MILLER INDUSTRIES

you keep livin/living poem

2016-03-06T14:38:00.000-08:00

you keep living

no matter what the commercials are
no matter what the potatoes taste

you keep living

no matter what your belly says
no matter what your gums taste

you keep livin
you keep living

no matter how the day feels
no matter how the day goe

you keep sticking an
you keep living

just tell yourself that
when the roughin get tight

get your tail out yer ass
an don't worry bout no smell

yer alive til it finish
and you wouldn't know the difference

til your in it
and you ain't there yet

cuz you readin that
and--!!! what... my rib... blood... a bullet...?! i am shot

...

but you keep livin
in someone keeps livin

somebody out there
gets to probably
...

web_log_2000

2016-03-03T19:08:00.000-08:00

my mind is going

my mind is going
***

I'm so turned on. I've been watching everything. I visualize the industrial thoughtscape. The more things change... What would I have me add? I have been hearing voices drowning voices into infinite feedback for... Forever. Since I can't remember.

But all of me is abuzz now, like the olympics. My belly is just swallowing adrenaline, attempting to channel calm unknowing at the certainty of a deluge. Chunky fibrous tendrils of meaning tighten along memories from 1995, 97... 86... 96... 98... 92, 88, all of 'em... The supernatural time-shifting of youth--the uneven unspooling of thought and experience, grasp and abandon.

Gadd, I got so much to do. And all the reasons, and no reason at all. And finally, finally, my belly is beginning to make up my mind. And that's what it comes down to. All fuckall, fuck all yall yo. I have been sufficiently unschooled. Had to do it myself, and now I'm glad for it.

That being said, what's the deal with those Viagra commercials, right? Who needs Viagra, just play the commercials! Hot damn! I'm watching the nightly news here! My lord!

WWE "Beast in the East" Reflections

2015-07-09T01:27:00.004-07:00

"The Beast in the East Poster" by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

I watched WWE's Beast in the East program this past weekend and I liked it. It was simulcast with Japan's J Sports network. For this reason the look and feel of the live-TV production was different, a little less polished, a bit more like the WWF of yesteryear. There wasn't any mid-match instant replay--only at the ends of matches did you get a sampling of highlights. The camera angles and shot selection regime were different--from the very beginning, when Chris Jericho's light-up jacket blinked on in the darkness and the camera focus affected a subtle effort to find depth, a la the sleeper awoken in the night to the sight of the battery light on the smoke detector--I knew I was in for something different. My brain immediately registered this as cool--like I'd caught a glimpse of an alternate reality. The quick lead up to the event and late onset of promotional effort lent even more to the mystique.

When I looked it up on Wikipedia, one source explained that Brock Lesnar requested to do the show because he planned a visit to an ailing Masanori Saito, famous pro wrestler and suplex master (he of the Saito suplex). So now my head is filled with notions of Brock Lesnar gaining precious suplex wisdom from Masa Saito's bedside, which is a touching scene until you contemplate the absolute and utter DOMINATION that will be the inevitable result of The Beast Incarnate sharpening his already superior blade...!

SOuND DEMO #22: Shark v. Squid

2014-03-10T00:55:00.000-07:00

SOUND DEMO #22: Shark v. Squid from Mike H. Miller on Vimeo.

Editing and sound design exercise for educational purposes. Video from The Incredible Petrified World, released 1960, directed by Jerry Warren. An odd, off-kilter indie b-movie from another time, I was attracted to the drawn-out opening sequence, featuring many, many minutes of undersea b-roll. This included the protracted shark-attacking-squid sequence, which is significantly tightened in my cut, if you can believe that. I wanted it to flow, which I knew would be helped by the sound, understanding that the sound would be determined to no small degree by the cut. In other words, one of them Lady and the Tramp jobbies, with the noodle sucked from two sides ending in a kiss.

