ascending into madness

28/08/2009

Went to RedXRed in vancouver randomly on tuesday… $2 glasses of beer & good music… and the dj played this track by Paul Kalkbrenner, and I grabbed the rest of the album today and have been really digging it… a bit more progressive than I normally would be going for (so yeah.. warning gets a bit techy and a bit repetitive.. but if you embrace it, good things can be enjoyed hehe), and I want to check out the movie that it’s a soundtrack for, Berlin Calling…

surveying the surf

This is the first track I heard…. was nearly the last track of the night and was a great finisher… but as happens when there’s 3 djs on the decks at once.. someone else interrupted it and mixed out of it…

paul kalkbrenner – sky and sand (feat. fritz kalkbrenner)

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cue the piano synth

paul kalkbrenner – atzepeng (special berlin calling edit)

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bring in the horns

paul kalkbrenner – bengang

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finish on a trip

paul kalkbrenner – absynthe

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Sorry I just couldn’t cut it down to any fewer tracks… I listened to this album today on my run and it ended up making it a bit of a mellow run, but on a bit of a meditative tip, the kind of pace you can just keep up forever… (speaking of running forever, the native mexican people, the Tarahumara can run for insane distances, like 160km at a time.. they practice persistence hunting, where they actually run down deer by chasing them until the deer tires out…. this is what I think we are capable of if we try and avoid being limited by the expectations of limits that we are taught as we grow up… their settlements were traditionally very far apart, and probably nobody ever told them they couldn’t run that far… haha or else it has to do with all the peyote and corn beer they drink, who knows)

Here’s something extremely nerdy (well, work related)… this is what my day looked like if you only looked at me checking in my work… (anything in square brackets is a summarization)

=====================

Change 193616 by [me] on 2009/08/27 15:05:42

[original check-in fixing a small bug in our game]

[file 1]#84 edit

================

Change 193617 by [me] on 2009/08/27 15:06:32

– missed file from last checkin.

Affected files …

[file 2]#7 edit

=========

Change 193638 by [me] on 2009/08/27 15:47:12

[missed another file]

Affected files …

[file 3]#3 edit

==========

Change 193649 by [me] on 2009/08/27 16:25:50

– build fix.

Affected files …

[file 1]#85 edit

============

Change 193651 by [me] on 2009/08/27 16:31:52

-argh fix fail, fail fail. FIX

Affected files …

[file 1]#86 edit

===========

Change 193652 by [me] on 2009/08/27 16:35:36

– I quit programming if I missed something again.

Affected files …

[file 1]#87 edit

============

I felt like maybe I was descending into madness, Don Hertzfeldt style

Rejected Coder….

now back to work so I can get my butt to our yearly virgo camping (maybe surfing?) trip in Sombrio tomorrow ! weeee ! :)

hapy.

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conscious effort

2/07/2009

The only thing better than a fantastic plan is actually following it and enjoying the benefits immediately…

stringoflights

this is what I was listening to tonight… the welder album “vines and stream”… it reminds me a lot of freeworm, and now that I say that I’m actually missing freeworm quite a bit and may have to change the album :-)

welder – purple & orange

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I was sitting in my living room this evening when the last final string of my dying set of lights went out …. It was pretty sad. Not only that it was fucking dreary, and since it was the last half-string to survive it’d been hinting at dreary for awhile. An end of an era I thought to myself, maybe it’s time to get “real adult/big boy” lights, lamps, and whatnot. Rather than let their dead carcasses sit up there (they were already trying to depress the hell out of me — not succeeding or anything, but sitting in your living room shouldn’t be a constant goddamn battle now then, should it), and knowing me, if I didn’t do it now it would.. uh… hang over me (I’m sort of terrified that might be a pun) if I didn’t take them down, I decided to take care of it immediately (plus I’m packing to go to Tofino and I’m notoriously great at getting distracted and taking hours to pack. I’m not sure if I’m really allowed to employ the word notorious there… is it still notoriety if you are the only one who really considers yourself to be something? …. (I of course just looked it up, because I can’t help myself, and: no, you can’t, but I’m going to wave my hands about in a way that clearly implies that I’m afforded some artistic license even though I don’t think I’ve paid my annual licensing fee since… forever))

Anyways, two things happened as a result of my proactive light removal.

First, I pulled down some trim. The trim itself is kind of a story in itself. My apartment has the great distinction of being originally decorated with what appears to have been a series of what were probably extremely ornate veneer wood panels. These panels of course were divided and enclosed by some equally classy trim. Since every sign points to my building having been exactly the 3rd cement construction apartment built in vancouver (get this: Nearly every electrical outlet in my house has *3* plugs in it — only two, maybe three, of them have been retro-fitted to allow 3 prong plugs to be connected… ), it either didn’t weather well, or I guess eventually the decor police decreed that wood paneling, no matter how ornate, was no longer the style, and it has been, no, not removed, PAINTED OVER, and badly at that. SoYeahIPulledOffAPieceOfThatStuff,SorryThatWentOnLongerThanItNeededTo,ButIThinkIHadSomeVentingToDoThere.

