Anyways, hope you enjoy, if you have any comments or remarks on it, feel free to let me know! I'd quite enjoy knowing what the thought is about some of the stuff I've been making. Otherwise, have a lovely day, and I hope seeing this interests you in some way.
In full disclosure, most all of my free time for the last... very long time has been put into playing a little game called Fallout 4, of which I have already made a little woodburning of for the Minutemen. Following suite, I made one for the Brotherhood of Steel, and it was not so good. I should return to that. Anyways, this one is for the Railroad, and while I'm not entirely happy with the design, the actual lantern symbol is present and burnt alright, so I'm rolling with it for now and will return to all of these symbols when I'm a bit better and not spending every waking hour of the weekend playing Fallout 4. I promise I'm more active during the week, I've just got a hankering to clear this game out before putting it down for a long while.
Anyways, hope you enjoy, if you have any comments or remarks on it, feel free to let me know! I'd quite enjoy knowing what the thought is about some of the stuff I've been making. Otherwise, have a lovely day, and I hope seeing this interests you in some way.
Another Noteflight composition, another lesson learned: It's much easier to write a tune for an instrument you've played for seven years than it is for one that you stopped playing years ago. Even though I've never actually used proper notage for my playing, it still translates pretty well with rudimentary knowledge of how composition works, and being able to imagine myself playing the instrument in question.
This piece is made up of Drums, a Bass, and another Bass (But not the same type.) The idea in its structure is that the two Basses (one electric, one old-style) are playing after one another, trying to one-up each other as a drum beat changes for each individual section. Hope you enjoy it, it took me a couple of hours to get going, but I quite like some of the sounds. Seeya tomorrow for more of the... well, not the same, you're probably getting an essay up next. But still. Eight AM. See you there.
So I really didn't have any time to get something ready for an eight AM posting, so quite luckily I still had a recent-ish writing contest entry that I, surprisingly, didn't post already. It was a short story, as evidenced by the WS: up above, and it made it past the first round but didn't get any further. I can see why, but it's still a neat little thing I wrote that you may enjoy. I'll have more stuff ready for tomorrow, cause Saturday's are free of me having to do important stuff and have much more opportunity than weekdays provide. Anyways, enjoy, seeya tomorrow, and hope your day is off to a nice start from this. Unless you read this at a later time or date, in which case just have a pleasant time in general. Joan and Mark by Mackinley Clevinger, August 9, 2015 “Joan, do you ever… do you ever get the feeling that we’ve… I don’t know. Missed out on something? A life we should’ve lived, should’ve been able to have. Something better than this?” Mark lifted his shovel from the rubble, sweeping it towards a ragged tear in the side of the squat concrete office building he stood within. Joan looked up from the aged maps laid out on a recently righted table and swept her gaze through the cracked-concrete lined hole in the wall, and sighed. “Like a normal life’s just passed us by? We had our chance, and it was taken away from us?” Joan heaved herself away from the maps and stretched, her spine popping and cracking as she worked the kinks out. “I feel like that every time I stop and think, Mark. I feel like we wake up to something bleaker and worse every morning, I think of the old days and I just can’t always stop the tears from coming.” Joan shook out her hands and cracked her knuckles, their light popping the only sounds reverberating through the dead relic they hunted through. Joan stepped around the desk warily, her balance wavering on the uneven layers of loose rocks coating the building’s shattered floors. She picked her way down from where the table stood towards Mark’s speculative figure, leaning on his shovel as he looked out from the crush of rocks towards the city proper.
