Author: jae

jae lethe (he/she/they) is a blogger, musician, artist, poet, web developer/designer, armchair philosophizer, teller of tales, and gadabout. Also, something he calls a "behavioral artist." (Not sure.) She has plans. BIG plans.

Among the things that he has done for a laugh are minor fractures, cuts, scrapes, and various scabs. Though she's quick to point out that they're no imbecile, we're fairly certain that he thinks the word means some kind of medieval pharmacist.

This is her latest home on teh internets - where jae stores their swear words, when they're not hurling them at the sun in vain.

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The Case of the Missing Lisa

Lisa hasn’t been at work in a few days now. it’s hard to explain, but even though i don’t much like her anymore, i am sort of worried. i’d like to say that she’s a big girl and all that, but, well… she isn’t. she’s a teenager trapped in an adult body. she’s always liable to go off the deep end with nary a moment’s notice. i hope she’s okay, and i hope she’s not feeling down this holiday season. i’ve got a big mouth, and i’m always running it, but i don’t wish her ill of any kind, truly. on the contrary, i hope she finds some sort of solace and salvation, and learns to accept humanity for what it is and not how it fails, and learns to be truly living, and all that. i hope she gets her shit figured out, so she’ll stop hurting herself and others.

it’s really none of my business.

i just hope she’s doing all right, that’s all.

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where do i know you from?

hey. YOU. how did we meet again?

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podcast topic?

what’s a good topic for our first podcast?

i have an idea for the show’s theme, but we need topics to cover. anything goes.

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Hollywood Hangup

FINALLY!! a word for what has bothered me about telephone conversations in movies for my entire life!

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playing peek-a-boo with ghosts at the edge of reality

i forgot to mention this yesterday. it broke my heart.

apparently, my grandfather had been asking about where his dad was, who died over twenty years ago.

and playing peek-a-boo.

my dad and uncle definitely inherited Grandpa’s gift of denial.

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and that’s that.

i am finished with that former place where i lived the last two years of my life. i did not say goodbye to anybody or to the ghost of the apartment, and i did not look back when i drove away. my time there is now officially over.

and thus endeth a long, tortured chapter of my life. mostly bittersweet and sometimes fairly tormented were my life and times there.

the place is empty, and no one lives there anymore. the shell of a hell of a place and time is now good enough to be dead in my heart.

it’s nearly 3pm now, and i must go to work at 8 tonight. i still work with my former lover, but i do not see her there. we do not talk at all any more. we are less than friends; less than enemies.

well… i AM sad about things. but not like you might think.

(tonight, Holly: if i get drunk and cry… it will not be because i miss her, but because she took two years from my life, and she wasted them.)

speaking of chapters: at one time, i was planning on writing a book about what ultimately was a glorified, protracted, bittersweet love affair with Lisa. perhaps some day i still will. but it will only be a few chapters, and it will be in the beginning of that book. that book is not about her any longer.

(and i never had any designs on Holly while i was with Lisa. i felt weak a few times, and sometimes i really thought how easy it would have been to just give up on Lisa and run to Holly. i did openly like Holly, and declared as much to both. but i would have been good. ultimately, i would have been a good man. i would have Done the Right Thing, i think. i now am ironically thankful that Lisa threw me away, because now i can be who i really wanted to be, and be with who i know in my heart i should have been with. things now just make so much more sense this way.)

so fare well Lovington! fare well Lisa!

i saw my grandfather today. maybe it’s just bad timing, but the last two times i’ve seen him, i’ve not been entirely certain that he was fully aware that i was there, or who i was. he was just laying there, in his chair, eyes not quite shut; swimming in his mind, asleep like some lame angel. my heart sinks; i nearly cracked right there. i don’t want to see this. maybe that’s the real reason why i’ve been avoiding my family, avoiding that sacred House of my now long-abandoned childhood.

yes, i think i’ll cry tonight, but for all of the best reasons.

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stuff and things

going out to the old apartment tonight to finish up. all i’ve got there now is a chair and a dresser, and the rest is going in the trash.

anyone got any good ideas for a podcast show? i don’t have a portable recorder, so i can’t do wacky man-in-the-street interviews.

how ya like my new (old) userpic? i actually SAW that thing in the sky once, when i was younger, so much younger than today. my friend Tony saw a smaller one in his house a few years back. same thing.

thanks to those of ya who gave my tune a listen and gave me your feedback. i really do appreciate it. here’s some replies to your comments:

Shelly- thanks… the bass is there, and kinda loud i think, but i don’t think it came out in the mp3. it’s clipped all to hell though, so that’s one thing i’ll have to redo. i used a lot of compression, especially on my voice, and on the stereo mix, because my voice is pretty wild dynamically. i’m going to redo the off parts. screw it. if others can punch in, so can i. at least i’ll know i almost nailed it for about nine seconds.

