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Showing posts with label creative types. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creative types. Show all posts
2/12/15
Forgotten Pieces of Processes
One part of the process I always have to remember that is very important in life inside and outside of my heart and my mind is music. Not just music like noises or radio or background so that I can better divide and discern what might be real and what is artifact or relic or error, but actively listening to and pulling apart and submersing myself in music. It's not difficult to forget, but listening to music is incredibly important in my life. Sitting down to paper my pencil or pen or whatever is in my hand and ready to create falls dead. Instant death. Sometimes I can move things along and create a corpse or a rock or a tree or a dancer or lover or a struggle, but it is lifeless. Stale. Imagine being beyond death to a place where everything is dimensionless. I wonder where it comes from and I tinker with my process or my thoughts or turn the idea around to another side and hold it up to the light to see if anything sparks inside. Listening to music and breathing it in helps tremendously. I will run over the same sounds over and over again, picking them clean until the only thing left is a place holder in my music library and my mind settles inside that hole, quite comfortable, stable, and slowly, one replay at a time, dying. It's not easy to forget, but I do forget that a valuable piece of the process is pouring in unfamiliar music to help keep the system turning with any degree of fidelity.
9/27/13
Stand Up Act 8 (stoneissuers, night work, handouts and nickle go)
(Stand Up Act 7)
Goddamn stoners. God fucking damn stoners. I don't have a problem with them for the most part. I really don't. Pot is legal in more states than anyone could have imagined three years ago. Not even a decade, just three years. Unless I'm completely off and time has been moving faster than I thought. Or slower than I thought. I'm not good with time. It has nothing to do with drugs, just alcohol. And college. In college everything is oriented to due dates and when you need to wash your clothes because you're going home to your parents and they reek of the actual world instead of the bubble they built for themselves wherever. I'm not good with time, but pot is legal and it's great. It should be legal. There is nothing wrong with it at all.
All kinds of legal things turn people into worthless sacks of shit all of the time and they're fine. Weed doesn't even do that to people on a consistent basis. If you smoke a pound of weed a month you will be in much better shape than the person who eats ten pounds of candy a month. To the point though, I don't hate smokers or pot smokers, but stoners are a bit different. Stoners are that one shade further beyond the smoker, for better and for worse.
Some stoners need that extra nudge to push and motivate and inspire them to operate and create and shove work through and enjoy other people and enjoy the chase of life in general. Some stoners like that extra nudge to mooch and coast, but not just coast, but accelerate, and entertain and smooth their own course through the path of least resistance, not as a way of escape or relaxation, but as a way to live.
Everything takes on the slight pale of life and death once they enter the circle. A routine trip to the gas station becomes a twenty minute conversation on the meaning of life and how hard it is to survive in the real world and if God hadn't created the man who created the coldcut sandwich the world as we know it would be horribly altered and disfigured to the point where walking out of your front door would be suicide. Jesus christ, calm down. We're gonna get food. I know you couldn't bring yourself to leave your front door without someone walking with you, but for fucks sake, it's not the end of the world. Not by a long shot.
I'm even okay with adventurous stoners. The kind that get really high and then want to operate. I'm a little bit of an adventure stoner streaker myself from time to time. I know it's obnoxious in some ways. It doesn't mean that I don't do it and want to push other people to, but I am that, and I'm never really all that sad when people shoot me down. When I'm smoking, "I just had the absolute greatest idea ever" is the last thing you want to hear out of my mouth. For one: it's probably a way too elaborate or distant quest to achieve a goal unique to me that I couldn't do without other people there (everything from playing some sort of multiplayer only game to crossing some distance to see or buy something much better crossed in a car). For two: there's probably a good chance someone might actually get hurt (adds to the allure of the adventure. When you have bad credit all you have is yourself, so while you gamble with imaginary numbers and scores, I gamble with my body... because I have no credit). And for three: by the time the idea comes out of my mouth, no one feels like moving. I'm okay with that.
The stoner I can no longer stand is the stoneissuer. The girl or guy who always wants to know what you have and then compares it to other high end "brands" they've had. No one asked you. Literally, no one asked you for your opinion on how this stacks up to Phonecase White Palidin (insert semi-obscure flower phylum here).
Yes, that's why I invited you over: to stick your nose into my bag and not shake your head, but give me the "weird" eye and ask the admonishing question of "how much did you pay for this." I'm begging the question in offering it, aren't I. I needed your expertise. I wasn't just bored the fuck out of my mind and out of videos to jerk off to and thought it might be fun to have someone else to talk to for an evening. No, I wanted your sharp nose and your ten point critique of what is essentially free weed for you. I'm not basically paying for your company like a truck driver picking up some fawn eyed drifter for a few hours of bullshitting til the next stop.
You asked to drop by and what I wanted you to do was pull out your pocket scale and shake your head and tell me I was lied to and it was almost a gram light and repeat over and over again that back home you wouldn't have paid over X amount of dollars for what I had while you ground up your Panda Blue Light Special shipped in from the west coast.
The stoneissuer is particularly distasteful because as soon as theirs runs out you are the first one they call. You are the first one they try to buddy up with and then they come over and try to be modest about how much they are taking and go out of their way to point it out that they are somehow doing you a favor because what they usually get is more pure and they're not used to smoking a gentler high and the taste is way off but they can get accustomed to it. Meanwhile the baseball bat in the corner keeps chirping in your ear "come on, just do it," but I love company more than my own sometimes and know better than to act out and act out of rage. Most of the time.
The stoneissuer will trash talk you sideways. The kind of person who, in a race, would nudge your back end out and force you off the road to get ahead and then say "well, I was holding my same racing line, but you were diverting from your own to hold me back, so it's kind of your fault you spun out into sand on your last lap." They will passive attack in attempts to try to insure and assert their value to the group as the token expert, without realizing that no one really cares as long as they get something out of experience.
Stoneissuers are usually descended from higher, no pun intended, echelons of the hierarchy of smokers. Rich folks all too often, trying to distance themselves, but be included in, the experience. The thing that makes them the most distasteful is that, if they aren't already motivated to stay away from the lower grades for the fact that moving up is sort of a socioeconomic graduation and going backward implies some sort of failure in tastes or earning power or status, as soon as their shit runs out and they go enough days without it, they're right back with you. Suddenly what made them curl their lips and flare their nostrils and roll their eyes like you just said One Direction is the greatest band to grace the face of the Earth, becomes "hey, that's not so bad. I kind of feel it." Suddenly "how much did you pay for that" and "you got ripped off" turns into "that's pretty good" and "is it alright if I steal some more?"
Yeah, it's fine, but nightwork is great. I think I realized one of the reasons why I like working night shifts so much, and it's nothing profound. It comes down to the fact that I don't give all that much of a shit when it comes to my clothes. It's not a complete abandon fueled by the functionality of homeless people. Nothing close to that. I have no one to impress so it makes no sense to impress people.
