Dear Bill Gates

IDEA THIRTY-NINE: BRANDTRUEBOY SHUFFLES

2007-12-11T16:49:00.000-05:00

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.

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

2007-10-21T16:16:00.000-04:00

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

IDEA THIRTY-SEVEN: Twit Yr Life

2007-09-16T14:10:00.000-04:00

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.

IDEA THIRTY-SIX: Early Adapting does not equal Evolution

2007-09-07T18:38:00.000-04:00

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.

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

2007-07-28T20:15:00.000-04:00

...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

IDEA THIRTY-FOUR: Start a new religion

2007-07-06T17:18:00.000-04:00

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...

IDEA THIRTY-THREE: No More Apostrophes

2007-06-03T09:24:00.000-04:00

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.

IDEA THIRTY-TWO: Throw out anything you haven't used within the last year.

2007-05-19T13:01:00.000-04:00

One of the things I've come to believe in is that it's important to live lean if you wanna make art that packs a PUNCH.

I find it necessary to get rid of unnecessary distractions. It's hard enough for me to finish anything without a lot of STUFF getting in the way. Of course, at the end of the day, all art is a distraction on some level--the making of it and the experiencing of it is, at its essence, a beautiful waste of time. So it's important to carefully seperate the so-called useful from the so-called useless in such a way that will avoid future tears and despair. Everyone fears the moment of realizing that something priceless is gone for good. That's how I came up with the formula that I get rid of any tools, materials and randomly collected items that will supposedly inform a piece of art within a year of procuring them, if they are not put to actual use.

Beyond the art clutter itself, this philosophy should also be used for clothes, appliances, furniture, mementos, shoes, table settings...significant others.

I think that by doing this I have it in my head that one day I'll whittle my life down and clear the space around me like the kid who lived across the hall from me in college. He was a hipster from Cali back in the mid 90s before there was such a thing, but he had it DOWN on the prototype tip: the dark blue jeans, the fucked up boots with flaps sticking out, the assymetrical bowl cut hair that looked like it was cut with carpenter scissors. He had the right kind of heavy-lidded eyes and crazy bedhead hair. He was a quiet drunk who was always covered with bruises and cuts. He wore a grey fedora along with his usual uniform of white undershirts and jeans and slept with a rotating roster of attractive black women... One nite in spring I ended up drinking with a bunch of folks i didn't usually hang up on the dormitory roof, a big security no-no. And for good reason--the roof was a collection of slants, nooks and crannies, any one of which I feared was waiting to trip me and send me over the side. I tried to play tuff, but thankfullyl we didn't stay up there long and went back to his room. All the time I'd lived across from him I'd never been inside, and I was surprised by what I saw, or, I should say, what i DIDNT see. There was nothing in it except for an old fashioned black typewriter and a stack of white paper that both sat atop the university issued desk. Otherwise the room looked exactly as it had the first second he walked in. I know because my room across the hall was a copy of his and seeing his gave me a flashback of that first instant in my own room, before my posters went on the walls and my books and boxes and clothes and CDs got scattered all about in their various piles.

Damn, i said, cradling my 40 bottle like a baby...is this all yr stuff?

No one answered me. Someone was playing a guitar...someone else threw a bottle against the wall.

We laughed and smoked cigarettes and stared at the bubbling mess of broken glass. Someone had a boombox playing a mixtape. That was back when everyone was into Palace. We blasted "Cat's Blues" and sang along to Will Oldham's psychotic twang, screaming the lines, "If I had a clue what justice was, it would be more than I deserved" and at that moment my prototype hipster neighbor threw open his closet door to reveal a ferreal American flag brightly unfurled down the length of it. Before I could register what was going on the prototype waved an open Zippo lighter along the bottom of the flag and the whole thing BURST into flames. There were screams of joy and fear as everyone stepped back as the yellow flames licked the ceiling. We crunched about in the broken beer bottle glass and watched the flag shrivel up around itself, like an old lady disappearing into her shawl.

I don't know what shocked me more: the sight of such a huge flag in a space so bare or the sight of the flames or the realization that at any second now I might be expelled and my college career would be over and done...

After what seemed like hours but was really only minutes, someone came running in with a fire extinguisher, shouting at us to step aside and spraying the entire wall with cheerful spurts of white foamy mess.

The remains of the flag were thrown away. One less thing to own.

The whole thing was pretty fucking cool and set a standard that i've striven towards (at times unconciously) ever since...

