Untitled Part Four&lt;p&gt;I was now floating, blinded by its thickness. I could swear I was swimming, with waves of gold crashing on top of me. I would take a breath when I could, and when I couldn’t, I smiled. He enveloped me in his beautiful destruction like a warm blanket around a newborn baby, and I reveled in it. There would be no more burning. There would be no more freezing. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I could feel the waves pushing me towards something, and I was able to open my eyes. My skin felt as smooth as the oiled feathers of a seabird, and I was able to slip beneath the current and up again as easily as if I were flying. This must be it, I thought. I was moving fast in the fluorescent breeze of ore, the gold beading off of my skin back into his sea, when I started to lift out of it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;He wasn’t promising me anything abstract, just the beginning of the end. Something I had no courage of my own to endeavour upon. I swam through the air, against the wind, against myself, and all for him. He was breaking the promise of breaking me.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I felt a crack at the back of my head and dropped onto the tile of my bathroom floor. I looked up to see the mirror was dripping gold, painting over the silvery backing of it. I hurled my body at it, clawed at the gold until it hardened under my fingernails, and collapsed onto the counter in tears. I wanted him to take me, and his rejection was more painful than anything I’d ever lived through before. Perhaps he wasn’t ready. Perhaps I wasn’t ready, either. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It was time to take a trip to nowhere. &lt;br /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;324FictionMaggie2004-03-31T10:34:44-05:00publishApril Calendar&lt;p&gt;Click on this smaller version for the 413k plenty-big version...either resize or &quot;stretch&quot; to your desktop...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;images/2004_03/april.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/april_small.jpg&quot; border=&quot;2&quot; style=&quot;border-color:#ccc;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;322ImaginingDaniel2004-03-30T15:20:56-05:00publishUntitled Part Three&lt;p&gt;I returned to the café where we first met. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I situated myself in the corner where I could watch the door, and pretended to read something he would be impressed by. I was never a Kerouac fan, but I knew it would be right up his alley. Each time the door opened, it would assault the coupling of bells above. My eyes would shift up for a moment…not him. Next bell…not him. Next bell…not him. Next bell…not him.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Two hours, twenty-three minutes, and 17 seconds later, he was standing in front of me. The door had been swung open, and I looked to see that the bells were frozen. Silenced. I glanced back and forth between his face and the bells. He sat down across from me, studied the cover of my copy of On The Road, and ripped it out of my hands. He threw it towards the door, hitting the bells on its way towards the street. The bells remained silent. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;He picked up my cup and finished my coffee. He never spoke a word to me before he was gone.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I walked home alone, again. I had accomplished nothing. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It was windy that night, and my hair was whipping my face in a frenzy as I walked. I felt a tug on my hair as I neared my apartment building. Too frightened to turn around, I moved my eyes as far to the right as possible and saw a canary had taken a few strands of my hair into its beak. I felt a tug at the other side of my head and saw that yet another canary also had my hair in its grip. Then they converged on me. Hundreds of birds came from the sky, grabbing at strands of my hair. I felt my feet leave the ground as they struggled to lift me to God knows where. The world was disappearing fast below me, and my futile attempts to stop them only made them fly faster, higher. I was growing so cold that my lungs felt as though they were freezing. Higher and higher and higher, their tiny wings carried me into darkness. I saw the face of a star, glowing electric gold before me. It was so close that I reached out to touch it. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I caught on fire and hoped for the worst.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;321FictionMaggie2004-03-30T10:48:50-05:00publishUntitled - Part Two&lt;p&gt;I walked home alone, unafraid for the first time. I never looked down once. As I opened my front door and walked inside, I noticed that my legs were growing tired quickly. It wasn’t until I reached my living room that I realized that I was wading knee-high in yellow feathers. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I wasn’t thinking clearly at that point, so I just gathered them up by the armload and stashed them anywhere I could – closets, drawers, cabinets…and went to bed. He had drained me for the night, yet I barely slept. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Weeks went by with nothing to speak of, except for my lack of sleep. Every night I would fall into bed and be asleep before I hit the pillow, and every night I would wake every five minutes afterwards. I knew he was breaking me down, but how? I hadn’t seen him since our first encounter. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I did all I could do to make myself stay completely awake one night. I drank so much coffee I thought I could bleed caffeine. I lay down on the bed, with one eye half opened, and waited. Nothing was happening. Just when I was about to get up and go try to fall asleep in front of the TV, I heard something slide open in my chest of drawers. I lay still, heart pounding, when I saw something enter my vision above. It was a single feather. It floated across my room, first up to the ceiling, then down towards my bed. I watched with that one half-opened eye as it dropped down and kissed my lips, before floating back up to the ceiling, and lazily going out of my window. Then I heard everything opening – drawers, closets, cabinets, all of them – and an army of yellow feathers headed haphazardly towards my bed. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It was no wonder I wasn’t sleeping much these days. &lt;br /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;320FictionMaggie2004-03-29T10:56:59-05:00publishUntitled&lt;p&gt;He had that great clever pointlessness about him, so much so that I knew he would be precisely the person who could destroy me. I leapt at the chance to say hello, meet this gorgeous un-maker.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I thought briefly of asking his name, but I didn&apos;t want to allow him to be defined by something so irrelevant. Besides, this particular man would never answer so pointed a question. This is why I chose him initially. Of course, as you will see, I had not, in fact, chosen him at all. He had been looking for me my entire life, in ways I could never see before I came face to face with him. His frustration seethed out of him so coolly, I never suspected thing.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&quot;Are you a writer?&quot; he asked.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I replied, &quot;No&quot;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;He looked away from me, raised his hand to his mouth and drew in a lungful of smoke from the end of his cigarette. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;This was the first time I would see the canaries. Tattooed brilliantly on the back of his hand, there were two golden-feathered violet-beaked canaries. I was so busy trying to not let him notice that I was studying them, that I almost missed him saying, &quot;You will be.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;319FictionMaggie2004-03-25T12:03:52-05:00publishFiction > chapter 19 > draft > bit&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The events and characters depicted in this work are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Sometimes you just have to jump down that wormhole to see where it leads. Sometimes you have to follow the shadow into the filthy room just to see what kind of furniture is in there. Sometimes you have to open the door to death just to see what form she takes tonight. Sometimes you have to fold yourself inside out just to see what lies at the deep dark spot in the middle.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;We are a generation unable to procreate. It happens by accident, and lives are lost like wallets, sometimes unintentionally, left on a café table downtown, sometimes intentionally, thrown out the window of the seaside tavern to be drown in the dark sea of our past. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;We age later and later and postpone death further and further along our trajectories. Our entire existence as humanity has shifted right, down the timeline. We are not adults until our thirties. We are not parents until our forties. We don&apos;t die until our eighties or nineties. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Why is it that the older we get, the more we fear the inevitable end? Don&apos;t we have more to be thankful for?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Or do we have more to regret?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;As teens we recklessly drive through traffic at breakneck speeds. As grandparents we toddle along with the blinker on. Shouldn&apos;t it be just the opposite?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;We always say we won&apos;t change, but we do. We always say we will love forever, but we don&apos;t. We always say we&apos;d rather die young than grow old, but we wouldn&apos;t. We always say we need a change but we&apos;ll run, scared, as soon as change rears its ugly head.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;We search and search for that one thing, but we&apos;ll never find it. We&apos;ll never find the love that lasts a lifetime. We&apos;ll never find the person that perfectly suits us. We&apos;ll never find the comfort level we desire. We&apos;ll never find the fame and adoration we seek.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Because we will refuse to love for a lifetime. Because we do not perfectly suit anyone else. Because we deny contentment. Because our need for adoration and affection cannot be satiated.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;We will write, we will read; we will sing, we will dance; we will rape, we will be raped; we will be robbed, we will steal; we will give false directions, we will be beguiled; we will lead, we will follow; we will cook, we will eat; we will sleep, we will stay awake for days; we will travel, we will settle down in the country.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But we will never find what we seek.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And because of this, we will not procreate. We will be the first of many generations to not replace itself. Slowly there will be fewer and fewer, and they will be seeking too, but not finding. And there will be less and less life and less and less novelty for that life to consume, and we will disappear. A forgotten trace at the end of the blip of humanity&apos;s take on life.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I like how my immorality hovers around me in its ethereal haze, like the fog off a November lake, like the Budweiser hanging off a fat man&apos;s neck. It follows me around to all my local haunts and then comes home with me and sits on the only other chair in my hole. I burn a cigarette and it breathes deep the second hand smoke like it was the steam in Norwegian sauna.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;My angel goes with me wherever I go as well, drinking incessantly. &lt;/p&gt;317FictionDaniel2004-03-23T12:52:42-05:00publishwhenever i start to feel bad i just think of everything you've already been through&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/gcr01.png&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It&apos;s time to step away.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&quot;Just step down away from the edge,&quot; I hear them say.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;So I do. And I walk through the crowd and into the stair well and down and out the front door and I get in my car and I drive far, far away.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/words.jpg&quot; align=&quot;left&quot; /&gt;Words, see it&apos;s all about those words. Heheh. All I have had, all I have are words. But for a bit they must live somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I&apos;ll leave you with a few more, some things dug out of the dusty attic, spells found in the woods tacked to the bark of some wise tree.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;photo by &lt;a href=&quot;http://benbubar.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;bb&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;br /&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/DM03i.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And then, I am indefinately leaving the helm of djdc to a guest blogger or two, for the first time ever. I was going to just spill the beans and tell you who, but I think I&apos;ll hold off on that. Suspence and all. Suffice it to say I wouldn&apos;t leave it to just anyone. You should know that already.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/DSCN2357iii.jpg&quot; /&gt;Ciao for now.&lt;/p&gt;316ImaginingDaniel2004-03-23T10:56:55-05:00publishmp3s&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t have a category for this entry, and I&apos;m not going to make one for it, so I threw it in the catch all.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;These are two spoken tracks on mp3 I&apos;m sharin&apos; for your benefit.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The first one is a clip from a short documentary from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manwithoutfear.com&quot;&gt;Daredevil&lt;/a&gt; DVD. I know what you&apos;re thinking: WTF? I won&apos;t get too into it, but there were some really good bonus materials on the DVD. Tom Sullivan was a consultant on the set--he&apos;s blind and so is the Daredevil character. &lt;a href=&quot;http://danielsjourney.com/media/tom_sullivan_64.mp3&quot;&gt;This description of running on the beach&lt;/a&gt; (720k) is really moving. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manwithoutfear.com/interviews/ddINTMefford.shtml&quot;&gt;Read more about the DVD bonus materials&lt;/a&gt;, which also included interviews with all the comic book creators, including Kevin Smith (who has a cameo in the movie as well).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The second one is from the audio book for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0156027321/qid=1079983171/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/104-5882867-3547963?v=glance&amp;s=books&amp;n=507846&quot;&gt;Life of Pi&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://danielsjourney.com/media/life_of_pi-disc_5-Track_06-64.mp3&quot;&gt;It is a short but complete chapter on fear&lt;/a&gt; (1.4M).&lt;/p&gt;315MinutiaDaniel2004-03-21T17:20:40-05:00publishtofu hut is ubercool&lt;p&gt;via &lt;a href=&quot;http://tofuhut.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;tofuhut&lt;/a&gt; (be sure to dl the bollywood tracks currently up there):&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/03/18/tammy.faye.cancer/&quot;&gt;Tammy Faye diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&amp;u=/nm/20040317/wl_nm/security_spain_truce_dc&amp;e=2&amp;ncid=721&quot;&gt;Al Qaeda supports President Bush&lt;/a&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The statement said it supported President Bush in his reelection campaign, and would prefer him to win in November rather than the Democratic candidate John Kerry, as it was not possible to find a leader &quot;more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://streetsandavenues.com/blackyellowblack/&quot;&gt;blckyllwblck&lt;/a&gt;, mp3s and good bloggin&apos; ...his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.radiocommunique.com/&quot;&gt;band, communique&lt;/a&gt;, is quite good as well...&lt;a href=&quot;http://launch.yahoo.com/artist/videos.asp?artistID=1098972&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysticalbeast.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;mysticalbeast&lt;/a&gt;, more mp3s and good bloggin&apos;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://neverheardit.com/&quot;&gt;neverheardit&lt;/a&gt;, remixes, mashups, bootlegs&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://boomselection.info/&quot;&gt;boomselection&lt;/a&gt;, ditto&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.disquiet.com/downstream.html&quot;&gt;disquiet - downstream&lt;/a&gt;, mp3s&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sleeve-notes.com/blog.html&quot;&gt;sleeve-notes&lt;/a&gt;, remix mp3s and good bloggin: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1171737,00.html&quot;&gt;The Guardian: Secret diary of an art gallery attendant: On the eve of its removal, Adrian Hardwicke recalls how people reacted to The Weather Project&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kingblind.com/2004_03_01_michiganblind_archive.html#107859278971167711&quot;&gt;Kingblind: Lost in Translation...literally: The full translation of what the director is saying to Bill Murray in amazing film Lost in Translation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Saw Lost in Translation. Had heard many negative comments about the film and do not agree with any of them. It is brilliant. I related to Scarlett Johansson&apos;s character a lot. In the sequel her husband leaves her for the actress.