S Y N T H Y T E

 hey daniel, check out next week's Rock Band downloadables (apparently celebrating Mayhem fest)

Behemoth "Conquer All"
Black Dahlia Murder "What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse"
Cannibal Corpse "Hammer Smashed Face"
God Forbid "Empire of the Gun"
Job for a Cowboy "Embedded"
Marilyn Manson "Disposable Teens"
Slayer "Black Magic"
Whitechapel "This Is Exile"

 Day two of finding my stepbrother sleeping on the couch at six in the morning.

 ummm yeah anyone not already following me on twitter please check me out there

from now on, i'll be using this blog to keep track of how often i come home from work to find my stepbrother sleeping on the couch

so yes, today is the first (though it has happened very often before this)

Nothing good ever happens to me without the bad showing up to ruin it.

Anime Central 2009 was fucking awesome. It was truly the best time I've ever had at a convention, ever.

But now I'm paying the price.

I've got conjuctivitis in my right eye and a fever that won't go away.

I pretty much already know that it's an STD. There's no coincidence.

Yes, I had sex at ACen.

I shouldn't have.

I haven't had sex in... at least five years. That's what I was telling myself when we did it. Somehow, that was my reasoning for being so FUCKING stupid.

I hate myself right now, in the worst way.

I always loathe people who make stupid decisions without thinking. I've always erred on the side of caution.

Now I've got to deal with this disease and it's my fault. I don't know if it's completely my fault, but even if I could blame him for not telling me, it wouldn't make me feel any less like a fucking idiot.

This is probably the worst I've ever felt about anything I've done in my entire life. I don't think I've ever felt so stupid.

You want to know what makes this all really terrible? I can't go to work. The constant watering and tearing of my eye is the best way to spread it; wiping my eye every ten seconds is going to be really noticable, and if I call and tell them why I can't come in, I don't know what I'll say.

 Music Updated: [STOP PUSHING BACK SHIT]

May 15th
Water & Bodies - Water & Bodies EP

May 19th
IAMX - Kingdom of Welcome Addiction
Oceansize - FRAMES
 
June 9th
Dredg - The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion
Somanydynamos - The Loud Wars [ free show = april 18th ]

June 15th
Enter Shikari - Common Dreads

June 19th
Poison The Well - The Tropic Rot

June 23rd
The Mars Volta - Octahedron

 so, time for an update.

after a month of being ran around in circles by the leasing office, we finally got a mailbox key. which means i have the Cavalry portable USB 50GB i ordered. it's sitting on top of my computer humming away.

i also got the two Poison The Well vinyls i ordered and the t-shirt of a great new band called called IN:AVIATE. but the hard drive is what i'm most excited about, because it means i can finally digitize my music library, something i've been wanting to do for a long time.

there's also a fancy service called Skydrive from Windows Live that i only just recently discovered. it's essentially free online storage, ala photobucket or a less sleazy RapidShare. they just recently upgraded their capacity to 25GB of free storage.

my plan is to offload my important files to the portable hard drive, then reinstall my copy of Windows Vista. not even because there's anything wrong with my computer - nothing of the sort. but there's a lot of excess registry data and uninstallables and the ilk. so yes, once the important stuff has been evacuated, i'll wipe it clean and start over. my only concern is that i don't have any more computer enables for my ipod, which means that if it doesn't recognize my reinstalled computer as the same one it was installed on, it won't let me use it V.V

at least, that's my theory.

i just recently found out that Alex may have to get a new camera, as his expensive, high-quality one has been damaged and may no longer be usable. we'll see. if that is the case, the situation with the ipod is up the air.

see, originally, i was going to get a DSi. actually, before that, i was going to get a digital camera, because i walk everywhere, and a lot of what i see, particularly in the mornings after i get off work, it all feels photogenic. i also wanted one to take with me to conventions and gaming events, but when i was looking up cameras, though, i realized how expensive it was to get a camera that could do both. when i heard about heard about the DSi, i decided that would be ideal; all i had was the Gameboy SP, and in addition to having a simple camera, it plays music and browses the internet... if anybody knows of a similarly priced ($170) device, let me know.

damn, have to leave for work. to be continued later.

there's an incredibly talented artist on deviantart who sent me a note today, urgently requesting my help in find people who will pay him to draw stuff. he's dropped his rates to the most ridiculously cheap level in order to make a quick $100. he does full ink and colors. and take my word for it when i say he's VERY talented. i've commissioned him twice, that's how much i love his art (though i paid much more).

http://7th-seal.deviantart.com/ 

in other news, the new Dredg CD has been pushed back (big surprise). it's now June 9th. ironically enough, The Mars Volta has just recently sprung a surprise on their fans; a new record in June! tentatively called "Octahedron". so i guess that makes up for it. Dredg and Mars Volta in the same month. that's a good thing.

