Damn, Garage Band is addictive. I keep trying to get things done, but it drags me back in. ...Poor me. :D

New blog-internal thread:

Spring Cleaning: Entry #1
Looks like the epicenter of the cleaning process is going to be the office. I put in 1:15 hrs cleaning up Planet Camino's desktop this afternoon. I want to get Jaguar installed now, so I can have better interactivity between the laptop and the workhorse. Need to get everything backed up, if that's the plan. Shouldn't be too hard though, what with Hal 9000 sitting there just behind the big screen.

Hoping to get up early tomorrow and spend the better part of the day absorbed in the office. G's going to be babysitting again for her Alex, so the timing is about right. Maybe I'll finally get my PWCL stuff back in order... Board meeting Monday.

Yeee! Last night G finished reading "Star Dust" (Gaiman) to me. Excellent, beautiful!

Today, the first icecream truck of spring came by -- and on the first day of spring! G says she's never had icecream truck icecream. What?! So I had a "Krunch" and treated her to an icecream sandwich.

Yesterday I got absorbed in playing with "Garage Band". What a killer app! I put together a strange and wonderful piece using sounds from around the house: bottles grinding, thwacking a glass on the table, the washing machine's lid slamming shut, blowing bubbles in a glass of water. It's 1:39 minutes of Brian Eno bliss.

Sounds quite good on the laptop speakers... Fileshared it up to the workhorse ten minutes ago and discovered that it sounds a lot different there. The drumming sounds are less percussive, and the ghostly howls are far more pronounced. So, workflow-wise, I guess I gotta do data collection on the laptop, then edit upstairs with the stereo's speakers engaged.

...Which means I'll at long last be upgrading Planet Camino to Jaguar. I need to be able to play mp4's. See, the iLife package came with the updated iTunes -- which I can't use upstairs yet. ...I've been hearing about how MPEG-4 is the wave of the future; given how central compression formats are to what I'm doing, I need to be on top of this.

Watched "Angel" last night -- thanks to Philip for the loan. Fred is waaaay better as a big bad than as a teddy bear. Crossing my fingers that Joss finagles a deal with Fox, so the story can go on...

Feeling overall better today. Still haven't solved the Tuesday thang in my head, but finally felt like I had the beginnings of a plan last night. Deeply flawed, but at least something.

Plans for G moving in are progressing. May 1 or June 1 are likely candidates, though the choice has not been made. [And, really, it's just up to me at this point.] May is looking kinda wacky, with J being out of town til the 15th, my bro's graduation on the 15th, and Rob & Kyrie's wedding on the 29th... The bed and the cat were the big question marks -- they may not be as difficult as I'd suspected. But also realized today that there's some furniture that I hadn't taken account of.

Happy first day of spring, everyone!

Well, I bought the lamp figuring that I could return it for refund if it didn't work out. *Grinds teeth* It's so almost just right. Problem is that it only has a 25-watt bulb, and on close inspection, it's cheaply made. Haven't decided what to do yet.

Preoccupied. Upset. Had a series of arguments on Tuesday that have me all tangled up in the head, trying to figure out if there's anything that can be done. Maybe the differences have grown too great. I'm willing to accomodate, though, if I can keep at least a low-level connect. Very difficult: it's all about form and awareness -- content is only a vehicle.

[Could you be a little more cryptic?]

Art, art, art. Made a techno-remix of the "Boy in Blue" sound clip, and my own one-minute edit of the filmmakers project. Wrote two poems during the past two days, which I'm fairly pleased with. Getting excited to play some more with Lightwave -- make some more Lovecraft critters.

Have a ridiculously cool idea brewing around ensemble creative process. I mean to apply it to YL, and perhaps to the HPL project that I didn't manage to finish last year:

1. Each person starts with the same selection of elements to work with.

2. There is a limiting factor: amount of time to complete, length, wordcount, etc.

3. Each person directs to completion their own product.

4. It's OK to steal from each other.

The incentive: When you get to see a bunch of people's takes on the same subject, you can make better decisions about your own piece. You may not feel invested in the initial topic -- but you can walk away with a product that you're proud of, nonetheless.

The copyright issue: Seems to me that even if you plagiarize outright from someone in the group, you should be able to put your "by Me" line at the top -- so long as there's a paragraph at the bottom that explains that the work emerged from an ensemble process, involving the following list of participants, and that any works they publish that have the same bits in them are not to be considered copyright infringements. [Sort of like one of those Creative Commons licenses, but "derivatives" being authorized for only a specific list of persons.]