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/2003_lost_in_translation_010i.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;been there, done that, made that face.&lt;/p&gt;314ElsewhereDaniel2004-03-21T16:27:59-05:00publishfreakin hott&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/fh-00.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; border=&quot;2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;remaining pictures taken by &lt;a href=&quot;http://tjsoutlet.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;tj&lt;/a&gt; and/or scott i believe:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/fh-01.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; border=&quot;2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;g-dub behind the kit for the freakin hot&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/fh-02.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; border=&quot;2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;despite the scowl, i&apos;m having a great time. somebody got a picture with me smiling? i was mostly smiling :)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/fh-04.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; border=&quot;2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;the daniel miller &quot;band&quot;, consisting of me, my guitar, and the audience, takes the stage.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/fh-05.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; border=&quot;2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/fh-07.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; border=&quot;2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;late in the set, aaron and maggie join me, and i trade my acoustic for aaron&apos;s telecaster. loud noises and rock jestures [sic] follow.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/fh-06.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; border=&quot;2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;playing with &lt;a href=&quot;http://thefreakinhott.com&quot;&gt;the freakin hott&lt;/a&gt; has been a blast. it has been great to bang on some drums again after a long break, and considering i don&apos;t have a drumkit in this country, really cool that jon and some stranger both loaned their kits to us for these gigs.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;but most of all, aaron and maggie have been great friends. they are true people and amazing performers and songwriters. i&apos;ll miss you.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/fh-03.jpg&quot; width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;248&quot; border=&quot;2&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;313ImaginingDaniel2004-03-20T18:09:24-05:00publishFiction > whatever this thing is > draft > bit&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The events and characters depicted in this work are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;My girlfriend&apos;s father was a priest in the Catholic church before he resigned and started a family. About fifteen years later he was arrested, tried and convicted as the famous Murder Hill Strangler. Turns out he was a serial killer during his tenure at the Church. Possibly after as well, although certainly at a lesser rate, for they never found any bodies, nor did he confess to any murders that might have occurred after that time period. But thirty-seven in ten years seemed plenty to the courts, and he avoided death row only by agreeing to lead investigators to the gravesites of the missing girls. Turns out they probably could have found them themselves with just a little forethought--after the first ten or so he started disposing of the bodies on the church grounds, under fresh graves out in the graveyard or under a secret corner of the basement that still had a dirt floor.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;He was actually finally busted when they had to exhume a twenty year old grave, in connection to an unrelated investigation, and found an additional rotting corpse laying on top of the coffin. That narrowed the suspect list, and caused enough of a media stir, to merit a re-opening of the case.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Just in case you were living under a rock during that time, and didn&apos;t watch any one of the various TV specials on his exploits, I will give you some details--he had a thing for amputees, and the first four victims were all as such. But soon his lust for armless women could not be satiated by those already missing appendages, so after capturing one of his fully-limbed victims he would sedate them heavily and carefully remove their arms. He would then rape them repeatedly until they invariably woke from their anesthesia. At that point he would choke them with fishing line, or a piece of cloth, or, it turns out, his clerical collar, until they quieted down into that eternal rest, all the while raping them one last time.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Strangely enough, he actually performed the funerals for two of his own victims.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Closed casket. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Empty casket, in fact.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I know where your daughter is buried and in twenty year&apos;s time DNA testing on the semen inside her will put me in jail for good.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The thing I don&apos;t get is how he went from that to family man. I never met him, never will, unless some perverse curiosity drives me to a jail across the state, but I can&apos;t imagine--all the friends and neighbors who shared a meal with him, shook his hand, sat on a community board or committee with him. And his wife, who shared a life and raised a daughter with him...for fifteen years, at least.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;She was actually an amputee. She has a false left arm--these days, anyway. She fell for him because he loved her the way she was, told her she was beautiful and didn&apos;t need to hide the fact with a prosthetic. It&apos;s almost as if he was just dating the other girls, and finally found The One. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Her mom ended up moving out to the country about four states over. My girlfriend talks to her on the phone about once a week. She pretends like everything is fine, but Natasha--that&apos;s my girlfriend--knows her mom a fucking wreck who&apos;s going to stuff it until the day she dies.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Natasha, on the other hand, has nightmares, one every-other night, like clockwork. She&apos;s a victim, breathing her last as a nameless, faceless stranger pounds away at her in the dark, dusty basement of a midtown church.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;They named their daughter Natasha! Not some silly name, but a cool name that resonates with culture and international mystique. Turns out, victim number twelve, seven years before Natasha was born, was also named Natasha. Of course it is coincidence, he never knew the names and hardly remembered the faces of his victims.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Neither Natasha nor her mother have ever seen a psychotherapist for their troubles, despite the fact that both the State and a fund initiated by the families of the victims offered to provide it for them. They never had health insurance in their lives, and so it simply never occurred to them to seek any outside help for their problems. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;They just work at Denny&apos;s and live in the country, respectively. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But yeah, the strangest thing, still, to me, is that he could just stop and begin living a normal life again. He&apos;s sixty now. It&apos;s like he lived a perfectly normal life, except for ten years somewhere in the middle. It&apos;s like he lived a perfectly normal life, except that in his twenties, instead of discovering alcohol or drugs or promiscuous sex, he discovered murder and necrophilia. And just like perfectly normal lives that give up drugs and sex with multiple partners and scales the alcohol down to wine on the weekends, he gave up on the murder and sex with multiple corpses and scaled the alcohol down to wine on the weekends.