AOTD Tuesday August 17th 2010

comission fur on fur (aka Chewbacca Riding a Giant Squirrel Fighting Nazis) by gamefan84

AOTD Sunday August 15th 2010

catch the stars by detail24

AOTD Saturday August 14th 2010

i decay II by J4K0644061x

AOTD Friday August 13th 2010

Furioso deluge by *sc0pe

AOTD Thursday August 12th 2010

A Stranger Leo 57 years old by BenoitPaille

Other People

I feel bad for other people. This is not because they are below me or that I am a better person. I feel bad for other people for the fact that they somehow get blamed for how dissatisfied I am with myself. Let me explain.

In today's world it's hard to not just sit back and absorb the fuckton of information and stimulation floating around our heads. And if you are a social networking/technology whore such as myself this turns into a fuckton of fuckton of information. All day long I read other people's blogs, look at their photos, marvel at theirs drawings, listen to their music, watch their videos, consider their opinions, read their writings, compare their lives to my own. And this is what upsets me. A little voice in my head goes off screaming at me about all the stuff they can do that I can't. All the thoughts they think that I won't. All the opportunities I miss out on that they didn't. And it just plain sucks.

Now if there is one thing I've slowly come to realize is that we humans are more alike then not. If this is true that means most everyone else is feeling this way too. Usually this would come as a comfort to know that you're not alone. Knowing that other people in your class bombed a test that you failed is almost as good as the feeling you get when you get an A. We are social creatures, we don't like to be alone, no matter how much we like dig into are little comfort holes of depression and isolation. But I digress. Usually knowing others are feeling the same as I is a comforting thought, but in this case it's not. Because no matter what I do, I will not be able to convince myself I am as cool/funny/witty/talented/smart/creative/amazing as everyone else around me. And the best part is, that's not even what I want.

I don't want to be able to say, "Wow I'm awesome at ________." That feeling of mediocrity is the fuel that drives us to keep being better. Maybe not everyone needs this, but it does help. Anytime I take a photo I am proud of I will see something that blows mine out of the water (in my opinion) and all I wanna do is top that. And in a way this is very helpful in the long run as my work will get better in someways or at least my experiences will grow. But until I am an old man looking back at my life I won't be able to appreciate all I've seen and done and read and thought. And in a world where I have a 3G Internet connection in my pocket practically anywhere I go I want my satisfaction NOW!

I realize this is a bit insane to wish for as I know the world does not work in such ways. If one of my biggest problems is that I don't think I do enough cool shit then I think I am living a pretty happy and comfortable life. So for now I will continue to feel bad for other people while I silently sit there and hate them for their achievements when all they really deserve is praise for their awesomeness. All I can hope for is that some people hate me for the same reasons.

Mr. Firth and an Intro to LEDs

One of the people who really got me into video art initially was David Firth, the creator of fat-pie and Salad Fingers.  At first I liked him because of his funny/scary/weird falsh animations, but soon I stumbled upon his video work. While mostly consisting of stop-motion work, there was something about them that always seemed a bit deeper and meaningful to me.







While I don't plan to do a video much in his style, he has been a huge inspiration to me and my work with video.

I am not sure about any of you, but when it comes to LEDs and me all I know is, "Look at the pretty colors!"  Before I embark on this LED/VIdeo project I should learn me some stuffs about them. If any of you care to learn too, I found a quick and easy tutorial on them here.

LED Video Project

I am not sure this is exactly what I want to do with my project yet, but I have some basic ideas brewing.  While I was in  the first section of 2D Digital Studio I studied the artist Erwin Redl.  Redl's main work focuses on LED installation pieces where he fills large rooms with grids of LED's.

His work is very minimal, simple, clean, and vast which all are things I am attracted to when it comes to art.  Ever since then I have wanted to work with LED's somehow.

My other great interest in the art world is video related work.  In the past I have made a couple "arty" videos:
I would like to continue exploring with video art and involve LED lights in some way. Those are my thoughts thus far, as more come I'll post them.

