Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

NaBloPoMo

Stalling, Stalling…

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It seems impossible that there are only four days remaining in NaBloPoMo. I have about nineteen post topics left. Sure, some of them will translate to an idyllic and oh-so-close post-NaBloPoMo world, but a few of them really belong with this month – in this special through-line we’ve all built for ourselves. So I’m going to make every effort to get them out this week.

Of course, when I made my list of topics there were only about 900 blogs for me to review, so that might have had something to do with my backlog of topics. Although, I had been planning on 30 songs all along, so i can hardly blame it on that.

My drunken Saturday Night notwithstanding, life is fairly dull without Elise around. I think I have determined that 72 hours is the ideal amount of time to spend without her – less than that and I don’t get enough things done, more and I start to drift aimlessness in my artificial bachelorhood.

Okay, posts and Trios hurtling your way any second now.

Oh Well (A Trio of Links)

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I’ve been so busy playing other people’s songs for the past week that i’m having temporary amnesia when it comes to playing my own songs for the first of what is hopefully a final Trio of Trios for you.

In the meantime, here’s the second in what I hope to be a tradition of presenting a Trio of Links every time I’m not quite ready with a Trio of songs when I planned to be. This Link Trio is drawn from NaBloPoMo blogs I’ve already highlighted in my series of site reviews.

The first link is In The No, the inaugural PodCast from A 1,000 Times No.

In it, blogger Jen interviews Tom Zoellner, author of The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire.

The podcast is a fascinating hour on the history of the diamond ring, partially about the history of diamond PR and how it has become “the semiotic of royalty.” Tom was also the co-author of An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography, the novel that became the film Hotel Rwanda, and he also discusses that book.

(Extra-bonus: Jen is connected with a cappella u, and her theme music is a cappella!)

The second link is Grand Rounds Volume 3, Edition 9, as hosted by Doctor Anonymous.

Grand Rounds is an ongoing event hosted in round robin fashion by a number of different medically oriented blogs. It highlights the best medical writing from recently updated blogs. Though the writing is medical, it isn’t necessarily technical – some of it is on topics like coping with the emotional ramifications of disease.

My final link is a post that all hobbyists should read at In A Minute Ago, titled Five Ways to Nurture Creativity.

I’m of the firm belief that it’s important for everyone to have at least one hobby that isn’t passive (like tanning or watching television), and I spend most of my free time trying to engage actively in something.

People become the most enamored with your creative output when you are engaged and confident in your work, and blogger Sharon provides five universal suggestions for getting to that point. One of the suggestions that is made is making a space for your hobby. This seems so simple, but it has been hugely impactful on my hobbies.

In prior apartments my computer was in my bedroom or living room, respectively, which made it hard to sit down to focus on blogging and recording music rather than focusing on sleeping or socializing. Especially when my computer was in the living room both hobbies declined to all-time lows. Now that I have my own office/studio it’s much easier to delineate serious, uninterrupted personal time devoted to either or both.

(Sharon also suggests keeping a visual journal, but this could just as easily be a small text pad, or memos to yourself – the point is not the medium, but quick instant-feedback on an idea that you can tap into at a later time).

Taking hobbies seriously dovetails with possibly the most important thing I took from my creative studies in college: Don’t apologize for your art! If you release creative output into space you shouldn’t defuse it by offering a retraction regarding its quality or content. Whether you make a mistake, or just felt the performance was a little too risqué, you have to allow it to stand on its own for the audience.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to the creative process itself – that’s what preparation and practice are for. A photographer will take some crap shots that never get printed, and an actor will discard many approaches to a line. However, an imperfection in a final product or performance is part of its art.

That doesn’t mean you can’t afford to be human – your humanity might be the most attractive aspect of your work. Just don’t allow your human flaws or self-deprecation to obscure what is so fascinating about you to begin with.

ps: I had hoped to record a Fiona Apple song for my last influences Trio, but i didn’t have a guitar arrangement locked down. Though it isn’t necessarily what i would have played, here’s a highly superior “Oh Well” from the unreleased Jon Brion version of Extraordinary Machine.

Trio: Season Five, Suite #7!

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Trio – the original singer-songwriter web session – typically features original songs, but for the third in a special trio of trios I am covering some of the songs that have influenced me and my songwriting. The first two influences Trios featured childhood and teenage influences.

