Okay so I'm attempting to complete my Tool Vinyl collection, but I'm having some issues. First of all, does anyone know if all Undertow vinyls are original run, or has there been a reissue of them since they came out? If there has been reissues, how can I tell the 1st run apart from the reissue?
I'm about to spend a lot of money on Ebay, and I have the serial numbers off the vinyls I'm bidding on, so I just want to assess the true value of this vinyl and make sure I'm not getting scammed. Time is of the essence - please respond!!!
I'm serious, I have been bitten by too many puppies, and your avatar makes me extremely uneasy at times. I can feel those horrible little needle teeth pinching the tips of my fingers and scraping the fleshy bits of my hand, and I can hear that almost innocuous gurgling growl.
I'm serious, I have been bitten by too many puppies, and your avatar makes me extremely uneasy at times. I can feel those horrible little needle teeth pinching the tips of my fingers and scraping the fleshy bits of my hand, and I can hear that almost innocuous gurgling growl.
Scars are cool.
Scraps with animals build character.
It's like going to a crazy, ex-wrestling dentist for knee surgery.
You know you're going home wiser for all your troubles and tribulations.
__________________ Time is still the infinite jest.
Last night a dog had a brain tumor on Dogtown, he slanted his head to the left and had his eyeball sinking into his skull. He was also bald with the exception of his head and tail which were huge and fluffy (strikingly familiar to a lion)
They had to euthanize him halfway through the episode because he was throwing up, walking in circles and running into the wall.
Last night a dog had a brain tumor on Dogtown, he slanted his head to the left and had his eyeball sinking into his skull. He was also bald with the exception of his head and tail which were huge and fluffy (strikingly familiar to a lion)
They had to euthanize him halfway through the episode because he was throwing up, walking in circles and running into the wall.
The poor dog.
That kind of scenario just makes my heart crack.
Mainly, because I can picture myself holding it and repeating, 'It's okay.'
__________________ Time is still the infinite jest.
When I think about it, when I let my mind go there, when I've been there, it has always felt like betrayal. Kills a small piece of what remains of innocence. And while it's kinder to make it stop, it still felt like I had let her down, looking into those sweet brown eyes and telling her for the last time that I love her and that it will be all right. She trusted me. And whether it was an accident of mismatched aging between her and me, or if there was something more that could have been done, I still feel like I lied.
They didn't want me there when they slipped the needle in. And I never said goodbye.
Sometimes, in dreams, I've seen her. My dead pets usually come back in dreams as zombies and I have to whack them with a shovel. But not her. We are always running through a field, green and bright and fresh, and she's bounding right alongside me or circling me, and her rich voice fills in all the sounds in barks and yips. And there's a warmth and an utter lack of fear.
If there's something after all this and maybe dogs can come back and visit you after they die, I think she knows I only ever loved her. I think she understands.
When I think about it, when I let my mind go there, when I've been there, it has always felt like betrayal. Kills a small piece of what remains of innocence. And while it's kinder to make it stop, it still felt like I had let her down, looking into those sweet brown eyes and telling her for the last time that I love her and that it will be all right. She trusted me. And whether it was an accident of mismatched aging between her and me, or if there was something more that could have been done, I still feel like I lied.
They didn't want me there when they slipped the needle in. And I never said goodbye.
Sometimes, in dreams, I've seen her. My dead pets usually come back in dreams as zombies and I have to whack them with a shovel. But not her. We are always running through a field, green and bright and fresh, and she's bounding right alongside me or circling me, and her rich voice fills in all the sounds in barks and yips. And there's a warmth and an utter lack of fear.
If there's something after all this and maybe dogs can come back and visit you after they die, I think she knows I only ever loved her. I think she understands.
This happens to me, also. It's the eyes. The soul's mirror, eh?
My dad's dog just had an operation. I just called him to see, y'know, how it went.
Just to be there, in spirit, for them.
And the whole time, I was thinking of the paraphrase, "How we treat the weak(and infirm), yeah, that's our true nature calling." Perry Farrell-Strays
Bottom line; it's harder not to be there.
It's important They understand, we love them no matter what.
__________________ Time is still the infinite jest.
Velveteen Rabbit audio on vinyl and played until it did not work any longer.
Dogs and childhood. Vinyl, remembering mum's stereo, big expensive fucker, and the tiny needle cleaning device she had and how funny I thought it was when I was small. It was a little vibrating thinger, and I chased the cats with it.
Mum gave me her vinyl copy of The Wall a few years ago. It's not as if I have gotten any use out of it, or can hope to any time soon. It's sitting safely in a sturdy box nearly 2000 miles away, four days driving, Fortuna. Storage unit, with everything else, my books, my movies, the better part of my better artwork. Even Crowley is up there, hell.
Silly material attachment, maybe, but there's more. All of these things, they have some strange memory, some importance beyond what they're made of. People, places, events, as much pressed in or printed on or woven into the fabric of what these things are on the surface.
When I say I miss my stuff, I guess I mean that I miss what my stuff means to me.
Hey. I mulled this over for a bit.
And it still fuddles me up. I believe because of the infinite possibilities.
