WHAT, WHAT, WHAT?

I knew their demise couldn't last too long. Nau is now back, dontcha know? Their blog was excellent, glad to see its back up and running. Interested to hear about why someone brought them back and whats the new plan of attack.

signs of democracy

I like this. I like the end point that the actors came to outside of AB and did it with a small comedy group. Maybe that's a sign that the economy is that bad.

Let your imagination die

This is probably a side effect of thinking to early, but . .
Perhaps it’s the crisp cold smell of fallen leaves that bring up the topic of change and death. The topic of death seems to be following me slightly closer. Lyle Owerko has put out some cool work but he keeps being noted as that one guy who photographed the world trade center jumpers (his work is worth more credit than a one hit wonder). However people’s draw towards the work is undeniable. What is it with people’s fascination of death? “What were they thinking right before they jumped?” “The rush of oxygen must have made them pass out, no-one would jump in their right mind” “does your life actually flash before your eyes?”
Maybe it’s the looming of all hallows eve (the best holiday in American culture, in my humble opinion), but the personage of how American’s think about death, is all about us. The ominous scarecrows on porches and the shadowy faces carved in pumpkins, all point us to America’s fear of death. SIDE NOTE: Most countries in the world celebrate death, as much as anyone can celebrate the death of friends, family, et cetera. Other cultures understand that death is inevitable and celebrate death as another step in life. Just as you have your years of teenage angst, you have your dead years. We on the other hand have built a billion dollar industry on shielding us from death. We have medicine to extend a terminal life, we have housing for our elderly loved ones (healthcare provides approx. 13 million job of which 25% are for elder care); death seems to be an admission of our flaws, loss and defeat. One the other side of our coin of denial is a bottomless pit of imagination that fosters its own industry, scary movies, Halloween costumes and candies.
All industry and notes aside, when people talk about death they talk about it with imagination. I’m sure you could pass people through MRI machines and see the creative centers in their brain light up like a Technicolor dream. I’m sure this isn’t any profound idea. Any time you peer into the unknown, you use your creativity. The simple fact is, that it is unknown.
I was discussing with some friends earlier this week, as Chuck Klosterman nears the end of his novel, living to die, I half expected a summation of why we canonize all of the artists that die. Some artist live underwhelmed lives but their death creates an explosion of fame. Other artist, meet death as they were half expected to die, that would be the only way people could see that artists career go. However they die and what their path may have been fans like to preserve the image of their death famed artists in their own mind. In a fans mind they can have a pristine image of what they want, with out any corruption. With art creativity come easily, with the fear of the unknown dusting off the unfamiliar art of creativity is harder. Fear seems to become some. It seems as though some people have a fear of their creative side just as much as they fear death. Maybe chuck had it right, don’t tell us what to think about death leave us to our own tools, let us become the artists of fame and the result will be much more fearful.

Jus' chillaxin'

You can't make this shit up. Relics in my yard




There was an amazing double rainbow, but I felt like taking a picture of the trash instead




Who has a miner cart in their backyard, I DO



"Horse shack," an un-known diddy by the B-52s




My unbelievable back yard

My procrastination project

A pic taken by my college roomie, Bredan (very talented photo taker). Only some touch up. Much love for Tyler "Baker" Thurman, the skater in the frame.



The Tres Hombres headed to surf trestles.



Suiting up



The two boys into the water like fish



Dude you totally could have kicked that guys ass from prison break, that was him right?
Man he had a huge head.

Boulder Love

Never thought I would see so much heart in a wolf tee! Nor did I think my next door neighbor and tallest kid ever that I played lax with would come out with music as sick as this. Much boulder love!

right department?

