birdfall / upgrade

Watching Twitter die in such public indignity (I shudder to imagine what's going behind the badge-disabled "hard core" halls and offices is painful, one system shutting down, one after the other after the other, waiting for that last rattle to come as the good times and the bad flood back in collision and in concert. Sounds familiar.

But I'm happy with where I am, socially, now: this space, the newsletter, Mastodon. Still trying to strike the balance between all three, but that will come – probably when I stop thinking of it (I've found over the past several weeks that a purposeful attitude of indifference to result (AKA "fuck it") has been a boon creatively and diabetically): whatever the path forward it's an opportunity to use social media as I would use it were I to start today and not almost twenty years ago: usage in forties will be far different than in twenties.

Or at least it had better be.

Speaking of new from ashes of old: my beloved iPhone XR bit the big one yesterday and I spent much of the afternoon chatting toys and games with a cool kid at Best Buy (neither of us are digging DEATHLOOP) while we set up my iPhone 14 Pro. Haven't really explored it much yet, but I do know that the camera captures dogpictures even better than the XR so that's nice. Plus the screen doesn't have a massive crack and pixlation and black blobs all throughout. Upgrade.

Got stuck in The Work this morning (what does it want to be what am i not hearing what am i not seeing etc etc) so I did a new Lynda Barry / MAKING COMICS exercise. Will post later this morning.

new phone first picture

implements/20221117

Thought I might make this a regular feature here, my own version of “Uses This” / “Cool Tools.”

on screen :: primary writing app / second brain is a combination of Obsidian (for generating, storing, and linking) and Muse (for drawing scribbles all over texts and arranging it all across a 34-inch widescreen monitor).

in hand :: Lamy Studio LX black with fine point nib (same nib I've used on all of my Lamy pens: I always take the one that came with the pen off and replace it with that first nib, been there since my first Safari) flowing with black Pilot Iroshizuki Take-Sumi ink upon Baron Fig Confidant notebooks held in a Cold Creek Leather A5 journal cover..

on person :: Rite in the Rain's (appropriately titled) On-the-Go mini notebooks for being on-the-go in Rite-In-The-Rain Wallet (which is pretty useless as a wallet but is an excellent running/daily-wear-n-tear holder) with mini-pen; first thing that goes in my pocket in the morning and stays with me all day long…. Gerber Lockdown-Pry Mutlitool: I never realized how much I would use a small exacto knife until I used it all the time. The rest of the components are great too. I was using a Leatherman Skeletool but I need scissors far more often than I need pliers on a daily basis…. Any one of two “tough solar” Casio G-Shock watches in the current rotation: a GAB2100-1A or a GAB2100C-9A. Simple, no-frills. Love them both.

in orbit :: CW&T's Superlocal: my relationship my daily ritual has been forever altered. A work of functional art… House of Marley Stir It Up turntable: oh, how I love this thing – and how I love the ritual of vinyl. Will probably upgrade speakers though – I prefer more bass than the HOM speakers allow…. Donner Practice Pad + Vic Firth American Classic 2B sticks (wood tip) + George Lawrence Stone's STICK CONTROL: a perfect combo for drumming while thinking. STICK CONTROL is a warhorse, published in 1935, still the go-to-text. Repeat each exercise 20 times. A meditative way revisit a previous iteration when stuck in the current – and keep my increasingly arthritic hands moving.

illuminations

A full return to inverse proportionality?

I am far more excited by the magnetic motion light I've installed above the keyboard tray of the standing desk converter than I should be but I don't care: as brilliant as the UpLift converter is, it makes for a dark keyboard area, especially since I can't move the tray. Fix: magnetic, AAA battery motion LED light so that now, every time I move my hands to the keyboard I can see what I'm typing and it's brilliant and I'm excited and I make no apologies.

Also exciting me WRT light: discovered yesterday that I can tell Siri to turn of the lights after a certain amount of time which makes a perfect timer. My 90 are up, I'm in the dark – save for my little keyboard motion lights, of course...

Current implements post coming later today. Making it a regular thing.

Translation of sketchy hieroglyphics: DOG UNDER BLANKET.

(that other place) notes, expanded

Expanding, from Mastodon post:

As someone who attempted to run the day to day of a company financed by a rich asshole who thought they knew everything by virtue of being a rich asshole – though this particular rich asshole was much more hands off than Twitter's resident rich asshole (except when he had an idea that just had to happen which required me to spend most of my tenure fighting back and getting him to open the wallet to basic site functionality that needed fixing and enhancement – I mean, who would have thought that a digital archive of more than a million pages of scanned historical documents should have a robust and user-friendly search engine?) – I have nothing but sympathy for those trying to keep it afloat: You're staying with a sinking ship whose iceberg decided they should be the captain.

