Depth of Focus

So I was doing some insulation work earlier today, underneath a house. It was a one-time thing, so no, I don’t have a proper job yet, but it was interesting. Educational, you might say. I’ve learned more about construction and materials used, so that was good. The knowledge may even come in handy one day. Anyway, that’s not what I was planning on talking about. While I was working, I saw a spider. If you know anything about me, you know that I have a pretty bad case of arachnophobia. While I can be in the same room as a spider, I tend to be extremely uncomfortable. I’m also usually fairly jittery if I see a spider, but it makes its escape before I can ‘take care’ of it. If it makes its escape in my bedroom, I have a hard time sleeping. I also have a hard time killing spiders unless I use a spray, simply because I’m afraid I may miss and then become the spider’s victim, rather than vice-versa. So yeah, bad case of arachnophobia. That isn’t what I wanted to talk about either. Back to work and the spider. It was a daddy-long-legs, a spider I’m actually fairly comfortable around, though I don’t actually want it anywhere near me. I’m just able to endure its presence. So I saw the spider, and ignored it. It did, however, bring to mind that little song ‘The Itsy-Bitsy Spider’. That spider went up a water spout, okay, I can buy that. Then the rain washes it out though, and after the sun dries up said rain, the spider goes back up that spout. My question is this – why did the spider want to go up the spout so badly? What did it think was at the other end? Some utopia for spiders? A land of bounty, where the flies are so thick you can barely see two feet in front of you? Maybe it knew someone on the other side. Maybe that someone wronged the spider, and he was doggedly trying to get to said someone for revenge. Or was it simply to spite the rain? Why? Why did the spider want to get to the other end of that spout so badly?? This has been plaguing my mind for the past several hours. These are the kinds of things that occupy my mind. I’ve also got questions about Mary and her lamb. These questions haven’t been bothering me much, I’m just slightly curious about them. For example, why would Mary let that lamb follow her all over the place? Having a pet is great and all, and I’d never judge her choice of pets, believe me. But it just seems irresponsible to allow that lamb to go everywhere with her. It could cause problems, both for her and the lamb. What if she wasn’t allowed to go inside some building with the lamb? Wouldn’t she have to tie it up outside? And if she did that, what if some sick butcher of a butcher came along and thought the lamb was a stray? Decided that it wasn’t being looked after, and decided to put it out of its misery, so he (or she) could sell lamb chops in their shop? What would Mary do then? Wouldn’t she be devastated? Also, I would think that a lamb following you everywhere would get annoying after a while. I mean, my dog follows me everywhere (when my dad isn’t in the house, that is), and while I don’t mind for the most part, after a little while, it does kind of get irritating. Not enough that I’d lock him outside or something, but that’s because he’s a small dog. He’s housetrained, and doesn’t usually make too much noise…though his nails click-clacking against the floor can sometimes drive one mad. So yeah, if a little dog can get a tad irritating, I would think a sheep would be even more irritating. They’re much bigger than my dog is, and their hooves would make a much louder clip-clop.

I’ma stop here, because while I can ramble on and on about the random and frequently strange things that go through my mind (such as if a cat combined with a weasel would make a better killing machine than a chicken crossed with a scorpion), I’m sure you all don’t particularly want to know too much about what goes on in my head. Ta!

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” – Yoda (George Lucas)

So a while back, I submitted a photo to a thing called ‘Plus One Collection’, which is a charity project. Basically, photographers around the world sent in photos that were to be compiled into a book, in three forms. There’s the printed book, the ebook, and an iphone (smartphone?) app – the thing says iOS mobile app – and then they’d go up for sale. All proceeds would go to charity. So before I go any further, I encourage you to buy a copy of any one of those! Anyway, the ebook and app contain all the photos from everyone who sent something in. All…500 some. Lemme check back…520. Wow. That’s a lot of photographers! So yeah, those two contain the photos of all 520 photographers, but the printed book only contains photos from 192 photographers. And guess what? Both mine and J1′s photos were chosen to be included in the print book!! I am extremely psyched about that! So again, I urge you to go buy a copy of the book. Link is here: http://plusonecollection.com/ There’s a Limited Edition book that’s fairly pricey (at $200) but it comes with an additional print of one of the photos in that book on museum-quality paper. Says it’s a ‘tipped-in’ print. I have no clue what that means. So I’ma look it up! Be right back. Aah, it means it’s only attached by corners or something like that. The ‘tips’ of the image. Hah. I get it. Anyhow, if you don’t want to spend $200 (I can understand that), then you can buy the regular version which will come out on February 21st and later. Or you can just go the ebook/app route, and get all the photos. But printed versions are so much better, if you ask me. So please, go buy one! Support the eradication of poverty! Or at least help make it not so bad.

