State of the Blog Ventures 2016

Lately I haven't been keeping as tightly to the schedule of this little online publication as has been my habit for the last, oh, nine years. I have, in fact, been "phoning it in." The reason is that I "haven't been feelin' it."

Two years ago, I did an assessment of where we were in the various blog projects.  I was even silly enough to list other, new things I could do in the blog, such as starting to review movies again, or to talk about classical music. A handful of commenters said "yeah, do something with classical music!" so with my unerring instincts I started reviewing movies again.

Well.  Maybe it's just the spring, or even just an inkling that I might be better served by putting more energy into the home, friendships, career, or other aspects of so-called "real life."  Maybe I need to attend to my so-called "spiritual growth."  Whatever the case, I think it's time to take another good hard look at the blog content.  Doubtless the upshot will be a ruthless KonMari-ing of my little projects.

Ready?  Here goes:

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The Infinite Art Tournament
56ish%
Believe it or not, we are already well past the halfway point of the Tournament. The Play-In Tournament is a distant memory, and of the 500 artists in the big show, more than 3/4 have already entered the ring.  Hell, more than 1/4 have already left it.

Will we finish the Tournament?  Well, here's the unspoken rule: a quorum is nine.  We've only ever missed it once.  As long as we keep hitting it, I'll finish the Tournament if I'm able.  I think it's grand.


Through History With the Monday Quiz
26%
This one has been a real crushing chore, and no one likes it much -- but I've learned an awful lot from the process, and actually want to carry on with it.  And anyway, it's reaching the point where it's going to be a lot easier to write, and maybe even to take.
 
Element of the Month
57%
Elements are kind of fun to write about and all, but it's been a long time since I really felt like I needed to write about an Element every month. 

Michael5000 vs. Shakespeare
There was a time when Shakespeare had the second-best blog all to himself. I notice, though, that the last time I wrote on a Shakespeare topic was 2013. So, I'm going to declare this line of inquiry dead.

Michael5000 vs. Dickens
70%
Sure, I want to finish reading all of the Dickens novels.  Other than the Christmas ones, anyway.  I'm at 10 out of 14.5 novels.

Michael5000 vs. The Beatles
23%
This sounded a lot more interesting then it turned out to be. I declare the project dead.

The Songs of the 50 States
36%
These aren't interesting to anybody but me, but they help me organize my odd travels and they stoke my interest in seeing new places and new museums. So, they're still something I might do occasionally.

Saint of the Month
As with elements, it's been a while since I really tried to make sure there was a saint every month.  But unlike with elements, there is always something new and interesting (to me) when I look into a saint.  So, I might still do these.

The Wednesday Post
These are kind of fun, and -- strange as it may seem to some of you -- have a constituency. 

The Free Box Tapes
It sounded like a good idea at the time.  I declare the project dead.

The Jazz Thing
This thing barely got off the ground relative to its size as proposed, but even so I learned a hell of a lot about jazz, which now makes up perhaps 15% of my musical consumption.  So that's a win.  I declare the project dead.

Movie Reviews
Don't know if you noticed, but I put up a movie review every Friday for a year.  That was fun.  But it's also been kind of fun not trying to make that deadline.  I declare weekly publication at an end, but that's not to say I might not like writing about the occasional movie still.

(Other Blog Projects)

Michael Reads the Bible
I'd actually kind of like to go back to this someday.  Maybe after the Tournament is finished.

State of the Craft
This was the most popular blog I did.  But, it's hard to keep interested in blogging about quilting when you don't quilt so much anymore.

Michael5000 Runs
For about a month and a half there, I was writing daily about the elaborate system of tracking and incentives I use to motivate my running.  I think I got that out of my system.

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Conclusions

OK, here's what we'll do for now:

•  Mondays: Will bring a Monday Quiz, if I feel like it that week.
•  Tuesdays: Will continue to be a Tournament Day
•  Wednesday: I'll do a Wednesday Post, if I feel like it that week.
•  Thursdays: Will continue to be a Tournament Day
•  Friday: If I feel like it that week, Friday could be an Element or a Saint or a Dickens or a State or a movie review or, you know, anything else I felt like writing.  And if I felt like writing a lot, maybe I'd throw some of that stuff at a Monday or a Wednesday too.  
•  Saturdays: Will continue to be a Tournament Day.  The specifics of Tournament scheduling will need to be tinkered with soon, but that's another story.

OK.   I feel better for having talked this out with you.  Thank you for reading my little blog, as you apparently do. Even on days like this.

Mission Statement Retreat 2012

In our times, it is critical for every business and organization to revisit its mission statement from time to time. Mission statements are, after all, a vital expression of an institution’s guiding values and ideals! Therefore, every responsible entity must periodically check to see whether its current practice is in line with its fundamental principles. Indeed, if the mission statement is not being adhered to, the organizational leadership must engage in serious, sober deliberation and make immediate changes. They must write a new mission statement.

