The Get Back Sessions

I've gnashed my teeth, cursed the gods, wrestled with demons and angels, screamed, prayed, poured my heart out and fallen into the deepest holes of despair. All for a woman. And I've done so well aware of the futility of it. A sign my dad put up above his bench decades ago says that determination and persistence alone are omnipotent. Makes for a good business saying. But when it comes to matters of the heart such ideas are actually detrimental. When in love with one who is not in love with you determination and persistence are hardly omnipotent. They aren't even sufficient. You can prove yourself in a thousand different ways. You can appear as the greatest person your desire has ever known. And none of that means anything if they are unwilling or simply don't love you.
So it goes. But I've found myself in a situation of trying to explain that to a close friend who, out of fear, pushed away his love. Of course he wants her back now, stupid git. Even the most emotionally mature, most intelligent, most self-aware guy will still do stupid things. Guys are dumb. That's the long and short of it. What makes such stupidity even worse is a guy can know this and know the actions he is about to do are stupid yet still do it. Why? Because guys are dumb.
Which brings me back to my friend. He's placed himself in the position of the jilted lover, the worse place to be emotionally (with the natural caveats such as childhood abuse, molestation and all that stuff that makes me wish aggravated assault wasn't a crime). While I think pursuing the woman of his desire is the wrong thing to do, he is my friend and I fully support him in his choice of paths. He loves her and no argument will ever dissuade such powerful emotions.
The same goes for trying to convince someone they love you. Persistence and determination propelling the most compelling of reasoned and heartfelt arguments will not change the mind of someone who has stopped loving you or never loved you in the first place. You're dealing with matters of the heart that are of immense intensity. So you alone cannot change the heart of your desire, even if you might change their mind. Love, like Life, simply is. It exists and then it doesn't. You can't force it. Stubbornness in love can keep a love together even when you don't necessarily like the person at the time. Conversely, stubbornness once that love has passed is a head-meets-wall situation.
Perhaps that love will return, but it won't come from ill-minded and irrational actions nor reasoned arguments. It will come from your desire still holding love in their heart and letting that love emerge again. Try explaining that to someone hurt by love though. As I've told my friend, if he wishes to pursue this path then he'll need to harden his heart more than he would if he simply let it pass and allowed the wounds to heal. Because he'll have to experience emotions so intense that only the strongest grip on reason and reality will prevent him from going mad. I've gone mad already. I failed at pulling romantic love out of my desire, though she does love me. I learned to accept that and actually am much happier for doing so.
Now this doesn't mean pursuing the one you love is entirely a futile exercise. It is possible, however slim that possibility is, to cause your desire to examine their heart and find that love for you does exist. That's the exception to the rule though. Rarely does it happen. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it isn't fair. And yes, while life isn't fair, it is up to us to make it fair. Yet trying to make life fair when it comes to love borders on the absurd. It's one of the areas where fairness does not apply. It's love for fuck's sake.
I wish it were otherwise as much as I wish I could dissuade my friend from subjecting himself to further injury. That's the existentialism Albert Camus wrote about. The never-ending defeat. But we must live it still. Being hurt by love is only natural. And failing to bring that love back is only natural as well. We must do it because to do otherwise is to run from life, to pretend that by sheer force of will we make ourselves immune from love. We are not. And we must bleed for it. But to think that we won't get bloodied as some point is foolish. And to think that we can prevent being bloodied again by having hearts of stone is equally foolish.
Thus I'm stuck playing the role of Virgil to my friend's Dante. I've been through that hell and now I have to go back to show my friend the way. It sucks on a multitude of levels. And as much as I can force his eyes to look at reality I can't make him see. He has to come to that place himself. I've learned my lessons, even if I occasionally slip up and let my heart run free. That doesn't mean I've forgotten though. Yes, I'm a flawed guide. As are we all who have had similar experiences. That doesn't mean I can't help though.
So I will do what I can as best I can because this is my friend and that's what I do for my friends. He is a man I trust with my money, my life and my secrets. I don't even have to use my entire hand to count the number of people who qualify for all three of those. Thus I certainly can't and won't abandon my friend just because it's a difficult task. Too many people do that to their so-called friends. If you trust someone like that then you have to remain loyal to them. Helping each other out is the only way to redeem ourselves, even if that redemption is only for ourselves. Love does not conquer all, but that's why we have friends to lead us back from that emotional cliff. That's my job.

