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May 24, 2005
Thoughts on Love/Nerds
Lately I have been fascinated with the cyclical nature of human relationships and why some are successful while others are not. In high school I was intertwined with a tight group from my church which slowly and imperceptibly disbanded at the onset of our experiences in higher education. College was a stage for even more fulfilling friendships and though they still exist, those relationships no longer function with the same daily acuteness of attachment that they did whilst at Messiah.
Though the aforementioned is not uncommon with most people, the inception of these relationships was wrought with the full assumption, though never implicitly implied, that they would last indefinitely. Their passing, and reflection henceforth, gives pause to question whether or not the energy used to foster them was invested wisely. I have found that it is entirely futile to attempt putting an empirical value on this sort of equation preferring rather to let myself enjoy the reverie of what it was like to experience another human consciousness with unrepentant abandon all the while remembering that my energies are finite and their wise investment in future endeavors would serve me well.
Finding an appropriate balance between conservative and liberal emotional investment is a difficult thing to do especially when one considers the outcome of either extreme; the first promises the potential for a happy marriage while the possibility for future loneliness (a la mid-life crisis) constantly looms on the horizon while the path to the other requires a dark wardrobe punctuated by thick plastic-rimmed plastic glasses, dingy Converse sneakers and perpetually soaked collars due to tears shed over the countless, brief, and intense relationships that all found a common termination in heartbreak. At this point in my life I find both prospects entirely unappealing preferring those sort of relationships that yield stimulating conversation while taking residence in a comfortable, platonic suburbia; far from the scary and fast paced high-rises characteristic of romance oriented city life.
In other news I've been annoyed with the whole geek-chic phenomenon. Since video games have risen to prominence (i.e. greater market share) it has all of a sudden become cool to be a nerd, though the pairing of that adjective with that noun is, in essence, a logical impossibility. If you love technology, own a treo, bleach your hair, dress like an extra from hackers and blog daily about the aforementioned subjects you aren't a nerd; you are a tool and take yourself entirely too seriously.
One of the central defining elements of geekdom is that you don't draw unnecessary attention to it, rather the life you live lays evidence to the delineation and, as a result, are slightly ashamed of the whole affair. It's not cool that I love Star Wars, it's not hip that I can work in quotes from a myriad of Sci-Fi sources to fit a diverse amount of male-dominated social situations and it certainly isn't groovy that I blog about any of it. I choose the internet for my forum of this type of discourse because your ingestion of this content is entirely voluntary. You can't call my nerd-dom out for scorn because you were here, reading a blog which instantly places you in the same demographic.
Xeni Jardin, Cory Doctorow (the two self-important members of the otherwise delightful Boing-Boing gang) and Wil Weaton are the biggest offenders in my opinion, acting as though we hang on their every word, desperate to know what they think of DRM, are interested in what pictures they posted on Flickr from E3 or care if they make an appearance on NPR. I appreciate Boing-Boing as a wonderful link farm but I don't want my steady diet of entertaining content interspersed with shameless self promotion. Blech.
For all you Star Wars fans: I came across this yesterday and thought Kevin's (we're on a first name basis now) take on the film was excellent. And thank the Lord this was brought to my attention.
Posted by Jon at 03:39 AM | Comments (2)
May 20, 2005
Fulfilled Expectations
I will begin with a quote: 'You know [George], just when I think you couldn't possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this...and TOTALLY REDEEM YOURSELF!'
It's hard to explain the intense feelings of joy that washed over me between midnight and 2:30am last night but I can tell you their origin was split between both relief and instinctual excitement. But first, a little back-story...
After my first viewing of Episode I the entire Star Wars universe went from being a completed mural to a fragmented puzzle, lacking key pieces and leaving me salivating for the finished image. Questions were raised, speculation ran rampant and harsh critique abounded around all the traditional stomping grounds of geekdom. Message boards, websites and other public forums became places for all manner of Lucas scorn; questioning his every decision on what he decided to show us and the manner in which it was executed. We as fans expected complete satisfaction after each part released, thinking we could fully grasp the story before it had been told in its entirety.
