BIRTHDAY BUDDHA

The lady came through again for my birthday... *ahem* HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ME!
One of my amazing gifts was a fourth generation Buddha Machine. If you aren't familiar with the Buddha Machine, they are somewhat hard to describe despite their simplicity. The little rascal's creators, Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian are a music/design duo based in China. The two create minimal meditative music that loops seamlessly and repeatedly. Nine of these simple compositions are then housed in a little plastic box with a built-in speaker. Other features of the box include an eighth-inch jack (for headphones and such) and two control dials; one for volume and one for pitch shifting. The pitch shift  ability is an amazingly intimate feature as you can really tune the music in to your own frequency to find that perfect harmony between man and his machine!
Not only is this a unique and wonderful gift idea for anyone, but it is a splendid therapy and could be the key to severe peace for everyone.

THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON LIVING

Melanie Hoch bought me an incredible album for Christmas; Kreng's Works for Abatoire Ferme 2007-2011. Within the past twenty-four hours this frankensteined masterpiece has become my favorite album (I'll consider all four 12" LPs and the 10" record in the box set to be one complete album.) Thank You, Mel, for being an amazing friend and sharing a very wonderful 2012 with me.
For everyone who reads C.O.P: You might absolutely want to listen to this...

"CHRISTMAS TIME TRAVELER" RETURNS SAFELY TO POST-12-21-12-CHRISTMAS EVE! (AGAIN?)

Merry Christmas, Everyone! And Happy Birthday , Mithra, you old fart (not the Son of God, but the God of the Sun- whose birthdate was lent to Christianity in order to nail down a day for the merry-making we know today to be Christmas) Christmas certainly does garishly mark the passing of a year for me and most Americans. Even New Year's Eve/Day doesn't have a marketing campaign that completely envelopes the senses the way Christmas does. We always seem surprised that Christmas is here again, and that it's over so quickly, and then we're quick to look forward to Spring and Summer. I remember teasing a friend, who was exhausted from the holidays at the start of the year, by saying, "Before you know it, it will be Christmas again!" I feel that just by repeating that phrase in my head now, I have managed to somehow skip those 360 days and here I am back on Christmas Eve. I time traveled! Even the same tree found its way into my living room, and if it wasn't for a few new ornaments on that tree I could almost assume I traveled back in time. Yes, Christmas is here again. Familiar holiday sights, sounds, and smells have been assaulting me for over a month now and I can only hope to make it safely back to my time machine to do it all again next year... or last year... or maybe on another planet...

NUTS ABOUT DROSE

Drose is a band from Akron Ohio and they have problems. The music is irritated and distressed. The singer is scared and may be a ghost. I love the minimal complexities of the instrumentation (and how that oxymoronic description embodies said tension). The singer pretty much displays the same cadence in each track, but it's a style that's pretty unique so I allow it to do it's haunting on me.
Hear for yourself! click here!
Also, kudos to the band for making one of the creepiest album covers. Look at that thing!

THE END

The Mayan calendar ends on the fast approaching 21st of December, 2012. Does this mean the world as we know it is going to come to an end? No. It's certainly more likely that I'll be filing my taxes come February.
Suppose, just for the sake of this post, that the world is going to end on Friday the 21st and maybe we're even as ill-prepared as ever. How can one say his goodbyes to everything? If you're made aware of your own passing; you can muster up some noble form of reflection, but knowing that everything will be gone along with you is a different breed of eternity.
My long farewell would go something like this:
Does a peace need to be made now? Or will it be made regardless? Will my enemies finally face their doom? Or will I just think about them a lot less? I won't miss my loved ones. That seems to make the most sense of all. Don't miss your loved ones. Friends, Family, Pets; they have connected with, and not missed, you. Beautiful architecture that I have not hardly begun to understand will finally be relieved of its duty. All color will turn off the light and sleep in an abyss of non-color and the abyss itself will suddenly be nothing more than awake. Goodbye to every small item on the far side of this planet, and at the far edge of this universe, to where I never travelled. Were those items ever real? or were they only illusions? Now they are as real as gods and I too will soon be that real. Although, anything that might survive to bear my footprint would remember the impact as having lacked any god-like oomph. Goodbye silly words like 'oomph'. Goodbye.

STUDENT LOANS

Student loans haunt me every day and they are impossible to pay. Hey, that rhymes! But seriously, I make around ten dollars and some change an hour; Take some taxes out of that and my income is basically minimum wage. Sure, my job as a custom framer and printer is stimulating enough. My work environment also encourages me to do the art that I love, and for the first time in my life I have a decent full-time benefits package, but quite simply I do not make enough money to pay rent and bills and groceries AND pay $250 dollars a month for student loans. The math is just not there. So I resort to a bit of dreaming. I've always been good at drawing but, hell, I'm even better at dreaming! I dream of winning the lottery (even though I don't play the lottery, but that one time I do, my number will definitely hit and I'll be an instant millionaire!) I dream my art will get recognized (even though my art is in a stack on the floor in my room, because even with my employee discount, I can't afford to get all of my pieces framed to prepare for a show) and I dream other dreams that also make everything okay.... sigh...
When I started this blog I was in a pretty low point of my life, but I managed to breathe and think positively and think thoroughly, and that helped me grow a lot and keep a clear and healthy mind and body. I still breathe and will not let the pressure of student loans destroy me. The responsibility is another subject, and I'm working on keeping the ball in my court. Good luck to everyone who faces the same dilemma that I am facing. It can really make you feel vulnerable and worthless at times, but that is exactly how you should not let it win. Keep your chin up, breathe, find good ways to make money to feed that hungry dragon, and stay happy. If I can do it, so can you!

SERIOUSLY. THE F?

On my other blog Almostnaught.blogspot.com I have been posting pictures of my creations. Lately, my inky brush strokes have taken on the form of, what I call, bubble people. I made one particular picture of my bubble people black-and-white and posted it as my Facebook profile picture. My co-worker Jesse saw this and was reminded of a Jan Svankmajer animated short. I'm pretty sure Jesse hadn't even seen the color version of my image but the likeness, in both black-and-white and color, is certainly there in the first two parts of Svankmajer's film. I can only hope that I'm channeling this genius somehow...