Author: jae

when Nelson freakin’ Mandela asks your band to reunite for one single god damned show…

oh, now this is good.

i am a better musician because i’m slightly handicapped. listen:

because i have something wrong with my left third (ring) finger (probably gout), plus arthritis (i’ve had that since i was a child), i am often forced to play with two or three fingers at most. (Django Reinhardt played with two fingers due to a childhood fire which left two of his fingers stuck together.) now, here comes the cool part:

i generally only play, by myself, when i am feeling up to it. so that means that i learn songs, usually, using all my fingers. then, when i play live, or whenever someone asks, or for any other reason i find myself playing with a finger-full of tremendous pain (and i DO mean TREMENDOUS… pain on a truly epic scale; enough to make the heart literally palpitate– i’d bet that even childbirth is nicer (not to take anything away from it; mad props to mothers), because mine is also traumatically painful AND occurs every god damn day), i have to force myself to find alternate fingerings on-the-fly, in realtime. so i end up choosing which notes i think are most important at the time, making for a more dynamic and spontaneous performance. and i’ve been doing this for so long (almost 15 years now), that it’s insanely easy to do, with no problems whatsoever (outside of the debilitating, crippling pain itself).

not to mention that the alternate chord voicings are infinitely more interesting to hear as well. imagine if Django had grown up listening to rock and roll music instead… say, Led Zeppelin and Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, et al..

i, literally, as they say, rock, so to speak.

i’ve had pizza twice in the last three days. it doesn’t take much to make me very very happy.

(post title edited for case-sensitive persons [6:15am, 2002.11.13])

get hip, fuckers.

this rocks.

wow, my LED rank images for phpBB2 are STILL number one! how cool… so i decided to make a new set. these new ones are FAR better than the old ones. they should available for downloading there in a few days.

new set
name: dome LEDs
descr.: flashing dome-style (retro) LED lights
set includes:
6 static images
9 regular animations
5 “boss” animations
1 readme
1 PSD (PhotoShop) file (aka devkit)
1 bonus animation embedded within PSD file
total files: 23

preview here.

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i know i’ve said that i was going to go towards a more acoustic/electric rock sound with my newer music, and i still will, but i’ve recently decided that what i really really want most, and if anyone out there can help me out, i’d really appreciate it,

is a funk band.

that’s right, you heard me. a funk band. actually, just a band that can do anything that i want to do. but i do want to do more funk. now that’s something i can really do well on the guitar. the rest is just horseplay, but i truly have a feel fo’ de funk. in fact, i am a downright phenomenal funk player. i wish u knew.

ideally:
me- guitar/vocals, some keyboards, some harmonica, etc.
singer/guitarist to split those duties with
bass
drums
maybe a guitarist/keyboardist

i foolly_[sic] realize that this may be a little late in coming, but nonetheless, here it is, my birthday present to myself:

i hereby declare that i am no longer thirty-one years of age, and that from this day forward i am now 23 years old; until such time as i see fit to GROW THE FUCK UP, YO.

i couldn’t be more serious, or more preposterous. all at once, which i think is the best way to be ANYthing. besides, i haven’t truly felt, except for a few odd days here and there, as if i were more than twenty-three years old since i was twenty-three and a half years old anyways. so fuck it.

i mean, who am i to say where time stops and starts? who am i to declare that space is either infinite, or is not infinite? all time is arbitrary. YAY! all space is arbitrary. YAY! you and i are arbitrary. YAY! love, and life, and revolution are all arbitrary. YAY! happiness and posthumous collections of our recorded works are arbitrary. YAY! freedom itself is arbitrary. YAY! there is no such thing as absolutes in a universe this fucking truly god damned humongously gargantuan. YAY! there is only the Second Law, and no other. YAY! nothing is true; everything is permissible. YAY!

YAY! hail Eris! all hail Discordia! misplaced bodhisattvas attack! YAY!!!

wow. people really like to see me frustrated, apparently. heh (i think).

