Tag Archives: tumblr

My Work, Writing

My New Weapons For NaNoWriMo

Quick blog post. Doing the NaNoWriMo thing again, going to crash and burn most likely, but there is one thing that has helped me in the two weeks prior to it.

The first is my main addiction which is of course Tumblr. The scene is…interesting at times, especially because I really feel out of place from it a lot of the time. And that’s what keeps me coming back – looking into a petri dish of social commentary, fandom and assorted nonsense that’s intriguing to me. So, that’s where I’m getting my inspiration from.

Second has to do with the thing I started two weeks ago. I’ve been working for a client that has me working at breakneck speeds for writing articles. At first I didn’t really think I could write a 500+ word  article in under 1-2 hours but apparently I can? and I’m getting faster – I wrote one under 40 minutes in sheer panic of the deadline yesterday.

So, that means, under concentration, I can hit the 1667-a-day pace for the 50,000 goal this month in about….6 hours. But, because the closest thing to research I’m using is riffing off Tumblr, it really won’t take that long.

I wrote 400 words when I woke up this morning, actually. From 4 Tumblr posts, completely dismantled to fit the narrative. All in…what, half an hour? This might work, maybe.

Expect updates. Happy writing.

 

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Art, Links, Music, My Work, Photos

Weekly Tumblr Dump – 5/3/2014

Via my friend Harmony, This is “Swoon”, a song from the Soul Visions album. It is a collaboration made by The Human Experience and Rising Appalachia. Buy the album here.

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And then there’s Kieron Gillen’s post on Sister of Mercy’s “Alice”, for his upcoming The Wicked & The Divine:

We’re all monsters, at least for a few seconds at a time. I don’t believe you if you’re saying otherwise. Everyone I’ve ever met have failed that particular test of being inhumanly humanistic. Especially you. Yes, you.

There’s music about how you wish you are. There’s music how you wish you aren’t. There’s music which looks the world in the eye and tells it exactly who you are, and asks if they want to make something of it.

I remember Warren Ellis reading the script for Aaron Sorkin’s pilot episode for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and saying something to the effect of having the urge to quit writing. I’m still trying to get my shit off the ground and This motherfucker drops a post that questions my goddamn skills.

AND I DON’T EVEN LIKE SISTERS OF MERCY. Just…fucking…ahhh.

Anyway, onward.

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I’m still bummed I didn’t get to meet Molly Crabapple at her talk with Warren Ellis in early April. She’s a great artist and this is a prime example of it.

From her Talking Points Memo article “Istanbul: Before the Tear Gas”:

Used to battling cops at games, football fans formed Gezi’s frontlines. Now, the police are so afraid they plead with protestors to please disperse. “Children of whores,” the fans chant back. It’s a sweet change from the last few years of New York demonstrations, where cops often forced demonstrators into pens, beat them, and arrested them like cattle. Next to hundreds of football fans spoiling for a fight, I finally feel safe from the police.

I dive to the front. Amidst the A.C.A.B. (All Cops Are Bastards) scarves and E-ticket fuck no graffiti spray-painted on the sidewalks, a masked boy holds up a flare. It burns neon. From Galatasaray gates, fans have hung a banner emblazoned with the words “There is no description for our love.” Flyers fluttered like ten thousand birds.

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This is from a Harbor Magazine photo shoot with model Dino Busch holding fancy owls in impeccable suits.

Source: http://evenghostandhorse.tumblr.com/

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I saw Massive Attack at the Warfield in San Francisco in 2010, and I remember seeing this during their performance. United Visual Artists took care of the lighting design of the Massive Attack shows, and they put up a lot of digital protests playing the back while they performed. There were some that I can recall, like the rising digital number of money spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the phrase ” WHAT THE FUCK, ARIZONA?” in digital typeface in regards to the recently enacted SB 1070 law.

Source: http://inf0lepsy.tumblr.com

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Links, My Work

Weekly Tumblr Dump 4/18/14

Source: http://fkaraboa.tumblr.com/

Cien años de soledad  is one of my favorite books from the magic realism style he created. While I don’t think it’s apparent, my writing DNA has a considerable amount of Gabo in it. Que descanses en paz.

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Source: http://elizabum.tumblr.com

Rod McKuen, from Listen to the Warm, 1967

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Source: http://warrenellis.tumblr.com/

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Via Laughing Squid is a great 8-Bit Cinema of The Fifth Element,  including the taxi chase scene and Zorg ZF-1 test demo.

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St. Vincent at the State Theatre in Minneapolis. Photos by Nate Ryan. Her new album is really good, I recommend “Rattlesnake” and “Prince Johnny”.

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Links, My Work

Weekly Tumblr Dump 4/13/14

This week’s Tumblr dump includes Lovecraft/Bible mashups, demigod genetics, samurai and body wall art, and ladies punching things.

 

Source: http://freelancejake.tumblr.com/

Charlie Stross put together this odd combination of the King James Bible with some H.P. Lovecraft via some bootleg Markov Chain. I’m a big fan of putting original work though processes to make new stuff – I made this poem through a posts on the topic of rules and put it up on my own tumblr ( “We Of Knowing”).

