rockets in the night - a metaphor

Wackintosh

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:26:56 GMT

How do you folks make music mixes? I have a total of 6 that I really like, and it's taken me 3 years to make them.

[I don't like Apple, more on that later]

Do you think them up beforehand? Or do you do what I do:

And add a song

As it's playing, try to think what would go well after it

Listen for an excellent transition

Because this strategy is very time-consuming. You'd be surprised how hard it is to get songs to flow into one another well. I read that Trent Reznor hired Bob Ezrin JUST to sequence The Fragile. I don't like talking about specific music, because the chance that you like the same music as me is so minimal, but I'll give one example:

Beck's "Sexx Laws [Malibu Remix]" into The Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love" is really hot.

Problem is, for every transition like that, maybe twenty of them fail. And to test a transition, you have to put your cursor at the end of a song and play it through, which means that the playcount on your songs gets TOTALLY screwed up. And I'm nuts: I need to have my playcount accurately reflect my taste.

This all comes to light because this entry is going about computers. Namely, shitting on Apple:

.

Now, I'm a traitor. I used to use Macs as a kid. I loved my old Mac Centris 8/160:

(Bonus points to anyone who knows what the "8/160" stands for.)

But I stopped using Macs in college when I started my computer science courses. There, everyone called them "Wackintosh" because there weren't any decent coding environments for them. That's because maybe 5% of the software out there was made for Macs. The rest was for PCs--which meant when a cool program came out it wasn't available on Macs.

(I remember King's Quest 6, specifically, not being out on Mac, which meant I had to play it at my friend's house; he went on to become a successful editorial and children's book illustrator.)

King's Quest Six was awesome, by the way:

.

But I hadn't given up on Macs. I bought a 2nd generation iMac when they came out, because I had heard good things about them:

.

Wow, THIS was a piece of crap. Maybe it was because they were switching from System 8 to System 9 or whatever, but every time I launched a program it went into "emulation mode" and took like 30 seconds to start up. Fuck that. Thankfully, desperately, I got rid of it on eBay, losing maybe $300 in the process.

I switched to a Sony VAIO.

I loved this Sony VAIO. I wrote It's Kind of A Funny Story on it. It was fast, easy, fun, worked great for school, and it was where I started using Windows Media Player to create, genre-fy, and grow my music collection. When it passed on (it lived for three years), I got another, an ultra-light.

The second one was also a beauty of a machine. My only complaint about Sony is that they screwed me on a charger replacement when they had to fix my VAIO because I stepped on it. This 2nd VAIO I still have but it is now on life support. After three years, it has developed these difficulties:

the cursor jumps around randomly every 30 minutes or so and will only stop if you hit a certain key over and over again

the hard drive spins very loudly if you have any big programs open

I took it to a shop; they told me--get this--it's because it's overheating. I NEVER would have thought it was a hardware problem. So I bought this Antec USB-Powered Notebook Cooler--

--which sits under your laptop and fans it lovingly to keep it cool. It's my new favorite thing since I am no longer into my high-performance Honeywell thermostat.

Anyway, I have become VERY concerned about my old computer dying, because, just as I BEAT MY EMULATED VERSION OF FINAL FANTASY I a few weeks ago--

--I am now tackling DRAGON WARRIOR--

--and the VAIO might die before I get to beat it!! I've only run into true irony a few times in my life (irony is NOT things sucking--as per "rain on your wedding day"--and it's not nostalgia, as per wearing a D.A.R.E. t-shirt), but this is truly ironic.

Just like when I was 11, I am trying to beat Dragon Warrior before I lose my game.

Anyway, back to Macintoshes. With my VAIO dying, I looked at new machines. My requirement was simple: ultra-light. I carry my laptop around a lot. But the newest VAIO didn't look like such a bargain. So I looked to the MacBook Air.

What sold me was the Super Bowl ad that showed it fitting inside a manila envelope:

So I bought one. About $2000. I was assured that it would

run all the programs that I need to run.

allow me to keep ALL of the genre information that I had assigned to songs in my Windows Media library.

I brought it home. I was very excited. Here's what I discovered:

Many of songs on my old computer were in Windows' proprietary .wma format, not in mp3. iTunes does not support importing of any of these files. None of them. That means that you have to get 3rd party software, convert all of your .wmas to .mp3s, and then bring them into iTunes. This involves downloading programs that cost $30 each, then seeing if they work, then trying other ones.

Now, I thought that Apple was a friendly, easy-to-use company that welcomed converts. No, what they'd rather do is snicker at people with .wmas who have spent years organizing and genre-fying their music.

When you unplug an external HD from a Mac, it gives you a BS error message: "You did not safely remove your drive." Fuck that. That's an unnecessary message I'm going to see ALL THE TIME. PCs don't have to tell me that!

The MacBook Air's hard drive can only hold 80GB. (This is all models' max capacity.) I'm slightly over that with my music collection. I could keep my music on an external hard drive and play it when I was home, but WHOOPS! See the point above.

Mac couldn't convert a project from Flex for me. Flex is an Adobe program and Adobe is supposed to love Mac.

On a Mac, your list of programs and your indicator of which programs are active are placed in the same place (the flighty bar at the bottom of the screen). Don't know whose idea this was. This means that to open a program and to see which programs are open, you have to go to the same place. These are fundamentally different operations, and they're much better handled in different places, like with the Start Menu in Windows. Plus, who decided that that little arrow that indicates which programs are on has to be so small?

Safari crashed first time I used it.

So, luckily, I never buy anything major without asking the store if it has a return policy. They did, but with a 25% restocking fee. That meant Apple sucked another $500 out of me this time.

I went and bought the latest VAIO. It turned out that J&R in New York had it AND could give it to me with Windows XP instead of Vista.

In short, Wackintosh.

Okay, that was MUCH longer than expected. Here is one of the things I meant to post:

When I was in high school, I went into Jim Hanley's comic book store (the now-shut-down downtown branch) to try and sell my old comic book, Uncle Tumba (I'm going to have a giveaway of those soon), on commission.

I met Ariel Schrag there. Ariel is a writer for The L Word and the author of four coming-up-on-legendary graphic novels about her high-school years. Touchstone just republished them, and on the L Word website, she's got a reading/presentation of the losing-her-virginity chapter of one of her books that's one of the funniest, best things I've seen on the internet lately.