&lt;/p&gt;312FictionDaniel2004-03-18T19:07:43-05:00publishyeah&lt;blockquote&gt;Men may not be the brightest bulbs in the bunch, but we can sense one thing: when we are being introduced to our girlfriend&apos;s next lover&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Random [dive into mark]&quot; href=&quot;http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/03/17/random&quot;&gt;Random [dive into mark]&lt;/a&gt;311QuotableDaniel2004-03-18T18:25:26-05:00publishragamuffins&lt;blockquote&gt;Who and what are ragamuffins? The unsung assembly of saved sinners who are little in their own sight, conscious of their brokenness and powerlessness before God, and who cast themselves on his Mercy. Startled by the extravagant love of God, they do not require success, fame, wealth, or power to validate their worth. Their spirit transcends all distinctions between the powerful and powerless, educated and illiterate, billionaires and bag ladies, high-tech geeks and low-tech nerds, males and females, the circus and the sanctuary. &lt;p&gt;...After stumbling and falling, the ragamuffin does not sink into despondency and endless self-recrimination; she quickly repents, offers the broken moment to the Lord, and renews her trust in the Messiah of sinners. She knows that Jesus is comfortable with broken people who remember how to love.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Alert to the manipulations and machinations of pharisaical self-righteousness, ragamuffins refuse to surrender control of their lives to rules and regulations. They see that the stale religiosity of legalists, trapped in the fatal narcissism of spiritual perfectionism, obscures the face of the God of Jesus. They will not barter their souls for the false security of fear-filled pieties that cripple the human spirit.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Brennan Manning in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0062517767/qid=1079572028/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/104-5882867-3547963?v=glance&amp;s=books&amp;n=507846&quot;&gt;Ruthless Trust&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;309QuotableDaniel2004-03-17T20:07:54-05:00publishall I really wanted to do was pull a chair to the center of the stage and lead everyone in a round of sobbing&lt;blockquote&gt;…Somehow it doesn’t seem like our current conundrum will be solved by the same old tactics--putting the smart, pithy guy at a microphone or using our intellects to analyze and solve the problem. &lt;p&gt;…Maybe the struggle should not be How Do We Get Them To Think Like Us--whoever Them is, Bush or Saddam or the guy in the SUV--but how do I, little ol’ me, how do I live an integrated life within this dis-integrated culture? How do I live a life of meaning and joy and gratitude and laughter and uprightness in the face of, in spite of, everything that surrounds me.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Maybe just a bunch of people doing the best they can individually is our best shot at turning things around.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;…no more &lt;em&gt;First Things First&lt;/em&gt; manifestoes for me. Fewer speeches. I am feeling just barely capable of figuring out my own path; I can hardly consider myself adequately equipped to square up our whole profession.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;…I gave the worst speech of my life…a few months back. They all came to hear wisdom about sustainable consumption or at least get a little inspiration…but all I really wanted to do was pull a chair to the center of the stage and lead everyone in a round of sobbing. It is overwhelming to me, really, the situation we’re in, the conditions of life we have created, the role the US plays in the world, what we have collectively agreed is important…&lt;/blockquote&gt;Jelly Helm, in Adbusters&lt;/p&gt;308QuotableDaniel2004-03-17T20:05:23-05:00publishWhy I play traditional grip&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;this is years old and i stuck it here for archiving purposes&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Much ado is always made over the grip a drummer chooses to use behind the kit. While I do sometimes use matched grip, for about four years now, I have used traditional grip almost exclusively; and I think there are many good reasons to adopt this practice.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I first used traditional grip in drum line, while in the 9th grade, six years after starting the drums. Quickly, traditional became the norm when behind a snare or practice pad, but behind the kit I stuck to matched. It wasn&apos;t until recently that I made the &quot;big&quot; jump to playing traditional all the time.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Since then my control has skyrocketed. I have obtained new sounds and chops simply because I switched grips. However, the main advantage in playing traditional behind the kit it thus: feel. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Matched grip was invented by Ringo Star to increase volume and attack. In my humble opinion, these two forces run counter to feel. It is fine to go for attack, even within the context of amazing feel. However, to go for attack all the time ruins feel. I think that is fine for drummers like Lars or Carmine, but from my observations, feel is a trait very short in most drummers skill sets. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Whenever I have had drummers switch from matched to traditional, their feel and their control immediately increase. This, despite the fact that they feel less in control of the stick! &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;This is where is gets philosophical. I believe that tackling drumming as a physiological subject is both right and wrong. I remember learning to hit the drum from a very physiological perspective; you know, strike the drum the certain way, being sure to &quot;follow through&quot;...but that&apos;s crap: there are many different ways to strike a drum! Certainly there is a place to learn proper wrist position and movement, but once someone is out of the basics, to concentrate any further on purely kinesthetic aspects of striking a drum is bogus.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Feel comes differently; and there are many different ways to obtain feel. The primary way is to play alot. Another way, I think, is to play traditional grip. Here&apos;s why.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Matched grip tackles drumming on a planar dimension. The plane is slightly off vertical, extended from the shoulder down to the drum. Striking a drum, let&apos;s call it interaction from now on, resides within this plane.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;For lack of better explanations, it is my submission that there is limited movement and limited finger control when using this paradigm. While not completely limited to this plane, movement is limited to an area just outside of this plane. Finger control is limited inasmuch as the entire drum kit was built around traditional grip. With the majority of the objects of the drum kit residing off the right hand side of the drummer, the right hand is provided great range of movement, while the left hand is severely limited. Thus, matched grip may not be limiting, hinging on the redesign of the drum kit. Still, my main contention for this grip is the lack of feel resultant in this planar range of motion. The relationship with the drum is vertical: the drummer is the striker and the drum is the victim of that strike. Techniques such as follow-through have come out of this paradigm.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The range of motion of traditional grip is actual greater on a standard kit; but more importantly, the potential feel within that range of motion is much greater because that range of motion is not planar. Motion is not along a plane, but within a circle. The paradigm is more relational than offender-victim. Finger control is emphasized, and actually required, when using traditional grip. Because the left hand will never function from the elbow, if the right hand was ever being played from the elbow, that must immediately be corrected for balances&apos; sake. This fact, I believe, has resulted in the aforementioned immediate increases in feel upon the adoption of traditional grip. This actual increases control, as the fingers and wrist are emphasized (as they should be). Volume, a severe offence of most modern drummers, immediately decreases. This also contributes to the immediate increase in feel. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;As I mentioned, I also experienced an increase in the number of functional chops available to me upon switching to traditional grip. Notes never dreamed of before are a simple flick of the left wrist away on the high hat, snare, small tom, and even left-positioned cymbals. It is not that these components of the kit were not available in matched (and I&apos;ll say again that I do still play matched on occasion), however in order to achieve the same effect the entire left arm would need to move, even from the shoulder. Because it emphasizes movement primarily from the wrist and fingers, traditional can help to increase both feel and chops.