April 2009 Archives

Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish has been writing on the torture that the Bush administration/regime purposely approved over the last five plus years, today he asks/states given the results of a poll on how do American Christians view torture:

So Christian devotion correlates with approval for absolute evil in America. And people wonder why atheism is gaining in this country. Notice the poll does not even use a euphemism like "coercive interrogation"...But it remains a fact that white evangelicals are the most pro-torture of any grouping. Mainline Protestant groups were the most opposed. A mere 20 percent of non-Hispanic Catholics believe that torture is never justified.

If one is a Christian, one follows Jesus Christ - right? Didn't Jesus espouse turning the other cheek? The way I read Matthew 5:38-48, is that we are to love our enemies, not torture them.

As a Chrisitan, I ask my fellows and fellowess American Christians - How did you all get so enchanted by Bush-Cheney-Rumsfield that their words mean more to your life & beliefs than Jesus Christ, the God-man you call Messiah? Please do tell...

Sources:
Pew - The Religious Dimensions of the Torture Debate
Poll shows support for torture among Southern evangelicals

If you are the sort of human who likes to have a really good panic every now and then and / or enjoys conspiracy theories, I would like to give you a good humorous cross section on the Aporkalypse to help trot you out of too much routing around in the slops of the swine flu hysteria [1]:

Apokalypse 2007 - A Flickr Photoset that involves a piglet and a BBQ spit. It does not end well... for the piglet.

Making Light commenter, albatross, makes reference to the Four Hogs of the Aporkalypse.

How to survive the Aporkalypse by Aaron at Tygerland.net:

Carry a pack of bacon at all times. If someone annoys you simply rub it in their face and watch them freak out.

Start ill-informed superstitions. For example: I heard that, if you wash your genitals in rose-oil after having full-sex with a pig, you won't catch the flu.

Further Signs of the Aporkalypse (from BoingBoing in 2001! How prescient!)

Last, but not least, The Ham of Darkness, which features a photo of a small blonde child french kissing a pig...

Notes:
[1] If you think I am not taking swine flu or *gasp* Avian Flu or **GASP**ZOMG**GASP**GASP** SARS seriously enough, I would like to trot out that you are much more likely to expire from an automobile accident, heart attack, stroke, or domestic abuse this year than you are of a fairly rare "epidemic" episode that happens once every few years to less that a couple of tens/hundreds/thousand folks world wide. I would really worry about how your local bus driver drives. The Flu is not even on the list of Causes of Death, but TB is. Have you been tested for TB recently?

All Photos by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79

Mon 04.27.09 - This morning Tammy and Bird were in the alley area of our apartments painting two chairs, given all the small child giggles floating about, I decided that it was time to get the camera phone and go take some photos. From the time I arrived to the time I departed about 20 minutes later, Bird mostly painted herself and not the chair. Much laughter was involved.

Other interesting tidbits from the day:
Spring New Living Room Layout, Part I
Spring New Living Room Layout, Part II

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Sat. 04.25.09 - Happy sixth birthday to this blog, Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen! Or happy blog anniversary! Yay!

It has been a big day with Jesse & Krista Wilder's baby shower, grocery shopping, the April Birthday Girls BBQ at my place, then to Salon Pop for Nicole Welke's art show, thus I am - like Scruffy - all tuckered out.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Fri 04.24.09 - Happy Birthday to me.

Today I was supposed to go to Disneyland with Julie Wanda but the plan got foiled by a migraine headache that landed me in bed most of the day. I took Maxalt, my migraine meds, in the late morning and by 6pm I could look at light again and walk about a bit, if unsteady. By 8pm, Julie joined me in Seal Beach and we walked down to the Wine Cellar on Main and Electric to salvage the birthday.

It was a delightful evening. I am very happy that we have our own little fun|cool|good wine bar in Seal Beach, even if it is a big overly loud and needs a few more servers on a Friday night. But it was fun and tasty. Now I am ready for bed.

And within an hour or two, Happy 6th Birthday to Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen!

Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Thurs 04.23.09 - A big Happy Birthday to Ms. Haley Callis for her big 25th birthday! And to add happiness to joy, Happy Anniversary to Haley and Jeremy for their 2nd wedding anniversary!

Tomorrow, the 24th, is my birthday. And Saturday, the 25th, is this blog's 6th Anniversary!

