I am in love with a girl, and her name is Life. We've known each other for a while, but it's only been recently that I've learned not to take Her for granted, to see Her as She is, to want to be engaged with Her with every breath. And She is beautiful.

Life and I bobsled through this existence, dancing on the razorblade precipice of What is Possible and What Once Was. She's done bad things and good things, as have I, but we keep coming back to this one Dancing Place, where the waltz cum tango cum foxtrot cum swing cum robot cum running man can find their way through our legs and inscribe their disappearing movements on the canvas floors of Time.

Life: she is partner, she is friend. We take the most intimate of baths in the open fields, lighting candles to shed light on a fearsome moon, laughing at the small burbling after-breathes of the volcano sighs.

Life, pacific, oceans, prolific. Two-stepping in the garden where the beetles do spy.

It's been a while since I've posted to the Woodshed, but here's me ranting on my current situation re: my hands, design, and working on my artistry in new/old media (as evidence by my recent "color" photo).

Latest work from the Sala-Studio, accidentally discovered while working on a logo for a new client. Feel free to use for V-Day.

Messing around in Adobe Illustrator....

More from the PSD studio.

The hectic life of a freelance designer splitting his time between two cities can take its toll, which is why I'll be down for the next day or two as I wait out this cold/flu bug I've contracted. If I don't get back to your emails, that's why. Thanks.

Another entry from the PSD backlog...

... is Neal Stephenson's The System of the World, part 3 of his "Baroque Trilogy", concerned primarily with a fictional-historical account of Leibniz v. Newton in early 18th-century London, as navigated by the invented Dr. Daniel Waterhouse and a motley band of pirates, duchesses, coffee addicts, scientists, watchmakers, footpads, soldiers, and more. I've read the first two parts in the past year or so, and enjoy Mr. Stephenson's re-invigoration of a time in history when the world (at least in the West) became modern, and capitalism and science asserted themselves on the world stage, and massive upheavals in economics, information, and the holdings of power made life very different for the ordinary Joe. Hmm, kinda reminds me of today....

Every computer monitor's pixels consist of a combination of a Red, a Green, and a Blue (hence, RGB) color element which is brightened or darkened depending on the color being called for the pixel to display. If it's purple, the green will diminish, if it's turquoise, less red will appear, etc. To use these colors -- which combined together form pure WHITE -- on the screen directly is dabble with the essence of screen-based visualization, allowing one to achieve effects like these, which consists solely of red, green, and blue stripes intermingled like spawning salmon. From the PSD lab...

Death Stars need not be so ominous. Some are very tiny, self-motivated, and direct. These conspire way down in the grid patterns of our lines/lives, and it is on their decisions that our chaotic world rests, that our chaotic world reigns. To picture these is to call them forth, perchance to be manipulated, such that Life Freight need not grip us so deeply so. It is as though the Fizz of the beery Universes has been harnessed and grasped by the molecules of our hands, and the ignorant may continue on their way, not knowing that we possess a/The Spider.

Click. (Smudge) C l i c k. (SMMUDDGGE) Scraping pencil shavings into the infrared ______. Chiaruscuro. Dada. Scared.

Here's a little ditty entitled "One by One" (mp3) that my brother and I recorded last spring as something of a joke, complete with Chris doing his best/worst Jim Morrison "Are you alive?!" impression on the break-downs, a kick-ass hip-hop drumbeat, some sleezy keyboards, and a very brief RAP SOLO by yours truly at the very end. Now you see why I'm focusing on design.

Classic quote from mark k-punk, exhumed here for your perusal, concerning an all-too-common feature of the Denver visage:

"Smug detachment is the required postmodern pose, because, on a psychological level, postmodernism is driven above all by the fear of looking silly, of being seen to be taking something - which the big Other might turn out to deem as ridiculous - seriously. The pomonaut is so depressively flat because he is well aware that there is nothing that can in principle escape this judgement. Conspicuously cultivated ironic distantiation, the flaunting of lack of commitment, is thus the only possible option."

More RGB fun!

Yeah, the Radiohead guy. Kick, ass.

I'd like to say I've found a new interest in Roman mythology ("Janus" being the god of doors, doorways, comings, and goings). The truth is, the word "Janus" was stuck in my head during this studio session because the Janus financial group is located in Denver, and I keep seeing it everywhere. Hey, inspiration: I'll take it where I can get it.

Taking the long way....

Enjoy it.

More and more visual complexity...

Fuck, this shit is fun... I hope some of ya'll agree. Keep going? More? Less? Back to the writing? Not that it matters, just curious about public sentiment towards these pieces...

They add up... trust me, they add up. The blog posts, the inboxes, the load times and forms to fill: each one a chink in our armor, each one a burglarized moment issuing us 1kb closer to death. I have spent many years online, and so have you. Some of this has been engaged in very important modes of study (thanks Disinfo.com!), or sending messages to grow important relationships: but a lot of the time, it's been inane, reactive, addictive behavior. Refresh. Refresh. Close all tabs. Reboot Firefox. Refresh. Refresh. Were we to get a 3rd-person understanding of the actual amount of time we spend at our computers doing fuck-all, we'd likely be horrified. This addiction stems from the fact that -- by virtue of Graphic User Interfaces and multiple modes of interaction (keyboard, mouse, microphone, etc) -- personal computers, in essence, have become the most intense VIDEO GAME ever made. Compare, say, the use of Microsoft Excel to Pong: which is more exciting? Clearly, Microsoft Excel. More happens with better graphics and more import than anything the Atari stick game could ever muster: and it's being used by office slaves to keep the books and write financial reports. Our entire life on the computer is like this: a vast video game more intense than even the highest levels of Missile Command, because if we "win" at this game -- if we write a DIGG-worthy blog post, get blogged on TechCrunch or BoingBoing, etc -- we get more than bragging rights and our initials emblazoned on the winner board: we get to live. Which is why becoming more efficient and conscious of our computer use is so dire: it IS a game, and we are all... fucking... losing. Which reminds me, I have some emails to delete.

This dude roolz:

Each day I also try to draw. It's a similar expulsion of buildup: Milking the cows every morning. Checking the chickens' eggs. Why should that be limited to a certain medium? Shit builds up inside you on multiple levels; if you don't degrease the system it clogs. Drawing brings me back to reality by sending me past reality, a sort of out-of-body perspective.