| Post-partem expression |
[20 Nov 2009|12:15am] |
so I'm here. a father of a three month old baby. Responsible to the bitter end.
But that's whats different now. as apposed to a year ago, even four months ago. The constant failure doesn't phase me at all, not like it used to. I used to grovel in my bouncing checks or complain about my relationship problems and fears, but now I feel like I have no room to claim credit for such things.
If I fail, it's because that was the hand delt. I wake up, rush to school, rush to work, hold a baby till I fall asleep, then I wake up. Durring school I have 2 hours to study, but I used to only have one legitimate hour before irritation I mean irrigation class hit its' final. So there are my nights, I can study at night after work, before I sleep. That's becoming more a reality with the slow season in full swing. but still I have to deal with the fog of fatigue turning me and my mind to mashed potatoes. But when something is late, when I look at the corrected exam with a soaring "C" and admire the various shortcomings of my addled joke of a mind, I don't cry. I shrug like the teenager I was always supposed to be but never got to be. Oh well, If I flunk then I guess I'm just a peice of shit dishwasher with no future, no past, no money, non time.
Nothing new. just now I can say it to my self, and express it with no shame. As surely as if the story leading up to here were a genetic code, this is the physical expression.
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| midterms |
[26 Oct 2009|01:39am] |
oy! I just kicked soil science butt last week in my midterm there, but now I'm freaking out about my EV midterm. you see they give you a map of france and germany with a bunch of numbers, and a piece of paper to write all of the names of those places. oh and I have to know their winemaking processes and restrictions. btw,the french are complex and nitpicky and obsessed with crazy spelling.
I'm dredding it, but here we go anyway.
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| Dionysian origins |
[06 Feb 2009|08:55am] |
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Made out of babies, trophy |
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There is a little controversy over where and when Dionysus religion started and what it lead to. Most of the older opinions seem to point towards a Thracian or Scythian-Sarmatian origin. The classical Greek philosophers didn’t seem to have a high opinion of Dionysus and they seem to believe that he and his ‘barbaric’ rituals came from a distant eastern religion. The ecstatic rituals described of the Dionysus cult brings to mind the kinds of rituals described of the Sufi’s but there’s probably no direct connection.
The biggest thing is that he’s not part of the Homeric Olympian Pantheon, so it displaces him from official recognition in major city centers. That's not so surprising if you know Dionysian practices and mythology. Not only is his religion full of uninhibited behavior, but the stories of Dionysus seem to give the impression of someone who is not in the favor of governments, kings, or the ruling class at all. Governments never liked how out of control the Maenads (women followers of Dionysus) got. dionysus seemed to constantly stand for the oppressed, the women, and children.
Tablets written in an early form of Greek describing Dionysus were found on Crete. Which thickens the plot and leaves our drunken folk hero in Early Greece. Most modern Scholars conclude that Dionysian religion was started in Crete, especially since Dionysus was married to the princess of crete.
But that still leaves a couple loose ends, in the middle-east and in Egypt. Interestingly enough some classical greek scholars believed Dionysus and Osiris to be the same God. Both of them invented fermentation, and crop cultivation specifically for beer or wine. They both transcend the land of the dead being shattered into pieces and rebuilt by goddesses. But Osiris teaches morality to his people, whereas Dionysus expects people not to judge each other and if they judge him they suffer some pretty harsh consequences.
Then there’s the issue of the pre-Alexandrian middle-eastern alleged Dionysian religion. Many Alexandrian scholars believed that Dionysus had traveled there before them and carried many names including Shiva. As we all know Shiva is basically an ancient Vedic Hindu diety so this piece of conjecture is easily shot down as being the kind of self-centric viewpoints of the Alexandrian academia.
Before I explain my theory as to where Dionysus and all of these alcohol religions came from let me detour to the theories of what became of Dionysian religion.