Sometimes it's a matter of detailing. Everyone likes a well detailed car or house, why not clothing. I am sometimes gripped by the thrill of matching. It's real. I am aware of my body and I ride in my body all the time. Everyone does. When things match, it's easier to not notice it and when you do notice it, you have color cues to make that understanding zip through your brain that much faster and then, that much faster, you can carry on being yourself. For the same reason I don't read too much into people obsessed with matching. It really is a matter of cutting down variables and freeing up much more, or at least that much more, free time and better yet, uninterrupted thought and brain space. That's pretty damn valuable for the small price of picking out clothing beforehand.
Consider when you're deep in thought after work, pulling the day in front of your eyes like that choppy 8mm film on the two spools that burns up if you leave it in front of the lens too long. That stuff your parents parents watched home videos of themselves on in dusty attics or family renunion Wonder Times grainy video project screen things or whatever it was they did kind of things.
That spool is running and you're trying to figure out ways to do that again, but without that 45 seconds of frames in the lunch break room where you put the pack of coffee filters you didn't pay for in your locker and that 72 second stretch of frames where you could've and also would've done your job better because you actually do care, but come off wrong sometimes over the phone. That spool is running and right in the middle of it. When you are beginning to build some understanding, it switches to a high definition video of rally cross for an hour compressed into ten seconds and switches back. Bad news.
That's what makes night work so great. It takes the work out of work. You can up and go with pants with their crotch completely ripped out and no one gives a shit and it already blends in with rest of the night because the lighting is so poor so even if you did look down it wouldn't matter because you can't see anything. It's a near perfect situation. Everything is dark and everything follows that dark pattern so even if someone did think they could see something, they wouldn't be able to really know beyond what's inside their own head and everyone knows as much as half of what's in their is bullshit anyway.
Nobody wants handouts. Sometimes you have to help your dealers, because some of them do it for a living and are subject to market forces same as any kind of investor. The truth is there are two sorts of dealers. There are the shorters and the careers. The shorters are on a temporary schedule. Volatile products and volatile prices. They're on the get wealthy very quickly and retire permanently track or supplementary income (McDonalds) track.
Sometimes you have to help folks out.
"Do you want some gas money? I can just bring you some money for gas. I don't want anything right now."
"You might as well take it though. You can use it for something is all I'm saying."
"I know, but I would rather have the money for later, 'cause there isn't a bank I can go to is what I mean. That's you're issue right now."
"If you just take this right now, I'm fine with that. I just need to put gas in my car because I had to push it off the street when the engine stopped."
Pineapple Express backwards. I always feel a little bad when my parting words are "hey, take care of yourself." Even when nothing is given, the sentiment itself implies the person it's directed to is completely incapable of and must be reminded to do better by their machinery. Nobody wants hand outs. Ever.
Happiness is contagious. I'll give you a nickle both to go down either road A or road B. Whichever makes me happy as I go is the one I'm taking.
Goddamn stoners. God fucking damn stoners. I don't have a problem with them for the most part. I really don't. Pot is legal in more states than anyone could have imagined three years ago. Not even a decade, just three years. Unless I'm completely off and time has been moving faster than I thought. Or slower than I thought. I'm not good with time. It has nothing to do with drugs, just alcohol. And college. In college everything is oriented to due dates and when you need to wash your clothes because you're going home to your parents and they reek of the actual world instead of the bubble they built for themselves wherever. I'm not good with time, but pot is legal and it's great. It should be legal. There is nothing wrong with it at all.
All kinds of legal things turn people into worthless sacks of shit all of the time and they're fine. Weed doesn't even do that to people on a consistent basis. If you smoke a pound of weed a month you will be in much better shape than the person who eats ten pounds of candy a month. To the point though, I don't hate smokers or pot smokers, but stoners are a bit different. Stoners are that one shade further beyond the smoker, for better and for worse.
Some stoners need that extra nudge to push and motivate and inspire them to operate and create and shove work through and enjoy other people and enjoy the chase of life in general. Some stoners like that extra nudge to mooch and coast, but not just coast, but accelerate, and entertain and smooth their own course through the path of least resistance, not as a way of escape or relaxation, but as a way to live.
Everything takes on the slight pale of life and death once they enter the circle. A routine trip to the gas station becomes a twenty minute conversation on the meaning of life and how hard it is to survive in the real world and if God hadn't created the man who created the coldcut sandwich the world as we know it would be horribly altered and disfigured to the point where walking out of your front door would be suicide. Jesus christ, calm down. We're gonna get food. I know you couldn't bring yourself to leave your front door without someone walking with you, but for fucks sake, it's not the end of the world. Not by a long shot.
I'm even okay with adventurous stoners. The kind that get really high and then want to operate. I'm a little bit of an adventure stoner streaker myself from time to time. I know it's obnoxious in some ways. It doesn't mean that I don't do it and want to push other people to, but I am that, and I'm never really all that sad when people shoot me down. When I'm smoking, "I just had the absolute greatest idea ever" is the last thing you want to hear out of my mouth. For one: it's probably a way too elaborate or distant quest to achieve a goal unique to me that I couldn't do without other people there (everything from playing some sort of multiplayer only game to crossing some distance to see or buy something much better crossed in a car). For two: there's probably a good chance someone might actually get hurt (adds to the allure of the adventure. When you have bad credit all you have is yourself, so while you gamble with imaginary numbers and scores, I gamble with my body... because I have no credit). And for three: by the time the idea comes out of my mouth, no one feels like moving. I'm okay with that.
The stoner I can no longer stand is the stoneissuer. The girl or guy who always wants to know what you have and then compares it to other high end "brands" they've had. No one asked you. Literally, no one asked you for your opinion on how this stacks up to Phonecase White Palidin (insert semi-obscure flower phylum here).
Yes, that's why I invited you over: to stick your nose into my bag and not shake your head, but give me the "weird" eye and ask the admonishing question of "how much did you pay for this." I'm begging the question in offering it, aren't I. I needed your expertise. I wasn't just bored the fuck out of my mind and out of videos to jerk off to and thought it might be fun to have someone else to talk to for an evening. No, I wanted your sharp nose and your ten point critique of what is essentially free weed for you. I'm not basically paying for your company like a truck driver picking up some fawn eyed drifter for a few hours of bullshitting til the next stop.
You asked to drop by and what I wanted you to do was pull out your pocket scale and shake your head and tell me I was lied to and it was almost a gram light and repeat over and over again that back home you wouldn't have paid over X amount of dollars for what I had while you ground up your Panda Blue Light Special shipped in from the west coast.
