Sunday, October 31, 2010

radioactive marshmallow clouds

Well, why bother writing anything that makes any sense at all?  I should just rip a couple pages out of the dictionary and type all the words backwards.  whoopadeedoo.  Come to think about it, that doesn't sound like a bad idea.  Maybe I should start a new religion and call it the yranoitcid cult.



We'll all wear robes made out of the curtains at old hotels and motels from around the country.  We can meet in abandoned churches and factories and read from the great book.

"Tonight my brethren, we will be reading from the chapter Uh."...uuuuh, I don't have a real dictionary handy right now or I would actually type out a couple of  verses for you.  I have a real dictionary, but it's in the bedroom, and my girlfriend is sleeping there.  We wouldn't want to wake her up.



Apparently, it's fine if I stay up all night writing nonsense and attempting to take over the world with my overdeveloped sense of creativity and taste, but only as long as it doesn't disturb her ability to sleep for insane amounts of time.  I used to enjoy sleep.  Sleep is good.

Lately, I can only think about all the things that I want to get accomplished.  Aside from taking over the world, it would also be kinda cool to go hang gliding at least once.  Have you ever seen one of those videos where people carry a camera while they fly around in a hang glider?  That is fricken amazing.


If I had a camera like that and I was good at hang gliding, I would fly right over stuff and then give the video to people that lived where I flew so they would know what it would look like if they were superheros and they were flying over their own house or something.

Speaking of superheros, have you ever thought about what it would be like if you made up your own comic strip?  I think about it all the time.  I have a couple of good ideas.  One of them is an idea where there are a group of evil villains who are always trying to take over the world, but they keep getting in each other's way and their plans are all pretty retarded anyway.

It would be pretty funny because people totally like to laugh at handicapped people.

My other idea is to have a world where everyone is a superhero and they go to work and stuff and use their superpowers to do normal stuff.  Like superman, who can basically fly and that's it really would fly up and fix powerlines or wash the windows on skyscrapers or something, and wolverine would work at a deli and slice lunch meat all day long.  I guess it wouldn't be as cool as the supervillians idea, but maybe it would help you to come up with new superheros since you would need to have a hero that goes to work at an office building and uses some kind of superpower there.

www.manga-manga.net

blah blah blah, what's the word for the day?  How about macaroni?  that's a good word.  I don't even know if it's spelled right, but who cares, right?  Macaroni is good.  I prefer to have a little bit of real butter and maybe a dash of sugar and maybe some fresh chopped garlic added right after shocking the pasta.  That way, it cooks just a tiny bit before you eat it.

mum
That's my favorite pasta recipe.  I love pasta.  I should make a web page about all the ways that I love pasta.  I guess I love pizza more than pasta, but really, how could you make a web page about how much you love to eat pizza?  I bet I could do it.  I am really THAT stupid.  I would order pizza from all my favorite places and take pictures of the pizzas, and maybe little video clips of myself eating pizza.  It would be fantastic.  That's just were I would start.

pink rose


Next, I would buy all the different frozen pizzas and describe the dining experience, from the accuracy of the instructions, to the quality of each brand of pizza using different cooking techniques.  I would show pictures of frozen pizzas that had been "modified" by adding extra toppings, and i would describe how to avoid all the pitfalls of this, 'pizza hacking'.

snapdragon
 That would take up a couple of months worth of blogging.  Next I would go back to my favorite pizza places and tell them I am the author of the now famous, "pizzaholic" blog and would demand access to their kitchen for video of the facilities and descriptions of the pizza making process.  Who proofs their dough, who uses mix, who uses bottled water.  All the dirty little secrets would come out.



