The soft ghost in the squishy machine. A falcon, or a storm, or a great song. Curious podcaster, occasional blogger, moody music maker. I also answer to Daniel. Say hello.
Is before vs. after the best way to determine
happiness?
Better than before but not better than
this.
Disoriented when I leave the elevator.
Circuitous motion, bed to chair,
loving to hating, free to feel sympathy
for skeletons
listening
to
their
music.
I cannot even ask you a question
without it being an awkward bother.
Art was never meant to get in
the way.
disintermediate
wink without the ink
Golllyyy, are they solving world hunger in there?
spin on that for a while
the long pull in the tent
Ohh, you’re on E-Bay again? Buying jeans?!
Dishonesty questions honesty’s integrity. People with good intentions will not be quick to assume that your intentions are bad.
Always remember that.
Today, as I was reporting for a job interview, I got into a brief, awkward chat with a security guard. The building I was in has a kiosk greeting you as you walk in the building. The lady at the kiosk generates a slip of paper with a barcode on it granting you access to the building. This piece of paper comes out sort of curved, which is problematic for the building’s security scanner.
The last interview I had here, it took me a long time (relatively speaking) to get the silly thing to read my barcode. The security guard, whom will be known as “Tiny” going forward, then tried to help me. There we were, me and Tiny, wrestling with this little piece of paper. Trying to get the machine. To read it.
So, when I waltzed in today, I gave him a hard time. I figured the thing would be difficult again. So, while I was waiting to scan my slip, lo and behold the lady in front of me was having difficulty too. But, overall, it didn’t take all that long. So, when I got up to Tiny, I said something like “You guys need a new method of scanning slips. This really shouldn’t be so difficult.”
Then, Tiny glared at me for a moment… not in an intimidating way, per se`, more in a very condescending way, as if to say “YO HOMEBOY, THIS SHIT IS STATE OF THE ART. RESPECT.”
Then, after a long glare and pause, he said “Are you serious?”
.. crickets…
“I mean, really. Are you serious?????”
Suffice it to say that he succeeded in embarrassing and shaming me for saying it. I regretted it. While I still think I am ultimately right, I kind of felt like I was shitting on his brand new couch. A man just shouldn’t do that to another man. As blinded by science as Tiny may be, I should have more tact than that. If I end up working there, I am calling it now that Tiny and I become friends though; that’s just how it works.
An M.I.T. neuroscientist named Ann Graybiel told me that she and her colleagues began exploring habits more than a decade ago by putting their wired rats into a T-shaped maze with chocolate at one end. The maze was structured so that each animal was positioned behind a barrier that opened after a loud click. The first time a rat was placed in the maze, it would usually wander slowly up and down the center aisle after the barrier slid away, sniffing in corners and scratching at walls. It appeared to smell the chocolate but couldn’t figure out how to find it. There was no discernible pattern in the rat’s meanderings and no indication it was working hard to find the treat.
The probes in the rats’ heads, however, told a different story. While each animal wandered through the maze, its brain was working furiously. Every time a rat sniffed the air or scratched a wall, the neurosensors inside the animal’s head exploded with activity. As the scientists repeated the experiment, again and again, the rats eventually stopped sniffing corners and making wrong turns and began to zip through the maze with more and more speed. And within their brains, something unexpected occurred: as each rat learned how to complete the maze more quickly, its mental activity decreased. As the path became more and more automatic — as it became a habit — the rats started thinking less and less.
In which I learned that Orwell was wrong: Big Brother isn’t the government, it’s Target.
Charles Duhigg, How Companies Learn Your Secrets
This is, like, the secret nut graf in this widely circulated NYT piece about shopping habits. Tell me this doesn’t explain everything about everything.
(via alexbaca)
Up late after a very busy day and I was daydreaming for a moment. I was reminded somehow of my 2D art class in college. The professor didn’t like me from the get-go for some reason. He even gave me the stink eye when I would flirt with the girl who regularly sat in front of me in class. Whatever, dude!
