Lately browsing FA just makes me sad. I see all these people crowded with friends. Mostly online friends, quite likely, but at the very least these online friends are available to talk to. If I want to talk to someone I have to hope someone is on. My real-life friend list basically amounts to one person that's actually living in my area. People have been putting up Myer's Briggs personality types lately. Last time I checked, I'm an ENTJ. An extroverted asshole, basically. I'm the happiest with people around me. People get, how do? Guess I'm just gonna have to buy a bunch of art and get popufur.

Been listening over some of the old tracks I've got up on here... goddamn, I've done much better versions of most of these songs but God knows if they were recorded in any way. This gallery is so ass.

Going to Roseville for the holidays. Found out both the cat and the dog died. The house will be lonely without them. Been practicing daily for about three weeks now: can't feel my fingertips on my left hand any more. Didn't get a job I was really hoping to get... feeling kind of numb to the world right now. I don't know about staying in Crescent City. There's no work here and there's tons of monetary stress in regards to my dad. I like playing with him, but I think I need to sacrifice that if I can't find fulfilling work up here. Been thinking about the military with the recent repeal of "don't ask don't tell."

I got a pretty good sealed pool. I think I should have made day two, but the fates conspired against me.

Portland Grand Prix in summary:

GRAVE TITAN IS AN ISSUE

My friend got 3rd at a Magic the Gathering Oakland Grand Prix invitational recently, so him and bunch of other Magic players (including myself) will be going down to Oakland to compete. My mom lives only a couple hours away, so I might not stay at a hotel. I'm still not sure on what I want to run. I proxied out Scapeshift and really liked it, but I don't think I'm going to be able to get a hold of the dual lands that I need. There's a budget burn deck wins that has been doing well, but with Worldwake comes a card called Kor Firewalker that I'm worried about. The only budget solution I can think of is running red/black or red/white for non-red removal. Red/white gives me access to lightning helix and path to exile, whilst red/black gives me access to blightning and doom blade. Maybe I should run red/white/black! Of course, that means there's no reason not to run a bunch of Ravnica dual lands. Maybe if I can sell my Warhammer 40K Tau army I'll have enough money to buy the cards I need.

So... no tracks from the gig, unfortunately. It really sucks too. Everyone did really well, and I don't think we'd be able to capture that kind of energy in rehearsal.

Dunno how the recording is gonna turn out. The new bassist said it had an omnidirectional pickup, which I'm thinking will catch too much of the bar noise. Practice was pretty tough today, my voice is kinda thrashed... especially from going over Dance Epidemic. That song is hard, and an oversight on my part caused me to think the main line is lower, when in fact I was gravitating towards the lower harmony for some reason. To late to change keys, so it might be pretty rough... that on top of the fact that everyone's had only about five days to work on it. It's so damn high that I have to do most of the chorus in falsetto, and I'm not a big fan of my head voice. It's a damn fun song though and has a REALLY bitchin' bass line. If we fake our way through it, I bet no one is going to notice. They'll be too drunk from the pre-fourth reverie. We can tackle it again later.

Nasty headache... probably from my voice constantly echoing in my head. I have to push on a lot of these songs.

I appreciate all of the buzz, but the focus for my FA page is the music. If you come across me via the front page or whatever, I'd appreciate it if you dug into my gallery and listened to a track or two. Have a good one.

I totally did not expect to get this much traffic after finally posting my FC pics. I was only bothering to do so because Strongpawz was having another Nuzzle Fuzzle (Steam group) music night and I figured the chat would dig the pics. So yeah... I should have had this stuff up a long time ago... along with a bunch more music. I don't have many excuses I guess, was rather busy for a while, didn't have Internet access for a time... and I've been discouraged about uploading large crap because I've had FA crap out on me like three times in a row on one upload before. But yeah, no decent excuse besides being depressed makes everything feel like work.

So um... glad you like the pics and all... can you please listen and comment on the music?

Prease? ;.;

I has one.

