Tim Donlan

Those gosh darn vengeful siths

There’s a scene in Revenge of the Sith where Palps and Anakin are chatting it up in some Coruscant theater. George Lucas’s vision of fine art the Star Wars universe is an amorphous blob with psychedelic lighting, like some holographic Digital Blasphemy [http://www.digitalblasphemy.com] rendering. Pure

Webzine in the works!

Start your hydrocarbon-based internal combustion engines. Crank up those creative gears. Cause now you can take part in making media history. I’m working on a creative zine this summer with a group of friends. If you write, take photos, draw, or do graphic design I’d love to have

My Miraculous Pre-cognition:

In yet another instance of things I wrote about in The War Inside coming true, the Playstation 3 unveiling is probably the most striking. In The War Inside, this guy Jon Bullman plays a game on the Playstation 3 with a character named Luna. Guess what character they decided to

Amazon to embrace Long Tail?

Right now I’m still slogging through the glacially paced snail-mail fest of finding a literary agent. My hopes waver between abysmal and slightly dim, depending on a variety of factors: blood alcohol content, Coriolis Effect, alignment of the upper satellites, etc. I’ve given thought to just throwing my

ALife Thoughts - digital life datatype

“What I cannot create, I do not understand” – Richard Feynman When thinking about Artificial Life, we’re looking at abstracting the methods found in nature to digital entities – in essence, extracting the patterns that are found naturally and, in turn, making new forms of life. This is not life in

Writers vs Storytellers

When someone is called “A good writer” what does it mean? Do they flaunt acerbic wit ala tycho [http://www.penny-arcade.com] or Oscar Wilde? Do they ignore the conventional trappings of grammar and become a literary darling ala James Joyce? Simultaneously weave a spellbinding yarn and milk a blockbuster

Friday Night Rants

Unbuttoned to mid-waist, sporting sparse chesthair, slicked back hair high fiving over margaritas and Michelob ultras. Sasha and digweed. Commiserating herd of girls, pedicured, the entire chanel counter inventory plastered to their skin. Fake smiles and compliments. Investment bankers, premed, prelaw, big firms, fortune five hundred brown nosers, gung ho

Sainthood

Sainthood May 6, 2005 Tim Donlan “What do you think about death?” he says, sitting on the brass bench in the engine room. Around us are the knobs and dials of navigation and engine pressure. All the gages and stopping points and half-assed second rate engineering. “If this ship were

A New Distopian Vision

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the course we are traveling on. This bright new century, issued in with hype and promise, stunted awake by tragedy, then slowly rising, bleary eyed, mildly confident, etcetera. There’s the promise of a digital reawakening, the remaking of the media [http:

Emergent Shenanigans

Was fooling around this morning with this little flash thingy: http://www.deviantart.com/view/8666529/ It’s a pretty cool simulation of chain reactions and emergent behavior. In a way, it’s very similar in principle to Conway’s game of life – atomic elements that react with neighbors to

Cinema Stagnation

Why Film Progresses Slowly as an Art Form. Compared to Music, Literature and Visual Arts – as an art form, film progresses much more slowly. This is because of a number of reasons. ** -Cost to Entry -Studio demands and Bureaucracy -Limited number of films released -Resistance to Radical Changes ** I believe

On A Certain Band

Neeraj (in response to this [http://www.tabulas.com/~apu1nahasa/home.html]), I was thinking about how you rank art (music and movies) via categories and rankings. Almost as if you are attempting to classify, ala Lineaus, the unquantifiable and nebulous realm of creative interaction. When I tend to think

The Finish Line - unsurprisingly deceptive

I think my muse has gone from beer to tea. I used to head down to the corner store, the Amoco at the bottom of Tilly Mill and pick up a cold Coors 40. I’d brown bag the thing, sneak it into my room and sip the beverage while

Check in: Nanowrimo week 1

So I’m basically one week into the Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month). Lets see how I’ve done. Words written: 17086 Hours Spent Writing: 19.5 (half of that during extended lunchbreaks at work) Percentage complete: 34% So those are the statistics. Basically I’ve been a fiend, as

Jamdringadling Googong!!!

www.nanowrimo.org National Novel Writing Month. I’m doing this next month – a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. That breaks down roughly to 2000 words a day. Roughly four pages to type on the screen every day. And I think I can do it. I wrote most

The Mechanical Bank

# The Mechanical BankTim Donlan October 18, 2004 The boy loved gadgets.Before mother gave him the mechanical bank, he was always pulling apart old windup clocks, littering the living room carpet with sprockets and gears and detached cookoo heads.Mother would see an old piece of junk in the bedroom

Convenience Store

Convenience Store August 9, 2004 They come for cigarettes, forties and pork rinds. They come for little foil pocket packs of condoms, for that single one-night stand of safe sex. They come for bottles of coke and juice and water, or maybe a slick plastic wrapped porn mag, masturbation material.

Purity, Addiction, The Fountainhead

I finished The Fountainhead about a week ago, and wanted to write something about it while it was fresh. The surface rationale of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead is preaching Objectivism. It’s a pretty straightforward belief system that has pros and cons. After thinking about it though, a few

Drumroll Please

The future is a blank slate, and I wonder if I’ll let nuance fill it for me. Will a phone call and a handshake set my path for years to come? Or will I take charge, decide on my own? I’m without a doubt at a crossroads. Everyone

Courtesan

Tim Donlan July 6, 2004 Courtesan The young man moved with inexperienced and nervous jerks, his naked brown body splayed on the floor. Sweet hazy smoke wafted through the room, out the curtained window into the courtyard. It was a sweet aroma, of ground nuts and Kasturi leaf. “The elders

lysergic acid lyrics

These are words from another time – a trip to the inner depths. March 28, 2004 1. latch onto the stream of empathy, ride it like a flow of thick crimson water. all the sadness and happiness of what it means to be human blurred into a teary visage: this is

Midnight Manifesto Mishmash

What do I believe in? I’m past the disillusion and apathy of mid-college nihilism. Agnosticism isn’t a belief so much as a lack of one. Self destruction was years ago. Unfocused rebellion only goes so far. Anyone can bitch and moan and feel terrible about their lives and

Planet Caravan - or - Transparency of Transaction

One thought that often crosses my mind when I think of the competing realities of open source and private software development: does this resemble communism versus capitalism? At the root of both these methods lie those two differing ideologies. Capitalism comes from the theme of healthy competition, laissez-faire. The legacy

The Herd

Tim Donlan June 16, 2004 The Herd The herd moved with a lazy gait down the boulder-strewn hillside, but I had a tough time keeping up. I was leaning back in the saddle, neck craned behind me at an orange sun sinking beneath sharp peaks. We were headed south towards

enmity, fury, pique, tantrum, umbrage, violence

I’m pissed and sunburned, late at night, speakers resonating with fury. I’m wearing my blue vest and no shirt, but the felt liner is cozy. I’m still pissed. Not cause of her, but because of the fury of the nighttime thunderstorm and the weight of the world.