Convergence

It is perhaps ironic that I have to log into my Google account in order to access my Blogger account in order to bitch about how my online identities are converging. Or perhaps it is simply telling. Or appropriate.

Regardless, I'm annoyed.

Flickr wants me to link my account to my YahooID, and frankly, the idea makes me a little uncomfortable. I remember back when they first announced that this was happening that there were some people making a stink about it in the forums, and others who couldn't see what the problem was.

Perhaps it's just more evidence of the generation gap that was described in a recent New York Times magazine article -- the gap between those who try to keep a certain amount of privacy online and those who put themselves completely online, their private life, public.

Sure, to be wholly anonymous nowadays, you pretty much have to be off the grid entirely, but I'd like to think that there's still a middle ground somewhere in there that I can carve out, with a little anonymity through obscurity and obfuscation, at least. I probably want people to find me if they're looking hard enough, but I don't really want to just drop it in their lap. A bit paradoxical, I suppose. Or like the article says, maybe I'm just fooling myself:

And after all, there is another way to look at this shift. Younger people, one could point out, are the only ones for whom it seems to have sunk in that the idea of a truly private life is already an illusion. Every street in New York has a surveillance camera. Each time you swipe your debit card at Duane Reade or use your MetroCard, that transaction is tracked. Your employer owns your e-mails. The NSA owns your phone calls. Your life is being lived in public whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.

So it may be time to consider the possibility that young people who behave as if privacy doesn’t exist are actually the sane people, not the insane ones. For someone like me, who grew up sealing my diary with a literal lock, this may be tough to accept. But under current circumstances, a defiant belief in holding things close to your chest might not be high-minded. It might be an artifact—quaint and naïve, like a determined faith that virginity keeps ladies pure.

Back in the day, I only set up my Yahoo account so I could sign up for online stuff without getting my "real" email address spammed. Then my YahooID got tied to a bunch of my mailing lists when Yahoo! assimilated eGroups. That was the beginning of the end, I think. When that happened, all of a sudden my hidden email address was mapped to my "real" address and could be seen by groups of people that I actually interact with in the real world.

So now, if I attach my YahooID to my Flickr account, all those peeps will probably be able to see my photostream. Which seems pretty benign. Except, my Flickr account also links to this blog. And somehow, I've always thought of this blog as being a separate sort of thing. So if I link the ID, the connection's made. Probably fine, right? What's the big deal?

Well, if it's done, it's done. The internet sticks around.

And then how easy is it to out the SOOTTAD, who is fiercely protective of her personal information to the point that there are no unprotected pictures of her on our *private* online photo gallery. I don't even post many pictures of myself in order to reduce the odds of her being identified by association.

Except that the information is already out there. There is a picture of the SOOTTAD out there on the interwebs, with her real name attached to it even. And the Yahoo email address has always been tied to the Blogger account. It just didn't have the reverse mapping from Yahoo to Blogger is all. Oh, F. I already linked to the blog on that stupid Yahoo360° page.

Dumbass. (F'ing Yahoo, pushing and pushing and pushing to continue the convergence. At least I'm not bumping into the namespace issue that other people are having.)

Like I said, maybe I'm just fooling myself.

My timing is impeccable

So, I just switched over to Vonage last week. I've been really happy with the service so far -- cheaper with more features. I get voicemail notices via email. I can check my messages by calling in or online via the web. And I had totally forgotten that my phone supported caller-ID. Schweet.

So, what happens one week later?

Vonage Owes $58M in Patent Case
In a ruling that could have wide-ranging consequeces for the entire competitive voice replacement market, a federal jury Thursday found Vonage guilty of infringing several patents held by Verizon, and awarded $58 million in past damages and imposed a 5.5 percent royalty fee on future Vonage operations. ...

I see that things are operating business-as-usual around here.

On the non-technology front, we're hoping to be largely moved into the new house later this month. There's still lots of little stuff that needs to get carted over or triaged, but I was thinking that I'd finally have some more time to refocus on work, get more wedding planning completed and maybe even hit some side projects I've been setting, er... aside. But I forgot that I got called for Federal Jury Duty at the end of March through mid-April.

