untranslatable concept

2009-06-20T16:29:00.002-04:00

Last night was the first summer alley party at the shop, and it was pretty sweet. It was also the one year anniversary for Skull Alley. We fired up the grill and some beats and let it rip. This one - and another in two weeks - are in honor of David Garrett - the "Daveer". No matter what I say about this guy it won't be enough. This dude showed up years ago and said he'd earn his way onto the crew. He started off cleaning one day a week. He watched and learned. And went to two days, then three, part time, full time. I've gotten to watch as he honed his art skills, constantly improving, never satisfied, always harshly self-critical but in such a way that I was always surprised how quickly he changed it up. If you get a chance to check out his art, do it.

Tomorrow is the first father's day I'll celebrate as a father to be. I have seen my future child's face on a scanner, heard the heart beat, felt the kick. I have never felt such purpose in my entire life. I think back to what a hellion I was, and how innately rebellious. We're in for it.

It's hot. It's summer in Kentucky, but at least there's been rain. We have tomatoes and herbs growing, and the summer sunday night open dinners have been an excellent social experiment. We'll have tomato-centric dishes in a month or so.

Still working on the website. Still upgrading the shop. I need 8 arms like Shiva, but with independent brains like an octopus.

Normal life. It's amazing. I still insist that we live in a golden age.

2009-05-20T18:14:00.002-04:00

heading to detroit again this weekend

making some random shirts to give away as usual

looking forward to pressing pause on the economic game and reconnecting to the disembodied future network echo that happens to manifest in the presence of very funky electronic music.

2009-05-06T12:39:00.003-04:00

Dealing with a scary economy is still way easier than outfitting a ship and sailing into the unknown, but it's a similar problem of resource management.

I have to plan for the worst case but keep on attempting to expand into something new. I contemplated the online tshirt sales back in the early 90s but didn't have the infrastructure. Now I do but everyone is doing it. I think, though, that I can pull it off. And if it doesn't work, it won't kill me. But we have a LOT of classic designs that I can pull out and put up. We'll see what reality says.

I'm going to try to launch for DEMF this year.

Wish me luck!

2009-04-29T09:57:00.003-04:00

So i'm sitting out on the street in a café in Paris, and i've just walked through the biggest church i've ever seen in my life. It was so big that I understand how catholics happened. That's the main thing I take from here- I understand how we, America, came from here and got to start over. In some way we're a continuation of something, mapped onto supposedly empty land. The grid here dates back to Rome. People have built layers and layers on top of one another and seem to have more of an anchor on an older "reality." They don't wear logos on thing, even a small logo feels garish and tacky. I bless my old french teacher in elementary school, mdme Nicole Charon, for her insistence on my accent... I get this feeling of acceptance here which I understand to be no easy thing. An unspoken "you are clearly American but you have actually bothered to learn at least a fair bit of French, so you get the benefit of the doubt." I am 39. I am married. I am going to be father. I have never felt so sure of my purpose in the world. I look forward to all of this. I want to apply the machinelike determination I feel in Detroit to simple things, like getting thin. Café de crème instead of mochas, no more cokes, big breakfasts rather than dinners. I want to see my bride succeed and come into her own. I want to grow Memetech into a real self sufficient enterprise and let my father retire and enjoy life more, to take up the load. Later in the day, we've been to an even bigger church and it was full of tourists but whoa. It's hard to describe it without swearing to emphasize the descriptions.
It's several days and four huge churches later. Went up to the tourist traps, saw the same roma team of pickpocket scout girls. Went up on top of the Arc de Triomphe, saw the world war museum at les invalides. More than ever I am a peace through strength pacifist. I see a sad country, repeatedly laying down her bravest, only now finally with the EU able to breathe a sigh of relief. I keep hunting the fleur de lys everywhere, but have a hint that the royal era is like bring up slavery in the states. It was there and a reality but we'd like to think we've moved past it. I am going to look up books with pictures of fleurs on amazon.fr and do a line tshirts with fleur de lys from paris. My bride is in the room, not feeling well, and I wish I could share this with her but i'd rather share versailles. The style here is quite cool, it's muted bu smart. There's so much that's gilded who cares about a bright shirt? The metro is amazing. If I was a billionaire, I'd buy louisville a subway system as thanks. Recaffeinating and getting ready to dive back into the Louvre. Hope the shop is ok, trying to let go. I want to come back here someday with my kids and Nancy, which means a whole new level of kicking ass at business. There was a guy on the Champs Elysees doing perfect birdcalls at the passing women. Got to get away from the tourist crap and back to the real city- it's amazing enough. Now we're in Reims, next to a roman arch dedicated to Mars- which means they must have won. We picked a random café and it's full of locals betting on standardbreds. There's a channel and kiosks and a human cashier. The dude at the table next to us bet on a horse that broke right after the race started. It's clearly a developed industry here. Now I'm Luxembourg, and I finally understand why it exists... It's got a lot of money, and it is very defensible, forts built by peoples going back more than 2000 years. We spent some time in Trier, and drove over a 2000 year old bridge. It's ridiculous how old everything feels here compared to home. I see why the Europeans feel all wise and knowing- they are constantly reminded of the layers we lack. At javascript:void(0)the same time we benefit from having had a new start. I think Europe under the EU can finally look around at themselves, surrounded by fortifications, and maybe relax and enjoy the peace.

