Hails to thee, Aaron’s Birthday! We are well met for the sixth and twentieth time this day beneath a sky so different from that of where we would call home. Thou hast brought tales of the year past, I trust, as has always been the case in years gone by. Let us hear them now.

I have seen much since last we were together, old friend. You’ve seen them as well, but differently than I.

I saw you end an old life. I saw the final departure of an existence which you felt a waste and time misspent. Your time in the military, fast and fleeting as it was to my eyes, so interminable to you whose mind knows better than I the ache of a long hour – your time in the military is done. But you are only now beginning to see that which I knew all along: that “wasted” as those years may have been to you, there was much gained from that time. You learned a trade. You learned skills which you would not have elsewhere. You learned how to exist in a group, how to function in the real world. You learned how to follow, and how to lead. Was it all so bad? Do you not think more fondly of it now than you did then? Do you not now wish that your good friend was not alone?

I saw you begin a new life. I saw you begin a career, and I know it was unpleasant to have to begin from the bottom again. No one to blame but yourself, there, though. I saw you swiftly catch on to your new tasks, and to be quickly esteemed by your peers and supervisors. I was not surprised. I see you even now planning to use what you’ve learned and gained there to your advantage, to move up in the world. This is well. If you apply yourself, I believe that you will go far. Perhaps even to this Maryland of which you speak.

I saw you begin a family. I saw the closeness which you had with a woman grow strong and ever so powerful, saw it envelop and overtake you, you allowing the overtaking, glad that you were not destined to remain alone after the fiasco that was The Last Time. I saw her fall so completely in love for you, and while there’s no accounting for taste, you have to admit that she at least believes there’s something worth loving in you. You two are one for the ages, and though it’s not always pretty or peaceful, once you two grow up a little more and calm down, I am certain that your union will be a tor upon the moor, a high island of stone upon the sea, a beacon of happiness in a world not so used to long marriages.

I saw you answer a call. I saw you step into a position of leadership among your peers and take the reins of a multi-faceted organization. I know that you are proud of your position in that group and feel a great sense of accomplishment in what you’ve done there. Such feelings are well-founded, well-deserved, and well-earned. You’ve done a lot of work there. You juggle a myriad of people’s likes and dislikes, happinesses and disappointments. You spend time with friends and people who make you feel happy, and you also deal with the stress of people who do not make you as happy. Take my advice on this, young one: you have a woman at your side now who deeply desires, more than you can actually understand, to help and to comfort you when your mind is heavy. Go to her and bring her your troubles. It will be easier on you, and she will love you the more for it. But as to the leadership itself, you should be proud. Not everyone has a chance such as you have, and has your group not been in the main successful? I believe that you have done well.

I saw your musical life stay fairly similar over this past twelvemonth. But this is also a point of strength for which I am proud of you. All your life, you had been guided in music by others: by your father in the joys of Mozart, by those who called themselves your friends in the ways of goth and industrial musics. While I do not doubt the interest of noise terror or the priceless value of a love for Mozart, which you will have until you die and is one of your strongest bonds with your father, it was best that you discover for yourself your true sound. Music, for you, my friend, goes beyong the simple sounds. You have an ear for music that few others do: you appreciate it on almost every level possible, and you identify with it. It was well that you led yourself through the great wilderness that is metal music and found your own niche therein, your sound, the space for your ears to call home, because if there is anything spiritual at all inside of you, music is one of the few ways for it to emerge.

I saw you actually open your heart and mind to the possibility of religion. I smiled as you did so, knowing even as you did in your deepest heart how it would end once your head was not clouded by thoughts of fathers long dead and stories long told and places long forgotten. But the willingness to consider new ideas, the reasoning which you applied to the equation, are those faculties which you have almost always had in abundance. You learned long ago to call them friends and to disregard the ill-founded and ill-proven words of which you know. For in the end, at the final day, the world will be as it is now, and nothing will have made such words suddenly into truths. The knowledge of that allows you a shell which you can bring to bear at will, and hiding behind it you will smile. You will respect, and you will nod, and you may even listen, but you will smile.