I got the track order screwed up originally, so there's going to be a bit of weirdness as I get things fixed. FC photos and the rest of the tracks from my last gig coming soon.

Various factors have accumulated to make me horribly depressed. I feel like I have few friends. It's looking more and more likely that I'll have to return to the CCC, despite ramifications on my mental health. My dad's latest plans to get on Youtube and market his CD (and other things) kind of hinge on me being here... we'll see what happens when I file for unemployment... finally. I should have done it months ago. I guess living on my tax return made me lazy. I decided to be very stupid and lose money at the local Indian casino recently. Did well on the slots... then lost 60 bucks at the blackjack table. I have horrid luck with table games. The root of it was because I couldn't get a hold of a friend when we were slated to hang out, I guess. This past week has made me feel very alone. I started painting my Tau, at least. I think I did pretty well for my first 40k model ever. I'll have to upload a pic... have to upload FC pics too. Been kind hard to get the computer for a decent chunk of time lately, due to my dad researching blogging and such. He's going to be a net-millionare and all that.

Does anyone actually read this shit?

Had a gig on April 4th. Lots of songs to upload... including the rest of my dad's album. Gig went fairly well, I guess, just disappointed in my guitar work. Thought I had everything pretty well-practiced, but nerves kicked in in front of an audience. Nothing I haven't experienced before. I'd like to take the songs we did out of this city. People tell me I have a great voice, but I don't seem to be using it enough.

God damn... money is a bitch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRhXsx47seE

Me on vocals, Drewfus on guitar

Had a little room party on-center yesterday. I woke up locked in a small utility closet for the breaker box. So yeah... I'm in some kind of shit, and I got other people in shit. I find it really hard to have a good weekend here. I hate this place.

Happy new year and all that.

I finally got everything situated for FC. So, barring an emergency that I'll have to respond to, I'll be going.

Had a shit New Year's Eve. Withdrew $40 from the ATM and then in my tiredness forgot to take the money. My thoughts were all over the place... and the damn machine spits out my card before it spits out the money, so I just grabbed the first thing that moved and walked away. I get pretty mechanical and linear-minded when I'm tired. So... that basically ruined my night. Didn't drink much and ended up sleeping in way longer than I wanted to. I was hella groggy today.

A SATA connector on my motherboard snapped off when I tried to install my new hard drive. Backing up my shit before my hard drive dies is going to get a little complicated now.

Uploading the album... but it's slow-going, and I got the track order mixed up. May re-do the whole thing, these tracks I have might have been the ones from before the mastering of the album.

Eh... that's all for now. Bedtime.

I've decided to sort through my watch list and really weed it down to a handful of artists that I really want to keep close tabs on and friends on IRC or the local fur group here in Humboldt. This is partially because I've been getting way too many submissions for me to look at. I don't have the free time I used to with my job and my tendency to get off-center on the weekends. Saving stuff is an annoyance as well, since I've started a massive organizational effort to reduce the clutter in my furry art folders and generally free up some hard drive space. The other thing is that I get bombed with tons of journal submissions when I'm only interested in reading a few, so I end up reading none at all.

I feel bad about people getting the "so and so has unwatched you" messages, but I'm going to be putting pages in my bookmarks of artists I'm interested on checking in on from time to time.

Oh... so yeah, I got my computer finally, if it wasn't obvious. I've had this task in front of me for a long time, but I'm only just now getting to carrying it out. I picked a bad time, heh... I should have done it when I was jobless. :P

Thanks for your understanding. Oh, I intend to put the rest of my dad's album up soon. I figure it's been long enough and sharing it can probably only help CD sales. I'll try to remember to post something more related to what's going on with my life in the CCC and all that soon.

I didn't get my PC when I had hoped. It should hopefully be coming up this weekend, along with my sister's car that has been gifted to me.

