this goes out to the Japanese artists whose music videos continue to impress and inspire. And oh yeah, who can forget Domokun?
TAKAKO MINEKAWA- PLASH
birth of Domokun plus the early years
Cornelius- Breezin'
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Initial Reactions....
Yesterday was quite the day as I wandered about the Kansas City International airport, waiting for a part to be repaired on the plane assigned to my ticket. To make matters....you know, there comes a time when typing no longer appeals to me and I have to go back to writing everything down on paper. My guess is that the soul-less interface between my thoughts and the keyboard become too much for me to handle. I guess there's something to be said for mobility and user-friendliness when it comes down to a writer's personal tastes. Mine you could say revolves around the primitive technology that's carried our civilization for a couple thousand years now. But then there's something to be said for the immediacy of the typed word that offers unlimited opportunities for sharing with others that the handwritten form cannot. A handwritten letter will always be personalized as each hand that writes is as unique and distinct as a snowflake. It also supposedly takes more time to write down our thougts than it does by computer. In the end the artists, no matter what the medium (books, films, design, illustration, music, etc.), must always use the tools they are most comfortable to use.
To continue further on this train of thought, I need look no further for examples than some of my favorite artists and styles of music. The sub-genre known as "breakcore" encompasses some of the most hectic yet addictive beats & rhythms of golden-age hip-hop, drum 'n bass, found sounds and gabba, all wrapped in insanity. The artists who create this style of music often use at home DIY creations of instruments based on their unique way of creating music. A look into drum kits shows us that sometimes its the familiarity with tapping out a rhythm with your fingers is easier and more connected to the brain than plucking a guitar string. In an age where the masses opt for trying to imitate their idols instead of create new art themselves, its easy to forget that art does not always have to follow a certain formula or utilize the same core instruments (guitar, drums, turntables, etc.) in their basic physical structure.
I guess it is for this reason that I will choose to forgo the comuter for a while in exchange for a tab of paper from which to gather my thoughts. Maybe the real reason is that I have become tired of reporting on my daily life ala monotone diary entries. The need for random thoughts and theories on life seem to be more fun to write about than the mundane and trivial. Or maybe its easier for me to keep a diary by paper and pen than it is by keyboard and CPU. In this short amount of time I have gone severely off course in my original intentions for this entry and instead have created a short discourse on the importance of the artist to remember to tailor their methods of creation to their own personality and not be stuck in one-dimensional atmosphere.
To continue further on this train of thought, I need look no further for examples than some of my favorite artists and styles of music. The sub-genre known as "breakcore" encompasses some of the most hectic yet addictive beats & rhythms of golden-age hip-hop, drum 'n bass, found sounds and gabba, all wrapped in insanity. The artists who create this style of music often use at home DIY creations of instruments based on their unique way of creating music. A look into drum kits shows us that sometimes its the familiarity with tapping out a rhythm with your fingers is easier and more connected to the brain than plucking a guitar string. In an age where the masses opt for trying to imitate their idols instead of create new art themselves, its easy to forget that art does not always have to follow a certain formula or utilize the same core instruments (guitar, drums, turntables, etc.) in their basic physical structure.
I guess it is for this reason that I will choose to forgo the comuter for a while in exchange for a tab of paper from which to gather my thoughts. Maybe the real reason is that I have become tired of reporting on my daily life ala monotone diary entries. The need for random thoughts and theories on life seem to be more fun to write about than the mundane and trivial. Or maybe its easier for me to keep a diary by paper and pen than it is by keyboard and CPU. In this short amount of time I have gone severely off course in my original intentions for this entry and instead have created a short discourse on the importance of the artist to remember to tailor their methods of creation to their own personality and not be stuck in one-dimensional atmosphere.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
When printing slang goes wrong....
In today's multi-lingual world, the one aspect of language that can always be counted on to change daily is slang. These words and phrases created by friends, celebrities, musicians, etc. become engrossed in our society's collective lexicon depending on the context and popularity of their use. In the effort to stay in touch with their readers, the print media will try to write their columns with a conversational tone and as such adopt slang words into their written pieces. As this practice continues to pick up more and more steam, the question that nobody seems to be posing is "Where do we draw the line?" Amongst the variety of printed media, I'm going to be discussing magazines because they are my favorite form of media coverage.
Amongst the growing number of magazines currently available on the shelves, there stands one in particular named "Game Informer." Being a desk assistant at dorm on campus, I have unchecked access to magazines that are sent to past residents who have since moved out. During my past desk shift I picked up the latest issue of "Game Informer" and started heavily reading through the columns to catch up on the latest in the video game world. In the main cover story, based around the upcoming Ghostbusters game, the author writes about the demo he plays. During one portion, he writes "The shelf slides aside abruptly, revealing a dank staircase." I'm sorry, did I read "revealing a DANK staircase?!" Maybe he meant, a staircase instead and the editor accidentally missed this error. Then again, maybe the author did intend for this use of the slang word "dank" to be used in his description. For those at home keeping score, the word dank is a slang term that refers to how awesome or high quality something is, usually used to describe food & drink as well as the quality of a quantity of weed.
