Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Tautological Profundity's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, December 25th, 2011
9:54 am	merry christmas it's 9:48 in the am, and kris still hasn't gotten up to open his stocking. psssh, kids today. that's okay though, i've got christmas music playing on the big speakers and i'm cruising around the internets. thought i'd put up a quick lj post. we had a holiday party the other night, had way too much fun. troy and lindsey and sylwia were all in town from cali, as was matt from new york, so it was great to have all those people in one place getting drunk. i took a ton of pictures and got to relive the night the next morning by going through them. put up a good selection of the non-risque ones up on the facebook last night and got to wake up to a whole stream of 'x likes your photo' notifications. always like those. last night was christmas at jen and erik's with mom and larry. excellent roast, i made a really good salad, we even went for a walk, which was nice. today we're heading up to bellingham for more fambly time. not sure if we're staying up there tonight or not, but either way i have tomorrow off work, so i'm good. love those four day weekends. aw, here's eartha kitt singing santa baby. it's a tough toss-up for me between this one and madonna's version. each has a place in my heart. anyways, merry christmas, 2011. (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 8th, 2011
8:02 am	what, again? fer reals? i don't believe it. i just commented on someone's livejournal post and it got me all nostalgic for the good old days. i think somebody said one time that nostalgia is an unattractive sentiment. my dad just wrote me that he finished my fourth book. liked it. he only started it a week ago or so, so he whipped through it pretty quick. sent a few notes in the meantime about how he was enjoying it. said the ending kinda snuck up on him, though, which is something i've heard before, and gets me doubting. did i precipitate the big final conflagration to abruptly? or am i reading too much into that? do i want, in general, to err on the side of a full, fleshy climactic portion, such that you wouldn't be able to miss the fact that you're coming up on the end? or should i be pleased that the reader is left with the sensation is wanting more, provided, of course, the ending doesn't at the same time feel unfinished? the lazy asshole in me leans towards the latter, naturally. all of this reminds me that i should put together a stock query letter based on this fourth book and do another round of sending it out to literary agents. i need an agent to find me an agent. can you imagine being a novelist for a living? shit. or how about quitting this job? man, how would that feel? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
3:48 pm	oh yeah this place. well, work is crazy insane right now. as in like lots to do and stuff. meh. we've got an intern right now that will (hopefully) be taking this one big huge thing off my plate that was added to my plate a few months ago and has since metastasized, and indeed just recently exploded in my, and by extension the company's, face because it turned out i wasn't staying as on top of things as it turns out one ought. lesson learned and all that, but fortunately those above me in the old hierarchy didn't lose faith in my awesomeness so much as come to grips with the fact that it's ridiculous to expect me to be able to handle this new big huge thing while at the same time doing all those other things that used to comprise my job, all of which are still, you know, my job. so that makes me feel good, and this new person is even occupying a position analogous to an assistant to yours truly, which nudges me in the direction of what is my ultimate career goal, depressing as this may be, namely corporate management. unfortunately, at the moment, the new person is only half-time, and wouldn't be starting full time until the beginning of the year, and even that is only if both the company and this person decide the fit is good, which is no guarantee. and the learning curve for this stuff is kinda ridiculous, especially given the fact that i'm having to create a system by which to track everything on the fly, if you will, and half of it still lives in my head at this point, so while the promise (okay promise is a little strong) of help in the somewhat near future is heartening, and the show of faith by management is reassuring, and the prospects for my occupational future job-title-wise are looking up, i'm still having to do a whole shitty ass-ton of work, so, you know, the phrase 'cold comfort' does spring to mind, if you know what i mean. sigh, what else. i'm working on a new novel, and this one is taking a decidedly different direction than any of the previous four. i kinda feel like the last one, or perhaps more the last two, were me achieving the genre i was shooting for sufficiently for me to move on. like i went there, tried to do it, fumbled around a few times, finally nailed it to a greater or lesser degree, and now want to try something new. also i was reading 'infinite jest' (yes, again) when i started this latest project, and david foster wallace's style makes rather more of a contribution to what i've got going than i really feel comfortable with. i'm trying not to worry about this too much, since (i tell myself) there is something i want to do, writing-wise, that lives on the other side of me aping dfw, and (i pray to myself), i'm actually already more than halfway past said aping, howeversomuch the usual capering demons of doubt and self-derision dance their merry way about me. i'm now reading 'the satanic verses', and rushdie indulges himself in similar orgies of clause-heavy sentences and brow-wrinkling circumlocutions, so i can reassure myself that it is not only dfw my language in this latest project is taking after. the drugs and alcohol are harder to explain, except insofar as i've limited myself thus far to squeaky clean characters in a lot of ways, which is in itself a refusal to face reality. but, again, i feel like i need to travel this path to sort of push out the boundaries of the space in which i can work. (truly, i haven't even pushed them as far as i secretly know i will ultimately need to push them. i'm not exactly sure what i mean by this, and don't even want to think about it very much, but it feels true.) anyways, i'm itchy to write. last night kelly didn't have rehearsal so i didn't do my usual tuesday night go-to-the-tin-hat-and-write thing, instead we got a christmas tree and lights and stuff and watched some tv, which was good. it was nice to have a little family time/date night. but i really do feel the hole that's a result of not having had a chance to write in over a week now. i keep having ideas of things the characters can do, ways their relationships with each other can change, and in fact, for christ's sake, tintillating anticipatorinesses of the fact that two of the main characters are just about to meet, as in that's where i left the story last time, they're just about to meet and have their first interaction with each other and christ i wish that was what i was doing tonight. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 17th, 2011
