Dear Mother-in-law, let me tell you about your granddaughter

Dear Mother-in-Law, I want to tell you about what your granddaughter Louisa did today. What she did, is not from my side of the family. It is from yours and your daughter/my-wife. The part with talking animals is all me, but the structure & planning? That is y’all’s influence shining through.

Lou has talked for a few days about wanting to host a Stuffy Summer Camp. Today she was clear she wanted my full participation and like 2 full hours of time where she had control to execute it. I am going to relay it to you.

All my wordiness is here to convey foremost that this was a VERY structured and planned out event. Behold Louisa in action!

First she pre envisioned the whole day! 

She explained it to me while she got chairs and clips from her art area,  and took them to her room. She draped a blanket across the chairs to make the camp Tent. Her plan:

She told me there would be two activities in the morning, and then two in the afternoon. One activity would be a more bold/energetic activity and the other a more artsy/cerebral activity. She picked out four counselors, assigning their activity at the start. Then she picked out the 13 campers. Once chosen, she divided them up for the morning activities, considering the preferences of each. 

Louisa oversaw teaching the “how to make a comic book” activity (ostensibly run by Mrs Goggles) and this largely consisted of her telling PeeWee the penguin how to make an art book as she made one. I meanwhile had the tiger and fox work together to make a book. The tiger was whiny and required much support and instruction from Lou. Once complete, Lou has all the art animals go down and watch a show performed by all the animals that had spent the morning learning tricks. Lou ensured that there was much applause and supportive cheering, and that each animal had a turn to show off their tricks.

Then Lou announced it was time for a shared group snack. She went to the kitchen, got a plate, put goldfish on it, and delegated to me to slice up an apple. She laid out the apple slices in an artistic spiral, took the animals to the couch and waited they all had snacks and that each ate. This also served as a snack for Lou and a break. 

After snack, she arranged a soccer game for all 12 animals to play together laying out 2 goals, and getting a ball. She divided up the team and whispered to the bigger animals on one team to let the younger smaller animals on the other team win. She tracked the points as the game progressed, made sure it was close (“you guys catch up but don’t win!”) and made sure the smaller animals got the final game winning point. Ha! 

Then she announced it was time to go back to her room for the afternoon activities! Surfing & Legos. She divided up the animals into two groups again slightly varying their choices. This time Lou opted to lead the bold/energetic task: surfing lessons! She got our two small surfboards (from Hawaii), and. laid out a blue blanket, sculpting one end into various wave shapes. Then one by one she trained the animals to surf. Starting them with easy basics, and then on their second turn making it more complex with tricks. On their third rotation it was like watching X-games!  She layered in each animals emotional reactions with some being bold and exuberant and others more scared and meek, requiring her to be kinder and more supportive. Watching her help some cope with imaginary fears was adorable (“I know it’s scary but you can do this!”)  

Meanwhile I was leading the Lego team’s activity. Once completed all my campers gathered around the wave and Lou put on a final surfing talent show where each animal demonstrated all they had learned. It was excellent and climactic. 

By this point my back was hurting a bit and I was excited the camp day was over! And then indeed most animals left with their parents to go home, buuuut Lou announced that some animals would be staying late, waiting for their parents, and that there would be 3 open activities for them to choose from for after/csno: free surfing, board games, and drawing. She propped up 2 animals on the surfboards, then  got a board game out and gave it to two animals, and then re-opened the drawing station and led that activity, while instructing me to run the board game. She alternated between helping animals play the board game with me, and having some draw. She had Tiger draw, and had PeeWee make a pretend restaurant menu.

Finally camp really ended and she began to clean up. After awhile she said “dad can i finish cleaning later?” :-)

She had told me that she wanted 2 hours for this, and now I see why. She had this whole big thing she wanted to do. She wanted to get to make her idea a reality. It required time and control, plus my participation to make guys talk. It was so creative and immersive and interesting. It shows a lot of planning and a clear understanding of structure that is NOT from my side of the family. So I thought maybe you’d enjoy seeing reading about it. 

Hyper Pop in 2025

Back in the 1990s, as a teen, I remember parsing the structure of much of the techno music I heard (before it was called EDM). The DJ would play something for like 10 seconds/16 beats/4 measure, then drop a new element/sound/layer. He'd do this like 6 times, and it'd take a whole minute. Then finally the song would begin in earnest with all the elements layered up. 

Later I recall noticing that songs might start with 2 layers, and go for those first 10 seconds/16 beats/4 measures, but then drop all the remaining layers immediately for the next 4 measures. Faster, more to the point. Later they'd just start at the moment it was all layered up.

On some level what was going on was, that "our" ability to process information sped up. At first we couldn't make sense of all the things sonically happening, so we eased into it. Then once we were more familiar with it, "we" began toying around with presenting sonic information faster. 

This sped up presentation of more sonic information, was happening in tandem with our experience of the internet, where we were exposed to more and more content faster and faster. MORE FASTER. Music mirrored this. 

Now in 2025, I am starting to feel intolerant of how things used to be. I don't want to hear a verse, then after the chorus hear a verse where the sonic landscape is identical to the first. Like in the song Allstar by Smashmouth, the 2nd verse has an identical landscape to the 1st but with the addition of an organ to the mix. Just barely bearable. Good news is that 3rd verse has a totally different sonic landscape! It almost sounds like a Sugar Ray song, or that one good Sublime song. It almost changes genres. NICE!  And this is what I WANT and EXPECT for all new songs. Old songs are like eating a whole box of ritz crackers. I want a plate with various crackers, cheeses, meats, deserts, etc. In fact I want to encounter a new tasty treat I've never had before.

There has been a trend to slow down and speed up music. It is like saying "lets turn this jam packed upbeat song into one of those old songs that is decompressed!" But I mostly find such slowed down songs intolerable when they are longer than 2 minutes, and they often are just 2 minutes, as if the creators feel the same as me. Being trapped in one sonic landscape for longer than 2 minutes just seems like more than I want. 

I was so confused why I liked Taylor Swift so much, and part of it clicked when I finally heard interviews with Jack Antonoff explaining the music in the background. He is constantly shifting around the sonic landscape and it is not repeating. But he has been doing it subtly so you don't notice, and with a awesome attention to detail. I want that in EVERY song. Every bar labored over. Constantly shifting and presenting new sonic landscapes so that I never land. It feels like flying.

I am listening to the song 757 by 100 gecs, and where the bridge would go, they instead just slow the whole song down. The final bit of the song is a totally different sonic landscape. Then more recently I heard Ten by Fred Again, and he too does this trick of dropping the song down to a slower tempo, but then he only stays with it like one measure, maybe two before ditching it and going back to the main speed and doubling down the beat to speed it up. It is so ADHD. The landscape just jumps all around. It sounds SO FRESH it makes all other songs sound boring by comparison.

The problem that is bringing this sonic shift to my attention, is that I keep finding these songs that are all over the place, and I can't put them on playlists beside normal songs, and it just doesn't work. They make normal songs sound BORING. They just don't shift around fast enough. Tedious to listen to.

In my mind, 20 years ago "we" stumbled into the dream/vision/future of noise pop, where we realized that many ugly sounds could be Music. And we've been living in that future ever since, where lots of songs sound like car alarms blaring. Old people who lived before the transition have not been able to come with "us" into this future. They are stuck listening to music that sounds like before, and to me is too boring to listen to. It was a music cutoff point like electric guitars and rap were. Now I feel like we are in a new one. Songs that just present SO MUCH sonic information, and present more of it faster. I don't feel like I can play this music for almost anyone I know, because they haven't made the leap yet. They need their time. 

I am across the gorge and this hyper pop future is AWESOME! The music is screaming at me like a car alarm and I LOVE IT.

