Project Robo-Dog, Imaginary Journalists, and Facebook Fridays. You know you're curious.

I recently took up the alter-ego name Mustafo Monkovit out of sheer wacky inside-jokeness resulting from a crazy night of aimless driving around Fort Worth with my wife this past week.  It's my Russian name.  And hers is Bruschetta Monkovit.

I kind of went on a spree with alternate identities from varying ethnic backgrounds, such as Juan Quatro the Magnificent, the last remaining descendant of the legendary Don Quixote, and a terrible street magician.  And then there's the Japanese KazanInu-Mekka, which translates (very) roughly to "Volcano Robo-Dog."

All this to say, I tend to dance aimlessly around random, off-the-wall topics, following them up with the inevitable closing statement that is bound to contain some kind of arbitrary observation and begin with the phrase "all this to say."

That's because whenever I think of something of actual substance about which I might blog, the option of actually blogging about it is conveniently unavailable to me.  So I usually condense it into a micro-blog and stick it on my facebook as a status update, like "I blame Mario Kart for my habit of throwing banana peels out the window while I'm driving" or "I don't procrastinate at work. I delegate tasks to my future self."

No one would've guessed that these statements are but mere morsels of the feast of blog-able content that flew through my mind too quickly for me to even grasp it, much less tame it and tie it down to this webpage.  The status about Mario Kart is but the echo of a fleeting monologue that digs into the effects of racing games on my lead-footed predisposition, as well as the incredible restraint I demonstrate by not throwing all my trash out the window as I drive up and down I-20 five days a week.

And while the procrastination idea may be something that you'd expect to see on one of those graphic tees by which teenagers find themselves all too amused these days, it was actually the tail end of a conversation I had with my inner monologue about what I would actually do if I were able to communicate with the past and future iterations of myself.

The truth is that there is a journalist inside my head, sitting on a wooden crate in a dimly-lit room; an old-fashioned typewriter sitting atop his lap as he endlessly punches away at the old creaky keys - a 30-page discourse on every thought that passes through his tiny, imaginary world.  Seldom does he ever publish an article, though; and when he does, his vision is too blurry and his memory too faint to dictate properly the essay to my antsy fingertips.

The posts in this blog serve two purposes: firstly, a method of record-keeping so as to provide a means by which I may look back and accurately assess my progress toward my goals, and secondly, my own entertainment.  When ideas never make it to this blog, but are instead thrown off-course into the sea of collective information that is proprietarily owned by Mark Zuckerberg and his evil empire of soul-stealers, they never live up to their true potential, and usually wind up serving the exact opposite purpose than that for which they were intended: they provide records of times in which I was either too busy or too distracted to actually write something substantial, and they provide entertainment for others.  I'm not too worried about the second part, but it's the first one that gets me.

All this to say,* I need some way to put ideas down on paper on the fly, in such a way that I can remember the ideas as they were when they first hit me, while not taking more than a few moments to write them down.  Then once every couple weeks, I just need to vomit them all down in this blog and then edit the post to make it something that's interesting enough for me to want to actually go back and read one day.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I guess I'm already using facebook as that always-accessible idea-jotter-downer.

Huh.

Looks like now all I need is some kind of routine to get myself in the habit of going through all of my old facebook posts and saying "What was I thinking when I wrote that?"  (...which is actually something I already think to myself pretty frequently.  Like when I read my status from last night: "Dude. Big fights make for great make-up sss...shopping.")

So it's settled.  I hereby commence Project RoboDog.  Phase 1: make a point to update my facebook status whenever I am struck with a thought or idea about which I would most likely blog if a computer was in front of me at that moment.  Then, every Friday, review my RoboDog posts and draft an actual blog post about the ideas they represent.

I didn't blog at all in May, and there were so many times I wanted to.  We'll see how June goes.  Facebook Fridays, here I come!

-R.









*You had to see that coming.

So that's my life.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about our future.

I say 'our' and not 'my,' because I gave up the notion of having my own future the day I permanently fused my soul with that of another person.  Leave it to me to make marriage sound like something out of a sci-fi novel.

