the random thoughts thread

[Jenny]

i'll be the first to say it:
i dont like when white people play the blues.

:-/

[ycartrob]

i'll be the first to say it:
i dont like when white people play the blues.

:-/

ooops, for the first time ever, I have to disagree with you, face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEOY0f_hNro&feature=related

[Jenny]

i'll be the first to say it:
i dont like when white people play the blues.

:-/

ooops, for the first time ever, I have to disagree with you, face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEOY0f_hNro&feature=related

OK OK i was speaking generally.
you've proved that it can be done.
touche, my friend, touche.

[The DARK]

Also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ATQFFwU0_k

But I see your point, forgive me for rubbing it in.  ;)

[ycartrob]

Also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ATQFFwU0_k

But I see your point, forgive me for rubbing it in.  ;)

this here, is the point (do you recall Blues Hammer from Ghost World?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfu8Dx0N6uY

[vespachick]

My internet surfing goes all catawumpus when the Board is down.  It's like I forget how to do anything! :-[

[Jenny]

now i remember why i stopped smoking weed.

[vespachick]

HOLY MOSES!! I finally bought an external hard drive (160 GB's) and moved my iTunes over.  My computer is like on rocket fuel now!   WOooooppPPeEEEEE!

[Jenny]

irony isn't funny to me.

[easy jim]

now i remember why i stopped smoking weed.

RIP, the good times...

[sweatboard]

I have applied to a Christian College. Seems like they are taking a little long to get back to me. They haven't talked to any of you have they?  ;)

you don't have to go to college to be a Christian...

HOLY CRAP!!   ;D

[easy jim]

dont you hate it when you finally get something figured out and it blows up in your face.  it blows up and pieces of shit just smack you in the face and run down your best Sunday shirt.  

I do

[vespachick]

Angy Ewok, this is for you (from yesterday's paper -)it sort of cuts off here due to new forum software, so sorry :'():

http://www.oregonlive.com/O/fashion/index.ssf?/base/living/121201891629930.xml&coll=7

