And the hits just keep on coming.

Here’s me being weird and ranting about things nobody else gives a shit about.

I look good in natural light.

I grew up drinking unsoftened water… in other words, water that had a little fluoride added and that was it. All minerals intact. My first experience with softened (in other words, demineralized) water, on a family vacation when I was 5, was quite a shock. It tasted so… wimpy. And insubstantial.

It was the Wonder Bread of water, more or less.

Next up, for those of you who don’t like music, there’s music :

A truly top notch piece from me, in my opinion. Simple, gentle, relaxing, and very pretty. I am especially proud of it because I actually overcame my urge to add elaboration and left well enough alone. The result speaks for itself.

Oh, and I also stepped outside the box in that I used a sound editor to do the fade in and fade out, which means I stretched my mind and my process enough to include an extra step.

Yay for me!

In our next piece, I vent a neurosis :

That whole business is the sort of thing that has been haunting my head for as long as I can remember. I have known I was extraordinary since I was three years old. And well-meaning adults told me that I had a lot of potential.

But because I am fucked up in the head, that just seemed like a looming, crushing obligation to me. The subtle oppression of high expectations, I suppose.

Why am I so afraid of leaving the middle?

More freaking music :

Another delicate, dreamy piece.

I don’t know why I beat myself up over doing so much music. It’s not like it’s low density content that I can just toss off. Each piece takes at least an hour of steady work.

But I will admit, it’s my default thing to do if I don’t feel ambitious enough to do more production=heavy content like some Interpretive Subbing or a Sarcastic Slideshow, but can’t think of anything to talk about either.

So to my overweaning superego, that means I must SUFFER.

Man, I hate that guy.

And the next thing is me talking about the theatre bug :

That time, I had just had the revelations and was able to put them to vid immediately. And I think they are pretty sharp, honestly. I am sure that this purpose gap in the modern world, the inability to feel the meaning of what you do for a living, reaches deep into man areas of our modern civilizations.

Marx called it alienation.

Back to music :

Not everything in this totally works, but I am still pretty happy with it. I am especially glad that I was able to do such a long stretch of solo melody without it being a total nightmare. Most of my pieces are low on that. I don’t know what else to call it… the parts where, if it was being played by an orchestra, it would be a solo.

Sometimes, I really hate being musically subliterate.

Yup. It’s more music!

That’s a pretty rockin’ piece, if I do say so myself. Maybe the flute bits could have been a little quieter, and that ending is pretty weak. But you gotta love that kickass bassline and the way the flute contrasts with it.

You know, I might just be getting good at this music thing. Maybe I should start working on a symphony. Knowing me, my symphony would be like, eight minutes long, tops.

Or maybe even…. dare we say it… NINE.

Up next : Yet more music!

Wow, that part where the sax cuts in is pretty rough. That definitely needs work. I mean, things go more or less okay from that point on, but in the future, I should work on being more critical of these moments before I throw my work up on the web for every Tom whose Dick is Harry on the Internet to see.

But what can I say. Some learn by study, others learn by just doing it a lot.

I do it a lot.

And the next piece of music is… not music! Psych! :

The title is stolen from a trivia book my friend Chris had when I was in college. Today, that type of book would take the form of a “fun facts you might not know” list article, or a site like Mental Floss. But way back when I was a callow youth and dinosaurs roamed the open malls, there was a big market for those sorts of books.

I was quite fond of them myself. I love info-snacking like that. I have a big appetite for knowledge.

Trivia books like those are like a big bowl of popcorn for the mind.

Well, enough verbal content. Time for more goddamned music.

That strings loop always gets stuck in my head.

And it still amazes me that I put this piece of music together without consciously realizing that the string part and the vibraphone parts are playing more or less the same notes.

I just knew they sounded right together. How thrillingly right brained of me!

And for our next selection, you get a nice thick piece of Sarcastic Slideshow :

Gah, I should not be this sleepy at 1:12 pm, especially after drinking a liter of Diet Coke. But sometimes caffiene actually makes me sleepy. That’s just how fucked up my sleep system is.

Maybe when I feel sleepy, I should drink alcohol instead.

Anyhow, where was I? Oh right. I love how snappy the audio captions are in that one. I hope it didn’t go too fast for people. That’s always a worry when someone has to read what’s on the screen while also taking in what you are saying.

And finally, we have…. um…. part 2 of the same thing? :

Oh right! I had so many awesome “bad English” pics that I decided to split them between two videos.

Thank goodness I will never have so much content that I have to split it up ever again.

See you for Part 3, dear readers!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

As promised, today I will start to “catch you up” on my video output.

