I don’t know what’s going on, over here.

I’m tired and angry. New classes have started. New production. New art class endeavors. No free time. I won’t visit my blog for a LONG time. It’s a heads-up.

I’m not editing this morning.

Dreamt last night. I was at school, not the school, a realm of my usual dreams, but the highschool that I attend in real life, and to get to it, I had to walk through stand-still traffic, which seemed to be the norm to everyone in the dream. In a classroom, students were working like factory workers, with chemicals in large round bins and Wallace and Ryan putting stuff onto a conveyer belt. I told the two that I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer, not the character though, but I do. I told them, instead, that I love Angel. They made a couple of jokes about his name before I told them Angel is a guy. They pretended think I was gay, but I could see that they were just surprised in my openness about the show.
I don’t know if either of them like or have seen it in real life.
There’s another part of the dream that takes place in front of a large monitor or television screen, and people were playing videogames with semi-holographic images. I remember the sensations of being entertained by said games, but the actual details elude me. Something about the gameplay involved collecting or saving points to purchase things to enhance your playing from a sort-of online source or community. The whole thing looked future-like more than practical. I mean, there was no gamer comfort. Nothing flowed naturally, it was just a bunch of bright ligths and neat ideas: like future things in 50s movies, which look cool in the future, but are impractical and very stupid.
Oh, I nearly forgot the part about moving through traffic in which I had to go through my usual bus. Like, from one side of the street, go through or over cars, step through the bus door, force myself through the window on the other side of the driver, and get the school on the other side. It was just a normal thing to do, I suppose, but this day, in my dream, I guess I didn’t feel like putting myself or Mrs. Patti, my busdriver, through it. I walked back out of the bus, Ryan looked sort-of shocked by my decision, and I guess in this new dream realm we both live very close to eachother and to the school, walked around the front of the bus, and through the window Mrs. Patti yelled for me to come back, and she handed me a script I had written. It was covered in copier marks and grary squares, meaning this damn thing had been copied dozens of times, and this was one of the latest. It started to rain lightly, and I took the soggy rag of a script. This very final copy was a makeshift one, with handwriting and typed letters of various darkness and alignment, meaning not only has this thing been through tons of fucking copies, but there was a major edit each time. She said she liked it, and I felt good about it, the way Barton Fink might feel good about a fisherman liking the show at the beginning of the film.
I can’t remember the name of the guys who made that one, but I should. They made No Country for Old Men, O Brother Where Art Though… I’m going blank, damn it. This really makes me angry.
I don’t think I should edit the grammar and spelling things. I’ll just improve them through practice more than…
Not only am I losing names and examples in my memory, but words, vocabulary. Trying to think in the morning, trying to think this morning is strange, my fingers aren’t quite working with me as I type. I don’t know what to do about that.
I hope the rash on my hand doesn’t turn out to be something that kills me. Eczema’s in the family. I can live with that. I can’t live with my epidermis becoming toxic and killing me from the outside-in because of the drug that was supposed to save my life from the depression that might’ve killed me. Not in a suicidal way, but an emotional way, a creative way.
I think I’ve written enough for the day, though I can’t tell, I don’t know how to tell, or know, or think. I don’t know anything. It’s all stuff and shit.
I certainly need to leave the Vista to take care of some business, mainly involving my bowels. Breakfast cereal? No. Ye-eeh! (That was a vocal squirm that I tried typing, but I don’t think it translates.)

Yeah, I’m back, hungry, and sorry if if anybody reading dislikes this new format. I’m going to work on it, really.
Tried watching Dancer in the Dark, starring Bjork, but I couldn’t watch all the way through. Lars van Trier did Dogville, which threw me in every emotional direction it could, for something so dark and vile, much like the residents of Dogville, and he also made Manderlay, which wasn’t as emotionally involving, and was a disservice to myself to watch, though some symbolic visuals hold place in my memory. Dancer in the Dark was anoter “Americans are evil” movie of his, Lars van Trier, and I just couldn’t get involved, I was far too preoccupied with Bjork to focus on anything, the musical scenes were sort-of… badly staged, and the cinematography was… amateur. I’m not a filmmaker, so I can’t be judgemental, but I can tell you, shaky-cam doesn’t always work, and it is NOT okay to use it in a MUSICAL SCENE! Mother fucking damn it! The film pissed me off, and I got so fucking bored. I couldn’t stay to watch, I was falling asleep. In my room, on my bed, I heard one last musical number. I suppose I did exactly what Selma did: walk out before the end. I won’t know if she ever gets out of jail/prison before her execution or if she got hanged. I suppose it’s for the best, since… well, I don’t like the damn thing.

Morning Pages (I want to read what you have to say.)

Julia Cameron suggests that “morning pages” are something for oneself only, but I feel comfortable enough to use this blog as a convenient way to express all of my ideas in the morning, unabridged, without being challenged or censored or being made to feel guilty for the content of my writings or being corrected according to someone else’s way of thinking. It will be my way of writing to you more regularly, even if you do not read regularly, and it will be my way of freeing myself from self-censorship, the first of many considerable creative mental blocks that I feel I must break through. This idea comes to me without hesitation and with a great, keen focus, so I must assume that I want this more than any alternatives I may invent for myself, if writing by hand every morning becomes troublesome.

If ever you feel the need to share or respond to anything, I’d like to think that this is something you would find as such. I am opening my heart and mind willingly to the internet, an unsavory, destructive beast, and I want to know if ANYBODY reading now thinks that I can withstand myself in taking a step like this.
I’ll find a way to differentiate between Morning and Average posts, so nobody is confused on the matter. I just want you to know, if you’re reading, that I want to trust you as I am learning to trust myself.

Bigger Pills

Doc’s got me taking bigger ones, in ten days.
Got a few wrapped presents for the Smith family.
Lip balm numbs my lips and sterilizes the tear on my mouth.
Feeling like the most privileged teenage artist in this motherfucking state.
More reason to be thankful and sincerely happy than most of the human populace.
I love life, and I feel like the immaturity of the teenage world around me is so far below, it can’t even see me.

Some of my friends may be tired of seeing this one, if they see it here:

Swordfighting

I am truely the most useless person around here.

Two Stupid Bitches Ruin Everyone’s Lives Over Their Wedding Ceremonies:

a film better known as Bride Wars. No self-respecting woman in today’s age would act this way. My parents are watching this, behind me, and the obsessed nature of the main characters penetrate Beck on full volume. The stench of oppressing self-esteem issues is strong enough to make me vomit. I want to spit on the people who gave this the “okay”.

I nearly lost it, earlier. Not much has changed, but I’m getting into the nocturnal habits, again, which will call for a week of the strangest sensations and head-rushes. By the time I get used to it, vacation will end, and I’ll have to sleep through nights. Fuck.

Assassin’s Creed 2 is quite an improvement on the wonderful things from the original. It also successfully carries off a cinematic approach, like an action/fiction period piece. I really love the hell out of it, despite the sometimes shitty climbing controls. When I started, controls were tight, but it seems my character isn’t always fast enough to accept commands I try to give. Sometimes he can leap three feet backwards to another ledge behind him, while at other times the same button combination forces him to plummet from crippling heights. What a fucking pisser. What’s the use of being able to run through a crowd if you trip when you so much as dreamt about touching that very person who will trip you twenty years in advance.
I assume you’ll only know what I mean if you play the damn game, so ignore me if you haven’t. It’s a good one, though.

I didn’t get white-guilt watching Avatar, but I certainly feel the deepest, strongest surges of male-guilt from most of my favorite 90s singers. I used to want to be a girl, when I found most of my female friends were so level-headed. I figured their regular reminder of physical pain and emotional stress kept their perspectives intact. Seriously, how can a male grow up in the 90s and NOT envy women? Around here, though, so few guys can understand that men and women are of the same species, and that one is as much an object as the other. I’ve been called a feminist, and I suppose I am at times.

This really is the best, and only, time for me to be alive. In the recent years of this decade alone, we’ve witnessed the release of Watchmen, Star Trek, Iron Man, Dark Knight, Avatar, The Box, There Will Be Blood, Slumdog Millionaire, The Wrestler, Man on Wire, Wall-E, The Departed, No Country for Old Men, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace… don’t get me started on the works from my childhood. In the future, I will be a member of the elite elderly, reminiscing over these golden days of film, while young cats I respect and consider beyond their own years mock the selection of my day, compared to their own. (A nudge to a conversation that most won’t understand, but I’m not worried, because “most of you” includes an estimated sum of two or three.

A sentiment from my journal in another community, for those of you who care, but do’t follow me anywhere else but here:

“Maybe I’ll meet someone who’ll love a loathsome, leather-faced emotional wreck, like myself, at college. In Memphis? In Canada? In Hell?
Shit, every time I wake up in the morning or enter a restroom, I feel panicked, like the long-since-ended show is still days behind schedule. I still feel the stings and aches from tearing myself away from performing. I want to go back, and I’ll be mother fucking DAMNED if I let myself watch it go away without moment’s notice.”

Replacing Mona Lisa

After spending most of my night on the pencils for the face, and a lot of time trying to determine the flow of the subject's hair in the references she provided, I began looking for relatively large domestic birds. The cockatoo was quick and I am graced with the excuse of my simplistic style. I hope that I might return to this piece in the future, when I've been educated and have experimented long enough to know what works, with the subject's permission. A morning of lines and another night for colors later, I really hope she likes this one. Her art blog's on the other side of that link.

I don’t know.

Vocal recording device is working out great. It doesn’t take too much energy to keep it going, and the way I use it, a pair of batteries lasts about a month. I’d like to edit my recordings and put them into posts in place of texts, every now and then, but there are some issues:

I have a poor vocal presence when not performing dramatically.

I’ll have to pay this damn site to feature audio files in posts.

Most of my recorded notes and conversations aren’t within contexts that I can assume others who aren’t present at each recording will be able to understand or have the patience to continue listening.

The primary subjects and relevance of my notes vary through a single day, like lights at a rave club.

With these things, I still think I can set up an interesting audio blog (podcast) with practice, help, and ingenuity. It’ll be one of the first in many steps to achieve my wild imaginings of FrankFest and The Fester, two intertwined dream projects of mine. One is a cross-country film festival occurring in multiple major cities at once, and the other is a forum/news source for nerds of the arts.
At the Memphis College of Art, where I hope to complete an admission application soon, I may meet others with similar goals and ambitions with whom I can fuel these ideas together, while experimenting in acting and aesthetics.
Imagine the birth of an empire: a handful of college kids put everything into a series of comic and film projects, each new thing funded by the last, each of many future goals feeding each other to grow a series of companies under my command, producing films, printing magazines and comics, posting news and hiring the freshest, coolest, best young talents to act, direct, edit, blog, report, illustrate, and probably most importantly, write. Until I reach a point of status to face public media ridicule, and the trolls will be begging for the slimmest chance of backlash.
I’ll open a restaurant that serves Paul Newman’s salad dressing. Pictures of me shaking the hands of the greatest modern talents will center every booth, like a collection of “I met the president” photographs.
Clever self-taught street artists will demonize me, and use me as the center of their popular statements of outrage.
Widely accepted rumors of my false, nonsensical devious sexuality will be the image of my later life, while those who crack jokes regard my craft with dignity and awe, and never connect the dots.
I’ll strike fear and anger in the hearts of young rebels who want what I will have, and never realize it until one, like myself, will accomplish it.
My select quotes will be recited as often as pop-culture will reference my utter disgust for Robert Frost’s work.
My ideas and style will appear so unique to the youths who observe my work decades after their time, that homages to me will become a standard, and eventually the norm. In this way, I will command the human genius and rule terrestrial art from beyond the grave. Even my persona will be swayed by the years following my death, and all that will remain is a legend of a character, who will be seen with every fiber of greatness that I hope to see in myself.

Smith, I hope you read all of that.

Fallout 3

I’ve been playing like mad.
I’ve become the richest person alive, saved Megaton, become a Regulator, brought peace to Canterbury Commons, protected an android from enslavement, suppressed an ant infestation that slaughtered a whole town, assassinated Tenpenny, made peace with vampires, become a hero of escaped slaves everywhere, aided Three Dog in The Good Fight, taken an alien spaceship and slain a handful of Brotherhood Outcasts for a bunch of old weapons, with the help of my manservant Charon. I can’t always afford a new set of Microsoft credits to purchase add-ons. I’ve read online about quests and characters I’ve never heard of.
The adventure is kept at a standstill, now, because the damn disc got scratched to fucking hell.

Oh, and I’m shit, playing Left 4 Dead.

“Film Expectations” or “Monroe Can Suck A Choad”

Drag Me to Hell
SPOILERS
Sam Raimi? What the hell do I know about this guy? I hear it’s funny.
From the first few minutes, I fall completely in love with Christine, partly because Alison Lohman is one of the most beautiful actresses I’ve ever seen (Marylin Monroe’s reanimated remains can suck a choad) and also because her character’s so well written and performed as a character ripped from my sweetest, dearest dreams. Nobody could predict just how tortured I’d be to see such a vision of perfection abused by a disgusting old woman, get tossed across rooms, get facially penetrated by flies, maggots, lace handkerchiefs, and dead forearms; after seeing such a wild amount of grief destroy her life, for making a simple human mistake, nothing I’d endured so far could prepare me for her death and damnation.
I did not find the experience funny. It was terrible and painful. I’ll probably think less of you and your moral judgment if you enjoyed watching this beautiful goddess of a human being suffer so much, in the slightest.
(Nothing personal, Miss Monroe.)

Wanted
SPOILERS (I GUESS)
The comic. I hated reading the comic. The first issue was cool, with interesting visuals and a character that most of its readers can relate to. An introduction to the idea of what a superhero world is like without superheroes was an interesting bit of literature. I can’t even finish the first few pages of issue two. The main character, with whom I used to relate, had become the most heartless piece of shit. What an asshole.
How could I watch a movie based on this comic that I can’t work up the nerve to start reading again?
The film. I loved watching the film. There’s an annoying introduction, explaining shit I’ll find out halfway through the motherfucker. It didn’t include the amazing death of the Eddie Blake parody character at the beginning, a disappointment. It featured despicable John Woo slow motion moments, but to a forgivable credit, for the outrageously entertaining gun battles. There are NO elements of supervillain mafia, which has no chance of proper translation in these days of film, though it looks very possible soon, for such an expansive audience after Watchmen and Iron Man. Lex Luthor is replaced with Morgan Freeman being everything I want Morgan Freeman to be. Angelina Jolie is attractive, to me, in the first time AND she plays a sympathetic character.
It’s a great film, all around, flaws and all, and it’s one of the few I deem worthy of personally owning. (I think you can imagine the size of this list if you know my taste in film.)

Taken
TRUST ME
Everything I expected. Cut out the first few minutes and the last few minutes, and you’ll have an onscreen adrenaline rush, but unfortunately with the cautious warning toward travelers I hold so dear will be ruined. Enough people will own it, and it’ll show on television enough for me to be able to watch without worrying about buying it. (I’m watching it right now.)

ART TRADE!

Follow the image link for information on this one.

PixelCake

Miss LeScum has an interesting style that I dig. I suppose I’m not big enough to be seen as any sort of online art connoisseur, but I feel obligated to mention her. Check out her stuff; you can find her site, here.

Julie and I are cool, I’ve got the project sheets, and I feel great.

