I guess I’ve only drawn 3 asciis in the last 2 years. That’s a pretty good ratio. I think I’ll keep that pace up. BTW, this marks my 15th year drawing ascii art. LOL is me.
Here’s the newest one, if you can’t read it, then it wasn’t meant to be.
More ascii!
Enjoy, until the year 2010. DON’T DO DRUGS. Muah :*
I had meant to sign up to Goodreads earlier, but completely forgot. Well, thanks to Twitter, I remembered. Here’s a quick review I slapped together 3 minutes ago. I finished this novel (well, almost finished…) about a month ago, and felt pretty bitterly disappointed. It was OK. But there was this hope that it would hit me like those old William Gibson and Bruce Sterling novels did in the BBS era. Back then, those books had a kind of gleaming freshness that captured this weird underground zeitgeist. Unfortunately, I think I’m now too old to get caught up in many new underground zeitgeists, and I think the whole internet boom that surrounded the cyberpunk movement has created a situation where those movements themselves will be harder to germinate. With the internet long ago gone “0-second”, I’m sure there’s ton of mini-bursts of heat to capture the attention, but when will something as large as the initial personal computer boom hit again?
—-
rating: 3 of 5 stars
Starts out with an interesting premise straight from the bowels of early 90s cyberpunk: People eat LSDesque feathers to get high, get hurt and generally escape reality. The landscape is a dystopia. The protagonists are mutants, shadow people, aliens and cyborgs. Techno music is rampant, though there’s a surprising lack of computer lingo and presence. It’s more rave-culture than mirrorshades.
And as novel as it all starts, it sort of ends up churning it’s wheels. For me, there was too much emphasis on dream-state Vurtcursion flashbacks, and not enough actual plot. The “experimental” writing gets tired as the storyline peters out. What starts out as an interesting premises actually devolved into a somewhat rambling snooze, and I ended up donating my copy about 4/5ths of the way through.
Maybe decent reading for someone just searching for an interesting novel and concept. However, I was hoping for what would have been, to me, a rare unearthed Cyberpunk era gems.
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IMAGES MAY SHOCK AND OFFEND
This is what my boss’s boss had me do this evening. The plan is to piss my boss off as a Secret Santa surprise. This is admittedly some pretty pedestrian blogging, but we can’t all be Egyptian freedom fighters.
Luckily for her, I’m 49% homosexual, with a strong tendancy towards awesome interior design. Check out the following steeloz. I smell future opportunities in cubicle redecoration.
Sashay!
is this image really as small as it appears in the editing window??? hopefully the “awesome” shows through
walls, filing cabinets, phone, chair , even the stack of papers in the inbox… all vandalised!
shit’s tight, yes? sort of hoping the monitor is a fire hazard (and believe me, i made sure to make it as flammable as possible!)
i’d totally rock this pattern at home. check out the arm rests! fucking sophisticated!
here’s the epitome of that 49%. attention to detail: fully functioning access to n0rp via cd-rom. classy
individually wrapped pens. penholder. swass desk design perfect for miniature wargaming or changing diapers.
I’m filled with a mixture of pride and hate. This calls for some Starbucks.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
The following is something I drew not so recently – at least a year ago. It was intended as an NFO file for some cause or another, I don’t remember and it’s not important. I think they wanted something punk rock, maybe a skull or a demon, but they got this ink-blot doodle instead. Neither side of the bargain was happy so it’s unfinished, but essentially done. It will never be worked on again, and that’s OK.
What this piece kind of represents to me is a state of mind I rarely get the opportunity to capture these days. Back in the day, when I was young, drunk and carefree, I’d get hit with the spirit and work on ascii art for hours at a time. When things went well it was all an all consuming passion. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss that feeling of pure creativity. It was electric, and when things were firing on all cylinders I would be completely out of control of my conscious mind. My fingers would move possessed over the keyboard, and I’d place every singleascii character with precision. Shading, shaping, and styles were all things to be seriously studied, improved upon and challenged. I’d often wake from a trance in my smoke filled room, ashtray full on my ripped, folding card table computer desk. My ass would hurt from sitting in a steel folding chair. The heat from the 486 I used far too long warming me. Sweaty probably. Tired. Completely satisfied with life.
Pausing, and thinking about the lack of this presence in my life is sad. Maybe more bittersweet. I’m sure everyone of a certain age has parallels to the feeling. An occasional melancholic reminiscence of days past. It’s a feeling I can appreciate in a lonely, resigned sort of way.
Not to say I give up hope of returning to ascii Art as a pure form. For now, the occasional “commissioned” piece can be drawn fast, and usually simply. Effort is needed to complete the piece, but usually not drenching obsession. I have my wife, life, career and goals.
