One of the best language learning methods, Assimil: How to use it and review

I have finished one of the most helpful books that I have read so far in my entire life, "Assimil: Le Nouveau Francais Sans Peine". If you are already a veteran of the language learning field; the most probable thing is that you're already aware of this method, but if you're a new comer in this discipline, this is the right place for you and probably this is the right method for you.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="437"] The Assimil Series: Available in a lot of languages[/caption]

The Assimil Series is one of the greatest self-learning books that you could encounter, mainly because of its unique method that consists in an overall exposition of the language you're learning in short lessons which feature either short dialogues, short stories, jokes, or interesting text about the language or about the country in which that language is spoken.

I know that the books are expensive and everything, but... you know... cuf, cuf... you could get them...cuf, cuf...around, cuf, cuf, cuf.

So, almost every lesson of the book looks pretty much like this:



You have your text in L2 ( the language you're learning ) and right in the next page you have the overall translation of that complete text in L1 (your mother language). But the true powerful aspect about Assimil is the audio, the book also has the audio recordings of every single lesson in the book, and that's the most important aspect of this method.

I know what many of you are probably thinking, "so it's basically just a book with a bunch of little texts, jokes and dialogues, but it will not actually teach me the language".

That's where you're wrong, I'm studying French right now and when I started "Le Nouveau Francais Sans Peine" I was a little skeptical about this method, but to be honest, it looked way more interesting and with much more content than the grammar-focused conventional books that I was studying at the time. So I decided to give it a shot, and the results were  amazing, taking in consideration the initial expectations that I had for this method.

This method is amazing because it works in a really mysterious but effective way, and also, (if you use it properly) it will actually make you start speaking and writing the language, better yet, it will help you to express yourself in the language, whether you're making some grammatical mistakes or maybe you're not speaking the language at 100%, you are still able to express yourself and make people who only speak that language understand you even tought you don't speak it 100% correctly, and that really should be your first goal while you're learning a language, to be able to express yourself so that natives understand you even if you're not speaking in a perfect way, that's your first goal, and Assimil really helps you a lot to achieve it.

First of all, there are two things that I would like to talk about this method. Okay the first thing is that, although Assimil tells you in the first pages that this method is for absolute beginners, I still don't quite believe that, but that's just my opinion, maybe you pick up the German Assimil and you'll learn a lot from it and you'll find it great, but I think that before you get to start with the actual book, you first need to check out a little bit your target language.

What do I mean by that? Ok, just check out the basics of the language like:

• Common greetings


• The verb To Be in present


• The verb To Have in present


• Common descriptive articles like: tall, fat, thin, etc.


• How to ask questions.


• Numbers, Days and Months

And that's pretty much it , you know, really basic stuff. But now pay attention at the expression that I used "check out", that doesn't mean that you need to learn them or to memorize them completely. Not at all, just get to know the language, familiarize with it, this is not yet the time to learn the language, it's just the time to familiarize yourself with it a little bit and c'mon don't be lazy, you can check out those 6 things that I listed above in just one week or maybe a couple of days.

Why do I says this? Ok, I believe this deserves an explanation. The thing is that if you don't know zero about the language, when you open Assimil, you are going to be truly expose to the language. You're a going to see texts all written in the language and even if you see the translation next to it; it's highly probable that you will be a little overwhelm by the language and by this method and if you're impatient you'll probably end up saying "Oh the hell with this!, this is just too advance, I will never be able to learn these entire texts, I need something simpler" and you will throw the book away. Big mistake.

But if you have already check out the language, it's probable than in the first lessons you will be able to identify certain words or sentences, and you will say "Hey I know what this means" even tought you still don't understand the rest 90% of the text without the translation, that feeling of "huh I already knew that word" or "huh I already knew what that sentences meant" kinda gives you some sort of motivation to keep moving forward.

How to use Assimil:

Ok, now let's get into the real stuff, how to use this book? In the first pages, the book already kinda explains you how to use it, but it's not really specific about it, it tells what you have to do, but it doesn't tell you in which order you need to do it, or which learning part is the most important. So, if you are having troubles or questions about how to use this method, I will tell you the way that I used it, maybe you don't like it, maybe you want to do it your way, but I'm just recommending this way because that's how I feel that I got the most out of this method.

Okay, first, remember the part of the audio recordings that I said before?

[caption id="attachment_402" align="alignnone" width="254"] Yes, here we go again.[/caption]

Well we're going to begin with that. The first thing that you want to do, when you're already about to start lesson one is... CLOSE THE GODDAMN BOOK!
Listen to the audio recordings, don't read anything and just listen to lesson one over an over again. Okay I'm going to explain myself, the language learning process in divided into 4 parts: Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing. Assimil will help you with all of them, but the most important skill that you have to develop in your early stages of learning is: Listening. Yes I know that I have already said this a thousand times in my previous posts, but "Listening" is the form that the language gets inside your mind, inside your brain, and once that happens, everything is going to be so much fluid.

How many times should I listen to the audio?

Well I think this depends in the language you're learning, for example if English is your L1 and you're trying to learn another Germanic-based language like: German, or Danish. Or if your L1 is Spanish and you're trying to learn: French or Italian. I think that mandatory you'll have to listen to it 10 times, and then, once you have already listen to it 10 times, listen to it more times until you kinda actually now what they're talking about. If they are languages from the same group of families you should be able to at least recognize one or two things about what they're saying, when you feel that you understand just a little bit of what they're talking about, okay that's enough and open the book.