Joan laid her hands on the back of Mark’s shoulders and looked over him towards a view topped with a dismal grey. “I think of the family I’ve left behind, Mark, and it’s a thought that tears me up inside. All I want to do is give up, let myself drown in the fear and the pain.” Joan let her head drop, her forehead pressed against the back of Mark’s head, and let out a shaky breath. “How do you…” Mark coughed and spat a dust infused wad of spit into the mess of rock and debris at his feet. “How do you… not… drown in it all. In the loss and the pain and knowing that things could’ve been different? That maybe… maybe it didn’t have to be this bad? For any of us?” Mark wiped at his eyes, leaving a wet stain on the dust caked around his eyes. “By remembering that what’s happened is done, Mark. You can’t change what you did, you can’t change what someone else did, it’s done. We have the lot in life that we do, and nothing’s going to change that but how we walk forward.” Joan lifted her head and looked at the ruins surrounding her, the ravaged remains of a once proud building long turned to ruin. She looked down at the area of cleared debris, the culmination of several day’s effort and too many spent supplies. “The past is gone to us and the present is fleeting, all we’ve got to look forward to now is the future. A better future, one we can be proud of.” Joan took a step back from Mark and bent down, looking at the scattered rocks and imagining what may be beneath. “It does us no good to dwell on our regrets, all of our mistakes, or what could’ve been. Bottle up your past for better days, and keep yourself focused on what’s important.” Mark let his shovel fall and turned towards Joan. “So none of it matters? Our families, our friends… the dead? They don’t matter, just keep on living? Shut out our past? Give up on our lives? Just…” Mark looked back through the tear in the side of the building. “Give up on hope that we’ll ever get back what we lost, and treat it as unimportant? That’s what you want me to do? Just… let the past die, like the world did?” Mark’s eyes darted over the streets, covered in rubble that obscured rusted and shredded metal that were once cars, over collapsed structures that were once buildings, and at the bodies that were once living people. “Joan, I don’t want to give up on that, no matter how much it hurts. I don’t care what happened, I don’t care who did it, I just want what the world used to be to be that again. I don’t want some abomination to take its place, I want my life back.” Mark stood staring over the decrepit city while Joan sifted through the rubble. “We’ll get there one day, Mark.” I'm surprisingly political for someone who doesn't live in the country where the giant election is currently ongoing... Eh, it's good to care about something, and the fate of the world for the next couple of years is a pretty big deal. Hopefully this kind of stuff reaches people who are in indecision, and it pushes them to vote responsibly. I try to make a point of not saying outright what to do in regards of who to vote for, as I don't want any potential message to be tarnished by somebody's predisposition towards a candidate, but instead try to start them thinking a bit more about why they're choosing who they're choosing, and to make sure that they're getting the full story on what's going on. This isn't the mid nineteen-hundreds, this is the twenty-first century. There's the internet and a ton of journalism. We know most-everything that these politicians are planning on doing, and can conjecture the rest based on history and world trends; we can pick the next four years and know, roughly, what's gonna happen. This is not the time for going with your gut, or listening to a few biased views. Get informed, find out what's up, do some research, and pick rationally.
I hope you enjoy this piece about politicians using the country as a toy for the benefit of themselves and their friends, and that it sets you thinking about who you're gonna choose for upcoming stuff. Have yourself a lovely day, and remember to be awesome to yourself and everyone you meet. Political Motives by Mackinley Clevinger, February 25, 2016 In the current election ongoing in America, it is well known that a hot-topic of debate is how the country should handle the influx of immigrants fleeing the destruction of their home country when they seek refuge in the United States of America. It is an oft-brought up talking point, and the decision a candidate makes on this topic typically falls in line with their party; the Democratic candidates want to supply aid and integrate these desperate people into the country, while Republican candidates want to shut the doors on the, using colorful and hateful rhetoric in doing so. This is, of course, a gross simplification, as the political grouping being examined in this piece contains members from both parties; it works more as a generalization, and in any important political matter it is vital that you research potential candidates to be as informed as you are able. I believe that a helping hand should always be given so as to spread a message of peace and brotherhood to all of mankind, and that turning away from someone in aid is a heartless and inhuman thing to do, especially in this current situation wherein they are victims of extremist groups that America had a hand in the creation of. (Seriously. America has really messed up that part of the world.) However, that is not the subject of this piece of writing. These same politicians who want to bar the way of progress for refugees seeking a safe haven also take great pride in vowing to destroy many government services that provide badly needed support to the citizens who they are trying to convince to vote for them, and yet they often succeed in garnering that support despite obvious objections because they know how to manipulate voters into simply not caring. I'm going to preface this with a warning: Andrei Chikalito, The Rostov Ripper. is a serial killer who killed people in very disturbing ways, and did it a lot. He is dead now, and if you do not want to be disgusted or worried by this man's twisted life, please do not continue on below this. There are plenty of nicer stories on this website that you could read, or things that aren't about mass murder that made me quite uncomftorable while I wrote it. I'm choosing to post it as it is something I have put time into making that may interest some, but if you are on the fence about reading this, I would advise you skip past it and maybe look at Warm Night or Markus and Dariah, or any of the Essays besides this one. If you are interested, go ahead and read, I hope you find it interesting and well-written, but serial killers are a nasty bunch, and I want to put it out there that this essay is about a very bad man, and it may be uncomfortable to view for many.
