Chris Tisdale's Blog

I turn 32 in 53 days, and I’ve decided to do a blog entry every day between now and then. Mostly self-analysis shit, with the goal being that, by my birthday, I have a better understanding of who I am and where I want to take my life. This is something I feel I need to do, and I hope you guys don’t get bored form it, and maybe even get something out of it for yourself. Let’s begin.

I want to start with a couple of my favourite Jack Kerouac quotes, because they sum me up to a certain degree:

“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”

and

“My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.”

You see, I have ideas. Oh sweet mercy fuck do I have ideas. So many, so often, and I want to see them all happen. To name a few:

-My webcomics, misplaced, and imaginary enemies.

-Two very different themed video blogs.

-A weekly video introduction on the front page of this site.

-About 3 dozen songs to record.

-About 10 different books to write.

-A dream house to build with my wife. (and some cool ideas surrounding all that)

-An animated feature film that only uses the Nine Inch Nails 2 disk epic “The Fragile”, played from start to finish, as its soundtrack.

-An incredibly awesome concept for a massively multiplayer online game that has (as far as I know) has never quite been done before.

And those are just the ones that currently occupy my mind. There will be more added next week, I’m sure.

While ideas are great, and creativity is what keeps our brains from becoming mere zombie-fodder, I think there is such a thing as idea-overload, and I suffer from it, and it becomes a huge hamper to my ability to follow through. It’s like, all of these ideas make a mad dash to escape my brain, and they all slam into the doorway like some Three Stooges bit, and they just repeat that routine endlessly, which results in nothing happening.

Or, like in the case of the two webcomics that finally managed to escape the bottle-neck, I get on a roll, and start having a lot of fun in the making of them, but then I become distracted by one or more other ideas that are still in the doorjamb brain-scrum, and somehow dwelling on those things cause me to lapse in the existing projects, the follow-through brakes get put on, and I give up on all my ideas, deciding it’s just easier to imagine how cool they would all be, then actually attempt to realize them.

With some ideas, it’s purely a logistics problem. I don’t know anyone in the video game industry, and I would be worried that if I told some random someone my idea, it would get taken and used and I would get neither credit nor compensation. (a scenario which I believe actually happened to my brother-in-law) So that idea will likely not see fruition. That doesn’t mean my brain can just throw away the idea, in fact, I continue to keep thinking and building on my impossible video game concept, I really can’t help it.

Of course, the other roadblock, or excuse (which, if I’m being honest, is probably what it really is) is my job.

What I do to earn the money that pays my mortgage is often stressful, mentally and sometimes physically taxing, and has me traveling for often days at a time, and by the time I get home, whether at the end of the day or end of the week, in one way or another I am simply exhausted, and by the time I have a chance to visit with my wife, play with the dog, and wind down from the day, it’s time to sleep and start it all over again. I’m not saying this to whine, it’s just the truth, and I bet there are a lot of people out there who can relate.

I am working on all of this however, as I think is evidenced by my recent relaunch of misplaced, and finally realizing Imaginary Enemies. It’s a start, but at the same time, it’s not nearly enough. Not nearly as much as I know I could be doing.

Tomorrow, I discuss my biggest obstacle. It’s bigger than my job, or the idea bottleneck. More of a stumbling block than money, time, connections, skill or talent.

-It’s me.

CR

Hey there, my blog-reading peoples!

It’s been a while, and I hope to rectify that with more frequent postings. I also hope to rectify my lack of commenting on all of your various internet homes. I have been reading, just, for some reason, not feeling very interactive for the past while. Can’t explain it.

Anyhow, I am very excited, because I have officially relaunched misplaced on its own domain:

http://www.getmisplaced.com

I know a few of you told me I should have done this a long time ago, but better late than never, right?

This time I’m going about it much more ‘professionally’, making the comic RSSable, Diggable, and all that stuff. You’ll see elements like that pop up over the next week or so.

