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EpicMegatrax writes more bullshit
 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-21 00:49 [#02502158]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



lol


 

offline mohamed from the turtle business on 2016-08-21 00:55 [#02502159]
Points: 31139 Status: Lurker | Show recordbag



is everything alright there mate?


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-21 05:14 [#02502161]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



i'm figuring a bold, italic lol for page eight
then you can fade back in on page nine with a italic
lol.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-21 05:18 [#02502162]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



anyways, yes, this is just me swapping to disk. read it or
not, as usual. really, i think you lot would be thrilled, as
this is draining all my righting juice like a wrightning wod
and i'm not spamming up anything but my own ramble thread.

i am dealing with things in my life that need to be handled
and that's been sucking down so much of my energy that the
writing backlog has continued and i've left the
infrastructure alone until i can clear life stuff out. my
mistake was going to sleep instead of writing the new weasel
scripting immediately; now i must juggle more adamently


 

offline mohamed from the turtle business on 2016-08-21 16:41 [#02502182]
Points: 31139 Status: Lurker | Show recordbag



you seriously think someone is reading?


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-23 03:38 [#02502236]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



the idea that someone is reading is sort of like one of the
different tips you can put on those baker blasters that
squirt frosting in patterns. it's useful dexterious practice
and so i've been keeping it up. the idea that someone is
actually reading is a different thing entirely.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-23 03:42 [#02502237]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



notions are really an old thing i've always done; something
many people probably do. now it has a proper name to make it
vague in a more targeted manner, and it has consequently
become more targeted.

notions typically occur A) out of the blue, or B) when i'm
arguing with myself. B) is more interesting, because i've
started get nuanced answers, sometimes. i got:

(don't) do it

to something i was arguing with myself about doing or not. a
distinct sense of the don't being in parenthesees. quieter
than the latter half. my subconscious mind noticing me
circing an argument and screaming out a summed-up average
through a lens i am capable of understanding.

having it be a floating point instead of a boolean makes the
book-keeping more complicated, but it's for the best of
reasons and i'm going to allow it


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-23 05:56 [#02502250]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



i got to thinking about minecraft today. it speaks to the
primal layers of the mind, i think. starting off in the
jungle, building a crude shelter, getting enough
infrastructure going that you start to range. then you start
to explore and make routes up in your mind; they become
automatic and you forget about them. eventually entire
routes are subsumed by your expanding infrastructure; some
diamond furnace in the basement you built from internet
plans six months ago and when a creeper detonates you can't
remember how to fix it. at this point, you have completed
the full stage act of a primitive man gradually becoming
conscious, having begun to lose track of the automatic
structures you've built to allow you to expand and range
further. auto-bread machines and levi jeans. snapchat,
requires gold, sapphire (for screen), and red flakes for
circuits


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-23 05:59 [#02502251]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



then i stopped thinking about minecraft, because i was
starting to have to pee. i'm in a park i know well and
obviously this gets quite strategic.

notions have begun using GPS weasel like a puppet at times.
sometimes i'll get sass when planning my route, but it's
selective and generally correct. the non-linear feedback
potential between notions and weasels is perplexing and
promising and worrying


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-23 06:06 [#02502252]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



i think practice is essential to anything. praxis, from deus
ex. makes perfect.

to be the sort of person who can catch a penny rolling off
the edge of the counter when the cashier drops it, well, you
need a lot of general experience coordinating the timing and
movement of your hand, arm, back and so on.

there is a feedback loop: where is my arm? move these
muscles. where is my arm now? move these muscles...

it needs real-world action to be tuned and precise. you'll
move where you intend to move more easily, and eventually
begin re-shaping how you intend to move as well.
calibration, then inverse kinematics.

years ago i tried some guided blamstrain meditation thing:
relax your finger, then your next finger. walking through
all the body parts. breaking my concentration when it's all
"right buttock" and i think about sampling it later. but,
anyways, simmering every part down, one by one. later i
thought: oh, a systems check / calibration. there's a lot
more in there than that, but the metaphor works well enough


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-23 07:15 [#02502253]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



so you know how 6IE.CR is all: doont. dant.
dadoont dahnanana
and there's that watery noise snare at
dahanana? last night it was rainy, and i was driving to
this, and suddenly i tuned into some outside noise: what is
that? well, i'm hitting a small river crossing the road
every time that watery snare hits, it seems, and i have no
idea how this happened, but i like it

it continues and i'm thinking: this road is new, and
curious, really. they have the usual drunk bumps on the
double line, but also sparse blue warning bumps in the
middle of the lane, reminding to keep in their lane, left
tires in locked groove, to the road. it also has slices cut
into it; a track of lines that cut shortest path in between
the curves but not quite; go open circuit a bit. i could
never figure those out, but now i know what they are for:
drainage.

some humans laser scanned the hill and then a man and a
computer sat down and came up with something that would
puzzle me for many a late night drive


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-23 07:18 [#02502254]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



algorithmically designing a track so the rhythms fit the
computer-generated road structures when the algorithm is run
in the wild. elbowrhythmic patchwerk