According to some, the cults of Isis and Dionysus were the basis of Christianity. But why not? Lets go over the basics of Dionysian mythological origins: a human born god walks the earth in confusion for some time before starting a religion with many sermons and offering his own blood as ritual sacrament, he later transcends death to be in the heavens. Wait did I just describe Jesus or Dionysus? Their stories are pretty frickin’ similar, but philosophically I think they are pretty much opposite. Of course I don’t know too much about Christian philosophy besides that they seem to obsess over death and dying.
Unfortunately Christianity has a lot in common with a lot of religions, so it would take a lot to mount a satisfactory case for a Dionysian origin. I think a couple of grad student's mad it their thesis, but I'm not sure. How I wish I could just order this stuff through the network like I used to at wsu.
In my opinion, Dionysus probably started in Greece and Minoan Crete since no one else seems to call their drunk diety by that strange name. But at the same time I think that all of these religions of alcohol had trade and communication. Indeed the Egyptians had a name for wine before they had a word for the grape vine. It seems evident that once people figured out how to make mead and wine they would emediatly see god in that sacred juice. In what other way can you imagine someone easily feeling transformed from human to godly then with the consumption of 'chthonic' wines. Alcohol and herbs that alter perception. To me it seems like the whole Dionysus kit and kaboodle is a direct product of breaking open the head and leaving it to the oppressed people to drink the most.
The evidence of this kind of alcohol religion are in every culture, and if they’re similar I don’t think its exactly an accident. The effects of alcohol are well documented and very predictable. Which says a lot to me about the origins of not just Christianity but also Judaism where wine plays a strong part. I think I said that in a previous post here...
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| more pagan mumblings |
[06 Feb 2009|08:53am] |
Upon some consideration I decided to abandon the quest to understand exactly where neo-paganism began, until we answer some basic questions first. besides I realize that it was a futile question anyway...
Firstly, How did the ancient European pagan religions die out exactly, and how much is really left? In order to answer that question we should really isolate two or three specific cultures in separate essays just to give a taste of the fall of pre-christian Europe.
Once we name a date that a culture could be called “assimilated” or “annihilated” we need to build a list of opinions and writings describing what Christian Europe believed of those specific cultures. And basically we’re looking for early re-constructionists or supposed fam-trads or even people who hold any kind of angst towards pagan beliefs and believers. This second batch of essays will probably describe the way that ancient gods became modern demons, demy gods, and were assimilated by Christianity.
Finally, once those questions are answered we can start venturing a guess as to who some of the first neo-pagans were. But I’m guessing we’ll find that neo-paganism has been initiated in one form or another one or more times before the scholars of Elizabethan times started the chain reaction that lead to Druidry, the Golden dawn, Thelema, and eventually Wicca and Druidism.
It’s also possible that we’ll run into magick-pagan religious systems that are infact the product of syncretic folklore in conquered lands. Voodun comes to mind right away, but I think that there were probably many more of these right at home in Italy, Greece, Germany, you name it.
This will have to be a multi-lingual research project. Limiting my self to English literature and scholars will severely inhibit my ability to produce any kind of reliable work. We’ll see where this all takes me…
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| studying the roots of neo-paganism |
[04 Feb 2009|12:20pm] |
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where did neo-paganism come from? well I'm not sure personally but I wanted to share some of my studies from the last few months.
Disclaimer: this is a blog post not an "official essay". and most of what I'll say is gleaned from a very limited scope of research.
First of all for the purposes of this post "neo-paganism" is the tradition of pre-monotheist and magical religion revivalism. so like wicca. or druidry/ism.
Most scholars seem to agree with Margot Adler's "drawing down the moon", where she claims that paganism as we know it today started in the 1950's with Gerald B. Gardner's "witchcraft today". Drawing down the moon is a really good book, I reccomend it, but I have to ask where does that leave Aleister Crowley? or the Hermetic order of the golden dawn? From my reading of "gems from the Equinox", a compilation of writing by Crowley about magick, it seems like Crowley was almost half-way there. He talks about both god and goddess. And he basically makes this mish-mosh new-age religion that starts somewhere in Kabalah land travels through yoga and alchemy country and lands somewhere in neo-paganism.
but let me take a detour for a seccond...