The stoneissuer is particularly distasteful because as soon as theirs runs out you are the first one they call. You are the first one they try to buddy up with and then they come over and try to be modest about how much they are taking and go out of their way to point it out that they are somehow doing you a favor because what they usually get is more pure and they're not used to smoking a gentler high and the taste is way off but they can get accustomed to it. Meanwhile the baseball bat in the corner keeps chirping in your ear "come on, just do it," but I love company more than my own sometimes and know better than to act out and act out of rage. Most of the time.
The stoneissuer will trash talk you sideways. The kind of person who, in a race, would nudge your back end out and force you off the road to get ahead and then say "well, I was holding my same racing line, but you were diverting from your own to hold me back, so it's kind of your fault you spun out into sand on your last lap." They will passive attack in attempts to try to insure and assert their value to the group as the token expert, without realizing that no one really cares as long as they get something out of experience.
Stoneissuers are usually descended from higher, no pun intended, echelons of the hierarchy of smokers. Rich folks all too often, trying to distance themselves, but be included in, the experience. The thing that makes them the most distasteful is that, if they aren't already motivated to stay away from the lower grades for the fact that moving up is sort of a socioeconomic graduation and going backward implies some sort of failure in tastes or earning power or status, as soon as their shit runs out and they go enough days without it, they're right back with you. Suddenly what made them curl their lips and flare their nostrils and roll their eyes like you just said One Direction is the greatest band to grace the face of the Earth, becomes "hey, that's not so bad. I kind of feel it." Suddenly "how much did you pay for that" and "you got ripped off" turns into "that's pretty good" and "is it alright if I steal some more?"
Yeah, it's fine, but nightwork is great. I think I realized one of the reasons why I like working night shifts so much, and it's nothing profound. It comes down to the fact that I don't give all that much of a shit when it comes to my clothes. It's not a complete abandon fueled by the functionality of homeless people. Nothing close to that. I have no one to impress so it makes no sense to impress people.
Sometimes it's a matter of detailing. Everyone likes a well detailed car or house, why not clothing. I am sometimes gripped by the thrill of matching. It's real. I am aware of my body and I ride in my body all the time. Everyone does. When things match, it's easier to not notice it and when you do notice it, you have color cues to make that understanding zip through your brain that much faster and then, that much faster, you can carry on being yourself. For the same reason I don't read too much into people obsessed with matching. It really is a matter of cutting down variables and freeing up much more, or at least that much more, free time and better yet, uninterrupted thought and brain space. That's pretty damn valuable for the small price of picking out clothing beforehand.
Consider when you're deep in thought after work, pulling the day in front of your eyes like that choppy 8mm film on the two spools that burns up if you leave it in front of the lens too long. That stuff your parents parents watched home videos of themselves on in dusty attics or family renunion Wonder Times grainy video project screen things or whatever it was they did kind of things.
That spool is running and you're trying to figure out ways to do that again, but without that 45 seconds of frames in the lunch break room where you put the pack of coffee filters you didn't pay for in your locker and that 72 second stretch of frames where you could've and also would've done your job better because you actually do care, but come off wrong sometimes over the phone. That spool is running and right in the middle of it. When you are beginning to build some understanding, it switches to a high definition video of rally cross for an hour compressed into ten seconds and switches back. Bad news.
That's what makes night work so great. It takes the work out of work. You can up and go with pants with their crotch completely ripped out and no one gives a shit and it already blends in with rest of the night because the lighting is so poor so even if you did look down it wouldn't matter because you can't see anything. It's a near perfect situation. Everything is dark and everything follows that dark pattern so even if someone did think they could see something, they wouldn't be able to really know beyond what's inside their own head and everyone knows as much as half of what's in their is bullshit anyway.
Nobody wants handouts. Sometimes you have to help your dealers, because some of them do it for a living and are subject to market forces same as any kind of investor. The truth is there are two sorts of dealers. There are the shorters and the careers. The shorters are on a temporary schedule. Volatile products and volatile prices. They're on the get wealthy very quickly and retire permanently track or supplementary income (McDonalds) track.
Sometimes you have to help folks out.
"Do you want some gas money? I can just bring you some money for gas. I don't want anything right now."
"You might as well take it though. You can use it for something is all I'm saying."
"I know, but I would rather have the money for later, 'cause there isn't a bank I can go to is what I mean. That's you're issue right now."
"If you just take this right now, I'm fine with that. I just need to put gas in my car because I had to push it off the street when the engine stopped."
Pineapple Express backwards. I always feel a little bad when my parting words are "hey, take care of yourself." Even when nothing is given, the sentiment itself implies the person it's directed to is completely incapable of and must be reminded to do better by their machinery. Nobody wants hand outs. Ever.
Happiness is contagious. I'll give you a nickle both to go down either road A or road B. Whichever makes me happy as I go is the one I'm taking.
5/10/13
What Makes You Laugh 2
This cracked me the hell up yesterday. As a kid I always had trouble with math. I remember sitting in the temporary trailer classroom in my AP history class. It was near the end of the year and the teacher was taking some of his sick days. He may have actually been sick. I don't remember. He was kind of an intense guy. Everywhere he walked he walked like he was walking into a steady fifteen mile an hour headwind. He couldn't have been more than five foot six, so the combination of the fast and choppy gait and the constant forward lean he rocked combined to create this Charlie Chaplin silent film physical comedy that left people giggling in his wake.
Advanced Placement history was hard enough, but he wasn't there he would leave worksheets for the less than competent place holder substitutes. There was a steady stable of substitutes so the substitute you had for German two would in all likelihood be the same one you had a few weeks later for chemistry. Their job wasn't to teach, it was to keep order first and foremost. If you learned anything while they were there it was incidental. The worksheets were usually word finds and other time killers. I don't know why they didn't just pass out crayons and blank paper. Wait, I do know. The number of people who could keep themselves busy inside of poorly airconditioned trailers without devolving into the chaos of recess could be counted on one hand. Maybe two. The worksheets that time around were math problems.
I sat near the front. Parents orders, and there was the standing threat that they might check up on you at any moment and if you weren't there or sitting where they told you to sit there would be a body tax to pay when you got home. So I'm sitting near the front with this xerox of math problems that's faded blue because school infrastructure updates itself about as often as government infrastructure. Are those basically the same thing? I don't know why I think of them as different things. Maybe it's just the division of public and private that happens so glaringly once you finish high school and realize there was a private system when you were just a pint too, but you were light years away from it then and student loans come preying as soon as you can make that decision yourself.
