Meatmachine.info

I have a really big announcement.

My Mom and Stephen came to visit today, and it was really nice to see them. We had lunch, drooled over my computer, bought four-hundred dollars worth of software, drove up the hills, saw the vista, drove down the hills, installed four-hundred dollars worth of software, went to dinner, and said goodbye. The net effect: their observations of, and comments about my apparent confidence, totally boosted my confidence.

Now, I know you’re all waiting, muscles tense, attention held so firm, eyes dry and wide, to find out what kind of announcement this kind of context could foreshadow. I gaurantee you will not be not dissapointed.

As a result, I have pulled all of the sad songs from the playlist I am working on.
Yes, you read correctly, sir/ma’am. This tape will be cheery.

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Me and Kassy busted the code. If you want to remove the banner ad from the top of your myspace, simply put the following code somewhere in your “about me!” or “Band Info!” area.

This is the code to remove the advertisement:

<style type=”text/css”>
div { visibility: visible; }
div table { visibility: visible; }
div table td { visibility: hidden; }
div table table td { visibility: visible; }
div table table { visibility: visible; }
div table table div { visibility: visible; }
table td div div { visibility: visible; }
div table { visibility: visible; }
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[iframe]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] { visibility: hidden; }
 </style>

If you’d rather replace the advertisement with your own 800x127px image, use this code:

<style type=”text/css”>
div { visibility: visible; }
div table { visibility: visible; }
div table td { visibility: hidden; }
div table table td { visibility: visible; }
div table table { visibility: visible; }
div table table div { visibility: visible; }
table td div div { visibility: visible; }
div table { visibility: visible; }
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[iframe]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] { visibility: hidden; }

.adcover{background-color:white;position: absolute;left: 50%;top: 0px;margin-left: -400px;width: 800px;height: 127px;visibility:visible;overflow:auto;}
 </style>

<div class=”adcover”><center>
<img src=”YOUR IMAGE URL GOES HERE“>
</center>
 </div>

Implementing this code on your M-Space page will breach you user agreement, and may possibly result in the deletion of your account. On the bright side, there are over 50 million registered M-Space users, so you might stand a chance of going unnoticed.

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Scanning in old negatives is very exhausting, I’m tempted to import all of them, and that’s what I’ve been working towards, but I’ve got to accept that some of these photos aren’t worth the five minutes it takes to scan them, adjust the resolution, and correct the brightness. Only the good ones go up on the Flickr.

If my dad taught me one thing, it’s that storage is cheap, it will always be cheaper later, and you should never get rid of something because of storage issues. He meant this in terms of computers, of course, but I’ve found myself applying it to everything else. I own so many blank notebooks, for fear I’ll have an idea and nowhere to lay it down. I have duplicates upon duplicates of different versions of the same damn Kid Presentable song. I have a box that must weigh thirty pounds, filled with paper artifacts from the last five years of my life. I have two independent backups of everything on my computer, and update them weekly.

I wouldn’t say that with a self-deprecating edge, if I had more confidence in the idea that the things I produce are worth keeping. I have a consistent dream, that years from now I will look back and bathe in nostalgia as I look over my physical collection of memories. I have no faith in my own ability to remember the most beautiful things around me, and I’m more afraid than anything, that I’ll never know what I’ll lose.

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A friend of mine posed this question on a forum, “Do you think people would be happiest if everyone was in an open relationship, or do you prefer single relationships with only one person exclusively? Annnd do you have reasons behind your preference?” This was my long-winded reply.

The way I see it, my views are split two ways. Let’s talk about sex first, shall we?Everybody, and I mean 99.9% of everybody, is at some point sexually attracted to somebody else, probably lots and lots of other people, at the same time, for different reasons. I’m a hardcore scientist when it comes to this. Millions of years of evolution have taught us to want to reproduce with somebody who is going to be able to help us produce healthy offspring. We also find variety especially interesting, and this encourages genetic diversity, which is incredibly important for evolving the nice little things, like an immune system. Our sex drives are explicitly geared towards multiple partners, maybe not simultaneously, but during our lives. There are patterns for how long most relationships last depending upon the release of hormones related to sex. When a woman becomes pregnant, she smells different, and olfactory(smell) glands in men tell us be more concerned for her health. I saw a pregnant woman with a bandage on her chin today, my initial reaction of “oh I hope she’s alright!” was so much more intense than it would have been had she not been pregnant, or not a woman.