By way of a (necessary?) digression, allow me to point out another level of cool that i've striven towards for many years...Herzog, Kinski and the movie Fitzcarraldo...It's one of my favorite artistic endeavors. A movie about an impossible mission (dragging a ship over a mountain in order to build an opera house in the middle of the Amazon rainforest), the making of itself which was an impossible task--i.e. filming the recreation of this feat with cast and crew in the middle of the Amazon rain forest...

here's a clip in which Herzog, the director, recounts how the indians in the film offered to kill Kinski for Herzog.

Murder offer

Here's a clip that shows why:

Kinki losing it on the set

IDEA THIRTY-ONE: Resist belief in a personal God

2007-05-11T17:31:00.000-04:00

To search for the truth, yes; but to think that there is somebody or something we call God, no.

It cannot even be said that He exists. Even that is too concrete. Then you cannot say that He is wise or that He knows. Because if He knows, then there are two things - the known and the One who knows. And that is too detailed for God. He should be an indefinite divinity...

...because the machine of the world is exceedingly complex for the simplicity of men.

IDEA THIRTY: Twitter Tag

2007-05-10T01:38:00.000-04:00

TRUE

I guess it's the Heideggerian in me, but in order to discover how to use something in a next level way (and by that I mean a HARDER BETTER FASTER STRONGER way), I have to first see it used in its most assed-out, busted-up, and/or pedestrian state. I want the usefulness of the tool brought down to its lowest possible level. Like tryin to type yr manifesto on an antique typewriter with dirty keys and a dry ribbon using a piece of sandpaper or celluloid instead of paper, or bombing the half-smashed glass of a bus stop shelter during a rainstorm so that the spray paint streaks and splatters and drips psycho style across the cracks like on a Jackson Pollack canvas... A next level moment can happen anywhere, at anytime, as long as you're open to it. I've had it happen where I'll be sitting thru a tedious, dry and overlong presentation, when suddenly there will be a diagram, or a collection of shapes or graphs meant to illustrate some banality and BOO-YA I'll realize a whole new way of thinking about something. It won't be a something that has anything to do with what the presenter was going on about, but oh well.

(Progress is very rarely a linear process that adheres to cause and effect. Sometimes you gotta break shit to see what's next)

Like on the new Twitter joint. What if u blatantly ignore the question ("What are you doing?") that sets the premise and instead use the broadcasting capability to issue news clip mini-posts about a particular subject at regular intervals, like an old school wire service received on cellys.

If you ignore the question you can use Twitter to publish a serialized horror story or you can "twitter" the first lines of books...

Opposite these innovators, on the other side of the room, stand the great mass of Twitterers tweeting in the most basic and obvious way possible. They announce where they are, what they are doing, where they're going and with whom. They also talk about what they're eating, drinking, smoking, watching, downloading and installing. I've clicked on to the "with friends" link of random kids and it's like listening into a conversation, which is pretty hot. This kind of basic "I am here" message, repeated over and over all around the world got me thinking…

What about a game called Twitter Tag? It would work in reverse to regular tag. The person who was "IT" would be in a general location that was made known, (like Union Square, NYC or Golden State Park, San Francisco) nonchalantly posting tweets from their mobile handy about their surroundings (the rule would be that each post has to DESCRIBE someTHING nearby) while those who are following try to get closer to the person and eventually try to tag them. The person who successfully tags the person who is IT becomes the new IT. They receive the password that allows them to go in and take over sending tweets to the IT account.

There could be some good old fashioned running around tag action as the tweeters zeroed in on the person who was IT.

At the end of the allotted time period for the game (a few hours?…a few days?) the person who managed to post the greatest number of tweets over the longest amount of time wins.

The possibilities for advertising and community building and protest staging are endless! I can see hip chains launching new products with an online map of all the locations where Tag will be played with the players converging on store sites or cafes or clubs…

Descriptions in the tweets would make the game a mash-up between tag and treasure hunt.

Likewise, it would be a great way to sell drugs, if one was so inclined!

Other followers who were not in the vicinity could help by tweeting their ideas of where/who the person was.

The whole thing sounds like fun to me but I don't really play games so some people who do should let me know what they think.

IDEA TWENTY-NINE: Twitterpated!

2007-05-04T20:48:00.000-04:00

It's spring and I'm twitterpated. You know: horny. Wanting it all ways, all the time. Fast and crazy, slow and insane...

Being good at making love is a lot like being good at writing:

In addition to having patience and mad skills, u have to have a willingness to

tap the alien vein that throbs inside you.

