Sunday, August 29, 2010

Meanies have 5 reasons

Or rather, now that I have Reason 5, I can have too much fun making crazy little tunelets like this,

Meanie

Next-to-someday step: gain the skills to get a clear picture of how and where to go with a riff-and-variations kinda thang. Doesn't need to go anywhere, but it feels great if it can jump off to somewhere super.

This song in particular is what I picture Snake Plissken hearing in his mind while driving through a disco, in a souped-up abandonded station wagon that has a machine-gun mount and a state-of-the-art 8-track player.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

And another wee tune

I call this one "full of whist", although somehow when I first typed that name just now it came out as "full of shite". : )


http://soundcloud.com/mindfu/full-of-whist

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Louis CK in the Cafe of Babble

My friend Cary Woodworth had a guest bit on the great Louis CK's show "Louie", on FX. I how many of the actor got SAG cards for their dialogue.

Here's the full show:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/2share/Cary_on_TV.avi

Here's a Youtube edit with Cary's specific scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtwrASnSEek


And here's another version of Cary's specific scene, output at a different resolution:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qLE7w8xVYo

Monday, July 26, 2010

Ad clicks pay money, irony is free

Saw this Google ad pop up on a YouTube trailer - and thanked Whatevah for the glory and the beauty of the cosmos.

drive-angry_lol4

The film is some sort of a phoned-in paycheck for Nicholas Cage - an unfortunately common occurrence of late.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Hunhappy

The way a hun deals with unhappiness, by making others unhappy until he is happy again.

Then he is hunbothered by his hunderlings hunappreciation of his hunderlying hunches, due to his hunditry for hundesirable hunconscious hungers.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

The Road Toddler

Like everyone else on the Internet, I've listened to Mel Gibson's recorded rants. Backwards and forwards. While I feel increasingly grateful for my little life.

His ex-girl Oksana's clearly egging him on with her calmness, and also saying things specifically for the record. That said, he is so obviously unhinged it's hard to fault her for doing that and more besides.

The thing that struck me the most, was that Gibson's wasn't really yelling at her. She seems more like a *direction* he was yelling. What he really seemed to be yelling at what was a hole inside himself. A big, empty chasm that's been with him for most of his life, that he is now in despair of ever getting rid of. A broken part of himself, almost certainly helped along by his crazy freak of a father, that he has tried to soothe with art, fame, success, wealth, more success, a wife and a family for 27 years, and when that didn't work, a hot new piece of ass.

And when that last desperate step still didn't fix the hole inside him, he reached a truly epic despair.

When Mel Gibson yells at that ex-girlfriend of his, he is really yelling at the abyss. And it's ignoring his pleas as it's tearing into him, because the abyss is him - and what he is trying to ignore.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

A Beginning of a Long Response to a Wizbang post.

This is in response to an article on Wizbang. It's a long story as to why it's here and not there, but that isn't really relevant right now.

Original article here

I've broken down every single claim I think is provably wrong, and listed them below. I'll post citations for my claims in the comments to follow this post.

The Democrats in general and President Obama in particular, have discovered all too late a political liability in the continuing unemployment figures. As the possibility of losing control of the House and Senate has crept towards probability, the Democrats have finally begun to consider how to address the problems their own policies made.

Incorrect Claims:

1. Democrats haven't realized unemployment figures being high would be a problem.
2. Democrats might lose control because of this alone, rather than it being an off-election year, in which the party in the white house typically loses seats
3. The Democrats are responsible for unemployment, as a consequence of *their own policies* (as opposed to Republican policies which have created the recession and the unemployment)

...recessions happen from time to time, and a review of the past shows that neither Republicans nor Democrats have been able to prevent their occurrence. However, it is possible to reduce the length and severity of a recession sometimes, and to make it worse as well. The best example of this would be the Great Depression, a serious recession made worse by the foolish policies of both President Hoover and President Roosevelt (each chose an extreme solution that led to unintended consequences). The mistakes made by Hoover were built on the assumption that government did not need to do anything, while Roosevelt's mistake was that anything government did would help.

Incorrect Claims:

4. That Hoover's mistakes were based on the assumption that government did not need to do anything - his mistakes were based on the notion that government *shouldn't* do anything, that it was morally wrong for government to interfere.
5. That Roosevelt's policies involved any mistakes that were near the magnitude of Hoover's
6. That Roosevelt's policies made worse OR prolonged the depression, instead of easing and shortening it.

President Obama inherited a recession, this is true. However, the recession was relatively mild, and most economists (the serious ones, not the ones who chase television stations and go hunting for book deals) say the recession itself actually ended earlier this year. The problem is that the jobs never came back, and we have to ask why. For that, we go back to the Depression era. The Depression is not often examined carefully for cause. Most people assume it was due to the stock market crash of 1929, but if so you would have to ask why....When a whole industry loses stock value, the effect is magnified subjectively even though the company is still level with its competitors; if the public believes the industry is sound it will continue to support it, but if they lose confidence the entire industry will suffer.

Incorrect Claims:

7. that the recession Obama inherited was relatively mild. This is the worst recession since the Great Depression.
8. the cause of the Great Depression was not merely a stock crash.

The present economic condition was created through three principle causes - the housing market bubble burst, the financial market crisis from CDOs, and stagnant strategy from the U.S. government....If consumers stop buying, the economy slows, and that is too strong a force to ignore or imagine that government can control. It should be noted at this point, that nothing done by the Obama Administration has been directed at improving consumer confidence. What improvement has occurred, has happened in spite of his policies.

Incorrect Claims:
9. Stimulus spending and unemployment extensions are each a "stagnant strategy", when in fact it is exactly the same strategy pursued by FDR which helped get us out of the Great Depession - because it enables consumers to continue buying what they need, rather than being forced to stop.
10. That Obama could somehow speed up the recovery by increasing "consumer confidence".

The problem in restoring jobs, is that this needs corporate confidence, ...When government actions threaten higher taxes, obstruction of business opportunity, penalties for apparent political orientation or simply being a target for a politician's campaign strategy, businesses will choose to avoid the risk and control costs.

Incorrect implications:
11. The implication that Obama's economic policies at all, EVER, include penalties purely for political orientation
12. That higher taxes ALWAYS threaten job growth more than stimulus spending can increase job growth - as increased spending shows businesses **actual money** - as opposed to "increasing their confidence" that if they start hiring now, they'll make more money someday.

There are three driving forces at work in the present situation regarding unemployment. The first is the obvious fact that President Obama's actions have ignored unemployment, or made conditions worse by attacking major potential employers. The second is that Republicans, sensing significant opportunity in the fall midterm elections and bitter about the contemptible treatment they have received from the most partisan President since Nixon, have for the most part decided to let Obama and the Democrats receive the due consequences of their decision. And the third force is the nature of the economy itself. The American economy in general has been shifting from manufacturing to service for decades, and we are now seeing the effects of that transition in the lack of ability of many workers to transition to the new demand.

