Controller Articulation as the Source of Felt Kinetics in Video Games: An Introduction

Gameplay begins with the realization that there is no game. That which we might point to as 'the game' is merely programming that instructs an electron gun inside a CRT monitor to fire particular sequences, which are in turn affected by opening or closing little switches with your fingers, i.e. the buttons of the controller. Nothing more. In fact, the console doesn't even care if the television is on or not. It's perfectly content to run the game in that mysterious, deep darkness where computers dream. The game exists in your head, it is you giving meaning and direction to the things which are happening. This is a world of arbitrary symbols coupled with representations of physical rules that can be spoken to by wiggling your thumbs around. Video gameplay is not, at its core, visual, although a high degree of acuity is indeed demanded by the practice in many regards. As one reads the words of a novel, one reads the programming; and in much the same way as a musical instrument is played or a trick of stage magic performed, the video game is played masterfully through sleight of hand.

This is an attempt to establish a vocabulary for video game playing techniques, as well as a means of perceiving video games as fundamentally tactile. Ideas about in-game elements like strategy and secrets exist in a separate sphere. This is not really a how-to, nor is it an attempt to over-complicate things. If this all sounds familiar to you then good, we're all getting somewhere. These are discussions that didn't exist and I wanted them to so I made them. Stop me if you've heard this one. Go ahead and call this a series of personal essays. In this first bit, I endeavor to explain the pseudo-physical reality of video games, the perception of control objects as real, and input duration as the source of felt pseudo-kinetics. That's a wonderful foundation from which to talk about meatier things. As well, I hope to establish some definitions that will come in handy later. It's also good to keep in mind that notions about 'what the programmers intended' have no place here currently.

In what is, essentially, the frame-by-frame flip-book of the game, depth of physical experience is simulated with motion and collision of images, supplemented by audio; indeed there is no other way. We are interpreting our control image on the screen as a 'symbolic player', but it is important to remember that the program is always drawing the entire screen as a single unit with interacting meta-parts. (All symbolic players are made of the code, and thus intrinsically tied to each other no matter their perceived degree of separation.) In this same manner of interpretation, we must also realize that we are within what can be referred to as 'symbolic laws of physics'; designed only to mimic what we see in the world or, in other cases, thwart and mock it. These symbolic laws come in varying degrees of rigidity, and are mostly supported by visual illusions - i.e. walking into a solid may only give the illusion that it is truly solid. The pseudo-physical space of the game describes the entire body of theorems that can be generated via button inputs in the formal system of the code - all that is possible. The pseudo-kinetic space loosely refers to those particular theorems that are useful to gameplay, so called 'physical moves' - all that is practical. This having been established, it now becomes convenient to drop the prefix pseudo- when referring to the physical environment inside the game; it is implied.

The kinetics of player control are felt and described by the duration of button inputs, and I refer to this principal broadly as 'articulation'. Naturally, the shortest duration of input is a single frame, possibly less, and indeed a discrete number of frames could describe any input. For our purposes currently, it is not necessary to slice things up so precisely. What is important, is to think about duration in the physical act of pressing the buttons. Consider that there are, in fact, infinitely many ways to press a button.

Three main lexicons of controller articulation, listed hierarchically, are: squeeze, tap, and roll. These are simply ways of holding the controller and pressing the buttons. Proper tactile gaming begins with hand placement on the controller, but since this is different for everyone, there is actually no 'proper' way. Use this vocabulary as a jumping off point for creating your own style, not guide to copy. 'Squeeze' is the largest and most common technique; involving keeping constant contact between one's fingers and the the buttons. 'Tap' is mostly self-explanatory. 'Roll' refers to the larger ramifications of the classic 'double flap' technique, involving rolling one's fingers across a single button to tap extraordinarily fast. It is important to use the correct technique for the situation. By maintaining constant contact with the buttons, tighter control over the input duration is achieved. When jabbing at the buttons, or through sloppy hand control, inconsistencies and delays begin to occur. Practice by getting a very good sense of how far down the buttons on the controller press. Really understand how much pressure you're applying with your thumb. Squeeze a button, release without letting go, then try to squeeze it for exactly half that long; twice that long. Tap at different frequencies, with different fingers. Relax and maintain constant contact; the squeeze motions you make to depress a button reverberate throughout the entire plastic body of the controller and are felt everywhere in the hands.

The 'jump' mechanic is an easy and familiar example. The maximum height of a jump can be explored in two ways simultaneously - visually, and manually. With your eyes, you are judging relative distance on the screen. With your hands, you are establishing the particular articulation required for that jump. It is of critical importance that these relationships be felt, not merely perceived. Imagine the control object is real, and scan it for properties such as weight, friction, and momentum. This is a thought experiment that helps give meaning to the feeling of particular squeezes. A heavy jump will feel heavy in the way the button gets pressed. A large amount of friction can be felt in the responsiveness of the d-pad. Musical ideas such as 'beat' and 'tempo' apply to button articulation as well, because input durations exist in solid and explore-able relationships to each other. Cut the height of a jump by cutting the input duration. You will not have time to think about it, the player must be able to feel the difference naturally.