2009-04-10T17:36:00.001-04:00

i'm married. i'm going to be a father.

it is the most amazing thing in the world. it happens every day, but some strange gear shifts in your brain when it happens to you.

i am very, very happy.

i also have a cold from hell, but it's mitigated by the circumstances above.

i wrote a whole lot of stuff on the honeymoon, will have to pull it off of the phone and post it.

2009-01-18T14:56:00.003-05:00

not only is my lady love a badass in many non-technical respects, but she can hack together a website:

j2nancy.com

2009-01-17T16:19:00.002-05:00

Saw "Wicked" last night, and glad to see recognition for our green sisters.

Listening to the new Verve... waiting for the inevitable synth wash tastiness.

It's a cold economy out there, not just a cold temperature.

But I have this particular kind of hopefulness.

I'm getting hitched on the first of Spring.

2009-01-06T13:14:00.002-05:00

suddenly it is January of 09. The fire + 1 year and three days. We made it.

people keep finding me on facebook and other social sites and reconnecting. every day some old school head pops up and says hi. it's the only thing that makes it worth ignoring all the zombie application requests.

this year stands a very good chance of being more "interesting times". moving to get ahead of the curve by taking all this production equipment and selling our own designs straight over the web. finally got all the ecommerce stuff mapped out. it's a code-slog, but it's worth it. i don't know much php, but in a few months i'll certainly know more of it. i haven't coded in years.

oh, by the way. for all those who said "wouldn't it be great if someone like Obama _could_ get elected?" - i'm very proud of us as a whole. it's easy to be cynical but just every once in a while society and democracy actually deliver. i wonder what we'll look back on this time and think? we've all got a huge pile of economic-poop equivalent to shovel. how will this shake out?

now it's a much more ground-level view. january and february are cold and not too many people wear tshirts in weather like this.

so we adapt, and work on the site for spring...

2008-12-02T09:12:00.005-05:00

it's been too long, and too much has happened this year since that fire.

the business rebuilt and survived and we are living lean this winter to survive the economic wierdness. we hooked up a lot of charities, like i promised myself we would while the flames were going. it was more than just a karmic payback or a warm fuzzy - it was a whole source of new people who had never heard of us.

memetech has a new designer in residence and he's redoing our website, which will rock.

i am engaged to be married sometime in the spring to the lovely miss Nancy Moise. more on this one later.

life is so very good!

2008-01-04T17:57:00.000-05:00

How crazy was that fire last night? The brown side on the left, that's Meme Tech. The blacked chunk on the right, that was my neighbor's place.

Here's another view:

When the fire engines pulled up, I was just about to leave and go hang with this lovely girl named Nancy. I figured it was serious when I saw how much smoke was coming out of the building next door. I grabbed three things: my computer, and two paintings by Sean Griffin. I opened the doors so the firemen wouldn't have to chop them down, and got the hell out. When I got back, they had chopped through the wall where one of the paintings was. You can see what would have happened when the axe went through the wall.

2008-01-04T11:06:00.000-05:00

Wow. All I have to say is wow.

Last night, the Louisville Fire Department saved the building I work in. 60 men and women, in freezing temperatures, against a fire that was ONE FOOT away from the shop. For about an hour and a half, I thought it was all over.

My neighbor, a small family business, lost everything. I can't even imagine how they feel this morning.

So far, 2008 is pretty intense. More than ever, I feel a debt to the world that must be repaid somehow. For now, thank you to the Louisville Fire Department.

2007-09-29T01:13:00.000-04:00

summer is ending and the nights at least are getting cold. it's the first time, ever, that I have finally this particular sound gear arrangement going. now i just need something capable of recording without producing distorted noise.

Really just setting up for tomorrow. should be an interesting weekend.

