| Something short |
[Mar. 8th, 2007|08:56 pm] |
I've got to write something today, I've been bursting at the seams. It's probably going to end as a rather non-sensical piece of rubbish, but I need to oil the gears a bit. They've gotten rusty.
The C.T.'s
Philip sat at a large table, at which other large people sat.
Writers, they called themselves. Each with an appropriately nuanced pile of writing materials in front of them. For Philip it was a yellow legal pad, a mostly chewed-through bic pen and and crumpled set of newspaper clippings held together tightly with an alligator clip.
"So, I can see we're all ready," said Monty, who was running the workshop.
Philip breathed deeply, wiped his brow then checked to make sure his faded black t-shirt was fully tucked into his equally faded black jeans.
"START!" Monty yelled.
Instantly a roar of heavy breathing filled the small conference room.
Writing, for these people, is a verb that should be taken lightly.
The Cerebral Transferers didn't actually think as they wrote, per se.
Instead, they closed their eyes, tightly gripped their writing utensils and relied on the random twitches their faffeine-addled bodies made over pieces of paper to do the writing for them.
From there they would talk about what feelings were generated in their writings.
Philip was very gifted, according to Monty. His technique was, legendary Monty would say - wide eyed dewey after an intense writing session.
It worked like this. You fast for a few days, then drink nothing but venti cups of the strongest brew Starbucks happened to have on hand for two more days. At the end of the "creative process," as they called it, the writers would be not much more than baggy-eyed, caffeine tweaking fatsos.
It was part of their weight loss therapy. Seperating from consciousness to rely solely on the unconsciousness' manifestation in twitchy fingers and limbs. This was the key to success, to overcoming food cravings. To read whatever they scrawled on their sheets of paper and decipher what it was their bodies really needed. Not food, Monty said, something, deeper.
Philip's technique transcended anything Monty had seen before and was something to be admired.
See, Philip didn't have fingers. In his youth, much like other children his age, he refused to follow the advice of his parents.
"Don't stick your hands in the meat grinders!" they'd say in Polish accents, before chortling and patting Philip on the head. Such a joker, that Philip, they'd say.
Now, at 24 years of age, fat and fingerless, Philip was determined to set at least one thing straight in his life. He certainly couldn't grow a new set of fingers, but he could drop his "excess baggage," as his parents would say.
At 342 pounds, Philip had a long way to go, but Monty had confidence in him. His technique, after all, was remarkable as Monty would say, glossy eyed and dewey.
No one seemed to question why even the founder of the Cerebral Transferers, Monty, was still such a fat ass.
It was because the technique required perfection, which could take years. After only two years, Monty himself had managed to lose a total of six and a quarter pounds. The weight shed slowly at first, only a pound the first year, but things had picked up, he'd explain. He had reached a recent pinnacle in his technique, after observing Philip of course, that resulted in an amazing half-pound loss every two months -- a feat Philip would soon surpass, given his technique.
Just minutes into today's session, Monty broke into tears, watching Philip work his magic.
After 10 minutes, it was over.
Normally each session would last 45 minutes, but today things were cut short.
Philip was dead and the class looked on in shock - their inspiration, the embodiment of Cerebral Trasferment laid on his back across the cold, black-and-white tiled floor, his chewed, black pen embedded deep in his chest.
It took a good two minutes for an ambulance to be called. After all, there was much sobbing and hand wringing.
Only Monty, after a good five minutes was able to gather himself together well enough to reach a nearby courtesy phone and shakily thumb 9-1-1 into the keypad.
The Cerebral Transferers never met again. Monty said their only chance at acquiring perfect technique was no longer attainable with Philip dead and gone. |
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| Not a girl, not yet a woman |
[Jan. 19th, 2007|03:40 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Moriarty, New Mexico | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  complacent | ] |
| [ | music |
| | my editor talking on the phone in his nearby office | ] |
I recently felt overwhelmingly disgusted with the current state of my health when, by chance, I happened to be standing next to a set of pull-up bars on UNM's main campus. Just for shits and giggles, I gripped the bar and started to pull, just to see how many pull-ups I could still do. The result? Not-a-fuckin'-one. That's pretty depressing for a guy who used to knock out 10 pretty easily back in his high school days.
It took a couple of months for the realization that I was overweight and out-of-shape to really sink in before I started taking steps to shed a few, well, a lot of pounds and improve my conditioning.
I hate going to gyms, so that was out of the question. I do enjoy working out, though. Just not to the point where I have an aneurysm and decide I never want to exercise again.
