Don’t have a lot to write, but I took a video tonight.
That’s my girl.
halloween dashed
Monday. Almost didn’t write. Fired this off around 11pm when I realized I had one thing to write about and that Sharaun made a neat video.
Here’s the one thing: Wouldn’t be the run-up to Halloween if there wasn’t some catastrophe with our stupid-complicated house and yard decorations.
In the past it’s been vandals, poor workmanship, and storms.
This year storms struck again. A two-day rainstorm with freak winds strong enough to wreak havoc on the props. The witch tore her moorings to the fascia and dropped to the driveway below. The mausoleum blew over and couldn’t be set right without falling apart at its shoddily nailed joints. On its way over it took out two of the homemade tombstones. It was a mess to wake up to. I’m not sure I can make all the repairs before Friday’s party… it’ll be race at best.
Here’s the video:
Goodnight.
castles on the moon
Turned out to be a pretty strange, loosely-connected deal today friends. Came easy though so let’s run with it.
When I was a tween I was big into all things occult. Not to say I was a practicing version of anything, rather that I was just intrigued by the mystical and magical and unexplained. I’ve written about this before, I think.
I sat riveted to television shows about ghosts and UFOs and cults and other manner of unexplained phenomenon. Which, at that time, before the great “paranormal bastardization” of cable channels like TLC, Discovery, and the History Channel, were a more rare occurrence on television. I checked out and devoured books from the local library on psychic phenomenon, spontaneous human combustion, witchcraft, Stonehenge, Bigfoot, and the like. I don’t know what drew me so to this kind of stuff, which then seemed supremely interesting and truly mysterious and now seems just so many folks talking through their hats and is interesting mostly as a curious aspect of human nature. Anyway, I loved the stuff.
You can imagine, then, how awesome it was when I somehow convinced my folks to spring for a series of Time-Life books called Mysteries of the Unknown that I’d seen advertised on television. Looking back, I can’t imaging these were cheap, and I wonder at my parents’ willingness to purchase them on my behalf. There were thirty-three volumes in the set, and they’d send you a new one every month or so (remember when book-series’ like this were the rage?). Each volume focused on one of those so-loved “mysterious” pursuits of mine.
Holy crap I loved those books. And while I didn’t quite take them as gospel (the skeptic was strong in me, even then), I did at least ascribe them some credence. I remember vividly closing myself in my closet with my copy of Psychic Voyages, following to a tee the step-by-step instructions required for one to achieve “astral projection,” where the consciousness leaves the body and can travel seeing through the physical world. I was going to astral-project myself down the street, into the cul-de-sac, and into Mary’s bedroom if I had to try all damn afternoon. I never was able to have that out-of-body experience; never set foot in Mary’s room either (although I guess I could look for pictures of the modern-day version now that Sharaun is friends with her on the Facebook, if I really wanted to).
It was in these books somewhere that I learned that, in “the old days,” they used to hang bells above-ground with strings running down into the coffins of the newly-interred deceased. The idea being that, as death was more then often mispronounced for things like coma or other catatonic state, these poor buried-alive souls could then signal the world that they there were merely resting, not in final repose, but instead now awake and quite ready to be un-buried.
I don’t know why but that image concept really stuck with me as a kid, and I still use it as a powerful mental image for the intense fear that comes with utter helplessness. Even today, when that everyday entropy begins to weigh and I get the itch to “run away,” I see a mental image of a man furiously pulling a string he hopes is attached to a bell he can neither see nor hear. It’s a pretty striking picture of being “stuck” and wanting to change one’s present situation.
Anyway…
Later in life I had a brief obsession with one the series’ covered topics, alchemy. In my late twenties I got interested in the history and thought processes of the ancient physical alchemist, and subsequently the grafting of those physical precepts onto the field of psychology by Mr. Carl Jung. I wrote about that a little at some point too, I think over here. But for the most part I left the “mysteries of the unknown” for the tweenage me to ponder… and grew up into a mostly practical adult (who’s just a little given to whimsy).
What the heck am I talking about? Goodnight.
PS – Kristina, if you’re out there, you still have some of my books. Love you.
better pinch yourself!
Today I am going to be indulgent and write about music.
Actually, reading my own entry I kind of hate myself. What kind of pansy has enough time to get so analytical about a single song? People really care about songs to a degree where they’d dissect them and ascribe meaning that’s probably not even there? Yeah, well, I like to do that sometime. I just don’t typically overcome the embarrassment and write it down. Anyway, when words come out I hate to throw them away.
A while back I wrote about the seventeen minute track that caps the new Sufjan Stevens EP. I loved it. Today I’m going to write about the twenty-five minute epic that caps the new Sufjan Stevens album (what can I say, the guy’s prolific when he gets going, a long-player right after an almost album-length EP and all). No, really it’s twenty -five minutes long. The song, called “Impossible Soul,” is longer than some albums in their entirety. I’d recommend queuing it up by going here and give it a critical listen whilst you read my interpretation.
This song is tough to swallow.
In the third movement, Steven’s loses his mind and has a full-on bed-intruder autotune breakdown. In it he robotically warbles about a “stupid man in the window” and some begging-to-be-deciphered stuff about how he “couldn’t be addressed.” I, in addition to some other armchair theorists, like to think that Sufjan is talking to God. But I’m getting ahead of my theory: I’ve decided that the song is about how “impossible” Sufjan feels it must be to have a saved soul in the face of his earthly motivations, and that the track represents his struggle with God upon this realization.
