Surprises

I've been writing a short story this past few weeks which I have more-or-less titled "Surprise Me". The title is fitting for the story itself, but it's also been an experience full of surprises throughout the whole writing process so it's kind of doubly apropos. The most surprising aspect of the whole thing is that I wrote a short story at all. I have started many but finished none in all the years that I've been writing and this one wasn't even planned. It just sort of spilled out whole cloth a couple of weeks ago and I've been massaging it ever since. Maybe that's the point. Maybe that's why it works. Had I set out to do it deliberately it might not have worked at all.

Having said that, the last few days have been a bit rough in terms of getting the work done.

I sat down last night like I've sat down many nights before that and just didn't get much writing done. I'm trying to do it on the computer now so that I can change things quickly and with less scribbling but I'm finding the process cold and...inefficient, weirdly enough. I've been scribbling in my Moleskine and just pounding the stuff out having a gay old time but you can't print that off or e-mail your notebook pages to someone to preview or proof. I do still want a handwritten copy of it in there (yeah, that's the romantic in me) but I need that digital copy.I also have a deadline of today to clean up a section which I promised to send to someone and I'm pulling my hair out trying to get that done in a timely manner.

The poetry I usually write is so immediate and rarely goes through this kind of rewriting process. Maybe a second draft to clean up an idea or two but, ultimately, if I rework a poem too much it breaks. Falls apart under its own weight. Feels manufactured and loses all immediacy and just feels...disingenuous.

This story is in its fourth and a half draft and it's only about 10 pages long. I really expected less, but maybe that's a fault of mine. Not having done a lot of prose work (as in so little it should be considered none) I guess I didn't anticipate what it would take. The need to back away from it for a while to let the dust settle before going in again, the major and minor tweaks that just keep coming every time I sit down with it.

Then, to top it off, there's my own overriding insecurity of whether or not it's any good. To put all this work into it and have it be absolute shite would be pretty heartbreaking. It's not, by any means, a great piece of fiction. I mean, call it what it is. It's a short erotica story. A blip of an encounter between two people done in such a way as to be provocative and sexy. But I still want it to be good, obviously.

So, I continue to toil away at it when I'm not fighting off sleep or dealing with the evil and weirdness in my everyday life.

Hopefully I'll be able to get a grasp on it today and work through the obstacles to get to a satisfactory endpoint.

Wish me luck.

BOOKTRYST: Original F. Scott Fitzgerald Manuscript Poems Discovered

BOOKTRYST: Original F. Scott Fitzgerald Manuscript Poems Discovered

Sloan X-Mas

Just found out that Sloan has released their Twice Removed deluxe edition as a digital download which has me torn. I really wanted to pick this up when I saw them on tour but it was $90 and I had to pass at the time. Now there's a digital option for $20 and it seems like a no brainer to get. What has me torn is, do I want a physical book to peruse or is the digital copy fine? Something to ponder.

Thinking of Christmas, here's a free Sloan holiday themed track...

                   
               
Later!

mike

Ponderous Things

I don't know about you, but this place is really looking like it could use a facelift. I'm coming up on my eighth year of blogging (not a peep out of you who want to bring up the alarming irregularity of my posts in the last few) and I might need to rethink the whole idea of the blog. Or just spruce it up and write more for it.

I think when you have more people reading and commenting on your Twitter feed or Facebook page it kind of takes away from the desire to do anything lengthy or blog-worthy. If the roles were reversed, I'd probably spend more time here pondering and writing rather than going for the cheap and quick social media thrills provided by the "other guys".

Anyway, I'm going to put some thought into it and see what I come up with.

Until then...

mike

Zoinks!

Saw this the other day in the parking lot where we take our recycling:

I really wanted to get around to the front to see if they had the spare tire there as well, but this was all full of awesome as it was.

Really short post, today, I know. Considering it's been a few months since I've been posting, I thought just about any new content was worthwhile.

Anyway, that's it for me for now.

Later!

m

Infinite Playlist

So, yeah. I got it into my head to make a friend a mixtape (there really is no equivalent or comparable term for the burned playlist so I stick with mixtape) and while compiling the 17 tracks that would ultimately make up the hour of music I also got it into my head to create a cover for the disc from scratch, much like Nick in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.

