well, come on over to my house to play ViDEOBALL with action button entertainment friends in a couple of weeks (just tweet at me at some point)

that's more or less the basic idea, yeah. they're usually about me, and sometimes about current events or what have you.

i guess i like sherlock holmes . . . and i also like james bond. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm someone should combine them

i don't do the barefoot running thing, what because i could step on some broken glass (lots of cars get robbed around here), and i think the five-finger shoes are cool, as long as you're not wearing them at social functions and repeatedly asking people how crazy they think they are.

i just wear adidas adizero shoes because, hey, they are normal shoes that don't feel weird. i say wear whatever you want man

at bloomingdale's! or on amazon.com. whoever is selling calvin klein x boxer briefs the most cheaply.

i have played all of the main series games -- except X, which i *might* get around to when it's out in the US and on wii U! -- and i have tinkered around in most of the mystery dungeon games. i played the first dragon quest monsters only very briefly. so, nope: i am not exactly The Biggest Fan.

it isn't a specific guy -- it's multiple specific guys. precisely one for every company i ever worked at in japan! as far as i can recall, no quirky / fun / hilarious japanese television drama has showcased the psychological depth of this variety of human. i have a chapter from my book about one such guy -- maybe i could do a reading of it.

i do not, actually, take notes while i read! i just read books again and again. i have never had trouble remembering what important part is where in a book; i suppose it's because i can take all the time i want with a book.

and with games, i only take notes because . . . and this sounds petty -- because i think of *so many* hilarious insults while playing any given videogame. because they are generally just so riddled with gross dumb stuff.

i tend to write 1,000 words a day, usually in the form of a personal essay, which goes into a google docs folder that i try to never look at. i'm sure there's some neat stuff in there.

as for novels -- i constantly think of ideas for novels and the characters who comprise such novels. i don't, strictly speaking, have a process for shoehorning them together. i write plot outlines, and tweak them in a sort of interior-decoration fashion. i don't think of them as plots -- just collections of people. i put characters into an outline and i spend several days or weeks thinking about how these people would interact. ultimately i have a bullet list of things one character would say to another.

i divide novels into six chapters, which i tend to title like so -- actually, hey, let's just paste the whole table of contents. this is "chronicle of a tennis monster", which is 46,000 words and took around three weeks to write.

table of contents

chapter one
a day in her life 3
chapter two
her story 12
chapter three
a year in her life 76
chapter four
an eventful period 145
(chapter zero)
about someone else 202
chapter five
a day in her life 296
chapter six
the end of the story 308
epilogue
another gorgeous thing turned to glass 344


so you can see the lengths of the chapters. we have eight pages in which i describe one typical day which -- for the sake of good plot -- turns atypical.

then we have 63 pages in which i describe her life leading up to the day told of in the first chapter. since i'm in the habit of writing books whose main characters tend to be between 25 and 30 years of age at the start, this chapter has a pace and tone which leans slightly toward "urban-legendary": time-wise, we cover more ground in this chapter than any other chapter (though i bend the rules sometimes in "chapter zero".)

then we have 69 pages in which we visit a sequence of anecdotes detailing the life of the character over the course of the year following the eventful day told of in the first chapter. the pace is faster than chapter two, and slower than chapter one. however, it's a wide variety of events, and usually this is where all the twists and turns occur. typically, i don't write about twists -- i never fashion a plot toward twists. they're natural, and nothing cliffhangery or blockbustery.

chapter four is 57 pages in which many years elapse following the eventful year. usually these chapters focus on one specific element which defines the character's life, obsession, or profession. i've noticed these chapters tend to lead into a sort of moment of quiet or peace.

then there's "chapter zero" and/or "the untitled chapter". this is where Main Character #2 enters, and we view their life in snippets which take place over a short period of time. of course, the whole purpose of the novel is for these two extraordinary people to meet. this is where i introduce conflict and plot. i think it's a powerful method. it's hard to explain without letting you read the actual story, though maybe you can get an idea. these are typically the longest chapters in the book -- this one is 94 pages! the second main character tends to be the most interesting and believable human in the book.

chapter five now reverts to the (third-person) point of view of the original main character. it tells of one day -- the tone is near-identical to the first chapter, except now we see that their daily routine is totally different. of course, it escalates into a major conflict. these chapters are very short, and i tend to write them first!

chapter six is "the end of the story". i write these occasionally before writing even chapter five (which i almost always write before writing chapter one). these are written as short stories in themselves, during which two extraordinary people meet and something happens between them. usually the "something" is an event i concoct completely by natural accident, far removed from the process of writing or even thinking about writing. it's usually an image -- "a man with a tennis-ball-sized tunnel through his torso, falling over" (not an actual image i've used -- just one i thought of off the top of my head).

the epilogue is occasionally nonexistent.

