buttons!!! are love.

Don't wanna form complete sentences lately. Don't like them. Too fascist, fragments seem more democratic. Made these for my band, (Stop worrying and) Love the Bomb. We're distributing them at our show on Saturday...


Originally I wanted the olive branch to be burning behind the dove. Not enough room.


Tribute to my Grandpappy, who was a B52 pilot in WWII, back before they had power steering. True story. He told his XO to F off one night, after something like a week of no sleep bombing the shit outta Belgium. Guess that's where I get it. He got his boys the day off though.


Tribute to my somewhat cripping obsession with apocalyptic imagery, zombie warfare and desensitizing video games. Note: The N Bomb in back with the RPG.

Here's how they started out

Excerpt from The Dead Romantics...

I'm going through the shoe box now. I haven't opened it in a while and there's always that fucking black book with the stupid fucking Companion Cube sticker sitting there. I want to read it, but I can't seem to open it. My brain won't let me. I'll come back in a few hours after these things kick in and try again.

(4 hours later.)

Alright, I'm ready. I know exactly which date to look for. This seems wrong. I don't know if I should. Oh well, I gotta do it sometime.

I really liked his handwriting.

February 14th, 1999

She left me a note on my car. At first I thought it was a parking ticket, since it was on this folded up pink paper. Plus I'm hungover as shit. Whatever. I said Oh fuck out loud, but no one was around so I didn't look too weird. But yeah, it was way fucking worse than a parking ticket.

'Hey Castor,
I'm going to get our abortion tonight. Wanna throw down?
-XOXO'

Oh. No. How does she know what my car looks like. I started to panic. This instant paranoia. Every building grew eyes, each window like a pack of insects preparing to storm. Baby? What the FUCK! I never thought, I don't know what I thought. But I never thought that.

Oh God.

I can't decide what disturbs me more, the situation or her reaction. I know this girl. She's not playing around. I drove straight to---

The rest of it is scratched out. I can't read it. Maybe if I get one of those CSI kits I've seen at the Science Museum. Could probably like, use some fancy powder or some shit and get an outline.

I shouldn't be laughing about this, but the other option isn't as pleasant.

I can almost see a name but, damn, he sure didn't want anyone to know.

It doesn't fucking matter anyway. We all know where he went.

You are being watched...

...Or so we'd like to think?

Another shameful disclosure. I have to admit I am fascinated by the reality TV craze. Craze isn't exactly the right word. This sludge, this crap-- it's been around long enough to be considered a staple in pop culture. 51 Minds, the production company behind such masterpieces like Flavor of Love, have come up with such a horrifically brilliant formula. They create these "celeb-reality stars" by the dozen, and each specimen has potential to spawn into a spin-off of it's own.

There is such a strange relationship these specimens have to the camera and the audience. There's an artificial haze surrounding all the events that partake, the confessionals, the over-the-top debauchery and the escalating violence. I don't know why any of these shows even pretend to hold any noble schemes. By being cast on a reality show, people objectify their identities. And it's almost a celebrated stature. Are we supposed to desire this kind of attention?

My theory is that we are being primed to welcome this 24 hour surveillance, through increasing amounts of mind numbingly dumbed down garbage, whitewashing our minds of any free thought or disobedience. We are encouraged to document everything digitally, upload our experiences into public view, use unlimited text message plans to send private information over the network. Our cultural value is determined by the amount of hits we recieve, or subscribers or friends-- is connectivity power, or is it enslavement?

I see a mix of Fahrenheit 451's televised oppression with doses of 1984. I remember in a Crit Theory class, the professor asked us if we cared that there are security cameras everywhere. No one seemed passionate, claiming to value safety over privacy. Another student went further to say that people would rather be safe than free. I feel like breaking my cellphone. (Again.)



I should have put more eyes on this, but I got lazy.

In music news, everyone should go see Phil Collins' Beat, Gentlemen Jesse, Deep Sleep show at the Talking Head on Feb 2nd. Looks like someone appreciates Photoshop's cutout filter as much as I do...

Of course it's a Monday. It's no suprise at this point that any bands I like would rather play anywhere else on a weekend. But if you're into well written, feel good powerpop, check them out.

I has a speedball pen!

And I don't know how to use it.

Here were a couple early attempts before I spilled ink all over my sketchbook.

For some reason blogger didn't post thumbnails, and I'm too tired to fix it right now, so click on the scribbles to see full size.



Crucial Doodling. Ink vs. sketchbook.



The Bandit. Inspired by Fallout 3.



More Scribbling that turned into a band logo. Maybe we'll use it for the cassette tape demo insert.



Part of an ongoing "rant"/ novel about two beings from different dimensions coexisting in the same space.

