Not in bed sick exactly.. although now I’m waring a coat and hat… dressed as I would to go out.. while sitting at the computer in the living room… though this is perhaps more an effect of the “how to we handle the cost of heating the house problem” then it is an issue of me being sick in anyway.
Today I woke up about 3 PM… last night I went to bed about 7PM, I’m guessing… and then woke up for a number of hours, before going back to bed.
I’m really barely out of bed.. not capable of much.. just basic survival.. is kinda where things are at at the moment…
Fortunately I’m an uber computer person.. which means… well that it doesn’t take much energy to do stuff… but.. well, mental energy… and my brain is a little soft and squishy at the moment.. at least when it comes to what you might call serious intellectual labor of any kind.
Well.. I am waiting for RAM to arrive anyway… and much of the real work I’m itching to do requires that RAM…
But…
Just the idea of bringing out the trash tonight.. fills me with dread…
What I think I’m going to do is make something for me to eat.. and then… from there.. see about the trash and bed… I think I’m going to set up a work station in bed kinda situation..
My laptop is decidedly underpowered when it comes to the subject of.. well just what kinda software is installed on it relative to music production… its mostly out of date.. and most of my software I never bothered installing on it.. and its optical drive isn’t what it was… but.. well.. what the hell.. its still worthy of some work…
If I’m just laying in bed.. not even bothering to put in the effort to keep my body upright.. I can sometimes fool myself into thinking I’m not sick at all.. and thus work on forward.. so now I’m going to look into some of that….
It’s important to me that I achieve the basic goal of posting regularly.. which means not letting more then a week go buy without a post.. and really ideally… there probably should be about a post a day coming from me and… I’m not sure of the head space I need.
I guess this is what I always think about with respect to blogging.. or I mean successful blogging… Is that it requires a different kind of head trip then the one I’m on.. and I’m not really sure how to get on that other head trip.. and.. and do I even really want that.. enough to do that?
You know that’s the funny thing about success… we all want it.. but how many of us want it bad enough to make it happen… and I suppose it depends on what level of success we are talking about, and just how we want to define success… and all of that kinda thing.
I mean we’d probably all like to be making millions but..
For me… right now.. success is just putting one foot forward, in front of the other.. and keeping up with the trying.. in making my way through life… and success is doing this without letting go of my dreams. And success is.. growing.. and success is… well…. growing is probably the biggest thing I’m always interested in… more so the economic stuff really.
Trouble is, of course, I need to get the economic stuff stuff in order.. carry on… and without it.. i often grow dark.
Well n e who… not much of a blog post.. but it’s tonights post
It’s somewhat late at night… no, I take that back, it’s very late at night.. I should be in bed.. Jesus, I have to get up early tomorrow to… and it doesn’t help that I’m feeling sick.
What’s there for me to write about today?
It’s been over a week since I posted.. which is too long.
Have I posted anything on the subject of all the music work I’ve been doing? This month is National Solo Album Month.. a challenge to try and make a solo album in the month of November.. well.. I’m trying… but I don’t know that I’ll really have anything finished come the end of the month..
It doesn’t help that one project I was working on.. not only did it crash.. but I can no longer open the document.. and that was maybe half a weeks worth of work.
I don’t know about this.. as a project for me at this point.. if it’s quite appropriate for me.. I think I’m supposed to work on these real labor of love projects.. not these scramble to get an album finished in a month deals…
I spend a lot of time, each day, working on it.. and a lot of time procrastinating it.. but.. more or less.. I work from the time I get up till the time I go to bed.. mind you there are hours and hours of not doing anything in them middle there…
And now it’s late.. and now I should be asleep…
And my anxiety is all crazy
And.. I’m not quite functional
and.. I’m not quite sure how to get functional and
Well what the hell.. at least it’s a post.. I should post it!
I have one of these drobo’s, ya know them? What it is is.. you can plug in like 4 hard drives and the drobo… does redundant storage on those drives. Which means if you save something to the drobo.. it gets saves in multiple places.. on the different drives.. so if a drive fails, you still have you’re storage.. which is a good thing.
Anyway.. one of the drives in my drobo, a 500 GB drive, is failing.. off and on.. which makes it so that there’s basically like.. no free space on the Drobo at this point… just cause of how full it is with data… and.. when its that full.. it operates real slow.. and my photo library is on there.. and that slowness makes photo editing / post production… like impossible.
