Mannloon.com The Blog

A little help?

2009-02-28T18:44:00.000-08:00

So seriously folks. My daughter is living with a guy that went to jail for 3 months for threatening to kill my son, does anyone understand that this is a horrible situation and is out of my control? I guess I will have to report all this to social services when i can convince myself to, but the whole point of that other blog entry found directly below this one was to try and explain my life is quite out of my control.

I NEED HELP, the help of people that do not have the problems i have, to champion a cause that is simply and quite honestly, trying to save my life and better the lives of my son and daughter.

I want to fight but do not have the means, mental ability or strength to do so.

I'm getting really stressed out, Kat won't even entertain the idea of me being at my house for one day to make an appointment with a Doctor I've been on a waiting list to see for 3 months.

To make sure, in case he reads this, this does not include Paul, he's got my back better than anyone has lately. But can no one else understand? Will no one else help me? Fuck people, you can't hate me that much.

For those that don't quite know what the deal is with me

2009-02-23T13:28:00.000-08:00

Currently I have been running into a lot of situations where I feel I have to explain far too much about my life in too short of a time. So I'm trying to write out a press release of sorts so that I can direct friends and others to it, instead of trying to explain things on the fly.

I was thrown out of my home by my wife after feeding her information that would end the iffy situation I've been living with for more than a year. When I lost my job at Convergys right after the birth of my daughter, my wife in my opinion at least, decided I had failed her. She treated me like I had made a choice to not help our family. This was not the case, and things went down hill from there.

Our arguments got worse and worse and eventually I began losing control and flipping out. Not violently on Kat, but breaking stuff and eventually hurting myself. This lead to an eventual stay in a psyche ward for me and meeting a Dr. I liked and decided to make my personal Doctor. In speaking with him I finally opened up to admitting that I was incapable of handling everyday life due to abuse I suffered as a child, that is well known to my family memebers as well as Katherine herself.

I have been diagnosed as ADHD for years, but I found, and my sister-in-law did as well, a scientific paper that spells out how sexual and violent abuse suffered as a child, leads to the brain changing the way it forms in early childhood, and manifests in symptoms very ADHD like, but detectable on an MRI. Besides the "why don't you get a job" problems I've always had, I was diagnosed with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, General Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, and various other goofy problems that have plagued me most of my life.

An example of Complex-PTSD would be the triggers that stop and or stopped me from every day activities most people have a hard time understanding how I would "choose" not to do. Taking care of my teeth, even going to the bathroom are connected to traumatic memories of being terrorized by my fathers second wife, when I was only 3 or 4 years old. So I have Vietnam style flash backs or feelings more so connected to taking showers and brushing my teeth, because this lady would scream at me or beat me with a belt if I didn't do things when she told me to. I was very attatched to my mother at this age, and this lady took some sort of gross pleasure in trash talking my Mom and harassing me.

So this psychotherapist that I met in the psyche ward, wants to get me into therapy and thinks I need quite a bit of help, both from medication and counselling. And I want to finally take my childhood abuse head on and see if I can't rise above it, but I'm pretty much useless at the moment.

Kat and I were fighting so badly that I would scream and flip out, and because of this I allowed my son Tanis to go live with his mother, who lied to me and said she would have a place for her and Tanis to live. Although now she is unemployed and homeless, and staying with friends with my son in tow. Kat thinks Tanis went away because I was getting violent, I sent him away because I was out of control, but I know Kat doesn't take my mental issues seriously, and she just insists I am to blame for everything. I miss my son terribly.

I don't know what to do now, I was going to go to a disability meeting about my problems, but Kat's brother decided he would try the same thing before I had my first meeting. He doesn't have ADHD, but when he was turned away by local medical places to get adderall, that he decided he needed, he just threatened to hurt himself and continued to pressure them until they gave it to him. I was there for this, because he did this the last time he crashed at our house and refused to leave. Just for example, to his character: He admitted to me he keyed his ex girlfriends car, and last week the case was thrown out, and he now insists he never did it. He, as well as Kat may very well be sociopaths.