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-25 07:13 [#02502319]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



when i play back memories in my head, the processes is akin
to being so adept at making macaroni-glue art that i have
become able to create smoothly-moving stop-motion movies in
my mind with macaroni metaphors. my inner macaroni artist
watches what my subconscious is able to do with subliminal
macaroni and then works very hard to memorize which
macaronis are used, and how hard. then whenever i remember
something, i make a macaroni picture of the macaroni picture
i made of what my previous macaroni pictures have flown
intogeter toecreate.

it's comforting to know that i perceive through my senses (a
step removed from everything) and that before i can make
sense of my senses, their output has to be transformed into
macaroni, computer cole's law, metaphors, weasels, and
helium. then i'm seeing it filtered through aldous's
heuristic spam filter... and, finally, when i play it back
in memory later....

i'm seeing all of the previous paragraph being paraphrased
in macaroni, and i realize i should move away from video
camera metaphors.

my mind can be camera-like, but it's not raw video. anything
i can consciouslly access from the recording has been
translated through a zillion layers of matryoshka brains


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-25 07:23 [#02502320]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



anyways, i'm terribly behind on all the things, because i
spend so much time exercising. i feel doomed, but also
sharp. sharp as a tack. i'm triple-noting this in my brain
so i keep it up when things explode tomorrow or this weekend
or whatever. because they will. like a tack


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-26 05:22 [#02502392]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



a buffer is important in driving. the amount of space you
leave in between yourself and the next car. enough time to
react, but not so much other cars whip in and cut you off.
balancing those two on the highway at rush hour is a pretty
advanced thing, really, involving lots of experience in what
you're gonna get coming and when. reading the twitches of
other cars and watching through the windshield of the car
ahead of you.

then, yes, here's music, and i'm eyeing the slow car. i'm
dropping off to build a huge buffer because i want to let
the car magnificently coast down this ginourmous hill. the
end of it slopes up and slows you down perfectly for a
curve; do it right and you're easily three quarters of a
mile without pressing a pedal.

so yes, use the music to time the size of the gap you need
and when to let the car begin doing the solar sail thing
until you hit approximately 20% of the speed of light


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-26 05:29 [#02502393]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



bikes were giving me grief on the hiking trails today. it's
mostly my fault for going when i knew the park would be
busy, but they did a lot to make it worse.

i listen/watch for bikes and get out of their way. no
problem. but when you take five minutes to huff up behind
me, slowly creeping, forcing me to watch you instead of
where i am stepping, i begin to get rather annoyed.

then when you finally pass me, and you conk out at a trail
marker and rest until i'm a thousand feet ahead, and do the
same shit over again, i begin to get really annoyed.

then you're also yelling at your other bike buddies and so
when i hear an aaaughdammit i don't bother to suppress the
audible guffaw rushing to escape my gut.

then i'm walking very fast, faster than you can bike. you
conk out again. debate with bike buddy about a hill i have
nicknamed The Heart Attack. you loudly and masculinely
debate that it might be fun to "bonk" down that shit, yo.

then i'm no longer annoyed. i am full of giggling rabbits. i
take off down the hill as your geezer biker butts are
arguing about the hill in the rhythm of a horse galloping,
roughly 180bpm. my sunglasses want to fly off, so i take
them in my hand to defuse the issue. if they'd tried to
chase me, i'm sure they would have lost.

so, yes, i have no problem with bikes, but if they become a
pain in the ass, i can always outwalk them


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-26 07:36 [#02502406]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



stirring up synchronicities is definitely where the
art meets the science. doing everyday things
like pressing the microwave buttons in time, walking across
the room in time, opening the microwave in time, all day.
because i love doing it, really.

but then come the moments: i'm doing all that and i'm on a
roll. everything's syncing up on my end, my movements and
microwaving the bag of meat i dumped onto a grease-proof
paper plate (or, well, three, because they're not
that grease-proof).

i'm riffing on other people slamming doors and chatting
along with all this. not with any intent; i've learned that
can get out of hand quickly. just casually, like the
microwave. boom, microwave door. boom, neighbor door. boom,
some guy goes JDKdfdFD really loud to his buddy in the hall.
boom, i lay a colossal, resonant fart in the perfectly
placed void between their exchange. boom, silence. boom,
microwave beeps. lunch is ready


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-26 07:41 [#02502407]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



i guess if i had to TLDR this whole mess of a thread, i'd
say: rhythm is a strange machine that will reliably deliver
a stream of charming absurdity to your life if you treat it
right


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-26 07:50 [#02502408]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



at times i feel like the pied piper. i don't even like pies.
i like acceleration. those bursts of acceleration that drag
the blood to the back of the brain, as hunter s. thompson
said. in the groove, mashed back into my seat, my analysis
machinery kicked in a day or two ago and said: parts of you
feel like you're cumming. the blood in the back of your
skull; that's a real thing. how are you breathing? how can
you take a bit of this home, like a doggie bag from the
chinese joint?

but then the moment was over. i'll have to wait for another
one to look at how i'm breathing. first time i caught it
all, it was gone by the time i tuned into my breathing
layer. all sorts of things happen to me when i'm feeling the
music and flooring it, with crying being the most common.
also yelling, essentially what passes for a yee-haw from
someone who definitely isn't a good-old boy

it is very cathartic and cleansing. studying why is
rewarding.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-26 08:01 [#02502409]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