As a long-established internet institution – I do not like to say “legend” – the IAT is not exempt from this responsibility. So, looking at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar for the first time since November 2007, I notice that we have indeed let the mission statement get out of line with the action:

The Life and Times of Michael5000 aims to be the internet's preeeminent provider of difficult pop quizzes on arbitrary topics. It further seeks to delight its community of creative, engaging, drop-dead sexy, and bracingly intelligent readers with glib little posts about the creative arts and dork culture generally, including but not limited to literature, film, the visual arts, music, history, geography, and college football.

See, this mission statement just isn’t working any more.

• It didn’t get the memo on the name change.
• Pop quizzes are yesterday’s news.
• It doesn’t say a single thing about postage!
• Or an art tournament!
• Or flags, but then we’re done with flags. The mission statement kind of sat out the flag era.
• And so on.

Fortunately, it is still right on the mark about the “community of creative, engaging, drop-dead sexy, and bracingly intelligent readers.” And perhaps as one of those readers, Dear Reader, you’d be willing to help me “brainstorm” some core concepts for the new mission statement! If so, remember that a good mission statement needs to be:

1) Clear
2) Foreward-looking
3) Specific. But with wiggle room. You don’t want to tie yourself down, after all. In fact, maybe “specific” is the wrong word. Maybe a mission statement should be “vague.”
4) Inclusive. I’m not sure what I mean by that, but it sounds great.
5) Brief, always, for is not brevity the soul of wit; and,
6) Pompous

Michael5000 vs. Roughly 14 Square Miles

Habitual readers might remember that, way back in the Summer of '10, I started keeping a map of streets I had run on.  It was one of my trademark long-term, who-cares-if-I-finish kind of projects, the point being just to motivate my running and exploration of the surrounding neighborhoods.

I have to say, I've stuck to this project better than some, and have been diligently running up and down the grid for the last year and a half.  I've made a lot more progress than I expected!  Here's how the map looks at this point.  I've been switching color for every quarter, so the legend would be like this, I guess.

Purple = Summer 2010
Blue = Fall/Winter 2010
Green = Winter/Spring 2011
Yellow = Spring 2011
Orange = Summer 2011
Red = Fall/Winter 2011
Maroonish = 2012 to date.

For a while, it's been at the point where it's kind of hard to see which streets I haven't run.

Here's that map:

...which is to say...

...I only have the right of way through an apartment complex left to shuffle through, and my big, beautiful motivational project is finished.

Why am I telling you this?  Well, I'm boasting of course.  And some of you will like the purty map.  But I'm actually also a little concerned about what will happen now that I've lost this chunk of my motivation to run, and in particular to run somewhat further than I might otherwise.

How Can ~I~ Help, Michael5000?

Well, I was hoping that maybe y'all might help me brainstorm for interesting ways to replace the great running map.  So: what have you got?  Don't be shy!  No scheme too harebrained!  Remember, if I accept your mission it's ~me~ who has to do the running (and whatever side labor), not you!

There are, as the facilitators say, no bad ideas!  Except "do the map again."  Other than that, no bad ideas!

The Fourth Anniversary Postcard-Sending Binge!

Tuesday is the fourth anniversary of the L&TM5K, and I am hoping to celebrate in characteristically ridiculous fashion.  I'll need your help!  I will need you -- that's right, YOU, dear reader -- to allow me to send you a postcard.


What's Up?

Well, remember these stamps from about ten years ago?  I recently discovered that I had set a couple of still-in-the-wrapper sheets of them aside, apparently in the surprisingly naive belief that they might accrue value during my lifetime.  (Unless you started in the Nineteenth Century, it's pretty much true what they say: philately will get you nowhere.)

With the postcard rate recently having risen to within a nickel of the face value of these puppies, it has become more economical to use them as postcard stamps than to fret over supplemental stamps to get them up to first-class value.  And that is the genesis of this idea:

I am going to use each of these stamps to send a postcard to someone in its appropriate state!!!

Yes, this kind of thing is my idea of a good time.  Don't judge me.

The Postcards


I'm purging the collection, frankly.  The cards I selected are the ones I'm tired of looking at and can't really imagine having an excuse to send otherwise.  They are mostly boring, but not boring in an interesting way, or are surplus cards from trips of the past.  These are basically the cards I'm tired of looking at.


Oh, plus for some reason I felt moved to make a few postcards out of a cereal box I used up this morning.

So anyway, fifty postcards!

And then I went through and put the stamps on them in determinedly random order.

