Archive for August, 2007
47 items.
Animated Shorts – I Love Buster Keaton
August 31st, 2007 |Posted In: Art-Paintings, Animated Shorts, Art-Paintings, Art-Photos, Everyday Stories, Feature, General
Animated Shorts – I Love Buster Keaton
19.19 by 12 inches, digital painting
J Kearns 2007
I decided the thing to do, the first night of having Direct TV, was to not fiddle with redoing the botched running of cords but to spend hours watching Buster Keaton. Because I’m crazy about Buster Keaton, and Turner Classics had Buster Keaton movies running all night so I settled in to soak ‘em up and marvel. The man was a genius.
I did my Qigong with Buster Keaton in the background and I didn’t feel guilty about it. Someone give me absolution.
You’re going to have to bear with my little illustrations of daily life. I’m playing with Artrage, a little $25 program. I got it some months ago and started using it for making textured skies that I’d import into Photoshop for paintings. But it was buggy and I stopped playing with it after a couple of days. They have put out an update and I’m playing with it again.
Speaking of performers. And prat falls. H.o.p., who never lets an opportunity for a captive audience pass, threw up a red blanket curtain and tried putting on a puppet show for the ATT people. The guy wasn’t interested but the woman was amused. I always tell H.o.p. that working visitors are working and don’t have time for a show. I try to get this gently through his head. He still always must make the effort of putting on a show. Anyway, H.o.p. realized there would be no audience but didn’t let it get him down.
He changed strategy.
For the Direct TV guy (whom he loved “helping” by holding the apt bldg’s door for him every time he went out to the truck, and there were many times he went out to the truck) H.o.p. emerged from his room, eventually, as Samurai Monk Dragon Smoke.
Below is Samurai Monk Dragon Smoke.
The Child Experiments with Being Samurai Monk Dragon Smoke
J Kearns 2006
The Direct TV guy was involved with working, of course, which meant Samurai Monk Dragon Smoke went for a couple prat falls. Then H.o.p. gave the requisite honorific bow and put up his costume. Which is an old blue blanket and an IKEA wall holder for odds and ends that H.o.p. saw and insisted on buying for his costume of Samurai Monk Dragon Smoke.
There’s always a show going on around here.
5Comment
The ATT guy who came out when we moved in several years ago was the same one who showed up this morning. I was thinking about him last night, hoping it wouldn’t be the same guy, because he was huge, tall tall tall and football player muscular broad, he makes regular chairs look like they’re made for three year olds, and one could tell he wasn’t pleased with moving around in our small apartment, and even remarked on how small he believed it to be. Which was why I hoped it wouldn’t be the same guy. I can remark on how small our apartment is, but I do appreciate it when visitors, entering, don’t immediately remark upon how small they feel it to be. Let me remark on it first and then you laugh and talk about how if we lived in New York our urban apartment would be a SPACIOUS PRIZE! That’s what you’re supposed to do. Maybe I should put up a sign on the door.
Well, what da ya know, it was the same guy. And he was not happy. Again. Maybe he doesn’t care much for his job. ATT had told us he could set up our router for us (one we already had). He couldn’t figure it out. He said, disgruntled, “I’m not supposed to do this. They’ll say anything to make a sale.”
“Where’s the box for the router?” Marty asked me about this box that he had out on the table three months ago and which I put up three months ago. He said, “I had it out on the table with the instructions until you went on a CLEANING SPREE,” as I went into the back room to see if it was there.
“So, cleaning off the table amounts to a CLEANING SPREE!? I try to pick up stuff you guys leave lying around and it’s a CLEANING SPREE?!” I said.
The ATT guy called his supervisor to ask about how to do our router. The supervisor told him that he’d have to learn how to do this router stuff ONE DAY and hung up on him! I busied myself in the kitchen making sausage for H.o.p. As they were leaving (had only been able to get H.o.p. online, but not me) H.o.p. choked on a piece of cut up sausage and spat it out in my hand. Every one was tense. I felt like we’d flunked the ATT guy’s apartment appraisal. Again. All our wonderful IKEA bookshelves hadn’t impressed him at all.
