Who in the what now?

Slipping on the stepping stones tripped and fell and broke my bones.

What a complete start\stop weekend this has been so far. The animation got where it needed getting, yet there's still work to do on it for the super duper deluxe extended director's cut I guess. I have three pages of notes to go through. NOTES! It feels like I'm starting it all over. And I still haven't heard when I'll get compensated, which would be nice. Granted, the director and producer have no idea when THEY will make any money from this, but a heads up on how things are going on the distro side would be nice. It has been getting great feedback from the screenings they've been putting on, and people I've shown my copy seem to like it. But feedback from friends and family does not equal Jon paying his bills. So yeah, I've been asked to give the animations I've done "that extra little something", which I don't mind doing really. Apparently Nicolas (director) has been given to calling me Sir Jon and wants to have me officially knighted for the trials and tribulations I've gone through while working on this project. I'm no Heath Ledger or nothin', but I think I'd look damn good in a suit of armor.

Friday night was Carol's going away party, which was cool. Drank too much, Turn of the Screw fucking ROCKED Tara's living room, Jeremy gave me a copy of his band Depswa's latest album, Murv stopped by after I called him to let him know Tara and Jeremy had his old band's sticker not only on their fridge but their bedroom door as well, played with the pitbulls, made Meatloaf's daughter giggle when I told her the show she was in (HBO's Carnivale) did absolutely nothing for me but I was sorry I missed all her nude scenes, and someone impressed me with having the balls to pick up a guitar and jam with some of the other guys there despite not having played in years. Good times. Oh, and Erica fucking ROCKS, and I so want to set her up with my favorite girl who likes girls like they're boys. She's a little action figure with the kung-fu grip and likes my cats, so she, to reiterate, fucking rocks.

Saturday morning Pony couldn't find her contacts. Of COURSE my cats stole the case, why was she so surprised? Just because she has turtles and they're not so good with the sneaky-sneaky? I mean, they're alright at simple theft, but you can see what they're planning a few days in advance.

Losgadh came and picked me up around noon to go shopping for her little brother Spencer. Apparently the girls at his school said he'd be cute if he wore cool clothes. So the 11 year old brainiac (he tests off the chart) told his mom that he wants girls to think he's cute, who asked Losgadh what's hip and happenin', somehow this turned into "get Jon to go with us". I think it's because I dress like I'm 15. At least that's what the tux guy told me when I rented one for a buddy's wedding. So now Spencer no longer looks like Urkel, and will have little girls swooning all over him.

After the shopping excursion, Losgadh and I came back to my place to take a nap. Well, she napped while I nursed a wicked hangover from the night before. Her boyfriend called an hour late to let her know he was getting off of work and he'd take her out to a movie. I'm hoping they went to see Troy, as it's a surefire way to gauge a guy. As Housecat told me after she saw it with a guy friend "He turned to me as we were walking out and said that even though he wasn't gay he'd still have sex with Brad Pitt". It's all about honesty people. I'm not gay, not even remotely bi, but god DAMN that motherfucker is one sexy beast.

Today I didn't do much, other than clearing out the spare bedroom for Cristal. Who is moving in. Or so she claims. She called around 3 saying she'd be here by 6, 7 at the latest. It's now 11 at night and no word. I'm guessing she's out with her boytoy. Bitch better get here soon with my money.

I'm exhausted, yet as you can see not much has happened the last few days. It just starts and stops.

There's more stuff to write about but I fear I've rambled enough. Mainly clever conversations with Natasha, saGe, Housecat, Stiles, WhatWouldSatanDo (and his coming by to play his drums for a whole of 5 minutes), my brother Jay's return from Europe, my car still being AWOL, my theory on why masturbation should stay a shamefull act, and the reason why my Mobil kicks your Mobil's ass.

Sheesh

I don't have a lot of body hair, and what I do have is blonde or ginger.

Imagine my shock, horror, and utter amazement when I just noticed that one of my three (count 'em, three) chest hairs is now white.

My body hates me.

Funny

I'm such a Law & Order dork.