U gotta give in to the bump and grind of it all

Every piece of art has a rhythm, just like a fuck. Even so-called silent pieces like the pillars at Stonehenge and precisely decorated Grecian Urns and still life paintings of fruit positioned upon rumpled tablecloths have a way of dancing through the space that they are in.

I can tell you about this but the only way you'll really get me is if you experience it for yrself...like the bullseye of an orgasm, understanding in and of itself is a gathering up and coming together that outstretches like gigantic unfurled wings--there's the gusty, exhilirating rush, the sense of things falling into place. An unexplainable feeling of being at home.

No matter whether we are at rest, or supposedly thinking about something else, our desires are constantly working for and against us, pulsing thru our blood...widening our pupils and charging our nerves...all for the persistence of something larger than our singular lives.

In the end our most dramatic, Shakespeare-style life altering emotional episodes are the result of boring old chemistry, nothing more.

The same is true of art making. It is a pragmatic business, just like Andy Warhol taught. You go to work and do a job that in the end comes down to numbers.

Ask any musician and he or she will tell you...in the end it's about numbers.

Ask me about my own writing, and I'll tell you that it's less about a motive driven plot and more about how certain groupings of words work together better than other groups of words.

Some words are now. They are of this moment and HAPPENIN.

I never want to lose being of the moment.

My blog BRANDTRUEBOY is having technical issues that may or may not be resolved.

I'm trying not to get overly romantic about my blog's demise.

Every ending is a beginning, I tell myself.

Perhaps the death of BTB is a harbinger of the death of blog culture on a larger scale.

I wonder, what would Andy do? If he had a blog and it got all fucked up and he still wanted to be in touch with his peeps, how would he go about it? And I realize that while I don't know exactly, he would definitely be something quick and easy.

http://twitter.com/true

IDEA TWENTY-EIGHT: Street level Google Map

2007-03-31T19:51:00.000-04:00

Google should fuck shit up and revolutionize maps--offer street level maps for yr handy. There you'll be, trying to get to wherever u need to go and following a "sketch" rendering of the street that you're on as you walk/drive/bumble/trance along. That shit won't be too thick, graphically--just a bunch of lines to represent yr surroundings. Store names and subway stops will be represented according to the filters u set regarding the type of information u want to come into view as you walk forward.

An icon of some sort will glow over the direction you are to take according to the address you programmed in. once you get to that icon you'd click or say ok and the next one would appear.

Users would submit youtube type clips of them walking down a street with a camera on their jacket lapel and the google doods would strip it down to scenes out of Tron.

Gone will be the bird's eye and all of the misperceptions it engenders.

People scale is the best scale when it comes to guides of any kind, i find.

The spirit craves a form it can know.

IDEA TWENTY-SEVEN: Bloody Strawberries Forever Soon Mix

2007-03-21T23:35:00.000-04:00

Fucked up mix of "Strawberry Fields" by the Beatles and "Soon" by My Bloody Valentine.

IDEA TWENTY-SIX: Electronic Kick

2007-03-17T12:49:00.000-04:00

The Electronic Kick is for meetings, both real-life and virtual. It would consist of two tiny round sensors. The first would be placed on the back of a person's watch between the metal or plastic watchback and the skin. The battery in the sensor would feed off the energy produced by the watch, regardless of whether it was mechanically or electronically manufactured. Another sensor would be placed somewhere on the person's clothes or body, or perhaps on a pen or handy that he or she will have nearby for the duration of the meeting.

The key if there are non-team members present in real or virtual viewing proximity, is to make certain the sensors and their use is well hidden.

The sensor underneath the watch is the receiver and the other one is the sender by which the person can send a pulse to another person by tapping it according to a preset number of times (once for teammate A, twice for teammate B, and so on). The pulse would be meant as "an electronic kick under the table" (thank-you, unrat) to the teammate on video conference who is babbling on or otherwise fucking up. With iChat, perhaps this could be built into the desktop interface as well, where you chould flag the person speaking in such a way that would only display on their copy of the web part, and remain invisible to the other meeting participants.

Still, such flagging would depend upon the person speaking to be refering to their desktop screen, which, in the case of long table in a large boardroom, might not be feasible. With the sensors on the particpants bodies, it doesn't matter if it's a conference phone call, an informal breakout session or even a cocktail party. The Electronic Kick could revolutionize corporate communiciations.

The first Wiki I ever spent time on and still the illest, after all these years...fusion anomaly: if u dont know, now u know!--enjoy!

