Action Figure

Maxwell's demon, a thought experiment meant to challenge the second law of thermodynamics, posits that the entropy of a system not at equilibrium may, with a little help, be able to decrease instead of increase.

In other words, a cup of hot water placed in a freezer could stay hot if something or someone could track all the molecules in the freezer, find the ones that are faster (thus hotter) than the majority and send them into the area around the cup.

Neofatalists believe our actions are predetermined by our personalities and that, in fact, the whole of existence was predetermined by the cause of events. In other words, neofatalists believe free-will is an illusion, not because we can't choose things, but because our very being is connected to those choices.

I took a walk to work on Monday. I decided to break every action down to its basics. I'm moving forward. I'm moving my left foot. My left foot is hitting the concrete. Every action, deconstructed and broadcast in my nifty little brain. I've taken this walk every day for a year. And I didn't realize, until this walk, that the wall closest to the door in the laundromat next to Moby's kabobs in Georgetown has a poster of Michael Bolton.

Life is School

Less time for foursquare.
More for homework.
Class is in session.

This Is Only Temporary

Hey you. Over here. Come on. Yeah, give me some sugar. Give me a hug. Yer a good person. No, really. You are. I just want to eat you up. I just want to take you and eat you up. I'm gonna eat everyone up. Just munch on em and consume them and be one big old sack of oneness and being slopping around taking it all in. Yeah, no, it's good. This is good. You'll just want to baste yourself in an herbed butter first.

Mommy, where do fish come from?

Jokes I Made Up

Can I trade in for a self-wiping butt?
Frozen food doesn't get out much.
So, if we call it mellow, no one will freak out that it's yellow.

Fun Overlord

Thanks to Matt Sesow, I can now count myself as the "Andy Dick of the DC art scene."

BLOG SWARM OF NOTE: Go, go, go. Capital Fringe Fest starts tomorrow. Buy some tickets y'all.

Are They Allowed to Do That?

Canon Elph, how I love thee. While strolling around Dupont Circle on Saturday, I ran into Zafar, a travelling drum group from North Carolina. They're on their way to New Hampshire. In between, they're busking in cities and using found objects as their instruments.

They set up shop in front of Starbucks. In the middle of their set I realized, shnikeys, I have a camera. Yay!

When a group of buskers take over DuPont Circle using objects they've found on the streets, it gets my attention. And makes me wonder: Why can't we have this much fun all the time?

DC is thought of as a vanilla town. Not much going on. The subway closes at midnight during the weekend and 3am on the weekends. The mainstream theater scene was created mainly for lobbyists and the mainstream art scene creates stuff meant to show off the walls of over-priced brownstones and condos. But the potential is there.

Want to see the potential? Attend the Capital Fringe Fest.

I Made This

I'm happy to announce that one of my paintings is hanging in the "Banners from the Fringe" group show at the DC Economic Partnership from July 16 until July 30. The DC Economic Partnership is at 1495 F Street NW.

My painting is hanging with works from some of my favorite DC artists, including Scott Brooks, Dana Ellyn, Gregory Ferrand, and Matt Sesow.

Here's an image of the banner in situ.

Manhole Covers

I'm wondering what's underneath.

IF I WERE: A Robot In Search of Enlightenment

Every prayer from Bible to Buddha would be pasted on my circuits.
Your soul would trip my compassion sensors.
I'd be a pious, justice-seeking piece of work.

The Secret Order of Hipster Burnouts

THE ORDER: Seldom Higgins, Tulip McCoy, Mince Daniels and Wingnut Brown

THE PREMISE: During a Maypole ritual at the OHB headquarters, Seldom Higgins, in a fit of rage over the absence of vinyl records, throws the sacred salt shaker. The salt shaker is sullied. The order will be ruined unless someone can locate more salt from the Great Hipster Coffee Shop in the Sky (rumored to be flying over Wicker Park, Chicago as we speak).

LET'S DO THIS THING #1

MARTIN: Lars, you’re a genius.

LARS: I’m getting better.

MARTIN: Better? Do you know how much soup like this would be worth in the city?

LARS: No, I don’t.

MARTIN: Exactly.

--

MARTIN: Lars, you’re a genius.

LARS: Never felt better.

MARTIN: The cape. The costume. It suits you well.

LARS: It’s the life I was meant to lead.

MARTIN: You’ve found your calling.

LARS: I’m ready to save the world now.

