asterphage

user since
Wed Sep 20 2000 at 19:48:17 (8 years ago )
last seen
Thu Jan 3 2008 at 05:59:02 (9.2 months ago )
number of write-ups
100 - View asterphage's writeups (feed)
level / experience
4 (Scribe) / 5325
C!s spent
3
mission drive within everything
celestial annihilation
specialties
visual arts (I guess), giant robots, action figures, nonsense
school/company
SVA (School of Visual Arts)
motto
Never trust anyone who only likes one genre of music
most recent writeup
veluti in speculum

I'm back after a long absence. I got a job involving websites, and it occured to me that E2 pretty much looks like work. So I'll probably go over this homenode at some point soon and update it, and yank out the stuff that's no longer relevant.

Table Of Contents

  1. About Me
  2. Things Said By People
  3. My Mix CDs
  4. My To-Do List
  5. E2 Stuff I Like
  6. My Writeups, By Category

I got a haircut, but my homenode is still long, so you may want to skip to the part that most interests you (though I think everything about me is interesting :P).

E2SS2K2

I got Secret Santa stuff from Roninspoon!
Spoon sent me something I wanted (a Stikfas action figure kit), something I needed (or rather will need when I'm overseas during Christmas vacation; a Moleskine notebook), and a light-up pyramid keychain from the Luxor casino.
His discerning tastes clearly show in the gift. I was absolutely delighted.

Informationation for my Super Secret Santa:

I like all sorts of things. I really enjoy action figures and robot toys, especially really weird and possibly ugly ones... but it takes a lot to surprise me now, since I'm always seeking out more, so I wouldn't expect anyone who isn't knowledgable about those type of items to find anything like that - though whoever I'm sending stuff to will surely get some sort of bizarre cheap toy along with something else.

However, I love strange and interesting useless objects (or objects that are better to look at than to use). For instance, among my most favorite possessions is an 18" tall orange art deco cat statue thingy made of... lord knows, plaster or cement or something, with a hook to hang it on the wall. It's hideous and it's tacky and I think it's beautiful.

Books, music and video are also high on the list of things that make me happy.

In general, if there's something you think everyone should own - be it a great novel/album/whatever or an excellent model of screwdriver or a particular kind of stuffed animal* or something else - I'd like one.


I'll probably be at school, and thus not at my listed Secret Santa address, until the week of Christmas, so perishables are a risky idea.

* Does anyone know where I can get an X The Owl or Daniel Striped Tiger hand puppet?

1. About Me

Hi, I'm Paul Segal. I mention that because my username for almost everything is "asterphage", but I recently decided to start putting my real name on things.

I'm from Oakland, New Jersey and I'm currently a freshman at SVA in Manhattan. My current goal in life is to become proficient in a field of visual art that can I can enjoy and live off of, while figuring out what kind of art I really want to be my life's work and then setting myself up to do that. I'm currently majoring in graphic design, and have become infatuated with advertising and packaging and pop art and all things decorative and commercial yet still aesthetically beautiful, so design may be the way for me to go (OTOH, I'm also becoming infatuated with every nerdy/geeky girl I meet, so who knows what will happen).

ICQ: 24024819
AIM: asterphage
Email: asterphage@yahoo.com
Website: Gone, for a while.
Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/~asterphage/

I don't like moments
They are too small and too quick
Like the flitting moths
-March 17, 2002

I miss Jack Potter

2. Things Said By People

Cosmo Kramer:
     So then you asked yourselves,
     'Isn't there something more to life?'
Jerry Seinfeld:
     Yes!
Cosmo Kramer:
     Yeah, well let me clue you in on something.
     There isn't!

"You said you were joining the team."
"But the team's not joining me."
-Our Man Flint

"I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again
Ten thousand dollars, at the drop of a hat
I'd give it all gladly if our lives could be like that"
-Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan's Dream

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection
not when there is nothing left to add,
but when there is nothing left to take away."
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
(thanks to ESR and rescdsk for
bringing this quote to my attention.)

It occurs to [him]
that if he died
that night
he would die happy.
because he was [loved]
-Inscription from a Radiohead t-shirt




DejaMorgana says I would also say "never trust anyone who only reads one kind of book"!

Word up, kids. Exclusivity is bad. Don't be that guy who's really, really into something and "doesn't like" or "doesn't get" everything else.


Anark says You have the coolest username on E2. I always wanted to be an asterphage, dammit...

I really meant to respond to that in a timely fashion, but I'll just leave it in my chatterbox until I have something to say about it, at which point he will have forgotten he said it.

I really need an illustration of my username, a character design for it. I figure it would be a bit like Galactus but less humanoid and less goofy.