The only internet videos that usually distract me are--
1. rare Nirvana videos
2. Bill Hicks videos
3. Louis CK videos
4. videos of Carlos Mencia (fuck you)
--but her video is awesome. And I'm not just saying that because Ariel was one of the first people who took a look at my writing and gave me a great suggestion. (She said that I shouldn't do comic books about Tibetan-monk super heroes. She said I should do stories about myself.)

No mental health stuff to report on right now; I can't help myself. I've just been really, really happy.

Going to France + Pictures

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:21:08 GMT

I'm in France from July 9th - July 30th. My fiancee is in a special program there and I'm tagging along -- to Paris. Before you get jealous, know this: THERE IS NO AIR CONDITIONING IN PARIS IN SUMMER.

"Remember that France is situated in a 'temperate climate zone'. Air-conditioning is still relatively''new' in this country, though A/C installation services have been operating there since over 30 years. A/C is simply not part of the French culture. On the contrary, French people generally do not like A/C, and often catch a cold when they are in a cold A/C’ed environment."
-- Paris Eiffel Tower News

Jesus, maybe that's the reason almost 15,000 people in France died in the 2003 European Heatwave. When it comes to no A/C, you've got to be on an island. I've been to Barbados a few times; they don't have A/C, but there are island breezes that, after three days of acclimation, do the trick perfectly.

What will it take from France to embrace A/C? Reminds me of Jerry Seinfeld's take on Chinese people and chopsticks.

[8:05 in]

"You aren't plowing a rice paddy with a bunch of pool cues!"

-------------------------------------------
PICTURES WOW!

So, there's a lot of stuff to write about, and I am going to take a look at the comments from the last entry where people suggested things that would make good giveaways for the books lying around my house. But, pressed for time, I offer up instead the latest pictures:

This struck me on a walk. The building on the right is approx. 100 years old. The one next to it is new.

Look at the difference in ornamentation! It's incredible!

So, why no decoration on the new building?

The knee-jerk preservationists in my neighborhood will say that it's because evil real estate developers want to make a quick buck. But weren't they trying to make a quick buck 100 years ago, too?

In my experience, everyone is trying to make bucks. They are not quick or slow. So it must have made sense a hundred years ago to put the ornamentation in because you could sell the building for that much more.

This means, really, it's our fault for not having prettier buildings. If we refused to live in the basic brick one on the left, they'd put up ones that looked like the nice one on the right.

The Brooklyn preservationist attitude reminds me a lot of the French aversion to A/C.

THANK YOU to everybody who came out to see the Be More Chill play in Chicago, produced by the Griffin Theater Company. We wrapped up the run and are looking to stage it again in the near future. While I was out in Chicago, I stayed in the apartment of a pianist and her husband who are literally patrons of the arts. Like if you're an artist, and you come to Chicago, and you don't have a place to stay, they'll hook you up.

This was wonderful. I've written my thank you notes. Thus I continue my streak of not having to stay in hotels more than a day, ever, because of support. Thank you.

I went to Italy for a wedding the other week. It was 12 hours of really perfect (like, scary Hollywood expect-the-monster-to-come-out-any-minute perfect) time with my family, surrounded by 24 hours of absolutely HILARIOUS travel hell. I'll write about it more when I can post a map. Literally. You need a map to see how fucked up things got. And a stylus.

I'm DONE with Ebay.

Again. I got an email from someone who didn't buy anything from me about an item I never bought from him. The email checked out as being from a legit ebay.com domain (not a phish). So they're sending out random messages now. Other problems:
1. if you lose your username/password it is hell to get it back
2. have to verify your bank accounts by sending this $.01 idiocy to and fro
3. every time you sell something, somehow, on top of everything else, they take a dollar
4. annoying usernames
5. ugly and juvenile "star" system
But this was the big one:

See that? That there's a dragon letter-opener. The sword he clutches opens letters. He's defending ramen.

This dragon letter-opener was, I assumed, made of pewter. Of course you should never assume anything about merchandise you can't see, which is another reason I'm done with eBay. The dragon letter-opener was $7 or $8, which also should've been my tip-off, but it cost like $20 to ship.

When it arrived, well... what can I say? Gaze at its beauty:

Now, I am a cheap-ass, except when it comes to very particular weird things; for example, I use the #1 rated thermostat in the world -- it looks like something out of A.I. I don't have a big-screen TV. I want people to come to my house and go: "Holy Shit where'd you get this thermostat?!"

So... a FUCKING LETTER OPENER THAT WAS ALSO A DRAGON was a pretty big deal for me. I've been looking for a cool letter opener for 15 to 16 years and this looked like it.

But when I got it out of the box, forget about it. It wasn't made of pewter. It was made of, like, the stuff they make the outsides of Oreo cookies out of. I was able to do ONE fun thing with it, that is, make it "defend" some ramen, before its tail and hand snapped off simultaneously.

Meanwhile, the pewter figures that I remember as a kid were small, all-metal, meticulously crafted, and expensive, with very clean lines. They had lots of personality. Now I can only find dreck like THIS:

and

C'mon, does anybody do this with style anymore?

Wait, do I have to find these fuckers on eBay??

Death & Giveaways

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:48:14 GMT

Jump to the bottom of this entry for giveaways, including Narnia giveaways!

Two high-profile suicides in New York recently, and one's a model:

.

Naturally, the model is getting more press, in no small part because of the alliteration: The Suicide Supermodel. But my fiancee works in fashion, and says the cover of French Elle does not a supermodel make.

In any case, it's as sad as any of the others -- she "neatly cut a hole in construction mesh covering her ninth-floor balcony, squeezed through it and plunged to her death," while her family and friends still say it wasn't a suicide. She was too happy, they say.

The doctor was Douglas Meyer, 44. He landed on an air-conditioning unit, 7:45am. Not a supermodel. He just got put on the Post website on a slow news day.

Now, it's trite-trite-trite to say that these two did something that that less important people do every day, why don't we pay attention to them, etc. etc., but sometimes it's good to remind ourselves about HOW many people do it every day. Recently, I saw the PBS DVD on depression, and learned this:

There are nearly twice as many suicides as homicides in the US every year.

It's such a tidy statistic; I'm surprised I've never heard it before. The documentary was a little disappointing, but it was worth it for two reasons.

I got to see Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon, reiterate his book's description of clinical depression, still the best I've ever heard.

My mom gave it to me, so I have to love it. Hi Mom! Thanks! I just learned that my mom reads this -- she says, "You don't update it very much."

