It's nights like tonight that the onus of writing falls upon me heavily. Sure, some nights I can happily pen sea shanties all the night long (no, I won't tell you why I was writing sea shanties, so don't ask.) but tonight I'm beset by the couplet of tired and uninspired. Although appearently I'm at least hitting verbose. Anyway, it was an uninspiring day to say the least. I worked, I got coffee, I ate pizza and drank a Rogue Smoke Ale (the highlight of the evening), I watched MST3k, and I read. A vertible "non-stop thrill ride" as the most talentless critics from midwestern newspapers put it.

But the burden of the blog does allow me to share this link I just found on Milo George's site. It's a rather entertaining gallery of propaganda art which is something that I've always enjoyed looking at. I haven't gotten to it yet but they do have a Soviet section, which should be a good browse. Anyway there's really nothing else I can think to say at the moment. So for now, vaya con perros.

Matt on 03.30.05 @ 11:57 PM PST [link] 

Well it's monday night, and I feel alright. Or something. Really nothing to talk about for today, I've just worked, gotten coffee, went grocery shopping, and read some of The Diamond Age today. Have I ever mentioned how much fun Neil Stephenson is? Very very fun is the answer. Anyway, I did promise to post my travelblogue didn't I? Now keep in mind that I originally meant to post this stuff as I was writing, but since I didn't always have a net connection I just saved to the laptop and compiled it all together. So it's gonna be really really long. Feel free not to read it.

Travelblogue – Day 1 – Fremont, Ca – 11:43pm

As you may or may not recall, the momentous spring break holiday started today. Which isn't to say that it didn't start off without big horrible bad omens, but it did start. The omen in queston was that when we got the Enterprise Rent-a-Car place where I had booked a car over a week before, and from whom I had received two email confirmations, they said they had never heard of me and had utterly no cars. Nor did any other rental place in town. Luckily I have very generous parents who were kind enough to loan me my dad's blue car for the week. And once we got on the road things weren't so bad. We only made it to Mt. Shasta before getting hungry, but we found this great little cafe there which brightened our previously damp spirits. And we put on Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency on tape and the drive wasn't too bad at all. So we're here in Fremont, staying with my friend Nate's family, and I'm completely exhausted. To the point of utter loopiness. As is usual before any trip I take I could of course not sleep last night and only managed about 6 hours total.

But anyway, yeah, I hadn't seen Nate in something like 5 years and it's been nice to see him so far. His family is really nice, and I got to meet his oft-mentioned girlfriend Irene, who Lynnea and I both liked a lot. And that's about all I know at the moment, except that we're heading into the city tomorrow for fun and excitement. And that I really need some sleep.

Travelblogue – Day 2 – Fremont, Ca – 10:52pm

So, today was the day of our trip into San Francisco. We went to church in the morning with Nate first, which wasn't a bad time, got some lunch and some coffee afteward and then headed into the city sometime around 1:30 or so. The first stop I made was to drag Nate and Lynnea to Amoeba Music in Haight-Ashbury. I now know where I want to go when I die. I guess I knew in some vague theorhetical way that such record store could and somewhere probably did exist, but really I was vastly unprepared. Zac mentioned to me a couple weeks back that whenever he goes into Amoeba nowadays (I'm guessing he probably goes to the Berkeley store but I don't know) his brain just shuts down. I had that and more. After all, Zac's been there multiple times, and to other similar establishments. I've never been anyplace like that. Anyway I loaded up, got a couple Future Bible Heroes records (which I've been looking for for at least a year, probably more like 2), some of the older Magnetic Fields records, a DJ Krush record, Hefner, and a couple other odds and ends. It was definitely a successful trip.