Drat.
Anyway, there are people who enter your apartment and they pick out nice things to comment on, like the paintings and funky stuff you’ve collected and make you feel good about a place. One of my sisters-in-law talks about how her kids will remember it real fondly because “Everything is right there! It’s great for kids!”
And then there are people who make you feel very small, like the big guy.
After he and his assistant left, Marty was on the phone talking to ATT for a while working out with them how to get the router to work.
Then the Direct TV guy arrived.
This was our apartment’s kitchen back in April. Though minuscule, it still vaguely resembled a kitchen.
Now?
Literally. We are WIRED.
I am distressed by these big fat cables. I should have been supervising in the kitchen. But I left the kitchen and was helping with trying to get our email working and when I went back in the kitchen there were big fat cables all over the place so it looks like an octopus’ den which fits with my also having been reading to H.o.p. about KRACKEN at the time. There is no hiding them. They snake large along the back of the kitchen sink, not tucked nicely into corners (should have been snaked up above the cabinet and back down).
The same wild travesty of cords is around the door leading into the kitchen from this room. And where was I when this was happening? Sitting nearby but focused on getting Eudora to please, please work again. Which it never did. It only receives but we can’t send out email. We spent all morning on the phone and part of the afternoon and no one can figure out why or get it to work. For now we are stuck with doing our mail online as we refuse to use Outlook.
Plus, what was going on around the door was partly hidden by the drapes on the curtain rod that conceal the sorry kitchen from this room which was not nearly as sorry yesterday evening as it is now.
That will be fixed. Tonight we take out all the screws and fix that. Fortunately, most of the screws holding down the cords have already, of their own accord, popped out of the plaster.
What? You don’t like the two coolers that have replaced the colonial chair? Sorry, don’t have anywhere else to put them. What are we doing with two coolers? They’re used for the occasional party at the studio.
The coolers became a kind of pantry.
Anyway, I just kind of stared at the way the cables were done and didn’t say anything because the Direct TV guy had been nice.
The only thing I can think to do with the octopus cord above the kitchen sink is…
No, honestly, I’m stumped. Nothing comes to mind. Nothing.
But we have Direct TV now which means we have some channels, whereas before we only got TBS and sometimes snowy versions of PBS.
The first science show we turned on for H.o.p. had some creature feeding off some other creature’s eye. H.o.p. flipped out. “I will never watch that channel again!” He told us we should not have gotten Direct TV because it’s freaky.
Animated Shorts – I Will At Some Point Derive Some Benefit From This, Won’t I?
14 by 14 in.
J Kearns 2007
I stopped wondering that about other aspects of my life a while back, but being hum 20 days new to Qigong, I’m beginning to ask that question.
First Order of Business
But first. ISP. We are in the process of switching. Earthlink has either already shut down our DSL or it’s just down. I’m on dial-up and just letting you know, FRIENZ AND RELATIVEZ, that ANY OF OUR OLD MINDSPRING EMAIL ACCOUNTS ARE DEFUNCT. Between the devil and the deep blue sea, we have switched to ATT. Yes, despite it being no respecter of privacy. When we heard that Earthlink was laying off 900 employees and closing 4 offices (AND THEIR STOCK LEAPED, INVESTORS HAPPY BEYOND WORDS AT THE NEWS OF IT, MORE MONEY MORE MONEY MORE MONEY) then, if we were already made crazy by their abysmal service, what lay down the road? Plus, Earthlink was usually so slow now that often enough we weren’t able any longer to view videos online at H.o.p.’s educational sites, and we need full access to those educational websites. Plus, though we live in the heart of the city, our television reception is nearly zero, we can only get Channel 17 and Channel 36 and a fuzzy rendition of the PBS channels (often without sound). That’s it. We decided some Discovery channel etc. would be nice to have for H.o.p. instead of ordering all the shows through Netflix. I’m ALREADY ruing the decision to get TV, it costs way too much money, but there you go. Marty said, “What do you think?” And after a month (we’ve been contemplating this for a month or longer) I said, “Sure, OK. We’ll have Discovery Channel.” The money should go elsewhere, like into essentials. Lots of essentials it should go into. But I had a moment of weakness. Marty couldn’t quite believe it. “Sure, sure,” I said. And he said, “Sure, OK.” And now I’m in a panic. Anyway, over the next couple of days we’ll be getting realigned with ATT (they’re dropping by in the AM) and I’m going to have to change our mindspring email addresses on websites and elsewhere and send out notifications. It’s going to be a chore. We were with Mindspring/Earthlink for 10 years. This is going to be a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig chore.