Notes From A Jeweler's Bench

Appraisals are not as easy as one thinks. Writing a proper appraisal of an item of jewelry is actually a research task--sometimes complicated and in-depth, sometimes as simple as writing down what is observed. Either way it does require a specialized knowledge that can take years to fully grasp. Simple diamond grading is only the first among many steps.
A basic appraisal requires knowing approximately seven things: what kind of piece is it, what stones are in it, what metal is it, how are the stones arranged, what size are the stones and how many are there, what is the raw metal weight? You have to start memorizing conversion charts such as how to convert carat weight to pennyweight, round diamond size to carat weight charts, the daily cost of metals and how to correctly divide that into the units needed. People seems to think that an appraisal is a simple as looking at a piece and just knowing how much it costs. Certainly I can ballpark it, but for the purposes of an estate or insurance appraisal much more is required.
It's also time consuming to write. Translating one's notes into a form legible to the average consumer or insurer is not easy. It requires the ability to accurately describe something in an intelligible way. You take a set of numbers formatted in a sensible way and throw in a description of how all those numbers come together to form a piece of jewelry. This is because the primary goal of an appraisal is to allow someone to either recreate the piece from the description or have another jeweler look at the same numbers and descriptions and arrive at the same conclusions. Appraisals are more science than art in that respect. If a piece were lost and an insurance claim filed then the insurance company will want to know with a high degree of precision what the lost article was and what it cost at the time the appraisal was written.
So the next time you want to have your jewelry appraised be sure to find an appraiser who actually cares about getting it right versus one who just churns out a set of notes loosely tied together. I've seen appraisals from high-end jewelry stores that look like a high school student wrote them. You can barely tell what kind of piece was being appraised let alone what the piece might have looked like. I never look at a previous appraisal until after I've done the basic work both because I don't want any bias entering into my assessment and I usually find the appraisal relatively useless. It really is amazing the kind of shoddy work jewelers can get away with when writing appraisals, even those who have done it for decades.

Music Of The Spheres

Found out a little bit ago that the first song a friend's newborn boy ever heard was Bill Evan's "Peace Piece" off the April mix I made specifically for the little one. I had slightly edited the song to include a fade in/out of Julien's heartbeat as the last note of the piano decayed. That is incredibly special to me. I think I'm going to smile for the rest of the day/week. I knew I liked the April mix, but this makes it even better than the best reviews. I feel like some of the joy both the new father and mother feel has been spread to me.
May, you can suck it so hard now. It's my dad's birthday today, the first after his passing. Now music has brought such ecstatic joy that I'm in tears. Thank you Life for such blessings.

The Get Back Sessions

Oh, since this came up in conversation before the show last night I figure I should put this down in writing before I forget about it again. My sister and I had to explain our rules of dating to an 18 year old girl who is living with us (long story). Of course there are exceptions but that's just how it goes. So, here are the basic rules of dating:
1) If the primary parental figure adores you on first sight (not love, but wants you to start having babies as soon as possible) then run because you're by far the best thing brought home so far.
2) Never date an aspiring anything (artist, musician, writer, whatever). Either you're doing it or you're not.
3) Never let your friends set you up. They'll have a vested interest at that point. Makes for too many people at that party.
4) Never date anyone more fucked up than you are. That's a fine line to walk as you have to find someone no more, but no less fucked up as you are.
5) Never date anyone with an "Oh Shit" aspect of themselves. Like finding out they're an ex-con. That's an "Oh Shit" moment. It's different from an "Aw Fuck" aspect. The "Aw Fuck" comes from finding out something like they lied to their parents about the job they had, then when said parents come to visit, they do everything they can to keep up the lie. Not necessarily a kill shot but certainly a flesh wound. The "Oh Shit" moment, yeah, that's a double tap to the back of the skull.
As stated, there are exceptions, but the rules wouldn't work without them. A close friend of mine has an "Oh Shit" aspect, but she was a different person by the time she started dating the man she would eventually marry. Still, keep these rules in mind when dating someone. They do help filter the people you decide to invest your time in versus dating wasters.