"So what do ~I~ do, again?" you ask


YOUR job is to indicate your willingness to be the postcard recipient for your state!  You can do this in the comments, or if you don't want to publish your address for all and sundry to see, you can contact me at my gmail account, which has exactly the address you would expect a guy named "Michael5000" to have.

What if I want a postcard, but my state has already been claimed?  Well, I actually have another sheet of these stamps with only "Oregon" and "Ohio" used, so you can play too.

What if I'm, say, FROM Kentucky but live in New Jersey now?  Sorry, the New Jersey stamp has to go to a New Jersey address.  Rules are rules; without them we are no better than animals.

But... but... I am not currently resident in one of the Unitedstatsian states!  The L&TM5K is all about international brotherandsisterhood.  If you want a postcard, just say the word.  Unless something weird happens and this goes all viral, I should be able to accommodate all comers.

And I get what?  A postcard with a cheery greeting, a note of gratitude for reading my blog, and perhaps an anecdote about how the postcard was acquired.

Happy Blog Anniversary Week to Me, AmIRight?

In Which Michael5000 Asks: "Seen Any Good Movies Lately?"

The Great Movies

Well, that was it. Last week's review of Greed completed my three-year journey through Roger Ebert's list of "The Great Movies." One hundred films that the most prominent living American movie critic thinks especially important, overlooked, influential, or generally awesome, and I've watched them all.

As projects conceived of under the influence of alcohol go, this has been a highly productive and enlightening one. Certainly I know an awful lot more about movies, and the history of movies, than I did when I started the project. And importantly, I enjoyed it a lot.

I let Mr. Ebert know that I'd finished, and told him how much I enjoyed the project, but he has not been able to get back to me as of this writing. Well, he's a busy man.

"What Next?" You Ask

Some of you -- and I know who you are -- are probably of a mind to mention another book by Mr. Ebert, The Great Movies II, which as the title suggests is a list of 100 more of his favorite films. To you, I say: Forget it. Ain't gonna happen. But I will be happy to read your reviews regularly, should you choose to take on such a project. Just let me know.

What I want to do is remedy an interesting gap that has opened up in my knowledge of film history. That gap runs from September 2007, when I started watching Ebert's list, to the present. During that time, I've gone to almost no current movies. You can see how it happened, I think. I was too busy watching movies to go to the movies.

Here's the Part Where You Give Your Nominations

So here's the plan. You, the L&TM5K readers, will come up with another list -- let's call them "The Good Movies" -- from 2007 to the present. Nominate as many as you want in the comments. Assuming we get more than 10 nominations, we'll eventually have a vote to narrow it down to the 10 I'll watch.

So again, I'm looking for your nominations for the best movies, 2007-present. Go!

Incident at Store #521

I occasionally find myself writing letters of complaint, but I always feel conflicted about them.

Here's one I sent out a few weeks ago.

Hi. I've been habitually going to Store #521 both for fountain drinks and for gasoline since well before it was a [xxx] property, probably spending in the neighborhood of five or six hundred dollars a year.

Tonight, I walked down to the store only to be told that the cash register wasn't working, and "we can't do anything at all" The gentleman trying to fix the problem was, understandably, looking pretty stressed.

No problem, I said, all I wanted was a fountain drink refill for which I am usually charged 89 cents. I could fill my cup, leave a dollar on the counter, and they could ring the sale once the cash register was working again.

"I can't do that," he replied.

Naturally, I was surprised. I pointed out that he could in fact do it very easily, since the transaction didn't involve using a scanner. I suggested - politely, I think - that remembering to ring in the dollar later was, in addition to an opportunity for a sale, not much of a concession to a customer who had taken time out of the evening to make a trip to the store.

"I can't do it," he repeated, not quite rudely but with some heat. Well, as I say, he seemed under a lot of stress, and perhaps he was bound by a policy? I don't know, of course. He went on to suggest that I go elsewhere in the neighborhood. Having exhausted my arguments, I had no choice but to take his suggestion.

And do you know what? It turns out that not only is there a closer soda fountain to my house, but a closer (and cheaper!) gas station too. So it seems I've just been going to ol' #521 through force of habit, ignoring these other places places because, I suppose, I already HAD a neighborhood gas station.

Anyway, I thought this was an interesting experience. And just to emphasize -- I didn't encounter any real rudeness tonight. Just a baffling inflexibility.

Best Wishes,
Michael5000

So here are my questions:

1. Is it a healthy thing that I let a frustrating social interaction get so far under my skin that I spend twenty minutes writing about it and figuring out where to send what I've written?

2. Is it possible that I'm just being a weasel? Am I a snitch who deserves stitches?

3. Is it a kind of handshake with totalitarianism, that I would essentially collaborate with the corporate overlord against the poor working stiff?