as for the process of writing: i keep novels open in google docs tabs. i tab over sometimes, and write a couple of words. i try to never write more than a couple sentences sat a time. five minutes here, ten minutes there. i spend two or three minutes thinking through each sentence. then i drip the words in, then i walk away and get back to my work.

eventually, it's a book of a sort. i put it on my kindle and read it, usually groaning at things i want to change. eventually i go back and look at it in a google doc, and i change the things i remember wanting to change. then i put it on my kindle again. i usually don't read it again.

maybe i could publish a book someday, though i never think about it. i don't know who would read them, and i feel as though criticism would outweigh praise, and they wouldn't be worth much money. i keep writing them, though.

in short, writing books is, for me, a way to better understand my real world -- in which i talk to friends, read news, and perform professional job tasks -- by interacting in a godly fashion with people i have invented.

i've currently gotten sort of lost in a book i wager will be around 500 pages in length -- longer than the book i've used in this example -- and i've adapted my template to accommodate three main characters instead of two (with twelve periphery characters instead of the usual four). we'll see how it turns out. the premise is ridiculous -- it's my joking effort to write something as popular as twilight, though i've accidentally conceived a plot which is maybe too interesting for general consumption. oh, well!

spacewar!

i'd probably have a PhD.

Django Reinhardt! Get the "Chronological Collection".

Oh, hey. Yeah, I know those chords off the top of my head. We play that song all the time.

The verse part is a C9, then a G, then D major, and then A minor.

I guess I can tab those -- the C I am thinking of is

x32030

and the G is

300003

(which is one of my favorite chords lol)

the little twist is

300005

(use your pinky finger)

Then it's just regular D and regular A minor. Then you repeat that, only stop on the D.

Then there's the chorus, which is just power chords.

G C B C (then G A Bb A)
G C B C

I mean, you can just noodle around on those.

The solo is weird and I change it every time. We really kraut rock it up, these days.

In the demo, I think I start off with a really weird chord:

9009xx

And I twist it to 90010xx (oh man that "10" is supposed to be a "10")

And then you go xx987x and scrape it down one fret at a time . . .

. . . basically I only write riffs where I don't have to move my fingers very much at all once I make a chord (lol)

Anyway, all things considered, that verse riff is one I play around with a lot and I've "written" a bunch of other "songs" using that. By which I mean when we improvise for performance art's sake, I often start with that C-->G transition.

I don't know if that chord is actually called a C9, by the way. I only think it is. I also think it's one of the chords people think is the first chord in the song "Hard Day's Night". I would look it up, though I am too busy playing guitar (SUNGLASSES FACE)

I've already done six more! I don't link them directly. You have to be tricky to find them!

it was alright. i got it for about $5 brand-new a couple weeks after it had been released (and tanked). i played it for about an hour. i got my money's worth. it was a cute game with some neat art direction and some nice-enough design decisions. i wasn't too compelled to get very deeply into it.

well, if i didn't i'd probably be dead.

i mean -- i unfortunately don't have anything interesting to say about him or his works. he sort of seems genetically engineered to deflect any sort of interesting thing i could try to say about him. i'll admit that i don't *LIKE* some of his music, just in general, and i sort of DIS-like some of the art direction of the videos / idols associated with his work (perhaps "characters" is a better word than "idols"), though it's pretty stupidly undoubtable that the guy is world-class talented.

this is the opinion of someone with, like, one perfume record in my iTunes.

i dig them a lot! they are my bros (spiritually).

i went to many of their shows in tokyo, though none were precisely as incredible as the "all acid mothers temple" show at akihabara club goodman on june 27, 2009. at that show, they convened every single permutation of the band's lineup throughout their history -- including all the guest members (including tatsuya "ruins" yoshida and the ladies from afrirampo) -- and just played a four-hour super-set.

it was fairly incredible and i am not sure how those old dudes were able to stay conscious for that long while rocking so hard in so tiny, hot, and sweaty of a deep-underground room. it was like going to church for me. i mean, it was hours of semi-improvised, very loud psychedelic rock music by some guys with great taste, whose own concentrated great taste had influenced all of my and my favorite bands' favorite bands.

i talked to makoto kawabata for a couple minutes after the show, to tell him that the whole thing was one of the coolest things i'd ever seen, and he said, "i'm glad you enjoyed it -- now if you could, please buy eighty or ninety of this place's most expensive drinks!"

this was, of course, re: the amount of money a band has to pay to rent a venue for a show -- and the band gets a percentage of the drink sales. for serious underground dudes like AMT to rent a nice (though small) venue for that long -- and to have invited all of those superhumans from all over japan, and pay for their expenses in tokyo -- must have really broke the bank.

even with tickets costing $40, they couldn't have paid back their expenses and the venue rental fee with tickets alone.

i'm pretty sure they lost a bunch of money putting on such an awesome show. it's sad that that's the way it has to be with cool people who make cool stuff for cool people who love cool stuff.

