lisa’s night out (wip / early version / early draft / etc)

this was it. this was it. ok. ok. ok. inhale. exhale. finally! she’d dreamt of going to the dance for so long and, finally, it was here. the time was now, the moment had arrived. the dance! glorious, glorious dance! she stood there, resplendent in her borrowed evening gown, her heart beating faster than it had ever beaten before. she felt as if she was on the edge of greatness, the cusp of something wonderful, and then she walked inside. oh my. the lights! the chandeliers! the fussy architectural details! so many pretty boys, so many handsome girls, all dancing, dancing, dancing the night away!

she made a beeline for the dancefloor, and she stood at the side, hoping that someone would notice her and sweep her off her feet and lead her by the hand into the middle of all the dancers and make her feel things she’d never felt before. oh, that would be wonderful, wouldn’t it? and that’s exactly what happened, too! well, kind of.

someone swept her off her feet, alright, but it wasn’t figuratively. and someone did lead her by the hand, but it was more like dragging. and someone did make her feel things she’d never felt before, sure, but those things were things she’d be happy to never have felt. ever.

but then again, with the state she’s in now, i don’t think she’d be able to wish—or do anything—anyway, so i don’t know about that last one.

monsoon sonata

I am most probably going to be releasing a split with a friend of mine sometime soon-ish, and it’s going to be quite, quite noisy. He’s got the whole digital noise/manipulations thing going on, while I rock the guitar into delay (Ibanez DE7) into two distortion pedals (Zoom Tri-Metal and a Beta Aivin Heavy Metal HM-100) route. I think my material’s actually quite good, surprisingly! It’s probably going to be an Internet/netlabel release, but who knows, maybe in the future we’ll graduate to CDrs?

Speaking of gear, I do hope to add an octave or pitch shifter pedal to my setup within the year, but that depends. On money, mostly.

Man, I really want to perform live. Wish that friend of mine was still here in Malaysia (and not studying in Aussie) so that we’d be able to wreck people’s eardrums together. Oh well. Kinda regret selling my amp now, since I’d need an amp to perform live and, well, I don’t know anyone that I can borrow one from.

The zine/chapbook/book is coming along pretty fine, too, if anyone’s wondering. I’ve written some pretty good stories, I feel. Mostly long(er) ones, too, although they’re still pretty short by most standards. Length isn’t really important anyway, is it.

do you remember the good old days

hearth hour

Your lights are off from 8.30pm to 9.30pm. An hour in darkness, oh my.

From 6.30 to 8.30 you’re busy digging your nose in front of your computer, no doubt equipped with the latest in power-consuming technology, with the air-conditioning on full blast while your younger brother/nephews/relatvies are busy playing some shitty game on your/their XBox 360/Playstation 3/Nintendo Wii and your dad’s busy eBaying while (attempting to) watch TV and every light in your house is turned on as if you were all chasing away the dark and the monsters that hide inside it.

But ok, it’s 8.30 now! You turn off your computer, turn off the TV, suffer without air-conditioning (travesty!), tell your younger brother/nephews/relatives to stop playing that shitty Naruto videogame and to come down and huddle together in the dark, talking and singing songs. For an hour your lights are off and you let people steal your shitty shoes. You don’t mind that, but it still irks you that people are taking advantage of a REALLY IMPORTANT thing to, you know, steal. Dicks. You’re a dick too, but you wouldn’t do that, right? I mean, God doesn’t like people who steal. What’s that stupid shit about chopping off the hands of thieves? Ooooohh, yeah, that.

The clock strikes 9.30, yeah, you’ve done your part to save the world, to save the future. Lights come back on, the air-conditioning comes back on, the TV comes back on, your dad parks his ass in front of the computer again to continue his eBaying. After 9.30 you’re busy masturbating to lesbian pornography in front of your computer, no doubt equipped with the latest in power-consuming technology, with the air-conditioning on full blast (and if it’s too cold, you put on a jacket instead) while your younger brother/nephews/relatvies are still busy playing some shitty game on your/their XBox 360/Playstation 3/Nintendo Wii (but then they need to go to sleep— oh wait, it’s a Saturday) and your dad’s still busy eBaying while (attempting to) watch TV and every light in your house is turned on as if you were all still trying to chase away the darkness and the monsters that you still think hide within its embraces.

Catholic indulgences? Carbon offsetting? Earth Hour? Makes perfect sense, Sherlock!

do you know how you make me feel?