4. Or is it maybe a good idea to write in, keeping pressure on everybody in the system to keep those front-line transactions positive?

Curious what y'all think.

Aztec Camera and the Graveyard of Music

I often envy the younger version of myself, who owned far less music but was more viscerally invested in it. After discovering rock music, for instance, I had a cheap little briefcase-like contraption that housed as many as 24 cassettes, and when it was still half-empty I knew each of those casette tapes awfully well, and I cared about them a lot. Then came the exciting time when I had more than 24 cassettes, and had to make the very interesting choice of which best 24 tapes would make the cut for the briefcase. And then, eventually, I had more casettes than I knew what to do with.

Too, when I bought my first CD player in 1990 it was a thing of considerable excitement to choose my first four or five CDs. Every new acquisition would be the focus of attention for at least a month or so. But as months go on, and then years, the shelves are eventually rotten with CDs, and now too the hard drives of my computers are clogged with unlistened-to music as well. At this point, I don't know whether I could realistically listen through my CD collection in a year without concerted effort, and that's not even addressing several dozen casette tapes that are still around and, believe it or not, more than a cubic foot of vinyl that has somehow persisted into the modern age.

Wouldn't less be more? Indeed, in my early 20s I had the chance to carry out the desert island experiment, taking just ten of my favorite cassettes to the island of Great Britain for a year. They served me well, and I don't remember feeling starved for music, just very attached to what I had. And thus I often think: if I divided my music collection into two equal piles, and tossed the lesser pile away, might it not make things better? Less cluttered? Might it even improve my relationship with music?

And sometimes I think, "well, I'll just start through the collection, listen to everything, and if it isn't great, it goes." And so I start at the beginning of the alphabet, and I listen to the 1990 Aztec Camera album, Stray. And here's the problem: I like that album. It's got good, catchy songs. Listening to it now reminds me of how it was one of my first CDs, a quirky birthday gift from a friend, and reminds me of the time in the early 1990s when I was listening to it regularly in a dingey apartment on Lynch Road in Lawrence, Kansas. These things make me not want to get rid of it. And this is a cycle that has been repeated four or five times.

Well, that's fine. There's no particular shame in holding on to an accomplished but somewhat obscure record from twenty years ago, even if it's a record that I only listen to and enjoy when I'm trying to decide whether I should throw it away. But to see the real magnitude of the problem, you have to multiply that record by, I don't know, hundreds. And at some point, these CDs, cassette tapes, vinyl albums, even computer files become more than mere clutter. They become depressing in the aggregate, a vast graveyard of music that I only wander through from time to time to pay my honest respects. Wouldn't less be more?

Three Dorky Endeavors

I: Running in Rows and Columns

I've been running off and on since I was in high school, but I never kept track of it. In August, though, I decided it was time to push myself a little harder, so I brought to the act of running the one thing guaranteed to make it yet more exciting: a spreadsheet!

It's a good spreadsheet. For every date, 1 to 31, it tracks the maximum distance, the average distance per run, the average distance overall, and various other arcana, and it's set to turn encouraging colors when I do well and nasty colors when I'm sub-standard. Plus, there are a bunch of statistics for monthly totals as well.

And here's the weird thing: it totally works. On days when I don't feel like running at all, I'm now totally motivated to get out there and run just a couple laps around the park, just to get a number on the board. On days when I feel like running, I know that taking a few EXTRA miles will make my numbers look good. Since I've started this, I've run more days than I haven't (I'd like to get it up to 2/3 next year), and I'll cross the 200-mile mark tomorrow. For what that's worth.

For those of you who know me on the Facebooks, yes, this is why I'm constantly nattering on lately about how I just set an all-time record for miles run on the 28th day of a month. Or whatever.

Down side: it hasn't helped much with the weight.

II: International Man of Chess

It's been almost a year since occasional L&TM5K commenter Morgan got me involved with chess.com. He has since stopped playing online chess, but I've stuck around like a chump, gradually picking away at my project of playing a game of chess with someone from every country in the world -- and this according to chess.com's very inclusive definition of "country," under which there are close to 300.

There is, of course, a spreadsheet involved in this one too.

I am pleased to announce that as soon as I lose this match I'm playing with a guy from Barbados, I will have crossed the 25% mark in number of countries played!

Down side: I'm at more like the 15% mark in number of countries won against.

III: Like County Collecting on Steroids. Or Maybe Acid.

You are of course familiar with XKCD, the droll internet cartoon, the self-described "webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." You know, the one with the stick figures! And you may vaguely remember having seen this specific strip:

Well, I learned recently that there is a small and I daresay quite dorky community of people who have taken this algorhythm to heart and begun making treks to the random locations that this formula generates in their local graticule of latitude and longitude. So -- to make this perfectly clear -- where some people might try to get their passports stamped at every national park, or play 100 golf courses before they die, or keep track of the counties they've been through, or (like Brother-and-Sister-in-Law5000) climb every "fourteener" in Colorado, the Geohashers travel to randomly selected locations.