As always, perfect timing.

I expect we'll end up closing on the old house right around mid-June, just to properly gum up the works.

When life gives you lemons...

Ice sculpture
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

...make lemonade.

'Course, seeing as lemons aren't really in season 'round these here parts, it's more like:

when life gives you three hours' worth of shoveling of hard packed snow and layers of ice... make art.

In other news, my lower back is now wicked sore, and I can barely hold a pen in my hand to write from all the shoveling. Oh, and we met some more of the new neighbors helping them get their car unstuck from the snow(ice)bank at the front of their driveway. (Which, incidentally, probably would have been unnecessary if the son had accepted my offer to help dig out the driveway. But, whatever.)

New Banner

Having some trouble getting the image uploaded and usable from Blogger.

Jumping back in; 5 Things

Well, school's done. We only have graduation left this coming Sunday and that'll be it. I'm going to have to spend some time reflecting on what I'm really going to do next -- plenty of half-formed plans that I've tossed around, but I need to give things a chance to sink and settle in.

Of course, there's no shortage of things to do right now. Things are finally getting under control with the new house -- I don't even want to go into the saga involved with hiring people to refinish the floors on the first floor except to say that it was scheduled to be finished in the middle of January and we just had our last interaction with the contractor this morning. We still need to pack and move. And we've really kind of dropped the ball on that whole wedding planning thing... I think we were supposed to send out save the dates about two months ago. We still need to meet with caterers, find hotels for guests, invitations, flowers, photographer? honeymoon?

I finally got around to dealing with some mail that was lying around and as I looked more closely at my National Geographic renewal, I wasn't quite getting what it was saying about getting the January issue or the next issue until it finally dawned on me and my brain was like, HOW THE HELL IS IT ALREADY FEBRUARY?! It's like I completely missed January.

Anyway, my friend Leah tagged me with a meme, like, a million years ago, so I figured this might be a good time to have at it. It's called "5 things you might not know about me." And, of course, the problem that most people experience with this exercise is trying to figure out what people don't already know. People either already knew me before they started reading this here blog (hello, Dr.J) or things are fairly self-evident simply from what I've already written, even if I haven't stated them explicitly. (Hey, did you know I'm a bit insecure? Wow, really?) And then the big challenge: the SOOTTAD has instilled in me a great distrust of putting out too much personal information out on the interwebs, so I have to balance telling you about me, without, y'know, really telling you about me. And more importantly, without outting the SOOTTAD.

So anyway, all that has probably made this exercise more of a challenge that it's probably supposed to be, but hey, I have a history of overthinking problems, so it's really just par for the course.

Ok, here we go:

1. After a shower, I always swipe off as much water as possible with my hands before towelling dry. I'm pretty sure I didn't away do this, but I haven't a clue when I started. I think I'm trying to make the towel have to do less work.
2. In high school, I was the fry guy at the local Carl's Jr restaurant. I worked 3 hours a day (the lunch rush) and the moment my shift ended, I would drive home, strip off my brown polyester uniform and take a shower to try and wash the smell of grease off of my body. I don't think I swiped off back then. That job lasted about 2 weeks, and is the only time I ever worked in food service.
3. I have the (unfortunate) habit of singing when I play certain songs on the piano (and guitar). The repertoire has dwindled somewhat over the years, but I'm still left with a handful of songs, including one or two by Billy Joel.
4. I started using stippling as a drawing technique because it was easier to cover up mistakes. While it's not always an optimal form for creating certain textures, (wavy hair comes to mind, actually, all hair) for the most part I think it's generally easier to render recognizable images because it lets a viewer's brain do more of the work. It's sort of like the way we see specific shapes in clouds -- your brain trying to organize information into identifiable patterns -- and sort of how it's hard to draw clouds that look like specific things while still looking like clouds and not a drawing of those specific things.
5. Despite the aforementioned issues surrounding the publishing of ever more personal information on the web, I do have profiles on several social networking sites, including MySpace. But for the very same reason, my MySpace page currently has 0 friends.