But what about if you're learning a language completely different from any other language you know, I'd say that 20 times mandatory.

Ok, that's the first part, now open the book, put the audio of the lesson once again and read (in your mind) while you're listening to the audio, do this at least five times. Then stop the audio, read the translation and all the notes that the text has, and then play the audio once again and try to read it yourself out loud along with the audio, do that at least 5 times.

Now you're going to close the book and you're going to do one of the most important techniques in the early stages of language learning, this is going to help you a little more with your listening and your pronunciation: Shadowing.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="302"] That's right baby![/caption]

When you do shadowing you have to listen to the audio and you have to say everything that the audio it's saying, but now here's the trick, you will NOT pause the audio at any time. You have to follow everything that the guy is saying without stopping and with the best pronunciation possible. That's why it's called "Shadowing". At the beginning is going to be a little hard, but it's all matter of practice.

How much shadowing you should do?

Well, ideally 10 times but I'd say that you should stop, when you understand everything that it's said in the lesson and when you feel that your pronunciation it's similar or almost identical as the recordings.

How many lessons should I do?

One lesson per day is perfect

But what about writing?

Ok, yes I know the method that I described doesn't contain any actual writing developement, but stay calm dudes. Assimil is divided into 2 big parts or "waves", in the First Wave (1 - 49) you should do what I already described to you and in the Second Wave (50 - 99), after you have already done your usual routine, as Assimil explains to you, you have to go back to one of the earlier lessons and you have to pick up a notebook, read the translation of that lesson and translate that translation (xD) into the original language without reading the original language. So is that good writing practice for you?

When you finally finish Assimil you'll have developed a good listening ability, tons and tons of vocabulary, a fair amount of idiomatic expressions, and the ability of expressing yourself in various subjects.

Is not going to completely teach you the language, but is going to make that tedious early learning stage so much easier, productive, faster and effective.

Trust me, I have used it in my French, and recently I met a French teacher (from France) and she told me that she was amazed with my French, the vocabulary that I knew, my reading ability and the sentences that I was able to formulate while speaking, she didn't believe that I have only studied french for less than a year. I'm not trying to show off xD, I'm just trying to make you realize how effective this method could be, and you should definitely check it out, the books are available for a lot of languages: Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Arabic, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, you name it, they are extremely good and trust me they will help you a lot.

I hope that this post was helpful for you and thanks for reading :)

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The Screenwriter's Dilemma: Becoming a Filmmaker

This post it's for everyone who wants to become a screenwriter or who's already one.

I remember that when I was younger I wanted to be a screenwriter, well first I wanted to be a writer, then a novelist, then a screenwriter and now I just write and I still write scripts. But I don't longer want to become a screenwriter, well at least, not only that. Obviously, I'm interested in the cinema industry, I'm interested in Hollywood but to a certain degree, I guess nowadays I'm more interested in the TV industry, because as I already said in a previous post,  I'm pretty sure that nowadays you can find better film quality in modern TV series.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="190"] Really good documentary about this profession[/caption]

But anyway, when I was younger, I started to investigate a lot about screenwriting and screenwriters and that was the same year when the Writers Strike took place, so just by that, I learned a lot about screenwriting, a lot about screenwriters and a lot about the situation that they were and that they are in. Let's face it, being a screenwriter has to be one of the most painful, unrewarding and underestimated creative jobs out there, and just for that, they're the most interesting characters in the cinema industry for me and they're the ones that I have analyzed the most, but I still have a ton of questions and a lot of things to say about them.



Okay, we are going to start analyzing this in the most simplistic way possible. And now, please answer the question in the most simplistic way possible, What is a film?, a film is nothing more that a story and that's it. You could have a brilliant director, you could have a powerful producer, you could have the greatest ensemble cast ever, but if you don't have a writer; you don't have a story and you don't have a film. For many years I looked at screenwriters as the martyrs of the film industry, mainly because they don't get at all the recognition that I thought they deserved. Just tell me, right from the top of your head, the name of five famous screenwriters...

I think the only screenwriters that I would consider "famous" or at least recognizable are Alan Ball, Robert Towne, Guillerrmo Arriaga, Paul Schrader and maybe David Chase (and all of them are also directors, producers and two of them successful TV creators executives).

But it's really strange to encounter a screenwriter whose talent is really recognizable and whose career it's really transcendental just by the fact of being a screenwriter and nothing more.

Most of screenwriters are left in the shadows if they don't get involve in the project as something else, and at the end of the day, they receive really poor recognition and poor compensation.

But why is it?, why screenwriter don't get as much recognition as directors? Well I think that there are certain factors to take into consideration,

• First, the whole: "Film is a visual media" yeah right I know that, but even if it's a "visual media" it's still trying to tell a story and stories are written in paper first.


• Most of really succesful movies are based in novels or in real life events, so that's not really good for the screenwriter if he wants to get recognition for his creative work, because he is not creating anything really, and even if he is, the public will think that everything is adapted.


•   And the third, which is the most important: ... (I'm going to save it, until the final part of the post)

That's the truth and still you have this:



The overall message that he is giving it's true. Screenwriting or better yet fictional writing it's a discipline and you don't need an absolute inherit talent, you can become a great writer if you do certain things or as he put it "skill sets", but which are those skill sets? God only knows.

I believe that you need to learn or experience certain key aspects to become a good screenwriter, and notice this word GOOD screenwriter. To become a screenwriter, there's only one thing you really need: connections. Talent or no talent, skill or no skills, if you have connections non of that matter.

