Here is a video of Monty Python's John Cleese talking about creativity. As someone who has attempted to teach architecture I am thrilled to have one of my central beliefs reinforced: you can't teach talent and you don't have to.
The practice of design (I'll use design rather than architecture to make it clear I'm not writing about the business end of things) relies on serial shifts in perspective - from the very big to the very small and all the stages in between. I like to break things into groups based on the human body: things much bigger than a person, the width of spread arms, something you can hold in your hand, etc. The logic of a building should apply equally to all these things; this is what Vitruvius called proportion. It doesn't mean what it would today (the ratio of one thing to another) but the visible, tangible fact the same rules apply to the thing as a whole and in detail.
A designer's task is to continually switch from thinking on the scale of a room, to the scale of the building, to the scale of the city, to the scale of an object in the room, and on and on. This is further complicated by drawing to scale. In a sketch a small object (a handle or turn) can be bigger than the room it will eventually be in. You are fitting drawings on to a page (working with one size of object in the physical world) while translating ideas about many different sizes in your head. It is a complicated business - far too difficult to pursue unless you really care about it.
Now we can add to this Cleese's proposition about open and closed mental states. Think creatively for a given time, think analytically for a given time. Back and forth on and on.
Of his five criteria for an open state, space is the most interesting. Architecture schools never provide sufficient studio space. The accreditation boards demand a certain amount of physical space per student and no architecture school I have ever seen or heard of actually provides that much. So students have to make their own psychological space.
For generations this space was a couple feet surrounding the drawing board. With a drafting light shining on it, it becomes the center of the universe and, back bent and head down, the student could shut out the world. Now, of course, the computer has become the surrogate drawing board and center of the universe. Students keep their hands on keyboard and peripheral, wrap themselves in headphones playing music loud enough so nothing else gets through - isolation in an electronic carapace. Where this becomes problematic (assuming you see nothing inherently problematic with it) is switching between analytical and creative thinking.
For me this was a simple as going out for a smoke. Most of the clever thoughts I've had in my life have come to me in the cold, shivering, with a cigarette clamped between my lips. And this is, by itself, a strong argument for the three semester system (so there is at least a one in three chance I won't have to freeze my ass off while smoking). Or I could move someplace warmer than Canada - how hard could that be? Unless I chose Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, or Siberia it will be warmer than here.
Cleese's findings also go some way to validating my belief in the efficiency of inefficiency. No matter how much time you schedule for "being creative" you might need more and if you stress about it, you're fucked. For years culture, in the sense that newspapers use the word, has been centered in places where people spend a great deal of time doing fuck all. New York in the 70s - all anyone did was go to parties. Paris for about a century before that - sitting around drinking wine at night, sitting around drinking coffee during the day. Switzerland, on the other hand, not such a great cultural haven.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Friday, March 15, 2013
Punching Famous People in the Face
Almost everyone has a story about seeing a famous person. For example, "I saw George Clooney at the airport!"
And that's it. They aren't stories so much as sentences. Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. So you could amend the sentence above to include something amusing about your trip to the airport. Or, if nothing amusing happened (and trips to the airport aren't often occasions for merriment) you could complain about the trip to the airport. Most people like traveling but no one likes traveling to the airport. It's a pretty safe bet you can find some common ground with your audience by bitching about airport parking or some such thing. Then you have a beginning, then you see George Clooney. And that's the middle of the story. Now you need an ending. Ideally, he would befriend you, take you with him to his villa in Como and you could hang around with Don Cheadle and Brad Pitt for a week.
But, if we're honest with ourselves, that's not going to happen. George seems like a very nice guy. He keeps himself out of the tabloids, opposes African debt, is handsome as hell. He still isn't going to invite you to Como. And you already have somewhere to go or you wouldn't be in the airport.