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1naVyl0mSGJkfJHvUtqodV?si=0deddfbdd7354563

Evolution of mammals (or how we've always been fricking awesome)

History of us, the mammals, according to me, Mahdroo (liberties taken)

375 million years ago
We were fish, but it sucked because the ocean was so full of bigger mean fish always eating us, so our most clever ancestor "Tiktaalik" climbed onto a beach, and the big fish could not eat him. They gnashed their big teeth and splashed about in vain. Tiktaalik laughed at them. He laughed so hard he started coughing. Took us awhile to figure out how to breath out of the water. But then on land there were delicious bugs everywhere! so Tiktaalik decided to stay on land. We all stayed, and we ate all the bugs and we did not get eaten by big mean fish anymore! We were tetrapod amphibians now and we spread all across the land. The world was ours! 

359 million years ago:
Living on land was nice but boring, because we were small, because the bugs were all small, because the plants were all small, because the danged fungi kept eating all the plants before they could get big. Boring.

360 millions years ago:
The MOST bonkers thing EVER happened! In the war between fungi and plants, the plants won the most incredible victory of all time. They invented bark and cellulose. Fungi couldn't figure out how to do jack-squat about it.  Plus the plants defeated gravity! Victorious and unstoppable the new plants had a non-stop tree orgy for 60 million years. Everywhere was suddenly ground-to-sky tree forests, and every square inch was pumping out bajillions and quazillions of oxygen into the sky. It was crazy. The air was suddenly all nice and posh and for us, breathing through our skin stopped being so hard to do, and the tasty bugs got bigger and tastier, and we got ultra beefcake huge. Like 6ft long salamander huge. And it started raining and never stopped. And we could have a million babies if we had water to drop them in, and suddenly everywhere was a forest swamp. So we had frajillions of babies! Amphibians FTW!

340 million years ago:
You'd think we would have learned the lesson of the big mean fish, but again some of the big amphibians got mean and took all the best forest/swamp spots and started trying to eat us (jerks), but at the periphery where it was dryer and crappier and unoccupied, we said "F you big amphibians! We'll live out here you selfish a-holes!" but again with the coughing because it too dry out there. Ugh. So we evolved some slightly better lungs. Hard work, but whadyagonna do? Then we evolved another clever trick, a layer around our eggs to keep them wet on the inside if they got dry on the outside. Amniotic sacks are the mother of invention! Take that amphibians. Keep your gross swamps. We couldn't have as many babies as the amphibians, but the crappy outlands were ours! We were hardcore and fringe. We were "amniotes."

335 million years ago:
The continents all smashed into each other forming Pangea. Bonus! We spread over all the dryer regions of the whole planet! The jerk amphibians still wouldn't share all the posh swamps. I mean gross swamps. They sucked. But over time Pangea's shaped changed the weather and there were more dry crappy outlands for us to take over (nice).

312 million years ago:
Us hardcore amniotes split into two groups. The others wanted more holes in their heads (not sure why). We named ourselves synapsids and they got named sauropsids. We weren't that good at names yet, and the split didn't seem like a big deal at the time.

305 million years ago:
Suddenly fungi freaking finally figured out how to eat trees! Crazy twist in the plot! BOOM fungi exploded planet wide and ate all the mega forests. Tree party over. Oxygen dropped, rain stopped, and the planet got hella dry really fast. Suddenly everywhere was a crappy dry region. No more water and all the amphibians got wrecked, and their billion babies died. Jerks deserved it. They are lucky any of them survived at all, but only the tiny ones living in a few posh swampy places. We didn't even care. Whatever.
Meanwhile all us hardcore amniotes realized "OMG the whole planet is crappy outlands now! We can live anywhere and everywhere! LETS GO!" and within like 5 million years we took over the whole planet and all the best spots were ours! YAS QUEEN.

300 to 250 million year ago:
Us Synapsid amniotes were living like kings. We were everywhere, even the gross swamps. I mean posh swamps! Heck yeah! Victory was ours and we could eat anyone we wanted. Yum. We grew huge and grand and majestic. Good times. We were evolving to be mammals, but not really quite yet.
Meanwhile, the other kind of amniotes, with the extra holes in their heads (weird). They were tiny and not a big deal. Sometimes we ate them. So they kept trying to evolve weird ways to not get eaten, like being lizards (too dry), then snakes (too gross), then turtles (too crunchy), then crocodiles (too rubbery). Whatever. We didn't care. They were still small and not that delicious. They were so 2nd string beta. We were proto-mammals and the world was ours!

250 million years ago:
Siberia exploded. Like all of it. It fucking exploded man. Dammit. Volcanos trashed the planet. Shit. All our best spots went dsystopian hellscape. All our best awesome huge synapsids family got extincted. Dammit. Only our tiniest small proto-mammals survived. Worst thing that ever happened. Stupid Siberia.

250-66 million years ago:
Fucking dinosaurs dude. The other amniote sauropsids with their dumb extra head holes evolved into dinosaurs. They took over all the best new niches, and ate any of us mammals they could find, and only tiny mammals that could hide in the ground survived. Shit it sucked. Stupid dinosaurs. It went on for like 200 million years! It SUCKED.
In order to survive we had to evolve really fancy teeth that could crush bug exoskeletons (what else could we eat?). We had to only go out at night (to not get eaten) so we evolved really good eyes, and body temperature regulation aka awesome fur. We evolved really good ears, and big noses. It kept us alive mostly, but it wasn't enough to overcome the damn dinosaurs. This whole window of time we tried so hard, but it sucked. This is when we truly became "mammals."

134 million years ago:
Flowers suddenly evolved, and exploded planet wide. Seeds! Fruit! The dumb dinosaurs didn't even care. Idiots. I mean, there was suddenly seeds and fruit everywhere! Free food, and the dinos were all like "nah we good." Morons. We got really really into seeds and fruit.

Around this time [we really don't know when] us mammals diversified into lots of different kinds of mammals, such as: 
proto-rats
proto-anteaters
proto-dogs
proto-monkeys
proto-horses
proto-elephants
proto-dead-ends (these ones died later)
but we all looked the same: like little rats or racoons. Why? Because the stupid dinosaurs kept eating us. If we tried to specialize or come out during the day or do anything cool like get bigger they just ate us. God we hated them.

66 million years ago:
Giant meteor killed all the damned dinosaurs (except birds) . HECK YEAH!!!! Frickin finally... but we didn't get to enjoy it at first because the meteor set all the planets trees on fire. And uh, y'know how we were all into seeds and fruit? Well dangit, the best of our arboreal tree-loving ancestors, got extincted. Again. GAH! And they were so cool too! Mostly ground tromping mammals survived. Only one little teensy group of tree-hanging mammals made it -us- tiny primates. Weird looking boogers we were. We were hanging out in like a posh hidden swamp in a canyon crevice in Africa or something that somehow survived the global apocalypse. No one thought much of us. Lucky. Without many trees tho we had to learn to run around in the open, but we got pretty good at running on 2 feet. Unique! Most the ground walking mammals thrived tramping around on four feet. They filled all the niches. Mammals for the win! Elephants and mammoths got pretty cool. Lots of big mega fauna! They turned out to be tasty!

When the trees grew back we decided not to go live in them anymore. But none of the other mammals remembered how to live in them either, so the birds got em. That was probably a mistake. Every time I see an eagle kill a squirrel I wish we'd killed off those damned dinosaurs when we got the chance. The birds actually did try to go dinosaur on us again at one point. There was this killer terror ostrich that tried to make a dino comeback, but the direwolves ate its face off. No more of that dino reign. Nuh uh. Mammals all the way baby! Anyway, so with all our hair and ears and keen noses and good eyes, and amniotic sacks and strong lungs, things have been pretty great for all of us. Mammaries worked out well. Our opposable thumbs proved really handy and that two leg thing totally rocks. We got some big brains and here we are! There are still fish and amphibians, and amniotes with too many holes in their heads but we can eat all of them now.  The past 65 million years have been good for us mammals, and the last 10,000 years have been particularly nice for us humans. I doubt anything bad will happen. Hopefully we'll continue to be awesome for millions of more years!

