#actually don’t follow me on twitter it’s my digital diary

[frankymca]

i was risking so much just to tell my mom the truth about you, and for what?

#fran talks #more like thinks out loud #this should have been a tweet #(follow me on twitter for sad thoughts and good lyrics @frankymca) #actually don’t follow me on twitter it’s my digital diary

[straycatboogie]

2023/02/26 English

BGM: Lenny Kravitz - It Ain't Over Til It's Over

I thought what I could write as the homework for the next English conversation class. Teachers said to us that we can write anything freely, and that makes me wander what should be the good topic. I talked with Pili, who is an admin of an English learning group on WhatsApp, about this. She suggested various ideas for me, and I also thought some ideas. Suddenly, I got an idea of whether I am an analog person or a digital person. Besides that, I also thought about the issue of immigrants or the trial of writing a short story like Lyria Davis or Yasunari Kawabata, but both seemed to be difficult for me to write about them actually so I decided to write that division. I say again, whether am I an analog person or digital person?

TBH I started having my smartphone later than others and also I can't manage task schedule or writing notes by it even now. Actually, I do "rarely" (for example, I write about the promises of meeting people into Google Keep as using the function of reminder. You shouldn't forget how autistic people forget their promises rapidly), and also I was taught how to manage my ideas on Evernote. However, it didn't fit me, or I should say that it didn't "suit" me. Even now, I write my ideas on the real paper memo pad or the "system note" given from my father for my diary or the homework like this. I have been trying to write my memo in English because it "suits" me (of course, I have been doing English memo for actual learning, too). I have kept on writing my English memo for about two years.

In a way, I am typically an "out of date", analog person. I don't use any kindle and also not enjoy Twitter. At least, I don't enjoy Twitter like I did once. I started thinking that it can be good for me to spend enjoying Hemingway and stay apart from the trends, not feeling up and down with what is buzzing on social media. In addition of being "out of date", this shows that I am actually getting aged step by step (we Japanese say that can be "power of aging (roujin ryoku)"). As getting older, I am slowly into the life of "retirement". Becoming aged or refined... this would lead me to live the life with enjoying Japanese traditional culture as paintings in ink or Rakugo. I would listen to Eric Clapton, read Flaubert, and sometimes feel moved by some Rakugo tales on YouTube... is it cool?

This evening, I read Yoshio Kataoka again with Jim Hall's jazz guitar playing. I think about the adoration for America, or for the Western countries widely. Recently, I am thinking about what can be the phenomenon of "becoming international" or "globalization". Of course, we shouldn't obey the Western culture blindly. But also I don't want to follow the movement of "Japan as No.1". The development of the internet have enabled us to communicate easily each other. The era the cool things come and go across the borderlines so rapidly... but I want to be honest or dutiful for myself about what is cool for me. Indeed, following the trends can be important, but it would become so hard if I lost myself within vast sea of information. I repeat this again. I would live this slow life dutifully with reading Raymond Carver's short stories translated by Haruki Murakami. But also, I want to learn more. The journey of learning English would have no ends.

#diary #english #journal #tumblr diary

[wormmomma]

tyler, the creator: the very queer discography review!!!

Im bored of writing overly long threads on twitter so i wrote a look at tyler the creators discography and why hes gay and im gay and deserved to have his dick immortalized in gold when he dies. So tyler gregory okanma is a black man born in ladera heights california. He’s also my third favorite rapper and since he discovered my favorite rapper earl sweatshirt I guess he deserves goat status for that shit too. Tyler started his career around 17 years old as the ace the creator. He did features at the time with casey veggies and the inspirations in his flow to mf doom where already apparent even back then. From ace the creator mixtape you can already hear the very digital and jazz inspired pharrell production. Funny story if you look up any of his ace stuff now you'll mostly find some really old production that in the age of tyler the creator type beats doesn't really hold u all that great. From there Tyler went on to create odd futures and his first album bastard. He quite quickly followed up bastard with godlin. Goblin, bastard, and the OF tape vol.1 all feel pretty interconnected so im gonna speed round from worst to best. So odd future tape volume one is fun and punk and really crass, it's also completely eclipsed by odd futures other releases. I love odd future and the collective's ability too be both edgy teen skate rap garbage, and a risky artistic rap collective all at the same time. In odd future's first tape it seems pretty clear that tylers description of the groups early work as a bunch of niggas joking around in a studio is very apparent for better or worse. If you wanna get high with some friends can listen to some funny edgy and downright grimey tracks over left brains booking production skip this and listen to odd future's next mixtape but come back here to listen to some funny skits and a few proto mellowhype track with domo genesis. Goblin is Tyler's attempt to do a bigger darker more sprawling version of bastard but misses the mark. I like the album and I love singles on the album. Goblin the opening track is amazing and is a great look at tylers mental state attempting to live up to his newfound fame and anxiety about his infamy. I love yonkers and tron cat. Tyler says alot at this time that he doesn't make horrorcore and he's correct but the lack of emotional honesty and his immature deflections is really going off on all cylinders. If you dont wanna hear skits like “my bitch suck dick” and lines like “im not homophobic faggot” i would probably call it his worst album. Before i talk about bastard id like to go over his use of slurs and rape in his work. Tylers consistent lyrics about violence towards women and use of the lgbtq community really don't insult me. I feel like his lyrical content is filled with a clear look of how angry and insecure tyler was about not having a father or any way of processing his angst. Did he have to sound like a incel threatening to stalk and murder women who refuse to love him for over 3 albums? No, but i really enjoy looking at his early music. He doesn't shy away from how angry, sad and desperate he was at the time. That synthesis of need for fatherly love, anger from a lack of it and deteriorating mental state honestly makes the content more palatable. Also as a black trans women id rather hear tranny an faggot bars from a male rapper making intreeating music. Tyler at the time was being honest, angry and vulnerable not like eminem and action bronson who spit these bars with all the same rap bravado and violent anger toward women with zero pathos. Bastard is amazing, it's an intimate dark album. At the time it felt like it was tapping right into where I was at the time. The amount of mental anguish on bastards opening track really hit me. I was an angry kid with a lot of angst and bipolar disease so hearing a rapper yell about that same dysfunction really meant alot to me. The flows are amazing and it was a really good look at tylers ability to build a narrative. Wolf was tyler's next album. For a while wolf was my favorite album by tyler. His look at relationships and breakups on bimmer and ifhy are amazing and are expanded on his future releases. Find your wings and treehome are also a good look at his more melodic influence. It was such a good album I actually bought the mrech for and went to see Tyler at afropunk. Also hearing an entire song about the death of his grandma really hit me, my grandfather died around the same time. Cherry bomb was bad, now moving one. Ok im  joking i've listened to it two or three times but its really not worth going back to even though tyler put his all into it. The soul features and amazing production is worth listening to but even Tyler admits he rushed the album a little and that he needed to blow people away next time. Flower boy, is one of the most important albums in hip hop. That's it. Bar none. It was my favorite release of 2018. Flower boy is about tylers newfound isolation with his fame, and how he drives cars by himself in beautiful la vistas. Its also about how he’s gay (or bisexual). There are ALOT of stupid takes on this album. There is a contingency of tyler stans that think tyler has been “playing a character” since bastard. Now I'll admit that wolf haley and dr.teecee are clearly characters; they are also artists' representations of tyler's mental state. If wolf haley has adhd and no father that means tyler also has those issues. So whether or not Tyler is playing a character he has in fact “been kissing white boys since 2004”. I also have seen an insipid article that asks if “tyler the creator should be accepted into the lgbtq community” due to his homophobia? Much more controversial and actually homophobic and transphobic people are in this community hes tyler the creator, not milo yinnaoplous. I also dont think that it occurs to the reviewer that alot of gay men are very hmophobic before they come out and that self hate is very common. Lyrics like “im not gay i just wanna dance to some marvin” also has a much deeper context now. Listening to older releases you can see how in your face tyler was about his queerness. He even said he filmed himself kissing his friend Lucas to prove he wasn't a homophobe. I'm happy Tyler grew enough to make an album not only about being attracted to men but how lonely he felt in and out of the closet. As someone who came out as bisexual at the time it came at a perfect time. Being  gay is isolating and confusing and when you do you lose alot of friends and family. Garden shed, who dat boy, and 911 are real standouts. His collaboration with kali uchis was also so fucking smooth and she a born r&b star. Tyler gained a grammy nomination off the album and said he loved the feeling of finally making popular catchy music people wanna sing the lyrics too, so he followed it with igor. Igor opens with this addendum on the back of the physical album: 

This might be fiction, this might be about igor but it is fully about tyler okanga. The album is very hard to parse and barely has any rapping. It's more of a pop experimental album with a lot of lofi synth production. Tylers production chops are full force here. Igor is melodic, sad and full of the same anger and obsession from his previous albums. Its just more mature and really gay, and i fucking love it. Tyler was dealing with a tumultuous relationship with a guy and his refusal to be with tyler exclusively. Its about a breakup. A love tragedy that only becomes more depressing after the argument on a boy is a gun, the breakup in my love is gone, and the sad slump back into needing closure in can we be friends. The album is fun to sing to, and fucking devestating. I've dealt with a lot of similar issues with love and obsession so to hear it so clearly illustrated on igor really hit me. I think the album becomes even more depressing with the unreleased track best interest, about tyler being a side nigga. This is the kind of music that's sometimes made in r&b and pop but never in rap. There was an interview where Tyler says he hated his voice which is why he edits it so evident on igor. Tyler also said he wanted to send these songs to rihanna and Justin Beiber but they didn't want them, as cool as it sounds. I'm happy tyler was able to tell his own story. I would also recommend magic wand since it's my favorite track on the album and kicks you in the face with how angry and heartbroken Tyler was at the time. 

Tyler is an artist that talks and speaks about how he feels all the time, he's also a person who feels enigmatic and mysterious somehow. I think it has to do with how constantly he's put to the side of his other hip hop contemporaries. He always seems to be making music Tom weird, controversial and experimental to be treated like asap rocky, vince staples, or the late mac miller. A fact that feels ironic since he worked with all of those artists, lil wayne, and even kanye west. I'm as big a stan for tyler as he is for Pharrell, if it wherent forever I'd never take rap seriously and would never have chosen to make my own music. As a black trans woman I find a lot of tylers work really relatable. I've been in alot of the angry hopeless situations Tyler talks about in his music. I think he's the artist who hits me the most on a personal level and yeah when i was depressed i sat in my bedroom and listened to bastard in my low moments. I like riding in the car and listening to all of flowerboy. Igor is amazing as well for almost half a decade it's been amazing growing up and hitting the same emotional beats Tyler went through5 in his work. Hearing about him coming out as gay ajd dealing with very similar backlash mad me feel less alone if im being honest. Tyler has said he wants to take a more production heavy role in the industry moving forward but he says that a lot, i think as long as he has a story to tell he's always going to make music. His music feels like a diary and I'm happy to read it and sonnet to it in all its beauty and ugliness. 