That last one seemed kind of lame, but I'm kind of at a loss for anything else. I mean, you all know that I was divorced, right?

I'm not so much for the meme-tagging, which is probably best since there are only a handful of my peeps that actually do this blogging thing. (and there's that intrinsic Ponziness to it that does kind of bother me) But I will send an optional tag to the SOOTTAD, just in case she wants to participate. Despite feeling strongly against posting personally identifying information, she's mentioned that she's felt sad about being left out of the meme game by some of her food blogging peeps in the past.

Almost There

Hope all y'all are doing alright; I'm hanging in there... not really ready to jump back into things just yet. School is just about over -- just one more day of class and graduation the following week -- but there's still plenty that's keeping me occupied. Maybe I'll try easing back into it sometime next week.

Goodbye, old friend

Goodbye, old friend
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

Hope and the Pelagian heresy

Perhaps there's been a bit too much thinking today. Or feeling. Or something. But whatever it was, there was definitely not enough working that needed to get done. And here I am, thinking, or feeling, that I should leave it be and do what's left to do around the house before going to bed, and then going to bed, and I'm sitting here writing a post that I've probably started and cancelled at least six or seven times already in the last half-hour because I thought I should just leave it be because it clearly wasn't ready to come out just yet.

Does any of this make sense? (Don't worry, it gets worse.)

So after learning about what happened to Helen Hill, I was thinking about how these things happen, and what can be done, and what it all means. Which is to say, how do people come to do these terrible things? And, how do you go on after something like this happens? And, well, what does it all mean? And I came to a point where I was thinking about free will.

And it's just like you're watching one of the Matrix movies, and it sounds like a cliché as you hear Keanu Reeves as Neo saying in your head: "It all comes down to choice."

Jenny Davidson begins her post "Helen Hill chose to be good."

You can succumb to the darkness and wallow in despair or you can find the strength to stand up and try to make it work. It seems hopelessly cliché, and yet, it resonates. Maybe it's just that I've watched too many sappy movies, but there it is.

I've recently came to accept that the challenges we go through, the difficult times, while unpleasant, are a part of life. An essential part of life. 2006 was a pretty rough year for me, but I think I went through a lot of growth. I'm in a better place, I feel like I'm a better person. And I realized that without a lot of that hard stuff that went on last year, I probably never would have gotten here. Which is not to say that I'm going out of my way looking for trouble, just that when it comes, I try to accept it for what it is and then do the best I can.

So the idea of free will wandered into my brain sometime around lunch. Later in the afternoon, the SOOTTAD sent me the post by Jenny Davidson where she talks about an idea from a John Passmore book which mentions the Pelagian heresy:

One version of that idea is the thing called the Pelagian heresy, the assertion (contra Augustine, who believed that man could be redeemed only by God’s grace) that man could perfect himself by the exercise of free will.

She later quotes an excerpt:

But we know from our own experience, as teachers or parents, that individual human beings can come to be better than they once were, given care, and that wholly to despair of a child or a pupil is to abdicate what is one’s proper responsibility. We know, too, that in the past men have made advances, in science, in art, in affection. Men, almost certainly, are capable of more than they have ever so far achieved. But what they achieve, or so I have suggested, will be a consequence of their remaining anxious, passionate, discontented human beings.

It is through struggle that we can make ourselves better, and we can help and support one another through it.

Anyway, I feel like I'm rambling a bit, but this whole thought process was nagging at me. And I kept trying to leave it be, until I caught a little synchronicity in Today's Show with Ze Frank. (Of course, theoretically, it was ultimately my choice to post this, right?)

I think that what I wanted to do was provide a small counterpoint to my previous post. I know what to do. It's just that sometimes, I feel so drained. And I need to take a step back and gather myself together before digging in and pushing forward again.

Do what you can. And hope for the best.

Mad World

Helen Hill died January 4, 2007.

I did not know Helen Hill, but it still makes me terribly, terribly sad. But the sadness is overcome by outrage to learn that she was murdered in her home. And it hits that much harder because she was a friend of the SOOTTAD's. As was her husband. As is her husband.