IDEA TWENTY-FIVE: "Electricity_WiKiscape"

2007-02-19T08:11:00.000-05:00

metropolis

To every NYC specialty restaurant, tasty deli spot, hair salon, pastrami steamer, late nite head shop, subway sandwich shop franchise, specialty lid shop, federal post office, chase ATM, belgian chocolatier and any other city bidnesses that i never seem to be able to re-locate when i actually need them--may I propose the creation of a city wiki based on tiny blue tooth data patches affixed to the doors (perhaps the patch could be cut in the shape of an old skool keyhole) of yr establishments? The patch would beam all the essentials about the place--address, website, reviews...right into a customer's celly, plus it would mark the date and time and add your having been there to a diary type log that is automatically generated complete with a readymade pic and contact file sharing workspace if you so wish to send out a URL to anyone who was there with you.

Some of these pix and details would have the option to be tagged public, making them searchable by the city wiki bots.

In this way, we'd build out the Electricity_Wikiscape, one nite at a time.

...

Meanwhile, more and more innernet nodes are being taxonimized.

The future is glob.

IDEA TWENTY-FOUR: Sell yr blog for one dollar

2007-02-02T20:35:00.000-05:00

stevemartin on flickr

Dear Bill Gates,

Wassup, it's TRUE, here, riding up on u, trying to get your tremendously valuable attention. I've got to say that while I supsect I'm as smart as you, as creative and inspired and next level in my planes of inspiration and influence, the facts of our situations are pretty dissimilar--tho perhaps not as far flung from one another as most of my readers might think.

What I might lack is yr unwavering sense of direction, but I think that comes from having a product suite, something finished (aside from a service pack or two--ha) that you can really believe in. I'm getting there, but it's difficult cuz like you the means to my product is also the product itself--im creating a new form of art, and hence a new way of being in the world. And part of that new way of being intersects with yr network of products and situations that have been created by those products--and by that I mean the situation of business and communication in the world today: the situation of how we make the money we need to live, sitting in front of screens or else feeding or selling things to the people who sit in front of screens.

What i want is to be in at the helm to write the next chapter on the scale that it needs to be written at. BIG. Bill Gates=BIG. Tho in the case of what comes next, in order to be really BIG you have to think really SMALL. Xtra Small, in fact--the size of networks that are node-free...black strobelights, one-man bands, secrets posted for everyone to see...

C'mon, Bill Gates. Please. I got all these ideas and I need you to help me get them out as quickly as possible. I want my notions and schemes to get super-realized--cuz those shits aren't half-assed--that's some straight up next level on the page below and above me. Like the links on the side, they're more than twinkles in my eye...

Take, take, take...but be sure to represent. This blog and the auto emails generated every time I post stands as a receipt--a tag that i hope you attach to whatever you use.

My innernet time stamp feeds my deep seated urge to be seen.

You've gotta make it tiny in order to make it big.

IDEA TWENTY-THREE: "A Fukt Up Mini-Cine Mix"

2007-01-19T05:49:00.000-05:00

I like to zone out to the mixes i make and dream of scenes from movies based on BRANDTRUEBOY. I threw some songs together earlier this week, when I was having a bad time wrestling with feelings of inadequacy and frustration. The past was a gigantic parachute that i was tangled up in, free-falling thru my jobby day job and whatever social commitments I couldn't get out of...Maybe since I'm never bored it means I'm wired TIGHT, with a fierce rusty wand of an antenna running down the length of my brain. Things that happen and the feelings they cause get so INTENSE...it's so good and bad and beautiful, all at once.

Anyways, I imagined the first set of tracks blasting thru a movie theater's high def, dolby digital while TRUE stared, for several uninterrupted minutes, at a laptop screen and at various objects and books crammed into her a tiny room.

"138th Street", The Walkmen
"Scentless Apprentice", Nirvana
"Yer Blues", The Beatles
"Lonesome Tears", Beck
"A Different Point of View", The Pet Shop Boys
"Godlovesugly (Reprise)", Atmosphere

(It would be cool if the scene suddenly switched duing the guitar solo before the second half of "Scentless Apprentice" from the laptop and the room to TRUE standing on a hill in the middle of a fantastic desert, her hand outstretched to receive a ginormous black falcon)

Once the bird landed the film could go back to her not doing anything...drawing and making fake candy wrappers and then taking a looooong time to putz around, smoke, and then head outside. All of it in real time with the above music playing.

The movie becomes an excuse to hear the music and vice versa.

