I am Karan from Olympia, WA.
Almost every other name used here is a pseodonym pseudonim pseudonymn alias.
The rest of it is true - mostly - and all of it is my own.
Don't even think about taking any of it, unless of course, you want to pay me.
Random Wisdom: You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life - Albert Camus
The counter says that 2847723 have been flummelized, but I personally think it's all a big lie.
I think I’ve ranted about Facebook before, if not here at least to every single person who happens to cross my path. Facebook brought all those bloggers who used to only blog about what they ate for lunch, how wonderful their children are and how fruitless their latest job search is into one single corner of the world wide web. For that I am grateful.
What I find most horrific about the place though is that benefit of viewing every single friend entry in a mishmash of order that totally crosses my eyes. And by benefit, I mean not so much benefit. I’ve endured Facebook for about a year, yielding first to the pressure to sign on because in my tiny little heart of hearts I am a true follower...I like to see what all the fuss is about and I want to belong. After finding 2 people I have thought about for a million years, I at first thought, yay....this place is all that I’d heard about. After getting hammered with requests for friend status with I’m sure were at least 4,889 stranger and getting jillions of forwarded messages in my email inbox, I attempted to pull in and withdraw a little bit from that world. Even though I made public only a few personal details, it seems that Facebook attempts to link me to the masses who they feel might find a bond with me and they beat feet to my FB door begging friendship with me. I wonder if that’s what the appeal is...the pseudo sense of popularity. I didn’t like it. I don’t wanna be a popular girl.
Anyway, I wiped all personal details allowed and almost immediately, people assumed that terrible things had befallen me. Some people saw that my relationship status was changed from married to I guess nothing at all and were deeply worried that Leonard and I were kaputt. I received email messages from real friends who wrote in a panic about us and other messages worried that I was no longer employed. I received not one email of concern worried that I’d lost my education or that I no longer had a birthday and I’m sure I removed those bits of personal information as well. Because I don’t live on Facebook like most of the people I know there, I had no idea that I was causing such a ripple in the universe and missed all the concern that flooded my wall. A friend finally called me and shared her concerns.
For the record, Leonard and I are doing great. Just fine. We’re totally hot. Even though my service ends in two weeks, I still have my VISTA position. Although I’m not sure I remember everything I learned in high school and college, I still have my diplomas and my birth date remains June 22nd.
This total mass freakout by my various status changes finally brought me to where I am now. I am overwhelmed and under impressed with my membership so if I can figure out how to do it, I’m deleting my account. I just hope that it’s easier than trying to disconnect from Farmville.
Now I need to get back to writing about what I had for lunch, tell you all how wonderful my children are and how hard it is to find a job.
We’re having our own little freak of the week story going on around here.
It seems that in Tenino, a little town very close to Olympia, some bozo was spotted driving his truck around with a dead woman passenger. I assume she was all propped up and buckled in because someone corralled a Sheriff’s Deputy and reported her and her driver. While having what must have seemed like a very surreal conversation with the Deputy (Are you sure you haven’t been drinking sir? Could she have been sleeping sir?), the guy and his ticket to the Diamond Lane drove right by giving the witness a chance to point out the pickup truck and it’s odd cargo.
The Deputy pulled the guy over and after inspecting his passenger, arrested him.
I’m going to watch the late night shows tonight because my guess is that there’s a joke or two in this whole story.
Here I am in Aberdeen (the Washington flavored Aberdeen), freshly back from my CERT class, seated at the tiny desk in my room and checking email when the fire alarm sounds. It’s no small thing, this fire alarm, it’s blaring and loud and ear drum busting shrillness. Being the person I am now, trained to respond to emergencies, I grab up my cell phone and room key, drop them in my purse and head to my door to evacuate. I touch the door with the back of my hand to check for heat, open the door a crack to check for smoke and seeing none, go down the stairs joining the man in the room next to me.
The man griped and bitched and moaned and groaned the whole time we descended because he just didn’t like this one bit. Not.One.Bit. He was upset because the fire alarm had disturbed his nap. The only thing I could think of to say to him was that at least he knows now that he won’t burn to death in his sleep. That seemed to provide little comfort.
When we reached the exit, we joined the only other person who decided to exit the place...a hotel full of guests in no fewer than at least 60 other rooms. That’s right, 3 of us evacuated.
I had 10 fire extinguishers in my CERT truck and offered them to anyone who spotted flames but it turned out that this was an unannounced drill. I suspected as much because I saw the fire inspection team checking smoke alarms....but did every other person in that place see them too? I doubt it.
Karan’s PSA: if you hear a fire alarm, don’t assume that it’s not a real fire. There are enough fire-dead people in this world who did just that. If it’s a drill, you get practice. If it’s a fire, you get saved.
I wonder if I was the only guest who brought her own fire extinguishers. I bet I was!
OK....Work of Art really needs to come up with more creative concepts for their weekly challenges. Really.
Reallly.
This week, the clan was ordered to delve into their childhood beginnings and create a work that marked the moment in time their creative expression took form. Yeah. Really. The manufactured hook to this challenge was that they could only use child appropriate materials, you know, like pipe cleaners and crayons and markers. Yeah. Really.