At this rate, I'll be stunned if Twitter's still up and running by the end of the week.

"No, not really"

Only side effect from omi-jab is a sore arm. Feel totally human otherwise, invincible in time for the next immuno-evasive variant to arrive over the holidays.

Vibes of Ted Cruz announcing Carly Fiorina as his running mate before the primaries were over in '16 as Tumor launched his revenge/ill-conceived indicitment avoidance greatest hits grift last night. Biden's reaction, when asked if he had anything to say about Tumor's announcing his candidacy, summed up all of my current thinking: "No, not really."

Still, waiting on the signs to pop up in this red state hell – or, rather, more signs to pop up since there have been numerous Tumor/Pestilence 2020 and Tumor 2024 signs and flags that never went away from the last time we had to listen to that shit.

Tried working in the evening last night and I really dug it. Thinking the reason it never worked before was that in the pre-LAST CHRISTMAS times, I had to work then – now I'm doing it because I want to.

good mail day

principles - updated

Principles, now numbering eight, with 05:

PUBLISH SOMETHING EVERY DAY - AKA the whole point of this space over the years: the daily posts are my warm-ups, my sketches – now including actual sketches – hurled into the world simply for the sake of hurling them into the world. I don’t anticipate that anyone will read them let alone enjoy them: they exist solely because I want them to exist and find the daily ritual of their composition in the spaces between the main work to be the most enjoyable method by which traverse the route between brain and publishing. Also a useful means by which to eradicate the need for external validation.

The complete living, breathing list lives and breathes here.

this would be a title if i could come up with one right now

Inverse proportionality's vanishing act continues: whereas once fewer words in the Main Work meant more words here, they are – as with yesterday's more with more – few with few (though there are, as I let this flow, more here than on the main work so perhaps it's a return to SOP?)

What I can tell you is that Kirby has been demanding to sit in my lap – while I'm sitting in the office chair - all morning: growing up with The Morkie and The Jorkie, he's yet to understand how massive he is; three more months of velociraptor age-range that could last three years or his entire life. Whatever works: he is, utterly, Derbz.

Also: go read THE MEMORY POLICE now. It’s a fucking masterpiece.

Bivalent stabjab this afternoon; die COVID die.

(back in the) grooves(?)

Banner day yesterday of site transformation, rebalancing: added pages for Attendance Cards, for VIOLENTLY ADORABLE, and Frequencies and "latest" (back) to the About page LINKS. Hoping that Squarespace adds a Mastodon social link icon soon but I suspect it will fall under their "such and such takes awhile to implement so please be patient (while we try to add stuff and break everything)" canned response.

Also nifty: the inspirations behind my new Principles page dug my efforts.

In word-land: banner morning this morning of getting back into the fiction groove – one of those rare mornings when I have a lot to write here but also managed to get a lot done in The Work: usually the amount of writing in this space is in inverse proportion to the amount of writing in The Work – of finding what wasn't working (efforts to combine – didn't need to combine stories, only to switch the medium of one) and how to – possibly – make it work for me again; also set a goal of releasing a new Etude by year's end.

I have now listened to Mr Leonard Cohen on vinyl for the first time and it was like listening to him for the first time ever – and this coming from someone who has a piece of his wisdom tattooed on his arm, "(if your life is burning well), poetry is just the ash."

Related: this was also my first time listening to music via physical media in years and I seem to have forgotten how, the patience, the focus it deserves. Efforts underway to return to that sort of patience from streaming befitting the investment in aural physicality. As I replied to K when she asked, "Why vinyl?": streaming is an e book, cd a paperback, vinyl the hardcover.

If you haven't checked it out, that Amazon Prime documentary on the music of Bond, featuring Billie Eilish and a ton of others, is fantastic. Helped to crystalize an unrealized goal I had as a music student: to have written a song as beautiful (and tragic) as "We Have All The Time In The World" and a score as rousing and exciting as ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (still my favorite Bond film).

Today's (and all moving forward) Attendance Card drawn in 4'33": Barry said she had her students draw for the duration of a song, so I decided to draw for the duration of John Cage's 4'33". Initially conceived card as a shrug but turned into what I can only approximate as a "Hallelujah" response to Mr Cohen on vinyl.