Ultimately, the enigma is wrapped around individual memories.
And each of us carries our own specific blueprint's of data.
Why some things simply can't be bought or sold.
And, also, why everyone sees these 'golden moments' differently.
A lot of my golden moments revolve around vinyl albums.
Music is the main threadding holding together my timeline.
Then music leads to words leads to art leads to movies...
__________________ Time is still the infinite jest.
I was going through some of the scripts from my comic book today, picking certain scripts out to take with me on a quickly approaching trip. And I was looking through my super-rough drafts, I could feel the memories in them, where I wrote them, what was going on. One scene here, written while waiting at the airport in Phoenix, Arizona, and another one I concocted sitting on a bench outside the library. I remember what I was listening to, in the beginning it was Mer de Noms, somewhere near the middle Dark Side of the Moon, the end of the second story arc was Smashing Pumpkins. This and that, here and there. The music is as much a part of it for me as the writing. I think, without the music, the writing probably would have never been.
When I look through my scripts, I'm bombarded by these memories. The pages hold more than the words, and the words mean more to me than their definitions. Because things happened during the composition that somehow find their trigger when I flip through those pages.
And I remember just today talking about where I had written so many of the scripts, not a single one of them came into being at a desk. And here, now, it has connected again, to memory. Strange synchronicity.
I was going through some of the scripts from my comic book today, picking certain scripts out to take with me on a quickly approaching trip. And I was looking through my super-rough drafts, I could feel the memories in them, where I wrote them, what was going on. One scene here, written while waiting at the airport in Phoenix, Arizona, and another one I concocted sitting on a bench outside the library. I remember what I was listening to, in the beginning it was Mer de Noms, somewhere near the middle Dark Side of the Moon, the end of the second story arc was Smashing Pumpkins. This and that, here and there. The music is as much a part of it for me as the writing. I think, without the music, the writing probably would have never been.
When I look through my scripts, I'm bombarded by these memories. The pages hold more than the words, and the words mean more to me than their definitions. Because things happened during the composition that somehow find their trigger when I flip through those pages.
And I remember just today talking about where I had written so many of the scripts, not a single one of them came into being at a desk. And here, now, it has connected again, to memory. Strange synchronicity.
No, I don't. It's not in the phase when I'll be drawing it.
But once I do have stuff online, yeah. Of course. I'm probably gonna be a total attention whore about it, actually.
As in...
Yeah, I really like Lateralus, and o hai, have you read my COMIC BOOK?
Actually, I lied. I think I have like four sketches of two fairly minor characters. I'll find them later.
If you're ever looking for exposure, I just opened an entertainment page on my website... I interviewed Paul Telner and broke the news about his TV Deal, I interviewed Brock Laborde about his book... and we've only had the page up for 2 weeks.
If you have like some one or two page drawings and want to get your name out, send me a link and I'll throw them up, credit you and see what that can do for you! :)
That's cool that you've gotten to that point so quickly with your site. Congrats on that.
Well, once I get to the point where I actually have uh, content or something, I will feel no shame in hitting you up. Probably like 5 or 6 months depending on job or whatever...
I'll give you much props for it on my site where I'm gonna be publishing for sure.
That's cool that you've gotten to that point so quickly with your site. Congrats on that.
Well, once I get to the point where I actually have uh, content or something, I will feel no shame in hitting you up. Probably like 5 or 6 months depending on job or whatever...
I'll give you much props for it on my site where I'm gonna be publishing for sure.
We've been up for a while with gaming--I get all my Xbox 360 games for free from all the main companies... my friends deal with PS3, Wii etc. But I have grown apart from gaming a bit and wanted something that's more of my thing; entertainment.
I wanted to focus on books, interviews with celebrities, interesting art, television and movies (I'm currently taking television broadcasting in college). I've been having trouble finding content worthy of publishing though... :(
I had a thoughtful and maybe insightful poaste but then my stupid friend called me and distracted me and I can't remember what I was going to say.
Something along the lines of things are veering more towards self publication etc and uh creative commons, no longer being slaves to the mainstream preestablished order of the media in general due entirely to the exclusionary and elitist practises of the industry...
Good, let's build on this.
Undertow is out on vinyl...
Vinyl is a trigger, spinning us back and out into memory land.
Soundtrack, images, movement.
Edit, cut, paste.
Yumm, paste.
__________________ Time is still the infinite jest.
I think when people started to hear about libraries and universities putting their entire collections online for people to read, and once google books got in gear, people started to realize that maybe self publication didn't have to be as difficult as saving up money and paying for printing and then hoping it sold. Or selling your soul to some shady company who guaranteed publication, but nothing else.
