A new site design is underway, including integration of the various other sites I’ve been tinkering with for the past several months.
The mission is to bring together all of my endeavors into one, cohesive hub encompassing music, photography, writing, and creativity, in general.
In the meantime, this temporary setup will have to suffice.
Sorry for the delay and poor netiquette. I hope we see each other again.
The greatest weapon against adversity is laughter. What I’d like to offer to you is a little known secret about how laughter can be used to overcome adversity of all kinds. No matter how serious the situation, you can–with time and proper training–wield laughter as you might a sword or chainsaw. I will explain.
PHASE ONE – CRAZY LAUGH
In any given adverse situation, I like to start with an off-putting or even maniacal laugh, which has the occasional advantage of intimidating (or even DESTROYING) adversity outright. More on that later. The important thing to remember is that putting all the “crazy” you can into it is very, very important. Employing the phase one or “Crazy Laugh” is equivalent to going “over the top” in the time-honored sport of arm wrestling. The idea is to give one great, big push to position yourself with the proper leverage against the opposing force. Namely, adversity.
You’re probably skeptical at this point. Good for you. A keen analytical mind is an essential survival tool. Stupid people die stupid deaths all the time. Some of them even win awards for it. But not you. So, to satisfy your hunger for evidence to support this claim, I will describe for you the proper application of this technique in an adverse situation. Take, for example, stepping in a bear trap that partially severs your leg. This is a fairly serious bit of adversity by any standard but not too serious, as I will demonstrate.
Imagine, if you will, that you’re enjoying a leisurely walk through bear country when, perhaps distracted by the sighting of a rare or endangered bird, you unwittingly step in a big, rusty bear trap. You have two choices in this situation. You could cry like an 8-year old girl with a fishing lure stuck in her neck (which will do little to help your situation, let alone your pride) or you can take a moment to calmly assess the situation, look directly at the bear trap and then burst into shrieking laughter with enough force and vigor as to virtually shred your vocal cords (Note: be sure to stop short of that, as there are other phases of laughter to follow).
Reach down into the depths of your bowels and muster a laugh so intense–so disturbingly hysterical–that IMMEDIATELY the situation takes on an entirely different tenor. What was mere seconds before a horrific bit of bad luck is instantly transformed into, at best, a somewhat messy pratfall. Do this and you will send a clear message to the bear trap and your mangled leg that this “rookie shit” is not nearly enough to dampen your formidable spirits. In a word: leverage. In fact, experts in this technique have managed to generate enough leverage using Crazy Laugh that bear traps will actually spring open and leg wounds will spontaneously heal.
DISCLAIMER: that level of ferocious optimism takes DECADES of disciplined practice to achieve. You ain’t there yet. Stay focused.
NOW, assuming you’re not one of the indomitable Masters of Crazy Laugh described above, what you need to do is move to the next phase. Once you’ve applied enough Crazy Laugh to establish dominance, you can then transition to a less off-putting, more bemused laugh, which we’ll call Ironic Laugh.
PHASE TWO – IRONIC LAUGH
Ironic Laugh tells adversity that, while you recognize and acknowledge its effect on your deal, you still have enough control over yourself to appreciate the humor of the situation. This belittles adversity and causes it to doubt itself. Apply Ironic Laugh liberally, gesturing toward the adverse situation as if inviting others to join in your amusement. You can even begin to ad lib a few phrases. Like, “Hahaha, boy, can you believe BEAR TRAPS? I mean, is it really necessary that they nearly SEVER the limb? I mean, it’s a bear TRAP not a bear MAIM, right? I thought the idea would be just to keep the bear from leaving! Seems like a major design flaw to me. Probably could have gone with an adhesive-based system! Anyway, I’m bleeding a lot. Hahaha. Geez…”
By this time, if you’ve applied the techniques properly, adversity is really becoming uncomfortable.
