Æ: Volume 2

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Organic cure-all

The next time you're feeling gross and ill-humored, I dare you to eat some leafy greens. Some really good ones like collard greens or kale. Something nice and dark with lots of folic acid. Or you could make a giant salad if it's summer with lots of romaine (not just hearts of romaine that look like iceberg lettuce standing up, but the stuff that's actually Green) and raw vegetables.

I'm telling you, vegetables are where it's at.

Every Freaking Day

Do you something in particular as a ritualized activity every single day of your life? Like meditate, watch Seinfeld reruns at 6pm, hold your breath at 11:11am, or go for a run? I'm not talking about something that you do a lot, or most days, or that you TRY to do every day. But something that actually gets done intentionally, something that is additional to the necessities of life.

It seems to me that this ought to be possible, and my idea is to go ahead and think about what you'd like to include in your daily routine. Then try implementing it, do or die. Think of how productive you'd be if you wrote a page of your story 7 days a week, or how fit you'd be if you did 10 sit ups every single day, or how much of Proust you'd have read if you read a page a day, on all days.

That stuff adds up. I think it'd be cool to take something that was valuable to you and to actually work on it as part of your life.

Whether this is possible or not, you'll have to let me know!

(Maybe it's possible for just over a year?)

Reclaiming a Good Night's Sleep

I just had a flying dream last night. Do you know what that means? Somewhere in my subconscious, I have at least a grain of happiness. Probably a whole fistful of happy-grains, actually. Flying dreams like, never happen.

And perhaps I wouldn't have attained this fabulous flying dream (with skis, nonetheless, so I could go skiing after I landed in the ocean) if I hadn't made a couple of changes lately. I tried out a new routine. I perfected my sleeping environment.

Eight blissful hours, it seems, are more likely to happen under a few circumstances:
*That you're not stressed out as you go to bed
*That nothing terribly unpleasant wakes you up in the morning
*That you don't go over the worries of the day as you attempt to fall asleep

Give this a try, and let me know if you sleep better:
- Stop thinking about work/performing work-related activities at least an hour (preferably two hours) before bed
-Perhaps alter the lighting in the bedroom gradually as the night goes on, so by bedtime you've only got a lamp or two turned on...and not the fluorescent overhead!
-Invest in an alarm clock whose noise doesn't totally freak you out. I use the "buzz" setting on my cell phone...it's such white noise that I barely even register it, but it always wakes me up.
-Most importantly, in bed, tell all of those nasty thoughts to just shove off! Kick 'em out!! Nothing really gets worked out as you go to sleep, right? So send them away, off into the future, to be dealt with tomorrow. (Or miraculously solved by other forces during the night.)

A good night's sleep makes everyone healthier, happier, less likely to have road rage, and less prone to being completely bonkers. I'm sure we all know this from experience already. But seriously. It's time. Try to get more sleep.

Taking back your neighborhood

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and tomorrow Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. To celebrate and start making that change a reality, Obama has been urging everyone to get out and do a little volunteer work today.

I helped do some tree planting prep at the Berkeley Aquatic Park yesterday and it was awesome to see so many people in the neighborhood coming out. It's heartening to see first hand that people do care about their neighborhoods and their environment and their country. Someone even said this was an exciting time to be alive, as we were digging out benches installed as part of a Works Progress Administration projects back in the 1930s. We can come together again and make change happen.

So the idea is that you make that your own. People have jobs and school and things to keep them busy, but I believe that a lot of people still have good intentions. I noticed on my way back from the park yesterday that the traffic island in front of my building was filthy with trash, so I got up this morning, put on my gardening gloves, grabbed my iPod and cleaned it up. There are hundreds of people living in front of that island and it only took one of us about 100 minutes to clean it. Even if only a tiny fraction of people actually did that once in a blue moon, it'd make a huge difference.

Is your sidewalk littered with trash? Or your neighborhood park? Or your shoreline? Is there something broken in your neighborhood that you know how to fix? Do you have a minute to drop off a few cans at your local food drive?

I'm asking you and Gandhi is asking and Martin Luther King Jr. is asking and Barack Obama is asking you to care a little bit, to take back your neighborhood and be that change.

Digital Doorman

This idea owes gratitude to my friend Sarah who got me thinking along these lines. In the past people in society used to have all these filters around them. If you wanted to meet someone you would need letters of introduction from mutual acquaintances that could attest to your goodness. You would stop by someones house and drop your calling card. And if they wanted to see you either they would or they would make an appointment to do so.

Today we live in immediacy. Your phone rings and the caller innately feels like you should be there to pick it up. When people send you an email there is a sense that you have to get back to them as soon as it is possible. It is quite a struggle (for some of us) to escape this mindset. Some people impose limits on themselves, only checking email in the morning or evening, but some of us are just bombarded by the contact and need a step back.

Thus, digital doorman. I can't quite be sure how this service would instantiate itself, but the premise would be the acknowledgment and emphasis that you are beyond some sort of firewall, that you're insulated. (Grandcentral is an example of this- requiring people to give their names before you talk to them and letting you review your callers before answering.)

I know in some sense this insulation implies a sense of inequality. Like you're too important or too busy to talk to whoever shows up. But really I'm thinking of it more as a necessary insulation so you can have room to breathe, to interact on your own terms. Or at least a balance between your own and everyone elses.

I was honestly considering turning on an auto-responder saying something to the effect of I might take awhile to get back to you. And I have one prof whose every email comes with a footer declaring the need to write again if you don't receive a response due to shear volume of email received. These too methods really emphasizes the lack of a system for communicating this to your potential callers. I think increased clarity of the terms of response would give us a much better response rate. Less people dropped. And maybe a more realistic expectation on our fellow communicators.

