First Friday art sales idea.

Sell stencil kits at First Friday. The kits would sell for 3, 4 or 5 dollars depending on what I do. The basic premise is that I cut s shit ton of stencils from my archive. And sell them with a can of paint. Basically a do-it-yourself vandalism kit. Paint is cheap from Wal-Mart and the cardstock comes cheap too. You could rubber band the stencil around the can of paint, maybe include a short how-to guide. This could make lots of money, and it could also fail moserably. I'd only lose a bit of money if it didn't work. But I'd make quite a bit if it took off.

So a kit would include:
1 hand cut stencil
1 can of paint
1 set of instructions

I'd also sell pieces that I'd made with the stencils. That would requre a larger investment. I'd be willing to work with someone of this if you have a steady hand. I have some people I want to ask first, but if the position of partner becomes available I'll replace this:

"The position of partner has been filled"

Damn it all.

So as it turns out it doesn't look like I'll be going to Reno after all. Steven if you read this before I get a chance to call you. I apologize. Ryan's thing fell through.

I'm still trying to figure things out. If anyone is travelling from reno to vegas on the 7th, or even the 8th I'd like to have a chat.

I just don't know.

I couldn't watch as Julie drove off this morning. This whole 'not seeing her for a month, seeing her for 3 days and then having her leave for another month' thing has fucked me up. I'm an emotional train wreck. It's really quite odd. I don't do this very often. I tend to just quietly deal with my issues in my head. Now I feel the need to blog about my feelings? How Junior high is that?

I do miss grade school though. Thems were some good/bad times.

I hear from several reputable sources that life just gets harder and as you look back you'll see how easy you had it. Well fuck. Right? If life is just an obstacle course you eventually lose then the game is rigged. What if I just want to play on the swings?

Update.

I'm going to be in Reno on july 5th. It will be awesome. The trip itself is probably going to be the best part. Prepare for massive updates after I'm back.

Random trip to boulder city.

So my friend Steven bought a new camera and wanted to try it out. So I went with him and took some shots of my own. Please enjoy.

So I'm thinking.

And I'm thinking I want to paint something on my wall. I'm pretty sure my parents wouldn't mine me painting on it. I'd run it past them first. But I have no idea what it would be. It would have to be something small. Something that added to the room. Something that played on my whole otherworld obsession. I guess I'll start brainstorming.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Also, look at my blog. It has a new banner thing and new colors. Tell me what you think.

Ten thoughts.

I picked the number ten rather arbitrarily, lets see how this works.

[01] The health care system (In the US) makes me want to retch. How can a business survive on the basis of trying to help the least amount of people?
[02] I really enjoy mystery in my life, and therefore hope to one day get caught up in some sort of conspiracy.
[03] Julie comes come tomorrow (see thought 01) and I am both very angry and very elated at this fact.
[04] I'm halfway through House of Leaves and I have no idea what else there is to be explained.
[05] The Saw movie theme is incredibly brilliant, and leads me to believe there might be something interesting inside the Saw series. Though it all repulses me still.
[06] I've been "saving" the Dark Tower series and Godfather movies, and I think it's time to fall in.
[07] Why do i have this strange obsession with old objects and places? Especially because I'm so concerned for the future.
[08] Perhaps that IS why I enjoy the past so much.
[09] Fuck I need a job/money.
[10] Does my school have any sort of astrophysics or cosmology courses/clubs? If so would I be in over my head if I tried to get into one?

I know that last one was kind of cheating.

Ghosts, my entirely unscientific opinion.

I'll preface this by saying that I haven't researched any of this and wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if none of it was at all verifiable. I will write as if these things are fact simply because that is the easiest way to write about the subject. Prefacing everything with "I believe", and "in theory" would get repetitive.

To begin, I want to state that ghosts as I define them differ greatly from what is generally accepted. A ghost (which is an ineffective term to say the least) is in the simplest terms energy manifesting itself in a pattern that mimics past events.