There is a particular time signature in each game that must be played with the hands and not the eyes. It is not unlike playing a musical instrument. Each note has both a pitch and duration, and rhythm is the essential structural form. The guts of mental training for video games involves being able to separate and recombine the actions of one's eyes and hands, and thereby discover and explore a deep, meditative type of zen. To move before the eyes see and see the way the hands move. The ultimate practice is to develop muscle memory nuanced enough to adapt to increasing degrees of subtlety demanded by either the game itself or the meta-game currently in effect.

But I think that's enough to chew on for tonight.

Cartridge Review: Masters of the Universe - The Power of He Man

Before this review can begin, I need to establish my level of nostalgic connection with the He Man franchise - it is zero. I grew up with early 1990's Nickelodeon cartoons, and when I wanted fights and transformations, I turned to the VR Troopers and their derivative action figures. I don't even think I could identify He Man until I became an adult; and as such, I won't be spending any time considering how much of a resemblance this game bears to the realm of Eternia. It is slightly above zero, as far as I can surmise. I hear the collective groan from the hardcore fan base, but remain politely unapologetic for my ignorance of all things He Man. It should be a given that it's more or less impossible to accurately recreate shows or movies as a 4K game program anyhow.

Go beat the game to see the other image.

M-Network's 'Masters of the Universe - the Power of He Man' for Atari 2600 had three graphics programmers, two regular programmers, and one for sound; which might explain why the game feels like an asymmetrical mash up of too many ideas happening at once. One thing that was definitely agreed upon is the fact that a lot of space was to be given to the opening title screen, which features a little animation of Prince Adam transforming into He Man and a weird little boop-y song with unsatisfactory melodic resolution. (The cartoon theme?) Considerable resources are also spent on the flashing image displayed upon clearing the second level and beating the game. These folks are trying to sell an Atari game based on a cartoon character after all, and these graphics are pretty good for the format.

Far less time and energy seems to have been spent on the actual gameplay, however. They could have started with a simpler basic premise, but instead created an overzealous mix of elements that constantly gets in its own way. Somehow though, this bumbling game becomes a horribly awesome freak-out of a thing. Like an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the crummy gameplay is  endearingly, frustratingly, awful. On B difficulty, (loops 3-8+) it's just frustratingly awful and might also trigger nauseous seizures. Actually, it might do that any time.

Naturally, the narrative centers around you riding your hover glider thing to Castle Greyskull and defeating Skeletor. The gangly mash up begins here, because the 2 levels in this game play entirely differently. It's as if nobody could agree or even compromise about how this game should operate. Starting above a home base square, the screen is laid out quite a bit like Defender. You can fly your ship left and right and the screen scrolls in that direction. You can move up and down, too. Some little numbers and an arrow indicate distance from the castle, and you start 30 units away. Either direction will get you there, which seems to indicate that the planet is incredibly small, or that you're moving in some kind of doughnut-shaped 2-dimensional space, but regardless; you also have bombs and lasers. Well, sort of. Since there's only one button to press, you get one or the other. If there's a spinning doodad on the screen, you shoot lasers. If not, you're droppin' bombs, and you must be above a certain height to do so. As we'll see, this is one of the things that makes gameplay so bad - the fact that you need mutually exclusive weapons at the same time.

Your way to the castle is blocked by enemies on the ground that act like little magnets. They stick to one spot, scrolling onscreen with your movement. Fly over one, and they jostle you around horizontally with no escaping. That's a pain the the ass already, but these jerks do two other things: launch a little spinning doodad, and shoot a tiny square upward; both of which kill you. Your bombs create black holes in the ground, and that's the only way to get rid of them. The spinners they launch will immediately fly toward you with staggered pauses. They can only be killed with a laser shot directly to their center; the old Atari gameplay paradigm of being able to hit a pixel with a scanline. It doesn't help at all that your lasers have very short range, slightly more than one body length. Rapid fire on / off is controlled via the color switch on the console.

The image of your ship is so large and slow compared to everything else on the screen that even small horizontal movements have a substantial impact on the scroll. Think about it this way - you can move your ship up and down, but when you move left and right, you are actually moving the screen around you, not the ship itself. To give a sense of fast horizontal movement over a landscape, the 'space' inside the screen scrolls faster than the objects within it, and your clunky ship is the relative 'center' which pushes these parameters around. This means that affecting your ship's left / right position can pull enemies toward you. You and your foes are not scrolling smoothly at fixed, relative points in the background; natural amounts of distance aren't created with horizontal dodges. Compare this game to Stargate for an example of a game on the 2600 that did a much better job with this type of scrolling and enemy positioning.

