It's been almost a whole year (I'm ONE day off, thank you very much) - time to update the DA journal.

Mmm, yes. Let's see. I think the biggest thing since last entry is the fact that I graduated from high school. I'm not in post-secondary right now - I'm on the year off, although sometimes I feel more as if it's the "year to pass by". I've been good recently, though. Not sure what I'll take when it comes time to come back to school ... I've been leaning towards something journalism related, since it'd be interesting enough to me as well as practical enough to hopefully find some use for. Of course, I've got months of time to figure it out.

Art pieces? Nothin'. It's not for me. My creative urges come in the form of either music or writing. Not saying I'll never make visual art again - it's just not an impulse.

Most of what I write will never make it onto here. I have a pad full of poems that I've been nursing for a bit - roughly sixty of them, I'd say - all of varying quality. I'd like to think I'm getting better, but at the same time, my emotional well-being has been doing nothing but rising for the last month or two - when the well of self-pity has dried up, so to speak, so goes some of the ideas. No, I'll be okay. I've just been busy.

November brings along National Novel Writing Month. As of this post, I have just reached 40k words of the target 50k. It's turning out alright, I'd like to think. Lots of musical commentary - a couple main characters who each pull aspects of myself into them (it's slightly cathartic, actually) - there isn't really any underlying plot at all, so much as it's just an observation into their lives and how they live with music and post-high school wonder. In addition to numerous musical subjects, it touches upon all your favourite good things - wondering about the future, figuring out what to do with oneself, love frustration, your good friends(and their moving away), relying a bit too heavily on alcohol (and irony, if you're John K. Samson) - those things. More of a character study with commentary and musings that I think anyone in the 18-early-20's demographic would find worthwhile.

Tentative title: "Ecstatic Sidelines". Subject to change at any moment.

I've been doing lots of volunteer work up at the university's radio station. It's a hell of a lot of fun, with great people as well. I'm really glad I'm doing that.

Musically, I find myself more and more intrigued with noise. I've gotten to a point where I will actually record random things onto my cassette player, and then plug it into my guitar amp and mess around with the distortion levels (sometimes I'll hook it into a fuzzbox and really mess with it), tape noises, the like. It's almost as if every sound is becoming interesting. On the more listenable side of things, my pop senses haven't really been honed yet - that's the next thing to work on. I think my musical calling is to create noise-pop.

Not reading as much as I used to, but I'm still keeping with it. I'm currently working at a book store, so that might feed it.

Musically in regards to my listening habits ... I'm seriously liking Caribou's new album, Andorra. I've actually heard so many goddamn albums this year that I shouldn't bother going into it, but that ones a clear frontrunner for "favourite of the year". Other mentionables would probably be Parts & Labor's Mapmaker, Cuff the Duke's Sidelines of the City, Liar's selftitled, the Ergs! Upstairs/Downstairs, Battles' Mirrored, Thurston Moore's new solo album, Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam ... and like twenty others. It was a damn fine year for music, I'd say.

I think that's about it. Right on. Let's see this thing get updated next year.

so I just finished reading "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dosteovsky. It took FOREVER but was totally worth it. I do want to slap the jury for their final verdict on Dmitry, though... ah well. I think it's pretty funny that "Smerdyakov" roughly means "shithead" in russian (at least, according to the wikipedia article). I picked up this particular novel because of Blake Schwarzenbach's (Jawbreaker, Jets to Brazil) recommendation in several interviews (as well as him listing it as his favourite book on his myspace acct - how creepy of me to be watching that...) but yes, it was a wonderful book, worth the time investment and everything. forgive me if I don't touch another large book for a while, mind you. The next writings I'll be tackling are Kafka's "The Metamorphosis (and other Stories)" and Christopher Moore's "Bloodsucking Fiends"(for some, you know, LIGHTER reading). I've also got a big ol' book on Lenny Bruce that I plan to flip through (I don't plan on reading all 500+ pages since it's a lot of legal/trial information, but man it was a $31 book on sale for six bucks, I can pick out what I want from it).

