I shall be in Atlanta on and off this week, so depending on how quickly I bore the people who live there, there will either be no entries or an explosive increase in them as the week progresses.
While I'm gone, Deputy Finn and Budnick are in charge, and nobody drink the bug juice.
...and I will use it as I see fit.
I've rebounded faster than I anticipated.
Something clicked, and I really don't feel like adding any more teen angst to this blog than I already have been of late, so I'm leaving it at that.
But, as a small measure of thanks, I will give some kudos out. First, to Garrett Donovan and Neil Goldman, who wrote an episode of Scrubs ("My Screwup") that I saw about a week and a half ago. It is the most saddening episode of the show I have ever seen, and I believe it would have been even if I myself had not been pretty emotional at the time. It is also the first thing I've seen on television to bring up that kind of feeling since Sports Night went off the air.
I've learned that those two were nominated for a Humanitas for that episode. Bravo to you both.
Bravo, and a kudos-variety-pack to Josh Radin, who provided the song for the final scene in it. You made something amazingly good even better.
Finally, to the IMDB and Michelle somebody or another, proprietor of this site, which has a detailed listing of music used in the show. IMDB for providing the episode name based solely on a guest star, and Michelle's site for providing this little bit of info:
Episode 3.14 - "My Screw Up"
Scene: Dr. Cox is finally able to forgive and to accept events that were beyond his and J.D.'s control.
"Winter" by Josh Radin. Album: demo [MP3 @ website]
I highly recommend downloading the music, though if possible, you should try to see the episode first.
And to everyone who's been putting up with my downer crap lately, you get a different, altogether more risque kind of kudos that we'll all feel awkward about in the morning.
[this is my show and it will not be dumped]
So, it would appear that I didn't manage a second post on Thursday.
Yeah.
My energy lasted through most of the day, and then I sort of crashed. It was a pretty nice day, and I actually managed to not worry about the other hand dropping. And then Friday, well, my positive energy didn't last anywhere near as long then. Nor did my hopes about how well Thursday went.
I don't know what to write here now.
I'm not sure who I'm writing for, and I'm not sure I'm getting what I want to across.
This isn't a regularly scheduled crisis of faith. I've been shaken a bit.
And I'm really not able to find the perfect phrasing that leaves little to interpretation.
It'll probably be a couple days 'til I get a handle on this. Til then, hope you're all having a wonderful time and can bear the certianly gut-wrenching absence. Visit Wil or Greg or even Tycho and Gabe.
It would appear painful melodrama can be contagious.
[i guess there's nothing like that, i guess.]
I tried to stay up all day yesterday to break myself once again of my awful sleep schedule, and didn't quite make it. But, I lasted long enough to be walking dead when I collapsed, and to sleep for a very long time, and wake up now (6am) relatively refreshed.
So, the idea now is to stay awake for a normal human time period today, and go to bed, and be on the way to a more prim and proper 3am bedtime, like I'm used to.
I'm sure by noon this will be gone, but right now I'm feeling all kind of positive and proactive. Now I'm listening to music that makes me feel all empowered to overcome the stuff that's bringing me down. I got real battles and I got superficial ones goin' on, and it's time I regrouped and went at it. First stop, getting my house stuff in order, so I can get the impending move monkey off my back.
Of course, my brain just also spent 30 seconds mentally replaying the classic Space Ghost "You're bringin' me down, man!" bit. So, chances are my chemical levels will balance off before long and I'll have just enough drive left to do basic tasks like clean and go to the grocery store.
I'm gonna make use of this energy while it isn't expecting it, but I'll probably post again later.
[born to shimmer]
Let's hear it for goals.
Today I did manage to do most of what I set out to. I finished the underlying composition for the "new" TRB track- my first attempt at a remix. I also managed to do a little somethin somethin in Illustrator before wishing to bash my brains into some kind of putty material which I might then transfer into a mortar and pestle for further brutalization. At that point, I went back into Photoshop and things were good.
I got a test version of the latest version of Gallery running, and if it works out fairly well I may switch Imperial Surveilance over to the newer version. So far, all I can see that it adds is an annoying java applet.
I did some other things with my day, but they weren't all that interesting and I'm trying to steal some of Greg's zen thunder and be upbeat.
But, the laundry didn't get done. Surprise Surprise.
Time for a bit of sleeping, a bit of dreaming, a bit of plotting, a bit of scheming.
[phone number on a girl's hand]
What'd I do yesterdee.
