MY LIBRARY

I don't read much at all. It's not that I don't have the time but I might not have the patience. In school, growing up, I would let every other classmate answer review questions about the chapter we were to have read the night before. I'd found a way to turn avoiding homework and class participation into an art form. I literally read maybe 20 lines from A Separate Peace and possibly a total of a chapters worth of The Great Gatsby and somehow managed to get Bs on both tests. Don't get me wrong, I am very literate and enjoy writing and appreciate good writers and understand how difficult it is to produce good writings, but I always had an internal monologue reminding me to not get involved with the reading part. Becoming familiar with an author's style always seemed intimidating to me and the 'good' ones usually have a lot of work out there. I couldn't allow myself to sort out the inner-workings of this strangers mind. A relationship perhaps too intimate would form between me and the author and this would surely be a burden to my sanity. Being assigned reading in school also made it seem like work. There was a thin line between a textbook and a novel and the two often teamed up to potentially ruin a sunny afternoon of fun.

Around 1990 I found Calvin and Hobbes. Bill Watterson's comic strip found a way to slip through all of those barriers I put up in my brain, my stubborn attempts to resist the influence of an author. Everything about it fit into my life like clockwork. The artwork itself became more and more refined as the years went by. It "matured" along with me into my teens. The kid and his tiger would literally poise themselves atop higher and higher precipices while expressing perfect observations of life before plunging down the treacherous hills in their little red wagon. We have all faced those moments of much needed clarity in peace and in chaos. Calvin seemed to dislike schoolwork and we frequently found him daydreaming in and out of class. How could I not relate? Hobbes, on the other hand, was Calvin's voice of reason and kept all of us grounded a bit in reality. It was all there in Calvin and Hobbes. I was there in Calvin and Hobbes! These days I often mention that I learned everything I need to know from that strip. Calvin and Hobbes was my textbooks and it's my collection of novels. Bill Watterson retired the strip on December 31st 1995 and sent me off into the world bestowed with this unique knowledge and perception of the entire universe to use at my disposal. Face it... Gatsby wasn't nearly as great.

MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES PT.1

As mentioned in the first C.O.P. blog post, I consider myself to be a shapeshifter of sorts. My interest in activities, art, people, and personal style changes from year to year if not minute by minute. Sometimes my interests are recycled and sometimes I uncover something entirely new.

For part one of this ADD-ridden flux, I will start with exposing you to the Scratch DJ. I would have to say my interest in Hip Hop drifted solely to the DJ in 1995 when a lot of amazing things were happening with DJ crews in the San Francisco Bay area (Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters), on the East coast in New York (X-ecutioners), and in the U.K. (Scratch Perverts) that were grabbing my attention throughout the '90s. Q-Bert, Mix Master Mike, Short Kut, Apollo, Yoga Frog, D-Styles, Disk, Flare, and A-Trak make up the Skratch Piklz and they reigned in the '90s. Their skills influenced- and intimidated- other DJs to such a degree that Q-Bert and Mix Master Mike were asked to no longer participate in the DMC championships in order to give other DJs a fair chance at winning, granting them legendary God-like status. Meanwhile another DJ crew, The Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters, harbored one of my personal favorite DJs/producers Eddie Def. Eddie Def and his crew developed the first ever battle record Hamster Breaks vol. 1. Each track on Hamster Breaks vol. 1 was crafted to include continuous sampled words and phrases or looped beats intended for scratching and beat juggling. Eddie's style was a little sloppy and care free and he went on to produce a huge amount of solo drum machine driven projects. In the early '00s it seemed like 3 Eddie Def albums came out per year for a few years straight. Some of his output was lo-fi, minimal or even unfinished sounding, but I admired his aim and overall he influenced much of the early beat driven music I ended up making on my computer. There is something about scratching records that goes far beyond that abrasive back and forth 'wikky-wikky' sound everyone is familiar with. There are infinite sounds and techniques, and as seen in some of the videos below, an innovative DJ must have a mind that understands sonic architecture and complex combinations of patterns. I'll let these clips of scratch DJing at its finest speak for themselves. Oh yeah, and that DJ Swamp routine is one of the best routines ever!

LEERIX

She says, "Go! Be careful what you catch-

You'll have to eat it next, and you can't take the taste of game."

and I say, "No! I'll drag it through your door-

I'll leave it on the floor, just to pretend I can't be tamed."

