F*ck The Bucket & Other Thoughts

The first thing - the new ad from KFC - Killed From Chemicals - about a donation they'll make to the Komen Foundation for every bucket of "chicken" bought from their stores.

Is it just me, or is this maybe one of the worst cross-promotion ideas, ever? Trying to trick people into buying "food" that is totally poisoned with chemicals - the types of preservatives, hormones & gawd-knows-what-else that anyone who might even know someone with cancer should avoid in the interest of maintaining good health - on the pretense of helping a charity.

Shame on you, KFC. And shame on you, whorish Komen Foundation, for partnering with a fast "food" restaurant that just came out with the Double Down, as in, double your chances of going down from any number of ailments - heart disease, cancer, stroke, or perhaps explosive diarrhea. I don't support KFC in any way and now I'm not sure I can support Komen anymore.

Was that really your best option, Komen? Really? Really?

In other news, The Universe is up to her tricky bitch shenanigans again. This hasn't been the *worst* week I've ever had, but I'm giving it a slot in the Top 10.

My laptop is trying to kill itself, which I can understand when I watch clips of The Hills on it, but it was fine one day, fatal disc errors the next - and that's with excellent virus protection & good security controls.

Blue Screen of Death and "this volume is dirty" message, and not the fun, naughty kind of dirty - the You're Painfully Screwed in the Ass With Sandpaper sort of dirty.

Thankfully, I still have my old desktop, circa 2003. Runs like a champ, if all you need to do is open Notepad. Open anything else, like, say, the Calculator, at the same time, and you might as well go make a sandwich while you wait for it to get that done.

In fact, you can make the bread dough for the bread that will hold your sandwich then brine your own pickles for that sandwich before it's finished. It's a boon for the compulsive multitasker. What it's not good for is processing ginormous photo files, but one at a time, it can slog through it.

However, the really, really shitty part of all this was forgetting that my entire calendar lived on the laptop. The laptop I'd shut down to keep it from spontaneously combusting until I could get it to the shop.

While I *thought* I'd backed up everything I needed, I neglected to even *look* at my calendar before starting the work week, comfortably in my jammies & bathrobe, processing photos from a shoot on Sunday.

At 11:40am my phone rang... it was a client wondering where I was for an 11 o'clock scheduled shoot.

It was just like the nightmare where you're supposed to be taking a final exam but you wake up late and when you get there the doors are locked and you're naked.

OK, maybe it wasn't that dire, but I felt about as stupid. Thankfully, he was totally understanding about my computer woes and I got there, shot the job and he was happy with the work.

Thinking the worst was behind me, I got home and began transitioning *every* single piece of data I might need to this old POS. The most important thing being my email.

I wanted to install the new Office software and it wasn't working - had to track down & fix a registry error, but that took HOURS, because the install took a good 15 minutes to get 80% complete, then it would stop and roll back the changes, which took another 15 minutes. THREE TIMES I tried this.

Out of my mind with frustration, I finally got up, went to the bar and poured myself a drink. Slammed that then poured another, and went back to work. By the time David got home I was a drunken wreck. (Lightweight! Heyyy!)

I am so dependent on these goddamm machines I cannot live without them, and that's upsetting for so many reasons. None of them all that worthwhile. It makes me long for a job "Makin bucks, gettin exercise & workin outside. Fuckin A."

Oh, and yesterday, Nikita was about to puke on the hall rug and I went to gently redirect her to the floor when Henry was startled by the commotion and flew after me, which startled the cat and as a result, she took off running WHILE puking, leaving a stunning swath of puke extending through half the length of the dining room. Awesome.

Whether it's the full moon, Mercury in Rectalgrade or some shitty karma making the rounds, it needs to stop.

Catching Up With Your Past

There's really no escaping it, for better or worse.

Things I thought I'd dealt with and cremated are coming back to life almost in front of my eyes. This sludge bubbling up from the depths is making icky puddles in what I thought was a healthy patch of grass.

It's stuff I don't know what to do with. I've run out of mental cartons. Like the stuff that keeps piling up on my kitchen counter. I have no real place to put it.