Anyway.  I am totally excited and totally terrified.  Excited because I've been doing some networking, and I think I've got a good group of people behind me to help convert my painting hobby into a painting career.  If you work in the customer service industry, be nice to everyone.  Because you just might come in contact with someone who is deeply plugged into the art community in your metroplex, and if you are upbeat and helpful, they just might spread word of your paintings to some of their friends who happen to own galleries all around the city who are looking for new talent.

So that's exciting.

This Saturday, I say my farewells to all 12 of my guitar students after teaching them their last lessons.  The closer the day comes, the more I'm bombarded with thoughts about all the things I won't get to teach them.  I'm nearing completion of my book into which I've tried my best to stuff every tidbit of guitar-oriented musical knowledge I managed to absorb during my time in music theory classes, classical guitar ensembles, garage bands, jazz quartets and praise and worship teams.  I plan on getting all of my students' addresses and mailing them copies when it's edited and published.  I also want to put it in stores, so we'll see how that goes.  I've already sent a rough draft to a fellow author/guitarist whose years and talent in both areas far surpasses my own.  He wrote back saying he had learned a few things and really liked the tone of voice I used throughout.

So that's encouraging.

I'm also leaving my current place of work at the end of the month.  I'm transfering to the Fort Worth branch, where they've already made preparations to give me a promotion and a raise.  It will be a great opportunity for me to finally gain some managerial experience.  They already have a few projects with my name on it simply because they heard through the rumor mill that my brother and I were shakin' things up at the Dallas center.  He's leaving too, but he's leaving the company altogether, so the task of carrying on the 'Bayron Brothers' legacy rests on my shoulders.

So that's intimidating.

We got a new laptop.  What we do with big purchases is save a little each month, then when our savings matches the price of something that's available, we just go buy it.  It's our first Windows 7 PC, so we're still in the shock-and-awe stage of new-userism.  This will be the year that Glennda and I completely upgrade our tech lives.  We've already gotten a great deal on a 500GB media hub with a slot for an additional 500GB drive.  We're inheriting a 68" HDTV from my dad when we move in a couple weeks.  We got the new laptop, and we'll be getting new OS's for our iPhones this summer.  We also plan to buy a PS3 sometime this year, and ever since Gizmodo leaked all that stuff about the new iPhone 4, I've had my fingers crossed for a winter 2010 release.  All things considered, by this time next year, we will be set with everything we've been patiently waiting for, and we're doing it all through saving up and spending cash.

So that's freaking awesome.

When people ask me "How are you?" or "What's on your mind?" or "Hey, why are you ignoring me?" everything in this article is what I want to say.  But I can't, because no one really means it when they ask how you're doing, so I usually just respond by saying something like "You don't care" or "Why is your head so fat?" and then I do something really charming so they don't think I'm being serious, although I actually am.  Then I stare off like JD from Scrubs while I mentally write this entire article because they made me think about it.

So that's my life right now.

-R.

Back in the Saddle

Whoa!  It's been forever since I've written in this plog.  Or like two weeks.  I guess I've just had a lot going on.


We've been caught up in the hustle and bustle of hustling and bustling to get everything in order for the Big Move to Arlington.  Apparently my cat thinks this keyboard is a bed, by the way.  Anyway, we found an apartment with almost the exact same floor plan as our last one, so that's really awesome...and kind of strange in a Twilight Zoney kinda way.  I wrote a goodbye e-mail to all of my Dallas co-workers, which most of them found quite entertaining.

I'm currently about 40 pages into a book on how to speak the language of music.  I imagine the finished work will be around 60 or so pages, so once I add illustrations and reformat it to like a 6x8, it could be in the range of 100 or more, not including the appendices.  Once I get it edited and published, I'm going to send a copy to each of my guitar students.  I only have six weeks with each of them before my time as their teacher comes to an end.

My parents got me a $100 Visa gift card for my birthday.  I'm usually of the mindset that gift cards are effortless cop-out gifts given by those who lack creativity.  But I'm also at a point in my life where I appreciate the ability to go spend money on un-budgeted-for things.  Like graphic novels.