MARTIN: Exactly.

--

MARTIN: Lars, you’re a genius.

LARS: I was stressed.

MARTIN: In double overtime, at the end of your career? What the hell?

LARS: I got angry.

MARTIN: About what?

LARS: He said I was going to lose the World Cup.

MARTIN: Exactly.

I have the power to eat things that are alive.

It is Not Your Imagination

Something is wrong with you.
You should get help.

Cameron's Love Song to No One In Particular

I'm not in control. I don't know what I'll do next. I'm not sure how it will turn out. The only things I have to grab on to are grilled cheese, mine, moving pictures, mine, books, mine, crayons, mine, and the rhythm of your voice.

IF I WERE: A Robot at the Ocean

I'd eat every 3.45 hours, making sure to drink dark beers for social lubrication.
The mosquitoes would be no match for my automatic hybrid fly swatter/bugsprayer plugin.
6 Megapixel manipulations of reality would take the place of reality. All the robots would be smiling and having a good time. The bad times would never have happened.
There would be no down time. Every moment would be calculated to achieve maximum fun and minimum expense.
The salt in the air would cleanse my circuits. I would be able to return to my city robot existence with more efficiency and less error messages.
I would be an ocean-loving, lobster-grubbing, tourist-hopping piece of work.

The Grass is Green Right Now

Poop is funny. You're a baby!
I'm sorry bout the fit.

I don't spend a lot of time with kids. Toddlers. Babies. It's fun. Except for the tantrums.

That's mine.
Um. Okay.

For Today I am a Child

On vacation, hanging with the fam.

Synchronicity, a term coined by Carl Jung, refers to "temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events." As in coincidences that cannot be explained by causality. It's about finding patterns in the chaos.

In May, when I was on my way to New Orleans to visit Peace Corps friends, I read a story in Atlantic Monthly about Moto, an experimental restaurant in Chicago formally filed under the genre of Molecular Gastronomy. The head chef Homaro Cantu is getting crazy kudos for his unorthodox methods, including carbonated fruit, edible paper and fun uses for Class IV lasers. I was interested in Cantu's creative translation of gourmet cuisine. It's like punk rock meets opera.

Friday night, some of my friends and I went to a concert at the Black Cat (DC's mecca for punk rockish music). The bands included Psapp, a group from Brooklyn that has an obsession with cats and funky sound loops. Smitten with the show, I purchased the band's disc and had the lead singer autograph it. When I sat back down, a dood was smoking near my group.

As I sat down and showed my new purchase, smoking guy commented about Psapp's cat obsession. And we started a conversation that would last the next four hours.

Smoking guy works for a nonprofit in DC. But he used to work as a chef for Moto. Cue synchronicity music. Seems creating avante garde food is a high-pressure, high-stakes industry. Smoking guy burnt out. He's still passionate about food but he had to take a break to find out how to balance his life and his passions. That's a very familiar conundrum for me.

Ever since Peace Corps, this type of coincidence has become run-of-the-mill. The fellow Peace Corps trainee who went to the same school and church as I did when I was a kid. The member of my current church who, as it turns out, became good friends with a friend of mine from high school after challenging him to a karaoke-off in a random bar in Illinois several years ago. The Peace Corps recruiter I worked with whose last name is also Lee and who also served in the Dominican Republic. It goes on.

Part of me wants to find order in all of this. To say it means something. But, like the subconscious creating the illusion of consciousness, I believe synchronicity is an illusion. There is a connection in everything. That dood next to me on the subway had the same kindergarten teacher as I did. The rock I just stepped on was once part of the house I grew up in. When I find these things out they seem fantastic. But they were always there. Nothing has changed. Just my perception.

Synchronicity is being aware. Synchronicity is making connections. Synchronicity is a parlor trick.

Keep on entertaining me life. The show's just starting to get interesting.

This already happened.

Your brain's playing tricks on you. You are not controlling this moment. It is.

GLEANINGS: It takes up to .5 seconds for your conscious mind to be aware of any stimulus. Some parts of your body take longer to relay information than others. Once all the information arrives, the brain creates the illusion that the awareness happened at the same time as the stimulus. This illusion is called evocative time, and helps to explain the feeling of things taking more or less time than the clock on the wall says.

LEARN MORE:
Dylan William on the delay and its implications for teaching
Benjamin Libet's experiments
Gazzaniga's theory that our unconscious is really running the show