damn. looks like ol' Spidey's going gangbusters. I had hoped it would be good, and i figured there would be a good big reaction, but i have to admit that i never saw this happening. $114.8M in three days (final numbers). craziness. that's what it is.

well anyway, so, now i've seen it three times. hehe.

i've hesitated to make a new post because the comments on the last post have been fairly active (compared to the normal comment volume anyway), but i've used that as an excuse long enough.

since the Lucifigous Prick show is now listed on the Louisville Music Index, i took a couple hours to throw together a quick site. and i finally registered the domain name. so now, i don't have to post links to our MP3s here, and instead can do this: http://www.lucifigousprick.com/.

and aside from Spidey, band stuff, work, and hanging out with Nate (who's out of school and in town for a few days), not much has been going on.

exciting (& geeky, as usual) things happening today:
1. will be picking up the Star Trek: The Next Generation Season Two DVD box set
2. i get to pick up the comics (hopefully) that didn't get delivered to the store last week, plus this weeks comics
3. back-to-back new episodes of Enterprise

am i happy? do you have to ask?

i didn't think so.

damn Diamond Comics Distributors. damn them i say! they're always screwing things up.

i actually decided to go pick up my comics today on lunch instead of after work as i normally do (for reasons you'll see in a moment), and after busting my ass and risking my neck (car trouble, long story) i get down there and the guy sorting out the new releases for the holds customers is like "sorry dude, Diamond fucked us today… we only got half our shipment." so here i am, having taken time to run down there to get my books on "geeky wednesday", and now i've just gotta go back tomorrow or Friday to pick up the rest of them. it wouldn't be so bad if Diamond wasn't the only comic distributor around, then I wouldn't have to deal with so much of this shit (because my comics shop would already be getting their books from a better distributor).

anyway, so the reason i had to go pick my books up on lunch is because… (drumroll please)… my roommate brax got paul & myself a free pass to see a sneak preview of the spider-man movie tonight! needless to say, i'm extremely excited. (but i'll try to refrain in the following days from posting about anything that might spoil the movie for ya.)

oh, and i think i've narrowed things down on the car shopping front to either a Honda Civic or a Nissan Sentra. i plan to go by one of the local dealers on my way home tomorrow to talk to a sales rep and maybe do a test drive. we'll see. i still haven't really made up my mind whether i'm just going to buy a new car, or fix the current one and keep it for another year… but that decision will have to be made soon.

well, with all this excitement here around ye olde bipolar, coupled with Nathan's constant whining about my lack of posts, i guess i better jump on this crazy train or be left forever behind.

of course, the big problem with having a weblog is having a consistent stream of interesting tidbits to post about, but since i don't have that in my life currently, i guess i'll just have to post about some really stupid shit until something better comes along or i get some groundbreaking idea that will shake the foundations of our society.

anyway, so, i've finally started playing the game i bought about a month ago, and i've been enjoying it. yet another game that promises to suck away what little life i currently live. yay!

today i finally started pulling together some packaging ideas for our demo (don't wanna go handing out unprofessional demo CDs, now, do we?), and as soon as i get something finalized i'll probably post some images for you all to see.

and since brian's off in rock-star land, i guess i should mention that i enjoyed the show on Friday, and, like Paul, i was happy for brian that he did well.

oh, and the June 4th show may be on again… right now it's tentative, but we're planning on having a show with us, Old Man (the puffin's band), and Telavet. we'll keep you posted.

that's it. that's all i've got. if i think of anything else, especially anything that might be interesting, i'll be sure to let you know.

well, i've had enough "free" time the last couple days to get some of the photos–from the trip brian & i took to Romulus–scanned in and fiddled with, so i figured i'd post 'em here for you guys.

our intrepid romulan commander, brian, with his (self-described) "crazy brian beard."

the only pics i got of the actual show were a few of Hey Mercedes, and unfortunately most of 'em weren't that great… i really need to learn how to use that camera better before i go on trips like this. anyway, on to the photos.

and finally, just for fun, a shot from a recent photo shoot with the Lucifigous Prick mascot–Stupor The Skeleton. this is a rare action photo, capturing his innate vitality and charisma.

so, brian caught me at the Rud on friday and mentioned that he was going to Michigan on saturday. somehow, i'm not sure how, he managed to convince me that i should tag along with him, to go up there and meet Hey Mercedes and some of the various other indie-rock icons that would be in attendance.

so, after the Rud & the Backdoor on friday–a night of debauchery to be sure–we both managed to drag ourselves out of our respective houses and get out of town about three hours later than we'd originally intended. but no matter, suffice it to say, brian drives fast. but aside from the momentary shock of blowing past a cop somewhere around Toledo, the drive was pleasantly uneventful.