But what's this?! Upon researching Webster's dictionary, the word dank existed in a proper form before becoming a slang term. And what's more, among the definitions listed for the word dank is one saying "unpleasantly moist or humid; damp and, often, chilly: a dank cellar." OOPS! Shite, I messed up. Okay, okay, so I made a mistake. The author in the Game Informer column used "dank " in the correct context and I have now ended up with proverbial egg on my face. Despite this foul-up I am still concerned about the misuse of slang in printed form as I still maintain my stance that there are some slang words or phrases that should only belong in verbal discourse and never written form. There, that's all I was trying to say. Better luck next time....
Amongst the growing number of magazines currently available on the shelves, there stands one in particular named "Game Informer." Being a desk assistant at dorm on campus, I have unchecked access to magazines that are sent to past residents who have since moved out. During my past desk shift I picked up the latest issue of "Game Informer" and started heavily reading through the columns to catch up on the latest in the video game world. In the main cover story, based around the upcoming Ghostbusters game, the author writes about the demo he plays. During one portion, he writes "The shelf slides aside abruptly, revealing a dank staircase." I'm sorry, did I read "revealing a DANK staircase?!" Maybe he meant, a staircase instead and the editor accidentally missed this error. Then again, maybe the author did intend for this use of the slang word "dank" to be used in his description. For those at home keeping score, the word dank is a slang term that refers to how awesome or high quality something is, usually used to describe food & drink as well as the quality of a quantity of weed.
But what's this?! Upon researching Webster's dictionary, the word dank existed in a proper form before becoming a slang term. And what's more, among the definitions listed for the word dank is one saying "unpleasantly moist or humid; damp and, often, chilly: a dank cellar." OOPS! Shite, I messed up. Okay, okay, so I made a mistake. The author in the Game Informer column used "dank " in the correct context and I have now ended up with proverbial egg on my face. Despite this foul-up I am still concerned about the misuse of slang in printed form as I still maintain my stance that there are some slang words or phrases that should only belong in verbal discourse and never written form. There, that's all I was trying to say. Better luck next time....
Monday, November 19, 2007
good morning vietna.....err wait, sorry, meant to leave it at good morning
anyways, tonight was a definite bust, getting absolutely zero homework done and top of that, I still have yet to update this site on a consistent basis. And oh yeah, i'm fat....wait.....no i'm not fat! YES! I did something! I ate cheez-its at a ridiculous speed and sat back the rest of the late late night to allow my body's high metabolism to process any and all fat in such a manner as to have no effect on my outward appearance. Yes, that's one thing I've done tonight. The second and more time-consuming goal I accomplished was sitting on my ass at the Spahr engineering library watching old episodes of "Andy Richter Controls the Universe." Case Closed
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Fears...
As the importance of blogs continues to rise in society, so does my fear of posting entries in my blogs. For as long as I can remember, I have had this deep-seeded fear of screwing up when it comes to any kind of writing, whether it be for personal, business, or classes. I don't know why I have this fear but it's been with me as far back as elementary school when I would stay up late into the night pacing about the family computer with fear and worry gripping my heart and mind. I would stare at the screen for hours as the anxiety brewed quietly inside me. Every little keystroke brought forth an additional amount of stress to the project at hand. At times I wanted to scream out to the heavens above with the echoing of the personal hell contained within but instead I let the pain continue to build within.
Fifteen years later nothing has changed. I still shrink away from important papers that I should be writing, hiding away from the anxiety rollercoaster ride that I know will accompany me with each paper left to write. At this very moment I have two papers due for my Western Civ I class but instead I am writing this blog entry in the hopes that if I confront this problem head on I will realize that its something I can run away from no more. It is this one fear that paralyzes my entire body and brings my heart to the brink of destruction each and every time I attempt to work on a paper. In the end there are two possible outcomess to the paper assignment. The first possible outcome is that in the end after laboring over the assignment with anxiety-driven madness I actually complete the assignment. I won't even go into whether or not its finished by the deadline as it is usually not the case. The second and more familiar outcome as of recent is that I do not finish the assignment and instead drop off all communication to the person or place of business that the assignment is due. Later after dwelling alone in my room for an extended period of time, I will emerge from my hole gripping a piece of paper from my doctor or an e-mail from the Services for Students with Disabilities office, claiming that it was due to my illness that I could not turn in the assignment. By going this route, I continue to perpetuate the one, single road block in my life that's been stopping me from publishing articles in the Kansan and other local publications. Because I cannot trust myself with being able to finish a writing assignment by the deadline, I keep myself away from applying for a job at any writing publication.
