Smart Mobs and the Casual Consumer 101

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

also check out the RenGen...its all about the idea of the casual consumer being a powerful force in how the rest of the 21st century, business, and globalization will be shaped.

i have been working on a lesson plan using the incredible Turk and social responsibilities of outsourcing. will be posted soon.

official

the past is dead and buried....

misery no longer wants company

" i know old habits die hard when you have a sentimental heart"

so ... what do you do.

create.ignore.cry.enjoy.admit.retreat.love. not sure really

i made these hearts once... and the entire process was an absolute metaphor for my life.

i went way out of my way...and stressed myself to the ends of the earth. to just get the materials to make these little papermache anatomical hearts. than i had such great plans for them...i was going to stuff them full of candy. mail them to everyone i had ever loved...ever wanted to listen the things inside my heart that flutter up to my head and out of my mouth....

well i made the molds i bought the candy...i made a mess of my world. just for them to sit. stagnant. never being let go of for others. they were made. conceptualized. crafted.yadayada. but sit in front of me in a purple easter basket. waiting for the day. i get all the addresses and get the courage to send them on their way.

i think. i create. i make a mess (literally and figuratively). i ended up sitting looking at this mess. and leaving no one else aware of the entire process. even though it was all for them.

over and over and over again.

i hope to stop this cycle. but i am aware of it and have been for a while. i still exist. and i have done nothing. i might like it subconsciously but consciously i just sit around and think about it.

drink.dance.drink.ride.drink.sleep.asprin.repeat

Bars bars and more bars....

It seems to be the norm around these parts. Every night same thing same people just a different hangover or a different conversation. i have a love/ hate relationship between the lifestyle. for the longest time drinking till six am was just another night and i am not sure if i am growing up or have just been absent for so long, but the reintroduction to this lifestyle, is too much. i don't think i am cut out for it. or maybe i need to think that way because i am moving towards something different so fast. it is hard to stop what i am becoming even if i wanted. in may.. Portland and start a new life or stay here and build on a pretty great life. do i teach or do i keep being taught. choices at any age are not easy and well at 24...they aren't life and death choices im making so i should consider myself lucky.

i know a life cant be in a bar but i am so use to the routine that i have created one around the culture. the same people the same faces...ants ants ants swarming around the ant hill with a lonestar bottle as the post. sad thing is i might know your name, your face, who you are usually seen with... but i have no clue who you are. you give fake hugs and hellos beause its crowd courtesy but when do we stop. stop being ants? i remember hearing that in waking life and my jaw almost dropped.

"i dont want a straw...i want real human moments... i dont want to give that up... you know?"
best line ever... are at least when i heard it....


THIS IS KIND OF HOME... or at least a window away but am i just an ant....


I really dont know how to end this one except with this clip

Androgynous- gender fuck

Main Entry:
an·drog·y·nous Listen to the pronunciation of androgynous
Pronunciation:
\an-ˈdrä-jə-nəs\
Function:
adjective
Etymology:
Latin androgynus hermaphrodite, from Greek androgynos, from andr- + gynē woman

1: having the characteristics or nature of both male and female
2 a: neither specifically feminine nor masculine b: suitable to or for either sex
3: having traditional male and female roles obscured or reversed

— an·drog·y·nous·ly adverb
— an·drog·y·ny Listen to the pronunciation of androgyny \-nē\ noun





Androgynous traits are those that either have no gender value, or have some aspects generally attributed to the opposite gender. Physiological androgyny (compare intersex), which deals with physical traits, is distinct from behavioral androgyny which deals with personal and social anomalies in gender, and from psychological androgyny, which is a matter of gender identity.

I love it. There is this great collective location unknown, but more literature for the collective pours out of eugene,oregon than anywhere... i remember a few years back i saw this poster on a cork board at swt. and it made me smile FINALLY FINALLY someone put what i feel into words. maybe not the most eloquent but definitley to the point and relatable.

im really glad these guys are around!



I like this idea of crossing gender characteristics, i am just so tired of the female identity being one which is destructive to itself and the male identity being one that is outwardly destructive.






strength should not be judged on how well you play to your genders stereotypes. forget gender. i know its kind of hard to ignore being that your gender is in between your legs, in your hormones, and sprouting on your face. but the social roles we give to gender....ignore that. be you. feminine or masculine. i'm tired of the stigma that gets attached to people because they step outside the gender box. go androgyny!








matt and kim...female badass drummer.... nerdy emotional singer guy... good stuff.

another...ache....

i went to highlands today.

i wrote a story about my dad. it will be read tomorrow night at GrownUpStoryTime 11 @ Rudz. Come check it out.