What was supposed to be a vertical / horizontal dogfight of sorts becomes only a horrid chore. If you don't destroy a magnet immediately with a bomb, it will launch a spinner which prevents you from dropping bombs until you destroy it. Now you're stuck over top of an enemy that can kill you with an upward shot, lacking any way to defend yourself on the vertical axis. You're being jostled around horizontally which affects the scroll of space, bringing the spinner which is already tracking you right into your head in just a few incomprehensible seconds. If you destroy the spinner, the magnet will launch another with very short delay, allowing you to get off only a few bomb shots before another spinner fight. You can't move on until you destroy the magnet and even if you do move on, the next enemy will just be another magnet. If you get hit, the game freezes and flashes horrifying colors but doesn't re-set the board in any way; the enemies left onscreen stay there. When you regain control after a death freeze, you can just get hit again right off the bat, and suck up all 3 of your lives immediately. Oh, but, good news! You can go back to home base and buy more lives for 100 x loop# points a pop. Except you can only carry 3. And no, zero doesn't count as one.

The bizarre physics happening in the screen scroll is both the main reason why gameplay is so broken, and the point of leverage against it; as many situations like this are. We'll get to Castle Greyskull in a second, hang in there.

Hang in there, get it?

The best way to deal with the magnets is to destroy them with bombs before they have a chance to launch a spinner. The game seems to want you to do this by flying above them, after all, their upward shot is destroyed by bombs as well. Yet, this really just leads to a lot of gruesome death because the spinners launch so quickly. A better way to destroy them is by manipulating the weird scroll. When your bombs fall, they create black holes on the ground, which are then part of the landscape, or space; meaning they now scroll faster than objects. What you can do, is create a crater to the side of a magnet, then reverse direction. We would expect the hole in the ground and the magnet, both on fixed positions in the ground, to remain at equal distance from each other at all times. What we find instead is that, since the magnet is scrolling more slowly than the hole, the hole can simply be moved underneath the magnet, and poof, it's gone. You're safe for another few seconds. This principal also contributes to the frustrating nature of the spinner fights - during your window of opportunity to bomb the magnet, the holes you create are always sliding out of their intended locations. It's quite possible to create a hole in the extreme left side of the screen, then slide it under a magnet on the right. In so doing, you limit the number of dog fights you must engage in and eventually reach Castle Greyskull.

This level is much more straightforward and, um, "enjoyable". Skeletor is chillin' out on the right side of the room shooting lasers at a specific frequency, and you can block them with your sword button. Just run to the right and touch him. That's it. Wait, this level also has the most amazing colored, moving walls I've ever seen on Atari. In the same vein as Laser Gates and Yar's Revenge, these barriers are the true graphical miracle of this game; squares within squares that constantly morph into each other while the walls move back and forth. Things get even cooler when you touch a wall or get shot; the screen has a massive spasm of color and you must start back on the left, temporarily slowed down. What's more, you can't really die. Not unless your score hits zero. Every hit just removes some points, and if you've made it this far you should have plenty. Enough to have some fun running into things. Just you and Skeletor, two stupidly immortal cartoon-based video game characters kicking back to enjoy a face-melting disco trip. When you get bored or start throwing up, just end the level to hear that weird little song again and loop the game.

Fuck it, I've got points to spend.

Apparently, the difficulty will continue to increase until the 8th loop, but I can't bring myself to play that long. The best score I managed to get while researching for this article was 40K. Speed increases right away on loop two, and magnets on the first screen launch spinners almost immediately, dragging you into death traps all the time. If you make it to Skeletor again, he'll be firing even more lasers at a quicker frequency. It might be interesting to see if racking up a huge score by remaining on one screen would cause the programming to glitch out or crash. If so, we can only hope the resulting break in reality would engulf all of Eternia in a tie-dye acid wave with a static soundtrack. The colors are the only thing that can save us from the crap-fest that is this game.

Whats it Like

You can't stop noticing and haven't thought to notice.

Though you notice much.
Even it.

The very intense world hears you listening
And listens back.

Tongues of inflection speak into existence visualizations of concepts
Tying spiderweb into diffusions of light
On the water surface of the form nameable.

But how can you tell the others?
With no such life machine symbionts.

Evaporating branches of possible minds fog out
The archetypes introduce themselves.
Microscope insight reveals macrocosm tendencies.
It's like paralyzing and raw-egg sweet.

You and your fractals of ambivalence, and they stop motion time.

Scavenger Homecomming

Come whenever, with us or by yourself, back into all the decent garbage.
That shit is mine and yours and my neighbor, who I'm kind to, didn't want it. So..
Come.
Extra frustrated with glorified static as you see it.
Alert, raccoon-like, and useful as you are.
When you dream awake about ignoring this or that.
After you make your nuanced curses
on the altar of the pile of sheared bolts
Maybe hear, you can -
and come sheer them yourself.
This is an act of practice; intended for you to give it something to mean.
Bring out your paper to the fire for the fire - aren't you sick of that offer?
All those metaphors about ants,
When everyone is visible and transparent.
Come check out the effects of the externalizing charm though, also.
You don't have to go far from your own backyard to coin the phrase.
Come to find out – ugly by now, with all the things pointed out.
Crumpled and agitated with no new synchronizations.
I can see why you would be uneasy about the future prospects.
With each gathering perhaps a little more forced of sound.
Gotten it out combined with what's the point tiny.
Certain illness
on sale today.

Come look at the prism of divergence from culture. Dare you chop with your words.
You got it in you.
With little power comes little responsibility.

