12.11.2007

IDEA THIRTY-NINE: BRANDTRUEBOY SHUFFLES



barry gordy


This is an easy one: charge minimum 100 bucks to send someone a fully loaded silver iPod shuffle, chock full of tremendous tunes from yrs truly. Profits go 2 charity. Merry Xmas Gift if that's yr thing.

Note: must find out what the max # of iPods u can have/ account.

10.21.2007

IDEA THIRTY-EIGHT: Next Level Zine delivered to Next Level People



raymond pettibon

From the publication floor on the BRANDTRUEBOY skyscraper, I'd like to create a zine called Next Level People. Each issue would contain a couple hundred pages, prolly 300 to start, with anywhere from a paragraph or sentence to a whole short story, maybe even novella length of text devoted to this person whom the author has deemed a part of a new, next level way of thinking, feeling and being. The peeps might be philosophers or artists or poets or skateboarders or djs or fashion designers. Doll-makers and rhyme slayers. Trophy takers and vegan bakers...macro biotic innovators.

There'd be exactly one issue made for each person included in it, complete with handmade, personalized packaging. On the corresponding blog the goal of getting the copy to the person would be documented and photographed. Some of the people will already be famous so there will be the usual tribulations with trying to get in touch with them. I haven't decided whether one of the stipulations is that the zine has to be hand delivered with this documented in some form, like a signature or a pic/video of the handover.

I also haven't decided whether it should be just text. I'm leaning in that direction. Perhaps a simple line drawing in between pieces. I'd like the paper to be handmade and super thin. From Viet Nam or Japan and printed w old skule steez.

The logo could be imprinted on a wax stamp. I could go down to this place in the village and get that shit made up. One can always make prints using a soap eraser, a pencil, an exacto knife and some ink...

I wouldn't mind using a pinky ring like the fucked-up pontiff that I am.


The next level people are all those who fit that old Tortoise album title:

Millions Now Living Will Never Die

We will dovetail once and for all time, as we disappear like jet trails into a new eternity...

noosphere




9.16.2007

IDEA THIRTY-SEVEN: Twit Yr Life



bunraku

What I hope to someday soon find on Twitter is the textual equivalent of lifecasting. That's to say, I'd like folks to Twit Yr Life, the theme song being sung to the tune of "Sing Your Life", by Morrissey, an appropriate choice for an genre based upon the over dramatization/significance placed upon the everyday, in a manner akin to wig-wearing English poets and 13 year old Goths.

(both of whom I love)

Anyways, to Twit Yr Life youd need a qwerty keyboard on a reliable MDA as you ran around, being you, and transcribing as much of the experience as possible. Youd have folks struggling to keep up their twit/minute ration. Better yet would be if you could get yr agent or assistant to do it--they could Twit Yr Life so that it would be in the third person. THAT would be some hot shit.

A whole new kind of PR--a whole new kind of serial entertainment.

"Microcom", perhaps?


"Sing Your Life"

Sing your life
any fool can think of words that rhyme
many others do
why don't you?
do you want to?
Sing your life
just walk right up to the microphone
and name
all the things that you love
all the things that you loathe
sing your life
all the things that you love
all the things that you loathe
oh sing your life
oh sing your life
Others sang your life
but now's your chance to shine
and have the pleasure of
saying what you mean
the rare pleasure of
meaning what you sing
oh, make no mistake, my friend
all of this will end
so sing it now
all the things you love
all the things you loathe
oh sing your life
all the things that you love
all the things that you loathe
oh sing your
oh sing your
Don't leave it all unsaid
somewhere in the wasteland of your head
and make no mistake, my friend
your pointless life will end
but before you go
can you look at the truth?
You have a lovely singing voice
a lovely singing voice
and all of those
who sing on key
they stole the notion
from you and me


Of course, my current goal is to Twit Yr Life in as few twits as possible, using as few words as well.


