unveiling of the uninspired

hallelujah, i have seen the light!!


(don't worry i only look like this on stage)

well - ok... no, not really. i am just trying to crash face first into fiction and come out standing proud. i told monkey 0 that he inspired me and this is the moment he didn't even know he was waiting for.

Ladies! Gentlemen! and the rest of you aqua-dwelling Miscreants! step right up and see the amazing - no - the astounding - (at the very least, the mildly amusing) "from the chaos journals"!! mysfit's brand-new and very own scratch fiction site!

'what is scratch fiction?' you ask.

'what are the chaos journals?'

'where are my shoes?' you wonder.

well, my dear little fishies, all these answers and more will be found sometime in the near-aquatic ataxic future (a.k.a., somewhere between the fish and chaos) so keep your eye turned to these small bites of virtuosity and the color green!!

in the meantime, i will answer a few of the questions i know you are drowning to ask.

'why are you leaving the fish?'
(jenn see, darling, do not be mad at me, i am not abandoning the fish - i am merely expanding my reach)

'why not write fiction for the fish?'
at first i toyed with the idea of keeping the scratch fiction here, where the side-bar river of links spills our fishes' virtual wanderings to the attention of those who's fish-following brings them to our rocky shores. but i want whatever crap that i tap out kept together to play with and follow as i feel like it.

'where did this come from'
as i said - it's all monkey 0's fault.

I NEEED TO WRITE. i can feel the words, ideas, characters yelling at me from the back of my mind, but they have become so muffled and weighed down in rl-shit (that's real-life, for the uninitiated) . so, stuck in the middle of two novels, a number of short stories (all deadends) and now, nanowrimo found me stuck at the end of november at like a 5k word-count with nothing left to write (so much for that idea, oh well there's always next year), i have decided that a site to which i dedicate only 15mins of forehead space to at any given time, whenever the fey mood takes me is a good thing.

it's a good thing and it's all monkey 0's fault.

'where will you begin?'
i thought you'd never ask. i was going to wait until i had redesigned the template, but i guess it'll just evolve with the writing - it's all about the words anyways, right?
to get started (remember i am not lazy, just uninspired) i decided to explore some random plot generators to see if the net had caught something to spark the forest fire - or at least amuse me for a while.


The following came from the random plot generator from Teresa Nielsen Hayden, an editor who has recently been doing some work for Tor Books.

Advice for the Evil Overlord:
I will never accept a challenge from the hero.
Advice for the Hero:
If I am captured by the Evil Overlord and escape, I will assume that he is tracking me in some manner. If I am going to the hidden rebel base, I'll first go to an alternate location, change clothing, equipment, and means of transportation, and then go to the hidden rebel base.
Advice for the Bad Auxiliary Character (Legion of Doom Troops):
Don't attack the hero alone or in pairs. The Evil Overlord hired a million of you for a reason.
Advice for the Good Auxiliary Character (Innocent Bystander):
Do not run back to get your teddy bear or puppy.
Further Evil (Advice for the Evil Empress):
I will learn the various arts of self defense and not rely solely on muscular minions to protect me.

Murphy's Laws of Combat:
-A Purple Heart just proves that were you smart enough to think of a plan, stupid enough to try it, and lucky enough to survive.
-The most dangerous thing in the world is a Second Lieutenant with a map and a compass. -The worse the weather, the more you are required to be out in it.
-The bursting radius of a grenade is always one foot greater than your jumping range.


this one is still amusing me. So You've Decided to Be Evil is a "step-by-step guide to joining the forces of evil". it has everything the modern villain needs to think about in order to break into the world of complete megalomania and super-villainous. from what to wear to what to look for in a thug to where to build your secret lair. It's got everything!


for those a bit more mad-lib inclined - give this horror plot generator a shot.



well, seen you soon - somewhere between chaos and the fish.
love, mysfit

oh what links we mortal fish attempt

with the advent of electronic mail we can now send each other entertaining junk mail at the push of a button. and though much of it is crap or the dreaded chain letters - sifting through the many emails i get, i found a few gems hiding in the javasoup that i thought might entertain a few fish along the way.

