ninjutation

Songs on my Mind

2006-09-28T20:11:00.000-06:00

A couple weeks ago for Jacqui's birthday we were up caving and two songs ran through my mind the whole day

Song Number One
Eagle Seagull - Your Beauty Is A Knife I Turn On My Throat

Song Number Two
Josh Ritter - Me & Jiggs

I guess this is an mp3 blog now... today anyway.

Chance Meeting Over A Plate of Cookies

2006-04-25T23:13:00.000-06:00

Click Here for Video

I replaced the embedded video with a link so as to not reload every time.

I wanted to make a video where I was interacting with myself. This was the end product... or at least so far. It isn't quite finished yet. I just thought i would share it as it is so far. Enjoy.

I could play slots all day long

2006-04-09T23:06:00.000-06:00

This was me playing with shadows during a recent trip into the Canyonlands south of Moab Utah. This was taken at sunset across a really narrow slot canyon.

Mega Mega Blue Thing

2006-03-03T15:04:00.000-07:00

Construction Photography

I love tunnels...

2006-02-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

I was hanging out in a culvert taking pictures, and then I put a few other images into it. I just loved the way the light poured into the dark tunnel.

Hey Man...

2006-02-19T18:42:00.000-07:00

This is a really quality little alleyway between a couple of the local shops around the corner. One of those classy spots where Bruce Leroy might meet the Shogun of Harlem... or witness the effects of mass inebriation. Regardless, you get the point. It is classy.

This Canyon brings back Memories

2006-02-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

Taken in a canyon near Orem Utah. I just like the way this turned out. Apparently I have been on a blurry photo streak lately. Yes it is intentional.

My First Skull Friend

2006-02-15T23:14:00.000-07:00

My uncle was showing me a little gift he was given recently from someone who thought, that as a dentist, he would love to have a skull with teeth intact. I know I, as a non dentist, I would love to have a skull... with teeth in tact. There is just something intriguing about it. Well, I had to take some sort of memoir from the first human skull that I have ever, and possibly will ever befriend.

The new Pink

2006-02-13T17:37:00.000-07:00

My apologies to the parents of this beautiful child. She really is a cute kid, but I couldn't resist publishing how this one turned out. Reminds me of something from Donnie Darko... but in pink.

Remember, that one time...

2006-01-27T17:46:00.000-07:00

Someday, Apple might send a new powersupply to a local apple dealer and I just might get my computer back in my possession. Until then, no graphics... will words be enough?

A little while ago I wrote a little song. It was all about shallow love... to start. You can listen to it on MySpace (click on the song "Time I Was Sensitive") if you want. It is really rough, I just wrote it and put it up in little more than a couple hours I think. Don't expect too much. The subject manner being shallow love, to start. I was thinking about people, and how I think a lot of times we are out for experiences, and not the journey itself. More specifically, we have a tendency to want to experience everything, once. We develop these long lists of things that we pursue to the point that we have a claim and then pursue another. If asked I will probably claim both as active pursuits, but am I really pursuing it. For me, I don't really think I could honestly call myself a painter anymore. I have done it, I studies it in school, I sometimes do it a little, but it isn't really a steady pursuit anymore. I work more in computer graphics than paint these days.

I think a lot of times this can manifest itself in so called "Extreme Sports," because we are soooo extreme. It is done once, and forever on the resume of things to talk about. I don't want to confuse this with me attacking these actions. There is nothing wrong with it, it can be a fun experience... but when I was writing this song I thought that it would be funny to sing from the same stand point and direct it towards love. "Remember the time I was Sensitive... Remember the time I had integerity... and the time we said 'I do'." I don't think, or at least I hope this type of love isn't rampant. I thought it would be a funny way to examine the way we view life sometimes.

When I think of times past, I think of the longevity of peoples actions and choices. When people entered a career it was for life, when people took up passions and hobbies it seemed to stick for a large duration of thier life. I could be romanticizing this, as I frequently tend to do, but I think we are prone to attack life and passions with a vivacious ADHD type mentality at times. We want diverse experiences and a long list of accomplishments with minimal effort. Or at least, I find myself in that situation. This song is a good example. I wrote it in a short time, and really haven't gone back and polished it up yet. It could use it... but I haven't.

I am glad that there are a few things that I do come back to over and over again. I am glad that many things are enjoyable still when we do come back and revisit the experience, or one similar. When I set apart a day to just paint, I feel good. When I am able to revisit my roots in an activity I feel a reconnection. I am sure that is why I have returned again and again to lead canoe trips at a summer camp that I thought was going to be a one summer gig. I love to just work for the summer in a capacity to me that seems simple and meaningful. I have always admired people that were passionate and focused on simple things, and content and skilled in thier area of expertise.

