Getting to Know Yooou

Getting to know a new computer program, when you’re not a magical tech baby, is no fun. I’ve been meaning to get into learning Blender (a 3d art program) since late last year, let a bunch of life stuff give me permission to put it off, and now I’m finally getting back to it. Getting used to the interface – for me – is like walking through a waterfall made of karo syrup.

Hey, I didn’t own a computer until I was, like, 27. In college I learned 3d Studio Max and some bare minimum of Maya, but haven’t had to use either of those in ten years. Plus I don’t have much of an attention span for tutorials. Though if you’re like me, I’ve found it helpful to turn on some music with the volume low enough to make out the tutorial presenter’s voice. Education!

Now. The title of the post refers to a song from The King and I, which is about a lady who meets the king of Siam, so here’s a Cramps song that mentions the King of Siam, plus general sleaziness. Sleaze on!

Random Thoughts from Satan, #4

The other week I took my cat to the vet. The vet is in the same parking lot as the local Planned Parenthood. In that building there was an alarm going off, some kind of smoke, people standing outside. I wasn’t able to find out what was going on, but it’s a safe guess. Jesus terrorists can fuck off.

Yesterday I took my cat back, but this time had to take a cab. At the vet some people had a large cage which took two to carry. Inside were a dozen pit bull puppies. They didn’t look like bodies for the fight ring – they were clean and no doubt there to get vaccinations and such. But there is not enough dog love in this country to take care of the dogs we have, and the thought of a dozen more pit bulls just bummed my shit out.

On the way back in the taxi, the dude driving switched from his culture’s music to some American pop station. It was playing a Meghan Trainor song. I might not have recognized the Eastern music influence if not for the juxtaposition there in the cab. Still, it was definitely there. Some vocal flourishes and other elements intentionally evoking Bollywood styles. Then the song reached a place in the chorus where she said something about being “untouchable” and dwelled on it for too many seconds.

Now is it just me, or is that hella tacky and fucked up? Taking a serious cultural issue from another country and reducing it to a hook in your song about being independent women or whatever. He wasn’t bothered, but then, he might not understand the lyrics at all. Anyway. Things are things.

Half a Day

It’s Tuesday. (Took a while to get this post finished, settled for half a day because I wanted to spare myself more difficulty.)

I wake up at six in the morning with four hours of sleep. Why do I do these things? Getting by on that little sleep hasn’t worked out for me since my early twenties. I’m not even a drinker. Anyway, I’m sleeping on the floor because the last cheapy fold-up beds we had fell apart a few years ago. Not built for un-skinny tall dudes and I don’t have money for something better than a cruddy stopgap. Even though I sleep on the floor, I’m not someone who typically feels back pain. But I did something recently and today is horrible. Mostly just when getting up or down, so better than chronic conditions…
[Read more…]

Levitate Me

What Else Is There? – Röyksopp ft. Karin Dreijer

This is a repost from my writing elsewhere.

Trigger warnings? Things that could bother people: the dark mood, time lapse photography of mold (eww), depiction of dead ducks that may or may not have been real, images of buildings falling apart in stormy weather.

This spooky jam is sung by Karin, who is not the lip-syncing floaty model in the video, but rather the tight-lipped weirdo in the ruff collar.  You probably know them from The Knife and Fever Ray.  Music is by Röyksopp.

I’m posting this because levitation.  People sometimes experience a feeling of floating in altered mental states.  Whether you’ve experienced that or not, there’s something about the feeling of it that resonates with a primal part of the mind.  It shows up in a lot of art – song, visual depictions, writing.  I found the use of it in The Lost Boys especially evocative.

I feel like the way an animal learns to move is by willing itself in the desired direction and flailing its body that way until muscle learning catches up to  desire.  In order to want to move the body at all, there has to be an inherent feeling in the mind that movement is possible, which exists before any knowledge of how to make movement happen.  (As always, I could be very wrong.)

Essentially, we’re all natural born levitators.  The only thing keeping us from being able to float towards our desires is physical constraints.  That’s no small limitation – psychic levitation isn’t real or possible, as far as anyone knows.  But the feeling is there.  And maybe the limits of our bodies are the reason evoking that feeling can be so eerie, melancholy, or abstractly powerful.

And on an entirely different note,

Float On – The Floaters

This song is the equivalent of a video personal ad for the singers.
I challenge you to invent your own additional verse for the tune.