Damn! I wish that this coronavirus pandemic were just an elaborate prank. That would have been awesome. Self-isolation hasn’t changed my life one iota. It does mean that some friends are now unemployed, bored, with nothing to do. So, they want to collaborate with me, again, playing rock and noise. At least that motivates me to get more stuff done. So, I’m actually a little happier with that aspect of this. The empty streets and parking lots are a bit of apocalyptic fantasy fulfillment for me, too, without the zombies or vampires.
I am spending some time taking stock of the progress in my various projects. It helps me to re-evaluate and refine my workflow, from time to time. The changing landscape caused by COVID-19 is a pretty good reason to plan out a new approach to everything, right now. Many venues, comic book shops, book stores, art galleries, etc. are not going to make it through the effects of this pandemic. The economy, and everything it touches, are going to be drastically transformed. The old models of doing everyday activities, of making and performing our art, are not going back to business-as-usual. The next couple of months are going to be VERY interesting.
People are stuck at home, with nothing to do. So, I hope to produce more completed work to post online. That is where the audience is going to be, for awhile. Maybe when this plague blows over we will be out playing house parties or something, until regular venues can make a comeback.
Anyway, I will share some music from my collection with you. This is Local H and Britney Spears, each doing Toxic. I have been in a Britney Spears mood lately. Dunno why.
Planet 9 Film Fest 2019 @ Ant Hall in Hamtramck, Michigan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m late again. What else is new? It has been a LONG time since my last original post. I will summarize a bit.
Planet 9 Film Fest went well in October. Got to meet up with friends I haven’t seen in awhile. Saw some creative movies and great bands again.
Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve all went well. Mostly, it was dinner with family at my grandmother’s house.
Unfortunately, there was a death in my family, my great aunt. Shortly afterward, a friend of twenty years also died. I’m getting older. Everybody is dying.
There have been very few mechanical problems with my car during the past year, thank god. I’ve managed to stay on top of things like that. Thankfully, I don’t have to commute every day to a shitty job I hate, anymore, with little time or energy left to work on music & art. So, it turned out, disability was a blessing in disguise.
For me, creativity is how I keep my sanity. It is more of a compulsion than a hobby. Gotta get the demons out of my head, somehow. Trouble is, it is easier to get started than to finish anything. Distractions and mental instability are frequent problems. Then, I get upset at myself for not meeting my own self-imposed expectations and deadlines. I have to figure out how I can get out of my own way. Occasionally, I’ll try different things I’ve discovered that seem to work, temporarily, until I backslide again. This usually happens when I forget my meds and don’t get enough sleep. Then, I struggle to get back on track with everything again. It is very hard to focus when this happens. Maybe there isn’t a permanent fix to this.
I’ve had many projects partially completed for a long time now. Most of the work is already done. But, to get things finished I have had to learn (the hard way) to slow down and just do one thing at a time, instead of piling on everything at once. I’m terrible at multi-tasking.
One positive thing to come from all these delays is that I have gone back to some things I’ve done and made improvements. So, Theee Urban Spacecat #3 looks a lot better than it did before. There still isn’t enough completed music to go with it, though. Same goes for issues #4, 5, 6, and 7.
With the next cassette-zine issue being recorded, I am working on more material that I can perform live by myself. I would like to prepare my car to travel a lot in the next couple of months, play some local shows, and eventually go on a mini-tour to New York and back. I HATE booking venues, though. It is not something that I look forward to. Bottom line, I want to insure that everything goes smoothly and I, at least, don’t lose any money or kill my car in the process. If it is just me and one other person coming along, that should keep the overhead low.
I have been making some neato t-shirts & stuff. So, that has been a nice creative outlet, for me. If it can also generate a little revenue that would be pretty awesome. I had hoped that YouTube could be a viable source of income. But, all the policy and algorithm changes they’ve made makes that feel very unlikely. The FTC COPPAcolypse is approaching, too. So, many content creators may be forced out. Who knows? I’m watching to see how this fiasco plays out.
I’m just gonna keep doing what I do, in my little corner. I’ll put some of it out there somehow, eventually.
YouTube finally have announced that they’re changing their terms and conditions on December 10, 2019. They will begin deleting accounts for extremely vague reasons of “profitability”, including all accounts connected to Google and YouTube. It is unclear what they even mean by the term profitability. The way it is written it could mean anything. If we don’t make enough of a profit for them? If we’re too small? If our videos take up too much memory space on their servers? WTF?
YouTube got hit with a huge fine a couple of months ago by the FTC for violating COPPA. They were told to get their house in order. So, they have also implemented changes for the new COPPA law, requiring you to mark whether your videos are made for kids. If they are made for kids and if you don’t label your videos accordingly, you could be fined to the value of $42,530 PER VIDEO. YouTube’s algorithm and AI software is changing AGAIN. The site will identify whatever THEY deem is for kids, regardless. So, you may not have it accurately labelled to their liking even if you try.
YouTube has ALWAYS fucked with content creators, from day one. Every once in a while they’d get a bug up their ass about one thing or another and start purging videos and closing channels. I have been harassed by lawyers and had several YouTube accounts deleted before. It is a pain in the ass starting over again and again. I resigned myself, long ago, to the fact that they were never going to allow me to build up my channel into anything profitable. Very few YouTubers are able to turn making videos into their day job. But, that was always the way YouTube ran their business. So, we just dealt with all the bullshit as best as we could. Now, the government is involved. They could fine us thousands of dollars. It is an automated system that decides against you, not a person. So, you’ll eventually have to take each case to court for appeal. FUCK THAT!
By next year, we will see what kind of fiasco this is going to become. I’m pretty sure that a LOT of people are going to have their lives ruined during this mess. The FTC have said that YouTube is their main target, “like fish in a barrel”…and WE ARE THE FISH. I’m pretty sick of this shit. I’ve set almost everything I have on there to private. I’m backing up all of my videos onto Dailymotion, for now. When the smoke clears I will see if I want to post anything on YouTube again. I dunno.
live music by DEATH CAT Dear Darkness Awards! :Midnight Nosferatu (classic silent film with live score by An Angel Submerged & Jessi McAnelly) Judges 10:45 New Year’s Kiss The Conformity Pimp Slap Telepathic Telephones (feature) Higher Space Halitosis Judges 9:00pm Questions for a Dinosaur Lake Michigan Monster (feature) Professor Mexico Moose Monster (silent film with live score by Aleph Om ) Amsteroid(feature) Judges 6:40 Stare Way to Heaven The Nervous Breakdown Hotdog Food of the Gods Fresh Green Gamer’s Wife Judges 6:10pm Whacked (feature) cache cache Crazy Judges 4:40 Fucked Up Point Blank Drawn Together:Comics, Diversity & Stereotypes(feature) The French Chef with Julia
This was originally intended for a compilation. But, I missed the deadline. So, I reworked it into something different, a bit longer, for an upcoming issue of “Theee Urban SpaceCat” #3 cassette-zine. I’m working on more material that I can perform live. But, this plunderphonics style track is still pretty good and I didn’t want to waste it.