Anyway, after that we went driving around the city and eventually ended up where all tourists end up, Fisherman's Wharf. So we walked around there a little bit (and saw some cool dub guys playing on the street) and eventually headed back to Fremont. Then we took Nate out to sushi in honor of his birthday in a few days which was also fun, then came back to his parents' house and chatted with his parents and his sister, who are really nice people and lots of fun to talk to. All in all it was a really fun day. But it's late and I've got to get to bed as the more serious driving begins tomorrow.

Travelblogue – Day 3 – San Diego, Ca – 12:21am

So today was of course the long and boring drive from Fremont down to San Diego. Actually it didn't seem too bad this time. We got off around 8 this morning and made it into town by 4 which isn't too bad. Plus we continued the audiobook of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency which is a book I always enjoy, either in audio form or no. So anyway there's not too much to report from that portion of the trip as it mostly involved sitting and then more sitting.

Anyway after we got down here and got cleaned up, we out and grabbed some coffee with Matt and once Mia got home we headed out to the Country Kabob from some Greek food. It's really nice to see them again. I'm glad I get to hang out with them all week. Anyway, we met up with El Pat afterward at LeStat's and hung out there a bit then headed back. Which really doesn't make for the most interesting recounting of one's day ever told, but that's what happens when most of your day is driving and the remaineder is recovering. Go figure. I don't really know what's going on tomorrow. I'm planning on heading in to work for a little while at least, though I'm tired enough at the moment that I'm not feeling terribly keen on working for too long. Anyway, speaking of tired I'm fairly close to falling asleep at the moment so I think that's what I'll do.

Travelblogue – Day 4- San Diego, Ca, 1:34am

Cripe, is it actually 1:34am? No wonder I'm about to fall asleep. Well, that and the rather large quantity of sake I ingested earilier. Today wasn't the most exciting day, really I just went to work (although I did see my good friend Cole there, whom I hardly recognized since he's lost so much weight which was somewhat amazing), came back here, went out to the venerable Sushi Deli with Matt, Mia, Pat, and of course Lynnea then came back here, had some more sake, and watched Shaun of the Dead, which was absolutely hilarious. Really there's very little to write about. Which doesn't suit me too badly at the moment since sleep is sounding better and better with each passing second. Basicallly it was a fun day, even including the working part since I haven't seen any of those blokes lately, but not terribly interesting to write about. And I need to do a bit of reading and get meself to bed. I'ma consider that enough writing for the day.

Travelblogue – Day 5 – San Diego, Ca – 12:33am

This trip is blowing by so quick I can't even believe it. Tomorrow is our last full day in town, which seems ridiculous to me. I'm fairly sure we just got here. Anyway, today was a decent day. Work was a little annoying since they keep piling more and more stuff on me, not seeming to realize that I'm only in the office for one more day, not back in permanently. Nor the fact that I won't even be in on Friday. But at least I'm not going to go totally broke from taking an entire week off.

Speaking of totally broke though, we decided to do some shopping after I got back. Today was bookstore shopping day which went really successfully. I didn't find everything I was looking for but I found some stuff I wasn't at all expecting like a complete unabridged four volume set of The Thousand and One Nights for only $30, plus a single volume edition of The Faerie Queen by Spencer, which I've been wanting to read the last couple years (since it utterly thwarted me when I tried to read it in my English 220 class ever so long ago). And of course the usual contingent of scifi stuff that I don't really need was thrown in for good measure. But I'm happy that I picked up some more Neal Stephenson, if The Diamond Age is half as fun as Snow Crash it'll be great. We also went to the Sanrio store and loaded on the requisite cute stuff. I myself got a Chococat wallet, which is of the girl variety that only opens from the top and may drive me insane, but it's cool enough that I'll have to try it out for awhile at least.

Anyway, then we rounded off the evening by having dinner with my good friend Cole. We went to Afgani food at the Khyber Pass in Hillcrest, which is a quite tasty, albeit slightly pricey place. For those that haven't had it, Afgani food is sort of like Indian food if it had been switched at birth and lived a different life. It's really good. And of course so was chatting with Cole, he's just such an amazingly cool guy. Anyway, that's it for now. I've got to get my reading in and get to bed – I told Lynnea to wake me up early tomorrow so that I could get to work, and consequently leave work, early.