The knowledge of the final day, that certainty of that which shall be at the last, is likely the main of why you seek me out today as you do upon this day every turn of the Spring. Yea, though I was there with you at the first and shall be there at the last, and though I see the world and your life from a more distant, arching place than do you, I am no closer to discovering the secret than I was when first you asked me those many years ago when you were small. I know that you are no nearer the answer, either. I suppose that we must continue to search, you and I, each in our own ways, and hope that one of us discovers the answer before we must leave this world together with questions still hanging. If such is our lot, then I shall agree with you that it is a cruel one, but we may yet uncover the mystery.

Such is the whole of my tale this year, this the sixth and twentieth year of your life. I look forward to our next meeting when Spring again brings her rains, and though oft enough I share your every emotion, on that day I shall once again be Your Happy Birthday.

I will outlive my words.
Mightier than the sword?
(To your god, perhaps - all
far-off and removed; unconcerned.) No.
Violence shall split the land
asunder. The deep drowns the dawn.
A wry smile from the groundlings.
Scrabbling for papers, we
push, shove, and generally
degenerate.
A caw of victory from me, at least:
I put someone’s eye out
before I died.

.

Cold

chaotic chords of ice,
hacksaws in my heart.

a wall of screaming memory,
soul consumed in a funeral pyre of ardent azure.

the march of history
echoed in a pounding cadence of
power.

enveloping darkness.

cold.

.

Liar

you’re a liar.
slick adverts, that get
inside
my head,
and your shit does wonders
for a year,
for a life,
and then you’re like
gotcha.

http://envinyatar.org/images/Wedding_Photos.zip

Right-click on the link above, and select Save Target (or File) As… to download it. Then unzip it using the basic Extract command in Windows, or use WinZip/WinRar.

Simply stated, one can typically estimate how amazing a show is/was by how drained one feels afterward, and (more specifically) the next day. But the days of estimation are over, for, with Vinny’s (soon-to-be-)Patented Formula For Determination of How Awesome a Metal Concert Is, metal devotees can now be completely certain, and mathematical wizards can properly conduct long-desired studies of this phenomena.

DEFINITIONS

There will be some terms which we will need to define at the outset. These are, namely, the following:

CA: Concert Awesomeness

Sh: How Shitty One Feels the Next Day

NS: Level of Neck Soreness

LD: Level of Deafness

HS: Headache Severity

DL: Level of Dehydration

SS: Level of Sleep Starvation

CI: Caffiene Imbibed

BPM: Beats Per Minute

The measurements used in Vinny’s (soon-to-be-)Patented Formula For the Determination of How Awesome a Metal Concert Is are as follows:

Time (Standard SI Derived Units):

Hour (the duration of 9, 192, 631, 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom * 3600)

Minute (the duration of 9, 192, 631, 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom * 60)

Distance (United States Customary Units):

Inch (25.4 mm)

Foot (12 inches or 304.8mm/0.3048m)

Temperature (Fahrenheit scale)

Degree ([°F] = [K] × 9/5 - 459.67)

Mass (United States Customary Units)

Pound (453.59237g or 1.25lb Troy)

Volume - Fluids (United States Customary Units):

Ounce (2 Tbsp or 1.041 oz av of water or 29.57353 mL)

Volume – Auditory (Decibel) (Heavy Metal Prime Units - “The Manowar Scale”)

Notch (the equidistant circumferential division of progressively higher values on a control knob - standard setting is 11)

Concert Awesomeness (Heavy Metal Prime Units - “The Bruce-Dickinson-Eats-Sharon-Osbourne-For-Breakfast Scale”)

Will be explained below.

THE FORMULA

Vinny’s (soon-to-be-)Patented Formula For the Determination of How Awesome a Metal Concert Is is as follows:

The degree to which a metal show can be considered awesome is derived from several factors. Simply stated, the concertgoer must feel significant levels of drainage following the show in order for a concert to be considered exceptional. To illustrate: if the concertgoer feels like he or she just left the set of The Vue, then the show was probably a Linkin Park gig. However, if the concertgoer feels like Jesse Jackson sitting in the front row of a live 24-hour Bill O’Reilly marathon, then it is likely that Gorgoroth and Immortal opened for a returned-from-the-dead Quorthon.

To arrive at this level of drainage, several things must be taken into consideration. These are: To what extent is my neck sore? How poor is my hearing? How horribly is my head aching? How dehydrated am I? How sleep starved am I? How much caffeine have I taken/will I need to take? Combining the answers to these equations together via simple addition gives one the level of drainage (aka How Shitty I Feel the Next Day). We will discuss them in succession. (The Examples are from an Ensiferum concert I attended on November 14th, 2009.)

