Everyone is always busy, and damned sure to tell you about it. What that really means is that they are tired, and that they want your empathy.

I’m busy. No, really, I’m just tired.

I want to write, I want to make music. I want to explore myself, and produce things from within. Yet, with all the undue stress and other things that require my attention I am finding less time to do so.

I am busy.

No, I am tired. I don’t have the energy to focus. I choose not to rearrange my schedule so that I have time to focus on the things I really want to do. I will not make excuses for not getting the things done that I want to get done.

There are always things swirling in my head. How do I get them on paper? How do I get them on an MP3?

I’ve been doing lots of meditation lately, and I find that having mindfulness and concentration help. I will write on that later (unless I’m too busy, of course.)

I’ve been wanting to write a second book for a while now. I tell myself that I need inspiration. I don’t know whether it should be fiction or non-fiction. I should write what I know.

I’ve mostly been writing reviews lately for another website. It’s not something that I get true enjoyment out of, but it keeps my mind sharp. If I’m not writing something, I lose the ability as time goes on.

Soon, I will start on a second book. I don’t know how or why yet, but it will happen.

You know, if I feel like it.

I had played the game to completion, and found that it wasn’t as bad as I had read.

The game splits you up into four different story arcs. Each with their own set of heroes and vastly different attitudes. Most are throwbacks to older Resident Evil aesthetics, but there’s one with a brand new feel.

Part of it felt like Resident Evil 5, and another felt like Resident Evil 2. For parts you get to fight against hordes of zombies and get freaked out like in the older games. In others, you get to destroy lots of strange monsters.

Ultimately, the game looks better than Resident Evil 5. Everything is cleaner and there is less screen tearing. If Resident Evil 5 got complaints of straying from the horror genre, then I don’t see why Resident Evil 6 wouldn’t be the same. I never really got spooked too much, but I had loads of fun plowing down strange creatures.

Some people really miss that, but has the game not been veering away from the survival horror genre since Resident Evil 4? Perhaps I’m not purist enough. I shrug my shoulders and tell people that I had fun with this game. I was given enough diverse play styles and an interesting story. I don’t really ask for much more.

Why all the hate? I think people don’t like the direction the series has gone. After so much experimentation, and hitting the nail on the head with Resident Evil 4 it must be difficult to please everyone. There’s remakes, spinoffs, and too many sequels. Fans always have certain expectations of a series. With a series such as this, it is impossible to please everyone.

I think Capcom put out a fun game. What else needs to be said?

I was tagged by my dad at Troll Mystic here in this post. Unfortunately, I don’t know any other authors to tag. I know more musicians these days than writers. The one author I know offline doesn’t even have a blog.

1. What is the title of your book?

Rainbow Laser Grimoire

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

I honestly don’t remember. I was having a bad reaction to some medicine I had just started. I was hallucinating a little bit, frantic, and full of anxiety. I decided to put my energy into writing a short book.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Hard to say. I suppose you could say it’s a fictional diary, although there are several parts that are very much based in reality. That’s what makes Rainbow Laser Grimoire exciting to me. Unless you personally know me, it’s best to just assume it’s all fiction. Even if you know me, the parts that are real are heavily veiled with metaphor and still won’t make any sense. If I’d have to pick one genre, I’d have to call it surrealist fiction.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Zach Galifianakis.

There’s no characters though. He’d make for a great narrator. Even though the narrator is describing himself the entire time.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Rainbow Laser Grimoire is an amalgam of surrealism, dada, poetry, and curiosity.

6. What is the longer synopsis of your book?

This thing documents a lot of my thoughts and feelings on my life. There are things I’ve done and things I must atone for. There are things I want to do. There are things I only dream of doing. To the uninitiated, the book is gibberish. To those who dissect it like a frog in science class, there is some deeper meaning.

I call it a grimoire not because it’s a boring book of spells, but because it is a regurgitation of my inner most being. Understanding the book allows you to understand my magic. It is a primer to help folks understand why I do what I do, and why I think what I think.

Even if you’ve never met me, I feel it is written in such a way that anyone can take something from it.

7. Is your book self-published or represented by an agency?

I self-published this on Amazon.

8. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I took about eight months to write the whole thing. Once the side effects of my medicine started calming down, I found less inspiration. Call it writer’s block.

9. Who or What inspired you to write this book?

I was going through a nasty divorce at the time. Aside from the anxiety, I felt like I needed a project to which my attention could be focused. I wanted to distract myself, get to the bottom of myself, and learn from myself. That way I could pick up the pieces and move on.