Eventually, the pizza mafia would come after me for revealing all their pizza making secrets and I would have to be put away in the secret pizza agent relocation program where I would have to live in LaFontain Nebraska where there isn't a pizza place for a hundred miles, and even then, it's just a bowling alley that serves frozen pizza.

agerantum
All in all, it would be a crazy ride of fun and pizza filled adventure, but in the end, you have to ask yourself...is it really worth it?  Do I really want to give up the simple enjoyment of a frozen pizza with too much cheese that didn't really cook all the way in the toaster oven so I throw it in the microwave and wind up with a gooey chewy mess of pepparoni flavored wet cardboard?  I don't think so.  I"ll just stick with my life the way it is and maybe my next brilliant idea will save the world...How about pizza that grows on trees?

Friday, October 29, 2010

theblackninja 2.0

Blogging is such an interesting concept.  I remember when one of my good friends refused to get a cell phone because it was too, "trendy".  Now everyone has one.  It's hard to survive without one.  You can't find a pay phone anywhere.

fringed sagebrush
 The other day, I was looking around for a pay phone and all I could find were places where there used to be a phone.  Well, maybe blogging is like that. Maybe there will come a time when there are no more regular media outlets and the entire media structure is a network of bloggers who linkback each other all day long.

I was reading a science fiction book the other day and one of the stories was about a future like that where a couple of people orchestrated large groups of bloggers so that they would develop patterns together and give their viewers a sense of consistency.  If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.  Large groups of people would tend to think alike, especially if they worked together.

forsythia cuttings
 So, the story was about a particular reporter, or blogger, or whatever you want to call these future media personnel, who wanted to report about things that nobody cared about.  It was all about his 'morals'.  So, one day, a famous person who was from the same small asian country as him decided to give him a boost and grant him an interview.  In the blogging world, this would be like suddenly moving from working on a small environmental blog, to interviewing jessica simpson or something.  I don't know.  It was a sad story because the person just gave up on the whole thing instead of coming up with a winning solution.

moringa cups
 It's one thing when a story is intriguing or something, but it is just way too frustrating when a story ends with some lame, expected kind of an ending where you're just thinking, "Damn, how tacky was that?".  Well, that's how I felt about that stupid story, someone came up with a great idea and then didn't have the strawberries to finish it with the same kind of inspiration that it was started with.

moringa in bloom
In the story, the reporter just gave up or something, because they were frustrated that the system wouldn't let them act however they wanted, like they're some kind of ultimate human that can do whatever they feel like and we should all just tell them hooray and thank you for not sitting in a corner somewhere and waiting to die.  I'm thinking a better ending would have involved him finding a way to make his idea culpable.

For instance, he wanted to write about butterflies that were becoming extinct.  Maybe he could have made a site all about butterflies and how cool they are and generate a lot of interest in butterflies, and then, later, after the people were looking at the butterflies, he could have made a little post, like, "oh, by the way, butterflies are awesome, and there are some butterflies that are going extinct, and this is what you can do about it."

paulownia seedlings
 It does no good to complain about something.  People don't really care about things that they can't do anything about.  Why should anyone care about some butterflies that are being killed if they can't do anything about it.  What are they supposed to do, feel bad about something that really doesn't have anything to do with them?  How stupid would that be?

Can you imagine a tv show about all the things that you should feel bad about?  I guess it would be called the evening news in some places.  I was watching the news the other day and apparently there was some lady that was found dead in her apartment and she had been dead a long time, and nobody cared.  Now I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure things like that happen all the time.  I can't figure out why they would have that on the news and not have any news about the kids who built an electric car that can travel at the equivalent of 300 miles per gallon, or the people that built an electric car that can travel 600 miles on one charge.

moringa crop
Now that's news.  I would watch the news all the time if it had cool stuff like that on it.  I don't watch the news at all now days.  I used to watch the evening news, and then one night I noticed that as the night got later and later, the sounds from the news got more and more intense.  Once I noticed that, it was all over.  I couldn't watch any of the news shows without thinking about how stressful it was just to learn about what was, "going on" in the world.  It's absolutely silly.