So I was embarassed by his trying to get on disability, the same as I was when he got on the same medication I got on years ago. So I decided not to go to my meeting at the social security office. I'd honestly rather be homeless or die in a street than be a fraud like him. He was living off of Kat and I, eating food we got from foodshare from the government, and the whole situation makes my skin crawl, It's not fun to be me in any way at all.

The point of this is, I am in need of a base of operations to set out to meetings with therapists and doctors as well as perhaps the social security office. But I have a really bad taste in my mouth for these things as a guy who forced himself on my wife and I's life with our children, and still sits in my sons old room, hording shoplifted goods from the grocery store we live by, just leaching off of anyone he can. I can't just "get a job" and get my head in the game.

I was very abused as a child, sexually, violently, and i've been running from it and hiding it for years. At least hiding how it had really messed me up, always wanting to make my brother proud, since he obviously has always hoped it didn't get to me more than it did him. I cannot function as normal people do, and I need help to get through this.

I am staying at my old friend Paul Riendeau's house in Milwaukee. But he's not going to be able to help me the way I need to be helped, god bless him he's a great friend and a wonderful guy, but I had always hoped at least Kat could help me get to some needed appointments, to get things in motion, to get my teeth fixed as well, and she couldn't. Things had been ok, but she also decided she needed adderall without being properly diagnosed, and when she had taken it last month she got very moody and I did my best, but I couldn't handle the stress.

I don't have a wrap up for this blog, I just want people to understand my problems.

ARM

Music Meets Idiot

2009-01-30T06:15:00.001-08:00

This was originally posted on my myspace music page in August of 08

I thought I'd update anyone that may not know, or cares to know as to why I've been MIA on the music / music myspace lately. And I did just add some of my friends from my personal page, so perhaps someone will actually read this right?

As most people know, I'm a complete idiot, although I've been coming around a lot lately. My daughter being born nearly a year ago has had a huge impact on my way of thinking, one that the birth of my son should have, but I was 19, and as William H Macy once said "I didn't have the brains god gave an animal cracker" at that time in my life so it's not that hard to see why I dropped the ball there.

Getting into synthesizer programming and sound design as much as I did, and one would need to to make good electronic music, was far too time consuming and involved. I consider myself honored to have had Phil Shenandoah around to lean on and learn from, but not only should I have been doing other things a year or so ago, when I was working on tracks, but it's almost impossible to imagine spending my time tweaking patches when this little girl I have wants to snuggle and watch Blue's Clues.

Music is a huge part of me, it always has been. And although I've become a much more mature musician through the last year or two, much to my dismay I have no time, or sometimes even the want to attempt to produce tracks.

My synths are packed away at the moment, to make room for Audrey's stuff. And I've tried to focus more on being a better father and husband than guru of subtractive synthesis programming. But I keep listening to as much music as possible, and share that with my daughter, as well as trying to teach my son to program his rompler PCM based digital synth, what little I have to teach that is.

The one thing keeping my brain happy in a musical way is playing guitar, which I know Phil wouldn't understand, but it's great for me. I have my Gretsch and Fender Strat out in the living room, and I play songs for Audrey most the time, and on the rare occasion she's occupied I've been studying guitar theory and practicing as much as possible. Mostly Chet Atkins, or Chris Cheney's (of the Living End fame) stuff. I had a pretty intense John Fruciante kick last month too.

Which kind of comes around to my viewpoint of my current status as a musician and songwriter. Which is; the type of person I was in my youth (10-26), that was quick to brag but slow to learn, and rarely had a grasp on how much work needed to be done before I could rest on my laurels, my comprehension of music and skill at guitar and other important factors, sat dormant for an unthinkable amount of time.

And although I'm almost officially on a long term break from trying to make records or gig on a regualr basis, I'm having more fun and making better music than I ever have. And I would appreciate it if people would keep an ear open, or check back here every once in a great while.

