Perhaps I Did...

Thinking About Creativity

2006-12-29T12:25:00.000-06:00

I've been mulling over some things lately with respect to creativity. Specifically, regarding music, but it is often generalized to art, writing; basically anything regarding the synthesis of elements into a new and slightly different form.

My friend Gavin noted to me yesterday that he couldn't easily pin down the kind of music that I enjoy. Of course, I responded with the inevitable, "I like any music that's good music." But I would like to refine that idea a bit within the ghostly space of the online realm.

I tend to despise genres. I think that they are necessary, but still evil, in that people decide to define their own personality and taste with respect to these artificial formal definitions of style. It's useful to label something as "Jazz," "Blues," or "Kraut Rock." But when someone decides definitively that "I only like House Music," or "Nu Metal is the only good music," they are slinking up into a really tall tree without many low branches; it's hard to climb down and open up to new experiences.

To be dichotomous about things, I will offer up an adage:

There are two kinds of artists: Those who define a style, and those
who mimic one.

The perpetuation of creative ideas within the iron walls of genre tends to result in artistic incest, and we all know that inbreeding, while wonderful for exaggerating form, results in serious defects otherwise. Like with natural selection, exogamous pairings will create more robust progeny. Bringing in from the outside is the healthiest thing that can be done with a genre.

I read a nice article about Kieran Hebden, also known as Four Tet. I offer a snippet to support my own thoughts.

The current climate of pop music doesn't sit well with Hebden. For the past two years, one band after another has got huge by rehashing the classic rock sounds of the 1960s and 70s, and the tide doesn't look as though it's going to turn for some time yet. The Australian retro-rock band Jet, in particular, inspire Hebden's wrath.
"I'd rather listen to 15 Emma Bunton albums than a single song by Jet, who I think are the most offensive band in the world right now. They are militantly retro, combined with this ugly arrogance. Jet say that they want to be like the Rolling Stones, who are, they claim, the only good band in the world. But when the Stones made their great albums, that wasn't their attitude at all - their ears were open to so much."
Hebden recounts a Miles Davis story to reflect the difference between the originators and bands that idolise them. "He was at a concert, a few years after doing Kind of Blue, and there was a straight jazz band doing Kind of Blue-era music. They know that he's in the crowd, and they go up to him afterwards and ask him what he thought. He said, 'Didn't we do it right the first time?' Maybe the ultimate respect to show the music you love is never to try to emulate it."

Seasonal Thang (Or, Hyperbolic Perception of Time)

2006-12-25T22:55:00.000-06:00

2006 has been a crazy year. It's strange how fast the years begin to flow as age progresses. Well, not really that strange, if you think about it mathematically.

Our perception of time is directly linked to the amount of time which we have already percieved. A two-year old toddler will percieve one year as half of her life; a 75 year old person will percieve the same year as 1/75th of his life. So we could (if we're being really dorky) apply the hyperbola f(x) = 1/x (where x is time in years) to represent our perception of time.

In any case, this past 1/24th of my life has been full of perplexing challenges and satisfying achievements. I have a lot to be thankful for. A few great friends, a lot of neat-o acquaintances, a loving family, a darling girlfriend; these are but a few of the blessings that I can count.

I'm especially thankful for those people who've gambled precious moments of their short time on this spinning ball by engaging in creative projects with me. It's been truly grand to be a part of something bigger than myself, and to record testaments to our collaborations in the pulsing flesh of the electronic netherworld. To those of you whom I have not yet had the opportunity to work with: our time will come. It will be awesome.

It's my hope that I will continue to grow and stave off the dullard crusts that calcify the soul as cash and convention consume. I hope and pray the same for you. I hope and pray for clean water and health care for everyone in need. I hope and pray for an end to senseless follow-the-leader-ing and sloagan-slinging. I hope and pray that we all find peace and purpose in this ever-complexifying world.

Have a merry Christmas, or December 25th and beyond if you'd rather.

Bloodsucking Leaches Part II

2006-11-15T14:21:00.000-06:00

VNR = Video News Release. They are a tool used by public relations firms to "educate" the public by producing very slick, news-like featurettes which can then be showcased on local news programs.

What's alarming about them is that the stations rarely identify that the sources of this "news" is a company who's business is directly effected by the political ramifications of the issues which they address.

Democracy Now explains in greater detail (emphasis added):

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to speak with one of the authors of the report in a minute. But first, let's take a look at one of the VNRs that made it to air. In June of this year, the PR firm Medialink Worldwide put out a VNR that sought to disprove the link between global warming and hurricanes.

VNR NARRATOR: You've seen it before: winds, floods, the devastation left after a massive hurricane passes through. There's a lot of debate as to what's been causing all of these hurricanes. Some scientists say it's part of a naturally occurring cycle, while others have made the claim global warming is to blame. Dr. William Gray and Dr. James O'Brien, two of the nation's top weather and [inaudible], point to scientific data for the answer.

DR. WILLIAM GRAY: We only have good data with a satellite around the globe, going back about 20 years. And in those 20 years, we see no significant change in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes or major hurricanes around the globe.

VNR NARRATOR: Gray and many of his colleagues believe it's not global warming that’s creating these massive hurricanes, but the cycle of nature itself.

DR. WILLIAM GRAY: Since it’s changed, there's been a lot of people saying, “A-ha, the globe is warming. This is a cause of these last two years’ storms.” Well, we don't think that's the case. Whether this is a way nature sometimes works.

VNR NARRATOR: It’s these changes in the Atlantic salt content and currents that Gray says causes most of the hurricanes on the East and Gulf Coasts. This year the probability of a major hurricane is about 81%. And while this number is a prediction, it's based on science and research, so it never hurts to be prepared. I'm Kate Brookes.

AMY GOODMAN: This VNR was produced for the firm TCS Daily Science Roundtable. Until last month, TCS was owned by the Republican lobbyist, DCI Group. TCS was also the recipient of a $95,000 grant from the oil giant ExxonMobil for, quote, "climate change support." But when ABC affiliate WTOK-11 in Meridian, Mississippi, aired the VNR in May, none of these details were mentioned. Instead, viewers were shown an edited version of the VNR with the station's news anchor reading the same script.

WTOK-11 ANCHOR: Hurricane seasons for the next 20 years could be severe, but don’t blame global warming. One of the nation's foremost hurricane predictors is Dr. William Gray, the famed Colorado State University hurricane predictor. He says the earth's natural cycles are to blame for the increase in activity.

DR. WILLIAM GRAY: Since it’s changed, there's been a lot of people saying, “A-ha, the globe is warming. This is a cause of these last two years’ storms.” Well, we don't think that's the case. Whether this is a way nature sometimes works.

WTOK-11 ANCHOR: Gray makes predictions for the upcoming hurricane season every year before it begins.

AMY GOODMAN: That was from ABC affiliate WTOK-11 in Meridian, Mississippi, in May. We asked a representative of the station to come on our program, but we didn't get a response. Another 15 stations either turned down our request or didn't respond.

Read the rest here.

Bloodsucking Leaches

2006-11-15T10:42:00.000-06:00

Democratic lobbyists are fielding calls from pharmaceutical companies, the oil and gas industry and military companies, all of which had grown accustomed to patronizing Republicans, as the environment in Washington abruptly shifts.
[From The New York Times.]

So the real political masters in this country will still be having their cake as well as eating it. When will our nation realize that all our political actions are intimately tied to producing more wealth for a small slice of the population?

I Love Sharing...

2006-10-19T08:57:00.000-05:00

There's a really great website that I feel the extreme urge to plug. It's called Freesound, and it is a soundfile sharing site that is under a Creative Commons license. This means that you are free to use these sounds as you like (with some minor restrictions, such as attribution).

Freesound also encourages it's users to upload files. I've used quite a few field recordings from freesound in episodes of The Radio Project, but until yesterday, haven't uploaded a single thing. It's quite fun to plow through the hours upon hours of audio that I've generated, and then selecting small snippets that are finely tuned and crafted for sharing. I will probably become addicted to it!

In other, slightly related news, I decided to take up those annoying pledge drive announcers and acctually donate some cash to a local independent station, KKFI. It feels good to share!

Links:

http://freesound.iua.upf.edu
http://creativecommons.org

Doseone Quote

2006-10-13T15:20:00.000-05:00

From a Pitchfork Media Interview with Doseone.

'What sometimes gives me an empty feeling is that I read these fucking descriptions of my writing and [they say it's] obsequious, and vague, and I just don't know what these people read-- do they think I'm on tabs of acid...What I remove from my writing is linear context. It's not really important to me, because it doesn't give me chills to see, "you flip the latch and the lock opens and then you can open the top of the chest and inside the chest is this." That doesn't give me chills, to think in that vein. So I've always kind of avoided it.

We make selfish music. The pace is dictated by us. If I want a breakdown here, I put a fucking breakdown here. I am not concerned about the 80 BMP consistency law of popular music. I'm concerned with other things, and they're very valid.'

Internet Distribution Is My Hero

2006-10-13T00:22:00.000-05:00

I know I like to toot my own horn a bunch and you're probably sick of hearing it, but The Radio Project just broke 3000 total episode downloads!

This is really exciting for me, and with my current job I am in a position to purchase some personal studio equipment. Once this is acquired, I will begin production of new episodes right here in Kansas City. As always, submissions are welcome!

Most amazing is that there are still subscribers, even after this long hiatus after my graduation. A recent high count of 113 loyal RSS subscribers is a decent amount of ears!

New Radio Project Episode

2006-09-13T10:35:00.000-05:00

The title says it all. If you haven't subscribed to The Radio Project's RSS feed, this episode will explain why you should, as well as give you a dose of some Caribbean philosophy, and how media companies are trying to take away democratic media.

link.

Zero TV

2006-09-07T13:10:00.000-05:00

Oh man, I just found the most awesome site (thanks to Boingboing). It's a video site called Zero TV, which has a ton of really wierd mini soap operas and stuff on it.

Some of my favorites include:

Mary Worth, which takes the comic strip and makes it into a surreal, stiff, Lynchian soap opera.

Milwaukee, a long-running soap about a brewing family in the aforenamed town.

And Milhaus, which is just really funny and strange.

This is totally the kind of direction that I wanted to take the minidramas on The Radio Project. If anyone is interested in creating some material to submit to Zero TV, let me know!

Life is good.

2006-08-22T00:15:00.000-05:00

My first day of work went well. I edited some video using Adobe Premier, and my Final Cut Pro knowledge carried over quite well.

Right now I'm listening to Oxygene by Jean Michel Jarre, sipping "HRM Rex-Goliath!" Giant 47 Pound Rooster Pino Noir (yes, an animal wine) and eating salted organic home grown tomato slices that I bought at the 39th St. farmers market.

Aaaah.

What's been going on...

2006-08-18T12:23:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've last posted, so it's time for an update.

Right now I'm living in Midtown Kansas City with my lovely girlfriend Mary Balda, and her crazy white dog, Archie. She had an opening at the most recent First Friday art crawl, and the response was encouraging.

I started my post-college career as many do: in food service. I delivered monstrous 30 inch pizzas for d'Bronx, a local shop right down the block on 39th and Bell, for about two months (check it out sometime, it's quite yummy), and also waited tables (first time ever!) at Harry's Country Club (cigarette smoke, slide guitars and bola ties, not frou-frou golf course and Polo shirts).