Recession-chic picnic blanket

I think it would be really cool to make a really giant (or at least pretty big) picnic blanket out of the stuff you'd lay down on the grass if you didn't have a picnic blanket.

You could sew a bunch of your old towels together and then cover it with a patchwork of your old pants or jackets or worn out blankets. If you sewed it by machine, which you'd probably need to if you were using old jeans, and quilted it up decently, it would even be machine washable. And I bet it would look pretty cool. Or at least the potential for it to be attractive would be limited only by your aesthetic vision.

Rooftop garden subsidy

You know how you can get tax credits or something for putting up solar panels? I think we should also have subsidies for other kinds of green roofs and environmentally friendly initiatives.

I don't really know what's involved in converting a normal roof to one of those living roofs, but it would be really cool if you could grow stuff on top of apartment buildings - especially if you could grow food. They say you save on heating/cooling expenses with something like that, you're helping convert more carbon dioxide into oxygen and you're still making use of the solar energy hitting your roof. Only you eat it instead of turning your lights on with it.

I don't know if rooftop farms are really that practical in terms of green roofs since it's possible they need deeper soil than what you can get away with on a roof and the roof pitch might not be quite right, but if it would work, how cool would that be? Even having a decent container garden on your roof could help deal with some of your water run off.

You could make a little CSA for people living in apartment buildings. Granted you couldn't feed all of a high rise with one little plot, but the people who tended it could share the food. Anyway, it's a start. At the very least, I'm always in favor of plants.

Taking a little break

There's one thing that's always a good idea - vacation.

Speaking of vacations, we here at Aught Empire will be taking a little pause from our regularly scheduled program to recover from the holidays, get powered up for a new year and generally enjoy life.

We'll see you again in about a week!

Personal Libraries

Slow road back from death. We'll get back on pace eventually. (My current thought right now btw is just to have posts for every day no matter when they end up appearing.)

But for today:

I'm currently obsessed with the word library meaning a particular collection of books--over against the physical location. In a large part I feel this way because I love my own personal library. But you know whose elses I might like? Famous peoples.

You could totally sell collections of books that were the total collection of a particular person. Famous authors, politicians, inventors. Really whoever. People could do research and try to put together all the books a person had read. If just all the books they had in a collection when they croaked. That would totally sell tho.

Imagine you could have friends into your library room and say 'these are all the books Ben Franklin ever read.' Or 'this room represents the accumulated literary knowledge of Dostoevsky'.

And people could seriously try to read all those books. Like an insane project to know what their favourite thinkers knew. Seems like fun to me, but I guess I'm a book nerd.

Catching Up

In keeping with New Year's types of things, lets think today about being nice to ourselves. Maybe this is the opposite of the New Years resolution spirit, which attempts to be exacting upon you after a season of gluttony. But we here at the Empire would like then to be a voice of reason. Resolutions work best when you don't resent them.

Say you promised yourself to write a daily blog and punctually post updates on a daily basis. And sometimes you fall behind a few days. And sometimes you cheat and change the date stamp on the post. Well, you also post ahead sometimes because you know you'll be gone. The effect, a post every day, will eventually be the same. The impulse is the same. Products don't indeed have to be perfect, they have--at least in my mind--to be true.

So go a little light. Go a little easy. Don't let the rigour of your resolutions distract you from the purpose, the idea, the concept behind them. Do your thing. And do it like a human, full of foibles, flaws, missteps, miscalculations and all that stumbling jazz.

Indoor sparklers

This is probably a terrible idea, but one can afford to be a little reckless in honor of New Year's Eve.

We all agree that sparklers are the best thing ever, no? Except it's kind of a bummer that you have to leave the party to set them on fire outdoors so as not to burn things down indoors. So, what if you had indoor sparklers? Would that not be rad? Something like a glorified incense stick (which sparklers pretty much already are) that you could light indoors without destroying furniture or your nice hardwood floors or setting drunk people on fire by accident. And maybe they would even smell nice...

Drive thru movies

I will be the first to admit that this idea is dated maybe 15 years and made kind of (but not entirely) obsolete by NetFlix, but I would also like to point out that I thought of it like twenty years ago, so there.

Here goes:

Let's be honest. All the time you are thinking to yourself, "It is Friday (/other weeknight) and I want to watch a movie except not one of these movies that I have and have watched already twelve times this month." And the problem is that you don't want to set foot in the soul sucking pit that is Blockbuster or spend the next six hours trying to crack the advanced logic used to organize Reel (/other rental place that claims to have every film known to creation and some yet unknown, see also: Scarecrow in Seattle).

Therefore, I decided a long time ago that what would be really awesome is some kind of video rental drive thru. Or, better yet, a kind of glorified Pink Dot (and maybe Pink Dot actually does this come to think of it...) where you could call them up and tell them what movie you wanted to watch (and they would of course have it) and they would deliver it to you for next to nothing and you could also have them deliver like pizza, beer, popcorn, etc. that would be actually good pizza/beer/popcorn because that's what you really want to consume along with your movie habit.

Reasons this is better than going to the store yourself:
1. no waiting in line
2. no need to find the movie yourself
3. it may very well be cold outside

So, maybe you like to browse. Ok, fine. But could you not just browse like IMDB, say? And then tell them what you wanted. And order your pizza/popcorn/beer and have it delivered or pick it up yourself from the drive through?

Ways this is different from Netflix:
1. no monthly fee!
2. food comes with your movie!
3. no waiting for 24+ hours for your movie to show up.

