Fire Sign

As usual, I have allowed distraction to take the reigns and lead me away from my keyboard on a daily basis, resulting in mental trafficking and stagnation of the mind. I wonder how much more backed up my thoughts will get before some of them start vanishing. I had an excuse last week, which was my new motorbike (the damn thing just won’t let me be) but this week I have little more than a vague mention of rock band to pardon my absences from posting. I’ve added a few new people to the ranks of my friends list since the last time I had anything of value to say, so we’ll see if anyone new will be listening in this time around. Anyway, with so much to say, I find it difficult to reign in a good spot to start. I guess I’ll start with last week’s excuse for not doing much:

For those who don’t know, I got a new bicycle a few weeks ago, and took about eight hours building a small motor on to it. In essence, it works like a moped. I pedal the bike up to speed, and then release a clutch. This starts the motor, and from here I can stop pedaling and use it just like a small motorcycle. (It’s really more like a dirt bike)

Anyway, since completing it, it’s been in a constant state of disrepair. This has reassured me of my inability to build anything that works dependably, but that’s another story entirely. Three hours after its completion, my youngest brother piloted my shiny new motorbike at full speed into a curb at the mouth of our parent’s driveway. The result was a bent and fractured rear wheel. The bike itself was not even 24 hours old, and my brother managed to effectively destroy it in a matter of minutes. So, my father, out of sympathy for us both, paid for a new wheel which I had to take about and hour to completely replace.

Ok. Working bike again. So, since the bike was to serve as a temporary replacement for the jeep that doesn’t work, I decided to attempt the ten mile trek from my parent’s house back to my apartment. Things went fairly smoothly until I took a detour through a field to test its durability off road. All things considered, the bike performed miraculously. I only wish I could make the same assessment about it’s operator. I, like the absent minded fool that I am, started chasing geese around this field with my 3.5 horse power dirt bike, not noticing that this “field” was actually a drainage basin for a business park up the hill. I regret to report that I found the drains with the effective use of my front wheel an impact sensor. I was henceforth banished from the seat of my bike, as it followed me through the air only to meet me on the ground about a split second after I got there. I am miraculously unharmed, (at least, that was my initial assessment. A good night’s sleep revealed a fair bit of bruising the morning after) and the bike is apparently unscathed aside from a minor dent in the fuel tank, but upon taking it out of the field, the drive chain for the motor got jammed and bent in the motor casing, and I had lacked the insight that day to carry with me the tools I needed to repair it. I had to be picked up by my brother, who helped me take the chain off and prep it for repair the next day.

So, next day, an hour of repairs, and the bike works again. This time, I’m heading for Downingtown to meet my fiancé’s mother for a word and a bite to eat. Five minutes into the trip, and a fierce rattling brings me to a halt. I discover one of the bolts for the engine mount is missing. ah ha, but this time I have all my tools with me. so, I pull the bike to the curb, tighten everything that isn’t missing, and decide to cope with the missing mount. The rattling stopped when I refastened the motor to the down tube of the bike. I get to Downingtown after a long and extremely satisfying ride. Things are going great. Now, once again, I must make the trek back to my apartment. I get going feeling pretty confident, having all the tools necessary to commandeer any mechanical problem that might arise along the way. I am on the road for 2 minutes when (drum roll please) my rear tire tube explodes from the initial stress of the impact that claimed my first back wheel. And when I say it exploded, I mean this tube was irreparable. I had to walk my bike five miles up the road, through heavy traffic, to Exton where I met up with my roommate who helped me take it back to our apartment.

Next day, I salvaged the inner tubes from my old bike, used one to replace the one that exploded, and put the other in my backpack along with my tire patch kit and pocket bike pump. Nothing can go wrong now… UNLESS the drive chain has now stretched from being bent and broken in and no longer fits the bike, so when I start the bike, the guide wheel along the side of the bike turns down and gets stuck in the spokes of the rear wheel, yet again banishing me from my seat atop the wreck that is my shattered dreams of freedom of transportation.

For now, my bike is sitting outside on my patio. I haven’t tried to start it since last Friday. I still need to resize the chain, or purchase a new one, and figure out a way to format the mounting hardware on the guide wheel so that it never again allows itself to protrude into the rear spokes turning me into an awkwardly shaped squishy missile. Out of all of this, I have learned to truly value the importance of wearing a helmet. I have a fairly good one, and despite its brand newness, it already has a number of scars it’s claimed in place of my head.

EDIT: this is probably the reason why I'm so afraid of delving into my jeep. I'm usually quite keen on jumping in head first and trying things rather than learning from paper, but if this is what happens when i put things together myself, then I'm terrified of the damage i could do to my jeep should i ever try and fix it! (my friend Jeff recently disassembled his entire engine with little to no experience, and when i asked him where he got the balls to do it he, he said "hey, you're the one who showed me how to do this kind of thing." he helped me with some of my hair-brained creations when i was a teenager. i had never been more happy to have him as my friend.)

Alas, I had a lot more to say, but this is quite long already. I suppose I’ll close by asking if anyone can tell me how to do an lj cut. It’s been explained to me before, but like everything else I’ve absorbed over the years, I’ve already forgotten. I think that if I’m going to catch up on all the writing I haven’t been doing, it will be a lot more courteous if this long spiel wasn’t showing up on people’s friend’s pages every day!

song_of_copper asks: Tell about some of the things you've made. It can be *anything* - from clothes to New Year's resolutions to machinery...

This is probably one of the best questions I could have received since I’ve been making things since birth. This will also however be a little long in duration, so sorry in advance for the long read.