What causes energy to manifest itself this way is not necessarily, or even frequently a result only of death. Often times a death is not very energetic (IE death in sleep). What would cause energy to build up is the repeated energy released by a family living in a house. More likely than just an average family to do this is a family that released larger amounts of negative energy. Perhaps an abusive household. Or a household grieving due to the death of a loved one.

The result is a buildup of energy in a particular area. This would account for the frequency of haunted houses, and even more frequent haunted hotels. Any area that receives intense amounts of, for lack of a better term, "psychic energy". The places that would best contain this energy are places that receive constant or at least rhythmic energy flows. Here are some of the places I would expect to see a "ghost": Abusive households, Sporting arenas, any bed, even a bedroom, cemeteries (due to families, not the dead), hotels, large terminals (Grand Central, LAX, etc.), places of slaughter, war grounds, prisons. Basically anywhere where a lot of people think and feel a lot.

An interesting side effect of this theory is the possibility of a self-haunting. A child who lives in a bedroom up until they move out may encounter a ghost of themselves. Due to the excessive amount of time spent dreaming, thinking, crying and so forth, there might be a buildup in the room. The result could be any number of things. Objects moving, air temperature, the feeling of presence, or any of the other things reported.

Another facet of this theory is that ghosts would most likely manifest themselves when large numbers of people are around. In fact, in large areas, many ghosts could be operating in their various loops and no one would notice. The only reason they are reported so often by individuals who are alone is that in the rare occasion a ghost manifests itself when there aren't many individuals to spark them, the lone individual is more prone to notice it.

The buildup of energy would behave similarly to a static charge. The energy is slowly increased. If left alone for too long the energy will decrease. But rhythmic or continued application of energy gets to a point where it will "spark". And whatever kind of energy has been building manifests.

An unexplored section of this theory may say that sudden feelings of euphoria or sadness may be a result of these, again for lack of a better word, "psychic discharges".

I'm stalking a House.

That's right. That house I ranted about a couple of days ago. Well, as it turns out, the internet is rediculously good at keeping information for years and years.

Built in 1982, the house isn't as old as I once thought. But it's almost thirty.

It's had at least 8 owners. Probably more, seeing as this list has some gaps in time and sudden new owners.

I found out that the house has been changing hands rapidly since 2004. The house hasn't maintained an owner for more than a year for 5 years.

Well SHIT!

So. I was working with my laptop in a last ditch effort to fix it.

The screen flickers and sticks and such. But when you twist it to the right, it stays stable enough to read and figure out what's going on.

It's getting stuck at MUP.SYS which is apparently one of the great unsolved mysteries of the computer world. So in an attempt to do what one website suggested I do, I was twisting the screen to get a stable image when I heard this unholy crack, like someone snapping the neck of an adversary:

Fuck, right? Splintered and cracked. It's now a piece of modern art. I think if I took this thing to a gallery it'd be sold for a chunk of change. I've even got a name for it: "Shutdown Cycle"

The computer is in a freaky loop which was the problem to begin with. It loops when trying to start up, failing, tries to start, fails, etc. And now with it's splintered screen it goes batshit loco every time.

You know if I were rich I wouldn't have this problem. I'd already have a new computer. It fucking sucks to have $10 to my name and be in debt by the thousands. And now I need a new computer.

Fuck the world.

It's kind of unsettling...

that "House of Leaves" is actually kind of getting to me. I can't sleep, and I can't be awake. It's odd. I keep thinking about the book, looking things up that it references. Thinking about what some of the passages are talking about. Refusing to skip over the more annoying bits of text to get to the meatier discussions of the actual house.

I find myself wondering about my old ideas of "___________". I used to write bits of fiction on that idea. That there is ___________________________. And that _______________________________________. _________________________________________. ____________________________________________. It is actually hard for me to write this down and publish it. This idea of mine is really one of the things I truly cherish. Not many people know about it. In fact, I am sorry to tell you (you already know this by now), I'm going to replace my idea with a big blank space to protect it.