Now I'm getting ready to start a new (salaried!) position at a company called NovaStar, doing a thing called "Instructional Design." I'm still not sure exactly what it entails, or how my background (Math & Anthropology) fits into things, but I'll find out soon, since my first day is Monday.

In creative news, I'm doing some sound and video design for my friend Ashley Miller and his band Pewep in the Formats on September 2nd at The Pistol, a sweet West Bottoms venue run by cool kats Joe and Laura. It will be swell, so come out to see it!

Oh and I recently read this really odd graphic novel called Black Hole, by Charles Burns. The art is thick and bold, and the story is a surreal teenage mystery.

I've still got the last episode of The Radio Project to upload, so I'll try to get that up soon. Will anybody be carrying the torch this next school year?

Ommegang

2006-06-25T01:54:00.000-05:00

Digital Democratic Media: A Video

2006-05-19T15:03:00.000-05:00

I just uploaded my video project from my Digital Ethnography class with Dr. Michael Wesch. You can view it here via YouTube, or check out the direct link here (right click and save as).

Newspaper Coverage!

2006-05-04T20:17:00.003-05:00

The KSU newspaper, The Collegian finally picked up a story on The Radio Project. It's got a few photos and some quotes from me and a few other participants in the program, and was written by Mark Sibilla.

You can read the article here. These pictures are from the Collegian website, since they'll most likely take them down in a week or two to conserve server space.

Thanks Mark!

Fifteen Mb of Fame, Threats to Media Democracy

2006-05-02T14:41:00.000-05:00

Oh, I forgot to mention another bragging right in the previous post: The Radio Project has been featured on the nifty monthly showcase, Famous for 15mb, which is quite the honor, if you look at the roster. They've got Craque, a talented independent fellow sound sculptor and podcaster, and countless others from the U.S., Spain, Denmark, Hong Kong, Mexico, and more!

It's great how the internet allows producers of content to exist with little to no cost for their distribution and marketing. Shamefully, there are efforts going on right now that are trying to destroy this democratic mass media ecosystem.

If it weren't for the watchful eyes of IPac, the austere Electronic Freedom Foundation, and others, media democracy would be an illusion perpetuated by Fox News and the like, but kept as a democracy of the monied few.

We need to keep a watchful eye on the hegemons of media, who are desperately trying to use legal means to secure absolute control over all information, obliterating the public domain and requiring licensing for use of all media. This would make it impossible for small, independent media producers to use such material as a reference source, which is an important right for anyone publishing news or scholarly work.

Reference is key to legitimacy, and the greedy companies that control the world's information flow want to keep that legitimacy away from the independent producers who threaten their grasp on the minds of the masses.

Don't let this happen. learn more by clicking on the following links, and contact your senator and representative today!

http://www.eff.org/IP/WIPO/broadcasting_treaty/

http://www.public-domain.org/?q=node/47

The Radio Project: Broke 1000 Downloads!

2006-05-01T15:05:00.000-05:00

Wow, I must have just missed the big moment, but on the last check at Feedburner, here is the item useage for The Radio Project.

As you can see, our most popular episode as of yet is EPISODE 010, my birthday episode, with 290 downloads. I don't know if that means that almost 300 people have listened to this show, or if there's just a bunch of bots doing something, but it sure feels good to compare today's stats with those of just over a month ago!

Oh, and to add to that, I forgot to mention that I won two awards from the Kansas Association of Broadcasters Student Broadcasters Award. My anthropological piece Search for the Sacred got first place in the documentary category, and is featured as the last segment of The Radio Project: EPISODE 001. My comrades Rachel Coulter, Jess Singer, Lisa Scruggs, Matt Fields, Jake Acosta, and I all got second place in the entertainment category for The Radio Project: EPISODE 002. This couldn't have happened without the help of my creative and devoted friends.
Good job guys!

Sheesh! With all this radio/podcast/video/who knows what else, it's a wonder I've got time to eat/drink/sleep!

Anyone looking for a restlessly creative intern this summer?

91.9 Computer Evidence

2006-04-19T22:27:00.000-05:00

919computer
Originally uploaded by Captain Redbeard.

Heh. I just found evidence that someone(s) at the KSDB radio station had downloaded the infamous Shaye Saint John video clip from Vimeo.

It looks like we have some fans at the radio station! Note the renaming of the file to "hipsters."

Incidentally, I also found in the same "Recycling Bin" a copy of a surrealist animation that some friends and I did back at the end of last year.

Bad Judgement

2006-04-17T20:26:00.000-05:00

It was bad judgement for me to post my last entry with such vitriol and hatred for the local Manhattan bar PJ's. I did so hastily and after a bad encounter at their open mic night over a week ago, and since then much drama has ensued from the spiteless noise performance that my friends and I participated in.

Here is a video clip of part of the evening (the noise band portion).

View this clip on Vimeo

After this, my friend Joey Murphy (who was in the noise act first) played a set of his composed music, and people were rude to him during it. In hindsight, it would have been a better idea if Joey had played his prepared material first, and then been followed by the noise.

Concurrent with my angered posting, which was sparked by some hateful words from regulars of the bar toward Joey, myself, and my friend Lisa, a post appeared on a local music scene website called MMCLive. You can follow the thread at this link. Basically I am called pretentious and a moron with no respect for anyone, and I try to defend myself while stirring up more trash talk. Resolution is unlikely, sadly.

However, I do not have any ill will toward those who are so angry. I find it amusing that our noise performance, which really was done with full hearts and without ill will, could cause such a stir. I went to PJ's for a show on Friday evening, and Aid performed, as well as Pineapple Truck, new upcoming group Shhh, and Emma's Mine. I enjoyed the evening very much, and wish that more shows of that caliber would take place in this town.

So, I apologize for the ill feelings and elitist attitudes. It's hard to tell where they started at this point, since I've felt snubbed by a certain local band in Manhattan since my band Blum(b) played our first show at PJ's, and the band members came in with their groupies and guffawed at the fact that we were using a turntable in the performance. They left without listening or even saying "hello" to me, even though I knew several of the band members and had even had a few glasses of wine and jammed with one of them at his apartment several weeks before.

So pretension sparks ill-will sparks anger sparks bad posts, and it is too much to deal with. I have two degrees to finish up this month, and I'd rather worry about that than waste more time on this.

Shaye Saint John Shoutouts

2006-04-09T22:22:00.000-05:00

Before the townies got angry at some dilettante open mic night at a depressing bar called PJ's (the Colombians and Pedestrian Pancakes ruled, however), we decided to test my audio blogging feature.

Update:

The Colombian guys from the open mic night were called Guafa Trio. They are excellent, and definitely _not_ dilettantes!

And the Shaye Saint John in the title of this post is a reference to our noise "band," named after the infamous videos of a deranged burn victim/marionette of the same name.

I'm Friggin' Mobile

2006-04-08T02:55:00.000-05:00

Testing testing 123...

Anthropological Blogging

2006-04-04T14:31:00.000-05:00

My Professor Mike Wesch is a featured blogger on a bustling anthropological weblog called Savage Minds. Here is his first post, regarding the practice of "Anti-teaching." It's a great read!

Savage Minds offers a fresh perspective of the current trends in media democracy that are still in their infancy, and which may soon be quashed by the hegemony of global media corporations.

In my Digital Ethnography course this semester, which is lead by Dr. Wesch, we are engaging these issues in a fundamental way, and have been working dilligently at developing a wiki-based site called Mediated Cultures, which seeks to be a hub of media discourse.

Our class will be producing a DVD at the end of the semester.

The Radio Project: EPISODE 009 UPDATE

2006-03-30T18:14:00.001-06:00

EPISODE 009 of The Radio Project is now online. You can download the mp3 here (although it's really hosted at Archive.org).

I also have some good news regarding the stats! It turns out that more listeners are tuning in to the show.
There are now over fifty dedicated subscribers for the show's RSS feed (not a ton, but better than nothing) and the previous episode (EPISODE 008) has been downloaded 139 times!

Hopefully people see that we are dedicated to creating a quality program that can be entertaining, educational, interesting, and creative, and they are enjoying the product of our labors.

The Radio Project: Progress Report

2006-03-02T11:47:00.000-06:00

My experiment in media democracy, The Radio Project is growing quite nicely. Here are some graphs from my Feedburner account. They show a remarkable increase in listenership over that past six weeks.

Not bad for a crap-hour-slotted show in the boondocks of Kansas! Hopefully more people will be attracted to the program and it's Surrealist bent, and will contribute and listen weekly.

The Radio Project

2006-02-09T22:07:00.000-06:00

I've been working ecstatically on a radio/internet program called The Radio Project. Episode 003 is now available for download.

Alternatively, you may subscribe by copying this link [http://feeds.feedburner.com/theradioproject] into iTunes [Menu->Advanced->Subscribe to Podcast->paste link] or another RSS aggregator.

If you have not listened to it yet, it is a fun and informative podcast/mp3zine in the vogue of public radio, with diverse and amusing segments for you to enjoy.

Please let me know what you think!

link:http://theradioproject.com

stop animation in the works

2005-12-11T12:43:00.000-06:00

Check out these pics from a stop animation project I'm working on with friends.

We're starting a Surrealist video blog/podcast with more content along these lines. I'd like to call it Documents, after an old 1930s Surrealist journal of the same name, but I need to confer with them first. Stay tuned for more.

fun links

2005-12-06T23:24:00.000-06:00

Here are some cool links I found today:

A neat mod dreamland, and a 1960s fetish blog.

CIA disruption tactics that are easy and fun!

A freakish cartoon diary.

And finally, some fake porn.

pd progress

2005-11-15T00:15:00.000-06:00

I've made interface progress on my Pure Data abstractions. Here is what I used two weeks ago when opening for the Broze Own Tour (Yacht, E*Rock, and Bobby Birdman) at the Dusty Bookshelf.

I have a new Myspace music page up now, and hopefully I will be able to create a single website for that stuff. Soon...

Charged the tanks on horseback...

2005-10-10T23:06:00.000-05:00

My friend Jay Boucher, student of war and such told me that the Poles (my ancestors) charged the German tanks on horseback on the front lines during WWII.

Oh and I'm feeling really jaded, but trying to get over it. Watching wonderful musicians and artists all around me, I am feeling more and more like a dilettante. Sigh. But there are some really great creative people whom I have come across, and I should be happy and give them what's due.

Hoo be doo woo woo!

been a while...

2005-09-14T14:18:00.000-05:00

everything up in the air, jobless, statusless, penniless...

where is creativity when i need it?

blogs suck

avoiding responsibility

2005-04-27T18:08:00.000-05:00

I'm at the cafe and I am trying to do homework. Rather, I am trying to not try to do homework, since I don't really want to, but I have to. It's springtime, and the weather, secret projects, and my libido seem to jiggle my brain every time I try and focus on school.

Now that I'm single, after a drawn out process of second guesses, looks, and chances, I feel that indeterminacy is my salvation. There are so many directions I can go, so many places, ideas, and people to explore. I only hope that I make the right choices, and learn from my mistakes. I don't really feel like going into the details of my romantic life on the internet, but I guess that this is documenting it in a really fuzzy, noncommittal way. Yeah. Suffice it to say, things with Mary ended civilly, and the future is always up for grabs. Distance is tough.

