Year: 2006

Categories
family life uncategorized

Good Times, Bad Times

These past several days have been good and bad. Holly’s blood sugar is getting more stable lately. That’s terrific, and a huge relief. However, her last couple of paychecks have been in the double-digit range, and rent is right around the corner. My dad, being a complete fucking saint, lent us some tiding-over cash and even brought Hol a much-needed printer cartridge so she can print out her school texts (potentially saving her eyesight!) – an act which singlehandedly saved us from literally starving in the final couple of days leading up to Pay Day.

However, I ended up calling out of work a couple of weeks ago, ostensibly to help care for Holly during a particularly crappy day, but also because I’ve just been completely exhausted lately. What I might have done differently is worked some serious overtime, but now it’s too late for that. Rent is around the corner. Which will leave us both with nearly $200 total to last two weeks (that’s forgoing paying a bill or two).

I hate to beg, but these coming days are going to be in pretty stark contrast to the relatively minor poverty of this last week. Sugar-free, or at least diabetic-friendly, foodstuff is expensiver than your garden variety. And laundry needs to get done or we’ll be working in the coal pits in the buff. If you can, throw a couple of bones our way. I can’t promise anything at this stage, but I’ll sure try my best to make it worthwhile somehow. Assuming Holly’s well enough to return to work soon, we should be doing a bit better in a few weeks.

Thanks for reading this.

Categories
current events media uncategorized

Richard Dawkins versus God

Guess who wins?

The God Delusion

Categories
current events

Clinton blasts Fox’s Chris Wallace

Priceless: Clinton blasts Fox host: ‘Nice little conservative hit job… You think you’re so clever’

Categories
life uncategorized

Time/spent

Some things i’ve been doing lately:

  • Reading Jackie Corley‘s fabulous manuscript for At the Slaughter
  • Listening to some cool new music for a new gig as a reviewer for The ChickenFish Speaks, and composing my first batch of reviews
  • Writing and recording a new song
  • Working 40 hours at a dreadful service-industry night job, hoping like mad that working in the internet department might somehow lead to Better Things
  • Making slight tweaks to this site, as time permits
  • Listening to a slew of great podcasts
  • Reading lots and lots of syndicated news feeds
  • Reading a few great books (fiction, science) and magazines (tech, culture/music)
  • Struggling to stay afloat
  • Not sleeping much
  • Spending as much of the remaining free time as I can with my girlfriend Holly and Speck, our dog
Categories
internets media podcasts uncategorized web design

A note on web syndication

Syndication is a really cool way to not ever have to actually come here to know what’s going on at this site. Think of it as “set it and forget it” web surfing. Let me explain.

You can use a news reader or other application (such as web-based apps like My Yahoo!) to read content from this and other sites without having to actually go there. The advantage is that you can see what’s going on in the world around you without ever having the leave the application (or site) that you’re looking at. New articles are delivered to you (instead of the other way around), so you don’t ever have to remember to check in.

For instance, I’ve got my Thunderbird set up with a whole slew of news feeds. Instead of actually checking in with BoingBoing, Huffington Post, Ze Frank, and Pitchfork every day, I let them come to me. I get all of the content I want, delivered to me almost as if it were an e-mail.

You can find all sorts of applications out there that will read news feeds for you and put them all in one place for you to check out.

To add a feed, look for the icon, which may vary from site to site, or a link, usually saying something like “RSS”, “XML Feed”, or some suchlike. Copy the link and add it to your client application (follow their instructions).

You can get feed links for this site toward the bottom of the page, in the sidebar (under “syndicate”). There are links to add this site in a variety of ways.

Special tip: you can append “/feed/” to the end of the URL for any category or page on this site. For example, to keep track of updates on the “podcasts » songs” category, you would use: https://transmothra.com/category/podcasts/songs/feed/

Extra special tip: There’s also a comments feed at jeremyjarratt.com/comments/feed/

See also:

Categories
uncategorized

Downside, an upside

The first real installment in my new song podcast series: inspiration strikes, finally.

(This song is in its very early stages and will sound janky!)

Categories
creative music podcasts songs uncategorized

Downside, an upside

Finally, after three or four days of nearly agonizingly languishing meditation on the fate of my latest song, comes the breakthrough I’ve been lusting after: I had gotten up to go to bed, and the moment took me completely by surprise. And at first, I did not even know that it was the missing piece that I sought.