But yes. This book is seriously getting to me. Hell, who knows, maybe It's not "getting to me" maybe I'm just letting something that's been lurking inside finally show itself.

What is this thing? Me being a bit crazier than I let on? Probably. Maybe not.

Ah well. Maybe I'll take up writing again. Finish that short story about "________________". In fact maybe I'll pick up that other story and finish it. If it's bad it's bad you know? The worst that could happen is that it gets passed over and forgotten. The best? Someone likes it, I suppose that'd be the best. Simply having it out of my head and on paper in concrete form would be good. (Mostly because I don't trust my own mind to hold onto ideas forever. In fact I have the unsettling belief that my mind will lose it soon if I don't get it down.)

Hell, maybe I could put a book together. Some photography. Those old short stories. Maybe even a poem. It wouldn't get published. Something that abstract and, (What's the word?) experimental needs a big name to actually draw a moderately sized crowd. However. If anyone knows a publisher willing to put out an experimental style publication direct them my way. Or direct me their way. Whichever.

It's 4:30. I need to stop doing this.

Every neighborhood has one.

You might not think so, but you do. For the longest time I would watch movies and when kids were dared to go up to or into theirs I'd get jealous. But, as it turns out, I do have one. My local haunted house is located at [information removed because I relaized I want to keep it secret].

Many people I have talked to, at least four, have dreams of one day owning that house. The only problem as far as I can tell is that people tend to live in that house for very short spans of time. It was vacant for a very long time. And when I saw someone moving into it when I was in high school, my heart sank. A year later they were moving out. Someone moved in again during my senior year. And now it's for sale again, at "reduced price".

Now why would a house have a slew of previous owners who live there in short duration and also be going at a reduced price? Yeah. I know. Haunted house. Needless to say, I want it.

I walked out of town today.

I took a walk today. I ended up walking out of town via Boulder Highway. It was a surprisingly emotionally stirring experience. I felt like continuing on and going on some sort of soul searching journey. What Ended up happening however is that I turned around. And when I did, I encountered what you would if you were coming into Las Vegas from that way. My first sight was the vast expanse of city lights. The next, the first motel you'd see on your way in. I watched as a couple repacked their car, left their room and drove out of the city. In my world, they left the city forever. They barely escaped gambling debts and habits that will take years to overcome. The photos I took of this experience are as follows.

The system is down.

That's right, a Strongbad reference.

But in all seriousness, my computer is trash. It doesn't like to do that turning on... thing. So updates and such will be severely limited now.

Pointless Beauty

Here are some "pointless beauty" photographs. Please read this previous blog for a description of what I mean by that.

A discarded and battered cell phone.

The moon in relation to a string of streetlights.

Weeds growing from cracks in the pavement.

One streetlight releases different color light.

Credit to the anonymous artist who left this here. (Who, as it turns out, is my brother and his friend Katie.)

Late night sprinklers.

A bicycle hidden in the corner of a dumpster alcove.

Pages of my life.

Here are a few selected pages of my agenda from last year. I organize in a fairly strange way. In these pages there is an underlying order. That order goes down first, and is then subsequently revised, edited, scribbled, and otherwise marked. I'm not going to tell you when they were made. It's relatively obvious why: They're agenda pages. Please enjoy.

Tidbits at 3:AM

I want to sit in a club and sip a drink and let the pulsing music pass through me. I want to sit alone and do this. Which seems odd.

I also want to do some "pointless beauty" photography tomorrow. And I don't mean that term in the way it sounds. I'm not going to look for roses and kittens. What I mean by "pointless beauty" is beauty that is, essentially, pointless. A marble in the desert. Typically small caches of beauty in places no one will look. But sometimes enormous overlooked beautiful forms. This is what I mean by pointless. They are pointless because they aren't assigned a point. Which makes them almost more beautiful.