Of all the toys I had when I was growing up, none were more influential then the collection I started when I was just four years old. It was then that I made my first advance from the bulky duplos to the more advanced legos. From then till now, I have been building with them nonstop, and never looked back. Since legos came in kits, it was always custom to build the kit first, but it never lasted long. I don’t think I made one that lasted more than a week before it was torn back down to single pieces and molded into my own imaginings. This is a major factor in discovering the origins of my thought process. Every piece fit neatly beside each other, but the key difference between duplos and legos was that now I had access to moving components. I could now make hinges, joints, axels, and I could apply them to any point on any surface. The implications were astounding. My experience with legos eventually evolved into my capacity to draw, and later, to arrange music, as I found the concepts of both had their roots on mechanical construction. As for some of the things I have made with legos, my most recent achievement was a 3ft long spacecraft with a full interior, shuttle bay, retractable crane, and docking station. It’s still a work in progress, but I have pictures if anyone is interested: (you’ll have to click on the image to enlarge it in order to see the entire slideshow!)

http://ember-reed.deviantart.com/art/i-m-a-lego-maniac-35246985

So, when the limitations of the lego became too great for me to exceed, I turned to the pencil, and a piece of paper. I can still remember the first time I was ever able to surpass the second dimension with a piece of paper. it was the first time I had ever learned to draw something that didn’t look like a technical diagram. Obviously, my first love was of drawing machines. I loved drawing ships and cars because I could draw them in the same manner as I would build with legos; by constructing them out of simpler parts. Even now very little has changed about the way I approach a drawing. I use details like parts and use them as a map for assembling an image to my satisfaction. This is why, if I want to continue to evolve as an artist, I have to learn to see the finished product before I complete the image. This is why I have had such great difficulty in learning how to draw poses and expressions. It requires a certain intuition and understanding of the concept of expression, which can never be mastered through mechanical understanding; the concept of emotion is wholly non-mechanical. About two or three years ago, I started an account on deviantart.com about the same time I started trying to write seriously. It was around this time that I first started using digital media to create my work. The results are as follows:

http://ember-reed.deviantart.com/art/hands-of-the-artists-29329304

http://ember-reed.deviantart.com/art/neru-and-azreal-51884078

http://ember-reed.deviantart.com/art/N-E-R-U-59582905

In my first year of high school, I was introduced to my first piece of music composition software called fruity loops. It was a fairly complex program that grew in complexity as I obtained newer versions over the years. From ninth grade till my final attempt at senior year, I familiarized myself with this application and learned to love every second of my time with it. Due to the restrictions of the system I had when I first installed it, my capacity to create music reached it’s end close to the end of my senior year. The complexity of my music surpassed the capacities of my processor, and so I attempted to format my computer in hopes that I would be able to eradicate enough software to reinstall a fully functional version of fruity loops 5. It failed, and I haven’t made any music since, but I plan on returning to this passion when I am finished with my writing. As with everything else, my music was a sum of pieces. The music I created was electronic in origin as this was mainly what I was listening to at the time, but the influence my choir had on me steered the structure of my music to more classical composition. The result was an interesting blend of electronic sound, and classical structure. Since my mind is chaotic at best, most of my music was over layered as a result of my inability to think on a single plane at one time. This meant that most of my music came out to be a lot of indistinguishable noise. There was however rare occasions when I would get the perfect balance between layers, and a song would emerge. Since a lot of these songs were never finished, I am left with only three polished productions that I am proud to call my own, my favorite of which was called “the fall of silence,” and can be found here:

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=6405675

Now, in the time I spent in high school I obtained one more outlet for my creativity in hopes of boosting my position on the social ladder. This was designing and assembling clothes: an ability that my grandmother passed down to me, as no one else in my family ever took to picking it up. Wile I never considered this one of my strongest talents, I was proved wrong when I took first place in the fashion show during senior year. My inspirations came from functionality. I liked anything that served a purpose, and when combined with an artistic mind a strong sense of color, you get a unique design that is apparently desired amongst the various cliques of my high school. The pants I made that won the fashion show were originally designed as a kind of sports wear because of the way the elastic bands that suspended the lower half of the legs would help your legs spring back faster while running. In the end they were too uncomfortable for sports, but were well suited for raves, so that’s what they became: party pants. I made a few different designs of “party pants” including a grey version that would turn into shorts without removing anything from the legs. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures available on my pc of these finished designs, but I’ll make sure to take some and post them later.

So, in addition to everything else, I have, every once in a while, become absorbed in various projects over the years, each one more complex then the last. I think these projects were my own way of testing my resolve, since I could never take one on that was smaller than the one that preceded it. For example, when I was 17, I tried to build a 4 disc cd mixer, and in the process, I got a crash course in soldering. I used a bunch of old Discmans and built a frame for it all out of some pieced of plastic and a bit of wood. This all went great until I tried to build an amplifier for it. This was when I got a crash course in electrical fires, but that’s how you learn. Later on, when I got my car, I spent two days building a car stereo into the driver’s seat using parts from an old computer sound system. As a result of my previous failures, this one turned out a success, but it was to be a limited success as its durability proved far less adequate than I had expected. Ever since, the things I make tend to be much tougher.

So, I learn from trying things. It’s how I learned to draw/sew/produce music/build anything that comes into my mind. My latest project, which comes as an explanation for my recent absence from live journal, was a motor that I installed on my bicycle. Even now, it is a work in progress, but the more it breaks, the better I’ll learn how to fix it. I’m hoping to have enough confidence this time next year to be able to take apart my car, and even then, it will be another game of trial and error. I think this is why I was so terrible in school, since I could never accept something as fact until finding out for myself. This was easier for math and physics since anything could eventually be proven through equations, but even then, it was all part of something I wanted to figure out for myself. By the time I got to high school, my capacity to understand things made it difficult for me to stay focused because I was constantly ahead of the game, which left me without any motivation for homework or school work, so I spent all my time learning and developing the ability to express myself through my creations. While this makes me a poor fit for today’s society, it makes me one of the few innovators left in the world. So now I’ve decided to turn my attention to telling stories, and even though my ability to assemble has provided me with an excellent story, I’ve found it far more difficult in the execution. I know, as experience has told me, that I will eventually figure this whole “writing” thing out. It’s just a matter of time! ^_^

papercolors asks: Explain your tag-- Facebook art. Or just your experience in Facebook in general.

Well, if you have a facebook, then you may or may not be aware of an application recently added to facebook called graffiti. For those who don’t know, graffiti is a very basic illustration application that allows the user to leave small illustrations on their friend’s pages. In addition to this feature, there have also been graffiti contests in which contestants must create an illustration based on a theme and draw it on the contest page’s wall. I have entered two of these contests since joining facebook, and though I was hopeful to win one of them, I was left disappointed in the end. To be honest, throughout my artistic career, I have never won a competition no matter how much favor I thought I had, so this wasn’t all that new in the field of disappointments.

