Blog

Slaying the Hydra of Social Networks

14 October 2009 Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Yunyu

This post is basically about slaying the cancerous hydra mayhem of social networks, because, quite frankly, by the time I signed on to what might have been the 10th social network, which happened to be facebook, I think I was quite over all the manual crossposting and the chaos that came with it. (I know facebook takes RSS feeds but there are the others…the many many others)

I decided that enough was enough and it was time to get some social networks amputation/streamlining happening. Even if it meant involving pretty, shiny knifey things….

Alert***:Long and geeky post, by some standards, but consider this a public service post if you are either

1) using wordpress
2) looking to unite all your blog posts and status updates across all your social networks
3) you. like me, wishes very bad things for the next human that comes up with the next facebook/myspace/friendster clone.

Since all my base is on WordPress, the post leans toward being WordPress-centric

Else for those who are simply falling asleep….something on the interweb to distract you with while we do some light geek speak.

**** OH MY GAWD!!! LOOK!!! ZOMBIE SNAILS!!!****

For the rest of us – A History Lesson from a musician’s perspective

Once upon a time, as a floundering musician/ content creator living on the primordial interweb, there were just the websites. You didn’t have to update them, if you needed to add material you needed html and then most of the interaction came from emails, or letters.

It was rather lonely. So we evolved. Yaaaay Darwin.

Then came blogs, which was a godsend, comment features are fun and remain so. Then the social platforms which was still good, still ok, just a blog and (generally) myspace. Oh yes, we can handle that…until social networks met heaps of money, fell in love and decided it was a good idea to breed.

Now they breed faster than cancerous hydra heads of DOOOOMMMM and your royal madness just about loses it trying to sync her blog posts. So slaying the Hydra that is Social Networks has become the first and important order of business.

because

1) time saved from copying and pasting blogs all over the interwebs can be used for other forms of manic entertainment. Like look OMG Mutant Birds!!!
2) Shaving boring, pointless crossposting time is more important than shaving personal ape hair

The Problem:

So here’s my deal, I’m on facebook, myspace, livejournal, twitter, imeem, bebo, friendster, last.fm and god knows what else…I have lost track.

Of course: I’m hearing some news that EVERYONE is on facebook and I should just close off everything else and live on facebook, but we know it isn’t true…and it’s only a matter of time before something comes up to take over scary spam spewing facebookand divides everyone yet again….*froth*

Then if you think it’s going to get better? How about when you can build your very own social networks? (I’ve actually known about this for awhile but am choosing to STILL ignore it)

The Plan of attack

So, in old school seven samurai style, one must have a plan/goal before a battle.
091013sai2

Goal: I want to only deal with WordPress (for blogs) and Twitter (status updates) but somehow sync these to everywhere else I’m on. No manual crossposting anywhere else.

Period.

Breaking this down,

1) able to send status updates to all social networks at once. Not once at Twitter and another at Facebook etc…
2) Everytime I do a new blogpost, the link to my new post is posted along with post title to twitter and every other status updatey thing on all my social networks
3) sync blog posts to livejournal – because a I’m noticing a majority of you are still there and I rather you didn’t have to click around too much
4) Allow comments posting with social networks login (esp twitter/ facebook)

These below, were the solutions that worked for spidey, I thought I’d put them here so, with any luck, it saves u time being a test monkey for each one.

1) able to send status updates to all social networks at once. Not once at Twitter and another at Facebook and 20 other soc nets.

–>> Ping.fm

Their site explains it all. Basically, it promises to sync your blogs, status updates, microblogs all through one site. You can decide whether to only sync your blogs or your status updates/microblogs (same thing to me)

But here’s what I found

For Microblogs/ Status updates/ twit updates etc – not too bad.I can add links etc, nothing breaks, everything works. What’s better is that it also adds status updates to my aol, skype and gtalk accounts. You beauty.

Blog crossposting – Not for me. From a wordpress perspective. Everything breaks. Ping reads html differently from wordpress who has it’s own html grammar etc, cross posts look broken and mutated. Apparently there are fixes coming but posting only from ping is not going to work for me.- Not to fret…there’s something else for it. (see below)

Status updates that syncs to everything else through Twitter

I really wasn’t going to want to log into ping.fm everytime I sent a short status update, also, I prefer sending out my twitter/ status updates through tweetdeck (desktop app) . I wanted to see if there was a way I could get ping to get status feeds off one convenient source – aka twitter.