2007-08-16T17:59:00.001-04:00

subject appears to be convinced that it is very hot outside. subject works a long number of hours but not in the hot part of building, and appears to feel guilty about it. subject continues to sell tshirts at an alarming rate.

nothing else to report

2007-06-16T17:01:00.001-04:00

A brief description from my current favorite author on the nitty gritty of extrasolar colonization.

As I've said since I was a teenager, when I grow up, I want to be copied onto a robotic explorer and shot into space in the direction of something interesting. But it doesn't look like I will meet my goal become an asteroid mining tycoon.

2007-06-01T17:26:00.000-04:00

Just finally it sinks in, i'm on my way to the D again. It's 7ish on friday night, l've got the ways and means, and nothing tying me down until Wednesday. Old school simply jeff breaks competing with the air turbulence since my ac is toast, and I begin to consider working my ass off all summer with the goal of a nicer car. This roadtrip usually marks the beginning of the summer for me. Demf. Friends and family. Some bass to shake my bones. Ahhh... Better... Figured out an open window arrangement that lets me hear better- this ipod transmitter sucks.
I'm typing this on my phone while I drive.

I'm going to put a set of icons on my car with the puzzle pieces like on the old boot screen for macs. Some will be: aphex twin plastikman the screw a file folder a turntable a 303 skl a knob hmmm maybe a full color background palla style...

At this point it's just notes at random. thai coffee, harmfully sweet as it is, is awesome. Note to people throwing festivals: learn to control weather. Note to self: never try to park a honda at the uaw headquarters.

The concept of cellphone neck.

So it has always been, and will always be- all about the sound system. Not all sound rigs are created equal. In the D, this is the starting point. Rule 1: always co opt the media. Make them sponsor things so they will have to see the good stuff and be proud to be a part. Note to self: get a car system that shakes your neighbor's trunk.

If ravers rioted it would be very low impact.

Ok this is weird... We used to be from the future. But if we stopped evolving our futurism would start to become stale and anachronistic. We'd become more of a parody of what kind of future we could predict only with our historical context... Dated and ironic.

Ok, imagine combat armor and combined sorts of martial arts and breakdancing. Oh my god. Hardfloor. 3 303s on the main stage... tasty.

So Sunday was awesome. The M-nus party. Wow. ...ok at one point we pile into the bus and someone was appointed the designated thinker. That was two parties ago. The girl who looked like she was from some northern clime who danced so low it was past yoga and limbo. She literally was down to two feet or lower with her entire body, and danced with these crazy hand gestures like she was pulling something out of the speakers. She was mime-ing pulling stuff out of people. She had a black tattoo of a star on the center of her back. I was certain at the time she was a witch.

Richie says he wants to make the music industry pure data for ecological reasons. M-nus is actually about subtracting the physical plastic object from the product. It is made of oil, you know.

Now it's 11 in the morning. It's too early to be so late. So I forgot about crackheads. My mechanic warned me, it's not just an insult for people who acting dumb, it's a real phenomenon. Crackheads. Here's a funny one. Crackheads in detroit now have 500 memetech stickers and a bunch of business cards. And my stereo, ipod, and window fragments. Detroit imported vehicle surcharge. And you know what? For the music I've been hearing this weekend, totally a fair price. I'll take it.

The next day's line, a few hours later: "Gotta ask: late night or early morning?"

I remember this whole thing where we're all aggressively futuristic and next level no bullshit. An awareness that life is short and every moment is important and should not be wasted screwing around. The whole Detroit posse always tried to rock that thing, and I always remind myself when I come up here. Find out in a week if any of it sticks.

The guy who moved to LA said he traded watching weather patterns for traffic patterns.

When you drink good coffee a lot, you should go back down to earth and have some totally appalling coffee.

Detroit needs it's own grand theft auto.

So while I escaped up here, Memetech totally threw a party. I love the fact that the shop rocked of its own accord. I have given it my blessing. Because I'm going to Demf every year.

Quote from a lady cop downtown: that's just my job, that's not me.

The clear alchohol rule for not staining your clothing when drinking: for serious drinkers, a good plan.

The entirety of techno is shaped by the differences between the 808 and the 909.

At the final afterparty there was no cell reception, blocker or underground. There was a decoy party. There was a second decoy party. This party was double-decoyed. Crazy deep.

Raved til dawn. Twice.

This the coolest thing ever: that on the Tuesday I decided to chill with my friends in detroit everyone left me alone. The phone didn't ring once. Thank you, all.

2007-05-19T10:52:00.001-04:00

Ok, it's time to sort through random story notes that I left for myself. I never have the time or discipline to write science fiction, but I come up with concepts and ideas all the time. Many suck. But here are some:

Surveillance search patterns should be based on something that works. Copy nature. If you have an aerial drone, model the search algorithm on the hunting patterns of predators. Model the behavior on sharks, or maybe hawks. Little brains driven by the urge to "GET IT" ... and many millions of years of successful hunting shaping the wiring.