Next week (I’m pretty sure of it) I will be officially putting my new comic endeavour out into the world. I can’t tell the name yet, because I still need to get the domain set up, but you’ll find out as soon as I do. I know I’ve been talking about it for ages, but it’s finally coming together in a way that I’m really happy with. If nothing else, there will be a teaser ‘coming soon’ image up, while I get a few comics ahead.

After they’re both up and running, I’m going to start working hard at promoting the comics, getting some eyeballs on them, hopefully build a decent fan base or something, who knows?

So that’s my big news. I hope all of you are doing well, and I will check in later in the week.

C.R.

My dad sends me quite a few forwarded emails (fewer since I introduced him to snopes.com) and most of them are groaner jokes or interesting conspiracy theories about oil, regular dad-forward type stuff.

He sent me this the other day, and I finally got around to reading it. If you have a chance, give it a read, and then at the end I have a little exercise for you to try.

Read the rest of this entry »

P.E.T.A. is just another terrorist organization, and they need to be stopped.

Aside from their completely absurd agenda, condescending superiority complex, and guerilla tactics, what’s not to like about these animal savers?

How about their latest ad campaign, which is exploiting the recent Canadian bus-beheading incident to further their insane causes?

I haven’t seen it, and I’m not going to link to it. It’s been on the news, and the wife found read me a synopsis. If you really want to check it out, I’m sure you can find it, but I’m not going to satisfy those fucks with so much as an href.

The gist of their fucked-up logic is something like, ‘The way that victim felt on the bus, his fear, is the same way an animal feels right before it’s slaughtered.’

First of all, what a weak fucking thread of a connection to make for your sorry-ass and insane propoganda.

Secondly, shame on you fucking people. Actually, shame isn’t even close to what you people deserve. Shit in your open wounds, you fucking people. If you lost a loved one in a tragic random act of madness and unthinkable horror, and some group of big-titted vacuous celebrities fronting a group of overzealous fuckholes decided to use your loved one’s murder to further their assault on the rest of the world, I’m guessing it wouldn’t do much to ease your grief and suffering.

Not that I wish any harm to anyone, but I can’t help but wonder, if one one of Pam Anderson’s kids died in a car accident, do you think she’d be okay with her beloved PETA turning it into some kind of Anti-Veal statement or something? “See the way his limbs were torn off when he went through the windshield? That’s just how chickens feel when the drumsticks and hot wings are removed.” Fuck you, you disrespectful cunt-whores.
Speaking of overzealous fuckholes, apparently, that baptist ministry that seems to think picketing funerals and other tragedies in order to blame ‘the gays’ for all of the bad things in the world instead of doing something more constructive with their time and money-like, I don’t know, feeding the homeless or committing mass suicide-are planning on bringing their holy bullshit to this kid’s funeral too. I don’t care if this beheaded young man and his family were puppy torturing inbreeding drug dealers who like country music, I would still have nothing but the utmost sympathy for them right now. As if losing a son wasn’t bad enough.
And third… what? What the fuck are you talking about, ‘This is how an animal feels when it’s slaughtered’?
I’m not saying I’m an expert on meat preparation, but I’m pretty sure they don’t put ipods on cows, and wait until they’re asleep at 1 in the morning before coming up from behind and jamming a hunting knife into the back of its neck. It just doesn’t seem like a very efficient technique, at least, not from a mass production standpoint.

I’ve seen fields of cows, I live in beef country, for fuck’s sake. those dosey bastards wouldn’t survive a decade as a species if we set them ‘free’. My retarded Sheltie could take down a half-dozen of those lumbering lunch-mobiles on his worst day, not to mention the buffet all of those liberated bovines would make for wolves and bears and cougars.