To describe the program, there are a few simple elements. (this program is unbelievably simplistic) There is one tool with three variables that can be changed. One is the size of the tool, one is the opacity of the tool, and the third is the color. There are a little over a hundred or so colors to choose from, and the shape of the brush tool is constant; It’s always a circle. The real benefit is the replay option. The application memorizes every stroke and allows you to replay the process of it’s creation from beginning to end upon it’s completion. There is a drawback however, and that is, once the image is completed, you cannot go back and edit. It is a one shot deal!

For me, this is a beautiful thing. I thrive on simplicity, and find their constraints to be the perfect tool for squeezing just the right amount of creativity and skill from my own mind. The result: I perform better with this simplistic online application than I do with advanced tools like Photoshop. I believe the reason for this is because I like to assemble images by focusing on the small details that make it appealing. When the space is very small, I am able to focus on the image as a whole, and the end result is a finished product that I am fully aware of from beginning to end. When I work on much larger images, it’s harder for me to focus on detail work while maintaining an idea of the whole, and as I progress, the image begins to form in a disjointed manner which takes away from the finished product rather than enhancing it.

This is why my experience with creating art on facebook has been an overall pleasant one, and while my disappointments in contests prevented me from continuing my efforts online, I still see it as some of the best work I’ve ever produced.

Examples of graffiti art by me:







As for the replay, here’s a link to the replay for the last image on that list:

http://apps.facebook.com/graffitiwall/show_replay.php?rn=016dbdebfb16b0af1bc54de5bb8b99a1

and that’s my experience with facebook art! ^_^

This wasn’t what I had in mind, but a challenge is a challenge. It’s not in my favor to back down now…

Talithakalago asks: what are your thoughts on yaoi….

I guess I should start by saying the word itself sounds really funny. It sounds more like an expression of exhaustion or extreme pain than a word. I had heard it many many times before connecting it with its literal meaning, and every time I did, I regarded it as some sort of grand mysterious entity that would always be too far away to grasp. And then, one day, sometime after I graduated high school, I became what many people today refer to as an otaku, (a mild one, but an otaku none the less) and thus it was no longer ok for me to remain clueless regarding the definition of yaoi.

My presence on deviantart.com made it extremely difficult to avoid as I found myself swimming in yaoi before long. Having been given adequate resources to base my judgments upon, my thoughts are as follows.

As far as I can tell, yaoi seems to evolve from an over exaggerated attempt by women to understand the relationships between two men. This seems quite obvious since most yaoi stems from a misinterpretation of strong friendships (or in some cases, strong hatreds) between male characters. As a result, it is my understanding that yaoi can only appeal to other women. Are there exceptions? I’m certain there are, but I’m just as certain of their rarity. I think it’s rampant because of the lack of such honest and emotional men in real life.

I believe that if all men were as honest with each other as their videogame counterparts, there would probably be a lot less yaoi, and a lot more women in serious fulfilling relationships. It’s the absence of these elements in the real world that spawns these kinds of fantasies.

Does this mean that there aren’t such examples of male bonding in real life? Absolutely not! What I’m implying is that these kinds of displays nearly always take place behind closed doors away from the prying eyes of the opposite sex. As a result, most women are first acquainted with this kind of male bonding in videogames, and the most common reaction seems to be that it implies something more than just friendship. The truth is, these bonds are a great deal more common in real life than women think, and it’s for this reason that there are usually an equal or greater number of men who enjoy the same games. (*sigh* I suppose the love between two men can only be truly understood by two men who love each other. I can claim to love several men not related to me, and I can assure you that it has never been accompanied by the thought of physical companionship. It’s a special bond, unique in its characteristics and origins, and I think it’s greatly misunderstood)

As for it’s content being offensive or not, other than its implied misunderstanding, it’s completely harmless. I find it hard to see how anyone who is comfortable with their sexuality can be offended by this type of material. In fact, I find some of the artwork inspired by such notions to be very well executed, and due to the overwhelming feminine characteristics of some of these male characters, I can sometimes find it to be quite beautiful. This observation however is limited to an extremely select few entities. For the most part, yaoi is poorly drawn by a large number of uninspired fan girls who know less about drawing then they do about male relationships. I can however reserve this same judgment for most yuri as well, since most of THAT comes from sexually frustrated teens who have never witnessed the female body in all its true glory. Overall, the topic of yaoi neither interests me, nor puts me off. Besides providing a revealing look into the young female psyche, it does nothing for me.

And those are my thoughts on yaoi. So, if it’s ok, I’d like it if I were asked more pertinent questions in the future! X_X

got this from song of copper's journal, and since I received a very detailed answer, far beyond my expectations, to my inquiry, I felt it was only fair that i post the same thing in my journal and open myself to questioning! so:

Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on yaoi, the benefit of revolutions, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc. Repost in your own journal so that we can all learn more about each other.

questions GO:

I have just watched a film that reaffirms everything I have ever believed and redefines the choices I’ve made for the path I choose to walk in life. this has completely turned me around and made me realize the mistakes I’ve been making and the poor choices that got me into the state I’m in, but more than anything, it underscores the importance of the novel I’m working on and has fully revitalized my motivation to see it’s end.

For those of you who haven’t seen zeitgeist, know that it won’t be pleasant, however revealing it may be. What’s important is to not think of the film as truth, but as a guidepost to seeing the world in a different light. For me, it was seeing my own conclusions echoed back to me with resounding clarity and precision. While I have, for a long time, suspected many of the claims this film has brought out into the open, I have never been able to confirm any of it within the scope of my existence. It seems obvious now, and I’m happy to say that it hadn’t slipped my grasp quite completely as it has most of the rest of the population.

It’s available for free download at the zeitgeist site, or can be found on Google video in three separate parts. I am urging everyone who reads this to look into this. I could care less if it alienates me from everyone on my friends list. Nothing has ever been this important.

http://zeitgeistmovie.com/main.htm

Hello everyone. Sorry for the week long absence. I’ve been trying to post daily, but as most of you probably already know, the new smash bros. game came out recently and as a result, I’ve been at my parent’s house playing with my brother. He’s advanced to the regional smash championship by the way.

