Baketball this afternoon. We lost two games and I was dirt tired but somehow I scored the winning shot off a rebound in the third... AWESOME. Then I came back in the office and got PAID. How cool is that? So i went to your room, and read your diareeeeee. My first NovaLogic paycheck. Still, I need some actual solid work to do. I feel wierd getting paid when I'm working so little. I want to work hard for NL! Yes I'm a company man. Piss off.

more love from the coalition of the not crazy "I was no Clinton fan, but give me his iffy morals any day over Bush's Mussolini-like strutting."

arnold for president

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall. If your interested in the White House leak of the CIA operative's name, this blog has some solid and up to the minute info. This could get interesting... No matter how many BJs BC got, this never happened in his white house. Ethics, schmethics-- GW and co. are jerking us all off.

The Top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2002-2003

What a beautiful lucky life I suddenly have, I thought to myself as I turned off PCH and onto Malibu Canyon for the 16th time in three weeks. I'm thrilled because today, today today, today I saw a dolphin on the way to work. I wasn't looking for it but there she was. I've always, ever since I was a small child, loved dolphins. When other kids wanted to be vets and firepeople, I wanted to be a marine biologist. I remember doing reports on dolphins for class. I had one of those whiteboards that was pre-folded into three sections so it would stand on its own. I always had real nice boards for presentations because my parents owned an art gallery and frame shop so I had access to every marker, and colored paper,and cloth, and glue I could want. I also had the help of my mom who is talented with such things. A dream of mine for forever has been to do the swim with the dolphins thing... Plus I like the Miami Dolphins too. I know that the dolphin is a cheesy animal to like, 'cus it makes you think of chintzy glass dream-catchers and astology and other lame shit but whatever I'm a dolphin fan damn it and I saw one today and I'll probably see them pretty often at my new place. Oh, I'm giving away too much about my new pad. I move in Sunday.

War is peace and all that jazz

You will feel sexy and powerful and desirable if you click here. This is the kind of interview that I read Salon for. [snip] "Just as there is the "Fox effect" in the Western world, there's an opposite sort of thing going on in Arab and Muslim countries. The way they compete for market share is by getting to see who can present the most outrage and direct that outrage toward the United States. The ironic thing is that if you watch Arab television, and you can actually get some of it on the Web now, it looks a lot like Fox news!" [snip] Rampton restates a comment made by Brian Eno that the media doesn't tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about. Like with the governor recall, if the media takes Arnie seriously, then everyone will at least consider him. Meanwhile the green party candidate is a joke, so nobody will even consider him. Sure, some of this has to do with party politics, but Arnie is a joke even if he wins. Anybody who thinks otherwise is, in my opinion, hypnotized on that particular issue by some ideology or media outlet or guru. Anyway, it's a nice interview and I highly encourage you to read it.

pongtrix

This is some of the coolest shit I've ever seen. You don't need to install the language shit so when it asks, you can click cancel. The video will still work.

CBS News | Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11 Here is an excerpt: "CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks." This story is dated september 4. Where is the rest of the media on this? Meanwhile Al Gore's beard is still an issue. Pathetic.

... and the pain rushes in

Wouldn't want all ya'll monday morning folks to check the site and not have an update. Here 'tis: The allergies come with the ominousness of a hurricane, and later with the force of one. What a fucking Sunday. Well I'm moving to a new place on the 5th, Sunday. I'll put up pics when I move in. It is a terribly unique spot and I don't want to give away the details yet. For now I'll just let y'all know that it's closer to work. Currently listening to: Let it Bleed Current Mood: sneeze-tastic I'm totally happy about going to work tomorrow. Isn't that ideal? Right now I'm dead broke though because I haven't gotten paid yet for my PA work. I gotta go calling and asking about it. I'm still unable to update the website through my design software, so for the site is run all by blogger. I may have to start coding the shit myself. Ugh. More to come later on Monday.

On lunch I played basketball with dudes from work. It was really fun but boy am I a sloth... Well, that'll change. Afterwards I hung out with my grandma and parents then came home and took an ill-timed nap that has led to me being very awake right now... Camping is off for the weekend I guess but Karaoke is on for sunday. I may have found a new place to live... If it comes through it will be SICK but I won't give specifics yet...