Travelblogue – Day 6 – San Diego, Ca – 12:54am

So, today was the last day in San Diego. Which is a little bit sad since it seems like we just got here, but I suppose that, once tomorrow's horribly long, painful, grueling, somewhere in the neighborhood of 12-hour long drive is over it'll be nice to be home again. Anyway, brief rundown of the day. I got up a little bit early and headed in to work at about 10:30, worked until 3:30 then came back here. After that Lynnea and I went out and got a bagel at LeStat's then went over to Grossmont to go to Cost Plus, Trader Joe's, and since Trader Joe's wasn't carrying Glenlivet for some inexplicable reason, BevMo. We had to pick up much needed, and generally unavailable in Oregon, supplies you see. Unfortunatly that didn't end up being quite as fun a shopping trip as we were hoping since we ended up being rushed for time, as we were going to a movie at 7:15.

The movie was Steamboy which is Katsuhiro Ôtomo's first movie since a not terribly well-known anime of the 80s called Akira (of which the manga is probably at least 3-4 times as long and makes infinitely more sense – and is a great read actually). It was uh, ok. Not great by any stretch of the imagination, but not really terrible either. I think would prefer the subbed version for sure. I mean, of course Patrick Stewart was good, but Anna Paquin? Or even worse whoever voiced Scarlett? Awful. Still, it seems like all these big budget anime movies coming out lately are high on the visual effects scale and low on the plot level. I mean, Metropolis... I don't even have the faintest idea what was going on in that movie. Ghost in the Shell: Innocence – visuals... wow. Plot... huh? And so on.

Anyway, then we met up with Mary (who I guess has been hiding under a rock for most of the week) and went to a couple coffee shops. We started at LeStat's but the barista on duty was Troy, and he seems to have penchant for blasting hightly inappropriate music (both hair metal and, as was the case tonight, hardcore) so we left and went elsewhere. Then we came back here and played with Matt's new PSP, which is just way way cool and I'm afraid I'm going to have to get one of them before too long. And here I am, getting my day's writing in even though it's super late and I have a evilly long drive ahead tomorrow. So that's it for me.

Travelblogue – Day 7 – Hornbrook, CA 12:01am

Well, we're finally back home, or at my parents' house at least. I guess I'll be putting all this together tomorrow and editing it into a blog post. I wonder if I can count that as my writing for the day... Maybe if I do an introduction to the whole trip.

So anyway, I don't really have much to talk about tonight. The drive up wasn't too bad, although traffic was pretty much as bad as I've seen it through Orange County and LA. Which is not to say the slowest, I've been just stopped in the OC for like over an hour without moving before, but basically the freeway was just really slow and completely glutted with cars from Anaheim all the way past Burbank. But once we got through that it wasn't too bad and actually we made the entire trip in only a little over 12 hours, which is below par for the course, if you'll forgive the hanggliding metaphor.

Alright, I know I'm way too tired to be writing any more at this point if that was my idea of a joke.

Travelblogue – Epilogue – Ashland, Or, 6:48pm

I was thinking of editing and posting the whole Travelblogue today, but really I'm way too tired out. We got up fairly early this morning, at least considering how tired we were last night. After hanging about my parents' house for a few hours, Lynnea and I came up with my dad, who for some reason insisted that we put the new alternator in my car today, despite the fact that that was not even near anything I wanted to do today. But he didn't really seem to be about to take no for an answer so we went ahead and did it. And actually it turned out that the old alternator was fine, just that the wire that connects to the battery was barely connected. So we fixed that and everything seems to be fine now. Meaning that the mechanics' quote of $240-some dollars was about $240-some dollars too much. Which is cool. And I think we fixed the fuel leak too, which had been another $260 quote. I don't think I'm going back to those mechanics.