In other news, I still don't have a job, so I'm an amorphous amoeba, structurelessly getting through the days, thriving on random impulse and attraction regarding various activities. I think that I'm just a slacker by nature. Too bad I wasn't born into a trust fund.

bring on summer

2005-04-22T11:02:00.000-05:00

Blah. I like riding my bike to school now, since I patched my rear tire. I also like going to Pat's on Tuesday nights for two dollar pitchers of beer.

I've been honing my interactive music system lately and have some interesting results. It also helps that I've found some good system designers who are kind enough to share their work and findings on the good ole' internet. Here's a good blog by someone on the Pd mailing list.

http://www.pixelsumo.com/blog/

It's hard to figure out what to do with my lady situation. I need definition, since grey areas are closing in from every side. Grrr! I feel like this is becoming a Xanga.

Unlocked

2005-04-02T17:10:00.000-06:00

I finally got back into my apartment after two nights relying on the kindness of friends. It makes me all warm and fuzzy to know that there are people who will help me when I am in need. The world seems less cold and heartless now. It was a relief to take a shower and brush my teeth. I missed work on Friday because I couldn't get a ride out there, since it's on the outskirts of civilization. I really wanted to go too, since we were having a potluck in my training class.

Now I'm at the coffee shop, outside, enjoying the beautiful weather. I'm also trying to strategize about generative art/music software design. I think that the best approach is to download and study any examples that I can find, so as to learn good modular programming. I really feel gyped now, since when I took C++ programming five years ago, we never got into object oriented programming. I need to really learn programming skills, but for now, I'll focus on higher level strategies, until my need for greater sophistication forces me to plunge into the deep ocean of serious scripting.

I found a really awesome website called rand()% that features a shoutcast stream of generative music, which I can access with Pd. It would be sweet to tap into the stream using the [shoutamp~] external, do my own generative style modulations/additions/subtractions, and then re-stream it with [shoutcast~] onto my own shoutcast server. If it's free, maybe this is a possibility.

I got a letter from my school saying that I didn't get accepted to go to China this summer, so that's a drag. I guess that God has better plans for me? I hope so, at least...

Stupidity.

2005-04-01T00:06:00.000-06:00

So I got locked out of my house this afternoon after I made lobster tail stir fry. I tried knocking on my upstairs neighbor's door and calling her, since she has my spare key, but she wasn't home. I hope she's alright, since she's an 80+ years old southern black lady who's really sweet.

I had to borrow my friend Kramer's car to get to work, and I was late. I missed a whole half-hour of sitting around in the training room websurfing. Boo hoo. I packed a lunch, but it was inside the house, safe from being eaten--by me. I had to get a nasty factory-made burrito and a styrofoam cup of ramen noodles for dinner. I still can't get ahold of Mrs. Bayton, so I can't even sleep in my own bed tonight! Maybe I'll camp out somewhere on campus like that NYU dude.

On the plus side, I found out how to do pictures and audio blogging. I am now poised to flood the world with useless information!

2005-03-31T23:18:00.000-06:00

me being happy.

Blorp.

2005-03-30T17:07:00.000-06:00

I don't have much to say. I just wanted to test my shift from a 3rd party comment system to the native blogger one. Not that I get many comments. Not like I'm a movie star or anything.

(((()()((()()()()(_______-___-----_______-_||___))))))((()()()()()
()))(())()()(((((((()))))))()()(___--_______--_()()(
()))(((((()))))))))))(((________(((((())()()()
()(((((((())))))_________))))))))(()())))))()())
)))000OOOooooooooo()((__________(((((((((((((()))()
)()OOOOOOooo___()()_^|^\/\ooOOooOO)00)00((()()()OOOOOOO))
oooooooooOOOOOOOxxxOOOOOXxoxXOOOOOoOO)()0000
QQQooOOOOO()()()000)))(((OOOOOOOoo000(()()XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

^automated generative keyboard art made by human machine

Now that I'm attatched to the internet...

2005-03-30T16:15:00.000-06:00

I can finally write a bunch of shameless drivel for the world to ignore! Huzzah. This job has me with my eyes glued to a glaring CRT for hours a day. I've already installed Pd on my virtual drive, so I can learn about data structures and FFT's.

I'm disappointed with my digital synthesis class at the university. I'm no expert at it, but that's the point. I don't feel like my expertise is growing. We're using Csound, which is a neat synthesis environment, albiet the real time aspect is less intuitive. there are two other people in the class and I'm the most enthusiastic by far, even though I'm not even a music student. I just know that if I was taking a synthesis class at UCSD, Mills, or NYU I'd be gaining more knowledge, more quickly. Blah. Poor me. Start looking for grad schools I guess.

I did find out that there are some courses in the CIS department that touch on my interests. But they are grad-level, and I don't have enough programming experience to learn about artificial intelligence as of now. Maybe I should start reading a programming text book? Which language is best? Most of the open source software I use is in C, and Python looks promising as well, since it is similar to scheme/lisp in that it is an interpreter language. I'm spoiled by immediate results; sick of rendering/compiling.

wasting time

2005-03-29T22:53:00.000-06:00

I am at my training class for my tech support call center slave labor. I drank two big cups of Coca_Cola at McDonalds and now am maintaining my high with tea made in a french press. I started emailing my coworker with remixed pseudo-generative messages to pass the time. Here is the history of one thread. Keep in mind that I am in a frazzled state right now. I could lose it and do something dangerous, like fill the gas tanks of the US military tanks with sugar and then whittle a potato into a hammock. And my work email has a typo for my last name.

=================================================

would you like more sugar with that?
-----Original Message-----
From: Kyle Kliopowicz
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2005 9:03 PM
To: Amber Thornton
Subject: #((((((###(R(((((((((((E: ((((((((((((###(R(((((((((((E: ((((((((((((####
Amber cooki$$@@@@@@@$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$KyleKyleKyleKyle
((((((((####((((((((####funfunfu@@@@@@@nfun
$$$$daydaydayday%%%%daydaydaydaydaydaymix.
jectjectjectjectjectjectject]}ugh
ughugh KyleKyleKyleKyle
((((((((####((((((((####funfunfu@@@@@@@KyleKyleKyleKyle
((((((((####((((((((####funfunfu@@@@@@@KyleKyleKyleKyle
((((((((####((((((((####funfunfu@@@@@@@KyleKyleKyleKyle
((((((((####((((((((####funfunfu@@@@@@@KyleKyleKyleKyle
((((((((####((((((((####funfunfu@@@@@@@KyleKyleKyleKyle
((((((((####((((((((####funfunfu@@@@@@@
(
(
(
(
(
(
(
(____________________________________________>

From: Thornton
Sent: Tues, March 29, 2005 8:57 PM
To: Kliopowicz
Sub: RE: ((((#########((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%5
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$4$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!###############@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ *

(??????????????????????????%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
and then we all sat down and ate es.
-----Original Message-----
From: Kyle Kliopowicz
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2005 8:55 PM
To: Amber Thornton
Subject: ((((((((((((#############((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
O i thot we could play it's .
#(###(#(###(#(###(#(###(#(##*##*#&##&#&#&#&#&((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((##########
((((((((((((#############((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
((((((((((((((((((##############(((((((((#########((#########(((((((((#########((((((((((((((((((#######(((((((############(((((((((((((##########(((((((((((
#########(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((()))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))______________

<><><><><><><>^^^><><><><><^^><^>^<>^<>^<^>^<^><^>^<^>^<^><^><^><*&*

Owe. it'sremix. it's((((((((((((((((((((
((((((((((((((((((#(#(###(#(###(#(#(###(#(###(##############(((((((((#########(###(#(##*##*#&##&#&#&#&#&. it'sremix. it'sremix. it's((((((((((((((((((((
((((((((((((((((((#(#(###(#(###(#(#(###(#(###(##############(((((((((#########(###(#(##*##*#&##&#&#&#&#&
##(#(###(##############(((((((((#########(####(((((((((((((##########((((((((
. it'sremix. it'sremix. it's((((((((((((((((((((
((((((((((((((((((#(#(###(#(###(#(#(###(#(###(##############(((((((((#########(###(#(##*##*#&##&#&#&#&#&((((((((( i thought i thought ((((((((( could play fun.
#(###(((((((((((((#############((((((((((((remix(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((remix. it's(((##########
#(#(###(#(#(###(#(###(##############(((((((((#########(####(((((((((((((##########(((((((((((
#########((((((((((((())))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))(((((#########(####(((((((((((((##########(((((((((((
#########((((((((((((()))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))______________#(#(###(#(#(#(((
#########((((((((((((()))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))______________#(#(###(#(#(###(#(###(##############(((()))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))______________#(#(###(#(#(###(#(###(##############(((((((((#########(####(((((((((((((##########(((((((((((
#########((((((((((((()))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))______________(#########(((((((((#########((((((((((((((((((#######(((((((########((((((((((((#############((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
((((((((((((((((((#(#(##((((((((((((((((((((. it'sremix((((((((((((((((((((. it'sremix

-----Original Message-----
From: Amber Thornton
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2005 8:51 PM
To: Kyle Kliopowicz
Subject: RE: ---_E_--_-_R__--__-R__--_-___: _-_-R

um, kyle, i don't think you need anymore sugar or caffeine...

A View from Nowhere

2005-03-28T20:12:00.001-06:00

A view from nowhere is not here nor there, for
absolute truth runs scaley upside the poet's creek.
It slithers slimey through green-mossed bends,
Momentously stalking the dry spots.

A view from nowhere is all he ever thinks of in his
Empty room, table and books, no bed. He seeks
To speak without language or listener,
To publish invisible texts,
To penetrate neutral structures with dissonance
And propagate signals of ontological noise.

He philosophizes to unveil the dullness of being,
And, in turn,
Taste coppery limbic blood,
Grope static signs into submission,
Smoke hand-rolled prisms of contradiction, and
Salt the moment with a shaker of supernovas.

Dry Well

2005-03-28T19:53:00.000-06:00

My talents have a sneaky way of abandoning me at the times in which they are most important to securing my manhood. I mean, if I have nothing to show for all of the work I do, I feel like a bum. This especially sucks when there's a total need for my creative works to shine, as in to keep me from feeling completely smashed by competition. Sigh. I know I'll get past it, but it always hurts washing with a dry sponge.

Also, my freaking laptop has an annoying habit of revving up it's fan every twenty seconds after about 30 minutes of activity. It sounds like a damn tiny motorcycle goon challenging me to a race. And now the headphone jack won't mute the built in speakers when it's plugged in. So when I'm trying to make music at the coffeeshop, I can't hear unless everyone else does. Not good when I'm already self-conscious about the work I've been doing.

To top it all of, my cell phone is totally berzerk. It will charge for hours and then have zero battery life. It says it's plugged in and charging when the cord isn't even connected, and then when I do try to charge it, it beeps a lot and can't seem to decide if it's charging or not. What ever happened to quality products lasting for more than a 16 month cycle? I want the cell phone equivalent of a GE toster from the 1950s.

Bored in training.

2005-03-25T00:15:00.000-06:00

I'm training for a job doing tech support for a large desktop computer marketing label, and the class is more watered down than $1 wells at a suffering bar. I've already researched neural nets, markov chains, celtic mythology (Finn MacCool rules). I've been here since 4 pm and don't get out until 1 am. I need to bring my sketchbook in here.

