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After some deliberation, I rolled some cigarettes, threw on my jacket, brushed my teeth using Arm & Hammer baking soda, and grabbed my Swiss Army shoulder bag before twisting open the deadbolt on my green steel apartment door. My sneakers I was already wearing as an insulator against the cool stone tiles lining my ground floor dwelling. I estimated that this would be at least my eighteen-hundredth trip to the booze-mart a couple of blocks away since moving into my downtown suite in the summer of 2006.
Do I have a problem? Doesn't everyone? When the urge to drink begins swelling, I know it's simply a matter of time before I make that lonely trek across the hand-railed overpass to 109th & 99 Avenue commercial strip that houses my favorite East Indian family enterprise I lovingly refer to as "The Boozeistan".
Using almost half of the last of the birthday money I'd received from my dear Mother only two days prior, I purchased a magnum of Gato Negro Cabernet Savignon. Several hours earlier, I'd promised her on the telephone that I wouldn't be spending a nickel of it on liquor. Technically, wine isn't liquor, but I still couldn't believe my own audacity. I was compelled - nay, divinely propelled, to imbibe.
I'm drinking it now while I write this piece of self-deprecating drivel. My insurrectionary proclivities are too much for my ping-pong-ing brain to quell. My less than feeble convicting judgments whisper, "Do it Blake" in rasping harmonies. Am I a musician? Am I a writer? How long must I endure this poverty of stimuli? Will I be a capital-'I'- Internet addict forever?
Addiction. Who isn't addicted to at least ten different things? I can name ten substances / stimuli right now: booze, coffee / tea, Coronation Street, weed, bad girls, Internet, driving fast, the opine arts, nerdy chicks, and gourmet cuisine - about in that order. What sorts of things do you fancy, Dear Reader?
Understand that these lusts for life shouldn't necessarily pose a major threat to anyone's functionabili-googie in society. Lots of people smoke weed and watch Coronation Street religiously, I'm sure I am. The thing with me is, is that my folks pay for all my rent & utilities... so therefore, Mom & Dad play the trump card on any of my philosophical leanings.
Am I that bad? I just turned 35 and haven't had a steady job in almost three years. Sure I do odd jobs here and there: dog sit, sweep stairwells, babysit, teach music lessons, run little errands, play open stages... but I don't exactly make a bundle. I spend too much time playing computer games and cleaning up after my malatrose (I don't know if I just made that word up? French?) friends who like to pop-in unexpectedly. It's like a never-ending cycle. A timed, revolving door of eccentric n'aer-do-wells' egos? Where the hell have I been living this last half-decade? One thing's for certain... I've certainly been of course to lead a shortened life of astounding decadence if I keep chasing my own Dragon's spawn.
Making silly songs and embarrassssssssing video takes for Your Tube. Imagining myself as a mucho big-shot, upcoming producer. Spending hours, hacking away at social media sites. Learning the ol' html macro scripting. Learning a great deal about the micro and macro workings of social media. Editing video and audio and recreating the mouse-trap and all. Big money is all I'm after. That... and of course getting closer to Jehova.
Let's say The Blakemeister is visiting one of his friends who happens to be in a drunken-stupor. He's all alone- and this wasted-drunk devil calls you up for a little "face-to-face, let's-share-a-drink-" type chit chat at his place. Still... I never bully too hard... not ever, and try my musician's best to stick-up for my bros. I do my best not to let my ego supersede my observance of others' limits.
Well, Dear Reader, I just so happen to be an "edit-on-the-go" -type of person so there's a high likelihood that I would most definitely concede to my friend's boozing proposition whenever I'm feeling down-and-out, eh? Given the high likelihood that he's holding more booze than he can drink, it might just behoove me to charm him out of it. If this proverbial friend of mine happens to love my company as much as I love booze, then I'm drinking Scot-free tonight. Smokes too... hopefully!
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Though nothing astoundingly special, the above video was produced start to finish using free open source drivers, software applications, and networking controls - more specifically, the "Ubuntu" v. 10.04 rendition of the Debian Linux-based operating system for home computers.The live picture-in-picture video of me was achieved with a Hauppauge brand video capture card's S-Video input which was connected to the A/V output of my Panasonic video camera - giving me a nice black & white video feed right into my computer's video card. Using the free XawTV software, I was able to feed the video image from the camera into a neatly re-sizable desktop display window.Now I have the power to make some nice multi-media presentations through the placement of various application windows within the screen capture area provided by the XVidCap software. Computers, being so prone to glitches as they seem to be when you're me, I could hardly believe everything was working as it should; not many tweaks needed to be made., and nothing crashed or spat an error out. I stuck an Audacity sound tracker window in the picture and a gedit notepad window to the east.This too can you do with Ubuntu on your computu!
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