When the SOOTTAD told me about it, she described them as "two of the most purely nice, kind, loving, creative people I have ever met." And all I could think was, what is wrong with the world? What kind of world do we live in where such a thing could happen? Where such a thing could happen to people like this?

The headline in the New York Times -- "Just Days Into the Year, Killings Toll Hits 8 in New Orleans" -- seems absurdly distant. Same for the Shreveport Times. Another body count in a world full of violence. You could quickly scan it and wander off, troubled but largely untouched. I know these things happen, but knowing them, even once removed, cuts to the quick. The connection brings it into sharp relief, and yet it isn't necessary to have that connection to feel its impact. It was fundamentally a terrible thing to happen. A terrible thing to happen to anybody. It sparks anger, outrage and then more sadness.

And yet the despair currently surpasses the outrage right now.

I think about the insulated worlds in which I move. In school, I'm in contact with many people who want to be healers, people who want to make a living making the world a better place. Lots of warm fuzzies flying all around. A hopeful place. It makes me want to bring understanding into my perspective. People can be swept up by the tide of circumstance; desperation can cause people to do terrible things. But this seems to go beyond my understanding. I can't put myself in a context where one could do such a thing and still be within my perspective, my values, my world.

And I am left finding that I can only ask, how can you heal from a thing like this? All I can think to do is try and cherish all the good that we still have and do our best to protect and fortify it against all the bad that is swirling around us, but there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with that too...

The world's gone bad, and I wonder if it's gone past the point of no return.

Before and After

Also known as, what I did on my winter vacation...

Master bedroom

Second bedroom

Third bedroom

Gotta get back to the everyday craziness -- it's been a pretty painful transition so far. There's still plenty more to be done, but it probably won't get dealt with in any kind of appreciable way until the SOOTTAD is back from Chicago for good later this month.

Holiday Spirit

I've been kinda out of sync with the whole holiday season thing this year.

Case in point, it's Christmas Eve and I spent most of the day painting one of the rooms in the new house and then went for a run before it got too dark. And now I'm sitting home alone at my computer (homes alone what with the new house also being unoccupied) trying to figure out what I'm going to make for dinner. I'm hoping to go out for drinks with some friends later tonight.*

It's just not feeling particularly Christmas-y except for the part where I have to take into consideration whether stores are going to be open and realizing that most people either aren't around or are off doing family things. (Like the SOOTTAD, who's already at the parental homestead.) I haven't been exposed to much of the commercial holiday onslaught because I don't really watch TV, haven't done much (any) shopping (at least in any kind of retail venue) or really been out and about in any kind of traditional/mainstream public space. It's a testament to the busy, I guess. In fact, the first time the whole Christmas music thing really was noticeable was at lunch Friday at a fairly mainstream "Mexican" restaurant in the area. (A regrettable meal, I'm sad to say.)

Anyway, it was an odd feeling seeing the decorated houses on my run (somehow seeing the Christmas tree through a window hits home more than the lights and decorations out front), noticing clusters of parked cars in some neighborhoods where a family gathering was probably taking place or the occasional family packing into a car, presumably heading off to just such a gathering, only elsewhere.

It's actually the first year I haven't flown back to California for holidays. In the past, I've always visited for at least a few days, even if I had to fly out on Christmas day or spent much of my time working at the computer.

But things were just too crazy this year. I knew we were closing on the new house in the middle of December and would have to deal with fixing things up before the SOOTTAD moved back. There was a possible business trip to Texas the week before Christmas. (It thankfully fell through, but still made travel planning difficult.) And I was also feeling a bit reluctant leaving the sick kitty to the care of others. (I trust my friends, but I didn't want to burden them with the frequent medication, supervised feedings, daily poop-scooping, and the general stress and anxiety caring for a ward whose condition could go quickly from bad to worse.) And when I'd normally be planning my flights, I was feeling overwhelmed dealing with the new work project, school demands, a sick kittycat, and new house details, not to mention trying to provide moral support to the SOOTTAD, all on top of managing the normal everyday business.

