Thursday, December 27, 2012

It's printing.

Compromising with Myself (To Finish This Damn Book)

The best way to describe the version I am deciding to go with is that it is the greatest compromise between all of my ideas.  Days Go By is going to be the name I am going with.  I am going to do a thorough proofread, but I am only cleaning it up a bit and making sure there are no typos and that I am saying what I am intending to say.

I am very proud of how my work on this novel has progressed it to it's current state, and I know it is more important for me to finish it than to make sure it is absolutely perfect.  It doesn't have to be perfect.  It just has to be perfect enough, and I can honestly say that I think I have come to that point.

I feel like, if I am truly going to get it ready for the competition, since I am not going with the YA version that is too short for the competition, and this version is set in the present but is a reflection on past events and takes place for the most part in the past tense, and is about 60,000 words exactly.

I am going to print it, proofread it, make corrections, and set it up for the competition, and send it at my earliest opportunity (Hopefully on Midnight of January 14).




Forcing it and pooping my pants

It's too early in the morning to write a blog post.  I don't know how those journalist types do it.  I don't know why I even thought it would be a good idea.  I guess I just need some inspiration.  Perhaps I should continue on with watching the entire series of Monty Python's Flying Circus.  I am on disc 3 of 16.  Some people might think it's too early in the day for Monty Python, but those people just don't know how to get the day started off right.

Anyways, I'll probably come back to this later, when I am somehow inspired.

Friday, December 21, 2012

my inner musician is clawing to get out

I finally have had time to sit down and figure out how to use the Ableton Live 8 software that came with my amp.  While I am still learning, it seems usable; while maybe not the best recording software, it will work for my purposes.  I will probably mainly record live, although the MIDI drums sounds it came with sound pretty good.  I am not sure I want to mess with the MIDI, though, since I can always use my drum machine, which I already know how to use fairly well.  Now that I have a decent guitar and a decent bass, I can hook my mixer up to my computer and start recording.   What am I going to record?  I don't know.  While I definitely do have a lot of songs I COULD record, I have no desire to record any of those songs.  I think I am going to continue jamming and when I come up with something that sounds cool, I will work with it and build on it and lay down tracks.  This is more or less how I recorded my last actual album (Daydream Death Rattle), but I am a much better musician now and am interested in seeing where I can go and what I can do (recording wise -- there probably won't be any Gabe Gott shows anytime in the near future.  I am happy with recording and being creative and experimenting and seeing what I can do with the means I have available).   Perhaps I will finally do what I have always wanted to do and find a movie I can jam to and build an album around, much like it is rumored that Pink Floyd did with Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz.  I have a few movies in mind, one in particular that I just watched that I am currently leaning towards.  Hopefully, since I am on break right now and since I will have weekends off with my new job (starting in January), I will be able to find the time, every once and a while, at least, to work on a project of this nature.  It is generally good for my sanity.  Even more so than writing, perhaps, music has a therapeutic effect on me, and I just simply love it.  I love music, I love being creative, and having projects to work on and people to collaborate with and people to share my creative expressions with.  I would like to come up with some kind of musical alias/stage name to go by and put my music online, perhaps.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Only $79 from Sweetwater for this guitar case...  Suck it Guitar Center!  That's $45 less than your sale price!


Monday, December 17, 2012

J-E-L-L...O!

I guess it is about time for me to write a long, rambling one.  I don't know, though, I am once again semi-coherent so I don't know it will be much the same, but we'll see...  Watching Invader Zim, which I still don't see how it was supposed to be a children's show.

Okay, maybe it's not time for a long rambling one.  I am feeling lazy and still surprisingly burned out.  Those final papers really wore me out.  My brain is Jello, which means that my Super Ego is Bill Cosby.  I can live with that.

What Do These Videos Have in Common?









And it's not the 70's.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Interlude

Okay, I have screwed around for a few days, it's time to get to work.  This book ain't gonna' finish itself.

Put together a 25-hour rock n'roll playlist and set it on random.

See you on the other side.

Goodbye, for now
So long, fair well

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Bananas

Once you're in the mode of being busy it's hard to switch out of it.

I can't relax.  My mind won't let me.  I just have so many ideas working, so many things I am working towards achieving, I just feel like I can't stop, even when I am not in class or working on any school projects.  I am going to be starting my thesis soon and then my life will be over for a while.

Not to mention I have to finish this book.  No choice.  Got to do it now.  Too close to the end.  There is no turning back.  It has got to be done.  Soon.  January 14, 2013.