The truth is seeing a celebrity is going to freak you out a little. It's like seeing a ghost, or a transformer, or something else that only exists in the world of make-believe. In the couple of seconds you have a celebrity's attention, you are never going to be able to think of something witty to say or memorable to do. That's why my brother and I adopted the strategy of punching famous people in the face. Yes, it's against the law. Yes, you will probably go to jail. But your story will have an unbeatable ending.
"I was going to the airport and [something about parking]. I walk in the Men's Room and there's George Clooney!" This is the point where most stories would end. Disappointingly. "What happened then?" your friends will ask you. And you can say, "I punched him in the fucking face." Best story ever.
I'm not advocating punching George Clooney in the face, per se. He is just the first famous person I thought of. It could be anyone from Dustin Hoffman to Dame Edna - it will still work as a narrative device and you'll still go to jail.
I have never had the opportunity to see how well this works in practice. The only famous person I have ever seen was Juliette Binoche and that was from across the street. Oh, I saw one of the cast members of the Canadian show The Listener but didn't punch him. This isn't evidence of hypocrisy, I don't even know his name so I didn't tell anyone about seeing him.
An important note tho - do not punch a female celebrity in the face. That makes a terrible story. Every one will hate you. Not just the people who used to be your friends but the entire world. Only punch male celebrities in the face! I cannot overstate how important that is. If I'm buying something at the grocery store and read Miranda Kerr got punched in the face by someone who says I told him to - I'm going to be pissed.
I haven't thought of an all-encompassingly awesome thing to do to female celebrities. It isn't as easy as you might think. It has to work for everyone from Rihanna to Queen Elizabeth II. There are some things we can rule out. Don't take her picture. That's not cool. It's not a satisfying narrative either. Don't wave your private parts about. For the same reasons.
I'll ponder this problem and get back to you.
And that's it. They aren't stories so much as sentences. Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. So you could amend the sentence above to include something amusing about your trip to the airport. Or, if nothing amusing happened (and trips to the airport aren't often occasions for merriment) you could complain about the trip to the airport. Most people like traveling but no one likes traveling to the airport. It's a pretty safe bet you can find some common ground with your audience by bitching about airport parking or some such thing. Then you have a beginning, then you see George Clooney. And that's the middle of the story. Now you need an ending. Ideally, he would befriend you, take you with him to his villa in Como and you could hang around with Don Cheadle and Brad Pitt for a week.
But, if we're honest with ourselves, that's not going to happen. George seems like a very nice guy. He keeps himself out of the tabloids, opposes African debt, is handsome as hell. He still isn't going to invite you to Como. And you already have somewhere to go or you wouldn't be in the airport.
The truth is seeing a celebrity is going to freak you out a little. It's like seeing a ghost, or a transformer, or something else that only exists in the world of make-believe. In the couple of seconds you have a celebrity's attention, you are never going to be able to think of something witty to say or memorable to do. That's why my brother and I adopted the strategy of punching famous people in the face. Yes, it's against the law. Yes, you will probably go to jail. But your story will have an unbeatable ending.
"I was going to the airport and [something about parking]. I walk in the Men's Room and there's George Clooney!" This is the point where most stories would end. Disappointingly. "What happened then?" your friends will ask you. And you can say, "I punched him in the fucking face." Best story ever.
I'm not advocating punching George Clooney in the face, per se. He is just the first famous person I thought of. It could be anyone from Dustin Hoffman to Dame Edna - it will still work as a narrative device and you'll still go to jail.
I have never had the opportunity to see how well this works in practice. The only famous person I have ever seen was Juliette Binoche and that was from across the street. Oh, I saw one of the cast members of the Canadian show The Listener but didn't punch him. This isn't evidence of hypocrisy, I don't even know his name so I didn't tell anyone about seeing him.
An important note tho - do not punch a female celebrity in the face. That makes a terrible story. Every one will hate you. Not just the people who used to be your friends but the entire world. Only punch male celebrities in the face! I cannot overstate how important that is. If I'm buying something at the grocery store and read Miranda Kerr got punched in the face by someone who says I told him to - I'm going to be pissed.
