Theme Songs

Learning that I have the ability to blog from my phone will most likely both increase my blogging frequency and greatly reduce the point and relevance of my posts. Sorry about that.

Today's random thought for all of you is this, I personally have never seen the cult classic Twin Peaks, but after just being a witness to the intro and theme song (and a bit more of the episode) I am distinctly left with a feeling that I want to shoot myself in the foot so I can leave and not watch anymore.

I know its wrong to judge on the song, especially 3 or 4 episodes in, but is this show worth it? (if it helps in any advice giving I am leaving now to go home and watch another episode of Buffy which I'm watching for probably the 3rd time through)
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Not that it matters

But I really hate being caught in the middle sometimes
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The Greatest Sci-Fi/Fantasy Feel Good Raffle Ever

Just in time for the holiday season I have come across a delightful way to possibly win some cool ass shit and help out what looks to be a pretty nifty organization. Combining my love of all things science fiction/fantasy and making the world a better place I bring you Patrick Rothfuss and his amazing charity raffle!

To be fair, I haven't actually read anything by this guy, but after tooling around the site for about 10 minutes I'm sold and will be heading to the library on my lunch to see what I can find. I came across the site, due to my love of all things social networking, when I read a tweet from Neil Gaiman about it. Really, what the hell would I do all day without twitter/facebook/blogger?

Basically he's teamed up with Heifer International and he's matching 50% of ALL donations made through January 15th. Make sure to donate through HIS PAGE for this to work. There are a couple of different ways to get in on the prize action if your interested. For me, I'm going to check out option #1, The Lottery. For every $10 I donate, I get an entry into a lottery for a chance at what looks to be a kick ass pot of possible prizes. Hardcovers, first editions, most signed by the authors. All the kinds of things I LOVE. And there are a ton of books donated for this thing. But since he's already raised over $10K in 3 days it sounds like there are a ton of people donating money as well. I'll still throw my hat in the ring though. $10 (tax-deductible!) for a chance at a random new book? I'm all in.

Check it out. Take a spin around the site. If nothing else the writing for this post (and his bio) are a good read. If it's something that makes you smile and you are part of a social networking site (really, who isn't these days?) then pass it along.

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Is the tenor of my voice unhearable to you?

Today's office interaction is brought to you by the folks at

Some Random Hearing Aid corporation

&

Maybe if I Use a Dog Whistle You'll Notice, Inc.

Timeline:
Month of November
Characters:
Lower Level: Frustrated lower level employee who fears her voice has been snatched away by The Gentlemen or some other lower level demon.

Upper Crust: Management level employee who has an insane ability to remember all your fuck ups but none of her own.

Totally Random: Management level employee of another department.

Just Trying To Help: Mid level employee, often caught in cross fire of Upper Crust and Lower Level.

Our story starts at the beginning of November where Lower Level, trying to juggle multiple projects, remembers with a start that another project (that they were late on last year) will be coming around the corner full speed any day now.

Lower Level: (gasps) Argh, we have to get this project review started or we will be late again! I know I'll go and check with Totally Random to find out the timeline and get this started!

Lower Level and Totally Random have a conversation and get a timeline worked out. Lower Level then takes said timeline back to Upper Crust and makes sure rest of team is aware.

A week passes.

Lower Level: Just wanted to remind you Upper Crust that the project review needs to be done by the end of this month. I know we are all super busy so let's work out a plan to make sure it gets done.

Upper Crust: I'll look at it next week when I get back.

Another week passes.

Lower Level: Umm, Upper Crust, have you had a chance to look at that project review? I just ask because with the holiday coming up we don't want to lose any time. Totally Random would like this as close to done as possible by week one of December!

Upper Crust: I'll look at it next week when I get back.

Lower Level: Well, I think I'll just get this started and send the project out to the team. Doesn't hurt to have it in everyone's hands since it's due the first week of December.

Lower Level sends project to team with instructions and explanations of time lines.

Another week passes making this the final week of November.

Lower Level sends out same email that she sent last week to team with a reminder that the project is due (gasp) the first week of December and can we please set up a plan for how we are going to accomplish this?

Holidays commence. Theoretically joy is had by all.

Lower Level returns to work and is in the middle of a meeting (that is not about previous mentioned project) with Just Trying To Help when Upper Crust walks up and interrupts.

Upper Crust: We don't need to have this project fully done this week right? (Visually scoffs) Totally Random just wants a base estimate, not a fully reviewed product correct? (Doubt of ability to get this done permeates speech patterns)

At this point Lower Level starts to wonder if maybe her voice is actually only audible to herself.

Just Trying To Help: It was my understanding that Totally Random did want this as close to done as possible by this week.

Upper Crust stutters, splutters, and stares at Lower Level in confusion. Lower Level just stares blankly back since all month she has already said This Project is Due as Close to Complete as Possible by the First Week of December for a month now so she's not quite sure repeating it now will help.

Upper Crust mutters something about not understanding Just Trying To Help's notes and wanders off. Leaving project no closer to completion. Lower Level and Just Trying To Help go back to original meeting they were having.

End Scene.

What do you wonder about?

Sometimes I sit and daydream about how much money I would be able to make if I sold off everything I own. I'm talking everything here folks - the bed, the movies, the books. Everything. All the way down to a stack of less than 10 books and a duffel bag of clothes.

Then I dream about taking my 10 books and my duffel bag of clothes and hitting the road. For where I don't know. For how long I don't know. Just going. Taking the money I've earned and living as cheaply as possible until it's gone. Seeing what I can as far as my available transportation can take me.

And I wonder in these dreams what I would do. Who I would meet. What I could become. But then my alarm rings, or a car honks, or a co-worker stops by to give me something and I'm brought back. Brought back to the white institutional inspired walls of my office. Brought back to the noise and the grit of the city around me. Brought back to my empty apartment. And the dream gets shelved. Shelved until I get another 10 minutes of silence to wonder.

Chase and Facebook Team Up!

So Chase has gotten together with Facebook and created one of those great voting campaigns where all you have to do is pick your favorite Charity and click a button. Of course I'd love if you picked mine but since I won't actually say where I work I guess I can't really ask that of you :) But really, go check it out, I know you all have Facebook pages! Pick one charity, pick twenty, just pick. This link may take you to a random charity but it will at least get you started.

A sneak peak into my eating habits

I spent all day Sunday laying on my couch watching the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now I've already seen this show a bunch of times, but the boyfriend finally returned all my seasons after admitting he will never actually have time to watch them (which is truly a shame in my mind) and I have been craving some vamp ass kicking action for awhile so I hunkered down and mindlessly wasted the day away.

I've had days like this before. With no real outside responsibilities, no pets or kids, I understand this is a luxury for most those around me and I promise I am not taking these wonderful moments for granted. I thought about going out and watching some football but the desire just wasn't great enough and I am attempting to lessen the amount of football action in my life anyway* (for reasons that are too long and boring to go into during this post).

When I get into these days I am amazed at my own ability to sustain myself. It is no wonder that I am winded when I walk up to my third floor apartment when I have a diet like this. I sometimes wish I cared more about food and my health and all that, but after nearly 30 years it just hasn't sunk in yet. I am a total grazer/scrounger when it comes to eating. I would of been screwed before microwaves and instant everything.

So for your reading enjoyment, a list of what I grazed on throughout the day yesterday...

• 2 20 oz. bottles of Vitamin Water
• 2 hot dogs
• Probably 10 oz. of an 11 oz. bag of wavy Lays potato chips
• 2 ice cream bars
• half a hard boiled egg
• a chunk of sharp cheddar cheese
• and probably half a pack of cigarettes.

Dear gods, how am I not dead yet?



* While I am doing well in my no football mission, missing the Colts game last night is a very sad thought for me right now.

One brief moment

I was standing in line in a random store, waiting probably not so patiently for the search station to become available so I could hunt for things I want and don’t need. I looked up and saw you riding the escalator to the second floor and my heart froze in mid beat. I searched your features trying to figure out if it was really you, it’s been so long, silently praying you might look my way, fervently hoping you wouldn’t. Then your eyes turned towards mine and before my brain could even register if they met mine I looked away, unable to face the fact it might be you. Unable to face you recognizing me. Unable to face you not. My mind raced as I waited, feeling the escalator move upwards with every atom of my body, wondering if I should turn and look again. Wondering if you were looking at me. Knowing that by the time I made a decision the chance would be gone. And then the search station in front of me became available, erasing all thoughts of what to do from my mind. I moved ahead, searched my item and found it was not there. I went back to wondering, wondering if I should go up and pretend to look (for the section it would have been in awaited me atop those moving stairs). Wondering if I should just move on. The heat of the store and my feet decided for me (thank god) for I found myself heading towards the exit, not looking back, not looking around.