First of all, we have this little wee rant of mine.

That was the night when I had finally gotten so fed up with the wayward and wastrel ways of our cousins to the south that I just had to vent. So out came a lot of things that had been in my mind for a long long time.

I mean, Jesus Christ, America…. for a country with so much pride, you have very little shame.

Maybe that’s what you need.

Oh, and is anyone else nostalgic for the time when the mass shootings were months apart?

Next up, the usual blurb of music.

My self-judgment : it almost works. It’s almost good. But not quite. The two samples are both awesome, but combined, they are just a little too cacophonous. Maybe if I had lowered the volume on them it would not have been so bad. But there’s a lot of areas where they just don’t meld.

It’s so easy for me to fall in love with a really cool sample.

Up next, we have another in a long line of Sarcastic Slideshows :

That’s Eric Clapton (who IS GOD) playing Classical Gas in the background. I really should do music credits for these sorts of things. It’s the least I can do.

Except when it’s my own music. Or wait…. maybe ESPECIALLY when it’s my own music. Hmmmm.

I assume the “All Employees Must Wash Genitals” is someone’s idea of a joke. Unless it’s from the set of a porno.

Then there is this one :

I’m not going to talk about it.

This next one is a little low on content :

Man, that was a shitty day. I am glad it happened, though, because I feel like I burned through a lot of the crap that clogs up my brain in the process of dealing with it. Especially the stuff about my childhood. That needed to happen.

Catharsis is freedom.

Next up : Music AND slides! Really, I spoil you people.

The slides come, of course, from the internet, but more specifically a site called Heroes in Situations that collects all kinds of comic panels that are hilariously “off” when viewed out of context.

The music, of course, is my own composition. So many of this tunelets of mine seem really promising, then they end. I have defeat my “one minute only” compulsion and stop being in such a hurry to be “done”.

Insert premature ejaculation joke HERE.

Note how the color of the text matches the color of the shirt of the person speaking.

That’s what I call quality workmanship. For a change.

Making those little re-subs is a lot of fun and a lot of work. I can never be sure if they are funny or not.

Once I pluck up the courage to have my voice acting appear in things, I will try dubbing.

Next : more music!

That is one of my favorite pieces that I have done recently. To me, it sounds professional, slick, and very cool, as well as interesting and somewhat unexpected.

Your mileage may vary, of course.

Oh, and a word on titles : Like a lot (but by no means all) of writers, I hate coming up with titles. So I tend to go with the first thing that pops into my head that isn’t totally stupid.

Why is it called “Sunrise In Neon City”? Don’t ask me. I just work here.

Next, me talking.

As you can see, Joe is my saviour and he solved both of my reasons to be stressed out and I can’t possibly thank him enough for that. Honestly, I owe him a ton of thanks for a lot of things, but I am pretty sure that, while he appreciates appreciation, were I to totally give in to my effusive nature, it would make him highly uncomfortable.

So I get it done in one sincere, heartfelt, hearty “Thank you so much!”.

More of my happy shining face making words :

I have no idea why I didn’t just turn off the tablet that was making the spooky blue glow. I suppose I thought it would add texture in my inimically wacky ass style. I do remember that I was feeling pretty strung out that night from my various madical conditions and running on blind determination, so perhaps my mental faculties were on spring break that night.

I think the video evidence bears this theory out.

Next up, more of my ponderous pontifications :

Video suitable for thinkers only! Everyone else will probably start wishing there was more visual content.

And yeah, I should totally get on that shit. At the very least, spend some time with Google Image Search in order to get appropriate pictures, or do those cute lil Stephen Colbert’s “The Word” style text comments again.

Well, every day I get a little stronger. I am more open to effort lately. The idea that I am happier when I am busy is finally penetrating my crosswired cranium.

Yup, the next one is me talking as well :

Erf. Not my best work. I am even more incoherent and all over the place than usual. I remember it was jeezly hot that day, and knowing me, I was probably dehydrated. Plus, to be honest, I was probably also really sleepy. My sleep has been all over the damned place this summer.

But that is a subject for another time.

And finally, some more music, this time downright silly :

I love that piece because, despite the semi-dubious decision to use that very low-octave bassline that some people might not even be able to hear, the end result is so lighthearted and pleasant and just a trifle silly that it really feels like I stretched myself as a composer on that one.

Feels weird calling myself a composer. But that’s what I am, or at least, that’s the only word I know to describe what I do, with the samples and music and such.

Well, that’s all for today, dear readers. There will be two more parts of this exercise that are more or less just like this one. That’s how big the backload of unshared video has gotten.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.