First Off

2008-05-28T06:32:00.011-05:00

order = chaos

Reality operates under a fiercely ordered set of maths and sciences which, even when we can't sufficiently describe them, are observable in their perfect static. A belief in miracles could be allowed or even encouraged if asynchronous phenomena were observed with any degree of veracity (beyond the basic miracle that it exists in the first place, and continues, inexorably, without fucking up, unlike human endeavor.)

And so it is left to humanity (and, er, vogonity) to sow chaos into order, to the extent that we are able to subvert biology and physics, for good or ill. And yet for all of our hubris, nothing we've accomplished measures to fuck-all against the scope of this universe, let alone any cosmology allowing for the possibility of (infinite) multiple universes.

I don't like it at all.

Assuming a sentient intelligence existing in the fifth dimension (which is to say that we exist in the fourth dimension, time, unable to affect it in the manner of the other, 'lower' dimensions), we would still be incapable of recognizing it as such, being limited as we are in our fourth dimensional existence (you've read Flatland, right?). We would readily, and perhaps somewhat justly, nominate such a thing as a god, regardless of alignment or intent. Even the most warlike and misogynistic, egregiously shitheaded example of fifth dimension life could seem as a god to those of us with lowly, fourth-dimensional senses. (Faith as Stockholm syndrome: yeah, the pain and death and assrape has gotten old, but he keeps telling me he loves me and anyway, it'll all be over soon.)

And so it is left to we criminals and rudeboys and -girls to proselytize in favor of the known, the human, the fourth- dimensional base and debauched matter, the very stuffs of which we are made; to learn our country and its attendant exegeses, to know Spaceland and Flatland as thoroughly as possible, to know our universe, its constituents, and any fellow inhabitants of the fourth dimension, lest we go traipsing into (apologies to Joe Casey) Godland gullible and weak-willed, ignorant, and easily over-awed.

2008-05-27T07:57:00.005-05:00

the vibrations are getting closer.

Enlightenment acheived through chemistry is still valid. All enlightenment is simply short-cut/ short-circuit.

Valid, but possibly much more difficult to bring the sermon back from the mount.

I make it a habit to attempt to close off reality tunnels that I don't like. Simply calling them to mind in as much detail as I can muster seems to do the trick nicely, more often than not. High potency euphorics make the process a bit faster, machine-gunning 'useless' reality tunnels with videogame cheat code efficiency.

Recently, on a Messianic trip that was over the top even in comparison to my usual Lex-up trips, with outmoded ideas and ideals melting out of my brainstuff like there's a hole in the dike (and there's no hope for anyone attempting to Dutch-boy my ass). I had a moment, and goodness knows I'll be lucky not to end up all Beautiful Mind fucked up trying to get it back. I'm losing my I. This one is starting to have trouble defining singular experience as non-universal. And yet, most of what this one perceives in other a is a disconnected experience, that this one finds difficult to associate, assimilate, or alleviate. The concept of combative meme-plexes gathers more currency as the attempt to create a plex that is holistic and positive is met with the equal and opposite drive toward another plex whose makeup is much more isolated and self-serving.

Omnijectivity. "Reality is neither objective nor subjective, it's omnijective."

This one nominates a new plex. One which, by it's very nature, seems inescapable.

The Briar Patch.

We're all just trying to get fly. Seriously.

don't just tag along, start a war if you want to

Quit fucking whining and start winning. Yeah it's trite but it's my mantra. It's my fucking pipe and I'm smoking it.

I don't believe in your institutions

...and I've got a little surprise for you. We have become Death, destroyer of worlds, and we looked upon our creation, and saw that it was good.

And.

We.

Burn.

2008-05-10T16:09:00.001-05:00

Final Fantasy II Final Fantasy III

Polite Dissent » May and June Searches: comics, medicine, and medical comics

2006-07-17T13:28:00.000-05:00

Intravenous Pumpkins.

I think I've got a new band name...

Interview: Chip Zdarsky

2006-07-07T02:16:00.000-05:00

Ian Quinn: Why is your medium of choice comics?

Chip Zdarsky: Because I'm relentlessly horny, and comics can be worked on throughout the night, alone. And once in a while you'll need some reference material so you'll just HAVE to go the InterNet, just for a sec, and that "sec" turns into three beautiful, moist minutes.

iq: Do you have a social agenda in your work?

Cz: Yes, thank you for asking.

iq: What level of fame do we (your fans) need to take you to in order to ensure both a comfortable life for you and a steady stream of new, quality work for us?

Cz: High? A high level of fame? I'd like that.

iq: To whom would ye give no quarter?

Cz: The stupidest people I've ever known could still end up being art directors, so to answer your question, I would give quarters to everyone because you never know who is holding the rest of the quarters you so desperately need to play Strider.

iq: What are you, personally, looking forward to doing in your work?

Cz: Something printed in colour, actually, I'm sure you were expecting some smartass answer, but there you have it. Colour. I just want to keep drawing, I'm stupidly lucky in that people pay me to draw and write and colour, so I just hope that continues until I'm dead. People keep telling me that I can live on in my work, but I'm not sure if I believe or understand that. Cause Charles Schulz is still not returning my calls. Love, Chip!

You really should check out Prison Funnies, Chip's website. You should really check out the The Act_I_Vate webcomic blog to see Chip's excellent Zdarskyverse strips, as well as several [many! -ed] other quality strips. Stalk Chip on his livejournal. Chip will be in Austin for the Dragon's Lair 20th Anniversary, August 25th-27th.

--ian That's a fine piece you got there, buddy-boy. Mmmm, a gun like this ain't just for playin' kissy with.

Too cool.

2006-07-06T16:02:00.000-05:00

http://www.pinktentacle.com/2006/07/gallery-of-fantastic-creatures/

Found on boingboing.

I really want my own fantastic creature to put on a shelf somewhere...

--Ian

oh what a tragedy...

2006-07-06T04:42:00.000-05:00

X-Posted to Designated Sidekick

"For example, if you were offered a shot at being in the Teen Titans, why would you take it? The level of death, pain, insanity, torture by demon/alien, loss of loved ones, loss of team mates and the rest that goes with the membership card would have to have you say "Sorry, Suicide Squad has better working conditions"." Quote the Designated Sidekick

Even with the added risk, an offer to join the Titans (or the JLA, or the Avengers, etc.) is like getting drafted to the NFL. Sure, there's a high chance that you could sustain massive, life-threating, crippling, even fatal injuries, but damn, it's the NFL.

Same idea applies, I think. I hope I'm not being overly simplistic here, but I think even within the DCU and Marvel U, there is an urge in the younger/ less popular/ less powerful superheroes to want to play with the 'big boys,' and this has even been written enough times to prove true. (To great effect, I thought, by Grant Morrison in his JLA run, where..um, Kyle Rayner, maybe? is talking about being in the presence of near-gods. feel free to correct me on this one... i know for sure it's JLA, at least. I believe Spidey does a similar thing in the New Avengers title.)

Now really, to get to the heart of it, writers on the big universe books tend to suck. Even when they have great bodies of work outside the big two, they just phone it in, or are forced to do shoehorn work with editorial mandates, or any number of things influenced by ego and the newest summer blockbuster, writing for these licensed-content-generators can't be a terribly rewarding experience. Characters get killed, rebirthed, recharged, crisis-ed of the infinite or identity varieties, etc. etc. ad-freakin-nauseum. It's easy to fill a few pages of paying work with the death of one shmuck or another. If it boosts sales and leads to a few more bucks in your pocket, great. If people get pissed off and start screaming your name from rooftops or message boards, they just need to remember to spell your name right.

So why do we keep buying this crap?

a)Because *we* want to play with the big boys. Through all of this BS, somehow, Batman is still -cool-. Spider-Man could be written to be a furry with a particular fetish for Aunt May in a Snoopy costume, but that's not going to change how great Spider-Man...wait, that might actually do it...

The idea of Spider-Man will remain great. "With great power comesyaddayaddayadda" and all that jazz, there are some amazingly fantastic stories out there starring your friendly neighborhood sad-sack, whether or not another good one ever gets made. The moral to this, I think, is that continuity isn't actually that big a deal. The best stories almost all stem from a revamp, reboot, or retelling these days. Who cares if you miss a few ~~months~~ ~~years~~ decades, if nothing substantial actually happens? Which brings me to...

b)...is a little trickier. b) is your comics geek self-loathing that says it's better to put up with a little crap just so that you can keep having your new crap the week it comes out...and besides, it's bound to get better soon(er or later), and it'd be lame to have a *gasp* gap in your collection run, cuz y'know one day Nightwing #134-147 are going to totally put the little one through grad school... keep in mind, anything that DC or Marvel put a TM or circle-R to are the equivalent of Britney Spears and Avril Lavigne. Superman sells Pepsi... end of fucking story. Especially at the level that books are selling these days, fans are essentially worthless to anyone up the ladder in Marvel or DC. What's your $3 worth when the movie is worth $300,000,000?

So, once you've gotten over b), you take another look at a) and start buying ~~collections~~ wisely, only proven material. Who needs to spend $3 a month for a 10-minute decompressed sexist racist anti-intellectual lightboxed-from-a-porno 'read?'

Not me, not any-fucking-more.

Comics should be good, but they're often not. It seems that when it comes to human artistic endeavour, there's always a need to seperate wheat from chaff. Hopefully one day they'll stop giving jobs to the guys who suck, and keep giving them to the ones who rock. Ones who rock being, by definition, ones who aren't sexist, racist homophobes, and don't resort to easy outs or cheap tragedy to keep the drama level up. Y'know, good writers...

I still read a few big-2 heroes, and am inclined to pick up new ones, too. The great thing about the small market is the freedom it brings. Brubaker's run on Captain America has been amazing to me so far, and I've -never- been a Cap fan before. Gail Simone has me pretty hooked to Birds of Prey, I love Peter David's X-Factor, and am looking forward to Vaughn's Dr. Strange and Brubaker's X-Men, and Morrison's Batman...
--Ian

My {Bizzarre} Soundtrack

2006-07-06T03:08:00.000-05:00

So, here's how it works:
myspace meme that I found particularly interesting... and I just like my funny results, though I could use a much better fight theme.