STILL psyched about this!

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“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” – Albert Camus

So I’ve got things settled as I mentioned before. House needs cleaning (well, more cleaning – it’s a NEVERENDING PROCESS of clean, get dirty, rinse and repeat), but that’s to be expected. We should be getting some of our household stuff soon. Soon as in, either tomorrow or the day after. I’ve signed up for this online work thing, which is good, except it’s not allowing me to apply for any of the jobs. I’m hoping that it’s just because I’ve literally just signed up for the account, so I’m going to check it again tomorrow and see if I’m allowed to do any of the job-y things. Most of them pay pretty miserably, but the whole idea of this is to get used to them so I can do a lot of minuscule paying jobs which will then add up to at least minimum wage…we’ll see how this goes. Other than that, there’s not much new going on here. I sang in church yesterday, and people said I did well…I’m choosing to believe them to preserve my fragile ego.

Well, just wanted to update. Have an awesome week!

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So sayeth I.

So I’m updating! I know, I’m just as surprised as you are! It’s still Monday! What’s become of the world??? I don’t know. Well, first, I guess I should say happy new year! I hope it’s a blessed one for all, and that at least one thing you’ve been hoping for or wanting will happen this year. Also, may we all not die this year due the world ending in some horrible way. Or ending at all really. Anyways, on to other things. I made dinner for my mom’s cousin, her husband, and her mother yesterday night. I think it turned out fairly well. A little more bland than I was hoping for, but as I didn’t have all the ingredients I wanted, I guess I can’t complain. They said it was good, though they could have just been saying that. I like to pretend they weren’t though, to spare my fragile little sensibilities. I don’t think it was that bad, so all in all, I’d say it was a success. I also spent a decent amount of time last night taking photos of the stars. I love doing that. It constantly surprises me when I aim the camera at what looks like one or two stars, take the shot, and suddenly there are dozens in the photo. It’s incredible. What annoys me however, is that I have a D40. Don’t get me wrong, I like my camera…but to take a good photo of the star trails, I need to have the shutter open for at least a minute. Longer for the better shots. The D40 though, won’t work with a wired shutter release. I have a wireless remote for it, and that works fine, but holding down that button won’t keep the shutter open the way a wired shutter release will. So, to get a good shot, I’d need at the very least, a D90. A D3100 might work, though I haven’t checked that out, but I don’t really want to buy that. For lots of reasons, but the most important reason is, it’s only a step or two above the D40, and if I’m going to spend several hundred bucks, I want to spend it on a camera that won’t need replacing for quite some time. When I say ‘won’t need replacing’, I mean a camera that’s so good, I won’t want to replace it. The D3100 just won’t cut it. /End rant

Welp, here’s hoping your year will be full of win. Have a magical year, and I’ll catch you ’round. Probably not in person though, since anyone who reads this is probably hundreds of miles away.

“Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Go out and start a brand new day.

