23-05-2016: starts rock band. cancels tour because he has to work.

review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/05/23.html

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to the ramifications of not being conditioned properly by tv brainwashing

somebody asked me about which saturday morning cartoons i used to watch as a kid last night, and i really drew a bank.

"my parents never had cable."

and, that's true. they didn't. but it's not really the reason - i wouldn't have watched them if i had cable, anyways. see, i do think i can actually draw larger conclusions about my individuality through my disengagement with popular culture so i think this is worth a bit of a rant.

the truth is that i used to sleep in on saturday mornings. the reason is that my parents were divorced and friday night was the time i spent with my dad. he'd often keep me up until well past midnight, even when i was very young. so, i would almost always be asleep on saturday mornings until close to noon.

i guess most parents want to put their kids to bed early on friday nights, so they can get a rest from their kids. for me, it was the opposite: i wasn't allowed to go to sleep.

so, rather than watch early morning cartoons on saturday, i always watched late night movies on fridays. and, i actually remember being isolated from the other kids because of it. they'd be talking about these cartoons, and i'd have no idea what they were talking about, so i'd just end up on the outside. had they seen the new tom hanks film? the star wars trilogy? and, the answer was they hadn't - they weren't allowed to, they wouldn't want to, they weren't able to follow...

so, i found myself unable to relate to the other kids at a pretty young age.

a pattern developed as i grew older. had i seen the new sitcom? no; i was reading a book. had i seen the new action series? i still didn't have cable. had i played the new video game? i didn't have a gaming console, and i didn't really want one - i preferred my guitar.

i've argued in the past that you could probably convert me into a normal dipshit by sitting me down and making me watch every episode of friends for a month, clockwork orange style. the reason is that the reason i'm not a normal dipshit is that i didn't watch every episode of friends. or any episode of friends. i don't know which one i am; i'm not even entirely sure which is which.

what that means is that i never got all the subtle capitalist brainwashing that they cram into television, and i've consequently never really had to reverse it. so, all the left-wing music and political commentary came at me as a tabula rasa; i didn't form myself by reacting against the status quo so much as i formed myself by not knowing what the status quo even was.

there's a lesson for parents. if you keep your kids off tv, they may end up with a higher kind of pure intelligence. but, the functional outcome of this may just end up being a life time of alienation and an inherent inability to understand how to conform.

forced brainwashing aside, i think i'm too far gone. i'm half way to my grave. i'm not worth the energy. and i kind of like myself who i am, anyways. but, in hindsight, i realize the longterm social disadvantages of not being able to relate to the people around me when i was very little and am aware that i'd be very different today had i actually watched those saturday cartoons like the other kids.