Post-Hiatus

2005-03-01T16:35:00.000-06:00

I haven't written much in a while. Probably because blogs are so damn self-important. But, to keep the digital record continuous, I have returned.

I played a show last night at PJ's here in Manhattan [KS] with my band Blumb. We opened up for two really awesome musicians Aid and Manipulator Alligator.

We had a decent sized audience and actually got paid $30, and had access to free beer! I got rowdy and yelled a lot, but was still loveable enough not to get kicked out, since it was just festive encouragement.

I need to get some mp3's of Blumb so we can make a little nest on this newfangled internet.

I feel like I'm writing an insurance claim right now.

Sweat Lodge

2004-07-27T22:05:00.000-05:00

Went to a sweat lodge the weekend before last. We stripped to our shorts and made offerings of sage and spice: dashing the herbs on the blazing fire and praying to the Great Spirit and the Six Grandfathers.

Chief Standing Cloud had Dalton and two women smudge everyone with a censer burning the sacred sage, wafting the cleansing smoke across our bodies with an eagle wing and a hawk tail.

Purified, we entered the sealed dome, not covered with bison skins but trash bag plastic. The heated stones were passed into the central pit of the lodge one by one with a pitchfork. Chief Standing Cloud sprinkled herbs which crackled red across the energized mass. There were drums and rattles, which we used to sing and pray.

A girl began to cry and wail as the flap was shut, cradling us in black. The Chief baptised the heat with water poured from a gourd ladle: the steam was a womb of focus. Our prayers were non-denominational and sincere, agreement was expressed with heart-wrenched Ah-ho's.

A young woman began to sing this song:

Let me know how deep I go
Mother
Let me know how deep I go
Mother Divine

I felt my voice snake around her steady chorus, channeling the urgency and primality of the request as my hand coaxed watery tones from the tom in my lap.

Later a song came to me:

Sister I feel your soul
Sister I feel your soul
On and on like the river flows
Sister I feel your soul

When the heat became unbearable I prostrated myself on the patchwork of rugs and prayed for endurance. After I emerged from the lodge, I felt utter clarity and breathed slowly and fully, not needing to breathe at all, sustained by my solemnity.

Afterwards we smoked the peace pipe and turned it to the Four Directions in contemplation after each use. I sat to the Chief's right and was given the honor of lighting the pipe for him.

When the ceremony was complete, we went back to the house and shared in a potluck feast of rotisserie chicken, various bean salads, fresh fruit, Italian bread, water, and the most delicious berry pie I have ever savored.

My eyes were blurry from the lodge, and I was exhausted and silent as we drove back to the world of clocks and wages.

regaining inspiration

2004-06-24T23:22:00.000-05:00

finished with 2nd meeting of Ionian Society, new literary coup trying to make a bend in the perceptual cathode ray dimension of Manhattan Kansas. free form thoughts and ideas would make Neal Cassidy proud. ditch the structure. let freedom ring. let bells toll lullabys for forgotten youths in sun drenched gutters of low carb madness. can't remember a time where minds could meet and just groove, just feed and sup on the succulent carcass of language. small bands are the most dangerous, difficult to control and harder to find. ditch the structure. concentrate on that one sour note that lingers in my ear, transforms into tinnitus tinglings and then vaporizes. I saw a woman riding a motorized scooter for cripples dragging an empty radio flyer wagon to the post office yesterday. i changed a dead light bulb for my clients with down syndrome and was rewarded with a box meal gordita. i scoffed at the redneck stampede fest that was rained out, disappointing thousands of ticket holding pickup owners. that's ethnocentric. ditch the structure. P(x) = P(P(x)) generates a boring chain of endless drivel. concentrate on the orange and blue covered purple lattice scratched with pastel crayons on a misshapen monogram. connecting black line boxes on a field of white filled with typset commands to make my computer gurgle in an impolite guffaw. looking at drawings made a while back, why am i not a drawer at this time? irrationalism is my new idea, but it's really old, the disparity between structure and mayhem was revered by the timeworn Qabbalists and even Robert Persig got his crack at it, but who can ignore the powerful magnet of the deconstruction of materialist myopia? our sense organs are small, and their cyborg extensions have their limits--time, space, reason, materials...inner eye still needs a new lense not found in the walmart eye center nor the hubble telescope. to rant without structure, no drug or drink to fuel this purging, is it literary suicide to leave these indelible marks in the gauntlet of google's grasp? what damning secrets lie revealed in the gibberish spewed from unsure fingertips to make ephemeral markings on a flickering luminescent screen? the lack of paragraphs makes machine gun blurbs illegible and uninteresting. concentrate. free the chickens in the cutting room to let them peck out the eyes of anchormen everywhere. the editor is guilty conscience, plaguing the reams of ticker tape emotions clicking by in endless squiggles. a poet can only use a tenth of one percent of the feces flung at his wall of paper.

Post-Hiatus

2004-06-11T14:15:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've written, and I have witnessed many strange things, which will most likely manifest themselves in the future, but cannot be brought forth now. I am still alive, and thinking, and hope to have a serious update within the next few days.

Revelation 18

2004-04-24T23:12:00.000-05:00

The Fall of The United States of America.

After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. With a mighty voice he shouted:
"Fallen! Fallen is The United States of America the Great!
She has become a home for demons
and a haunt for every evil spirit,
a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird.
For all the nations have drunk
the maddening wine of her adulteries.
The kings of the earth grew rich
from her excessive luxuries."

Then I heard another voice from heaven say:

"Come out of her, my people,
so that you will not share in her sins,
so that you will not receive any of her
plagues;
for her sins are piled up to heaven,
and God has remembered her crimes.
Give back to her as she has given;
pay her back double for what she has done.
Mix her a double portion from her own cup.
Give her as much torture and grief
as the glory and luxury she gave herself.
In her heart she boasts,
'I sit as queen; I am not a widow,
and I will never mourn.'
Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake
her:
death, mourning and famine.
She will be consumed by fire,
for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.

"When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry:

" 'Woe! Woe, O great city,
O The United States of America, city of power!
In one hour your doom has come!'

"The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more-- cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and bodies and souls of men.

"They will say, 'The fruit you longed for is gone from you. All your riches and splendor have vanished, never to be recovered.' The merchants who sold these things and gained their wealth from her will stand far off, terrified at her torment. They will weep and mourn and cry out:

" 'Woe! Woe, O great city,
dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet,
and glittering with gold, precious stones and
pearls!
In one hour such great wealth has been brought
to ruin!'

"Every sea captain, and all who travel by ship, the sailors, and all who earn their living from the sea, will stand far off. When they see the smoke of her burning, they will exclaim, 'Was there ever a city like this great city?' They will throw dust on their heads, and with weeping and mourning cry out:

" 'Woe! Woe, O great city,
where all who had ships on the sea
became rich through her wealth!
In one hour she has been brought to ruin!
Rejoice over her, O heaven!
Rejoice, saints and apostles and prophets!
God has judged her for the way she treated
you.' "

Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea and said:

"With such violence
the great city of The United States of America will be thrown
down,
never to be found again.
The music of harpists and musicians, flute
players and trumpeters,
will never be heard in you again.
No workman of any trade
will ever be found in you again.
The sound of a millstone
will never be heard in you again.
The light of a lamp
will never shine in you again.
The voice of bridegroom and bride
will never be heard in you again.
Your merchants were the world's great men.
By your magic spell all the nations were led
astray.
In her was found the blood of prophets and of
the saints,
and of all who have been killed on the earth."

Mysticism

2004-04-24T22:27:00.000-05:00

What's further than the farthest star and closer than your very flesh?

What a weekend.

2004-04-07T00:22:00.000-05:00

I'm officially 22 years old now. Yay. I am so excited. But on a less sarcastic tangent, this past weekend was a riot.

I left for St. Louis on Friday afternoon in order to attend the fabulous Nada Dada gallery show in which my lovely girlfriend, Mary Balda, had a sound and sculpture exhibition. I yammered to myself the entire trip, creating new ideas for electronic instruments [pitch-responsive amplitude modulator] and academic pursuit [perception mapping and analysis]. I must have appeared as a wandering maniac, jabbering endlessly out loud to no one but myself in the car.

I arrived in the evening and immediately went to the show. All I can say is that I was amazed. I had been there the weekend before, helping Mary set up her space, and the quality of the event was incredible. There was a great variety of expression, from sound and sculptures to mail art to nude models to an explicative-riddled bathroom, it was an excellent show.

After the show Mary, her big brother Nick and I went out to the bars and ran amok. In the morning, we decided to barbecue shish kabobs for dinner and set out upon University City to experience the day. We saw: a Capoeira group doing street moves, a guy named Jeremy twiddling with Max/Msp on his laptop with a portable speaker, a person dressed up as the Easter Bunny, a woman with a plastic hair net that looked like she had shoulder length plastic Ken doll hair, and much more. I was ecstatic and friendly, talking to every interesting person I encountered.

We drove over to the Arch and I scattered small stones on the ground, looking like a schizophrenic shaman communicating with spirits. We looked at the cryptic graffiti riddling miles of flood walls. We bought the supplies for our feast [beer, veggies, meat, bamboo kabob sticks]. We grilled on an "AS SEEN ON TV" Red Devil grill, with its handy parabolic shape. The food was delicious and Mary's roommate Megan joined us. We all babbled and were mystified by life, drinking it down like desert wanderers plunging our heads into the well at a remote oasis.

Later we went out to a little club whose name I can't recall and I danced wildly with a folding chair, tossing it to the ground and kicking it victoriously to the sparkled amusement of the door girl. The music was a newer kind of breakbeat with dark jungle basslines and a guy playing polyrhythms on conga drums along with the DJ. After that we retired to a neat little checkerboard floored cafe for a late night snack, but I was too full from the kabobs to eat anything.

Mary took me out for my birthday dinner at a Vietnamese place and I had a spicy bowl of seafood soup. Nick hitched a ride back to Kansas City with me and he met my dad. On the drive I rambled at him incessantly and rapidly, possessed by the ghost of Neal Cassidy.

It was a wild weekend.

I am obsessed with pure data

2004-04-02T13:49:00.000-06:00

That's right. I love using pure data. It's my favorite hobby. I work on it more than anything, including schoolwork. I like to build my own computer instruments from scratch and cause acoustic mayhem. I am such a nerd.

Thanks a zillion Miller Puckette!

i-pod crime

2004-03-31T17:52:00.000-06:00

Wow. such a pretty little toy causing so much mayhem.

ipod murder

mugged for ipod

Maybe we should revert to walkmen?

fragments

2004-03-31T13:23:00.000-06:00

No luck we such trailors,
wandering the aquatic deathbead of the seat.
Pithy sailors see:
squandering hazmat class defeat.
Is cancer evolution's dopplganger,
the devil vilified by
righteous midwest patriarchs?
the transformation triggered
by
waste and environmental contaminants?
or
Is cancer the probe of our epoch-
-memoried genes,
a stretching cilium casting the lots of
random recombinations
recodom ranbina ns tio
o m rane cod bin ioans t
condom stab rare non-i?
Is creation's kernel a chaotic function?

The math department is a world unto itself...