I started looking into different exercises that I could do either at or near home (like at a high school football field, etc.) and discovered kettlebells. I tend to get quickly obsessed, so within a week or so I signed up for a kettlebell workshop and purchased my first kettlebell. For an idea of what a kettlebell is and what a workout might look like, check www.youtube.com
I'd avoid dragondoor.com (the Web site that basically brought kettlebells to the US from Russia) simply because the people that lurk there act like brainwashed zealots and would, at the mere suggestion, dry hump their kettlebell while spouting off the near-religious qualities the lump of steel can provide.
Despite it's nearly cultish following, I find the kettlebell a blast to work out with and it works the shit out of me, which is the point.
After taking the workshop, I looked online for a beginner's kettlebell workout, found something I liked and have been at it three days a week for two weeks now.
In addition to starting a regular exercise regimen, I started trying to eat better. I've been cooking for myself every night and eating my lunches mostly at Subway (not the best, but I'm lazy and hate packing lunches). Go Jared! I've been eating a salad almost once a day and trying to add as many veggies as I can (diced bell peppers, celery, broccoli).
Most importantly, I've just been eating less. I finally broke down and decided that calories do count, so I've been watching it.
While it might sound like a challenge to eat less, so far it isn't. I try to eat something for breakfast everyday and just spread out my meals into smaller portions throughout the day. (bowl of cereal or oatmeal for breakfast, sandwich/a few chips/veggies/salad for lunch(spread out over the course of 3 or 4 hours), and then whatever for dinner (spaghetti, grilled sandwiches, etc.). The point - I'm still eating pretty much everything I used to eat, but by spreading it out over several hours, I don't drive myself to the point of starvation and can minimize my portions pretty significantly. Less food = less calories, period.
Check out http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.html for some good info on how dropping just a few calories can make a huge difference. The author relates everything about weight loss in engineering terms(intake, output, outside variables, etc.), which makes it interesting and pretty easy to understand.
Oh, and I cut soda completely out of my diet and began dragging a water bottle with me everywhere I go. When I say "cut out" soda, I mean it. None of that diet shit either. Fake sugar or not, water is just healthier. For two weeks, I've only had water and 6 cups of coffee to drink. I don't drink coffee too regularly, but happened to have a few cups at breakfast with my Dad and a couple more during the workweek when my lack of caffeine (from soda deprivation) started to catch up with me.
What's the point of all this god damned jibber-jabber? In a little under two weeks, I've lost 8.4 pounds. Might not sound like a lot, but considering I was weighing in pretty regularly at 287, dropping under the 280-mark in 12 days or so is pretty encouraging. And no, just because I weigh near 280 doesn't mean I'm a fat bastard. I'm pretty average looking, actually. At 6'4" the weight tends to distribute pretty evenly, so I look pretty athletic even though I'm probably 60 pounds overweight. That's another reason it's taken this long for me to get in shape, I don't really look 'fat,' even though I am.
My weight goal: lose about 60 pounds.
My athletic goal: be able to do 30 or more push-ups in a minute, be able to do 45 or more sit-ups in a minute, and, most importantly, get to the point where I can do a few pull-ups.
Notice I didn't attach any time period for these goals. I'm not going to set some mystical date off in the future and work my way toward that. This is bigger - this is a lifestyle change. I plan on living this way for the rest of my life, so if it takes me 6 months to drop the weight or three-times as long, I know it'll happen. No rush.
I'll be updating about another recent inspiration, Ninja Warrior, that has further driven me to get in shape in the near future. |
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| Vintage |
[Dec. 25th, 2006|02:36 am] |
Rough draft of a poem:
Vintage
The door to the cellar creaked
with Andy's gentle pull
He stepped into the darkness
and returned clutching a bottle
It's surface dulled with dust and age
it's innards moving thickly, blood-red
He cradled it between his knotted hands
to reveal the label: 1954 pinot noir
The contents sloshed between the grip
of his palsied hands
"You're not supposed to shake it," he said,
as he set it back, roughly, on the wooden rack
"On what occasion do you plan on drinking it," I asked.
"The birth of my next child," he said, straight-faced.
I nodded, seriously.
"It's a joke." |
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| Brand New - The Devil and God are Raging Inside My Butthole |
[Dec. 23rd, 2006|02:54 pm] |
Although the subject of this post might lead you to think otherwise, I actually really enjoy this album. I thought I was being clever, but as most other writers with a sense of actual wit would tell you, using the word "butthole" doesn't make one clever. Damn.