I burst through the doors, though in reality it was probably just a normal exit, and headed out in to the now refreshing coolness of a November afternoon. Why would you be here? Do you work down here now? Are you just subjecting yourself to needless torture by shopping in the loop over the lunch hour? Do you hate yourself that much? Was it even you? Does it even matter? These thoughts tumbled one over the other as I headed to my next stop on an endless lunch trip of errands. Slowly my heart found itself beating again. Even more slowly my brain returned to more present things at hand. But for one brief set of moments I jumped back in time. For one gradual instant I found myself completely filled with you.

If only the city were so creative...

It is a beautiful day in Chicago right now. The sun is out and it is actually producing warmth for the first time in weeks. My iGoogle homepage tells me it is 68 degrees out. All in all, simply wonderful.

I decided to celebrate this wonderfullness by spending the second half of my lunch hour down at Millennium Park. On the North end of the park is a fountain, apparently in the Wrigley Square and Millennium Monument area (that's a mouthful of a title!) and that is where I found myself an empty bench and proceeded to finish my book in the much missed sunshine.

I ended up finishing the comic before my lunch was done so I spent the remainder of my time gazing idly around the park. I wasn't doing a hard-core people study, which I often love to do to occupy my time and brain, more just lazily cruising over the surroundings with my eyes. It was halfway through this cruise that I saw a family in front of me that grabbed my attention.

What I can only guess was a father figure was running around the empty fountain chasing two 5 year old looking girls who were giggling hysterically. The fountain turned off for the season became the perfect ring for the kids to run and run but never really get out of sight of the parental units. Like a human version of a hamster wheel. The low lying wall also provided excellent "wall-walking" for these kids and the varying heights helped with the dramatic feeling of the chase taking place. There was also the added bonus of being able to hide just outside/inside the ring (depending on where dad was) and jump up to surprise the other party. All in all these kids were having a great time.

As I watched them giggle in the way only a 5 year old who hasn't seen the world yet still can, I thought how great it was that this family had found a way to take one of the many expensive city adornments and put it to great use during an off season. I thought how much could we save as a city if we started paying attention to creating things that could be functional year round, if instead of filling my alley with constantly changing flower planters (shucks Daley, thems flowers sure is pretty out there in my smoking alley, thanks!) maybe put that money into our public transit system so we don't have to hike fares again. I can't speak for everyone but I personally could do without the 4 planters directly out back my building when I smoke if it meant a faster, cheaper, cleaner ride to work each day.

Moral of the story? Can I fix Chicago's monetary and political woes? Of course not. But I can say if you are reading this today and you live in Chicago, go outside! And if you live in Chicago and have small children now you have a new place to let them run rampant and smile if you ever find yourself downtown on a warm fall day.

Free is the Magic Number

Ultimately, what it comes down to is that I just simply have too much stuff. I am a classic pack rat, and have an inability to ever throw anything away. Ever. It's something I have dealt with my entire life, and really haven't put that much energy into trying to change so don't feel bad for me when I gripe about stumbling over things or not being able to find things. A while ago I came up with the brilliant idea to try and start selling all these extra things I have - clothes, movies, furniture. I even made a few attempts to craigslist various items all with no luck. But again, I didn't put too much work into it so again, don't feel bad for me.

But recently I got to a tipping point with one specific item. The Day Bed. I got the day bed from a friend when I was living in a studio and it served me quite well in my tiny home. Then I moved to a 1 bedroom and bought myself a big girl bed and moved the day bed into couch status. Then I was gifted a couch. This left the poor day bed relegated to "in the way" status and I took it down. Problem was that at the time the only space I had to store it was up against my bedroom wall. And it lived there for months. It lived there through multiple attempts (half hearted as they were) to sell it online and in person. It lived there as I consistently stubbed my toes on it and banged my knees against it. And finally a few weeks ago I decided it just couldn't live there anymore.

So I posted it once again on the never ending sales section of Craigslist. But this time I thought I'd try a new track. This time I posted it as "FREE".

Saturday night at 8:00 I tossed out the ad with a few cell phone picks and stated that it would be great if I could get it outta my place by the end of the weekend. Saturday night at 8:10 I took the ad down and started replying to the 15 messages I had already received.

Call one: Interested party no longer interested.
Call two:
Me: Is Martha there?
Other end of phone: No, can I take a message?
Me: She just replied to an ad I posted on Craigslist about a bed...
Other end of line: She just went to store, should be back soon.
Me: Okay I'll call back in 20 minutes or so.

15 minutes later, my phone rings and it's Martha hoping I still have the bed. A few quick directions and they were at my place within the hour.

9:30 Saturday night, bed gone. I have found my bedroom once again restored to it's rightful size and my are toes blissfully happy to have found their arch nemesis whisked away. And somewhere out there in Chicago is a very happy little girl who now has a bed all to herself.

Could I have used the $50 or so bucks I could have made selling it? Yes. Did giving it away to a very excited family make me feel way better than $50 ever could have? You bet.

Marketing Fail

No Hotwire, you actually have nothing I want. Thanks for trying.

And the top 5 are...

According to Crain's online information the top five largest employers in Chicago are
1) U.S. Government - 78,000 local employees
2) Chicago Public Schools - 43,910 local employees
3) City of Chicago - 35,570 local employees
4) Wal-Mart - 23,453 local employees
5) Cook County - 22,142 local employees.

So Wal-Mart, who the city tried to keep out so desperately, employs more people than the county? Awesome.

Another great fact:
Nationally the U.S. Government employs 1,800,000 people. Wal-Mart? Their national number is 2,100,000. Makes you wonder who is really running this country some days.

Where I live

I try to not post a lot of identifying information here since well, I say some things that I probably shouldn't be associated with, but since this has pretty blatantly evolved from a commentary on the news and goings on of the world to my own little rantification place I figured a personal post won't bring me down. Now I'm still not outing who I am (or where you can specifically find me) so don't be expecting any addresses or anything.

When I moved to this wild and exciting city I lived in a sublet downtown. Not fun downtown either, like loop, right next to the El tracks downtown. I took the place, and spent every dime earned for getting me an edumacation, so that I could figure out if I wanted to live here on a trial basis. When the trial was up I had to decide where to migrate to. At that point in time I could count 4 people I knew well enough to hang out with after 5 p.m. Two lived west and two lived north, so being the insanely logical person I am, I flipped and coin and headed North.

After a year in a studio I decided it was time for a big girl apartment and started the dreaded apartment search once again. I find I love the idea of apartment hunting - the browsing of Craigslist and wandering the neighborhoods looking for signs - but the actual appointment setting and viewing always brings me down. After not too much searching I found myself a bonified one bedroom, with a full dining room to boot, and dragged all my belongings to my new place a few blocks north and west of my studio.

Let me take a brief break to say thank you to anyone who participated in that move. I apologize for it's insanity and multiple unprepared trips in I-Go vehicles and I promise I will be hiring professional movers next time this comes up.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

I loved my new apartment. And I loved my neighborhood. Close to the train, directly behind a grocery store and relatively easy to give directions to for my friends if they ever decided to come from out of town. But after a few weeks I started to notice something about my new found home as I walked the streets. My first realization? There were a ton of dogs! Yay. Second realization? Almost everyone was pushing a baby stroller. Fuck.

I had dropped myself in the "Newly married, late 20's, early 30's up and coming family" section of Chicago. Awesome. Nothing could be further from fun for a single, non-child wanting female. But I hung on and ended up finding quite a great group of folks that didn't fit the first impression bill. I also found a great bar/restaurant which upped the value of the area for me considerably. And yes, I'm calling it a restaurant for those that know the place I speak of because since I eat there way to much I have earned that right.

So at this point in the story, let's be kind here and call it story and not just rambling if that's okay, you as the reader might be wondering what in the world the point of any of this is. Well, there's not really a point. Sorry. That's one of those annoying powers the Internet has given anyone with the ability to hit a power button. I can at least tell you how the trip down memory lane started.

Today getting off the train from work there was a woman holding a newbornish (somewhere still small enough to hold, not even close to walking, but not fresh out of hospital or anything, whatever that age is) baby waiting for husband to greet them. Dad runs up, hugs them both and they head off to their presumably idyllic home/condo. I smiled at the scene because while I may not really like/want kids of my own, I'm not a total heartless bastard, and started to think of my own life and projections of future accomplishments. Now, don't fear. This isn't going to turn into a "Oh No! I have to get married in the next 11 months or I'll just die!" kind of post. But it did get me thinking there are some things I'd like to start to accomplish. School at some point. A reduction in debt. A job I can love.

