When I finally opened the Ruffus The Dog web site to the public I knew it wasn’t really finished - nothing ever is.
There are always changes, tweaks and inevitable corrections to be made as any site grows and gets road-tested by those who arrive first at the gates. There were some issues with bandwidth and file size for the videos - they tended to choke, stutter and endlessly buffer, thus degrading the viewing experience. I’ve made a few changes in that regard so it’s a smaller file size that plays on the web while still providing a broadcast quality version for download.
I suspect I may have to do some re-encoding to get the data rate just right so it all plays to my satisfaction.
There are also download links now for the episodes (in a variety of formats) so the shows can be viewed freely on other devices. I wish that functionality was built right into the player but since it’s not I need to provide it for each post on the site. Fair enough.
Eventually there will be more outlets for the full episodes - YouTube, Vimeo etc. - and I’ll likely use a service like TubeMogul to make placement of the files easier. Right now I’m content to do everything by hand so I can get a better grip on the formats, file sizes and general layout before attempting to automate the process. One step at a time.
There are also new badges which link to the Twitter and Facebook pages for Ruffus.
Overall I’m not completely satisfied with the graphic layout of the site - I want to keep playing with some ideas - but it was important to finally get it out there for everyone else to see, otherwise I’d be fiddling with it for an eternity. First thing is to make sure all the basic bells and whistles work with a minimum of fuss and bther - then I can do more work on making it pretty.
Tomorrow I’ll be posting two more episodes: Ruffus & Hyde and our own version of The Frog Prince. After that it will be one new show each week - usually on a Tuesday.
Once I get into a comfortable routine of posting episodes I can concentrate on more Behind-The-Scenes material and the writing of the Storybooks.
Cheers.
P. S. I won’t be offering many caveats for the shows themselves - there’s a lot of good shit in Ruffus The Dog - but I feel obliged to mention that the late Karen Ohland, one of our key puppet builders, absolutely despised the Little Jane puppet and kept asking if we could re-shoot the entire episode just so we could change that character.
I’ve posted in these pages - and the previous incarnation of this blog - about the unique and rapidly evolving blend of our technical senses and our immediate surroundings, which we quaintly refer to as “the real world”. Awareness of this extension of our senses has grown enough to give it a catchy name: Augmented Reality. Like all such phrases it tries to explain the whole thing while managing only to scratch the surface and still come off sounding like something a plumber does for $100 an hour while showing off the crack of his ass.
“Okay, Robbo, what is Augmented Reality and why should I give a shit?”
I’m so glad you asked.
This has become a longer blog post than post than most, with a pant load of embedded videos (and juicy links that you must follow or I’ll come to your home late at night and read them out loud to you) because there’s a lot of information and examples connected with the ideas behind AR. What I present here is by no means definitive. How could it be? All of this seems to be evolving faster than I can type. What I posit here merely gives a sketch of what I see happening and some consequences for us to consider.
Here we go.
Augmented Reality - or “AR” as it is also known (and I fucking hate the over use of acronyms in this dirt stupid KFC, McD, ROTFLMAO world of ours) - is the use of technology to enhance our senses and provide a richer experience of the world around us.
A simple cartoon example would be Steve Austin’s bionic eye in The Six Million Dollar Man that could zoom in with really cool “boo-boo-boo-boo-boo!” sounds. While we’re on the verge of having implanted tech just like Steve Austin the reality is more complex, not only in what can (and will) be implemented but also how these ubiquitously enhanced senses of ours will change how we live and behave in this world and consequently change what it means to be human.
One of the most vocal enthusiasts for augmented reality at the moment is Bruce Sterling who has been devoting the bulk of his recent blog postings to the subject and he can always be counted on to point out the deliciousness of fundamental transformative power coming soon to an eyeball, ear, tongue and brain really near you.
Here’s a keynote address Sterling gave a week ago at the Layar Launch Event in Amsterdam:
Thanks, Bruce, now let’s have a practical demonstration of what this funky augmented reality shit is all about.
