Is it just me or...

Ha! So innappropriate that they removed it!
Doesn't stop Boing Boing though


is this logo really innappropriate?



sent courtesy DingoMan

I must own this.

EBAY, YOU ARE MINE!!!!

Fuck yes. I will never lose another auction on Ebay because of this and now you won't either.

I'm nuts

I swear, I'm like a five year old today. I can't buckle down and get anything done. It's terrible. I'm totally paralytic. All I want to do is play my ukulele and avoid reality. Such is the lot of the self employed. Procrastinate and cram.

Road warrior...

Sharon and I are about to embark on a crazy time. Ithaca, Denver, Pittsburgh, New York, and Oakland road trips are coming in rapid succession. I'm all for making hay while the sun shines, but sometimes when I look at the calendar and see all those workshops, I think we're nuts. Argh.

Audio blogging...

No typing today.

Done! Halfway anyway...

I finished a major editing job this weekend and now can start on my other projects in earnest. That is, after I put up a stupid website for our swing camp Grrr. I hate making websites!

In other news, our friend Marilee was in town from Boston this weekend and we gave her the whirlwind tour. Flea market, Elmo's, Carolina theater, etc. We haven't had too many visitors down here and it was fun to show her around. She seemed to enjoy herself and scored some great stuff at the flea market. So, mission accomplished.

Lastly, Ong-Bak Thai Warrior is perhaps the greatest movie of all time. Nope, it is. It is the greatest.

Terminated

My friend Joe called me today to relate a story about his eight year old daughter that I thought might bear repeating here. Recently she has been on a kick where she keeps asking him if she can watch R rated movies. The answer is, of course, no. Last night, she asked if she could watch The Terminator. When Joe said no, she gave him her "cute" face and asked him how he could resist a face like this. When the answer was still no, she marched to the phone, picked up the receiver and dialed a few numbers. What ensued was a three minute imaginary phone conversation with the President about the relative fairness of her father's rules when compared to the rest of American households. She then hung up and announced that President Bush had said that her father's actions were "unjust and illegal". To which Joe replied: "I guess that's why I didn't vote for him."

Gearing up...

I'm in the home stretch with my two recording projects and I wish I could say that I was almost done. The Palmer project is expecting delivery of the finished product on Saturday and I've just received the transcripts tonight. The rough mix and final script for my documentary on Poverty is due Wednesday and I just finished the rough draft of my script today. Did I mention the psycho terrier? Pablo, he is no sleeping. Grrr.

Bed rest for Terriers...

Yeah, so we have two new foster dogs. One male, one female. They're awesome, but the male (Mickey) has torn out some sutures from his neutering wound and has had some swelling. So, following the instructions in the neutering fact sheet that we received from the shelter, we took him to the vet. Turns out he's fine, but the doc told us to put him on three days bed rest until the swelling subsides. Um, yeah. He's a fucking Terrier. The only way to get a terrier to lie down for three days is to kill it. So, it's been a carnival of pain since Saturday morning and honestly, I don't think it's helping. Back to the vet tomorrow. Maybe he'll give us some sedatives, which would be great, because I'm out of Vicodin.

Presentation...

So, I was asked to present my work for a documentary festival at Duke University last night. If you had told me a year ago that I would be standing in front of 200 people, explaining my pieces as if I was Ken Burns, I would have told you you were nuts.

It was a great night though. People seemed to enjoy my pieces and I was finally able to meet some of the cool folks who work in the video and photography departments. Their work was very cool and I look forward to getting to know them better. Fellow kooks, for sure.

Coachable...

There is nothing like a good coach. Good teachers are wonderful, but a good coach is the thing you hardly ever find and the thing you should hold on to most. I am fortunate enough to have three great coaches in my life right now and I just wanted to take a sec and tip my hat to you people and tell you what a tremendous thing it is that you do. The world would be a stupider place without you. Thank God you're here.

Sincerely,

Grasshopper

End of Winter Haiku

Took dogs out early
cold blast eviscerates
fuck, fuckity, fuck!

My life...

...,for the next two weeks, looks exactly like this:

I'm going to...

...teach myself how to make a Podcast.

My life rules!

I have the resources I need to continue to eek out a living. I have a car that runs. I have a full refrigerator. I have the tools I need in order to work. I can figure out ways to continue to educate myself. I can afford a cup of coffee. I can make my mortgage payment. I have a manageable amount of bad debt. I have a bicycle. I have a support system in place.

It doesn't sound like much, and it isn't, compared to someone with a corporate gig, but it's an embarrasing amount of wealth to have compared to someone like Fuze (my documentary subject). I'd been thinking about the financial gulf that separates us lately and what the difference is between barely making it and being in poverty. Poverty is so complex that it's hard to get a handle on all of the components that contribute to it's onslaught, but now I think it really boils down to, in Fuze's case, resources and breathing room.

Here's a guy who's smart, has a college education, is well spoken and outgoing, and still can't get a job. He works like a fiend and gets what money he can by selling his artwork and poetry. He lives in a friend of a friend's basement, barely eats enough, and spends most of his time wondering where his next dollar is going to come from. The one thing that allows him to earn the extremely small living that he does is the fact that he is mobile. He has an old car that he uses to drive to open mic nights and poetry slams in order to perform and sell his stuff (when he can afford the gas). His car is the one thing that keeps the scales from tipping in the direction of total financial devastation.

So, when his transmission blew yesterday, it all became very clear for me. He, in fact, was very philosophical about it. Like it was just one more thing to deal with, but the implications hit me hard. He can't do anything without his car. There is no public transportation that can help him. He now has to walk a half hour to the grocery store, an hour to get his email at the library, and has no chance of going to any gigs that aren't within walking distance of his house. In short, he's fucked. And it's not fair. He's done everything right. He's educated, smart, sober, spiritual and a really nice guy which adds up to: nothing, apparently.

I think we tend to search for certain indicators when we look at poverty and when there aren't any, we get nervous. We want to pidgeon hole people and look for behaviors that lead to poverty, but the truth is, they aren't always there. Lack of time and resources are what keep the cycle going. If you are always treading water, not drowning is all you think about.