Facebook

Facebook is funny.  It's obvious as a bunch of gate switches, on and off.  Zero and one. It's funny because there are so many ways to have full conversations using only gate switches.  It's obvious, but it's still funny imagining an ever flipping map of things and you can hit whichever switches you want to in a side scrolling self describing toggle machine.  It's pretty swell and still funny.  Rudimentary, but a chuckle.  All the positions begin at off.  No point fives.  I'm not sure where I'm going with this, oh yeah, just remembered.  And forgot.  It's back, okay, got it, the hook is that with only being able to describe yourself through on or off it becomes possible to predict what's coming next and it grows formulaic.  For a ball of nerve endings that require routine to survive it becomes a joke.  For a ball of nerve endings that are a ball of fat and salt it's very funny to watch and also to participate.  It's fun I think is what I'm getting at.  Fun to create and fun to acknowledge.  The equivalent of a wave to say that I am me and you are you and "hi, how are ya."  Its neat.



///DJ? Acucrack - "Captain's Waterlog"

A Joke, a Little Work, a Little Fantasy, and a Little Truth

Maybe that's why I enjoy night so much.  During the day I just want to stare at the sun and dream about going there.  Life without sunglasses was brutal.  I went mad trying to find them and turned my apartment inside out looking for them.  Of course I left them at a job site.  I asked the people there, when I returned and thought I saw them, if they were mine.  And they said "I don't know, are they?"  I don't know!  Are they?!  I thought they were, but they wouldn't tell me and I thought maybe they were playing a game on me to see how long it would take for me to declare that they were and take them.  In my mind, steal them.  I put two and two together (after turning my place upside down searching) and made my declaration.

So, let's open with a joke.  I'd like to.  I know I am no comedian, so let's give it a little go.  What did the manhole cover say to the street?

Give up?

It said "I'm glad I'm not square."

I was speaking to someone and I can't quite remember who.  I don't think it was a friend.  I think it was a random conversation that sparked up between myself and someone else at the gathering, because I'm near certain it was some sort of gathering with friends that I was at, otherwise I would have been on the deck of my starship.  I was speaking to someone and the who is not all that important.  What came out of the conversation was a comment on the work I do, performing maintenance and changing spaces and power tools and heavy tools sometimes when the work is thick and the corrections that need to be made are more intensive than pure oil changes and minor rerouting/replacement of resources.  

The comment was that my job is basically life as we know it and all I have to do is mine plus a little extra whenever it's not intensive.  I must say, I got offended, but I laughed it off.  I got offended.  Deeply offended.  Do you understand how difficult life is?  Do you understand how difficult maintenance is?  Cutting off the infinite hydra?  It has no heart.  It has no organs.  It has no weak points.  It is impossible to kill or destroy.  It will never be complete and it is constantly adapting.  I wanted to break their face when they said that, but I decided to laugh instead which was good for both me and him.

As I backed my mind over the conversation about work after things died down and everyone went their separate ways and I stepped inside my airlock and sealed the door and fired up the engines and set the course back away from the sun and plotted around the minefield of asteriods too big to bounce off the shielding and hull it occurred to me that they were not spot on, but they were right.

When I am not doing heavy work, my job is to perform what I would do for myself, except duplicated.  It is similar to running many instances of one life simultaneously.  Without the extra relationships so you can focus pure on the bones, guts, and vessels.  The blocks and supports that allow relationships to happen.  It's extra relationships to me, but for the constituents its first order relationships.  I maintain my ship to allow me to get the distance I want and know I need, and come and go from the inner system close to at will.  What they use their fighters and runabouts and escorts and carriers and interceptors and cruisers and bombers and liners or whatever you want to call its for is their business.  My business is making sure they run as well as they possibly can so they can do their business and grow their relationships as I do my own.

When it comes to work there are many ways to go about it, but they were right.  I am no longer offended by it.  Yeah, most of my work is life.  Regular life things.  That's about as much job as I can handle.  I'm laughing while I say that, but it's something I've come to know about myself that I didn't really think about more clearly until that particular conversation happened and I got sickly offended.  As much job as I can process is life, is the other connection I am trying to make and I think I made it good.  I'm not offended at all.  I control the timezone and the appointments to a degree.  I set the tempo.  To a degree.  And that's why I love my job.  It is a direct hit to my wheelhouse and not a degree more or less.  