11:03 am	laptop maintenance last night i did laptop maintenance. my old (old old) writing machine finally stopped working properly recently. the 'o' and 'p' keys are only occasionally functional, and last night even the down arrow wasn't working. obviously that's not gonna work, so kelly was nice enough to lend me the basically permanent use of one of her laptops. she has somehow managed to collect a couple-few over the years. i don't know, she probably 'buys' them, or something. anyways, my now new writing machine doesn't have a real word processor on it, something i discovered when i got to the bar a few weeks ago to take it on its maiden voyage. i was non-plussed, to say the least, though i did manage to find wordpad on it, which was enough to be getting on with. it indents at the beginning of paragraphs, i can pick fonts and font sizes, it italicizes, and that was enough for the short term. however, this past tuesday night i spent my third evening writing on this new project i've started, in wordpad, and it's starting to get up into the 10-15 page length range, which is getting a little unmanageable when it comes to transferring to a different program and sifting through it line by line to make sure the formatting is correct. so, one of my projects last night was to download open office onto the new machine. i was also planning to open up the new project in open word, or whatever, and do what is basically just housekeeping, and doesn't require the ambience of a writing night, and honestly would even be a waste of a writing night. however, last night kelly rented a couple movies and i made dinner and we had a nice little date night, so that was cool. the other bit of laptop maintenance i did was on trying to get the latest novel, #4, off the old machine, and it boded far less well, and actually is kinda scaring the shit out of me. pretty sure everything will be fine, but i'm nervous. basically it's the old problem of that dinosaur of a laptop, which i already miss, but that the only method of data extraction i have available on it (after much thought and effort, which i've probably detailed exhaustively here at some point in the past, that being kinda my m.o., i.e. exhaustive detail, etc.) being 3.5" floppy disks, which has worked fine in the past, albeit laboriously, but that last night, suddenly, terrifyingly, just didn't seem to want to work at all. i managed to scrounge up three different floppy disks, which was two more than i had expected to find, and i thought i was golden. one of them actually had a version of this fourth book on it, though not the latest version, so i set that one aside. in case of disaster, i can rework it and salvage the book as a whole. so that left two. disks. one of these the computer just couldn't read, nor could it format. i tried all the different kinds of formatting, and nothing worked. so i go to the third and last disk. this one it could read, had a version of the 2nd book on it, so i cleared it and tried to copy the 4th book onto it. disk error, couldn't copy file, data may be corrupted or lost. ack! i tried everything i could think of, deleting the file from the disk, emptying the recycle bin, doing a 'save as' in word, dragging and dropping the file into the 'a' drive, nothing worked. so i go to fred meyer to buy a packet of new floppies. they don't sell them anymore. bartell's, where i got my last batch, also doesn't sell them anymore. then, like i said, i also had to make dinner and it was time to watch movies, which was way more enjoyable anyways, but left the whole novel retrieval process in unconsummated limbo, and i'm still real unclear on what exactly this is going to mean in the long term. obviously i would be really sad to lose the book, as in like whoa, though i don't really have any reason to think that's going to happen. the file is still fine on the machine, and i even have that backup on a floppy that, honestly, wouldn't take much work to bring back up to finished. so, long story long, last night was laptop maintenance night, with more to come. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 16th, 2011
6:33 pm	1984: we were all so innocent back then the american government right now is about as orwellian as it's ever been, with everything from the TSA fondling our genitals to the patriot act allowing the FBI to flagrantly (and ostensibly legally) disregard the bill of rights. (i say ostensibly because, duh, how retarded do you have to be to think that some two-bit bill shoved through congress during a national panic could make it *legal* to disregard the bill of rights?) and you need to show ID for the simplest things nowadays, reminiscent of old WWII movies set in nazi germany (papers, please). i have to say, it's kind of depressing. all of us are being monitored much more effectively than orwell could have dreamed. there are cameras on every street corner, facebook has its hooks into our computers, if you don't have a webcam you're probably got a kinect set up, all of which is hooked to the internet, and the government can basically monitor our phone calls at will. the executive branch makes war the world over without bothering to go through proper channels (i.e. congressional approval), blatant propaganda, much of it deliberately misleading if not downright false, is fed to us constantly (i.e. fox news, and most likely others)... i haven't read the book in a while, so i can't be sure, but i'm trying to think of some way in which we aren't living in 1984 and i can't. :( (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011
9:08 am	wherein daly gets married and we vacation kelly and i went out to whidbey island this past weekend for my old friend jen daly's wedding. we went to high school together, then college. one of my favorite people, and the weekend was full of lots of my other favorite peoples as well. we rented a condo through vrbo.com, the perch, and tyler and erin and matt were staying with us. a really nice, spacious three bedroom place. i picked kelly up from work at 5 friday and we headed straight to the ferry in mukilteo. traffic wasn't as bad as i'd feared, and the ferry wait was half what we'd been led to expect, such that we actually made it to langley at an eminently reasonable hour. hung out and had a couple drinks with matt and tyler and erin, then got dressed to head out to the cocktail party following the rehearsal dinner. everything in langley is about a block and a half from everything else, and there were probably fifty people associated with the wedding staying in town for the weekend, so we basically spent the next day and a half continually running into the same smiling faces. friday night was prima bella, where we got to say hi to all the old friends in town that we hadn't seen in a long time, meet a bunch of the groom's family, who were all almost invariably tall and attractive. from there it was off to mo's, which was the other bar in town, and the christened after-party spot. turned out mo's is literally across the alley from the place we were staying, which we didn't realize until matt pointed it out the following morning. kelly and i walked home around a long block. it was pretty hilarious. saturday we went out to breakfast, nursed some sore heads, laughed a little deliriously. it was very much a vacation type of feeling. lovely. the ceremony was that day at two, so we walked around a little and then headed back to shower and change. the ceremony itself was beautiful, accompanied by buzzing hummingbirds and circling eagles high in the sky, a damselfly gracing kelly's program briefly, all in a lush farm-type setting with water in the background, the sun breaking through fitfully and a nice breeze to keep me cool in my suit. after that was cocktails on the lawn, everyone wandering around chatting and looking fabulous. when it came time for dinner it was the beginning of my responsibilities for the evening. jen asked me to m.c. the event, which began with announcing the wedding party. it was interesting being the m.c. i was originally not worried about it, until the time got close, and then started getting a little nervous. and rightfully so, to a certain extent. i was basically in charge of the wedding from dinner on (though, of course, the bride was the ultimate authority). i