Besides, all that talking in movies sometimes gets to be too much.

IDEA TWENTY-TWO: "Plainsong"

2006-12-21T18:13:00.000-05:00

The song by The Cure thundering thru the speakers at Imax theaters while footage of the destruction of the World Trade Center plays on the screen in super artsy colors. Possible slo-mo of towers of smoke rising in place of steel.

No faces...at most only silhouettes.

"i think it's dark and it looks like rain" you said

"and the wind is blowing like it's the end of the

world" you said "and it's so cold it's like the

cold if you were dead" and then you smiled for

a second.

"i think i'm old and i'm in pain" you said

"and it's all running out like it's the end of the

world" you said "and it's so cold it's like the

cold if you were dead" and then you smiled for

a second

sometimes you make me feel like i'm living at

the edge of the world like i'm living at the edge

of the world "it's just the way i smile" you said

--"Plainsong", by The Cure

IDEA TWENTY-ONE: Learn how to see with more than yr eyes

2006-12-14T19:52:00.000-05:00

There are a thousand shades of black.

IDEA TWENTY: Netwerk 1417

2006-12-09T23:52:00.000-05:00

A new "chaperoned" on-line social community in which underage teens (ages 14-17, hence the title) can sign up for all the usual networking goodies plus free s/w and virtual tutelage by the world's best bloggers on how to create killer templates that they can then save and upload (using handy conversion tools) to blogger, or myspace, or any other social community when they "graduate" from 1417. The kids will also get tips and pointers and training on how to vlog and the ability to borrow from a library of donated cameras and laptops. Ideally there would be an innernet radio station attached and maybe a handful of local access cable shows and maybe bricks n' mortar spots like the scratch academy could integrate with us offline in various cities and provide dj training and the history of hip-hop to those with musical aptitude...

1417 would form the intersection between underage and underground. It would be a training spot for future activists and poets and programmers and philosophers as well as a place where more older, accomplished bloggers could give back to up and coming youth via the innernet.

The theme of this network is that it is a station along the way--a place to create the template of the way to be specifically famous on-line, with guidance and words of wisdom on everything from dealing with creeps and indentity theft to free downloads of cool movies and books.

(like a wrinkle in time and nietzsche and gandhi's my experiments with truth and tolstoy and doestyevsky and the art of war and the illiad and...)

It would be an on-line education of an alternative way of being. By being invite only (perhaps only to the top students in every school?) there'd be an exclusivity to the network that would make membership highly coveted. As well, unlike other social communities this one would actively push out every member as soon as they hit 18.

Just like Menudo!

IDEA NINETEEN: Blogger Mix Club

2006-11-14T18:00:00.000-05:00

So, who wants to build and share music mixes with NK and i?

...

On 8-Nov-06, at 6:54 AM, TRUEBOY * wrote:

I really like this idea. I'm going to go check out YouSendit...i'm also going to post this email, k?

xo

On 11/6/06, N A T U R A L K I N D S wrote:
J.:

I think we should start a song of the week club on DBG. Everyone
interested in participating chooses a song. We can use YouSendIt.com
to transmit it to all sorts of people at once (which you should
consider putting up on the 'Tools' links). Maybe we can then come up
with little weekly mixes for one another. 4 people? 4 songs. 20
people? 20 songs.

E.

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N A T U R A L K I N D S to me
show details Nov 10 (4 days ago)

I usually just send one song at a time, selecting it from an imported or download song from my iTunes music folder. If we post the YouSendIt link when we upload it, anyone can access the uploaded music for up to seven days. I think we just need to distribute the YouSendIt upload links via the web or email.

Does this make sense?

E.
xo

IDEA EIGHTEEN: Next level hero

2006-11-04T22:28:00.000-05:00

A character named Free Fiber. A model and celly star: she sends out chain texts that people pass along, phone to phone, about underground, online parties hosted on her super phat server farm...

IDEA SEVENTEEN: Feed yr network with symbolism.

2006-10-18T21:13:00.000-04:00

Here's a good one:

send me YOUR ideas and I will post them here. the only rules are you can't submit the idea under yr real name and you have to include the url to a website that does not include the likeness of you--whether photographic, textual or animated.

c'mon--let's build a new bill gates out here together.

trueboy[at]gmail[dot]com

IDEA SIXTEEN: Transparent Organic

2006-10-11T18:29:00.000-04:00

In light of the e.coli scares going on throughout the country it seems the only way farmers will be able to win back the trust of consumers is to offer 100% transparency with regard to their food production process. By suiting up their farms and processing areas with a multitude of webcams, these companies will be able to put their leafy greens where their mouth is when it comes to guarantying the wholesome cleanliness that is the hallmark of the “organic” lifestyle.