Hi my name is lua o'reilly i make music on soundcloud.com/wormmother

If you liked this review let me know and I'll do a look into earl sweatshirt.

#Tyler The Creator #wolf #bastard #rap #music #punk #reveiw #discography #queer art #queer #black art

[kcourtney01-blog]

Social Media and Literacy Learning

Author: Kali Courtney

Date: 02/26/19

Literacy is the quality or state of being literate which means having the ability to read or write. Having that ability is important within this day in age due to that a lot of information we receive as people is put into forms where knowing how to read and write may be beneficial. Different sources such as books, newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals and much more have given people access to an abundance of knowledge. Since the peak of the 21st century there has been rise to a new source of information which is social media. Social media has various forms of digital platforms where individuals can express themselves and stay connected with people across the globe from them. Just like there are multiple different versions of newspapers such as, The New York Times, StarTribune etc. There are different social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Blogs, and so many more. Within each of those social media sites they each present their own forms of communication and information outsourcing. People who use Instagram make personal profiles and share their world through the use of pictures and filters. Twitter is more of a platform where individuals really can be personal as a online diary of sorts. As times have changed and continue to change, the way we collect our information is as well, so the question is “How does social media help with literacy learning?”

I want to showcase within this passage some of the ways that literacy learning can be aided through the use of social media. Within this article I will be addressing how social media has helped me within my literacy learning. I also will be pulling from great writing scholars such as Deborah Brandt and speaking on behalf of literacy sponsors within social media and how those sponsors are linked to literacy success. Lastly, I will be speaking on behalf of Malcolm X pulling from snippets of his autobiography; I will be showing that if Malcolm had access to social media his literacy journey would have been much different. To start off  I have been lucky enough to see the evolution of social media and the internet being that I was born at the beginning of the 2000’s. When social media first arose  it was used as more of a source for people to stay interconnected with one another. Facebook was used so every once in a while I could see what my cousins in Puerto Rico were up to and stalk their daily hilarious posts. Instagram was used just primarily by younger people where I could post a picture of my daily outfit or a cool scenic picture. In terms of actual information such as news and things of that nature I would get from watching Fox News or reading the latest newspaper. Now in terms of literacy, anything that involves reading or writing is engaging in the act of being literate. By me engaging in Facebook or Instagram, in writing captions under my pictures or writing daily post on Facebook I was sharing a form of my own literacy work. I will say that now since social media platforms have changed drastically they offer much more sources of information. I have learned new literacies just from scrolling through my explore page or recommended on Instagram. Due to instagram I was able to learn how to take care of my naturally curly hair by reading about what products helped certain women and men and which products worked on my curl pattern. I also follow many blogs that speak on women empowerment and self-growth which have given me the tools to be more self sufficient and boost my confidence by seeing what these other women post and talk about. By seeing their literary works I was able to learn many things (new literacies) for my own personal use that I don’t think books or newspapers or your daily magazine would have been able to show me. 

As I mentioned in speaking on behalf of my personal connections and experiences with social media, I spoke about blogs or pages that helped me in learning new information; sources that aided me along my literacy learning and are still helping me to this day. Those pages and blogs are what you would call “Literacy Sponsors”. Deborah Brandt, whom is a Professor emerita in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, thoroughly explains what literacy sponsors are and their importance in writing. Deborah states “sponsors seemed a fitting term for the figures who turned up most typically in people’s memories of literacy learning: older relatives , teachers , priest , supervisors , military officers , editors , influential authors.”(Brandt, 2017, p.73) As Brandt stated sponsors are people or things that have helped shape your literacy outcomes and in my case and, I’m sure in the case of many others, social media has played a crucial sponsor in literacy learning and outcomes. Further into the chapter, Brandt touches on some key concepts in relation to sponsors and sponsorship . Brandt states “people throughout history have acquired literacy pragmatically under the banner of others’ causes.”(Brandt, 2017, p.74)  I really appreciated what Brandt spoke about in terms of sponsors spreading their messages to others without even the slightest idea that their doing so and same goes for the individual taking in the sponsor's information. Social media sites are so big and vast and there is an abundance of different sponsors that people come across on a daily basis. Just from scrolling through my feed on Instagram or twitter I come across thousands of posts from people I know to people I’ve never seen before. Then next thing I know I’m reading about  a strangers opinion on if cats are better than dogs; or on someone's political views. Social Media is a new wave of how people are accessing different information and learning constantly. Since the uprise of social media, I’ve seen an increasing number of individuals becoming more vocal in social and political issues and it’s because they see others posting about those things and others are sharing their knowledge about those topics and the learning just continues. One thing will pass from one platform to another and eventually it becomes accessible to many around the globe! Just as I can testify to social media being a avid sponsor for me in my literacy journey it is one for many others and they don’t even realize the power in what it’s doing for them.

 Although social media is this great source of information some may argue that it isn’t that great. For as long as I can remember I’d always hear my Dad say or my Grandmother “all that facebooking is frying your brain!” They would say that because sometimes I would find myself not knowing how to spell words properly because I relied so much on automatic spell check from using digital platforms so much that I began to use less of my natural brain power. So in certain aspects I could see as to why some would think social media doesn’t help in literacy learning. I also think that a part in those opposing views in generational changes and shifts. Many whom I’ve asked this question to who opposed it were older (30 or older). I know many times my father has voiced to me that all this technology is making this new generation lazy and when he was younger they didn’t have all these fancy machines to do a lot of work for us. I think that like with anything being used for learning whether it be books, textbooks, teachers learning style, social media etc. Everything will have it’s pros and cons but I believe that because we are in an ever evolving technological time social media is very useful in helping with literacy learning. 

Now lastly, Malcolm X whom in many eyes was one of the greatest figures within Black History, was influential beyond all means and many saw him as very intelligent. He was an individual who spoke with elegance and poise and who knew how to strategically convey his message and voice to millions upon thousands. The snippet of Malcolm's autobiography shows his struggles of not be able to know how to read and write when entering into prison; Malcolm had stated “I became increasingly frustrated at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in letters that I wrote, especially those to Mr.Elijah Muhammad.”(X, 2017, p.107) He expressed much in the beginning of the passage how being illiterate was very frustrating for him and how in the streets he was able to gain and earn respect by words but now his vocal articulation doesn’t do much for him as being literate in reading and writing would more. In another passage, Malcolm X expressed “I saw that the best thing I could do was get a hold of a dictionary -- to study to learn some words. I was lucky enough to reason also that I should try and improve my penmanship.”(X, 2017, p.208) Within that, Malcolm X pointed out something important and that was a literacy sponsor. Going back to what Brandt was speaking on behalf of in the earlier paragraphs, Malcolm himself, Mr. Muhummed, his yearning to become literate and more importantly the dictionary were avid sponsors within his literacy journey. Without those resources Malcolm probably wouldn’t have converted to Islam, nor led great social political movements across the nation/world. Although I do believe and feel that if Malcolm would have had access to the resources of social media his literacy journey would have been easier but also I think the basis of his message of Black empowerment would have reached the hearts of many more. Malcolm himself would have been a great literary sponsor to many if Malcolm would have had access to let's say Instagram, he would have been able to post his flyers and messages for many to see! Beyond even him being a literacy sponsor he would have gained quick access to different resources providing him aid and information of literacy. He would have been able to get practice writing through social media platforms and I think and believe his literacy journey would have been much faster if he would have had those technological resources at hand. Although I am making assumptions, I think some can start to come to the conclusion that social media is a very useful tool in many individuals literacy journeys and those platforms have helped many start affluent careers and make marks on the world in numerous of ways. Malcolm was able to leave a mark in spite of not having those sources but imagine if those tools were at his disposal what he’s mark would have looked like.

In conclusion, between my personal experiences with social media, Brandt’s literacy sponsors, and through the story of Malcolm X’s literacy journey, we are able to see how social media can make a positive impact on literacy learning. Although many people (typically older generations) might see social media as a negative platform for communication because of how lazy it can make some people, social media gives people a place to share and read new information in which they may have not known or heard of before. Social media will continue to grow and I think it is important for people to continue to use it as a place where people can exchange new information to spread across the globe. Having this at your fingertips ensures that you won’t have to just go to the library all the time just to get some information about something so little. All of this is positive for the community despite social media’s negative connotations.    

[alia15]

The Future of AA

For as long as I can remember, I was a writer. I wrote short stories for fun as a kid, I kept a myriad of diaries and journals as a pre-teen, I LOVED writing essays in high school & college, and with the advent of social media I spent a lot of time writing (what I thought was) creative, engaging & humorous content. Then, in April of 2012, I listened to my gut -- and also the suggestions of friends and family members -- and finally started a blog. A blog where I wrote about a myriad of topics -- mostly personal stories, opinions and anecdotes -- and literally covered every subject imaginable.

The love of writing is still there.

But there is some lost love for maintaining a blog; a blog that for the past 6+ years I've constantly and consistently thought about, researched things for, ruminated over, stressed myself out about and put an immense pressure on myself to keep up.

After 6 years, I felt like I was forcing myself to keep going; to keep writing and posting frequently in fear that if I slowed down, I'd lose my loyal followers. In fear that my already dog-shit online reach would decrease even more. So I spent the little 'free time' I had and kept going; often writing posts that I wasn't even really passionate about but figured "eh, this'll do" just to publish SOMETHING.

No more.

Blogging has changed significantly in the past year or so, and so have I. I don't want to keep up with the Joneses and monetize or focus more on the aesthetics and money-driving aspects of blogging, because that isn't why I started. I have a good job -- a job I love, actually -- and I was never trying to become a full-time blogger. Props to those who do it, but I didn't have what it took to get there: sponsored posts/ads, promotional content, and SELLING SELLING SELLING.  I actually stopped following a lot of bloggers for going this route because I first fell in love with their real, raw, honest & humorous writing, and they lost me when it became sponsored posts for curling irons.

As a result, my kind of writing and blog style was going extinct, and social media drastically changed. From what I can see, people don't really 'read' anymore. They want quick bursts of content, like a photo with a storytelling-style caption or a series of short videos on Instagram Stories or Snapchat. When I'd take the time to write a longer post on what *I* thought was a meaningful topic, it often got :::crickets::::.

And despite how I may sound, I'm not bitter. I work in the industry of digital media and I get how this works. Trends change. The way people consume media changes. It's damn-near impossible to get people's attention nowadays. And quite frankly, I was tired of vying for the attention that just wasn't going to be there anymore.

Here's the thing: I'm not 'getting rid of' this blog. It'll be here as long as the hosting site allows. I will occasionally find an old post that I want to resurface and post it somewhere. If I have something I want to say, I will absolutely post it here and promote on social media. I hope that you'll use the archive link on my site & the search button on the left-hand side to find older posts of mine that you want to (re)read.

