Archive for category [ ｍｅｔａ ]

I hate to break character but no fool is clowning me this time next year when the world has not yet ended. I did not get religious. I’m not a Republican. I believe in higher taxes for everyone, mandatory same-sex marriage, and teaching Freemasonry in schools. (Which, like algebra, the kids may never use but at the very least they will be able to understand music videos.)

So some of these lists got a little crazy. Glad I got them done tho. I think I could have done a better job with 2001. I think some of that 2nd part was 2002. You know that whole 9/11 thing…people think it’s funny now but… Uh. Yeah that messed things up a bit. Some missing chunks towards the end of that year. I’ve averaged the two years together in my head and lost focus on the more positive, social stuff that was happening. (Like social drinking.) But there’s only ten things in a top ten list so the most intense things make it. That’s what is so dumb about trying to sum up a whole year with ten things in general. The picks are for real but I’m making fun of the list format, or the idea of trying to sum up everything at once. But I like the idea of more really specific lists. That’s where things get interesting, the more it gets away from critical consensus of what’s “Best”. I think I have my links and feeds and twitters in order where it’s the stuff I care about following. I don’t need to weigh in on the Pitchfork list every year, or whatever. (I should really catch up on The Roots tho at least, I’m 3 albums behind now.) Lotta bandcamp albums to go through. Think I’ve lowered the standard or set the tone enough….I’m just a message board dude with a graphic design fetish. Aside from the life issues, that’s all this is.

Coming up on a month post-JLPT. December is pretty brutal for getting anything done, so the Ankis have piled up pretty high. Getting better at customizing the thing, deleting cards I really know well (being careful with that but I think the katakana cards are safe to ditch), adding a new deck for words and expressions I find on blogs. Maybe get to editing the song decks. (Altho I’m not sure how great the song vocab is for learning what words can mean in context of a song.) Gotta make some kind of jump to try to apply this to something.

Got to get on ebay as a regular thing. Def a lot of things I could get rid of, I just can’t get it organized.

Working with a higher bass tuning. Had the C# 3rds tuning for a while, which I should really write up or do some youtube vids. (This is something I attempted to explain in the podcast.) I started using the tuning as a way to simplify using a numeric notation system for microtones, and learn general music theory better but it’s interesting by itself. Now it’s starting with E because I’m just playing along with songs and I wanted a higher range, but the thing sounds better under higher tension. Built up the finger muscles where it doesn’t bother me (thumb and wrist were killing me for a long time). Tried playing guitar a little the other day, don’t have the guitar callouses anymore, kinda sucks but I never got good at actually playing, I just like it for drones. I think bass might be my main instrument. I’m a total moron. I can’t believe any of this.

Ok, it’s time to delete the whole blog. It’s all done. We’ve done it. Everything’s resolved. No, wait. Come back, It’ll be fine.%

Next: reviews…?

I think you’ve figured out what it is, self. You don’t really feel like you did when you are a teenager. You were miserable as a teenager. You had plenty of friends, you were getting laid, you even got into the school you wanted at the end there. There was money for records and books without much real work. Still there was a kind of constant crushing depression. Now you aren’t depressed in the same way at all, even though money is low, work is…work, friends are rarely seen, getting laid seems not a remote possibility. There were periods where you were thinking more clearly. It’s about the company you keep, or in this case, do not keep. It’s not a revelation about religious or sexual orientation, you’ve just got poor judgement about who to hang onto and who to run away from. Like anyone you truly have something in common with, who might get you somewhere you actually want to go; those people get ditched for some obscure reason. Even now, you’re thinking more having to tell someone to fuck off because they aren’t the type of person you were talking about. That is the bigger concern than going nowhere forever. Forget that. The bad news is you aren’t currently around the right the people, the people who used to be all around that you blew off for no reason. But the good news is you aren’t around the wrong people. The people aren’t wrong themselves, you’ve just got entirely different agendas in life and didn’t want to admit it. You’re on the right track now. Put that stupid doohickey at the end of this bullshit and get back to work. %

Things are coming together, and by “things” I mean brain cells, specifically, mine. Looking for someone’s address today, sorry I didn’t do postcards this year, found my old card list, used to send out a bunch. Maybe I’ll do it for New Year’s. But I found this old mini-journal, I starded doing lj in 05 I think and I deleted almost all of it but I wrote a lot. It was mostly crap but it helped. I forgot how much it helped cause I found stuff from 04, stuff I just typed up in Notepad (very short entries) and I was completely zonked. Then I remember at some point after that I had the txt files up for download…dumber than the writing. The format is kinda interesting, if you take it as an art piece. Some of it is like that, intentionally poetic or abstract. But then some is just bullshit. If I let myself write more I think I would have figured this faster.

