I'm a (unaware) Copycat

Exhibit A:
ManCalledSun's (under the current moniker of "Doctor Jones") July '09 Mixtape Cover


Exhibit B:
Melt Banana's Teeny Shiny album cover


Whoops.
I thought the mixtape cover looked vaguely familiar... *shrugging emoticon*

Laughing at Laughing

I thought this was hilarious 20 years ago, and still do today. Quality stuff.

Notes from Contemporary Non-Fiction workshop

- Personal essays don't have to be about personal experience
- Free from objective parameters of academic writing
- Seizing opportunities to describe stuff
- Themes that are inherent in the situation
- Walking up to the door and then doing an about-face
- Explore something by looking at something else
- Stick to the personal experience to negotiate the politics of the essay
- The painter stops smelling fumes after a while
- It could easily be crap
- Entertainment-to-truth spectrum
- A piece heightened by the literal gravity
- The unbalance between whats offered and what could be offered
- ... so that the reader knows that you'll meet him in the middle somewhere
- The application of all things
- Less 'taking care of it' and more of 'existing within it'
- Blunt Fashion
- It's a big step, but not in her world
- A TV interviewee looking into the wrong camera
- Modulated imagery
- Understanding the merit of an experience
- David Foster Wallace-ise it

As the London Lamps Do - March 2011 BRR Mixtape Brigade

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=11DY31CS

But first let me gaze at this solitary figure, who come hitherward with a tin lantern, which throws a circular pattern of its punched holes on the ground about him. He passes fearlessly into the unknown gloom, whither I will not follow him... He fears not the dreary path before him, because his lantern, which was kindled at the fireside of his home, will light him back to that same fire again. And thus we, night-wanderers through a stormy and dismal world, if we bear the lamp of Faith, enkindled at a celestial fire, it will surely lead us home to that Heaven whence its radiance was borrowed.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

This video has ruined my life

...and I blame Kevin. A week ago, he posted this on Facebook and I watched it, and my life has been upside down ever since. I am not in control of myself, as if I have been possessed. It is hell. I blame Kevin.

So, there I was, 3AM, humming an Acid King riff to my newborn - successfully lulling her to sweet, precious sleep - when, out of nowhere I break out and start singing the pizza song at the appropriate pitch. She woke up.

There I was, reading Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, rejoicing in his civic accomplishments and feeling inspired to strive to be a better American, when all of a sudden the momentum was broken by the hankering to order a pizza topped with fish sticks and whipped cream.

There I was, in the CMA auditorium, enshrouded in the exotic voice of Yasmin Levy, being whisked away on the tides of Spanish Jewry and riding back through hundreds of years of beautiful Mediterranean tradition… Only to have my journey interrupted by the mental image of five young girls bopping around in slow motion, spelling P-I-Z-Z-A.

There I was, immersed in learning the skill of sentence diagramming, struggling with determining whether this or that noun phrase is adjectival or the object compliment, only finding it terribly difficult to concentrate because I kept hearing voices – oh, the drowsy voices! – singing about pushing the limits of pizza creation.

Fictional Characters I'd Hang Out With

Val & Earl - from the feature film Tremors

Tremors is an awesome movie about giant carnivorous underground worms that hunt in Perfection Valley, Nevada. Val & Earl are gruff handymen who assist the few permanent citizens of Perfection in monotonous, low-paying grunt jobs. They fancy that they are shortchanging themselves, and after a colorful mishap with a sump pump they decide to pull up stakes and move to a more populated town to search for better occupational opportunities and a thorough live-in maid. These plans are thwarted by the realization that there are four frikkin gigantic subterranean man-eating worms (“Graboids”) spread throughout the valley, devouring livestock and licensed Doctors. Now Val & Earl must lend a hand to the rest of the citizens of Perfection Valley to eliminate this dangerous threat.



See, we plan ahead, that way we don’t have to do anything right now

I wanna hang out with Val & Earl so that, when the time is right, I will sacrifice myself for them, to allow myself to be gobbled up by the mutant Graboids, so that they may live on and be prosperous. Granted, as evident in the sequel, they actually do live on and make a fortune off of the franchising royalties from the products based on the events of the original movie. But allow me this; allow me to re-write history and be the martyr for these sterling, foul-mouthed gentlemen. Let’s say I’ve been hanging out with Val & Earl for a couple of years, right? We inhabit the same trailer, guzzle the same cheap beer and holler lewd things at women. We laugh and slap each other on the back. We’re so chummy. We also work! We work hard! We’re a dynamic and tight-knit power trio with potential for great things. Then the Graboids come. Ultimately, we find ourselves cornered in a clamorous situation and find that that potential for great things is in jeopardy.

What the samhell blippity bloppity do we do? Earl exclaims

Fuzzy bunny ketchup packets, this is some serious hibbidy jibbidy! Val despairs.

I say nothing. I close my eyes and find my ch’i. I then stride forward, heading to certain destruction. Val & Earl recognize my intention and are overwhelmed with gratitude. They lean on each other and begin to sing a sonorous rendition of Ave Maria. Time slows and the clamor fades as I continue walking the warrior’s path. At length, I come to a halt on the dusty dirt road. I spread my arms and tilt my head back. A Graboid bursts forth from the ground beneath my feet. The momentum behind its ascent is so great that the mutant worm rises into the air; my lower body fastened in its mouth, my torso exposed and surrounded by a golden aura, my head eclipsing the sun. Filaments of angelic beings swoop and swirl. During the descent, the Graboid slurps me in like a strand of sphegetti. I single tear streaks down my cheek. And I am gone. Val & Earl seize the opportunity and make a run for it, sobbing with gratitude. They live on and become prosperous.

… And then I’ll be reincarnated and do the same for Bill & Ted.

...and Suchlike Wonders - February 2011 Mixtape Brigade

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TUYVU217

They turned their horses up the ridge, which was crowned with the dark pines. The first trees stood deployed like outposts. Their trunks were as straight as masts, and the bark was purple in the shade. The ground under them, deep and spongy with brown needles, supported no grass. The grove was quiet except for a little whispering wind. Birds took no pleasure in the pines, and the brown carpet muffled the sound of walking creatures. The horsemen rode in among the trees, out of the yellow sunlight and into the purple gloom of the shade.

“Be still a moment, Tom,“ Joseph said languidly. “There’s something here. You are afraid of it, but I know it. Somewhere, perhaps in an old dream, I have seen this place, or perhaps felt the feeling of this place.” He dropped his hands to his sides and whispered, trying the words, “This is holy – and this is old.”

- John Steinbeck