If you ask me, people  who produce stuff like that should be forced to sit and watch at least the show which they produce.  Everyone involved, from the janitor on down to the people who make the graphics and sort through the advertisements.  They should have to sit and watch it every night.  Once they can tolerate their own work, night after night, then the show would probably be worth watching.

moringa oleifera
 As it stands, I'm pretty sure that most of them don't even watch the show once.  They produce the cool 3D logos and the crazy theme songs and then they go watch leave it to beaver, or barney or something.

What kind of a crazy world do we live in where people work all day on something and their goal isn't to make something that they would like to watch, but something that they can inflict on someone else.  You know how you can tell a successful drug dealer from a bad dealer?  A good dealer never takes their own product.  I guess the analogy of dope dealer is only applicable to people who produce media if they are producing something that is bad.  Is it good to be entertained?

fringed sagebrush
I would say that it is a positive thing to be entertained.  When you are entertained, your creative brain is free to enjoy itself, whereas a brain that is deadlocked in the battle for ultimate supremacy can only become more like darth vader.  Darth vader was a cool dude in my book, but he wasn't very good at innovating or producing creative solutions to difficult problems.  He could track down the rebels in any corner of the galaxy, but he probably couldn't figure out how to get his truck started with a ball point pen and a bottle of soda like McGyver could back in the day.

santolina
Now that was a guy who could take care of business.  If there was a problem, he would figure out how to solve it.  He could disarm a nuclear reactor with a chocolate bar and some rock salt.

Monday, October 25, 2010

theblackninja 2.0 revisted

I am still reworking the site and contemplating the new structure.  It's a challenge to sort through all the possibilities and come up with the correct one for me.  I love movies and art and cartoons.  That's probably what I'm going to stick with for a while.

can of ninja is better than can of whoop ass


You know what they say, do what you know.  I like to watch stuff.  I also like music a lot, but I like all kinds of music so if I made a page about all the different kinds of music I liked, it would be all over the place, like a crazy person.  Anyway, the new format is almost completed.  I've got a couple of things to correct before I start in on the content.  It is such a relief to have a concept in mind.  I have been aiming at one for so long, it's like finally eating a whole pizza after getting off ship when you've been out at sea for 6 months.

I mean, I can only imagine what that is like, mostly because we were out at sea for all that time, but when we stopped in dubai, they had a pizza hut there.  The pizza had goat cheese on it, and it tasted like cardboard, but it was pizza, so it's not really the same as going for 6 months without pizza.  Also, I made some pizza that was pretty good.  I mean, it wasn't as good as straw hat or something, but it was delicious.

Maybe a better analogy would be to say that it's like having an ice cold beer after coming out of boot-camp.  Imagine drinking tap water day after day and eating that slop and then one day, you get out, you go to your girl's apartment and she's got an ice cold beer for you in a big ol' mug that's all frosty and good.  How delicious would that taste?

theblackninja 2.0

As you may or may not know, the black ninja website has officially completed it's first round of development.  www.theblackninja.com version 2.0 is well underway and will be released within a day or two.  It is actually all formatted out and looking much more professional, but the links need some review and I haven't decided how to manage the pages.

The first round of content was managed using a home made perl script and it worked pretty good.  My main goal is to focus on content production rather than on managing the content.  I have been learning a lot about keeping it simple and applying that experience should be pretty easy.  From my experience, some things just don't really matter.  When I first started out, html errors was a sure fire way to get yourself kicked out of the listings, but it appears that isn't really a major concern any more.  I guess they figure if people are using your content, then they must be able to see it and who cares what the validators say.

ninja star
Ok, well, back to work. Pictures to slice and reviews to type.  I am pretty excited that the new format will allow for a much closer focus on art and entertainment.

star wars reenacted by bunnies

star wars reenacted by bunnies in thirty seconds

star wars bunnies

Here's a cute little clip.  I hope they make a full feature length version.

naruto

Everything is coming along well except that my main art computer is acting like it's full of oatmeal.  I need to brush my teeth and I have the montezuma's revenge.  Ugh, actually it sounds like things aren't going well at all, except that they really are.  I completed all the 'junk', that I wanted to start my theblackninja.com website with and am starting on the actual content tonight.