I mean, at the very least, couldn't movie rental places have a drive through? Is that so much to ask?

Chapstick and floss

How about a little bit of floss stashed in the bottom of a chapstick tube? I think that would be pretty easy to do and that way I could only lose one thing as opposed to two.

I lose shit a lot. It's kind of my cross to bear, whatever that means.

Snow Roomba

I was originally thinking about some kind of super heated shovel for the snow...but that seems a little silly. And like maybe you don't want the snow 100% melted if you're trying to shovel it. So scrap that idea. Throw it right the eff out.

But how about a super heated roomba? Huh? How about that? Now you're interested. It would just be a tiny toaster sized device that you charge overnight, program in a set distance and turn loose in the snow. It would only go straight (this would avoid have a weird, windy path made for you) and would go as far as you told it to melting the snow as it went.

You wouldn't have to shovel anymore. Or there'd be minimal shoveling anyway. This bad ass could take care of a lot of the grunt work for you.

Accelerate

I SWEAR I posted this before. Sorry for repeating that (cuz I know I've written that) but I feel like I should let you know that I'm aware that I've probably posted this before and that we have no good way of keeping track of that shit. Sorry, yo.

Anyway, I think it would be handy if cars had a light, similar to the brake light but in reverse, that let you know when a car was accelerating. Sometimes it's hard to tell, but it would definitely affect the way we drive. I honestly think it would lead to less traffic. You wouldn't accelerate behind someone if they weren't speeding up, right? But sometimes it's hard to tell and we end up with that stop and go shit. Yup.

Happy boxing day to all you euros.

Doctor You

This is clearly a mistake, but I'm writing it anyways. I want people to have their own access to basic doctoring supplies. I'm envisioning a kit that is made up of a series of common tinctures. And perhaps you have a pass a basic sanity test before being allowed to have one. And yes, it can not have some of the big guns that are either super addictive or dangerous. But like, how about some of the basic elements that end up in most potions the doctors give us? A small quantity of the HCL stuff, a little bit of steroid, the basics of antibiotics. I feel like you could do this in a safe way. I mean, I don't know how, but someone could devise something for that. And then you could totally make it so people could mix up as a pill or a salve or what have you the basic necessities. Save you a doctor trip, same you the insane medicine costs.

I figure someone out there could totally whip up a kit like this full of totally legal substances too that was more like an herbal remedy kit. Which would be less cool in my mind, but would none the less get to the point of what I'm saying. Think if this like an advanced first aid kit. Basically we all have these things in our medicine cabinets anyways. Someone should just make a super well put together and full of instructions for use kit like that. Colds, allergies, headaches, cuts and bruises, minor infections, all that jazz. Go to.

Driving Miss Daisy, the video game

Sorry for two video game posts in a row. Oh, and sorry for a video game post on Christmas. I realize it should be something about loving your fellow man, etc. but it just wasn't in the cards. My sincerest apologies.

The big Jose Calderon assist for this one goes to Luis. He wanted all Morgan Freeman movies...so I'll see what I can do.

Todays idea is about taking movies that really don't need to be turned into video games and doing just that. Like, Driving Miss Daisy, per the title. I guess you'd just kind of drive around in that one? At it's core it would be a driving game. Where you get points for running errands, I guess? I never saw the movie so it's hard to be too specific.

But there could be a Shawshank Redemption game. And that one I can speak to. You'd try not to get raped, smuggle shit into the prison, and some other related prison jobs.

Robin Hood, Batman Begins, and Wanted are already games...

But Evan Almighty isn't! And neither is the Bucket List! And holy fuck Morgan Freeman has been in a handful of movies.

But really, just make those overly dramatic films (or romantic comedies for that matter) into video games. Why? For the sheer ridiculousness of it.

And of course, Merry Christmas.

Blurred lines

I was talking with Hot Sauce the other day and I realized that I learned a lot from video games. Seriously. I learned what flag went with what country, the rules of sports games, critical thinking, time management and a bunch of other stuff. But I never knew that was happening. It just sort of did. I think I'm better for it.

And this wasn't playing educational games either. This was playing Bomb the Russians and Kill Knife. There's always been a pretty bold line separating educational games from secular games. And guess what? No one that doesn't have to play educational games ever does. Seriously. They're boring as all fuck.

So the idea today is to blur those lines just a touch. Sneak in some elements of educational games into the regular games that all the normal kids are playing. Except normal kids aren't the biggest segment of people playing games...but that's another story.

What kind of educational elements? I don't effing know. More puzzles and facts thrown at you. You already have a lot of consequences built into games which is pretty cool. So maybe you don't need much more. But a few little tweaks would probably help.

Self-balancing technology

Did you know segways balance themselves? Yup. You don't even really have to do anything. You just kind of rock your feet if you want to go forward and the reverse to go in reverse. Let me make myself more clear: to keep a segway in balance you have to do nothing. For reals.

So why haven't we applied this technology to other stuff that needs balancing? The original device that made me think of this was ladders. Couldn't ladders just go straight up and not need to be v-shaped? And if you put wheels on the bottom then you could move the ladder without getting off of it.

A ladder that moves while you're on it and takes up less room than a traditional ladder. Yup, that just happened.

And if they balanced themselves then they'd be super safe. Except, you know, if you fell off.

Cuz you don't have self-healing bones, John Connor.

Pop music

Obviously music is always evolving. And there are sounds we can't even imagine that will be commonplace in our lifetime.

I'd like to try and speed that process along. And I'll be up front...I have no idea if anyone but me would like to hear it. But eh, whatever.