But you don't want to be that writer right?, the one who writes bad comedy films and pathetic action flicks? No, I'm guessing that you're aiming for something with more substance.

Well, after all of this, it seems that being a screenwriter is one of the worst thing in the creative world. You struggle a lot and you finally manage to create your story, to define your characters, to connect everything together, and after months or maybe years of hard work, writers block, research, depression and everything; your script is finished.  And you did all that so that you could sell it to a film studio, so that studio could give your story (that's right YOUR story) to a director guy, who will make a movie about it and if it's successful, the producer will make millions out of your idea, the director will take almost the entire credit of your story (even if he wants it or not) and you will end up just as a lonely and forgetful name in the credits, without making a big amount money.



"Why would anyone want to be that?"

That's really not my question, to all of you young screenwriters or young aspiring screenwriters, my true question is: Why would anyone want to be ONLY that?.

In this world there are two types of artist: The Creative Artist and The Interpretative Artist.

Film Directors (who make movies based on somebody else's original work), Actors, Singer who don't compose their music. All of them are Interpretative Artist, they interpret what somebody else wrote, they interpret what somebody else compose or lived. Of course some of them are able to take their own creative perspective and transform it into something else. But without that main original idea, there's nowhere to go to.

Creative Artist, on the other hand,  they start from zero. Writers and musicians are creative artist, they have no place to go, no path to take but their own, they create that main idea themselves and then they develop it. So by this enormous characteristic, Creative Artist can generate their own material without relying in anyone else.

The third aspect that I wanted to save until this moment, is: Almost the absolute majority of successful screenwriters are film directors themselves and a lot of successful film directors are screenwriters themselves.

If you are already a creative artist, aren't you able to interpret your own work, your own story?

I understand why this happened before, but nowadays, there's no excuse, specially if you're young, if you're already a screenwriter why aren't you a film director? Nowadays there are only two things that you need to become a director, a story (which you already have) and a passion for films (which you already have). Why don't you take charge of your own story? Why don't you direct your own story?, even if it's an indie low-budget production it's Ok, the point is to get your story out there, show the world your story, receive feedback, and all of that is going to give you incredible experience in your writing and in your directing and guess what? since you're already a Creative Artist, you can write another story  and make it a film using all the experience that you gain from your previous one. In this time, is not that hard to produce an indie short film or something like that, there are a lot of good editing softwares out there, a lot of books info and tutorials about filmmaking, great cameras that are not really that expensive, and a lot of people interested in these kinds of projects.

Is that or, wait for some successful hollywood producer to take a look at your work and  if you're really lucky he will buy it, and you won't see your story ever again, until he produces it and that could take years or simply could never happen.

Screw that man, don't wait, don't waste your time with this industry-business bullshit,  life is too short, do it yourself!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="380"] Nowadays, we have great examples of this kind of philosophy[/caption]

Cinema is composed by two powerful disciplines: Writing and Directing. If you're a film-maker it's better to be these two things.

I already said that if you are a Writer you should become a Director, but that's also the other way around, if you're a Director become a Writer, generate your own material.

If you don't believe me, maybe you'll listen to Spike Lee:



So from now on, new and aspiring Film Directors; let's become writers and new and aspiring Screenwriters; let's become Film Directors, for the sake of both arts.

Interested about the cheap cameras stuff I said earlier?

Interested about the editing softwares stuff I said earlier?, of course you could buy them but... there are other ways.

Interested about the film tutorials stuff I said earlier? 

Thanks for reading :)

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Basic Spanish: Similarities between English and Spanish

Obviously, almost the most common question or the most common thing that someone asks himself when he has decided to learn a new language is the following question: Is it hard?



So, in this case, if you have decided to learn Spanish, you're obviously wondering or are interested to know, if Spanish is a difficult language or not .


In my point of view, the difficulty of a language it's completely defined by the languages you already know. I'm from Mexico, so it's possible that learning Portuguese it's going to be a little more easy than someone from China. Or vice versa, let's say that I and a chinese friend want to learn Japanese. It's possible that he will pick up the language a little bit faster that I will because he's already familiarized with Asian Languages.

Languages are all a big gigantic family, almost all of them are brothers, sisters, cousins, distant cousins, fathers, mothers and grandpa's. There are two enormous families of languages that are predominant in the world: The Indo-European Family and the Sino-Tibetan Family.

You can find the Indo-European languages in America, Europe, Oceania and the Middle East, while you can find the Sino-Tibetan languages in East and South Asia.


Spanish, English, French, Russian, Hindi, Italian, German, Portuguese, Marathi, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Urdu, etc. They all are from the Indo-European family, so in a way they all are, brothers, sisters, cousins and distant cousins.
So in a way, Spanish and English are from the same family but we can't called them brothers.
From the Indo-European Family several groups of languages descend:
The Italic Languages where Latin emerge and from here, the famous Romance Languages arise, all of these languages are based on Latin and they are: Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Romanian, etc). All of these languages are direct brothers from one another, and if you already now one of them, you can learn another one without great difficulty. They have almost the same structure and they have similar vocabulary.


English descends from another group of languages called the Germanic Languages: Where you can find German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, and many other, of course including English.
So they're both from the same family, but they are not from the same group, so I guess we can call them cousins, BUT!!!, they are not distant cousins, NOT AT ALL.