on monday, *** sent me this to start off my week just right:
men-in-coats

on tuesday, [identity-protected] was feeling political and wanted to show me what other dissidents around the country had done in recent weeks:
WAL-MART: the high cost of low price

on wednesday, someone forwarded this out of boredom:
http://www.endofworld.net/

on thursday, {name removed} sent me this because i like family guy:
the life of larry, part 1
the life of larry, part 2

on friday, so-and-so sent me this to keep me through the weekend until monday happened all over again:
ninjai: the little ninja

Enjoy!

and what do you see -

- in this doodle-fish?

love, mysfit

Happy Non-Turkey Day!

alright, alright -

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

today we recognize and give thanks for that the good things in our life. many people apparently are very thankful that turkey is so good, that they always eat it on this day. being a vegetarian, my views on the subject are slightly different (and there is no way i'm going to give thanks for tofurky - so don't ask)

today i am thankful for my brothers and parents, for my good friends and the new friends i meet everyday.
today i am thankful that i don't have to work today or tomorrow
today i was thankful that few people go skiing on Thanksgiving so i went skiing.

gotta run and have dinner with a close friend and some new friends - so more on the ski-fish adventure later but for now, remember to pause and think about what you are thankful for today.

a picture is worth a thousand fish

my fish just had a birthday

so, there are some benefits to getting older and one of them is a day like yesterday.

breakfast
boots (ski boots, yay!)
hair
movie (harry potter was spectacular)
sushi

i love the people who love me!

IT'S SNOWING!!!!!!

it's snowing it's snowing it's snowing it's snowing!!!

(just thought i'd share)

clarity just confuses fish

i've been called worse things, but slacker certainly applies where the fish is concerned. technically the third contributor, i haven't really contributed much at all. jenn and mysfit have poked and prodded me out of my lethargy, however, and i will answer their challenges. since i'm sure everyone is on the edge of their office chairs to learn about me, i will begin with this most recent of revelatory memes...


5 Things

10 years ago: senior year of high school. i didn't like anyone i went to school with by then and spent most of my days hiding out in the closet that passed for a newspaper office playing minesweeper and reading star wars books (the zahn trilogy is really the only one worth reading in my estimation). i had a girl who was soon to discover the joy of college boys and leave me for one and then come back. then i left her. i also played a lot of doom2 and warcraft2. most of my friends existed in the gaming world. at that point i thought i'd be a computer programmer and married by now instead of in a band and living in sin. i think i'm much better off now.

5 years ago: halcyon days, if ever there were any. fall after college, apartment with 3 of my friends, lots of girls, drugs, and music. i learned more in the year after i graduated than i had at any school and i realized that 95% of what i thought was important was really just bullshit. had just started working at the theatre in new bizmark, a job i would hold for three years, where i would eventually meet jenn and fall in love with her belly because of the way she would slink into my office and frame herself in my door and ask me questions just so she could flirt. mmmmm...belly.....

1 year ago: two months back on staten island, working at the job i have currently. the band had begun its slow metamorphosis, and it's still metamorphosizing. we're now a three man acoustic act while we find a replacement drummer and bassist. maybe even keys. fucking gabe. he's one of the worst human beings i've ever met.

5 yummy things
ice cream
a good burger
breakfast
oatmeal creme pies
jenn's belly.

5 songs i know by heart
elegy for mippy II for solo trombone by leonard bernstein
demons by sfa
spill the wine by eric burdon and war
opening theme song for bleach, second season
revelry by happy anarchy

5 things i would do with a lot of money
buy a drummer
buy a bassist
buy a keyboardist
buy a tour bus
buy a house

5 places i would escape to
a cabin in the woods
a cabin on a mountaintop
my secret underwater lair
dagobah
wales

5 things i would never wear
a bike helmet
penny loafers
women's underwear
jewelry
pants