So what I figured I would do was to go and buy a 2 Terabyte drive… and I would use that to replace a 500 GB drive in my tower.. use that 500GB to replace the failing drive in the drobo.. I’d then have more space.. that I could sorta rearrange what’s on the drobo and what’s not… and I’d be good to go.
But.. even once I’d done that there’s still a kinda data problem: I have about 6500 GB or 6.5TB worth of drive space in my tower… and I don’t know.. a few TB in the Drobo..
Because of the data redundancy it’s like you have less space then the individual drives capacity… So lets say, I have I have 8 TB total.. just for shits and giggles.
Now how do you back up that much space? As in lets say there was a fire or something.. I’d loose it all. So, that’s kind of a serious issue, right? I mean I could burn DVDs and each of those can take about 4GB… so.. I would literally need to burn more then 1000 DVDs to back everything up.. if I had filled up all my drive space that is.
Clearly that wouldn’t work.
Not only that but its kind of a situation where you can just never have enough hard drive space, or I can’t, cause I’m working with 1080p video.. that eats up space like crazy.
It used to be.. on my older computers.. that I could back up whatever I had onto CD ROMs or DVD ROMs.. and I would need to do that just to clear out space.. but I have so much space now.. that I don’t need to that.. and never really do do that… so.. nothing is backed up beyond the Drobo…
Well.. so anyway.. I went to get a 2TB drive from Microcenter last night… and I was greeted by signs that said “because of the hard drive shortage we are limiting the sales of hard drives to 2 hard drives per household”
WTF?
Turns out.. in that one area of the world where all hard drives are made.. there’s been some serious natural disasters… so they can’t make them any more till they fix the problem.. and thus a shortage is coming.. and now is probably the best time to buy.. before the prices really start to go up.
And… well the prices, for 2 TB drives.. were already more then I could afford (more then they where 9 or so months ago when I picked up my last drive)… So.. what did I do? I bought a Blue Ray Burner..
This would be my first blue ray drive.. and.. turns out.. it’s about as much as the 2 TB drives used to be
But I’m still not sure if it’s going to work
The Blue Ray Issue
So.. a blue Ray disk, one sided, will give you 25 GB of storage… although there’s different formats and what not and some will give you more then 25 GB.. trouble is that bigger blue ray formats aren’t not yet being mass produced and so they are really too expensive to make sense.. in terms of the blank media for then..
However.. I was able to find 25 GB disks for a buck a pop.. which is really pretty cool.
Anyway so the problem…
I’m on a Mac.. and when they made Blue Ray… they put in this insane encryption scheme so people couldn’t pirate Blue Ray DVDs… and when I say insane I mean.. probably half of Microsoft’s.. the delay of the Vista Operating system.. what.. 4 or so years ago.. like have of that was probably because of the complexity of the encryption scheme.. and trying to work that into the operating system.
So Apple.. never built in to there operating system.. and thus you don’t see blue ray drives in Macintoshes. Steve Job was quotes as saying “Blue Ray is a world of hurt” as being the reason…
Well.. whatever.. the really ridiculous part of the encryption scheme is that it was cracked eons ago.. and there’s no getting around that movies are being pirated like mad these days…. so… nice going guys, right?
So the thing was.. because Apple doesn’t support the encryption scheme, can a Mac burn a Blue Ray? That’s probably up to the makers of the Blue Ray, if they want to go to the trouble of making Blue Ray drivers for the Mac, or something like that.
Well.. apparently.. you can’t really find Blue Ray burners that will work for the mac…
But.. but.. You can set up a Mac to boot into Windows..
Of course I have one little problem.. the only version of Windows I have is XP, which is from before they built the encryption scheme into windows… and.. I don’t have a spare drive to make the type of drive that will work with Windows for a boot disk.. so I can really only deal with this by virtualizing windows..
I’m told that… XP.. well I can burn a DVD from it, even if it doesn’t support the encryption.
But we’ll see.
The other thing is that this is an internal drive.. which I will have to install.
Mac Pro’s are set up with 2 drive bays.. for DVD players / burners.. but.. I don’t know why anyone would ever buy 2.. but.. point is I can apparently install this in the other bay.. and we’ll see how that works… but..
But I may just end up returning the drive.