This could be an excellent project to initiate on youthlib.com, or perhaps on the YouthRightsLeaders list.

With regards to the HPL project, I'm thinking that if I made my elements available to the filmmakers group, they could each create something... And when I made my own final version, it would be unique -- but better for having been informed by other people's creations. [G commented that this sounds a lot like the "artistic response" process that she employs in Artist's Way.]

House cleaning is nominally what I should be doing. Have only done a little this week. Feh. But I've got decent excuses: the aftermath of Tuesday tying up brainspace, and having made some art. Art should, more or less, always trump.

Made fondue for G last night -- her first ever! Fondue is special to me from my family: my parents had it on their first date, and it we frequently had it on special occasions (though not only on special occasions).

Also finally watched the movie "Svengali", which my bro gave me for a birthday quite some time ago. Glad to see it, but was nodding off a bit. Feel like I need to go back and rewatch the second half -- cuz what was that ending about??

Thanks to G! I can now fileshare between the Workhorse and Confessor! [And if I had an airport extreme, she says, I could print from the laptop without having to turn on noisy Planet Camino...]

It's been interesting to find out who reads this blog based on who's commented on the entry saying that G & I are thinking about moving in together. ...I seem to be flirting with what G calls an "open source life". Here's the original essay that she got the concept from:

"Open-Source/Open-Life

There is a way of developing software called open-source. At it's core is a philosophy that the very best software only comes from many minds and hands working on it. When you keep things closed off they aren't tested or used as rigorously and consequently you end up with an inbred half-wit of a program. I have to say that I wondered about parallels in my own life. I'd kept secrets from people. I thought secrets gave you power even. I lived my life in a closed way. Then I applied for a job with the government that entailed getting a security clearance. I didn't get the clearance and I was baffled as to why, angry even. I wrote and requested all the documentation they had on me using the Freedom of Information Act. I got back 100+ page book on me. I read the interviews they conducted with past and current friends. I read notes from psychologists. It was fascinating. People were honest with strangers about me and said things they had never said to me. Some of them made up things and thought they were being honest. All in all though I got back a painfully candid view of myself, warts and all as they say. I was forced to acknowledge dark and unpleasant facts about myself. It changed me. Then a few months later it really started to dawn on me that the secrets you keep about yourself own you, you don't own them. All those secrets just hold you back and make you anxious someone will find them and hold them against you. What an absurd way to live. That has made me see the Internet as some sort of self-improvement tool. Oh sure, nobody will probably read this, just as nobody was willing to read the clearance documents about me. But I will have purged those secrets from myself and I will live my life in the open and honest way that I have to."

Boy do I want to get that lamp I saw last night at Sorel's on Hawthorne. If I'm good, I'll wait -- so I can bundle it in with other tasks. If I'm bad, I'm out the door after this post.

I'm wearing shorts for the first time this season.

Tigger is stretching upward more and more. I'm wondering if s/he'll put out a big stalky bit, like the previous lamb's ear that grew in the backyard... Until my efforts to save it from being plowed and bark-dusted went horribly wrong, and it drown in the bin I'd meant to replant it from.

Here's the one big downside to morning pages that I've found so far (besides the time commitment): if you wake up in a cruddy mood, the thought of doing writing feels like rubbing it in. Not appealing.

Had a lovely day yesterday. Our local mensch mph was the first to comment on my blogger post... eliciting from me a bemused, "Oh. Here it comes." A 3-way iChat led to deciding to make a trip over to the new parents' homestead, via Oasis pizza and a lovely walk down cherry blossom filled SE Taylor. [Oh ma gawd -- so pretty! And there's a cob memorial, and a house with vampire teeth, and concrete steps that curve. My new favorite secret spot. Apparently I must never be without my camera again.]

So, a lovely evening spent with mph, Al, Benjamin (7 weeks?!), and G. Got my new email schema up and running. Talked Buffy. [Who the hell is Kennedy anyway? I'm only up to s5!] Talked about gay marriage and middle America.

...Which reminded me about how my ideological roots are in social constructionism. SC's approach to the world is to say "Hey, look! Everything has a history. Nearly everything social is at least partly artificial, touched by the hands of willful human beings who tussled over different options -- but now we've forgotten that there was ever a fight, and think stuff is just 'nature'. If the 'way things are' was made, social reality can be remade."