It's been a few weeks of going dark on 'AA,' and I have to say, I know I made the right choice to take a step back. I've felt less anxious and stressed, and when I do have free time I don't feel that pressure to focus on writing or posting new content.  I DO miss the community and as a result of not writing, I'm not reading as often either, but I promise I'll keep checking in when I can. I'm a big fan of so many writers & bloggers out there, but I guess you can say I've fallen victim to the trends in how *I* consume content these days, too. I'm more likely to engage with you on your Instagram or Twitter than I am to comment on your blog lately.

Before I go, I want to say I'm so insanely grateful and thankful to those who always did check in and engage with my work: my 'IRL' friends & family but especially those I've never actually met. The women I admire who had the same love I did; sharing their thoughts, experiences and opinions on some really important matters. I'm sorry I lost the spark to keep it up, but I hope you guys don't.

If you still want to follow along, I’m really active on Instagram and Twitter, so I hope to see you there! (What, you thought I was going to just stop posting altogether? Psssssssh.)

Sending lots of love your way -

AA

[nyrator]

goddd okay

post solo exchange diary feelings

warning this got super dark/personal real fast and I apologize but mannn

so like

goddamn what a relatable author kabi is

god I wish I had scans of this manga to post and scroll through over and over again, I buy physical whenever I can but always read the digital versions anyway because convenience (also my head gets dizzy from physically reading things apparently, or at least my eyes don’t know how to focus properly)

okay so like

yeah it started off like “oh well yeah haha I’m successful now time to keep going, oh I’ll right an exchange diary”

and boy did it spiral down from there (in a good way)

the fight with her father, the feelings of abandoning her mother... those especially got to me. I’ve grown distant from my mother, but I still feel afraid to abandon her, leaving her behind with her growing dementia and inability to take care of herself, she can hardly walk. But at the same time, for my own happiness, the only thing I can do is leave. And yet, even if I do, the guilt will remain. That part resonated with me so hard and made me want to cry.

and then kabi’s life, writing about her ten years of depression, being a lesbian, her infatuation with her mother, and then having it published and trying to keep it a secret from her family, while also wanting to share it- until it ended up getting delivered to her house after she moved out, and her mother ended up reading it and just being so cold to her- such a familiar cold feeling. The lack of love in her family, the complexity of it all, I can feel it, I can relate to it so hard.

it’s scary to think there’s someone out there, who is suffering just like you are, but can phrase it so beautifully, and yet they continue to suffer and there’s nothing you can do about it

I have to admit this gamejam has brought up my underlying feelings of depression again. It’s something I’ll never be rid of, the scribbling insides of my head begging for suicide every day and every night, intrusive thoughts about returning to the lifestyle of mutilating myself with any object in my vicinity, my eating disorder, my lack of energy to even move at times, and other gruesome things I probably shouldn’t lower your moods with (sorry for getting too detailed here whoops)

yet I still have the mindset of “at least I’m not as bad as I was before, I’ve been worse”

which honestly is true, I have good people in my life, which honestly I admit makes me more fearful for losing them by venting, if solely for the fact that I know I’ll never get completely better, and am afraid of them giving up on me with these kind of relapses

but Kabi reminded me of something

loving myself is the only way I’ll find happiness, even if short-term. I have an extreme self hatred, I’ve noticed my mental nickname for myself is “you piece of shit”, and I’ve noticed any time I get remotely happy about something, or praise about anything, it makes me so estatic and grinny that my inner voice tells me “aaa, I’m such garbage, look at me getting excited for a single comment on this trash”, yet I still bask in the moment in a mixture of self-hating ecstasy 

it’s probably impossible, but I need to keep it in mind

but yes, this depression and Kabi make me want to do something recreational with it- if I’m going to vent about depression, I might as well do it in a format people might enjoy

after the jam is over I might try again to make a serious comic

I have a poll on twitter about it, but even then all the categories bleed together and I have no idea how I’d actually organize it into a coherent structure, but I want to make something. And not about me, but about a fictional character, some idealized version of me probably, some author avatar or something. That Rotten Nyan character I mention every now and then. And the events would be exaggerated but based on my life, without feeling weird or lying or anything since it’s partially fictional, and I feel that it’ll be too tryhard and dark and grim and beyond my capabilities of making, but I still want to at least try.

the problem with trying though is sitting there concentrating and turning these thoughts physical, and trying not to be overwhelmed into a crippling depression where I don’t want to move for hours at a time due to focusing on them and getting sucked away into the abyss with them. At the very least, I can vaguely picture the artstyle in my head, it reminds me of an artist I follow on twitter whos name begins with dorm, that sad yet more detailed deformed-anime look

at the very least I’ve managed to sort of distance myself from it and instead focus on it in terms as a story, but the biggest thing I’m afraid of: hurting people I reference in the story. There are friends I want to talk about, events that happen, but I don’t want to risk hurting my friends with this information (they’ve gone through their own fair share of hardships), but I’d feel rude hiding this story from them too. I think I’d probably just keep it underwraps for a bit and mostly keep it to online friends if it ever happens, though, see if the internet discovers it on its own.

but yes, the gamejam itself

I love the people involved and hanging around them is always a good time, and I really do want to finish this game someday, but man, this game just brings about some kind of irrational guilt in me, why I don’t know, that triggers my depression- but it’s so dear to my heart at the same time. I’ve tried taking breaks from it, for months, years, and I come back, reread my notes, and it still hits me as hard as ever. It’s not like other projects that I can just lose attachment to, something in me tells me this is what I want to make someday, this is the one. Even if it isn’t as a game, just some way to share Yarn and Nyla’s lives with the world.

I don’t know if it’s the feelings of sadness the game gives me, the doubts I have over the game itself, or just doubts in myself in being able to bring it to life, but mannn, it crushes my soul in more ways than one when I try to work on it

I’ve gotten two worlds done-ish-but-not-really, and my mind just isn’t feeling it, it’s not satisfied, and it doesn’t have the energy to polish it up. Backgrounds were always my hardest thing to visualize, and this game always proves it to me- I just can’t create landscapes or environments. I can make concepts, but not a solid physical form. It’s funny, I knew I’d only get three worlds done instead of ten by the end of this, but I didn’t expect the progress to be this painful to just get three done. Still, the jam gives me the most incentive to work on it, even if I don’t submit anything at least I’m working on something in a good environment.

but yeah, this got a lot more dark than I intended whoops

luckily I have good people to talk to about ideas and need to open up more to more people in general and get a better understanding of what I’m doing with this game

also yeah

read Nagata Kabi stuff

she’s great and I love her and wish her the best

#text stuffs #nyrants

[aarontveit]

alright, I said I would type it out when it arrived, so here you go!! (i apologize for any typos, i’m dyslexic!!)

Aaron Tveit’s Interview/Article. THE X MAGAZINE: Issue #001, October 2017

Aaron Tveit is the man everyone wants to be -- or to have. His fervent fans, a sweet but somewhat frightening breed, refer to themselves as “Tveitertots,” and listicles chronicling reasons to love him abound. There are even gifs about his hair. But perhaps the most striking thing about Tveit’s appeal is his own indifference to the attention. Upon arriving at the lakefront cottage in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where the actor stayed while starring in Company at Barrington Stage, an exuberant labradoodle rushes to greet us. “This is Miles,” Tveit grins, and his easy appeal radiates.

Most of Tveit’s sentences begin with some iteration of: I’m very lucky. It’s his refrain. “I’m in this tiny percentage of people that jumps out of bed in the morning to go to work because I absolutely love what I get to do for a living,” he says. “I always remind myself of that -- especially in this crazy f--ing world that we’re living in right now.”

People who court Tveit’s degree of success usually declare that they’re special, but Tveit repeatedly insists that he’s just like everyone else. Anointed with titles like “Broadway Wonder Boy” and “Broadway’s Favourite Boyfriend,” the actor patiently dismantles myths of perfection, instead emphasizing his gratitude. “I’m just a regular guy,” he says. He loves fantasy novels, had a crush on Alicia Silverstone as a preteen, and listens to 90s rap when he needs to cheer himself up. Tveit’s friends from home keep him grounded -- they travel far to see him perform and support him at every turn. “But they’re also the first to say: ‘Hmmm, we don’t know if you’ll make it,’” Tveit says with a laugh, “which is the best thing I could ask for.”

It’s natural to imagine Tveit starring in a series of wholesome vignettes. He loves his parents and visits them often, and recently built a fence around their property for Miles. He’s allergic to dairy, a believer in ghosts, a bit of a nerd. He is a student of the world, equipped with a kind of caffeinated curiosity that never crashes. “I had a teacher once say that curiosity is the best quality you could ever have as an actor, and that really resonated,” he says.

In Stephen Sondheim’s Company, Tveit starred as Bobby -- the last bachelor in a pathologically matrimonial group of friends -- and he is quick to acknowledge his likeness to the character. Approaching his 34th birthday, Tveit remains a bachelor while most of his friends are married with kids. “My buddy came to see the show -- I was the best man in his wedding recently -- and he said, ‘Oh. So it’s just your life.’” But there are deeper similarities between Tveit and Bobby too. Despite his career choice, Tveit is an unwilling recipient of offstage attention, a reluctant receptacle for desire. He is the observed observer, reflecting the psychologies of those around him while remaining somewhat indecipherable, a blank-canvas quality that separates good actors from great ones. Like Bobby, Tveit is a host of quiet contradictions: He is present but elusive, open but guarded, social but withholding, expressive but hard to read.

In the past, actors have played Bobby as a brooding, bitter character, but Tveit chose a different interpretation. “My version of Bobby is an optimist,” he says. “He’s actually the only true romantic in the show.” Tveit references several lines and scenes that support his thesis statement. “He can’t fathom why anyone would get married without love.” While the other couples encourage Bobby to settle, Bobby holds out for something more. “I relate to him in that way. I’m an optimistic, happy person -- and I’m a romantic. I believe that when you know, you know.”

When pressed on what he means by the word “romantic,” he elaborates with ease, traveling a well-worn neuronal path through the topic. “Deep down, I believe we’re all going to meet these great loves of our lives,” he says. “The verdict’s out whether it’s one person or many people -- but we have the chance to open ourselves up, and I relish that opportunity.” Tveit upholds an ideal of marriage, which he believes Bobby shares. “If and when I get married,” says Tveit, “I want it to be once.” His parents have been together for nearly forty years, and Tveit describes their relationship with aspirational reverence. He summarizes the flimsy reasons that Bobby’s friends present him to buckle into a lifelong commitment -- “Because you have to, because it’s time, because you need to settle down, because that’s what real life is” -- bu neither Bobby nor Tveit cares for this sterile social contract. They care about love. Love in the particular. Love with claws and freckles and a fear of crosswalks. Love in dorky pajamas. Love with allergies. “I hope to be married one day and I hope that I’m going to meet someone that makes me feel...that way,” he says.