announced the band, the toasts, pie cutting, bouquet toss and garter throw (where i might have descended into patois just a bit, but got the crowd going pretty well), etc. i had people coming up to me all night asking questions about what was next, how shit was gonna work, etc. it got stressful for a minute during dinner, but i hit my stride after a bit and actually ended up having a great time doing it. it also helped me pace myself on the beers, which when you start drinking at 2:30 in the afternoon is always useful. the band was kickin, this 7 piece funk/soul band with a good singer, i got down to the wife beater and danced my sweaty white ass off. at the end of the night the mother of the bride came up to me (she'd told me earlier that i was doing a great job, which felt good) that a speech therapist friend of hers there had exclaimed about how well i was enunciating. ha, pretty funny. apparently i speak well. after that it was back to langley and on to mo's for the after party. i almost had to give it up for the night when an attack of the hiccups tried to sideline me, but some time and some water got me back in the saddle. we shut down mo's, matt and i entertaining the single ladies in town from san fran, and he and i closed out the evening in the kitchen talking about serious business, the kind of stuff you only talk about late at night, when everyone else is asleep and you've reached that valley of witching hour lucidity. it was really great getting to see him, i only catch him once a year or so. kelly and i now have lots of reasons to go to new york: matt, jen and mike (bride and groom), and lynn and jan. sunday morning was for a goodbye coffee and food at another place in langley, where we ran into everyone again and sat around in the sun basking in the glow of a pretty awesome weekend. we got gelato on the way out of town, caravaned to the ferry, saw a bunch of folks on the ferry boat, i got shat upon by circling gulls, and then it was back to seattle. pretty amazing weekend. had just a great time, good balance of leisure and activity, lots of my favorite people in the whole world, even played a little concert on the balcony saturday morning for all the wandering white retirees on the streets of langley. a plus plus all around. (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 14th, 2011
9:28 pm	another substantial break, or, mulish refusal to leave it's raining outside. hard. times like these make me glad i live in a world of modern construction, electric light and heat, etc. it's pouring down rain, maybe forty degrees outside, and yet i'm completely dry, warm, fat and happy. the modern world is a beautiful thing. not to mention the fact that i'm a base commoner with no particular skills or connections, and yet have the wealth to own fabulous pieces of technology that allow me to connect with the world and professional grade musical instruments. not to mention a rather impressive library. and two cars. i've got beer in the fridge, food in the cupboard, and yet another day off work tomorrow. shit, i'm a fucking prince, given the right frame of reference. it's good to take a step back every now and again. i broke my collarbone four weeks ago tonight. bike wreck coming home from ballard late of an evening. i was lucky in that it didn't break all the way through. no surgery, just a sling for the past four weeks, and it's already enough better that i'm typing with two hands, thank the good sweet christ. i don't know if you've tried the whole one-handed typing thing, if you're one of us who can type with any sort of quickness, but suffice to say it pretty much sucks the fat one. i've been doing it for weeks, and i'm more than ready to be done with that bullshit. it's funny, though, this whole 'being broken' thing. i've never broken a bone before. the ways it limits you, things you never would have thought of. tying your shoes. pulling up your pants. zipping up your coat. these are things that beg for two functional hands. anyways, i'm on the road to a full mend. six weeks is what the orthopedic doc told me, so another two with the sling and being super careful and i guess i can start training the left arm back up. i noticed today that that bicep is noticeably smaller than my right, the one i've been using ever since. kinda scary, kinda weird. i'm looking forward to having full use of my body again, and getting back on my bike. i've been riding the bus to work, which is pretty nice in that i get to read for an hour in the morning and in the afternoon, but i do miss my ride. and with the changing of the seasons it's gotten to the point where my ride would be in the light, even at ten to six in the morning. and even some good weather every now and again. a little scattered, a little disjointed, but i wanted to get something up here. i feel like the keeper of the fire, refusing to concede a desolate place that used to be crowded and welcoming. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011
10:05 am	the gamut it's amazing how much difference a weekend's worth of dissipation can make. riding to work monday morning was markedly more difficult than it was this morning, and i didn't even ride home last night. met tyler for a beer after work and tossed the bike in the back of his truck. i'm assuming that having a ten mile ride the day before had my body in better shape this morning for the ride, whereas yesterday morning i hadn't ridden in almost three days. but who knows. chances are it's more complicated than that. i've had random days where i was just tired, and didn't have a good idea why that might be. although i do have another theory that has been borne out to a certain extent with subsequent experimentation: that my legs need to be 'turned on' at some point during the day. by that i mean they need to be pushed beyond their comfort zone, kept there until they warm up, and then they'll have an order of magnitude more power and endurance than they would have had otherwise. i imagine it almost like a phlegmatic plug that needs to be blown from their airway, to use an admittedly unpleasant and rather baroque metaphor. (i guess that would be a simile, wouldn't it?) in other news, the fourth book is dangerously close to completion. i haven't had a chance to write lately, and am not sure when i will anytime soon. kelly isn't doing an esoterics project right now, and i'm really broke, so both means and opportunity are rather lacking at the moment. i also feel a kind of mulish reluctance to finish the damn thing, since that will put me back in that pricklish situation of being between projects. it will also place me ever more squarely in the face of the next big thing i want to do, which is to publish on kindle, and the idea of actually doing that scares the crap out of me. i've already written about that somewhat exhaustively, i realize. i haven't, however, i don't believe, mentioned cover art. wait no that's wrong, i have. anyways, if i'm gonna do this thing, this self-publishing thing, i want to do it right. i don't want to half-ass it off into the electronic ether only to wish i'd put more time and effort in on the front end. that's why i want to at least read through everything before i publish it, and also why i want to make the cover art good. unique. something more than a fucking solid blue background with the title in some bald font staring out at you with all the delicacy and grace of a heifer chewing its cud. anywho, riding through downtown on my way home last friday i ran into a hipster on an old road bike and we struck up a conversation. basically rode together from chinatown all the way up to dexter before he turned off. we were riding along, chatting, and i asked him what he did for a living. turned out he was a graphic designer at a firm in pioneer square. i said, hey, i'm actually looking for a graphic designer, somebody to do cover art for novels. we pulled over and he wrote out his flickr account and e-mail address, said i should look at his stuff and shoot him a line if i was interested. it was pretty cool. some of that crazy serendipitous confluence of whatever. his art was interesting for sure, he's definitely talented. i haven't contacted him yet, i'm not sure where i'm going on that front. another area of my life offering some semblance of interest is writing songs. for some reason i've been able to write songs recently, something the possibility of which i've for many years simply discounted. i've written three songs in the past few months, and i started a fourth this past weekend. i didn't get very far with it, and thought i might have to give up on it, but then i found myself singing the bit i did get down this morning as i was riding along, which is a good sign. that's how the last one i wrote started, too. with one bit that stuck in my head, and the rest of it layered on after the first part had gelled. i like writing songs, at least when i like the songs themselves. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011
9:38 am	prosetry i hate that word, it kinda makes my ass itch, but this new book i'm reading totally fits the category. prosetry. kelly and i just recently picked up a huge bookcase from some friends who were decamping their longtime abode (thanks rob and eric!), and undertook the radical task of alphabetizing our fiction collection last friday night. and boy howdy lemme tell ya, we got a lotta books. kelly counted them at 556, and one wall of our living room now looks a lot like a used book store. (or part of it, anyways) the other night, i think it was monday, i finished harry potter book seven (and i just gotta say how much i enjoyed reading that series through in its entirety for the very first time--i've read them all multiple times, but this was the first time achieving complete consecutivity--such a powerful series, so many things going on, so much emotional maturity and such deft morality and yeah anyways) and so there i was, snuffling a bit, and without a book for the first time in a while. it's nice being in a long series, so you aren't constantly looking for the next book. i sat there, fetching deep watery breaths, and there was the wall of books staring at me. and in alphabetical order by author, no less. so i plopped my ass down onto the ground and started browsing. saw a lot of possibles, most of which i've read before. i've got nothing against rereading books, if they're good, but it's nice to read something new. and then i stumbled across a book i didn't recognize. this doesn't happen often, even with 556 books. even with our old system of jumbled mess, books piled on top of books behind books, i'd still laid eyes on just about everything we had. or so i thought. but here was a new one, and it looked like that kind of contemporary literature-type fiction, national bestseller, new york times book review calling it majestic, epic, vital, etc., you know the type. i didn't used to get down with that kinda thing, but i've come to like it more and more in recent years. it's called in the fall, by jeffrey lent. god only knows how it got to be in our collection, kelly said she'd never seen it before, either. but there it was, and there i was without a book to read, and so we decided to go to the ball together. the language in this book is weird. flowy weird. prosetry, really (insert cringe). his adherence to the rules of grammar, attribution, consistent reference, ranges from strict to spotty to what the hell did he just say? there have been a few sentences i've stared at for a while and been utterly unable to make sense of. but there have been quite a few more i've had to tilt my head at for a second before they resolve into idiom that makes perfect sense. and the overall effect, mood, ambiance, is lulling, almost soporific, rich and deep. i'm enjoying it. in other news, i brought my lunch to work today. i'm trying to save money, and buying lunch every day is kinda foolish, financially speaking. now i just have to find a place to go eat it that's not my desk. my manager has an obnoxious habit of availing himself of my presence, even when i'm clearly eating/reading my book at what is clearly 'lunch time'. hence my steadfast commitment to getting the fuck outta dodge for a hour (no more, no less) every day. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 12th, 2011
12:35 pm	productivity it's a nice rainy saturday for little chores around the house. did the dishes, finally, now that kelly's already home. i meant to clean up while she was gone, but it really wasn't that long and i got all fucked up sick right in the middle of it. anyways, the kitchen is back in shape and the dishwasher's running. got a pot of coffee on, kelly's at work, kris took off for his dad's house, so i've got the house to myself again. don't get me wrong, it's great to have her back, i missed her a lot, but i do love having the house to myself. so i've been getting little tasks done, like i swapped my brooks saddle from the old raleigh to the new trek. that was a fun one, each bike has a different mechanism for attaching the saddle to the seat post. the trek has this solid sort of thing with a single allen bolt running vertically up into it. definitely gets my vote for elegance. the raleigh has the kind i'm more familiar with, a bunch of fussy metal bits held up against each other along a horizontal bolt with nuts on either end. getting it fastened inside the far narrower other saddle was a bitch. but i got it all squared away, and now the infinitely more comfortable saddle is on the bike i'll actually be riding twenty miles a day. it makes me a little sad to separate the fixie from the brooks, since they pretty much go together like peas and carrots, but pragmatism and a comfortable ass win out every time. someday i'll get another brooks so each bike can have one. on a side note, i rode down to ballard on the raleigh last weekend, and got a face full of the difference between the new bike and the old. it turns out that i like both of them the best. the fixed has that simple, elegant smoothness. the handlebars are much more stripped down, so riding without hands is way more secure feeling. the new bike doesn't like to do it, for whatever reason. and i just feel so much more in control and tied to the road on it. and jesus that saddle is more comfortable. (of course, that's no longer an advantage of the fixed) on the other hand, riding uphill out of ballard without being able to downshift SUUUUCKED. i was actually really surprised how quickly i've gotten used to that particular advantage of the trek. and only having the one brake made me a little nervous. and then there's the coasting thing. i was a huge bike rider as a kid, and there are a bunch of silly little tricks you just can't do fixed. like standing up and cruising along. or dismounting by swinging your right leg over behind where your left stands on its pedal, cruising along like that until you finally stop and then just having to step down onto the ground. or stopping pedaling long enough to drop off of a curb without worrying about a pedal catching the edge of the curb. little things like that that have been a delight to rediscover. anyways, the rain situation in seattle the past few weeks has been ridiculous, so i've been giving a lot of thought to my new status as a bicycle commuter in light of my desire to not have cold wet feet, etc., all day at work. since my water resistant gloves got stolen last year (along with every other accoutrement, goddamn motherfuckers) i've been using these ghetto leather gloves from value village. they actually