I haven't thought of an all-encompassingly awesome thing to do to female celebrities. It isn't as easy as you might think. It has to work for everyone from Rihanna to Queen Elizabeth II. There are some things we can rule out. Don't take her picture. That's not cool. It's not a satisfying narrative either. Don't wave your private parts about. For the same reasons.
I'll ponder this problem and get back to you.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
New Ideas in Architecture
eVolo has just concluded the 2013 version of their contest for new ideas in tall buildings. They are beautifully rendered idiocy. The winner seems to think moving humans to the North Pole will reduce the heat up their. Because humans don't generate heat. Or use it. Or accidentally generate it by burning fuel, running machines, or doing about a thousand other things that generate heat.
I don't disapprove of competitions like this - well, not any more than I disapprove of competitions in general - although I would point out the eVolo books, selling the work of others in a bound format, do quite well. It's a smart idea. And it presents ideas that are, sometimes, smart. But they aren't realistic. I guess they would say that's the point; that visionary ideas never seem realistic until they are realized.
Here is my suggestion for a future architecture - build a properly secure gated community. One that not only keeps poor people out but creates the illusion poor people don't even exist. This is an ongoing project in much of the world but it is disorganized and architecture has many techniques to bring to the table that are under-used.
People with money will pay to never have to see or hear people without money. Preferably they would like no evidence at all of poor people's existence. One way to go would be a massive arcology. This has a lot of benefits. Done correctly the inhabitants would never have to leave and rigid immigration policies would keep poor people (and their smelly lives) completely away from the inhabitants. It also controls the air and water supply for the inhabitants. Again, ideally this would be self-contained - or externalizing. That way the arcology could pollute like crazy yet have perfect air and water for its inhabitants. But arcologies are big, and therefore not particularly exclusive. They also don't offer much of an illusion of choice.
If I was a developer right now, I would be working with landscape architects and counter-terrorism experts to make each new development as visually isolated from the rest of the world (and a physically protected) as possible. I would have the name of my counter-terrorist experts first on the brochure, then my name, then the architects and landscape architects. I would sell people the right to live in prisons. And they would pay for it.
Or you could use dirigibles. The idea the city of the future might wander over the face of the earth (or float around on the ocean currents) is at least as old as the 1960s. Floating cities are graphically wonderful but full of actual problems. As they drift the cost of importing anything increases drastically. And, most importantly, they never go anywhere interesting. The surface of the ocean is always the same. A dirigible, on the other hand, moves from place to place. Companies are already doing R and D on truly massive dirigibles in response to the price of aviation fuel. And because the world of the shipping container will not last forever. Since dirigibles only use fuel for maneuvering, not for staying aloft, they are less expensive. And since they don't need to land they can be used in the most severe geographies. Want to lift something off the side of a mountain? Someone does and that's why people are doing work on mega-Zeppelins. Put a bunch of them together or let them maneuver as a fleet. You have the illusion of choice with all the actual exclusivity even the richest bastard could want.
The other interesting challenge is how to use architecture in the context of the massive, unplanned settlement (the barrio, favela, whatever). Rich people and getting richer, poor people are getting poorer. The effort to study barrios is academically interesting. The ability to create a place that functions with similar efficiencies starting with, say, one thousand households is potentially very lucrative. Why spend years working on a single tower when you could be installing slums with thousands of units in cities all over the world? That's how to really have an impact.
I think I should start a consulting firm. I will dream up the most offensive things anyone could do and people will pay me for the right to make them happen.
I don't disapprove of competitions like this - well, not any more than I disapprove of competitions in general - although I would point out the eVolo books, selling the work of others in a bound format, do quite well. It's a smart idea. And it presents ideas that are, sometimes, smart. But they aren't realistic. I guess they would say that's the point; that visionary ideas never seem realistic until they are realized.
Here is my suggestion for a future architecture - build a properly secure gated community. One that not only keeps poor people out but creates the illusion poor people don't even exist. This is an ongoing project in much of the world but it is disorganized and architecture has many techniques to bring to the table that are under-used.
People with money will pay to never have to see or hear people without money. Preferably they would like no evidence at all of poor people's existence. One way to go would be a massive arcology. This has a lot of benefits. Done correctly the inhabitants would never have to leave and rigid immigration policies would keep poor people (and their smelly lives) completely away from the inhabitants. It also controls the air and water supply for the inhabitants. Again, ideally this would be self-contained - or externalizing. That way the arcology could pollute like crazy yet have perfect air and water for its inhabitants. But arcologies are big, and therefore not particularly exclusive. They also don't offer much of an illusion of choice.
If I was a developer right now, I would be working with landscape architects and counter-terrorism experts to make each new development as visually isolated from the rest of the world (and a physically protected) as possible. I would have the name of my counter-terrorist experts first on the brochure, then my name, then the architects and landscape architects. I would sell people the right to live in prisons. And they would pay for it.
Or you could use dirigibles. The idea the city of the future might wander over the face of the earth (or float around on the ocean currents) is at least as old as the 1960s. Floating cities are graphically wonderful but full of actual problems. As they drift the cost of importing anything increases drastically. And, most importantly, they never go anywhere interesting. The surface of the ocean is always the same. A dirigible, on the other hand, moves from place to place. Companies are already doing R and D on truly massive dirigibles in response to the price of aviation fuel. And because the world of the shipping container will not last forever. Since dirigibles only use fuel for maneuvering, not for staying aloft, they are less expensive. And since they don't need to land they can be used in the most severe geographies. Want to lift something off the side of a mountain? Someone does and that's why people are doing work on mega-Zeppelins. Put a bunch of them together or let them maneuver as a fleet. You have the illusion of choice with all the actual exclusivity even the richest bastard could want.
The other interesting challenge is how to use architecture in the context of the massive, unplanned settlement (the barrio, favela, whatever). Rich people and getting richer, poor people are getting poorer. The effort to study barrios is academically interesting. The ability to create a place that functions with similar efficiencies starting with, say, one thousand households is potentially very lucrative. Why spend years working on a single tower when you could be installing slums with thousands of units in cities all over the world? That's how to really have an impact.
I think I should start a consulting firm. I will dream up the most offensive things anyone could do and people will pay me for the right to make them happen.
On Facebook
I started using Facebook in 2006. Makes it sound like a drug. That makes me a relatively early adapter. I was in Rome, in the middle of a design studio and someone found the site, next thing everyone in the studio was on it. Posting pictures mostly.
The way people use Facebook has changed according to the other technologies available. When it was the only place you could upload pictures for free, that's what it was used for. Then other platforms (simpler to use and tailored for use with cellphone cameras) cane around and that aspect of Facebook faded into the background. Most people I know post the occasional picture of themselves when they are doing something really interesting, or when they are drunk, or to mark an event. Otherwise Facebook became a prototype Twitter.
Facebook has, for years, been my Twitter surrogate. I never understood the use of Twitter. I already have a collected and curated list of friends who get my random thought blasts through status updates, why would I need another platform to reproduce that? Here I was a late adapter. I didn't understand the random thought blast could make people famous - was something you could monetize and get paid for. I still don't use Twitter because my phone isn't made for it.
I bought a phone made by Motorola specifically for the African market. It's incredibly cheap. There's almost no metal in it. And a battery charge lasts forever. In exchange, the screen is as lo tech as a digital clock from 1960. It can only show three letters at a time and you have to scroll endlessly to read anything. Writing on it is next to impossible. But I think it is a beautiful piece of design and I like how cheap it was. I paid $5 for the phone and $20 to have it shipped to me. In retrospect I ought to have bought 3 or 4 just so I felt less like I was being ripped off on the shipping.
So Status Updates have migrated to Twitter. Facebook initially had two things to offer, and here I'm thinking of my reaction to it not what the company claimed it would (or could) do. I liked it because I could post pictures (and see other people's pictures) and make little posts all my friends could read. I still update my status fairly regularly - it is a medium I'm comfortable with. Updating my status hs become a form of mental exercise - work a joke into something people will read and maybe think about. It requires about 1/50th the commitment reading any of these posts does. But most of my friends haven't updated their status in months - they use Twitter for that.
Facebook has become a great aggregator. The greatest. Sites like Huffington Post, Geekologie, and the Cheezburger Network are strictly about aggregation; they collect things from all over the web and repost it. They create almost no new content. See this from Bruce Sterling for an idea of who is creating for the net and who is just reposting. I probably shouldn't have said "just reposting", In the same way creating a mix-tape was the simplest (but highly refined) act of creation a kid of my generation could accomplish, reposting is a similar kind of creation through recontextualization.
And I should also add, my friend Emily is better at this than anyone I know. Which is something I wouldn't be able to say if there wasn't any creation, any addition of personality, taking place in the process.
Facebook, like the internet as a whole, has moved into a new phase. Maybe this is only true for people like myself - people who can only navigate it by following trails laid down by others. I cannot say what the internet is to those able to recreate it any way they want. But, to return to my point, the internet has entered a phase where curation is more important than collection. No one cares how many GB or TB your site has of something. Remember when that was the pitch, "50TB of pure Sports Action!!!" Now it is all about separating the wheat from the chaff.
Why Facebook is still interesting to me is all my friends get together to act as a collection of curators. I think it would be interesting to have a running list (with links intact) of all the things my friends collected from the net. I don't have the technological savvy to do that but wish I did. 80% would be about architecture. The other 20% would be the interesting part. And, despite the internet law of averages, none of it is pr0n or videos of cats or babies.
The way people use Facebook has changed according to the other technologies available. When it was the only place you could upload pictures for free, that's what it was used for. Then other platforms (simpler to use and tailored for use with cellphone cameras) cane around and that aspect of Facebook faded into the background. Most people I know post the occasional picture of themselves when they are doing something really interesting, or when they are drunk, or to mark an event. Otherwise Facebook became a prototype Twitter.
Facebook has, for years, been my Twitter surrogate. I never understood the use of Twitter. I already have a collected and curated list of friends who get my random thought blasts through status updates, why would I need another platform to reproduce that? Here I was a late adapter. I didn't understand the random thought blast could make people famous - was something you could monetize and get paid for. I still don't use Twitter because my phone isn't made for it.
I bought a phone made by Motorola specifically for the African market. It's incredibly cheap. There's almost no metal in it. And a battery charge lasts forever. In exchange, the screen is as lo tech as a digital clock from 1960. It can only show three letters at a time and you have to scroll endlessly to read anything. Writing on it is next to impossible. But I think it is a beautiful piece of design and I like how cheap it was. I paid $5 for the phone and $20 to have it shipped to me. In retrospect I ought to have bought 3 or 4 just so I felt less like I was being ripped off on the shipping.
So Status Updates have migrated to Twitter. Facebook initially had two things to offer, and here I'm thinking of my reaction to it not what the company claimed it would (or could) do. I liked it because I could post pictures (and see other people's pictures) and make little posts all my friends could read. I still update my status fairly regularly - it is a medium I'm comfortable with. Updating my status hs become a form of mental exercise - work a joke into something people will read and maybe think about. It requires about 1/50th the commitment reading any of these posts does. But most of my friends haven't updated their status in months - they use Twitter for that.
Facebook has become a great aggregator. The greatest. Sites like Huffington Post, Geekologie, and the Cheezburger Network are strictly about aggregation; they collect things from all over the web and repost it. They create almost no new content. See this from Bruce Sterling for an idea of who is creating for the net and who is just reposting. I probably shouldn't have said "just reposting", In the same way creating a mix-tape was the simplest (but highly refined) act of creation a kid of my generation could accomplish, reposting is a similar kind of creation through recontextualization.
