29.10.08

The fate of your life may very well be determined by how good you look in white

I realized I should probably get to updates tonight as tomorrow will be too busy. At the end of this post you'll get an (early) Dichter des Donnerstags update, stunning, I know. Not STNNNG; little different. Anyways, tomorrow will be busy with going to the Apple store to get my iPod fixed up before going on a trip to Virginia to visit Angie. I leave tomorrow at 4, and I'm going to try to avoid as many uses of my computer as I can. I am bringing it though, so I may check everything once, but that's it. I'm pretty ready to be there, though; I spent all of my Chinese class wishing that the faster we talk Chinese didn't have a correlation to how slow the hour goes... which is true, by the way. We're at a level of Chinese where we can talk much more fluently; but as a result, we say a lot more in less time, which leaves us with, uh... dead space.

Speaking of dead space, there are two major swing forces in my life right now; this is not to say that I'm a simple creature with base desires -- it's just that most situations right now are fixed, and the only two things that I still am allowing to swing free in my world are quite simple. Video games, and sleep. Video games, because I really want to play things like Fallout 3, OTRSPOD 2 and that Lambda-encrusted horror survival game I keep hearing about. But I have no time outside of class and doing homework and working at Borders. The other one is sleep, which gives me more time, but makes me ... well, I dunno. After experimenting with 4-5 hours of sleep a night, I got sick for 3 weeks. Coincidence? Loopy is for definite though. Mos def. Ah ha! He may be coming to SpringFest at Mac -- a concert Joseph may actually enjoy? We shall see.

Alright, enough rambling. Here's the moment you've been waiting for: DdD!! Although this already appeared on a certain someone's facebook wall a couple of months ago, here it is again, to mark the occasion:

The setting sun is sinking ever quick,
The wind is blowing cold across the streets.
This precipice I walk upon is slick,
With rain, with tears, with sideways-slanting sleet.
The skipping stone is faintly heard below
As lightning threatens sky with blinding shake.
But still I walk this path because I know
That seeing you is what I have at stake.
But here the storm is suddenly at rest,
The way before my feet is soft and clear.
The sound of waves and gulls and light caress
Make known that I'm so close to you, so near.
        What gives my fight across the seas some truth
        Unless it's that I'm coming home to you?




Also, for anyone that was at the concert in Morris, or I guess anyone that might be interested in damn good dirty blues, I'm currently listening to the Eddie and the Dirty Pennies EP, and it's highly entertaining; if you would like a copy of it, send him a check, show me the carbon copy in your checkbook and I'll let you rip/burn it.

What? Consumer-enforced DRM.

28.10.08

its continual crunch of entire months toward zero's and ones in the hoped pursuit of what the timeclock can't afford them...

Sorry about missing the Art update -- I couldn't decide on a drawing to put up, nor have I had time recently to do more drawing, plus writing a big essay...yeah. Epic fail.

So I'll be trying something a little different today with the update. I had this floating around in my head yesterday, and I felt like it deserved voicing on some level.

So, a play. Yeah, drama. There are some characters, they're on stage, they've got some interpersonal conflict going on, you know, the way these things work. Except...they make a joke one time, and the audience laughs -- "What was that?" I'm thinking a whole new level of breaking the 4th wall; the characters slowly begin to realize they're in a play, in a theater, and they also begin to realize they aren't bound to this place they find themselves. They can go outside, go to a bar, get drunk if they want, and come back. So all of a sudden they have their entire worlds broadened, and they have to deal with this freedom, and this self-awareness, and it gets to them, and the aforementioned interpersonal conflicts come to a violent close on stage, not because it's convenient, or because it's showing a different place; no, they come back to the stage and the play, and the confines of it because they want to, because they understand that they are bound to it, and that one must kill the other, on stage, because he knows that is what is required of him, by the world in which he finds himself.

Copyright 2008 Colin Welch, because I think it's a good idea.

Also, Mosaic Mondays?

26.10.08

There it is.... middle class....

Here's the Dichter des Donnerstags update, but ... on Sunday! Enjoy!

Darkness.
Bright light?
No…just shellfire. Shellfire?!?
Battle! Fire! Wait!
People charging; boots tramping around me,
Foreign boots, alien boots,
On MY soil! How dare they?!
Closed eyes…they’re gone.

I can’t move. Why can’t I move?
Oh, God. There’s Smith. I can barely see half his face…
Why can’t I … oh, God, their blood, their blood!
Running over the ground, through my hair,
In rivulets across my cheeks…no, my blood?
My blood? That’s … right …
I was…
Shot.