Wed 04.22.09 - I love the comic, Bizarro. Most of the time it is very bizarre, as the name would lead one to believe, but every so often it is true genius, like today's commentary on Homo Sapiens - the uppity cousins.

Happy Earth Day!

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Tues. 04.21.09 - My lunch was *not* agreeing with me, so I stopped at Bay Liquor to get a 6-pack of Diet Coke (oh, lovely bubbly nectar of the post-modernist goddesses), when I got back in the car Magnus was perched on the passenger side dashboard and was not moving. He did not get off until we parked at home, luckily we were only 2 blocks away, that little sandy rascal.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Tues. April 21, 2009 - Carnations are interesting flowers, in that depending on place and culture, they can be seen as cheap, throw away flowers of the industrial flower age or as a flower of celebration and history, or as flowers of ritual, time and place.

In California for most of my lifetime, they are the cheapest flowers that one can buy in a mixed bunch at the supermarket or on a busy street corner. To purchase carnations says that the buyer did not think, as well as the grocery store carnations smell bad in a clean sort of industrial way.

According to various sources online, carnations have a grand and long line as a meaningful and majestic flower through history. And last year, when I was in the south of India, they were everywhere and beautiful. Bright red and yellow carnations floating in big bowls of water, being strewn in the streets of Chennai by a funeral procession, or in the streets of Panaji as a shrine, used as the flowers in garlands for wedding and laced along gates & buildings, temples, and trees.

Given the context and color and look of the carnations in India, they did not convey cheap and industrial, but were lovely, sacred, and vibrant.

When I saw this typically modern American red & white carnation washed up in the intertidal zone of the beach today, instead of thinking of my not so great American carnation associations, I thought of the loveliness of the flower in India and its role in ritual.

I wondered who tossed it in the Pacific Ocean and for what life occasion. Then, with the diurnal ritual known as the tides, the Pacific brought it to the beach. And I photographed it.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N95.

Sat 04.18.09 - Ever since Tammy saw Mary Tsao's fabulous photo of her pregnancy that I favorited on Flickr, Tammy asked if we could do a photo shoot with her and Magnolia (aka Bird) before the new baby arrives. Given that Tammy is now in the last 2-3 weeks of her pregnancy, I have asked her every couple of days the last two weeks if she would like to do the photo shoot today?

It has never been the right time, until late this afternoon when Tammy and Bird showed up at my door all dressed up to go to a play. It was not quite yet the 'golden hour' but in the shade between the apartment buildings the color and lighting was just right for my Nikon FM3a. We took half a roll of Agfa slide film at that Jason Schupp had given me last year with Bird performing admirably and taking good photo art direction.

When I pulled out my Nokia N95 to get a few digital stills, Bird started to act up. Whether it was being so good for the previous 10 minutes or whether it was the appearance of my tried and tested Nokia camera phone, but Bird started to goof off. The above photo was the best of the photos from my Nokia, the best in a good cheeky way. Go Bird Go!

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Fri. 04.17.09 - This afternoon, I met up with my mom to go to lunch and to see the Roger Kuntz painting exhibition, Roger Kuntz: The Shadow Between Representation and Abstraction, at the Laguna Art Museum. We had a delightful outdoor garden patio lunch across PCH from the Museum at the Madison Cafe and Gardens before we headed over to the Museum to see the Roger Kuntz show.

Both my mom and I truly enjoyed Kuntz' Freeway series of paintings from the early 1960s as they had strong light and shadow all the while hovering between Abstract Expressionistic Color Field paintings and Pop Art. We also loved the marvelously impish "surrealistic pop" Blimp series from the early 1970s, I particularly liked the "Lunar Approach" and "Goodyear Hits Target".

My mom liked Kuntz works so much that she bought the exhibition monograph the Museum bookstore. As a small aside, my Grandma Grace studied painting under Roger Kuntz in the early 1960s, so after we went to the museum, my mom left to directly go over to my Grandma's to show her the Kuntz book.

Thurs 04.16.09 - One of my favorite Long Beach area artist/musician is Nicole Welke, who not only is a great musician, but is a fabulous painter of cutely subversive paintings. If you have been in the Ladies Room at Alex's Bar, you have seen her pink baby/bunny and little girl paintings on the walls. If you are a fan of the True Blood tv show, then you have seen Nicole's paintings.

Come out next Saturday night to Salon Pop to see Nicole's work in person and have a lovely time with the rest of us!

What: Art Show at Salon Pop, featuring Nicole Welke's paintings
When: Saturday, April 25, 2009
Time: 7-10pm
Where: Salon Pop, 1085 Redondo, Long Beach

I wish I had a great photo for you all tonight. Or a big written post chock full of juicy tidbits or meaty ideas. But I don't have either for you all this evening because today was Tax Day.

Actually, my activity towards the eventual goal of the 11:59pm tax filing deadline this evening started yesterday. Back when I expected a refund every year, I couldn't get my taxes done fast enough in late January or early February. Now that I am not teaching, nor do I have a day job, but instead all my working efforts are those of the self-employed, it is all I can do to drag myself to Turbo Tax to get my taxes done in time.

The last two years, I knew before it all started that I had a loss or close to a draw, thus my incentive to do my taxes early was slim to none. This week I cut it very close, close in time and close in dollars.

I do not begrudge paying my taxes - as I do like paved roads and the like, nor do I begrudge giving a full accounting of my fiscal activities - it is a good discipline. But to sit down and do it, that is the hard part.

Luckily for me, TurboTax has really stepped up their game and rather than struggling a bit with the software or explanations or the user interface and then panicking that I would be audited by the IRS due to the bizarre TurboTax interface & lack of clarity, this year was easy with TurboTax 2008, unlike the evil 2005 TurboTax adventure.

TurboTax just worked this year. I had a choice of doing it online at the turbotax.com website or downloading the software on to my computer - or in my case, as a repeat customer, using the cd that came in the mail months ago. Rather than TurboTax walking me through tons of evil details that not even tax accountants understand at first glance, this year the program got smart enough to let me know when I should pay attention and when the details did not pertain to my situation. I love it when I am not drowned in details that make me panic.

Best of all the user interface allowed me to hop back and forth in between sections, finish bits, save and then hop somewhere else without complaint. And it was worth it to get the Home and Small Business edition, as it really was able to breakdown all the categories that as a small business owner / freelance / self-employed person would need to know and had expanded pop-ups to help explain each category of expenses that one is allowed to take for a business expense. There was only one time where I had to guess where to list an expense (domain name registry fees).

Big thanks to the design and development teams at Intuit for a good tax experience, rather than a panicked, evil one.

Intuit, I do have one big request: Please make a Quickbooks Simple Start for Mac OS X. Just sayin'... not all of us small business owners out there are MicroSquash junkies. I know I need to keep track of business expenses during the year, but I am not going to shell out $199 for the Mac edition of Quickbooks before I know if I like it & it will work for me. How about making Quickbooks Simple Start as an online service that is device agnostic?

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Tues 04.14.09 - One of the neighbors has a Buddha's Hand Citron tree on the edge of their yard. And I photographed the two citrons that were big and lovely whilst walking home with Les Doggies.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Mon 04.13.09 - I expect too much from Windows. I expect that the operating system should actually work and when it doesn't I try another way, then it throws errors.

Dear Windows, there is a reason I switched to Linux on my old Dell and to Mac OS X for my regular use computer...

Photo by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Happy Easter!

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79

Fri 04.10.09 - A completely delightful evening was had tonight on the Good Friday appetizer crawl from Walt's Wharf to the new Thai place on Seal Beach's Main Street. Big thanks to Mike, Kimm and Kelli for organizing a lovely and fun evening.

Even though my exposure to Kalpen Modi's (aka Kal Penn) acting career was in the excellent but more literary movie, "The Namesake", and not any of the Harold and Kumar movies, I am still excited to see that he is leaving Hollywood behind for an even weirder town: Washington D.C.

Good luck, Mr. Modi.

Sepia Mutiny on Oh my God they killed Kutner. Bastards!
8Asians on Kumar Goes to Washington

Yesterday, walking into a bathroom at a Starbucks triggered the most bizarre 24+ hours of migraine I have ever experienced. Mind you, I have been getting migraines since I was 9 or so years old and I am no stranger to the experience. The usual migraine for me starts with a fluorescent light trigger (evil evil evil energy savers) and/or consumption of an allergic food substance (usually egg plus dairy) that causes a sense of unwellness that descends into light phobia, nausea, and twenty thousand evil hammer elves pounding at my skull and eye sockets for a day or so.