Incorrect Claims:
13. That Obama's actions have "attacked" major potential employers AT ALL. I'd love to see some specific companies that have been attacked by Obama's economic policies.
14. That Obama's actions have ignored unemployment, rather than being focused on repairing it
15. That there is some "new demand" for services that workers are showing a "lack of ability" to transition too. (This last one is especially weird).

The most recent bill of debate has been the option to extend the amount of unemployment benefits. Those in favor of the bill argue for it on compassionate grounds...such a bill increases costs for employers and therefore further reduces the opportunity for companies to hire new employees. The bill then is largely superficial in effect, and may be said to do more harm than good to the nation as a whole.

Incorrect Claims:
16. That those who argue in favor of extending unemployment due so solely on "compassionate grounds".
17. That because such a bill may increase costs for employers, which can't be outweighed by the increase in consumer spending that unemployment benefits make possible.

...Money has to come from someplace, and so benefits paid by government agencies must come from public revenues....holistically the government action is parasitic and does more harm than good by definition.

Incorrect Claims:
18. that "money has to come from some place" means it can't come from credit.
19. that government money coming from taxes somehow means that it can ONLY be parasitical - i.e. that government money can't be spent in a way that **increases** value
20. that, again, there is not also a **pragmatic** reason to continue unemployment spending - that it keeps the economy afloat in times of trouble so that it can fully recover.

Neither liberals or conservatives, Republicans nor Democrats, enjoy perfect knowledge of how government should operate in all cases and situations. It is therefore vital for a discussion, even debate, to continue on specific actions the government may take or consider, in ever aspect of the public welfare. We should be able to agree that as situations change, perspectives on all the major issues develop from former positions to more considered or sometimes evolved opinions. Accordingly, for all the strong emotion present in our debates, it is important to listen to the other side and consider what they offer. Even if rejected, the dialogue and respectful consideration of alternatives is a quality much in need and short in supply.

A statement which I agree with wholeheartedly.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Can it be a timesuck if it's time that doesn't suck??

I say possiblidetrimententatively no.

Just got the APC40. Still less than a novice. But a grand freaking time so far!!! Set it up with the Oxygen8 keyboard; no more room left to plug in hard drives until I route 'em all in via firewire 800 (the firewire 400) is going to the sound card. So, for the eventual playing live, going to have it well set up for samples.

But you don't care about that. I'm just blatherin'. Here's another quick tune I cranked out:

new_roo.mp3

Next steps - take the 16-odd (and I do mean odd) songsnippets I've posted up here so far, put them in some kind of order, and start working with them - and then I have an entire set of odd original beginnings for fun, fun music to fuck around with.

Thank you Great Whatevah for giving us the beauty and power of music, among many other things. And so constructing us that we appreciate it, because it matters to us. That's the double-edged sword isn't it? To appreciate how great something is, we also may have to have a space for it inside; a space that, when we don't have this great something or aren't generating it, is empty and in loss.

Thankfully with music, among many other things, this lack is easily rectified.

Hypsteria

The kind of name a clothing company would have, if it existed to create new faux-kitsch t-shirts for the teeming hipster masses with slogans on the front like Patton Oswalt's classic mindblower: a unicorn on skateboard that says "powered by puppy kisses!"

Or maybe a guy with a leafblower, only he's standing on a giant's head and blowing leaves out of his brain dude! Like literally blowing his MIND whoah ha hah!

That kind of clothing store.

Only run by Kevin Bacon and five other people. Maybe Ethan Hawke, Samuel Jackson, Gwyneth Paltrow and Queen Elizabeth.

And Another Tune Down, Another Tune Down, Another One Out the Bus

The Firewire Bus, that is, to completely jam together references for those who know Queen by way of Al Yankovic and those who know computers...come to think of it, probably a pretty overlapping crowd...

So anyway, just had fun jamming this tune out as a way to learn more of Ableton, as I eagerly await my APC40. The purchasing of which I hope isn't a mistake, as I really should be writing fiction. But I've just been missing some simple fun too much.

step_sequencer2.mp3

Friday, May 28, 2010

Patton Oswalt declares war on the music geeks

Patton Oswalt starts razzing a guy in the audience, and then finds out he's a musician - at which point, it's all over.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

And now battling it out for the front burner - music again!!

I just ordered an Akai APC40 from Amazon. It means being boringly smart with my budget otherwise for the next few weeks, but I'm psyched. After watching videos on YouTube, it seems like just the tool to do what I've had to do with one mouse for years.

Your new God


Writing is great and I'm good at it, but it can be rather solitary. To (I think) quote Robert Heinlein once said, "There's nothing shameful about writing, but you should do it in private and wash your hands afterwards." Music is that direct communication that surpases words. Also, it maketh the booty move. I'm looking forward to practicing and getting set up to play out live at least a couple of times, just for the thrill of directly subjecting people to my ideas and hoping that they get something good out of it.

A new tune I just made, while warming up the learning curve Ableton and the APC40 have in store...

space_groove_instruments1

Boiling off the Back Burner - photography again

Just had an absolutely GRAND time taking photographs of Kiyomi, a Long Beach yoga instructor.

We went to a location in Malibu that I'd previously been hipped to by my friend Cary's wedding, around this time last year.

Kiyomi

Photography is pretty damn awesome. I had some dirt on the sensor too - it's amazing what a simple computer program can do. I used Adobe Lightroom 2 - a fantastic program.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Lord of the Blings

Three Blings for Paramus Princesses under the sky,
Seven for Goths and Metalheads in FYE stoned,
Nine for Jersey Shore fashions doomed to die,
One for the Dork Lords in their parent's basement thrones
In the Land of Jersey where the Turnpikes lie.

One Bling to rule the Mall, One Bling to find them,
One Bling to bling the Mall and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Jersey where the Turnpikes lie.

...ok, all I really had was "One Ring to Rule the Mall". : )

Splurgatory

Where we can buy the shiny crap we've all our lives, so we can then let go of it and move on...to the next ethereal mall.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

'Lost' - more like 'Betrayed'.

Just watched Lost's final finale. Emotionally cathartic - but without revealing a single goddamn thing. Which makes it some of the laziest, cheapest, borderline deceitful bait-and-switch writing I think I have ever seen.

I really thought they were going to pull it all together. As this last season continued without any resolution, I really thought it was going to end in a final masterstroke - because that's what it would have taken. I believed they CARED enough to do that. Naive, I know.

Now it's wreckage is scattered on the desert island of modern television; the sad remains of something that once seemed it would take flight.

And I'm diagnosing the scene of the accident. The culprits seem clear in method and motivation. In this interview, they present their account of the events:
...we made a very conscious choice to ask, "What are the big questions? And most importantly, what are the paths of these characters? Where do they lead?" And we followed those paths and tried not to trip ourselves up getting too diverted from that. We felt that that's the thing that's ultimately going to make the finale work or not work....That's the best we could do.
Translation: When our stories weren't interesting we threw in new mysteries and promised a pay off, and when it came time to pay off on them we just didn't care.