Structurally, the song is split into musical/lyrical fifths. Because it’s pretentious, I’m going to refer to these as “movements.” Here are the lyrics. Let’s get stupid about it.
- The first movement is a struggle with human desire; a man crushed by a woman he loves, still pining pitifully for her.
- In the second movement our narrator changes, and we’re now hearing the woman who was our subject in the prior section. And in this movement the object of his desire reminds the diserer that this obsession is a mere distraction from more righteous pursuits. Urges him to get over let go of his longing, to not “be distracted” by it, it’s not “worth all the work.”
- Our narrator returns for the third movement and issues a gauntlets-down challenge to God, baiting Him to come down and get involved. It’s the most abstract of the sections, and where I’ve made the biggest stretch in guessing intent. I say the “man in the window” is God (maybe thinking of stained glass or something).
- If you buy this crap so far, then I’d tell you that I think the fourth movement is God’s response to our narrator’s challenge. His response is both fatherly and reassuring.
- And, like Job’s response to his go-round with God, the fifth and final movement sees our singer wither from his previous hubris and humbled again before his creator.
In the end I feel it’s likely not a bad stab at it – much of Stevens’ output is steeped in Christian allegory. Anyway, because I like to think he’s talking to God, the song becomes that much more awesome. The bouncy denouement pronouncements of, “Boy, we can do much more together! Better get a life! Better give love! Better get it right! It’s not so impossible!” take on the air of a revival-tent pep-rally.
I’m almost not posting this crap. Goodnight.
$100 easy dollars
Tuesday night on the internet and I’m writing right up until my 9:30pm call from Shanghai comes in. I’ll take what time I can get.
In January of 2007 I decided to integrate some small Google ads into a couple of my more “highly-trafficked” websites, namely my blog and a now ridiculous-looking page I made back in highschool which I maintain partly because it’s got a decent pagerank, partly because it gets hits, and partly because it’s such a funny example of my 1995 webpagin’ skills. Despite my meager readership and small search traffic, I figured some unobtrusive Google ads wouldn’t hurt – and I might even make a little money over time.
Once upon a time I used to check my progress, but slowly forgot I even had ads on the pages. Last week I got a $100 payout from Google. It took me three and three-quarter years to earn that $100, which is something like 2¢ per day. (As an aside to that sentence, I always found it confusing that the dollars sign goes before a number and the cents sign goes after. Just seems needlessly confusing.) I guess that falls in line with my “might as well; might earn some money” attitude about the whole thing… but man that’s some sloooow earning.
I’m already looking forward to my next $100 (they only pay once you hit that mark) in July 2014.
Goodnight.
money for the rainforest
I always giggle a little when I hear someone say that they donated money “to the rainforest.” Really? The rainforest?
It’s like there’s only one. A single rainforest. A needy one, at that. People don’t wonder what the rainforest is going to do with their money? How do we know we can even trust the rainforest? What if the rainforest uses the money to buy a plane ticket to the western seaboard and have a slut-up with some giant redwoods? What if the rainforest is into self-harm and spends the money on new chainsaws to cut herself down? What if the rainforest pisses away your money on booze and pills?
How to you even donate to a forest anyway? Yes I’m asking sarcastically. I imagine a little Cesna flying over some dense canopy, dropping tightly bound packages of cash and checks to be forever lost in the thick tangle. That’ll do a lot of good, that money you gave “to the rainforest.”
Think people might be a little too eager to dump their money into a charity-du-jour? I still believe that humans, Muslim or not, are overwhelmingly well-meaning. I mean, Earth as a unit pledged some $5.3 billion dollars to Haiti when they got earthquaked. Folks that is a ton of money. And a good portion of that came from private donors, I bet even one or two Muslims. I haven’t done extensive research, but a couple sources online content that most of that money, up to 90% in fact, still hasn’t made it to Haiti and that the 10% that has is mostly made up of nation-to-nation cancelled debt – which does little to get people fed and watered and out of shantytowns. Instead of diminishing, the number of refugees living in tents has instead risen, and now comprises over a million displaced souls.
I wonder how much money will eventually make it? Goodnight.
maybe i should invent a machine
Hi internet. I took a break latter half of last week and I deserved it; did me well.
Sunday the weather turned cold and wet here in Northern California. It was, by me, welcomed. Even into last week we had temperatures in the 80s and it just didn’t feel like October. When the rain came today it pushed a summer’s worth of dust and dirt down from the gutters, spitting out a foamy mess. Maybe it’s the 100th time I’ve said this, but it’s always amazing to me how strongly things like weather and songs and smells can bring back memories. Combine one or two or even three of those things and I swear you could create as immersive an alternate reality as is possible. Maybe I should invent a machine.
I’ve started turning off work e-mail on the phone over the weekends. This is my second weekend without. I have to say it makes a dramatic difference. Not reading that one thread which will start Monday morning’s rolling snowball of a complicated task means not dreading the coming of Monday morning; means not having to fight the pull to log on and dispatch a preemptive answer; means not getting sucked into a discourse and being derailed from time with family. It may seem silly that I have to turn off the feature to get away… but when it’s on it’s just so easy and so right-there. It’s hard to not look when the thing clicks at you, announcing a new thread about Q4 budget or receive-side adaptive equalization.
I’m sitting in the living room now, listening to this out-of-nowhere record Forget by some dude who calls himself Twin Shadow. Egad is it good. It’s like a guy was frozen in the 80s and woke up to make a totally rad anachronism. Even Sharaun is kinda jamming to it.
Goodnight.