2004-03-29T18:18:00.000-06:00

I can't help but occasionally let that queer notion wash over me that I am entering a strange and distant universe by stepping through the doors of Cardwell Hall, the KSU math and physics building. I'm here every day--I even get paid to be here for 10 hours of the week--but sometimes the feeling that I am an outsider creeps up from the depths of my not-quite-mathematical mind.

An outsider--in a realm of outsiders. Math and physics people aren't what you would traditionally label as "normal." I've been slowly soaking in a bubbling brain bath with these ultra-nerds and haven't noticed that the steam has clouded my perceptions of what a "normal" person is. When I say nerd, that is not an insulting term, but rather an endearing one. I'm a nerd too. A nerd is just a person who can't get it through their skull that it is not acceptable by the statistical mean of individuals to have a fascination with non-athletic/entertainment-oriented subjects that's deeper than a two-minute television news story.

So I've been surrounded by nerds for so long now that I think of them as the norm. And I like it. I went into the campus bowling alley and felt uncomfortable being around so many non-nerds. Their behavior seems so animal and anti-cerebral, driven by simple instincts like sexual attraction and territory management. What the hell is happening to me?

Alas, I do not truly belong in this world of functions and formulae, digits and decimals. I try to feign that I have the otherworldly intelligence and tenacity to sit and stare at a piece of paper for hours on end, merely for the satisfaction of producing a string of symbols that is unintelligible to more than 95% of the human species. The reality is that I am fooling myself and my colleagues. I'm not hard wired for exact science. My mind makes connections between disparities with complete disregard for logic, and I'd rather find esoteric pseudo-patterns than razor-sharp general rules. I can't even organize my bookshelves properly by genre because the groupings become muddled and flimsy whenever I contemplate their boundaries.

I am the bane of all hard science.

Child kicks RC vehicle...

2004-03-20T13:16:00.000-06:00

I was driving home for lunch and saw the oddest thing. A young child [I am unsure of the gender] with long hair was driving a remote control truck along the sidewalk, ran up behind it and kicked it. As the toy tumbled away, the child made a pained expression and grasped it's foot in agony.

Yeah Yeah Yeah's

2004-03-10T18:10:00.000-06:00

I forgot to mention the awesome show that I saw on Saturday in Lawrence. The Yeah Yeah Yeah's played with The Chromatics and The Ssion [a personal Kansas City favorite of mine]. I went with Mary and her friend Jami, who drove to the Granada.

The Chromatics consisted of two guys plunking around playing lethargic drug music under a red spotlight. The music made me feel as sad and sophisticated as an orphaned street urchin in Eastern Europe during communist rule. I bought two CD-R's for $10 total and they are lo-fi and wonderful.

Ssion was fantastic as always. This was the third show of theirs that I've witnessed and the performance is always hammed to the extreme. The first show of theirs that I went to was shut down by the police after only a few songs, since it was in the old Your Face Gallery on 19th and Summit and the people were a fire hazard. Some guy got maced and my friend Seth Johnson was arrested for stepping onto the street.

Ssion's act consists of three costumed performers: Cody Critcheloe [the frontman, dressed as a cow with udders, who incidentally does album art for the Yeah's], Taylor Painter-Wolfe [garbed as a chicken] and Shannon Michaels [clothed as a lioness with an open, throbbing pink vagina]. Chaos ensues onstage as the band rips through a repertoire of catchy anthems. This time around, some other friends of mine scrambled up onto the stage during the last song and danced around like maniacs. J. Ashley Miller [from Pewep and the Formats] was up there wearing a big green face mask that turned his head into a cushball with a carnivorous right eye. At the end of the song, Cody screamed for his tour manager to "get these kids off of the stage."

The Yeah's were very energetic and appreciative of the sold out crowd. I was worried that their recent stardom would tarnish or drain the performance, but it did not. The sound was full for having only one melodic instrument for the most part, and Karen O.'s intonations and rockstar gestures were sincere and emotive. Her stage presence evokes Patti Smith mixed with Nico. If Karen O. is not a crazy heroine goddess within three years I owe someone a Coke.

I got some beers at the bar with this corporate guy from Atlanta who was trying to befriend me. He was friendly but he kept comparing Ssion to some local Atlanta genital mutilating act, and I think he was on ecstasy because he kept on patting my shoulder throughout the night. It started to freak me out!

At the bar was a smattering of sub-legal teenyboppers who asked me for cigarettes and alcohol. I'd always thought that at 21 years old, I'd finally be able to prey upon those cutesy high school girls that I was afraid to ask out when I was their age. This is untrue. While they are nice to look at, their inexperience and lack of depth is a total deterrent toward any type of romantic thoughts.

So the show was a blast, and at $12 a ticket, there was an adequate fun to funds ratio.

How I came to be a criminal [part 3]

2004-03-08T13:41:00.000-06:00

This post is a bit post-event, but whatever. I went to court in St. Mary's on Thursday. I wore my suit [sans tie for that too-cool-for-a-tie look], and brought a folder full of evidence [including the letter I had received stating that my DL suspension was released on Feb 24, the day before my arrest!]. Of course, there was a torrent of rain during the drive, but I made it on time.

At the municipal court, I started to study my Anthropology book, but realized that it was more compelling to observe the miniature dramas unfolding in the proceedings before my own. I think that I will start going to court regularly and taking notes on what the lawyers say and how they behave.

When it was my turn, I got the driving with a suspended license charge dropped, but pleaded no contest to the speeding ticket [even though the damn 20 mph speed limit was most likely instituted to provide the pathetic burg with enough ticket revenue to afford a new police car every 3 years].

I figured that since I had not done anything arrestable, they might waive $50 from my fine since I had to post bail for a crime that I did not commit. Nope. Not a chance. The best I did was to get the payment broken up into smaller installments due a month apart from each other.

I'm meeting with a lawyer tomorrow morning [a portion of my school fees go to free legal counsel], to discuss the possibility of suing for wrongful arrest.

Half-dream

2004-03-08T01:18:00.000-06:00

Dozing off, I had a vision where I was following a guy with shaggy blonde frat-boy hair in a red sweatshirt. He looked back at me and continued on. I walked over to where he looked at me, and did the same, only to see myself [in the past?] gazing back. Then I felt a queer pinch on my right side which jolted me awake, like a mischievous spirit tickling me for sport.

I seem to be more suceptible to these imps when I sleep on my back...

Tilapia is good.

2004-03-01T02:09:00.000-06:00

I should really be getting to bed [Topology test tomorrow...!!! What the hell is Bd[A] and what is it's relationship to A' U A!?!?!] but I can't help but post about my eventful Sunday.

I woke up and smoked the hooka with Kramer [addictive...], and got a call from my friend Rommel about a 12-year-old's Filipino birthday party. The guests were friendly and impressed that I ate fried Tilapia fish with my hands [brains, eyes, and all] like a true islander. They even said that I was now officially part of the Malay race. Sweet. I did the electric slide and the hokey pokey with the kids, and talked about the cultural prowess of the ancient Malay people, who populated a range of islands whose breadth spreads an entire hemisphere: Madagascar, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hawaii, etc. I now wonder if they were able to reach the Americas...dissertation thesis perhaps?

After that, Rommel and I found an open building on campus with blackboards [they were really green, but whatever] and tried to figure out how to do really abstract symbolic manipulations that cannot be expressed outside of the realm of mathematics. What fun.

Then, Mary called me up and played some clips that she'd recorded at the Basilica in St. Louis with her friend Danae's [sp?] digital recorder. I ghetto-rigged a quick audio recorder of my own with PD and put the phone up to my crappy built-in computer monitor microphone. Then I played the sound back to her, and she re-recorded it. And so on. There was much re-re-re-recording, etc. The signal becomes distorted by serious artifacting, which I assume is a result of the compression algorithms and filters used by the digital wireless networks in order to maintain real time transmissions. Quite amusing. I think that she may use the files and concepts in her gallery show in April.

Now: On to bed!

Whoa.

2004-02-29T04:24:00.000-06:00

Party tonight. It was awesome. At my house. Great. I am a little tipsy I guess.

Interesting occurrence. I went to a "metal party," where about 15 dudes were in Wamego playing poker and watching video of a final performance for some local metal group. One of the guys offers me a beer. I do a double take.

"Are you a cop?" I enquire.

"Uh...no."

"Are you a jailer?" I counter.

"I fingerprinted you!!!" He replies.

It's weird to go to a party and see the guy who "jailed" you yucking it up with potheads and betting money on a poker game. Especially when he sports a Harley Davidson shirt.

So...the party was a success. We posted it on the international party listserv, so tons of people showed up. We offered: a keg, jello shots, a kick-ass dance floor with booming sound system, a jazz-laden chill room upstairs, and Kramer's hippy/hooka [not weed, but Arabic tobacco] room.

Not a bad turnout. I took pictures to document it. An eclectic mix of people. I love sentence fragments in this post.

So now I have a topology test on Monday and I need to get some sleep so I can do proofs of concepts that cannot even be elucidated in English. I guess that I am learning Math-ese. I mean, how can I explain to you that the limit point of a subset A of the real numbers is an x element of A such that x is in a closed subset U of the real numbers such that there is another element in U? I don't even know if I said that right. The point is, I'm too deep into stuff that no one else cares about...

Good night.

How I came to be a criminal. [Part 2]

2004-02-26T18:49:00.000-06:00

And so the return trip began. We took Hwy 24 back, passing the gargantuan uber-suburban wastelands of Cabela's and the Kansas City Speedway with their hundreds of square miles of parking lot. I was getting tired, but otherwise the drive was going well; perfect for replaying the fresh memories of the evening's wild happenings.

We went through a small town called St. Mary's. You know the type, where the "highway" becomes the village main street and has a speed limit of 20 mph, even when it's vacant as far as a gun can shoot; the kind of town where there's one cop for every 15 miles and he likes to sit and wait, and wait, and wait...for an unlucky traveler to zip past.

Bloop! The lights were flashing for me to pull over. I had dutifully slowed to the required dreadful crawl in town but finally near the edge, I was accelerating back to the regular highway speed. I pulled the car to the side of the road and cut the engine. The officer was cast in the mold of Barney Fife. You could tell that he probably didn't have any substantial hobbies and thus took his job way too seriously.

"You were going 32 in a 20 back there."

"I'm sorry officer, I saw that I was at the edge of town and thought it was ok to resume my speed." You know, the HIGHWAY SPEED! This WAS a highway!

"Well you still had a block or two to go until you're out of the zone. I'll need to see your license."

"Ok." Damn. This guy's not going to cut any slack on this. He went off to his "mobile command center" and came back 5-7 minutes later.

"Kyle, did you know that your license is suspended?"

"Uhm, that can't be right. I paid all of my fines a while back. There must be some mistake." Oh shit...

"I'm going to ask you to step outside of the car..." And then the Fife clone proceeded to arrest and handcuff my sorry ass!

I've never been arrested before, and I don't plan on it happening again. Having to stand against the hood of a cop car while Mr. Dutiful Authority snaps metal rings around my wrists [uncomfortably tight, too] is not my idea of a splendid time.

All of this happened while Bri, who I barely even knew, was sitting in the passenger seat. She had to drive my car out to some podunk jail in Pottawattamie County Kansas, to wait for me to get fingerprinted, photographed, and documented. Then, she even had to lend me fifty bucks just so I didn't have to sleep on a hard bench in one of those silly black and white striped jumpsuits [yes, the criminals really do have to wear them, I asked a jailor].