Young Woman in Class

Another Self-Portrait

 

 

If anybody reading has Traeger’s class:

HELP!
Lost the information sheets for the art history projects, miraculously, though it isn’t the favorable type of miracle, and I need to snatch some copies FAST!

On an easier, calmer note:

I, again, woke on the couch, with a dead right arm. No pain to speak of, so there was no need to flail and thrash around, again. Feeling’s back, and the disorientation was incredibly brief.
And last night, I dreamed. I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever enjoy a good dream again, and I did.
It must’ve been a long one, because I seem to recall maybe two events, and I remember having many perspectives of each one. You know, looking at it cinematically, one scene from one perspective, the next in another, back to the first in a whole new perspective, back to the second… it should take a long time to accomplish this sense of omniscience.

I played a couple of roles. Think I was a commercial actor and myself, when I wasn’t watching me from outside of my own head. While filming a commercial, I was damn sure that I knew exactly how it looked, like the cameras recording played the material in my head. I was with a girl, a beautiful, talented girl, smart and funny… yeah, you know, she was a composite of the various things I find attractive in women, most notably, her subtle behaviors and basic features may be modeled after someone I know in real life. Anyway, the two of us had to perform a conversation on camera, being ourselves, and work the product into it, somehow.
My recollection of these events may be incredibly off, but I’ve tried making sense of it all.
Before waking, I knew I’d wake up, and everything was blurring out, and I stayed focused on her for as long as I could, and she knew that I’d be leaving, because I could see how panicked she was about the world disappearing. Tried keeping me asleep by attempting to delay my departure from the astral form (“the astral form” being the best term to describe the embodiment, or lack thereof, when the mind leaves the body, in meditation, or in sleep) and it didn’t work.

Around after noon, I had this crazy feeling. (Edit)

I’ve got friends. Some are female.
There are many ways that the bodies and minds of humans can communicate, and I’ve had the luck to follow my gut and be glad I did.
Sometimes, my gut leaves me high-and-fucking-dry and in a panic, for me to scramble things together, and it becomes the biggest, ugliest mess since last week’s total fuck-up, until next week’s total fuck-up.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what I want.

Today, for absolutely no reason, I was in a relatively good mood. And in this relatively good mood, I took it upon myself to indulge my pleasant fantasies: the most pleasant of which is to have conversation with my dear friends, with nothing else worth doing but smile and know how great such a moment is. Things used to be that way so often, and now such moments are scarce and fleeting. She has a big smile, and I’ve got my big, dumb, ugly grin, and there’s no need to talk, and I wonder why she looks at me strangely sometimes, and I always hope that maybe she’s thinking the same way I am, and the moment lasts longer than the usual half-minute or so.
And the day’s been coated in very mild sugar, and that wonderful concrete texture I love so much is everywhere, and I haven’t even left the house since… like, Tuesday, man. It’s all groovy, dude. Just can’t wait to see that bright’n shiny smile of hers.

Diet’s been for shit, again, lately.

I’m really looking forward to getting a digital recorder, to document conversations and ideas and shit. Stellar stage-show visuals playing to Daft Punk. When I get into my usually entertaining conversations, it’ll be there, to listen back to. Might possibly put together the simplest format podcast online. I can’t post things like that on this site without paying for it, so I’ll find another way to do so, when the time calls for it.
Hell, I may never get my hands on something like that. I recall the traumatic events that my few-hundred-dollar camcorder followed, before being cast away, nay lost, to the fate it might find in my cluttered and violently hazardous bedroom.

Drinking diet cola’s made my piss feel like citric acid.

Fuck the typos.

EDIT
Yeah, 1:06AM, and mom’s laughing like a fucking idiot down the hallway. Tells me something: they’re gonna fuck, tonight. Goddamn it. Can’t they, like, rent a hotel? I fucking hate being able to hear them. This always takes away my desire to do anything. They sicken me.
And yeah, I know the difference between fucking and making love, and neither of my parents are in a physical condition adhering to the requirements to fuck, and they love each other, and all that shit, but it’s quite literally the ugliest image to put into my head, having seen a grand variety of porn, civilian casualty photographs, suicide videos, harlequin babies, and brutal facial scars, all by the loving graces of the internet. My parents fucking is the ugliest thing I can imagine. (That isn’t to say that I undermine other things that are far more grotesque, I’m just telling you how bad it is from my perspective, a common theme to blogs.) Trust me when I say that I know there are some pretty bad things out there, most of which I’ll never see, nor hear about. I speak with anger.

Technologic (Edit: Human After All)

Dad got a new DVD player, added HD channels to the cable service, to go along with the new television monitor we’ve got, now, and I can finally read texts onscreen.

I love film. I love the stage, though I want to take a long break from it. After seeking help for a possible chemical imbalance, I hope to be a better friend to the people I care about.

Looking at the way I have been acting, I would hate myself, if I were not myself.

QUICK EDIT:

Do I really hate myself? I hate the sight of me, but I’m fascinated by my appearance. I detest my own company, but I never quarrel with myself, in a thobvious sense. Do I hurt myself out of spite, or do I plead for intervention? Do I really ever hurt myself, considering?
I’ve been told that I need to embrace my flaws. I don’t really like them, though I’m aware of a few, that I can name, if I’m not mistaken in their nature. I wish there were some solid reliability I could place in my emotions and opinions, though I know that they’re all my own, which isn’t the matter in question, anyway; isn’t there anything I can do without feeling remorse or regret?
If it is true that ‘to live is to suffer’, ‘all human suffering comes from the self’, and to live and experience human life is more than exposure to only negative or only positive events and feelings, then isn’t the logical conclusion for me to stoop wondering about these things and continue doing what I want to do?
That is assuming that I am already doing what I want to do, and that I know what I want, at all. I don’t know what I want.
That isn’t true. I want to eat, occasionally, drink what I fancy, watch what I please, acquire the time and space to read at my own leisure, while listening to music fitting my various tastes, face a bitter conversation with people I behold in disdain, spend as much time as possible in folly with friends whom I love more than myself, and criticize every hypocritical moment of my pathetic, joyous, uncomfortable life.
I want nothing to change, to be in a stand-still. To get the chance to turn my accused “best years of my life” into just as I’m told it should be.
Perhaps I am excited about the things to come out of fear of what I’ll lose. I must learn to depend on myself, soon, or everything I know about the disgusting state of humanity will go to waste, and the glorious ideas of art, tranquility and love will die with me, on every wet sidewalk that nobody ever thinks to walk down.
We are all connected, but our individuality, which unites us in a natural sense, separates us emotionally, and mentally, makes me feel alone, and that nobody cares. Nobody cares.
What is it; “to care”? “to love”? “to understand”?
Does everything have to come from selfishness?

We’re all selfish.

I shouldn’t be.

What makes you so special?

I’m not. Everybody else is. They get the privilege of helping hands and harsh experience. I’m always going to want what other people have. The praise that follows everyone I’ve ever known, and the love given in return for their mastery of art, in the various forms they have steered it. It’s not good enough to be “good”. I’m not good enough to be anything, am I?
I’m never good enough, for me, therefor the world.
Why is that?

My Parents Love “Twilight”

I enjoy a good laugh, but nothing is funny when a piece of shit gets treated like a freshly cracked geode. Why can’t my father respect that I treat film as individually as he does? I’ll make fun of whatever I want. He’ll enjoy whatever. Everyone’s fine, yeah?

No. Let’s go apeshit. Any excuse to take out our frustrations on our son will do just fucking fine. You steal our lives, you make existence a struggle, you take and never return, you selfish little shit, and insulting overpaid talentless teenage hacks is the last goddamn straw.

In this world, is it so terrible take pleasure in disliking? Fuck you for being so self-centered. A film doesn’t magically get spit out of a god’s anus and land in DVD boxes, father. There is an art, and it is being insulted, scarred, perhaps even destroyed, by meaningless indulgences like the “Twilight” franchise, and I couldn’t possibly live with myself if I saw all of this happening with serious eyes.

Your points of view aren’t even your own. You listen to those people on the internet talk, and you want to think just like them.

That’s a joke. It has to be. I would not be so passionate to defend the ideas of other people, would I? It breaks my heart when I hear people slander Terry Gilliam, though I actually enjoyed few of his films. My world was turned upside-down when I learned it was possible for someone to dislike “West Side Story”. I didn’t think I’d wake up the next morning, it was so terrible. When I think about the viewing habits that I’d grown up with, I stop breathing, because I know that for so long, I’d denied myself the self-respect that comes along with appreciating what empassions me. Watching mediocre comedies and Disney movies never satisfied anything. I only laughed when I thought I was supposed to laugh.
Nothing can make me angrier than thinking of what an idiot I used to be, and how my parents encouraged this delusional frame of mind.
Supposedly, this is all a false point of view inspired by the words of respectable film critics. Fuck you, dad. You think you’ve ever had an original idea in your life? because I’m pretty damn sure you wouldn’t accuse me of anything that YOU have done with your own life, out of the fucking blue. Get a therapist, you asshole.

Those of you still reading:

Some stress, some strange decisions, some exciting developments, some sorrowful inner turmoil; it’s all the same, I suppose. I’ve been sluggish, so if you’re following, sort of, you know, don’t stop, because I’m not gone or done, yet. I’m just in a bit of a rut, I guess. It’s all cool, and so are you, yeah?

Check out The Tobolowsky Files.

Yes, Ma’am!

The OE

Original Emo sits in front of his fucking Vista, thinking about someone he thought he’d gotten over, not that there’d ever been anything between them, forgetting all of the many possibilties ahead of him, listening to a Seether song, remembering that there was a time when he listened to this song while working along side her, getting all fucking depressed, and as if the past day hasn’t been lonesome enough, he logs onto his blog to bitch about it. Nobody reads, nobody cares, and nobody notices, and I’m so self-indulgent, and I want… I don’t know what I want. I never know what I want. I never know anything. What a fucking great waste of time this was for you. I hope you choke on the shit and fucking die. Maybe I’ll join you, and you can ostricize and smear shit and trickle piss on my quivering soul as you please. Bottles and rocks for everyone. Fuck you.

Finished ‘Folio Piece

It's my bus driver!

I am 30 minutes into a discussion that may determine my plans for the future.

One of my favored possibilities for a career, reviewing movies and entertainment news, is part of an industry in crisis, and three great minds have come together in a discussion about it. Listen to the audio on Dave Chen’s site, here:

http://www.davechen.net/2009/10/conversation-on-blogging-ethics-and.html

If you’re confused, read the material Dave has set up to prepare you for the conversation. If we are to keep the internet a respectful place, we must all respect each others’ intentions.

For those of you who read and keep track of my life, as I report it, I am terribly confused about what to do when I leave high school, and online ethics are a part of that confusion. If you listen, you’ll understand why. I do not have the diction or creativity, as it turns out, to express all of these ideas on my own, if they are even in any sort of abundance at all.

I feel like disappearing.

October 14, 2009
sometime after 7:00AM
The Zutons are golden.

I feel lonely and useless, no matter what I do.

2:22PM
I’ve just found the words to say this, and maybe a month of experiencing:
I have been in an emotionally gray spot. So many strong feelings are rushing forth at once, without provocation, and I’m either too dull or distracted to interpret them all at once, so this mass of emotional energy is…
in between any discernible, definable, recognizable, possible extremes.
It almost feels like the gears and cogs are grinding, and the metal’s soft, and the clock has to slow down or stop, before it breaks. The sharps points and edges are beaten, ground, bent, and dulled.

8:44PM
Smith has me reading Sprout, by Dale Peck.

I do not ever feel like writing, anymore, but I’m writing, now, because Sprout put me “in the mood”.

Everything bores.
Everything depresses.
If I don’t hang out with Colt, soon, I’ll scream.

The Adventures of…

Joss Whedon and J.J. Abrams, comin' atcha!

Season 1:
Joss N’ JJ’s Excellent Adventure
Joss N’ JJ Go To the Moon
Joss N’ JJ Meet Frankenstein
Joss N’ JJ Cure Cancer
Joss N’ JJ Have A Baby
Joss N’ JJ: The Swimsuit Special
Joss N’ JJ Meet the President
Joss N’ JJ Find the Plot
Joss N’ JJ and the Dynamic Duo Kill Jeff Loeb
Joss N’ JJ Start a Band
Joss N’ JJ: The Musical
Joss N’ JJ Meet the Harlem Globetrotters
Joss N’ JJ, Awesome Show It’s Canceled!

What further adventures can we look forward to?

It’s just a momentary gag, yeah, but it’d be fun to see if anybody can some up with some real stories to go along with the idea of a buddie-time-cop series that throws references to these guys’ shows.

I’ve just seen the first episode of the second season of Dollhouse. I’m not too fond of it, but I know that these shows follow a pattern. As soon as the “ordinary circumstances” are drawn in the dirt, we can fully enjoy the thrill of it all being thrown off balance, which was every episode of the first season. Awesome. It has its terrible moments, like the pointless memory-disease episode that only served to give a little backstory to Caroline, who is not a character I sympathize with or enjoy watching, and the plot twists involving Paul’s neighbor/girlfriend was such a trivial thing for a character I passionately hate, but it’s all cool. The Alpha and Omega thing was the perfect apology for such painful moments.
I was almost hoping that it might get canceled, just so I could see a movie-length continuation of the thirteenth episode.

A moment away from the busy schedule.

Dudes, I got curious about how easy it’d be to find me online, and I Googled “Blobguy”, my online persona. Holy shit! My blog, Spill page, and Deviant page came up first!

I’m a pretty important person.

The Last Quixote

I just saw something.

I watched a thin, tan, translucent spider with black joints spinning a smaller black spider trapped in a web, behind the kitchen faucet, beneath the window overlooking the backyard. I watched, and realized something.
Any other teenager would make a big deal out of this and bore everyone else with their bullshit “philosophies”, using the spiders as an excuse for trying to appear intelligent to the dimwitted and disconnected.
What the fuck is happening to our nation’s youth? It’s being fucked over, that’s what. The only difference between your hippies and our hipsters is: we don’t know that we’re fucked no matter what, and we have more drugs than you. Shit, under ethical treatment, we get pumped full of happy pills that shrink our perspectives while communicative therapy and healthy diets are all we really need to stay afloat, and neither of them have to cost any more than buying good food and being open with people.

This is nothing new.
So why are so many of my peers BLIND to this shit?
Because they’re distracted, easily, and the pills and salty fats don’t help us, there. We’re not completely fucked. Not all of us are idiots. The fucked part is that most of the cats who dig the knowledge abuse it, instead of respecting it and using it to benefit the majority. These aren’t new ethics.

And none of that is new, either.
So why am I the only teenager in my city who voices these things? Those of us who’ve accepted all of these truths for a long time are apparently few or silent, here in South Carolina, or at least in the military community of Goose Creek.
Why bother with all of this shit?
Who cares?

Nobody.
And, fuck it, I just did the teen thing, anyway. Maybe I’ll hint toward committing suicide and other trendy teenage bullshit.

Mark your calendars!

What was a joke at the end of last year is now a real holiday, folks, though it isn’t printed on calendars, so you’d better take it down now, before you forget!

September 18 is officially “Make-Bob-Feel-Like-Shit Day”!

Make some touching cards to remind everyone to “cheer up, at least you’re not Bob,” and toss in some of your favorite insults. Use today as an opportunity to take out some serious frustration on Goose Creek’s smartest, most idiotic teenage masochists. Had a bad day? It’s probably Bob’s fault! Show that bastard what’s what!