The Mission for

The Mission for Cowabunga Breakfast

You can and must surmise what sorts of things this mission is for. This is breakfast for those who are awake at this hour. I think it explains itself and it's memes pretty clearly. Written throughout 2012 and recorded some time after the turn of the calender, this is actually my fourth album, but the first released online.




Parasites Gotta' Die

I was a stranger, and you were a stranger, and we were both stranger than most.
And the ghost that pursued us would always elude us, and burn us until we were toast.
It was fun being toast for a while, we'd smile whenever the poison would flow.
Ooo, drinking and dreaming and sinking the boat,
parasites gotta' die with the host.

I was a dreamer and she was a dreamer, but we never got up on time.
We had sex, drugs, and more, and eventually bloodshed that started with liquor and lime.
Well we both walked away with a few dozen scars, and some laughs at each other's expense.
Ha ha, she'll never get her white picket fence, those parasites don't ever pay their own rent.

Usually I must be feeling awful glad.
I know that I'm addicted right down to the molten core.
Life is one big, nervous mystery I'm trying to record;
there's a lengthy inner history of parasites and war.

He was a local and I was a tourist but we were both nomads, for true.
Though we lived in the gutter, our tribes drank as brothers, and sang 'we're the fortunate few'.
After five years and counting I still can't remember the moment that I said goodbye.
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
Parasites gotta die, gotta die.

Extremely Slippery Gold

My actual initials are M followed by C. I am a metaphysical wizard of the nth degree.
I built my box of secrets and I swallowed the key;
ya shallow bitches ain't gonna get nothing out of me.
Flick you in the ear, spin your brain the fuck around,
pop ya in the kisser with the horrible, horrible sound.
Step into the laboratory, that is where I can be found, and it's going to be a long way down.

See I am a genuine mutant genius, you may find that the worms spit out spice
faster than words can unwind.
And if I'm really comfortable I really lose my stupid mind.
I am floating in a sea of surreality and vibrational frequency that seems to speak to me
though I am not fast enough to fully understand it.
Blinking my eyes in unison with the streetlights like I planned it.
Ima psychedelic riot and cool, cool handed. Reaching ever higher, as demanded.

But now keep quiet, hold your breath and wait for the first fire.
Answered my own riddle and I'm not even beginning to get tired. There's a real reason,
but you wouldn't hear it until it expire.
And my voice is only a note in a larger choir.
We are now changing, as we always have been. Unattended minors in a school inhabited by
better has-beens, and seekers, and vipers than I care to dissect.
As if they owed me debt which I could forcibly collect.
But the problem is the language used to describe the effects is pretty shoddy at best,
and dissolves in neglect. And I'll admit, I'm not a college-educated architect,
never going to be exactly correct.

And as I move through faces, leave my friends behind and journey to strange places,
and strange mornings, and unspoken, unspeakable glossolalia without warning
yes, I struggle in the current just to write some of it down,
and when it leaves the pen it disappears on the rebound. It's the swiftly cutting blade
of the immediate moment. Orange light flickering on the senses and soft spoken.
And here I am spinning straw into gold tokens, but I don't need a lot
because I know the game is broken.
I'm claiming something I am unsure if I can possess,
and the trick is learning how to slice up infinite regress without a big mess,
I guess practice is the key. I don't believe it's pointless but that's not a guarantee.
I understand I am alone in my own mind, and my modus opperandi is completely undefined.
I am a ghost in a machine in the kingdom of blind swine and a faun warned me
not to drink up any of their wine. I fucking listened.
I am not a prisoner or a victim. Big Illuminati is the Boogeyman system.
Enjoy it while it's happening and suddenly it's gone. Trying everyday to tap into
something you can't con.

I am moving to a rhythm I can only hear in my head. Not my problem if it's something you resent.
This was really just a way to ventilate the space a little,
couldn't tell you what it's truly supposed to represent.
Just a creature made of feeling, sustained by need.
A billion hungry voices that mamma's gotta' feed. And can we do this forever?
It's not as if we're not clever. We're standing in the right place, now hand over the lever.
I've been talking your ear off all evening, I know.
Was the message delivered? Yes? Good. On we go.

Juice Box

Hey you people now don't be sad. We're all in second grade.
And you might not know it now to look at it, but you got it made.
There's a hundred million things like sleeping you'll probably never really understand.
Bitches and bees and spiders and fleas and buffalo stompin' free.
You might not see it in the present tense, but everybody's all a seed.

You could be the littlest giant in the ocean and still ride the big balloon through time.
Or you could be a clever sloth, a mechanical sloth, and emote through the circuitry of your mind.
We prefer fruit, can't get enough fruit. Gotta eat a new fruit today.
If it rains for a whole week and it's lightening and the power goes out, how about an old board game?
No way, I saw it was twenty years prior, and the basement flooded like a miniature lake.
Big whoosh sound, lunch bell down, man with the eraser - mean, mean fake.

Flap your little hands like mad, you're a float in the big parade.
And you might not have a lot of helium yet, but you've got a lot of carbon to trade.
They're gonna' try to cut your ears with the clippers; misdirection is the name of the game.
Uniform Thing says 'raise your hand' and he don't care what's your name.