My attempts to stay in the J-school over these past years have been so that I can enroll in their classes which will force me to take on this personal demon head-on as it be with the survival mechanism of sink or swim. I finally had the opportunity to try this long-awaited strategy out this semester by enrolling in "Multimedia Reporting" and "Multimedia Editing." However, I made the mistake of enrolling in two more journalism classes which ended up taking up my time from these other journalism classes and in the end I withdrew from all four classes. This is where I found myself currently, sitting in the McCollum ARC typing up this blog entry while awaiting a job interview to return back to the desk job I tried to leave behind.
During the course of typing out this blog entry I experienced wincing anxiety that continued in waves throughout this writing process. What I have learned over the years about dealing with this problem is that it helps to wear a warm coat or other clothing because the anxiety and stress creates shivers all over my body, especially my back (which regulates the temperature of the rest of the body). Of course the prescribed Adderall helps as I usually take it while working on a writing assignment. The medicine keeps my butt planted in the seat long enough for me to crank out enough sentences and paragraphs to either complete the assignment or come damn near close. Without the Adderall, I have a tendency to become flighty and will at random pack up all of my things and quickly exit whatever place I am at and move to another location. Taking this moment to examine this behavior I can only surmise that relief from this anxiety and stress comes best in the form of being in motion, whether it be on foot or by car. This constant need to leave behind the root cause of the stress is controlled by a primitive instinct to protect my mind and body from anything causing it harm, which in this case is the paralyzing stress that stems from the writing assignment.
Well shit, there's everything that I've been dealing with for the past 15 years now, laid out nice and neat in paragraph form. Yes I am presently on my Adderall which is probably the reason why I was able to make it all the way to the end of this entry without hesitation or pause. The sad part that comes along with this typed out explanation for my successive failures in writing is that I have yet to develop a system for combating this problem. If I could develop a method for approaching a writing assignment, one that takes it from the beginning to the end of the assigmnment, I would apply for a job at the Kansan and Lawrence.com in a second. Until then, I will work on this problem by simply continuing to write in this blog daily, meeting the fear and anxiety that takes me to the breaking point and somehow make it my own.
Good night self, until we meet again tomorrow.
Fifteen years later nothing has changed. I still shrink away from important papers that I should be writing, hiding away from the anxiety rollercoaster ride that I know will accompany me with each paper left to write. At this very moment I have two papers due for my Western Civ I class but instead I am writing this blog entry in the hopes that if I confront this problem head on I will realize that its something I can run away from no more. It is this one fear that paralyzes my entire body and brings my heart to the brink of destruction each and every time I attempt to work on a paper. In the end there are two possible outcomess to the paper assignment. The first possible outcome is that in the end after laboring over the assignment with anxiety-driven madness I actually complete the assignment. I won't even go into whether or not its finished by the deadline as it is usually not the case. The second and more familiar outcome as of recent is that I do not finish the assignment and instead drop off all communication to the person or place of business that the assignment is due. Later after dwelling alone in my room for an extended period of time, I will emerge from my hole gripping a piece of paper from my doctor or an e-mail from the Services for Students with Disabilities office, claiming that it was due to my illness that I could not turn in the assignment. By going this route, I continue to perpetuate the one, single road block in my life that's been stopping me from publishing articles in the Kansan and other local publications. Because I cannot trust myself with being able to finish a writing assignment by the deadline, I keep myself away from applying for a job at any writing publication.
My attempts to stay in the J-school over these past years have been so that I can enroll in their classes which will force me to take on this personal demon head-on as it be with the survival mechanism of sink or swim. I finally had the opportunity to try this long-awaited strategy out this semester by enrolling in "Multimedia Reporting" and "Multimedia Editing." However, I made the mistake of enrolling in two more journalism classes which ended up taking up my time from these other journalism classes and in the end I withdrew from all four classes. This is where I found myself currently, sitting in the McCollum ARC typing up this blog entry while awaiting a job interview to return back to the desk job I tried to leave behind.
During the course of typing out this blog entry I experienced wincing anxiety that continued in waves throughout this writing process. What I have learned over the years about dealing with this problem is that it helps to wear a warm coat or other clothing because the anxiety and stress creates shivers all over my body, especially my back (which regulates the temperature of the rest of the body). Of course the prescribed Adderall helps as I usually take it while working on a writing assignment. The medicine keeps my butt planted in the seat long enough for me to crank out enough sentences and paragraphs to either complete the assignment or come damn near close. Without the Adderall, I have a tendency to become flighty and will at random pack up all of my things and quickly exit whatever place I am at and move to another location. Taking this moment to examine this behavior I can only surmise that relief from this anxiety and stress comes best in the form of being in motion, whether it be on foot or by car. This constant need to leave behind the root cause of the stress is controlled by a primitive instinct to protect my mind and body from anything causing it harm, which in this case is the paralyzing stress that stems from the writing assignment.