So let's take traditional pop songs and play them with weird instruments. I'm not talking about covering the standards, I'm talking about writing new music that you'd hear on top 40 radio...and then playing them with a saw. Or some crazy wind instrument made from root vegetables. The harmonies and melodies would all sound familiar...but there'd be something really different.

This could be cool. Where's Kanye on this one?

Super secret storage

My favorite subject. I think I must have been some sort of burrowing animal in another life 'cuz I love me some hiding stuff. Either a burrowing animal or a fighter pilot. I can never tell.




So throw away water bottles are out these days. It's all about reusable bottles. I bought my first tiny plastic bottle in months today and it felt weird. I had an empty nalgene in my car, just nowhere to fill it up.

But if we're gonna be carrying these reusable bottles around all the time, why don't we build some extra uses into them. The lid could be made into an extra storage spot without much trouble. Or the base. Or more tricky, but far cooler, a removable cylinder in the middle that you could fill with whatever. And you could fill the bottle with water and it would look like all your shit is underwater.

I'll give you a second to settle down from how cool that would be.

So yes, you lose a little room for water. But you gain room for everything else you're always carrying. Keys, change, advil, floss, bullet casings, a lighter, bootlegged Eric Chaves t-shirts...

But seriously. $10 for a boring ass piece of plastic or $15 for a boring ass piece of plastic with kick ass storage hidey holes? I thought you'd make that decision. Good job.

Small miracles

My brain is weird. Or maybe it isn't. Maybe it works just like normal. But anyway, here is a way I process things. Maybe you do it the same way, maybe you don't. When I have something coming up that I'm stressed out about, like a speech at work or a non-work function I don't really want to go to, I try to bookend it with things I like.

So say I have a tough project on Wednesday I have to do. I'll plan something fun and relaxing on Tuesday night, and then something fun and relaxing for Wednesday night.

Right now you might be thinking, "this guy is retarded. This is the most basic thing ever."

Well first I would scold you for saying "retarded". Then I would say, maybe you're right. But I'm not talking about HUGE parties or treats for yourself to surround the bad stuff. I'm talking about slowing down for a second and appreciating the good things you have going on in order to pull some energy away from focusing on the bad. It could just be dinner with a friend. Or sitting on your couch and doing nothing. Or making the dinner you really want.

You can just focus on that good moment which comes before the stressful one. And then when the stressful starts to creep in, focus on the good moment that will come after.

I think it's about building a balance and not letting yourself tip over one way or the other. This has been so incredibly helpful for me I can't even tell you. I wish I could explain it better. Because if I could, then you might be excited about it.

This is just how I get through the day. Whatever. Not all our ideas can be fascinating.

Facebook Photo Scavenger Hunt

There are two ways I envision this happening.

1. The first would be to establish a list of things to scavenge for and then rifle through any profile you could find for those pictures. Here's a potential list of things to add to this kind of scavenger hunt:

alcohol being consumed
cheesy sunset
things written on the beach
inappropriate picture taken at work
pets wearing clothes
etc



Pretty simple. You get points based on how many you can find and how quickly.

2. In this scenario, you actually have to take the pictures. You still esatblish a list, but the idea is to post the pictures to FB, as opposed to finding them on FB. Got it? So you and your friends would agree on the things to look for.

Bad sunburn
Way too drunk person
Poor sign grammar
etc



Either of these could really work as an application. Or just something managed amongst friends. I wish photo scavenger hunts got the same love as fantasy football.

The Sex Diet

I like to think that if people had shit to do all the time, and weren't ever bored, they'd eat a lot less.

Of course not everyone eats when they're bored. But a lot of people do.

So my idea is to have sex every time you're bored. More sex = less food = dieting. Not to mention all the positive health benefits obtained through regular intercourse.

But let's slow down a second. Obviously it isn't that easy. You need a partner, and you need a partner who's into it and has a similar schedule as you. And is also down to have lots and lots of sex. Not easy to find I guess. But if you know this person, then there's no reason you can't get started on this diet today. And what if you don't know this person? Then it gives you something to shoot for.

You should also eat healthy foods to replace all the energy you're using blah, blah, blah....

UPDATE: This already exists. Fuck you, Kerry McCloskey. Fuck you.

Spicy Mashed Potatoes

Someday we'll be so organized around here that we'll have theme weeks. Like, we'll do a whole month of Christmas ideas, or a week of food related ideas, etc. But for now that really isn't even close to the case. Which means you get a few lines by me explaining how things will be someday. And the whole time all my rambling is pretty much filler.

Yup. Today I'm suggesting a recipe for spicy mashed potatoes. I googled this and found a few recipes. However, they were either mashed potato balls (which get fried during the process) or use horseradish. Gross. My recipe uses chili powder, potatoes, and a healthy amount of butter. And some other stuff. Onions? People like those.

I think mashed potatoes don't get enough love. Probably cuz they're so boring. Let's add some damn flavor to them, change the color a little bit, and go from there.

Look out. Spicy mashed potatoes might change your whole world.

Sticks & Stones

The way we use words is important, right? Your kindergarten teacher was wrong in telling you that words can never hurt you. Words are powerful, impactful, defining… you get the picture. So the idea is to look into your daily transcripts, find some words that you might be throwing around willy-nilly, and consider changing them.

For me, the phrase I'm tackling is "I feel." It usually precedes some sort of expression of thought or emotion. Now, following this phrase with something emotional or an actual feeling makes sense. But here's the odd thing: I've found myself using "I feel" to start a sentence that describes a thought or opinion I have. As in, "I feel like we don't want to go that route." Or, "I feel like that ad could have a little more white space to it." See, because it's at work that this phrase particularly bothers me. Shouldn't my thoughts and opinions be rooted in critical thought, as opposed to emotional reactions?