So this was my first Christmas spent away from most of the family. I know I’ve been doing a completely lousy job of updating blog posts, and while I know only one or two people read this, it’s still no excuse. So I’ll quickly fill all y’all in on what I’ve been doing. Let’s see…my youngest brother (meaning he’s still older than I am, but of my brothers, he’s the youngest, if ya get what I means) is now in Louisiana as well, we’re both living in the same house. In a way, it’s not made much of a change, but in another way, it’s been a huge difference. I think it’s a subconscious thing. Most of the time, we don’t really get in each other’s way. He does his thing, I do mine. So that’s not really affected anything. I say it’s also a huge difference because like I said, it’s a subconscious thing. I guess a part of me knows there’s someone else in the house now, so I don’t twitch at every little noise I hear. Well. I do, but not like before. Before, it was something like: *snap* *Looks around wildly* ‘Who’s there?? What was that?! Is someone trying to break into the house?? If they are, they’re going to regret it hugely – I’ve got a metal rod, and I’m not afraid to beat them over the head with it!’ Now, instead of thinking someone’s trying to break in, I hear a noise, react, and then think ‘it was probably J3, and if it wasn’t, he’s in the front of the house so he’ll let me know if someone’s trying to break in.’ Also, the food doesn’t last as long. I have to cook twice as often now. I do mean ‘I’ by the way. I’m the one doing all the cooking. Though he’s been doing most of the dishes, so I suppose I’m happy enough with the trade off. I’m not entirely sure I’d want him doing too much cooking anyway…he tends to not follow the recipes quite so well. Speaking of cooking, I’m going to be making dinner for my cousin, her husband and her mother on Sunday (yep, New Years day), and I’ve never made what I’m planning to make before, so I figured I should try to make it, and I did. I made it last night for dinner. It’s missing a few of the things it was supposed to have (this actually does have a recipe), so I decided to mostly just…wing it. I must say, I am truly surprised at my culinary abilities! I honestly expected it to be fairly mediocre, and while it likely won’t win any awards or anything, it tasted quite good, if I do say so myself! J3 seemed to like it well enough too, though I did mess up on one thing – I added cream cheese in large clumps, and I didn’t warm it up any first, so it didn’t mix in as well as it should have. I know what to do for Sunday though, and I think it’s going to turn out pretty well. I’ll give y’all an update on Sunday to let you know how it turned out. I won’t forget, I promise! What else is new…oh yeah, we ordered computer parts on…Tuesday night I believe, and they arrived today! I was completely shocked at the speed they arrived! It was a day, if that. I mean, I know things don’t take as long to arrive as they did back in Mongolia, but this was fast even for here. I’ve started building the computer, and, wouldn’t you know it, I’ve injured myself. Ripped a couple layers of skin off a finger, and it was bleeding quite badly. I wanted to keep working on the computer though, so I just stuck my finger in my mouth. I know some people don’t like the idea of ‘drinking’ their own blood, but I’ve never had a problem with it. I mean, I grew up in Africa and Indonesia. I got used to ‘dirty’ things. Even so though, it’s your own blood! Why should you have a problem with it? Also, I hate to see my blood leaving my body…so yeah, if it’s a cut on the hand, I tend to suck on it, partially because I feel it stops the bleeding more quickly (though it probably doesn’t) and partially because that way, the blood is still in its original container.

Now that that bit of grossness is out of the way, I’d like to post up one of my (hopeful) New Years resolutions: ever since the beginning of 2010, I’ve wanted to do a cross-country walk. I don’t know if I mentioned this in a previous post (I’ve discussed it all with a friend, so that may be all I’ve done), so if I have, and I’m just repeating this, I apologize. I want to go from Delaware, to California and back. Meaning East coast-West coast-East coast. I don’t know why I want to do it, but a part of me feels that this is something I have to do. As in, if I don’t do it, I’ll be less of a person or something. I can’t explain it, and I know my parents think I’m crazy. I think my mom probably assumes I’ve forgotten about this, since I haven’t brought it up in a while. I assure you, I have not. Actually, I want to do a total of three walks, one is the one I’ve just mentioned, the Delaware to California and back. The second is from Maine to California (not back, I’ll just get a plane back home), and the third is a walk through all 49 land-accessible states. Alaska may be an issue, since I’d have to go through Canada. I’ll need to figure out what kind of permissions or whatever I’d need to get for that. The Maine to California isn’t really a necessity, but I’d like to do it. The 49 states walk though, is another one I really want to do, simply because I know nothing about my country, and I’d like to see more of it. Anyway, to get back to my original point, my hopeful resolution for 2012 is to do the Delaware to California walk. When I say walk, I mean on foot, not that I’ll necessarily be walking the whole way. I may jog occasionally. I know that I may not get to do this in the coming year, but I really hope I do. To that end, I’m going to need to stock up on supplies…such as camping gear, a waterproof video camera, and a mini-laptop, so I can keep people updated on my progress. Other things I’d like to get is a GPS tracking device, as well as a GPS. The tracking device will let people see my progress, and the GPS will let me figure out what paths I’m supposed to take. Roughly anyway. Well, I think that’s all for now, so I’ll sign off.