Sounded simple but, really, it was a bit more complicated than I'd hoped. I actually thought I would stress over the tunes more than the sleeve art but I was very, very, wrong. The music came quickly and the actual design came to me very late in the process. I knew that it had to be Jelly bean themed, but other than that I had no idea what I was going to do. Do I paint something? Are there a bunch of dancing Jelly beans all over it like some twisted California Raisin knock off? What materials do I use to accomplish this unknown project?

I knew, at least, that I would need a digi-tray to set the disc in but soon discovered they are harder to find than you might think. Digi-trays are not in high demand on a retail level and do not get stocked by your average, and even your not-so-average, music stores or big box stores. I found some online but I didn't need to order 200 of them, nor did I want to pay $40 for overnight delivery. I wracked my brains and came up with, what I thought was, an ingenious plan.

Hit the music stores that carry used CDs. They often have bargain discs for $5 or less and if they happen to have a disc held in a digi-tray I could buy it for a paltry couple of bucks, peel out the tray, and utilize it in my own far-out disc sleeve. This was something I was able to accomplish at a local shop called The Vinyl Exchange. I found a couple of weird world music discs in cardboard sleeves with digi-trays for $2 each and I was in business!!

I also found an Imogen Heap album and the first volume of Freakazoid!, both for $2, so that was equally awesome.

I grabbed some craft supplies from a local dollar store (cardstock, construction paper to cut into jelly beans, etc.) and proceeded to assemble the case for the disc.

It wasn't a difficult process but it was time consuming. I created and folded the cardstock cover and glued the digi-tray in. Then I cut out each individual jelly bean (all different colours) and glued them on to the cover one-by-one. Lastly, I grabbed a Sharpie and wrote up the liner notes and song info. I wanted to do something design oriented on the disc itself but I didn't have the time or materials so I just left it blank.

I was pretty happy with the results with the exception of how egg-like many of the jelly beans came out, and I attributed the image on the inside of the case to Monet rather than Van Gogh which, as an Art History student, shames me greatly. The person I gave it to doesn't know the difference but I felt like I should still cop to the fubar publicly so perhaps that will go some way to evening out the karma.

I enjoyed the experience, overall, and will likely try it again. I've put together another playlist for the same friend but I don't think the effort for the first one was appreciated much so I may shift the next project to someone else. I'll post images of that one as well when that happens.

Later!

mike

Let Them Eat Cake

A little while ago I made a cake. That doesn't sound like a big deal, I know, but there's a bit of a story behind it and the expectation for how it would eventually turn out was the subject of much speculation here at Jozic HQ. I forgot to take any pictures until very late in the process so I grabbed what I could (it's a pretty amateur effort at chronicling the experience compared to what my bud Carly over at the Citric Sugar blog does on a regular basis).



The story behind the cake takes us back to Ottawa and a trip I took there with my lovely wife about 2 years ago. We stayed with a couple of friends, Meg and Ian, and after supper on one of the nights we were there Meg brings out this chocolate cake. It's the most delicious chocolate cake I have ever tasted in my life. I can eat piece after piece of this thing but, of course, I'm only allotted the one. I beg for the recipe, which she mails me, and I sit on it for 2 years until I finally decide on my holidays that, yes, by gum, I'm going to make this durn cake for myself and see if I can recreate the magic.



Overall it went well, I guess. There were parts of it that I was unhappy with, and despite being told the frosting was perfect, I didn't really think I nailed it. It was good, though. It was eaten fairly quickly. I shared with friends and family and, although there were critiques, nobody just flat-out disliked it or refused to eat it.



A success on some levels, but I'm hoping with the next effort I can achieve better results. Even slightly better results would make me happy.



Laters!

mike

Passion Pit

I've kind of been ignoring the ol' blog of late. I managed to restore the settings after my last bit of experimentation with Blogger and templates and what-not, then summarily bailed on it. That was a bit uncool.

So, I've returned, ever-so-briefly to share with you a band I've recently discovered called Passion Pit. There's a lot I like about this group, and some I don't, but I dig this song and thought I would share it with you. The site I got it from described it as alternating "between car crash drum-and-bass explosions and a plodding melodic pop that bemoans the many stages of grief inherent in heartbreak." That was all they had to say to hook me, what can I say?