So with these thoughts in mind I'm going to try my best this weekend, between the furniture moving and football watching, to clear some time and invite some old friends to dinner. Me, my resume, and my credit cards need to have a serious heart-to-heart (or as some like to say it's time for a come to Jesus meeting!).

Have no idea how this works

Imagine this, you send out a resume and get a reply within 20 minutes thanking you for your submission. And this is an actually reply from an actual person (or so you believe as far as you can tell) as opposed to some automated system reply. This gives you confidence that there is a real live person reading your carefully crafted attempt at the sale of yourself.

7 days go by and in your daily path of checking the usual suspect job sites you go back to the site where you found said job and it is gone. It was there 4 days ago (according to the Google Cache that is) but today it is not there. And you have had no further contact from since the initial "Thanks" email.

The job had been posted for over 2 months before you got around to submitting yourself. And now within the span of a week of you throwing your hat in the ring it has been filled. Or at least that is what you presume.

Do you....
A) Move on and work on writing a better cover letter and resume for the next opportunity?

OR

B) Contact original person with some kind of "Just wanted to check in, I see the job is gone from your website, am I out of the running?" kind of email?

A random view into my office

I figure since you all can't be here to share with me the joys of my office I would try and randomly bring you episodes as I interpret them. Enjoy. Or mock. Or ignore. Whatever you want to do, for me it gave me 10 minutes away from my spreadsheet so I enjoyed writing it.

And in today's email in-box we find.....

Dear useless member of our team:

While looking through the database I came across a record that is wrong and decided to research what the rest of the file said. Upon discovering that the types of addresses were listed incorrectly instead of simply changing them from the simple drop down box in front of me I have constructed this irrationally long email explaining step by step what I did, what is wrong, and what I want you to do (which is go back into the record I am still probably in and change the types using that handy drop down box).

Sincerely,
Your Luddite supporting supervisor




....Okay, so maybe I am overreacting here from a simple email request (at least it wasn't printed out and brought to me this time), maybe it's time for me to let it go, but crafting these blog posts about it are just so much more fun!

Waiting

15 days ago I used one of those online application systems that allows you to apply for multiple jobs within an organization and I applied for 4 jobs. 5 days ago I received my first "Thanks but no thanks" email from them about one of the jobs. Specifically it said "Unfortunately after a review of your credentials and background, we have decided to pursue other applicants who more closely align with our position requirements." It was a rough read but a necessary evil (and to be fair I really wasn't very qualified for the gig they turned me down for, I just really wanted it because it had the word Library in the job title.

So now I am stuck waiting for responses from the rest of the applications. By rejecting me for one I know that their system is working and farming out my stats to hopefully the correct departments. I can only hope that the reason I haven't gotten a slew of additional denials is that maybe I am pseudo qualified for some of the other positions and am in the "to be considered further" pile.

In case you've never done this. Waiting sucks.

For this to work I need to stop telling everyone about it

So I find myself all over the Internet these days, blogging, tweeting, facebooking (is that a word yet?) and while I find it satisfying I also find I am missing out on one of the major attractions to this whole online personality game. The anonymity. Everyone who reads my rambling knows who I am. For the most part this is fine, and let's be frank here folks, there is not a lot of you out there. But there are most definitely rants I have and things I want to shout out into the universe that I could not have any of you know. There are the private thoughts that need to escape or you might explode. The 140 character version of PostSecret. It's what the damn Internet was made for.

But to do this I would have to go and create a whole new set of twitter accounts and neglected blog addresses under an alter ego, and I would have to work at actually keeping it alter. I'm not sure I can remember that many passwords. I'm not sure I can be that creative.

So I guess for now I'll just keep screaming these things inside my head. It's not as fun, but it is sort of working for the time being. And if I do get around to creating another me, I promise I won't tell you about it.

Following trails of random links brings fantasticness to Thursdays

I'm spending my Thursday reading random posts, comments, and reviews all over the web. And by following many, many links I've found (The Customer is) Not Always Right and it is fantastic.

Brought to you from Chandler, AZ.....

The Outer Limits Of Entertainment
Movie Theater Chandler, AZ, USA
Customer: “Two for ‘Ice Age’, please.”
Me: “No problem. Did you want the 3-D showing at 2:15, or the regular, 2-D showing at 2:50?”
Customer: “What’s the difference?”
Me: “…thirty-five minutes, and a dimension.”

Welcome to my Office

A Typical Office Interaction

Brought to you by JJ

The Corporation that brought you Jaded and Tired of My Job

(All conversations slightly modified to get across the true sentiment of speaker and listener)

Because it's not really there unless you print it

Tuesday, 10:45 AM:
Supervisor approaches my desk after a meeting, waving piece of paper in my general direction and says "I found this on the server, but I don't really know where, man is that thing disorganized! Too bad I don't' actually have any constructive ideas on how to fix it, maybe stating it repeatedly will clean it up...but anyway, here is something that was started by someone at some point and you should use this to update the process we talked about."

Supervisor continues to wave printed out piece of paper at me as though through the magic of seeing the paper I will psychically know what and where this document can be found. I start to think (yes, not even start to ask, but start to think) of asking, "Couldn't you have emailed me a link to where that was?" but think better of it since engaging the beast for longer than necessary will surely flare up either my ulcers or my hankering for a cold stiff drink.

I instead say "Okay, I'll do that" offering no further engagement to paper waving supervisor. Supervisor stands for just as many moments as it takes to be socially awkward and then shuffles back to office to probably print more random things found throughout the mystery that is our server.

I go back to listening to Pandora and think about finding that document but instead start blogging while all the time thinking, yes, this is my life.

I might be your future neighborhood librarian

I spent the past weekend delightfully wandering around the American Library Association's Annual Conference here in Chicago (located at the massively confusing and overwhelming McCormick Place). This was made possible by a wonderful friend who happens to work for the ALA and her ability to get me a free pass!

Initially I thought I was going to be getting into the whole kit and kaboodle, but it turned out my free pass just got me into what they were classifying as "the exhibits". When I initially found this out I had to go take a breather (and a smoke) outside. I was bummed. Thoroughly, irrationally bummed. I had gone through all kinds of literature and found what I believed were the most interesting, least likely to get me busted as not an actual librarian forums and panels to attend. But once I had my "fresh" air I sucked it up and headed into the exhibit section, since hey I had taken a train and a bus all the way down here so I might as well right?

And then I became aware of what the exhibit hall meant. It was one of the largest open spaces I've ever seen, filled with rows and rows of booths containing books, authors, guys selling gidgets and gadgets, posters, and all the schwag you could ever want or dream of. And at a lot of those book booths, the books were free. Totally, 100 percent, no strings attached, free. Now truthfully these publishers were hoping that I was an actual librarian or teacher and would read and love their book so much I would order a whole slew of them for my school. But I'm not. But they still handed their precious, uncorrected proofs over to my anxiously awaiting hands. It was beautiful.

Over the weekend I managed to get there (from Oak Park where I'm staying for 10 days) through a convoluted system of El trains, buses, and Metra trains 3 days in a row. I scored probably 60+ books and half a dozen posters. But the highlight of the entire trip was Monday. Monday is when I spent 3 hours in line, spent $10 on my third copy of a book, and got to meet face to face one of my literary heroes. The one, the only, Neil Gaiman. Neil won the latest Newberry award for The Graveyard Book and came to the ALA conference to sign, be presented the actual award, and many other book/library related activities. It was awesome. By the time I got to him on Monday he was looking a bit exhausted but he was diligent none the less and even thanked me as I eeked out the words "I think you're brilliant" - which I'm surprised he even heard I was so quiet.

It was an amazing weekend and I wouldn't change a thing (like staying home and resting so I could get over this cold/ebola virus that has attached itself to my lungs like my boss suggested I should have done). Amongst all the goodies being handed out I also found something else. I found that I really want to go back to school. Badly.

My educational history shows a pattern of work a few years, school a few years, work a few years.... you get the idea, and I am definitely at the end of this current work spell. So I've sent the word out to get some GRE books from friends and asked my mom to help pay for the actual test for my upcoming birthday present. I'm starting to look at all the schools that offer an accredited MLS (no that is not Major League Soccer, but Masters of Library Science thank you) degree to see if I can find one I like. And hopefully by fall of 2010 I will be chucking this work life to the side (or at least to a part time category) and readjusting my back pack straps. Here's to scholarly adventures.

