29th Aug2008

Lyrically speaking for August 29

by Aaron

Happy Friday everyone! It’s that time of the week where, first you’re ready to get on with your great three-day holiday weekend. But that also means today is another edition of lyrically speaking. Now, I know some of you are already off-line for the great weekend and I understand if you don’t really care about songs and inspiration this week. But I’m going to give it to you anyway!

Now I don’t really consider myself a big fan of rat rap (thanks Colby!) music, but sometimes there are songs that actually have really good melodies and lyrics that are actually moving or powerful. I, personally don’t find this too much in rap music as I am not really a fan, but there are songs are cross over into different genres and capture the attention of many. That’s what the song Miss Jackson has done.

It you have probably heard the song on the radio but it’s been a few years. This was one of the songs that broke out Outkast and solidified them into mainstream music. Outcast had been around for many, many years but this song along with the song “bombs over Baghdad”, brought them into everybody’s consciousness. The song Miss Jackson talks about the heart ache and pain of trying to have a sustainable relationship with a girl, but then seeing that it just may not work out. It also shows how they want to step up to the plate and be a father figure even if they are not together. I enjoy the song I hope you guys do too.

Just a quick important note that Outkast consists of two members: Andre 3000, and Big Boi. you will see their cues in the lyrics below. ALSO PLEASE NOTE THESE LYRICS ARE GRAPHIC AND CONTAIN ADULT CONTENT! IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED, PLEASE SKIP THE LYRICS AND READ NO FURTHER! THANKS!

From the album Stankonia this is Ms. Jackson:

[Andre 3000]
Yeah this one right here goes out to all the baby’s mamas, mamas…
Mamas, mamas, baby mamas, mamas
Yeah, go like this

CHORUS: Andre 3000
I’m sorry Ms. Jackson [OOOH]
I am for real
Never meant to make your daughter cry
I apologize a trillion times
I’m sorry Ms. Jackson [OOOH]
I am for real
Never meant to make your daughter cry
I apologize a trillion times

[Big Boi]
My baby’s drama mama, don’t like me
She be doin things like havin them boys come from her neighborhood
to the studio tryin to fight me
She need to get a, piece of the american pie and take her bite out
That’s my house, I’ll disconnect the cable and turn the lights out
And let her know her grandchild is a baby, and not a paycheck
Private school, daycare shit, medical bills I pay that
I love your mom and everything, but see I ain’t the one who laid down
She wanna rib you up to start a custody war, my lawyers stay down
Shit; you never got a chance
to hear my side of the story we was divided
She had fish fries and cookouts
for my child’s birthday I ain’t invited
Despite it, I show her the utmost respect when I fall through
All you, do is defend that lady when I call you, yeah

CHORUS:
I’m sorry Ms. Jackson [OOOH]
I am for real
Never meant to make your daughter cry
I apologize a trillion times
I’m sorry Ms. Jackson [OOOH]
I am for real
Never meant to make your daughter cry
I apologize a trillion times

[Andre 3000]
Me and your daughter.. got a special thang goin on
You say it’s puppy love (arf arf arf)
We say it’s full grown (ARF ARF WOOF!)
Hope that we feel this.. feel this way forever
You can plan a pretty picnic
but you can’t predict the weather, Ms. Jackson

Ten times out of nine, now if I’m lyin; fine
The quickest muzzle throw it on my mouth and I’ll decline
King meets queen, then the puppy love thing, together dream
bout that crib with the Goodyear swing
on the oak tree, I hope we feel like this forever
Forever, forever, ever, forever, ever?
Forever never seems that long until you’re grown
And notice that the day by day ruler can’t be too long
Ms. Jackson my intentions were good I wish I could
become a magician to abacadabra all the sadder
thoughts of me, thoughts of she, thoughts of he
Askin what happened to the feelin that her and me
Had, I pray so much about it need some knee, pads
It happened for a reason one can’t be, mad
So know this, know that everything is cool
And yes I will be present on the first day of school,
and graduation

CHORUS:
I’m sorry Ms. Jackson [OOOH]
I am for real
Never meant to make your daughter cry
I apologize a trillion times
I’m sorry Ms. Jackson [OOOH]
I am for real
Never meant to make your daughter cry
I apologize a trillion times

[Big Boi]
Uh, uh, yeah
“Look at the way he treats me”
Shit, look at the way you treat me
You see your little nosy-ass homegirls
done got your ass sent up the creek G
Without a paddle, you left to straddle
and ride this thing on out
Now you and your girl ain’t speakin no more
cause my dick all in her mouth
Knahm’talkinbout? Jealousy, infidelity, envy
Cheating to beating, in the end to the G they be the same thing
So who you placin the blame on, you keep on singin the same song
Let bygones be bygones, you can go on and get the hell on
You and your mama

CHORUS:
I’m sorry Ms. Jackson [OOOH]
I am for real
Never meant to make your daughter cry
I apologize a trillion times
I’m sorry Ms. Jackson [OOOH]
I am for real
Never meant to make your daughter cry
I apologize a trillion times
I’m sorry Ms. Jackson [OOOH]
I am for real
Never meant to make your daughter cry
I apologize a trillion times
I’m sorry Ms. Jackson [OOOH]
I am for real
Never meant to make your daughter cry
I apologize a trillion times

Category : Ideas
Tags : ,
3 Comm
28th Aug2008

Talk your way out of it

by Aaron

You’ll have to excuse the lack of picture for today’s post. I spent a good 10 minutes looking for a picture that would fit today’s topic or be a play on words for today, but I was unable to find anything. So, you’re stuck with just this entry.