And yes, I am aware that in capturing them and giving them a place (hell, even by looking at them) I destroy their "pointless beauty"

0 to "penis" in 90 seconds.

(Very quick news: I am now living in my brother's room. It's okay. We roomed together back in Reno, so we're fine. But it's really really cramped.)

I'm back in contact with an old friend (Misty). It's awesome. We have plans to hang out more in the future. She said she reads my blog, so I'm going take some time to speak to her. Hello! I hope you're having a good day/night. And back on topic. We hung out at Applebees. And here is my story.

I took a bus to get to our rendezvous. It was a fiasco. I got there and assumed the bus would be there soon. "No", said the god of the bus system. "For your arrogance you shall wait not 30, not 40 but 50 minutes in the Nevada desert heat for your bus."

About 45 minutes into my wait a skinny black woman in a big floppy hat arrived. She was crazy. Not in the adorable puppy that runs around a lot crazy. But the probably keeps a human hand in her purse on the off chance someone asks her to give them a hand kind of crazy. She looked normal enough. But she screamed. A lot. Things like 'Satan is in her throat! The Satanists are coming and you will pay for all you have done!' and 'AAAHHHAAAAGGGGGGG! NO! NOOO! AAAHHHGGGHHH!'

I kid you not.

She did it on the bus too.

Once I arrived in the Galleria Mall area I think I saw my friend. But I didn't stop to say hello. I'm always afraid they'll turn out to be someone I don't know. I tried applying for jobs at places in the mall, but it turns out they all take applications online these days. Sad. So I applied in store at Borders and Target.

Then came the Applebees event. Where Misty and I conversed and ate food we liked and such. In our conversation we went from 0 to "penis" in 90 seconds. Meaning that it only took us 90 seconds to make a perverted joke. This one involved a penis. (The next one had to do with a scrotum). We remenisced, talked, found out that we both hate pancakes and cake. And rejoyced.

So I'm going through a dream phase.

It's actually very neat. I'm in a sleeping pattern that seems to allow me to remember my dreams much more vividly. I'm obsessed with unreal and otherworldly things, so this is awesome.

I'm having more of those classic teeth falling out dreams. Everyone seems to have them. It's a ridiculously realistic sensation. Only in mine I have another tooth behind the one falling out so it's actually not a really threatening sensation that I get. The problem with these particular dreams is that for a while they were filed under real memories in my brain. And I would think back to the last time I lost a tooth and think it was very recent, and cite the dream memory as real. It's really very strange, and leads me to wonder if there are any more dreams I've filed in the "real memories" file.

A recent dream went roughly like this:

I was going to see a girl who is sick. She was in a room on the second floor of a large house. The house was old. The colors of the house were rich and deep. And when I would try to go up to see her I would find my way blocked. As it turns out I am not allowed to see this girl. She is off limits. I try various methods and eventually make it to the second floor but have to hide constantly. I am forced to leave before I am discovered. the top floor is old but cleaner. I enter through the front door again and am led to the stairs by the girl's sister. She tells me to go through a small (very small) door under the first stair and crawl up to the second floor. One inside the crawlspace A mouse scuttles up to one of the exit holes. I push out and into a pristine medical ward-like hallway. I run through room after room until I reach the girl. I wake up.

All of my dreams seem to follow this search, evade, discover, escape type of theme. It's interesting. Needless to say, I will be sleeping in this pattern to see if I can illicit more of this.

This is from xkcd

Musings on myself

I've always found a deep and troubling connection with those characters you see in movies that coat the walls of one room with their thoughts. I've always had the urge to do that. To lock myself in a room with reams of paper, a computer and a printer. The end result of which I believe would be an astounding piece of artwork. I want to map out my ideas on massive walls. Start in the center and let it grow like some virus upon the wall.

I also want to do this in three dimensions. start with a room the size of an airplane hangar and employ dozens of people to help me build wonderland. Where sketches of domed shaped rooms with mirror floors and starry skies could be just one of the hundreds of other rooms. Mobius strips the size of a BMW bus.

