Small Victories

Life is like a fire breathing tiger at an Origami swap meet. All you want to do is trade bits of beautiful things with other people and then, descending from on high with no warning comes life, tearing people in half, exploding fire over everything you value, and using your favorite couch as a really big scratching post. I need more hours in my day. The good news is (did you see it yet? Seriously, look around for a second. Did you see it?) I fixed the footer. Yaaay. A small victory three days after the fact, but the point is I did it and it looks way better than it did. More legible, more sexy, more everything. So while the universe burns hotter than a gay man with gonorrhea inside a green house buying last minute flowers for his parents on their anniversary while figuring out how to explain the answering machine message he accidentally left them while high on lsd at a rave, I managed to accomplish something tangible. Bang. One goal down, 9000 to go.



On a completely unrelated note- no that's not true, it's semi-related- on a completely semi-related note, I'm trying to figure out how to master Wordpress. I was browsing some job listings and a few looked mighty tasty, but the job poster demanded a "mastery of Wordpress." That is about as vague a requirement as I have ever seen. That's like those listings that require a "mastery of Mac machines." Do they want me to be able to write applications for Macs or something? Do they want me to able to turn it on and navigate the interface? Or does mastery mean I must have owned one for several years? I bet it means that I have to dress like that guy who used to be in those Mac commercials when Mac was trying to justify their outrageous prices for marginal differences by making everyone who didn't own a Mac feel like they were being total assholes for not having the money to plunk down for one.

What is there to master in Wordpress? I guess I'm missing something, but I'll look around and see what the big deal is. Maybe there's more to it than using the interface that is essentially the same as blogger. Maybe there isn't and it means that I just have to go into the interview with the posture of someone who knows his shit. Or maybe it means I just have to sprinkle in some Wordpress jargon. Its probably the third thing. Pepper there ears with some sugar sweet tech talk. I should purchase some fake glasses too to make my face more approachable. Not that I look like an idiot, but I do look like I should be out in the wilderness firing a 24 inch chainsaw and smoking Marlboros (which is kind of the job I would like to do, but I don't live anywhere near any logging operations).

At any rate, I lost my train of thought. The thought of deforestation gives me boners. Well, just one boner over multiple time frames. Obviously. But, there was something else.

Oh, I got it. Nabbed it. The story site for my fiction is what I'm working on piecing together. Hopefully that'll be up sooner than later. I've got a story to tell you that I think you might like.

///Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Phenomena" When the White Stripes came out with their album Icky Thump a lot of critics said, "oh my God this is completely and totally awesome," but in my opinion the YYYs nailed a much ickier harder thumping sound the year before with their album; this track being one of my favorites on the whole thing. If the universe ever does catch fire and we're all going to die, I hope they play this song when the curtain comes up.

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.

industry, power, respect.

today kicks off a week of industry. my life in its current format leaves very little time (relatively speaking, since if i were an expert in any of this stuff it would probably take me half as much time) for me to actually work on the things i, meeeee, wants to work on. if i could i would love to spend 8 hours doing markup and 4 hours doing art, but unfortunately the litany of job applications and form after form after form after form that has to be filled out leaves me with probably half as much time as i would like.

throw in cooking for sedentary people (two hours minimum average) cleaning up after said people (one hour minimum) plus other inbetween projects as assigned and what do you get? you get not very much time left at all. thats what you get. plus headaches. and rage boners. yeah, i thought it was weird at first too but ill get into that more later.

so anyway. at the risk of having all of my available free time ripped away from me for having jinxed myself i hereby declare this week to be industrialization week.



what this means to you? it means you shoulda bought that rain coat last thursday cuz its about to rain harder than a methane storm on titan. or harder than the main floor at a strip club on 25 cent lap dance night. whichever is more unpleasant in your mind. but thats a good thing though. because its like a dad who goes to beat his kid and the kid cringes but then the dad realizes he forgot to wear a belt to the museum that day so the kid is off the hook... but not like that. better? hmmm lemme start that over.....