It was just too much to deal with, so I punted. It was probably the right decision, but it still makes me a little sad. And I've definitely been feeling it more the last few days. I kind of hoped that my parents would decide to fly out and visit me instead. Supposed to be a mild winter this year, y'know. But, no... and I didn't really try to push the issue.

Anyway, after my run I made my first active acknowledgement of the holiday season by putting on Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. I'm listening to Soma-FM's Christmas Lounge broadcast now.

During the run, I was thinking about all this. How I was feeling a bit down. A bit frustrated with the slow progress on the house. Bummed that the SOOTTAD had to leave yesterday afternoon because of filial obligation. That I was left to paint alone. That I couldn't drum up any friends to help me. That I had to fend for myself for dinner tonight. I was hopeful that I could at least hang out with some friends tonight, but that plan fell through too.

But... it is what it is, and I suppose it's as it should be. These little twists and turns, I assume, I hope, have some reason.

After all that, I still felt, I still feel, an underlying sense of gratitude. I'm kinda bummed right now, but in the grand scheme of things, life is good. I have a roof over my head. (Two, even, were I to need it.) I'm worrying about WHAT I'm going to have for dinner, not *IF* I'm going to have dinner. I'm not with my family right now, but I know they're there, and that they love me. I have many, many friends, new and old. The SOOTTAD will be back tomorrow, and actually, I'll be heading out to spend the day with her family.

When I finished my run, the sun had already dipped beneath the horizon but the part of the sky that was still light was still a deep amber and orange. I ended up watching it slowly faded into a sort of pale brightness, silhouetted by the leafless trees around the neighborhood. It was no idyllic, snowy New England winter scene, but it was still a beautiful sight.

Walking back home, I wished on a star.

I guess I'm getting into the spirit of things in my own way.

Happy holidays, folks.

* A friend of mine apparently has a long-standing tradition of going out drinking at Charlie's Kitchen every Christmas Eve with some friends. I was hoping to join them, but this year, one member of the group has a girlfriend who's hosting a dinner and it turned out that the dinner ran late and they had to bag it for the first time in several years. My luck these days, it seems.

Pluses and minuses

Cat1 & Cat2, November 2006

Baloo, who I've been referring to as Cat2 here, has been very sick for the past several months and took a turn for the worse this week after the most recent round of chemo*. He seemed to have dramatically less strength and stability in his legs (than the already low baseline of the last few weeks), he wasn't really eating or drinking and was just hiding in the basement for a good part of the evening and following morning.

When I took him to the vet for his appointment the next day, he really wasn't looking good, and talking over the options, I was having a hard time keeping my shit together. Actually, let's be honest: I pretty much completely lost my shit while talking to the vet. I hate it when I can't keep it together. But yeah, he wasn't doing well. The vet remarked that he looked pale (possible low red blood cell count) and that he had a fever, and she talked about the possibility of hospitalization, more testing, antibiotics, a possible blood transfusion, all with a pretty poor prognosis. I was basically thinking that I wanted him to be home in a familiar environment, and wanted the SOOTTAD to be able to spend some time with him as she was flying in the next day (today) before, well, you know...

They left me alone to sob uncontrollably in peace, and I eventually got most of it out of my system or under control, or, well, something. While waiting for the assistant to return, I tried giving him reiki** just hoping that it might make him more comfortable. It turns out there were a number of uncharacteristic snafus including lost samples, and the vet being called into a meeting of some kind -- I was kind of shellshocked and it didn't really phase me at that point. In the end, we decided not to get the bloodwork test results rushed (STAT!), and I took him home with an IV bag of fluids that they had showed me how to administer and the plan was just to keep an eye on him and the vet would call when she had more information.

Through the afternoon, Boo settled down awkwardly on the bed upstairs. It raised my spirits ever so slightly that he chose the bedroom over the darkened basement, but I was still worried. Cat1 (Stimpy, named by the Ex, who for the present we will simply refer to as Tubby McEatsalot because he's been chowing down on all the food Boo hasn't wanted) spent the day with him, and I actually tried to work from bed for a while so I could spend more time with him.