•  300 isn't Frank Miller's best work.  But it is something that every Frank Miller fan should have in his collection.  It is drawn with his signature Sin City style, yet the presence of consistent color is just enough to set it apart from the rest of his standalone works.
•  Batman: Year One.  As a diehard Batman fan, I just freaking needed to own this book.  The fact that it is written by Frank Miller just adds to the fact that I freaking needed to own this book.  Regardless of visual artistic style, when I become a graphic novel artist, I imagine my writing style will be very closely akin to that of Miller.  I only wish he had drawn it as well.  I still need The Dark Knight Returns, though...
•  Final Crisis.  You could fill up an entire bookshelf with all the crises that the DC universe has suffered.  In fact, I'm pretty sure my dad actually has a bookshelf in his house labeled DC Crises, with every single one lined up in chronological order.  I got this one mainly because I opened up to the middle and saw what looked like Ultraman being squashed in the hand of an 8-storey Mr. Manhattan.  I know, right??
•  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  I can explain.  First of all, you don't get married to a woman named Glennda and expect to live the rest of your life without hearing about this book constantly.  It wasn't the story that interested me, but rather the fact that it was penciled by one of my all-time favorite comic book artists: Skottie Young.  I became a follower of him about a decade ago when I stumbled upon his website (http://www.leadheavy.com/), which no longer exists.  He's right up there with Frank Miller and Jim Lee in my book.
•  Mystery Novel...ok so I didn't go out and buy a novel called 'mystery novel,' but my wife did order something for me from bn.com and refuses to let me know what it is.  I could go look at the digital receipt sitting in my inbox because she used my own account to buy the thing, but where's the fun in that?

We're house-sitting for some friends this week.  They have these awesome door knobs that open from the inside but not from the outside, so when a house-sitter goes outside to take out the trash and doesn't think to take the house key with him, he ends up spending 15 minutes looking like a burglar trying to break in until he finally finds a half-unlocked window and uses a pooper scooper and a hose to MacGuyver his way back in.  I'm just saying.

I'm going to go pay attention to my cat.  In a fit of attention-craving, he actually climbed up my jeans just now.  It was cute until he kept going and began to climb up my T-shirt.  That was significantly less cute.

And now, you're in the loop.

-R.

Stuff you probably already knew

I solved a problem today.

I was in the office of a sales executive at the local branch of our credit union, discussing the coverages on a new insurance policy.  She had a wooden puzzle on her desk, just begging me to take it apart and figure out how to put it back together again.  So I did.

We talked about comp and collision and liability and premiums and deductibles and  all kinds of other grown-up words, but all the while, I fought and finagled that stupid wooden puzzle.

I joked about how that set of seemingly rectangular pieces of carefully whittled wood were going to keep me up at night if I wasn't able to solve them by the time she'd drawn up the papers.  Once she had them all printed, she began to say "I win" as she slid them across the desk for me to sign, but she never completed the phrase because at the same time, I set the puzzle on her desk, completely assembled.

"Well I'll be.  Do you know how many people walk through these doors every day?"  She asked.  "You're the third person whose ever been able to solve that puzzle in all the sixteen years I've worked here."

Whoadude.  That comment got me thinking about the experience of solving that puzzle, and I came upon three elements that came into play:

Determination.
I was going to include patience in the list, but then I realized that a person's patience is always directly proportionate to their determination to meet an end.  If you really want those donuts, you'll wait in line for as long as you have to wait.  If you really want to finish restoring that classic car, you'll wait as long as you have to for the parts to ship.  Within the context of problem-solving, patience is a symptom of determination, and determination is what you get when you mix desire with willpower.

Time.
If you could solve it in 10 seconds, it wasn't really a problem to begin with.  It was an exercise.  It was practice.  If it's actually a problem worth solving, it will take time.  You'll have to come up with a few wrong answers.  You will have to be puzzled, tricked, and baffled speechless.  This all takes time, and at the end of all of this, if you have determination and this next element, you will end up solving the problem.