Doug- thanks… the song is about an ending relationship. i wrote it about 8 years ago for the girl i went to Europe with. we were destined to be together… just not for very long. it’s still a great song, though, which is why i kept it around. i think those are the original lyrics.

Sean- thanks… my voice cracks all to hell when i try to squeeze out the high notes. i have to go falsetto, and i just won’t do that, unless i’m trying to be Mick Jagger trying to be Prince.

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podcasting 101

i was confused at first by all the information that’s out there. When i first started looking into podcasting around this time
last year, there was too few articles with too much information. i present to you the Simple Version.

So you wanna podcast?

Ok, here’s whatcha wanna do:

  1. Record yer audio & make it all nice and friendly with title=”link to excellent free audio editor”>Audacity. For the most listenable results, export as an mp3 file, perhaps 128kbps/joint
    stereo/16bit/44.1kHz (kbps can change to taste, but you want to keep your file slim without being warbly or over-compressed – never use
    joint stereo for quality audio, only for speech, to cut a few kb off; in fact, you can easily get
    away with mono for speech). Never forget to edit your MP3’s ID3 tag, to make it more informative and give yourself credit.

  2. Host it. i use www.ourmedia.org for free media storage & bandwidth (“forever”). for some reason it requires
    registering with www.archive.org first, which is pretty cool anyway. don’t be fooled, your username at
    first will actually be your email address.

  3. Get your feed URL happening. sign up for Blogger or some other blogging site (i just use good old www.LiveJournal.com)
    for a feed generator and general blog to link to your audio.

  4. Make it podcast-friendly. i use www.feedburner.com to convert the RSS or Atom feeds into an RSS 2.0 feed that automatically
    detects any links to media (be it audio, video, or image files) and wraps it with the tag, the key to the whole thing.

  5. Blog. it’s as easy as typing in
    <a href=”http://www.archive.org/download/File_Name/01FileName.mp3″>new
    Podcast is online now</a>
    and hitting “update”.

  6. Phone up Ira Glass of PRI‘s This American Life.
    Tell him his days are numbered. Hang up suddenly and with a certain gusto, for effect. This last bit is purely optional. Nevertheless, you
    should tell people about it, just so you’re not wasting your time. My feed is at

    http://feeds.feedburner.com/Transmothra-SignsOfTheCollapse

So you want to listen now, eh?

  1. Download a podcast-enabled free RSS news aggregator (you can find one almost anywhere, just google it or follow the links
    provided herein). Don’t want to deal with that? Grab a decent browser already! Some browsers have built-io RSS functionality, while others require add-ons. href=”http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/”>Firefox has a great extension called href=”https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=424″>Wizz
    RSS     that makes it oh so easy.

  2. Add the RSS link of your choice to your aggregator. Sites with RSS will have a little “ title=”Really Simple Syndication” style=”border-bottom: 1px dashed; cursor: help;”>RSS“
    or “XML“
    logo. Copy the link.

  3. Follow the instructions for your aggregator to listen to podcasts. in my case, i just open up the RSS reader, click on the
    channel, click on the post, and select “enclosure”.

  4. For more info, see podCast411.

read through the links provided, and you’ll get the picture quickly and pretty easily.

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audio

here’s a link to download my song “Ten Silver Needles” – this post is also my first podcast (this one’s just the one song). more to come when i get a proper show together.

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FYI: MS info

for Holly, who recently found out that a dear old friend has MS:

The life expectancy of people with MS is now nearly the same as that of unaffected people.

The earlier in life MS occurs, the slower disability progresses… Those diagnosed before age 35 have the best prognosis. Females generally have a better prognosis than males.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_sclerosis

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not a meme

purely curious:
what are your favorite posts from 2005 (other people’s)?
what are your favorite posts from 2005 (yours)?
what did you learn this year?
what did you remember?
what’s your favorite new CD, book, or movie?

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Note to customers: the plural

Note to customers: the plural form is not designated with an apostrophe. Dumbasses.