This is a Cosmic Joke

I had all the right beginnings of an enlightened secular human; I was never baptized, or ever sent to church, I thought bible stories were absurd fairytales, I believed firmly in the general truth of scientific fact... but sadly, I've come to realize that I'm not an Atheist.

Now, don't get me wrong-- I'm not religious. I don't believe in any written GOD, yet I find myself praying very colloquially to some fuzzy, omniscient entity when faced with the next dire situation. But this isn't much different than your average inner dialog. It's only an attempt to relinquish control, in that way, place responsibility on this imaginary being. (I learned this from AA and it can work on anything stressful. Admit you're powerless over ______ and the higher power can deal with the bullshit for you.) It frees me up psychologically. But this entry is not about praying to Imaginary Cosmic Beings.

Somewhere, about six years ago, I ended up crazy and set on devouring this new age bullshit. 99 percent of it is just that; entertaining bullshit. But I found truth somewhere in the mess of wishful fantasy. It finally made sense to believe that nothing is completely coincidental. I believe that people appear in your life to teach you a lesson, whether you learn it or not, whether they know they're teaching it or not. How you physically, socially and psychologically exist attracts those of certain substance to you, and then often the same chemistry repels them, also aided by circumstance.. Now this is commonly thought of to be a sad event, but I see it as natural. We are all in transition, forever. Clinging to the past only stunts your growth.

Some people or situations are purely symbolic and meant to bring a detail of yourself into light. You find yourself encountering them again and again, wherever you go, and you don't realize why-- but it becomes pretty apparent after a while.

Sometime along this downward spiral into mysticism I learned how to read Tarot Cards. In 78 cards they detail every aspect of human existence. Studying these symbols further, they place an emphasis on every cross section of our experience being part of a larger, renewing cycle. It got me to think about numerology across civilizations and the universal agreement on what each number (1-9, 0, etc.) mean, how advanced mathematics describe systems and most natural systems operate on cycles and... well, everything is interconnected in this way.

So I don't find it too much of a stretch to believe that there is a systematic method to our existence. Apparently the hindus and buddhists and other religions all believe this too and can explain their theories much better than I can. But I'll just end by quoting Miller in Repo Man,

"A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness."

What would Meatloaf do for love?

(Anything, but not that.)

I thought about it for a while one night. Laying there, staring at the ceiling, with a fever and a raw throat. (Love, I mean- not Meatloaf.) I wondered why every time we begin to fall in love, it feels new. "Never felt this way about anyone before." "This is different." And what eventually happens? Heartbreak. Revenge. Recovery. Rinse. Repeat.

I had a revelation, so I wrote it all down (in complete darkness) in the notebook by my bed. Here it is in it's unpolished entirety, translated from illegible chicken-scratch.

I'm beginning to realize a few fundamental truths about love. It's not a catch all. Everyone has a their own definition for every different type of love. It's endless and eternal in it's variations. Sometimes people get hurt because the one they love CAN'T, I mean, literally CANNOT love them back in the same way. Because it's not in their nature, it's not how they perceive it. Love is a snowflake, it's beautiful and no two are the same and it's rare to stay the same forever. It always changes; it melts, it freezes, it steams, it rains, and pours. Makes a lot more sense to me now that the suit of cups in the tarot symbolizes emotions/wishes/dreams. What was I saying?



The awesome thing about BPD is that you get to experience fucked up mood swings that piss off and alienate your partner! I'll save that type of blog entry for livejournal.

How is this relevant to music and art? Obviously, love is the number one subject ever sung about. And I believe that love is the secret to art. Some call it passion. That's what separates the real from the fake. And also, I'm watching Meatloaf videos this week.

REVAMP

I've returned with another update, and a new format for this blog. And this time I'll stick with my original subtitle "Art. Music. Life." No constraints. I never liked rules anyway.

I'm drawing up storyboards for a short animation I want to produce. The working title of it is 'There is a Sky." At first I wanted to do a very visual story about some little creature escaping from a large prison. As I did some research, I found this article from last year about a guy that escaped a North Korean prison camp. He was born and raised in the camp, and never knew there was a world outside of it. I started getting more ideas for the main character, a bird-like creature that doesn't know there is a sky and that he has wings. Anyway, it should snowball from there.

I rented the Orange Box after being very behind on new-gen games, since I just bought a 360 a few months ago. Portal is the stand out here, and now I understand why it received so much attention. You wake up in a lab, with no explanation. A creepy AI named GlaDOS directs you through a series of tests in which you use a gun that makes portals, and you navigate through deadly obstacles by entering and exiting through these wormholes, or manipulate your surroundings to advance past pits of acid, turret guns, etc. People complained that the game was too short, but I thought it was perfect.

And I found out about the nerd/folk musician Jonathan Coulton. He writes these hilarious songs about, well, nerd/geek culture related things like zombies, transformers, and so on. In other words, no I haven't mail-ordered any new records lately.