|
29.3.02
Joe Frank r0x
You know that cute story that everybody has, about running away and the parents letting them and realizing on the way out the door that they'd never make it and the parents grudgingly asking the kid to forgive them and come home?
I remember being about five years old and saying 'I'm running away from home' in a fit of immature anger one night. Dad pulling the Koch rifle from out under the kitchen table, sighting down at my head, and saying 'we got too much money tied up in you, bwah. You'se stayin' here.'
It was the nicest thing anybody had EVER said to me. Then and now.
Matt Shepherd 29.3.02
28.3.02
Joe Frank MP3 Collection
If you do not go to this site now and download and listen to 'Dreamland,' I will personally destroy you. Destroy you.
NP: Joe Frank, "Dreamland"
Matt Shepherd 28.3.02
Informal Communist Discussion
Goddamn Communists and their goddamn Communist hot rods keep driving up and down all over my Capitalist street, spreading filthy Communist exhaust all over my starched white Capitalist linen. I hate those Communists and their hot rods, souped-up muscle cars with big tires and roll cages, laughing and snorting cocaine and pointing at me and saying "down with the Capitalists, man." Driving arround in their Communist hot rods. They leave pot holes in the roads, these jacked-up funny cars, burnt rubber all over the intersections of the Capitalist streets as the Communists hammer down on the pedal and just go, baby, roaring off into a sunset free of McDonald's burgers and refined sugar injected into baby carrot shoots to make them more appealing to children. Burnt rubber stink and they're gone and all the old people come out of their houses onto Libertarian porches and say "there go the Communists" and sit and rock and look at the Capitalist pavement as the Monarchists walk their bulldogs. But the goddamn Communists are always back the next day in their goddamn Communist hot-rods, waving organic bread and belching fire and squealing up and down my Capitalist streets.
Matt Shepherd 28.3.02
27.3.02
Don? Is that you?
"Hello?"
"Scott?"
"Who?"
"Don?"
"This is Don."
"Yeah. Is this Scott-Don?"
"I think you have the wrong number."
"Hold on."
"Goodbye."
"Hold on, hold on. She's in the room, right? How is she?"
"She's fine. Who is this?"
"Duane. Duane Mosler. I'm a friend of Don's. Was a friend of Don's. Am a friend of Don's, I guess, sort of."
"Duane Mosler says hello, Mother."
"I talked to Scott-Don yesterday."
"What? What's that? Oh. You go on upstairs, then. I'll be up in a minute with some tea."
"Is she gone?"
"She's gone. What the hell do you want?"
"I talked to Scott yesterday. You're not Scott."
"I'm Yance. What do you want?"
"How's it going?"
"Fine. What do you want?"
"I was just wondering how things were, with Mrs. Marks and all."
"She's fine."
"Really?"
"No, not really."
"Oh."
"..."
"I guess that was a stupid question."
"I guess it was."
"Maybe I should just go."
"Maybe. Good bye."
"Hold on. Hold on, hold on."
"What?"
"Well..."
"Well?"
"I...I just want to...um..."
"I'm hanging up."
"I want to be Don."
"What?"
"I want to be Don."
"Why...why..."
"Look, I know what's going on, and I know it's been a few days. You must be getting spread pretty thin, just giving up whole days to hang around the house and pretend to be Don. I want to help. I want to help Mrs. Marks and help Don, I guess."
"Look, this isn't your problem."
"I know. I know it's not my problem. I just want to be involved. I want to help."
"What was your name again?"
"Duane. Duane Mosler. If I could just do it for a day, just one day, then I'd feel like I was contributing something. Scott -- Scott Baio -- told me that all you had to do was be there and say you were Don if she asked, and I can do that. I know it's just a small thing, just one day, I but I want to help. I want to be involved."
"You do not want to be involved."
"Yes I do. I want to be Don. I can help, just for a day."
"Listen to me. You don't know what she can get like, when she suspects. You really don't know what she can be like when she starts thinking you're not Don. The other day, she got a potato peeler and -- this isn't your problem. You don't want to be Don. Not even for a day."
"But I -- "
"Case closed. Goodbye."
"You want me to tell her?"
"What?"
"You let me be Don or I tell her Don's dead."
"What?"
"..."
"Why would you do that? What's wrong with you?"
"You can't stop me. Letters, telegrams, loudspeakers, e-mail, couriers, kids, slipping notes into the daily paper. I'd tell her. Often."
"You're sick, aren't you?"
"I just want to help. I just want to be Don. Just for one day."
"Look, I've got to talk to the others."
"I'll be there at 6 a.m. tomorrow. You tell the others. I'll be Don tomorrow."
"But -- "
"You tell them."
(click)
Matt Shepherd 27.3.02
If they can make money selling 'em...
Business idea that I shared with my sweetie this a.m. -- and that I'd like to hang onto for slow or indie business times -- hire yourself and your fast Internet connection out as a plagarism sleuth to university professors. They spend hours and hours poring over Web-hosted essays for plagarism, but most aren't all that Internet-savvy and many don't have the time to really search the way they should. So why not get a university to contract you as a free agent, available to investigate suspicious papers for about $30 per hour? 90 minutes -- $45 -- should be enough to check many obvious sources and run searches and word-string match checks to see if anything pops up, more effectively and thoroughly than a professor or TA could do. And you'd be focused on finding similar essays, not on the pressures of teaching, etc.