2013-06-05T19:28:00.003-07:00

Click to view moiré statements on GLOSSI.COM

chekk dissss miller

PHREEEZ PHRAIME

2013-01-07T00:05:00.000-08:00

with subtitles

all i want 4xmas iz u (cover)

2012-12-18T11:49:00.001-08:00

christmas cover-loveletter to libby, @ blondunderwater, who made the request. She comes by her fondness for it honestly, as a result of
loveactually
, which many people also love, especially if they've been college-aged and wearing sweatpants at any point in the last decade or so. Song by Mariah Carey and Walter Afanasieff.

I stuck my head in the old Lexmark X5270...

2012-11-12T20:34:00.000-08:00

...Now all I smell is FedEx!!! ... !!!

devils dine, new cut of an olde favourite

2012-11-10T02:43:00.001-08:00

i wrote this one way back in '04. finally figured out what it needed: Vincent Price-style laughter. really though, the same could be said for anything... note the many devilish THINGS all over this advance premix, comin atcha straight-on from HELL!

Devils Dine

2012-11-10T00:02:00.002-08:00

so...
what're my yeaaaahptions?

how long we gonna... DO this? i'm having a heart attack here waiting for this Benghazi thing to...

i don't know. develop.

i ought to be talking to somebody other than myself about this...

so.

i guess...

that's where YOU kind of fit in.
see i'm casting as wide a net as--as it were--as i can...
hopefully drag something out of the...

well, anyway... i need a special kind of favor, and i think you've got what it takes, which is GRIT.

have you got GRIT, kid?

i thought so.

take this [SUNBURST FLAG PIN] to the Mayor.
tell him i sent you. he will tell you its story.

then he will very likely offer you a substantial amount of money for the item.
agree to his terms.
return to me with the money. understood?

2012-10-20T04:58:00.000-07:00

"Well, Lieutenant? What do we see?
"Plans, sir."
"Plans? What kind of plans?
"Well, from what I can decipher right here--my first guess right off the bat is unmanned aircraft."
"Unmanned aircraft..."
"Drone, sir."
"Yes, yes, drones--the plans were for drones. Well, what are they? Ours? Our plans?"
"Ah, negative on that, sir. I've got a mark and some scoring over here on the--right there... Indicates folding, and you see right there--ink, like a stamp, a seal..."
"Ink."
"...Which would indicate maybe that it was folded up into some kind of--of government dossier, or some such... Arrangement."
"Hmm. You don't think all of this is somehow part of their plan right now?"
"Excuse me?"
"Wait, what'd you say you thought it was?"
"I--I said I thought maybe plans for some type of unmmanned aircraft. Surveillance drone, probably. Very lightweight."
"Huh."
"My guess is it was folded up into a--a folder or a packet. Eight-by-eleven. It's been filed with other official documents."
"Yyyyyeah. With the fold marks. So who's is it? You got an agency?"
"Can't say yet. We'll run spectrals on the ink, match it to something in our database. That should tell us a lot."
"Good, Lieutenant. Reminds me as a kid I used to make planes. Paper planes, you know. Boy, I always wanted to fly. God I wanted to fly. Neighbor kid got one of those remote-controlled planes for Christmas one year. That was in Florida, you know, so he was out--we were all out in the street by early afternoon with our new gear, and Paul--that was the kid's name--Paul had his remote-controlled plane. And he needed a decent amount of space, you know, for that plane to take off. He needed, like, an actual runway, haha! And all the kids out there with their new scooters and footballs and rollerblades--well, you should have seen it! Totally bonkers, and NO ONE would get out of the road to make any room for poor Paul's plane to get a good takeoff. I mean, there were babies crawling around out there getting in the way of the street hockey. It was bumpin'. And there you got Paul, pleading with the street, trying to make room, hahaha! Oh, that poor kid. You've got to hope if there's a God in Heaven that he's a pilot today... Are you still with me, Lieutenant?"
"Of course, Sir. No, I was just thinking about something you said... Right at the beginning of your story you said something about liking paper airplanes, making paper airplaines."
"Yeah, I used to make them all the time. Customize 'em, experiment with different designs. You build some for gliding, some for turning, dive-bombing, that sort of thing. Great fun. We need more of that in schools."
"No doubt, Sir. So... But what if that's... That's exactly-- you just said it. Weird. So, I think that might be exactly what we're dealing with here, Sir."
"Paper planes?"
"These plans... They're also the building materials! Look! This is how those schoolkids pulled it off, the clever little bastards! They're the spies! They cooked this whole thing up themselves! Amazing."
"Huh. Well, I'm never amazed anymore. Not these days. Good work, Lieutenant. Keep me updated on your progress."
"...Ah, yes, of course. You will be the first to know anything we find."
"Very well. Carry on."