Rising from my chair and extinguishing one of my last cigarette butts in my desk ashtray, I found that I had a melody already in my head, complete with an accompaniment of washing, ethereal rhythm guitar. It was nothing more than background noise; the blips and bleeps that randomly orchestrate themselves into patterns of thought or waves of sound. The type that usually functions merely as a filter through which to perceive the void in front and behind you as the world, as reality, often taking on the arduous task of giving you a rhythm with which to shuffle your feet forward.

And then it struck me: I had a bit of an interesting thing going on… I wondered if I should take a moment to figure out the melody and the chords underneath, so as not to forget it when I awake, seven hours later and a completely newborn human being all over again.

As I considered how best to record this thing without having to actually turn on my digital multitrack recorder, it hit me once more, as if to carry the point home: what if it goes with the thumping, driving, slow groove I’ve already got? Yet again was I assaulted with more forceful, intuitive instruction from within: Turn the fucking recorder on, you idiot! Do not lose this! It is perfect!

I turned on the recorder, hastily gathered together a few effects pedals (after trying to figure out how best to save the current patches onboard the VS-880EX recorder for the drums, without losing the careful nuances I’d already fine-tuned), plugged in an electric guitar, and ran it through.

It fit. Perfectly. The rising melody, like a siren calling from a forgotten time; the cascading, echoed rhythm guitar burbling underneath like waves upon the ocean; the bass, thumping along like exhausted, yet somehow furiously driven oars hitting the water with a great, unified FLONGT.

[SHIFT]+[STORE]. Save Current? Y.

Must leave, go to bed, reboot, so as not to ruin it with overthinking things. Tomorrow, I will begin again.

Poweroff/Restart? 0.

Thomphsss, sleep now.

Downside (working title), sample 1

Categories
family life Speck uncategorized

sick and tired

Doggy: sick.
Mommy: sick.
Daddy: tired.

Categories
creative friends

So You Wanna Be a Drummer… Really?

So You Wanna Be a Drummer… Really?
(A Cynical Glimpse into What Challenges Await All the Would-be Drummers in the World)

By my friend, the exceptionally gifted Michael Christmas.

Categories
creative life music uncategorized

Downside

Lately i’ve been working, taking as much care of Holly as I can humanly manage (and managing to piss her off once in a while, too – oops), trying, frankly desperately, to keep my head above water financially, and trying – my god, I’m trying – to manage my creative life. Primarily at the moment I’m working hard on a brand new song. This one’s heavy, with a low, funky “Those Shoes” kind of vibe. The working title is “Downside,” and lyrically, it’s about the hear/see/speak-no-evil attitude of rich people when dealing with those of us on the Other Side of town. The Battle of the Haves vs. the Have Nots. That could always change, as these things do, when the lyrics start getting downright sophomoric. Low bass, some common and twisted chord changes, and chaotic, mind-bending guitar, with a Soundgardenesque vocal melody. Probably been done before, but this one’s mine.

Over time, I plan on posting a sort of mini-log of how it’s going. If possible, i’d love to post a running mix as it develops; however, my creative time is severely limited, so this might take a longer time than I’d like. For anyone who might read this who’s a home-recording nut, this one’s for you. DIY, baby.

Categories
media uncategorized

I had no idea: Iggy Pop vs. Rev. Cool’s Peanut Butter

I had no idea: the famous Iggy Pop peanut butter incident was provoked by Dayton’s own Rev. Cool (from WYSO)!

Categories
current events uncategorized

Baghdad, With Trenches

Iraqis Plan to Ring Baghdad With Trenches

So that’s what the future of democracy looks like! I can hear it now: “Thank you for bringing democracy to our formerly sovereign nation, Americans!”

No wonder the entire world hates the United States. No wonder at all.

Categories
current events uncategorized

Dwarf Planet Named After Eris

Hail Eris!

Categories
creative internets uncategorized web design

New tutorial: HTML Beginner’s Course pt 1

I’ve just finished posting the latest tutorial: HTML Beginner’s Course pt 1. This tutorial covers basic HTML formatting and some common tags. Nothing intensive here, just a crash course in what it is and what it does, with a little bit of the fundamentals. Topics to be covered later include lists, images, links, tables, and CSS.

Get your feet wet now, we’ll be doing some fun diving soon enough! There’s even an RSS feed to the tutorials pages, so you can keep up with the latest tute’s.

Categories
friends internets uncategorized

New page: Tutorials

Because I seem to be the only person in my local circle of friends who understands web code, I receive lots of requests from people to help them jank up their MySpace pages. In response, I’ve created the first tutorial: MySpace: the DIV element. This tutorial assumes you know a little bit about HTML and CSS going in. In future tutorials, I’ll cover basic HTML and CSS.