Hurm. A danged good idea here.
NP: Joe Frank, "Pilgrim"
Matt Shepherd 27.3.02
26.3.02
my vote is for 'genius'
"Hello?"
"Is Don there?"
"This is Don."
"..."
"Hello?"
"Uh, I'm looking for Don Marks."
"This is Don Marks."
"No you aren't."
"Yes I am."
"You sound nothing like Don. Your voice is, like, two octaves lower."
"I have a cold."
"Look, can I speak to Don, please?"
"Speaking."
"..."
"Hello?"
"I'm just going to call back later."
"All right."
"Okay, this isn't funny. Let me talk to Don."
"Speaking."
"If you don't put me on with Don, I'm going to..."
"To what?"
"I don't know. Call the cops."
"Because you don't recognize my voice? Because I have a cold?"
"Because YOU'RE NOT DON."
"Yes I am."
"Fine. Fine. If you're Don, what's your favourite brand of beer?"
"What?"
"If you're Don, what's your favourite brand of beer?"
"Hold on a sec."
"What?"
"..."
"Hello? Hey! HEY!"
"Keith's."
"How did you know that?"
"I'm Don. I know what my favourite brand of beer is."
"You looked for empties, didn't you? I bet you looked for empties."
"No. I'm Don. I have a cold."
"Fine. If you're Don, what --"
"-- I don't have to answer these questions. I already did this once. I'm Don."
"Bull. Let me talk to Don."
"I am Don."
"What's going on? What have you done with Don?"
"..."
"Hello? HELLO?"
"Okay, great. She's gone. Sorry about that."
"Sorry about what? Who the fuck are you?"
"I'm not actually Don."
"Christ almighty."
"Are you a friend of Don's?"
"No, I just call him out of sheer indifference."
"Oh."
"Yes, I'm a friend of Don's."
"Oh."
"Oh what?"
"I'm afraid I have some bad news."
"What?"
"I'm not Don. Don's dead."
"WHAT?"
"I'm pretending to be Don because his mother's flipped out. Seriously. She's gone totally batshit."
"Don's dead?"
"He killed himself right in front of her. Blew his brains out."
"I can't believe it."
"Yeah, well, neither could she. She shows up at the hospital screaming. Bits of brain in her hair, right? So we pump her full of roofie and send the cops over, and Don's head is all over the living room ceiling. She fell back when he did it, cops saw blood on the edge of a glass coffee table and matched it up to a cut on her arm. Must have been looking right at him."
"Oh my God. Oh my God."
"So a few of us, family friends, take her home the next day, right? She starts wandering around the house like an Alzheimer's victim, looking for Don. She can't find him and starts getting really upset, starts pulling at her hair and moaning, and Jerry just steps forward and says 'yeah, Mom?' and suddenly he's Don. To her, at least."
"Who are you?"
"We've been taking turns. We've been switching off every day for the past six days. As long as there's someone in the house that answers to 'Don,' she doesn't start mutilating herself. But we have to be consistent. There was a three-hour gap the other day when Marty had to pick up his son at daycare and had a flat, and when Yance got here she had gouged holes all over her forearms with her fingernails. He found her huddled in a ball in front of the oven."
"But who are you?"
"I'm a family friend."
"What's your name?"
"..."
"What, is she in the room?"
"No, she's not in the room."
"So what's your name?"
"...you won't believe me."
"Look, if you don't tell me your name right now, I will call the cops. I will. And when they show up at the door demanding to see Don, because I've told them, I've told them, I don't know, I've told them that he called me last night drunk on heroin and told me he's a child pornographer, when they show up at the doorstep and demand to see him, what --"
"-- Scott Baio."
"What?"
"..."
"Did you say Scott Baio?"
"Yeah."
"Like, 'Joanie Loves Chachi' Scott Baio?"
"Yes. Joanie Loves Chachi Scott Baio."
"Like, 'Charles in Charge' Scott Baio?"
"YES."
"But --"
"Mr. Marks and my dad went to Princeton together. My mom and Mrs. Marks stayed close after Peter died, and she was about to drop in on Patricia when Don killed himself."
"You're Scott Baio?"
"I'm Don."
"What, is she back in the room?"
"Yes, that would be great. Stop by any time."
"So what happened to you, man? I watched 'Charles in Charge,' but then you just vanished."
"Look, I have to go help Mom."
"This is fucked up."
"No kidding. Gotta go. Gotta go."
"Sorry about, uh, Don."
"Not as sorry as I am. Believe me."
"You got any movies coming out or anything?"
"What? I don't act."
"Oh yeah. Right. See you later, Don."
"See you."
(click)
Matt Shepherd 26.3.02
25.3.02
Another comic worth worshiping, but HIGHLY OFFENSIVE TO SOME.
In case you're not up on what's happening with me, I should let you know that I'm writing these things from the road. I can't tell you where I am right now, you know why, but I'm going to be updating this every two days or so as I move from city to city.
