Hacked!

Hi Everyone,

Sorry about the Spam. It seems that my gmail account was accessed. I have changed my password, so hopefully that takes care of the issue. Please ignore any emails with bad grammar, and or solicitations for anything except handshakes and hugs.

Thanks so much.

Raul

Battle how are you?

hi Battle, as soon as i started this my life changed in an instant http://g.msn.com.br/BR9/1369.0?http://cnbc7.com/news

Someone's in the kitchen...

A quick word regarding the creative front, and possibly a word or two on what's happening elsewhere.

I will start with a brief brief brief word on work-related things, as I tend to ensure that the bulk of my outpourings are professional musings or emotionally dry pseudo-intellectual ramblings.

Work: DK is wonderful. I feel at home and am logging in hours and hours. Next to Cornish, I have never felt like i needed to be somewhere more, or that I belonged more, and I appreciate every minute that I can work with, alongside and for such a brilliant collective. Their feedback has already been so valuable, and positive.

Gigantic Planet continues to employ me as well, and it's wonderful to have such overwhelming creative freedom. I am still amazed, though I also appreciate, that they have put so much faith in me as their AD, but I am gaining more confidence as each project passes. They are likewise an amazing group of folks.

Now, on to the other thing:

a few weeks ago, Aaron let me know that he wants to move to New York within the next few-to-six months to pursue career opportunities--culinary arts, or publishing, the former he excels at (is quite brilliant at actually, in all realms) and the latter I feel he would be very very good at.

Of course, neither he nor anyone else would expect otherwise, I have no plans of relocating or leaving Seattle with so much going on here for me professionally. On that note, I just really love it here. It's my favorite city so far, and has treated me so well. I of course can't expect everyone to love this place, having lived here, never lived here, or currently living here. Life is a huge sea of flux and people move this way and that--upwards and downwards, nearer and farther. And of course Aaron wouldn't expect me to uproot, especially not now, and that didn't factor into his plans for his future I am sure, which I kind of admire. Like two sine-waves. Autonomous and out of sync.

We sat at a small table, over pizza, and a little wine on a Friday evening, and we discussed his plans to move. He has a good friend with a couch, and a few others that are excited to have him land in town. It's hard to think more than abstractly, but I managed a measured dialogue. I told him, and meant it, that I would do whatever I can to support him, both in his decision making process (should he arrive at different plan) and in his eventual move. I want nothing more than to see his talents flourish and paint him with true happiness, even if that means having to watch that happen from across the country, as a friend. It will have to be, and it probably will.

One of the things I love about Aaron is his ability to communicate the important points, to touch on hard to express subjects and be generally steadfast in his delivery. There is also his resolve. It's the kind I love to sleep next to at night, though it means that I will have to cherish that while I can--Aaron rarely if ever backs out on his word.

There was a bit more said, and some blurry eyes, but it was a mild and purposeful conversation. There was never any strife, just a kind of silent convergence of thought and acceptance. As comforting and without so many useless words as ever. I mean, there were people abuzz all around us--it's not like the room fell literally quiet, and even we continued to talk. But I felt we had an innate understanding, and as we let the room continue to fill up with so much talk it was soon time to leave.

The outside air was nice, and it helped a few thoughts to emerge from the recesses: I love him,

which, i suppose really means knowing how to say goodbye.

It has to happen sometime, and I would much rather it be purposeful, meaningful...with personal agency.

I mean, it's going to be so trying, but what would it mean it if it weren't?

Dana's House of Spite

Dana has a new blog! Hurray for Autumnal musings, and Musey Autumns:

http://spitehousetour.blogspot.com/

Airborn Wasteland

Seafair is such a wasteful imposition.

The end.

The Archivist

Email archives are neat. Every conversation is like reading a novel about two individuals you don't know. Who are these people and why is one or the the other (or, why are they both) so different than they are now? How are they the same?

To me, it seems that temporal proximity deadens subjectivity. My friend Dana often sites the possibility of a lessening in useless or misplaced emotion as one of the perks to look forward to as we grow old. Despite tons of evidence to the contrary, I can actually see this, as it's very odd/interesting how even a day or a week can multiply the level of objectivity with which you perceive even your own actions. Have humans ever really had this efficient of a chance for self study, or the examination/re-examination of those around us then with this kind of up to the minute archiving?