Did you know that "Islam" has only been called "Islam" for about two hundred years. It started with western Intellectuals doing that cataloging and psuedo science we're famous for. and they wanted a name to describe all of those guys that believe in the prophet mohamed. Muslims first regected the idea that they're all the same, because they weren't, but eventually they used the idea of one "islam" as a pollitical tool. Contrary to common belief Muslim empires didn't do mass conversions or inquisitions and witch burnings. They just occupied lands and fed the inhabitants. eventually the pagan religions from Spain to India were mixing in to this mohatmetan religion. Islam was a really colorful and intresting beast, with many names. But that's not the point, basically religion changes.
The Islam of today is not the islam of 60 or a hundred years ago. The same could be said about any religion. So sure, wicca and druidry as we know it today is a tottaly different animal from anything older than a hundred years or more. Whether it started in 1954 (witchcraft today) or 1904(the Equinox), I'm pretty sure that the roots of these many neo-pagan religions comes from people trying to reach back into their pagan pasts and filling the gaps with what they know from their present to create the religions of neo-paganism.
In my opinion there's evidence of worship of pagan dieties, divination, and magick back maybe four hundred years. Like most pagans these days they were just Jews or Christians, or aetheists who were intrested in cardomancy. or maybe herbalism. or just plain old magick. and it seems eventually you find your self in a coven or grove following a full blown pagan path. My main example right now is the work of Dr.John Dee. He was Queen Elizabeth I's conjurer and advisor. Basically he was an Occultist who wrote down most of what he did, meaning that he is also a kind of historical gem in that sense. His life is a window into what was going on back then. at the same time i realize he wasn't a witch and he definately wasn't in any secret societies so more "occultists" need to be found.
But besides Dr.Dee there were also the masonic orders, the Rosicrucianists, the kabalists, the sufis. And while it seems like most of these guys were "monotheists" from the start just venturing into the occult and witchcraft, it seems to me like given enough time they would develop a broader world view. Ofcourse I don't have any printed sources to say that the occultists of the 1600s were polytheists or even penentheists but like I said this is just the sum of a very little bit of research.
more on this later...
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| R.I.P. Chloe |
[28 Jan 2009|08:51am] |
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my Girlfriend's rabbit died last night.
chloe is on the left. she was a happy rabbit. She enjoyed eatin carrots and apples, but she didn't like bananas or ferrets. She was surrounded with friends, constantly sleeping with the dog and cats. She showed a little interest in the dogs food, and the dog was a little too forceful in protecting his food. the dog spent her last moments whining next to her pawing at her to get back up. He lost one of his best friends to his own strength and we all lost our favourite rabbit. We miss her something terrible.
I think that's the hardest part of keeping a zoo of animals in your house, they can't live forever.
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| the bus |
[27 Oct 2008|10:33am] |
the bus system that gets me to my monday janitorial shift at Whoopemup is terrible. They were supposed to pick me up at 10:30 and yet they awoke me up at the fine hour of 8:30 with a certain conviction that I was screwing them over by not being at the buss stop. it's just a constant struggle with them. half the time they just forget that they need to pick me up entirely, and they won't refund my fare. but ofcourse even that is cheaper than a driver's liscense and a tank of gas right now.
so I guess I start my weeks off on a bad note these days, but it doesn't matter because on friday it's halloween. it feels like I live my whole life in anticaption of hapiness, of rest, just like I used to five years ago. but back then I didn't have any real problems, just imaginary ones. I am greatful to have real spectors and real vacations from real jobs. it's a bit easier. But now that the new year is upon us I feel like I have arrived in a way. like I don't have to stress about tommorow until it comes around.
Hopefully I reach the internets later this week to update further.