Naruto naruto the ninja
 It has definately been a learning experience.  There are so many things to do.  It's really starting to feel like a rat race, but I just know it will all be worth it.  The more I improve, the more efficient and productive I can become.  I just know if I can be effective and successful at these projects, I can spend more time with my family and we can have more time to enjoy each other.  Plus, I stress myself out much better than any boss ever could.

naruto the ninja is surprised


I started doing some keyword research and discovered that naruto seems to be one of the highest ninja related searches and so I'm starting there.  I have always been interested in anime and cartoons, but my plan was to start with classic stuff, like the cheezy ninja movies and stuff.  I will probably do those next, but for right now, I'm starting with current ninja stuff.  Actually, from my research, it's pretty complicated with all the different episodes and story lines and stuff, so I might still start with the classics.  I won't know until I actually publish, that's just the way it goes.

Naruto is pretty cool.  I have really enjoyed the crash course that I have put myself through.  What a cool cartoon.  It's a little cheesy and stuff, and there are some philosophical things that I disagree with, but it's a fricken cartoon for crying out loud.  It's a good thing.  Naruto is officially awesome enough for theblackninja.

naruto ninja

figuring how to best use my time is the hardest part of being a self-employed publisher.  I was reading about affiliate marketing and those guys are just brutal advertising guerilla warfare people.  I bet they make a ton of dough though.  I was just doing a little research to learn about what's out there.  Some of what they advocate is just like spam.  You know ninjas improvise, adapt and overcome.  It's our way.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

My first post

That's right, it's the obligatory first post in my blog!  My webpages are coming along swimmingly.  I have two primary pages that I am working on right now.  As an artist and an author, it's very challenging to get through all the mumbo jumbo out there and come up with something entertaining and then get it to the customer.

Symbols have powerful meanings. 


My first page, infinite flower is a page full of pictures of flowers and art work that is based on flowers.  When I was first discharged from the military, I discovered free software called GIMP that helps me to manipulate pictures of all kinds of stuff into things that look like flowers.  My favorite thing to do is just to slice up a picture of a flower and give it a sense of balance.  I haven't worked on that site in a while, but it's my first real attempt.  I have been building sites (unsuccessfully) since around 2000-ish.  So, it's been about 10 years on and off depending on what else was going on in my life.

The main project that I am working on right now is theblackninja. This site is all about awesome people that I have known.  I have tried to capture what it was that made them awesome and just made each description about ninjas.  It works out pretty good, because there's a lot of mystery involved with ninjas and ninjitsu.  I guess it's a little trippy because it works out like some kind of wierd religion or something, but really, it's just an attempt to spread the awesomeness and to get my artwork out there.  I have been making comic strips and little black and white icon kinds of art for those pages.  It has been coming along pretty well, but I still am not really proud of it.  Trying to bring the concept and the execution all together into one comprehensive package is really difficult for a retard like me.

Cogs represent machinery of society that keeps functioning.


Anyway, I have been doing pretty well with it.  I have almost all the html errors eliminated, I got a sitemap uploaded and I started some affiliate programs.  There really is a lot of stuff involved.  I could work full-time for ages and still not really get everything done.  I really want to do a home-repair kind of a thing.  I love fixing stuff.  I have my hands full right now.  My main goal is to make the black ninja a kind of a teenage entertainment site and eventually produce a comic book or something with the artwork.  I really don't have any real solid plans for the future, but I am learning a lot about search engines and traffic stuff.  Content almost seems like the last thing that people think about.

Well, I really appreciate all the tools and stuff that are available.  I have so much work to do.  There really isn't any extra time.