And of course, thanks go out to Phil Shenandoah for everything he's helped me learn or do in the last two years, as well as Henrik Iversen, for his support of my project. And last but never least, my cousin Matthew Brawand of the recently disbanded Love and Fame and Death, he's had more success than I ever have, and every 3 or 4 years I get to hang out for a week or so with him like I did just last month, and he always helps me conect some very simple dots mentally, emotionally, and involving my understanding of guitar theory and music.

I may not have many "fans" but I get more resepect than I deserve from people I 'm lucky to know and consider my friends.

So, this is heavy stuff I guess, but all is well, and keep an ear out for me, I will make some noise at some point.

ARM

If you weren't ignoring me, you probably should.

2008-12-24T13:01:00.001-08:00

It appears I air too much personal information in public. I am removing things that I think could cause harm or due no good to people close to me. I will reserve judgment of other people until after I figure all this crap out in April.

My apologies.

ARM

2008-12-20T17:51:00.001-08:00

gonna try and vacate the myspace blog, easy as it is use, and use this one and link it off the facebook.

Reminds me of the glory days

2006-12-21T20:50:00.002-08:00

So today fate would have me wake up with 2 cigarettes and no money to get more until around 2:30, due to banks, and checks and just bad timing. I had smoked the second one as late as I could, being around 10:30, and from then until just now I was a mess. As said as it is, I was searching my house for change, which every smoker I know has done, but I had to go mostly for pennies. Eventually finding enough and going to a "coinstar" machine at a local store, then quickly to Kwik Trip to pay the yet again raised price of $3.44 for a pack of Marlboro Reds. Not only was I searching for smoke money, but I also am on or slightly to the bad side of "E" as far as gas goes in my car, and even more exciting is that I had to put the last few drops of brake fluid I had into the car just so I could stop while driving to these places.

I found the money, I made it there and back without losing my brakes or running out of gas. This is sort of a sign of the things going on in my life that may have contributed to my anxiety attack thinger the other day, but this type of situation, where i beat the odds, and if only for a short while, defeat life, and "win", is something that I think the only person that would understand as well as I do is Colin. He may be a wanker, but he and I lived a miserable existance together for years, and somehow always kept our heads high because of things like today.

It makes me play Hans Zimmer's score from the movie The Rock and sit back and smoke and feel triumphant, it's retarded, but sometimes it keeps you going.

Heard any good stories about me lately?

2006-12-21T20:50:00.001-08:00

Perhaps the one where I start blacking out, think i'm dying, manage to settle down, drive to Tanis's school to pick him up, and then precede to have multiple black out / numbness /freaking out /thinking I'm gonna die / saying fuck in front of my 7 years olds elementary school's office staff episodes, Then being taken to the back room of the office, laying down, hearing sirens, having, first responders, then EMT's show up and tell me I have a heart rate of 120 bpm, and that they're taking me to the Hospital via ambulance, having my step brother Shaun pick up Tanis, then go get Kat from her job, and all of them come down to meet me, where I sit in a gown with EKG wires attached to my chest.....

did you hear that one?

I thought I was having a heart attack, although honestly I always think something is wrong with me, it seems though, that I have more severe anxiety than I thought I had, since this was despite my lack of sleep, water and general healthy living, just a big scary anxiety attack.

what a fucking day.

2006-12-21T20:46:00.000-08:00

To go with the video of Vince in studio, I found this one of Alan Wilder explaining how an Emulator II works.

>

Alan is an amazing programmer and producer, most of what made Depeche what they are or were was Alan's doing. However in toolin garound YouTube I found a video of him talking about the new Recoil album coming out in 07, and some how it seems he's started to look like a mix of Richie Sambora and Alan Rickman. weird.

Not that Synth wizard Vince Clarke has ever been that impressive looking either.

E3 so far.

2006-05-10T01:27:00.000-07:00

So The big 3 all had press conferences yesterday or today, and I'm pretty satisfied. here would be some quick thoughts.

