Author: jae

according to my incredibly scientifical calculations, 50% of the world’s human population is bisexual, 25% is totally gay, and 25% is totally straight (or so they say).

so just get over it.

and in other news:
all parents want their children to have kids… it’s called schadenfreude.

my good friend Melissa should be having her baby soon. she may have already had it. i forget the date. she was moving to Wisconsin in June, i think.

so i’m generally really fucking antsy about that.

want news! aw, i wish i coulda seen her pregnant. i bet she was even more beautiful than ever. *sigh*

i am not revealing what the runes said, because, oddly enough, i found it far too interesting.

all dogs are idiots. all cats are liars.

it’s no wonder that we tend to personify them as, repectively, men and women.

i’m getting this (top of page: the anthology and the Barringer short).

you probably should too. i happen to know for a solid fact that it is good. really, really good.

Word Riot Press is the coolest indie publisher on the planet, run by interesting and cool people who make printed words seem fresh and new again, which is a welcome change from all the overhyped crap that’s being published these days. sink your teeth into something mean and beautiful for once.

i’ve got about 16 miles left on my car before the Land Shark turns 100,000 miles.

i don’t want it to happen! my baby! my widdle gray menace! and to think it was only 1997 when i first laid eyes on it, 60,000mi young and pristine. you coulda eaten out of the trunk (which holds up to four gangsters – or three, with two violin cases).

so yeah. i’m kinda sad about that.

i’m going to seriously try to quit smoking. shaddap! i still have a deep-seated aggressive loathing for nonsmokers. i just want to live a little cleaner.

has anyone ever noticed that the opening montage/title sequence of Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb features an orchestral arrangement of none other than “Try a Little Tenderness”? i think that’s hilarious.

saw my old friend Amber today at the bank. she was working so we didn’t get to talk that much. pretty cool though.

Fear of a Black Hat is nowhere near as funny as i thought it was when i was 22 and stoned. but it’s still pretty funny. skip the DVD and get the VHS – the “extra” footage is not only awful, it’s embarrassingly amateur. i’m pretty disappointed, because that film was like the Holy Grail for me for several years. i loved it… maybe it just suffers from Mel Brooks Syndrome (only funny the first time through, then his films become stupid and awful on subsequent viewing (with some exceptions)). if you like Spinal Tap, and you like gangsta rap, check it out sometime.

Disney’s The Black Hole is another one that i should have left in my youth. amazing and phenomenal special effects, but a horrible script, plus the worst science of almost any sci-fi movie ever. i give them credit for actually knowing and using the term “Einstein-Rosen bridge” (however vaguely; it was used WITHOUT any context, so you know they didn’t even know what the term means and didn’t want to try to make anything of it), but that was the only time that any hope peeked through an otherwise dismal script. at least the transfer was more than adequate, with black staying black. and that ship, the Cygnus, is still one of the baddest-ass motherfuckers in fictional outer space, even if it did nothing whatsoever. (dishonorable mention: wtf was with that sudden, inexplicable “meteor storm” at the climax?)

i am going to listen to some deadlysexy rock and roll and put on my mean face and make Good Things happen.

my bed now smells vaguely like a Lisa.

awwww, my cuddly little [Vulcan] pal…

i’ve never slept so peacefully in all my life!

and here i’d been planning on washing the sheets. i’ll give it another few days.

good god! the entire city of Dayton, Ohio, and no CompUSAs anywhere around?!?? (Miamisburg = too fahr)

Mendelson’s, here i come.

i’ve been musing on many thoughts tonight, as is my wont when i am drinking.

one was a mental livejournal post about how my friend Lisa and i are always coming to the same conclusions at the same time. that post may come later. needless to say, we are always on the same wavelength, to the extent that even when we disagree, we always have similar thoughts in mind. blah, blah, blah.

and somehow that morphed into (probably via my thoughts on Ralph Nader and the Election of the year 2000 C.E. of our lord Buddha (which is exactly how we met, as i was trolling – in the fishing sense – for Nader Raiders on the eve of the elections, having lost my vote by moving to Ohio from Florida with the exact wrong timing)) a train on the American Dichotomy. listen:

we are Americans. we are THE world’s underdogs who won.

not to be confused with THE world’s Underdogs (of which there are many), or with THE world’s Winners (England, or the Roman Empire). we are THE world’s Underdog Winners.