Anyway, that aside, I want to thank everyone who reads my entries. Live journal has become something of an instrument I’ve been using to keep me focused on writing. While it hasn’t completely paid off yet, it has made it an essential part of my day, because the first thing I do when I get to my computer is check my live journal. At the very least, it’s completely disabled my normal function of forgetting about the whole project for the sake of some other distraction, and not counting this last week, it’s kept me from wasting away in front a tv screen which has become a serious problem

My next task is to remove as many of the available distractions from my computer as I can and produce a writing schedule I can actually follow; something simple like an hour a day at a specific time. if I can do that for a month, then I will increase the time to one and a half hours a day. The goal is to eventually be writing about 20 hours a week or more. I should be up to that speed by the summer; at least that’s the plan

I’m writing scenes now. It might turn out to be a mistake, but I’ve always believed that my greatest talent was for making a marvelous whole from little pieces. I think that if I start writing all the scenes I know already, the middle ground that I’m having trouble with will become clear in time. since starting at the beginning has become my greatest obstacle, I’m going to write from the center in both directions, starting with the train scene, and the neru vs. azreal battle that takes place immediately after it. if I can do that, I think I can start getting a feel for how I want the rest of the novel to sound like.

Anyway, I hope everyone has been well in my absence. I’ll be reading my friends page again, so I hope I haven’t made anyone feel neglected in the last few days.

Trouble with the roommates again…

Once again, I find myself in a difficult position with one of my roommates, but I fear that there will be no quick solution this time around. It seems my concerns from the last issue I had with him are being fully realized. He’s gone into complete control mode, and this time I am going to have to stand up for myself. I really can’t take his shit anymore.

To reiterate, my roommate has a new girlfriend. They’ve been together for a few months now, and that means that he is becoming desperate for an outlet of control. Since he knows from experience now that he won’t be able to control her, he is instead trying to control all of us. Now he is leaning on damage control… keeping the place clean is now top priority. The only problem this time is, now the place is clean, and has resorted to focusing on the mediocre: dished that aren’t 100% spotless, shoes and jackets not being put in the closet when we get home, keys being left on the coffee table. I don’t know when HE became a neat freak, but I can promise that I will never want to live like that. It’s a different story when we are having company or something, but to maintain this immaculate façade forever is pushing the extent of my patience.

What really burns me is that we’ve been living together for nearly sixteen months without a big issue like this. Why he has now chosen to constrict our actions is beyond me ability to define, but what I do know is that I’m sick and tired of it. as usual, being the dominant alpha male that he is, he’s taken it upon himself to plan an “apartment meeting,” between the four of us, and we are all “expected” to attend! This is where I will make my stand once and for all, and prove, to all three of them, that I will no longer be seen as a push over. There is a big difference between comfort and functionality. He has officially crossed the line where he is no longer concerned for the quality of life in the apartment, and is now instead focused on his own ideal living situation where we all bend to his every will.

I am finished taking his bullshit and anyone else’s. It’s my turn to be angry, and I will not let anyone deny me the right to be pissed the fuck off.

When I was having trouble getting motivated to work on my novel, I decided it would be good idea to browse the web for some kind of advice or how to manual on what I should do to get me rolling. While reading a long list of self help articles won’t force my hand to the page, it can give me a number of idea’s on how to start fixing the problem, rather than sitting back and beating myself up for not knowing any better. One such idea among one of the many articles I went through suggested that I write letters to myself about the book project as a way of helping me to get back on the topic of writing. Like my encyclopedia idea, this is effective in both keeping my mind on the book itself, and at keeping me writing, which seems to be the real problem here since I can never find the words I’m looking for when I finally do sit down to get things done.

While this isn’t exactly addressed to myself, it is on the topic of my novel. I created this journal to be a portal for me to share my work with everyone I’ve met on LJ, and this is a good opportunity to try and get people interested in the project. If the concept isn’t interesting to anyone, then at least it provides me with cue I need to pack up and start over.

(please please please don’t steal my ideas. I’ve worked for four years developing these concepts, and they are very important to me!)

So why the title “The Letter A,”? To me, it’s a symbol of beginning. Therefore, I decided that since each novel was about the beginning of something, I made the titles of each begin with the letter A.

The first novel in the series (chronologically speaking) is called “The Architects,” and follows the story of Atlas Z. Reed as he forms the organization known as the architects. In a world of corruption and decay, Reed and the architects use their power and influence to create a new world, independent from the rest of the world’s nations, and become the founders of New Atlantis: a floating city in the center of the Atlantic Ocean. Threatened by their technological superiority, the world’s remaining superpowers use propaganda to rally the population against the young sovereignty. Using their technologies, the people of New Atlantis are able to avert destruction, but upon thwarting the enemy assault, a new conflict begins between the superpowers, and the result is a devastating third world war.

The second novel in the series (and the one I’m currently working on) is called “The Angels” and follows the story of Neru, who is the grand daughter of Atlas. Neru’s father, Isaac Reed, is the current leader of the Architects, and with most of the rest of the world in ruins, it has become the purpose of the Atlantaians to lend a hand to the world’s population, and restore peace and prosperity. Neru, who like her father suffers from an array of odd genetic mutations, also suffers from an inability to speak, unrelated to her voice. (meaning, her voice works fine, but she is unable to speak from a psychological problem) on Neru’s 16th birthday, she is taken away from her home by her father, and they travel to the original headquarters of the architects, which had been lost to the current generation of architects for many years. Under the suspicion that her father was keeping something from her, she escapes from her father and explores the facility herself, only to discover that she is an artificial human upon finding the lab where she was created. Angry, confused, and alone, neru runs away, only to be caught by a group of mercenaries assigned to terminate neru and her father. She is killed in a skirmish, but her spirit embarks on a journey through consciousness and perception as she learns the true meaning of life and of god.

The third novel in the series is called “Atlantis,” and the story is still a secret, but I will say that it describes the next phase of humanity’s evolution in a final conflict between humanity, god, and the forces of entropy. It’s the real conclusion to this story, and while it is so far the shortest, it is also the most important. This is designed to be the real end to our story – the end of humanity – so in a way, it’s apocalyptic, but I want it to demonstrate that the end of our world is not the end of everything, and that everything we know is part of something much greater!

So, that’s the basis of my novels. If this sounds interesting to anyone, let me know. If not, let me know. I need to know right now if what I’m doing is worth the effort. This is an extraordinary amount of work, so I want to be sure that what I’m striving for is worth it all. Who will read this upon its completion? Let me know if you want to be one of them!

oh, and if you have any question about the series (not that i expect that much interest this early in the game) ask away, and i'll answer!