Anyway, so that was the afternoon and now I'm just sitting around reading some old Robin comics and finally listening to the records I bought at Amoeba. And other than breaking off and doing my requisite book reading, that's really all I'm planning to do for the evening, other than maybe drink some of my delicious delicious scotch.

---

Anyway so that's that. Now you know what I did on my spring break. And a riveting read it was I'll wager. But now it's time for MST3k and tasty beer.
Matt on 03.28.05 @ 10:05 PM PST [link] 

So, I'm back from the trip. Actually I've been back since yesterday and I actually did put together a travelblogue over the course of the trip that I was intending to edit and compile today into one long travel post, but, holiday that it is, I've only been home for a few hours total today and am now so inordinately tired that it's all I can really do to tap a few keys before shambling off to bed land. Plus most of the entries are on my laptop and I don't really feel like digging it out and copying them over at the moment.

Speaking of the holiness of the day, I'm really not that into Easter. I mean sure, I'm in favor of what it stands for and all that, but that's really something you should be celebrating every day, if you want to get all churchy about it. Easter generally just means that church goes way too long and is filled with tourists. And seriously, if you want your christian holiday to bear much weight shouldn't you at least discourge people from using the name of a pagan goddess as its title? But I digress. Anyway, despite my lack of enthuaism for Easter in general, the specific was pretty good this year. Both my sisters came to town and my grandma and uncle came for dinner and it was a good time. And my almost-five year old niece was loaded with sugar and quite literally bouncing of the walls. Seriously, it looked like it should have hurt. But we didn't get back here until 6 and then Lynnea wanted to go see her mom and stuff (quite reasonable considering that we'd been hanging out with my family all day, but still I just wanted to stay home and read) so we hopped back in my car and drove out there, and we didn't get back until almost 9 I think. And as I said, I'm really sleepy.

Anyway, expect the travel report tomorrow. For now, I sleep.
Matt on 03.27.05 @ 11:13 PM PST [link] 

So tired... must stay awake to blog. Must not break policy.

No, I'm not actually tired enough that forming coherent sentences is difficult, but close though. It's past 3am and we just got back from the Decemberists show up in Eugene. And as tired as I am it was definitly worth the trip. I don't know if every Decemberists show is that much fun or if it was just this one, but that was a seriously great show. They were mostly doing new stuff off of Picaresque (which unfortunatly isn't out till tuesday so I couldn't nab a copy at the show.) but they did a few old ones, and the new stuff was really enjoyable (I think it says alot that I was able to enjoy alot of the songs I'd never heard before as much as the ones I know by heart). They ended with some sort of long epic (but rokkin') song about whales and revenge which was really fantastic, but then they got called out for two encores the last of which was some Irish drinking or other in honor of St. Patrick's Day. I think everybody was having a great time. It was loads of fun.

I can't exactly say the same for Okkervil River. We only got there in time for about their last 5 songs, but they sounded kinda thrashy and not very together. But it's the first night of the tour so I suppose some slack might be cut. And of course it's always possible that they're one of those bands that just doesn't sound so good live. Such bands exist.

But anyway, it's ridiculously late and I'm deadly tired, plus I still have a little bit of reading to get in before I call it a night. But at least my dedication to not collapsing once more into decadence has stood firm another day.

Matt on 03.17.05 @ 03:13 AM PST [link] 

So, I guess I'm just barely getting any writing in today. But it's a quarter to one and I just now got my day's reading in (finished Martian Time-Slip, by the way, which was great) and the thing is, I know myself. The day I skip my reading or my writing is the day the system will fall apart. I mean sure, I might skip a day and go back to doing it the day after, but that will be the first crack that eventually tears the structure down. Best to keep at it. Which might be a little difficult over the course of both tomorrow and the the upcoming vacation, but I can't let my determination slip for any reason. If I don't get home until 3 tomorrow night (which is a distinct possiblity) and I haven't gotten any reading done or written anything (which hopefully won't be the case) I'll keep myself awake until it's done. Otherwise I'm afraid I'll end up going back to the old system where I do nothing but sponge up media and output nothing.