Open your music player (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, etc).
Put it on shuffle.
Press play.
For every question type the song that's playing.
When you go to a new question press the next button.
Some songs fit perfectly.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Opening Credits: "Blue Lights" - Pretty Girls Make Graves

Waking Up: "Offend in Every Way" - The White Stripes

Falling in Love: "Miss Elaine" - Run D.M.C. (snort!)

Fight scene: "Laid" - James (HAHAHAHAHA!)

Breaking up: "Heel on the Shovel" - 16 Horsepower

Getting back together: "Return to the City of the Dead" - Powerman 5000 (0_0)

Secret Love: "My Vagina" - NOFX

Life's okay: "Join the Dots" - Queen Adreena

Mental breakdown: "Please Hold" - Enon

Driving Flashback: "Tobacco Road" - Albert Collins, James Cotton, Junior Wells (weird...)

Partying: "The Doodler" - Turing Machine

Happy dance: "P.L.U.C.K." - System of a Down (hahaha)

Regretting: "Getting Smaller" - nine inch nails (neat!)

Long night alone: "Give Up... And Move On" - Oneida (Ha!)

Final Battle: "Attack" - System of a Down (YEAH! okay, so this wasn't the first thing that came up... but the others were intro tracks that made absolutely no sense)

Death Scene: "Porno Disaster" - The Octopus Project (hahahaha)

so, in my movie I'm... a homicidal (possibly hermaphrodite) southern porn star.

i think this sounds cool enough to burn. so if any of you want a copy, just ask.

--Ian

This Week...

2006-07-06T01:46:00.000-05:00

Here's the titles and Diamond codes for the books I'm looking forward to this week:

APR060057V OLD BOY VOL 1 TP (C: 1-1-2) $12.95 DAR
Love the movie, haven't read the fanscans of this yet. Looks good, though.

MAR060384D FABLES VOL 7 ARABIAN NIGHTS AND DAYS TP (MR) $14.99 DC
Woohoo! A storyline I haven't already read... This book keeps getting better, for me anyway. I hope the trend continues.

APR060282D TOP 10 BEYOND THE FARTHEST PRECINCT TP $14.99 DC
Hooray for more Top 10.

MAY062007D UNCANNY X-MEN #475 $2.99 MAR
Ed Brubaker starts his run on Uncanny. I'm thinking yes. Could be great...

APR063443E RUROUNI KENSHIN VOL 28 TP (C: 1-0-0) $7.95 VIZ
Woot, the last volume of Kenshin! I'll be happy to have this series complete... So, so great.

APR063014H FLIGHT VOL 3 GN (C: 0-1-2) $24.95 RAN
ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY BRILLIANT! I lurve Flight 1, Flight 2 was even better (and bigger!), so I hope Flight 3 will be simply amazing. The first two were everything an anthology should be.

MAY063379F JAMES BOND MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN SC (NOV035064) (C: 0-1-2) $16.95 DIA
MAY063380F JAMES BOND SPY WHO LOVED ME TP (C: 0-1-2) $17.95 DIA
I know nothing about these, but they might be worth a look...

MAY062758F LICENSABLE BEAR #3 $3.50 ABO
Hooray for Licensable Bear! We should all be wearing Licensable Bear merch. Some~~whore~~one should license some, or something.

DEC053005F MONOLOGUES FOR THE COMING PLAGUE SC $18.95 FAN
This has me almost by title alone... a quick google gets... "Monologues for the Coming Plague is the longest and most ambitious work to date by Anders Nilsen...Taking a cue from the school of Automatic Writing, an aesthetic mode championed by Andre Breton at the beginning of the 19th century that became the foundation of the Surrealist Movement, Nilsen began work on Monologues for the Coming Plague. The process is born out of a stream of consciousness followed by limited editing and rearranging. The book ranges playfully from riffs on the gag cartoon to paranoid soliloquies of a surrealistic apocalypse, with references to contemporary politics, pop culture, and religion, plays on language, and sequential abstractions." [from http://www.fantagraphics.com/recent/bks.html]
Looks like a lot of fun.

MAR063212F THEY FOUND THE CAR $7.95 FAN
Mmm.. more Fantagraphics goodness, this time from Gipi. "a late-night telephone call about a mysterious car which went missing seven years ago and has now been recovered causes a chain reaction of violence." [from Last Gasp]

I'll try to chime in with notes on any or all of this that I get to pick up, later on.

--Ian

Writing Bugs

2006-07-05T18:54:00.000-05:00

I think I've caught the writing bug, again.

More news to follow.

--ian

2006-03-25T10:05:00.000-06:00

I really hope to god I'm the only person on the planet who hadn't seen Street Trash until a few days ago. Seriously. When I think of all the time I wasted in theatres watching crap like Munich when I could have been watching bums play keep-away with a deliciously realistic severed penis... well, no one likes to admit they've wasted their life, but it may be true.

The plot is so loosely woven that when a random element suddenly displays a little relevance, it's like finding the Easter egg full of coke when all you've gotten so far is off-brand jellybeans. At times it feels like two separate movies vaguely connected through a bum with inexplicably clean and glossy hair whose face is covered in shoe polish. On one hand, we have a liquor store owner uncovering a box of 60-year-old Tenafly Viper, which he decides to sell for $1 a bottle to the local winos. The first guy who drinks it dissolves almost instantly into a fabulous blue, green and yellow puddle in a broken toilet. So the Viper is the villain, right? This is a movie about deadly hooch taking out the downtrodden.

Not exactly. On the other hand, we have an emotionally disturbed Vietnam vet with a knife carved from a human femur terrorizing the junkyard over which he prevails. He's the more immediate danger to the protaganist, his kid brother, and their hovel mate, because although the shiny-haired Fred keeps stealing/buying bottles of Viper, he never manages a sip before some other bum comes along and takes them.

As far as plot goes, the rest is pretty inconsequential. Some bums die at the hands of the Bum King, others get ahold of a bottle of Viper. The important thing is that whenever someone dies, it's really gross. There are people melting, exploding, being decapitated, losing penises left and right.... there's a creepy almost-sex-scene between the she-mulletted secretary at the junkyard and Fred's kid brother, a creepier actual sex scene with Fred and a mobster's vomitting girlfriend, there's chicken in people's pants... for the life of me I can't figure out how this movie hasn't replaced It's a Wonderful Life in the holiday rota yet.

Ultimately, the two plots do wander into each other for a gloriously gory finale that's now firmly in my top 10 movie deaths of all time. I'm not speaking to you again until you watch this movie.

2006-02-03T12:20:00.000-06:00

The following are brief descriptions I wrote to accompany the selections on my favorites shelf at work:

If you haven’t tried Girls, it probably isn’t what you expect. It’s an eerie, creative Sci-Fi story with a mean cliffhanger at the end of the first trade. The writing and art are both excellent and there really is a reason the girls are (tastefully) naked.

Help Xoo! Read Seaguy! Like most of Grant Morrison’s work, Seaguy defies simple description. It could be seen as a treatise against Disney that takes place in my own personal psycho-hell, but that doesn’t give enough credit to the billions of subtleties at play.

Here’s what Morrison has to say:

“As the story progressed and took on a life of its own, it soon became clear that it was really about the 'big brothering' of society, omnipresent surveillance and global disinformation. It’s about the dumbing down of culture, the creation of capitalist 'comfort zones' in the midst of social decay, about a world tranquillized and satisfied and quite unaware of the dark glue that holds it all together. …and talking tuna fish.”

Yeah, that’s right, Evil Ernie in Santa Feis one of my favorites and I’m not being ironic. It’s funny, Evil Ernie is actually a pretty sympathetic character (you can’t truly hate someone who was mercilessly abused by his parents as a child and ended up forming a deep psychic connection to Lady Death due to the mistakes of a well-meaning doctor), the art is delightfully gruesome, and really, who doesn’t want to see those Santa Fe schmucks get what’s coming to them?

Here it is. The whole reason I decided to sell comics instead of joining the merchant marine. As you read Transmet (and you will), keep in mind that it was written by an Englishman and began well before September 11, 2001. Also, if you’re not enraptured by the first volume, please give the second one a chance. The first arc is mainly character exposition and I assure you Spider Jerusalem is more than the Hunter S. Thompson caricature some people perceive in the first volume.

Ah, The Invisibles. I won’t lie to you. There’s a good chance you’ll hate this book, or at least that you’ll find it confusing and overwrought. You may have to study it to fully appreciate it. You may also have to approach the story from the point of view of an angry teenager and just go with it. If you’re not afraid to put a little work into your reading enjoyment, though, I promise it’s worth it.

DMZ is like a counterpoint to Ex Machina (see Taj’s shelf). Set in a very near future in which domestic unrest has turned the US into a war zone, it follows an intern photojournalist who crash lands in the Manhattan demilitarized zone on his first mission. He quickly sees a truth that hasn’t been shared with the American people and sets out to tell the story while continuing to live in the DMZ.

Who hasn’t wanted to kill their ugly, creepy children and abusive husband and take on a mission of enlightenment through violence at the prompting of a 50s TV character? Come on, be honest. (this refers to The Milkman Murders)

Do I really have to explain the innate refulgence of anything entitled R. Crumb’s Kafka? This is a Kafka biography peppered with R. Crumb’s illustrations of text from several Kafka stories to help illuminate both Kafka’s writing and life.

Local is a rare book that anyone can jump into at any point. Each story takes place in a different city with (mostly) different characters at a different point in time and is self-contained. The gimmick is that each city is realistically represented in the artwork, but even without that point of interest the stories are unique and the art is engaging.

A Trip to Rundberg is a deliciously depressing tale of zombies chasing rednecks from Austin’s own Nate Southard. The book is treated as an action story rather than a horror story, so the pace is much faster than many zombie books, while still chock full of brain-eating fun.