we fought back at our oppressors, and we won. we won. as underdogs, we won. and when nations sought to take from us that which we called Freedom, we won again. and when we ourselves have found ourselves embroiled in heated battle with other Americans over the issues of our day… whatever was Truly American won out, in the end. Slavery? not American. move aside. you have lost, we have won. Senator McCarthy? traitor. step down, please. you have lost, we have on. Jim Crow? please. this is America. we have IDEALS here, for fuck’s sake.

the point being, the American inherently loves an underdog who is a winner. it is as much a part of our National Character as it is in our Blood. and how rare it is that the two happen to be one and the same!

so what do we have now? we have Underdogs – the Democrats, and other Liberals, Leftists, and so forth… and we have Winners – the Grand Ole Party, Republicans, and those like-minded traitors who seek to subvert our glorious and humane system for their own gory profits.

right now, we have no underdog winners. we have Howard Dean, but he has not won enough. and we have George Bush, a man who has seen defeat at his own barely-opposable-thumbed hands (think minor-league baseball, oil, military service, and a general lack of understanding of basic principles of thought) and somehow managed to come out as the governor of the most massive state in the Union, and somehow (and rather inexplicably, save for the grace of his brother Jeb, who just happened to be governor of the biggest electorally-contested state) from there to the Presidency of the most powerful nation on Earth. and because he may soon drive that nation straight into the dirt, he may even be an underdog for the umpteenth time.

“how the world dearly loves a cage”
-Maude (Ruth Gordon), Harold & Maude, 1971 (written by Colin Higgins) (the year i was fucked into existence)

we Americans love only one thing more than we love an underdog-winner: we love to cage and be caged. we are self-flagellists. we are not only the President of Hairshirt Club, but also a member. if there’s one thing we understand, it’s how to put ourselves into a position of indetermination. we love to be in a corner! because we love to fight. no wonder one of the very few forms of expression we’ve cultivated to be able to fully support many different enterprises has been WRESTLING leagues! we love to fight! we want nothing more than to put ourselves at the bottom and fight our way back up!

we have Winners, and we have Losers. but we don’t have a proper LoserWinner just yet. so what’s going to happen next? how can we possibly make up our minds about who we’ll choose to lead us into the next great phase of the 21st Century Dawn?

the Good money (of which there is generally little) is on the Smart contenders. but the Smart money is on the Dumb ones.

i made a deal to read the damn Harry Potter series.

i am glad that Tasha (my Good Friend Tony’s fiancee) is getting a little better here and there. i am also extremely happy that she is so cool to me, because there’s not much that’s better than when your best friends’ partners accept you as their own. Tony’s daughter Abigail says that i am Tasha’s “boyfriend.” hee hee!

i feel disappointed in myself that my general insanity probably inevitably leaves everyone thinking that i have long-lasting hangups about certain members of the preferred sex. sure, i hold grudges, and crushes are generally fairly intense (both coinciding with the Scorpio profile), but ALL THINGS HAVE AN END. this, i think, is my statement to you, dear reader. i love my friend dearly, and that’s all. i would certainly fuck her in a heartbeat, but as a male, i would also certainly fuck just about ANYTHING in a heartbeat. she just happens to be closer to the Front of the Line.

i feel like it’s just so hard to express how much i am fond of certain people without making it seem like i’m utterly freaked out or obsessed or in some way creepily weird about it. and that, i guess, is my own fault. if it helps to paint a more realistic picture: she’s got a girlfriend, and i’m not jealous. not even slightly. which is somewhat unusual for me. i have now even inexplicably taken to using her “married” name whenever i refer to her nominally. with some degree of strange glee, i might add.

truth is, there are a few people who i have grown intensely fond of. Melissa, Cat, Lisa Bubba, and Tony, and Travis. probably a few others.