Nexus One

I noticed that Google's new phone, the Nexus One, can come pre-jailbroke.  When the iPhone first came out the big thing to do with them was to have them "jailbroke".  This meant that you could edit and use the software in ways that Apple's original software would not allow.  This was also a way to have and iPhone if you didn't have AT&T as your provider.  Google's Nexus One can be "jailbroken" by Google for you for a hefty fee.  I am not sure it's worth the price, but it intrigues me that companies are watching the illegal things consumers are doing with their products and finding a way to make a profit off of them.

Here is a video of someone showing off some of the capabilities of the Nexus One. 



While it seems that it will not quite live up to the iPhone, it seems like a close option for those who want a smart phone like the iPhone, without paying the high monthly fee.

Top 20 Albums of 09

Well here they are:

10. Say Anything - Say Anything
9. Dead Man's Bones - Dead Man's Bones
8. Black Moth Super Rainbow - Eating Us
7. HEALTH - GET COLOR
6. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion
5. Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
4. Matt and Kim - Grand
3. Passion Pit - Manners
2. The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love
1. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

and now for the albums that didn't quite make the top 10 that you probably don't care about:

11. The Used - Artwork
12. Modest Mouse - No One's First and You're Next
13. Leathermouth - XO
14. Between the Buried and Me - The Great Misdirect
15. Silverstein - A Shipwreck in the Sand
16. Discovery - LP
17. Karen O and the Kids - Where the Wild Things Are OST
18. Muse - The Resistance
19. Riceboy Sleeps - Riceboy Sleeps
20. Sunn O))) - Monoliths and Dimensions

(((O)))

fotd
fuck
world
human
hours
time
people
life
shit
name
please
tonight
black
happy
sorry
death
birthday
stop
totd
trying
mouse
tomorrow
animal
average
epic
million
body
facebook
looking
century
lost
miles
check
modest
cult
cloud
actually
damn
woot
money
duluth
jarid
days
album
found
takes
kill
real
hour
chicago
thanks
read
form
fuckin
amazing
shoes
water
sweat
night
times
seeing
reading
condition
deadly
including
creator
sigur
love
university
slow
shut
planet
music
originally
earth
holy
soon
shot
line
week
srsly
blue
sick
past
house
bear
monday
dammit
actual
gonna

Dead Man's Bones

Dead Man's Bones is the music project of actor Ryan Gosling (Stay, The Notebook, Murder By Numbers) and Zach Shields. The best way I can describe their style would be Gospel Horror Bog Zombie Folk Indie. It's rather fresh and new which surprised me. I read in an interview with them that they tried to make sure that most of their mistakes they made while recording were added to the album. Kinda neat if you ask me. Their self titled album comes out October 6th and I would highly suggest you all check it out. Here are a couple of tracks I quite enjoy:

