The first rays of sunlight filter through my blinds, beatifically contouring the form of my sheets as I confidently sit up in bed to stretch and greet the day. For I am into "fitness" now, and I can't be bothered by anything. My blood is vicodin puree. Zen from stem to stern. I only eat food from packages with trendy sans-serif organic labels and only off of plates designed by Swedish art students. My wardrobe consists of pastels and earth tones made of material blends of NASA polymers and hand-dyed fabric from smiling rain forest tribes. You don't wash it, you recycle it into mortar to rebuild the war-torn countries you learn about while standing in line at Starbucks.

This is, of course, utter bullplop. But it is true that I am exercising now; bike riding and yoga. Something in me took a look at the roads and trails around here and said "man, I need to go tear-assing around on loose gravel and in traffic supported by naught but two strips of rubber and Newton's laws." I've logged about 40+ miles in two weeks, mostly riding on a short trail near my apartment. When I'm feeling dumb I go down the road to the bridge and then uphill the whole way back, about 4 miles round trip.

The yoga class meets once a week to reenact cubism's greatest hits through interpretive agony. For some reason this feels really good at the end of class, probably due to the specific targeted nerve damage in my spine so all I can feel is dopamine. Seriously, I feel great. But I'm stretching things Henry Grey didn't know existed. My ulterior motive for taking the class was to try to find people my age to hang out with. According to the two I've met, we're a bit of an anomaly here- a dozen-odd young professionals caught in the limbo between MTV and AARP.

I feel I would be remiss if I did not mention the Crossroads guitar festival concert I attended last weekend, but it's taken me this long to mention it because this is the end of the second week in a row without a real break. I flew out of Indy last Friday, spent all Saturday at the show, and flew home Sunday morning.

The concert was really great. It was like five years of concerts in one day- Clapton, BB King, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Allison Krause and Union Station, Jeff Beck, John Mayer, Buddy Guy, and more that I can't remember right now. Jeff Beck was the big surprise of the show, coming out with a set of solid rock and improv that had the exhausted crowd cheering. the big surprise of the day for me was Vince Gill, a contemporary coutry artist. I had never really listened to him, but the man can play the blues. And Eric Clapton, of course, was as great as his reputation suggests.

My first check cleared this week, supporting the notion that I'm actually here to stay for the foreseeable future. I'm still in the habit of saving boxes and keeping things that I'm not using packed, though. When I moved in last month it was the fourth place I had lived in the span of a year so I still feel a bit nomadic.

My life is not entirely dissimilar from a cosmonaut living on the International Space Station in that I now rely on scheduled deliveries of items formerly available within thirty miles of my front door. In fact, this may be the first time I've lived in a town lacking both a comic shop and a music store. No small wonder everyone's married here; there are no geek vices to keep them celibate.

My first of doubtless many Amazon.com orders arrived yesterday. The box size was a little misleading until I opened it to discover the special edition Smashing Pumpkins CD I ordered came with a larger booklet than I expected. The other item was the British import Tarantula single, paid in full primarily for one b-side, "Death from Above." Both CDs are great, in my estimation, but I'm an unabashed fanboy and it's been several years between albums.

Zeitgeist sounds like a continuation of Machina, if maybe a bit simpler. Machina served to announce the band breaking up, hence the heavy apocalyptic and death-of-rock themes. Seven years later, things are looking up. Zeitgeist responds to the previous album's despondency with a sort of cheerful rebellion- kind of a cockeyed smile and a middle finger to "The Man." Here, "The Man" has shifted from a passive corporate blob to the more modern all-war-all-news-all-for-sale, all for self-perpetuity blob. Back when "alternative" meant "not completely co-opted yet," rebellion against the status quo left over from the Regan years meant passivity and disillusionment. (Which I, for my part, did all I could to buy in to as a teenager even though I was pretty happy and probably more a part of the establishment than I cared to admit.) Now, this "Man" relies on passivity of any stripe, which most of what passes for rock in the mainstream is happy to propagate. It's always the aging rock stars who remind us why rock should be better than that- Ozzy, the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, and now it would seem the torch is passed to Billy Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlain, and whoever else they can rope into their crazy rock circus long enough to go on tour. I doubt most current bands will change with society in the coming years as we hopefully move out of the terror decade. If anyone will hear the old guys and take up their cause, it's the kids practicing on starter gear in garages and basements as an escape from the current status quo.