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The last point is another philosophical one, that of the interaction or relationship between the drummer and the drum. Matched grip tends to push; traditional to pull. To understand, grip, without sticks, in the matched position. Then open your hands. The palms then face outward. All movement is up and down, from the fingers, wrist, or elbow. Again, in that planar fashion.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Now grip as if holding the sticks in traditional grip. The right hand should naturally move slightly inward to face the left. Open your hands. Now the hands are open, as in receiving, or holding, or touching something that flows, like water, or pulling something towards oneself. This holds with the circular paradigm described earlier. The natural movement of traditional is to draw in to oneself. The circular movements are more like juggling and less like striking....&lt;/p&gt;306MusicDaniel2004-03-17T19:52:17-05:00publishall sorts&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theyblinked.com/blog&quot;&gt;Dan&lt;/a&gt; is back from a good trip to SXSW. Here&apos;s to the coming year.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;From the Freakin&apos; Hott:&lt;blockquote&gt;Donny and Marie clearly did quite a number on you.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; Now open your eyes.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; Pull up your pants.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; Count your money.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; Figure out which corner they dumped you at.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; And for the love of Maude, wipe that Mormon DNA off your face.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; If you manage to make it home without being picked up by Peaches and Herb or Everything But The Girl (word of a hot piece of ass travels fast amongst the boy/girl duo scene), dust off your Zips and head down to The Red Lion Pub on Friday, March 19th - maybe you&apos;ll have a shot at being picked up by The Freakin&apos; Hott. Get there by 10PM or risk being pimped out to Ashford and Simpson. And wear something tight, yet surprisingly easy to remove.&lt;/blockquote&gt;...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;First to in-person, at the L&amp;E tonight, name that face wins a pint on me. Should the owner of that face show, he will also get a pint.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;More styles to pick from as I procrastinate &lt;s&gt;suicide&lt;/s&gt; real life.&lt;/p&gt;305AnnouncementsDaniel2004-03-17T16:19:49-05:00publishFiction > Kara > draft > bit&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The events and characters depicted in this work are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I have this friend, Kara. She&apos;s this cool artsy type who really knows how to dress, has her &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; porn collection, although apparently she doesn&apos;t frequent &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; porn shop, she&apos;s into music and smokes a lot and in general is into the same kind of bullshit personal narratives. And she&apos;s also already been married and divorced. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The hilarious part about Kara and her smoking and drinking and her divorced fine ass is she comes from this hyper-conservative family.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I wouldn&apos;t say her mother is conservative, but she doesn&apos;t use her turn signals so as to save battery.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Her dad is a successful businessman. Every time I hear about him I imagine Dustin Hoffman&apos;s father in &lt;em&gt;The Graduate&lt;/em&gt;. &quot;What are your plans...daughter? ...What are you doing?&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I&apos;m lying here in the pool.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I wouldn&apos;t say he&apos;s a liar, but he won&apos;t drive his SUV on dirt.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;He was a pastor at the local megachurch...until he was busted for having a ten-year long affair with one of the church secretaries.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I wouldn&apos;t say his wife is conservative, but she didn&apos;t leave him.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Of course, according to Kara, half the staff of that church are having affairs with the other half. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You think half the staff are women?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Ha.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I wouldn&apos;t say her mom is conservative, but her idea of escape is a four hour trip to the supermarket.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Needless to say Kara&apos;s folks don&apos;t know about the smoking or drinking or porn collection or bullshit personal narratives.&lt;/p&gt;302FictionDaniel2004-03-16T18:31:37-05:00publishmore notes&lt;p&gt;Inspiration comes at the most fucked up times.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I&apos;m just a regular guy trying to make it in a fucked up world.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;What is the point of lists? If you can remember it the first time to write it down, can&apos;t you remember it the second to actually do it?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It is truly frightening to be loved. To have someone&apos;s heart in your hands is a grave responsibility.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Not fiction: There are people with GW&apos;04 shirts at SXSW?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The cockroach story.&lt;/p&gt;298FictionDaniel2004-03-15T20:06:41-05:00publishcul&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;The Morning News - The Vanishing Act&quot; href=&quot;http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/stories/the_vanishing_act.php&quot;&gt;The Morning News - The Vanishing Act&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;297ElsewhereDaniel2004-03-14T17:02:46-05:00publishblind&lt;blockquote&gt;In the present day, and in troublous times, many protect themselves behind the shield of their ignorance. But the explanation is at hand--they are willingly blind; they shut their eyes amidst the clearest light; for if &lt;a href=&quot;http://biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&amp;passage=daniel+5&amp;version=NIV&quot;&gt;God considered King Belshazzar without excuse when the Prophet was once presented to him&lt;/a&gt;, what excuse can the blind of these days allege?&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;--Jean Cauvin&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;(via &lt;a title=&quot;Metaphilm - Daniel 05:15&quot; href=&quot;http://metaphilm.com/philm.php?id=100_0_2_0_M&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;296QuotableDaniel2004-03-14T16:50:39-05:00publishlife&lt;blockquote&gt;A good life is a work of art. It is a gift and not a commodity. There is no exchange value for life. It exists outside the realm of value; is beyond expense and worthlessness.&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theyblinked.com&quot;&gt;theyblinked&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;295QuotableDaniel2004-03-14T16:07:30-05:00publishfear&lt;p&gt;Eric Hoffer:&lt;blockquote&gt;You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;294QuotableDaniel2004-03-14T16:05:22-05:00publishi am so into joseph arthur right now it's stupid&lt;p&gt;So a couple days ago a good friend introduced me to Joseph Arthur, and his stuff is amazing. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/josephArthur.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Joseph Arthur&apos;s Main Page&quot; href=&quot;http://webs.lanset.com/kthalken/&quot;&gt;Joseph Arthur&apos;s Main Page&lt;/a&gt; is the unofficial site and the best source of info.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.josepharthur.com/&quot;&gt;official site&lt;/a&gt; isn&apos;t so great.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;if you have realplayer (i don&apos;t): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_887688.html&quot;&gt;track at npr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/05/arts/music/05SPIN.html?ex=1079413200&amp;en=be8aa51f70d6f8f2&amp;ei=5070&quot;&gt;NYT&apos;s&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;blockquote&gt;Doubt adds depth to songs of faith; otherwise, they can become one-dimensional proselytizing or simply preach to the converted. And doubt suffuses Joseph Arthur&apos;s pensive and haunting third album, &quot;Redemption&apos;s Son&quot; (Enjoy/Universal).