With the economy in shambles I have been trying to reshuffle my finances so that I can best managing them. Suffice to say, it’s a mess to begin with. Three different firms, seven accounts and no unified plan. As I go about consolidating them, one rises to the top, of being a royal pain in my ass. Charles Schwab, if you know him well you can call him chuck, or just call him chuck anyway. This cheap marketing ploy is weak at best. The lack of connection between the idea to how the Charles Schwab business is run, is none existent. You would hope that talking to chuck would mean that everyone is personable and friendly. Hopefully when you talk to “chuck” he listens, right? Euro RSCG is one of the largest agencies in the world. No blame to them, great campaign, shake of the finger to the partnership between the two. Just as they talk about in Life After the 30 Second Spot, agencies need to do more than just write a new idea for each client. The idea works, but Chuck isn’t there to answer the phone.
My side of the story:
Closing an account was a pain. I had to activate an online account to avoid the transaction fee. In order to get the account to work I had to call, go into the office, show my ID, go back home and then closeout the account. Why cant they, one, put a computer in the lobby or solve the back and forth. Two, have the online assistance service be able to process the order for me. If I was someone who traded regularly the ease of doing one trade for me would be a great aid.
Changing the name on my account. For some reason my account had my mothers last name and not mine. Apparently the names have to match perfectly, never mind your social security number. After talking with the people in the office again, I was referred to the client services department. It took me three client service representatives and a manager telling me that my name is different and asking for proof of name change to get no where. It shouldn’t have taken so many people (Insert joke, how many Charles Schwab employees does it take to _________. My fav. How many Charles Schwab consultants does it take to screw you in the ass? 4, something I never want to see). I have bosses, parents and teachers that have told me what to do. I don’t need my finical firm telling me that my name is wrong and I need to fix it. Having everyone trying to be so polite and using my mother’s last name calling me Mr. Flaster, didn’t help. Oh the irony. Calling to correct them on my name and they don’t listen. “I’m sorry Mr. Flaster, there is nothing I can do . . Mr. Flaster you must fill out this form.”
Sure there are rules that help govern a company. But, if you are presenting the image of being a helpful listener, you should at least remove some bureaucracy, or cross-train people so that they can actually help your clients. At the end of my many calls, I asked if I was talking to the right department. Maybe I should be talking with the marketing department, since there is no way client services can help me.

Long posts, unacceptable

MY SINCEREST apologies. My last post was way to long. Although something’s need to be said, as I felt with my last post, they are best said concisely. to present a worthwhile apology, I must abridge last post.

Think about why things are the way they are, how they can be better? Sometimes you need to avoid the argument of the semantics to solve the problems of your semantics.

I love the short and sweet. It makes everything better, from design, art, culture even science (ie. E=mc2). HOWEVER, making something short and sweet for being short and sweet has become too much of a crutch. Take a look at the problem and everything it touches, then solve the WHOLE problem.

ROAD LESS TRAVELED

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth

Then took the other as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads onto way
I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference


Robert Frost


With politics looming and an end date looming, fate seems to hang on a Tuesday in November. I feel like there is a political meltdown in the midst. Everyone seems to keep pointing me towards political conversations no mater how far I run in the opposite direction from them. A journey to this point needs to start somewhere, what better place than the path laid before us.