Anyway, I'm sitting near the front and getting nowhere. I got beyond the first few algebra problems because they were easy. I remember getting stuck on this problem that had X and Y on both sides of the equal sign and I was going crazy trying to figure out who the hell would torture someone with that kind of difficulty. Just start off with the Xs over here and the Ys over there, but how will the children learn about life's complexities if they can't fit the building in their heads? I couldn't. Half the classroom was, by then, devolving into a dozen different conversations and spoon fighting and pencil fighting and laughter everywhere and I'm just trying to think because I was told if the worksheet was finished, I could start my homework. If I finished my homework I could go outside as soon as I got home and the faster you could get out of the house and go play and ride all afternoon and not be around the dead air in that building and the anxiety couched inside the better off you were. Can't get into trumped up trouble if you're not around to get pegged on made up charges.
The substitute teacher came over after several minutes and asked me if I was okay. I said yeah, of course, just trying to think. Turns out I had my eyes closed and my head on my desk and I was rubbing the worksheet on the short naps of my hair and it was making this paper on velcro loop sound that was loud enough to distract him at his desk. I liked the sound. I didn't like being interrupted. To me it was really soothing. It was helping me focus and draw away from the noise of being there and the difficulty I was having and it kinda sounded like the noise the wind makes when you're in a car with the window down and it goes fwoosh by your ear. Beautifully white noise. As soon as he snapped me out of it I couldn't get back there. I ended up making little drawings of airplanes for the rest of my answers and turned it in at the end of the day. The answers didn't matter that much. Check, check minus, check plus. It was mostly a way of taking attendance.
Yesterday though, I was in a similar way. I couldn't get the windows I was working on to stay up. I spent hours reading up on the product. I installed them correctly. Insulated them correctly. Nothing over tightened, nothing under done. There was a slight bowing, but it shouldn't be affecting the sashes the way it was and it was driving me crazy. Every time I adjusted them I had to take the window out of the frame, adjust the settings, put the window back in and test it. Hours into this I began to zone out and go over all of the steps I covered over the last few days, from demolition to installation to fine tuning to the now. Going over the entire ocean of knowledge accumulated over that time and evaluating each nodule for a potential mistake. While I was doing the sun went down. There were no blinds in the window.
Sometimes to help myself think these days, an extension of my head rubbing habit from yesterday, I rub and cup my dick. It's not a pleasure thing, but it kind of is. Hearing the sound of the paper rubbing against my skull and feeling that movement and motion put me in a good place to think straight. I don't rub things on my skull as much anymore, but I do enjoy rubbing my crotch when I'm trying to figure out and navigate particularly difficult things that require brain power. I guess when my bodies happy, my head is freer to roam.
So I'm standing in front of this window, staring blankly into space and eyes defocused to the point where all I can see is my vague shilouette, while I pound the details of why the hell nothing I'm trying to do with the window sash springs seems to be working, and one hand all the way down my pants cupping my cock and bulls and giving them a little go, and it comes to me: it's vinyl! If the screws won't work and the springs cannot be moved or adjusted manually, just shim the frame in and that'll create the pressure to keep the window from falling on its own. Eureka!
I break out into this massive grin and my eyes come back into focus and I look through my reflection into the darkness beyond the glass with my dick in my hand and the sixty something year old neighbor two yards over is scowling directly at me with a cigarette in his hand with a look of disgust so intense I have not seen anything remotely like it since the last time I "disappointed" my dad and was there face to face to see his closed mindedness It was hilarious. My brain immediately searched its data banks for the universal sign language of "oh my god, I was not jerking off to you just now!" but it came up blank so I just carefully took my hand out of my pants, turned off the light and walked out of the room... into the next room over which also had a light on... so I pretty much hid behind the wall of the door until he finished smoking and went back in his house. I laughed so hard I almost pissed my pants. Speaking of which I once pissed my pants outside of a bar and the guy who was my ride wasn't done yet so I had to go back in and sit down at the bar and my pants made this ridiculous squishing sound and I had to explain myself. Not a single person there was as upset as that guy was standing out in his yard yesterday night.
Cracked me the hell up yesterday.
Advanced Placement history was hard enough, but he wasn't there he would leave worksheets for the less than competent place holder substitutes. There was a steady stable of substitutes so the substitute you had for German two would in all likelihood be the same one you had a few weeks later for chemistry. Their job wasn't to teach, it was to keep order first and foremost. If you learned anything while they were there it was incidental. The worksheets were usually word finds and other time killers. I don't know why they didn't just pass out crayons and blank paper. Wait, I do know. The number of people who could keep themselves busy inside of poorly airconditioned trailers without devolving into the chaos of recess could be counted on one hand. Maybe two. The worksheets that time around were math problems.
I sat near the front. Parents orders, and there was the standing threat that they might check up on you at any moment and if you weren't there or sitting where they told you to sit there would be a body tax to pay when you got home. So I'm sitting near the front with this xerox of math problems that's faded blue because school infrastructure updates itself about as often as government infrastructure. Are those basically the same thing? I don't know why I think of them as different things. Maybe it's just the division of public and private that happens so glaringly once you finish high school and realize there was a private system when you were just a pint too, but you were light years away from it then and student loans come preying as soon as you can make that decision yourself.
Anyway, I'm sitting near the front and getting nowhere. I got beyond the first few algebra problems because they were easy. I remember getting stuck on this problem that had X and Y on both sides of the equal sign and I was going crazy trying to figure out who the hell would torture someone with that kind of difficulty. Just start off with the Xs over here and the Ys over there, but how will the children learn about life's complexities if they can't fit the building in their heads? I couldn't. Half the classroom was, by then, devolving into a dozen different conversations and spoon fighting and pencil fighting and laughter everywhere and I'm just trying to think because I was told if the worksheet was finished, I could start my homework. If I finished my homework I could go outside as soon as I got home and the faster you could get out of the house and go play and ride all afternoon and not be around the dead air in that building and the anxiety couched inside the better off you were. Can't get into trumped up trouble if you're not around to get pegged on made up charges.
The substitute teacher came over after several minutes and asked me if I was okay. I said yeah, of course, just trying to think. Turns out I had my eyes closed and my head on my desk and I was rubbing the worksheet on the short naps of my hair and it was making this paper on velcro loop sound that was loud enough to distract him at his desk. I liked the sound. I didn't like being interrupted. To me it was really soothing. It was helping me focus and draw away from the noise of being there and the difficulty I was having and it kinda sounded like the noise the wind makes when you're in a car with the window down and it goes fwoosh by your ear. Beautifully white noise. As soon as he snapped me out of it I couldn't get back there. I ended up making little drawings of airplanes for the rest of my answers and turned it in at the end of the day. The answers didn't matter that much. Check, check minus, check plus. It was mostly a way of taking attendance.
Yesterday though, I was in a similar way. I couldn't get the windows I was working on to stay up. I spent hours reading up on the product. I installed them correctly. Insulated them correctly. Nothing over tightened, nothing under done. There was a slight bowing, but it shouldn't be affecting the sashes the way it was and it was driving me crazy. Every time I adjusted them I had to take the window out of the frame, adjust the settings, put the window back in and test it. Hours into this I began to zone out and go over all of the steps I covered over the last few days, from demolition to installation to fine tuning to the now. Going over the entire ocean of knowledge accumulated over that time and evaluating each nodule for a potential mistake. While I was doing the sun went down. There were no blinds in the window.