This was an exercise in voice. I'm not sure it worked out, but I still kind of like it. Reading it again makes me think it's a little too up-front, not enough subtlety... but I'm not sure. Any comments?

24.10.08

Like a large dollop of grey plopped hard in the plain water of hack, you sink

Whoops. Got up all early to go talk to my Algorithms teacher about my project and the midterm, and here I forgot he was going to be gone today! Oh well, at least I don't have class this afternoon too. Still, I was looking for some direction on the project... I know what I'm going to do next, I just want to make sure that's what I should be doing, you know?

Pretty tired; long day yesterday plus going to bed at 2 and getting up at 8:30 makes for a sleepy Colin. However, I did make great gains on acoustic session stuff when I was up last night. Let's just say, "Tonight I'm gonna rock you."

I have a project update due on Tuesday that I have to work on on Sunday with Adam, so hopefully that'll go quickly and cleanly. I also have a paper due on Tuesday (hm....). Busy weekend? I work my usual Saturday and Sunday shifts, so I guess so.

Speaking of work, two things: one, we hired a bunch of new people at Borders - I have no idea what they're all going to be doing; two, my request-off for next Thursday got approved, but then they scheduled me anyway. So I have to call my manager and figure that one out, since I will be on a plane, and thus unable to serve people Lattes.

Also, I know I missed the poetry update yesterday, but I had a busy day, forgive me. I'll get the update up as soon as I'm back on my computer.

22.10.08

Welcome to the no gamble grind of what seems middle-class and above

Another woot-off! I can't handle this pressure!

So I went back to the doctor yesterday, since I hadn't felt any better, and I saw Dr. Ness, who's this awesome old guy who's actually the head of the practice at the clinic I go to. He decided to take an "aggressive approach" as he put it, and prescribed me a high-power antibiotic, steroids, and an anti-histamine nasal spray. The nasal spray was free, and he gave me enough to last the rest of the semester, so I walked out with a brown paper bag full of nasal spray. The diagnosis was that I have a lingering infection, coupled with sudden allergies to Sampson; so yes, the kitty's adorable, but he is killing me slowly. Hopefully the nasal spray will be enough to keep his immense dander reserves at bay. Can't we sign a mutual disarmament agreement?

This weekend was amazing when I wasn't really sick or waking up in the middle of the night scratching my eyeballs. On Friday night hello blacksmith played The Basement; we were a little rusty, ok, a lot rusty, but I still had a good time. It was good to be playing that music again. Then on Saturday I worked a bunch, but saw Tessa and Jamie after that. Sunday was weird; I was supposed to work on a project with Adam, but instead I just ended up waking up with a swollen eye and laying around at home watching football with my folks and eating crab fingers. Then I worked, while fucked up, which was too bad. Yesterday I ended up hanging out with Jamie and Jenny and Martin, playing poker and eating Mesa pizza. Today I woke up late, got a bunch of research materials from the library for my genetic algorithms project, went to class, and then played through our music again with Martin, which was amazing, figured out recording stuff on our free mixer, and even got to talk to Angie for a little bit, which is a blessing, as she is in the middle of Tech Week for UVA's production of King Lear (it's the bit in the middle about "Cordelia, you go long").

Other than being sick, life's alright. This week is much easier than past weeks; in fact, the semester is lightening up a bit as my classes move away from learning lots of shit to writing papers and reflecting. I get to work on a project creating Neural Networks to identify 50x50 pixel characters (A, B, C, etc.), a project implementing a genetic algorithm to quickly exponentiate (frex. x^41 really really fast), and a paper about either Schiller's "Aesthetische Politik" or Herder's "Bloekende Schaff" allegory for language development. Wooooo.

Also, in 8 days I will be leaving Minnesota to visit my darling girlfriend. It will be Halloween that weekend. It's going to be awesome.

20.10.08

Call to Dive

Well, there's another song done. Call to Dive is a song with specific sections: the first half of the song is extremely dense, the second half is incredibly poignant (which is where I pulled all the lyrics from for my titles). Here's the lyrics, with the second half designated by a big ol' marker.

The lids on Streetlights peel back
to reveal row upon row of bulging black bird eye.
all gorged out toward you like exotic zoo snakes
heaped up on fiberglass rocks,
fat with farmed rats coaxed down their throat...

below them in their brights,
tilt finished arrows beached up on thin tin signs.
and where its corrugated stem injects into cement
there is a deep fried breastbone,
popping hard half ate on a rich red curb...

all at once,
this moment has no mercy on your color find eye's
stole blues version of oakland...
as you make for thin ice on your you on you violent night.

the next morning everything begins again over a walk,
past a few balloons tied to a lovesick car-salesman's wrist.
you press on...
a soft bicycle wheel chained up
behind a savage looking pair of women's dress shoes,
abandoned to the left of a tire tread pressed dead pigeon
lain askew in more rich rose colored gutter.

there...there...
temperature taking your skin,
tinged city wind catching air
on your pleasantly imperfect and c-section shaped skull.