Let’s assign feelings to animals for a minute, because that’s how PETA wants you to think of them. I’m no animal empath, so I’m not sure one way or the other, but let’s just say they have feelings. Which is a life more enjoyable, one where you live in a peaceful, protected setting, with all the food you need, enough mating to keep you satisfied, all of the naps you could ever need, until one day, you’re led into a small pen and BAM, it’s all over.

or…

You live in the wild, where you may not see your first steps, because a natural predator may just raid your family and eat your soft little body, and assuming you get to adulthood, life is a constant struggle of scrounging for food, fighting off competition for procreation, and running your ass off when those same predators appear, hoping like fuck you aren’t the slowest one today, hopefully Jerry’s ankle is still sore from that rock slide the other day, oh no, Jerry’s outrunning you, and they’re getting closer, it feels like your heart’s about to explode, but just before it does, you feel the jaws sink into your ass, and you stumble just long enough for another one to get up beside you and latch onto your throat, bringing you down, and as you cry out in pain and fear, suddenly there are six of them on you, tearing and ripping you apart, and you feel every tendon and piece of meat being chewed and pulled off of you, your eye gets stabbed out by a vicious and misdirected fang, and then, maybe, you finally are allowed to die, and your family gets to come back the next week to find your bones starting to bleach in the sun.

My point is, Animals don’t treat animals or people ethically, so PETA’s entire acronym is ridiculous and senseless, their motives are dark, and their tactics are insidious and thoughtless. If you think otherwise, you’ve gotta do your research, these are not nice people, not by a long shot.
As people, we have to figure out how to treat each other ethically first, and that includes NOT exploiting the grief and loss of a family for our own gain. Once we get that figured out, then we can start worrying about the cows, okay?

Until then, I plan on having a medium rare steak tonight, happy knowing the cow was not killed in a brutal and frighteningly ‘natural’ way, but humanely for the nurishment and enjoyment of myself and many others, and then I’ll be sending my thoughts out to the family of that murder victim, hoping that they have the strength to move on past this tragedy, and all of the ensuing bullshit artists who’ve selfishly connected themselves to it.

-Fuck you, PETA. Here’s hoping someone dumps a bucket of fake heads on your organization’s doorstep.

C.R.

My wife and I used to watch Tech TV a lot when it first came to Canada, but it wasn’t long before G4 bought the network out, and slowly, most of the personalities we watched regularly (Martin Sargent, Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose, Patrick Norton, and others) were let go, or left the place. Leo managed to come back in a couple of iterations; Call for Help, and The Lab, both of which I followed pretty closely.

A few months ago, I went to the website for The Lab, to get one of the free files mentioned on the show, and discovered that the show had been canceled. In the ensuing enraged comments, someone mentioned that he had a podcast network thing called TWiT. I Checked it out, and now I can get my fix of the wisdome of Mr. Laporte, and his many cohorts and guests.

From the TWiT site, I stumbled on a mention of Kevin Rose, and learned that he had founded Digg, which I didn’t know, and that he was also a founder of an internet TV channel called Revision3, which features shows made by a lot of the former Tech TV people, and a few new ones.

Ever since these discoveries, I’ve been following both the TWiT casts and the Rev3 shows, and it’s been like the old days all over again.

About a month later, I start seeing ‘trailers’ on the Rev3 shows about a new show debuting on the network, called Wine Library TV, featuring this crazy, hyper, New Jersey guy named Gary Vaynerchuck. I’ve never had much interest in Wine, so I didn’t really think I would have anything to do with this new show, but I thought I would check out the first couple of episodes when they started airing on Rev3.

And now it’s one of my favourite things on the internet.

If you’ve never seen Gary’s show, this article does a better job of describing him than I could. Basically, he’s a knowledgable and passionate wine expert, as well as a ‘web 2.0’ networking and marketing madman, who is trying to bring the whole idea of wine back to the masses, and out of the hands of snobby, condescending wine douchebags.

After watching his show for a month or so, I got the wife into it as well, and we’ve started trying wine more often, and it’s becoming a hobby I’m starting to really get into. I once went to a microbrewery beer tasting event with a buddy, expecting just to get hammered, but we also learned about how to taste for the different flavours, and train our palates to appreciate the differences between ales. Of course, now that I’m a gluten-free-guy, that whole beer thing is pretty much out of the question, but now I can enjoy that same experience with wine, with a little help from a crazy dude in Jersey who constantly references 80’s pop-culture and old-school wrestling.

Last week, I saw that there was some big news coming from Wine Library TV. It turns out, Gary has reserved half of a huge cruise ship for his fans and friends, and is hosting what he calls ‘The Thunder Cruise’, a seven day sail through the Bahamas, with a bunch of amazing wine tasting events along the way. The wife and I have been thinking about going on a cruise for a while now, so when I heard about this, and saw what a good deal it was, I called the wife, and she said, ‘Let’s go!’

(A Sidenote: This is why I love my wife. First, she doesn’t find it too odd that I get practically obsessed over this guys videocast, and actually enjoys it herself, and then, I suggest we go on his cruise, and she barely has to think about it. She’s awesome.)

The cruise officially went on sale yesterday, and we booked our cabin, and the rest of the details like flights and all of that will be taken care of this week. It’s been almost seven years since my wife and I met, and we’ve never been on a serious vacation like this, so I am extremely pumped. The fact that it is hosted by and I will get to meet one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever seen is just a pile of icing on that cake.

So if you like wine, or need to get inspired about how to be a succesful internets person, I couldn’t recommend Gary’s websites highly enough. And if you’re not busy in April, and want to come cruising with us and try some amazing wines, I believe there are still cabins available, go check it out!

-CR

The afternoon at work got boring, so I had my cheap-ass McDonalds’ Cobra Commander present my company vehicle travel log in typical Cobra Commanderesque grandiose fashion. It was riveting. Notice over CC’s shoulder that, in the month of May, I drove 2455km for work. That’s 1525 miles to you dirty, metricless heathens.

So I’m starting to work on ideas for my netcast, which is likely going to be largely music-related, (though it might involve other media-ish things, I haven’t completely genre’d myself yet) and, with any luck, will debut next week or the week after.

I have pretty strong opinions about music, and I’m sure that many of them are unpopular, (in fact, I’m kind of counting on it) because my taste in music tends to land quite far outside of the realm of popular, and on the occassions that I dig something that a lot of other people do, it’s probably a coincidence. It’s not that I’m one of those people who prides themselves on listening to bands that nobody’s heard of. While that may sometimes be the case, more often than not, I simply really get into music that other people don’t so much.

My Last.fm profile probably explains it better than I can, and I plan on having it linked-to on the podcast as a frame of reference, and object of fair-play reactionary ridicule. Anyhow, what I’m getting at, is that music is incredibly subjective, so me (or anyone else) going on rants and raves about what I think sucks about music needs to be taken with a grain of salt (and a shot of tequila, and some lemon), and from a certain perspective. Namely, in this case, mine.

My problem, or one of, is that it feels like nobody takes music very seriously (“Hey man, it’s just music”), and I really do take it seriously, which may seem strange, because I’m exactly the opposite when it comes to movies (“Hey, man, it’s just entertainment, relax.”) I beleive the main difference there, is that the movie industry has more or less been a blatant corporate ad-machine whorefest of money and disrespect for its fans for pretty much as long as I can remember. Even when you see a guy like Kevin Smith, who is suposedly all down to earth and shit, there’s still that thing in the back of the head of the masses saying, “Yeah, you still make an obscene amount of money for making your little song-and-dance numbers, douche-bag. But that’s alright, it’s a douche-bag littered industry, so it’s no biggie. We’ll still go see the Jersey Girl sequel.”

With music, however, there is still a feeling that the people making the entertainment, or at least a large enough percentage of them, are genuinely trying to create something with motives that aren’t just about lining pockets. I say ‘just’ in there, because of course everyone who makes music wants to make a living at it. I’m not so naive that I won’t admit that 99.999% of artists in any field are doing it in hopes that they will make enough money to keep from having to get a real job, whether they proclaim ‘it’s all about the music’ or not.