I need to do this more often with the passions that I have in life. I need to revisit them again and again. I need to record more and develop more than just a simple knowledge about it. I need to apply this to my work, I need to apply this to my interests, and most importantly to relationships. So I guess in the end it is about relationships again (not just romance, but relationships in general).

What are the roots that you like to revisit?

[ZY/3] = 3^[7/X]

2006-01-08T22:32:00.000-07:00

Baldness or Reverie

2006-01-08T19:42:00.000-07:00

I thought I would try my hand at getting rid of my hair completely, given my naturally high concentration of such follicles, it proved to be a bit of a task.

However, I am starting to fear that people might think that I am narcissistic. Why so many pictures of me? I promise not to take offense when I am messing around. I have not one guarantee as convincing from other such friends. Submissions and permissions would be welcome I suppose...

I almost didn't post this one... maybe I shouldn't have.

2006-01-08T19:34:00.000-07:00

I saw the original picture and I just had to mess with it.

Double Take

2005-12-26T22:36:00.000-07:00

Hiking up at Powderface Ridge earlier this fall

It's All Business

2005-12-16T18:16:00.000-07:00

Sorry this post is all business. I would love a quick response from those that visit the blog as to what the new animated side bar looks like in your browser. So far every time I have checked it, it has been different. For me it looks best on my mac when browsing in safari. The picture is what it looks like on my machine. If yours looks different, please let me know what operating system and browser you are using. Thanks in advance for the help.

...Maybe This is Less Creepy...

2005-12-11T21:45:00.000-07:00

Total Lack of Expression

2005-12-11T01:31:00.000-07:00

I feel I may have developed a Twitch

2005-11-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

A nervous tic motion of the head to the left

New Audio Post Section

2005-11-11T13:13:00.000-07:00

I am going to periodically post new music stuff that I have been working on. You can find them on the handy sidebar to the right. I put on a cover of Martin Sexton's 'Glory Bound', and a working version of a song I wrote called 'Waiting Room'. The second song is a better version than what I emailed to some of you.

PS - yes the vocals are supposed to sound that way!

Salad Fingers

2005-11-02T23:26:00.000-07:00

This past weekend in a last minute effort to procure a halloween costume I finally decided on Salad Fingers. Having lost interest in digging out the vintage earphones and bad teeth in an effort to become Frankie Wilde, I stumbled across the linked cartoon. I spent the rest of the night with lettuce taped to my fingers as I held my little spoon. Unfortunately it was not rusty.

Neon Speaks to my Soul

2005-11-02T23:21:00.000-07:00

I think this picture has a sibling on eyunphotoblog. I have been meaning to post this pic for a while. I think we shot these about a month and a half ago.

Kind of a Cloudy Silver Lining

2005-10-19T18:45:00.000-06:00

When I was younger I was lured to the rave on the guise that there would be "Glow in the Dark Elvis' Parachuting in from the sky." ... well I was going anyway, but still... I wanted to see them. They never did materialize. This is the next best thing I guess. His stage show was kinda... um... molestational in nature. The poor lady who volunteered. Maybe I will post that one next.

Discreet on the Street

2005-10-11T22:31:00.000-06:00

You worked hard, scrimped and saved, and now you finally own your iPod.
Why not let everyone know it?

Oh Great Bubble Dome

2005-10-06T20:17:00.000-06:00

This was taken inside the Earthship in which I resided as my soul was borrowed by the grand wizard Marlonne. It was not until I left that I realized it wasn't my soul that he wanted at all. He just wanted use of my flat, cuz it was condusive to entertaining the ladies. I suppose he fancied himself a procurer of sorts... in a less literal sense of the word.

RaDIOActive Jellyfish

2005-09-08T17:03:00.000-06:00

Centennial Celebration

2005-09-08T16:51:00.000-06:00

Alberta Centenial Celebration through Eyun's Eyes

...my night at the castle to see if it was really haunted...

2005-09-08T16:25:00.000-06:00

This summer on a canoe trip we came accross the White Otter Castle. It was built as a solo effort by the Hermit Jimmy McQuat on White Otter Lake. His body found in the lake in the spring of 1919 had spent the winter in the ice as he had allegedly drowned while net fishing the previous fall. The Picture below is the headstone that marks his grave. This is also the site of many ghost stories. I did not however come across Jimmy McQuat, despite all the wind that was howling through my tent.

