Posts in the Me category

OK, I'll probably never live down the embarassment, but here's a link to a couple of finished tunes I've put together.

Well, kind of finished. The first one is as finished as it's ever going to get - because it's meant to be unfinished. I wrote it for a friend of mine who checked out of life at the beginning of this year.

The other one? Welllllll... let's just say it's my only ever attempt at rap. And frankly, I'm beginning to think I just don't have the chops for rap :) Not my thing, perhaps. Who knows? As for the subject matter, it's a long long story. And even though my sister swears otherwise, the lyrics are "Crack Whore like you, sitting in my car, don't know where you're going but you won't get very far". Not "Crack Whore like you, sitting on my cock". Sheesh. Claire - take a bow.

(I may post the full story that I'm telling in the song up here at some point in the future... and yes, it does involve a crack whore. And no, I wasn't so hard up that I needed to visit one).

I need to get back into music again. I've got two guitars I can basically just about finger pick - no chords - and a synth that's sitting in my bedroom basically up on bricks. (I use the synth as midi input to FL Studio Pro XXL - the first track's sax is a really good soundfont I downloaded from somewhere, and played freeform on the keyboard.

Of course, I can't really play the synth, but heck, it's a lot of fun and makes for a nice distraction from my day job. I should really crack all these discarded toys out again and start playing with them.

The guitars? I've got a Squirer Stratocaster I bought at the Experience Music Project on a whim, and an acoustic that I got to replace one that I destroyed to make a short film. It's a pretty basic one from Guitar Center.

The Strat appears to get quite a bit of fret noise, but I have no idea how to fix that.

I've also got a Line 6 POD - which rocks - and a harmonica. I picked up a rainstick, a set of pan pipes and a recorder while I was in Peru too.

Why do I have all these instruments when I can't play them? Because it's fun to try :)

Well, my Neon finally died. After owning it for 8 years, and putting 127,000 miles on the clock, the final tally came to:

• Reverse lights no longer worked
• When braking, the left turn signal would turn on solidly and stay there
• Clutch was slipping really badly. (This was the final straw)
• At low speed when turning, there was an odd thunking feeling to the wheels, like they were egg shaped or something. (At highway speeds, it was fine)
• Handbrake would lose its ratchet at times

So... time for a new car. I ended up getting a rather spiffy brand new Subaru Impreza WRX Wagon. Some people tell me that the wagon part will make it more difficult to pick up chicks, because it makes it look like I have kids. Me, I'm just thinking it'll be handy for going on camping trips.

Oddly, for a turbocharged car that takes premium gas, because I'm taking it easy driving it (break-in period, dontcha know), I'm actually getting better gas mileage than I expected. If the gauge is at all correct, I'm getting about 28mpg - which isn't bad at all, especially for Seattle. My Neon would get that (before the clutch started going), so I'm pretty happy all in all.

And it's peppy. It has Get up and Go. Vim. Vigor. All that good stuff. Basically, it moves like shit off a shovel. And it's bright shiny blue, which is always a plus in my book.

I'm just going to hate the payments though :( One of the great things of having paid off a car is not having to care about the payments any more, and this'll be about $460 a month out of my pocket that I'm really going to miss.

Ah well, if I quit smoking and eat in at lunch, cook at home more, I shouldn't miss it that much. And given that I'm not going to smoke in my new car, I might be able to manage that.

I've been quiet for a while... but I've got some new photos up online at http://www.flickr.com/photos/fleetingshadow

:)

More posts soon...

Just got back from my trip home to England. More later :)

There's one person who I'd really love to meet - namely Gigi Edgley. I was massively impressed by her performance in Farscape - she was captivating, with an amazing presence and motion in everything she did (it certainly doesn't hurt that it was very erotic). She's definitely someone I'd like to sit down with and chat over drinks for a evening. Of course, the chance of getting to do that are slim - unless I ever finish writing The Witnesses and get enough money to make it. (The female lead is written for her - whereas the male lead is written for my friend Joseph DeLorenzo).

She's currently touring the US. If she was to hit Seattle, I'd take her out for a drink and get her to meet the Surreal Software crew (a more talented group of scum and villainy you'll never meet).

Other actors I'd like to meet and/or work with some day?

Meg Ryan, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Ben Browder, Claudia Black, Anthony Simcoe, Wayne Pygram (ok, so yes, that's the whole Farscape cast... not too surprising to be honest), Hugh Laurie, John Hurt, Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, Kevin Smith, Janeane Garofolo... I'll add to the list when I remember who was on it. It's a long list.

Some times I wish I was still a journalist... much easier to meet people that way :) But when I moved to the US, it got much more difficult to get into the biz - in the UK, it was easy (at the time, anyway, provided you had a bit of history)... it seems much harder to network into it over here.