work pretty damn well, and this morning i smeared them all up with lp boot oil, so we'll see how that works out. if monday's anything like today it will be a primo test. i've got a couple different jackets of varying levels of water resistance, and shell pants, so i'm fairly well covered, except for the foot portion. that's where i've been bending my thought the most, and i've got a couple ideas. i know they sell little bootie things that zip over your shoes, and that is a definite possibility, though i hate spending money, and i imagine they're like forty bucks a pair, if not more. i've also given some thought to getting a can of silicon sealant to spray into the suede of the leather shoes i got at goodwill for biking. i discovered long ago that canvas shoes and tennis shoes with vents over the toes are pretty much for the birds when it comes to biking in the cold. all that cold wind on your little toesies blows, lemme tell ya. a nice hefty layer of leather makes a big difference. the only problem is that once a nice hefty layer of leather becomes sopping wet it takes a reeeaaallllyy lloooooonnnnnngg tiiiiiimmee to dry out. like they're still wet when you go to ride home at the end of the day and no amount of dry socks makes a damn bit of difference because they just get wet once you put them into the damn wet shoes. another idea is simply to keep a pair of dry shoes at work. i'll keep y'all posted on where i end up here. i have to confess, my status as an inveterate seattleite notwithstanding, i won't complain when and if we get a stretch of dryish weather. but in the meantime i don't really mind. the good part is that i don't really have to worry about being cold, at least while riding. nothing like working your ass off to keep the core temperature up. 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Friday, March 11th, 2011
6:48 pm	new bike i bought a new bike recently, one that i'm indecently excited about. you know i've been riding fixed for the past three and a half years, and i still love that bike, but we've had some serious car issues recently that have made me have to entertain in a rather serious fashion the idea of riding to work. kelly and i are basically a one car family at the moment, and her jobs aren't terribly conducive to bussing all over town. my job, on the other hand, is perfect for biking, with the proper bike. as much as i bought into the (perhaps dubious) romanticism of fixed gear riding, i've never fooled myself into thinking a twenty mile a day commute was feasible with it. sure, it could be done, but it's not ideal. as such, i've always had a hankering for the perfect geared bike, and even spent hours and hours on craigslist looking at the offerings there. well, i went by 2020 cycle, the place i got my raleigh back in '07, after work one day, and found my goddamn dream bike. it was everything i was looking for, from the downtube shifters to the 531 reynolds steel to not having the brake lines poke up into space. you know those rubber pokey things, what with the brake cables tucked down and wrapped into the grip tape. it was an investment, i probably spent more than i should have, but goddamn it's a beautiful bike. it's a 1987 trek 560 pro series, and it's in mint condition. the lady who sold it to the shop had the original owner's manual and everything. as far as i can tell it's been sitting in a garage since 1987. it's even still got the original tires on it. well, not anymore. the rear tire let go in rather spectacular fashion, first tearing open while i was at lunch and then fully exploding while it sat in the machine shop at work, taking out a chunk of the fender i'd just bought along with it. pretty exciting. so anyways, i've put in more miles in the past two weeks than in a lot of weeks before that, and monday morning i'll be right back at it. i gotta say, it's pretty amazing to have gears when it comes to going up hills, and down hills, and that whole coasting thing is the bee's knees. and i gotta say, i like riding through the city a couple times a day. i've always worried that i'd simply hate the work and time involved in commuting by bike, but aside from the first couple minutes of each leg, which are always the worst, the ride itself is not at all objectionable. even in the rain, once you're warmed up, once your body's in the groove, it's actually pretty damn nice. here's what it looks like, same color and everything. the seat's different, and i really need to swap my brooks saddle onto it anyways. it's a goddamn thing of beauty. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
3:59 pm	kindle publishing so remember i was talking recently about self-publishing all my books on kindle? well, i've come across two different articles in the past few days about this girl amanda hocking, who has never been published the old fashioned way, and is now selling 100,000 copies of her books a month through kindle publishing. she takes home 70% of sales revenue, and at $.99 to $5 a book, we're talking a minimum of $70,000 a month. something tells me she's not bothered by the thought that self-publishing has ruined her chances of hooking up with a major publishing house. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011
8:05 pm	jk rowling i'm currently re-reading all the harry potter books, and it's been a really interesting experience from the perspective of having written a few books myself, to see how her writing style evolves throughout the books. the first one, philosopher's stone (i read the british version this time), is good, surprisingly good, especially for a first novel, but it was also juvenile in its overall tone. on the adult side of juvenile, certainly, but it was a kids' book. the second one, too, though things started getting a little more complicated, a little more interesting. but it was the third book, prisoner of azkaban, where i had the impression she really came of age as a novelist. this might sound horribly presumptuous of me, but it's just my impression. the third book suddenly had an emotional depth that eclipsed that of the first two books. had far more subtlety in its moral message it was longer, too, to accommodate a more complicated plot, and with a stronger sense of what would become the story arc for all seven books. book four, goblet of fire, is where she blossomed. far longer, the language more mature, more emotionally acute, more adept. and the plot grows to almost a monstrosity, without descending into incomprehensibility. she shows even more of the deftness that will carry on throughout the rest of the series. and now, book five. order of the phoenix. i just finished book four, and began book five, and have been thinking about this subject for a while, is why i had to sit down and write. because the beginning of book five is so...freaking...good. if she blossomed in book four, she attained an elegant and masterly exquisiteness in her voice by book five. the wry humor just biting enough, just insightful enough. a sheer delight. anyways, long story short, i'm really enjoying reading the harry potter books again. (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 3rd, 2011
