One misstep'll kill ya

Something I saw today is making me feel like crap. Knots in the stomach, sweaty/tingly extremities, and propensity to cry at slight emotional instability. I must be syncing up or something… Sigh.

Someone once told me, “You paralyze yourself when shit goes wrong, so that you’re unable to get up and make it right”. Looking back at my blogger-days posts, I can see myself beating myself up so hard over shit like this. When it comes to intrapersonal stuff, I have a lotta deep, dark wounds, which I try to hide with wit & sarcasm & aloofness. When something got through those defenses though, I shut down. Hard.

These days, I feel as if I’ve made some progress–at least mentally, but I still get that physical/emotional hangover. And this event hits really close to home. Blah. Said I’d stop writing self-indulgent posts like this after blogger. I guess I just don’t know when to stop sometimes.

Gotta Get up, move on, and make it right. It’s the only way. To survive.

.:.

On a tangentially related note, I was reading the blog of one of my few frenemies yesterday. Turns out he had a lonely, shitty birthday on the 5th, and he has no real friends. I saw the title and thought I’d feel good readin’ the post, especially after the way he treated me the same day many years ago:

While b-day boy and all the cool kids (i.e. everyone else) were locked in his room laughin’ and havin’ a ball, I was sittin’ in the livin’ room babysitting his two elementary school brothers. I asked if I could come in, to which everyone replied, “NO.” Even homeboy’s mom ignored me and didn’t even look at me as she passed by to take snacks & sodas upstairs.

I have never forgotten how lonely, out of the loop, and plain shitty I felt that day. This experience, along with my first heartbreak still gives me hella insecurities and make up the biggest of my aforementioned wounds. Simple things such as not gettin’ a call back from someone can lead me to thinking that everyone hates me and I have no friends. So while I never wish ill on anyone, with this guy, I thought I’d be happy to see some karma in action.

I’m not. I pity him and his square head.

.:.

Fucking life. Fucking karma.

I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to do that.

But what’s really of interest— to the artist in me at least—the geek in me is afk, shitting himself over the wonderful possibilities as well as the horrible implications for internet monopoly—is Scott McCloud’s beautiful & super informative comicbook describing what Chrome is & how it functions. McCloud captures the images of various coders and designers, and use them to explain Chrome’s features to users and dispense tech-talk to the developers. And man… If you’ve read McCloud’s other books, you know that McCloud has a wonderful grasp on the medium of comics, and can explain just about anything through a few, lines & a word bubble.

The part below perfectly illustrated what I perceive to be one of the most frequented and most frustrating part of a browser: the URL bar.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAA indeed!

In the new version of firefox, the “awesome bar” tries to give suggestions when you type into the box. But a lot of the times, these results just end up cluttering the short box and makes things even more difficult. In fact, while creating this post, I typed “hagure” into the URL bar and instead of taking me to hagure-metaru.net, I got a link for http://hagure-metaru.net/wordpress/wp-admin/press-this.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fblogoscoped.com%2Fgoogle-chrome%2F&t=Google%20on%20Google%20Chrome%20-%20comic%20book&s=&v=2

That is not helpful at all. I look at the first part of the URL, then my eyes glaze over at the trailing gobbledygook, and I feel like the programmer in the last panel. Here’s hopin’ Google comes through.

*sigh*

Here’s to the Google Monopoly… a reluctant cheer. May you guard my (and the rest of the world’s) data/life with wisdom, courage and justice.

Surprise!

Originally uploaded by iamanerddotnet.

NOTE: A work-in-progress… beta is yucky I know, but better than nothing for now…
There’s a good discussion going on at flickr (a place I should frequent more often), regarding “obey” and other’s use of images in the public domain (in this case, art that is really old). It’s a pretty good overview of the arguement, and I found myself nodding my head at many different points from bothsides. I believe Shanrosen says it best though:

If you are arguing that copying is unethical, have a deeper look at art history. Historically, artists always learned by copying the masters. Lots of copies of the works of the Old Masters exist, and many works only survive as copies. This is widespread in all the arts. Shakespeare, for example, used many earlier works when developing his plays. Think of the folk process, where works are changed and developed over generations, sometimes retaining much of their original character, and sometimes being substantially reworked but still clearly identifiable. Check out Bob Dylan’s works and his creative process. It is much the same as what we are talking about here (though Dylan is IMHO by far the superior artist).

We need to be clear-headed about copying and copyright. If we’re not, then we could acquiesce to a copyright regime which would be stifling for everyone except the media conglomerates. It is already affecting people here in Flickr who use old found images in their montages. Their pages have been removed from public view in case of (highly unlikely) copyright violation. The risk is seen as too high for Flickr to take.

But what effect is that going to have on the art of montage? We have perfect tools for it now (Photoshop, GIMP) but will we be unable to exhibit montage on the web for fear of copyright violation? (Fairey’s work is a digital montage of public domain works, a bit more subtle than the usual, but you people have identified the source images accurately.)

The Grooveblog discusses Roy Lichtenstein’s fine walk between appropriation and theivery.

I’m having a really bad day. Just wanted to tell someone.

=(

Perry Bible Foundation ~ Durab Inc.

This would be infinitely better than MySpace if you didn’t hafta pay. As of now, its about even.

. : .

So its a weekend evening, and like many other weekend evenings here in Vacaville, I’m super lonely. This time though, it’s not because of limerence and its ilk. To quote Red,

“I guess I just miss my friend(s).”