Right now, I want you to close your eyes, lean your head back and go ahead and imagine that this post is typing itself. Well, that’s exactly what is going on. This post is the first half of what I want to demonstrate for my new writing setup. Late last year, during my writing group, one of the members talked about how she uses a dictation program in order to get all of her writing done. The main motivation for this was that her wrists and hands were hurting so much that it hurts type after a while. She told me about the program Dragon naturally speaking and said how amazingly accurate it was.

Now, I really didn’t believe her because I had used a different dictation program back in college only about four or five years ago. But let me tell you that the program was atrocious! It would only get about 50% of the words correct, and then at a certain point, for whatever reason it felt like, it would just start typing gobbledygook. Only after using it for about two weeks that I decided it was garbage and I threw it out. I really should’ve went back to the store and got my money back, but I was just that upset. I was relegated to physically typing all of my papers for the rest of my college career. Anyhow, this person from my writing group was extremely correct in how accurate this software has become.

Right now my hands are behind my head and I’m very relaxed. My eyes are closed. I am dictating this entire blog post to all of you. Now, I do use a Macintosh so that means that I cannot use Dragon NaturallySpeaking. There is a new program now, called MacSpeech Dictate. This program uses the Dragon NaturallySpeaking engine but they implemented it for the Macintosh platform. This program has heavily impressed me even to the point were I went out and bought a $20 microphone. I tested it out for about two or three weeks, and decided that it really is amazing. It does get tripped upon words here and there, but it is only a program so I don’t expect it to be 100% accurate. I have a little headset microphone that doubles as speakers for my computer so I can listen to music and dictate at the same time if I feel like it.

The program is easy to set up, and I only have to do a little bit of training to get it to accurately recognize my voice. When you run it for the first time, you go through about a 10 minute reading process where it listens to everything you’re saying and tries to adjust itself to how you speak. After that it is very accurate. If you wish to fine-tune even further, there are two other selections you can read to train even further. An additional benefit, is that you can use the software to control your computer. I can dictate commands to have it control my computer and have it open and close programs. Overall, I am very very satisfied with this product.

So, I am really hoping that this program helps me generate my writing even faster. I think that once Spirit hackers is ready to go, I can use this program in order to dictate thousands of words much faster than I can ever typed them. And my wrists won’t hurt when I’m done!

So what do you guys think? Do any of you use dictation software? Have you tried it in the past? It’s definitely something to look into, especially if you do tons of writing. Also, most modern headset microphones don’t make you look like a total dork!

Category : Just me, Tips
Tags :
13 Comm
24th Aug2008

Mr. Kotter????

by Aaron

I wanted to post a little off-topic today and let you all into a funny trend I have been seeing in my blog stats. Back on April 29, 2008 I posted an entry talking about how I was back here and ready to blog after moving to a new place. I used a picture of Mr. Kotter because I thought it was funny. Well apparently there’s A LOT of people who search for Mr. Kotter and come here!

Since that initial post four months ago, I have had over 117 people drop in here at Copious Notes using the term “Welcome Back Kotter”! That’s a lot of unintended visitors! I can only hope that some of them are writers and are interested in this blog for what it is really about.

What I find more interesting is that shortly before that post, I posted an experimental entry where I wrote a few adult-themed sentences to see if it would generate interesting search results for people coming here. Well from my same stats page, the official score is:

Kotter 117, Sex 0.

Go figure! Horshack is just more popular than people doing the nasty. :-)

Category : Just me
6 Comm
22nd Aug2008

Lyrically Speaking for August 22

by Aaron

Happy Friday everyone! This week I bring to you another song that I’ve been really into these past few weeks. Sometimes a song comes around that you just really enjoy listening to, not just for the lyrics but also because the melody is really great. I don’t even mean great in that ‘typical radio formula’ sense where it gets stuck in your head. I’m referring to just a great song. For this week, I wanted to post a song that is inspiring in its poetry but also a song that is a fun driving song and I think can be classified as a ‘summer song’, whatever that means.

Personally, I find this song from 10,000 Maniacs interesting, thoughtful, poetic and observant of the world we live in. It reminds you to stay young at heart and enjoy life. I think all of us at times need this advice!