Now, our instinctual motivations aren’t very clear to us, they don’t need to be in order to work. If I see somebody who I think is attractive, I’m not thinking “wow, she’d be great at bearing children”, or “wow, he’s/she’s really strong, he/she could probably provide for our family”. It’s more along the lines of “Aw geez, whenever I look at him/her I get really nervous, and he/she makes me smile a lot, and he/she has the most beautiful hands I’ve ever seen, and wow, oh geez.”, or even the more explicit “her boobies and hips/his shoulders and hands give me boners, aw geez”. We’re all adults here, right?

Then, there’s the other side of the argument, that I have absolutely no understanding of. I can say I’m in love. I’ve been in love with the same person for several years. I didn’t always think of it as love, and I’ve often had conflicts with what society defines as “love”. I’ve decided that when I say I love this person, it means I can’t see myself ever being able to stop feeling the way I do about her (however not-logical that may be). It means that every time I have tried to be in a relationship with somebody else, I feel like I’m being dishonest, manipulative, and a total bastard. I find myself wishing I could turn it off, wishing I could find somebody else and be happy, but it never seems possible. The slightest reminder brings back waves of emotions as strong as they ever were. None of this makes any sense, in the face of all reasoning, in the face of millions of years of evolution, in the face of what I want. Love’s a bitch?

(There’s also the other kind of love, that I feel for my family, for my friends, we all know how that goes.)

I guess what I’m saying is, if people are comfortable and happy in a poly amorous relationship, that’s wonderful. I don’t think it’s possible to say that everybody could be happier this way though. Nor do I think it is possible to say that polygamy fits everyone better. We’re all very complex, sexy, confused, messy people, blanket statements like those don’t work on us. At this point, I can’t see myself in a poly amorous relationship, because she makes me shiver, she makes my stomach get all tense, she makes me feel better in a way I can never remember, and I don’t know why.

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My scanner arrived today, I’m stoked. I’ll finally be able to (digitally) enlarge the dozens of processed negatives I’ve had sitting around since the end of senior year. It’s very exciting to see these photos the way they were meant to be seen so long after taking them. Deathrace, Chow Brahs show, Tattack portraits, photos of Zack, all these images come with nostalgia. It fits in between the grains of silver. If I can get a few batches scanned in tonight, I’ll throw them up on Flickr.

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I’m trying to organize my plans for recording and releasing material, this is what I’ve come up with so far.

Release 01
Meat Machine - ALL OF IT (WIP)
In an attempt to reduce the amount of materials consumed in the sharing of music, and to give more “bang” for the “buck”, I will be releasing as many Meat Machine songs songs as I can on a single CD. The only exclusions will be the songs I can’t take seriously anymore, the ones that I still take too seriously, and the songs I’ll never write. What that leaves you with is as follows:

1. Floodwaters
2. Note to Self: More Letters
3. Said Letters
4. Recent Archeology
5. Seeing Up
6. Waste
7. Indian Summer
8. I Don’t Know
9. We Will Ride
10. Clear the Walls
11. Birds & Bombs
12. Stolen Laughter
13. Tourbody
14. Muscle Memory
15. Big City
16. & more!

Release 02
The Exterminatorrs - Appetite for Destruction!
A series of duets with the delightfull Brittney Bullock, recorded at Reznor Studios with Jon Flores.

1. I Wish
2. Decades
3. Stay in Jersey
4. Third Song
5. Twenty Three

Release 03 (WIP)
Friend of Dinosaurs / Meat Machine - Dinosaur Meat
A split with my good friend Jeremy Northrup of Disarm! Disarm!.