You could build a compass in the woods if you know how to operate the Earth's magnetic field.
But you're not lost, not yet. Don't place your bet until you see if they rigged that roulette wheel.
Juice box life and cushions; you will never outgrow cartoons.
When the water in your head makes you dizzy, you can always blame it on the moon.

All the Rocks in Pumpkin Town

Let's roll down to Pumpkin Town, we should leave today.
Last night we played at the Palace Theater, and they booed us off the stage,
but on the train I saw you smile in your sleep, and I felt brave.
We're going to prove something to ourselves.

And in the name of our brave and noble-hearted tribe,
we keep the jack 'o' lantern flame alive. We go a-truckin' through the fog,
though there are signs that we may break. We recite Stick Stickly's address,
and we feel a bit more sane.
We're gonna knock 'em dead with our loud, shy sound.
Digging up the bones in Pumpkin Town.

When I was a wooden puppet, back before I came alive,
I could jump, twist, and gesture; but I couldn't use my eyes.
Friday nights I'd sing for lose change at the Muppets' open mic.
That was the only kind of life I was aware of.

Then through some twisted pumpkin magic, I wound up with my own organic brain.
I don't complain about the pain I now can feel, because I am real.
These days I only sing my song to call the rain.
Make it rain.

(it rains)

So, let's take the show to Pumpkin Town, where everyone will cheer.
We can drink right from the rivers of Shipyard pumpkin beer.
The call goes out in all directions as the band begins to play -
"You've been a long time gone, but you're welcomed here to stay."
You gotta find your soul as the wheels go 'round.
Flipping all the rocks in Pumpkin Town

Stoned Ape

Occupied headspace, invariable flux. Mis-communication, I lost seventy bucks.
But hallucinogenics are still are the rage. Doors of perception for those who are brave.

 Absorb, synthesize, broadcast, surround.
That is the name of the mayor of our town.
Absorb, synthesize, broadcast, surround.
That is the method I use to get down.

Elegance, appitude, fortitude, grace, are not always needed to decompress space.
Migration, invention, focus, and flight, stretch out with your feelings and you'll be alright.
Truly made worth it when I saw that sound,
psilocybin producers at large underground.

Absorb, synthesize, broadcast, surround.
Those are directions our ancestors found.
Absorb, synthesize, broadcast, surround.
That is the method I use to get down.

(freak out some)

Timulteous origins, fungus galore. Language development alien spore.
Civilization and art on the rise. Compelled by the voices of stuff in the sky.

Now, vilify, misinform, separate, confound -
those are the tricks of the bandits in our town.
Absorb, synthesize, broadcast, surround.
Art, love, and drugs, maybe tear it all down.

Waitin' on the Magnet

Hangin' out at Ernie's Disposal,
waiting for the magnet to carry me away.

Last Stand at Mertland

There's nothing to drink, in the kitchen. Purple Kool-Aid turning blue.
Where's that Sparrow Cat when you need her? I've got candy corn melted in my shoe.
We were laughing on Christmas with the ladies wearing white, no,
they're never never gonna' catch that old Grinch.
Aluminum foil will do in a pinch. Aluminum.

Thanks for all the burritos that you sent me through the mail.
And the garbage bag or bread, it's the thought that counts. In fact I like mine a little bit stale.
Just lately, blood and snot. Reoccurring absentee.
Are they sirens I hear, are they sirens I'm looking at?
Wonder was looking at me.

There's nothing to drink in the kitchen. We got relish and what looks like cheese.
We'll recycle the beer cans at daybreak. I was kinda' thinking Chinese.
And as you know, Uncle Scrooge became a new man indeed, but Marley still carried his chains.
And I don't think that's fair because he did a good deed, and he helped his friend avoid a grim fate.

Hole in your sole (-oul) as you're walking. Dirty socks now soaking wet.
Contradiction and the flashbacks, where's the dollar we had? I forget.
Now let's scrub all the chalk off the walls of the attic; get headquarters ready to die.
When the whole bush is burning, the crickets, they ain't got time to say goodbye.

Closer Away

I was mad at myself, I was mad at my family.
And I'd stay up real late so no one would talk to me.
Hated going to school, but I loved my pet fish.
And I would write, write, write it all down.

Well, I loved that sound with my feet in the air.
They said 'happy birthday' I said, 'who fucking cares?'
I wanted to smoke my dope and kiss that girl;
but I never learned how to do a kickflip.

I was the only motherfucker in the world who felt pain;
acting like a magnet for the black and white rain.
Gonna' stare a big hole in the front of your head;
I'm gonna read my book and fail phys ed. She said
'I love it when you smile, you should do that more
but I could only scream, scream, scream.

Never got caught by the cop or the shrink.
Tiny drops of blood on my face in the sink.
What I mean what I say don't ever agree;
come a little closer, get away from me.
Come a little close, now get away.
Come a little closer, get away from me; please get a little closer away.

