HeLP!

I've been going record crazy. It is an addiction I cannot and do not want to curb. I am going to go broke. I don't care. Vinyl is precious to me. It gives my sad little life direction. It keeps my hands out of my pants (except when I reach for cash to buy record). I used to hate people like the one I have become. I worked at a used record store for ten years. I once mocked and loathed the sad, empty-lifed recluses who came into the store and snot-pawed the vinyl like some middle-aged pizza loving Gollum whose one-ring was an out-of-print Italian prog album. Now I am that person. I don't drink, smoke, or do drugs. I try to eat fairly healthily. I exercise regularly. I collect vinyl. I am new at it. It is a corrupting influence. I don't know exactly what caused this mania. I got a new job. I am in a band that makes me happy. My life has changed significantly in the past few months. This coincides with my new habit, but I'm not sure how the two fit together.

Here are my recent acquisitions of the past month or so:

Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
Pink Floyd - Meddle
Ray Charles - Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music
Geraldine Fibbers - Butch
XTC - Skylarking (Mermaid Smile version)
Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
Jethro Tull - Warchild, Heavy Horses, Living in the Past
Panda Bear - Person Pitch
Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
Lou Reed - Transformer
Big Star - 3rd
David Bowie - Scary Monsters, Changesonebowie & Changestwobowie
Billy Bragg - Workers' Playtime
Can - Ege Bamyasi
Decemberists - Crane Wife, The Tain, Her Majesty, Picturesque
6 Nonesuch Explorer Albums

There are more, but I'm too weak to go on.

Rest in peace, Arthur C. Clarke

There were two major authors that completely consumed by brain from about the ages of 10 to 14 - Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke. Ray Bradbury showed me that there was something beautiful, scary, and poetic in almost everything around me, while Clarke taught me about potential.

Almost everything that guy wrote was about how we could achieve anything we wanted as a species as long as we just rolled up our sleeves and got to work. Nothing happens to any character in a Clarke novel if they just sit on their hands. His heroes are always people who think big, question everything, and look ahead. Unfortunately, it is our inability as a race to live up to Clarke's vision that I am so disappointed in the world right now. I feel that we're asking all the wrong questions, setting all the wrong goals, and simply not applying ourselves. We could be achieving greatness, but instead we're fighting over whose god is better than the other.

In spite of this, I refuse to give up hope. It is because of people like Arthur C. Clarke that I cling to one last shred of optimism. He never gave up on us, so I guess I can't either.