I guess I already said that, didn't I? Whups.
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(1)
09:27:12 PM,
Monday 10 December 2012
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I do stand-up comedy and stuff now. It's pretty fun. It's also a lot of work. I like that I feel like I'm really doing something.
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09:23:13 PM,
Monday 10 December 2012
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So one of the effects of my battle with depression is a deep pain associated with a lot of the creative work I did before it hit. It's not that I don't want to cartoon or write comics, it's that I can't. It causes a sensation not unlike being trapped under a rock filled with spiders. So I've been looking for other outlets.
After a year or so of searching, I think I've found it. I've been doing stand-up for about two and a half months and I have the bug _bad_. I'm do four or five slots a week, I've met a ton of comedians and I've even made friends with a few. Stand-up is invigorating, it gets me out of the house, and it keeps me connected to people. It doesn't have the baggage and guruism of improv, and it's not as isolating as grinding away at art for hours on end. In all I'm happy to have tackled stand-up, and found its challenges inspiring instead of enervating.
I've still got horrible depression. It's still a fight every day to get out of bed. But it's not controlling me any more. It's not the sole focus. To all my friends who are going through difficult periods, I offer this. It may not seem like much, but any hope at all is good when you're at the bottom of the well.
Here's a set I did a little while back. (I posted this on FB, if it seems familiar)
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(8)
01:55:54 PM,
Saturday 19 November 2011
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Had a breakthrough last week during a show for a mostly-empty house. Instead of grousing about it and just doing bullshit, I did what I could to use the opportunity to try new stuff and experiment with some of my more finished bits. A real change in attitude, there.
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01:54:19 PM,
Saturday 19 November 2011
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This always makes me laugh.
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01:54:15 PM,
Saturday 19 November 2011
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Hey, Tim B. You want to live-chat the Finals game tonight? My gchat is my last name.
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(6)
10:55:20 AM,
Sunday 5 June 2011
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I now live with DOCTOR LIZ.
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(3)
06:06:52 PM,
Wednesday 30 March 2011
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I'm starting a PBEM game with bi-weekly turns. You'll play an occultist or monster competing for territory and artifacts in a city rife with intrigue. Anyone interested?
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09:37:26 PM,
Sunday 13 March 2011
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A friend of mine from high school is getting married to Penny Arcade's Director of sales. I found this out, not through facebook, but by seeing her in an episode of PATV.
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(1)
10:13:19 PM,
Wednesday 30 June 2010
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I am in NYC with my friend Joe. Yay!
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01:46:20 AM,
Wednesday 9 June 2010
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I would really like to play this game with pretty much all the folks who read this blog. It comes out in April, and it's a two player game with no particular rules, but one player wanders around the world, interacting with items, while the other player builds out the world and creates the reactions. The possibilities are very exciting!
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(11)
02:24:38 PM,
Monday 1 March 2010
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I think we watched The Wire because of Martin's incessant blogging about it.
Thanks, Martin!
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(1)
09:35:09 PM,
Wednesday 17 February 2010
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Martin, this made me think of you. (Everyone should watch this)
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04:21:36 AM,
Thursday 3 December 2009
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I feel like a strange old man saying this, but man, pop music is so great right now. I can't speak to the Hilary Duff/Jonas Brothers cookie cutter pop, but pop music as a whole continues to move down a bizarre, contradictory path.
The big example is Pitch Correction as aesthetic choice (T-Pain/Kanye). Pitch Correction is a gloriously post-modern contrivance. It takes an invisible technique that has been around for ages, turns it up and shoves it in the listener's face. Pitch Correction is being used to make a wide variety of complex, appealing music. Hyper-pitch corrected voices have become a new instrument. Listen to 808 and Hearbreaks or 'Buy U A Drank' or 'I'm on A Boat' and it's hard to argue that it's not a new weird sound for pop.
Studio pitch correction for 'correct' singing has existed for 20 years or more, it's an established part of the pop landscape. People whose strength is supposed to be singing will come to the fore, the others will fade into obscurity and hackitude (Think of the relative longevity of Christina Aguilera/Justin Timberlake vs. The Rest of N'Sync/Britney)
That's just one place where the envelope continues to be pushed, and the sound continues to evolve. Pop's nature embraces the duality of a conservative core of mass appeal and a constant questing heart for the new. This hasn't changed. I will happily defend modern pop from haters. Yeah, there's crap (the conservative hairification of rock is pretty dull), but if you don't think pop is as weird and wonderful as it has ever been, you're not listening hard enough.
(I mean, seriously, in a world where Paper Planes was a recent pop hit how can you argue pop has calcified?)
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(20)
02:22:16 PM,
Thursday 24 September 2009
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Hey y'all. I'm competing in a comics contest. The updates on LIvejournal are kind of works-in-progress and don't always read well. However, I'm posting the pages I completed in the previous week on too-fat.com. That may make a more enjoyable reading experience.
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(2)
09:56:54 AM,
Wednesday 16 September 2009
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I think I linked to this before, but I dearly love this video, on the true worth of science and the dangers of searching for perfect power and infallibility.
[via Warren Ellis] (Ellis describes the series this is excerpted from as 'The Leviathan of British rhetorical television.']
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(2)
08:23:42 PM,
Tuesday 8 September 2009
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Gmail status updates.
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(1)
05:20:59 PM,
Tuesday 1 September 2009
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My uncle David is writing about casinos on Indian Reservations for Slate.
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(4)
08:48:12 PM,
Friday 14 August 2009
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I randomly bought Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede in high school because it had a funny title. I read it all in one crazed sitting and was exhausted in school the next day. It made me laugh out loud many, many times. It's probably one of my favorite books, and one of the few I came to sort of randomly.
Now it's being made into a movie. At the very least, I'm happy for author Bradley Denton, because maybe more people will read this fun road/mind trip of a book now. Even more remotely, maybe a decent sf/comedy will be made out of it.
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(2)
12:28:53 AM,
Friday 14 August 2009
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I'm going to be starting an old school D&D game via Twitter. Anyone want to play?
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(9)
09:36:40 AM,
Wednesday 5 August 2009
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My friend Mano, who was on both my Harold teams, has a very short appearance in the latest episode of "Lie to Me". It's really strange to see the happiest Greek I know playing Random Terrorist #2, but still a kick.
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05:07:16 PM,
Thursday 14 May 2009
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