"That's the best we could do," is a sad excuse to make for this kind of utter laziness.

But with that kind of laziness present from the beginning, how could the first two seasons have been so good? Well, is it just coincidence, that this writer left at the end of the second season?

http://www.annarbor.com/entertainment/lost-former-writer/ 

Those first two seasons were so good, that I hung on for hope as the writing degraded for the next four years. And some of the most interesting ideas appear to be his - the Dharma Initiative, for instance. He very politely doesn't specify why he left. I think it was because he was trying to bring the ideas into some kind of resolution, and the rest of the writers, and especially the producers, just didn't care.

I know a series can end well, without chickening out on the ending. The Shield did it. Six Feet Under did it. But not Lost. "Emotional closure" doesn't cut it. You don't end a story with "and it all was a dream!" Let alone "and it all was a dream, except not, because it's somewhere beyond space and time, except it isn't, because...well a bunch of stuff happened but Kate told Jack she loved him. Here, buy the box set!"

Bastards.

We may just need a government agency to make sure this never happens again. the Television Intelligence Agency. They can pursue the quality control for shows that bill themselves as intelligent. They won't have a lot to investigate, that's for sure.

In the mean time, at least there's this:


OS X-communicated

Thou hast offended the divine Jobs, the creator and destroyer of platforms.

God tested an earlier version of Steve Jobs, named Job. Jobs' revenge was to grant the angel Satan a gig at Microsoft. Jobs has continued to contract with him via marketing. 

For your wantcrimes of daring to want features Jobs has decided you don't really need, he will OS X-communicate you by taking away your Apple products. So you'd better Think Different than question his divine wisdom about:

- wanting a button to eject a disc
- wanting to use Flash
- wanting to use a phone network that actually, you know, connects phones
- want to use an iPhone to see breasts
- wanting to use any browser besides Safari

Friday, May 21, 2010

Preincarnation

Where you decide where you want to be born in your previous life.

Why must time only run in one direction?

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Nostradumbass

A prophet whose predictions are so wildly, obviously wrong that he is listened to for entertainment value - and doesn't realize.

A phrase I created a number of years ago, referring actually to Nostradamus. Because if you actually read his prophecies, they are about as meaningful as predicting a ham sandwich could have mayo.

...But now listed here, because I just saw someone else use the phrase in a comment at the brilliant Sadly No. And I figured I should at least put my stake in the ground here. As much as it's weakened by the honesty of admitting at least one other human came up with it too.

I couldn't have predicted that. I'm no Nostradumbass.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Pretirement

When you're ready to do what you actually want to do in life, a bit earlier than usual.

For some people, this may even involve working. Which is SICK!!

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Roommance

The kind of relationship that continues much longer than it should, because the apartment is just too good to leave.

This is sometimes resolved by going back to the pay-rents.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Douchebaggage (n)

The carryon luggage in the lives of those who believe they soar above our lives, but instead crash among us and disturb us in their wake.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Homemade coffee for the win.

Ingredients:

Cold, filtered water
Organic fair trade coffee beans

Tools:
 Coffee grinder
 Coffee press

Steps:
- grind the beans.
- heat the water.
- put them in the press.
- filter the coffee.

Results:
Joy.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Conservatism and mental illness

Specifically, the legacy of the sainted Ronald Reagan.

Let there be no mistaking my position: I think he was a charming man who was good to his friends, gave the American public a soothing image of leadership, and committed great harm first to California, and then the US and the world.

This harm was due to his following of basic real-world conservative ideology. In surface terms it's "small government and personal responsibility". In real-world action, its "Winners call the shots, and losers can go fuck themselves". Where "Loser" is defined as anyone who is not powerful to begin with.

To provide cover for this core ideology takes a lot of work. The many smokescreens involve "State's rights", "Big government is always bad", "activist judges are a travesty". But you can tell they're smokescreens because such issues are never problems when they can result in something conservatives like. The outcome of Bush v. Gore in 2000, for instance. The huge expansion of Federal government power and removal of constitutional restrictions on executive power under Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes. The many activist judgements of Scalia, Roberts, Alito and Thomas.

With inconsistencies like this, to follow conservative "philosophy" thus becomes an emotional matter. Following any one of the many items that make up the current conservative movement to a logical conclusion results in unacceptable cognitive dissonance. So any logical thought is cut off immediately once it reaches a certain point. This is literally mental illness by choice. It explains how Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have any listeners, let alone Sarah Palin. It also explains how the GOP is paralyzed in terms of providing actual solutions - trying to solve any single problem will alienate most of their constituency.

This is not something new. It dates back to conservative intellectual William F. Buckley and before. For good fun, look up the debates of Noam Chomsky vs Buckley. The match was the logical equivalent of Bruce Lee vs. an angry fat kid.

And this is because holding the tenets that Buckley did, logic was *impossible*. Don't get me wrong, Buckley was a very smart man. His skill was in wording conservatism so that it actually *sounded* reasonable. Instead of a bunch of emotionally-based crap meant to support the status quo of keeping WASP's in power. (And I say this as a WASP.)

What is particularly interesting to me, then, is the result of this actual chosen mental illness in action: an increase of *unchosen*, untreated and potentially dangerous mental illness in the streets.

This is on my mind because yesterday a woman lost her mind, cut loose and stabbed 4 people in a Target. A target that a friend of mine almost went to that same day. Here in Los Angeles - which has more than its share of truly crazy people with nowhere to live but on the streets.

One of the main reasons for this is California's legacy of conservative policy in action: the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act which Ronald Reagan as governor passed in 1972. It made involuntary commitment much more difficult - so the truly crazy who don't think they're crazy can roam the streets *until* they do something defined as criminally insane.

This same act also pushed the mentally ill onto community centers, i.e. off of state budgets - and also without increasing any of the local or community budgets. Thus also allowing Reagan to cut the state budget.

Which is what really matters - lower taxes. Because who cares about some people who are so crazy they might hurt themselves or others? They should have chosen to be born healthy, or at least rich.

Does that sound like a prescription for a society that works well - for anybody, including the rich?

If you said no, congratulations. You have chosen a sane outlook on social policy.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Eating Crowe

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/apr/28/russell-crowe-gladiator

During the filming of "Gladiator", Crowe allegedly threatened to kill a 77-year old producer, for not giving Crowe's assistants the salary Crowe demanded for them.

If that is true - which it may well not be - then in my dreams the producer would respond to Crowe with something like "Say that again, so I can sue your bitch ass out of existence."

Maybe Crowe had a bad moment. And the alleged argument was over salaries for Crowe's assistants, so he is at least in theory trying to benefit someone else. It just seems like a typical grown man's tantrum - when you can't get your way, scream and yell until you do.

And this macho posturing is never directed at those of equal or greater power. Just those in some way weaker. As primate psychology, it makes perfect sense. As a human being, I think it fucking stinks.