"emotion" is a complex thing, but i think it makes intuitive
sense to say that some people are "more emotional" than
others. on top of that you have "emotional control." old men
that used to be loud and angry young men can remain
precisely the same inside and simply get very good at
keeping it to themselves instead of acting out.

i am an extremely emotional person. when i get mad, i get
really mad, and so it became very important for me to learn
how to not get mad, and how to handle it when i fail and get
mad. i have also endured anguish that borders on physical
pain and had me punching myself in the head after four
weeks. thinking about drinking bleach. i don't want to die,
i just can't take the pain. i lay down and had a serious
think about it. all the reasons, do it or don't.

well, it'd really hurt, but i was hurting worse. then on to
the usual, friends and family i'd hurt along with myself.
that didn't move me too much. part of why i was in such a
pit at the time was terrible messed-up shit in my family.

then i thought of one of my art projects. it could have been
the SK-1, or some bit of cardboard. what i'd come to
recognize as the notion-layer said to me: if you die, none
of that will get done. it is yours, and no one else can
finish it.

that annoyed the ever-loving piss out of me. i decided that,
well, fuck it, if i'm going down i may as well finish a few.
i got out of bed and began to work on whatever it was. i was
still a mess, but that was when i began to get better on a
fundamental level. that pit is always there, like booze, but
i've learned ways around it, because it ate me down until
nothing was left but a deep and strong desire to create.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-26 09:57 [#02502416]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



so i'm off for a drive after that heavy stuff, and it's
eating at me: i've covered this before. i could just be
confusing it with a time i've told a friend about it, but
no, darn it, did i cover that on xlt? in my own thread
already? this is the point where having my conscious
monologue cached to disk would work a lot better if i'd
repaired that index mechanism the moment the whim hit me.
but, no, i wussed out and now it's starting to be a mess.
like my own mind.

like all the stuff i have in backlog. like hacker koans. i
don't want to try and go create a better garbage collector.

also deeply cutting through my life is this one about the
nature of "randomness":

In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came
to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.

“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky.

“I am training a randomly wired neural net to play
Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied.

“Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky.

“I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to
play”, Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.

“Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his
teacher.

“So that the room will be empty.”

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.


randomness is in the eye of the beholder. there is really no
such thing as randomness; it is a concept we have invented,
just like the number three. you can find three of something
in nature, but that's not the same thing as an abstract
symbol that represents access to a complex set of metaphors
known as counting.

trying to "randomly" wire the neural net does not mean it
has no preconceptions about how to play, it simply means
that you don't know what those preconceptions are.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-26 10:05 [#02502417]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



out for a drive, i had on totems flare, and growl's garden
really got to me at 65mph. slow down to stop for a light,
gun it at the banger end as clark signs his tracks, and i'm
sobbing. it's a very sad song, really. part of the driving
is escaping the pressure, freedom, and all, but the
catharsis is something deeper. stuff gets to me, it really
does.

music has always felt like a sort of pressure-release valve.
nine inch nails got me through high school. it's only now
that i'm really questioning that and studying it, though. i
feel like it's very important to go out at 4am when i have
the highway to myself and truly let go for a bit. all the
horrible stuff bothering me, cry it out.

i have to credit mushrooms with this, at the root. dredging
through my own past and finding buried pain and trauma.
crying for what seemed like hours. then the notion-layer
said: alright, enough being sad, time to be happy. and then
i cried just as hard because i was happy. it was a firehose
approach, though, and in daily life it's best to mete this
out in a deliberate fashion. it is, quite simply, like
taking a shit. after crying all the terrible things, i feel
like i've just taken a huge dump. lighter. i can gen on with
life.

i regularly experience moments of joy that some people
probably only hit upon when their first child is born, but
the price for that is moments of pain that are just as
sharp. like weeds in the garden, i always have to keep
pulling them out.

then rainbow voodoo came on and i was crying because i was
happy, and also yelling. i won't describe my driving on the
advice of legal weasel. then i pulled into a gas station and
got myself together so i wouldn't be a sobbing wreck when i
went in to buy cigarettes.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-26 10:10 [#02502418]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



the explosion timer is getting pretty bad. counting down to
single digits. i really gotta defuse dat bomb. finish some
of my general life backlog before it eats me alive.

it dawned on me that reading all through this in a linear
manner to make the index will make a fine bootstrap
mechanism for me to resume this later. i can let this spiral
go and have a thread to tug it back into action later. i
haven't ever written myself a path back into any of these
streaks, and i really hope it works, because that could be a
massively effective mechanism.

so, i'm going to trust in that, for the sake of
science as well as my own behind. gonna sign off for
a bit and muddle through a bit shit


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-27 03:44 [#02502477]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



i suppose there is something in confessing my sins. there's
something very catholic about the brutal-but-honest moral
inventory. my mum had a catholic high school in the bronx
and everything i've heard told me the nuns there were
complete dicks.

my father had a mum who thought boys should go to church as
a social development thing and a father who had nothing but
contempt for churches. so my grandparents compromised:
grandpa shopped around, toured all the town parishes, and
picked the one he found most tolerable. that was where my
dad was dragged. when my sister and i were... i dunno, ten
and eight? my father said: church is there if you want it.
it's entirely your decision, though.