Hazards of Love

Looking for a little musical intrigue in your life? Love the idea of one album telling an entire story, start to finish? Can't get enough of magical curses and queens of forests? Than I have the album for you!

The Decemberists new album, Hazards of Love, is all that and so much more. They recently played Bonnaroo where a member of my group got to see them perform the album live and it was, in his words, one of the best musical moments of his life. Being as he's had some pretty awesome musical moments I decided maybe I'd better check this thing out. And have been doing nothing but listening to it, non-stop, any moment I can for the past two weeks.

The quick and dirty version is a young maiden falls in love with an enchanted man (Fawn by day/Man by night) whose mother happens to be the pretty all demanding queen of the forest. Mom obviously doesn't want son to run away with this woman so she sends The Rake to kidnap her (and pretty brutally attack her from what it sounds like). Enchanted man goes after his true love anyway, saves her, and then the two of them die together in a raging river. It's pretty damn awesome. There is a great song by song explanation (much wordier and more cleverly written than my own quick synopsis) located here. Which to be honest really helped me understand the whole thing, just scroll down a bit and the explanation starts.

And if you find you love this as much as me, and you have some free time and money (and you live in or near Chicago), they are coming to town. They are scheduled for a Friday night gig at Lollapalooza, which for $80 you can get a Friday day pass and check them out. I contemplated this and almost did it but then discovered, like many of the bands, they are playing a Thursday night gig at The Metro for much cheaper ($35). Of course I got my ticket as soon as they went on sale.

More random Bonnaroo items

Most annoying moment:
Friday morning at 5 a.m. a neighbor camper decided to start advertising bloody mary's for sale. He did this by yelling "Bloody Mary!" over and over and over. For 3 hours.

Nicest Strangers:
A fellow camper overheard that my book/map/schedule that they handed out upon entering the grounds got trashed in the rain on Thursday. He found they had an extra and gave it to me.

Many people throughout the weekend got me high (or offered). Never when I was with one of the boys of course, but whenever I was on my own I found plenty of offers.

Weirdest attraction:
Late at night there was a carnival/circus show. Almost impossible to explain but it included an under-miked announcer, random acts including fire hulahooping, a man in a helmet pushing a lawnmower in a circle, and an interpretive dance with human puppets. Also large metal sculputres that belched fire into the sky. Sadly I was not high for this one.

Funniest overheard at Bonnaroo moment:
"This shit is crazy!" Overheard by a random stranger at the back of the late night carnival attraction. It was funny because it rang out over the announcer (who no one could hear anyway) and broke the weird hypnotic silence we were all sitting in.

Funniest non-bonnaroo quote:
"And Marty doesn't count" Said by me to my brother late Sunday night. Only makes sense to us.

Most Unneccesary food item:
Water. Not that water was unneccessary. Water is very important. It was just that since we spent all day in Centeroo I just filled up my bottle there and not at the tent.

On a side note I have 3 large containers of Ice Mountain water if anyone needs it.

Adventures in Bonnaroo land

(Thought I published this last night, whoops! Will finish later)

4 pillows, 3 camping chairs, 2 tents and 1 broken cell phone later I have returned home from Bonnaroo. It was an amazingly awesome experience and if you ever have $250 extra dollars (plus transportation, gas, food, and beer money) laying around combined with the ability to take a 5 day vacation, I highly, highly recommend it. I saw part or all of 20+ bands in 4 days and it was fucking fantastic, though pretty exhausting at the same time. So for anyone interested, here's the breakdown. Word to the wise, this will probably be stupidly long since my blog window is so narrow (and a hell of a lot happened). Sorry.

Wednesday night: Me, my brother and my boyfriend (here on out referred to as "the boy") hit the road in our upgraded 2009 Silverado around 11 o'clock at night. We had initially rented a full size vehicle (a Nissan something or other is what they would of given us) but due to the joys of renting from urban Enterprise locations they neglected to actually have the car on site when we showed up for our reservation. Options were to be driven up to another lot for our full size car or take the quad cab truck at the same price. We went with the truck. The plan was to drive through the night to hit Manchester, TN around 7 am. Brother (who is a bartender and used to working nights) would take the first shift and wake me up when he started to fall asleep and I would lead us in. I crashed out in the back, unable to sleep, while he drove through what ended up being torrential downpours all through Indiana at half our intended speed. We ended up hitting the entrance line around 9:30ish instead.

Thursday: Then came the 4 hour, idle slowly, use the "park" gear often, and drink beer section of the drive. People would get out, roam around, throw Frisbees, all while we slowly inched our way to the coveted farm land. As we were getting ready to roll in it started raining again making for a pretty damp and rushed tent pitching party later on. The gates to get in took awhile because they search every car for glass (no glass at all is allowed, which turns out to be a pretty damn smart idea after all the shoes I saw lost throughout the weekend) and drugs. We of course made it through a-okay. Orange flags and volunteers led us to our parking spot which is also your campsite and we raced through claiming our territory. Not much that we wanted to see was happening Thursday and we were all pretty exhausted so since the rain had let up we decided to just wander in to the music area and get a feel for the place. The boy had one band he wanted to catch at 7 so we had plenty of time. The walk from our campsite to the actual music festival grounds was quite a hike. We ended up being pretty much at the back of the whole camping area (if I can scan a copy of the map at some point I will try and show you where).

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Okay as I'm typing in this format I'm realizing this is going to take forever but I don't really want to start over so I'm switching how I present this weekend.

First Music - some of these I saw the entire show, some I just hung out for a few moments, and some I basically could only hear since I was so far back.

Thursday: MURS

Friday: Gomez, Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, Ani DiFranco, Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Phish, Public Enemy, Girl Talk

Saturday: Bon Iver, Of Montreal, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, NIN, Yeasayer, moe, Ben Harper (those last four I really only saw between 5-15 minutes of each, it was the end of the night and I was freaking beat)

Sunday: Erykah Badu, Snoop Dogg, Phish

Favorite musical moments: Watching Bruce come on stage at the end of the first half of the Sunday night set of Phish and play Mustang Sally and Glory Days with Trey and the band. Ani DiFranco (always, always wonderful), seeing Justin rock the fucking house with Bon Iver (I used to hang out camping with that guy, it was weird to see so many screaming fans for him!) and watching 40,000 white kids clap off beat to Snoop.

Biggest let downs: Missing half of Grace Potter wandering around trying to find brother and boy. Dragging my dancing ass out of Phish to find out Public Enemy basically played the same concert as when I saw them at Pitchfork last summer ("For the second to last time ever we're going to play It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in it's entirety!")

How I worked it: Basically I would hang out around camp till the first band I wanted to see started then hike down to Centeroo (the music area of the farm) and stay there all damn day (longest was Friday, went in at noon for Gomez and got back to tent around 4 am). This led to not a lot of beer drinking because I found it expensive and unnecessary to drink $6 Budweiser's all day. In the end this was probably a good thing since because of that I actually remember most of the weekend.

Lost and Found and other broken items: I only got lost once. Friday night I was on my own (we mostly all split up all weekend) and as stated previously had been out since around noon. I was hoping to catch Girl Talk for awhile as my last set of the night but by 3:15 a.m. I was done (they were supposed to start at 2:15 but didn't get going till about 3). I tried to head back the way I thought my camp was and ended up wandering around for close to an hour. Luckily I didn't get too freaked out about it which is pretty damn big for me who often can panic when lost in the dark in a field in a foreign state.

My phone was in my back pocket all day Thursday and when a late night major thunderstorm caught me out and about I think it finally gave up on me. Friday morning when I went to open it it was obviously water logged (the screen was all kinds of fucked up) so I took it apart in an attempt to dry it and left it alone. Tried it again on Monday and it was a no go. I now have a replacement phone being shipped to hopefully arrive in 2 days or so. Yay for insurance I guess.

General Atmosphere: The place was filled with stoned out kids as you probably already imagined. In the beginning I felt a bit old (and a lot sober) but I got over it pretty quick. For the most part everyone was pretty passive (when you're that high trying to fight is not even conceivable) and with only beer being sold inside Centeroo it kept things low key.
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Yikes lightning is flashing around me in my apartment so I'm going to jump off this ancient beast I claim is a computer. I'll try and come back later and finish it off!

Long winded cult invitation***

So I'm trying to sell some of my stuff on Craigslist once again. I have found that I am notoriously bad at this because A) I never take the time to write good descriptions, B) I rarely add pictures which is key to getting folks to your ad to begin with, and C) most of my stuff is pretty crappy.