Voila! Enter Notify.me
Read this
http://wiki.notify.me/How_do_I%3F/setup_ping.fm_as_a_destination

Basically the above are instructions of how to set up any website as source (in this case my twitter) , I am now able simply update my twitter and it broadcasts my tweets to all my other social networks.

It’s TEH AWESOME.

Note: The next point brings us into wordpress plugin territory. Most wordpress plugins made in the last year need PHP5 to work. So if your server still lives in primordial PHP4 you need to upgrade. I was told, in most cases, this is a fairly painless process that takes only 48 hours. Simply

1) backup your website
2) call webhost with instructions to upgrade to php5

(you might be able to request that they somehow leave your php4 site on their backup server in case something breaks in the transfer….in any case…backup backup backup)

In case , like me, your webhosting service is run by technologically challenged babboon’s arses…be prepared….they took 2.5 weeks..Fortunately my screams for help through twitterverse got me 2 masters of the geekfu, Bruce and Chris who consequently took time out from their own projects in coolshite, saved my site and saved the day.

— on a note, if you don’t know what Coolshite on the tube is, you should. They are a cool pop culture podcast from Tasmania, Australia who consume and review all forms of media, even the bad ones, so you don’t have to.

Check them out

So yes….where was I?

2) Everytime I do a new blogpost on my wordpress, I want the link to my new post to be posted along with post title to twitter and every other status updatey thing on all my social networks.

*** Before you proceed a few things:
1) I’m running wordpress 2.8.4 latest version, so plugins work for this version. If you’re running an earlier version of wp, then these might or might not work. Good luck.

2) I’m assuming you know how to install your own wordpress plugins. It’s quite easy if you are already pretty at home with uploading files on ftp clients etc.

3) Again, your server needs to be on php5, or face the wrath of internet brain farts. ***

So soldiering on, I tried a few. So far, my favourite plugin that doesn’t break everything is Shorten2ping.

Shorten2ping gives you the option of sending updates of “New blog post+link+title” to twitter or direct to ping.

In my case, I’ve set it to update my twitter account with “New blog post {link} {title of blog post}” . Twitter then sends that update to all my other networks. (using Notify.me ) Of course, there’s an option there to let u beam directly to ping.fm as well. However you want to set it up.

*** Note; if you are beaming information from Twitter using notify.me, it’s best to NOT include Twitter (which will be your source) in your ping.fm broadcast list (destination)….

or there will be eternal feedback loops where twitter updates ping.fm which then updates twitter which then updates ping.fm which then updates twitter which then updates ping.fm which then updates twitter which then updates ping.fm which then updates twitter which then updates ping.fm which then updates twitter which then updates ping.fm which then updates twitter which then updates ping.fm which then updates twitter

You get the point. Obviously, your royal madness has done something just like this before with loudtwitter and it’s the best way to generate ALOT of content and piss off everyone real quick. So there, feed your feeds carefully…they loop.

3) sync blog posts to livejournal – because a bout of you are still there and I rather you didn’t have to click around too much

I have to thank hacked2death sharing this. Tried a few plugins which promised the world, journalpress works as advertised for me.

Install as per plugin instructions, backup backup backup, then, add livejournal as a mirror. Test posts worked fairly well as those on livejournal can see. Sometimes there are brain farts, but I think they largely work.

Note: I tried mirroring this to myspace blog, no luck. So for those who have figured out how to beam blogs to myspace, lemme know, I’ll place it here for everyone. Have tried some other cross-posting plugins that work for awhile then myspace blog breaks it again.

    Conclusions about myspace:
    1) Multi-arsed Babboon-like codemonkeys live in myspace and break things.
    2) Myspace is a psycho web nun that wants to shut everyone out on the interweb.
    3) You should probably try to get out while you can.

4) Allow people to post comments using their social networks sign in.

I figured that the last thing we need is one more username and password when reading/ commenting on my blog, so now you can add comments on the site using one of your many social networking accounts. This way I think we’re all happy.

Intense Debate is a handy dandy plugin in that regard. I’ve seen how well it works on other sites, I guess in the weeks that come, we’ll know how good this actually is. At the moment I like that it lets you sign in with your twitter/facebook/ open ID. Guess the jury is still out on how good this actually is, but I guess time will tell and I’ll keep coming back to update this post and maybe put it on the sidebar so we can all refer to it.