Our Earthlink DSL was painfully slow but dial-up is insane. Our connection is so slow it will take 10 minutes for this to post. A last check of mail has been slowly loading in for the past 20 minutes.
Second Order of Business
Am 12 days into working on the Standing Meditation, still getting that right. I had been wondering why in the world I wasn’t feeling any tension in my thighs, considering one stands with knees bent, and I believed I was doing it just right, and then around the 9th day my knees started saying, “Something’s’ wrong here.” So I positioned myself in front of a wall and found that indeed I squatting with my knees beyond my toes, too much stress on the knees, and found more the right positioning for the legs. Two days later and that’s feeling better.
So 12 days now into the Standing Meditation, and 20 days into Qigong and I am rather uninspired. Today I was so uninspired that I stood in front of a bookcase and read book titles and examined a couple book covers. “Shouldn’t be doing this,” I told myself and eventually kind of settled into things. I suppose I’m acquiring more standing meditation stamina, at least, but I don’t feel physically improved. I’m impatient with the tedium and the thinking, “When will I stop finding this tedious because I really would like to hit a point where I find it pleasant.”
Yesterday I added the Walking Meditation, which I was really looking forward to. But I’m concentrating so much on keeping the right posture (as with the Standing Meditation still), and moving absolutely level with the knees bent, “emptying” one leg while transferring weight, that after a couple of minutes I again start thinking, “I will, at some point, derive some benefit from this, won’t I?” and feel increasingly dulled.
Which is kind of odd because the first two weeks I was feeling very positive about it all, feeling that I was certainly going to derive benefit from it, and after about two hours of the Qigong I would feel a lift that remained with me much of the rest of the day. But that lift stopped 5 days ago or so.
Having decided the needed thing to do is to learn the elementals, I just stand there doing the meditations. Bored. Angsting away. And, oh, I walk with the Walking Meditation and my right knee goes kind of “Ouch” because I stressed it by squatting too low too fast and too far over my toes with the Standing Meditation for the first week.
I will at some point derive some benefit from this, won’t I?
I keep telling myself that I will and to not even ask that question for four months.
Third Order of Business
Finally got H.o.p.’s standardized test results back. They are exactly what I was expecting, almost.
He’s great with concepts. He’s in the mastered range (75th to 99th percentile) for reading comprehension (85 to 95th percentile on the various scores), vocabulary, language expression (75th to 95th percentile on the various scores) and word analysis, but is the pits in spelling and language mechanics. No surprises there as we’re coping with dyslexia and there are certain things for which he’s just not ready. What I’ve been primarily concerned about with him is nurturing an appreciation for the written word and story.
And he is in the so-called mastered range for all math concepts (all in the 88th to 90th percentile range). He is in the partially mastered range in math computation, which does surprise me. I thought the results for math computation would be more the pits.
He was taking the test at the end of “third grade”, and most of the grade equivalents were somewhere in the 5th grade level. I was very surprised it was at 6th grade level with math concepts. Got mid 7th grade with Language Expression. I’ve got to find something that will interest him in continuing to work at least with math concepts. People always say, “Do LIVING MATH!” I’ve tried. He hates it all.
He scored real high in thinking skills. That surprised me because I can tell him, “Please put up your socks that you left next to the front door” and he looks at me like I’m speaking an incomprehensible alien tongue and wanders toward the television, scanning the ground. “I don’t see them,” he groans.