• TBA

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I can be an industrious little bastard when I’m feeling all aflutter’d. ‘Muscle Memory’ is recorded and up on the M-Space. I’m going to go record a few more.

I just saw a photo of Goldy taken recently (I assume). His hair is really long, his beard is long. I’ve never thought about this before now, but everyone I knew in Jersey is literally growing up without me. It’s the sort of thing you don’t invest much in when you see a person every other day, all the physical changes blend together into your mental image of that person. Goldy was frozen in my mind, but he’s a living growing thing, with mad beard growing abilities. I wonder what future Goldy’s will think of all this.

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I am of the majority of Americans who do not regularly read the newspaper. I don’t currently own a television, and when there was one in my home, I didn’t use

I was going to write about how I’ve developed my personal politics, and how Bill Clinton rules, but then Molly invited me to a video chat. Like any face-to-face with someone you miss, it was exciting and awkward and strange and lovely. I’m still shaking, my body is shivering for no reason. I had actually started to forget how strong these feelings are, and she reminded me so easily. I want so badly to be close to her now, within 10 feet of her, it’s all I want. I tried to play ‘Muscle Memory” for her, but she said she couldn’t hear the words. I need to begin writing songs engineered to stream through computers.

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I left for the 1078 show later than I had planned last night, Siobhan wasn’t sure if she wanted to go, and let me know she wasn’t half an hour after the show was supposed to begin. Riding my bike rllyrlly fast, and utilizing time-travel-techniques perfected in Superman 3, I got there right as the first act was starting. There were only about 10 people in attendance, the majority of who were in bands that were playing. The bands were a nice sampling of some CA folk music. The two acts that blew me out of the water were Deer Tick and Chorused the Animals.

John McCauley (Deer Tick) set in my mind that I’ll never get anywhere in life unless I learn how to finger-pick. He voice was incredible, well projected, that “Sammy Davis” kind of sound. He said he was from Providence, RI, which was exciting. He looked a lot like Brian Chippendale de la Lightning Bolt. On his right shoulder he had a tattoo of the California Raisins. After his set, he was nice enough to let me take a Polaroid portrait of him, and I bought his CD and a cassette split he was on.

Chorused the Animals (of the Perfect Light) is normally a full band I’m told, but was represented by the solo Jocelyn Noir this evening. Guitar fighting, satanic worship, and a mouthful of obscenities made it enjoyable. She was also kind of enough to allow to take a Polaroid portrait of her, alongside Adam Lipman, who played immediately before her. I left with two hand-sewn articles of Chorused the Animals merch., and that warm belly feeling.

I also took the time to speak to Jason, one of the operators of the 1078 Gallery about helping out with shows there. He said they’re always looking for volunteers at the gallery, so that’s something to pursue. He also put on Yo La Tengo between bands, so he gets cred. points.

It occurs to me I missed an Aubrey Debauchery show, how did that slip past? Boooooo.

As always, big ups to my corporate sponsor, M-Space. “We make everything friend’dly!”

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I was talking to Jon tonight, and we were comparing our collections of Reznor released and Reznor related music. Kid Presentable, Captain my Captain, Meat Machine, The Exterminatorrs, This Mountain, Science of Self, all the big names. By my count the total is over 150 songs, with a few alternate versions. That’s something to be really proud of.

Afterwards, I decided I am going to spend my time working on some releases. The first will include the 7 Meat Machine songs I recorded with Tom K. at the Janglebox earlier this year, and another track I recorded on my own. The second album I’d like to put out would be the 5 Exterminatorrs songs that Brittney and I recorded with Jon in the Reznor basement. I just got much higher quality versions of the tracks from Jon, and I’m really excited to make them tangible.

If I can get my little dorm-studio in working order, I would also like to record another Meat Machine album, of the 5-7 songs I have written since working with Tom, and any others I’ll write between now and then. All of this is an attempt to keep myself from wasting time. Jon agreed with me that it’s an almost anual tradition for us to stop what we’re doing, look around, and think to ourselves, “I could be so much more productive….”. Once again, it’s time for me to get up and create. I hope this fills the emptiness that has been growing inside of me.

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