~Andrew Graham - from the song Take it Easy on Kathy at Least She Can Dance

LATENT ASSASSIN

Almost every morning I wake up and my mind does a quick review of what just happened. Most of the dreams are already forgotten, and the ones that linger read like fortune cookies written in broken English. I roll over. Now I think about the night before. Sometimes I'm relieved to know I stayed in, saved some cash, and that surplus of energies should allow my morning to run a little more smoothly. Sometimes I can immediately feel the old almost worthless alcohol buzz oozing off me, and I wonder why I wasted so much energy just to have a conversation with a friend. Regardless; I've now been reset. I have a day ahead of me and an impending evening wrought with simple models of moral circumstance. Still in bed, I'm almost paralyzed with the task of sorting out my persistant past, present, and future. It's such a sloppy process that I almost feel completely new. I might as well be three years old learning the days of the week for the first time. Today(Wednesday) I recognize just how vulnerable I am when resetting. Throughout an average day I demand my personal space, I spend my hard earned money, I make friends and strangers laugh with my polished wit, and I make sure I stand up straight and keep a close eye on my surroundings. Then all of that conscious effort vanishes and I sleep. My strength is gone. How much easier can I make it for my enemies to blot me out, I wonder, but even they let me sleep. Thank you, enemies. My Neighbors remembered to unplug their iron, so I didn't choke on the smoke of our block burning down. Thank you neighbors. My body kept me breathing and kept my cancers at a safe distance from my vital organs. Thanks automatic motor functions. A new day and I can already feel my strength returning. Everyone else seems charged as well. A delivery truck is idling, waiting for its driver and his empty dolly. Members of the local gym jog to the gym to jog in the gym. My roommates make their escapes to work. These are our attempts to assassinate the naked delicate person in our bed each night. The us who is lucky to be alive.

THE BIG BANG TASTES LIKE LIVER

I'm so tired of hearing about The Big Bang. I enjoy watching shows about science and technology, but every time the subject is The Big Bang, I feel like I'm forcing myself to taste liver for the 5th time. Have you ever tasted liver? I'm pretty sure I remember it tasting like cardboard marinated in mud. My mother would randomly order it if it was on the menu at a cheap restaurant. I would always take a bite of the liver, reassuring myself that it wasn't going to taste as bad as I remembered, but it always tasted awful. This is exactly how the Big Bang theory finds it's way into my head and rests in my gut, leaving my brain reeling with questions, regret, and a nasty aftertaste.

According to popular scientific theory; at the beginning of time, everything (and they mean EVERYTHING! even TIME!) was compressed into an infinitesimally small singularity. This singularity was not floating in space. Space was floating in it. Nothing was in existence at that point. The singularity barely even existed it was so tiny. Then, in an instant: The Big Bang. Within a trillionth of a millisecond the Universe was born and had doubled in size 100,000 times. Radiation, matter, gravity, and, yes, even time were all finally new. Within 10 billion years Earth began to form. 4.5 billion years after that and I'm typing about it. Sigh.

What makes us believe this? Well, in the early '20s American Astronomer Edwin Hubble looked out into space with his observatory's huge Hooker telescope and realized all the little blurs previously assumed to be clouds of gas, were in fact other galaxies. Galaxies neighboring our own Milky Way galaxy (the closest neighbor being 25,000 light years away). Moreover, this discovery led to other observational experiments that proved all of these celestial communities were moving rapidly away form one another. Being bitten by this theory left scientists and the public in a rabies-like frenzy. A thing once presumed wild was now wilder; falling apart even! We wanted an explanation before we hurtled out into abandonment. Quite simply the idea was put in reverse by Georges Lemaître and we could only conclude that everything was real close to one another in the 'beginning'. Logic and reason and science had provided for an interestingly unfathomable -- silencer.

Planck Satellite image of mapped microwave background radiation. AKA- The afterglow of the Big Bang.

