Cautiously optimistic vs. caustically homophobic

From Obama election night rally 2008-11-04

Like most Democrats, progressives, and young people out there, I was elated when CNN announced that Barack Obama had won the presidency.  Obama ran an outstanding campaign and made a lot of great promises.  Most of my friends have astronomically large expectations of our president-elect.  It will be interesting to see how the next four years play out, especially with a firmly Democratic Congress.  I'm optimistic, but wary.  The sooner that first piece of progressive legislation comes out of the White House, the sooner I really believe that this administration is different from George W. Bush's.  Maybe it's been too long since I had faith in our federal government.

My favorite shot from the celebration: Jesse Jackson weeping.

Photo from Getty Images by AFP/Getty Images

My favorite part of Obama's acceptance speech: his inclusion of gays in a list of proud American demographics.

"Its the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America."

By the way, California: What the hell?  Almost 6 million of you voted Yes on Proposition 8?!  I'm not surprised to hear this from Florida, but you, California?  Ugh.  Lucy and I are planning to join a Prop 8 protest downtown on Saturday the 15th.  Let me know if you're interested in coming.

Brief video of Lucy, Kelly, Joe, and I listening to the beginning of Obama's victory speech in Grant Park, along with about 240,000 other people:

From Obama election night rally 2008-11-04

The closest I've come to a long, protracted death

When a dermatologist told me a few weeks ago that I should get a biopsy for a mole on my head, I never seriously entertained the idea that I had skin cancer.  I didn't lose any sleep playing out worst-case scenarios in my head (though I did lose sleep trying to lie down in a way that kept the stitches in my head off my pillow).  I thought so little of the matter that I didn't even mention it to most of my friends & coworkers.  So why was I so relieved when I got the call telling me that my test results were all negative?

No problem imagining worst-case scenarios after that call.  Suddenly, I couldn't do anything but think about how different my life would have been from that point forward if the test results were different.

More than 1,000,000 new cases of skin cancer are diagnosed in the US each year, so why not me?  I love biking and reading in the sun when the weather's nice.  I'm an occasional smoker and consumer of processed foods.  My mom survived a brush with cancer a few years back; that certainly doesn't help my odds.

Anyway, from here forward, I plan to spend the majority of my time indoors, with the shades drawn, wearing a raincoat, a large floppy old lady hat, and sunglasses.

Here's to a clean bill of health!

Stories of the Road #32: The Lost Post

Hi, all.  It turns out that my work didn't appreciate my last post, which combined the company name and booze, drinking, etc. in such a way that my blog was spotted by their saved Google searches, and I was asked to take it down.  Here are the bonus items from the bottom of the post.

1. Quimby's is hosting a release party for Lucy's book on Tuesday, Oct 14th, starting at 7 PM.  If you're reading this, you should totally come.  Lucy's been busting her ass putting together the presentation for her book tour and Quimby's will be the debut performance.  Come!  Seriously!
2. Lucy & Johnny puppet blog #2 is here!

Stories of the Road, issue 31: The Fonts of Scottsdale

The Sunday night before my first trip to Arizona, I checked the local temperature in Scottsdale at 10 PM.  It was 95 degrees.

Luckily, it's a dry heat, and yes, that makes a difference.  One of the locals told me that their heat index sometimes drops below the real temperature.  This is unheard of in Chicago, where humidity is a malevolent force and the heat index can be likened to the Terror Alert Level (except you actually give a shit about the heat index).

Arizona's insect population is more hoary and nightmarish than that of any state I've visited so far.  My coworker went househunting in the area and spotted three black widows in a single home, nearly walking face-first into a web on the way in the front door.  (An indigenous welcome mat, maybe?)  Housing divisions invade areas with high scorpion populations, but the original tenants are too stubborn to move.  Scorpions glow under black light, and many new homeowners are surprised by what turns up in a black light scan of the backyard.

After hearing stories like these, I was afraid to sit on the ground to stretch after my evening run.  I could only imagine how welcoming the open leg of my shorts looks to a scorpion.

The local flora are no more benign.  I gently touched the spines of a cool-looking cactus and my friend laughed condescendingly before describing the skin irritation and inflammation those spines can cause.  Chill out, Arizona nature!

Two weeks into this assignment, I'm starting to see why people live here: the evenings are 75 degrees and usually rainless, and locals tell me that this moderate weather sticks around all winter while snow plows patrol the streets of Chicago.  Summer precipitation comes in the form of thunderheads that rain furiously for 15 minutes but put on a spectacular lightning show as a prologue and epilogue to their visit.  The buildings are new and polished, and their low profile allows for fantastic views of extended sunsets.

The Southwestern aesthetic is ubiquitous.  Color schemes waver within the bounds of beige and red.  Most of the fonts look like they were lifted from a Chili's menu.  Sand, rocks, and intimidating cacti are the norm.