Well, this dual-suicide situation got me thinking about suicide pacts and mass suicides. (Yay!) I also had it on my mind because of THIS movie clip:

Pretty insane. And unsurprising: Japan's suicide fixation goes back thousands of years. Besides seppuku --

-- there are the internet suicides, particularly the new communal charcoal suicides. These are particularly disturbing to me. People light barbecue coal in a small, sealed environment (a bedroom, say) and wait for the carbon monoxide fumes to kill them.

Unfortunately, on the lighter side, this DOES remind me of the old Bugs Bunny cartoon where he gets cooked in a pot by the natives (5:35 in):

Too much? Fuck it. Humor has no boundaries. If you can laugh at suicide, you can beat it.

GIVEAWAYS

As I've done in the past, I'm having giveaways because I have (foreign) editions of my books lying around the house and

I'm not allowed to sell them.

Having them around the house makes me look like a loser.

However, I'm not sure how to run the giveaway. In the past I've just given books to the first X people who answered, now I'm thinking maybe something else:

whoever alerts me to a broken link on my website

whoever gives me a good suggestion for the website

whoever can find and trade Nirvana bootleg CDs/DVDs with me (here's what I want)

What do people think? Here are the items that are up for grabs.

HEBREW EDITION OF BE MORE CHILL WITH CRAZY COVER (5)

GERMAN EDITION OF IT'S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY (SEALED) [god, like people used to say about comics -- "1st edition sealed"]

THROUGH THE WARDROBE WITH MY ESSAY ABOUT NARNIA (4)

Prince Caspian DVD out soon! Heh.

THE ULTIMATE TEEN BOOK GUIDE, which has me writing about Hatchet and two small summaries/essays of Be More Chill and It's Kind of A Funny Story (1)

So what can ya give me?

The Finalest Fantasy

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:42:59 GMT

In 1993, I wanted to see this movie --

-- but I didn't have the chance. So I put it on a mental list. I thought, when I get some other stuff done, then I'll go and see "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story."

Fourteen years later, many other things have gotten piled on the list. For example, I have a credit card bill from Citi Mastercard March 2006 that has a $461.07 charge for "ELEC BILL PAYMENT SERV MILWAUKEE". Why would I be paying a power company in Milwaukee? In today's money, that $461 would be like $550. That's why the bill is STILL in my mental list and I am STILL going to write my letter to Citi Mastercard and get my money back.

I'm also currently in a dispute with HIP .

Anyway, shortly after Dragon got on there, I started to add other things to the list, and chief among them was beating three video games:

[Final Fantasy I]

[Dragon Warrior I]

The last one is acknowledged to be a crappy, impossibly hard game. But the other two were definitely within my reach. I was good at RPGs; I loved puzzles, numbers, and charts, like most pre-pubescent boys. There was one problem:

The fucking video game cartridges!!!

Oh my God, these were the worst. There are some pieces of technology that have not improved since the last century (here's a question for you: how come my mp3s have pops and glitches in them now?), but getting rid of those cartridges has really been a godsend. For those who don't understand, here goes:

Your game was not stored on the Nintendo box.

It was stored in a cartridge

The cartridge was made of cheap plastic

The cartridge RELISHED and DESIRED death

The cartridge could be killed by:

stepping on it

accidentally spilling orange juice on it

getting DUST (dust! DUST!!) inside it

any kind of mild flirtation with a magnet

oxidation damage to the connectors, the little doodads at the end of the cartridge that hooked up with the inside of your Nintendo; these connectors would rot like this after YEARS and YEARS which meant that if you were still trying to play the game you sucked and you might as well just give it up

The cartridge ONLY WANTED TO GET KILLED WHEN YOU WERE ABOUT TO BEAT THE GAME

When the cartridge died, you lost your game and had to start at the beginning.

So, you can see how things got a little traumatic. I cannot tell you how many times my brother and I got to the VERY END of Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy and the whole game died on us. I got so obsessed with it that I remember, one day, going to school and telling everyone that I had beaten Final Fantasy, and then, in class, realizing--

I'd just dreamed it.

So, you can imagine my relief last year when I found this program:

That's the FCU Ultra emulator. It's easy to download and use on Windows, and it can play all sorts of old NES games. I picked up Final Fantasy here--

http://www.romscentral.com/nes/nesF.html

-- which is really good to know because a lot of the game sites (or ROM sites) are broken.

I started working on Final Fantasy six months ago.

Last night:

The death throes of Chaos, the last boss.

The VERY long-winded postlude.

The final screen.

This is, quite literally, a dream come true.

Two New Pictures

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 03:56:13 GMT

If you're feeling blue, just remember, you could be these folks:

[yeah, screw you, I know I need a better cameraphone]

[picked this up at a rack in a diner, among postcards for gyms and fancy kennels; here's the book!!]

Uh, sorry if you actually are those folks. Wouldn't that be great if the money clip art guy was reading this and was like: "Fuck you, man! Silver Lining Collaborations pays really well!"

Posters and Lists

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:52:57 GMT

Two posters in the NYC subway system struck me recently.

[by the way, my fiancee saw this and thought of me immediately --
maybe we could make more money AND I could be less crazy!]

It's only in one spot -- the 5th Ave. stop on the -- but that station is PLASTERED with them. Makes sense, it's a high-income, high-pressure ZIP code. I have two reactions to the poster:

(when I'm down) I think about calling -- I fit ALL of the criteria: age, diagnosis, medication, symptoms

(when I'm up) I laugh and point and click my heels (seriously) and feel like the Luckiest Man Alive

They'll take them down soon enough, but I'm glad they've been up there educating people. Still, I'm not sure why bipolar ads always show people in the down phase. I guess otherwise they'd look like this:
Second Poster

That's not the actual poster -- I don't have a picture, and I can't find one on Flickr, although I did find these fun pictures of NYC subway posters. The actual poster is for a charity, but it does have Jackie Robinson, and it says "Sometimes Politicians Change History. Sometimes Athletes Do."

That got me thinking. These days, we don't really have athletes -- we have celebrities who are active in athletic fields -- but they sure do change history. It was two decades ago that Arthur Ashe announced he got HIV from a blood transfusion, and it was a big wake-up call that you could get it from activities other than homosexual sex. I remember that. Meanwhile, Lance Armstrong got EVERYBODY wearing these things --

[plus: how to spot a fake one]

-- and when they find a cancer cure, they're going to mention him.