I’ve posted Pattie Maes TED Talk here before but it’s worth putting up again because it pertains directly to what I am nattering on about. Maes is speaking of research she and her team at MIT have been doing on a project called Sixth Sense
Of course, it’s the abilities displayed in Pattie Maes talk that matter more than the cludgey gear slung around the neck of her colleague.
A lot of people see that video and immediately say: “Yeah, but who wants to go walking around looking like a dork with a big piece of shit hanging off them?” - oh, there are a few but the people who make that comment are completely missing the point.
It’s the context.
It’s the inherent idea that counts. The tech will inevitably, inexorably. become smaller and more wearable. How wearable? Remember Steve Austin and his “boo-boo-boo-boo-boo!” eyeball?
Until we get the Steve Austin Special - competitively priced well below the $6 million price break - we’ll just have to make do with our arms length windows on the world.
That would be our phones.
iPhones and all those who follow in its wake are the AR device du jour. The best known of the lot is NearestTube, which uses the GPS and compass capabilities of the iPhone to help you find the best route on the subway. But, to paraphrase the opening narration of the Six Million Dollar Man: “We have the technology, let’s abuse it.”
Issues of data-privacy aside (see Lawyers below) that’s some cool shit.
It seems these days everyone and their dog are trying to make the next best iPhone app but that’s a far cry from wearable, insertable, implantable AR tech, right?
Well - maybe.
Don’t go thinking that it’s only the big huge well funded mega tech companies and university labs that are coming up with all this cool shit. Another aspect of what makes this tech/sense evolution so cool is how it is burbling and fermenting in the myriad garage labs around the planet. Folks who, on their own time (a la the protagonists of the movie Primer), innovate in their home made laboratories - like part-time Dr. Frankensteins - crafting really wild ideas with readily accessible tech.
Some of this home-brew lab work is focused on genetics and that scares the hell out of me but since this is a happy happy joy joy blog post and we’ll save the “Oh god, oh god, we’re all gonna die.” blog post for another day.
Johnny Lee gave a great demo at TED where he showed what could be done by cheaply hacking the Wii remotes to craft all sorts of intriguing possibilities.
And when you add the Wii hacks to a 3D display and ultrasonic displacement you get a proto-type for a touchable hologram.
I know what you’re thinking and yes, porn in the future will be awesome.
Touching virtual bewbs is but one part of the equation. The true innovators - the ones who will be crafting the truly disrupting uses of AR - will be the folks working alone, in their basement or garage, unleashing what at first appears to be a simple game-like app built from readily available gear and quickly becomes adopted as a new and necessary way of seeing and interacting with the world around us.
Count on it.
Now let’s take this AR stuff a little further, shall we?
Look at the Microsoft Photosynth project.
Amassing the vast and continually growing library of images from around the world, collating them together and intuitively crafting a 3D representation of real world locales. Neat! What’s that got to do with AR?
Show up anywhere and layer on top images from every angle and across a span of time. Mix in a tad of that facial recognition shit and you have a playlist of who’s walked those streets you now tread upon or have gazed out the windows above you. The time of the place will hover over it just as surely as the light which meets your eyes as you gaze upon the actual real world structures. Time - history - formed not just from the perspective of Napolean’s winners but from the experience of any participant who happened to capture a sliver of their time in place, will hang like neglected Christmas lights from every location on the planet.
Make the media layers of AR richer and deeper and the passing of time itself will be reduced in meaning.
And then - there’s virtual worlds.
Oh shit.
I’ve blabbered on about this before. Look at the stuff I just showed you. Now take a more detailed 3D representation of Google Earth. Add the ability to travel that world with an avatar. Add the ability to connect the various virtual worlds together - and, yes, folks are actively working toward making this happen. Stir in any of your favourite virtual worlds. Mash ‘em up. Voila.
You can appear as an avatar in a virtual reality simulacrum of the world and transport yourself to a cafe on the other side of the world - a representation of a real cafe - and sit across from a friend who is actually there. They (and anyone else fitted with the tech) will see you sitting, perhaps ghost-like, in your chair at the table. What used to be called “spirit photography” would now be seen as the next wave of social media.