With that said, this is a research paper on Ukranian born serial killer Andrei Chikalito, who killed over fifty men and women, mostly children, by mutilating them with a knife to achieve sexual gratification. This essay aims to outline his life and why he did what he did. Originally a school project for Sociology, but if I'm going to spend hours on something, I'm going to share it with people who might be interested in it. Again, if you are unsure, I advise you don't look at this, it likely isn't worth the discomfort you may feel from it. The format is kinda awkward, as it is a research paper with references and stuff translated from Microsoft Word to the Weebly text editor, but it should still work as words you can read just fine. Without further ado, I'll be back tomorrow at eight AM with something. Have a nice, peaceful, day. The Rostov Ripper by Mackinley Clevinger, February 24, 2016 Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo, known as The Rostov Ripper and the Maniac, was a serial killer in the Ukraine, his span of murders beginning in 1978 at the age of forty-two and ending in 1990 when he was caught, ultimately being executed in Moscow, Russia, in 1994. (Jenkins, 2006). Andrei Chikatilo confessed to fifty-six murders, of which only fifty-three were confirmed, targeting primarily women and children of either gender. He would bind his victims by rope and mutilate their bodies with a knife, the acts of violence giving him the only sexual release he could obtain, often trying and failing to rape his victims before resorting to using the knife as a simulated penis, reportedly even eating parts of the sexual organs of his victims that he cut off. For twelve years he escaped justice, killing indiscriminately while the authorities scrambled to catch a perpetrator hiding in plain sight, finding himself in police custody on several occasions and being freed each time as the search swept over him, unaware that they had the man they were searching for. (The Biography.com Website). Andrei became a murderer because of hereditary and social elements that combined to make him need the excitement and satisfaction given to him from viciously murdering anyone weaker than him, a release of both the anger instilled in him by a life of being bullied and mocked for numerous character traits, chief among them his inability to maintain an erection which forced him to seek sexual pleasure by means besides regular intercourse. (Blanco). I was messing about with a response to a question for a computer science class, and ended up writing a fairly long little story about the 'true' power of java. It starts off as the response to the question, but ends up going some fun and weird places sure to either amuse or offend. I had fun writing it, and I need more time for a bigger project I'm working on, so I hope you enjoy this little bit of silliness I came up with! See you tomorrow at eight AM again.
(Make sure to read past the first paragraph, it starts as a boring-normal response and goes somewhere better.) Java Silliness by Mackinley Clevinger, February Question: What is the true power of the Java language? The given power of the Java Language is that it's a great tool for most any purpose, able to be applied in numerous processes spanning every field of human activity to better enable us, as a species, to do the things we do, while also avoiding a war over which Operating System is best by having a lowest common denominator-type program to do all of this. Anyone, anywhere, can make use of Java to do most anything they can imagine, and plenty of things they can't. Basically, Java is really, really useful and versatile for people. However, there is a deeper truth here. Java is more than just a convenient programming tool, it is something people have dedicated themselves to. Java has become more than an assemblage of code that gives us convenient abilities in an electrical domain; it is the first choice for many among contenders for which language is best, Java held to be superior among its programming language peers. It has a strong following of users who actively try and convince others of its superiority, to the point where some even hold users of different languages to be inferior and in need of converting to the true language. I think I'm mean to the characters I write. I went the path of quality over quantity, and as such spent about half an hour on every. single. paragraph. This was something new, the writing style, so I tried to do it right. Enjoy! Tomorrow at eight, as usual, probably for something considerably different.