When everything was finally over, I ended up getting home at 5:00 am. Talk about being prepared for my damn number theory test the next day! I'll be surprised to score better than 75%.

This is ridiculous. I paid the fines for the speeding ticket, my license should not be suspended. I'm going to speak with the prosecutor before my actual court date, because the bondsman [also the owner of a local newspaper and self-educated man] suggested to get it cleared up first, and they'll drop the charges.

It is a fairly novel thing to have my mugshot and fingerprints on file somewhere. It's even neat that I had to wear handcuffs [like I was an actual physical threat!]. But that damn speeding ticket...

How I came to be a criminal. [Part 1]

2004-02-25T17:06:00.000-06:00

Last night I went down to Kansas City for the awesome annual Mardi Gras festival on the closed off 18th and Wyandotte block containing YJ's snack bar. Rumor had it that the Flaming Lips were going to do a free show and be given the key to the city by the mayor. So I decided to make the hadj, with the company of a new KSU friend named Bri. We took Hwy 24 instead of the usual I-70, because I'm too cheap for the toll and like the local scenery. It was a little strange going on a drive with someone I barely know, but she needed a ride and I try to be a good Samaritan. Also, I figured that we could split the gas [see toll comment above].

We got to Kansas City around 17:00, when the festivities were scheduled to begin, but there was such a crowd around the key-giving ceremony that no one could see anything that was happening. A lot of my KC pals were there, so I made the rounds and schmoozed like a Hollywood producer. I was really happy when my old friends Corey, Stacy, Jay, Amy, and Lauren showed up. The Flaming Lips never played though, which initially dampened the experience. I felt responsible for raising the hopes of many of my friends, whom I had excitedly informed about the event that I thought was to occur.

All was soon remedied by the other entertainers that responded to the melancholy void of many party goers. J. Ashley Miller and the Golden Calves, Rah Booty, The Pythons drumline, an 80+ year old black dude who told dirty jokes [A gorilla was watching a lion eat and all of a sudden his thing got hard...], and an assortment of Jazz musicians brought much to the fanfare. There was great food, free cotton candy, and wacky outfits. Lots of little children ran about giving out cookies and wearing monster costumes.

The pinnacle of the night was the parade. At first I thought that the parade was going to be a passive experience, as dictated by conventional parade-going values in the United States. Only after a few minutes did we realize that the parade was participatory. That's right, the entire party was transmogrified into a street crawling, drunken amoeba of people, floats, and marching band instruments. Traffic was stopped at the intersections and a guy banged a big chest-mounted bass drum in response the honks of angry drivers.

We finally marched through a yawning garage door into a sculpture studio made from a refurbished autoshop. More music ensued as members of T.J. Dovebelly rocked out with this really awesome jazz guitarist [editors note: It was Doctor Chadbourne and Malachy Papers who played.] a whose name I didn't catch. In the lot across the street, some people set a parade float afire. Everyone gazed in primal awe at the plumes of flame which danced about the skeletal undercarriage of the formally decorated mobile platform. That is, until the cops showed up with whirring lights and blooping sirens. We decided at this point to head back to Manhattan.

[P.S. I found some pictures of the night at arc-nine.com. 2004.02.29]

What is a human being?

2004-02-23T11:01:00.000-06:00

I stumbled across this question today while driving back home [I was at school, about to grade some diff. eq. assignments and realized that I had left the grading criteria on the computer in my bedroom [damn you outlook for flushing my conveniently accessible webmailbox!]]. <-- Whoa, what an odd "sentence."

The question is this: What really defines a human being? I think that much of it is technology, or tools. I like to think of tools as external material developed to assist a task. Things like pens, paper, streets, cars, sandwich bags, books, computers and ovens are all tools. We are surrounded by tools. Try to think of a day that goes by where you do not use any sort of tool. You'd have to be naked, unshaven, and hunting or foraging in the wilderness. You'd be an animal.

But now that I think on this notion, there are creatures other than humans that use tools too. Bees build hives, as bird's do nests. Chimpanzees use more objects for tools than any creature other than humans.

So my thought was not completely correct. The two are not mutually exclusive. Being human requires tools, but tools do not require being human.

Oh well.

Living Without Home Internet

2004-02-18T18:13:00.000-06:00

It really ain't too bad. I spend all of my time now playing with Pure data, instead of studying. I can check email and do blog/surfing stuff here at the differential equations lab at school, while getting paid for "monitoring" this vacuous room. I can talk to Mary on the mobile, so lovey-dovey conversation isn't lacking. Really, there aren't many problems with not having internet service at home. I'm quite content without it for now.

But, what about when I want to hear a new musician I've just learned about? Or I need to check my email at the last instant of the evening to see if an assignment is due the next day? Or I want in-depth information about a news story I heard on NPR while driving around? Internet access has quickly become a staple utility of my existence, I depend upon it almost as much as water and electricity, and certainly more than a worthless SBC land line.

So when Cox Cable sends us the cable modem installation packet tommorrow afternoon, you won't hear any complaints from this fellow.

St. Louis Road Trip

2004-02-16T17:53:00.000-06:00

I visited my girlfriend Mary in St. Louis last Thursday night, for Valentine's Day and our two year anniversary. We had a great time together, taking adventurous forays across the Mississippi River into [shudder in fright] East St. Louis, and eating good Indian [where they overbooked on reservations and had a big crowd [but the food was still worth it]] and [authentic] Chinese foods. We went to the top of the Arch and Mary got scared. You can tell when she is scared because she gets her tap-dancing stage smile and her whole posture is as rigid as a frozen slim-jim. She got me a pornographic 17th century [?] Japanese drinking cup and I gave her a rubber puffer fish, since she has similarly adorable round cheeks. We also bought each other gourmet soap [$5 a bar!], and rented American Splendor, which was phenomenal. The trip was a refreshing break from the normal drudgery of academia.

When I take roadtrips through rural areas, I like to scan AM radio stations, just to get a bit of the local color and kill time on the journey. Usually, I hear obscenely biased broadcasts like Savage Nation or some other misinformed ad-hominem-riddled conservative banter. This time however, I stumbled across WGN 720, beamed out of Chicago. The program was called Extension 720, and it is the saving grace of AM radio [along with Art Bell, of course]. It's hope-inspiring to hear intelligent discourse over such normally fuzzy and mindless airwaves.

SOB's at SBC Severed the Link

2004-02-10T14:20:00.000-06:00

Well, after days of threats, the SOB's at SBC finally decided to cut the tie from our house to the internet. If I can say only one thing about SBC, it is that they have the most horrible customer service imaginable.

When my roommates and I signed a contract with SBC to provide DSL and phone service to our house for ~$50 dollars a month, we thought that the bill would be, gasp, ~$50 dollars a month. This is not the case. The bill has fluctuated vastly outside of that margin, and always above, never below the fifty dollar line.

When we called to complain about SBC's egregious accounting errors, we were first required to wait upwards of an hour to even connect with a human representative. And then, for the majority of our calls, we were again jettisoned through the labyrinth of cryptic phone channels that is the SBC customer service center.

And one time I called to complain about SBC, waiting on hold for forty-five minutes, only to have an SBC customer service representative try to sell me long distance! Despicable.

I would be so inclined to think that shoddy service is the reason that SBC has a hard time answering their consumer help calls. SBC must receive thousands of complaints a day. So now that I've posted the acronym SBC next to as many unflattering terms as I can think of, I'll let this post be absorbed by Google, to resurface whenever people search for the brand name SBC.

SBC will probably try to sue me for slander, but everything is true.

The only time I use SBC's phone service is to call SBC customer service and complain.

SBC is a horribly bureaucratic corporation with a mistake-riddled accounting department.

Dump all of your SBC stock.

This is getting ridiculous.

SBC sucks!

The Great Lion Has Been Decapitated

2004-02-02T13:00:00.000-06:00

The Great Lion has been decapitated,and oozes
glowing clear cytoplasm from the neck wound.

In the place between the worlds,
carefree but attacked by Others,
the Bubbly Giant, transparent and gelatinous,
breaths his breath to send my ship
along a bright white rectangular corridor
back to the Turmoiled Plane.

As we recede down the brightly lit tube
the Bubbly Giant wards off a Dark Thing,
guised as a bird, metamorphosed from a shadow,
sent to disrupt our mission.
He blows with full cheeks and a cheerful, sonorous
tune is encrypted in the gusts that propel
our emergence into the periled world.

I arrive in a suburban wasteland.
The children are zombies, killed by
a conquered soul, injected with the Darkness
and lead on a conquest of decay.
the sky is covered with the blackest of thickened clouds,
and a moon throbs brightly orange and full,
like a diseased eye.

I stumble through an abandoned house,
the central node in a network of filth-nests
for the incubating clan of disease.
Mislead children and young adults are being
abused and molded, the strings being attached
to facilitate extra-worldly control.

Awareness of my presence sparks a red gleam
in the leader's eye. I turn to run, but my
legs, my upper thighs are weak from my journey,
It's been a while since I occupied my body.
I trudge along slowly, like running through
waist-deep snow, with painful awareness of my
imminent capture.

I somehow manage to elude the scouts
sent to destroy me, and come upon the
roadways of the town. All lanes are full and
directed out, away from the infected place.
Bright Orange Moon pulsates above the evacuation,
The climax is almost nigh.

That was my dream last night/this morning. Apocalyptic, no?

Computer Problems

2004-01-27T13:10:00.000-06:00

My trusty machine is now in a coma. It strange to feel the absence of the luxuries which it provided, luxuries I always take for granted. I think that the problem is in the power supply. The computer kept rebooting every ten minutes the other day until finally the cooling fan whirred to a halt. I could smell a burnt metallic aroma, and knew that I was in trouble.

Bah.

Contentedness.

2004-01-22T16:56:00.000-06:00

Ahhh. I feel so cozy and fulfilled. I had my first day of class today and it looks like a challenge, but an exciting one at that. I only hope that my other classes will go as smoothly as the ones I've already attended [Linguistic Anthropology Field Methods, Spanish III].

I'm going to be learning how to dissect and analyze a foreign language using various methods. Dr. Ottenheimer says it will be like rowing a boat while building it simultaneously. We're going to be studying Swahili [KiSwahili to the native speakers]. The other students in my class seem promising, I think that everyone will be motivated and empowered to gain some very useful knowledge. This is the first 700 level class I've ever taken, and I hear that little voice in the back of my head whispering, "Grad school, grad school!"

Spanish seems great too. The teacher is from Costa Rica and she pronounces all of her ll's and antecedent y's like the english sound j. Por ejemplo, Yo hablo a ella sounds like Jo hablo a eja. Interesante, no? I also like how the entire class will be conducted in Spanish, and it is four one-hour sessions a week instead of two three-hour classes. That should facilitate better acquisition.

...

2004-01-08T21:06:00.000-06:00

Hmmm. The classic depression due to lack of structure has begun to show through the waning holiday cheer. It's the impetus to do, create, and learn.

I've become recently interested in mesoamerican mythology and culture, civilizations like the Maya and Aztecs. There's an odd parallelism between Quetzacoatl and Jesus. Both were born of virgins. Both were religious geniuses who defied convention and were conspired against by the old guard authorities. Both left their followers because of this pressure and promised to someday return.