Anyway, the day wasn't too exciting. But due to lack of anything else to write I'm appearently going to write about it anyway. (You know, I was looking at the archives last night after I finally got the new style applied to them, and in the early days of this blog I actually went about trying to say intelligent things and whatnot. Boggles the ol' mind, don't it?) After Lynnea got home from her final (she's in the middle of finals week, poor thing) we went over to her aunt and uncle's house (techincally her great aunt and uncle though they're never referred to as such, though I think they're at least in the 60s somewhere) to fix their computer. They're great. Her aunt (whom I decided tonight might best be described as an auntie) Chaunsa is Thai, about four feet tall, and always stuffs us full of Thai food whenever we go over there. Which I'm always in favor of. And Howard on the other hand, is 6'+, solidly midwestern looking, and because I can't think of another word to describe him, completely goofy. They're loads of fun. Anyway so after eating glass noodles and chicken satay, and getting the computer taken care of, we ran a few errands and came back home. At which point I decided to reblacken my hair since it was in serious need. Which led to a slightly amusing story wherein my face got chemical burns from Dr. Bronner's soap, but I'm too tired to tell that at the moment. Let's just say that when a significant other doesn't remember that you're in the shower and turns on the cold water elsewhere, it is not a good time to have somewhat caustic soap on your face. At least most of the red is gone at this point...

Matt on 03.16.05 @ 01:18 AM PST [link] 

So... I don't suppose you notice anything... shall we say different... about the 'ol website? Yep, believe it or not I actually went ahead and gave the overhaul it's been needing for over a year now. You people didn't think I'd actually do it, did you? I actually didn't really intend to update it today, except that I was bored and had a few free moments so I finally managed to fix the sidebar (you'll notice it goes all the way to the bottom of the page now, like it was always intended to do) and once I had that fixed I decided I might as well overhaul the whole site. I gave some thought to completely redoing all the graphics, but eventually I decided that I'd kinda just dig a notepapery look. I tried actually scanning a piece of note paper but it didn't end up quite like I wanted, so I finally just drew one of my own. I think it turned out pretty nice, although getting the top, middle, and bottom to line up was hell. Cause see, I had to make the middle dynamic so that it would size to however big the blog entry would be. Actually the more I think that I actually pulled it off the more impressed with myself I am.

Anyway, I've tested it in Firefox (where it shows up the best) and IE6 (which had just a tiny bit of wonkiness, but it's a wonky browser, so I'm not that surprised). If anything looks messed up on anyone's system drop me a line at the contact address on the sidebar. It should be pretty cross compatible though, as long as you're running a recent browser. And you really should just be running Firefox, unless you're on Mac or something. Firefox rules.

Alright, well that's it for tonight. This may not be much of a post but I've working on this blog for hours now and it's good enough for me. But believe it or not, I have another update in store for the future, something that, if I can get it to work, will blow your sweet minds. But for now, enjoy the papery feeling.

Matt on 03.14.05 @ 09:19 PM PST [link] 

So it's 8pm on sunday and, like usual, I can't quite figure out exactly where the weekend went. Sure, I've got another 5-6 hours before I'll actually go to bed but damn, this was a short one. And my last normal weekend until April I just realized. Lynnea and I are taking off next saturday to head southward for a week. We'll be swinging though Frisco on sunday then on down to San Diego for a few days. Should be fun to get out for a bit. Not only that but this wednesday we're heading up to Eugene to catch my favorite band, The Decemberists who are on tour with another band I dig called Okkervil River. Yep, nothing like an extra 6 hours of driving in a week that already promises to be filled with it. Oh well, I won't be able to complain that I never go anywhere for awhile.