PHASE THREE – VICTORY/TAUNTING LAUGH
The third and final phase is the laugh of genuine amusement. Let’s call it the Victory Laugh (or Taunting Laugh). You can use this to handle smaller adverse situations, like dropping a lit cigar on your exposed genitals. Or, continuing with our example, you can use Victory Laugh after successfully completing the first two phases. As time goes by and your heartbeat begins to slow, and maybe you’re a little chilly from blood loss, the laugh transitions from irony to genuine amusement and maybe even flat out giddiness. This is a proclamation of the euphoric joy of victory. Soon enough your destroyed limb won’t matter at all. Adversity will shrink away, defeated and shamed, while you drift off to a comforting sleep.
I hope you find this useful. The key to perfection is persistence, so keep at it. Remember: adversity is out there and it’s trying to kill you. If you’re going to die anyway, you may as well die laughing.
It’s basically to the point where I have more apology posts than actual posts.
Anyway.
SORRY ABOUT:
DOING ABOUT IT:
First, I really want to fix the way it all looks. If it looks good, I’ll be motivated to visit. Superficial bastard that I am.
I’ll give you a holler when I’m ready to roll again. Cheers.
There’s been a slight change of plans. It’s WordPress from here on out, thanks in large part to my incompetence and impatience. It’s okay, though. I was looking to start over with something fresh.
Originally, the plan was to cut the Blogger stuff loose and start over. Upon doing so, it became apparent that leaving old posts on a blogspot address wasn’t going to solve my one problem: preserving links to images and other files which are hosted on my site. Blogger and WordPress handle those things differently, so basically the links that Blogger made don’t make sense to WordPress. I’m sure there’s some other technical crap involved, too, but I honestly don’t care. The point is, once it was clear that leaving the stuff on Blogger wasn’t going to fix this I figured I may as well bring the stuff along with me.
A bunch of posts didn’t make the cut. A few more will probably be culled in the next few days. Looking back, a lot of the things I wrote give me douchebumps now. Anything causing that reaction is getting deleted. It’s better for both of us.
It’s going to take a few for me to get things set up and looking the way I want them, so it’s going to be ugly around here a while. Sorry about that.
If your feed’s messed up, sorry about that, too. I’m trying to straighten it out with Feedburner as soon as possible.
Blogger has decided to nix FTP support, which leaves me in a little bit of a jam. I’m forced to choose between the following:
Option 3 is the most attractive, of course, because I am reluctant to involve myself in technical ballyhoo. Also, I am lazy. Not to mention the fact that a fresh start might do me some good. The old digs have been feeling a little, well, old lately. I’m a guy who likes to change things around every now and again.
Off I go.
What can I say about this Halloween? That it was more fun than I had any right wishing it would be? That I spent it in absolutely fantastic company? That I experienced what can best be described as a perpetual high for the entire month of October? Yes, I could say all of that. It still wouldn’t be enough.
HOW TO MAKE A KICKASS HALLOWEEN:
Start with a pumpkin carving party that had so much Halloween mojo (thanks mostly to my amazing wife and parents) that a little monsoon rain couldn’t stop some 40-odd (and I DO mean odd) people from coming up to set the back yard aglow with Jack O’Lanterns of every kind.
Add a special visit from my good friends Pumpkinrot and bean, who I finally got to meet after literally years of correspondence, blog posts, collaboration and general warm fuzziness. And you know what? They are the real deal. Kind, generous, wonderful and thoughtful folks. They didn’t even get freaked out when I got us all lost and it was starting to look like that scene from that horror movie. Either that means they knew they could take me or that they’re just that cool. I’m going with ‘just that cool’.
Then top it all off with a return to HAUNTED OVERLOAD in Lee, NH. But, this time, let’s really do it in style. Let’s pile Pumpkinrot, bean and BOY into a car driven by Yours Truly and send them on a road trip for a VIP tour of Haunted Overload, courtesy of owner Eric Lowther. Yeah. Let’s.
