It’s been a strange few days, dear reader.
Did you hear what Yoko Ono did to “Imagine”? That is what I woke up to this morning. No surprise I couldn’t get back to sleep. Her voice has always been one of the most wrist-slittingly shitty and annoying things ever to be recorded. #Whenwillyoufinallyshutthefuckup,younotalenthack
N.P.: “Contagion” – Circle of Dust
Contemptus minivani.
Also, fuck Facebook, Google+, and John Mayer.
And as long as we’re here, I was just watching the season finale of ” Better Call Saul” when some goddamn credit card company’s commercial came on featuring Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” in the soundtrack. I’d heard about this but was sort of refusing to believe it was real. But I just saw the damn thing, and oh God, does it suck. I think this is the first significant misstep by the Prince Estate…certainly the most egregious. Prince never licensed any of his music to any television commercial during his lifetime, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have wanted the practice started with some goddamn credit card company. The Estate has done some pretty brilliant things: the website, finally making the entire catalog of official releases through 2015 available to stream online, and recently they launched the official merchandise line which is not too shabby, I understand that the Estate’s primary directive is to make money and maximize the profitability of the Estate, but this is a significant blunder.
N.P.: “Lunatic Fringe” – Red Rider
Still very frustrated. But if dreams are indication (which I don’t actually believe they are, but it would be good if they were (in this case, at least)), things are looking up. Sunday night I dreamed I was the President. Of the United States. I got used to it very quickly, and spent the rest of waking Monday not fully recovered from being the POTUS, and generally feeling rather indignant about the whole deal.
Then in Monday night’s dream, I was just In Charge. Of Everything. The World. There wasn’t a title associated with the job…I was just the leader of the world. For the most part, everybody seemed pretty happy, so that was cool.
Whatever. I can be silly sometimes. Hope you’re doing well.
N.P.: “Keep It In The Family” – Hybrid
The writing is going like shit. Recording is going like shit. Tech is pissing me off. All is frustration and misery. Also, fuck Sundays.
N.P.: “Double Talkin’ Jive” – Guns N’ Roses
Laying low this weekend (unlike most other weekends when I go on headline-grabbing crime sprees (?)). Writing, catching up with some reading, and trying to learn Notion and integrate it into my workflow.
The book isn’t going as well as I’d like it to. Or maybe it is. Hell, I can’t tell anymore. I think I’m just going to get to certain point and hand the whole weird thing to someone trusted and hope for a no-bullshit assessment of the State of Things.
Yeah, right. We both know that’s not going to happen. I’m just going to keep working away in secrecy until I know damn good and well that the thing is done.
Back to it.
N.P.: “Power Struggle” – Sunna
I was passing a car on a 2-lane freeway a couple days ago. The driver I was passing had demonstrated very quickly in our brief time together that it was either idiotic or perhaps simply clueless. Which is really not a big deal: pitifully few drivers on American roads are anything approaching what I would call “competent” behind the wheel. So, no biggie…I just don’t want to be stuck behind such a person for the next 20 miles when there is no one else visible in front of us on the road ahead. IAmyway, in the not-too-distant distance I saw a rather massive semi truck barreling in my direction at a pretty decent pace. I had plenty of distance and time to pass the car in front of me.
So I did. At least I started to. The idiot that I was passing suddenly started accelerating. It was as if it had, upon seeing me suddenly passing her on the left, realized that it had been dragging ass with its right-turn indicator erroneously left blinking, and stomped on the gas to correct its previously unacceptable performance, giving no thought that I was trying to pass it and had made the decision to do so based on calculations that did not it including accelerating at the same rate as me. Dammit.
I think it should go without saying that there was an exactly zero chance of me aborting this operation at this point. The truck was close enough now that I could tell that is was a massive Peterbilt with a grill that is built such that the driver can simply rinse things like me off of it and be none the worse for wear. I glanced quickly at the speedometer: 105 mph.
And in that moment, my only thought was. “I should be feeling fear.” I felt nothing except a pretty significant annoyance at the idiot in the car next to me and a mild curiosity about what was about to happen with regard to my imminent vaporization. I mean, I knew what was going to happen did not include an accident or anybody being vaporized, but at that moment I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out that way. Still, there was no actual fear. Since I was alone in the car, there was no one around to pretend to be afraid for, so I didn’t. Which choice was suddenly infinitely more interesting that the outcome of the oncoming traffic situation: I don’t actually feel fear very much. If at all. Not that kind of fear, anyway. I admittedly spend a lot of time wrestling with a simply vicious, creeping, generalized, existential dread. But when it comes to street fights or prison riots or those sorts of goings-on…nothing. I get incredibly focused and hyper-vigilant, but no actual fear. It’s been pointed out to me many rather awkward times that I have no real startle reflex either: gunshots and explosions don’t really move my needle. But in those moments that I’m not feeling something i know I’m supposed to feel, I am aware that I’m not feeling something I know I’m supposed to feel and it’s as if there is an “Insert Emotion Here” sign in my psyche, and my mind has becoming unbelievably adept at instantaneously synthesizing something approximating what it thinks is the appropriate emotional response and implements it. But I don’t actually feel the emotion itself.
It is not only with fear that this happens.
This is what the book is about.
N.P.: “Spoiler” – Hyper
Another rather crap day. There were, however, significantly more machine guns involved than usual, which made things slightly more spicy, but they ultimately prevented both lunch and writing, Alas.
N.P,: “Lovesong” – Snake River Conspiracy
People disappoint.
N.P.: “Wish” – Kosheen
What’s crackin’, knowledgeable reader?
I’ll be honest, I was going to write about something here…kind of thought about it all day, but then now that I’m here, I started to write it, I just decided against it. Not time yet, I guess. Maybe I’m just not in the right mood.
Anyway, since I’m here, I Just wanted to say hello….hopefully there will be more to say tomorrow.
N.P.: “He Is” – Ghost
Work work work, blah, blah, blah.
I’m angsty lately. Discontent. Frustrated. And not a little bit overwhelmed by everything. I’ve been bitching about the ludicrous amount of quality television and movies that are being produced these days, and the weird anxiety produced when it’s all you can do to go through the various movies and series released on various media and platforms, sort through the crap and select what you want to put in your To Watch Queue, and then running out of time to actually watch any of the stuff, and the damn Queue just gets longer and longer….
Similar things happen with technology…especially software. I am sent new apps all the time that are really good at what they do, but I’m already neck-deep in another app that I’ve been using for that particular purpose for 2-3 years, and was hoping to keep using. But then something always happens with that app, and I end up having to look around at replacement programs, picking the one that’s going to function best for me and my seemingly ever-developing workflow. This process involves some basic internet research, reading of reviews, and usually watching several different tutorial videos to see how the thing really works before drinking the proverbial Kool-Aid on that particular app. And then once that is done, I have to learn the ins and outs of that app, Which is, of course, something that I’m having to deal with now.
I guess I’m just annoyed by change. And the fact that it seems to take a prohibitively long time to set things up to do whatever it is you’re doing, such that once you actually get things set up, the amount of productive time is pretty minimal, and just when you get into a groove, everything has to be changed again.
Sorry…this is boring. I have written some decent stuff in the last four days, but it’s all going in the book. The book…it’s weird as hell, dear reader. I don’t even know how well it’s going, if I’m honest. I think it will be extreme, one way or another: either a total flop or a revolutionarily big deal. It’s either going to change everything, or nothing at all. Whatever that means.
N.P.: “Natural One” – Shearwater