Mister Bubbles

The New Hope Project

2009-12-25T01:13:06Z

The New Hope Project was an experiment in making music with instrumentation provided solely by sound clips from film. I decided to see what I could do with sound clips from Star Wars: A New Hope. Each sound effect used has been left unaltered, each clip unfiltered. With the exception of volume and panning, they are strictly as presented in the film.

It has been an interesting experience. I documented the work I did in a LiveJournal which I will edit and make public when possible.

The song is 5:20 and weighs around 7.5 megs. It's a bit on the industrial side.

Edit: New Hope

The Shell

2009-12-02T18:51:35Z

I am a fuck-up, a miscreant, and a liar. I find that the traits I prize most are the traits I don't possess: patience, selflessness, honesty, directness, responsibility, drive. What worries me is that I don't know how to obtain them. It should be as easy as making a decision, assuming the role, keeping my baser self at bay like a lion tamer that has been overcome before and still feels the fangs. It isn't, though the wide-eyed terror is becoming all too familiar.

There's no sense talking about it, really. There's no sense doing anything but trying to reach those ideals every day, no matter how futile it feels.

The Machine

2009-10-26T23:05:23Z

I think it's interesting that highly literate, educated folk immediately disregard the idea of God as folly, despite the fact that the concept itself stands apart from religious context. Some people discard the notion that there could be an external force, sentient or otherwise, that has (or had) some role in the existence of what we think of as our universe just because they consider organized religion laughable and their adherence to "ghost stories" ridiculous.

The mentality that assumes ours is a universe with limited possibilities, defined only by properties its occupants assign to it, boggles me. It is one thing to suggest that outlandish ideas have no place in specific contexts, but to extend that into flat denial is asinine.

Personally, I believe we're all intricate, infinitesimal pieces in a malevolent machine which is an intricate, infinitesimal piece of a malevolent machine... but that's my prerogative.

Get Lamp

2009-10-03T20:39:00Z

Champions Online

2009-09-16T21:38:32Z

Good game. Fun and interesting despite having played City of Heroes until my fingers bled. It stands out in a myriad of ways and being a fresh MMO will be growing and changing in the months to come, hopefully to its benefit.

However, I have a complaint that I have never had before: there is no game manual.

For most games, this would not be an issue. In fact, for many fantasy-based MMOs there'd be very little reason to have one at all as the systems used are homogenized to the point that if you've played one of them you can slip into the functions of another with little difficulty and learn the minor differences as you went along.

Champions, however, uses arcane stat systems, lets you build your character from the ground up (no classes or "archetypes" like CoH), has a relatively involved crafting system, and has so many cleverly hidden buttons in the UI that it's like a game in and of itself to find them. There are elements of this game that are completely unique, but without a manual which might detail the basics it is far too easy to miss these features.

I find it reprehensible that their forums are the only way to orient oneself fully to the game. It takes massive "newbie" threads to let folks in on the game's dirty (and fun) little secrets as even the game's official website has a manual that only details the most basic aspects.

Anyway, since I know a few people that are playing, here's a link to a rather informative forum post that has a lot of the important tidbits: Nelinaa's nOOb tips.

If anyone's playing and feels like looking me up, my global nick is @symmetrian (main character's name is Absidy).

Whatever You Are

2009-08-21T01:37:18Z

The stoicism of ingrained ideology is both its power and its worst feature.

Neologism

2009-08-17T23:21:05Z

Today's game is "Spot the Neologism"! In this otherwise innocuous article there is a word over which the mental tongue stumbles. It tastes familiar, and you know there's a word in there somewhere, but the spell-check in your brain is rifling volumes and shaking its head, preparing its, "Ah ah ah!" (complete with finger waving) when it recalls the horror of common use. So, maybe it isn't a word now but it will be, and that's almost more offensive.

Alice

2009-08-17T17:28:25Z

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland trailer is out.

It makes my vorpal blade go snicker-snack.

Deep Secrets

2009-08-15T05:52:10Z

The last book that made me cry was the last one I finished. It doesn't matter which book it was - I certainly don't recall, and that isn't the point. I seem to have trouble with endings.

50-Word Story Collection (January 2009 - Now)

2009-08-15T05:38:22Z

Warning: some of these could potentially offend.

Third Floor, Room 113
"I can still hear your heartbeat," she whispers quietly, then closes her eyes.

That scent of pure oxygen; the strange white-out fluorescence above my bed. There are flowers, I know, and cards. She's lying. I can tell by the sharp pain in my chest and that long, final, ululating keen.

The 4-step guide to bedding a friend
One - Be attentive: ask questions, listen, respond. Offer no information unless asked, be frugal with compliments.
Two - Stay busy but make time. Touch casually. Connect emotionally, refrain from exposition.
Three - Raise the stakes. Close the distance, create intimacy. Speak softly.
Four - Never be the first to say "I love you".

Third of Six
"I've got another one over here!" The shout carried over the din of cicadas, as surreal as the searchlight reaching jagged shadows across the stagnant pond. The air was thick, heat stewed and saturated with sticky-sweet decay. They'd found little Becky Turner, her left arm severed, tangled in the reeds.

