User Guide

Desire

2010-05-26T14:14:57Z

Same ice cream. EXACT same ice cream. I love the little narrative spin-outs here so much:

Guthrie -
That looks so much better
I WANT THAT
Mumph mumph mumph

Hopper -
Disney ice cream
it tastes pretty good, actually
Guthrie is completely exhausting sometimes

Success and Failure: Food

2009-11-15T16:34:58Z

For our entire childhoods, my father would make themed 3D cakes on our birthdays. These would be the ultimate homemade expression of food love: not good enough for a cake store, yet so loved, constructed, and amazing.

My brother has been carrying on the tradition for years with his kids. I have a six and three year-old, and I finally got one that captures what dad was doing. Guthrie's third birthday last week got him a locomotive. Just the fact that he recognized it was reward enough for me.

This is before the finishing touches, and the icing - well, that's kind of what it looked like, yes. Steampunk!

Then last night we had friends over and paella. Paella, I hate you! Freaking rice was so damn crunchy, it was like we were eating raw carrot casserole. I sat on my apologies, but it was basically all I could think about. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

This morning, I photographed it to show just how ugly it looks to me now. Of course, I will muscle my way through these leftovers, since behind the rice-rocks are some fine flavors. Just imagine eating this, every little grain a crunch festival. Now imagine watching five other people do the same thing. I must have had two bottles of wine, myself, to cope.

Grrrrrr....

I used to be GOOD at cooking. I used to be able to handle several burners at once. Now I feel like an exposed ferret on crystal meth, running around like a maniac, desperately trying to smile, stay suave, and contain my internal freak. It doesn't help that our new kitchen is like a retail display window, nor does it help that, as my friend said last night, 'quit yer bitchin, the party's in the kitchen.'

In honor of my own obsessiveness about this horror show of rock candy, I offer John Updike's stupendous example of wit and insight:

Thoughts While Driving Home

Was I clever enough? Was I charming?
Did I make at least one good pun?
Was I disconcerting? Disarming?
Was I wise? Was I wan? Was I fun?

Did I answer that girl with white shoulders
Correctly, or should I have said
(Engagingly), "Kierkegaard smolders,
But Eliot's ashes are dead?"

And did I, while being a smarty,
Yet some wry reserve slyly keep,
So they murmured, when I'd left the party,
"He's deep. He's deep. He's deep"?

Still Love The NYTimes Commenters

2009-08-15T01:53:59Z

This is perfect, regarding the tacitly-supported or explicity-promoted right-wing response to the Obama health care inititive:

I presently am dealing with an alcoholic friend, trying to walk that fine line between supportive and enabling. The comment about Obama being like "a deer in the headlights" made me realize that the right wing has become like an addict -- completely bonkers and in total denial about it. The question is: How do the rest of us do the intervention? [link]

Yes, when will this party stop the madness? Will it? Or can the Democratic Party somehow recpature the will to overcome the hatred.

State of the States

2009-08-05T20:26:49Z

Gallup's survey from January to June of over 180,000 adults shows how lost the republican party continues to be. These eight years have left it in the wilderness still, and the Sotomayor process just made it even more palpable. The only thing they've got now is the bitter-white theme, and someone, somewhere, needs to start building a new party around positive alternatives.

I remember my mother constantly calling herself a 'commie pinko liberal' even as it was never, ever true. Liberal, yes, commie pinko, nfw. And she knee-jerk hated anything that was republican. That's what is happening with Republicanism now. Knee-jerk, thoughtless, self-identified anti-it-all. What if Republicanism jumped over the social issues of the day? What if there was a big tent Republicanism that somehow pole-vaulted into something radically new?

Where could it start?

balance and joy

2009-08-05T20:17:26Z

Hopper took this the other day as he and I took the ferry to my office. Just playing around with my camera. He's six now. So I was astonished, as is my general way of being around young people. The composition was just so sickly perfect. I wondered about all the things we unlearn as life goes on. Having children is an obstacle to clarity and a vehicle to unexpected discovery and happiness. These days, every time my boys jump on me, I try to just soak it in for the tough years ahead, when things matter more and casual love is harder to come by. But now, there's a lot of everyday bliss.