I loved this awful experience

 I always feel so meta that it is hard to describe anything. I love that I love that I describe my sentiment about any feeling I have as something I love. If I don't like something, then that experience of dislike is something I love. I love the experience of disliking things.  I love the experience of being bored. I love having experiences. So I will say a thing like "I love hating aspects of Microsoft Excel."  And I really do. I derive a lot of pleasure from how intensely I dislike it.  

In this moment, I am listening to a song. It is a beautiful song. When my heart tips past the threshold of holding-everything-at-bay and is submerged in the beauty of wave after wave washing over me. I am engulfed in emotion. And the intensity of longing to somehow share this beauty breaks my heart and crushes me. I am a frail leaf dry blown over jagged rocks, and pulled apart, pushed into a creek, and pulled into a million pieces, becoming soil. I am gone. It was helpless. And I cannot share it with anyone. Will anyone ever read these words even? I think not. My life is full of these moments of loneliness and beauty. Do I like this experience? That is hard to say, but I love it. I love it perhaps a bit like Stockholm Syndrome. It has me. It has me and I cannot escape, and my principal experience of life is to love my experience of life. So this too I love.

I had worked hard to setup my daughter's very first playdate today at 1pm. My wife nor the other parents were that excited about it. Or else it felt that way. But I was. So excited. And deeply committed. Daughterboo has been so isolated from normal kid interaction, partially because little kids under 4 don't really play together, but mostly because of Covid. And so I was really eager to make this happen. To give her an opportunity. So I setup a playdate with a kid. How? It was a birthday party last week for one kid in her class, and I asked all the parents if they wanted a play date. Blank stares. I share with them a picture of the place we'd play, a pic of kids playing there, and that made it a better sell. One mom said "YES!" and she delegated to me the task of walking over to her husband to tell him that he'd be assigned to go on the play date. Did our daughters like each other before this date (or even know each other's names?). I don't think so. Yet I was committed. I set it up. The day of, I had a plan, to keep daughter relatively mellow leading up to it. So she would have good energy for it. And my plan got foiled. I'm going to cut that part of this story out. But she had a thrilling morning. One of the best ever. She was so happy and alive, which is good. Great. BUT, come 11am she was not calm. No problem. I took her home. We ate. We watched TV. She cuddled my arm on the couch and we got tranquil. An hour later she wanted to draw. A relaxing thing to do. I made up a project for us. Her mom was out-of-town and coming back at 2pm. We could make her a sign that read "Welcome Home Mom! We🤍 U" So we spent 30 minutes on that. She had at this moment in her skill-growth just learned to color inside the lines, and to cut with scissors. So I had her do both these things. I was proud of myself for keeping it fun, and collaborative, letting her choose what to color and cut, and yet moving swiftly on the other aspects of it to get it all done in those 30 minutes. It was tricky to work out the timing. Really tricky, and I was proud I did it. And kept it fun. I got it to where we wrapped up all our tasks at approximately the same moment. She was finishing up the last thing, the heart, just as I was prepping the tape on the back of all the words to tape it to our front door. At this moment it is 12:28. We are exactly on schedule. All that remained to do was put this last piece of tape on the back of the heart and walk over to the front door, and put it up. We'd be done at 12:32. It was going to be great. Her mom would feel loved when she got home in 1 hour at 1:30pm, and we'd be gone by then, having peed (12:35), eaten a burrito (12:38 to 12:47), and walked out the door (12:51) to stroll to the playdate with an easy cushion of time. This did not happen. Instead, what happened was my daughter had an idea to put a drawing of herself, her mother and myself inside the heart. She drew a circle in the heart, inside which to put the three of us. She drew the first head circle. Then she stared at it. This is the moment that this entire blog post is about. This tiny moment. This is the awful experience that I loved. All this to get to this tiny human moment. My four year old stared at the circle inside the circle. The gears of her mind turned. The head circle, inside the larger circle, was too large, so large, that she would not be ablt to fit two more head circles beside it. And her skills are not so evolved that it occurred to her to draw Mom and Dad smaller, or outside the circle. All that she got in that moment was that she could not do her plan. Her plan was foiled. This is them awful experience I love. Her plan was foiled. And in that moment she decided to make 3 hearts, with 3 circles, each with a different person inside: mom, dad and herself. And in that moment I got onboard and switched my plan to have the sign say " We🤍🤍 🤍U" because I have done comedy improv, and inside that training I get it. Just ride the wave. Whatever someone else's contribution is or becomes, you just say "Yes!, and" and accept it and run with it. So BAM now I am drawing her more hearts and we are coloring them in... and halfway through working on this second heart my daughter unravels. Her commitment to her idea is a canyon to cross, and her tenuous feeling of control is a rope bridge across. Reality is friction cutting the ropes. They fray. The bridge shatters. Explodes. She is falling. ropes fray. Shatter. The bridge collapses. She is falling. She reaches out but there is nothing to hold onto. Me? Apparently she has pulled me into the freefall with her. I need 60 seconds of decisive action to finish this 30 minute plan, and she is flailing and will destroy anything she touches. She wants and opposes every action simultaneously with maximum intensity. She wants to make more hearts. She doesn't. She wants me to put it up. She wants to put it up. She doesn't want me to. It is all screaming and anger and despair and frustration, all felt at maximum strength. I jumped and grabbed the other side of the canyon, and am holding us up with one hand, while holding her with the other. Pulling us up. Because all I want is to make her mom happy, but more so to take her to the playdate and give her the chance to have a friend and be a kid and be social, a chance she has largely been denied for two years. And I am so committed. And the next 10 minutes is a blur. I get that burrito shoveled into her face through tears and her shoes on and out the door to the place, and she is trying to shift from sad and upset to happy, she is really valiantly trying, and just before we get to the other girl, just then she finally does it. We have an amazing two hours. We were a minute late. Only 1 minute. It was almost more. It was a mad dash. It was SO intense. It took everything. And it all came down to that moment when she drew the 2nd circle and had to decide what to do. I love that moment. It was so awful. It ruined so much. It was so human. It was like the song. Have billions of parents already had this experience? And it is so hard to convey. A film might be able to convey it in 3 minutes or less. Who would want to see that film? And so many words here for me to process it and cope, and cathartically get it out. https://youtu.be/0pHotq9fGZU

Fastworward to being a Dad

I just wrote this text to two friends (group chat) and thought to share it here. I will not edit it, I’ll just post it as was. One thing to add is that my daughter is 3 almost 4 years old. This is how I relayed an update in a text:

Personality tests I used to take revealed that I was very accomplishment based. Like more than others. And I have long pondered that. In parenting, I often look back at my time with my daughter through the lense of "what did we accomplish?" My main goal is to provide her opportunities that she may someday grab/seize! Yesterday was a rare double victory day because we had two outdoor adventures! Took her to the creek for 2 hours, wherein she leveled up to: personally desiring to actively go engage strangers! She said “I wanna see who they are.” In weeks from begging me to flee to actually wanting to play with other kids! And later in the day we had a 2nd victory. She still insists at age 3.9 to be pushed around in a stroller. And after a fun bout of her helping me plant wildflower seeds in the canyon, I got her to agree to walk (WALK!!!) to the market for a treat. This action I have imagined will be a staple of our lives here, but we can never do it because she won't walk. Well, we finally did it. She agreed to walk and then did it! We walked somewhere. Half way there I pretended to not know the way (she loves this game) and she got to tell me how to get there. Then after we got candy, Pocky, I let her pick where we sat and she picked a place. Then afterwards she invented a game where she threw white flower petals in the air pretended they were snow and sang the Frozen song" let it go" and pretended to have snow powers for like 15 min. Which was, like a very creative weird fun and interesting thing to do. Opportunity seized?!! So double victory. Triple? A good day. Mostly I don't score myself on her seizing. I score myself on opportunities presented. There is so much Entropy pulling me toward "do nothing." I guess the urgency of the speed of how fast she is growing up is the motivation to act more quickly? In terms of game theory, she is like a weird little pet tamogochi NPC. Hahaha.love is awesome!

