Debaser (Pixies)

"Remix" by Cassettettette. Ingredients: Cassette.

I should.

I really should. This is an impartial list of things i'm thinking right now.

-Should make music. (This is a hugely simplified version of the thought process that is currently happening.)
-Legs hurt and I don't know why.
-Wondering what the "barrier" or "thing" that separates me from people who "succeed". I don't feel like i succeed when I try. I know trying is just the very very very beginning of succeeding, and I guess I should just "try harder". I don't like many of the things I do. When I do like them it's usually an accident. Are "great things" just the "cream of the crop" of infinite tries?
-There is no justification for me not continuously trying to accomplish the various things I want to do. There's "so many" but I work on my projects very rarely. This is not excusable.
-I would like to have interactions with more people who are "doing things" about "doing things".
-I need to do some psychedelics. This is an avenue that I really feel would help me progress with my "creative development" in a way some would not approve of. I don't even know if it would help. But it certainly can't "harm me". Riiiiight?
-Um... coffee.... I don't know.
-I need to stop "I don't know"ing.
-Fingernails too long.
-Hair too brown.
-Piercings not enough.
-This energy I have is far too sporadic and uncontained/indirect to be productive. What are some ways I could control this creativity/lack thereof and channel it in helpful ways?

I need to do something other than type these thoughts.
My legs hurt.

I could not stop myself as I walked towards the bright light.

How to make cookies like Jamie.

Step 1.
Decide to make cookies. They're going to be chocolate chip.
Running time 0:00:01

Step 2.
Chat on Facebook, download some music, listen to said music.
Running time 2:00:00

Step 3.
Walk to Safeway to purchase ingredients.
Running time 2:20:00

Step 4.
First go find the chocolate chips. You will need them to find out what other ingredients you will need. Buy those ingredients, and also coffee and creamer because you're out of both.
Running time 2:35:00

Step 5.
Pay for your items.
Running time 2:45:00

Step 6.
Walk back home.
Running time 2:55:00

Step 7.
Mix ingredients and put your first batch in. Adding 30% more chocolate chips than called for is recommended.
Running time 3:10:00

Step 8.
Eat vegetables, rice, naan, and salad while you wait. Also, now is when you begin to brew the coffee.
Running time 3:20:00

Step 9.
New batch of cookies in the oven. Now try the firstfruits of your baking-labor, pour yourself some coffee, and go smoke a cigarette.
Running time 3:30:00

Step 10.
Another new batch in the oven. This is the last batch. Blog about your cookie-making experience while you drink more coffee.
Running time 3:40:00

Step 11.
Relax. You've got cookies and coffee for a couple days. What more could you need, except maybe some Modest Mouse to listen to.

Things I need to get. Part ?

These are things I need to get. Enjoy a little insight into my "need to get" life.

1. Some new pants OR fix the pants I own but can't wear because they're too torn up/not finished making them fit via sewing AND get a minimum of 1 pair of new pants.
2. A cord for the digital camera I "own" so that I can put pictures on my compy.
3. Ingredients for the chocolate chip cookies I will fix later today. (This is the most imminent item I will get.)
4. Webhosting service for the "real" moose-bait website.
5. Sheets/scraps of fabric (black, blue, grey, yellow, red) for my ceiling/maybe part of my walls/maybe to replace the Mexican blanket covering Window #1.
6. Hair dye.
7. Shelves of mostly any kind.
8. "Indirect" lighting. Possible a tall lamp, but other things I would use would be a small lamp, Christmas lights, fireplace (Unlikely at this point) or lava lamp.
9. Things to fasten things to my walls.
10. End of the list for now.

Right now

Right now, I am...

/Excited for the future (2010).
//Excited by the word "rooibos".
///Wondering what the next "big thing" is going to be and how it will be used by several for its full potential and just-sorta-ruined by the other millions/billions of people who use it/watch it/eat it/propagate it.
////Excited for the chocolate chip cookies I am inevitably going to bake today.
/////Excited to rearrange my little living/bed room.
//////Kinda hungry.
///////Little bit of anxious.
////////But still mostly excited.

Hope this lasts.