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| convenience |
[23 Sep 2008|03:14pm] |
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so I've had this idea in my head but I haven't had a way of describing it completely so I haven't blogged it. silly huh? I guess I'll just have to rely on the internets to be my brain for me here...
It seems to me that whenever a scientific discovery becomes famous people tend to try to explain all of science away with it. So people's whole life's work are reduced to the titles. Like "Evolution" or "atoms" worst yet is "string theory". Do most people who watch a nova documentary on these subjects understand what they are, no. Infact many people graduate from college with professional degrees in law or medicine without a clue about some of the foundational, BIG, ideas that make all of our lifes possible today. and that's ok as long as no one ignorant is voting on it or writing legislation on it, or basing religions on it.
and that's basically my idea, If you don't know the nitty gritty don't act on your theories about the possible conclussions. Because that leads to alot of lazy theories, alot of convienient science, religion, politics, and economics.
I remember when "what the bleep" came out and every pagan I knew was suddenly content to just boil their whole religion down to an unproven scientific theory. I'm not saying it's exactly wrong, it's just dangerous and lazy to leave everything up to the "strings" no questions asked. Only a few decades ago a cult named "psychiana" trusted the power of god in the hands of nuclear physics. They claimed that the destruction of hiroshima was not only proof that god was on the side of america, but is also proof that god was giving us his divine power to ascend to his level. and I guess that not far off, but I hope my humble readers can see why that's a silly reason to subscribe to a mail order cult religion.
To me it seems like modern legislation on things like the internet and stem cell research are a little like manifest destiny. Journalist John L. O'Sullivan said,"And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us."[1] But remember that the whole continent that O'Sullivan is talking about was inhabited by pesky indians and wasn't anything like what those colonial americans thought it would be like. Imagine us fools now, just walking off the cliff of technology with senator McCain and all of his knowledge of our manifest destiny.
I hope you readers see what I mean. It's pretty simple, and I may not have said it perfectly but atleast I'm saying it.
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| The day the earth stood still |
[22 Jul 2008|11:55am] |
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One of my favourite movies of all time has been remade and is now in the post production process. I ofcourse mean the 1951 classic "the day the earth stood still". I like this movie because it still stands up as a sci fi flick, and the photography and lighting is incredible. it seems like film and special effects are so cheap these days that many film makers have just forgotten the artistic principals behind making movies that are perfect. never to be remade. solid.
Hollywood is just so hungry for that never before seen action that they get impatient and greedy. they're making supersized value meals, that leave you hungry instead of wholesome masterpieces that make you feel enlightened.
Now I'm not saying that *all* filmakers are doing this, just alot of them. It's gotten to the point that many people who love film will refuse to recognize modern masterpieces.
Anyway, The day the earth stood still has some cheesy parts, but all in all it was a provocative pollitical film with a kind of sci-fi premise. It had a revolutionary and beautiful soundtrack. and there are some things like the robot Gort, which makes more sense today that it did in the 50s.
Basically what I mean to say (without ranting too much) is that re-imagining a masterpiece with typecast actors and glutonous special effects is a recipe for disaster. Sometimes it can be almost pulled off, case-and-point: speed racer. But most of the time it's just creatively bancrupt and destined to whither away into nothing.
It's times like these that I wish we had more Stanley kubricks and Sergio Leones.
Check out the trailer: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970416/
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| updates |
[23 Feb 2008|02:31pm] |
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Hustle~ Reggae Disco |
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I have several posts in the brewing stages right now from music to current beer and mead projects as well as some interesting new cartoons I'm working on, but instead I am spending more time right now on trying to finish some easy cartoon projects.
Anyway, I have a qustion and I can't seem to find a good answer for it yet:
Can I broadcast am/fm radio with my powerbook's wi-fi card the same way that i can project internet, and an ipod can broadcast radio for car use?
It's just that I have access to nice stereos on a regular basis, and burning CD's seems like a waste. What if I could share my music with out sounding crappy through these tiny speakers on the 12" powerbook? I think that that would make sooo much more sense then buying a dock for everykind of mp3 player...
go go search the internets!