Music Of The Spheres

God it was good to see Centro-Matic last night. Yeah, they played a lot of newer stuff that I've never taken a liking to, but they also threw in some real gems. I've heard the achingly beautiful slow version of "Rock'n'Roll Eyes" but never the album version live. That was followed with "Part Of This Accident" then later "Infernoesque Grande" and "Flashes & Cables" in tandem. And the encore was pure 2000 Centro-Matic: "All The Lightning Rods", "Tied To The Trailer" complete with Matt Pence's madness on the drums and finally "Am I The Manager Or Am I Not?" Only the second time I've heard that song live, the first time was the closer for the best show I've seen by any band. I say that was the best show ever because The Greenhornes opened and it was the only show where the audience actually shushed people during the quiet parts. Didn't hurt that the band was throwin' electricity all over a great set-list on a cool June Sunday night.
Centro-Matic once was a consistent cathartic experience. They lost that for most of the decade but showed little sparks of that again last night. I left content. Also realized I need to see more shows.

Notes From A Jeweler's Bench

Soldering is as much a matter of science as it is of art. All temperature refers to really is how excited molecules and particles are. The use of the appropriate flame is critical but not something a bench jeweler has the time or need to calibrate exactly. Instead it's done more by context and feel. A light brushing flame will produce different results than a tight, sharp flame. Even then, the fuel to oxygen ratio is a matter of feel as similar flame shapes can have vastly different temperatures. Additionally, the aperture of a torch tip affects flame temperature. What works for silver soldering won't work for 14k or platinum soldering.
The lesson here is to realize that a jeweler about to put heat to a piece has put all of this into account before even picking up their torch. The more experienced the jeweler, the more the jeweler knows what they can get away with and what they can't.

The Get Back Sessions

One of the many ways I'm not normal even amongst the abnormal: I still make mix tapes (well, CDs, but you get the idea). Sent off four mixes to a few friends early in April. Had another mailed out to a mix CD club I'm in (yeah, I'm that nerdtastic when it comes to music). Liked making that one as a friend and his wife let me use a recording of their baby's heartbeat in utero on the mix. Little Julien should be here by now since they went to the hospital last night. Brief tangent aside, I'm in the midst of two new mixes. One is themed around songs that make me instantly and almost unconsciously smile. Suppose you could call that a happy mix, but in my timey-wimey sidewalk slant. The second is themed on parkour, the art of movement. I like taking one kind of cultural product and building a new structure atop the founding idea(s).
That first mix though...it makes my heart and soul ache with joy. Who knew you could experience almost divine euphoria and still feel heartache? Or maybe that's the reason. The experience of awe leaving you with a desire to constantly bathe in that light. Imagine those first few moments of feeling true love. How your heart strains your ribs and chest. The lightness you feel--emotionally, spiritually, mentally. Clarity of thought, precision of movement. As if Rodin's statues leapt off their pedestals and began explaining the meaning of everything. That's what I'm capturing aurally. Nietzsche always did see music as the ultimate expression of the Dionysian. Sublime joy is what I'm after.

The Get Back Sessions

Can't say this is a start. No middle, beginning or end. Just sort of is. These are my personal observations, part philosophical, part nonsense. I'm sorting these pages out a bit. My hope is by doing so I can provide a more constant stream of posts. No promises on consistency though. It's my brain plugged directly into these digital magics and my brain is a very varied thing. That's all for the moment. Ain't a start, ain't an end. Just all in it.

Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader?

I swear to God I have me some Wordpress hate. But I'm determined not to let that slow me down anymore. I wanted to move this blog to it's own domain and everything. The plans are still there, just not the knowledge yet.

Oh, but I have stories to tell!

Later though, mustn't make this temporary residence too ambitious. First things first:

The Fake Famous Girlfriends

I do believe Karen O has been replaced as my fake rock-star girlfriend by the glorious Victoria Hesketh, more commonly known as Little Boots. I say this in a non-stalkerish way, sort of. She's adorable, a fantastic singer and an inventive lyricist and composer. Then of course, she has a blog where she says things like this:

"what a difference a year makes.

when i think back to sitting freezing writing songs that are now going to be on my first album its almost incomprehensible.

thank you to any one who has listened, written, watched, come to a gig, told a friend, taken a picture, shared a link, downloaded a song be it legally or otherwise... everyone who has supported me in any way whatsoever this year, i wouldn't be making music without you so thank you from the bottom of blackpool tower to the furthest stars in the cosmos....

ok i'll stop being epic now.

go and get pissed, eat quality street and fall asleep watching love actually.

happy christmas,

victoria x"

I don't have the time at the moment to post her two blog hits "Meddle" and "Stuck on Repeat" but go find them. Now I'm off to work when I'm not supposed to.

