here i am only like five dollars from my credit limit so i leave it alone so i can pay it down as soon as i get my check cashed. of course mtv decides not to warn us about their quarterly grip on all venders’ checks and so they don’t pay us until 20 days after payday. yup, i waited three weeeeks for a check that nobody warned me would be late even a day.

one of the many things this messed up was paying off my credit card on time. (as well as every other scheduled practice regarding my very delicate financio-system). this damn thing would have been paid down weeks ago. but here i am tottering on that limit’s edge for weeks. and then, capital one throws down a charge for going over my credit limit on the 23rd of June. that’s almost a month ago.

as i’m so close to the limit, this fee pushes me over the limit again. 

so…i imagine they’ll fine me for this time next time i’m close to the limit. 

sigh.

sp-walkbutton, originally uploaded by nezua.

the best thing about today is that the sun is out. so that makes me happy.

NOW! i’m off to shoot my vlog. that’s what they say in transylvania when the domestic animals get into the henhouse. now ya know. bell biv devoe.

shooooot. i’m always shooting something, you know? shoot for beauty. that’s my new tagline. i think i’ll carve it into the side of my Taser.

my hair is longer than it’s been in my adult life. this is wild! you’d have to know the whole story and i dont have time for it now but here’s some.

i grew up with long hair, and i mean long and i mean young. by the time i got a haircut i wanted short hair so bad. just to fit in with peers. i was tired of being called a girl. and sometimes not as a joke. but then i got older and after many years of short hair i missed my long hair. but since being a kid, my hair has become much courser and thicker. much harder to grow. easier to sculpt than cut. it grows “out” for a long time before it grows “down.” so i never want to go through that tough six or eight months where it grows longer than short but shorter than long. lots of unruly, defiant, huge hair. i’ve even got the ends trimmed once and its long enough now that i think i can finally call it “long hair.”

of course now i start romanticizing my shaved ‘do. missing that lean, smooth, clean aerodynamic feel. i did love the queue-type cut i had (twice) for a while. long  hair and shaved hair at once. the best of both worlds. boy did i catch hell for that hair. serious. i’ve had a lot of hairstyles. but wearing a queue (and as a non-asian, maybe that made it worse or better, i dont know if at all) in manhattan and oregon, both, i’ve done it. people dont even hide the whispers anymore. it’s like they think that you’re so “out there” in some way (religious, cultural) that you can no longer observe them, or hear, or maybe speak up?

once i turned around i was in a movie line (i once feared confrontation as a boy but at some point cured that by instead rushing right toward it as a habit and now its where i’m at mostly) and heard someone actually talkinga bout me RIGHT BEHIND ME and i was like wtf is that? and i turned around and glared at the person and they, like, turned around too to face away from me. it was sort of comical, but i was really irritated. i dont know if i’d be better with it today. other stories, too. at a party at my friend’s in nyc, i was taken to be a hari krishna devotee. this really weirded out some of the room, but it probably didnt help that half of them were on acid that they had been told was e. talk to me some time about that night. it was…memorable.

the good thing about a queue is that you can go from long hair to queue, tho not the other way. i could just shave the rest of my head and keep that part, now that my hair is long. if i wanted to. what i didn’t like about that hair was sleeping. if you keep it as a braid, it is right under your head so you cannot lie on your back. and you can’t really just let it fall all over. anyway. my hair is pretty long now. i keep it tied mostly in back. tho yesterday i pulled it all to one said and knotted it there. thats why i love having long hair. you can do SO MUCH with it. i often bemoaned being a boy when i was younger because we had all the boring stuff. boring clothes, boring hair, etc. of cousre i grew up in the 70s and in a subculture not mainstream american but influenced a lot by india so what i had been exposed to was pretty flavorful and majestic and free, all in all. by the time i started thinking about clothes and a “look,” the world had become very conservative, and michael j fox was hip on tv as a young republican. i was like wut? no colors, no little mirrors, no sequins, no ties, no ballooning airy flow, no threads, no embroidery, no flaring, no layers? this is what i get to choose from? …short, boxy hair and pants and shirts????? even in my video games i chose to be a girl. they just always looked cooler to me. were allowed to be cooler, free-er, expressive. one thing we dont talk about a lot online is the box males are crushed into. and of course this clothes ejemplo is just a tinge of what i mean, just an outrcopping, a sign of the mime. we talk about how the patriarchy kills and despises women. and “it” does. and “it’ also crushes the heart out of out males. binds us up in cheesestring and paints eyeballs on our head. it has to. to make us the footsoldiers of “itself.” trust  me. i’ve suffered within this male role. i dont care for it. and first you have to learn to even see “it” as prescribed and required. in fact, i dont think you can see misogyny fully until you do. hand in hand. and its a stagnant, dead land there’s no air in there. there’s not much joy. there’s dominance and war and anger and self-repression and control and aggression and violence….and its not who any of us really are. no more me than she. its as much a trap as the image we foist on women, the one that tears them down, too. each cage is tailor made. we need to address both traps or nobody gets free.

my whole week has been fucked up by these computer issues. why is it always that way? why, just when you are about to lift yourself out of the tiniest bit of debt, you break a tooth or two? why just when you breaking even, another expense comes up? i was finally looking like i might just get ahead of my stress-laden schedule, no not even aHEAD, just even which would be so nice, and bang. my hard drive dies, causing me days of lost time. and now i’ve gone an blown all the time i thought i’d use to get even and now i’m behind again. 

