Nighttime in portland

Sitting downtown looking at buildings shining amber against a charcoal sky.

It’s not black: clouds are bouncing ambient city light.

Everything is shadowed: monochrome, like fading vintage photos.

Faces have no features. The crowd mills from shop to shop.

Speckles of white light shine on dead bone branches, but there are no stars in the sky.

In my ears, The Allman Brothers sing about defiant midnight riders.

Cameras pop here and there. Panopticon in the dark. Little flares and baby carriages, but it is weirdly quiet.

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Decades-old TV ads penetrated distant methane giants to create ravenous new forms of consumer. They came for us then. Demanding answers.

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BRACELETS – $25 plus shipping; can do custom imagery for $5 more

Madonna 1. $20 plus $5 shipping. Image is a Raphael Madonna. Matching cross beads have been attached to either side. 1.5" at the apex.

Madonna 2. $20, plus $5 shipping. Image is a medieval Madonna. Matching metal beads attached to the sides. 1.5" at apex.

The bracelets shown here are my test models. Because of that, you get $5 off if you want to purchase them. They are very sturdy! The central stone is glass (not plastic!), sealed with Diamond Glaze around the edges to protect the stone and image. I have banged the heck out of these things and even gotten them wet with no ill effects. The bracelet does not stain the skin and non-toxic glues and materials were used as much as possible. No two bracelets will ever be identical, as I choose unique images for each bracelet.

These bracelets can be customized to show any image for an additional $5.  They take about three days each to make for the glues involved to cure properly.

I currently have materials to make four additional bracelets of this type. 

TREASURE BOXES – $20 each and $5 shipping – highly customizable and unique! 

Shown: Verdant, Pasha, Delilah and Daisy. $20 plus $5 shipping. Hand-decorated treasure boxes, great for gift-giving or storing your small and precious things. Click to enlarge or see larger versions below!

I hand-craft each of these sweet treasure boxes, starting from metal containers and applying paper, fabric, sequins and other decoupage elements as the piece develops. No two boxes will ever be exactly the same!  Each box measures 2.25″ width x 1.75″ height. The insides are felted in black (made from recycled plastic bottles) to protect your treasures.  You can buy them now or request new boxes. Two (Verdant and Delilah) are now sold! Check out the closeups of each box below the cut!

Verdant - a vivid spring box with red and green tones. Pink ribbon, green sequins, green leaves and crystal elements add flash to the piece. SOLD. THIS UNIQUE ITEM IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE.

Pasha- a hint of exotica. Epoxy beads and metal spangles give the box a royal look. $20 plus $5 for shipping. Available now.

Delilah- super cute and spring infused, with a small yellow flower, green leaf, gold spangles and a tiny green ribbon bow. SOLD. THIS UNIQUE ITEM IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE.

Daisy - A queenly box of summer in royal reds and browns, with green leaf and ribbon accents. Topped with a genuine French Euro cent. $20 plus $5 shipping. Available now.

Candystripe -a riot of pink, green, orange and yellow with two small flower tops, red ribbon accents, green spangles and rounded green leaves. $20 + 5 shipping. Available now!

I will ship your treasure boxes or bracelets carefully in a proper box with plenty of protection. These items are as strong as I can make them, but are still hand-made – so please handle them tenderly.

The base materials for these treasure boxes is pretty easy to get and I can make a batch of four once per week. 

Feel free to leave me a comment or e-mail if you have any questions about these items or are interested in purchasing. Treasure boxes can be made to quantities of up to 4 at a time, and I offer discounts if you want to bulk purchase more than 10.  Plans are in the works to add my items to an Etsy store in the near future. (I’ll keep you posted.)

Thank you for looking! 

Batman, Marilyn and Wonder Woman: THEY FIGHT CRIME - taken in PDX 2007

I’m actually losing track of the stuff that I want to do the next few weeks in my lovely hometown of Portland, Oregon (or as we natives call it, “Goddamnit, stop moving here, it’s not really that hip and cool, really!”)