TELL ME...

Tell me what I really want to know.


Wednesday, December 12, 2012

The Story of My Brain Going on a Cross-Country Ride

My brain hops out my window and onto the cold tar shingle roof, slithers out to the edge, and makes the leap into the narrow patch of green grass below.  A little too far out, and it would have been splattered on the pavement, a little shy and it would have slammed against the railing on the porch and splatter the Jehovah's witness lady knocking on my door and making the dogs bark.  It is just the distraction I need for my brain to make it's exit, on it's never-ending quest to the next railroad track, the next box car, to make it's way back and forth out and across this great land of ours.

You see, folks, my brain is a true American patriot.  It expresses it's gratitude for this great nation and sets out to live on the land and survive as far a hard day or two of labor will take him.  Some people pay him in food and clothes or maybe cigarettes, a wayward sip from a flask every now and again.  He loved the land, and could sleep anywhere out in the wilderness, away from society, and feel at home.  Is my brain a Thoreau, you ask?  Perhaps, I say, perhaps.  It is hard to judge with it's absence.  I need a brain to think and since I haven't got a brain, I can't think, you see my dilemma?

It tips back a sip of gin and looks out of the open bar car as it zooms past some manure patch grown up around the tangled remnants of an old apple orchard.  My brain hops off, too much tempted by the later, but my brain was the type who could stop and sniff a pretty flower for hours, rolling a cigarette and landscape to pass it by and let it become nothing but a fleeting memory, which was bound to happen sooner taking a splash of gin from the flash someone had traded him for an extra pair of shoes he had found in the trash out behind someone's house in some suburb.  It never occurred to him that they might have been evidence of a crime or something.

As it leaps from the side of the box car it doesn't see the approaching barbwire fence until it is too late...




I sleep like a rock the whole night.  I don't remember tossing or turning, and I woke up, my limbs taking a moment to catch up with the rest of me, and so I shake them back into cognizance again.  I stretch and get out of bed, I have sleep for three days straight.  I missed two days of work.  No one woke me up, nothing.

I get out of bed and something has changed. Something is missing and I can't quite figure it out.  I try to come up with an answer, but I look around and look around and look around and everything seems the same as it always has been and always will be.

Oh well, I say, and go downstairs and turn on the Kuerig and get the coffee out of the cup, empty out the replaceable filter and put some grounds into it.  I have my own filter to make it run on regular coffee because those damn k-cups are so expensive, and I am a coffee addict.

I turn on the television, my eyes gloss over and....

I wake up 54 years later and in some secret military hospital hooked to some machine.  Wait, no, I am some machine.  I am trapped in a machine?  I try to look and realize I can't.  I have parts and base units and means of communication but I am no longer a human being.  I am hardwired, humming, computing, alive.



See Ya' in Saint Louie!

"I stink," some random hobo says.

Wait, that's not some random hobo, that's me!

Jesus Christ, I can't believe I've let myself go like this lately.

Oh, well, I guess...  At least my papers are done and turned in.  Whatever happens, happens at this point.

Hopefully I took them seriously enough.

Or was at least charming.

If not, I might be totally fucked.

Not really, I'm sure I'll do fine.  I just get the jitters of what-if's until I see it in black electronic scrawl across my computer monitor.

For now I am going to bathe, play guitar probably, and then watch Star Trek and the news and Jeopardy.  My brain will not be home for a day or two while it heals from all the marks that have recently been etched in it.

The homeless man gets up and strips off his clothes and jumps in the shower.

FREEEEEE!!!!!!!!





Changes

I come back in from smoking a cigarette (the stress of the end of the semester inflames my nicotine addiction, what can I say?) and Changes by Black Sabbath is playing.  It took me a moment to realize that's what it was (it was in the middle of an instrumental break) because it was so beautiful.

It really brought my mind into the present.  I have been so focused on these papers and my book and my career and the future that I have neglected the beauty of the moment.  I guess it is on my mind because I just wrote a paper on the present tense in fiction and particularly in Rabbit, Run, because it really fits how I view my life for the most part, from the only point in time where I have any direction control over my actions and the immediate effects of those actions, and I have time to seriously consider future actions.

Next song I hear two Beatles songs in a row.  They have like 10 albums on the playlist so it's not uncommon for me to hear more than one.  First it was... "Get Back" from Past Masters Volume II and then it was "Don't Pass Me" by from The Beatles ("The White Album").