I don't think they're tracking me, or at least not very well. I've been subtly changing my appearance on buses and trains, and when I have the cash I'll buy two train tickets for two different towns (cars are usually destination-specific) under two different names, get on one, exit, get on the other with my face covered or obscured, exit, and get back on the first. A subtle change or two and then I shift back to the second seat in the other car with my new moustache, wig, scar, what-have-you. I think it's thrown them off the trail a few times now, and I shouldn't even really be writing this, but I don't think they'll ever hack through the passwords surrounding the site. The three of you that know how to get in here, I trust not to reveal the passwords ever.
People have been asking me for directions a lot, though, and I'm pretty sure that's just because I'm so good at blending in and walking with purpose. I look like I belong. I always give very vague but authoritative directions when asked for them, because I want to seem like I belong where I am. There are King, Queen, Dufferin and Mount streets in every major city in North America, which is useful. Sometimes I worry that they're giving me names of places that they know don't exist, smoking me out, so I usually throw in a "I think that's the new name of..." or "didn't that place close a couple years ago?" to make it all more authentic and throw them off the scent.
I swear I've seen the same thin little guy with one of those punk can't-grow-a-moustache-yet moustaches two or three times, but I can't get paranoid. Every town has like six hundred of these little weasels, and they all hang around bus stations.
Plus, I'm pretty sure that they don't know about the tooth, which is something else I can surprise them with if they do catch up.
I'm gonna get moving now. I can't tell you where I am, but I hear there's a great pierogi place in this town, so I'm gonna get some good food and figure out where's next. I don't know how this thing's gonna wind up, but I'll keep you posted. If you ever don't see a post for a four-day stretch, assume they caught up and go quiet.
Later.
Matt Shepherd 25.3.02
The best cartoon on the internet today.
Really. Boxjam's not only a swell guy, he's mastered the art of minimal graphic humour...and makes me crack up more than any other comic (except maybe Superosity).
He also has the greatest T-shirts of any online comic out there. I wear mine sometimes and small children point an laugh at me.
The big news of yesterday: one, I spent all day yesterday helping two Bishop's University students by acting in their short film "Red Sky Morning." I play a marketing executive who rapidly collapses into complete insanity. Not much of a stretch there. Secondly, I found out my old Scoutmaster recently killed himself and his mother in an apparent murder-suicide. When telling a friend how weirded out I was about that, he told me that HIS Cub leader escaped from a mental institute and killed himself by grabbing a cop's gun. While he was a "current" Cub leader.
Avoid the scouting movement, ye depressed and ye unbalanced.
Actually, I find that while some Scouting leaders have been the nicest people I've ever met (Skip, my old Scoutmaster, being one of the good eggs despite what happened fifteen years down the road), a few really strike me as people who are trying to fix their secret broken selves by 'helping' kids, and usually wind up not doing much good. I dated a monumentally screwed-up youth centre coordinator for a while, which is how the whole idea came up years and years and years ago...
Matt Shepherd 25.3.02
22.3.02
Read the comic!
You know, when you seriously start worrying about the proper style for toll-free numbers, you've been working too hard. But still...
1-800-555-5555
or
1 800 555-5555?
Which is correct? (800) 555-5555 just looks stupid. The Canadian Style and MLA style guides are no help. I don't have a Chicago SG at work. It makes my head hurt thinking about it too much.
In other news, I resurrected an old mix CD I made last December for listening here at the office. It's great! Check this out, amigos:
Tom Waits -- Jesus Gonna Be Here
Velvet Underground -- Heroin
Alabama 3 -- Ain't Goin' to Goa
Mick Harris & Neil Harvey -- Not Found
Manitoba -- People Eating Fruits
Moved -- Cacao Facil
Air (French Band) -- Jeanne
Beck -- Nobody's Fault But My Own
Masada -- Gevurah
Gavin Bryars -- A Man In A Room, Gambling (4)
Charlie Haden -- Taney County
Herbaliser Band -- Who's The Realest?
Blind Boys of Alabama -- Jesus Gonna Be Here
Severed Heads -- Alaskan Polar Bear Heater
Now you can't beat that. No, really. Try it.
Matt Shepherd 22.3.02
21.3.02
Are you the keymaster?
I've been changing all the locks in my house. One on every door. The thing is, I don't want my guests to feel secure. Private, sure. A little hook-and-eye on the bathroom, on the bedroom door, keep kids from wandering in or the cat catching you doing something embarrasing. I'm hip.
But I don't want my guests feeling inaccessible, you know? They can't be sitting around in my house feeling like I can't get in. They can't shut me out. They have to look at the lock and know it's a courtesy lock, that it's there as a nod to their privacy and because I'm a good damn host. But they have to understand that one good kick and I'm in the room. Not even a good kick. One half-assed shove and that lock pops like tinfoil and I'm right there in the room with them.
Because I shouldn't be shut out in my own house. It's just wrong, right? They can't lock me out of my own rooms and laugh and laugh. They can't. I won't let them.
I'm changing the locks. There are fourteen.
It's a courtesy thing.
Matt Shepherd 21.3.02
20.3.02
good advice
Just taking a sec to check out the James Hudnall site, and his comics-writing advice is as good as gold. It's funny that he uses a few clichés in his "clichés must die!" section (including ...must die!) but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt...