Well shit, there's everything that I've been dealing with for the past 15 years now, laid out nice and neat in paragraph form. Yes I am presently on my Adderall which is probably the reason why I was able to make it all the way to the end of this entry without hesitation or pause. The sad part that comes along with this typed out explanation for my successive failures in writing is that I have yet to develop a system for combating this problem. If I could develop a method for approaching a writing assignment, one that takes it from the beginning to the end of the assigmnment, I would apply for a job at the Kansan and Lawrence.com in a second. Until then, I will work on this problem by simply continuing to write in this blog daily, meeting the fear and anxiety that takes me to the breaking point and somehow make it my own.
Good night self, until we meet again tomorrow.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Test in progress, the rest is retail...
So its time to see what this hum-drum sucker is really capable of. So for this exercise I'm going to need a volunteer jpeg from the crowd. Now don't come rushing up all at once, and hey, GIFs & BMPs, scram!! Sorry about that, now like I was typing I want to test out this baby and see just how many pesos a company would shill out when they see how nice and interactive this blog could be. On with the programme:
Now be nice as this guy to the left is a fellow pub-crawler of Larryville (yes, i still refer to Lawrence as Larryville) who by this time of the nite wants very badly to avoid any bright lights or flash photography. However, when he stops by
my pad and start muttering gibberish, i have to document the occassion and then reward my friend with more booze. His girlfriend (not pictured but sitting right next to him) was in happier spirits.
But what am i listening to right now? time to figure out that I love music from all over this world (et tu, Japan?) which is why i'm bumping the following.....
hmmm...curious if this is working, cuz if it is you should be listening to Malawi musician Esau Mwamwaya covering M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" track off her latest release "Kala." Much love goes out to IHeartComix for originally getting a hold of this. Definitely run over to their site, its like 50 clicks to the west from here, might be able to get there by sun down. Moving on, time to try and fix that picture above......hmmmm.
Now that this has been a successful blog hit with many 'funderful' moments, i have to close this test like Manhattan and bury the project forever under loose red tape and conspiracy speculation ("What does the 'Manhattan Project' of the WWII days have to do with the Teenage Mutant Turtles 8-bit game which spots the same name?"). Maybe some questions are better left for the history books. Peace to the Beasts....mission control, out.
Monday, October 8, 2007
A hole in the ground....
So this is a hole in the ground blog, dedicated to relieving the stress of one veteran college radio deejay whose seen the good times roll past too quickly. Too much shit going on to stop and take in everything around me. Lawrence, Kansas is good people but the good ol' days are spinning by too fast.
This won't be a sob-blog ("needing a place to cry and mope because no one wants to have coffee with you anymore") as I have come across some while browsing the blogger site. No, this will be a life distilled, slowly breaking down everything we walk past daily, pushing aside the beautiful for the next disgusting moment in humanity brought to you by the MCM ("mass circus media").
At its most basic core, this site will also be one of interactive material taken from my daily life, including concert pics, interviews with artists, film clips from past shorts and anything else I come across in my past five years in college. Just remember, its not about how long or short the race takes, just as long as you finish in the end.
You can take classes on how to make violins from the best violin makers in the world and it won't matter because in the end if you can't make a violin when I say make a violin I'm going to hire the guy over there because even though he learned from average violin makers, I know that he can make me a violin and thats all I need.
This above analogy has been eating at me ever since my Journalism professor told me this a month ago because it rings true of everything we do in life. It doesn't matter where you went to school, if you even went at all, if you can't still do the tasks for your job. This is my ultimate problem in life as my universe consists of a long, tattered string of incompletes weighing me down as I try to keep moving forward each day.
This won't be a sob-blog ("needing a place to cry and mope because no one wants to have coffee with you anymore") as I have come across some while browsing the blogger site. No, this will be a life distilled, slowly breaking down everything we walk past daily, pushing aside the beautiful for the next disgusting moment in humanity brought to you by the MCM ("mass circus media").
At its most basic core, this site will also be one of interactive material taken from my daily life, including concert pics, interviews with artists, film clips from past shorts and anything else I come across in my past five years in college. Just remember, its not about how long or short the race takes, just as long as you finish in the end.
You can take classes on how to make violins from the best violin makers in the world and it won't matter because in the end if you can't make a violin when I say make a violin I'm going to hire the guy over there because even though he learned from average violin makers, I know that he can make me a violin and thats all I need.
This above analogy has been eating at me ever since my Journalism professor told me this a month ago because it rings true of everything we do in life. It doesn't matter where you went to school, if you even went at all, if you can't still do the tasks for your job. This is my ultimate problem in life as my universe consists of a long, tattered string of incompletes weighing me down as I try to keep moving forward each day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