A man in a suit hands you a gun, a photograph, and 100 untraceable bullets, then invites you to exact revenge on the person who ruined your life at no risk to you. But why? What’s in it for him? Who does he work for? Who does he work against? What do you do? (this refers to 100 Bullets)

I refuse to justify vampire pirates. Just buy the book. (Sea of Red)

Shaolin Cowboy features a silent title character, his acerbically verbose mule, and lots of blood and guts.

I’ll spare you any “a picture is worth a thousand words” wankery. Nat Turner is a virtually text-free Kyle Baker book about… well, Nat Turner. You remember Nat. He led the 1831 Virginia Slave Rebellion. But even if you fell asleep that day in US History the story is clear and compelling.

Banana Sunday is cute. I can’t like cute stuff? It has to be all government conspiracies and death and destruction and social decay? Screw you guys. It’s got cute teenage girls, talking monkeys and apes, and enough mystery and conflict to keep it interesting, while still being enjoyable for all ages.

If you haven’t read V for Vendetta, you need to do so before the movie comes out in March and ruins it. If you have, reread it before the movie comes out in March and ruins it. It’s a classic Alan Moore story of Thatcher’s Britain run amok that will strike a chord with most Americans today.

2006-01-23T11:36:00.000-06:00

Why do I even feel bad when I have to tell people their investment comics aren't worth shit? This time it was some guy with a copy of Silver Surfer #50 with an embossed cover. It's worth about $6, which is $4.50 more than he payed for it in 1991, but of course he was expecting it to at least be in double if not triple digits, I'm sure.

"Why did I hold onto it for so long if it's worthless?" he asked me.

"Because you love Silver Surfer? The art and the story give you pleasure?" I suggested.

"I never read the fucking thing."

Of course I knew he hadn't and my point was lost on him. The first few times this happened it was little old ladies hoping to sell their sons' comics and I was sincerely sorry to tell them they were worth a couple of dollars each and there was nothing I was currently buying. After talking to this guy for a few minutes, though, I actually took pleasure in giving him the bad news and had hoped to discover that he'd payed more than $6 for it originally, but that wasn't the case. It was a gift from his grandmother, it turns out.

Beowulf (2007)

2006-01-19T07:02:00.000-06:00

Beowulf as written by Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman?

Directed by Zemeckis?

Geekgasm.

Can I preorder tix now?

--Ian

BBC NEWS | Technology | Apple addresses iTunes concerns

2006-01-19T06:27:00.000-06:00

And again, witness the power of blogs.

Apple, I think generally, are great. Not quite great like google, who I'm certain are actually plotting world domination, turning us all into GoogleBorg, or something, but Apple's still pretty great.

I wish I had more to add to the IP and privacy and etc. debate, but alas and alack... I'm just happy there are others out there doing good work.

--Ian

BBC NEWS | Europe | Dead whale left outside embassy

2006-01-19T06:19:00.000-06:00

I'm in love with this kind of pranksterism/ demonstration/ what have you.

As opposed to trying to suicidally directly oppose the Japanese whalers, this actually makes a point, and anyone calling Greenpeace stupid for this stunt is obviously just... well, retarded themselves, to be blunt.

Now, can we get a pile of dead US soldiers and Iraqi civilians to dump on the White House lawn?

--Ian

I <3 Half Price Books, Records, Magazines, Inc. Redux

2006-01-19T05:52:00.000-06:00

Same store, round two. Drop $100 and get:

Alan Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thing vols. 2-7

Y the Last Man vols. 1-3

Skreemer & Enigma by Peter Milligan

Our Cancer Year, signed by Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner

Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom & Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctrow

I so win.--Ian

I <3 Half Price Books, Records, Magazines, Inc.

2006-01-16T21:22:00.000-06:00

Howard Cruse's Stuck Rubber Baby. Personalized to Jim Hightower. For $1.48. With an additional 15% off.I win.That is all.--Ian

myspace.heh redux

2006-01-13T04:11:00.000-06:00

a banner ad on myspace is currently telling me:

33 Million People in America with skin have eczema.

I love ad copy.

--Ian
this of course begs the question, how many people without skin have eczema?.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Booming nations 'threaten Earth'

2006-01-12T02:49:00.000-06:00

Booming nations 'threaten Earth'

Earth lacks the water, energy and agricultural land to allow China and India to attain Western living standards, a US think-tank has warned.

Story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4604556.stm

Ok, not that this isn't a disturbing article, but that's one helluva racist headline, I think. I mean, the body text is actually pretty good, but I'd much rather see "India and China Have Chance to Bitch-Slap Western World With Progressive Thinking."

Yeah, yeah, there's a reason I don't write headlines.

--Ian

test

2006-01-12T02:20:00.000-06:00

trying to get performancing to work...

myspace.hah

2006-01-12T02:00:00.000-06:00

X-Factor #2

2005-12-30T14:44:00.000-06:00

X-Factor v4(?) #2 Feb. 2006

Okay, confession time. I don't follow X-books very closely. Didn't pay attention to House of M, at all. I only really bother when it's a writer I'm interested in. Whedon on Astonishing. Grant Morrison on X-Men. Peter Milligan on X-Force (and no, I haven't read much of his current run on Uncanny, either). And I love me some Peter David. X-Factor 87 (the one where the team visits a psychologist) ranks as one of my favorite single issues of all time. The recent Madrox mini was manna from comic heaven. And suddenly there was buzz that it was actually popular enough to launch a new X-Factor series, just in time for Decimation.

Oh, Joy. Big crossover time. That worked really well for David back in his old run. And, what's this you say, Brubaker is writing Deadly Genesis? The big crossover book? Aw, hell.

But it's Peter David writing. And Ryan Sook doing the art chores.

Ryan Sook impressed the hell (pun intended) out of me in... wait for it... Hellboy. He's managed to come a long way from that, even. He's joined by Dennis Callero this issue, who, at first glance, is not as good. I hope Sook will be back to solo soon...

Ian Quinn

Read the rest of this review at http://www.thecomicsreview.com/view.php?ItemID=188

soap box

2005-12-30T05:22:00.000-06:00

Added FeedBurner SmartFeed instead. Point your favorite reader or live bookmark there. Trying to make only the last 30 days show up on the index page.

soap box

2005-12-30T04:44:00.000-06:00

Adding comments, linkbacks, and an Atom feed.  At least, trying to.

www.myspace.com/alisonwiley

2005-12-30T02:31:00.000-06:00

This girl wants to be my friend.

No, I haven't the slightest fucking clue why, either.

--Ian

S&M Airlines by NoFX - Discover Music - Pandora

2005-12-29T19:35:00.000-06:00

So I give the screamo the ol' thumbs down, and up pops NoFX.

Fucking awesome. See, NoFX is offensive. I figure this because they make me laugh my ass off. Often. Anyone that can touch my sense of humor over and over again must be fucking offensive.

NoFX is awesome, and if you don't think so I bet your grandma sucks eggs.

--Ian

California's Burning by Smoke Or Fire - Discover Music - Pandora

2005-12-29T19:27:00.000-06:00

Random Musing:

The problem with...whatever this is...screamo?/modern punk?/???...whatever.

Anyway, it's completely fucking inoffensive. Rock should offend me. This is why Don Henley sucks. So all these fucking bands? They're Don Henley with screaming and loud guitars. Possibly offensive to your parents, but ball-less otherwise.

--Ian

Cochise by Audioslave - Discover Music - Pandora

2005-12-29T19:04:00.000-06:00

I really don't like Audioslave.

Except, this fucking song, man. I mean, it's not quite a great song. But, for one moment, it really sounds like Chris Cornell had a moment of clarity; he was like, "Wait, I've got Rage Against the Machine as my backup band, and I useta know how to write a bitchin' rock song..."So he whipped his cock out, fluffed it up real big, and said "Whoa, it's a little smaller than I remembered..." and then gave us Cochise.--Ian

R.A.P. G.A.M.E. (feat. Manchild & Iz-Real) by Viktor Vaughn - Discover Music - Pandora

2005-12-21T16:05:00.000-06:00

Pandora is the coolest thing ever birthed by Ye Olde Intarwub.

For a while, I might just be liveblogging the cool songs that come up on my pandora radio.So, yeah, Viktor Vaughn, alias MF Doom. For those who don't know, Doctor Doom's real name: Victor Von Doom.This whole album is pretty damn good. This is a good song on a good album...  But pandora's already moved on to the next track, and so have I.

Listen at pandora.com/

$500 Deposit

2005-12-18T12:45:00.000-06:00

Bob the Angry Flower rocks hard.

He chops that fucking Dalek in half. How cool is that?

The Gods of Mars - Google Book Search

2005-12-18T09:57:00.000-06:00

I guess I'm re-hooked on John Carter, Warlord of Mars series.  But short of hunting for it in used bookstores or paying "value-added" prices for old paperbacks, how am I going to read the things again?Off to piratebay and mininova to search for ebooks, I suppose.

Read more at books.google.com/books?...

2004-01-09T18:26:00.000-06:00

troubleshooting

2004-01-09T18:01:00.000-06:00

Reopening, tentatively. --ian

2003-06-16T10:46:00.000-05:00

linky til I get the page fixed: scribbles.

2003-06-15T13:05:00.000-05:00

I am 81% Evil Genius

I am pure evil. I lie awake at night devising schemes of world domination, and I will not rest until all living souls bend to my will.

Take the Evil Genius Test at fuali.com

I rule.

--Ian

2003-06-12T10:09:00.000-05:00

Your Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Score
Category	Your Score	Average
Hacklust	48.11% Will kill for XP	52.6%
Sensitive Roleplaying	70.89% Will talk after everyone important's been killed	52.7%
GM Experience	47.1% Puts the players through the wringer	68%
Systems Knowledge	84.46% Played in a couple of campaigns	89.5%
Livin' La Vida Dorka	52.87% Has interesting conversations in public	61.5%
You are 61.65% pure Average Score: 67.5%
Take The Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Test and see how you match up!

2003-06-12T08:36:00.000-05:00

On and on and on it goes.

