The Secret Life of a DogBrain

I have a tendency to find teachings in movies, like celluloid Sufi teaching stories, and the film that most recently has touched me was Ben Stiller's THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER WITTY. I have always loved the story and I found his interpretation personally touching for me. It may not be for you but I think that sort of thing jus dependent on where you are in your life.

Anyway, here is a fun little article related to this recent connection...

Put down the first stone...(and pass the potato salad)

So here's a pet peeve:

I just saw another person use the term

"That's Stupid, why didn't they just give the money to a homeless shelter or the poor"

No I am not going to go into the sentiment, it is a good sentiment and I agree that more should be done for the disadvantaged.  I also wish that the world was much simpler and that a simple act like that could be thought to actually have a cumulative positive effect but it isn't and it doesn't.

I have heard this term used in conjunction with everything from the kickstarter projects to make potato salad to the space program. Now I like potato salad, a lot in fact, and contributing to something like that is pretty silly...but some might think it fun and then they are totally within their right to do it.

WITHOUT JUDGEMENT.

In fact until you can prove to me that you have NEVER gone to a movie, bought a record, painted a room in your house (materials cost you know) or made a meal that did more for you than just supply your daily nutrient requirements you should SHUT THE F**K UP.

We all live in a constant state of, well, simply living.  In that state we don't hurt but we aren't ecstatic either, we are just existing.  If that was all there was in the world we might all very well go mad, that is where "state changers" come in.  State changers are those little things that make us feel, even if ever for so transient a moment, better.

Now for the sake of my point I am not going to go into those in society for whom state changers involve hurting other people, no matter how much FOX NEWS or  THE INTERNET tells you children those people are in the minority. Trust me, the majority of people in this world are pretty good nice people.  They work hard and they raise their kids and yes, the on occasion give to charity when they can.  Those good people are ENTITLED to doing something silly every now and again...for fun.

Which brings me to the second part of this, the space program.  Too many times have I heard pundits attack programs or ideas that have purely scientific or intangible goals because "there are still hungry kids in South Philly".  Having recently driven through Philadelphia I can understand their concerns, if they were real, but usually they are not.

After the Apollo 1 tragedy George McGovern, a man I have to admit having voted for, attempted to use this argument as an excuse to shut down NASA and the space program.  He wasn't the first and he won't be the last to attempt that, but it must be understood that he did it for a specific a reason, a reason all too rampant today.  He did it to manipulate the public for PERSONAL GAIN.

I am not saying he didn't in some part of him believe that shutting down a program that had no direct benefit for his constituents in favor of a tawdry concept meant to tug at the American Puritanical hearts and thus possibly gain him votes from those directly OUTSIDE his constituency.  Then again maybe I am, hell it worked on me but then again I would have sooner chewed off my arm then vote for NIXON.

In that case it didn't work, we still went to the moon...but we never made it to Apollo 20.  There are still 3 surviving Saturn Vs languishing in the dust because there were "homeless people". The evil moon program got shut down, and guess what?

There are still homeless and hungry people.  It's just that they live in a world that hasn't actually learned to navigate the solar system yet, that still has yet to bring back resources from the asteroid belt or the outer planets to make our lives here on Earth a little better.

Is my view of what our race might have gained a bit "rose colored glasses" about the space program, perhaps.  We will never know though, because of lost time and opportunities, because the advancement of our culture has been cut short because of (unspecified) kids in (unspecified) cities.

It can also be said that making sure that no one goes hungry or homeless, not just in our country but anywhere else in the world, THAT would be real advancement of our culture.  That would mean the advancement of us all to a higher moral level and that would be TRUE advancement and I would agree.

The trouble is though until we actually stop listening to people who judge and people who manipulate for personal gain, until we actually all stop JUDGING and go back to giving a damn about other people and situations and their kids that is not going to happen.

So I will repeat myself, until you assume the mantle of a friar and give away all your worldly goods to the poor and forsake everything you enjoy in favor of tending to their wounds SHUT THE F**K UP.

...oh and pass the potato salad.

