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

Belong. Belong. Belong.

"Tell me who you spend time with and I'll tell you who you are."
-Dominican Aphorism

No, really. I don't want the attention.

Strange

My friend Hotstream has posted a summary of Tap Tap, a comic we created while we were in Peace Corps. It's about zombies, talking dogs, missionaries and voodoo. The story was a bit unwieldy. But the pictures are beautiful.

Hunting

FIELD TRIP: Head over to Head Sticks. Click on animated docs. Enjoy the short film "Hunting" by my friend Kate Gorman.

The Order

I had this statue of Grumpy Bear from the Care Bears. My friend Josh and I pretended it was alive. And when we did bad things it would get grumpier.

I didn't know enough to laugh at myself when I was a kid.

Love Poem to No One In Particular

Crack

The egg recipe WINNERS are Dave Hotstream and Jennifer Reeves. Here's a mash-up of their winning entries:

EGG IN A HOLY BLANKET

1. Fry baby bread hole coffee cup.

2. Salt pepper runny yummy toasty egg.

Grow Up

A SIMPLE IDEA: The Movement to end the Institution of Permission.
Stop following. Start touching.

I do not need permission to go to the bathroom.
I do not need permission for anything else.

You're Not Safe

[Thanks for the photo shoot Rory and Topher. Oh and Jaime, thanks for being a good sport last Friday.]

Several academics, including the economist Christopher Garbacz, have pondered the seat belt paradox. The following comes from Garbacz's paper on New Zealand's seat belt law:

"It appears that the favorable effect [of seatbelts] on automobile occupants may be offset partially, or in some models perhaps completely, by deaths among cyclists and pedestrians that may be caused by more dangerous driving by drivers who feel safer."

In John Adams' book Risk, he suggests accidents would decrease if a sharp spike were installed in every steering wheel.

I've long been infatuated with the paradox of safety. The rush of an audience watching as my ensemble and I perform an improvised musical. The thrill of spending two years on a tropical island. The excitement of the next Big Thing. Those things only happen when the risk of failure is palpable.

I'm a normal guy -- maybe even a little boring. Maybe even a little risk averse. Which is why I need that spike, not the seatbelt. Without it, I'll just go crashing into life willy nilly.

NOTE TO READERS: No more new stuff till Saturday. In the meantime, read the good stuff:
Start Touching
If I Were A Robot
We All Need A Guru
I'm Wrapped In Goodness
Looking Down

Turn that Smile

Dearest reader. I'm in an existential funk. I want you to make me feel better. Right now. Right here. We'll do it together.

Pink monkeys. Unicorns. Duck ponds. Cotton candy. Holding hands. Singing songs. Hanging on someone's words. Having them hang on yours. Laughing because it's the right time to laugh.

Think of Cabbage Patch Dolls, My Little Pony and puggles (a mix of a beagle and a pug).

Now. Take a breath. Breathe in. Breathe out. You are the sea. You are one with the Earth. Now, for the love of God, go make some money.

I'm This Big

INTERACTIVE: Post a good egg recipe in the comments. Bonus points for recipes that include food coloring. Best entry will be reposted on my blog.

It's My Fault

Remember that huge fish I caught when I was a kid?
3.7 foot carp, big and glugging?
I didn't catch it.

Another fisherman gave it me. I put it in my bucket and acted like it was mine. Tons of pictures. Calls to the grandparents. I smiled a lot that night.

We tried to eat that fish but it wouldn't die.

I cannot give everyone a hug.

IF I WERE: A robot

I'd make my bed every day. I'd brush and floss after every meal. I'd do the dishes, dust, disinfect. I'd be very, very clean.

I'd hit on electricians. I'd look up to superconductors. I'd worry about shorts.

Life would make sense. I would enjoy a good cup of coffee without worrying about the existential ramifications of spending three dollars for a beverage that actually depletes my liquid reserves.

Work would involve a lot less singing, very little snacking and absolutely no laughing.