Personally, I just love the idea of the eventual merging of virtual worlds when World Of Warcraft guilds will storm the barricades of Second Life and decimate the entire place without ever once having to resort to any flying penises.
But that’s just me.
Our virtual worlds will augment our real worlds. The layers of virtual reality that can be woven with our perceived reality is stunning. The world is gonna become a fucking Hieronymus Bosch painting of hallucinations. It used to be just crazy people walked down the street, talking to themselves, seeing visions and walking into traffic. Now everyone’s gonna be doing it. What will the crazy folks do to distinguish themselves?
Speakin’ of crazy folks - let’s get into the shit.
Lawyers and marketers.
Oh yeah.
Let’s kick the marketers in the nuts first.
Folks in marketing say they are providing a service to both producers and consumers in this world by making available the information necessary for informed choices. Bullshit. They help sell crap. They help sell policy. Marketers are scum. I’m with Bill Hicks on this one:
The obtusely sociopathic marketing monkeys, the progeny of Bunyan’s Vanity Fair, will forever seek ways to insert themselves and their message into the line-of-sight of your experience of this world. Like Chaplin in his first film, Kid Auto Races In Venice, or the scene stealing squirrel - but without the charm and humour - they will find and exploit any and every opportunity to get your attention. Mix that up with AR.
Walk down the street on a sunny day, observing the world through your AR filters, and you will see billboards change to suit your targeted demographic; store signs will be augmented to get your attention; directions to sponsored events will compete for display space - it will all get eyeball bleedingly irritating in a very very short time. Some locations will willingly make use of the tech to showcase their wares. Other locations will look forward to making a buck renting the AR space of their street or building to a series of targeted rotating ads.
Some locations won’t want to have these ads over-layed on the real world views of their buildings. Will they be able to opt out? If the net service you subscribe to sells any blank space available for advertising the actual owners of the space wouldn’t have any control of what gets presented in your AR view of the world. This is similar to what’s already going on with Rogers and other service providers who think they have a right to inflict themselves upon your transport through the net, replacing ads, redirecting traffic and generally acting like ignorant, arrogant, greedy douchebags.
You may not be able to escape the barrage of unwanted AR messages that will litter your world view like the road side billboards of yore.
Or would you?
Bring in the lawyers.
I’m usually with Billy The Shakes when it comes to lawyers. They’re fun to kick around - until you need one. But, for the most part, they’re about as beneficial to the growth of humanity as marketers (see Bill Hicks above).
Just as Stanislaw Lem loved to probe the ethics and legal ramifications of robots in our society, we would be well advised to get a preview of how AR will affect our jurisprudence of the senses as touched by AR.
It was a big deal back in the 1970’s when the concept of “air rights” came into being - the right to sell and trade in the real estate that hovered over the actual surface of owned land. Like the debt trades that have recently beggared America, the rights to open space could be bought, sold, and traded as needed. So too the rights to the AR space could conceivably become a viable economic model - controlling what can (and cannot) be augmented over a view of a physical locale. Issues of free speech will erupt - escpecially when vociferously pursued by a business agenda - when any controls are sought to reduce, replace or eliminate any undesired AR presence.
The DMCA, no doubt, will also be brought into play (just as abused as it is today) to prevent the unauthorized use of content, trademarks or logos - or to restrain any unfavourable AR commentary placed up a business. Visible and prominent comments - similar to what might be found on a blog but now hovering in the air in front of any given establishment - thumbs up or thumbs down, restaurant reviews or revealing corporate profiles that do not place a company in the best light could be posted and subsequently suppressed.
Is it free speech or is it graffiti? Where does your right to know stop and where does their right to inflict begin? Could instrusive AR marketing be considered spam? Is the pollution and overt control of your senses a viable claim for legal action? Will large and powerful interests be able to hold sway over how you see the world you would like to choose to see through the technology you choose to apply to yourself?
Yes, indeed, kill the lawyers before they impoverish us all - but not before we get laws passed in our favour.
