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[Sep. 1st, 2008|11:40 pm] |
I literally feel retarded. Like my mental capacity is slowly being chipped away day after day. I'm still trying to figure out what's the cause of it. Got lots of sleep over the weekend. Read two books. I've been spending A LOT of time on the computer. So maybe I should cut back.
We finished http://www.etccoffee.com so that's cool.
I'm actually making headway on Pandemonia, even though you're tired of hearing that.
Hmm...
~Jacob |
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[Aug. 20th, 2008|09:09 pm] |
I feel busy. But am I really? We had a film festival that I designed the program for. Upshot is I got a free pass to any movie for the weekend, and the cast party. So that was cool.
We're harvesting veggies. I've got two freelance projects outside of work. Maybe soonish if the work relents I'll have an update on Pandemonia for you. Still no real writing though. Ugh.
~Jacob |
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[Aug. 9th, 2008|11:26 pm] |
No real updates for a coooooon's age. What is happening now? I am eating lots of sugar, and fat. But I remain my skinny self. Um. Update that is not an update.
So many projects, Christonarood with a keyboard. I have two websites to upgrade and a third to search engine optimize. Somewhere in there PANDEMONIA will continue to happen. I will finish it when the last of you that remember it are silenced.
Okay!
I'm a rank 4 level 48 hunter on lord of the rings. WHAT THE FUCK.
I'm a rank 0 level 1 real achievement person. SAY IT TWICE.
I read part of the vampire again because there were more goth kids than fleas on a coon hound at BooksAMillion, for a shitty-ass new book release (dulleyeboy slur "no man...forget everything you know about vampires. It's about a girl falling in love with one") SHIT. FUCK. I'm tempted still. Dave, forgive me?
Should just be publishing short stories. Should just leave it to die.
I can't think of anything else. I went to a punk rock show that was rawk. The sound was tuned so perfectly it caused a sympathetic vibration in my ear fluid / cerebrospinal fluid. They'd hit a chord and my vision would double. Religiouecstatic! Swayandjump! Screamandhoot.
I've found my career, but I still need to get this writing thing going.
~Jacob |
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| Little Big Side Project |
[Jul. 31st, 2008|12:06 am] |
So today the upgrades for a multi-million dollar company's website (in Ireland!) went live. The lowest peak of their hits is at 1,000.
Eek.
Iontas
Hope I got everything.
~Jacob |
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| A Survey You Can Believe In |
[Jul. 29th, 2008|05:39 pm] |
~Jacob |
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[Jul. 27th, 2008|01:23 am] |
To those that eat us, we must seem beings of pure light.
One of my designs made it up on a billboard, unexpectedly.
Soon, text will DEVOUR US.
~Jacob |
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[Jul. 16th, 2008|10:14 pm] |
Got a freelance gig updating and fixing a website for a company that was given $500,000 in investments to start-up. This might be the first time I've "charged what I'm worth", namely $350 for two regular days of work. I figured it was about the right price for my weekend, and they agreed to it instantaneously, almost so quickly I wondered if I'm still underpricing my work.
That'll be nice.
I've decided NOT TO PURSUE GRAD SCHOOL AT THIS TIME. Because I have a job as a graphic designer and am learning web voodoo, and I feel if I can stay motivated, Pandemonia will provide me enough outlet and opportunity to be creative.
It is oh so hot. Did I mention we don't use our air conditioner, relying on a window unit to cool one room to 80 degrees (80! Oh voluptuous frigidity!) during the day? I must be in season right now, because today my sweat STINKS.
If I can get a couple more of these tidy side projects, I think I can start making real headway saving up money towards...what? I don't know. As horrifying as it sounds, it may be going towards some year in the near future buying a house. They are the price of cars, here.
Don't worry, I haven't lost my edge?
~Jacob |
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[Jul. 7th, 2008|09:48 pm] |
Roaches? Fuck roaches! We have a brown recluse infestation. And in case you'd forgotten:
I'm just a little nervous.