I’m really upset right now. This doesn’t happen to me very often, and though I’ve learned to calm down, my thoughts are very manic when I’m about to lose my temper, so I thought It might be a good idea to try and write it out instead of letting it get to me.

It’s really hard to focus when I’m upset. It’s probably like that for everyone, but it really bothers me. I’m very introspective, so when I’m trying to stop for a moment to analyze my own thinking, and I suddenly can’t, I get unusually frustrated; even more so than I already am. I believe that everything that affects us is under our control, but that control is limited heavily by our own level of discipline. I accept that my own discipline is fairly short at the moment, so there’s only so much I can deal with, and so much I can take. Until I gain I higher level of discipline there are still a lot of things that are going to bother me, and today, it was one of my best friend that’s crossed the line.

My first roommate has been my friend for eight years, and for good reason, but I’ve had to accept that he, like everyone, isn’t perfect. He’s somewhat of a womanizer, has a tendency to dramatize things, but more importantly, he’s a massive control freak. Everything ha to be his way, and when it’s not, it’s his “responsibility” to change it.

It was a simple issue. He had a gripe about me using his entertainment system irresponsibly. He thought it was too loud, and that I might be damaging his equipment, despite the fact that I had the volume set to his own predetermined limit of -25. there is an unspoken agreement between the two of us about our respective equipment. Since he has a TV, and no computer, and I have a computer with no TV, we understand that we both have the right to use each others’ systems with certain ground rules. He’s broken mine a time or two before, as I have his, but there have never been disputes before.

It is my belief that the dispute this time arises from the fact that he had his girlfriend over at the time, and as a result, he felt he needed to exert his authority and establish his dominance about the household. Since he believes (as I have allowed him to believe) that the apartment and everything in it is under his control, I usually let this sort of thing slide, but I couldn’t let it go this time. Something about his attitude really bothered me tonight, and I think it’s because of the relationship he’s in, and the fact that as usual, it’s made him more dominant around the apartment. He issues more commands, and takes charge of the apartment order more when there’s a woman in his life, and I think it probably stems from a host of relationship issues he’s had in the past.

Because of his thirst for female companionship, he’s had a great many more opportunities to screw up than I have when it comes to dealing with the opposite sex. While we are both the same age, I’ve been in six relationships before finding my fiancé, while his total list of victims has rocketed into the 50’s. This has also given me many opportunities to observe the changes in his behavior between the man I know in a relationship, and the one I know who’s single. It’s the same sharp contrast between the pros and cons of the friend I know and love. On the one hand, he’s responsible, resourceful, and intelligent enough to know the difference between right and wrong. As a friend, he’s also extremely loyal, but this makes the cons much harder to deal with. When engaged in a relationship for more than a few weeks, he becomes controlling, self righteous, and confrontational. He’ll become over confident over the next fem months, and try to force a more rigid control over the things he believes need improving, and will most likely vent these sorts of things on the people closest to him.

While most of this is simple speculation, it irritates me to know that I have no control over it in anyway. I know that tomorrow he’ll sit me down like a misbehaved child and reprimand me for not taking him more seriously, even though he know from eight years of experience that, more than anything, I hate authority. It’s just too much to deal with right now, especially when I’m trying to get my novel underway again. Dealing with one out of hand roommate is enough for me. I can’t afford to deal with a second.

god, i miss erin!

I miss high school. I know there are a great number of people out there who are probably head-desking right now for seeing those words, but it’s true. After these last four years out, I find myself wanting back in. so why do I find myself regretting the changeover. I realize now, after all this time, that after five years of high school, I had adapted to survive in a high school environment, and having taking such an exhausting amount of time and effort to do so, I am now resisting to making another dire and more widespread adaptation.

I realize after being alive for 22 years, that I change and grow very slowly compared to the rest of my peers. I’ve come to believe that the reason for this is because I need to understand something completely before I am able to risk becoming involved. This was my approach to every subject I ever had in school, and though it didn’t seem to work out for me in the beginning, I discovered much later on that the information I was retaining was far beyond that of my fellow students. I had become I fast learner, and I, unlike most of the people I knew back then, was able to apply that learning to anything I wanted, because I understood it, rather than just knowing. So how has this aspect come to hurt me so much now that I’ve left this grand institution?

It’s because I’ve grown so used to the social structure of high school that t can barely breath out in the open of the real world. I was recently reminded by a friend’s entry that I used to produce music when I was in high school. In the last day or two, I found all my old songs and played them back with an awe unlike any I can describe. It served to remind me of what I was capable of when I was in high school, and why. I may have barely passed high school, but when I left, I did so with more knowledge and learning than 95% of my class, and it was because I never got bogged down with meaningless homework. Instead, I took on grand projects that I thought would draw a great deal of attention to me, and make me of value to my peers. Everything I did was used as leverage to gain me social status, and I realize now how effective it really was.

I failed my senior year the first time around, but when I came back to repeat it, I had become a growing legend. Suddenly, a lot of people knew my name, and wanted to see just what I was capable of. I got this attention from everywhere, and I couldn’t get enough. It forced a quality upon my work that I have since been unable to reproduce. My art, my music, my writing, my singing: it was all improved upon for the sake of popularity, so that I could one up anyone I met without much contest. Even after I graduated, I came back to reclaim the buzz when I spent two sleepless nights making my brother’s spirit day costume, and made sure to have him tell everyone who made it. It was all part of my motivations, and made big projects like a four day production for 3 minutes of music seem easy. So why does this all come back to bite me now.

The question is, who do I have left to impress with my work now that I’ve left school. The answer: no one…

I realize now that the reason Its become so difficult for me to make progress of my novel is because the only people I have to read it are the ones closest to me, who are already aware of my capabilities. Absolutely nothing I do can impress my parents anymore, since they’ve seen it all, and a great deal of my friends became my friends as a result of my talents, so who’s there in my life left to show off to. Since I can’t find an answer for that, I have nothing left to do but sit and waste away what I’ve spent the last eight years to become. Attention and praise were the only rewards I ever saw value in, and now, there’s no where for me to get it.