I would be energetic. A team player. A people person. Ready to serve. A piece of work.

Atlas, meet Harold

Just a quick reminder. There are more than 6.5 billion people on Earth. When did this happen? February 25, 2006.

BLOG SWARM OF NOTE: Ze Frank's sandwich-centered vodcast world. (Thanks Sweetney.)

Recurring Dreams

Why do we vote for people and not beliefs?
Same hair. Same suits. Same words.

Why is the idea of a parade better than the reality?
Same elephants. Same floats. Same bare chests.

Why do I contemplate growing out the hair on my head?
Same bald spot. Same horse shoe. Same dream of hair.

It's my only consistent recurring dream. I wake up. I walk to the bathroom. And there I am with a full head of hair. Hi there. Wow. It was all a dream. Deus ex machina. The story is over. Pert Plus is back on the shelf. Boyish life regained.

The current six year-old president, Nate Duffmeister of Illinois, would like to remind you to wash your hands. His vice president, sixty-six year old Merna Johnson of Kansas remembers washing her hands in a sink for the first time and thinking, "All this trouble just to get water to my hands."

Can You Believe It?

A SIMPLE IDEA: Believe everything people say. Believe them, until proven otherwise. Everything.

If the dood behind the cash register says, Hey, I like that shirt. You might want to wear it more often.

If your boss says, that's good work. That's good work. Keep doing it that way.

If the guy on the street says, I want your money. He wants your money.

It's amazing what happens when you start trusting other people.

I'm Gonna Live Forever
Rock Heals is having a zombie haiku contest. Enter people. Enter now.

Here is my entry. It's so going to win.

IN LIEU OF FLOWERS
I’ll be honest about the zombies.
They were meant as decoration.
I didn’t know they’d eat flesh.

Facing Up

When I was a kid, I didn't like to play sports because I was worried a ball would hit my face. I was very careful. Nonetheless, I often got hit in the face.

Now, when I play sports (which, honestly, isn't very often), I mock the ball, frisbee, puck. Hit my fucking face. Hit my fucking face. I haven't been hit in the face in years.

I'm scared.

We all need a guru.
The father of painter Andrew Wyeth, NC Wyeth was an illustrator. Kick ass illustration mind you, illustrating versions of Peter Pan, Treasure Island, Swiss Family Robinson, etc. NC raised Andrew like one of the Lost Boys. It was not a rational "education." In fact, one of NC Wyeth's students, Peter Hurd, noted that the child Andrew could barely read. To this day, Andrew plods along in books. But, um, have you seen Christina's world? Take a look.

The freedoms NC gave his son, the crazy unconventional freedoms, turned Andrew into an illustrator of the soul.

We all need a guru that pushes us to do the unconventional. The scary shite. The stoopid shite. The stuff we're meant to do.

My grandmother used to tell the story of driving through Maine in the summer and seeing Andrew Wyeth on the side of the road with a clothes line across two trees, dozens of watercolors hanging off. To humor him, she bought some of the paintings (a few cents a piece) then threw them away. Whoops.

Start Touching

Come on. Try it. You know you wanna. Yer so ready.

I'm going out on a limb. Your retirement plan is not rocking your world with romantic candlelight dinners and funny kissy poo nights.

Your new plasma TV didn't help you realize life is about getting into other people's craws and sticking there.

Your rennovated kitchen will not keep your neighbors' kids from being functionally illiterate or the homeless man sleeping under your stoop from getting his next hit of crack.

Start touching. Come on Try it. You know you wanna. Yer so ready.

OVERHEARD: "Only in Rhode Island can you keep from going to jail after rear-ending a police cruiser."

I AM SEEING YOU

Have I become a speculative fiction writer, or am I just being prescient? I believe, very soon, you will see people at cafes, headphones in, video instant messaging with friends. Meaning, video iming like it's a cell phone. This makes sense. This is why the whole video messaging didn't work with cell phones. It's not the right medium. You know, the media is the message (or the massage). A computer is the right medium. People will suddenly video message on a computer. Computers are what we use for work. We are ready to pose. We're not ready to pose walking around with a cell phone. Put the lap top on the table. Even if you are out in public, and suddenly, it's cool. It works.

