Is to balance curiosity with comfort. Truth with oblivion, if one wants to get political.
Somewhere in the vast cacophony of the grey zone lies getting trashed and listening The Fragile when you are old enough to own property but you don’t.
Holy shit I have domains and blogs
Just got an email about this domain getting ready for the annual renewal. I wondered… do I want to keep this one? Do I want to keep any of them? I logged into the host and made thoughtful faces but I decided I could only really make a decision by actually coming here.
And it turns out. Yes. I want to keep this one and I want to keep all of them. Each domain and blog is a little part of me. That’s why I always insisted on self hosting, and why I part with real money to put it out there on the internet. It’s mine and it’s me. No one remembers these places, and almost no one ever knew they were here at all. To me that never mattered, or rather it matters less now than it ever did before. Especially this blog. Cyberagefunk was/is the place I let it all hang out.
Reading over some of the stuff I wrote is incredible cringe, but I get it. I remember (sort of – maybe – definitely not all the time) what it was like to be me writing that post. Maybe I was feeling proud about something that seems lame now, or I was whining about something pathetic. Whatever! My house; my shit.
It blows my mind that it is coming up on three years since I posted here last. My life is completely different to how it was then. It’s better. I don’t think riding 10k is anything to boast about. Fucking n00b. I don’t live in the town’s shittiest apartment. I have cool lights I can set to fit my whim. I have like a million computers. I’m happy more often. Actually, there was a period for maybe six months where I was happy. every. fucking. day. It was a blast 8) But on the other hand.
Life is exactly how it always has been. I’m more me than I’ve ever been. More isolated. More distracted. More prone to bouts of world drowning melancholy. Self indulgent. Nerdy as shit and susceptible to intense short lived obsessions. Like I get deep into cycling and I lived GCN and learned how to maintain my own bike (mostly because this town doesn’t have a bike shop). I became a nut for gathering personal metrics, smashing PBs, and making sure it was all immortalised on strava. You didn’t really ride if it isn’t on strava. I’m still into all that stuff but the total consumption of body and mind ebbed away to a more normal hobby level.
NIN. I have listened to so much fucking NIN since I wrote here last. I think I never really let myself enjoy it because it wasn’t what serious industrial kids aught to do. The Fragile is probably my favourite album. Period. Out of all the albums I love, The Fragile has not been far away the last three years (I’m playing it right now). People say, yeah but Downward Spiral is good too. Sure. But it’s no Fragile. Absolute fucking master piece.
Anyway, that’s it. Maybe I’ll be back soon. Or maybe it won’t be until that thread of nostalgia reminds me of the cool places I used to smash out some words.
J. C. Rage
I’m Fucking Tired and I Think I Might Be a Replicant
This is an I’ve got nothing to blog about day. I’m wrecked and I’m looking forward to sleep. I hope I have kinky AF dreams, but I think I’ve turned into a replicant. It all started when I stumbled upon this Blade Runner themed ambient sleep track. It runs for 10 hours and is a mix of all those ambient sounds and music that made the first movie so atmospheric. Apparently it has stuff from the second movie too.
Anyway, after having fallen asleep to this a few nights running I think I may have uncovered my true identity. If this is the case then soon I will be uttering my last words and I want to go out like Roy Batty.
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
So I’m going to sleep, or to die.
Shifty-eyed Mess
Today I woke up with a fuck this and fuck that and fuck you and hurry the fuck up and boil, kettle. Then it was a day of too much coffee and high anxieties, my greatest achievement, unfucking a thing I fucked. So by the end of the day I was a jagged mess, bathed in adrenaline and caffeine overdose – a wild-shifty-eyed, uncomfortable in own skin, thoughts racing, grinning-way-to-big mess. Wires crossed. All lights green.
I am now sipping a shiraz aged in whisky barrels, jaw throbbing dully as it unclenches. Life is stupid.
Sometimes it sneaks up!
Happiness. Sometimes it just sneaks up on me, and I wonder, am I at the start of a manic episode? Usually it’s happiness (I think). I’ll enjoy it while it’s here, but once it’s gone I will wonder if it was ever hear at all. Once the feeling is gone it’s like it never was.
Maybe it will be a few hours. A couple of days. A week, maybe. What’s causing it? Well I’ve occasionally been double dipping on my antidepressants, which I shouldn’t but when every day is grey and nothing matters, why not live a little! Also pushing harder on the cycles and enjoying wine in more moderate dosages. Maybe it’s none of these things. I mean my life is a joke. What do I have to be happy about. Well, it’s my joke, damn’t.
Hope you’re all enjoying your own jokes too, or super-serious-what-evers.
Transmission Restored: Funk Log Resuming_
Finally, after CyberageFunk was hacked two years ago (or however long ago it was) I’ve finally corrected stuff and the site is once again displaying correctly. I’ve been feeling the need to go back to blogging every day.
What’s new?
- I broke my fucking knee crossing a road in Sydney days before I was meant to fly out to the US to meet my then girl friend
- Relationship with the above mentioned girlfriend ended (not on account of broken leg and missed flight – it was complicated!)
- I have my own crummy apartment
- I’ve been studying Networking (mostly Windows Domains)
- Drinking has varied between restraint and outright excess
- The will to live and create has fluctuated wildly
- Self loathing is similarly in a state of constant flux
- Oh, I got a vasectomy – I’m back to my early 20s conclusion that I should not spawn more humans.