What I am thinking about while working on this boring project:

This song I'm listen to is so good I want to buy nice headphones just to listen to it.

How amazing is it that we evolved to be able to experience such a nuanced spectrum of sound that I can even appreciate how beautiful the detail of production is in this song.

It fascinates me how each person's taste is so subjective, and that their tastes also evolved, over time enabling their appreciation of and preference for different aspects of everything that is possible.

There is so much to experience! Such a complex reality we are in!

Hanging a lot of Picture Frames

Time to put the picture frames on the wall:

Christmahanukwanzivus Art

Here is a little bit of behind the scenes creativity to share.  I host an annual Christmahanukwanzivus party, and I wanted the image in the invite to set the mood for the party AND be unique.  I used a pic of some fun loving mammals, and upped the level of fun until it said cozy holiday.  Took about 45 min on Pixlr.com

The party was great too!  We made snow flakesI always like to document my peeps at get togethers, but during the party not everyone was there at the same time :(  So I took 2 pics and photoshopped them together.  You can see that on the right it is daytime and the left it is night.  Not my best shop job, but un-noticeable photoshop always feels like a lie to me, so I like to leave it obvious (and it's WAY easier too : )

Signal to Noise

I have been thinking about the phrase "Signal to Noise" recently.  I want to jot down what I think of it, right now, in May of 2013, while I am 34.  A lot of these thoughts have been floating around my head for years.  I am going to slide into talking about it diagonally from another thought.  How I feel about sell out bands, and how that is an outgrowth of my feelings on creativity in art.

I have often talked about how much I respect the bands The Counting Crows, Smashmouth, and Gwen Stefani of No Doubt.  Specifically, I like how they each more or less sold out and blatantly switched to a pop style, because there was no economic future in their original style.  Early in Counting Crows growth, you can see them try to mature and stay true to themselves.  Like Eddie Vedder in Pearl Jam, you see these bands initially wanting to not sell out, and make shit pop music.  But then you can see them very quickly give up on that and decide instead to sell out and sell out hard.  Smashmouth more than any other.  And I respect this tremendously.  Why?  Because it fits this narrative I have:
       
    The majority of art is ineffective.  It is made as an expression of
    creativity, and succeeds at that, but achieves little else beyond.
    Which is to say, it does not land with an audience.  It is dead on
    arrival.  It is stillborn.  No one cares, and it means nothing to the
    majority of people who encounter it.  Worse, it may counteract
    any intent the creator had.  To me, this is fine.  Because if the art
    was made without intent beyond the creators desire to create,
     then that is all it was meant to do.  However, what angers and
    frustrates me is when the artist decides to tag on an intention
    afterward, or worse, they have the intention from the beginning
    and fail to execute on this intention effectively.  I hate seeing
    creators do what they know how to do, and wishing it achieved
    some result, when it clearly fails to do so.  I hate that very much.
       
    The majority of art s ineffective.  If you want to make art be
    effective, affective, or DO anything, then you have to own that
    and really grapple with how the enduser is going to receive it.
    I find most creators, all of us really, to be lazy.  It isn't natural,
    but it is necessary, to really think about how your creation will
    land with others.  But it is only necessary if you want your
    creation to DO something.  If you don't care, then you can go
    make whatever you want.  Like Eddie Vedder writing a song
    about cockroaches.  He wanted to express something, and
    not write a radiohit for some labels.  And he succeeded at that.
    Criticism of art, is only valid, in my opinion, in analyzing what
    was intended, and did it succeed in that ambition?

And that is why I love Smashmouth so much.  They made a shitty ska album late in the third wave of ska, at the peak of ska's popularity and just before interest in it crumbled and vanished.  Had their follow up record been ska, it would have utterly failed.  What happened instead was that they had one slightly non-ska song on the album that became a record hit, and they subsequently decided to ditch their entire position as a ska band, and instead make music that sounded like their one pop song, with the intention of achieving further mainstream success.  And they succeeded wildly with their song Hey now you're an Allstar!  I love that they had an intention and succeeded at it.  Many other ska bands from this time, maybe half heartedly tried to do the same thing, but more or less failed and fell by the way side.

When a creator creates a creation, which they only half-heartedly intend to achieve a result, it seems to me that they fail.  It seems to me to be necessary to know what you want to achieve with a creation,  and really take on being responsible for making it work.  In the world of writing, this is what editors do.  They tell authors "hey this isn't working, it needs to be fixed, or it won't achieve the result you want."  A day or so ago I was reading a book on the biology of evolution, and he was just blathering on wasting pages and paragraphs not saying anything, and then just failing to hit home the most important points that mattered.  Ugh.  It was all noise, no signal.

As I understand it is a legit scientific measurement that came out of the field of electronics.  Signal is the desired information, and noise is the irrelevant information that is cluttering up/interferring with your ability to detect the relevant desired information.  The ratio of signal to noise therefor indicates how much you are getting of what you want, versus how much junk is obscuring it.  At a personal level "Signal to Noise" means can you get what you want out of this or no?

An example.  In an online forum discussing something of interest to you, the divergence into tangentially unrelated topics increases the noise to signal ratio, until it becomes so hard to learn about what you are interested in, that you give up and leave the discussion.

So to me, in art, if what was created fails to convey its intended concept, or induce its intended emotion in the audience (or achieve whatever it was intended to achieve), then the creator has failed because their signal to noise ratio was off.  Smashmouth saw that people wanted pop music, and made pop music almost devoid of anything ska-like, and succeeded.  The band Reel Big Fish tried to make pop music, but also tried to keep their ska roots in doing it, and failed, because people didn't want their ska roots cluttering up their pop music.  If Reel Big Fish's intention was to succeed as mainstream stars, they failed.  If their intention was to stay true to their Ska roots, then they succeeded.  This example illustrates my theory that Intention is the measure by which art can be evaluated or criticized, and the unit of measurement then is Signal-to-noise.

End part 1.
Begin part 2.

Here is an entirely different way I have been thinking about Signal to Noise.  I have not synthesized this way of thinking with the above way of thinking.  I will (I imagine) do that later.  For now, I just want to get it out, so that I can save it in writing for the "later" that I am hoping will happen.

What follows is an interpretation of how the ratio of Signal to Noise relates to the information gathering technique's used in the Intuitive and Sensory styles of the Myer's Brigs personality types

At the core level, my understanding of what Myer's and Brigs were aiming at, was to define how any given person most immediately goes about solving a need for information.  The intuitive style they propose is a way of describing when an individual as a habit, seeks out and notes a wide variety of information, and then seeks to arrive at clues by comparing all that information.  In contrast, the Sensory style depicts when an individual screens out as much information as possible, seeking the specific relevant clues needed.  A wide array versus a laser focus.

My assesment has been that The wide array succeeds better in situations of uncertainty, finding information where there is little to go on.  The sensory style works better when there is an abundance of information, and dodges overload.

As interpretted through the conceptualization of Signal to Noise...
Intuitive style data collection is actually a mechanism to tolerate and make use of data with a low Signal to Noise ratio.
Sensory style data collection is tailored to using data with a high Signal to Noise ratio.
Therefore, which technique is best to use in any given circumstance, could be determined by understanding what the Signal to Noise ratio is, and consequently using the best tool for that circumstance.  If I understand Myer's Brigs test correctly, they are evaluating which you prefer to use, or rely on most frequently.  Which can help you understand why the technique you most commonly employ is failing, in the face of the kinds of circumstances you are using it in.  As well as how others attempts yield different results.

Okay, now I have to go do other things and think other thoughts.  Blog out.

The Origin story of Mahdroo's Name:

One day five years ago I self actualized... POP! At that time, if you had been malkovching into mind, you would have seen that a lot happened all at once. Most important was that I was in utter awe, and in this awe I realized I could have anything I wanted out of life, literally anything, and I was absolutely certain to my core of this fact. However, at this time I was unaccustomed to wanting things. I was rusty and found it difficult, so I started trying to think of things to want. Here is a list of things I immediately thought of:
- A sandwhich (but no, I realized I had already eaten and wasn't hungry)
- A new car (alas, I liked the car I had)
- A new apartment (liked the one I had)
- A girlfriend (turns out I liked the freedom of not having one, and feeling like a victim about not having one)
-I wanted the ability to lift a truck over my head (I had it. I had enough money to rent a crane, etc).