I miss high school.

what is it about a perfectly tuned note that brings me to tears? i wonder how many of you reading have seen Across the Universe. theres a scene in there choreographed to the song "let it be" sung by a gospel choir. the soloist has perfect pitch. it's one my biggest pet peeves to hear people singing out of key, even a little bit. in direct opposition to that is the reaction i have to perfect pitch. the notes this lady hits are simply unbelievable, and she sings them with a passion that would knock you over if you weren't sitting right. every time i hear it, i'm in tears.

i think it reminds me of the experience of singing amazing grace to a large crowd of people who are intently focused on the sound of my voice, and my voice alone. it speaks volumes about the experience of individuality when a single voice can dominate a moment like that. i can say from experience that it's one of the most divine moments in my life.

i wonder if anyone else harbors this reaction to music. particularly singing, but any music in general counts. is there something inside all of us that is so resonant with music that it can bring us to tears, or is it a select few with a better understanding of music that can have this experience. it's so profoundly moving that i really wonder if it can happen to anyone, or if i really am the only one listening.

anyway, that aside, i was once again rudely awakened by my ignorant roommate. he has an extremely bad habbit of screaming profanities at the top of his lungs in the general direction of the television when things don't go very well for him in halo matches (which has become increasingly often)

i really never thought i could believe in a worthless life, but he's really testing my patience on the issue. I've never met anyone with less worth, and his lack of consideration for others (and not just me) is staggering at best. it's happened on almost every occasion that he's invited people over, that they arrive to him just getting in the shower. how do you invite someone over and wait until they get there to take a shower. for a half an hour no less. then I'm stuck in the living room with his flaky guests while he lathers in hot water haucking lugies for half an hour. all he does is go to work (as a salesmen of course (professional assholes in my opinion)) then comes home and plays video games in unending frustration till four in the morning, keeping everyone up, and wasting our electricity. I've never met anyone as obsessed with video games as this one. complete failure at life. ugh

sorry for the rant. don't know if you can tell from the poor rushed writing, but I'm writing this is an overwhelming sense of frustration. i think I've grown so used to having wonderful people around me that it's hard for me to adjust to what i would call a perfect sample of the scum of the earth. self centered and racist to boot!!!! arg

ok, i'm done.

i think I'll go eat something. prologue coming soon! promise

as if i had anything else to report. i had really wanted to post a finished prologue today, but it seems, despite my best efforts, that i was unable to get any farther than a paragraph into it. even though i couldn't finish in time to post this week, i can't continue to avoid posting until i have some of my real work ready for readers. i have too much to say in the meantime, and it's starting to pile up! x_x

one thing i do want to share is an idea i had about how to stay focused on my novel when I'm not writing the main body of the piece. it actually came to me while i was reading the foundation novels. in the first foundation novel, a select group of scientists are sent to the end of the galaxy to produce an encyclopedia galactic, the purpose of which was to preserve the knowledge and learnings of humanity should the galactic empire fall. this made the book unique since every chapter was preceded by an excerpt from the encyclopedia, providing a small insight into the nature of the characters or events about to be divulged in the chapter. since i have an overdeveloped left brain that keeps me bogged down on details and prevents me from maintaining the flow of the story itself, I've decided to use that side of my brain to organize and produce an encyclopedia on all the locations, technologies, characters, history, etc.. from the futuristic world the story takes place in. it will map the course of events starting from the present day all the way until the end of the third novel in my story, and will provide me with all the reference material i will ever need to get me unstuck from any situation i could possibly run into as i continue forward with my writing.

the real benefit to this project however come in two pieces. one is the fact that throughout this project, i can jump around as much as i want, keeping each entery organized and categorized in a network of folders, allowing me to satisfy my dominant left brain while keeping me focused on the world of my novel. the second part of it is all about my ability to describe to any extent of detail the aspects and characters of my novel without creating any real impact on the novel itself. that means that i can get the description bug out of my system before tackling the real body of my work which should enable me to write more efficiently without getting bogged down on endless details.

i had planned on adding an excerpt from the encyclopedia itself in the absence of a prologue, but i seem to have carried on too long, so i won't post it unless it's requested. let me know if you are interested, and I'll include a few excerpts in my next post. if anything, it will provide you all with a bit of insight into the nature of the content of this novel! ^_^

i do have alot to say, but i don't want to overwhelm any of my readers just yet, so I'll save most of it for another time. i hope everyone is doing well. i know I've been better, but i haven't given up yet! ^_^

thanks for reading!

this was probably a mistake, but i think it'll leave it up for a while and let my readers be the judge. it's become apparent to me, especially after hearing this, that i really do have a strong tendency to slur my words together. if this is impossible to understand, let me know, and I'll never do this again. I'm a singer, and I'm not supposed to hate my own voice, especially since I'm supposed to be starting music school next fall, but i can't help it. it sounds so creepy x_x

VoicePost 218K 1:06

(no transcription available)

anyway, I'm sorry for the annoyingness. I'm warning you all now, it's probably best if you don't press play, but if you feel brave, i won't stop you. i really can't anyway.

and i promise to have some of my writing up by the next time i post. i know I've been stalling, and i did have a whole lot in mind when i made that post on add a writer. it won't be long now before i have something for you to read.

but before that, i also wanted to share this video to help get to know me. this is me and a bunch of my friends being very very stupid by hoping into some rapids and going along for the ride during our late summer excursion at Ohiopyle state park. which is in Pennsylvania...



my freind jeff is the first idiot to take the plunge, followed by joe, followed by me, followed by jeff again (idiot) followed by my youngest brother kevin, who you may notice, tries to get out of the rapids half way through cause he realized it was a really bad idea, where as i was practically pushed in by jeff who was constantly assuring me that it was painless. it wasn't. the rocks under the water are massive, and when the rapids change direction, you don't allways change directions with it! x_x

i ended up with a couple of major bruises, but otherwise it was, admittedly, alot of fun!

I had some other things I wanted to write about, but I’ll save it for another time. I don’t get tagged very often, so I felt this needed doing, especially since it’s a good opportunity to explain a bit about myself! ^_^

Tagged by mouse_pie

List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
Tag seven people to do the same.
Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag "whoever wants to do it."

1. I am first and foremost a child of reason. I have always believed, and raised to believe that logic is absolute. It is my religion. I have never in my life taken something someone has said to heart before a long and drawn out internal analysis. Sometimes this takes about a few seconds, and other times it can last many many years, but it has contributed to the person I am. This bit will make the next fact a little hard to believe.