Paradigm Shifts.
It's the best way I can think to put it.  First, I envisioned all the pieces mentally, thought about how they would go together, then tried to put them together that way.  Naturally, they didn't fit.  Then I tried to get them into the same position, only using a different method.  That didn't work either.  I tried to force it by shoving and squeezing.  I knew it wouldn't work, but it was worth a shot.  I eventually had to erase my original concept of how it was supposed to fit together, and completely start from scratch with a new understanding of how all the pieces worked (and didn't work) together.  It wasn't until I rearranged my thinking that I got it.  And you must first arrange your thoughts before you can re-arrange them.

All this to say, I had a somewhat revelatory moment today as I sat silently across a room from a complete stranger, effectively cheating on my current insurance provider.  And the lesson is this:

The answers to the big questions can be found in the small things,

if one has the presence of mind to apply his heart to what he observes.

-R.

The Sweet Taste of Solidity

I've finally got myself on some semblance of a daily routine.  I've got 3 alarms that get me up in the morning, and each has its own intention:

6:45 - "Turn me off immediately and go back to sleep.  I'm just here to let you know you're about to have to start waking up soon."

7:00 - "Stay awake long enough to check and make sure I am in fact the 7:00 alarm and not the 7:15 alarm.  Once you find that it's really and truly 7:00, go back to sleep."

7:15 - "You may have to actually get up now.  Wake up your wife and ask if she needs 5 more minutes of sleep.  If so, set the alarm for 7:20 and check your facebook on your phone.  If not, start making her coffee."

...Then I pretty much keep repeating that last step until 7:30, which is the latest we can possibly wake up and still get her off to work on time.

After she leaves for work at 7:45, I eat breakfast and do an hour of mental workout, then an hour of physical workout.

- Mental workouts consist of logic games, memorization techniques, creative outlets and learning new skills.
 - Physical workouts consist of 15 minutes of yoga, 30 minutes of weights, and 15 minutes of tai chi.

I usually finish all that around 10.  Then bible study and quiet meditation usually takes me to 11.  I spend the next hour doing various household tasks like laundry, emptying the litter box, etc.  Lately I've been spending this time packing boxes for Arlington.

I start making Glennda lunch at noon, because her lunch break is at 12:30.  We eat lunch together, and then she leaves around 1:15.  If I have anything to finish up, I'll do it here.  Otherwise, I start into all my unfinished semi-recreational tasks.

(Right now I'm tailoring a bunch of misfit and hand-me-down clothes to make them more awesome.  I'm taking in a pair of Glennda's pants so I can wear them.  Other times I'll take Bear for a walk, work on one of the stories I'm writing or just paint.  Or record myself painting and make a YouTube video out of it.)

I'll leave for work at 3:45 and when I come home at 9:45 Glennda and I will relax while watching our recorded shows.  Then she falls asleep and I read whatever book I'm going through until about 10:30 or 11.

So that's what my weekday looks like.  All this to say, I've finally been following this pattern long enough to call it a certifiable habit.  And it feels great.  I read somewhere that if you write down your routine and read it back to yourself, it helps to solidify it in your brain as fact.  So this journal entry is kind of just the last brick in the road to the routine-led day for which I've been striving for a couple years.

Ecclesiastes 10:18

-R.

Calvin and Hobbes rocks your face*

So if you haven't discovered the greatness that is Regina Spektor, you need to pick up her album far and listen to it until your ears bleed.

----

I've always been fascinated with the secret arts of the far east...Tai Chi, QiGong, Fajin, Kundalini Hatha-Yoga, Feng Shui, that kind of thing.  Not only am I intrigued by the medicinal possibilities, but it's always a fun exercise in apologetics to compare things like Taoism and Buddhism to the ultimate source of Truth.  I was having a conversation with my dad about how much I admire the level of discipline found among Buddhists.  He responded by saying that the problem with the Buddhists is that they are too perfectly balanced.  Whaaat?  Is there such a thing as too perfectly balanced?  Then he said that things like love and passion require an imbalance.  An imbalance of priority, of importance, of desire.  And it makes total sense.  After all, the Buddhists are the ones who first realized that in order to do away with the negatives in life, one must abandon pursuit of the positives.