So, you ask me, what in the name of Hecky Joe were you up to this weekend? I really couldn't tell you. I know I've spent a pretty good chunk of time reading Martian Time-Slip by the venerable PKD, which, true to form, contains alot more discussion of schitzophrenia (and other neuroses) than really anything else. But also true to form, it's a pretty good time. I think my problem is that I never really woke up yesterday. Or rather I did a little in the evening after I had some dinner and some coffee and some beer, but then I just watched an MST3k and went to bed. And today we just went to my parents', had lunch, I installed a new hard drive for them, and we came home. So I guess the weekend is shot. Ah well, it's not like I actually work much more than 20 hours a week. Anyway, I've now written something, thus fulfilling my compact with the dark forces who grant me my ability to live my lavishly immobile lifestyle. I'm going to scuttle off now and make another cup of genmai to try and wake me up some more.

"Hecky Joe" ? Sometimes I think my brain it has problems.

Matt on 03.13.05 @ 08:21 PM PST [link] 

So, it's blogging once again tonight. I suppose I could go work on my short story, but it's been a long day and I'm flagging a bit. That said, it's been a pretty good day as far as I'm concerned. The big news for me is that the iRiver H320 mp3 player I ordered showed up today. Which, I was really hoping it would but I had convinced myself that it wouldn't get here until tomorrow so as not to get my hopes up. But man, this thing is cool. It's slightly smaller than my guitar tuner, it's 20gigs, it plays oggs (my digital music format of choice), it's allegedly got about 16 hours of battery life (of course, I haven't been able to verify that since it hasn't even been in my posession that long), it displays pictures (which um, seems pointless but whatever... still cool), has an FM tuner and recorder, built-in voice recorder, and, if I want to install the Korean firmware (which may or may not void the warranty), will play videos to boot.

So then the majority of the day was spent ripping some of my records into .ogg format (cause mp3s suck with all their corporateness). And so far I've only gotten about 60 cds ripped, which accounts for maybe half of my essential records. I figured I would just put the essentials on for the moment, then add the supplemental records as desired. But yeah, so far I'm seriously happy with the thing. I'm actually listening to it right now, which might be a little ridiculous (note to all you people who spell the word "rediculous" - you are all idiots and if you continue this mispelling I shall cause your skulls to be ground to powder with misery and sorrow. mend your ways or face my wrath.) since I'm sitting here in front of my computer which can play music just as well, but hey, new toy you know.

The other thing I did today was finally finish Jude the Obscure. Sweet monkey, that was a depressing book. I mean, I'd read (and incidentally, loved) Tess of the d'Urbervilles so I wasn't expecting happy tea parties in the sunshine or anything but wow. That was some good pain. Of course, that's what I love about Thomas Hardy. You're reading along and you're thinking to yourself, wow, it can't get much worse than this... and then bam, it's way worse. And again, and again. It gets to the point where it's almost comical. And at least in Tess and Jude, once you get near to the end of the book... ta-da! Brutal murder! And the one in Jude is partictularly horrific and came straight out of left field (I mean, it makes sense from an analytical stance, but I seriously did not see that coming). Loads of fun. And if anybody out there reading this has read it, that ending scene with Arabella was just way too funny. Still, that said I think it'll be awhile before I tackle anymore Hardy. As much as I like him, 500+ page Victorian novels tend to take a really long time to read. I need something quick and pulpy after that. Maybe some PKD (heh, I just noticed the can of Ubik in the background on that site.) or something.

Speaking of which, I wish they'd fire whoever is casting these PKD movie adaptations. Affleck in Paycheck was bad enough (though I still actually enjoyed it) but Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder in A Scanner Darkly? The hell? Maybe I could see Winona as Donna, it's a pretty big stretch but it could work, but Keanu as Bob Arctor is just wrong. Not even close to as wrong as him as John Constantine, but wrong nonetheless. Actually why are they still putting him in movies at all? But I digress. At least Soderburg isn't directing (he was supposed to be for awhile there). I guess he figured ruining a Lem novel was enough.