The summer of 1999 was filled with venomous scorn over his Jar Jar centric first offering and the cries of despair in May 2002 over the film's poor dialogue and Anakin's deadpan delivery seemed to spell disaster for these much-hyped prequels. As maybe you could tell from my opening paragraph, any flaws that may have been present in the trilogy were vanquished due to the magnificent job Mr. Lucas achieved in Revenge of the Sith. Hayden got his act together, Jar-Jar was on screen for a mere two seconds and all the loose ends my mind had been wrestling with have, at the moment, been tied up. It is as if George took the six years of constant negativity from the fan community and focused its dark energy into two and a half hours of pure cinematic bliss. The action was intense, character development believable and Anakin's turn to the dark side truly scary. It is now, officially, the second Star Wars trilogy and functions as one should by sating the publics ravenous appetite for action and adventure as well as giving us the origins of one of its most enigmatic and treasured characters, Darth Vader.
Episode III was the most richly detailed piece of the vast Star Wars tapestry and once in place, served as the nexus from which all the other movies derive their energy. It will be wildly entertaining to both fans and casual viewers alike so I enthusiastically recommend it anyone who enjoys a good movie. Below are some pictures and videos from the event, I hope you enjoy them.
The grisled remains of my rather tasty prime rib, consumed prior to getting in line.
Darth Vader stops by to inspect his troops.
A pair of nerds sitting in a mostly empty theatre awaiting a movie that will not start for another three hours.
John flashing the every popular 'thumbs-up' as I do my best impression of Rocky.
My loyal Stormtrooper Pez dispenser that accompanied us on this momentous journey.
Movies:
A sith and a jedi engage in a duel to the death where, apparently, both lose.
Darth Vader, who sat with us challenges a rather pitiful padawan.
A pair who sat behind us, encouraging the two aforementioned warriors as they engage in mortal combat.
A fire alarm was pulled twice before the movie started and John was kind enough to disrobe, guaranteeing that our magnificent seats would be intact.
The blissful, opening moments...
Posted by Jon at 03:20 AM | Comments (4)
May 18, 2005
My Private, Creative Sanctuary
The usual construction of a post to this website begins at some point, hours before hand while at work, when a particularly pithy phrase or clever analogy springs to mind. I then begin to arrange words around this vague concept til I have crafted a rough draft, existing solely in my mind, on what I want to communicate to all of you. The sudden conception of these thoughts often takes me by surprise and I excuse myself to the bathroom hoping to quickly hew them from the nebulous mines of the right side of my brain to be melted down and reformed in the well-ordered refineries of the left; leaving behind a vernacular sword capable of deft intellectual combat.
At other times, such as this, I am compelled to sit down and force myself to write, reminded that some frequent degree of content is required to retain whatever few readers I have. It is not as though I don't have many things to share with all of you though I want to make sure whatever I do say is somewhat entertaining and pertinent to minds separate from my own. Thus, I digress...
My brain is currently attempting to sculpt something of recognizable cohesion from the myriad of concepts and ambitions that I am captivated with at the moment. I have been thinking a lot about what it means to truly and completely believe something with hopes of exploring the subject further through a Lewis-esque type of essay. The inner sanctum of my mind understands what it wants to say but when I begin to dress it in the garments of the english language the concepts get a bit muddy; much like the fashion designer who's work is embraced by her inner circle of close friends but is dismissed as foolish opulence by the uninitiated masses.
The beginnings of my essays often take place the same way these posts do, in the bathroom at work, as I had mentioned earlier. I don't spend much time in there, a few minutes at most, using the toilet as a sort of inverted porcelain thinking cap. Its white ceramic base catches both feces and my stewing thoughts; the toilet's plumbing transporting one to the buildings septic system and recycling the other in perpetuity til I am satisfied with the communicative outcome, respectively.