NEW FUCKING MUSIC!

APRIL 7TH
Junior Boys - "Begone Dull Care" : [Parallel Lines] [FREE Show April 25th @ Billiken Club]
Doves - "Kingdom of Rust" : [Kingdom of Rust]

APRIL 28TH
SomanydynamoS - "The Loud Wars" : [Progress from "Flashlights"] [CD Release FREE Show April 18th @ Billiken Club]

May 19TH
Dredg - "The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion" : [Push Away (demo)]
Oceansize - "Frames" (US Release) : [Commemorative T-Shirt]
IAMX - "Kingdom of Welcome Addiction" [Think of England]

I am so pumped! And so broke!

<1234567890>

give me noxious fumes
give me crowded rooms
i want broken fixtures
i want stolen futures

i need you
like i need
another hole in the head
trepanation addiction
my fiction fiction

you cheshire cat
where oh where
are you at

 Wow, that post on Thursday seems REALLY annoying in retrospect.

Thank god nobody reads this thing, right?

Anyway, the recent reemergence of one of my fav bands, Glassjaw, has me reminescing back to the shining start of the new millenium, when I hadn't yet realized how passe angst was. Looking back at my CD collection, also recently unearthed and realized that 2002 was the best year ever for my music. That year the following albums were released:

"Bitterness The Star" by 36 Crazyfists
"Worship/Tribute" by GlassJAw
"What It Is To Burn" by Finch
"Wiretap Scars" by Sparta
"Terraforming" by The Postman Syndrome

As much as each of these bands have evolved after these initial releases, I savor these albums the most. It's not to say that I consider them the best music ever; that's a far more complex list. Instead, these five albums shaped me as a post-adolescent, as I graduated from high school and left behind my past. 

In the process of looking for a way to post tracks from these CDs, I've stumbled onto Opentape, which is a resurrected version of the wonderful Muxtape web service. Check it out and give it the support something like this needs.

Time for sleeping.

a sequel to one of the most underrated action movies of all time! 

 I keep waiting for it all to come crashing down.

I know I've got a mountain of debt that's waiting just outside my front door. It all stems from the apartment I used to live in, the expensive one that I was asked to move out of. I wish I'd had more time to prepare before making the decision to move into that apartment, to find a cheaper apartment, to find someone to move in with, but I didn't, and now I have a month's worth of unpaid utilities and a bounced rent check waiting for me as soon as I walk in the bank. I don't know the sum total of damage, but it's at least two hundred. That's not to mention the student loan payments I haven't made for the past five months. No doubt the loan has defaulted.

In addition to this, I have pressing medical pressures. My ingrown toenail is not going away any time soon, and my wisdom teeth make my jaw ache constantly. These are things I should have taken care of, but know I can't afford to pay for right now.

I don't know if I should clear things up with the bank first, or see the dentist and podiatrist first so I can tell the bank that I have medical bills to pay.

Either way, this means I'm getting a second job soon.

Fortunately, it looks like the local comic book shop is hiring, and I'm a shoe-in. I'm going up there on Saturday to talk to the owner and maybe start learning to run the place.

What this does mean is that my spare time is going to be MIA real shortly here.

I have always been very lucky. I've always gotten by with the minimum of effort. When I got to college and dawdled my first year through, my father threw a brick at my face. It still hasn't struck me. I spent the next year of my student loan dawdling also, until my transportation broke down. A second brick in the face meant I wasn't going to be handed a new set of wheels any time soon. Even then, I couldn't bring myself to find a full time job. It wasn't until the pressure at home got unbearable that I picked up the night shift and made enough money to move out. Not even really moving out, I was living off my former friend's parents' hospitality. Within the year, I'd worn out my welcome, and I was still working the same dead end job, screwing around and not doing anything important. When they told me it was time to go, I panicked and signed up for the closest apartment I could find. That made it even worse, living by myself, with no motivation and still no vehicle... at that point, I was completely self-absorbed, wasting three months doing absolutely nothing despite the fact that I clearly couldn't afford to pay rent there and ignoring the bills piling up. I was kicked out again, and things looked their worse.