Ok, what the hell am I talking about? I think I blanked out there for a minute and kept typing. Ah well, I'll leave it up.

Matt on 03.11.05 @ 12:13 AM PST [link] 

First of all, site news! A very cursory glance will reveal that I have done some minor updates to the sidebar. One of these days I'm actually going to redesign the site so that it, you know, works, and is not crappy. I mean, I am a professional web/graphic designer. You'd think that I'd have my site looking all neato-keen. The problem is my blogging software, while it works great, is kinda weird in the setup. And I'm used to being able to abosolutely position everything, so me and it tend to fight a bit. And I guess the other problem is that I'm normally paid to do web design. Ah, but I'll actually put some work into it sometime. After all, the current look is just what I threw together in a couple hours as a placeholder, then never fixed. But until then let's go over the sidebar changes. Yay.

Alright, first item of business is that I completely got rid of the anime and manga links (one last chance for those that didn't write them down). Two reasons for this: 1) It's 2005. I think you people can find anime and manga info online by yourselves without my help. If nothing else there's this little thing called Google. and B) All the hits I was getting from Korean domains (Annyong ha shimnikka to all the Koreans out there by the way.) of people looking for manga was falsely inflating my hits. And I gots ta be keepin it real around here. Next up, you'll notice there's a couple more people on my friends list. First off I've added my bro (I don't mean that we're actually brothers, but in the sense that black people use it, which I think is more meaningful) Jonathan. I don't actually go to his blog very often, seeing as it's a heavy political blog. (You know like, that kind they talk about on tv and stuff. Not that I've watched tv in last two years. Ok, so they kind that they talk about on the internet and on NPR and possibly on tv maybe.) Not that I disagree with him at all, just that politics is not so much my thing. But it's a good site, if that's what you're into. Ok, and I just noticed that Zac appearently has a blog and didn't tell me. And has had one since October. But that's very Zac, so I'm not terribly surprised. Hmm, he needs to post more. Anyway, that's going up as soon as I finish this post. Then last but not least I've added Brenda who I really should have added awhile back since I've been on her sidebar for months now. The last change is that I've added two more of my favorite web comics and replaced those text links with jaunty graphical links (which Red Meat did not offer, so I had to make my own).

In other news, believe it or not my new found self-discipline has actually been working so far. Not only have I actually gotten a solid start on a short story I'd been wanting to work on for awhile, but I've also read something like 200+ pages of Jude the Obscure since Sunday. (I guess didn't mention that I also adopted the policy of having to spend at least an hour every day reading non-comic books.) But anyway, it's going surprisingly well. Appearently the first step toward motivation was, uh, deciding to um, have some. So. The first step towards motivation is having motivation. Damn, I should write a book. Anyway, motivation or no, I've already written a lot and it's closing on 12:30 and I wanted to squeeze in an episode of MST3k before bed. So that's it for me tonight. Hmm, I usually like to go out on a joke...

Matt on 03.10.05 @ 12:28 AM PST [link] 

Well, it's 11:25 at night and I've yet to write anything, and seeing as this is only the second day of my administration's new write-something-every-day policy I can't start slipping just yet. And since I highly doubt I'm going to be stuck by a firey muse at this point in the evening, that leaves blogging. Of course, that said, I don't really have a whole lot to blog about tonight. It wasn't the most exciting day. The one cool thing (or at least cool to the likes of me) is that I found out about this program called Samurize which basically lets you collect all kinds of data from various sources - your own computer, various bits of software, the web - and set it up to be displayed as part of your desktop or as a persistant sidebar, or what have you. I've always seen screen shots that had that kinda thing and wanted to do it myself but I never knew what software you used. And it's free no less. If you have no idea what I'm talking about then here, take a look at this (note the Serial Experiments Lain wallpaper, tre chic, no?). Samurize is giving me all that system information stuff at the bottom of the screen, updated in real time. It actually took me a couple hours to put that setup together, but I think it's pretty cool (Note to the techies out there: I Photoshopped in the 127.0.0.1 - it does give you your actual external IP). And you can set it up to put RSS feeds out there, weather, info from Winamp, Azureus, whatever you want mostly. It takes a bit of messing around to get a feel for the configuration, but once you have it down it's pretty easy. Well, anyway, I was impressed.