I recently went over an infographic breaking down the amount of time a person spends doing certain activities in a lifetime, such as sleeping (28 years!), eating, sitting on the toilet and so on until you reach the very unlikely case of months spent writing a very large novel. Did you know that the average person spends two years socializing (and I am pretty sure this means in person, maybe at a party, possibly holding a red plastic cup, half empty...or...full?). This kind of a breakdown makes me wonder how much time the average person will spend reading and sending emails, or rereading specific strings of existing virtual dialogue. How many interactions are relived once, twice or more?

Also, how is each instance different than the last? Emotions die for sure, but what about the perceived intonation? One sentence seemed far less angry to me in one instance, while another sounded altogether comical: oddly deadpan. Each revisit is like dropping a pebble after pebble into a slowly freezing vat of gelatin. Fewer waves. Lessening movement. Soon to be static.

On a side note:
For me, this is kind of a timely meditation, as it comes on the heels of a sudden obliteration of old friendship--a friendship that remained, at least in my mind, in a kind of stasis--trapped in an archive. As I think of it now, it would seem that the last point of contact before the final point of contact was probably an email. To that effect, the terminal point of contact was likewise an email.

My mind, the ever spacial information flood, wants to imagine this in tangible terms: each email, from inception to completion, as points on a weird spiked line--or a series of overlapping lines--plug in your x and y values as you please:

X=time in years/months

y=humor content

y1=verbosity

y2=appreciation

y3=frequency of youtube links shared

y4=frankness of discussion

y5=emotional content

y5=seriousness of subtext


You could color code the varying y values and then, "viola!" a relationship that's fit to print.

Of course, much like the human mind only perceives .04 percent (or something close to this) of the matter that surrounds us, so would this exercise ultimately fail in capturing the true nature and essence of such a huge deluge of exchange, the bulk of which actually happened outside of the world in which I now communicate to you, and often complicated by third, fourth, fifth parties, and on and on to the 100th.

So, if you imagine a cyan line, crossing over a yellow line, both crossed over by a magenta line, each on their way towards the next point in virtual communication space, the space made inside is what we can never recreate. If you imagine this to be the perfect metaphor, which it isn't, then you could probably throw y6 through y80, each line with it's own unique color over the same moment in time and still have an empty white space left staring you in the face.


BUT
What happens if you start deleting points? Point by point, space expands, leaving your unreliable recall to do the work--that line was green and it went
over the
red,
kind of like "this?" and it stood for "level of support," but crossed over the sinking blue line, y55, which illustrated a decline in certain key words (openness), but even with them there, there were huge holes already. I wonder what happened in those spaces? So much subjectivity.

This is precisely why you shouldn't delete your archive.
This is precisely why you should delete your archive.


I, out of eye-rolling frustration deleted that final point, forever changing the shape of how our virtual friendship comes to a close. On paper, it appears that I sent a couple of messages out into the ether and never received a reply. I suppose it would be nice to review at some point years down the road, if I were think to, but then again...

In all reality I could probably delete the whole of my gmail account, or facebook profile, or Flickr archive, or Twitter tweets, or MySpace page (or possibly the actual domain in its entirety) and suffer very little from it. I would probably have more time to sleep, eat, expel and maybe even a few more days to put towards writing that very large book.

I could also put more hours towards that two years or so that I have to spend of real interaction.

The Archivist

Email archives are neat. Every conversation is like reading a novel about two individuals you don't know. Who are these people and why is one or the the other (or, why are they both) so different than they are now? How are they the same?

To me, it seems that temporal proximity deadens subjectivity. My friend Dana often sites the possibility of a lessening in useless or misplaced emotion as one of the perks to look forward to as we grow old. Despite tons of evidence to the contrary, I can actually see this, as it's very odd/interesting how even a day or a week can multiply the level of objectivity with which you perceive even your own actions. Have humans ever really had this efficient of a chance for self study, or the examination/re-examination of those around us then with this kind of up to the minute archiving?

I recently went over an infographic breaking down the amount of time a person spends doing certain activities in a lifetime, such as sleeping (28 years!), eating, sitting on the toilet and so on until you reach the very unlikely case of months spent writing a very large novel. Did you know that the average person spends two years socializing (and I am pretty sure this means in person, maybe at a party, possibly holding a red plastic cup, half empty...or...full?). This kind of a breakdown makes me wonder how much time the average person will spend reading and sending emails, or rereading specific strings of existing virtual dialogue. How many interactions are relived once, twice or more?

Also, how is each instance different than the last? Emotions die for sure, but what about the perceived intonation? One sentence seemed far less angry to me in one instance, while another sounded altogether comical: oddly deadpan. Each revisit is like dropping a pebble after pebble into a slowly freezing vat of gelatin. Fewer waves. Lessening movement. Soon to be static.

On a side note:
For me, this is kind of a timely meditation, as it comes on the heels of a sudden obliteration of old friendship--a friendship that remained, at least in my mind, in a kind of stasis--trapped in an archive. As I think of it now, it would seem that the last point of contact before the final point of contact was probably an email. To that effect, the terminal point of contact was likewise an email.

My mind, the ever spacial information flood, wants to imagine this in tangible terms: each email, from inception to completion, as points on a weird spiked line--or a series of overlapping lines--plug in your x and y values as you please:

X=time in years/months

y=humor content

y1=verbosity

y2=appreciation

y3=frequency of youtube links shared

y4=frankness of discussion

y5=emotional content

y5=seriousness of subtext


You could color code the varying y values and then, "viola!" a relationship that's fit to print.

Of course, much like the human mind only perceives .04 percent (or something close to this) of the matter that surrounds us, so would this exercise ultimately fail in capturing the true nature and essence of such a huge deluge of exchange, the bulk of which actually happened outside of the world in which I now communicate to you, and often complicated by third, fourth, fifth parties, and on and on to the 100th.

So, if you imagine a cyan line, crossing over a yellow line, both crossed over by a magenta line, each on their way towards the next point in virtual communication space, the space made inside is what we can never recreate. If you imagine this to be the perfect metaphor, which it isn't, then you could probably throw y6 through y80, each line with it's own unique color over the same moment in time and still have an empty white space left staring you in the face.


BUT
What happens if you start deleting points? Point by point, space expands, leaving your unreliable recall to do the work--that line was green and it went
over the
red,
kind of like "this?" and it stood for "level of support," but crossed over the sinking blue line, y55, which illustrated a decline in certain key words (openness), but even with them there, there were huge holes already. I wonder what happened in those spaces? So much subjectivity.

This is precisely why you shouldn't delete your archive.
This is precisely why you shouldn't delete your archive.


I, out of eye-rolling frustration deleted that final point, forever changing the shape of how our virtual friendship comes to a close. On paper, it appears that I sent a couple of messages out into the ether and never received a reply. I suppose it would be nice to review at some point years down the road, if I were think to, but then again...

In all reality I could probably delete the whole of my gmail account, or facebook profile, or Flickr archive, or Twitter tweets, or MySpace page (or possibly the actual domain in its entirety) and suffer very little from it. I would probably have more time to sleep, eat, expel and maybe even a few more days to put towards writing that very large book.

I could also put more hours towards that two years or so that I have to spend of real interaction.

Ha!

"Whatever it is, it's twenty times heavier than a boot!"

"ohhhhhh..."

The Dog on the Freeway

The furrows. The gaping maw. The fish-eyed glassy look of terror. These are the visual cues that will help you identify the mutant-transfer-Junior/Senior/Sophmore Cornish motion design student as he or she approaches the end of spring semester. This oddity is a veritable chimera of design principles (in varying degrees of good and bad), academic sensibility and (mostly/almost entirely) self-determination. Also, it likely has the worst posture of anyone else who sits for long hours upon chairs so ergonomic as to be inversely ineffective when combined with the abnormally low and quickly decomposing desks. Generally mammalian, it would appear that this creature, though treading brave and unconventional shorelines of disciplinary evolution, has not yet developed a resistance to the tried and tested infections that plague the overworked.

Looking to leap over the dividing line between "slow and steady wins the race" and "I can't afford too many 30,000 dollar drops in the bucket," this creature from a distance appears to suffer as such. It's a disease I would like to describe as "Dog on the Freeway Syndrome." It's acute, terminal and resistant to all forms of medication and is contracted much easier from communal design settings and fluorescent living. It makes me think of a kind of Black Mold for the soul, and that there is definitely something growing in the walls of Cornish, though for the life of me I can't figure out how I have survived it thus far. I suppose I may be doing something right, and leaning heavily on my fellow leapfroggers for support may just be the trick; though whether or not the MAC Truck of institutional pressure, or the 18 wheels of cultivated, cumulative and entirely unclear expectation finally get to dash my spirit in chunks along the dividing line remains to be seen. As for now, all I can do is alternatingly leap and then remain perfectly, ass-clinchingly still, all while grabbing at scraps as they are tossed from the surrounding din. It works for now I suppose. And it also doesn't.