It’s hard to tell whether Tveit is an introvert or an extrovert, so it’s no surprise that he identifies as a “weird combination of both.” Around friends, he’s silly, unfiltered -- but around strangers, he’s cautious. “Someone once told me that I had Norwegian reserve,” he says. “When I meet people for the first time, I sit back a little. If I’m psychoanalyzing myself, I guess I’d say I like to understand people before I interact with them. I don’t know if it’s a guarding mechanism -- I’ve always been that way.”

This guarded nature might explain why he’s so hesitant to share on social media. Self-promotion has never been easier, and public figures have never been more pressured to capitalize on it, but Tveit finds most digital approaches pernicious. He did finally concede to Instagram and Twitter, but he mostly uses these platforms to promote projects. (Not even Miles has made it onto Instagram.) Nowadays, most young performers work to groom their brand, to generate an impression of intimacy between themselves and their followers. Tveit isn’t one to sneer, but he finds the platform-as-diary approach silly at best. “At the end of the day, I just don’t see why anyone would be interested in what I do outside my work. I see posts like that and I just think, who cares?” 

What you’ll find on his social media is Tveit the acor. What you won’t find on his social media (or anywhere else online) is Tveit the person, and perhaps that’s why he still possess a kind of purity. Mostly, Tveit’s social media proves that he is a man who works -- hard and often. “I’m a person who’s never, ever satisfied,” he says, “and I have a really hard time resting. I don’t vacation well because I don’t, like, sit down very well. Those are tough qualities sometimes in my personal life, but as an actor I think they serve me really well.”

Tveit says the performers and creative professionals he’s worked with over the years have provided “shining examples.” “You look at these people who have this insane level of success, and then you meet them and they’re the nicest people in the world,” he says. “Hugh Jackman is someone I really, really look up to in that way. I mean, when we did Les Mis, he had the hardest job of anyone these, and he was the nicest person in the room. He knew everyone’s name, was never late -- led by such an ultimate example. I said to myself, ‘That’s the guy I want to be like.’” 

Regarding the digital drool that appears when you Google his name, Tveit maintains a healthy, bemused detachment. “You have to let it go in one ear and out the other,” he says. He’s happy whenever people respond positively to his work, even if “that’s how they happen to be manifesting it.” Despite the feverish adoration, Tveit believes that his carefully preserved privacy has another advantage: It’s secured him respectful fans. “I’m very lucky,” he says. “I haven’t really had any kind of strange, uncomfortable, weird encounters. Fans have been nothing but wonderful and supportive for me.” I ask him how he feels about the term “Tveitertots.” “I think it’s absolutely hilarious,” he laughs. “That in itself -- like, how could you take that too seriously? It’s so wonderful and silly and fun.”

But is it frustrating for his personal life? “People often say I’m not what they expected,” he answers. “But for me, it’s been a positive thing. Usually, they say I’m nicer than they thought,” he laughs. “Less serious, more ridiculous.”

As an actor accumulates celebrity, the role that’s toughest to maintain is that of the unadorned self: the regular guy who loves his labradoodle and his family, orders a turkey sandwich and recites the post-industrial history of Pittsfield. Despite the roles and the awards, the voice and the dancing, the YouTube views and Spotify plays, the 246K Instagram followers and the marriage proposals in the comments, Tveit is just a regular guy. And maybe that’s what makes him most exceptional. 

#the x magazine #aaron tveit #/ #// #/// #p: aaron tveit #i can't believe i had my magazine for all of .2 seconds and then typed up this monstrosity

[kentonramsey]

I’m Clinging to Personal Writing More Than Ever Right Now

Over the past week, I’ve felt like the digital user equivalent of a rat scavenging for crumbs on the sidewalk, sniffing around various websites in my quest for heartfelt personal content. The more days I spend cooped up in my apartment, the more I crave opportunities to immerse myself in someone else’s thoughts. I yearn (yearn!) for the first-person perspective to the extent that even just the sight of the pronoun “I” makes me sit up a little straighter at my kitchen table or on my couch… or on the floor in my bedroom where I’ve been going to sit every time Austin and I have concurrent conference calls. In May 2017, The New Yorker‘s Jia Tolentino declared the age of personal essays dead. I wouldn’t be surprised if social distancing brings them back.

I tore through Molly Fischer’s essay “A City of Bodies” in The Cut, where she traces how quickly things shifted for New Yorkers in the course of a single week, and how eerie it was to witness the swift transition from jokes about not hugging to learning the phrase “catastrophe medicine.” Even though I don’t have children, I immediately clicked on an essay about “The Heartbreaking Reality of Parenting in the Coronavirus Pandemic” by Emily McCombs, a writer I’ve followed since her tenure at xoJane. I snuck into the backend of Man Repeller to read Leandra’s essay “This Is More Than Working From Home” in draft form because I was too impatient to wait until it was up on the site.

Give me the internet of 2012 but give it to me in 2020.

These are mere morsels, though, and what I really want is a giant slice. A deluge, if you will. I saw people on Twitter penning passionate pleas for movie studios to release films like Emma on-demand early, so we could enjoy them in our cooped-up limbo, and while I’ll admit that sounds nice, my passionate plea is for the release of something else entirely: more! personal! essays! They don’t need to be perfectly composed, or visually stimulating, or tied up in a neat bow. Better, actually, if they’re somewhat messy—a true reflection of the disarray that pervades this unprecedented juncture in our human lives, something akin to diary entries or mental ticker tapes.

I suppose what I’m asking for are essentially blog posts. Give me the internet of 2012 but give it to me in 2020. Give me shower thoughts and off-the-cuff revelations. Give me comment sections. Give me headlines that don’t give a hoot about SEO. Give me the Wild West of the digital world, when throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what stuck was pretty much the prevailing modus operandi. I’m greedy for thousands of words that cater to this initiative, but I would settle for just a paragraph, as long as it attempted to comply with the standard of no-standards—heart unbuttoned, an exposition of the seemingly mundane.

It’s unnerving, to be connected by this common thread of anxiety, and to be pushed apart by it simultaneously.

Here, I’ll go first:

Never in my life have I experienced the surreal feeling of walking down the West Side Highway—or anywhere, for that matter—knowing full well that every single person who passes me is thinking about the exact same thing. It’s unnerving, to be connected by this common thread of anxiety, and to be pushed apart by it simultaneously—by the safety of an invisible radius we have tacitly agreed to maintain during our brief bouts of fresh air. It’s unnerving to be cooped up in an apartment with the person I’m supposed to be marrying in three months, wondering whether that will happen on the planned date, already engraved on our wedding bands.

It doesn’t feel like we’re spending time together, even though we are spending nothing but time together. I miss him even when we’re in the same room. Or maybe I just miss the conversations we used to have that weren’t about the indefinite clearing of our calendars, the worried texts and phone calls from our parents, the oscillations of fear and gratitude. Because in the midst of this uncertainty we are, above all, grateful—that for now our lives and our work appear capable of bending around the shape of whatever is looming.

“Okay,” I said, and it seemed like it would be, in that moment.

I quipped sarcastically last night about whether he’ll even want to marry me at the end of our shared quarantine. “Don’t joke about that,” he said, so fast the beginning of his sentence overlapped with the end of mine. The sound our words made when they met there settled over me like something soft. “Okay,” I said, and it seemed like it would be, in that moment. After we finished dinner, I stretched my legs out beneath the kitchen table whose surface I’ve memorized like my own reflection over the past five days, resting my feet on the lip of his chair.

Graphic by Lorenza Centi.

The post I’m Clinging to Personal Writing More Than Ever Right Now appeared first on Man Repeller.

I’m Clinging to Personal Writing More Than Ever Right Now published first on https://normaltimepiecesshop.tumblr.com/ I’m Clinging to Personal Writing More Than Ever Right Now published first on https://mariakistler.tumblr.com/

[kyzarix-stuff]

Digital Identity, aka “Hi, my name is Kai.”

disclaimer: this blog post is for an academic requirement, please do not attack me with pitchforks or fire

So, this time we’re going to talk about the digital identity that I’ve built online, and my digital footprint. Beware, we will be treading on some backstory here, but the outcome will more or less explain my usernames on most platforms.

Who is Kai?

For the longest time, since I was afraid of revealing my real name when playing games, I went by the usernames kairanshire (a reference to an old character of mine) and kyzarix (a bastardization of the words “Kaiser” and “Rex”); this led to me often being called Kai/Kairan or Ky in game. I eventually just adopted it, and I’ve been calling myself “Kai” in-game ever since. 

Here’s a screenshot of my steam profile, where you can see that I introduce myself as Kai, as well as my Cosplay profile, which is called @kyzarixcosplay or Kyza Cosplay (Kaiza Cosplayer in Japanese).

Who is Sam?

On most other social media platforms that are not used for gaming, I use the handles kairanshire/kyzarix and yet still place my name as “Sam,” usually with some extra phrase to be quirky. I notice that my digital identity, or the way I present myself, also changes depending on the platform. Let us examine my facebook page, pictured below:

Majority of my posts on Facebook tend to be reposts, cat videos, and basic photos taken by friends and family. Compared to my other accounts, although majority of the people who see my Facebook are people I know in real life, I do not share much of my personal thoughts and feelings there. A typical Facebook post looks like this: 

Which, for the most part tells those who see my posts that I generally like cats. I think majority of the posts on my Facebook page are cat related. Since I do not really want to reveal other parts of my identity on Facebook, I am content with being “the person who shares cat videos and photos” on someone else’s news feed. At least this way I don’t think I am offending people by posting pictures of cute animals. 

On Twitter and Instagram, I tend to be more vocal and free with my posts. While I’m aware that these are shared to a more general public, I also for some reason, just feel better and don’t feel the need to curate my posts as harshly. I freely post ~aesthetic~ pictures alongside derpy cosplay pictures and retweets of anime screenshots. These accounts are pictured here:

I also do not reveal my full name or any other personal information (workplace, school, major, age) on these accounts, which is probably why I feel more comfortable crafting an identity which caters more to my interests. This is how I have met a couple of my friends simply through our shared interests alone, rather than physical connections. Fellow weebs, cosplayers, dare I say the word “gamers” and makeup enthusiasts-- I don’t mind them seeing all my posts! That one person that added me just because I was beadle for a class? I do mind them seeing my cosplays because they might call me weeby, I mind them seeing what games I’m interested in because I fear they might judge me. 

In addition, there is one last account that I will show here, which is my private Twitter account. 

This one is not only locked, but also does not conform to my usual nomenclature (no kai here!). I definitely designate that this is a private/rant account, and this was actually made because my parents found my public twitter and called me out for not telling them when I got sick. I didn’t feel comfortable anymore with placing some of my rants (especially about sickness and more personal, sad issues) on my public twitter, since I felt that my parents reading it was an invasion of my privacy.  

My posts are less retweets and more short rants, which I use as a diary of some type in order to vent. Every so often a friend whom I have permitted to see the content of this account will talk to me about what I’m feeling, which does comfort me to a certain degree. This is in essence a curated space for me to rant, where I can control who can and cannot see this part of me. 

So, which one of these is the real you?