So... "Sometimes Politicans Change History. Sometimes Celebrities Do"? Sure. Like I mentioned a while ago, Britney Spears is the first person I've ever seen to get bipolar disorder on the front of a glossy --

-- which does more to get mental illness treated seriously than all the commercials, newspaper reports, findings, and "Bipolar Depression" posters COMBINED.

Here are some more.

After his early-90s meteoric rise, naturally.

She ran into trouble coming up with an album to follow up her hit. This brings me out dumb comments like this:

why when these ppl have a project coming out their is always something. now she had depression.don’t believe that shyt. you were in depression but you did 2 movies finish an album.please.

Eh, what a bastard. Do one album yourself.

"The funny thing is, I have never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. Never. What's to be ashamed of? I went through a really rough time and I am quite proud that I got out of that."
[from The Trouble With Spikol]

Here's somebody who's not on the list but should have been: Richard Jeni.

I had no idea that he he killed himself last year. It's that much more horrible because, after a blast to the face, he was still alive when they found him. I remember his stand-up being pretty good, and lo and behold, it is.

The celebs who talked about their mental illnesses lived. Richard Jeni died. I don't think it's it all bad to make these lists. Sometimes politicians change history. Sometimes celebrities do.

A Park Slope Spring

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:38:45 GMT

Good news today:

My server is back up!

Now that it's summer, I finally got the pictures I took of my neighborhood from spring into my Flickr! Here are a few (there are 12), hope you dig 'em:

Click one to see the whole set! Hope they make your day better.

3 Quick Things

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:40:43 GMT

My ENTIRE server went down over the weekend.

But it wasn't my fault. The server farm at my host exploded.

Frankly I'm a bit suspicious. Check out the details, in a message from the CEO of the place:

"06/01/2008 11:00 PM CDT Update
As previously committed, I would like to provide an update on where we stand following yesterday's explosion in our H1 data center. First, I would like to extend my sincere thanks for your patience during the past 28 hours. We are acutely aware that uptime is critical to your business, and you have my personal commitment that The Planet [that's the company] team will continue to work around the clock to restore your service.
As you have read, we have begun receiving some of the equipment required to start repairs. While no customer servers have been damaged or lost, we have new information that damage to our H1 data center is worse than initially expected. Three walls of the electrical equipment room on the first floor blew several feet from their original position, [emphasis mine] and the underground cabling that powers the first floor of H1 was destroyed."

Frankly, this sounds suspicious. It'd be one thing if it were just a fire, but an explosion that blew things "several feet from their original position?" At least my data is still there, it's just temporarily unavailable.

On the positive side, my site is diminishing in importance compared to this blog. People stay in touch with people they like on blogs, not sites, and people read this blog on LJ as opposed to on my site. I also think YourName.com has become a little lame. (Remember when a "firstname"@"firstname""lastname".com was a cool email? [Sorry to anyone who still has one.]) These days, if you're really legit, the first thing that comes up for you on a search is your Wikipedia.

Besides, I can't post YouTube videos on my site! They go in fine on the LJ, but on the site (which mirrors the blog), they dissappear. That's why I have to put the lame "[link]" link under every video. I was SO proud of how I got my website to mirror my blog (and it was a shit-ton of work); this glitch really pisses my off.

I assume no one knows how to fix it. I'm just bitching. Thanks for listening.

Why is it that Ira Glass annoys me so effing much?

I don't know if it's his glasses or his voice or the fact that -- no, this is it -- the fact that he seems like one of those people in high school where if I tried to play Magic with him he would beat me and then call me stupid and laugh with a thin chipmunk laugh. I know it's petty. I'm not usually like this.

[link]

Uh...

Be More Chill Play Reviews

Wed, 28 May 2008 21:49:08 GMT

For your consideration: the Be More Chill play

The reviews have come in and they're great. The play is now playing in Chicago. (I'm going out to see it June 21st--signing books and such afterward.)

no idea where this is in the play

Chicago Tribune Review

"No 'High School Musical' kids in 'Chill'"

More Reviews to convince you to go:

Daily Herald

Time Out Chicago

Others...

the play has been nominated for a Jeff Award

Jeff Awards are the Tonys of Chicago. Check out the actual rules, provided to me by Bill Massiola, who adapted the play:

"The nominating committee attends the opening night. If they like the play and deem it award-worthy they recommend it for nominations. They have to nominate different categories (secret ballot) and when they count those votes from opening night at least 5 of the seven nominators who attend must agree on two the same category."

So, uh... It's everyone's bet that the actor who plays Jeremy, Jake Cohen, is getting nominated for Best Actor -- according to the reviews, he's fantastic. And he's 20.

If you're there, please go. I hope it doesn't end up like Indiana Jones, which had great critical reviews, but, uh...

"At Least"

Wed, 28 May 2008 19:28:32 GMT

When I'm feeling really down, I play the At Least game. Goes something like this:

at least I'm not addicted to hard drugs

at least I have all my limbs

Those two are usually good enough. But these days, have to add:

at least I wasn't in the earthquake China

at least I wasn't in the floods in Myanmar

Those statements help combat a sickening tendency I have, when I'm down, to think that I'm the saahhhhhddest person in the world. And while I'm pretty sad these days, for the simple reason that the draft of my new book I wrote is, uh... --I can't look at images like this--

--and feel sorry for myself.

(And not just that. Tornadoes happen all the time, so they get under-reported, but look what happened in Iowa and Minnesota this week:

I'll never live where there are tornadoes.)

But combating the "At Least" game are reports that people who live in real hardship are less depressed than people who don't. Based on last year's finding that Nigeria was the least depressed nation on earth, well, I hate to say it, but doesn't that mean I can't say "at least I'm not in Nigeria"?

What a disgusting, egotistical idea. To think that I'm worse off than people who are starving and dying of malaria and getting shot at every day, because they're not depressed. Thing is, this turns out to be untrue.

We still tend to think that depression is a disease of the rich. That study ALSO found that the US was the most depressed nation on Earth (9.6%), and after it was reported, people trotted out the oft-said, jokey idea (ha! ha!) that manic-depression, anxiety disorders, and so forth are a privilege. If you're getting shot at, you can't worry about being valedictorian. We're just whiners:

Simon Wessely, professor of epidemiological and liaison psychiatry at King's College, London, believes that cultural factors, not capitalism itself, have created a situation where more people define themselves as mentally ill.

