The Bite-Sized Pegritz

The Zen of Assholery: Cat-Piss Genji at the Filthy Well

Fri, 08 May 2009 02:49:08 -0400

The Zen of Assholery: Cat-Piss Genji at the Filthy Well: PEGRITZ(.com)! is proud to present—for the first time in English—the adventures, koans, and meditations of legendary Japanese Zen master Cat-Piss Genji! Read on to enjoy the tale of “Cat-Piss Genji…

Pegritz's Art (and soon, maybe some stories) at DeviantArt.com!

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:20:30 -0400

Pegritz's Art (and soon, maybe some stories) at DeviantArt.com!:

For most of my life, I was a pretty accomplished artist. My father was an artist in his spare time, and I took after him. I began doodling when I was six months old—couldn’t even walk yet, but I could scribble the shit out of a giant crayon! All through my school years, my fellow students and friends used to love to see whatever monsters or giant robots or cartoons I would draw. In college, I became an illustrator for Cal U’s celebrated Flipside Magazine, and hoped that someday I might make a career out of art.

Well, that didn’t happen.

In fact, by 1999 or 2000, I’d grown so sick of the lack of recognition for my skills that I quit like a sulky little bitch and didn’t do more than doodle a few goofy caricatures or triumphant cocks here and there over the next eight years.

Then, in November of 2007, as I was working at my wonderful new job as an Apple Computers Tech-Support Agent, I realized something: while I was stuck on the phone talking to people too stupid to own any computers let alone Macintrashes, I was doodling nonstop on the back of my team rankings sheets, Post-It notes, and any other pieces of paper I could find. It wasn’t long before I purchased a new set of Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph pens and started gettin’ bizzay on some new actual artwork.

You can now see it at my DeviantArt profile/portfolio! I’m busily scanning stuff, so there’ll be new content almost every week! Do stop by and check out what ya boy’s been creating lately, and—as soon as I find my old drawing books—what ya boy did that made him semi-professionally famous back in the day!

"Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife — chopping off what’s incomplete and saying:..."

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:22:22 -0400

“Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife — chopping off what’s incomplete and saying: “Now it’s complete because it’s ended here.””

- Paul “Muad’Dib” Atreides

A More Perfect Union

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:46:21 -0500

A More Perfect Union: In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, here’s the video and complete text of Barack Obama’s historic speech on race in America, given at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, PA.

Windows 7 Beta: Microsoft’s Back in the Saddle Again

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:02:46 -0500

Windows 7 Beta: Microsoft’s Back in the Saddle Again: So, the Windows 7 beta is out. And it’s clear Microsoft has finally gotten its head on straight again.

"LOOK AT THE PICTURE!!! See the skull, the part of bone removed, the “master-race”..."

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 21:50:26 -0500

“LOOK AT THE PICTURE!!! See the skull, the part of bone removed, the “master-race” Frankenstein radio controls, the Brain-thoughts Broadcasting Radio, the Eyesight Television, the Frankenstein Earphone Radio, the Threshold Brainwash Radio, the latest new skull reforming to contain ALL Frankenstein Controls, even in THIN skulls of WHITE PEDIGREE MALES! Visible Frankenstein controls! The synthetic nerve-radio directional antennae loop! Make copies for yourself! There is NO ESCAPE from this worst gangster police state, using ALL of the deadly gangster Frankenstein controls!”

- Francis E. Dec, Esquire.

"Humans are evil bastards to claim that a god is all-powerful when it is impossible for a male queer..."

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:02:39 -0500

“Humans are evil bastards to claim that a god is all-powerful when it is impossible for a male queer god to give birth to a baby or breast-feed it - a power that only a Mother posseses [sic]. Humans are Evil bastards to claim that a god is all knowing - when the queer bastard is too stupid to comprehend that 4 simultaneous corner 24 hour days and 4 Earth rotations occur within a single 24 hour rotation of CubedEarth.”

- TimeCube.

Sadman’s “Cold in the State of Me” is...

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:06:32 -0500

Sadman’s “Cold in the State of Me” is officially the Derek C. F. Pegritz Official Song of the Year for 2008. Don’t even bother to ask why.

All that crap aside, Sadman is an amazing synthpop band. Truly, I’ve never heard a Swedish synthpop band I didn’t love.

Mr. Bungle’s “The Girls of Porn” is the...

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:08:18 -0500

Mr. Bungle’s “The Girls of Porn” is the ultimate Not Safe For Work song…so for god’s sake, don’t click the above link if you’re in the workplace—or, if you can’t resist and do so anyway, don’t blame me if you get in trouble! This song is just so amazingly good, I have to share it with the world. Metal + ska + funk + Mike Patton being completely insane = Total Jam(tm).

