I should really be asleep, but I'm writing here instead. The reasons for this are complicated and varied, which often is something I say when I can't quite put my finger on a single one, and this is an instance of that.
There are 3 things bothering me right now, and I am at a loss to fix any of them. And there's been no one around since Lish left to heave my helplessness onto. I hate feeling helpless. I'm a compulsive fixer. If I can't fix what's bothering me, I seek out someone else and try to get them to feed me something I can fix, in some kind of karma-fishing pay-it-forwarding that pans out so seldom I fail to see why I go for it so often.
Sometimes, when I get lonely, or upset, I go driving. Just sort of aimlessly toodling around, usually with high-decibel music going, sometimes with the appropriate climate-control device for the season going entirely too hard - I've come back from doing this in winter positively red all over, with my eyes dried from the heat.
Tonight, I documented it. I'm not sure whether I look at it as a positive or negative thing, but very few of the shots came out.
I kept the A/C within normal bounds because it was humid out and I had window frosting problems to contend with. I had new, and good music, check. It was loud, check. It was a Sunday night, so even the frat boys were curled up asleep, check. Yet, I didn't feel all that much better when I got back. This is happening more and more when I do this, which is contributing to me doing it less and less.
It seems that less and less I'm certain how to return myself back to feeling "me." And I don't know why on earth I think I could be any help to someone else needing that.
I suppose it's something to think about. I need to stop wasting these moments though.
In site news, I think I'm gonna stop posting the new TRB tracks here in advance of the official site, because it's been a while since anybody said much about 'em. In that case, it just makes more sense to plop them on the official page and them as wants em can get them.
Although, seeing the tracks listed here reassures me that I am still pumping out some kind of creative product on a semi-regular basis.
I dunno. I need to sleep on it.
I need to sleep period.
[i'll be there, motown style]
A new TRB song is available.
the rage box - daydreaming of valhalla
This one got away from me a bit. It was supposed to be a fairly uplifting track, designed to cheer someone up, since I was unable to do much of anything with my sympathetic energies, and the particulars of this situation hit home with me.
Unfortunately, it hit home a bit too well, and so this became a somewhat melancholy track. And it took on a kind of different structure than I'd originally intended. I made this string patch that doesn't fit the song too well, but I decided to use it anyway. This also ruins the kind of clean sound the track had until then.
Speaking of - lately, due to Leslie and Jannica (hope thats your actual name)'s influences, I've been listening to some old Depeche Mode that had been deemed verboten, and have begun a love affair with a band called Hybrid. Thank you both so much. It's been a wonderful time to sit and think with music playing.
Both of these sources influenced this track, in that I tried for a very simple, very clean foundation (ala DM) and, well, the Hybrid stuff just really got me in the mood to make music. I'm still wrapping my head around Hybrid, but I have a feeling I will get some ideas from them. In any case, Hybrid are quite the awesome, and I can't believe I shut myself off to DM. Gods among men.
This track is nowhere near as good as either group's work, but I like to document influences. I like to document a whole lot of stuff, which you've probably realized by now. If not, you should see the pictures of the time I sorted computer screws. Yeah.
Strangely, this is the first track I've had a problem coming up with a satisfactory name for, and this comes on the heels of an IM discussion about my song titles. Huh. Alternate titles were: Praises that go Unspoken, Self Imagination, and the ultra-pretentious The Crushing Weight of Molehill Mountain. I even considered King Jeremy the Wicked, because it fits the emotions I associate with the song, but I just couldn't do that. The first of these almost certainly would have been the final track name had the track stayed like I was intending, but like I said, it got away from me. I like to think about the road not traveled. Sue me.
This one goes out to anyone with family that make you feel worthless for being human. If you're anything like me, you've been so crushed down in that regard that it's little consolation if others around you see your goofs for what they are, and love you all the same. But, nonetheless, chances are there are people who do.
And chances are there are many many praises that could be said about you, that cause that love, and they go unspoken.
</pretentiousness>
n.p. hybridfinishedsymphony
[that's all there is]
A new TRB song is available.
the rage box - into harm's way
This is available both here and on the official site. For my disclaimer about how this is not a great song, I suggest you read the annotated download page.
Additionally, there is prototype artwork for the forthcoming TRB CD, available for perusal here.
comments are welcome.
there are other labors that will be highlighted in this space soon.
the show, such as it is, is back on.
[and yet harmonic]
So, as it turns out, DeadAIM's logging capability is pretty spotty at best, and I don't manually save my conversations with Lindsay frequently enough. Fuck.
I suppose that really it doesn't matter that much right now anyway.
I think one of the best friendships of my life may have just ended. And furious or relieved or destroyed as I might be, the real bulk of what I feel right now is just a sort of low, draining sadness.