For those not erudite enough to appreciate my username (:P), It's a combination of a pair of Greek words that are used as roots of English words sometimes. It means "Star-Eater", or "Eater of Stars" if you want it to sound cooler. Unfortunately, the fact that phage has been assimilated into English as a word for a type of virus can make the name confusing to some. Whatever, "Star Virus" is almost as cool anyway, so people can think whatever they want. The real disadvantage of the name is that even the drunkest and most degenerate among us have the wits to think of "Astro Fag", should they need to senselessly mock me. Not that I mind so much; I'm not sure what an astro fag is, but I'm sure it's damned stylish.


Mission drive: "To include ASCII art in all my nodes" is no more, because

Klaproth says sorry, but this is a text-based site, and ascii for ascii's sake does not help us.
and I didn't really use all that much ASCII art anyway.

3. My Mix CDs

Seriously. Give one of these a try, if you're in the mood and the selections don't seem antithetical to all you love (or aren't too eclectic for your mood). The current ones are both made for particular moods, and future ones will at least follow themes. They're in order from newest to oldest, though so far they were all made over a relatively short period of time.

In the works: a Pop mix, "Songs About Water", "Songs That Make Me Want To Cry" (or maybe "Sad Songs" in general), "Songs For Driving In The Rain", "Songs For Singing Along"

Ultra Mix 1 - Summer 2002

This one started when my friend Beth mentioned that she didn't have many good CDs to bring to the gym and listen to while working out. So I made her a mix CD, which ended up including a bunch of stuff I'd enjoyed this summer. It's all fast-paced, high-energy stuff, with a good amount of rock and hip-hop but about half techno. There's a lot of Paul Oakenfold on there because Beth likes Paul Oakenfold a lot. I think it came out very well; it's perfect for driving or walking or doing anything, really.

The songs that almost made it on would be enough to fill another mix CD... and I just might do that, eventually. I designed a cover for volume 2 already - this one is red and white with Ultraman on it, and the second would be blue and white with Baltan on it. Anyway, notable removals are Paul Oakenfold's Get Out Of My Life Now, Fatboy Slim's Acid 8000 and Mad Flava, the Pet Shop Boys' My Head Is Spinning... the list goes on and on. Aside from those four songs, though, none of the rejects were from artists that ended up on the mix.

Like it says, track 3 comes from the Digimon movie soundtrack, and track 9 comes from the soundtrack to Run Lola Run. Track 7 is from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, and I think everything else was a regular album release, though I could be forgetting something.

 1. Paul Oakenfold - Ready Steady Go                     4:15
 2. Outkast & Cee Lo - Speedballin'                      4:51
 3. Jasan Radford - Run Around (Digimon: The Movie)      2:07
 4. Freestylers - Weekend Song                           3:56
 5. Stroke 9 - Kick Some Ass                             4:08
 6. Swizz Beats & Bounty Killer - Guilty                 3:53
 7. Fatboy Slim - Because We Can                         3:27
 8. DJ Icey - City Of Groove                             3:56
 9. Tykwer, Klimek & Heil - Supermarket (Run Lola Run)   4:40
10. Pet Shop Boys - Forever In Love                      6:18
11. Artful Dodger & Craig David - Woman Trouble          3:59
12. Matthew Sweet - Over It                              1:35
13. Paul Oakenfold - This Is Trance                      6:56
14. Fatboy Slim - Love Island                            5:18
15. Frenzal Rhomb - Summer's Here                        2:54
16. The Chemical Brothers - Piku                         4:54
17. Paul Oakenfold - Chase                               6:16

                                             Total:     73:23

Winter '01-'02 Mix

This one is songs that give me the feeling of winter or winteriness (mostly in terms of music, though a few of them evoke winter lyrically). Some of them in particular are also songs that I was listening to a lot during the titular winter.
Songs that almost made it on:
Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan's Dream
Bob Dylan - Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
Smashing Pumpkins - Thirty-Three
But as much as I associate them with this past winter, those three will all be needed more on the Sad Songs mix.

Nota bene: Track 1 is actually a combined recording I made of two tracks from the game, from music files someone ripped from the game cartridge. Track 3 is from the Metal Gear Solid OST. Track 12, as it says, is from the Vanilla Sky soundtrack, and is NOT the peppier version from Songs For A Blue Guitar. Track 16 is from No Disc, the second Cowboy Bebop OST, and is usually not found filed under the artist name. As far as I can remember, everything else on there is on a regular album release by the listed artist.