Matt Shepherd 20.3.02
The nice thing about having a six-digit user code and password is that you can sing that "You don't make friends with sa-lad!" thing from the Simpsons. And yes, I know that's not where that tune originally comes from. You have so sort of slur "Ydon' " at the beginning, though.
I'm writing text for a "CRM Solutions Provider" at work today, and after an amazing amount of research, I've discoverd that CRM is a business-sourced term for Customer Relations Management -- and that nobody ACTUALLY KNOWS WHAT IT MEANS. It's the perfect buzzword, because it has no definition...there's a lot of "CRM Software" out there, but it can be anything from an e-mail manager to a specialized Excel spreadsheet. It's like all that business-world BS-speak has blossomed into perfect nonsense, and they all keep jabbering the blather because they don't want anyone else to think they don't know what's going on.
If you're thinking of becoming a business student, let me save you about $30,000:
Buy low. Sell high.
THAT'S ALL THERE GODDAMN IS TO IT, FOLKS!
--
np: nothin'. Gotta rectify that.
Matt Shepherd 20.3.02
17.3.02
Looking for cheap components...
I've been busy working away at building a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) lately, gathering info on what kind of system works best and where to get all the fiddly bits from. Living in Sherbrooke, it's hard to get a reliable computer-parts store within driving distance.
The beginning, anyway, of a monologue for the Big Mysterious Radio Project:
It was then, when I was staring up at that sixteen-foot phallus made of cardboard and rubber bands, that I knew it was my destiny to be an artist.
I left the museum talking -- no, ranting, really. Ranting on the street, striding along, jabbing my finger in the air and babbling out loud, "I know I can do it I know I can make a difference I can BEAT that I can BEAT it I know I can do it I AM AN ARTIST." And I felt the eyes of the crowd upon me as I strode past, felt them watching me and hearing my words fall on them like warm rain and felt their appraisal and approval and I knew they believed that I was. An artist.
I was an artist.
I went home and grabbed the phone from the roommate, hung up, and when he started to complain, I punched him in the mouth. "I'm an artist," I screamed at him, and I could feel all the veins in my neck sticking out a clear quarter-inch, my eyes bulging, my throat hoarse from the streetlong raving for my growing swell of admirers. He staggered back clutching his nose, blood starting to flood from between his startled fingers, his eyes glazed with fear and hatred. "I'm an ARTIST!" I insisted, and the pure light of my art drove him from the room, saying "You asshole, you can't even draw a circle" through his hand and a mouth full of blood.
I started making calls, because he was right, I couldn't draw. Not one bit. Couldn't paint, either, and had not talent for sculpting. If I'd ever had a proclivity for manual artistic talent, I never knew it, and it had been lost along with my hand in the thresher that summer on the McCaul farm. But I was an artist. The phallus had convinced me.
If a man could get twenty-four thousand dollars to make a sixteen-foot phallus out of old cardboard boxes and rubber bands, then by Jesus and Joseph and Old Joe Stalin I was an artist, or I would be one, or I would be the man behind the curtain that the artist stands in front of, lights burning her face, vaseline on her eyelids to keep the Frenells from arcing through and searing her retinas, making her blind and stumbling in a world of brilliant media.
And that was how I became an art consultant.
The calls came in slowly, at first. My first big break was a young up-and-comer in high school, one who'd seen my newspaper ad and was wondering about my services. I let him off cheap. He wanted to draw ducks, you see. He had a strange obsession with ducks. He couldn't draw anything else. He thought about ducks, dreamed about ducks, masturbated to vivid fantasies of mallards flapping on his groin. Flapping.
The thing was, he couldn't sell his ducks, and nobody wanted to watch his ducks, nobody wanted his ducks on their walls. There were better ducks. He hated Robert Bateman, the famous wildlife painter, and would go on bitter rants with the hurt pride that only sixteen-year-old geniuses can muster about Bateman and how he'd cornered the goddamn market on goddamn ducks and you couldn't say "mallard" without somebody saying goddamn "Bateman." He hated Bateman.
So I told him, I told him that I was an art consultant, and what I did was that I helped artists, those with technical skill but perhaps not the marketing savvy to capture the modern art idiom, I helped them to seize that market, that high-priced glittering world of vaseline eyelids and sixteen-foot phalluses, I helped them grab that and squeeze it like a baby chipmunk. Squeeze it 'till it squealed, or quacked, in his case.
He liked that, the sixteen-year-old duck artist, and I swore full confidentiality and told him that if he couldn't sell straight duck paintings, he had to think of the other powers and attributes of the duck population and reassign those to unusual milieus to create modern art that might generate what we, in the industry, called a "buzz."
He thought about it for a minute, making a small coughing noise in the back of his throat, rasping a little. He told me that ducks had wings. "Too general," I said. He told me that ducks could swim. "Try harder," I said. He told me that ducks ate bread in parks sometimes. "Interesting, but we're not there yet," I said, He said that ducks, usually, flew in a "V" formation.
I said "Bingo."
Six weeks later, he was finished an art sequence called "V", taking famous art works and photographs from history with a prominent V motif in them, or a character with a V in his name, and replacing the Vs with a V of distant migrating ducks. Winston Churchill flashed a hand full of tiny flying ducks; and so on. He was hailed, within weeks, as a young genius. His next painting was a series of stills from pornographic films, blown up to eight-by-eight panels, with ducks flying out of women's mouths and privates. The series sold to a reclusive Texan millionaire for forty-seven thousand dollars.