i said no thanks; my sister stuck with it through
confirmation. my parents reliably drove her there like
soccer practice but did little to interfere with her
autonomy. some parents are terrible; mine weren't. just have
their issues along with everyone else. but there was a
certain level of respect for the decisions of a budding mind
that i am eternally grateful for.

today i fucked up. it happens; i'm human. i was going to
make a left out of a lot and i was fussing with the food i'd
just bought and wasn't looking thoroughly. caused some poor
chap to jam on the brakes, hard. felt terrible about it. he
tailgated me for miles. followed me after numerous turns
down sidestreets. he has my sympathy. it was entirely my
fault. normally i'd get angry with that sort of behavior,
but i feel like i might have done the same in his shoes.

the only thing is i know it didn't make him feel any better.
never makes me feel any better... but, hey, i fucked up. god
bless. that was a "dick move" on my part and i have the
utmost respect for your anger, mang.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-27 03:48 [#02502478]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



i always felt there was something about catholicism, in the
stopped-clock-tells-the-right-time-twice-a-day sense. the
padre in the privacy booth. privacy wasn't even a thing when
that started. relieve yourself, like taking a dump.

i don't like putting a priest in charge of that, but there's
something about the whole system that makes intuitive sense
to me.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-27 03:58 [#02502479]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



you want a real trip? epigentic psychology. how patterns of
human behavior can ripple backwards through a family tree
like the frozen progress of a state machine. patterns that
alternate back and forth between generations. other patterns
that move in a three-waltz and skip a generation. how your
mum's reaction to her dad causes her to unconcsiously fight
certain patterns in herself and unintentionally pass them
along to you vicariously.

genetics is massively important. it's the hardware you're
built on. but software layer; the lamarckian clusterfuck.

i went through a phase in my pre-teens where i would
compulsively yank out my eyelashes and touch them to the top
of my upper lip. the skin there is super-sensitive; building
circuits years later i'd use the same spot to see if the
op-amps on the filter i'd just built were getting too hot
(miswired). the end of my eyelash folicule felt cool and
pleasant. deeply. i knew it was bad news and the reason i
quit is because i recognized the value of eyelashes; my
parents prodding had nothing to do with it. i stopped
because it was a bad habit, and i knew it.

years later, i caught my father in his office doing the
exact same thing. he'd lifted it off me. my father does this
thing with the cartilidge in his ear that makes a crisp
snapping noise. i remember pressing him: how do you do that?
show me. c'mon. c'mon

his response: no, i'm not going to tell you. because you
won't be able to stop.

genetics plus learned patterns.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-27 04:05 [#02502480]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



it is the worst part of fate, really. i've had a good
relationship with my sister past the pre-teen bickering, but
as of late i've spotted her sporting some of my mom's worst
habits.

trying to point it out to her is just as tough as it would
be trying to point that sort of shit out to myself; fuck off
etc. goddamit. i've spent years brutally tearing myself
down, seeking out patterns -- epigenetic and genetic alike
-- becoming aware and taking control. but, you can't foist
that on someone else. all i can do is be gentle about it and
wait for her to come around on this or that.

patience is one of my weakest aspects


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-27 04:13 [#02502481]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



my father was in san francisco in 1967. right at the crux of
it all. he visited ken kesey's ranch before it got shut
down. people would kill to have lived in that place at that
time! i must confess, though, i'm annoyed at him: i feel
like he doesn't appreciate what he's had.

he told me how he'd seen how the kesey gang had "painted the
trees psychedelic" and the whole tone of his dialog was as
if he were speaking of syd barrett. he is of the opinion
that ken kesey was a great writer until he got deep into
psychedelics.

he did acid a few times and then he got a tablet that was
meth or something very un-lysergic. a seriously bad trip,
whatever it was, and he quit drugs forever. at that point,
his life as an adventurer was over and he was overcome with
the burning urge to have some kids. he's told me this, in so
many words. it is both depressing and inspiring at once: he
pushed it as far as he was able, then he tapped out and
decided to spawn some crazy nutters to take it a bit
further.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-27 04:23 [#02502482]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



that school bus metaphor that was nagging at my
consciousness? it's a multi-part thing. three or six things
at once. that's why good metaphors nag at you: it feels more
significant than any individual reason you can rationalize
out, and that's because it's multiple things at once.

obviously, ken kesey's magic school bus is one part of it.

next, when i was about four, in pre-school, i spontaneously
decided that the whole class of kids and their minders
really, really needed to go outside and paint on the windows
with soapy water. somehow i managed to sort out an
unorthodox, unplanned recess. i got everyone in the place
outdoors and painting on the windows with soap. not bad for
someone that age. more than that, pretty strongly weird.

it was a massive success. everyone had a great time. then
the arch-matriarch of the joint (who was familiar with my
nonsense already) took me aside after it was over: now you
have to clean the windows.

i was four. i threw a shitfit: "everyone else helped make
the mess!" i shot off. again, pretty solid logic for four,
but she had me cornered. she said: "but it was your idea."

and so we have the next meaning: i have a lot of wonderful
things in me, leadership sort of things, but it will never
live up to its potential without a lot of brutal work that
falls on my shoulders alone. everyone else just gets to
enjoy it, but i really have to work.

the full analogy was: "saying i am broken is like saying a
school bus is broken because it doesn't work underwater."

