Month: March 2006

I need to get inked

elvis13 Comments

I’m having one of those ‘I desperately need to get tattooed’ fits. I dunno if this connects to teh mood I woke up yesterday (long past, pretty much purged by writing it, though thanks all for the offers of gifts, distractions and sexual favors), or if it’s just time. But I’ve suddenly got tattoo images […]

I’m having one of those ‘I desperately need to get tattooed’ fits. I dunno if this connects to teh mood I woke up yesterday (long past, pretty much purged by writing it, though thanks all for the offers of gifts, distractions and sexual favors), or if it’s just time.

But I’ve suddenly got tattoo images drifting through my head and am suddenly making plans rather than just visualizing possibilities.

It got worse yesterday evening; I walked over to a friday beer bash at work to see new products, and ran into an old friend who now works at my company (coincidentally the host of the halloween party where this photo was taken) who was telling me about a sacred heart tattoo he’s set to get today from my pal Klem. And I could suddenly hear the machines, feel the needles.

And my head’s ready to boil over.

I started last week I guess, with the sudden inspiration about the Samurai no Kokoroe phrase (though I don’t find that calling to me the way it did a week ago). But no – it started eariler, with a plan to get tattooed while I was in Anaheim. That didn’t pan out due to the usual ‘I forget how disneyland exhausts me’ problem, but I’d gotten revved to feel the needle.

But in the last week it’s gotten worse. I’ve talked to a couple friends about planned tattoos, and a couple older ideas have bubbled back up. I’m picturing some polynesian things on my right arm and hand, a celtic thing I want Pat Fish to do (the current idea is something related to Manannan mac Lir). There’s the Dead Men Tell No Tales idea that Jack Rudy in Anaheim was gonna do but I may have someone up here do it. And I’ve been picturing a tattoo based on the old symbols for argumentation, the closed fist (logic) and open hand (persuasion, rhetoric). I started to picture them as skeletal hands, and it started to make sense if I can just figure out where to put them.

That’s on top of queue of tattoos I already have planned; the Life on the Ocean Waves backpiece (Anyone wanna go into that tattoo shop in SD for me and see if they can snap a picture of the flash?), the Pirate Wench deal, the Hulalupe. I need to finish my right arm. I want to get the pig ‘n chicken on my feet (an old sailors anti-drowning charm). I want a FTW tattoo.

I just have that feeling – that need. That jones. I need to get tattooed.

     I don’t even feel it
     But lord how I need it

Up on the Wrong Side

elvis8 Comments

Ever wake up, for no good reason, just sort of pissed at the world? Actually, for some people the question is, do you ever not. But anyway, that’s not usually how I wake up. Usually I’m ok. Maybe not great, but ok. I don’t mind being awake; sun in the window, or the sound of […]

Ever wake up, for no good reason, just sort of pissed at the world?

Actually, for some people the question is, do you ever not.

But anyway, that’s not usually how I wake up. Usually I’m ok. Maybe not great, but ok. I don’t mind being awake; sun in the window, or the sound of rain, and the promise of one of the best things in my day, that first cup of strong, dark coffee.

Today though, some dream, or some turn of moon or some other turmoil in the back of my mind soaked across the line that divides subconscious mind from mood, and I woke wanting to hit something.

I don’t even feel bad this morning, physically, which is a good thing; the first moring in a week I havn’t woken with a a sinus headache.

Yet – this low, murky feeling of rage. This vague desire to do harm with no real specific target and no ability to communicate what it is. No ability to communicate at all; I’ve been trying to answer emails all morning and just keep sitting and staring, hands hovering over the keyboard. Nothing. No words come.

I’m not even mad at anyone, or anything. It’s a static charge of annoyance that needs to arc someplace.

Normally I’d feel better – food, coffee, exercise, these simple things please me. Even doing crunches until my muscles burned didn’t sear away the feeling. I would go back to bed but after three cups of my black liquid crack, there’s no sleeping, not for a good twelve hours at least, if that.

I feel like Al Swearingen in the Deadwood episode Here Was a Man; “I need to fuck something! Trixie, get up here. And bring the bottle.”

Yeah. That’d work.

Half-Nekkid Drag

elvis11 Comments

I can’t find my fucking camera. I think maybe I need to get another one. So from the archives – some guys really shouldn’t do drag. (Happy HNT)

I can’t find my fucking camera. I think maybe I need to get another one.

So from the archives – some guys really shouldn’t do drag.

(Happy HNT)

Read more “Half-Nekkid Drag”

Re-Imagineering

elvis7 Comments

God, I have a new favorite blog. Re-Imagineering: A forum for Pixar and Disney professionals passionate about the Disney Theme Parks to catalog past Imagineering missteps and offer up tenable practical solutions in hopes that a new wave of creative management at Imagineering can once again bring back some of the wonder and magic that’s […]

God, I have a new favorite blog.