One question we need to answer is whether or not this digital identity is a faithful/truthful representation of how I see myself. To be honest, I would say that no matter which platform of social media that I am representing myself on, I am sharing a part of myself. These things are true, though they are incomplete (which I personally think, is okay.) There is nothing on these platforms that I personally am lying about. I do like cats, I love to cosplay, I love games, and I get angry and I rant sometimes. These may be spread out across multiple accounts, but I do not think of them as being necessarily untruthful for being incomplete. Even in certain friend groups our humor and personality and the things we talk about changes-- so why can that not apply to online accounts as well?

I don’t think the digital footprint I’ve left is a lie-- but rather that each account is a piece of a puzzle, which, even if you follow all my accounts, still are yet to be completed fully.

word count: 922

[simplerperfectionist]

Day 1

Today is the first day of an extended social media break which I have chosen to embark on in an attempt to break my addiction, foster my relationship with myself, develop and deepen my focus, clarify my own intellectual and artistic voice, and hopefully vanquish that little goblin that sits in my head and watches me all the time from the projected viewpoint of others. You know that Atwood quote about every woman being a man inside a woman watching herself? I feel like that all the time. She’s nodding to the way in which the internal voyeur is used as a weapon of the patriarchy to get women to subject themselves, and I do feel that in a gendered way sometimes but I also experience it in a more general way, that whatever various audiences I perceive myself to have live constantly inside my head and I am performing for them at all times, even in my thought exercises. Which I suppose is because those audiences only exist within my head. Yes, there are people that follow me on various platforms or friends who consume my #content, but the panel of people that I feel are always watching me and measuring me are simply my own inner critics projected out through these platforms onto the vague digital presences of my friends and acquaintances and a smattering of strangers. Anyway, all of that is to say that my overuse of digitized self publicity has been making me feel like a madwoman and has been actively rewiring the way that my thoughts form and unnecessarily activating my stress responses for, well, honestly probably for years, but most notably for the past year or two. 

Lately one of my favorite fantasies is to acquire whatever sum of spare money it will cost me to hire a tech nerd to scour the internet for all of the profiles and accounts and email lists that I have long since forgotten and abandoned which they/I/we can then scrub, delete, and bury. I feel like none of us listened when people were like “whatever you put on the internet exists forever.” I shouldn’t speak for other people. I never listened. It didn’t feel like a big deal! I was a kid and I wanted to know things, and express myself, and keep up with my friends. I didn’t know that it would one day rather haunt me to feel relics of my earlier selves floating about in the ether, available to anyone even remotely more computer savvy than myself. Anyway THAT’S a fun paranoia I generally avoid thinking about for longer than 30 seconds at a time. In truth, I don’t think it matters that much. I mean I can pretty easily freak myself out about it if I think about like A.I. or like dystopian government conspiracies or even the possibility that I could ever end up being someone in a position of notable influence that might motivate people to fuck with me... BUT if I avoid those dark rabbit holes, it really doesn’t matter. What are people gonna do with my old 8tracks playlists? With an etsy shop I forgot about? They’re ghosts of my former selves and dried out seeds of old timeline potentials. Lol. 

God, I shouldn’t have mentioned A.I. because now I’m stuck thinking about how you cannot confirm the interiority of anyone at all in the world save for yourself and subsequently I truly could be the only human being in a world of A.I. and I wouldn’t know. A fun secret is that I have become a truly deeply paranoid person over the past several years and sometimes I freak even myself out with how unhinged I can sound, but I generally handle it pretty well and surrender myself to the knowledge that I don’t know much about the nature of reality, nor do I need to, and whatever thoughts I run with are simply thoughts and are quite harmless. If you’re reading this please do not involuntarily commit me lmao. 

Okay the irony of documenting this journey digitally online, specifically on a social media platform, and writing to a nonexistent but theoretically eventually existent audience is NOT lost on me. There’s something comforting about it though. Honestly, I’ve always thought that about writing on tumblr. I used to have a locked blog that was a digital diary of sorts though I believe I’ve since deleted it. There’s something about the blue background I feel like. It’s like writing a letter and sending it out to sea. I guess it’s also the anonymity of the platform. I know a few users on here, but generally I know nothing save that there are other users and I know some of their interests. This feels like a way to be seen without being seen at all. Like talking to the stars at night. Anyway I suppose I could write in my journal instead, but I like the act of typing, and I do have a vague sense that I may someday share this. Also I do think this is helping to ease the withdrawal from the public platforms, which is actually probably the only reason I’m using it.  

Enough musings, here’s the nitty gritty of the update: I've deleted Instagram and Twitter from my phone. I don't remember my logins for them so it's a fairly effective barrier in that there are a variety of steps I would need to go through in order to get back on. Twitter auto logged out on my laptop so there's a similar barrier there. I've yet to log out of insta on my laptop but I suppose I should do that as well. I've rearranged the apps on my phone and I suspect I will another 8 or so times as my relationship to the device changes. I desperately want to throw it away and get something simpler, but I’m still too tied to it at the moment. I really want to be free of it. I hate my stupid phone. I want to not feel like I’ll die without it, like I’ll start living on another planet. Honestly? I probably will! And that would be good for me. But I can’t shake the feeling that something bad would happen if I did, that if I stopped looking at everything happening out in the “world,” if I stopped observing what all of these people I’ve labeled as friends are doing, then I, what? Would lose touch with reality? Would become too different from them? Might dare to be happy in this chaotic time on earth? 

I actually know exactly what unplugging fully would do. At first I’ll have to go through withdrawals, but once I make it through, the noise in my head will quiet, the sense of being watched will severely diminish if not die, I will become deeply grounded and present in my own surroundings, observing them honestly from my own perspective rather than filtering them through learned lenses, I will stop questioning my own artistic and intellectual worth, instead trusting myself because I will become my primary resource of knowledge and creation and discernment, I will invest more deeply in the relationships that exist in my physical reality and the distant relationships in which I and the other are equally invested in maintaining as I’ll no longer have the illusion of relationships that subsist on passive observance and occasional expressions of support via likes/comments/reacts. I don’t know WHY I’m afraid of that!!!! That’s what I want!!! I want friendships based on time spent together, I want letters exchanged, post cards, phone calls, I don’t want impersonal pictures of peoples’ lunch orders or concert videos. I don’t want to be known that way and I don’t want others to know me that way. I don’t want to meaninglessly keep tabs on people, I want the magic of wondering about them for months or years and randomly encountering them. I want to live in a world of magic. I DO live in a world of magic, I want to clear enough space to let it work. 

I fell into musing again lol. The rest of the update is that I still have facebook but I never check it. I’m keeping tumblr for now because it’s still useful to me in various ways. I have snapchat as well, but I only really use it for two group chats. I still have costar, venmo, and spotify but I rarely use the social aspects of them. I need to purge my email, but that’s not a job for today. I also need to end some subscriptions which is less about social media but they still feel like digital ties. I thought nextdoor would be a good form of plugging into the local buzz, but it’s honestly just annoying so I need to get off of that too. I’m planning to start reading the local papers and avoiding all other news. Hopefully this will guide me towards community engagement and local politics instead of 24 hr national outrage. Oh I’m also still listening to podcasts if that counts, which I feel like it does. Okay! Well,

Signing off until next time,

This has been E. G.

[bestcheapvloggingcamera]

How to Start Vlogging on YouTube - 5 Step Tutorial:

Interested in learning how to make your own vlogs for YouTube? Wise decision on both fronts, my friend. With the meteoric rise of YouTube serving as evidence, it's undeniable that video is becoming an increasingly popular medium for both content producers and consumers (two terms, more and more, describing the same population). And because it's YouTube that has become the leader in online video--in fact, now fielding more queries in the US than any other search engine save Google--it makes the most sense to publish there. And did I mention its free? And it now supports HD? The following is a how-to guide for creating your own video blogs, doing so in little time and costing next to nothing.

Vlogger's toolbox

1.       Computer/Internet connection: You're reading this article...check!

2.       Video recording device: My guess is that you already own something that records to video, if not a dedicated camcorder, then a cell phone, digital camera or webcam. If not, don't worry--although, you did just bust my "no purchases necessary" bubble--because you can get one online or at nearby brick-and-mortar on the cheap.

3.       Editing software: Again, even if you're unaware, you most likely already have it. Windows Movie Maker comes bundled with Microsoft PCs, and iMovie comes with Macs. Both, although entry-level editors, are more than capable of producing video blogs.

4.       Desk lamp (optional): To put your best face forward, you need to properly light it. Natural lighting from a window is ideal, but if you're shooting at night, you'll probably need additional lighting beyond just the overheads.

Pick a topic, any topic

Important: although blogging is personal, this isn't your diary, folks. Maybe you to want listen to yourself ramble on about the mundane details of your life, your current emotional state, or whatever else is on the top of your head, but, trust me, nobody else does. Your video blog, to be effective, should be tightly focused on a singular topic, one about which you are a) knowledgeable and b) passionate. If you meet those two qualifications, then your vlog has the best chance of offering something worthwhile to the viewer in an interesting, compelling manner.

One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is doing a product review. If you regularly use a product and love doing so, then you probably know quite a bit about it and would come across energetically when speaking to it--plus, you already have it around the house to show on camera. Congrats, you're qualified to vlog! I recently recorded a review of the newly released Bud Select 55 (oh, how I love getting drunk for reasons other than dancing off beat and sending inappropriate texts).

Lights, camera, action!

Lighting: The best option is to position yourself near a window, letting the sun light your face. The goal is to make sure your face is well lit so the viewer can see all that passion about Bounce dryer sheets being emoted on your expressive features. If you have to use artificial lighting, avoid relying just on overheads, which can shadow your eyes and simply not provide enough light. I'd advise using a desk lamp set up near eye level to supplement.

Sound: Using your camera's built-in microphone should be good enough; however, make sure you're somewhere quiet. That means eliminating as much background noise as possible, including the sound of your laundry being dried to static-free perfection.

Performance: Your first instinct may be to write a script. Don't do it! Sounding as if you're reading lines comes off badly, and having a script nearby tempts you to do something even worse: looking off-camera to actually read what you wrote. Do that, and just like an outfit of clingy clothes, the whole thing is ruined. It works best when you give a natural-sounding delivery while looking into the lens, appearing to make eye contact with the viewer. Go ahead and outline what you want to say--it'll help you stay focused and reduce distracting "um" pauses--but just don't write it verbatim.

Edit it, then edit it some more

Rule One: Generally speaking, shorter equals better. It's a moot point that there's a ten minute limit on YouTube; your vlog shouldn't come within a closet make-out session length of that time maximum. Seriously, I highly doubt what you're talking about warrants more than three minutes, probably no more than two. If you haven't been paying attention, online content platforms becoming popular lately fall under the more-is-less micro category. Twitter, anyone?