So not really a lot of interesting stuff :/ Life has revolved around work and study, and trying to not waste time binge watching shit and being a social media whore. The relationship ending has been the hardest to overcome of recent developments. This time around it was me that ended things. I miss lots of things about it. It was a fun and extremely motivating relationship, like none I’ve ever had. The reasons for ending it… are complicated.
Generally, I’m in a state of funk. I’m back in a no man’s land far from anywhere I want to be. Fuck everything. I want a pack of smokes and a shotgun.
Is living worth the shit? Is the shit worth the struggle? For the normal person that’s always an emphatic yes, omg what the fuck is wrong with you. What says you?
J.C.Rage ending transmission.
Creativity And Courage: Battles With Procrastination
For me having a creative drive is a wonderful and cursed thing. On one hand I feel like it is the only thing I have to really offer, but on the other, I have completely failed to do anything substantial with it. For a number of years now I have had this growing sense of doom, as I’ve watched all my endeavours brought down by a lack of courage.
All creative endeavours require a huge investment of courage, whether the piece is created for cerebral appreciation, pure-candy, or a mix of both. Creative pursuits require investments of time, self-belief, and determination – courage by another name. Courage is what we call on when a piece gets wonky, goes awry, or when we encounter writer’s block. Courage is what we need to break through all the traps that can drag us down when we’re feeling weak, lost, tired, etcetera.
To date I have dozens of short stories, novels, digital art pieces, and one animation left unfinished. My hard drive is littered with the corpses of failed courage. Anxiety, depression, life falling apart; these have all been factors in why I have so much left undone. For some, creatively thrives in these situation, but this has not been my experience. Sometimes projects haven’t turned out because they weren’t properly thought out, little flash-in-the-pan-ideas that are more a feeling than anything – I’m not counting those here. Those feelings or ideas can often come in handy somewhere further down the line.
Every day is a new chance
And this is what we have to keep in mind: even if our courage fails us time and again, for whatever reasons, there is still the chance that today is the day we get started on that big idea, or get back to one we’ve left sit. Even if we start with something small. Start journaling, or blogging. Every day is a new chance to challenge habits of procrastination and get going. Every day is a chance to do all those amazing creative things we didn’t do yesterday. We can reverse the trend of years slipping through our hands, as we postpone our dreams. Yeah, that sounds good! Let’s do that. Let’s stop wasting our talents. …but when picking up these tasks it is easy to be overwhelmed by all sorts of thoughts.
Some thoughts that bother me:
- Is the idea good enough?
- Is it worth it?
- Is there some better way to spend my time?
- What’s the point?
- Even if it is good no one will care.
- It’s utterly futile.
- I’m going to die and it’ll all mean nothing, forgotten in the blink of an eye.
- Maybe I’ll get a head start on that that death thing.
- No, maybe I’ll just get drunk and piss the day away.
The answer to all these questions? It doesn’t matter; do it anyway. If, like me, you subscribe to the idea that life has no inherent meaning, then what can be a greater goal than to pursue work that we enjoy doing?
Today was a big nothing
I spent most of it asleep then I sorted out like a year’s worth of emails. There were around 4000 of the fuckers, and almost all of them were spam or marketing stuff I didn’t care about.
I just ate a bag of chips.
The end.
Bacon, death, and industrial-metal
Today I woke up feeling like doing anything was stupid. Instead of doing stuff I lay in bed thinking about dying. Eventually I decided to make scrambled eggs. I cut a finger while dicing onion. There were no bandaids, so I was trying to stem the bleeding with tissue. It wouldn’t stop bleeding, but I was set on getting the meal done. I’d chop a bit and then wipe blood away. Occasionally a drop would drip into the food. What do I care. Food just gets turned into blood and shit anyway.
Some people will always succeed but I don’t care
Eventually, still bleeding, I returned to bed with the my booty of scrambled goods and coffee. It was pretty good eats. Instead of doing anything important, I got back to reading the gonzo account of rockstar, Al Jourgensen (Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Lard etc). I would laugh here and there but I couldn’t concentrate, and most of the time was spent reading the same pages over and over. I also found it a little depressing (but maybe a little bit inspirational too) that this crazy character could be so fucked up on drugs and booze (and be depressed), yet still do like a thousand albums. I don’t even care about waking up in the morning.
Chicken coop massacre
Around 1 pm I mustered all the rock-star inspired OMPH! I could pull together to go check the animals. I discovered the poor chickens had been massacred – probably a dog jumping the fence in the wee hours of the morning. No bodies, but lots of feathers. That was kinda depressing.
Then I managed to use the phone (something I have a near phobia of) to book an appointment I’d been putting off for weeks. Then I showered and now I’m fucking exhausted.
I want wine
My favourite Ministry album
More depressing haiku and other joy
Today’s super depressing haiku is delivered by Yellow Smiley guy as featured in the hit webcomic Jim Is. JK like five people have read those. Yeah, I wrote a bunch of these as a laugh, so be prepared for more jabs of eloquently executed gloom on days I don’t get around to more substantial blogging.
As an afterword, I’m feeling great. Today, anyway. Yellow Smiley might be sounding-off in the gloom, but today I’m sickeningly positive.