bye maya

2012-08-14T02:06:00.002-07:00

Maya, my wonderful old black lab family dog is dead. She passed into the ether this morning on the East Coast. I haven't been home in two years. Couldn't make it home earlier this summer because... I have been waiting. Doing nothing. Remaining available at odd times for odd, infrequent jobs. Feeling sorry for myself. Avoiding social contact. Ignoring covenant. Isolating. Retreating. Abscessing.

I was right there when Maya was born. It was Election Night, 1996, and Bill Clinton was looking pretty dominant over Bob Dole. Our black lab family dog Tina was giving birth to a litter of ten tiny puppies, nine of which would survive. I was right there, keeping an eye on the birth in the guest room, in the plywood and particle board den that my dad had constructed, a birth that would take many hours to complete, and I would be between there and in the other room, the basement family room, where my recently deceased grandfather's large, wooden television had the Election Night broadcast. I had to get the little puppies to nurse on mama and keep everything cleanly. Keep an eye open for new puppies to pop out. I was at home doing this by myself because I had just quit the swim team, which was incidentally one of the defining plot points of my adolescence. Being in the basement of that house, which was partially in-ground but which opened up to the outdoors on the downslope side--that was fairly defining right there in itself. That's where we had the wood stove, that's where we stacked the dry wood outside, against the house under the overhang and the deck to get more dry, out of the direct path of the elements. November of '96 would have been the beginning of the second winter spent at the new house in the woods that my parents built.

There was one runt in the litter, and I believe it was black if the memory serves... It was all I could do to keep that littlest one in the mix nursing on mama. It was weak in the back legs, eventually it died. My mother buried it when I was at school, I think. Brand new snow on the ground just that day.

I sat with those tiny puppies and their mama a lot. Tina would growl at me, out of maternal instinct, but she pretty much let me help out. Some time went by, and they got bigger, and I can remember transitioning them to more solid food--like yogurt mixed with powdered puppy food or something. And we had to give them worm medicine for a while, because puppies get worms. I remember the smells and textures. Then they got big enough to be out of the wooden shelter, and they were out running and pooping all over the basement family room. They were so soft, and then their teeth were coming in, so they could really give you a nip. They were all so cute and tumbly and funny. Just, you know: somersaulting fluffy puppies, yipping and yapping, wrestling on the carpet. Chewing wood chips that flaked off the logs we were feeding the stove.

We used little stripes of paint or nail polish on the puppies' tails to differentiate the same-coloreds. I remember there being two or three yellow labs and the rest were black. Daddy was yellow. He mated successfully with mama on the second weekend rendezvous. When our girl Tina left, he got all excited and drank water and ran around too much. He got a twisted stomach and died within hours. It's a real problem for bigger dogs. I think his name was Duke. I saw a picture of him.

Soon all but two of the pups were sold. Then we had two of them for a while, and I almost thought we might keep the two, even though the plan was just to keep the one. Maya, whom Daniel my brother had named. I remember the small sadness I felt when that second-to-last had to go. Some time later I heard through my dad that one of the puppies had to be euthanized because of bad temperament--aggressive qualities, dangerous around children, and such. It can happen. Our little one, Maya, was definitely not dangerous or demented. She was a goofball. Her mother Tina was very intense. She was my dad's duck-hunting dog. Disciplined. Whistle-trained. One loud short whistle meant "Sit!" And Tina would sit, no matter where she was. One time she was chasing a woodchuck through a thicket near our house. The woodchuck let loose a short, high-pitched whistle, probably out of terror, and Tina sat right down out of a full-fledged pursuit. Saved that woodchuck's life on that day.