It can work for a lot of people a fair amount of the time - in the short term. In the long term, people who act like this live increasingly crappy lives. People do less for them, work less with them, and can actively work against them. So is the real-life implementation of karma - for most people.

But stars are a little different. The consequences can be very long delayed. Their money fame and power cause others to tolerate their tantrums. Unlike businessmen, they don't even have to show a logical pretense for their tantrums.

So while this destructive behavior would put a common man into a legal situation of Check Yourself v. Wreck Yourself, Crowe's insulated from the worst effects - at least, as long as his name continues to put butts in the seats.

In a common man, this behavior would also be a sign of someone about to lose it. But Crowe probably isn't crazy - at least not yet. You do have to be in basic control of yourself in order to be excellent at a craft. Which, to give the man his due, he is.

What this sounds like instead, is a fake flex of crazy. Which is far more common in LA than elsewhere. People can *pretend* to be crazy to get what they want, because a) there really are so many literally insane people here, that LA's economically middle-class and upper-class people would rather back away than take the risk, b) people drive everywhere and work inside, so they just aren't used to unwanted interactions, and c) even if they are crazy, they can still affect your career with their money or connections. So many people's immediate response is to back off for various reasons.

But this guy Crowe allegedly threatened is, once again, 77 and a producer. How much further up the ladder do you have left to climb? Wouldn't you rather not take shit instead? I ask you. Let alone that he's also a holocaust survivor. Wtf. (If this story is true, Crowe should be kidnapped at night and beaten senseless by Israeli commandos.)

But I digress. The elderly producer guy was probably not worried by any alpha-male shaved-chest chest-beating. He was probably far more scared of Crowe leaving the film halfway through, and leaving behind a multi-million-dollar miscarriage. So those with fame and power who know how to flex crazy get what they want out of sheer bullying, and are so rarely called on it that they actually don't seem to understand its happening when it happens.

And that right there makes LA a far worse place to live. Which, call me crazy, is a goddamn shame.

On the other hand, Joachim Phoenix who also starred in "Gladiator" is also a *great* actor - who may actually be going crazy. A key indicator: his erratic behavior isn't somehow increasing his status.

Then again, he may be pulling another kind of fake crazy - an Andy Kaufman. Which at least is a crazy I can tolerate.

Self-Whelp

The Lord whelps those who whelp themselves.

I.e. we are responsible for raising ourselves, yada yada - we can't pick our parents, whatever God(s) exist, or what they put outside us. But we can choose how to take it and walk through it. And we can give ourselves what we need to prosper, and put books in our own hands that are worth reading.

And then we can still be like surly teenagers to us as self-parenting overlords. Its a full cycle, isn't it?

Monday, April 19, 2010

Tea Party Nutcake Recipe

1 part fear of change,
1 part xenophobia,
1 part unacknowledged racism
1/2 part genuine gripes with a twist of complete misinformation
a pinch of crazy

Mix in manipulative elitists who wouldn't let them into the same country club, but can fake the right down-home style o' speakin'

Simmer until election time, hope the pot doesn't boil over and backlash,

and serve to their corporate masters.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Poutsourcing

Externally dislocating one's inner grouchiness to factors outside oneself.

You own internal mental labor force works hard to make you feel like crap, and you reward them by giving factors *outside* yourself all the credit? That's completely unfair!

The Union might have a meeting about this.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

And Yet Another Tune

This one started out titled as "Why", simply because I couldn't figure out why the program wasn't doing what I wanted. : )

In a couple of iterations it randomly ended up as "Why2b", which actually perfectly suits the song.

Why2b

Monday, February 22, 2010

Typos can be dangerously revealing things.

This just showed up in my inbox. Sounds like someone's crystal-meth induced discussion of spirituality.

Ah, California.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Testing the vortal

So a company I'm working for has this thing called a "Vortal". I want to test what it looks like, so I'm trying it here.

Insert pithiness at your wish or peril, in the wee tiny Vortal box. That may not appear until I get all the settings right.

Monday, February 15, 2010

The Whore of Babble-on and on

Ladies and gentlemen, Sarah Palin!

Oh is that too harsh? Perhaps I should say "the Sex Worker of Babble". But with the oral servicing she's giving a logically flaccid Republican ideology via lubricious talking points, McCain isn't the only John in the Godless Old Patriarchy.

Seriously, if reason and logic are part of God's heavenly legos from which the universe is built, and I believe they are - then this bitch is a blowtorch and a ballpeen hammer.

So Democrats, if you actually lose to Sarah, and the multiple heads of a nameless beast she's riding to uncertain acclaim - then you DESERVE to lose.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Poptards

A title looking for people to mock.

Weerie

So tired it's strange and almost frightening, but really more weird in that it's distinctly different, but otherwise doesn't feel that weird at all.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Shitholier Than Thou

Oh yeah? So you think your hometown was petty, ignorant, mean-minded, poverty-stricken, ugly and somehow bland and mundane also?

Well I grew up in Roselle, NJ. Beat that.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Whatevah

Seemingly the God of slackers, but really the god(s) of agnostics who'd rather not put any structure on the divine, and who consider the ultimate point really to spend attention on the present rather than the ultimately unknowable, anyway.

Seeing as we're here at all, and the universe requires quite a fair amount of active work just to make our existence possible, it would seem there has to be some kind of a benevolent (beneviolent?) Whatevah somewherehow.

But whether or not there is God(dess)(s)(es), it's still about doing right now with this life anyway.

Therefore and thus, Whatevah.

Monday, February 8, 2010

More audio a-sanity

It's not quite insanity, and it's a bit too fun to be perfectly sane. At least for me.

Just started setting up my Oxygen8 keyboard with Reason 4. Next stop Ableton.

The Setup

Ah, and here's another set of much-less formed riffseeds for about half an album that I've been tooling around with here.

Some Sing
Sweet Night
Job Intervoodoo

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Shakespeare's Cumedies

An aspect of William Shakespeare which is much ignored by the easily-offended academia, has been his early work in porn.

Like many in the entertainment business, he had to do some less tasteful work before his big dream could take flight. Before his big break at the Globe Theatre, his titles included:

A Midsummer Night's Ream
The Merchant of Penis
Julius Seize Her
Tightass Androgynous
As You Lick It
Much Ado About Nutting
King Rear
Cleopatra Does Rome


He is also said to have performed in these plays, under the name of Long Bill Snakespeare.

Take heart, writers everywhere.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Busimess Devewhopper

The lie a developer tells to soften the impact of an upcoming business trainwreck that's just now becoming apparent.

Some substrains of this species include:
The devilwhopper. Example: "Why would anyone need more than 640k?" - Bill Gates
The divawhopper. Example: "The iPad is just awesome!" - Steve Jobs

The Carbohydra

An unfortunately non-mythical beast, which strikes by gradually overloading your midsection and/or upper thighs, until you are trapped within a lair containing a sofa, a television and a refrigerator.