Though the process is quite effective the finale to this bizarre ritual, actually recording these musings, often gets lost in the shuffle with things like food, water and sleep taking precedent. I can assure you though that I have the best of intentions of getting these things produced and you'll be among the first to know when they do.
Tomorrow night I am pleased to announce that I'll be viewing Episode III at midnight. The hours leading up to that momentous occasion will be filled with much anticipation and excitement. I will, of course, be viewing George's final installment on the big screen at Randolph forgoing the crappy excuse for a theatre that sits a few minutes away in Kingston. Truth be told I would have happily traveled to NYC to see the premiere in the big city, however, one of the essential three was missing for this dream of mine to become a reality: My love for Star Wars was present, my faith fully intact that this would be an excellent film but, Hope didn't come through in the clutch on that most important front of actually attempting to obtain the tickets. Would it have been that hard to pick up the phone? ;)
Posted by Jon at 04:14 AM | Comments (2)
May 13, 2005
A Lucid Evening
There is something so intangibly wonderful that happens when design, great house music and cold beer in a pilsner combine to form a magnificent evening; like when the colors of red, green and blue light coalesce into the purest white imaginable. This evening was a true collaboration of my core passions.
Stenciling, and the design sensibilities it draws to the surface, has been devouring all aspects of my creative consciousness since last weekend. So much so that during conversation I just nod my head, feigning interest and imagining the world around me through the filter of contrasted colors separated by thin partitions of white with the recently applied paint dripping down at random. I'm not sure what it is about the process: its immediate recognition after quick application, the roots it has in graffiti, the way it can quickly be adapted to a wearable medium or the very male imagery it naturally communicates. Honestly, I don't really care what explanation espouses my instinctive draw to stenciling but, rather that the reaction itself exists and I am free to enjoy it with reckless abandon.
Another one of my non-sentient mistresses is the documentary and my voracious appetite for them has never been fully sated, even after all day Discovery Channel marathons. Allow me to elaborate further.
I rarely ever happen upon these broadcasts; channel surfing isn't an activity I particularly enjoy. Rather, I seek these things out, marking my calendar and planning the activities of my life so that they will effortlessly flow around them, like a shallow river parting swiftly past jagged, upward thrusting rocks. Shark week, the latest David Attenborough series, an hour-long special on Stalin and Hitler - after hearing of these programs, and others like them, impending arrival to the small screen I am filled with both excitement and excess saliva leaving me in a feverish, moistened frenzy.
It was once said to me that the whole notion of offering these programs for sale directly after a free broadcast seems completely ludicrious. It is sort of embarrassing to admit this but I'm exactly the sort of fellow who is excruciatingly tempted to purchase what I had just seen, credit card burning in my wallet as my fingers long to dial the appropriate 800-number. I imagine the surprised sales representative on the other end of the call wondering what fool would spend twenty-five dollars for a forty-five minute presentation on humpback whales as she hastily inputs my order, longing to return to her game of Spider Solitaire.
I do own a few of these series and my reason for telling you all about my documentary fetish is that I found a veritable treasure trove of this type of entertainment in a most unlikely place. I knew the films themselves would be excellent considering I had already seen them at the cinema and was a big Tolkien fan. The real treat of this expensive box set is the Appendices which contain over 8 hours of documentary content per movie. I have been ingesting this prodigious amount of footage with such propensity that I could easily be classified a glutton.
This morning I started the final disc in the set and am dreading the whole experience ending. I feel as though I am an integral part of the cast and am confident that if I saw Billy Boyd walking towards me on the street I could aptly recall private, on-set moments of an experience I was never a part of; my recollection frightening him with a trekkie-esque grasp of the most insignificant details.