The past ten years in music specifically, feel like there’s been a significant shift in music, both in what’s being offered, and what consumers are willing to swallow. A lot of music is treated like fast-food now; artificially flavoured, instantly addictive, but ultimately empty, no real lasting substance, and easily disposed of for the next serving of unhealthy crap.

And that really fucking bugs me. Many of the same people who now bemoan shit like Mambo #5 or the Macarena or boy bands or Vanilla Ice, are the same people that made that fucking garbage as popular as it was in its day. You know who you are, and you are part of the problem.

I just want people to like what they like for a good reason, and not just from being ear-raped with it by the radio every two hours, or because it’s attached to some cute car commercial or something. I’d much rather see someone unapologetically bopping along in their car to ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’, just because that tune just still gets him excited after all these years, than someone who never has a song worth lasting on their ipod longer than a month.

But I’m going to get into this in more detail in audio form. In fact, I may have just rough-drafted part of the first netcast right here. Music is something I’m passionate about, and I’m really excited to get to talk about it, even if into the internet ether of who-gives-a-damnism.

-Okay, time to go listen to my Gerardo live bootleg collection…

It’s been kind of a fucked-up time lately, so allow me to briefly sum up some of the crap that’s been going on…

It’s been raining a lot lately: Yeah. At least it’s not snow. I actually don’t mind the rain. It’s keeping my crop of dandelions in the backyard nice and healthy, and the grass growing between them is getting so tall that Kyuss is getting afraid to walk through it. Granted, he is a little pussy of a dog, but still…

Work is crazy: The past few months have been incredibly busy at the day-job. Last week I was on the road every day, and two days this week I will be as well. Add to that a gluten-poisoning experience right before a flight home last Thursday, and I am one fried chicken, colonel.
The Wife lost her job: Yeah. The official story is that the new owners of the business she worked at ‘couldn’t afford to pay her anymore’, but I suspect there was something sketchy about the way they went about it. Fortunately, she is handling the situation well, and we’re working on some plans, but it’s still a pretty serious bummer, as she was really enjoying the job while it lasted.

I got my Crow!: Finally! Many many thanks to JoeCrow for his excellent workmanship, and all the friends and family who helped chip in with birthday and xmas moneys, two weeks ago a large box with a large golden Crow T Robot showed up at my office. I’ve been meaning to take some pics of him and me riffing a movie, or of him terrorizing my dog (Kyuss really freaks out when I make Crow’s eyes follow him) I just haven’t got around to it yet. My feeble attempts to work the puppetry controls on him have given me even more respect for Trace Beaulieu and Bill Corbett.

There are they now: When TechTV became available in Canada, we subscribed to it, and it was one of the most watched channels in our house. Unscrewed with Martin Sargent and The Screen Savers were favourite shows, among others. When G4 assimilated TechTV, however, a lot of the great personalities were booted or left. Recently, I’ve discovered where most of those people are hanging out, making netcasts and internet TV awesomeness: Revision3 and TWiT, and since learning about this, I’ve been spending a little too much time in the respective archives. It’s been geek-tastic.

I has a plan: Every once in a while, I get a delusional idea in my head that I can actually accomplish all of the little projects that have popped into or out of my head in recent years. Well, last week, I sat down and wrote out somewhat of an action plan that may help me achieve some of my lofty creative personal goals. If my plan works, I will share it with you guys, but basically, if I can stick to the plan, I will be producing two webcomics, a podcast, a novel, an album, and a daily blog featuring a photo I’ve taken. This is sort of day one of that plan. Wish me luck, or motivation, or anti-fail, whatever you can.