And I should also add, my friend Emily is better at this than anyone I know. Which is something I wouldn't be able to say if there wasn't any creation, any addition of personality, taking place in the process.
Facebook, like the internet as a whole, has moved into a new phase. Maybe this is only true for people like myself - people who can only navigate it by following trails laid down by others. I cannot say what the internet is to those able to recreate it any way they want. But, to return to my point, the internet has entered a phase where curation is more important than collection. No one cares how many GB or TB your site has of something. Remember when that was the pitch, "50TB of pure Sports Action!!!" Now it is all about separating the wheat from the chaff.
Why Facebook is still interesting to me is all my friends get together to act as a collection of curators. I think it would be interesting to have a running list (with links intact) of all the things my friends collected from the net. I don't have the technological savvy to do that but wish I did. 80% would be about architecture. The other 20% would be the interesting part. And, despite the internet law of averages, none of it is pr0n or videos of cats or babies.
Beer and Friendship
Here is a recent advertisement for Carlsberg Beer. The connection is obvious enough - beer makes friends. To take this on as a logical premise would be a waste of time. Just to point out that corporations are taking everything we value in life and attaching them to products we have to purchase, well that's something that has been said many times before.
I chose to write about this because, in my very hazy memories of when I used to drink, the effect was precisely the opposite. Beer didn't make friends for me. Most of my friends chose not to be around when I was drinking. And when I started drinking all the time, they were gone. I'm not blaming them; in their place I would have made the same choice.
I don't remember much from my drinking years. There are three years - the last two I was drinking and the first of my recovery - that are completely gone. I have the occasional image without any context but that's it. My experience wasn't something you will ever see in a beer commercial.
That is, in a way, the point of most commercials. I would write more about this subject but everything I could come up with would be cribbed from David Foster Wallace's E Unibus Pluram - by far the most insightful look at television I've ever come across. It's published in his collected works A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. But you can likely find the text on the internet. It's longish and requires editing but struggling through it is worth the effort.
Foster Wallace was a suicide. I don't begrudge him that. It doesn't raise him in my estimation either. Some people opt out. So it goes. I sometimes wish we had his thoughts on the internet tho. I think the problem with writing about the internet is the stage of its development. When Foster Wallace was writing about television it was already on its way out as a technology. People writing about the internet today are about a likely to get it wrong as the people who wrote about television in the 1950s. Either it is nothing (a temporary aberration that will eventually become much more like something we already recognize) or it is everything (a completely species altering technology that will stretch into every corner of our existence). Both views are wrong because they lack the nuance that will tell us what the thing really is.
Note: Here is E Unibus Pluram online.
I chose to write about this because, in my very hazy memories of when I used to drink, the effect was precisely the opposite. Beer didn't make friends for me. Most of my friends chose not to be around when I was drinking. And when I started drinking all the time, they were gone. I'm not blaming them; in their place I would have made the same choice.
I don't remember much from my drinking years. There are three years - the last two I was drinking and the first of my recovery - that are completely gone. I have the occasional image without any context but that's it. My experience wasn't something you will ever see in a beer commercial.
That is, in a way, the point of most commercials. I would write more about this subject but everything I could come up with would be cribbed from David Foster Wallace's E Unibus Pluram - by far the most insightful look at television I've ever come across. It's published in his collected works A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. But you can likely find the text on the internet. It's longish and requires editing but struggling through it is worth the effort.
Foster Wallace was a suicide. I don't begrudge him that. It doesn't raise him in my estimation either. Some people opt out. So it goes. I sometimes wish we had his thoughts on the internet tho. I think the problem with writing about the internet is the stage of its development. When Foster Wallace was writing about television it was already on its way out as a technology. People writing about the internet today are about a likely to get it wrong as the people who wrote about television in the 1950s. Either it is nothing (a temporary aberration that will eventually become much more like something we already recognize) or it is everything (a completely species altering technology that will stretch into every corner of our existence). Both views are wrong because they lack the nuance that will tell us what the thing really is.