Well, of COURSE I had to get in on that action. My first geohashing adventure, completed last Saturday, is chronicled here.

The introductory page of the Geohashing Wiki is here.

And if you live in or near the City of Roses and want to go on an expedition, I am SO IN!!!

Oh, did I mention there are achievements?!?

Down side: I frankly can't see one.

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DorkFest results tomorrow!

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Name That Baby!

It's a very special edition of the L&TM5K this week, as you the reader have been invited to participate in the naming of an actual human child!!!

Longtime readers will remember the former blogger ChuckDaddy, and may also remember that he left blogging two years ago shortly after the birth of his son, Elliott (AKA "Easy E.")

Well, once again the late summer finds Mrs. ChuckDaddy great with child. This time, however, there is a crisis: the happy couple find themselves completely unable to settle on a name for their imminent bundle of joy. (Despite, I might add, any number of suggestions from me, all of which were awesome. But whatever.) In their moment of need, they turn to the greatest concentration of brainpower known to humanity: the L&T readership.

Parameters

1) If you believe children should be labeled from birth with a marker that perpetuates the subtle tyranny of gender expectations, you will want to know that this is going to be a girl baby. That's right: a sweet, beautiful daughter, gentle and good.

2) "These," says Mrs. ChuckDaddy, "are our top five names":

Fiona --347
Norah --476
Penelope --358
Sophia --7
Stella --186

The numbers are the current ranking of the names among baby girls. No doubt they got this info from the Baby Name Voyager, which is absolutely the killerest app on all the internet for looking at 20th Century American cultural history. It may also be useful for baby naming.

3) Mrs. ChuckDaddy further asks us to attend to the following criteria:

• The name should go well with the baby's last name, which has already been settled on: Boone.
  
  
• The name should go well with her brother's name, Elliott. Because... you know how kids get picked on when their names lack resonance with those of their siblings? I guess?
  
  
• It should "suggest intelligence, confidence, and maybe even some sauciness thrown in for good measure."

4) Finally, the ChuckDaddies ask that "If your readers have reasons for liking or disliking the names, perhaps they might say why? If your readers have other suggestions perhaps they might want to share them?"

Editorial Interjection

Although she didn't specifically ask me to mention this, you will want to know that Mrs. ChuckDaddy goes by a "street name" -- Marsha -- that is not only quite lovely and charming, but has been represented in her family for the last six generations. Oddly, I do not see it on the list above, despite that Mrs. Chuckdaddy is an only child and thus the only person capable of continuing this wonderful and venerable tradition.

Now, I would certainly never want to imply that Mrs. ChuckDaddy has a "duty" or a "responsibility" to honor this precious tie with the past, and I'm not implying by any means that she is "betraying both her ancestors and her offspring" by breaking the sacred chain. By no means. I just feel that you, the L&T reader, should have all the facts available when making your recommendations.

Having Said That...

It's time to Name That Baby!

Leave your suggestions and comments in the, well, comments.

The Thin Man vs. Tomatoes

Doubtless, dear reader, you are a little out of breath, having rushed straight to the internets upon waking, knowing that today is Tuesday! It's Great Movies day!

Well, you know I hate to disappoint. But, it's summer! Who wants to watch movies in summer!? Hmm. Come to think of it, a lot of people must, what with the whole "Summer Blockbuster" concept. But not me. So during the coming dog days, we'll take a little breather from the Great Movies. I know, I know. But you'll just have to be patient.

Blog as Self-Improvement Platform

Last fall, I announced I was going to be posting about (1) my weight loss program and (2) my attempt to give up delicious, delicious diet cola. You haven't seen anything on either of those topics for a while, though. The first was stymied by... well, like most weight loss programs, it just kind of petered out, and things weren't helped by my inability to remember week to week whether "Wednesday Weigh-In" meant that I was supposed to weigh myself Tuesday and report Wednesday, or weigh myself Wednesday and report Thursday. No, really, I found that really confusing. I'm kind of an idiot.

Right: michael5000 turns down an offer of diet cola at a local eatery.

On the other hand, you don't read about diet cola because there's nothing to say except maybe "Mission Accomplished, Suckas!" I haven't had a sip of the cool, refreshing stuff since December. So, that went well. Of course, there's kind of a coffee problem now, but at least that seems a little more grown-up.

What Now?

I'll tell you what now.