 1. Nobuo Uematsu - Final Fantasy VI Opening Theme #3 / Terra      3:55
 2. Wumpscut - Eclipse (Kaelte Container Remix)                    5:12
 3. Rika Murakana - The Best Is Yet To Come                        5:44
 4. Sarah McLachlan - Possession                                   3:56
 5. Einstürzende Neubaten - Bili Rubin                             2:59
 6. UNKLE with Thom Yorke - Rabbit In Your Headlights              6:20
 7. Radiohead - Street Spirit                                      4:09
 8. David Usher - St. Lawrence River                               4:14
 9. Vertical Horizon - Grey Sky Morning                            4:32
10. R.E.M. - Everybody Hurts                                       5:20
11. U2 - With Or Without You                                       4:56
12. Red House Painters - Have You Forgotten (Vanilla Sky version)  5:29
13. A Perfect Circle - Three Libras                                3:35
14. Hum - Apollo                                                   5:47
15. Björk - Frosti                                                 1:41
16. Yoko Kanno & Gabriela Robin - Green Bird                       1:54
17. Todd Rundgren - Can We Still Be Friends                        3:34

                                                        Total:     73:17

"Chill" (Light Techno Mix)

Some of these aren't so light and some aren't so much techno, but it all works well, and the "for chilling" became the important part. This one really fell together at the end after much torturous reorganizing.
Songs that almost made it on:
Aphex Twin - Agiespolis
Squarepusher - Tundra
Underworld - Mmm Skyscraper I Love You
But the first two would've been repetitive, and weren't as upbeat as the tracks from those artists that made it on, and the last just didn't work out.
Possible substitutions, from later auditing:
Forever by Orbital for Halcyon & On & On
Autumn In Ganymede by Yoko Kanno from Cowboy Bebop OST 3: Blue for Piano Black or for one of the Gorillaz songs.

Nota bene: Track 9 is from the first Cowboy Bebop OST, and is usually not filed under its composer.

 1. Aphex Twin - Cuckoo                     6:04
 2. Gorillaz - Double Bass                  4:45
 3. Radiohead - A Meeting In The Aisle      3:09
 4. Nine Inch Nails - La Mer                4:37
 5. Future Sound of London - Cascade        4:16
 6. Jakatta - Ever So Lonely                3:38
 7. Moby - Run On                           3:45
 8. Squarepusher - Papalon                  8:10
 9. Yoko Kanno - Piano Black                2:48
10. KMFDM - The Problem                     6:05
11. 311 - Stealing Happy Hours              4:15
12. Gorillaz - Dracula                      4:41
13. Orbital - Halcyon & On & On             9:25
14. Moby - Fireworks                        2:13

                                 Total:     67:51

4. My to-do list

In No Order

  • Node my high school, or at least something about it. *Later note: This may never happen, now that I'm out of there...
  • Write up all that crap in the little list I've been making on my Visor. I'd put it all here, but don't feel like copying it (and don't want other people to get to a couple of them before I do :P )
  • Try to remember the anecdote that I was going to write under "go ape in 2001". It was some things that occured around the start of this year that made me feel like finally crossing that river and smashing that old Moon-Watcher's skull in with a rock.
  • Find me one a' them Perfect Screwdrivers.
  • Get blech, the compilation CD

5. E2 stuff I like

"Writing one good node that gets no attention is still more satisfying than writing ten shitty high-rep nodes." -nocodeforparanoia
I like my highest-rep nodes, but with a few of them I'm ashamed that other people like them so much more than I do.

Noders:

  • This TehBesto guy has quite a bit of good stuff.
  • I'm a big fan of Igloowhite's writing in general.
  • Roninspoon tells great stories, even when they're about not-so-great things.
  • I never really knew sensei, and haven't read as much of his work as I should, but I miss him anyway.
  • I also really (really really) like the writing of Interstellar Scrotum, even though he seems to have returned to his home on Scrotus Prime in the year 10000...
  • Li Kao is cool even though he writes even more slowly than I do :)
  • donfreenut ain't bad either, though I like his humor and facts more than his serious non-factual noding.

I'm sure I forgot some people whose writeups I love right here, but I'll add them as I think of 'em.

The most useful writeups ever:

Writeups I love:

These are better'n bookmarks. Bookmarks may be deleted someday. These links probably won't. This started as a list of nodes that I would search for frequently, and read over and over, even though I never bookmarked them... they just got stuck in my head.

Art & Music:

Graffiti:

Songs & Albums:

Life:

Culture:

Pop Culture:

Literature:

Fiction:

Humor:

Lexicography:

Nonfiction:

Poetry:

Node titles I love:

I probably am ambivalent about the writeups, if there are any. Most of these are phrases I'd love even if they weren't node titles; some are nodes where I feel the writeups didn't live up to the expecations I was given by the great title. Some are the best nodeshells ever (some are my nodeshells).

6. My writeups, by category:

I decided that now, at only a hundred WUs, would be a good time to start listing my writeups here in a readable fashion, so that one can find writeups similar to any one of mine that is of interest, or just see an overview of what I've written about. (It's mainly because I find Everything User Search results hard to read.) I'll update this any time I write something up or get a WU deleted. Note that some writeups fit into multiple categories. Links within each category are in alphabetical order, and are exact node titles.