between no longer and not yet...

on the threshold of some brighter thing
--David Sylvian

there's always room for mellow

Sleepbot Environmental Broadcast

Streaming ambient radio. Droning, whirring, bleeping, bubbling. Liquid sound.

a year of audio strangeness

The 365 Days Project

One mp3 a day for a whole year--obscure and oddball music clips to amuse and disturb.

Special thanks to the usual decaying city for bringing this brilliant mp3 site to my attention. And thanks for a great evening of conversation--you provided much brain-and-soul-food-for-thought.

frozen flora

winterday, dream away

fork in the road

snap snap, grin grin

I received a new digital camera for Christmas, hurray! Expect more stupid photos (and maybe some good photos too) in the near future.

This picture is entitled my gods are many and smell of pez.

Happy New Year from the staff of lowercase lifestyle.

robots need love too

Nufonia Must Fall

It's a graphic novel. It's a compact disc. It's a must.

it's doodle-riffic

smiley napkin guy,
cheering up the easily amused since 2001

embrace the random ii

Questions? Answers! Answers? Questions!

I Ching Reading

art attack

Check out a great site for a great Cleveland artist:

Salvatore Mazzola

meet the new blog, same as the old blog

I've told you that I am what I hate. I've shared my anger and rage, and I've done the foxtrot with my shadow. But as my dearest friend so insightfully pointed out, all of this has been the shit of yesterday, and now it's time to move on. The road I'm currently on is bumpy with frequent forks and roundabouts, so buckle up.

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Jesus was said to have chased seven demons out of Mary Magdalene. Could it be that he merely opened her eyes to the divinity within us all, thus freeing her of the Seven Deadly Sins?

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My paternal grandmother is 92, and her memory is failing rapidly. Recently she said, "I need a new head. They don't sell those, you know."

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To make trips to the airport more enjoyable:
1. All airports should be required to play Brian Eno's Music for Airports at least three times a day.
2. All boarding announcements should be delivered through a talk-box a la Peter Frampton on Do You Feel Like We Do.
3. For five dollars, one should receive a lap dance from a professional stripper with a metal detector.

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Weirdsville--once your ears recover, they will thank you

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Thank you, and good night. Pleasant dreams.

enemadda da vida

Argh, another case of Writer's Block, this time due to a combination of frustration and exhaustion. My thoughts cling to my brain stem like a constricting ivy. I have so much mental pollution that I need to expel but cannot. Instead, I find myself trapped in a Harlan Ellison story as Mad-Libbed by Beavis and Butthead: I Have No Ass, and I Must Crap.

This too shall pass.

embrace the riddim

Dub Selector

shattering glass

Today was an incredibly frustrating day, so without further ado, five of my favorite screams in rock songs:

5. Joyride--Frank Hart of Atomic Opera

4. Fast as a Shark--Udo Dirkschneider of Accept

3. Careful with that Axe, Eugene--Roger Waters of Pink Floyd

2. Blindfold--Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters

And at the top, a white-hot blast of pure rage, disgust, and contempt:

1. Jerk-Off--Maynard James Keenan of Tool

embrace the random

I found this cryptic sentence in a recently enjoyed fortune cookie. I have my suspicions as to its meaning, but I'd love to hear your takes on it as well.

Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.

take a deep breath and count to ten

A Top Ten of Lyrical References to Anger

10. Anger got bare knuckles / Anger play the fool / Anger wear a crown of thorns / Reverse the golden rule -- Kid Gloves, Rush

9. Scissors cutting out your anger -- Shallow, Porcupine Tree

8. Human bodies soon will know our anger --
The Return of the Giant Hogweed, Genesis

7. And then, in a fit of anger, I pounced, and I pounced again -- Nanook Rubs It, Frank Zappa

6. Hot colour melting the anger to stone --
Long Distance Runaround, Yes

5. Your pain and anger is in the howling dark of every corridor I walk -- The Last of You, Marillion

4. Anger is a gift -- Freedom, Rage Against the Machine

3. Anger, he smiles / Towering in shiny metallic purple armor --
Bold as Love, Jimi Hendrix

2. Anger and coffee, feeling mean -- Black Coffee, Black Flag

And in the top slot, from the vitriolic sneer of Mr. John Lydon:

1. Anger is an energy -- Rise, Public Image Ltd.

i am what i hate

The Shadow Knows

I'm beginning to see myself as others see me, and I'm seeing aspects of myself that I've denied for years. I can be petty, moody, vindictive, stubborn, and narrow-minded; I can be a real jackass. Yet I merrily scorn other people for exhibiting these very same traits.

I am what I hate. When I encounter bags of garbage wrapped in flesh, I recognize their putrid stench much like a dog sniffing his own behind. Their flaws are my flaws, their sins my sins. I merely magnify their shortcomings to deny my own.

For years I have struggled to find the right way to express anger. I have always linked being assertive with being aggressive. Being assertive felt like being a bully or a spoiled child--it made me feel ashamed. So I became a pleaser and a compromiser instead, wanting everyone to be happy always and to like me always.

So how does a pleaser express anger then? For me, there are two ways: passive-aggressive comments, and full-blown fits of rage. The passive-aggressive crap doesn't worry me that much. I'm learning to recognize when I'm about to start some serious trash-talking, and I'm trying to keep it to a minimum (if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all--does that make Marcel Marceau the angriest man alive? but I digress).

However, the occasional rage-fueled shitstorm is still a problem. I joke that I have anger-induced Tourette's Syndrome. When I'm furious, I cannot control my mouth, and every other word is MFer (something I never realized until it was pointed out to me by bemused friends). A few years ago these fits went beyond mega-cursing straight into kicking trashcans over and physically shaking with rage. At my worst, I picked up someone's chair and crashed it down onto a nearby desk. Scary.

I haven't kicked a trashcan in quite a while--yay for me. But I still get to the point now and then where I'm so angry that I feel ill. So how do I get beyond this irrational behavior? I decided to embrace the random last week and visited an interactive I Ching website. The question I asked was "how can I avoid stress at work?" The answer was "Fellowship."

Now I have never been good at sharing my negative feelings with others. I preferred to keep it all bottled up inside rather than burden others (again, the pleaser). But the flip side is that I'm a great listener. People seem to feel very comfortable with me and thus tell me very personal things, even if we've only known each other for a few minutes. I'm the proverbial shoulder to cry on, and that's fine--I haven't rusted yet.

So if listening to others' problems doesn't bother me, shouldn't it follow that listening to my problems won't bother them? If I'm happy to help an angry friend talk his feelings out, that happiness will be reciprocal, right? Right--yet stubborn, bull-headed me never really saw it that way, instead preferring to build walls around my anger, alienating those who care for me.

This isn't going to be easy. I recently told a friend that I would sooner drop my pants in public than talk about myself, and I wasn't kidding. The naked body holds little terror for me--the naked soul is another matter entirely.

I am what I hate. But I am also what I love, and that may just make the difference.

photoshop phun

This is what I'd look like if I were in the film Begotten.

counting on one hand

My Top Five Songs about Masturbation:

5. Cyndi Lauper -- She-Bop
4. Chuck Berry -- My Ding-a-Ling
3. The Vapors -- Turning Japanese
2. A Perfect Circle -- Thinking of You

And at the top, a cryptic ditty about self-pleasure during Leap Year:

1. Robert Plant -- 29 Palms