Fucking angles?

Really? The only viewer of my fucking blog, all goddamn day was searching for the phrase “fucking angles”? Fuck that! Fuck you! Fuck!

It’s finally up, Alex.

I edited a video, made up of recordings from Caitlin’s camera, together about the long search for Captain’s Comics. Follow the URL:

http://my.spill.com/video/the-hectic-misadventures-of

It looks poor quality, because I can’t compress the original video. (I know absolute shit about all of this editing stuff, but I love doing it.)
Let me know what you think – content, story, editing, script, characters, actors, score, special effects, advertising – what can I improve for future features?

Check out a video I slapped together a couple of months ago.

Here it is, on the Spill community.

Looking at a Painting

I remember that the summer sun was as filthy and overexposed as the Woodstock documentary footage. Grit in the air snagged on my hairs and fell to my scalp, and in caught in the sweat of the joints in my hand. The sweat on my head layered over dry, sticky sheets of itself, and captured the slightest gust. The heat in my arms and chest from thrashing at the grass. The pain in my heart from moving too fast in the heat. Brush and can in both hands, I worked to see what waited me on the other end of the paper’s transformation. I looked forward to seeing a masterpiece form before my eyes, and found that I’d been fighting the heat and the pain to cover a piece of paper in blue latex. A sheet of light aqua-blue latex.

To the New Girl

I remember having the raging hormones, just last month, and all of the complications that I thought were in my life. For the past year, I’ve dealt with a whole mess of emotions that had never occurred to me that I’d someday have to face. I’ve crushed, I’ve lusted, I’ve desired, and I’ve been desired. I’ve made decisions that I thought were for other people, and I realize that they were all mine, no matter who the intentions benefited. I’ve wanted to kiss someone, and I’ve wanted to hold someone else, and every now and then there’s someone I’m curious about fucking, and perhaps I’ll meet someone to love and make love to. I have many years to look forward to, in a complete life, but I could die tomorrow. For the first time in a long time, I’m not in any sort of rush to be anywhere or do anything, or get anything done, or be with anyone. I’m in no rush, and it feels great. I’m standing still, and the part of the world surrounding me is starting to catch up to me. Or am I catching up to it? It doesn’t matter. All that matters is what feels good. What I enjoy. What makes me comfortable, and I’m comfortable with you. I’m not saying that I’m one of those artists who can get on with his life without getting drunk or high and ruining your life, or who falls in love with a younger, more Asian, woman, or a guy willing to mutilate or die to prove his own worth to himself with you as an excuse. I’d just like to spend more time with you. I’d just like to know you, and help you, and be whatever it is you need from a person like myself. I won’t always be charming or understanding, but I want to be, if it’s what you like. It’s what you deserve. I want to know: are you comfortable with me? Do you understand? Will you allow me the pleasure to be there for you? There may come a time when I ask some things of you, and I trust you to tell me when I ask for too much. Everyone butts heads. Oh, I look forward to an answer. Well, in due time, I guess. I feel so great right now. I guess you’ll let me know when you’re ready for this kind of question from me.

I don’t know what to post about.

I said that I’d try to keep things up to date on here, and really all I have to say is “I’m in another show and I can’t read comics these days.” to hit the nail on the head.
I’m experimenting with sublimation tiles and printer ink. It’s rad.
I’m not quite as excited to act now as I was last year.
I’m not sure quite what to do or not do about someone who’s just entered the picture. I remember saying before that I document thoughts and ideas in notepads. Well, I also remember writing in one that this is a strange feeling for me. I’m not sure what is the cause for my interest in this person, but she gets more fascinating as time passes. Am I attracted? Am I smitten? I have no fucking clue what I’m feeling, but it feels good, whatever it is.
I recently shaved again. I look fatter and paler. I’m ugly, now, and must wait more than a week to make my hideous jaw disappear behind a mask of facial hair again. There was a time I thought I looked good. Now, this feels like a mistake. If I feel good in a beard, I should keep it. What made me shave it, post-audition thrills? Fuck. I look like a harlequin baby. (That’s a terrible thing to say, and I apologize, but I dislike my appearance that much.)
I’m more impatient. I’m more tired. I’m less angry.
One kid in Drama doesn’t seem to know that he plays for another team, but he’s coming onto me pretty hard. I don’t know what to do about it, how to handle it without lying or hurting the guy.
One friend of mine has something for a girl, and I have noticed that this girl’s started paying a strange amount of attention to me. She is attractive, but I don’t feel much for her, and I fear I’m stealing spotlight from my friend.
I am still very uneasy about some things concerning homosexuality. I don’t know if it’s a homophobic thing, because I get along great with some gay guys and lesbians, but there’s some odd feeling that I feel the need to get over, and I don’t know what it is. Maybe I’m afraid of finding a bit homosexuality in myself, but I have to wonder if that’s a real possibility. If I have potentially romantic feelings for a girl, and I’m fascinated by women, then there’s no question that I swing that way. Am I bisexual?
This reminds me of a conversation, in which I recalled what my grandmother said to me about one of my astrological alignments, which she said was a trait rarely held by other men. Something to do with my emotions.
Listening to the Rushmore soundtrack. It is a film that I would call perfect, like Broken Flowers. Why? Dunno, don’t care. I love it. At moments, it reminds me of my friendship with Smith, but Max’s absurd desire for romance from his teacher draws a line. At one point, a long time ago, I thought I had those kinds of feelings, but they’re gone, and all I care to be to Smith is the best friend I can be. Sometimes my taste in film reflects my inner conflicts, and the course of the movie reflects my course of meditation. I never did anything outrageous, like Max Fischer, and it was because I’d drawn his very conclusions in a matter of days. Sometimes I have to remind myself that Smith is attractive, and keep in mind what conclusion others would draw if they don’t understand my inner workings. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it’s part of Smith’s job to know me, and her job doesn’t stop even when we’re capable of having a regular friendly conversation.

I’m tired. Thoughts of a Drama girl keep me awake at night. What do I do to keep myself from forcing this new person away, or thinking the wrong things about what I think of her? I’m not really “scared” of anything, but I worry about how things can go wrong. She seems easy going, but what does that mean? I’m sure she’s spent enough time finding the more attractive guys wandering the halls, and how long will it be before some confident, pretty guy reaches her interest before I do?
Smith has enrolled the help of Kayla to write our script project as a musical. In Amerson’s class, sometimes she goofs around with her guitar, and sometimes she plays, and I can’t help but be so impressed by her. Not in a jealous way, like I’m accustomed to.
I have the strange feeling that I’ve been cheating my way through my short art career, as a student, and I don’t know why. Like I don’t deserve praise, and it’s all I seem to look forward to, sometimes. I used to do things for praise as a kid, like an excited puppy. Now, when I try to do things for myself, I end up depressed when I don’t get rewarded. I want to say that I’m pathetic, but I know it’s for other reasons.
I’m so tired, these days. I’m hardly a pleasant individual in the mornings. I wish I could be, so… the Drama girl gets a little bit of a better impression of me, but it’s better that I act like myself more than show off something that isn’t me. At all.
Last night, I remember going to sleep, feeling like everything’s alright. Like nothing was of consequence. Nothing bothered me, and all that mattered was whatever I happened to be thinking about at the moment. Now, all day, I’ve been so uncomfortable, like last night’s feeling was a sham, like it was all something from a pill I don’t remember taking, but it wasn’t. What’s with me, now? What calls forth this degree of discomfort?

After I turn 18, I’ll ask everyone who matters to me whether they think I should give that free mental health clinic place a go, and weigh their opinions against my own desires.

God, I’m so lame.

I now type with barely clothed women dancing over my view of the words, and damn it, I like it. In the (richer) future, I may prove to be the dancer’s ideal strip club patron.

Halloween 2

Joey tells me that Mike was killed at the end of the first movie, and immediately after embedding the white horse dream symbol into the front of my skull, Rob Zombie starts off right where he left off. Why? I mean, the story could stand very well on its own, and if I’d seen the first damn film, I doubt I’d forget its ending so soon. He excuses himself with a slaughter scene right at the beginning that drags for quite a while, so I made the assumption that the story needs to continue from that specific moment immediately after the first movie ended, but SPOILER it was just a dream. The entire opening of this movie was a recap in a dream. Fuck.

From that moment, I couldn’t take it seriously. I yelled and commented for everyone to hear, and the other eight of us seemed to agree. I even got a few replies now and then from a couple of girls sitting very near by.(Their anonymity suggested a possible interest in myself, but a few good looks from outside the lobby and I decided they were a bit too young, and their looks of disgust made way for a lot of immaturity.)

I had fun with it. Not enough killing, no scare or shock, the purposefully ironic bits were depressing instead of humoring, and the purposefully depressing bits were fucking hilarious. Some overacting and lack of acting, but who cares? I got to see a stripper’s face get flattened against a mirror, the only likable fuckhead in the stupid town get his head stomped, a slut with homosexual tendencies get strangled in slow motion, doctors perform surgery through a mess of barbecue sauce, and the most beautiful stealth-kill I’ve ever seen.

I don’t give a fuck about about Myers having a sister. I didn’t give a damn about any of the characters in the movie, especially Mike’s psychiatrist, whose performance (coupled by the tree-kill) was the highlight of the two-hour-long joke. I could give a rat’s ass about Rob Zombie’s desire to explore the Halloween franchise. It seems to me like he’s got enough ideas he wants to use in a psycho movie, why doesn’t he invent a movie series of his own, with characters of his own, so that people won’t enter the cinema expecting onslaught to get disappointed by a long music video without music. (It does have a score, but the only band music in the whole thing gets framed and highlighted with neon signs surrounding the performers. I’m not being literal, but you get what I mean: the whole thing has to stop just so Zombie can show everyone what performers he likes. Following this particular thought, it seems to me like the movie was perhaps made by a teenager who wants to believe he’s the only person with issues and thinks the imagery he can muster up is demented or unique. “I don’t see you making any movies.” You’re damn straight, asshole. I don’t see you making any fair, critical assessments of film with a self-taught education in film. Zombie, I’m sure you’re a cool guy, and we’d probably be great pals if we met, but I’m sure this movie could’ve been made by the depressed clusters of teenagers in black that go to my school, if they had the budget. I seem to be the only one of those kids that matured to this understanding that fighting convention is the greatest, and longest lasting convention of all.)
Oh my, I’ve filled out another side-note. Whatever. Go watch it for a chuckle or a date, because it isn’t one of those movies that requires or asks for your attention.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

I was drawn in, when I was younger, by the easily identifiable teenage hero with abandonment issues and sexual confusion teaming up with attractive girls who pilot giant robots to save humanity from giant monsters. Over time, the story revealed what the robots and monsters really were: way to appeal to troubled teenagers through a popular medium (comics and cartoons) to lecture them on dealing with life and humanity.

I’ve had my fair share of depression and anger, and we all deal with the hormonal stuff at this age. In America, today, we send our youth off to get spoken down to by doctors who inject and prescribe all sorts of chemicals to alter the mind. In Japan, artists and writers have a strong sympathy for the teen-aged generation, and utilize all of their will and ability to help out in every way possible. This is illustrated, to me, with Neon Genesis Evangelion. I’ve just seen The End, the movie ending the television series, and nothing, absolutely nothing, has reached me and convinced me of my own worth and purpose as this show, as an agent of one of the most beloved art forms today. I don’t care if Americans don’t want to try as hard, I don’t care if people commit suicide all over the place, I don’t care about your bullshit, and I don’t care about my bullshit, because none of it matters. There is absolutely nothing in the perceived world of humanity that is as important as doing and thinking what feels right and good. I don’t care if I die in the next few minutes, as long as this understanding never goes away.

Is the show a piece of propaganda? Yes. And it knows it. It doesn’t hide behind anything. It is such an obvious thing, that this is intended to alter and control minds. I don’t care. I don’t care what you think, and I’m glad. I don’t have to be speculative of everything. I can like Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen and I can hate Casablanca, because it comes naturally.
I feel good, and I don’t have to answer to anybody for it. That’s how much I love this show and why.

Uh…

Considering downloading a desktop stripper. Dunno why, I’m just a bit curious, and it may inspire a fascination with strippers.

I just thought of a cartoon series concept for the Spill.com crew.
Like, the first episode would open with Leon’s origin, and he’ll be the black son of Adam and Eve, born amidst dinosaurs, then a quick battle in his teens, wielding a sword, battling a wizard, then a cut to his arrival at Ellis Island, very Cassidy via Preacher…
After a few more origin scenes for the other guys, we’ve got Korey approaching each future Spill.com member like Agent Graves…
In future episodes, there’d be a thing where Korey’s roommate tries to find villainous things to do and gets foiled by Cyrus’ army of cats, like a vampire Cobra Commander… (Cyrus would try to end each conflict with a quip, but it’s always uncomfortable, and everyone lowers and shakes their heads instead of nodding and laughing.)
Over the course of many episodes, we allude that Co-Host may be up to something sinister, and reveal that it was all just a red herring… (I use that phrase often, these days, “red herring”.)
In one or two episodes, the LEOG will assemble to do the A-Team thing… (There might even be a mystery episode where the LEOG members try to find a strangely vanished Spill crew and give up, without a resolution. It could be called “No Ending for Old Men”, and the next episode, everything’ll be back to normal, without a hitch.)
Carlyle can always be the normal guy, the one who walks in and out of a situation unscathed, until, once every three or four episodes, he goes samurai and becomes the “god machine”… (A nice series finale might reveal that Carlyle was a robot under Co-Host’s control.)

Gonna hang out with Joey, today, and it’s to the airport, tomorrow.

Shirt Designs: Part I

Scripts

Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen – another John Hughes type of visual story with 1980s stereotypes in a modern setting. The two romantic climaxes are incredibly well written, and the dialogue is natural and fluid. I have a sense of the characters, but their decisions are predictable, and it’s nothing really new. It is a good reintroduction to story elements and archetypes that are universally identifiable. Parts of The Great Debaters come to mind with the freshman character, and the use of his perception of Vickie and Peter as a vehicle for their romance. I haven’t finished reading it, and everyone’s storyline has gone to shit at this point, so I think I can predict how it’ll all end.
Profanity: “FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!”

Four Dogs and a Bone – another one full of stereotypes, with a comical approach to different types of people in the film industry with borderline “fast talk” dialogue, which I love. The producer is a rat who’ll do anything to make a movie work. The young actress uses her questionable connections to get a free ride through Hollywood. The stage actress is the queen of all she sees and must be recognized as such. The writer has a pure artist’s soul, and will not bend to the will of mortals, until his inheritance is swept away. The director is only spoken of. A very literal, complicated explanation of how every generic piece of shit gets put together for the cinema. A great show, if there’s a teleplay version, because I can’t imagine sitting in a theatre house without squirming impatiently with fast-talkers chasing each other in circles.
Profanity: “Do you want to suck my dick?”
The Wild Goose – accompanied Four Dogs and a Bone, in the print that I read, and enjoyed it thoroughly as a mad, thrilling, senseless, funny slap in the face, after enduring a story with a rigid, structured “beginning, middle and end” parody comedy. I loved it, very much.

