Since We Last Spoke

I've been selected to be guest of honor at the upcoming Feral! 2010 convention. It's quite an honor but also a bit nervewracking; I've never really done a live show or had much cause to play and sing at the same time, since I always focus on songwriting rather than performing. And why not? It's not like I'm going to be on tour anytime soon.

But while that will be a challenge I will have to overcome, it's given me renewed vigor to get that second, fully-instrumented album done. I'm doing EVERYTHING now - drums, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, synths, keyboards, vocals, editing, mixing, mastering.... it's a ton of work, and it keeps me up nights (in a good way), but it's worth it. There's something about creating and having something that moves people in the end very special, despite how much hair I pull out in the process.

Oh! You can follow @campferal on Twitter, and see their website - http://campferal.org.

In case you don't follow me on any other outlet, here's a link to the album I just finished. If you don't want to buy it, you can stream it for free (though in lower quality, boo).

http://theeverpresentmelancholy.bandcamp.com

Also, MySpace, whee:

http://www.myspace.com/theeverpresentmelancholy

Hey guys in the bay area-

Do any of you have a room at your place with decent acoustics you could possibly loan the use of to a recordin' otter for a short weekend? I need some better acoustics to do some final recordings of a couple songs for inclusion onto the Myspace page.

I'll, um... buy you dinner and love you forever.

( Just click this fuckin' thing )

So, Ardan went and visited Tilt's room to tease him. He stuffed a speedo on Ardan and demanded he dance for him. He didn't know it was being recorded!

Dance, bunny, dance!

First of all, a big shout out to my roommates for the con, Cooner, Baja, and Jimmy. You're all special in different ways to me and it was great having all three of you in the room.

Now then, I don't normally write out these things but this con was a very different experience for me than past ones, for obvious reasons- I was suiting a brand new character, one that I was very happy with, had a fully fleshed out character for (though he's still developing), and he got to speak, which was always a limitation I didn't much care for in suiting. When I get to speak in suit, for me, personally, I get to feel like I'm a theme park character, and that I can interact with others a little more. The people who don't speak and pantomime well are just that much better at performing than I am, but all the same, this was great to me.

Don't know who I'm talking about? I suited this guy, named Ardan.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2118361

He was received very well, I think. I can't gauge whether he got a lot of attention (as I don't know what constitutes a lot), but certainly enough to make him feel welcome and that others were interested in him. I think I did a good job speaking with the accent and a few people were disappointed to learn later that I wasn't actually Irish (if I fooled them that well, then I'm much better at it than I thought I was, or they were distracted by other things).

Unfortunately, as Baja mentioned several times, this seemed like a "36 hour con". Indeed, it seems there were a huge contingent of locals that got there late Friday night/Saturday morning and then left on Sunday during the day. I've NEVER seen a convention so dead on Sunday night. I was tired, but I wanted to get in Ardan one more time on Sunday, but there just wasn't enough going on to warrant staying in him.

Anyway, overall a very good experience thanks to having a white rabbit along. The big downside is that his head really got smushed in the airport on the way back home, and I'm REALLY hoping it can be repaired. I'd hate for FWA to be Ardan's first AND last outing. :P

( Oops, I fell on a bunch of tattoo needles )

Please take a listen to my newest song. I'm pretty proud of it and I hope those of you out there who haven't heard my music before will like it.

Here's a link to it on FA: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2006078

Thanks for listening!

I think I have a problem. I'm a... gear slut.

In the music world, this is when you can't stop lusting after all kinds of music gear, even though you don't need it and your current stuff is pretty good. I own a Taylor DN4E, which is a solid wood Taylor acoustic-electric, with a solid sitka spruce top and solid ovangkol back and sides. It's a close African cousin of East Indian Rosewood and has nearly the same tonal properties, it's just not as expensive of a wood. Today I went and played some Taylors that have Indian Rosewood on the back, and I have to say, that even though they are more ornate, I actually prefer mine, which is $500 cheaper. Woo! This, however, has not stopped me from reading all I can about tonewoods and picking a bunch of guitars up and playing them to see if I can tell the difference. Surprisingly, most of the time, I really can. Man, I really should've been a luthier. That'd be such a kickass job.

That being said, what I'm *really* slutting after is a new audio interface. My current one is an M-Audio Fast Track Pro (USB) that just doesn't have the frequency response to sound good. Most of you out there (if you've actually read this far into this journal) listening to my stuff may not be able to tell, but my stuff lacks sparkle and depth. My microphone seems to be great at picking up boomy bass, but is really lacking on mids and highs, and I know the frequency response isn't that bad. I'm pretty sure it's my crappy audio interface.

I really want to get a Motu Ultralite for my interface, and then probably a AKG C-1000 to directly mic my acoustic guitar.

*sigh* Wanting stuff is great if you're rich. Too bad I'm not! :)

... who can help me fix the intonation on my electric guitar? I absolutely cannot get this thing to intonate correctly, and I'm a complete newbie at the process. I REALLY hope the instrument I bought isn't THAT shitty and can't be tuned.

Ethiopian....



... or abs?

I used to make a lot of posts about negative things, and so it appeared to many people that I had nothing good in my life, which was far from the truth. One of the things I'm trying to work on going forward is positive thinking. I have a lot to be thankful for in my life, and while I recently had to go through something awful and mistake prone on my end of things it's taught me a lot, and I will be a better person for it. I could write a very long post about how I'm thankful for each and every one of my friends in detail but it would take me hours to write, hours I don't have today before I accept someone's kind invitation to join them on Thanksgiving.