9.07.2007

IDEA THIRTY-SIX: Early Adapting does not equal Evolution

Hipsters, pundits, marketing gurus, knowledge workers and all other brands of pseudo geeks need to take a page from the book of the ferreal geeks of the world: the Sys Admins. Forget the cowboys who actually design networks, I’m referring to those nervous nellies whose job it is to take care of the bloody thing in part by trying to keep your machine locked down to prevent power users from “moving too quickly” to the latest version of Windows, Office or even freaking iTunes. In light of the Apple iPod price slash this week, it turns out the TRUE geeks of the world know something after all: early adapting sux. Just because the new shiny toy promises great things that will change your life and make it better in a million trillion ways doesn’t mean that it actually WORKS. Patience is a virtue in the “real world”—why throw caution to the wind online and dunk millions into the fledgling Second Life platform before it’s had a chance to iron out its many kinks? Why rush to be one of the first to have an iPhone when it means paying 600 bucks for a pretty brick—only to have that same piece of gorgeousness come down dramatically in price just a few weeks later? Why get your panties in a wad about installing the “cool looking” Vista when it’s full of bugs and a pain in the ass to use?

Sometimes it pays to be thankful for what you’ve got. Here's a hot new item that should be on everyone's "must have" list: a computer that actually WORKS.

7.28.2007

IDEA THIRTY-FIVE: Research the setting/context/symptoms in/within/by which artists create for clues to questions that have yet to be formulated...

...but now can be asked.



For instance, what am I, the writer of the blog BRANDTRUEBOY who goes by the name of TRUE, really scared of? At one point, if any, do I become powerless against the irrationality of fear? Well, for one thing I've noticed that when I write very suspenseful or scurry or extremely dramatic scenes there's often a description of a buzzing sound of some sort--whether from fluorescent lights or a film projector or an old fashioned CRT monitor...there's something off to the side or just underneath the surface of the action that persists relentlessly--providing a context of incomprehension by which to frame and isolate the action. I wonder if this is influenced by the chronic tinnitus in my right ear, the result of hereditary ear problems made worse by a childhood spent at loud shows not to mention the time in my early 20s I passed out drunk on a park bench in Greenpoint with an ear bud rammed in my right ear (thankfully one was not in my left as well) and the volume turned to max and the CD Man, with the Tortoise CD inside set to repeat. For whatever reasons the ear bud was also missing its cushy black protective cover.

(After years of not being able to listen to it I now start a DJ set with a Spring Heel Jack remix of a track off of Millions Now Living Will Never Die, the album that was in the CD man on that fateful nite. The notes are hard coded on my brain--after one listen i had that record memorized. I mix it in with "La La", a dreamy Slum Village track. The two tracks contain ghosts of sounds that mix together forming a musical phantasm sandwich--oozing, radiating deeply blunted beats and other moist and gooey goodness)

The ringing is always there--i only really focus on it when everything else is silent, or if I'm stressed--then it gets louder and louder.

I think it's one of the reasons that the movie Eraserhead hit me as hard as it did: the white noise soundtrack that runs throughout the film reminded me of what I "normally" hear inside my head--the high pitch buzzing of screaming twitching nerve ends accented by faint lower tones. Machines bellowing. Pipes groaning...those sounds really got to me, they haunted me more than the shots of the mutant baby, or the "just cut em up like regular chickens" scene.

I think then of Kurdt spending days hiding out under the highway overpass alongside a muddy, rushing river. Or of Balzac illuminated by oil lamps and fueled by endless cups of coffee. I think of Hemingway writing short stories that took place in Michigan while sitting at a tiny table in a Parisian cafe. I think of Nas writing rhymes under the rumble of the elevated subway track out in Queens. I think of Aphex Twin composing electronic symphonies in his head while standing beside an electrical power plant deep in industrial England in the middle of the night...