So yeah, if there are better ways around it lemme know. The idea is to make comment posts as easy as possible.

Wish list – this is for you developers, or people who have found the dream plugins I can’t find.

There are a few more items that remain on the wish list. So if you’ve found anything that works add to the comments and I’ll add this to the list.

1) A place to collect all the comments back onto the blog, be they posted on livejournal or facebook etc, they get collected and placed back onto the main blog. I heard backtype is good for it. Have installed it, but it doesn’t look like it does anything. This is important because the minion hive mind need to unite if we are to plan zombie takeovers.

2) A way to reply to comments left from all over the web without signing into the site itself. Meaning I can reply either via my email client or some desktop application. aka I don’t have to log into myspace to reply to myspace comments, then log into facebook because I see comments coming in from facebook just to reply.

This has been a public service post by Your Royal Madness, who does not promise a total fix but hopes she saved you weeks of research and hair pulling and being a test monkey for plugins. Happy social network slaying!!

The dusty altar of spiders

7 October 2009 Tags: , , Yunyu

Ahem * steps gingerly onto the dust invaded altar of spiders* . I’m back again.., after the distractions and the nest move amidst all the mayhem that is life.

Hope you are all well, dear minions. Much has happened on my end, as per the last post. After failing in an epic battle of sonics with the Von Trapp family that used to share spidey’s balcony, the spiders have promptly uprooted her 2 by 3 metre tardis of a studio and left her matchbox apartment to seek quieter ground. Oh I also forget to mention that the final clincher was when the landlord wanted to remove spidey’s alien repelling aluminium foil on her studio windows. This let too much sunlight in and rendered all of spidey’s muses unconscious or foaming at the mouth. (Either which was a huge mess to clean up after).

{Ok…in short my studio window faces a very sunny zinc roof and I have no blinds, so unless suntanning eyeballs and getting cataracts was the latest fashion trend…}

Fast forward into 2 months later…

Finally settled into what was a very chaotic move where there was NO INTERNET but now I’m all happy settled and thought my minions should know. 🙂 (pretty pics in a bit!) All this and I had a writing deadline for another music project that I can yet mention. ( No it’s not my album…)

so some miscellaneous updates at which I shall be as brief as possible:

Album:

Getting there. Still a secret. Don’t curse at spidey. She’s done with her writing….it’s the other non writey album bits that take time…
Same goes for gigs as well, no shows until the new tunes wail their way into existence.

Non Album updates.

– some projects of interestingness in the world of Sci-fi/ Fantasy which can hopefully be announced maybe…I’m still keeping fingers crossed for this one.

– sketching idea bits for a 3rd album – because this is what you do when you’ve done your writey bits for the second album and you are basically waiting for everything else to catch up.

– Back to regular blogging. Aiming for (in the midst of still recording and video clip logistics) one blog post a week. Yes, your royal madness will be disciplined and write on her alter once a week from here on end. To show that I mean it, I’ll be telling u about my next post everytime I post one :). There. Let’s see how long we can keep this up this time …

Coming up –

– Before the return to blogging I decided that the first order of business was to clean out how my wordpress was broadcasting (ie crossposting) entries to the ever growing number of social networking sites that is growing way way faster than mutant hydras of mayhem. — The fact that I am also on, possibly, a dozen other networks other than myspace and facebook is making things generally unfunny now.

So for the benefit of those who face this problem, or similar, consider the next post a is public service one – albeit wordpress centric – because wordpress has all my base. I spent a precious week researching plugins and testing what works and then another week getting it all running, I decided that noone else should have to go through this again.

Internet time is fun time, not painful test monkey time.

Coming shortly… Everyone is everywhere – How to shave time off crossposting blogs and status on the internets…because this is becoming a more urgent issue than shaving personal ape hair.

All along the watchtower

20 March 2009 Tags: Yunyu

I has new neighbours. Most times it’s fun to have new neighbours, my last neighbours were naked…alot. These ones are noisy..alot.

I think they are a musicky bunch. 3 Kids. I think. One plays the piano, one the violin and the other owns a drum set.

So far, the one with the piano has been playing inspector gadget for a month and still not getting it past 1st verse.

Violin person is trying to play the Simpson’s opening theme song and hasn’t gone past the 4th note, for a month.