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| Niggy Tardust |
[13 Feb 2008|10:41pm] |
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Niggy tardust~ Raw |
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So I've been thinking about organizing my musical opinions into a separate blog and I decided to test drive the format I'm thinking of on the latest album that I have had a chance to hear. Thanks mom for getting this for me!
Artist: Saul Williams & Trent Reznor collaboration
Album: The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust
*Genre: Industrial/spoken word/dirtysouth, Political, Profoundly Californian
Two Word Review: Prodigiously soulful
One Paragraph Review:
Saul Williams and Trent Reznor demonstrate the diversity in their artistic pallet by mashing their two music styles and extending the product into territory beyond what either artist has conquered. I look forward to seeing more from this creative relationship in my lifetime. I would recommend this album to any open minded individual seeking to understand culture clash on the most primal of levels, in music. This album isn't melodic, but it is beautiful, and that appeals only to a special kind of person.
My favorite Moments: the use of horns in "scared money" and the old-school public enemy-esque, flava flav-esque samples in "tr(n)igger".
Review (aka rant):
Lets just say that I have been anticipating the moment that I could hear this album for quite some time, and I have not been let down.
This album is way ahead of its time and I hope that people years from now will be able to recognize that. It represents the convergence of rock and rap in terms of core ideals instead of the superficial attempts of the tired 90's "numetal" bands. I say this because of the kind of syncretic trope that it uses. I don't think there is a band that has accomplished this sort of stuff since RATM.
NiggyTardust is full of those sweeping sound scapes and crunching grooves that Trent is famous for in his deep and emotional work with Nine inch nails. From begining to end you really feel that you are experiencing the articulate passion of Saul's political diction. But what's awesome about the way the music is delivered is that there is never a lack of patience. The album has a lot of room to build up and it has it's high and low points.
This collaboration and the quality of the work is a product of producing music for the sake of music and not billboard charts. This is the stuff that our dying music industry has needed for more than ten years now. So I hope people catch on and can find it in themselves to listen to the whole album... before musicians start to get panicky.**
Road blocks to acquiring a taste in this album:
Saul's voice has always been hard to get used to. He goes out of his way to express his lyricism and he's not very melodious or conventional about it. Sometimes his voice really attacks your nerves, but I think it's because he's sonically presenting emotions that aren't necessarily very enjoyable to experience in the first place. Which is an interesting road block for me because of the kinds of bands that I have become obsessed with like Meshuggah or Fushitsusha and in fact all of the work of Keiji Haino.
It's noisy. Life is noisy, get used to it. it's very.... avant-garde.
*I'll blog later on the whole genre or no genre discussion in music, but basically I believe that genres are made up of style, content, and place.
**For the record I will never read a news.com release seriously again. I have seen alot of bullshit come out of them but none more important than this one. But the truth of it is that musicians and record labels alike are getting a little silly about this stuff. In any case, remember teh review is just a test run...
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| Trent Reznor |
[09 Feb 2008|02:01pm] |
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When I found out back in october that two of my favorite artists were going to out of the blue just collaborate and stick it to the RIAA by letting people download the album for whatever price they like (the way radiohead did or Harvey Danger did), I pretty much screamed with excitement. But I ended up not being able to afford it (5$), so I just haven't downloaded it. not for free, not for money. but as soon as I do get a job and last years financial aid then I'll happily trek over to Niggytardust.com and download away.
I felt from the begining that it was kind of blindly thrown out there, and that maybe Trent Reznor and Saul Williams didn't really know what they were getting them selves into by making people put a price on their collaboration. For starters, very few people outside of the spoken word community even know who saul williams is, or care since his music is too much of an aquired taste for the stupid, dumb, and hyphie crowd anyway. but it gets worse because from the start, there was no publicity circus or middlemen so it's not like people were going to suddenly care because of how free or close to free they could 'legally' get the music. So in many ways I feel that expecting great financial reward or even break even financial reward was a bit of a failure to assess the market.