So, yeah, I like the album.

In other news, my comics are shipping weekly now, and the next box just went out this morning according to my e-mail.

(spoilers ahead for anyone who has never seen a summer blockbuster)
This past weekend was my first chance to sit and relax after a week of moving, work, and unpacking. Not that I actually relaxed, but I had the chance. I saw Transformers on Saturday, which would seem like a leisure activity, though it ended up being wildly confusing. Once you get past all the giant robot action, it turns out to be a movie about various people and how they are effected by a handful of transforming robots. Like Magnolia, only I don't care. Here is the movie, boiled down and without all the cool CGI:

• Optimus Prime gives a nice cosmic NPR narration on the beginning of life for living machines. We assume this could only have happened exactly 10,000 Earth years ago.
• Michael Bay's stock red-blooded American army guys are introduced through their suitably ethnic banter: The white dude has a wife back home and a daughter that he seems confident is his, though the movie doesn't factor in stop-loss in telling us when exactly he would have been in procreation proximity with his wife. The black dude is inoffensively competent, a good soldier, no more or less equal than his absolutely equal buddies. The Latino dude talks a lot. The odd fellow in the glasses is there to balance the weight on his side of the helicopter.
• A Decepticon lands on a military base, transforms with a series of slack-jawed reaction shots, and then just sort of strolls around like a golfer on a putting green, off-handedly blowing things up.
• The only soldiers to escape are our previously introduced platoon, the Fightin' Relatables. They are attacked by a Decepticon that burrows in the sand and attacks as a giant scorpion. You don't screw with a Decepticon that doesn't feel the need to turn into anything.
• Bay assumes we have had just about enough of this giant robot nonsense for now, so we are taken to sunny California to meet Sam, a boy who lucks into driving a car that can get anywhere in Los Angeles in five minutes through only the lightest traffic. Sam also repeatedly mentions his great grandpa who, in Da Vinci Code-style flashback, did something in the Arctic where he stumbled on a thoroughly frozen Megatron. No word on whether or not he ran into the expedition from H.P. Lovecraft's novella "At the Mountains of Madness." And just for kicks, we meet Sam's perfunctory romantic interest.
• Smash-action cut to somewhere in Washington DC where John Voight is speaking to a group of teenagers about computer security jobs. The world of the movie is run by children- the bureaucrats are just there to observe and be flabbergasted when the kids come up with solutions to problems. One of the kids present is the guy who played Nerd of Doom Andrew on Buffy. He disappears into some other movie we don't get to see where most of this plot prattle is edited out in favor of giant robot action, or so I like to believe. In his stead, we get a British runway model that the movie proclaims to be a genius programmer. Her partner in crime amidst all of the flashy glowing computer displays and "hacking" is the dude from Kangaroo Jack.
• More with Sam and his car and other things that don't involve lasers and mass destruction.
• Group introduction with the Autobots! They explain how they learned to talk from the internet, which makes some sense, as they only speak English- they couldn't get past the Great Firewall of China. Thanks, Google and Yahoo.
• More action, Bumblebee takes a cheapshot from some government agents, the entire plot is picked up and moved to the Hoover Dam for a while.
• Something important enough to bring all of the plot threads and characters together happens, Megatron wakes up in a mood similar to John Wayne in Dennis Leary's song "I'm an Asshole" ("Have you ever taken a cold shower? Well, multiply that by 15 million times, that's how pissed off The Duke's gonna be"), the Decepticons assemble and start actively tearing things up. Good hustle, fellas.
• One of the producers checks the title of the movie, remembers what all this is about, and gives the audience what it deserves by virtue of paying admission: all-out giant robot action. Big jumbled masses of motion-blurred CGI metal rolling around and blowing up, occasionally standing up to look like something other than a ball of parts. Then back to the blurriness.
• The good guys win, Sam gets the girl and a bunch of clingy Autobot buddies, the soldiers from the beginning mostly disappear, and Optimus Prime concludes the proceedings by assuring his cohorts that humans are a-o.k.

