Remember fifth grade and the substitute teachers and their mountains of copies of crossword puzzles with subject themed words to keep all the kids busy and the game all of the smart kids played where they competed to see who could finish all of the copies and win their free time first? Remember the other game the smart kids who didn't give a shit about extra time to do their homework in class because having homework to do was a great excuse to get away from having to spend time around their shitty parents played where instead of finishing crosswords they tried to find legitimate instances of curse words, the more rank the better? That just came to mind as I was thinking about myself (as usual) and I was thinking about the things in me that are different, which led to thoughts about picture finds where you look at two pictures and try to find what's different between them and that lead to thinking about word finds and that led to all of the wonderful hours in fifth and sixth grade I spent doing word find puzzles and circling "ass" instead of being taught anything by anyone because the teacher called in sick again because the kids are a bunch of bastards. They were still passing out crosswords and word finds in 7th grade and 8th grade now that I think about it. I raced through the pile a few times, but it was bullshit. It was not uncommon to have a teacher say "put your head down and take a nap if you like" as though I didn't get sent to bed without dinner often enough. Napping wasn't high on my list of favorite things to work hard for.
There really was no satisfying conclusion to finishing all of the crosswords besides the pride of knowing that I beat the pants of Annette with her stupid times table finger counting trick that I didn't learn until last year and promptly forgot. Fuck you Annette. You looked like Meg Griffin five years before Seth McFarlane dreamt her up. Suck on that coaster thick glasses. I hated her when she beat me at anything because she was a total douche about it. To this day when I beat people at anything I can't help but feel that I should have been more encouraging or at least explain to them why they might have lost and how they could have won. That might be even more annoying than simply sticking a finger in their face and saying a hearty "booyah".
Where was I. Crosswords, check. Annette was really smart, but a total bitch, check. Oh yeah, what's different about me. So here's what's different about me now from the me of five years ago in order of importance to me (sorry, this is so me themed today, but I'm not really, but I'd feel guilty if I didn't say something to acknowledge the fact that I'm being really really narcissistic [sort of]):
1: I don't think of myself as a funny person anymore. I used to think I was funny, but I'm not. I'm easy to laugh at and I think I'm fine with that.
2: I'm weird. No two ways about it. I am one of the weird ones and will probably be thought of as one of the creepy ones when I get too old to be weird and when I'm too old to be creepy I'll be one of the pleasantly eccentric ones you try to ignore, but who somehow end up miles away from their home health aide at a highway rest stop asking you for change so they can buy a colostomy bag from the potato chip vending machine.
3: I will probably never be married or will not have kids of my own. This will happen because I've realized I am impossible to start a family with. No really. I dare you to try. My heart is fucking Thunderdome. Raising kids and being with me will be like trying to keep track of the lost kids of never never land. If you were to combine Bill Cosby's sagely aspects, Peter Griffin's story telling, Homer's scheming, Seinfeld's eye for human interaction, and a middle aged Golden Retriever's eagerness to do everything, with a Bull's eagerness to do nothing except watch the world go by and bone constantly you'd roughly have an approximation of day to day life with me. Throw in "unconventional" tastes in design and home decor and art and general errata and my home probably won't even be a safe place to raise a kid from one hour to the next.
4: I will never be a kept man. I'm too damn old. Missed that boat, but it was fun to imagine what could have been had I really stepped up the training back when I first starting writing this and my biggest concern was beards and whether or not to shave my nuts.
5: I share my work openly. In the past I sat on it because I was somewhat embarrassed by it. Now, even better than simply not giving a fuck what people think of it, I honestly feel that it is worth sharing. It's become worth more time and attention than my own. How much time and attention is absolutely up for debate (whether its 1.01 person's T&A or 100 it's still greater than 1). Why more time is needed is also up for debate. Dear universe: I am at a highly impressionable point in my writing career... send me mentors or something. Jesus does not count as a mentor.
6: I've sort of come to understand that the people I grew up with, by and large, did not grow up "with" me. That's taken a lot of getting used to. How the hell to I grow myself into their circles if, apparently, I didn't do it successfully when they were right next to me. Frustrating. It's like everybody I knew went into a hall of mirrors together and somehow I ended up outside of the building in the alley with the alley cats and half eaten funnel cakes and everyone else went out the exit proper and I have no fucking clue how I ended up on the outside of everything.
7: I don't think there's a seven, but it's there for balances sake.
I've got an idea. Send me your address and I'll send you a handwritten poem on heavy stock plain white paper. Seriously. No scheme. No game. No angle. Just some art that'll only cost you the time and effort it takes to shoot me an email. You're address won't get shared (not just because I have no one to share it with but because if I gave someone my address I would want it destroyed immediately after it was no longer in use by the specific person I loaned it to). You won't suddenly have spam roll into your mailbox. I won't randomly show up your door with a handle of Vodka and tell you to drink as you run out to go to work in the morning. You won't get signed up for... well shit I could go on for another thirty lines about what won't happen.
What will happen: I'll send you a poem. That's it. A new fresh from my mental presses poem and maybe a scribble too. Bam, done. inacinch@gmail.com. and actually, by putting that there I will probably get a ton of spam, but I'm not mad about it. I just like to send people art. It's fun.
Or don't. It's not like I'm going to kill myself or anything if no one does this. I'll just keep doing what I usually do: write poetry, whack off till I fall asleep, wake up in the middle of the night in tears, write a story, knock myself unconscious with five shots of whiskey, wake up at a reasonable hour and repeat. The question is: how much of that is true. The answer is: most of it. Lulz. Anyway. Don't forget to see if you can fill out the crossword puzzle with all expletives. What is life if not a challenge to be more awesome than you were yesterday.