"In this country, rates of actual mental illness are not increasing," he says. "Studies by the Office for National Statistics, repeated over a decade, do not show an increase in all neurotic disorders, depressive disorders or depression."

"It is true that rates of self-reported symptoms are on the rise," says Wessely, but that has to be seen in a context where "more human experiences" are seen as illnesses nowadays.

"In my trade, for example, states of sadness are now seen as 'depression', shyness has become 'social phobia', and all sorts of variations in childhood temperament, personality, emotions and behaviour have become characterised as diseases that need treatment, be it Asperger's autism or ADHD."

So there you go--depression et. al are "diseases" of the UK, not of places with real hardship, where people don't "report sadness as 'depression.'" Problem is, the same study that touched off these discussions concluded that the reason Nigeria has such a low depression rate is that it's so underreported. You can get sent to an asylum for saying you're depressed in Nepal or Nigeria--and I mean an old-school asylum, like the one briefly featured in the new Indiana Jones, which I saw over the weekend.

(I thought it was great. How come people hate it so much?

I LOVED the end, thought that was some of the coolest CGI I've seen in a long time. Anyone else like/hate it?)

Anyway, one time when we see mental illness come out in ANY nation, industrialized or not, is when that nation suffers a huge disaster. That's why it's important for people to take stock of the mental health situation in China after the earthquake, which happened in a rural region, not a high-stress, high-whine city.

From the AP:

The government says the quake may have killed more than 80,000 people, leaving many more to deal with the deaths of loved ones. Millions have had their homes shattered and their lives thrown into turmoil. No government estimate of people needing psychological help has been released, although the state-run Legal Daily newspaper quoted an expert as saying they could number as high as 600,000...

Xinhua reported last year that there were 16 million mental patients in the country but services at the grass roots level were still lacking, and public awareness was minimal. Health officials have said that by of the end of 2006, there were only 1,124 mental institutions, with 146,000 beds and 19,000 psychiatrists or assistant psychiatrists.

When a disaster happens, mental health problems happen. Depression et. al are not solely for the rich and real-disaster-free. There's also plenty going on in Baghdad:

So, if you're depressed, it's perfectly legit to say "at least I'm not in Nigeria." If you were there, you'd be just as bad, and you'd be getting shot at as well. AND you wouldn't be able to report it to anybody.

rTMS

Fri, 23 May 2008 13:41:35 GMT

I like making my blog posts epic tales, which of course goes against professional advice, but I'm making an exception here to post an amazing video on Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation:

If you can't see it, it's a demonstration of TMS, which uses concentrated magnetism to "stimulate" (aka ZAP) areas of the brain. TMS is similar to ECT (Electroconvuslive Therapy), the modern name for "shock therapy," but instead of electric pulses, it sends in bursts of magnetism.

Here are some important differences:

ECT causes a small brain seizure, TMS doesn't

magnetism from TMS enters the brain more easily than electricity from ECT

TMS can target very specific areas of the brain

Why does this all matter? Well, as neuro-imaging gets better and better (see fMRI), we are becoming able to see the brain in frightening detail. That means we might one day be able to send magnetism directly (and only) into the part of your brain that appears to be implicated in your depression (or generalized anxiety, or manic depression), and zap its ass.

(This reminds me of when I was six years old, and I went into the doctor to take off a wart on my wrist, and to my immense surprise he shot in some local anaesthesia, pulled out what looked like a dentist's drill, and zapped it with bursts of electricity. At least, that's what I thought it was. Apparently it was laser treatment. But did they have laser treatment in 1987? In any case, over the next week, the wart turned black and fell off.)

On the subject of ECT, a lot of people don't realize that this image of "shock therapy"--

--has been replaced by this:

.

As it works today, ECT is tightly controlled and much safer, plus statistically it helps people with major depression between 75 and 90 percent of the time.^[1] Essentially, if antidepressants absolutely don't work for you, you try ECT. But there are still questions about memory loss.

As for the future of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, researchers have put an imaginative "r" on the front for "repeated Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation."

From Robert Post, Chief of The Biological Psychiatry Branch at NIMH.

"Sometime we may use [rTMS]... scan your brain and pick up areas of depressed metabolism, and it would then focus stimulation on those areas. Half an hour later, you would leave with your brain rebalanced." ^[2]

Narnia Anthology

Sat, 17 May 2008 03:09:29 GMT

For Your Consideration:

The Narnia Anthology Through the Wardrobe, with my contribution, is available now in Borders

Instead of the big-time poster for Prince Caspian, I wanted to show this--

--I think that's pretty cool. Looked indie, turned out that Disney put it out. But anyway.

The last time I worked with BenBella books was their World of the Golden Compass anthology--

--and that was quite a success. I am back now for the Narnia anthology. I contributed an essay called "Reading The Right Books," which is 4th in the book, so I'm like "Breed" or "Rape Me," good placement. In conjunction with Through the Wardrobe, BenBella Books set up this website, TeenLibris.com, where they put up an It's Kind of A Funny Story excerpt.

I would love it if you would get my book and read my essay. It explores how CS Lewis, in Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Can you believe they're going to put out Voyage of the Dawn Treader? That book was fucking incredible!), combined Irish and Celtic myths with Christian imagery. Specifically, the voyages of St. Brendan.

I'm going to have a giveaway of this book, so stay tuned, but in the meantime, I'm going to see the movie, because I saw the ad for it and just said "holy crap" over and over again and made my friend rewind the DVR.

Be More Chill Play

Sat, 17 May 2008 02:19:42 GMT

For Your Consideration:

-- The Play
Tickets Now Available at the Griffin Theater in Chicago

Adapted by Bill Massiola and directed by Jonathan Berry, the first theater adaptation of anything I've done--a Be More Chill play--is doing a run from May 18th through July 6th at the Griffin Theater in Chicago. I gotta go out there at some point to see. The show just got coverage in the Chicago Sun-Times, and if you are in Chicago or the surrounding lands, if you went and saw it, I would be very very thankful. Thank you!

(Now, in the Sun Times piece about the play, there is a link to something quite bizarre that has been popping up lately about Be More Chill: this salad bowl.

The bookofjoe is a popular blog about, well, stuff, and Joe, with whom I corresponded back in '04 when Be More Chill came out, found this thing, and put it on his site, and now I see it linked everywhere.

Iced Serving Bowl

Keep salads and fruits crisp and chilled — without ice cubes!