I thought of more things to want only to keep realizing that I did not honestly want them. Within 5 minutes I had exhausted my creativity. I came to understand that I did not want "things." This left me befuddled. What was there to want? I paused for some time, mind ablank, standing there looking stupid.

Then, in that emptiness, a little voice in the back of my head said "well, I have an idea for something we could want." To which I replied "oh, what is your idea little voice?" and it said "well, how about a new name?" And I must have looked confused so the little voice elaborated "...an awesome name! The best name ever!" And getting the idea I grew enthused "Oh!!! That is a really good idea! I would LOVE a new name, an awesome name! That would be really extraordinarily wonderful!"

Now, what neither I nor the little voice knew at that time, was that a new name was really the first manifestation of deeper change that was blossoming inside me. The idea was that I could truly and completely be myself. Be exactly who I am, all the time, with everyone. Instead of trying to be who I believed others wanted me to be, I could just. be. me. It was the possibility of acceptance.

And KABLOOOOOMMM!!!!! The idea unfolded in my mind, and it felt like every birthday and Christmas combined into one. I got REALLY excited. I could have a name that sounded like what I am like. Truth in advertising if you will. A name that would convey to others exactly what I am like, that would express all the enthusiasm and creativity that make up me. A name that was my own creation, unique and mine and amazing! I dropped what I was doing and ran off to create my new stupendous name.

Mind you, all of this was happening in a matter of minutes. It was very intense (just like me), but now dear reader, please flashback in time with me to 6 months prior to this event. On this day farther back in my past, I had not self actualized. On this day I was in an odd part of Los Angeles, and talking to some random strangers, as I am often found to be doing, and in this case I had just said to several black women "Why do you guys have such funny names?" and they were ALL visibly shook and, like, "awww hell naww!" "No you didn't!" Then one woman saw that I was looking at them with this naive waiting curiousity and she said "oh, you're just a stupid curious white boy...okay. Here's the deal. Our parents thought that each of us was unique and wanted us to have names that were an expression of that uniqueness. So instead of using names that already existed, they made up new ones by combining words together." And I said "AWESOME! I wish I had a cool unique name. But I didn't. My name was Matt.

Now, flash forward with me back to my self actualizing experience. When we left me I had set out to make my new name. I got a pencil and paper and started writing every word I could think of that I like. My favorite word is shellac. That didn't help any. In fact, nearly none of the words worked, because I was determined to have a "k" sound in my name. Very masculine, I thought. After spending quite a while failing to find a masculine name that suited me, it occurred to me that I am not particularly masculine. I thought "what am I like?" and I immediately envisioned myself running through a crowd enthusiastically yelling "WHOOOOOOOOOO!" at the top of my voice. Clearly I needed "oo" in my name. There were surprisingly few O's in all my words. The first word I had written down was Madrona: a native American tree with red peely bark and fruit that looked like a thousand exclamation points. I added this word to the best adjective that described me: Kooky, and I got Madrooky. That did not work. Not enough OOH! So I said "Mahdroo" and immediately I knew that I had it. I lept up and ran to my computer to google it. No spelling of Mahdroo was a word. I then picked the spelling of my choice, deciding that Madroo would sound like a crazy marsupial. Silent H.

I got every login name under Mahdroo. I got Mahdroo.com I went all out. In the coming days I told everyone I knew, and then everyone I ever knew, and my family and friends. I told them all this very long story that you have just read, and I asked them all to call me Mahdroo from now on. Many had concerns and objections and reasons why they didn't want to call me Mahdroo, and I listened to them all, and asked them to call me Mahdroo anyways. And that was back in 2005. I have been Mahdroo ever since.

The one thing I have left out of the story is the doubt. All along the way, there were little bouts of doubt. And to those I would say "well, if I can do anything then nothing can stop me, and this name can be my test of that. If can't make this name work and stick and be everything I ever dreamed it would be, then maybe I can't do anything." And every day my name proves to me that I can do anything, that I can shape whatever future I choose for myself. That is the meaning of my name.

Oh, wait, no. Sometimes people ask "what does your name mean?" and I randomly decided that it meant "he who brings cookies... or enthusiasm." They are the same, I think.

Now I will direct traffic!

Fun story time: I drove to work to check my schedule, which took longer than normal because traffic was hella backed up because all the traffic lights were down in West Hollywood. On my way home I was surprised that they were still down and there were no cops directing traffic. Santa Monica & Fairfax is a major intersection with two lanes both way and a middle turn lane. Cars were creeping through it and traffic was backed up for blocks and blocks. How my small, well-run city could take so long to rectify the problem baffled me. I decided that I would help out and direct traffic in the mean time till someone came to take care of it. It wasn't all altruism though. I was scared but far more excited at the thought of directing traffic. I thought "this may be my one chance to do it. I'm gonna prove to myself that I can!" It had air of suspense and excitement you'd associate with being the first on a new roller coaster ride. I parked my car, ran up to my apartment, grabbed my bright red don't-crash-into-me jacket, and I got my roommate, telling him my plan and recruiting him to come take some pictures, which is how we got this gem.



I just strode out into the middle of the intersection and got in the center. I don't know if you know, but there is a little spot in the center of every intersection where no one drives. It is full of dirt and coins and stuff. I stood there and started waving cars to go, and stopping the others with my hands. I had a fierce stop that could stop any car dead in it's tracks. Instead of 1 car at a time I could get 10 thru, then turning cars, then switch directions. It was tremendously more efficient with me that without me and this made me feel good about doing it. I got a lot of happy honks and waves. Many people yelled "thank you" and some looked at me dumbly. A few I saw taking pictures or video of me. I was pretty excited and waving my arms hugely like Peter Townshend. Giant windmill circles to get cars to do what I wanted. I hopped around a lot and I was yelling at the cars what I wanted them to do. Lots of pointing and waving. Afterwards people who saw me do it said I was really really good at it and asked if I had had training to do it.

After 20 minutes a cop showed up. I figured he would come replace me or arrest me, so I waved at him. He didn't walk out so I yelled/asked if he'd like me to come to him. He picked the latter. So switched traffic direction and went over to him. He parked in one of the turn lanes, which blocked traffic, and seemed sort of a dick move. And he was arresting me. Yup. Hands behind my back, against the car, he took everything out of my pockets, and all the while I was very friendly and answered all his questions pleasantly. By the time he had me get in the cop car I think he had grasped that I was just a very nice guy who was helping with the traffic. All the while, the people at the bus stop and crosswalks were booing and yelling at him that I was doing a good job and to leave me alone. He drove me all of 300 ft around the corner and just up past the intersection (now blocking a different lane of traffic, again WTF). He got out and a bunch of my advocates chased him down and were yelling at him. I waved and signaled that I was okay, and this was all cool. And the officer walked over and explained procedure to them and calmed them down. I kinda figured from the get go I could get arrested for this (at least my roommate knew where I was) and I was prepared and okay with that outcome. Anyhoo, the cop talked to me for awhile. Very nice fellow. He informed me that I had generated eleven 911 calls in the 20 minutes I directed traffic. I think people were concerned there was an accident and didn't understand what I was doing. That made sense. I told the officer I understood and appreciated his efforts, and got him to clarify what exactly was illegal about what I was doing, so I would know not to do it anymore. You can't stand in the middle of intersections it turns out. And apparently neither could he. His cop friends pulled up and parked their cars, and came up to his window to talk. He painted a rather polite picture of my efforts, and they all commiserated that the union that directs traffic was doing a crap job covering this situation and the city of West Hollywood was botching it all to heck. Ahhhhhh. I had expected him or his buddies to direct traffic instead of wasting time on me, but alas, they couldn't. Before the officer let me go, I checked in to see whether I had been "arrested" or "apprehended" and he informed me that I had been merely "detained" which does not sound nearly as cool. Disappointing right?

