A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

Listen Up!
Indeed it does. I've got a pretty bad cold of some sort for a good 5 days now, and I had to call off a day at work because of it. Basically I'm over it now, but I hate how each time I ever do get sick I never am able to do anything. Of course there was an interesting point my mom brought up when I told her I'd called off of work, and that was that she couldn't understand how I "laze about" when sick, no matter how bad it is for her show powers through and does her work no matter what. I find this just silly, and I'm wondering, because it is a totally subjective thing, if I'm crazy for actually STAYING at home and maybe even in bed when I'm ill...
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So on to other things, I'm headin to Philly Jugglers Fest this weekend! And I'm finally performing as part of the stage show there, where I'll be doing Android Hell and Muffin Clutches. Once again I've thought about saying farewell to the Muffin Clutches routine, but the great thing is it's just so simple, and easy, and great, I don't think it'll ever get old, even I'm getting excited about performing it again! The last time I did so was on the Juggle This stage in the spring. Hopefully Android Hell will do well though, because while I'm able to do pretty much all the tricks in the video now plus a few more, I'm still not sure about viewing angles for the audience. i mean the balcony is going to have a GREAT view of the act, but I'm still not too sure about the others, well, we'll see what happens.
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College is doing VERY well this semester so far! My projects are getting done quite quickly and I'm getting to class pretty much on time each day, despite what my parents may think. I'm so glad I got my copy of photoshop years ago, because playing around with it has given me all the knowledge and skills I need to basically finish these classes faster than half of the rest of the class. Things are good.
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Daily Life:
SO I've been having strange and memorable dreams recently. the past two days in particular have been quite incredible, from essentially the first sex dream I've had in years which I won't go into detail on two days ago, to yesterdays dream which I will. It was somewhere between a dream and a nightmare, and I can't really remember plot or such from it, but the imagery of it was so incredible and it's stuck with me so well I might end up making it into an art piece.

The dream started off as I was inside a store in some sort of car race, racing some sort of go-car type car through a K-Mart like store with all these bends and diving between racks and such, and it was awesome to say the least. As that ended though and I made my way to the back room however, it ended up with me somehow unwittingly walking into an underground organization of some sort, dealing in some sort of illegal substance, it wasn't any specific drug, but it essentially was that, and I was forced to play along and be part of it from what I knew was a notoriously "kill any intruders" type of boss in this white cinder painted back-storage room which now that I reflect was a lot like a Shoprite back loading docks if all the pallettes and such were removed leaving the white painted cinder walls.

After he realized who I was and saw how I was intelligent enough to play along, he put me into a loyalty test thing, where basically I was to hold a screw up to the wall and stand there in the same spot holding the screw to the wall until he said otherwise. Of course I knew this meant I'd be standing there all night, so I settled in and entertained myself somehow with looking around and getting to know my surroundings, until suddenly he snuck up behind me and set a pair of headphones on me, with mini-screens the flipped down in front of my eyes. I resisted a bit but there was pretty much nothing I could do as I was still intent on holding that screw to the wall. So soon enough the video and audio started, and it was just like a virtual reality helmet, and it went on a propaganda type horror video, you know, the type designed to desensitize people to something while scaring the shit out of them?

Basically this video went on with all sorts of images like what looked like a disembodied Weird-Al Yankovich head (from his early days with the mustache) coming closer to me and shaking from side to side as it's face was filled up with needles, dozens of them, starting on the left, then spreading like a cancer to the right and all over, all the while creeping closer as more flew in. Another image I saw was when I was running down the same white storage room I was actually in save for fake buildings that dotted the sides, while a line of arrows was shot at me along the ground, chasing me to the wall where there was a bent one stuck in the wall which, when I grabbed, seemed to halt them for a moment before they fired again straight for me. Another image was the classic image of all the walls of a room showing massive faces belting out insults or other sayings that messed with your head, and one final image I remember was me hiding by clinging spider-man style up in a corner to hide from him as he shot up the walls with a machine gun. All the while with this I would remember it was VR partly and put my right hand back up in front of me to hold that screw to the wall.