I’ve been listening to the rapper Scarface’s “The Fix” LP a lot lately. He’s always been one of my favorites, and I grew up listening to his solo albums and the Geto Boys stuff. He’s always struck me, and countless others I’m sure, as something of a spiritual man. When he’s expressing darker emotions, he has a finesse that transcends usual genre cliches and speaks a lot of universal truths. Not to mention his gravelly voice is a perfect instrument for lament. One track, “Someday”, involves his spiritual beliefs concerning God, creation and the idea of belief. It’s good stuff. It always is when he’s reflecting on these things. But if the subject matter had been different, I think the last line of this song would have caught my attention. With a simple couplet he captured the feeling I got, and get, when inspiration strikes. I doubt it will translate to text, especially without context, but here it is:
“And I was singing this morning, got touched by the spirit
So I wrote it down for the homies to hear it”
You can download the song here
The saturation isn’t quite the same as it should be when viewed in Notepad, but this is close enough I guess
Your mission, and yt, ou will be forced, at gunpoint, to accept it is as follows:
Help me with Photoshop. Or if you’re a communist Gimp. Or if you’re ironic, MS-Paint. Whatever, I need to do a couple of things, and I’m much to busy playing the market to learn them myself. Time is money.
First, I want to get a better rendering of the header ascii/jpg I’m using on this blog. You know, the wicked ASCii one. Not only will a nicer looking render serve to make this, the most widely syndicated blog related to file_id.diz and .nfo file art, look cleaner, it’ll also help me pull underage hoes. Allow me to elaborate.
When (not if) one of you decides to help me, and makes a totally kick ass, anti-aliased, high resolution conversion of this ascii, I’m going to make it into a custom license plate for my new automobile (which may or may not be a 1982 windowless conversion van with an aftermarket ice cream truck sound system). Your art will undoubtedly be featured in rap videos as I anticipate my pimped ride being highly sought after as a representation of The Real.
The license plate will be Illmatic, So So Def, Fresh, Clean and Charged 2 The Game.
Second, I need to know how to convert white text on black background ascii (as seen in this post) into black text on white background. The infamous “Notepad Mode” so revered in the ascii community. I’m sure this is a fairly simple matter of reversing the pixel’s polarity without splitting their nuclei. However, I’m going to need assistance, for which I’ll be really grateful.
As a reward, here’s some Jeep Beat Music to enjoy while you rush to contact me.
Well, I guess this post is sort of late. There was a renegade demo party that just ended. If I had posted this two days ago, it could have been an advertisement. As it stands, I guess it’s a footnote. That’s fitting.
Anyway, this party was called RVScene. It was held outside of NViDiA’s major US demo party, NVScene. I’m sure it was fun, but I couldn’t attend. But I was there in spirit, with this pretty crappy, pretty rushed File_id.diz art I did for the organizers.
I’m sure I’ll have more news about it soon, when everyone “recovers”.
Truckin on down the line!
So another Anonymous friend of mine requested an ascii signature for some bulletin board. He showed me another user’s signature, and yeah, there’s limitations whenever making an ascii signature these days. Formating, font type, etc, all tend to make an oldschool thing turn into a hunking pile of doo. This is what I drew for him:
And this is the result of the webification:
Just another in a long line of ascii art related examples of why progress sucks. 
I had completely forgotten about this ascii. Found it while randomly surfing the interweb. Thanks to Lord Scarlet for his 16 colors site, where this was hosted.
This is what I’ll call a “Mega-Joint”. Strangely, the time stamp on 16 Colors points this towards being drawn in 2001, which makes sense with some of the imagery in the ascii (WTC Towers, terrorists, burning flags – Canadian ascii sceners were a notoriously jealous bunch). At this time, the ascii scene was already bemoaning the fact that it was “dead”. Yet here we see the output of five artists as we drew simultaneously in Pablodraw. Try getting something like that going these days.
For the record, and to answer the questions posed in the impromptu “chat area” at the bottom of the canvas, i drew the dicks. You’re welcome.
This is how we chill
My car got broken into last night when I was at work. They stole my radio, and presumably some CDs. I haven’t honestly even looked inside it yet. You know, I’m a really busy, high rollin’ man. I let The Help worry about these things.
Anyway, I drew this horrible, horrible, horrrrrriiiible ascii while I was on the phone with my wife. Also, I was working at the time. So even though the timestamp says this ascii took 20 minutes (!) to complete, it was more like 2. I think the quality of the work really reflects that. L.O.L.
That’s a burgler to the left. He’s sayin’ “KEKEKE” and waiting to steal my Cookie Crisps while listening to my bOOMBOx.
Since the cleaning guy hasn’t gotten here yet (see previous post), I drew a really quick ascii. It says “Bored” if you run a 0day group, and want to use it as a file_id.diz feel free. I will expect 0second access to your top fTPZ.
Note: This is the first non-outside image I’ve posted here, I have no clue how it’ll work out. Also, I was too lazy/tired to edit the actual image size. Maybe its 3 gagillion pixels large.