Of course it was a painful experience for most of them. Probably what hurt the most is that the whole idea of picking a single moment was ridiculous. Every single artist I know came to art as a journey...it wasn’t just one of Oprah’s Ah Ha things...like someone flipped a switch and voila *I am an ARTISTE!*
Most of them flailed around, playing with the little kid materials hoping for some sort of inspiration that would point them toward that golden moment. For most, it never arrived. Jaclyn was a particular disadvantage because I think she realized early on that showing her star-covered boobies was not going to be justifiable in this challenge. She tried the pipe cleaners. She tried Rorschach-style smuggies and in the end, she came up with a clothes line strung between two trees and some cockamamie story about how this symbolized that and that symbolized this. I know it was cockamamie because she whined the entire show about how she couldn’t get it.
Ryan struggled too. He ended up with a bunch of crumpled pictures piled under a bunch of non-dominant hand pictures taped to a wall. I think that he was partly there...if the pile of crumple were to signify the early struggles for art a kid who keeps working at it feels then the pictures on taped to the wall maybe should have been better...not so literally childish. But he didn’t ask me so his looked stupid and I felt sorry about that. We also learned that Ryan is a shunned Jehovah’s Witness and not even his mom is exempt for that shunning business. I felt sorry for him about that too.
Abdi drew little drawings of things other’s asked him to draw and his piece was a compilation of those drawings. I think in some minor way he did exactly what the assignment called for. His work symbolized his growing skill at drawing and his acceptance by his peers as an artist. If that’s an Ah Ha moment, I don’t know what is. The judges hated it.
Mark created a book of Mark. I liked it and I wished that I could have seen more of it. He was smack in the middle of the top and bottom group so he faded into Episode 7 obscurity.
So did Miles. His work was a checkerboard sort of affair that I didn’t like at all until I saw it on the wall. It was all black and white squares and three rubber band balls in the three primary colors were stacked below it. I was impressed enough to be surprised by it at the showing.
Nicole’s piece was the most complex. It was a sculptural work symbolizing layers of her self with somewhat hidden artworks inside the sculpture on each layer. I didn’t really like looking at it, but I liked the symbolism she was going for...but unless your in a feel it-smell it only sort of gallery, looking at it is what art is all about it.
Finally Perrigrine, Falcon Girl. She told the tale of a very unchildlike childhood. She grew up in a community of adults who showed her many adult vices, giving her the golden opportunity to be totally screwed up in her adulthood. So far, though, I haven’t seen that in her so it seems that she embraced the weirdness that she witnessed and made herself into her artistic self. Her piece at first looks way messy and convoluted. It featured candy and little unicorns and sparkles and playful things all mixed together with cigarettes and joints and other adult things and in light of her childhood, it was sort of powerful. Of course she won this challenge and I think she deserved to. Hopefully, if she wins that grand prize, she can spend it on therapy when the time comes.
On Work of Art this week, we see our hive of artists divided into two teams (Red and Blue) competing to design a piece of public art.
Team Red was Nicole, Ryan, Mark and Abdi. They built a trapezoid with little outlying trapezoids that sort of looked like they were paying homage to the mother trapezoid. Team Red was all clover and rainbows and unicorns sprinkled with gymnastic sparkle dust.
Team Blue was Perrigrine, Miles, Jaclyn and Erik. They built a playground looking sort of thing that was a big cabana chair. In a moment of unfair, one judge implied monumental insensitivity because it was aimed to look at the space where the Twin Towers used to stand. The artists of course were horrified. Only people from that NYC neighborhood might have known that tidbit so it was not such a fair thing to hold against them. That said, the piece pretty much sucked.
We know from the get go that tensions with the Blue Team are high and we are initially led to believe that it will be a hatefest between Erik and Jaclyn.
Not so much.
While Erik was the leader in this episode of hate, his major focus of much dislike ended up being Miles. Miles deserved it. He was condescending and unpleasant and difficult to work with but in the end, Erik wins the Emmy as the all time big baby. He fully embraced his outsiderness and pouted and cussed and generally made himself unavailable in all ways to his team mates. If this was Survivor he would have been voted off the island. If this was Lost...well I dunno because I never did get that show...but he was not fun to watch and while part of me understood his frustrations, he behaved much like a 9 year old kid who isn’t allowed to play because none of the other kids like him. I didn’t.
I wonder if Erik ever finds that this behavior works for him.
At one point I have to admit that I felt sorry for Erik’s predicament…mostly because I had just experienced my worst day ever at this VISTA job thing I’m doing and I too was essentially excluded from a process in which I was a major player. Like Erik, I was left to feel not only excluded but devalued by the other participants. But, unlike Erik, I continued to participate and do what I could to make the outcome successful. Perhaps I need to have a conversation with Erik.
The public art pieces were judged by the regulars plus a woman dressed in a Viking vest. They noted the functionality of the pieces, the aesthetics and overall community reaction to them. IMHO, both teams created ugly public space art but Team Red won, giving Nicole the winner’s crown. Team Blue fully lost, sending Erik home to paint his scary art and to hold a lifelong grudge against the other three.
From Ads of the World - Gold Medal Winner
