Blog: A bark in the dark

even if you never love me back Originally uploaded by The 10 cent designer From the 10 cent designer. lovely

The workers at Consolidated Overmetrics insist to this day that they were not, in fact, contracted to design a piano catapult. Court documents and deposition transcripts indicate multiple incidences where employees and executives state that at no time was their a client workorder reading, "We need something of the dimensions x, y, z , must be capable of generating n amount of torque-feet and, by the way, also able to fire a Mahogany-toned Yamaha baby-grand Model AE564 (with the Composochrome add-on package) with lethal force at a range of 400 to 500 yards." This was [...]

I was at a wedding reception when the revolution began. I'd never been to the city before and was grateful for the excuse, and we were all taking shelter from a sudden storm that came up in the church just a few blocks from City Hall that had been converted to a barn. It was sudden to me, anyway, it doesn't rain much where I'm from. The church where the wedding was one of those steeple-peaked, turn-of-the-century looking models but had closed down years ago. Now they rent the place out for weddings , which I'd imagine doesn't [...]

"You don't even know what I used to be like," he snorted, reshuffling himself into the passenger seat and burying his elbow deeper into that seam between where car door ends and the window begins. He got like this sometimes, feeling down like just about everyone can from time to time, but then refracting those feelings into a general loathing for himself and pretty much every decision in his life. She understood this, but tapping on the nubby little grip on the underside of the steering wheel wasn't helping. Hell of a way to spend a Saturday. The [...]

Thomas looked down into the well, deep down, feeling his eyes stretch like a couple of threadbare rubberbands behind his glasses as he did. Nothing, just a few tufts of lost grass growing more and more sparse as they mistakenly pushed out between the tired old bricks, a blistered tree root elbowing into the shaft and back again, then darkness, deep, hungry, endless. It couldn't be that much, he thought, he was fifteen for god's sake, who believed in bottomless pit stories? Babies, that's who. Still, down there was a football, two frisbees, Eddie Falcon's Plasticman and who knew how [...]

I'm told that earlier this week was Blue Monday, a special little invention in Britain that apparently defined January 18 as the most depressing day of the year. This year, anyway. Their reasoning seems simple enough -- the holidays are over and, well, you live in Britain and thus probably won't be seeing the sun in a month and a half. I certainly admire the Brits for sticking a flag in the ground for such a day (because really, their weather gives them every right), and I like the extra edge this adds to the New [...]

I've noticed a couple more things about this space as I try and remember to look at it more than once a month. One, it looks a lot like what it is -- something started about five years ago and generally untouched by any technological advance from the most basic template, apart from my ruthlessly pirated header above (thank you, artist who's name I forget!). Really hoping to get around to changing all that at some point but, eh, probably not. Suffice to say I'd like to apologize for my dated appearance, but that's a little consistent with real life. [...]

My goodness two weeks can fly by, can't they? Not entirely sure how that happened. I know there was this and that at work, but other than all that I have no real excuse. The ability to convince yourself that you've got something important to say can at times be elusive, I guess, and the wherewithal to sit down and start looking when it's not readily apparent is even moreso. I'm going to set aside the facing-down-loss theme that we inadvertently stumbled upon for a moment and get into my week a bit. I work at [...]

So as you've probably noticed and as I've already addressed, I'm a bit hung up on this topic of grief. I'll get more to the why's and what's to this a little later, I'm sure, although I'm (mostly) happy to report that the raw emotions I shared below of the past few weeks have subsided. Time and the need to Get On With Our Lives demands that be the case but, inevitably, as I think about it now, there's a little bit of mourning that's in order for the end of mourning, so to speak. Loss is something [...]

Hi. Now where were we? I'd apologize for the silence, but I'd imagine if you track through this little bulletin board you'd find a lot of those as daily posts turned to weekly theen turned to yearly and so on, so let's just skip it. Still, a shame for me to part ways with you on such a down note. I'd like to say that my absence had to do with grieving, that the house was shrouded in black drapery and thoughtful candlelight for the past week in light of the loss described below, but that [...]