I chatted with my favorite, Adry, a little bit and realized how it must suck to be not-white in Oklahoma. Then I realized that I missed her stupid silliness. Our conversation is short though, so that only made things worse. Then my fellow insomniac (well, back when I was one… I dunno what I am now), Amanda of all people has to sign online (that punk! the nerve…). *sigh* I missed a lot of stuff by coming back too late to do SB. Perhaps it was for the best, but I was really looking forward to working with Amanda, Zach, Mel, Augustin and Vanness (sorry I didn’t keep my promise). Summer Bridge is just a crazy, crazy, crazy experience and it would have been great to experience it one more time with some of the coolest, funniest and cutest people I know. It wasn’t meant to be though, so oh well.

Talking with Amanda also brought up The Head… and that’s a whole other bucket of tears… or whatever it is that emo people do (and yes… I cry for you Stump). And thinking about these LA friends led me to think about Lyon, also in LA, and how he left me just a week ago to rot in this desolate wasteland known as Cow Towning (DESPAIR).
The closest Fume Hood Posse members are Dr. Claw and uh… Wayne (sorry forgot your FHP name), and they’re in Sacramento… not exactly down the street anymore.

But despite all this… I just miss them. For one, they exist. That’s always a step in the good direction. And for two, its all good. The End. … I’m really lucky to have a lot of good people in my life. One day I will repay you all… IN BLOOD… hehe.

I also miss Japan. Man that place is cool. 日本に帰りたい。。。Speaking of which…

Advantage Lucy – Oolt Cloud

This song is so beautiful to me. I don’t know why… but I can listen to it forever. I really suck at words, so all I can say is that its ominous, but hopeful. Surprizingly, clockw0rk of Strider/Doom fame doesn’t agree with me. We’re usually i2i on these things… strange. Its got a great build-up… and the ending guitar shit is awwwwwwe. Make sure to check Lucy out… its really great stuff. I wish I coulda saw em in concert when I was in Japan. Next time… definitely.

Now if I could only find some lyrics…

I’ve been rather busy. I was gonna reboot, but fate had its way with me.

Anyway, nothing’s new. I just feel more ‘emo’ than ever. Which is another reason I haven’t been posting. I don’t wanna whine about my so-called “despair” (yeah… some people call it that), my privaleged life is just fine thank you very much.

No love from anyone, even my GF (powerbook). I hate lower ram slot failure (see sidebar). And my Dragons (500gb external HD) is coughing up its organs… how am I gonna back up over a 100 gigs of music. Let alone a 100 gigs of video. And then the 100 gigs of random other stuff. *SIGH*

I’ve been listening to the Akira soundtrack a lot recently… here you go. At one point I was listening to the chants non-stop the whole day.

Now though, its this song from Champloo. Just what I need.
I haven’t played my favorite Silent Hill song yet… I wrote it on my arm to remind me… but I don’t hafta play it quite yet.

「逃げられないよ。僕らは外では生きて行けないだよ。」

I need to go bowling.

EDIT: I dunno why the 2nd Akira song (Kaneda) sounds all crazy in the mini-player… it works if you just click the link.  Makes for some interesting ambiance though.

but all your friends are losers and are being home-bodies?

and when you say “all”, you only mean like 2-3 people?

…

At least I have them.

I went to Japanese Language Table again yesterday. It was really cool. I met Shinya, a cool dude who likes the inaka, Eric, a non-UCSD student who only comes for the table, Daniel, a potential mex dude lookin to get a head start on JAPN10A, Hank & Kyle, s’more ppls interested in the language.

Also there were Andrew from HILD class, Eliza from American Pie, Fabianne from Japanese, and also James from japanese, who I went to the pub with, along with Aiko (US Pie as well) and Old Guy Tim (supposedly the guy who started the food co-op (!) ). I then met Ai & Kotaro there.

This was a list of people. Hopefully, I can gain some more friends. Cool people tend to make that happen, so yay.
Oh yeah, and it was a little awkward maybe. I felt some tension at first, but things seemed to settle down after a while. I was aloof. I dunno. I suppose “fate is for the lazy”.

(btw, you gotta watch the movie, “Saving Face”… if you do, then the previous quote is what I said BEFORE watching the movie… I’m hella wise). Anyway, I know what they say.. I know what you say.. but hopefully all that matters is what I say…
ringu.

btw, I really love puma jackets. Man… I gotta buy some hair picks so I can wear my favorite outfit of all time with my newest one.

Regarding jackets… I no longer have anything to prove regarding cold. I’m cooler than that now.

Fly me to the moon…

I wonder if when I look back on posts such as these, will the memories still be there for me to decipher?

I just remembered that no, they won’t be. Oh well… at least I’m in a reasonably good mood. Nothin like last quarter.

Now Song: “Ave Maria” (watchin bebop)… oh beauty…

PS: My printer hella sucks. It runs out of color ink, which the display on it kindly reminds me of by flashing on and off consistently. This is a great and noticable reminder, but with the hella crappy side effect that I am unable to do anything at all with the thing. No printing in black. Not even scanning, which takes no ink whatsoever, is available to me. Fuckin’ reeks of HP’s schemes to screw us outta $… sigh… actually come to think of it, I bet its not even outta ink. THE BASTARDS

stole the election???
no way! Impossible in such a land of Democrazy! (haha that was unintentional)

I really gotta start sleeping @ 2 on time…