“A journey by Sea and Land, Five Hundred Miles, is not undertaken without money.” -Lewis Hallam   – I’ve no idea who he is, but he makes an excellent point!

“The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.” -Don Williams Jr.

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Go out and start a brand new day.

So I’m living on my own now! Though it won’t be on my own for too much longer, as my brother’s going to be moving in on Friday. I know it’s Tuesday (at least in the US), and I said I’d update on Mondays, but it completely slipped my mind yesterday. I was messing with the laptop for a while, since it’s still giving me trouble. I’m pretty sure I mentioned before how it died on me only a few days after I got to Louisiana. Well, I managed to get it running again, though it’s not a perfect solution (the perfect solution would be to just go out and get a new computer, which I’m going to do, in fact, there’s hopefully a computer on the way, but I’ll still need to use this laptop as J3 will be using that computer most likely…as he has a bunch of artsy stuff he needs to be doing), but it’s good enough for now. The reason it’s not a perfect solution is that ever since I got it running, I’ve had to reinstall the operating system every two or three days. I’m about 98% sure it’s not the operating system’s fault. No, I’m pretty sure it’s because of the laptop itself – I’d say the chips inside are just about fried. I’ve got it on a cooling pad now (which is a much better option than a desktop fan which I was using before), so I think it should be able to last at least a few more months, even if I do have to keep reinstalling the OS. I’m doing all the kinds of adult things that adults have to do, like getting various cards and licenses (or starting to, anyway), as well as cleaning up around the house, cooking for myself most of the time, rather than just getting take-out (I have to say, I’m extremely glad that I started experimenting with cooking when I was younger…gave me a bit of experience, so I kind of know what goes together and what doesn’t). I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – America has gigantic portions. The amount of food they give you! It’s definitely cheaper here than in Japan. Or even New York probably…I’m trying to get myself into the habit of taking some of it home so I don’t absolutely stuff myself, and so I’ll have something for later (which means I won’t have to cook. While I don’t mind cooking, it’s nice to not have to). I’m also trying to get myself into the habit of exercising every day. I skipped yesterday because I was so sore from the day before…but I’m feeling much more limber today, so I’ll be exercising again. Woo! Last (at least for now), but certainly not least (you always hear that…and yet, it’s almost always true), I’ve met both my third cousins. I’m sure I have more third cousins, but I have no idea who they are, and it’s likely I’ll never meet them. I’ve also met a fourth cousin – a one year old girl. She had no idea what to make of me when she saw me, so she just kind of looked all surprised. It was amusing. I’m told that she acts like that towards anyone she’s never met before. She warmed up a little when I started playing with her though. So, that’ll be the end of this post. See you next week!

I don’t care how poor a man is; if he has family, he’s rich. – M.A.S.H. (That’s a tv show, innit?)

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EEANB, SNFYD

So this will be my last post from Mongolia. I leave today and I can say it’s going to be quite the challenge getting all my bags and everything through. I’m seriously hoping I won’t have to move bags around once I enter the U.S., as I have three. Which means I’d have to find a cart, which I haven’t done since…ever. Still, it might happen. It’ll be weird not seeing most of my family again for nearly a year…and then for about three years after that. But I guess that’s the way things have to be. They usually work out in the end…not always the way we expected, but that’s why I try to just go with the flow. So this won’t be a long post, just wanted to have something up so I can say I’ve been consistently posting! I hope I’ll be able to post next week as well, but I’m not sure about the internet situation. It might take a little while to get it all set up. Here’s hoping it won’t though!