Posted by Jon at 03:15 AM | Comments (1)
May 10, 2005
Guiding Neuroses
I am a terribly distracted person, someone who is enamored with whatever is the most exciting at any possible moment. My tortured attention span expires without warning, constantly bounding from stimulus to stimulus, like a bee haphazardly collecting pollen in a field of epileptic strobing lights and sounds. This was a terrible pox to have on my schooling career with the explanation for my above average (but not even close to exceptional) grades originating from a considerable amount of parental pressure, being that they were both dedicated teachers.
I applied to only one college, my sole choice springing intuitively from a single visit to my brother whose fellow dorm-mates would stay up to the wee hours of the morning, playing pranks on more serious minded peers as they attempted to sleep or study. I had absolutely no idea what it is I would do with my life and spewed large amounts of bull feces when asked what I was considering majoring in.
Two popular answers were computer science and veterinary studies citing the nominal interests I had in both pets and technology, though I had no real idea of the truly laborious task it was to actually become adept at either of those aforementioned fields of study. Instead of worrying about my future I simply slept, finding comfort in the notion of shutting off my brain for hours at a time where I was free from its constant brooding. Intense forces of rumination were at play beneath my brow but I was at a loss with how to focus these seemingly unimportant, but potent, instincts into something of external value.
Shortly before I left for college I discovered the internet and how naturally dexterous I was at arranging content to be displayed on it. I had finally found something that both held my interest and distracted my brain for long periods of time, allowing the constant jitters of my mind to be compressed into a sine-wave of deep, robust vibration.
My weekends became full, not with social engagements but, with hour after hour of my simultaneous exploration of both technology and information architecture; parcelling off large tracts of time in which I would let my mind tumble from one related concept to the next. I was making things and it utterly captivated me; time was now passed, not with pensive anxiousness but, with a lucid ease and an object of noticable value left in its wake to lay testament to the entire experience. It was as if I woke from a nap, my chest heavy with the jewels recovered during an adventurous dream with my co-star Captain Nemo; creating allowed me to escape and I was now utterly dependent on that feeling of detachment.
College became an intense time for this type of action, only now my reveries took the form of molding the physical as I attended classes in drawing, printmaking, photograph and sculpture. I was absolutely smitten and thought nothing of what would come next, all consumed with the act of making.
For the past year distractions have slowly erected themselves providing their own rewards but subsequently obstructing me from my acts of creation. I have realized that I must cleave them from my life, like great oaks from the edges of a clearing, to free up those precious hours with which I am afforded the expanses of time wherein I can cogitate over that which engages my fickle attention span.
The vacation I have taken since completing _respondcreate_ has been well earned but through it I have learned that these side-quests are not altogether fulfilling. A new leaf has been turned and once the obligations to those distractions have been completed in the coming weeks I will return to my core passions with full creative vigor.
Stay tuned.
Posted by Jon at 02:37 AM | Comments (3)
May 08, 2005
Wearables
I made a few shirts this weekend and thought I'd post them up on the site. Check them out and let me know what you think. These two shirts were my first attempts at this process and they came out real well so expect to see more elaborate designs in the near future.
This is a tag ('ink') I used to write.
A very Banksy-esque military themed polo.
Posted by Jon at 03:40 AM | Comments (4)
May 04, 2005
Truly Wonderful News
I'm not one for hasty construction when it comes to speaking to you from this site because I am both free from any deadlines and acutely neurotic in terms of presentation.
However, information such as this imparts a tremendous responsibility on my part to notify you all immediately.
As an actual DVD it seems as though the quality is sub-par but it is only a passable representation of that pure, delicious content that I require. You can personally thank both Boots and Pup for bringing this momentous occasion to my attention.
Posted by Jon at 04:28 AM | Comments (1)
May 02, 2005
Successful Investment
Before I have invested time in any serious venture my primary concern has always been associated with the return value I will glean from it. In fact, this ethic is what lies at the base of capitalism and the entire world economy itself. If the fuel we put into the machine is more valuable than the widget produced by it than the contraption is essentially worthless.