I still have to answer for what I do.  I still have a difficult time performing maintenance on my own craft.  Multiplied over others crafts it's like managing a motor pool and every now and then when one limps into the shipyard and drops anchor I'm happy to see it because I know I am built for it, and yeh it, the task, may be nothing fancy to you.  It may be routine to you.  To me it is approaching maximum output and it gives me joy to know what I work to do, and sweat to do, and bleed to do, I can do for them and theirs too and let them punch their throttles and brakes and when they turn the dual keys and sequence their hyperdrive to go see who they want to or bring their lights up for their party or plug in their laptop in their study or push their coffee table to a spot where they can put their feet up and still be sitting on their couch or activate their weapons without having to think about whether it will work or not. 

Sure, it's regular shit.  As much job as I can take without losing control of my own regular shit.

Alright, I'm going to try to get through this fast so I do not waste your time.  There are few things worse than thieves.

Burn like a tire.  The easy thing to do is burn energy by burning it.  We all get that.  Burn the excess.  Take only what you need.  I think that's the key and the dream to art's pursuit.  The realized and often unrealized dream to art's pursuit and it's main reason for existence.  Without art we are nothing.  We are little entropy machines and we are aware enough to know this.  We build up charge and build up charge and requires expense.  It is not optional.  We are aware that ourselves and environment are constantly approaching disarray at fantastic speed.  Our awareness heightens as we approach great structure.  We would not know structure without disorder built into our make up.

The easy thing to do is burn.  It's not the secret of life.  Each day a person wakes up they are given charge.  Each day a person wakes up, their fortress has trapped free energy from the destruction around them.  Destroy it.  Burn it.  Literally.  Run in circles.  Use it to create more endless fury.  Or battle it.  Make a declaration and take a stand and say "no."  It's not about building a tower to be sent down by time or sent down by someone else.  It's about recognizing that you have recognized that you are different.  You know what's happening and where it ends and offering a beautiful warning.  The game of putting your finger on the tip of your nose to say "not it!"  

I guess I did finally get that I cannot play dumb as often as I would like to.  At the same time though, what gave me pause was, I also know for sure I am not as smart as I think I am sometimes.  A good portion of the time.  So I'm not going to allow myself to get brassy on my own behalf.  S'not playing dumb, but I would rather underestimate the jump and take too much care than overestimate the jump and take too little.

I am an awful liar.  I still sweat horribly when I'm trying to spin a lie.  Does it ever get difficult for you to think about who you would be if you're skillsets were rearranged when it comes to communication?  I am such a bad liar, it's ridiculous.  I would probably enjoy card games and games in general a lot more if I could lie better.  Then again, if I had a talent for it, I would probably abuse it and beat it until the wheels fell off and I wouldn't get caught in a web.  I'd get caught in a world of trouble and the very ground I walked on would be sticky as fuck.

Life without headphones has been brutal.  I didn't realize how much I needed them to help me tune out products of my mind and visions and conversations happening and not actually happening and interpolations happening and not actually happening.  With background I can turn the contrast up a lot higher when I am walking, forced or no, outside of the learned and mastered framework where I know exactly what is and is not imagined without having to look twice unless I have to.  It's been a very rough go and very upsetting.

I went to the gas station again last night because I was very hungry and needed milk.  I didn't want to go, but by the time I convinced myself it was worthwhile I was feeling pretty ready.  I saw it again.  Between two houses, there it was.  Smack dab in front of my face and I almost yelped.  I walked back and forth along the street and it was there, tracking.  I just wished I had my headphones so I could put my head down and forget about it.  I don't want to know it.  I don't want to get to know it.  I don't want it to sniff me out again or get a smell for me.  What the hell were you?