Spike was quite a challenge. We had to hike down these large pieces of redwood tread board a mile for a bridge we are constructing at the bottom of a bike trail. They were 3x12x72/74 inches, probably about eighty pounds each. They varied depending on how much moisture the wood still had in them. We also had to bring large metal pipes and scaffolding down, then 6"x4"x10' pieces of lumber for the side railings. Basically, I was sore all the time and surprised how far I could push myself. The work was hard, but I noticed that I wasn't getting depressed like I usually do. The constant exercise got rid of it completely. Later in the spike, however, we came to a point where we didn't have much hard physical labor to do, just touch-up stuff. It sucks to be idle and depressed on the grade, there's not always people to talk to as you work.

This was my first time actually constructing a trail--previously I just did maintenance. We had to cut the trail out of the side of a hill using full-bench construction. Full-bench construction is when you cut into the hill as deep as you need your tread to be wide, and then establish the back and fill slopes from there. Half-bench construction is where you cut into the hill partially and construct your tread (the part of the trail you walk on) by cutting into the fill slope (the slope above the trail) and packing dirt towards the outside of the tread, towards the fill slope (the slope below the trail). State parks is really picky about their trails. They require full bench construction because the trail doesn't have to me maintaned as much, even though the process takes much longer.

State parks also wanted a really gradual grade: just 1 or 2 percent over a stretch of trail that was maybe about 200 feet. It was difficult to meet up with their demands; we got confused a number of times before figuring it out. The way they had the trail outlined with flags was not very informative and we ended up having to cut deep into the tread we were working on to establish the slight grade.

All in all... it was an experience, but it also helped me realize that I'm not really cut out for this stuff (trail work pun). My crew is going on another spike to the same place tomorrow, but I'm not going. I'm getting my feet taken care of. I just paid half of the $425 fee for my custom orthotics today, but I don't know when I'll be getting them. Even after I get that, however, I know I don't have as much of a passion for even the "fun" work in the CCC. It's just a job to me, a pit stop on the road to some other destination. It's good for my resume though, I plan to stay in for at least six months for the scholarship money. I'm going to start looking for other work soon. Fortuna kinda blows. :P

Enough tl;dr, later.

I'm going on spike tomorrow. I'm anxious as hell about it. My stomach is upset and I'm super jittery. I'm pretty sure I have everything I pretty much need--I bought a decent backpack yesterday, for example--but it's totally different from what I've been doing lately. I'm worried about being physically and mentally able to cope with the work. I'm worried about my feet as well, hopefully the pain doesn't get too intense.

I'll be away for eight days, and then I get a four-day weekend. I'm hopefully going to get my PC and stuff up here by then. I'll probably get my Warhammer 40K army up here too (Tau) and then pay off the guy I owe with my next paycheck.

I did an assessment of my expenditures over the course of these 2+ months and found out that I've been spending almost 40% of my paycheck on stupid crap: booze, food, cigarettes, soda. I'm going to be a lot more responsible with my money from now on, but it's looking like I won't be able to make it to Further confusion next year as I had hoped.

Eh... enough writing for now. Will hopefully be posting again soon with my own PC. *grosses fingers*

Man... what the fuck did I do on Sunday? Oh yeah. I shined my boots: they look pretty. Then I pretty much just chilled. It was a lazy day.

I got way too drunk this weekend. I started in the evening of Friday, slept some, and started drinking as soon as I woke up and continued until my bottle of Southern comfort was empty. I took a bit of a break on Sunday, drinking several beers at the local brewery that evening.

I had Columbus Day off, so of course I had the brilliant idea of getting supremely fucked up the day before I had to get back to work. Let's see... I started with a small bottle of Captain Morgan mixed with coffee and Monster. I was walking around downtown Fortuna with a corpie friend of mine and her currently-fired-corpie-boyfriend. We went to a neat antique shop and I picked up a traditional non-labeled shot glass. Then I went to the bar, saying I wanted a martini. I had a Ketel One dirty martini... and that led to other things. I had a shot of Snake River Stampede because I got to keep the shot glass it came in: a tall plastic shot glass that closely resembles a shotgun shell ("12 GA" is even stamped on the bottom of the brass :3). I finished that trip to the bar up with a Bacardi 151 on the rocks with lime.