Rule Two: Vanilla Ice rapped it best, "quick to the point, to the point no fakin'." With your video's title, you're making a promise; and you need to deliver on that promise quickly--and by quickly, I mean in the first five seconds. If not, then you're running the high risk of viewers clicking away "so fast, other DJs say, damn!"

Techniques/Effects: A text intro and outro is fine, just make sure they don't force you to violate the aforementioned rules. When you're starting out, your video editor's built-in effects and transitions are like shiny new objects tempting you to play with them--they're innocent looking, but employ them at your own peril. Anything beyond a simple fade is probably going to look at best endearingly cheesy, at worst annoyingly distracting.

Send it through the YouTubes

The information you wrap around your vlog is just as important as the information you deliver in it. Around it? Yes, I'm talking about the title, info and tags. Not only do these three make up the text that'll communicate to the user what your vlog is about, but, importantly, they're three main factors by which YouTube indexes your video for inclusion in its own search engine, as well as how the other major players like Google and Bing do so too. As such, you should be filling each with searched keywords best describing your subject matter. The title is the most important; the art is writing one that packages your topical keywords into an appealing attention getter, plainly and clearly delivering the gist, but in a click-baiting, compelling way.

If you link it, they will come...maybe

Just because you post it on YouTube doesn't mean anyone is going to see it. There are literally millions of videos on the site competing for viewers' attention, most of them sitting silently, waiting on the thousands of views that are never going to come. The same as for the vlog itself, if you want to make some noise you've got to create it. For purposes of both optimizing for the search engines and targeting well-qualified traffic, a smart way to catch views is to cast out a wide net to Web 2.0, posting the link and embedding the code to popular places themed similarly to your vlog's topic. For my Bud Select review, I found Budweiser-related Facebook pages and groups--many with thousands of fans and members--and posted my vlog to their respective walls. From YouTube Insight's statistics, I can see I've gotten views as a result.

By making and uploading your own vlogs, are you going to become the next YouTube sensation, garnering millions of views and thousands of dollars as a partner? Rest assuredly not. But, with some creative and strategic effort, you can definitely make yourself heard by the niche you serve, with the possibility of creating a targeted funnel of well-qualified traffic to your website or blog (something that could be profitable if you're selling a legitimate service or product). Business purposes aside, by creating to-the-point video blogs on topics you know about and have passion for, you'll definitely be adding value to the online community. Isn't that what it's all about? If you are looking for cheap cameras visit: best cheap vlogging camera

[limejuicer1862]

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Michael Prihoda

is a poet and editor, born and living in the Midwest. He has published two chapbooks and eight full-length collections of poetry, with another forthcoming in 2019. He has a blog to share his typewriter poetry. A full list of his creative publications appears here publications

He is the founding/managing editor of After the Pause (an online literary journal of experimental poetry, fiction, and artwork) as well as its small press imprint a…p press. In addition, he runs the After the Pause Review of Books.

He would love to hear from you:

You can find him elsewhere at:

Twitter: @michaelprihoda

Facebook: facebook.com/michaelprihoda

The Interview

1. When and why did you start writing poetry?

I started writing poetry in college but I began writing fiction well before that while I was in high school. I think I began as a means of self-discovery, of gripping and coming-to-terms with who I was and who I wanted to be and how I saw the world. It was therapy and self-discovery. Now, I see poetry as a vehicle of philosophy, an avenue through which to draw back a curtain to show an audience only things language can display and explore. For all that the world sways digital, there’s magic in paper pages, in what remains possible through the agglutination of words and phrases in both physical and metaphysical ways.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

Literature was baked into my childhood. My earliest memories are of learning to read, specifically the first book I ever read solo: See the Yak Yak. I loved books of all kinds through school, was more of a book locust than just a book worm, and I believe what truly cemented the power of books in me at a young age was being read to by both my parents, not just as a toddler, but probably up until middle school. I would sit on the floor and play with Lego or do a puzzle and my parents would read classics like Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, The Gammage Cup, The Chronicles of Narnia. While my tastes have danced through different genres as I’ve grown up and been exposed to more and had a variety of adult experiences, I’ve remained obsessed with literature and read anything I can get my hands on that sparks that special something inside the literary chunk of my brain.

3. How aware are and were you of the dominating presence of older poets traditional and contemporary?

Aware, but not willing to let that detract from my passion to pursue poetry. I also think that is starting to change. Poetry is being fully embraced by younger generations and I’ve seen poets achieve remarkable levels of success and exposure in their 20s and 30s. Poetry in America isn’t stuffy, archaic, and dying with some last cohort of old white American men who were renowned for their 20th century contributions. Poetry feels incredibly diverse and exciting and I think youth are driving the movement.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

I have honestly never kept a regular routine for the actual writing I do. Writing has always been contained to my spare time as I have a full-time job that is separate from my creative pursuits. I write sporadically, often in bursts, and will sometimes go weeks without writing a thing that is creatively productive. However, I have oriented myself toward the world in such a way as to always be a consumer and processer of information and literature. I see the potentiality for poems and stories everywhere and I make an effort to jot down ideas or phrases that I believe might grow into something more. My writing brain is always on, whether or not I do any actual creative writing in a day.

5. What motivates you to write?

I’m motivated by my experiences. I feel the constant urge to create based on what I see in the world around me and my emotional response to it. Sometimes that’s in the form of very short poetry, sometimes it becomes longer stories but I feel that the connective thread tying all my work together is a disorientation that I feel and see in the world around me between what this life is supposed to be or could be and what this wreckage ends up being for so many of us. There’s a line in one of Jeff Vandermeer’s books that runs through my head almost daily that (apologies to Jeff if this isn’t exact), “We are vessels filled with light. Broken vessels, broken light. But vessels nonetheless.” I’m another broken vessel filled with my own kind of broken light, hoping that I might share that light with people out there for the moments their light feels weak.

6. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

What always catches my attention most, and what always has since I was very young, is when an author is able to craft a compelling world, one that could only come from that person’s brain. Or if in poetry or realist fiction, I look for a compelling voice, something that sounds and feels unique, lives and breathes on its own terms and is unapologetic about doing things differently or taking risks in the approach and execution. Of course I am influenced by myriad writers who have come before me, as are all authors, but the great ones take their influences and produce some new tonic. I would hardly call myself a great writer, but that is what I try to do with my poetry and my fiction, having attempted to distill and absorb as much as I can from the writers I most admire: bloom something into existence that could not have come from anyone but myself.

6.1. Which older writers “spark that special something inside the literary chunk of (your) brain.”?

Non-exhaustive yet comprehensive of who I think of as particularly special: Don DeLillo, Kurt Vonnegut, David Foster Wallace, Jeff Vandermeer, Lydia Davis, Kelly Link, Rae Armantrout, Claudia Rankine.

6.2. Why are they special?

Each brings something unique to the literary landscape and is wholly an individual stylist. DeLillo is perhaps the most concise writer I’ve ever encountered, not necessarily in brevity of writing, but in the meaningful usage of sentences. Each feels weighty and philosophical. Vonnegut is the original fabulist, speculative before that became a genre. Foster Wallace practically invented a new dictionary to write Infinite Jest and it is some of the most compelling prose I’ve ever seen. Vandermeer is inventive and able to morph his style into myriad genres while never losing his flair for the strange and unfamiliar. Davis is perhaps the best writer of realist short fiction, pared back and brimming with constrained emotion. Link is an incredible modern fabulist, marrying wild concepts with deeply human ambitions and themes. Armantrout’s poetry is so sparse yet packed to exploding with meaning and societal references. And Rankine is a standard-bearer in creating literature that strives to impact the racial conversation our country needs to have.

7.  Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

Writing feels like an activity that is necessary for my mind to feel as if I’m living a valuable life and contributing in the ways that I have been equipped to contribute to the world. Similar to spending time with my favorite people or going to work at the education nonprofit where I spend my days, it is a life-giving thing. I’ve done plenty of things in life that ended up not feeling useful or valuable. But I’ve never sat down to write and gotten up again without thinking I had just done something deeply meaningful and valuable, whether or not what I wrote in that instance ever sees the light of day.

8. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

I believe becoming a writer begins with becoming a serious, avid reader. You learn so much about the writing craft through reading, and here I don’t just mean serious, classical literature. Anything applies. But I don’t think anyone can call themselves a writer unless they’ve put in the legwork being a reader. Secondly, you have to be okay with failing and here I don’t even mean rejection. Of course that will come. But rejection isn’t even close to the first obstacle writers will face. You have to be okay with writing things that are pure trash, that just aren’t good, that are so deeply flawed it would be embarrassing to show them to anyone else. The quickest way to become a good writer is to practice the art of writing and to become good will require writing a lot of bad along the way. I have an untold number of stories, poems, and novels that are bad and will never be published and will never to be shown to another soul but I had to write them in order to hone my craft, my voice, my style, to understand the intricacies of writing and the process that I would have to use to create something meaningful and valuable and, ultimately, publishable.

9. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

The major project I’m working on is a manuscript of poems that has been a result of reading Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was unfairly detained for over a decade and never charged with a crime. His diary is gripping and became the inspiration for a series of poems that also owe a debt of gratitude to the books The New Jim Crow and The History of White People. The poems grapple with how white supremacy has infiltrated everything about the United States and the experience of living and working in this country and how our country has abused and continues to abuse its power, especially against minorities. In the case of Mohamedou, the long arm of the United States stretched into Africa to take him from his homeland, away from his family, with no actual basis. As if the way my country persecutes some of its own citizens wasn’t enough. I often find injustice a trigger for my poems and this project has been an experience in attempting to find a foothold on the side of human dignity as I desire and work toward a world of actual equity.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Michael Prihoda Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

[swipestream]

Sensor Sweep: Schuyler Hernstrom, New West, Zothique, Starship Troopers, S’rulyan Vault

Fiction (Everyday Should be Tuesday): “You may talk of cities and justice all you wish.  Tonight, the pagan wins.  My anger will be sated and these 

wicked people brought to ruin.”

Mortu and Kyrus in the White City is a new novella out from Cirsova standout Schuyler Hernstrom, the first in a planned series equally sword and sorcery and far future post-apocalyptic.

Speaking of Cirsova, congrats to Donald Uitvlugt on winning the Cirsova no. 9 giveaway!  Check out Donald’s own work.

          Publishing (Strategy Business): The media and entertainment industry has a long history of embracing disruptive innovations, from the printing press to the personal computer. But the rapid shift from physical to digital over the past decade or so has been truly revolutionary. In general, physical media has suffered a great deal. Printed newspapers and magazines have migrated to online versions, while DVDs and CDs have been supplanted by film- and music-streaming services.

  Fiction (Jon Mollison): Newsletter readers and those who follow me on Twitter already know about my next release.  As a quick break from the Heroes Unleashed Universe, I knocked out a nice fantasy epic that features a gladiator clawing his way out of the arena, crossing half an empire and back, and confronting a derelict empire with sword in hand. Along the way he must face the difficult choice between two enchanting women, and he must learn how to become the leader he was always meant to be.