Art – a European script with three characters who each embody one of the three current attitudes toward modern art, or, at least, collecting modern art. The conflict is shallow, but it moves the characters so vividly. I can’t imagine the show being taken seriously as a performance, but it is a very nice read, and I recommend it to anyone who’s at odds with their own perception of “what constitutes art” and all of the rest of that bullshit.
Profanity: Europeans, especially the ones who seem to like showing off their prowess in artistic trivia like to use the word “fuck” the same way we use “damn”.

Fucking, damn it!

Parents watch some fucking football program. Mom slaps her hands together and stomps her feet like an ignorant ape cheering for her imaginary toddlers, dad laughs like a stainless steel saw being repeatedly slammed against a car, and I’m trying to type and focus on “Let’s Do This” blaring in my ears, and I can still hear their moronic hooting and yelling. God mother fucking damn it!

First Drama Meeting

Awesome, man, with plenty of talented people. Smith’s afraid of some people overstepping boundaries, but just as in every previous year, everything’s going to turn out fine, as frustrating as things may seem.

I’m disappointed in the lack of interest for Art, the only script that I’ve seriously considered acting for, and I hope to make my mind up soon after reading it, so that I don’t pull a fast one on Smith.

Still working on a shirt design, and I think I’ve come up with a nice sleeve design that I hope people will enjoy.

Unrelated to Drama:
got very little homework to deal with this semester, but with the classes for the next one, things might get really fucking overwhelming…
hopefully, will start working on personal designs and experiments with sublimation tiles in Walls’ class
is already finding Traeger’s class boring, not because it isn’t challenging, but because it demands patience and focus that I’ve only had for few things in the past
will start eating very fucking soon
is finding TA work very easy, so far
thinks movie viewing will be cut a bit short for a while, when Drama stuff picks up
is, surprise, surprise, attracted to nearly half of all the females around him
has stunted in writing frequency

I deleted my Blogger account, so it’s just me and WordPress.com…

finished lines for Batman and Catwoman

Some recent things I hope to finish soon enough…

Bon Jeer-no

“If you ever wanna eat a Sauerkraut sandwich again take your Wiener Schnitzel lickin’ finger and point out on this map what I wanna know.”

Landing the Shore:
We all knew what we wanted this film to be. Very few of the men and women entering that cinema could understand the gravity of the very things that awaited them, but we veterans knew. Few of us would leave with beating hearts.
My own heart stopped several times, (1.) when the free ticket had to be checked for a real one at the box office,
(2.) when I heard the ticket was void for tonight’s show,
(3.) when the money gathered between my wonderful friends was useless for a SOLD OUT SHOW,
(4.) when I thought I had to watch the movie fifteen minutes late in another cinema, and
(5.) when I got smuggled in.
With beads of sweat and the strongest fear of being discovered, I trudged through the film, thinking that I might be taken out. I’d heard that sometimes you can see the flashlight moving on faces in the audience, and sometimes, you don’t see it at all. Would I be next? (It’s a joke, guys, I wasn’t that scared. I swear, I really wasn’t.)
Further details will not be disclosed to protect myself and others from conviction of theatrical felony. I would like to thank my friends for this night, and you all know who you are.

The Battle for France:
Inglourious Basterds was a cinematic event. Never, never ever even think that you can get away with experiencing the movie as well your first time. Never, fucking, ever think that anything can replace the thrill of hearing a collective “yay” or “nay” from dozens of people just like you cheering on your wildest fantasies. There is no, not a single one, none at all, reason for you to think that it is okay to watch this alone, at home. This movie, just like all of Tarantino’s brilliant works in the past, is one that is meant to be experienced in the vain of those films which he takes his material from. If you want a realistic Nazi-killing team of heroes, watch Zwartboek. If you want to see homicidal fucks killing Nazis, watch The Dirty Dozen. If you want to see all of Hell descend upon the Nazi regime, watch Inglourious Basterds. There’s no need to doubt the surreality of this world, because I’ll be goddamned if our world is as fucking entertaining as this.

Aftermath:
On reflection, there were a few scenes, beautiful and delicious as they are, that were heavy in need-to-know-basis vintage film trivia dialogue which lasted very long, just to put our heroes in slightly tighter spots than before. As if they didn’t need to exist. (Forgive me for thinking that it’s odd for Europeans to have seen only any interest in films instead of art or radio in the days when children had to save for months to afford a cheap ticket and nobody thought the art would last longer than another trend. Well, Germans and French take pride in their places in cinema history, so it is fair, just unusual in a WWII movie.) But I love them, and I love what they do for me, which is get rid of a few aces to make the game more interesting while my ears get a verbal lap dance from Nazi-killing lips. The things that could hold the movie back for some have certainly strengthened my love for it, even though it isn’t altogether one of the best movies, nor, obviously, is it perfect. It is one for the books.

“Grat-zee.”

The Weakest Week

Boring in both art classes, so far. Expect to get on with some cool shit next week, though.

Algebra would be almost unbearable without Wally and Chris.

Being Smith’s TA is just doing stuff that I would do for her whenever I showed up during Geary’s class before summer started, which is awesome. I expect the work to pick up when her classes get more involved.

Shirt design ideas:
“LEON is my hero” in green and orange on black (for myself and a gift to mail to Leon of the L.E.O.G)
Dark Knight Returns Superman on blue or black (will take a LOT of time to adapt into an appropriate design)
Concrete’s head in white over black, or in black lines over gray or “ash” (easy and nerdy, bitches)
“You need to dye.” in black on a dyed shirt (stupid, not very interesting, not funny)
white Dharma symbol on black (basic, easy)
Spider-Man’s mask on red (never too many Spider-Man shirts)
blue and yellow or blue and black Invincible costume symbol (though the screens can’t cover the length of the shirt and the shoulders)
“M*A*S*H 4077th” in yellow on olive green (just came to mind)
Comedian’s button covering a green shirt torso (just came to mind)

Back to School and Shit

Boring.
Boring.
Boring.

I’ll assist for Smith, starting tomorrow, and the art projects start Thursday.

The American President Under Attack?

Fuck no, dudes. Barack Obama, whose name is not yet accepted as an American English proper noun, has to fight to prove his citizenship? That’s absolutely ridiculous. Those who put him into a position to be elected by majority don’t care, but just to be fair, he would not have gotten through the earliest preliminaries otherwise, and those with power who really wanted a black president would get one, no questions asked. The masses demanding to see a birth certificate and the manipulated press giving airtime to these demands are just tools of the men behind desks, the men who want the American citizens to be confused about every aspect of their political figureheads to draw attention away from true controversy, like where the orders are really coming from and why saving the dollar is more important than saving the homeless. These conspiracy theorists are so fucking muzzled up in the odds between each others’ crackpot ideas that the truth can only be uncovered one generation at a time, just slow enough for the corporate monster to come up with more ideas to knock the credibility of those crackpots down day by day.

Instead of being a united consciousness, this monster, birthed at the landing of the first Anglo Saxons’ arrival to this continent, raised on the income of war and the fragile stock, fueled by the unquestioning proletarians and hidden from them with a cleverly long lasting illusion of government and justice, this monster, is America. We allow it to come in and rule us? Yes. We are rewarded with the sweet, un-tampered media, with songs and film from the intelligent, and literature from the brave, and so many more things… do I complain? Not about my precious arts, which have also been kept alive merely to keep the populace wary of crackpot theorists like myself, but I complain that I must endure the babbling of idiots with the capacity to understand the fallacy of the political ring and refuse to. Shit, man, I wouldn’t change much, I just want people to stop filling my beloved internet with propaganda that neither benefits me or interests me. This place is not just another gimmick, people. This is something we need to respect, the internet, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be kept quiet about being redirected from my favorite porn sites!

Northwoods Antics

A continuation:

http://blobguy.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/northwoods-antiques/

Trina and I headed over to the mall. Got her the same Steadman poster I got for myself. She bought my double espresso.
My distaste for some retailers has been renewed.
Faced a harsh reminder that I’m artistically out of practice.
Had a lot of fun, with some actual conversation with another real person. Better than most Sundays, to say the least.

Dazed and Confused

Or, as I think of it, American Graffiti: the Sequel.

Rich Linklater really shows an influence from the young, experimental George Lucas, with a casual approach to storytelling and a heavy reliance on an understanding of the setting.

Find it difficult to put together better words to say these things.

It’s better than American Graffiti, in ways that the 70s were better than the 50s, and it worse in ways that the 70s were worse than the 50s, which says two things:
I allowed myself to embraces my own age, which movies don’t often accomplish.
The omniscient viewer unanimously associates the time period with the story. That takes a LOT of work to accomplish.

I expected to hate the movie, but I didn’t.
I expected it to be boring, but it wasn’t always.
I expected more stoner scenes, and I’m glad as fuck that I didn’t have to endure many.

I won’t dignify the minor details of the film, which so many mindless people think deserve a “cult following” rivaling the over-popular Boondock Saints and the overpaid Kevin Smith, by mentioning them. I don’t earn anything of value to know that other people can recite that moronic pothead’s George Washington theory.
If anybody should circulate the movie, it should be film students, not potheads. Those fucks think cheap laughs are an art form. No offense to my good friends, but really. Get some perspective in film, and I might consider taking people seriously.

Northwoods Antiques

Got a photo-poster of Lizard Lounge by Ralph Steadman, a poster featuring Murphy’s Law, and the first four issues of The ‘Nam.
Hope to see District 9 fairly soon.
Saw quite a lot of folks from school running amok.
Brief moments of meeting Grady and Allison Zobel.
We’ll see where I go from here.

I’m listening to LEOG: the 80s Episode.

http://my.spill.com/profiles/blogs/league-of-extremely-ordinary-24

I’m reminded of a Swatch advertisement parody of Watchmen.

Phil Collins?

I love Ally Sheedy.

Ferris Bueller is not Cameron’s alter-ego!

Mr. Bean? I don’t think so.

They keep interrupting Kristin, and I’m almost just as pissed as her.

Hate Mel Brooks comedies.

A modern version of Max Headroom? Isn’t that half of Tim and Eric?

Ugh, fuck soap operas, guys.

Cylons can’t be stopped by microwaves! I refuse to believe this!

I used to like Saved by the Bell.

The fuck is Tales from the Darkside?

Masters of the Universe fucking sucked!

Dawn of the Dead is great, really freakin’ good, man, except for the damn ending!

Mullets don’t look that bad.

Cajuns are an ethnicity? Why?

I’m tired of Journey. Really, really tired. Good music, but way too fucking popular. That’s some shit.

I hate Big Trouble in Little China, if you’ll remember.

My attitude to most of the legendary performers of the time, I address here.

The martial arts fascination was beyond moronic, but there were some cool moments.

Monster Squad? Been a while since I’ve seen that one, man.

I think of Cobra Commander, when I think 80s villains, and I’m not just saying that because of the recent release.

Will have to check out Shogun.

Atari: good for two games, one of which is worth playing.

D.C. Smoke-In sounds ki-ick… a-ass…

No comics? Again? They never fucking talk about comics anymore, damn it!

Practice Pencils on a Brawny Babe (I can’t remember the model’s name.)

OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

REASONS TO WATCH TROLL 2:

if you despise the appearance of trolls
if pissing on the dinner table is the only way you can organize a hunger strike
if you saw Treevenge and thought something was missing
if you love supporting films with all-robot casts
if you forgot what 80s clothing looks like
if you don’t know how to spell “goblin” backward
if you relate to people whose lives are led by an audible soundtrack
if your dead grandfather told you to do it
if you want to prove the merit behind your hate for the color green to everyone you know
if you stumbled into the room and have nothing better to do
if you’re a vegetarian running out of ideas for acceptable ways to eat people
if you’re sexually aroused by popcorn

I fit all of the criteria! Do you?

Battle Royale

There’s something I love about the Japanese culture in its attitude toward childhood. I’m not talking about the mass hysteria of pedophilia. I am talking about the idea that a person’s life is decided by the actions he or she takes in youth. High schoolers go through all sorts of hell in cartoons, comics, and movies. It’s just a reoccurring theme of boys becoming men and girls becoming women.

Just got a call from Red Cross. Girl sounded cute.

Back to the action!
Battle Royale starts out as a non-stop joyride of dramatic death! I saw the stereotypes: the romantically driven hero and heroine, the war-wise veteran, the homicidal maniac, the cold-hearted bitch… and I fucking loved it!
Until the end. I should’ve stopped watching at a point when the plot twisted. I totally saw it coming, and immediately after, I knew that it wasn’t over, and I kicked myself pretty damn hard, because everything after that predictable “twist” was irrevocable shit. Fuck that ending.

It was good, though, watch it. It shall be my figurehead of my notion of “trash culture”.
If underage Japanese girls turn you on, you should be forced to watch them die horribly at the hands of the people who care most about them. Call me sadistic, but it’s the kind of erotic thrill I can also get by watching beautiful, innocent young women being eaten alive in zombie movies. Have you read American Psycho? The movie was great, but Bret Easton Ellis really knew what kind of horrible deaths could rev me up.
How can I possibly say these things? I’m a humanist and I love women!
Well, we can’t always keep our erotic interests locked in a box. How many have I found within myself? Jesus, more than I can count.
Cannibal Holocaust was really the one that made me reexamine my approach to all of this. It made me so sick.

I started going into a strange direction with this.
No real… plans for this. I didn’t put down any ideas beforehand, and I just started typing immediately after watching, so who the fuck could guess what would get put down?
I wonder how old that woman working with Red Cross is.

Time Traveling Theories

I just read in Roger Ebert’s review of Time Traveler’s Wife, and there are some points in the science that bother me. I haven’t seen it myself, and I realize that this is a drama fueled by a single aspect of science-fiction. It’s supposed to be cute, it needs to be sad, it must drive our emotions, but avoiding scientific principles to do so with an element of science fiction is like using a newspaper praising Spider-Man’s heroics to kill radioactive spiders. There’s nothing more than human drama to distract me from the time traveling, right? The only thing that keeps me from accepting the film’s rules as truth for the movie’s sake is that I’m following two people whose lives keep getting interrupted and shit, yeah? Well, damn it, that’s not enough, is it? I’m okay with LOST and the first season of Heroes. Why? Because I don’t give a shit about about disproving something that I willingly accept and take for granted on my own.

I’m not being fair.

When a person jumps forward or back, it is the living being taken to and fro, not his or her clothing, because that would be ridiculous! Why would non-living material be brought through a vortex created and sustained within a living thing? Following this logic, which I could without the upcoming flaws, wouldn’t dead cells stay behind? The man would be shaved bald, nail-less on fingers and toes, without bodily fluids… he would come into a new point in time needing immediate medical attention, just to justify why his clothes stay behind when he flashes away. That’s a big risk for a mindless summer romance. One that wasn’t taken, so why should I give two shits about a movie that doesn’t give any about me? Well, I don’t, now, and you can predict that this film is very low on my list of “need to see”.

If you thought Shanna took me back…

Ho-lee shit! Age of Reptiles by Ricardo Delgado was a portal to my childhood, and I was just as intelligent back then, by the way. A thrilling tale of vengeance and irony told in stunning silence and brilliant illustrations? I can’t even tell you how awestruck I am in over Delgado’s work.
Hieroglyph is also just as striking, visually and as a story. He’s a master, Delgado, and there ARE people in this world worshiping him, no doubt.

