Category: Me Myself&I

Woke up. Had to go to my parents to help with some internet cable-needs-to-be-rewire-from-the-street-problem. RER A, RER E. Apparently my help isn’t needed, dad’s way to not make me feel like I have to be there for them. My sister has some eczema on her face which seems to block her from doing anything useful at home so I set the table, go get some bread and help mom while dad goes picking up the grandparents. My grandfather’s friend, Parkinson is keeping him warm and also, very very stiff. He can barely swallow so it stresses out mom and all of us enough that we can’t really have conversations. Plus, talking about a 53 year old shooting his ex boss in NYC or Apple winning against Samsung is not that funny, more like signs of a completely sick society.

Tension, I get that dad has like 300 things to build/fix/repair and mom is on his ass it feels like they reach all the time for the last strengths they have to not fight or scream. Grandpa is losing it he almost wants to punch his daughter when she forces him to drink water and he’s all like “no, you calm down” it’s time to grab him with dad and put him on his bed for a nap, it’s always a little weird after a bottle of wine and lunch, dude’s still heavy. Dad asks if I want him to drive me back to the RER A, I decline politely and push him to go nap, I know he needs it. My sister is gone to bed because her eyes hurt but she come down with me and put her ass in front of the TV while I clean up the kitchen. Mom thanks me, I say bye to everyone, go see grandpa who’s sliding off the bed, put him back in position and talk to him a second but it’s like, he’s not here at all. I smile and go. RER E, RER A.

Public transportation is good to see how bad people’s behaviors are. Back home, grab my skateboard change clothes, back to RER A. Stretching, breathing, pushing, focusing, jumping. Smiling, spitting, snoring, blowing my nose, sweating. Finally, train back home. Black baby in stroller looking at long nose white dudes like they are really weird makes me smile, makes me think about my past, creates one of those big ball in my throat. Doors open and it’s like the world is on fire and I don’t need no water, let the motherfucker burn.

Burn, motherfucker, burn.

My father doesn’t play music, has no rhythm, no pitch and doesn’t listen to music either.

My mom played harp when she was eighteen, I never saw her play it in my life. She played a bit of piano and can read music, she likes some music from time to time (her parents had a music store).

My sister is a mix, she listens to some music with her headphones but otherwise, she’s like my dad.

No one in my extended families plays music. Obviously, I’m the only black dude of the clan and naturally, I’m the one living and breathing music.

It’s been weird, I started piano lessons at 6 in a situation where my new parents tried to give me anything I’d like to try and me trying to please my new parents by saying yes to everything. Well at twelve, I was over classical piano. I was frustrated to play a music that doesn’t make me feel so good, I wanted upbeat and funny stuff to play, fat chords and imaginative melodies. Black music.

Took bass at fifteen when my friends needed a bassist for a rock trio. I remember thinking that I would like this instrument, because I loved bass notes on the piano ( does being a lefty affect that? I don’t know). My parents didn’t give a shit so my grandparents took me to a store and bought me my lefty bass and an amp for 200 bucks. A week later like every fresh musician I was like “was it a good idea?”.

A bit more than fifteen years later, my parents still don’t give a fuck. I mean, never encouraged me, never asked me to play, never asked me anything about it, never said anything cool about it to people, they just kept telling me to turn my shit down at home. My take on computers, composing, playing piano again, starting guitar and making songs? Not a word. Except once or twice in front of a lot of family people, like to make it like they care about what their son does musically, which is kind of not that true. Sigh.

So when I’m compiling a couple of years of tracks and music, building sound design for my 2012 demo reel, I think about all that. I hear my stuff, it makes me pretty proud or really proud knowing how I had to believe in myself and work harder. Some stuff I almost don’t even know how I composed it, how it came to reality but I sure feel like having A LOT more to express refining my skills and tools. Yeah.

Of course it would have felt better, I would have felt more confident with some support or I can’t even imagine what’s like to simply enjoy playing music with family but that’s the way it goes. Some room for improvement in my life, definitely.

The scariest thing about last weekend is not Todd Akin, it’s being a teacher and get five years in prison for having sex with students at your place, all of them being above 18. Of course all gave consent.

5 years. Half a decade for that.

It’s the worst message you can send to all the legally horny women out there. Todd and his stupid shit? Ignore this bitch who cares, we all know he’s lying and saying retarded shit, water-doesn’t-get-you-wet retarded. Rape is serious. We know, women know only a very few morons would say the opposite and we will not listen to them.

But this? It’s saying you are a woman and you can’t act like men. You can’t have legal sex if you are a wife but you can have illegal sex when you are a husband. No judging, no moral just facts.