Well. That sucked. Yesterday went about as I feared / expected and our beloved wilderness explorer, urban trail guide and pack leader Shenoa lost her battle with Time, just a few months removed from her 13th birthday. Of course, as her guardians it fell to us to give time itself a nudge, to head to the vet's and make that most incomprehensible request of asking someone to end a dear friend's life. And of course, it's not like that, not really. This most difficult of decisions is The Right Thing. This is What's Done. This is [...]

So when i flicked this thing back on a couple days ago I had a couple of completely amorphous and occasionally ambitious ideas of what form this shoppe would take, if any. I've got big ideas, see, and every so often the wherewithal to carry them out. But one such concept I had involves this longer project that's been, well, haunting me for the past few years. As I told a kind and literary-minded coworker of mine who asked what I was working I sort of rolled my eyes, explaining "When I lie in bed and think about [...]

Greetings, friends. We are once again open for business. When this space began (good lord) over four years ago the idea was simple -- allowing yours truly the limitless space and outlet to spill notions and half-baked ideas across the world. The whole news-magazine cover story 'Blog' trend in a nutshell, I suppose. And, even more egregiously, it evolved into something that meshed pretty well with the whole mp3/music blogging wave which, given where my head's been at for the better part of my life, was just fine. Then things, as they often do, changed. [...]

Let's just stop pretending now. This isn't much of a regular jumping-off point these days and, I venture to guess, won't be. There's simply too many diversions and projects out there these days and -- nothing against you, Accidental Reader -- this is not the primary space I'd rather devote my energy. And yet. There's been a sort of loss of religion around these parts, if you'll pardon the expression (and you shouldn't). I am a music nerd, as my wall-length collection will attest, and this was before recent ascent/descent into vinyl-hawking. [...]

One of the most vivid memories I have of music doesn't even involve hearing it. I still haven't heard the song, to this day, and I think the reason why may have something to do with the fact it was by The Cure. I don't begrudge the Cure, or their listeners. They're just a band that I was sort of adjacent to, listening-wise, but never completely immersed in. A few songs sank in here and there either from my friends or -- naturally -- a given mixtape from someone I was entangled with. "Charlotte Sometimes." "Fascination Street." [...]

• The Cure - Primary

People disappear. They just do, and I'm not talking about the message-on-a-milk-carton, Daniel Travanti TV Movie kind of disappearance. In each person's lives there are people, maybe even groups of people, who just get . . . misplaced. And I'm not even talking about where I've been the last year. Yet. Very often it's not even as if you miss them. Years go by. People age. Lives, as they tend to do, go on, and before you know it people who occupied a space in your life -- maybe even an important space -- [...]

• Sun Kil Moon - Lost Verses

Greetings, word urchins. So...it's been too long... Yes, let's just leave it at that, shall we? Good lord, what are we talking, three months? Five? Six? Maybe. How have you been? Me, oh, I've been well. Busy, let's put it that way. You look good. Healthy, like you're starting to get some sun with spring starting to spring about. What can I say, I've missed you, I think. Maybe, anyway. I've missed me, more to the point, and maybe the me that I'm thinking of has a more to do with typing and dropping words and [...]

It's a strange thing, the body and mind's habits. I suppose those are two things. Hmm. At any rate, they're odd. After spending a month being devoured by work hither and yon, a lull gratefully sets in. Except it's an odd lull, one I probably shouldn't be relishing nearly as much as I am. All October I bounced from assignment to project (as evidenced by my absence from these 'pages' so as much as I'm in the habit of productivity on one front, productivity on this front (in my head at least) feels starchy, [...]

I'm not a nightowl. I'm not a morning person either. If given a choice, in fact, I'd probably function at the relatively civilized hours between 10 am and 7 pm. Not really that unreasonable, really, and frankly I'm a little lucky that my necessarily evil professional life functions at those hours (somehow). But tonight, for the seventh night in the series of eight, I've got to put on my nightowl hat. Not such a bad thing. It fits better than the morning hat, certainly. Morning hats [...]

a clock on the wall is broken, but accurate a man walks under an overpass, unable to escape the feeling he is being passed over. warm sun, no rain accurate is not the same as right accurate is not the same as right hold hearings so your voice can be heard sift through the garbage until it looks like dinner [...]