Day One with the BlackBerry

The alarm is ungodly loud. I did wake up to an email from a friend I'm sweet on though, so it evens out. Apparently my comics are delayed and someone new is following me on Twitter. I found this out while in the bathroom getting ready for work. Still haven't put everyone's info in, then again I never have collected all of their information in one place before. I need to get a card adapter so I can pull all the business info off of my dad's old Palm. Beyond that, happy with it at the moment. The damn thing looks like an oversized version of my old phone.

Two Receivers in Deep Space

Urge to post...rising

Reasons Why I Should Be Shot

There are many legitimate reasons for why someone would be in their rights to painfully torture me unto death. That I spent my money on clothes and new tech versus art like James Jean's is a primary one. I will have this painting one day.

In a Coma

Work has obviously slowed what is already a spotty blog. But be assured that I will return to posting things only I care about soon. Or rather, be warned.

Taking a Page, Closing a Tab

I think this post will qualify as a genuine shotgun blast of information as I'm very tired.

First off is this excellent link provided by the near and dear Miss Information. It's along the lines of something I think college professors should do at the beginning of class or at least when the opportunity presents itself: pronounce the names of key figures in the class literature. I always have to spell out the name of a philosopher highly influential to me, Ludwig Wittgenstein (the 'w' is pronounced as a 'v') and I still don't know how to say Hegel's name properly yet. So finally there's a site that provides those pronunciations. About fucking time.

Next is a post from Ezra Klein linking to another blogger who makes a point about the raft of Obama appointees and their informal name as "Clinton staffers". The point is it seems the mainstream media and particularly the rightist punditry refer to "any Democrat under about fifty or fifty-five years of age who has had work experience in the executive branch of the federal government." This generally puts said Democrat in the Clinton administration but doesn't necessarily make them a Clinton appointee. Both Klein and Hertzberg think this isn't a problem in the first place but look to clarify the difference between President Clinton's appointments, President Bush's first term appointments and President-Elect Obama's appointments. The key differences are: a) President-Elect Obama has avoided the "no Carter people" or "no Johnson people" of the Clinton and Carter presidencies respectively based on his desire to collect the best people to do the jobs he wants done; and b) most of the Democrats with any executive experience naturally come from the Clinton administration since that was the last time the Democrats held that branch of government. So calling an appointee from the 90s a Clinton person does refer to someone but that reference is pretty meaningless since it doesn't really tell you anything about the person. More to the point, by calling on such people President-Elect Obama is looking to avoid the learning curve of White House staffing.

The final tab to close comes from Andrew Sullivan (naturally) who links to a review of Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody that described both the advantages and drawbacks to distributed, or cloud, actions on the Interwibble. Where you have Flickr providing the first pictures of the 2005 London bus bombings that no news organization could have gotten you also have cloud organizations for Holocaust deniers (re: future lead pipe victims) or even terrorist cells. Shirky, through reviewer and tech security guru Bruce Schneier, speaks about the Interweb's ability to allow loose collections of people to form informal organizations with near zero financial costs and a wide latitude for collaboration and potential action. Personally, I think there's some over-stating of the matter. Loose collections of people don't necessarily evolve into informal structures and informal structures don't necessarily do anything.

Welcome Back Hack

Oh look! Krauthammer's back from his post-election rehab! And he's brought the neo-conservative word on the economy with him in the form of former AEI think-tanker Irwin Stelzer. Bad Krauthammer, you didn't cite your source. I had to go through all the trouble of googling Stelzer. I mean, when the guy you're about to use as the basis for an argument on the economy and how Capitol Hill is handling things once edited and wrote the introduction to The Neocon Reader, don't you think it's pertinent to mention that to your audience? No? Not even when the sitting president appears to have checked out and the president-elect gives all the appearance of already running the country? Not even when the appointees selected by the current president are the ones asking for the billions of dollars you mentioned (without regulation of course)? Oh, and you forgot to mention that Wall Street came running to D.C. first, not the other way around. Fuck all man, own up to your ideology's mistakes. Welcome back Krauthammer. When's your next vacation?

Capital Gains My Ass

David Kurtz mentions this item on Tuesday from Rep. John Boehner who argues that cutting capital gains taxes further would stimulate the economy more than new spending would. I'm about ready to carry around a flaming effigy of capital gains taxes if the GOP claims one more time that cutting capital gains taxes will solve the economic crisis. How the fuck would cutting taxes on investments do that? Right now there's little incentive for people to even start investing in the financial markets let alone make further investments. And investment money is not money that flows into the economic markets so there's no help for the middle class there. Yes the financial markets need help but cutting capital gains taxes isn't a real solution nor does it solve the problem of a flailing consumer market. It's a ruse of an argument allowing the GOP to give the appearence of offering a solution while not actually providing one. What's more, it's a poor ruse as most of the middle class would look at a capital gains cut as some benefiting the rich, well-invested types versus their small annuities and savings accounts that keep getting smaller. Why the GOP keeps running this argument I don't know, but it shows a lack of seriousness on the part of the House GOP to come up with real solutions to this crisis. It's almost as if the GOP has checked out for the rest of the year and left everything for the Democrats to do, which actually might not be a terrible idea at this point.

Eye Strain

Bleh, I'm done appraising things for the night. My eyes hurt from the strain of going back and forth from 10X to 2X to 3X to normal. And my head doesn't have the energy left to type the damn thing and come up with carat sizes and prices. Plus I have some music to listen to and comics to read. I really do hate appraising things.

Delays of the Final Crisis Sort

Too much reading right now. You have any idea how hard it is to figure out what's going on in Final Crisis when you spent nearly a year out of comics? Honestly, Morrison is kicking some bizarre ass on Batman but Final Crisis makes no sense right now. And Johns is building up the Lanterns for The Blackest Night event next year so no help there. Superman is tied up in the New Krypton series and I can't find the first issue of the Brainiac arc. Basically I'm lost but I won't let anyone tell me what's going on since I want to read it myself. I could type appraisals, read books on marketing, novels that are stacking up again or reading the blogs, but no, it's comics for me right now. Fucking DC and Grant Morrison.

The Fundamentalist Trapped In Reality

It's a day of Sullivan posts, sans Gilbert and Sullivan music sadly. In this post obviously the topic is Gov. Palin, her fundamentalism and fundamentalist religion in general. Sullivan is responding to the comments of a reader arguing that you cannot understand the thinking of Gov. Palin without prefacing it with an understanding of her religious background. This, of course, is true but a subject Sullivan has dealt with in his year-old book The Conservative Soul.
For Sullivan, it's not so much that figures like Gov. Palin or President Bush willfully ignore reality but their fundamentalist beliefs (such as the inerrancy of the Bible) force contradictions within the Bible itself and emperical reality that doesn't jive with the divine text into a sort of non-existence within their psyche. The only problem is reality and contradictions have a habit of continuing to intrude in one's life (such as President Bush's perception of the Iraq War and the reality on the ground). Contrary to what you might think, the schizophrenic mentality it takes to maintain the convictions of fundamentalism are not necessarily overriden by reality. With the case of Gov. Palin one sees a woman so steeped within the fundamentalist psyche that, even if you pierce through her perceptions, whatever information is conveyed is ultimately an abberation devil-derived, or further evidence of their correctness. Either way, further discussion of the topic is no longer needed. Hence the "lalalalala" attitude comes so naturally to fundamentalists while appearing freakishly psychotic to everyone else.
Even when ultimately defeated, either by a superior ideology or obsolesence through time, fundamentalists not only refuse to recognize the defeat, they claim a faltering of the faith, a conspiracy of sinners or even a Job-like test they must endure. Reality has influence over the minds of fundamentalists; it serves as a reminder of why they must maintain their faith and a confirmation of their own righteousness. Trying to sway the fundamentalist psyche is akin to deprogramming Manchurian candidates or women lost in abusive relationships. It is possible, but the break from one perceptual reality to another is traumatizing in its own right. Better to ease the fundamentalist psyche out through marginalization and natural shifts in generational thinking. It took nearly four decades to reach this point in the culture war of America but I'm optimistic that moving away from it will happen quickly--say a decade or less. At least that's what I hope.