Hated myself maybe less than society.
Turn the music up so no one talks to me.
It's a very strange life when you're extremely aware,
try to block some things out but the truth don't care.
She said 'you're the one whose going to have to fix your head,'
but I wanted to be dead, dead, dead.

BUG

I got born three days ago, gonna die by the end of the week.
Mom and Dad never met me, or any of my five hundred brothers.
All my friends got eaten up by birds, they struggled only for a minute;
and the birds will get eaten themselves someday, but that's not a whole lot of comfort.

See, I've got ninety-some hours, trying to get laid before I die.
I do not understand this compulsion, I'm keeping up behind the times.
You can always ask for directions if you like yelling at the ground,
when you're thirty feet up and your antenna's pointed down;
and your natural defenses won't postpone your expiration,
when you're thirty feet up and you're antenna's pointed down;
you will know me by the sound of the colors.

The ants are herding aphids, I have seen them do it well.
They've got this far our social hierarchy like you could not believe.
Running errands for the queen in a death spiral until the end.
Funny thing about the hivemind, at least they've got a lot of friends.

See how the fish are searching for a quick and easy meal.
Watching shadows on the surface; could be me if I get too close.
Perhaps a hook on a decoy on a line on a reel,
but when you think you know it all, you misinterpret how you feel.
You're a bundle of sensations in a shell of pure enigma.
When you think you know all, you misinterpret how you feel.
Pay attention to the sound of the colors.

Life is a pretty tasty meal for other life. You friends are a great way to get to know yourself.
So who are you? A jillion paper wings; your kids are going to wonder too.
Humans love anecdotes - let's decompose.

Well turtles live forever and a day, but they won't tell you how.
Must be lonely in a shell so long, they don't want that curse for you.
I asked the owl about the bumblebees, and she said they'd all been gone.
She read the bark on the tree, and she informed me they lived on.

And now the lightening bugs are signaling each other in the dark;
a single moth flies in the fire because he thought he found the moon.
One of these days I'm gonna break out and go see the big waterfall.
I'm gonna hover right above it and I won't be scared at all.
There are times when I must realize what it means to be an insect.
I'm gonna hover right above it and I feel so very small.
I am drawn, as we are all, to the colors.

Gentle

Cowabunga Breakfast #5 - Gentle

Released spring 2013. What can I say about this one? It is gentle; it was supposed to be. It is that black ribbon of tape, it is the sunrise crow stopping by to jam on some other morning when I hadn't been sleeping. This album is kinda about living all the time. It is also kinda about being alone. In ways. But gentle now.




King Neptune (Full Text)

Farewell, King Neptune. As black frost covers your eyes,

may the insects remember all the sugar you fed them.

Farewell, sea green bottle-glass skies.
And all the hidden mysteries of the lucid dream we've been having together.

You and I were just getting to know each other.

It's a shame what happened to our family, to our brothers and sisters.

That fire was never inside the stone, it was your light reflecting.

Farewell, King Neptune. We bury you with all your comic books;

with Superman #1 and The Flash.

It was over in one of those.

I am leaving for where you are going, and getting back before you leave.

Farewell, King Neptune.

Hope you find more there than I could.

Farewell, Compass. I knew you were broken when I walked north and wound up down & out.

Send us all a map whenever you learn to draw.

When we were kids you talked nonstop
about how you wanted to run the Iditarod & mom would berate you.

"Those animals shouldn't be treated like that just so some lousy Men can prove
how strong and capable they are!"

But you said Man and Wolf could be bonded, and this was after you got those rabies shots, even.

I never understood that about you.

Farewell, King Neptune.

Someday I will think of something brave to say here

and I will come back to now and say it.

Our minds will be an ocean of spiderwebs;
A symbiosis with the ecosystem of an opportune trash pail.

I'm sorry I killed your pet fly.
I'm even sorrier that Dad laughed at my cartoon sound effect.

He thought the weirdest shit was funny.

Christ, he thought Charlie Chaplin was the goddamn genius of the world.

I'm sorry you carry off so much anger with you, but thank you for agreeing to take mine as well.

No one should have to live like us.

Everyone should've had to kill those chickens
and swat down that huge moth.

Farewell, King Neptune.

The future is a popsicle-stick joke and the past is a slasher flick.

Tonight we are staying up late.

Tomorrow, the world.

Farewell.

Dog's Wish

Been creeping, dull job. Grab coin, tell dog.
Spot fish, hide sun. Dog's wish - long run.

Meatball hoagie, is good for me.
Buy two, get three. Dog's wish - one free.

They were both strays. They were two animals.
Hot gravel on the interstate.
Dog's wish - friend to play.

Big sonder, small paws. Quick jolt, sharp jaws.
Fiendish loyalty; we all get thirsty,
but please chomp Frisbee.

Transmogrification Blues

One thing surely seems apparent in the universe. It's that the joke is always on you.
It's not a bad thing, though, when you get it you will think it's funny too.
Now, I've been fishing with these riddles in my type of family business.
Every year, I like to shed my skin and become a new snake.
Where my former self has gone, I'm prepared to follow on. Even without shoes.

Got the transmogrification blues. Quantum paranoia, here I come.
Four dimensional gorilla glue, until all is said and done.