  Fiction (Paul Bishop): Debuting as an imprint of Kensington Books in 1975, Pinnacle became a hugely successful publisher of paperback original action-adventure series typified by their vanguards, The Executioner series created by Don Pendleton, and The Destroyer series created by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir. Pinnacle displayed long-term market savvy, either by setting genre trends, or quickly responding to popular output from other publishers by creating similar series of their own—which were usually a cut above the originals.

  Fiction (Tellers of Weird Tales): I have read a paper by my friend Nathaniel Wallace, who presented at the Dr. Henry Armitage Memorial Scholarship Symposium in Providence, Rhode Island, in August of last year. Nate’s paper is about adaptations of Lovecraft’s work to musical forms. That got me thinking about other adaptations of Lovecraft’s stories and poems. Until someone tells me different, I’ll stick with Harold S. Farnese’s musical settings for two poems by Lovecraft as the first adaptations of his work to a form other than that of verse or prose. Here are the first adaptations into various forms, in chronological order beginning with Farnese’s compositions. The source is the website The H.P. Lovecraft Archive, here.

  Fiction (Wasteland and Sky): I’m back with more horror for you today! After last week’s trio of stories, it was pretty clear Mr. Paget would really have to outdo himself here to keep up with the craziness. But these stories are not as insane as those were, though a few have some issues of their own. Let us continue the spooky fun with my ongoing look at The 27th Pan Book of Horror Stories. It promises to be an interesting ride.

Cinema (Swords & Sorcery): Jim Cornelius posted today that Mel Gibson is planning to remake Sam Peckinpah’s epochal The Wild Bunch. While I don’t doubt Gibson’s affinity for bloody action, I have, let’s say, serious doubts about this undertaking. You don’t remake perfect movies, only crappy ones that have some cool idea buried inside. Still, I’ll wait and see what happens.

It got me to thinking about my plan to review Westerns here a few years back, which in turn got me to thinking about which of them are my favorites.

  Cinema (Sargon of Akkad): The politics of the movie Starship Troopers. Thanks to everyone who made this video possible. Below are some links if you’d like to want to read further about all this, support me.

  History and Fiction (Karavansara): My friend Shanmei is writing another historical mystery (we talked about her first mystery story here). The book is set on the route between Italy and China at the turn of the century, and is loosely based on her grand-grandfather’s diaries and letters. Looks good. A few days back, Shanmei asked her readers what level of historical accuracy they think is needed for an historical mystery like the one she’s writing.

  Fiction (DMR Books): Clark Ashton Smith was a writer that made an indelible contribution to the genre of sword and sorcery fiction. However, his work is usually associated with the cosmic horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, rather than the father of sword and sorcery, Robert E. Howard. In truth, Smith acts as a sort of connective tissue between the two. Many of his characters would not be out of place in say, a Conan story, while the various worlds he created were just as imaginative as any produced by the writer from Cross Plains. As for tone however, Smith drifts towards the Lovecraft side of the spectrum; his stories are fatalistic in tone and the vast majority of his characters die horribly.

  Cinema (Walker’s Retreat): The Father of Battleboars saw the new Halloween, and he has one of hell of a discussion with co-host Dorrinal about it and its context in the wider world of horror films. Well worth the time listening to it, or watching us in the chat.

  Gaming (Niche Gamer): We’ve learned Grinding Gear Games is possibly bringing their massive free-to-play action RPG Path of Exile to PlayStation 4.

The news comes via the Taiwan Digital Game Rating board, which published a rating (via Gematsu) for the game on PlayStation 4.

While a PS4 version isn’t confirmed, the game is currently available for Windows PC and Xbox One.

Here’s a rundown on the game.

  RPG (RPG Pundit): This is a review of the RPG Supplement “The S’rulyan Vault“, written by Venger Satanis, published by Kort’thalis Publishing. This is a review of the print edition, which actually appears to be a combined book containing what was originally two different books (the S’rulyan Vault I & II).  It is a thin softcover book of about 30 pages.

      Cinema (RPG Confessions): Sword and Sorcery became an exploitation genre, rife with quickie production schedules, recycled sets, props and costumes, and written-on-the-fly scripts that checked boxes for mandatory story elements. The only bronze-thewed barbarian that managed to escape such a fate was, inexplicably, Beastmaster, which made not one, but two sequels and then morphed into a syndicated television series that lasted more than one season. Unbelievable.

    Sensor Sweep: Schuyler Hernstrom, New West, Zothique, Starship Troopers, S’rulyan Vault published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[projectalbum]

Art is Resistance. 149. “With Teeth” (Halo 19), 150. “Year Zero” (Halo 24), 151. “Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D” (Halo 25), 152. “Ghosts I-IV” (Halo 26), 153. “The Slip” (Halo 27) by Nine Inch Nails

The 6-year gap between Nine Inch Nails studio albums saw the Internet become truly ascendant in popular culture, for better and worse.

Napster took a bite from the music industry and was put down like a mad dog. The Pirate Bay first unfurled its flag. Radio play and music videos were still the main avenue for displaying the wares of major label musicians to the general public, and success was still measured in units of CDs sold, but more and more people were becoming hip to the underground access provided by a DSL modem.

But the power of the Web to empower artists and connect them to their fans still evaded most of the recording industry; honchos and artists alike were largely clueless. Trent Reznor, the big ol’ nerd, was a notable exception. Posting on early message boards on Prodigy, embracing torrents, creating an online gateway for the band’s fans, leaking material from the archives, experimenting with an optional-pay release, even being an early adopter of Twitter— it was a white-hot fiber optic cable running through the life of the band. While this technological engagement didn’t always translate into sales (The Fragile was considered a financial disappointment), it was a 21st century incarnation of the connection between what the artist creates and how the audience consumes it, internalizes it, and hopefully finds some emotional release in it.

This uneasy alliance between organic emotion and technological chilliness is reflected in this era of Nine Inch Nails’ aesthetic, both musically and through the packaging. Where Downward Spiral and Fragile dealt in decaying earth tones, the releases starting with 2005’s reemergent With Teeth (#149) are shades of blue, black, ghost white, and slate gray, dirtied up by belching factory smoke, or distorted by broken pixels and lines of computer code. The songs are likewise colored by pulsating synth accents, digital distortion, hums and drones and beats. The instrumental stems for Reznor’s compositions were offered up to remixers both professional and amateur, so that even the boundary of artist and audience member became liminal. He had his carefully constructed versions of “The Hand That Feeds” and “Only,” but suggested that there were infinite alternate permutations to be created at the click of a button. For the once angry, brooding Prince of Industrial Rock, it was downright egalitarian.

“All The Love In The World,” a title that might suggest a big-hearted power ballad on a cornier band’s track list, is in Reznor’s hands an electronica-inflected paranoid dirge. Where crunchy guitars would have provided the backbone in the past, here woozy piano figures are the main melodic backup to the vocal, before shifting into driving major chords to signal minute 3’s complete tonal transformation. With its layers of harmonizing Trents, it’s completely unlike anything else in the band’s repertoire, but it was the perfect next course to stimulate my appetite. And then Dave Grohl’s superhuman drumming on “You Know What You Are?” kicked me through the door. The wailing chorus presented an aggressive musical release for me that I’d never had access to before.

“Right Where It Belongs,” the keyboard-driven closing track, is spooky and introspective, and one of the best songs in NiN’s catalogue. A stripped-down, electric piano and vocal version, originally exclusive to the Japanese release but eventually uploaded by Reznor to his website, captures that dark night of the soul uncertainty even better. This recording made its way into the end credits of my senior thesis film, at the point where it was obvious it wasn’t going to go anywhere and that I should at least put copyrighted stuff I liked into it. I also set a live version against grainy deleted footage from Pink Floyd - The Wall, a mashup I figure ol’ Trent would appreciate (the idea was to then do the reverse, matching “Hey You” to the visuals cut together for NiN’s stage show, but the result wasn’t as compelling).

I don’t have any supporting evidence, but Year Zero (#150) may well have been the first time I ever plunked down money for a physical copy of a NiN CD. Also lacking sufficient empirical backup: I’m convinced this speculative fiction about an increasingly plausible American dystopia represents some of Reznor’s strongest songwriting. Inhabiting characters like a brainwashed foot soldier, an underground Resistance fighter, a religiously-inflamed demagogue, even a judgmental alien intelligence, he moves away from the diary page introspection that could occasionally curdle into lyrics of questionable taste (Sorry, please don’t slip on all the tears I’ve made you cry).

The release of the album was notably attached to a labyrinthine “Alternate Reality Game” campaign, with in-character websites, USB drives hidden at concerts, and music videos with secret messages, adding plot strands and world building to the lyrics. (I missed the boat on all that, but the work that the same marketing company did for The Dark Knight was sure something to experience.) All of which would be near-impenetrable, if the actual music wasn’t so compelling. You don’t have to read the wiki pages to feel the apocalyptic beats and glitchy cacophony of “HYPERPOWER!,” “The Good Soldier,” and to pump your fist to the chorus of “Survivalism.” “I got my propaganda / I got revisionism” hits harder in a time, 10 years on from the album’s release, in which the most powerful voices in the U.S. government disregard reality on the reg, occasionally try to downplay the Holocaust. “Capital G,” a gleefully sociopathic near-rap by the forces of greed, could soundtrack one of Paul Ryan’s dead-eyed workout photoshoots.

“In This Twilight” and “Zero Sum” are the shattering two-part coda, in which the squabbling remnants of humanity face the end, whether by divine intervention or nuclear fire. The first juxtaposes crunchy, distorted percussion and fuzzed-out bass with perhaps the most perversely light and melodic vocal performance Reznor has ever delivered. He’s singing about encroaching extinction, but in a blissed-out religious reverie, optimistic for the afterlife. The character at the center of the closing track is not so sure: this is the End of this ridiculous human experiment, and we’ve brought oblivion on ourselves. “Shame on us / For all we have done / And all we ever were.” There’s the Nine Inch Nails nihilism we know and love!

Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D (#151) filters the previous album through Hip-Hop and EDM, to uneven effect. The collection of remixes never quite sustains the highs established by the first two tracks: Saul Williams’ fiery rap verses turn the instrumental “HYPERPOWER!” into a polemic against a legacy of American violence, “Gunshots by Computer,” while modwheelmood frees the vocals of “The Great Destroyer” from the squealing synth breakdown and creates a whole new paranoid anthem. While it’s also interesting to hear the Kronos Quartet reinterpret “Another Version of the Truth,” the rest is largely skippable. The physical set includes a DVD with the multitracks for the original Year Zero recordings, so you too can fuck with the raw materials! (I’ve been trying to remix things for years, and I’m awful at it, but it’s fun to hear the individual instrumentation.)