I fought a lot, I (finally) slept a lot, I got up and continued my recent move toward trying to give myself some kind of repetitive stress injury - the past two nights I've chosen incredibly tedious tasks to keep my brain and hands busy. Two nights ago it was opening every unopened bill and bank statement I have (I pay and read them online,) completely reorganizing the way I filed such things, and reordering them into some semblence of chronology. I had a gigantic pile of opened envelopes and stupid crap they put in with bills by the time I was done. I was up talking to Lish and yet still using every moment I wasn't typing to open letters and sort, and it still took me hours. Crazy. But now if you say March 03 Bank Statement and January 04 cable bill I can have them in hand within 20 seconds. Trust me, that is useful somehow. Or maybe I am a chemically imbalanced archivist.
Today I tackled the CD collection, making a full inventory of what CDs were missing, and checking each and every one to make sure none were hiding in the wrong cases. Remove CD from shelf, open, take out disc, check for extra discs, replace disc, close. Repeat. I don't know what in me is making me do this, but it's not all bad, because I need to do this kind of tedious beancounter inventory stuff. I think next I will reorganize and label my vast VHS tape collection. Or get a job folding laundry. Who knows.
Cleaned up a whole bunch of other stuff, sorted things for filing again - My filing cabinet is actually becoming useful again, instead of this thing that I can't use because all the file categories are wrong. I have a whole stack of school notes and so on that I have decided to smelt. I normally keep my school notes, and have them for every class I enjoyed going back into high school, but I think as this summer progresses I will smelt the lot of them. I don't want to be lugging those damned things around when I move.
Speaking of, in cleaning I've been evaluating what I will want to take with me for the eventual move and what I won't. Note to self - Poker-bin air-sealed mini-cigars actually hold up quite fine over incredibly long periods of time. Found those when cleaning and decided it would be fun to see if they had mutated in any way. Fie on smoking, it is lame, but those things do cool stuff to my voice. Now it will probably be another 8 months before I touch anything like that again.
Was interesting to be halfway leaning out on the patio, keeping the smoke from those things out of the house while listening to my underappreciated Orbital CD. Perfect weather for it. Stirred some interesting old memories. It is odd to me that I am the buzzkill who reminds everyone about smoking death and drug braincell slaughter and yet almost everyone I've really spent a lot of time with and cared about since age 13 has been a smoker. And then when I shocked others with what I was doing, I got called Mr. No Smoking Anything Ever. Well, it's good to know my rep exists as being vehemently against it and yet I can still tear up my vocal chords for no good reason from time to time. It wasn't a poker night, but it felt like a night for that kind of stupid "manly" thing. And it ended up being nice.
So, what else. Basically just cleaned. Tomorrow I think I am going to try my hand at this Unzervalt track I have planned and try to do this art thing in Illustrator. I would also like to do some laundry, but I mean, really, who are we kidding here.
I've got some irons in the fire. Lotta strands in duder's head.
Oh, and the Busa is back. Sweet.
"Show me, where the real light isBuildin' a wall inside
A wall 'round my heart (wall around my)
Buildin' a wall inside
Yeah"
--Orbital ft. David Gray Illuminate
From the underappreciated The Altogether CD set
[Riku Nuottajärvi is a bad ass]
So, against my better judgment, I decided to stay awake so I could watch the launch of SpaceShipOne on TV. If you don't know what it is, go read CNN or something. I'm not runnin a flop house for people who don't like space nerdy stuff here. Hundred Kilometer mark's about to get busted.
Anyway, I had to find something to occupy my eyeballs that long, and that ended up being hopping back and forth between VH1 and MTV. The bright colors and flashing lights keep my pupils dilated, you see. Anyway, it occured to me that the summer anthems are cropping up. This summer's already got its main one - Switchfoot's Meant to Live.
Perhaps I should explain what I mean. Generally I don't slave myself to popular music, and most of my collection is made up of stuff you don't find on any broadcast radio stations. But, I don't have the typical snobbery for radio pap - it has its place. It's fine. It's especially great during summer, for some reason - the RIAA moguls know how to time these things so that songs really tie themselves to the summers they get big in.
As such, I tend to adopt one big radio song each summer as the anthem for that summer. I decided for my own amusement to compile a list. I couldn't limit myself to just one for each year, and some have more than others. This is mostly an exercise in nostalgia, but it allows the random internet populace the opportunity to judge me based on the top40 stuff that has dripped through my crap filter and managed to become sentimentally significant to me.