But this time it wasn't just something I could shove in a box, or in the back of the closet and forget about so I decided to try once again to get through the magic gates and become a bonified craigslist seller (instead of just they buyer I've been up until now).

See what I'm selling is a day bed. Yup a whole goram* bed. You can see (hopefully)why this would be something that can not just be stepped around day after day. I own this because I originally used it as a bed in my studio and then as a couch in my one bedroom. But recently I have come into the good fortune to get an actual couch (a real live grown up piece of furniture!) so have dissasembled the day bed and leaned it up against the wall. In my bedroom. And it's starting to get really annoying.

So I got my shit together and posted it in the furniture section along with a ridiculously heavy and large wall mirror (most likely best for a mantle, unless you really trust yourself and your wall studs) and 2 DVD storage units. I figured if I was going to post one thing I might as well try and get a few other odds and ends out the door.

16 or so hours after it goes up I get a reply. Yippee, I think, I might actually make some spending cash to make up for Printers Row**. I read through the reply and it seems harmless enough. Woman looking actually for immediate bedding for two (some Church thing, I specifically made sure not to ask about it) and wondered if another bed would fit underneath. I replied I wasn't sure, I had stored boxes under there and so maybe a mattress flat on the floor would work, but I would measure when I got home to make sure. And if she could get it by tomorrow I would knock $25 off the price (I had listed it as negotaible and she had asked).

Her reply is that they are really looking for something to fit a rolling trundle bed under so she is going to pass on the one I have for sale. I could of left it at that. I could of walked away, deleted her emails, and never thought about it again. But (obviously) I didn't. I thought it would be polite to reply, to indicate I had received her turning down of the bed. I wrote...
"Sorry it won't work out, good luck in your search!
Cheers
Gradual Instant's actual name"

That's It. One little sentance. Thought it was a nice, quick wrap up. I moved my brain back to square one and hoped someone else might be able to come and buy this damn thing.

But then it happens. I go back to check my email and see she has replied to my final reply. I open it up, thinking "Hey maybe they changed their minds, maybe they want to wait to see what the measurement is". But no. No, not at all. Instead I get this.

(Names changed in case any one reading this actually knows these people and it freaks me out they might be able to find me.)

Hey Gradual Instant's actual name,
I saw you live in Lincoln Park. My husband and I are South Africans who are part of Newfrontiers, a church family with more than 600 churches worldwide. We are busy planting a church with our leaders Jack and Jill Crazypants into the Lincoln Park area and I was wondering if you would ever be interested in visiting us one Sunday. Its very relaxed at this point. As there are about 30 of us meeting in a home. We’re planning on moving into a building probably early January/February next year and in the meantime are gathering people that are keen to be involved in a new church plant into the Chicago/Lincoln Park area. We meet Sunday afternoons between 3pm and 5pm at this moment in time. No pressure, but just wondered if I could introduce you via email to Jack and Jill and get them to send you some information... Okay, gotta run, we live in Winnetka at the moment but travel into the city to be a part of what they’re doing. Its very exciting... They live on Ashland and Fullerton area. We have three kids under the age of 6 and Jill has two kids (one of which is almost 2 and the other is about 5 months old.
Cheers,

1) I do not live in Lincoln Park. I made this clear I thought in the ad when it said "Location" and I did not put Lincoln Park.
2) WTF?
3) No part of this is appealing to me. Not Lincoln Park. Not church. Not kids under the age of 6. Nothing.
4) Really, WTF? I just wanted to sell some furniture to you, not join your crazy cult!

So I guess the end result is this; if anyone is intereseted I not only have a day bed for sale but I may have an in to a sweet kool aid kicking hang out on Sundays. I'll drop you off at the door for $5.




* I have been watching way too much Firefly
** Printers Row was amazing and hopefully I will get a post up about it before I hit the road for my next adventure, or at least a book list of what I scored. And yes, Neil is hysterically funny and witty in person, but no I did not get to meet him one on one.
*** When I started this post I meant that the actual lead up to the invitation took awhile, but after writing it all I think I may also be long winded, so I guess we have ourselves a double serving title today. Works for me. At least one of us is working overtime.

Pennies for a rainy day

There are a million ways to earn money off the internet (probably) and over the course of the past few years I've come across a handful of them. I always get really, really excited which quickly breaks down into really, really bored. But since I've started one back up again I though I'd come list them all here (mostly so I can come back in three months when I've once again lost interest and laugh at myself for my short attention span).

Squidoo: Build thing they call "lens's" that are like mini webpages. Get others to view your Lens and click on ads and such. Earn money from those ads. At one point I was up to about $7 I think, but now when I log in I can't seem to find it. They have a rule if inactive for a year the money goes back in the bank sort of thing so I'm guessing I lost it. Whoops.

MTurk: Amazon's weird little worker bee community thing. People (or companies, or robots, I have no idea) post tasks/jobs for us worker bees to complete. These range in payment from a penny to up to a dollar. My lifetime earning from them is $21.98 but at some point I rolled that into an Amazon gift certificate and now have a whopping 89 cents for a current balance.

Google Ads: You all know about these. Dedicate some space on your site/blog to let google pick out ads (theoretically matching your content) to fill in the space. Then hope your readers click on them every once in awhile to send some revenue back to your pocket.

Moola: By far the weirdest money making set up I've seen. Basically play on line games (a small handful, maybe 3-4) and bet/earn money. You can earn extra for all those regular things as well such as referring friends, signing up for offers, etc. The newest thing though is using their search feature allows you to earn revenue. They had this before and I tried it randomly but never seemed to win. The newest incarnation however has returned at least a penny (and a few 50 centers) each time I've searched today. I started at $5.05 this morning and now am at $7.66. This seems to be the easiest if I can stick with it. I'm hoping to get to $20 by next week!

So these are my four random money generating activities on the internet. What will I ever do if I don't have a desk job to find this stuff?

***Update: Looks like the Moola winning might have been a glitch. While I legitimately needed to do about 40 searches, I'm guessing the system won't read it like that and will probably take back my money. That's okay. If it comes back online I'll just make sure to use it for a few searches a day and not my major internet work.

Turns out someone used all those AOL disks for something besides coasters after all

Oh poor neglected blog, how I've missed you. I know it's been awhile and I apologize for my absence, life just kind of took over for awhile there if you know what I mean. I really don't have time even now to type but I just wanted to lay down a quick theory I'm working on.

I believe there must be a strong correlation between the necessity to print out every single email received (because you know if you don't print it and wave it around then it must not exist right?) and still using an AOL email account for your major personal interactions.

Just a thought.

Dilemma resolved!

Update on previous book post (wow, that doesn't narrow it down at all does it?).

So I was telling Boyfriend about the dilemma behind this post, and how I couldn't figure out where to ship it,when he chimed in that he always has stuff shipped to his parents house (some southern suburb). Since his dad comes to the city often for shows (music; listen not play)he just brings it up with him. And he went on to say it's too bad my family is so far (really not horribly far, but enough that I don't go home on a regular basis). Then he took the next step and completely surprised me by saying, "I can see how much you would love this, let me take care of it for you. I'll buy it and ship it to my parents". Wow. I am a big fan of Boyfriend.

Oh and randomly I figured out why my template was all wonky looking (bottom of this post)! Turns out there are two tabs at the top of the editor box, one says "Compose" (which is your standard WYSIWYG editor that looks like a Word document, and "Edit Html" which is well, where you can directly edit your Html. Turns out I had switched tabs unknowingly one day and it apparently stays like that, regardless of logging in and out, till you change it back. Learn something new every damn day.

What Craig taught me today

Randomly paging through Craigslist part time jobs today and I came across two that caught my eye. The first one (located here)was just really well written, entertaining to read, and spaced out nicely so the physical layout was easy to scan through.

The next one I'm going to cut and paste right in since I don't think it will last long. The tile was Bouncer/Security Needed and in case the link works, here ya go, but in case it doesn't....(all horrible grammar, spelling, and punctuation totally not mine). Man spam really is everywhere isn't it?

Bouncer/Security Needed
I need a security/bouncer for my wife.Her arrival date should be 17th OF May.I will prefer you to have your car available for this,I am offering you $650 as your weekly wages, So i will like to make one week payment deposit to you before her arrival so that i will be rest assured that i had secured your services now you are to make yourself available for 3 times in a week to her schedule for 2 hours each day.she will be going for her medical care and for other purpose which she might need you for as i stated on the AD so you are to secure her around for those period i stated to you...Also i want you to know that my client who is in the State will be sending you a cashiers check (which will be an over payment of $3500)so you will have to take the check to your bank and have it cashed once it gets to you and then after the check get cleared your bank you will notify me and then i want you to know that the remaining funds after deducting your wages will be used by my wife for her travel expenses,accommodations and any other expenses.

