Generic People Blog

Shark Bite attack of man in Florida

2011-10-07T00:54:00.000-07:00

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) blaming C.J. Wickersham, who was attacked by a shark in Florida for the ills and transgression of society as a whole is just vicious and mean spirited if not hypocritical.

Its one thing to make a joke about the premise of sharks having a political agenda to save the planet by reducing the human population - as if they had gathered together and put a bounty on people.

But it is quite another thing as a member of the human race to relish and or celebrate the death or mutilation of another fellow human being by an act of nature. And moreover to interpret it as some kind of mandate by God through the fishes that somehow that person personally deserves to be punished for the transgressions and blunders upon the environment caused by the entirety of human civilization.

For many this would be tantamount to treason to one’s kind. And to many at the very least, that would be justifiable grounds to banish that person or persons from the society that has harbored, fostered, supported and provided a world in which they could espouse such offensive ideas amongst those surrounding them; and still be protected from violent retaliation for the views they hold. It is quite simply an act of biting the hand that feeds you. No pun intended :)

Management Doesn't like Old Dogs

2011-03-31T17:47:00.000-07:00

Old dogs know the old tricks. New dogs fall for all the old tricks. The "Man" needs new tricks to fool old dogs.

They Don't Have To Be Logical

2011-03-18T16:19:00.000-07:00

The beauty of movies is that they don't have to be logical. That kind of goes along with political opinions, personal preferences, and my all time personal favorite, the ubiquitous relationship.

Stupid People

2011-03-13T11:42:00.000-07:00

Stupid people are fun. Fun to watch as they attempt to fly with just a pair of sneakers. Fun to watch when they express their fashion individuality. Think of a word, I'm thinking spandex in all the wrong places. Fun to watch their strong powerful independence as they drive by their own rules. Fun to watch expressing their powerful ideas belted out from street corners at 3 am some times 12 noon at the beastro. But stupid people are most amazing in the flurry of their animated energy dance in determining which material totem will put the public around them under their spell of control.

Winning Is Refusing To Accept The Defeat

2011-03-12T22:41:00.000-08:00

Winning is refusing to accept the defeated judgment of trolls.

I mean come on who is at home waiting for trolls, are they winning women or just trolls wearing lip stick.

Are they driving a winning car or Are they walking taking the bus or bumming a ride with other trolls.

Who returns the phone calls of trolls. Do winning marquee names appear on their cell phones or just other trolls.

When you have tiger blood you don’t care about trolls you have omnipotent mind tools to master your winning universe.

Charlie Sheen just like his dad loves the smell of napalm in the morning.

Bachelor Apartments Contain 15 Times The Amount Of Bacteria Than Bachelorette’s Apartments

2011-03-12T12:42:00.000-08:00

As the old saying goes numbers don’t lie but you can lie with numbers. Well it is true from my observation that most dude’s pads are trashed in many ways. But this isn’t an indictment against single men and their propensity for bacteria - but rather a question of the company they keep and the parties that are thrown at the dude’s pad.

Case in point from my observations - the Greek System on any University campus; If you go to any university fraternity you will notice a high degree of wear and tear on the house facilities; and if you go to the sororities you will notice an almost pristine museum quality about them. Why is this, you might ask. Well the answer is simple.

Watch the film classic Animal House if you have never been to a 4 year university. The sororities party at the fraternities - get drunk puck, and start fights ( dudes going crazy over sexy babes with beer goggles ) and then they go home. You can apply the same behavior to any major event where throngs of people gather get drunk demonstrate groove to the music and then go home.

If your pad is the scene of repeated parties, get together / crash pad, bus stop, community center for neighbors and so called friends, romantic recreation facility and so on - there is a high probability that your average dude’s pad will have a higher amount of bacteria in it, than his corresponding bachelorette abode.

The moral to the story is that if you want to have a clean relatively bacteria free apartment where everything is where you left it and nothing is missing or stolen - make plans to order take out, party your butt off and take your showers at her or other peoples places and then go home to be with all your cool stuff.

People Skills 101

2011-01-15T12:33:00.000-08:00

I can not stop you from

throwing hot coffee in my face -

but I can stop pouring you

another cup of coffee.

Pot is not a Drug?

2010-07-07T02:01:00.000-07:00

Pot is not a drug? A mother of 3 responds to me that Pot is not a drug; and that compared to alcohol, smoking pot is harmless compared to all the alcohol related issues. I find it funny to hear people who are acting in an parental capacity to spout off about why they think pot should be no problem. They of course feel they are better and more involved parents because after a few hits they are just overly interested in their kids Lego's and other assorted games and parts and pieces.

I'm not sure being overly side tracked because of your altered mental space is making you a better parent. Lets put this into perspective. If on final approach to LA X on a fully loaded 747 how would you feel about the pilots smoking out in the cockpit. Even if you believe pot is not a drug as harmful as alcohol how much confidence would you have in your chances of landing without incident with your smoking out pilots.

How about if you are on trial for your life and your attorney is smoking out before his final summation to the jury. How about if your brain surgeon is smoking out during your procedure or your favorite football team is stoned at the supper bowl and you have taken out bets on them to win. How much confidence do you have in them to execute their job stoned and how upset would you be if your team lost the game cause they were stoned?

Smoking Pot Doubles Risk of a Fatal Accident. Is pot a drug, is it harmful compared to alcohol. I think the real question is; would you trust your life to someone smoking out in clouds of pot. Ok some people would say they have seen people be far more violent and harmful with alcohol than with Pot. True enough, but if you are going to try to suggest that pot is ok because PCP, or LSD, or alcohol is worse - that doesn't change the fact that all these drugs cause a diminished capacity and even though your smoking out pilot may be mellow and docile as opposed to confrontational and combative with alcohol the pilot will still be experiencing diminished capacity. In the end if your plane crashes or your football team loses because they smoked out does it matter that they were mellow when they blew up the jet at the end of the runway or choked at the supper bowl.

Some may say granted there may be diminished capacity but pot has some medical medicinal advantages and the worst that happens to people when they get stoned is that they fall asleep; pot smokers are such sweet people when they are stoned. And on top of everything else it isn't fair that alcohol is legal where as pot is illegal.

So based upon the idea that pot smokers are sweet gentle people and the worst they do is fall asleep when they are stoned - it just isn't fair that alcohol is legal when more people are using and abusing alcohol and the results are horrible domestic abuse etc. etc. - we should make pot legal. But are pot smokers nice people by the fact they smoke pot or because they were nice people to start with.

When a guy with five felonies of cultivating marijuana and no doubt and avid pot smoker - starts shooting at police in Hemet California because he is upset about being criminally prosecuted I have to say maybe pot smokers are not so sweet. Granted it isn't a proven fact that he was a pot smoker but we know for sure he was a grower so you do the math. But what really is revealing are the comments many pro pot people post about why we need to legalize marijuana!!! The reasoning seems to be that if you don't want cops to be shot at then legalize marijuana. It kind of sounds like,"I want what I want when I want it and I don't care who it hurts" it sounds like the thinking of an addict.

I think the argument could be made for the idea that since alcohol is legal and as such a legitimate business that can be promoted with advertising and marketing dollars more people will be encouraged to part take of the drug because of its legitimate business status. If pot were legalized would not the same forces that have promoted alcohol to the point that it is a metaphor for a good time living the good life. When it was legal to advertise cigarettes more than they are today life style and good times were the focal point.

We as a society already have enough problems with legal alcohol and cigarettes. If we added pot to the assortment of legal drugs wouldn't that just ad to the problem of more drug and alcohol abuse. Many people use multiple intoxicants including alcohol pot etc. In many a party setting the beer flows the mixed drinks make the rounds and then there is the proverbial question,"do you partake"? Pot smokers by beer and hard alcohol as well as partake. Maybe not everybody but I have never noticed people passing up a chance at free beer because they were dedicated pot smokers.

Ok I can hear it now," how can you make such assertions without having been a pot smoker". Simple I went to college I lived in a dorm I lived in a fraternity I've seen my share of out of control parties and heard the rhetoric of relationships gone bad cause boyfriend or girlfriend can do nothing but get stoned all day. You don't have to smoke pot to see someone wast their life chasing around looking for their next bag of weed. Some people consider pot smoking a lifestyle choice, some like to think of it as a form of self medication. Some people seem to think that because they smoke out and or are current or former smokers that they are the only people qualified to have an opinion on weed and unless your are a fellow partaker you have no right to object. It kind of sounds like the I have a right to smoke my cigarets anywhere crowd. That is another argument and I'm not getting into that one.

Some people seem to think it would be funny if pot was legalized because few if any people would show up for work. If nobody is at the factory making all those munchies and delivering them to local stores how will all those stoned people get their food. life might be good for the few people who did show up for work - and were willing and able to be drug free. In fact they might see pay raises and promotions because they were the few motivated people to go to work. Maybe there is an idea in there.

People who do this to dogs are truly evil

2010-06-27T02:28:00.000-07:00

I came across something that really makes me sober up to a perspective about people. People who do this to dogs are truly evil disturbed and all around bad. And dogs that still love people after this happens to them are truly an amazing pure spirit that reminds me of the good in life that can be.

At the Safe Haven / Humane Society in Albany I wrangle dogs and take pictures with a good friend of mine to help these dogs find new and better homes.

This Pit Bull was surrounded by staff and volunteers at the shelter and was happy wagging his tail and just wanted to lean up against you and love everybody willing to pet his head. The irony and tragedy in this - is that he was found wandering the streets with his intestines hanging out with sever slashing wounds made by what the Vet described as a large kitchen knife. He survived multiple deep wounds and still loves people. That just kind of hits me. There is a lesson in there that one can take to heart.

And in reference to the title of this blog entry. If you are the person or the kind of person who did or could do this; to this beautiful dog - you are in my view truly a bad person and I can only imagine there is a special place in hell for souls like yours whether that is in this life or the life after. Granted that wasn't very PC but you know its just how I feel. And as a foot note this isn't the first Pit Bull that I have seen mutilated by people and every time the dog was just a happy puppy looking for a little love and attention.

The VW Jetta Manifold is Back

2010-05-20T18:50:00.000-07:00

Finally got the VW intake manifold back from the machine shop today. Woo Hoo its looking good.

Now I'm putting the manifold together with the head with the gaskets and torquing down the mounting bolts to their correct torque settings. The fun part is just assembling all the parts together and seeing it come together. Once I have the manifolds on; then the next step will be to make ready the lower deck to set the head gasket in place and blot down the head to the bottom end.

Finishing up Late night

2010-05-02T01:18:00.000-07:00

Crazy stuff happens late in the morning when you are working on your truck while people come and go at all hours. Its funny how you get the curious, the oblivious, and the shady wandering around your work area.

None the less heading down the home stretch to finishing up the project everything seems right with the world. Anyway the new hub is on looking good after all the running around.

The right tool for the right job

2010-05-01T21:07:00.001-07:00

Having the right tool for the right job can be a circus act at times. For example I need a 1 & 7/16 socket to get the nut off the wheel hub off a Chevy S-10. So I had to run down to Sears and locate a larger socket. I found one but the only problem was that it wasn't deep enough. So I found myself having to use a 38 mm deep socket from Harbor Freight. You gotta love Harbor Freight.

Street Side Mechanics

2010-04-30T23:08:00.000-07:00

Street Side Mechanics:

Ok when you have to fix the car you are driving and money is short and you love tinkering with mechanical stuff - the time will come that you will find yourself turning a wrench on something parked in the street. The fun part is figuring out which tools you need and which ones you don't. With a new hub for my S-10 I'm off to start trying to change it out.

This Week at the Safe Haven Shelter

2010-04-10T00:25:00.000-07:00

We have Malamute Wolf mix dogs and they are the most wonderful dogs. This puppy is named Russell and what a dog he is. He sits well, loves to eat doggy treats, and he is loyal. He will follow you every where. Pretty much wants to lean up against you if you stand still. Yup he is a dog among dogs - truly man's best friend.

The Machine Shop rebuidling the VW head

2010-04-10T00:18:00.000-07:00

The guys at the shop had to take a little extra time in getting the right shims to complete a valve job on the rebuilt head.

VW head back from machine shop

2010-04-08T18:04:00.000-07:00

Well my VW head is back from the machine shop. Now I begin the slow process of putting it all back together again and firing up the car. Hopefully everything will work like flawlessly.

The Problem With Plan B

2009-11-26T06:15:00.000-08:00

The problem with Plan B is that it inherently dilutes Plan A and thus compromises a total commitment and focus to Plan A. The Kamikaze pilots of World War II did not have a plan B. Ironically they did not stem the tide of the American juggernaut toward ultimate invasion of the Imperial Japanese Islands but they did accomplish one thing.

They gave the American High Command concern about the ultimate price of invading the Japanese Home Islands by delivering staggering casualties among the American Naval invasion forces. The Kamikaze pilot along with the rank and file Japanese solders held to the Bushido code. In its purest form, it demands of its practitioners that they look effectively backward at the present from the moment of their own death, as if they were already, in effect, dead.

Conversely the Americans did not really consider a plan B either it was all or nothing, give no quarter to the bloody end. In effect they mirrored their Japanese adversaries in devotion to their cause. In a Plan A situation where plan B just is not an option you have to be totally committed to the ultimate prosecution of your objectives at the expense off all else.

I have know people who were so against being poor that in their belief system they would do anything to have the cash to not be poor in their frame of mind. Even at points espousing being willing to strip or prostitute to maintain a life beyond poverty.

For me the ultimate aim of what one is and what one aspires to do with ones life is far more important than money. Money is only a tool and a kind of measuring stick of success in our society but it is not the objective of a life's vocation. The objective in life is not to have as much as it is to be.

For the want of money many people lose track of what they want to be and pursue having money and end up being something else. If you wish to be a filmmaker or cartoonist you must work at that every day because in the end what you do every day is what you will do for the rest of your life. As John Lennon said,” "Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans."

The other plans are Plan A and what happens while we are making other plans is Plan B. Plan B is the stripping and the prostitution unless that is your life's goal. Thus the term selling out.

"Selling out" refers to the compromising of one's integrity, morality and principles in exchange for money, success or other personal gain. It especially refers to the attempt to increase social appeal or acceptability through this compromising. The person acts in this way is referred to as a sell out.