In a business environment, the application of this monetary cost-effectiveness principal is easily accepted as doctrine but becomes less pertinent when you begin using it to ascertain one's overall self-worth, or at least in the rubric with which it is evaluated.
Today I had the opportunity to listen to a talk by Steve Wozniak, the inventor of the original Apple Computer, given at Gnomedex 4.0. He described the process in which he went from playing with electronics to the driving forces behind how his hobbies turned into something that ended up making him gads of money. Throughout those formative years, both pre- and post- Apple's founding, one theme remained present throughout; do something because you are passionate about it. His reward had nothing to do with any sort of guarantee of monetary pay-off but solely with finding enjoyment in the act of creation itself. Any additional benefits that arise as a result are merely the side-effects of your internal drive to make something great.
Though his idealism can appear non-applicable to the average observer, due to the fact that his 'hobby' earned him countless millions, the underlying principle is that satisfaction finds its source in the seemingly random, intangible motivations of the individual and not in some sort of societal doctrine.
One story of his in particular drove this point home: when Woz and Jobs received their first big order for the Apple ][ (100 units for $500 each) they sought out investors to front the money required to buy all the parts needed for the task. A venture capitalist offered to help them out on one condition, Wozniak had to leave his treasured job as electrical engineer at HP. At first he refused, citing that computers were his hobby and he was worried that if it became his full-time occupation he would lose his passion for it. Though Wozniak was eventually persuaded it does go to show that his concern was with making a great computer, not in the amount of money he could harvest from the practice.
Currently I am not living in the utopia I imagined I would be during the blissful haze that were my four years at Messiah College. I am working in my field and have a wonderful job but would rather be doing the more creative aspects of graphic design and not so much in the area of print production. Though this state is not uncommon to most designers fresh out of school with an undergraduate degree I am coming to terms with the fact that even if I one day land my dream job there are no guarantees that it will bring the state of lucid contentment I so desire.
I have a passionate love affair with graphic design but at the end of the day it is just the communication of ideas whose implications far out-weigh the manner in which they are packaged. The more I think about it the more I want what my life to be that which enriches the existences of those around me, even if the time invested to accomplish the aforementioned task doesn't return any sort of monetary gain, though I certainly wouldn't be opposed to it.
If we look to one aspect of living: love, status, wealth, accomplishment or companionship to define the validity of our existence then our contentment perches precariously on that which is temporary. A dependence on Christ however, and our whole and complete surrender to His perfect will guarantees not the treasures of this world but the security and permanence of the next. In more practical terms my hope lies in the possibility that sometime in the near future I will find myself receiving a paycheck for that which reflects those passions that monopolize the moments I spend free from the tyranny of a time clock.
Woo-hoo! Now for those fascinating trivial bits that surface in my daily rounds and late in the day come to a full, rolling boil.
It has recently come to my attention that the church doesn't condone file-sharing because its existence pits it against this age-old commandment. Though it is never good to justify ones actions through clever arguments I would contend that the real thieves are these deceitful bastards, whose vocation consists of screwing both artist and consumer. I always knew there would be a better way and after reading this I am certain I have found it. (There's two parts so make sure you read both.)
My voracious appetite for comics has spread from my daily internet ingestion into the realm of print. The release of Episode III looms ominously on the horizon and in anticipation I've been reading Dark Horse's General Grievous series and am anxiously awaiting the last two issues. In addition to this I've been reading Marvel's take on what happened between Episodes IV, V, VI which ran in the late 70s and early 80s. The stories are a departure from what could be considered traditional Star Wars story telling but the campy fell they exude adds a warm uniqueness all its own.
I've also been playing quite a bit of Halo 2 since I got a hardwire running to my XBOX as opposed to the lag-infested wireless connection I had. Turf is an absolute work of art and promises the potential for the sort of close-range bliss first introduced during our epic matches in Chill Out. My gamertag is 'kons0uL' so send me a friend request if you're interested in playing a few games.
Posted by Jon at 08:15 PM | Comments (4)