Since I'm not so focused right now (my analytical brain has been napping), I won't try to organize this post too much. I want to be able to rant poetically and idiotically like a Timothy Leary DMT experience transcript.

I just got the newest Autechre cd in the post today, and am impressed as always by their impeccable production values and mind-bending progressions into the unexplored regions of electronic sound. It's like wandering through a forest of thick vines and snakes, the limbs of the plants taut and squeaking as aluminum cicadas flit mindlessly about the angular paths through which the listener walks.

So the break has been enjoyable, full of memorable experiences and adventures, talks and silences. I've finally decided that my mom lives on the edge of nowhere in terms of my Kansas City social connections. Olathe is too far away and uninteresting. I am eternally drawn like a gnat toward the big lights of the city.

But the country is something else entirely. I now feel comfortable enough in my new house out in Manhattan (KS) to miss it.

Blogs are stupid when they are personal.

Struggling to be creative...

2004-01-05T13:20:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted in a while, because every time that I get the writing urge, I'm usually driving around and get lazy. I'm back in Kansas City for the holidays and the festivities were great. Ugh, I feel so bland right now. I'll try writing more later.

Why am I a math major?

2003-12-15T17:30:00.000-06:00

Why am I a math major? I'm not so sure sometimes. I'm not a mathematician, that's for certain. At least, I'm not one of those guys who can solve the quintic or factor 30-digit numbers. Hell, I can't even write a decent proof!

I guess there is a certain dorky quality about math that I enjoy. It is elusive, oblique, and obscure. Graphs of differential equations are pretty. It's fun to correct drunk pseudo-intellectuals at parties when they wrongly try to explain chaos theory to a girl that they're hitting on.

I was a horrible math student during high school--I tended to think of math class as a study hall for working on my sketchbook and screenplay writing attempts (Which never got past the preliminaries. I was trying to hard to be David Lynch). I'm pretty sure that I passed freshman algebra solely because my teacher didn't want to have me in his classroom again.

It wasn't until my junior year that I even thought of math as being something interesting. I was taking a computer programming class and suddenly it clicked! I finally understood functions. My algebra 2 teacher, Miss Boll, was a really great motivator. She was excited by math and some of that excitement transferred to me. She told me about hypercubes, which resonated with me because I read a book when I was in the 5th grade called The Boy Who Reversed Himself, by William Sleator.

I had been curious about electronic music ever since I heard Chariots of Fire by Vangelis. Later forays into industrial and dance music finally fulminated into a desire to understand the techniques and mathematics behind the experimental, avant garde electronic music community. I realized that I needed to learn about things like fourier analysis and digital signal processing to really know what was going on with the machine I was using.

So here I am, at Kansas State University, learning mathematics. Or trying to learn anyways. My modern (i.e. abstract) algebra class has been interesting, but I think that I may have jumped into a cold, dark pool without sticking my toes in first. I feel like I've been teleported to the busiest street in Tokyo and forced to write an essay about the intricacies of Japanese history, in Kanji. There is a definite communication barrier. I understand what groups, rings, and fields are, but factor groups, extension fields, and vector spaces still have me puzzled. This stuff is way foreign.

(Parenthetical thought: Mmmmm. I baked glazed chicken for dinner, with a honey, mustard, and curry sauce. And...I've been keeping my room clean! Is there finally hope for me becoming a mature, capable adult?)

A few minutes until my math final

2003-12-15T11:44:00.000-06:00

And I want to waste them, since studying is no good at this late of a time. So I'll post a fairly quick and content-devoid note to nobody, and feel good that I am at least updating the site. I'll probably add some more later, about my weekend and so forth.

I put in my first weekend working at Big Lakes Developmental Care Center, where I am a care provider for adults who have various developmental disabilities. The job is a handful, but it's worth it financially and spiritually. It feels great to be making money doing something other than call random people to try and sell long distance to them.

Weird Dreams

2003-12-09T12:06:00.000-06:00

What a night! I had three scary dreams right in a row.

First, I was locked up in a jail/institution with a calm but psychotic killer. He was so rational and collected when he spoke of his deeds that put him in jail. Then he forcefully tied my hands to the ceiling and slashed at me with a foot and a half long piece of sheet metal that was two inches across and sharpened like a razor on one side. I could feel my sleeping body twitching at each slice, and he even cut off the toes of one foot and my fingertips. I didn't really feel pain, but it wasn't very fun getting butchered.

Second, I was in a big basement that reminded me of my old childhood home in Ohio. I kept wandering through it and there were these occult books that I used to be really interested in, lining the walls in bookshelves. I felt an evil presence. I couldn't see it but I could feel it. Was it the house that was projecting that feeling? I kept wandering towards where the laundry room was, which is significant because I used to be so scared of that room, especially when the door would suddenly creak open on its own volition. I looked down a telescoping chain of rooms and could see a red, pulsating light in the doorway of that most disturbing chamber of cleanliness. I felt the evil presence, very strongly this time. I picked up as many of the books as I could carry, trying to discard them, thinking that maybe they were the things that had welcomed the spirit. The spirit was upon me. I grew frightened beyond my wits. I cried out, "Leave now, evil spirit!" It could sense my weakness and insincerity, and grew stronger against me. I was suddenly aware of being in my real, current bedroom. My dream body jumped up, and saw that the door was open to a distorted purplish pink vortex of color, and a wind was tearing though mi cuarto. I grew more defiant, remembering everything I could about exorcism and demonic possession that I had heard about growing up in a religious home. "In the name of Jesus Christ, leave this place spirit!" More assertive, this time, my command caused my real life body to sit up quickly in my bed, completely awake, and totally wary of going back to sleep.

But I did. Third, I was on a honeymoon with my future wife (who is she?) and some other friends. We were staying in a mansion located in a big cul-de-sac overlooking a lake, or the ocean maybe. Details are fleeting my now awaken memory, but people started dying and there was this strange "carnival ride" that was sort of like a ski lift that took people throughout the dark, scary regions of house. My "wife" and I actually jumped off of the ski lift thing at one point and befriended some cute little "creatures of the darkness," which were similar to puppies in their behavior, so the dream wasn't as bad as the previous ones. We then decided to escape and were gathering our things and climbed up to the huge deck in back which overlooked the large backyard body of water. The sky was deep orange and looked apocalyptic. There was a banquet table and (don't laugh) Tom Cruise was this ghastly vampire/devil man who inhabited the house, and he allowed the survivors to leave under a condition. He gave each couple a blank card and said that once we had all left, one of the group must return to the house with all four of the cards, and place each one in a dark room. Then he became angry and roared, "Now leave, or all will die!" As he yelled this, the sky warped and crackled with lightning. Needless to say, we all ran out of there, and my "wife" and I jumped into the gigantic SUV that had belonged to one of the dead guests. (They had no need for it!)

I don't even know if anyone put the cards back into the house as instructed, but I hope so. Otherwise, I'm cursed.

I didn't realize that I could title these things...

2003-12-08T22:23:00.000-06:00

Wow, I guess that shows you what kind of guy I am. I rarely read the instructions on tests and homework problems, and I like to guess what people are going to say before they finish. I'm a hasty boy. Now I need to retroactively title my posts so that they don't blend together so much!

Drinking caffeine is great if you need to do a lot of boring, repetitive work. The only drawback is the addictive pull of the drug, so I always pull a Junky-esque kick to detoxify my system and make sure that I can still function on my own batteries.

Ever since I quit smoking cigarettes I've been wary of being subjected to dependency of any unnecessary outside influence. It's fine and dandy to occasionally use chemicals as tools, but when they are required for normal functioning, the organism must rebel against enslavement and purge itself.

There is nothing more refreshing than hearing two 50 year old PHD's competitively spew lines from obscure 20th century poets in the math department breakroom.

Oh boy did I waste yesterday.

2003-12-08T12:21:00.000-06:00

I woke up at 8:00 am on Saturday to participate in the Putnam Mathematical Competition, which is something everyone should do at least once in their lives, to completely belittle themselves. I answered 3 out of 12 problems, let's see if any of them were right!

Needless to say, I was fairly worn out at 4:00 pm, having left early after completely exhausting my mental faculties. But did this stop me from letting loose after the Wildcats won their big upset against Oklahoma? I don't even follow football, but I wasn't about to pass up an excuse for some pure bacchanalia.

So how did I release my burnt-out reasoning machine and celebrate the victory?

I got really soused at a foreign exchange student party, and made a complete ass out of myself. I danced/staggered (gracelessly of course) about the gathering and attempted to make social contact with some of the guests. Big mistake! I was in social limbo.

Normally I am fairly amicable and can hold interesting conversations with new acquaintances. Not this time! The most intelligible slurs to leak through my drunken lips sounded as well constructed as those from a first-year artificial intelligence programmer's final project.

But the night wasn't a complete waste. There was this really suave Lebonese guy there with a long, black, curly mullet and a sport jacket. He looked tough!

So I woke up in the morning with a throbbing cranium, cursing myself for the abuse. I gulped down the recommended glass upon glass of water, and lay about moaning like a beached walrus.

The worst part of it was that I couldn't even read! Every sentence I tried to savor cracked against my skull like a ball peen hammer. It was pure torture. I am a habtiual reader and somehow manage to read ~10,000 words a day without even thinking about it. So every time the habit module of my brain kicked in and glanced at a page of text, WACK! The pulsating pain returned.

The small pleasure of turning off my brain is not worth the torment of rebooting it.

Money Woe$

2003-12-06T22:33:00.000-06:00

Sigh...money, money, MONEY. I'm floating in limbo, between that moment where you decide to get a job due to empty pockets and the day that the first paycheck arrives. Money. I like to think that it's vulgar, dirty, a wasteful venture. But what am I thinking! I need to survive!

This semester is creaking to a stop, and not a minute too soon. Motivation was lacking, my energy dispersed and entangled throughout the trivial aspects of living on my own for the first time.

I can remember a time, two Falls ago (Fall's sounds, smells, and tastes are encoded with many bittersweet but fun-to-recall memories), when my mind was racing with Holy enthusiasm. I saw the world as if God had cut off the top of my skull and stuck a feeler in my head, sampling the wonderful beauty and mystery of existence. I felt that my purpose was to be in wonder and awe at the tiniest detail of my environment. I was ecstatic. I was on the path. I was a shaman. I was in tune...

Now I look back/ago/inward (what do these words mean?) and find that the little part of me that was so inflamed is merely a pilot light. What happened? Am I far from my destiny?

To quote my sister, Kaitlyn, "I want to write about me so you can all know how I'm doing, and what I'm thinking about."

It feels like I'm not walking this tightrope like I should. I wish that I had a mentor. Is it too late to shape my life after the guidance of the wise, now that I am aware that it needs to be done?

Structure in my life is a wispy brine shrimp exoskeleton, swept up by the bristly baleen of the giant disorder whale.

Trying to be thoughtful

2003-11-28T02:13:00.000-06:00

Mmmm turkey and poetic late night driving moods combine to stir this typing fit. Eyes can't quite stay closed or open so this post may push the sitter from the fence and plummet the rest of my thoughts into either sleep or frenzied activity. Friends of five years and changes crash around personality like river rapids and rocks. Incoherent exhaust-o-typing resembles a futile attempt to capture feelings and subtle moods not codified by words.