10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

I go over a myriad of topics in the book. If you’re a fan of experimental fiction, dada, surrealism, occult, BDSM, or psychedelics then you might find an interest in reading this. It isn’t very long. It’s a bit strange, and I think it could be fun if you’re tired of reading the traditional sorts of fiction.

Whenever I see a ‘hive mind’ hatred towards something, it only serves to draw me closer in. This happened with the Playstation 3, Hannah Montana, and the Twilight movies. I’ve always been a big fan of ‘so bad it’s good.’ You should see my movie collection!

I’m a firm believer in the Windows curse where every other version is good. 98SE was good, ME tragic, XP was god-tier, Vista was not, and 7 was like explosive rainbows coming from a unicorn’s gullet.

That means Windows 8 has to be awful, right? Not necessarily.

First, understand that I am not your average user. When I was a teenager, I was given Windows XP and SUSE Linux 9.0 as a birthday present to give me some incentive to learn new things on my computer.

I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a ‘power user.’ I know how to break things, I know how to fix things, and I’m not scared of editing lines of code when necessary. That being said, I don’t really do a whole lot of programming or anything like that.

I just want computing to be fun. I want to be able to do what I want. Using both Linux and Windows 8 allow me to do both of these things.

When I was using Windows 7, I felt like having both was redundant. I could use either for video/audio editing, Internet, music, and torrents. I could really only play my games on Windows, except for “Analogue: A Hate Story.”

I feel like I keep reading anecdotal evidence that suggests you should only attempt Windows 8 if you have a touch screen. I don’t have a touch screen, and I’m fine with using mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts to do what I want.

It was strange have the Start menu morphed into some strange Metro UI reminiscent of Windows Phone 7 or Xbox Live’s interface. I don’t mind it so much. It make things fun. A lot of the familiar Windows 7 stuff is still there, but in different places.

It doesn’t take very long to get used to it. Though, I wish there was some indication about the keyboard shortcuts. When I first install Linux, there’s always a pop-up screen with some helpful hints. At least it told me to swipe the sides to get to some other menus.

I’ve been using Windows 8 for several days now, and there’s nothing I can’t live without from Windows 7.

It’s different, and built more for tablet users. However, I think this raises the ultimate question: Where is modern computing going?

Just like when Facebook makes an update, everyone will always complain.

I feel that Windows 8 is the first step to moving forward. It’s a small step, but I think something like Windows 8 is a good showing that the desktop PC experience is capable of evolving dramatically.

I think it’s a great step forward in mixing the existing Windows experiences and kicks it up a notch. The Windows Apps are actually implemented with the desktop fairly well. Whether you want to mix Skype or Netflix or just use the desktop by itself. Everything seems to simply work smoothly, and smoothly together. Up until now, everything has felt a little disjointed and based off of a 90s’ aesthetic of computing.

You might not like it, but you should definitely try it out. If the curse is anything to go by Windows 9 will definitely have perfected upon the ideas Windows 8 has thrown into the fold.

It’s been a while since I’ve done podcasting of any kind, so I decided I’d go ahead and make the next music podcast.

We have a bit of industrial wasteland and neo-folk this time around. There’s a few other genres sprinkled in the beginning and end, but we try to forget about those guys.

itunes | RSS | MP3 | podcast@blackflowermusic.com | twitter | Facebook | Blackplanet

Naked City – Demon Sanctuary [0:00]
Intro [0:42]
The Calm Blue Sea – After the Legions [1:10]
Double Intro All The Way [6:21]
Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat – A Scatterbrain Sings of Christians and the Ghoul Bares Teeth [6:46]
Dead Can Dance – Kiko [13:14]
oOoOO – Mumbai [21:13]
Tenhi – Kuoppa – Depth [23:20]
Les Joyaux De La Princesse – Automne 1941 [27:51]
Arditi – Legionaries [30:38]
Lustmord – Blood Deep In Dread [35:00]
Om – Gebel Barkal [42:46]
Current 93 – Pomegranate [47:26]
:zoviet-france – Stocc Blawers [52:57]
Tenhi – Aatos – Reverie [55:17]
Death In June – A Nausea [57:29]
Miranda Sex Garden – Inferno [1:02:04]
Outro [1:09:56]

Think of Sound Shapes as a platforming title meant for avid fans of music creation. Anyone into platforming games can enjoy it, but the heart and soul of this game really spring to life from its manipulations of sounds and rhythms to create a rich and complicated universe.