I awoke today with a swirl of the dream from last night fluttering on my consciousness. Although the details and twists of the dream were, as dreams are, over-the-top, phantasmal and euphoric, the base of the dream is what stirred me. As psychologist or wing nut dream analyst would, I stripped away all of the flourishing delights of my dream journey. I’m not a sci-fi writer so I will spare you the details that I enjoyed behind closed eyelids. But, I dreamed of an Asimov like state. The world was governed by the logic of Google, science, technology and probability. Problems arose when human nature wasn’t part of the calculation, and humans began to be shuffled as computers saw fit.
I don’t want to delve into what my dream state was thinking about human nature, it had something to do with trying to explain technology and thermostat to my quintessential Jewish grandmother. She just wanted to freeze at the minimal 60 degrees and save some money, no bother to let the temperature be more comfortable.
This is neither here nor there.
After settling my mind and regrettable skipping breakfast, I went about resolving some questions poised to me, either internally or off the cuff comments that have stuck with me.
Lets start chronologically-ish. A couple of weeks I went to a remarkable speaker and debate. The keynote speaker was James Kunstlers, after his rousing speech about how society was built on petroleum as source for our energy and in turn our physical society was designed such (you have to take a plane, car or even a bus to get most anywhere). That we have reached peak oil consumption and all the problems dealing with a commodity that everyone so desperately needs, but we have to think about how to redesign our life’s to fit an alternate fuel source. Something that will eventually have to be able to run with out a drop of oil. Petroleum is a much more farther reaching commodity than we think of. Without petroleum, we have pharmaceuticals, no transportation, no alternative to lumber.
The debate following was a “hot mess” as some might describe it, I can really think of no better term. One panelist was in an out roar of how fear inspiring the lecture was and how name calling of Palin was unnecessary. The token republican on the panel agrees. Others noted, “forget the oil crisis, the ice caps will melt in 5-10 and this will be much worse than any prison sentence handed out.” The gentleman in the nicely ironed oxford noted how inspiring environmentalist/ entrepreneurs will save us. Worry about the environment. Let capitalism save us. We need to redesign our society. We have no oil. Don’t be mean, you big meanie. Vote early and vote often!
Of course no conclusion was settled.
After the panel exited with many of the observers, I saw some of my parent’s friends. We caught up and jumped into dialogue of the topics. They especially wanted to what my reaction was and whom I agreed with most. Most of my parent’s friends were deep in the hippie era. I told them how I thought most of the pundits were very ironic, the condescending lady caring the banner of compassion. Everyone trying to hold there voice over the next person in line to talk. Each cause was more worth than the next. They insisted that MY GENERATION was the most important in deciding what happens next. We need to vote to make sure we are heard and that we help make the change that hasn’t fully set in since the hippie movement in the sixties. We are the new hires affecting companies. We are the new investors. I could have flown out of the auditorium with all of the empowerment they besieged me with.
However, the one analogy that stuck with me was a story from Apollo 13. When the astronauts were stuck, time winding down, the end game approaching, what were they to do. The engineers on the ground compiled a cardboard box of everything they had on board, dumped the contents on to a table and worked until a solution was reached. It seems as though that’s where we are now. Anything that is none essential needs to be scrapped and put into a cardboard box and dumped out on our national table, from sea to shinning sea, for the amber grains of gold, and purple mountains of majesty. Lets go dumpster diving and get every cardboard box we can. Lets get leaders that understand this and embrace our paradigm.