Good Things

2009-04-21T04:48:57Z

Randomly sent from my brother-in-law, who found his white board, made things, photographed them, erased them, and made more. And who graciously let me post a couple of these here. His latest film.

Great work, Ad. His site.

Incredible Reporting

2009-04-21T04:22:09Z

This picture is by Tyler Hicks for the New York Times.

It's such a macho reporter fantasy to be embedded, and it reminds me of the kind of tough-nut self-involved culture that can sometimes exist in any front-line volunteerism as well. Can't stop for water! Gotta get this done now! Gotta take my shirt off! Gotta be me!

But then, this multimedia piece - and the accompanying article - from C.J. Chivers coverage of a unit getting ambushed in Afghanistan makes me shut up, lift my head, and sit speechless at what it takes to be a soldier. And that's the point of these journalists risking their lives - our insight/action/engagement. This has got to be one critical function of journalism, and I hope blogging and citizen journalism don't mark the end of fearless reporting like this. Wow.

Have you ever been really afraid? I have, maybe twice. Once when I had to stop, camp, and sleep lost on a solo hike in a desert. And once when I heard shots in a orange grove near where I slept in my car. And I've never been shot at. The chaos, your life flashing in front of you. Now. Take a picture that's in focus and tells the story of that moment, at that moment.

One of my favorite editors once told me that you had to be able to think as an editor without the software impeding the speed of your idea and its execution. You just have to think and do. That must be what Tyler Hicks was doing. Knowing his equipment so well that he could take these images in the midst of what surely was terrifying even for the most seasoned photojournalist.

Click to watch the multimedia once you get to the page - the link wasn't working in my cut-and-paste here.

Steve Schmidt is Right

2009-04-18T16:27:02Z

I continue to be fascinated to watch the historic realignment of the republican party, and finally I feel like I'm hearing a rational new voice: social wedge issues and bigotry will not win the party a meaningful share of the electorate in the years to come. Intolerance as the basis of party loyalty just isn't the direction we're headed, unless there's a spate of terrorist acts in the U.S. and the electorate reverts to the policies of panic.

Steve Schmidt, John McCain's former top adviser, came out on Thursday (so to speak) and said that the Republican party risks becoming a strictly religious party if they continue to oppose gay marriage, or at least gay unions. Amen. Any connected progressive has got to want the Republican party to stop leaning on and fomenting hate as a tool for votes.

If they return to their roots - fiscal conservativism, federalism, isolationist trade policies - at least they will simultaneously bring their loyal membership into an alignment with integrity, respect, and honesty, too. These eight years have seen the total collapse of the party's core integrity, and they have got to recover that not only to continue to be meaningful, but to stop being just tragically ugly.

And if Obama continues as he has done to date, I just don't think fear is going to be a winning strategy anyway.

The Hood: Specifics #1

2009-04-16T12:02:32Z

If you're thinking of becoming a parent, here's something about it.

It is likely that you will develop an ever-expanding and uncomfortably close knowledge of the details of television and toy culture. You will know the Star Wars Clone Wars ships that Lego has available. You will fall asleep to the endless looping of the Wow Wow Wubbzy theme song. You will know without blinking that you are holding Dr. Freeze's helmet between your thumb and index finger.

This ever-widening knowledge is secret, except to your children, who are of course your leaders in learning here. You can't share this junk with your friends who don't have children, because it looks like you yourself are a child. Which is in and of itself not untrue, given the amount of kid culture that you absorb as a byproduct of caregiving. And you certainly don't want to share with your friends who do have children, because they've got enough competing theme songs in their head already.

It is a burden best borne alone.

PS Mr Freeze is from the amazing Zakka, a block from where I work.

Norm Coleman's Got Religion

2009-04-16T03:21:50Z

Norm Coleman tells the New York Times that he binds his tefillin every morning and prays because his senatorial race is in God's hands now.