! oh man you have to laugh. you really do. lookee how i dragged a manhattan pace into oregon. fuuuuck. think about it. what RC said. at this point, i don’t even need to be nailed to a spot. i could move south of the border and be WARRRRRRM and in the SUN all the TIME and throw capital letters around like I JUST DONT CARE yo. still make my money. in fact, while i struggle on the lip of the red column as just a matter of regular life, if i were to take my spindly income and outsource my ass to a cheaper locale, then i could be livin large, baby. and by “large” i mean, “less stress.” why is it that you feel you are always around the corner from the clearing? that’s an illusion, isn’t it. by “less stress” what i think i really mean is a kidney-shaped pool in a tropical land. and good, good rhythms. and blender drinks. and a ton of smiling faces who drop by whenever they want. my dreams, in actuality, have never been big. its the nationally-endorsed nightmares that tower like buckling glass drenched in hot footlights, like a three-camera stage shadow on your forehead, like a ladder that never ends and looks like it’s taking you up while its taking you down and around the bend.

honestly, i can’t wait to be done with MTV and these weekly-minted legally-choked little video-snax i do. i do’nt mean i’m not grateful for them and the gig, i am. happy to have shown myself again what i can do, and to earn bucks this way.  but just wait, baby. just wait to see what i dig up when i’m not asking for release forms no more or approval from 1515 b’WAY. just you wait to see what ima goan give back to this place. brad will up in my camera bag, ‘mano. el amor y justicia en mi corazón. rocket shoes on my favorite mule and jade-flavored dynamite jelly in my breakfast scones.

music n justice, blogmiga. out. love n soul, papá. 

in other happenings, i am perhaps getting closer to carving out some breathing space in my schedule. not quite roomy yet, but if i keep at it, i think i can put a job or two away before long. which—you don’t even know—would be like having a “two ton heavy thing” off my back. i just laughed. did you ever hear that song by queensryche? building empire its called. in the beginning is a phone recording by bush I, or dan quayle? don’t remember. he tries to articulate something “hanging over you like a…two ton…heavy thing.”  i think that’s right. funny.

i’m adjusting to this election year on the road politics journalism thing. i’m way too much of a painter or poet type to get it instinctively. i write what is a blog for me about hillary’s appearance and i post it in a few places (thanks M), and it is the morning after her appearance here and it is first hand reporting and so it gets picked up in a few places and i don’t mean to say nobody likes it, seems most feedback was positive, but later i’m fielding return fire and i realize after that you have to nail certain things down because people, some people will always not like what you are saying (especially when you stake out an opinion) and they will come at the weaknesses in the piece, if there are any. and you learn what those are. i got hit with an unsigned comment at one joint, and they were like “this location (the high school where clinton was) seats this many people and the other one (the pit, where obama showed up) five times as many and you wrote that ‘you could fit nine of these rooms into the bigger one” (even though i wrote that it was a rough guess) and getting all judgmental and googlish on me and i realize that i can’t just write emotionally like that… i mean i’m not going to get flavorless. and i am me, and this is not traditional media. but it just helped me think about the particular field and  what makes those types of pieces stronger and what strengths should be brought to it, and such. i can see why new media freaks out traditional J-school types. but i think there is a middle ground. or a nezzle ground. i want to find this new ground, at least where and how i am meeting it, based on my own integrity, how i see the medium. but even in my own view i don’t want to confuse people like that. i didn’t technically mean “seating capacity” x 9. i meant the overall area. one place felt and was and sounded vast! and the other felt smallish. but i was probably being a little too figurative about the space. and people read those political pieces like hard news. so even if they have to adjust to a different style, i do want people to believe me when i say “its nine times as big.” or maybe not. maybe my writing will just become known as being emotional and figurative! i guess i have to decide those things. it was a good experience. really, i just get surprised sometimes by how many eyes can—just like that—be on your piece. i want to keep that in mind is all. i don’t know about you but sometimes when i write i still feel like i’m just writing to myself.

oh, and the mexican newspaper got back in touch with me. they still want me to write that regular column. coolio.