10:48 am	to publish, or not to publish i have a serious quandary in front of me, with respect to publishing the books i have sitting around. y'all might remember that i published my first book on lulu.com last year, partially on the advice of some friends who recommended trying to set up a grass roots audience that i could show to potential agents and/or publishers in the attempt to publish the more recent books. yeah, suffice to say 'grass roots' is perhaps stretching the point a bit. i did sell 6 copies, which is admittedly pretty cool, and i got a check in the mail for twenty-four dollars, so i can without dissembling say that i am a professional author, but i think you can see where i'm going with this: i don't think the publishing world will be set afire by my six sales. the question is where to go from here. i've been giving some thought to moving platforms, from lulu to amazon direct-to-print. or something like that. it's a similar deal, an online, digital-only printing format, but it goes onto amazon.com and is available for immediate download for the kindle. lulu, on the other hand, just downloads you a pdf, and it requires you to give them your e-mail address and set up a username and all that crap. (why does every website in the world want you to set up a username and password? srsly?) not a big difference in the nuts and bolts, but an enormous difference in psychological impact. everybody buys shit on amazon, tons of people have kindles, whereas who the fuck's heard of lulu, and no i don't want to give you my goddamn e-mail address. i'm also thinking of publishing more than just the first book. this is either a dangerous step or an obvious step, depending on what you believe and what you take seriously. some people will tell you that once you self-publish, no legitimate house will touch your manuscript. it's like the kiss of death. this is why i've been holding two completed books in reserve, as something fresh to sell. however, there is another school of thought that says that major publishing houses are vestigial hold-overs from a world that time is in the speedy process of forgetting. amazon's digital downloads have officially exceeded their physical print sales. it's a brave new world, defenestration of all the old rules, etc. much as i can appreciate the heady times the publishing world is clearly going through, i'm a careful, plodding kind of guy when it comes to important stuff. and this is important stuff. so my dominant impulse has been to play it by the old rules, flirt with the new stuff a little, but generally play it safe. unfortunately, i'm also a lazy bastard and absolutely detest the process of trying to sell my work to a legion of faceless drones who would honestly much rather not hear from me. as such, a distinct argument for going the dangerous route has been steadily creeping up on me. first off, i don't plan on stopping writing anytime soon, and i'm already coming up on the end of my fourth book, which means that even if i publish everything i have completed to date, that doesn't mean i'll never be able to publish something new, in the extreme off chance a major publishing house does come knocking. secondly, i'd like to make the work i've done so far available to people, and not in the sense of 'here i'll e-mail you a huge word document', because that's just lame. thirdly, it would tickle me to no end to be able to go onto amazon.com, search for myself, and see my books for sale. fourthly, with the psychological difficulties lowered i might actually sell some, as in like more than six, and might actually make a little bit of money, which would be absolutely fucking fantastic. (denouement, or rueful aside:) as you can no doubt tell, i find myself powerfully swayed by this last argument, and even a little excited to move forward with this plan. unfortunately, if i do this, i will want to go through all three books with the proverbial fine-tooth comb and do one more finish edit before booting them out of the nest, so to speak. we're talking somewhere south of three hundred thousand words, which lands somewhere in between 'yikes' and 'holy shit batman'. also, i would need to make some sort of cover art for all three books. the shit i cobbled together on lulu was strictly for the birds. i've got an idea to go out into the city with my camera and wait for inspiration to strike, i only need three pictures, and this even sounds kinda fun, but it's yet one more stepping stone, stumbling block, time-intensive task hulking between me and the culmination of my plans. given my aforementioned woeful laziness, full time job, desire to also continue writing, desire to willfully persist in being a musician, and tendency to fill any nooks of time by reading (which, as we all know, is necessary training for a writer), i seriously despair of managing to bring this plan to fruition in any kind of timely manner, if at all. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 25th, 2011
9:28 am	abuse of power, as it relates to political affiliation working with a bunch of republicans has been good for me, the past few years, in broadening my mind after spending my whole life in the insular arms of self-righteously liberal seattle. which is not to say that i am no longer self-righteously liberal, but more that i expend a great deal more thought trying to justify to myself the gut-level reactions and judgments i find in myself when it comes to political matters. this thought generally takes the form of imaginary arguments (discussions, whatever) with various of my co-workers regarding the issue at hand. it's particularly humbling, from a rational perspective, how difficult it is to come up with articulate arguments, with facts to back them up, that would have the slightest hope of denting the assurance of 'the other side'. i'm not casting aspersions on 'the other side' by saying this; the difficulty runs in both directions. the right and the left, generally speaking, are very similar in that they are both quite sure that they're right. this morning, in talking to one of the least politically committed (as far as i know) of my co-workers about longshoremen, i had a brain flash that has given me a good handle on some of the more striking issues relating to right vs. left, at least as regards my gut-level instincts with respect to individual cases. and this is the concept of the abuse of power. in the nineteenth century, the people who owned everything were the people who owned everything, and they had all the power. as we all know, the more power a person has, the more power they want, and the more they abuse that power. this isn't a democrat/republican thing, this is a human being thing. (and yes, obviously, let's get all warm and fuzzy and say that some people aren't that bad, etc., but then let's come back to reality) the first wave of unionization, or the first few waves, whatever, i don't claim to know the history very well, was about as righteous as you can get. think upton sinclair's the jungle. with respect to the situation in that book, i'm a lefty to the bone. the stock yard owners, who no one could possibly deny with a straight face would be died-in-the-wool republicans today, were abusing their power egregiously, and were thereby begging for a smack down. fast forward a hundred years to the longshoremen of today. the guy i work with drove truck for a long time, and was telling me how it works at the docks, when you go in as a truck driver to pick up an ocean bound freight container. a guy named willy fills out your paperwork for you, and he writes really slowly. and if he gets a phone call from his wife, he'll turn his back to you and make you wait ten minutes while he talks to her. you're not getting paid by the hour, but he really doesn't care. and if he's sleeping when you show up, and you wake him up, he might get pissed off, spread the word to his buddies that you're not such hot stuff, and the rest of the guys in the yard treat you like shit. if you happen to be a teamster, on the other hand, they'll wave you through ahead of all the regular guys in line. and i don't know if you're familiar with the money and benefits longshoremen get, but suffice to say it'll either make you drool or piss you off. this is a shining example of the abuse of power on the other side of the political spectrum. this is unionization run amok. this is a small group of people with a strangle-hold on a vital segment of the economy, who can pretty much do what they want and take what they want. if i were a manager and heard that employees of mine were doing the above, i would fire them. and yet, as a card carrying liberal, it goes against all my instincts to talk shit about a union. they are our brethren, or so the standard liberal conception has it. but the above is simply what happens when you get an insular (there's that word again) group of people together with too much power. whether they be stock yard owners or good old union men, right or left, power is power. and the abuse thereof isn't any prettier just because the guy you vote for has a little (d) after his name. (Comment on this)