The Drummer, drums at 7.30pm when I’m fresh out of the studio, and need to be music free for awhile….and…well he’s learning…but the drumming’s very bad and I’m too polite to tell him to stop. Except he does stop, intermittently, and picks up a completely different rhythm before he masters the last. I want to twat him on the head to tell him to practice properly.

Then I hear the tunes of inspector gadget again with the same wrong notes since last month and I want to fire missiles from the strings of my all powerful zither.

zither

This entry is brought to you by your royal cranky, who should really be kinder to budding musicians.

For those whose muses need the naughty chair..

3 March 2009 Yunyu

Before there was order. Then the muses said “Let there be NOISE”
order

And the above where I spent the initial weeks/ months (post Spiked Soul) going into a very bad sort of a bitey, rabidey human bean. All this for trying to write new material.

riots

There’s something very difficult about being creative all of a sudden. So if there was some sort of metaphysical hospital for suddenly non functioning creators, my patient file would probably look like this.

Patient Name: Yunyu
Symptoms: Patient exhibits bouts of rage, complains of sudden inability to write, bouts of random nausea, talking to self, telling thin air to shut up, short spurts of head banging on the nearest hard object, repeat random violence sequence, has zombie delusions, was caught trying to chew through the scalp of a fellow artist
Diagnosis: Muse Riot-itis

My first album was mostly written in Perth, which for some reason always makes the muses happy. For the most part, I think it is well and truly because my muses are secretly beach bums that were too lazy to even join the reincarnation queue (which is why they don’t have a body and feed off me instead.) …if you believe in that sort of thing. Then said, Perth IS a beautiful place and if ever there was a portal for the birth of good music, Perth definitely had one.

I’m not sure if it’s the epileptic seizure inducing city lights, or the fact that there’s simply too much entertainment (whether u want to or not) in the city, or the fact that I am just a cranky cranky crankpot writer with a helluva writer’s block. Somehow along the way, focused writing became some kind of a colossal challenge.

Spiked Soul was an album that came relatively easy. I was bored in Perth, I heard voices, I wrote what the voices said/sung. The whole process was very much like minute taking in some sort of a madhatter’s tea party kind of way. Too easy really.

Writer’s block or writer’s flood?

Post Spiked Soul, early attempts to write the second album resulted in a choir of muse produced verbal vomit, which certainly wasn’t too pretty.

Maybe I had unlocked some sort of a vein, this writing thing, I suddenly had no control over it. I was hemorrhaging muse spew and there was no end in sight. If I had to blame one more thing it was the huge amounts of graphic novels I had consumed a little after Spiked Soul. Suddenly it was too many ideas, too little tunes.

This meant that it was hopelessly difficult to finish a song without going crazy and trying to change the lyrics/ story in the tune every 30 seconds. The end result was me lying helplessly in a heap of scrap papers with no known musical tune in sight. My overzealous muses had mauled every single visiting tune to bits.

My vicious vicious monkey hyena in-bred muses.

While most of my fellow writers’ vocationally suffer from what is known as a writer’s block, I believe I was battling some tsunami version of a writer’s flood, and , frankly, not handling it well at all.

The result is inherently the same. You end up not completing anything worthy of mention. You also want to eat all other songwriters/ creative people for dinner, very literally. Somehow, in your deepest delusions you hope that by doing so you could maybe absorb some of their inspiration and cleverness back into your system. Then you have to deal with the paranoia… OMG I’ll NEVER WRITE AGAAAAAINNNNN!!!!

For awhile I tried everything, I did the whole artist way thing. I wrote pages (for those not in the know, pages are a form of writing exercise u do, involves a blank page, a pen and just writing anything you want till you fill up 2 pages..worth a try).

I did a hippie dance, I went to see beautiful sunsets and fantasized about beautiful beach people becoming whales and mud wrestling each other and winning sea slugs… I picked up hobbies, attempted knitting….(nuff said). The result of all this positive attempts resulted increasingly eye-watering levels of panic with no cure in sight.

This was until I was kindly reminded of the concept of the concept album.Of course, this is right round the point where I disappear from the internetty in a long spur of a non-naked EUREKA! moment.