For once forget your headed to the mailbox
to drop more finished bills down to its gut...
even though for all you know...
that's about as far as those things ever go.



as sad as it is so,
kids today will never wear the perfect cape of clean air.
nor one true brand new brazier of sheer luck...
or does someone out there still expect that...
the way a moth gives freely of itself unto the bulb.

they will not learn their lesson from a teachers copy
of a blackened lung, hung in the classroom, on the coat rack...
or left dripping in the closet during math minutes passing.
nor from a nice new globe made of gold, cast in the shape of a half eaten apple...

not until...
the sun is on a stick.
the moon hung on a hook.

desperate times call for step by step schematics of the human dive.

The end...

(one mile of week&will later)

a sunset interjects.
donating the kind of red you only see in stores.
affording yourself a bit more reality,
some singular mood polarity .

If you could, you'd have a close friend
drive you off into the sinking pinks.


Also, when John McCain called Obama names, he was actually referencing this guy.

If you could, you'd have a close friend drive you off into the sinking pinks

Zombies!!



Yeah. That was it.

17.10.08

A sunset interjects

Alright, that's that. I've given my notice to Caren, I'm moving out at the end of the semester. Joseph's trying to get out of the house ASAP, but I don't think I'm going to be able to live with him -- I'm tied to an area that doesn't have rates within his price range. That's too bad, but things happen, you know? At this point my options are to inquire about a sublet from someone going abroad in the Spring or applying to live in a language house on campus. I guess we'll see...

I'm feeling slightly less ill now, which is good. I'm on Fall Break, which is also good, because I finally have time for meeeeee.

Speaking of me, we're playing tonight. Whoooo.

16.10.08

The sun is on a stick, the moon hung on a hook

This is one day's musings about words and letters. I thought it was interesting, if nothing else.


Letter a day.

Letter, unfettered.
Spreader of fetters for all the unlettered.
Delettered – removed of meaning and cognizant communication?
Dehumanized – removed of humanity and reconciliation.
Does an alphabet make us human?
Is graf a quest for humanity?

Über.
Over, above, beyound. (??)
Übermorgen is a day farther than tomorrow.
Does that make an Übermensch two men down the line?

Beyound. B(ey)ound by the future?
to
too
Through the future to beyond.
Through the future to be bound.
Found? Hardley.
Hard ley Hard(ley).

Aus/sagen. Transitive. To speak to someone.
No English transitives … no transition?
Bound by a lack of change?
Can a culture be defined by its language’s range?

Hold on. To what?

Wait. The wait.
The wait for/to what?
“Good things come to those who wait.”
“The waiting’s well worth waiting for.”
“What are we all waiting for?”

Jimmy Hoffa.
Hofft er noch?

B.C. Before Christ.
Before Cameras?
Before the Culling? } Does one letter matter?
Before the Calling? } One letter… letter a day?

Self reference is recursive,
But can it be regenerative?

14.10.08

Nor from a nice new globe made of gold, cast in the shape of a half eaten apple

Still sick, still missing updates. Well, here's the art update:



I'm tired, and sick, and in class, so here, more graf.

12.10.08

Desperate times call for step-by-step schematics of a human dive

Who would have known? I feel even shittier today. I got sent home from work, I almost threw up in the bathroom and felt all tingly and shit. And my arm has been spasming since like 2:00 this afternoon. F***in a. I'm tired of being broken down.

A what I'm listening to update is not going to happen weekly; I just don't have enough time, and I'd have to do it midweek when I should be doing homework. I think I'm going to have to let this one go for right now.

My job is really not conducive to people getting sick, which sucks. Maybe I just get sick too much.

I'm finally getting a break from riotous amounts of homework though, which is fitting considering Fall Break is coming this week. I actually feel like I'm not always playing catch-up -- like I might have time to play guitar or work ahead on homework.

10.10.08

they will not learn their lesson from a teachers copy of a blackened lung, hung in the classroom, on the coat rack...

Just kidding. My extended strep test came back positive. Good old strep. Sorry Angie, I'm having an affair with penicilin.

Do you know what I wish I was having an affair with? Playing guitar. I miss the days when I squandered my time playing World of Warcraft, and now I almost skip class just to go home and jam. Seriously.