If you’re a woman it’s considered disgusting behavior, you’re a monster but if you’re a dude and you get caught it’s “shit happens, let’s move on” time? WTF.

This story is saying if you are a woman you can’t have strong sexual appetite. You can’t possibly want to act and decide to have group sex at your place, with adults, consent young people you know. Uh yes, she could.

Texas uses this no-sex-between-teachers-and-students excuse to grill this woman for cheating on her husband because the good behavior for a woman in Texas -and in the Judeo-Christian West world- is to shut the fuck up, raise kids and wait for your husband’s cock in your mouth when he gets back from whatever. Maybe from some other pussyhole.

I don’t know, it bothers me. I want women to be free and enjoy life like this teacher did (nobody was harmed or molested). I want them to not worry about thinking of sex, I want them to long for sex if they want and I’m tired of associating women and “non-sex” and rape as if it was the only way for women and all of us to think about this beautiful thing that is having fun with your body reaching higher pleasure, sweating.

I think it would profit everyone.

I had forgotten about Paris summer smell. Heavy weather, warm metro hallways, pungent pee, pungent sweat or pungent perfume, the smell of a storm coming. So many triggers. I’m always amazed at a perfume power. This one reminds me of this friend in high school and also of her place, this one immediately places me in this office with these people, this one is this blonde skateboarder from ten years ago… The smell of plants, so different from L.A. There’s nothing frying around. Riding my bike along the river, this almost non-existent breeze…

Of course it hurts too. These summers spent thinking “France is awesome!” only to realize year after year that it might not be the case, at least for me. It’s hard to divorce.

 
First one!

My first commit on my game, I guess things are becoming a bit more official when stuff is git’d. Michel coded and showed me -again- how disgustingly weird and unintuitive programming is. Even with tools like Unity we’re still SO into the ice age of coding, you don’t even know. Fuck.

I might have playable mechanics and a really basic version of my game soon. Exciting. Also, still doodling about the name even though I have an idea.

You wouldn’t believe how much I was into space when I was a kid. Completely nuts about it. Ariane 4, the future Ariane 5, the future shuttle everything was ready in the 80s to dream about that. If I had had the internet I would have tried to make something in this area. What not to love about space, especially for me.

Not the first black man to doodle about that, apparently.

I had learned how rockets are powered (liquid this, liquid that mix and BOOM) and Jean-Loup Chrétien was so inspiring. Oh, before driving rockets you need to fly fighter aircrafts? AWESOME.

That was when I was a kid and had a blank canvas in my mind and the feeling that the entire world is aiming for up there, right? RIGHT?

Today I don’t give a fuck about space. Fuck space.

Of course we can do amazing thing like sending a robot on wheels with a ZERO error margin far from Earth I know we can. I know we can master perfection despite all the philosophy BS. But it’s not beautiful when we are incapable of doing things this way here, when it’s about us because of the incredible, embarrassingly huge amount of waste of money and resource every fucking day. When we try to solve our humanity problems, we suck. That ruins everything for me. It’s all bitter in my mouth.

Imagine if this human power, this focus and dedication, this money were used to fix shit on earth: everything that goes wrong down here would be resolved in a year. Maybe less. That’s what makes me feel like “fuck your red rocks” because during that time a white dude shot Sikh people dead because of how they look, people argue over chicken and gay rights and a young 21 year old black man got shot in the head in the back of a police car. And so on. It’s 2012 and only white people dream about space, go on the Twitter and watch. A large majority doesn’t give a fuck about that stuff because we have to deal with stupid shit that shouldn’t exist anymore. I mean, we’re sending robots 60 million kilometers away at the same time. It hurts.

Science, NASA and professors, give me affordable highly efficient solar panel, give me affordable highly efficient fuel cells give me affordable highly efficient water filtering systems give me things that we all over the world would use. But you can’t. The US will not pay for things making the world a better place for no profit, the US are barely willing to make you all dream with a little car on a red planet. I’m sure Lonnie G Johnson’s JTEC engine is getting shut down by every possible entity. Profit.

It’s exhausting. The waste, Jesus. The waste.

Beyond that, it’s like the Olympics. So much bullshit about how “we’re all together, to infinity and beyond”. Solve 40 year old social issues for real before bragging that shit in my face every 4 years.

Credit photo: Sean Bonner.

L.A. April 2012. Atwater Village, coffee, friend, talking. Click.

Another truth imho is that we all watch too much TV, and that’s what really makes us crazy.