Neck Soreness: Here we will be establishing to what extend the act of headbanging contributes to Feeling Like Shit. First, establish the normal length of your neck from where it meets your collarbone to the lowest corner of your jawbone. Multiply that by two to account for back and forth movements of the head. Now drop the inches - we’re just looking for numbers here.

(Example: 5*2=10)

Add to that number the weight, in pounds, of your head (a typical adult head weighs 10.47lb). Drop the pounds - again, we just want the numbers.

(Example: (5*2)+10.5=20.5)

Now the complicated part of neck soreness begins. You must calculate exactly how many times you headbanged during the concert. The sub-formula for this is as follows: we will average one headbang for every beat of each song played during the show. But some songs are slow, or have slow sections, you say (unless you’re at a Slayer gig). This is true, but in any decent metal song there are multiple opportunities to out-headbang the BPM, so using one headbang per beat is more than adequate to reconcile the problem with slow sections in some songs. Then we must factor in how many songs were played, as well as the length and BPM of each of those songs.

(NOTE: You should always be liberal with the number of headbangs, i.e. not necessarily the strict BPM. If it is practice during a particular song to headbang to the 8th notes, then that’s your speed of your headbangs. Also, if you end up with a fraction of a headbang left over, round that bitch up.)

(Example:

Song 1: 205 BPM;

Song 2: 144 BPM;

Song 3: 148 BPM;

Song 4: 203 BPM;

Song 5: 104 BPM;

Song 6: 139 BPM;

Song 7: 161 BPM;

Song 8: 105 BPM;

Song 9: 119 BPM;

Song 10: 205 BPM;

Song 11: 132 BPM;

Song 12: 115 BPM;

Song 13: 140 BPM;

Song 14: 191 BPM;

Song 15: 165 BPM;

Song 16: 192 BPM

205+144+148+203+104+139+161+105+119+205+132+115+140+191+165+192=2468 Headbangs

Final Calculation: ((5*2)+10.5)*2468=50594 Neck Soreness)

(Additional Note on Neck Soreness: You only need count the songs of the headliner, because the only headbangs which are significant enough to cause neck soreness are the ones done to the headliner songs. Exceptions to this: (A) if the openers were deserving of neck soreness-causing headbangs (i.e. the above Gorgoroth/Immortal/Bathory example) or (B) you’re a gigantic pussy and any headbang hurts your frail little neck.)

Level of Deafness: Noise, obviously, is the primary factor in this element. If this was a John Mayer show, then you probably only need one hand to calculate this up. If, however, you saw KISS in Ottawa (current recordholder), then I hope you have a Cray or two handy. Begin with the number of speakers, including the amps at the feet of the guitarists.

(Example: 22 {Hey, it was a small place.})

Now multiply the number of speakers by the average volume setting of them all (standard is 11 and it is unlikely the volume settings would be otherwise unless you’re at a Manowar show, in which case the 11s have their own 11s).

(Example: 22*11=242)

Next we must factor in the distance you were from the stage. There is a baseline of zero for thirty feet away from the stage in a small venue and seventy feet in an arena/Wacken-style environment. Multiply the previous number by the number of speakers for every foot past this baseline (in the direction of the stage) that you were standing.

(Example: 242*(12*30)=87120)

(NOTE: There is a variable in the Level of Deafness equation. If you were smushed against the stage by several large personages, and were in close proximity to a guitarist’s amp (i.e. less than a foot and more often than not less than six inches) for more than 50% of the concert, then add that single speaker into the equation twice again.)

(Variable Example: ((1*11)*2)*(1*30)=660

Final Calculation (including variable): (22*11)*(12*30)+((1*11)*2)*(1*30))=87780 Level of Deafness)

Headache Severity: Thankfully, this equation is the simplest of the lot. Simply add the Neck Soreness and Level of Deafness together, and you have your Headache Severity.

(Example: Final Calculation: 50594+87780=138374 Headache Severity)

Level of Dehydration: This equation appears complicated, but in fact it is not too difficult. For openers, take the number of bodies within five yards of you and multiply that by 99 degrees (we are adding several hundredths of a percent because the temperature of those bodies is also just as elevated as yours).