So now, every time I speak to express something, I will consider if it's an expression of a thought. If it is, I'll start my sentence with "I think" or something similar. If it's an expression of emotion, then I'll start my sentence with "I feel."

And I'm not sure, but I think (see? right there, I did it right there!) the result will be twofold: I'll express myself more clearly, AND I will be more conscious of whether a statement should come from a critical place or an emotional place. It could actually work backwards, changing the place from which my statements originate.

So find some words in your life that you might be letting slip in unnoticed, and notice them.


ps- This is my inaugural Æ post, thanks to messenger & noweverybody for the letting me add a few drops to the bucket!

Snow globes and sun jars

Snow globes get a bad rap. I think, in general, people aren't so fond of them. Not that they hate them or anything, but given the choice between a snow globe and the cash equivelent, most people would take the cash. Hey, to each their own.

But living in an area that gets no snow, I'm thankful for the wintery goodness that a snow globe invokes. Just for a minute I can stare at the peaceful cozy scene inside and imagine I'm there. It's nice.

The idea for today however is to sell a warm weather option: the sun jar. This is something people in cold weather climates can break out when it's snowing so that they can fantasize about being warm. Same idea as a snow globe, except this one has a light in it AND it warms up. So you can hold it in your tiny hands and enjoy the bright sun and it's warmth. And yes, there would be a tiny scene inside. Santa on a surf board perhaps?

There are a million ways to make this work. Ok, granted I can only think of three. But you get the idea. You could plug it in or have it run on batteries, or you could use the same technology as reusable hand warmers (tough to make the light work), or, and this is my favorite, you could run it off solar panels. So, you know, your sun jar is actually powered by the sun!

And I could charge one up in California and send it to my friends back east all full of west coast sun. That's how this whole idea got started in the first place.

TIVO for the internet

So a friend told me this is basically like Google. Ok, true, one feature is no different than a search engine. But the second part is more like TIVO.

Ok, so I plug into this search engine and I search for something. Let's say I want to watch the "Dick in a box" video. Easy enough. So I search it, find it, and watch it. But the search engine records all that and then it says, "hey, you might like "Jizzed in my Pants." and it tells you how to get there.

It mostly works for entertainment sites because if you're just looking for some information it would be annoying if you kept getting referrals to other information on the thing you already figured out. Like, I don't need another recipe for bread pudding. This one is fine.

But yeah, guiding you to entertaining things based on other entertaining things you like is totally helpful.

Pie Night

Hey! It's an idea that I've actually done and can personally speak to.

Pie Night is like an idea for a party. You can guess, I'm sure, what kind of party. Everyone brings a different kind of pie. And then you all eat the pie whilst talking about your 401K's and your spin class. It's fun and a great thing to do around the holidays. Throw in some mulled wine or...beer? Beer goes great with pie, right? But yeah, this is kind of a winter thing. You know, when friends are in town and/ or sick of family.

But here's the 2008 update: After pie, drag everyone out to one of those fun bars where you can play darts and board games.

Tsk tsk to all of you who thought "Pie Night" was going to be something dirty. I'm looking at you, Billadonna.

S.B.T.A.C.B

Slightly Better Than Average Citizens Brigade. Yup.

So the idea here is to get a bunch of people to do good stuff. Not the kind of stuff that would end up in the paper or on TV or would necessarily change the world. Just good stuff. Canned food drives. Park clean-up. A commitment to volunteer somewhere once a month. Stuff like that. And nothing that would require any financial obligations or fundraising.

It wouldn't all need to be organized either. Well, ok, there's gonna be some organization. But maybe one day everyone just gets together in the morning, goes out to do good stuff for two hours, and then meets back up to trade notes on the good stuff they did.

What's the point? As always, who fucking knows?

Two Stacks / We want two stacks

Pavement, yes. Good eye indy jerks.

This post is about grading papers. But it could just as easily be about any project you're taking on that is in its essence very repetitive but requires your brain to be somewhat alert while doing it. Like if you had to write emails to fifty important people in a row and fairly quickly. I don't know. Read and the apply to your own work at will.

The thing with grading papers is...well there are two things. First, it requires you to be on your game. You have to be able to read things that don't always make sense. you've got to focus. And then judge. The second thing is that there is generally time pressure. Which doesn't always mean you have the luxury of quitting when you lose your eyes or your head.

Currently solution? Go ahead and do the work. But sort them into: wide awake and with it on one hand and sleepy and fog-headed on the other. The wide awake pile, you're done with those. The fog pile has to get a second look. Chances are you've probably done most of the work for yourself already. But it is probably best to be sure that you haven't accidentally drawn funny cartoon figures in the margins or circled words you found funny the first time you read it.

You'll thank yourself. Your students won't. But maybe you'll see less of them in Office Hours the following week.

Match.com for couples

Slow down there, chief. It's not what you think. Yeah, I do want to get couples together, but not like your dirty mind is thinking. Pervert.

I just realize it's hard for couples to meet new people. Maybe they can meet other couples, but it's hard to really expand that social circle. So the idea here is to expose couples to other groups, couples, and singles who might be engaging in similar activities. It's just a way to get hangout buds together. Maybe there are parties they can go to. And it could put them together based on how well the group would get together, not just two individuals. And since they aren't going to be together forever and ever (it would really only be a few hours) the service doesn't need to be nearly as accurate as the dating sites. Hooray for lowered standards!