It's a Fixed Race

SIMPLE CONCEPT: The leaders of our country can only be six year-olds and sixty-six year-olds. They get one four year term. All presidential candidates must choose a complementary vice president. For instance, if the candidate is a six year-old named Russ, Russ can pick a sixty-six year-old named Hermione.

Why the dichotomy? Six year-olds know the difference between good and bad. Sixty-six year olds have lived the difference between good and bad.

You Are My Body Guards

Hose Em Down!

A foam is any substance formed by trapping a lot of gas bubbles in a liquid or solid. Solid foams, like polyurethane, polystyrene and polisocyanurate are excellent thermal insulators.

Besides causing anticipation every time I order a Guiness, liquid foams have excellent fire extinguishing abilities (particularly in fighting class B fires -- burning flammable liquids).

Though not a foam, fiberglass insulation is naturally fire retardant. Owens Corning's PINK brand is an industry leader, not only for its durability but also for its long-standing licensing agreement with the Pink Panther cartoon.

Ecstasy

Chocolate, candied ginger, mangoes, early Phillip K. Dick novels, Kurt Vonnegut, Delillo's White Noise, The Simpsons, Dead Can Dance, The Flaming Lips, Poi Dog Pondering.

Looking Down

Rock climbing is dangerous. Stand to the right, walk to the left.

Disney is dangerous. Stand back.

Smoking is dangerous. Stand still.

Driven

I don't own a car. It's worth every bummed ride, every late subway train. I don't have to find parking. I don't have to buy gas or insurance. I don't have to worry about crashing or needing repairs.

I bought my bike a year ago in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of DC. It's a Dahon folder. Fits in my closet. Looks cool. Has eight speeds. Gets me to work in 15 minutes.

I don't own a house. I live in a small studio apartment in the U Street corridor of DC. I can walk to work. There are three grocery stores within an 8 block radius. I have many bars to choose from and a beautiful park just out the building's entrance.

I bought a large jade plant from Home Depot. It looks like a mini tree and I forget to water it sometimes. It makes me feel happy when I look at it. Not as happy as coming home to a dog jumping into my arms, but happy.

BLOG SWARM OF NOTE: Stop Blog & Roll

This is Not Real

Roger Water's Radio Kaos tells the story of a young Billy who is a vegetable. Billy can receive radio waves in his mind. He learns to manipulate the waves to call a local anarchist radio station. Oh yeah, and he takes control of the world's nuclear weapons and detonates all of them. It's only a simulation. No one dies.

When we are asleep, our body is paralyzed. During dreams our minds go through the same synaptic responses used during the day. According to our minds, the simulation of our dream world is the same as our real world.

Reality television is a controlled simulation of real-life experiences. Nonetheless, the general public reads reality television as the real deal. Fans of American Idol become attached to their favorites and have begun to suspect a conspiracy.

I bought an XBOX 360 on Tuesday. I bought a racing game called Burnout Revenge. The game allows me to drive at 200 miles an hour and fuck shit up. In fact, the more cars I crash, the higher my score and the faster I can go. I do not own a car. I ride a bicycle. Since Wednesday, my biking has become a bit erratic. I swerve a little more and I have been trying to ride as fast as I can. I haven't had the urge to crash into any moving vehicles, but I'm worried I might run into a wall or a parked car. I do not own a helmet. I'm going to buy a helmet today.

I'm Wrapped in Goodness

Contrary to popular belief, the Twinkie's shelf life is 25 days.

According to its website's metatags, Moonpies are the "CyberSnack" of the 21st Century.

Little Debbie of snack cake fame was modeled after a black-and-white photo of then four year-old Debbie McKee. The image was altered to make Debbie look older.

I ate my first Lara bar in Central Park while staring at a shirtless man. It was yummy.