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Source: http://lifemadesimple.tumblr.com/post/82015012077/step-by-step-a-great-way-of-painting-your-own

This is the first the first image of an amazing step-by-step instructional post on making this mural painting on a wall. I don’t know if I’d do this particular one on my wall even though I love Seven Samurai, but the technique is something I’d definitely keep in mind.

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This is an interesting post on simple Punnett squares/hereditary genetics in respects to demigods. Credit goes to Erin:

OK this is kinda weird but I’ve been thinking about if two demigods had a kid, would there be a chance their kid could be immortal, or completely mortal? still a demigod, or more like a fourth of a god?

I mean on the surface, it seems like one of those things where the fractions would just keep dividing, but if you would think about them as alleles and dominant / recessive traits, for this example, lets use Mm (for mortality im clever) and the dominant M would be immortality and recessive m would be mortality. In the case of PJO, mortality would be incompletely dominant, showing signs of both parents (eg. being susceptible to both godly and mortal weapons; able to eat ambrosia, like their godly parent, but also able to eat regular food like their mortal parent). So if you have a god, they are completely immortal, MM, and their completely mortal partner, mm.

Now when you cross the two homozygous people, all the offspring would be Mm, a demigod, that is. Do a Punnett Square if you don’t believe me.

So you have a demigod (Mm) and they can produce offspring with a god (MM), another demigod (Mm), or a mortal (mm). If a demigod has children with a god, theoretically, their children would have 50% immortal, and a 50% chance of being a demigod. If a demigod has children with a mortal, their children theoretically have a 50% chance of being demigods, and a 50% chance of being completely mortal. Finally, if two demigods had children, their theoretical children have a 25% chance of being mortal, and 50% of being immortal, and a 25% chance of being mortal.

That doesn’t even scratch the surface though, I mean, what about mortals who have the power of Sight? Could immortality be a sex-linked trait? Does immortality work differently in demons and monsters, or is it the same? What about nymphs and naiads? Centaurs? Possibilities are endless with genetics guys get excited.

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Source:http://denst.tumblr.com

That’s not Photoshop – an artist painted that on her body. You can see the whole process of the artist putting it onto her via gifs. it’s pretty cool.

 

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Source: http://mma-gifs.tumblr.com/

That is ex-MMA fighter/actress Gina Carano beating the ever-loving crap out of a theoretical jaw. The post has this to say about her:

“Gina can land all 8 blows in a blistering 3 seconds. And how much does this maelstrom combine to generate? An amazing 4,800 pounds of force. That’s like a North Pacific giant octopus pounding you with all 8 of it’s arms. Translation: In 3 seconds, Gina could brake your ribs, give you a concussion, shatter your nose, rupture your spleen, cause internal bleeding, and put you down for the count.”

I think she’s doing a superhero movie now but I hoped she be in one of the DC/Marvel ones and not with Rob Liefeld. Oh well.

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Links, My Work

The Weekly Tumblr Dump – 3/7/2013

I spend a lot more time on my Tumblr blog than this site, but I feel guilty not giving this blog any love (especially now that it is actually jesusgaray.com). That being said, I’m selling out and putting up some of the likes I’ve clicked on this week [NOTE: I will always put the source for any of these posts, as I don’t want to be one of those douchebags who put up art/writing playing it off like it’s mine]:

Source: joshfranfuckthis.tumblr.com

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Source: geek-art.tumblr.com

This a part of  Marko Manev and Matt Ferguson’s art show (check it out here).

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A quote from David Lynch, via mariomayfire:

“I hate slick and pretty things. I prefer mistakes and accidents. Which is why I like things like cuts and bruises – they’re like little flowers. I’ve always said that if you have a name for something, like ‘cut’ or ‘bruise,’ people will automatically be disturbed by it. But when you see the same thing in nature, and you don’t know what it is, it can be very beautiful.”

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Source: http://melovecomics.tumblr.com/

Click on the image and you’ll be able to see close-ups on all the characters. I really like the Hellfire ones.

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Source: http://didyouknowblog.com

 

I’m a big anti-fan of the whole ancient aliens thing, but the utsuro bune urban legend is interesting.

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Source: http://vicenews.tumblr.com 

From the Vice News article:

China’s environmental problems have become such an embarrassment to its leadership that the country suddenly finds itself on a war footing. On Wednesday, Premier Li Keqiang, the second-ranked political leader and head of economic policy, formally declared a “war on pollution” in a speech before the annual gathering of the National People’s Congress. The reform is welcome news, but overdue — and the outlook of the strategy Li outlined is about as clear as the morning sky on your run-of-the-mill, suffocating Beijing day.

Li called for the closure of 50,000 small coal-fired furnaces, the removal of 6 million old, emissions-belching vehicles from the streets, and new guidelines for air quality improvement in seriously affected northern Chinese cities. He described the state of Beijing’s air as “nature’s red-light warning against the model of inefficient and blind development.”