So without further ado-
95 - Matthew Sweet - We're the Same, Gin Blossoms - Hey Jealousy, The Magnificent Bastards - Mockingbird girl, Sarah MacLachlan - Posession
96 - Butthole Surfers - Pepper, Nada Surf - Popular, Filter - Jurassitol
97 - Prodigy - Narayan, Forest for the Trees - Dream, Deana Carter - We Danced Anyway, Ben Harper - Faded, Third Eye Blind - Graduate
98 - Alanis Morrissete - Thank U, Madonna - Frozen
99 - Train - Meet Virginia, Smash Mouth - All Star
00 - Cowboy Mouth - Easy, Soul Asylum - I will still be laughing, A Perfect Circle - 3 libras
01 - Dave Navarro - Rexall, All Saints - Pure Shores, Vertical Horizon - Best I ever had, Eve6 - Here's to the night
02 - Chad Kroeger - Hero, Tommy Lee - Blue, Incubus - Warning
03 - Counting Crows - Big Yellow Taxi, Creed - One last Breath
04 - Switchfoot - Meant to Live, ...
Oh, and while I'm talking about MTV, the new Beastie Boys and Linkin Park videos are really neato, but what's up with them leaving off the white text? That's like the bread and butter of music television. It's the "It's time to pay the price." It's Snaggletooth's ",even." It's Farnsworth's "Good News, Everyone!"
Bunch of crap.
Well, I guess I'm gonna go watch some doofus in the Mohave for a bit while they delay the takeoff.
[elevator music]
so, hey, welcome to the new design. If you don't like it, stifle yourself for a while, because I'm still hammering out the tiny details. The old index will continue to function and will be available here. You can bookmark that if you're such a stick in the mud.
For those of you ready to brave the new frontier, you may be enjoying the new wider aspect ratio and easier to read fonts. I pretty much stole the fonts from the default WordPress setup. I may still end up switching to that, but for now, we go on with Movable Type and the Fantastic Newness.
There's been some fun new frontier stuff in life recently, but it's not the kind of stuff I necessarily want to try to encapsulate into an already trumpet-laden blog entry. So, I'll tap out some bullet points so I don't forget them, and maybe elaborate on them later.
I had a wonderful trip to Atlanta. It's amazing how there are bits of Atlanta that are every bit as Hipstery as the fratboy-plagued lands of Athens, but filled with the nicest and most interesting people imaginable.
After getting through a rushed Wednesday morning, I managed to make my way to Atlanta and even get to where I was going without a hitch. This is pretty amazing, given that it's been 4 years since I lived there and I was going deep into downtown urban confusion-sprawl. I had locally made ice cream, and I played scrabble. I lost at scrabble. That part sucked, but it was incredibly fun. It's been a while since I played a real boxed version of scrabble, but even longer since I lost. Next time, that ice cream place better have Boggle, and then it will be on. This paragraph was brought to you by the National Stilted Description Awareness League.
Then there was actual dinner, at this hip place where I actually had a delicious sandwich that I swear to God was called a Betty. Later on, for like a midnight snack, there were fish tacos. Quite an out-of-character but delicious culinary day for me.
Oh, and there was exotic fruit Arbor Mist, most hillariously fruity cheap wine in the known universe.
Thursday I drove around a bit downtown, and napped a bunch. Saw Shrek 2, which was an amazingly good movie - I still haven't decided which I like better, but Puss in Boots is about the cutest goddamned thing I've ever seen. Watched Matthew Perry get screwed by the dealer on CPS, commenting the whole way and impressing the people around me with my Bill-Murray-watching-Jeopardy-in-Groundhog-Day-esque clairvoyance about celebrity playing habits.
Twas a great couple days.
'Tis a brave new world.
It's been a battle, but I think the comment spam crap is finally over. I've deleted well over 3000 spam comments since it began, but I've been spam free for a couple days now. Bonus.
I have been getting some legit comment traffic though, so I figure I'll dedicate this post as a response to the regulars and the semianonymous Google Expressway motorists who took the time to post comments.
To Guido, who I doubt will ever show up here again: I own the Gone Jackals album, and that song's not by them, though their music makes up the bulk of the game's soundtrack.
After some research, I found that the song is actually called Increased Chances, and the band itself is called Chitlins, Whiskey, and Skirt.
To Travis, here's my semi-crappy mp3 of it- I made it a while back, using a tape deck, but it's better than nothing. I keep meaning to redo it but I don't own the game. You should probably fix the file name with the above artist info.
To Finn, . what?
To Carrie, the same way I meant it when I used it another place. Bumping something unpleasant off a list in an effort to hide from it. In both cases it was using an unimportant entry to bump an important but unpleasant one from the top of the list.
To Busa, come back from friggin' Sweden already.
Thank you one and all for your meeting of my attention-whore complex needs.