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ok, well…

let me make this easier for you:

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Ten Silver Needles

i put my first rough mix of “Ten Silver Needles” up at MySpace: www.myspace.com/jeremyjarratt

comments and suggestions always appreciated!

don’t worry, after i’m finished with this and the next song, it’ll get heavier and rockier.

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(no subject)

Aeon Flux still rules.

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turkeys only doing it for the money today

Holly’s family is just fine; my family is about as disfunctional as they get. Gerry playing WiFi puzzle games on laptop, Dad showing off his latest hi-tech toy (a $99 “pen computer”, ages 8-13, write or draw on special paper and it tells you about the word you just wrote, really cool but completely devoid of practical utility), Uncle Kent being Uncle Kent. and Grandpa sitting there in his chair; you’re not sure whether he knows you’re there or not; his eyes only half closed, half open, he says and does nothing, in his own little world inside his head, if such a place still truly exists. (and the lot of them, Masters of Denial, bragging to each other about how good he’s doing.)

nobody mentioned Thanksgiving. nobody offered us any food until we got up to leave for work, last-ditch-bluffing that we were going to stop someplace for a quick bite. not a word i said, i think, was actually heard or processed by anybody, not even my plaintive “so do you guys have any food going on around here or anything or what?” early on.

and yes, i’m thankful for my family, and for Holly and Holly’s. but especially i am thankful for my poor dear old sweet Grandpa, and his sweet dog Matty.

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fart

Q: what [virus] could cause a PC to make farting noises through the speakers, about every hour or so, even when the mute is on?

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there is [no] art

mixing down “10SN” – i’m getting to the part where i have to make semi-permanent but lasting commitments.

my problem is that i really want to pull down ALL the instruments except for the stereo harmony acoustic guitar arpeggio where i sing “one lonely guitar, one lonely string/one lonely singer…” but it really really shows off my weaknesses as a singer. truth be told, it really does sound terrible.

and that means that either i have to

a) go back on my “no punching in” rule, for the sake of Steve Albini-esque Total Recording Honesty

or

b) embarrass myself.

which would you do?

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and in other music news…

i’m finally starting to mix down the songs that i have recorded so i can leave them behind for others and start on new things once more. it’s going okay so far, but i really have some nasty clipping on my least awful bass take on “Ten Silver Needles”. i might have to redo it. i think i probably either didn’t route the signal through the compressor/limiter when i tracked it, or i didn’t use enough limiter. you’d be surprised how out of control a bass can get without heaps of compression.

also, i found that i really do need to have 2 tracks of harmony acoustic guitar, which means i now have to have 9 tracks on an 8 track machine. and i hate bouncing when i hadn’t intended to from the get-go. it leaves me less space to fool around. for instance, there’s a part where the lyric goes “one lonely guitar, one lonely string…” and i wanted to pull down the rhythm guitars and just leave the harmony parts up (yes, i know it’s neither one guitar nor less than 12 strings in total – at least it’s apreggiated); now i’ll have to print it with level changes – which means i’d be better off doing effects in one sweep, since this is the last time i’ll be able to control them individually. still, i can do this.

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the Cocker Spaniels kicks your ass!!!

wow. the music of Sean Padilla, aka the Cocker Spaniels, is a shit-hot ball of ferocious beauty. the dude rocked. he didn’t even have his backing tapes. just him and his guitar, and he burnt down half of America, with love, all by hisself.

damn!

the audience i thought kind of sucked a little. my pal Tony flaked on me last minute. Ohioans are just [a]pathetic. but it was so exciting to finally meet this guy whose album i adore because it speaks in so many tongues to so many topics and does it so well and so originally. i was kind of nervous and shy, feeling stupid because of my regular LJ tirades and rants against everything must make me look like a total jackass above all else; and because he’s like this great big damn shining star and i’m oddly starstruck by this guy who probably only a couple of thousand other people in the world have ever even heard of (THAT will change over time, trust me).

his between-song banter is deft and skillful, people. and he’s only 24. for crying out loud, THAT should be enough to convince the world that a star is born. but his songs, and his playing and singing… crimony! like i said, ferocious beauty. nobody that young is that good.

and about the most likable fella you could ever meet.

i weep! i weeeeeeeeep!

[special thanks go to Holly, who not only let me go although she was deathly ill, but even came with me, although she was about ten seconds from the grave by the time we left]