It has many more than 7 heads, made of chips, bread, pasta, crackers, cake, cookies, pizza and more. Cut yourself off from a chip and seven more chips will take it's place...

Fleeing works, but is unfortunately not nearly as delicious.

It's allies are the Chocolate Minitaur and the M&Medusa. All of whom have a sworn enemy in the Tofu Manchu.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Christian Meth vs. Hippiecrisy

Christian Meth is defined as those things which Conservative Christian Civilian Persons (CCCP) go crazy for.

Hippiecrisy is defined as those things which hippies love, that in fact run entirely contrary to their stated goals.

Of course there's unfair and factless generalizations in both of these categories. That's what blogging is all about.

Christian Meth:
- Movies about white families
- Military invasion paranoia porn (see "Red Dawn", "24", "Left Behind", "Fox News")
- Ronald Reagan
- Music which is less culturally challenging than Lawrence Welk
- Sarah Palin (oh man, how they love them some Palin. Good God.)
- Completely disproved political talking points which are emotionally soothing (see "Tax cuts are always good", "Democrats hate the military", "Obama was born in Kenya", "It actually matters that Clinton got a blow job")
- That a fetus is absolutely a human being from the instant of conception - but ask them if they'd save 4 impregnated embryos in petri dishes over a 4-year-old child, and watch the gears start grinding

Hippiecrisy:
- Worrying about fair trade coffee, rather than how poor Americans are screwed over in the Appalachias and all of West Virginia
- Donating to help animals, or the poor in other countries, or animals in other countries, rather ignoring the homeless right across the fricking street (see "Los Angeles downtown Hoovervilles", "People For the Ethical Treatment of Humans" [a group that doesn't exist]).
- Thinking Che Guevera was a heroic revolutionary for the people, when he was in fact another murdering fascist thug the instant he got any power
- Thinking they're awesome for listening to gangster rap, rather than doing a damn thing about actual conditions in American ghettos
- Thinking that talking shit about The Man actually means they aren't, themselves, The Man (see Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Barbara Streisand, most of the executive-assistant-abusers in Hollywood)
- Capitalism is automatically awful
- New Age movements which pretend to be about spiritual betterment, when in fact they are materialist-oriented wealth-lust (see "The Secret") or low-grade pyramind (intentional spelling) schemes (see "Scientology")
- Smoking cigarettes is bad for you, but hemp will save the planet


This article is an example in balance. Conservative Christians are, in general, pretty easy targets. And I disagree with them in just about every one of their Fox-approved talking points. In fact it's a crime and a shame to me how people who are generally screwed over by the GOP's major backers, have had their well-deserved indignation channeled against the populist reforms which would most benefit them - more educational funds, more job-training funds, more restrictions on corporations, and publicly funded health care.

The last point is just craazy. Every single country in the world which has single-payer health care has a healthier population that lives longer AND PAYS LESS. Yet somehow it's off the table - thanks, Democrats.

Which leads to why it may be that Christian Conservatives, and conservatives in general, are in their own way right not to trust the Democrats. Unless Democrats actually stand up and DO things - such as FDR and Harry Truman - or they are at least extremely effective, such as Bill Clinton - they are only slightly better than the GOP. So why, in fact, would conservatives switch?

Now let's talk hippiecrits for a second. Easy targets also - and it's unfair to tar most hippies with this brush. A lot of the benefits we take for granted now, were fought for and achieved by the radical leftists of their day. That kids can go to school and not be worked to death in factories. That minorities can actually vote. That there is no longer a military draft. That there is any social security or medicare at all.

But hippiecrits exhibit a fundamental difference between talk and action, that sets my teeth on edge. Hippiecrits so *almost* get it that they are tragically frustrating. They earn my ire for how much they *say* they want a better world, but in fact take no meaningful action or plans at all.

For a prime example of this, see Ralph Nader. Boy, he says a lot of the exactly right things. But once he stopped forcing car safety and started running for President, what has he actually done? When has he helped a single other progressive candidate get into office, or helped a ballot initiative win, or performed any other meaningful action that actually caused physical changes in the real world? And how in Hell is he supposed to get anything done as President, if he doesn't have a party behind him??

As the USA grows one step closer to pitchforks and torches, those who present actual plans with measurable results will get a majority from both sides - just as President Obama did when he plausibly represented change. Now Obama is in the phase where he must demonstrably achieve those results - which I think he is realizing now. I wait eagerly for politicians of both parties to realize the same.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Awkweird

Strangely enough, one of my favorite zones. There's something soothing about events at the nexus of awkward and weird - it's like the two forces of awkwardness and weirdness cancel out, and in the eye of this hurricane lies something new and forceful, temporarily revealed and at rest.

Gone Fishin' to the Bay Area

Visiting my good friends Brian and Julianne in Santa Cruz, while I explore relocating myself to the Bay Area.

And you know, it really is better here. Even if it's just the same sort of hassles and tasks, it just feels so much better. I went to a DMV this morning, of all places, and compared to a Los Angeles DMV it was somehow a pleasant easy experience. It's not even like the workers were any technically better - it just didn't suck somehow.

Perhaps it's just that the DMV's in Santa Cruz and Los Angeles, are located around views like this:

Santa Cruz.

From Starred Photos


Los Angeles.

From Starred Photos

This Way to the E Trance

I'd like to thank the California DMV for the graphic to my next Psychedelic Trance album. I haven't made one yet, but it's great to have the cover already out of the way.

When I took this picture, some people inside the DMV actually came out and made me stop. I took pictures with my iPhone also, which I deleted in front of them. Somehow taking pictures of signs on the exterior of a building aids possible terrorist activity, apparently.

Which has some others living in such fear, that the terrorists have already defeated them. Thankfully, not me - I'm still using my free mind to sort reasonable concerns from irrational fear-based BS.


From Starred Photos

Monday, January 25, 2010

Ideadhesion: the Stickiness of Ideas

My diet is extremely simple. I'm avoiding one thing - wheat. Now, wheat is in an incredible amount of things. Not just breads, pizza, all cakes, all pastries, and pasta - but in gravies, sauces, sometimes French Fries and even frickin' soy sauce. But it's still a simple diet - avoid all of those things.

I do this because I have a wheat "allergy". It's in what Jon Stewart calls "dick quotes" because eating wheat won't land me in the emergency room with an unexpected bill that costs more than a round trip to Paris with a two-week stay in a 5-star hotel. My wheat "allergy" will give me zits.

But if I eat wheat often over a period of time, my skin gradually gets worse and worse until I'm covered with zits. Which is a problem. At the same time, I love breads for the carbohydrate sirens that they are. This leads me to play with fire and eat bread on special occasions, the key word being "occasionally".

Explaining this to my friends and family can be strangely difficult. I find myself constantly having to restate the reasons for my diet for people who've known of this for years. And to be fair, I'm not being consistent. But they've seen the way my skin was, for years before I eliminated wheat. They see how clear my skin is now.