But no, not being arrested is good news, and better news is that I didn't cause any accidents or get hit by a car. The best news is that I made a difference, and the fun part was that I enjoyed doing it and people really appreciated my efforts. Plus now I have a sweet cop story to tell. Carpe was diem'd and my life sure is fun!

my Avatar adventure story

Before the scifi film Avatar came out I was pretty excited about it. I bought tickets months in advance and posted this pic on facebook asking "who wants to go see the 12:01 opening day premier midnight screening with me?

A friend, seeing my enthusiasm invited me onto the Fox studios lot where she worked (exciting) and gave me a full sized promotional poster (awesomeness!). My roommate and I, being total nerds, hung it up in the hallway. This only helped get us more excited about the film, and the night we were to see it, I went hours early to wait in line to get us good seats. Now, my roommate had had blue face paint from Halloween, and I brought it to the premier. I figured "if I am going to really geek out on this film, I might as well geek all the way out." I decided to abandon all fear and shame and convinced the girl next to me in line to help me paint my face blue. I hadn't anticipated it, but soon every camera there wanted a picture of me. Then a video team was interviewing me, and then the guy in charge of promoting IMAX nationally was having me pose for pictures. I realized this wasn't going to work. Who cares what one dorky guy does? I told them to wait a minute (boy was that a powerful feeling) and I went outside and started asking everyone if anyone wanted to paint their face blue and get their picture taken. Honestly, I knew we needed a woman for to make it work but there were no takers.
I walked back surprisingly defeated. Then the gal who painted my face trotted in, and volunteered. Hot! So I painted her face while her boyfriend waited outside (double hot!), and then the two of us posed for pictures. She was really nervous about it, so I told her how to pretend this was normal and look really excited. I think she had a good time :-) They gave us free t-shirts and Avatar toys, which was pretty cool. Like we'd won a contest or something!


Then, the IMAX guys told us James Cameron, the director of Avatar, was coming. We were going to get to meet him and pose for a picture! Hot damn! When he showed up we weren't supposed to talk to him, but he ended up talking to us. He shook my hand and said to his friend/associate "See this is what I'm talking about." When we posed for the picture (as you can see below) we used the pose and face we had practiced before (with less eyes bugging out). And despite the fact that we were the one's wearing blue face paint, Mr Cameron managed to out-geek us by saying "no no, you are supposed to be like 7 ft tall, we should make you look taller than me!" Well played sir, truly your are a king among the nerds!



I got the email address of the cameraman, and asked him to email me the picture, which he did at 4am. I posted it to popular social news site reddit.com at 5am, and by midnight it had 25,000 page views. Wow. I had succeeded at making myself the most visible person in the role of avatar fan. So of course, the next day ABC news in New York called me and asked if I would be interviewed for a segment on Avatar to air on Good Morning America. Holy shit! How did they even get my number? I told them I would do it if they promised they could interview me in under a half hour and have everything ready for me when I got there. NYC agreed to my terms. So I took an hour off of work, and drove over to their studio. On the way there I called to check they were ready for me and the receptionist said "I'm sorry, who are you?" OH NOES! but when I called back 10 minutes later he was super apologetic "I"m sorry Mr. Mahdroo, yes we are ready for you, everything is set up!"
Outstanding! I painted my face blue as I drove, so that they could interview me blue-faced (dangerous yet worthwhile). Then I called my mom who called everyone she knew and told them I was going to be on tv. Apparently the mayor of my mom's town called her to say he'd seen me on tv while on vacation in Maine. Epic win! Here is the clip below:



Our pictures were included in Entertainment Weekly two weeks in a row (good gracious! see below) as well as being featured on the Yahoo homepage, and on my favorite scifi blog io9.com <---pretty much anywhere they needed to represent Avatar, the put up the picture with me.

My Obama airplane crash dream!

Okay, I know dreams aren't normally worth posting, but this one has amazing special effects and Obama was in it!


Last night I dreamnt I was flying on board air force one and sitting next to Obama. Except it was more like he was on a passenger jet and sitting in coach. He and the other lady in our row were jabbering away. Then he turned to me and I was so excited to ash him questions. I was asking him if he had aides who helped him with email. Like if he wanted to read an old email he remembered, did he log on & find it, or delegate the search to an aide?

He laughed and told me it was an interesting question. He was about to answer when the plane started a steep dive and began turning in a tight circle. I looked out the window and saw flak everywhere. Fighter jets were shooting us down. I braced for death, and found I was surprisingly calm and at peace. I made sure my seatbelt was tight and wove my carry on thru my legs so it wouldn't hit anyone in the head. Then the back of the airplane exploded off and we began spinning and falling/flying like a frisbee. I remember thinking Joe Biden would be president, and another JFK-like amazing leader would be lost to us.

What I didn't know was how close to the ground we were at that point. A few second laster we crashed into an Iranian soccer stadium, wend across the field and ended in a sea of busses. I was alive. Most of us were alive!

I was telling people to run out the back, and I ran up to the front. One pilot ran out, but the Senior Captain was injured. I told her what a good job she had done saving us all, and picked her up and carried her outside. While running down the aisle sideways so as to not bumpt the captain, I saw there were grandparents with kids still seated. I wanted to help them off the plane but the captain said no, the most important thing is to protect the president.

I could not find anyone as we'd all split up, so I hid in a nearby school, in a vacant gym, behimd two vending machinesl for a week. A white Labrador Retriever who had been on the plane with us ran back and forth between all our locations and delivered notes. Obama was alive but injured and Robert Gibbs was protecting him.

Then a kid found me and ratted me out. They realized the dog was our agent. I ran and ran and ended up hiding in the shrubs in some suburb. After a day the dog found me and walked up all leprosied and died right next to me. A man came chasing after him, but didn't find us. I took of over a set of rolling green hills nearby and woke up.


-Mahdroo

What does a Mahdroo want?

A list of things I want:

-pants (jeans and khakis)
-shirts (button up short sleeve shirts)
-shoes (saucony sneakers)
-a t-shirt from Swingers (with the presidential seal of swingers on it)

-car tires
-car bumper (rear)
-car driver side mirror
-car oil change

-iPod for Jessica
-iPhone (the new one when it comes out)
-new mac (maybe in 2010)

[EDIT] followup.
Mahdroo eventually got new jeans, car tires, a driver side mirror, and oil change. Jessica got a new iPod. At this much later date, Mahdroo still wants all this other stuff.

The EXCITING! origin of hiccups

Now known: The EXCITING! origin of hiccups.

I am pleased to report that the cause for hiccups has been figured out by scientists (according to Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin). Hiccups are a remnant of the evolutionary transition from gills to lungs, from fish to amphibian. Imagine a new baby tadpole swimming around in a pond. I is born as a fish-like thing with gills and develops lungs later as it grows. But at one point it has both! Golly, how does that work? This is where hiccups come in. The tadpole swims up to the surface of the water, takes a big gulp of air into its lungs (hic) and then closes it epiglotis, and dives down and resumes breathing with its gills. The repetition of this process is what we experience as hiccups. Turns out all animals can get hiccups and the same part of the brain controls it in all animals. Apparently natural selection never selected it out of our gene pool.

the iPhone of the future!

The following are my thoughts on "if I could have my iPhone do anything, what would I have it do?"

Okay, I am so in love with my iPhone.
The phone part, it's okay, but the personal computer? Wow! That is something I would like to see developed further.

So now here is what I want.
I want first of all to be able to talk to my iPhone and to be able to tell it to do things by voice command.
"iPhone call Pete mobile" or "iPhone google charles bronson"
better yet would be
"iPhone, access facebook, update status 'I am riding a segway.'"
even better,
I would like my iPhone to periodically check in with me and tell me things or ask me questions.
"Mahdroo you have an Doctor's appointment today at 4pm."
"Mahdroo, would you like to update your twitter status?"