5 favorite tv shows
simpsons
family guy
daily show
arrested development
farscape

5 things i enjoy doing
playing music
watching anime
reading
travelling
sleeping

favorite toys
computer
xbox (forthcoming)
instruments
blank paper
blocks

first time, i did it for the hell of it
sfa has been a topic of discussion on the fish recently and i've been asked to expand upon my love of them. what initially caught my attention was the cover of one of their albums, the all-welsh mwng (pronounced mane, i think). an animal skull with beard and pipe. i grabbed that and radiator at the same time and didn't listen to them for several months. i listened to radiator first, thinking it the more accessible of the two, and wondered why i hadn't listened to it sooner. the little rhodes melody was beautiful and somewhat reminiscent of the pumpkins' mellon collie, insofar as the use of mellotron. the strange, not-quite-british vocals and interesting choices in harmonies got me next, followed quickly by the lyrics. no one writes lyrics like the furries. i dunno if it's a certain quirk of being welsh or a combination of musical chemistries, but they can't be reproduced. even if you tried, you couldn't write a furries song.
contemporaries of blur and radiohead, sfa hasn't garnered nearly as much attention, but they don't seem to care. i hesitate to call their fanbase a cult following, but have you ever heard of them? their first album fuzzy logic was cut in the early/mid nineties somewhere in between kurt cobain and the bends. comparitively mediocore with a few really good songs but a great first offering nevertheless. after listening to album after album, you can hear the directions and ideas that would later flourish on rings around the world.

and the people who lie are the ones that get by
radiator. i really love this album. it's not as polished as the rest, but it's the furries hitting their stride. a solid second album from beginning to end with cameos by valentine strasser and einstein, radiator is where sfa starts to get political, and they don't hold back. the last show ended with a scathing song that i didn't know but that i will call all governments are liars and murderers. 'nuff said on that topic. all the elements are in place on radiator. the lyrics just get better and better.

i exist in flexi-time
guerilla is where sfa really delves into the electronics of it all. satellite rock. you can almost hear the 1's and 0's. they started out as a pop-techno band so it makes sense. the artwork starts to take a turn for the weird, too. the production isn't quite what it will be yet, but it's getting there. one thing that i've noticed is that, from the beginning, sfa has been comfortable and confident with its voice. the crappy songs are just as sincere as the great ones, so much so that i'll forgive them for fire in my heart, a song that prompted mysfit to say "this band sucks." we then argued about judging an artist based on one piece or song as opposed to their entire body of work. take an example from neil young. or david bowie.

pan ddaw'r wawr what???
the welsh-language mwng is tough. cos i don't know what they're singing about. sometimes, if i listen the right way, it sounds like english with too many vowels. a good deal of the music even sounds welsh...that is not to say it sounds like welsh music but that the language of the music sounds like it's another language. sense? either way, i'd only reccommend this double disc for anyone who's really into sfa.

you expose the film in me
next comes rings around the world. from the opening bars this album knocked me out. this is sfa at its best. better in so many ways than what's come before and since. i've never heard better production. the noise solo at the end of receptacle is so far outta sight i can't even see it anymore. just hear it. really. get this album.

rocks are slow life
phantom power is a whole lot smoother. the noise and effects are reduced with more attention given to arrangement. production continues to improve somehow. the songs are more epic. the thing that i like best about this album is its demonstration of the furries' range vocal abilities.

sleek as foxes in the street
a few weeks before we went on tour i picked up love kraft. i listened to it on my headphones in a hotel room in pittsburgh. back on a roll is a song about a touring band that doesn't want to go home, doesn't want to have to do anything but continue touring. pretty much summed up what i was thinking at the moment. it took me several listens to come around to the album and it continues to grow on me.
sfa is a great live show, too. the visuals are as lush as the music. they do great things with lights and sometimes wear sasquatch suits, power ranger helmets, or glow-in-the-dark-fiberoptic-looking jumpsuits. gruff threw stalks of celery to the crowd. he wanted to know how to address us for the evening and someone called jesus, so that's what he called us. they arrived at music festivals in a tank.

so yeah, that's why i like sfa.

why does my fish have to work at all?

shoot me - i hate my job some days - bad enough i get yelled at by users, but today it was a tech who doesn't understand what they hired me to do - i'm so uneasy (pissed/frustrated/worried/pissed) that i'm shaking - all this impersonal shit - i won't even face him, we work ten feet from each other and he's emailing me so i respond - i do the best i can and it's never enough... never enough...

