Literate Archives
Kilgore Trout Wannabe’s, or The Fountain of Youth is Vegas.
By on June 24, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)
So, long story short. The website is back online. Originally I felt ashamed about the circumstances, but I feel mostly angry about it now. It just took forever and cost me $46.99 more than it should have. (Dolla dolla billz y’all!) That being said. I’m sorry everyone. But now, to the future…
prescottfamily.org is coming in a big way. We have big plans. Big dreams. Small hopes. That’s all I can say about this for now. TOP SECRET.
It may come as a surprise, but I am more of a designer than some code guru. (Not a surprise.) Suffice it to say I don’t really know much javascriptness. Today I came across Prototype and script.aculo.us. (Way legit!) Both have the potential to help me pimp out these here pages to Olympic heights.
You know it’s all that. But I miss my friends and love those who are around chillin’. New friends, potential new friends. Beer barons. I ran out of deo-derant. And I mean, it’s fine. Work is in AC. After work is in the warm LA nights. Warm smoggy LA. San Gabriel Valley. LA wannabe’s. It’s so weird. You are in “LA”, but not really. You don’t feel like you are.
There is this unseen gap. Like a demographic. There are newer strip mallz here. That’s the big difference. There isn’t as many established strips like there are in the real “LA”. Not like established historic like New England (Shili), but sort of. (I just ended it with a preposition, but whatever. It’s about the story telling. It’s the kids, the insane, the crap. The salt of the earth. The real people. They get it. Read Kurt V. He knows it. It’s the insane man (or woman) calling for Kilgore Trout. Sex shops. Science Fiction. Yeah, the writing is poor, but they said it. They deal with the real issues, the UNIVERSE.)
My Karass
By on July 7, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (6)
Most of life, in general, is comprised of people acting weird. Even in the most sincere cases, life is like this. But that’s the big idea isn’t it? Everything is silly and cannot be taken seriously ever. But at the same time, everything is sacred.
This next part is especially for Alisha and Laura, but is equally important for anyone who loves old men as their own offspring:
“I wish I’d written Our Town. I wish I’d invented Rollerblades.” -Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
SPOILER ALERT*: I can’t really talk about this without ruining the surprise.
I have been considering my karass today. (All of this probably has to do with the amount of Vonnegut I have been consuming of late.) I can’t exactly pinpoint who these individuals might be, but I know it must involve the Internet at some point. I love the idea that we are unknowingly working toward some greater goal together. It’s not anything we plan. Life, the Universe, plans, they all progress on their own.
*You should read Cat’s Cradle or this if you are in a hurry.
Links Blaring
By on November 11, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)
REAL TALK! I’m at the crossroads, Sunday morning, (gonna miss everybody), in life right now. I’m exiting the college-part time job-parents helping with rent/school/insurance/etc-not worrying about things like insurance-time and entering the holy f-bomb-I need to get a job soon-working-car?-finding a place to live-getting married-combining books-living time. I really felt this today. Not in a bad way, more like getting stuff done like mad. I was gathering for my portfolio today and realized at some point recently I deleted my last 2 years of school work. EVERYTHING! Which is good and bad. Most of it wasn’t that good anyhow + I have printed versions of all the good stuff. Also, I have all the stuff from working at UR. (Also, it looks like I’m actually graduating, contrary to what I found out last week. I shouldn’t speak too soon though…)
Even though there is only 5 (4?) weeks left in the semester, what really hit me was how unprepared I am for jobs/interviews. Not because my portfolio is loosely together, but I’m mentally not prepared. I was reading How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul today when I realized this. It talked about going on countless interviews, learning from the bad ones, etc. REAL TALK!
“HOW TO FIND A JOB”
“WHAT DO EMPLOYERS REALLY WANT”
I will probably talk about this a lot more coming up, so get ready!!! (i.e. I lost interest in writing more because Laura and I are making ginger bread and it’s almost ready!!!!)
***Links Blaring refers to my Tumblr, which attacks all my time!!!
I read this book: Rendezvous with Rama
By on March 14, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
While looking for our book club books at Counterpoint I came across Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke for $3. I really like this guy, Arthur C. Clarke. This is the third (fourth?) book I’ve read that he has written. Okay, the others were 2001: A Space Odyssey (obviously) and Islands in the Sky. I watched the film adaptation of 2010, but that doesn’t count. Also, the film wasn’t that good. Though it was made 16 years after 2001 the special effects are far more primitive. But that’s not the point. I read Rendezvous with Rama and it was very good. I liked it very much. I read it in (essentially) two sittings. You should really read it.
This book has it all, all the elements. It’s really the perfect representation for its genre. It has adventure (Wild at Heart hahahah), it has uncertainty, it has the unknown. That’s one thing I really like about Arthur C. Clarke. It is a theme in all his works I’ve read. The uncertainty, the unknown. No matter how advanced and futuristic society becomes, we never know more than our Solar System firsthand. Our Solar System is quite large, and colonization of planets happens, but we still are always curious. There is always the infinite universe. It is pretty darn overwhelming.
To explain the plot briefly, Rama is a 31 mile long spacecraft. It has been traveling for perhaps millions of years. The closest it has been to any star was more than 200,000 years ago. It is an enigma. It is unknown. As it is traveling through our Solar System the crew of the Endeavour has 3 weeks to explore it. That process represents the core of this book. There are many surprises. If you read this book, keep in mind that the Ramans do everything in threes.
I read this book: The Survivors
By on April 11, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)
I just finished a book that I must reccomend. It is called The Survivors. I feel so down since I finished this book. It is the essence of everything I love about books lately. Adventure, suspense…
I bought The Survivors along with Rendezvous with Rama, another gem from Counterpoint. I mean, it was on the vintage paperback shelf. I paid $1 for this book. I bought it solely on the cover. Perhaps my greatest find at a used bookstore.
I am deeply obsessed with polar regions for the same reason I’m obsessed with the ocean and outer space. It’s the unknown, it cannot be contained. We cannot really grasp it, even with our thoughts. It is the sublime. It is beautiful and bleak.
Polar regions have incredible occurrences that only happen at the poles. Auroras? High concentration of meteorites? Yeah! Talk about feeling small. The thought of it all overwhelms me.
The Survivors follows the story of Duncan Craig, who left his job in London in search of something new. He travels to South Africa where he thinks he will be able to find work. The work he finds is far different than he imagines. He becomes a skipper of a catcher in a whaling fleet. The circumstances in which he becomes employed are sketchy. There is a lot of unrest in the fleet and speculation of murder and wrong doing. There is a rush to get out into the Atlantic and sort out all the trouble.
As the story begins to become monotonous, Craig goes into the floes in rescue of another catcher whose hull was cracked from the ice. This simple rescue escalates and many ships go down, including the large factory ship The Southern Cross. With over 500 men on the ice, they must figure out how to survive without freezing to death or being crushed by the icebergs moving through the floes. Whoa! You begin to get an idea of what it would be like to be stranded on the ice, how small we are in the scheme of things, how little control we actually have.
And this is the real deal. While researching this post I came across this blurb about the author: “Hammond Innes was a writer who made a point of researching the material for his adventures in great depth. If he was writing about oil-rigs then he spent time on an oil-rig; if about the Antarctic then he spent time in the frozen South.”1 Hammond Innes had personal contact with the forces of the Antarctic. He witnessed the magnitude of the ice. I can’t imagine anything more perfect. This book is “a rousing adventure yarn of derring-do on the Antarctic” written by an author who experienced it first hand.
1 Asto