In God's hands how, exactly? This is the god-will-tell-me-what-I-want-to-hear crap that drives me insane and makes genuine religious workers feel funny inside. I mean, come on Norm, if you're waiting for a sign from God, how about that you just LOST YOUR APPEAL? Or was it God telling you to appeal the appeal, as you've now announced you'll be doing?

When people ascribe fate or the hand of God to every shift in the wind, they abdicate their own duty as workers of the world: social, humanitarian, capitalist, moral, political: all of it. If Norm Coleman really believed this was in God's hands, perhaps he would open his heart to his own responsibilities to the greater good and bow away. Who knows, perhaps so would Al Franken. But Al has not declared his fate to be in the hands of God, so apparently he's still claiming some lingering desire to want to be a Senator from Minnesota. Norm Coleman's desire has now evaporated in that toxic piousness and religiously-voided personal responsibility that so many use to shield their ugliness, vanity, and greed.

Please Norm, keep God out of this Minnesota outhouse of power-lust. Don't feel bad about wanting to win - you're just human, that's all.

1929, 1969, 2009

2009-03-11T23:27:33Z

Every 40 years, a realignment.

Whine-a-thon!

2008-12-09T04:36:27Z

Chevrolet has three times as many car dealers in the U.S. as Toyota, but sells far fewer cars. It would make sense for Chevrolet to close dealerships, right? But the dealership lobby is so strong that it has for years worked to implement laws that stipulate that the car manufacturers pay as much as $500K every time they close a dealership.

And so they're rubbing their hands together, it would seem, hoping for a portion of the bailout. The cynicism and greed is just appalling. Maybe we just deserve what's coming, like Veruca Salt and Augustus Gloop.

Back From a Different Galaxy

2008-12-08T23:21:14Z

The last month started with the diagnosis of a severe spinal curve in my two year-old and has finally found a stasis point in him getting a cast to help coax his spine to grow straight.

The x-ray of his spine is so unsettling that I've basically decided not to post it. And here all this time we just thought he was being cute. He is an inspiration to us and those around us and if you want the full story, send me an email and I'll tell it to you. Gregor at catmanandmary.com.

Anyway, we're thrilled to be back to getting on with life, and while this is going to be a multi-year journey to get that spine straight, now we're on it and that's a lot better than where we were last week. So please expect more of the extraordinary life insight you've come to expect from me at a far more standard schedule. Because Mary Catherine Gallagher is back, baby!

Litigating Gets Lost

2008-11-22T18:57:00Z

When we start doing stupid things, we create broad narrative explanations for ourselves. These happen far more often as we get older, of course, and the options seem more limited. So when we sell things that don't work, or backstab at the office, or generally lose touch with our ideals and best-selves, we find a way to survive the terror or self-knowledge by weaving good yarns.

If I didn't do it, someone else would, so, hey, don't look at me.

This is what the people want, so, hey, don't look at me.

Progress is progress, so, hey, don't look at me.

Well, they're telling me to do it, so, hey, don't look at me.

Look, sometimes, you have to do crap to get by, I understand. But don't make crap your new business idea, OK?

So I'm sure self-deception is the explanation for the legal education website whocanisue.com, right? I mean, surely, over a couple scotches, the idiots who put this horror into the world would cry out that they, too, hate their lives and what they're doing with them. Right? They don't actually think that Who Can I Sue is a question that people SHOULD BE ASKING, DO THEY?

The Democratic Party needs to stop supporting trial lawyers. Because we've reached a new low when the power of the internet is harnessed for desperation schemes supported by a group of lawyers whose moral compass has gone haywire up the ass of the north pole.

And now for something completely different

2008-11-17T17:11:34Z

This is from my great friend and long-time collaborator Sebastian. If he's judged as being in the top five entries in the doritos make-our-commercial-for-free you user-generated-content-types, he'll go to the Super Bowl, eat fancy food, and win $25K. This seems entirely possible to me.

Then they choose one spot from those five to actually air. And if USA Today ranks their spot as the spot of the Super Bowl, they win $1M. Could this air? Could it beat GoDaddy? I hope so!

Nice work, dudes.