A Screenshot In The Life #1

Edie Sedgwick In Wallpaper Form

My Christmas gift to you, my reader, is this wallpaper of Edie Sedgwick that I made using a picture of Edie Sedgwick and multiple pictures of wallpaper.

Merry little Christmas.

Portland's Sad Google Statistics.

Top Google searches for '09:

1. trimet trip planner
2. oregon unemployment claim
3. 95.5 the game
4. multnomah county jail
5. onpoint credit union
6. mypcc
7. pcc.edu
8. pdx.edu
9. workinginoregon.org
10. blazers edge

Think those are some interesting statistics? I think it's accurate for the most part, a good snapshot of what "mainstream Portland" is all about. Hipsters aren't present in these statistics because obviously they use alt websearches like Bing.com.

Looking at Google's 09 city statistics I'm surprised at how many cities have jails, colleges, and sports teams in their top searches.

Also found

Google Maps - Fastest Rising
1. mount everest
2. laguna seca
3. in-n-out
4. grand canyon
5. eiffel tower
6. white house
7. great wolf lodge
8. wild animal safari
9. voodoo doughnuts
10. path station

Makes me want a donut and wonder what next year holds for us.

Fewer thoughts than normal lately

Been consumed by music, I don't know if that's a good thing. My laptop hard drive is almost full, I need to do some cleaning and put the stuff I don't listen to very much into my external hard drive. Going to save that for another day though.

Recently read about Zachary German's forthcoming novel Eat When You Feel Sad and think, "Why am I not writing my novel?" so I opened my rich text file and began revising what I'd written so far. Edited one sentence. Got interrupted. Was gonna go back and edit/write more but I decided to blog.

Wanting to "publish" a playlist I made earlier this month but I don't wanna do the work to organize it into a "real playlist" so I may just upload it as a grab bag of tracks I like. Would like to feel like at least one person would download it and enjoy it before I go to any sort of work to upload it.

Birthday tomorrow. I expect ~6 birthday texts. Any more and I'll be upset or disappointed. Any less and I'll be relieved or disappointed. Don't feel like I have anything to celebrate this year. Maybe next year will be better. As it stands, 19-20 has been a year of transition, with no "real accomplishment" as I see it, more like trying to get comfortable+steady+on my feet with some reclusion that isn't really a good thing to be happening but it is anyway.

Wondering what my "barrier" is.

These are the winters of our discontinuance.

Wanna apologize for all the angsty material I've posted lately.
Wanna get back to my purpose: Flipping off the camera.
Wanna get some new disposable cameras someday and take memorable photos like this one and develop them at The Fred Meyers'.

Are disposable cameras the new polaroids? Are polaroids dead? Will they be missed?

I'm sorry I'm sometimes different.

I'm sorry I'm sometimes unconventional.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes silent.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes unhappy.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes excited.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes indecisive.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes irrational.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes curious.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes tangential.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes reclusive.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes lazy.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes indifferent.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes unresponsive.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes spiteful.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes perverted.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes stupid.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes ungrateful.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes talkative.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes boring.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes logical.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes condescending.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes narcissistic.
I'm sorry I'm sometimes different.

Our Blog's Prayer

Our blogger, which art in Google,
linked be thy URL;
thy unique visitors come;
thy feed be updated,
in our blog as it is in our twitter.
Give us this day our daily post.
And forgive us our downrating,
as we forgive them that downrate against us.
And lead us not into advertising;
but deliver us from paysites.
[For thine is the text,
the images, and the mp3s,
for ever and ever.]
Amen.

Pointless, unexplained, excitement.

Gettin' "the jitters" and bursts of uncontainable force/energy that make my stomach clench for no reason. Maybe it's the caffeine or the scraps of interaction I'm begging from the table. Maybe I'm unhealthy. I think I'm unhealthy. Not been eating "right" I don't think. Drinking 5+ cups of coffee every day. Sleeping 6 hours every 12 hours. Smoking too much.

May update this post later with more things.

May not.

Made a "art" this morning. Tried to scan for uploading but my scanner wasn't working. Wanna sell my "art" but I wanna keep my "art". I especially like the piece I did. I had an overexposed print that I printed a picture over. It's very "artistic".

No progression.