2. I consider myself an instrument of god. This may be difficult to understand right away, but my highest ideal is my understanding of the purpose of my existence. I believe that I, and every other person on this planet, exist for the benefit of each other, and that there is no greater power than the will of a group. This is not something I believe in blindly, and it has taken the sum of my entire existence to lead me to this standing. Even now, it is constantly evolving, but the idea that I can change the way we look at the world, and our purpose in it, has never changed!

3. I have recently become engaged to my girlfriend of 4+ years (stitchedmoon). I think she’d be my quirk. We seem very poorly matched since I hold the highest hopes for us and for humanity, and she just happens to be an existentialist. I sometimes think she was designed for the soul purpose of testing me and my beliefs, but I’ve never known a deeper love. Despite our differences, we are connected by something far deeper than mutual circumstance. We do however hold vastly different positions on the next bit.

4. it’s something I don’t discuss much, and it might be because of the fact that I’m sometimes ashamed of it, even though I know how illogical it is to be so, but I am a very sexual person. I feel that my ambitions in this aspect of my life have fallen short of my expectations, and this is most likely a result of the fact that I’m not very open about it, but I love sex and sexuality, and I’m beginning to realize how beneficial it can be to be more open about this chapter of my life. This is another thing that comes between me and my Fiance, but as I mentioned earlier, I am in love, and so, life goes on, and I deal! x_x

5. I am VERY new to writing as an ambition. The idea of writing a book isn’t new, but the actual “writing it” part is something I have little experience with. As a result, I’m now reading a lot of books, since reading is another subject I was never too good with. I’m very quick to learn, but I’ll need as much input as I can get on what I’m doing since I am not yet in a position to pass accurate judgment on my own writing!

6. I LOVE ROBOTS!!!!!! The first passion I was ever intensely aware of was for building things. I am a problem solver by heritage, and as a result, there was never anything I couldn’t figure out how to build. I’m still a lego maniac at 22, and even though I’ve taken the engineering bug out of my future ambitions, it has always been my first and greatest skill. This ability comes in handy when writing science fiction since can create extremely realistic machines in my mind and maintain the capacity to describe their workings. If it were a more creative field, I would have been an engineer major the first day I left high school, but since there are so few experimental industries these days, I decided to lean on my other talents as creative outlets, and left engineering as a hobby I will one day have the money and time to revive. My dream is to live long enough to either see or create the first humanoid android. Since the main character of my first novel project is an android, it’s not hard to see the obsession! ^_^

7. I am multi talented. This gives me a unique perspective on a great many things about life. Since I am also very analytical, I’ve made it a habit to try and observe my brain and it’s responses to the different challenges I’ve faced along the road to my many talents. At the moment, my greatest strength is probably singing. I was terrified of singing when I entered high school for the first time. The last year I was there I sang three solos at the senior concert, one of which was unaccompanied acapella – meaning, just me: nothing else. I am also a decent piano player, but my favorite skill, and probably the most difficult to earn, is my strength as an artist. I say difficult because my aptitude for engineering comes from having a very calculating left brain mindset. Since being a good artist requires more right brain thinking, it’s taken me a long time to adjust, but it’s made my music, my writing, and my artwork very unique in that I have come to balance the use of both sides of my brain.

Well, that’s about it. I have other things I’d like to explain about myself, but this is probably adequate for now. I don’t want to loose anyone’s interest by becoming too self centered, so I’d rather hear about others!

I know the top states otherwise, but I would like anyone who actually reads this to do it themselves. This way, I get to learn about all my new friends. I would also like to add a special requirement, or rather a special request, for anyone who gets this from me. That is, I want to hear about the things you love about yourself: the best parts about you! ^_^

This is of course entirely up to the person filling out the meme, but I want to hear about what people find unique and inspiring about themselves; what they believe they have to contribute to humanity! It gives everyone an opportunity to see what they have within themselves worth loving.

Anyway, that’s it! ^_^

Nice to meet everyone by the way!

i got this from song_of_copper's journal.

If I were a metal, I would be: mercury

If I were an animal, I would be: an Alaskan wolf

If I were a color, I would be: amber

If I were a mythological being, I would be: an android

If I were a human activity, I would be: getting distracted

If I were a work of art, I would be: an Escher

If I were a tool, I would be: a computer

If I were an emotion, I would be: aspiration

If I were a character in a book, I would be: Hari Seldon from Forward the Foundation

If I were a famous historical person I would be: Galileo

If I were an article of clothing, I would be: work boots

If I were a kind of weather, I would be: a windless dusk snowfall

If I were a part of the body, I would be: the brain

If I were a gemstone, I would be: amber

If I were a plant, I would be: European beech

If I were a sound, I would be: an orchestra tuning

If I were a food, I would be: pineapple

If I were a geographical feature, I would be: a dormant volcano

I feel overwhelmed and a bit depressed knowing that no matter where i apply myself over the vast expanses of internet communities, i will never gain the following i was hoping for. there are few things i find more important than being heard, and recognized for what i have to say, but i imagine that this is something i have yet to earn, and must wait for as time makes it's presence known to me by the passing of every hour i use for nothing. it's strange how it's only in the moments that i waste that i feel like i'm getting older, and somehow farther from reaching my goals. i guess it should be obvious, but it seems strange in the oddest sense that i don't really notice time passing when i'm working towards an end. anyway, i've gotten used to the idea that only one or two people will read this, so i'm really just keeping this journal for my own purposes now. the fact that it is online and available to everyone is just a convinience i no longer consider of real value to me.

anyway: i've spent the last month out of work balancing the skills and traits i believe will carry me through the next twenty years of what i hope to be an expansive journy - or rather demonstration - of what a human life is capable of achieving. regardless of what i've come to believe in the last 20 years, i've never abandoned the idea that cration is humanity's one and only path away from entropy. it's what i love to do, and therefore, it's what i've been doing. since i can't seem to find a job at the moment, all my efforts have been didcated (not yet wholly) to persuing my place in art, music, and writing.