Re-Imagineering:

A forum for Pixar and Disney professionals passionate about the Disney Theme Parks to catalog past Imagineering missteps and offer up tenable practical solutions in hopes that a new wave of creative management at Imagineering can once again bring back some of the wonder and magic that’s been missing from the parks for decades.

These guys get it. They really, deeply, completely get it.

They get why Disney and Disney theme parks rock. They get what’s wrong with the Disney company today, what’s going wrong with the parks. They see the slippery slope Disney is on, toward corporate mediocrity.

And they see how an artistic and creative re-birth is possible for Disney. God, I hope people like Pixar’s John Lassiter and Steve Jobs and Robert Iger are reading this. hell, Lassiter should be hiring these guys to take over.

Keep it up, guys. People need to hear it.

Prog Rock Island

elvis5 Comments

I can’t stop listening to this stunning song. David Gilmour – possibly the most stylish guitarist of all time, and the other brilliant creative mind behind Pink Floyd – is about to realease a new album. I picked up the single from iTunes music store – On an Island. It’s a dreamy, ethereal piece that […]

I can’t stop listening to this stunning song.

David Gilmour – possibly the most stylish guitarist of all time, and the other brilliant creative mind behind Pink Floyd – is about to realease a new album.

I picked up the single from iTunes music store – On an Island.


B000E6Uk5K.01. Aa240 Sclzzzzzzz

It’s a dreamy, ethereal piece that sounds, more than anything else, like Obscured by Clouds-era Pink Floyd, that then breaks into some of the most brilliant, classic Gilmour guitar playing I’ve ever heard. It’s one of those songs that almost sounds like a clinic in how to do it, the way I felt listing to Sonny Rollins play a fifteen minute sax solo when I saw him live a few years back. Like you could sit and listen and learn everything you need to know about how to play a perfect solo. It also features stunning backup vocals by David Crosby and Graham Nash, who may be geezers but wow can they still sing.

I was a huge Pink Floyd fan – and still am. But my favortite Pink Floyd isn’t the stuff that sold a bazillion records. I don’t really like Dark Side of the Moon, nor do I much like The Wall. They have great songs on them but they’re not what I consider Pink Floyd’s creative, artistic peaks.

My favorite albums were some of the less massively successful ones; Animals, Meddle, Obscured by Clouds. I tried hard to love the Syd Barret era Floyd, but as brilliant as Barret was, those albums lacked Gilmour’s guitar, and to my ear, that was such a huge component of Pink Floyd’s sound that they never quite stuck with me. They’re great, but I don’t love them.

I stopped listening to Pink Floyd after The Wall. They’d said what they had to say. Waters was spinning off into ego-land and the band had taken on that commercial juggernaut sound, were turning into one of those dinosaur acts that need to stop a while. But I still listen to the old albums, have them all on CD and vinyl. And I love them.

This song has something – something of that old, classic Pink Floyd, something of Gilmour’s first solo album (which I loved when it came out, and wish I could get now, though it’s not yet back in print); and yet it sounds current, not like he simply went back and said I can do that again.. It sounds like that because that sound is David Gilmour.

God I hope the rest of the album – due out next week – is this good.

Personal Pages, Profanity

elvis8 Comments

Well now. I’ve been upgraded – or downgraded – or degraded. Or just, you know, graded. Feels like that, or maybe that’s more grated, and it feels like that as well. Secure Computing, the motherfuckers who sell STOOPIDfilter to repressive countries and companies, agreed that I wasn’t Pornography, sex. Evidently I’m Personal Pages, Profanity, with […]

Well now. I’ve been upgraded – or downgraded – or degraded. Or just, you know, graded. Feels like that, or maybe that’s more grated, and it feels like that as well.

Secure Computing, the motherfuckers who sell STOOPIDfilter to repressive countries and companies, agreed that I wasn’t Pornography, sex.

Evidently I’m Personal Pages, Profanity, with a side of Personal, Mature.

Well, fuck yeah. That’s me. The Moronosphere, ProfanityBlog.

Because we’re all about the effword here.

Maybe it’s mature that bothers me more. Who you callin’ fuckin’ mature? We ain’t got no fuckin’ maturity here. Not a sausage. Not a drop. Not a fuckin’ cc, baby.

I guess the point is that the people at Secure Computing listen if we complain, but they still do the wrong thing and slap a fucking label on something they don’t get.

I’ll have to see if we’re still banned in the fuckin’ UAE. They’re not allowed pornography, let’s see if they’re allowed to read the effword.