This past year I’ve been thinking about how I’ve almost regressed to being like I was as a teenager and it was really starting to bug me, but now I see I was actually thinking a lot more clearly then. Like I really thought about a future career up to a certain point, then there are years of random nonsense. Completely lost. That’s all I’m going to say about it.

But records, folks. We can talk records. Working on some drafts. And a hard drive reformat. %

I know I need to get more professional. It’s what this whole having-a-website thing is about isn’t it? Having my shit together is Plan B, that’s all I’m saying. Whatever dumb job pays the rent is fine and I’ll make my completely unaccessible art/music to explain my own life back to me. Maybe, maybe (of course) it could make me famous 100 years after I’m dead. That’s the dream! But it’s just not working out. I walked out on too many of those dumb jobs. It didn’t used to matter, you could take some time off and walk right into another job a month later (only way to get a vacation anyway). But these place are a lot pickier now. The unbelievably stupid dream is dead. Let’s be clear, I wasn’t looking for a showbiz “break”, I mean a break like finding a winning lottery ticket, one of my relatives dying (after winning the lottery—not a rich family—and also deciding they liked me enough to actually inherit anything, just as unlikely). Or there’s always marrying a lottery winner. (Assuming a conventionally rich woman would be too smart or high class to fall for me…still holding out for this one tho. It’s statistically most probable and no has to die.)

But the time has come to begin thinking about trying to begin trying to get a real job. Yes, I could live with my parents indefinitely and continue blogging and working odd jobs, making only enough money for gas and multiple credit card bills. But that road only leads to easily earned respect—blogging is widely accepted the only true valid art form of the 21st century—but it’s too easy! I’d just be coasting.

I dunno where the fuck I’m going with this, I gotta walk my dog. Peace. %

12.7.84 Oklahoma City OK [...] During the second set, the crowd was that curious college type. They have what I call “R.E.M. Sensibilities” and Black Flag has a tendency to make them react in strange ways.

I’ve had this example in my head since I read Get In The Van a couple years ago about contradiction in writing and how blogging and the internet in general—having everything everyone has ever said on record being easily available—is destroying any young person’s attempt at achieving emotional maturity and enabling everyone else to sink even lower, to the point where everyone can act like a bunch of 5th graders and no one even thinks it’s weird anymore. Problem is, the example doesn’t exist in the book the way I remember it. There’s two R.E.M. references in the book, but they aren’t close enough to have anything to do with each other (somewhere later he’s simply listening to them while writing: “R.E.M. on the stereo”). The way I remember it, he’s coming down a lot harder on the fans, then soon after he’s grooving out to them with no qualification. It’s not exactly scandalous however you embellish it but I figure, if this was a blog he’d have to have some bullshit in there like “hey guys, I know I said these R.E.M. people could never do what I do and that I would destroy them, but you know…the band does have some catchy tunes.” The comments would be apeshit. Backpedaling would be demanded, yet not at all accepted. Anytime he did anything: “Rollins? That fucker can’t even make up his mind about R.E.M.” Nonsense.

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Man, this WordPress 3.3 is great. Recently I’ve been realizing I take my internet knowledge for granted. Never thought about using it to get a real job, or any job. Just been doing whatever menial work and only thought about doing more of the same until I got some “break” of some kind. Well, I guess I know some stuff. Not too great at selling myself obviously. Saw the Weekly was looking for someone to write up live shows a while ago, but that’s their “intern” position and it required a resume and cover letter. I could see free shows as a fine enough type of payment but if I had a decent resume I would at least attempt to be getting a real job with it. Never understood the cover letter. I’d rather dig trenches for a year if I could skip the cover letter. I have to sell you the quality of my past trench digging? Can you just look at these trenches? Deep enough? I’ll dig some more. The last job I applied for before I had to move back in with my parents was dishwasher at a waffle house, 45 minute commute by train and bike. Anything but retail again. But I had no experience. Or they assumed I was crazy. I mean, that’s reasonable. Really wanted that job. But this WordPress update is great. Highly Recommended. %