well! uncle scrooge comics, thanks to the disney universe setting, employed a brilliant adventure story writer / comic artist full-time, allowing him a far-reaching outlet for his excellent writing.

from wikipedia's entry on the film "raiders of the lost ark":

"Between January 23–January 27, 1978, for nine hours a day, Lucas, Kasdan, and Spielberg discussed the story and visual ideas. Spielberg came up with Jones being chased by a boulder,[3] which was inspired by Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge comic "The Seven Cities of Cibola". Lucas later acknowledged that the idea for the idol mechanism in the opening scene, and deadly traps later in the film were inspired by several Uncle Scrooge comics.[17]"

i mean -- indiana jones is based in part on scrooge mcduck. that's Sort Of A Thing, yeah?

well, yes. i started calling the genesis "mega drive" after living in japan for a while.

and i started calling it "genesis" again after moving back here.

also, i stopped calling texts "phone mail" and started calling them "texts" after being here for about four months. et cetera.

satan

Well, the primary tone-thickening agent is . . . the low-quality camera microphone. lol etc

Though beyond that there are a couple of things:

1. The ZVEX-brand Fuzz Factory is good for really ugly fuzz, though if you're careful with it you can get a really sane sort of distortion out of it.

2. The Gibson 61 SG has 57 Classic Humbuckers, which is the original sort of humbucker Gibson made, and is often described as having a "fat" sound. Honestly, if you want a fuzzy, gritty sound you're better off *not* using humbuckers, since they exist to "buck" the "hum" -- and any other sort of noisy interference. This means that they especially react forcefully against the weird squiggly / noodly Germanium transistor fuzz of the Fuzz Factory -- meaning I get less crunch out of it with humbuckers than I would with, say, a Telecaster's single coils (or, preferably, a Jazzmaster's P-90s).

3. The Fender Bassman amp is a good amp! I like Fender amps. I like to be able to freeze the tone down to a hideous, solid core. I like that "Gang of Four" tone -- though I don't go for anything like that in that particular recording.

4. The Boss DD-20 Giga Delay digital delay pedal is what I'm using for all my reverb-like sounds here. I like the DD-20 because I can make it sound like reverb. It's worth noting that the reverb you hear in the intro is definitely not coming from the amp, and that room's walls deadened any sound that would naturally reverb. That's all fake. Heck, it's fake *on* fake: it's not even digital reverb. It's digital delay emulating digital reverb. I say the DD-20 is a great use of $200 if you are serious about delays and echoes and reverbs. You can set the time manually, and you can use one of the nice big rugged pedals (it's a double pedal) as a tap-tempo foot switch. So if you watch the video you'll see me stomping my foot rhythmically sometimes: that is not a Stage Move: that is me setting delay time. I go for around 130 milliseconds for my reverby sounds, and then I switch to a preset with a louder effect slap-back and a harder fall-off for the weird metallic clanging tones (when I have the octaves on).

5. The Electro-Harmonix POG2 Polyphonic Octave Generator is an awesome thing! I enjoy it a lot. I can get a weird hockey organ / 18-string-guitar sound out of my normal six-string guitar, and I can even dial in really precise attack delay so that, if I want, I can have the octaves only come in if I sustain a note for longer than a quarter-note or whatever. Which is neat! Though I stand by Tom Morello's teachings, that you should strive to always use guitar effects in the way that immediately struck you as hilarious and fun in the first five minutes in a guitar shop: I use a total jerkoff preset on that POG2, just beelining right for some serious "Purple Rain" tone.

You can seriously get a thousand unique sounds out of that POG2 and it is the easiest thing in the world to make the exact sound you have in your head. The interface is just that fantastic: volume sliders for all the octaves (-2, -1, dry sound, +1, +2, detune) and a couple of buttons for effects (Q is a sort of auto-wah / percolator thing which I have fun with sometimes (you can get this sound like a ghost playing a keyboard down the hall) and attack delay is a fantastic / miraculous darn thing). Also: presets!

If you are considering getting an octave pedal, know that I used a Digitech Whammy IV (for octaves) exclusively for several years, and played the majority of our shows with literally two dozen pedals in my setup. Now it's just these four. Seriously -- though I might add a Digitech Whammy DT to the setup if I decide to spend another $300 on Guitar Stuff.

(My interest in the Whammy DT was born when I noticed that Brian Gibson of Lightning Bolt now uses one instead of his (stupidly rare / expensive) Bass Whammy. So, if it's good enough for him! (And he makes it sound fantastic.))

Uhh, I sort of interrupted myself there, though here it is: the POG2 is really hot all by itself. I should upload some videos of me and Delicious playing without a bassist, and you can hear what I do with the attack delay and the -2 octaves coming out of a bass amp (and the DD-20 delaying just the clean signal). It sounds really satanic, bro