the show was good. I enjoyed most of the music, but let me tell you, you put 4 or 500 sweating indie-rock kids in a huge room with limited ventilation, and the atmosphere gets oppressive at best. by the end of Hey Mercedes set (the first we were able to see), i was entirely ready to head back out into the cold Michigan night for a smoke and some elbow room.
the second band i saw was called "!!!" (which i think means "pretentious jam-band" in japanese). honestly, i enjoyed their music, and they seem to be very talented musicians, but basically all their songs just sounded like extended jams. perhaps there was structure there and i was just not in the mood for "party music", or perhaps the fact that the lead singer was pretty much a complete dick factors into my distaste. needless to say, i didn't stick around for the whole set.

let's see… then we saw a band whose name i can't remember, but it was two or three fat guys (one of whom unfortunately removed his shirt halfway through the performance) and a normal guy. They played some hard-rocking punk music and were really pretty good.

final band we watched was coalesce (see brian's pics, linked in his post.) who put on a good show. my tastes generally don't lean that far towards hardcore punk, or vocalists who scream more than sing, but they really tore it up onstage and i enjoyed it.

after the show we made the rounds again and hooked up with the Mercedes and Coalesce boys, headed out to the hotel, grabbed ourselves a room, and hung out with a bunch of people i'd never met before in my life. i pretty much felt like an outsider the whole night, but Sean helped make us feel welcome when we went out to grab some late night dinner at a place called Coney Island.

After that we were pretty much beat from our long day on the road and at a show (after a night of too-much drinking), and called it a night.
The next day's drive was again, thankfully uneventful and we made it home only about 45 minutes later than we'd intended (after stopping for an hour lunch at Denny's).

exciting stuff, eh?

yeah, i know.

anyway, in other news, there's not much other news.

the prick's demo is almost ready for public consumption, so hopefully, if i can remember to take some damned CD-Rs with me to practice tomorrow, i'll be able to upload at least one track for you to enjoy and comment on.

that's it. i'm out.

well, tonight I went out to the bar (which was a big surprise to brian, since i'd told him about an hour earlier that i wasn't interested) with paul, neil, & lisa, and we met up with brian there and hung out for a bit. at some point, i ordered a large sampler (mmm… sampler platter) only to come back to the table and find that neil & lisa were pretty much already on their way out the door. well, not that that really matters, 'cause between a hungry brian, a semi-hungry me, and a not-really-hungry but unable-to-resist-the-sampler paul, we finished the thing off without much trouble. shortly before the last morsels were yanked by greedy hands from the platter, brad and dave came over to join us. paul offered brad a won-ton, and brad's first reaction was to ask me which of the many sauces went best with them. (of course, the answer is "honey-mustard") brad then proceeded to dub me the "king of condiments," a declaration he even repeated later when his girlfriend joined us. so, apparently, either through pure obsessive behavior or a history of good advice, i am, at least in our little circle, the King of Condiments. thank you. you may rise.

another thing i've realized though, is that i could be in the running for a totally unrelated title. i'm pretty sure i could make a strong showing in a contest for the "king of work avoidance." not that i avoid doing the work i get paid to do, that is, not my actual job job. but my god, when i get home, there are literally 10 to 15 things i could be doing at any given moment. 10 – 15 projects i've started that i really need to finish. and what do i do? well, of course, as i recently explained to paul & brax, i've only got two weekday nights that are really worth anything–personal project-wise. Tuesday is band practice night (band-practice from ~7:30 to 11:00pm). Wednesday is geek night (trip to comics store, dinner at Denny's, then Enterprise at 8:00pm, and DS9 at 10:00pm). Friday is… Friday. That's socialization day. Friday is the day matt comes down from the mountain to carouse with friends and other assorted real living people. Friday is the night (typically–unlike tonight, which was an aberration) where matt goes to the bar to look at the few hot girls and (as noted in another post) not speak to any of them. Saturday is much more open, and should be the day where i get all kinds of shit done, but it is usually the day where i sleep a whole lot, then laze around the house. Sunday's another sleep day, and then also another band practice day, which accounts for at least 14 hours. So, i'm left with Monday & Thursday after work, and whatever hours & can squeeze out of Saturday & Sunday to accommodate all those things that i need to do. Needless to say, not a whole lot is accomplished usually.