Quote of the day: “I am a fail-pizza with extra fail-sauce. Hold the winchovies”

I had two hour-long flights yesterday, to a customer site and back again, so I decided I would finally start reading Irvine Welsh’s latest book, a collection of short stories called ‘If You Liked School, You’ll Love Work’. It was a toss up between it and the recently published, unedited version of Kerouac’s On The Road, subtitled ‘The Original Scroll’, but I figured Welsh would be better fare for sleep deprived airline travel.

For those who don’t know, Irvine Welsh is the man who wrote Trainspotting, and if you liked the movie as much as I did, then I highly recommend reading the book. It’s not one of those things where the book was necessarily better than the movie, but the movie focuses on a select group of characters from the book, which was a smart way to make a decent film adaptation. So what I’m saying is, the book has more of the same, including a very gruesomely funny scene involving menstruation and tomato soup. But I’ve said too much already.

So I’m reading his latest, and in the titular short story, there is a line, the kind of line he tosses in every so often, that I really dug. It’s what his protagonist thinks after realizing that sleeping with this particular girl was probably a bad idea:

…anybody can play Emperor in the Enlightened Realm of Retrospect,

just as we can all play Cunt in the Kingdom of Trouser Wood.

I love it.

I would say that Kerouac and Welsh are my two favourite writers, and I sort of obsess about the two of them alternatively. This is probably because I read the bulk of their work during what has cheaply been buzzworded the ‘Quarterlife Crisis’ part of my life, the early to mid twenties, when it seems like a lot of people are trying to reconcile their youth, and figure out the inevitability of adulthood.

I think the best advice I could give to anyone in that part of their life, would be to spend a summer working in some remote, beautiful area, away from the distractions of modern life, and spend the free time you have during that summer reading as many of the books that you’ve always wanted to but never got around to reading, and if I could humbly recommend a couple of books worth reading during that time, I would say ‘Maribou Stork Nightmares’ by Welsh, and probably ‘On the Road’ by Kerouac, though honestly I found just about every one of Jack’s autobiographical series of books to be pretty amazing.

Speaking of bookish things…

As I was deplaning last night, a whirlwind day of travel and playing the technician equivalent of beat the clock with a room full of old and poorly maintained machinery, I was thinking about how much I travel, and how I could almost write a book of travel advice, and while I was waiting by the baggage carousel for luggage that seemed have been shipped separately on the backs of drunken three-legged donkeys based on its delay, I found myself turning that train of thought into an interesting concept for a work of fiction, whether a book or movie script.

Then today, as I’ve thought about it further, I’m thinking it might be an interesting concept for a fiction blog. I will have to let this idea ferment and cement a little more, but I think it could turn into something pretty cool.

One last book related thing. I recently downloaded some audiobooks, for road traveling, to offer an alternative to music, and found them to be a great idea. One of the downloads I.. erm… found… was a collection of Phillip K Dick audiobooks. Never read his stuff before, and I’m really finding it pretty amazing for the most part. Kinda fucked up in places too, but not really in a bad way. I can’t get over how much shit he more or less predicted about the future that has in some roundabout way come to fruition in the age we live in now.

-Speaking of the future, I have to go pick up the wife so we can continue to discuss possibilities for ours. More on that soon, probably.

CR

I have assembled some photography and random words for your entertainment pleasure. Please to be clicking on the hypertextually linked graphic above to get whisked away to a pleasure-dome of humour and jocularity and whatnot and such as.

Um, yeah, so it’s been a weird day. I got up early and walked the dog in the -13 degree icy fog, got ready, left the house, and got to work early, which never happens, and have been feeling un-naturally good. I’m not complaining, it’s just odd, and it makes me a little odd. But you kids love that about me. Pork Chop Sandwiches!

Alright, I have expensive parts to order and customers to ensadden when I tell them the prices of said parts, and then I have a work trip to book for next week, so I need to get to it. Fridays are always busy, so I may have to leave work early to compensate for actually having to work today.

-Oh, and if it’s warmer than freezing and free of snow wherever you are, I hate you.

CR