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i think i’m-a be at 1470 tonight, if anyone wants to hang. second floor, mind you. and yes, that is a total gay bar. i used to hang out there all the time, back in the day, when it was truly cool. i was there not too long ago, and it seems promising, i guess… it just ain’t nearly as insanely hip as it used to be. oh well. at least i still have choices there, hee hee heeeee! let’s hope i don’t wind up here this time tomorry nite… i could use some good old fashioned Dionysian debauchery, like the Olde Dayes…

and god damn, i can dance like a mothafucka! (if you consider Mick Jagger to be a good dancer, that is… i DO.) …Jess, help me out here, vouch for me– i know you’re reading this…

What she asked of me, at the end of the day… Caligula would have blushed!
-The Smiths

Rock Band Police to Reunite — for 3 Songs Only

transmothra.com/story/pioneer.html

just over 7,000 words, making me officially about 6300 words short of my quota.

this is the latest update, and includes some minor changes to the first chapters. PLEASE O PLEASE let me know if you find any continuity problems.

dark dark day.

quiz results…

How much of a freak are you?

wow, i don’t know how this happened, but i’m glad… two days ago, i bought three packs of smokes (Camel filters). my usual, as it were. and now i’ve STILL got a pack and a half left.. i noticed that a few days ago, i’d only smoked a half a pack in a day. this is great… for years i used to go through 3 packs in a day, and at my peak i could often be seen midway through my fifth. i am so glad to be smoking so much less. what a happy accident.

Heather Firth has got it right!

thanks to theapostate for sharing this article on what i was talking about in that last post.

i’ve toyed with the idea of revolution, and of getting elected the worst party/officials into office as a means to bring about revolution, for years and years now. i’ve never had such an opportunity present itself.

therefore, i want to make it devastatingly clear, right here, right now:

in the next two years, i plan on spending a healthy amount of time in jail for my actions.

i will harm no one, insofar as i am unharmed myself.

but i will demonstrate, and remonstrate, and i will incur much wrath among friend and foe alike. i will take part in as many demonstrations as possible, starting this saturday in Columbus. i will do everything that is in my power to start this fucker rolling, and, once rolled, to steer it as best i personally can. in short, i will take back my political life and return to my political roots (my very first protest was staged in fifth grade). i will resist, and i will use force, if necessary.

i will take part in Controversial Actions.

i will fuck in the streets, and i will revel wildly throughout the night. i will smoke my marywanna and eat my El Esdee in open and public spaces. i will flaunt my freedom, whether i have legal rights to do so or not; simply because i AM, as we all truly are, a helluva lot more free than any stupid “law” could ever suggest. we can do anything we want to do. anything at all, “an’ it harm none”.

and should it come to that, i will take as active a role as possible in the coming Revolution.

this is The Time. this is The Place. this is The Hour.

transmothra.com is back online, albeit the backup occured before some minor changes. that’s okay, i was going to change the format on the book page anyway.

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YEE-HAW!! the Grande Ole Party won!!

every single office in the land is now occupied by a Good Ol’ Boy! this is FANTASTIC!!

i’m serious!

now the people can RISE UP in REVOLUTION against the thoughtless tyrrany of shallow men, as they did in France in 1814!

Bastille Day II! LET THE HEADS ROLL!!!!!

it was on this day, one year ago, that i threw my dying grandmother a birthday party. her real birthday’s on the 20th (we’re both Scorpios), but i Knew that she wasn’t going to make it, because her body was really beginning to shut down; she lost her speech, and most of her physical functioning by that time, as well as most of her comprehension and possibly also her sight. so i stealthily tore off the dates on her calendar up to the twentieth. i brought in a couple dozen helium-filled balloons, most of which were red (her favourite colour). i made sure to put a number of them within reach, should she regain some muscle control and wish to play with any. put streamers up on the ceiling and walls, making a big ‘X’ above her, with the ends hanging down to her bed in the middle. put a big banner reading “Happy Birthday!” in big, happy letters on her wall facing her. turned on her favourite country music.

i even invited my mortal enemy (see hallowe’en post), who came and left early, before anyone else, the fucking pig bitch.

we gathered around her and fed her cake. well, a bite. she couldn’t really swallow too well, poor dear sweet woman, lumière de ma vie. i read to her from the cards that were brought. when i read the card from my grandfather, her husband, i lost it. i showed her the picture i made for her, and read what it said (“Goodbye Paulyne – we will always love you”). completely lost it. gave her a very special hug.