 

Two quick plugs:

1. Lucy's book, French Milk, is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com!  The new & improved version has lots more pages and contains even more John Horstman than before.  How much more?  Buy it and see!
2. My friend Lane made a 3-minute film for the Chicago Film Race, and because his film is rad it was picked to be one of the top 10 finalists.  Please watch it and hopefully vote for it here.  It's titled "Tomorrow."  Click on the picture of the sunrise.

Writing about writing

Hi, all.  About two weeks ago, my lungs turned into the La Brea tar pits, and I've been a wheezing bag of slime ever since.  Luckily, in between games of Super Mario Galaxy and meals of greasy breakfast foods, I've found a few interesting things to read.  Here are two pieces I'd recommend to anyone interested in dusting off the old quill and inkwell.

Through Merlin Mann's wonderful blog on 43folders.com, I found a short essay by Kurt Vonnegut entitled, "How to Write With Style."  The entire article is here and you can read it in 5 minutes if you don't get distracted - more difficult than it sounds while at your computer, I know - but I'll summarize it for the convenience of those short on time or up too late (like me).

1. Find a subject you care about
2. Do not ramble, though
3. Keep it simple
4. Have guts to cut
5. Sound like yourself
6. Say what you mean
7. Pity the readers

My favorite line from the piece is the last paragraph for point 5:

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.

For those with lengthier attention spans, take a look at The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White.  (Coincidentally, I was about halfway through this book when I read the Vonnegut essay, which recommends Elements of Style at the end.)  The advice is more mechanical & dry: omit needless words, use the active voice, keep related words together, etc.  These guidelines are linked by the book's central theme: writing should be clear and vigorous.  Strunk best expresses this idea with four words, elegantly practicing what he preaches: every word must tell.  There's also a great analogy in there about how there are no unnecessary lines in a drawing, so why should there be unnecessary words in a book; unfortunately, my copy of the book is 1,700 miles away right now (Stories of the Road returns soon!) so I can't quote it exactly.

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Lucy & I collaborated on a comic!  I wrote it based on a true story about our internet French lessons.  Guess which version is mine and which is hers.

Efficiency expert in training

OK, so I've blogged about productivity a few times before.  This time, though, I'm going to pass along some useful information instead of just talking about how great GTD is.  Here are three of my favorite efficiency tips from three of my favorite efficiency gurus.

1. Batch your tasks (from Tim Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek) - This one is pretty intuitive: buy all your groceries at the same store, run all your errands on the same car trip, cook enough food at once that you can eat the leftovers for days, etc.  Extending this idea to the web, you could also write all of your email replies in one sitting or check for updates to your favorite sites all at once, and no more than once a day for either of these activities.
2. Process your email inbox to zero (from Merlin Mann's Inbox Zero talk) - My personal email inbox currently contains zero emails.  Same for my work inbox.  Every time you check your email, process every single message and clear out your inbox.  Processing means performing one of five actions: delete, delegate, respond, defer, do.  As Merlin says, deleting is the most underused of these options.
3. Define your next action (from David Allen's GTD) - For every item on your to-do list, write down the next physical action you must take in order to "do" that item.  Let's say you lost your driver's license today, like I did (true story).  Instead of "renew driver's license," your to-do list would first contain "look up nearest DMV on internet," then once that was complete, "call DMV at 312-793-1010 to find out what to bring to get new driver's license."  This is great advice for unsticking a project that has been stuck for a while.

Also, puppets!  Lucy & I made this video before she left for vacation.  First in a series, maybe?

Euphoric nostalgia

In her latest book, What It Is, Lynda Barry provides methods, exercises and general motivation for getting your creative juices flowing.  Large portions of the book are dedicated to memories: What is a memory?  What is the past?  Where (and why) do we keep bad memories?  Why are memories important?  A few recent blasts from the past have had me thinking over these questions.

I downloaded a fan-subbed version of the first Rebuild of Evangelion movie.  For those who don't know, I was a huge anime fan in college and Neon Genesis Evangelion is my favorite series - hell, it's pretty much my favorite anything.  Books, albums, movies... I have to admit that my #1 spot remains shamefully devoted to a Japanese cartoon from 1996.

The new Eva movies are a reanimating/retelling of the original story: about 3/4 of the scenes remain basically the same, but look nicer and sometimes have computer-animated additions.  Of course, this means 1/4 of the scenes are (shudder of spine-tingling anticipation)... NEW.

Here's the great part: they didn't fuck things up with the new stuff.  (Are you reading this, George Lucas?)

It was awesome.  It was so awesome.  For 97 minutes, I was bursting with this feeling that was a combination of nostalgia and euphoria; I don't know of any English word to adequately describe it, but we could damn sure use one.  I was literally giggling when I paused the movie halfway through to polish off the remains of our pantry's cookie stash.

When the new X-Files movie came out earlier this summer, Lucy went through the same thing: almost two hours of fantasy bliss, revived straight from her adolescence.

It's a rare privilege to be transported so completely back into your past by something brand new.  When I was watching that movie, I felt the Evangelion feeling; there's no other way for me to define it.

Three more Eva movies are planned for release over the next 2-3 years.  Funny to realize that I already know exactly how I'll feel when I watch those as well.