It says something about the state of music when you come to expect new cd's from your list of favorite bands to be awful. Maybe I'm a pessimist or just hard to please, but I've been horribly dissapointed with the new material from some of my favorite artists over the last couple of years. Case in point: Hopesfall, In Flames, Mates of State and Phoenix. While these bands', with the exception of Hopesfall, newest material isn't terrible, they tend to lose the intensity, melody and rhythm that made their older cd's sparkle with such ... magic. Where am I going with this? Basically, Brand New's latest CD avoids this.
I still am afraid to give "The Devil and God..." my full endorsement simply because I haven't listened to it more than a couple of times, so it might not have much lasting appeal, but for now, it's a nice addition to their already outstandind repetoire.
I'll be the first to admit, I usually avoid bands that follow the rock formula (intro -> chorus -> bridge -> chorus -> ad nauseum -> outro), but GODDAMN, does Brand New do it well. I think the band's saving grace is two-fold -- excellent lyrics (Nothing gets so bad / A whisper from your father couldn't fix it. / Your whisper's like a bridge, he's a river span.) and some incredible guitar melodies (see "Sowing Season" at 1:04 and "Degausser" at 1:48).
It's definitely worth a listen, especially if you're like me and tend to avoid more main stream releases like this. |
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| Jeremy Enigk |
[Dec. 20th, 2006|04:55 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  tired | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Chunky sounds my computer makes when the ram light blink | ] |
Former Sunny Day Real Estate frontman Jeremy Enigk recently released his second solo album titled, "World Waits." The album as a whole is nice to listen to and stays pretty mellow throughout but does escalate to some strong points. He sings almost entirely in falsetto, which I, for some unknown reason, LOVE. Men singing in high voices just strums my musical chord for some reason. My only real complaint is that he gets to points where he's yelling out words, while still in falsetto -- sounding like a Melissa Ethridge tribute, which pretty much makes me want to vomit all over myself.
Also, there's one song (can you tell I'm being ridiculously lazy with this review)(I have since looked it up...it's track 4)that is intro'd with soft electronic sounds that call to mind a steamy love scene from Top Gun. After listening to it I feel the compulsion to jump into an F-18 and fly into the danger zone.
On the whole, I'd give it a B-. The album is definitely well-polished -- it has great musical variation(from average guitar and bass to orchestral sounds) and nice lyrics, but after a few listens it seemed to fall flat. I've listened to the album in its entirety about 5 times and don't have much desire to keep it on constant rotation. I'll probably shove it into my fattening cd case and throw it in the player when I'm feeling the gentle tug of 1980's-inspired eroticism. |
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| A brief excerpt... |
[Dec. 19th, 2006|03:45 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The buzz of my gnome-driven computer | ] |
Last night I rode in a trolley alongside about 8 kids to report on their delivery of food baskets and toys to families having a hard time this Christmas. Although the experience was interesting, at points it felt like I was trapped in hell. What follows is a brief excerpt of my notes from the event.
"Christmas carols deafening...
kids screaming songs, very excited to
deliver presents."
It took a minute for me to translate that because:
1. the trolley bobbed over every minute transition in road grade, making it feel like I was riding in a golf cart over a series of speed bumps.
2. the trolley failed to blow hot air and instead spewed frosty air at what seemed to be my entire body. Fog drifted out of my breath with every exhale. Thus, my hands took on an interesting, palsy-like shake.
As such, my handwriting resembles heiroglyphics more than english. |
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| American Hardcore and Rocket Slime |
[Dec. 18th, 2006|02:55 pm] |
I took a trip to the local independent theater, The Guild, Friday to catch a flick much heralded by my friend Joseph -- American Hardcore. The movie is intended as a documentary tracking the origins, life-blood and subsequent death of the hardcore punk scene in America. While the film appropriately encapsulates the angst, ferocity and anti(?)homosexual diatribe of the early 1980's hardcore punk scene, it fails to really go beyond that.
The entire movie is dedicated to giving the scene a good old-fashioned pat on the back for what felt like two hours. It really doesn't do much more.
Figureheads from the era, including Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins repeatedly spout off about how the scene formed from the likes of angsty 15-year-old boys looking to rebel against the current administration, suburban life and conformity in general. While the topic certainly merits a good talk, especially in relation to hardcore punk, it definitely did not need more than the first 20 or so minutes it took in the early part of the film.
I would still recommend seeing the movie, just don't expect much more than two hours of, "Fuck, man. We were angry, violent assholes, but we were different."