At Your Job
-Dead Kennedys-

If your machine might slip a gear
Push this button to help it clear
Your time card says your name's Joe
But we'll call you 6-3-0

[Chorus]
I'm working at my job
I'm so happy
More boring by the day
But they pay me

All that time spent going to school
Just to end up following-rules

[Chorus]

Now it's time to take a break
Don't stray too far or you'll be late
Thank you for your service and a long career
Glad you gave us your best years

[Chorus]



p.s. (because i'm feeling melodramatic) no one understands anything, why do we assume; why do we pretend - you know it's just a misunderstanding... come back come back

all about my little fish

i've been tagged by tesco - that bastard - he hates these things and i think i agree with him but fair is fair right? (in other words, tesco, be warned: always be prepared) - sorry this took so long, i'm not so good at summing my self up

so here goes:

5 Things

10 years ago: oh must we think of old times that i'd rather forget? to be honest i can vaguely place things in relation to my age at the time but i only have vaguest idea what exactly was going on 10 years ago - i was still in highschool (yes i know, i'm a young-un), so i was probably drunk and this was not long before i ran away from home to go hitchhiking around the eastern US for a summer, but enough of these blurry memories... they make me dizzy

5 years ago: would that be 2000? I was program manager of a college radio station somewhere in NJ. trying my best to not fail out of school and - woah, look at that - drunk most of the time as well. my hair changed color at least once a month at that time in my life, so it was either blonde,red,black,blue,green,purple, or shaved - the possibility of a mohawk is very strong. (What? I get bored.)

1 year ago: worst job ever; morally strong and good but ethically, mentally, emotionally and monetary suspect. you know, i don't need moral/ethical issues in my job, i have enough in my life. plus i never want to rely on a "job" that requires unpaid overtime and and questions you dedication to the "cause" when you refuse to clean the toilets. just got out here to CO and suddenly i couldn't tell you why (i know now, but that hasn't happened yet - ask me in about a year ago in another two months or so). as for my creative life, it had just been totally hijacked by two stories, the likes of which have never been seen on this planet... then it got cold.

i agree with tesco, those seem a bit out of place, like two memes have merged to make a monster meme... but whatever...

5 yummy things
yummy? in my tummy? i hate food....

ok ok - ceasar salad with chick patties(mmm, vegetable protein disguised as chicken); chocolate chip cookies, vanilla ice-cream, whiskey, stout beer

5 songs i know by heart (this one's hard as i usually know lyrics but not song names)
Rage Against the Machine: killing in the name of
They Might Be Giants: Birdhouse in Your Soul
Beastie Boys: Paul Revere
Happy Birthday
um... twinkle twinkle little star?

5 things i would do with a lot of money
kick my roommates out of my house... ok, no but I would highly encourage them to move
fly anywhere i want at the drop of a hat (and learn the language)
tuesdays would be a good time for anyone i knew
support Hamlet so he could be a ski-bum and not worry
invest in an independent publishing company

5 places i would escape to
my imagination - (well that about sums that up. as for "real" places - who cares just get me out of here!)

5 things i would never wear
crocs, crocs, anything from walmart (ever again - i know too much), crocs and um... crocs

5 favorite tv shows (kill your TV - you'll feel better about things)
Family Guy, Law and Order: SVU, do animes count as tv shows? then there's like 15 or so (Serial experiments: Lain, Shaman King, Boogie Pop Phantom, Bleach, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Bubblegum Crisis, etc.) - and there was this awesome show on the Discovery Channel where this older man got really excited about making historical connections

5 things i enjoy doing
writing (when i write well)
playing video games (when the game doesn't suck)
drawing, (which includes messing with pictures)
messing with people minds
yes i agree with tesco, sex is fun

favorite toys
photoshop (and thus by proxy, my computer)
my contact juggling ball
my pen (paints, brushes, markers, easel)
hamlet (oh come on - he is too a toy)
i wish i had a nail gun - i used the little palm-sized one when building the deck last winter (but if wishers were fishes - i'd have a jeep too)

five people who get this meme
jennsee
transience
oldben (still there? allo? allo?)
livewire
monkey 0

ha! so there - i hope that was informative

a fish of explanation for jennsee

more from mysfit's pen:
(this might be a poem or something like one)

over skin that’d be comfortable on me (2005)

so this space, this ten-fingered-toed, bipedal trunk with two arms and a ball perilously perched on thickly wrapped sticks; this must be me.

i don't buy outfits; i slipshod thru fabric nightmares that never perceptually fit a perception of me, my perception of what i'd be comfortable wearing.