///Cowboy Bebop OST - "Blue" I think my opinion still holds that some of the best music is written and heard and felt in languages that you can't understand specifically because the worst thing anyway can do to some art is make it readily understandable and take away the pleasure of dawning reason and the avenue of organic access each person has to make when no person can make an inroad for the masses. The idea of masslessness comes to mind, but I'm pretty sure that's just more errata and artifice and artifacting. Sometimes I need a good paint chipper for my brain.
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
8/28/10
dear (______):
Dear Matt LeBlanc,
You were pretty fucking awesome in the Lost in Space remake (still one of my top five favorite Sci-Fi adventure flicks of all time plus the soundtrack killed too). I’m sorry things didn’t blow up for you over the years. Of all the Friends cast members you deserved a lot more than what you got. I know you know Jennifer Aniston is fucking over rated. Just wanted you to know that you’re not the only one who knows she’ll eventually go the way of Sarah Jessica Parker and be prominently featured in family guy skits about cuckolds, frigid vaginas, and bald tires. Lost in Space > her collective body of work. Just wanted to say thanks for the memories, dude.
You were pretty fucking awesome in the Lost in Space remake (still one of my top five favorite Sci-Fi adventure flicks of all time plus the soundtrack killed too). I’m sorry things didn’t blow up for you over the years. Of all the Friends cast members you deserved a lot more than what you got. I know you know Jennifer Aniston is fucking over rated. Just wanted you to know that you’re not the only one who knows she’ll eventually go the way of Sarah Jessica Parker and be prominently featured in family guy skits about cuckolds, frigid vaginas, and bald tires. Lost in Space > her collective body of work. Just wanted to say thanks for the memories, dude.
8/27/10
Think Harder
I take back what I said about New York not being an art hub. If you think about it, the population density is what makes it something of an art hub. If, as I previously suggested, it is no more an art center than any other city because art and art production chiefly exists within the minds of a cities occupants, more occupants means a denser more interleaved art community (not necessarily more interconnected). If we want to value a cities artistic merits based upon production and the potential for creative growth then NYC rightfully ranks high. If we want to assign value to the degree of interleaving and interconnection that produces art like a gene pool than NYC likely won't rank nearly as high as smaller cities and that is because smaller cities possessing the critical mass of community participation that makes increasing densities only marginally more appealing or useful to the community of artists then a smaller city would easily rank higher for the simple matter that the weave will have fewer threads and more contacts between the threads that do exist.
Surely the potential exists for a person who specializes in technical writing to meet up with a fashionista and produce something God awful or God sent, but as the population density grows well beyond the critical (and indeterminate) density of creating minds the chances of that meeting shrinks and the potential for compartmentalization and xenophobic design grows. I think that's what I was trying to get at before. NYC is not what I expected because I hadn't considered the difficulties in meeting with other people across the geographic mass (if you laid out every floor of NYC in a two dimensional plane it would probably be half of the size of New York proper) or the difficulties entailed in navigating the purposeful dilution of the contacts being made by those who aren't actual producing artists, but who seek to participate for lesser motives (if personal motivations can be ranked from the pure artist to the profiteer and name plater). And that is what has been a little bit of a let down.
The upshot of this is that the individuals are statistically "out there". I just have to find them. So I'm going to start actively looking through my terrible internet connection. I doubt I will find many in Queens, not as a generalization of the population's abilities, but absolutely as a generalization of the population's visible activities.
I think there was something else. Was there something else? Well, look, I wanted to do the inception poster and I am fed up with thinking about it and knowing that I can't upload it even if I did do it so check this out:
_h
^^^There's your poster. I was going to draw an old school circa 80s architecture chair falling backward into claw foot tub with geometric water and various aging and weathering appliqués and pastel Pantones. Since I'm on a 56kbps connection you'll have to settle for the low low loooow fi version. Bam, done. Well at least now you have the recipe so you can go do it. Stick with reds and grays for the text and a faded yellow tub with seawater colors in the tub or some combination of those colors with a two or three color palette for that really nice low budget mass distribution feel. At least that's what I think about the matter.
Lastly I hate middlemen. I spent some time today trying to think of a fun way to describe them. The hand shakers. The go betweeners. The thing is, middlemen are essential to civilization, but even in "uncivilized" society they serve fairly critical roles. I tried to find an axiom that painted them honestly without coloring the words with my own misgivings and hatred of where I fall in the relationship of middlemen to the greater contingent. I came up with: "Middlemen: Making Life Easier and More Expensive for Everyone Since the Dawn of Time". I think that about sums it up. They let us all be lazier. They give us opportunities to pay for opportunities to pay for things and it's so difficult to be on the paying side of their equation. If you're on the production side, you love middlemen. Middlemen find you purchasers. Middlemen create your demand where none may otherwise exist. They help you find customers and they help customers find products, but for absolutely everyone involved costs go up. American is the land of the middleman and if you produce anything or buy anything your dollar costs just went through the God damned roof of what they ought to be. Your time and energy costs may have gone down, but that's an artificial deflation. A trick of conversion and magical math and the incomprehensibly tangled relationship of the greenback promise note to what it cost you to get that slip of paper. There's a special hell for the middlemen. And wouldn't it be hilarious if it was managed by middle managers who answered to no one.
No, I suppose it wouldn't be hilarious. It would be Six Flags America.