Note: Here is E Unibus Pluram online.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
On The Walking Dead
My shit never stopped being together.
- Michonne
I love The Walking Dead. The show, not the zombies. In particular I love the dialogue. The last episode - Arrow on the Doorpost - featured almost no dialogue in an episode entirely about people talking. The writers really amazing restraint.
I especially like the character Michonne. I think her introduction will mark a point similar to when Spike was introduced on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. People looking back at the series as a whole after it is finished will divide it into before and after Michonne.
Unlike the Governor, who is far more important as far as the plot arcs are concerned, Michonne is interesting. She is almost pathologically averse to speaking and she is the biggest badass on television since Al Swearengen on Deadwood. Where Al was given great soliloquies (some of the best, most poetic language in all of television history and fifty different uses for the phrase "cock sucker"), Michonne relies on the slightest changes of expression and posture. It's a different kind of acting. They are both great characters only great actors could pull off.
I am torn between wanting to know what Michonne did before the world went to shit and never wanting to know. One of the reasons the show is so fascinating is watching the characters change from who they were in civilization to who they must become to survive (Daryl, Andrea, and Herschel are good examples). But it is almost impossible (and sometimes comical) to imagine Michonne as anything other than a katana wielding name-taking ass-kicking hardcore survivor.
In my merrier moods I like to imagine her as a Barrista at Starbucks.
- Michonne
I love The Walking Dead. The show, not the zombies. In particular I love the dialogue. The last episode - Arrow on the Doorpost - featured almost no dialogue in an episode entirely about people talking. The writers really amazing restraint.
I especially like the character Michonne. I think her introduction will mark a point similar to when Spike was introduced on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. People looking back at the series as a whole after it is finished will divide it into before and after Michonne.
Unlike the Governor, who is far more important as far as the plot arcs are concerned, Michonne is interesting. She is almost pathologically averse to speaking and she is the biggest badass on television since Al Swearengen on Deadwood. Where Al was given great soliloquies (some of the best, most poetic language in all of television history and fifty different uses for the phrase "cock sucker"), Michonne relies on the slightest changes of expression and posture. It's a different kind of acting. They are both great characters only great actors could pull off.
I am torn between wanting to know what Michonne did before the world went to shit and never wanting to know. One of the reasons the show is so fascinating is watching the characters change from who they were in civilization to who they must become to survive (Daryl, Andrea, and Herschel are good examples). But it is almost impossible (and sometimes comical) to imagine Michonne as anything other than a katana wielding name-taking ass-kicking hardcore survivor.
In my merrier moods I like to imagine her as a Barrista at Starbucks.
On Unemployment
I'm having trouble writing lately. Normally this happens for one of two reasons. Either I don't know exactly what I want to say or I have something I really don't want to say. The first causes long streams of non-sense, too many big words and wandering. The second stops me totally. So let me get this out and hopefully I'll be able to move on - write some more about zombies and capitalism.
I'm unemployed. I've been looking for a job for two and a half months and haven't been able to generate any interest at all. No interviews, no call backs, no "thanks but fuck off" emails. No nothing. Like I don't exist. Which is pretty much how I feel. In a society where value is determined monetarily, I am worth zero. No one will pay me anything to do anything. I make $0 per hour, which translates into $0 per year - that's math even I can do.
In a world where so many people are doing so many things, I'm doing nothing.
In the wake of the 2007 financial collapse investigations into predatory lending demonstrated extraordinary malfeasance by banks, mortgage brokers, and lending institutions. People were given mortgages they should never have qualified for, with incomplete disclosure of the terms and, most damningly, contracts were altered without the borrowers knowledge or consent. Thousands lost their homes.
Investigations into the human toll of rampant financial up-fuckery have discovered a large percentage of people who lost their homes are suffering from clinical depression, feelings of guilt, and a vastly increased risk of suicide. Even though it has been proven over and over again that financial institutions placed these people in an untenable situation (without their understanding and sometimes without their consent) the victims are the ones who feel responsible. I can understand that.