~Jacob |
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| Garden mania |
[Jul. 6th, 2008|01:23 pm] |
So Kelsie and I are really starting to have a self-sufficiency trip. I blame watching Colonial House. But here's a picture of what our garden has given us in three days:
I'm going to put this picture in my profile, and it'll update as we get more. I also have a timeline I'm making of all our produce, so that'll be interesting. When the tomatoes arrive...it's going to be ridiculous. We have something like 8 plants.
I'll tell you about my life later, dear readers. Ta!
~Jacob |
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| Celebrate independence by... |
[Jul. 4th, 2008|10:14 pm] |
Grilling squash you grew yourself and elk steaks that your father hunted and killed, and eating watermelon that came from your local farmer's market.
~Jacob |
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| Ineluctable |
[Jun. 17th, 2008|09:48 pm] |
There exists a land, in fact, where people do not speak words, but rather inscribe them on large stones worn smooth by a dead river. Because it takes so much time, they are notoriously careful with their speech. And when they wish to speak with someone, they throw their stones at the listener's head. Indeed, some of the most verbose of this strange tribe are also the most deadly.
We do not ask much of you. Merely that you listen. To death. |
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[Jun. 1st, 2008|11:24 pm] |
They had a guy in yesterday that they got. He was swollen at the seams, bad, until his skin had split. Head like a melon, leaking spit. Used to be one of the fastest runners, they said. We took him to surgery, and completed what had started. Got him over to the ward, after. I went to go look at him, just to see what happened to the ones that ran. To reassure myself that rooting was the wisest path.
He was wilted, but they always are after transplantation. The little kids were playing with him. Tugging him this way and that, screaming with laughter. Transfers from the children's hospital. New grafts. You could still see the patches where the hair hadn't grown back all the way. I couldn't stop staring at him. At the way his legs had warped and withered. God's greatest gifts, they say, are the ones you must fear the most. Not my best work, but not my worst. It would do.
Sometimes I wonder if the Cultivation Board isn't just an outgrowth of that first fear of mutation.
I dragged my ass back to the prep room for the second shift. Tuesdays are the worst. Those are the days we get the new ones, in from the farms. Overtime. Lots of pruning. Leather straps and cinches, wire and bamboo. Lots of training, getting them to grow right. Or start, at least. We just do the rough work. The finesse we leave to the stewards. I had this little girl on the table--couldn't have been more than five or six. I read her chart, and it turned my stomach. But we're not supposed to let that get in the way, Lord knows. If they could have replaced us with a gospel of machines, with their razored-prayers perfectly programmed, I wouldn't be standing over her knee with a hacksaw. Imperfect tools, wielded by imperfect hands. But it must suffice.
Sometimes I let a little heresy in. Contamination is inevitable, I suppose. I look at the charts, what's marked vestigial, what's not. Needed and unneeded. Fingers maybe, or the tongue. Sometimes strange things--a single toe, or an eyelid. And I wonder. What we would look like if wildcrafted, if left to devices of our own. If not guided to our one good thought for life at an early stage.
Not to say these aren't our devices as well. But I see things, sometimes. I got real good with a blade early on, so they took me on and let me keep that. Good enough and quiet enough and yes sir enough to work on some of the most sensitive transplants. Varieties with no vestigials, just everything on there and used, you could tell, used! Runners, Weeds, wildcrafted some. Not often though. Less and less now.
We always took a lot from those. Weeds especially. Nothing worse than something growing with your wards like it had some sort of claim to you. Hiding its deformity. That wholeness which is indecision. Pretending it had just one good thought, instead of its million possibles.
Sometimes, I'm afraid to say, we couldn't train them all. They had to be uprooted, extirpated. I can't say my hand never slipped a little, before that final call came for them. Imperfect tools, wielded imperfectly. Sparing them that final mercy, in the Lord's compost heap.