I hate it here. I'm stuck staring at this box all day, and my creativity seems drained. I need real people, dammit. My brother is good company and all, but shit, where'd all my friends go?

--Ian

2003-06-09T06:14:00.000-05:00

How evil are you?

2003-05-01T01:58:00.000-05:00

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Very High

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

2003-02-19T00:24:00.000-06:00

Some random videos for ya.

Super Hard Mousse

Dragon Quest commercial

Pocky commercial

Selah,
Ian

2003-02-03T09:08:00.000-06:00

Fuck.

Ronnie quit doing the Unsent Letters. Moments of mirth are now missing from my weekly browsing routine.

Comics as a medium are in dire need of a shot in the arm. I'm the man to do it. More to come on that, later.

Coupling is far better than any TV show has the right to be. I've seriously and literally rolled with laughter watching it. Certainly not for the prudish. I am upset that NBC is threatening to Americanize it to replace friends... I just hope the result is more than satisfactory.

Work sucks. I don't tire of not having a job, I only tire of not having any money.

With that said, WHAT IN THE FUCKING HELL DOES A REASONABLY QUALIFIED YOUNG MAN HAVE TO DO TO GET A MOTHERFUCKING JOB IN THIS GEEDUBYA WAR ECONOMY?!?! [end random violent outburst here.]

Does (creation.) look like a good title for a magazine?

Selah,
--Ian

2003-01-11T18:25:00.000-06:00

This space intentionally left blank.

2002-12-06T14:27:00.000-06:00

Fuck

http://www.2600.org/news/display/display.shtml?id=1441

Just, fuck...

--Ian

2002-12-05T01:38:00.000-06:00

Just thought I would share:

"TiVo is the Royale with cheese of the new millennium!" -- Samuel L. Jackson

--Ian

2002-11-27T01:39:00.000-06:00

From the Worst Forum Ever:

"Florida has Key West, SoBe, DisneyWorld, UF, THe Spaceshuttles, beaches full of supermodels. What the F*** does Texas have????????????? "

Carlo, rassumofallthethingstosayaboutFlafrassum

Texas has spaceshuttles, dadgummit. And last I checked, DisneyWorld was points against. And SoBe is just a PepsiCo company. And the only supermodels I ever saw on beaches in Florida were modeling Depends undergarments.

Texas has Austin, Galveston, and South Padre beaches where the women are both young and gorgeous; the best Mexican food in the entire country; we had Stevie Ray Vaughn; we've had Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, and NBA Championship teams; Texas is HUGE, g*dd@mmit!; Texas has 5 (count 'em, FIVE) Six Flags parks (with Bugs and Batman, which whoops Mickey and friends here to sunday), and Sea World; Ozzy Osbourne pissed on a state monument; we've had the country's (if not the world's) largest rock concert; we schooled Rick Linklater, Robert Rodriguez, and John f-in' Woo; we had a war fought over us; we have real, live cowboys AND indians; we have Texas Instruments and Dell.

I'll grant that Texas sucks, but it doesn't suck nearly as bad as Florida, or any number of other states.

--Ian

phew, I can't believe I just came close to state patriotism there...

2002-11-27T00:55:00.000-06:00

Avril Lavigne's Punk (ass) Guitarist.

lockdown

freedom is slavery

uniqualist me

out

2002-11-13T22:48:00.000-06:00

"Mr. Speaker, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words. The Declaration of Independence is 1,322 words. Government regulations on the sale of cabbage is 27,000 words.

Mr. Speaker, now if that is not enough to stuff your cabbage roll, regulations cost taxpayers $400 billion a year, $4,000 per every family each and every year, year in and year out.

Unbelievable. It is so bad, if a dog urinates in a parking lot, the EPA declares it a wetland.

Beam me up, Mr. Speaker. I yield back 2,800,000 words in our Tax Code."
Congressman James A Traficant, Jr.

--Ian

2002-11-02T16:13:00.000-06:00

Which Colossal Death Robot Are You?

Yay!
--Ian

2002-11-02T00:23:00.000-06:00

My friend Andrew Reeves at schizmatic says that this is the best article to come out of Salon.com. I disagree. This fluff is complete excrement that writes off an entire genre by picking the easy targets... like making fun of Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park is tough, or something. Try coming up with reasons why Rage Against the Machine is trash, not just something you don't like. Or even the Deftones. Or just keep writing bullshit that'll get published because someone out there thinks maybe you're being 'brave.'

On the other hand, this is a Salon.com article worth reading.

Selah,
--Ian

2002-10-18T07:13:00.000-05:00

Lately, I've been at the angle of certain works. Take your average thriller, you can almost bet that you have the setup, a next-to-final confrontation, and then the "twist" final confrontation. This comes up far too many times to count, and you can guess the outcome from the tone of the work. Either the good guy wins, a la a James Patterson work (Kiss the Girls, Along Came a Spider, etc.), or it's a tragedy, as with Se7en.

Now, this leads to some really trite crap, and some revolutionary stuff, no matter how predictable the entire work is. Superhero books fall prey and succeed due to this over and over again. Indie books will, too, according to subject matter. The easy rationalization of this is the old '7 base conflicts' rule, that there's only seven distinct stories to tell, and so craftmanship comes with how the story is told. Fair 'nuff.

So yeah, comicbooks will be comicbooks will be comicbooks. Now, when you hit the 'industry,' you can start beating your head against the wall, because as of yet fans don't differentiate between the trite and the revolutionary. They're willing to stagnate, just like the popular music industry, with the trite crap, the same-old, same-old, the comfortable. Sometimes I really wonder what the average X-fan thinks of Morrison's run, or Milligan/Allred's X-Force/X-Statix. I like to think that, to most of them, picking up the new ish of X-Men is akin to picking up the new N'Sync record, a habit that's maintained with no mind towards quality, substance, or relevance.

In the comics industry it's just a much smaller scale than the record industry, but it's the same none-the-less. I'm not going to feel bad about picking up the new X-Men, just as I'm not going to feel bad about picking up the new Weezer or Korn album. But, I will go out of my way to pick up the Filth, or XXXLivenudegirls, or Finder, or TMNT, or any of a dozen others, just as I'll go out of my way to pick up the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs, or the new Mindless Self Indulgence, or the new Tech N9ne, or the new (international) Noise Conspiracy, or any of a dozen others.

But then, I'm not your average comics fan, just as I'm not your average music fan, but you'll always be playing against the average. Sure, one day works like the Watchmen and Sandman, Strangers in Paradise and Ghost World, etc, might handily outsell the tights-club-of-the-week book, just as the Beatles (should) always outsell the flavor of the week pop phenom. And your average fan ain't gonna fucking understand that there's more to the world than Superman or Britney Spears. Well, fuck, if you've got any taste and you didn't get over that sad fact by the time you were out of high school, then you've got some problems that I can't help you with.

But, if you're willing to grab all of your friends and scream at them that there's this awesome new (or old) work that's full of cred and resonance and craft and CAPITAL-A-FUCKING-ART, then we've got something we can work with, and we always will, and we'll always be able to make sure that the cream of the crop gets recognized as such, no matter how popular the bubblegum flavor of the week is. People will remember and worship Transmetropolitan or Eightball just as they are wont to worship Mudhoney or Sonic Youth. And the world will be a better place for it.

Selah,
Ian
I hope to see you there

2002-10-17T06:38:00.000-05:00

Woo, the Napster debate. I chime in thus:

I am an avid digifansub, mp3, and scanlations downloader. Digifansubs are anime videos encoded and subtitled by fan groups.
Illegal.
Scanlations are manga issues and volumes scanned in and translated by fan groups.
Illegal.
Now, most of these series that are being translated are not yet available in an English language version, although with the growing popularity of manga and anime, they are usually liscensed by various US vendors concurrent to their release in Japan. This does nothing to help the once tenuous legality issues that fansubs were subjected to. It makes the process downright illegitimate and illegal in most cases. Most of the mp3s I download are illegal as well.

Now, the rationalization.

As the supreme ruler of my own little universe, only my rationale exists, and so it applies to everything. I don't give a lick about the artist in question, because of my rationale. Now,

I'm of the firm belief that there is no such thing as a free lunch. If you're getting one, you've done something to deserve it (see: karma). The reverse is true as well. The way I see it, if I grab your mp3, your movie, your comic, etc, for my own personal use and enjoyment, I'm not affecting your pocketbook at all. If I like it, I'll buy it anyway, and if I don't like it, well great, I didn't spend any of my hard-earned dough on your sack of crap. I almost blatantly refuse to buy any album released on a major label today, due to the way the RIAA and the major labels run their business, and the short shrift they give to the people who are responsible for the art. BUT, I will in an instant go see these bands perform live, buy their tshirt, buy them a drink or lunch if I'm in the position to do so. If I think an artist deserves my support, they will damn well see it.

I expect the same of my stuff. As soon as I have stuff to show (which I'm already working on, a bit. see the ::serial:: section of my website, and mp3s at the bottom of the page), I'll give it away for free as well as sell it, because if it's any good, it's gonna come back around. Someone will buy my lunch. If it's crap, then I'll flounder, and I'll spend a lot of time sucking. But I'm not going to blame my lack of success on the assholes that 'steal' my work and give me nothing in return. Hell, even assholes have friends, and if they play my 'stolen' music, or loan my 'stolen' art to those friends, then maybe they'll buy it, or maybe the next friend down the line will. This shit works. Fugazi and Ani diFranco have been running on the same kind of support for years, thriving on it. Admitedly, they're cheap and not free, but it still works. I'm so sick of whining about this and that 'but my work.'