I prefer to sip most liquor instead of shoot it, even if it's very strong. I've messed up and coughed in the middle of a shot and got some liquor down the wrong tube before. That wasn't fun, and I'm never doing it again. D: That and I actually like the taste.

Then I went to a Mexican fast food place and got some tacos, chips, and a margarita. I expediently went back to the bar to quickly drink a Jagerbomb before returning to my previous company. I quickly separated from them to go hang out with some people I didn't particularly care for simply for the fact that there was the promise of more booze... specifically E & J.

So yeah... I had a bad emotional breakdown later that night. I didn't get caught for being drunk on center (though I pretty much just hit the gazebo briefly before going to my room). Everything that's been on my mind kind of culminated in a wave of negative emotional energy. All I could do was think about what makes me hate living here. I'm working on improving my situation. I'm trying to get out more and am going to be looking into the gay scene here.

Enough tl;dr. Later.

The computer lab has been pretty craptastic of late, in that it has a tendency of making routers cry and explode. I've kind of had cyber psychosis for the past few weeks on top of that. I've been in a depressed state where I'm unmotivated to do much of anything once I get back from work. Not much different right now, since I'm feeling the residual affects of getting a paycheck that allows me to purchase far too much booze than I should be legal for me to carry.

But yeah, I'm still alive. I hung out with a fur at College of the Redwoods yesterday, which was pretty cool. Pounced.org is good for something after all. The bitch is that I had a bit of a problem coming back, which means I had to miss a rec trip to a paintball match. D: Oh well, I don't need any more bruises, and my clothes are dirty enough as it is. That's 40 bucks that I shouldn't be spending anyway. X3

I've generally been in a better mood as of the past few days though. I finally went to a podiatrist on Thursday and got some inserts that more directly address my problem of being somewhat flat-footed. The inside edge of my toes have been numb because I've been pounding the crap out of a nerve there due to the arrangement of my arch. Now I'm recovering... which means the nerve can feel pain again. Ow. :<

Man... I've been drunk all fucking day. I wanna go scouting for "honeys" or something. I have this dire need for intimacy for some reason.

Been coughing a lot lately. The constant smoking of a half a pack of Djarum Blacks a day has finally caught up to me after two months, I think. I've been coughing really hard. I guess I need to get on the patch or something. Quitting cigarettes is difficult when I have money. It's hard to find a substitute... even a chemical one. I smoke even more when I drink. :P

Might post some more tomorrow. I think I might hang out in the computer lab most of the day and nurse my wounds. It looks like the router is back up. Have a good one.

I have sand in places I didn't even know existed.

Ammophila is an accursed dune grass that I've been pulling up lately. It's not difficult, but there's a fuck-ton of the stuff and the job is mind-numbingly boring. I'm on my... third week of going out on the beach and pulling this crap for six/seven hours and piling it in big heaps to be burned.

I want to be there when it's set on fire.

I wish it screamed for mercy when I pulled it up. I would derive so much pleasure from that.

What's crazy is that I've been doing 4/10's of this crap, which is where I have 4 10-hour days within the week. I get a day off, but it leaves me a lot less time to just relax and get stuff done when I get back. I need to alter my sleep schedule for 4/10's as well, something I'm not very good at.

Well, I've got about five minutes before the lab closes. Friday should be pretty chill, so I'll probably post again tomorrow.

Didn't manage to make it to the gay parade on Sunday. Turned down an offer to take someone's place because I didn't want to be held down while I was there. Ended up not being able to find a ride and heard later that "volunteering" for that trip basically meant simply being present.

Oh well. I can check out the gay scene some other time.

Speaking of gayness, finally found a guy here who's gay. Well, bisexual. I like his personality, and he's cute. Should be hot hot dickings within the week.

Though... this place is kind of ridiculous. You can't fuck on center. It's a state facility, so you can't bring booze on center. If you come back to center drunk you have to go straight to your room and--preferably--not speak to anyone on your way there. No PDA (public displays of affection) on center... the list goes on.