That's what for me is so enjoyable about music, particularly playing guitar, but also really just sitting and listening to and absorbing the music.  It is something that one can only fully appreciate if one is focused on the present moment of the music.  That is the kind of music that appeals to me anyway.  I don't want to hear background noise.  I want to hear intelligent articulation, whether through vocals or instrumentals or whatever.

Anyways, I think, what I am trying to get across, in a very obtuse way, I fully admit, is that music makes me happy.  Walking into my office to finish my final paper and happening to catch the beauty of the song really inspired me to appreciate life.  It is something that I and most people, for that matter, probably take for granted.

This is The Amboy Dukes featuring Ted Nugent.  Nice.

Now the sun is shining.

In a few short hours I will be done with my last paper of the semester.

God that sun is bright.

In a few short hours I will be able to relax and sit back and reflect where I am right now and relax and let the pieces to my brain fall back to the earth to my skull.  I will get myself together then.  And also, make several big steps towards the future.

I take a deep breath and hit "publish" and then close the window to the Internet and maximize Word and get back to work (I am already two pages in!  Hot damn!  I could finish it early and get out the wine and celebrate!)

The future.



Monday, December 10, 2012

SUBMIT (TO MY VIDEO BAR)

If you are in a band, and you have a Youtube station you would like me to include in my list of stations, please contact me ASAP.  Keep in mind I am looking for local/independent rock/experimental/instrumental/punk/electronica.

If you don't fall within one of those categories, I will take it on a song to song basis.  If I like your songs I might still play you.

Eventually I would like to put my own music on here as well.

Anyways, email me or contact me on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and I will get back to you promptly.

Also, any animators?  Youtube-clip-size movie makers?  Feel free to submit to me as well.  I would also add videos that I like.  Think bizarre comedy.

WHAT I NEED:
The name of your Youtube station.

And yes, as of now, it does have to be Youtube.  Sorry users of other similar sites.  Perhaps in the future I will have enough time to figure out how to have a wider range of options.

Anyways, music of any length but movies/videos no more than like 3-5 minutes.


Gibberish

I'm wasting too much time, doo soo soo doo sooo

I'm wasting too much time, dark doo-soo-sark-sark

I'm wasting too much time, doo soo soo doo sooo

I'm wasting too much time, dark doo-soo-sark-sark

I'm wasting too much time, making this gibberish

I'm wasting too much time, singing this gibberish

I'm wasting too much time, making this gibberish

I'm wasting too much time, singing this gibberish

I'm wasting too much time, doo soo soo doo soo...

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Escape into Now

I just had an important revelation about my book, which is a sign that I am on the right track, that I SHOULD enter the Amazon contest.

I just had an idea that at once justifies all my work on it and makes me closer to being actually done.

I don't want to reveal what exactly it is yet, sorry folks, but, I assure you, my novel, now definitely titled Escape into Now will be done by the end of Winter Break.

Oh yes.

The sad part is how obvious it was.

How right in front of my face.

Oh, well, it doesn't matter now.  I have to think ahead a little and make a plan.


Thursday, December 6, 2012

frizzazzled

My brain is fried so I will keep this short.  In fact, that is all I have to say.

Toodles.

Rambling in the Middle of the Night

Will anybody read a book without chapters?  It's not the first but it's certainly not all that common.  Not to mention the fact that it's in the present tense, and is more character-oriented than plot-oriented.  It's around 60,000 words and will probably not dip much below that.  I'm editing page 30 of 200 (which for a manuscript doesn't really mean anything) and hopefully once I get through it, past a thorough proofreading or two, I won't be so inclined and self-obsessed to keep going back through it.  I'll tell myself enough is enough and send it off to the Amazon contest when it opens and hopefully I'll have a shot.  If not, well... I'll keep trying.  I'm confident that the changes I am making are what it needs, and, until I get some indication otherwise, they are the changes I am going to stick with.  I want to get this done so I can say I have gotten it done, even if I end up publishing it on my own I will at least be able to say that I have finished a book, and I will move on to the next one.  And the next one and the next one...  Am I crazy?  Maybe?  Talentless?  Maybe?   Dedicated?  Yes.  Driven?  Yes.  Goal-oriented?  Yes!  Incapable of giving up on my artistic pursuits?  Yes!  I couldn't give these things up even if I wanted to, and I certainly have, definitely certainly have, at times.  But I can't.  Writing and music and creating are built into my DNA.  Maybe I might never make a living doing them, but I am definitely closer than someone who just automatically gives up when it gets hard or seems unlikely or it seems like no one care.  None of that stuff truly matters.  If I was doing to to be famous, then I would have lit myself on fire in front of a library a long time ago.  I am cool with obscurity.  The internet is a wonderful resource for someone, if given an opportunity.  Either way, I am in school, making progress, hopefully doing well enough in my classes (will find out in the next couple of weeks if I get those A's that I have worked for this semester) to justify continuing.  I believe I am on the right track to getting a teaching assistantship, which is a necessary part of my plan, if I want to really be serious about applying to any PhD. program.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Magic/Pull My Strings