HAUNTED OVERLOAD 2009
Ladies and gentlemen, you know me. You know my tendency for hyperbole. You know I tend to get overly excited about things. Let me be clear: as excitable as I might be, I haven’t the ability to exaggerate the awesomeness that is Haunted Overload. No matter how much I tell you how good this place is, my description (and my photographs, for that matter) will fail to match what you will experience if you actually go and see it for yourself. Better still, if you’re fortunate enough to talk with Eric and the Haunted Overload cast and crew, you will begin understand the amount of love and effort that goes into this event.
There are many things I could tell you about the magnificent props, the acres of Jack O’Lanterns, the field of corn that is planted and grown specifically for Haunted Overload by Eric himself every year, and many other things that set Haunted Overload apart. What I really want to tell you, though, is how taken I was by the people who bring it all to life.
The cast, the crew, the nice ladies at the ticket booth and Eric himself: they all LOVE being a part of this thing. There are many impressive things about Haunted Overload but this is the most impressive thing to me. Every single conversation I had or overheard was infused with a very real passion. There is a sense of family, as hokey as that might sound. It’s a bunch of friendly, talented, motivated folks drawn together by a common love for Halloween to turn a patch of empty field into a creepy fantasy world. While it’s clear that Eric is the creative force behind this overgrown haunt–and that he apparently does not sleep from September to January–he has a lot of help from great folks who are fully invested in making Haunted Overload a success. The result is a really fucking killer show.
No lover of Halloween with access to a reliable form of transportation should miss this event. Period.
Thank you to Eric for the invitation and tour. You’ve really made something special. Thanks to the cast and crew of Haunted Overload. You’ve helped to make something special even more special. Bravo.
Thanks to you for reading. You can check out my photos of Haunted Overload here.
a storm surges and shadows
the crossing of your face
this debt i tithe against
worries me onward into weather
i stretched a thin love until it snapped
it sinks like an anchor in black water
trailing a broken chain
Scott is my friend and a fellow musician. We’ve been making music together for a pretty long time. As long as we’ve been friends, anyway, and that’s been a good 14 or 15 years.
Whenever we finish a recording session he usually gives me a cd of the work we’ve accomplished. He also has the peculiar habit or scrawling some juvenile yet inventive and often bizarre profanity on the disc. Naturally, childish idiot that I am, I find this hilarious. I mean, how can you not laugh at a phrase as absurd as “bonerhornet”? Needless to say, I’ve been holding on to them and have amassed quite a collection. These are just a few of them.
This may just be a celebration of the joys of potty humor or it may be an expression of his intense frustration as the de facto engineer/producer on our various projects. Could be both. I don’t care. Shit’s just funny.
The simple fact is that I am feeling weird tonight.
I’m tired. I’m loopy. I have half-heard and quarter-understood buddhist notions of now vs. then in my head. This is the kind of thing that will tend to come on a night like this: a rubber frilled lizard with a teddy bear head holding two polaroid photos of himself.
Memories. Identities. Illusions. I don’t know what it means. I don’t ask.
This is a creature which I’ve had for many, many years. There are several memories tied to it. Old friends. Former friends. Events that stuck in my mind.
I have this thing about keepsakes. The rubber frilled lizard was a keepsake from a moment I thought needed to be preserved. I don’t even talk to the person who shared that moment anymore, as sometimes happens. The head was added later for similar reasons and under similar circumstances. Since then he’s sort of just been along for the ride.
I have a hard time getting rid of things like this. Plus, I’ve always thought the thing was sort of funny. Certainly unique, anyway. The nostalgia has mostly faded but I still like having the odd little bastard around. We relate.
I think it’s a rule of blogging that you’re never supposed to write one of those posts where you apologize for not posting in a long time. I apologize anyway. Partly because I sincerely regret dropping off for over two months and partly because the idea that there are rules involved in something like blogging makes me chuckle. Not an amused or even bemused chuckle but the wheezy, tired chuckle of an old clown who has just died and discovered that the afterlife is a never-ending birthday party.