Now given that, if I really dream, I want the following.
I want my iPhone to run multiple databases tracking my life.
So like imagine 5 excel spreadsheets running:social life, diet, finances, travel, mood
At regular intervals my iPhone would Ping me,
"Mahdroo what is your current mood"
I'd reply "engrossed" or "anxious" or "happy" and it would enter that emotion on a database but also, at that date and time, it would enter the current time, temperature, my location, as well as keep track of how much I spend, and what I eat
"Mahdroo whadya have for breakfast?" "Hummus, Pita Bread."
It would track who I hung out with and what we did.
"Mahdroo, I see that you are moving, what are you up to?"
"Going to festival with Jessica and Paul."
And it would upload this information to my computer, or it would have a built in analyzing AI, which would cross reference all the variable factors and begin looking for patterns [I do not care how BIG an iPHone would have to be to do this, I'd wear a backpack if I had to for this kind of interface].

"Mahdroo, 1 hours after you drink coke/soda your mood becomes Anxious 91% of the time."
"Mahdroo, you have listed friend/contact Zelmo as your 5th best friend, but he is 12th on the list of people you regularly interact with."
"Mahdroo, you call your mother, on average, every 10th day. Would you like iPhone to prompt you to call her more frequently?"

This would be AMAZING. I could add to my subjective understanding of my life and objective report to give me realistic perspective. I think this would be very useful if I wanted to understand my life and make it fit more in line with my dreams, desires and ambitions.

Now, I want to take a moment and address the concerns I can hear people voicing to this. There are two kinds of concerns. The first is the external threat. "Oh no, our data will get in the hands of giant evil corporations." While this is 1984 thinking model is valid, I think this could be easily resolved. The purpose of a phone/personal computer, even though it is on a network, should be to serve its user and not the corporation that made it. We would likely end up with a situation where corporations offered to buy your data rather than steal it or force it from you. That said, this is a tertiary and resolvable concern that people would throw out to cover the more deep fear they would have about the technology I am discussing.

----

The primary concern I think people would have with this technology is that most people don't want to know what is going on in their life, because not knowing is one of their chief psychological & social protections. For example, imagine one day you have double booked an evening. You call Jimmy to say "oh sorry Jimmy, I am so sick, I can't hang out tonight" and then go to a party with other friends. We tend to think of this as a polite way of covering up the fact that we are rejecting Jimmy, and that protecting him from this harsh truth was better than telling him our plans honestly. Now imagine if your iPhone announced "you have cancelled 6 of your last 10 scheduled interactions with Jimmy." You might feel guilty about this. You'd say "shut up iPhone, don't ever tell me anything like that again" because you want to keep the mental protection of not knowing. However, once you got past feeling hurt because you thought it was bad of you to reject Jimmy, and your mean ol iPhone called you on it, you might go on to alter your behavior towards Jimmy, either hanging out with him more, or ceasing setting up events with him. You could even prompt your phone to remind you to do either.

Between those two reactions is the problem with the technology I am envisioning. On the one hand, we think we could not psychologically handle this information. On the other, if we had it (and a useful AI-personal assistant-bot) then we could use it to order our lives more in line with our intentions. Most everyone I have talked to about this idea has proposed altering the technology to fit our psychology. I however propose that instead of changing or limiting the technology because we could not handle it psychologically, we should aim to change our psychology to handle the reality of the situation the technology would present us.

Two different points of view from which to stand are "what is wrong with me?" versus "I'm great, now how do I get what I want?"One of my core beliefs is that if everyone understood what everyone else was actually like, then we wouldn't have as much shame and guilt and fear in our lives, and this would diminish the degree to which anyone is engaged asking "what is wrong with me?" We would be less likely to label things "wrong" and more likely to understand differences in others. I think any given person's perception of how one should act is created from limited access to a realistic understanding about how people DO act (including themselves). To a head, my theory is that if you understood yourself better/more accurately, I believe that you would see that you are the way you are, and the things that you think are wrong with yourself aren't. Instead of not accepting your own thoughts. feelings, behavior, actions, desires etc, and trying to change any of those so you can be how you think you should be, I think people could come from a space of greater-self acceptance. To be clear, access to greater information would not perfectly correlate to increased self acceptance. Another influence would likely be required, such as psychology, to help people choose to accept their life instead of deciding they are a horrible horrible person and getting really depressed. I feel confident that such mechanisms exist and could be utilized. And they aren't nearly as much fun to talk about as awesome talking iPhone AI-bots that help me lose weight.

Yes, AI bots that would make my life more understandable and a secretary to help. That is what I want. Okay, Apple, get to it (maybe I should start learning how to program?).

my hotmail using mother

My 60+ year old mother.
I was helping her with her computer this morning.
I got her off a pc and onto mac 5 years ago.
She is running OSX 10.3
And using Safari v1 for a browser.
Yeah, they invented Safari in 2003, and she is still running v1
and there are no longer any 10.3 compatible updates for it.
This means Hotmail is no longer compatible.
(yes she uses hotmail).
She can't send and delete emails on hotmail.
Oh god. Why?
Like herding cats,
I have trained her how to download and install browsers
and now she has ie, safari, firefox, camino and opera.
And one by one we found that none of them worked, until...
Opera! Hooray! The only one!
So we're going to let her use opera
and go take her mac to a mac store to get
osx 10.5 so she can use safari to check her
hotmail.

Whhheeeeeee

A blog topic about blog topics (gackkk!)

If you are reading this, you've probably already thought "why does Mahdroo have a blog?" And the obvious answer is not that I want to keep you appraised of my life (gosh, go find my Twitter account for that. jk) but rather because I like wasting time on the intranets. So to further clog the pipes, here is a list I found of all the blog topics I could try out (or you!).

http://weblogs.about.com/od/startingablog/tp/BlogPostIdeas.htm

1. Lists
People love lists, and just about any kind of list is bound to attract traffic. Top 10 lists, 5 things not to do, 3 reasons I love something, etc. Start with a number then take it from there.

2. How-to
People love to find easy-to-follow instructions to help them accomplish a task. Whether you want to teach your readers how to throw the perfect curve ball or how to avoid getting bitten by a mosquito, the choice is yours.

3. Reviews
You can write a review of just about anything on your blog. Take a look at the following suggestions:
* Products
* Websites
* Books
* Movies
* Music
* Restaurants
* Hotels
The possibilities are nearly endless. Just think of something you've tried and write about your experience and thoughts.

4. Photos
Post a photo (or photos) related to your blog topic.

5. Link Roundup
Write a post that includes a list of links to other blog posts that published great posts or to websites you like.

6. Current Events
What's going on in the world? Write a post about an interesting bit of news.

7. Tips
Write a post to share tips to help your readers accomplish something in an easier, faster or cheaper way.

8. Recommendations
Share recommendations for your favorite books, websites, movies or other "favorites" related to your blog topic.

9. Interviews
Interview a prominent figure or expert in your blog topic then publish a blog post about it.

10. Polls
Register for an account with a site like PollDaddy.com then publish a poll related to your blog topic in one of your blog posts.

11. Contests
People love to win prizes, and blog contests are a great way to drive traffic to your blog as well as encourage visitors to leave comments. Blog contests can be used to write several posts such as an announcement post, a reminder post and a winner post.

12. Blog Carnivals
Join a blog carnival (or host one yourself) then write a post about the carnival topic.

13. Podcasts
Sometimes it's easier to talk about something than it is to write about it. If that's the case, try audio blogging and post a podcast.

14. Videos
Share a video from YouTube or one of your own, or host a video blog.

15. Quotes
Share a quote from a celebrity or prominent person in a field related to your blog topic. Be sure to cite your source!
16. Links to Interesting Content from Digg or StumbleUpon
Sometimes you can find some really interesting submissions on Digg, StumbleUpon and other social bookmarking sites. It's fun to share links to some of the best submissions related to your blog topic or of interest to your readers in one of your own blog posts.