Nobody who knows me thinks I am incapable of being an asshole. I frequently am. I try to admit it, and who knows how well it comes across, but all I can promise to those around me is that I spend plenty of time reflecting on it later and beating myself up for it.
I don't know what to do from here.
i just thought i'd put some truth out there, now that it won't hurt or help matters.and i can't take it back in a moment of pride and preservation.
which, dear god, i do all the time and it's fucking terrible.
[but i'm not]
Weekend roundup:
Late thursday, I posted the entry about me double checking everything I say in the world, because I find myself unable to recant things and say "Oh I was simply angry" and have them be stricken from the record with the ease that facilitates free expression.
And I got fairly depressed, because I've been through this a couple times. This led to an awful lot of sleeping. And it wasn't until last night that I realized that little I do is going to affect things one way or another, and I need to stop drugging myself into sleep to kill the time between moments that I'm able to get my mind off what I can do to change the outcome of things beyond my control. It's going to kill me and its going to ruin the relationships I still have some type of impact on.
So, bearing that in mind, I decided to start a personal audio log. Partially, this was to test the waters of the Ogg Vorbis sound format. But I decided to keep a log (of sorts) that I wouldn't ever make public, because it would be too big in file size and too, well, me. Unedited, unprocessed, without the opportunity to go in and splice in jokes. Speaking of, I had to resist the urge to call it the Captain's Log. But I started doing that so that I could still document things for my own perusal, but wouldn't have to be held to a double standard of textual concreteness.
That didn't really sit well with me, though, as not too long ago I went through a self censorship loop in this very space. So, the idea was put aside, until Saturday evening, when I decided to be forthright in both. I got pretty sad and contemplative, and began work on the song in the last post. I finished that late at night, and made my first audio log entry. And I thought.
And I got more depressed.
And I thought some more.
And I finally decided for real that I'd do both.
So, welcome to the no-kid-gloves weekend roundup. This is my life. This is my blog. If you aren't interested in being a participant in either, there are many other places on the web that would love to enlarge your penis or give you a great rate on a new mortgage.
Friday
Leslie came up as planned, the dinner turned out a bit too salty, and the super ninja death Habanero sauce turned out to be less lethal than I thought it would be. I suppose it's odd to be disappointed in the fact that my tongue did not atomize in spicy death at the first taste of "Virgin Sacrifice," a super spicy chile sauce I got, but damnit, I had my hopes up.
We played some old games, and we sort of cooperatively got thrashed at a bit of Doom3. Hugo didn't get to save Penelope, because the Elephant ran away too damned fast. And I got my ass beat by the computer in game after game trying to get the first person to really admire the game grid in functional glory. So far I think the closest I've come are Finn thinking it's a neat idea and Evan finding it cool enough to attempt to destroy. Kevin, everyone else seems pretty underwhelmed. I guess Anna thought it was a pretty impressive engineering feat, which counts for something.
Leslie had work at 8am, so it was bedtime for her. I got to try and sleep and carry out a very familiar and very frustrating war in my head.
Saturday
Then there was Saturday, when I did more depression sleeping, ending in the aforementioned series of tough internal battles, and attempted valving of frustration through banging on a keyboard. The night mercifully ended with a crappy limp into the audio logging genre.
That is basically all of Saturday. Pathetic.
Sunday
Once again, I slept rather than deal with my head, though this time it was partially due to the incredibly comfy ass sheets I got on Lindsay's recommendation.
I called Carrie, left a message, which, as I was hanging up, sounded like it got picked up on, and got nothing back.
Then I spent a bunch of time disconnected from the world in Gainesville, and had some delicious dinner. And heard Mick Jagger singing something I'd never heard before.
And it was pretty nice. But I could feel something bad coming.
Monday
It wasn't quite as bad as I thought it was going to be. My intent to make myself available as a shoulder or whatever on what I knew was an important and forecasted day were construed as "bothering."
I have no idea what to say right now.
But I'm done mulling over whether I should say it.
n.p. rollingstoneswaitingonafriend
[time for breakfast]
A new TRB song is available.
the rage box - her reactor's gone critical
This cost me most of the evening's sleep to do, and was completed at the expense of 2 other blog entries I meant to get fit for public consumption tonight.
And on top of that, chances are, nobody's gonna like it. But it's 160bpm of creative output for the evening, and has a synthesized steam jet sound I'm quite proud of. It's yet another of the ~2min demos I seem to be cranking out, which I think will have their own section on the forthcoming TRB cd.
Anyway, I have to sleep now, on my very very comfortable new sheets. Thanks for the tip there Linds-o-matic.
[smoking gun or mushroom cloud?]
I had most of an entry called "Public Relations" done and saved, but I'm now not sure if I want to post it.
The main gist of it was that many of the people in my life are pushing their way through difficulties, and I wish them well as best I can. Also, that I've reduced the throttle time on comments, since people were having trouble with that. Let's see how long it takes the spammers to notice.