(and with that, and my next statement in mind, i now coin the word “bucketcrab” – which is an English-speaking etymologist’s wet dream, and so i feel no explanation is necessary.)

of those people, i would gladly bucketcrab to get to. the females, anyway, since they are of my preferred sex. the males can kiss my ass in that regard (mainly because i do not find them desirable sexually… i’m a mostly straight male, but definitely bi after all). but i do love them all so dearly.

i nearly got carded for beer today. i am 1½ times the legal age. i feel like i am just tonight becoming an adult, too… but that is another post altogether.

people really do want Ross, Chandler and Joey for President. funny (read: SEXIST AS FOOKIN’ ‘ELL) how they probably wouldn’t vote for Phoebe, Monica, or Rachel, even if they were the only choices. people are idiots the world over, but Americans are the Kings of Idiots. pipe more money into Education (and less into Hooveresque “security”); particularly with some modicum of intelligence (do schools really need that many television sets? or ever-more-glorious football stadiums??), and we can certainly change all that. hope is not lost yet, brothers and sisters.

i haven’t been working on my music for a while (several days). i need to badly… i played some raw tracks for my friend the other day and was mortified at how painfully awful they truly sounded. the music wasn’t so bad, but i had accidentally erased the “good” vocal takes i had. and for god’s sake, it wasn’t even MIXED. it was just raw. i need to at least have some ROUGH mixes. you know, with some modicum of EQ and effects. it was just all muddy and ugly. utterly unlistenable! so i need to get to work. and i need to work hard. i definitely feel like i have a solid record in me, but i’m definitely not putting enough effort into it. nowhere near enough! for some perspective, the most listenable track i have is an early rough recording of “Something” (by The Beatles), which i didn’t do a thing to, and it has very very little accompaniment. so i desperately need to take more advantage of EQ. (each instrument should have its own band, with very little overlapping of frequencies, so it doesn’t blend too much and become all muddy and amateur-sounding).

i am going to be reading Arthur C. Clarke’s Rama series. it will be the first time i have read a novel since last Fall. i haven’t even been able to read novellas or longish shorts for quite some time. i think i’ve been feeling overwhelmed. ironic, since i’m a jobless bum. but i think being a writer, musician, artist, poet, and webgeek can sometimes make for bleak spots, where one doesn’t know where in the hell they are supposed to go next, or what they are supposed to do. so sometimes i just don’t do anything, including experiencing the works of other artists.

latest performance art: booty-dancing to network news music. it’s far more compelling than it sounds. and works much better than you’d think.

so a few days ago, i get a sudden phone call, at 8am. it’s my old girl pal, whom i haven’t really had any substantial conversation with in several weeks or more.

“hey! so, uh… what are you doing today?”

“er, ah… nothing, far as i know… er, why?”

“I’m coming over. see you in a few minutes.”

(last time i actually had a real conversation with her, she lived way up near Chicago; she lives in Indy now. so i was more than a little startled.)

so she stayed here for a few wonderful (if utterly uneventful) days!

it was basically blissful for me, because i’m just so fond of her.

i used to be head over heels for her, and of course, it’s hard not to have SOME feelings for someone just like her (of which there are precisely none), but i’m all cool. seriously! i sure did have a couple of brief moments when i wanted to totally come on to her, but i didn’t at all. and my heart’s completely solid… no bumps or bruises whatsoever.

there was about a molecule of actual flirtation, several picograms of near-cuddlation, five or six hours of close slumber, and lots and lots of warmth. (plus about twenty hours of excellent movies.) so that was just awesome.

i enjoy her company more than almost anyone else in the world.

to Mrs Bubba: thanks a million!

working on a new, vastly improved redesign of transmothra.com.

it contains elements of the two swiftest sites i’ve built yet – mars s.t.s. and tecumseh local music boosters.

basically, it uses the mars templating engine to deliver content seperate from layout, while giving the user a choice of what style (colors, fonts, etc.) they want to look at the page with, ALSO delivering browser/OS-specific code where such code may otherwise break down on one or more platforms (like my trademark translucent backgrounds, oy vey), and also has the added functionality of being able to use splash pages, slicker URLs (?page= instead of the more esoteric-looking ?p=), and customised additional scripting (for instance, a javascript image gallery pop-up on one page, and on another, maybe a different menu system and a widget of some sort, like flying text or something), extra content, and titles for every page (i think mars had that bit already).

so now, all i’ll need to do is make a content file, drop it into the “content” folder, maybe configure it for the extra scripting, and voila! the next time i want to redesign the layout, i just add another stylesheet… that way, the old layout is kept and both or all layouts are still selectable in a style menu.

total and utter independance of content from style.