In lieu of stripping or prostitution, selling out could also be getting involved or married and divorce with kids thus allowing yourself to be redirected to working for 7-11 to support kids and a family life style that you never planned on or wanted. Ultimately Plan A is so badly watered down that it all together fades to a lost child hood aspiration that was never accomplished.

It is a sad ending. It is far better to strive for the golden ring than to try to match your life to some else's idea of a career time line. My Uncle once said it is best to have your own plans lest you become part of someone else's plans.

Plan A and Plan B

2009-11-25T19:50:00.000-08:00

Plan A is usually the plan you wish to go with and when you put that idea into into the career vocational context its the line of work you see yourself passionately pursuing. Plan B is the alternate option to just pay the rent while you are looking for a way to pursue Plan A. But there in lies the rub.

A quote or misquote by John Lennon went like this: "Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans."

In my case plan A is being a cartoonist / Humorist and maybe one day filmmaker. It is what I want to do. But it comes with sacrifices. And you can often see those in the form of social alienation. Often your friends who are employed in a regular cubical 9 to 5 job will look upon your plan A as absurd and they try to encourage you take anything to support a plan B so you can join them in their working for the weekend party scene. But the problem with taking plan B is that you end up abandoning plan A. And then plan B becomes what you are doing for the rest of your life.

So you have to make choices and often those choices remove you from people and places and you end up alone. But better to be alone that in good company and miserable, lamenting what you could have done with your life but didn’t. Or at least that is the way I see it. A couple of years ago I watch a dear friend die from brain cancer. He was only a few years older than myself but watching the lament of a life not quite spent doing the things he wanted to do or achieve some of the goals he had set for himself turned my stomach. I promised myself I would not die like this or at least try not to, so I threw myself into this project and it is what I do. And if in the end this is as far as I go then I will at the very least know that I had done my best and tried for the dream. I think Theodore Roosevelt said it best:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt
"Citizenship in a Republic,"
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Stimulus Funds Cash For Trash Program

2009-10-31T22:23:00.000-07:00

I propose a stimulus funds based cash for trash program. As I stand here on Coco Beach Florida, I'm drawn to the endless pieces of plastic parts and pieces adorning the beach and some even attached with marine life such as barnacles. I'm thinking you know the cash for clunkers program sucked because it wasn't something that everyone could get in on.First off you needed to have the clunker to trade for a new car in the first place. More over you really had to be middle class employed or have some kind of cash flow to be in a position to be able to trade in a clunker for a new car.

But a cash for trash program would enable everyone to pick up trash and just make a few bucks for coffee, a burger, maybe even a movie. I mean think about it people spent money to produce distribute and sell the consumer products and packaging that are floating in with the tide on to the beach. Why shouldn't governments around the world put a bounty on such trash.

If you think about it there has always been a bounty on most metal items. Even in ancient times metal when lost in battle was often scavenged and recycled. Every ancient battle field you will find today will be mostly if not totally striped bare of any metal. I think that the most common place to find ancient swards was in river beds where the ancients were unlikely to have been able to have found their lost items. But the point that I'm trying to make is that the human motivation to recapture the value of lost or discarded metal has always been there.

Another example that comes to mind is the current day "core charge" for automotive parts. Have you ever seen very many alternators laying along the road side. Generally you don't unless its a recent wreck or something. Core charges keep used automotive components coming back into the system to be reworked recycled or melted down.

I think just about every piece of electronic equipment out there should have a core charge. I mean if you paid 100 bucks for a new DVD player plus a 25 dollar core charge would you throw it away in a dumpster when it didn't work anymore. No you wouldn't. You would take it back to Target or Sears where ever you got it and return it for the core charge. How about cigarettes? I hate cigarettes but I know many friends that smoke and are quite addicted to smoking. I feel for them none the less I see endless piles of cigarette butts on the ground here and there. Well what if there was a core charge on Cigarette butts for say 25 cents. Hey it would be a beautiful moment for people wandering the streets looking for coffee money. And do you think smokers would toss the butts out of their moving cars on the freeways anymore? Well maybe but it would be more likely smokers would collect their butts and return them for the core charge. I could be wrong, but I'd pick up the butts for coffee and I think most people who were not too proud to pick up a quarter would pick up a butt for the core charge.

Blown tires on the freeway - Oh my god, you see it everywhere. There should be a buck a pound core recovery fee for anyone returning to the DMV or the tire shop - blown tire road kill. After that would you see truckers leaving tire parts on the road ? There is always the possibility that you would but I know someone would show up to get the five pounds of rubber on the road. Old tires should always be worth at least five bucks based upon an original core charge paid.

If we had a program like this it would give countless under employed people and people in general an added economic boost to go out and pick up some trash for cash. Motivating the masses of people with an economic incentive to pick up the trash would give us all a cleaner environment. It brings everyone into the act and it takes advantage of the sheer numbers of people in the world to combat a global problem. Just imagine if six billion people in the world picked up one piece of trash and returned it to a recycling point. How fast could we clean up the world and make it a better place for the wild life and ourselves? As a final note, here in Florida you don't have to pay a monthly fee for garbage pick up. You just set you garbage out on the road side and the state garbabe collectors come by and pick it up. So how is that any different from a core charge or a bounty paid on garbage collection and recycling?

The Top 5 US State Economies

2009-10-30T12:19:00.000-07:00

As a passing point of interest I noted that the top 5 ranking US state economies are California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois.

California ranked number 1 with an economy of - 1,846,757 (2008 GSP $Millions Bureau of Economic Analysis)
Texas ranked number 2 with an economy of - 1,223,511 (2008 GSP $Millions Bureau of Economic Analysis)
New York ranked number 3 with an economy of - 1,44,481 (2008 GSP $Millions Bureau of Economic Analysis)
Florida ranked number 4 with an economy of - 744,120 (2008 GSP $Millions Bureau of Economic Analysis)
Illinois ranked number 5 with an economy of - 633,697 (2008 GSP $Millions Bureau of Economic Analysis)

What struck me was how all of these major economies were on the coast line of the US or located near a major maritime shipping area. If you check with the CNBC article called "America's Top States for Business" you find a different ranking of states but its more from a perspective of cost of doing business. According to that report Texas ranked number 1, New York number 2, Oklahoma number 3, Utah number 4, and Idaho number 5. What you may notice though is that California ranked 7th.

California ranks number 1 in the US regarding population.
Texas ranks 2nd in population,
New York ranks 3nd in population,
Florida 4th in population,
and Illinois 5th in population.

I think what one can draw from these numbers is that it may be prudent as a business to be based in a business friendly state and conduct your operations in states with a relatively high GSP. So if you find that you are a state with a low GSP with a high cost of business you may find that business may relocate to another state looking for more favorable operating conditions and also you may be overlooked for sales generation if you have a particularly low population in addition to a particularly low ranking GSP.

Life After You, a spoof

2009-09-18T00:33:00.000-07:00

It was once spoken by a great man that you can find all you need at Goodwill, and in the end everything goes back to Good Will. LIFE AFTER YOU: The Series begins in the moments just after you die. As each minute, hour, day, month, and year passes, the fate of one of your former and particular social environments, material possession or theme is explored.

Life After you artfully choreographs special effects, combined with interviews from top experts in the fields of biography, gossip, psychology, sociology, botany, forensics, biology, genealogy, and archeology to provide an unforgettable visual journey through the ultimately hypothetical obituary - who do you really think would show up at your funeral.

Some of the lucky few in society have maybe a few good and real friends. But this series is based on the majority of people with poser friends and half baked relatives and crazy neighbors. It takes a modern man living in a home located in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington DC that is ravaged by social gold diggers, drama queens, slacker relatives, fair-weather friends, and apathetic administrators, court clerks, and so on; the series exposes the surprising insights about how they function today and ultimately what is left and how you are remembered and for how long if at all.

Urban tree-cutting rules to get more strict in Seattle

2009-08-06T09:51:00.000-07:00

And I agree with it. The fact is that the NW is a unique area in the country, with an abundance of trees that enrich the quality of our daily lives. The desirability and livability of a neighborhood is improved with trees, that is why developers hire landscapers to plant trees and shrubs in new developments.

If you are one of those people who feels the need to clear your plot of land for fear of falling trees, you should consider living in the vast dessert areas of the US. You may consider living around Las Vegas Nevada. There you will be safe from falling trees and I’m sure you will appreciate the sweltering heat of the dessert while you prepare yourself for your impending heat stroke.

I would speculate that in the US you may find that more people are killed from heat stroke and over exposure to the sun than falling trees. If people are worried about the liability of trees falling on neighbors maybe we need tort reform for urban trees in the same way we need tort reform for medical malpractice.

In Life - Being There is the Best Business

2009-08-05T16:45:00.000-07:00

It is my opinion that; in this technological wonder world that we have created; being there is still the best business, and especially when it comes to friendships. The Western Airlines TV ads used to say,”Being there is the best business”. Western Airlines ceased operations on September 9th of 1986 but what their ad said still makes sense to me today. I always liked the bird that rode on the back end of the plane quoting pithy business maxims and such. That was back in the day.

What I’m getting at is, for an example: That morning newspaper with a cup of coffee at your favorite bistro with outside seating when the sun is just cresting the tops of the buildings is a magical time when your morning crew shows up to greet the day and pay homage to the fact that we are taking another whack at yet another wonderful day at being alive.

The same holds true when you look up old friends, good friends, special friends, and friends that are just crazy. When you stop by; you reaffirm the fact that you have always found them or something about them unforgettable and wonderful and this is just one more confirmation that you still enjoy them being in the world with you.

Life always seems far more clear in the morning and especially if you have managed not to lose your mind the previous evening and spout off about emotional reactions to things that you probably should not have gone off about. Now that its the morning you can look at things more clearly and objectively and you not only look the wiser for it, you may actually be wiser for it.

I think the Germans understand this point that I’m about to make; and to that point probably most Europeans, maybe even the rest of the world. None the less I’ve just stumbled upon this epiphany; anyway - practically pragmatically it just isn’t workable to have 6 billion friends in the world that you spend quality friendship time over a cup of coffee with in the morning. So when you do spend time with the friends you do have you are letting them know that they are the chosen ones that you have decided to have in your life.

That's what being there does, that's what it is. It is better than the digital communications gadgets we love to constantly upgrade and plug into. The digital is helpful, but ultimately you need that physical same place-same time moment. That's what makes friendship work well, that's the organic reality of community and friendship. Now as a disclaimer I may be wrong about all of this and it may have something to do with a bad batch of coffee I had this morning and the fact that I was iChatting with my homies on the East Coast...

Waiting for the Aliens to arrive?

2009-07-23T11:28:00.000-07:00

People are sitting around

in a field

with their cone tin foil hats on

staring into the flame of a candle

waiting for the aliens

to arrive.

Thought for the day...

Bathrooms Designed for Real Men: the manly version of the boudoir

2009-07-08T19:29:00.000-07:00

The modern bathroom is tantamount to a small castle or present day cave for a man. Therefore a man's bathroom must have manly materials such as a steel grated floor. Men being the manly bunch they are; I don't think any manly bathroom would be without a fan. I'm talking a fan that is more like a wind tunnel turbine fan. Something capable of generating a class 5 hurricane would be nice. A really classy touch for the manly bathroom is a mainline water supply to flush the entire bathroom after use. This is the kind of water supply that produces down stream flow that could generate maybe 18 gigawatts of electricity.

Now by its very nature a bathroom has smells and odors. So to control particulates that attach themselves to interior walls and fixtures - all manly bathrooms should come equipped with air quality mitigation canisters in 3 standard scent categories - diesel, Jet A Kerosine, and Standard Rocket propellant.

If a man walks by smelling of diesel, or Kerosine you don't wonder who he is or where he has been. He's been working and that is the smell of manly work. And on top of that diesel will kill the smell of any cologne after shave perfume and so on so remember petrochemical scents rule.

Just by being a man you are the proverbial bull in a china shop. So to plan for that all manly bathrooms should be furnished with stainless steel and high impact plastic fixtures .

The controls and instrumentation buttons and throttles that control wind and flush velocity are lit in manly red and VW instrument panel blue for low light navigation. Lets face it when a man is on a mission you need the best gear and just like a surgeons tools - when it is all done everything gets sterilized after every use.

Doors for a manly bathroom need to be capable of handling small thermal blasts. And if you don’t understand this requirement then you just haven’t know very many manly men. But in the event you did not know this; every manly toilet should be equipped with a 5 point seat belt. But for those men who ride untied the real manly bathroom will come equipped with the obligatory “oh shit handless” strategically located at key anchor points.

In addition no manly bathroom experience is complete without the in flight reading multimedia station using tough books technology. Now this may seem like overkill but you just have to understand the manly man bathroom environment. It is death valley deadly. Therefor the manly bathroom must be equipped, and rated to handle any and all adverse corrosive environmental conditions. For those busy working type men that can not spend too much time off the clock some manly bathrooms come equipped with ejection seat capabilities. This provides quick blow dry and delivery back to your given work station.

Should a friction lockout occur there is a special emergency tool kit equipped with high viscosity lubricants,crow bars and hammer. And last but not least; should there be an in flight malfunction all ejection equipment is rigged with strobe lights and GPS locators as well as post egress survival kits including MRE and medical kits and cargo parachutes and overnight tent.

That is a manly bathroom.

Don't Play With Your Food; Just say no to chickens as pets!

2009-06-19T13:42:00.000-07:00

By the way, did you know the city of Miami Florida has an estimated 10,000 feral chickens roaming the streets and alleys of that fair city. The city tries to catch them and ship them out to the farms and you know deal with them. If we start letting people have chickens within the city of Salem Oregon, maybe we should start putting together a Feral Chicken squad like Miami to keep the run away and feral population low and non existent. I don't know about the rest of you but I just have a problem with having as a pet any animal that can also double as a tasty buffet with BBQ sauce and fixens. That's kind of like inviting your friends over for the wedding and then after the I Do - Do I - part you have the friends for dinner literally. It just isn’t right man. And granted some people don't intend to eat their chickens but it all too easily starts out by nibbling on the eggs and the next thing you know Toto is on the BBQ. Just like Drugs - just say No!