Mashup vs. Mashup

elvis3 Comments

It’s been too damned long since i gave a shout-out to m’man Art’s site, MashupTown. So here y’all go. Put on the Super Freak – Superfreak vs. Roxanne. This clip fuckin’ rules. Wonder Bop – the Ramones vs. Oasis. Some love it, some hate it. It’s so wrong in a way that’s so right. And […]

It’s been too damned long since i gave a shout-out to m’man Art’s site, MashupTown.

So here y’all go.

Put on the Super Freak – Superfreak vs. Roxanne. This clip fuckin’ rules.

Wonder Bop – the Ramones vs. Oasis. Some love it, some hate it. It’s so wrong in a way that’s so right.

And finally, Dirty Deeds will Rock You – AC/DC vs. Queen. This thing just needed to exist, I tell ya.

Art, you rock my world.

Hey, you know what I wanna hear? more mashups features UFO or Scorpions. Someone’s gotta be doin’ that shit.

Samurai no Kokoroe

elvis13 Comments

I ran across this over in Buck’s blog; or rather, I ran across a reference to it. Buck helped me with translations, which I then cross-checked on a number of web sites. I do not know the origin of this, nor do I know of it’s accuracy, nor am I certain the translations are correct. […]

I ran across this over in Buck’s blog; or rather, I ran across a reference to it. Buck helped me with translations, which I then cross-checked on a number of web sites.

I do not know the origin of this, nor do I know of it’s accuracy, nor am I certain the translations are correct. Details, these are; It spoke to me.

Samurai no Kokoroe – Precepts of the Samurai.

  • Jiko o shiru koto
         (Know yourself)
  • Jibun no kimeta koto wa saigo made kikko suru koto
         (Always follow through on commitments)
  • Ikanaru hito demo sonke suru koto
         (Respect everyone)
  • Kankyo ni sayu sarenai tsuyoi shinnen o motsu koto
         (Hold strong convictions that cannot be altered by your circumstances)
  • Mizu kara teki o tsukuranai koto
         (Don’t make an enemy of yourself)
  • Koto ni oite kokaisezu
         (Live without regrets)
  • Hito to no deai o taisetsu ni suru koto
         (Be certain to make a good first impression)
  • Miren o motanai koto
         (Don’t cling to the past)
  • Yakusoku o yaburanai koto
         (Never break a promise)
  • Hito ni tayoranai koto
         (Don’t depend on other people)
  • Hito o onshitsu shinai koto
         (Don’t speak ill of others)
  • Ikanaku koto ni oite mo osorenai koto
         (Don’t be afraid of anything)
  • Hito no iken o soncho suru koto
         (Respect the opinions of others)
  • Hito ni taishite omoiyari o motsu koto
         (Have compassion and understanding for everyone)
  • karuhazumi ni koto o okosanai koto
         (Don’t be impetuous (rash, passionately impulsive)).
  • Chiisa na koto demo taisetsu ni suru koto
         (Even little things must be attended to)
  • Kansha no kimochi o wasurenai koto
         (Never forget to be appreciative)
  • Issho kenmei monogoto o suru koto
         (Make a desperate effort)
  • Jinsei no mokuhyo o sadameru koto
         (Have a plan for your life)
  • Shoshin o wasurubekarazaru koto
         (Never lose your “Beginner’s Spirit”)

I’m not a zen guy so much. Not into the eastern philosophy, the meditation. Yet, I see myself as some sort of warrior, even if I’ve not always got an enemy to face down, or if the enemy is within. The sword may be imaginary, may be made of words, but it is the fighter with whom I most identify.

And so, when I read this code, this set of rules, it seems to apply.

I do not agree with every line of it, nor do I measure up on all points. And yet as a whole, if feels right.

Certain lines of it speak to me to the extent that I began thinking of a tattoo; wondering what these look like in Kanji.

Ikanaku koto ni oite mo osorenai is one such – how can one not wish to embody it? But more, there’s another that says tattoo to me for a special reason.

Koto ni oite kokaisezu – Live without regrets. This is something for which I strive, and mostly, mostly, I’ve managed it. But it also takes me back to a memory, one of the last conversations I had with my father, or at least one of the last meaningful ones we had.

“What if you regret your tattoos?” he asked me, when I first started to get them. And it made me think. I considered this for several moments before I answered him.

“I have no choice – thus, I will not.”

It was a moment when I made a lifetime choice about regret; a choice that applied to tattoos specifically at that moment, but as time went on, a choice I’ve tried to apply to all my life.

I strive for this; yet there are regrets in my life I feel daily. And thus I strive to overcome regret.

Koto ni oite kokaisezu. I want to wear it.