Sometimes to help myself think these days, an extension of my head rubbing habit from yesterday, I rub and cup my dick. It's not a pleasure thing, but it kind of is. Hearing the sound of the paper rubbing against my skull and feeling that movement and motion put me in a good place to think straight. I don't rub things on my skull as much anymore, but I do enjoy rubbing my crotch when I'm trying to figure out and navigate particularly difficult things that require brain power. I guess when my bodies happy, my head is freer to roam.
So I'm standing in front of this window, staring blankly into space and eyes defocused to the point where all I can see is my vague shilouette, while I pound the details of why the hell nothing I'm trying to do with the window sash springs seems to be working, and one hand all the way down my pants cupping my cock and bulls and giving them a little go, and it comes to me: it's vinyl! If the screws won't work and the springs cannot be moved or adjusted manually, just shim the frame in and that'll create the pressure to keep the window from falling on its own. Eureka!
I break out into this massive grin and my eyes come back into focus and I look through my reflection into the darkness beyond the glass with my dick in my hand and the sixty something year old neighbor two yards over is scowling directly at me with a cigarette in his hand with a look of disgust so intense I have not seen anything remotely like it since the last time I "disappointed" my dad and was there face to face to see his closed mindedness It was hilarious. My brain immediately searched its data banks for the universal sign language of "oh my god, I was not jerking off to you just now!" but it came up blank so I just carefully took my hand out of my pants, turned off the light and walked out of the room... into the next room over which also had a light on... so I pretty much hid behind the wall of the door until he finished smoking and went back in his house. I laughed so hard I almost pissed my pants. Speaking of which I once pissed my pants outside of a bar and the guy who was my ride wasn't done yet so I had to go back in and sit down at the bar and my pants made this ridiculous squishing sound and I had to explain myself. Not a single person there was as upset as that guy was standing out in his yard yesterday night.
Cracked me the hell up yesterday.
10/25/12
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"
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"
8/28/12
Circle Back
I am circling back and taking my time to do it. Care is the order of the day. I posted some old stories to Bits. It's funny sometimes looking at how the composition has changed. How some of the sentence structure has remained the same and some has mutated.
I edited the names out. Not for protection against embarassment, but because it was a collective effort and the whole idea about collective effort is not knowing who contributed what to make the final product. More than that though, I was trying to hide my voice. I want to rework that story. It's good, thus far, lower case letter t$$$, but seriously, it is a good start and was a good start to something really violent and heavy and it needs a good twenty to thirty thousand more words to make it polished. I'm willing to do it. You know I'm willing to do it. I just have to do it, and that's why I put it out there. That, and just to say thank you too to an old friend I ain't talked to in far too long who put a good idea in my head and then vanished. I'm on the hunt for several a thing. this is one of them. Chasing my tail.
I edited the names out. Not for protection against embarassment, but because it was a collective effort and the whole idea about collective effort is not knowing who contributed what to make the final product. More than that though, I was trying to hide my voice. I want to rework that story. It's good, thus far, lower case letter t$$$, but seriously, it is a good start and was a good start to something really violent and heavy and it needs a good twenty to thirty thousand more words to make it polished. I'm willing to do it. You know I'm willing to do it. I just have to do it, and that's why I put it out there. That, and just to say thank you too to an old friend I ain't talked to in far too long who put a good idea in my head and then vanished. I'm on the hunt for several a thing. this is one of them. Chasing my tail.
8/27/12
Development
I haven't transcended, but, God knows, I've tried. I will keep head banging. I will because there's no other way. Explorations and serial failures. I did not use to approach writing as work, because I never got paid to do it.
It was a hobby and still is. What changed inside myself was perspective. That and doing more reading. The reading has been tremendous. Just opportunities to see the constructions in different light. Not even different light as much as opportunities to see the same constructions spun by other brains in the same kind of light.
It's been ... refreshing.
Refreshing and disconcerting. It's been a very thorough, bridge crossed, work in progress. I can't recall being this high over so extended a period of time without gumming up the workshop. It has been silly even keeled. You and I
Where are your papers? Where is your documentation? Where is your passport and your photo identification? Where is your veteran of foreign wars certificate and your color bar? Where is your jacket and your weapon? Your cap, your boots, your wares, and your ounces of drug deals and your tears for times only you can relate to? Where the fuck is your memorial? Where are your headphones? Where is your ethic and your lorn and your degrees? Where did you leave your books and, holy shit, where did you leave your other set of keys?
///Skrillex - "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" ...you don't need to hide, my friend, cause I am just like you...
It was a hobby and still is. What changed inside myself was perspective. That and doing more reading. The reading has been tremendous. Just opportunities to see the constructions in different light. Not even different light as much as opportunities to see the same constructions spun by other brains in the same kind of light.
It's been ... refreshing.
Refreshing and disconcerting. It's been a very thorough, bridge crossed, work in progress. I can't recall being this high over so extended a period of time without gumming up the workshop. It has been silly even keeled. You and I
Where are your papers? Where is your documentation? Where is your passport and your photo identification? Where is your veteran of foreign wars certificate and your color bar? Where is your jacket and your weapon? Your cap, your boots, your wares, and your ounces of drug deals and your tears for times only you can relate to? Where the fuck is your memorial? Where are your headphones? Where is your ethic and your lorn and your degrees? Where did you leave your books and, holy shit, where did you leave your other set of keys?
///Skrillex - "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" ...you don't need to hide, my friend, cause I am just like you...
7/15/12
Redesigns and Motions and All Kinds of Crazy S--- (with disclaimers)
The summer redesign of Auralport is coming. It's in the factory works right now, as we speak. It's been autumn way too long over there and frankly the browns are starting to get to me and darken everything I do when I am there. I need some green going on. Some color to reflect the growth and all that. More importantly I need to incorporate some pinks and purples. Yeah, it'll look a little gay, but that's what I am. Sue me. For gayness. Cuz if you try to sue me for anything else you will find pretty quickly that I am, as they say in the business, "judgement proof". Not saying you won't win the case. All I'm saying is what you win will be a big happy bag of nothing. Except maybe self satisfaction. However, you can go home knowing that the only reason I am judgement proof is because I have nothing to take. But more importantly (this just keeps going on, right?) the only reason why I have nothing to take is because of the decisions you made that put me in a position to have nothing. So basically we're even.