Oh and the other issue is now my virtualizing software won’t work… thanks to my OS upgrade.. but I understand that’s an open source / free virtualizer out there somewhere… so I’ll have to be looking into that.
I just had to make this plea… that you stop everything, and go see The Rum Diary now.. or as soon as you freaking can.
I’m nervous that this might be one of those movies that people miss.. or maybe only get to when it comes to DVD or Cable, or something like this, and maybe you don’t even see it then…
Well, I saw it today, and it was pretty freaking awesome.
My Personal Rum Diary story
For one reason or another I find that I spend a lot of time on IMDb (The Internet Movie Database if you don’t know)… and because of that, quite a long time ago.. I saw that… well #1 That The Rum Diary was being made, and #2 and more recently, that it it was coming to the theater soon.
And the funny thing is.. that #1 I don’t know anybody else who noticed this and #2 No one who I brought it up to understood WTF The Rum Diary was… or why they should care.
Ok.. maybe you shouldn’t car.. maybe it’s not you’re thing… No, I take that back, it doesn’t matter if it’s you’re thing or not, it’s a good fucking movie and you should see it.. just on principle that you should see good movies.. and not just the usual shit Hollywood pumps out at you.. and gets all the attention.. cause it has all this marketing muscle and blah blah blah…
Ok, So lets talk about why I cared
One of my favorite all time movies, without a shadow of a doubt, is a film by Terry Gilliam (one of my favorite directors) known as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas..
Some of these quotes should give you a flavor of the raw awesomeness that is Fear and Loathing… I’ll tell you it blows me away how many times I can watch this movie.. and still get off on it.
I never liked Johnny Depp before this movie.. but this.. this made me a huge freaking fan.. of at least this performance…. I think this is is his best performance period… just awesome.
But perhaps more importantly….
It HUNTER S THOMPSON man!!!
How can you not love Hunter? Well.. perhaps if you don’t know who Hunter is.. Ok, so let me quickly story you on Hunter.
Hunter was a writer.. a funny as hell bad ass writer.. and… well ok, I’m going to share a clip from a trailer to a documentary on him. Now.. what I want you to notice here.. is some of the folks talking about him.
Hunter.. is covering politics.. and he’s not doing it in a stricktly objective kinda way… he’s doing it in a somewhat… well Gonzo way… in a way that… uses certain types of comic devices to get at the kinds of truths that the traditional objective journalism shtick can sometimes miss..
But look at the people talking about him… You have George McGovern… if you don’t know who he was.. he ran for President against Nixon.. he was one of the first guys to really come out against the Vietnam war… Bill Clinton’s first job was in McGovern’s campaign… McGovern.. is often seen…. and I don’t think exactly rightly so.. as kinda a leftist…. certainly someone who folks on the left of the American political spectrum tend to dig.
And then… we have Pat Buckanan… who’s something of an arch conservative.. way to the right.. who got his start working as Nixon’s speech writer.. ran for President.. blah blah blah.. people on the left hate him.. I mean the dude wanted to make a gain fence between the US and Mexico..
So how is it that this one guy has fans on both the left and the right.. and he’s throwing down some major political criticism? Writing for Rolling Stone.. a big part of the youth movement.. of the 60s?.. for lack of a better way of putting it?
Well that might all be besides the point.. or might not be the thing that’s so awesome about his work…
Well… what is awesome is how he was a truth teller.. and funny as hell.. and powerful in his writing.
Anyway
So clearly I’m a big fan…. and
The Rum Diary is the first book Hunter wrote… long before he became famous for his writing… and he had a hard time getting it published.
I confess that I never read it.. nor have I read Fear and Loathing.. which is generally thought of as his major work…
So um… lets scoot on over to The Rum Diary
As I say.. Hunter wrote The Rum Diary early in his career, before he was famous. At the time he was struggling.. and I do mean struggling.. working as journalist to pay the bills, which they barely payed.. I mean he was really still just trying to break into journalism, never mind being a writer of books..
I forget the whole story but he see’s some add for job as.. I wanna say a sports writer.. down it Puerto Rico.. for some dinky news paper… and off he goes… and The Rum Diary is the book that comes out of this…
I don’t know the that the trailer does it justice…
Anyway…
So Johnny Depp is a big fan.. paid for Hunters Funeral.. and is really a strong supporter.. and thus worked to get this movie made.. as a producer… and seeing as he’s already mastered performing as Hunter….