Having Chickens as Pets in Cities like Salem, Oregon

2009-06-18T13:24:00.001-07:00

Having chickens as pets reminds me of people who buy homes they can barely finance in the pursuit of a lifestyle they can neither afford, nor properly maintain. How many people have you seen purchase as much house as they can afford; and then they don’t have the cash for maintenance and improvements, not to mention taxes; and last but not least making that mortgage payment over the next 30 years. Just hope your career job does not get outsourced, downsized, or automated.

Now consider pets that people acquire in the pursuit of a certain lifestyle statement - such as dogs and cats. How many dogs and cats end up in the Humane Society shelters because people have decided they just can’t afford them, it doesn’t work with the new home, the new furniture or living situation, or simply they are just bored and it just doesn’t interest them anymore. Then there are the people who are just too cheap or unwilling or incompetent to plan ahead to get their animals spayed and neutered and you end up with exploding feral animal populations. I won’t go into the many other dogs that have been acquired as pets that are then turned into fighting animals. And where you find chickens you could find roosters, and hens, and they in turn can be used to breed specialized cockfighting chickens. Or you could just start out with cockfighting chickens and breed from there. Its a brutal Blood sport.

Human Cruelty to animals because of neglect, financial incompetence, or fad boredom is a horrible price to exact upon a living creature just to give the average citizen the freedom to express their choice in the latest flavor of pet acquisition.

The idea of a pet is a very property and ownership-based idea. It lacks the willingness to simply appreciate the animal in its wilderness environment or domesticated farm environment. If you have ever visited San Diego you will notice Macaw parrots flying around here and there. They are not native to the area. They were pets that got loose from neglect or just intentional release. People often don’t think about what their situation is going to be like 6 months or a year from now when things have changed or the animal has grown to adult dimensions or unforeseen animal behavior arises or special needs pop up.

I had neighbors that had tarantulas, scorpions, and snakes, and rats. And because of that I, and other tenants in my apartment complex had crickets showing up in our homes. Subsequently my neighbors had to get rid of their pet collection because it was encroaching on the quality of life of the people around them. So, suddenly the pets they had became somewhat homeless. You can only imagine where they went.

The obsession with farm animals and exotic wild critters isn’t new to this country or the world. The Romans decimated entire populations of wild animals from around the Mediterranean and especially Africa. Today many pet shops specializing in fresh water fish and salt water fish from around the world feed the frenzy to own something exotic and when mistakes are made by stores or pet owners, animal populations in the wild are harmed for the sake of harvesting popular breeds. And acquired breeds fall victim to neglect and ignorance in a caged environment.

As Americans obsessed with the ideals of freedom is it not amazing how we are so willing to make an animal into a caged and imprisoned creature for our own pleasure and entertainment. Having said that why do you really need to own a chicken in downtown Salem, Oregon. The answer is you don’t. The desire is a whimsical desire on a level equivalent to an unruly child's or adult's Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, OCD with a pet possession fad that will possibly infringe upon the quality of life of the animal and the citizens of the town as the population density rises ever more year after year.

At this point let us end this blog entry without getting into Animal Hoarding as it relates to chickens, farm animals, and weird human fetishes. If you want to have farm animals and use chickens for egg production - buy the farm and do it right and provide a proper and humane environment for those animals to live in. And by the way, just to get those $1.98 per 18 count egg cartons at WinCo Foods you need to have a farm where you are raising thousands of chickens so you could acquire the economies of scale to overcome the fixed costs of veterinarian costs, feeding costs, housing, and so on and so forth. So if you are into the chikens for the so called free eggs, forget it - go big or go home.

The Class Clown: an effective defense against bullies or not

2009-06-17T17:48:00.000-07:00

I have to laugh about the issue of abuse and violence; and subsequent Anger Management theories. Off hand it has always seemed to me that often, only one side of the argument gets publicized. I remember as a kid - I was one of those kids back in the mid 60s who got into after school fights. Compared to what I've seen on the news these days; grade school fights in the mid 60s were pretty tame by comparison. Usually I was the kid that got beat up. And usually it was 5 against one. But usually there was one or two guys and a few girls that would be the primary aggressors. By the way back then size mattered. The big kids and their spectator fight groupies usually won the fight.

To redress this blogging thought a bit; grade school fights back then were pretty tame compared to Junior High and High School fights. Anyway, when I think back about my encounters with school fights; I remember that stomach knotting dread, and the fear of watching people look and turn towards you, and you knew it was going to happen. Running wasn't always an option, and the problem even if you got away was still waiting for you the next day. Any you know the thing that really gets to you is not just the kids pounding on you but all the other kids that gathered around to watch the blood sport. I think at times I was more angry with them for watching than the guys actually beating the living daylights out of me. And now days the spectators record the event and post it on YouTube. Isn't technology something.

During those formative years as a 3rd grader - at Turnagain Elementary School- I learned that being the class clown was often but not always an effective defense against would be bullies. If you could make them laugh, you could divert their aggression into something else. Something else that did not require my head as a basket ball. However that tactic didn't always work because some nights the crowd just wasn't laughing at anything. And what they just wanted was someone's blood. You could say it often turned into beat the comic up; his jokes sucked.

For example, when during his live comedy act Michael Richards - the eccentric Cosmo Kramer character on the Seinfeld TV series -, was harassed by hecklers during his comedy routine - and he had an outburst of politically incorrect profanity - he paid dearly for his comic miscalculation. At that moment, Michael Richard's had run into the school yard bullies who were out for blood trying to crash Richards routine. Richards did not know how to handle the Heckling and couldn't joke his way out of the situation. In a blundered attempt to get the audience to laugh at the hecker's interupting his routine he Richards basically set himself on fire with his remarks that inflamed the hecklers anger and the crowd supported them; subsequently Richards was savaged by the media as the bad guy. Now if Michael Richards had the talent of one of my favorite comics - Carlos Mencia who I've seen live at the Historic Elsinore Theatre here in Salem - he would have had a witty thoughtful repartee with the hecklers and gained some comic reversal of momentum in his own favor; derived from their foray of castigating remarks. That's what I've seen Carlos do. The man is a comic Genius. However Michael Richards couldn’t. He did not have the skill, the talent, or that special something that allows a comic to respond quick and turn the situation to his comic advantage.

And there in lies what I find interesting. This is where violence and abuse get blurred. One person or a group begin to torment you - either by word or physical insult. If you are particularly talented you can turn their tactics into a joke that defuses the situation without stepping on or over the line into a field of social land mines. Consider Eminem's film 8 Mile a 2002 American hip-hop drama film.In the climactic final scene Eminem's character - a rapper faces off against his rival rapper in a flurry of rhyming rapping put downs told in story form to draw laughter from the crowd. Naturally the movie is about Eminem's character Rabbit and he naturally wins. But the point that I'm trying to make here is that humor can be a defensive tool or an offensive tool. And depending on how people around you interact with you it is hard to tell who is starting a fight or running from the fight.

So if you can see my point about the complex nature of dealing with jokes bullies and would be social hecklers.Its complicated and the idea of Anger Management seems a little lost unless you are going to just preach to the loser and say hey you need to control yourself. And when I say loser I'm talking about the social outcast of the said violent abusive encounter. The loser is the one that is ostracized from the group. They are painted as undesirable or weak or the vanquished social malcontent combatant.

For example let us say you are verbally assaulted and defend yourself with a verbal comeback. And then a physical fight breaks out and you are beaten and bruised but the out come is that even though you did not throw the first punch, and you were physically harmed shows you to be the idiot or the brute for responding. You are show as; out of touch with social rules, and norms. And maybe a law suit is if filed against the organization you work for and a settlement is reached out of court in favor of the guy or guys that threw the first punch and who beat you.

Even though the other guy started the confrontation and physically vanquished you in front of your friends and family you lose because the courts came down on their side and not yours. Thus you are the loser of this fight. So how do you manage that? Well you manage it the way many people do. You try to walk away, you apologize in hopes that they don't follow you.

But what do you do if they follow you. This is where Anger Management in my opinion gets foggy. I think the best anger management therapy is comedy - even though it can be dangerous. Comedy can enable you to see life in all its unfairness and just let go of the anger and frustration of it all. Yes the game is rigged, but you can’t win if you don’t play - do you see the irony, can you laugh about it. That is learning to come to grips with anger in my opinion.

Carlos Mencia through his humor helps people see themselves and that is what I think a good comic does. Its not so much about being funny but helping people see things that are funny. Its explaining the irony of life and lightening life's burdens with levity that helps you see life from a different perspective in a way that helps you see that things even though they are not as good as they could be; conversely are also never as bad as they could be. That's what good comics can do in my opinion. One of the greatest comics - George Carlin was the epitome of a scholar and humorist in his manner of sharing wisdom through humor.

Writing a better blog for free

2009-06-08T10:57:00.001-07:00

I have heard the maxims cited all over the internet; Create or Die, Don't be boring and find an idea that they can't steal from you. Well it all seems to revolve around the quality and volume of ideas that you can come up with; on an ongoing basis that makes your blog worth reading. Most blogs; one could say, start out like personal diaries; and or ship's logs. Just the thought of a blog starting out like a ship's log brings visions of Captain Kirk of Star Trek starting a TV scene with a star date and the situation of the Enterprise.

Outside of the introduction Kirk goes on to weave an engaging space adventure. And subsequently, we end up with the Trek conventions, clubs, toys, posters and the list goes on for a whole merchandising jack pot. So as you can see its all about creating a winning stream of content. And that in of it self takes talent, vision, and dedication to contribute on a regular basis. That is hard work, and lots of people, myself included tend to just say - expletive - I am just going to go have a beer and get a regular job that I don't have to think so hard about.

Ah but there in lies the rub. Today slacker jobs are on the decline or there is a waiting list of thousands because if a slacker can do that job it can be out-sourced or automated or offered up to the lowest bidder from thousands of wannabe slackers. Wow! that's not fair you may say. And you are right it isn't fair; but that is what is happening. Every couple of months they seem to come out with a faster smarter cell phone that does more and coasts less. And when are they going to settle on a final operating system?

The technological march is relentless. Moore's law states that the long-term trend in computing power doubles every two years and a college of Moor from Intel caculated that things double every 18 months. Anyway, because of this; learning to be a creative, original thinker isn't going to be just a casual pass time activity for your run of the mill coffee house philosopher. It is going to become the only way to survive. Sure sure, you have a job today, but over the last few years have you seen the steady creep of automation and downsizing and consolidation. You see it and you know it is happening.

Because you have to type and construct syntax, sentence structure and ideas and so on to write an effective blog. Blogging is a great way to think out loud and get used to thinking and digesting the changing world around us on a regular basis. It could be argued that blogging is a form of mental calisthenics. That is how you write a better blog, its all about regular practice and thinking.

Amazing Art made extremely small wow

2009-06-08T01:20:00.000-07:00

This is an amazing artist.

The Kid next Door

2009-06-07T01:56:00.000-07:00

The kid next door - probably 5-ish; Cool kid. Loves my radio control Porsche Carerra GT. He wants me to give it to him. I had to tell him," Dude, then what would I play with". From his quick little mind, he makes me a new offer,"Can I have it when you die". I said sure, you can have my Porsche when I die. Then he up sells me and says can I have all your toys when you die. I said sure. Now he is leveraging his relationship with me and is telling everybody in the neighborhood that I'm going to die in a few weeks; and he gets all my stuff. Do you see the irony in this.

So this is today's youth, this is what generation XYZ etc. etc. is all about. You have to laugh. Everybody needs a sponsor to get ahead I guess. Someone has to give up something so someone else can move up the ladder of life. I don't know that many of the life coach or success pundits in life these days give much credit to those that helped them get ahead and learn the ropes while someone else held life at bay.

I’m rambling a bit here. But the kid next door makes me think about how often in life you really do need someone else to give you a leg up, give you that tool that toy that something that gives you that chance to be a contender. And it is quite seriously giving you something that without you will have to struggle long and hard even a life time for just an opportunity to just excel through merit and hard work alone which at a youthful age are only distant shores that you may never see.

Mentors and Mentoring

2009-06-02T13:47:00.000-07:00

Mentoring, is a funny thing. If you have the right mentors doors open and with the proper education and information you can rise quickly in your career. If you do not run in the proper social circles or have the current political currency to be mentored then you will have to actively seek help on your own where you can find it. In a world where a large amount of the mentor focus and help can be geared toward the under 20 something crowd - being too old (over 40) can become a handicap.

This is where you can be thankful that you live in the internet age. Today more than ever you have access to information that only a few decades ago just wasn't available in book stores or public libraries. And if you were in a low population place in America; for example Emmonak, Alaska on the banks of the Yukon Delta you had even less access to critical information.

Today if you have internet access you have access to the world. You have access to what was very privileged information only available to top executives years ago. One of my favorite places to read up on obscure information is Amazon.com. Yes you have to purchase the books but you can get great deals on used books where the cost to ship is more expensive than the actual book itself. The next spot to search for information to mentor you on your journey are Google Searches, forum searches, blogs etc. Often you find that the more you learn the more exclusive the circle of people you may need to mentor you. When I say exclusive I am referring to the number of people that actually understand the jargon of the industry or field that you are researching.

So once you are looking for mentoring or assistance from a smaller pool of people you run into people who may or may not help you depending upon how they see you. Some people are truly altruistic and wish to help for the sake of helping; if you fit their idea of a worthy person. Others see helping you as helping the enemy and so they choose not to help you. Some people help because they like to hear themselves speak and it makes them feel important and knowledgeable. The bottom line is you have to be careful in your search for mentors and always evaluate in a circumspective manner the information you receive. Don’t be hurt if people choose not to help you because you don’t belong to the club they support. Its just the way of things. Be gracious, be humble, and always say thank you. Last but not least try not to outshine the master. In my opinion try to be a decent person, cultivate a healthy respect of others yet don’t become a lapdog with your beliefs and values. You don’t have to like everybody and everyone won’t always like you. Accept it, understand it, come to terms with it. On this path I think you will find the enlightenment you may be seeking Grasshopper.

Surfing the web for a potential contributing blogger

2009-05-24T11:30:00.000-07:00

I think today is unfolding nicely. After the morning coffee I set to work surfing the web looking for a person or a type of blogger that felt they could ad to the GP blog. I read a blurb in ProBlogger about a point that you look for someone who can fill the gaps in you blog. Since I'm not a doctor or a teacher I'm feeling the need for someone in those areas of expertise and experience.