And i’ve just finished adding the comments functionality to pages (as opposed to blog posts), so if you have any questions or need help, I’ll do my best to clarify. This is a work in progress.

Categories
current events uncategorized

Hacking Your Way to a Better Tomorrow

Did you know: If you’re really serious about getting your favorite greasy politician elected, you could

  • invest hundreds of hours (unpaid in most cases) campaigning for them

    • or you could

  • simply hack the Diebold machine taking the votes, which only requires a few minutes of your time.
Categories
current events uncategorized

Ann Richards, R.I.P.

Richards remembered as “a true Texas hero”

Categories
uncategorized

Experience necessary

It’s the oldest catch-22 in history: Experience necessary. How do people with experience obtain that experience? Presumably, every human starts life as infants, with little or no experience within the field in which they will eventually earn their keep. So why is it that every interview always ends with a polite summation of my lack of experience?

It’s hard for me to articulate the fact that I can do absolutely anything thrown at me, other than by awkwardly blurting out “I can do absolutely anything thrown at me!” while a horrified interviewer looks on, aghast. But my lack of experience equates roughly to lack of proof.

Joseph Heller explained the Catch-22:
Catch 22Catch-22If you’re insane, then you can’t request to be reassigned from flight combat, because it would prove that you’re sane. If you request to be reassigned from flight combat, then you’re not insane, because only a sane, rational person would make such a request. Therefore, you can never leave.

Ergo, if you do not have experience, then you cannot gain experience. If you have experience, then you must have started with experience.

The thing is, I am experienced. But, because on previous projects I was the designer, the information architect, the developer, and the entire MIS department, all by myself, I therefore cannot prove that I can work as a specialist in one area, working from specs from another specialist in one of those other areas.

What I cannot deal with is the fact that I am stuck forever as a lackey at low-rent jobs that I hate with all of my passion because I am a lackey at low-rent jobs, even though I am 1000% smarter than 90% of the other people around me and am capable of doing so much more – but am relegated to mopping up other people’s messes for the rest of my fucking life.

When I pulled into the apartment parking lot after my miserable interview, Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” came on.

You’re going to reap just what you sow.

I am overqualified, but underexperienced. I am, therefore, a failure.

Categories
life uncategorized work

Experience necessary

It’s the oldest catch-22 in history: Experience necessary. How do people with experience obtain that experience? Presumably, every human starts life as infants, with little or no experience within the field in which they will eventually earn their keep. So why is it that every interview always ends with a polite summation of my lack of experience?

It’s hard for me to articulate the fact that I can do absolutely anything thrown at me, other than by awkwardly blurting out “I can do absolutely anything thrown at me!” while a horrified interviewer looks on, aghast. But my lack of experience equates roughly to lack of proof.

Joseph Heller explained the Catch-22:
Catch 22Catch-22If you’re insane, then you can’t request to be reassigned from flight combat, because it would prove that you’re sane. If you request to be reassigned from flight combat, then you’re not insane, because only a sane, rational person would make such a request. Therefore, you can never leave.

Ergo, if you do not have experience, then you cannot gain experience. If you have experience, then you must have started with experience.

The thing is, I am experienced. But, because on previous projects I was the designer, the information architect, the developer, and the entire MIS department, all by myself, I therefore cannot prove that I can work as a specialist in one area, working from specs from another specialist in one of those other areas.

What I cannot deal with is the fact that I am stuck forever as a lackey at low-rent jobs that I hate with all of my passion because I am a lackey at low-rent jobs, even though I am 1000% smarter than 90% of the other people around me and am capable of doing so much more – but am relegated to mopping up other people’s messes for the rest of my fucking life.

When I pulled into the apartment parking lot after my miserable interview, Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” came on.

You’re going to reap just what you sow.

I am overqualified, but underexperienced. I am, therefore, a failure.

Categories
internets media uncategorized

Kirk & Spock get “Closer”

This is quite possibly the greatest thing the internet has come up with: Kirk and Spock: Closer (warning: completely NSFW). It’s a fan-made (T. Jonsey & Killa) slash-fiction remix/mashup of Star Trek: OS moving pictures, set to Nine Inch Nails‘ classic pants-creamin’ body-rocker “Closer”. It’s a music video with a silly, yet wholly erotic theme.

This is the culmination of all that is Great and Good about teh Interwebs! Finally, we can unplug our rigs and live wistfully happy, idyllic lives among nature now. It has happened. Utopia can start now k thx. The Interwebs has fulfilled its function. 42 my ass.