The long and short of

I’m ecstatic. I’m overjoyed. The thing with the job went through (or fell through, depending how you look at it) and I’m floating on air knowing I don’t have to worry about that anymore ever again. But. Amidst all this euphoria, I’m lost for what to do. Not in the long term: plans and whatnots; more of the what about tomorrow kind. I’m thinking maybe I’d sleep in for a couple of days and then I’d tidy up then I’d play video games until my eyes give out. But I’ve been doing that for the last three days and it’s become so that I am starting to feel wretched over all this idleness.

Drawing would cure this but I haven’t drawn anything serious since February and yeah, if I dwell on that I’d be horribly depressed. I doodled some but that’s just not the same. I’ve been looking at a lot of artwork (by other people) earlier and though I didn’t feel like bashing my head to the nearest wall (like I do sometimes) it’s still awful that everyone else is doing something and I’m sitting here blogging about it instead.

I’m trying to expand my horizons when it comes to art appreciation. I lean more towards the conventional-types: comic artists and pen-and-ink illustrators. And turn-up my nose on doodlers, sketchers and digital artists. But the only difference between the two is the end product. It’s more than likely that if you scratch the surface, your average doodler has as much skills as your average comic artist. They just prefer doodling to drawing comics and that’s why they do as they do. Pah! Maybe this is a simplistic approach but I really want to embrace this. I think maybe it would help me appreciate other artists more, and in the process, it would open me up to more possibilities with regards to my drawing.

I know I’m good at drawing but only up to a certain point. I’m hampered by the fact that I tend to keep within my comfort zone. I don’t draw with anything besides ink, I don’t explore scenarios beyond what is realistic, I often draw only what I see and I can’t seem to translate 3D on paper. And no I’m not just feeding my inner inferiority complex here. I want to be a complete-er artist. Do crazy stuff for a change: cockroaches with ties, buildings with personality, airplanes with faces. I want to draw robots and goats and zombie balloons; I want cutesy octopi pictures, and Obama caricatures, and schoolgirls with googly anime eyes; I want to do a rough pencil sketches, leave it as is, and call it done. I want to color things in photoshop like I mean it. I want to slapdash colors with watercolour and not feel slightly foolish with the results. I don’t want to do abstract but I should try it at least once just to get it off my system. Then maybe it would finally make sense.

I was actually contemplating turning this into a portfolio/art blog instead of the mishmash that it is now. But I don’t art 24/7 and (no matter how much I wish it) this is not a perfect world and I won’t have nearly as much stuff to say.

This entry feels all unfinished but I’m falling asleep in front of the keyboard anf that’s not a good thing.

Little Man Tate: Nothing Worth Having Comes Easy

www.littlemantate.co.uk Little Man Tate on MySpace buy this CD on Amazon UK

Nothing Worth Having Comes Easy Released : 2008 Label : Skint 1. Money Wheel 2. What Your Boyfriend Said 3. She Looks Like Audrey Hepburn 4. Shot At Politics 5. Hey Little Sweetie 6. Joined By An Ipod 7. Face On A Wall 8. A Little Heart 9. Back Of The Pub Quiz 10. London Skies London Eyes 11. Shoulder To Sigh On

It’s a mistake having this up for spring-cleaning cos it’s a definite keeper. Maybe the last song doesn’t fit with the album and Little Man Tate in general but it’s not an awful song. So yeah, I love this record. I wouldn’t mind having it on repeat for a whole week. I’d buy it twice just to prove my point. So sorry to be chintzy but I won’t be putting this up on mediafire and I won’t even review it. Picking it apart would be beside the point. I’d rather just listen and enjoy.

But I’m not.

It’s funny because a lot of awful things have been happening lately, and I’m feeling so horribly deadpan. For one thing, I just got kicked off of my job. Not formally, but through the grapevine. Which, if you look at it, is a lot worse than being told about it in your face. I should feel sad and awful but I’m not. It actually feels liberating, like breaking up with Tiny Tim some years back.

If it turns out to be untrue though, and I’m still expected to go to work tomorrow and for the rest of my life, I would feel cheated. I was ready to move on a couple months ago when I went into the office early one morning and discovered that my boss is, secretly, a monsTTAAAARRRR!. And when she tried to smile conspiratorially (to include me in on the secret), I knew that there was no way I would ever like her again. Of course you don’t have to like your boss for things to work out, but I’ve been phoning it in eversince so she probably hates me already.

And that is, of course, the coolest thing ever.

I’d probably chill out for a couple weeks then I’d plunge into something totally off-the-wall like real estate or sales. I’m not worried anymore, although of course, I can’t turn off my brain and not come up with different scenarios and have a million conversations in my head, but that’s just who I am.

I picked up a couple of cds today, The Antlers’ Hospice and Stuarts’ God Help the Girl. Depending on how good they turn out, I might have them up for a spring-cleaning review (but I doubt it). Also, I checked my beleaguered iTunes and saw that I have T.I.’s A Year and A Day on my library. Now I hate the whole hip-hop/R&B thing so I might just scrap it off entirely instead of listening to it or doing a review. I’d do Little Man Tate’s Nothing Worth Having Comes Easy instead. Finally getting on with music that I really like.