Simply place the included liquid chill pack in your freezer overnight, then lock it into place on the bottom of the bowl.

Food stays fresh and cool without getting soggy — even outdoors!...

From Harriet Carter Houseware. One of the stranger things I've seen associated with any writing I've done. I didn't make, nor do I endorse, any bowl.

Tickets, Triggers, and Kidney Stones

Fri, 16 May 2008 21:56:56 GMT

I had a good week last week, but got very depressed on Monday. And what set me off was the dumbest thing:

[Just one, though.]

Now, my dad spent a good chunk of my childhood, like the father in Squid And the Whale, driving around Park Slope, Brooklyn looking for parking spaces. He had all this sage ancient wisdom about it, too, like he would recognize a certain car in front of him and know where that car would turn at the next avenue to go to his presumptive parking spot, so therefore he could make this other turn, loop around, and beat him to the spot he knew he wasn't going for.

I always thought it a little silly.

Well, now--strange days--I have a car. I see that it's not silly at all. In Brooklyn, a parking ticket is $45 and a double-parking ticket is $115. In Manhattan it's like one order of magnitude higher. I've heard that UPS has a $20M yearly budget just for paying parking tickets in NYC.

$2000000 budget
/ $300 avg. ticket (a little high, maybe, but Murphy's Law)
= 66667 tickets

(That seems way to small. They have to get at least 1000 tickets a day, with the number of trucks out there. That would be, given 250 workdays a year,

1000 trucks
* 250 workdays
= 250000 tickets
* $300 / ticket
= 75,000,000

So a 75M budget would be more appropriate. Just FYI. UPS.)

Anyway, I saw this ticket and I was just like, fuck. Here I am having to pay this goddamn thing...... (mumble mumble)... I hate myself and I want to kill everyone!

How'd that happen? The logical steps in my brain were "here's this ticket --> I have to pay a bunch of other crap too ($4108.23) --> my sources of income are inconsistent --> one big source of inconsistent income is writing books --> the current book I am writing SUCKS --> I hate myself and want to kill everyone."

But really nothing changed when I got the parking ticket. It's not like the parking ticket was for $75M. It was just $45, and I'm so cheap, I eat breakfast at the library and I'm pissed that the platter (eggs, toast, meat, and home fries!) just went from $2.50 to $3.00.

That got me thinking about depression triggers.

The things that are generally listed as depression triggers are fairly inane:

Death in the family - obvious

Financial setbacks - obvious

Substance abuse - obvious

But I learned about an unexpected one from The Noonday Demon--

.

--which was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist (2001) and is generally accepted as the definitive layman's text on depression.

The author, Andrew Solomon, writes from experience.

[I like this picture, I think he looks like Kafka]

Solomon went through some REALLY bad shit--like at one point he was having unprotected anonymous sex with men in London to try and get AIDS so he could die without killing himself. What fascinated me is that two of his major episodes were caused by physical trauma: first he had kidney stones, and then he got a dislocated shoulder.

(By the way, how much salt do you need to eat to get kidney stones? I eat a lot of salt. Like I put two packets of salt on McDonald's fries when I eat them. And potato chips? I'm addicted to THESE goddamn things:

Are kidney stones inevitable for me? I hear that peeing them out is the worst possible pain a man can experience.)

It's not as if Solomon got hurt, got a bunch of medical bills, and then got depressed. Or as if he got convinced that he could never recover. A physical injury literally tripped his brain into a breakdown. That's how his chemistry works. He told the doctors that he previously had a severe episode brought on by kidney stones and he needed morphine RIGHT NOW, they told him to chill, and lo and behold, he went down again.

That's something I never would have thought of as a trigger. I personally would--I know this sounds sick, and I'm probably cursing myself here--but I would welcome a mild hospital stay when I'm down. The lack of responsibility! They give you drugs, food, if anybody calls you--"Sorry, man, I'm in the hospital." Definitely wouldn't trigger anything for me. I come out and get a parking ticket--THERE'S where the trouble begins.

[the parking ticket that caught Son of Sam]

I know that I'm not the only person who has been set off by something as ridiculous as a ticket. Anybody else?

Anyway, happy ending to this one. The other day, this amazing thing happened to refute the ticket problem:

ALL OF THE PARKING RULES IN PARK SLOPE ARE SUSPENDED FOR THE WHOLE SUMMER!!

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! That means I can park anywhere I want and NEVER get any tickets!!!!! Until September. I hate doing multiple exclamation points, but seriously. It's times like this that I wish I could do the Bill Hicks maniacal laugh:

Britney Spears and Vincent Van Gogh

Thu, 08 May 2008 17:27:01 GMT

Britney Spears, who has bipolar, is making progress, reports the New York Times:

[She] was awarded extended visits with her sons after a child custody hearing in Los Angeles Superior County Court on Tuesday...

Mark Vincent Kaplan, a lawyer for Kevin Federline, her former husband, said the extended visits with the children, Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1, were "recognition of the progress that has been made, a progress of structure and stability."

Who ever thought you'd read about Britney in the Times? You really never know how it's going to turn out with celebrities. I think that's why we like them so much--not that they're beautiful (so many of them have thin lips and Picasso faces), not that they're rich, but that we are suckers for narrative: the star-crossed lovers, the tragically-fallen-heroes-who-left-us-something-indelible, the everymen. And Britney? Her narrative is getting more and more unique:

1999-2002 -- standard sexy shell--is she a bad influence on America's young women?

2003-2006 -- standard celebrity train wreck -- what happened to her? is she washed up forever? her true colors are shining through, she's trash, etc....

2007 -- almost unprecedented public meltdown (at least I never saw anything like it in my life)

2008 -- first person I've seen to put mental health on the cover of People magazine:

In between numbers 3 and 4, sometime last year, I wondered if she would be a suicide--a decidedly 00ze, post-talent suicide. That it would be fitting, wouldn't it? We are a generation that celebrates bad things, like Britney's music, and so we'd see her go instead of Kurt Cobain. ("You're the first generation that just loves CRAP," my dad used to say. And he's right: Thundercats was crap. Having a low-paying job is crap.) If she killed herself... wow. Even our celebrity suicides are campy! Aren't we witty?