Turns out that the cure for Muse-Vomit-itis is all too simple. All I have to do is to write according to a self made up rule, no exceptions, no excuses. That unless a story or an idea worked under the new rules of the newly created universe, muses had to shut up and come back when they had something valid. The new rules for play seemed to work better than the best of super nannies for the rogue muses.

Dedicated to writers/ songwriters/ creatives who suffer from some version of a muse riot/ strike. Hope you find your muse nanny soon. Keep writing. (even if your writing looks like mine…which is like rancid cat pee)

riot2

The art of skirting around an issue (aka. album)

21 February 2009 Yunyu

Dear minions,

How’s all? Thanks for the warm twitter welcome. I hope everyone’s well in these crazy times and keeping ok. I have missed you, dear minions. Spidey is needing internetty minion chatter to continue maintaining some facade of sanity. At least to her outside world.

I’m alright. Still working on the album, which is proving to be bigger job than all my multiple personalities combined. It’s going slowly but not badly. Thanks to my long suffering manager, the second album has become one with many crazy good people working on it, so if it calls for me to take a little more time with it, so I shall, and I hope my minions understand my need to take time with this. I just want this album to be bloody bloody good.

We’ve decided to hold back on the singles releases until the rest of the tracks are more or less completed. So, at this point I want to take the time to thank the minions who have been checking on me with pulse checking machines. Sorry for the internetty silence, but there was some intensive songwriting to be done the last couple of months and your royal madness actually managed to get pretty focused about all of it.

So for now, I can tell you that almost all the material for the album has been written , and is sitting in the later stages of production, mix master etc There might be one or 2 more tunes/tales I might like to write but they are a bonus tunes at this stage.

New album is concept album

You are going to find that I haven’t mentioned anything about anything I’ve worked on at all. The reason is simply because the new album is a concept album, so any smidgen of research/ lyric bits I reveal is probably going to give it all away and spoil the surprise for everyone. For those who might have looked hard enough at previous photos I have posted on the blog, I might have given the game away already. Those who think they have worked it out or are in the know, keep it to yourself.

Much much more importantly…knowing me and my arse luck, telling you about the contents of the album is going to jinx it all somehow.

So I’ll update u as much as I can, in the entries soon to follow… while I carefully navigate/ distract u pass the research papers/lyrics/mess that might give the game away.

So with this…just 2 teeny tiny rules of engagement.

1) please please, don’t ask me what the album is about or ask me for hints ( things will be revealed in their own time) and;
2) don’t ask me when the album is going to be done. It’s done when it’s done and you will hear about it..promise. (because, believe me that’s all I’m obsessing over at the moment).

Back shortly, wednesday to be precise. I should be back in broadband civilization by then.

Love
your royal madness.

Yes Alice, walk pass the teeth of Luna…

15 April 2008 Yunyu

Dear minions,
Gig this Friday at Sonar (Luna Park, Milsons point, Australia) with Aleeoop, videoKidz and your royal madness. If you haven’t booked yourself a ride into the mad teeth of the Luna Park. Do so now. I promise to make your childhood delusions come true. Well, most of them anyways.

www.moshtix.com.au to pre-book.

ok

Magic Pens

10 April 2008 Yunyu

I made maggots last night. That’s all I did. Honest. Swear. Maybe.

See there’s this pen you can buy from the main chain stores…toy section… The real ‘real’ magic pen they call it. All you need to do is to use the pen to get a sample of the lifeform, draw, put it in the sun and voila, you have lifeforms of your choosing in any shape you desire.

I remember watching an estranged maggot crawl by on a lazy summer day. I reach with my pen and penetrate the writhing white lifeform….slowly. First it curls around the nib in a lover’s embrace and still I push. It curls some more. I am aware of the deathly silence that surrounds this moment and then CRACK. I have broken the white squirmer and all is still as my vampiric pen refills it’s juices. Strange sucking sounds, my pen suckles it seems, and the maggot disappears.

Then there I was doodling, for no reason at all, a nest of maggots. And as the sunlight hit, they squirmed across the page as they made their transition from 2D to 3D. One maggot had become many. I watch the strange dance of white maggoty joy and then “Slam”. I was bored and I didn’t want the worms on my bed. Pity about the notebook though, it’s probably ruined or very squishy. It’s a nice day anyways so I figured I’d head out.