Review: Tim Powers, The Stress of Her Regard

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 00:46:22 -0500

Review: Tim Powers, The Stress of Her Regard: I have several books by fantasy/horror author Tim Powers—On Stranger Tides, Dinner at Deviant’s Palace, and, of course, The Stress of Her Regard—but the only one I’ve ever been able to finish is The…

"…a considerable new message…the blissful counterstroke…"

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 12:33:27 -0500

““…a considerable new message…the blissful counterstroke…””

- Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

An Android-Skull Sword Cane?!

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:19:05 -0500

An Android-Skull Sword Cane?!: It’s just what it says it is!

"Not that the incredulous person doesn’t believe in anything. It’s just that he..."

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:15:19 -0500

“Not that the incredulous person doesn’t believe in anything. It’s just that he doesn’t believe in everything. Or he believes in one thing at a time. He believes a second thing only if it somehow follows from the first thing. He is nearsighted and methodical, avoidind wide horizons. If two things don’t fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a thing that connects them, that’s credulity.”

- Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum (1989).

music.pegritz.com: Free Music to Soil Your Eardrums!

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:31:11 -0500

music.pegritz.com: Free Music to Soil Your Eardrums!: Music.pegritz.com is now live…meaning you can download all my “solo” electronic works directly from The Man Himself for—get this—no money at all. That’s right: everything’s free! So have at…

"We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works."

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:03:44 -0500

“We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.”

- Douglas Adams.

Hmmm….I totally forgot about this song, “Fuck...

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:04:15 -0400

Hmmm….I totally forgot about this song, “Fuck It,” by a one-hit-wonder by the name of Eamon. It seems pretty appropriate to call folks’ attentions back to this song right now. Mind you, things with me didn’t go down quite as described in the song, but the sentiment is certainly 100% spot-on.

The CyberDen Internet Radio Show!

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:39:19 -0400

The CyberDen Internet Radio Show!:

DJ Bat, the electrowizard behind one of my all-time favorite industrial/ambient acts, Xorcist, now has an exceptional podcast going. The first volume, “Blueprint of Life (1965-1985),” is a wonderful retrospective documenting how electronic music (and music in general) influenced Herr Fledermaus during his formative years. It’s a wonderfully intimate, and extremely musically diverse memoir of one fella’s musical influences that greatly parallels my own, though, as I was born a little later, our timeframes don’t quite coincide—though we were still both huge New Wave fanatics.

The second podcast is a superb selection of Halloween-oriented music! And believe me, DJ Bat knows his horror-movie music….Didn’t hear any Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos in there, but hey…I still haven’t even gotten close to finishing that damn album yet. :) Check it out, though, fellow electro-heads! Early electronic music and spooky jams are good for the soul.

Plus, Bat gets Mad Props for mentioning Emerson Lake & Palmer’s Brain Salad Surgery.

“Ode to Morphine” is another new track that...

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:16:41 -0400

“Ode to Morphine” is another new track that I’ve written in honor of a dear old friend. Were it not for opiates, I’d be dead now. Not that I’m a smack addict—I’ve never been addicted to anything in my life (not even Oreo cookies)—but opiates are, quite literally, the only painkillers I can take that do not make me horrendously ill. All NSAIDs give me terrible rashes, swelling, vomiting…it’s miserable. But with this goddamned fibromyalgia worming through my every muscle and joint, with an army of kidney stones just waiting to march forth and shred my ureters, with the skullcrushing migraines and the horrendous pain/nausea of the mysterious “ileus” that keeps coming back every few months to make my small intestine stop working…well, if it were not for Morphine and all his many poppy-powered derivatives, I would’ve put a bullet in my head long ago.

This track was written when I came out of the hospital after my latest bout with my digestive system shutting down. I spent a lot of time in there writhing with jagged, bit-crushing pain until the Morphine came along to transport me to fields of lush ambient relief.

A New Song: “Fuck You, Melissa”

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 18:03:53 -0400

A New Song: “Fuck You, Melissa”: The easiest way to blow off steam when people really piss you off is to channel that pressure into something creative—like this vicious little jam that is guaranteed to make your speakers cry.

Yesterday, the girl I’d been dating for the last year very...

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 17:09:23 -0400

Yesterday, the girl I’d been dating for the last year very suddenly decided she “just wanted to be friends.” I don’t play that game, so I told her to go fuck herself. This song is the audio equivalent of the psychic turbulence I’ve been experiencing for the past twentyfour hours….I never really loved the girl—that part of my soul was burnt out last year by someone else whose name I refuse to mention. But I’d certainly grown fond of her, and cared for her a good bit. Still, I’m honestly surprised how bad I feel now.