... and in the darkness blog them

I ripped my headline this morning right from the blogger page. Yeah, whatever. So I'm having difficulties connecting my web software to the FTP server, so for now I'm just making the blog the home page of jordanblackman.com. Do you like this format better? Was everything else fluff? I could put links to the other pages on the sidebar here... What do y'all think? This is YOUR jordanblackman.com. The Sundowners site is down. They are changing there name to The Sockets so they will probably have that up soon. Meanwhile if you live in NY and you haven't seen them, you really owe it to yourself to check out Miller, The Sundowners, and the percusion major. After all, you worked all week and they will rock you out and help you get that whiskey down. Ask anybody. I recently remembered an amazing fact about Cohen. The first time he got drunk, he was underage and sans ID-- obviously. But, he bought the beer himself. We were in Miami and we figured he looked the oldest so we went to the notorious gas station where my buddy knew an attendent who "never checked." We sent in Cohen and he came back with a huge smile and two twelve packs of Ice House bottles. What a wonderful time that was. To you, Cohen!

N-life

I leave the apartment around 8:15 am and come back around 7:30, so my free time is suddenly something I need to meter out very carefully. I want to feel like I'm still growing outside of work, not just watching tivo and drinking. That is why I'm not gonna buy a tivo. I think I'll take some courses at SMC just for the hell of it next semester. French probably. I'm also interested to get back into recording music. I've been writing again. I'm running into the same problems though. I come up with a couple bits and lyrics that I like, maybe a verse and a chorus or a chorus and a bridge, but then I can't seem to finish. I'm not happy with the parts I try to write to finish the song. I think it is a problem of not playing enough, not playing enough of other people's songs. So I'm playing again. I play with Chris's band about 1x/week and I've been playing after work until Samurai Jack comes on. I watched Zoolander again and loved it. It's so funny when his friends go get orange mocha frappacchinos then die! I caught a little Howard Stern this morning, his wildly sonorous voice was fuzzing in and out while I winded through Malibu Canyon. He was playing clips from last night's debate, which I didn't get to see since I was at work. Howard seemed awfully biased toward Arnold, which suprised me. But then I learned he had Arnold on his show. Stern makes his listeners, and himself I imagine, believe he is just totally real and straight when he talks, but his shit is just a show too, and he has to jerk certain people off to get by just like every other douche on the radio. Which is fine, but since he has mixed up so his person and his persona, he is probably kinda miserable. Or not. All yall should AIM me, my id is BOKONONJOE. I have it on most of the time I'm at work. If you want to use another service I can work on that, let me know.

@work

The good news is I really, really like my job. Nearly everything I have gotten to work on has been both interesting and instructional for me. I get to do some really creative things even if nobody is really paying attenion yet-- which is fine because I don't really know what I'm doing yet. I've written up design docs, met with audio, pulled logs from servers, brainstormed mission ideas, done market research, and tested out the game. It has all been fun stuff to do. The other people generally pay me little mind. The producer tells me I have to earn some cred to get respect, which is fine, I'm willing to do that. Otherwise we are a pretty cool bunch here. I will be staying late most of the time, which is ok. Gotta get that cred. So I'm looking for a new place to live that will be closer to work. It basically takes me an hour in the morning and 35 minutes in the evening to commute. I'd like to have that time at home or doing something, and I'll save on gas. Plus I can afford to spend a little more money on rent now, right? I really want a pad in Topanga, but it will probably be too expensive. If you can help, let me know. The bad news is since I like my job and all, I'm stressing a bit. You see, I don't yet have much actual work. I'm not sure how assertive I should be seeking it out, or if I'm best off just chilling for a while. I would feel more comfortable with more work to do, but the producer tells me it will come, so I am trying to just chill out.

Don't pray, write your congressperson

"To put it bluntly," former Nixon White House counsel John Dean wrote on the legal Web site FindLaw on June 6, "if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be 'a high crime' under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony 'to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.'." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons." – George Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in a speech in Cincinnati. "We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established." – President Bush, Feb. 8, 2003, in a national radio address. "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." – Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council. "We know where [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat." – Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements to the press. "We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." – Vice President Cheney on March 16, 2003 on "Meet the Press." “We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas." - State of the Union Address – 1/28/2003 "Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaida." - State of the Union Address – 1/28/2003 "We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in." - Bush Press Conference 7/14/2003 (yes he really said this)

President Bush is not a wartime president

I'm so sick of the TV calling him one. What a load of crap. We all know the war on terror is a misnomer, just like the war on drugs. The Dao De Ching says if you give evil nothing to oppose, it will disappear on its own. The more powerful an entity is, the more it needs humility. But these days (and always?) it is the power hungry who have the power, and by calling this a war the executive branch makes yet another gross power grab. I'm afraid that if we continue to call for a war, we may get it. Yay Karl!

