Posts Tagged ‘Kleptus’

Messages to Yourself from the Future

Posted: April 4, 2011 in Writing
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I have ranted before about this strange drive I have to create things. Being digital has helped a lot, because I can perform magick tricks that were only in my head–or I didn’t think I had the chops to do–and send them out into the world as my little wind-up creatio

n and see where they ended up. Case-in-point: my buddy Miguel runs an awesome blog/podcast/site called The Monster Island Resort Podcast. It was his birthday. Through FB, he asked what his “monsters” were going to do for his b-day. I suggested in a comment a Photoshop-Miguel-into-vintage-movie-posters contest. I really thought the amateur PSers would come out of the woodwork. Apparently, it is not such a common skill

Miguel vs Monster Zero

Miguel vs Monster Zero

; this means I am taking my own proficiency for granted. Far be it from me to suggest a contest without participating; I threw together a pic of Miguel laughing via screencap off of his FB and Google Image searched for some Godzilla movie posters. A few minutes in PS later, and I sent the composite up to Imgur and posted the link back to his FB wall. Lo and behold: I won the contest! He posted it up in his FB album. My artwork is now–briefly–his FB icon. I laugh every time I see it, and I brought a friend some birthday magick.

Because I PRESSED RECORD.

I am still sortof blown away that I have written poetry for something like 25 years (not so much lately), and I have 15 consecutive years of doing music compilations. I am listening to my record collection that Kleptus and Moonbow helped me move into my spare bedroom after 2 years of rotting in my garage, and every song I hear is a message I had left behind for me to discover later on. This funk phenomenon has happened to me many times over the year. It is why I am passionate about creating. “I’m not bragging; I’m confessing” ~King Fantastic

My last entry was So You Think You Can Blog. No matter how many people think that I was somehow commenting on their efforts (or lack thereof), this was nothing more than a message to myself that I will be able to discover again and again when I decide to do the painful process of reviewing shit that I have already created. I made a Nu Decade resolution to myself to blog once a week; I’m supposed to use Sundays–it’s on my personal Google Calendar. My phone blows up with SMS reminders. I’m trying to convince myself that uploading and tagging camping photos to Facebook with witty captions somehow absolves me of blogging that week. Because it is fuckin’ hard.

The Turntables are Alive!

The legendary Studios of Doom be alive and kickin'!

The more you create original content–in whatever media you choose–the more you attract people who feel that it is a breath of fresh air because it is not recycled: it is actually new. This is the act of creation. Press record. Put it out there. What do you really have to lose? How big is your audience, really? If you’re scared that someone is going to dig up some Tweets or a blog you wrote weeks or months or years ago, then you need to reconsider what you stand for. Although there is an unsettling–creepy and threatening, really–trend to use interconnected networks on the Internet to squelch your individual voice, you HAVE one, and it is your human duty to exercise it across ALL media. It’s called integrity, and it leads to serenity in troubling times because it gives you confidence. And if you can capture–or bottle–some of that in a blog post, or a mix CD, or a painting; work on a vehicle or a piece of furniture; a biz plan outline, a stream of photographs, a poem, an essay, a sketch…comprehend that it is creation and you are creating it. The world ALWAYS needs more content!

I am old enough to remember when the drum machine and the synthesizer appeared in the music market. The critics opined that now you don’t have to hire a drummer, or a string quartet, or a horns section. Then digital recording came along; now you didn’t have to rent an entire studio; you could four-track in your folks’ basement. Then came the worst evil of all: the sampler. Just go ahead: rip-off and re-use any break you could load into the computer. Music has not suffered from these advances; it has grown and proliferated and been brought to the masses. Anyone with a mind of their own now can Garage Band themselves into the public’s eye. I have to applaud the effort–or luck–that it takes to leave a message that potent in the past for yourself: you get to live with it. Did you fuck your brand up? Probably not; in fact, I bet you built it–it’s like character.

Going back through old mixes and compilations and poems and stories, I am certain that I am continuing to be sincere and amazing. It is important that I recognize that these creations are love-letters I am leaving myself; it does not matter that sometimes I feel like I have an audience of one. Someday, I might have an audience of one more: some other creature that gains knowledge or strength or spirit from some message that I have left for myself. I certainly gain wisdom, knowledge, and opinions–experience points–from other people’s efforts on- and off-line. That’s icing on the cake.

Music Should Be Loud

Posted: June 10, 2009 in Music
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“it’s been a long time…I shouldn’t have left you / Without a strong rhyme to step to”

That is the opening lyric to Erik B and Rakim’s legendary and elemental “You Know You Got Soul“. It always humbles me to re-learn this fundamental fact of life every time I am alone and I turn up my stereo. Because my sound-producing systems are a power-sucking, overwhelming, disgustingly 70’s speaker-studded monstrosity that has not stretched its wicked claws in almost a year. With Kleptus and teh Office Qween (and the loveable brats) moving upstairs, the animal is waking from slumber. It misses it’s counterpart, a big stainless steel bear affectionately called Teh Kegerator. I might point out that using a Kegerator (especially if you have a Kvar system in place) is actually greener than recycling all those cans and bottles. Walk the walk, bitches.

So I am totally head-over-heels in love with Chicane featuring Natasha Bedingfield – Bruised Water. That link is specifically the Adam K Remix. It’s been a long time…since I have heard a track that every single version is stellar. Plus, it helps that Natasha Bedingfield is crazy fuckin’ hawt. I had to search for this, but check out the original video with the updated mix. But let’s not get twisted; the message and the mermaid from the original remix outing is drool-fuel, too.

“so let down my guard / drop my defenses / down by my clothes…I’m learning to fall / with no safety net / to cushion the blow”

That’s about where I am at, but moving steadily on radar. Stay tuned; especially to Mordenkainen’s Parlour.

Taking Writing for Granted

Posted: May 27, 2009 in Writing
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If you look at my Archives, you’ll see that I actually used to write for myself, by myself, for years and years. The idea of transferring this to an electronic medium since I sit in front of my MacBook Pro most of my waking hours should be a no-brainer, except for one small detail. I refuse to use it privately; it’s just my personality.

When I was let go by Achieve Internet last year, I realized that unemployment, in a sense, is like forced vacation, and even if you really wanted to get on with your next gig, you had a metric shit-ton of time that you spent thinking about the world we live in, and life in general, and inevitably, you wander into some really deep, frightening places. So when I had all that free time where you literally cannot spend towards finding a job, I decided to type into this WordPress blog several hundred poems that I had written over my formative years in high school and college. And then BURN the original journals in the first camping trip I had taken in years with a couple of friends led by Kleptus himself.

For those of you who stumble across this and are not familiar with WordPress, it makes blogging and publishing so easy even a caveman could do it. The hinge here is that there is security; you can blog all you want and never publish a thing to the general Intarwebz. I think that you owe it to the online community to share; hell, everyone else is doing it and some are even making money at it.

Part of the fascination I have with the World Wide Web — rockin’ it at 14,400 baud since my first AOL account in 1992 where they asked me for a “unique” screenname, and the online presence known internationally as Thee Froggacuda was born — is that no matter how you interact with it, you develop a personality. On AOL in the early days, this used to consist of hanging out and doing free-form text-based roleplaying at something like the legendary Red Dragon Inn, which I just discovered is alive and well (and still has my “Kiss the ‘Tender” apron hanging in its accustomed place behind the bar), unless you were going back to the early, early days, hanging out and doing free-form dice-based roleplaying in Galsteefus’s basement.

The point of this bit of writing is that I have been taking writing for granted because of some sort of personal paralysis due to having a real live audience. And my worst critic is myself. I think that this says a lot. “I actually used to write for myself, by myself, for years and years.” That was earlier in this blog post. The archives are right next to you on the right-hand side under Archives, go figure. Choose a link; check it out.

This is where the public / private thing comes in. Our lives are on camera and on the Internet right now; isn’t it our duty to try to be graceful footage and Facebook for future generations? There is this misconception that old web pages die natural deaths, but I still have all of the HTML code, graphics, databases, and other artifacts from many iterations of my own Virtual Lilypad site, and nothing is safe from The Wayback Machine. Content production on them Intarwebz is, I would suspect, at an all time high and still rising. What are we to do with all of this dreck that we make public?

Whether you keep it public or private, nearly anything you do is capable of being recorded or transcribed or captured. And then traced back to or otherwise attributed to you. Tagged, if you will. I read an article that 1 in 5 US Recruiters Google your ass when your resume comes across their desks. People upload their own videos to YouTube, their own photos to Flickr, and their own shopping interests to Amazon. This is all content that may or may not be of any passing interest to anyone but the people that are adding the content. Where is the value?

  1. Creative aggregation of data
  2. Remixes and mashups
  3. Historical record

1. There is so much damn data out there at any given time being copied and created and beamed around the world, it is literally like a gigantic ocean. Data mining with all of that out there moving and morphing and trending and boiling has got to produce some fascinating art if it could be visually represented. When you dig into this matrix and start following threads, there would be intricate patterns and relationships and chaos theory butterflies, and I would probably just be hypnotized. With an uber dashboard to pan around and zoom, you could literally “zoom” all the way in with search algorithms to find specific pieces of content that are the catalysts for larger currents. Maybe one of those elements is one of these poems, songs, or stories that are contained in the Archives.

2. As most everyone knows, DJ Lurk loves hisself a good remix. He has even made some of his own. So I know how much of a labor of love most remixes are. There’s a relatively new piece of lingo the means essentially the same thing: mashup, which is a little more specific, at least in music, than remix. Most all of the created content on the Internet is public. Even if you think it is private, it isn’t as private as you think — somebody can see it and potentially mash it up with something else. Repurposing existing content in a new way is as much of an art form as making the content in the first place; in fact, many times a fresh take on an old standby is better than the original. Take Vince Shlomi — the Slap Chop is an amazing product, I know — but the Steve Porter Remix “Rap Chop” was so damn good I started following him on Twitter. I was going to spin the remix at the first chance I got but somebody beat me to it already. Speed of information flow is approaching speed of light.

3. History has always suffered because it was a privilege for the powerful and rich to be able to write the accounts. Publishing your own version — essentially documenting your own personality, life, and experiences — is, in and of itself, riches and power directly proportional to the amount of content you produce over that lifetime. You can’t take it with you, but you can sure make a conscious, good-faith effort to provide something for the seething, sentient mass of ones and zeroes to Borg. The value of anything that you do should be weighed first and foremost by whether you find value in it yourself. Then, and only second, think about the audience. The value of this blog is because I find it fascinating. If others do, too, well, icing is my favorite part of Delicious Cake.

I just realized — part of the reason writing electronically versus otherwise is less productive. I find that some of the most fun is using hyperlinks as footnotes. They’re even better because they are in-line, and you can click them if you want extra context or detail. However, they do a damn fine job of preventing me from getting my point across in a coherant manner sometimes. And potentially, other readers. Note to self. On WordPress, no less.

This was not the best content I have ever created, but I do feel like I cracked my knuckles and limbered up a bit before all of the writing that lays ahead of me, both personally and professionally. So, in the interest of reading more writing, well, an enigmatic word to the wise: GreenHouse.