[but sugar i won't let it go to my head]
So, an interesting (if depressing) fact about me: when unhappy, I become more productive.
Generally, I don't run from unpleasant thoughts. I am a blue pill kind of guy - I'd rather face the unpleasant, knowing it is real, than live a more jolly time in a fabrication.
However, my brain functions much like a computer - this helps out in a lot of problem solving situations, but it also allows that Flynn guy to make me stutter by chucking some unsolvable problems at me. Which is, of course, to say, that sometimes I get a problem that isn't really solvable, and yet my brain devotes many many many MANY computational cycles to it. I burn these precious computrons during times of inactivity, such as when I am supposed to be sleeping.
So, while I don't like running from unpleasantness, there are times where such unpleasantness catches me in a feedback loop. And I'm just human enough to
realize "Hey, I should probably stop this before my brain uses all its resources on it."
To stop it, I usually have to keep myself incredibly busy - I have to create tasks for myself to keep my mind busy and off the unsolvable loop.
Very little makes me unhappy for a long time - stuff that makes me unhappy, I think about it, try to find a solution, and move on. So when I have a prolonged period of unhappiness, chances are I have a pretty unsolvable problem. And in that case, I get in a loop, and in that case, I realize i need to stop my brain.
So, to link all that uninteresting reveletory crap together, being unhappy makes me more productive.
Here's some of what I've been doing:
I've almost got another version of the great z axis redesign pieced together. I think you'll all find it much better. All of you being a euphamism for "You 4 to 5, depending on who is giving a conference in Sweden."
I managed to do the switch-over with the new computer hardware, and get my newish system running. It's beefy, and now I can begin work on a new TRB tune I have planned, which will either be called Unzervalt or Vela. I haven't decided.
I finished the newest addition to the Game Grid - a pair of original NES ports, smack on the front, wired up for use with any NES pad around. Awww yeah.
I actually created a LiveJournal, simply so that I could leave comments for people. Of course, then I had to make a custom graphic for the live journal, because why have a registered signiature if you can't further customize it with visual iconography? And why not put some interests in a livejournal profile if you can't sleep?
I wrote a script for a demo reel production, that I'll burn to DVD and package with my resume for this summer's great job hunt. I'll post the script when I transfer it into Final Draft, instead of the incredibly nonsensical shorthand I wrote it in while I couldn't seep.
I also fired up my video cam for the first time in earnest since the Great Frying that occured at the tail end of my final project for my video production class. Word to anyone using DV cameras: be very careful attaching a Camcorder attached to a shitty VCR to a DV port on a computer. You can create an incredible shock hazard. My VCR is toast, and my camera was malfunctioning. Luckily, it was functional enough to make a dump of my group's final project, which I was the sole editor on, and which we got an A on. Booya.
Anyway, I didn't know if the camera was dead - the VCR is fried, the 1394 card -exploded- (pictures when I find it) and I hadn't taken the time to test the camera out in a methodical fashion. I finally did that, and at the very least it can play from tapes, record to tapes, and use the A/V output. So, 80% of the stuff that matters works fine. Seems to have a little more trouble autofocusing, but it's not having massive digitization errors like it was right after it got its mind fried. And I'm more than capable of using the manual focus features I paid the extra cash for.
The other 20%, for me, is the DV dumping, and right now that remains unconfirmed. It may be that the crappy-ass 1394 card I got isn't working properly, it may be that the DV port on my camera is dead. It's frustrating to me because I don't have a proper set of scientific controls to determine which it is. Anyone with a firewire device to spare so I can test my crappy card, let me know. I can't fathom how much it will cost to repair if my DV port is dead. And, needless to say, it will complicate the filming of my resume DVD stuff. Maybe I can just buy a deck, and then I won't even have to use the camera's DV port. Though to do that, I'll have to win a billion deutschmarks in der lotto. And then probably convert those to Euros because the germans got rooked.
The funny thing about that is it may turn out to be cheaper to buy a really crappy DV camera, and use it just for dumping video, than to repair the dv-out capability on mine. I really hope I just have a crappy firewire card.
There was some other stuff I did, but it all kind of leaked out of my brain while I was writing that overdramatized summary of why I get productive like this.
Lindsay's man sent me this link, which is simultaneously insane and very cool. Old-School.
I think if I remain unable to sleep right now I will load up Zak McKracken and have some nostalgia juice flow over me.
