He's always barking at the picture rectangle

EVERY sunday, and sometimes on thursdays and mondays, my human is jumping up and barking at the little padded men in helmets on the picture rectangle! I have no idea whats going on! I usually just elect to take my new denta-bones (which are extremely tasty, but don't help my breath THAT much) and hide under the coffee table. I figured it must be just some random phase with him, but it seems this will be going on until early next year! We still have the scary mask day, the lots of food day, and the weird music and big flashing tree day! I don't think I can handle all this commotion PLUS him barking all the time.

*Matt from the other room*
"In my defense Ryo barks EVERDAY at NOTHING for absolutely no reason..."

My human can complain all he wants about my barking...I'm just keeping him and the other humans safe from mailmen, stray cats, and the evil Lili who resides in our domain. My human has also been commenting that its been "cold" out. I guess anything under 85 degrees is cold now? Whatever he feeds me and I love him for it.

Ryo out, peace

School, work, music, football, repeat.

Before I get into new stuff let me say this about my previous post. I don't know that I necessarily drew any significant conclusions from any of what I said. That was just a good portion of the thoughts floating around in my brain and it was getting a little crowded up there haha. So now I feel much better.

ANYWAYS football has begun!!! My Cowboys are engaging in their usual heartbreaking ways at 1-1 losing 31-33 to the Giants Sunday evening (ryo will have more comments on this). Also fantasy football has taken over an unhealthy portion of my time again (to the right is my team logo). Last year I was the ninja turtles....this year I am ninja turtles 2. Glorious.

So I guess I'm going in backwards order from my title? in that case we have music next! Well I'm doing my best to take the advice of a) Pearl Jam and b) the ticket hosts while talking about the cowboys. I need to basically get out of my own way to get things done musically. The members of Pearl Jam allowed their producer Brendan O'Brien to have a considerable say in their new album. Instead of "trying to make ideas work that probably weren't even good ideas..." the band planned rehearsed and went right in to the studio to make a straightforward, quick, and "fun" album. My opinions of how this actually turned out aside, I do believe I too need to "get out of my own way" and just get some things done musically. Every artist faces the challenge of having either too many ideas or not enough and sometimes both. I've very recently started having just a smidgen more confidence in myself. I finally give myself enough credit when I'm playing around with an idea, that I may not be able to save or record right away, that when the time comes for something like it I will be able to come up with another idea just as good if I forgot the first one. If I track back my songwriting and ideas they've only gotten better not worse, so why would it be any different in the future? haha

Third topic of choice is work a. However I'm not going to talk about how this affects me cause I don't like always getting the response "welcome to being and adult!". Its not like adults don't complain about the fact that they have to do adult things too haha.

School finally is going good and moderately okay at the same time? I have a class I'm very unhappy with, but I've decided to not put more than is necessary for my little A in it. My literature class is ALLLL about Dante's Divine Comedies and is extremely interesting. It also keeps my trying to read about 100 pages in three different books between every class. This is where my little brain rampage from last week came from, however I'm enjoying the mental stimulation. So thats pretty much what I do these days. Work and go to school, listen to and make music, and watch football. Not too bad.

Ryo (aka mopey) and my brain that won't turn off

(Something is wrong with Ryo. She had a pinched nerve in her back a while ago and I think the weather makes her uncomfortable, so she is very mopey as you can see in the picture. Therefore she'll be taking a break this week...and I'll take more than my share of the blog space.)

It's a strange thing in life to think that you've got everything figured out just to learn quickly that you're completely wrong. Then again, maybe you are right but now wrong by thinking you're right. Then again maybe you've never been right and never will be, but the point is try. Then again maybe you used to be right and you're getting closer to being right again, but not in the way you originally thought.......Throw in actual situations and life experiences into the wrongs and rights of this paragraph and you have what my brain has been juggling the past few days.

This is what happens when I do my homework! I was reading through a book for class called "Evil in Modern Thought" and my brain shot off on philosophical rabbit trail after philosophical rabbit trail. The main issue with this is I will get nothing out of it till I write it down, because the trail of logic is not at all simple in my mind. So have fun reading this!