It all sounds silly because it all seems so much of a cartoon right now, doesn’t it? But we must consider these implications of where our extended senses are leading us. We must anticipate the best and the worst uses to which humanity will employ these innovations.
The current battles being waged over who owns and controls the internet are, for the most part, narrowly focused on the desire of a few large corporations to maintain an old business model by making the internet become the new television versus the desire of human beings to express themselves and connect with each other on a truly global scale.
It would be good to remember the significant part of the AR acronym is the letter R.
Reality.
The internet isn’t television. Despite the proliferation of trivial distractions that threaten, as Neil Postman warned, to amuse ourselves to death, the true value, the true nature, the true destiny (if you will) of the internet is to make our real world more real to us. Once the technology becomes ubiquitous and becomes not something that sits outside of us but is an undeniable extension of who we are and how we experience this world then, and only then, will the really big ass disruption occur.
If you are lucky enough to be free to use this technology to transcend the boundaries of time and space and personal knowledge you will quickly and easily discover what it means to be human.
All other distractions will fade away.
I guarantee it.
Of course, I could be completely wrong and maybe we’ll just end up like a bunch of embryonic meat puppet slaves to the devouring robotic overlords of the Matrix.
Still - it would be more interesting than the drab and petty shit being inflicted upon us now.
I’ll leave the last word for Bruce Sterling in a talk he gave over a year ago about the ubiquitous nature of our technologies and where they are plausibly leading us. A little behind the times now, even after only a year of innovative development, but still a good primer for what I’ve been nattering on about.
Keep your eyes open folks - and look at what you choose to.
Cheers.
P. S. When I said: “Speaking of crazy - “ I did not mean to equate lawyers and marketers with people suffering from or coping with mental illness. That would be a wholly inaccurate and unfair depiction of anyone with a mental illness. My apologies.
P. P. S. Chris Grayson of GigantiCo left a comment on this article - you should check out his blog - he covers this territory in more detail and with greater aplomb than I. Thanks, Chris!
On Friday we head out east to visit my sister, her family and some very dear friends in Prince Edward Island enjoying the fresh air.
Speaking of fresh air -
While I enjoy the east coast breezes I shan’t be without the interwebs but I might get more lazy than I already am. So this is the post that says I’ll be out of town for a while.
If I remembered to pay the bills then this web site will stay up and running while I’m gone. If not — well then you won’t be reading this and it won’t matter.
Cheers.
P. S. In keeping with the photo above, I just had to post this video because the tune is very catchy. It’s Storm Large’s song 8 MILES WIDE, from her hit one-woman show Crazy Enough and it was sent to me by Fred via The Bloggess.
Rheingold spoke at the Reboot Britain conference about 21st Century Literacies and he always gives good talks. His sometimes halting delivery is more than made up for in the depth and breadth of ideas he gently pries apart and reveals for our consumption and consideration.
This is a cool video Cory Doctorow posted over at BoingBoing. It’s just some neat footage of a neutrally bouyant balloon that is placidly hovering in a room.
A pink balloon.
Those of you who have been reading this blog for some time will know where this going.
Last year, over the Christmas holidays, I posted here (and on Twitter) about the plight of a small, homeless pink balloon named - appropriately enough - Pinky. I can’t replay the old blog post here because when I fucked up my blog it disappeared into the ether of the interwebs along with 2 to 3 years worth of mental gems and turds - but if anyone can find it for me I’d appreciate it. Nor can I lay out the original tweets - entitled Teh Saga Of Pinky - which inspired the blog post in the first place because apparently time to Twitter is like the flat Earth or the simulated reality of the button-eyed freaks in Gaiman’s Coraline. Twitter Time is only visible within a limited distance after which it simply ceases to be and all sense of history drops over the edge into a timeless abyss and is lost forever.
But I digress.
Here’s what I can recount:
We had a small pink balloon show up on our doorstep in the midst of winter. It lingered there but we (myself and my immediate family) being heartless cretins, left it there - just to see what would happen.