I was given my first package of Emergen-c from a fellow bald coworker.

On the night of my senior prom, my mother gave me a gift bag including, among other things, my first package of condoms. I did not use them that night.

BLOG SWARM OF NOTE: Pulp Decameron

This blog ain't over.

Okay. I over reacted. I threw the goat a little far. Over shot my arrow. Jumped into the deep end. Painted the house and the yard. Digested my food and myself.

Thoughts:
Trains are amazing. There are house boats. Are there house trains? I know, I know, circuses. But could I rent an apartment on Amtrak? That'd be sweet. Though I'd get sick of the cruddy microwaved breakfast sandwiches. No, honestly. Is it that tough to toast bread?

Two roosters meet each other in the middle of an arena. They're all full of adrenaline and ready to rip the other apart. The house goes wild. Yelling. Who wins? I don't care. This is a great excuse to buy some cotton candy.

George Stephanopolous walked into a deli on M Street this morning. John C. Reilly was pushing a stroller down a subway in Brooklyn last weekend. Kurt Loder walked down Broadway near 66th Street three weeks ago. Famous people are real.

This is Too Easy
Well folks. I'm closing up shop. All past blogs are on sale two fer one.

Hey There Sailor

I've been accused of being a naive idealist. I'm neither. What I am is open to the possibility that things are better than they seem.

That said, Richard Bach makes me nauseous. Deepak Chopra makes me think about a new age store in Florida where the books smell like incense 6 months after you buy them. And this community building workshop I am attending on Thursday at GEL 2006 worries me a little. I like my new age with a side of snark. I have a feeling the workshop is going to take itself too seriously.

Perhaps this is why I love performing and teaching improv. It's a good mix of touchy-feely and irreverence.

While I'm away for GEL, enjoy these Sesame Street treasures from YouTube.

Paint Should Be Your Tatoo

Had a killer interview with Matt Sesow a couple weekends back. The interview is forthcoming from Rock Heals (next week, God willing).

Matt and I used to work together before he quit the office life and holed himself up in his Adams Morgan studio where he works and lives. He estimates that he has painted over 10,000 paintings since he started in 1994. He's been a self-supporting artist for more than 5 years now.

One of my favorite statements from the evening was, "Kids who want to be artists shouldn't get tatoos. Paint should be their tatoo."

As the photo above proves, Matt practices what he preaches.

Great new open source advertising campaign from Firefox.

Power to the People

Found out last week that Join The Global Fund, a site AKQA created for Friends of the Global Fight, was nominated for a Webby Award in the activism category. Woohoo.

Bright Lights

Gulp. I love advertising. This is the truth. The truth will set me free.

I'm not supposed to like advertising. As a returned Peace Corps Volunteer and an artist, I should revile advertising. So goes the party line.

But, truth is, advertising is effective. Advertising is direct. And advertising can be beautiful.

What better career for a progressive thinking artist? If stuff is going to change, it's going to happen through commercial art. Dark arts? Maybe. But even the Jedi must know the ways of the Dark Side.

If you want to make a difference, you have to play the game.

Starving Creativity

Came across this minisite for Easy Mac from Kraft Foods.

I like the soft branding of the site -- notice how there's no Kraft logo anywhere until you play a video. Nice.

I don't like the "viral" subservient college student piece -- it's choppy and gross (click on the refrigerator to watch the dood eat some nasty cold cuts).

Pomposity v. Populism

In response to my recent audio collage on Rock Heals, my friend Dave had some tough love for me:

IM with HOTSTREAM 04/13/06
HOTSTREAM:
Hooker. You are swimming in the self-indulgent arty wank-off end of the pool again. Is this what happens when you live in DC too long?
ME:
Thanks dood. I love you too.
HOTSTREAM:
Hey, I'm just trying to offer constructive criticism.
ME:
it's supposed to be tongue in cheek.
HOTSTREAM:
Which part is supposed to be tongue in cheek? I mostly just heard a lot of noise.
ME:
Thanks for the criticism. Pffft.
HOTSTREAM:
I'm just trying to give you the benefit of my years of accumulated wisdom.
ME:
Is that what this is? I thought you were just berating me for my pomposity.
HOTSTREAM
I don't remember using that word
ME:
Self-indulgent arty wank-off
HOTSTREAM:
Yeah, that was it.