she’s speaking in oregon, and as the trusty mtv street team memba fur oregon i must do my duty. and for any secret service freaks or other red-eyed, internet-poring, fear and security obsessed maniacs who think someone might actually plan an assassination and blog about it ahead of time, of course i mean “shoot” as in “film,” but not film, so “tape” or “videotape.” 

i smell coffee. time to pour it.

you haven’t read my multi-page recounting of how terribly the obama event started for me, which you might be surprised to hear, viewing the video(s). it worked out, but it was definitely not an ideal scenario. more on that later. i wrote a long blog on it with lots of groovy stills from the footage which will post monday, i’m guessing, on the think.mtv site. 

this time i’m packing up ahead of time (which means i have to go very soon) so that i’m not only fresh in all those wonderful american ways we are so used to, but also so that i KNOW i have all my batteries, backup batteries, tapes, cameras, FOOD, mics, cables and SO on!

don’t know what type of footage i’ll get. don’t know what type of crowd she’ll draw. clearly not anything like obama’s if she’s showing up at a couple high-school gymnasiums! but i will do my best to capture good footage and make a good video, even though i am personally rooting for obama. it’s just a matter of professional pride. 

okay, peace. more later.

obama vid halfway done compressing. just do a little edit and then you have to recompress/bounce down. and then a long wait. it will be exciting, the day i can get a Power Mac (doláres!) because they have massively more powerful processing ability than this iMac. tho i love my iMac. it’s a very stable and pretty and smoothly running machine, almost always. aside from the normally expected glitches which are not long running or troublesome overall. i bought it with money i got from my book getting pubbed. if you want something special, sometimes you have to take advantage of a rare situation when it happens. just like i bought my recent “expensive toy” the iPhone with the money my nana left me when she recently died. i even felt that she would be happy with that choice, seeing how much fun i had with the new apple gadget. which is why it so disgusted me when recently someone tried to claim that i bought it with money i stole from them. please. anyone willing to disrespect my nana’s last wishes with such lies—ESPECIALLY after they were told the truth of how i got my phone—is really fucking with their own karma.

took a break. i’m back. the obama vid is online now.  i’m sort of annoyed that it looks so compressed. it skips and all the hours i put into tweaking the cuts JUSt right are lost in the browser’s dipshitiness and lag. agh. i’m getting off this internet thing. it’s starting to piss me off.

still deep in the edit, deep in the mix. was supposed to have this piece uploaded early this morning. gah. i hate this. i slipped all out of whack a week or three ago and i’m still playing catchup. i wish she had never emailed me in the first place. wish i hadn’t answered. wish luke wasn’t right, all those years ago.

tomorrow a photographer is going to venture into my messy studio room to shoot a portrait of meh for a soon to be released neztastic article in the local newspaper. i’m laying lots of traps for him as we speak. i’ll teach you to read MY blog!

can’t reveal what my  new mtv vlog is on except to say DON’T TASE ME BRO and now i gotta roll

so i load up my house of nezua blog and wam! i get a 404. blog gone. cluster suspended. entries gone, index page gone, style sheet. all gone. ugh. those of you with feeds connected may never have known. i’m hoping that reconnecting the feed went well, and that’s back on track. but if it weren’t for the fact that i back things up generally (although not as often as i’d like), this blog would be completely gone. the design, the images…but at least i hold on to periodical downloads of the full theme. it’s still a bit sketchy in places, because i just dont have the time to spend a day or so on a blog, on a free blog, on my own blog. if i could, i’d have already worked out guest posting templates at UMX.

that blog was hosted on a server which is (was?) maintained by a friend who found me online. he’s been a kind and helpful person in my life, whom i’ve given nothing to save the writing of my UMX blog, which to him was worth supporting, and thus me, in turn. one of those people who you do want to remember when you move up in the world, simply because they have helped you with such generosity, unsolicited generosity, and without a bunch of “remember me when you’re famous.” don’t know what happened with the server…wrote him, but that was only last night. anyway, i never felt safe on that server. and this is why. so i’ve moved the House of Nezua blog to xolagrafik.com. i guess i’ll have to do a redirect on the domain name. don’t have time now.