The sounds of 2 writers talking
Chuck Palahniuk and Willy Vlautin meet and talk about their trade -- and creative juices
Sunday, June 01, 2008
JEFF BAKER
The Oregonian
Chuck Palahniuk was working a story, a little something special for his book tour. Willy Vlautin was just back from Europe and heading up to Seattle for a reading at the Elliott Bay Book Company.
Both writers were eager to get together at Huber's and talk about what they do and how they do it. They'd met before and were friendly but didn't know much about each other. Palahniuk was curious about Vlautin's musical background -- Vlautin is the founder of the alt-country group Richmond Fontaine -- and how songwriting fit into Vlautin's creative life. Vlautin marveled at Palahniuk's energy and imagination and wondered how he kept it up over 11 books.
Vlautin's new novel "Northline" is a moving follow-up to his 2007 debut "The Motel Life" and marks him as a writer of enormous empathy and skill. Palahniuk's just-released "Snuff" continues the string of inventive, boundary-pushing fiction that started with "Fight Club" in 1996. A movie of his 2003 novel "Choke," starring Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston, won a jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and is scheduled for release Aug. 1.
Both writers live outside Portland -- Palahniuk in Southwest Washington, Vlautin in Scappoose -- and love to find unusual places to work. They started their conversation about the creative process by talking about YouTube and hostile audiences. Their comments have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Jeff Baker: Willy, what happened in Europe, where you were touring with Paul Brainard and playing music?
Willy Vlautin: People were recording it. I read but I had pedal steel behind me and we were playing music in between. As far as I'm concerned, if people want to record it it's more of an honor than anything.
Chuck Palahniuk: Did people (give you grief) for being an American?
WV: No. The first couple of times we toured there we did a little bit, but we're not really that kind of band. Have you?
CP: In Ireland I got called an imperialist by some crazy heckler in Galway. Big, big hall in Galway and he just picked up his stuff and left, screaming the whole time.
JB: Chuck, at what point do you say, 'I want to do my next book about this'? How does it go from idea to execution?
CP: I'm always looking for circumstances that bring people together, like a play, for a limited window of time, for a structured activity that will allow them to gradually reveal themselves. Like this last week in Baltimore, sitting with these seven or eight middle-aged ladies and the publicist and me, just signing the books, flapping the books, stamping the books, this mindless activity for hours on end. It gave us the freedom to talk about our lives in gradually more detail.
Toward the end, people were telling really therapeutic secrets. I'm always looking for a trapped circumstance that will allow people to reveal themselves, which is what church used to be or support groups or green rooms at (sex shows); whatever serves as that sort of compulsory three hours of boringness that people need in their week so they can come together and they're given that license just to talk.
JB: Willy, do you write on tour?
WV: No. I write short stories for fun, and they're always my craziest ones, but I've never written a good one. I've edited a lot on the road. Book tours I can't because book tours make me nervous. I end up drinking beers every night and I can't write in the morning. With the band, I can just plug it in, so I don't get so nervous.
CP: Are you nervous about the presentation?
WV: I'm very shy, I'm very anxiety-ridden.
CP: But you still perform music?
WV: I've been hanging out with the same guys for 14 years in the band. You can hide behind the band. It still makes me nervous, but not like readings. That's why I've been so impressed with your readings. It takes a lot of me to do a reading tour. I'm a wreck when I come back.
CP: Readings can be poorly staged compared to music. In music there's a stage and a presentation built into it . . . plus they're serving beer. In a reading it can so dry and pretentious. . . . The way you hide behind the band, I hide behind my props, having those things to give out, those things to throw. . . .
WV: It gives it structure, too.
CP: Exactly. The severed arms go out at this point. The smoking cigarettes go out at this point.
WV: Can you write on tour?
CP: Yeah, sometimes the very best ideas come because of the emotional stress of being so deprived. Also, people are just constantly heaping ideas on you. . . . My job on the road is to sort of listen to people and gather stories from them as well. They're just heartbreaking and they're so original.
WV: And you have a good memory for it, too.
CP: You know, if the story is good enough, you don't need a good memory. . . . I can't imagine thinking in music. Do you just hear a rhythm, or . . . how does music occur?
WV: I think about it as a story first. It's always a story, and music is the soundtrack to it.
CP: Do you think of lyrics first?
WV: The story first, the heart of the story. When I'm writing a story, I'll have ideas but I have the heart of it in my gut, you know, like what it feels like, and that's how I write a story and that's how I write a song. Like I'm working on a story right now and I don't know how it's going to end up.
CP: Do you write the songs?
WV: Yeah, I write the melodies. I can't read music. Two of the guys in the band can. I just write the chords. My stuff's really simple, too.
CP: That's a whole different skill I've never understood.
WV: I just look at it as writing soundtracks to stories. . . . I'm not a great musician by any stretch of the imagination, I just hang with them.
JB: So you present the melody and the lyrics to the band and they add to it and complete the song?
WV: Yeah.
CP: Workshop kind of works in the same way, where you present a rough draft or a first draft and you've got all the minds in the workshop saying, "What about developing this aspect" or, "You need to linger a beat longer here" or, "This joke would have a better effect if you tweak it this way."
WV: How do you know when to trust someone? I mean, the thing about workshop is it seems so scary. Do you just follow your gut like you would with anyone who gives you advice?
CP: If it really resonates with you and you sort of pound yourself on the head and say, "Yeah, I should have done it that way, that way," then it's right.
WV: Raymond Carver said anyone can read your story and give you good advice. A grocery clerk can read your story and figure out something you wouldn't have figured out. Everyone's got a few good ideas about stories and you'll know when they hit you. . . . Does it still bother you when you get bad reviews?
CP: I don't read them. I can't read them anymore. If it's good it just makes you so high you just walk around high until you collapse, and (if it's bad) it just bums you out. It doesn't serve my plan.
JB: What about you, Willy?
WV: I try not to. I do initially just to get a ballpark view. You can tell from the first few reviews what it's going to be. . . . I just like writing, and I don't want to give them more power than they deserve. My brother will tell me if they're good, like, "You've got to read this one." I don't really read rock magazines or book review-type magazines.
JB: What kind of music do you listen to when you write?
CP: It varies so much from book to book. For next year's book, I listened to nothing but vintage Billy Idol, and it's so funny because I've always felt that a short story should start midstream, just bam, bam, bam with a lot of energy and that it should run for a limited amount of time and wrap up really tight. Five, six, seven pages, tops, and then it should be over and just leave you stunned.
And then I saw this documentary in which Billy Idol was talking about punk music and he said all the songs were about starting bam, bam, bam and going for two-and-a-half minutes and then the end. And I realized that my taste in short stories was based on Generation X and the Go-Gos and the Germs and all these punk bands from the late '70s and early '80s. and I wrote exactly to mimic those songs.
WV: You've said something about writing with speed, with that burst, and I think that's great. It's just like Thom Jones' stories, jumping on for that ride without having to shift through it all. You just jump on.
CP: You did a screenplay for "The Motel Life." What was that like, writing a screenplay?
WV: They told me what they wanted, which I wish they wouldn't have done. It was kind of like sitting at a lunch like this, and between phone calls they told me what they wanted. . . . They didn't really have a clear vision, but I took notes. I went home and wrote what I liked. . . . I'm not really sure what'll come of it, but it took four months going over and over to get it right, and I much rather would have worked on a novel. I think there's a lot of skill and things involved in writing a screenplay that I'm not sure I want to find out. I'd much rather start a new story. How about you?
CP: Kind of the same thing, especially if it's several books back it's kind of a complete, resolved thing and it's hard to reinvent it through visual images, plus it's not the skill set that I studied and know anything about.

[dragonboy]

fight fight fight, bite bite bite...the Itchy & Scratchy shooooow!

[primushead]

Fucking locusts.  Shut up already. >:(

[dragonboy]

Both of my sisters have Wiis, both of my sisters and my Dad have DSs...I feel left out  :-/

[dragonboy]

112?!! I'll be lucky if I make 40  ;)

[vespachick]

"The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds."

-Daniel Goleman

[megalicious]

dear dude who invented air conditioning,

you are awesome, and my life would suck without your invention.

love,
meg

[MMJ_fanatic]

Fucking locusts.  Shut up already. >:(

don't ya mean cicadas?