The sad thing is that out of all those people who did download the album, less then ten percent even bought the album for more than 5$. Which makes me wonder who actually bought the album, and why? What lessons can we take away from the scenario towards the future so that artists can both avoid record labels and avoid loosing all their money in recording/distribution?
also doesn't "whatever price you'll pay" feel like a bit of a jewish grandma guilt trip? I think there should have been a more solid price, and maybe even product. I think they should have never advertised it and just handed out a demo or single like any old indie band in the center of college campuses. And then randomly they should have gone on tour and given the album out in concert... that's the closest thing to a solution that I can come up with.
I'll blog more about this when I can get out some more solid answers, or ideas...
I'll just expect you know who Nine inch nails is.
But if you don't know who saul williams is then watch this:
and their newest collaboration....(although for the record I think that the youtube is better quality):
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| explain thanksgiving to a guatemalan |
[02 Feb 2008|02:27pm] |
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This is a conversation I had earlier today with my friend in guatemala (translated from spanish):
Jonah: Why are there cartoons of people wearing weired fucked up costumes and indians and turkeys for thanksgiving in the states?
Me: Where did you see that?
Jonah: I was surfing on flickr.
Me: Do you guys have a thanks giving over there (dia de gracias)?
Jonah: yeah, but no turkeys, and I've never seen those funny clown hats before.
Me: In the states thanksgiving is about white people celebrating that they killed all the indians. the "clown hats" are supposed to be what the white people wore when they came to america and tricked the indians into giving us all there food before we killed them by surprise.
Jonah: hijo su gran puta madre (son of a big whore mother).
Me: I know.
Jonah: I'm never going to the states. even legally. my whole family is indian.
.....
Needless to say, that took alot of explaining and linking to news articles to get out of his head.
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| llamas and teeth |
[30 Jan 2008|08:50pm] |
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Today I met the dentist for the first time. He looked at my two year old x-rays and gave me an estimate of how much it would cost and told me that it need not last longer than an hour. And sinceI have had my wisdom teeth growing and holding my other teeth down like a vice for over a year I was pretty much ready to get rid of it at any time/cost/pain. I was ready to have some snow plow tie a bike chain to my four huge wisdom teeth and just pull them out that way.
Anyhow, all within the space of an hour and fifteen minutes I met the guy, he injected me a couple of times, and tore out my teeth. It was over before I knew it. The teeth were frickin' huge! almost an inch long and one was as big around as my ring finger. I didn't get to see how big the bottom ones were because they had to be sawed into little bits in order to take them out without making to big a mess. Honestly the not having teeth hurts alot less than the getting injected in the mouth 4 times, I swear he was practically shaking the needle around in my cheek to see how much he could make it swell later on.
but besides that I'm pretty happy. 40 Pens. 20 hydrocodones.
And I just contracted a pet guinea pig. Like I need any more pets, pretty soon when I move in with my girlfreind it will be two dogs, four cats, three ferrets, a bunny, and now a guinea pig. I keep trying to convince her that we need a goat or a llama.
imagine the benefits:
llamas make nice wool = source of income
llamas are good gaurd animals = more useful than either of the panzie dogs.
llamas can survive at high altitudes = yes that is useful
llama is a cool word to say.
Any how, that was just a little update from last post.
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| Opposite day |
[27 Jan 2008|10:26pm] |
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the fountain ost |
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So this last friday I did what I do every friday night. I sat down to a dnd-esque game session with ten other ultra-nerdy roll players. They're so nerdy that one of them actually invented the whole system we are using to play this particular game, and we're alpha testing it for him so that he can get all of the kinks out of the system to sell it hopefully some day.
..... and the most bizzare thing happened. I made a lord of the rings refference, and no one got it. I was trying to tell them that any animal with an uncountable amount of tentacles is called a "muctapus" because thats what my brother named the monster outside of the mines of moria when he was four years old. And it was tottaly lost on them. They didn't even know what moria is.