balancing the three of these traits at the same time is a bit exhausting, but for the attention deprived mind, it's less of a difficult task and more of an only option. my priorities have been reading, singing, and sketching, but i've been known to stretch my attention over a far wider variety of activities as my days have been untouched by routine for more than three weeks. i've had time to practice using my graphics tablet, which i am becoming very good at using, and since my keyboard is only two feet from my computer, i've had many occasions to succumb to the temptation of playing out a few riffs that pop into my head now and then..

this in particular has made me miss the times when i had a working copy of fruity loops running on my compy. it's been almost four years since my last real musical production, and the urge to compose music is resurfaceing within my desires and making itself known through the increasing duration of sessions with my 63key yamaha turd. (i used to hate to play it, but it's all i've got now)

to make matters more complex, i've been trying to plan out a graphic novel project to run alongside my scifi novel so that i may be able to release it to a broader audience upon it's completion. this may never go very far beyond my occasional immaginings, but my recent increase in artistic capacity has forced me to realize that i will never be able to cut art from my life. i am as good as i ever was, and even when i go months without drawing anything, my aptitude for it never seems to diminish.

doing all of these things alongside eachother has made me greatly aware of the importance of avoiding specialization. the brain functions smoother and more beautiffully when there are no boundaries within it to run into. when i write, i want to see what i am writing as the words are placed in sequence by the functions of my left brain. when i see pictures in my head, they are never without a sound and discription to make them all the more beautiful to my mind. the arts are one subject, and should be performed side by side at all times because of the complexity in each of them. there is no artform that could readily excell all others because they are constantly in balance with eachother, complementing eachother in ways we can never fully describe to oneanother, but then there is never really any need either. most people know the sensation of seeing music and hearing an image. (and i am reffering to the experience of doing so WITHOUT chemical aide)

every single fragment i have used to assemble the story i am working to tell was forged from creations like these. characters, scenes, cities, and even objects and specific lines were forged from my experience browsing the varios artforms and being inspired to the core by their brilliance. some scenes are coreographed to whole musical compositions, and little of the completed project will be without visual aide, either through my own artwork, or through the work of other illustrators i've come to befreind.

this book is to be the sum of everything that has inspired me in the last twenty years, and a guidepost for everything i hope to achieve in the next 100...

i hope i have readers by then ^_^

erin made me get one so we could be officially engaged over the intertubes. since i got one, i have discovered a handy application called GRAFFITI, which i can use to draw on peoples pages. i have found that it works incredibly well with my tablet, and i've been making some great pics with it in the last few days.

ever since i finished those portraits i've had an explosion of artistic production. i feel like i know how to draw for the first time in my life; like every time before this i was just stumbling in the dark looking for an idea of how to make an image look half decent. it's almost like there was a plug or something in my brain that i was forced to pull to get those portraits done on time, and since then i've had little to no difficulty in producing work that i'm proud of....

anyway, if you have a facebook, you should be my freind on facebook, and get graffiti so i can draw on your page. comment if you want to be my freind on facebook, and i will send you my name so you can add me! ^_^

the best part about graffiti is the replay option, which plays like a video and shows every brushstroke from beginning to end. it has taught me alot! ^_^

just thought i'd let you all know that i've just proposed to my girlfreind... and she said yes. no idea when the wedding will be, but it's official now. figured it was worth reporting! ^_^

Hey… I haven’t left anything here in a long time. I’m more than disappointed in myself for abandoning my attempt to get myself to write more. In fact, I haven’t made much progress on any front in a long long time. I’m not sure what else to say other than I’m sorry. I know that must sound really silly, but it’s more than an apology to my readers (you select few x_x), and it’s more than just an apology. I feel a great regret that spans the last few years of my life, and the longer I leave it be, the more overwhelming it becomes. Every time I think it’s time to confront what I’ve let myself loose, I become crushed under the weight of what it’s become for me. It’s becoming more than I can bear, and I’m loosing sight of what it felt like to be free of it.

When I say I am sorry, it is more than just an apology because it means more than I am capable of expressing. I was given a purpose in life. One that was so important, that I saw myself as something greater than my purpose, and I actually believed that this fate would befall me no matter what my actions were. I thought that I could forge a future without working for it, and in that time I’ve accumulated a long list of things I’ve yet to accomplish, and it never stops growing. It hurts me in a way that I can’t really describe whenever I think of the potential my life has, and what I’ve made of it. these are two entities that simply won’t match up, and I’m beginning to think they never will.

There is a point, and it is very fast approaching, at which I will no longer be able to turn this around. A point where I become so comfortable in my position of inaction, that I will simply cease to be capable of realizing this quickly diminishing potential I’ve been given. This is more than unacceptable. It is, in the simplest terms I can muster, wrong. Right and wrong have always been clear to me. There are few gray areas I’ve left to clarify. This is not one of them. What I am doing is not right. I’m sure every one is familiar with the phrase, “with great power, comes great responsibility.” I have ignored my responsibility for far too long. There is a reason I am capable of so much, and it is a sin to live my life without pushing my potential as far as it will go.

I am sorry. Sorry for not being a better person. I’m sorry for not trying harder. I’m sorry for always taking the easy road. I’m sorry for being ignorant of the prices I must pay for this dream. I’m sorry to everyone who has ever believed in me for not being greater than I am. I’m sorry for everything I have ever done that wasn’t for progress. I am most sorry to myself, for giving up so many times, and making a fool of my better half.

I can’t go on living the way I have, and I don’t intend to. Though my intentions have a way of slipping through my focus, I can’t allow it to continue. This is more important than my life, just as it is for anyone. We exist to better ourselves AND each other. We have a future ahead of us, and the more our time slips away from us, the less we have to make it better for everyone. I want the future of humanity to be a bright and strong one where no life will ever go to waste. This sense of purpose that I feel every day belongs to everyone, and I know there is a reason.

To anyone who will listen: there is no greater pain than regret. Today’s comfort will always become tomorrow’s missed opportunity. You must cherish and value every second you are given to act on a greater impulse and begin building a greater future, if not for yourself, then for all humanity. Comfort is a curse, and we can’t pursue it any longer. It is very hard to change the world, but it would be a scary place if it were easy. Please, doesn’t lat laziness be the end of YOUR potential as it has crippled mine. Don’t give up, and build your momentum. If anything can be learned from my mistakes, it’s this: never, ever waste a minute on anything you don’t treasure, so figure out what you do before it’s too late.