You know how I know we're not in hell yet? Scratch that. I don't know. Added a story to Bits. Suck on that. Or just read it. Is it bad if you go to a job interview and they don't tell you what the job actually entails, but ask you to come back for an all day interview? I hope it's a boiler room orientation and not the beginning of a real life Battle Royale. Both were good movies, but the main reason why I would prefer Boiler Room to Battle Royale is that I still have writing to do and can't really afford to risk death on an Island. Well, no I take even that back. Lots of take backs today. The thing is, if I die, something is bound to be published. And that's all a body can really ask for. That and a spectacular death.
///Pink Floyd - "Shine on you Crazy Diamond VI" It takes a lot of musicianship to hold a listener for 12 solid minutes. The Red Hot Chili Peppers almost nailed something close in their song Californication, but they fell several hooks short and ended up with something you can nod off to after the first minute and wake up to in the last minute. Floyd nailed it. Experience enhancers optional.
Surely the potential exists for a person who specializes in technical writing to meet up with a fashionista and produce something God awful or God sent, but as the population density grows well beyond the critical (and indeterminate) density of creating minds the chances of that meeting shrinks and the potential for compartmentalization and xenophobic design grows. I think that's what I was trying to get at before. NYC is not what I expected because I hadn't considered the difficulties in meeting with other people across the geographic mass (if you laid out every floor of NYC in a two dimensional plane it would probably be half of the size of New York proper) or the difficulties entailed in navigating the purposeful dilution of the contacts being made by those who aren't actual producing artists, but who seek to participate for lesser motives (if personal motivations can be ranked from the pure artist to the profiteer and name plater). And that is what has been a little bit of a let down.
The upshot of this is that the individuals are statistically "out there". I just have to find them. So I'm going to start actively looking through my terrible internet connection. I doubt I will find many in Queens, not as a generalization of the population's abilities, but absolutely as a generalization of the population's visible activities.
I think there was something else. Was there something else? Well, look, I wanted to do the inception poster and I am fed up with thinking about it and knowing that I can't upload it even if I did do it so check this out:
_h
^^^There's your poster. I was going to draw an old school circa 80s architecture chair falling backward into claw foot tub with geometric water and various aging and weathering appliqués and pastel Pantones. Since I'm on a 56kbps connection you'll have to settle for the low low loooow fi version. Bam, done. Well at least now you have the recipe so you can go do it. Stick with reds and grays for the text and a faded yellow tub with seawater colors in the tub or some combination of those colors with a two or three color palette for that really nice low budget mass distribution feel. At least that's what I think about the matter.
Lastly I hate middlemen. I spent some time today trying to think of a fun way to describe them. The hand shakers. The go betweeners. The thing is, middlemen are essential to civilization, but even in "uncivilized" society they serve fairly critical roles. I tried to find an axiom that painted them honestly without coloring the words with my own misgivings and hatred of where I fall in the relationship of middlemen to the greater contingent. I came up with: "Middlemen: Making Life Easier and More Expensive for Everyone Since the Dawn of Time". I think that about sums it up. They let us all be lazier. They give us opportunities to pay for opportunities to pay for things and it's so difficult to be on the paying side of their equation. If you're on the production side, you love middlemen. Middlemen find you purchasers. Middlemen create your demand where none may otherwise exist. They help you find customers and they help customers find products, but for absolutely everyone involved costs go up. American is the land of the middleman and if you produce anything or buy anything your dollar costs just went through the God damned roof of what they ought to be. Your time and energy costs may have gone down, but that's an artificial deflation. A trick of conversion and magical math and the incomprehensibly tangled relationship of the greenback promise note to what it cost you to get that slip of paper. There's a special hell for the middlemen. And wouldn't it be hilarious if it was managed by middle managers who answered to no one.
No, I suppose it wouldn't be hilarious. It would be Six Flags America.
You know how I know we're not in hell yet? Scratch that. I don't know. Added a story to Bits. Suck on that. Or just read it. Is it bad if you go to a job interview and they don't tell you what the job actually entails, but ask you to come back for an all day interview? I hope it's a boiler room orientation and not the beginning of a real life Battle Royale. Both were good movies, but the main reason why I would prefer Boiler Room to Battle Royale is that I still have writing to do and can't really afford to risk death on an Island. Well, no I take even that back. Lots of take backs today. The thing is, if I die, something is bound to be published. And that's all a body can really ask for. That and a spectacular death.
///Pink Floyd - "Shine on you Crazy Diamond VI" It takes a lot of musicianship to hold a listener for 12 solid minutes. The Red Hot Chili Peppers almost nailed something close in their song Californication, but they fell several hooks short and ended up with something you can nod off to after the first minute and wake up to in the last minute. Floyd nailed it. Experience enhancers optional.
8/25/10
One of Those "Say Anything" Days
I don't know what the hell to tell you. Scratch that, I do. First off, I'm sorry I was gone for so long. It's not like me to stay away, and truth be told, I wasn't staying away as much as I've been held apart by circumstances beyond my control. Actually I kind of felt like the bearded guy with wings from Flash Gordon just then. At least my voice boomed in my head as I proclaimed the truth. It's not actually that dramatic, but I wish it were.
I guess, I really don't know what to expect from life anymore. Between the images pumped in through music and the massive filtering of said music to just the things that I don't mind slam dancing in my brain tissue and the images sucked in from television and the entire glut of information that comes unfiltered and unfilterable, my image of New York was unrealistic. "How realistic did I want it to be" is probably a more important question to ask. It's not a wasteland. It's not a shooting gallery. It's no more a hotbed of imagination and talent than any other city with a downtown and an uptown (that little detail is what makes or breaks a city for reasons locked into the evolutionary genome of bullshit socio whatevers).
I'm not making sense am I? I guess I'm just pissed off. Right now I'm that 105 year old man who sits in a high backed chair with his back to his bay windows, dressed in his three piece suit he wore to his last day of work before he retired, who cannot for the life of him remember the conversation between his ears that told him he should make the drastic change from the life he knew to the life he didn't know he would come to loathe.
We are after all in the first few hours of the first few months of the first few years of this, our new year under the banner of industry for the sake of perpetuating a life whose value lies in the work it has yet to complete. So I should be aiming for ... what? I don't fucking know.
Nope. Not true again. I do fucking know. My goal hasn't really changed. Only the operating conditions have changed. All I have to do is put food in my face, keep a simple computer, and not be homeless. If I can land a gig to make that happen I'll be good as a bar of gold. Or something. Something is getting lost in the wires again and I am blowing fuses faster than I'm replacing them and I think that's why I like talking to you. It doesn't really show me what needs to be replaced, but it does...
Okay cannot finish that thought. I think what I'm wanting to say is that I suppose if no one loves you, I'll be willing to. No pictures or links for a little while. My arrangements aren't allowing me to do the things I love doing for you. But we'll catch up later when I can think again and I stop feeling weird shit touching me. Total Promisaurus. And not like Inception promise either [I'm still gunna do it... i sware]. And my grammar will be better too. And punctuation. And that's it. Only because I told you I would fix it and I meant it. Because a man without his word is a laughing hollow eyed handshake that will eat you up from inside your dreams, like any other big city you knew.
///The Cranberries - "Dreams" who hasn't sung these lyrics to themselves? Raise your hands. To your throats and gently throttle yourselves for being too cool for school and then go youtube as soon as you feel you've punished yourself enough. Best song ever. Sure I can't listen to it 8 times in a row anymore, but that just comes with growing up. Right?
I guess, I really don't know what to expect from life anymore. Between the images pumped in through music and the massive filtering of said music to just the things that I don't mind slam dancing in my brain tissue and the images sucked in from television and the entire glut of information that comes unfiltered and unfilterable, my image of New York was unrealistic. "How realistic did I want it to be" is probably a more important question to ask. It's not a wasteland. It's not a shooting gallery. It's no more a hotbed of imagination and talent than any other city with a downtown and an uptown (that little detail is what makes or breaks a city for reasons locked into the evolutionary genome of bullshit socio whatevers).
I'm not making sense am I? I guess I'm just pissed off. Right now I'm that 105 year old man who sits in a high backed chair with his back to his bay windows, dressed in his three piece suit he wore to his last day of work before he retired, who cannot for the life of him remember the conversation between his ears that told him he should make the drastic change from the life he knew to the life he didn't know he would come to loathe.
We are after all in the first few hours of the first few months of the first few years of this, our new year under the banner of industry for the sake of perpetuating a life whose value lies in the work it has yet to complete. So I should be aiming for ... what? I don't fucking know.
Nope. Not true again. I do fucking know. My goal hasn't really changed. Only the operating conditions have changed. All I have to do is put food in my face, keep a simple computer, and not be homeless. If I can land a gig to make that happen I'll be good as a bar of gold. Or something. Something is getting lost in the wires again and I am blowing fuses faster than I'm replacing them and I think that's why I like talking to you. It doesn't really show me what needs to be replaced, but it does...
Okay cannot finish that thought. I think what I'm wanting to say is that I suppose if no one loves you, I'll be willing to. No pictures or links for a little while. My arrangements aren't allowing me to do the things I love doing for you. But we'll catch up later when I can think again and I stop feeling weird shit touching me. Total Promisaurus. And not like Inception promise either [I'm still gunna do it... i sware]. And my grammar will be better too. And punctuation. And that's it. Only because I told you I would fix it and I meant it. Because a man without his word is a laughing hollow eyed handshake that will eat you up from inside your dreams, like any other big city you knew.
///The Cranberries - "Dreams" who hasn't sung these lyrics to themselves? Raise your hands. To your throats and gently throttle yourselves for being too cool for school and then go youtube as soon as you feel you've punished yourself enough. Best song ever. Sure I can't listen to it 8 times in a row anymore, but that just comes with growing up. Right?
8/17/10
Back To The Emerald City
Heading to NYC. I won't know when I'll get to write for a while until I get my internet situation sorted out or find a library, get a card, and park myself there. Shouldn't be anything too unmanageable. I've been through worse.
In the meantime, I'll miss you more than I can really explain in words or justify with powers of reason.
///Nine Inch Nails - "The Four of Us Are Dying" Give your woofer a good work out and raise the bass a notch or two. It beats against the face like a hot breeze on a hot day, but it feels so good all the same. See you later this week. I'm inclined to promise, but I think we both know what happened to my promise of an Inception themed retro poster (I'm still going to do it, just not today... or tomorrow). Oh, and p.s. I've been sneaking in updates to the fiction at Bits and I enabled comments here since there're no comment forms there. Not that anyone has had anything to say about us, but just in case. You never know when Jesus himself will want to leave you a note and be completely stymied by the lack of a comment form and then you're really fucked. K bye.
In the meantime, I'll miss you more than I can really explain in words or justify with powers of reason.
///Nine Inch Nails - "The Four of Us Are Dying" Give your woofer a good work out and raise the bass a notch or two. It beats against the face like a hot breeze on a hot day, but it feels so good all the same. See you later this week. I'm inclined to promise, but I think we both know what happened to my promise of an Inception themed retro poster (I'm still going to do it, just not today... or tomorrow). Oh, and p.s. I've been sneaking in updates to the fiction at Bits and I enabled comments here since there're no comment forms there. Not that anyone has had anything to say about us, but just in case. You never know when Jesus himself will want to leave you a note and be completely stymied by the lack of a comment form and then you're really fucked. K bye.
dear (______):
Dear NYC,
If you'll kindly remember from the last time you robbed me, I was quite broke before you picked my pockets and you got nothing of even remote value. Not much has changed, so lets just be friends this time.
xo,
See ya soon.
If you'll kindly remember from the last time you robbed me, I was quite broke before you picked my pockets and you got nothing of even remote value. Not much has changed, so lets just be friends this time.
xo,
See ya soon.
8/15/10
Where the Lost Things Go
Is sort of where I've been. In and out of dreams and stuff. I literally woke up in the middle of the night and there were kittens all over the floor so I did what any reasonable person waking up in the middle of the night to find balls of kitty cuteness everywhere: I started flailing around the floor trying to get them off of me. Turns out they weren't real. And it turns out I sleep on the floor. Hopefully that'll change soon.
In other news, the world is a fascinating and gross and scary fun place. I've sort of been in a project gridlock again. Turns out the answer to the gridlock was... I completely missed that. The source of the gridlock was that I've been looking for a place where I can simply spew information and I haven't been able to find one. I feel like my head is so pressurized with stuff that if I were to sneeze I would blow my fucking brains out.
In using google reader I feel there is an obligation to only share the things that you think other people may find interesting or helpful or possess some sort of value to them, be it comedic or otherwise. Therefore, if I am sharing things there, I am basically saying to people who follow me: I think you might like this. I ran into a similar jam when I found myself clicking the "like" button for every single thing I came across. The thing is, I do sincerely like the things that other people are sharing, but is the "like" button supposed to be reserved for the things I cherish?
For the most part it seems a fallout of the amplification syndrome for text based communication. I only type in "lol" when I do laugh out loud. I laugh a lot. Other people don't laugh so much. Am I obligated to adjust my own inputs to help people feel less patronized. I'm not trying to be creepy, but somehow I feel like others might misunderstand that I laugh easily as me buttering them up for ulterior motives. Not true. I just love to laugh and I love to like and I love to share.
To solve this problem I joined twitter. However in joining twitter, where I hoped I would find a fantastic outlet for the bits of things that keep firing off in my head that eventually stifle my ability to focus on anything, I ran into the same problem pretty much instantly. Am I just the guy with no filter? No. At least I don't think so. I filter a lot, it's just that so much more is generated that is interesting to me to say and hear aloud and hear other people say. I don't really want attention or specific responses or responses at all. I just want to see it outside of my head to remind me that my brain is still working and that I am not talking to myself. But therein lies another problem. Is it not okay to talk to myself. I hate talking to myself actually. I prefer to spit it out and then read it somewhere else so that it at least feels like I'm not talking to myself and that way I can sort out who is who upstairs. It keeps things organized. My major concern then, in this rambling analysis is that in being myself I will distance everyone because there is so much chatter and not all of it is important or relevant to them. In fact, probably twenty percent is relevant to other people. You people. The rest is important to me. None of it is garbage. I just don't have enough storage space to keep my mouth shut. And I am a little sorry for being so. A lot sorry.
Well, to help curb the rush I've decided to start a comic:
I have no idea what it will be about specifically, but mostly it'll just be where I talk to myself about all of the things that I don't talk about here (because I want this to be interesting to other people).
Life is full of so many questions and very few easily digestible answers.
with some exceptions. Mainly I was thinking about the whole "when is an artist an artist" question. That's when it struck me just how obnoxious a question that is. To ask for a definite quantitative boundary between the artist and the non-artist is to ask the question of if you cut a distance in half an infinite number of times, when do they touch? People have asked me if they were writers before and I've always said "you're a writer when you know there's nothing else you really want to do." I think a better answer, now that I've mulled it hard over the last few weeks is that you're an artist when you can solve art problems to your own satisfaction. You're a writer when you can solve writing problems to your own satisfaction. Same thing goes for photography.
What I'm saying is, if you wake up one day and you say to yourself "I want to paint a portrait" and then you sit down and paint a portrait and you finish it, if the thing you have when you are done makes you happy and satisfied that it is a portrait then you are a portrait artist. If, when you finish, you look at the thing and you say to yourself "it is like a portrait, but not what I would call a portrait" then you are not an artist yet. If you sit down to write a story and when you are done you yourself cannot without a doubt call it a story of whatever length or genre then you are not a writer yet. If you sit down to write a program or perform some chemical solution or diagram some molecule and when you are finished you are not satisfied with the result then you are not whatever it is you set out to be just yet. Maybe satisfied is the wrong word there. If you are not contented with the fullness of the work, allowing for individual levels of mastery, then you are not whatever it was you set out to be that day.
So now I know. I am an artist, but I am not a photographer. I am a writer, but I am not a scientist or an accountant or a manager. I am an athlete, but I am not in great physical condition. It's made life a lot easier to understand and has helped take the hesitation and judgement out of things. The community be damned, and I mean that in the nicest way, when it comes to personal qualitative judgments. I finally understand that if I keep looking to the community for approval I will never get a defacto answer until I'm dead and gone, and quite frankly I can't really wait all that long.