So that was the less good thing that happened, but the really great thing that happened was that as I was removing the lights from the opposite corner of my living room, one of the strings lit back up (mostly)! Oh. Right. As you can see from the picture. This corner was previously where my lamp was, so deciding I didn’t need to double up on one side and have the other side feel like a black hole, I’ve moved the lamp to the other corner. My living room is actually much more nicely lit now than it was before this whole ridiculous shenanigan began. And I can put off grown up lights for awhile. Actually it reminded me what I really like about these lights — they do brilliant things to people’s eyes at night… they remind me of good conversations with people I like.

And why maybe this little rollercoaster of lighting struck me as somewhat inspiring, is it feels like it mirrors the theme of /transformation/ that’s either in my life more right now, or appears to be there because I’m looking for it. (I fully believe but also embrace the idea that we are insane pattern recognizing creatures and that false positives are generally more evolutionarily selectable…. not picking up on a pattern was/is more likely to end your genetic line than falsely seeing a pattern that isn’t there — natural selection favours the less costly error…)

Focus, man! Anyways I feel transformed from my last few show experiences… Fake Blood & Amon Tobin… both fucking wicked shows each in their own way. I’m remembering myself, how much I enjoy shows without being slowed by too much alcohol. Don’t get me wrong alcohol is fun as hell, but it’s expensive in both the time & money (especially the after-parties/continued drinking/etc that seem like a good idea when you are already sauced.. if drinking wasn’t so self perpetuating things would be much simpler). Instead I’ve walked home elated, rather than feeling the usual alcohol induced disconnect, feeling more in my body than ever, so in my body it feels like I’m pushing a few microns out past my skin…

Here’s something I’ve been listening to on my post-show walks home…

bearbot – technolocrips

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bearbot does some pretty great blends and he has 2 free mixtapes on his site, which is always nice: http://www.bearbot.tk/ and seriously.. somehow getting darude “sandstorm” to work with ratatat, daft punk & feist?? I was in the middle of a run when I listened to his mixtape the first time and almost had to stop running… it’s hilarious and yet it kind of sort of works still…. It still makes me smile everytime I hear it and I’m not disassembling my ears to avoid hearing it in the middle of the mix tape (granted if it ever gets to that point, deleting or skipping the track would maybe be a better first response)

So yeah that’s fun to walk home to. The only real problem is that I get home and I’m NOT TIRED AT ALL… I get too into enjoying the calm and the quiet of the night, coupled w/ my post night out endorphin rush… maybe have a beer, suddenly it’s an hour or two later and I’m low on sleep for work. Still, more functional the next day than I’d be with a hangover… so really I guess.. maybe not so bad.

Fuck I really need to finish packing now. And hang up my clean clothes to dry. I can’t wait to get out of town and up to Tofino, working Canada Day was kinda hard when everyone else was off, but a long weekend will be even better. I am not going to go over what I wrote to fix any mistakes because it’s too fucking long and it’s too fucking late. So I apologize for anything ridiculous.

I wish there wasn’t a word count on this because it’s kind of embarrassing.

Happy Canada Day and have a great weekend everyone :-)

hapy.

Oh! I almost forgot! Check it out, the picture above — in addition to the risen-from-the-dead lights, it also features my “new” painting that finally got finished. I had some help, my friend Joanne & I finished it a couple weeks ago by adding a bunch of black and some writing. The painting was actually painted in landscape orientation but it looked like utter shit and it was just meant as a putting-paint-on-canvas exercise to get myself back into it, but changing the orientation TRANSFORMED (haha) it into something I actually liked. Accidental art is better than nothing I say… ;-)

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a smile you can hear, a laugh you can feel from the next house over

27/06/2009

snob scrilla – there you go again

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Almost certainly the only thing holding you back is your own self. The excuses you let yourself be okay with, the paths of least resistance you always choose. TV instead of reading, reading instead of writing, writing instead of doing, etc. etc. Okay writing is doing, sort of, ish. All of these things in moderation are great, but when you fill up every space with the same thing, it’s going to affect everything.

I am wrestling with this constantly. Every weekend (and this goes for weekdays too haha) doesn’t need to be packed to the gills with friends, socialness, and drinking. Drinking is the motherfucker too, not only does it usually use (screw up) the rest of your day, it can screw up the NEXT day even. If there was a pill you could take to un-drunk yourself, this would be less of an issue. How rad would it be if you could go for patio/beach beers with your friends at noon and suddenly be stone cold sober at 5pm when you want to do something productive. (drinking 2 beers or whatever doesn’t really work either… just makes you tired, and still lose motivation to get shit done)

Speaking of drinking and being unproductive, Fake Blood is @ dicks on dicks tonight (what! today was productive! I deserve a reward… is it bad that 1 productive day is reward worthy? probably. baby steps!). Goal: functional and productive tomorrow — so…. showing up late, only for the headliner, and leaving my bank card at home. No afterparty goddammit! :-) (this is one of those attempt to know-thyself things)

Photo-0011

hot chip – touch too much (fake blood remix)

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hot chip + fake blood?.. yes, yes and yes…. fake blood can be a bit epically rave-y sometimes for just sitting around but check out his mixes for good running music, and I’m betting he kills it tonight!

fuck I said productive way too many times… it’s lost all meaning. fuck. now I’m screwed :)

hapy.

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