I step out into streets into a world I don’t recognise. My neighbour is killing her husband and tells me she going to draw a better one. Says she likes him younger and with more hair. When she’s done he’ll do her. It’s all very scientific. Meanwhile, She’s happily stabbing him in the eye with a pair of gardening shears. Tells me that this is all rather therapeutic. 40 years of marriage, this has by far been the most satisfying moment. I wonder when she’s going to get to the drawing part.

There is a long line forming where my best friend lives. She’s an artist so she draws pretty people, and today, she’s asked to be a mass murderer. She’s as efficient as ever was though. She’s got assistants who look like real life manga beauties and they are taking numbers. In the waiting room she’s got dead bodies strewn all over the clinic with the magic pens sticking out of their jagular. A roomful of suckling sounds.

Almost like a nursery.

One by one the pens bubbling with warped DNA bits are delivered to her studio/clinic, where, in a few minutes, the assistants carry her lifelike artwork out of her studio to the sun to dry.

One by one, youthful sailormoon like figures crawl out of the paper. A few hello kitties come out of the room with shy hellos too. This was way way weirder than cosplay. A couple of Angelina Jolie look-alikes stroll by too.

“Are their souls intact or have they been redrawn as well, they still the same person after this?” I ask

“Perhaps, maybe, whatever, think it works like plastic surgery probably, can you hand me that spray paint?” my friend was evidently an artist busy at work.

I spy a couple of cops at the clinic and they have signed on to be drawn as teenagers. Something about going back to school and making sure they never end up in law enforcement again.

Meanwhile in the parks, trees have taken on phallic shapes as young vandals inject their magic pens into trees and re-draw tree DNA into shapes they deem funny. On the other end, bunch of greenies are busy poking/ killing each other with the pen and turning each other into trees in an attempt to decrease carbon emissions. There are a couple of young tree saplings, so I presumed they started with their children.

The tree beside me starts a song and a speech about the joys of photosynthesis, peace and the hippie movement amidst much joyful babble. He sounds like a senator I know. I had to laugh. All around me are human trees still wearing their hemp made shirts.

The trains comes and I stumble into the city where the bling bling boys are chasing girls around with new and improved appendages, some tentacle-like. Some of the girls have turned to a triple breasted look….some have gone for more that that. 2 real life Sheela-na-gigs stroll past me, closely followed by Mona Lisa herself…and my brain broke.

I scream, the dream guards pull me out, drag me through and I land cold, sweaty and in the dark, tangled in sheets.

I am Yunyu’s screaming neurosis.

of Mushrooms and tadpoles

31 March 2008 Yunyu

Last night. I dreamt of mushrooms and a vagabond. You know? The type where an old man comes up to you brown teeth and all and says “Child, do you never want to dream again? Dip your hand into this bag, and you will know peace. Or then,” he paused, taking out another bag. Pink and stained from all the memories of the world and he says “this one though, will make you dream colour, but you will also know misery. You see dreams are a curse, they make you so hungry. I’m hungry…you have cinnamon? They are nice things…Hurry hurry, pick one child, because you are running out of time.”

I had to ask then. “Are dreams bad? Can I not pick? I will dream when I feel like it thank you very much, and no I don’t like your mushrooms either ways. They look like goldfish eyes” Then the vagabond sniffles, glows and vanishes. I pull a face. He leaves both bags behind. One a dream giver, the other the dream void. I try and pick up the bags, knowing them to be powers of the world but as soon as I touch them I start to dissolve into sand that divides into rivers that flow like spores/ sand into the bags of mushrooms.

70% into the dream-giving bag. 30% the dream void. I remember noting this as I fall into sand. 2 sand rivers sorting and dividing into the bags. Funny how statistics are such vivid and round numbers in dreams. I’m down to my chest now, slowly atomising into sand. There’s a tray of cheese crackers, what looks like good cheese and some wine and I help myself. Atomising is such a slow process. I am almost bored out of my mind about my inevitability.

And I laugh. Suddenly it’s too funny when you are all half sandy and half humanoid. My laughter spills the half drunk wine spills and my sandy bits are soaked. Hmm…tadpoles, wine and sand make tadpoles. Now I am a third tadpole colony a third sand and a third human. It’s a giddy ride, when you are a million tadpoles at a time. It’s almost like having compound eyes except…maybe worse.