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In his new songs, failing romances, a crisis of purpose and uncertainty about faith all converge. Sometimes they meet in a single song like &quot;Favorite Girl,&quot; a pristinely subdued ballad that starts out confessing, &quot;I&apos;ve been so happy being unhappy with you&quot; and winds up wondering, &quot;Will salvation only come if I fall?&quot;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;...In &quot;September Baby,&quot; he sings, &quot;When I fall onto my knees, I pray you don&apos;t leave me behind,&quot; never quite saying whether he&apos;s singing about a lover or a deity. It&apos;s one of the ambiguities that make his songs linger.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webs.lanset.com/kthalken/reviews/musician0697.htm&quot;&gt;Joseph Arthur&apos;s Real World Diary&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You&apos;ve Been Loved&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;You don&apos;t know how you feel Are you a dream? Are you for real? Cause you don&apos;t ever slow down To find what you lost or lose what you found &lt;p&gt;No one&apos;s saying what you need to hear &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You&apos;ve been loved &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It&apos;s always hard to admit &lt;br /&gt; Most days you feel like you don&apos;t exist &lt;br /&gt; Temptation sneaks past your fists &lt;br /&gt; Until the devil won&apos;t let you resist &lt;br /&gt; Oblivion is what you want &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But you&apos;ve been loved &lt;br /&gt; You&apos;ve been loved &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;What you&apos;re gonna do with your life?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You&apos;ve been loved&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In the Sun&lt;blockquote&gt;I picture you in the sun wondering what went wrong&lt;br /&gt; And falling down on your knees asking for sympathy&lt;br /&gt; And being caught in between all you wish for and all you seen&lt;br /&gt; And trying to find anything you can feel that you can believe in&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;May God&apos;s love be with you&lt;br /&gt; Always&lt;br /&gt; May God&apos;s love be with you&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I know i would apologize if i could see your eyes&lt;br /&gt; &apos;Cause when you showed me myself i became someone else&lt;br /&gt; But i was caught in between all you wish for and all you need&lt;br /&gt; I picture you fast asleep&lt;br /&gt; A nightmare comes&lt;br /&gt; You can&apos;t keep awake&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;May God&apos;s love be with you&lt;br /&gt; Always&lt;br /&gt; May God&apos;s love be with you&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&apos;Cause if i find&lt;br /&gt; If i find my own way&lt;br /&gt; How much will i find&lt;br /&gt; If i find&lt;br /&gt; If i find my own way&lt;br /&gt; How much will i find&lt;br /&gt; You&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t know anymore&lt;br /&gt; What it&apos;s for&lt;br /&gt; I&apos;m not even sure&lt;br /&gt; If there is anyone who is in the sun&lt;br /&gt; Will you help me to understand&lt;br /&gt; &apos;Cause i been caught in between all I wish for and all I need&lt;br /&gt; Maybe you&apos;re not even sure what it&apos;s for&lt;br /&gt; Any more than me&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;May God&apos;s love be with you&lt;br /&gt; Always&lt;br /&gt; May God&apos;s love be with you&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I saw &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.summerblanket.com/&quot;&gt;Keith&lt;/a&gt; mention this before, but I will have to get into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.magnetmagazine.com/&quot;&gt;magnet mag&lt;/a&gt; when I get resettled...last two acts I&apos;ve mentioned here were both featured in the same issue.&lt;/p&gt;292ElsewhereDaniel2004-03-14T15:51:11-05:00publishmore free moosic&lt;p&gt;In my constant effort to continue pointing you to free mp3s (NOT m4p&apos;s or other proprietary crap), I present to you the strange electrish sounds of&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;LIARS&quot; href=&quot;http://www.liarsliarsliars.com/downloads.html&quot;&gt;Liars&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;a UK band on Daniel Miller&apos;s (the OTHER Daniel Miller) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mute.com/&quot;&gt;Mute Records&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;from &lt;a title=&quot;LIARS&quot; href=&quot;http://www.liarsliarsliars.com&quot;&gt;liarsliarsliars.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;blockquote&gt;Feel free to check out the DOWNLOADS section of the site. &quot;They Were Wrong, So We Drowned&quot; is there in it&apos;s entirety thanks to Josh hooking up the wires. I know it takes the fun out of downloading records and stuff.... If you still want to feel like an outlaw,try tying a bandanna over your mouth and give yourself a name that ends with &quot;beard&quot;.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;291ElsewhereDaniel2004-03-14T14:46:53-05:00publish2nite&lt;p&gt;The Freakin&apos; Hott, still featuring yours truly on the drums, opens for Timb at Dada&apos;s Popscene.&lt;/p&gt;288AnnouncementsDaniel2004-03-13T15:41:00-05:00publishFiction > Patent Leather > draft > bit&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The events and characters depicted in this work are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/shoes.jpg&quot; border=&quot;2&quot; style=&quot;border-color:#ccc;&quot; align=&quot;right&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;This story needs more beauty and less regret, more hope and less despair, but I am afraid that the only beauty comes from the deepest of compunction, and the only hope is birthed in the darkest pits of misery.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Regret, not for the love lost, for the love was wonderful and beautiful and pure, and I will never regret giving or receiving it. It taught me of life and beauty and of building story together with another. I will not regret losing it, because I once had it, and to have had it at all is enough. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Regret for the life that was lost. The child that could have been. The children that were destined not to be ours. The lives robbed and cared for by that great, holy Kidnapper, who steals not only hearts but lives and dreams and the hopes he so jealously desires. I imagine them, for some reason I imagine them both beautiful girls, dancing around him now, their flowing brown hair shining in the sunlight, white dresses bouncing around their ankles. They know each other. They are friends and pluck the pedals from flowers together, one and then the other, reciting poetry as they fling the plants&apos; remnants to the ground, the ground far below them, the ground of our hearts. Perhaps, once that ground has been covered by many soft colors, they will tread there, light steps in their small patent leather shoes, reminding us who they are, who they were, and who we are yet to be, together...and apart.&lt;/p&gt;285FictionDaniel2004-03-12T14:48:43-05:00publishwhat IR is, what it isn't&lt;p&gt;There seems to be continued confusion as to what Integration Research is and what it isn&apos;t, despite what I feel are clear purposes and objectives stated on &lt;a href=&quot;http://integrationresearch.org&quot;&gt;its website&lt;/a&gt; for some time now. I can see how posts like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danielsjourney.com/blog/index.php?file=2004_02.xml&amp;id=206&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; might be confusing, but I still like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danielsjourney.com/blog/index.php?file=2004_01.xml&amp;id=122&quot;&gt;this description&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Integration Research is a &lt;em&gt;nonprofit&lt;/em&gt; organization. This means that no person can directly profit from any of its potential financial success. It, as an organization, cannot be used to profit any person or persons. Hence the name nonprofit. Any &quot;revenue,&quot; be it from traditional channels or from public-type funds (donations, grants, or endowments from other nonprofits), must be used for the purposes of the organization as declared in its official documentation (which is in the public record and also happens to be almost verbatim on the website) and can never be distributed--there are no shareholders of a nonprofit, no personal ownership whatsoever, and it cannot be passed on as part of an estate. I know there are &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; nonprofit organizations which exist for the sole purpose of profiting or benefiting one individual, or a group of individuals, and perhaps providing them a tax shelter. I assure you IR is not one of those. I don&apos;t know how those people get away with it, and more importantly, I don&apos;t want to know.