If for no other reason than to keep it all straight in my head, an Upcoming Calendar of Things in Portland:

June 21
Hollywood Theater presents 80′s Movie Anthem Sing-a-Long
7:30 PM; probably $7 or 8 at door or online
All of your favorite 80′s movie songs and clips playing back-to-back (all with lyrics on-screen) – went to the 80′s New Wave singalong a couple of weeks ago and it was awesomely fun. You know you want to belt out “Danger Zone”.

June 24
Hollywood Theatre presents: CONAN O’BRIEN CAN’T STOP
Times TBA.
“Filmmaker Rodman Flender followed O’Brien on his “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour” and returned with an intimate portrait of an artist trained in improvisation, captured at the most improvisational time of his career.”

June 25
Tiger Bar PDX: Ben Union
Tacoma rockers Ben Union hit the Tiger Bar in PDX. Pretty fun prog-funk rock! I believe they’re opening act, probably starting around 9 PM?

June 29
Ground Kontrol Free Play Night!
$5 cover, all games free, 21+, may be busier than usual this week due to Groupon promotion.

June 30
Ground Kontrol presents: Comedy Night!
No cover, starts at 10 PM, 21+ only.
“What’s so funny about video games? Well, quite a lot, if you ask tonight’s performers! Some of Pacific NW’s funniest people (and alleged video game fans) will be featured during Ground Kontrol’s first-ever live comedy show!”
July 9-31
TREK IN THE PARK: “Mirror, Mirror”
Saturdays and Sundays at Woodlawn Park (corner of NE Claremont and Oneonta) in NE Portland. Get there EARLY for good seating. Last time I went I got there 20 minutes early and there was nowhere NEAR the ‘stage’ to sit. We’re talking show up several hours in advance with picnic lunch and a book for best seats, here.

Know of a fun and nerdy thing to do in Portland? Drop a line in the comments!

Bloom - this one will be cards/posters/etc soon!

Bloom – Iridescent by ~cassandrapoe on deviantART

A charm to channel my frustration about money woes

8 Dollars v.2 by ~cassandrapoe on deviantART

I need to run this one through the scanner for cleanup...

Inspired by the Madoka Magica witchbarriers, this was designed as the new header of my personal wikispace.

Barrier by ~cassandrapoe on deviantART

Red ink, one issue of a women's magazine, and white sugar.

The Blonde You Want by ~cassandrapoe on deviantART

I have also done several artist trading card bite-size images but I want to run a couple of them through the scanner before I display them.

First principle: You get out what you put in.

Blogging really is a situation where you need to be actively generating new content at least three times a week, as well as commenting on others’ blogs and cultivating and seeking out new contacts and connections.  If you can’t do this regularly, on a regular schedule that readers come to expect, you will have to accept your traffic is going to be weak and your page counts low.

Relationships between sites and authors are also much more immediately useful and helpful to your hit counts than search engines. Gaining affiliates is critical – and it’s important that the affiliates are in the same psychological vein of content as yourself.  People will be interested in your content if you’re interested in theirs – and if you connect with a site that covers the same topic you do, you both win because audiences may migrate between sites.

Second principle: You can’t predict what’s going to fly.

People may be able to argue this one, but my experience  is that what makes a post go viral is really random chance.  You can SEO-sculpt, keyword stuff and massage your content to tweak search engine results all day long, but at the end of the day nobody really knows how to make viral happen.

Those that do claim to are lying, dishonest, or using methods that are lying or dishonest to force a meme unnaturally.

What people on the Internet will find worthy of talking about, interesting, funny, or sharable is a mystery and utterly dependent on both context and the whims of the moment.  As we’ve seen with cases like Rebecca Black, sometimes the reason you become successful isn’t even to do with how good your content is.

Third principle: Blogging is not about you.