then i remembered how my parents took me to a gypsy for a
reading (for the lulz) when i was six months old. she said
i'd be "part fish, and all-american boy." well, there's the
underwater thing again. i'm also an exceptionally strong
swimmer.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-27 08:24 [#02502493]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



this is one of those things i've wrote fragments of all-over
like but now i'll gather them more properly.

summer 2009, i procured an illegal early leak of totems
flare off of this chap we'll call "the internet." i've
largely hung up on water pipes these days, but i was
listening to that album after quite a few bubbles and i was
really loving it.

i wrote to clark on myspace: "oh, gosh, i love this... yeah,
it's an early leak, sorry, and, uhhh, what are the lyrics to
rainbow voodoo?" like the button on my AC unit says,
"constant fan." cough.

he kindly replied; typed up the lyrics for me. i asked if i
could post them on watmm, and he replied, "oh, go on then
:)" i'm sure i'd heard the phrase before but it was the
first i'd really noticed it. then i noticed it again in sean
of the dead, at the end, when he's going out to be sean in
the shed. his girl says it. i got what clark meant from the
context he used the expression in, but only when i heard it
in that movie a month or three later did i really get the
flavor of it.

there's a lot of reasons i remember that day. i was driving
up to see my boyfriend -- named daniel -- whom i hadn't seen
for a couple weeks, and i was stoked. my car at the time had
a beefy stereo with shitty speakers and broken AC. highway
driving in the summer meant i could have breathable air or
music that wasn't a clippy, distorted mess, but not both.

totems flare sounded fantastic through that clipping. clark
gets so much shit for that sound, but there, take that. it's
the only thing my old honda could handle on the highway in
the summer.

related: i switched on an EQ preset "bass boost" in my
phone's media settings, and it has changed my life. it turns
lights seen in the rear-view mirror into buzzing form
constants, like you get with powder on a speaker cone at
tuned frequencies. it also noticibly ruins clark albums.

part of why the album gets me so worked up is all this
attached to it.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-28 09:18 [#02502544]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



i just had the most amazing experience. i had on the
backstreet boys track i've mentioned here previously. it's a good
singing track, and i started to sing to it. i was really
getting into it, so i put on El Camino by The Black Keys
next.

El Camino is a great singing album, suited to my range, etc.
the choruses are universally easy to sing while the verses
are really difficult. this has always fascinated me; it's
clearly deliberate on some level.

tonight, though, i was nailing the verses. when i slipped
out of the groove, it was usually because i was too busy
saying to myself: holy crap, did that just come out of me?
that sort of mama cass wall-shaking kind of singing that
i've never quite managed like i did tonight.

i always skip tracks on El Camino. lonely boy, wow, wat?
just letting it go along.

gold on the ceiling, experimenting with, uh, falsetto, i
think it's called? quiet vs. loud singing, with the quiet
falsetto being much easier to hit the high notes with.

little black submarine, mama cass comes out of me and i am
gobsmacked.

i let a few songs i don't like singing pass by to give my
voice a rest and then skip to Stop Stop. it's the toughest
of the bunch for me. out of my range at points. i'm tuning
around to the balls of resonant vibration inside me for
various frequencies and i figure this is what people mean
when they refer to feeling like they're outside of
themselves when they sing. looking at the body like it's an
image on a screen and tuning it to different resonances.

tuning... which, by the way, felt a lot like tuning an
oscillator. i'm not practiced at it enough to jump across
the scale and land on the right rock in the pond.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-28 09:25 [#02502545]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



singing is like piano, to me. i lash out and hit the keys
and it's about where i want, but vague. like i have oven
mitts on. gradually, i moved up to winter gloves and then
thin leather gloves... wham, mash, and now it's more or less
where i want instead of just in the neighborhood.

i give up on Stop Stop and skip back to Gold on the Ceiling,
and start fussing with vibrato -- another thing that, well,
i know what i want, i just had trouble singing it. skip back
to Lonely Boy and i more or less have it down. yeah, ok,
vibrato, a song and a half, there. i interrupt myself with
giggles after spontaneously doing a
paul-macca-does-little-richard "woo!" i try to do it again
deliberately, but, no, i think it just has to come out on
its own.

so much of it felt like it was coming out on its own, and
that trying to fuss with the low-level guts of it actually
sent it off the rails. keep a focus on what's coming out of
yourself rather than how you're making it. adjusting my
pitch when i landed wrong, i felt that sense of parallelism
i've felt with driving. previously, adjusting my pitch would
yank me out of the rhythmic groove, and by the time i was on
key, i was off time with the track. now i seem to be able to
do both at once.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-28 09:34 [#02502546]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



After Gold on the Ceilings got me onto vibrato, Little Black
Submarines drifted by, and then on Stop Stop for the second
time, i found myself playing with beat frequencies between
my own voice and the guy singing. never in my life have i
been able to do that, and it felt very casual and natural.
just like tuning an oscillator on a synth. not thinking
about how to execute things, just thinking about what i want
to execute.

this is that non-linear shit i'm after. i started singing and
completely expected what i used to get: enthusiastic but
cringe-worthy. the spirit is there but i'm best locked away
so noone can hear. instead i felt precision, agility, and a
sense of broad focus on the big picture rather than getting
lost in all the mechanisms.