It really is difficult for me to get into how this writer actually makes me feel. He makes me believe in these outrageous and forgotten landscapes, like there’s no room for any doubt that these things could’ve happened, and there’s nothing in existance to stop me from facing it right here and now. He’s a rare type who shows us a world from his imagining, and there’s a bridge between all of humanity, and this man’s comics transcend whatever separates us.

I added quite a few more titles to the wishlist. I love seeing it grow. That’s what it’s for. It shows that I have more to look forward to in life, and that I’m willing to stick around for that.

Getting tired.

Listening to /Filmcast. They’re about an hour away from starting their review of G.I. Joe, while Spill has the unedited form of their review online already. It’ll be removed as soon as it’s edited and animated.

What I’ve heard from my most reliable resources tell me exactly what I expected to hear, except for the “having fun” part. I don’t think I’ll have fun watching this movie. I think that I am far above whatever shitty humor makes up for how terrible the plot and acting are.

I’m starting to have lifted spirits.
School next week, comics tomorrow, I have a handful of readers who still pay attention! That last one is reason enough for celebration! I love you guys! Now love ME more!

Bad thing to write: I’m depressed now. Don’t think you’ll understand why, but I am, and I hate myself again.

I’m still trying to use up space as filler to make the image aesthetically fit where I’ve placed it. It would look like shit if it got any smaller, and it’s much easier to come up with bullshit to make the page look pretty, and it’s a lot of fun anyway. Just look at that illustration. Isn’t it gorgeous. My god, I may ejaculate just looking at the damn thing!

Zero traffic, today.

Well, guys, I’m trying to keep everyone up-to-date.
Uh, decided to never finish my MF Doom portrait. Boring. Penciled in varied tones, makes mask look awesome.
Heading to Soundwave tomorrow. Walking Dead, Power Girl, Invincible, Kick-Ass…
Listening to Peter Joseph’s live podcast right now.
Saw Mysterious Skin. I love it.
Will soon read issue five of Wednesday Comics.
Feeling good about high school schedule this year.
No more donuts.
Nothing worth reading about, really, never mind.

Big Man Japan

I wanted more Big Man scenes. Grandfather’s rampaging through the city, topped off by a salute to the sun, was my favorite part, being the most hilarious. The end: what the fuck? I can understand that this is a parody, but do you really have to swing that at me? Holy shit. I started watching the final scene with an air of confusion, followed by a realization of how far the parody had gone and accompanying laughter, I regained a silent sense of confusion to find myself wondering if I was still supposed to think it was funny, and finally laughed when I realized how poorly delivered such an outrageous joke was… but I’m of another culture, so who knows what I missed. The important thing is that I enjoyed it, and merely thinking about the movie has made me forget how my fragile heart collapsed under the pressure of my depression only a couple of minutes ago.

The Seven-Issues War

Holy shit! I’ve just capped Invincible, and the last seven issues, begin to end, is an all out war! I can’t remember ever getting a violence-gasm like this, with tangible plots and enriching characters, and such an emotional tidal wave to carry the action… THIS is what a superhero comic is supposed to be like! Robert Kirkman is much more than a writer! Having finished the conclusive issue of Conquest, I was breathing hard, my heart was beating so fucking rapidly… nothing I’ve read so far has been as exciting and fulfilling as Invincible has been recently, and I’ll be damned if this book isn’t added to my subscription this week!

It’s been a while since I’ve read any Walking Dead, and apparently, it was to do with the inclusion of another series’ first issue printed on the back. I’m sure it’s quality reading. I’ve no reason to doubt Kirkman or Image.

I’ve had to catch up with Astounding Wolf-Man, to make sense of the crossover issues, but I’m not entirely sure that I care about the series as much as I did in the beginning. It’s taken some interesting turns, but so slowly. The rate of change in the story’s plot is relatively rapid for a superhero story, but it takes two issues to set up a drastic change that can just occur in half the reading material. My exposure to the art also affects my view of the story, which I can’t seem to take as seriously with this pop-rock cartoon style. I know that they’re trying to steer away from being another gothic vampire/werewolf comic, but the character’s existence in the Image universe is enough for me not to mistake it for another horror story. The art makes me want to mock the main character, when I should sympathize with him. Maybe it’ll pay off to continue reading, the same’s happened for me when I stuck to Preacher, when I had my doubts with it.

I’ve grown to love Ryan Ottley’s artwork. It’s cool to see how it’s changed so subtley over the years, and the gore has certainly been amplified a great many times over. When Omni-Man slaughtered the Guardians of the Globe, I thought I’d seen some real hardcore shit, but goddamn!

Mom’s watching a documentary about some teenage asshole who killed himself. Fuck that kid. If life was so fucking terrible for him, none of those people should mourn him as much, giving him credit for being a person he wasn’t, honoring him with this documentary, glorifying the human youth’s desire for self destruction. Fuck that shit. He didn’t celebrate his own life, why should anyone else?

You may think I’m being harsh, but I don’t care. I face many times a day when I could kill myself, and I don’t. I’m not celebrated for doing what comes naturally, to overcome this wild depression without any fucking assistance.

Ground Beef

Took a couple of days to actually build up the interest to continue reading Invincible. I love it, but I always feel a sense of betrayal when the writers take a breather from the heavy action. I want it all, here and now, page after page, action, drama, violence, fantasy, a complete bombardment, and Invincible devlivers, but with three issues of stand-still in between.
When I catch up, I’ll probably subscribe to it, and then start reading Wolf-Man. Robert Kirkman’s a superhero’s writer and-a-half, man, I tell you what.

I also intend to add Kick-Ass to my subscription at Soundwave, and I’m SO looking forward to the movie!
Five minutes later: I just saw someone’s video recording of the trailer from Comic Con. I’m less thrilled. With time, who knows how many times I’ll change my mind on the matter? Millar and Romita are doing a great job, and that’s all I care about.

Power Girl is turning out to be one worth following. Her short story at the beginning of JSA Classified was great, and I like being able to follow a character who’s supposed to be attractive without feeling like a pervert or an asshole. Now, after reading issue three of her new comic release, I can only hope that we get to follow her in a continuing series.

Planters

I put these down, today. I'll get around to giving MF Doom some black and color. I might have to shorten his neck, it looks too long, here, and the hand needs to cover the opening for his mouth, like in the reference I used. I try to stay true to the photographer's work as much as possible.

Guess what. Guess, damn it! You fucker, I said “guess”, so guess you piece o’ shit!
Now that you have, I gotta say, that was pretty stupid. You were nowhere near–
No, I was gonna say “Guess what. Fuck spellcheck!” but I sort’f hammed up the beginning. Whatever. I hate that phrase, “ham up”, by the way, and also “by the way”, so why the fuck do I use them?

I finally cracked open the first volume of Scott Pilgrim, by Brian Lee O’Malley, and I absolutely love it. (The art sort of reminded me of Octopus Pie, but with a little more of a Japanese influence, like most Canadian Artists I’ve found, and humor that I can relate to easier, like most Canadian writers I’ve found.) I’m two volumes from catching up, now, and I’m looking forward to a lot of cool shit, with this new branch of entertainment opened up to me: the future hi jinx of the Canadian freeloader, the possibility of an origin for Ramona, video game related humor that doesn’t copy-paste all of the popular Newgrounds jokes like most people do, and speaking of video games… the game based on the comic itself! Awesome?

Yes.

I think I’ll be fine, this school year. When I head back in, I won’t be detained by reeling emotions surrounding a person who isn’t there anymore, and I won’t be as troubled with other girls, because I think it’s safe to say that my mainstream status at school has diluted over the coarse of the summer vacation. Yes, I’ll be a free man, so to speak, and I’ve been personally assured by a teacher I had in middle school that I’ll be entering two classes she’s teaching for some advanced version of what we so curiously call “social studies”. I hope I remembered correctly, and I also hope that I can enjoy it as much as my previous class covering that tier of education. Meuse was pretty cool, and he actually wanted to teach, instead of repeat, the great thing about all history teachers I’ve had the pleasure of meeting.
Also looking forward to art class. I know people who have problems with Traeger, but they aren’t my problems, and I can only hope for exposure to the most unrelenting of instructors in this field. It’ll probably turn out to be the only thing to fuel me creatively in times of doubt, when before, I had to wait until my hands started grabbing shit and moving on their own. Jeez, sometimes when an idea comes up, it’s down so fast I’ll wonder if I ever did it myself, and sometimes I feel like the idea’s walking over to me, late, because I forgot to pick it up at the airport. I can’t drive!
Nor do I look forward to it.

Was that a pun? Oh, Wally, and a poor one at that! I'll just have to imagine giving him quite a thrashing, like Superman did to Lois, back in the day. I love that writters for comics just had Superman clock guys whenever they thought it'd shock little kids. His shot at Ronald Reagan was priceless. I've been educated on these matters by a site called Superdickery, in case you thought I actually read through terrible Bronze Age comics.

Oh! I forgot that I found some of Wally Wood’s erotic comics. I found Malice in Blunderland to be the most entertaining rendition of Lewis Carol’s story I’ve seen or read so far, despite the appalling inclusion of rape, the sloppy layouts and suffered writing, the love for the book that I know most of my friends have, and how captivating the Russian experimental Alice (found on Netflix) was.

Wait, wait, there’s more space, right here, that I feel the need to fill up.

About the title of this post: I can’t always come up with a clever title, or enough distaste to even care to come up with something suitable. All entries are dated (twelves hours late) and I’d hate to have too many posts without titles, so every now and then I may type in something that has nothing to do with anything.

George riffing on George?

Listened to George Lopes’ latest special, last night, while my folks were watching it. There was a long joke about how kids today have stupid names, and I recognized instantly that he was using material that George Carlin had. I’m not complaining, he seemed to put more thought into the logic and direction the jokes went, but a little pocket of disappointment resides somewhere in the visual metaphor that I’m too out-of-it to describe surrounding Lopez. He’s a good guy, a funny guy, (his masturbation jokes were hilarious) but this tiny little ounce of doubt may prevent me from enjoying his future material as much as I could’ve.

It’s like my realization that Carlos Mencia had run out of material after the end of his show’s first season, and when I found out that Denis Leary was a comedian. Just not as infuriating.

Now, I’ll return to my comical happy place, where Eddie Murphy can’t sign on for as many films because his touring gets in the way, and George Carlin gets an HBO special every couple of months, and Bill Hicks has a podcast for his comedy routines, and Dennis Leary never got onstage, and a new ethnicity emerges from our dormant mutation catalysts hiding in our DNA every week for Carlos Mencia to make fun of, and George Lucas’ science-fiction phenomenon didn’t sell quite as well as it could’ve and he moved on to projects closer to his heart while the rights to the Star Wars franchise found their way into Stanley Kubrick’s hands, and Harrison Ford died young at the top of his game, and Mark Hamill tours cross country all year long with Kevin Conroy to record freshly written Batman episodes live in front of a studio audience, and Bill Cosby doesn’t give a shit about being kid friendly, and somebody proofread the Rock and Rule script before it underwent animation, and Stephen Spielberg and Frank Cho buy an unpopulated island to fill it with dinosaurs and giant apes and tribes of fully trained camera men to capture the pure beauty of it all, and I have sex with a beautiful girl who loves me and earns money at one of those job-things. What a wonderful world I live in.

There must be something wrong with me.

I hated the New Frontier cartoon movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed the comic. It must be due to my pace of reading, since I can’t remember a single moment of the comic that didn’t make the cut, and the pacing in a movie can break a film as easily as immortalize it.

Aku from Samurai Jack is so fucking evil, until he’s conquered the known world and turns into Cobra Commander, who bends to the will of writers who treat their viewers like children.
Well, Samurai Jack was a Cartoon Network series, and the target audience was children, but I was a smart kid, dammit, and I knew the difference between a cruel slaughtering bastard and Dr. Evil, the villainous mastermind who creates the means by which the hero foils the master plan to destroy shit. Aku posing as a hermit and Jack pretending not to know just to move a plot-less episode forward is some Adam West shit.
Another franchise with which I’m in an abusive relationship. When can I find a cartoon that will treat me right, love me as much as I love it? Oh, it’s scheduled to return in 2010 on Comedy Central. As much as I’ve grown to hate the channel, I’ve grown to love Futurama.

I hardly know shit about comics. When I talk about them to other nerds, I don’t feel harassed for the lack of knowledge I carry. Am I the only cat like this? Seriously? I feel like a king amongst most of my friends, and the only boost into the right direction I can get at that point is somebody to ask me a question I don’t know the answer to.
“Why is Carol Ferris the Star Saphire?”
“Where did Bizzaro come from?”
“How many times has Wolverine fallen in love?”
“Who the fuck is Captain Marvel?”
“Who came first, Aquaman or the Sub-Mariner?”
“Why couldn’t Cap just bust into Berlin and just end it there?”
Actually, for that last one, Captain America’s participation in the conflict was prolonged for the same reason America entered in the first place: capitol. Victories are like natural resources to superheroes, because the fewer they are, the more profitable they are.
The only reason I thought of the Carol Ferris question, other than wanting to know the answer for myself, because Joe Quinones’ depiction of her in the Green Lantern Wednesday Comic is absolutely gorgeous.
Wait! Green Lantern? Carol Ferris? The New Frontier? I brought it full circle, bitches.

High Tension, Otis, and Feast

High Tension
After murdering the father in such a manner, I feared how the killer would kill anyone else. I feared so long, I eventually wanted to see someone die: why I’m watching. The dead head was morbid and Alex’s father’s decapitation was surprising, but I’m about halfway through and nothing’s impressed or entertained as much as those brief moments.
Second act is boring. Cat and mouse can be suspenseful, but it isn’t here, and all I find myself wanting is a view of Alex being maimed, that two-dimensional generic victim bitch!
The twist shows me I’ve wasted time, but not as much as The Machinist. I could’ve seen the main character’s pre-twist journey without the game of hide-and-seek. It would’ve been easier to follow and make sense afterward. Should’ve been 30 minutes long.

Otis
A torture film with a summer comedy sense and style of humor probably makes easygoing audiences feel “hardcore” for laughing at images of pain and death the way indie zombie fans do. Doesn’t stick to comedy and drama, tone shifts without warning. I don’t care about any of the characters, least of all the easily identifiable teenage victim, except, very slightly, do I get a flicker of connection with Otis and his brother. All of the payoffs for enduring the film are comedic, and in a knockoff Caddyshack “hyuk, hyuk, it’s irony” kind of way.
I’ll probably delight in the thought of never seeing this again.

Feast
I like it when I see kids die in film, and this one delivers. Fun, until I’m faced with the uncomfortable position of watching two survivors sacrifice a bound, defenseless woman to rape by monster and death by explosion so they can escape. Her death was a little cartoony, but too terrible for me to even think of as a joke.

The Long Piss Goodbye

You wouldn’t believe how surprised I was to find this phrase blasting through my head. I’ve never ever heard of Halcali, so the “clever” fetish pun doesn’t slide. What the fuck was going on that led to this idea, this arrangement of words?

I’m so tired. Second time taking a long break from watching Short Cuts, which ain’t bad so far, but the trio of fishermen make me so fucking angry. I’ll finish it tomorrow.

Started reading the Luna brothers’ The Sword. I don’t feel confident in saying why, but I don’t think I’ll be finishing it anytime soon, despite how enticing it’s turning out to be, like their other series Girls, but with longer build-up periods between shorter conflicts.