Christmas in July

I am pretty damn excited, like Christmas in July excited.  Why? Well in accordance with my decision to "...to thine own self be true" I have made some pretty radical decisions as to what I am going to be when I grow up.  Over the years I have been like a kid in a candy store with all the technological advances that have come along, jumping from 2D to 3D to mobile app and so on.  In the end though none of them caught my interest, nor earned my love as the simple act of shoot photos and video. The trouble has been that over the years my income never kept up with my desire to persue this trade, hanging onto film for longer than I should.  Keeping small sensor video cameras longer because, well the kid needed shoes and such.

Tomorrow "the kid" heads out on a road trip for 3 weeks, in August he disappears for a couple of months for his first semester at Digipen. I have a choice of either surrendering to "empty Nest Syndrome" or starting the next phase of my own life.

I choose the latter.  Tomorrow my new GH4 is suppose to arrive, along with various and sundry other components.  The passat is loaded and it is time to try out my idea of being a "Mobile studio".  I wish the Westy was in better shape but such is life.

The sun was dusty gold and setting behind the coastal mountains, over exposing the world, when I pull off at the back entrance to Sears Point Raceway to think.  I was on my way back from Davis where I had seen my dog, my Sparky, for the last time.  The sweetest dog I have ever know, unquestioning love on four legs, was in so much pain that he was too vicious to hug, let alone get a muzzle on him.

In a few hours we would get the call that he had a a ruptured disc in his spine and that his spinal cord had degenerated to liquid.  He was in constant pain when he was awake but they had sedated him and he was still asleep.  They told us they could make sure he didn't wake up again, that he never had to be in pain again, but that would mean we would never see him again.

Laurie, Nick and I agreed that we never wanted him to feel pain like that again.  We formed a circle and hugged each other hard.  We cried the kind of tears that only come from real life coming to call, wrapping us in its her arm.  Those arms felt warm as a summer afternoon and cold as a winter night at the same time.

That phone call was in the future when the Passat shut down and I called my friend Blake Tatum.  We  had been discussing the new situation, the fact that no one had heard from my best friend Jeff Canfield.  Jeff lived alone in Oakland, quietly and kind of secretly. He had missed a call to his Mom the previous Thursday and she had told Laurie that she had a bad feeling.

It is not a good thing when a mother has a bad feeling about their only son.

I had been doing a racing magazine of sorts with Blake for about 3 and a half years.  That would end suddenly, without warning, in a few months and as of this writing I still do not know the details.  That too was all in the future as I sat there watching the sun go down.  At that moment, radio off and the only sound being the hiss of radials on the river road as cars oblivious to me and my thought sped past.  At that moment Blake was a good friend, a former cop and he and I shared a dreadful secret.  Blake had told me to send the Oakland Police to Jeff's condo to have a look.  I knew what the were going to find, Blake knew what we they were going to find.  I held out hope that Jeff had been so depressed that he had just gone for a drive, taking his cameras off on the road he loved, going to points unknown like he had done before.  It was a faint hope but it was all I had. Blake told me it would take time for the police to complete the search and that I could call him if I needed to.

I pestered the Oakland Police switchboard all night.  I sent text messages and I tried to be numb. Other people might say they "tried to be strong" but I knew that was not the path I needed just then. If I made myself strong I would have to feel and I wasn't ready for that.  I needed to be numb, not the numb that comes out of a bottle but the numb that comes from inside.  The numb that comes from not allowing yourself to acknowledge that what was happening was real. When I finally got the report from the police that night they said there was no response to their knock at the door and his car was in its parking space.

They found him the next morning at 9AM, dead in his apartment. I didn't go down to be there when they opened the apartment and I still feel guilty about that.

In two days I had lot my two best friends.  Sparky, who through everything that had gone before was vessel of unrelenting joy and love.  Jeff, my wingman in every sense of the word for most of my life. When they found Jeff I knew that I had to stay numb, I also knew that change wasn't coming, it was here.

Forward into the past

The team and I are finishing up the last of the work on the latest project with Baylor College of Medicine and quite frankly I am exhausted. We came in at the last minute and bailed the art on the project out, as we did on the last project with them, but I had to do more management than I have have had to do in a long time (including crossing swords with a lawyer). In the end though the work we did was great, the client is pleased and we are all settling in for a breather.  I still have some 3D to do but the other are off to their own projects.

All during this project I have been pondering what I need to do next for myself and for my work, a common topic for me.  I have come up with some solutions, but I am not quite ready to reveal them to all.