--
I recently purchased and beat Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin which subsequently leached off the better half of last week from my life. The game, from start to finish, clocked in at about 9 hours for me. The game felt short and, in some ways, half-assed. In particular, the sub-weapons system was completely useless. As opposed to the previous 1,000 or so iterations of the series in which the main character would use axes, knives, holy water and magical time-stopping watches to aid in battle, PoR offers the aid of Charlotte, the young and bookish half of the game's main duo. A tap of the right shoulder button would result in the brandishing of a magical attack that used the same amount of magic power (MP) as Jonathan's (the main character) seemingly useless and virtually infinite supply of sub-weapons. It seems like there are just a shit-ton of sub-weapons to pick up throughout the game (and level up if you so choose), but why on earth would you use them if you can just as easily call upon Charlotte to do more damage and use the same amount of MP. Maybe I should have given a go at leveling up the sub-weapons to see how they would help, but I just never needed to. I played through and beat the game using Jonathan's sub-weapons a total of three. fucking. times. Literally.
All that being said, the game was fun, had a nice story and the new two-character gameplay mechanic was a nice touch. The switching-of-characters mechanic would have been a lot better if the developers had taken the time to develop more elaborate spells for Charlotte instead of wasting their time working on the sub-weapon mechanic for Jonathan.
I'd give the game a B.
--
After finishing PoR I needed a new game. A brief visit to Gamestop, the wasteland of all things evil in the retail video games industry, revealed DragonQuest Heroes Rocket Slime.
You play as a bouncing blue slime named, you guessed it, Rocket, who is sent on a mission to recover the 100 inhabitants of Boingsville(not sure that's the name, but punny names such as this abound in the game) who have been slimenapped(see, I told you) by some platypus-looking baddies. So far the game seems fun and manages to nicely blend the story and gameplay mechanics of the Legend of Zelda series with the mindless, pick-up-and-play attitude of Pokemon. That's right, Pokemon.
At just an hour in, the game is damn fun and I can't wait for my first tank battle, where you hurl random crap at enemy tanks from your own castle-like tank that bears the visage of a dab of slime. More on this game later. |
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| Splinter Cell: Double Agent (xbox360) |
[Oct. 19th, 2006|04:26 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | calm | ] |
I still can't quite figure out why people rizzum themselves over the Splinter Cell series. I've given earnest tries to three of them and they've all annoyed the shit out of me. The gameplay isn't overly complex. Instead, you stick to the shadows where you could be giving an enemy a handjob and, as long as you're in the dark, they would attribute the sensation to a creature from the ether. The way things have to be done can be interesting -- I'll give them that. They don't spell out what you have to do with a lighted path, but often times, the logical way to get past an obstacle isn't what they want you to do. Need to get out of a jail cell? Don't whistle at a passing guard, reach through a window, slam his face into the door and steal his keys. No, that would make to much sense. Instead, walk over to that huge fucking poster on the wall to find that you had evidently been carving a pathway through a 15-foot-thick wall ala Shawshank Redemption. Do they clue you into this path? No. Instead, they expect you to run around your cell, climbing on the bunk beds, hiding in a locker, sitting under a metal shelf, all the while whistling your fucking brains out until you happen to notice that the enormous poster on your wall seems oddly out of place. It could also be that I'm just a particularly bad gamer.
I'll probably rant more on this later, but I've got an interview in 20 minutes I've got to run to. Until then, same Matt time, same Matt channel. |
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| Quick note before I forget |
[Sep. 5th, 2006|05:25 pm] |
I've had this idea kicking around in my head for at least a year now. Gotta jot down at least the basics.
Rilen was the product of a glucose doper. His mother had been infusing the drug since before he was conceieved and continued to shoot up through his infancy, sometimes pressing the small metal canister against her breast - where the subsequent mark wouldn't be noticed - as he drank mouthfuls of nutrient-and-glucose-rich milk.
This was when the drug was still new. Still hot from the greedy hands that fed it to America from underground labs in the Middle East. So new infact, that the side effects hadn't even surfaced.
The drug gave dopers a mellow high, blasting their synapses with endorphins while a slow-release tab dripped meth into their blood stream to keep their energy up at remarkable levels. It made users feel like a stoned kid with a massive sugar high.
summary: side-effect is life. Terrorists released the drug onto American streets, back-alleys and ghettos where drug users and dealers could get hooked the fastest. The same terrorists, just a few short months after the drug had hit state-of-emergency levels in the states, would release a vaporized neuro-toxin that targeted everyone that hadn't gotten hooked on the drug. The only people left were the glucose dopers who scrounged out their worthless existence by constantly infusing more of the drug into their bloodstream.
Rilen, the protaganist, is a second generation doper, born from the womb of a glucose addict and raised on the streets. But he's different than the others.