I have to say though, that this past week/weekend has been pretty decent so far. on thursday, i went out to the hardware store and picked up this neat toolbox and some other bits & bobs, and constructed (what will be) a nice guitar effects pedalboard. so, i had quite the productive day on Thursday. today, after doing the normal saturday sleeping 'til 4 after a night at the bar thing, and lazing for a couple good hours once i got up, i actually managed to do a few productive things. i got the velcro strips placed on the plywood base for the pedalboard, broke out the guitar for 30 – 45 minutes and played around, then checked email for a little bit. oh, and i also sketched out some ideas that i had for a logo for My Favorite Martyr (no, it's not just you, that site is so horribly out of date, it's almost funny again. BUT! it does have the first mention of Old Man–paul & neil's band–on the web!), and for a flyer design for Old Man (which i was going to try to mock up & post, but i haven't been able to find any appropriate imagery yet). of course, there were several other things i needed to do (as i told brian when he asked about going to the bar), but after about an hour of sitting in front of the computer avoiding them, i realized it was a bit fruitless for the time being.

y'know, perhaps i'd get more done if i spent less time avoiding work and more time doing it. but my biggest problem has always been not so much finding things to do, as deciding between the things that i need to do. so, i'm going to ask for your help on this one. (realizing wholly that the majority of my pleas for public response have brought few in the past–but now that we have the comments system in place, perhaps that'll be different now…)

here's the list:

votes   project
_1__ finish 2nd poetry book
____ finish & submit short story(/stories)
____ write new poems
_3__ write screenplay
_2__ continue working on novel
____ redesign coffeemonk.com
____ design separate myfavoritemartyr.com
____ today/tomorrow mixed 2 CD set
____ mixed cover songs CD
____ learn to play bass for Old Man
_1__ put together (personal) media server
_1__ design new bipolar theme
____ finish playing computer games i'm in the middle of
____ put unboxed comics in boxes

and here's the plea: help! help me figure out which of these things i should attempt to do first. if you wanna go crazy, put the whole list in order of "importance." but at least tell me the one thing you think i should focus on until it's done. this is the struggle i'm presented with every time i enter the door to my house from work or being out on the town or whatever. and i've yet to reach a decision on my own. so, give me a hand. there are no prizes to be awarded, but if it's something that either exists or can be translated to the web-medium, i'll be sure to post it here first.

well, i've been getting pressure again to establish some sort of regular posting pattern, but unfortunately, there's been enough going on to deflect me from posting when i think about it, and not enough going on to really warrant posts of any kind of substance. life seems to be pretty much status quo for me at the moment, no warrants, no arrests. no all-night benders with cheap booze and cheaper girls. such is the luck.

i finally got myself one'a them handheld deevices. Handspring Visor thingamabob. i tell you, that thing is going to steal my soul. I've got bejeweled on it, and SimCity (not to mention the actually useful applications like shopping list programs and address books & whatnot.) between just figuring out what the fuck i'm doing with the thing, and installing all the various software on my work & home machines, and playing those addictive fucking games… i really not sure what's going on any more… it's March, isn't it?

anyway, works fine, life's fine, band's fine, car's fine. uh…

hung out with brian tonight and actually got Paul to come along, that was nice.

damn, it's late, i haven't accomplished much of anything, and i have got to get to bed.

Ok. so i flubbed up. i couldn't keep up the pace! i crumbled like a cookie! i folded like a house of cards! no update from ol' matty in… uh… almost two weeks! (damn, has it really been that long?)
crap. oh well, better luck next time.

Onward, to the meat of today's post.

< backstory > I've got this friend who's been going through a bit of a rough spot in his life the past couple months, and i've been doing what i can to help keep cheerful, if not altogether happy. we talk pretty much every day on the ol' jabber just doing the normal everyday IM thing that (probably) you and a million other people do. well, today, part of our conversation went a little something like this:

Him: So tell me a story.
Me:  uh… i don't know any stories.
Me:  Hmm.
Him: Tell me the one about the guy whose life is pretty screwy, but eventually he makes it out okay and his friends come and visit him a bunch.
Me:  well, there was this guy, see?
H: Uhuh?
M: and he lived in this little house.
H: k
M: and for a long time while he lived there he thought things were really cool.
M: then, one day, he realized that things really weren't so cool after all.
M: and this made the guy in the little house sad.
H: Right. I've been there.
M: but this guy had a friend in another little house far far away.
M: he liked to talk to this friend.
M: and this friend liked to talk to him.
H: Right.
H: I wouldn't call his house little.
M: (suspension of disbelief, please, or i'll smack your hand with a little ruler)
H: K
H: So they liked to talk.
M: they liked to talk.
H: Right.
M: and they liked to visit each other.
H: Right.
M: sometimes, the guy in the little house would go visit his friend.
M: sometimes, his friend would come up to visit him.
M: but mainly, they just wrote to each other, and enjoyed being able to do so.
M: but now that this guy in the little house was sad, it made his friend sad too. so his friend did what he could to cheer up this guy. and if it weren't for the fact that he lived so far away, and things in this guy's little house still weren't cool again yet, he would have gone to visit this guy to cheer him up more.
M: and this guy understood, but he was still sad.
M: well, as time passed, the two friends continued to talk and to visit as much as they could, despite the fact that they lived in different towns far far away from each other. and each time this guy and his friend talked to, or saw each other, this guy was just a *teeny* bit less sad.
M: then one day, while the two friends were visiting, (which they did fairly often now) this guy realized that he didn't feel sad anymore, or that if he did, it was only a very very little bit. and this guy told his friend the news, and his friend laughed and said
M: "ha ha! of course you are!" and "didn't i tell you everything would be cool again!?"
M: and this guy laughed, and said
M: "of course you did! and you were right, too!"
M: and they both grinned, slapped each other on the back, and walked wherever their feet would take them.