What you’ll notice at first is that the guy is creating a level. What he’s created eventually ends up in the hands of the girl on the bench.

I like to draw comparisons to LittleBigPlanet with this game, but I feel that’s an inaccurate statement as well.

It’s a beautiful game. Each collection of levels or ‘albums’ is done by a different musical artist and a different graphic artist all having a completely different feel to them. There’s not really a story mode beside the vague attempts of continuity between some of the levels.

It is available on PS3 and Vita, and has inter-operability between both systems.

If you already have the game, feel free to check out my levels on my page.

After a year or so of hard work, we are finally ready to release “Rainbow Laser Grimoire.”

Rainbow Laser Grimoire is an intense journey through surrealist thought, philosophy, short stories, prose, and wild hallucination-induced fantasy.

This is one to be read carefully. Cryptic metaphors and dada-inspired nonsense are littered throughout this text. Through knowledge of Gematria, psychedelics, pop culture, and Thelema culture perhaps one can fully appreciate all of what this grimoire has to offer.

Released by Soror Puella Lucis (pseudonym and magickal name for Andrew Eidson) this book is littered with madness and dark surrealism. It borders on insanity, and was written under the most curious of influences.

The third eye tingles, and those who read it only with two may not grasp the message of “Rainbow Laser Grimoire” in its entirety.

A grimoire is generally regarded as a book that gives some sort of magickal instruction. Usually, you’ll see them written as a “how-to” guide explicating very specific practices. This book takes a more liberal stance on the standard approach.

As a collection of narratives, poetry, and philosophical musings, this book can be read for amusement and for genuine learning purposes. It is an absurd book, and it aims not to please.

You can now purchase “Rainbow Laser Grimoire” in both print and Kindle editions. For the first 90 days, you can get “Rainbow Laser Grimoire” for free with your Amazon Prime subscription.

Due to the nature of the eBook format, it is recommended to purchase the print version. This book was created to be read on paper, and certain things can only be properly understood by seeing it on paper. Should you choose the eBook format, you may miss out on some “Eureka!” moments due to the way kindle handles page formatting and page numbering.

Between the last release and this one, I released very little. Most of 2005 was spent adjusting to the college life. You know, being in a dorm, paying for things myself, and living the life.

I found that I had very little time, and very little creative juices left. Ritual of Forbidden Blood and Broadcast Pink Seeds (World Love) were the only two songs I made during this time. When 2006 rolled around, I had found out about this genre of music called “noise” and about this guy named John Cage.

All I had listened to was Merzbow and a gaggle of other Japanese noise artists (which are still my favorite.) In one of my classes, we watched a documentary about John Cage. All the talk of indeterminacy inspired me. The less I cared and the more nature took its grip over my music, the better.

The explication behind Cage’s 4’33 got my gears going. 4 minutes of breaks and rests written for the piano. The piano wasn’t the music, the crowd’s noises were the music.

That, along with Hantarash’s Yamataka Eye doing a concert where he destroys a building with a backhoe whilst screaming into a microphone opened my eyes to a whole new world of creativity. I also found out about the Dada movement some time along the way. My mind was blown. I finally had my creativity back.

Finally, I came across this article online called The Aesthetics of Failure.

Ever since I was introduced into making music, this is secretly what I wanted to do. I wanted to stop caring. I want to destroy music theory, and rebuild from the ground up. I want to count on mechanical failure instead of viewing them as a bad thing.

One of my favorite quotes from Cage is this:

If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.

It put a new perspective on boredom. I mixed that with my surrealist tendencies, and you have “The Aesthetics of Failure” album.

I remember it clearly, back in high school, someone once told me, “Don’t be offended, but your music is considered noise. It’s a real genre, you should look into it.”

I didn’t really believe him at first, but I’m glad that I naturally found my way down that path.

My favorite track off this album is a tie between Leviathan’s Call (Intro to Joy) and The Serpent’s Return (Ode to Joy.) 

Both were made on an old keyboard where the pitch shifter was on a knob underneath it. I broke the knob off and had my ex-wife play Ode to Joy while I would mess with the pitch shifter with a small screwdriver. I couldn’t see up under there, but the metal contact would freak out the pitch resulting in awesome sounds. The Serpent’s Return was a mixture of me rolling dice/flipping coins, my ex plucking a viola, computerized synths, and the keyboard from the first one.