Finished watching LOST’s fifth season. It’s great.

I get the feeling that people see some of my tattoo designs and expect me to produce anything the way they see it. I’d feel better about my role as an artist if people didn’t hide their fucking disappointment. That’s just insulting, after producing something I volunteered to.
“Hey, catch me a fish!”
“Will this do?”
“Oh, uh, yeah, this’ll be just, uh, great, man, thank you.”
“You gonna tell him it’s poisonous?”
“No, it’d hurt his feelings.”
That’s some ignorant bullshit. Of course, my suspicions are unfounded, and there’s no reason to think I’m being mistreated. I fall asleep to the sound of a voice telling me that “it’s okay,” that I’ll be fine and I’m a “genius”, while I wrap my ugly hands around my ugly arms to keep myself warm, and I lose myself and think someone’s always with me, but nobody’s here, except me and the parents, who have decided long ago to be servants more than parents and resort to crude behavior to get my attention. Would they make up their minds?
Not like it matters. They assigned their own responsibilities to themselves, and I’ll assign whatever responsibilities to myself. They should be so lucky that I’ve got it figured out this far, where most people my age do without thought of consequence or cause. What about me makes everyone think my eyes are below theirs, like I’m everyone’s student, and anything else is just a form of getting attention. They’re all idiots, even the friends who think twenty years behind and think I’m outdated. Fuck them. Fuck everyone. Fuck the people who think they’re better than me, fuck the people who think they can control me, fuck the people who claim to know me, and fuck everyone who’s shown me that I mean nothing to them. I don’t need them. I don’t need her. I don’t need anybody but myself, do I? I’m a fucking genius! I don’t need self righteous idiots singing the tune of the desperate artist, who’ve never fucking known depravity like I’ll never know depravity! I don’t need a community of people who up and forget everything I’ve ever fucking done for them! I don’t…
I don’t need to keep reminding myself how lonely I am and how much I love the people who don’t seem to want to love me back.

Why can’t I ever talk to Jamie without dealing with his assumptions that I’m trying to prove something? Is he, himself, trying to prove something so often?
Why can’t I log onto Facebook without feeling sick every time I see a person’s name? I’ve had time to disconnect myself from her emotionally, and I really want to say that I’m convinced that I’ll fall in love with someone and forget all about her.
Peter says that “drama is overrated.” Well, Peter, I’m a one man show, and when you say a thing like “you’ll see how pointless it all is,” you’re telling me that all of the disputes I find myself in with myself have absolutely no meaning, or value, nor do they allow for improvement of understanding the self and others… you’re telling me that I’m supposed to want to kill myself, Peter, to stop all of my dramatic inner conflict. Is that what you really mean? Because when you toss around sentiments like that it certainly feels and smells like a rotting, swollen ape-man is spitting those words of self-destruction onto my face.
I think something’s wrong with me, but nothing can be wrong with me, because I’m a creator, and we’re all supposed to be knocked off our hinges; it’s the only way we get people to show that they love us the way we want to be loved, isn’t it?
“It’s stupid, man.”
FUCK YOU! YOU PIECE OF FLAMING SHIT-CARCASS, YOU CRAWL BACK INTO THE DEAD CUNT THAT SHOT YOU OUT BEFORE YOU EVER FUCKING THINK YOU CAN UNDO THE REALITY I FUCKING LIVE IN WHEN YOU’RE TRAPPED IN YOUR OWN LITTLE CIRCLE-JERK-TOPIA WITH ALL THE STUPID WHORES AND ASSHOLES WHO THINK THEY AMOUNT TO ANYTHING MORE THAN THINKING PILES OF DIRT! I know what I am, and I’m a FUCKING GENIUS!

I guess I deserve to live and die alone. It certainly feels like I’m half done. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t take for granted that I do live with other people who care about me, I’m talking about my living consciousness. It’s all alone, inventing talking pictures to entertain itself. I’m waiting for another one of her to drop out of the sky, but younger and more impressionable, for me to impose some of my own interests, so I won’t scare her away, and I won’t bore her, and she’ll want to be around me, at least. Not this shit I’m in the middle of right now. Could the world make another her, and if so, do I deserve the chance to try to be with her?

It always occurs to me, that no matter how dark and sinister my thoughts turn toward myself, it’ll never affect her. She’ll never know, and she’ll never care, and t hurts just a little more, and I run away from the thought and keep myself from realizing truths that everyone else never thinks of as anything more than minor details. They aren’t minor details to me, the pain I feel is real pain, it’s deep, and every passing moment brings new ideas and possibilities. Things may get more hazardous in the future, but now, in these days, when I’m young and frail, I hang on the brink, teetering over the edge of a wall dividing the center of a pit and the centers of countless other pits.
I try so hard to keep from wanting to be someone who doesn’t give a shit. Sometimes I do want it, but it could never happen, could it? I even still find it difficult to be as definite as to use the word “never”.

Not much else to mention. (I wrote that sentence before baring my soul, and I’d rather type in this sentence than reach my hand to erase that one.)

Hey, another post!

I’ve written a couple of permanent Pages, and you can find both of them in the menu to the right. Enjoy, as these lists grow.

The Postman Always Rings Twice

Boy, was this one a doozey or what? Overacted, overscored, and underwritten. I felt like I was watching a stage show, which works okay with a stationary story, but the most important moments of the plot take place when the characters are on the move. The actors try to lead the atmosphere, and I see how hard they try. The characters’ actions are so fickle. It seems like this was a production put together by guys looking for money more than a group trying to pay homage to a popular novel, and granted, I’ve yet to read the book and it may be just as painful to endure, but it looks to me like the underlying purpose behind every decision disappears so that the characters can have their stereotypical moments with dramatic music, corny lines, and picturesque poses for the advertisement reel. If all bad murder plots were filmed by the same man, you could tell he hasn’t learned a goddamn thing over the years. It’s such a disappointment to see that even today people manage to squeeze out staged pictures just as bad as this one.

Oh, look, another entry about doubting my abilities…

Shit, man, I can’t deal with thoughts, right now. I just want to do, but there’s nothing around that I want to do, and I’m stuck with thinking, but there’s nothing worth thinking, nothing new or old, just thoughts that are wasting my… whatever the fuck they’re wasting. I just need something to keep me away from this shitty fuckin’ thing that my mind’s just gotten into. I don’t know what the fuck it is, but it ain’t good, it ain’t good, it ain’t good, whatever the fuck it is, it ain’t good, I dunno, I dunno what it is, but it needs to go the fuck away, I want it gone, gone, gone, gone the fuck away from here, man, just fuckin’ go! No distractions quell this shit, man, I don’t even know what the fuck “quell” means, why the fuck did I write it? I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care, just keep away from the… shit, man, shit.

Head just got light, shook it around, figure eights, nothing to think, nothing to do, nothing, nothing, nothing… I dunno, dunno…

I can’t even imagine what it’s like to believe in anything other than humanity’s boundless value.

Being a follower of Scott Kurtz’s PVP, I’ve subscribed to the comic’s site and I view everything Kurtz posts. The motivational speaker whose video is featured on his site, now, had some interesting ideas to bring forth, in a round-about way of proposing the idea that the collective human subconscious is more responsible for creativity than any individual, which goes along with my understanding that we are all connected with everything around us in ways we refuse to acknowledge, generally speaking, as a society.

http://www.pvponline.com/2009/08/03/elizabeth-gilbert-on-nurturing-creativity/

This society of men and women who turn away from our connections to the Earth, Sun and moon, find no bond between the human individual and the human collective, and see everything around themselves in relative to its shorthand uses and hindrances is what we’ve allowed humanity to be ruled by, within our own minds. It isn’t difficult to see through the conventions that this novelist used in her speech to relay the ancient and enticing idea that I take for granted as truth: creativity is not a product of the individual alone. These conventions of “spiritual connections” and “divinity” that she alludes to is the same set of misguided conventions that invented beliefs in embodied deities, who were all once just poetic expressions of the source of life (the Sun) darkness (forces polar-ly opposing the natural occurrences that kept us alive and healthy) health (a connection and understanding of our origin from combined elements and conflicting energies) and the mind itself. She is very well onto something, but harnessing that something and cutting it free of its fatal confines within a religious perspective will benefit the human understanding, and bring it closer to the truth.

After I’d finished watching her speak, dad asked if I knew anything about what she’s written. I haven’t the slightest clue who the hell she is, let alone what she’s written, and it baffles me why any of that should impose on my desire to listen and learn from my fellow human beings. It feels like he’s so fucking deluded to the value of communication and expression. These are things that our souls thrive on! (That is an easy way of saying that without communication and expression between humans, its race is doomed to fall short of its potential rapidly. I’d love to take the Peter Joseph route on this point, and refer to a story about a king raising isolated children who died without human interaction, but I can’t remember it very well and I don’t feel like going through the trouble of finding anything more than its synopsis, which is more than enough to voice my thoughts.)
No offense to Miss Gilbert, but I really don’t care who she is, and that’s perfectly fine as long as the message she gets out is listened to. Hunter Thompson never had that kind of luck, with so many people caring more about his public image than his public message, man. This is a more substantially justified fear than not being noticed at all: being noticed for the wrong reason.

Shanna the She-Devil

Allow me to ask a favor of you, to benefit us both, reader and I, and follow me back to a time of wonder, when the world was made of possibilities and every person was his and her own… I’m referring, obviously, to the 1990s: the greatest time to to be born. I was alive to see, and goddamn if I didn’t become a better person because, I’d gotten and taken the chance to grow up with Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton’s science-fiction thriller playing along an ageless fantasy, brought to life before my eyes with an art–

God damn! My fucking parents can’t stop flirting and cackling like tactless toddlers for more than a fucking minute! I can’t concentrate.

Anyway, Frank Cho’s seven issue revival of the discontinued Shanna is a shameless indulgence that sends me reeling back to my youth, when I didn’t have any fucking worries. Holes in logic are clear and present, but what does it matter when I can see a muscular Arian woman slaughter giant lizards? Why can’t I have more Shanna?

I wish they’d shut up! Jesus, MASH is entertaining, but it’s first three seasons aren’t that funny.

Anyway, I can, and so can you, but in my opinion, Edgar Rice Burroughs falls flatter than a maple leaf, and Bronze Age comics don’t get much better. My imagination is enough, and perhaps, in the future, somebody like myself can make something… as unique and defining as it is long lasting with the character. Frank’s the man, man. Read Shanna.

I don’t think I like the art for Survival of the Fittest, though. May be a while before I decide to look into that one.

EDIT:
Enjoyed some of Adam Warren’s Dirty Pair, and look forward to reading the rest, and getting a start on Bad Girls. I’m really fucking tired. Really fucking tired.

A happy 18th to Colt.

A special pack of birthday plasma to a lucky clotted patient, after tomorrow!

First time in a couple of days I’ve checked my DeviantArt messages, to find a beautiful young poet’s fantastic reaction to a very old poem of mine. In the days when DA is occupied by professional comic and concept artists, overly popular trend artists, and teenage girls, I always have some sort of confidence to find that at least one demographic doesn’t forget me, as filthy, ugly, vulgar, stupid, depraved, arrogant, selfish, demeaning and stupid as I can get. Even when I start to wonder if I’m a hack, and if anything I do amounts to anything I care about, someone I find attractive will always remind me that I’m not good enough for anything, inadvertantly, and I can postpone my deep depression over a particular someone to enter a deep depression over myself. It’s good to have options.

For anybody who’s tired of reading about how fucking pathetic I find myself, you can go fuck off: the party’s getting started.

Find it so difficult to bother working up the energy or desire to do anything, I use my imaginary friend as an instigator, egging me on to roll out of bed, get something to eat, make sure I save the fork for another meal later on, pick up a can, listen to something, check for recent downloads, read some messages, write something nice about a friend’s update, put on a jacket if I’m getting cold, read something since I’m so intent on dowloading every American publshed comic, stop sulking and put on a smile, don’t think think about her right now, might as well haul the trash out, change my clothes at least once, calm down and rationalize, head over to bed before I keel over, write down the name of that song before I forget, look up a movie on Netflix so I know if I’ll need to look for it elsewhere sooner than later… I can’t seem to do anything without my imaginary friend to be there, to convince me to do something, anything. She’s especially worth the company when I start to flash back.
I don’t understand why I try so hard to look forward, and all anybody wants to do when I’m around is look back on the past. I had some fun times, but isn’t it more fun to have fun together than remember having fun together? At least she’s here to help me, my vapor woman, my air mother, the figure that tucks me in at night and substitutes whatever I never got from mom.

My invisible friend, the one person who loves me the way I want to be loved, is a fantasy I project for myself, to make sure I eat and sleep comfortably, to keep myself alive, to prevent any unpleasant trains of thought. She doesn’t judge me, she doesn’t insult me, she doesn’t force me, she doesn’t even have desires, as far as I know, outside of my personal welfare, and that’s all I’ve got to hold me together. It isn’t much of a matter along the lines of “a man needs looking after, no matter how old,” it’s a matter of “he’s a selfish little bastard.” Can’t I invent some desires for my mind-mate? She does so much for me, and all I grant her in return is a bullshit purpose for existance?
But she doesn’t exist. A theme that I’ve explored in my art before I even knew it: I’m in love with my own mind. I’ve told Smith before, I’m tricking myself into loving myself, and it’s becoming more evident with every moment I decent further into the pitiful state of mind that I find myself in, now.
I am either a social creature or a crippled hermit, but I’m never both at once, and I wish I could just be one for a while, instead of being tossed uncomfortably into either role with every shift of the season.

Just saw Watchmen movie, again.

I found myself feeling almost exactly the same way I did in the theatre, with tears and everything, as memories from my first reading returned to me, and all I could focus on was how I felt so close to this other world, from a time I was never alive to see. Even on a screen 1/20th the size of the one in the theatre, with an audience of two people whom I dislike watching anything with, I got completely wrapped in with the film… until I saw, once again, that Zack Snyder fucked up the beautiful sex scenes and butchered the political logic and suspenseful thrill building up in the later half of the movie, but the first act was a magical moment. I heard from someone that Doc Manhattan’s origin story could’ve worked as a short film on its own, and while I disagree, I still feel like the moment’s establishment within the story is separate, in that it begins, has a climax, and ends on its own without interference from the rest of the show, and could certainly hold up better as a separate feature with a lot of work.

I’m trapped in my mind.

It’s difficult to explain. My imagination’s becoming so vivid.

I can’t stop thinking about her, as usual. Same paranoid shit going on, with delusions about my role in other peoples’ lives, moods shift like motor-powered bricks, and I’ve stopped drawing, suddenly. I wake, and over the course of my “day”, I see everything dissolve around me, and I wake up later to see it happen again. My head is heavy. My muscles are stiff. My pillow stinks. The air is wet when it’s hot outside, and the floor sticks to my feet. Sometimes I rub my arms to make them feel warm, but my hands are soft and weak, like a sheltered girl’s hands, and I force myself to stop at the thought of this. My face has the textre of freshly shined leather, and it feels like a twenty-four hour rash, which it fucking is. Every single thought that enters my head fires me back, into an event from the past, when I go through the motions of things I remember doing and saying, and it always involves her.
Why do I still think about her so much? Can’t it register in my head that she’ll never have feelings for me? It doesn’t fucking stop, even when I think it does. When I think I’ve ridden myself of the feeling, or when I think I’ve found a way to distract myself, or latch it onto somebody else, it’s still there, wrapped around her.
It certainly doesn’t help to avoid typing her name.