There's a big little thing that English and Spanish share with each other, and that little thing is LATIN!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="295"] Latin is not dead[/caption]

Yes, I know that English is not a language based on Latin, but the Anglo-Saxon language was heavily exposed to Latin in three great moments of its history, The Conquest of the Roman Empire (When the romans conquered Britain), the Christianization of the English Kingdom and the Norman Conquest (When french soldiers, who spoke french, a language descended from Latin, attacked and conquered Britain for a long period of time).


So as you can see, English is not based in Latin, but I'm pretty sure that English is the Non-Romance language that has been exposed to Latin the most.
Don't believe me ? , well I'm going to put a little text that I already wrote above, but after that little text, I'm going to write the translation in Spanish, and almost every little similarity that you see in both texts it's because on a Latin based word or term.

English is not a language based on Latin, but the Anglo-Saxon language was heavily exposed to Latin in three great moments of it's history, The Conquest of the Roman Empire (When the romans conquered Britain), the Christianization of the English Kingdom and the Norman Conquest (When french, who spoke french, a language descended from Latin, attacked and conquered Britain for a long period of time).

El Ingles no es un lenguaje basado en Latin, pero este lenguaje Anglo-Sajon a estado fuertemente expuesto al Latin en tres grandes momentos de su historia, La Conquista del Imperio Romano (Cuando los romanos conquistaron Bretaña) la Cristinianización del Reino Ingles y la Invasion Normanda (Donde los franceses, quienes hablaban Francés, un lenguaje descendiente del Latin, atacaron y conquistaron Bretaña por un largo periodo de tiempo).

So as you can see, there are a lot of words and a lot of things that Spanish and English share despite not been from the same group of languages.  So truly, without knowing it, you already have good descent amount of Spanish vocabulary without even realize it.

If you read the two texts closely, you can see that the structure of English and Spanish it's similar but they differ in certain aspects, but you can learn them without big problem. I will talk about these aspects in a next post, so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading :)

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Ian Anderson - Thick As A Brick 2 (Album Review)

What a wonderful, clear , pure and nostalgic little masterpiece Ian Anderson has decided to release this year. What we have right here is nothing more and nothing less than the official sequel of Jethro Tull's epic masterpiece Thick As A Brick. If you haven't heard this album (well this song) and you're a fan of prog rock, then you still have a long path to travel.

I have to admit that I didn't expect this album, to be honest I wasn't even aware of its existence until a few months ago I just went to progarchives and I read "Thick As A Brick 2" and I was like "naaah it can't be, it must be some compilation album, or an homage from another band" or something like that, then I read Ian Anderson, and I was like "Oh my god, I think this is serious" and it was.

An entire new album created as the sequel of an influential and epic masterpiece is here, the sequel of Thick As A Brick, after 40 years, we have the sequel of this masterpiece, a real sequel in this year made by Ian Anderson, the brain and heart of Jethro Tull. What we have here is Thick As A Brick 2: What Ever Happened To Gerald Bostock? (not to confuse with Thick As A Brick Pt.2)

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="240"] A web-blog, GENIUS![/caption]

For those who are not familiar with Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson, Thick As A Brick or Gerald Bostock, I think I shall give a little background about this.



Thick As A Brick is a conceptual album that was released in 1972 by Jethro Tull. At 1972-1973 Progressive Rock was at the pick of its life, almost all of the greatest masterpiece of Prog-rock started to emerge these two years. Progressive Rock was in a wild state of evolution and one of the key characteristics of this evolution was the implementation of conceptual albums. Albums that in a way, told a story or dealt about a particular theme. A lot of conceptual albums started to emerge around that period during the Prog rock scene and Thick As A Brick emerge as a response or better yet, a parody of all the other conceptual albums that were around at the time.

Originally the concept of Thick As A Brick started as a joke, but the album quickly became a masterpiece and ironically one of the finest conceptual albums ever (despite being a joke or a parody of them).

The story of Thick As A Brick revolves around a little poet boy named Gerald Bostock, also known as "Little Milton". He enters in a poetry competition and he writes an enormous controversial epic poem called "Thick As A Brick". Of course he wins the competition, but at the last minute the judges decide to disqualify him, because of the controversial and offensive nature of the poem, plus when he attended to BBC-TV he "uttered a profanity". You can read the whole article about this in the cover of the album.

The album consists of only one epic song, lasting 43 minutes divided in two parts, and the lyrics that we hear in the song are the actual poem written by Bostock.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="380"] Of course all of this is fiction and the true mastermind behind the story, the album and the poem is this man right over here[/caption]

Of course the album it's a complete epic masterpiece but we are not here to talk about it, we are here to talk about its sequel.

And what can I say about it?

It's an extremely strong, solid and powerful album. I consider it a masterpiece but I guess the correct term it's actually an "Elitist Masterpiece". Why? Because this album it's only for lovers of Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson and 70's Progressive Rock and Folk Rock.

There's something special about this album, of course what he have here is not modern progressive rock, it's 70's Progressive Rock. A lot of modern bands try to create a 70's Progressive Rock album but in most cases there's something missing. In this case, of course, everything is right there and everything is right, but of course we are dealing with an elder veteran here.

Unlike it's predecessor, TAAB2 it's not only one song, the album consists in 17 short songs, but of course this album was meant to listen to it completely every time and not by song. If you do this you can start to visualize that the album it's pretty much just one big song as it's predecessor, and those 17 short songs are actually the 17 movements that this epic has.



The style and lyrics of this album are what you would expect from Ian Anderson, satirical, poetic, clever, highly romanticized (in a good way), dealing about trivial but also with deep meaningful aspects of life.