I know of a couple services like this, but not ones that cater to couples.

Some people don't have trouble making friends and could do without the internet. Well great for them. Jerks.

Grow it up, Cut it down

I know it is a myth to think that one can be totally self-supporting and solve all the worlds problems by rejecting the mass produced world and all. We have to engage, I know. But it is also a myth that you need to buy a new piece of furniture every time the current cut and shape goes as little out of fashion. And this is just one project. One project that could become many. Resists with time.

Grow a tree. Plant one or a bunch today. Then cut it down and do something with it.

And since that'll take awhile. Get some other wood right now. Like big raw scraps of a cut down trunk. And like make it into a table or a bookcase. Anything. Just start with the rawest of the raw and make something. Spend a lot of time on it too. Make it really well in fact. And if there is something wrong with it, fix it. Take it apart and make it again. Give the object some love and some history. I'm all for material fetishism. Give it some power of its own.

And the trees you grow, mark em off for a later date when they're to be made into something too. I just love the idea of your things having a special place, a story and a life. So when they have something wrong you want to get in there and make it better, not throw it out.

And yeah, maybe it gets thrown out in the end too. But at least work on it.

But this is me.

Calling stuff

I don't know about you, but I lose my keys all the time - ok, not like really lose them, but manage to set them by the sink in the kitchen instead of on the dresser by my bed where they always are and always should be. Or I'll forget my phone in the closet, and it'll be as good as lost to the world when I have to leave Right Now for the airport.

Except that when you lose your phone, you can call it. So, it's never really lost. Unless you actually lose it, but even then you can call it.

Anyway, I want to be able to call my keys. I want to be able to call my keys from my phone and have them ring or vibrate or flash a little light when I can't find them. And this calling of stuff could be extended to whatever other important things you always need to find at the last minute. How helpful would that be?? So helpful.

OneTwo

What would this place be if it wasn't just a repository for the things we intended to do but may or may not ever do.

I'm going to try to put together a record called "One,Two" that is all only two chord songs. And will probably feature the lines "One / Two" in each of the songs.

I think it'd be a fun way to test the limits of what you can do with only two chords at a time. And I also like some pretty simple stuff so why not? I've never been too big a fan of virtuosity. Probably because I'm lazy and bad at things. But you know, whatever gets you by.

Take that 3-chord punk.

People Laws

I was having one of my internal debates about whether or I believe in copyright laws especially as they pertain to artistic production. And before I get to my extended idea, I'd probably say that in reality all I want is a huge extension of fair use laws. Like for example I can do almost anything I want as long as I'm not making money off of it or something. In such an instance I'd be redefining 'fair' as something like I'm allowed to listen to all the music I want without having to pay for it. But onto idea proper:

Copyrights should be totally non-transferable. And to such an extent that the sole creators should always have the rights to them. Main point of is: corporations can't hold copyrights. They should probably be assured of some use of the copyright, but they shouldn't ever actually have them. I'm willing to concede this little bit because clearly if a corporation is housing, fostering and otherwise giving the person space to create the thing worthy of copyrighting, they clearly have a stake in it as well and should be compensating. But I just don't think that creation should ever be taken from the person. (Again, see above about fair use and what it would mean to 'take' something.)

What I'm asking for here is a difference between what can be granted to an institution or corporation and to a person or group of persons. Even a group of persons are still particular persons. Corporations start to float away, they have rights that aren't tied down to specific people. And as such they have lives of their own that can be bad for me and me. Anyways. Harsh laws for corporation. They know how to exploit so should be reigned in. Each people could theoretically do that too. But I guess I'm envisioning a world in which rights are so well tied to individuals that single powerful ones couldn't do the evil things corporations seem capable of doing in this day and age without batting too many eyes.

Anyways. Same ol' tirade. I want things for free. And I'm happy to share my things. I do in fact have some too. Enjoy. Use them fairly. Thanks me. That's all.

Alternate universe play

I was trying to think of a way that to solve the problem of popular plays needing to be in giant venues so that everyone and their mother can come see it before it moves to the next town. This is a problem because when you use a huge theatre, the actors have to act to the back of the room, which makes everything they do look fake and overdone - as opposed to movies and real life where you can get up close and don't have to telegraph your feelings far, far away.

And thus I came up with this genius idea - the alternate universe play, where the play never stops and two audiences see two different versions of the story.

Doing the exact same play twice simultaneously could get hard - like what happens when your character drenched with water in one scene and then has to be dry to do it over again for the other half of the audience - or what happens if you're supposed to be on both stages at once? And of course it would throw off your character's emotional continuity.

So, instead, what if you did a single play told from two (or more!) points of view. One set would be at the saloon and one set would be at the schoolhouse. Or you could do different rooms in a house. Or different people's houses. And your character would go from place to place and interact with the people there and tell their side of the story. And each audience would see it from one side or the other. .

Maybe the dad is a total hotshot at the office, but doesn't get any respect at home. This would be fun acting-wise because you'd really get to dig into your character and let them play two different roles. I know you get different scenes in a normal play, but this way you'd have to go out of your way to have each character make sense within each context to each respective audience. Or you could treat it like two alternate universes.

The stage would have to be in the middle with the audience around the outside with the two stages split somehow. In all likelihood, this would require someone to custom build a theatre to house this genre of plays, but it would be worth it, and you could use the venue for other things in the meantime. People have done this before - see Wagner and the theatre in Bayreuth - and could therefore do it again.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure this is a brilliant idea. I can't wait to see one.

