quickies for today

I had a couple things I wanted to hit and I’m going to try to do all of them rapid fire…. here goes:

high school

I’m going to my 10-year high school reunion this weekend. I’m not sure what to expect. I’m looking forward to seeing people but the entire thing seems a little surreal. My plan is to watch Grosse Pointe Blank before I go. Hopefully I won’t have to kill anyone while at the shindig.

HELLO! Kitty

Joel had posted about the Hello Kitty ummm… massage product and thought it was some type of bootleg. Well, as it turns out, unlike the Hello Kitty Gat, it is an official Hello Kitty product. Thanks to Destroy All Monsters for the info about it. You can buy your own Hello Kitty “Back Massager” on eBay.

follow up thoughts on the rights and responsibilities of free speech

Thanks for all the feedback on that posting. Joel had asked if I thought the same was true for the visual arts and yes I do think it is. And I realize that it’s a slippery slope that we’re on. But it’s socially irresponsible for people to deny the pervasive conscious and unconscious effects of any form of media, especially on group behavior. I’m not advocating censorship (in fact, one of my favorite quotes is from the great supreme court Justice Black “Censorship is a sign of a society’s insecurity”). But for a photo editor at Vanity Fair, People, or Entertainment Weekly to suggest that they don’t influence our perceptions of beauty for example is ridiculous. The problem is, that once you admit this you become a party to it and most people don’t want to accept the implications of that responsibility. It’s easy to do anything when you don’t think you’re affecting anyone else.

Pledge of Allegiance

ummm… I’m going to save that one for another day. I just don’t have the time or patience right now to tackle that.

lighting seeds

sometimes I love kodak.com. I mean really love it. We just had a huge lighting storm hit rochester and a group of us, including the head of kodak.com, all gathered at the large windows in our office and stared to the west and watched the storm. It’s moments like that which make this place great.

i finally figured it out

it took a while but i recently realized what i don’t like about like about Eminem. For me he epitomizes our society’s desire to embrace “rights” without embracing the “responsibility” that goes along with them. A few days ago I had the chance to listen to a some stuff off of the new album, The Eminem Show and songs I heard all had a similar theme: “all I’m speakin’ is words and I’ve got a right to do that and my words don’t really effect what people do.” Sweet baby jebus, someone tell me when and where this idea that words don’t affect people’s behavior came from? Or what’s worse why every time the idea that words might have an effect on people is brought up the entire entertainment industry wraps itself in an American flag and starts wailing about First Amendment rights.

The funny thing about the First Amendment is it protects your right to speech (as it should) but it doesn’t protect you from the responsibility that right requires. It also doesn’t necessarily protect you from the results of your speech. I mean Em, or is it Mr Nem, you can’t seriously believe that your lyrics don’t affect the way that teens (let alone adults) think or act? I mean just about any form of communication is about affecting behavior. That’s the power of any mass media form of communication (why can the industry charge so much for Superbowl ads? Nah, advertising goal isn’t to influence behavior…. never).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that the First Amendment is a bad thing. In fact it’s a crucial part of our democratic republic (remember, we’re not a democracy). But for God sake, can people at least take responsibility for their words? ‘specially those moving some 3+ million albums in less than five weeks.

busy, busy, busy

Title says it all. I still haven’t succeeded in putting down any of the balls I have in the air. Work has become much more exciting (which is good) but also my time consuming (which is bad). As Tom, my boss puts it, this will be the Summer of Learning. 100% of my focus will be on recreating kodak.com’s learning content. Ever since I joined the company I’ve wanted to take a crack at it. And now I’m getting my chance. But at the same time it’s a huge and high profile project, one that requires a lot of attention. And I need to figure out how to give it that attention.

Competing with it is the current play that Exact Theatre is working on: Jean Genet’s The Balcony. And that has been one heck of a learning experience. In retrospect I don’t think staging it this summer was the best idea. We’re doing our best to split our time between getting this play done and planning our first full season. Oh and trying to find people to sponsor the seasons (if you know any rich people who are looking to sponsor a small theatre company, please let me know). On the plus side we’ve all but nailed the plays for the season. The big debate is if we should do two or three plays. We’ll have settled that by August.

Another thing I’m balancing is Martial Arts and general mind and body fitness. I’m running every other morning, which is still a tough thing to do for me. I haven’t had as much mental time to work on Kung Fu and I’m really disappointed about that. Plus, the weekend of the Super Summers Martial Arts conference that I’m attending is also the opening weekend of the show. Oy. So I’ll be there for the first two show nights and miss the third performance.

Plus somewhere in there I need to fit my friends. And of course the universe would see fit to choose this exact moment for a new girl to come into my world. Darn Universal Irony… it gets me again. Any hoo, I’ve met this super cool new girl named Drea. We’ve been out a few time (well more than a few time, but not yet a lot) and things are going well. Thankfully she is as busy (if not more) as I am, so at least that smoothes things out a little big.

But in all of this, blogging is falling to the bottom of the list. So I’ll probably stay on every other day updates during the week for a while. Plus I’m trying to work in an occasional weekend update and a redesign in there somewhere.

ohhh my achin’ head

Actually it’s my neck. Heather posted a great blog about martial arts a few days ago and how she’s crafting a personal learning style for herself. Long ago I found my learning style. That style is called pain…. Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit when I write that. I definitely don’t go out looking for pain. It just find me, usually in new and oh so surprising ways. Last night was no exception:

We have been working on a demo to perform at an upcoming conference. As usual we are working on creating a bad kung fu movie. One that would make the Shaw Brother’s proud. My role is this one is, and it’s a stretch, as the clumsy student who doesn’t really know martial arts. I do get to showcase a couple “hidden moves.” These are techniques that really are hits, but make the person performing them seem like he (or she) doesn’t actually know what they are doing. But eventually my character gets, well, thrown on his head. When we practiced that sequence last night I blew the break fall. The result: new pain.

Basically I go in to tacked the opponent and fail. That results in my being kneed and elbowed. Then he latches around my stomach and lifts me so I end up with my back on his shoulder facing the sky. He then racks me for a moment or two and then swings me back down to the ground. To help him with the lift, I jump and tuck my body. The only problem was I didn’t untuck fast enough as I was being brought back to the ground. So instead of my feet hitting first, my head hit the mats first. Owww! Thanks to that I’ve had a sore neck since then.

As the final demo will be on a hard wood floor we are most likely going to change the throw. I learned a good lesson, but at the same time I have no desire to tempt fate. Especially considering that as my family might comment, I’m not the most coordinated person out there.

credit where it’s due

Check out Heather’s newly redesigned blog, it totally rocks! Just don’t refer to it a Posey.com… she’s kinda touchy ’bout that.

On a slightly different note, this is something that you gotta see. I don’t watch much tv (‘specially late night), but I do know about Triumph the Insult Comic Dog from the Conan O’Brien show. Any hoo in crusing blogs this morning I came across this quicktime video clip: Triumph at the Episode II opening in NYC. It’s big (23 mb), but if you’ve got broadband and haven’t seen it already it’s soooo worth the download. ‘Specially if you need a pick me up or if you have even a little geek in you.

Once you’re done, check out Blackwolf the Dragonmaster, Duke of Talisker — New York City’s first and only Unofficial Wizard homepage (you’ll recognize him from the video)… The fact he posted his personal D&D stat’s says more than I could ever hope to… no the stats aren’t for a role playing character, for himself. Really. Check it out.

Oh, the Beth Orton concert rocked. She’s pretty cute in an androgenous-chrissie-hynde-sorta way.