You grow up right, or you don't at all. One good thought. Rooted. |
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| fuck I am stressed OUT |
[May. 28th, 2008|11:41 pm] |
I'm trying to figure out why I'm stressed out all the time, and it's getting so much worse. The vacant house next door had 75 roaches on it last night. I got to see them mating. Giant slugs are eating my girlfriend's basil. Our cabinet got a minor ant infestation.
Today I had a simple design that was supposed to take 40 minutes. I took TWO HOURS and came up with something horrible. My boss told me it was horrible (it was). Then he did it for me in 20 minutes, while I watched.
Today at lunch (which it occurs to me I do not get paid, nor do I get paid vacation, and don't know about insurance, but soon) I had to do two movie banners real quick while eating. Dylan was in his "hyper-social schizophrenic mode" and kept demanding to be held and petted and coddled.
Our hamster constantly chews on her cage, and now she's taken to making squeaking snarling noises occasionally. Our cat Chaplin has developed a nervous disorder where if he gets "stressed out" he goes around the house trying to pee on things, except he can't because he's too nervous.
My boss told me today if my job stresses me out I should quit. He wasn't telling me to quit. It's good advice in theory...I wish I knew why I worry / stress so much over my job. I guess it's because I know that / worry that he was doing me a "favor as a friend" by hiring me, and that if I don't do better soon I'll be a drag on the design group, or already am. That it'll be an awkward situation where he wants to fire me, but can't because we're friends.
Still no writing, and sloooow work on Pandemonia. I was going to hit it today. What got in the way? I stayed a little late to work on a marketing email that came up last minute, and then went to the RecycleNow executive meeting. By the time I got home to water the plants and slug-proof the garden, it was 8:00. Not sure where the next 4 hours went, but here I am.
I go to the beach in a week for a week, which is time I'm not technically entitled to yet but I'm taking nonetheless. My mother needs even more support now than ever, and is becoming more dependent. I feel like everything in that family is dissolving. I kinda feel like a lot of time that I don't have a family, even though I know they're there to support me. I just never have need of it. Needless to say though, I'm not looking forward to it. So it puts more ehhhhh at work for me, and I'm not even going to enjoy it. Fuck.
I have to get Pandemonia up and running by December. Or February, or something. If I don't apply to grad school this time around and get in, I'll have wasted our opportunity to settle in here for this year. I want to go back to school because now I could just do some "good work" but nothing spectacular. I need to do something spectacular. I'm afraid of getting old like everyone else, and settling for something mediocre. I'd rather do something extraordinary and be miserable than live a middle life.
I just worry that I'm only making myself miserable for nothing. I'm just a big seething ball of negativity. Some sleep will make it better I'm sure.
~Jacob |
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| Jacob tries exis-angst-ial |
[May. 19th, 2008|12:57 pm] |
Pollen clouded the air, infecting us with abortive information.
He's still looking. What's wrong with this guy?
Some would say he doesn't have enough to occupy him. Some would say he's overfull.
Give it a rest, already.
Most of these problems (he tried to tell us over tea) stem from too many dreams.
Infecting us with platitudes?
Most of these problems (taking coffee to mouth with shaking hand) branch from a single root: there are too many paths in this world.
If you split your self enough, bacteria-like, you can one day aspire to be just as hungry.
Mathematically, movement in all directions is the same as no movement at all.
If nothing can be said of time once your heart stops, then all our words and thoughts and dreams must compound that infinity into the present.
Oh shit.
The only thing certain that can be said of death is that you will be forgotten.
Oh shit!
To say nothing of the imagined trajectories. The secret routes. The house with hallways to the attics. The crawlspaces. The stair of the servant.
Can't I just play games?
There will be this, and this, and more. Until you die. And it will continue after. Until it has eaten every trace of you. You're either with us, or against us.