Everything matters, everything makes a difference. All of the who, what, whys and wheres are the ingredients that make the artwork. It's not true what our high school english teachers tried to teach us: that the artists work should be judged irrespective of his or her life--life matters. It forms the fairy tale called "reality" from which all other stories are spun--the question is, which parts matter more? The fact of religion or nationality or sexuality that an artist was born into or the vibe of his favorite watering hole, or the exact layout of the room into which she locked herself away from the world for many years? The person he or she ended up falling in love with or the fact that she went to bed every nite as a child with the sound of music from the juke-joint down the street wafting up into her window and seeping into her brain?

That which seems to matter least...that which doesn't make sense...that which is the remainder once something else is taken away. All of these are worth examining. But so are the everyday things, the routines, the shopping lists, the minor irritations and invisible, chronic disorders.

And since you never asked, here it is:

I fear the insistent (buzzing) persistence of evil.




(why is the nite so still? why did i take the pill? cuz i dont want to see it at the windowsill...)
--The Arcade Fire


7.06.2007

IDEA THIRTY-FOUR: Start a new religion



i dont have dreams

instead i live my goals

like waking dreams...


Two goals of mine that I forgot to mention in the tweets above:

Become the falconeer of a majestic falcon whose lineage is rooted in myth

Start a new religion online


The former may have to wait for the next time I'm in the middle east.

The latter has already begun...


6.03.2007

IDEA THIRTY-THREE: No More Apostrophes



In the age of of IM and Twitter, the apostrophe is just one more superfluous character that could be used for something else. Context tells us when we come across it that 99 times out of 100 "cant" means "can't", the contraction of can not, and not an old school form of worship singing. As for showing possession, I propose that we rid ourselves of the apostrophe as an attempt to move past all of that. Why is there this constant need to own something? Isnt it telling that we choose to communicate using sentences with words that own other words? It would seem that our western capitalism is being reinforced on an infinitesimal level in the space between the letters we use in our words. And if u try to make the argument that the rules* of grammar dont have any direct effect on daily life, just try speaking to a little kid in Dutch or Spanish using the formal "you"--they will look at you like youre nuts, while an old man, on the other hand, might get peeved if you address him using an informal "you"...

Language is something we mold AND are molded by...a languages grammar is like the BIOS underneath the OS on your laptop...its an invisible system of commands, the fucking around with which could equal the meltdown of the entire system or else a possible dramatic boost in performance.

We live in the age of the mash-up, when its not about buying something as much as its about subsuming it and making it a part of what you already are.

Once you get in the habit of subsuming and not CONSUMING that which is Other, you start learning how to see yrself in other things, hence, slowly diluting the entire notion of the Self and the Other so that they are always already less distinct from one another, and more obviously parts of the same whole.

Whats more, not only do you see yrself in other people, and in other things...but those people and things start unveiling other people and things that you never expected, things that change the way you understand other things...

(Things that change yr grammar.)

Its a lot like blogging. You have an idea and u get on yr innernet and search and read and run a google image search and yr idea changes, it grows, like an empty bag that you fill with things you gather.

Instead of plot and character, the innernet generation thinks in terms of posts and content.






*I know that there are those out there such as the members of The Apostrophe Preservation Society and nk who will argue with me that there is a beauty to the rules of grammar similar to that of mathematical proofs and music composition--a rarefied sense of sanctity to be had when one does everything the way one is "supposed" to. While Im a firm believer that in order to properly rebel against something one should attempt to first fully understand the nature of that which they are overthrowing, I do believe that the time comes when misuse starts down the bumpy road towards acceptance, and its up to societys thinkers to identify and perhaps embrace these paradigm shifts as being the essence of what we used to refer to as "progress".

The more information we have to try and take in, the more we need to communicate, in order to engage with networks that will digest large chunks of information for us. It requires a lot of typing (often with thumbs) in order to keep our relationship with our innernet active and fresh. We need something faster than contractions, something even shorter and more to the point.