Further, they know cigarettes are bad, and alcohol, and junk food, and reruns of Robocop II for that matter; yet indulges in those directions don't cause them to question whether those items might actually be healthy. But when I break with what's good for me and succumb to sweet, sweet starchness, they seem to wonder whether they're remembering my diet correctly at all.

I think this lack of memory occurs because avoiding wheat doesn't fit with their worldview. Wheat is good and healthy for everyone, according to all forms of mainstream public opinion and American culture. Thus the default network of other ideas that give context to new ones, just doesn't have a place for my contrary information to fit - and so the idea just doesn't stick.

Where I'm going with this, besides just bitching about my friends, is the larger world this illustrates. As humans we don't tend to think about new ideas on their own merits. We see how the new ideas fit in with our current ideas on similar subjects, and accept or reject the new idea accordingly. So to get people used to a particular idea, sometimes you have to either find a good set of accepted ideas that it will adhere to, create a whole new set of ideas that's so enticing they'll take the bunch - or utterly destroy the current network of ideas with a blunt and shocking reality. *

Perhaps somewhere there's a black magic book of marketing which describes this process in far more exacting and diabolical detail. A way to measure the stickiness of concepts, word-shapes and comfortability-matrices. Methods that other warlocks of language use intuitively when they create names for pharmaceutical industry, companies, or the latest Warner Disney Virgin-slut master-jailbait chickiepoo. (It's war out there, people!)

This whole phenomenon of idea adhesion, as observed in my friends and extrapolated to other less strange humans, makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. It's far more beneficial for us to think in larger patterns and look for wholes, than to deal with individual distinct events or items. It's also how the software of our language-based consciousness works: we create concepts which deal with sets of ideas, because it enables us to organize and assimilate large amounts of information.

It's just freakin' annoying when I'd rather reach for that bagel of a flavor I haven't had in years, and I'd rather not catch an earful. But, maybe that's not a bad thing either. It's not automatically terrible to be consistent.

Friday, January 22, 2010

GetOuttaMyFacebook

Internet Gods, I have sinned: I hate facebook.

I've tried to like it, just as with MySpace, and Friendster, and Tribes before that.

I just don't want random people randomly in my face. Even if I like them. Maybe especially if I like them. Then I feel extra guilty and stupid for not interacting, when at the same time I just don't feel like spending the time and energy it takes. At it's core, I just don't want to respond to a bunch of other people's stuff at a pace that's not my own. I just want to go online, do what I have to do, and go elsewhere. I don't want to have to keep up with a bunch of social crap I don't give a crap about.

Is that wrong of me? Or, more pragmatically, is that the most useful way for me to live? Maybe what I resent is being kicked out of my ADD trance and being forced to focus on someone else. Maybe I should open up more. But isn't anonymity - aka anyone-imity - one of the greatest things about the Internet? It takes out so many dance steps that are required in the meat world. We can get and give as much information as we want, without having to deal with boundaries of identity, swamps of personality, obstacles of social chores and blockades of people in groups.

Has there been a Christian version yet, a Faithbook? If not, it would probably be a winner to start one. For someone else. I can't even stand the secular version, so clearly it's not for me.

But, I'll be on Facebook again, never fear. Probably even tonight. Dealing with friends and such. Social networking is efficient, is good, and is even usually good for the soul. It just gets on my nerves. There's a way to approach it that's better, that doesn't push my real button: my awareness of my need to stay on track.

Nevertheless. Right now, I hate Facebook.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Kafkafornia

So I had a crazy past 6 months. At the end of a 5-day hospital stay caused by an undiagnosed allergy to presciption antiobotics that nearly made my skin fall off, I went home for Christmas and had a great time.

Then I came back to work early to finish out the last days of 2009 - and was laid off on December 31st.

At which point I attempted to file for unemployment, and entered into Kafkafornia. Kind of like the Twilight Zone, but sunnier and more vapid.

I wanted to talk with someone before I filed, so I could make sure I filed at the right time, and do everything properly. There's a phone help line - that tells you to go the website and then hangs up on you. There was no office I could find that had a single human being available to talk with you.

So I filed online, and then looked around some more. There had to be someone somewhere, I figured. Finally I found a strange sort of satellite office located in the upstairs floor of a train station. I called and asked if I'd be able to speak with someone if I came there. They said yes.

So I showed up, waited in line at the desk, and finally got to the desk. I told the clerk I wanted to talk with someone about unemployment. He said I should just file and see. I told him again I wanted to talk with someone. He then handed me a slip of paper with a 3-digit number on it.

To paraphrase, he then said "There's a phone behind you with a direct connection to the unemployment office."

"The same number as on the website?" I said in disbelief.

"Yes. But this time, when you hear 'Welcome', enter this number. If you don't get through, try again. You should reach someone in 4 or 5 tries."

I looked over at the phone. There were 10 guys ahead of me, waiting. Figuring at least 5 minutes to get someone on the line, and at least another 5 minutes for their question, that's 100 minutes.

So I went home, filed, and watched some TV.

The worst thing about this is, on the surface this looks like bureaucracy grown out of control. But in fact it's exactly the opposite: it's cost-cutting gone wild. Rather than hiring people to help the populace, California has cut corners in every way possible to still barely serve the public.

And so it goes.

Boy, California and America in general better get it together. I can't honestly blame Schwarzenegger, at least not alone; the budget's been a mess since Enron days, and it's only continued it's slide. But it's not going to last much longer.

As for America, I think Obama has misread the public, and is delivering a Bill Clinton-style administration when what the country needs is FDR. In defense of Obama, FDR inherited a far worse crisis which enabled him to have far more leeway. But the change Obama promised is unlikely to be delivered with compromise.

I don't think they realize how close the seemingly sleepy public is to pitchforks and torches. One day, it's going to be one corporate bonus or cozy bank deal too much. I'm shocked it hasn't been already. But I guess we're all hope fiends right now.

The Emperor's Psyche's Wack

I wrote this in an email chain a few days ago. May I ever meet George Lucas, I hope he understands. Or, if he's going to hire me, this page may just go on sabbatical a while.

But, dammit Lucas! It's been years now, and I still can't get over it. Why did you do this to me? Why did you release 3 *terrible* movies that utterly cannibalized my childhood?

The why seems clear: he's de-evolved. He's willingly allowed himself to walk down the past of lazy storytelling for dollars. I came to this conclusion when seeing him interviewed on The Daily Show, pushing his own book on making blockbusters. He actually defended the newest-created Star Wars films, by saying they "appeal to different generations". Because pre-schoolers apparently like the newer ones, you see, they're really just as good.

The problem: the old films appealed to young and old. The new ones appeal only to the very youngest.