After this event presidential and vice presidential debates ensued. Change battled with Real Change. Biden battled McCain. Palin can wink and she IS a Maverick. Tina Fey made fun of it all. What battle had I tuned into, comedy battled fear. After 8 years of material has built careers for comedians. When we have a real choice in the face crisis the joke only seem callow (I still love you Jon Stewart, keep up the good work). On the other side candidates were still selling themselves. It was a battle of brand, slogans and company lines. Where was the fine print? What was each person’s plan? What were they putting in the cardboard box? These were bonafide leaders. They were political party figure heads, not mavericks.
I continued to be unsettled. One of my good friends who continually sends me pieces of political thought for me to chew on sent me an interview of Naomi Wolf. Although hard to believe, she rallied up her cause of the dire situation of the precedents set before us. Is America coming to the end of its 200 yearlong path. Have we veered from so far from the constitution that we lost. Its been a source for democracy around the world. If we have drifted so far from it how well has it served us. Although her words were quit strong, you can also see that she is a nervous wreck. I can’t support fear mongering on either side of the political spectrum; it only polarizes people further and doesn’t help reach a conclusion. She didn’t bring one helpful insight. Who where the people that stared our country and not just the founding fathers, the founding generation? What burdens did they bare to help us get here. What path did they walk?
Do we need new leaders? As I watched the clip my friend sent me I drifted back throw some of the over conversation that we have had. Here comes the chronologically-ish part. About a year ago an online movie came out, the zeitgeist movie. Recently another one of my friend sent out a mass email about it. Having not seen it in a while, I redressed it. The website was updated and had a sequel. Very befitting of economic crisis, the first chapter of the film unwound the economic system. I’ll try and synthesis what I have learned and what Naomi and the zeitgeist film are getting at. The constitution was design for the people to govern the people, corporations were originally design to perform simple projects on short controlled process. People were to run their own lives. Especially in the last hundred years we have dealt these responsibilities. We didn’t want to take the time, or didn’t have the educational grasp that our founding fathers did and have changed the paradigm of government, business and society.
Our debate for the next candidate roars on. We blindly trudge down this path. There are innumerable problems that politicians dance from one topic to the next. Each topic can’t even be covered in 2-minute (two minutes in heaven is better than one, right?) reactions and they are all linked together to stay on only one topic. Pundits bounce riffs and jabs back and forth about whom is more flawed. They are all right, are they not? Plain jokes a re hilarious, Obama needs to give us answers to change. We walk down the same path nonetheless. I think its time that we start to look at the path we walk down.
One person recounted how, during 9/11 people stood there in a burning building waiting for someone to tell them what to do. This is the depressingly sadistic nature of our country in crisis. We don’t want responsibility. Tell us what to do. I don’t think this was a conscious decision, but has happened through time. The House of Representatives is no longer representative, its been capped. People that are elected need MILLIONS of dollars to get elected. CSPAN should be our neighbors discussing what we need to do. Debates should be professionals, Joe six packs and hockey moms discussing their concerns. We don’t need new leaders. We need revolutionaries. The pundit that wanted the future to rest in the inventive minds of entrepreneurs had it somewhat right. There are brilliant people out there that like fixing these problems. We all need to be involved in this. We all need to be working on what is going in to the cardboard box and what we create with it. We need experts, we need revolutionaries, we need everyone!