It didn't take long to realize that Maya wasn't possessed of all the same field-dog qualities as her mother. It would be fair to say she had ADD, we all agreed. Endless energy, perhaps; raw athleticism, definitely. But Maya was a space cadet. A most lovable space cadet, in a warm, fuzzy, 70s cartoon sort of way. She was longer and lankier than Tina, and she never outgrew her puppy skin. By that I mean you could grab excessive amounts of skin from the nape of her neck, really anywhere--it seemed as if she was given the skin of a dog 33% larger than she ever turned out to be. My friend Emerson was always fascinated by that. At first we thought she was going to be huge, judging by all that extra skin she had yet to fill out.

Her mother died after a day spent out hunting. In the evening, Tina laid down on the carpet in the entryway and had a heart attack. I knew something was wrong with her as I was leaving for "Youth and Government" club at the YMCA. I was a junior in high school if I recall correctly. I'm writing this now juuussst about thirty, give or take. It was extremely sad for the whole family, but especially for my dad. Tina is buried in a nice spot at the top of our property, and a tree and flowers grow there.

Maya eventually lived several more years than Tina, who was only ten when she died. Maya was a few months shy of sixteen by my count, which is a ripe old age for a lab. Even when she was very gray and aged and stiff the old girl relished a walk in the woods and a scurry along a scent trail in the tall grass at the edge of the property. I always walked her on a loop around Tina's grave site. I think we all did. It's such a nice spot anyway. I remember Maya getting surprised by a woodchuck there one time. I thought that was just great. Maya didn't kill woodchucks like her mother, who was absolutely bloodthirsty on the things. After Tina died, woodchuck numbers shot back up. Maya was simply befuddled by the awkward, waddling little groundbears, who hissed and tended to be ornery.

I took her on one last walk two summers ago. Said a goodbye. She'd been quite old for quite some time, and the last handful of goodbyes between Maya and me carried similar melancholic notes. I was hoping to see her again earlier this summer but plans fell through. Shouldn't have. Regret is quick and decisive, predictable, and keen forever as a recent memory.

2012-08-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

My blog is pretty much the best blog out here, no joke. Second best.

3chops 3d

2012-08-02T03:14:00.000-07:00

outer space visible through the moire, inside the event horizon

new math for baby

television ratings for baby

2012-07-26T03:01:00.000-07:00

$8,500

Magic Wand Moment

2012-06-21T03:34:00.000-07:00

"Bra, we should be more... choosy. with our choices."

"Sure, no... I hear that. But I think... I think we could wait just a little while longer..."
"..."
"See how this pans out. For the natives."
"Give me the wand."
"Hey, stop! I never get to use it!"
"You just used it. Now give it!"
"Unh!"
"There. I didn't mean that. But it is what it is."
"Dude... I'm bleeding!"
"Listen! Let's... We can wait for a few more minutes. Then we have to fucking JET."
"Ow, my chin dude."
"It's fine. Watch... What are they doing?"
"They gotta tie off that hog, I think. Man, you better not have messed up my teeth."