she understood, i think. i will never forget, looking into those sad, brown eyes… she looked back at me, with a tear in her eye… oh christ i’m losing it now.

she died two days later.

i just don’t know how i’m going to get through this week. it’s all going to be coming back, all the painful memories. all the goodbyes. i never will forget that the hardest thing i’ve ever done in my life is tell someone that i was kind of alright with them dying. and then seeing it happen, right in front of me.

that last night, that terrible, dreadful night… i held her hand… i hogged her all day long and had to constantly remind myself to let others have some time by her side. poor sweet Grandmother… how i miss you now… i’ll skip most of the details, but we had people in and out all day; people from Hospice. the supervisor (i think that’s what she was) came and told us that that day was it, and to be prepared, because it was almost surely going to happen very very soon. we had to put wet swabs in her mouth, poor dear…

my grandfather, skilled denier that he is, poor guy, spent the entire day in the living room, acting as if everything was perfectly normal. watching tv, talking to people, making phone calls here and there. he was in his chair watching tv (great defiler of humanity) when it happened.

her breathing had been laboured for some hours. at some point, it had suddenly become more relaxed and slow. she was on oxygen by this time. (i swear to god, when the oxygen guy came to install the tank and train us, he said “now this is a thirty day supply” and stupid god damned fool me, always the best fuckup in the family, said (tho’ quietly, shhh!) “it’s okay, we’re not expecting to be needing it after tonight”. right there in her room! god damn me!! jesus, i have so many regrets with regards to that whole last precious and horrifying year…

anyways, i was holding her hand, and her breathing had become suddenly less laboured. i mentioned this, and a few minutes went by. then it happened. she took her final precious breath. i leaned into the baby monitor with great haste: “Grandpa, come here NOW please!” …but it was too late. it was all over. it was all over. she was gone. and then one last, terrible Death-cough. i’m not going to talk about this any more. except to say these things:

– that immediately following her passing, i put on Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” and sat in silence, gazing sadly lovingly at her, contemplating our amazing journey together. we laid a red rose………………………. said goodbye to the wind……….

– that my friend Travis, my brother in spirit if not in blood, who had flown back up here to Ohio at my sobbing request (required not even the slightest pleading from me, that angel!), was at the door within minutes. he just had a feeling that he should come back over to the house. he showed up and i hugged him and cried and he was such a brother.

– that as the coroner’s men were carrying her out, i waited, and when they came past me, i had a sudden thought, and i screamed out “aloha!”, over and over again. she had a funny history with Hawaii. maybe this week i’ll think to tell about it. crazy little bird.

– that that night, i went in by myself, and laid down on her bed, and cuddled her teddy bear, and wailed and wailed and wailed, like a baby, snatched from its mother…

o god. i miss her so terribly. she was the only one who was there all those years for me. solid.

and i find it so hard to reconcile my agnosticism with the deaths of all of those whom i love. Carl Sagan, my first truly Important hero (my first were tied: Stevie Wonder and Evol Knievel), to his dying moment believed firmly that there simply was nothing after death. i want to believe something, for chrissakes. but i cannot. it makes no scientific sense, and i’m not superstitious enough for any of that religious crap. i’ve been there and done that, and believe me, it’s all a bunch of comfortable lies. some noble truths, no doubt, but as for the Great Philosophical Questions of all time, there simply are no solid answers.

enough with my horseshit. fuck this. this is why i hated it when my birthday came, because all it is to me now is just the last gas station, the last exit before Doom. not even two weeks after my 30th last year, and bam! Death. my own birth is a but a mile marker for Death. ain’t all of ’em like that for everybody, though? how’s that for symbolism?

The Universe, you can ram your stupid god-damned symbols right up your ass.

again, enough. how foolish and selfish of me. god damn. it’s just that… damn, the pain of such an unbearable loss… if i had to give up all but one thing in my life, i’d choose to keep her. but now everything is too late. it’s all over. she’s gone. forever… forever. forever.