But then she got taken out of her house in January on that stretcher--

--and her placement into parental custody did her wonders, and her legal turnaround began. (And I show that picture above, with the crowd, to highlight something pretty savage I read about the event:

"Paparazzi came out in force, following the ambulance as it left. Another group of paparazzi met the vehicle at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, some banging on the ambulance doors..."
[CNN]

Wow, that's gotta be fucked up. Photographers banging at you as you go into the psych hospital. I don't know if I'd ever have made it to the psych hospital if I'd had a huge crowd of people trailing me giving me shit.)

It's to my great discredit that I had to wait until somebody went into the hospital and I saw it on the news, with comments from inane celebrity journalists ('Britney Spears Meltdown': the fallout and aftermath of the Britney Spears drama in a special report on "Showbiz Tonight") to think about the person as someone who needed help like me and didn't deserve to just get laughed at. There's no question in my mind that if Vincent Van Gogh were around today, his hilarious mental illness issues would be picked up by CNN et. al just as hungrily:

Am I Crazy? A New Mental Health Direction for The Blog

Mon, 05 May 2008 19:48:46 GMT

Since it started... I don't know when... in 2004?... I've had this blog be about two things:

self-promotion

funny stories from my life

But for the last six months, I've been building up to a switch. I have to start writing about mental health.

Can't be helped. Going to the psych hospital and coming out and writing It's Kind of A Funny Story has been the most important experience of my life (with the exception of getting engaged). And since then I've come in contact with so many suffering people that I think it would be, frankly, irresponsible of me not use my (very small) soapbox to help as many folks as I can. Besides which, there are simply fascinating things happening in--

science

culture

medicine

--that will, in the next decade, have a profound effect on those of us who are certifiably just a little bit crazy. I truly believe that in the 2010s, we can:

get the stigma out of mental illness

get society at large to understand its enormous costs

take real steps toward keeping people from contracting it (and yes, that's the right word).

And shit, that'd be a big deal. Would it be like curing polio? No. I recognize that. But would it be like the successes of the gay rights movement and the civil rights movement and the women's rights movement?

Absolutely.

So, if you don't care about mental health--if you're here because you read Teen Angst? Naaah... or Be More Chill and you want to hear the funny stories (I can't imagine you came for the self-promotion)--I hope you can warm up to it. But don't worry, I can't keep from telling funny stories too (like the one that starts below). I haven't been able to stop since I did it in grade school to keep people from making fun of me. So that's always going to be a MAJOR part of things. My goal, ultimately, is to combine the two--funny stories about mental health with a purpose.

Last night, when I started writing this entry, I just couldn't get into it. I was all distracted reading about David Icke, the immensely popular "Illuminati" and "New World Order" author of such books as:

Tales from the Time Loop: The Most Comprehensive Expose of the Global Conspiracy Ever Written and All You Need to Know to Be Truly Free

Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster

Children of the Matrix: How an Interdimensional Race has Controlled the World for Thousands of Years-and Still Does

Alex Jones' Prison Planet.com: The Earth Is Being Turned Into A Prison

really

Prison Warders,

this video

doesn't

Mike Huckabee

selling out his speeches

Icke is the author of several books that (in a nutshell) essentially maintain that an elite cabal of shape-shifting, child molesting, human sacrificing, Satan worshipping, lizard-aliens are currently engaged in a conspiracy to centralize power and enslave the human race.

I Know What You Did Last Math Class

"A profusion of online programs that can track a student’s daily progress, including class attendance, missed assignments and grades on homework, quizzes and tests, is changing the nature of communication between parents and children."
-- NYTimes, May 4, 2008

Times Magazine

daily fluctuations in class ranking

This is sick and it is going to send many young people into mental hospitals.

"[At the end of the school day,] Mrs. Dobbins refrains from the traditional after-school interrogation [of her children]: Did you cut math class? What did you get on your language arts test? Thanks to ParentConnect, she already knows the answers. And her children know she knows. So she cuts to the chase: 'Tell me about this grade,' she will say."

"Parents hope to transform even modest dips before a child’s record is irrevocably scarred. 'I tell my son, "What you do as a freshman will matter to you as a senior,"' Mrs. Dobbins said. '"It will haunt you or applaud you."'"

"[O]ne Kansas parent compared watching PowerSchool to tracking the stock market."

Times

don't

Stress causes depression.

Rosanne M. Thomas, Gregory Hotsenpiller, and Daniel A. Peterson.

shown

cause

The companies that provide the real-time child-monitoring grade-reporting services mentioned in the Times article are:

Edline

ParentConnect, owned by Pearson

Pinnacle Internet Viewer, by Excelsior Software -- recently purchased by GlobalScholar.com.

PowerSchool

I encourage you to email or call these organizations and tell them that their businesses are damaging American children (and yes, children, not high school kids--the Times mentions 4th graders being monitored by these programs).

Here are relevant contact numbers and emails:

Edline
312.346.9900 (Corporate)
email form

Pearson, owners of ParentConnect
general contact

Global Scholar (new owners of Pinnacle Internet Viewer)
877-824-4040 (appears to be a sales number, so...
GlobalScholar.com
10900 NE 4th Street, #900
Bellevue, WA 98004)
email form
list of management team

PowerSchool
(916) 288-1600

ORGANIZATIONS.

[David Icke's forums - as of 3:09:19pm EST, May 5, 2008, 1052 users logged in and viewing]

New York Press, Geckos, and A Lot of Love

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 05:26:08 GMT

It's been 20 years since New York Press, the first newspaper I ever wrote for, was founded. And of course, I only found out by accident:

I had no idea I was going to be on that list, and such high billing! That's some damn good company. Just want to make notice of two who weren't on the list.

George Tabb

George's punk-rock writing produced some classic mid-90s pieces. Like "Why Chicks Can't Rock":

"Then there’s the whole orgasm thing. Men, unlike women, really know how to blow their loads. Let’s take an AC/DC song for example. Like 'Let There Be Rock' or 'Whole Lotta Rosie.' Angus, the guitarist, certainly knows his rhythm. The songs have a steady beat you can wank to, and they both build up with crazy guitar leads to one hell of a climax.

One.

Not two.

Not three.

And not zero.

One.

Women, for the most part, don’t understand this. They are used to the whole multiple-orgasm thing, or none at all; therefore their songs are all over the place and are usually unintelligible."

George has since become a 9/11 health advocate--
- George's message
- George w/Brian Williams
--and the author of two great books. The latest, which I really dig, is Surfing Armageddon:

.

Marty Beckerman!

Hey man, how is The Beck not here? With classics like "her strapless pink shirt certainly would make a snug fit on your average oxygen particle." (From "Marty Beckerman Goes to College".) Marty kicked ass at the Press.