Whiskey Jack

2005-08-30T13:21:00.000-06:00

Hummingbird Plume Lookout, Kananaskis

Headspace

2005-08-30T11:57:00.000-06:00

‘Excuse me?’
‘You didn’t just leave it all back in Vegas, did you?’
‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’
‘…uh sorry…’

I hated it when that little dialog in my head got the better of me. It seemed to be happening a lot lately. I suppose that is what happens when you live so much of your life inside your own mind. I had been on one of those phases lately. Too much reflection, and that took me completely out of reality.

‘’Sorry I was just thinking about something,…my mind ran away a little bit…uh…excuse me.’

It had been two weeks now and I still couldn’t give up on the thought that Aiyana wasn’t going to be around anymore. She had slipped out during our little trip to Vegas. Things had been a little strange lately, but I still didn’t really see it coming. It had been one of those weeks that I kept that mental scenario in my mind, how it was all going to work out. Just as soon as she showed up again. Deep inside I knew the truth though and I knew that I needed to let it go. She was one of those complex hard to please girls. She was the chili that was just plain too hot to handle. I knew I needed something with a little less spice, something a little friendlier, …con carne. The kind of chili I knew I could really enjoy, not the kind I had to place in Tupperware every other night till I could deal with it later. Some chili is only a nice can, some has nothing to offer and isn’t worth eating, and then there is the stuff that is just too hot to handle. It is always back burner’d, and more trouble than it is worth…

…I had been walking for quite a while and I really didn’t know where I wanted to go. When I got into these moods I usually ended up in the same place. I was approaching the bridge so I ran up to the left side and launched myself over the rail and landed on the little patch of snow on the hill below. I loved this place. It was one of those old bridges where you could scramble all over the truss system that held it up. I ran up one beam and wedged myself into the ladder shaft and made my way up to the platform that we had secured in place over the river.

The river had just broken up from the winter so it was pretty cold still in the shade of the bridge, but it was incredible watching all the ice break away and float down the river. Hmmm ice cold. Hot chili, Ice cold. It was a little bizarre. I just thought about the analogies I had always used to laugh about when describing Aiyana, they were so different from the scene in the river below me. It was so cold down there, and peaceful as well.

It reminded me of the sweat lodges we used to make when I was younger. We would store ourselves up in the hot house until it was too much to handle, when we would take off into the freezing water of the river. The shock was somehow the best part of the whole thing. The flush of lightheaded heat drained away with the sudden spastic shock and paralysis of the cold. Somehow as I warmed up I was filled with that giddy lightheaded feeling of intoxication, only I didn’t feel sick at all. It was all the incentive I needed to go back at it again.

Hmm just looking at those miniature icebergs in the river was fascinating. It brought back lots of better times to mind. The innocence that I always believe I had previously in life. Memories always tend to be that way. How was it that life was so sincere and warm back then? It didn’t seem like it at the time. In fact, I think I was still waiting for the next big thing. The one thing that was going to fix everything forever. The big thing that was going to start my life. That is when it would begin. My chili I guess, I could eat it forever.

Chili… why was everything good referred to as chili. As if one thing could heat up the rest of my life. Hmm so good. Nice warm and spicy. The same crazed elation as in the old sweat lodge. Oh just thinking of it now, it was so hot. Just like those fist few days in Vegas. I thought I was going to pass out, I was almost lightheaded, and weightless. The air around the platform felt a lot cooler than where I had been perched. A really calm, silent, cool air began to rush past me.

No you didn’t.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You didn’t just leave it all back in Vegas, did you?’
‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’
‘…uh sorry…’

The water was even colder than it looked. As I broke the surface I opened my eyes and saw green everywhere, except for the bluish patches on the edges of the little icebergs. Well this was by far the furthest I had gone in a long time. I really needed to stay a little closer to reality in my mind. I slid up onto the icy banks and slowly picked myself up. There was nothing lightheaded or giddy about this. This was just cold. A little closer to reality perhaps, I’m going home.

Elbow River Flooding

2005-07-12T11:51:00.000-06:00

The Elbow River during the rains and flooding in June.

Udderly Art Pastures

2005-07-11T23:34:00.000-06:00

I found myself walking along the +15 walkways in Calgary and came across a cow sculpture show. Kinda disturbing... but I liked the way this cow looked at me. He was a nice cow, a friendly cow... and I wondered why he had no friends...

Turbine Canyon

2005-07-11T22:34:00.000-06:00

This past weekend we ended up at one of the coolest places that I have seen in the Canadian Rockies to date. We packed in and found this canyon not even 100 meters from where we camped. This waterfall was down the canyon a little ways.

Blowing Fire w/ David Bowie

2005-03-11T19:46:00.000-07:00

Blowing Fire w/ David Bowie
Originally uploaded by ninjutation.

Due to the lack of females at a party the action quickly escalated to a whole new level... Happy Canada Day.