This song would have fit right in on Machina II, matching the "what the hell is this frantic fuzzy noise that I must hear over and over again?" vibe. This new Tarantula video reminds me of the Cherub Rock video- lots of filters and nonsense going on but fifteen years later. The Cherub Rock video was shot on film in the woods, then deliberately processed wrong, bleached, and thrown down the stairs. This new video has the same feel, but with digital filters.

My new apartment is a mess of boxes and bags, but I'm adjusting pretty well to this new town and new job. My office is smallish, but nice, with a window with a nice view of a tree and an old church. This week is going o be slow for me while I get acclimated. I'm waiting for the HR office to process my paperwork so I can get my new e-mail address and parking pass.

My new machine is an iMac (lowercase "i" implies divinity) is currently looming before me on the desk. The help desk sent over their tech lackeys to install Final Cut Pro and the rest of the Production Studio 2 bundle. If the computer could reach it's own keyboard it could do my job without me.

My new comic shop:
Giant Silver Surfer. I don't really care about the rest of the movie, but this is cool.

I canceled my pull file at the shop I've used for years here in Fort Wayne. I can't say I'm sorry, really, even though I was pretty much only keeping it for the sake of supporting the shop that got me started as a comic geek lo those many years ago. They had a habit of leaving books out of my file that I had requested, and I ended up going to Discount Comics for a couple of titles they never had in stock in the first place. As the name implies, Discount Comics sells comics at a deep discount. It's a locally owned brick and mortar shop that does mail orders to my new area, and the discount is about equal to the shipping charge. I would still pay full price at Alter Ego if I lived close enough, but I'm not driving to Muncie every Wednesday.

You believe it was... Muur-der?!

(edit- click to play the video)

The new design is a result of Blogger telling me about lots of cool new features, then telling me my old template wouldn't work with the new stuff. They added the ability to add RSS feeds to the sidebar, something I've been eager to do with my Netflix queue. Technically, this works. The problem is that the feed doesn't update right. Netflix updates the feed automatically and the list stays current, but near as I can tell it's Blogger not checking the feed and updating properly. If the movie list disapears now and then it's because I'm frustrated with it. The other new addition is the countdown clock to Warren Ellis's first novel. A countdown to a book is pretty geeky already, but I'm looking forward to it that much.

I'm getting ready to move now. My stuff is scattered between the basement here and a storage facility near here. The new place has a dishwasher and a second room that I can use as and office. I get a balcony, a storage closet, new carpet and kitchen floor, and the laundry facility is right next to me. All this for only about $50 more than I was paying for the freezing cold gulag I used to live in.

The following is true:

I got a job at DePauw* University as a multimedia guru for alumni relations. Moving shall commence in the coming weeks. New clothing has been purchased to make me presentable. More on this as it develops.

I will probably still graduate, to answer the many who have asked about this. I don't know when or even how exactly, but the consensus seems to be that I should finish what I started out of boredom and desperation, even now that I am neither. If there were a way to pinpoint and remove certain classes from my memory upon completion of the degree, I would have made more of an effort to be done by now.

As my life gets more interesting than it has been recently, I'll blog more. They must have internet access where I'm going, right? It's between Indy and Rose Hullman- there must be an intarweb tube we can all siphon from.

* DePauw with the "w" is the one in Indiana. DePaul with the "l" is north of Chicago. I'm at the former.

It's about time. The new album comes out July 7, hopefully followed by a US tour. They're playing a few dates in Europe in June, so hopefully someone will record the concerts.

I took a few notes while watching Armed and Famous tonight. What insight about Muncie can be gained from reality TV? Here's what I learned:

They came in the back way through the arse-end of town

Wee-Man is serious. Seriously.

Latoya has the Jackson family nose.

Eric Estrada looks good for his age.

Jack Osbourne has not seen the Mythbusters episode that shows how cars are not bulletproof.

Wee-Man can disarm a man. Seriously.