From a book by David Meerman Scott I've gleaned perspectives on blogging that I never really had thought of before. Well I guess I'm thinking about them now. It is funny how some times you don't get that ahah moment about ideas that you have been aware of; but until someone or something rearranges them for you in a different format you don't' get it.

The Story of my life

2009-05-14T09:32:00.001-07:00

The story of my life seems to be unfolding into one of two directions or maybe more. The reason I say this is probably based on deep seated insecurities but non the less I found myself looking at social net work friends and their families and it just kind of hit me that I'm probably never going to be one of those guys that belongs to the - retired, gold watch, wife is at the salon; bring the car around, dear; made all the right moves within the world of the career bureaucracy courtiers.

Conversely I saw Gran Torino with Clint Eastwood; great movie. Now there is a life I could see for myself. You know the grumpy old man mowing his own lawn drinking his beverages by himself. Grumpy is just me; even though I really love people, I just cant stand them.

Its moments like this that I have to dig up my copy of “The Big Lebowski”. And as usual somewhere in the movie I realize I’m probably going to be a little happier than I think. And to that end I realize you know its the peace and the quiet that mellow me out. So having said that life for me is just going to settle in somewhere between the Dude and Howard Hughes but I just don’t see the tidy social pillar of the community happening. I’m just too disgruntled and likely to build a kit plane in my garage if I had one or if my living room was big enough I would build it there and guard it with my Ak47 which at the moment I can't recall where I left it. But don't worry its not loaded or in one piece and its most definitely locked up probably at mom's or does my brother have it. Anyway its all good.

The Zen of the Unexamined Life

2009-05-10T22:07:00.000-07:00

When I hear people musing about thoughts of - I want to be a world class writer, Independent filmmaker, or some upscale professional living “The Life”. I can only wonder which episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians Celebrity Apprentice, and so on and so forth did you get that idea from.

Some people think they are going to strike a pose and win it all with the right line or the proper accessories. They think that opportunity will unfold like the shallow plot of some B grade summer movie playing with the fantasy of business success and the American dream.

Yet in the middle of it all when you press them for an explanation of how; their explanation seems to be bedeviled by ambiguity, abstract thoughts, metaphorical cliches and a distinct unwillingness to launch into a short and sharp plan that one could only hope be followed by and equally pithy action item list.

If however you have never gone through the process to actually think through - how it all should come together, and considered the obstacles to be overcome. Then I guess in that situation one could just be happy in their cocoon of blissful ignorance that might only be tempered by the sudden onset of age related health problems that are simply harbingers to the fact that the ride in your life is almost over. Thus the Zen of the Unexamined life.

Yes I’m in a cheerful mood today.

Work at home: getting your home work done and managing your time and friends

2009-05-04T14:44:00.000-07:00

When you work at home people just don't get it that you really do need time to work on your work. The trick is trying to find a polite way to keep people out of your working space. The problem that I probably present to many of my friends is that I pretty much work until I burn out which means I don't really take time off unless I absolutely have to. Then when I find myself staring at the light table and thinking of absolutely nothing; I know I'm not getting anything done. So, that means its time to get out of the house. The crazy part is that I need to be the one who decides when need to get out not my friends who are board and or lonely. So this may mean I may have to move out into the woods like Henry David Thoreau. I can see it now; a palatial log cabin like lodge on some gigantic high altitude lake.

The Statue of Liberty

2009-03-06T20:28:00.001-08:00

The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying 'Give me your tired,
your poor, your huddled masses.' She's got a baseball bat and she's yelling, 'you want a piece
of me?' ' Robin Williams

Today’s Economic outlook and the Independent contractor:

2009-03-06T09:29:00.000-08:00

A great book I've been reading is a book by Thomas W. Malone called "The Future of Work". From what I’ve been reading; I think that corporations are going to continue to downsize, out source and you will see the accelerated growth of the independent contractor. Multitudes of traditional companies will become more like film companies. Films are put together with temporary independent contractors. You have actors cinematographers producers etc. that come together on a per project basis and then disband after the job is done. This is similar to the way construction is done as well. This will start to do away with employees who don’t ad to the bottom line of overall profit. And with the government wanting companies to take up to 65% of the healthcare tab - I think you will see more companies looking for independent contracting employees or other out sourcing options at an accelerated rate as we go forward.

The overall effect is that I think the country will come out of this recession restructured in a way that more people will be competing in a virtual work place for more jobs on a merit basis that rewards smart thinking innovation and handwork. And when I say hard work I mean delivering your work as specified on time with a consistent record. This requirement will cut both ways from independent subcontractor to independent general contractor. I think this effect is best demonstrated in the college environment. Universities have gone online in the effort to broaden their market share and increase revenue. In so doing they have changed the nature of the University degree and education system. Now you need a degree but now you have to be currently updated with the latest skills and credentials that everyone with a willingness to learn will have to keep up with on a frenetic basis or be left behind. This all pushes education back to more of a merit based system where the volume of demonstrable skills and credentials determines your future to an extent.

The politicians are just getting in the way of this progress right now. I think the technology is driving this change and the government is clueless. You should have a look at “The Future of Work” , its pretty cool and eye opening. Another thing you can do to keep up with the changing world of work is sign yourself up for a Google reader account? I have one. I keep track of a number of business blogs related to what I'm doing. You would be amazed how you can locate very specific information related to what your interests are.

I think its mounted on the math build at OSU; but it reads, “he knows enough who knows to learn”. Its funny how things like that stick in your head over the years; but to me it is of more relevance today than it has ever been - I believe.

A Tax for American Teachers

2009-02-27T16:57:00.001-08:00

I think they should have a Tax on improper use of Business English within the 50 states of the US. This tax should go directly to k through 12 teachers only. I say this in consideration of " they" the ubiquitous powers that be - seem to be always asking teachers to do more for less.

I say this because we seem to expect miracles from teachers for as little money as possible. And yet everything we do as a society seems to be breaking down all the hard work that teachers put into educating the American student population.

I think my tax would work like this; if you are a business and you conduct you advertising or business communications through the use of poor English, improper English, slang English, or any other language other than English you should pay a percentage tax on the media that you use to communicate that message. Subsequently everyone would have the freedom to conduct their business in any communications manner they choose and yet we would have a constant contribution to teachers to educate literacy.

Companies would either develop better English skills or they would just cough up the cash because they made so much money from the use of poor English.

And if you notice that I have made some grammatical errors in this blog; well I'm ok with that because this blog is free to me so my taxes on it would be ZERO.

School Fights & Comedy: a primal form of Anger Management Classes

2009-02-26T10:26:00.000-08:00

I have to laugh about the issue of abuse and violence and subsequent Anger Management theories. Off hand it has always seemed to me that only one side of the argument gets publicity. I remember as a kid I was one of the kids back in the mid 60s who got into after school fights. Now grade school fights in the mid 60s were pretty tame compared to what I've seen on the news these days. Usually I was the kid that got beat up and usually it was 5 against one. But usually there was one or two guys and a few girls that would be the primary aggressors. By the way back then size mattered and the big kids usually won.

To reconsider this a bit; grade school fights maybe pretty tame compared to Junior High and High School. Anyway when I think back about my encounters with school fights, I remember the dread the fear of watching people turn towards you and you knew it was going to happen. Running wasn't always an option and the problem even if you got away was still waiting for you the next day. Any you know the thing that really gets to you is not just the kids pounding on you but all the other kids the gather around to watch the blood sport. I think at times I was more angry with them for watching that the guys actually beating on me. During those formative years as a 3rd grader - at Turnagain Elementary School - I learned that being the class clown was an effective defense against would be bullies. If you could make them laugh, you could divert that aggression into something else. However that tactic didn't always work because some night the crowd just wasn't laughing at anything. You could say it turned in to beat the comic up; his jokes suck.

When Michael Richards - the eccentric Cosmo Kramer on Seinfeld - during his live comedy act was harassed by hecklers during his comedy act, and he had an outburst of un-p.c. profanity. He paid dearly for his comic miscalculation. Michael Richards ran into the school yard bullies and couldn't joke his way out of the situation; and his jokes inflamed their anger and the crowd that supported them; he was savaged as the bad guy. Now if Michael Richards had the talent of one of my favorite comics - Carlos Mencia who I've seen live at the Historic Elsinore Theatre here in Salem - he would have had a witty thoughtful repartee with the hecklers and gained some comic momentum from it. That's what I've seen Carlos do. The man is a comic Genius. However Michael Richards couldn’t he didn’t have the skill, the talent, or that special something that allows a comic to respond quick and turn the situation to his advantage.

And there is what I find interesting. This is where violence and abuse get blurred. One person or a group begin to torment you either by word or physical insult. If you are particularly talented you can turn their tactics into a joke that defuses the situation without stepping on or over the line into a field of social land mines. Consider Eminem's film 8 Mile a 2002 American hip-hop drama film.In the climactic final scene Eminem's character a rapper faces off against his rival rapper in a flurry of rhyming rapping put downs told in story to draw laughter from the crowd. Naturally the movie is about Eminem's character Rabbit and he naturally wins. But the point that I'm trying to make here is that humor can be a defensive tool or an offensive tool. And depending on how people around you interact with you it is hard to tell who is starting a fight or running from the fight.

So if you can see my point about the complex nature of dealing with jokes bullies and would be social hecklers. Its complicated and the idea of Anger Management seems a little lost unless you are going to just preach to the loser and say hey you need to control yourself. And when I say loser I'm talking about the social outcast of the said violent abusive encounter. The loser is the one that is ostracized from the group as undesirable or weak or the vanquished combatant. For example lets us say you are verbally assaulted and defend yourself with a verbal statement and a physical fight breaks out and you are beaten and bruised but the out come is that even though you were physically harmed you are shown as the the idiot or the brute for responding or out of touch with social rules or a law suit if filed against the organization you work for and a settlement is reach out of court for 30,000,000 in favor of the guys that beat you. Even though the other guy started the confrontation and physically vanquished you in front of your friends and family you lose because the courts came down on their side and not yours. Thus you are the loser of this fight. So how do you manage that? Well you manage it the way many people do. You try to walk away in hopes that they don't follow you. But what do you do if they follow you. This is where Anger Management in my opinion gets foggy because now we are entering the realm of Walker Texas Ranger. I think the best anger management therapy is stand up comedy - even though it can be dangerous.

Carlos Mencia through his humor helps people see themselves and that is what I think a good comic does. Its not so much about being funny but helping people see things that are funny. Its explaining the irony of life and lightening life's burdens with levity that helps you see life from a different perspective in a way that helps you see that things even though they are not as good as they could be; conversely are also never as bad as they could be. That's what good comics can do in my opinion. One of the greatest comics - George Carlin was the epitome of a scholar and humorist in his manner of sharing wisdom through humor.

Left and Right

2009-02-26T10:23:00.000-08:00

I think I heard it best mentioned the other day when a talking head was speaking about conservatives and liberals. Its like arguing over the goose that laid the golden eggs. Conservatives are more worried about the health of the goose and liberals are worried more about how the eggs get distributed.

Genius

2009-02-21T09:55:00.000-08:00

I read this first statement in a blog written by an illustrator that I respect and I thought it would be fun to just run with variations on what he said:

“in all honesty my livelihood is fundamentally based on the fact that other designers can't draw well, so they pay me to do it instead.”

Or other designers can't write well, so they pay me to do it instead.
Or other designers can't find their way around a computer well, so they pay me to do it instead.
Or other designers can't deal with people well, so they pay me to do it instead.
Or other designers can't figure out how to research a subject, so they pay me to do it instead.
Or other designers can't design a campaign, so they pay me to do it instead.
Or other designers can't find original ideas well, so they pay me to do it instead.
Or other designers can't find the time, so they pay me to do it instead.
Or other designers can't, so they pay me to do it instead.

In the end you find that true genius will educate itself and find a way.

Picture Day at Humane Society for Dogs & Puppies

2009-02-20T23:48:00.001-08:00

You know any day is a good day with the dogs. All these dogs are down at the Albany Safe Haven Humane Society.

www.safehavenhumane.com

The German Shepherd is probably a year or two old and is just the best. His name is Thor. I have a bias for shepherds but this one is just the coolest. The Husky puppies are sweet as well. They need snow.

The thing that always gets to me is why these dogs end up here. People just trade them in when they have a life style change. I've always felt that the way a person treats a pet is the way they will treat you some day. Some day when you as a human being just don't fit their life style you will be out, dropped off at the corner and left to fend for yourself.

If you wonder why the guy in the picture is wearing a jump suit - the reason is simple. When I go down to see my dogs I expect to get dirty because dogs run in the mud, they slobber all over the place and usually they shed hair all over. So if you plan for it you can have a great time without destroying clothing while you are communicating with the dogs.

Branded T-Shirt Art and Celebrity Culture

2009-02-20T23:41:00.000-08:00

Henry Ford said it best when he said,” A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one”. There is quite literally a vast array of offensive and divisive t-shirt manufacturers flooding the market with negative and socially corrosive themes; promoting drug and alcohol use and abuse.

You could say these manufacturers promote lifestyle t-shirt apparel brands; to a wide range of customers. Some manufactures develop annual retail sales developing centa-millions in profits. Many controversial artists from the music industry have recognized their ability to create culture through t-shirt apparel brands. These t-shirts transcend their realm of music and appeal and go far and beyond their core demographic customer base. These same business operations have come to realize that their marketing strategy performs in a way that leads them to believe that they are not merely on the pulse of social change...but that they create that cultural pulse. However that marketing strategy is an idea that acts like a double edge sward; it can cut both ways.

The humble t-shirt is a labor intensive product relative to its selling price. It starts its journey in the cotton fields and ends up in the textile mill. From the mill it finds its way to the garment fabricator where it is cut, tagged, and tailored into a basic shirt. Next stop is the commodities warehouse where price is contingent upon season, and prevailing economic conditions

the sale price of the base garment is determine by supply and demand. In addition on an ever growing basis the cost of energy to ship bulk commodities ads to the base price.

The next stop on its journey is the screen printers where specialty inks are applied in various locations upon the garment and then sent through a drying process. And again at each stage of this process freight movers are doing there part to move the basic elements of the would be shirt to the next stage of development and adding their coast to the final price of the finished garment.

At this stage the design stage; begins with research and creative free association brain storming and time to refine a design idea to its core components to produce a wining piece of graphic design. From the rough sketches, the basic design takes shape and then it evolves to the digital side of the equation where in the final art and mechanicals are set into place to be used by the screen printers.

None the less in the end the reality is that the only thing that makes a t-shirt unique is the Art. If you take all that away, it would just be a t-shirt with ink on it. There is a steady and growing appetite for new dynamic design content in the t-shirt market. Relevant good art, with a sold brand - anything with a little originality and social following will seize the cultural spot light.

If brands can promote and involve their audience through relevant content, original creativity, and soft prompts and cues; they begin to become active in the social cultural experience. In turn, the brand becomes a definitive and regular source for inspiration and connectivity. Another component of this key interaction for the brand's social presence is the tech internet interface.

Today's culture is treating their personalities as products and this reflects an increasingly competitive society in which the best way to stand out is to develop an engaging--and easily defined--image ie branding.

Companies and celebrities have been doing it for years. Now it's the average guy's turn. "For a long time, parents discouraged their children from worrying about what others thought. They didn't realize how shortsighted that was," says Mark Leary, a social psychology professor at Duke University who studies impression management. "We need other people to think well of us." And being able to wrap ourselves in an established brand solves that problem quickly and simply.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse; a creative successful branding is critical to communicating the anti drug message. A brand if executed successfully can be recognized and positively regarded, the familiar presence of the brand may create positive response to any new ad. it also may increase the perception that each ad is part of a larger program and thus influence acceptance of the campaign’s messages.

Ultimately in the end it all comes down to the artist the designer and his or her singular vision. Does it work or not? Accessorizing yourself with artsy clothing including the ubiquitous black rimmed thin rectangular reading glasses does not make you a legitimate artist, having access to Photoshop, and hanging out in the swanky coffee shop scene does not make you an artist.

You can not cheat on this point. Good art is not made by committee or by striking a pose. It is made with relentless passionate hard work, legitimate artistic vision, technical skill and most of all talent and the willingness to put yourself out in public to face rejection. Sometimes people don’t “get your art” and that hurts. But those who do “get it”, well those are the people and the reactions that make my millennium.

New Books from Amazon.com

2009-02-10T17:05:00.000-08:00

Amazon.com is my favorite book store in the whole world! In the days before online commerce - if you lived in a place like Anchorage Alaska you were pretty much stuck to what the local population was interested in reading. In my case, living in Alaska was like being sequestered on Devils Island waiting for carrier pigeons to deliver bits and pieces of information about the outside world. For example when I was in my teens in the 70s nobody really had any great books out on the book store shelves in Alaska about film-making. For that matter that is still a hard subject to find unless you go to the more metropolitan book stores. None the less, times have changed and I can perusse any subject day or night and anywhere I can take my lap top. And since I'm a big fan of used books, you can always pick up a healthy collection on Amazon and a few days later; there you have it. I'm getting spoiled with this tech world we live in.

Dogs & Puppies at the Humane Society: What a day

2009-01-07T17:53:00.001-08:00

What a day! Got up early to take photos of dogs at the shelter. Diva, Brandy,& Jack from left to right. Diva was a great little puppy. I think she had some pit bull in her, and Brandy was a wire haired dog. He was a lot more lively in person than in this photo. Great dog. And Jack, Jack the dog all the way to the right - he was a very happy dog, a good dog.

After I got back from the shelter. Found a notice on my door. Looks like they are coming into inspect the apartments. I wonder if this is going to affect my neighbors with the $5000.00 worth of tarantulas and scorpions and snakes etc. etc. Things that make you go - Hhhhhmmmm.

Spent the better part of the afternoon hanging out with my buddy that photographed the dogs with me and one of his friends. From that conversation I picked up on a web site called Aweber.com. This is a site dedicated to helping you develop and execute e-mail campaigns. Additionally I'm looking at another site called IContact, and Constant Contact. I am also seeing that there are a number of people pointing out the perils of rental e-mail lists. Ah its always a complicated world.

Working late

2009-01-06T23:24:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when you are working late you can really get into the zone just playing random stuff off of You Tube.

A little help from a friend can make all the difference

2009-01-03T19:45:00.000-08:00

So an old buddy and former roommate of mine made a road trip up from Arizona where he works as an archeologist. He has worked with Ebay for at least the last year and is helping me set up my first listings for miscellaneous stuff that I'm using as a practice run for selling. The funny thing is that it seems a great deal simpler to buy stuff off Ebay than to sell . None the less I've got to find my way through this. So today is the first day that I actually listed something to be sold.

Its that season you know

2008-12-28T20:11:00.001-08:00

Hero Dog Saves Companion Dog Hit by Car

2008-12-26T18:54:00.000-08:00

Law of large numbers

2008-12-18T09:03:00.000-08:00

"The law of large numbers (LLN) is a theorem in probability that describes the long-term stability of the mean of a random variable. Given a random variable with a finite expected value, if its values are repeatedly sampled, as the number of these observations increases, their mean will tend to approach and stay close to the expected value. (Wikipedia, law of large numbers)"

In 2008 film "21" inspired by the true story of the MIT Blackjack Team that used the law of large numbers to execute their plan to bring down the house in Vegas. The film drew from the book Bringing Down the House, the best-selling book by Ben Mezrich. (Wikipedia, "21" (2008 film)

Summary conclusion as it applies to my project. As Voltaire once said I think, “ of course the game is rigged but If you don’t play you cant win”.

The winnings you can win are only as likely as the quality of the game you are playing.

this is the difference between a dead end job and a job with unlimited career growth. The longer you play in the career with unlimited career growth the more likely you will achieve more success.

How do I define career growth? In a name Warren Buffet. Warren isn’t working as a security guard or a janitor or a public servant. In a phrase, Warren isn't an employee. And in many ways being an employee is a poor game where you are helping someone else win large while bleeding out your time and creativity which are limited resources. You may say no man no creativity is unlimited. No, no it isn't. My proof is found in music albums. After a while every musicians work all starts to sound that same and that is when they have found the limit of their own creativity. So in my opinion you only have so much and you should use it wisely.

Warren Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska on 30th August 1930, to Leila (Stahl) and Howard Buffett. As the son of a local stockbroker, it is likely that he was exposed to markets at a very young age. (Wikipedia, Warren Buffet)

Warren was in the right game that had unlimited potential so that the longer he played the more likely he had a chance to develop a winning plan. And with his early life

he had a mentor named Benjamin Graham who was very influential on Warren. Graham’s philosophy had such an impact on Buffett that he enrolled in Columbia Business School to study directly under him.

Having direct contact with such a critical mentor increased Warrens ability to plan and play better games within the investing world.

As his knowledge and contacts improved so did Warrens game and chances of winning larger and larger

The moral to the story is that if you are smart enough you can beat a system that is overwhelming and unfair to capture you're 15 minutes of fame and fortune. And if you have planned correctly that will be all you need.

The Nature of the Season is tough to get anything done

2008-12-09T08:45:00.000-08:00

Well here I am. It is always the same every year. This time of year is always slow and tough to get through because of just the nature of the season. You know friends family and everybody else's friends and families taking time off and doing other things other than regular business activities.

Down town by the docks I found this really cool Royal Enfield motorcycle. I think its the new Royal Enfield Bullet Classic. Check out their web site its pretty cool: www.bulletclassic.com

More on a down time

2008-11-25T20:22:00.000-08:00

A little more info on starting up during a down time.

Entrepreneur Strategies For Growing In The Down Economy (Part II) from Toilet Paper on Vimeo.

Starting a venture in a recession

2008-11-25T19:35:00.000-08:00

On the eve of launching my project while still cleaning up loose ends I ran across this cool video.

Start & Grow a Healthy Business in a Recession from Toilet Paper on Vimeo.

Opened the Ebay store & the Peloponnesian War

2008-11-19T13:05:00.000-08:00

Opened the Ebay Store. Surprisingly it was easier than I thought but so far so good. A book that I'm am reading or have been reading for the last week is called the "Warrior Politics" by Robert D. Kaplan. Very interesting book in its references to ancient societies and their politics and paralleling them to current times.

Right now the book is going over The Peloponnesian War where Athens was fighting it out with the Peloponnesian League or Sparta for domination of the region; and the liaisons these two Greek city-states made with other Greek city-states.

So what does any of this have to do with opening an Ebay Store for Generic People; well in an obscure way, I am making parallels with the ancient political and military struggles with an entrepreneurial startup in today's market place.

Having said that; one of my many frustrations is the plethora of life and business maxims that are thrown into common communication almost on the chanting level; its the sunshine factory comments that have a phrase for just about every positive and or negative situation there is. And let me edify the point ie. where there is a will there is a way, it was ment to be, it wasn't ment to be, good things come to those who wait, if you want something badly enough you will get it and if you didn't get it you didn't want it bad enough etc. etc. etc. If you are satisfied with those kinds of answers then I guess you may be just blissfully happy and here is looking at you baby, gotta love you. However I'm not so easily satisfied with the new-age, new millennium sunshine bumper sticker philosophies. I need an answer that has some, "what for" to it!

The Peloponnesian War teaches how power and affluence blinded Athens to the bleak forces of human nature that lie just beneath the veneer of civilization, threatening its good fortune. (Warrior Politics - Robert D. Kaplan 2002)

Yes and people haven't changed much by today's date. But in the book Kaplan talks about Determinism and how it has been argued since the Greek Stoics. They pointed out two opposing ideas: individual moral responsibility and causation. Causation is the belief that our acts are the unavoidable result of a chain of prior events.

The medieval Catholic Church seems to have embraced the concept of causation, they believed that history had a single direction and purpose. At this point I'm getting a little foggy on the exact difference between Determinism and Causation. In a synopsis I'll just say causation sounds like the Domino Effect - one domino block hits another and so on and so on. Yada yada yada.

In contrast to that belief of the medieval church - Niccolò di Bernardo dei MachiavelliMay 3, 1469 – June 21, 1527) believed that the future was not determined and immutable. Kaplan says Machiavelli revolted against the medieval church determinism. Machiavelli believed that one could alter the course of future events. You the individual could alter one of the Dominos and thus alter the course of the future.

I will point out that before you start to hyperventilate about Machiavelli being a moral monster lets just consider these current times of " Retroactive moralizing and massaging". The fact is that the subject of morality is and has been an ever evolving concept over the last several thousand years of human evolution and is hardly the immutable monolithic constant embraced or interpreted the same way by all people all the time through out all history etc. etc. etc. None the less, Kaplan points out that if you are going to condemn Machiavelli that you probably need to throw in, "a long list of thinkers - including Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas, John Adams, Montesquieu, Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Coleridge, and Shelley - all of whom "have advised, approved, or borrowed Machiavellian maxims" - would "form a legion of fellow immoralists".

Ok all of this is taking the long way around to the point that years ago I had a girl friend that was always spouting off about, "Beggars cant be chooses". That always sawed me off. That statement alone sent me into orbit. Beggars can't be chooses - wrong. If you have the gumption to ask beggars can be choosers and if you read Machiavelli you can understand why he was not a determinist.

Its good to be alive!

2008-11-17T08:32:00.000-08:00

This is why I think pilots and especially a brave and brilliant few are the most amazing people in the world. The first time I saw this video it choked me up. Here this guy losses a wing and he doesn't just give up and cry and die; no he fights he struggles, HE bravely, solders on in the face of certain death and he pulls it off. He; yes I'm proudly enunciating the fact that he is a guy a dude, a man among men - lands that crippled plane and walks away with his life. Yes he was lucky he was flying a stunt plane in that he had an engine with the power to weight ratio to enable him to hang on the prop and stand on the rudder controls so he could get in position just above the ground. When he was close enough, it looks like he chopped the power and with a combo of Rudder Elevator and Aileron controls he flipped the one wing over and dropped the plane on the ground. And if in the end this is all a fake well here is to great drama. These guys know how to make a movie that will hold your attention. Sweet isn't it.

Hmmmm a miniature V12 RC model engine

2008-11-15T16:12:00.001-08:00

Working on the To-Do list while I wait to get my laptop back from the Apple Store. You just have to wonder how long does it take to bolt in a new hard drive. I know I could disassemble any computer in a few minutes and if I'm really pushed for time I could have in apart in a few seconds. I mean really come on. I find myself wondering if they have even touched it.

None the less look at this, a miniature V12 RC model engine this is just beyond cool to me. Ok, to get to the fun stuff advance the video to about a third of the way in. The guys spend a little too much time fumbling with getting the engine started but once they do; ah the whir of the engine is music to the ears. I would assume that only if you were some what of a gear head.

The economy in the U.S.

2008-11-14T11:21:00.000-08:00

When you look at the United States on a map you can get a feel for area and population. The funny thing is when you fly over it; for example up state New York - it is very different. There are vast tracts of land that are relatively untouched by the general population; though if you look closely, you will see the scares of civilization here and there running out its tentacles into the vastness of the American landscape. Here is an example of what I'm talking about. Have a look a this map of the % change in GDP by metropolitan area circa 2006. Even though we are a nation of 300 million people we are clustered in areas of concentration. And some areas seem to be evolving as the population ebbs and flows around the country.

The funny thing is that in this internet world we now live in the question one may ask is: how much bigger is the economic map than the United States for any given product or service. With a gross generalization you could claim the world but I'm not sure that is reasonable in the absolute sense of the world. However in a connectivity sense we in the US are connect around the world to a growing network of potential consumers. And in a world where the idea of the Knowledge worker is still unfolding and evolving and the traditional 9 to 5 working for the man job is regularly being whittled away and reduced to its basic core components and in some cases completely automated. Have you ever wondered what ever happened to all those endless banks of bank tellers and secretary pools. There are a vast number of jobs that just don't exist any more. So what will people do for a vocation for work for rent. I think the economy the world economy and I'm just guessing - will resize itself down in a rough reordering of social and economic priorities. Having been to Canada during this last week; I remember while driving through Montreal how the apartment housing look ed strangely like old Soviet tenements in Moscow. It all was reminiscent of a bleak time during the cold war where people scrapped out lives huddled in over stuffed dormitories with 3 or 4 families sharing floor space just to sleep. That is the kind of future I wonder about for the United States. Am I frightened? No. Curious yes and yes I wonder with a bit of trepidation. I hope Old Glory has not see her best days yet.

It is that time of year

2008-11-13T16:17:00.001-08:00

I am listening to a piece of music by Aram Khachaturian who was born 1903 in Tblisi , Georgia, in what was then Imperial Russia land of the Czars. Anyway I'm musing to a piece called the Masquerade - Waltz and another piece called Spartacus. None the less fall /winter almost the holidays is here in the Northwest. Its a grand time to be alive in America. This is something really wonderful about having four seasons. There is the fresh bite in the air, the smell of wood burning in a fireplace and the rustle of leaves under foot.

Back the States: Back in Seattle

2008-11-11T07:38:00.000-08:00

Getting ready for the final push to launch project. Back in Seattle you can tell you back when you start seeing Chihuly glass designs on display in public and corporate buildings. I am always amazed at the size and beautiful color of his work.

Anyway back in the States Back in Seattle its time to start thinking about getting back into launching my project. I have come a long way and I'm just about at that point that I think I can make an initial offering of designs to the market.

Computer is Down and I'm stuck at JFK

2008-11-08T09:40:00.001-08:00

Well my connecting flight from Albany to New York's JFK was delayed by bad weather for 30 minutes on the ground. So in a commuter jet with every seat taken we sit like sardines in a aluminum can with wings waiting for our departure clearance on the taxi way. There must be 5 or six other planes ahead of us. Oh this is just just just the perfect end to a winter retreat. I don't like confined spaces with other people it drives me nuts but I just have to talk to myself its all good. Finally we get the clearance to take off. I'm calculating; well I have an hour and a half layover in JFK to catch my connecting flight out to Seattle. This might work out nicely. I get in I'll zip over to my connecting flight and out I go. 30 minutes later I'm in a holding pattern around JFK. Now I'm wondering if I'm going to have to run to catch my plane but we will see. I think we've been in a holding pattern for maybe 20 minutes then we start descending into JFK. We touch town and the pilots are instantaneously on the reverse thrusters and breaks. I'm chuckling to myself this plane is going to explode or I'm about to feel a sever bump which should be the end of the runway. And I'm stuck next to all these people. I don't mind crashing I just don't want to be next to these people. But as usual nothing really dramatic happens and we slow to a fast taxi and come to a stop off the runway on a taxi way and sit. We are still sitting there 20 minutes later. The flight attendant gets on the horn and says she has bad news and good news. The bad news is that we will be there for a little longer and the good news is that our gate is just across the taxi way and it will only take us a minute to get there. Then suddenly the jet spools up and we are moving again. Ah we are heading for the gate, and then another gate, and another and another. Several minutes into this ongoing taxi I suggest to the guys around me, "you know this short trip to the gate is turning into a road trip, to the Grand Canyon". It felt like we were driving around JFK looking for a parking spot. I was ready to say to the pilot let me out here I'll make it to my connecting flight by myself. But no we were stuck on the plane until it came to a complete stop once the pilot figured out where to park the plane. You know you see these kind of drivers all the time in Wal-Mart parking lots. They are so afraid they may have to walk a ways to the front door so they spend all afternoon circling the front door area parking spots. I'm just not having a good day.

Finally we find our spot and come to a stop. Oh sweet Marry we have arrived. Now the laborious process of getting this heard of people off the plane begins. Needless to say after several minutes of patient waiting I decide to sit back down in my seat because for some reason they have a log jam in the forward part of the plane. From my position in the rear of the plane all I can see is a folding wheel chair being fed into the plane and positioned so as to assist someone get off the plane that now that I recall was the last to board when we first boarded the plane. Wow my claustrophobia is closing in on me so I put my headsets on and look for some of my favorite tunes on my Blackberry. A little Rob Zombie seemed to fit the bill. Ah man what is this; if the plane was on fire are we all going to wait for gimpy to get the move on, while the rest of us roast. I don’t know. I think I’d like passenger jets more if they came with ejection seats for every passenger. Just knowing that I could pull the lever and get out of here. It would be so much more mentally soothing. I could put up with screaming kids and the overly - carry on baggage challenged. I could just smile and give em the old thumbs up as I pulled the lever. I’m outta here sucks. I can just imagine how this could play out with people stuck in endless holding patterns over JFK; whole rows of people would just punch out, saying screw it I’ll walk to the hotel. You would see a cloud of white parachutes raining in on the various neighborhoods of New York. That would be a sight to see.

Ok, finally the guy with the Walk Easy Forearm Crutches and the help of the flight crew finally got shoe horned into the folding wheel chair. Now they have him pointed down the aircraft cabin stairs. The guys is propped up like a long distance ski jumper. I bet this guy never knew this was part of the flight. None the less they get this tiny flight attendant to help nudge him forward. At this point I’m thinking maybe it isn’t so bad being stuck back here in this human bee swarm re-breathing air that has been around since the time of the dinosaurs. Now maybe this life I have is a lot better than I once thought. Now that I see this guy with his entire life in the hands of this tiny tiny flight attendant; ya gotta wonder does God have a sense of humor and is this part of the joke? Is this the joke? Now the guy disappears down the stairs in a flurry of rapid thuds and thumps reminiscent of an old tired steam engine chugging off into the mist. Moments later the plane begins to clear out. I find my way off the plan and once I get into the terminal I check with the airline counter to see if I can catch my connecting flight; and surprise, surprise, surprise, it just left and they the airline rebooked me on a flight for the following morning at 8:20am. That's just too precious isn’t it, I’m spending the night in New York. Wow God does have a sense of humor, teach me to be pissy about the old guy on the plane with the Walk Easy Forearm Crutches. You see God does exist just to teach us humility. So here I’m going to be until my flight in the morning. The rest of the story I continue when I'm more awake.

Things could always be worse

2008-11-08T09:40:00.000-08:00

Well it happened again. My computer HD just died. But as I always say when things go terribly wrong," things are never as bad as they seem or as good as they should be". Having said that, I'm listening to the theme song to the 1963 movie - the Great Escape - Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Garner, Richard Atenborough etc. I love those war time escape movies, where a bunch of guys make radios out of a quartz crystal and a rabbit hair. Its like MacGyver before there was a MacGyver.

Speaking of things I'm getting on the plane in Massena New York after driving down from Montreal Quebec. I'm looking forward to my flight. I'm seeing the same plane I flew in on, I see them pack my computer in the storage area on the port wing of the Cessna 402c. I'm feeling confident, God all I need is a scarf and my hands on the controls. And yes today I fly the right seat. And yes its true being an artist wasn't my first choice in life careers. What I really wanted to be was a fighter pilot or even a bomber pilot. My preference would have been World War II but I was a little too young for that and the Gemini and Apollo programs were a little before my time as well. As for my astronaut aspirations; because of a slight visual color deficiency in my visual acuity; that little thing washed me out. It also had an impact on my military aviation aspirations as well - so I'm now a coffee drinking artist.

Having said all of that I did solo a Citabria Decathlon severl times when I was 17 years old. I was flying a plane before I drove legally.

None the less I digress here. I am boarding the 402c and I've spoken with the pilot so I get the right seat next to the pilot in command. Sweet, I have scored. Looking left right and all around I just take in the smells and sounds of the aircraft squeaks, the whirr of the gyros, and I anticipate the rumble of the twin engines roaring to life. Amidst all of this there is the familiar smell of fuel, aviation fuel there is nothing like it in the world accept, jet fuel; but that is another story.

None the less I'm looking around the plane doing my own preflight inspection. Ah the wonders of flight and if need be I can fly this baby, just give me a chance. Looking out onto the starboard engine I take note of the engine cowling. I've never seen so many patches in a non combat plane before, ever. looking closer I see that the engine vents have what appears to be smoke smudges exiting the lower set of louvers and what appears to be smooth organic shaped chunks of metal missing in the louvers themselves possibly from melting which would indicate a fire at one time - probably an in-flight engine fire. Ah things that make you laugh. Isn’t life grand. We take off heading to Albany New York. I check that starboard wing now and then and then again one more time. I think about the engine running under that cowling. I glance at the altimeter. We are cruising along at 8,000 feet at a speed of 135 knots indicated airspeed. I check out the GPS navigation equipment; the pilot has us on a vector straight into Albany. I wonder to myself, strange thoughts, like if that engine caught fire we would have 8,000 feet to lose and then locate a good improvised runway. I think it would be nice to land with gear down but that might not be do-able . The area around Albany New York is pretty un-populated and mostly birch tree woods and rolling hills and lots of lakes and streams so it looks like a landing might be in a marshy grassy clearing and that would mean gear up and belly landing the 402c. Then, then the walk home would be a little cold , lucky for me I brought my La Sportiva automatic crampon compatible boots for general purpose mountaineering, and let us just say if we need a fire for dinner I've got the gear. I'm getting cold just thinking about this but I will survive. But it doesn't matter anyway because we are descending into Albany anyway and I'm starting to see more roads and houses. The adventure winds down ,cela est la vie, cela est la vie... I don't know what the French word or phrase is , but it sucks. It sucks that all good things come to an end.

At the lac

2008-11-04T15:30:00.000-08:00

At the lac. From the Lodge I walked down to the water. The lake was like glass accept for a beaver that swam past with a log in his grasp. Busy little guy. Other than that its just very peaceful, quiet accept for the occasional loon.

Thinking about going home is always a bitter sweet thing. Leaving new found places very hard to do. And this place is wonderful, peaceful, far and away, I will miss it.

Its Sunny and Cold today

2008-11-04T10:03:00.000-08:00

Sunny and cold and I'm going for coffee at this big log cabin lodge. Hopefully I get some great pictures. Its really cool. Yesterday I think I walked 5 kilometers. Today we will see where I go I'm just taken it easy.

Brief Thought

2008-11-03T14:39:00.000-08:00

It's not how old you are, it's how healthy you are that count's because without your health you don't have anything.

Things you see along the way of a bike path / ski path

2008-11-03T13:26:00.001-08:00

Its funny how I always find a coffee shop on my walks. You will see a young buck deer in here. That deer followed me for a while. Actually I didn't know it at first until I looked back and saw him walking up on me. I have expected him to ask me for spare change. Yes he was looking for a handout but unfortunately I didn't have an apple or a carrot for him. The deer around here are practically pets. Now that I think about it; when I walked into the grocery store in town I saw these pallets loaded with 20 pound bags of cut carrots and I it struck me as odd and now I know what those bags are being sold for. Its for feeding the deer.

A walk

2008-11-03T12:52:00.000-08:00

Well sitting here in the lower bunk I'm thinking of my last walk around the chalet.

MONDAY

2008-11-03T06:13:00.000-08:00

Well I'm looking at the end of the vacation coming up. Ah the depression and the dread. I'm going to have to go home. I just don't want to leave. I could just stay here for another month.

This is life or at least the way it should be

2008-11-02T05:56:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting here in the Chalet drinking my morning coffee in the lower bunk looking out of my room to snow covered roofs and pine trees glowing in the morning sun. I'm listening to a piece of music from Spartacus, or Spartak, a ballet by Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978). As referenced by Wikipedia - the work follows the exploits of Spartacus, the leader of the slave uprising against the Romans known as the Third Servile War, although the ballet's storyline takes considerable liberties with the historical record. Khachaturian composed the ballet in 1954.

But more to the point; I remember, the musical score from a movie also sited by Wikipedia - The Hudsucker Proxy a 1994 film directed by the Coen brothers, telling a fictitious story about the rise and fall of a naive executive and the invention of the hula hoop. It stars Tim Robbins, Paul Newman, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

In many ways the ballet Spartacus and The Hudsucker Proxy are both about monumental struggle corruption deception and victory and loss. Its great stuff. The Hudsucker Proxy is so apropos for my project and my efforts right now. It talks about life questions in the game of trying to succeed in the business world. I have to get this movie when I get back to Oregon.

Anyway it all comes back around to walking and talking and thinking about life. The big questions like; what do I want to do; who do I want to be; what can I be. Granted not everyone may be thinking of these questions but some people do and you would be amazed who and when you hear these questions. I think I've heard many people say at a point in their life something like - what about my life, when do I get to live my life, when does my ship come in, when does it finally start for me. And often when I've looked at the people who are saying this I see people who have had lives on hold while others were living.

And I think you know, every minute that goes by is another chance to turn it all around, every cup of coffee is a conversation waiting to be had and every step down the sidewalk an adventure in progress. I don't want to miss anything. So I guess that what I'm saying is I want to enjoy what I have as much as I can while I'm climbing the mountain of business. So when I throw myself back into my work and start the effort anew racing for the golden ring I am doing it with the knowledge that this is the way I want to live out the rest of my time - while enjoying a great cup of coffee. And naturally coffee for me is a metaphor for the little things in life. I would rather be battling the dragon than waiting for the end to find me huddled in a cold dark place. And if its my place to be smashed upon the rocks then such is life. Its not the way I want things to be but I couldn't live without the hope of winning. I live for that feeling, that hope, that possibility, that I get when I wake up in the morning and I know this could be the day. And if this could be the day then its already that day in a way.

Basilique Notre-Dame De Montreal

2008-11-01T21:40:00.000-07:00

The camera gear I had on this trip just could not do this building justice. I need the architectural bellows lenses and the tripod set up to deal with this. As you can see with a simple wide angle I'm getting the height but you can also see how the optics start to bend the building and in the one picture of the entire structure it really gets crazy and bends much more.

This is where you need the right lenses for this kind of massive structure but it was beautiful to see. I wish I could come back when its all lit up. If you want to see what it looks like with the lights on and in good photographic perspective go to: http://www.basiliquenddm.org/

It is truly impressive even I was losing the light and it was quickly turning into early evening. After getting back to the lodge, I down loaded the photos and since everything is in RAW file format the resolution is very high and I haven't changed the resolution so if you want to look at a bigger picture you just click on any image and is should come up in a second window in its full resolution. Its pretty fun to look at.

A Day in Montreal

2008-11-01T20:58:00.000-07:00

I could live here, I never really knew what this place was like until today. It kind of blows my mind about what I thought I knew. It seems to always surprise me that the older I get the more I realize how much I just don't know. But its fun learning about the world that I just did know was there.

Having said the preceding; I think it is only fair to say that I did see a notable population of double wide trashy looking buildings and or domiciles that I just didn't feel compelled to photograph.

Also the street lights are gas lights. That is pretty neat they have a pilot light and come on at dusk.

Coffee in the Village

2008-10-31T14:53:00.001-07:00

Well we found a nice little cafe in the village. The snow was
melting but it was still cold out. So when we went in the the cafe the warmth was a welcome change. The fun thing about this place was that it was an i nternet cafe with wifi. I think we may come here tomorrow with our lap tops. This place even had a small fire place. It was very toasty.

Back into the Mont Tremblant Village

2008-10-31T10:31:00.000-07:00

Well I am just having a cup of coffee hangen with the family typing away on the computer. The sun is out and its looking very nice outside. In fact its looking like the snow is melting even more. So its off to the Village to take pictures and talking business and politics.

Early this morning Angela needed help on some documents that she wanted to move some graphical elements around. So naturally since I have my laptop I broke out the gear and imported her files and recomposed her documents for graphics in illuustraitor and did a little bit of croping in photoshop and Voila it was done. So I must bid you a bon aprey mi di and off I am to the village.

The Mont Tremblant Village

2008-10-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

The village is a winter wonderland. Its funny but I'm just thinking how much fun it would be to be able to spend a month here skiing and sledding. Wow that's a throw back to 8 years old. Snowballs and sleds.

Again fun time in the village today. The snow is sort of melting again but then it snows here and there.

Well on a completely different note; I've found myself leaving the door closed and the window open in my room at night. Sounds crazy but the fresh snow filled air just smells and feels good. I have lots of blankets and pillows and I just bury myself in the lower bunk. Sweet blissful sleep. Ah this is living.

Back At the Lodge watching the Deer

2008-10-30T20:29:00.000-07:00

Wow lots of snow and hangen out in the village watching the deer. These deer are just more than happy to run up and bum food off of everybody. Its funny to see deer running through town. The deer here are just wandering through the lodges and cabins.

Ottawa drive in the Snow

2008-10-30T19:19:00.000-07:00

Ottawa is windy and cold and fun. Headed out for coffee. Dirk and Angela have meetings to get to and I have some time on my hands to wander and explore before we head back to the lodge. Not bad so what does a guy do in a crazy city like Ottawa and I only have a handful of French to run around with. Merci, Cava, Vraiment, Qu' est Ce Que C'est, Bon Jour etc etc. you know. Everybody says I speak with out an accent. Cool. Dirk warned me though, to stop telling people I learned my accent from Pepe Le Peew. I'm trying not offend anyone while having a ball working my foreign self. Canadian flags looks so cool in Canada. I think its because they are much bigger up here and they really look like the real thing. Could be because its really Canada.

Ice Storm Snow Storm

2008-10-30T17:47:00.001-07:00

Wow it got crazy cold and lots of snow and ice. Power got knocked out at the lodge and WiFi was down. Couldn't do much but sit around the fire and practice my French. Ah bon apres mi di!

After getting out of the lodge we headed to Ottawa for the day, took lots of pictures as best as one can from a moving car. The tree blocking the road was just one among hundreds on our way to Ottawa. Crazy times. Adversity always makes for high adventure.

Snow

2008-10-28T21:03:00.001-07:00

Snow, snow, snow, its snowing in Canada. Go figure. I just need the Christmas music to go along with it.

Mont Tremblant, Canada Day 51

2008-10-27T22:09:00.001-07:00

Well it looks pretty nice around here. There isn't any snow on the ground yet, but its getting cold. You can tell that when it does snow its going to be deep snow. There are a lot of Birch trees around here. Very pretty place. Its funny to see the deer just run around looking for handouts.

The funny thing is I find my self reading about Frangelico a premium hazelnut liqueur from Northern Italy while listening to Tony Bennett on his UnPlugged Album. Its 10:56 pm Oregon Time and its 1:56 am here in Mont Tremblant laying on the floor of my room. Yes I've abandoned the lower bunk of the bunk beds for the floor. Tomorrow there is a grand log cabin lodge that I'm planning on exploring after I hit the pool or something. None the less what's cool right now is that I'm playing my music off my Blackberry. I just plugged the head phones in and I can walk around without waking anybody up while listening to my tunes. Its very cool, I think I need more reading material so I think I'll head down stairs and refresh my supply. My copy of Scientific America is getting a little dry.

Not bad, I'm working a very very nice late night mellow listening to some easy tunes. Yup this is living. I think I'm going to hit the spa tomorrow, hot tub, steam room and sauna. I'm not sure which order it will be in but I'll just wing it.

Well I'm In Canada and its Day 51 of my project

2008-10-27T21:12:00.000-07:00

Its 12:27 in the morning here at Tremblant as I sit in the bottom bunk of a bunk bed and write my blog. No there are no kids in the upper bunk, I'm alone and taking in the quiet of the evening.

Well I got here to Mont Tremblant Ski Resort and my brother picked me up from the airport when I arrived. None the less the overall flight plan was that I flew out of Seattle on Delta and arrived at JFK New York and then flew out from there to Albany New York and then I finally flew into Massena New York on a Cape Air Cessna 402C. Very cool plane as you can see from the cockpit photo I took. The controls were just a few seats away, I just wanted to touch them so bad.

We took off from Albany airport and climbed out to 8,000 feet. At altitude we cruised for an hour and then slowly descended into Massena New York. I couldn't help but feeling like taking control of the plane and carving some curves and performing a couple of loops. Ah I gotta get back into flying. The think that was coolest was the way we taxied out to the Runway in Albany New York and rolled out and took off. Flying is good for the soul!!!

When I finally fell asleep in Tremblant it was 12:30 am after flying for 4 hours from Seattle to New York, and laid over for 2 hours until I caught an hour flight to Albany where I had a 4 hour lay over until I finally flew out of there for an hour flight to Massena New York and then Dirk and I Drove 3 to 4 hours north to Tremblant. It was late when I arrived and we all sat around talking until 12:30 and then I was out, dead asleep for about 13 hours. Not bad, I woke up at 1:30 pm the following day Eastern time. But that is for the next blog.

Dog Picture Day at Humane Society, Day 48 of Project

2008-10-22T18:28:00.000-07:00

Went to the Dog House today. Ok the first dog that I just loved today was Conrad. I think he is a lab dane mix. Big boy, came up to my upper thigh. Beautiful dog, well healed and sits on command. I would be putting this old boy in the jeep and heading off to the woods. He is a little disoriented at the shelter but that is what happens when your keepers just dump you off because you dig holes too much. You see people are too busy to spend quality time with their family and themselves. He reminds me of Old Yeller from the Disney movie. He has crazy eyes but he is all love and slobber. This is a dog you have sleeping on the rug in front of the fireplace in the log cabin out in Montana.

The Other two dogs are Australian Shepherds I think. Anyway these were just wonderful dogs. Yogi to the far right was just brought in while were taking pictures and was just full of energy. He was just a little hard to settle down. I think the recent separation from his home hit him hard. The dogs all take the separation from their homes with varying degrees of emotional acting out. Conrad that I jokingly referred to as Cujo was a wonderful dog and very loving but you could just tell he was emotionally hurt and lost about his situation. That really makes me feel bad for these dogs. People just drop them off like so much unfashionable garbage that is no longer cool for their irresponsible lifestyles. Ah I get upset about how people treat dogs.

The last dog on the inside left is Beka. This is a sweetheart dog. She would put her paw through the cage and just wait for you to pet her. She was such a sweetheart. Again I cold have taken them all home.

Tuesday 5 days to Canada and Day 47

2008-10-21T13:24:00.001-07:00

Well its a new day and I'm working on the short list of fixes to "Living for the Moment" You know when I'm just working on the art part of the project I'm just amazed at how much time it takes to put the art together the way I want it. Just doing the art is a complete job in and of itself. I do this all day long, 7 days a week and still have tons left to do. So that's why I have to limit the scope of what I'm developing until I can free up time.

Saturday working on sketching & Inking 6 days to Canada

2008-10-18T23:37:00.000-07:00

Well got up late and been working on design elements of "Living for the moment"

Ok up late again Day 45 of project and 7 days to Canada

2008-10-17T15:16:00.000-07:00

Coffee in hand and poppy seed cake. Yup I made that cake the other night. Weird isn't it. Dogs, Photography, computers, art, engine rebuild and Mountain biking etc. etc. etc. things I do to keep my brain going.

I'm changing art mediums today. I'm spending more time on the light table sketching in shadows with ink and pencil. But before I get too deep I think I'm going to the library to get reference books on Frank Miller, and other great cartoonists. This will just take me in a new direction to free up my head from he fog. I've noticed getting into the physical art sometimes really helps get my head out of the fog. We will see what happens. Heading out now.

Crazy sleep and focus problems

2008-10-17T04:06:00.000-07:00

Here I am 4 in the morning can't sleep can't think too well but I managed to dismantle the light table and replace two bulbs. The apartment is starting to look pretty organized. I've got the research data put away in binders. The physical art is getting organized better but needs more work. I think when I get back up this morning - if I go back to sleep and if I can fall back asleep - I will hit the computer again working "living for the moment".

Pictures of the Dogs at the Humane Society

2008-10-16T17:28:00.000-07:00

These are my dogs today. Rowdy on the right and Brandy on the left all very happy dogs. Rowdy just loved to be pet and just leaned into me and as you can see lifted his left front paw. What a dog.

Brandy was a good old dog. I think he was 3 or 4 years old. Big dog he was. His head was waist high and I'm 6 feet tall so he was a big dog. I think they both - Rowdy and Brandy - had great dane in them. They were both mix dogs. None the less, I just get a kick out of big floppy eared dogs. Brandy was a little on the drooling side and very energetic. In fact both Rowdy and Brandy were very energetic. Rowdy was a jumper. That could almost rise above a 5 foot fence to get his head over for an ear scratch and head petting. Again dogs; I'd love to have a large estate with a big log house with room for big dogs. I'd have to have a big fireplace in that lodge like log house. I think that would be just grand.

Battling the Fog 8 days to Canada Day 44 of project

2008-10-16T13:08:00.000-07:00

The crazy thing about the fog of the mind is that it wells up when I'm facing a problem or an impasse. Or sometimes its just got to do with changing positions in the apartment or how much sunlight is coming in from outside. In any event its tough to deal with. Over the last few days I've been getting to bed around 3 am. Or rather asleep by 3 am. Last night I was in bed by 2 but laid there watching Navy Seals until I faded away.

In the past one of the ways I deal with depression is I go for a walk or a bike ride. When gas was cheap I'd go for a drive and then a walk or what ever caught my interest. I used to have an athletic club membership. That was grand. The jacuzzi and the pool was where you would find me. And naturally along with that the steam room, sauna, and showers. That was good stuff. In lue of getting our sometimes a take a brake and play my games of Myst. Right now I'm spending a lot of time with Myst 3 Exile. Just the sound of the ocean waves crashing on the shores is helpful to get me settled down to work on my art.

Its funny, the older I get the more reclusive I become. I'm kind of amazed how long I've been in the apartment without really talking to anyone. But its all for a good cause, I'm just trying to finish off this one design. I think this design will be really good when I'm done but it takes a lot of thinking and messing around with it to make it right. Sometimes I look at it and it just looks cluttered. It didn't look cluttered in the sketch but it does now. So I'm working on reducing the umber of colors. Reducing the number of colors seems to help reduce the clutter of an image. None the less for the moment its important to concentrate on the structural elements. Just getting all the structural elements into place will be the turning point. Then I can concentrate on the colors and the shades.

The think that I've thought of is maybe I should work on other things but I just don't agree with that. I have to finish off a balanced body of designs for the Ebay and the Cafepress shops. I just feel that way. I want a spread of humor and designs that are not particularly weighted in one area.

Once I'm on the plane I don't want to be messing around with artwork in Canada I just want to concentrate on managing the Ebay and Cafepress stores along with my direct mail campaigns. So it is ok for me to just burn up on this art stuff until I get it done and that is all that matters.

I used to have a saying in college. It went something like this; "Considering the amount of time I waste, I am terribly efficient with the time that I don't waste". It seems that I get lost in wandering around waiting for the muse to strike or the epiphany to appear. Its hard, I don't know if this is ADHD or just the way people deal with things. In any event its nothing that I can really deal with outside of myself. Generally I'm a pretty social person but if I get into too much contact with other people it just disturbs my mental processes and I loose my thoughts in conflicted emotional and mental chaos other peoples lives. So to be true to myself I'm barricade myself in my world to maintain as much pure energy on my project as possible. Is it working. I don't know, I hope it is. I know that I've finished a great deal of art so far. But I have a little was to go to be done. I'm hoping the weekend will see me complete all of my design that I need to launch my Ebay Store.

The Art gets Foggy and complicated

2008-10-16T00:52:00.000-07:00

Working on this one design gets complicated but I'm still making slow progress. I'm getting sluggish in the head so I need to switch to reading or something different for the time being.

At the Artistic Tipping Point; 9 Days to Canada Day 43 of Project

2008-10-15T12:53:00.001-07:00

Ok, well I'm into some details for "Living for the Moment" the shadows and light on the GP guys are offering a potentially very cool graphical look and I'm just going off road here because I think that the end result will be cool. So on I go.

Day 42 of the project and 10 days to Canada

2008-10-14T23:12:00.000-07:00

Wow, the burnout factor hit me today. Still hammering away on the art and today I've made it 70% through getting Living for the Moment finished up. I get a little foggy in the head and after looking at all the art that is done now it is starting to feel good and right.

Pretty Much what I have done:

Main GP Logo
Drugs Will Beat You
Friends Pick Up
Save the Planet

Almost Done:

Living for the moment - pretty much this design is requiring pen and ink illustration elements that I have to build up from rough sketches. And at this point my cool light table is helping out a great deal. I got it for from a museum that was listing it on Craig's List for free if you could haul it away. I used a Chevy S10. It barely fit but obviously I hauled it away. I had to methodically drill out every spot weld so that I could break it down and reassemble it in my apartment. I put it back together with stainless steel bolts and wing nuts. I thought that was kind of fun. And now I rock because I have a very cool light table to use for illustration. Yes everything ends up on the computer via the scanner and gets vectored but hey I'm having fun with the old school tech.

In Working on this project one of the things that I have found myself thinking about is how much old school technology is just being dumped and forgotten. Everybody has a computer and the image manipulation programs and a digital Nikon that pretty much shoots the photo for you but how many people can draw with a pencil and paper. Then again those skills don't really seem to be on the top of the list anymore since clip art landed into the art world years ago.

What I think I need the soonest:

Sleev logos
Reef Shark Weight Loss
Meals on Wheels (alternatively) Wheels For Meals

Late Night late rise 11 days to Canada & Day 41 of Project

2008-10-13T11:21:00.000-07:00

Ok, hit the sack around 3am but made substantial progress on the Friends design. I think I can say I'm 80% done. If I can round off a few more edges I can set it aside and tackle the next design.

One thing I've notice is sometimes I get so focused on getting things perfect I over look the fact that I'm done. That kill a lot of time. So technically I'm done with Friends Pick Up the Pieces but I'm obsessing on colors which is just something that can be handled later since the basic structure of the design is in place.

So I should start the next design which is disconnected and Reef Shark Weight Loss. Reef Shark will be fun because its funnier and less of a heavy funny. If I can keep my focus groove on and running I should try to punch out the two sleeve logos today as well.

Pretty Much what I have done:

Main GP Logo
Drugs Will Beat You
Friends Pick Up
Save the Planet

What I think I need the soonest:

Sleev logos
Reef Shark Weight Loss
Meals on Wheels
Living for the moment

Late Night Again 11 days to CAN

2008-10-13T00:55:00.000-07:00

Late night working on reworking Freinds Pick up the Pieces. Looks like I'm going to have to just kick around redrawing various elements. Basically changing the original design to a better cleaner look.

Sunday wow that was fast - 12 days to CAN

2008-10-12T12:58:00.000-07:00

Wow you know what they say; Life is short and we are only here for the weekend and its already Sunday afternoon. That's just making my head spin.

Ok today still working on Friends Pick up the Pieces. I've got my CS2 manuals out big note pad with sketches and note as how I'm going to solve my markup / general reconstruction issues. I have moments when I just cant think on this stuff and then moments of clarity. I think building and designing stuff is far more difficult than just slapping together print ads for local businesses. Trying to make yourself happy is far more demanding.

You know I think I know why I'm a cartoonist, class clown, etc. etc. last night I'm hitting the sack around 11 11:30 and I'm dozing off blissfully and then I suddenly I get that whooshing feeling, I'm swirling in my head, I'm feeling the sensation of the light tumbling of an earthquake and I drift up out of my slumber to consciousness. And as the swirling fades away it morphs into headboard banging on my wall. Ah, the thrills of apartment life. Those kids are next door are jumping on the bed. What a bunch of loons, they were off and on until 2:30 in the morning. They gotta stop feeding the the toddlers sugar. I can't believe the man of the house works nights at Fred Myers until like 8 or 7 am. Maybe he likes it just so he can get away from those kids making all that noise. God forbid I may have to start sleeping in the living room again.

So unable to sleep I got up and turned up my music and tried to concentrate on more art work. I turned the TV on too. I turned on Myst III Exile just so I could hear the sound of the ocean in the background of my music.

Day 39 Brain Recovering a Bit

2008-10-09T22:31:00.000-07:00

Today I took pictures of Dogs with Don at SafeHaven Humane Society. I love dogs, they are the most pure people on the planet. The shelter is full of happy dogs, they all need homes and I swear I could take them all home. I just couldn't afford the space and the dog food bill but if could they would all live with me. We'd be hangen out watching tube or patrolling the estate. I found another beautiful Shepherd mix today. His name is Chip - about 4 years old but looking at his feet I'm thinking he's younger or a wolf mix but good natured dog. I love shepherds.

Most of the time I like a more traditionally colored German Shepherd and usually the American kind - which is big. But Chip is a beautiful pup, nice size, very do-able for a sports vehicle situation. Meaning - have dog will travel. But more to the point - I had a German Shepherd years ago like Chip. He was a long hair like chip and black as night. Black long haired shepherds are a beautiful bunch.

And like most shepherds that I've met, they are always well mannered and take directions well. They just want to be good little troopers. I don't know how anybody could want any other kind of dog outside of the dogs at the shelter which I said yes I'd take them all home if I could. Chip was so close to ending up at the my families farm. We already have a black lab and Chip would be a great addition to the family. None the less that's my mom's place and bringing lost animals home is something I've got to go easy on since I've been bring animals home most of my life and at 48 you can begin to see how a farm could have quite a number of lost animals living there. So if I have a dog they need to stay with me. And since I live in an apartment that wouldn't be fun for the dog. Though Chip is making me wrestle with the idea cause I do live near a big park and there are several larger parks in near wilderness areas near by.

None the less by the end of today I seemed to have finished rebuilding another piece of feature art. Between coffee, shooting pictures of dogs, and working off and on the art I'm finally making progress on the main pieces that I lost during the computer hard drive failure.

I had a conversation with a dear friend of mine today and found out about the details the situation surrounding how her daughter and only child died in a recent car wreck. It was an early morning situation where 3 boys and 1 girl - kids in a Ford Ranger extended cab speeding to school somehow ended up in a head-on collision with a semi truck that collided with the passenger side of the Ford Ranger. The semi sheard off the passenger side of the car - as I understand. Her daughter died at the scene, one boy was life flighted out, the driver escaped serious injury, and the boy in the passenger seat in front was rushed to an area hospital. He had to be resuscitated at least once. He suffered massive facial injuries as well as leg and arm compound fractures. Needless to say the wreck was horrific and one can only think what could have been done to somehow turn back time, intervene as if somehow we could make a deal with god and make it all right. And the odd thing is that for anyone who has lost a loved one is the bitter realization that the world doesn't stop to take notice of your loss. It doesn't even slow down. Your loss is a singular tragedy and contrary to popular belief few people feel your pain. Ok I'm getting morbid but for me its very sad that this kid that I knew from the time that she was in diapers - I think she was six months old when I first laid eyes on her and it just seems like I lost one of my own kids and I don't have kids. Its like this vacuum and the world just seems that much lacking wanting for her absence taken so prematurely. The loss of anyone is always tragic but an 18 year old is just such a loss a tragic loss.

Golden Wings - Day 35

2008-10-03T07:47:00.000-07:00

I admire pilots and general adventurers like the late James Stephen Fossett. He was a man much like my own father in his pursuits. Ever since I can remember I’ve admired pilots/adventurers. Though my list is long my favorite is Howard. Howard Hughes, is the man and Fossett was in great company as one of the great ones. But the way Fossett left this world is the way I would want to go. I don't want to go slowly and out of control of my faculties. I've often thought it would be great to buy the farm in an air race. Passing the last pylon my P51 throws a piston and suddenly spewing oil and smoke I lose positive control of the plane and my last thought or word would be,"Oh Sh@#$%^ !!!!", and my plane would slam into the desert floor leaving a sprawling fireball. That's the way I want to go. And of course I want to leave an over drawn bank account because that would be special.

My short list of favorite pilots:

Short List of Adventurers real and fictitious:

As defined on Wikipedia - an adventurer is:

One whose travels are unusual and often exotic, though not so unique as to qualify as exploration.
One who lives by their wits.
One who takes part in a risky or speculative course of action for profit or position.

Now that I think about it I kind of grew up living an adventurers life. Maybe not the most adventurous but it had adventure in sailing and flying. I lived in the Caribbean, islands in the Pacific and lived out in the bush in Alaska. No wonder I find regular life tedious. So maybe I'm crazy but that is why this project means so much for me. It keeps me awake.

An Idea in the age of knowledgeworkers

2008-10-02T22:30:00.000-07:00

Just because you have an idea doesn't mean it belongs to you. This is a sentiment that I am afraid of and that I think will become the future as technology and population explode and in so transforming our world into a cold cold place where the individual is nothing but a grain of sand in an endless sea of sand.

The knowledge worker revolution is supposed to be the next wave of business paradigm to sweep the world and the US. There was the industrial revolution, the information age, and now as the computer, the robot, software, and billions of people swamp the world we embark upon the age of the knowledge worker. But those in the power those in control the few that wish to remain in control will own more than iron and land but ideas you and i think of. To capitalize on an idea it always has been a race to stake your claim because people often think alike and one good idea is never spawned by just one person and thus its a race a competition to the top of the hill to claim this one idea as yours through law and the might of capital and possession and the excersize and proliferation of your brand of the idea.

Google Analytics up and running on all sites

2008-10-01T07:09:00.000-07:00

Well this is a milestone; Google Analytics is up and running on all primary Generic People sites. I'm still installing filters on genericpeople.com but all is well and operational. I have to laugh because in the middle of doing everything else it seems to have taken me - including the learning curve - all of August and September to finally figure out the bugs and get the installation complete. And I have to give the major Kudos to my brother for helping me out on the code and the ins and outs of the tracking code placement for the analytics. Now I have not been hammering away on Google everyday trying to get it figured out. Simply the way Google analytics is set up - you have to wait 24 hours or at least 8 to 12 hours to see if your code placement is correct and functioning. That in and of itself is a serious time sink. Sooo you have to do other projects while you are waiting for this one to work itself out. None the less At this point I would say that in addition to Google Analytics being up and running it is also safe to say that the T-Shirt Count Down is operational, Cafepress Store is operational, as well as the main GP page is functional, GP MySpace, GP Wikipedia, etc. And all of it possible because of friends and family. I would be S.O.L. if it were not for friends and family. Kudos to all and to all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy Hanukkah

I have to chuckle more when I consider working on this project; I think its akin to working on my VW. It is not like I have formal training on working on my VW; or developing web assets for a design project. It is just something that I've picked up on the way as necessity has required.

Ah that's perfect, the theme song to James Bonds “Thunderball” is playing on Pandora.com. Shaken but not stirred.

Anyway I’m digressing, I think looking back on this project I would have to say that unless you are a very popular person going into a project like this - you are just not going to be experiencing a great deal of traffic - just because you set up the structural elements of your web assets correctly. Once your assets are in place then you can start promoting yourself and it is going to take effort, time, trial and error, and lots of creative thinking.

However to the point of setting up web assets - it is pointless in my opinion to attempt to drive traffic to your web assets unless they are set up completely and correctly. Essentially your web assets and more to the point web stores like Cafepress and Ebay are a virtual net and traffic are schools of fish. If your net is not built or is full of major holes you are not going to catch any fish. So if you see my point there is no reason to try to drive traffic until your net is finished and set up.

This is where patience comes into play. You have to be very patient while you build your web assets. And you have to be especially patient when you are overcoming the web assets learning curve.

The bottom line is that I have the structure almost all in place. There still is a lot of work to be done on refining the literary content, graphical mark up and portfolio offering but these things are all adjustment not new construction components.

Disorienting times just before we get to the top

2008-09-30T07:32:00.000-07:00

It always seems like life has got something to throw at you at the very moment you are cresting the hill in life. And yes naturally life is full of hills but why does the odd bad messed up stuff have to always happen just as you get almost to the top.

I think its like driving on the freeway. Ever notice you can be driving along doing the speed limit and maybe you will come up behind someone who just can't stand to let you pass or they just have to jump in front of you because for what ever reason they just need to block your steady progress down the road. They will speed up and cut you off and then slow down. Moments like that you want to do unspeakable things. But you don't and life goes on. But that is sort of a metaphor in life. People just have to get in your way because if you pass them on your way to where ever they take it as a some kind of competition or life metaphor thing so they feel the need to box you in or race to cut you off because it gives them that power feeling that life isn't passing them by. But ever notice that people don't always do that when you are in a much more powerful sports car. Now granted some will want to overtly race you but the numbers of jerks that just want to cut you off or race to get ahead of you is cut down substantially. Now part of that could be that while you cruse along in for example your - Porsche Carrera GT pumping out 600 horse power 0 to 60 in 3 seconds and you are already doing 70 - could have something to do with it. But just let us say you are doing 55 in the slow lane. People creep past you. Some are looking at you but most just seem to pass by almost asking permission to pass you. Which leads me to the point of perception. If people think you can beat them without trying they are very polite. But if on the other hand you are driving an old Datson B210 trailing blue smoke people in Toyota Prius will be racing you and cutting you off with the added plus of the finger expletive.

So when it comes to your own business the closer you get to making things work the more crazy od ways people and life act up to the point you crest that hill. Then it will be on to the next bigger hill and people will act weird and crazy before you crest that hill and then things will get better until you find another hill.

None the less the current hill is in conjunction with opening the Ebay Store is also lining up various online screen printers to provide Ebay Store production and fulfillment. The crazy part is just getting the cost of shirts and volumes calculated in addition to the shipping and fulfillment. This is evolving at present. The idea is to have the costs automatically rise and fall with the fluctuating cost. This is exciting but the reason its exciting is because I could make money and I could lose money. It could hurt and hurt bad if I miss something. Naturally you have to calculate the cost incurred by Ebay, PayPal, shipping, fulfillment, printing etc.

Within the midst of all of this are new concepts that possibly are very critical to the execution of this element of the project for example online escrow accounts.

Seize the Day

2008-09-23T12:36:00.000-07:00

Ah time to seize the day. Library here I come.

Insomnia and late night thoughts

2008-09-23T04:57:00.000-07:00

Somehow the brain is unwilling to let the body just slip away into sweet sleep. So here I sit contemplating my lists of objectives to bring this project to fruition.

The basic outline functional focus of the collection of web assets is to drive traffic to a point where you can; A. Pitch your proposal, B. Engage in a transaction, and C. Complete the transaction through manufacture and fulfillment. That's all there is. So keep it simple, edit down and maintain a consistent theme and continuity.

I need to get some sleep but the thought of the library and tearing into those books just keeps my mind running. More over I think I need to review my progress on the web assets completed to this point and consider the shape of the project at this point. Its easy to asses that traffic to my sight is minimal at best but I'm not that worried about it. The most important thing is that the structure is soundly established and once it is in place then I can actively engage in promoting and pushing traffic from the outside to the site.

I think in the review I can consider what advise I've received and compare to what I've done.