I woke up right in the middle of the last image with a shock and I still have no idea what to make of any of it, but those images were just so visceral and mind-fucky I just can't forget them. I've had VERY few dreams like that, the most memorable one is the recurring nightmare I had when I was around 6 years old of us going to a dining hall and having a massive tongue reach out from the megaphone style speakers across the room and shoot towards me

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150

Listen Up!
ANOTHER New video?! Yes! Android Hell. My inspired little routine of sliding balls on an angled surface in order to juggle them, and an act I'll be performing at Philly Fest this year in a few weeks. I'm really quite proud of this, and the editing on the video too. I hope you enjoy it!
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College is working quite well, of course I'll let you read more about it below, as that's what I'm talking about this week in depth. And a thought just popped into my head! If I'm always missing so much because I can't think of something to write in the longer sections of the blog, perhaps would me readers simply be happy listening to me give little updates from just this first section if I never missed them each week?.... I love and hate my random ideas sometimes.
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Work at the Meadowlands has been fairly good, I've been watching the Jets suck and then suddenly put EVERYTHING together in the second half of their last game against the Patriots, and I was quite excited to watch as they went to just clear house and get a 28 to 14 game against them! That was incredible to see let me tell you. Of course then I saw when I got home that the Giants were absolutely CRUSHED TO POWDER, and yeah, that put me in a meh kinda mood, even after seeing all my other favorite teams win, the Dolphins, Steelers, Buccaneers, and Jets.

Daily Life:
Well with college having begun it's time to talk about what I've got going on this semester. I've gotten a big change this semester over the others, I'm only taking 2 classes. There's a few reasons for this, first of all, they were the only 2 classes besides morning classes that were available that went towards my degree. That was the big reason, but the other reason and the reason why I'm not taking extra courses to pull out a full 12 credits is because I'm hopefully going to continue my job hunting through the semester and get a good job besides working at Meadowlands Stadium, that way I can actually start building up money for things such as buying a new laptop, paying back college debts with my parents, and paying for trips and such.

Now I did learn recently that the new meeting time for the Tech.MCC club which I've just stepped down as president from is now during my class time on Tuesdays, but I figure I'll be able to at least pop in from time to time as long as I get my work done readily. It's going to be a bit weird but I think I could get used to not going there each week, and Jon seems to be doing an alright job already of spreading the word and getting people into the club, I heard that there were 4 people at the first meeting without there being fliers put out, which is a good sign.

Now, on to my classes though, my first one is Typography, and it's going to be an excellent class. I've always known about how text and type can either compliment or detract from an image, and now I'm going to be learning the nuances of this and hopefully getting better at designing things. Another thing I love it, like the other class I'm taking this semester, all the work, or at least the majority of it, is going to be done in photoshop! Always great to be in my element at the computer with my program. Already the first assignment had been done and handed in, and I think it's a great start to things! I'm eager to see where this class leads. Tuesdays from noon till 5.

The next class is on Wednesdays at the same time, and it's a very similar class, even sharing the same instructor, and it's Digital Graphics. Plain and simple, you can't get more descriptive than that title, or more broad. I am also eager to see where this class leads, because it is done in nothing BUT photoshop, which is great! Like the other one the first project has already been done and I've done a decent job on it as well I believe, and it was a simple cutting and pasting assignment, the technical word being a photo-montage. Basically cut out elements from one photo and put them into another so they fit nicely. It seems to be quite easy with the skills I've gotten from doing EXACTLY THAT in a few of my profile and facebook pictures over the years, so while I'm not going to say I'm going to breeze through these classes, I will say I think they are FINALLY going to actually compliment what I already know how to do in the real world and have good real world applications as well.

Juggle This:
I am so eager for Philly Fest to arrive. I've been practicing my performance routines and am absolutely ready for it. I just hope that Michael Karas manages to show up, I may sound a bit awkward saying so, but I really don't get to see him enough. I don't know what it is, but his style and thought process I find compliments my own fairly well, and I've been inspired to do lots of things by bouncing ideas off of him, granted some of the ideas have been worse than others, but we really do get along grandly and I just feel a kinship with him. He is my best juggler friend and again, I hope he makes it so I can try out some of the awesome juggling machines he's made, I've been fascinated by so many of them from the pipes to the very notion of underwater juggling.