Speaking of video games, Fable 2 comes out in two weeks, but only on the XBox 360. That system looks better and better everyday. At this point, though, I might as well wait for the next round of systems to come out so that I can stop being always the last kid on the block to get something.

That's the problem with software vs. hardware. In the software development cycle, there's a distinct period where you provide support for your product, before simply moving on to the next version. Sometimes, companies even manage to do the two concurrently, something Sony and Microsoft can't seem to grasp. Even the phrase "to be supported" implies something different from what you'd expect in this industry -- being supported means developers are releasing games for the platform, rather than the platform's owners maintaining it. Hell, with the rrofd in 360s, you could question the original distribution, much less the shitty job they did of providing service to their customers. This is an industry where customer loyalty cannot be bought and sold -- it can only be acquired by having the prettiest bling. Would Apple get away with not maintaining their OS? No. Microsoft gets away with it by some unfathomable virtue -- maybe being the biggest assholes in the customer service ring actually helps you.

Like how the moth gives of itself under the bulb

Sorry guys, I definitely missed the poetry update. That's what happens when you're passed out for most of the day. I went to the doctor yesterday morning and they told me I just had a virus, so I went home, drank a glass of water and took a 4 hour nap. That was pretty much my entire day yesterday; oh, that and listening to another 6 or so minutes of Chinese and writing it down, and doing it while mixing Claritin, Advil and Cabernet Sauvignon. So without further hubbub and to-do, here's the update for Dichter des Donnerstags:

Hands slack at sides.
My shoulders are in my ears,
So I drop them inches.
Last week’s sweat. Sensei.
BREAK.

Hands up, relaxed,
If they were anymore cat-like they’d have whiskers, I swear.
Foot shuffle forward comes from hips,
Slowly,
Like the darkened snowfall out the steamy window.
Suddenly
Hand snaps out
Fingers grasp cloth, grasp shirt,
Push in close,
Right leg snaps around
Left leg push left hand pull
IKUSEI!


The was trying to really channel what it was like to be there, I think I managed to get that, but I dunno, since ... well, I was there.

9.10.08

The Mercury Craze

I feel like I've sucked this song dry, so here's the lyrics. It's kind of dense, but...enjoy!

When last we left him...
our hero yes was recently diagnosed as being last haver
of a most unusual sort of blood.
quite surprised by the news himself,
(and still the genuinely unlucky man)
he now wields his one and only body bag
of this, his now very rare blood.


and so, we find him seated not starved but smalled,
before a really rather serious spread...

his evening's eats have been copped and bequeathed
by the richest of rich who's only child is especially sick...

their fair scared parent eyes reading weak...
yelling help across some 200 feet of set table
yours far full of edge... perfectly still like straight teeth

It seems so few would know just what to do as the new and improved lucky you,
to be courted and prized as someone else's very own personal blood mine.

I mean...What if your o-so unique blood... then became the latest craze...
would the dear disparate world not get the wrong/right idea,
You...now owning all your ever so happening blood...
You...sole proprietor of all that priceless red wet...

What if...
What if your blood were then all the rage...
What then...
What if your blood weren't you...

What would you give
in order to get your hands
on the latest most luxurious blood...
to have yours flushed completely
and replaced with that of a nice bright white
college boy or very viral multi-millionaire widow...
Would you later pay extra
for your old red tide to be glassed,
sat down, room warm beside your occupied hospital bed.
so that when you were well ,
and in your right mind of redwets
and new whites. You just might
indeed, spill your own & old blood.

can't you hear your mercury just
ringing with the jingles already...

is there a terrible time to your life that never seems to let up...
is it a terrible time of the great nothing much...
what say you leave your past life's luck in the dust...
and let the miracle most of modern day at your blood...

8.10.08

As sad as it is so, as sad as it so

Sorry about missing the Artsy Fartsy Monday update. I had to hand in a homework assignment on Tuesday for my AI class. It involved designing a Java program to read in data from a file and then search through the world it defines and find the best path from start to finish. Yeah, it was pretty intense. The whole thing finally came together after I got back from Morris. Tomorrow is Dichter des Donnerstags, and Saturday is going to be What I've Listened to Far Too Much This Week (WILFTMTW if you like acronyms), so I guess it'll just be a musical/arty end of the week here! I feel bad, so here's a double art update for all you graphite/charcoal/ink lovers:



This is why I love using charcoal -- you can almost feel the texture of the stems on the bouquet, and the natural shading of it is amazing; the caption for that part reads, "a cosmos for you", which I thought was amusing, at least. Along the texture lines, I'm split on how well I conveyed the wax on the candle stump - sometimes I feel like, "yeah, rock on!", but other times I think it's more of a bark-look. But the wick and flame are fucking righteous, if I do say so myself.