You can download the entire Trio, or start from a past suite of original songs:

See the rest of this post for chords to all three songs. [Read more…] about Trio: Season Five, Suite #7!

NaBloPoMo Round-Up #8: Me, L, and T

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I know that one of the cardinal rules of blogging is to not post while drunk, but what you don’t know about me is that both my typing and my sentence construction skills are completely unparalleled when i am drunk. I need no conscious thought. I need no spell-check. I am one with my home keys.

(Seriously, i should create a category for drunk posts so you can behold the perfection.)

This may be the result of Gina and Wes coming over for a brief rehearsal, plus drinks and the best eight episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force (strangely missing the plastic surgery episode – next time, i suppose).

Long story short, i’m seeing twice as many Ls as there really are, which makes for over two-hundred. Yikes. I should be sober by then. [Read more…] about NaBloPoMo Round-Up #8: Me, L, and T

How the Long Tail Ruined Shopping

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Though I can’t say that I’ve ever been a tremendous fan of Black Friday, i readily admit that i had my moments of being a shopaholic. I delighted not only in the shopping, but in the browsing and discovering, and in immersing myself in a sea of other shoppers.

Recently this delight seems to have evaporated into thin air – heading out to a store is a chore, and more often than not i just do a quick browse before i’m ready to leave. I didn’t even contemplate heading out on Black Friday.

Why? Don’t i like to shop anymore? Have i outgrown it? Is my budget taking the fun out of it?

For months i couldn’t figure it out. Then, last month I read Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail (a book, though that link is for the author’s website). I realized that it wasn’t that i stopped liking shopping, but that the Long Tail ruined shopping for me, and maybe for you too.

Let me try to explain.

Think back five or ten years ago. A shopping trip wasn’t necessarily a buying trip – it was a voyage of discovery. Especially on Black Friday. You might know about a few tentpole items from television commercials or word of mouth, but you needed to walk the aisles to learn about everything that had been unveiled for the season. And, you needed to hit multiple stores before you could find the best deals on items from your wishlist(s). Shopping was a necessity to achieve your buying goals goals.

If you’re the least bit internet savvy, today much of that discovery process can be conducted virtually. In-store deals aren’t all that attractive… getting to Walmart at 5am on Black Friday might score you a few door-buster deals on their loss-leaders, but any price that they can afford to slash in a physical store is sure to be equally slashed somewhere on the infinite internet since websites don’t have to pay for employees and shelf space.

Stores are disappointing to me not only because i do a lot of discovery and deal-finding ahead of time, but because I find myself distrustful in physical stores – i see an interesting new widget, but without at least 10 user reviews i can’t possibly know if it’s worth buying.

As a result I’m just not excited by a brick and mortar shopping trip anymore. Now that you are thinking about it you might agree.

Furthermore, as our tastes splinter into ever-more distinct niches (as abetted by vast info on the internet) a physical store is less and less likely to even have what we want. Guitar stores hardly ever have the brand, model, or color that i’m looking for. I’m sure knitters feel the same way – after knitting for years will a Yarn Emporium have all of the special brands, blends, and colors that you want for your project? If not, while not just order all of it on the internet for a bulk discount?

There are still reasons to shop physically. Two primary reasons are expertise and hands-on experience. That’s why it’s so hard to eliminate clothing stores from our physical routine – we need help finding our size and we need to try things on to find out what looks good.

Groceries are another excellent example – when you have an indeterminate goal the physical act of browsing often yields the best results. Unless you have a specific meal in mind, grocery shopping is about options and ideas. Shopping for home decor falls into the same category. Since i don’t travel much, preparing for a vacation also fits – I spent hours shopping for Bonnaroo, looking for little items that might increase my chances of survival.

Yet, even these experience are being intruded on by the internet, with similarity-searches and tagging making the virtual experience more and more like scanning a shelf.

The Long Tail is not just a matter of quantity of choices, but of quality of information. As I become more and more accustomed to both I find that I am unsatisfied by a trip through a big box store that carries only the most popular (not necessarily best) items. Every trip is a disappointment – i can never find exactly what i need for the price that i want.

Reading The Long Tail changed my perspective on a lot more than just shopping through the utter obviousness of its conclusions. I have some more to say about that – hopefully before NaBloPoMo has ended.