i grew to really dislike that phrase. “remember me when you’re famous.” i’ve heard it all my life. at first it was cool beans. “wow, this person thinks i’ll be famous one day!” and then after a few years it came to feel like it was a phrase pretending to be about me, but really about them. and i couldn’t understand why so many people would want me to remember them…without much more reason than because they said so. or think that because i had talent there was reason to award them for seeing it. i’m not talking about the jokes, like when someone loans you a buck and then sez dryly “just remember me when you’re famous” or something like that. i’m talking specifically about the odd admiring revelatory pin a person who doesn’t know you very well sticks into the calendar the moment they understand you have a talent of some kind. it’s just odd. after more years passed it begin to feel like i was walking to the candy store with a pocket full of loot and next to all these people who noticed my pocket was full and were saying “give me candy when you get back from the store.” and i grew to begin to resent it. “get your own fucking candy” i wanted to say, in time. and then i decided that when i DID become “famous” (whatever that means) and wrote my memoir, it would be called remember me when you’re homeless. because nobody seems to want to associate themselves with you at that point. and i can’t remember for the life of me a single time someone said “remember me when you’re homeless!” or even “hey, remember me when the consequences of feeding your talent’s insatiable maw causes dysfunction in your life!” that would be an interesting comment to hear. yeah. when i was living on the street, i had no friends. i had one for a while. and i have to remember her. she was younger than me, too, so that was very moral and mature or just kind of her. because the town turned against me. even the best friend i had shunned my other friends to befriend years earlier (its so shakespearean or something!) sat with those who were condemning me, and chose them. to find insults about you tagged under a bridge when that’s the only place you have to sit down and think of as “base.” oh, but when you look like you are scooping up all the sun in your path, then people seem to appear with smiling faces every other week wanting their share. i know it sounds bitter! i’m a joyful sort and i try to be generous. but i am what i am. remember that when i’m fameless.

i just had an email conversation. that’s the second time someone has asked for help and i have given them a suggestion that worked and they replied thanks anyway and here i go getting annoyed by a word again. thanks “anyway?” i think i won’t bother replying next time. i’m sure they will work out whatever problem comes along next. and i won’t have to stir up my seemingly neversleeping nervous system over their claiming cures for which i helped carry the pestle.

i think i know why i’m feeling so annoyed. that’s what i get for typing while listening to brassy german hip-hop. dreht ab, good group, i love the song, but hey. i’m too stressed this week to be aggravating my “fuck you” nodes without even understanding the language i’m using to do so. so i switch to Jay Chou’s “Luan Wu Chun Qiu” instead. not that i understand chinese…but he doesn’t jam on the same nodes. i love this song. and a few of his songs. i chased down some of his music after watching the Jet Li movie that featured a title song written by Chou. to find this tune, i had to order a chinese DVD of which i could only find one, on Amazon.com. not on iTunes, not on ebay, nowhere.

yes, that music helped. i really am not sure i know of a more mood-altering substance than that of soundwaves…song..

okay. i have to get rolling. have a lot of work to do. as usual. i’ll remember you when it’s painless. and in a couple weeks…okay, no by the start of march, i think i’ll be project free, except for the mtv gig. and any i take on in the future will definitely be spread around.

and i just uploaded my last mtv vlog, which i am waiting on approval for. when i get it, i’ll post it. its not as big as the last one, just a small comment on a local happening/wondering. so don’t get all excited! or do get excited. and remember me when you’re fearless.

this developer said that he’s not a designer because his well of creativity dries when he is under pressure and i thought thats funny, thats the opposite of me. i dont really like pressure, but until the deadline gets really close to me, i dont feel much impulse to move. and then when time gets really tight, i bust out crazy and hot and wild and slam the job home aplomb wushu style. but this weekend is tight by any definition. like a clam, another one said add another twenty to that, please, and i’m happy as a….open, yes, open, wet and...” clam, tight as a drum. an oceanic rhythm, a moon dripping sun. hey, we’ve floated past the breakers, we’re vortex of the swum, i see we’ve escaped the makers, it’s clear they’re on the run…

…illos. that’s what i was saying before the baking clam scent yanked my neck left. need to do three things this weekend. shoot my vlog for MTV and do two logos for a PAC group, and finish this lot of about 20 high-quality glyph/illos for a book. that’s a lot all together. man.

did i tell you, my little MLK vid (i seem to default to calling it this as much as i feel it is not “just” about “MLK” but i guess its easiest) was featured on the Brian Lehrer Live show? it’s not Oprah, but still! that is very cool! a friend told me about it, she was on the show, is sending me a copy of the tape. i don’t see it on the podcast list…she said they liked it.
and i have an acting job for next week. cool. it’s an educational video being shot, and i’m not playing a thug! …it was very interesting in film school, seeing the different roles my peers would cast me in. mark basically cast me as a fictionalized version of myself; s. cast me as some fantastical, magical, demonic, Boy From the Upstairs Apartment; Ari cast me as a street tuff dragging a woman into an alley, Luke cast me as some Cheshire on a Toadstool-Meets-Obi-Wan character; and the European students cast me as an Angel and a victim of a party of Vampires. interesting that the american students more often cast me for negative types, while the european students cast me as either benevolent or neutral/vanquished/victimized. not a big enough sample to make much of it. but interesting. oh, in this script for next week, i play a teacher.

lots to do tho, today and tomorrow. next week very busy too. time to eat now. i may be away for a few. business contacts please email info[a]xolagrafik[d]com, friends if you need me please ring me. i will probably have to shut down my email app while i work. it tends to serenade me with aquatic missives when i’m not expecting it. the undercurrents are fierce.