Not really though. I got off scott free (where the hell did that saying come from? a reference to free balling in kilts maybe? I dunno) after a fashion. You got to screw me or at least feel like you taught me a life lesson. So we're even right? Nah, I'm going to cut your face off and feed it to you the next time I see you. LOL that is happening. Which is why I can't see you. Because I will make a sincere attempt on your life. Jokes aside. I will kill the weaker of the two of you. Do not come to my house, parents. Because I will kill you. I hope that's clear enough.
So anyway. The redesign is coming and I'm really looking forward to it. The hard part is trying to find a good shot of nature to work with. I'm out there all of the time, but I just have to remember to bring a camera one of these days. So many pictures to take. So little time. I looked into dslr-s and realized pretty quickly there is no way in hell I could afford one. There is a way, I just lied, there is a way, but if I ever ponied up the money I would have to spend it on a car first. Which brings up other mommy daddy issues but I'm not going into that. I am. Just this once. Caps locked. WORST GRADUATION GIFT AND SUBSEQUENT CHAIN OF EVENTS EVER, I HOPE YOU HANG YOURSELVES IN SEPARATE ROOMS OF THAT SHITHOLE YOU LIKE TO CALL A HOUSE.
Okay, so, not to be entirely bipolar on this. I would like to present a motion to do some art. Everyone at the table, yay or nay my friends. Yes, we are taking a vote. All present? Alright then, moving forward on the motion to attempt some cartooning. All in favor, say aye. All opposed? Let the record show that the motion is passed.
I've got my fingers back into poetry and short stories again. God knows I damn near had to handcuff myself and blindfold my eyes to do that. It had to be done though. A life without creation is self destruction. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing with facebook at this point. For me it kind of does well as real time memoirs. It all depends on how far back the record will go. If the timescale ends after so many years, it's pretty much useless in that regard. I hope it doesn't. I'm pretty much writing a book on there, though some probably think I'm just a loon. Which is fine, because I kind of am. I gave up on trying to find the secret of life because I know the guy who knows the guy who has it. It's frustrating because he gave it to me once and knew that I wouldn't remember. So I have to try again, but now he knows that I know so I'm going to have to pull some kind of double fake to get it this time.
So what is the crazy shit. The really really junk that still makes go "wait a minute, what?" There isn't any. Smiley face. Not today. Alright here's one. Just one. I woke up in a trap house again. I used to call them house parties until a friend of mine introduced the concept of the trap house and I had a little revolution in perspective and was like "that makes absolute sense." Mostly because it does. That is exactly what they are. Which explains a lot about how the people in there behave. Yeah, I felt like a nub the first time it happened. But now, it's just like, "alright, got all your shit? okay, time to roll." Where was I going... so yeah I woke up and rolled out and someone said "Hobbes, where you goin?" as soon as I got out the door, and I was like ... yeah, that's my gotdamn name. And I realized alot of the people I used to know, don't know that I changed my name. So I let them call me by my old name, fam aside, because they just don't know. And I'm okay with that, I think. For now. It's not legal, but what is?
///Beck - "Devil's Haircut" pistols are pointing at a poor man's pocket, and he don't give a fuuuuuuuuu
Not really though. I got off scott free (where the hell did that saying come from? a reference to free balling in kilts maybe? I dunno) after a fashion. You got to screw me or at least feel like you taught me a life lesson. So we're even right? Nah, I'm going to cut your face off and feed it to you the next time I see you. LOL that is happening. Which is why I can't see you. Because I will make a sincere attempt on your life. Jokes aside. I will kill the weaker of the two of you. Do not come to my house, parents. Because I will kill you. I hope that's clear enough.
So anyway. The redesign is coming and I'm really looking forward to it. The hard part is trying to find a good shot of nature to work with. I'm out there all of the time, but I just have to remember to bring a camera one of these days. So many pictures to take. So little time. I looked into dslr-s and realized pretty quickly there is no way in hell I could afford one. There is a way, I just lied, there is a way, but if I ever ponied up the money I would have to spend it on a car first. Which brings up other mommy daddy issues but I'm not going into that. I am. Just this once. Caps locked. WORST GRADUATION GIFT AND SUBSEQUENT CHAIN OF EVENTS EVER, I HOPE YOU HANG YOURSELVES IN SEPARATE ROOMS OF THAT SHITHOLE YOU LIKE TO CALL A HOUSE.
Okay, so, not to be entirely bipolar on this. I would like to present a motion to do some art. Everyone at the table, yay or nay my friends. Yes, we are taking a vote. All present? Alright then, moving forward on the motion to attempt some cartooning. All in favor, say aye. All opposed? Let the record show that the motion is passed.
I've got my fingers back into poetry and short stories again. God knows I damn near had to handcuff myself and blindfold my eyes to do that. It had to be done though. A life without creation is self destruction. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing with facebook at this point. For me it kind of does well as real time memoirs. It all depends on how far back the record will go. If the timescale ends after so many years, it's pretty much useless in that regard. I hope it doesn't. I'm pretty much writing a book on there, though some probably think I'm just a loon. Which is fine, because I kind of am. I gave up on trying to find the secret of life because I know the guy who knows the guy who has it. It's frustrating because he gave it to me once and knew that I wouldn't remember. So I have to try again, but now he knows that I know so I'm going to have to pull some kind of double fake to get it this time.
So what is the crazy shit. The really really junk that still makes go "wait a minute, what?" There isn't any. Smiley face. Not today. Alright here's one. Just one. I woke up in a trap house again. I used to call them house parties until a friend of mine introduced the concept of the trap house and I had a little revolution in perspective and was like "that makes absolute sense." Mostly because it does. That is exactly what they are. Which explains a lot about how the people in there behave. Yeah, I felt like a nub the first time it happened. But now, it's just like, "alright, got all your shit? okay, time to roll." Where was I going... so yeah I woke up and rolled out and someone said "Hobbes, where you goin?" as soon as I got out the door, and I was like ... yeah, that's my gotdamn name. And I realized alot of the people I used to know, don't know that I changed my name. So I let them call me by my old name, fam aside, because they just don't know. And I'm okay with that, I think. For now. It's not legal, but what is?
///Beck - "Devil's Haircut" pistols are pointing at a poor man's pocket, and he don't give a fuuuuuuuuu
2/2/12
Gestating Names
The low line is happening.
slowfluid
fingerslip
sunlance
powerdive
horsemenofthesun
highsequence
memoryanthem
keptaquaintance
throattwine
founderstext
Yes, I spent five hours doing this. Yes, it was hard. Yes, it would have been a lot easier if there weren't fifteen thousand dead blogs with catchy names still alive from 2002 that haven't been posted to in five years. Or, roughly, and my math isn't that great, but fifteen thousand days. Roughly. Probably more. Anyway, there were about three times more names that made it to the final cut. Two thirds were already taken. And five thirds were crappy for various reasons. Too cheap, too easy, too slow, too fast, too complex, too simple, too pandering, too monotone, too soft, too sexual, too written, too base, too serif-ed, too guilded, too quilled, etc, etc. These are the front runners.