Friday, November 26th, 2010
12:20 am	halloween 2010 halloween was a lot of fun this year. kelly's english brother paul, who lived in seattle for a year back in like 2005 and worked with me at lucca statuary making, well, statuary, moved to vancouver bc recently with his girlfriend rebecca (who's great), and thus is within striking distance once again of hanging out. friday after work the beginning of halloween weekend i drove up north to meet rob and laura to pick up both paul and rebecca and ian and brooke, ian who lived with us for a year a while ago and brooke his girlfriend whom we met over 4th of july this year while we were staying at the cottages in birch bay. (you can see that there's a fair bit of backstory here) anyways, i drove up north, pulled off on exit 218, pulled to the side of a dark and deserted country road, and picked everyone up. we all stayed at our place that night, with kris, played games and watched tv and generally hung out. saturday night was the halloween party, and the six of us (kris took off mid-day saturday) basically started the party, since we were all already here and putting on costumes and making liquor runs and putting up fake cobwebs and black lights and red lights and scary window treatments and pretty much generally getting ready for the party, the process of which at a certain point becomes, for all intents and purposes, the party itself. lots of people came, every one to a man (woman, etc.) in costume, and everybody partied hardy, marty, etc. it was a very successful night. the going to bed portion of the evening was late indeed. sunday morning was commensurately late, and consisted of football and brunch with rob and laura, who had come into town to pick up paul and rebecca. mimosas, bacon, eggs, mia and steve came down as well, it was a nice sunday brunch. rob, laura, mia, steve, paul, and rebecca took off as kelly and i began losing the fight against the overpowering urge to nap, leaving kelly, ian, brooke and i. this was sunday, halloween day itself, and ian's twenty-first birthday. his mom had gotten him a hotel room in downtown seattle for that night, for his birthday, and he and i had plans to do his twenty-one run, at the conor byrne in ballard. unfortunately, i was quite simply too tired to get myself (and, as circumstances would require, everyone else) ready early enough to get myself down to the bar early enough to secure myself a spot on the list for open mic night, but eventually we all did motivate sufficiently to go down to the hotel, check them in, leave the girls behind to amuse themselves, and for ian and i to take off for ballard, seeking to rally, me figuring that ian's first experience in hanging out at a bar would most likely be rendered more interesting by his being surrounded by friends, though they may be once-removed. my friends, in other words. a bunch of regulars were there, i introduced ian to everyone as my little brother (step-brother-in-law, strictly speaking) on his twenty-one run, earning him many the ribald nudge and wink. rick and liz were there for the halloween sake of things, ben and dan, the beatfunkels, bill and his new thai wife, nicole, all and sundry, it was a lot of fun. and they had a costume contest, pulling everyone who wanted to enter up on stage, one by one, and having the crowd vote on them while we all sat and watched the debut episode of 'the walking dead', that new amc zombie show that's pretty much awesome, and you know what? i fucking won third place. seriously. i bought a sweet mullet wig at display and costume supply, wore my rei vest, wife beater, grossly short cut-off faded jean shorts, white socks and engineer boots at our halloween party, and rocked it. at conor byrne i went for the full-length faded, holy jeans, which made me infinitely more comfortably in myself than those rather frightening shorts. but i still looked like a super-sweet dude, in the worst possible way. my name was rod, and i had my '82 IROC parked right outside, def leopard blaring from the cassette deck. (not really with the car, obviously) so anyways, yeah. i totally got third place in the costume contest and got free beer for the rest of the night, which really wasn't that long since it was already kinda late at that point and i had to work the following morning, which meant that i wasn't really interested in staying super late. but still. free beer. seriously. awesome. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010
11:04 am	creative outlets i was talking to someone the other day, i think it was zack at kelly's birthday, about how if i didn't have creative outlets outside of work, i would probably go screaming insane. i'm not real sure about the adverbial capacity of the word 'screaming', but somehow it seems appropriate. saturday during the day i set up joey's camera on a bookshelf in our yoga room and used the movie setting to tape myself playing songs. (kelly's camera went on walkabout at burning man, so we currently don't have one. and now joey's, which she lent us on the playa, has no more battery power, the usb doesn't seem to charge it, and we don't have the charger, so we *really* don't have a camera.) anyhoo, i was able to lay down ten or twelve takes, a few of which were worth watching, and uploaded them to my computer. the video and sound are surprisingly good. part of it has to do with the acoustics of the yoga room, which i've always liked. but i'm kind of inspired. if i can ever get my hands on a working camera again i'm totally gonna experiment with it, try to get something laid down i'm willing to put up on youtube. become the next justin bieber. it only took ten or fifteen years, but i seem to finally be calloused enough to watch myself perform in the critical sort of way necessary to make conscious tweaks to my own performance. and also, tonight is writing night. the story i'm working on popped into my head recently and i caught some glimpses of different ways to navigate the third act. it's funny, i had a hell of a time with the middle of this book. serious angst-type issues. hopelessness, etc. but now that i'm coming up on the third act (and i have to thank ricky for a conversation we had while i was writing tipping point where he happened me onto thinking of a book in terms of three acts: it makes intuitive sense to me in a helpful way), suddenly the story as a whole has a certain momentum, a certain overall form, that makes thinking of the next thing infinitely easier. in fact, if anything, i started getting worried this morning that i wouldn't have room to develop a wrinkle i just introduced to the story. and i'm wrestling with how to tie together two disparate plot lines, both of which, for the sake of narrative imperative*, should really be featured in whatever ending i end up with. they are sufficiently different that tying them together will take real dexterity. it will have to be something along the lines of a coincidence/confluence/concordance sort of a deal, and pulling that off without sounding like a hack is tough. anyways, i'm looking forward to writing tonight. i think i might embroil my characters in some type of shit, which is always kind of exciting. they're out of town, at a bed and breakfast outside leavenworth kelly and i stayed at a few years ago (thanks mom), and i'm wondering whether the bad guy should follow them or not. i had a titillating vision of a big ending scene, but it's way too early for that. many things must happen first. and i even have vague sorts of notions as to what kinds of things. this is the part of the project where i wish i had three or four nights a week to write and not just one. or maybe even, *gasp*, days in which to write. yeah, i should really try to publish again. damn it. i hate that. ___________________________ *sorry for this. the rhyme makes me cringe, but also amuses me just enough to leave it in. plus i am trying to say something there that i was having trouble articulating, and don't have to patience to try to come up with something else. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 9th, 2010