A couple of times in my life, I have had sound trigger a migraine. I learned early on, aka 1991, that I cannot go into a club that plays house or bass 'n' drum electronic music with a light show unless I want to exit with a migraine. Sound, repetitive loud bass sound that I can feel on my skin plus lights equals a migraine trigger, thus my love for the good old fashioned high trebled rock'n'roll.

Bizarrely enough, smoke of the mary jane is also a migraine trigger for me. I can't smoke the stuff or be around anyone smoking hash or pot at all. Neither can my brother. It triggers migraine and nausea for me, and just nausea for my brother. I am all for legalizing the weed, just do not smoke that sh*t within 50 feet of me.

Back to the sound trigger, I have read about folks who have aural / audio / optical migraines that are triggered by sound or flashing lights. When I was in my late 20s, I worked in Boston and was in an office with fluorescent lights and a CRT computer monitor. My doctor helped me work out that the flicker cycle of the fluorescent overhead lights was competing with the 60 cycle/minute flicker of the CRT monitor which was causing my brain to GACK into migraine land. She told me to turn off the fluorescent overhead lights, get a desktop incandescent light, and spend at least 1 hour outdoors every workday. This prescription worked.

I walked at lunch and home from work. I turned off the fluorescent lights and got an incandescent desktop lamp. No more migraines at that job. I now make sure that my house & work environments have lots of natural light and no fluorescent bulbs of any kind. I avoid electronic music. I avoid any combos of egg and dairy in food (thus my joke about being a gluten-free vegan carnivore). I spend most of my time now, gratefully, migraine free. Except the one off odd migraine here and there.

Yesterday was that day. I walked into the Starbucks bathroom, which had bare walls and a concrete floor with a very very noisy overhead fan. The fan was very loud and I could feel the sound and air pulse out of the fan, echo around the concrete and hit my skin. My first thought was, "Oh no! I need to get out of this bathroom now. Yikes, I have to pee!" I tried to get in and out quickly, but I didn't do it soon enough.

Within 30 minutes I found my eyes struggling to focus and the road in front of me pulsing. My hearing was starting to pulse as well. By the time, we made it to Erika & Thomas' house, I had a hard time remaining steady enough on my feet to walk up the stairs. I was having a hard time thinking and I was giggling for no reason.

Normally, by this time, the crushing headache pain and attendant nausea would have descended, but this migraine was different. My head felt off, but not achy. Erika gave me a cold pack and a black shirt to put over my eyes as I laid on the floor to try to get the world to stop pulsing. Within 20 minutes of no light and the ice pack on my eyes & forehead while lying on their living room floor, I started to feel more normal, though all the sounds I heard were still lightly pulsing.

I waited until I felt calmed enough to go home. Once home, I put myself to bed as my limbs felt weak and disoriented. I kept waking up feeling more than a bit off. Due to the fact that the headache and nausea did not arrive, I didn't take my migraine meds, but instead took a benadryl thinking that maybe the dim sum lunch that Erika and I went to contributed to the completely off kilter day.

I woke up this morning feeling like I needed to stay in bed with my eye mask on. My day was very touch and go. I walked the dogs but half way through the walk I started to feel a bit weak and the world got a bit visually wavy again. We went home and I went to sleep for the late morning and early afternoon. Since then, I have alternated between about 60% on and about 85% normal, with bouts of weakness, visual fuzziness, and feeling like my body took a half step over and left me here.

I went and read various folks' stories about optical and aural migraines online and my experience is in line with theirs. What has been so odd about the last 24+ hours is that the pre-migraine or first hour of migraine disorientation that I usually experience has now lasted for over a day.

I really hope that I wake up normal tomorrow. Well, as normal as I ever am.

Sat 04.04.09 - More photos on this tomorrow, when I don't have a funky headache.

Fri. 04.03.09 - After some prompting, the refrigerator repairman returned late this afternoon to replace the defrost motor in my fridge. The warmth of the spotlight contrasting with the blues of the late afternoon sun in the kitchen was lovely. Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Fri 04.03.09 - Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79 as we were driving south on PCH to get the car fixed.

Take a stance. Even for a minute or two or a month or longer. Do it publicly.

One of the conversations, however briefly, I got into today on Twitter with Jonathan Greene was about John Gruber's iPhone post, "Complex".

While I agree with Gruber's initially stated premise that starting with a simple problem or solving a problem (just one) is a great way to begin any project. Once the simple has been defined, then build on it. Gruber goes from strength to strength to Apple fanboi kool-aid drinking by the end of the post.

In one of my Tweets, I pose the question:

"Gruber is very much in the Apple fold. That is why I ask if he is making a theoretical stance rather than an accurate assessment"

I think it makes great articles to take a stance and argue from it. I think it makes great art when one decides to take a stance, even if briefly, know where one resides in that theoretical space as one creates and practices one's art. But it is also important, whether one is writing articles or creating art to clearly acknowledge the stance and space that one is standing in, so that the reader or viewer can also know where to stand.

What do I mean by this? In Gruber's piece, his lack of a disclaimer or acknowledgment to the audience or even to himself of his US-centric and Apple-centric position makes the ending arguments of his piece fall flat if the reader falls outside of the concentric circles that Gruber is assuming that everyone is agreeing on. Many of the ideas in his article are intriguing, such as basing a series of devices on a software/firmware platform first rather than the function of the device, but this assumes that all the readers have drunken deeply of the iPhone kool-aid and are devotees at the shrine of Jobs. But what happens to the cult when Jobs retires and the powers that be don't carry on the same way? What happens if Gruber is looking at Apple's strategy from a theoretical stance or from a critical (in the academic sense) 20/20 hindsight review of the last eight years of strategy rather than what may or may not have happened?

This year at SXSW, Andy Budd and I had two very fun rounds of debate about Apple, the iPhone and anything that Nokia is doing. We were to have round three but never got to it. Andy is a User Experience professional, not only does he blog about it, run a whole web firm predicated on UX (clearleft), writes books on it, and speaks on UX, but he also firmly lives it. I thoroughly enjoy engaging Andy on topics of UX as it intersects mobile, as it is a great place for my great passion of mobile to cross his of UX. Andy and I disagree on the iPhone. While I agree with him that it is the "game changer" of 2007/2008, I don't think we can assume that it will be going forward.

I argue that Nokia and other firms cannot be discounted in the wake of the iPhone, as not every user/customer/person will be satisfied by the iPhone's features, functions, and OS. I have a number of non-web-design LA area creative friends who tried the iPhone and returned it before the 30 days were up for an Android G-1, a Sidekick 3, or for a Crackberry. I also have a number of friends and colleagues in LA and other places, who prefer Nokia Nseries phones to the iPhone, of which I am one of them. Most of us in this category want camera phones that take great photos.

On Twitter, I summed up my statements with on Gruber's article:

"It can be easy to forget culture & sub-cultural usage patterns as well as differing personal usage. The US is not all."

To this end, both in Gruber's article and in my own conversations with web colleagues who are passionate about A or B or C or X or Z device, I think we all have to remember that different mobile devices are not just fulfilling a cultural zeitgeist of the moment (like the iPhone in the US right now), or a sub-cultural niche (like the Sidekick 2 in the North American punk scene from 2005-2007), but also individual's differing usage patterns.

I do think it is important to state, even if briefly where one stands in that moment within the frame of the discussion so that the reader/viewer knows what one's theoretical stance is.

This is why I always encourage my friends who are excited about digital photography to write about and publicly dialogue about whether they are most interested in the act of shooting the photo or in the act of processing it later on their computer. Do you post your photos as is or do you process them? It is not an inconsequential factoid, but a record of your artistic / photographic journey that helps your viewers to know where you stand right now.

This is why I try to be clear that, for now, I like to shoot photos with camera phones, as I like the immediacy, I like the constraints, and I like to send my photos to this blog or to Flickr unprocessed, as is. And on the other side, for my friends who the great pleasure comes in the hour or two spent at their computer later processing their DSLR photos, good - many beauties upon you. Let us know about your process.

Why do I talk about theoretical stances or spaces in conjunction with John Gruber, the iPhone, Andy Budd, Twitter, Flickr, and camera phones this late in the evening after a long day? Well, in my recent post on the Nokia N95 vs. the Nokia N97, I was outright that my interest is in the camera capacity of the device and in response to some comments, I made a few comments that went deeper into the the territory of the quality of the camera being preeminent. I didn't make these comments to inflame but to iterate that my theoretical space and concern as an individual user of mobile devices is that of a photographer first and foremost.

From what position or space are you standing in right now?