Trespassing is a crime.  I walked all the way up to the fence of their yard between the houses.  When I touched the links and rattled them a little it ran off, but I couldn't see to where.  I'm not looking forward to tonight.  I don't know if I should stay or risk going out.  I just don't know.  I don't know where they come from.  They make my skin prickle.  It was so hard not to pee my underwear.  I don't know what to do about it, but I'll figure something out eventually.  Or hide.  It is entirely possible I'm not the one it's looking for and I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Entirely and absolutely possible.

At any rate.  Our problems are our own and it's passed time to close up shop for a little while.  Shut down hailing frequencies and allow the machines to do their work and hum and try to do some dream work.  I am going to get a replacement set of headphones as soon as possible.  I can't use photoshop effectively for the time being so we will try to change the face of the Auralport and OEM by hand.  We can do it.  I hate waiting for me.  I think you don't like waiting for me too.  Nothing to it, but to do it.  I want to crank out a few short stories too.  There is a pair that have been knocking around my skull for a few months that I've been editing up there and it is, again, passed time that I put the needle to the record and turn up the volume and relax and reread.  

I do not know what's in the backwoods.  I always hope the backwoods do not know me too.

Left Field - "Gussett"  i wish it was raining today

Tired, Music, Studio Dust and Weekdays

I'm tired.  A lot of people are.  Just kind of beat.  It's not the usual beat.  The common beat.  You know the kind of beat I'm talking about.  The beat that runs from Sunday into Monday because you didn't do anything and you got tired near the end of the day because of all the things you didn't do, but didn't spend the energy to not do?  Is that the right way around?  Spent the energy to not do?  It's not that kind.  It's the kind of beat that comes from doing stuff and dreaming stuff with equal gusto.  I was going to say passion, but I feel like passion tends to connote a certain amount of emotional sensitivity that tends to drag meaning away from doing stuff and bend the beat toward a beatnik kind of over sensitivity that screams I spent my day doing nothing because doing nothing was better than doing something I don't believe in.  Whatever that means.  So I'm tired.  Just tired.  Days full of doing and nights full of doing and not enough doing to go around.  What it do?  I don't know?  What does it do?  Give me a few weeks and I'll tell you.

I'm tired though and it gets aggravating.  First world problems or something like that.  I never thought I would find myself whining to myself about transcribing my voice recordings.  I don't want to sit down and type at my computer, but I don't want to sit down and write down notes and write out stories with pen and paper either, but I don't want to transcribe my recordings because, as it turns out, that's kind of harder.  I've never said "what the hell did he just say" in reference to myself so many times in a row.  Doesn't help that I lost my data cable for transferring them to my computer.  And I could buy a card adapter, but I bought a shower curtain instead.  It's weird.  Am I dodging myself?  Probably.  Do you know how hard it is to do that?  Not very.  I'm easily distracted.  Especially when I'm tired.

I have a hard to stifle desire to make music.  Write songs.  Emo guilty.  I don't know the first thing about writing songs, but I can learn.  Task locked after a way.  I would say everyone is, but that's just not true.  Pretty sure I'm not waiting for anything specific.  I'm trying to turn routine into stability, but it feels like the only routine I can maintain with any faith is instability.  It's what makes me a good fighter and a bad fighter at the same time, because even instability can grow predictable.   I kind of had a little crisis mode thought track down on the low lying channels that worked its way up to the high line and caught fire across circuits.  What if I'm not a writer?  What if I've just been fooling myself for a decade?  And then I thought: well, it's been a pretty fun decade, set backs not withstanding.  Maybe all you have to do to live, the secret of life or something like it, is to do what you love and let everything else orbit it and sometimes you spend time on Titan and sometimes you stink up Venus for a little while and sometimes you dig ditches on Earth and go visit friends on Mars before swinging out to Saturn to ogle and then do some time on Io when you know when you can't be trusted to do anyone any good.  Anyway you cut it though the sun of desire still comes up and you put your helmet back on and check the pressure and the panel and kick on the boosters and go.  I don't mind that.  I don't think I don't mind that.