The sad thing is, while I'm working on this I come across a ton of dead blogs. A ton of "this is my outlet"s. And they have clearly failed or moved on to other things that distract them or allow them some kind of other outlet or actually physically or maybe emotionally dead or just medicated. Enthralling and disheartening at the same time because I see it and I think "oh my god, I'm just like you, let's be friends" and then I understand they quit or walked away or grew out of it or whatever you want to call it for whatever reason.
The important thing is, the important thing being, the important thing seeing and I will tell you what you see, progress. I already had several design themes in mind and the name that wins out will probably be the one that fits the thema best. I'm not sure that's a word as much as it is a feeling. But yes. Usually it is fairly bad practice to name a color after you identify what color it is, but I am an impressionist and I see definites in swatches and brush strokes and it's much easier to name the thing after it exists instead of creating a name and top downing it.
So I'm thinking saturday will not be a terrible day to launch something new and old and new. It has been a long time coming. It will be fun to get my fingers dirty in adobe again. It's been a while. Too long. Like everything else. Well not even close to like everything else. the important thing is, and i can't stress that enough, the mind work is done. now it's getting down to the actionable items and I am gathering the disparate, the desperate, and the deserters to the factory floor because its not time to make weapons or war. It's time to make... period.
///Kinny and Horn - "Sacred Life" ...love the everything. Just write it all down cuz I don't really care. But I do. And that's why I foster love for the one's I don't dare. Be nice and sacrifice and play nice. Align. The world wasn't won in a day. The world wasn't one in a day. The world wasn't sung in a day. The world wasn't done in day. There's still time. So play.
slowfluid
fingerslip
sunlance
powerdive
horsemenofthesun
highsequence
memoryanthem
keptaquaintance
throattwine
founderstext
Yes, I spent five hours doing this. Yes, it was hard. Yes, it would have been a lot easier if there weren't fifteen thousand dead blogs with catchy names still alive from 2002 that haven't been posted to in five years. Or, roughly, and my math isn't that great, but fifteen thousand days. Roughly. Probably more. Anyway, there were about three times more names that made it to the final cut. Two thirds were already taken. And five thirds were crappy for various reasons. Too cheap, too easy, too slow, too fast, too complex, too simple, too pandering, too monotone, too soft, too sexual, too written, too base, too serif-ed, too guilded, too quilled, etc, etc. These are the front runners.
The sad thing is, while I'm working on this I come across a ton of dead blogs. A ton of "this is my outlet"s. And they have clearly failed or moved on to other things that distract them or allow them some kind of other outlet or actually physically or maybe emotionally dead or just medicated. Enthralling and disheartening at the same time because I see it and I think "oh my god, I'm just like you, let's be friends" and then I understand they quit or walked away or grew out of it or whatever you want to call it for whatever reason.
The important thing is, the important thing being, the important thing seeing and I will tell you what you see, progress. I already had several design themes in mind and the name that wins out will probably be the one that fits the thema best. I'm not sure that's a word as much as it is a feeling. But yes. Usually it is fairly bad practice to name a color after you identify what color it is, but I am an impressionist and I see definites in swatches and brush strokes and it's much easier to name the thing after it exists instead of creating a name and top downing it.
So I'm thinking saturday will not be a terrible day to launch something new and old and new. It has been a long time coming. It will be fun to get my fingers dirty in adobe again. It's been a while. Too long. Like everything else. Well not even close to like everything else. the important thing is, and i can't stress that enough, the mind work is done. now it's getting down to the actionable items and I am gathering the disparate, the desperate, and the deserters to the factory floor because its not time to make weapons or war. It's time to make... period.
///Kinny and Horn - "Sacred Life" ...love the everything. Just write it all down cuz I don't really care. But I do. And that's why I foster love for the one's I don't dare. Be nice and sacrifice and play nice. Align. The world wasn't won in a day. The world wasn't one in a day. The world wasn't sung in a day. The world wasn't done in day. There's still time. So play.
9/30/10
Structural Irregularities
Are being hammered out. Trying to front load four hours of creativity into my day and it's been like trying to pack hundred pound boxes into a moving truck with my pants around my ankles. Which is to say, horribly difficult. But I am and will keep trying until I turn from a night owl into a night owl completely out of phase and happy to be so. I won't ask you to stay tuned. That's just selfish. I won't tell you to check back often. That's even worse. So how about this:
///Sarah Vaughn - "Lover Man (Remix)" I'll be thinking of you.
///Sarah Vaughn - "Lover Man (Remix)" I'll be thinking of you.
7/10/10
get sorted
Well, I'm lost. I realized it today. Well actually I realized it yesterday when I went to bed at 5:30 in the morning. That was a pretty good indicator that I'm not really driving in any particular direction with any sort of conviction. On the other hand, it could be an indication that I'm driving in every direction with complete conviction. Either way the sum of detectable movement is a big fat zero.
Qualifier: it is a happy zero. I haven't accomplished nothing in my efforts to accomplish everything. I simply haven't produced anything measurable by fiscal standards, and who's really keeping track of that? Everyone, you say? Well I don't care all that much. Like Lady GaGa apparently said (I heard from a friend of a friend who read something who was told about the thing to read by a friend's friend) money is boring. The only reason why I want to make money is so that I can pay for things that will free me up to do other things. If food and housing were free, the only jobs I would do were the jobs I wanted to do and I wouldn't have to worry about getting paid because the jobs that I actually want to do are jobs that I would literally do for free. Seeing someone enjoy the product of your labor should, and for me actually is, so enjoyable that I rarely do the things I enjoy for money unless its necessary.
To get back to the point, I've been using my pen tablet to make things like this:
I'm not completely sure why. I used to doodle a lot in high school instead of learning stoichiometry and trigonometry. I suppose if I paid more attention I would be getting home from a 60,000 dollar job after doodling equations instead of sitting at home making pictures. I'm not sure I would make a trade though. I mean obviously it would be nice to have a pay check and a car and an apartment, but I'm not dead, I'm not homeless, and I'm not being starved at the moment so I suppose it's not all bad. I'd rather be able to dream and create than be able to dream and unable to creatively articulate.
And you know what else? I'll fix those images right now before I go to bed, because if I don't I'm going to end up putting it off until I'm on my death bed telling a priest that my only regret was not fixing the graphics on this page.
///Susumu Hirasawa - "Jouken Douji" If you thought Anime music was composed entirely of campy Japanese pop tunes and you haven't tried anything I've recommended by Kanno or Susumu, today should be the day you listen to a track that is all kinds of funky intricate and sexy. Like "really awesome piece of slick technology" sexy, not "anemic girl with plastic breasts" sexy. The bass line in this track is hotter than a lot of hip hop bass lines and from what I know of production (admittedly very little), I'd say the production value is higher than the norm for Anime music. Susumu Hirasawa delivers complexity in balance with beauty and gets it right more often than not.
