My music tastes have been described by nearly everyone I know as ‘needing extreme improvement’. By social standards, I’ll have to agree; I abhor modern (as in late 90s to present) English music. To me, English music sounds the same from song to song; it’s very difficult for me to ‘feel’ that an English song is unique in any way. A month ago, I was describing my dislike of modern music, and I was struggling to find the words to how I find the vocalists… the friend replied that it was ‘nasaly’ in many of the songs, which I guess would be the best word.

When I was in an evolutionary psychobiology class a few years ago, I kind of understood why we’re at this point in English music right now. For the first day of class, our professor handed us a picture of an outline of a fish, and gave the picture to the student at the beginning of the row.

His request was that the student copy that fish as best as possible, and then the student next to the person would look at the copy, and try to make an exact replica from that copy.

I know this isn’t a true representative of what I’m going to describe here – evolutionary biology – but it got the point across. With each iteration of the original fish, the pictures from student to student would eventually morph and distort into something completely different by the end of the session. The class started with this perfect copy of a fish, and in the end, it wasn’t exactly fish-like.

That got me to thinking about copies of many things in general. For example, if we took an original copy and did a Xerox on that copy, it’s obvious that the Xerox’d copy is not the exact same as the original. Now, take that copy again, and perform another Xerox… the quality of the copy degrades with each copy.

I think that’s where modern English music is headed right now – everything’s a copy of a copy; bands inspired from previous bands, sounds that ‘improve’ on previous generations, or even remixes of covers. I feel that the music in this generation now has completely degraded to the point where creativity is lacking in both lyrics and harmony.

Which brings me to… why I like listening to things I don’t understand – this being mainly Japanese music. I think what makes my tastes horrible aside from it not being English (and hence, I cannot really connect with many people in terms of music, socially), it’s that I listen to the *wrong* kinds of Japanese music. I guess “wrong” is a bit subjective, but according to my friends who do listen to Japanese music, I listen to the shitty kind.

I’m fine with that, because to me, it sounds unique and different. The great part is – I don’t understand a goddamn word.

I’m sure to you that makes no sense at all. Why listen to something you don’t understand? I feel that there are two parts to this – curiosity and emotional creativity.

I love listening to Japanese music because I’m curious about what I don’t understand. What is the artist trying to convey through the lyrics and the melody? What do *I* want it to mean to me when I listen to it and interpret it?

When I listen to these songs, there’s a scene playing in my head about what I think the song means. I try to guess the translated lyrics, or even play a made-up story in my head about what I think might be going on. Then, I like to try to find that translation, and see if it matches up with what I’ve conjectured. I can’t say that my conjectures are always correct, but I think in a way, it’s a bit rebellious.

In a way, I don’t like being told what something means – I want to be able to discover it for myself, and twist and turn it into something meaningful to me that can inspire and lift me when needed.

Also, I recognize that a lot of the themes inherent in Japanese songs often involve nature, love, friendship, courage, togetherness in very upbeat and passionate tones… not something I find too often in English songs nowadays.  Hence, a lot of my thoughts when listening to Japanese music is often of one of those themes.

When I drive out on a sunny day along highway 280 in the Bay Area, I like to listen to “Life” by Yui, as I pass through the green, grassy, cow-inhabitied hills on a light Spring day, or “Kirari” by Going Under Ground during the Summer mornings; I don’t know the translation to Kirari, but when I listen to it, I imagine a sun rising over a town as morning arrives, casting out the shadow of yesterday – a great new day.

When was the last time I heard an English song where I had such feelings, where I can say, “YEAH, TODAY IS GOING TO BE A GREAT DAY!”, or “I’m going to make sure that with each step I’ve taken, there will be something arriving on the platform for me!” (“Kono Namida ga Aru Kara Tsugi no Ippo to Naru” by Tokitou Ami)? Not recently.

Also, the best part of all the songs? They read like a goddamn poem. Because when translated to English, Japanese cannot be completely transliterated into English; lots of it may be broken in a sense, which I feel that lends such poetic quality to it. The secret to when I write poems? I listen to Japanese songs and try to extract meaning in the same way as someone would translate the actual lyrics itself.

