An Idea for a Short Sci-Fi Film

Dude and his friend are drinking beer in a park when a small meteor strikes a few yards away. They approach the smoldering crater and gaze in awe as extraterrestrial life blossoms forth. They observe that this form of life experiences time differently than they in that everything seems to occur at warp speed. They watch as a miniature civilization dawns and progresses from the pre-stone age to a postmodern age in a matter of minutes.

They begin to discuss the moral, spiritual and scientific implications of their discovery. Unable to comprehend the meaning of the lives of alien life forms as they watch generations go from birth to death in a matter of seconds, Dude and Friend destroy the society much like a young child destroys an anthill.

We're all Gonna Die!

In the short term, we could damage the Earth irreparably through climate change, nuclear war or what have you.

In the slightly longer term, we could be destroyed be a cosmic collision, be is asteroid, comet or other.

In the much longer term, we could fall victim to a collision between the milky way and another galaxy.

In a similar timeframe, we could be sucked into the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy.

Lastly, we could freeze as the universe expands ever outward and cools as it does so.

Our sun will inevitably explode at some point.

With all this in mind, nihilism seems like the best option moving forward.

Le Mythe de Sisyphe

Here's my latest sound design project. Have a listen to Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus, then stick around for the explanation.

Le Mythe de Sisyphe

For this piece, I took Albert Camus' essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus) in the original French and isolated all the letters that also represent musical notes (A-G). To make the chord progression that carries throughout the piece, I used only the first paragraph and determined the total number of letters in the words from which these letters came and translated them into musical intervals. For example:

"par" has one musical note, A. It also has three letters in it, so I made a chord with a root A and a third interval.

I did this for all the musical notes in the first paragraph and used whole notes for the chords.

Taking the second paragraph, I again isolated all the musical notes, then used the remaining non-musical letters to determine the rhythm of these notes. I counted the non-musical notes after each musical note and based on the number assigned the preceeding note either a whole(7+ non-musical intervening letters), half (5-6), quarter(3-4), eighth(1-2) or sixteenth(0) note rhythm. Here's an example:

The phrase "ce long" has three musical notes- C, E and G. The C has no non-musical letters between it and the next musical note E, so it gets a 16th note value. The E, on the other hand, has three non-musical letters between it and the G, so it would be given a quarter note vaue.

I repeated this process for the remaining pargraphs in the essay, and assigned intuitively each paragraph an instrument. I then staggered the instruments so they entered and exited in an acceptable fashion.

Finally, I concluded the piece with all instruments playing Albert Camus' signature, a chord composed of two As, a C, a B and an E.

A Flawed Call to Arms

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world, Unite!

You "have nothing to lose." That's not enough to motivate me. "A world to win" is too abstract. Give me something tangible to gain.



Count me out. I prefer the status quo.

A 2 am rumination

In reading the Communist Manifesto, I'm coming away with one major thought. Too many of the authors' defenses hinge on "You fault us for wanting to do away with X? Well nine tenths of the population do not have X, so this is not a change," or "...X is a bourgeois-created illusion."

I want to tear apart this book and lay out all the arguments based on assumption and faulty logic. It makes me mad that a book like this changed the face of the world.

Here We Go Again

The fish laid eggs again. I didn't think any were viable at first, but second inspection showed me some have little baby fish growing in them. Get ready for round two...

A Writing Prompt

Taken from Dan Wiencek's "Thirteen Writing Prompts" on McSweeney's:


Write a scene showing a man and a woman arguing over the man's friendship with a former girlfriend. Do not mention the girlfriend, the man, the woman, or the argument.

Write a story that ends with the following sentence: Debra brushed the sand from her blouse, took a last, wistful look at the now putrefying horse, and stepped into the hot-air balloon.

A husband and wife are meeting in a restaurant to finalize the terms of their impending divorce. Write the scene from the point of view of a busboy snorting cocaine in the restroom.


I found these to be worth sharing.

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