I've been trying to figure out what I need to do to find my music again.  Wherever it is.  It's not on notes between lines and bars and what have you.  I think that ship has sailed for the time being.  Not that I can't do it.  I just get pissed off hearing ridiculous compositions by people years younger and I know I'll just tear it up, spit on it, crumple up the spit on shreds and bean someone on the sidewalk with earbuds in their ears from my window, correcting for wind.  I'm still pretty good at that.  "Hey, douche!"  Smack.  Kind of a counter productive talent.  I can also flick a cigarette with 75% accuracy from two yards.  Bigby would be jealous, if he were real.  In a fight between Bigby and me I would totally win, or at least be the one still able to walk afterwards, cuz I would kick him straight in the dick like five times before he hit the ground.  I've been trying to find my music again though.  I used to play trombone and that little plastic flute thing that could only play eight notes, and that other thing.   Viola!  Not well though.  Music programs in sixth grade didn't teach you how to tune them.  I'm pretty sure my sixth grade music teacher was on pills most of the time.  She just sat at her piano, over weight, with ratty, burned up, lye blonde, wisps of shoulder length hair, playing chords and vaguely answering questions.  Didn't help that I was perpetually terrified of popping my eyeball with a snapped viola string.  For some reason I never got over that fear and the even greater fear of facing my parents who would say something like "this is why we didn't want you playing viola!  and staying after school!"

I don't get why they cashed out when their investment was practically over.  They pretty much took a steaming dump on every extracurricular I chased and then wondered why the scholarships didn't come rolling in like publishers clearing house with ten entrants instead of 10 million, because that is basically what scholarship competitions are.  Do people even realize how much nonsense has to go right to win that crap?  It's gotta be something on the scale of lower tier pro sports or Division three sports.  Is there even a third division in the NCAA?

I have a vague idea of the direction I'm going to have to go.  Samples.   Lots and lots of samples and loops, but also keyboard and MIDI instruments.  I already have some of the tracks laid out in my head.  That's the easy part.  The hard part is the hours and days and weeks it takes to get it laid out on my computer.  I'm going to do it though.  And I'm going to pick up reading music again in a few years.  Or, I should say, a few years after I start doing that because I know the time will come when I can't find the sample I want and the realization will dawn for the second time, dawning first here, that it will ultimately be easier to create the exact sound I'm looking for instead of looking for the sound already out there and bending it to my will of production.

I'm getting behind though.  Behind on the various projects.  Time is at a premium lately and I'm trying to restructure my time expenditures to better reflect the end times of another year.  The heady days of Summer are gone the fuck out the door, nigga.   Time to start burning the winter fat and make something real that I can hold up to my eyes and review and turn over and do better again.  Masturbation is not that thing.  When the hell did I start masturbating so much?  It's gotten to the point where I have to check my hand for excess lotion before I go out in public.  That's not healthy, right?  That's the other problem though.  Two hours a pop is way too long for masturbatory purposes.  The pursuit of the perfect orgasm is a waste of time because I know where it is.   That little switch in my head that says "alright, just pick one and let's get through this," broke a long time ago.  That has teamed up with my easily distractedness and my absolute focus on making the best iteration of an experience or nothing at all to explode my masturbation budget into a time deficit that sucks the rest of my day into it like a hole in the space time continuum.   You've got a problem when you wake up and think "alright let's rub a quick one out before breakfast" and you're washing your hands at lunch time.  Defeats the purpose of waking up, dude.  Get it together grouch.

My studio is accumulating a disconcerting amount of dust.  This needs remedied.   Soon.  The itch to produce something, anything, is getting unscratchable and we are not under any circumstances doing crack again.  With crazy people.  To make up for it.  That's like asking someone to scratch an itch on your knee and they punch you so hard in the cheek they blow one of your wisdom teeth out.  Sure, the itch is gone, but damn.  I would have gone to see a dentist for that shit if I knew you were going to do that.  And second of all, I thought we agreed on "not the face."  It's cool, though.  It's not.  I have got to get my creative hands dirty doing before they turn on me.  Operation Danny's Attic, the Outride missions.