Now, there are extreme cases. I'm gonna be righteously pissed if Disney lifts my work, near verbatim, and uses their power to sell millions of copies to people who have never heard of me. The laws are there to keep that kind of thing from happening, outright theft. But if (ohgodpleaseletitbeso) the Invsbl Skrtch Piklz or Fatboy Slim or Wu-Tang Clan wants to lift my stuff as a piece of sound collage, great. That's spinning my art to a new level, a different direction. That's not theft, that's creation. Creation is nothing if not the use of available materials to create something else. I don't serve my dinner guests sandwiches and milk with the addendum that the milk is by Borden, the bread by Wonder, the jelly by Welch's, the peanut butter Jiff. Filmmakers don't typically go out of their way to thank the architect of the building that frames a key scene, or the automakers that built and designed the cars in that awesome chase scene, or the manufacturer of the firearms used by the hero. Van Gogh didn't have liner notes that came with his paintings detailing the canvas maker, or the paint brand, or the brush maker. I could go on.

The way I see it, a lot of artists are just uncomfortable with their own level of craft, and feel that misuse of their material is a good enough reason to place blame as to why they aren't "making it." Put up or shut up, if you can show me that you're the second coming of Lennon, and that l33t J03 H4XX0r is ruining your burgeoning career by spreading mp3s of your opus on the almighty equalizer (read: Internet), then I'll change my tune faster than an altar boy evading a pederast priest. But if you're just Brand X (pick a fucking target), dropping another piece of brain-dead, derivitave, talentless, self-referential, indulgent, cliched crap, then back the fuck up and take stock of why you really aren't 'making it' as an artist, and find another hobby. I hear politics is a rewarding field.

Selah,
Ian

2002-10-06T03:37:00.000-05:00

fuck, it's a wonder that people are still coming here, but the stats say you are, so I feel obligated to put something here.

I went and saw Meg Lee Chin. This ruled. If you want some pics, click this: megcam.zip

This is the best Meg show I've seen yet, out of 7. Severly cool, and with any luck she'll be coming back with Pigface sometime soon. My god this woman deserves to be a star, absolutely stunning music, presence, everything. The pics will get you a little of the way there, but words can't do it justice. You just have to see and hear this stuff for yourself. Go check her out at megleechin.com

And uh, yeah. As ever, life is tough, but I make it by somehow. I'm almost to sick of everything else to discuss it. I'm sure this won't last long though. Anyways,

Selah,
--Ian

2002-09-17T18:44:00.000-05:00

Thanks for coming, even with the lack of regular updates.

It's movie time... I'm gonna go see One-Hour Photo later, Notorious C.H.O. Friday, The Transporter as well next weekend... lots of fun stuff.

I'm catching up on my Miike movies, so far I've seen Fudoh, Audition, Battle Royale, Ichi the Killer, and City of Lost Souls. I get to watch Visitor Q soon, and I'm hoping to find Dead or Alive before the week is out.

--Ian

2002-09-10T06:49:00.000-05:00

I have no idea who you people are, but I hope you have some idea of who I am.

It's daylight soon... It's the part of dawn that's actually kind of worth watching, as the sun slowly starts to burn away the night previous, slowly brightening the sky inbetween glances through the window.

--Ian

2002-09-07T21:22:00.000-05:00

The days go by so quickly.

My prose is failing me, but hopefully it'll come back soon. I am writing a little (very little) every day, and something will click soon. I will make motivation my bitch...

I think a lack of feedback from anyone is really stultifying. I'm missing both the validation and the criticism. I wish that I had a better support system for that kind of thing in place. But alas, I do not. So if any of you reading this want to comment, or drop me email, or whatever, you know where to reach me. If you don't, it's stain099NO@SPAMyahoo.com Of course, remove the NO SPAM...

Not that there's a lack of excitement. Being an American is tough right now, especially being an American with a brain and a conscience. I don't know how to fix things, I sure as hell wish I did. But no one else seems to have any particularly good ideas, either. I'm not fond of the idea of invading Iraq, but I do think the barbarians should be brought into the 21st century... Barbarians all over the world, that is.

This is scary. Although, I'm glad I read This Modern World.

As the days and weeks go by, I find myself coming to agreement with most of what the liberal world wants to tell me, as I see the conservative side, whom I tend to agree with on a lot more things than even I would expect, becomes more and more irrational and bloodthirsty. It's disheartening, and scary, and overall, depressing. I just don't know what to think anymore. I don't want to think anymore. I just want to keep listening to music, keep reading comics, and get on with my life. Sometimes I wish I weren't so upset about everything else.

But, fuck, someone has to.

If I'm not gonna scream about the injustice of it all at every available opportunity, who is? I haven't seen any of you do it.

I'm done... nothing left to write, now.

Selah,
--Ian

2002-09-04T05:00:00.000-05:00

Apparently, I'm not "doable". Look for -iq-

2002-08-30T01:38:00.000-05:00

New address, new scribbles, new pic, new links, check them out.

Selah,
--Ian

2002-08-28T21:26:00.000-05:00

Chunk of convo with Ronnie:

rainier street: and to answer your question

rainier street: it's men that suffer delusions of thiness

SpiderJ099: heh, I don't think body issues are unique to men or women

SpiderJ099: but I do think that there might be women out there with delusions of thinness

rainier street: there probably are

rainier street: but, the pasty old man in a speedo image

rainier street: exists for a reason

SpiderJ099: yeah, fatchicksinpartyhats.com exists for a reason too

rainier street: good god

Selah,
--Ian

2002-08-27T14:45:00.000-05:00

ambivalent/ ambiguous

Post #1 for the day,

Just have to force myself to write here for a bit, not sure why, just need to get those muscles working. So, unless you think I might be able to ramle out something intelligible, I'd say don't read this train wreck of a post.

Are fat people capable of a reversed form of the delusion that makes skinny people think they're fat? Is that at a 1:1 ratio, describing some horrible trick of nature, where there are a bunch of fat chicks wearing thongs who actually are under the impression that they've got a smaller waistline than Kate Moss, for every girl who weighs a buck-oh-five who won't wear a bikini for fear of showing off her love handles?

Just a thought. Pay no mind.

Selah,
--Ian

2002-08-27T01:45:00.000-05:00

ambivalent/ ambiguous

I give up... Love Hina is not a guilty pleasure. The manga is freaking awesome, one of the funniest and warmest stories I've ever read. There, I said it. (And the cheesecake is still nice).

Transmetropolitan is (more-or-less) over. I'm mourning, along with everyone else who has a clue and is reading this book. Nothing else like it out there, in a good way.

Now I'm going to go sit and have a good cry over the whole mess.

Yeah, right.

Selah,
--Ian

2002-08-25T23:00:00.000-05:00

ambivalent/ ambiguous

Pad Thai is the ultimate comfort food. Good stuff.

And I've been told that the only way to keep traffic up is to keep posting, so that people have something to keep coming back to look at. Seems to be sound advice.

Comics are very near and dear to my heart. I'm getting absolutely hooked on TokyoPop's new $10 manga volumes... Too many good series out, it's like the Lone Wolf & Cub and Astro Boy trades... $10 a pop for a ton of them is still a lot of money, and they're getting it from me.

Kodocha is the first pick for me. A totally insane comedy, great translation and adaptation, and some touching drama too. All time great series, I think. If I had a kid, I'd almost want it to be Sana... She'd know how to put up with me...

The Cowboy Bebop manga is neccesary just for the liscense, to see more of the CowBe characters. It's really not that great, but they do keep the characters pretty well, which is what's key to this, and it's short at 3 volumes, of which I already have two. So in the spirit of completists everywhere, I'll pick up the third.

GTO Great Teacher Onizuka is just as good as everyone told me it was... Unfortunately, because that means yet another series to pick up on a monthly basis. It's really easy to identify with the almost-lecherous Onizuka, and so this book is really fun to read. Tons of comedy and touching characters, a creator in top form.

Love Hina, well, I'm just a sucker for a good shounen romance/ comedy, and so I am a Tenchi fan. There, I said it. And so, Love Hina appeals to that oh-so-dirty side of me very very well. It's very funny, and very endearing.

There's a few others I'm thinking of picking up, which I don't know much about... Priest, Ragnarok, umm... I'm fading... oh well,

Selah,
--Ian

2002-08-24T22:36:00.000-05:00

catharsis/ denial - realization

So I'm busy mourning love lost and opportunities squandered, and I never stop to think that I'm in the best, or worst, possible place I could be at the moment.

So I step back, take a look at myself, and see that of anyone, I've got the most room to thrash around and flail until I grab hold of that ledge, that one that I can pull myself up on to and be stable again, for however long the ledge holds, until it inevetably breaks like a cliff on a Roadrunner cartoon.

But such is life, and if I know that it's going to break, at least I should be able to order some Acme™ Rocket Skates and power through to the next one... and the next one... and the next...

Because if I don't, and if I don't start now, I'm proper fucked.

This was my life. It never made much sense to me.

There are people out there that I owe major debts to, be they public, private, financial, emotional, what have you... To these people, I say thank you.

Now get the fuck off my back before I snap and take a Jr High with me.

And there's no reply.

So I'll slip and stumble some more over words and feelings as I try to make sure and hurt[not hurt] myself. Masochism[self-preservation] is a mighty instinct, one that's very difficult to overcome.

Gah, this skin itches.

Selah

--Ian

2002-08-23T02:47:00.000-05:00

Chapter 3 posted, new format... just click the serial link under this window.... enjoy, please.

--Ian

2002-08-22T15:59:00.000-05:00

Open letter to "Ashley," if you're still reading this thing, drop me an email at stain099@yahoo.com I'd love to hear from you.

--Ian

2002-08-09T07:14:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah. Happy Birthday Elliott, MAI BURATAH!

2002-08-09T06:37:00.000-05:00

- 2 -

I was in Minneapolis when my Grandfather died.

I was still there two weeks later when I finally got the news.

A man named Jonathon Briggs contacted me at work on January First. He had been a college friend of my mother's, and had last seen me when I was seven years old. His company did business with the one I work for a few years back, and he recognized me in a brief encounter in the meeting room.

My mother had been in touch with him through e-mail for a while, and had let drop that I was completely out of pocket during this time of familial crisis. This jogged his memory enough to go looking, and find me despite two lateral promotions between groups with poor to no communication.

I am constantly amazed and astounded by the small world syndrome. The very instant I decide I've completely distanced myself from the various vagaries of my past, something comes back to show me how wrong I am.