…i can’t even see the monitor for the tears in my eyes. i’m going now. i don’t know if i’ll be back or not.

yay! looks like meat-thing.com is nearly back online, tho’ transmothra.com has yet to go live once again… keeping me fingas crossed…

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chapter two of Pioneer nearing completion; more meat. here is an excerpt (minus formatting):

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So I started this as a sort of journal, to tell the world what I did in the event that I cannot. I meant to tell a little bit more of the story before I dozed off last night, but I didn’t… well, what can ya do, huh? So I guess I’ll just phone this one in and have the computer tack it on to the end of the last part. Right. Let’s get down to details, shall we? I need to sort everything out before I go any further with this thing. I’ve got all the time in the world at this point anyway.

Okay… where was I? I already told you I was going out into space. And I’ve mentioned that nearly every habitable planet out there has already been well documented. According to G-DECS, that is. There’s one that they don’t know about, and I found it.
But first, a history lesson!

In the year 2153, space travel took a massive leap forward with the breaking of the String. Uberphysicists all over the world had been working on solving the problem of faster-than-light travel for well over two centuries, even before the advent of uberphysics itself. (Before 2039, all physics were grouped into separate realms of study, until Hiroki Takamura discovered the key to the linking thread of what was then only called String Theory.) As it turns out, by literally unravelling whole sections of the bolt of string-fabric, something deemed impractical until someone accidentally tripped over a complicated piece of lab equipment, starting a miraculous chain reaction that accomplished just this, and in a meaningful, useable way (the part that baffled skeptical theorists), space itself can be torn open; this allows for movement in and between higher dimensions. Now, by moving in, say, the fifth dimension, you can traverse the same distance as you can in three dimensions, only in a fraction of the time. The actual fraction is pretty complicated, but think of this: as a two-dimensional “flatlander,” there is no way to get to the other side of your sheet-of-paper universe without travelling at some point in at least a third dimension. However, once there, it takes nearly no time at all; it’s merely a matter of alignment. And by travelling in dimensions higher than four, space itself warps up until you get a sort of folding of your sheet of paper (at this point, the two-dimensional representation of the universe will suffice better than a three-dimensional model would, for the purpose of clarity in mental visualization), whereby you could literally jump from one side to the other without travelling the actual [three-dimensional] physical distance.

We call this “tweening” space.

This process got off to a rocky start, but it’s since been refined quitea bit. It’s now considered to safest way to travel. It’s still a bit slow, owing to the fact that it’s only been in practical human use for about a quarter of a century. But faster than light it is! In fact, the distance to, say, Sirius (the so-called “Dog-Star”) can be travelled in just a little over three years now! That’s well over twice the speed of light, and a marked improvement over the early phase of tweening, when only about 2c (twice the speed of light) was thought to be practical initially. In another thirty years, we’ll probably be tweening across space at 5c!

Enough about that. What I really wanted to tell you is this: a little over ten years ago, in fact it was the exact day I retired, or the day after (something like that anyway!), my friend Xanther and I went in together on some parts for building our own tweenboat. Xanther has since moved away to Germany, and I haven’t heard from him in years, but that’s no matter because he sold me his share of the bundle just before he left. I’ve been putting this thing together now this last decade, and has it ever been a learning process! Things have changed, even since the last time I went back to college. I finished it last night. It’s been mostly functional for a few months now, but I needed to do a little testing and adjustments and all that business.

So there’s my ship, and there’s its engine. You finally know the How, and the Why. Now let me tell you about the Where!
Sixteen months ago, I was in my backyard observation booth, another project of mine and Xanther’s. I caught a signal from somewhere near the constellation of Cancer… it turned out to be a complete fluke, but as I was realigning the telescope, I passed by a faint object up there. I still find it hard to believe I actually caught it again, going back trying to make it out. Of course, I couldn’t actually see a thing, but the meter gave me the impression that there was something out there around the star G 51-15, otherwise known as DX Cancri, a tiny and cool red dwarf not quite 12 light-years away.