I'm amazed how every time Vincent Dinoffrio is wrapping up the hows and the whys the uniformed police know exactly when to enter the room to take the suspect away. Amazed I tell you. How do they do that? Does he give them some sort of code word? It's almost like it's scripted.

Oh, wait...

Dammit

Spent the weekend, other than Saturday night's party at the Rainbow for Pony's b-day, finishing up the final shot for Making Waves. Which opens tomorrow night. In the UK. That's roughly 20 hours from now. I sent the producer a quicktime version of it, but they need the full rendered frames to drop into the final edit. So how the hell am I supposed to get 3.7 gigabytes of TIF files (640 frames, 1920x1080 resolution, each about 6 MB) over to the UK, and also to the director in New Zealand, in time? I have no fucking clue.

So I'm uploading the final frames to the studio where the editing will take place via FTP. My quick, and most likely flawed, calculations on my upload speed and the total file size brings the estimated time of completion to be around 12 hours. This is a perfect example of the word "guesstimistake".

As I should have expected, I have another shot to do for the DVD version that they may drop into the theatrical release. How did this go from 7 simple shots to 11 slighlty more complicated ones? I should have kept my big mouth shut when I was asked what I thought of the film, nodded politely, and walked away. But no, what did I do? I said "Cute movie, too bad the space station CGI is crap. You should have asked me to do it.".

Thirst

Stand against the storm foolishly standing at the edge
A memory, now a tragedy left to jaded lovers long grown cold
The story goes untold and no one ever knows
It just disappears beneath the fears I've carried

Been a long time since I've had peace of mind
But it's okay, it's alright
What a crime to have wasted all this time
But I'm alright, I'm okay

No desire to wonder why the answers have so long escaped me
But my arms are open wide to the pull to the flow I know
Walk along the shore, gently ease myself into your water
I simply disappear beneath the calm you carry

Wade into your water
A promise, an escape
Wade into your water
To find me something pure
Wade into your water
And wash me all away

You should read the whole thing

Whittled severely from the original, which I can't remember exactly where I saved it. Read it anyways...

I think that abstract thought just developed as part of a group-cooperation adaptation. No big deal. Just the capacity for one more degree higher of metaphorical representation than we'd have without the good old cortex. Nothing much more than a hall of mirrors which we then proceeded, forgivably enough, to get lost within.

Why are we lost in the hall? the nature of mirrors being a lovely metaphor for rational thought, as they are slices of accuracy. Confusing, misleadingly restrictive, accuracy. Like the blind men and the elephant, words may capture and pinion just the very thing to the writer, but it's only one or a few aspects of the real experience. It can never be the whole. No two people's experience of a whole is ever the same; our sensory impressions resonate in innately different chambers.

No two people's experiences of a word are the same, either, but through extensive experience and the shared intention and emotional need to communicate, we have a pretty good idea of what each other's trying to say. It is, after all, humanly evolved - I mean, we made up language out of the basic noises our bodies make, so it stands to reason its nonsense can be easy enough to get fluid and actually practical with.

So then, with all this understanding, we are stunned when one of us says one experience was surprising and refreshing, when another thought of it as staid and pedantic. We might share a similar experience of those adjectives, but clearly our experience - the same sensory input, the same sequence of events - was very different.

It reminds me of studies about the inaccuracy of eyewitness testimony. People will swear up and down they saw such completely different events, and memory gets fucked with by leading questions and subsequent associations. With fuzzy grey mushboxes like these, it's a wonder we can operate elevators, much less program computers, and spell. In line with this amazing line of reasoning, to employ clean clear logic is to impose right angles and geometrically perfect parallel lines on a nature that has no such things. We are all parkinson's patients trying to grasp experience; all cute fwagile widdle butterfwies who'd believe our crayola paper wings to be stained glass.

I had a friend once who thought herself into a deep depression for at least a month over the fact that nature contains no so-called perfect geometric shapes; that the human intellect has invented that malarky and imposed it on a roundish, lumpy, formerly happy world, and it's the root of all that's wrong with us.