Get back to me with the following details of yours if you are okay with my terms,

Your Full Name
Address
City
State/Zip Code
Phone Number

The pay check can be send out to you immediately,Kindly let me know if you are good with this offer so that the paycheck can be forwarded to you as soon as possible and i will appreciate a quick response from you.

Thanks and please get back to me asap
Kindest regards

Moore Melborne


Also (and this is JJ again) what the heck happened to my blogger homepage? Something went wonky in the back end and now my WYSIWYG editor that I write in is weird looking (and to be honest kind of archaic looking as well). Hmmmm...to explore another day I suppose.

Swine Flu (because eventually I had to post something about it!)

see more Funny Graphs

Argh, it doesn't fit! Go check out the orginal here, it's worth it for a nice quick Monday laugh....

Neil Gaiman Friday

As many of you know I am a huge Neil Gaiman fan. I've read many of his works ranging from children's picture books, to graphic novels, to full on adult length novels and have loved everything he has done. So it is with great excitement that I came across a tweet from him (yes I even follow him on Twitter) stating that he will be making an appearance in Chicago for the Printers Row book fair. Even more exciting it turns out I will be in Chicago that weekend (I'm going to Bonaroo in June as well and was worried that dates would conflict). Events at Printers Row are free and open to whoever shows up except those held in the Harold Washington Library which, while still free, need a ticket to get in. Ticket information for Neil's visit will be posted on May 18th. I'm so excited I've even written in my planner to go online that day and try and get tickets so I don't forget (as it's the day before my monstrous work event I will probably be very scatter brained).

In my love for him I read his blog when I get the chance. Over the past year or so he has mentioned his work on the project "Who Killed Amanda Palmer" for the full story of how it came about click here. The end result is what sounds like a fabulous photography/art book with stories attached to the pics written by Gaiman. This sounds absolutely delightful to me so when I saw the post with the link to pre order I actually almost giggled out loud at my desk. The catch however is twofold. A) the book costs $34.99 plus shipping and I'm hard up to drop that much right now trying to save for all the things I want to try and do this summer (though the fact that it will be very, very limited printing is quickly pushing that fear out of my mind) and B) it will not be available until July so I have no idea where to have it shipped. I'm hoping (secret cross my fingers hoping) that I will be starting new employment around that time so I don't want to list my work address for shipping which is what I normally do since shipping to my house is a nightmare. Nothing larger than a letter is ever left for me which means a trip to the post office (if it's USPS) is involved and the post office near me is somewhere between the sixth and seventh layers of hell. If it's UPS or FedEx the gods only know what will happen to the package if I'm not there to receive it.

So I find myself in a dilemma. I could ship it to my mothers house though since that is in Wisconsin I won't be sure when I would be able to go get it, and I have a terrible time waiting for something once I know it's arrived. I could wing it and ship to the house or find a reliable friend with better delivery services than I and have it shipped to them. I think I'll mull it over through the weekend and hope that I come up with something (and convince myself to spend the money as well).

Jingle Off

My bar, I love that I refer to it as mine in that possive "I own it" kind of way, is having a jingle contest in two weeks. You can find full rules here but the quick and dirty version is create a 30 or 60 second jingle, submit it by May 8th then come back to see who wins May 9th. I really hope a bunch of people participate because it could be a ton of fun.

Getting by with a little help from friends since the government can be basically worthless

I am damn lucky when it comes to certain things, specifically such things as having a job and not having to interact with the majority of Chicago, Cook County, or Illinois government agencies. I bitch and moan about a lot of other things in my life but let me just say for the record here that I am really, really glad I don't have to deal with that in my life.

I was reminded of this when catching up with my blog posts from friends and enemies this morning (every once in awhile I like to take the temperature of those not like me in the world and see what they're all bitching about. It doesn't happen often). On the friend side I saw this post from impending unemployment. What a cluster fuck. While reading it, it reminded me of a post from a ways back from Rock Rock Silly. I went and dug through the archives and found the one I think I was thinking of. Not the same institution but equally as frustrating.

In these times navigating the bureaucracy is frustrating, difficult, time consuming and often leads one to drink (I would imagine). As one that does not have to traverse these murky waters yet (and hopefully not anytime soon) I would like to send out my shoulders for leaning on to all my friends that do.

A tiny little book update to start your weekend

I just went to my own blog page and saw that it still says I'm reading Heart Shaped Box, which by the way I finished what feels like ages ago. Yet instead of going to the layout or settings or whatever back end section of this thing I go to to update these things I decided to write a blog post about it. Hmmm. Not the most efficient use of time, but too late now.

So I've finished Heart Shaped Box so long ago I don't think I can give an accurate review. I do remember liking it, good little horror story with an interesting premise. Guy obsessed with death orders a suit online and a ghost comes along with it. The tale that spins out of it is intriguing, enough to make me read it pretty quick if I remember right.

Since then I've knocked back a bunch of others but since sadly I haven't been keeping track here on this blog so I can't really remember what. I know I did read Enrique's Journey which was fantastic and I think everyone should go out and get it now. In fact I think it should be required reading in high school as well. Who really needs more Brave New World anyway?

I also knocked back a bunch of comic books on a recent bus trip to Madtown. Including Marvel 1602 and the third volume of Buffy.

Right now I'm reading World War Z. And I'm freaking loving it! I've seen it around a bunch on the train and in coffee shops and finally broke down and bought my own copy a few weeks ago (only to realize later that boyfriend owns it and I could of totally borrowed his, ah well I've now done my part to help keep bookstores open). If you haven't had a chance to read it yet I highly recommend it. Just now googling it to get a link I saw an IMDB link that says it's being made into a movie! That should be interesting.

So that's what I've got for today. It's a gorgeous day in the windy city and I hope wherever you are you get a chance to get outside and enjoy. My final thought for the day (totally unrelated to books) is a line from a blog post from a friend because some day I also hope to be "a woman so magnetic she fucks up compasses"
Cheers world.



All links brought to you today by sources other than Amazon

A few great ways to give back

I am swamped at work and in life lately and I apologize for my disappearing act. I did however want to jump on real quick and share a bunch of great opportunities to take part in some pretty kick ass fundraising/events all over the country.

First up my dear friend Tim is having his annual fundraiser dinner for GSA for Safe Schools. Located in Madison, WI (yay home!), GSA works tirelessly to help create a safe education environment for all students regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression all throughout the state. I can testify to the many, many road trips Tim has taken to connect with students and staff all over to help make sure no district is left without help. If you're in the area consider buying a ticket (they had a great silent auction the year I went), if you're not going to be around Wisconsin then just consider making a contribution. They do good work.

Next is for my friend Matt who is participating in the Race for Hope in Washington DC. It's a 5K run to benefit both the National Brain Tumor Society and Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure. Matt's goal looks to be $200 - there is no way we can't knock that out of the park!

Steve here in Chicago is participating in the MS Walk. His goal is $500 and being already half way there I know he can do it. The walk is May 3rd (same as Matt's run, what a busy day!), so hurry up and go check out his page!

And last but not least, I have to put my own shout out in. I'm selling raffle tickets for one of the most kick ass raffle's I've seen - probably 10 prize packages each valued at over $1,000 each usually! Tickets can be bought here. Just make to sure to say I told you about the raffle in the comments section so I can claim credit in our staff competition :)

So whatever you're interested in, and whatever you can afford I hope you will be able to support at least one of these extremely worthy causes. Okay, back to work (so that the raffle here actually happens!)

Calling all readers smarter than me

So I have an idea. And I'm going to need help with this idea. Someone out there who reads this must have the knowledge that I don't so I'm putting it out there to see what you guys come up with. Here it goes.

I want to make a video or more appropriately a flash animation segment. Now since I know nothing about this I am probably going to use all the wrong words but follow me if you can. The vision I have of the end product would be a short video/flash product with voice over narration. The graphics would consist of stick figure drawings flipping quickly to show movement, kind of like those old flip book comics. Make sense?

So what I need is A) someone to help draw the pictures. B) someone who knows how to then put them together in this animated sequence. C) someone who knows how to then get this baby online. and D) someone who can help me get the audio narration.

Any ideas?

XKCD does it again

Damn, first I had the actual pic but my blog writing window isn't wide enough. So please check out link here XKCD.