The vet called with the test results: low RBC count as expected, high WBC count -- an indication of a possible infection. Instead of taking him in for more tests, we opted for prescribing a course of antibiotics, which meant another trip back to Angell. I went after dinner, and stopped in on a friend before heading home, and when I got back, he actually came downstairs, crying for food and drinking some water.

We'll take the small victories.

Of course, the downside to the feel-good experience of seeing the cat upstairs amongst the living, is discovering that while he was feeling well enough to want to sleep upstairs through the afternoon and evening, he wasn't feeling quite well enough to actually make it back downstairs to the litterbox. And finding a bed soiled with cat pee some time after midnight just before you're going to climb into it really isn't on my list of the best things in life. Yay, full load of laundry at 1am.

But, y'know? For now, I'll take it.

* Yes, he's getting chemotherapy. One of these days I'll actually get into all that.

** So, uh, yeah, I did a Reiki workshop last month. There's a story there too, but I'm not sure I'll get around to writing about it.

A quick observation on Waltham demographics

During a brief stop at the local Shaw's Victory Hannaford's Supermarket down by Main St, I saw not one, but two other asian dudes over six feet tall.

Represent, yo.

Still here

AEM06 Day 8 -- flipbook
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

Hey.

I hadn't really planned on doing AEM this year, but then I decided that I'd do it. And then I figured I'd quit because I had so much other stuff going on. (which was why I wasn't going to do it.) And then I found myself doing art everyday anyway. And then I tried to dial it back.

But it's been just little things here and there, and I haven't really had the time or inclination to post. I figured I'd just check in, say hi, and give y'all a peek at what I've been up to*, which has mostly been listening to this one Leo Kottke song over and over and over again (which surprisingly, hasn't gotten boring... yet), sketching some ideas, figuring out how to use Macromedia Flash. It's been a good break from work, but at times it's gotten a little distracting. (I'm only now starting to recover from staying up late Sunday night/Monday morning.)

Anyway, I thought I might try to visualize how particular scenes would look by making little flipbooks rather than doing it directly in Flash so I went to Staples and bought a pack of scratchpads for the task. I haven't made a flipbook in ages and it's a nice change (along with the Flash stuff) from my usual pen and ink drawings and pencil sketches -- it's been fun.

So anyway, expect only sporadic posts. Hopefully I'll see you around.

* If you're curious about the Flash stuff, drop me a line and I can send you a link to the work in progress. I don't want to post it because it isn't done and I'm hosting it on my personal site that doesn't have a lot of bandwidth.

I listen to Mike, but he's kind of an dick

Mike-FM is one of those new 24/7 shuffle play stations that boasts about their lack of DJs and makes the claim that they "play everything." Whatever. As far as the DJ thing, yeah, they have no DJs, but they do seem to play a lot of bumpers. This becomes relevant later. And as far as the "we play everything" thing, they play everything about as much as Bob's Country Bunker plays BOTH kinds of music (Country AND western.) It's mostly 80's and 90's rock and new waves with some 70's R&B, disco and saccharine pop thrown in. As I said, whatever. I actually kind of like the mix they play, and when they play something that I don't like or find boring, I change the station. No big deal.

Anyway, you may have heard the news: Deval Patrick won the gubernatorial race yesterday. First black governor for the state. First Democratic governor in 16 years. I'm pretty good with all that.

So on the drive into work this morning, I was listening to Mike, and they aired a bumper congratulating the governor elect. Sort of. Backhanded compliment. I don't remember the exact wording, but it essentially suggested that Patrick won because he spent the most money on the campaign. ("glad to see that money talks" or some such.) I looked it up -- it WAS the most money ever spent by all the candidates on a campaign, but the biggest spender in the end was apparently the Republican candidate, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey. So, um, yeah. I guess some money also doesn't talk.

Yeah, that rubbed me the wrong way. (Duh, if it hadn't I wouldn't be here writing about it 12 hours later.) I thought about it though. I tried to be fair; I tried to rationalize it.

