EXPLODERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Because of size constraints, you might have to click the image to get the whole thing. It's worth it?

So hey guys, in class today I decided to be productive, so I created the long talked about web-series Exploder!!!! that I suggested a while ago. Without further ado, Exploder!!! will be posted with some frequency. This is the rare #1 that I created today, and hopefully I'll have them up more and more.

PS: I have a newfound respect for inkers.
PPS: Look for the spinoff: Exploder Joins a Student Programming Group

Exploder #1 by Rafael Gaitan
"Exploder Plans a Trip"


PPPS: The word he says is "asshole." It looks like "coshole"...but it's not.

Even In These Formal Shorts, I Feel Like a Failure

Am I really turning into a grown-up? I'm thinking about grad school and moving to another state and settling our my affairs for the future, and less and less about things I care about everyday.

What happened to just not giving a fuck?

In lighter, more career-oriented news, it does seem like I will be making the Quantum Leap into another state sometime in the near future. Everything just has to come together, and it looks like it will, which is exciting.

Music has been kind to me lately, with my post being kicked up soon on justafan.tandrew.com, as well as a weekend full of vampires, tokyo police clubs, and NBA Superstar Puns. And Ballantine's Finest, which is far from.

Anyone wanna go to California with an aching in their heart?

.tipstimoV

So it's been a week since I last had any kind of internet access, and in that week I managed to

a) improve my golf game, but in an amount so negligible that it's laughable.
b) purchase BluBlockers.
c) pour through disc after disc of the lovely and talented Veronica Mars
d) listen to the Mars Volta like I was getting paid for it.
e) miss all 3 of you who read this, as well as the countless that I wish did, like hell.

Thanks for the memories, now, then, and for all the whens. It doesn't seem like it matters...but it does.

<>

I've always felt that some of the best songs I've ever heard are really, really short. Apparently brevity, aside from being the soul of wit, is the lifeblood of pop brilliance. A 2-3 minute song is usually much more focused, clever, and downright enjoyable than the epics brought about by some artists, though by no means is this any kind of solid observation.

The Kinks are a band that are known unknowns, to turn a phrase off a Three-Six Mafia record. Everyone has heard of the Kinks, and everyone has heard "Lola" or "You Really Got Me"...and that is that. The Kinks enjoyed great success in England, and Ray Davies is probably one of the greatest singer/ songwriters of any generation. The song that made me realize how wrong I was to lump the Kinks into the British Invasion Also-Rans is one of the happiest, poppiest, prettiest and most evocative songs I've ever heard, off of their 1968 album The Kinks Are the Village
Green Preservation Society,

"People Take Pictures of Each Other"

Clocking in at a mere 2:12, Ray and the gang take us through a lifetime of photographs, with and without his presence. Using generalizations of occasions when people would photograph one another, and blended with personal anecdotes, the song offers a sweet and sentimental look at exactly what makes one care about the fleeting moments of life. As Ray himself puts it in one of the most poignant and gorgeous verses ever written, "People take pictures of each other/ and the moment to last them forever/ of the time when they mattered to someone." The deceptively easygoing backing track caught me off guard the first few times and found me singing along, completely underlying the powerful message contained in one simple sentence. The Kinks capture a moment of sublime sentiment in telling us what we know; pictures capture what we wish we could have forever. Time flees, people fade, but pictures help us delay reality for the better. No matter what one thinks of him or herself, everyone has had their picture taken, which reminds us of a simple resolution; at some point in time, someone thought so much of each of us that they wanted that fleeting second to last, that one particular moment, for as long as it possibly could. As the narrator of the songs puts it, "How I love things as they used to be/ Don't show me no more please." Overwhelmed by all the energy and fulfillment that a simple object can hold, the narrator finds himself relenting to this emotional tidal wave. The song captures the feeling of stumbling onto old photographs and "time traveling" to periods that mattered to someone, somewhere, enough to grasp tightly.

This song reminds me of "the good times," when people could just be at their most emotionally naked, and when there was nothing more important than the moment. As I'm graduating in just a few months, this song particularly hits close to home, as those of you who personally know me are aware of how notoriously camera-evasive I can be most of the time. A song like "People Take Pictures of Each Other" reminds me that life is too short to let slip, that it's too short to avoid or dodge out of the frame of, and as futile as it seems to try to fit an abstract concept into the inevitably fallible , it'll be worth it someday, somewhere. To someone.

YOU A FOOL FOR THIS ONE.

MegaCon was amazing, as usual; it's nice to have a weekend away from reality.

This weekend was filled with spirits (heightened and filtered) and well as egregious amounts of rap music, freestyling, and personal affronts. And also breakfast spreads that possibly qualify as heaven-sent.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

PS: Dyevushki, soboka.

PPS: Maybe I listen to just a bit too much Ghostface.

(S)elective Memories.

I almost forgot that I had this thing. Life has been...life, and I think I've come to realize that Popeye Doyle could be the greatest fictional character ever.

In lieu of interesting/ exciting/ cliche news about life and how scared I am of the future, I leave you with selective quotes from my favorite person ever, Andrew Tan.

#1)
"Don't Asian people look funny?"
-While watching A Better Tomorrow II and after a Tequila Slammer

#2)
"I'm fucking playing Fake Plastic Trees, you stupid motherfucker!"
-upon being asked by Dominic Tao what he thought he was doing.

#3)
"Let's Go to Krispy Kreme and get some hookers!"
-Upon being asked if cream-filled or jelly-filled hookers were more desirable.

Aside from that, shit is life is shit. At least MegaCon is this weekend. Nothing to take one's mind off of dyevushki like a weekend of friends and people weirder than you.

I'll try to write in this more often, and more importantly, with more "prestigious" content. I'd hate for this to become LJ2.

Wanna give me a job, Someone?