The problem with raising children in a technological society is that they miss out on the very characteristics of experience which made it possible- tenacity, agrarian work ethics, social interdependancy made explicit from an early age. As technology increases, people come of age from an easier childhood into a greater position of sheer material power than ever before. At what point is the amount of constructive and destructive power available to a citizen so great that citizenship is not guaranteed? How do you raise a new citizen? An option for a good story, assuming the technology is advanced enough, you raise them in parallel virtual environments, or successive ones, which present issues of survival and ethical development in earlier technological eras. Adversity, difficulty, moral challenges. It's like a schooling system, but much harsher. The crops fail. Those who revert to cannibalism don't graduate. Bronze era stuff. Early technological development, the moral decisions of the British empire, commerce. Early ecological questions. When a person has lived through these eras and developed into one who is capable of responsible use of technology, then they may study Modern Engineering.

Aristoi, come to think of it. (An excellent book by Walter Jon Williams)

2007-05-15T20:39:00.000-04:00

hustlin. makin shirts. drinkin coffee.

hung out on the top of the Belvedere today imagining what banners Forecastle will need.

griffin headed out today, in the most wildly loaded truck, ever. he had matt mccormick weld on a safari style rack on the top of his toyota. it was dense, and we wish him well but will miss the heck out of him.

had the coolest weekend, just mostly chillin with family.

2007-05-04T17:26:00.000-04:00

What is the DEMF? What's the deal with Detroit anyway?

I might have rambled about this before but I got the question again recently and so here goes:

Detroit is the birthplace of techno music. There was this wierd confluence of japanese engineering at Roland and a little bit of soul and a place where things were so beat down economically that doing anything that brings people of all kinds and colors is a revolutionary act. Detroit shows the reality of race in America, in history and today. In the 90's, many of the best underground parties ever were in Detroit. As we used to say, "Bass brings the people together." When the sound is crisp enough that it doesn't hurt your ears, but the low end of the sound is strong enough to make your skeleton resonate... well, let's just say it's one of those things for those who know.

It's a different time now, and many of the people who used to travel so freely are older, and more responsible, and live in a less mobile fashion. But now we also have our shit together, and can take a vacation, get a hotel, and what do you know? There's a hundred thousand of us hanging all over downtown by the river. That's what the DEMF is. We regroup and compare notes, and dance until our older bodies give out, and swap inspirations. And while the event itself is pretty cool, from noon to midnight, it's the afterparties that really break out the thing we used to refer to as a vibe. Anyway, it's a good time. Jeff Mills is headlining this year.

There was this party called Amphoteric, at some particular space that no longer exists, and I got to see Jeff Mills play records. It was like he was a robot from the future, he did stuff I did not think possible. He mixed records by looking at the groove and dropping the needle on the record, no fader, no headphones.

So the people doing DEMF now are the people that I'd want in my crew if civilization had fallen and we had to built a city and society from scratch. They are the pickiest customer I have ever dealt with, because every facet of their project has to be designed well, mean something, and be perfectly executed. They would sit there with a ruler and measure the shirts I printed for them to make sure every one was perfect. In short, they're crazy, and obsessive, and what they are after is creating the perfect experience of music and culture. So, yeah.

Did I mention that my week has been insane? As in, a test of will and endurance and balancing of priorities in the face of equipment failures, hard core economics, and events beyond ones own control? It's like that.

Oh yeah. I'm done with college.

2007-04-22T12:38:00.000-04:00

Thunder again. Lots of walking, got to carry a very cute girl several blocks on my shoulders. Broke some stairs in an old house downtown. Walked right up to the water's edge and once again got the best seat in the house. Today: bruises.

Drink some coffee, head to work, get ready for next week.

2007-04-21T11:35:00.000-04:00

Ever boggle at the numbers when people start talking about the government?

This is a visual view of how it all breaks down.

Fascinating stuff.

2007-04-21T00:32:00.000-04:00

Maido has the best sushi in Louisville. Toki blesses her rice.

Mmmmmmmmmm

2007-04-20T17:29:00.000-04:00

Today is one of those days that makes you believe. I walk in fresh from recovery from papers, taxes, and lots of sleep deprivation over the past few days. I talk about how the dryer is ghetto, but it keeps on working, and how we love our ghetto dryer. Within 1 hour, the dryer is not producing any heat. For those not familiar with screenprinting, it's the most important piece of equipment in the shop. There's also some other synchronicity-type events. Memetech is officially freaked out all day. Not to mention drying shirts temporarily with a hair dryer.