I need to purge this crap from my head, but I'm not ready for a lobotomy. And there's no Goodwill drop-off for this kind of crap. What a sad thrift store that would be. Thousands of urine-stained mattresses.

The Universe has a way of forcing us to confront our issues. Change it or accept it and move on, but you won't be able to escape it. Not for long.

One thing, or person, I'm glad to have not escaped entirely just got in touch with me through ye olde past-facer, Facebook. He was a friend from my former life and when I left that life, I cut all ties to it. My own witness relocation program.

He happened to speak with the ex (after 12 years of cutting him out of his life) and afterward, felt compelled to track me down to tell me I'd done the right thing. That was great. It's been 13 years since we last spoke and after exchanging emails, it was like no time had passed. He's still a solid, good person and it's a pleasure to be reconnected.

As for the other crap, I expect The Universe will help me build the appropriate cartons to cram all that negative shit into and light it all on fire. But I need to do it quick because I'm running out of space.

Biding

It feels like we're marking time now... waiting for the end of winter, waiting for warmer days, waiting for the economy to improve, waiting for the invention of no-calorie doughnuts...

I'm waiting to get back home for a long-overdue visit and still waiting for the invention of a personal teleportation device.

In the meantime, we pass the time as we usually do - trying to figure out how many more cats we might be able to fit into the family.

When not working on that algorithm, I notice all sorts of things that irritate or confuse me.

For example, the Crest Pro-Health toothpaste I bought at Costco last month... The daytime toothpaste is in a lighter-colored tube than the nighttime tube, and that makes sense, but the paste is dark blue, whereas the nighttime toothpaste is white.

Wouldn't it make more sense for the daytime product to be in the lighter colored tube and white, and the nighttime product to be in the darker tube and a darker color?

Then there's the exploding soup commercial. No one on that team consulted with women while developing that campaign, or any women that clean their own kitchens.

I think it's an ad for soup crackers or maybe it really is for tiny bombs that make a bowl of soup explode into a gigantic mess. Whatever it is, I don't want it. Every time I see that commercial I wince at the amount of cleaning that product would require, so whatever it is, I'll never ever buy it.

Fascinating, isn't it, what's taking up space in my head these days? No, I know it isn't. It's all I've got at the moment.

The other day on Facebook I saw a friend's status update about meeting someone for coffee. It occurred to me how long it's been since I met anyone for coffee. What a lovely thing that would be. If only I had some friends here.

I'm not whining. It's my own fault for moving 900 miles away. I obviously didn't think this through. The longer I'm here and the more isolated I feel, the more I shut down.

It sucks to feel so far away from my life. This, being here, is not my life. It's a detour on the path back to life, back to reality... It's going to be an ongoing challenge to keep cracking the cocoon.

So, now I have to figure out what to do with my time while I'm here. A few ideas include: becoming fluent in Canadian, learning how to unload the dishwasher telekinetically, creating new dishes with fat back, and teaching Henry how to swear in French.

"Did You Pray?"

Loved watching Captain Chesley Sullenberger on 60 Minutes last night. What an amazing guy.

Katie Couric still bugs me, maybe because CBS kept jamming her down our throats when she took over the evening news, or maybe it's her annoying use of "you all." I'm sure it's both.

Now, I'm no fan of religion - you could say I'm anti-religion. But if someone is religious, isn't that a personal issue? What people believe and the beliefs they practice seem like personal matters, unless of course your neighbors like to slaughter goats in their front yard every third Tuesday of the month.

It seems inappropriate to ever ask anyone if they pray, if they believe in god - anything on that subject. If someone wants to offer up that information, fine - as long as it's not at my front door or anywhere near me or my personal space - but is it necessary (or appropriate) to ever ask that in a television interview?

But ask she did, and Sully said, ""I would imagine somebody in back was taking care of that for me while I was flying the airplane." "My focus at that point was so intensely on the landing," he said. "I thought of nothing else.""

Thank you - thank you for being so focused on your job, because it clearly made all the difference. Pray? WTF would praying have done to accomplish that incredible feat? Has god had over 30 years' experience flying commercial aircraft?