We're not built to think clearly, though we seem to be born with an understanding (the curse of knowing too much?) of what clear logic and "perfect" "ideal" reasoning are like. Our reach there is certainly greater than our grasp; our eyes, bigger than what we can really stomach. Our impressions, our unruly little id, our impulsive desires all squashed under the square-edged cookie-cutter matrix of logic. Meanwhile, we'd rather be stretching or sleeping, really. When your shiniest toy is a hammer, everything casts the reflection of a nail.

The logical Form has no margin for the fitful impulses of the animal self. Strunk and White have no allowance for those of us who bang on the keyboard as a means of expressing frustration, even though it sure gets the job done.

Lifted

I'm going to plagairize a bit. Okay, a lot. I'm feeling a bit down and in need of some help in a couple areas of my life and can't find the motivation nor the strength to ask for the help I may need. It all comes down to feeling powerless, or at least not being in control. I like being in control, I like calling the shots, I like being self-sufficient. When I don't have that control, calling the shots, actually needing someone's help, I feel ashamed.

Shame is a very powerful tool, and it sticks with us. I actually believe that shame triggers an endogenous hormonal cocktail that is chemically addictive. I think we can get high off shame. The clammy hands, the anxiety, the heart pounding sweat. Like stage fright or a roller-coaster, I think the thrill of shame is something we dig into on a very base biological level, and it just so happens to be self-destructive to seek out those experiences. I don't think many in the BDSM scene would refute this, and people with eating disorders might nod a bit too.

So the fact that I know I need to rely on others, for whatever reason, fills me with both a sense of dread and yet, at the same time, the slow quiet thrill of not knowing what may happen next or if I can actually survive. From shame comes the schism. The sense that my body is bad; it does not contain the 90-degree "right" angles of "pure" rational thought. The sense that I am stupid; I cannot grasp the concepts of how to effectively function in our society. We are taught from day one not to let our emotions out as freely as we wish. In school we memorize facts, multiplication tables, names and dates; and spend next to no time on sex, and no time whatsoever on death. The two most fundamental biological drives. By the time we're angry teens, we've come to suspect the futility of the battle. Following the plan, once we're aging pencil-pushers (or shit-shovelers; it works for all the socioeconomic strata), we're lucky to have any impulses left.

I need to think on this, but it makes sense for now

It never ends

I thought I was done with this freelance work, as the movie OPENS next Wednesday, but the director called me on Thursday from New Zealand and asked me to change a few things, and to transfer the files to an online storage spot he set up. All 1.6 gigs of it.

So I haven't been online much, other than to check messages.

I did spend Friday night at only's studio though, which was a needed break from sitting in front of the screen here at home. Even hung out with Misery, which was cool except for her being on the phone most of the time with her little boytoy. It's cool having a completely platonic friend like her, for so many reasons. The only downside is that all my friends at the studio thought we had something going on.

Quick E3 wrap-up

I was also quite pleased with Sly2, Jak3, and Rachet and Clank 3.

I do have to give BIG props to Aaron Habibipour for turning Iron Phoenix around in the right direction. When I first played it as Meteor Blade it was complete crap. Apparently he went to the developers over in China and redid all the character designs, plus had them implement a whole litany of improvements in under a month. Amazing, it really is. Sammy is lucky to have someone like him. Darkwatch is looking quite spiffy as well, but not such a dramatic improvement from last year as Iron Phoenix. Again - kudos to Aaron.

The best E3 related incident was the Sony PR man giving me extra passes to the party when the group I was with wound up being one short. Thanks man - even if you most likely can't read this. The group from Suckerpunch are a great bunch of guys to hang out with, especially Dev Madan. I can't believe I've known him for over 10 years.

Seeing Black Eyed Peas, Missy Elliot, AND The Crystal Method from 30 feet away while getting hammered on free drinks all night was great. Sony parties usually are. I drunk dialed about 20 people and just held the phone up to the stage. Yeah, that was me.

The night before I went out drinking\shmoozing with a few reps from the UK. The less said about that the better. Let's leave it at: failed attempt at going to Jumbo's Clown Room, where strippers go to die.

So basically I've been drinking professionally all week, and I'm going to use the weekend to recover from all the walking I did the last three days. Going to Magic Mountain for Cutter's birthday today was the final nail in my coffin. The Goliath was awesome, but an amusement park is in no way the proper venue to nurse a hangover.