Jon Stewart, ever the agreeable host, said his preschoolers love the newer Star Wars, including the Clone Wars cartoon series. Of course, all the pretty stuff that explodes looks awesome, and the plot may work all right for pre-schoolers. Hey, maybe Clone Wars is even good. I just can't bring myself to even try to watch them. I've been burned too bad. But also, George Lucas isn't writing the Clone Wars. Seems like he's the background Gene Roddenberry of that scene, if even that...

Which is the crux of the problem. Lucas is not a 3d artist, or a set designer, or a costumer, so he has to hire experts. And they have to impress him. But when he comes up with an idea for a script, who does he have to impress? Emperor Jack of squat. (Or perhaps Simple Jack, which would explain any screentime for the loathsome and borderline racist Jar-Jar). So he can just roll with the lamest idea off the top of his head.

It's just being creatively out-of-shape, developing into the condition of being a middle-aged 600-pound man.

This de-evolution is painfully obvious when looking at Lucas' work. It has steadily gotten less and less mature. He starts with the genuine, raw unsettling genius of THX-1138, then the adult, insightful nostalgia of American Graffiti, then the teen fun of Star Wars ending in a pre-adolescent marketing-emasculated Return of the Jedi (Ewoks!1!! He could have had a planet of ass-kicking wookies and he went with freaking Ewoks????), to the abortive half-heartedness of Willow, to....this bunch of preschool shit with maybe 3 good fight scenes.

What's next, Boba Fetal??

Maybe Lucas really didn't know what he was doing in the beginning, but had to do something. And was supported by people with good instincts. And now that the story is all him, and he isn't facing bankruptcy, he's completely divorced from common (story) sense on the outside and his own unconscious from within.

I can hope one day he'll get it back, because it will be great. In the meantime, it's not a tragedy in the grand scheme. But metaphysically, it's a freakin' shame.

The "mancession"

I heard on NPR yesterday a phrase that grated across my ears like barbed-wire on a baby seal's back. Okay, perhaps not that bad. But bad enough for my tender post-allergic skin. "Mancession".

It's supposed to refer to how many men are out of work in this current recession. And it's so LAZY. "Mancession"? Is that the best you can do?

How about "He-cession?" NPR, want to give me a job lazily coining or co-opting half-cute phrases so I can masquerade as being insightful by simply describing a situation and generalizing, rather than actually providing thoughts as to how to solve the problem?

Here's some free ones: let's call that "men-eralizing". Or "Rat-ionalizing". Or "gener-rat-bastard-ionalizing".

Delightenment

What we all have at our fingertips, every day, by sheer miracle of being alive.

What, in its most active form, looks nearly crazy on others. It is kind of crazy. It's a mania. We rarely feel comfortable displaying it except in concerts or perhaps religious events.

What, when people experience it in a calm form - perhaps without the fear that can give us a hard manic shell - looks even saintly but without the pomposity. Serenity in an active sense.

Simply, joy. It's weird how it's weird to have it. We can as kids. As we get older, it can seem stranger to have it. Even perhaps socially disapproved. This is sometimes considered to be because "life is harder" as we get older. Certainly we feel less protected, especially in my American society where we have much less community and a sense of common caring and purpose. But awful things happen to children too; yet there is still room for delightenment in their lives. A kind of childhood satori. There's no logical or even biological reason why we can't be just as happy at least, as we get older.

I think it's the accumulated weight of stories we get invested in, and habits we become comfortable with even when they suck for us. Get rid of them now, and create a space for delightenment to alight and light us.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Apocalypse WoW Redux

I just now finally cancelled my World of Warcraft account, and deleted it from my hard drive. Those smart, smart pushers at Blizzard have informed me they'll keep my characters on file and will never, ever delete them. So any time I want to come back, they'll be waiting for me - just for an hour or two! That's all!

The first 10 days are free!

Good Lord what an addictive game. I thought I could handle it. I guess I can to some extent, because I'm quitting. And, to be fair, I started it when I was unemployed. I could have spent that time not sending out resumes to write scripts instead - but I didn't. I had to know.

And the worst, craziest thing about World of Warcraft is the seriously intensely addictive nature of it - because it's social. People you've never met are waiting for you to log on, be part of their guild, go slay some digital monster somewhere, go engage in some quest which is far more interesting than this mundane real-world stuff like write, read, go outside, eat, work out, or shower. Now those other things can lead to the grand adventure of, say, having a girlfriend one day - but what if she doesn't play WoW?

I'm frightened to think of what may happen to our civilization if politicians get ahold of the game-designing genius that exists at these video game companies. But then...they already do have them. The games are different, and played for different stakes. But certainly people make them very real. They invest in them. Sometimes all someone has to do is hold out the barest outlines and everything else just plugs in. Witness the teabaggers. Or, to annoy some of my friends on the Left, the campaign of Ralph Nader. Who says all the right things but has yet to produce one political or legislative victory as a candidate. Who doesn't even have a party behind him!

But there I am, getting all invested in it myself.

The thing with games like WoW, or politics, is that they are clearer than real life in one important way: the outcome. We all know the things we can and should do to improve our lives; we just aren't sure that they will work. But we can be sure, in games. In video games, we know that if we kill the boss we'll get to the next level. In political games, we "know" because we believe it that if we get this next election to go our way, we'll be on the path away from destruction and into glory.

Politics are games that we must pay attention to, because everyone else is, and they have power over us. Both the masses of our peers and those we choose (from a list almost always chosen for us).

But life is the game that is our own to play, now and effectively always because we won't know when it ends. And that is the game worthiest of our attention - because it's rewards are of course the most real.

Even realer than, say, some post in a blog.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Avatard

noun. Anyone who gets so far into the movie "Avatar", that s/he starts learning Na'vi as if it was Klingon.

Actually, that would be kind of cool. I could respect the level of nerd scotch-taped-glasses-to-the-grindstone that would take.

I guess a more proper meaning of "Avatard" would apply to those who think the movie has any more meaning than "Pocahontas" meets "Robotech". But that may apply to some of my friends. So, needless to say, to my friends this does not apply.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Wonderings about the future, part infinity plus one (me)

Standing here just over the threshold of a new decade into this new millennium, what does the future hold?

Will the freedom of the 20th century - which really was only achieved in the 1990's, if one considers the relative effects of Jim Crow and de facto exclusion of women from the economic prosperity of the workforce in enabling economic freedom - be subsumed under a 1984-and-beyond future?

I hope and expect not.

Things are a little scary though.

Or are they only scary because I'm getting older, and I'm away from the battlefield? It does seem like more and more that propaganda is used to control people by distracting them from thinking. A kinder, gentler 1984. A kinder, gentler subjugation of the human race by the elites, who themselves are also subjugated by the outlook of the same system - they must believe their control of the world is for the world's own good, or they wouldn't be able to participate. They must make themselves believe it...

And so the whole world continues under this spell of our civilization - leaders and workers. A strange thing. Built upon the firmware of primate psychology, to be sure - pack leaders and followers - but all in a non-human pack share in the work.