Anywho, where the lost things go is where I've been. I didn't bring anything back, but hopefully next time I'll spear myself a fine trophy to prove I was there.
///Luke Slater - "Stars and Heroes"
Something has just occurred to me as I close this entry; if I have no followers on twitter I have an infinite jar to pour the excess in. Maybe that's an answer. The funny thing is we're talking this over right now and there's an argument happening and I really just wish I could have a moment of quiet at an hour as late as this.
In other news, the world is a fascinating and gross and scary fun place. I've sort of been in a project gridlock again. Turns out the answer to the gridlock was... I completely missed that. The source of the gridlock was that I've been looking for a place where I can simply spew information and I haven't been able to find one. I feel like my head is so pressurized with stuff that if I were to sneeze I would blow my fucking brains out.
In using google reader I feel there is an obligation to only share the things that you think other people may find interesting or helpful or possess some sort of value to them, be it comedic or otherwise. Therefore, if I am sharing things there, I am basically saying to people who follow me: I think you might like this. I ran into a similar jam when I found myself clicking the "like" button for every single thing I came across. The thing is, I do sincerely like the things that other people are sharing, but is the "like" button supposed to be reserved for the things I cherish?
For the most part it seems a fallout of the amplification syndrome for text based communication. I only type in "lol" when I do laugh out loud. I laugh a lot. Other people don't laugh so much. Am I obligated to adjust my own inputs to help people feel less patronized. I'm not trying to be creepy, but somehow I feel like others might misunderstand that I laugh easily as me buttering them up for ulterior motives. Not true. I just love to laugh and I love to like and I love to share.
To solve this problem I joined twitter. However in joining twitter, where I hoped I would find a fantastic outlet for the bits of things that keep firing off in my head that eventually stifle my ability to focus on anything, I ran into the same problem pretty much instantly. Am I just the guy with no filter? No. At least I don't think so. I filter a lot, it's just that so much more is generated that is interesting to me to say and hear aloud and hear other people say. I don't really want attention or specific responses or responses at all. I just want to see it outside of my head to remind me that my brain is still working and that I am not talking to myself. But therein lies another problem. Is it not okay to talk to myself. I hate talking to myself actually. I prefer to spit it out and then read it somewhere else so that it at least feels like I'm not talking to myself and that way I can sort out who is who upstairs. It keeps things organized. My major concern then, in this rambling analysis is that in being myself I will distance everyone because there is so much chatter and not all of it is important or relevant to them. In fact, probably twenty percent is relevant to other people. You people. The rest is important to me. None of it is garbage. I just don't have enough storage space to keep my mouth shut. And I am a little sorry for being so. A lot sorry.
Well, to help curb the rush I've decided to start a comic:
I have no idea what it will be about specifically, but mostly it'll just be where I talk to myself about all of the things that I don't talk about here (because I want this to be interesting to other people).
Life is full of so many questions and very few easily digestible answers.
with some exceptions. Mainly I was thinking about the whole "when is an artist an artist" question. That's when it struck me just how obnoxious a question that is. To ask for a definite quantitative boundary between the artist and the non-artist is to ask the question of if you cut a distance in half an infinite number of times, when do they touch? People have asked me if they were writers before and I've always said "you're a writer when you know there's nothing else you really want to do." I think a better answer, now that I've mulled it hard over the last few weeks is that you're an artist when you can solve art problems to your own satisfaction. You're a writer when you can solve writing problems to your own satisfaction. Same thing goes for photography.
What I'm saying is, if you wake up one day and you say to yourself "I want to paint a portrait" and then you sit down and paint a portrait and you finish it, if the thing you have when you are done makes you happy and satisfied that it is a portrait then you are a portrait artist. If, when you finish, you look at the thing and you say to yourself "it is like a portrait, but not what I would call a portrait" then you are not an artist yet. If you sit down to write a story and when you are done you yourself cannot without a doubt call it a story of whatever length or genre then you are not a writer yet. If you sit down to write a program or perform some chemical solution or diagram some molecule and when you are finished you are not satisfied with the result then you are not whatever it is you set out to be just yet. Maybe satisfied is the wrong word there. If you are not contented with the fullness of the work, allowing for individual levels of mastery, then you are not whatever it was you set out to be that day.
So now I know. I am an artist, but I am not a photographer. I am a writer, but I am not a scientist or an accountant or a manager. I am an athlete, but I am not in great physical condition. It's made life a lot easier to understand and has helped take the hesitation and judgement out of things. The community be damned, and I mean that in the nicest way, when it comes to personal qualitative judgments. I finally understand that if I keep looking to the community for approval I will never get a defacto answer until I'm dead and gone, and quite frankly I can't really wait all that long.
Anywho, where the lost things go is where I've been. I didn't bring anything back, but hopefully next time I'll spear myself a fine trophy to prove I was there.
///Luke Slater - "Stars and Heroes"
Something has just occurred to me as I close this entry; if I have no followers on twitter I have an infinite jar to pour the excess in. Maybe that's an answer. The funny thing is we're talking this over right now and there's an argument happening and I really just wish I could have a moment of quiet at an hour as late as this.
8/14/10
dear (______):
Dear Christians,
If you need Jesus to tell you to be a decent human being to be a decent human being, what you probably need is a psychiatrist, a life coach, and a month of self evaluation.