He was on his way, he and his ducks. Flying south to fame and fortune and acclaim. And I knew I was on my way too. They came slowly at first, but the calls came, first a trickle and then a stream, other artists whom were in the confidence of the sixteen-year-old duck genius, other people with technical skills but no perhaps the abstract-art-flair that it took to make them famous. As in, with fame.
I would sit there in my apartment, my door locked, and answer the phone. I kept the door locked because my roommate had never forgiven me for punching him in the mouth, and was thirsty and hungry and hung over for revenge. He would try to ruin my new career by startling me while I was on the phone, to make me scream or yell or cry out and make the people at the other end of the fuzzy connection, fuzzy because my only phone was an old manual dial from the forties, make them think I was insane. Once he went as far as to rent an ape suit and buy bloody fresh steaks and stuff them in the mask of the ape suit, and smear blood all over the gloves of the ape suit, and waited until I was on the phone, pitching an artist, my voice rising as I reached a frenzied pitch of artistic contemplation and creative thought, and burst into the room kicking the door open, spraying blood everywhere as he waved his arms and yelling booga booga. I almost had a heart attack. And I lost the client. I started locking my door after that.
At any rate, I would sit there with my clients on the phone, with my lap robe on. The first thing I bought, with the first flush of success, was a lap robe. They're hard to find, and a little old fashioned, but I like them because I tend to get a chill and a lap robe seems to be what keeps me from getting cold without making me too warm. Long underwear makes me too warm, and I can't lie in bed, can't lie horizontally without falling asleep.
And I was successful, and my clients were successful, and everything was a big success. There was champagne and delicate fruits and tasty chocolates from countries I've never heard of and couldn't begin to pronounce the names of. I was responsible for some of the most famous works in modern art, some of the most audacious concepts in installation work came from my mind while I sat in that crowded apartment, sipping warm brandy with a lap robe keeping my six-inch phallus, delightfully bereft of both cardboard and rubber bands, nice and toasty.
---
It's about half done. Should run about 25 minutes, read, once it's finished. It eyeballs at around 15. Needless to say, my career as an art consultant will end badly.
Matt Shepherd 17.3.02
the comic continues
Matt Shepherd 17.3.02
7.3.02
the debate rages on...
I innocently started a thread on this message board over a week ago, fully expecting a couple of answers and a die-down. Instead, I seem to have touched a nerve and sparked some lively debate over writers v. artists, and the fact that artists seem (to put it crudely) grip writers by the balls and demand cash for services up front. Many do, anyway.
Anyway, it's quite the snappin' little debate. I'm a touch embarrased by the whole thing. I just thought it was a nifty idea, is all...
NP: Bob Belden, "Black Dalhia"
Matt Shepherd 7.3.02
6.3.02
type in twelve
I'd like to, if I may, tell you a little bit about my job.
It's confidential, but I know I can trust you. You're my friend.
There aren't a lot of people I feel like I can talk to, you know? Ha. I knew you'd agree. That's why we're friends.
I've been working at this same job for about twelve years. I've taken seventeen sick days over the twelve years. I was sick for fifteen of them. Two of them I just called in sick, because I --
I don't have to explain myself to you.
Every morning, I get up and drink three big cups of coffee with brown sugar. I eat a sugar-free cereal with two per cent milk. Immediately after breakfast, I wash the dishes I have used and clean the coffee maker.
I have the coffee maker set to make coffee before I wake up in the morning. Did I mention that? I set it up at night so that when my alarm goes off, I can drink my coffee.
They pick me up around 6:45 a.m., sometimes a little earlier. They just pull into the driveway and shut the motor off. I've told them that they don't have to shut the motor off, because it takes me, like, eight seconds to get from the door to the car when they pull in, but they shut the motor off. Every time.
We don't talk a lot on the ride in to work. It takes a lot of concentration, the job, so you spend a lot of time, you know, focusing. Getting in the zone. The other guys do, anyway. I never really need to spend a lot of time focusing. Sometimes I think I got in the zone twelve years ago, and never got out. That I'm living my whole life in the zone, always in the zone, drinking coffee in the zone, sleeping in the zone, eating and farting and masturbating and belching and feeling alone and lost and afraid, all in the zone.
We don't talk a lot on the way in. Did I say that already?
The first row of TVs is about two feet up off the floor. All twelve are recessed into the wall, with sort of a lip over them so it looks like it's just a screen in the masonite. They're stacked four wide, three high, and the screens are all sort of wide so it makes a big square. Early on, in my first year, it took some time to get the trick of getting them all in your field of vision at once, because you sort of have to sit near the back of the room and angle your head a little higher than you might hold it normally.
The trick is to not focus in on one screen, to not get involved with one character or action. You have to let your eyes just open up to the whole wall while you watch, and keep recording your general feelings -- are you happy, sad, upset, frustrated, etc. It's harder than it sounds. Every time I fill a sheet of notepaper, I just toss it over my shoulder and keep going, writing and writing.