And the same for music. The whole revolution that occurred with Napster changed things. It gave way for iTunes and other similar venues, which are accessible even to groups without a label or a recording contract. And iTunes' honesty about how many mp3s they sold versus how many mp3s the labels paid their clients for shone a pretty bright and revealing light on how badly some people were getting screwed. Now Radiohead and NIN and a few others have ditched their labels (either permanently or temporarily) and now allow free download of their new albums from their websites. Radiohead: enter your own price, no seriously. Pay or not; they've known which side their bread is buttered on for a long time. The big money comes from touring. Royalties and record sales, that's the label's business and they take a pretty big cut. So finally a few groups manned up and were all like fuck the labels, because they've been fucking the musicians for a long time. Time to bite back. And I think the logic is that they've figured that if more people know about the music, if more people are interested, then they'll probably sell more tickets. If the music is more accessible, then more people will know. And big names like Radiohead and NIN can get away with it. Whether or not anyone new will be able to make it "big" doing their own self promotion and sale online has yet to be seen, whether they will be able to make a living at it. But that's the direction it's heading. And I hope they can make it.
Even television is going towards an online or online and free medium. From mini web-isodes to actually allowing people to watch full-length episodes of current shows. And then there are people who do video blogging and other things like that with reasonable success. Sometimes CRAZY success.
Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. Free for anyone who wants it, and with pretty high production values.
There's even some comic book by someone who has made money at comic books released online. I can't say I like the comic book itself, because I don't, but I like the concept.
Merchandise, touring, and maybe collectible items for the hardcore fans. You can live off that if you know what you're doing.
The guy who makes the webcomic XKCD is self sufficient at it. He used to work for NASA or something. Now he just does XKCD. And he survives. If he had been dependent on a publisher or a contract or something in that direction, he would have given up or starved by now, and eventually he would have been dropped. But he didn't; he did it online and just allowed his audience to grow and the cash he made to grow until he was self-sufficient. We've still got XKCD.
It works. But you have to do it right, and you've still got to have a little bit of luck. Taking out the publishers or record labels or studios can do a lot towards making sure that what money you make at it is YOUR money solves a certain number of problems, but it leaves others open and creates a few. But this is new. It hasn't been figured out entirely yet.
And I'm not saying that making money off of your art is the most important thing. But it is NICE. And if you can live off it, then that just means you'll be able to produce more of your craft without much worry about holding down a 9 to 5 job to pay the bills at the same time.
Vinyl, yeah. It has memories. It's sentimental. It's part of a time when anyone could strike sparks, when rocknroll was a smaller industry in a smaller world with a very specific audience, where people were connected. Mum was a hippie, and she actually lived next door to Jim Morrison at one point, no shit. But those times have been dead for a long time. And now we're going towards... you can't even touch an mp3. You can't pick it up and look at it and watch the way the light plays on grooves. It is only useful to listen to. It is only information, and it is intangible because of it.
Zeros and ones.
I will always have an affinity towards the feeling of carefully slipping a record out of its sleeve or cracking open a cd for the first time, but then again, I'm sure that some people around the time that the automobile overtook the horsenbuggy missed the closeness with their animal and the gentle sound of horseshoes against the ground. I miss my first computer, even though it was a plasticky piece of crap by today's standards. I've never felt that way again towards another computer, never felt that thrilled and that impressed. It had a four gig harddrive. I was so pleased. But within a few years, it was obsolete. Technological progress and sentiment are often at odds with each other.
I interviewed the minds behind White Ninja who now successfully live off their comics and the spin-off merchandise.
To bring things really into perspective; I Can Has Cheezburger has 4 workers who make their livings soley off posting user submitted cat pictures (which most have been frequenting many forums for years). They now own about 6 blogs posting images with captions and are doing quite well for themselves.
That reminds me: I once had a genius idea for a business venture. I know that certain people who have never lived in Texas, people from New York and other "strange foreign lands" have a certain affinity for the good ol' Texan stuff, like tumbleweeds. I do not understand this, but I am aware of it. Certain types have been known to purchase tumbleweeds on ebay and the like, to decorate or what have you. And it occurred to me, as I watched some tumbleweeds accumulate against the side of my house last winter that I could, in theory, collect the seeds, provide growing instructions, and produce a small "Grow Your Own" tumbleweed kit to sell to these bizarre and um maybe slightly dumb people. I could sell them for like five bucks, virtually no investment on my part. Ebay account, plastic bags, small printout of instructions, and the seeds are free to me.
Then I found out it had been done. Something about the lack of originality made me not want to do it.
That reminds me: I once had a genius idea for a business venture. I know that certain people who have never lived in Texas, people from New York and other "strange foreign lands" have a certain affinity for the good ol' Texan stuff, like tumbleweeds. I do not understand this, but I am aware of it. Certain types have been known to purchase tumbleweeds on ebay and the like, to decorate or what have you. And it occurred to me, as I watched some tumbleweeds accumulate against the side of my house last winter that I could, in theory, collect the seeds, provide growing instructions, and produce a small "Grow Your Own" tumbleweed kit to sell to these bizarre and um maybe slightly dumb people. I could sell them for like five bucks, virtually no investment on my part. Ebay account, plastic bags, small printout of instructions, and the seeds are free to me.
Then I found out it had been done. Something about the lack of originality made me not want to do it.
That's actually a really good idea--and imitation wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if you can come up with a catchy slogan and website. I'd seriously look into that venture... even if it goes nowhere; it costs you nothing to invest in.