He said he was sure he could do it. He obviously believed it and followed through.

I'm not anti-god or anti-spirituality - to each his own - again, unless the goat slaughter is really getting out of hand, and then you're going to have to leave the neighborhood. FWIW, I believe there are forces or energy at work beyond our understanding - I call it The Universe.

The Universe, I believe, is Mother Nature, it is what it is, it's energy, it's the search for balance, it's totally unbiased and not a human or celestial force or some entity that will "save" me if I just believe. I call The Universe a tricky bitch, because that's exactly how it/she seems sometimes.

When She plays a trick on you, the key is first believing in yourself, that no matter what trouble that bitch doles out, you'll come out on top. She won't help you, some imaginary god won't help you - you have to do it on your own and believe you can do it. Asking for help might help you help yourself, but you still have to believe you can do it.

All this to say, I'm glad Sully wasn't sitting in that cockpit praying. I'm glad he said that he wasn't, that he was focused on the job in front of him and nothing else. I'm sure everyone on board that plane, whatever their individual faiths might be, are also glad that he never gave god a single thought throughout all that madness.

I'm sure some will say that he was helped by passengers praying like hell, but I don't buy it. He believed he could do it, he did it, and that's why he's so awesome.

Take Off, Hosehead

The universe is a strange, tricky lady. In the span of one week's time we went from David returning from 4 months overseas to him being laid off and now we're contemplating a move to Vancouver. Right now I'm just happy I can find my pants and put them on.

We're excited about the idea of relocating to the Great White North. Vancouver is a beautiful city - the clean, polite version of San Francisco with slightly better retail prices. Used to be a much bigger "discount," but that' OK - they make up for it with better manners.

We're not Bay Area haters by any means, but here's a list of things I wouldn't miss:

• The Eastbay Freeway
  
• Waiting in line for everything
• Gang-infested areas of Oakland
  
• Frank Sommerville
• The Nasty Nimitz
  
• Crapplebees et al
  
• Our shitty bitch neighbor
• Sourdough bread
• Hartzheim Dodge
• The South Bay
• Sacramento/the Central Valley
• Penngrove
• 580/101 construction nightmare
• Toyota Zone commercials
• The Raiders
• Crazy Neighbor Bob (who still hasn't left, even though the house has sold - INsane)
• Melpenis
• Bart
• Sirens
• Road rage
• Cherry bombs on 7/4

And here's what I would absolutely miss:

• My wonderful, terrific friends
• This incredible house
  
• Peet's Coffee
• New theaters right down the street
• Trader Joe's
• Encinal Market
• The SF skyline
• Louis' @ Ocean Beach
• North Beach Pizza
• Day trips to Sonoma
• Mill Valley's town square
• Highway 1
• Capitola
• Dave Morey & 10@10
• Dottie's True Blue Cafe

I'm sure there's more I would miss, but it seems manageable. It's a quick flight up & back.

No Vomiting Required

The other day I went on my "go see," as it could be called, to do a walkthrough of a property and think about how I might want to shoot it, but it was really a go-see for them - to look at my book to decide if I'm right for the job.

I was not. And while it's never any fun to lose work, I have to say, it was a relief. I can probably blame it on my horrific gaffe of leaving the last few pages of a portfolio empty. Those of you with art backgrounds are likely gasping at my rookie mistake, but I did not go to art school and have had no training in such things.

That said, this was billed as an informal walkthrough to look at the property and decide what we wanted to shoot and discuss scheduling, time of day, etc. And meet the homeowner.

I brought a book of samples so the agents and the homeowner could see a range of work, but it was not intended to be a formal presentation. I filled most of the pages of a very nice album with work I thought represented the best I had to show. The remaining pages will be filled when I have more work to put in them, but for now they're going to stay empty.

After a pleasant tour of the property with one of the agents, we gathered around the dining room table and made small talk while looking through marketing packages for other properties - all of which were full of terrible photos printed on crappy paper.