Near the start, I used to think about what I was writing. Now I just write. I put a pen in my hand and my hand on the pad and it moves like the images move in front of me. Sometimes, I feel someone else in the room, staying low to the floor, collecting the pieces of paper I've tossed over my shoulder. I don't take my eyes off the screen, though. They break that habit out of you pretty early on.
I'm the only one left of my original car pool. Did I mention that? Everyone else in the car pool has changed three times at least. Most guys last three years, maybe four. When I started, one of the guys vanished after two weeks. He just stopped showing up at the car pool. He had weird eyes.
It doesn't bother me, how often the guys in the car pool change. We don't talk a lot on the way in.
I watch all twelve TV screens at once, and write and write. I don't know what I write. I don't know what happens to those pieces of paper. I don't know what they do with them. I write and I write and I don't watch any one screen, and they pay me a lot of money. Afterwards, I go home and sleep. I think.
This one time, I woke up in the park with a lot of blood on my shirt. My hands, too. There was something stuck under my fingernails. I went home and cleaned myself off and looked for the cut, but couldn't find it. I didn't tell anybody, not even the guys in my car pool.
There aren't a lot of people I feel I can talk to, you know?
I'm not supposed to tell you this. I'm not supposed to tell anyone this.
But I can trust you. You're my friend.
Matt Shepherd 6.3.02
5.3.02
...um, whoops. Please ignore the double-post below. I thought Blogger had shystered me, but it was just being slow.
NP: Joe Frank, "Hawaii"
Matt Shepherd 5.3.02
Putting the Id back in idiot
Ha! HA! Blogger tried to screw me again, but I WAS USING NOTEPAD! HA!
Okay, there really IS a sewing.com!
I just hemmed my first pair of pants. HAW!
Hem and haw. Get it?
Yeesh.
Mom did the first leg for me last night, and I tackled leg #2 this evening. Over an hour to hem one friggin' leg! I suck at hemming! But the end result turned out OK, and actually is even with the other leg and everything. Who the hell looks at the BOTTOM of people's pants, anyway?
I actually got in an argument with somebody once, because he'd bought a $40 pair of dress socks...plain black..."But they were Armani!" Listen up, buttercup: you can buy 'em for a buck at the dollar store, and WEAR SOME FRIGGIN' SHOES. Who's ever going to see your socks? Pants over the tops...shoes over the bottoms...about an inch of exposure, if that. On the old "Little House on the Prairie" TV show, Albert used shoeshine on his ankles because they were too poor for dress socks.
Man, it's amazing what occupies those brain cells. Can't figure out how to stitch a hem, but I recall incidents from "Little House on the Prairie." Go Laura! Go Laura! Go-go-go Laura!
Sleepy, and I still have to write Man-Man scripts. My life is a scintillating funball!
NP: CBC Radio. Too lazy to put something else on...
Matt Shepherd 5.3.02
Okay, there really IS a sewing.com!
I just hemmed my first pair of pants. HAW!
Hem and haw. Get it?
Yeesh.
Mom did the first leg for me last night, and I tackled leg #2 this evening. Over an hour to hem one friggin' leg! I suck at hemming! But the end result turned out OK, and actually is even with the other leg and everything. Who the hell looks at the BOTTOM of people's pants, anyway?
I actually got in an argument with somebody once, because he'd bought a $40 pair of dress socks...plain black..."But they were Armani!" Listen up, buttercup: you can buy 'em for a buck at the dollar store, and WEAR SOME FRIGGIN' SHOES. Who's ever going to see your socks? Pants over the tops...shoes over the bottoms...about an inch of exposure, if that. On the old "Little House on the Prairie" TV show, Albert used shoeshine on his ankles because they were too poor for dress socks.
Man, it's amazing what occupies those brain cells. Can't figure out how to stitch a hem, but I recall incidents from "Little House on the Prairie." Go Laura! Go Laura! Go-go-go Laura!
Sleepy, and I still have to write Man-Man scripts. My life is a scintillating funball!
NP: CBC Radio. Too lazy to put something else on...
Matt Shepherd 5.3.02
Type in enthusiasm.com, this is whatcha get. I hate web refers.
I know I'm running off at the mouth today, but what can you do. I just saw an old note on my desk, residue from an edit job of last week in which I was taking notes on the theoretical future "tone" of the doc I was rewriting.
It's a little piece of note paper, about two and a half by four inches, white. Scrawled across it in my messy hand:
"MUSTER ENTHUSIASM."
Sometimes the best things are on little bits of paper you find lying around. I think I'm gonna make a "MUSTER ENTHUSIASM" poster and stick it on my wall. It's the best backhanded motivational statement I think I've ever heard.
Matt Shepherd 5.3.02
Todd and Penguin--the comic strip now with more Penguinny goodness!
A brief e-mail to the Todd and Penguin auteur, Dave Wright, in response to a "like your blog" comment:
I've found that blogging is the single most important creative tool I've discovered in years. I've tried lots of things, like carrying a notebook and a pen around, and a mini-tape recorder, but all of them take too much transfer from the idea to the execution. Digging around for the notebook or the recorder, jotting/saying the thoughts, and THEN having to deal with them again later.