Qualifier: it is a happy zero. I haven't accomplished nothing in my efforts to accomplish everything. I simply haven't produced anything measurable by fiscal standards, and who's really keeping track of that? Everyone, you say? Well I don't care all that much. Like Lady GaGa apparently said (I heard from a friend of a friend who read something who was told about the thing to read by a friend's friend) money is boring. The only reason why I want to make money is so that I can pay for things that will free me up to do other things. If food and housing were free, the only jobs I would do were the jobs I wanted to do and I wouldn't have to worry about getting paid because the jobs that I actually want to do are jobs that I would literally do for free. Seeing someone enjoy the product of your labor should, and for me actually is, so enjoyable that I rarely do the things I enjoy for money unless its necessary.
To get back to the point, I've been using my pen tablet to make things like this:
I'm not completely sure why. I used to doodle a lot in high school instead of learning stoichiometry and trigonometry. I suppose if I paid more attention I would be getting home from a 60,000 dollar job after doodling equations instead of sitting at home making pictures. I'm not sure I would make a trade though. I mean obviously it would be nice to have a pay check and a car and an apartment, but I'm not dead, I'm not homeless, and I'm not being starved at the moment so I suppose it's not all bad. I'd rather be able to dream and create than be able to dream and unable to creatively articulate.
And you know what else? I'll fix those images right now before I go to bed, because if I don't I'm going to end up putting it off until I'm on my death bed telling a priest that my only regret was not fixing the graphics on this page.
///Susumu Hirasawa - "Jouken Douji" If you thought Anime music was composed entirely of campy Japanese pop tunes and you haven't tried anything I've recommended by Kanno or Susumu, today should be the day you listen to a track that is all kinds of funky intricate and sexy. Like "really awesome piece of slick technology" sexy, not "anemic girl with plastic breasts" sexy. The bass line in this track is hotter than a lot of hip hop bass lines and from what I know of production (admittedly very little), I'd say the production value is higher than the norm for Anime music. Susumu Hirasawa delivers complexity in balance with beauty and gets it right more often than not.
4/8/10
creative pointers
when it comes to creative pursuits, just as in sports, there are the people who can do it without trying. there are the people who can only do it when someones foot is in their ass to get it done... ...NOW.... and then there are people who have to make at least a semi-conscious effort to produce who also gain no benefit from extreme deadlines. the practicers. or to draw the sports analogy a little tighter... the everyday starters. the guys and girls who dont miss a day, who dont have spectacular highlights every game, but who impress with consistent performance on a day to day basis. the people who you can build a team around.
not that im that guy. i kind of fluctuate between vomiting out work and working consistently. and my consistent work is sometimes consistently good and sometimes consistently bad. i guess im a streaker, more or less. but thats beside the point. speaking of which... heres the point
creative pointers...
i thought about our talk the other day and i think you might be righter. or at least more correct than you were yesterday. which is to say: ill be helpful if i can. if what im about to do counts as helpfulness. i think it does. i feel like it does. it should. well anyway
so im at a point where i know for a fact that im procrastinating. i should be working on a background and general design for the front page of a story blog site i would really like to see materialize as well as do some work on the production company a friend of mine is trying to start up (design wise... we havent even started to consider the legal paperwork and what exactly a production company does when its not tagging its name all over movies). how do i know im procrastinating? easy.... i have all the elements i want to work with... i have the programs installed... i have the web space... aaand for some reason im trying to figure out if i want to take a nap before i get started.
okay.... well that was the worst pointer ever.
was that a pointer?
i dont think i pointed you to anything even remotely useful.
well ... how about this
to rev up motivation for doing one thing it often times helps me to talk about what exactly i am doing even though i know what im doing, but when i get stuck with no one to talk about my poor time management with except myself i get trapped in a loop of thinking ab...
... bored with that. well not bored... but you get the idea. if you get stuck drawing, go paint. if you get stuck painting, go craft something. if you get stuck crafting, go write. if you get stuck writing, go kill yourself. if you get stuck killing yourself, go draw.
and thats my helpful tip. pointer.
and thats my helpful creative pointer.
///Air - "talisman" i dunno if i pointed you this way yet... but this is one of the greatest rainy day songs ever. it swings with a dark jazziness that slides down your consciousness like water down a window pane in light rain while the streets shine and the gutters talk. gorgeously composed and ... thick is the word that comes to mind. thick but not over whelming. you can hear the whole song, whereas some songs are so thick you can only real hear one part or section at a time unless you have like music in your blood or something. anyway. ill tell you what the other one is next time around.
not that im that guy. i kind of fluctuate between vomiting out work and working consistently. and my consistent work is sometimes consistently good and sometimes consistently bad. i guess im a streaker, more or less. but thats beside the point. speaking of which... heres the point
creative pointers...
i thought about our talk the other day and i think you might be righter. or at least more correct than you were yesterday. which is to say: ill be helpful if i can. if what im about to do counts as helpfulness. i think it does. i feel like it does. it should. well anyway
so im at a point where i know for a fact that im procrastinating. i should be working on a background and general design for the front page of a story blog site i would really like to see materialize as well as do some work on the production company a friend of mine is trying to start up (design wise... we havent even started to consider the legal paperwork and what exactly a production company does when its not tagging its name all over movies). how do i know im procrastinating? easy.... i have all the elements i want to work with... i have the programs installed... i have the web space... aaand for some reason im trying to figure out if i want to take a nap before i get started.
okay.... well that was the worst pointer ever.
was that a pointer?
i dont think i pointed you to anything even remotely useful.
well ... how about this
to rev up motivation for doing one thing it often times helps me to talk about what exactly i am doing even though i know what im doing, but when i get stuck with no one to talk about my poor time management with except myself i get trapped in a loop of thinking ab...
... bored with that. well not bored... but you get the idea. if you get stuck drawing, go paint. if you get stuck painting, go craft something. if you get stuck crafting, go write. if you get stuck writing, go kill yourself. if you get stuck killing yourself, go draw.
and thats my helpful tip. pointer.
and thats my helpful creative pointer.
///Air - "talisman" i dunno if i pointed you this way yet... but this is one of the greatest rainy day songs ever. it swings with a dark jazziness that slides down your consciousness like water down a window pane in light rain while the streets shine and the gutters talk. gorgeously composed and ... thick is the word that comes to mind. thick but not over whelming. you can hear the whole song, whereas some songs are so thick you can only real hear one part or section at a time unless you have like music in your blood or something. anyway. ill tell you what the other one is next time around.
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