It was a loyal balloon that stayed true to its desire to find a home with us until finally I could take it no longer and posted a series of tweets that ended with this picture and asked the question:
“Should we bring Pinky inside & offer protection from the elements - or should we let nature take its course?”
Note: For the record - TwitPic has all my photo posts still archived. Perhaps I should stick pictures with all my tweets from now on.
The response to my Twitter question was an undeniable “Yes! Rescue Pinky!” - and so I did.
In my original post I also tucked in a bit of blather about how human beings like to anthropomorphize things, imbue them with character and feelings, and all too often bestow our care and affection upon objects more than we do on other human beings in our midst. We are all some really fucked up monkeys.
While my original Twitter posts and blog entry have vanished forever I did manage to dig out of my email files this late night drunken missive I wrote to myself on the couch with my iPhone as a nudge to make the blog post the next day about Pinky:
For what is a balloon? Any balloon? It is but a container - a vessel of a moment in time - the encapsulization of the breath of life. And here we have this feeble artifact, this minor player in the grand theatre and parade of life - a lowly, singular, lonesome sagged pink balloon - a vessel of the breath of life constrained, held back, diminished, neglected, buried - and yet persevering against all odds, unrelenting in it’s obdurant determination to not just survive but to also be noticed, to be made note of, to be recognized, named and accepted. Each one of us may only play upon these doorsteps for the most brief of times and yet we are most definitely here and not to be neglected nor discounted nor, worse still, ignored - we are here - as in Horton Hears A Who - we are here, we are here, we are here!
One balloon serves as a rather frail and tepid metaphor for all the many things each of us may ascribe to the story. But it serves well enough -that lone sad semi-deflated rubber sack of air is all of us; it is what we are, how we are perceived and what we yearn to be.
One little balloon - on a doorstep - in a snowstorm.
What a wonderous world this would be when we are finally capable of setting aside the metaphors and allegories and heart warming images to clearly see that all of these stories - that all stories - are about us - about you and me - about us all.
Perhaps one day.
Until then we shall have to be content and find solace for our hearts in the tales of the trials and tribulations of a small pink balloon on a snowy doorstep.
Shortly thereafter my friend Jill Gollick also had an encounter with a pink balloon. She had been away for the holiday season but, via Twitter, got my posts about Teh Saga Of Pinky.
When she got home this was waiting at her doorstep:
I didn’t put it there.
Honest.
While Jill’s tale of Pinky The Second ended in horrible tragedy, our Pinky lived happily ever after.
But this whole errant pink balloon thing is starting to get on my nerves.
First me.
Then Jill.
And now this hovering version of the same.
Where are these balloons coming from? What do they want? Where is all this leading?
Perhaps time will tell.
But not Twitter time, of course - that’s too short.
Should you or anyone you know have any pink balloon stories to share with us please be sure to let me know.
In the meantime, here’s some balloons who don’t need rescuing.
Those who know me have already heard this story but I keep getting encouraged to post it again so here it is.
It’s a true story and still gives me the willies just thinking about it. It involves me a recipe for pie and an eel.
You can download the whole seven pages of woe here as a PDF but here’s a brief snip from the tale:
Something to remember when slaughtering eels is to never panic and begin slashing at your own hands with a sharp knife. Not a good thing to do.
The knife blade dug into my left hand just at the first knuckle, leaving a neat V-shaped cut that flapped open and bled freely. An eighth of an inch to the right and it would have severed the tendon to my index finger.
I shook off the offending serpent and retreated to the kitchen sink. As I washed my hand, peeling eel grease out of the wound, and bandaged myself, my anger boiled up inside of me. How dare such a simple creature attack me? After all, I am a superior being. I reside relatively high on the food chain. I am a human being, dammit! That thing’s not going to get the best of ME!
My friend Ben has suggested I re-stage the event for video but I am not so inclined. I am not now afraid of eels nor am I reluctant to reprise the pie recipe - it was, after all, quite delicious - I just think it would end being like Woody Allen and the lobsters in Annie Hall, so that won’t be happening.