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant believed/conceived/thunk that in the universe there is a rift between reason and nature, but that this rift is both a blessing and a curse. It is a sort of paradox. We have been made for nature and nature has been made for us. Nature follows natural laws that have logical, tangible, and quantitative orderly paths that we humans have been given the ability to decipher. This discovery gives us unmeasured pleasure and even some essence of purpose. However the tragic half of the story comes in to play in the infinite nature of...well nature. Man has the ability to reason and discover ALL that is logical, but he can never discover all that is logical because its infinite. HOW TRAGIC! To know that one has the ability to accomplish something, yet never will! This goes beyond a fear of failure, this is a problem of fulfillment. However Kant is a man who himself longed for hope, and this he gives to us at least a little. The joy of man is to reach for that which he can never attain. Just think of our fascination with superheroes! We long for that which we cannot be. Man longs to be great than he is; man longs to be God...Mind blown a bit right? Mine was. Especially with the connection that to a Christian the goal is to be "like Christ". We strive desperately to be that which God already told us we are not and cannot be.

(My mind has not had time to process the religious aspect of this thinking yet so moving on!)

My over thinking situations and life in general led me into depression. I saw little point and little hope in the everyday. The point of everyman is to procreate, love his family, and stimulate the economy. This is the agenda and the life path of everyman, but I as a human have been instilled with the desire to be more! I have been instilled with the desire to be a "superman", to be bigger, stronger, smarter, faster, and be able to accomplish any task set before me. For a while I felt I could do this. I could be a top student and athlete and musician and intellectual and friend and whatever else I wished because I had the ability to make anything I wanted an ability. Yet experience and life demanded of me that I must choose one thing and make that my ability. But nature says no, you cannot have that you reach for, you must only be happy in your pursuit of it.

So believing in this wisdom I set out to do so. I chose to focus my life around music as it was the only thing that seemed worth focusing on anymore. I chose to finally shut up, keep my head down, and do what needed to be done. I can think about it once the job is done and I have nothing else to do. This has worked for me for the past few months, but its starting not to. Through reason I have negated my ability to reason. I have allowed myself to become dull and stupid. My thoughts are only as deep as I am, because they focus on nothing else. I have repeated in my mind repeatedly the phrase "power through". Shut up and get it done, get to work. I still believe this is admirable and necessary for me to succeed and prove myself to myself alone, but there is still a problem. I have negated my lack of motivation not by creating a source of motivation, but by ignoring the lack of such a source. I have moved forward by driving on empty, breaking down, and then pushing the car hoping to hit a gas station soon.

Well the fact is I don't see a gas station ahead, and I don't even know if my car runs on gasoline or something else. Maybe it runs on Willie Nelson's bio-fuel or hamsters on wheels, I don't know yet. But I do know this, I cannot deny my brain higher thought! I cannot deny my tendency to over think. I cannot deny my human self its desire to know all, and never be able to. If I were rich and had a happy marriage and wonderful children and close friends, I could easily be miserable if I allowed myself to be okay with it all. Something can always be better.

My mom has been telling me for a while that I'm one of those people that always thinks "grass is greener on the other side." She couldn't be more right. I long for that which I cannot have, and when I have something its not as great as I had hoped. Unfortunately the same thing happens withing myself. I seek change in my own character and I am always dissatisfied with the outcome. Once I was more proud and I sought humility and my humility brought me apathy and insecurity. When I was eloquent and intellectual I sought simplicity and bliss through ignorance, they made me realize how much I loved the others. Now that my focus is music my brain longs for the challenge of the sciences and mathematics. NEVER before in my life have I said "man I kinda feel like taking Calculus again."

My only conclusion is that I need to strive again to be a superman even though reason tells me I cannot be. If reason has taught me anything as of late its that I should ignore it sometimes. In order to be happy I will allow myself again to be exceptional. In order for my music to thrive I need to be thinking about something else unrelated, that's just how it works for me. If everything is greener on the other side, then I need to be on all sides so that everything may be green.

If you read all this I'm impressed haha,
Matt (get better soon Ryo!)

They must have rabies

So my human barely even says hi to me when he gets home! He just walks upstairs and starts yelling at the computer. He keeps saying it won't "boot up" or whatever that means. Hitting it usually seems to make things work for him. Also he was outside cooking some of that delicious people food on that "BBQ" thing and it started trying to explode! Flames where shooting out the top and bottom of it! He said he just "opened up the propane valve too much" whatever the heck that means. I think its alive and actively trying to stop me from getting some people food... Anyways for some reason my human keeps disguising himself lately. He walks up to the door and his eyes are just gone! Covered by some glass shield! Of course I have to bark and warn my other humans in case the evil glass eye shields have taken over his brain, but they always seem to get mad at me for it anyways. That stupid cat Lili has been entering my human and I's domain and sleeping in the closet on his gym bag lately...frankly I don't get why he doesn't just close the doors and keep her in there...well he has a few times, but he always lets her out and says "awwww I'm so sorry Lili!" We'll never defeat her with that apologetic attitude of his...