On a much more attainable level I want to make a book. A book of paper models. Each page would be made of cardstock, and have shapes that you would pop out of their perforation that when put together would make paper models of the universe. And not just the ones I think are real. These models would bring abstract notions into a visual corporeal existence. So people would then see just how the universe ticks. And "tick" is kind of exactly the right word. I want people to construct these simple white models and see the metaphorical gears behind the white clock face.

Planet of the Jews

This is a trailer created my myself and my brothers today. I hope you enjoy.

Things I desperately want. (In no particular order)

A hug.
A job.
A normal sleeping pattern.
A long black fitted coat.
A deeper understanding of the universe.
A cuddle. (Can that be used as a noun?)
A good amount of money. ($1,500)
A licence.
A brain that understands math.
A new camera.
A scholarship.
A movie marathon.
A pair of wings.

Why I'm not an atheist or a theist.

Forget the Bible, the Koran, the cathedrals, the mosques, the temples, the priests, and forget the doctrines. Instead, think about the central question.

Given what has been proven by science and reasoning, does there still exist the possibility of a "god"?

There are those who say that yes, a god does indeed exist because a book said so. If that were all we needed to prove something, I'd leap from a building and fly. For as the great and powerful Douglas Adams once wrote in his text "There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that provides the difficulties."
But we all know that doesn't quite work (Because some of us have tried).

So books aren't proof.

However! If you ask a scientist why there isn't a god you're bound to either get an opinion or the honest 'Well, I can't say there isn't a god. But I can say that there isn't sufficient proof for the existence of a god.'

Okay so orthodox religion isn't reliable and science is working on something else entirely.

But! There is some circumstantial evidence that points to a god! Evidence that wouldn't stand up in the court of law, like hearsay (the Bible) or something that looks like there may have been someone here potentially sometime in the past but maybe not (the supposed "fine tuning" of the universe. The very concept of "fine tuning" implies that there was a tuner, therefore the name gives the theists an advantage. They do have the handicap of the burden of proof, so we'll let them have this one.)
Moving on, this fine tuning refers to the balances in the universe that led to the formations of stars, galaxies, planets, nebulae, black holes and sandwiches. A nice list of them appears on a website ridiculously biased and untrustworthy. (But they cite sources. That makes it just a little bit more okay to take them seriously.) Fine tuning refers to the scientifically verified fact that if certain constants in the universe like gravity and such were slightly off, the universe would be an inhospitable expanse of space. Here's a quote I found that adequately explains how exact these things must be to maintain life:

"One part in 10 to the 37 is such an incredibly sensitive balance that it is hard to visualize. The following analogy might help: Cover the entire North American continent in dimes all the way up to the moon, a height of about 239,000 miles..." "Next, pile dimes from here to the moon on a billion other continents the same size as North America. Paint one dime red and mix it into the billions of piles of dimes. Blindfold a friend and ask him to pick out one dime. The odds that he will pick the red dime are one in 10 to the 37." - Dr. Hugh Ross

Shit, right? But that still doesn't prove there is a god. It's pretty convincing though.

Another fact in regards to the structure of the universe is just how well things seem to work with numbers. In essence there is nothing that says 2+2 should equal 4. Humanity has assigned number values to things and found that certain things are always true no matter how many times you try. This is true for ridiculously complex mathematics. The fact that the universe adheres to these mathematical concepts and theories sometimes boggles my mind. This language which we created ourselves (mathematics) accurately fits inside the universe like it was meant to be there. Most of the time I think, well that's not really a surprise, we built mathematics to explain things so it does what we want it to. But math isn't just a set of bendable rules. It's a ridiculously complex and rigid set of rules that tends to know things before we do. And that, my friends makes no sense. The fact that a mathematical theory can describe things we've never seen before and then turn out to be true implies that math is something central to the universe. The core of what I'm saying is that the math was always in the universe even before we discovered it. It has it's own laws. And I wonder why it does.