Yesterday I went into a tizzy because I couldn’t find a particular backup disk with some important script files on it. Whenever that sort of shit happens to me I behave pretty much the same way I do when my computer or hard drive goes down.
It’s bad enough losing data when one is notorious for not backing up their shit - but when you lose the fucking backup - that’s just too much.
I stomp around and fume and swear and throw things and just generally behave like an ill-tempered ogre that might be prone to dismembering friends and family members if any of them so much as utter the words: “Is something wrong?”
When basic crap around me breaks down or refuses to work - or refuses to be found - I cease to be a civilized human being. I would not fare well in any post-apocalyptic scenario - whether it be an Omega Man or A Boy And His Dog or This Quiet Earth or any other world-gone-wrong scenario. As much as I enjoy watching those films and putting myself in the role of the stalwart and ever-resourceful hero, when confronted with the reality of things-fucking-up I quickly realize I am not the hero type - I am, in fact, the Wallace Shawn character from My Dinner With Andre.
“But, Andre, I like my electric blanket!”
Fortunately, after digging through mountains of improperly filed debris which I like to refer to as my stuff, I managed to find the files I was seeking. However, it would be too easy to simply carry on as before now that the world has been set right once again. It’s not right - it’s still busted - I just happen to be able to once more find a way to pick out a path amongst the shattered landscape that surrounds me. As someone who lives, for the most part, inside their own head, I am all too capable of ignoring the basics that would drive more sane creatures into outrageous fits of despair. Dirty dishes, mounds of laundry, stacks of books, desk buried beneath a sedimentary paper simulacrum of geological proportions - all of it is so easy for me to ignore because all the real action is happening between my ears.
I was better able to cope with this state of affairs when I had an assistant and an office. That’s my excuse - for the moment - and I’m sticking with it. I pretty much need a full time nurse to lead me around and point at the next thing on my To Do List. All the other petty inconveniences that plague normal people and which constitute life in the real world are - in my case - always better handled by someone else.
That someone else is not my wife nor would I ever expect her to assume such a role. Merely thinking of the possibility - let alone voicing it - would ensure my quick demise in flash of eye-ball laser power reducing me to a small pile of smouldering and bewildered ash. She has her own shit to deal with and the attendant shit of sharing her life with the organizational equivalent of Charles Shultz’s Pig Pen.
This is something I must handle on my own.
I’ve done this before, you know. Every time something goes horribly wrong as a consequence of my own inability to cope with the world beyond my eyeballs, I vow to shape up, get my shit together, hunker down, suck it up and a litany of other buzz words all uttered with the intent of, once and for all, ceasing this obsessive compulsive behaviour that is an extension of my fractured thinking processes.
Having one’s thinking process be fractured is not, on its own, a bad thing. It leads to many acrostic views and stimulating synchronistic perspectives that can feed multiple creative endeavours.
It just also - in my case at least - requires someone to follow me around with a shovel and a broom.
The human equivalent of a dog-walker, I suppose, prepared to stoop and scoop and perhaps occasionally yank on the leash to keep me off the grass - (that’s intended as a metaphor, yo) - since I am so obviously incapable of doing anything that doesn’t involve what is of immediate interest right in front of my nose or right behind my eyes.
For today, at least, I am making the effort to clear up the strategic piles of thoughts, works, interests, possibilities and potential that allow to cluster about my feet (often literally) and get myself back on the path - any path - that leads to something - anything - remotely productive.
Tomorrow, I’ll probably dig out all the old wind-up toys and spend the day on the floor taking pictures of an as yet to be conjured epic scenario - the dirty laundry can be sculpted to create other worldly landscapes - and those stacks of books can be pressed into service as the ruins of tall buildings from some distant and dysfunctional metropolis.
But what’s really truly important about all of this is . . . I found what I was looking for.