Not feeling a sense of "progression" from point A to point B. Don't even know what point A was or point B will be. "My life" is unbalanced. My sleep is fragmented and scattered across the 24-hours called a day. I get no response, no feedback, no input, not enough at least. Should I "put myself out there" and hope for some sort of positive response from others?

Am I just at a low point in a large mood swing? The past would say yes and I should just "ride it out" until I feel better.

Words are not working for me. Music is not working for me. Interaction is not happening.

Been wearing the same clothes for days. They're comfortable. They're all I have to "wear".

Finished the B-sides playlist to the Cold Skies/Grey Weather playlist. Listening to it now. Dunno if it's B-side-ish enough. Has plenty of alt lo-fi tracks but so did the "real playlist" maybe I should've gone more mainstream with the B-sides.

Wanna "live the mumblecore way."

Miss my old second-story window overlooking the hillside. Sitting on the sill at night smoking in my yellow-tinted room. Feel like I could've been in a Wes Anderson hit independent film with a cameo by Bill Murray.

Wanna make my life into mumblecore movie directed Aaron Katz. Wanna have a "deep dark secret" I reveal to an attractive girl at a party. and we watch fireworks afterwards.

Wish childhood lasted forever.

Wanna be known

Wanna

have a strong fan base that I communicate with daily through blog/tweet/email.
inspire people to create art/literate based on my New York Times bestselling indie film book on tape.
collaborate with the "greats" on a revolutionary art piece that gets 1,000s of unique hits.
be a part of what comes "next" during post-internet social interaction.
drink coffee at a hip coffeehouse & work on my Sundance screenplay.
have my face on a Gorilla Vs. Bear polaroid.

What are these but the dreams of someone who is still soulsearching.

Want 2 Be In A Real Band.

Not a "hypothetical band" or a "1-man band" or a "solo project" but a band that practices in garages/has a shitty drummer/records demos and sends them to major labels or Pete Wentz. If I was in a real band we would be called Wolf T-Shirt or Cassettettette, depending on our style. Wolf T-Shirt would be spazwave/post-thrash a la Sleigh Bells meets Pre-Madonnas. We would have a bassist who plays like DFA1979, a drummer, a synth/drum machine/programmer and a singer who sings through a megaphone & blows a whistle. Cassettettette would be pure chillwave/drone/sleepytime music with both male and female vocalists who play synths and drum machines/weird objects. Lots of looping. We play house shows in Pacificnorthwest cities & SXSW.

Feeling like I got ripped off in my teenaged years b/c none of my friends wanted to be in shitty bands.

Discouraged about music.

I spent ~8 hours solid working on a track that I had very high hopes for but now I'm just tired of it.
It's nothing like I want it to sound like. It lacks malleable quality of something made with analog/handmade/real instrumentations because it is made entirely digitally.
All my music heroes have handmade/unpolished sounds that I want to achieve. Should I just "go for it" with physical objects to make sounds? Percussions made from hitting wood together and turning 70's TV dials? Digital synths recorded onto my cell phone and then played back?

Did the "greats" teach themselves or did they learn from "past greats"? If they taught themselves how long did it take? Were they done by Thursday afternoon?

How can I "learn" and get "feedback" when nobody gives a shit about musicians that aren't good?

How long will these five cigarettes last me? At this rate not long enough.

How does a "1 man band" play by himself? Does his drum machine only have two different loops, one for chorus and one for verse? Or does he program it perfectly and just play along?

How do you get "rhythm"?

Sometimes I wanna be "normal"

Give up my alternative-lifestyle habits/sensibilities and "settle down" to a steady, unfulfilling job, or maybe a corporate career, with wife-and-kid and a car I know how to fix. One that takes regular unleaded. Try to have weekly "family game night" but give up when I realize my child is as ambitious and individualistic as I was when I was their age. Go to church and watch "the game" on Sunday afternoons. Visit the in-laws twice a month. Go cut down a Christmas tree & decorate it with family heirloom decorations passed down to us. 1 Christmas present each to open on Christmas Eve. I got a new tie. She got lingerie for tonight. The kid got their favorite author's newest New York Times Bestseller.

The missus and I are a bit tipsy from rum & eggnogs.