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;IR has &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; to do with my intellectual property or artistic work. Period. It has to do with art, yes, and I am an artist (in the theoretical if not the financial sense), and I started IR, but the relationship ends there. IR may end up owning some of my intellectual property, to my personal financial detriment, but it will be primarily of a technological nature and in all likelihood never of an &quot;artistic&quot; one. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;IR, like me, has no money to spare, and is getting by on the skin of its teeth. It, like my artwork, is a liability, one you are welcome to share if you like. If you are looking for work or money, your only option is to bring money to the table with you. Just the facts at the moment, facts that will hopefully change with time, time being, also at this moment, both our biggest ally and our greatest enemy (time being money and all). If you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; money that could go towards our purposes, then IR is your friend, and we will be happy to kiss your ass and love you long time.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;IR is primarily an incubator, which means we take ideas that can be used for the public good and get them to a state where they can be launched out into the real world and survive on their own. Our ideas, or yours if you choose IR as an appropriate home for them, must fall into the scope of our purposes.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;At present, we are working on a couple of projects and hoping to tackle a couple more, in an attempt to gain presence in the &quot;marketplace&quot;--the marketplace of ideas. We hope with the proof of a few successes, we will find willing partners in our attempts at bigger and better things. Part of the bigger and better will be the more specific ventures mentioned on the site, artistic communities in real and virtual space, publishing ventures, concrete and useable technological offerings. Part of the bigger and better will be a vast site with a wealth of knowledge and resources for both cultural producers and consumers. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;For now we struggle. For now we live. For now we try to explain to you what we&apos;re about. For now I ask, if you are antagonistic, keep it to yourself. We have enough hurdles without you throwing yourself in the fray. If you hate me, then hate me, if you want to rape me, then rape me, but leave my kids out of it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;If you are interested or encouraged by something like IR, then we would love to hear from you...we need encouragement too.&lt;/p&gt;284CommentDaniel2004-03-12T14:43:28-05:00publishnotes&lt;p&gt;I wouldn&apos;t say she&apos;s conservative, but she doesn&apos;t use her turn signals to save battery.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I wouldn&apos;t say he&apos;s a liar, but he won&apos;t drive his SUV on dirt.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Release No. 0027&quot; href=&quot;http://www.usda.gov/news/releases/1997/02/0027.htm&quot;&gt;Release No. 0027&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;zero tolerance policy on visible fecal matter&lt;/blockquote&gt;283FictionDaniel2004-03-11T17:31:52-05:00publishAnnouncements&lt;p&gt;This Wednesday I&apos;ll be playing the trap kit for the Freakin&apos; Hott at the Lounge, trying to be called the Wormhole, right across the street from Respect&apos;s and next to Ray&apos;s, Clematis, WPB. Starting at the usual time. &lt;img src=&quot;http://newtimesbpb.com/issues/9245/1/image.gif&quot; align=&quot;right&quot; vspace=&quot;5&quot; hspace=&quot;5&quot; border=&quot;3&quot; style=&quot;border-color:#ccc&quot; /&gt;If you miss this band you miss fresh Hedwig covers and original lyrics like &quot;If you&apos;re such a starfucker, why aren&apos;t you fucking me.&quot; Rockin&apos; good time.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;For the benefit of RSS readers:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Integration Research representing at South by Southwest Interactive, via Dan Hughes, weekend of March 13.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The Freakin&apos; Hott, with yours truly on the trap kit, &amp; The Daniel Miller Band at the Red Lion Pub March 19.&lt;/p&gt;281AnnouncementsDaniel2004-03-08T13:12:25-05:00publish{..6..}&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/white_roses.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Všetko najlepšie. Lubim &amp;#356;a.&lt;/p&gt;280MinutiaDaniel2004-03-07T13:04:30-05:00publishspeaking of free: free for you&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;images/2004_03/march.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/march_small.jpg&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Behind that thumbnail you will find a plenty wallpaper-sized March calendar image if you are so inclined.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I like the way the lines on the floor make the text look slanted.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Of course inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.veer.com/ideas/wallpaper/&quot;&gt;Veer Ideas--Wallpaper&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;279ImaginingDaniel2004-03-06T19:46:19-05:00publishOpsound: open sound resource&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Opsound&quot; href=&quot;http://www.opsound.org/opsound.html&quot;&gt;Opsound&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/opsndwav3.jpg&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;Opsound is a record label using an open source, copyleft model, an experiment in practical gift economics, a laboratory for new ways of releasing music.&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Too much stuff on this thread to share it all, but suffice it to say that I am even more stoked to see this development than I was about &lt;a href=&quot;http://magnatune.com/&quot;&gt;magnatune&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Opsound was started by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.highlala.com/front.html&quot;&gt;Sal Randolph&lt;/a&gt; who is doing all kinds of interesting things--check out the free music at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.highlala.com/projects/crush.html&quot;&gt;crush&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.highlala.com/projects/socarch.html&quot;&gt;Notes on Social Architectures&lt;/a&gt;&quot; {&apos;Joseph Beuys defined &quot;social sculpture&quot; as &quot;how we mould and shape the world in which we live.&quot; It is in this context that he made his famous statement that &quot;everyone is an artist.&quot;&apos;}, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freewords.org/fwabout.html&quot;&gt;free words&lt;/a&gt;, and the similar projects &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freewords.org/biennial/fbdir.html&quot;&gt;the free biennial&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freemanifesta.org/dir.html&quot;&gt;free manifesta&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Also down this rabbit hole are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anti-music.com/&quot;&gt;anti-music.com&lt;/a&gt; {not my cup o tea, but def the new punk}, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.locarecords.com/&quot;&gt;loca records&lt;/a&gt; {if, like me, you are &lt;em&gt;sans&lt;/em&gt; Flash, check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cyberpipe.org/mission.html&quot;&gt;their mission statement&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.locarecords.com/links.html&quot;&gt;links page&lt;/a&gt;}, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/opensource_pr.html&quot;&gt;this Wired article on open source&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml&quot;&gt;the disinfopedia&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cyberpipe.org/&quot;&gt;cyberpipe.org&lt;/a&gt; {which, while I can&apos;t read anything, their tagline &apos;ALL OUR CODE ARE BELONG TO YOU&apos; is enough to warrant a link}.&lt;/p&gt;278ElsewhereDaniel2004-03-06T18:39:54-05:00publishradio vox populi&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;radio vox populi: live from the commons&quot; href=&quot;http://radiovoxpopuli.org/&quot;&gt;radio vox populi: live from the commons&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;277ElsewhereDaniel2004-03-05T20:09:03-05:00publishhow r thes thngs rit al t tim&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://bluepyramid.org/ia/aaiwlc.