DX Cancri was discovered roughly 200 years ago, in the year 1972. Not much was ever really known about it, except that it is a cool little brown thing not a tenth as massive as Sol. Nobody expected there to be any planets in orbit around it, much less a body suitable for exploration. Yet according to my own studies, there exists at least four small planets and one large, gaseous jovian. The second planet, moreover, not only receives enough radiated heat from DX Cancri, but even sustains its own oxygen-rich atmosphere! It is, in my view, fully capable of sustaining life of some sort. At least on the one side. You see, DX Cancri 2 doesn’t so much orbit around its host as hovers in a circle. Only one side has seen its own sun in at least several million years. On this side, temperatures average close to that of the Earth, with extremes only ranging from about -2’C to 42’C. I think I’ll have not a bit of trouble there, although I really have very little data on the actual weather systems on the planet. Size-wise, it appears to be very roughly a third the size of the Earth’s moon, requiring no extra men on my mission for a nice basic plotout. There also appears to be an environment featuring both plants and possibly animals, as the typical elements found in such an atmostphere are all in order as well. Of course, on a planet this tiny, I shouldn’t have to worry about running into anything larger than a cat. Just in case, I’ve brought a maser.

Well, that about takes care of that. When and if I am able to return home, I’ll fill in all the blanks later on. All that’s important right now is that I’ve got a destination that no one else knows exists, and when I come back, I’ll be quite possibly the last great space pioneer! History, here I come!

* * * * *

Everything this morning went off without a hitch. I called Dennis, who is going to be taking care of my dog Sparky. Dennis and I go way back. He got me my first job, and through these long years, we’ve been pretty good friends. He asked if there was anything I needed. I told him no, everything was all set.

“Well, Jimmy… I guess this’ll be the last time I see ya… it’s kinda weird, bud. I never knew anyone who went out that far!”

I laughed. “Oh, who knows, Den? You’re only 91 now, in 18 or 20 years I’ll prolly come back and you’ll still be out there, tinkering with your plants, same as always!”

Dennis smiled, but there was a wistful look in his eye. “Jimmy, you know as well as I do-,” he started to say.

“Den, you can beat the odds… you can always beat the odds! Besides, you know damn well you have at least six or seven more good years… isn’t that what the doctor said? Well, shit, in that time they’ll have a solution for you. Look, buddy, you just keep up your atomics therapy and I’ll see you when I get back, okay?”

“…okay, Jimmy. All right.” I could tell he was just humoring me, but then again, I was only trying to lift his spirits anyway. We both knew the awful truth. It was enough for us just to pretend our way around it. Just so we wouldn’t have to break down on the phone like blubbering idiots. “You’re probably right, Jimmy.”

“I know I’m right. Take care of Sparky for me. Remember to keep his meals rotated; he hates having the same dinner twice in a week.”

“I thought his name was Max?” he chided.

“You asshole!” We both had a good laugh, and then it was time for me to go and get ready. Just as Dennis was hanging up the the line, he tilted his head just enough so that I could see a startling thing. Behind him, on his ugly green leather sofa, was the most beautiful young woman I ever saw.

“Whoa, hold on! Dennis!”

“…oh. Yeah, Jimmy?” He almost looked annoyed, like he picked up what I saw and knew what I was going to ask. I had to laugh, and could hardly even ask.

“Oh that’s just Kim. What? What??!”

“Who’s Kim, Denny boy?”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ve been together now for, what? Two months now? Something like that.”

“Wow, I think you’re setting a personal record!”

“Shut up, you old man. I don’t need you to jinx this. Remember the last one?” I did. She hated me, and the first chance she got she let me know it. Eventually, she left him because I was always over. Can you imagine the nerve!

“Oh, it’ll be all right!” and then I chuckled at him, real quiet-like, so that in his brain the translation would go something like this: ‘Dennis, you old dog!’

“Listen, I’m no dog, this is serious,” he said, damn near startling me out of my laughing fit.

“You think so, huh?” I almost couldn’t believe it. But then once, a long time ago, he had been serious, so I knew it was possible, if not probable.

“This is The One, Jim.” He never called me Jim, either. Always Jimmy, and if he was being a wise guy, it was James.

I gave him a look. He had it coming, although maybe now he didn’t exactly deserve it so much.

“Okay, James, this is The Next One. There! You happy?”

A pause. Then all of a sudden, we both just crack up.

When I finally hung up the line, I think he was starting to believe that he could outlive his profile. I was thinking that, too.

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comments and/or criticism most welcome, and appreciated….