Hope you enjoy.

m

Under Construction

Well, I decided to play around with the customizer and, as it turns out, I probably shouldn't have. What ultimately happened was I mucked about until I mucked it up and now all the presets and sidebar info and everything custom about the blog has been jettisoned. So, the posts are still here but nothing else is. Which, I suppose isn't a tragedy, seeing as I don't post nearly as often as I should, and I don't get a great deal of traffic, so it's likely nobody has even noticed yet.

Ah, well.

I'll probably have to come on a little later and do some adjusting to get things back the way I would like them to be. Until then, it's going to remain pretty bare bones here. Maybe I'll compensate by posting more. You never know.

Later!

mike

ADDENDUM

Obviously I figured out how to restore my old template. I'll still probably try and tweak it at some point. Everything else is changing, so I may as well. More on this later.

m.

Siamese Dreaming

I've got a little free time on my hands and I've been going through my music collection, filling holes, organizing what's already there, and listening to a lot of stuff I haven't had on rotation for a while.

One such album/srtist would be Siamese Dream by Smashing Pumpkins which I consider to be one of the best rock albums ever. No hyperbole. The songs, the words, the sounds, are all tremendously good and so very tight. The layered guitars, the insane drums, the ethereal quality of Corgan's voice and lyrics which, I would say, has never been recaptured on any other Pumpkins album make this album near-perfect for me. If I'm trying to get someone to listen to the Pumpkins, I usually toss them Siamese Dream.

Now, from everything I've read and heard, after all the tracks had been put down, Corgan went back and rerecorded the guitars and bass originally played by D'arcy and James Iha. The only tracks he didn't mess with were those of Jimmy Chamberlin because Corgan did not know how to play the drums. This would, if the stories are true, make the whole album a collaboration between Corgan and Chamberlin and all that implies.

Other albums followed but most without Chamberlin as he was kicked out of the band after a keyboardist they were touring with died as a result of a drug overdose which Chamberlin was involved with. I won't get into details but the story is probably detailed here.

Flash forward to the 2007 release of the newly reformed Pumpkins album, Zeitgeist. Now, when I say newly reformed, I should qualify that D'arcy and Iha did not return to the lineup for the same reasons they left the band in the first place. Chamberlin, however, did take the opportunity to reconnect with his old band as Corgan had never agreed to losing him in the first place. So, we have Corgan and Chamberlin together again working on this 'new' album - the same guys who were essentially responsible for Siamese Dream - and it turns out to be utter shit. I don't even consider it a part of the true Pumpkins canon because it sounds like a band trying to sound like the Pumpkins rather than actual founding members of the band making up for lost time.

So, what went wrong? I dunno. Maybe D'arcy and Iha had a much stronger influence on the music than people give them credit for. Maybe Butch Vig was instrumental in bringing everything on SD together the way it did. All I know is that the same guys did it perfectly once and cocked it up royally the second time around. Go figure. Maybe it's true what they say about how you can never really go home again.

And on that note...

Later!

mike

Bowie and Albarn

My new favourite for the day.

mike

Happy Birthday Superman

If you didn't know (and until today, I didn't know, so if you feel bad, don't), today, February 29th, is Superman's birthday. A big Superman fan I know was having a get-together tonight to celebrate and I couldn't attend so I figured I would, at the very least, post something here on the blog, especially since I've been silent on here for roughly two months. I wish I could have been there to celebrate big blue but in lieu of actually being there and debating whether or not the New 52 Superman is better or worse than the previous incarnation, I did do something Superman related today; I picked up the first season of the 1950s television show The Adventures of Superman on DVD for $10. A little less camraderie involved, sure, but I did my part. I'll probably watch an episode or two and maybe some features before bed, I'm sure.

mike

Size Isn't Everything

I'm going through some of my books to find and record where I'd left off in each of them for my GoodReads page when I came to a particular volume entitled "Vicious Circle" by Mike Carey. This is the second of five novels featuring the occult investigator, Felix Castor, and runs for a lengthy 512 pages, or so. Tracking down my last known place in the book I was reminded of just how god-awful long this thing was, and remembered why I put the book down in the first place. I hit 3 or 400 pages in and just sort of petered out. This is not a story that requires 500 or more pages to tell. It is well written, sure, but I think someone needed to reign him in on this one. It's not even the longest of the series, but it's still a marathon read. I was honestly considering picking it up again to finish it off, but now, probably not anytime soon.