(Example: 20*99=1980)

Next, multiply that number by the length of the concert in hours from first note of the opening band to the last note of the headliner’s encore (you can be liberal and factor in the few minutes of the first opener setting their volumes as well as the several minutes of cheering and then slow movement away from the stage after the headliner is done, but I have attempted to be precise in my examples).

(Example: 1980*4.5=8910)

Now, add to that number the total amount, in ounces, of beer consumed from one hour prior to one hour after the concert.

(Example: 8910+40=8950 {Hey, I was poor and had to save some loot for a tshirt anyway})

Calculate the total amount, in ounces, of water consumed from one hour prior to one hour after the show. This is to account for water reclaimed (re-hydrating). Now divide that by half (because, as we all know, water is beer’s bitch). Now subtract that from the most recent total.

(Example: 8950-(32/2)=8934

Final Calculation: (20*99)*4.5+40-(32/2)=8934 Level of Dehydration)

Level of Sleep Starvation: This equation involves two separate groupings of time. First, calculate Time A. Time A will consist of the following: the total amount of time, in hours, that would normally have been spent sleeping, but was not, due to: driving to the concert, waiting in line forever to get the best spot, standing around drinking beer before the show, actual performance from openers to final headliner encore, milling about after the show buying tshirts and more beer, talking to the openers while praying that the headliner comes out, and driving home.

(Example: 1+1.5+1+4.5+0.25+0.25+1=9.5)

Time B will consist of the total amount of time, in hours, spent at work or some other obligatory activity (i.e. community service) for which sleep-lost time would normally have served as preparation.

(Example: 13.5 {I had to work a twelve-hour shift and didn’t want to risk sleeping for an hour and being too deaf to hear my alarm, so I stayed up})

Now, multiply Time A by Time B, because the longer you remain awake the worse the loss of sleep is magnified.

(Example: Final Calculation: 9.5*13.5=128.25 Level of Sleep Starvation)

Caffeine Imbibed: This section is the most challenging, but it is the penultimate calculation in the Formula, which will be followed by the Grand Equation (which will be solved by the Final Solution), and it is the Amount of Caffeine Imbibed. Lesser persons might rely on Monsters or Red Bulls or those 5-Hour Energy Drink things, but we as a group (metal devotees) don’t fuck around, so we just pop caffeine pills. This is an important factor in the Formula, because this is only a temporary fix to Feeling Like Shit, as when you finally swear off the pills you crash rather hard. (NOTE: You might ask why the amount of coffee consumed is not included here, but I long ago developed an immunity to coffee-generated alertness, probably due to repeated 8-shot lattes at midnight, and I know a guy who got cut off at Starbucks. For serious.) Calculate four pills taken for the first hour of Time B from the previous element (Sleep Starvation), increasing every hour of Time B exponentially by Time A, because Time A is constantly magnified the longer you’re awake.

(Example: Final Calculation: 4+(4^*(A^*B)) OR 4+(4^(9.5^3))=4+(4^(857.375)) OR total 1.6655*10^12 Caffeine Imbibed)

(NOTE: Obviously, you should not take this much caffeine. As balls-out as metallers are, this would make even our heads explode. This is simply a measurement of how much caffeine we would need to take if we wanted to pussy our way through the sleep loss. But, because we’re not pussies, we don’t take that many pills, and just simply deal until we can pour ourselves into a bed.)

The Grand Equation: Now that all the sub-elements of the formula have been accounted for, it is time to add them all together, in this wise: NS+LD+HS+DL+SS=Sh. Leave out CI for just a moment. It factors into Sh, but not via straight-out addition – rather, it serves as a modifier in the final Concert Awesomeness (CA).

(Example: 50594(NS)+87780(LD)+138374(HS)+8934(DL)+128.25(SS)=285810.25 How Shitty You Feel The Next Day)

The full number of Sh is placed on one of two Concert Awesomeness graphs for final determination of How Awesome the Concert Was. Shows in small venues use the CA(Sv) graph, while shows in large or outdoor venues use the CS(Lv) graph.