Pa Pa Power

In the Room Where You Sleep

My Body's a Zombie for You

Existential Paradox Art in Route to the West

I acquired a collection of fibers that would grant me flight to the wonderful land of disillusion. I had never misplaced my time in such areas, so I allowed such transitions to occur. The first obstruction that presented itself to me was the fact that my documentation of such travels began its first two sentences with the letter “I”. From an existential mind this would have no serious threats to me, for it was “I” who put them there and it was “I” who decided to so abruptly say, “fuck you grammar, this is my essay and if ‘I’ want to start my essay with ‘I’ twice, then ‘I’ am going to do it!” The inherent problem with this is that I hate existentialism, and also hate it when documentations or publications of any form contain repetitive words. After that rant, and the one about to be mentioned, I have placed what looks like the first Roman numeral in my spewings eleven times. My concerns with such egotistical implications, is that when attempting to describe a simple trip to Hollywood to see Chris Mars’ new gallery, long winded tangents of referring to oneself have bored or frightened about forty to fifty-six percent of the readers off. Jarid (as to avoid anymore “I” problems Jarid has decided to switch to the third person) apologizes for such horrid actions and will now continue with what he intended on writing about (that being an overly wordy pretentious surreal documentation of a trip to Hollywood).
Jarid ventured fourth into the perturbed sea of fast alloys and inconsideration. His aspirations whispered sweet nothings into his ears as he attempted to not end the pulse of himself or those around him. A giant sleek metal bird awaited him, set to leave the crust in two collections of sixty minutes. Upon arrival to the nest of said birds, Jarid climbed through an artificial gash placed on the side of the bird in order to prepare for such leaps of space. All too soon, the pungent odors of fame and wasted papered scripts would be writhing throughout his body, and the sad sorry fool did not even see it coming. Jarid soon realized that the flight had not even taken off and he had rambled on for more than a page now, and aimed to repair such atrocious acts on his part. The flight made it to Hollywood safely, he was unsettled by all the crazy people in Hollywood, he saw Chris Mars’ gallery, and then he went home, the end.
While reading literary collections on art, one can notice the immense forests of words one must venture through to arrive at a coherent story. To some this could be considered an enjoyable process, while to others an inefficient waste of time and paper. But what of those writings that contain both the forest and the straight forward? Obviously it is a completely original idea that has never been done before and the brilliant author of such creations should be praised for his genius and giving high markings on his works. Or, he could be scolded for switching viewpoints mid-essay and claiming to do something original in a trite stale world where everything has been done before rendering himself a stuck up liar. He shall leave these conclusions up to you. Good luck.

New Shit... Oops I Meant to Say Wickson! Same Thing

The next Wickson! album is possibly going to be recorded with an actual keyboard and not music loops. This is just me messing around a bit. I thought I would put it up here to see what you all think. I don't know how to play anything really so it probably sounds very shitty and I am sure a final product would have beats and other layers added to it. So based off that, what you think?

Scared

I am going to try to make a top ten albums and top ten songs of the 2000's... This is gonna be ugly. I expect much debate, loss of sleep, and minor drug habits forming during the process of picking them out. Damn the torpedoes!

Bigbadaboom

Lately I have been finding myself thinking about the end of world. This is mostly because of my insane boss who thinks the bible can tell us how UFO's can fly through space at such great speed and that you can find out the exact day an time Jesus was born by measuring the length of one of the pyramids in Egypt. This being said I have been looking around and witnessing the happenings of our lovely planet and realizing that we are kinda going downhill. Not that I think we are heading to an end, but shit is going down, and if you are into that whole Mayan calender thing we is fucked circa December 21st 2012. Now I could get into a long speculative rant about how this is going to happen, if it will happen, what we should be doing to avoid it, and other bullshits, but I think I am just going to post some songs that I think fit into ugly world/end of worldness. Let us begin class!


Screenwriter's Blues (Live) - Soul Coughing
Lyrics

This song is not about a doomsday scenario or anything like that, but I think it paints a rather lovely/ugly picture of out mindset in this day and age. To me this way of life will lead to a drab conclusion of our existence. We are becoming boring fuckbots who seek cheap thrills, though the line about the sun does bring a bit of hope. The sun will rise tomorrow, with or without you.


Road to Peace - Tom Waits
Lyrics

Tom Waits in more on the road (no pun intended, though it's not really a pun... eh, no using a line similar to the song title intended? Meh) to the doomsday thing. To me, the life style and mindset from Soul Coughing's song will lead to a world like this (which when I look around I am seeing). That being said, it sucks. My favorite line from this song is ," Maybe God himself is lost and needs help." I don't like this because it's dissing God, I like it because it's telling us we gotta suck it up and make some changes for ourselves. Yes, it would be nice if we could sit down and ask some supreme dude to stop raining shit down on the world, but (this being if God does exist) what if he/she/it is just as scared as us and confused. We gotta step up and make changes for ourselves, or accept our demise.


In This Twilight - Nine Inch Nails (Sorry I couldn't find a downloadable mp3)
Lyrics

This song is what we is heading for I believe. While Mr. Reznor paints the last day of life beautifully, it is not what I would like to happen. I like living, ya know? There isn't much else to say about this song. We die, sky is pretty, Trent is the shit.