Welcome to the joyus circus of public transit

PRE-DAY 1: I have been riding the bus for a couple months, it took a a while to open up my eyes and take a deep breath of what was going on around me(don't worry I didn't want to throw up at the rancor smells that live on RTD buses, actually pretty clean). Being a 6 foot 3 large body, cramming in a less than airline sized seat doesn't appeal to me. Punctuality and me don't get along either, but when it comes to riding the bus, I'm early. Arriving early is crucial in sequestering one of the two rows of seats that have extra leg room, so much room that I occasional find myself slouching to maxmize my body to floor ratio. ironically these oversized seats are adjacent to the handicapped area(RTD logic: put all of the uncomfortable people together, those in a wheelchair next to those with oversized legs. people with oversized legs can sadistically fantasize about not having legs like their neighbor in the wheel chair. RTD I'm onto your charade)
DAY 1: on this particular day I'm rewarded with this thrown of an bus seat. The bus starts to quickly fill and it becomes apparent that I won't have the thrown room to myself. As a beautiful, princess of a woman, walks the aisle, our eyes spark. A whole 45 minutes of titillating conversation and mild flirting brighten my bus ride. The spark is all I'm left as she passes me for an open seat.
I must have missed the joker that laughed at me, when he saw this karmic swap coming. A giant of a man boards the bus and plops down next to. I'm sure he was as glad to see a thrown still available on the bus. I'm now pressed against the emergency release railing of the window(my greatest fear slash rebelious act, is holding up the bus unavoidable by pushing the emergency glass out, or just pulling the cord for a stop no body wants). I feel like a stress release toy, my eyes might just pop out. The man reaches up to his face with sausage links for fingers and buries a knuckle into his nose.
I'm locked into this event.
Its like staring at the sun.
It hurts so bad but I cant retch my eyes away from the vulgarity.
His nostrils bulge with the mass of his finger embedded into his nasal cavity. He withdraws a winner! This greenish gold blob covers the gambit of booger textures. It starts with a crisp dry crunchy anchor and slowly morphs into something that could almost be spat out as phlegm. It very well could as it strings out of his nose. This booger could actually be hacked up and spat out from the otherside. Jack Blacks voice echoes;"If its stuck together its technically one booger". Anything is possible, welcome to the circus.
For David Blanes next trick, I will disappear into the giant blob. My mothers conscientious snaps me back. "You shouldn't stare." The man is enthralled with his catch of the day. He probably would never notice that there is someone slowly being enveloped by actions, as well as, his mass. I avert my eyes to my book, no way am I reading. I just don't want to see where the golden nugget ends up. Its dangerously close to his mouth. anything could happen, David Blane is performing miracles on the 4:05 Boulder Express. I assume that the booger doesn't end up in his mouth by the giggle that resonates his body. He has probably meshed this masterpiece of a archaeological dig from the darkside of his nasal cavern into his masterpiece of thrift store plaid. My guilt of voyeurism shields me from whats going on for a couple minutes.
I'm drawn back in. I want to see whats going on in the other rings of this big top circus. I peel back my guilt and walk back into the big top. The round mass sitting next to me has comfortably fallen asleep. I feel like I could fall asleep. This man is putting off more warmth than a space blanket, a nice contrast to the jet of cold air coming off the window, which i am firmly pressed against. I could just fall asleep, I'm sure this man would make a great pillow.
As I start to find an eerie comfort I see something glimpse over at me from a couple rows in front of me. It looks like an oversized eraser head superglued to a drive-in screen of a forehead. Hooray another ring in this glorious circus. Bus-fare is a better deal than HBO. This enormous mole like growth(no way in science, could this be benign. It must be sought after like the holy grail of Oncology, maybe there is reward money out for it). Its bobbing on the horizon of the seat back. It looks like the hero from a Sergio Leone spaghetti western, riding off into the sunset(the sunset happen to be the oversized forehead). Maybe I should sign this growth to a contract, I could make a pretty penny as its agent. Fugitive mole turns actor, its got street cred. "The mole with no name" in the Good, The Bad and THE Mole.
I swirl about in this ocean of abnormalities, a swell of comfort washes over me. Its not because I can feel well with in the margins of normalcy, in comparison, which I do. These are my neighbors on the bus as well as off. Throwing aside the canvas of the big top circus and all of my preconceived notions, I chat with my neighbor. He has arisen from his slumber and joined me in reading(he has probably been actually reading).
Immediately my shame of internal judgment punches me in the nuts "how could you be mean, this man is a saint." Gasping for air, my inner douche-bag mutters a rebuttal, "a saint of boogers." My inner asshole is to busy gasping and choking to interrupt what has become a splendid conversation. As we get off the bus, the princess tries to create a spark again I can only glean over the conversation I just had. "I don't need you. I have my friend David Blane the saint of boogers." I give my friend a hand shake as we part ways. I would have given a grand hug, but booger doesn't look good on me.

One MIC

She is right, it is a glorious day in Boulder. Michelle Obama has been sent in place of her husband, we all know how voters will vote in boulder, her job is to make sure voters actually register and in turn actually vote. The line up of preamble speakers have done their due and rallied the crowed. Michelle talks about the dire need for environmental, education and the economy leadership that comes from someone who understands (The three "E's," as I like to call them.) Michelle continues to amp the crowd with Barack's ideas and can dot attitude: "There is only one candidate that has a responsible Iraq time-line, One candidate that wants to make sure everyone gets health care without fear of cancer being a predisposed aliment, One candidate that wants to give breaks to 85% of America." Wait! did I come to see Ms. Obama or is she just the warm up for Nas, she has me totally convinced. I'm waiting for the beat machine to start cranking out some bad ass shit. Although Nas doesn't show up, and just need one mic, one mic to change the nation, its Michelle, who is just as cunning. She, who tells us we need one candidate, just one candidate to change the nation, one candidate can do all this for us. She asks: "Who is that one candidate?!" With unanimity and remarkable clarity, for thousands of people, students, teachers, citizens and even couple republicans that have hoped the fence; BARACK OBAMA!