A picture would be nice but I can't even draw these feelings, feelings of listening to poignant KJHK DJ selections while on the lonely darkness of state highway K-7, returning from a friend's new house to the dying fires of my old home. Try communicating that emotional epoch that defines each period several months, segmenting them off with songs and books, smells and flavors; a discrete pill encased in membranes of internal division. You can't, but you know it is there.

I can't edit or think about appearances, sleepy brain wants none of that. Thanksgiving for me treads a deep rut in my liferoad, continually retracing my neural pathways with the sensations of warmth and love. Not everyone gets that, I guess, and I am glad for my blessings. I'm running out of money and my brain won't focus on my studies.

What is my destiny and why do I avoid it?

Why do I get so rhetorical around this time of year?

...

My Fake Xanga

2003-11-18T00:44:00.000-06:00

Hee hee hee. My little Xanga project makes me titter like a meth-ed out entomologist in a room full of cicada specimens. In it, I take the guise of an imaginary 13 year old boy from Johnson County, Kansas, and try to convey the mannerisms and language patterns so that they stand up to the utmost scrutiny. It is my hope that I will be able to infiltrate the age group and communicate with them successfully, like an anthropologist would. Oh the fun I am having! I am such a dork.

I'm currently trying to find a rich source of text messages between these kids so I can analyze their language and social rules. Then I plan to integrate my page into one of their webrings, infiltrating their circles undetected. I tried to get Kramer (my roommate) to procure some data for me from his 12 year old brother, but he won't do it, for some kind of "honor" reason. Bah. Family stuff. Clan mentality. He watches too much Braveheart.

Is this a morally wrong venture? Will the FBI burst into my room one night, point oil-dripping assault rifles at me and confiscate my computer? I doubt it. I see nothing wrong with having a little fun with the internet for the sake of a good laugh. I'm not being overly secretive about anything. I'm not a wacko kidnapper or "photographer." I'm just a bored college kid trying to do what every parent dreams of. In fact, if this works, I could sell my method to parent organizations everywhere, so they can keep tabs on their children.

It will probably take a month or two of germination before my plot comes to fruition. I need to have a buildup of maybe 15-20 posts, and that takes a while. So I wait patiently, now and then adding a carefully crafted stream of semi-coherent, misspelled pre-teen idiom. I bide my time, but I shall achieve my goal!

[Evil scientist laugh]

Weightlifting

2003-11-17T23:49:00.000-06:00

Sigh...There's nothing better than a refreshing shower after busting butt at the gym. That's right folks. Kyle has been working out this fine semester. Expect quadriceps like Easter hams and pectorals to par with Pamela Anderson this holiday season. I've been pumping up.

Now, don't go passing judgment upon me and my decision to lift iron.

[The following is said in a gritty, macho WWF Challenger voice]

Besides, you're probably still benching with the pussy weights. That's right, little girlie man. I can lift more weight than you, and your biceps are like rubber bands compared to my throbbing specimens. In fact, I'll bet that every time you see me in the gym, you stare in wishful awe at my taut, rippled torso, artificially bronzed [Fruit of the Earth Aloe Vera Sunless Self Tanning Cream] and flatteringly framed by my poor excuse for a tank top, which has been ripped apart by my straining dynamos so much that it looks like it's made of spaghetti. Watch me pick up this gigantic bar bell loaded with weight and be amazed by my well-marked progress in the art of picking up heavy things.

Huuurrrrr...Urrrrrrrrrrr...HuuuhnggggggggggrrrrrrAAAAAARRRR!!!!

[End Slim Jim commercial]

Did that last bit sound like I was constipated? There is a guy like that at the gym, but so far I've seen him maybe twice, and I'm pretty consistent about going 2 or 3 times a week. But most of the people there are decent, and I've grown used to the culture of the fitness center. It's a strange but practical culture, full of mores and codes that are at first confusing and intimidating, but then quickly adopted after a few weeks and used to scorn the infrequent exercisers for their unlearned behavior.

I've found my gym guru, a guy named Evan. He's like Superman, down to the broad clefted chin, curled bangs and small Kansas town origin, so that's my nickname for him. Not to mention that he is so ripped that he could wrestle a steamshovel and win with a reversal. Don't try to imagine this, because it is way too cartoony, and he is not a cartoon. He is flesh, bone, and all american muscle. He introduced himself with a sheepish "I'm just a freshman," but he is not a freshman of the school of heavy lifting. This guy could work out in a forest by lifting trees out of the ground and juggling boulders, but he is the humblest and most softspoken guy that I've encountered at the fitness center.

Superman.

Yeah.

Incoherent Babble

2003-11-16T14:14:00.000-06:00

Is it a faux pas to mention blogs in a blog? It feels awkward to do it, like I'm in a ska band called "The Checkmates" or an emo band called "Emoville." Yes, this makes me a loser, eh? I'm an idiot about this stuff.

I've been looking at some blogs today, and there are so many different styles of writing out there. I seem to suffer from style envy. My writing is so...stuffy. I feel like a cobwebby old english professor with out of control wizard eyebrows and an old tweed jacket with elbow patches.

Should I adopt a new style, or is it something that is as inescapeable as having to clip my fingernails once every three weeks ? (Dammit, it's almost time.) maybe I can be like Method Man and tout styles upon styles.

Booyah! I was goin bout muh bidness today an dis guy! He tried ta jump my ass! I hadder puddup a fight to save muh neck. Shit, this bitch be crazy comin after me n shit. I was runnin down the street yellin for my boys, but they's lazy asses was shooting pool over at Sammy's bar. So's I turned around on the guy, see, and puddup muh fists, see? He slowed hisself down a minnit and looked me up an down, tryin ta size me up. I says to im: "Betta get me on da first punch or I'll clock ya one!" (etc.)

Yawn. Okay, that was pathetic.

Is style something that authors are conscious of? I should think so, but it's not so easily adopted as grown into. If a person is accustomed to wearing Abercrombie outfits and happens across a thriftshop one day and decides to dress like a hipster, they're probably not going to be successful. Maybe if they start listening to college radio, go to some obscure performances by bands that they hear about on the "cool" radio shows, and observe the trends practiced by the fans, they can slowly learn what identifies the hipster, and adopt such traits. And vice versa.

So must style be absorbed over a period of time and acclimation? Ack! Here I go again, slicing and dicing the world into chunks of wordy thoughts. I can't escape myself! I'm trapped and paralyzed by my analyticity.

I want to be more visceral, more reactive, instead of being so contemplative. I want to spew out streams of vernacular like a busted fire hydrant, or tubgirl. (You do not want to know about tubgirl, trust me.) It seems that great authors have a knack for appropriating or creating styles. Which is it? It seems to me that to be believable, an author must do a lot of listening and immersive study of the speech characteristics of different people to make the dialogue true and interesting. (The creativity most likely arises from the combination of various observations, to create a new personality. So is personality attached to expression? Crap, I need to not review my posts, or they will become even more confusing, with edits at the beginning which answer questions from the end, or worse even!)

Vernacular and cliche are so intrenched into the language of normal people that it doesn't make sense for a writer to avoid them like the plague. (Ack!!! Cliche attack!!! Must....resist....deletion!) It's quite important for an author to study instead the way in which cliches and idioms construct a local dialect, or a certain age or cultural group.

And there I go again, fully conscious of my stuffy academic style, unable to defeat it, even when I am attempting to do so with all of my strength. Analysis cannot enclose itself entirely. Is this self-dialogue like Ouroboros, the self-devouring snake? Analyzing analysis is suspiciously circular, like a guy giving himself a blowjob. (Had to be crass, don't want to lose [nonexistant] readership!)

And my analysis of my analysis of analysis, which from now on we will label the phrase analysis of to the function A(x), where x is the item to be analyzed, is going to eventually become a recursive and confusing mess of stuff that no one wants to read about. A(A(A(A(A(...A(x)...)))))!!!

Yikes, what a crazy blog this is! Or is it? (Drat, forgot first rule of blogging: Don't mention blogging!)

...

Some time elapses

...

Ok, I think that I figured out my style. I'm a nutcase who spouts incoherent and overly wordy babble for the sake of his own sanity.

File next to Cooking at the bookshop.

First Post

2003-11-15T13:10:00.000-06:00

Last night, I did something crazy. "What? What!" You ask with feral features and foamy mouths. Did I find a kinky BDSM club and see people hanging from their nipple rings? Did I throw rocks out at the highway from an overpass? Did I get into a fight with 25 shadowy figures behind a bar and have to defend myself with the secret training I endured during my formative years at the Tibetan monestary?

Nothing quite so exotic. I went with my roommates to a "Christian game night party." Yes, I can tell exactly what you are thinking now. Christian game night party? This guy is a dork, a loser, a boring moralist. He probably hands out pamphlets and tracts at the bar districts on Saturday nights.

Not quite. Yes, I have been hanging out with a group of Christian kids (CK's) over the past few months, and do you want to know the reason? It's not even tied to religion at all. I simply enjoy being able to have a good time without drinking alcohol at every occasion. That's right, I'm surrounded by alcoholics, and need respite!

Now, I enjoy a good flavored beer or wine just like the crem de la crem of all connoisseurs. I can drink an entire bottle of Grey Goose vodka at your parents house before you get back from the toilet. I am not against getting drunk and being raucous. It just irks me to the bone when I feel dependent on any external influence to maintain my stability. And alcohol has become such an influence.

So, to prove that I haven't lost my ability to be silly and crazy and funloving, I am desperate to find people who do things, anything really, with the absence of alcohol.

Is it really so difficult to not get drunk at a place where alcohol is provided? Ask my roommate. He said last night that he was "twitching" to get some alcohol. Prior to the game night, my two roomies and I sauntered over to the Nelson-Strickler art gallery for their monthly opening.

It was an experimental evening. Kramer, one roomate, and I pledged to not be tempted by the booze for the entire evening. Of course, the gallery was stocked like Julia Childs' spice rack. Bombay Sapphire, Boulevard Beer, wine in carafes...we were salivating and resistless, like Odysseus listening to the Syrens.

But we persisted, and left the place an hour later not having drunk a single drop. Now, if it is really that hard to not drink, then there must be a problem here.

Hence, the CK's. We arrived at the house after the gallery tired and dejected, really wanting some nice stiff drinks. What we got were cupcakes, brownies, and other goodies. And wonderful, refreshing lemonade. Ahhh! Lemonade, the lifeblood of restaurants. The sweetened drink for those who don't want water, but abhor carbonation.

We played games like Balderdash, Egyptian Rat Killer, and an insanely dorky but fun German "designer game" called Settlers of Catan, which Jeffery swore wasn't D n D.

There wasn't a single religious reference over the entire evening. Not that I care much, for I'm comfortable talking about beliefs with anyone of any culture or creed so long as we talk respectfully and rationally.

But the point is that I was able to have an eventful, enjoyable evening without the use of alcohol to make it so. Even though it may seem like snacks in the kitchen with Mrs. Cleaver to you, I consider it a success.

Of course, tonight is a blank page, and if the CK's aren't doing anything, then I'm going to have to get creative.

Anyone want to go fill the public swimming pool with cinder blocks?

~Kyle