"We can derive knowledge from the world; but we cannot derive the world from knowledge." --Tor Norretranders, in The User Illusion

Along with the yummy hilarity of the Comedy Fest last weekend, I found some time to work on that audio collage I was talking about. Here it is in this week's Rock Heals. The final product, which took about 10 hours to create, got me geeking out about the science of consciousness.

As a guy that makes his living from ideas and who spends his free time making things up, I think it's time I give a shout out to my subconcious. What up dog?

A good website, a good play, a good painting, is much better than the group that made it. That's obvious. But humans tend to decide that people making good art are geniuses. I don't think Beethoven was a genius. I just think he tapped into some good shit. And road that train home. He was just a regular guy.

I've been holding on to Tor Norretrander's User Illusion for the past 7 years. I reread portions of it because it fascinates me. The thesis? The human brain becomes conscious of reality a half second after it actually happened. Meaning, our concious self is experiencing a representation of existence. That representation is only a small nugget of the actual information our brains receive. Kind of like a graphic user interface is a recreation of the calculations happening within a computer. In fact, the term "user illusion" comes from experiments done at XEROX PARC that eventually turned into the interfaces we use in OSX, Linux and Windows. The book goes beyond this stuff and starts connecting this delay to environmental, social and political problems.

What this means is, trust the gut. Get excited about stuff. Be willing to trust things that feel right. As Norretrander says, "It is important to dare to be pleased that we are not in full control, are not concious all the time; to enjoy the liveliness of nonconsciousness and combine it with the discipline and reliability of consciousness. Life is really more fun when you are not conscious of it."

The White Chappelle?
(Chappelle illustration courtesy of Lance King of snakesheep)

First off, a clarification. I do not have a drinking problem. I was trying to be funny. I failed.

Dave Chappelle's a guy who will never fail at being funny. I was in the front row of his late night show at the DC Improv on Tuesday. The majority of the show was a dialogue with the audience. Dude was just having fun -- while flinging such nuggets of wisdom as, "You don't go to war with a country that has weapons of mass destruction, you negotiate." His set was 2.5 hours long. That's a lot of fun.

Show highlights:
1. The audience and Chappelle singing along to the theme song for "The Greatest American Hero."
2. Chappelle, in response to audience requests, receiving a call from Common.
3. A long and winding tale about a pimp named Iceberg Slim.
4. Chappelle referring to me as the white Chappelle. 'Don't take offense. I'm not dissing you. If I diss you I diss myself.' Having a bald head does have its privileges.

Funny ha ha? Or funny, I didn't notice that smell in here last night. Is there a dead rat in the cinderblock? Funny. Or funny, have you noticed how you always finish my sentences for me? Just the last word? Under your breath? Every time? Funny.

It's DC Comedy Fest this week folks. Four days of comedy gluttony. Starts on Wednesday. Goes through Saturday. Funny.

The city is winning. There’s too much to do. And I find myself spending almost as much time deciding as doing.

Can a simple life exist in the city? I sure hope so.

As nice as it is to live in a place where I can eat Ethiopian, dance Salsa and see Dave Chapelle, all in a 5 mile radius, what’s missing is a true sense of family – says the guy that lives alone. Says the guy who’s idea of a good evening is reading a book. But, honestly, telecommuting’s the future right? Who says I can’t live in the middle of nowhere? Or more specifically, the middle of Missouri.

In other news, I’ve been playing a bit with Audacity. My friend and collaborator Kate and I are working on a new piece tentatively called “The Working Poor” based on some video she shot while she was here in February. I’m taking the audio from the videos and slicing it up to create an aural collage. Yum.