I spent years being my own man, years spent in an irresistable ignorant bliss, running away from the old self, blind to all of the old bullshit. And here it was, staring me in the face again.

My memories of my grandfather are mostly gentle and prosaic. A too short lifetime of trips to the mall for toys or music, Christmas mornings, Thanksgiving dinners, the odd fishing trip, or the evening bowling. Sick days away from school spent in the care of the old man, playing gin and checkers. The smell of his aftershave, and his bristly stubble rubbing against my face or forehead during a hug or a kiss. The looks of astonishment as I repaired an old television, or tinkered with a computer. The words of encouragement towards refining my skills with electronics. Tens and twenties slipped between fingers with the admonishment not to tell my parents. (Who would eventually think that it was drug money, or other ill-gotten gains.) His random mysterious smiles.

The sick feeling of despair and desperation as his brain slowly ceased to function as he sunk into senility brought on by Alzheimer's disease.

The last time he called me by my name was to ask for a glass of ice water as we watched a golf match on TV. Had I known that would be it, I would have personally axed a chunk of the arctic and brought it to him in a crystal goblet. Instead, it was a recycled plastic fast-food cup filled with tap water.

After that, I was my father. I was a high school friend. I was an army buddy. Anyone but me.

Shortly thereafter, I left. I could no longer deal with a world that could allow something so heinous to happen. Had I been told it was a sign of Armageddon, of the end times, I would have believed.

Maybe at some point I realized it was just the same old bullshit, but it was never a concious decision. Instead, I just buried it and let it lie, just like any other emotion I might have felt in relation to the place, to the life, that I left.

It's not that life was horrible. It was intolerable to me, but not horrible. I'm certain there are worse places to spend your childhood. I've heard about them in music, seen them on the news. Regardless, I had the undeniable imperative to run far, far away and not look back. I didn't ever want to be reminded of that place. I didn't want to remember that I had a childhood.

But there it was. The old me, resurfaced, resurrected, warts and all. Ugly reminder of something I thought was well behind me. For all I knew, or even cared in as much as I thought about it, he had been dead for years. Why did I care now? His mind had passed long ago, isn't that what counts? I couldn't see the import in the passing of the body. His death was a moot point.

But it found me. Damn it all, it found me. It crept in, and settled deep. I needed closure, finality, or something, to make it go away. That deadly feeling washed over me in a tidal wave, and I sunk. Suddenly almost dead to stimuli, feeling deaf, dumb, and blind. I set my body on auto-pilot, no longer in control. No longer with the power to take control. But I could feel it. I was going back.

I was going back to Texas.

--Ian

2002-08-05T04:13:00.000-05:00

beginning/ belonging

here's the first chapter from a new work in progress. i hope you enjoy it.

- 1 -

Time slows down the first time I see or hear anything great. I've learned to appreciate this. It gives me time to contemplate and revel in whatever it is I'm experiencing.

Many three-minute bursts of rock music have given me time to think, re-think, and over-think my relationship with rock n roll.

It took me a long time to find out that it works the same way for bad news.

I've never had a near-death experience, I've never seen my life flash before my eyes.

But I think I know how it works.

When the time seems to slow, my brain goes into overdrive. In a seizure inducing montage of images, sounds, ideas, and feelings, I falter and stumble.

It's not life, by any stretch. It's not sequential, even remotely so, it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make enough sense to be a dream. It is completely ethereal and overwhelming.

If prone to motion sickness, it would induce vomiting. If prone to weeping, it would induce loud crying jags. If prone to hysterics, it would induce furious screaming. If prone to violence, it would induce broken bones. If prone to fainting, it would induce catatonia.

I am prone only to apathy. I just sit, stunned and stewing.

Suddenly, I know what clothes in the wash feel. Wash, rinse, spin.

In rare cases of bliss, I'm affected longer than the song lasts.

In every case of bad news, I am left reeling, as if having been on the recieving end of a left hook to the jaw. I can remain that way for hours, or days.

I spent a week battered and bruised before I got over being dumped for the first time, in high school.

I spent a full day delirious after losing the first job I gave a shit about.

I spent several hours sulking after recieving my first rejection letter, from the University of California at Berkeley.

I never thought it could last a year.

2002-08-05T03:51:00.000-05:00

pic

Old yet new

2002-07-27T02:00:00.000-05:00

the kinks own me

there's something about my 'creeper' bands.

what i mean by that is, bands that i love, but constantly forget about.

there's many bands in that list, some that i should be ashamed to admit aren't in my constant rotation. the kinks is one of the best examples.

i can't think of a kinks song that i don't like. father x-mas is one of the best rock christmas songs ever. just so much good music from this band, spanning decades. and they are, after all, the somewhat direct precursor to 'metal.'

so i get in a mode of listening to a band, or a few, over and over and over and over like a retarded 5-year-old, and don't exactly burn out so much as phase out. and then it can take months to phase a band back in. and so i'll go several months at a time without listening to the kinks, the flaming lips, hum, or apples in stereo, among many others.

so maybe i try to make a concious effort to listen to these guys more often, but it never really works. they fade out to the back of my mind, only to return with this "oh wow, i forget how much these guys make me happy" vibe, which is great. maybe it's better this way. maybe i've got it set up like this in my head as some kind of escape mechanism. i get into a funk, i can turn on one of these bands and go "wow, life does have a myriad things that are good and true."

it's really difficult to believe that my brain is anywhere near that well ordered, organized, and constructed. i think i'm just retarded some of the time, which is true of all people. so if my biggest retardation is forgetfullness of favored bands, as well as miscelaneous other forgetfullness streaks, then i've lucked out, i guess.

it could be a lot worse. i could be the president.

Selah,
--Ian

2002-07-23T07:28:00.000-05:00

and, a few days later...

it's tuesday morning in arlington texas.

what the fuck am i still doing here?

so i'm still stuck in this shithole town. tough fucking luck for me, right? and i'm at a loss as to what to do with myself, which is no surprise.
i don't need another reason to be disgusted with myself. so i need to get home, get work, get moving. i don't need to be lazing about up here, throwing days away. and boy is it ever so much easier to write in the first person.

There's this one spot, it must have magic in it. I've been there a few times, it's fantastic.

and it's all been said and done, i know. but i feel like it needs to be said again, and hell, it is my journal, after all.
arlington sucks.

Selah,
--Ian

2002-07-11T20:47:00.000-05:00

"...now with semi-hourly updates!"

still muthafuckin bored.

2002-07-11T18:40:00.000-05:00

annoyed/ ennui

Muthafuckin A I'm bored with everything.

Bourne Identity was a great movie. Perfect escapism, just what I needed. But now I'm back to real life and disappointed. And it's not looking up any time soon. My landlord is the worst definition of scum possible, there are no jobs in this town...

Gah, fuck it.

Selah,
-Ian

2002-07-04T19:20:00.000-05:00

If you should have a problem with me, please consult my attorneys.

2002-07-02T10:33:00.000-05:00

employed/ implode

Great, I'm ready for work at 10:30 am, and have to be there in half an hour. Luckily for me, it's just as bleak and dreary out there as it has been the past several days. If it were actually nice outside, I might resent going to work. As it is I just kind of loathe it.

Work sucks.

And it's all your fault.

Selah,
--Ian

2002-07-01T17:17:00.000-05:00

adrenaline

Fuck You, Soccer Mom.

Did the rain make you stupid? Or were you born that way?

Or was it that your minivan made you feel all powerfull? Or maybe it was the margarita you sucked back with your fellow Soccer Mom friends there at Chili's?

I really hope that you look back and realize that you did indeed deserve that middle finger, and several more like it. That you are a dumb cunt who shouldn't be allowed to drive in inclement weather, nay, at all.

I hope that the incident did some kind of major dollar value damage to your precious Caravan (or was it a Voyager?), after leaving me nothing but a spit-buffed paint scratch.

I hope that the stress brought on by worrying about what a stupid stupid boil on the ass of humanity you are builds up into a massive anyeurism.

I hope you have a pleasant day.

Selah,
--Ian

2002-06-29T23:43:00.000-05:00

ambivalent/ ambiguous

Gentle hypocrisies, yeah. That's my tangent.

They allow us to be the compassionate, empathic, loving, kind, and generous people that we are. And then simultaneously be cynical, jaded, bitter, spiteful, and nasty people that we are. Isn't that just super fucking nice?

I really don't know anymore. Maybe I'm degrading into nothing more than a factory of bile, shit, piss, and vinegar. I'm pretty damn sure that I need a paradigm shift. A gestalt change. Because if it doesn't happen, I'm just gonna hate everyone around me. And that isn't good for me, let alone them.

Especially since I'm not particularly prone to hate to begin with. There are few people in the world that I actively hate, and most of them are far off monsters. I don't want to become a hate-filled husk of my former self just because I'm unhappy with my current situation.

I'm just so tired of everything.

Selah,
--Ian

2002-06-28T19:30:00.000-05:00

embittered/ emboldened

I've been told that every generation has a great freakout. That every couple of years people start crying "DOOM!" and running around like chickens with their heads cut off. I realize that this is true. Every generation thinks that it is worse off than any that came before it. Boo-fucking-hoo for us right? We've got running water, electricity, the internet, the printing press, radio, television, motherfucking Hollywood and shit. We've got central heating and air, indoor plumbing, hardwood floors and wall-to-wall carpeting. We've got IRAs and 401ks and compound interest oh my. We've got Pizza Hut, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Budweiser, and Starbucks. We've got Neverwinter Nights, Spider-man, and Harry Potter. Hip-hip-hooray!

We've also got a political and economic structure that's corrupt and rotten to the core. We've got hundreds of thousands of people working at less than a living wage. We've got the television to tell us that it's all OK, that we're all OK, that we can all own Acuras that will pick up the intercom at our house, and tell us exactly where on earth we are. We can all make ourselves look like the folks in the Smirnoff Ice commercials, and then eat McDonald's to celebrate. We've got a war that is ripping away our personal freedoms as quickly as it kills innocent folk whose only crime amounts to something along the lines of having never had a Frappacino and a Big Mac. And not allowing our biggest corporations to run rampant drilling for oil on foreign soil in order to fatten their already enormously overinflated pockets. The most powerful man on earth is a drug-addled bigotted money-hungry nepotistic idiot puppet-prince. We're living the nightmares of conspiracy theorists, and we aren't paranoid enough to care anymore.

We are fucking apathetic, ignorant, docile apes. We care more about who J-LO IS FUCKING THAN WE CARE ABOUT THE STATE OF OUR NATION, POSSIBLY THE GREATEST FUCKING NATION EVER KNOWN TO MAN. We could care less about the raping of our innocence and the theft of our well-being. Obviously, because we haven't done a thing about it. WE HAVEN'T DONE A FUCKING THING BUT TO BEND OVER AND POLITELY ASK FOR MAYBE JUST A BIT MORE LUBRICATION. We haven't so much as squeaked out a request for a reach-around, let alone massive, all-encompassing social and political reform.

Because if we did, then something might actually happen. And that change would break our fragile psyche, so change be damned. Because one person can not make a difference, so I'm not going to try because no one else is. I like where I am. I won't be affected. I'll be dead before the worst of it could start. We could end up wasting the best part of our lives railing against the unjust brick wall that's not going to move, anyway. So we'll self-hypnotize into a state of zen-like calm and even ecstasy as we lose everything that our forefathers lived and died for. Because we like things the way that they are. WE LIKE TAKING IT UP THE ASS! LET IT BE KNOWN THAT WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ARE SO DELUDED AND LULLED INTO OUR FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY THAT WE NOW LOVE THE BRUTAL TORTURE THAT OUR WAY OF LIFE IS UNDERGOING, AND THAT WE AREN'T GOING TO DO A FUCKING THING ABOUT IT.

Because if we did, we might have to work for it or something. And that's not the american way, dammit.

--Ian
scared shitless, witless, clueless, useless, tight-lipped, tight-fisted, tight-assed, half-assed, ass-licking, money-grabbing, ego-jabbing, sniveling, grovelling, moaning, groaning

2002-06-27T16:15:00.000-05:00

The cosmic finger of friendship.

2002-06-27T11:15:00.000-05:00

and if i'm wasting my time

Answer these using the lyrics of only ONE band:

Band: The White Stripes

1. Male or Female?: The same boy you've always known.

2. Describe yourself: I'm bound to pack it up and go away.

3. How do they feel about you?: People don't even know me/ But they know how to show me/ Why can't you be nicer to me?

4. How do you feel about yourself?: My pride is dying/ I think I'm all done lying/ Whoa-oh/ Nobody's sharing/ So I stopped caring

5. Describe your gf/ bf: So many times I've gotten used to this/ This whole idea of being all alone

6. What would you rather be doing?: So does that mean that there's no more doing/ And there's no more thinking/ And there's no more feeling/ 'Cause there's no right opinion/ Can you tell me what I'm supposed to Do?

7. Describe where you live: When you're in your little room/ And you're working on something good/ None of it's really good/ You're gonna need a bigger room

8. Describe how you live: I'm patient of this plan/ As humble as I can/ I'll wait another day/ Before I turn away/ But know this much is true/ No matter what I do/ Offend in every way/ I don't know what to say

9. Describe how you love: The calmest blue ocean water cannot stop/ My heart and mind from burning

10. Share a few words of wisdom: There is a man/ A certain man/ And for the poor you may be sure that he'll do all he can/ Who is this one/ This favorite son/ Just by his action has detraction magnets on the run/ Who likes to smoke/ Enjoys a joke/ And wouldn't get a bit upset if he were really broke/ With wealth and fame/ He's still the same/ I'll bet you five he's not alive if you don't know his name

2002-06-24T15:17:00.000-05:00

ambivalent/ ambiguous

A plan is just a list of things that don't happen.

Never in my life has this statement been more fucking plain and true.

I feel like I should be horribly depressed. There's no one left. Nothing left. It all fizzled, went out with a whimper. And I saw it all happening. I felt it all happening.
But I'm okay. Maybe it just feels like a moderately fresh start. Maybe it's all just a false tell, and I'm just gonna go about business as usual. I'm not gonna let this all bring me way down. It won't fucking happen. Not on my watch. I'm going to fuck this shit up like there's no tomorrow, because at this point there really isn't.
Because for all my planning, I don't fucking know what I'm going to do ten minutes from now, let alone tomorrow. So it's just not there. How zen.
And when things finally work out, I'm going to revel in it. I'm going to sit back and gloat. I'm going to laugh at you.

You know who you are.

Selah,
Ian

2002-06-20T03:15:00.000-05:00

inchoate/ indistinct

What makes beer such holy ground? I've seen guys decry the evils of Starbucks, Wal*Mart, et al, until they are blue in the face.
And yet, they head down to the bar and immediately start throwing back Guiness and Bass.
You thought I was gonna say Budweiser didn't you? No, I'm sorry, most of my friends have taste. And Budweiser is evil. No questions there.
But I digress. I'm not going to insinuate that Guiness is an evil corporation. I don't know that. I attended a focus group study for Guiness. I got paid a $100 to find out that they market Guiness directly to young people, selling it almost as the "grown-up's" drink. And I got to tell them that they had a lot of stupid ideas.
I can't say much more about that, because I believe I signed an NDA.
So, they sell poison and market it directly to young people. Yeah, it's definitely a tasty beverage. And there's that whole country history of rampant alcoholism. So is that what makes it ok?

I'm all for gentle hypocrisies. Hell, if I weren't, I probably wouldn't be able to make it day to day. I just try to stay aware of mine. I don't dash them, because there's no point. I'm built out of gentle hypocrisies. I just wonder if other people are as aware. Something tells me they're not. And isn't that high and mighty of me?
bah

Selah,
-Ian

2002-06-15T01:54:00.000-05:00

pass me the coat hanger, Jim

SpiderJ099: gah, Audition is horribly awesome.
HansandJudy: hunh?
SpiderJ099: listening to an interview with the director
SpiderJ099: Japanese movie
HansandJudy: oh.
SpiderJ099: it's... unique
HansandJudy: write about it on your website. better than tacky pro-life jokes. then i can read about it later when my eyelids aren't drooping.
SpiderJ099: hey, that's not a joke
SpiderJ099: it may be tacky, but it's not a joke
HansandJudy: well, at least we agree that it was tacky...
SpiderJ099: it's more of a moral imperative
HansandJudy: what--to be an insensitive dick?
SpiderJ099: -_-
SpiderJ099: no, as in if pro-lifers are going to go around proclaiming abortion to be murder, then miscarriages must be natural death, with all the trappings thereof.
HansandJudy: not all pro-lifers say that abortion is murder. get your facts straight, lest you continue to sound like an under-educated nitwit.
SpiderJ099: ...
SpiderJ099: every pro-lifer I've ever encountered says that it's murder.
SpiderJ099: if you're pro-life, what other reason is there?
HansandJudy: lots of reasons. yes, i am pro-life.
SpiderJ099: *shrugs*
HansandJudy: classy.
SpiderJ099: I don't see any reason other than believing that it is murder to want to revoke by law another person's right to choose.
HansandJudy: did i say anything about revoking laws? check your prejudices at the door. or at least the keyboard. it's disrepectful and ignorant to base your assumptions on easy stereotypes. wake up a little, would ya?
SpiderJ099: I work on classic definitions until you tell me otherwise.
SpiderJ099: Pro-lifers, classically, want no one to have the right to abort a baby.
HansandJudy: cite your source.
SpiderJ099: Every single pro-life advocate I've ever seen on TV, heard on the radio, or talked to in real life.
SpiderJ099: Every picket line in front of an abortion clinic.
SpiderJ099: Every minister who has made a personal vendetta against abortion clinics.
SpiderJ099: Every "concerned citizen" who wants to shut down Planned Parenthood
HansandJudy: uh-huh. and i suppose you feel you've met the overwhelming majority of pro-lifers in the country, so you're an expert now?
SpiderJ099: Look, I believe that in an ideal society, we wouldn't need abortions, and I don't think that they should be happening.
SpiderJ099: I don't like the idea, at all.
HansandJudy: those of us who aren't radical don't exactly make the evening news. quit being so tunnel-visioned.
SpiderJ099: So by that rationale, I'm pro-life.
SpiderJ099: But, from the standpoint of whether you should be able to do it or not, I'm pro-choice.
HansandJudy: okay, fine. i'm just saying, don't equiate "pro-life" with "pro-coat hanger," okay?
SpiderJ099: Who said that I equate it as such?
HansandJudy: implied as much.
SpiderJ099: Uh-huh. Methinks you'd be grasping.
SpiderJ099: Methinks you shouldn't equate "pro-choice" with "pro-abortion"
HansandJudy: and methinks you are very, very young, and generally have no idea what you are talking about. okay? just an opinion.
SpiderJ099: Ok, waitaminute. You're attacking me, from the word 'go.' You haven't given any sources or info either. So I'm playing against an empty table.
SpiderJ099: If you don't believe that laws should be passed in order to abolish abortion, then what makes you pro-life?
HansandJudy: eh, well... anyone can cite sources. anyone can grasp at loose arguments. the point here, actually, is that it takes maturity to be sensitive, and all this started out as was my suggestion that you not alienate one of the possibly most consistent visitors to your website by posting items which could be offensive to said reader. if you've got lots of other hits on the site, then okay, i'll go back to cnn.com
SpiderJ099: Wow, so as long as I'm being insecure and self-deprecating, I'm not offensive, but when I make a Carlin-esque "Things that make you go 'hrrrrrmmmmm...'" style joke, all of a sudden I'm being offensive?
HansandJudy: difference is, you are aware when you're being insecure and self-deprecating, but you didn't seem to consider the fact that the joke (which, by the way, are you now admitting to the fact that it was a joke? your word now, not mine) could be offensive to others. i don't think it's any healthier or nobler to be insecure and self-deprecating, but that is a different issue.
SpiderJ099: It's one of those half-jokes. Like saying our president is a mongoloid idiot.
HansandJudy: wow, i'm so not half-laughing. that's the problem with half-jokes. they're not half-funny.
HansandJudy: must sleep. laters.
*** HansandJudy signed off at Sat Jun 15 01:46:02 2002.