There would be cameras on the fields where the produce grows or where the animals graze on healthy, chemical free grass. There would be cameras on those who cultivate the young plants, as well as upon those who fertilize them (hopefully without deady, e.coli carrying manure) and there would be cameras on the harvesters, the washers and packagers….

In turn the personalities of the workers would be given the chance to shine: the planters and huskers and slicer and dicers would have their own blogs and IM handles…they could become innernet stars like the rest of us losers, with customers emailing them directly from the webcam links. By accepting a job at these farms they agree to sacrifice work time privacy for possible innernet. They would also be indirectly responsible for bringing America back to its farming roots—this time as spectator consumers.

This is not to say that in order to feel safe the customer would feel obliged before each purchase to check in on each and every one of the many possible employees who could have a hand in creating their product…although the opportunity is there for the neurotics among us. The idea of a “disseminated watch” should be promoted instead, by which I mean that the possibility alone of anyone checking in at any time should already allay the fears of most hopelessly busy and hopelessly well-meaning American consumers. The packages of food (be it triple-washed fresh spinach or turkey burgers) would come with a corresponding number to plug into the transparency search engine, thereby guaranteeing a window on to the exact farm or ranch where the food was produced, meaning, the possibility to bond with those who grow your food would be real—imagine, emailing the person who saws off the cow rump for your rump roast? Or reading the blog adventures of the pilot of a crop duster airplane? By spending the money to not only put their employees online but to give them the tools to become innernet stars as well, these corporations (and I’m thinking especially of the hipper than thou, tech-savvvy organic food industry) would gain the trust of an ever-curious public. I know I’d feel better if the people who pluck the fruit I eat had cameras on them throughout their entire shift, ready and able to capture each and every work and non-work related movement. We’d be able to time how long they wash their hands and count how many times they scratch their crotch. We’d know whether they smile and whistle while they work or if they’re just barely making it thru their shift. In return for the sacrifice of their privacy, the workers would have an audience who listens to what they have to say. They could talk about their day and their lives…their hopes and dreams and fears of languishing, like so much overripe fruit, at their current, lowly rung in the agricultural industry.

I know Saturn had a similar kind of idea in the 90s, by which you received a letter with a picture included of the actual assembly line crew who built the car you bought. The vibe was all about being a part of a large, extended family…the assembly line folks sent invitations for cookouts and country fairs…the idea being that it was more than a car that they were selling—but a whole way of life. A big bright personalized existence. I guess my version of the idea is from the opposite perspective…a personalized existence built out of necessity—a way of being that is one part suspicious and two parts cautious, not unlike like the American suburbs and exburbs.

As with my mashup/mixup s/w idea, I’m surprised this hasn’t happened yet. Well, maybe not THAT surprised, as I AM a genius after all. (C'mon BG, get off yr tush and hire my smarty pants ass!!!)I’m thinking it won’t be long, though. Soon I’ll be waving my “gently pasteurized” blueberry juice in front of a plasma screen and the exact robot manned conveyor belt upon which the crushed and battered fruit were unceremoniously shat into plastic bottles will come into view, along with the workers manning the controls. I’d be able to look into their faces while I sipped, feeling that special glow that comes from watching a day in a life that’s not mine and probably never will be.

IDEA FIFTEEN: I wanna be a post-christian

2006-10-01T10:16:00.000-04:00

I don't mean “post-christian” as in the fundamentalist Christian description of a jaded secular attitude towards christianity or of certain agnostic or atheistic beliefs that we are living in a post-christian era, in which all actual believers have been taken from the planet according to new testament prophecy. No, what I mean is Post-Christianity in the sense that I want to find a new way to be Christian (lower case “c” is on purpose) that at once acknowledges its history as one of the world’s major religions and rejects the continued relevance of that history. I see a two-pronged approach to this: a return to the old skool, O.G. Christian life—wandering the earth teaching and helping others along with the kicking off of a fierce multimedia philosophical project to THNK the historical moment that we find ourselves in according to the context of the dominant Judeo Christian western mindset.

By doing this we will attempt to live the very essence of Christianity through offering a critique of the world of which it forms the foundation.

Let’s try and change the focus…

Let’s bring back love.

(yr neighbor, like yrself)