Jonas Brothers: Lines, Vines and Trying Times

www.jonasbrothers.com Jonas Brothers on MySpace buy this cd on Amazon

Lines, Vines and Trying Times Released : 2009 Label : Hollywood Records 1. World War III 2. Paranoid 3. Fly with Me 4. Poison Ivy 5. Hey Baby (feat. Johnny Lang) 6. Before the Storm (feat. Miley Cyrus) 7. What Did I Do to Your Heart 8. Much Better 9. Black Keys 10. Don’t Charge Me for the Crime (feat. Common) 11. Turn Right 12. Don’t Speak 13. Bonus Track: Keep It Real

I’m not really familiar with the JoeBros. They’ve been around for a while but I always just think of their music as something for the ‘tween’ set, bubblegum and pink. That they actually play instruments and write their own songs is a surprise. And this fourth outing, my first JoeBros cd, is a mix of solid pop and rock tunes that I wouldn’t mind listening to from time to time.

Kris Allen: Brand New Shoes

www.krisallenofficial.com Kris Allen on MySpace

Brand New Shoes Released : 2007 Label : (self-produced) 1. Brand New Shoes 2. Beautiful Moon 3. I Was Played 4. Wipe It Away 5. Running 6. Be My Lady 7. Wastin’ Time 8. Lovely 9. On Our Way 10. Real World 11. Land of Smiles

I like Kris Allen. He wasn’t my vote for American Idol but I’m not bitter about him winning. I knew that out of all the contestants, his songs would be the type I would listen to long after AI is over. That said, this is a forgettable album. Not bad exactly, more like mediocre. Of course this is self-produced and a couple years before the Idol exposure so you’d expect it to be a bit raw. It’s a mix of good and ok songs, nothing truly remarkable and nothing so awful, you’d have to skip it every turnaround.

Spring cleaning my iTunes

I have too much music. I add new songs/albums almost every week  and the old tunes get stuck in the back burner. The bad part is, on a hectic month, I don’t even get to listen to the new tunes and they get shunted along to the back row until it chances to play on Party Shuffle some months later. And either I get pleasantly surprised or just baffled with it all. For normal folks, this shouldn’t be such a problem. But I have a nonexistent storage space, and it bothers me that I can’t really tell if I like half the stuff I have on because I haven’t even heard them.

So I’m doing some spring-cleaning, and this will probably go on for a while. I’ll be listening to albums on repeat and basically pick out the songs I like and screw the rest off. I’ll do a tiny review to appease myself then keep the albums on mediafire in case some people want them. Or, I get anal and decide that I actually want the whole album instead of just the good bits (it happens). It works both ways: I stay happy, other people stay happy, and I’d have my library all organized.

Now if only Mediamonkey would stop being all buggy on me so I can switch over and ditch iTunes altogether, I’d be set for life.

Aboard the Lazy Boat

I draw. But not often enough to suit me. In a perfect world I’d spent each and every waking hour drawing things. I won’t be blogging then, or watching TV, or reading books, or brushing my teeth, or playing with Maya and BoboBear,  because I would be drawing. I would be a happier, jollier, nice-ier person and I would stop obsessing about tootsie rolls because I would simply not have the time to. Too bad this is not a perfect world and I would continually have tootsie rolls stuck in the back of my teeth for all eternity.

These drawings were done a while ago, but so far they’re the only ones (of about 80+) that are clean and web-ready. The main reason for this is cos I am lazy, the second is: I’m scared of computers, third: I’m allergic to Photoshop. I want to do as little digital editing as possible. Sometimes though I get sucked into the fallacy that I can color, and I spend countless hours slapping on colors and gradients and adjusting the elements until I get exhausted and decide to stop. I liked how the coloring went with the first drawing though, the last one not as much.

Beep! Blogger Bus, Beep!

It’s good to see that this particular blogger bus is moving along but as it progresses I start to hate it more and more. I want to have a lot more control over how the pages look like but I’m a miserable cheapskate and I’m loathe to do some hard coding because I just don’t have the time, or actually, the energy.

It seems that the easier it gets to have a blog published, the harder it is for me to keep up. I was more at ease years ago when you have to wrestle with HTML and PHP to come up with something halfway decent. Or maybe that’s just reverse snobbishness on my part. I still don’t know what I want to do with this blog but the general idea is already half-formed in my head. A couple more days and a healthy dose of chili powder will probably do the trick.

At least I already have the theme and header downpat. It was supposed to be a different image but the Terms of Use on that one was so horrifying-ly affected that it seems more trouble than it’s worth. What I ended up using is this Gaara fanart by tsukishoujo. I dunno if she minds, but hopefully not so much. I’d deal with the widgets in a bit and maybe they wouldn’t be such a problem.

I realize now that this is more of a note to self post, one that I would do well to avoid in the future cos it feels counterproductive. Along the lines of better to be doing than talking about it snitzel. I’m looking to post drawings in the widgets, as well as a last.fm player and others of the same ilk. That is, if wordpress.com would allow it. I have yet to check.

The Number One

I have Oasis’ song Half the World Away on endless repeat. This song has been on my song library for a couple years but this is the first time I heard it and I find that I actually do like it. This is characteristic of me. To, one: have a song I know nothing about in my library, and two: go on and on about something trivial when what I really want to say is, hey look I have a new blog! As if, you know, it’s worthy of announcement.

I feel the need to up and explain myself but I’m wondering why I should bother. It’s not as though I’m looking to share my thoughts with other people, or that there is an ulterior motive behind all these typed words. Mostly I just like reading stuff that I wrote after so many years because they turn out to be very surprising. This just goes to show that I’m very full of myself. But I think maybe that goes for everybody who has a blog so it’s a moot point.

I like music and I like books. Sometimes I watch television. And movies. But only after some years had passed, so that can be discounted. I draw some, but not enough to suit me. I play video games even though I absolutely suck. Maya is a little girl. And Bobo is her teddy bear. My name is Mermer, and really, I’m trying very hard to be succint.

3 paragraphs. That’s almost a success story.