and the whole thing should deliver completely valid, future-compatible markup (with the sole exception of what remaining Flash i decide to keep, and i might work around that where possible).

it’s going quite well so far. i’ve gotten the “splash page” bit working, and it’s recognizing two very basic stylesheets i’m using to test it with, inserting them into a dropdown box, and setting them up correctly.

confession: sometimes, when i’m out in public and i see a little kid, i think about kidnapping them.

no, no, no, no, no. not ME kidnapping them. i look at them and wonder why in the hell anybody would see one of those disease-infested snot-factories and think, ‘gee, i wanna have one of those things for myself!’

i mean, at least when you make your own, you get something out of it. (of course, women have the hard part: labor, and the possibility of having never had an orgasm during conception in the first place… so why aren’t even more kidnappers female? but i digress…)

the next time you see a missing kids flyer on the window or door of the local grocer, or in your mailbox… look over it carefully, please.

in other news, Jimmy Carter to stand trial for alleged peace-mongering.

“Prosecutors will have no difficulty establishing Carter’s willful intent to pursue and maintain the aim of peaceful intervention in international affairs when they cite his formation of The Carter Center, an organization whose three publicly stated aims are ‘Fighting Disease,’ ‘Building Hope,’ and ‘Waging Peace,'” [Vince] Halloway [, an expert in international law with the Brookings Institution,] said. “Carter will be forced to answer for his reign of tranquility before the entire world community.”

this story, from the Onion, is of course satire, but sadly, there is an awful lot of The Flavor Of These Days in it, if you dig me.

i just came within about two seconds of cutting my hair completely off.

and i might just do it later today anyway.

here it is. not quite 500, but 1) i was awfully close, and 2) i’m not counting my CMJ/NMM comps, which number about 2 dozen.

My CDs
don’t you ever forget that Africa gave us rock and roll (PDF, 26k)
(i have about 4-5 more coming, as well… and another 23, if i can get my hands on $100)

this does not include cassettes, which my best estimates put at around 2-3000, or vinyl, of which i have about 100-150.

if you hate PDF files, well, then, i’m sorry. i spent about 3 hours tonight trying to code it into a form which LiveJournal could handle. all in vain. so whatever.

Me vs. Godzilla on AMC tonight. if there’s anything i like better than to see that big brown bastard get his just desserts, i don’t know what it is.

that’s not the original ending, btw. his agent paid off the studio to let them reshoot it. in the original, the Moth was the Master. fuck, i dominated that prick. made him my bitch. he made me a sammich when i got through with hizazz.

money talks.

he’ll get his.

EDIT: hey, i forgot that they actually released the REAL ending on this film! my guy Marty came through for me and blocked the release of that pussy’s reshot ending where he “wins” (totally unbelievable anyway, if you ask me). in the REAL, OFFICIAL ending, i tag team with my other self on that fat rubber fuckdoll.

haha! take that, lizard boy! hey, i hear Geico’s hiring, after their old spokesgecko was found naked and hanging from the ceiling of a Vegas motel room. of course, you might want to do something about that little powder habit there, tough guy. yeah, you heard me. fucking cokehead. i offered time and time again to take you under my wing, but you had to go your own route, didn’t you? and when all the fame and fortune and girls and chemicals fucked up your head, where were you then, huh? er… i mean, where was i? well, nevermind that. you fucked up, and you know it. i gave you a chance, and you BLEW it. see you in hell, zippertit.

“Over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas”
by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt.

compiled from here

complete list
print version

desktop versions here.

i am compiling a list of all of my CDs. i expect it to end up being about 500 or so. most of them are from BMG, Columbia House, and especially Django’s. prior to moving here i had nearly all of my previous CDs stolen. i had well over 300 then. i’ve replaced several (including my favorite semi-rare CD, Einstürzende Neubauten‘s Strategies Against Architecture II!), but some were practically irreplaceable, which is why if you ever see a Hank El Diablo CD, you need to let me the fuck know about it.

i just sent out electronic resumes via email to several recruiters, and at the bottom of them, my signature was attached, even though i had selected “off.” my signature includes the phrase “eternal salvation or triple your money back,” with a link to SubGenius.com (among other unsuitable things). damn you, Eudora. damn you straight to hell!

the look on my face when i realised what i’d done was positively Lovecraftian, i can assure you.