The silver lining: new spells can be created from anywhere. And leaders aren't necessarily smarter than workers - smart people and more importantly effective people can and do come from anywhere. It's not a genetic thing, and it's not even an education thing since the information is there now for anyone to educate themselves, if they have exceptional will - it's a software thing. It's how people choose and shape their worldview and their plan according to their own choices and their own free will.

And there is a kernel of free will in everyone, and always will be in every functioning human - any system depends on it, even as it clouds and distracts us from this ultimate internal reality of free choice with bread and circuses, or the current equivalent of hamburgers, war games and bimbos.

So my money is on the seeming randomness resulting from the spark of life, free will, and simple orneriness existing in everyone, to continue to be just one step out of the grasp of mankind's wish for total control.

My bet: as long as there are systems, there will be hackers. And information will always want to be free. With that desire for information, comes our freedom as well.

Now to get a job.

Apocalypse WoW

The destruction of one's life by playing too much of the online game World of Warcraft (WoW).

Picture a doughy, Red Bull-swigging Kurtz in a dorm room, illuminated only by a shaft of light penetrating the musty darkness from his monitor. "The horror...the horror..."

Holycaust

A dreams of many Christian fundamentalists, in which all who believe differently than they are quietly and cleanly evicted to Hell so they can meekly inherit the entire earth, and not even have to clean up their own messes.

In other words, Jesus as a combination of Himmler and Mini-maids.

To be fair, this only the Christian variation. A secular version involves the just come-uppance of a wasteful humanity via the destruction of the environment; a New Age version involves the 2012 Apocalypse, in which we Westerners who did not heed the ancient wisdom of the (brutally warlike and human sacrificing) beautiful Mayan people will be doomed, doomed I say! And only those who heed the wisdom and head for the freakin' hills might be saved.

The operative traits of this groupthink syndrome seem to be:
1. only believers have a chance
2. all others are doomed to their fair comeuppance for not believing the believers
3. the earth is violently cleansed and left to the use of the believers - if it's left at all.

Orcward

The social faux paus of discovering a co-worker is actually an orc, when you've just been going on at lunch about how awesome it was to see all those orcs massacred in "Lord of the Rings".

Procrastinaction

Standing within that rare zen instance where things get done around you by you doing very little, in just such a way that the more active parts of the universe move through that empty space to slide into completion.

The eye of a tornado.

Passive progressive

Doing things to help others, behind their back.

Multi Slacking

Avoiding doing what you really should be doing, by doing a bunch of other things at the same time.

Blogging doesn't count.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Squanderrific Fabulust

The condition of needing to buy, as a silent emotional definition of one's purpose: conquering whichever store one's in by acquiring it's most desirable things.

Part of this also involves the emotional territory of having something, so someone else will *not* get it. It's actually use or utility or superiority to other objects is actually a side issue - a rationale rather than a reason.

There is within this also a touch of the gambler's high; the expression of the deathwish, the brush with chaos, the hanging-toes-over-the-edge-of-Hell feeling of spending one's wad on something cool.

Anyway, that new Mac touchscreen sure looks sweet.

Steve Martin - "That's all I need!"

Slacktivation

A sort of vapor-lock of the soul, in which the space of having nothing to do is so delicious that one extends it well past the point in time in which there is actually something to do.

So one is actually actively pursuing the avoidance of actively pursuing anything else.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Unclosed Dislocation

What Dick Cheney is apparently feeling on his eviction from the White House - an emotional dislocation which can't be resolved, and thus leaves him wounded and lost. By needing to be emotionally close to the power, he thus persuades him to think he has **any** credibility to criticize **any** other administration's national security policies.

See also: "National Insecurity".

Once again, this is what it's like to be addicted to ideas.

I have a lot to do today.

So I figured I'd just sit down and work on another little piece of music.

3 hours ago.

Strange Times

I love it. It's all off-time, with a groove. Maybe it's in 5/4 time? You know, standard 4/4 with an extra beat before it repeats? I still have to layer it and arrange it - it's a little confusing, all coming in at once. It would probably be much better served as a piece if the drums and bass came in first, and then the layering pads.

Also the drums are constantly changing in small ways, which I like. This is due to a "Random" setting within Ableton. There's more for me to learn there, as well. What I'd ideally like is to pair similar randomness with forcing it to play within a scale; and then have those scale notes trigger similar randomly-generated motifs. *Not* noise; within a scale, and within a direction even.

Then output the whole thing as midi and shape it into a fully composed piece.

Or, finish my scripts, or finish my novels, or finish the several movies I have unedited...and pursue my lifelong goal of creating a spiritual framework for understanding and being in line with the truth of pure information itself.

Or, do my errands. Which I'm about to, now that I feel recharged.

Friday, January 1, 2010

More music

The first distracting tunes of the New Year.

God, I love Ableton Live. At this rate I'll have the raw materials for a full album in about a week. During which time I'll also learn my next belt in Kung Fu, learn Flash, and solve the Unfied Field Theory (hint: the Strong Force is Love).


Highbrid
Annual Crazy Day

Buh-bye 2009, and the decade you rode in on.

Don't get me wrong (I'll get myself wrong on my own), a lot of good things happened in 2000-2009. Both for me personally and for a lot of people. Most importantly, all of us here are still alive and reasonably healthy. Far more than in any other time in human history.

But it sure seems that this decade had more than it's share of total freaking chaos. And lot of chaos-inducing crap that didn't need to happen if people were just paying attention. Yes I'm looking at you, Bush administration...and the just-over 50% of American voters who somehow re-elected you.

And what can you say about a decade that began with not even knowing who our President would be - for months?? A decade that is now bracketed on both sides with recessions bordering on depressions, a two-front war, and Britney Spears to boot?

In my own personal life, where my focus is probably more worthily spent, it's been a similarly crazy decade. Realistically, every decade of my life has been pretty crazy. But this decade, and in particular these past 6 months, have been especially ridiculous.

Reviewing the past is an infinitely-edged sword. One arbitrarily selects a number of years and examines them as if they are a cohesive unit. Rather than just a period in which a bunch of stuff happened. We still need to go through this process, in order to understand the present and then plan for the future - but we need to be aware that such a review can only be subjective. And very incomplete.

In other words, no matter what we guess about the causes, shit happens and it's done. In a real sense, the past doesn't even exist any more. Nor the future. All there is is the knife-edge of the present, expanding and contracting according to the scope of our focus. Just as all that really matters in the entire physical universe is the range we're focused on outside ourselves. We can focus on something as small as the fly on our hand, or as large as the jet plane we're flying in. Our focus can even expand to abstract concepts of impossible size such as nations, globe and species.

But no matter what bits of space and time we're focusing on, it's still just a bunch of stuff that is, and events that happen, that we move our way through and try to plan how to best come out the other side.

So, whew. With all of that in mind, I wish everyone (including me!) the best of all possible fortunes in this coming year, and coming decade, and all that moves forward after that.

Because life is beautiful and even existing is such a blessing that everything afterwards is parsley on the full and lovely plate.