the end.

it's been a slow week. not much going on. but, happily, it appears that a couple members of the old murray crew will be coming into town this weekend to hang out. it'll be the first time we've had quite this many together since jim's wedding. it should certainly be interesting.

on Saturday, we're planning a little get-together at Jim's house… the band will probably play, possibly even Old Man if they're up to it (we haven't really asked them yet, so Paul, this is me asking).

Valentine's day came and went without much difficulty, i mainly just did my best to ignore it. i'm not going to whine and bitch about not having anyone to share this "special" day with, because really, the fault lies mainly with myself. i need to get up off my lazy ass, go do some things that make me happy, and yank my balls out from where they've crawled up inside my abdomen long enough to talk to a girl (or four) that i might be interested in. one 'o these days, that'll happen. this is the year for it.

last night i finally made my first batch of turkish coffee, though i found out (did a little online research) that i really probably picked up the wrong kind of pot. i guess the one i've got is adequate, but the real ibriks depend on the wide bottom and narrow top to help "cook" the coffee (the coffee grounds sitting on top of the water form a lid of sorts that helps raise the temperature… or something like that), but the pot i picked up is only marginally narrower at the top. really though, it turned out pretty good for a first attempt. only thing i didn't have was a froth on top of the coffee… the froth got all boiled away. and i drank three of the little fuckers, so needless to say, i was pretty wired for a while last night.

well, now i've got something to fix next friday when we get back from the bar… assuming i'm lucid enough to prepare it… drip coffee is quite a bit easier to make.

ah well. that's it. that's all i got.

i seem to have returned to a semi-regular practice of actually turning on my webcam, turning on the chat client, and maybe… if you're all really lucky (or not, depending on your point-of-view) of posting to ye olde bipolar.

had a fairly fun weekend (except for the Sunday that wasn't) hanging out and being social. paul and i chilled most of Friday night watching various incarnations of Trek until it was time to go get our drink on. we did the normal friday thing at the bar, meeting up with neil and BRIAN and SCOTT and their friend chris. we did have quite a bit of fun, as usual, looking at pretty girls, screwing up our courage, and… completely ignoring them. woo-hoo!
at the end of the eve, BRIAN and SCOTT and neil came over to the house so i could play that "jive" delta airlines sound clip for SCOTT, and so we could all laugh our asses off for a while. i think at this point, i was on coffee, but neil & paul were still drinking. by the end of the night, we nearly had to bury poor neil.

saturday was a lazy day, woke up and got some "kefk" (that's KFC to you phonics impaired people), and did some more chillin at the house. we (that is, my roommates and i) briefly toyed with the idea of going out for a fun night of bowling, but instead opted for a somewhat-less-fun-but-still-enjoyable evening out at the rud watching two bands we'd never heard of, looking at pretty girls, screwing up our courage, and… (you guessed it) completely ignoring them. well, except for Rachel, but she doesn't really count since we already know her and she's just really friendly anyway.

i stayed up way too late Sat. night/Sun. morn doing god knows what tinkering around on the computer, ended up slinking off to bed about 6:30 or 7 AM, and ended up sleeping until the sun was down again. boy what a waste of a perfectly good day. but nevertheless, two hours after i woke up, we had our normal 8:00pm sunday band practice, and though it got off to a slow start, we did make some progress, making the day not end up a total waste.

today at lunch i finally broke down and bought a turkish coffee set (sort of) from a Russian grocery near a place my work crew frequents, so hopefully, once i get off my ass and down to the "real" grocery store to buy some sugar (note to self: add sugar to grocery list, you moron.), which we've not had since we moved in back in May of last year…. well, then i'll be able to have some real turkish coffee, just the way Arslan used to make. now if i could only make Baklava and kebabs (A.K.A. gyros), i'd be set (and fat) for life. I do have a recipe for Sarma, which i hope to break out here sometime soon… perhaps that'll be turkish coffee & sugar night as well.

oh, anyway, i've got shit i want to do tonight, and at this point, i think i'm using this blog as a crutch to avoid "work." hep me jeebus. i thank i just self-revelated.

g'night.