moving away from books ... I've been thoroughly enjoying the new album by the Thermals, "The Body, The Blood, The Machine". Straightforward and fun garagey-punk rock. "Heres Your Future" is a wonderful opening song, and A Pillar of Salt-Returning to the Fold-Test Pattern-St. Rosa and the Swallows is just a 1-2-3-4 punch of excellent songs one after another. I also finally got the Falcon's "Unicornography", which is a serious contender for my "#1 Punk Album of the Year". Another candidate is the Lawrence Arms "Oh! Calcutta!", and since the Falcon is 2/3 of TLA... well, lets just say those Chicago boys made some fucking great music this year. 31Knots released a new ep called "Polemics", which has some great experimental and noisy bits, although some of it falls flat. The experimental stuff on it is quite thrilling, which makes it a good listen. It's also got some neat artwork. Lastly, I'm super excited for Sonic Youth's "The Destroyed Room" b-sides/rarities comp coming out in December.

the weather here is inhumanely cold. today, with windchill, it was something like -39 C (thats -38.2 F, for the Americans). It doesn't really matter though because once the weather hits about -15 it doesn't matter how cold it gets, all that matters is that it's REALLY COLD. It was so cold today that the cd player in my father's car wouldn't read anything until it was heated up.

also, a note to dental workers. do you people idolize the Marquis de Sade? My teeth were being scraped (or scaled, as they'd call it) for forty odd minutes. I thought I was going to snap. That scraping noise - it's enough to drive someone mad. I can't even count how many times my face cringed when that metal scraper was clawing at my gumline.

"Devin, it appears your gums are a bit inflamed..."
Yeah, maybe because you're poking them with that fucking metal scraper!

... Wisdom teeth are gonna be removed in spring/summer.

now, to let this devart journal stay up for three-six months before I update it again. hurrah.

So over the past few months I've gotton back into a reading groove - I used to read like everyday when I was younger and then kinda... stopped. I've been reading a lot more recently, and I just finished these two books:

Artificial Light by James Greer
and
Road Movies by Lee Ranaldo

I LOVED Artificial Light. It's really weird in that instead of chapters it's presented in 21 different "notebooks" - and they're all mostly written from different perspectives or people; surrounding various events. There are a few main points throughout the book however, and the "main" character is a 20-something female who goes by the name Fiat Lux (a pseudoname - for reasons explained in the book). Theres lots of musical stuff in the book too - like, one of the main events is the suicide of a very well-known rock musician (whos name is never given in full but anyone whos even slightly knowledgable about music will know), a band on tour... I don't really know how to describe it all, but it's part historical novel, part science-fiction, part sociological study, part murder mystery, and whatnot. It's just really quite good.

Lee Ranaldo's "Road Movies" is a collection of poems, essays, lists and whatnot from time he spent on the road, on tour with Sonic Youth. Lee Ranaldo's lyrics have always been my favourites as far as Sonic Youth goes, so this book seemed like an obvious pickup; and it's mainly poetry. It's good, lots of film/music/arty literature and whatnot you'd expect. Very beat-ish, I suppose. Plus it has the lyrics to "Mote", which is a damned amazing song.

I'm currently reading Thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure"; and while I'm really not much a fan of older literature (it just doesn't interest me), this one has something a little different about it that's making it interesting to read. It's probably one of the most depressing things I've ever read though, but I don't mind that. I'm almost through the second part of it.

as for writing, I seem to be hitting creative points at anywhere between 2-4 AM, where lately I've been writing 1-3 poems nightly; but not every night. I'm still relatively new to it so we'll see if it develops or anything. I haven't written any creative prose in a while either, so that might pop up as well.

thats about it for my err, first devart journal entry of 2006.

I know, I know. I never update this, and it's a cryin' shame. Well, maybe not. Either way- I made something new (100% photoshop) and uploaded it. No word on whether or not I'll try and stay productive, we'll see.

Also, you have to check out this band called "The Dismemberment Plan". They're amazing.

Deviantart gave me the free-week trial right on my birthday. CONSPIRACY? More @ 11.

Did you know Vanilla Ice is on tour right now? Yeah, but it's only in California. He's got a new CD ready for release or something. And here I was, thinking he gave up after "Ice Ice Baby".

I say we start a petition for his movie "Cool as Ice" to be reshown in theatres.