Here’s what surprised me. He got a 12th grade equivalence for science. Now, I’m not surprised in that it’s a subject he loves, the only subject he loves (in fact) outside all the art and film we do. Anyway, he was 99th in the National Percentile for science. This is actually what weakened me absolutely on the television and made me decide, well, yeah, it’d be nice to have Discovery Channel access for H.o.p. because he loves almost all videos to do with science.
It’s my anticipation that in the next couple of years he’ll make a huge leap in reading and that it will be up there near the science. My expectation with the spelling is that when he gets some mastery over writing on the computer then that will improve a great deal. I didn’t start teaching myself keyboarding until I was 10/11. He’s interested but doesn’t like to practice it. As for math, I’ve got no idea. The other day I joined yet another online homeschooling group for math hoping somewhere in there I might eventually find the holy grail for mathematics. I pulled back out Penrose the Mathematical Cat because he at least loves the stories.
There. I did it for THE STATE. We did the standardized testing for the state. I still hated doing it. And H.o.p. was in agony until the last day when he decided he liked some of it. I fulfilled my obligation.
Did I learn anything? Well, I hate to admit I did learn something on the science end (really, I hate to admit it). I’ve been over at Amazon the past few days looking for other science books he might enjoy this year because every curriculum we’ve purchased for science has been uninspiring. I came across a series of books on quantum physics done in story form for grade school to high school age. I’ll be ordering those as he was expressing interest in some of that this summer anyway. He heard about Schrodinger’s Cat and that got him started. What he understands of it, I don’t know, he will look vague but then later he’ll tell me about a storyboard he’s making and some of the things we’ve talked about will have become properties of a character. I told him about getting the books and he’s quite excited about it.
I’m also surprised how closely the results and my anticipations (based on those scores and my knowledge of how H.o.p. does things) align with Lawrence M. Rudner’s study, Scholastic Achievement and Demographic Characteristics of Home School Students in 1998
The grade equivalent score comparisons for home school students and the nation are shown in Figure 2. In grades one through four, the median ITBS/TAP composite scaled scores for home school students are a full grade above that of their public/private school peers. The gap starts to widen in grade five. By the time home school students reach grade 8, their median scores are almost 4 grade equivalents above their public/private school peers.
P.S.: See that painting at the top of the post? If I made animations, that’s what they’d look like. Every so often I think of doing animations like that.
Shaina’s Pool
Digital painting 2007, 30 by 20 inches
To view a much larger image for detail, click here
The digital painting was based on the below personal photo.
Took forever on this one to get what felt right. It was pretty depressing working on it the first several days. What I was going for just wasn’t happening, and parts felt so far off the mark that every digital brush stroke I made I was also wondering why I was going on with it, feeling perhaps I should abandon it altogether instead of investing more time. But I kept thinking, no, what I have in mind should happen at one point, and I kept on. And finally the “it” happened.
I don’t post the personal photos I use for base reference for my digital paintings very often, and don’t know if I should go back and post them along with the paintings.
Called “Shaina’s Pool” because it is. She’s a little girl who had her first birthday party this summer. I decided I wanted to do a nearing the end of summer painting and that this would be it. H.o.p. is on the left in the pool. Shaina’s mom is in the bright orange top, looking on the proceedings.
This post is just between me and the few people who visit here so don’t be surprised if I move it over to “private” and thus take it down after it’s been up a couple of days.
Got H.o.p.’s standardized scores back. He did basically what I expected him to do.
He’s good with concepts. He’s in the mastered range for reading comprehension, vocabulary, language expression and word analysis, but is the pits in spelling and language mechanics. No surprises there as we’re coping with dyslexia and there are certain things for which he’s just not ready. What I’ve been primarily concerned about with him is nurturing an appreciation for the written word and story.
And he is in the so-called mastered range for all math concepts, but is well…partially mastered in math computation, which does surprise me. I thought the results for math computation would be the pits. Most of the grade equivalents were somewhere in the 5th grade level, though I was very surprised it was at 6th grade level with math concepts. Many of the math concepts he was even better at when he was seven, had them flat down, but got little practice with them when he was eight because all the curriculum resources put so much weight in computation and he hates computation. I’ve got to find something that will interest him in continuing to work at least with concepts.