The homeowner, some "famous" artist and art-directing marketing dude, was telling a zany, HI-larious story about being at a party where he made a beeline for the host's bookshelf that had "sex books" on it, as he described them, to find out which books had the pages stuck together. Klassy.

He continued in some graphic detail about how those pages could become stuck together. Perhaps that was his way of reassuring us that *he* understood how that could happen, though I don't think the rest of us needed the explanation.

After our short trip back to 7th grade, the agents looked through my book and they all had very nice things to say about my work. Then an agent slid the book over to the homeowner and asked him if he wanted to take a look. He absent-mindedly replied “What? Sure…” and commenced flipping through the pages.

He flipped through all the photos and when he got to the empty pages, he looked up and asked me, “Is this yours?” Like I brought someone else’s book or he wasn’t just asked moments ago if he wanted to see MY work. I replied, Yes, it is, and staring right through me he said, with the gravity of a doctor delivering very bad news, “Don’t ever do this. Don’t ever leave blank pages in the book. Either fill them up or rip them out.”

He then smiled weakly and said he just wanted to help me out, to which I enthusiastically said, “Oh definitely – thank you very much!” What a nice way to be helped by someone who, just moments ago, explained to everyone how jacking off into a book might make the pages stick together.

I mean, it's nice to get input and I would love to have my work critiqued by a professional, but it just seemed out of place. Not only that, but if he's such a brilliant artist, can he not see that those empty pages represent future potential yet to be fulfilled? Was he confused when he turned the page and there were no more pretty pictures? He needs the back cover of the book to tell him the show's over?

I think I dodged a bullet by losing that project. Lord knows how many colossal blunders I'd have made while shooting that job, with him bivouacked in my colon the entire time to tell me about every single one. Thank you, Universe.

I Love the Universe

I was not looking forward to today. It was going to be a marathon day of driving, like, over 150 miles, which might sound like the best time ever, but let me assure you, it gets old QUICK.

Sometimes that's just the (bad) luck of the scheduling draw. I'd love to plan everything in neat geographical groupings, but it usually doesn't work out that way. I was going to have to start in Sonoma then go down to Fairfax then head back up to Petaluma. Fuuuuck me.

Looking at my calendar last night I kept thinking I should call and try to swap appointments, but I hate doing that - it's not their fault it turned out like that. I sucked it up & went to bed early.

This morning, my phone rang just moments after I turned it on. It was the agent in Petaluma and she had to reschedule. I almost cried hot tears of joy right into the phone.

Thank you universe! Even the universe knew it would have been asinine to drive all over the state like that.

Getting Closer

I'm getting closer to a couple of things... Meeting a rattlesnake up close and personal and running into a former boss - it's just a matter of time for both.

Working in St. Helena today I walked out to the back area of a country lot located up above Lake Hennessey - not much out there besides vineyards and one-lane roads.

As I walked away from the house, the agent said - of course - "Watch out for rattlesnakes." I knew he was going to say that and I was already on high alert, scanning the ground all around me.

I got my shots and made a hasty retreat to the deck while we talked about snakes. He told me how his cat catches and kills baby rattle snakes and leaves them on his front stoop. That's one talented cat.

Finishing up around the front of the house, I walked off toward the side of the yard and he said "Be careful..." He was really worried I'd walk right into one. Then he told me that whenever the topic of snakes comes up, he usually sees one soon thereafter. Neat!

As for the boss... A few months ago I happened to think of a former boss I loved working for but lost touch with over the years, so I sent him a message through an online networking service. The message bounced back, but I figured he'd get the message whenever he logged in.

Then a former coworker and I who have been in touch again for the past few months sent me a message about another former colleague and he showed up as a link on her page.

The other day I was leaving an open house when I saw a couple coming up the walk - I thought for sure it was him and his wife. I thought that was weird - what would they be doing there? But it turned out to be their doubles.

Today when I stopped for coffee a guy came walking past my car - he looked exactly like my former boss. What the hell is going on with the universe?

I think it'll be fun to get back in touch with him, so I'm looking forward to that. I am not looking forward to meeting any snakes - ever.