11:28 am	john's music i'm working at john's music right now. it's saturday, i already worked all week, etc. basically i'm just helping john out because they had four things to cover and only three employees to cover them and i can always use the extra cash. life is going pretty well, all things considered. i came down sick a day or so ago, but i've been fighting through it valiantly, which pretty much means business as usual and generally ignoring the fact that i'm sick. last night i rode over to lara and darren's house to help them drink the beer he's been brewing lately, a blonde and a black ipa, both of which had rather high alcohol contents. since i had met wes at my place after work to play guitar and drink a couple rainiers, this would be prior to the party what with the home brew, by the time i finally mustered my ass back onto my bike to ride home i was a wee bit how do say a little bit tipsy, also known as drunk. not generally considered the best get-well remedy, but i feel better, sick-wise, than i did yesterday morning, so take that how you will. wes brought over a few bluegrass books and we played some tunes out of them. he took the leads, of course, since he'd worked on them and they're super tough. i sight-read the chords, which is pretty much cake. C C C G7-C, etc. but he left them at my place, the books, a lending type arrangement, and i brought them here to john's today with my guitar, so i'm gonna work on my bluegrass leads some today. that shit's pretty fun. if you're able to get it up to speed it really cooks, it's cool stuff. the cure band hasn't played together in months and months, and i quit the jazz singers recently by mutual consent with frank (long story, basically i'd been drifting away from full and total commitment for a while, not in any sort of egregious way, more in a sort of apathetic, not really giving a shit but in a nice way sort of way) so my array of musical outlets has suffered a significant cutting back, so to speak. the only things i do musically now are to jam with wes and do open mic, both of which are most decidedly of a sporadic nature. i mean i guess i do manage to do open mic at least once every two or three weeks, and wes and i have been getting together at least once a week in the recent past, but he and i sometimes go months without playing, when he's got a big show going, or whatever. anyways, long story short i'm feeling a little uneasy about the current state of my musical endeavors. i told kelly i was worried it would all just drift away from me when i wasn't looking, like i'd wake up one day and realize i hadn't sung or played guitar in three years and i was suddenly old and fat and bald and life had lost all meaning and my left hand fingertips were tender and pink and all the music had left my life and there really wouldn't be much left for it but to end it all. she told me she didn't think that was very likely, but it bothers me nonetheless. i started rereading infinite jest recently, fyi, in case you're wondering where this obnoxiously verbose and pretty clearly unnecessary and over the top loquacity is coming from. apparently it's catching. ooh, and my pot pie is done, time for breakfast. and speaking of fiction, i haven't written a word on my current story in an unfortunately long time. definitely not last week, and i'm pretty sure not the week before either, and possibly not even the week before that. life is conspiring against me and i am meekly allowing it to trod upon my dreams and aspirations. no, that's a bit strong. but i do need to get back to it. and i should also really try to get back in the game of attempting to publish. as unpleasant as it is to fruitlessly attempt to peddle what i can only refer to as my art, much as i cringe inside to call it that and sort of look fearfully over my metaphorical shoulder, primed for jeers and/or derision, the fact remains that i've written three fucking novels and it's stupid to just let them sit in my computer when i could instead subject them to the heartless depredations of some faceless and jaded editor and okay wow that's a little bit melodramatic, but anyways you get my point. so yeah. i think i'll play guitar now. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, October 1st, 2010
7:06 pm	yup rode down to the conor byrne wednesday night to see rabbit skin glue, my buddy ricky's band. they're kinda like led zeppelin does surf rock. no vocalist. pretty awesome. the ad said the show started at 8:30, so i busted my ass to get outta here a little after eight, and naturally they weren't on till after eleven. suffice to say i hung out with a bunch of friends and got a little too drunk and stayed out a little too late. work on thursday was difficult, to say the least, but i had a damn good time wednesday night. got a good ride in and everything. this past weekend, friday night i think, i rode up to capitol hill for tess's boyfriend mike's surprise birthday party at the canterbury. jen daly was in town with her new fiancee mike (that makes two mikes, for y'all keepin track) from san fran, so it was something of the event. kelly had to work late and daly's texts through my phone managed to talk her into coming out anyways. tyler and erin, rebecca and jen hersman and justine and lauren and mike freeman (that's three mikes) and a bunch more people. it was fun. wes has been coming over to play guitar quite a bit recently, which is awesome. he was over today, just took off. he's in town, not in the middle of a serious gig, which is nice. in my eternal apathetic search for building a band i've always had wes in the back of my mind, but it's kinda inconvenient that he's often unavailable for long stretches of time while he sings in operas around the country, etc. but he's a hell of a guitar player, and a damn good singer. obviously. anyways. tonight we're in town. we were thinking of heading up to bellingham, since kelly's english brother paul, who has just very recently moved to vancouver, bc for a year, is coming to her dad's place tonight, but the plan has been bumped to sunday for various reasons. so it'll be the three of us chillin. and that's about all i can think of for the moment. oh, except that i'm really enjoying the third stieg larsson book. it's a pretty good series, once you get past his writing style. he's totally a journalist writing a novel, which makes for a very unique style. anyways, yeah. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010
3:56 pm	mew i think i'm done for the day. i could have gotten more work done in the last hour than i did, but i'm tired. today was kinda stressful. tonight i get to go to ballard and see my buddy rick's band play. should be fun. maybe i'll play some guitar when i get home. AND SO ENDS THE LATEST THRILLING INSTALLMENT OF (Comment on this)