In my head, I borrow or invent situations that might test my ability to prove something to myself, but they’re not real. Imagining that I’m of some worth, because I can predict what I expect of myself doesn’t prove shit, nor would it prove anything to occur in real life. I’m a sad, pathetic, lonely old man at age seventeen, and I’ll probably be this way for a very fucking long time.

I’m about to fall asleep in front of this machine. I remember when I used to dream about love, when I knocked out of it. What happened to that? When did I stop sleeping and filing away to a place or time when I felt comfortable and happy? It was an escape from whatever the hell it is I face, here, but that never happens anymore. Where did the dreams go?

Everything in the room is dark and dull, covered in lint and dust, full of insects racing and squirming to get on top of eachother, and this pair of eyes can see everything just in that condition. I try not to look at her, when I get the chance to, for they’re scarce these days, because I’d hate to see her that way. Her approach to viewing life, as I remember them from quite a while ago, are childish, like the kids who’ve just found out that nearly all of fastfood is made of dead animals. She dislikes the thought of dead humans, but rushes at the chance to make an insect die. Who can be so demoralized? Nearly all of us are. I eat meat, I’ve no shame in that, and I know that I wouldn’t have it in me to survive without the conventions I have today, but I feel guilty. It doesn’t really matter what anybody else thinks of what I do or say, but I’m driven to make my thoughts seen, as if I think it’ll matter. There was a time when I thought it would matter if the most important person saw what I was thinking, but I know it doesn’t matter. If my thoughts are nothing, and they are all I have that I value, then why do I continue thinking? My feelings obviously only matter to me, so why do I bother with them? As I type, I’m indulging a strong emotional movement, and I’m crying, but it wouldn’t matter, would it? There are times when I say “I want to die,” or “somebody kill me” alloud, and I don’t know why. In response to finding myself say these words, I ask myself why I did, also alloud, and find that I’m talking to make it clear to any observers that I didn’t know what I was doing, and realize that even if somebody were paying attention, they would’n't care. Who would bug the place where I live? Who would follow everything I do? Who would watch a simpleton with delusions of grandeur yell at himself and pound on his skull every day for fifteen years since his arrival in… ?

If what I feel for her is just a crush, like everyone’s gotten into the habit of calling it, and I’m not really feeling love, I fear the day I actually know the feeling. I don’t think my heart could take it. I’m soft and weak. My defense is a ploy, meant to look like something built to withstand, but the only thing keeping me safe from myself is… shit, I can’t think of anything.

Miniscule, unimportant, stupid…

It’s slipping away. I’m losing a grasp on things. Nothing is in perspective. I can’t think correctly. I slip in out of being either an imbicile or an ass.

I’m so out of it, I turn the most idiotic of ideas into over-blown adventures in my head. I’m excited by the most disgusting things, and the revolting conclusion is how terrible it is to realize I’d been working like an enslaved zombie over a project that I am not fond of to get a product I do not like. This is ridiculous, I’ve wasted time on stupid shit, and I’m not putting my abilities to use nor practicing them! Fuck! Fuck me, fuck this shit, fuck the house, fuck the patronizing people, fuck everything! Fuck!

I am a transdimensional citizen of Earth.

There’s no knowing when or where it’ll happen, but occasionally, I’ll spend a certain amount of time in another dimension, roaming my common grounds with fresh eyes and ears. Sometimes memory is a great factor, sometimes it is not.

Just woke but a few minutes ago. A couple of hours in Blockbuster in an alternate realm proved annoying, but only after I’d inexplicably lost my clothes. I can’t remember how it happened, but whatever mistake I made was so commonplace in the dimension I’d found myself in, nobody but a self-important security officer cared to bother me about it.

In that dimension, companies don’t squander their wealth. The smallest installations of their franchises are built up and maintained to the fullest of the company’s ability. My time at Blockbuster was really a trip to the arcade-foodcourt of my friends’ choosing. Honestly, I’d've wanted to go where I could get my hands on comics, unafraid of a lack of money, because there’s no need for it.

On another note, my parents are alright.

Feel like shit.

Woke on couch. Sweat and drool on head with shitty air conditioner fuck up sinuses. Back very stiff, hurts to move. Headphones worn while sleeping now fucked up more. Lonely.

Will watch JL Unlimited soon or Batman animated series?

ReRuns of TV Guide

Listening to an illegally downloaded Madonna song wearing shitty headphones, while mom scribbles in a Sudoku book and dad’s gawking and repeating all of the events playing out on re-runs of Punk’d on the TV Guide Channel. Re-runs of MTV and VH1 programming that I can hear more clearly from behind me than slow techno beats thumping in my ear.

Only moments ago, I sat through a re-run of Real Time with Bill Maher, while dad interrupted my only vaguely reliable source of news to make cheap jokes of his own or explain punchlines to mom, who diligently stared at numbers on a grid.

Before that, I was watching a Rifftrax coverage of the first Fantastic Four movie. The humor started picking up when I realized that they really did know how bad the movie was.
This only sours the opinion of my parents that I’ve accumulated over the years, remembering how they don’t give a shit whether actors can act or jokes are funny, they’ll be entertained by anything that distracts them for more than a few seconds, like goldfish chasing an idiot’s finger on the other side of the glass, or even more accurate, like the idiot showing the fish his finger just to watch them chase it. I know that this is very critical of me to say, and I know how they’d react if they ever find this commentary I’ve made of them, but I don’t think I can manage much more. I’m remembering why I enjoyed staying awake only at night. It was to avoid them, if you’re too stupid to figure it out on your own and you actually give a shit about the unimportant little things that whack away at the inside of my skull. On the outside of my skull, I knock with a fist, every time they suck on their teeth like apes, or overly exaggerate stupid habits, like stomping their feet in overplayed shock for the comedic benefit of the audience watching their every move, and the whistle in their snore, the childish giggling at stupid “jokes” that they tell each other every night while “flirting”, or the generic universal grunting when they fuck, and the limited playlist of three songs that dad can ever whistle.
They make me cringe and gnash my teeth, and squint until I give myself a headache.

Fingers

July Reading: A Notch in the Belt

As if I needed to feel any worse about myself.

Over half a dozen comments I’d never known about popped out of nowhere, responses to stuff I posted last year. What the fuck is up with that? “Keep up the good work” and “I love this blog” are not spam, are they? Do comments like that really intend to steal or corrupt? Anyway, I’d like to apologize to those who’ve not been recognized appropriately, and it’s a really good feeling to see that I have people actually interested in my well-being and ideas despite my often occuring fits of manic depression.

Children

I’d known about the hassle of feeding and cleaning after a child, and making sure the kid’s safe is an unquestionable factor, but who the fuck could’ve told me that holding one would be so much work and so fucking terrifying?

When I’d shown up to Keely’s party, the bulk of it’d taken place. Great greens and a delicious cake. I only partook in singing to songs that everyone knows when it first started out, but it got old really fast, and John (spelled correctly?) took it upon himself to keep the sulker company. He’s cool for doing so, and I didn’t mean to start the sulking, but very few events could’ve transpired to prevent me feeling alienated. Keelz had fun, that’s all that matters.

Euphemism

I scratched and tooled this out pretty fast.

I don’t know how to measure the lengths of time that I spend awake.

BOOK:
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
I haven’t touched a book from the series since the only plot-driven, plot invested, plot oriented, and, frankly, entertaining character in the series died by falling behind a black curtain. You can imagine my outrage to find that the woman writing these books expects me to invest my time in following an adolescent ass hole who thinks himself hot shit, when the only well developed character with dependable behavior dies so soon after taking my affection. Perhaps that is her way of pushing the main character’s internal conflict into my own mind, making me come closer to relating with him. Whatever, point is that I’m listening to the audio book, and it ain’t quite as thrilling as I’d hoped it’d be, so far.

COMICS:
Blackest Night seems cool. Really dig Red Robbin’s costume, and he’s okay for a start, but should he become a permanent character, he should at least find some inner conflict that drives him outside of his lost-father complex. Half of all the folks ever met Batman have that now, and he’s got potential to be a very disturbed, very tragically flawed figure. Dark Reign is okay, too. Bringing a gun to dinner may not make sense within the context of the story, and it might even stunt the progression of the story, but Nick Fury certainly is entertaining, and I forgive that the whole world stands still just for his romantic conflicts, as long as it’s a very grueling and ugly world waiting for his return. Of course, I’m very late in continuing to follow him and Dark Reign. And everything, for that matter.
Introduced the Luna brothers’ Girls to Nathan, who responded very positively to it.

MOVIES:
Rifftrax
These guys really improve any movie. Alex, if you’re reading and you haven’t heard their commentary on Spider-Man 3, I think you’ll find it isn’t all that bad of a movie with them to guide you through it. Same for Crystal Skull.
Audition
Didn’t like it.
3-Iron
Kim Ki-Duk continues to dazzle me with amazing cinematography, and with a story deserving of such dedication. The visuals, every sound and even the dialogue seemed mathematically arranged to equate the nearest value of perfection. To some, it may demand attention, and that may annoy those people, but it’s captivating and constantly peeking interest for me.

Speaking of Asian films, I had a doozy of a past-blast, to the days when I was a kid and Cartoon Network had incorporated Japanese imports to prime-time television, over here. A program idiotically called Toonami stole my attention, and everyday after school, I’d wait for the moment to watch gimmicky shows for impressionable little kids like myself. I’ll probably never go back to watching Dragon Ball Z, if that’s what you’re thinking, and if you’re actually reading and care about what I’m typing, no. Yesterday, I sat through the first run of episodes from the Tenchi Muyo franchise, recalling how much I’d loved the show, noticing that the plot shifted to match the comedic or dramatic liking of the writer(s), and hating, once again, how cool visuals met with not-bad vocal talent completely won me over without a hint of tangible plot development. Of course the plot exists, and it’d be idiotic of me to say that it wasn’t planned out, but it suffered from something that all captivating child-targeting series do so from, and it has something to do with predicting the kinds of things that grab a kid’s attention. I never noticed how stupid it was for the villain to show up unexpectedly to kidnap the demonic space-pirate just long enough to lose control over her and vanish to his organ keyboard-powered labyrinth spaceship and await the arrival of the only person who can kill him patiently, because I was distracted by the lightsaber fights, the slight comedic moments, the cute rabbit-thing, the “I’m your granddad, and you’re the savior” drama, the spontaneous love triangle and so many other things. As probably the first animated series to capture my emotional investments, when I was a lonely little boy without friends, the show still has a very special place in my heart, despite its failure to respect my intelligence.

Gran Torino

It was okay. I love Clint Eastwood. He’s the closest thing to a heroic figure I’d ever had, or at least his roles in spaghetti westerns. He strolled across treacherous lands, dropping into troubled communities, stopping those who destroy without reason than to destroy, setting an example for dudes everywhere, and without the patronizing quips and senseless fist fighting you’d expect from John Wayne. For too long, children have gone without a cowboy to look up to, in our country’s culture, and that is why, I suspect, so many peers dig Gran Torino. Because it’s something new. Quentin Tarantino was something new to these people, too. (To me, as well.) The thing that bothers me about the positive energy flowing from these throwbacks to the good old days is that I seem to be one of the few who actually care enough to look back on those days, and embrace what made these tributes great. Gran Torino makes me love Clint Eastwood all over again, but that’s it. No striking visuals, no powerhouse performances, and an unnoticable soundtrack. All of the elements are arranged to bring a strong focus back to Clint Eastwood, just like the westerns full of “actors” and tense, dramatic confrontations. It is a modern western, in that sense, which is great, but it’s done way better with the man with no name. How many of my peers, who love this film, will take the time to look back on Eastwood’s Italian days?
“You must think you’re better than everybody else, just as always. It isn’t enough that people like a movie, is it?”
Like it all you want, I just wish I could let people feel how I feel. It’s a wonderful thing that I feel for those films, that were made with love from their stars and their director and editors, love from the screenwriters and love from the audience… and so many people show such great love for a mediocre movie with some heavy heroics. One man can’t bear the weight of an entire flick, and I tend to love the performance and hate the movie as separate pieces of entertainment, when it comes to that.

This one of Spider’s as close to finished as it’ll ever get.

If I quote him, I'm an ass. If I don't, I'm a poser. If I tell you to go fuck yourself, I think I'd be justified.

A picture of Thompson I’ll never finish…

From one of the few good photographs found on the internet.

Playing with Faces: Last Summer and This

Pay no attention to the diagram you don't understand.

Some practice on youth.

Trying to find my place in crosshatch. The broad strokes are easy, representative, and NOT vague.

The lines are too broad. They ruin the delicate features of the subject.

This daily posting shit must annoy all three of my readers.

Except the two who hardly jack in until once every who-gives-a-fuck. (I know, I bullshit a lot, but really, some grade-A golden literature may be born of the ideas you’ll’ve read by the end of this entry.)

I want you to think of the only thing in your life that could be the last redeemable trait, should you find nothing else of value in the world or in yourself. The one thing that could be your saving grace, a last hope in days when your name is the last of your worries, and why you can’t remember it.
Yesterday… afternoon (?) I woke in a lazy daze, where I’d slip in and out of consciousness, but so frequently that the few things I was aware of slipped into the dream I seemed to have been having. I had the most fear-inspiring nightmares of abandonment, and the last thing I could ever count on, my writing hand, had disappeared when I needed it most. It was a dead hunk of meat hanging from my arm, stiff, rotting and heartbreaking. Of course, I thought it was dead because I’d slept on my arm, making it go numb, so the half-hour nightmare was just that, but it was terrible. In such a mental state, I couldn’t tell the difference between being paralyzed within the dream and wishing for suicide awake. It’s difficult for me to explain, right now, in my current state of mind, but it really fucked me up.
Incorporating water in my diet and pissing without agony. My sleeping’s gone erratic: waking in early morning, waking at noon without remembering falling asleep, trying not to pass out in the afternoon, waking at midnight… fuckin’ shit, man.
I must be two days ahead, now. It still feels like the day after Sunday, which for me was Tuesday morning, and looking at the digital calendar thing, it’s… Thursday! Shit!