He scored very high in thinking skills. As his mom, this comes as a surprise to me considering that often enough I wonder where he’s left his brain. Except I know where it is, firmly implanted in thinking about film, film, film, storyboards and animation. Today he was asking me about an animation site and I couldn’t begin to remember the films he was describing. But then I realized, ah, he was describing all the films at an animation awards site we used to visit three years ago, which altered its format so the kid friendly stuff was very difficult to access so we stopped visiting. He remembers all that, no problem. Probably remembers every single frame.
Here’s what surprised me. He got a 12th grade equivalence for science. Now, I’m not surprised in that it’s a subject he loves, the only subject he loves (in fact) outside all the art and film we do. We’ve got a lot of resources for him around here and if he’s not doing film and animation he’s going to be listening to science DVDs and doing science at Brainpop and Cosmeo. But the science part of the test was just not that hard, so I don’t have a clue how this is supposed to give a 12th grade equivalence. That’s part of the surprise to me. Maybe everybody gets a 12th grade equivalence for science. Well, I guess not since he was 99th in the National Percentile. My dad’s a scientist so he may be pleased to hear that.
Anyway.
One–This year I’ve got to find something concerning math concepts that he finds fun, because everything I’ve seen so far for hands-on math and tried with him, he’s hated. And it needs not to cost an arm and a leg. “Living math” has always sounded good but every time I try to get him interested in “living math” he runs. He hates puzzles, he hates games (except for Monopoly, which he invariably wins) and he just plain hates having to figure out anything that he’s not itching to figure out for himself.
Two–We already go to the Fernbank Museum of Natural History a lot. And we’ve got Brainpop and Cosmeo. But we need something else, and it isn’t going to be in the science curriculums I’ve got sitting on the shelves. And yeah there are all the home experiments you can do but his interest in most of those is so-so. And he doesn’t like dead things. And he doesn’t like engineering. You know why he likes science? Because he’s already got a science fiction brain. He likes science for the possibles less than the knowns, only he doesn’t know that yet. The only reason he’s interested in learning knowns is for how he can form a science fiction story universe around them, with a lot of fantasy thrown in, and outright denying the knowns when they get in the way of his preferreds. He likes, of course, quantum physics.
Yes, I know it's everywhere on the internet…
August 27th, 2007 |Posted In: General, You Tube (other people)
Why didn’t she just say,
As long as there’s Coca Cola we know we’re home. Am I right? Well, that’s what my dad would say. But seriously, what’s Google Maps for if it’s not to keep me from driving off the beach into the ocean. Haha! That’s another dad line, actually. He says, “If it wasn’t for Google Maps you wouldn’t know your ass from nevermind”. Which, I have to admit, I don’t think is totally fair because how many other South Carolina teens wish they were me up here tonight in the spotlight, not being able to point out America on a map hasn’t kept me from succeeding, has it? That’s another dad line, too, actually, well, that’s what he’s going to be saying twenty-four hours from now. He’s going to be saying, “Not knowing where the god damn USA is didn’t keep you from almost winning Miss Teen USA, did it?” and then he’ll say, “I always said if it wasn’t for Google Maps you wouldn’t know your ass from nevermind.” Admittedly, when you Google my name two days from now the results aren’t going to be so pretty, but…uhm…you know what I wish? I wish I had a Myspace page? In my name? Can you imagine how many friends I’d have gotten with a Miss Teen South Carolina Myspace page in my name? Except maybe not now it wouldn’t be so great to have one. I’m not the only person in the world whose life has been ruined by The Iraqs. That’s what I keep telling myself. Well, that’s what my dad’s going to be saying. But then he and mom will pull it together and remind me it’s all about looks and connections and reassure me that there’s no such thing as bad publicity and, after all, my ambition is to be a top European model and they’re not going to care if I know where America is, they’re just going to care what my weight is, and looking at myself in the monitor right now, I’m really sorry I ate dinner night before last…
The icing on the cake is that Miss New Jersey, the 5th contestant, when asked what skill today’s teens were lacking, promptly responded, “Public speaking.”