Of course not, I’ve never told you, have I?

righteous mess

This is what you call a mess, no?

This is also what I use in making my amateurish attempts at noise.

I should upload some of that shit on the ‘Net.

jud jud

Got my hands on the four expired rolls of slide film I had a friend buy for me today (two rolls of Fuji Velvia100F and two rolls of Kodak Ektachrome 100VS). I then finished up the roll of BW400CN in my XA and popped a roll of that Ektachrome in it. Looking forward to finishing the roll up and seeing the results. Am probably going to have it cross-processed so yeah, should be fairly unpredictable.

The slight problem of printing/replication for the ‘zine/book/chapbook/whatever has pretty much been solved, too. I’m most probably going to get it all done at, surprise surprise, the Ricecooker. Now it’s probably just a matter of “when” and not “if” in regards to the book-thingy. It all depends on how fast I can write and how much of that writing is actually good.

let’s hope i don’t jinx this shit

Remember me once saying that I was planning to put out a ‘zine/chapbook of my short prose? Well ages after first stating my intention to do so, I can safely say that, yes, it will most probably happen. I know, this is so unlikely of me, but yes, if I may be allowed to repeat myself, I’m quite confident in the fact that it will indeed happen. I can’t give you any sort of timeframe since I’m still working on material for it as I type this. Some of the stuff I’ve put up here on the blog over the past few months will be in it, but I don’t plan on putting any old material (read: anything from before this year) in it. At least not in their orignal forms.

Sure, my last attempt at self-publishing (a CDr) fell flat on its face and left something of a sour taste in my mouth, but there’s really no harm in giving it another go, eh? Well, ok, sure, there’s always the danger of it not going down well and thus being stuck with stuff no-one wants to read and some sort of financial deficit but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.

Potential cover:

I quite like it, if I may be honest. Reminds me a bit of the cover of Joy Divison’s Closer cross-bred with the cover of Bauhaus’ In the Flat Field. Somewhat. But then again not really.

trying to be nice

Fuck yes.

Enjoyed myself immensely. Jumped about, headbanged, screamed my heart out and made a couple of new friends. All in all, a good day.

grindprose

in case of fire

“in case of fire, do not use elevator.” my brother didn’t. he used the stairs, like all the signs told him to. he ran down ten flights of stairs in his underwear only to find that the door leading outside was chained. from the outside. he kicked and screamed and tried to force the door open, but to no avail. he suffocated.

protection

my sister told me this story the other day: when her previous boyfriend told her that he wanted to fuck her, she wasn’t surprised. she could see it in his eyes. so she told him that sure, he could fuck her, but he had to be protected first. he had to bring protection. the next night she heard a knock on her door, and there he was, her boyfriend, along with two goons in sunglasses and spiffy suits. “protection,” he said, patting both of them on the back. she left him a week later.

you shouldn’t tell

when i told her i liked her, her skin grew pale. when i told her i really, really liked her, her hair began to fall out. when i told her i liked her more than anyone else i’d ever liked, her clothes began to tear apart at the seams. when i told her i loved her, she crumbled into dust and drifted away on a north-easterly breeze.

daytime dilemma (dangers of not knowing what to name a story and thus having to steal one from the song you’re listening to at the very moment you decide to post it on the internet)

i haven’t got the energy for this shit anymore. i’m dissapointed in you, you know? i really, really am. i don’t know which one of these you forgot: the hours we spent lying in bed in our underwear, stoned as all fuck; the days we spent bumming it out on the streets of KL, filthy and unwashed; the money we spent on paint and furniture and upholstery, trying to decorate our apartment and the fun we had doing it; that policeman we beat up in that stinking alleyway, all because he’d looked at you funny and so on and so on. and then there was that promise you made about how, you know, i was your “bestest friend ever” (you were drunk, i was drunk, who gives a fuck about grammar anyway?) and how we’d always “stick together.” i didn’t think you’d forget. i thought you meant what you said. yeah, my mistake, sure, but it was a mistake i only made because of … well, because of all of the above. i should’ve known. two days after you met her you told me you loved her and you moved out, just like that. you left me all alone. i haven’t heard from you in a year. maybe longer. i don’t know if you’ll ever read this, but if you do, i hope to god you’ll be able to smell what i’m smelling right now. i hope to god you’ll be able to smell that sweet, sweet scent of burning bridges.