Yeah so that's that. Maybe if we're lucky the ice caps will melt, we'll all drown, and Al Gore will die laughing.

Pine-Sol

This is the part of me that needs medication
This is the part of me that believes in heaven
This is the part of me that thinks outer space is all dead
This is the part of me that wishes it was with it
This is the part of me that's trying to be funny
This is the part of me that loves my parents
This is the part of me that thinks that ants are cavemen
This is the part of me that thinks all humans are ants
This is the part of me that learns from sitcoms
This is the part of me that means nothing
And I don't know
Where I could go away and you could wish
That I had stayed or just stayed gone
And I don't know
And I don't know at all
So, out of the context and into what you meant
And you know your reasons
You don't know who you are
But you know who you want to be
I don't know
So you go to the library to get yourself a book
And you look and you look
But you didn't find anything to read
And I don't know at all
Left all my kinder parts rusting and peeling
That guy was complaining as he looked at the ceiling
My nose isn't that big, it looks nothing like me
We're all doctors trading sadness for numbness
Grass looks much greener but it's green-painted cement
The mayor's machines are there cleaning the pavement
You can't make dirt clean so we'll just lemon-scent it

-I.B.-

Before Your Mother Wakes Up in the Morning

Ok I don't have much to say this time other then I has some music me thinks you needs to check out, srsly. First is a group I was very excited for and they exceeded my high expectations ten fold. They are called Discovery and consist of Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend's keyboardist) and Wes Miles (Ra Ra Riot's singer). If you are going into it expecting Vampire Weekend or Ra Ra Riot then you may be disappointed. BUT if you are going into expecting amazing electro smooth dreamy ethereal amazingness then you will be all YAY. Their debut album LP will be released on July 7th so if you like it get it yo.

Discovery - Orange Shirt

Next I wanna talk about some music that has been out for a while. I wanna talk about The Decemberists' new album, The Hazards of Love. At first the album was kinda meh to me because I was expecting another The Crane Wife (There latest album prior to Hazards for those of you ignorant readers) which was rather rude of myself. After many many listens I feel now that I rather do enjoy the album, this being even more so post me seeing them in concert (they were fucking great by the way). Colin Meloy (lead singer) has this ability to tell stories whilst singing unlike anyone I have ever heard in that the sounds he produces seem to be telling the complete opposite of the lyrics he launches out of his mouth. The Rake's Song is a very good example of this. It's more of an upbeat song with a very interesting beat with a refrain consisting nothing but the word "alright". The drums in this song sound like they're being played on a metal garage door if you ask me, but anyway the song is about a couple who have 4 children. Sadly the 4th child and the mother die during the birthing process. After this the husband becomes annoyed with having children and he kills them all... Yeah. Check it.

The Decemberists - The Rake's Song

NEXT is some new Modest Mouse entitled The Whale's Song. Splitting lead guitar with a post-rockesque build up at the end. I have an uneasy feeling about their new albums coming out later this summer. So far they have released 4 songs, two of which I like and two of which I find very half-assed and not Modest Mousey. I won't tell you which is which though, don't want to influence your thoughts on the subject.

Modest Mouse - The Whale's Song

Well there you go for now, I will probably do more of these in the future if people like em. Happy listening doods!

The Perfect Fit

The Dresden Dolls - The Perfect Fit

I could make a dress
a robe fit for a prince
i could clothe a continent
but i can't sew a stitch

i can paint my face
and stand very very still
its not very practical
but it still pays the bills

i can't change my name
but i could be your type
i can dance and win at games
like backgammon and life

i used to be the smart one
sharp as a tack
funny how that skipping years ahead
has held me back

i used to be the bright one
top in my class
funny what they give you when you
just learn how to ask

i can write a song
but i cant sing in key
i can play piano
but i never learned to read

i can't trap a mouse
but i can pet a cat
no i'm really serious!
i'm really very good at that