2002-06-10T18:12:00.000-05:00

do pro-lifers hold funerals for miscarriages?

2002-06-07T10:53:00.000-05:00

daisuki/ daifuku

W00t!!1! Caffeine high!
Far (the band) is great. Check them out.
Umm... I wish I had more to say. Oh, Blame! is probably the coolest manga I've read. I'll post some pages later. It's super cool.
And umm... yeah. I'll speak again when something comes to me.

Selah,
Ian

2002-06-03T14:07:00.000-05:00

exhumed/ exhausted

I'm back. AKon was again a blast. The Anime Heretics party was... ah, interesting.

Thursday
Arrive in Arlington at 5:30 AM. Wake up around 2 PM. Try to entertain myself in godforsaken town. Fail miserably. Hit the Anime Heretics party around 7 PM. Mistake. Danny and Eric aren't there, being who I wanted to see. Talk to friends I took to the party exclusively until pizza shows up. Eat pizza, leave. Go to IHOP. (Yay Arlington). Stay up until 3 AM playing Frequency for PS2.

Friday
Arrive at Kon around 8:30 AM. Run around waiting for the dealer's room to open. As soon as the dealer's room opens at 11 AM, grab the first two volumes of FLCL manga. Too bad I don't read Japanese, this comic looks spectacular. Go on shift at noon, actually work this year. Running around dropping stuff off, setting up signage... Super fun. 4 PM, go to the Iron Artist "competition." Umm, nevermind. I absolutely hate poorly carried out panels. This one was the worst. Stan Sakai wasn't there, as advertised in the program, and Newton Ewell didn't show up either. So we had Fred Perry from Golddiggers and two guys I had never heard of (One of which was Steve Kyte, who ended up being rather good. And rather English.) This would be easier if I had kept my Kon schedules. Panel is over at 5 PM, and we watch a few minutes of Tokemeki Memorial. I will go in to how much I loathe dating sim anime at a later date. This show sucked. Ari and I heckled quietly to each other, which made it a bit more bareable. Hit the bar with Mark much later, have a beer. Nice. Catch a bit of the Duel Jewel concert. Freaking awesome. Otaku don't understand the concept of Vis-Rock, I'm guessing. Heard "Damn that chick is cute" at least once. Watch Battle Royale with friends. Asshole next to me doesn't understand theater ettiquite. I feel bad for not explaining it to him.Try to go to the dance. The DJ really blows goats. Leave dance.

Saturday
After finding no parties Friday night (because my dumb ass forgot to call a couple of people. Hi Nicole.), I crash out at 2 AM. Am woken up at various points in the night by snoring roommate, and then permenantly at 7:30 AM because the rest of the roommates want to be morning people. Start working at 8 AM. Finish at noon. Run around killing time waiting for panels. Go to Nov Takahashi's State of the Industry panel, which this year is being used to hawk a new weekly manga zine they're trying to bring to the states. I wish them luck, but I feel so used for being turned into a focus group. Not that I couldn't have gotten up and left... But still. Try to go to the Megatokyo panel, but it was too quiet. They needed some severe work on PA systems. Go and watch a bit of Alien 9, then stand around talking to Fred 'Piro' Gallagher, get my sketch of Largo w/ b33r. Supernice. Superl33t. Ari goes to sleep, I go to the bar with Mark again. Watch some neat Visual Kei and J-Rock videos, as well as some random K-Pop. Highlight: Linkorean Park. These guys rocked. ^_^ Am only mildly buzzed as we leave the bar. Mark manages to vanish easily, so I say bye to the others of his group and go to look for him, with no results. End up hanging out with Sarah for a few minutes, and we go back down to the bar. Her roommates are not my favorite people already. Mark shows up at the bar, so we start chatting again. End up carousing with him for a few, and then finding Nicole and Miguel, with an old friend Elliott in tow. Wow, someone I had never ever expected to see. So we go up to their room, I have a glass of wine and a beer. Neat. They head down to hentai fest, I head back down to the dance. Run back in to Mark's conquest of the night, we go back looking for them, find his room, with him not in it. I sit around being fairly uncomfortable around a bunch of people I don't know, which is odd for me. I leave again, find Mark, tell him of the goings on in his room... He gets so excited, we immediately go back. Now things are a bit more fun and bizzare. Pictures getting snapped left and right of a bunch of girls making out. woohoo. So we finally find another party with some more booze, run into Arik, woo fun. Get stinking piss drunk, ouch. Sit around watching bi girls make out and sing shitty Indigo Girls tunes to each other. Finally spot Roz and Ari in the parking lot from Mark's balcony. Run down and talk to them. Convince them to go back to Arlington.

Sunday
We wake up the next day too late to do much of anything at Kon, so when we show back up at the hotel to pick up Ari's car everything is shutting down, with nothing much left to do, so we go back to Arlington. I can't get Holly to come back from Dallas, so we decide to leave after having dinner at the Mexican buffet with my dad and siblings. Arrive back in Austin before midnight. Ari leaves to hang out with his other friend, and I'm left home alone to decompress. Yay, another successful AKon.

Selah,
-iq

2002-05-30T18:08:00.000-05:00

no fucking refunds

So, I'm in Arlington for AKon, and, much to my chagrin, I haven't puked yet. Maybe I'm just happy to be away from Austin for a few minutes. Actually, I think it's more like I'm excited like a little kid on Christmas Eve for the Kon. Sugoi-yo!!!

Selah,
Ian

2002-05-26T13:50:00.000-05:00

freak out/ fuck up

Yeah, I freaked. I fucking drank a bit, got a little bit nuts.

The Fragile just doesn't sound right until you hear it on really good speakers at high volume.

Then it's fucking ecstasy incarnate.

And so I have the feeling that I at least partially put a damper in my neighbor's Memorial Day party, which wasn't completely intentional. And umm... I finally figured out what happens when I don't eat or drink anything but alcoholic bevarages. I get really fucked up. And then, I wake up really fucked.
And so now, after a judicious helping of Excedrin and soda, (without the benefit of solid food), I learn what a full on caffeine rush is like...
Y'see, normally I have the tolerance of a bull elephant, for alcohol and caffeine. Just so happens, that right now I can barely type I'm so fucked on the caffeine. Man, Mr Jitters has it out for me right now. It feels something like the onset of a really good LSD trip, only without the permanent happyface. I wonder if I'll start seeing and hearing shit anytime soon.

Oh yeah, Mindless Self Indulgence is the best "I'm alone on a Saturday night" music ever.

Oh yeah, and the new Eminem record is really good. If you like that kind of thing. Thank god for internet pirates.

Selah,
-Ian

2002-05-25T17:30:00.000-05:00

amoral/ amorous

This is the best thing I've ever read:
Spousal Abuse in the Senate.

We elected a wife beater? Probably, but not this time.

Selah,
-Ian

2002-05-24T15:19:00.000-05:00

ambivalent/ ambiguous

You don't even fucking want to know.

I am tired.

I'm bored, I'm mostly broke, I have a toothache, I haven't slept in 24 hours, I'm...

Yeah, I'm a bitch. I constantly whine and moan. So fucking sue me. I'm tired. So very tired. I'm tired of a lot. I'm tired of the fact that being a bastard works. I'm tired of Starcraft. I'm tired of comic book questions that should never be asked ("If Multiple Man had sex with one of his clones, would it be incest or masturbation?"). I'm tired of being sick and tired. I'm tired of being hungry, and fixing it by buying crap with no nutritive content. I'm tired of far too many things to bother listing here.

So I'm gonna smoke a cigarette, listen to the new Eminem record again, and maybe get some sleep.

Selah,
--Ian

2002-05-20T18:42:00.000-05:00

ambivalent/ ambiguous

i look like death warmed over.

i don't feel much better either.

but between the white stripes and funny friends

the day is looking up.

Selah,
--Ian

2002-05-20T01:41:00.000-05:00

pastiche/ past tense

Bleachmobile (Bleach in Japan) are three super-cute girls who play the meanest noisecore that side of the Pacific. Hell, this side even. I am one of the lucky bastards who got to see them live at SXSW, and boy... These girls FUCKING ROCK. Notice the caps and curse used for emphasis. The bass player is smaller than her instrument, yet plays better than... well, almost everyone I've ever seen play live. The tunes are noisy, but just catchy enough to keep you listening. Who cares if you don't speak the language? Can you understand a damn thing being said if say Refused is playing? Didn't think so. Just listen. Loud.

Selah,
--Ian

2002-05-19T16:34:00.000-05:00

Listen to the White Stripes. Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.Listen to the White Stripes.

2002-05-19T06:01:00.000-05:00

imposed/ improved

I get so sick of being bored. And just when I think it's not going to end any time soon, I get a wake up call. I go out, believing that it's just moving to a different place to be bored.

that's when it hits me

It's one of those zen moments, where everything is in its place. I meet the right people, the people that I wouldn't actually be talking to if this weren't the right occasion, and everything gets that much better. I just go with it, knowing that it really could be worse. It could be terminal, and it really isn't. I can fool myself into thinking that all my diversions are purely momentary, but that is so untrue. I have so many diversions that it's just tough to decide which one to pursue. I'll never run out of things to occupy my time. That's why imortality is such a nice idea. I like the idea of being able to choose my diversions without fear of when it's going to end. Make it a lot easier to choose if I knew that I had all the time I could possibly need to accomplish everything I want to. I mean, if I could just sit back for a few years and read, I wouldn't even have trouble trying to figure out what to read next... Ah, such pleasant fantasies. Should bring sweet dreams...

Selah,
--Ian

2002-05-18T19:14:00.000-05:00

first herradura post.