future passed

2012-05-26T20:23:00.000-07:00

dreamimager

Cray 1 supercomputers, the round ones. The other ones those guys are leaning over--those could be a row of washing machines! They're not. That guy in blue could be a Best Buy sales associate, making a sale on a computer washing machine. The brown-haired guy in the white stripy shirt just got a divorce and a settlement from his business partner. He doesn't need marriage to get his laundry washed. He doesn't need marriage for anything. In the absolute back row you've got cabinets filled with floppy discs and fireproof safes filled with papers and patents and film slides of pornography. This is all when they live in an atomic tomorrow in Florida. There's high-rises in the swamps of public Florida. They all sit and stew angrily in cramped people-movers when they have to get around, so mostly they stay put. Some people hallucinate from tiny trace amounts of swamp gasses that routinely leak into the sub-surface people-mover capsules that travel to and fro beneath the swamps. For these unlucky few, the dangers are manifold. You don't ever want to go swamp crazy. That's what they say. Local news station got its license suspended for reporting on the effects of long-term swamp poisoning. Nobody talks about where the radiation goes, you know, from the atomic power that runs everything. But that gets crowded out by the sheer volume of the paranoia related to swamp gas.

2012-05-09T17:49:00.001-07:00

Been doing a little freeform, you know, freestyle... Snow angels in sand. Nothin too much needs to me's worth worryin about. Just issues forth. For every issue. Like... A heavy hipster hugger my holster: the gun fires confetti. The copilot wasn't briefed and now he is dead! A tragedy in 3-act graffiti.

A mural by BODE; 90 Clarion Alley, San Francisco, California, United States, via Mural Locator.

2012-05-04T18:39:00.001-07:00

--So tell me a little about yourself, Nathaniel.
__Okay, doc. Should I talk about my past? Start with my past?
--That's entirely up to you now.
__Of course. Of course. I guess you're looking for the broad stuff, right? Like place of birth, parents' names, general stuff?
--Would it help you to start by telling me where you were born?
__...Yeah, I spose it would. Midwest. ... Nowhere. (laughs). I moved all over as a kid. Shuttled between my uncles and aunts and great-aunts and, you know, for god knows how many years. I guess I could do the math on that... But honestly I don't like to think about it any more than I have to.
--And why is that?
__Oh... I've never really been much of a head at math. That's all. I'm actually proud to say it, too. It's a trap, obsessing over calculations like that.
--You say a trap?
__Yes sir. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, if you ask me. You're robbing the moment to deface what's passed with artificial notches and gridlines. It's a whole, huge, unnecessary bureaucracy, with its own culture, its own behavior--its own evolutionary mandate. Doc, I would go so far as to call it self-aware. It's as much in the mix to win it as America or al Qaeda. Or the NFL. At least as much, you know, if not more so. Math.
--Ah, of course. And so I am to understand you experience pain when you recollect those childhood memories?
__It's a pain to calculate, doc. Only when I calculate. I'd rather that span of time you're calling my childhood be remembered as it was, which is... Really more a flavor of a bleakness of timespace than a calendar could do it any justice, right?
--I think I'm following that.
__Right.
--Well, Nathaniel; I do think it is a very good sign to hear you acknowledging this pain.
__Sure. Difficulty. ... Yeah.
--Yes indeed. In whatever forms it may take, through whatever normalization processes your chain of consciousness will negotiate for itself... Yes, Nathaniel. We have made some remarkable progress today.
__You know, that's a relief to hear?
--I can imagine. It was a pleasure meeting you. Good luck on your voyage.
__Say what?

<fffff-SHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!>

2012-05-04T01:56:00.001-07:00

Carlsbad Dance, 1954

Illicit Shoe Rendezvous

2012-04-17T01:05:00.000-07:00

My Dad's Apache

2012-04-16T19:43:00.000-07:00

Dad's truck made the cover of LMC TRUCK, another milestone in his ongoing geographic analysis of hot rod culture in an era of diminishing fossil fuels.

Autocomplete cap fer Mitt 2day

2012-04-11T18:32:00.006-07:00

Autocomplete cap fer Mitt 2day.

2012-04-09T16:54:00.001-07:00

Battle of Vimy Ridge

Saw this on Wikipedia's main page. I'm sure they're wearing their earplugs there.

modern turnkey operation

2012-04-01T03:42:00.000-07:00

Let's talk business:
Business is up.
I got modern turnkey operation.
I got rabbits in the stew.
...

...
So why not let's get under us some numbers,
earn us a masters thesis in
seein' about us a screw?