These are the proper, scientific, mathematically derived terms which may be applied to a metal concert, in any appropriate method of conjunction, etc., i.e. “That show Grew My Virginity Back” or “Yeah, man, that concert gave me a Four-Hour Hardon.” Now, the Caffeine Imbibed comes into play here, as a modifier, as I said before. Which modifier may properly be used depends on the amount of powers to which the 10 in the CI total must be raised.

The first two graphs (CA(Sv) and CA(Lv)) depict the proper terms to use when describing a concert (Terms A). The third graph then depicts what would be the proper terms (Terms B) to use when describing Terms A, and by extension to enhance a description of the concert. Terms B may be spoken/written before or after Terms A, in any appropriate method of conjunction, etc., i.e. “I Got some Insane Whiplash off that shit, dude,” or “That show was like the Second Coming of Christ, man - Fucking Awesome!”

CONCLUSION

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Vinny’s (soon-to-be-)Patented Formula For the Determination of How Awesome a Metal Concert Is. Look for it in the upcoming print editions of several well-known periodicals, and in the online versions of multiple respected websites. I believe there is a film documentary deal on the table, and I have been asked to publish by assorted scholars from Cal-Tech and MIT.

May you find it as useful to your future endeavors as I have.

P.S. No laughing at the shit banners. I made them at work with an online photo editor. And, no, I doubt I’ll ever be re-doing them, so don’t ask.

Really?

It seems so. It was a long while ago that I sat in that faraway place and thought those rambling thoughts - thoughts of a lost homeland, a missed calling, a misplaced birth, an emotional dependency on silly things. It seems so long ago, and yet it has merely been a year, I suppose. Though it both does and does not feel like it.

Much has changed since then, that much is a certainty. I’ve grown older, more mature (as some people tell me, though others say I’m just as off-the-wall), and have a beard - that last indicative of a major change in my life. I am no more under the thumb of Uncle Samwise; I make my own decisions about my life’s direction now, and I am both glad of and unnerved by the change.

I have begun a career in the field which I have desired for a long while now. I have a wonderful woman who looks through my faults, and (while not overlooking them) is able to see that there is something worthwhile inside (a degree of sight which I often do not possess when in front of a mirror). I have friends, real friends, a concept unknown to me two years ago. I have a group of people who look to me as their leader and praise me for a job well-done in marshaling such a varied bunch of personalities into some semblance of a group.

Life trudges on, I suppose, and though I’ve left the Air Force behind me (a sea-change to which I often refer, but with good reason in this instance), and though the promise of a life for the seizing lies sweet upon my lips, my life is in a time of flux, with a myriad of choice laid out before me, and the host of decisions to be made recalls many old questions which are now brought to bear once again. They’re my questions to know and to ask myself continually, but they do crop up every now and again - sometimes a burden, and sometimes welcomed.

For the present, though, it’s Cassondra’s birthday, and today is a happy day. I can’t give too much away, but she has a nice surprise or two in store for this evening.

I’m very grateful for her. If there were some sort of deity or overarching governing intelligence, I’d certainly slaughter a bunch of sheep to it and say Hey, thanks for Cass, man. But I’ll just content myself with loving her. Loving her is more useful in the long run than any time spent on a god or whatnot, anyway.

I’m also very grateful for the folks I call friends, and the ones I call acquaintances and hope to get to know better as friends.

I suppose I should write more poetry and blog a little more often, even though nobody comes over here (though with this FaceBook plugin I might trick people into reading these posts).

At the very least, I need more ink.

A trophied divinity:

steel pinions founded upon
titled transparency,

January’s crucible crucifixion beach about the
pale-trimmed temple of trampled green;

Calvary orange-paved in
rivets of absolution.

Thy Winter renaissance?

A benevolent validation:

an Autumn of discontent made
retrospectively glorious - a
zealous derivation of existence
confirmed in blood.

Personalized
martyrdom.
resurrection.

You have fallen.
I have tasted the lips of hell.

Let us take each other from the hard earth.
You shall climb that orange-girdered mountain
and I
must follow or be consumed.

        it is a certainty
        not unlike the
        death of a guitar.

        its dawn surges in
         unbridled melody and
          it is so
           assertive - a
            descant of furious surety.

        its sound dims;
       slower now. See the
      melancholy of its
     realizations, the
    final
   capitulation of conscience;
  a soft stratospheric shriek,
 the solitary string quivering its
last.

        it is a hope birthed in
        regrettable innocence.