Let me clarify – it is highly unlikely (unless one of your posts goes viral; see principle the second) that anyone apart from maybe family and close friends is going to be terribly interested in the details of your personal life. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with writing about yourself in a blog, and there’s nothing wrong with using a blog as a personal journal. If that’s a critical or important route to creativity for you, I’m not knocking it at all! But for the most part, personal blogs are different beasts from blogs designed (or intended, at least) to be read by a massive number  of people.

For people who want to attract an audience the content needs to be useful to the reader. Period. Eliminate “I” language as much as possible and shift to neutral third or use “you” or “we” instead.  It’s helpful to ask yourself, “What do my readers get out of this, and why should they care?” If you can’t answer that question in some way, the post is probably a bad idea and should be shelved or redesigned so that it can answer that question.

Fourth principle: Posts and topics have a natural shelf life.

Two of my posts went semi-viral last year, and what was interesting is that for both posts, traffic rose rapidly into the stratosphere for about three days and then dropped like a rock immediately after. Other posts on the site were not really noticed, even when they were linked directly in the text of the viral post.

This suggests that people don’t really bounce around a lot between posts on one site after being lured there by a hot meme – unless you make it super, super easy for them to do so. It’s been a real challenge to make that work both on Blogger and on WordPress, because the tools at the free level don’t really support it. People seem to click on whatever they’re linked to and then move on to whatever the next topic of interest is – which is often not on your site.

That’s not to say that older posts have no life at all- you shouldn’t delete them after a month! But with all the content out there, and so many people generating it, there is a very clear ‘wave’ effect to blogging; either you’re right on top of your topic – or you’re already behind it.

Fifth principle: Keep everything in your blog on-topic for that blog.

I did a lot of stream-switching this last year, and although I regret the endless confusion it no doubt caused my readership, I accept the damage as growth and learning pains. But you don’t have to make this mistake.

Basically, keep it simple: one topic for one blog. If you want to become a destination site for your favorite topic, you need to keep everything in that blog aligned with that same topic and never waver from it. It just becomes too confusing for everyone whenyou’re writing about your favorite designer shoes on Monday and the top 5 things you should never do while blogging on Tuesday. It diffuses your online identity and makes it impossible for people to really get a handle on what your blog is actually about.  It also makes it harder for you to develop a distinctive blogging voice for that topic.

The flip side of this is that it’s really okay to have more than one blog. You probably have six or seven different interests; you don’t have to compress writing about all of them into one space. Consider grouping your interests by obvious broader categories- for example, putting all of your music, TV and movie interest in one blog, and your political views in another.

Don’t let readers get confused. Don’t let them not know where they go to find the content they’re interested in. Cross link material between blogs only if it’s relevant to the topic of both.

Keeping these points in mind will help you develop a stronger blogging voice and start you on the road to establishing your own unique presence on the web. Later, I’ll write about experiences with different platforms and their strengths and weaknesses for the end user. 

What I think I should be doing, right now, every day:
Creating new content.

Removing any concept of false equivalency, where ‘creation’ is automatically given higher moral value than ‘presentation’, and taking ego out of the equation, have I been trying to dance with the wrong pair of shoes on all this time?

I’ve always held raw new creation as the highest human output of value, and that repackaging other material is just lazy, regressive, cheap: forgetting that curation and selection can also be a kind of art. Who’s to judge?

Or am I confusing hobby and work again?

Things to think about.

I’ve decided that the Internet really doesn’t need to know as much as I initially wanted to tell it, which is one of the reasons that posting has slowed tremendously on both of my personal sites. The other reason, frankly, is that stuff related to The Protomen (now that they’re wrapping up this quarter of the tour) has gone absolutely ballistic and it’s taking a great deal of my time and attention to process and keep up with it all. Things should cool off some for April. But there’s a lot of great, exciting news (and more than I can even make public yet) so if you’re curious where my brain’s been in March, check out Protoprime.