I've been getting excited about weekdays.  For televisions sake.  It's a fine time of the year.  Sports, cartoons, sitcoms.  New episodes of this and that.  And then it occurred to me why other people don't necessarily get as excited.  They're taping it, or catching it later online.  Technology sucking the fun out of life.  The death of the viewing party.  DVR killed the video star, would be an ironic throwback title to it, if ironic is the right word.  Maybe dated fits there too.  Sad times.  Remember when Seinfeld episodes were still new?  People probably had to VHS them and before they could do that they had to master their tape machines and make sure their television was on the right channel.  I wonder how many people taped Friends by mistake and shot themselves in the face in their bath tub with a glass of wine balanced on the side by the bubbles that same night.  I'm not saying Friends was that bad a show or Seinfeld was that good.  They were just that far apart.  After the Seinfeld finale I'm sure Monday night suicides probably spiked for a few weeks and then dropped dramatically.  What do you mean the saga of Kramer has reached it's conclusion???  Can't remember the last time I used three question marks in a row, but I'm sure my computer could tell me.  I've got to clean my studio and fire up the factory.  They may not respond to coaxing, but I'm fed up coaxing with words.  It is time to put the boot to them.

Anyway, the point is, there's a lot of work to do and the work doesn't care how tired you feel or where your identity crisis lies or how you feel about what you think you might be terrible at or good at.    Until you do it, you're going to wish you did and once you've done it you're not going to think back and say something like: "man, I wish I hadn't spent so much time caring about and doing something I care about and enjoy doing."

Call it a cold start.  I don't know how it ends.


///The Flaming Lips - "Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung"

Stand Up Act 1

Hi,

This is all improvised. I'll probably never get up in front of a mic because I am an impossibly shy guy, unlike the actual shyguys from the Mario universe. They were pretty in your face and aggressive. Actually I'm kind of like that too. So never mind that whole thing. I guess I'm just self conscious like everyone else who doesn't have enough money to ignore the rest of the world from the second they get pushed out of the womb like that little donut hole that pops out of a whole puncher. Who knew that those things grew up to be people. Or maybe people are just loose leaf paper. Waiting to be hole punched or something. How fun was using that thing. I must have ruined at least three acres of forests punching holes in paper. But I guess it wasn't really my fault. The teacher's were the ones who wouldn't accept paper with holes punched in the middle of it and around the corners and across the sides like St. Valentines day. Stick figures aren't going to shoot themselves. That's what meth and coke is for. Or something. Well anyway, I should probably explain a little more:

I've listened to a lot of stand up on the radio, well, on my computer. Which is the radio of my generation. Or I suppose, just my segment of my generation. The poorer people who got birthday cards with ten dollars in them from their parents. The kind of thing you'd expect from a grandparent who still believed ten cents could get you a sucker and copy of the latest Action comics in color and a trolley ride to the carnival next to the board walk made of gold and pixie dust and where the hell is that dish of Werther's I left to keep my copy of the TV Guide cross word I tore out of that magazine at the doctor's office, because I may be old and out of touch, but I'm still sharp enough to know when to steal shit instead of buying it. Thrifty. Like listening to radio on your computer instead of going to the club and seeing it live, because your poor and, shit, with that much money you could buy a whole mess of bacon and the good orange juice with the pulp in it instead of the food coloring.

Listening to all of this has basically made me as a largely failed occupational, but still pathological, writer want to express things that are funny to me too and hope that maybe like two other people will also think so. I say two, because I always like my stuff and my friend who doesn't really exist, the person who is basically holding down a time share in my head sometimes likes my stuff too so we need at least one more person in on this before it'll get good. Kind of like having sex with that person in the office that everyone has already had sex with, or actually no, it's more like picking up a copy of the latest nude mag, whatever they call, Juggs, or Juggs for black guys who apparently can only be aroused by large jewelry and x and y and z that we already featured in this magazine, but now it's earth toned and somehow more street, well whatever they call it, it's like picking that up and then you realize that "yeah, it's still just glossy paper and your left hand, dumbass. We coulda bought booze with that money you ass. Then, we could have at least forgotten that we were horny in the first place and also apparently do not have internet access." So at least me and two other people. Because one of you is imaginary.

