Thomas Mahoney

There are a few people in my life who after 4+ years still give me shit for moving to and living in California. Sure, we have earthquakes, annual budget problems, energy issues, delusional fame-seekers, and sports fans who either don’t care or support a team with a rapist (cough, Lakers, cough), but you know what we don’t have, you holier-than-though New England apologists? This:

Fuck ice. Ice is for my Coca-Cola, not my power lines and roads. I’m excited about spending a month in the east, and weather is not why.

I’ll be spending an extended amount of time in Manhattan during the end of December and beginning of January. I’m sure most of my friends in the city already know this, but if you live there and we haven’t talked, hit me up. This won’t be exactly a vacation, but I’ll have plenty of time to meet up, hang out, and enjoy the sub-zero temperatures.

Also, I’ve finally made some progress on the portfolio section of the site, so if you’re interested in seeing some projects I’ve worked on or learning about the skills/experience I have that allow me to make outrageous claims about the current state and future of the web, check it out.

Yesterday and today, I wrote 3 separate drafts of a statement involving the recent actions of my former employer, who laid off several members of an already small staff.

I looked through them. Some parts were clever, some parts were witty, some were brutal, some funny, and all honest.

And then, it hit me.

I really don’t have anything interesting to say about it. We’re in a recession. Tons of people are getting laid off. I didn’t take it personally, and I wasn’t really that upset. Fortunately, I have a few things on the side that should help ends meet. And that’s that. If anything, I extend my condolences to the two owners and those who were retained. You’ve got a lot of challenges ahead of yourselves, and I hope you tap into that creative intelligence and work ethic and survive the storm ahead.

The next few weeks will be interesting ones for myself, my friends, my family, and the unknown visitors checking out this site. I’ve been working on a variety of projects that will be unveiled over the upcoming month and beyond, and I look forward to your feedback. And I finally have some time to breathe, maybe take off to somewhere for a week, and catch up on a lot of reading.

In the meantime, my services are always available on a freelance, part-time, full-time, or consultant basis. I’ve got tons of skills, loads of experience, and killer references. Hit me up if you need the resume or to see the portfolio (which, now that I have time, will be updated on this site sooner rather than later). And I’m always looking out for the new wave of cyber ninjas ready to shred the ‘net and collaborate on projects outside of mainstream corporate America.

Always forever now,

Thomas Mahoney

This year, I’m thankful for the following:

I’m thankful Obama won, not just because he is an intelligent, thoughtful leader, but also because it renders “red state thinking” obsolete.

I’m thankful the Silverlake Monsters won in fantasy baseball.

I’m thankful there are people alive that still write great books and haven’t been seduced by other forms of media or convinced their words don’t matter.

I’m thankful for free open source software and the cyber ninjas behind it. 

I’m thankful that TV on the Radio, Deerhunter, the Black Angels, the National, and Lil Wayne released new music this year.

I’m thankful I know people with ideas original enough to change the world and the confidence to put them into action.

I’m thankful that in a year as shitty as 2008, the human spirit, no matter how depressed and beaten up, still holds onto a glimmer of hope.

And as always, I’m thankful for minor chords, diminished fifths, tritones, and all supernatural laws governing Riff Creation Theory, including the tools necessary for evangelism, such as Gibson guitars, Sunn amplification, and Russian-made vacuum tubes. Get down on your knees and bow down to the cosmos, whether you’re a pilgrim, an indian, a turkey, or Rick Astley and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Shady Jeff, mentioned in the previous post, doesn’t just take your Nazi-engineered cars and turn them into Green Peace-friendly automobiles, but he also does straight-up mechanic work. I think he saved me $300 today in about 12 minutes. I normally don’t point out to the links I have in my sidebar, but click “LA Bio Cars” for more info. Go to his shop (even if it is in Pasadena and he has “L” and “A” tattooed on his hands). Brakes? Check. Windshields? Check. Sparkplugs? Check. Hummer engines installed into 1950s-era Ford pickups painted jaundice yellow and guzzling rotten veggie oil? Check.

Jeff is your new mechanic. Deal with it. Call him. Tell him, “Tom Mahoney sent me.” He’ll ask, “Are you inquiring about auto work or should I start making funeral arrangements for someone?” Tell him you are contacting him for the former. (Mum, c’mon! Stop being so literal. It’s called a joke. Do they have those in England?)

Quick note: Jeff loves MySpace. He loves it in that way that closet homosexuals used to (and still) love the corner of Santa Monica and Highland at 2:30AM. But soon that link will point to a new site. Give it a few weeks. The point is, call Jeff. He’s even friends with Cam’s mom, a woman I met under the most extenuating of circumstances (thanks a lot for the Ian Curtis, James).

- If you follow my Twitter, you might remember the other night I went off about rewriting an .htaccess file to modify some PHP script on my server. And I did it on a Mac, which is a fucking wickedly brutal feat to pull off for someone like me (from what I’ve read) with little server experience. Anyway, the people at Perishable Press, who are way smarter than I’ll ever be, have a great overview on .htaccess tricks you should check out if you are into such things.

- Led Zeppelin is the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band ever. This is not an opinion. It is fact — watch the Royal Albert Hall performance if you need some evidence. I’m pretty sure before Stephen Hawking and his android wheelchair kick it, he’ll release some kind of equation proving it. Of course, Led Zeppelin is trying to sabotage this with talks of doing a tour without Robert Plant. Yeah, sounds like a good idea. Is a $100 million a piece a good price to destroy a legacy for? For instance, say if I find a cure for cancer, make a gazillion dollars, and at a late age decide I want even more gold, would I, let’s pretend, go on national television and tell everyone I’m a serial child rapist/murderer? Too brutal/illogical of an analogy? Not in my mind. Don’t do it. Just play, “In The Light” over and over again and read some Crowley texts, Jimmy. The shark isn’t ever going into the vagina again.

- I was recently privy to the most terrible conversation to have occured in the western hemisphere in the past several months. No, it wasn’t racist, or sexist, or homophobic, or violent, or in any way offensive to your average emotionally-challenged civil lawsuit plaintiff. It involved one past and one current heroin addict. Actually, it was really just a monologue with the occassional interjection by the other party, who later laughed with me about the shittiness of it all. One person just kept on saying how much it irritated them how a certain strand of heroin on the west coast is called a certain thing, when in reality that kind of heroin is only on the east coast and a much better product. As the voice of reason — and if you have made me the voice of reason you’ve already lost — I declared the conversation to be beyond all that is useless and annoying. You do drugs? Fine. But when you’re high, it’s in your best interest to follow a simple rule I have tattooed above my right wrist (for non-substance abuse reasons): DON’T TALK. Talking about drugs while on drugs is the only morally reprehensible part of the act of using, henceforth illegal in my eyes.

- Enough about me. What about you? What did you do today? I’m not being facetious or sarcastic when I ask this. I really want to know. Email me. What are you doing and why? God bless.

TM

This is for all the psychic ninja occultists out there and for all the readers who may have forgotten my gang out-mindfreaks Criss Angel on an hourly basis. Woo!