..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Friday, September 19, 2003

"One problem about relating things in the first person - the reader knows the narrator doesn't get killed."
- Boy's Life - Robert McCammon

what the hell was i going to say when i sat down here? i swear i had something important but Porky's was on TV and they were tearing down the bar and i turn back around to the blank screen and now i forgot.

oh well. time to ramble. okay, here's an annotation to my "why i write" post. my mom read it and had some corrections. she said that she didn't remember them putting me in a desk in the hallway to draw a clown but she did remember them talking me (and some other children) to the parking lot (?) to sit down in front of the car of our choice and draw the front end. that's even stranger than my version. she said that the animals i drew on the blackboard had impressed someone because of the correct perspective and sizes of the animals in the background so i was told to draw the front end of the car to see if i could duplicate that same kind of awarness with the perspective. i guess most kids always draw cars from the side and maybe they flounder when the headlights are a just a couple feet from their face. anyway, i remember something about drawing a car. i don't remember the other kids though. still sounds kind of ominous. i mean, who knows what kind of affect that can have on a child. my car chase obsession was one result. what if those other kids are designing crash-test dummies, reading too much J.G. Ballard, collecting Dale Earnhart T-shirts or maybe one of them is the dude in Jackass who stuck the Hot Wheel up his ass. could be a class-action lawsuit in here eh? ("ladies and gentlemen of the jury, watch as my client get an erection as soon as the opening credits of Mad Max begin...") Perspective she said. Makes sense. "Vanishing Point" is at the top of my unreleased DVD want list right now.

speaking of Vanishing Point, road trip to Toledo tommorrow. can anyone suggest some driving music? i'm not leaving until 4 so i'll honestly go get some new music if someone recommends it with some passion.

more Chuck news. just read that the names in "Diary" were chosen from a nationwide contest where people sent him their names to be put in the book so he didn't have to waste time thinking of them. i tend to randomly flip through my copy of "35,000 Baby Names" when i'm stuck. that book still raises an eyebrow when someone notices it on my desk.

saw something very cool on another site. Wood mirrors, trash mirrors and a roomfull of flashbacks. The dude's name is Daniel Rozin and his art projects are cool as hell. he makes a "mirror" out of wood and little servo motors that tilt some wooden tiles to reflect light and create an outline of someone who passes in front of it. it's hard to explain but the video on the site shows how it works. he also does this with hammered pieces of trash, and some silver balls that are pushed in and out of tubes. fascinating stuff. he also has a room where you enter with a flashlight and illuminate different stages of his life. his "flashback" room is a great idea and his explanation...

"everyone knows how to use a flashlight and what to expect of it, and the flashlight in this experience performs as one would expect it to, apart from the fact that the flashlight emits no light"

...is interesting enough to inspire all sorts of fiction. i'm stuck on a project right now actually. i'm currently trying to talk myself into writing my first first-person story. i've always been opposed to writing in the first person for several reasons. some i can't explain. it just always feels wrong, like i'm cheating. like i'm not working hard enough.

now Porky's is over and some dudes are building a dunk-tank out of garbage. what's up? is all the good TV being used up tonight? i'm two for two! i'm going to hit a random button on the remote and see if i don't get the hat trick. ready...

no bullshit. i just clicked on the History channel and the narrator is talking about Nobel inventing dynamite. i've always heard about that ("the Nobel Peace prize is named after the guy who invented what?") but never heard the whole story. i have to watch this. wow. "Porky's," two guys constructing a dunk-tank, and the history of dynamite. TV won't get this good again so i have to give it both eyes and ears right now. they just said that the first bomb was dropped during a demonstration from a Wright brother's airplane. it's as if planes and bombs were squeezed out of the same womb, connected forever. it's like the mechanical fly Fishfry was talking about. you just know it flew into a metal spiderweb.

also, in honor of her Private Hell that she just posted, here's a little joke i've always liked:

dude goes to hell and he's getting the tour by a demon. the demon opens a room and inside are a bunch of sinners standing waist deep in shit. the new guy is thinking, "that's nasty, but i really thought it would be worse..."
then the demon whistles and yells, "Okay, breaks over! Everyone back on your heads!"

::: david - 10:30 PM [+] :::
...