Sony:
I think the price for the PS3 is fair, especially if you consider the price of the Blu-Ray drive itself and the built in wireless LAN, cause if you think about it, adding the not as impressive and quite awkward external HD-DVD drive to an Xbox 360, as well the wireless adapter to a 360 like mine (the higher end one) with those additions would be well over the $599 price tag for a 60 gig PS3.

The PS3 controller, looking identical to two previous Playstation controllers, I think is a bit weak. I mean I agree if it ain't broke don't fix it, but it's sort of well known that Xbox controller S's and even more so the 360 controller are superior. Of course that could be my opinion. But the idea to "throw in" gyroscopic sensors with "6 degrees of freedom" in an obvious attempt to take some steam out of Nintendo's launch is pretty weak man.

As for games on the PS3 i was not impressed, the only game that got me excited was the new Hot Shots Golf, and frankly I would buy that if it was on PS2, so yeah, the games that were played in real time looked no better than 360 titles, honestly most times they looked worse. Which shocked me as much as the next guy.

Nnotable things were the Magic the Gathering style card game camera thingy they showed, where monsters would pop off the cards and fight eachother, As well as the game Eight Days and whatever that nameless Naughty Dog project is. Oh and Tekken 6 (damn straight Phil)

Nintendo:
No price or official launch date for the Wii except for a general 4th quarter of 06, which is cool, don't write something in stone unless you have to, fanboys get bitchy man.
I will say though that this conference was my favorite out of all 3, with Shigeru Miyamoto coming out to open it conducting a virtual Wii symphony playing the Zelda theme, it was fucking outstanding, I love that guy.

I've grown to like the name Wii and down right love the remote style controller. . I will admit the idea of playing a first person shooter with the controller makes me a little, let's say, leary. But once I saw the video of Warioware for the Wii I was fucking sold. And the fact is has a speaker which plays dynamic sounds that go from the controller to the T.V. man alive, I dig it.

As for games, I like Nintendo's style, and while they're not trying to show crazy graphics, they did show some things that are interesting, tons of things that will make strange uses of the new controller, but I can tell you, for me, as a parent, I will have a Wii, to play tennis with my son, or just sit and fish in Zelda, that system really has my interest. the idea of "next generation game play" as opposed to next generation graphics. I like the way they think.

Microsoft:
First of all, what the fuck is Bill Gates doin here? Well he was talking about how Windows Vista was going to change some things about PC gaming. and he was right. The idea of, and soon to be reality of playing games cross platform is long overdue. It may be a ways off and a little more complicated than they made it look, but being able to get Xbox Live messages on your phone or PC is excellent. But most of all just being able to play on a PC against console gamers is cool.

Peter (kind of a douchebag) Moore showed off the HD-DVD add on for the 360 that I mentioned earlier, which does about as much for me as gay midget porn. He talked a lot actually, and for the most part I tuned him out. One thing Satan...er I mean Peter showed that did catch my attention was the new wireless 360 headest, which better not just be a crappy wireless version of the current 360 headset which is garbage. But when he pulled up his non-Bungie-fucking-over-arm's sleave to reveal the logo of Grand Theft Auto 4, that got my attention good and proper. This will be the first time GTA is available cross platform on release day, which is awesome. Although it's totally like the fall of 07 that it's coming out, but I'm still pumped.

As for 360 games, I kind of came away with a 50/50 feeling about it, I mean I don't see Sony or Microsoft living up to the hype of last year, but Microsoft at least has the first batch of ass games out of the way. The Gears of War demo was OK, I'm not like trying to blow myself over it or anything, but it looked alright. It certainly looked better than Sony's crap demo FPS thing, what was that shit called again? See I can't remember, that's how shit it was. although not a 360 game the PC game Crysis by the guys that made Far Cry was shown, and that shit looked pretty good, the origianl Far Cry was excellent, and I'm not talking about the garbage Xbox ports, I mean the PC version.