AP

Today's idea to learn more about the Associated Press. What do they do? Who are they? How come so much news comes through them? Do we think they are evil or are they good? Is it possible that they are unbiased? Or if that is an impossibility at least without a controlling consciousness with which to direct bias?

Can I send things to the AP that might be picked up other places? How much does that cost? Can our blog go out over the AP? What might that even mean?

I figured I'd write one final sentence that wasn't a question.

What fucking aisle is the charcoal in?

I've asked that question. Out loud, but to myself. And I haven't gotten a response believe it or not. This may have happened to you, too. You may have been in a popular supermarket, any chain will do, and wondered where the soap, or the condoms, or the roasted peppers are. And the next step, after wondering that and wandering the aisles for a bit, is to wonder where someone you might could ask is hiding. You know, like an employee of that fine establishment. And of course you never find one. You just walk and walk and look and look.

I think this might solve all that. It'll solve it for those of us with cellular telephones anyway. It's a simple phone number that you text with the name of what you're looking for. Then, seconds later, you get a note back that says: aisle 5. You get an answer to your question! Just like that! It's really quite simple.

There are a million other ways to do this. There could be little units located throughout the store on which you could look things up, not unlike Borders. Or it could be a website that's only accessible from inside that store. Doesn't matter. But this would improve a lot of shopping experiences.

Maybe they want you to hunt and see things you never knew you needed and that aren't on your list. Maybe that's part of their evil code of ethics. I have no idea. But if that's the case...fuck them.

Towels

I was thinking about this in my half sleep so I can't be sure which parts of it I thought were really good and which parts were only good in the half of me that was asleep. But I've felt the need to have a lot of non-disposable wet towels. Something like wash clothes, but a whole system that allows you to pick one up, use it for something gross-like cleaning the bathroom, cleaning up spills in the kitchen, whatever-and then dump it into the dirty laundry. All I'm really thinking of is some low grade wash cloth material that lives in one bin there it stays wet and then has its own laundry bin right next door. I don't like the idea of those things going in the regular laundry. And sometimes you need something more solid than a disposable wipe.

That is all.

Vote for the cast

So obviously this hinges on some pretty arrogant people putting aside their egos...but let's just agree that it's possible.

The idea here is for a movie studio to let fans vote on who should be in their next movie. And who should direct it. But the catch is that they'd all have to agree to be in ahead of time, and agree that *gasp* the fans may choose someone over them. I think we need to work in some money for charity to get them to do it, but that's doable.

But wouldn't it be cool to see the script or a plot summary and then pick from 3-4 people for each part? Like, you get some serious say in the creative process.

You know where this would TOTALLY work? You know, don't you? Yeah, you know what I'm going to say. It's porn! A porn company could 100% do this and I think people would actually like it more. You could even vote on individual scenes. Yeah, this works better.

Folk Radio

I listen to a lot of classical radio. It's nice because it rarely has obnoxious sound effects and screaming commercials. Indeed, usually there aren't many commercials at all. That and it is totally available everywhere. Or maybe anywhere with the proximity of a large city or university. But usually you can tune in for some classical music and just chill out.

That and I feel like I'm learning about music while listening. As opposed to top 40 radio where you learn about what is going on now. Classical radio largely has the benefit of most of it's music having already been canonized. This allows them and me to create a sort of sense of what classical music is and what I might perhaps want to know about it. So I'm like learning.

Now here is where I pull the M. Night Sham twist on you. Imagine all that but with folk music. Boom. Yeah. Let that sink in.

Okay, so maybe it isn't that profound. And maybe 'folk' is a pretty big word. But I would love to hear the types of traditional music that people play in Irish pubs the first Tuesday of every month. And old blues recordings. And gypsy klezmer music. You'd probably have to do a good job creating shows that addressed these specific types. But imagine if there was just a network of these types of radio stations our there filling the country with a folk music education. Something that isn't fly by night. Something that we might want to learn about while its here.

Saturation Point

This might qualify as a bad idea, but it's interesting, and interesting is good, so I'm going for it.

The idea: Test how truly awesome the things you love are by saturating yourself with them beyond normal usage. We're talking music, movies, people, food, activities, colors, adventures, any old thing. You could set up a sort of experiment, such as: I will listen to Song X ten times today, and see how I feel afterward. Or, I will only wear turquoise for the next week, and see what happens. Chocolate will be the main ingredient in everything I eat until Friday. I will spend every afternoon with Fred until something dramatic happens. Et cetera.

Saturate yourself to the point where you feel questionably comfortable, and let me know what happens. I am reasonably certain at this point in my life that certain things are so amazing that there is never enough, and that I can't experience them enough times, and that there is no saturation point. It'd be good to have empirical proof of this, however. So get to it!

Citizen

Why is it that people can't decide to be citizens of a place or not? Here's an alternate system:

Until a person is of age (the age is sort of arbitrary, here I'd say 18) they are taken care of by their parents government or the government of the place of their birth. At 18 they are offered to join that government as a citizen. Everybody has to be offered this, no discrimination. And if the person doesn't want to join, they don't get the special benefits package: voting rights, health care, &c. Perhaps there could still be a place for taxation (tho I'm still going to assume that that can be offset by sales taxes and assorted other taxes-property or whatever).

What I'm thinking of here is citizenship as a choice. One that comes with requirements and with benefits. Obviously there is a serious danger here of setting up a system in which people are denied rights, but I'm thinking perfect world scenarios in some respect. That is, it is easy for people to be a citizen if they'd like to and beneficial to the government to have them. But also that people who wanted to could opt out, could go their own route. And here's the kicker, still be allowed to stay in the country and do almost everything anyone else would do too. Within some limitations. Obviously the non-voting. And I assume other ways that are less than good as well. Point being, there'd be a choice. A non-national option that allowed you to be on the earth in some specific location without a particular governmental affiliation.