I feel so sorry for Christy, having to bear the responsibility of inviting me to live there. I behaved as though her room was my own, left it a horrible mess, and pretty much buried myself in Resident Evil 4 and cable TV until the end.

Turning 24, moving into the apartment, the opening of Newcastle Comics, the whole end of 2008, it all has crystallized these experiences. Laid before me is an opportunity to live for real.

After leaving the New Year's Eve Party early, I was sitting in my room, listening to Have A Nice Life and working on Apparatus, and I finally made a connection; doing real things makes me happy. Video games, RPing, Gaia, just screwing around... I get lost in these distractions and they don't leave me feeling anything but distracted afterwards. They're addictions.

So, on New Year's Day, I wrote up a slip of paper and taped it to the side of my computer monitor. It says: "Death to Distractions".

Underneath it is the following list:

Newcastle Comics Cult Cinema Club
Apparatus
Maggotbox
Pulp Noise
Myfellowgamers
PHASE

The first three should be obvious. The third is a new project, inspired by Have a Nice Life and the Enemies List record label. The idea is to compile music, write prose set to this music, and package it with artwork. Simple but ambitious. It's a freeform project, not limited to a certain theme. The idea is to not only support the underrated, underexposed music I enjoy, but also to exercise my prose writing muscles and also to collaborate with other artists.

Myfellowgamers is a gaming website that I've become enamoured of. It's more than a novelty, and I recommend giving it a look. The driving principle of it, and the reason why I'm so focused on it, is that it uses comparison reviews between two games to create a more sophisticated ranking system than your average, numerically-based sites like Gamespot and the ilk. Despite my new vow to put video games aside, this site is something I'm already a part of and I want to see it grow.

PHASE is Newtypes. It's my cyberpunk action movie tabletop RPG. I'm going to start work on it again, because I'm tired of D&D and Vampire and Werewolf and I want something that doesn't suck to play.

So, these are my top priorities. I'm putting aside Gaia, no more commissioning, no more RPing, no more distractions.

2009 is the year distraction died.

 

thanks to Scott @ WeAreMovieGeeks.com for the tip!

 also, Godwin's Law is a riot.

so is this

 first off, Uncle Outrage: great stuff.

as some of you may be aware, about this time every year, i prepare for ACen. in years past at this time, i began searching out particularly unique cyberpunk-esque outfits to acquire and wear for the convention. i recently enlisted the aid of Merc in assembling an outfit, as i found myself dry on ideas.

she suggested the following pair of UFO pants with a matching shirt vest thing with an offer to sew on an anime-style zipper thing down the front of the vest. it's a really cool outfit but i'm worried it won't look that cool on me.

later that night, i was looking up pictures of this character from "The Good, The Bad and the Weird". I love his outfit, and while studying it, it struck me that it wouldn't be that difficult to put that one together (other than that swanky ass belt).  There's a plethora of pinstripe vests available on Ebay, this one being the cheapest. Assembling the rest of the outfit is more a question of budget and availability. I can get a swanky dress shirt here for $25, or I could just go around various non-internet stores and look for one. If I can find a cheaper dress shirt, I can grab the expensive, sexy pants from Lip Service, or if I can't find a satisfactory shirt, I can get a cheaper pair of pants from the same store that sells the dress shirt. And then, of course, there's the matter of accessorizing; gotta find a cool belt(s?), a hat(?) and a pocketwatch w/ chain. My Dr. McNinja cosplay will require dress shoes, so that kills two birds with one stone there.

What do you folks think? Should I opt for the anime-esque raver gear or the gangster-esque western outfit?

 

I never thought I'd see the day that Alec Empire would let a car company use his music for a commercial. Even worse, his so-called "New Sound" is fucking electro house, the same shit he was railing against in '99. He sold out, that lousy fuck.

Digital Hardcore Forever