Repository Personal Factors

Spurred by Kevin and his related blog entry at eggsandjuice, I will attempt to list my referential library. This doesn't quite include manga volumes and individual issues of comics I have collected over the years... perhaps that will be another post.

The transforming palate at the boundary of distinction

Half a decade ago, I was exasperated by the predictability of statements made by people I interacted with. In those days, I had to steel myself for the inane dogmatism a common citizen exuded. Circa right-now, I am routinely displeased by questions posed. Most certainly when it is an inquiry given and increasingly those I make. The invasion of a person's thought processes is no longer appealing. In other words, stop asking for prosaic reports. Bare some teeth.

I'm a searchlight soul

Necropolis 0.6a

17x24" sketch inspired by Joakim Dahlqvist's "Podalida" works

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DISGUSTED

I ordered a Long Island iced tea tonight. What I got was a travesty to refined alcoholic tastes. I watched the bartender grab a plastic cup and fill it with ice, then grab that universal nozzle contraption and press this magic button which dispensed a pre-mixed concoction that "tastes" like Long Island iced tea, topped with the obligatory jewel of soda. Never again. It is a depressing circumstance when a staple of liquor beverages is replaced with a factory blend. So I propose this replacement to your store-bought mixed drink:

28 years of social interaction

Barraging my mom with questions as a child. Staying up late/getting up early to watch Sailor Moon with my older sister. Playing Nintendo with family. Summer water fighting and breakdancing with the Warheadz. Writing letters to my pen-pal Micah. Walking home from school with the first best friends. Passing notes with classmates in high school. Underage drinking games. AOL chatrooms and spitting digital game at girls that may live in my neighborhood. Getting pwned on Battle.net Warcraft 2. Phone calls with the first girlfriend. Lunch period cliques. sQuiD! crew chat battles. Random drives with Bertrand. Geeky horseplay in the computer labs and every other hallway on campus. Piling into Lando's car and skipping class to eat fast food. High school graduation night and LAN parties. Waiting in line at the Warped Tour. Discovering the town and the city in the backseat of Ron's car. Tennis with Bryan. Shotgun rules and Rosario's Logic. Inventing new phrases and jokes with Ryan. Racquet club pimpin. Road trips with cousins. CRC shenanigans and Taco Tuesdays. Kickin it at Alex's place on Q st (and T st). San Diego Comic-con. A real glimpse of women at CSUS. Bars and clubs and bars and clubs and a rave. Late night pow-wows with the experienced guy cousins. Westcoast Brewfest. Driving to San Diego and L.A. with the men that I call my brothers. House parties at the Monkeyhouse, the Compound and West Sacramento. Text messaging. Trying to date a coworker. Bulls on Parade (birthday partying in the month of May). Online comic battles and forum trolling before the term was coined. Cabin trips and gathering as many of our friends together outside of the hometown. Dating on Myspace. Going to Las Vegas without parental supervision. Finally being behind our own table at a comic convention. Meeting Canadians, an Australian, and an Indonesian. Chicago cab drivers and driving to Seattle with Alex + Yuka to see James, Marley, and Rey. Whizzbang. Endless nights of Halo, Guilty Gear, Street Fighter, Tekken, Soul Calibur, Def Jam: Fight for NY, etc., or, How to Get Really Good At Trash-talking. The war room at Hoppy Brewery. Hitting on every other hot piece of female ass that walked thru the door at Utrecht (and spying on the gaggle of bitches that go to the sushi place next door). West coast sharkin' with the boys. Pillow talk. The unholy draw of Facebook. Convincing an exotic dancer to give me a discount. Unexpected mini-reunions at BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse. Being the Mariposa hall's lab tech stud. Sessioning with Adam and Pat. The Bitter End, Buckshots and Fairfield county lockup. City Comes Loud and Second Saturdays. The Tiger Cage. Bringing Respark together to produce comic books and grazing the lips of majestic triumph/learning I am horrible as a leader. Smash and crash in Paragon City a.k.a. building a hermit shell via the City of Heroes mmorpg. Vandal runs in the daytime. The shape-shifting, recurrent Unicorn. Discussing theoretical physics on the light rail and talking down a drug dealer (and stealing their pipe). Having a whole conversation with my nieces and nephews. Drink and Draw. Relearning the first language I spoke (and lost) on a family trip to the Philippines; Learning that G.R.O.s speak better English after three beers. Conquering my traumatic spelling flaw with the word "unknown" and thus owning my voice and opinion. Discussions about Zeitgeist, the singularity, and other jargon. Separating the wheat from the chaff. Hookah intellectualism. Skype debates. Google+ hangouts.

Learnin' somethin' every other day

Even though I wasn't able to taste the fabled goodness of their Swedish meatballs, I discovered a perverted appreciation for IKEA. Despite the offensively foreign nature of their product signage, and the ridiculously Walmart-esque "super store" expansiveness of that building, my first visit was a truly manchildish experience. Sure, 500 Days of Summer ringed painfuly close to my conscious perception as I wandered about with Ron and Khonnie (heretoforeverafter referred to as The KhRonnie), I could not help but attempt to maximize the last hour before closing in as many ways possible.

Dated June, 2009
I begin this entry with the intent of continuing my series of internal dialogues of life and an artist's perspective as I know it so far. Although I'm concurrently assembling another playlist of tracks that will run non-stop tonight as I embark on a quest that will likely destroy the next few days of my life. There is no gain without sacrifice, I believe, so I will have to offer sleep in exchange for glory. Okay, enough pre-asides.

I made a move today. It wasn't the most bold or heroic of attempts, but it was still a motion out of my natural, hum-drum daily routine. It was a well-intended and simple gift, tinged with a shade of snobbish, know-it-all sincerity that comes with almost every sentence I deliver. That is more than likely the problem with the way I act in most encounters with the opposite sex. Either I'm not douchebag and cool enough to play the part, or too mild and uninteresting to pull it off. I obviously don't smile like a rampant toss of the joker card. My flaws are more than public. Unexpected stutters, vicious silences, schizophrenic belligerence, an oddly common habit of looking off into some interesting distant scene when speaking to others (a.k.a. bad eye contact), and laborious insertions of vocabulary exclusively used by intelligencia paint a basic picture of my eccentricism. I don't know what to do, and I probably may never will. Though, for the little trouble of

Allow me to set the stage. This will be a rant. I drank/drunk 5 beers and a hot shot of Cutty Sark. While chain-smoking the rest of my pack of Camel filters and downing said beers, I formulated this idea.
Artists are purely an emotional lot. That's not to say no other professional archetype employ some form of passion. However, the artist nowadays is moved by a specifically primal state of mind. As I see it, I cannot FORCE work when I'm in some kind of funk. There's very little point to push myself when I am not mentally and emotionally inclined to it. However, I am most likely wrong in trying to generalize my predecessors or contemporaries. Though the concept remains that we are in a ready state when we are at some kind of brink or motivating instance that compels us to produce. Just like our will to make love or fight, these things don't readily appear because it is conveniently 5:04 in the afternoon on a Friday. There is some kind of impetus.