Disassemble and Reassemble- Heavy Input Mode

Just another day in the relay race of life.

MUSIC: Tool (I like the lyric “I know the pieces fit” in this song. And it is about “design”.)

I know I have not posted in a while. It happens every now and then. It seems lately my “idea hamster” has fallen asleep on the wheel. It just being tossed around and thumping on that wheel. It can be very annoying. After a while it feels like I should be wearing a helmet and licking windows. I just was not inspired to write anything. I did have even enough material in my head to even write a short blog posting.

I had planned one weekend to do nothing but writing. That was the plan. Buffalo NY area was hit by 2 feet of snow. My snow blower was not working right and kept jamming on me. So I had to shovel the driveway by hand. It is not so hard really. But it is still annoying though. The problem is that when it snows like that you have to shovel every few hours to keep up with it. Plus I helped my neighbor when his snow blower broke on him too. The other problem was when it was all over it left about 3-4 inches of ice in the driveway that had to be broken up. That is a very slow process. I was exhausted. And just could not find the energy to type. And I did not what to type anyways.

I have been unsuccessful trying to come up with an idea for this month’s MoviePoet.com contest. I would hate to miss yet another month.

I go through these times of “no good ideas” from time to time. It puts me in what I call “heavy input mode”. I will start reading a lot and watching a lot of movies or TV shows. It is a process of “filling up” my head in the hopes of knocking an idea or two out. I have read a couple of “pulp fiction” novels. I read Robert B. Parker’s latest Spencer novel Now and Then. I also watched the first season of “The Wire”. A note it was created by David Simon. If you take his books Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (also the basis of the TV series) and The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood you will see the influences to this series. I also watched the third season of Rescue Me. I think both shows have some interesting and complex characters to them. I may discuss them at another time.

But I also need to have some fun too. The world is just not drama. I found episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 online.

The other thing is that I cannot get narrow minded and limit my selections when I am in “heavy input mode”. And a word of advice you should avoid people who are narrow minded. Prime example, a person who only listens to sports news. And let us not forget someone (regardless of which) repeats verbatim the “party line.” These people are “Parrots” repeating. They are not really having a meaningful conversation of any real substance. It gets real bad in major election years.

The other thing I do is load up the MP3 player to listen to at work. I download podcasts from This American Life and MaximumFun. I also found audio clips from a guy named “Dave Rabbit” who was a soldier and pirate radio DJ during the Vietnam War. His show only lasted 21 days before he stopped doing it. (Heard about this by listening to Opie and Anthony Show. I have to give credit where credit is due.) I also found the WFMU radio website. It is a freeform radio station. It means they allow their DJ’s to program their own shows. Imagine that. Creative freedom. A scary idea to have on radio these days. There is a weekly show on each week called 7 Second Delay where the two hosts try to pull a radio stunt off within the hour. Here are some highlights.

I was searching the website of WFMU and I found a “buried treasure”. I know I have a lot of “voices” going on inside my head at any given moment. I think I may have found the soundtrack that goes with the “voices”. It is the audio equivalent of a “car wreck”. Give it a listen. And be open-minded about it. And you may realize why I can’t seem to take it off my MP3 player. And if you come up with a really good explanation on “Why?” PLEASE contact me.