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Personal

The Long Update

I hate doing the “oh I’ve been away” part of this entry. Makes me feel like a chump, but I haven’t been. I dropped a new issue of Cram, got a poem published, found employment, and in a sense regained the part of myself I had been missing for a while. Vagueness of that last part aside, I feel and think clearer now than I have in a long time. Now, for the details.

Cram

Things did slow down a bit, mainly because both Cindy was busy with her new gig and I was in a state of flux for a good chunk of 2012. I’m still really grateful that we have been able to pull this off as much as we can, but I’m still hungry. I’ve been researching to write an essay for the blog, seeing as we need more content than the weekly Crams. Also trying to make moves with other ideas stirring in my head. also doing a project with Phil and Cindy with me on, of course, story duty.

I’m Going Going, Back Back, To Jersey Jersey

In I’m officially back in the mother country of New Jerusalem. The best way to describe my feelings is this: picture an archaeologist trying find his oldest tomb. Then picture that person now trying to ship ancient relics to a mausoleum, only to return and find out no matter how much you can move, the haul is endless and makes it a  Sisyphean nightmare. That was just in the second week alone. I’m lucky I have a place to stand in my old room.

However, it has its moment of greatness. Holding my sister’s and her husband’s wedding rings as my part as her witness to her civil wedding was something worth being home for. That was a while back now, after reunions with old friends and abusing my ability at reconnecting with the newer ones, and blacking out for a good portion of the summer due to helping preparing for the (happy) clusterfuck that was my sister’s wedding party. I actually got back into the swing of writing because of this. and made up a magic realism story about a pilgrim coming home to a family of gods. A the moment there’s only one entry, but I’m cleaning up the next part which is an epic poem about the family dog.

The Job, Or How How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Become A Woman on the Internet


I finally found employment after a year of not having any. It’s not at all like what I was doing in SF. I’m still staring at Excel sheets, of course, but that’s interspersed with a crap-load of comments I put up under the pseudonym of Jamie. To date, Jamie is a mother, dancer, crafts and superbike enthusiast, nurse, customer sales rep, and recently Portuguese. I’ve had the opportunity to write blog posts, which is great. There’s a serious difficulty with the distractions of working from a home office however. I’m sure I’ll get it down right.

Badass and Published

That’s what I said I’ll be a few years back. Out of a lark it finally happened, thanks to Saul Williams and his Chorus book. Of the 97 poems in the book I’m number 21. To see a poem that I wrote in my sleep-deprived night owl phase back in 05 come to light in 2012 is crazy. I’ve been dabbling in poetry again, to see if I still have it. I probably don’t but you never know.

That’s it for now. you can find me on Twitter (@TheJesusGaray) and Tumblr (jesusgaray.tumblr.com), fyi. I’ll put up some of the content I put up there here.

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Uncategorized

Thoughts on Tumblr, Google Plus and Wolves

I jumped into the   Tumblr wave a few months back, which should explain why this has gone on radio silence for a while. It’s a must faster delivery system in that you can click on one icon, put down a blurb (or in the case of The New Inquiry, something larger) and while it does have its drawbacks ( the MB capacity for songs could be just a little bit higher)I’ve racked up at least 5 times the  posts I have here in the span of  2 months.

There are some things that do bother me, however. Reblogging is a really cool idea, but people are putting things up without filling out that part right above the tags. You know, that part that says CONTENT SOURCE. Jamie McKelvie said it best himself on a post in his tumblog. Give credit where credit is due.

Like many kids growing up in the age of the World Wide Web, AOL, and Napster, I had my own little  angst-filled journal, filled with stories of friends with nicknames for each of them in fear that someone will read it like Big Brother didn’t already have my SSN. Since then I’ve grown from angst to full on rage to self-medicated annoyance, but it’s amusing to see myself slowly verging into internet “get off my lawn” territory. The deeper i go into Tumblr-land the more I find these emo/pothead/”Alt” teenage diaries. In most other platforms it’s easy to dismiss them, but they put up one interesting article or image, and they trick one into going to their  tumblog with its crappy song embedded on it and a wall of GPOY. Then I remember that I did pretty similar things myself (without the music, I knew better) and I should just leave them be until they become superstars or cancer patients.

Another point: those annoying goddamned memes are so visible on the dashboard page. I now understand why Sarah Palin went wolf hunting. She wanted to kill all the Insanity/Courage/WTF Wolves that posted by  thousands. However, this is Palin we’re talking about; she doesn’t know that the internet isn’t a series of tubes that go along with the Trans-Alaskan pipeline. For the love of god internet dwellers, stop making these little lupine self-help fortune cookies (the 4chan troll face is pretty cool though).

Google+, while I’m not fanatically cheering about it and trying to get people on-board, still hasn’t changed the fact that my user time on it is increasing. I won’t jump ship anytime soon, as  Facebook isn’t the hot mess that Myspace was and is still has a massive fanbase (750 million at the time of this post. In a lot of respects, while it’s easy for those with existing Google accounts , I wonder how long it’ll be until the Yahoo!/Hotmail crowd creeps into the clean + page, filling it with baby photos and passive aggressive status posts.I just hope Google doesn’t sell out and put games on this.

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