I spend most of my working day at a computer, and connected to the 'Net through a cable modem, so blogging really is instantaneous. Being a child of the age, I type literally six times faster than I can write, too, so it makes the most sense for me to try to record things spontaneously at a keyboard rather than a piece of paper.
What I really SHOULD do is keep a hard copy of the blog. I'm getting quite proud of it, and don't want these ideas to perish when blogger shuts down (as all these cool free services seem to, eventually...)
The nice thing about blogger is that I can transfer stuff like this to it, too. I'm gonna do that right now, in fact.
NP: still Erik Truffaz
Matt Shepherd 5.3.02
Moderntheatre.com is apparently for sale.
Open with a fairly traditional stage, a woman...I dunno...reading a book or something. A man enters stage L. They talk for a bit, the tone of the conversation rising to anger. As it reaches a crescendo, the man clutches his chest. He's having a heart attack! He pitches over onto his back. The woman screams and begins to perform CPR, pleading with the audience for help. The audience just sits there.
Eventually, an elderly man gets up, a doctor, and timidly inquires as to whether this is part of the play. The woman shrieks that it is not, and the man hurries up to the stage. While climbing up onto the stage, he suffers some sort of stroke, and falls back into the front row, blood tricking from his mouth. The doctor's wife rushes down to him. She begins to scream as well, her screams mingling with the actress' pleas for help.
A short while later, a young woman in a jean jacket stands up and asks if this is really all some modern theatre thing. The woman and the doctor's wife scream that it isn't. She begins to run out to the lobby to call 911, but trips on a stair and falls, cracking her head on the floor. She passes out.
Another man gets up, this one rather overweight and quite drunk. He pulls out a cell phone and apologizes loudly and profusely for interrupting the goddamn play, and that he doesn't understand this modern theatre shit, and he's gonna call an ambulance and he's not paying any goddamn fine if this is all some sort of fancy-ass "performance art" shit. As he dials, he suffers an epileptic seizure. His friend, similarly dressed in a plaid shirt and baseball cap, begins to demand the audience members around him for a safety pin to pin the drunk man's tongue to his lip to keep him from choking.
Three seats down, an audience member reluctantly gets up, stating that she does not want to interrupt the performance of what is obviously a clearly affecting and gut-wrenching piece of theatre, but audience participation is part of the piece. As she looks through her purse for a safety pin, she sees her insulin kit and realizes that in all the excitement, she is over two hours late for her insulin injection. She lapses into a coma. Her husband begins to yell at her, berating her for ruining the performance.
The piece continues to expand through disaster to disaster, incorporating the audience members as performers, or the performers as audience members, unfolding like a dark and beautiful flower.
After an hour, the auditorium is full of dead, dying, unconscious or incoherently distraught people. Nobody can tell who the actors were, and who the audience was. There is nobody left to observe.
NP: Eric Truffaz, "Mantis"
Matt Shepherd 5.3.02
4.3.02
I'm warming up to "Your Radio Nightlight," but in that "this isn't bad, but I could do this, and probably a little bit better, even" sort of way.
Ah! One of the choice phrases from my conversation with Aaron (blogged a coupl'a days ago) just resurfaced...
"The problem I have is I think of the people I admire and think that I couldn't be that good...but then I realize that for these people to exist, SOMEBODY has to be that good...so why SHOULDN'T it be me?"
Oops. Gotta go!
Matt Shepherd 4.3.02
Benjamen Walker's *Your Radio Nightlight*
Hola! Translating the index for this year's Eastern Townships Tourism Guide, and multi-tasking by checking out Benjamen Walker's "Your Radio Nightlight" at the same time. Long-time friends and associates know that I'm a monster Joe Frank fanatic, and B.W. is sort of J.F. format ripoff (he blatantly admits it, and is somewhat proud of it), so I figured I'd take a listen. It's in my own best interest, if I'm going to try to ape Mr. Frank myself with the upcoming Canada Obscura.
Not bad. I'm listening to "Underworld," which seems to be a long monlogue by Mr. Walker, laden with symbolism and a little too reminiscent of Grade 13 creative-writing classes. Definitely lacks the deft surgical satire of Joe Frank, thus far, anyway. To be fair, it's partially the voice -- Benjamen has the standard College Radio Nerd voice, instead of Frank's gravelly, oily throat, which makes him a little harder to take seriously. We'll see how it goes, though. I AM enjoying the listen, just being very critical...after all, this is something I want to do, so best to figure out what I don't like early on...
Matt Shepherd 4.3.02
I got worms.
Many people don't know that I vermicompost -- that is to say, I have a big Rubbermaid container in my kitchen with a few hundred redworms in it, and I put all my vegetable waste in there for the worms to eat and, over time, turn into delicious compost for the plants.
Unfortunately, I'm fairly new at it, and have several questions, esp. regarding why the worms are climbing the sides of the bins and these little white buggy things crawling around the sides of the bin.
I hope they get answered soon. I like my worms.
Matt Shepherd 4.3.02
3.3.02
Jones on Bookbinding
Well, the folks are here, dinner has been had, all is well with the world.
An interesting bit of conversation with Dad this evening -- sidelong winding its way around to our varying ideas of what "Conservative" means. I associate it with a very fiscal concept -- what is good for Big Business is good for everyone, and money rules all. His view is that conservatism is more about small government, independence etc. Neither of us are particularly conservative, in case you were wondering.