what this means to you: this means that this running account will soon feature links to my works of fictions and poetry. maybe through rss... not really sure... but i will learn and when i do you will know because itll be up here. of course with anything i do theres a certain reserved shyness at first. well not everything. that is definitely not true. i love talking about sex. sex sex sex.... whatever im a guy. that just comes with the territory. seeeeex. penis penis penis penis LOL sorry . .... uhm where was oh yeah... so with sharing the fiction though, thats always a difficult thing for me. mainly because i failed the fiction segment of the degree i didnt get. go figure. i shoulda been a mechanic. its not too late though. actually when i do get a job i will probably go to technical school and just keep writing because i love it and would be doing it anyway.

sooo uhmmmmmm that is some seriously loose thinking up there.

recap? is that even necessary? probably. in summation

over the next 5 - 7 days i hope to give you access to my fiction, because i love you, thats why. i would be not telling the truth if i said i didnt care if you liked it or not. but i would also be not not telling the truth if i said ... what would i say there ... i thought i had a contrast going. apparently not.

time to move my third world media country into my second world. with strippers. and black jack. and cotton candy... but mostly cotton candy.

///bonobo - "pickup" thats that shiiiit. that beat and that flute together that just make you wish you coulda been at a house party in a sweaty basement with some young dj who had an ear and no cred who ripped it up every night with class and panache and who now graced you with rhythm so fresh you could have swore he knew you'd meet the girl you were dancing with that very night out on the porch and that she would love that song just as much as you did and that right when things were about to get awkward it would be the perfect spell to cast on her body. i dunno. lol. this song just puts me in a flow coma. whatever i was doing before it came on temporarily ceases so i can give my brain full capacity to bounce from beat to beat and dip in between the bass trees chasing after the flighty notes of the flute.

broken thoughts cohere poorly 12/15/06

Subject : broken thoughts cohere poorly
Posted Date: : Dec 15, 2006 8:15 PM

im hedging about what to write.

i had a crazy dream about dry humping t-girl vampires. it was pretty fucking scary. i also looked up what a post op vagina looks like and it is fucking ugly. nothing like the real ones girls have.... which i guess is hard to define since the ppl that have post op vaginas are technically girls. you know what the fuck i mean though so i wont expound any further. weird dream. it happend while a friend of mine was playing the orchestrated rendition of coldplay's second album. it was good music when i was awake but apparently fucked with my brain on a subconcious level. either that or the fact that i missed dinner. ah well.

i was thinking about something earlier. i was thinking about the idea that...

hmm. some big football player dude just saw me watch his lady friend walk into the bathroom. no sexual thoughts crossed my mind, but seeing the schtuppy hardened look on his face when i glanced back kinda made me wish i had so that i could have a smug moment of self satisfaction. as it stands, the only thing i got out of it was the over riding sensation that he's an idiot. i guess ppl get that sometimes from my writing, you know, except directed towards me. well im not going to tell you to go fuck yourselves... its normal.

i think ive reached fuck quota for this entry so ill try and direct my vocabulary into new realms of fucking awesomeness.

so anyway... i was thinking about something today. oh yeah. i saw time magazines pictures of the year and one of the pictures was a party bus going to a prom at the high school that inspired the TV series the OC. It enfuriated me. i ripped the page out of the magazine and flushed it down the toilet that i was sitting on while i read. i moved on to maxim. if im gonna read shit it better be properly labeled.

in other news... ive been making some strides in getting over the anxiety of influence. ive been told my poetry tends to skew toward wallace-stevens-esque-ness with C.D. Wright sprinkles. I've been avoiding reading their work like the black plague, but I did end up reading one of C.D. Wrights books. I might look up wallace sometime too. being a vessel of tradition ain't so bad so long as i dont let it trap me. oh yeah... fuck this train of thought... what i really wanted to say was this:

i pulled out the 400 pages of notes i wrote in highschool when i was trying to put together a galaxy to host the space opera that i was beginning to envision in middle school. i saw star wars way back then and i was like: man this is awesome, but what about... what if... how come... and the questions lead me, in my writing, to decide i would make my own saga. my own fucking epic. so im gonna try and work on it some more over christmas break. its one of the projects that has literally been nagging the back of my head for years. one thing though... if its ever adapted for cinema... cuz im gonna write the screenplay anyway once its done... but if it ever is... or if it makes it to animation... i get to pick the soundtrack