i can't fix a car
but i can fix a flat
i could fix alot of things
but i'd rather not get into that

i used to be the bright one
smart as a whip
funny how you slip so far when
teachers dont keep track of it

i used to be the tight one
the perfect fit
funny how those compliments can
make you feel so full of it

i can shuffle cut and deal
but i can't draw a hand
i can't draw a lot of things
i hope you understand

i'm not exceptionally shy
but i've never had a man
that i could look straight in the eye
and tell my secret plans

i can take a vow
and i can wear a ring
and i can make you promises but
they won't mean a thing

can't you do it for me, i'll pay you well
fuck i'll pay you anything if you could end this

can't you just fix it for me, it's gone berserk...
fuck i'll give you anything if
you can make the damn thing work

can't you just fix it for me, ill pay you well,
fuck ill pay you anything
if you can end this
hello, i love you will you tell me your name?
hello, i'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same?

And now for something completely different... I think that drama is a conditional occurrence for the continuation of life. At any given time something is always wrong no matter who where or what. I think that we create and seek out bad and dramatic things when there is a lack of it provided to us via nature. In third world countries people have to worry about starvation and disease, in suburbia we have to worry about our cars breaking down and getting the medication for all the shit we think we have. People who actually lead hard lives are depressed because the lead depressing lives, people here are depressed because "no one gets them" and "no one has ever felt the (sadness, isolation, anger, confusion, darkness) that they feel". If you can realize that other people do feel your depression it might help a lot. Being sad together makes things easier. After you know you bombed a test, it always makes you feel better to know someone else bombed it. And next time your car dies just remember that your hair is not on fire. And the next time your hair is on fire just remember that your hair is not on fire while you are listening to Nickleback. And If your hair is on fire while you are listening to Nickleback... well you are fucked and my (insert your choice of Deity here) have mercy on your soul.

I am not sure where I am going with this one. I am just sick of drama and sadness and shit, but it's unavoidable so I brog about it. Yay internetzzzzz.

NINCOCKSIGURROS

MY BLOG IS DEAD AND NO ONE CARES IF THERE IS A HELL I AM SURE MY BLOG WON'T BE THERE BECAUSE THAT REALLY MAKES LITTLE TO NO SENSE AT ALL!!!

I just got back from a mini road trip to Chicago to see the incredible Nine Inch Nails (i.e. Trent Reznor and who ever he finds to play with him at the time). It was probably one of the greatest and worst times of my life. Greatest for when Trent jumped into the crowd I got to touch and hold his hand for 5 seconds (holy shit!!!). Worst because this is probably going to be the last time I see NIN in concert. Trent has said that he is not done making music under "NIN" but he is done touring. All the tour shirts said "NIN: 1989-2009" on the back and the tour's name is "Waves Goodbye" so that really sucks...

On the other hand sandwich the whole Trent/Chicago amazingness was two 8 hour bus rides to and from. In order to not go insane from boredom, Townsie and I started a little game to see how many words and phrases we could slip the word "cock" into. Sadly I lost my list of all the ones we had, but I shall see what I can recall:

Cockolate
Cocktopus
Cockpot
Cocktagon
The Cock Exchange
Helicockter
Cockstnatinople
Cock Tower
General Cockster's Last Stand
Hockey Cock, Cocky Puck, Cocky Cock
Slap Cock
Cock Trial
Heart shapped cocket
Cock and Roll
A cock of sheep
Cock Martins
The Red Cocks
The White Cocks
Cock strap
Girl Cock
A Cock to Remember

Anyway you get the picture. Everyone else on the bus loved us I am sure...

Here is you, "Jrd says listen to this now" song of the day:

Click Here: We Are Scientists - Hoppipolla (Sigur Ros Cover)

We Are Scientists did a cover of Sigur Ros's Hoppipolla and I think it's pretty damn great. I never thought I would see the day where a band would have the balls to cover Sigur, let alone pull it off. It's nothing amazing, but I think it's very nice to listen to. Anyway, enjoy!