But. All rants about math being the "language of god" aside, These are the reasons I cannot accept atheism or theism. Neither side has a bit of real proof.

If science is right, everything is predictable, and if enough mathematical equations were crunched, I could predict the future based on all the atoms positions in the universe, and how they are slated to interact, right down to the atoms in my mind.

If religion is right, everything is predictable because god has the ultimate say in what happens. God is all knowing and all present. Therefore, when the universe began, god knew the end. And that means god knew how the universe would unfold and did it. Therefore god chose how we would act billions of yeas before we were born.

(Come to think of it, science and religion agree on some things.)

Tune in next time when I'll talk about something else.

On my roof.

In suburbia the houses are all basically the same. Mirrored, rotated, copy pasted. It's a much better place to grow up than most people seem to think. I'd much rather grow up in a cookie cutter home than... say live in an impoverished country where drinking water is something you earn. Suburbia also has an iconic beauty that (I hear) was a dream for those back when Steven Spielberg started making movies featuring these neighborhoods. Anyhow. To the main event:

To change things.

I feel like doing something drastic. Like walking out of my house for a month, or changing my name. Speaking the truth to people around me. Anything to simply twist my life into something drastically new. Anything to break the pattern. Anything to bring me closer to the fantasy world I keep in my head.

Beautiful Malancholy.

A beautiful mix of joy and depression. A feeling that reminds you that to miss a pair of lips means you've had them before. That to want companionship means theres hope for it. Even that there is a deep beauty in everything.

I'm taking pictures tonight.

This song is also amazing: Here.

My old habits...

My old habits are still out there, fading. I used to stencil in drainage ditches in my suburban neighborhood. I went back to see what remained of them and to my surprise, some of them were still in good shape. Others were not so lucky. Here are a few of the pictures I took. The rest can be found Here.







This one made me feel especially special. It's a stencil someone else made which they sprayed next to my (and Gabe's) original 6 foot anatomical heart stencil.

A question of dire importance.

I really do want input on this people!

And I know I screwed up the title of it.

I want...

I want to create a piece of artwork that causes people to be removed from reality. I believe that this has been my goal all along. I want viewers to enter into my piece and suddenly know that they are somewhere else. I want to play with perception, twist the idea of reality. I want the "viewers" (it would be a multisensory expirence actually) to enter and become something else. They will leave my art with knoeledge they hadn't thought they would ever posess. I don't want them to be able to express it in words.

I want to explore what is real.
What defines art.
How far I can push the liminal idea of space and time.
I want them to forget they are looking at a piece of artwork.
I want them to expirence it alone.
Trip the mind and have it fall into place somewhere else.
I want it to make them think they are dreaming.
I want them to faint inside it.
I want them to feel both small and infinite.
Expirence nothing and everything in one moment.
Find their senses incapable of comprehending.

So it's over.

Obama will finally win, and Hillary will bow out. Or so I hope. I think Hillary should play this song during her concession speech. It's upbeat enough to allow some optimism, but modest enough to retain the melancholy feel of a speech like that.

But people don't soundtrack their speeches. they really should...

Ghosts on the net.

What would happen to my Blogger, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, and etc. accounts if I were to die tomorrow? Would they live on as a ghost on the net?

It's an interesting idea. Everything would continue on existing after my death like a carnival ride crafted by a dead man. Pages would load. Slide shows would play. Words would continue to exist with my thoughts and emotions. It's interesting to think of a ghost this way. Just as a profile page still exists after the host dies, so does a ghost. The page doesn't know that it's dead.

And is a page in some small way still the person who made it? If it still contains emotion in its texts and photos, does it not still retain some small part of the individual who made it?

Is this why profile sites are so popular? A natural instinct not only to be remembered by minds that will also die, but to leave a permanent mark on something. Just something to think about.

Oh my god. Look here.

"Hey!!!!my name is Haley and i love life...!" She died yesterday.