Anyways, clearly this could be exploited and made bad. But so can anything. Just a different model. And one I might like a little better.

Survival Landscape

I'm 99% sure I posted this idea already. But suck it up because you're getting it again.

My idea is for a huge open lands project in which you could hike around for days or weeks or months and count on a somewhat steady stream of food. How, you ask?

Well, there's going to be small maintained gardens and crops for you to utilize. And there will be animals to hunt as well. All access will be managed carefully so that nothing is overused. The maintenance on these crops and herds will be done as behind the scene as possible. So in that sense it's kind of like Disneyland.

The idea is that there really isn't a place where you can do this without taking your life into your own hands. In my open space world you can venture out and explore and learn survival techniques but also be reasonably assured you'll be able to find food and clean water when you need it. And if things get really desperate there are people who occasionally roll through and can help you out.

Not that there wouldn't be danger. We're gonna release some mountain lions and other predators, too. It should be as natural an environment as possible. And it would be huge.

I'm not opposed to further Disneyfication by building some cool structures hidden in the landscape for you to find and explore. Caves, temples, etc.

It would be kind of fake, but also very real.

Work for your food

I have to give partial credit to my friend Jeff on this one. We're both very concerned about the state of childhood obesity in this country. That state being Nebraska. Ay-oh!

Just kidding. But seriously. Have you seen kids? They're really fat these days.

So our idea is for an obstacle course, or series of obstacle courses, in which you are rewarded with food. But, like, that's your dinner. So you have to climb one of those wall things and at the top is half a sandwich. Then you crawl through some mud and swing over a puddle and get a cookie.

You know, typing it out makes it seem kind of mean. We didn't plan on that. It was more a way to incorporate calorie loss into calorie consumption. And trying to create a zero balance. And this wouldn't be something you'd do all the time, it would just be a silly learning exercise to help people equate the two. I don't think people often realize, or even consider, what kind of effort it would take to "get rid" of what they're eating.

It's not mean. It's supposed to be fun.

Period Piece

Every so often it's cool in Hollywood to do these period pieces where you do some kind of dramatized/romanticized re-enactments of historical happenings or just stories to get people in the mood of how things might have been way back when. And sometimes they'll go to great lengths to make the costumes and the sets and all that really accurate, which will be great, but then they'll have like American actors pretending to be from Troy or France or whatever. You know, like an Australian Mel Gibson playing Braveheart. Or Brad Pitt in whatever that movie was that everyone but me saw.

My idea is that you really go all the way, including the language part, so that if you're doing a story about the Romans, you do it in Latin, with subtitles.

This could work really well with the Canterbury Tales, for example. The Canterbury Tales definitely have film potential, for one thing. Chaucer already has most of the script written in Middle English for you. And Middle English might even be vaguely comprehensible once you get into the swing of things.

I know there will be legions of people who will never see it because they're allergic to subtitles, but I still think it's a rad idea and should be tried at least once and probably lots of times.

Class Warfare

This is something I might find a good way to try once I have a class of my own to abuse with my inane ideas.

When you read something there are impossibly many ties in all over the world. I'd imagine as a teacher teaching a novel it might seems really tough to pick one critical angle to take on a work. So maybe for one class session you assign everybody a different reading and make them play the role of that position on a book for that day.

An obvious problem is that not everyone has the same source material. But that is a problem to shifts the focus of its work onto the student to read, comprehend and represent well the paper they're reading. (Again, this might be a try once a semester type of thing, not necessarily fruitful for basic class discussion.)

Another issue is the fact that some of the arguments probably are two various to meet up in fruitful discussion. You aren't necessarily going to get much value by pitting a socioeconomic reading against a reading that is more about tracking a system of images through the novel. But also you might. You never know. And with enough voices in a class their is opportunity for some pairings not to be terribly fruitful while still having a lot of interesting fruit on the table.

Just seems this might very well teach kiddies about really understanding the argument of a paper. And also the myriad possibilities of looking at books. And really not closing off the possibilities. Instead showing that there is too much and learning how to still get value out of that over abundance.

Oh ye little experiments. I can't wait.

(Vam)Pyrrhic Victory

That title is likely to have been misleading by the time you get to the end of the post, but really sounds to rad to have passed up. That and I'm off the belief that I can argue for the rightness of any title if need be and end up sounding at least halfway convincing. And so it goes.

Winter means less light and far too much dark. Often I get sad about this. Today (which is not today) I woke up from an afternoon nap in the total dark. This has always been a nurtured peeve of mine. Today, however, I'm saying no more.

Today I'm saying, nightwalkers, my friends, embrace the dark. I mean, I like the sunshine just fine. But don't I also love the night life and therefore, relatedly, to party? I know. Why them should I refuse to appreciate having extra night time? I can appreciate it. So I will.

You should join me in this. Think about the things that are more fun to do in the cover of night. Think about how you can go to an earlier in the day movie and not go into the theatre in the light and exit in the dark (it's already dark out!). Think of the parties that can start earlier and rage longer. Oh gothy friends, what have we to fear from the night? Are we not one with her wan pall? Can we not indulge our spooky urges? We can.

All this is yours if you'll simply flip your thinking around and decide to embrace the growth of the night. And then when it starts going the other way again you can drop the facade and return to loving the day.

And people who live in lands where there is winter. You have just a whole other set of problems and I can't offer you as much help. Even my positivism doesn't want to take on six months of dreary sludge. Lo seinto.