But no matter. His new book Dumbocracy, out just in time for the election, will put him on top of many lists:

Other than that the list is great, although it's really sad to see Jonathan Ames there and not feel happy anymore, because I love his writing but then I saw him out one night, told him about a reading I was having, and he told me, "I never go out to other people's readings," which is just a dick move.

So, the reason I even came across that list was because I was looking through New York Press for an old article I wrote about Russell Tappan Hawkey, a sort-of crazy and resourceful older hippie (only of course they're all older now) who looked like Robert Redford, who I met outside of Mars Bar--

[this is the place where I saw a man get on top of the bar, bend over, and show me the tattoo of the sun's rays shining out of his asshole]

--who impressed me with his story about being the universal messiah. ("I'm not just the messiah for the Christians," he explained. "I'm the the messiah for the Jews, the Hindus, the Muslims, and the Buddhists." [full-text])

Russell once told me that:

"I don't believe in the capitalist economy, I believe in the gifting economy."

I wasn't quite sure what this meant. He explained, "You give gifts, and then you get gifts from the universe." I doubted the scheme, but five minutes later we got on the subway and there was a pear sitting right on the seat next to us.

"See? Look!" he said. "The gifting economy at work!"

And he ate it.

Now, I just found out that the gifting economy is a real thing! Well, it's called the "gift economy," but Russell was right. He sends me emails occasionally from Asia, where he says he is living with snow monkeys.

Point of all this is that I wanted to get into the gifting economy--I want a new hobby, something cheaper than M:TG--so I began visiting the "barter" section of craigslist.

Wow, talk about a treasure trove of humor. People try to trade the MOST ridiculous stuff in the gifting economy--"CAR AUDIO FOR PAINT BALL GUN", "Looking 2 Trade My 8GB Iphone 4 A Dog"--and I found a few gems that were so wonderful, I decided to start a blog:

Funny Things on Craigslist

I couldn't believe that no one had done it before! It seemed genius. But then, I found out that craigslist already has a "best-of". midnight picnic says that he likes my blog anyway, because of the categories (and, I would hope, the wit), but I don't think I have the time to do it, not if I'm finishing up this new manuscript--things are going well; that 585-page first draft gave me a lot to work with.

THIS brings me to the topic of geckos. I found the following ads in the barter section of craigslist two weeks ago. Note, there were THREE ads, posted separately.

GECKOS ....GECKOS.... GECKOS.....GECKOS

Reply to: comm-632889355@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-04-06, 9:40PM EDT

LOOKING FOR FREE LEOPARD GECKOS, IF THERE IS ANYONE WHO WANTS TO GIVE THEM TO A GOOD HOME ,,,,, I HAVE PLENY OF ROOM FOR THEM.... I CAN PICK UP.

THANKS..............

LOOKING FOR FREE LEOPARD GECKOS/SUPPLIES (BROOKLYN)

Reply to: comm-632889908@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-04-06, 9:41PM EDT

WANTED HEALTHY UNWANTED REPTILES................... IM LOOKING FOR FREE LEOPARD GECKOS..........I WANT TO EXPAND WITH THE ONES I HAVE......THEY WILL BE IN A GOOD HOME WITH PLENTY OF SPACE...

IF YOU HAVE SUPPLIES YOU DONT NEED SUCH AS LARGE PIECES OF DRIFTWOOD, VINES AND HAMMOCKS,OR EVEN LIGHTS ( 8 1/2") THAT WOULD BE GREAT TO..

PLEASE DO NOT EMAIL IF YOUR SELLING OR IF YOU ARE A BREEDER....... PLEASE EMAIL ME IF YOU HAVE ANY TYPE OF UNWANTED REPTILE THANKS

LOOKING FOR REPTILES (BROOKLYN)

Reply to: comm-632891192@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-04-06, 9:42PM EDT

I AM LOOKING FOR FREE LEOPARD GECKOS

I HAVE PLENTY OF ROOM IN THERE HUGE TANK AND WANT TO EXPAND WITH THE ONES I ALREADY HAVE , THEY WOULD BE IN A GREAT HOME.... OR IF YOU HAVE REPTILE SUPPLIES SUCH AS LARGE PIECE OF DRIFTWOOD , HAMMOCK ,VINES OR ANYTHING FOR REPTILES THAT WOULD BE GREAT ALSO.

I WOULD PREFER FEMALES , DUE TO HAVING MOSTLY FEMALES,,, BUT IF NOT ITS STILL OK. THANKS.... PLEASE NO EMAILS IF YOUR GOING TO SELL. IF I WANTED TO PURCHASE I WOULD BUY FROM A PET STORE....THIS IS FOR HEALTHY UNWANTED REPTILES.

IF YOU HAVE UNWANTED TOKAY GECKOS I CAN TAKE THEM ALSO.

I've removed the guy's email address to protect his gecko privacy. I ASSUMED that geckos had to be a drug term, but nope, it seems that this guy is just a gecko freak. Of course, like with anything else, there is an entire gecko world out there:

Are you Killing your Leopard Gecko too!

More of the quarterly report:

Photos

I was never proud of my photos--the most popular one I've ever uploaded is Joan Baez kissing Reverend Billy at Burning Man 2005, and I didn't even take that--I just needed it for a blog post. I don't remember where I got it. But in the last few months two of my photos have been picked up by places.
1. For KGB Bar. Used on Schmap.com, this map-type site.
2. They took this one for Wikipedia! A person emailed me on Flickr asking me for it. Interesting because I just read Miles, his autobiography. AMAZING. Reading it made me feel ashamed of my paltry artistic efforts.

Some Writing I Didn't Post Yet

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ned-vizzini/

An Interview I Didn't Post Yet

http://www.invictusverbum.com/blog/?p=4

People Whose Stuff You Should Buy:
1. Lach, who people call "king of the anti-folk scene" but who really is just one of the best songwriters around, period. If you don't believe me, listen to "Drinking Beers With Mom".
2. Music from Recommended If You Like Records. In addition to being run by the guy who fronted "Shrivel" (not their real name) in Teen Angst? Naaah..., this is the label that puts out The WoWz, whose song "Happy Today" is one of my favorites of all time and is the best song I know about manic depression. I wish I could find it online. It makes me cry sometimes: "I know that this feeling will soon go away / But I'm feeling happy today."
3. Music by Consider The Source