When English music starts becoming upbeat, inspirational, and productive to my creativity – I’ll give it a chance again. This is not to say Japanese is going through the same thing, or will go through the same thing, however.

Until then, I like not knowing what I listen to.

Life

In the city I’m not used to that’s full of dirt,
I can’t laugh the same and I walked with my head down
People pass by in a quick pace
I ask “has their dreams come true?” But I’m still struggling

I want to try living in the present
rather than returning to my childhood
It’s my nature to be a coward

If I go to a sunny spot and stretch my arms out,
I wonder if I can go beyond the sky
that’s what I thought

The wings I use to fly away are still invisible
It’s because it’s not simple that I can go on living

I just picked up a wet puppy
and for a while, I laughed so much that tears spilled
“I want to be loved, I just want to be loved”
is what I said. It’s no good just to ask for it

When I was a child, there were days when I hurt my mom badly
I want to change everything

I went to a sunny spot and tried holding your hand tightly
I will destroy that place, that time so I can change my life

But I really can’t express everything that’s in my heart
It’s because it’s not simple that I can go on living

I went to a sunny spot and spread out my map, but
I know… You know… that even the path of doubts can’t be helped
I can change my life

All the days that have passed make up the me that’s here now
It’s because it’s not simple that I can go on living

Isn’t it Wonderful?
The sun shining with light and
The skin that was burned are dazzling, aren’t they?
That time that was long is now revived
As if it was long, it’s short
The time of my wonderful memories
The pure black face is telling a story

I can see the campus from the window of the returning edge bus
Isn’t it wonderful? My entire life, the eager figure
Scorches in my eyes
The play I’m making up

With everyone’s power
That’s never the power of just one person
When it’s painful, when it’s sad,
Everyone supports me

That is teamwork, isn’t it?
The days of decisive battle unfolding on the real performance stage
Even if I win, even if I lose,

My eyes shone
I can see the campus from the window of the returning edge bus
Isn’t it wonderful? My entire life, the eager figure
Scorches in my eyes

Isn’t it wonderful? Getting on like this
Isn’t it wonderful? It’s an aspiration, right?
This time, I want to become wonderful
Watch over me, okay?

Isn’t it wonderful? Getting on like this
Isn’t it wonderful? It’s an aspiration, right?
This time, I want to become wonderful
Watch over me, okay?

This time, I want to become wonderful
Watch over me, okay?

*Did You Know: I’ve had this domain since I was 17 or 18. This was around the time Final Fantasy X was about to come out, and the theme song was called “Suteki da ne” (“Isn’t it wonderful/beautiful?”). I went off to search for the song, and found a song with the exact same title, and thought this was the theme song. I fell in love with it so much, that my domain is of course, suteki.nu . However, later did I learn that the version of the song I had was the incorrect one, and the actual one found in FFX is sung by another artist. Regardless, I prefer the one I found, sung by Kiroro, which has no relation to FFX at all.

I made this up a week ago:

“Failure is the soil on which success can grow.”

Netsuite’s developer program is a joke. There are no real support resources online on how to troubleshoot particular issues with their webservices. All I’ve wanted to do was create a customer with a status of a ‘new lead’, but because my Netsuite passport webservices login has the role of ‘Administrator’, I cannot create a customer with that status, as it’s not present with the Administrator role.

Now, this is present with the Sales Person role, but I cannot figure out how the hell to give the Sales Person Role proper webservices access; I’ve checked everything for webservices access with the role, and it still errors out.

I’m using the PHP toolkit here that’s in beta.

I’ve registered for their closed-off SuiteFlex developer community, and have no notification if I have been allowed in so far.

So what the hell, Netsuite? You want to be a real SaaS platform that developers can work with? Open up your support community, and don’t give some crappy examples here of how to work your webservices!

Oh, and you know it’s bad when you have to call THREE times to get a sandbox account. On SalesForce, getting a sandbox account is quick and easy.