17. Your Turn
Turn the tables and post a question or comment then ask your readers what they think about that question or comment. Your turn posts are a great way to spark a conversation.

18. Guest Posts
Ask other bloggers or experts in a field related to your blog topic to write a guest post for your blog.

19. Point/Counterpoint
A point/counterpoint post is where you present two opposing sides to an argument or issue. This type of post can even be separated into two different posts where the first presents one side of the argument and the second presents the other side.

20. Answer Reader Questions or Comments
Look back through the comments left by your readers and find any questions or statements that can be used to spark a new post.

Summer Movie Reviews

I have a bit to say about this year's summer movies. Mostly I have unadulterated enthusiasm for what I liked, but if you stick with me, I have some intelligent things to say too.


Iron Man: (4 out of 5)
I feel like my demographic won a national contest. Comic book nerds rejoice; the theaters are ours! Iron Man was very good. Like Spider Man 1 good. It managed the fine line between fun and hokey and not serious, and holding my disbelief at bay. I bought in the whole time, which is the best most movies can do, and it rewarded me with a really fun time. It was actually worth seeing twice.

Batman: Dark Knight: (5 out of 5)
Damn. Damn yall. Did you see this on imax? DAMN! This film never let up. So cool. I don't have anything to say except that I want to see it again.
EDIT: I did see it again. DAMN! This film is awesome!

Hancock: (2 & 1/2 out of 5)
My expectations of this film were SO low that it couldn't actually have been as bad as I thought it would be, and so I actually enjoyed it. The original story is this: imagine a super hero who is a metaphor for America. He is lazy and ignorant. He doesn't care about anybody but himself, and when he finally does decide to help other people out he causes SO much collateral damage that it would have been better if he'd never involved himself in the first place. Then imagine a story where our super hero learns to take responsibility for his actions, including going to jail for his crimes, only to be let out because he is needed to save the day. Right. This is a fun fantasy land.

However, this redemption story wass not good enough, SO in the 8th rewrite of the script they added a whole new second half where we introduce two new villains and we learn that actually Hancock has been alive for thousands (think immortal Greek God) of years and doesn't remember because he has Amnesia. First, this is a stolen plot device from a FAR superior story, and it is sickening that they used it as such a throw away. Fuck them for ruining this awesome plot idea and wasting it like cheap crap. Fuckers. Anyhoo, it makes the second half of the film a little interesting and very confusing (to everyone who isn't familiar with this plot idea already...ie not me). The sucky thing is that it throws the whole Hancock as America metaphor out the window and replaces it with pulp comic book schtick. And then Hancock saves the day and does the right thing and then the film sort of ends.

It was cool to see a superhero crush the ground each time he landed and took off, if that is what you want to see, and apparently I do. The CGI was alright, so I'd say the movie was only half bad (the story half).

Chronicles of Narnia: (1 ouf of 5)
I actually got bored and started looking at the wall of the theater, which if you think about it, took a lot of people to build. The detail of the fabric on the wall was of particular interest. How thick do you think those walls are anyway? Anyway, yeah, the film... First off, abominable special effects. Unforgivable. Second, the morality this film presented was repugnant to me. Those who took action were either evil, or punished, and the film only praised those who submitted and became followers. The weak will inherit the earth bullshit. Submitting to God is not how you defeat an enemy army and makes for a shitty movie, so the protagonists had to keep awkwardly oscillating between being ineffectual "killing-is-wrong" prats to being action-stars slitting throats. Complete douchery from start to finish.

Speed Racer: (4 out of 5)
I am the only one I know, but I really enjoyed this film. It was a visual rollercoaster for 5 year olds, with lots of pretty special effects. Ask me on any given day and I am actually irked that I cannot get enough pretty special effects. So finally given that which I long for, I cried tears of happiness at the awesome retina-takeover ending. God I love spinning color.

Wall-E: (5 out of 5)
Wow. Wow. Uhm. I have a lot to say about this film. It has an insanely high rating over at metacritic.com and every review is aglow with praise. The review I like the best is actually the harshest (Salon.com). Their review basically goes like this: "One of the greatest films ever, however it is a little disjointed; the second half is not as amazing as the first, and the happy ending feels a little forced." <--Right. But still one of the most amazing films ever! I was most interested in what the film means. Remember "An Inconvenient Truth"? It was about the fear crawling into all our hearts that we may actually destroy the earth, and be unable to repair the damage before it kills us all. "Will we save ourselves before it is too late?" is an uncertainty that quietly tortures us. Such pent up emotion is exactly what the catharsis of movies is for. Films usually address this pent up emotion by answering our unspoken question with a "yes we will survive" as Bruce Willis blows up the Asteroid, or a "no, we are screwed" as Mel Gibson drives around Australia scrounging for gas. But even in the latter scenario, someone is left alive.

In Wall-E all life on earth dies. Humanity has destroyed the Earth, not through war, but through pleasure seeking and sloth. Rarely has a world as bleak as this been imagined. 700 years in the future we have completely destoryed earth, and it is unihabittable. But Humanity has survived (whew) thanks to space travel. But instead of boldly & intentionally pursuing another planet to live on, Humanity is dumb, complacent and purposeless. We are not trying to save the world or ourselves. Humanity is simply slurping away at soda and uncaring of anything beyond their own pleasure.

This is such a huge fundamental shift in thinking in film plot that it is easy to ignore. Normally there is an external force that oppresses people: a villain, or government, or matrix. If the force were defeated, then people would be alive and free and do wonderful things. The message here is that the force is not "out there" but in here, inside each of us. Our own laziness, apathy & pleasure seeking will be our demise. When was the last time you threw away a glass bottle rather than recycling it because it was easier?

It is hard to imagine a Disney film asking us this question. The group I saw it with had a 6 year old, and he was pretty confused/freaked by aspects of the film that he didn't have vocabulary to explain. He said it was sad that earth was so dead. I am amazed that Pixar got away with making this film.

The ship full of ambivalent materially-content humans looks like a metaphor for America (or the 1st world). Imagine people so content with their lives, and oblivious to any problems in the world, that all they did was amble around focused on pleasuring themselves, apparently unwilling to work on the world's truly pressing needs (or ignorant of them). That perfectly describes the world of Americans, and the state of humanity in Wall-E. Like Al Gore, Wall-E & Eve bring a message to the people that there is something to do. But that is where the similarities split. Unlike real life, the humans in Wall-E leap into action like a progressive's wet-dream.

This happy ending seems tacked on. Humanity returns to Earth, gives up their life of leisure and gets to the hard business of replanting the planet. In reality I think most people would want to go back to their lives of leisure. Instead, we whisk through the replanting of the planet during the credits, and soon kids are swimming in creeks beside green hills and willow trees. A good message to send to the children I suppose. "Kids, sure we're gonna f* this planet all to hell, but, we CAN fix it, you see? So don't cry too much, k? This IS a Pixar film y'know!"

This makes the overall message of the film come out a little schizophrenic: we may screw everything up worse than you can imagine, but it could still be okay.

Kung Fu Panda: (5 out of 5)
Up to this point there have been two classes of computer animated films; pixar & all the other ones. The quaint, forgetable films like Over the Hedge, Open Season, Barnyard, Chicken Little. I contend that Kung Fu Panda is the rare gem that breaks this mold, a film that transcends quaintness & forgetability. It is Awesome. Most notable is that the story is the anti-Shrek. It avoids references and cultural jokes in favor of being universal and timeless. And that would make it as bland as every other film, except it is funny. I and everyone in the theater laughed. A LOT. Hard explosive belly laughter. Time and again this film was funny. Jack Black brings that which he does best to this story. And the story is great. It is everything to everyone. "Follow your dream & self actualize" - but with bodacious fight scenes. I saw it twice in theaters and then watched it again on my computer. This might just be my favorite film of the summer.

Interestingly, this film totally broke the Box Office record in China for an animated film, earning 135 million, over 40 million more than the next closest animated film (wow!). The news in China is all like "dude, why can the Americans make a better film about China than we can? WTF!"

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