This is America, I thought, everybody is allowed to voice their opinion. Freedom of speech is guaranteed by the Constitution. (And let's not go into all that business about who controls the channels by which people's voices are heard.)

And it's a radio station that prides itself for it's irreverent style, and they're all about courting that world-worn, cynical late-thirty, forty-something demographic sweet spot. Of course, there's this pattern I've been noticing. I remember being annoyed in the past when they had a bumper making fun of Mike Dukakis. I mean, sure he looked kind of ridiculous sitting in the tank with that helmet on, but uh... that was like, what, almost 20 years ago? I think there's been a Kennedy bumper too.

And sure, this state is largely Democratic, so I can certainly understand that if you're going to be making politically-flavored snarky comments (and for the moment, we'll ignore whether or not it's appropriate to be making politically pointed comments in the first place, 'cos y'know, other broadcasters have suggested that you shouldn't cause controversy) you're going to target the people in power, the ones who hold the political majority. But we've had a Republican governor the entire time that WMKK has been around and I can't remember a single snip at Governor Mitt Romney, even when he was off on his Republican roadshow making fun of his "home state" of Massachusetts.

Not much of a point really, just mixed feelings about listening to Mike, although these days, I've been listening to CDs more anyway.

whoops

Playing with flash the evening and now it is about 2 hours until sunrise. Tomorrow is going to be a very long day. *sigh*

AEM06 Day 3 - Still Fighting It

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

I was listening to SUNNY16 on the drive up to work and thought that it might be fun to try and make a video for the song "All you can eat." Not a new idea (that is, I've wanted to make videos before for other songs) but nothing usually comes of it -- maybe an idea for a scene or two, maybe even a few sketches, but nothing more.

But who knows, maybe for AEM. We'll see, we'll see.

I get some propaganda email from amazon later in the afternoon, pushing... Ben Folds transcriptions. Hmm. Keeps Ben Folds on the brain today, at any rate.

Thoughts return to the video. I need to get the song onto my computer, but I've been having issues ripping CDs on my laptop (the last time I tried, the bundled software would only rip to WMV format unless I upgraded... no thanks) so I wandered over to the Ben Folds website to see if there were any free downloads there... and ended up watching videos. I'm a sucker for videos. I hope I can get back on track, but I'm rationalizing now. Maybe something will inspire me at least... and hey, I kind of like the composition from one of the scenes in the video for "Still Fighting It" so I decided to sketch it.

Voila, entry for the day.

As a side note, the title of the song resonates in interesting ways in my brain. It initially conjures up the constant struggle I've been having trying to deal with all the things that need to get done these days. It's overwhelming. And yet, here I am carving out more of my precious time to draw. (And there's struggle there too.) And then to blog. There is no time for blogging and yet ... here I am. Blabbity blah blah. Lots of things on my mind these days but, no time. I have to go to bed. But I recognize the need to create, the need to express. It's food for the soul.

And then the song itself is actually about growing up, or trying not to, and basically failing. And that too is interesting, having wandered over to Molly's site today and read some of her Prego Saucy writings. And I see the change from how she was before. And I've reflected on change and growth and identity. And today it seems that I'm thinking about it in the context of this growing up business that seems to be happening all around me -- new houses, weddings, babies -- all that adult, grown-up stuff. And I recognize that while I'm not feeling old, I am wondering whether maybe I'm doing something wrong, like I got off the bus a few stops early and while I've enjoyed hanging out in these here parts, I wonder if I was supposed to be somewhere else by now. And the question becomes: is another bus going to come along at some point or, to mix metaphors, did I miss the boat?

Honestly, it's nothing so dramatic as that. While things are crazy busy and I've been a little on-edge and cranky, I do think that things are coming together. I am buying a new house. I'm getting married (again). And well, yeah, we're talking about that other thing too.

Ok. It's late, and I gotta get up early for a frisbee tournament tomorrow morning. later.

AEM06 Day 2 - Bad Day at the Office

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude

'nuff said.

And so it begins...

