Barnson.org

Why is this need inside me?

Last night I watched the extra features on the DVD for “Once Upon A Time In Mexico”, which is the wonderful follow up to one of my favorite all time movies, “Desperado”. The trilogy of movies in this series was done by a guy on the cheap, mostly produced at home, and all out of this need to create..

Man, I want to do this. I’ve been listening to old Wayward Sun stuff, cleaing it up for this site, watching movies like this, even revisiting my old stuff.. and I realized, I am part of this group driven by a need to create.

Not everyone feels this way. Most people are happy with their lives, but I am not, unless I feel I have put some new peice of art or music or film or writing or acting on this world.. but its a bit of a curse.

I would love to be one of those people who are happy with going to work, having a house, some money, some kids, a simple life.. it would be GREAT! But I am driven at 3am to go into my basement and hit the keyboard.. or to spend a summer editing a film. And to be honest, its an addiction.

At one point I thought it was about the attention.. being told how “talented” I am.. but now I find myself just creating stuff and never listening to it again.. or writing stories no one ever reads.. And I’ve realized, its more just this force that moves me to lose sleep, lose time with my family, lose time I could be studying.. and well, hey.. why do we all feel this need to post here.. we need to create.

Maybe its a blessing.. maybe its a curse.. but honestly, I seem driven by this vision of a great great grandson finding a box of pictures and CDs, and listening, and suddenly knowing me as more than just a name and two dates… Is that it? I don’t know.. why do YOU do it?

TODAYonline brings us this little tidbit:

“A CURIOUS, anti-brassiere advertising campaign begins today. Printed against a light blue background, the print advertisement has no pictures and tells readers to “stop wearing bras”.

The striking caption is accompanied by research findings about how wearing bras can cause cancer.”

Read the article: Stop Wearing Bras

I’m posting on the front page. Why? Because I can. Thanks Matt. I’m honored to be a Barnson.

EDIT by matthew: Check out Paul’s blog at murphymaphia.com. From time to time, he writes some pretty cool stuff, though like barnson.org, most of it’s pretty mundane 🙂

By the way, if anyone is going to be in the Washington DC area in the next two weeks, I am in a show that opens tonight and runs the next two weekends.

Its a black box performance of a new play called “Symbolic of Love” by Lee Wilkinson.

Please feel free to email me for information, or call 202 333-2202

Interesting statistics for your viewing pleasure:

• Most popular search term that leads people to barnson.org: Rice Pudding“
• Second-most popular term: “Cream Cheese Frosting“
• Most commented-on article ever: “Where do you really stand on politics?“. (closed to further discussion)
• Second-most commented on: “Autism or Demonic Possession?“(closed to further discussion)
• Average requests per month: roughly 100,000
• Percentage of bandwidth used by serving mp3’s: 43.39%
• Post that has gotten me more hate mail than any other: “Garageband, Reviews, and my take (I think because of my fairly high google ranking for some bizarre reason is why)
• Most registered users ever online at one time: 5
• Most unregistered users ever online at one time: 33
• Most mystifyingly-popular post: “Back by popular demand: The art of tying shoes“.

Hope you enjoyed the list!

It’s that time in life when I need to pick up a new bad habit. Due to circumstances, nothing seems more appetizing than beginning a drug addicition. To date, I’ve never smoked a cigarette or taken an illegal drug. But it’s never too late to start destroying my life via a helpless, ugly relationship with small pills.

Since turning 30 I’ve realized life becomes more interesting because people are more interesting. Socializing and interacting wth people my age carries far more interest because older folks have responsibility and what I consider “contribution implications”. My friends are no longer talking about hot bars and latest flings but issues and social trend and grown-up stuff.

However, after months of doing the couples-nights and weekend social entertaining, I still feel stagnant and dull. I never walk from these gatherings feeling enlightened and challenged. Thus, I need to begin a terrifyingly addicting drug habit for two purposes:

1) Make other people more interesting 2) Make me more interesting to other people

I’m not into health and happiness. I’m into eccentricity.

Anybody got some good suggestions? Also, I need drugs that can be concocted at home. Ideas that fall in the “meth” vein are good. Basically, I don’t want to have to get sold-out by some flaky street pusher who’s looking to score snitch points by turning in Mr. Sammy G Suburban Whitey to the cops.

As I was reading the blog on the old, old Wayward Sun tapes, I figured it would be nice for Matt to know how I came to be a part of the Barnson.org family 🙂

Back in the day (fall ’91), I embarked on a journey to get a degree at UMBC. My degree was to be in intramural sports, however, due to a communications error, UMBC thought I was going for a Mathematics degree. The resulting snafu added 3 years to my undergraduate career.