Well ok, more specifically.. what we get in the movie
We see an earlier younger Hunter.. he’s not as bad of an alcoholic drug addict.. doesn’t have his voice yet so much.. it’s a bit straighter.. less Gonzo.. he’s not quite so crazed.. he’s much more of a straight man… though we still see the strong wild man kind of.. unflinching quality… as he observes the world around him… and in how he interacts with it.
Rather bad ass..
Maybe wild is too strong a word..
Well.. what is impressive is how strong the story telling of the movie is.. accept for pretty close to the end.. and even then really.. you don’t really know where the movie is taking you.. it’s kinda James Joyce esk.. in the way you’re flung into a world and have to work out what the hell is going on with this world as the character is making sense of it..
So in conclusion
I wont say much more.. accept to say that the movie.. and never mind who Hunter is, why you should care about Hunter, or anything else.. just the movie it’s self, on strictly movie terms.. is really really really freaking good.
I’m telling you this as a movie snob.. as someone who has a hard time saying any movie is great.. cause unless it’s truly great.. I think it’s dog shit.. cause WTF are you doing making a movie if you’re not trying to make a great movie.. and I just view doing any thing less the something truly great.. a kind of ethical travesty of justice.. I mean if you’re in a position to do this on a world stage kind of level. (Which might have something to do with why I’m ridiculously self critical)
Well actually I’m slowly started to become less film snobby and more cable of enjoying films even if they are flawed… but never mind that.. go see the fucking movie man, you’ll be glad you did!
I’m searching for a voice in these blog posts.. it’s difficult to find…
I think my voice is.. kinda… Beat-esk in the sense that I feel beat-en.. in the sense of… what you got form the Beat generation. And I’m deeply influenced by those guys anyway.
But I think it’s like..
I don’t know.. some percentage of what I post I think is really fucking good.. an a much larger percentage I think is embarrassingly flawed.. .and I think it must have something to do with the voice.
What’s strong.. in me is often this kind of… beaten down person.. worn down.. weary… from slings and arrows of suffering.. inward suffering.. who the fuck taught you to suffer like this?’
Well.. whatever the fuck it is it is.. and it is.. a matter of fact.. it is reality… it is reality in all it’s darkness.. glorying in it like pig in shit… and that…. that is a beautiful thing!
I mean.. fuck.. so much of the shit people write.. they are so concerned with there careers and business and all this shit.. that reality.. is totally white washed away.. nobody knows what the fuck reality is off in those lands.. this land.. that I’m standing on here.. is no that land, let me tell you…
And that.. that simple fact.. that’s enough to make it worth reading.. hearing.. see what this voice has to say… it could be something worth while… and you feel that possibility ever more acutely as the old sources of whatever.. grow more and more boring.. as there deception takes effect.
Well anyway.. I get concerned with my bullshit to.. and get sucked in.. and become this creature.. like Golomn or something… who’s not even fully human.. but’s still shooting out these posts.. and what the fuck does he think he’s doing?
I don’t know.
But I see this in me and I go… Jesus.. we got some wiring issues going on…
This deal about the public self.. this here is my public self…
It’s one version of me.. there are others.. some more positive then others…
I spend a lot of time these days thinking about getting old and all the life I failed to live up until this point.. and figuring that should tell me about all the life I will fail to live going forward.. which brings me to this issue of.. well just what the fuck should I be doing..
I’m about to hit the bed.. haven’t had enough to eat today… kinda a part of the.. stressing over what have you’s… and we got a significant snow storm going on outside.. and… I’m inside mostly working.
Todays project.. efforts…. were interested. I took a couple.. field recordings.. and sorta mixed them together.. to explore what I could do this way… and so far it’s been pretty interesting.. and as I experiment.. I come to some new thoughts.
I really really really.. need to jump off the deep end.. I need to explore outside of my comfort zones.. by huge amounts.. I’m always kinda doing that but I feel like…
Well I feel like what happens when you are totally out of you’re comfort zones? Suddenly.. you have to apply whatever it is that you do now.. to some other scenario … and maybe there in find something exciting…
But yeah.. I want to break free of what I’ve been doing.. and I want to do this in a lot of ways.. and I can kinda feeling coming.. if that quite makes sense..
but anyway.. this is late night ramblings and who knows what reality is anyway
So I’m in surreal reality-vill.. and… feel like I’m falling apart.