I like pleasure spiked with pain and music is my aeroplane. It's my aeroplane

Ahhhh music. I love it so. After all its what I now go to school for now! And because I mad the wonderful decision to switch my major I'm now getting to more of the fun part. My classes are listed in my last post so i won't bother with that again, but I will say that I'm quite excited about my digital music II class. I'm actually going to be able to just record a song that I've been wanting to do for a while and use it as my project for class. So now I have an excuse to hole up in my room and work on music "I'm doing homework mom!". Kevin and I are looking to become producers for hire and to start recording bands. Its something I've always wanted to do, but I'm definitely getting more motivated than usual and I'm putting in some extra work to learn the ins and outs of the MANY MANY different recording softwares I'll be using as well as the whole MIDI vs. audio track thing. Other than being quite musically inspired, pretty much the past 3 days, I've just been working alot and battling my computer. It seems to have a death wish, but I've persuaded it to live on for just a while longer. Also I got new cross training shoes and tested em out by running 4 miles with my parents last night. Did better than I thought I would, but I definitely don't enjoy it as much as they do haha. more stuff later.

Today will be a short post as my human hasn't been around much to do anything with me! However the other two have been so kind as to take me on incredibly long walks and even to play at the lake for a while. My human to his credit however has an amazing supply of tasty new bones (seen right), but to his discredit has not fed me today and keeps saying he needs to go to some place called "wal-mart" before he can! Does this mean he's forgotten about me the 20,000 times he's been there already this week, and STILL has to get me more food? Terrible....Well when he's not, not feeding me or whining about his ankle, or work my human is just sleeping. He must be doing something important right? He DID get some new fancy looking shoes yesterday, I wonder what those are for. He keeps saying "cross-training shoes" but they don't look religious to me at all. I'm off to harass the cat.

-Ryo

Baaaack to School

(The picture on the right is one of me and Nikki from the UTD catalogue ^_^. We knew they'd use it when they asked to take our picture!)

Yes its that time o'year again. I start classes tomorrow (august 20th) at UTD again and I'm moderately excited. I have Digital Music 2, Elements of Art and Performance, History of Roots, Jazz, and Swing, and a Lit class on Dante's Divine Comedies. So this is a pretty artsy semester and I'm hoping my creative half can keep up haha. So lately I have fallen abruptly from my crazy perky happy attitude to a more even keeled one. My current mindstate isn't as inexplicably fun as the previous one, but I'm still getting things done. Both of my two summer basketball leagues ended. My injuries were topped off last night by a second ankle sprain...I now will be wearing two braces when I play! Other than that not much has happened for me besides a healthy amount of work at Aaron Bros. I'm sure once school starts I'll have more fun things to talk about!

Stay beautiful people ;)

Matt

Annoying people

Do you know how many times my human (Matt) has called me with false promises of treats just so he can take embarrassing pictures of me for this blog? Too many... My new bones are delicious and he gets brownie points for them, but he walks a fine line. A dog's love can only be so "unconditional". So many things have seemed to be happening. The tree-like one "Tim" left with his suitcases of sadness and I haven't seen him since! (Tim's in Prague!!!) My human has been coming and going more than usual to this place called "work". I doubt he really does any, he's always just sitting at the computer or trapping me in the room (like right now) and making me listen to the loud noise boxes (music from the computer speakers). Sometimes he even picks up one of his stringed boxes (guitar) and hits it while howling at nothing?! Why does he do that?! I don't choose to have the emergency sirens go off just so i can howl at them with a stupid smile on my face like he does! Oh well it seems to make him happy...weirdo. More on this later...