How interesting will my blog be now that I'm a working man? After all, I go into the office each day and sit or stand or walk or eat in one of the above positions for 9-10 hours, and I sleep 7 hours, so where will I find interesting shit to blog about? Not to say work isn't interesting, it is. It's only gonna get more interesting as the weeks go by and the milestones to release loom larger and shit gets intense. Working late starts this week, and it's gonna just get more intense. Fine, but a lot of the interesting stuff will not be at my discretion to blog about. After all, I'm in an office and respect people's privacy and I signed an NDA re the game itself. Well, hopefully I'll make it spine tinglingly exciting somehow. The picture on the home page is from our new title, pretty sweet huh? That's in game. Notice the badass foliage you can see through the pretty and reflective water. I took my resume off the main page because it is kinda useless right now. So what should I put in the upper right corner? Please email me your ideas.

Don't know what to do or say when you walk my way. Not a problem on the phone. It's when I see you.

So for some reason my recent updates have been lost by blogger. That's what I get for using free software. Just goes to show how important it is to pay for quality software. I should know, I'm a producer at a computer game company. Yes that's right folks! The job I mentioned before came through. I now work at NovaLogic! My title is associate producer and my salary is just a few notches above "pittance," but I'm happy as a lark. I've worked there for one week thus far. It has been awesome. I need more work but it seems likely to come. I work under a cool guy named Joel who knows a lot of shit and seems very down to share the knowledge. My job responsibilities include managing the game's script, mastering the game discs, and getting dinner when the artists, programmers, and other developers stay late to crank out a badass game. Our current title is called Joint Ops and, although I can't disclose much, I will tell you it is really fun. We've been playing multiplayer at work on the latest builds and it is a blast. So I think I fixed the web site. Expect regular updates once again. Yay! Happy birthday Claudia & Jason! Amy moved to San Diego and I saw her last night. We all went to a gay bar. I was wearing a shirt that said "dork" on it and this dude puts his pointer finger into my chest and says "You are not!" It was hilarious. It was one of those full moon nights where things seemed crazy and you could feel that the night was heading into highly liquored territory. Well, I left before the shit really went down because I needed to take it easy, and Rage in West Hollywood isn't my scene. Anyway it was great to hang with her. Sara Cohen was in town for the Emmy's She leads this glamorous diamond purveyor public relations lifestyle. She was staying at the four seasons and taking stretch limos around the city. Pretty cool. Chris and Anda and Sara and I hung out at the four seasons. They had live music and awesome bottled beers and 50 year olds with more moneyed panache than I ever imagined possible. I wrote a song today and also played with Chris's band. So expect more soon. Thanks for keeping the faith through the downtime and keep on shuckin'!

"The world is like a ride at an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly colored and it's very loud. And it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to wonder, "Is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and they say, "Hey, don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because it's just a ride." And we... kill those people. "Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because... it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money, a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, into a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defense each year and instead spend it feeding, clothing, and educating the poor of the world which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we can explore space, together, both in and outer, in peace, forever." -- Bill Hicks

concerning human understanding

I realize I haven't updated in over a week. My computer had to have some work done on it. I took the whole thing out of its case and into a new one. I also formated the main drive. This means I had to reinstall everything so I've been significatly slowed in my quest for blogage. But fear not, I shall proceed and continue in this magnificent march toward certain doom known as life, and I plan to document every precious moment right here-- psyche. Well anyway I'll tell yall what I've been up to and throw up some new links and pics later on today, Wednesday, 2 years after 9/11.

reality v

It's 7:30, in an hour or so a van will arrive at my door. I will step into the driver's seat and burn on down that line to idunno somewhere near the Salton Sea. In the back 5 seats I'll have a full load of camerapersons, directors, producers, PAs and perhaps some actors. Sounds kinda sexy doesn't it? I'd rather stay home and chew gum. But in three days thereabouts of work I'll make rent so I gotta go don't I? All I want now is some time to work on some personal projects. Make a short video piece or work on some songs. Hell, if I get to do my laundry I'll feel creative. I'll just have to think of my next voice mail message while I'm driving tonight. Meanwhile I re-rendered the home movie I made out of Claudia's trip clips into windows media streaming format and put it up in the downloads sections. You can also see it just by clicking here. Don't forget to make it nice and big. Claudia actually has the only final copy but this is close. She doesn't like to watch it because it makes her cry. The beginning is the worst part and the end is the best so if you decide to watch it stay strong . I've been real allergic these days but I'm getting on. I learned that air coming out of the tear ducts is not completely abnormal; some magician even did some magic trick using that ability. It's nice to be talented. the shoot ends Saturday and I'm hoping to spend a couple days in San Diego and then grab a ride with somebody back to LA. If you wanna be that ride please call me. If you wanna hang out in SD also call me. Last night I watched Requiem For a Dream with my new apartment-mate, Anda (who is very cool). The movie fucked with me pretty good. I have a hard time with movies where it's a downward spiral and you know it from the beginning. Hell, I had a hard time watching Election. Is being alone really such a bad thing? I also watched my first Goddard film (Breathless) and Princess Mononoke. Also I am experimenting with online poker.