One creative output I’ve been enjoying lately are making custom mixtapes – these were made to add value to protoprime, but they’re also just reflections of the kind of music I can spend literally all day listening to. They’ve kind of replaced Try-It-Tuesdays for now, since it takes quite a bit of work to dig up some of these songs, but I’m having a blast putting them together. Volume One is here, and Volume Two is here. Lots of 80′s synth fury, big sound rock, and forgotten gems of AOR melodic, prog and metal. Working on volume three – might release that next Tuesday.

I’ve also just started another music blog (when am I going to work out my schedule to keep all these things updated? I’d better do it pretty soon!): This Burning City. I’m still exploring what I want to be putting energy on, and This Burning City lets me talk about the Nashville music scene (and other indie musicians) that’s outside of the scope of Protoprime. I kinda waffled on putting this with Cassandra Reviews, but that’s going to end up being more a TV/film/animation blog, I think.

I’ve also been spending more than a little time at Ground Kontrol, playing 4P Pac-Man. Which is the greatest idea for a social arcade game EVER.

So I’m not dead! Just still trying stuff out.

Maybe 40 minutes before I get to see ████ again.

Ride down from ███████’s been quiet. We’ve been careful, running at night, just a few hours at a time. During the day it’s not too bright to be traveling much in the open. There’s not a lot of cover between Fernando and █████████ – the desert’s open and it’s just too easy to be seen from too damn far away.

We’ve been basically living in this shit-beat old black van for like three weeks some now. Everybody stinks. There’s no room for anything like comfort between all the instrument cases. If it rains, we shower. We take turns driving and sleep in shifts, and I can’t remember last time I felt safe putting my head down. But fuck, I’m not really tired anyway, I’m wired. Running over the plans again in my head, lookin’ for the flaws. Probably some; hell, there’s always some. Can’t change it, gotta move on whether it’s all good or not.

I just keep seeing █████’s face, his shitty haircut, those burnin’ eyes and that crooked part of his mouth when he smiles. I want to get him back in me so bad. He’s waiting for me in the tunnels under the city, doing watchdog duty while I’ve been east in the mountains, fixing up the instruments, tuning the jammers, training the kids how to play. We’ve been apart for months, and that sucks.

Okay, thirty second recap. First there was the war, then there was a whole shitload of nothing, then there was the █████. Eventually when the ██████ got strong enough, some of them broke off, went west and made ███████ up against the sea, the last civilized place left anywhere. All good for a while. People moved there, settled down, had kids, tried to start the world over. But ███████’s now run by a powermongering dick calls himself ██████. Pushes down on everything and everybody, with the machines that still run after the war. There are factories, everything run by auto, where the enforcers and the sky-spies get made. Keepin’ peace of the gun. City’s barricaded in to keep the people inside in and the people outside out. It’s all clean and bright and completely fucking fake. Towers send the signal. The signal’s what the ████████████ are all about.

The signal keeps people quiet, and only us kids can hear it. The parents, the older folks – they knuckle under. They don’t even know why, they just feel it. It works on the brain somehow, like a sedative. Everybody so calm, nobody questions, nobody feels anything real any more. No tears, no laughing, no living. Everybody numb, dumb, and quiet.

That’s where we come in. Us kids cracked the signal. We can still hear it, our ears ain’t numb enough. It hurts like hell, but we jam it and we move ahead.

Music works. Loud, loud music with notes played the right way. Music cracks a hole in the signal enough to think through. We’ve been passing old tape decks and cassettes in the city for a while, bootlegging free thought. That’s just been a bandage on a stab wound, though.

That’s why we’re comin’ back, hell-bent, with a van full of scrap instruments and a plan. Tomorrow night, we’re gonna play the biggest gig of our lives. If we fail, we die. If we’re caught, we’ll get disappeared, just like the rest. Gone into the recycle bins or into the black tower that nobody but nobody comes out of. This shit’s real, and we’re running out of time.

Who we are or were – doesn’t matter now. Nobody’s gonna care if we lose, but everybody’s gonna remember us for trying.

– edited from the recovered diary of ███████████, circa 2430 A.D.