Friday, April 18, 2008

It costs $99 to fill this thing

Cities made of polygons. Bit by bit. byte by byte. word by word.
debug my workweek. Design my night. charge my soul and type my life.
Cities made of traces. Stack by stack. core by core. bug by bug.
thread my eating process. Manage my sleep. code the Haxan and test my stress.

Schedule schedule schedule brief brief brief view review.......

The dust will not be blown from our tongues. split the lip and down a Rockstar.
Crooked scripture for the war outside; bent men for the silent kill inside.
We're living in a spiritual cemetery where the gallows are created in droves.
I'm put on bus just to make a living with a sugar on my teeth hell bent on dysfunction.

'sall good.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

First Aid Sleep

Another day, another dollar, another hustle....

The sun has finally decided to show. It's punching me right in the eyes right now, as I commute to work. The taste of old-fashioned donuts and diet mountain dew lace my breath, and all I can think about is the crappy spring mattress that they have in the First Aid room at my work.

Last week was a gray haze as I couldn't find a rhythm of sleep. I was consistently getting 4-6 hours of sleep. Because of this, work was a difficult to say the least. It has percolated into a fit of foggy depression, and I knew that it was simply because of the lack of sleep. I set out to find a place to take a nap. I couldn't sleep on the floor in my office because of a few reasons. First, people would come knocking . Even when I lock my door, and close the blinds, people don't get a hint very well. Secondly, I actually wanted a dark room with quiet. My office has a large window overlooking at the mountains, that lets the sun in even though the blinds are shut.

After a recommendation from my buddy at work, I found my way to the First Aid room on the third floor. They have a first aid room on each floor of the people (for a total of 3). When you approach the door, there is a sign a la an outhouse that says "Vacant" or "Occupied". You can't help think of people having a passionate love affair when it says OCCUPIED in big red letters. Upon opening the door, I found a a bed, telephone, and a stack of what appeared to be sheets. Next to the stack of sheets was a sign on the wall that said, "If you are sick, please call this number. We need to keep track of usage of this room." I don't that's really necessary especially considering that when I'm sick, I usually want to be left alone. After observing the sign, I moved onto the bed. Covered in sheets from a 1980s hotel, I noticed that the pile of sheets weren't sheets at all. They were disposable pillow covers. I guess they want to let you lay your head on the pillow and drool to your sick hearts content.

Closing the door gave myself complete freedom. The room was pitch black and nary a sound. The only thing I could hear was the corporate hum of electricity in the rafters above the ceiling. I set my cell phone's alarm for an hour in the future, and got the best sleep I had all week.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Alvadar's Destiny Afire

"I've got eye goop again!"

"It's flaring up?"

"Yeah."

"How does it feel?"

"Like an American miniature horse taking a dump on my eye."

"Ohhh."

A short pause.

"Eww....miniature horses are creepy. They're creepy looking. Come look at this photo. They're freaky."

A short walk to the other room.



"Huh."

Monday, April 14, 2008

Erased blog

*Sigh*...

I wrote this long blog about baseball and how some memories from when I was a kid, but somehow it didn't post.

Another time now. The time has gone.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Blogs are like comics...

The amount of interest oscillates up and down and all around.

I know that no one is reading this since I stopped writing since the Xbox arrived and pushed my interest in video games to the forefront. If I don't consistently write these, people leave. So I write this blog as an exercise of my own memory which has always been poor when recalling events and not list of facts.

Capree and I just watched the documentary, "Comic Book Confidential", thanks to our friend Kayla. We both had a smile on our face the entire time, as it brought back many memories from our lives. I let Capree explain her thoughts on her blog.
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I started reading comics in the cliche way through superhero comics. I believe it came about from the reprinting of the X-Men stories from the Chris Claremont Dark Phoenix Saga. This were released in the early 1990s to reprint the X-Men stories from the 1980s. Placing supplemental new stories with reprinted stories would show up in the Classic X-Men line.

What's great about this memory is all the things that are triggered with thinking about it. My brother, Quinn, and I would go to Night Flight Comics after we got our haircut at the Cottonwood Mall. We'd always go look through the back issue bins, trying to find new series that were mentioned in the Classic X-Men issues. It's funny now that I think of it that I never kept up with the most current story of X-Men at time. I always followed 5 to 10 years behind. While it is and was obvious that Marvel Comics was milking the franchise for it was worth through it's countless spin offs, I simply didn't care. There was so much to discover. I remember I got a X-Men superhero encyclopedia through the Scholastic Book Club in elementary school. I wish I knew where that was...

Eventually, I broke out of my boyhood transfix on superheroes. Using my interest of
The Simpsons at the time, I found interest in Bill Morrison who worked on the Simpsons comics. He actually did an appearance at Night Flight where he signed the Treehouse of Horror comics and did a personalized portrait of your favorite Simpsons character. I asked him to do Groundskeeper Willie, and he drew it in like 5 seconds. Again, I wish I knew where that was...

At this point, I started to take notice of individual artists and followed them from series to series. I remember Battle Chasers and The Darkness during this time. But I had found that I was still trapped in the mainstream notion of what comics are. Big chested women (and men), technically and meticulously colored, with stories that simply never end until the reader loses interest.

Two particular comics came about that really changed everything for me: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. My friend, Tyler, and I would look for all the issues of Johnny while I found Jimmy Corrigan on my own. I had read that Jimmy Corrigan had received a National Book Award which seemed impressive because graphic novels never seemed to be critically acclaimed or accepted as a art form like a book. I ordered the hardcover edition, and the rest is history. From Jimmy Corrigan's author, Chris Ware I found a world of independent comics where real world stories and issues were addressed. In addition, the artist's style was completely at their whim without any preconceived notions of what a comic book should be.

I could continue on, but I'll save some of my thoughts for another time. I'll just say, that all of this really culminated at ComicCon last year where all my the different phases were mashed together. Giant superhero publishers with big movie deals and the individual artists who pulled just enough money together for a booth, it is all there. For those of you are into comics at all (I'm looking at you), go to ComicCon.