Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Thoughts Right Now

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The most awesome part of Eight Minute Abs is that the instructor totally doesn’t mind when you scream obscenities at him on every exhale.

As an added bonus, if you continue this habit (even under your breath!) after picking up the phone mid-crunch for a telemarketer they will find a way to hang up with you as quickly as possible!

In other news, i was just a quarter inch shy of my longtime dream of crushing a rat to death with a flip flop, except it was a mouse and a box of wine. Still, so close!

The Long Tail of Things I Enjoy Doing

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I’ve recently been reading The Long Tail, which I was originally turned on to completely separately by the original Wired article and via author Chris Anderson’s brainstorming blog (still ongoing).

I haven’t formed a complete opinion on the book yet (I should probably finish it before doing that, eh?), but something I have enjoyed so far is that certain passages have made me put the book down to do my own research, or to start my own discussion. A good book should do that!

It isn’t really necessary to understand what “The Long Tail” means to appreciate the rest of my post, but if you’re interested Wikipedia can tell you, or you can just trust me to summarize it as follows:

The Long Tail is essentially a model (not necessarily of business) where end users have an tremendously huge number of choices – a number typically impossible to amass in any kind of bricks and mortar establishment (think of Amazon’s book and CD selection vs that of Borders or the currently liquidating Tower).

Given this huge number of choices, it turns out that significant user demand for choices continues far past the initial popular choices – ranging even beyond the choices typically offered in a more limited format such as a bricks and mortar store. For an eBusiness such as Amazon or Netflix that incurs relatively low cost to keep these seemingly infinite choices in stock, a significant portion of their profit will be generated by those more obscure choices that a physical storefront would never offer – in effect, the “long tail” of the choices being offered.

Anyhow, back onto my topic.

One passage that had an extremely visceral impact on me as a read was this one: Labor – forced, unspontaneous and waged work – would be superseded by self-activity. [Eventually] nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes … to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.

It isn’t author Anderson’s writing – it’s a quote from The Pro-Am[ateur] Revolution: how enthusiasts are changing our economy and society by Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller (DL it here), who are in turn quoting Karl Marx’s writing from between 1845 and 1847. And, though Marx’s meaning is diluted when taken out of context, the quote resonated with me.

(Marx’s point is that Communism will ultimately find success in the many crafts of its people, as society will “regulate the general production” through the varied skills of its members. For more on the idea of crafting, visit Craft Research)

The quote resonated with me because of a certain conversation I had towards the end of high school. I was talking about potential college majors to my good friend Robert (who I owe a call), and he said something akin to, “Peter, I want to be a jack of all trades, and a master of none.”

Now, I was familiar with the phrase, but I had never thought of its practical application to a person. Why would anyone want to be halfway good at everything and perfect at nothing? It seemed unfullfilling to me at the time.

Robert’s words reverberate in my head from time to time as I take up yet another new hobby – piano-playing and MYSQL, as of late. I don’t know that I have a hope of mastering either skill, but it hasn’t stopped me from pouring time and energy into either. So, am I a jack of all trades, and in the process have I mastered nothing?

Marx’s quote resonates because it gives Robert’s some perspective. According to him – and I agree – none of us are meant to function solely in a single dimension of production. Yes, most of us have a proverbial “day job,” but our passion carries us to work just as feverishly at acting, or mountaineering, or homebrewing, or any of the other interests of my many friends, and we shouldn’t necessarily despoil that passion by attempting to thrust that work into focus in our lives by majoring in it or making it our business.

I love communications as much as everything, and it’s a perfect thing to take up my 9-to-5 because I would never contrive quite so much communications to work on in my free time. What if I do spend my weekends struggling to debug my own code or master a new instrument? It doesn’t mean I have to get my degree in IT or Performance – if I did I might not like either as much.

That’s just one instance of the trains of thought departing from The Long Tail station; even if it’s not a superior book, it’s a superior catalyst.

Couldn’t Stop, Couldn’t Keep It

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Under some amount of compulsion from my need to be picked for my office building’s talent show, earlier this week I recorded a quick take of my well-received cover of “Stop! In the Name of Love.”

And, proving that the easiest way to defeat my procrastination is through convenience, i used the same recording setup/settings to record a neat little multi-track version of “Couldn’t Keep It.” Not technically perfect but, despite that, it’s very close to being the definitive version of a song i’ve been hearing in my head nonstop for the last year.

Happy Birthday To This

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With less than a month until my twenty-fifth birthday I am left pondering – am I ready to be an adult yet?

The conclusion would seem to be foregone. I’ve certainly been paying my own way for years now; I have a steady job (actually, a new one, as of Monday). I live in a beautiful house. I’m in a long-term relationship. I own plenty of adultish toys I could never before afford.

In short, I would seem to have attained some sort of stablity. A steady state. Does that make me an adult? How do I measure my adultness? How can i quantify it.

The answer to that quarter-life birthday riddle lies in this day, also a birthday – the birthday of this blog. At this moment I have been blogging continuously under a single title for six years, now entering my seventh.

That has nothing to do with being an adult. But, my blog tells me all sorts of things about the person i used to be, in contrast to who i am now. It tells me about slogging away at a coffee shop for CD money. It tells me about living in dorms rooms and ghetto apartments. It tells me about uncertain crushes and the blossoming of a more permanent romance.

It reminds me of when I only owned one ugly, thick-necked, out-of-tune guitar.

Obviously i’ve seen some progress. And, if you’ve stuck around long enough, you’ve seen it too. You’ve also seen the evolution of my writing – both in what I finding inspiring, and how I get my message across.

This year you’ve seen some new things – two out-of-state, out-of-comfort-zone adventures that I documented via my camera phone. You’ve also been left out of a few details, like my joy in seeing friends and co-workers experience the thrills of marriage and childbirth, my re-emergence at local open mics, and my excitement over my new position at work. I just don’t have the will – or the time – to report it all.

And, the nature of the internet has fundamentally changed. No one wants to wander out a domain blog when they can stay in the safety of LiveJournal or MySpace to read about their friends. And, with that centralization comes the dawning realization that all of this is in fact permanently archived (duh), leaving everyone frantic to carefully cover their electronic trails so future dates or bosses can’t find out every dirty little secret.

Has that changed me? I can’t really say. I’ve always tried to blog what’s important to me, even if only to remember something that might otherwise drift out of my memory. So, while other blogs are created and deleted, while other bloggers become LJ-checkers and MySpace addicts, me and this digital mirror still remain.

I wish I had time every day to devote to this. I wish i had tricked out special features and new songs for you every day. But, i wish that every year. No matter what i wish for, what i already have is what this means to me, and what you mean to me for still caring about it. And, if you need to go away for a while – to your MySpace or your real life – that’s okay. I’ll still be here, still growing. If it weren’t for this, i might not realize just how adult i’ve become; if i don’t keep it up, how will i ever know how far i have left to go?

Thank you for watching (and sometimes listening) as i’ve inevitably and inexorably grown up. And, happy birthday to this.