I know it's probably a quirk of my own reading habits, but when there are a dozen other books that are waiting in the wings that I've started, and a dozen more that I'm waiting to get to, "Vicious Circle" just falls a little short on the priority level.

Cheers!

mike

Face of the Goblin

This is something I've just stumbled upon, and I think it's pretty cool. Original make-up test for the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man. I actually wish they would have gone this direction. I was never too much of a fan of the version they used, but what's past is past. As it is, it's just nice to be able to have the chance to see this, finally.



I also kind of like hearing Raimi giving direction from the sidelines.

Later!

Second Chances

I went to see Raiders of the Lost Ark at a local theatre today and found it to be a near-biblical event as far as my cinematic experiences go. I'll probably post about it in the near future but, for now, and seeing as how I'm kind of in an Indy mood now, I thought I would post this video about sequels that should get a little more credit because of the number one movie included on the list, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The reviewer/commentator makes some interesting points throughout which I think many internet reviewer/commentators should maybe take to heart.



Now, I'm going to go read a bit, then hit the sack.

Take care!

mike

We Gotta Get Outta This Place

Well, I just handed in another application today. It's not a step up job-wise seeing as I'm a de facto supervisor in my area and I'm essentially applying to go down to a lesser position, but I've done the math and decided that getting paid $4000 more a year for none of the responsibility and 1/5 of the work is an okay trade-off with me. We'll see what I think if, and after, I get an interview. Because of our collective agreement, I have 3 months to decide if I want to stay at the new position and have the option of resuming my old position again at any time within that time frame. It may be a win-win situation.

In honour of the subject line and the sentiment that started the whole job search, here are Eric Burden and The Animals with a song that pretty much sums up things in the Jozic household of late:



Wish me luck!

mike

"Would it have changed some of the ways we looked at one another? "

As my previous post should have made clear, I am on a bit of an X-Files kick at the moment. While I was surfing the 'net earlier and listening to the 4 CD Mark SNow soundtrack collection, I ran across the track, "Dim Memories", and it reminded me of one of my favourite teasers from the whole nine seasons of the show. It's from an episode titled, "The Field Where I Died" and was directed, I think, by Rob Bowman, my a-number one X-Files director.

I liked revisiting it on YouTube so much, that I thought I would make a post out of it, so without further ado...



Later!

mike

Every Agent Needs a Partner

I know I've probably said this before, but I've kind of wanted to do a podcast for some time, now. I've rolled topics over in my head for ages, wondering what I could possibly do that would be interesting to me and that wasn't already being done by a million other podcasters out there. After a lot of mulling, I thought that the possibility of tackling The X-Files in a podcast might be a fun and worthwhile venture for me. I'm a huge fan, the passion for the series has never faded, there is an active campaign to get a third film made, and there's still questions I have about the series' mytharc that might become clearer after rewatching everything and commenting on it. The subject also provides some interesting possibilities that I find intriguing but will not comment on at this time.

The main spanner in the proverbial works is the fact that, after brainstorming the thing for an hour, it occurred to me that without a Scully to comment alongside my Mulder, as it were, I don't think it would be very interesting thing to listen to. I'm known for talking at length about my stuff and the media that I love, so much so that I think some people actually steer clear of certain subjects around me to avoid a lengthy chat about something pop culture related. However, I've tried recording some solo audio commentaries for fun and without someone to respond and bounce something back at me, I just don't think there's any compelling reason to listen to me.

So, I've finally come up with the idea that might actually get something creative rolling, but I don't know anyone else who watches The X-Files, never mind enjoys it. For a short time I entertained the idea of having my wife (a redhead, no joke) play the skeptic to my believer but I think that may be a recipe for disaster, leaving me with something of a conundrum.

It'll take more mulling, I think, before I decide to venture off on my own with this. Until then, little to nothing will happen on this front. I will keep y'all posted, though, and we'll see what happens.

Cheers!

mike

17 Minutes of Jamie Benning’s Raiding The Lost Ark

Raiding the Lost Ark: A Filmumentary - Part 1 from jambe davdar on Vimeo.

Cheers!

mike

"Stay Gold"

Very excited by the idea of a new Big Pink album coming out next week. Especially if the rest of the tracks are anywhere near as good as this one...



Stay gold, Pony Boy!

mike