Sorry this is getting really tangential, Philly. Each year has been a blast and this year I hope will be no different, and of course I'm always eager to see just who shows up and maybe I'll also host a workshop there about videography or something, as I love doing that despite having only a few things I'm actually qualified to run a workshop on.

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150

Listen Up!
Workin at the Meadowlands is just great. I just have to say that. There's plenty of things to nitpick at for sure, like the parking situation for example. Which has gotten way worse now, since they are making us park at the BACK of the employee lot and having to go through quite a number of hoops just to get to the punch in clocks. But the big thing that will never change is that I'm in a customer service job, which is what I'm best suited for, and getting PAID to watch football games. This is just awesome. OH! Especially sicne we just got a new break room! One which is literally triple the size of the old one with working AC and NORMAL chairs to relax in as opposed to the high-chairs of the old one which were almost leaving you better off standing.
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College is about to start, and I think this is going to be interesting, because for the first time ever, I'm going to only be taking 2 classes, and continuing to job-hunt the rest of the time. It's going to be good because the two classes I'm sure to like, Digital Graphics and Typography. I'm not 100% sure what to expect this semester, but it's going to be an interesting one for sure, especially since I've stepped down as president of Tech.MCC
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I've rarely felt like a more awesome juggler, as you'll read below. I think the only times I've felt more proud of being a juggler was when I was featured on Juggling.TV for Pong Progression and when I was featured on the list of the top 40 jugglers for 2008. I'm so eager for Philly Fest!
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Juggle This:
This, feels, AWESOME. Not only have I released Intercepted Gravity a few days ago and gotten nearly a thousand views already on Juggling.tv alone! But I've also come up with a unique routine that I can finally put together and perform at Philly Fest on the main stage! I'd thought about doing Muffin Clutches up there as an in-between routine but enough people have seen it and kinda isn't right for that stage, especially the fact the routine barely lasts for a minute and a half. But this new one is awesome, and I don't want to reveal too many details about it right now, so instead I'm going to talk about Intercepted Gravity and what went into making it.

So I start off the same way I always do, by gathering footage from whatever practice sessions I do, and trying hard moves that I hadn't managed to do before or breaking personal records for them. While doing that I also try to get routines in there of tricks strung together in interesting ways, and so after a few months of doing that, I had enough footage to start editing. Now, when I start editing I always never have enough footage to complete the video, and that's kind-of intentional, because I like to have my videos build themselves, and I would like to explain that further because that was a very mystical statement.

I don't like to plan things out, especially when it comes to my videos and such. I always leave room for improvisation and as with my music videos, leave footage space so i can record more later. This is because as I start editing, I'm able to look at the style of the clips and find a piece of music and editing style that matches, giving the video a cohesive center. From there, that allows me to be inspired by it and come up with more tricks and routines that are done with that style in mind, so it compliments the whole video even more. That and it's very easy to record more footage than I need after I've started editing and gone back to recording, and that is a very good thing, because then I can afford to toss out the worse portions and replace them with better ones.

Once I finally get done with the first edit, I always continue to record more footage to see if things can be improved, and I watch the video over and over again. This is to make sure that I notice things, like segments which are too long, slow, or boring, and replace them with better ones or fix them. A lot of the times the editing will be imperfect like when I make a trick that synch's with a certain beat of the music, sometimes it will be off a bit because the editing preview isn't synched as well as the final video, so I get to fix those things after watching it fully rendered.

Usually from there the video is done and I show it to a few of my good juggling friends to see how it looks to them before upload, which is what I did for this one, but around the 3rd revision round or so, I struck upon something amazing. I realized about the color curves tool in Vegas, and looked at each clip of my video. Nearly all of them had incorrect colors! ESPECIALLY in the form of too much green and blue. So I managed to figure out how to finally fix my colors in the video, and make things look professional once and for all! I can't possibly see how I managed to edit videos before now! It's absolutely incredible if you watch my more recent videos and then compare them to Intercepted Gravity. They just look so much worse!

Well that's what I had to say about that, I'm quite elated with what I've been doing in relation to juggling recently and I can only hope this will continue until at least Philly Fest, and then past there so I have a shot once again at getting on the top 40 jugglers of the year once again XD

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150