Fractal method to reflections and I'm moving.
Ten years ago, I traded all my cells in a rock paper scissors with the cosmos.
That elephant in the room will never tell.
They showed me time once in a dream and they weren't kidding.
When I awoke, I was whacked out on DMT.
I had the strangest sensation I'd been awake the whole time,
now I'm compelled to spread the news,

concerning transmogrification blues. How self-transforming smoke is what we are.
Big smiles in that room, they said "come back and visit us any time."
Transmogrification blues, haven't you guys ever read Calvin and Hobbes?
Using cardboard replication technology, I gave my selves different jobs.

There's been so many fractures I stopped counting.
That crystal never forms the same way twice.
I skip on water and I'm watching where the ripples go.
Fortune rolls like a circular dice.
And it's like I'm some kind of council room where all my different forms
are deciding what is really going on.
I rather like it, I must say, but it can get in my way when I sing with my one squishy face

those transmogrification blues. My paper trail goes on until I'm senile.
There have been rumors of a pit stop soon,
just a few more miles, crocodile.

And if there's one thing I've learned about the universe,
it's that the joke is always funny in the end.
But it's not the punchline that really matters. It's the telling of the joke, my friend.

Breakfast in Prison

I really hope the serve breakfast in prison. After all of the booking and process is through,
I hope some kind soul can slip waffles and smokes through the bars, straight to you.
I'll smuggle in syrup if I can. Fuck the man and his rules.
This completely unnatural, cold, dirty flood that is risen.
Brother, I hope they serve breakfast in prison.

Promise you'll live and keep standing. True bravery harshly demanding
that you lock up your insides where no guard can take them, and arrive at some gentle crash landing.
I spoke with the mayor, he said somewhere in time this cruel world will all be forgiven.
Until then, he'll make sure they serve breakfast in prison.

Your shoes are much bigger than mine, but in my imagination I fit in them fine
In the underground everyone wears the same size,
those barbed wire laces so easily could have been mine.
It's a sleepless kind of vision, as I'm picturing breakfast in prison.

No one deserves it this way. All for some plants and un-taxable nickles.
As I search for something more comforting to say; some quick turn of phrase
that could slice up this pickle, or tickle your funny bone so you're not sad all the way.

All your good friends won't forget. Sad kind of fourth of July.
Dry your eyes off if they're wet. Don't lose your mind to regret.
As weeks turn to months, I'll be counting the days, if months turn to years I'll be counting.
As weeks turn to months, I'll be counting the days until we can have breakfast at my place.

Gentle Black Ribbon

Gentle black ribbon, how you been living?
Gentle black ribbon, living all the time.
Living on a dime, aaah, I'm living all the time.
Gentle black ribbon, such a thin black line.

Speed Queen dryer; X-men retired.
Speed Queen dryer, I saw a few break.
Saw a few go. Soft, you know.
Too soft to let it go.

The Mime who Learned how to Talk

Cowabunga Breakfast #8 - The Mime Who Learned how to Talk

Recorded September, 2014 and written mostly throughout the summer that year,  this album concerns itself with the aftermath of the fire, and the reality of the flood. Central is the idea of the death of old magic like hair, and the mime learning only how to talk; simply the theory, not the practice. It is a contemplative birth from ash type of journey with love at the end. These are the lyrics.
 




Bonus Level Devil

Waking up from instructional dreams. All the trees in the sidewalk blooming,
got a bad burn from all that snow but now the color's ceaselessly zooming.
The empty space is so clean now, you really know how to spin.
Got a good deal on a heartbreak apartment, but I think that I'm ready to move again.
(ooo) Cause I beat the devil.
I beat the devil, in the bonus level.

Radio DJ don't dig it, he don't know me very well.
Those carcinogenic songs, so detrimental to your health.
As if they heart could be simplified in such an ugly way, hey hey hey,
my brothers be wary, be wary of the girl with the small vocabulary.

These days I don't know where I'm going, but I know where you could stay.
I am deliberately difficult to translate, and I think you know I like it that way.
And if you ever get your arms around me, I would never need to stray,
(aaa) maybe someday.

When I was a kid hanging out at the mall, my father gave me two or three quarters,
stood me on a crate so I could play the arcade.
And he said 'make them last', so I got good fast.
The speakers would scream and the lights would flash, you know, I noticed, that helps me every day.
He taught me how to beat the devil, ooo, I beat the devil.
I beat the bonus level devil.

Big Silver

Cellar door opens today, countless lichen grown on clay.
Asteroids is a fun game. Inward journey all the way.
Skeleton key, made from bone. Real quick now, pick a toe.
Understanding amputee. Counterclockwise spiral key.
Fish on land got to breathe. Scuba diver got to sneeze.
Broken treasure feels relieved. Gold fortune make believe.

Well he wrote his own movie he could star in.
And his alter ego hired all the actors.
And he got real blazed and explored the maze of echos. Echos.
And at the end he left a few blank chapters.