----

I watch my wife's shows because I like spending time with her doing what she likes doing.  She watches Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice.  In one of these shows (it's still hard for me to tell them apart at times), one of the characters says that she's probably going to hell for trying to force her pregnant teenage daughter to have an abortion.  It got me thinking - there are really people out there who assume that the Christian doctrine teaches that committing sins condemn people to hell.  If you murder someone, you're going to hell for it.  We tell people that no amount of good works can get you into heaven, so why would we make people believe bad works will get you any closer to hell?  When thinking in terms of salvation, you must think of 'sin' not as a set of actions, but rather as a state of being.  Namely, being dirty.  We're all born dirty, and we stay dirty until we let God clean us off.  The bible calls this process sanctification.  If we die dirty, we go to hell.  If we die sanctified, we go to heaven.  It's as simple as that.*  In my humble opinion, there are just as many Christians who need to learn this as non-believers.

----

They say you learn something new every day.  They're freaking liars, whoever they are.  However, I would say that most people probably learn something new every week.  This past week, I learned how to turn a standard household laser pointer into a candle-lighting, paper-burning, pocket-sized sci-fi torture weapon.  That's all I'm gonna say about that before I get myself in trouble.  Glennda, if you read this, the cat was already missing some fur from his tail before I learned this, and no lasers* were involved in the removal of said fur.

----

So a guy I used to work with at the Y is taking an LSAT course where I work.  He once made a disrespectful joke about another one of our female co-workers (who is now my wife), and my first instinct was to break his nose.  The only reason I didn't was because I didn't want to lose my job (the fact that about 30 kids would've been witnesses didn't even factor into my equation until much later in a moment of guided retrospection).  Still, after all these years, the second he walked in our doors this afternoon, the first thing I thought to say was "Hey I remember you - I almost punched your face in.  How've you been?"  I'm not really the type of guy you'd normally find smacking people around,* but there are just some people you don't disrespect - and my wife is one of them.

----

That's really all that's going on in my head at the moment.

Pieces,
-R.

















* (insert long, fine print disclosure here)

Checking In

My computer keeps giving me the blue screen of death. I am 98% certain it's iTunes-related, which makes it all the more ironic that I'm using my iPhone to write this.

I set some goals for myself exactly a month ago, and now that it's officially February, I'm taking my first peek over my shoulder at the last 31 days to see how everything's gone.

My own personal brand of logic dictates that if I can be disciplined enough to take one photo a day with my phone for a month, I just might be able to do other more significant tasks with a similar amount of regularity. Currently I have 31 pictures from January.

I've also put together a list of twelve non-fiction books I want to read this year (ideally at a rate of one per month), and I'm happy to report that I just finished the first one this past week.

I've put myself on a plan to work out hardcore Tue-Fri every week to get back in shape. The first couple weeks were torture, but I'm slowly getting there and have the photos to show it.

...but then there's that creed. The creed based on such a great idea. The creed that was to change who I was and how I lived this one life that has been given to me. It worked out great at first like all these silly things do, but a couple weeks in I started thinking that maybe I'd bitten off more than I could chew. It became extremely difficult and exhausting to live up to every facet of that freakin' creed every moment of every day.

But y'know what? You don't win a race by jogging. All the great thinkers of the world were also great doers. In one of the greatest movies of all time, a quitting athelete offers this explanation her coach: "It just got too hard," to which the coach replies,

"It's supposed to be hard. It's the hard that makes it great. If it was easy, everyone would do it."

You can't rise to a challenge that doesn't exist. If it's not
challenging, you're not growing from it. And this year is supposed to be about growth for me, so I say bring on the creed.

It's been a great month and, all things considered, I'm off to a great start. But I can top January and I fully intend to.

Oh, and here's my pic of the day:



Styrofoam cup + pen which I used as an engraving tool = reason #47 why I am a guitar teacher.

Stay tuned, folks
-R.

Godzilla hates Japanese people.