Anyway, while I mull over the ramifications of all statements I make, I feel this thing should at least get an update, so here it is.
So desperately I sing to thee of love
So hey. This is my 100th blog entry.
I kept wanting to have something special ready for it, some kind of commemorative dealy, but the things I could think of I either couldn't pull off in time, or felt were lame.
It's not that big a deal, since I write in places other than this, and have really only been taking this seriously since the new year. If I totaled up all the posts everywhere I'm scattered around the web, it might total as much as 200, or I dare say. two hundred and twenty. So, I guess this is gonna be pretty low-key. But, I felt like marking it, because it's one of those things I tend to mark. One of those odd semi-arbitrary times to look back, and reflect on the stuff I've covered in the entries so far.
Well, I seem to talk a lot about how I'm tired, plug stuff in the gallery, and link a lot of sourceforge projects. Wow. That was a pretty pathetic showing.
Some inner truth of vast reflection
I can only hope I can keep this writing momentum up such that I might actually put something of real interest to someone up here, so that the 200-entry mark isn't quite as hollow.
And I can keep it up as long as it takes
Chances are, though, it will be more of the same old crap. Which I guess isn't so bad, given that there are people on LiveJournal spending their time pretending to be celebrities, and people on other sites clamoring to proclaim their love for whoever happens to be on the cover of Teen People this week. I feel bad though, because I can actually recognize the standard which I am falling below, and yet continue to do so anyway.
Still my confession draws you near
Plus, it gets me ego-stroking comments, which is all I'm really after. Speaking of which- Greg, an autostentrola is a word I made up. It started with Stentrola, which I thought was a funny old-timey-sounding stenography machine - in other words, an old timey machine that writes very quickly. I added the auto- to enhance this. So see a wordamatronic autostentrola is a newfangled ciphering machine that spits out words at an inhuman level of speed and efficiency. Or, you know, You. Mr. Oooh I've got 205 entries since FREAKIN' JANUARY.
Anyway, happy 100 everybody. Nobody rocks like Chicago.
[Sure, but also rage and hate and pain and fear of self]
-a quote from a little play called Isaac and Ishmael, the extended version of which is scrawled across the pages of notes I’m looking over in a concentrated effort to turn them into readable and potentially entertaining paragraphs.
It turned out that Shabbos wasn't quite as restful as it could have been. I suppose that's what I get for celebrating a tiny part of the sabbath of a religion I'm not actually a practitioner of.
I managed to fuck up pretty bad, and the hardest part to deal with is that the person I hurt worst I wasn’t expecting to at all.
I have to be patient, try and do things to keep my mind off of the bad stuff, and try to fix things when I can.
Now I guess I should move on to lighter things. This is gonna be pretty spastic and unintelligible.
g d f e d c d c
riku is frigging badass.
And the StarCon ringtone is the gift that keeps on giving.
Gary settled before going to trial. The cue card guy proposed that I cease this ridiculous talk show farce, because it’s never gonna play in Topeka, and he was shot down. It’s people like him who are running the industry, man. Smoke and mirrors! Do you know who owns and controls the station you’re watching?
So I says to him, “Why not do another Gambler movie? I mean, they are successful, and everyone likes them, and it’s not like they cost a fortune to make or anything.” And then I realize, this entire time I’ve just been talking to a look alike. Kenny Rogers never would have been that patient, and besides which, last I heard, wasn’t in a wheelchair. Man, was my face red.
This is the dawning of the age of aquariums. Now go buy one, and some turtles and some koi and some of that fruity-pebble-looking gravel shit before the Fifth Dimension has to come over to your house and beat your ass in. This message brought to you by Fred's Pet Shop, a subsidiary of Fred International, winner of three JD Power and associates awards for outstanding local merchantry in a row. No endorsement by the surviving members of the Fifth Dimension is implied.
I just had to ask my friend Michelle if the men in Australia were sized like pygmys. Never in my life could I have predicted that.
This is how the writing has been going. It’s like I’ve got this pitching muscle, and I’ve been building it back up, but I can’t get it anywhere near the damn strike zone, or even to stay in the right sport for more than 3 seconds. See, I can’t even properly piece together one of my patented ridiculously obtuse metaphors to explain it. The pitching muscle would be my writing acumen, see, which atrophied horribly, and I’ve been trying to build back up. And the strike zone would represent “focused creative output,” namely the story I’m trying to revive. This would honestly make the world’s worst editorial cartoon. Every single aspect of it would have to have some text superimposed on it explaining what the hell it’s supposed to represent, until the whole thing merely was a meta-editorial cartoon on the newspaper of life, which represented “crappy editorial cartoons.”
Jesus, I haven’t even had coffee.
One of these days I’m simply going to wake up as a duck with a messy desk, and realize that I have become Shoe.
1.