Now I’m puking my guts out from the disorientation. hmm…pizza from the night before. NASA should have trained me for this I remember thinking. O wait, it doesn’t make sense, I have no stomach so WTF? Where is this river of reverse gastro food source?! I wave my hands through the sea of puke, sand and tadpoles tracing the source of my digested food. Hah..rope like things, this must be my guts, so I pull…

The mushroom bags come alive like tents when I pull, like puppets. Humanoid puppets, bursting with mushrooms. It’s getting crazy, the mushroom bags from Mr Vagabond now look like frankenstein monsters gasping and the like. They are pulling back my guts too, with arms that look like tentacles and sand bags. I’m insulted and it becomes a matter of pride. So I suppose I should be fighting for my intestines so I pull, they pull, it’s all a great show of strength. All this time, I’m a million tadpoles swimming in a murky morbid sea of puke and sand. I’ve never been busier.

It’s all very distracting, by now I’ve figured that closing my eyes makes the puking go away. Which is a relief, but the mushroom monsters still have my guts.

This is a problem.

Then of course, it occurs to me that my hands are dissolving now and I’m going to be losing the tug of war so I put my intestines into my mouth. At this point I discover that my intestines taste like the best snake candy in the world, and forgetting my fight I start chewing.

I realise to my horror I can’t stop chomping through the rest of myself from the inside out. The mushroom humans realise this too and they start looking really scared and really small. I don’t stop, I can’t stop…chew chew chew this is all I know. I slurp the tadpoles and the sand and all the mushrooms and the bags and the sea of gross out. I am my mouth.

All this time my eyes are closed and I don’t want to open them anymore and I feel my eyeballs slipping out from behind my sockets as my mouth burrows into my face like a giant mutant termite and empties out my sockets and then I think I hear my skull cave in. At this point I know the universe has stopped. At this moment I’m all knowing, all hearing and I know I’m the only one left in the verse. Then I cry and retch huge pieces of flesh and I am me again.

Somewhat. For some reason I’m now wearing a McDonald’s uniform behind a sign that says tadpoles for sale. $4.99 ask for the special upgrade. A girl comes up to the counter and asks for a tadpole special, someone unrolls my sticky frog tongue and gives it a good wipe on the food tray, from my drying spit is a sea of tadpoles with the face of the vagabond….

Freudians can shut up now.

Naked bodies and head transplants go on a ferry ridee.

28 March 2008 Yunyu

I woke today to my neighbours chasing each other around their house naked, it took me a good 10 minutes to make my coffee, return to the ongoing scene, spill caffeine on myself to realise, hey I’m not bloody dreaming… So now that I’ve finished acid washing my eyes, I can now proceed to, for no reason at all read up about head transplants.

Maybe it’s the moon but I’m itching to swap some heads today….starting with the naked neighbours. Pity about the spinal cord not being able to reconnect thing…or the possibilities could have been endless. Aside from the medical implications of things, I imagine reading adverts from enterprising fitness freaks might put up…”Give us your bodies and we’ll train it for you!…Taking personal training to a whole new level.” Or in some cases, the disciplining parent, “You two better get along or you will wake up sharing a body.”

Of course youtube never fails us with the visual material. Here’s one of a monkey’s head transplant.

On another tangent. Gig coming up April 18th.

Those in Sydney you are coming yeah? I need some human heads

Sleepwriting moth.

14 March 2008 Yunyu

Given the popular orient belief that moths are embodiments of the newly deceased. I catch myself getting absurdly happy when I see one perched in a ceiling corner or on my kitchen table. Maybe I really want a visit from a soul I love but my mind knows it needs to move on, and snap the fuck out of it. Pronto.

In the realms of dreaming and needing to finish the last of the demos for the album, I awake to find this poem on my laptop with not recollection of having written it at all. So unless there’s a ninja poet living in my quarters that I don’t know about I’m guessing I’m sleep writing again. Something I’ve not done in awhile. Not sure the poem is yet but it’s reminding me of some mutant moth made of haiku. I’m thinking I’ll file it here for future reference. It’s not quite curling into a song at the moment.

Hiss
I am crackling mist

Shapes
I inspire

kiss
At the nape
of rusty necks

then
I flake.

Burn
I see love in the light
of dancing shapes

Fire
the smell of my wings sing
and singe

Sting
I am scorpion
born without the kill

7 years
times up
skin itches

soul
in transit

grab
I am moth

fly

Social Media

Stay up-to-date with my latest news and blog entries via your favourite social network services.