1) Weight Loss 2.0: I'm going to try again. Starting now, I weigh in on Monday night and report immediately. You will be able to watch my excess weight just melt away. I'm going to be so freaking svelte you'll hardly be able to stand it. By midwinter or so, I'm going to take a special trip out to Colorado, find the extremely fit d (who is, obnoxiously, a decade or so younger than me), and kick his ass! Just to show how incredibly in shape I am! He'll respect that, I think.

OK, I exaggerate. It will probably take until next summer before I really qualify as a living lethal weapon. But the main thing is, I'll be posting my progress so that you, my extremely attractive readers, can say encouraging things like "Still quite a ways to go, Captain Flab!"

2) Tomatoes. I have read that if you eat something 13 times, you will develop a taste for it. This sounds like a promising area for self-improvement! However, I have also read that if you eat something 6 times, you will develop a taste for it. Also, 20 times. Also, 5 and 15 and 12 and 18 times. So, it would appear that no one really knows what the hell they are talking about.

Nevertheless, over the next month I will be, for the third time in my life, attempting to develop a taste for that most noxious of God's fruits, the tomato. That's right: every day, starting tomorrow, for at least four weeks, I shall put a small tomato in my mouth, chew it thoroughly, and swallow it, giving a good faith effort all the while not to pitch my cookies.

Please don't think this is masochism! It's not like I've decided to try to eat brie or caviar or cat poop or anything like that. Tomatoes are known to have real nutritional value! And they are often thrown into an otherwise perfectly appealing sandwich or salad! So it's not like my decision is completely random; there would be real practical benefits to becoming one of the legions of tomato pod people. I'll let you know how it's going. Please wish me luck. I'll need it.

the most noxious of God's fruits.

Looking for a Sign, part III.

Several readers were kind enough to comment yesterday about my quest to find or create an arbitrary symbol. Here is the design that was up for critique; let's call it Symbol #1:

Comments about it included that it looks like fire, that it looks like a French curve drafting template, that it didn't really seem symbol-ish, that it looks weapon-y, and that it looks like a jack-o-lantern face tipped over sideways. And I agree with all four of those points. In fact, it feels kind of like y'all put words to unconcious reservations I'd had with the design.

So today, I used a highly sophisticated piece of graphic design software -- it's called "Paint" -- to tinker and tamper with the Symbol. I started by twisting the upper left branch to the left, to diminish the flame/spearpoint look, and breaking the "donut hole" through the bottom, to disrupt the jack-o-lantern face and to try to make it more typographical. Here's Symbol #2.

Then, I put an indentation in the left side -- I wonder if there are words for this kind of thing? -- in an attempt to, again, make it less flame-y and more caligraphic. Here's Symbol #3.
Later in the day, I messed with it some more, twisting the old "spear tip" over and to the right." Here's Symbol #4. (by the way, don't worry about the color differences and ghost design lines; those are just artifacts of my having used the least possible sophisticated design tool.)
Thoughts? Votes?

...and other weighty matters.

I shall now introduce a new weekly feature that may well bring back this online variety magazine's original subtitle. Which was, you might recall, "Like You Care."

One of the purposes of the L&T is to keep me, michael5000, focused on my long term goals, projects, schemes, and hijinx. And there is a long term goal that I've never been able to do much about. That goal? To get rid of some of the weight I gained in my early thirties.

So here's the deal. Tonight, writing the Wednesday post, I weigh in at about exactly where I've been for the last five years. 213 pounds. Roughly 30 pounds over a healthy weight for a guy my height, particularly one who jogs a lot. So I've graphed out weekly target weights for the next two years, which seems like a fairly moderate time span. With every Wednesday post, for as long as this blog keeps plodding along or for the next two years, I'll note where I am relative to the plan.

The idea here is of course that I will either have to lose weight through a judicious application of reduced caloric intake and an active lifestyle -- or I will have to admit my failure to you, my readers. And if I fail, I encourage you to mock me for it. In particular, I encourage you to call me "Tubby."

So: WEEK 1: Target Weight: 213. Actual Weight: 213. Except, this first one doesn't really count as much of an achievement, for obvious reasons.

Isn't Wednesday Supposed to be Music Day?

Wow, you've really been paying attention. Yes, we'll get back to that next week.

Looking for a Sign, part II.

It's the first ever post featured both on the Life & Times and State of the Craft! I'm so efficient I can hardly stand myself.

Last year I asked my readers of the Life & Times of Michael5000 blog to suggest a neutral symbol for me to use as the dominant element of a new quilt. I wanted something that appeared to have meaning but that was actually meaningless, or that meant something completely trivial. I wanted a signifier without a signified, for all y'all who have dipped into semiotic theory. "Why?" you might ask. Reasonable question! I've got no answer for it, however.

The readers came back with some fabulous suggestions! But then the suggestions pretty much just laid around the studio floor for a year, until last week. Having put Symbol on my quilting to-do list, though, I clearly needed to start thinking about what the symbol in Symbol would be.



To review: Symbol is going to use a set of neutral batiks that BigSister5000 gave me for Christmas a few years ago. They will to be pieced together too form a very simple background, and then the symbol itself will be appliqued over the top of them, probably in scarlet. If all goes well, it should look attractive and interesting. With me? Good.



OK, so back to the question of the symbol. As I started chasing down the leads that readers had tossed me, I got kind of interested in the concept of the irony mark. I love the irony mark! Although, if people used it, it might reduce the impact of irony. Ironically. But anyway, in terms of this project, it is perhaps both too meaningful, and too graphically simple to be impressive when rendered at four feet tall.

Similar considerations torpedoed the interrobang.*

I flirted briefly with this symbol for something-or-other from mediaeval alchemy. I could have reversed it or something. But I ultimately rejected it for being, maybe, just a tiny bit too figurative. Which is to say, it looks just a little too much like a critter.

Heather's suggestion of letters from the ancient Soyombo alphabet of the Mongolian language -- see why I pose these questions to readers? -- was pretty awesome. I think they are lovely. I was afraid of what the straight lines of the right and top sides would look like at large scale, though. It seemed like they might be too rigid.

Then, I thought I had it! The letter "aum" in the Devanagari alphabet, used in Hindi and several other languages:

It's lovely! It's curvy! It's simple! It's arbitrary! But... as I soon found out... it is the most common graphical symbol of Hinduism out there. My "arbitrary" symbol was just as content-free as a crucifix, star of David, or yin-and-yang symbol.

Back to the drawing board.

Another reader, G, had suggested I look into Maori design, and I was taken by this pendant I had found:

I don't know if that shape conveys meaning in a Maori context or not, but I wasn't taking any chances. I took out the details on the top left to reduce it to a more graphic level, flipped it around the vertical axis, and "cut a hole" to make it look slightly more caligraphic. Here's what I came up with:

Now, here's the question: Have I successfully come up with a completely arbitrary symbol? In other words, have you ever seen this shape in a corporate logo, in religious iconography, in a foreign alphabet, or anyplace else? 'Cause I don't want to make this thing and discover I've just made an elaborate advertisement for the Americaplump MegaAgriCorp, Inc., or whatever.

* Very possibly the first ever use of this sentence in human history.

Rock My Vote

I don't remember ever voting in a Presidential primary before.

I have voted in primaries, of course -- I've voted in every election I've ever been eligible to vote in. But since the Beaver State's primary typically happens long, long after the candidates for both parties have been signed, sealed, and delivered, the Presidential portion of the spring ballot is always a bit of a dead letter. It has apparently been quite unmemorable.

This year, however, is different. This year, the party with which I am affiliated -- I am, for my sins, a registered Democrat -- still has an actual choice of candidates in the running. Zowie! My vote will count! In theory!

But here's the thing: in this year, of all years, I do not have a strong preference between the candidates. It's not that I'm apathetic, and it's not that I'm dazzled, but just that I think either of my choices would make a perfectly adequate executive.

Gentle Readers, I stand before you an undecided voter!

Well, undecided but leaning to Clinton, who has articulated a potentially workable healthcare policy. But essentially undecided.

So, here's your big chance to influence an actual voter whose actual vote is still in actual play! As well as literally dozen of his local readers! Let me know why I should vote for the candidate of your choice!

A few clarifications:

1) No, I will not automatically vote for the candidate who gets the most or best comments here. That would be illegal, not to mention unethical, not to mention dumb.

2) I will not necessarily announce who I end up voting for. Sanctity of the ballot box and all that.

3) I may ask pointed follow-up questions.

4) If this subject turns out to be popular, interesting, and/or amusing, we'll revisit it on Saturday. Otherwise, we'll just let it fade away like another Forgotten Land....

Blog Seeks Subtitle

Gentle Readers, I have some excellent news to share. You may remember that, last week, I interviewed for a promotion that would involve exciting new professional challenges and responsibilities! Not to mention a substantial pay increase! Well, you will be happy to hear that I did not get the nod, and will happily therefore be able to continue to dedicate many happy leisure hours to the production of rantings for this online periodical.

Which brings us to our next point.

Ever since the L&TM5K started, back in 2007, it has always borne the proud motto of

My Life. Like You Care.

Recently, though, I've been wondering if the first half of that is really accurate. After all, I don't really talk about my LIFE very much; it's really more like "Stuff That Interests Me, Like You Care" or "My Gonzo Projects, Like You Care." Except, those would both stink as subtitles.

