Review: The Number 23

Jim Carrey's greatest comedy.

2/3rds of a star.

And Some Good News

A new project is gathering. Collaborators are joining the ranks. Concepts are forming. Logistics are being...um...logisticized.

Possibly the heaviest band ever conceived by mortal men is taking shape. Forgive me if I am a little stingy with the details but I'm just not quite ready to unveil it yet. Don't want to jinx it. It would be like pulling a cake out of the oven too soon.

Suffice to say that I am extremely excited about it and will have more to share in the next few weeks.

Here's What Sucks About You Humans

You're prone to making up your minds about things when you don't have all the information.

Just sayin'.

The Mothman and Other Peculiarities

Because perfectly rational explanations are BORING, dammit...
I have suddenly developed a fascination with the tales of The Mothman. Any story involving a humanoid with reflective, red eyes and moth wings lurking in the woods is pretty compelling. Also, the name Indrid Cold--a mysterious and allegedly otherworldly (ooooh...) messenger associated with the legend--is a pretty cool name.

Of course it's horseshit but I can't resist these things. Good fodder for stories.

Another Google Gem
I found a sealed copy of Crazy Man Soup's debut EP on eBay.

Hahaaaaaaaaaaa!

Quite the bargain.

The Thing Is

Just letting it happen is the thing.

The hardest thing in the world to master is to just let it happen.

The hardest thing in the world to master is to cease attempting to master and to allow a thing to unfold.

When you're accustomed to struggling to make things happen it's easy to linger past the point when effort is necessary. It's easy to overlook that a struggle may not have been necessary in the first place.

One Thing After Another

Hey. How's it going? Good, I hope. Here's the rundown on my end:

Life Lessons
Trust is usually taken a lot more easily than it's given. Think about what it means for someone to trust you. Do you appreciate the value of that? What about the value others place on the trust you've put in them? Just a little free, unsolicited advice from Yours Truly on the subject of social currency.

The SWAG Method of Web Design
Have you been following the aesthetic changes here at all? I gotta tell ya: I have been wrestling with this thing for the last 3 days trying to fine tune the stuff I fucked up and then lost track of along the way. Everything I learned about web design I learned by trial and error. Actually, it doesn't even feel right to call it web design; it's actually more like web manipulation. Sort of like the distinction between a writer and a typist. Designers are artists. I just sort of know what I want and then stumble through until I get close.

But anyway, it's obvious that CSS could be really cool in the right hands. For me, it's really just a way to hone my profanity skills while I try to get that dashed line over in the profile container to line up in the right place.

And after all of that, I'm not even sure that I 100% don't dislike it. Bah.

What's Next, Musician?
I've got a few things to say about this:

1. I'm scoping out my options for a home studio. This will probably be PC-based because of cost.
2. Once that's up and running, I'll be recording some stuff I'm working on now. It will be mostly violent and noisy, within the limitations of a PC-based recording situation.
3. There might be some other shit possibly a-stirring but that's up in the air.
4. I would very much like to join a band that marries the best attributes of Converge and Massive Attack circa Mezzanine. My creative spirit walks in both of those worlds, more or less. Know of a band fitting that description in need of a bassist?

Head Full of Fortune Cookies
Do you see potential or do you see potential problems?

(I'm unapologetically philosophical today. Beg pardon. These are strange times.)

The Internet is Creepy (Profoundly Obvious Statement #115648)
I did a Google search on this url (creepy exhibit a) to see what comes up in the event someone decides to look for it (ha). In so doing, I discovered that the former location of this site--namely the original Blogger site--has been overrun by some sort of cybersquatter (creepy exhibit b). The old url wasn't high in the search results but was still only a handful of pages in. I have two problems with this:

1. I thought the "jonglassett.blogspot.com" address was still associated with my Blogger account, even though I'm no longer using it. I obviously don't have my site there, but what if I wanted to go back to using it because of a problem with my host or something?
2. Enterprising miscreants can put all manner of horrendous stuff up on that site and have my name associated with it, which means anyone searching on my name can find said stuff and possibly make the assumption that I am somehow responsible.

That sucks. Anybody know if there's anything I can do about that? Could we maybe unplug the Internet for a couple of seconds and start over? I have my reputation to think about.

In Closing, I Love...
...to stand at the end of the driveway after collecting the mail and look up and see the stars in the still and cloudless sky.

I'm going to go walk my dog now. Have a good one.

Wet Paint

I get bored pretty easily so I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner, but I've messed around with the look a little bit.

What do you think?

A Sonic Experiment

On the subject of picking a direction--any direction--musically, I've started something that I'm really excited about.

Conceptual noise/art metal taking what I know about recording (jack shit), throwing in what I love about distortion, minimalism, doom, horror and infernal frequencies, using what I have on hand for gear and then grinding it all together with a slash-and-burn approach to composition and production.

If all goes according to plan this should be a raw and ugly affair.

Details are forthcoming.

Penn Jillette

Here's a link to a blog about Penn Jillette, one of my personal heroes, having at another of my personal heroes, Neil Gaiman.

Not that I have any personal heroes, mind you.

To be honest, I just enjoy playing even the tiniest role in any and all mischief.

Bickr

The uproar over the new restrictions announced by Flickr rages on among the elite and most populist contributors there. No more than 3,000 contacts per account and 75 tags per photo seems to have some really upset. I guess I can see their point on the contacts thing, like if photography is your bread and butter and you need contacts to peddle your wares. Personally, I've never had a photo with more than 5 tags on it, so that one has me scratching my head a bit.

The strongest point I've seen made is that Flickr is supposed to be a networking site and placing restrictions on that very act seems, well, kinda self-defeating. Lots of people blame Yahoo! and there's certainly reason to be suspicious there or at least not much reason to trust them. There is the fact that everyone is now required to log in via a Yahoo! account, so those without one need to get one and lots of people are unwilling to do that because big, leviathan entities gulping up huge swaths of cyberspace just rubs some folks the wrong way. Imagine that.

Meanwhile, I--with my 3 (count 'em) contacts--am perfectly content cruising well beneath the radar and continuing my little amateur experiments. My original intent today was just to announce that I've uploaded some pictures recently with which I am very happy. Nothing special, mostly just a few macros with my little point & shoot Olympus:


Good vibe on that one and, hey, wouldn't you know that someone marked it as a favorite. One or two of those colored glass ones will probably get printed and/or morphed into some composite Photoshop dealie.

I've been saying for a couple of weeks now that I'm going to buy a digital SLR. I probably will but there's no hurry. Though I am itching to play with one.