dancing, doing everything in time to a beat. it's soaked
into my breathing on some levels, and i found it uncannily
natural to twist and contort things inside myself.

i've been studying breathing, too. i have a relationship
with lots of muscles down there i didn't really know,
previously. between deep breathing and hours of
hiking/dancing, i have lung capacity i've never had before.
more exciting is lung... well, dexterity? fine-grained,
quick 'n' responsive control of everything.

deeply tearing into mental automation, re-factoring my own
mental structures. fixing things simply because they seem to
need fixing. then out of nowhere, i can really, really sing.
i cried about it. so lovely.

so much makes sense that i never saw before: i could feel my
voice warm up just like my muscles do after fifteen minutes
of hiking. i spotted loads of bad habits and potential
fixes. the whole thing bootstrapped and dialed itself in,
after a mere forty-five minutes. i have a long way to go on
jumping around the scale rather than moving in thirds, but
45 minutes a day should have me better on that in... i
dunno, a week or three.

yep, feeling smug tonight


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-28 09:38 [#02502547]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



also noteworthy: i smoked a cigarette or two, but i was
otherwise sober. i can't even say "oh, it's because i was
stoned," because i wasn't. it was all me


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-28 09:49 [#02502548]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



oh, yes, on the mama cass / gobsmacked tip -- i meant to
mention a word i mentioned for some reason: cobfounded. it's
a portmantaeux of gobsmacked and confounded. i have been
cobfounding myself a hell of a lot, recently


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-29 00:40 [#02502569]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



feeling far less smug today. i'm behind on work, behind on
sending invoices for work, bad at juggling my expenses, and
now it has very real potential to cascade and i may have to
couch surf or sleep in my car unless bank transfers happen
faster than they usually do. and it is no one's fault but
mine. fuck. at least i can sing


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 01:37 [#02502623]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



i fell into the pit again for a few hours, yesterday. so
weighed down by all the crap going on that i was lying in
bed like a blob creature. i dragged myself out for exercise
and such despite being in a foul mood, and if i hadn't it
would have been far worse. it's the end of the month and i
botched multiple deadlines involving moving money around and
i was in shit creek. before i continue, i'll note it's gone
180 today, and i've more or less put out all the fires.
getting to that is what's interesting.

anyways, i've spent a lot of time depressed. mostly in high
school, a bit in college, a real bad stretch after that, the
next five years were wonderful. 2013-14 it was real bad
because my wonderful life imploded and i was completely
unprepared. i spent a lot of time in bed dredging through
everything mercilessly.

i have always felt there's a functional aspect to
depression. you are willing to tear through all sorts of
things you deeply believe and set them on fire, and if
something is holding you back, this can eliminate it.

the first negative is obvious: it sucks balls. it's absolute
shit.

the secong negative only becomes apparent after it's too
late: you are equally likely to set fire to all sorts of
wonderful things in addition to roadblocks. in a word, it
leads to self-destructive behavior. self-destructive
behavior can spiral and make the whole thing worse.

my do it or don't moment was, i believe, early 2014. it was
before i even had to sell all my gear off, and i'm really
glad, because i might not have made it without that.

that forms the lowest level of my reaction to depression:
that point comes back to me, and i say: this day sucks, but
future ones will not. this does not get me out of bed, but
it keeps things from getting properly dark.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 01:46 [#02502624]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



the second layer of reaction is to get up. get out of bed.
get moving. i know from experience that getting myself
moving (instead of stewing) is the hardest and most
important step to getting out of the pit. it's been a while
since i've had the trouble with that, that i did yesterday.


once you're in there a bit, past trauma begins to bubble up.
i really miss my synths. they were like pets to me. i love
my laptop like most people love a dog. a sort of genuine
fondness that can even go oxytocin release. the synths were
so much deeper. focused in a way a computer isn't, and very
strong personalities. it was worse than putting a dog down.
it was like i was one of those people with 47 cats and the
house is a warzone of feline wreckage and the county comes
and takes them all away. i was not taking care of shit
properly... it was 47 cats bad, but it was bad. this does
not mean the trauma of losing my pets was any less real.

i've been through this with myself before: it's over. it
sucks, but if you work hard, you can buy a few back
eventually. don't dwell on it, because that won't get them
back. get up, because working on your life might.

but then i've messed a bunch of stuff in my life up, and i
feel crushed by the weight of untangling the mess i've made
for myself.

at this point, i try bribery. i write a few little things in
my head to post to twitter. i was at the gas station and the
song on the megacom sang: "all my exes live in texas; and
that's why i hang my hat in tennessee." solid giggle before
i went back to feeling sour.

so i'm hacking the lyrics in my mind, in bed, and this is
the only bit of respite i've had all day: "all my execess
lives in taxes?" no, that's too confusing. "all my excess is
taxed in texas." yes, there we are. "and that's why i hang
my headquarters in the irish sea."

but after i'd tuned up the lyricism i didn't feel like
getting up to post it. i am going to go do that now.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 01:57 [#02502625]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



the fundamental block i laid myself up with is that the
money will not get to the thing in time and the thing will
be overdrawn, and this means fees, and this is almost as
terrible as bees. a bee got in my car today, and i got out
very fast. it's a good thing bees can't drive, or i might
have been yellowjacked. i suspect they get particularly
agressive in late summer because they know they're going to
die soon and they're pretty pissed about it. that, or the
food sources are so picked over that a hamburger is as
tempting as a glass of lemonaide.