[goto 10]
[goto 10]
been having an awful couple of days. I just encounted the following mp3 blast from the past in my vast media archives, and it made me happy for a minute. so, here are the lyrics.
artist unknown - The Apocalypse - from the game Full Throttle
the population is greatly decreased
and now the odds are greatly increased
that i may someday get a chance
to kiss your lips
I thank the lo-o-ord each day
for the apocalypse
folks are mostly disfigured or dead
but, sugar, I wont let it go to my head
my mama's face has dripped down into the dirt
but I'm still chasin'
chitlins, whiskey and skirt
twisted, ain't it.
Well, okay, I'm a liar. The new redesign didn't work out so well, so there will be more posts before I try again. It wasn't a total loss, though, because I've begun turning that super industrialized design into a shell for the new TRB-site.
I fixed the thingy for the supersecret geek project with carrie, and so now I need good LEDs. Not so much good, really, as "really insanely bright." And Bright I found (note the scientifically accurate capital B.)
Places like Chi-Wing, SuperBrightLEDs, and TheModHouse(I still say it looks purple, which is sweet, but pink is still uncommon) had the brightness.
Then it became a matter of the cheapness. Going in that vein, I found DirectLeds, the cheapest so far, HiTechLEDs, a sort of middle road with good selection, and though not the cheapest, still my favorite so far, LSDiodes.
They send out this bumper sticker with every order. Sweeeet. Plus they have really nice tutorials, which they get points for in terms of generally being nice to the community.
I think I'll probably buy a bunch of blue ones from DirectLEDs, some UV ones from HiTech, and some Green ones from LSDiodes. Then I can decide who to throw money at based on customer service.
This isn't super bright LED related, but cool nonetheless: super glowy clearness.
I was going to do a big geeking out article about AIM clients, but i got very pissed at Gaim and so now they get nothing.
I'd like to be furthering TAB, but it's proving difficult. I feel like a number of evil spirits are befouling my creative humours, and all the leeches and cranial drilling just aren't working.
So, I'll leave you with a particularly apt Red Meat, and take off.
[tough crowd]
I've been working on a redesign of the site. Pics of progress are available here, here, and here. You guys probably hate it. It's something I'm working on.
Anyway, in the interim, and because it's the hip thing to do, here's a guest author for today's entry. Mr. Matt Lowe, standup-comic extrordinaire. I'll explain this entry later.
< begin matt >
So, how bout them Olsen twins, eh?
They're getting a lot of press lately. Apparently they're on the bubble of turning 18, and so now they're all hot and sexually approachable, as if that legal distinction really matters to much of the underage-pinup-girl-magazine-buying public.
To most people like me, I think they kind of dropped off our radars for a while- it was like Full House, then nothing, and now this Oooh, it's like Britney but there's two and they're twins. Yet, if you go by the bargain bin at your local Wal*Mart, you'll find it chock full of crazy adventure movies they've made. It's insane. The sheer volume of direct-to-video schlock they've made since Full House is more than any pedophile could hope to masturbate to in a single human lifetime.
Am I right?
Am I right?
I don't actually care if I'm right or not, they just pay us to say that.
My real concern isn't so much the rampant drooling over these hot hot underage sex conduits, but that we're setting them up for a big, big fall. I mean, the majority of people who even knew who they were before being instructed by Teen People remember these girls telling Uncle Jessie they pooped their pants. This isn't like Britney/Christina or the new wave of Lohan/Duff. These girls can't just flash a boob and have middle America applaud them for their stance on premarital sex. They're gonna have a rough time navigating the murky waters of teen sex princessdom.
Because, it's one thing to strut around in a schoolgirl uniform and have a hillarious vegas marriage. America will buy that and lap up more. They'll even laugh at Bob Dole horning in on it. The Olsens have a much tougher job ahead of them: convincing America to forget about the time they spit up on Dave Coulier, and treat them like the iconic forbidden fruits they have been inexorably developing into for the last 10 years.
But if they should fail to do so- if they should try to make the jump from cute motherless babies, craving the attention and care they need - because, you know, Stamos can't be everywhere - we may never again be able to titillate ourselves with wildly objectifying pictures of young starlets. The whole mediawhoring system could come crashing down, as America hits its collective conscience threshold and says to themselves, "My god, what have we done?" And that would close a long, long line of tradition in this country. Did I say long? I meant profitable. It would close a profitable tradition in this country.
So I say be careful, young Ashley, and don't let the hyphen bog you down, young Mary-Kate. America's not done whoring you out just yet. And if you play your cards right, you might find yourselves partying with the likes of Paris Hilton while still enjoying the wholesome image that empties those Wal*mart bargain bins in the midwest.
They're telling me I've put enough of you to sleep for the night. That's all my time tonight.
< end matt >
[walk on from joey slotnick]