A new way to see the world

Reading this guy's twitter I came across this link. What's going on in the economy in our country and our world is something that everyone is experiencing but we are still having a damn hard time processing it. Or maybe that's just me. These pictures bring it home in a whole new way for me and if you're a visual learner they might help you as well.

I think the most startling for my own ignorance was that up until now I have been thinking of the crashing economy in a strictly United States sense. Picture #5 of the job seekers in China now out of work because exports are down because we aren't buying anymore hit home like a bullet to the brain. I am amazed at my own exclusivity, I've never been patriotic before so I'm not sure why I all of a sudden started to think of this problem in such a small mindset.

I'm not sure if this makes it better or not. Opening my mind is always a good thing but I must be careful so that I not drown in the reality. When it comes down to it though I'm pretty damn lucky. My job (as far as forecasts can see) isn't going anywhere.

So if you want another look (or just a different way to look) check out the pictures.

And for another take check out Notes from the Unemployment Line brought to you by The Stranger (a Seattle based newspaper), really brought to you by impending unemployment who gave me the link in the first place. The article is all about the numbers and it's fascinating.

Sometimes I am quiet

I can talk a lot. I can fill up a room with stories and anecdotes. I can chat for hours on topics that range far and wide, sometimes knowledgeably, sometimes not. But there are also times when I am quiet.

Sometimes it is because I am sick, and I am using all the energy and resources I have simply to function which leaves nothing left over for witty banter or engaged facial reactions. More often than not I am simply choosing observation over participation. I am watching the world around me, I am watching you interact. Like an alien studying human behavior in order to learn how to assimilate. Like a basketball player studying plays. I am learning, I am watching.

I am also most likely not angry with you. Trust me, you will know when my quiet means anger. I will use my words sparingly and wield them like a professional ninja with throwing stars. I will whip them at you so fast and deadly that you won't even know I have severed a limb until I am long gone and the bleeding can't be stopped. This is a gift my father has given me. The way that I fight, and I try not to use it very often as I get older. The worst part is the gift works best with those I love and know.

Often the room does not even notice my quiet. You are so loud around me that my silence does not register. I prefer when this happens. Then the probing questions of my health and thoughts are left unasked. It's easier this way since I won't answer them anyway.

I enjoy quiet. I enjoy my solitude. It does not mean that I am not having a good time. It does not mean that I want the world to go away. It is the same way I love to sit on the edge of a game, watching but not playing. I don't expect you to understand, and I can not explain it any better than this. All I ask is that you please not try and take it away.

Pondering Magnetic Forces

If I had time I would like to do a sociological study on the invisible magnetic forces at work when more than one person enter a small space, such as in an elevator. I think it would be fascinating. And if nothing else would make a great short story.

Trust me, it's worth the 7 minutes

I just discovered Wil Wheaton's blog, WWdN: In Exile, and I'm loving it. And I'm loving that I found it from a tweet from Neil Gaiman on Twitter. Ah, technology how I love thee. I've been surfing back through some of Wil's posts and had come across this, hit play and then kept reading. It's beautiful. Hit play and sit back and just listen. Her name is Zoe Keating and this is her website.



Taken directly from Mr. Wheaton himself.....
"See that MacBook next to her? She uses that to sample herself several times to build a rhythm, and then she plays over it, like a one-woman string quartet. Or quintet. Or awesometet. I didn't realize this the first time I heard her; I just thought her music was haunting and beautiful, but once I knew what she was doing, I was awestruck. In fact, knowing how she does it, I defy you to listen to it again and keep your jaw off the floor."

If I had the follow through

I want to write a story about a guy who is afraid of letting cab drivers know where he lives so he always has them drop him off 2 blocks away then waits till they leave before he heads home. This also makes it impossible for him to order delivery. And needless to say he doesn't have a lot of friends come over.

However I don't have anything else to go on but that. So for now it lives in the back of my brain. And maybe someday when I pretend I am a writer I will finish the thought.

12 minutes

I just got home from the gym. I spent the last half on those crazy elliptical machines. They kind of make me feel like I'm losing my mind but I seem to be able to hang on the longest on them so I've been using them more often. If I read it right I ellipticized for 3 miles in just under 34 minutes. And if my brain hasn't completely sweated out my ears I think that boils down to somewhere between an 11 and a 12 minute mile. That. Is. Awesome. For me at least. I'm going to go pass out now.

Post Happy V Day

I am a firm believer in avoiding at all costs the hallmark created culture of Valentine's Day. I find it obtrusive when I am in a relationship to have the outside world tell me (or my partner) how exactly we should love each other and when I'm single it's just fucking depressing to have it constantly thrown in my face. My one caveat is that while I do not expect or want flowers, chocolate, or gifts of any kind on February 14th, if you are dating me I do want it at some point. Preferably a random Tuesday at least 3 weeks away from any significant event. Just because I don't like V day doesn't mean I don't like being loved.

Lucky for me this year, I passed this past Saturday with someone who may dislike the holiday even more than me. We found this out about each other awhile ago which led to a nice stress free weekend. It also led to a conversation a while back about Horny Werewolf Day. One of his favorite writers, Warren Ellis, said at some point "Always remember: Valentine's Day is a Christian corruption of a pagan festival involving werewolves, blood and fucking. So wish people a happy Horny Werewolf Day and see what happens." I don't know the back story, or if there is much more, but after finding this out I struck a deal with the boy. No V Day acknowledgement from me but I definitely wanted a card that wished me a Happy Horny Werewolf Day!

So I reminded him every few weeks until the fateful night rolled around. Turns out he "commissioned" an artist friend of his and said friend liked it so much he used the idea for a flyer for his own website. I couldn't be mad. It was a kick ass flyer. And as soon as I get the images emailed to me I will post them here.

In true celebration of the day I went to a hardcore punk show Saturday night. By a band called Fucked Up. Yup. It's all about pushing your boundaries apparently. Did I love it? No. Did I hate it? No. So I guess that's something. I can say it got a whole hell of a lot better once I bought the earplugs for $1 from the bar.

Hope you and yours celebrated in whatever way you saw fit. Or didn't celebrate. Whichever works for you.

Bonnaroo

Bonnaroo is a 4 day music festival that takes place in Manchester, TN in the beginning of June. It's a camping thing with over 700 acres of land to spread out on. It's huge. And I'm going.

I've never been to one of these things before but after seeing this years line up I couldn't pass it up. The boy and the brother are also going and who knows who else will jump on board before June reaches us. You can check out the full website here, but I wanted to copy in the names of the bands announced to give a better idea of why I decided to spend a ridiculous amount of money to participate.

Oh, and by the way, this means I will be seeing The Boss twice in one month. Life, at least musically speaking, is all good.

The Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival 2009 Lineup:

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Phish (2 Shows)
Beastie Boys
Nine Inch Nails
David Byrne
Wilco
Al Green
Snoop Dogg
Elvis Costello Solo
Erykah Badu
Paul Oakenfold
Ben Harper and Relentless7
The Mars Volta
TV on the Radio
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Gov’t Mule
Andrew Bird
Band Of Horses
Merle Haggard
MGMT
moe.
The Decemberists
Girl Talk
Bon Iver
Béla Fleck & Toumani Diabate
Rodrigo y Gabriela
Galactic
The Del McCoury Bandof Montreal
Allen Toussaint
Coheed and Cambria
Booker T & the DBTs
David Grisman Quintet
Lucinda Williams
Animal Collective
Gomez
Neko Case
Down
Jenny Lewis
Santogold
Robert Earl Keen
Citizen Cope
Femi Kuti and the Positive Force
The Ting Tings
Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
Kaki King
Grizzly Bear
King Sunny Adé
Okkervil River
St. Vincent
Zac Brown Band
Raphael Saadiq
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Crystal Castles
Tift Merritt
Brett Dennen
Mike Farris and the Roseland Rhythm Revue
Toubab Krewe
People Under the Stairs
Alejandro Escovedo
Vieux Farka Touré
Elvis Perkins In Dearland
Cherryholmes
Yeasayer
Todd Snider
Chairlift
Portugal. The Man.
The SteelDrivers
Midnite
The Knux
The Low Anthem
Delta Spirit
A.A. Bondy
The Lovell Sisters
Alberta Cross

MORE ARTISTS TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON!

Ah, the joys of the internet

I made a promise to a friend, so here it is. The CatCam! (wouldn't fit in the side bar so had to make a post about it).

Webcam chat at Ustream

Enjoy.