If you fail at reading even rudimentary graffiti, the tag says "Meo". It stands for something, but it's...complicated. Maybe I'll post that spoken word for a Thursday sometime. Anyways, I do crappy graffiti on notes and stuff, I've never really felt the need to buy paint and go out, it's just more of a hobby. I enjoy juxtaposing sharp edges with reliefs and curves, but someday when I have boatloads of free time I'm going to try emulating some wildstyle; at that point, you'll probably see me in the corner of a coffee shop, gibbering and sweating, mumbling something about pipes from the beyond.

Whoops, my woot just came up, guess it's Thursday. That was Artsy-Fartsy "Monday". As for other updates, well, I'll be brief.

First off, my punk band, hello blacksmith is playing a free show on the 17th of October (that's a Friday), in The Basement.

Second, I'm really fricking tired. That's really about it. I'm going to the doctor in the morning for what I think is a sinus infection. Speaking of which, better get on that sleeping bit. See ya'll tomorrow.

6.10.08

It's like a half-selfish sending of an SOS

I went to Morris this weekend to hang out with friends and see a live show of mostly Twin Cities based artists, the irony of which is not lost upon me. It was a good time, I got to see my friends, got a little too far gone on Friday night, and saw an amAZing show on Saturday night. Dirty blues, some indie rock and P.O.S. somehow makes for a good mixture.

The whole trip got me thinking about place, and people. At first I really didn't like Morris, but as I saw more of it, it started growing on me; rather, the people started growing on me. Martin said that life in the dorms was very different from life out in the town, which I believe; nobody could party as much as those guys did in the dorms, no matter how little RA oversight there was. The point being, people wander around to all of these different colleges to try and find a place, or a group of people, that seems right to them. Some people can be happy anywhere, whereas some people are never happy where they are, no matter where it is. I feel like most people are in the middle, that the heart of a place matters enough to ruin a good deal, but the pain of a bad deal can be overshadowed by the heart of the place and the people who live there.

In short, you need a community, and it's in your hands to build it.

3.10.08

It seems so few would know what just to do as the new, new and improved lucky you

Today was nice. I slept until noon, had class, didn't do homework, went to work and worked floor which was nice and easy, and then bought my plane ticket to see Angie over Halloween weekend, which is going to be amazing!!! She's now singing in my ear about how she "wants, wants her boyfriend."

In case people hadn't noticed, all the post titles in a while come from The Mercury Craze by Subtle.

I have a lot of homework to get done ahead of this weekend, and people are making it difficult; Friday or Saturday is a silly question, but it seems to matter to people. I'll try my best to get homework done, but if I don't think I have enough done, I won't leave. My hopes are your hopes.

Sleep well everybody. Happy Friday.

2.10.08

You know you want it!

There’s no war anymore,
No violence.
The smell of the furnace has been replaced
By the shaving of bone.
We discovered the value of the body
After we realized we nearly killed the Earth.
Now the body satisfies not just our needs,
But all needs.
Like progress.

We’ve molded bowels into bowls
To drink out of.
Turns out a femur makes
A pretty good ladle.
And ribs for bicycle spokes
Keep the cities moving.

We are protected,
Just as we protect.
Words have been culled,
Raggedy sheep from a flock,
Things like oil. Greed.
Words like poison.

There are places outside the cities
Where we hid the wrecks.
The metal, engines, burned for weeks.
The plants are still full,
Just now of vines and blooms
Instead of fumes and grinding…
Industry.

“We are as one, now.”
We take not that which comes not from us.
The air is pure, and you can hear birds
With songs like a thousand suns…
“Ashes stuff blankets, Towers of Glass from dust.”

“Reduce, reuse, recycle.”



Post-apocalyptica is a popular concept, or jumping off point. That's where this poem ended up, but that's not where I started; I started at the last line, actually, and wanted to put a different slant on this oft-used "save the environment" line.

1.10.08

What would you give in order to get your hands on the utmost in luxury --

German essay is done. Algorithms homework is done, except for printing. Chinese test is, well, studied for? Yeah, ok, I'll give it that. Go team!

I am sooo tired. And still hungry. But mostly tired. However, I get to see Vinny tonight and eat Taco Bell, so that'll be a good time.

Oh, and I got a good gift for my dad yesterday from the promos section at Borders, which they give to employees when they're good little darlings, "Wineries of Wisconsin and Minnesota", which is kind of 'eh', except that it was published this year, which means it's completely up to date, which is awesome.