anyways, the fees were bad enough, but with the end of the
month, i have loads more coming. this could mean more
overdraft fees, and also late fees. worst of all, when the
place i'm staying bills me... well, if that bounces, fuck.
this is the end of the world

and that's where it went into bullshit. it is not the end of
the world. hell, it's not even like you don't have the
money. it's just huge fucking mess and it will be over once
you deal with it. fuck the fucking fees.

then i went out and got cigarettes and gas. if you leave the
gas out of it, that was a $45 pack of cigarettes. i knew
this clear as a bell as i bought them, because, well, fuck
it. sometimes you have to burn perfectly good money on the
Altar of Chaos.

i am working on my internal issues very diligently and this
bit of my life has gone to shit meanwhile. the consequences
are real ($200 in fees sounds about right at the end of
this) but i already have the infrastructure in place to make
them little more than a bump in the highway. this turned the
fees from bees into minutae, and with the emotional pressure
gone, well, i could get back to dealing with the mess.

i'm still waiting for the gears to churn and see how much
i've lost on botching it, but it's more of a casual
people-watching vibe as opposed to tensing up like i'm about
to be in a trainwreck.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 02:10 [#02502626]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



re: lucky lighter ~ superstition-class notion

lucky lighter was running low on fluid again, today. as
discussed, the policy was to purchase a new, identicial
lucky lighter, ideally from the same store -- or the closest
i could get without driving all over town. reasonable
attitude for the sake of resource management.

i bought a new, identical lighter at the same store, but
forgot to toss the old one on the way out. i was going for a
hike next, and i thought, oh: i can bury it in the woods!
that seems appropriate; it's something a daft magick ritual
would have you very seriously do anyways. the core of it is
to put some conscious groundwork in, and that's what makes
the machine work.

i'm walking onto the trail and i decide: no, that's too
complex. it will wear me down doing it every time. besides,
it has fluid in it, and i don't want to leave it in a park
full of burninatable things. i decide i'll just throw it out
in the trash can after my hike, and it can come along for a
nice little outing before being put out to pasture.

then i forgot about it for the rest of the hike, rambling to
myself in my head about rhythm and breathing (next post).
until i was in the exact same spot i was in when i decided
to throw it out in the trash -- then, it came out of hiding
and tore into my path like a rabbit. i threw it in the trash
can.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 02:17 [#02502627]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



walking, i realized i was doing an 2-bar loop. one, two,
three, four. one, two, three, four. inhale and exhale
roughly with the bars.

studying breathing, i've had trouble not interfering. i
always do. i start to feel my heart thumping and i'm aware
of whether i start the inhale on the a heart contraction or
a heart release. at this point, i have trouble not paying
attention to it, and i can actually feel my heart skip a
beat. like, no, wrong. clearly. but then i'm stressing that
i did it wrong and i do it again.

i remembered the first time i had my heart skip a beat (and
i noticed). i was lying in bed, unable to sleep, and heard
my heart pulsing in my ear. then it skipped a beat. i didn't
like it. it freaked me out. then it did it again. doctors
eventually told me i had inherited cardiac arrhythmia, the
PVC variant.

today, i am actually pretty sure my arrhythmia -- largely
gone since i got in shape -- is a software problem. i caused
it myself by breathing improperly without understanding that
was the root of it, and it took hold as a feedback loop that
doctors later diagnosed as a physical ailment. perhaps it
is, perhaps it's not.

anyways, when i'm hiking, i can ignore my heart and look at
breathing with less distraction. my feet are going in
rhythm. one, two, three, four. i realize, this is my way in:
counting with the beat. it's so deep in my brain from music.
it's very easy to focus on it, and not get myself
distracted. my feet do it naturally.

aaron funk described his obsession with counting. also how
he can enjoy 4/4 music, but -- for some reason -- has
trouble writing it himself. well, my answer is that rhythm
is crucial to having the trains of thought stay on the
rails, and that's he likes to count. i didn't do that, but i
had other similar foibles as a child. so has just about
everyone i've ever dated, by the way.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 02:25 [#02502628]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



with enough hiking, and my feet to distract me from my heart
rate, i can glue a deeply-implemented structure -- counting
a two-bar loop -- into breathing. eventually i will breathe
in sync with the loop and it will be as natural as walking
with it already is. then i can lie down in bed and count as
i breathe and this will allow me to observe heart rate
effects without losing my marbles and breathing
incorrectly.

i should note it's not exactly one bar in, one bar out. it
feels a bit lopsided. i'll need more hiking to sort out how
far, but i'm of prodigy's track "one love (edit)" off music
for the jilted generation. circa 2008, i smoked some herb
after abstaining for a good few weeks and i had one of the
few moments of spontaneous, primal synaesthesia that i've
had: i saw the aaayaaa loop as a loop with a gradient of red
to blue and back. tilted offside, like a lissajous pattern.
i realized: that's breathing. it's got to be. that's the man
in the track going aaayaa.