Funny thing, he said (on his fifth or sixth beer by now) is that it is not a matter of conscious decision any more. It is choosing which decision to become conscious of.
~Jacob |
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| Woohoo! |
[May. 14th, 2008|07:01 pm] |
After about a month of gloomy prognostication on my part upon approaching--for the second time--the Paducah job market (with the goal of securing a job for my then-empty Monday Tuesday) I am happy to announce that today I was told I will be starting full-time as a graphic designer; I will start this in two weeks.
Sorry, I just wanted to make a complicated sentence.
But yeah, it's cool.
Now I just need my boss to not get mad when I ask for a week off in a month for my family reunion.
Blecht.
~Jacob |
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[May. 11th, 2008|04:22 pm] |
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[May. 8th, 2008|08:50 pm] |
Two days later they found them, sealed with sugar.
You couldn't even tell where the holes had been. |
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| Life currently |
[Apr. 9th, 2008|09:07 pm] |
It wouldn't be enough that at 11:30pm yesterday our cat came down with a urinary tract problem caused by the stress of rampaging electricians, prompting an immediate vet visit. Not enough that I cut myself on nails crawling around in our uprooted attic fishing him out. Not enough that we had to stretch an extension cord up there from the basement just to get power for a light.
It wouldn't be enough that Kelsie's parents are coming to visit on Friday and our house is a total disaster which renews itself every day the electricians dump their dirty parts, tromping feet and accompanying debris all over our sundry.
No, it wouldn't. Not without the drainage pipe the contractor "fixed" breaking open at the seal and spilling water all over our basement.
Guess what I get to learn tonight?
CHEMICAL WELDING. WHEN JACOB DOES THINGS HE DOES THEM TIL EXTINCTION.
~Jacob |
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| Made it to the end of the week |
[Apr. 4th, 2008|11:38 pm] |
Felt pretty low this week. It's because I'm not as good at my job as I should / want to be. I need to keep reminding myself that even though I a) learn really fast and b) have a lot on my plate to learn (not to mention being on a Mac with weird shit going on with network privileges and programs crashing a lot like MAIL, MAIL people)
But today I did some work on the art map for Lowertown, did it relatively quickly, so that was good. Then I finished up the design for the Market House Museum, and it's going to look great. Albeit, I did have some help from others on the finer points, but I felt good about my decisions. I'm just not comfortable at all with the time it's taking me to get shit done. I'm still at 1.5 to 2 times the amount of time it should take me to do this stuff.
Nathan will be gone until Wednesday, so Monday and Tuesday I'll be working with the woman I'm in "competition" with for hours. Awkward? Maybe. And I don't know what I'm supposed to work on, just that "things will come in that you should deal with".
Man, I hope this lasts long enough for me to get good at it.
I also independently am going to be making a website for a friend from the coffeehouse Kelsie and I frequent religiously. It's just 3 or so pages, but I have no idea what to charge her. I told her $50, but she said she has no problem paying me "what I'm worth". The problem is that I have a low feeling of what I'm worth, I suppose. Anybody know what a good range is for a simple website like that? I'm thinking $50 is good, but I'll probably end up spending the weekend+ a few days after work on it.
I suppose I'm getting better. Wish I had CS3 at home to practice on my own, so I could accelerate my learning.
No writing still, but you knew that. But I'm at level 36 on my Lord of the Rings Online hunter, which is my panacea for coming home with no feeling of worth. I suppose it's: "well at least I'm good at games". Ah well.
I am getting better. And it'll be awesome. Eventually.
House-wise, we'll lose our power totally on Monday, and it'll be back on at the end of the day. I sure hope they're done by Tuesday? Can we hope for Tuesday? The rain's been horrible...got two leaks in the roof again, and our backyard is underwater. Lost all the carrots we planted, as the bed has literally been submerged two inches underwater for two days now.
But things are getting better. Because There Will Be Websites (and Blood).
~Jacob
(Which is an Amazing Movie) |
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