i was right you know; you always try to dress me in your free-from-decades fashion, filtering thrift stores thru your taller-than-average frame and everything fits you even if it is ugly.

but i don't mind; i miss your open-closet presentation of repetitious color schemes that all turn black when i put them on and you always gave me red, for some reason.

but these are things that closeness amplifies and distance cannot contain; you ask me about my comfort-level shapes in sleeves of cloth but i cannot answer future fashion tips on the phone; sorry.

i once knew what i'd be the best-dressed feature in my scrap book of what i'd be wearing when i was dead but when i realized i was hiding suicidal closets in my blue room at 272, i got scared.

scared enough to leave clothes to other people and music to musical souls banging drums along the wet streets of new orleans; waiting for the poets to come home.

maybe if you dragged credit thru paris' eiffel-tower-view of ladies in lady-softened gowns, we'd find identity-laden patterns to swathe the mannequin in me.

or maybe not; looking back, i’ve hung heavy-handed hints on hangers in strangers' closets but no one’s come to my rescue yet; perhaps they don’t know where to look.

both our wardrobes betray flagrant disregards for the fashion-conscious minds of other image-conscious people; the only real difference is that you like yours and i have lost a version of me.

do not despair, my fish

(Carrion Comfort)
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.

NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

news fish

-France Suffers 'Shock Wave' as Riots Spread
After 11 days of rioting, the first fatality was confirmed in France, where the rioting has spread to over 300 towns. "All told, 4,700 cars have been burned in France since the rioting began [on Oct. 27] and 1,200 suspects were detained at least temporarily". (anne? anne? are you ok?)

"The growing violence is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger in its suburbs, where many Africans and their French-born children live on society's margins, struggling with high unemployment, racial discrimination and despair - fertile terrain for crime of all sorts as well as for Muslim extremists offering frustrated youths a way out.

France, with some 5 million Muslims, has the largest Islamic population in western Europe.

President Jacques Chirac, whose government is under intense pressure to halt the violence, promised stern punishment for those behind the attacks, making his first public comments Sunday since the riots started.

"The law must have the last word," Chirac said Sunday after a security meeting with top ministers. France is determined "to be stronger than those who want to sow violence or fear, and they will be arrested, judged and punished."" - from the AP article linked above.

novel fish

so i know that jennsee will probably be yelling at me soon as i have many pending posts but this one is important dammit.

i joined NaNoWriMo! yes, thanks to banzai cat, i will be attempting to write a 50,000 word novel by Nov. 30th. for those of you confused: this is 175 pages of pure crap. plot snot! it's quantity not quality that counts so i've sharpened my nails, wrung out my inkjet and am planning to plunge my head into a world of imagination like there is a tomorrow and i am it.

so what if i'm four days late in joining - that leaves me 26 days (which, for those of you without a calculator at the ready, is equal to about 2000 words or almost 7 pages a day - every day until midnight on 11/30).

so what if i've never finished a novel, only short stories and never written more than 50 pages on any given story.

so what if i'm in the middle of two novels and haven't written anything in months - this ought to really piss off my other characters (serves them right for leaving me out of the loop for so long).

i'm ready, willing and able to lose my mind and all feeling in my fingers to break personal records of crap and so should you!!


fish to look forward to (or as my fish likes to call it, FUTURE FISH): a fish of explanation for jennsee (probably something like a poem); i'll probably do another list of movies soon as i've been watching some good ones lately; also tesco tagged me and i am in the process of responding to his taunts so there's one coming up called "all about my little fish";

episodes of strange and unusual fish:lost&found

so i found my lost book and inside were all the words i had taken apart to put my thoughts back together.

when i moved out to colorado i started a new book and had sworn to finish every page by the end of one year in order to document a year of my life. however, i stopped writing and lost the book for a while so it may last me a while longer. i guess i'm alright with that.

some titter-tatters:

"if there is time i will wrap windows in flower-covered sheets to block out the sun but not the heat from flipping through memories. should i isolate while editing through year-long thoughts or should i inundate the fish with words without connections? should i draw out each thought, wrap it in techno-paper and share it with around-the-world strangers on the edge of their seats? waiting, watching, creating copy after copy of my alphabet ramblings and learning to talk backwards.

Ice Floats,

therefore we exist.

i remember you. all parts of me have been 'you' before. they have not forgotten."