The interesting bit was trying to figure out where the difference springs from, and I suspect that for people of my age, having spent much of our youth in the '80s, it might all be Reagan and Thatcher, and "Reaganomics" defining what I think of as Republicanism/Conservatism. Somewhere in the last few decades, conservatism seems to have imprinted itself on me (and, I suspect, most people of my generation) as something that advocates fiscal "responsibility" above and beyond all else. Smaller government and etc. does get lip service, but usually just as something that is "wasteful," not something that is ideologically unsound.
Somehow, this seemed more riveting when we were discussing it, but I think the central point is a good question. Has conservatism changed, or is it just my perception that it has? And how much did the '80s, '90s and "Big Money" conservatism (see Mike Harris, Ralph Klein, etc.) have to do with this ideological shift, either real or perceived?
Off to bed, to dream of Thatcher. Ugh.
Matt Shepherd 3.3.02
Fight the real enemy
One side effect of spending all day cleaning the house is that it gives me lots of time to think of weird crap.
Scenario for a film:
A young photo buff one day decides to take apart his camera, and despite knowing a heck of a lot about the things, finds a little hoojamadigger that he can't figure out. Being the adventurous sort, he removes it.
Later that same evening, he sees Bigfoot! What a coincidence!
He takes a few snaps, and upon printing them, is startled to discover that they all came out perfectly clearly! Wonderful National Geographic-type shots.
For some inexplicable reason, he decides to hold off on publishing his Bigfoot photos until he has a chance to figure out why his Bigfoot photos turned out, while his previous photos of UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, Elvis and Casey Kasem all turned out foggy, unintelligible messes.
A relatively bright young feller (hmm. Or perhaps an old codger, like say a Weekly World News photographer from the good ol' days), he quickly discovers that since the days of the Brownie, all photo equipment manufacturers have been conspiring with the world government and that obsequious global shadow government to install a Weird Filter on cameras, a filter that will automatically take anything outside the realm of normal human experience and transform it into garbage.
He sets out to reveal this secret to the world, but is promptly murdered by Maury Povitch, who is still bitter about the cancellation of A Current Affair.
I insist on Tom Waits being cast as the reclusive engineer behind the current Weird Filter, Mark XVII. Other than that, I'm open on all casting. Maybe Gilbert Gottfried as the lead, as the fact that HE can be photographed is still a mystery to millions.
NP: Tom Waits, Mule Variations
Matt Shepherd 3.3.02
Guess who's not cleaning the house?
I'M not cleaning the house!
Guess whose parents arrive in eight hours for a three-day visit?
MY parents arrive in eight hours for a three-day visit!
Guess who's dangerously close to panic?
Stockwell Day. The race for the Alliance leadership is NOT going well for the ole bastard. I almost feel bad for him.
Hurm. That took a turn for the political, neh?
A few bon mots from a coffee klatch last night with Aaron Patella, Esq.:
"The voice in peoples' heads that they listen to tends to be the smallest one."
"The thing keeping me from really believing in myself is that most really self-confident people I know also tend to be arrogant assholes."
I'm sure there was more, but I was all hopped-up on caffeine and now I don't remember the entire conversation. Damn, I'd best get to cleanin'.
NP: CBC radio. Borrrrring...
Matt Shepherd 3.3.02
Netscape.com
Yearrgh. I'm only in Netscape because I set it as the default page for Internet Explorer (Captain Irony!) and I only use IE when Netscape crashes -- which is becoming distressingly frequent. The program doesn't die, it just...stops. Pages stop loading, and no matter what I type in the address bar, it just sits there. The weirdest thing is that even 5-10 minutes after I close everything, if I ctrl-alt-del, "Netscape" still appears as a shut-downable option.
Anyway.
I'm just blogging in to jot down a story idea: man who respects objects. Starts with his girlfriend and her stuffed animal Choomy, which he has to apologize to when he knocks it around or off the bed. Soon, he starts doing it when she isn't even home. Next thing, he's apologizing to the fridge, to the table, to various things when he bumps or scuffs them. Quick descent into a weird form of totem magic wherein he spends all his time talking/apologizing/dealing with various...things.
---
NP: nothing, actually. I'm only up 'cause the damn cat jumped on me.
Matt Shepherd 3.3.02
2.3.02
Oswald liked products.
He really did. Not any products in particular, just products. He liked to go to grocery stores especially. To look at all the products. No meat, no poultry, no produce. No special cheese. Just the canned, the boxed, the packaged. The products.
He told me once, while drunk on highballs, that he loved the names most of all. Jos Louis, Tang, Froot Loops, Precious Moments, Wizard, Dunkeroos, Catapult, Wagon Wheels; all those logos, all those designs and colours and special distinctive little hooks.
Once he broke into a graveyard with a chisel and began to give all the inhabitants of the graveyard product qualifications. Henry Musty, 1945-1992, was Bigger Than Ever. Kathleen Hargrove, 1845-1921, was Low On Fat. He even carved out his father's tombstone. Oswald Sr. was Tough On Grease.
Oswald told me that he aspires to be Tough On Grease some day. But he was drunk at the time, so I won't hold him to it.
Matt Shepherd 2.3.02
|