I discovered that I was the only one in the whole room who likes the lord of the rings.
They not only dislike the lord of the rings, they refuse to watch the movies or read the books.
How can a group of larping, historical re-enacting, blacksmithing, beer brewing, dnd-ing, shadowrunning, computer progamming, obssesive book worms and historians hate the lord of the rings?
"it's too wordy and landscapey"
"frodo is emo"
"bilbo baggins was only kind of cool because he actually becomes a bad ass by the end of the hobbit"
"helms deep was boring"
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| Meeting guides |
[27 Jan 2008|10:25pm] |
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these last few years have been a time of losing the ideas and ambitions that I used to have. Sometimes they have been more like liberations, while other times it feels like those same things were in fact amputations in disguise.
Recently I've been realizing how much of a loss stopping my comic book art was. At the time I felt really disillusioned and I seriously needed to get out of my depression that kind of painted most of my comic book art. But at the same time those comix had some really cool ideas and I could have become a better artist. Instead I just replaced my row of sharpened pencils for my guitar.
I used to want to write and draw comic books. every day, with every fiber of my body. I think I had good reasons, though kind of immature for why I stopped. At this point I'm happy that I didn't finish some of my comic books, because I realize now when I read them that they were horrible. In the sense that the story was too long, the jokes not funny, and the panels were innovative but often lost and muffled. The ideas were pretty good though, especially when I look back and realize the things that I accomplished, threw away and re-accomplished at such a young age.
And I still have allot of time to go before I can stop being "young".
so I have decided in this last week to alternate days drawing and guitar so that my separate and crazy endeavors don't consume me or stress me out. A good whole day of break should help me out in keeping a level head.
The only thing is that I'm re-re-re-re-re etc... writing the main story of the comic book that I've been developing since I was nine or ten. And this is basically because in reading my old stories I realize that even though the universe was cool, the characters were fresh and the concepts are still everything that I dream of seeing in media today, there is still very little emotion. The story was too much about armies, parent-less heroes, and stopping apocalypses. In some ways the biggest mistake was watching the lord of the rings so many times during my early teen years.
Right now I'm trying to find a simple passionate story in the characters from the original stories. Something where maybe only two or three characters feelings or lives are at stake instead of the whole saving the world shtick.
I'll get back to this in a bit, but I figure that on ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) vrax's I should post my incomplete and wandering thoughts, just so that they're out there.
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| Blood Money |
[05 Nov 2007|11:15am] |
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Puscifer ~The Undertaker |
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Today I finally recieve some money from the university to pay for rent and life in the form of a short term loan. Basically I finally talked to someone who actually knows what's going on in there and he set me up with a short term 500$ loan for this month's rent aswell as my full fin-aid on weds to pay of the loan.
But to grease the wheels of life I have been donating blood plasma for 30$ a week andgoing to the food bank every two weeks. It's a pretty good service that the food bank provides, and the whole social services building. They pay for your electricity bill (no matter your financial bracket), and automatically apply you for food stamps when you show up. And there's tons of food and other supplies that you can't get on food stamps. So I've been eating pretty well.
Blood plasma is a pretty easy $250+ a month, and it's not too much work. You just have to eat well, excercise often and drink alot of water before sitting down for an hour with a needle the size of a capri-sun straw in your arm. They just take the blood out of you spin out the plasma along with some anti-coagulant they add, and return the blood to your arm. Then the plasma can be used to make skin ointment for burn victims in europe aswel as media for SARS researchers in europe.
The only concievable problem that could occur with donating blood plasma would have to be if you have a fear of needles. Which I don't, the whole process is very scientific and interesting to me, atleast durring the actual act. Afterward however I have this really nerve racking feeling that I've been somehow violated like I had a pencil in my arm or something. It's really weired to me because of how primal and underdevolped this fear of seeing a round scar on my arm is. I just see one of my arms and chills start going up my spine, pulling my arms into this sickly numb feeling. Sometimes it take a minute to just get over it and start thinking about happy things in life.