Jack Osbourne can take a taser standing up. Like father like son.

"Ponch Just farted." Seroiusly.

I used to live right by that laundromat.

Nothing less than a killshot will take down a south-side junkie, and should it come to that, my money is on Jack Osbourne.

Muncie will show up and cheer for anything. (ie: BSU football)

Wee-Man found the most amicable crackhead on Earth. Seriously.

Even the crack dealers are sweet old ladies in Middletown, USA.

Crab-hands just wants to go home.

Wee-Man is rollin' the Muncie streets protecting the Muncie women. Seriously.

The start of my "me" semester has been, essentially, two additional days of finals week. I worked for about twelve hours total yesterday finishing my animation for the Terri Dreams, currently rendering behind this window. I also went to the IDMAA meeting to get feedback on a grant proposal I wrote last month for their double-secret project. The forthcoming revision should look great, and if the project gets off the ground I'll post a link.

I crashed on Gerry's couch last night and ate breakfast in the new cafe in the library. It's pretty nice- food, coffee, and huge sunlit windows. The rest of the day has been constant running around and working. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to visit most of the people I'd like to (the old office, Scott, and others), but I'm anxious to get home because my brother goes back to school next week.

The long, arduous process of sorting through my stuff, packing boxes, and driving back and forth between cities is finally complete. I'm no longer a Muncie resident, so it's back to Fort Wayne to finish my projects and my degree. No more Heorot, Fickle Peach, Moe's, Motini's, Scotty's, Pita Pit, or Greek's. I suppose I'm alright without these establishments, but what really hurt was closing my pull file at Alter Ego Comics. I think the shop in Fort Wayne has the same service, but it won't be the same.

On the plus side, I'm able to use the Allen County Public Library again.

John Battelle has some interesting insight on "conversational media." This is a better term than "user-created content." The simple explanation is that conversational media is any sort of media published on the internet that isn't expressly for commercial purposes. My current favorite example:
Singing skeleton marionette


Hee hee, he dances and so does the pair of legs behind him. This sort of video has been around for a long time- the dancing baby, the Star Wars kid, and innumerable videos of cats are all examples. The dancing baby was originally intended as a demo for some prefab animation software, but nobody knew it. Conversational media is different from viral marketing in that the content is purely for enjoyment. If you clicked on the link above (then you're a geek like me), you saw the rundown of big media companies and their attempts to get in on web 2.0 content distribution. Newscorp bought Myspace, much to the chagrin of Viacom, for a hefty sum of money. Google bought Youtube with a built-in bugged for the wave of infringement lawsuits from big media copyright holders.
It seems to me that the short-term value of these assets is the ad revenue that comes from multiple users navigating through several pages of content, seeing new ads with each new page. Meanwhile, consumers are blocking and skipping advertising more and more. In light of this apparently growing trend, the web advertising model starts to look short sighted, if not willfully ignorant of the user base. However, I see these conversational media outlets as a great investment for trend watching. When a company owns the media servers, they can search and compile all kinds of data on what's popular while it's still popular.
Movie sites are popping up on Myspace now in order to connect with the target audience for the majority of studio films, and networks are using Youtube to market programming to an audience that has largely tuned out in the hope of getting their attention again.
And I just realized that I don't really know where I'm going with this. It's been on my mind for a while, since I did a project on the subject last year.

It got cold here in a hurry this year, after a pleasantly warm Thanksgiving week. I think we're fighting nature's population cap by living here at this time of year, but until we get satellite powered ubiquitous wireless internet, we're not leaving our northern population centers for warmer weather. I have the heater in my apartment blowing full-blast whenever I'm there and awake, though the effective radius is the size of an Ewok's strike zone. Sometimes when I'm cold and impatient I sit on the vent to warm my mostly uninsulated bones. Oddly enough, though it was turned off, I thought I heard it this morning. I assumed it was the neighbors, but then I found it running despite the switch being off. Apparently, there's a thermometer failsafe so I don't freeze to death in my sleep, which was rather considerate of the designer. If the thing didn't run on a pencil sharpener motor I'd call it good design.