Although today is Good Friday - ( I’m always naturally inclined to shout: “What’s so good about it?!” ) - and that makes it an official sort of holiday, official enough that my son is home from school and underfoot, I am still trying to get my tasks done so I can finally, once and for all, stamped it no erasing, launch my other fucking web site. I’ve used this animated GIF in the earlier iteration of this blog and remembered it fondly enough to include it here. That, of course, lead me down the rabbit hole of leafing through all my image files from the old posts and, just like when you clean out the attic or the cluttered shelf at the back of the closet, found myself saying things like: “Ohhh, I remember that one!” and wanting to post it once again for all to see. In all modesty, I did some funny shit with my Photoshopped images and I will make an effort to re-use them here but for now I can only regard the effort as yet another steaming wad of procrastinaton that stands before me and my goal of project completion. Hell, just writing all these words here is an act of procrastination in itself; dutifully pounding out an endless stream of description that has no deeper meaning or purpose other than to keep me from doing what it I have tasked myself with.
Enough!
I’m still here - I’m still posting - and when I’m done with my work I will post here about that and tell you what went into making it all happen.
Jill Gollick has been kind enough to invite me to participate in one of her great WGC discussions at Camera on April 29th to talk about the project. You can find out more at the Facebook page for the Web Creators Show And Tell event. That should be fun. We might even be streaming the evening online - I’ll let you know if we get that happening.
And now I shall walk away from the interwebs and get my ass to work.
The name of my website is millsworks - as in: As little as possible. I have been described by those close to me as the world’s busiest lazy man. I’m built for comfort, not for speed. I prefer being horizontal.
Mike Rowe is the host of the television series Dirty Jobs where he explores (so we don’t have to) the filthiest crappiest jobs on the planet. I’m sure he’s only just begun to scratch the surface of the myriad of human toil considered to be less than worthy for the rest of us wallowing in this declining mess once called Western Civilization.
I’ve had my share of shitty gigs. I won’t bore you with the alleged street credentials of my god awful, mind numbing and soul destroying minimum wage days. Been there, done that, don’t want to go back.
Please understand - I’m not completely adverse to hard work. I have often worked myself sick doing the very things I love so dearly. Finishing a production and ending up in hospital as a result is not a rare experience for me. I just figure if I’m gonna wear myself to the bone for something it had damn well better be something I actually care about. Finding that sort of thing these days seems to be getting harder but that’s territory for a different blog post.
I like watching Rowe’s show and I enjoy his take on the gritty realities of life around us that we choose to ignore or separate ourselves from on a daily basis. The very things that make our lives of comfort possible are based upon the backs of those who do the work the rest of us so assiduously avoid.
In this TED Talk from last December, Rowe explores his experiences and comes to some common sense conclusions about the nature of hard work and why we need to support it.
Now if you’ll excuse me - I gotta get busy with my own shit.
Yesterday I went into a tizzy because I couldn’t find a particular backup disk with some important script files on it. Whenever that sort of shit happens to me I behave pretty much the same way I do when my computer or hard drive goes down.
Having one’s thinking process be fractured is not, on its own, a bad thing. It leads to many acrostic views and stimulating synchronistic perspectives that can feed multiple creative endeavours.
Although today is Good Friday - ( I’m always naturally inclined to shout: “What’s so good about it?!” ) - and that makes it an official sort of holiday, official enough that my son is home from school and underfoot, I am still trying to get my tasks done so I can finally, once and for all, stamped it no erasing, launch my other fucking web site. I’ve used this animated GIF in the earlier iteration of this blog and remembered it fondly enough to include it here. That, of course, lead me down the rabbit hole of leafing through all my image files from the old posts and, just like when you clean out the attic or the cluttered shelf at the back of the closet, found myself saying things like: “Ohhh, I remember that one!” and wanting to post it once again for all to see. In all modesty, I did some funny shit with my Photoshopped images and I will make an effort to re-use them here but for now I can only regard the effort as yet another steaming wad of procrastinaton that stands before me and my goal of project completion. Hell, just writing all these words here is an act of procrastination in itself; dutifully pounding out an endless stream of description that has no deeper meaning or purpose other than to keep me from doing what it I have tasked myself with.
