2005 Turns Bad

So everything was going pretty well. Christmas was great with the gifts and happiness and such. Marigold and I drove down to Louisiana last Friday to be with her family for Christmas. We had Turduckin and everyone smiled contentedly. Except for Mirabella (Da niece) who was barfing in the back room. Luckily she got over it quickly and the next day she was jumping around and screaming just like any healthy five year old should. Little did we know that we would all be barfing in the back room soon. The mounting rumbles began for me on the drive back home on Tuesday. As we pulled the car up to our apartment after about ten hours of driving I raced in so that I could spend a few hours in the bathroom. The first thing I noticed upon entering was that I didn't need to open the door. It was already open. The computer desk is opposite the front door in the main room and it was clearly missing some of its main components, like the recently purchased computer and monitor and cable internet hub and Wacom tablet and keyboard and mouse and printer and stereo system. They did not take the old computer which I still have set up because I never really finished moving all the files and programs over to the new one. And it was a good thing too. I hadn't backed up any of the new files on the stolen computer. That means many an illustration is gone. I only have the low res versions that might be posted here or on my other site. I could try scanning in some of the print outs I have, but I am skeptical about that. One of the good things is they took the old printer, the one that doesn't work well, and left the new Epson printer I bought last month. They also took our old digital camera, not the good one which we had with us. They stepped right over the new mat cutter Marigold got me for Christmas and pushed aside the sewing machine I got her. So at least we have those to keep us warm at night.

Here is the front window they most likely came in through. The latch you see was our high-tech security system.

They only took things of street value - pawnable or tradable items. Fortunately for us this means we didn't lose much that was unique and handmade like artwork or our Social Security Cards. In fact they moved the SS Cards in order to riffle through Marigold's jewelry. They did take plenty of that. In fact I never knew Marigold had such valuable pieces. Had I known they might have gone missing years ago.

Anyway, Marigold lost one particular ring that was her grandmother's and she is most sad about that. If it doesn't turn up at local pawn shops, which we are trolling now, I hope that we can get the full (estimated) value of it through our renter's insurance. We are still revising the police report to have an accurate list of all the missing items, and looking for old pictures of stuff.

Like night and day I got over my stomach virus the other night. One day I can't stand up straight, the next - everybody thinks that I am lying about being sick. Marigold and her dad are the only ones not to be incapacitated by it yet. I think that it took a bit of the sting out of getting robbed for a while.

And then when we were starting think more positively about it all, another bomb hit us last night. I'll let Marigold talk about it when and if she is up to it. I have lots of work to do now that the next quarter, my last, is starting next week. So I can't sit around and be gloomy, but I'll try to squeeze it in.

P.S. Many areas of New Orleans, especially The East, still look like Katrina just hit. Don't believe the hype that New Orleans will be back up and livable by next June if they can't even get electricity up and the garbage out of the streets. The disconnect between the PR machine and the actual situation shocked me.

saxamafone

So I whipped this one out last night. Usually I ink my drawings on watercolor or heavy drawing paper because I like the tooth. After seeing a watercolor painting done on vellum the other day, I decided to test the ink out on the next best thing available to me already - tracing paper. Because of the waxy, non-porous surface the ink lays on top and can be pushed around very easily. I like the way it can make a nice mess without sacrificing fine lines if I so desire. And I do.

Also, I want to do many more music related themes in my work. If you don't know me, and you don't, I loves me the tunes. While looking up pictures of a saxophone to reference, I got all nostalgic for my sax playing days. Sure, I was bad (just like I am on guitar, bass violin, accordion, piano, . . . ) but it was fun to make some noise and pretend. If I had three wishes one of them would definitely to magically gain some musical talent. Robert Johnson made a pretty fair deal, I say.

"Sometimes I Wish I Were Plain and Dull"

I just finished reading Youth In Revolt by C.D. Payne. I had never heard of it before reading about it on this site (referenced through Energyface). The guy and his some of his interviewees (Michael Cera, aka George Michael of Arrested Development fame) go on and on about how this is the funniest book ever written. Even on the cover of the book the illustrious Los Angeles Times says that it will be the "funniest book you'll read this year." I know that I'm not the world's foremost expert on funny, but I never once LOL'ed while reading this admittedly humorous yarn. And I don't mean LOL as in you just said something mildly resembling a joke and I am now typographically acknowledging it. I mean LLOL - Literally Laughing Out Loud, or LLOLOL -– Literally laughing Out Loud Over Literature. With David Sedaris I would LLOLOL. Many times. With Douglas Adams I would repeat sections with friends, doing voices. And we would all Laugh Out Loud. With C.D. Payne at most I grunted at a well-turned phrase, not unlike a good pun (see above, maybe). I might even dare to say that it was approximately as funny as this here blog. I'll let you be the judge of that, Los Angeles Times Readers. However, it is much more page turning than this blog will ever be, all page turning logistics aside. I think I read it just about as fast as your latest Harry Potter periodical. Highly entertaining in an early teen, sex ridden, cross-dressing, pyromaniac, and overall revolting type way. Again, like Harry Potter.

Perhaps, as some have suggested, it all comes out a bit too well for our young hero in the end. Surprisingly, I prefer it that way. The whole novel takes a strong dose of Suspension of Disbelief to get through as it is. We are meant to believe that a fourteen year old wrote all this in his diary on the fly. I got excited when the word "“pulchritude"” slipped by casually in context - a bit too impressive for a fourteen year old with an overactive libido. Maybe it is okay for a formerly sex crazed forty something's first book although.

They are making a movie of it all due for 2006 (maybe), so I will have to see that when it finally squeaks its way onto video. Like all Kurt Vonnegut movies, I'm sure it will be a Thunderous Failure of a film. Who they would target it to? It is a story about a 14 year old and his sexual exploits. It is more about misplaced youth nostalgia for adults than summer teen flick. To be loyal it should be marketed to adults who would never pay to see it anyway. In order to get it the appropriately pre-teen marketability of PG or PG-13 they would have to severely water down the story to the point of stupidity. In keeping with the film industry, I'’m sure that is what they will do.

Rio Chiba = Dirty Poop

Buy an iPod. I hate to fall over the overpopulated side of fence but I am finally ready to admit that my non-Apple portable mp3 player is complete crap. It is a Rio Chiba, and you should by all means never buy a product from Rio. Call me racist, but I don't hear bad things about iPods (other than the price), and all the other brands are sketchy at best.

Marigold got it for me last year for Christmas for about one hundred dollars and it worked great for about four months. It was easy to use and very durable. Then one day I dropped it about three feet onto soft carpet. Now it doesn't do shit. I looked up how to fix it and saw that the warranty on the thing is for 90 days and after that it cost about one hundred dollars to return it to get it fixed. Also, some message boards revealed that many other people had the same exact problem (and at about four months to boot!). I wouldn't go as far as to say conspiracy. What company that wants to make money would deliberately make a faulty product? But they have deliberately made a cheap-ass piece of crap, and then provided terrible customer service. Cheap, bottom of the line products don't necessarily piss me off. After all, I buy store brand food at the grocery store, or even worse, FMV (For Maximum Value) food. What really gets me is the next to zero customer service. I couldn't get a single person to email me back, and there were no phone numbers to call, even for an automated service. Their website gave predictable, repetitive advice for a similar problem that really had nothing to do with mine in the FAQ section. What do you do if your question isn't frequent? Or if your website isn't updated frequently? You're shit out of luck is what you are.

I broke into the thing in order to try to fix it myself, but I could only get it to work while it was plugged into the computer via USB. It acts like it is working fine for transferring music to it. But try to use it as a portable, handy music player and you get only get an electric word displayer. The specific word is, "upgrader." I have given up. And it actually broke back in April. Because I am stupidly stubborn, it has taken me this long to let it go.

I can now give it away as a White Elephant gift, scattered parts and all. At least I got that. Perhaps I can trade it for the iPod that some sucker brought to the party.

Get The Lead Out

This time of year I always think that I am far, far behind where I should be. The apartment should be tidy, the creative juices should be flowing, the presents should have been bought and wrapped by last month, the Christmas card should be sent out. I should be reading books and watching movies all day long for Christ's sake. But then, everybody feels this way. That is why there are more suicides this time of year than any other. (Or that is what I hear anyway. It's probably not true at all, just like all the things you hear 'global warming'.) It's also why everybody is so happy come Christmas day - no more worrying about the build up. Unless you messed up and believed your wife when she said, "Let's just give each other Love this year."

Mysterious Ways

I wake up every morning to the soothing sounds of NPR. They always segue into the classical music with Block and Byrd doing their little science talk thing. Today they talked about the emergence of life and how that could have possibly happened. Doesn't it make you feel good to know that people are still working on the big questions? I mean the whole God-Is-Mysterious line of thinking is nice, but it is a dead end. If everyone thought like that we would never know the difference between the stars and your neighbor's Christmas lights.

But you want amazing - how about Emergent Complexity?

We observe, over and over in nature, when lots of objects, lots of particles, like sand grains or stars or molecules, or cells, when they interact, they tend to yield structures that are far more complex, that have behaviors that are far beyond anything that the individual sand grain, or star, or cell, could do itself. - Robert Hazen

Basically, the total is greater than the sum of its parts. This is so simple but it blows me away. It is amazing how a long string of emerging complexity could lead to something like myself. Or you! Or blogging! Most especially think about some sand getting together and yadda, yadda, yadda, we got Elgar's Enigma Variations, we got Egon Schiele's drawings, we got the freaking Grand Canyon. Imagine if one particle of sand had not been there. You might have been a duck instead. Or a duct! Or duct tape! Or a tape worm! Or a worm hole! eww . . .

P.S. Another thing that blows me away - the beautiful reference to Peter Seller's Being There on Arrested Development last night.