Highway system all linked up. Faulty neurons holding tough.
Miyazaki calls your bluff. Leaky red plastic cup.
Truman program on the brain. Bug's inheritance will remain.
To the Earth from whence they came. Meaning hard to ascertain.
Cricket naps throughout the day. Rolling stone just wants to play.
Mother Nature mocks your fame. Inward journey all the way.

Haunted Train Station

I live next to a haunted train station, this is no exaggeration.
Ghosts of all the space invaders I kill still lurking around.
Now, Halloween might set them free. Where's my tombstone gonna be?
But lives do not apply to me right now, please just calm down.
I know I always fight it, but this year I am excited for the cold.
Right before I met her I'd been reading about how luck favors the bold.

My apartment building got stuck in a flood, my friends swam over and smoked us up.
Branches, trash, and auto parts were floating through downtown.
It was a dark and stormy day, but not all pictures look that way.
The River Dragons flew above, and marveled when they saw their new creation.
But the flood could not destroy the haunted train station.

As summer spun in motion and I didn't fish the ocean with my Dad.
Not for lack of trying, I'm just dying to crawl back inside the hot sand.

I live next to a haunted train station, can you feel the track vibration?
Box car graffiti museum is rolling away. And every time I try to chase it,
my lungs remind me not to waste it; and the fortune cookie reads -
"You can't find Banksy in the Louvre."
I live next to a haunted train station, but I'm gonna' move.

I live next to a haunted train station; living is my main vocation.
Measured pulse of celebration, sacred in my estimation.
Spirits and intoxication; what's the final destination?
Waiting for our ride at the haunted train station.

Gravity Man

It's been a rager, a 700-pager. I never felt hazier than when I came down.
Heavy monstrosity at terminal velocity; crushed by the pressure of holding my ground.
Oo what a miracle, wow.

Gravity Man, he don't fly, he just stands. And the whole floor is quicksand, or lava...can't say.
Soon comes the day, just us feelings awake.
Learning violin as you begin to burn at the stake.
Could you help us fall into the lake?

All my blood's the receipt for the money I spent. Present coupon and remember,
no exchanges if burned. Take your bag and sit out the next turn.
All my desires get confused with my dreams, until I'm pierced by the laser beam exiting my heart.
Don't you never call me son, you don't know what I'm from;
we'll call Gravity Man, I know he's got some.
I was a cold, big fish from a dark, green ocean and these days I live in a tank.
I'm all bones and I've got you to thank.

Gravity Man, is your orbit your escape plan?
Twenty thousand feet, aren't you sore?
No it just ain't a miracle no more.

The Mime Who Learned How to Talk

My feels have left me high and dry since I stopped frying my mind all the time;
I felt like a Mime as I rounded up the shards of my life:
my Atari games and my local music archive, acrylic paints and my x-acto knife,
and a tape recorder and my meteorite; two warm pairs of gloves and my guitar.
Donnie helped me sweep my floor, and Bill took my old furniture.
We had some mean words with Landlord Jack, but I got my security deposit back.
I felt like a hack, but it had to be done. I'd lost enough to win this one.

The future moves before I speak, it's just a flashback to last week.
The past is bleak and shot through with holes that I don't know where they're from.
My kindergarten teacher told me I was smart because I knew what the word 'dilemma' meant;
and my first grade teacher, she told my mom that I probably could be president.
My actions are words and my nouns are verbs, and I'm my own experiment.
I had to get bent to wind down all the lines I had to walk.
Then in 2012 at the calender's end, well I almost got killed by my mirror friend
but instead we went to sleep beneath my sea,
a hundred fractal versions of me.

And all the words I set in stone, got reabsorbed into my bones.
And all the stones I carried 'round, they really weighed my pockets down.

What tough lesson, did I earn it? Why buy a flag just to go and burn it?
Sometimes I feel so blank and can't turn it into anything at all.
I'm supposed to be whatever I decide, and that's the inherent problem alright,
but I'm not defined by what I don't like, and I guess that's a pretty good start.
I've got Millipede skills, black rum lemonade, and the same wallet I've had since seventh grade,
and an ornament that  my late grandmother made, and it's one of my very best treasures.
My broken inventions got chopped up for parts, and I finally found a girl who knows my heart.
We feed the wild cats who live in our yard, and I like watching cardinals fly through the rain.
Loss and gain and faith and pain and ignorance that I cannot feign,
with excruciating practice I became, the mime who learned how to talk.

(Let Me) Bury my Head in the Sea

Burial at sea, that's the burial for me.
Disposed of by water, won't return a zombie.
Blue midnight green, let me sink into bed;
let me bury my head in the sea.

Burial at sky, a good way to get high.
Don't use no machine to keep this guy alive.
Though it might seem quite cold, I assure you, I'll thrive.
Won't you bury my eyes in the sky?

Burial in grass, well I sure had a blast.
My consciousness one with the vastness at last.
Feed the bugs all a treat, let the mold be recast.
Won't you bury my feet in the grass?

Burial in bone, cause the skin I don't own.
She loans you some crystals, then turns them to stone.
As the entropy rises and space pulls apart,
won't you bury my heart in your own?

(Tuck my Pants) Into my Socks

Self explanatory.