Nice concept in terms of analysis. However, I'm not sure how well it jibes with the practice of actual social change. People are invested in tradition; the best you can hope for is baby steps, in terms of cultural shift. If you get something started, it's more likely to pinch off into a subculture than to actually impact the mainstream. But SC makes you want to redesign everything from the ground up.

There are also issues of cultural appropriation that you have to steer clear of. Just because I can examine the history of a particular subculture, doesn't mean I get a right to intervene. For example, I wouldn't mind it if certain sects dumped their notion of god as a big patriarchal Santa Claus in the sky. But that's a fight for insiders to initiate and wage. I'm not a stake holder; it's only going to be appropriate to get involved if there's some sort of invitation. [And even then, there are further issues about the legitimacy of movement leaders to be considered. Oy!]

Yeah, during the past four years (?) my focus re social change has become much more about looking at nitty gritty legal code and reworking that. Which, in itself, is not enough. Gotta teach people about how to use the code, how to file and pursue a civil rights complaint, for instance -- otherwise it's all just ink on the page. ...I'm not of the mindset that legal victories are about "shifting attitudes", as many people seem to feel. Bigots remain unshifted by the mere existence of a law. You have to whack them with those laws until they're afraid to mess with you. And then, maybe if you're lucky, their children will grow up thinking that fair treatment is the way things ought to be.

Shifting hearts and minds one person at a time, through personal relationships? Yeah, I believe it's important... But I feel little faith. Like I said, my roots are in SC. I can't seem to unroot the desire to rework the system from the ground up... The thing is, only politicos and theory wonks actually care about "how it all fits together". Most folk aren't going to make the history of sexism, racism, homophobia... name your pet issue... into their main field of study.

And they shouldn't. Kindness is enough. If you're a decent person, then you don't need to be able to explain why you're good, and contrast yourself against a historical background.

...See, I'm kinda conflicted in my attitudes about social change. [Not if it should happen -- but how it should happen, and who's responsible for what.]

SC, by making everything look artificial, tends to drain emotional significance out of institutions that were fulfilling. Marriage -- there's a good example. Posed rhetorically: If everything is artificial, what is real enough to invest yourself in emotionally?

New topic. So, within the context of workflow, I've decided that my old mission statement of "What needs to get done?" is flawed, because it leads to me squeezing all the fun out of life. The germ of my next operating system is something like (ugh) "follow your bliss." The next operating system not actually existing yet, I won't be making an abrupt switch-over -- but I'm beginning research. Let's call this new project "JOY".

JOY: entry #1 - relational info in workflow
Work for its own sake tends to drain joy. It is numbing, because there is only blind output -- no input, sensitivity to state, or scheduling flexibility. An alt sys must incorporate emotional awareness into its process. [Addenda: awareness of both oneself and others.] This inherently relates work to other people; emotion is "relational information". To set up a schedule that rigidly requires the same workflow every morning, is to presume aloneness -- both in the morning space, and more broadly in the world. A joy-based OS will require some kind of evaluation of personal mood each morning, allowing the flexibility to redirect efforts based on how one is feeling relative to the set of friends, peers, and lovers [and self].

Tech problems. Apologies to anyone on an RSS feed. It's fixed now.

G and I are thinking about moving in together.

The practical shift to G being over as default, in my mind, happened two weeks ago. The big conversation about "What's it going to take to make this decision?" happened the weekend before yesterday. A few bumps this week, my being someone who's never seriously lived with a girlfriend or boyfriend before. Predictable. Settling into the idea now... Imagining what it will feel like to look backwards upon having lived together for a few months, past-tense.

That's been the big thing chewing up my mindspace for quite a while now. I love G. I think I would change the direction of my life for her. For us. I am (am I?) a better person when I'm with her. She reminds me: Life.

Oh... Yeah.

For me, part of the shift is going to be modifying my self-worth. It's been about "What do I need to get done?" If I were my own boss, I'd be sued for cruel labor practices. [Not that I, as my employee, have complained. Dutiful.]

Where this paradigm has been revealed as untenable is in who I become. I system-crash, feeling bad for not having been productive enough, and in my shame want to be alone. Pushing away G?? No!

Instead, I'm exploring a paradigm of joy. If I strive to give myself everything I want -- which includes G (big time) -- a thousand little luxuries, then I have the well of passion that will fuel getting through the drudgeries. Counter-intuitive in this work ethic driven nation, but if I treat myself like a king / queen, I think I can count on myself to do all the hard stuff too.

Joy.