So I'm gonna take some stabs at being funny until the acts kind of peter out, wherever that is. Maybe it'll be a continuing thing to go with my art. The problem with the world today, one of the many problems with the world today, possibly the largest problem with the world today is that there is so much to do and keep up with and pay for that there simply is not enough time to use these two hands, this one mouth, and these two eyes to generate everything that well's up inside. Which is why massive population extinction will be swell. Less stuff to do. More time to spend drawing on caves. Or at least exploring caves. How fun would that be? Screw this fucking phone bill. Who the hell am I going to call? Dave? He's ten states away for fucks sake. And the only other person alive on the east coast. My geography sucks by the way so if there are less than ten states on the east coast, I don't want to know, because I'll forget and be a forgetful jerk, but really it's your fault for giving me that information to hang on to with the expectation that I would actually commit it to essential memory where I put things like "how to breath" and "do not sleep underwater because that shit will drown you". Well I'm not calling Dave, because last time I schlepped up there it turned out he hadn't found the last post apocalyptic brewery still functioning. It was a fat rendering plant. So fuck this phone, fuck this phone bill, I'm gonna go draw on walls for the next month and get really good at growing shit." And so I figured I would take a stab at it. I mean what could it hurt.

I had this joke actually already in mind on my way home this morning. It was a fictional conversation. Happened in my head. Not fictional. Fictional to you. But this actually happened: "you smell like dog farts again."

"shut up"

"dude you smell like dog farts."

"well, shit. I have been slinging bags of dog food around for the last two hours to feed you"

"dog farts, dude. You better shower when you get home. I don't want you in my bed fartin up the sheets."

"well, shit on a stick, I'm tired as hell."

"have you been fisting dogs all night?"

"no, but that's kind of funny."

"I know, right?"

"Yes, I have been fisting dogs for the last eight hours and that is why I smell like Alpo gas. It's tough, but if I don't fist these dogs, who will? Who will fist these dogs for $7.75 an hour? Do I like it? Frankly that's none of your business. Other job skills? No. Just the fisting. Yes we do get a half hour to eat lunch. Alright then, thanks for your time. Should I wait for a follow up call for that second interview? Alright then, you take care too. Bitch. Click."

That last part was the joke. It was this thing that just struck me as hilarious. How would I explain to someone, because sometimes I am very much compelled to defend my various conditions of dress and stench and dishevelry to people I have to share public transportation with. And that's part of why I hate the bus. It's not like the subway where you can just look outside once in a while and know where you are or count the stops, unless you ride a particular bus line all the time. Your head has to always be on the gopher swivel trying to assess how much longer you can press your luck. Is this the stop I need to get off at or can I save myself another hundred yards, but if there is no stop in the next hundred yards I risk riding this thing all the way to the stop right before the depot because for some reason no one lives or works anywhere near this road for the next two and a half miles, but if I do get off here I'll have pit stains by the time I hit that meeting and I think there was a bridge with no sidewalks after this stop light, oh shit, I should have gotten off. So you're always looking around and making dodgy eye contact and in those few seconds you can read a lot once you've done it enough times.

Yeah I reek of cheap beer, but hey, at least it's not puke. And yes I did sleep somewhere without toiletries so my pits stink, but hey, at least it's not puke. I'm sorry, do I smell like I've just taken a bath in coffee creamer and fisted dogs for the last six hours? Well, guess what? I did. Boys gotta eat lady and quite frankly I'd rather smell like I just did something than like I just crawled out of a vase at the funeral parlor. I don't know where they get that scent, but they all have it. Probably from failed Mary Kay pyramid scheming or is it Amway still? Aren't those the same thing? I bet they were both founded by the same married couple. Rich wives. Pyramid schemes. Started by the richest wife who needed something to do that would still stroke her ego. God, that's depressing. And now part of the cando American fabric. Along with dog fisting for near minimum wage and listening to the radio on your computer. Which is actually not listening to the radio at all. When it's pre-recorded. But what's the difference. The difference is the radio is live. Sort of. What the hell is the difference?