Ian Anderson in the flute it's magnificent as always and its voice hasn't changed a lot.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="312"] Now let's get inside the album and the new story it tells:[/caption]

The album starts with a slow version of the ending of Thick As A Brick Pt.1, setting right away that cool 70's feel, I'm not from that era, but I'm sure that if you were a Prog fan in the 70's and if you listen to this, you're going to feel nostalgic as crap. Then the album opens with a nice prog rock beat that transforms into an Electric/Acoustic hard song, really nice but now we get into the first progressive passage of this album, folkloric, bold, bad ass and beautiful at the same time.

In Might-Have-Beens the whole concept of the album it's explain. The album deals about the modern life of Gerald Bostock, now as a 48 old. The album talks about the 5 paths of life that he could have taken. In one life he is a greedy millionaire banker hated by many, in other life he is a veteran soldier of the Afghan War who is still traumatized by the experiences he lived over there, in another life he is a homosexual homeless bum, in another life he is an arrogant evangelist priests and in another one he is a simple common man, married who works in a store.

The album as a whole, flows in a magnificent rhythm, almost as the same rhythm of the original TAAB with beautiful acoustic passages, hard prog moments, permanent folksih atmosphere and even a little it of punk in some songs, the last five songs of the album are truly magnificent in every way.

The album it's an excellent piece of prog music. Of course, people don't consider it better than the original, but it's not meant to be. This album it's a phenomenal album on its own and despite that I know that it's not a masterpiece I consider it to be, because it remind me of all of the old masterpieces that it's predecessor made fun of.

This are some of my favorites songs (or shall I say movements) of the album.





Thanks for reading :)

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Arjen Anthony Lucassen - Lost In the New Real (Album Review)

Arjen is one of the most active musician and composers that I know today, he's always working in different projects and with a lot of different people. Something that I admire from him is his ability for composing and writing  entire albums or better yet Rock Operas almost completely alone and in a really fast time. I don't know any other musician who's able to do that, he's usually the mastermind behind all of the projects that he is part of. He is not only the definition of an multi-instrumentalist artist but also an multi-dynamic creator. If his albums were films he would be  Director, Writer, Actor, Producer, Editor, etc, etc.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="270"] Saint Arjen, Omnipotent and omnipresent[/caption]

His most famous bands or projects are: Star One, Stream Of Passion and of course Ayreon.

Of course is impossible to talk about Arjen without talking about Ayreon which is his greatest project, Ayreon is basically a Meta Rock Opera, all of the albums in a way tell a single collective story and within it you can really find Arjen's true musical style and influences.

However it seems that Arjen has finally left Ayreon because a lot of people called his last Ayreon album 01011001 "more of the same" (which they aren't lying). So since then, he has decided to put Ayreon to sleep, beginning to work in other  projects like Star One: Victims Of the Modern Age.

And know we get his first solo album since 1994's Pools of Sorrow, Waves of Joy.

And what we have is Lost In The New Real 

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="504"] Just look at this cover![/caption]

And I'm going to be honest with you people, I don't know what to think about this album, I guess I'll find out at the end of this review.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="280"] Glad you're happy Arjen, because right here is when things start to get a little ugly[/caption]

The first thing that I have to say is that I like the music from Arjen but I'm not a fan on his, of all of his albums with Ayreon, the only one that I consider a true masterpiece (and I agree in calling it The Wall of our time) is The Human Equation, all the others are just OK for me. The thing that I hate about Arjen's albums is that they try to be extremely pretentious with the stories of the albums, I like the Sci-Fi atmosphere that he always manages to create but the stories are cliché ,completely exaggerated and really pretentious. But you maybe asking:

What does it matter if the story of a conceptual album is good or not?, it's a music album! not a film!

It matters because that pretentious story defines the overall structure of the album and in Ayreon's case, it makes the album tedious, with bad lyrics and extremely long. If you want to create a conceptual album that is going to last almost 2 hours you have to make an effort in writing a good clever story and not another cliché Sci-Fi flick.

I don't like Ayreon very much and I blame the stories for that, I mean just look at Victims Of the Modern Age, it wasn't a conceptual album is not a pretentious Sci-Fi Rock Opera, it's a solid progressive metal album that everybody loved.

But that's enough for rants, now let's get into this album, and the first question that I ask is: Does this new album has the same flaws as Ayreon's previous album? I don't know right now but let's find out.

So the first thing that I realize of this album is that it has 20 songs and a length of 1 hour and a half, not my favorite album structure but whatever, let's give it a chance.

Lost In The New Real is also a conceptual album, but it doesn't quite follow a clear story-line, something that it's a little bit confusing. The concept is that Mr. L (the famous hippie character from the Ayreon saga) it's resuscitated in a virtual futuristic dystopian reality and the album deals with Mr. L exploration of this reality or something like that.

And the first amazing thing of this album is that the narrator of the story is a character name Voight Kampff who is none other than Rutger Hauer. The narrations that he gives are perfect for the mood of the album and one of the albums highlights.

Now, I'm not going to make a song by song review of the album, the album has a lot of them .  But I'll talk about the album in general.

And what I want to say is that almost all of the songs of this album are OK, there's no song that I consider bad. All of them have the same arjen-folkish-opera-scifi style that you already know really well, and a most of them are short songs and have the same structure, all of them are fine but sadly that's it. The only one that is more than fine is the title track but that's it. There are no great or excellent songs, perhaps the worst song is Our Imperfect Race which seems that this is the point where the album starts to get tedious but it doesn't.

The two songs that I don't actually consider them great but I liked them really much are Parental Procreation Permit and E-Police.

But now let's talk about the other aspect of the album, the cover songs.

The cover songs are excellent :) he couldn't have chosen better song to cover, all of them are amazing. The only that it's a little weird is Pink Floyd's Welcome to the Machine, that guitar riff is just an intruder in the song.

Besides of that, Zeppelin's Battle of Evermore completely amazing, and I loved the ending.

Alan Parson Project's Some Other Time as excellent as the original.

Zappa's I'm the Slime weird, crazy and scary, how it should be.

And finally Blue Oyster Cult's Veteran of the Psychic Wars, PERFECT. Fuck Metallica, this is the greatest cover of this song ever, hell I think is ever better than the original!

So that's pretty much all that I have to say about the album. All the songs are OK and decent, thanks to the amazing covers the album doesn't get tedious as previous Ayreon albums did.

So I guess this is a good balanced album. OK songs and excellent covers. If you're not a fan of Arjen check it out, it's a nice introduction of his genre and if you're a fan, you are going to either love it or hate it.

Besides the title track, these are my two favorite songs of the album:

E-Police



Veteran Of The Psychic Wars



Thanks for reading :)

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If You're an Atheist, Please Never Become This

I have never considered myself an atheist, but I had always sympathized with them, we were almost usually in the same point of view when it came to religious or even philosophical debates. I considered them a great group of people full of logic, comprehension and I respected them. But now that I discover more and more, now than I learn more and more, and now that I watch the modern atheism of nowadays I have to admit that I'm kinda disgusted with it. The new atheism that a lot of people now practice it's the so-called: Militant Atheism, which (and maybe I'm completely exaggerating here, but I don't know) it might become the fall of atheism or at least the fall of smart, believable and respectable atheism.

A key characteristic of this type of atheism is that; they're not only that, they're not just atheist, they have also become (and some of them might don't even realize it yet) anti-theist and misotheist. Let's get down to business, an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in God or any kind of deity and that's it, nothing more and nothing less. But when you start proclaiming hate, hostility, anger, discomfort, etc, etc. You're not just an atheist, you're an anti-theist too.

And to be honest, I have no objection at all of people hating or bashing on something, they're in their complete free will, and I completely understand why people would hate religion so much, is something that deserves a lot of criticism and in their point of view: hate or even destruction.

Is not an attitude that I admire but it is an attitude that I respect (well I guess now is "respected") until I saw some strange things that started happening. I guess that for most of these atheist/anti-theist, hating or bashing religion was just a simple hobby, you know, something that they did in their free time or when they were bored. But something started to change, when a lot of these atheists started to get more and more incredibly hostile, I was still OK with this, although it was something that bothered me a little bit, I was still OK with it.

But it all fell down, and I completely lose all respect that I had for them, when a lot of these atheists started to join in this incredibly stupid and not saying impossible quest for destroying religion and preaching the atheist word. With the stupid and pathetic idea , or better yet, the stupid and pathetic believe that if they manage to destroy religion all of the problems of humanity or most of the problems of humanity will disappear. That's the reason why I have lost so much respect for them, for that stupid and ignorant believe that they have; a lot them really think that religion is the greatest problem of humanity right now, that is the root of all evil in this world and that if we manage to bring it down, everything is going to be perfect and we will grow so much as species.



For a group that claims to be realistic and to be lovers and followers of logic I'm afraid that for reaching this point of stupidity you have completely deviated from such principles.

Yes I know that this video contains a lot of satire, but the overall message that he's giving it's alarming.

Now let's get realistic here people.

The fight that you're fighting is completely stupid and a waste of time. That's why it's a great hobby! But if you're actually taking this seriously, if you actually believe that you could manage to bring down religion and everything will be just pure happiness after that, I'm afraid that I'll have to slap you with the royal hand of realism.

I will not try to stop all of you atheist folks in your sacred crusade, because you're as exaggerate and hostile as your fanatics counterparts. But I'm just going to tell you 3 things that you should have in mind while doing this:

1.- Religion is something that would probably never EVER disappear from humanity.

Religion nowadays is something that has become so integrated in our global society, in our lives, in our history, in our traditions, in our way of seeing life (even if you're a believer or not), in our psychology and overall in our world that is hardly ever going to disappear because it has become a part of us. It's a part from human psychology, people will be always willing to believe in a higher power, people will be always willing to believe in a metaphysical or even supernatural force, they do that for means of escapism or/and comfort. A lot of people find the true meaning of their lives within religion. Religion gives to a lot of people a meaning, a purpose or even a reason to live. And that's just an incredibly enormous power, I'm not saying is good or evil, but I'm just saying that it's an incredibly monstrosus power that goes so deep inside the human mind, feelings and strength that is hardly ever going to disappear, it doesn't matter how "smart" we get. And EVEN if religion falls, someone (or a lot of people) would probably create a cult that would work similar or even identical as a religion and I bet my ass that a lot of people will follow it.

And another thing, religion is not the single worst enemy of mankind!, do you really believe that religion is the root of all the violence or most of the violence that it's happening around the world? Let me tell you something folks, we are humans, we kill each other, for whatever reason: money, power, love, respect, believes, politics, survival, revenge, safety, anger, food, order, drugs, etc, etc. And we have been doing that for a lot of years. And let me tell you something, religion is just one of them, just one in an enormous list of reasons why we would kill each other, and sadly enough, a lot of  violence coming from religion, wasn't just for religion but also almost with political, economical, expansive and imperialistic agendas. Religion was just a way to transport all of these agendas, in this context; religion is not actually a reason but more like a way, and if you only get rid of the way, the reasons will find another way for bringing their agendas to fruition. My point is that we will always find a reason to kill each other, ALWAYS, we're really creative in that department. Just look at this, the two greatest world-wide massacres that humanity has suffer in all its history have not come from religion or a religious background. It came from governments and a desire for power.