Later in the day, right as we have overcome all difficulties, the dryer begins to work again.

Life is freakin wierd.

The main decision made today is that we're going to go for the record of most tshirts worn at one time on one person. It stands at 160 right now. We're going to own it. The only question is which one of us is going to do it. And all the shirts we wear are going to be memetech printed shirts.

j2

2007-04-15T17:16:00.000-04:00

There is a giant hexagon on the north pole of saturn. Voyager saw it 26 years ago and people thought it was a fluke. It's still there.

It has a weather system inside it.

Let's go check that out, shall we?

2007-04-15T12:31:00.000-04:00

Last week was CRAZY. Lots of orders, lots of hustle, lots of school. Two papers done, skipped the rough draft on the third one. Just two papers left to go, one on the Singularity as Technologically Flavored Utopianism, and the Russian Military Modernization Led To Authoritarian Nightmare Country one.

My Russian history prof evilly suggested that that if Dead Souls was good, we should read War and Peace. So... I never got into it the first time, but now all the history background totally makes it make sense. You've got all these well educated, enlightened nobles, but the ugly truth is that they are all only able to fund their pursuits on the backs of slave labor. And of course, Napoleon shows up. The underlying contrast between elegance and brutality- it's underneath every society to some degree, but the more I learn about Russia the more I see what we take for granted here in the US.

So today is an alternation between first quarter data entry, and Tolstoy. And some writing.

I'm making peace with not being able to launch Untranslatable again at DEMF, but I'm still going to try. I'm just not going to really be able to do more than think of designs until after graduation. Oh well.

New concept/phrase:
post-retro: getting over recycling the past as a source of culture, and looking instead to the present or the future.

Ok, back to work.

2007-04-07T12:53:00.000-04:00

My neighbor in the back half of the house has moved out, and no replacement has appeared, so I can be loud. I've got a slow aggregation of paper that's twice as long as it's supposed to be, and I think rather than chop it up, I'll just turn it in. I got a defective lamp to work. Macgyver would be proud, I used a laundry pole of a slightly larger diameter to go outside the stripped threaded made_in_wherever cheapness. I loaded it with energy-efficient tubey flourescent bulbs and now suddenly I can read in the front room. Someday, I aspire to have a comfortable chair, possibly a couch. A medially rotated lifestyle, apparently, is where you spend too much time hunched and slouched. I am the freakin poster child for this lifestyle. I wonder how much effort it takes to change deep rooted posture habits when you're already 37. Has to be tried.

School's almost over. I'm going to start talking to the void a lot now. You, the unnamed reader, are an unknown. Probably only AI's from the post-singular era will be bothering to read the whole web, trying to get your crazy posthuman mind about the twisted monkeys who turned themselves into you. But for anyone who cares, I’ll tell the story.

Next week I will accomplish multiple impossible things. This weekend, three papers to write:

Topic in Russian History: The Russian Army was woke up to the Rennaisance and found itself way behind Europe, to the point that even overwhelming numerical advantage just didn't cut it. Eventually they bought a passable military through foreign servicemen and began to adapt. The problem of playing catch-up militarily put additional stress on a country with the greatest geographical challenges in existence. In the rule of Peter the Great and later Catherine substantial modernization took place, but at the cost of exacerbating the gulf between serf and ruling class. How did the Russian military modernize over time and what were the side effects on Russian society and culture that resulted? (With one eye towards the Revolution)

Topic in Equine Business: The Standardbred horse industry is currently facing a demographic crisis along with the rest of horse racing. With an older crowd and competition from other forms of gambling, the industry faces the divide between the states which have slots at their tracks, and those who don’t. Ohio and Kentucky don’t, and face serious competition from states that do. With or without slots, what does the industry look like in five years? What can be done to promote the sport to the public at large, to catch the imagination of new enthusiasts?

Topic in Philosophy: If there is no substance dualism, and the mind and the brain are one in the same, how do we reconcile the experience of the human consciousness with what little we know of the mechanics of neurochemistry? Does the mechanical paradigm hold? What is the difference, if any, from a value held in the memory of a computer running a program and the presence of a thought in a human brain? Are computers eventually capable of thought? And if so, what is unique about the human brain that they would have to duplicate – Ie, the interaction of the senses and the body and language and all that. This one needs some work.

Clay Buffet was off the chain last night. It was full of people, Daveer’s fleur de lys stuff was awesome, and the band was so retro they brought their own bale of hay. Tight.

Lunchtime.