Blogging just hasn’t seemed all that interesting to me lately. I do have a couple of ideas about how to get back in the swing again, though. In the meantime, I want to wish anyone who’s paying attention a Happy New Year.
I hope 2009 is better.
A glow-in-the-dark skeleton Pez dispenser. It’s a skeleton. It glows in the dark. It spits out candy. What’s not to love about that?
This is one of my personal favorites from the bunch. I love that I was able to get the moon in some of these shots. It allowed for some experimentation with composition.
A long exposure shot from July 4th. I was really happy with the light trails in this one.
I had to have it even though Halloween is still months away. Then, having it wasn’t enough; I had to set it up, too. That, of course led to me taking a bunch of pictures of it. This is one of the better ones.
Seven explosions fading into sparks and an eighth in mid-burst.
White light revealing kernels of smoke in the night sky.
It makes me think of nebulae, the life cycle of stars and the universe as seen by Hubble.
It also makes me think I got really lucky.
We headed back to North Andover yesterday to visit my parents and check out the fireworks. I ended up taking about 500 pictures of the show including a handful of long exposure shots like this one. The best of the bunch will be up on my Flickr site as soon as I can find the several hours it will take to sift through them all.
A little sample of the damage my father and I did on Saturday. We basically took the bike apart and put it back together over a 12-hour period.
Okay, we didn’t really take ALL of it apart. We didn’t delve into the engine or anything like that but we did dismantle, inspect and clean the carb. Not a bad start for two guys who’ve never worked on motorcycles before.
It was also a lot of fun. I couldn’t believe how fast the time passed.
A new composite. Born from a few photos that couldn’t make it on their own, some spare time…and a little contemplation on interconnection.
Name one thing you’ve done that is more wondrous than the wind in the leaves. Name one thing you are that is less.
More inspiration from The Radiant Vista:
“Being labeled talented only means we have survived being untalented.”
- Craig M. Tanner from The Myth of Talent
Note: If you follow that link, just look for the .pdf file on the right when the page opens. That’s where you’ll find the actual article. It’s well worth the time to download and read.
This is here strictly because I like the thought of nesting the various vehicles of expression. I could get even more meta with this by hand drawing a replica of this photo and then scanning it and making a composite in photoshop or something like that. Or by making a t-shirt with this image on it and then photographing myself wearing said t-shirt while holding the bass in this same fashion, then printing out the resulting photo and writing my manifesto on it and taking the whole mess out in the back yard and burning it, thereby releasing it all into the ether. After all, why wait for time to do it?
Rufus seems to have become more relaxed. I’m hopeful that this is a sign that this place is starting to actually feel like home.
He’s still playful, but a little less rambunctious: as if the notion that there are no more cages or long, strange journeys or temporary families in his future might finally be sinking in.
His bony frame curled up on the carpet seemed to speak to this. Maybe it’s just me.
My father has one ear tuned to the sky at all times. Now I know where I get it.
I imposed on him to allow me to mess with the new camera while he tried to bring in distant signals on a shortwave radio. This is my favorite of about twenty or so shots.
Bohandian Fhartsody
THE FUTURE IS NOW
ATE:
LEARNED:
glints in the ice night sky
unwind a thousand slivers
diagonal spires
cutting
bright slices
in blue
this one
toward the aching onyx waters
that one and
that one
gone behind the sharp pines
and the curling smoke of awe
Technically I wasn’t tagged but I’m going to play anyway.
I do what I want, when I want.
Your envy is palpable.
UPDATE: I’ve decided to tag Almoorica. Let’s see what he does about it, if anything.
UPDATE 2: I’m also tagging Conan the Barbarian, Usagi Yojimbo, that chipmunk I rescued a few months ago and you. Let’s see if anyone has the intestinal fortitude to lay it on the line as I have done (again).