[caption id="attachment_292" align="alignnone" width="300"] Religion didn't cause that tragedy, humans did[/caption]

And just be honest and realistic to yourselves, close your eyes for a moment and imagine a world in which we're all atheist. Do you really see an improvement in humanity? do you really see less violence in the world? Do you really see an improvement in human behavior?. To be honest, I see that world even more violent that this one, because not all people will be able to handle their atheism as you do guys, a lot of people will go nuts. A lot people need something that tells them: this is right, this is wrong, period. And if they don't have that, they'll start to get confuse and things might not end well.

If you mange to bring religion down (which you'll not) there's going to be zero improvement in this world and in your lives.

2.- You're incredibly outnumbered!

Sure!, here on the internet it seems like there's an army of you, if you only live in the internet you would think that the vast majority of people are atheist/anti-theist. Sadly if you live in the real world, you can't say the same.

[caption id="attachment_275" align="alignnone" width="224"] Sorry, but I present you Misses Truth[/caption]

3.- Careful in what you're becoming

If you're an atheist/anti-theist, please tell me that you just hated every second of the cult of dusty video that I putted on top, please tell me that you completely hated it, because if you did, then I respect you and I have nothing against you, but for all of the other 3000 people who loved it, I just have to tell you something, careful in what you're becoming, you have become so passionate about this, you have select people who are always preaching your word and you have decide to follow them, and now you also have an imaginary utopia that is never going to happen but you're setting yourselves on a stupid crusade hopping to reach it.

I'm Mexican and I have a really ironic sense of humor so I have only this to say to you, remember Nietzsche:

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

And another thing that I still have to say to you, and to everyone really, everything in excess is bad, don't live with excesses, they're just going to ruin your life, if you're an excessive christian, that's pretty bad and if you're and excessive atheist, that's pretty bad too.

Let's imagine that here we have a girl who is an excessive christian, a guy who is an excessive atheist, a girls who is a passive christian and a guy who is a passive atheist. And they go out on a date.

First, the excessive christian goes out with the excessive atheist: Now just imagine the complete disaster of a date that is going to become, they're kicked out from the restaurant for causing too much noise and swearing.

Next, the excessive christian goes out with the passive atheist: The christian girl starts attacking the atheist guy  when the atheist guy just wants to have a good time, the atheist guy gets tired of all the fanaticism of this girl and he leaves.

Then, the passive christian goes out with the excessive atheist: The same, the atheist dude starts attacking the christian girl when the christian girl just wants to have a good time, the christian girls gets tired of all the stupid hostility of this guy and she leaves.

Finally, the passive christian goes out with the passive atheist: And they get a long pretty well, they don't try to shove their believes into one another, they have a good time, and at the end of their great date, they go to a hotel.

Now let me ask you: Who were the ones who got laid in this story?

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The 1st Step for learning a New Language: Something YouTube Polyglots overlook.

When you want to learn a new language and you go to YouTube so you can find people who can teach you a language via vlogs or  via 10 minute lesson videos, you'll actually find people who are also learning the language or they have learned the language and they're actually giving you tips of how to learn that language,  and if you search a little bit more, you'll find polyglots that can even teach you (in their own way) how to learn a language,  multiple languages or any language at all. If you have encounter one of them, he's probably from the not so famous community of YouTube polyglots.

Now you can find a whole community of polyglots on YouTube, members that post really interesting and helpful videos about language learning, some of the most popular and influential polyglots on YouTube are: Moses McCormick (username: laoshu50500), Luca (poliglotta80), Richard Simcott (Torbyrne), Steve Kaufmann (lingosteve), Felix (loki2504) and the legendary Professor Alexander Arguelles (ProfASAr).

All of them are a true inspiration if you want to learn languages, they're always giving you advices on the subject or sharing their experiences or showing you their method. Almost all of them, use (as far as I'm concern) the liberal method that I already explained on a previous post. They use a liberal listening-reading-speaking  method, without focusing on grammar.

However, despite all of the videos that they make and all of the good advices that they give, sometimes I think that they miss a really important factor about the people who are watching their videos. Sometimes, some of these polyglots like Kaufmann, try to impose you a predetermined way of how you should learn a language, and I don't blame Kaufmann because his method is actually very good  but, I feel that they miss a really important question.

And this is that important question:

If you want to learn a new language, the first and the most important thing that you have to ask yourself is: "Why do I want to learn this language?" that's the single most important thing that you have to know, why do you want to learn this language?.

You must completely define the reason why you want to learn that language, that's the first and the most important step of all. Why is the most important step of all? Because is going to completely define the organization, style, material, time and methodology that you're going to use for learning that language.

Define the reason.

Now, maybe you don't really know why do you want to learn this language, well I will help you, and I will explain to you the most common reasons for why somebody would want to learn a language.

Why do you want to learn a language?

Well... maybe you like the language, maybe you like or you're interested in the language, in the country, in the people, in the culture. Maybe you fell in love with the women of that country and what better way to hit on them that speaking their own language and being an exotic foreigner :D, or maybe you have friends or family who speak that language and you want to communicate with them in that way. Maybe you want to travel over there for a few weeks or for a few months and you want be able to communicate with the natives.