So my freshman year, I meet this tall dude with a definite Jewish nose who I immediately disliked. He was loud and arrogant, had no respect for anyone who didn’t like the Redskins or Capitals, and carried his bass guitar around everywhere.

(Side note: All the parents out there familiar with The Wiggles…doesn’t Sam remind you of Murray Wiggle?)

However, this fellow and I had a common interest in sports, and we spent many a classtime battling over Sega NHL 91. Next thing, we’re playing hockey together, and we become friends. I remember a road trip to Towson with young Samuel to watch some high school girl in a marching band competition. Her name was Jennifer something or other and she was from Canoctin (sp?)…

So our Junior years (cronologically, not necessarily in credit years ;), we move up to the UMBC apartments with Sam’s friend Ben and some dude Mike. So we had 3 Jewish dudes and the poor Catholic boy (me) living together. I never managed to eat mahtza (sp?) ball soup that year…

Now Wayward Sun is playing gigs and having a good time. I tag along when I can ( apparently taking Justin’s place, although I was the short, stocky groupie ). Ben, Sam & I live together the next year as well, replacing Mike with Jason Smith, one of the manliest men ever to walk the planet. Captain of the rugby team, Special Forces medic, going for his masters in Mechanical Eng, and quite the ladies man. You can ask Sam about the J/K’s snafu one day. (I want my two dollars!!!) Alas, J/Ks is no more…

Not to brag, but that year we pulled off the best on-campus party UMBC has ever seen. It was the first weekend in February, it was snowing, so we threw a beach party. Put Tide on the walls and hung black lights (Try it). Had a mixed drink bar and a frozen drink bar. Put a bowl of Coppertone in front of a fan to get the aroma correct. We had one of Jason’s rugby friends as a bouncer. He was 5’9″, 350+, and in nothing but a grass skirt. Jimmy, Bob, and the Beach Boys were on the stereo.

We had a line to get into our apartment. We made over $240 that night, and only got wrote up for a fire code violation. All I remember is Jason’s brother trying to pay for drinks with a Ski Liberty card.

So after that year, Sam graduated, but we stayed friends. I still claim that “Wrong Words” is by far the best WS song ever, for it’s simplicity. Plus, Ws would have made it big if they would have incorporated a rapper into the mix, but they were down with that 😉

I actually found Barnson.org googling Wayward Sun, and found some of the old music here.

That’s how I became part of the Barnson Bunch! My $.02 Weed

I’ve relaxed restrictions on avatars to accept 110×110 .jpg or .gif images. Uploaded a pic of Sam as a demo.

Go wild.

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There is an irony to being an adult, firmly placed in the late twenties – early thirties category. On one hand, you can afford almost any toy you would have wanted as a kid (Playstation, DVDs, Home Theatres), you can go anywhere you please, and you can stay up as late as you want!!

The irony is that you don’t have time to play with your toys, you don’t have time to go anywhere at all, and you end up going to bed earlier than High School because you are desperate for sleep almost all the time..

Let me know, AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO FEELS LIKE THIS??

As you know, I have been particularly absent from our little gang of late. I now spend most of my time in my car, driving between home, work, school, and a play that opens on thursday. While at home, I spend my time scheduling my work days, doing homework, and studying lines… its awful!!

The irony is that I have just added a cool new Cable system and a Playstation 2 to my home theatre.. and I played about 30 minutes of a game that I really want to play more.. and every day i say I’m going to take some time to do it… but every day, I just sink into the couch at the end of the night with my wife, we watch a rerun of “Highlander” and go to sleep.

So, today, once again, I am planning to spend some time playin with my wonderful toys.. and once again, I have already booked the whole day up until 11 tonight.

Grr.. Why do wish our whole lives to be adults, only to become adults and wish we were Kids?

I finally uploaded The Floogie. Mucho thanks to Justin and Teresa for resurrecting this old dog, and sending me an mp3 of this first Wayward Sun tune.

You can also stream the song using this link. Requires WinAmp or (for UNIX-like platforms), XMMS, and a high-bandwidth connection, because the song’s encoded at 160kbits/sec (a little fast for some streaming connections).

I apologize for the bad chunks of the song… it was on a well-worn tape.

Oh, Justin also threw me an original demo of us singing the Wayward Sun Theme Song; you can stream Wayward Sun’s theme song.