The glucose had bound with his growing nerves while he was still just an unrecognizable bundle of embryonic cells. The glucose replaced what would have become the nerves' mylin sheath, the biological equivalent of rubber coating over copper wire. But the glucose was infinitely more conductive than the usual mylin sheath is. The result: near instantaneous sensory input. Although electrical signals already travel at nearly immeasurable speeds, the glucose coated nerves boosted it just enough to make sensory perception as close to real-time as possible. Rilen experienced the world differently, he saw and felt things faster than ever possible before. He saw the world like the explosion of color on the drying wings of a newborn butterfly. But he also experienced nerve-fry, when electrical signals overloaded his extra-sensative nerves and popped in his brain like a static finger touching a brass doorknob. It sent Rilen into seizures that lasted only a few seconds but felt like years to his glucose-wrapped body.
Not sure what the conflict is yet. Gotta work that out. Any ideas from anyone reading this thing? Getting back at the terrorists seems a bit cheesy and impossible for some punk teenager. Maybe because of his biological makeup he can't get high off glucose, and is therefore able to abandon the refuse cities that had been built around glucose distribution hubs. People work like slaves for doses of glucose handed out by the terrorists. The terrorists use America as one big farm -- having glucose addicts raise crops, cattle, chickens, etc. for their nation.
Also not sure if I want Rilen to be a second gen. Maybe he's much further down the road when after slave factories have been built -- his lack of addiction allows him to escape a life of slavery because he doesn't rely on the glucose as the other Americans do. Hmm...so many thoughts... |
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| Screenplay synopsis |
[Jan. 31st, 2006|08:34 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | Automated | ] |
| [ | music |
| | telephones, keyboard clicks, and stupid office humor | ] |
Here I am, an office drone, updating his blog on company time so he can stick it to the man. Anyway, here is the SUPER rough synopsis of a screenplay I'll be writing this semester. This thing is stealing parts of everybody's lives, but hey, you're supposed to write what you know, right?
Boyfriend and girlfriend, seniors in college. Boy is an English major and plans on being a writer. Boy gets piece of mail one day offering him a job to teach English in Japan (anonymous type of thing that gets sent out to every person within a certain dept.). The boy sees it, the girl asks why he kept it instead of just trashing it and the boy avoids her. The boy, being a romantic, and in a soul-searching part of his life, decides to take up the offer, despite the fact that it will throw the relationship off balance (his girlfriend’s previous relationship ended with her former boyfriend cheating on her after he left for another college – long term relationship). His girlfriend, a biology major on a track to physical therapy school, knows she can’t go with him because she needs to complete a certain amount of community service hours in order to become eligible as an applicant to physical therapy school (something she wants to start applying for right away since it’s tough to get in). The boy gets angry, thinking his girlfriend is trying to hold him back and stuff him into adulthood too early. In secret, after much thought, the girl decides to sign up to go as well. She mentions none of it and even pretends to drop him off at the airport before she rushes home to grab her (pre-packed) luggage and rushes back to the airport to catch the flight (she said she had to drop him off early so she could make it to work on time). Being that the two enrolled and were accepted into the same program, they are now living in the same apartment complex, but on different floors (they also will be working at the same location). He keeps catching glimpses of her, but is chalking it up to a guilty conscience. They are given a few days to explore and become oriented with their new home before they have to work. In this time we see the boy wandering around and the girl following him, wondering when she will give him the surprise of her presence. During the wandering, the girl encounters a Japanese local who takes a liking to her (he keeps popping up right when the girl gets the courage to approach her boyfriend and gives her little presents, etc.) Eventually, the Japanese boy starts to win the girls affection and she finally gives up the chase, convincing herself that it’s ok because she had seen him flirting with a Japanese girl (actually a friend he had met online through an art forum). From this point we get back to the boy, we follow him around through the rest of the days until work starts where he finally encounters the girl. He gets pissed at her presence rather than joyed by it, but she doesn’t seem to care too much, which troubles him. He is quickly finding out that his romantic journey of self-discovery is nothing but lonely days and homesick nights. He finally goes to reconcile things with his girlfriend, but is absolutely destroyed to find that she has started dating that Japanese boy (she likes the boy, but soon finds out that he is just horny and looking to get some action with a Guyjin). Finally, early in the evening, the boy gets off work after teaching English to a class of older Japanese women and heads to a ramen shop for some dinner where he sees his girlfriend all alone. She looks sad, he approaches, they talk, and finally they realize that it’s not the setting or the people around them that are making them sad, but their lack of each other. They re-unite and decide they need each other, discussing their separate lives since coming to Japan. |
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nooget's journal
depressed