I’ve almost completely been overtaken by an interest in Japanese animation, which ain’t bad, but it’s surprising, still, after my “anime’s for losers who follow gimmicks blindly” phase.
Gotta say, British attempts at animated features in the 70s and 80s have some great art and alright vocal acting, but the lack of enthusiasm for the projects really show, and the overall product suffers.
When the Wind Blows had the chance to have a long-lasting impact on me, if it’d tried to stop being so goddamn subtle in its message, which is kind of an unexplored one. There was a lot of potential for it to kick my ass, to really tug at my heart, but all it wanted to do was pose some interesting ideas without finishing them for me.
Watership Down was easy on the eyes and heart, as well, since I felt a presence behind the characters, but the dramatic elements weren’t fully realized, with the artists trying to show more of what was going on in a physical sense, than trying to make me feel what was going on. That music video in the middle of the damn movie also pulled out of it, because it was way the fuck out of place and not a very good song anyway, as well, the seagull character seemed to be treated more like a Disney comedic character than what he was obviously supposed to be: a crafty foreigner, with crafty foreigner ways of getting shit done.
The only thing that The Plague Dogs had going for it was the beautiful artwork. I could’ve invested more in the characters, if they’d been a little more steriotypical of their tropes, since I was forced to look for complexity in characters who’d started out being more interesting with single dimensions. The wiley Scottish fox was a great character from his appearence, but he turned out to be the expected deus ex machina for several lack-luster confrontations and the sacrificial hero, which is the archtype that the troubled smart-guy was set up to be from the very beginning. I didn’t want two-dimensional characters in an epic, because all two-dimensional characters within epic stories turn out to be all good or all evil by the conclusion, and that’s no fucking fun at all. The rogue, of all characters, should be expected to save his own fucking hide by the end, because that’s what ALL audiences want from their rogues! That’s what made Desert Punk such a great character in the Japanese show/comic (you guessed it) Desert Punk. That’s also why I felt such a loss from seeing Han get frozen in carbonite (which isn’t a metal at all), because I knew, deep down, that a self serving rogue like Han would only care about himself, which made the depressed mood amongst his friends even more tragic. I knew hat Han didn’t care about them, and if the last movie’d been handled my way, I’d make it very clear, without ruining any of his setups, and it would have been a much more dramatic production.
Imagine a film picking up where Han’s friends have rescued him, and he ducks out, like he’d planned to before the attack on Hoth, without a notice, and we focus on Han’s friends feeling betrayed after everything they’d done for him, Luke feeling abandoned by his father, his masters who’ve passed away, his best pal, and his sister who leaves the rebellion to look for Han. Academy, Hugo, Pulitzer and Eisner all wrapped around a single script (and its various adaptations), motherfucker! Just say it, I’m a genius.

Do humans find beauty in humanity, anymore?

I am a student and an artist, so I am expected to have many traditionally idealistic views on matters of the aesthetic, so the poetic moment that all of my friends and acquaintances expect of me every now and then emerges, but do they see the sincerity behind the words?

Photojournalists line the internet, helping to fuel the capitalist machine with images that sell, with men and women removed from their natural divinity (I find very little more appallingly disgusting than separating that which I naturally find attractive as a human from that which I love unconditionally as a human, and women, god damn it, are more than fuck orifices) and, with the help of modern technology, turned into monstrosities. I must admit, some breathtaking artwork can be accomplished when celebrating and uniting (for example) a woman’s visual beauty and elements of what we consider ornate or elegant to make a statement or to entertain, and is well in such for the aesthetic, but to use it as a tool to convey what constitutes “beauty” is human negligence to the self and the race as a whole.
These people who try to portray the beauty in some subjects have women wearing suggestive clothing, which is neither fully offensive nor complimentary to the individual, hiding their faces in thick creams and goos and dusts that are meant to reshape the structure of the subject’s face to photographer’s liking. I haven’t gone very far in my journeys with photography, I’m not a fan of art for the sake of sale alone, I have never modeled to portray an idea outside of my own, and I’m not much of a performer of any scripted material than that within my own mind, but I can’t help but think that there is something perverse in the nature of those who use photography and alter humanity’s appearance solely for his or her [the photographer's] own expression, if it is truly his or her own expression being relayed by such imagery.
I don’t think I’m being clear. I focus on women, of course, because I am a male who is attracted to females, and I tend to set my attention to what grabs it most often. A woman is beautiful, and can use makeup and set amongst an atmosphere that captures such beauty without the integrity of it being damaged. A woman is not beautiful with a black stripe dragged across her face, hiding the perfectly sculpted brow, nose, and eyeline. Her hair grows and falls naturally from her head, but why should it be plumed like a shrub to decorate an already desecrated face? This is not my branch of art, and being fair, I’m probably being far too critical, but when am I expected to draw the line for myself as to what must be acceptable?
The nose is a wonderful physical trait. Why do cats with Photoshop blur it the fuck out of existence? Truthfully, all of this frustration comes from having gone through a few pictures of my favorite actresses’ photographs for practice-sketching material, and having come across Jennifer Connolly represented in such hideous ways, as of late. They are to compliment the photographer’s attempt to be chic, when the awe-striking figure from my childhood is graffiti-ed by eurotrash art movements that dehumanize our sense of art and respect.

I still need to take on regular practice.

I'm not worried about over-simplifying the shades and shapes of the model's hair, which I should try to work on in the future, but I am worried about whether I nailed the proportions. I found myself redrawing the same lines and circles in different places fifteen times before ignoring them all to get this product. I'm also, apparently, not confident enough to take on cloth, which may look pretty cool in my experimentation with angles and lines. Whatever.

No headaches, today.

Slept early, this morning, so woke early to day. Diet colas stacked in fridge, limited supply is just enough to control the rate which I slow down caffeine intake, to prevent headaches in future. Just took first shower in probably two weeks, and my hair is gorgeous, as always. Listened to Harry Potter episode of LEOG for the third time, and did not expect dad to want to head to Soundwave today. Will head out soon, and will hopefully return to find numerous updates on my favorite webcomics, and I will finish the comics Nathan lent to me today. Some of the Batman runs should exist in parallels, but the cracks in continuity between them have me more confused than trying to understand Alan Moore’s Green Lantern stories (without having read them, of course). Past couple of days’ve been exactly like this:

wake
eat
drink
read page one
read page two
blurry vision
try to watch something to wake the fuck up
fall asleep
wake
eat
drink
accidentally read page two again
read page three
read page four
blurry vision
try to watch something to wake the fuck up
fall asleep

UPDATE:
Fell asleep while watching the copy of Fistful of Dollars we got at Soundwave. Been dropping out of it at the damndest of times. On our way back from Soundwave, earlier, we stopped at Walmart for food, and with the energy invested in me by Clint Eastwood, I put full use of my fedora and squinty eyes to make myself feel like the badass of the grocery store, seeking justice in a lawless box mart, spreading dread in the hearts of capitalists as I strode without a flinch through the deli.
The following takes place in the passage of a complete second and a half. As we left, I was hauling everything in both arms, and just before making way to the parking lot, I caught a look at this pair of eyes staring from ahead of me. She looked young, but I’m also young, so the barrier of appropriate attraction becomes moot, which is not to improve or condone illegal and psychologically harmful tracks of mind, but I all but completely ignored her until she did the damn cutest thing a girl could do. She looked ahead at me, and without noticing fixed her hair. That I could inspire an impressionable young lady goofing around with girl-pals in a Walmart to unconciously desire better looking hair for a second sent my esteem sky-rocketing. I’m sure it was the way my delicious curls perch just beneath the brim of my withering fedora. I am beautiful that way.
Next time, on The Subtle Victories of What’s-His-Fuck in Public Situations…

Just woke the fuck up…

Realized a lot of things, and forgot them all, and didn’t care, because the last realization was along the lines of “it doesn’t matter what the fuck I think, whatever will happen will happen, whether I am a part of the fruition of any future events or not,” so fuck it. Spent a lot of time looking for Carlin videos on You Tube. I absolutely fucking hated sitting through the first ten minutes of Red Dwarf, and there’s no fucking way I’ll give it another chance. I’m reluctant to research the band Stolen Babies, suggested by Nathan, who’s lent me some comics to read, which I shouold’ve read all day, instead of looking for fucking videos I’d already seen online. Attractive women who’re skilled with guns seem like a turn-on to people through fiction more than reality. There are many possible approaches to the zombie-genre stories, and only a few seem to break the mold, and those few don’t even lend themselves to using “zombies” at all. Why do artists involved in producing adult material exaggerate the female form so often? Can’t I enjoy watching two women beat eachother senseless as cartoons, and appreciate two individual females as seen by the artist, instead of two plastic dolls drawn the same way? Why the fuck am I watching two cartoon women beat eachother fucking senseless, anyway? It’s stupid and it scarcely does what “adult” entertainment’s supposed to do: turn me on. But I’m a teenager! Everything turns me on! Shit, somebody mentions dogs fucking, and I’m trying to hide an erection for five minutes, while I think about how disgusted I am with myself for not being able to control sexual deviations, and knowing that I don’t have to be interested in animals fucking to inspire an erection, since at my age, with as much sexual confusio as I have, anything’ll spout anything, and rejoice in such line of thought distracting me from my blood flow, and want to kill myself for reminding my fucking self about the erection I’m trying to lose and inspire it to return! What the fuck?

“Why would the band kill their fucking audience?”
“Because it’s not a band, Bill, mister dressed-in-black-say-fuck-every-other-word-that-comes-out-of-your-mouth, cynical humanist, you, it’s the devil.”

I really do want to hear the reactions to people who claim belief in the divine war when I ask them, “What defies God’s will?” Since God is the inner power that guides our souls and connects us all as beings, alive or not, through the cosmos, an energy beyond description of divinity and incapable of human flaws, being the most basic form of energy, I doubt anybody can say whether God actually does have a will to oppose in the first place.
Off topic: the thought of immaculate conception puts my head to work, while I shut off connection to my brain. I have a grossly exaggerated image of this miracle in my head, of a woman suspended in air, having a screaming orgasm, an image that was briefly entertained by the introduction of the Invisible Man in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Why am I in such a “Randy Pan, the Goatboy” mood? I’m always like this, and I’m tired of thinking there’s something wrong with me for wanting the chance to perform oral sex! My face is covered in blistery sores, already, goddamn it!
“Hey, that’s funny, man, touching a side that you try not to show people, it’s interesting, it’s funny.”
Laugh at the huge hard-on I’ve got imagining how fucking awesome it’d be to have you walk in on your mom and I fucking, with your dad videotaping. It’s not the vulgarity that gets me hard, right now, it’s knowing that the image will fuck with your head the same way you see pictures of people dying all over the fucking world and decide you never saw it, to get on with the rest of your safe, protected day, never knowing when the image of a thirteen year-old boy’s brain spilled over a dusty sidewalk will enter your head, and you’ll hate yourself for jerking off to porn you knew this kid never got the right to see. Did he ever get a hard-on? Did he unconditionally love the people of his own family and community, and strive to do good by them, by doing chores voluntarily, and charitably offering services to men of business who never found the time to leave the shop during hours? Did he ever fall in love, and long to be with someone? He’s only human, with the same flaws that we all have, and knew people who loved, had friends and a mother and father, felt emotions like anybody else, and had the same capacity for understanding and ability to learn as you do. Will all of these factors play into your conscience when you’re trying to forget that he ever existed while you’re squeezing out a load to Sasha Grey’s epic ear-crippling videos, ’cause it certainly becomes a hassle for me.

My current oppinion Zeitgeist:

Mister Joseph’s podcast is interesting, and inspiring, and though he uses it to speak for the Venus Project, I’ll keep taps on his bi-weekly cast while distancing myself from the Project itself. Learning Zeitgeist’s stance over time and observation is definately more beneficial than unquestioningly subjecting myself as a follower, for now.
He certainly seems to believe in his message, and only time can tell me whether he’s worth investing my trust, which is a thing he says is unnecessary for such an evolved form of humanity, and I’d like to agree with him.

Reading up on Jacque Fresco’s movement: Hour One

The connections between the Zeitgeist films and the Venus Project are presented outright by the message of the second Zeitgeist release, as Peter Joseph apparently serves as the coordinator of the active branch of Fresco’s futurist project known as the Venus Project. The outright denouncement of money’s value and corruption is something that I admire and accept with open arms, but this message seems to clash with the “store” section of the Venus Project site, which allows visitors the option to buy Jacque Fresco’s books and DVDs, though the same material can be viewed online for free. Am I to accept that these acts of charity are merely that, or can I safely assume that something is out of place?

I’m still fresh in my investigation, and I want more than anything to believe that Fresco’s intentions are to the benefit of the human race, altogether, but a single doubt can lead to larger and bolder divisions between visionary and activist, which seem to have been the same divisions between representative and banker, in their own infancy. This is not a connection that I feel comfortable implying, so believe that my doubt is as heartfelt as the pride that I’d found after having seen both Zeitgeist films.
No matter what I find out, and decide on the matters of futurist Fresco and his propaganda, know that I am still on humanity’s side, which is my own side, your side, and the side of everyone I love. It doesn’t matter what individual person or organization I support, the only matter of importance is that I support the values that I see great and admire about humanity as a whole.
It’d feel damn good to know that I can be supported by those with a great following, but it’s nothing when their goals contradict my own: our own.

First of all, I have to thank Colt Davidson.

Had he not informed of the existence of these films, I would be in the dark over whether or not my “realizations” on the seat of power in the world today are shared by anyone else alive. My ideas have always been sketchy, and in the constant presence of those who argue the invalidity of my ideas, have been incomplete. Peter Joseph’s Zeitgeist documentaries have given voice to thoughts that I thought unspeakable. When I enter conversation on the subject of our role as humans in the world, I’ve been scoffed at, looked at in awe, and insulted in the most demoralizing ways, and I always play into the role of the failing revolutionary, giving all of my friends and family the benefit of living their lives without asking a single question about the importance of their own submission, and the harm they cause everyone else by this…

Of course, it may seem that I am trying to give myself a little more credit than is due, since I’d just seen the films, and they are very easily treated as propaganda. To this frame of mind in the reaction to my statements, I say:
It doesn’t matter if I came up with my ideas before or after viewing accused propaganda, the point of realization is that it was my decision to make, as it is anybody’s, and the only imposition being made by thinking of me as a victim is the harm done by those who think they’re doing good by thinking of ANYBODY as a victim who believes in the decisions being made by an individual who thinks openly, freely, and without consequence…
I’ve yet to investigate Peter Joseph’s movement, so I cannot say whether the propositions of his films for said movement’s success are beneficial to a minority, but I am certain that despite the true intentions of his movement, the message of his films are very clear, and can easily be detached from any organization posing as what it is not, and used as a guide for a movement for equal benefit to all of humanity, seeing as I can draw the same conclusions as Mister Joseph, my American History teacher, and every assassinated government leader and literary revolutionary who ever died to oppose that which destroys the value and progression of humanity, and as long as we are all capable of reaching these conclusions, then it is beyond a single man’s role in getting the message across. Before even considering joining this movement, I know, right now, that I am supporting the fundamental rights that humanity owes itself by acknowledging that I have these ideas, showing them to others, and letting people know that they are much more to me than the physical power that they can provide a dying system, as I expect the same degree of respect and love from others.

I recommend that everyone view these films. Take in the message, and decide for themselves. I’ve offered to do this by voice, many times, in class rooms and public locations, but it seems that Mister Joseph’s voice is preferred than mine. That’s fine, as long as you recognize what I am telling you through his words. These are words I tell my dearest friends, who look at me in pity for not following the same pointless routines that they do, my teachers, who defend their ideas like children defend a toybox from bullies in another class, my parents, who think that there is something for me to lose in choosing to agree with anybody but themselves, and to me, who was a damn fool for ever thinking that I was alone, and felt so powerless to the things that look so big from far away, who sometimes contemplated suicide as the only escape from the immense depravity that everything that I love can be seen struggling under the weight of, and…

I’m getting a bit emotional. Few of you read my blog. Those few of you may not recall my zealous rants in person. To those who do, I recommend viewing, once more, so that you understand my frustration without hearing my message escape in a cracking voice. I love you all, despite what you may think, because of the behaviors I’ve adopted in anger, but I do.

Fuck!

I’ve gone over twenty-four without caffeine, and I’ve awoken to the hell that I’ve turned my body into, that I’d never fucking notice without something to falsify high chemical energy.

Another portrait of another dancer: