date |
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04.25.98 |
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07.09.99 |
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10.10.99 |
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date |
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04.25.99 |
001 |
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10.12.99 |
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04.02.07 |
002b |
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12.10.03 |
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12.15.03 |
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12.17.03 |
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12.23.03 |
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12.23.03 |
007 |
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I must tell you that the internal mental monologue fascinates me. I am intrigued by that little spring of words that bubbles forth, seemingly from nowhere, to fill the pool of thoughts in our heads. It allows us to say truthfully that our minds are not empty. It also provides fodder to sort through when we are trying to fall asleep.
Quality control is really the only issue here. I am almost positive that the evolution of clairvoyance has been impeded because of the content of our internal dissertations. Speaking everything that washes through our little lobes would certainly create havoc among those within ear shot.
The statements that pass between us and the little men in our heads can be shameful, if not criminal, when spoken aloud.
Somehow, though, we find this internal monologue acceptable as long as it is not heard by the outside world. Should we not feel as bad for merely formulating these thoughts as we would if we had spoken them?
It seems our decadence is tolerable, even acceptable, as long as it remains in our minds and does not permeate to the outside world. I suppose the entire matter boils down to the burden of proof. We can continue to conduct ourselves as if we belong in the respected realm of society, as long as we keep our mouths shut.
And on that note, have a nice day.
It is bad manners to pray for things that you want.
Pray for the things that are needed, for yourself and for others. And pray, everyday, for peace.
It's really all you need.
I think that money is a tool and should be used to better peoples' lives.
It's not leverage, not that kind of a tool. If you couldn't bear to part with what you have to improve the life of someone that you love, then you don't deserve what you have.
People are the real treasures in this life, and if you took stock of who is crediting my account, you would count me as one of the very, very rich.
The other day, I watched while someone got furious about the fact that it took two mouse clicks to do something that they used to do in one. She was absolutely livid about it - actually yelling and cursing. The function was printing multiple copies of a document and the person so adversely affected by this horrendous miscarriage of computer science was an elderly woman. A woman, that in my mind, should've been able to remember what it took to create multiple copies of a document in the days of the manual typewriter. I learned how to type on one of those monstrosities in high school and let me tell you, it was no picnic in pajamas.
All that click, click, clack, clack. "Push for speed. Don't worry about the errors, push for speed!" The instructor would bark throughout the room as she patrolled back and forth like an upstanding member of the Nazi SS.
But still, a manual typewriter would have been a virtual god send to those monks that sat for eighteen hours at a time and transcribed documents with one of those quill things. I can just see the poor guy all hunched over one of those big wooden tables at about ten at night: "Hey, hold up Father Urethra . . . there's been a slight change at the bottom of page six . . ."
And what about those stone tablets! What did you use for white out in those days? Portland cement?
"Yea Bob, I need ten copies of the annual sales slab by eight tomorrow morning . . . and oh, by the way, I need it in color."
This might have been the guy that figured out you can write on dried animal skins with a stick of charcoal. You can even go so far as to cut the dried animal skins into little rectangles and put them together into a tablet using a little tree sap at the top. Now you've got yourself a dandy little tablet of sticky cowhide for taking notes at the elk lodge on Friday nights.
What have we degenerated into in this fast paced, can't wait, I-need-it-five-minutes-ago society of ours?
I really don't think that we're in possession of the technology required to measure the human energy expended in the course of one mouse click! How many billionths of a calorie would that be? How many mouse clicks would it take to drop one pound of fat? I'm not sure, but I think we're up into the number of stars in the known universe kind of numbers here.
How many mouse clicks would it take to power New York city for a day? How about just a standard one hundred watt light bulb? (you get the idea . . .)
I say it's time for everyone to slow down long enough to get just a tiny little bit of perspective.
Come on lady, it's a mouse click.
I just got cable modem about a month ago and let me tell you, this rocks the house! I'm fairly sure that this is going to change the world as we know it. Pretty much everyone has access to the web - oh, I mean if you're reading this anyway - but, cable modem brings a whole new meaning to the word 'access'.
The world of content that's available to me now is vastly different than that goopy, sluggish 28.8 world I left behind just a few short weeks ago. Streaming audio and video. Online updates and huge file downloads. Active channels and active content. It's like seeing something for the first time. My wife's turning into a real junky.
I think the next big technological race is going to be getting fiber to your front door. The first company to do that is going to be able to sew up your data connection to the outside world. Phone, internet, TV, pay movies, interactive cable . . . it's all there for the asking. And as TV and the web move closer together, it's going to be interesting to see what happens to that industry. We've already got DVD in computers and video and audio on the web.
Everything from live radio and TV to downloadable movies, CDs and what-nots. What's going to happen when the distinction blurs to the point of not knowing which is which? When computers are capable of pulling high resolution TV from the web?
Yup, these are truly exciting times and we'll all be able to look back on this someday and reflect: "Remember when video on the web was the size of a match book? Ha, ha, ha . . . "
We'll sit together and reminisce and laugh out loud as we recall the first time we accidentally came across one of those naughty web pages. Or the first time we accidentally hacked into the Defense Department computer by simply setting up a remote e-mail notification incorrectly.
And then we'll bark out the commands: "Computer; classical music; light strings; G minor; Legato at about 85 dB."
At which point, there will be several moments of silence as the computer searches the bounds of human knowledge for the information requested, quietly accesses it and then locks up and reboots.
I updated my laptop to Vista a couple weekends ago and was reminiscing about this article I wrote back in 1999. The world really has changed a lot. Now we've got YouTube and RSS feeds pummeling us from all sides.
I routinely have clients tell me that they don't want their sites optimized for dial-up users anymore. They want broadband all the way and all the cool things that that means. Video on the web is no longer an odd curiosity but the norm.
Personally I'd be lost without the web. I use it for research and for buying things and for the manuals for all my audio gear. Anytime there's a question, my first stop is Google.
I am surprised that DSL hasn't mounted any more of a campaign against the cable companies than they have. I guess it has to do with how the phone companies are managed and what they view as important.
I am happy to report that computers don't lock up and reboot anymore. Those times are long since relegated into history. Today computers politely tell you that they've experienced a problem and then proceed to trash your data; but keep a backup copy of the most recent changes prior to the unfortunate mishap so you can easily revert if you'd like.
SPAM, phishing, white-lists, black-lists, viruses, spyware, malware, hackers, trojans, adware, click adds, email blasts, WEB 2.0, Netflix, Viagra sales and low interest home loans all make the internet worthwhile and homey!
During the conception of my daughter to be, the thought never occurred to me that creating a life was a responsibility. That one day this person would be a living, active member of society—interfacing with the world without my constant guidance and direction and that, for better or for worse, I’d be the cause of that. It never occurred to me that this child would assume the best and the worst characteristics from its mother and father. That being a parent was both an active and a passive activity because children do become their parents. No matter how hard you tell them not to, it’s simply inevitable.
Had I stopped long enough to think about what I now know, twenty-four years later, well…who knows? Maybe that’s just too daunting a thought for a would-be parent to ponder. Maybe that’s why Mother Nature protects us from such philosophical considerations with a healthy infusion of mind numbing hormones. A kind of all natural drug abuse brought on by puberty. Can any parent of a teenager tell me that their once brilliant child’s IQ has not dropped significantly in the last few years?
I’m pretty sure that I’m not alone in this either. I think that most of us have sex, make babies, feed ‘em and raise ‘em without ever considering what an important task this ‘creating a life’ thing can be. It’s not until they’re out there on their own and you get to observe them as just another person that you begin to consider what it is that you’ve accomplished—or not.
Marie is one of the best parents I’ve seen. She is a person that concentrates on behavior, action and consequence. She’s painfully clear about what she expects and does a good job of explaining what the consequences for noncompliance are. She rarely sends mixed messages and she’s consistent in her follow through. Incidentally, these are the traits of a good manager as well.
I’ve watched as her kids took the long journey from tiny tykes to pre-adults, pubescent brain damage in tow. And I’ve witnessed, first hand, the effect that Marie has had upon their character. It astounds me to see the really positive impact that one person can have on another.
When I see my daughter today, I see the culmination of everything I did right and everything I did wrong. Like a piece of furniture that you wish you would have sanded just a little bit more before staining, so too the child is released into the world flawed. But the flaws become an integral part of their character—of their substance and of their personality. And in the end, the best you can hope for is that the things you did right outweigh those things that you did wrong.
If you were to ask someone what the most powerful man-made thing on the planet was what would the answer be? Tanks, jet fighters…the atomic bomb…
It’s almost funny when you stop and think about it, but the most powerful thing on the planet is actually words. It’s not nuclear fission or geothermal forces or even a Dodge Hemi—just words.
Words have been responsible for starting and ending wars. Words have been the instrument that rallied an entire nation’s people and resources behind a single cause (good and bad). Words have the ability to hurt so deeply that their lingering memory can be carried throughout a lifetime.
Of course, there are those that argue that words can’t hurt anyone. That words are just words and that they have no meaning until you allow them to have meaning. And in a way they’re right. After all, words are just minute vibrations passing through the air. Changes in air pressure so small that, from a physical perspective, they have almost no effect on us at all. Without the mechanical apparatus of our inner ear, we would perceive only the loudest of sounds merely as tingling flesh.
So how do we explain the power behind these seemingly innocuous guttural utterances? Surely they are not endowed with any magical power. Words cannot raise inanimate objects or affect a change in our physical environment. The power in words comes from their ability to affect our minds. Affect them in ways that, most of the time, we’re not even aware of. Deep within the programming of our minds, words live a seedy and sorted existence, tugging and pulling at the inner workings of our subconscious minds. Words dig into the playground of our emotions and spin their delicate webs. And, like the seed of the mighty oak, once planted words can grow into powerful and dynamic things. And they can cause great injury or harm.
All this because we let them in. Because we allow them to seep into our heads and to take root and to grow. Words are a catalyst for a virus or bacterium capable of spreading and passing from one individual to another. Words are the carriers of ideas and emotions and to that end, will never be squelched.
I think everybody procrastinates, maybe just to different degrees. I find myself toggling back and forth from motivated-project-completer to useless-lazy-slug. I’ve always said, “Why put off till tomorrow what you can put off today?”
In order to help myself cope with the problem, I’ve identified two broad categories of tasks: open-ended and closed-ended. Closed-ended task are the ones that have a visible ending point. They can be considered ‘done’ when you get to the end of them. Whereas open-ended tasks are those ugly creatures that just seem to hang around for ever. They’re the kinds of things that you just have more of to do every time you turn around.
So why, you may be asking yourself, would anyone choose to expend even the tiniest amount of energy classifying their tasks.Well, I’ll tell you. I’m of the opinion that people naturally gravitate toward the closed-ended activities. Because we all like that feeling of accomplishment when we actually finish something.
That pat on the back for a job well done kind of thing. Closed-ended activities that just go on and on don’t give you any satisfaction for doing just part of them. There’s just more to do tomorrow. Faced with the choice between two things to do—open or closed-ended—the open ended-task is going to lose out every time.
So what’s a poor soul to do? Trick yourself, that’s what. Break an open-ended task into virtual tasks; smaller pieces of the whole that can have, at least in your mind, an artificial ending point. A place where you can stand proudly and say, “I did it [all for the bootie].” There you go: now you’ve got a feeling of accomplishment. A feeling of satisfaction because there’s something that you can cross off your list. Go ahead, try it. Or put it off until tomorrow…that’s what I’d do.
Marie and I never learned how to write together. We are currently in the process of learning how to write—but for some reason, we haven’t had to learn how to write together—that was just something that was there from the beginning. Like our friendship was just there. I’m pretty sure that it existed before we did. We just had to meet each other and then put a name on it.
But from the first time that we tried writing together, there was some kind of unspoken connection. There was, at times, a feeling that someone else was inside your head. I’d call Marie to tell her about a great new idea that I just had only to find out she’s just emailed me the same idea. It was kind of creepy. But over time, that creepy turned into the expected and the expected into a way of working together that seemed to really get results. Results that always seemed greater that the sum of the parts.
Can I write without Marie? Yes I can. Is what I write as good without her input and interaction? Nowhere close.
In ways we’re very much alike but I truly believe that somehow we bring things to the table that the other does not possess. That we truly do compliment each other. But as you do with song writing, we never actually do sit down and write together. After getting in sync by talking through characters and storylines, we write our pieces separately and then trade them. It’s what each of us brings to the other’s—after understanding exactly what it is that we want to accomplish with the story—that makes what we do unique.
Marie always wants to leave a message and I always want to leave blood on the sidewalk.
Together we come up with a bloody sidewalk with a message.
In terms of writing—or more accurately the craft of writing—it has become apparent to me that crap equals good work. “How can that be?” you may ask. Let me explain:
The other day I started reading the first manuscript that Marie and I ever wrote together. At the time (1996-ish), we thought it was the best thing since chicken McNuggets. We thought it was going to be a runaway bestseller and then a Hollywood blockbuster. It represented a year's worth of sweat and hard work and it was our baby; our child and we loved it dearly.
But now, creeping up on a decade later, I read it and it sounds like crap. Oh, I still love the premise and the storyline. I think it’s got a lot of potential. But the way it was written is just crap. How could it be anything else? It was our first novel-length manuscript. And the exciting thing for me, now, is that I can see that it stunk. I can see the stinky parts and I can see how it could be improved.
And I’m hoping that I’ll see the same thing in another ten years when I look back at the things I’ve written this year. It’s all part of the same progression—in any art form. It happened to me for years with music; one year’s hits where another year’s crap. That’s good because it shows you very graphically that you’re improving. It’s the benchmark and the moving target all rolled up into one self deprecating package.
The scariest thing in the world would be to look back on something you’d done years earlier and see the best work you were ever going to accomplish. How sad would that be?
So in looking back on crap, I find encouragement and inspiration. Crap is a beacon of hope and a guiding light to keep me on track and on course. Crap shows me that, even though I sucked a lot earlier in my life—I suck a lot less now. And sucking less is always a good thing. It may be one of the main reasons that we’re here; to see just how much less we can suck today than we did yesterday. And crap helps us see it.
Here’s to crap!