Common sense says there are economic forces completely beyond my control effecting my situation. Architecture is part of the building industry - if people stop building, architects don't work. That's the big picture. The rate on a five year fixed mortgage has dropped to 3%. I don't know much about economics but I know that, combined with a conservative government more concerned with debt reduction than unemployment (despite the fact our debt to GDP is 1.5% compared to the US at 10%) is bad news for the building industry.
Despite all that I still feel useless. I vacillate between depression and anxiety. I feel guilty doing anything besides job hunting and that makes me depressed, when I take a break I feel anxious. Unemployment is bad news for mental health, unless you are rich as fuck and I'm not.
A recent article in the Toronto Star quotes a study by McMaster University and United Way Toronto, saying 50% of Toronto workers have precarious employment - "either full- or part-time with no benefits or no job security, or in temporary, contract or casual positions."
This is the labour market I'm trying to get in to.
To top it all off, I just turned 40. "Just" might not be the right word but until I'm 50 I'm going to describe myself as having "just" turned 40. This is a point when most people stop to examine the first half of their lives, have a mid-life crisis, dump their spouse, take up with someone much younger and buy a shiny sports car.
I own three pieces of furniture and my accomplishments in the first half of my life are the three degrees I still can't get a job with.
Those of you who have struggled through this sea of self-pity and bad prose, thank you. Those of you who are, like me, unemployed, take some small comfort in the fact I make excellent company.
I'm unemployed. I've been looking for a job for two and a half months and haven't been able to generate any interest at all. No interviews, no call backs, no "thanks but fuck off" emails. No nothing. Like I don't exist. Which is pretty much how I feel. In a society where value is determined monetarily, I am worth zero. No one will pay me anything to do anything. I make $0 per hour, which translates into $0 per year - that's math even I can do.
In a world where so many people are doing so many things, I'm doing nothing.
In the wake of the 2007 financial collapse investigations into predatory lending demonstrated extraordinary malfeasance by banks, mortgage brokers, and lending institutions. People were given mortgages they should never have qualified for, with incomplete disclosure of the terms and, most damningly, contracts were altered without the borrowers knowledge or consent. Thousands lost their homes.
Investigations into the human toll of rampant financial up-fuckery have discovered a large percentage of people who lost their homes are suffering from clinical depression, feelings of guilt, and a vastly increased risk of suicide. Even though it has been proven over and over again that financial institutions placed these people in an untenable situation (without their understanding and sometimes without their consent) the victims are the ones who feel responsible. I can understand that.
Common sense says there are economic forces completely beyond my control effecting my situation. Architecture is part of the building industry - if people stop building, architects don't work. That's the big picture. The rate on a five year fixed mortgage has dropped to 3%. I don't know much about economics but I know that, combined with a conservative government more concerned with debt reduction than unemployment (despite the fact our debt to GDP is 1.5% compared to the US at 10%) is bad news for the building industry.
Despite all that I still feel useless. I vacillate between depression and anxiety. I feel guilty doing anything besides job hunting and that makes me depressed, when I take a break I feel anxious. Unemployment is bad news for mental health, unless you are rich as fuck and I'm not.
A recent article in the Toronto Star quotes a study by McMaster University and United Way Toronto, saying 50% of Toronto workers have precarious employment - "either full- or part-time with no benefits or no job security, or in temporary, contract or casual positions."
This is the labour market I'm trying to get in to.
To top it all off, I just turned 40. "Just" might not be the right word but until I'm 50 I'm going to describe myself as having "just" turned 40. This is a point when most people stop to examine the first half of their lives, have a mid-life crisis, dump their spouse, take up with someone much younger and buy a shiny sports car.
I own three pieces of furniture and my accomplishments in the first half of my life are the three degrees I still can't get a job with.
Those of you who have struggled through this sea of self-pity and bad prose, thank you. Those of you who are, like me, unemployed, take some small comfort in the fact I make excellent company.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)