As for the title of this post, I’m sure you can figure out why I chose it. It’s also one of my favorite songs. Just about all of John Denver’s songs are in my favorites list.

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”  -St. Augustine

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EEANB, SNFYD

So I’m almost gone for good…I leave next week, and that’s going to be quite a journey…one that will be different from all other journeys I’ve ever been on. For this journey…shall lead me home. A home I’ve never technically been before. Though I’m wondering if I should really call it home. You know they say home is where the heart is (but what a shame, ’cause everyone’s heart doesn’t beat the same), but what do you do if your heart is like a compass with no north? No south? Always drifting. That’s how I feel. I go places where I live, and I call them home, but the only reason for that was because my family was there as well. Now, with this place I’m moving to, it will just be my place of residence. Not my home. Not really. But I think I’m fine with that. After all, where does it say I have to have a home right now? I’ve always been a bit of a traveling spirit, and I think I’d like to stay that way. At least for the foreseeable future. There’s a lot I’d like to do, so there’s all that stuff to look forward to. Anyway, not really all that much to say right now, so I guess I’ll just end this here. See you around.

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EEANB, SNFYD

So I thought I’d go back to Calvin and Hobbes for a bit. A few weeks back, I was going through deviantart, and, on a whim, I did a search for Calvin and Hobbes, wanting to see some fanart. Seeing some of the art, I started wondering about people’s visions of how C&H would be as adults. I found a decent number of ideas, and these here are my favorites.

First up, we have a motivational poster-type thing, followed by the painting/drawing in it’s original form. I’ve only seen the original form in one place, and that was a forum, from which I saved the photo to my computer. What astounds me most about this motivational poster is that some people seem to absolutely hate it. I was absolutely amazed. I was reading comments on someone else’s blog, where they had posted this exact same image, and what they were all saying were things along the lines of how the person who created this was being ‘sacrilegious’ to Bill Watterson’s art, and how it was illegal to copy his artwork like this. Most, if not all the haters, seem to think Bill Watterson would hate this ‘because he didn’t want his work to be merchandised.’ That’s not an exact quote, since I quickly tired of reading all those negative comments, but it’s pretty darn near exact. Sacrilegious? Really? Wow. People throw big words out there and hope it makes them look smart and seem in the right all the time, but this…takes it to a whole new level. The definition of sacrilege is, from dictionary.com, the ‘desecration, profanation, misuse, or theft of something sacred.’ I’m going to ignore the fact that technically, Calvin and Hobbes can’t be sacred, since the definition of sacred (wow, I’m using a lot of definitions in this post…I’m scaring myself) is something ‘connected to God (or the gods) or dedicated to a religious purpose’. So says Google. Now, I like Calvin and Hobbes, and I admire Bill Watterson, but I’m fairly certain no one worships him. Anyway, ignoring that, in my humble and honest opinion, this shouldn’t, and, to a logical person, couldn’t be considered sacrilegious, even to Bill Watterson. The reason Bill Watterson didn’t want his work to be merchandised was (and is) because he thought doing so would cheapen it, something I completely agree with. He also believed that merchandising would go against the spirit of the comic. I ask you to tell me truly, do you honestly think that this goes against the spirit of the Calvin and Hobbes comic? I do not. I can see how, in one sense, someone might think that, as the whole ‘motivational poster’ thing is a greatly marketed idea; but this one in particular was never marketed, was never sold for money…If only because it would be illegal to do so. Also, I highly doubt that the original artist of this drawing was the person to combine it with a motivational poster theme. Either way though, I see this as someone who, looking back upon their childhood, was feeling somewhat nostalgic and bittersweet about it all, and decided to put his feelings into something visible. I think that Bill Watterson would actually approve of this, because his whole idea with the comic was that there are different points of view, and we have to respect them, but also, in a way, that childhood eventually dies. I think he would like the idea of passing on your childhood memories, experiences and wonder to your children, and allowing them to create their own. I know I intend to follow this advice – I refuse to let my children grow up too quickly as seems to be the norm in today’s society. I saw a photo the other day that I’m not entirely sure was real, but it was still offensive to me. It showed a comparison of children (who seemed to be between nine and eleven) having a party and dancing in the early 90′s and children of the same age having a party in today’s day and age. The second image was a lot more…creepy, I think is the best way of putting it. I know some of what passes for dancing today, and the worst of that is grinding, which just seems completely stupid to me. The fact that children (children!) would be ‘dancing’ like that offends me. I don’t care what anyone might think about me (whether I’m sad or old-fashioned or whatever) but that truly does offend me. When I was their age I was playing tag, and with Pokemon for crying out loud, even at any party I may have been at. Dancing would have pretty much consisted of spinning around, maybe jumping on things…that kind of thing. I went off on a bit of a tangent there I suppose, but my point is (IT’S SNOWING! HARD. I’ma pause this after the next sentence and go outside for a bit), that most children these days are growing up way too fast. So yeah, I really like this tribute to Bill Watterson. You should be able to click on all of these photos to make them bigger. I know I would if I were you. If you know what’s good for you…