I feel like I'm leaving out a lot of stuff, but I might as well get to the meat of the Microsoft conference which was of course the final trailer, Halo 3, the thing my dreams are made of. And while it looked like pre-rendered typical E3 smoke and mirrors, Frankie over at Bungie.net has assured us it's being run in real time by the Halo 3 engine, so I'll take him on his word for now, he's been good to us in the past. I can only hope that some how just hanging out with Peter Jackson rubs off on the guys at Bungie and it makes Halo 3 that much better. The fact it's being launched side by side with the movie is kind of unimportant to me, I just want them to make the best Halo they can considering what bull shit Peter Moore and Bill Gates put them through last time. But Halo 3 will be on my mind, in my conversations, on my blog and in my dreams for the next 15 months or so, but I suppose as such a huge Halo fan I can't really see things clearly. If it's to be the last, let's hope it's the best.

All in all, one hell of a two day span in the world of video games, it's a fucking great time to be a gamer (if we must call ourselves that.)

Also notable, and most likely not read by anyone that reads my blog since it's at the end of a giant E3 post, and most likely you've gotten bored and left by now, We have been OK'ed to move to Appleton whenever we want by the company that owns both our townhouse and our new place in Appleton, so look out bitches, I'm coming.

Peace

Monthly Offical Update May 2006

2006-05-01T02:21:00.000-07:00

This is the first of what I imagine will be many "official" what's goin on in the world of Mannloon updates. It's like Bungie's Weekly update, but less informative and less often.

Music news that happened in April and is coming in May is less exciting than I would've hoped. Phil Shenandoah the mastermind behind Rayonnant moved to Appleton, WI last month, and in doing so now has no room to set up his rig to finish recording vocals for the debut Rayonnant CD. The situation is basically that he's waiting for me to move up there at the end of May to set up a mutual studio, or get a place where he can set up his own.

The untitled Mannloon project hit a wall in early April when I decided to switch to writing lyrics instead of melodies as I had been for a while. Life issues stepped in and derailed my progress as so often happens, but I will be mounting another attack in May.

As I mentioned earlier, We are moving back to Appleton from Milwaukee as soon as possible, we're waiting till Tanis gets out of school, so it'll be early June at the latest. Once there Phil and I will be teaming back up to take over the electro scene and play Tekken. Kat will be starting work in the fall at Renaissance School for the Arts in Appleton, and I will be doing whatever pays bills while both Kat and myself continue work on the IPTV show and Kat's other various web and media projects.

As for the distant future, we do only plan on being in Appleton for a while and then packing up again and moving to L.A., and while this may sound typical to anyone outside our circle of friends, anyone that knows us knows Kat doesn't fuck around. And she wants to go out there.

So perhaps we'll get out of this stink hole that is Milwaukee sooner than later, and perhaps I'll somehow get my digital cable back in time for G4's coverage of E3.

-Adam

I'm on the worst schedule known to man

2006-05-01T02:11:00.000-07:00

I just thought I'd mention

Making this my own

2006-04-26T04:59:00.000-07:00

I've been messing with the css on this page a little, it's getting there, but I still have no clue how to add like a big mannloon logo up in the corner or anything. But I think I can figure it out. let's test post a picture shall we?

Awesome, I'll have to put a link on myspace so people can find this.

Moving things over

2006-04-24T01:58:00.000-07:00

I'm attempting to move over all blogging to this one, I use that one a lot, and this one like never. So this one will turn a little less official and silly, but so be it, that's me, and I am mannloon.

E3 2006

2006-04-22T00:09:00.000-07:00

In non-music related Mannloon news, It is 99% confirmed that our own Kat Hinzman will be attending E3 this year. Since part of Mannloon has always been video games, if not modelling and mapping for Counter-Strike, at least the daily Halo games. So Kat will be bringing back tons of cool stuff, video and pictures from the convention. Surely this will end up fueling the IPTV show for a while, as well as give her a chance to hassle our old friends at G4.

Rayonnant

2006-04-08T17:08:00.000-07:00

As soon as I can clear it with Phil I'll be posting some samples of the new Rayonnant tracks.

mannloon.com

2006-04-08T14:43:00.000-07:00

I am moving the bulk of mannloon.com over to this, with any luck i will keep it at least as updated as i have the myspace blog.