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You&apos;re &lt;i&gt;Alice&apos;s Adventures in Wonderland&lt;/i&gt;!&lt;br /&gt; by Lewis Carroll&lt;br /&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;After stumbling down the wrong turn in life, you&apos;ve had your mind opened to a number of strange and curious things. As life grows curiouser and curiouser, you have to ask yourself what&apos;s real and what&apos;s the picture of illusion. Little is coming to your aid in discerning fantasy from fact, but the line between them is so blurry that&lt;br /&gt; it&apos;s starting not to matter. Be careful around rabbit holes and those who smile to much, and just avoid hat shops altogether.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Take the &lt;a href=&quot;http://bluepyramid.org/ia/bquiz.htm&quot;&gt;Book Quiz&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt; at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://bluepyramid.org&quot;&gt;Blue Pyramid&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;276MinutiaDaniel2004-03-05T13:34:44-05:00publish... ... ...&lt;p&gt;There is light and darkness in this world. Which are you living for?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The answer might not be as quick to come as you think. You might not be able to prove it. You might not be able to prove anything. But you&apos;ll know, eventually.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You will know which side of this battlefield you are standing on. And this might be your last chance to run across that field with a white flag.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The side we&apos;re standing on, only fools would stand there. We are small in number, we have few weapons. Your weapons are so big they cast shadows across our ranks.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Your generals are shouting, you hear them like a drone. You look around and know that you are destined to win. And yet there is that small nag somewhere above your groin. It moves up into your throat.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Your generals are shouting. This thing is about to start. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Will you stay put and kill or run across to be killed?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&amp;version=NIV&amp;passage=john+3%3A19-20&amp;x=0&amp;y=0&quot;&gt;#&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;275MinutiaDaniel2004-03-04T18:23:57-05:00publish... ...&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Real Live Preacher&quot; href=&quot;http://blogs.salon.com/0001772/2004/03/04.html&quot;&gt;Real Live Preacher&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;I had no way to make you stop. You were bigger and smarter, and you knew a lot of words. In desperation I turned to the only weapon I had. My voice. I shouted the worst, most terrible thing I could imagine. I shouted it as loud as I could in a high-pitched, little boy shriek.&lt;/blockquote&gt;274ElsewhereDaniel2004-03-04T18:13:55-05:00publish...&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;TheStar.com - U.N. staff see boy shot in back&quot; href=&quot;http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&amp;c=Article&amp;cid=1077923412783&amp;call_pageid=968332188854&amp;col=968350060724&quot;&gt;U.N. staff see boy shot in back&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;We make a mistake if we let our wounded memory guide our future.&lt;/blockquote&gt;273ElsewhereDaniel2004-03-04T17:50:11-05:00publishCuba&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.kirasir.com/Journeys/Cuba/People/thumbnails/6896_13_jpg.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Havana, Cuba, February 2003&quot; href=&quot;http://www.kirasir.com/Journeys/Cuba/&quot;&gt;Havana, Cuba, February 2003&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;photos by friend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kirasir.com&quot;&gt;Kirill&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;271ElsewhereDaniel2004-03-03T17:30:22-05:00publishgood historical stuff on scripture&lt;p&gt;&lt;a title=&quot;Fresh Air: Wednesday - March 3, 2004&quot; href=&quot;http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml?display=day&amp;todayDate=12/17/2003&quot;&gt;Fresh Air&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;really really good. so informs my faith, if you agree or disagree with me, this might help you understand where i&apos;m coming from.&lt;/p&gt;270ElsewhereDaniel2004-03-03T17:20:25-05:00publishIf you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans&lt;p&gt;saw &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lionsgatefilms.cohttp://www.integrationresearch.org/machine/mt-static/docs/mtmanual.html&lt;br /&gt; http://www.integrationresearch.org/machine/mt-static/docs/mtmanual.htmlm/amoresperros/html/index_toc.html&quot;&gt;amores perros&lt;/a&gt; last night.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.lionsgatefilms.com/amoresperros/images/feelings.gif&quot; style=&quot;border-color: #ccc;&quot; border=&quot;2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lionsgatefilms.com/amoresperros/html/audio.html&quot;&gt;some songs&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aviéntame&lt;/em&gt; by Café Tacuba&lt;br /&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;Abrázame y muérdeme&lt;br /&gt; Llévate contigo mis heridas&lt;br /&gt; Aviéntame y déjame&lt;br /&gt; Mientras yo contemplo tu partida&lt;br /&gt; En la espera de que vuelvas y tal vez&lt;br /&gt; vuelvas por mi,&lt;br /&gt; y ya te vas que me dirás,&lt;br /&gt; diràs, que poco sabes tu decir&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Despìdete, ya no estarás&lt;br /&gt; Al menos ten conmigo esa bondad&lt;br /&gt; Te extrañaré, no mentiré&lt;br /&gt; me duele que no estès y tù te vas&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Amárrame y muérdeme&lt;br /&gt; Llévate contigo mis heridas&lt;br /&gt; Murmúrame y ládrame&lt;br /&gt; Grita hasta que ya no escuche nada&lt;br /&gt; Sólo ve como me quedo aquí esperando&lt;br /&gt; a que no estés&lt;br /&gt; En la espera de que vuelvas y tal vez vuelvas por mi&lt;br /&gt; En la espera de que vuelvas y tal vez vuelvas por mi&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Me Van A Matar&lt;/em&gt; by Julieta Venegas&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;Tu eres mia la que siempre he buscado Me dio un dia y yo sonrio satisfecha Y confiada en que nuestro es la verdad Y confiada en que nuestro es la verdad...... &lt;p&gt;Sus ojos decian para siempre ese dia&lt;br /&gt; Hasta que un dia ese dia llego&lt;br /&gt; lo dicho lo va comiendo lento el sol&lt;br /&gt; Cerca del mar enbarcan a eternidad....&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Que nunca habra nada que nos separe&lt;br /&gt; Simepre esta a mi lado&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Acaso sera para siempre has olvidado&lt;br /&gt; Dijiste un dia’ solo escucho yo&lt;br /&gt; lo dicho lo va comiendo lento el sol&lt;br /&gt; Cerca del mar enbarcan a eternidad.....&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Porque tus amores perros me van a matar&lt;br /&gt; Sin haberme dado la felicidad&lt;br /&gt; Tus amores perros me van a matar&lt;br /&gt; Sin haberme dado siquiera&lt;br /&gt; Un poco de felicidad.....&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;De Perros Amores&lt;/em&gt; by Control Machete with Ely Guerra&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;El negro sera de ser negro sin el blanco El bueno deja de ser bueno sin el malo&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;These songs sum up the movie pretty well. Best film I&apos;ve seen since &lt;a href=&quot;index.php?file=2003_12.xml&amp;id=41&quot;&gt;21 Grams&lt;/a&gt;, officially makes me a Guillermo Arriaga and Alejandro González Iñárritu starfucker. This from the DVD extras:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/2004_03/cap220.jpg&quot; style=&quot;border-color: #ccc;&quot; border=&quot;2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dir.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2001/03/30/amores_perros/index.html&quot;&gt;salon review&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;268ElsewhereDaniel2004-03-03T14:55:45-05:00publishplaceholder<a href="http://www.freebandnames.blogspot.com/">Donkey Fire</a> <br /><br /> <a href="http://www.gamalielsdesk.blogspot.com/">Gamaliel&apos;s Desk</a><br /><br /> <a href="http://www.rotoscope.com/home.php">Rotoscope</a>. Check out the way improved recording of <a href="http://rotoscope.com/files/mp3/drive.mp3">Drive</a> and the amazingly good <a href="http://rotoscope.com/files/mp3/milkyway.mp3">cover of The Church</a>. Ah I will be able to say I knew them when.<br /><br /><a href="http://tofuhut.blogspot.com/">The Tofuhut</a>.267ElsewhereDaniel2004-03-02T15:38:44-05:00publish