Okay, here’s the thing: I’m not looking to become some kind of self-help, motivational, inspirational what-have-you. There’s plenty of really bad advice on the Internet already. I just want to share something that I’ve been using to keep myself focused on stuff I want to get done. The list is growing and it needs to get knocked down a little, so I’ve come up with a phrase that I’ve been repeating to myself. Here it is:
It’s pretty self-explanatory. The idea is that by taping this phrase up on the mirror, the monitor, the fridge, the television, the amp, the *ahem* Xbox & Playstation, it will serve as a reminder that there are some really cool things I could be working on instead of…well, fucking off, to put it bluntly.
There you go. If you have trouble staying focused or you’re good at finding excuses not to do the hard shit (which also happens to be the most rewarding), then maybe this or some variation will help you.
Does that kind of stuff work for you or are you the type who just lines ‘em up and knocks ‘em down?
-Jon
p.s. – Just in case you were wondering, I have no immediate plans to stop swearing. It’s just not on the list. As a matter of fact, I might write up some signs that say “What the FUCK are you doing TODAY to make it happen, ASSHOLE?” You think I won’t do it?
Once upon a time I dreamed of being a legendary bassist. I wanted to be one of those iconoclastic, brash, trailblazing sons-of-bitches who thumbed his nose at convention and shook room after room after room after room with gut-shaking frequencies as part of an awesome, awesome band full of people I genuinely liked and who felt the same way I did about the hows and whys of making music.
Well, I got halfway there. The second half, specifically. I’m in an awesome band with guys I consider great friends. We’ve played many times and continue to do so. We’ve been together for going on ten years now and there’s a whole network of people around the band who basically comprise my friends and family in this stage of my life. That’s something I value immensely.
The first half of that lofty ambition–the part about conquering the world of music and re-inventing it in my image–was (thankfully) smashed and abandoned long ago as I’ve come to want different things out of music. Growing up a metalhead, I have to confess that my motives in the beginning were more than a little bit about rubbing it in the face of anyone and everyone whom I felt judged by, etc. You know, all the usual pissed off adolescent stuff but with Slayer as a soundtrack.
Later on, when I saw a little more of life and started to get my head together a little bit I started to embrace music for a whole spectrum of other reasons. Getting to know the people who were behind even the most unabashedly shrill, piercing, confrontational and offensive styles out there revealed a community of like-minded and, generally speaking, really nice folks. There were always the occasional people who were intent on causing problems for somebody/anybody, but for the most part the average person at a show or in a band was there for the art, the camaraderie, the noise, the fun, the message (whatever it may be) and the gestalt of love+crowd+noise.
I’m in my mid-30′s now and, let’s face it: even if I were still holding on to dreams of fame at this point they would be sort of laughable. For starters, I’ve picked a less than airwave-friendly genre in many respects. That’s cool. I mean, there’s a whole other Tolkien-esque trilogy that could be devoted to whether achieving fame in music is really a good thing for a musician anyway. What I’m not ready to give up yet, though, is that experience of making songs and especially performing them live. There’s just no end in sight for that as far as I’m concerned. I can’t imagine it not being a good time, ever. Don’t get me wrong: there are bad shows now and again but those are few and far between and, to be honest, they’re becoming rarer as I find myself less concerned with the details of, say, promoting my band to anyone who’ll listen. I just want to write songs, record them, and play them. Loudly.
Life pulls at your sleeve. There are distractions. Speaking of my own experience, it’s easy to inadvertantly over-complicate a thing and move totally away from why you want to do it in the first place. It’s easy to get mired in unnecessary bullshit. I’m happy to report that I am just returning from such a detour and I guess that’s why I wrote this. It’s confirmation by way of looking back on where I’ve been so far and recognizing that the dream has been unfolding the whole time. There are still a lot of things that I want to accomplish and I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.
There is a collection of moments I have been cradling gingerly in my head since they unfolded during the trip to New Mexico. It is a series of moments shared with my wife in the dunes of White Sands National Monument. It is a sense of clarity and perspective that I have never felt before and I find myself trying very hard to maintain it. I find myself frightened of losing it.