After freeing himself lyrically from his old methodology, the next release from Reznor eschewed words and melody completely. Ghosts I-IV (#152) is nearly 2 hours of ambient experimentation, a precursor to the Oscar-winning film scores with Atticus Ross (a few tracks were literally reworked for The Social Network, and several others continue to be licensed for film and documentaries). The buzzsaw distortions, dark piano chords, oddly organic synthesizers, and industrial beats identify it as a NiN record even in the absence of vocals. Though good luck recommending your favorite tracks, with titles like “26 Ghosts III” and “09 Ghosts I” not exactly sticking in the memory.

The Slip (#153), originally released free of charge, is more of a return-to-form. Arguably too familiar— it’s essentially With Teeth Part 2, but leaner and meaner. It’s not held in especially high regard, but it was there right at the outset of my fandom, and as such I continue to have a soft spot for it. I even bought the physical copy after years of listening to the decent quality MP3’s. “Discipline,” with its uncommonly funky bass line and high hat-favoring drum beat, is my number 1 “trying to sneak it onto a party playlist but not very successfully” NiN song. Along with the following track, “Echoplex,” the dark dance floor vibe is a preview of the sound Reznor and co would explore with How To Destroy Angels. “Lights in the Sky,” “Corona Radiata,” and “The Four of Us are Dying” create a kind of suite, insinuating and ethereal. I can understand if you bow out of that middle, 7-minute-and-33-second, ambient track before the library sample of fighting cats kicks in. But “LITS” is Reznor’s sparsest, prettiest piano lament, announcing the eminent “retirement” of Nine Inch Nails as a touring/recording entity.

Wave goodbye. They’ll be back.

#Nine Inch Nails #Trent Reznor #rock #hard rock #industrial #electronica #CDs #cd cover #album art #alternative rock #With Teeth #Year Zero

[valeriewedding9-blog]

Pros & Downsides Of Wrong Income taxes

The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is actually an ancient youngster from sixteen, an indigenous New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. One of the best aspect of all this is in reverse compatibility assistance for Xbox 360 labels: Any kind of 360 game you can easily play on Xbox One is welcome in Rift's virtual globe. If you enjoy Young person stories, regardless of your grow older, you'll desire to open your heart and also your book shelf approximately this one. Mophidius is just one of a younger production from tabletop activity authors that have actually discovered the power of Kickstarter as potent marketing tool. Response: The activity is going to instantly save your progress once you reach the end of an amount. Burial place Looter Rebooted - The new version from Tomb Raider is actually designed to reboot the activity set for both the new creation of gamers, along with longtime fans. Provided the way that game went, any sort of method to respond to Hazard on Sunday are going to must be actually instead extra understated. The story from Activity of Thrones may be difficult at times; it follows numerous personalities all over several continents. This icy magma industry near Pond Mývatn is actually where Mance Rayder's wildling soldiers camp was actually built in time three. His better half left him and right now he plays mental games of misuse along with his daughters. Season 3 Information: There are five episodes in total in the 3rd season from the video game-- consider a fourth period hasn't already been verified, they are actually only phoned periods like a collection of TELEVISION show episodes are. There's a lot for supporters to review, because Persson codes in the open and maintains gamers apprised of updates using his Tumblr blog post, and lately via Twitter also. Noteworthy: Earlier played for Red Deer University. Invested three times (2010-2013) along with the Calgary Canucks from the Alberta Junior Hockey Organization, leading them in scoring his final 2 projects, consisting of earning 48 points in 46 games in 2012-13. I pre-ordered Superstar Wars Battlefront Deluxe and included the Time Pass PS4 digital-download later on assuming with all the over-rated media hype this would be the activity from all video games. That will not impact your fulfillment from The Hot Chance if you haven't read The Activity Strategy but. Education Games: Video games and also fun activities for grows older 4 by means of 11 that pay attention to property proficiency abilities. Developers used artificial snow in period one, however have relied on the wilds from Iceland since. Still, with the nightmarishly long haul just before Period 7, our team have actually got to take whatever disputes from information we can easily obtain. If this book wasn't 5 stars for me, then the EOBS (edge from manual crap) would certainly possess bumped that around 5 celebrities. Concerning Blogging site - Welcome to the on the web diary of Joanna Figueroa, textile professional, author & owner from Fig Tree & Carbon monoxide, a patchwork & embroidery design firm. If you have any inquiries about wherever and how to use visit my webpage, you can call us at our web-site. Lucky's Tale is one of two video games (the other being actually multiplayer dogfighting shooting EVE: Valkyrie) being packaginged along with the Oculus Break, and also that is actually an interesting little bit of platformer. I visualize a ton of people acquired the activity due to that, in spite of concerns over a downgrade. Instructing with computer game (game-based understanding) is actually a developing device for motivational as well as involvement knowing in rehab locations, in institutions, day cares, as well as in special education classrooms. Podeswa, who has routed two episodes of Video game from Thrones and is anticipated to controls much more in season six, was actually speaking at an event in Fox Studios Australia. This's not other, it is actually simply click bait as well as an individual at @t activities trying to piggy back Nintendo's good idea. I have actually likewise added my Task Food items Post at the top from my dishes webpage If you are actually searching for any of the recipes I have created PFB, that is where they are concealing! I 'd like to elect, however guide gets on my Christmas checklist so regretfully I don't have it yet. While numerous journey activities are actually packed along with dialogue and talkative personalities, Machinarium's cast of tin-can robots certainly never communicate. Varied Gameplay - The game combines a range of gameplay styles, consisting of survival, secrecy, fray and varied battle, exploration, and also extra. I'm not one of the screaming/crying fangirls this point, yet that was actually a truly amazing little manual. Potential Updates: This segment is reserved for potential updates like Episode 5 screenshots and the Episode 5 launch trailer. Characters Regarding Literature, sponsored due to the Facility for guide in the Library of Our lawmakers, motivates students to write to writers. That's certainly not to point out that the adventure hasn't already viewed its own allotment of inaccurate beginnings and also alternate routes: Video game tournaments date back to the early 1970s, as well as seeks to transform them into watchable theater started as long ago as the very early 1980s. Games do not need to have scholastic recognition to market, however academia must engage along with activities so as to modernise its approach to public background. The top VR games range coming from the Dan Harmon-inspired Rick and also Morty Simulator: Online Rick-ality (whose studio Google is actually buying, mind you) to the extra stark and also much a lot less light-hearted Local Misery 7. A number of teaser clips for the upcoming time surfaced earlier in the year, though there is actually not much in the way of new info being actually provided.

[cfwdina456114-blog]

Spoken word As well as Social Media Tips.

Publication from Digital & Social Media Advertising is actually the major peer-reviewed, professional diary for all those involved in the marketing from services or products making use of digital channels.. Among the essential techniques you can easily include into your social media efforts is to obtain involved and interacted with other individuals and webpages messages. Like other social media marketing companies, you may provide Orange Soft drink complete control from your project or even only receive help in details areas. Tracking the actions from web site guests is what marketing automation software program carries out. On my home page, I show them an OPTIN form like one I can generate for them-- which takes the visitor to Web page 2 where there is actually a FREE PRESENT - A total Video recording Marketing Method Tip. Despite the fact that you hear about the very same handful of socials media all the time, that does not indicate there may not be some other on the market. However individuals certainly never appeared. As a matter of fact, social media sites appears to have created companies much less significant. Take, as an example, a TV cameraman; while they may be actually media experts, there is actually absolutely nothing in their work remit that would provide any kind of understanding or even expertise of book keeping - and while they're hectic functioning, they merely don't possess the time to study book-keeping at an extensive adequate level to get the knowledge that they require. Whenever you produce a part from content (post, video or even podcast) for your blog site or even internet site, develop a checklist of 10 to TWENTY social networks posts at the same time that could be used to advertise that part from material. Create an understanding of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social networking site Optimisation, Associate and also other appropriate interaction channels for interaction of electronic communities. There is actually certainly that by just having a social media sites webpage your label will gain, as well as along with routine use it can generate a large target market for your organisation. In case you loved this informative article along with you desire to be given more information with regards to yellow pages online - prettinessyou1.info - kindly stop by our own website. Study carried out at the Stockholm University from Business economics looked at the hookup in between folks' use of the web as well as their results on a selection of other solutions of social health and wellbeing, including psychological health and wellness as well as work life equilibrium. Web content advertising is ending up being a considerably crucial part of any sort of electronic advertising and marketing approach. As top quality information takes leads to a brand name's site, brands may build a connection with the leads and nurture them in the direction of a top conversion or even purchase. Our experts will definitely personalize a social media sites method especially to accommodate your organisation's special demands, off extending label acknowledgment as well as improving website visitor traffic to sparking your existing community. Advertising and marketing services consisting of Search Engine Optimization, SEM, PPC, Social network Advertising Online Solutions, Startup Solutions, and iPhone & Android Apps Progression. I question exactly what the variation in between Inbound Advertising and Content Advertising and marketing is. I will significantly enjoy a description of the distinction in between the two. Throughout the years we have actually seen social networking sites advertising swiftly become a sector unto on its own. I have based several section of my lectures on chapters using this text message and constantly reference the book therefore trainees recognize that they can discover more from what our experts have actually been actually reviewing. In addition, this provides real-time collaboration devices to earn teamwork less complex one of social networks supervisors. You need professionals on your side, making sure your solutions as well as items are acquiring noticed, as well as your brand is actually participating in the right social discussions. To build upon this idea, the secrets to prosperous blogging are actually having the capacity to create material that others would certainly wish to allotment (shareable web content") as well as generate a web content technique for your blog that is actually lined up with your advertising goals. Justin Levy, tactical consultant on all social networking sites tasks at Citrix Online, editor-in-chief from Workshifting. Aside from his mentor, he has actually been active in a lot of administration as well as leadership parts including Co-Director of the Facility for Digital Business and also Social network Champ at Salford Company College. Off-page methods used for social media advertising would feature writing web content that is compelling, remarkable and also unique to its audiences. How to use Evergreen Information to fuel social networking sites approach - ideas on just how timeless material can aid enhance and scale a brand name's social networking sites tasks (in regards to gaining more positive event, fans, and also social allotments). Lots of social media internet sites have out-grown their members' limitation which was actually initially envisaged through their managers. Your SROI' social roi' has to go a step further, and also hook up the lead to your profit. While firms have actually placed their confidence in branded material for the past many years, animal observational evidence is right now requiring them to reevaluate. You might utilize one of these options to possess your material placed where that may get you some traction. A successful Social media site Marketing initiative must be actually created in such a way about generate a hype. As an enthusiastic Instagrammer, Twitter follower and also Facebook fanatic, this was actually news to me. Whilst I do not individually agree with the speaker's reviews, I perform think that the technique our company utilize social networking sites has altered. Social network marketing is actually economical as compared with typical forms from marketing. Along with many new social networking sites sites sprouting up as well as trying to getting attention, that could be challenging to keep up. Just when our experts assumed we knew whatever with the emergence from Ello, currently happens Tsu While having accounts on several internet sites can be helpful for fostering technology as well as staying artistic, this can easily likewise be hard to select which system to post your web content to.