Here we have the original image in all its (seemingly) water-color glory. I’m no art critic, but I don’t think it’s actually water-colors. My bet is it was all done on computer. It could be magic though. Magic does a lot of things. I bet the artist was a magician, or a wizard or summin. I like both of these two things equally. This is more the one I’d print out and put up on my wall, the other one has too big a black border. Moving on.

Next, we have a series of comics. The site is called ‘Pants Are Overrated’. It’s a finished webcomic, but they did four tributes to Bill Watterson. All of which were pretty great, if you ask me. Here they all are, in order from first to fourth. The little girl’s name is Bacon, and if you go to their site, they explain their reasonings for naming her that in detail, but I’ll just tell you what I remember. Basically, it’s a tribute to Francis Bacon. Since Calvin was named after John Calvin, and Hobbes for Thomas Hobbes, both of whom were philosophers, they decided to look to another philosopher for inspiration. Francis Bacon was the philosopher they picked, and personally, I might have named the little girl Francis, rather than Bacon, but that’s part of the second reason they named her Bacon. It was something along the lines of ‘if anyone was going to name their child Bacon, Calvin would be him.’ Honestly, I can see that. I can imagine someone with Calvin’s personality calling his kid Bacon. I do think, however, that Calvin would have grown up enough by this point, that he would have named her Francis, but nicknamed her Bacon. Who knows, maybe that’s what he did. These ones, you definitely have to view large.

Last, but not least, we have this one here:

This is among my favorites mostly because all the other ‘grown up’ Calvin and Hobbes I’ve seen, Calvin is always passing on Hobbes to his kid (who, oddly, always seems to be a girl that resembles Susie Derkins. Clearly fans are strongly opinionated about this). This is the only one I’ve seen in which Calvin is still interacting with Hobbes himself, rather than just saying goodbye. I don’t know if Calvin here is meant to still be seeing Hobbes in his own way, or if Hobbes is really meant to be alive, but either way, I like it. It’s a fun drawing. So yep, these are my top favorite  ’Calvin and Hobbes in the future’ artstuffs. I like them. I shall leave thee with another Calvin and Hobbes quote. I may start doing this with all of my posts…not necessarily C&H quotes, but nice quotes in general.

“We’re so busy watching out for what’s just ahead of us that we don’t take time to enjoy where we are.” Ta.

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EEANB, SNFYD

So I’m just about done with packing. There’s just some things that I’m not entirely sure what to do with. For example, I’ve got a couple of old backpacks, an old video camera case, a box for…something. Then there’s cables for stuff. Some cables I’m just tossing, since I really don’t need them. Others, I’m keeping since they’re spares. I likely won’t need them, but it’s possible I will. Who knows. This is why I keep them. Then there’s CDs, which I’ve got no idea what they contain. I’ma have to pop them into a computer and check them out. I’ll figure out what to do with them then. Like I said, just about done. Just those things.

Not much else to talk about today, so I guess that’s it for now. Ciao.

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EEANB, SNFYD