Ryo

The Straight and Narrow

So my car is finally fixed after a long full day of work. From best I can surmise (I had to look this word up immediately after I typed it...) the gaskets on my valve covers were old and crappy allowing oil to leak and get on my spark plugs which caused one to short and misfire causing it to overpower and kill my ignition coil? causing my car to stop haha. So my gracious uncle mike repaired the ignition coil mechanism thingy and wednesday I labored away fixing the rest with his careful humbling guidance haha. Anyways Alexandria (yes my car has a name), is running well again...she accelerates much faster now :). Anyways in response to my 2 votes on option #3 I'll throw some religion out here. So my uncle Mike is a man with an immense amount of mental energy and enjoys sharing it and his ideas, some of which got me thinking, especially about wisdom which I have spoken of often as something I search for. However I've become preoccuppied and lax, and that is unnacceptable. To be wise it must come from God alone, a man by himself is inherintly a fool, and I can't be wise away from God like I've been trying to do. ANYWAYS here's just a thingy from Proverbs 11:23-25
"To do evil is like sport to a fool,
but a man of understanding has wisdom.
The fear of the wicked will come upon him,
and the desire of the righteous will be granted.
When the whirlwind passes by, the wicked is no more,
But the righteous has an everlasting foundation."

This is basically what I'm trying do right now. As my mom has said to me time and time again "Just do whats right and good things will start happening to you." This doesn't mean that bad things won't happen, because they are happening and I could just as easily be miserable right now, but I've made the decision to succeed and to be happy, and ya know what its working amazingly. Who would've thought i could have a great day waking up at 6am and working on my car til 8pm and having to call in to work and not make it cause my car wasn't done yet? Its all perspective. I understand my Alexandria so much better now hahaha.

peace and love,
Matt

Commotion, emotion, and my humans.

So friday my female human (mom) had a celebration of some sort for herself. (Happy b-day momma!) All my humans were gone for a while and returned with the smell of frozen yogurt on them! Then the next day almost 35 of the humans showed up in my domain! Apparently the treelike one (Tim) is going to some place called Prague, so the other humans are celebrating him leaving. Makes no sense to me, I'm always so lonely and confused when a human leaves. My human (Matt) is still keeping my room a mess, he sure does talk about his problems alot these days. Gets on my nerves a bit, I can't chew on my new bone in peace without him making snide remarks like "oh ryo that's a tasty looking bone!" or "hey ryo that should make your breath smell better!". However we have taken some epic naps together with my feline spy...shes not a friend, not a companion. Lili the cat is my spy and informant on the feline world. She's like my personal case study on the feline condition. However sometimes she crosses the barrier between spy and ally without my permition. In the picture above I was just too tired to do anything about it...more on things soon.

A 180 degree turn back towards progess...hopefully (Matt's 2nd)

So following suit with the craziness I've allowed myself to suffer through the past couple years, I decided to make a last minute change. However this change isn't really a change as much as changing my decision to make a change by not changing! Try to figure that out! Anyways I've decided to return/stay at UT Dallas to finish out my undergrad degree in Arts and Performance with a focus in Music. A lovely long titled degree meaning I get to do music and art for a couple years :). I'm very happy with this decision because I was not liking the idea of 4 more years of schooling that my UNT adviser informed me I would have to endure. While feeling perky about my decision I shot off to good ole Wal-mart to get a filing cabinet and some groceries. On the way while driving up a hill my car decided to break down. Thanks to that hill I was able to put the car in nuetral and roll backwards down into a side street and park. My mom and I chained it up and dragged it back the house later. So i have time to write this blog since I'm not going anywhere anymore... Thats mostly it for me, Ryo will be posting shortly to fill everyone in on more amiable events in the Minich household.

ciao,
Matt

Where he's at (Ryo's 1st)

Well life's been pretty crazy lately. The back border of my domain (backyard fence) blew down during that apocalyptic event (thunderstorm)! Thankfully my human (Matt) and the gray striped one (Chris) secured it a few days ago. My human moved back home and brought with him loud music, weird sleeping habits, and seems to waste too much of his time with blog posts and facebook. The room is always a mess and its hard to tell whats edible and whats not these days, I'll just have to guess. After living apart for so long we bonded one day as he finally cut my hair, gave me a bath, and attempted to remove (brush) my teeth. However he was very supportive through each traumatic event so he has again won my favor...plus he gives me more food than anyone in the house and I let him sleep on MY bed.

Where I'm at (Matt's 1st)

Well its official, I have moved back home to my lovely parents house in Corinth. After a year on campus at UTD I realized a) I'm poor b) they're not and c) I need to switch majors and change schools! So I'm planning on going to UNT in the fall for music. My brain is boggled and I'm just going through the rest of this summer in a "I'm supposed to do wha?" daze. I have alot of decisions and life changes to make if I'm going to succeed, and I'm thinking for the next year I may just need to put my "thinking brain" on hold. The thinking brain is fun, but he thinks too much and doesn't get anything done. I'm sure from this blog you'll be able to see if I succeed or fail. Hold me to it!