Dual Fists of Inspiration

Wouldn't you just know it. I came home from work yesterday with a song stuck in my head: 'Distance' by Long Shot Party. "Who and/or what the fuck is that," you ask? It's a J-Pop song featured in OP2 of Naruto Shippuden. For the unitiated, "OP" means Opening - as in the opening credits of a show. (think Cheers: "...where everybody knows your name...") In anime, the opening sequence tends to change as episodes and story arcs progress, reflecting the story to come and the mood the writers want to present in this batch of episodes. So OP2 means the second opening sequence / song in the whole Naruto Shippuden library.

Sigh... Anyway, I came home with that song stuck in my head and I wanted to learn to play it. I looked up the tab with romaji lyrics and three hours later I had a recording I was so uniquely and overwhelmingly satisfied with that I would go on to listen to it at least fifty times -- giddily dancing like a five year old who's having too much fun to stop and take a pee.

So proud was I of what my audio workings had rendered that I felt the dire need to share it with the world. Usually I'd just upload it to muh' myspace music page, but suddenly that seemed silly. "I've got my own website now," I thought, "why should I rely on Rupert Murdoch to host my singing sensations?"

Thus began the unyielding attempt to shoe-horn an mp3 player into that minimalist site design I first published just hours earlier.

But inspiration was about to strike twice! For as I pondered the task before me an image popped into my head. It was a logo for the website. I won't bother describing it. (Scroll up and look left, dummy.) And once I had that logo in place, well the rest of the design finally started coming into focus.

So here we are. A website that damn-near looks like a website! I just might-could build on this one. Here's hoping I don't throw it away in the next 24 hours, like its predecessor.

P.S.: You damn well better listen to that song I put up!

Distance

Download

This is a cover of a Japanese punk rock song 'Distance' by Long Shot Party. I first heard this tune in Naruto Shippuuden's OP2 theme and this is purely a cover of that minute and a half, thematic version.

At time of posting I consider this to be my most enjoyable solo recording project ever. It's just a trifle, sure, but it's exactly as I want it, and that's rare.

Inaugural Address

After much too much deliberation and a whole slew of site designs thrown arbitrarily 'gainst the cupboards only to peel away and splatter, flaccid, on linoleum, I have finally found the perfect graphical backdrop for this website: None. My genius astounds even me.

Instead of placing the overlapping thickness of my many desperations on display by laboring, any longer than I sadly already have, at the reinvention of wheels web site-rical I will, instead, leave the content to the shaping of the page. You know: necessity; invention. As of now I have only this text and the video you may or may not see wasting space to stage left. Thus the chosen format. It serves this content purely and unceremoniously.

You do remember content don't you? It's that stuff art used to be made of before the advent of 3d graphics and alpha layered, chroma-keyed explosions; Before Roget was forced to list "vapid ratings whore" as a synonym of "journalist;" Before comfort and entertainment were canonized as virtues and "sin" came to mean "fiscal irresponsibility;" Before the pursuit of the dollar and broad social acceptance were recognized as ends of sacrificial worth, to be pursued in and of themselves.

...Oh who am I kidding. There was never a "before" that stuff. I should tell you to repent, and I will, many, many times - but for now revel in your debaucheries if it pleases you. Soon you will know a pain no comfort can unjoin.

So, yeah... Something about web graphics? Cool, cool.

Verbose: Going Nowhere Slow

One of my old rants committed to video as evidence to be used against me in the upcoming compentancy hearing.

The Rabbit: Purgatorio

Dog in a Bathtub Studios presents The Rabbit - Episode 1.

We certainly went from silly little hallway battle sequences to papier mache props and Tarantino'esque, foot fetish, in-the-trunk camera angles quickly, didn't we?