Inauguration Part 2

Where did we leave off...Oh yeah, heading onto the mall. Our first stop was an amazingly long line of port-o-johns that stretched as far the eyes could see.

Being as I still hadn't had anything to eat or drink at this point I took this opportune time to wander a few feet off and smoke. Come on, are you really surprised by this? Didn't think so. Soon we are all back together and heading in to the main event.


The view was amazing, the people were passive, the energy bubbled at the surface. It was all very calm and unhurried. People took their time, some followed the curving walkway, some cut through and over the tiny chain rope fences. We all streamed towards the hill that the Washington Monument sits on. As the family crested the hill we looked down into what I can only describe as a sea of people. Unlike any concert or festival I have been to it was as though there were nothing but other humans around me.

We decided to walk forward to see what we could and found ourselves at a road that didn't appear crossable. It was being kept clear for emergency vehicles and we couldn't see a way that pedestrians were crossing so we decided to go back to our original position by the monument (about 2 miles back from the Capitol I believe) and camp ourselves by the nearest jumbo tron.

The crowd filled in around us as the minutes ticked by. At 10 the music started, kids singing, trumpets blaring, but to be honest I wasn't paying that much attention. I just kept looking around at all the people. Old, young, groups, single folks, black, white, and every shade in between. No one arguing, no one jostling, no one being rude. It was surreal.

Then the processions of dignitaries (and some not so dignified) started arriving on the big screen. In retrospect probably one of the coolest things about being there live was that there were no reporters I had to listen to. No commentary from some asshole telling me what I am supposed to be feeling or thinking. Just the image of these people arriving and an open mike somewhere that every once in awhile let through a "Hi, good to see you" as people shook hands on the screen.

The crowd cheered when familiar faces graced the screen. Gore got one of the hugest responses with yells of adoration and feet stomping of approval. The kids and Michelle might have been the next loudest. Bush got booed which was no surprise and the combo of Gore and Quail just make people shake their heads at such opposites. I looked for Blago when the Governor's were announced but didn't see him. And I wondered what had happened to Cheney (and then realized I didn't care).

When the actual proceedings began the crowd became quiet like nothing I have ever seen before. I was afraid that the huge speakers lining the jumbo tron would be drowned out by the thousands of people standing around me jostling and talking, but it was like the very workings of our voice boxes had been whisked away by the magic of the moment (my mind quickly flitted over the episode in season 4 of Buffy, Hush, but then came back to the present).

It quickly became apparent that there was a delay somewhere in the massive electronic system. The sound was a few sentences behind the visual. By the time Obama's speech started I simply trained myself not to watch his mouth because it just became to confusing. What was hysterical though was during Biden's inauguration the sound was off just enough so that when you saw Biden's face you heard Stevens voice and vice versa. The end result was that it looked like Biden was swearing in Stevens.

Cheers and applause erupted at each critical moment. Steps behind the visuals we reacted to the sound. Chants of Obama's name sprung up again and again throughout the process (but never overriding if someone was speaking). During the invocation I took the opportunity to look around at my fellow bystanders. Not being a religious person (and pretty much being against Rick Warren with my whole being) I paid him little mind. I was amazed however by the number of bowed heads surrounding me. However when he mentioned the girls names and suddenly became a stereotypical southern baptist preacher I don't think there was anyone that at least didn't giggle if not laugh out right.

By the time Obama was sworn in I thought my heart was going to explode. The crowd let out a sound like one I've never heard before. A release from the past 8 years, a breath of hope and faith, a new beginning. As corny as it sounds it was what I felt in the air around me.

I listened to Obama's speech with as much attention as I could but have to admit I will have to find it online again to really absorb it. I was especially impressed with the well designed bitch slap that he delivered to Bush ("First let me thank you, and second let me tell you exactly how wrong you have done everything in the past 8 years"). The masses cheered at all the appropriate parts, and some around me cried through it all (I myself got a bit teary I have to say).

When the speech was done it was like a giant hand came down and turned the whole crowd around and whispered "go". The poem and the speech that came after Obama were lost to us as thousands of people in front of us started the flow away from the mall and back to their lives. This crowd, while still mostly decent, was not the same group I felt I had walked into this historic event with. These people were a bit more anxious, a bit more forceful, a bit less "love thy neighbor" which made me sad. But there were equal amounts of people verbally expressing their desire to not be pushed, or shoved, and that we will all get out when we get out so there was no need to rush.

Will finish this in one final post about the process of extracting oneself from a crowd of one million and add pictures when I get home.

My Inauguration Experience - part 1

As many of you know I had the opportunity to go to DC for the inauguration of Barack Obama as our 44th President. The following is what I experienced that day. From the mundane details to the overwhelming emotions. I hope you enjoy. I began this post at work and did not have time to finish it so will turn it into a two part (at least) posting. I am headed back out for vacation tomorrow so at least wanted to get this started. I will also try and get a post up about the rest of the weekend when I return.

At 1:30 a.m. Tuesday morning I set my alarm for 5:30 and crawled into my borrowed bed to try and get a few hours sleep before the big day. Unfortunately I have had a life long issue with falling asleep the night before a big event. First day of school (even all through college), start of a new job, these kinds of things keep me tossing and turning for most of the evening. So it was not until 4:45 that I think I finally fell asleep. Luckily all I had to do was wake up, put my shoes on (being on vacation and bouncing from house to house meant I slept in my clothes that night) and walk out the door which is what I did by about 6:30.

Just before 7 a.m. we met up with my father and step mother and the four of us (my brother was there as well) started the walk towards the mall. The parental units live on the Metro line in Maryland and had taken the train to what we had pre planned out was the closest spot that was still easy to meet at. We started at 13th and U Streets. As we headed towards the Mall area the streets slowly began to fill around us. It was a gradual process, city buses much more loaded than the pavement we were pounding cruised by to closer drop off spots. The streets were eerily absent of vehicular traffic. By quarter to eight we were a mile and half closer, standing in line at 12th and E street for a security checkpoint into the viewing area. My family insisted that all areas would have security check points. I disagreed but was out voted and as is my fashion when confronted with family I kept quiet. And so there we stood not moving for probably close to half an hour.

The sun rose onto the street around us during this time. The pavement swelled with people. There was no instructions or help. We simply waited. People chatted with their neighbors. About every 10 minutes we moved forward about 2 feet. It was slow and as the minutes ticked by we began to get worried. Was this where we needed to be? Would we spend this historic moment standing on a street corner with no jumbo-tron, no speakers? Still, all was relatively calm until a young man, early 20's maybe, tried to make a joke when a fellow pedestrian unfolded a newspaper. He tried to make this joke by yelling "gun". It was not so loud that the whole crowd heard it and panicked. But it was loud enough for the 20 or so people around us to become startled. He was quickly admonished by not only his own friends but the crowd as well. And I overheard his companion explaining that that shit is not only not funny it's a felony.


After hearing through grapevine and old school telephone conversations (my friend says that her cousin was told by a guy standing next to her that...) that there was no security at the 18th street entrance. After much debate on whether to believe this and give up our spot or stick with our original plan we decided to send my brother over there to check it out with instructions to call back and report. 15 minutes later my brother called and said that yes, 18th street was totally open. All we had to do was get back up to I street and then come down 18th and we would be in. Just follow the crowds. So my father, thinking he is always so helpful, raises his voice above the crowd in that "I'm a professor listen to me now" tone (which ironically he is so he has down pat) and announces that we have personal conformation from someone who is there that 18th street is open. And then we worm our own way out of the crowd and start heading towards my brother. Later on we discussed how amazed my father was that people didn't seem to listen to his advice at the first check point. I tried to explain that people don't believe people they don't know, no matter how great and euphoric we all were feeling, those people just didn't know who he was, and why should they trust him, we didn't trust any of the reports that came before from others? I neglected to mention that his professor voice also sounds like he is belittling and patronizing you all at the same time (because really, that might just be me). But I don't think he would of understood anymore if I had left that in.

The three of us start to head towards my brother at a slow and steady pace. I walk with my camera above my head, trying to get at least one decent crowd shot in the growing light. The streets become more and more full. As we round the corner onto 18th street there are 2 cops standing on the corner handing out something, figuring this might be something useful since they are cops and all I snag one and put it quickly in my pocket (of course then I completely forget it is there).





We manage to find my brother again at the entrance to the Mall and begin the trek into history. We wind around what google now tells me is the Constitution Gardens Lake where I was able to at least stop and get a few pictures.







From here we headed into the main event which I will finish in another post after this weekend. Sorry for the delay. Hope you had your own amazing memories on Tuesday.