From the album Our Time in Eden, here is These Are Days:

These are the days
These are days you’ll remember
Never before and never since, I promise
Will the whole world be warm as this
And as you feel it,
You’ll know it’s true
That you are blessed and lucky
It’s true that you
Are touched by something
That will grow and bloom in you

These are days that you’ll remember
When May is rushing over you
With desire to be part of the miracles
You see in every hour
You’ll know it’s true
That you are blessed and lucky
It’s true that you are touched
By something that will grow and bloom in you

These are days
These are the days you might fill
With laughter until you break
These days you might feel
A shaft of light
Make its way across your face
And when you do
Then you’ll know how it was meant to be
See the signs and know their meaning
It’s true
Then you’ll know how it was meant to be
Hear the signs and know they’re speaking
To you, to you

Category : Ideas
Tags : ,
0 Comm
21st Aug2008

Audio & Video?

by Aaron

You guys may do what I do and listen to podcasts. I listen to a great one called “I Should Be Writing” and I’m always using it to help inspire me. Now I had originally intended to possibly podcast along with this blog. I’m curious to know what you guys think about this. Would you enjoy audio or video entries? Would you want to listen to them? I did a podcast for over two years and I won’t lie: it’s work. I also think they’re fun to do (until it becomes work) and could add another dynamic to this blog.

Do do I add audio and video here? Should I just leave it at blog entries? I’d love to know what you guys think!

Category : Just me
Tags :
3 Comm
20th Aug2008

Making the Bad Guy

by Aaron

Today brought another round of development work on Spirit Hackers. Now that I have pictures of what I think my characters look like, I wanted to focus more on my main bad guy. My antagonist is someone who needs a good backstory. I will admit that I have never put so much development work into a story before. My Robert book was just organic and a lot of it written from a personal perspective. All other writing I’ve done was sci-fi or short stories that was just skill alone. As I’ve been saying for a few weeks, Spirit Hackers needs a plan.

My bad guy is of course an integral part of my book and much of the plot would not exist without him. An obvious thing that my wife pointed out last week was that all well-developed bad guys believe they are really doing good. I knew this in the back of my head but I hadn’t remembered it until now. I thought about many movies and books I’ve read and realized that I have to come up with a backstory to my bad guy that not only is his motivation but is also something that, if looked at from the correct perspective, could be seen as something good.

Whew, this isn’t easy!

I spent a few hours this morning working on what his motivation and backstory entails. I put some messed up searches into google to help find examples and seeds of ideas on where to go with this guy. Eventually I found a news story that entailed a tragic accident. This played a key role in my character’s story and I have a big chunk of this guy figured out. I also wrote up a time-line of the backstory for the novel as a whole. By doing this, I was able to further develop the motivation and ‘doing good-ness’ perspective of the antagonist. I also show the morphing of compromises and decisions this person makes that ultimately makes him a bad guy in the story. He’s not a bad person. He’s a torn person. He’s someone who doesn’t know what to do and is so overcome with guilt and anger that he cannot cope. I dare say no more, as I don’t want to give anything else away!

So that was today’s building up of Spirit Hackers. It’s coming along and I think that I’m still on track to start writing this baby again within a few weeks. No story is complete without good characters and I think that all this story development will eventually pay off when I begin writing. In a way, the book is writing itself with all this development. We’ll see how easy I think it is when I actually write this thing! :-)

Category : Spirit Hackers
Tags :
8 Comm
18th Aug2008

Getting the Picture

by Aaron

Well I’m here to check in with everyone as to the progress of Spirit Hackers. My preliminary writing has gone pretty well so far and I think I’ll actually be able to begin writing within the next week or two. I’m not setting an actual goal time because I want to be ready when the story tells me it’s ready.

For now, here is what I have accomplished:

1. Basic – intermediate outline. I have mapped out the key scenes of the book using a tool I’ll speak of in another post. By getting this map put together, I was able to set up the in-between chapters that will drive the story to the eventual climax. I don’t have it totally hammered out yet but I think the plot is probably 60-75% figured out.

2. Character development. I already had my character names but I really needed to develop their whole biographies and also get their features and language sorted out. So far I have some of the basics but I still need to get their motivations, backstories and also their distinctive language worked out. A big plus was that today I worked on finding pictures online of people that I believe fit the images I have of my characters in my head. I copied them all to my computer so I can more easily and accurately describe them as they go through the book. This was a big breakthrough that happened today.

3. A plot that makes sense. The last post I wrote that spoke of my plot highlighted the fact that I really needed to figure out where this story was going. I came up with a basic story of what the characters will do, that delves a little deeper than the outline I posted in #1.

So that is what I have so far. I really want to talk to you guys about the setup I am beginning to use for this book but it’s not 100% ready yet. I hope to also post more consistently this week, as I want to keep you guys up to date and also not let this place get stale. I appreciate all your comments and visits here. This is a part of what keeps me going.

I’ll see you all real soon!

Category : Spirit Hackers
Tags :
5 Comm
15th Aug2008

Lyrically Speaking for August 15

by Aaron

Hey everyone! I’m going to try to post Lyrically Speaking on Friday’s since that is the end of the week and also since everyone can use some inspiration for their two days off from work. I really don’t have much to say since this song speaks for itself and if you don’t find this inspiring, then something is wrong. I’m going to let the song speak for itself and it needs no introduction.

From John Lennon, this is Imagine

Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

Category : Ideas
Tags : ,
4 Comm
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