Her name was Melanie and she’d wear sweat pants to class, which I personally find to be a turn-on for reasons that will tactfully go unspecified. She was super cute and sweet, but very manipulative. She once invited me to her dorm room to hang out. When I arrived, she was sitting next to her boyfriend, whom I did not know about. ~Awkward~. Later that week, she invited herself to the darkroom with me. I was a hobbyist concert photographer in college and logged many a long night in the darkroom, which was in the dreadfully-quiet, creepy basement of the campus chapel. Digressing here. You can imagine what should have happened in the darkroom with an earnest boy and a fickle girl. But, nothing happened, actually. I was extremely shy about sex in college (remaining a virgin until I was 24, in fact. What a chore that was.) Needless to say though, I cultivated a taste for tension and the darkroom was as sexy as it was innocent. She showed me the heart monitor that she needed to wear at all times. How endearing.
So, this 2D class. One of our projects later in the semester was to create a design for a fake product. I used Illustrator to create a soap detergent box called “FUCK!” The product’s slogan was “Do you hate to do laundry? FUCK! We do too.” It had very facetious instructions for how to do laundry on the back of the box. I liked it, but nobody else did. The professor even made a point to address the class on the day I turned in my project. He posed the question to the class, “Are there any words you just wouldn’t use in an academic setting?” Long pause. Then he showed my FUCK! box to the class. Everyone gasped. I raised my hand and pointed out that my project was the only one in the class that everyone knew by name now. Isn’t that advertising’s ultimate goal?
Our final project for the class was to depict a catastrophe. The professor was vague about the parameters. So, being the studious student that I was, the night before it was due, I had done a sum total of zero work on the project. I wanted to get the best grade possible still by putting in the least amount of effort. So, I tore off a yellow post-it note and wrote on it: “This is.” I showed it to my roommate and he gleefully approved my lazy designs of my own demise. I walked in the next day to art class and handed it to him with 3 of my classmates turning in their pieces of shit projects that were more catastrophe themselves than depictions of one. When I handed my post-it note to the professor, he said “Is this your project??” with half a smile, and he reluctantly accepted, as I continued pushing it forward into his hand, nodding in agreement. My 3 classmates were envious of my courage in the most offended, facial-gesticulating way possible. I was red-faced and feeling like an asshole as I walked out, but by the time I got to my dorm room, I was feeling better.
I got a B minus in the class. Not sure what I got on the final project, but at least it was creative.
Not In Love (feat. Robert Smith)
by Crystal Castles
I had a great interview today at a consulting firm downtown! The position sounds exciting and everything seems to fit very well. The recruiting manager told me flat-out that she will be arranging an interview with one of the firm’s partners and their main guy for what I would be doing. So, hooray to that. It’s so comforting to get that kind of immediate feedback in an interview instead of waiting around, waiting for someone to call…. do do do dooo dooooo…..
But, the recruiting manager told me that I may need to be away for a few weeks at a time while working on projects. When she said that, my stomach immediately sank a little. I don’t mind travelling or being away; in fact, it’s something that I welcome. But I thought about my two cats, Lux and Cecilia. My mind immediately went to them all sad and anxious at a boarding kennel. I won’t to do that to them. My next thought was about getting rid of them, blah, which made my stomach sink more, feeling guilty for even thinking it. They’re monsters sometimes, but I’m glad they’re here…
I’ve decided that if I get the position, I’ll hire someone local to visit them here at their home to feed them and play with them during the times that I’m away for an extended period. That arrangement may cost more and be riskier with regard to possible theft, etc, but it seems like the best solution. Does anybody have a better idea? Feel kind of like a nerd that I had such a visceral reaction to it, especially in that particular way, but what can I say… I love ‘em.
Stalker (diptych) (detail)
Watercolor and graphite on panel | 2012 | Influence: Andrei Tarkovsky
Jacob van Loon