I feel it. I’m completely Breaking Bad’s bitch, jumping and cringing in front of my monitor once a week. I started  the show over just by watching the pilot again.

And it’s violent, I had forgotten about it because I’m sedated like most of you guys. It’s violently “real”, there’s something terrible about the fact that if drugs were legal, there would be no critically acclaimed show (same with Weeds). There would be probably much less violence in Mexico too. I’d be good with that.

Our global society  is not handling well endemic problems (unemployment) and people’s solutions (I’ve been told that dealing drugs is very lucrative). Meanwhile, a TV drama shows us exactly how we can justify death to provide for our families and my family deserves more than yours. It feels plain wrong. Back to Scarface. At the same time we try to be more humans and caring (gay marriage and goose loving and whatnot) but it’s totally against what we value out there with our minds and our pockets: violence, aggressiveness. Dexter, Call of Duty, Steve Jobs, Skrillex. Mad Men is like a new genre I call “Quiet 60s Conservatism Aggression”.

We’re angry too. I understand “getting it out” through violence: sports, playing punk rock or slapping the bass are great activities for that. But this aggression towards others, everyone, wholly and fully against anything for your little clan is a little too primal.

Simply put, we ain’t no fucking wolves no more.

-Courage +Wolf

It’s always good to think about something and see articles echoing my thoughts.

The dangerous gap between those who make software, and those who use it.

I’m a high end user comfortable with anything on a computer, knowing how things work to a ridiculous level. I’m not saying that to brag, I’m saying it by helping my mom on Office 2010 or reading this article above or how some people really still love a decade old XP’s interface and violently express it on the Windows 8 blog.

The truth is we, high end users developers and designers are fighting over stupid shit that 99% of people don’t care about and we live in a masturbatory bubble.

This is what I said about game programmers not listening to what’s going on outside that bubble, what players, users clients whatever you call them, really want. You guys should not just be listening to the hype or what would make your app, service and yourself cool but you should listen to people who are actively expressing some needs even if they seem to suck. Because these people have a problem that you can fix, and might even charge for. You make him happy, you earn some income.

Other echo on my reflections about race, black people and computer games.

We’re not saying that this stuff exists because of some hidden malice or secret industry-wide conspiracy to keep minorities in America down. The much sadder truth is that all this bullshit comes from simple, old-fashioned laziness. There’s no good reason video games can’t be infinitely smarter, more responsible and better than this — it’s just going to take time, thought, hard work and a bit of empathy.

And shit, who has time for that? Game developers have got to get another Callfield: Dutybattle out the door by Q3 or the EA monster will devour their children.

See the pattern? People so into their own power of creating apps and games that they don’t care or respect people at the other end. Seriously, stop this shit and please reconsider your position on this.

Oh you have to watch this 8 minutes Call of Juarez video it’s just… How the hell can they get away with this.

2012, we live in a world where it’s forbidden to post a nude picture on pretty much any social media service but where you can buy assault riffles easily.

I know it will probably not change in my lifetime but you people spawning kids jesus fuck you’d better invert the trend because maybe that’s just me but I’d rather have a 16 year old daughter taking pictures of her body than dead (yeah it’s a stretch to see it this way but that’s nothing compared to more-gun-control-is-reducing-my-freedom people’s insane arguments, nothing).

Screw you, I love my Prius.

My dad has one. He never gave a shit about cars (you wouldn’t believe at how he throws his rusted tools or kick some stuff in the trunk of a brand new car) but after using French cars -yes, PSA- for decades and having problems with them, he thought he would try this new thing and save the world blabla.

He just gave his old Prius to his brother and got a new one. He drives a lot, never had a single problem. Not once.

I’ve been pretty amazed at the design of this car. It’s more than well thought. Every single detail. It doesn’t look that good from the outside but the inside man. Absolutely nothing is left behind, everything has a purpose. That’s beautiful design. The absolute elegance of gliding on electric power, not making any noise but a little electrical hiss? Priceless. Only this felt more amazing.

It’s painful to watch my country not getting it. The car business is massively supported by French taxes and we’re hitting a wall but we still try to not look at the Prius, the Yaris or German cars that are so popular and of course sell much better than our own production. Our competition is better than us and three car manufacturers who can’t export in a small country like France is more than overkill.

But the worst part is that the industry today, the main industry today is not cars. We lost this one (and we’ll probably lose the high speed train one, we never managed to sell our tech despite having a 30 years head start fuck me). The industry today and tomorrow is happening with software, services and all this high tech where we’re getting absolutely fucked too, by a heavy competition and a terrible lack of support from the government compared to the disgusting amount of money injected in the car business lost battle for years.