For those of you keeping track, probably a month or so ago I said somethings and as a result, whether intentionally or because of a glitch, the earnings link to this blog "disappeared" so that I could no longer check my Adsense or decide what type of ads I get to put on my blog.

This morning it has mysteriously reappeared, coincidentally after I have stopped putting ads on my blog altogether.  Interesting.

I don't know what this means, if it means anything at all.  It could definitely be all my paranoid delusions.

I don't know if I will put ads back on my blog.  I kind of don't want to have ads on it anymore.  I don't know.  Blogger tells me I am eligible for Good Affiliate Ads now.  Interesting.

The stubborn artistic side of me resists the temptation; however, the greedy capitalistic side of me threatens to beat up the stubborn artistic side of me.

The stubborn artistic side of me responds by finding an appropriate music video response that represents in some convoluted way my stubborn artistic side of me's ideals.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

New Goal:

I am going to finish my book by January 14 so I can enter it into the Amazon contest.

What the Hell, right?

 In the past I have thought of doing this but this is the first time I have actually been close enough where it is entirely feasible to enter it.

 If I am able to enter it (there is a limit to the number of entries), I will have a 1/10,000 chance to win.  Not great odds, but better than my current odds and definitely better than my odds if I never enter it or try to get it published another way.

If I lose, I can always change it and shop it around or publish it on my own or whatever.

However, if I become a finalist, I win money and some level of notoriety, which will still help me.  If I win one of the prizes, even if it's not the grand prize...  Well, that would be pretty extraordinary.


Ramble On





a poem.

Originally wrote this poem a while ago, I think maybe for a class, but maybe not.  I can't remember.  Anyway, I think it is appropriate for this time of year.




Material Things

When it comes to money,
Or power, or property,
Or material things,
How much do I really need?

If you take it all away --
What does that leave me?
Does it make me
Less of a person?

Should I hoard it all away
For years of rainy days,
Or let the desire fade away --
No more haunting by those ghosts?

Whatever happens happens --
Life should be about living.
Love and friends and family
Are all anyone really needs.

So maybe I will just
Circumvent the rest
Living life the fullest,
Simply, and with zest.






Monday, December 3, 2012

Two presentations down, three papers to go.  Luckily the presentations were on two of the papers so really I just have one paper to go.  I feel like I am through the worst of it and I can see light.  However, I still have to sit down and do the busy work, which, when it comes to non-creative writing is the difficult part.  It's when writing becomes a chore.

It's not that bad, really.  I mean, I am hopefully going to make a living with it, so it will be worth all the headaches and late nights followed  by early mornings.  I admit, I have been up since 4 a.m.   I am okay with that.  I am not ready to sleep yet.  Sleep will come later.  I will stay up later and then sleep in a little.  Tomorrow I will spend all day writing and then go to class and then come back and write until it's time to go to bed or I need a break for a while, then I will go to bed and sleep in and get up and write all day on Wednesday, and Thursday, when I have one paper due, but I will have already moved on to the next one, which is due on Monday.  The final paper is due next Wednesday.

Then I will be done, done with my first semester of grad school.  Hopefully my hard work will pay off and I'll get my A's and I will be able to use all my professors as references on the assistantship application.  I already have one for sure. I might have won the second one tonight, and the other one I am pretty sure I could ask her now on the strength of my midterm.  I will have a solid paper I can use on the application, too.  This Updike paper probably.

And I have the new job next semester where I will tutor people on writing essays, getting some teaching experience.  It is all really coming together.

I also will be having a story appear, either in the print copy or on the website -- I don't know yet, but will announce it when I do know -- of Luna Negra, which, for those of you who don't know, is Kent State's literary journal. My story has NOT appeared yet, but I will let you know when I find out more details.  Luna Negra's website is lunanegramag.com

Anyways, that's enough boasting for one night.

Cheers!

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Little Children????




This song has an entirely different connotation now than when it was written.