Doodles Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

Kat is doing Art Everyday Month again this year -- do art everyday for the month of November. (I guess that's kind of self-evident.) I really got into it last year but I've been flat-out crazygonuts busy so I really didn't plan on joining in on the fun this year. There's just too much stuff going on. I keep thinking that I'll write a post about the daily breakdown of my day, but there are at least 3 other posts that have been in the draft stage for more than a month, so I wouldn't count on it. Suffice it to say that on average, I have about 5 hours a day of official "free time" which (at least abstractly without any context) seems like a good chunk of time to get things done, but when it comes down to the brass tacks, and I'm cramming laundry, paying bills, exercise, classes and homework into that time, there's not a lot of wiggle room for general decompress time or social time with friends. I've finally started squeezing in time to read the bookclub book (because I've had the damn thing checked out of the library for almost two months), I haven't really played piano since spring. Picked up the guitar for about 15 minutes yesterday, and immediately felt guilty afterwards. So finding time to make art is definitely going to be a challenge.

So what the hell do I think I'm doing?

Well, for one thing, I know that, like exercise, it's good for me. It's good to get the creative juices flowing. In some ways, it's like therapy. I enjoy getting lost in the process, and even more often, the surprise at the outcome. And I think it's good to have something external provide the incentive to keep going once in a while. And really, sometimes I really do just need a kick in the butt to get me going.

The other thing is that it seems like a pretty good exercise to try out my new "failure plan." The explanation for which is in one of the aforementioned languishing draft posts. But if you're curious, you can probably get the gist of it from Steve Pavlina's article Are You a Failure Germaphobe?

Failure germaphobe? Yes, yes I am. And I'd talk more about it, but I've got a bunch of stuff I need to get done before going to bed.

Reflecting on the bad guy

So I'm feeling like I'm a bit more on an even keel today and was thinking about my post from the other day.

First off, I realized that there is actually an exception to my No Money For Phone-Callers Rule: students raising money for school programs, specifically, my high school and college, the college fencing team in particular. I remember the days we had to do an annual "Phonathon" for the fencing team. I hated it, but it was something we had to do (along with other unpleasant activities like getting up at 8am to clean up parking lots after football games) to raise funds, presumably because we didn't have that much funding -- I think the phonathon and gruntwork was actually built into the budget. I never stopped to wonder whether the football or hockey players ever had to do that kind of thing. For some reason, I doubt it (at least the early morning cleanup crew business), but you never know. Anyway, I always remember how awkward it was for me to call up random alumni asking for money so I try to make the process and simple and painless as possible.

The other thing I was thinking about was the whole checkout fundraising thing. I have come to realize that when it comes to people asking me for money, I really would prefer to be left alone altogether. I don't like phone calls, I bitch about spam and I complain about junk snail mail. I guess I find the least obtrusive of them to be the snail mail, but I can understand how that's not a good option for underfunded local organizations. And really, the number of trees that die for junk mail is just absurd and depressing.

So how do these organizations raise money? Certainly my preference would be that they be publicly funded, but I recognize that it's reasonable to be concerned about a government that grows too comfortable spending other people's money, but what often seems lacking in that debate is properly making the distinction between charity and the investment in infrastructure and projects that benefit society at large and as a whole. But the question remains, how does an organization reach the right people who are interested and able to give to the cause?

I was thinking about this when I was checking out at the local Hannaford's where they had little coupons that you could use to donate money for breast cancer research. (apparently it's for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation which supports research and community outreach.) Frankly, scientific (and specifically medical) research does seem to be a perfectly appropriate place for the government to be spending money (seeing as the drug companies seem perfectly happy spending their own resources developing meds to help you keep your hard-on), but that's neither here nor there. The main point is that maybe supermarkets (and other businesses) are the right place to reach people. Certainly, it's a good place to provide information and help develop awareness of causes that are in need of funding. My personal preference would be that they just provide information that I could take with me so I could decide whether or not I wanted to write out a check once I got home rather than hit me up for a buck at the register, but perhaps I'm just not your average bear.

But in the meantime, I may need to rethink my default phone response.