So how big is the Universe anyway? Well we have certainly never known the answer to this question. In fact, before Hubble noticed those other millions of galaxies, our Milky Way galaxy was thought to be the near extent of the universe. An idea that seems quite foolish now to a person even of average intelligence. The Universe is relatively huge and potentially infinite. So how can mortal man assume it is expanding from one point? How are we sure that everything (in it's hugeness) is not still carving its way to some other point in some infinitely far corner of the universe to collect and collapse? This simple question is met with furious resistance most of the times I have ever brought it to light. I "...haven't taken enough classes..." or I, "...don't understand how physics works..." enough to dare propose such a theory. What's more interesting is that most people who have challenged me are atheists, or they at least put most of their faith in science over religion. What they don't realize is that they are supporting a theory of God. God was that moment right before the Big Bang. A voice too loud to hear had proclaimed "Let there be Light!" and there was light. Of course these people never read about God discussing the dissolving of radiation and the cooling of matter after all was put into action, so that doesn't dissuade them from being content with The Big Bang. If anything I'm typically Apathetic. I don't care enough to insist I'm right or you're wrong. I'm not too stubborn to admit when I'm wrong, but to not know exactly how huge the Universe is seems like a blaring signal to not take anything to be absolute. The rules of physics are distorted in nonsensical ways at a black hole's event horizon, so why is it not possible that physics can be altered in other areas of the unknown Universe? It is possible. Most people are just satisfied with the idea of nothing at the beginning. The Big Bang theory is simply buying us some time to make up for not knowing. Consider how science and understanding of our physical world has unfolded over the centuries. It is a very proud and clumsy process.

There was nothing at a calculable distance back in time from now? That theory is based on science, science is not based on that theory. Why? Because it might be wrong, mom. You don't have to order the liver.

OUR GROUNDED FUTURE

Why did I want flying cars so badly? I'm pretty sure everyone was certain we would have them by now, but why? Is flying a car really a symbol of advancing society? I guess some people reading this could care less about a flying car, but I was always looking forward to it. The concept seemed like fun in Back to the Future II. I have noticed that this laptop is cooler than I could have dreamed any flying car to be, and my model is a dinosaur already; an Apple G4 Powerbook circa 2004! It pretty much does what I need it to do and has suffered the need for only a few repairs including a new (and upgraded) hard drive, an upgrade of memory, and an occasional hammering out of dents. They don't make 'em like this anymore. Though as old as this laptop is, I don't think the reality of the technology it possesses has sunk in yet. When I stop and think about how easily I can find information by passing my hands over this machine, it's almost frightening. During my blind anticipation of the flying car, and in the waning of that interest, I don't think I saw this one coming.

The information age is upon us! Sure, I was warned about it in those early bizarre 'information superhighway' commercials 16 years ago. I never took it seriously I guess. Even when dial up became available in our home, it seemed like a passing trend. I remember being so excited to jump online when my dad was done working from home. I anxiously waited for web pages of my favorite bands to load at a snail's pace... waiting nervously as if the internet was going to 'go away' before I had a chance to get the exclusive information I needed.

Here it all is! Everything I could have wanted and more. Sometimes too much information is available. How do my cells even keep up? I don't remember installing any new software in my body, so how have I been able to adapt? It's very possible that I'm not adapting too well at all. Something so commonplace as switching on a light when entering a room has evolved into including the sights and sounds that millions of people have conjured and, like creating light with the light switch, the majority of us barely understand it beyond assuming it's some sort of magic. No questions asked or else I might ruin the trick. I suppose I might actually still be more comfortable with the flying car bit. I still kind of like the clunker of a concept that has some old fashioned character and will get me where I need to go at speeds far below that of light. Or maybe I just need to get out more.

MULESKINNER BLUES

Blue Yodel #8, written and recorded by Jimmie Rodgers in 1930, is the original version of what would be known as Muleskinner Blues. Muleskinner Blues saw many reinterpretations from then until now, but the version I've become most familiar with is The Fendermen's version from 1960. About 8 years ago I bought a '50s/'60s hits compilation record for a dollar from a thrift store. The record featured some obvious selections of 'Hop' styled chart-toppers of the era, but The Fendermen's Muleskinner Blues seemed to stick out like a sore thumb. Clearly the subject of the lyrics was derived from something I was not culturally familiar with, and possibly The Fendermen felt the same way, but they sang with such confidence to a point where they seem to lose control and the song's spirit takes over (note: near-insane laughter/yodeling adopted from Joe Gibson's 1959 version.)

An interesting quality of the particular version I own is the tracks tempo and grooves on the record are perfectly in sync, where if the needle skips forward or backward a loop is created. Sometimes the loop will find a rapid fire bass jangle and high pitched guitar flicker, or the loop may find a perpetually perfect, "he heee he he he heee- he heee he he he heee-". It's intriguing to the point were I've actually stood over the record for nearly a half hour manually guiding the needle from groove to groove, creating a 45 minute long version of Muleskinner Blues. I create a different version everytime I try it, and I'm always left smiling in my self-induced hypnosis. I like to think that I've contributed to the long line of reinterpretations of Muleskinner Blues, but it's possible the song has been creating new versions of us over the past 80 years!

By the way- If you don't like your job, then put the buck-buck-bucket down...