Some people I know don't read (old joke), but those of you who do may be interested in this site: Unsuggester. Enter a book you've read, and the site will give you a list of books that you are statistically unlikely to read, based on site members' reading lists. It seems to be heavily weighted by people with lists of nothing but Christian/inspirational books, or perhaps I'm just a heathen for reading John Steinbeck, Neil Gaiman, and Douglas Adams.

Tom Waits was on Letterman last night. If you're interested in turkey vultures, watch the first video. Otherwise, the song is in the second video.
Tom Waits on David Letterman - Pt1


Tom Waits on David Letterman - Pt2

I'm getting back to normal now, not missing the bus and getting used to the food here again. I never noticed how used to the food I was, that everything tasted the same to me after two years of eating the same four meal combinations in rotation. The Terri Dreams project is coming along nicely. My segment director made a rough mockup video with the storyboards timed to the music for reference. I worked a little more on the models and messed around with blend shapes to get the right motion. If nothing else, it fills my time with something fun and constructive.

After work on Friday I drove home to Fort Wayne to greet my brother and a dozen other students known collectively as the Cornerstones, a vocal group from Kenyon College. I say "vocal group," because (a.) I don't think I've ever heard Michael refer to them as a "choir;" and (b.) their arrival could be described as "vocal." Semantic issues were quickly forgotten as two minivans and a station wagon all bearing the Kenyon crest filled our driveway and a flock of students began to emerge. A series of them greeted me with a hearty handshake and a name- a nice gesture even in the dark where I couldn't see their faces very clearly. An indoor reintroduction and a group 180° allowed Mom to read their group shirts with nicknames emblazoned on the back, each an inside joke born of camaraderie and caffeine. Cornerstone custom is to perform unannounced in a public area the night before the scheduled performance. Fort Wayne is almost completely shut down at 10:00 PM, save for an area in the Jefferson Pointe mall by the theater that served as a performance space. Even in the cold they managed to attract spectators. Most people paused to listen for a few minutes before moving on to someplace warmer, but a few guys sat on the steps nearby and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the show. I found that this unscheduled performance fit with my research from my immersion in Chicago: more than one person walking to or from the theater wondered aloud if these were carollers for the holiday, despite a lack of seasonal music. In a near sphere of commercialism and carefully metered culture, the Cornerstones were something unscheduled and genuinely independent. This garnered some predictably strange looks from older movie patrons, while the highschoolers seemed more accepting of a deviation from the norm. The concert the next day was great as well. I recorded the show on my Dad's laptop with a cheapo microphone from Radio Shack. They didn't have the one I wanted, but the recording might still be okay. I'll do what I can over break.

I'm pretty tired tonight, as I couldn't get to sleep last night on account of a still-huge stack of comic books saved up over the last month while I was away. I just feel the need to update this blog before it gets to be a month between posts.

It's been strange being back this past week. I wasn't gone to Chicago for that long, not a semester, certainly, but I've had to readjust to life here. The bus comes twice an hour, not every eight minutes. With the exception of Thai Smile, the Asian food isn't as good. I'm not in constant line-of-sight range with a Borders, Barnes and Noble, or other bookstore. If I was at all employable I wouldn't still be in Muncie. I'm quite sure I could live in a big city now.

I watched On the Waterfront the other night. It's entertaining and intelligent, despite a heavy-handed tendency to beat the audience over the head with every possible symbolic reference the writer could think of. It works, though. I also devoted two nights to working through Gears of War with Scott on his Xbox. Despite the immaculate level of detail afforded by next-gen graphics processing, the game still operates under the same principles of the eight and sixteen bit games of the past two decades: run around, blow stuff up, wait for the talking heads to run through their script to give some semblance of plot, repeat. Beyond the graphics, there really isn't much to the game. Plot and narrative issues are hard for designers to work out, but they're also the cheapest problems to solve early in the production process. It's why the Halo series takes so long between games- the designers care deeply about creating a world for the player to work in. This is also why the first Halo was still on the best seller list when Halo 2 came out.

Well, I'm here in Chicago now, so all my blogging for the next three weeks will be over here.