I am truly thankful for friends that will listen to me when I have nothing new to say, or that I just need someone to listen to me talk. I'm truly thankful for the hope someone has given me going forward. I'm truly thankful I have a great job, a car, and supportive coworkers and a boss. I'm truly thankful I have a roof over my head and some nice things to call my own. And most of all, I'm truly thankful for the time I spent with John, even though I was too stupid and immature before to realize just how much I needed him and how he made a seemingly dark time in my life brighter. I have made many mistakes with respect to him but I will be a better person forever because of him, because of the things he has taught me, and the challenge he has issued me with respect to my life going forward.

On this day, please remember to thank, in person, if you can, the people in your life and what they do for you. I guess for once I need to let people know that instead of just eating turkey and stuffing on this day. I've never been openly appreciative of the things I have and I take them for granted, and important people need to hear that they are in fact important in your lives. It makes them feel good, but they just flat out need to know it.

I wish all of you the best holiday.

Looks like proposition 8 is going to pass, and by a fair margin. This completely deflates the Obama win. I feel very alone right now, and I don't have anyone with which to share a comforting hug. Not anymore, at least.

Obama speaks of change. Of how far we've come as a nation, to elect a black president. We haven't changed, though. We're not progressive, or forward thinking. We've simply shifted our hatred and bigotry to a new group of people to discriminate against, because they're different, because the majority religion is now guiding political decisions. Nothing has changed but the mask that discrimination wears.

I filled out a provisional ballot since I registered at Casa Canidae up in Mountain View and I voted in Santa Clara. I should've just registered down here in Santa Clara, but I didn't think to do it. The way I understand it, my ballot will only be ripped open and counted if it's deemed that it can have an effect. And I won't know for 28 days if they decide not to count it (and I have this sneaking suspicion they won't; they asked my party affiliation and I said 'democrat', but that was dumb- some Republican will probably get their mitts on it and accidentally lose it).

The house I'm living in has a serious ant problem. It got way more serious today. I noticed a bunch of ants crawling all over my desk but I didn't see a trail anywhere and I didn't have any food or drink on the desk, nor have I really ever had anything other than water on it. So I decide to put a bait underneath my desk, and go and watch football. I come back after 3-4 hours of football watching and there's a huge trail that winds the outside of my room to the trap from the closet, where there's a nice convenient hole in the base of a column for the wall. So I decide I don't want the ants going the length of my room and instead place 4 traps around the edge of the closet. BAD IDEA. Out swarms BILLIONS of ants, probably the entire colony. The traps were *black* with ants in a matter of ten minutes and they just kept coming. So I spent the last 3 hours trying to corral the ants from not getting into EVERYTHING, getting anything I could find in the house to spray them with. I was going to vacuum them up with the vacuum but it doesn't pick up LIVE ants, only dead ones for some reason, and I couldn't figure out the hose attachment because, while I read the instructions on the vacuum Trey has, I couldn't get the damn hose to pull away from the vacuum. I think I was finally able to get it under control, but ants are still here and there. Only way I was able to stop them pouring out of the walls was just to fucking DOUSE THAT SHIT with cinnamon and cayenne pepper. Of course, now my room smells like cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and disinfectant. And it's just a temporary solution; this house is really sitting directly atop a giant ant hill. I hope I can convince Trey he just fucking needs to bomb this place. I don't even know if that takes care of ants, but there's just way too many here.

Can everyone give me their AIM contact information, please?

Comments are screened, so everyone can drop even their secret accounts to me if I had it before.

Thanks.

Can anyone tell me why all of my AIM contacts would suddenly be gone? They're gone from iChat, from Meebo, and from AIM's client. Was my account hacked and someone just went and deleted everything? Is there a way to get my contacts back?

I don't think I've ever had as much body pain as I'm in right now. I don't recall doing anything to my shoulder girdle whatsoever and yet I think I have about 9/10 pain in my shoulder, and what's worse is that today it started pulling really heavily down the side of my arm to my wrist extensors. As the evening progressed further my radial nerve along the back of my tricep is starting to hurt as well. Essentially my entire right shoulder and arm feel like they're on fire now, and as I said, there wasn't some big incident to pop a disc in my cervical spine nor pull fascia or muscle in my upper extremity.

I'm working at home tomorrow to just have my work laptop on my stomach, as sitting up made it ten times worse during the day. If this hurts as bad as it does now on Wednesday, I'm so taking my new Kaiser benefits and freakin' demanding Vicodin.

Some of you already know, most of you don't. I'm only making an announcement because it'd be potentially really awkward for some of you to inquire how things were going not to know this information.

John and I recently broke up our relationship of 4+ years. This was not an easy decision and we're both hurting a lot. The reasons aren't important to our friends at large; what is important is that you know that we still love each other very much and want to be a part of each others' lives still. Real love and friendship doesn't just go away at the drop of a hat.

I don't know what will happen for the future; I may grow and change and John may too, and we may end up back together, or we may not. I'm not writing it off and neither is he, but we both realize we have to live our lives and let things come naturally, whatever the outcome. We both appreciate how much all of our friends who knew what we were both going through being there for us and supporting us. We are very lucky to have all of you, and we couldn't have gotten through this without your help.

This leads me to the other reason of this post. John is still going to live with Tube and Jakebe, but I need to investigate other roommate options for myself. I don't have much stuff; it'll mostly fit in my bedroom. Most of the stuff in our apartments/houses was John and the things we bought together I'm letting John have, because things are just things. They're not important in the end. Only love and friendship is; that can't be replaced. I need a place that's going to let me rent a room for $700 or less, ideally. I'd be moving around the 1st of November. If anyone knows people looking for roommates, I'd appreciate a heads up tip so I can know my options.

Thank you all.

I was putting my spare tire back in its natural well, and found this piece of cardboard underneath. I don't remember letting any Mexicans into my trunk....



Anyone have an idea what the heck this means?