I sound like a loon. It’s true, though. I’m carrying a whole desert in my head because I want very much to go back there. There was something very striking about the experience of resting on the top of a pale dune with my wife and just looking out over this…expanse. Despite the fact that there were people crawling all over the place (dune sledding is a popular sport there), it was a calming, humbling and oddly comforting feeling of shared solitude.
I’m very grateful for it but I hope to hell it doesn’t fade.
Whoever this is:
They GET it.
Based on what I’ve seen at PUMPKINROT.COM, I think I may have found a kindred spirit.
Check out the site. It’s full of incredible Halloween imagery.
I’m going to start planning for next year…
The hours of darkness stretch. The stars shine with stark, desolate clarity. The thin, reaching fingers of Winter pull the color from the leaves and the leaves from the branches. The black belly of the ocean churns with strange currents.
This is my season.
I saw a silhouette in the woods behind my house tonight. It looked like a short, slender man with some sort of long stick in his hands. I just stood there watching him, unseen, as he circled around the base of a tree in absolute silence–not so much as a crunching leaf. Not even a disturbed shadow behind him.
Then he raised the long stick to his lips. He breathed deep. The air in the woods pulled in toward him and I almost lost my own breath. His cheeks puffed up and then the whole scene–all the rustling leaves, fluttering wings of bats, whining, distant highway songs, buzzing insect riots and too loud neighbor televisions–went quiet for an elastic instant and–
*FWIP*
–the Full Moon twitched and ran and stumbled and started to slide down the sky. It sung like a giant whale.
My skin went red and my eyes went white and I roared a ball of flame that rolled off my tongue and onto the grass and into the brush and through the trees toward the silhouetted hunter. But he was already sprinting for the faltering Moon, and my fire splashed against the tree he was circling only seconds before.
I turned into a magnet and summoned metal and willed myself a running demon of spikes coming fast and wild toward the sprinting and still silent figure now closing on the dimming satellite. There was no seeing his expression, but I knew that it was joyous. Jubilant. Insulting.
Seraphs, catching sight of the conflict, rallied stars and sent them streaming down. Celestial fellowship aroused a sense of vengeance in them and they fell like burning phosphorous birds of prey. I felt the figure’s demeanor shift as the world lit up around him. No longer a silhouette but now a pale, exposed skeleton clutching a hollow tube and a few long, thin, black darts jutting out between his bony fingers.
Terror rippled across his face and ruined the smile in his mouth and eyes. The ripples slowed and hardened to anger and then cured to ferocity. His stride broke and he flinched at the hissing and pounding of attacking stars. He took on the countenance of someone ready to die in a whirlwind.
Then he turned to me.
By then I was covered head to toe in metal pulled from everywhere. Covered in nails, screws, keys, buckets, street lights, bicycles, a fire hydrant, barrels, gates, chainlink fence, mailboxes, cans and anything else you could imagine–even a neighbor’s car– and I was still running and still gaining speed. Shaking the ground with my sinking footsteps.
Over his bony, white shoulder, the Moon’s slow crash into the tops of the pine trees.
If you’re in the vicinity of Londonderry, NH this evening and you happen to spy a bald guy in a rocking chair out on his front porch, smoking a cigar and smiling at the intense thunderstorm playing out overhead, feel free to swing into the driveway and join me.
There are few things in this world I enjoy more than a good storm. The more dramatic, the better. No matter where I am or what I’m doing I am usually overcome with the need to stop and watch at even the slightest hint of thunder.
Don’t even get me started about power outages.
Anyway, my neck of the woods is under severe storm watch right now. I’ll try to get some pics if it pans out.
Yeah, that’s all I got. Stay tuned for a piece on one of my all-time favorites in the world of metal: King Diamond. Or, as I like to call him, The Evil Bee Gee.