After that, was Aeon of Horus which used mostly fruity loops and a bunch of digital guitar amps looped together on my computer. I love that particular style of noise music, but it’s tragic that I make so little of it like that.

A lot of the songs were made on fruity loops back then. These days, you get eyes rolled at you if you admit to that. However, I’ve been making ‘music’ on fruity loops for a very very long time. The only difference is that I’m actually trying to break the software and break my computer while rendering my computer. Granted, it’s harder to do that these days with simple audio rendering. Quad cores and several gigs of ram make that a harder problem to have.

Tristan Tzara’s Toothache was made using nothing but a metronome. Circumcision For The Mute was me recording scissors held against a still spinning CD in an audio player with the latch to always think it’s closed, so it will still spin while the tray is open.

This album will always be looked at fondly by me. It’s relatively amateur, but it was just whatever I felt like making. I never saw a problem. It’s a hobby, and I do what I do.

Next time we’ll have “A Wide-Eyed Fawn” which could almost be seen as an extension or sequel to “The Aesthetics of Failure.”

While the Playstation Vita doesn’t have very man games in its repertoire, I believe Gravity Rush may just be its first killer app.

It shows off the system’s capabilities in a modest way that doesn’t feel cheesy and allows for the player to immerse themselves in the game for hours simply exploring.

The basic premise is that you’re a gal named Kat who has amnesia. Big surprise, right? Like that’s never been done before!

Moving on, some story-related stuff happens and she gains the power to manipulate gravity. All this does is just shift gravity certain ways. So, you’ll hold yourself and then fall whichever direction you please. While in gravity mode you can walk upside down, perform gravity kicks, and do the gravity slide.

Each bit of the story is presented in a mission-based format. Allowing you to explore as much as the game allows before moving on to the next level. There are also areas that you can use the gems you’ve collected around town to unlock special missions. The special missions can be pretty tough escort missions, racing, and time attack sorts of gameplay. The tough part is finishing the mission with a satisfactory score/time to get more gems.

The game moves along fairly smoothly and had me staying up til the wee hours of the morning play new missions. I took a break for a while, thinking I was close to the ending. I didn’t want my time with the game to end!

One of my biggest complaints about the game is the story. I know I can’t always have my way, but I’ll be damned if Gravity Rush didn’t seem convoluted. There were some extra things you could find that would give some insight to the story, but that’s about it.

I feel like they were setting it up to have a sequel, because there is way too much left unexplained about Gravity Rush’s world. Oh sure, the current little town is safe, but they mention other pillars and other towns. What about them?

I feel like there’s a lot of loose ends, and Gravity Rush only left me unsatisfied in that regard.

Otherwise, no game this generation has left me with such a sense of childlike wonder. I boot it up and just fly around town searching for gems. An otherwise monotonous task turned into a fun adventure.

If you pick this up, be sure to also try falling in first-person mode. I always get disoriented in first-person, but it made the adventuring feel more real.

There’s also not a very high difficulty curve. If you’re collecting gems and doing missions you should do just fine battling the gelatinous anthropomorphic creatures thrown at you during missions. It was never a case of being underpowered for me if I died. When I died it was because I was using poor strategy. That being the case, I didn’t mind dying too often. There’s something edifying about a game slapping you on the wrist and telling you to think of something different.

OK, well, it doesn’t really do that. It’s a metaphor. Kind of like the whole game is a metaphor for the oil industry, or the economy… or something really deep. Stew on that!

Culture. It’s exactly that. There’s common sentiments on games, there’s rhetoric, and a myriad of other descriptors assigned to any subculture. It’s not like we’re playing a game of Uno here. There’s analysts for sales, predictions, “winners” of an expo, and more.

E3 is a yearly conference where several key industry warlords show off their latest games and tech.

In gaming rhetoric, there are terms we use like “casual” and “hardcore.” These dreadful terms usually imply that one simply plays and purchases games once in a while, probably owns a Wii, and absolutely adores Peggle. The hardcore gamer will spend hours upon hours playing her favorite game, follow all the news, sign up for mailing lists, show up on day one for a game’s release, pretend to be a keyboard warrior online in the name of their favorite titles.

They are passionate. I find nothing wrong with passion. What I do have a problem with is rhetoric and consumer behavior trends. 

I watched Microsoft and Sony’s conference. I also watched Nintendo and Konami’s pre-E3 pressers.