All of those reasons that I just mentioned, enter in the "SOCIAL REASONS" cabinet: You want to learn the language because you're interested in the social aspect of the language. You're interested in meeting people, maybe making friends. For this you don't need to learn in an official way or anything, you don't need to take exams or anything, you can learn just by using almost completely the Liberal Method. You just want to learn it so you can interact with people in a normal social way.  A lot of people have all of these reasons, however if you want to live in that country or if you want to work in that country or in a company of that country, I'm afraid that for these you'll need official studies or you will need to take official tests regarding that language, what brings me to the second most important cabinet of reasons which is:

The "BUSINESS REASONS"cabinet:

Let's say that you already have a profession, you're already working in some place or looking for a job, and maybe you say, "Hey, I want to learn a new language so I can expand my curriculum", "I want to learn that language because I want to work on that country", nowadays is common fact that people who can speak another language or multiple languages don't struggle to get a job as much as people who only speak one language, so maybe you can say: "I want to learn a new language because I want to get a job". You wont believe how many windows of opportunities  begin to emerge when you learn a new language, is almost like a new work horizon and a new language is a definitive big plus on your Curriculum Vitae. The more languages you know, the less competition you'll have during job interviews.

However, for this cabinet of reasons, you'll mandatory need two things.

First, you'll need official studies of this language or official recognition, now hang on a little bit!, official recognition is not as hard as you may think. First of all, you're probably asking right now, why do I need official recognition in the first place?, Well, when you're in a job interview, you can say: I know Chinese, I know Swedish, I know Russian, I know Spanish; and the interviewer is going to be like "Ok" but he will search on your Curriculum for documented evidence that proves that you can speak that language. He will search for a diploma, for a test, for a course, for any kind of official valid recognition that proves that you indeed speak that language in x level, and if he doesn't find any, he will not take that aspect into consideration.  You need official studies or official recognition so you can prove to the company, institution or people who are going to hire you that you can speak the language.

But, how do you get that?

How do you get official studies or official recognition?, well there are basically three ways: you can study in a Language Institute, finish your studies and earn a diploma, certificate, a bachelor degree, whatever. Other way is to go study on that country, receiving at the end of your studies there; a certificate or a recognition of one of the country's universities.

And the third, possibly the cheapest one but also possibly the hardest one is; to study for yourself and to take one of the official certification exams on that language and to approve it.

I'm going to make a little explanation here; almost every popular language out there has it's own certification exam, English has the famous TOEFL (for US English) IELTS (for UK English) and a few others. French has the DELF and DALF, Spanish has the DELE, Portuguese has the CELPE-Bras, Chinese has the HNK, German has the TestDaf, well I think you get the idea now.

Almost all of these exams are divided into 6 levels: A1 (Beginner), A2 (Intermediate Beginner), B1 (Intermediate), B2 (Intermediate Advance), C1 (Really Advance), C2 (You can even correct a native).

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="478"] If you study and if you're really serious about this; you can get one of these :D[/caption]

These are official exams and if you approve one of them you'll get and official certification valid anywhere. Now these exams aren't really cheap, and is really probable that  you will need to travel to a city where you can take this test. So I would recommend to find out where can you take the exam and how much does it cost, once that you know that, you can start saving some money.

You need to study a lot for these tests, you can find guides and other material like books that can help you for preparing yourself. Generally the B1 and B2 levels are the most demanded levels, I don't know how it is in other countries but in France, you need the B2 level if you want to study  over there.

Second, you need to learn the vocabulary of your area of work. For example, maybe you're an engineer, and you know German, you presented the TestDaf B1 and you passed it and now a German Industrial Company at Munich has hired you. Knowing the language is of course the most important thing but while you're working, you also need to know the vocabulary or terminology that is use on your area of work. If you're a doctor you should know medical vocabulary, if you are a lawyer you should learn law terminology, if you're an engineer you should know engineering terminology, etc, etc. Learn the vocabulary, learn the terminology that is used on that area of work in that language.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="225"] Yep, you'll have to study on of these, on your respective area of work of course[/caption]

EDUCATIONAL REASONS

But a lot of people may be asking:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="255"] But what about if I want to become a teacher?[/caption]

Well, when it comes to teachers it tends to vary a lot, first of all where did you want to teach? Here? in other country? in Kindergarten?  in Elementary School? in Junior High? High School? College? other kind of institution? everything seems to vary a lot. There are some places that will hire you as a teacher just by the simple fact that you kinda know the language. There are other way more respectable places that will ask you for official certifications (even if it's your own native language). There are other places that will actually demand you a Bachelor on Languages to work there as a teacher, and there are other high ranking places that will demand you a Masters degree (that is actually what every institution should ask for). So yeah, when it comes to teachers it all depends in where do you want to work.

But if you want to become a teacher, working at a respectable place; you need official studies or official certifications, as simple as that.

And of course if you want to become a translator, an interpreter, a professional linguist, if you want to work on an embassy or something like that, you need official studies for that, you need a career.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="392"] You need studies, but it's truly a beautiful job and they worth it.[/caption]

And that's everything that I have to say. Define why do you want to learn a language, it can be for the social reasons (meeting/speaking with natives on a normal social way, or just learning it because you want to learn it), for business reasons (applying a language on your work or career) , for educational reasons (becoming a teacher) or for working reasons (becoming a translator, interpreter, professional linguist, etc).

And now you know what do you really have to do in each one of them.

Thanks for reading :D

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