My mind is plagued by… all kinds of stuff really…
In my.. well.. forever wrestling with self stuff stuff… the last idea I’m kinda… clinging to is the idea that I ought to “Zen out.”
My therapist would probably approve.
By Zen-ing out.. I mean… a kind of psychological disengagement with entangling things.. to withdraw my psychic energy from such things… radically so.. to kinda.. try and.. and…
Well I don’t know.. I wont tell the whole story here..
I’ll just go so far as to say… I’m tired and in a surreal place and… I think I’m to go to bed and see how that works out for me.
I can’t say I was ever a big fan of Boy George.. I have a funny interview with Ozzy Osbourne, around here somewhere, where Ozzy praises Boy George’s act.. which is a slightly surreal thing into it’s self.
But…
Well these words started coming to me “Do you really want to hurt me, do you really want to make me cry.”
In not being a boy George fan.. I don’t really know what that song is about..
My imagination suggests that maybe its kind of a protest-e song.. that Boy George was kinda.. well “gender funny?” …For lack of a better term.. and so I imagine it’s like.. when we talk about rights for transgender, homosexual, and whatever other similar ilk stuff.. maybe Boy George is… sorta calling attention to an idea that the only reason you could be against it is cause you want to make him cry… which is to say it’s some kind of malice / oppression / whatever…
Of course for all I know.. the song is really a love song about love gone wrong.. ‘
Japanese style Karaoke vocals
I think the idea of Japanese style Karaoke vocals.. is… well a weird one.
I think.. if you’re a part of the American / Western / whatever.. cultural world.. the way you relate to that world can be deeply tied up with your sense of identity in that world.. “what’s your favorite movie, who’s you’re favorite rock star?” These kinds of questions seem to be about who you are.. what your identity is.
The Japanese Karaoke vocalist, on the other hand, isn’t a part of the same culture complex Boy George is a part of. So what he, or she, is responding to.. is the cultural artifact of Boy George.. without the “how it hangs together” (think Heidegger ) “inside of the culture complex” thing.. so it’s recontextualizing Boy George and there by imbuing new meaning.
(I know, funky Kung Fu style metaphysics)
In so doing, in a strange way.. the Karaoke vocal is a kind of celebration of spectical.. which seems sorta analogous to what Boy George was doing in the First place.
Death Metal
Metal.. of course.. is a kind of existential relationship to the forces of socialization. Boy George.. clearly.. had something to do with socialization.. because.. I mean this business of acceptable gender rolls of the time.. and all of that.. Boy George was kinda.. pushing against all that… so you can see the sorta analogous… well it’s like all the analogies rhyme.
So why I feel drawn to this mad idea
I think what’s going on in me.. is in part a collision of value systems.. between myself.. and the situation I find myself in.. that is in some way about my culture, my time, my society, my world…
It’s about how value systems frame reality.. and the power to frame reality is the power to define.. a thing one way or another.. and its my fight with this power structure… and what the power structure asks of us..
And that in here lys something central to my problems of the moment.
Let me try and swing at something… see if anything decent comes out here…
I just ate part of a clearly toxic sandwich… this has been a rather epic food going back week… food that I just don’t get to in time.. and hating to let food go bad.. I try it.. even though it might have fallen a bit over the edge of edibility…
Something.. you can’t quite put your finger on it.. but something’s telling you “dear God, no, don’t eat that sandwich.” Like here you are.. really freaking hungry… and though there’s this sandwich in front of you… you somehow just “don’t feel like eating it.” You don’t why… it’s just what you’re feeling.
Ah… but perhaps you lack discipline? So you force your self to take a few more bights… and.. then… well its not half eaten now… but now.. I don’t know.. 15 or more minutes latter… there’s this feeling in my stomach of… well it’s not a good feeling… put it that way… I feel a cold sweet coming on.. my stomach aches… all subtle feelings.. .accept for that faint acidic feeling in your mouth suggesting you might throw up soon…..
So…
I’m thinking I probably shouldn’t attempt to eat any more of that sandwich…
So my mind turns to what else might be editable.
There’s some frozen stuff in the freezer I could defrost but..
Well I think cereal might have to be the answer.. but… what are the odds that the milk hasn’t gone bad? Well I should be able to work that out with a quick smell.