This would all be no big deal if this center was actually located somewhere interesting. Fortuna is a void. Eureka and Arcata are nearby, but they're not much of a town compared to where I was living before. The only place of note up here is the Bayshore Mall. It's pretty void as well, but at least it has DDR. Speaking of the mall, I managed to acquire a spiffy hat at Zumiez. I mostly just needed something to keep my head warm, but I didn't like how any of the beanies looked. Thus, I got a neat brimmed hat with little pimp feathers in it and everything. Bad photography imminent.

I don't know anybody up here... I don't have a car... I'm forced to both work with and live with the same personalities day in and day out... this adds up to me being rather depressed. That, and I know that I have two more weeks of ammophila.

Joy of joys.

Enough writing for now. I'll describe what I'm doing later.

So... yeah. Sorry I haven't updated in ages. I'm planning on doing my journal more often now.

I joined the California Conservation Corps at Fortuna, which is a government agency that puts people ages 18-25 to work. We mostly remove non-indigenous plants, make and maintain trails, and SRP (salmon restoration project). I haven't had any work besides performing for about 2 years, so I'm mostly doing it for resume building--we only get paid state minimum wage.

It's alright, I guess, but I've been fucking depressed lately. Fortuna is a small town and we're not located downtown. The only thing within walking distance of me is a gas station and a bar & grill. I haven't been able to get out of town ever since I got here over a month ago. There's a gay parade in Arcata tomorrow but I haven't been able to secure a ride since the buses here don't run on Sundays. I want to get out and be with people I don't see every damn day.

The lab closes in a couple of minutes. I'll probably be stuck on-center tomorrow, so maybe I'll do a long post.

He plays gigs until the money runs out.

The album is up on CD Baby for 16 bucks. You'll be able to listen to the first two minutes of each track. The album should be downloadable as digital content pretty soon, through CD Baby and/or iTunes. Here's the link:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/dalemorgan

How do you make a guitarist play quieter?
Put sheet music in front of him.

I left with Christmas money. The only person being paid was probably my dad. The venue is pretty intimate, and we certainly weren't packing a full house. A good portion of people were on the "guest list" as well, mostly family. Having an alcohol-free New Years concert is a double-edged sword. It helps reduce the number of (typically drunken) requests for Free Bird and Sweet Home Alabama, but people want to drink on New Year's Eve.

How do you make a million dollars as a jazz musician?
Start with two million.

Song list, in order:

Ruby Tuesday by The Rolling (Fuckin') Stones
Four Winds by Bright Eyes
Leatherwing Bat by John "Spider" Coen (Dad calls him "Spidey")
Opera Singer by Cake
I Feel Like Life Today by Dale Morgan
Blind Willie McTell by Bob Dylan
Hey There Delilah by The Plain White T's
Across the Universe by Paul McCartney

How does a lead singer screw in a light bulb?
He holds it and lets the world revolve around him.

Ruby Tuesday has become one of my "standards." Despite that we tend to play for older audiences, it's hard to get the crowd to sing the chorus along with me. The first verse has an egregious low note that's at the bottom of my range, so the tone and volume aren't all that fantastic.

Four Winds is a weird song to follow Ruby Tuesday with. Of all the songs I did, I was hoping to do it the most justice. Unfortunately, I was so nervous that I was shaking visibly. I wasn't able to channel my fear into something more productive. New songs are a mixed blessing. There's a lot of flippin' words in that song, with a fast cadence to boot. I had to crunch the words into my cheat sheet, which screwed me up right in the beginning. The problem with cheat sheets is that one gets in the habit of looking at them out of principle instead of just when necessary, so I read out the beginning of the second half of the first verse while I was still doing the first half. However, after having forced myself to look at the sheet less, I glossed over some words in the next verse. Oh well, just makes me want to improve more. Thankfully, I was able to achieve an amount of emotive intensity similar to what Connor Oberst puts forth in the recording, enough so that it made my mom cry, at least. :P