Microsoft showed a handful of games. Most of them involved guns. The other stuff they showed were applications so that you don’t have to bust out your laptop or cable channels anymore for Univision or Netflix. They also showed something called Xbox Smartglass that implored the user to stream everything you’re doing on your Xbox 360 to your device, practically rendering on-demand apps on other platforms useless.

I watched it. I shrugged. There was some cool technology to be seen. There was a South Park game, even. Everything else was mostly guns or sports or family stuff.

That’s what sells these days, I’m assuming.

I see people getting online and complaining about how each conference was terrible and nothing was great. I don’t think it matters too much. These people are professionals, and they are going to do what sells.

I have to get this off my chest, and I feel like my blog is the perfect place to do so. This “hardcore” hive mind isn’t necessarily what makes the most profit. They are making what will sell, and what has been proven to work. These consoles have been out for 5+ years now. I just shrug.

Sony showed a lot of games as well. As well as some new technology aimed towards children. In the gamer rhetoric, this children’s interactive storybook “Wonderbook” with a game written by JK Rowling is the worst thing ever to happen since unsliced bread.

Just stop. Please. Children are a viable market. You are still getting the games you want to buy. This is an expo. In other industries, things like this would be applauded for breaking into its respective market in a new and unique way.

Am I going to buy it? Probably not. I already own a Sega Pico and some of the finest import Pico games it has to offer. I can dress up Sailor Moon all day with a stylus the size of my ulna.

I see no reason to hate on it. However, in the gaming world this thing is spit on. Perhaps it’s just the circles I’m in, or the forums I peruse but everything always reads the same. I see the same trends, the same manner of speech everywhere I go.

They are passionate. They aren’t analysts. I’m tired of browsing my Facebook or reading a thread and everyone acting like they are journalists with blessed insight. Passion is fine, discussion is fine, but something seems like it’s getting a bit ridiculous.

You’d think with all this “I don’t care” attitude, I wouldn’t care about how other people feel. It’s not so much as they are bothering me, as it is I’ve been observing this pocket of Internet culture for a very long time. I see these things, and I just want to get it out of my system.

Some of it is reminiscent of the stereotypes associated with Generation Y. Especially online, with the younger people. They seem to have that spoiled, self-centered outlook on things. Is there no objectivity anymore, my dearest Internet?

I miss the days of intellectual conversations and thought-provoking discourse. These days, I feel like people are saying, “Well, I didn’t like it so there’s no redeeming value, and I hate it!”

There were no games at Sony or Microsoft’s presentations I see myself buying. There are games I wish I would’ve seen there. I don’t think that either were particularly bad. Just because they did not appeal to me, does not mean I have to hate on it.

I hate to sound like an aged individual, but there used to be a time when you could argue on the Internet without someone going “Why are you arguing on the Internet?”

Having debates and good discussion is what the web used have an abundance of.

I get really excited for E3 every year, but I can hardly have a conversation with anyone about it because people are too busy lamenting what they didn’t get.

Earlier, I mentioned rhetoric and consumer behavior trends. It seems like this year’s E3 was chock full of games focused around violence, much moreso than any year’s past. It’s usually a little bit of this and a little of that. It is sad to see that gaming culture and its market is being filled with people who will buy up this sort of stuff.

Like I said, I think the companies had good presentations. I lament that I’m not getting the games I’d rather play because too many people are buying the ones with recoil and bloodspatter temporarily on the screen until you heal.

You can only get a bunch of tough guys in a jungle to save some folks so many times before it gets tired out. Space, too. Yikes. Not to mention most of the main characters are generally bald, grim, and lifeless characters.

Where are the blue skies?

I cannot help what people want to purchase. I will still keep playing what I want to play and only hope that it still gets created.

I also hope that ‘hardcore’ gamers stop with this pretense that they are better than casuals. There’s this perceived disparity, and it’s gut-wrenching. The ones who are better are the ones who buy the most games. That’s the fact.

Video games are becoming like Hollywood. That’s fine if it wants to go that route, I’ll just find alternatives. There are plenty of ‘indie’ titles as well these days.

I realize there is some hypocrisy in me complaining so much about people complaining. I realize people get excited and just want to talk about their favorite games.

Everybody has an opinion. Mine is that people take certain things too seriously. If you don’t like something, stop complaining and vote with your dollar.

Every vote counts. Every character of text doesn’t.