I don't really know what to make of it in the end. There are no rational problems with donating blood plasma for me. I just feel very strangely about it after a donation or just after I pull off the bandage. So we'll see if the fear gets worse, or if I can just get over it the same way that the actual pain went away after the third donation.
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| Wikipedia |
[29 Oct 2007|11:35am] |
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Don't get me wrong here, I love Wikipedia, but today I feel really shot down. I just wrote two page articles for three of the bands at my old and now defunct record label Crimson label. At some great difficulty I might add, since they have their onw special markup language. Two hours wasted.
They weren't gaudy advertisements or unreferenced assertions, these articles were wholesome well researched and illustrated contributions. I just thought that people in search of them should be able to easily find them. Better yet most of my sources were in print and on the web, so none of this myspace linking bs that most bands have on their wikipedia pages. The moscow-pullman daily newspaper. Border 104 newsletter. The Daily evergreen.
And yet, nearly 30minutes afterwords the articles were deleted on the basis that I was the only contributor. Should we just go burning new york times articles on the basis that there isn't a team working on every little entry? Should we just delete, without back-up, without mercy, when there is some doubt?
I wouldn't even mind if the articles were probationed, and then I could have a chance to argue against it. This was total and complete bs.
So in retaliation I am offering Parallax's debut album for free. right here. Get the word out, and maybe some team of highschool students can find a window of time to type out all that crap on at least one of the bands that I was contributing on.
DistanceMoon/DistanceObserver by Parallax
Enjoy...
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[18 Oct 2007|12:52pm] |
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Mogwai |
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For my birthday I celebrated with a couple of my friends at my apartment over quite a bit of mead. It was loads of fun just watching star-wars and trying to quote every line before the flickering telly could recite it for us.
Summary of meads:
750ml Wine bottle "Five point mead"
when my mom first made this stuff, it was absolutely amazing. I don't anyone anticipated that it could get better, but it did. After being left alone for two years or so from when we made christmas gifts the syrupy thick apple barley mead was able to clear up and free the carbonation. The result was a sweet champaign-like wine with a hardy barley after taste that cleansed the pallet. The consistency was smooth and the carbonation was almost professional. All in all this Bottle was the best choice to open up for my eighteenth birthday.
750ml Huckleberry Mead (camas prairie winery)
Always a hit, these guys (wsu alumni) are a huge inspiration for me in pursuing Viticulture and enology. This particular bottle was golden in color with an overpowering huckleberry scent. One word for this experience, "decadent". I highly suggest it.
750ml wine bottle of chocolate mead
Okay this sounds like a good idea right? what could be better than an alcoholic hot chocolate? Well maybe I made it wrong, prayed to the wrong deities, who knows, but it came out horrible. One year ago when I originally brewed it, it smelled like rotten eggs but tasted like raw dark bitter chocolate. In absolute dismay I tasted a cup of it and found the chocolate mead to be incredible potent. It's just really hard to get over the smell and after taste. One year of sitting in a cold dusty basement with the five point masterpiece didn't help it at all, never the less me and my two companions trouped through the whole bottle.
One Gallon Oat Mead (sweetened)
this stuff was alright I guess. It just seems like it wasn't as god as I used to make it or something, maybe it's always been this sour. It had this weird sour burning after taste. But basically it got the taste of things to kind of go away...
One Gallon Rice Mead
this was terrible, and yet alcoholic enough for government work. I felt so much like a convict drinking something rotten, or like a redneck having a good time. This stuff was a terrible idea. For now I'm guessing that it had to do with having sat out unplugged for two days before air-locking it, but it could have also been the wrong kind of rice. I used pearl rice which is normally used for sushi, in other-wards to starchy for the right kind of yeasts to feed well on it.
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