Storm Season
"It's raining," was the sigh that passed her lips, matched by wistful eyes and a melancholy lean against the sill, "Is it raining where we're going? I can't stand the rain."

"There is no rain, my child" Death whispered, taking her hand, "and you will miss it when it's gone."

Taking Turns
Tuesday is Simon's day. He likes puzzles and arithmetic. Wednesday is for Alice, because she likes the way it sounds. I keep two days for Daisy, she upsets so easily. Two for Sam. I'm only here one day a week, now, and that's just to be sure I'm still breathing.

One Night
You wake up in the dark to noises downstairs. Shuffling, indistinct sounds. Bare feet on cold hardwood, feeling along the wall. Down the stairs on tip-toes, hearing only the hard beat of blood in your head. A door slams, your heart stops. Then it hits you: you woke up alone.

Dress
The feel of silk stockings, accentuating a creamy curve, accompanies the warm scent of honey drifting lazily through candlelight. A tiny noise, indicative of music with tones both childish and soft, like a partially remembered dream, slips out of conscious thought like the dress laying supine on the floor.

Patience
They had words two days ago in an intimate cafe on the west end, over coffee and cigarettes (half-smoked, an executed patience manifest in their stubbing). Just words.

Just words she left in a note on a small sheet of paper, crisply folded and perched beside a bottle of pills.

Nothing
"Nothing has changed," he says, tasting the lie of it: bitter and cold, an ultimately shallow sensation.

She knows better, can hear the alteration on the line clearer than his voice and infinitely more substantial.

When they hang up, the dead line tells their story in one long monotonous hum.

Anomalies
Even after you are dead, your particulate matter long since evaporated and returned to the atomic ecosystem - blood and bones gone to powder, dissolved into molecular composites and born into the wind - there will be war. There will be murder, rape, and sadism. Life, love, happiness: these are the anomalies.

Junkyard
Two boys, panting, duck around the fence, leaning into the turn like motocross and kicking up dust - one stumbles, catches his fingers in the other's shirt and rights himself. The long chain of furious barks from the mongrel at their heels spurs them on, speed inspired by a towering dread.

Midnight Blue

2009-08-13T16:42:45Z

On clear days the cold breadth of snow fields glitter a deep symphonic blue, ice crystals kissed by a conspiracy of shadows and setting sun. Midnight cradles the somnolent star, tucked neatly into a fold in the mountains where it smolders quietly beneath a brace of black velvet sky.

There are two things missing from my life: awe and joy. If anyone has any to spare, I would gladly trade some cynicism and regret.

Set Fire to the Third Bar is nothing special despite the way it makes me feel.

Ooglaf!

2009-08-12T21:09:22Z

Ooglaf is finally on a weekly update schedule.

Caution: Please refrain from clicking unless you are a total degenerate pervert. Thank you.

A Gentlemens' Duel

2009-08-11T21:11:04Z

The Vastness of Place

2009-08-10T18:26:54Z

As the plane broke cloud cover I was reminded that Alaska is green. Verdant, primeval, fantastic green - the unbelievably vivid green that seems only possible in color correction and trick photography. Accompanied as it is by vast seas of primordial forests, tangled masses of woodland that extend into the landscape interminably carpeting the hazy ridges of distant mountains, it gives an impression of incredible distances and staggering heights. Strange to think that I once hated this place.

Spending a week cradled in an environment that is so incredibly wild that a mile walked in the wrong direction could lead to accidental death is something unique; it is awe inspiring on the level of religious experience. I spent much of my time dazed, staring out into the tangled wood wondering how far a person could get before they ceased to exist, becoming instead some fixture of the natural order whose wonder would remain unknowable in the remote isolation of that impossible green.

I was also reminded that Alaska is lonely. Stark, towering, numbingly lonely. It is savage, unapologetic; it is a force like gravity, ineffable and omnipresent. Surrounded by beauty - cold, callous beauty - it is natural to feel consumed by it, lost in it while remaining unable to connect to it.

I was lonely before. There, however, it is an external boojum that can be tracked, hunted, and potentially killed, drawn down and stared in the eyes before tearing at the heart seeking respite in murder. I saw it in the trees and in the blue of the peaks beyond the horizon. I saw it in the water along the trembling moonlit path. Sometimes, I would pass someone whose eyes looked haunted with their gaze fixed on a distant point and I would see the loneliness draped across their shoulders like a shawl, their gait altered by the weight of it. I remember once trying to combat that burden with alcohol and heated blood, not understanding the nature of my foe - that each shuddering orgasm would serve as a reminder of the parting, not the coupling, and would always illuminate the intraversible distance in-between. I am lonely now, but it aches less.

I am in Maine again and I marvel at how little there is to this place. The sparse forests. The flat land. The grand awe of nature replaced by a sad representative whose hues fail to engender inspiration or soliloquy. I look at the woods here and wonder not where I could go but why I would bother. I look at the people and think the same. There is an emptiness here that hurts more than loneliness ever could, limned as it is in the knowledge that there is substance to be had elsewhere. I am aware now of passions and desires that lay dormant when I am here, entwined as they are in a memory that no longer knows love, and I am at a loss as to how to proceed.