If you need Jesus to tell you to be a decent human being to be a decent human being, what you probably need is a psychiatrist, a life coach, and a month of self evaluation.
8/8/10
Bits for Flames Front Page is Done!
Click the screenshot to see it close up. I am so thrilled and tired and thrilled. The only thing missing is the "about" and "contact" links. I dropped out that entire poor excuse for a nav bar because it was making the page way too long and chunky and it is awesome without it. God damn, if you could see me smiling right now. I almost don't know what to do with myself. I feel like a kid who just finished a macaroni and glue master piece and I want to show everyone my grimy piece of paper. That's how happy I am.
///Aim-"Fall Break" I am looking forward to an Autumn that'll cool summer's misgivings and rages and bruises.
///Aim-"Fall Break" I am looking forward to an Autumn that'll cool summer's misgivings and rages and bruises.
Front Concepts and the Update Status
This is taking a little longer than I expected, hence a lack of fiction updates. Hopefully now that I have a much better idea of where I want to go with it, the actual php execution will flow fast and hard.
Concepts below.
I'm leaning much closer to doing something in line with this:
This one feels a little to much like cut and paste clip art to use as a header for the more organic processes I go through in creating the fiction on Bits, even though I feel it does capture how I feel about the story ideas that strike me and burn up my brain cycles until I get them down on paper:
Maybe a cross between the two we let me rest easier.
And with that, I am hitting the hay. More tomorrow, and I will do my damnedest to add one story to the fiction content every two or three days while I work on the graphic presentation. Promise.
///Ladytron- "CSKA Sofia" A dreamy anthem for a sleepy kid.
Concepts below.
I'm leaning much closer to doing something in line with this:
This one feels a little to much like cut and paste clip art to use as a header for the more organic processes I go through in creating the fiction on Bits, even though I feel it does capture how I feel about the story ideas that strike me and burn up my brain cycles until I get them down on paper:
Maybe a cross between the two we let me rest easier.
And with that, I am hitting the hay. More tomorrow, and I will do my damnedest to add one story to the fiction content every two or three days while I work on the graphic presentation. Promise.
///Ladytron- "CSKA Sofia" A dreamy anthem for a sleepy kid.
8/7/10
More Panels and Main Mock Up On Deck
So I think I might be done with panel art for now. Time to make slices and dress the site, but first the show.
Redid the GolfcartFlamingo logo entirely because the previous one looked way too everything. It was, in a word, tacky. I think it worked out better the second time around. A little bummed I didn't get to work an old Camaro into the motif, but it's better without it.
And the main panel for the fiction portal:
I haven't decided if I want this to be it:
Or if I want this to be it:
Well anyway, main page mockup is finally on the work bench. Here we go...
///The Arcade Fire - "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)"
Redid the GolfcartFlamingo logo entirely because the previous one looked way too everything. It was, in a word, tacky. I think it worked out better the second time around. A little bummed I didn't get to work an old Camaro into the motif, but it's better without it.
And the main panel for the fiction portal:
I haven't decided if I want this to be it:
Or if I want this to be it:
Well anyway, main page mockup is finally on the work bench. Here we go...
///The Arcade Fire - "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)"
8/6/10
Best Panel Yet?
How awesome is that?! I love it. It turned out pretty damn sweet for a quick job. Either I'm getting better or illustrator is reading my mind. Okay, enough stroking my feathers (though I sort of needed that) and back to it. One more to go. As a side note, I think I might change those paint strokes to sharp angled sort of cutout comic booky "kaboom" explosions. I think that would look even better.
And, by the way, I think I'm going to make that panel the front for the "contact" and "about me." The only reason why I'm not making it the absolute center piece is because I already have in mind a photo I took in the very early hours of a cool day while I lived in Chicago. I think you might like it too. We'll see.
Alright, moving on: I still owe you an Inception review. It's cooled off a little bit and you've probably read other reviews by now, which is a good thing ("the more you know" and all that jazz) because I want to make sure I- who am I kidding? I just haven't gotten to it yet. Maybe it'll be informative, or at least inciteful. I think I'll be able to muster at least above average incite and skip the all capital lettered rants that begin with words like "must watch twice" and "it blew me away." Most people who review films and say things like "it blew me away" as the lead in are probably blown away for one reason or another by just about everything they see. ;) I at least save it for the second line.
I've got to admit, it feels nice to be buried in getting the facade of Bits done. I'll post up a screen shot later of what the panels might look like altogether. Totally pumped.
///Sage Francis - "Lie Detector Test" Honestly, I still don't know the difference between an MC and a Rapper, but if I had to put money down on whether or not Sage Francis was an MC, I would put my bills on a big ol' hell yes. Looking forward to listening to this on a back porch of my own, with a beer in my right hand, smokes on the table, and a friend or two enjoying a big fat lazy Friday afternoon and loving it.
Panel 3 and "What Had Happened Was..."
Panel 3 for poetry is above. Panel 3 option is below. Haven't decided which one to go with yet, but that's a good problem to have.
So what happened is there was me and her and now there's just me. And me and her were supposed to be best friends, but that's sort of not happening. Or maybe it is. Maybe I just don't understand what a best friend is supposed to be. So, in the spirit of lolcats, I has a sad. It's distressing and depressing and it's every morning waking up from dreams of being left and having to leave and spending the day working, but in the back of my mind wishing and hoping and yearning for the day not to end and a new one to begin and to have to go to sleep and dream again and wake. All I want is for the night to keep going and my eyes to not close and my mind to not show me things that can't exist.
I saw (500) Days of Summer and, in seeing it, I finally "got it". I suppose, the reason (precipitating from the root cancer eating its way into my life through horrific family ties) for the separation was something along the lines of she really liked me, but as for someone to spend the rest of her life with she simply could not be sure. It would be an unfair gamble for her, and unfair of me to demand that she roll her dice with someone living at the edge of an abyssal plain. I wouldn't want to make anyone have to step into and live in the midst of the daily bullshit that goes on behind the scenes of the farce of my family and I know now that is what I was asking her to do.
It's supremely aggravating and gut punching the way things unfurled because a lot of avoidable things happened through their intent... and then to be constantly asked by the culpable behind the scenes actors who helped orchestrate failure "so how's she doing, do you guys talk?" is particularly galling. I want to stab them in their fat, beady eyed faces and slit their throats. So many awful things happened, caused by their utter lack of support, religious conceit, and selfishness and they'll never take responsibility for their massive role in cutting my legs out from under me with almost super villain frequency. It's funny because there is almost no other way to describe it. It's like James and the Giant Peach, but I still haven't had the benefit of magical intervention.
In another world, an alternate space, where they didn't exist and I did and all the stupid money issues I had nothing to do with never happened and I finished school because I had the support and genuine concern of parents who were not themselves bitter, money grubbing, pathetic shells of themselves locked in a dead end marriage that ate the lives of their children to survive... we're still together.
Where does love go. Who the fuck knows. How do you stay best friends with someone who doesn't talk to you? You send letters and messages and it starts to feel like you're the sorry sumbitch in no man's land waiting for the mail service to get through, but it never does and you'll never know why. I don't think I'll ever be alright with that. As for my romanticized view of the world: it's still there and still tinted Gothic.
I hate when people say things like "it could be worse." Of course it could be worse, but that doesn't exactly make the current unpleasantness any more livable. Anywho. Probably the last time I tag a post with "girlfriend" for a while. I don't think I'll ever be okay, but in time I'll have grown into another person and this person who feels this way will have died and the new person won't remember how the corpse felt, but will see the old photographs and think "oh, how charming. Wonder how that ended". It would be easier if it wasn't glaringly obvious how drastically, positively, different things could have been in my life from the time I was 5 years old to now without them destroying the things I cherished and the things that made me laugh and smile and the people around me and my siblings. They know it too. They'll never admit it though and that's why I will hate them until the day they die and I can sleep knowing they can never hurt me and my relationships with the people I love ever again.
///Dntel - "(This is) The Dream of Evan and Chan" Someday soon, I'll leave it all behind. Sorry for asking you to listen to all of that and thanks if you did.
8/4/10
Back at Bits for Flames and Hearing Some Hip Hop
Well the recap will have to wait until later tonight. Right now I'm back at Bits For Flames content injection into the fiction section of the site.
More graffix. This will be the Rant.Muse logo:
graphics will go up once i finished the other three panels. Partly because I want to do all the php at once, and partly to crack a whip on my own ass to "get 'r done". Hope you're liking the new and improved use of grammar. Remember when this thing was entirely stream of consciousness? Ah, the rebellious days of a couple weeks ago. Feels like it was just yesterday...
///Five Deez - "Sexual for Elizabeth" If hip-hop, at it's highest, most visible, most accessible and marketable levels were all about the instrumentals for just one month out of every year, it would be a beautiful thing. I would say "bring art back into hip-hop", but art didn't go anywhere. Sometimes you just have to look a little harder (something I'm honestly not always willing to do when it comes to hip-hop). This track, though not brand new, still inspires me to look a little closer instead of turning away from the entire scene altogether.
More graffix. This will be the Rant.Muse logo:
graphics will go up once i finished the other three panels. Partly because I want to do all the php at once, and partly to crack a whip on my own ass to "get 'r done". Hope you're liking the new and improved use of grammar. Remember when this thing was entirely stream of consciousness? Ah, the rebellious days of a couple weeks ago. Feels like it was just yesterday...
///Five Deez - "Sexual for Elizabeth" If hip-hop, at it's highest, most visible, most accessible and marketable levels were all about the instrumentals for just one month out of every year, it would be a beautiful thing. I would say "bring art back into hip-hop", but art didn't go anywhere. Sometimes you just have to look a little harder (something I'm honestly not always willing to do when it comes to hip-hop). This track, though not brand new, still inspires me to look a little closer instead of turning away from the entire scene altogether.
Golfcart Flamingo Logo
=_= very tired. The state of perpetual collapse that plagues my absolutely fucking retarded family life had me so angry and out of sorts I literally could not function and then the wonderful flip side of that situation was that I've been erased by someone I thought was a best friend (more about that later) so I had the unique pleasure of getting fucked from every direction at once. So its back on the smokes, collar up, stiff upper lip, and into that fucking wind.
This is what I managed to accomplish in a few hours of dedicated work when the bewilderment calmed down.
Three more to go. Dear god, if you're out there... please don't shit on me again today. I like getting work done. You aren't helping so just stay the fuck out of my way, okay? Thanks.
///El-P - "The League of Extraordinary Nobodies" '...and we haven't even gotten to the part where it's a joke..."
This is what I managed to accomplish in a few hours of dedicated work when the bewilderment calmed down.
Three more to go. Dear god, if you're out there... please don't shit on me again today. I like getting work done. You aren't helping so just stay the fuck out of my way, okay? Thanks.
///El-P - "The League of Extraordinary Nobodies" '...and we haven't even gotten to the part where it's a joke..."
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