I butchered Leatherwing Bat even worse this year, turning an eight-verse, eight-chorus song into a ten-verse, ten-chorus song. I took it in stride, though, and I had a merciful audience. They're music lovers, and they "get" it. Me and my dad kind of turned it into a comedy routine once I started screwing up the lyrics, even stopping once to ask: "Which bird are we on?" (After the verse about the leatherwing bat, the song does a verse about a red bird, a bluebird, a robin, a blackbird, an owl, a turtledove, then the bat again.) The verses are almost identical, so it's an easy song to screw up. Once the downward spiral of self-parody started, my dad decided to distract me, making me laugh through one of the choruses. I can't remember exactly what he did, but he has a way of doing things with his guitar that can really catch you unawares. Then, while re-doing a verse with my mind grasping the lyrics better, I contorted my face in anger and sung the words with vitriolic derision, cursing them for their sameness. That got a pretty good laugh.

Opera Singer went pretty smooth. I realized a little late that the new songs I picked to practice for the gig had a lot of low registers (for me). I get decent-enough tone at low pitches, but I can't put forth the volume. I have to get intimate with a really HOT mic at times. I'll have to reference the recording, but the song went wrong at the exact place I was worried most about: "I am an opera singer/ I'll sing when you're all dead." Either I started out on the wrong note or my dad was on the wrong chord, but I had to keep singing while I was thinking: "Oh God, this sounds fucking awful." For whatever reason, the starting note for that verse is ridiculously hard for me to latch onto and remember, but the melody for the following line: "I sing the mountains crumbling apart," is etched into my mind like a stone tablet. My sister came up with my mom to see me perform (the first time she had heard me sing, actually). She's a "hip cat" so she knew all the words, meaning she was looking up at the stage mouthing the lyrics along with me.

The first set ended with I Feel Like Life Today. We had my cousin Ross on bass for that one (and then later on Blind Willie, as well). I didn't bother to make a cheat sheet for it since it would be ridiculous. I only sung the whole thing about three million times in the studio.

Jeez... this is getting huge. I think I'll edit the rest in later. And umm... I'm out of good jokes.

So, the CD release party was a success. The venue wasn't packed, but I had a fair number of people requesting I sign their CDs (as well as the day after, on Christmas eve). The album will be up on CDbaby pretty soon (I'll provide the link once it's up). From there, one will be able to listen to the first minute or so of the tracks to allow one to decide if it is of their taste.

Later on, I did a few songs after the crowd had been whittled down:

I Feel Like Life Today, by Dale Morgan (of course)
Ruby Tuesday, by The Rolling (Fuckin') Stones
Blind Willie McTell, by Bob Dylan

I've been told by my aunt that Blind Willie McTell should be my next "single." It would be nice to see a little life breathed into that song, especially since it languished as an Infidels outtake until the Bob Dylan bootleg series came out.

I think I'll put up some scratch tracks that me and my father made at a small home studio in... Eugene? A little more north than where I'm stationed currently, at least. I had long given up on hearing a mixed version: it was a free session. The most furry-inclined scratch track I did--Leatherwing Bat--has a goof on it. Some of the others I did pretty well on, despite the roughness of it. When I'm able to rip in a format other than the ghastly .wma, some of those tracks will be up on here.

I have a folder with a score or so of cheat sheets for various songs. I should look through them to help jog my memory regarding the songs I've done. For the delightfully alcohol-free New Years bash we have planned, we have three new songs planned:

Four Winds, by Bright Eyes
Opera Singer, by Cake
Hey There Delilah, by The Plain White T's

I'm not sure if we're going to do "United States of Whatever" or not. The sound that we have available to us is primarily acoustic, and the audience will probably not stand a distorted cacauphany for long. We might just do a snippet or two. What is nice is the fact that one is able to create one's own lyrics quite easily for that song. I was thinking of doing a verse with song references in it, like:

"I went down to the bog and I saw Aqualung there, warming his feet. He was like: whatever."