As The Cold Seeps In by Mackinley Clevinger, February 22, 2016 This isn’t fair. How is this fair? I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t make myself move. How could this happen? Why? The cold had already set in, numbing me all over. What did I do to deserve this? The burning agony as I froze had already been and gone, leaving me with nothing. No sensation, my nerves dead. Why was I here? Why did I have to be here of all places? The cold had numbed an even greater pain, replacing it with the burning, and then with nothing. I’m going to die. It wasn’t the cold that had paralyzed me. No. I’m already dead. Just waiting for my brain to catch up. It was something else. Something I couldn’t remember. I can’t move. My eyes are stuck open, unblinking. I’m broken. Why? What happened to me? All I see is glaring, white light. It’s a different shade on the left, with flutters of the brighter side moving around. Where am I? Why can’t I feel anything? I feel different, more than the cold freezing all sensation, more than whatever had happened before that. Why can’t I remember? I can’t think right. Something’s wrong. What happened? Why was something wrong? WHAT HAPPENED? Without further ado, some woodburnings. Enjoy! More tomorrow at eight AM as usual!
A tad more coherent than another attempt I'd made, this is another Noteflight composition using a Bass, a Bass, and a Piano. Attempts to incorporate several other instruments failed quite badly, but I found these to work quite nicely. It's interesting to be able to work with instruments that you yourself don't play alongside one that you do; the way you think about each varies a lot. Started out by just thinking about something I'd play on Bass, and then experimented with the other instruments to try and fit them around it, ultimately putting the focus on the piano to close it out. It was interesting to create.
I'm going to include the sheet music this time, though to view it you need a program that can read it for you. Given that most people who have a habit of downloading .xml music files probably have a way of viewing them, I think I'll leave it to you to decode. If you're interested in having a look and want to know how to look at it, feel free to ask me, I'll try to help. Hope you enjoy the thing! I think it's better than my last one. If you're someone who checks in everyday for the 8 AM posting, see you tomorrow! If you're someone here for the first time, Hi! If you're anyone at all: What do you think of what you've seen?
It is late, so naming of the essay will not be perfect, but it's the best I've got, and it reflects that weird feeling you get in your brain from too much screen-time and fatigue from actually doing stuff instead of sitting around on the internet all day. Anyways, this is an essay born from a scholarship essay asking me what my most important life lesson was, which boils down to: Batman shouldn't have needed his parents to die to be Batman, he shoulda just done it anyways.
Not a perfect analogy, but you get the point? We can do things for ourselves without external pressures that force us out of the comfortable but unfulfilling places that we find ourselves. That's what I'm trying to say, and did so in roughly two and a half hours around midnight, so I hope you enjoy this, and my apologies for any oddities that may have slipped in. Feel free to tell me what you thought of it, I'd quite like to know. We Control Our Lives by Mackinley Clevinger, February 20, 2016 There is a prevalent idea in our modern culture that often acts as a mental roadblock to many of us, halting our lives from progressing due to its emplacement by a common theme in much of today’s fictional works; the idea that someone or something will, inevitably, come along in our lives and give us meaning. That the purpose we’ve been seeking and waiting for will show up one day and make everything better; that all the disappointments from not doing anything that makes us feel alive will be lifted from us, and all we have to do is wait for that life-changing day. It’s a nice thought, and the idea that something better is coming in the future can help us during difficult times, but this idea doesn’t help us if we hold on to it all the time. There is not a secret organization out there that is waiting for some arbitrary day to tap you on the shoulder, tell you what’s actually important in life, and give you a task that you can dedicate your entire life towards. We are not all going to go through a life-changing disaster that puts our lives into focus when confronted with our own mortality, making us live out the rest of our years doing what we love instead of whatever it was we did before. These things aren’t going to happen to us, and yet we spend so much of our lives banking on this theoretical future to hold all of our life’s fulfillment, doing things we don’t care about and putting our interests second in exchange for the life we just happened to settle into first. |
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November 2019
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