this leads us to what i've realized: at the core, my brain
forms a shitload of neural connections every day. it's like
lightning that i have to earth properly, or it will burn me
up. getting ahead of the tide is tough, because each day all
sorts of junk flies into my brain, and i will remember it
more or less forever.

science has proposed autism stems from an overwired brain --
neural connections that are too dense. i've thought about
this a zillion times before. smart people get depressed
because they think of loads of horrible crap that never
occurs to dumb people. it led to a dismal thought: there is
a structural limit to human intelligence. being too smart
leads to emotional problems and suicide prunes the genes.

now i realize: no, it's tough, but you can get ahead of the
curve. the winning formula is: rhythm, engineering, and
smoking weed. i love this, because it's about all i ever
wanted to do in the first place.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 02:30 [#02502629]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



i have an overwired brain, but so do many others. i am not
unique.

rhythm is the (programming) language of consciousness, and
paradigm is the compiler. if you can read the previous
sentence and understand it, you should now have a
functioning binary on your system.

but this is like saying, "you now have awk installed on your
unix box." it does nothing unless you use it, and using it
is complex and deep. after a few years, though, you begin to
forget you're even using it. you think in modules of complex
awk phrases that you've done a thousand times instead of the
individual bits of syntax.

when someone asks: how did you do that? it's like someone
asking you "how did you just use the UHHH vowel sound when
you were speaking, just there?" answer is: i learned to
speak when i was young, i got good at it, and now i don't
have to think about it anymore.

explaining how it works to someone is hopeless. you have to
walk the path, so to speak. it's as puzzling to others as
i'm sure the nuances of spoken english are to dogs. but,
bless them, they never stop trying to figure it out


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 02:32 [#02502630]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



metaphor is the (programming) language of consciousness;
paradigm is the compiler. if you understand this, you should
now have a functioning binary on your system (of a
compiler).

typing about rhythm so much made it take over the metaphor
for metaphor. metaphorest. metafive. didn't like him much


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 06:36 [#02502631]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



re: dogs trying to figure it out ~ cheeky-class metaphor

i realized i've done this before, on yugo, in what is
tantamount to a little burp of all that's been coming out of
me now. backwards in time. here: wumpus


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 06:38 [#02502632]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



re: metaphor metaphor ~ metametaphor

i realized this has been done before, and it goes: "do as
thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." it hit me either
before or after sascha was yelling "turn your code / into
law" -- i can't recall precisely.

yes, i've clarified what crowley was getting at and
translated it into a metaphor only software engineers will
understand. back to feeling smug. i much prefer it over
depressed


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 07:06 [#02502636]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



i was thinking a great band name would be: simbal monkey

cymbal monkey
symbol monkey
simple monkey
simian monkey

that's a four-bird stone. pretty dank


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 07:08 [#02502638]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict | Followup to EpicMegatrax: #02502636



johnny was a scientist with a simbal monkey problem


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 09:20 [#02502639]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



i've had all sorts of problems today. all up and down the
mammal tree.

today, driving: first, a bee gets into my car. it's a good
thing i was parked or i might have left that tangle in a
stretcher.

tonight, driving: i have seen a deer, a cat, a fox, and then
a goddamn coyote. i looked at the coyote... like, shit, is
that a coyote? for real? the coyote looked back at me...
like, "yes sir, i am." then he looked away and resumed
walking down the side of the road. i looked back at the road
and resumed driving.

the encounter with the deer was, as usual, more than a tad
frightening. both the fox and the cat were almost off the
road by the time i saw them.

alright, now summer is ending, because that's the only thing
that makes sense to me. it's the end of the summer. i'm
waiting for it to start raining bats at this point and i'm
done driving for tonight


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-08-30 09:30 [#02502640]
Points: 23981 Status: Addict



other things were off. i was re-listening to sacscha
yelling, sturm und drang, neu und fremd, my god let's be
friends. or something... but, yes, anarchy. i killed the
king of deceit.
yes, that would be myself.
david copperfielding myself magnificently. this is all over their lyrics,
and i never noticed.

when i said NIN got me through high-school i should have added KMFDM and
a few others. now i see a surprising depth in the lyrics. i
might be imagining it, but it's still lovely.

i decide to examine MDFMK's album "MDFMK" next. i fish my
googlefone out of my pocket. it is a disaster. i try to add
the album to the queue so juke joint can keep jezebellin'
but my fone misinterprets and puts on NOW, well, now.
blowing away the playlist i've been building for a week.
well, yes, that get the fone shit over with NOW, but it's
not what i wanted.

like i've said: when i get mad, i get really mad. i
screamed, "FUCK YOU GOOGLE" at the top of my lungs, right
into its stupid gorilla glass. some part of me hopes they're
listening to me for "tuning purposes" and an actual human
hears that.

i spent ages on the thing. found a stock fone and a carrier
that would accept a phone without crapware. then i blew in
an aftermarket firmware. for a media player, i tried the
dozen on the android store from the first 50 that were free,
not spyware, and didn't look like a clown designed it. the
best of the lot is still shit. i want to write a proper one
some weekend and release it for free, so google will never
make a dime from it.

twenty-percent time? how about a hundred percent? work for
myself. or perhaps valve software. i think i could tolerate
that. gabe, if you're reading, write me a letter


 


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