Now, I know that many of you are still busy working on your Flag of Oregon designs. But, I am now also soliciting suggestions for a new subtitle/motto for the L&TM5K. There's got to be something short and punchy, something that would capture the essential experience of the blog -- you know, the dashing wit, the bracing intellectual rigor, the ineffible PIZZAZZ of the thing. But I can't think of anything. Can you?

Flag Makeover: The Beaver State

And You Thought We Had Got Past the Whole Flag Thing...

But no. You might remember that, after seeing the "most improved" category of the L&TM5K Awards for Flag Merit, Bridget B. brought up the idea of a "flag makeover."

Meanwhile, in response to Rebel's mention of the Oregon flag's two-sidedness, I shot off my mouth in the following reckless manner:

Rebel: Oregon has the only double sided state flag - does that count for
*nothing*???

michael5000: The two-sidedness of the Oregon banner does count for something, yes. It counts towards the cumulative suckitude of our state flag. The "front" side -- something you would never have to say about a proper flag -- is a prime example of the suck-o-rama state-seal-on-blue genre that I discussed in the O.P., exacerbated by text that reads "STATE OF OREGON." Rule of Thumb: If your flag is so unmemorable that you have to WRITE OUT THE NAME OF YOUR STATE ON IT, start from scratch.

From the collision of these two concepts emerges:


The L&TM5K Design a New Flag for the Beaver State Contest!

And here are the rules:

1. A flag needs to look, you know, flaggy. Patterns of bold color with, if you must, simple and iconic symbols. No photos. No intricate drawings or text. (Intricate drawings and text are on the current state flag, of course, but that's a big part of why we are designing a new flag.)

2. Flags are one-sided. Duh.

3. Flags are rectangular. Don't get all Nepal-Ohio on me.

4. Ideally, a flag should be distinctive and immediately recognizable, yet sit comfortably among traditional flag designs.

5. Readers who are not especially knowledgeable about Oregon are probably worrying too much about symbolism if they even see that as a problem.

Submit!

Entries are due no later Tuesday, February 5th. They may be in the form of a verbal description, a clipped and forwarded image, an original graphic created in a sophisticated graphic design tool such as "Paint," an actual piece of paper (or knitted swatch, etc) handed or mailed to me in real life, or any combination of the above. My email address, at Gmail, is michael5000.

Please note: participation is mandatory for those of you who have artsy cred and were hoping to keep it.

I will personally send the winning entry, or maybe all of the entries, to Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski! Or perhaps a low-ranking member of his administrative staff! And although the L&TM5K budget can't really cover an material award at this juncture, it seems quite likely to me that you will get a handsome check from the people of the State of Oregon if and when your design is actually adopted as the official state flag. Also, you will of course have the thrill of seeing your design featured in a future post.

The Crisis of the Satisfied

This is not exactly a fresh observation, but like many people I am having a hard time in recent years producing the annual Christmas wish list. My family practices a vigorous -- some might say "excessive" -- Christmas gift exchange, and of course it is only fair to give people an idea of what might be appreciated. The problem, of course, is that we've all reached enough of a comfortable level of grown-up success that when we want something in the reasonable $20-$80 gift range, we generally just buy it. In other words, shy of such big-ticket items as "a canoe and a place to store it" or "to live free of a mortgage," I've pretty much got everything I want. Which is great! Don't get me wrong! But this list....

Books aren't bad, I guess. Coffee table books, anyway. Regular old books for reading, I can just get from the library anyway, though, so what's the point.

Music used to be a big wish list item, but now if I want a recording I just get it. Time to appreciate music is a bigger bottleneck than money to purchase it.

Clothes... well, I really prefer to dress myself, is the thing.

Yard and home improvement tools... I pretty much already have all of those.

Really cool old stuff dug up at some estate sale or thrift shop? Sure, that's probably the best. But how do you put that on a list?

So, here's my plea to you the reader: can you suggest anything I might want? Any new gadget that will make my life easier, or more importantly more fun? Any must-have work of art, literature, or bric-a-brac that would make me happier? Help me out.

Looking for a Sign

So, I'm looking for a symbol.


This is for a quilt project that is going to feature just one single very bold symbol on a relatively neutral background.


I am hoping for something that will be at a level of complexity a little less than this, the Arabic word for "peace"....
But a little more than this, the "thorn" letter of the Old English alphabet. This symbol, of unknown provenence, is about right in terms of complexity.


As is the Chinese word for "dragon." Except, I don't want the symbol to really MEAN anything. Or if it does mean something, it needs to be pretty abstruse in isolation.


Some other possibilities I'm thinking about include....


Some of the letters in the Glagolitsa alphabet:

Some Hebrew letters (although these might be too familiar):

Some words in Japanese script... Or Korean script (although these might be too, I don't know, "Orientalist").

Amharic letters?

I don't know. I'm hoping for ideas. Anybody have suggestions for me?

Not this one, though: