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.
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.
8/17/10
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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