Moved all the links that were just bookmarks to tumblr. Also managed to get into the my old livejournal, which I had lost the password and the email for but I finally got in there, cleaned things up a bit, changed the links to updated personal links and consolidated the rest (most links were to dead or deleted blogs anyway). I’m not going back to posting there, but there is a livejournal feed that works for this blog now, since I’ve redirected the feed from the old blog (does this make sense? It does for some.) And for I while I haven’t been linking to blogs that are already showing up on my blogspot profile. There’s some fuzziness to the whole process that keeps me from trying to make a “best of the internet” list which is a good way to make you want to quit the internet and/or life. Both will end on their own time. I mean…cheer up? Happy holidays.
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ffffffffsssssssss. Ha. Anyway, can you believe no one has typed out the entirety of Get In The Van somewhere? Unbelievable. I’ve been trying to find this Rollins quote about R.E.M and I basically have to find my copy and reread the whole thing. Which is not so bad, but it’s getting down to the end of the year. I wanted to tie the whole R.E.M. thing together tho and it’s bugging me and I’ve blown the segue. And the goddamn end of the year list. I don’t even know if I got 10 albums this year for a list but I’m going to figure that out too. I got top 10s for 2001 and 1991 too that would be pretty dumb to do after this month. Those are good years to look at. What was I really listening to? Gotta think about it. This blog is not what I’m doing with the entirety of my life, people…anyone. Helps me keep things together. A blog could only be year-end lists, couldn’t it? Think I’m killing all the blogging activity with my band/musical project, Hakujin. It’s like painting a statement of purpose into the painting, which I’m sure has been done a dozen different ways by now and I was mostly just fucking with people anyway. The mess started when I put the thing on MySpace. It is not about interaction. Hilarious it ever went in that direction, but I’m that serious about experimentation. Yes, I went to art school. It was relatively affordable then. I had a partial scholarship. Alright? My parents are maybe overly optimistic. I don’t know what any of us was thinking now that I think about it. Sometimes you’ve just gotta hit the reset button on your brain. Shake out the console. Blow on the cartridge. Step back, ponder your metaphor-hoard. Yes, we’ll need some restocking. Ok. Back to work. %

Which is…what. But I gotta keep doing it. So, I took the JLPT on Sunday. More than that I cannot say. That thing is locked down tight…I may have already said too much. My failing score could be voided! I might have passed, but barely (it’s simply pass/fail). The test is not easy is what I’m saying. I find out in February. Oh, I’ll take the thing again regardless. I got 3 more levels if I pass this one. What else have I got? This thing was at Villanova, which is just outside of North Philly. I never get up that way and I sure have no other excuse to be on the actual campus. Seems like a hell of a school, couldn’t imagine it. Makes you think. I might have bummed me out more if everything were not in the shape it is. That part of the school was all devoted to business classes and a few years ago you’d be thinking all these kids are definitely getting better jobs right out of school than I will ever get. But now, who knows? You almost feel bad for them. Yeah, I don’t know. Things in general…not looking too great. But you could almost forget all that on such a nice campus. Colleges are like the malls of intellect. On the way there I noticed a few random protests; on the way back I saw a lot of sandwich boarders announcing going out of business sales. Lot of panhandling, a couple bums, but a lot of charities and kids from schools. Lot of activity in the streets. Went slightly out of my way to check out a sound art installation I had heard about but it seemed to have been taken down. Some interesting neighborhoods along that way, at least, parts of neighborhoods. Glad I have a car now to check stuff out like this but I barely ever have money to do anything after the obvious. But I used to be horrible with money when I had steady retail work. Think about going back to that sometimes (or if it’s even possible) but I was so depressed. I’m a total fuck-up right now but I don’t want to kill myself. I think some things can get better. Like it might seem like I’m selfishly wasting resources just driving around “checking things out”, but I’ve set it up so I can decontaminate sea life damaged in oil spills while I’m driving. Some people (haters) will say it’s too dangerous to operate a motor vehicle while combing sludge off a puffin, but what’s “safe” really? You’ve got to pick your battles. %