Here is the story:

My father looks like hulk Hogan.

My father looks like a cowboy hulk Hogan, without the baldness, and usually wearing all wrangler…..

My father always cheated on my mother. She was use to the lying, the working late, the disappearing, the random women….. She says she gave up on the marriage the year after I was born. He had changed…

She spent most of my childhood teetering between ignoring and confronting my father’s actions. She eventually left my father when I was nine. She said she “couldn’t stand that son of bitch and he was so unbearable that she left a year before she could collect any of his goddamn social security.”

I remember my brother use to show up when I was about 12 he was in his late 20’s. He would talk to my mother and tell her stories about him and my dad. One night he told her this one…..

My father had an r.v. He would to let my brother drive it around when he was 14. Mainly because he could pick up women in it and my brother would drive him around. My brother didn’t complain because he got to drive. One night my dad had my brother and the r.v parked in a bar parking lot. When 2 o clock rolled around in came my dad and a particularly tall blonde woman. He told my brother to get on the freeway and just ride up and down it. About fifteen minutes down I-10 my brother heard from the back

“YOU HAVE A FUCKING DICK”

My father came out of the back yelling and dragging the woman across the r.v, he opened the door, and threw the woman out and screamed at my brother…. KEEP DRIVING.

I left the hallway before my mother or brother could see that I heard them talking.

I have never been able to look at my father the same since I heard that story.

Surveying the Damage after a Personal Disaster.

I have realized that the dramatic is not necessary an d extremely annoying when you decide you have no room for it in your life. Feelings are simple, it is when we ignore them and then agitate them after long periods of rest that complications arise. It is when we ignore honesty that the melodrama begins. and as we should all know or will learn to day, Americans coined the melodrama, and to me that is not something we should be necessarily proud of.

I just started thinking about ;whether it is the end of relationship, the final end or the ten billionth momentary pause end, sexual relationships, interpersonal relationships, professional, or personal. at what point do you stop giving pieces of yourself. selling them off bit by bit for compromise or understanding. just to move things along. at what point is the damage to yourself so far, you don't realize its you in the mirror. do you stay to the end. when no one wins and there is nothing even left of yourself to pick up. do you fight until your tired. do you just ignore the problems and go along. i understand these situations are all relative. but when you have a fighting spirit. how and when do you put a leash on it. i always thought i would never, i'd go out fighting for love, for happiness, for anything i believed in....now i don't know. how many times do you pick yourself up? i hope always but hope isn't actuality. if it was only simple as just following the steps of maslow's hierarchy. just climb right up them. no one tells you the self-actualization part is the bitch.


If nothing else i guess friends, bikes, cupcakes, music, and the occasional late night printing session can cure a case of anything. even heart break or just being completely feed up.

self-splotation is definitely the downfall of the current self. i will be attempting to define this whole self-splotation thing. its kind of like Sisyphus. More like a hubris against yourselves pain kill switch.


Here are some Rilo Kiley videos i have been enjoying... they are all definitley about exploitation of self one way of another. good stuff.

Telling

Storytelling...

It's so intriguing when done right, but you can't try to tell a story right...it just happens. It's like a perfect little snippet snap shot of reality. I dork out about story telling....

I think it is has to do with me not talking unless spoken to when I was living in South Carolina. I never really left the house, i had no way, and no one was ever at the farm. When people did show up it was just to drop off equipment and i could just point them in the right direction. literally point to the front ten acres, they would drop the equipment off and disappear down the driveway. at first it freaked me out. but then i became really accustom to the silence. i hated it when i would be asked a question at school, school consisting of 104 students k-12. no one wanted to talk to me. i was fine with that. i had spiky orange hair while they were covered in camouflage and called each other beau. ( i later realized it was a term of admiration, beau from dukes of hazard inspired) so i made a conscious effort. DON'T SPEAK. don't say a word if it is not absolutely necessary. And for six months, I barely spoke to anyone. I went an entire month without uttering a word. But i knew everyone....i heard everything they vocally published about their lives. i heard...i listened... i processed. and realized that everyone waits for their turn to speak, rather than listen.

So i have started collecting stories. I know BOOTOWN collects stories, This America Life, etc. but they collect the story for reinterpretation of the storytelling. I love that they do that! it is extremely interesting and worth checking out, but I want the story. I want to hear it... to get lost in it.... to understand who it is coming from... the source. i don't want the memesis of the story. i want to tell it but in someones ear... straight to them... have them listen... hear. process. pause. not wait for a chance to respond....but listen.

the conversational aspect broken for one moment.... the pause in a flow of back and forth...so

i'm textually babbling at the moment...i need more time to process what i am trying to say...maybe...

have a break before you read a really great story. caught the revival show last night... tom gabel, chuck ragan, tim barry...wow... i remember being 15 listening to hot water music and avail over and over again... laying on my bad tapping my feet on the wall. good times. enjoy.

well here is what i'm talking about....
i heard this story last night from a friend i haven't seen in a while.

reinterpreted because i did not have my recorder on me...

HEARD FROM A FRIEND AT A BAR:
So my bail bondsman in Tennessee was fucking nuts. When I was signing my papers he has this crazy bandage-hat thing over his head. He turns around to tell me “ i just had my third brain surgery, I think they put I rhinoceros brain in there, or something, cause I can’t remember shit.” Everyone else in the office is a little freaked out by this… and so am I, but everyone else is also laughing too BECAUSE I have to ride with the guy to the lawyers’ office, by myself. On the way to the car, he picks up a farrell cat. yeah, just picks it up. We were outside by the car; he reaches down with his hand grabs the cat by the head, not the nape of the neck. but the fucking head. opens the trunk and tosses it in there and slams it, barely missing its head...i think. You could hear the cat thumping around in there. He looks at me and says, “ I got 9 or 10 of them like that, I just throw them out there on my land, I got a bunch out in the middle of nowhere. We he gets there, they gonna rape him.”

OH BY THE WAY,FREE WARREN HATFIELD SHOW NOV. 25^th, help him never have to see this bail bondsman again. It will be here at RUDz downstairs…

THIS WAS AN AMAZING STORY-storytelling ...experience. i feel it gets lost being textual published. but its such a great story i didn't want to lose it. so it has been digitally entered into the database.

I miss....

letters, envelopes, the taste of yucky stamps, the hand cramps, passing notes, mailing them....


i just miss the stories, the words, written by hand.. i need to start writing letters.

expect them soon.

Baggage ANYONE?!?!?!

Over the past few days I have been really thinking about an argument and a few conversations I have had over the past few months about identity art/artist/issues... yada yada yada....

Personally i am not sure if identity art is dead, people or just tired of it, or people concepts of identity are changing....

I remember last year I wanted to put together this performance group called the cultural baggage brigade...

I would consist of 5-6 members that create an interpretation through luggage, what they perceive to be their cultural baggage. Than proceed to go into into public places, preferably well crowded, and let their baggage fall apart and ask others to help but also not judge... its who they are. it is still in the thought process stage. I just had a strong visual of a young lady... okay me.... sitting at a bus stop, suitcase ajar.... spaghetti and tampons with dirty dishes and little toy trailers spilling out of the case onto the street.... screaming at some guy who is trying to help me:

" dont touch my things, these are my things, this is who i am suppose to be, i don't even know if i want these things...... "

The entire time getting covered in the spaghetti sauce, sifting through items i felt symbolized my "cultural, social, personal baggage"

I think I will start assembling the brigade soon... and more ideas of what i think the brigade should be...

In the mean time I am quite intrigued by this video...enjoy

Sweet, cutesy, dark, haunting, i am just not sure..... BUT I LIKE IT!

A few of my recent favorite things.....




This is one of the most FABULOUS videos i have seen in a while..... but i also dont wathc television or use proper punctuation... so you should check it out for yourself.




This made me cry ...okay maybe not cry... but my tummy got that fluttery ache.


And i might have a little crush on Zooey Deschanel.

I also have been really interested in cupcakes and buttons. This really dark but sweet aspect of life and art... is so appealing.

SO I am creating a little visual, lyrical, media, etc. morgue to draw inspiration from. Let's see where it takes me?!?!?!?!

OLD PHOTOS

THE ARTERY

Performance Art Lab photos from the night at the Artery. The piece above was a 15 minute piece that displayed the back and forth physical altercation between myself and another. The interaction was doubled with the overhead real time discussion about the woes and dismay with my partner at the time. The dialogue began to pace the slapping. It was a really interesting experience. Especially because i invited my partner at the time, who of course was the only one conversing with his friends and heckling the performance. This was just another layer for the piece. Needless to say, once again another failed relationship gives me more art than love. Other artist showed wonderful work that night here are a few pictures, hopefully video soon to come.

If you would like you can click and view some of the pictures below and they will take you to the other artist websites.

(pictured below: Nick Teel, Ian Fernandez,, and Nancy Douthey, and Julia Claire Wallace