Those with nothing better to do will also notice that I'm currently taking an intermission from watching MST3k episode 312, better known as Gamera vs. Guiron. What happened to ol' Gamera? I mean in this one he's flying around in space helping confused children battle some kind of, I don't know, space vixens with a pet knife-headed monster, I guess they are. And he's got his own adorable theme song sung by children in Japanese. Possibly even Japanese children, I can't be sure. But I just can't help remembering when he was referred to as "the Devil's Envoy." And he ate fire. And he liked to smash Tokyo in retaliation to their nuclear testing. Or in retaliation to somebody's nuclear testing at least, I don't really remember who now. But the point is, Smashing. Retaliation. Fire-Eating. DEVIL'S ENVOY. But, you know, I guess even Gojira himself got soft over the years, and he was offing people by the tens of thousands in that first movie. Now Mothra on the other hand, Mothra's got it goin on, what with his whole being worshipped as a god bit. Mothra understands: less is more. I tell ya, unless Gamera shapes up sometime in the next couple movies he's never gonna get worshipped by teams of nubile young dancing types. And deep down, isn't that most of us really want?


Matt on 03.06.05 @ 11:56 PM PST [link] 

It seems like this always happens, I turn my head for a second and suddenly three weeks have gone by. And I'm like, no I swear I just posted, but you know, I didn't. Actually the thing is I was going to do this experiment last weekend where I was going to drink alot and watch vampire movies and post about it as it happened. And I started to, but most of the post was just me making fun of Van Helsing and, come on, that's like making fun of Special Olympics kids. It's just mean to make fun of anything with as many problems as that. Van Helsing was a special, special movie, with special needs. It would have been wrong to mock it.

Anyway, so in order to battle the ever-escalating creative entropy in my life, I've decided to adopt a new policy. Basically I've come to the conclusion that I have to write something every day. Whether that's a short story, some of my bad poetry, a novella, a song, or just humble blog post like this one, it doesn't really matter as long as I write something. It's just that, as I think I've said before, whenever I'm busy with work and school and that sort of thing I always think to myself, "When I get some free time...." And at current, I'm working around 4-6 hours a day which, discounting sleeping, leaves me with somewhere in the area of 70 free hours a week. And yet have I done anything in the past 6 months? Not really. Can I even manage to find a spare half hour to spit out a blog post more than once every three weeks? Appearently not. Well, no more says I.

Whether I can manage to actually go through with this policy will, of course, remain to be seen but even if I can keep it up for a week I'll have written seven somethings, which is more than I can say I've done the past several months. But really, I gotta get with it. I'm always one to deride those who spend hours upon hours sitting and watching tv, but it's not as though I don't fritter my time away any less fruitlessly. Example: I actually spent over an hour and a half playing SmashTV last night. I don't even like that game. I just started playing it to test out using the analog sticks on my controller and ended up beating the thing. That's irrecoverable time. I could have done something useful with that time. (well, ok maybe that's not terribly likely at 2 in the morning, but you know what I mean.)

Anyway, that does it for me today. All this resolution and determination is tiring, and I've been barely awake today as it is (something about playing SmashTV until almost 3am...). Plus by writing this, I can say that my new policy is already well underway. And you thought this was just a normal blog post. Heh. So long, chumps!

Matt on 03.05.05 @ 03:39 PM PST [link]