I'm not an insomniac.  But I do find myself having daydreams...only at night, when I'm supposed to be sleeping.

My apologies, but the nerd within me is forcing me to take a second to point out that the above sentence embodies quite perfectly the mess that is modern American colloquial vernacular, in that it focuses on the topic of  daydreams, while simultaneously contradicting the  very meaning of the word on all accounts, but does so without sacrificing the grammatical integrity of the sentence as a whole - an act which is a paradox unto itself.

Anyway.  I know it's time to empty my brain when I start finding new constellations in the glow-in-the-dark stars I put on my roof about two years ago.

The back story there is that since before we were dating, Glennda wanted me to go stargazing with her.  We never found the time or the place, so I eventually just dropped ten bucks at Party City and we "stargazed" in my bedroom.  But we were engaged by then so it wasn't weird.  She commented that they weren't all that bright, and I shot back with this line (that, looking back, was quite cheesy, but seemed awesome at the time): "Stars shine brighter when you look with your heart."

The point is, we go to bed.  We watch recorded TV shows.  Glennda falls asleep.  Then I watch the Science Channel until I fall asleep.  Or, I watch the Science Channel for 3 hours and then blog because my mind is racing.  And right now, it's going so fast it would make Speed Racer pee himself.  And it would make Godzilla destroy Tokyo, 'cause he'd be all like "Why is that guy's brain going so fast!?  I hate Japanese people!!"

I normally don't post these...well, posts.  What I love about blogger is that you can save stuff as drafts.  That way, you can still keep personal journal-like entries without putting them out there for the interwebs to devour.  Like one time I wrote this song about gnomes and leprechauns and birds that give live birth instead of laying eggs.  I was so proud of the perfect meter of the song that I had to write it down somewhere, but when I read it back to myself, it was less of a clever song and more of an essay that should've been be entitled  "Why All My Friends Stopped Talking To Me."

So here I am, brain-vomiting all the nonsensical imaginings that keep popping in and out of my head like tiny bits of inter-dimensional popcorn or those subatomic particles of anti-matter that people like Stephen Hawking claim are the cause of the shrinking and eventual demise of black holes all throughout the universe.

What??  I have no earthly idea what I just said.  But I'm sure it made perfect sense.

Well, my brain seems to be slowing down now.  And I know I must be falling asleep because I just deleted three paragraphs of understandably random yet fantastically entertaining text, which took me approximately seven minutes to write (give or take seven minutes).  And I can't tell you why I deleted it because as of this very second, I don't even remember what it said.  Are you as confused as I am?

Good night, Neverland.

Pbthbpbth.

-R.

Ode to Bear

(To be sung to the tune of the song "We're Off to See the Wizard")

Oh, my cat drinks from the toilet,
And no one can figure out why.
It's not because he's thirsty, 'cause
His water bowl's not even dry!

If ever you wonder if cats are weird,
Just look at the one that I've got here.
Because, because, because, because, becaaauuuusse
Because of the curious things he does.

(Da-da-da-da-da-da-da, da-dum)

Oh, my cat's a freaking weirdo,
Because he drinks out of the john!

(Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-da-da ba-da-da ba-dum)

Anime Cat!!

-R.

Getting there...

So I scanned in the tattoo sketch and cleaned it up in Photoshop.  The three main components are the Servant, the cross, and the compass.  I always knew the cross would be over his head, but it's the compass that's getting to me.  Here are the two ideas I'm torn between:

This was my first instinct.  My only reservation is that the initial sketch was pretty well contained within the circular border of the compass.  This kind of separates the elements and creates focal confusion.

This is a more accurate representation of the original sketch, all the way down to the size and placement of the compass' outer ring.  It looks more like a compass and is easier on the eyes.

When I compare the two, the first one looks more edgy.  Like a lot more.  It also slightly resembles a Victorian Catholic crucifix.  The second one is more true to the original, but there's still just something about it that's rubbing me the wrong way.

The shape of a tattoo really determines where it goes on the body.  The first one would probably go on my shoulder, whereas the second I would put on my chest.  It all depends on that dadgum compass.

This is all for now.