An Atlanta musician decides to send out to everyone on his email list a link to Immigration Gumballs asking everyone to watch it and learn about the dramatic effects of immigration on this country. The long and short of it is Roy Beck addressing an audience of about 99.9% white faces on how America has “below replacement fertility” which would stabilize our population except for all these immigrants. Which means fewer white folks and lots more American (as in the continent, as it came to be named) Indians from the South. Right?
Oh, lord! What happens if H.o.p. (who descends mostly from displaced Irish, Scots-Irish and French who immigrated here, and some of the Cherokee and Ioway who were displaced by the great Anglo-European influx) marries a person whose ancestors were living on this side of the ocean 600 years ago?! And their children marry people whose ancestors were living on this side of the ocean 600 years ago?!
Can you imagine, looking out over America and seeing just a few white faces peeking out of the corners here and there? Yikes! It’s the apocalypse! A nightmare horror show! After all, where would the Home of the Free be without the white people who killed off untold numbers of American Indians and forced those remaining into death marches to their new homes on largely inhospitable “reserves”? Shouldn’t their legacy go to pale skins, else it be trashed with the barbarous sensibilities of South of the Border non-whites?
At least frame the argument honestly, OK?
There are all kinds of comments on the Youtube thread by people with monikers like “Secure the Border” and “Texas Ranger”. In fact over 1500 comments. The video has been favorited 777 times and has nearly 3/4 of a million views.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has this on Roy Beck,
Before he even said a word, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) got a standing ovation from the 27 anti-immigration activists who gathered at the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C., on the morning of Feb. 13 to kick off a two-day lobbying effort on Capitol Hill.
Tancredo, chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, proceeded to regale his audience with ominous warnings of a global plot to destroy the United States…
Patrick McHugh of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which purports to be a squeaky clean think tank that rejects racism, was there pressing the flesh along with Barbara Coe, head of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, who repeatedly referred to Mexicans — as she has for years — as “savages.”
The Citizens Informer, a white supremacist tabloid put out by the Council of Conservative Citizens hate group, was available.
NumbersUSA executive director Roy Beck, a long-time friend of Coe’s, adopted a more moderate tone when he addressed his guests and told them what they should be doing to end the current immigration regime.
It would be better, Beck counseled, if their attempts to lobby legislators that week did not appear to be orchestrated by NumbersUSA. For their campaign to be effective, he said, it “needs to look like a grassroots effort.”
What’s NumbersUSA?
Founded in 1982 as an anti-immigrant umbrella group by Michigan ophthalmologist John H. Tanton, U.S. Inc. operates most publicly through three projects — NumbersUSA, ProEnglish and The Social Contract Press*, which publishes the journal The Social Contract. Tanton and his wife, Mary Lou Tanton, have been chair and vice chair from the start…
In a private 1986 memo leaked to the press, Tanton suggested racial Balkanization was under way, and warned, among other things, that Hispanics were out-breeding whites: “On the demographic point: perhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down!” The memo contained such incendiary language that U.S. English executive director Linda Chavez quit, as did advisory board member Walter Cronkite.
Source: Southern Poverty Law Center
Mr. Atlanta musician began his email with, “I try not to send out many of these but I felt this might be of interest to some of you.”
Only in that I now know you’re a frightened white man.
He continues on to say this is an email about something that isn’t “political in nature” but is an issue that is heavily politicized.
Not political in nature?
Not political in nature?!
Well, then, what is it? A condiment or something?
Site Search Tags: hate+group, immigration, roy+beck, numbersusa,
Rain! 2007 Aug 26
Am getting suddenly slammed with a lot of spam comments with a single link. So I’m putting into moderation, for the next couple of days, all comments with links.
For a while I’ve been writing about the hell I’ve been going through with my Dell monitor. Well, here it is. Thought I’d picture it for you. Click on the image to see it bigger at Flickr.
This is my canvas. It’s canvas hell.
I forget what I spent on this monitor, which I’ve had for a year-and-a-half, but it was somewhere in the order of $500 to $600. This may not be much for some people but it was a lot for me. It was supposed to have a great range of grays for a flat screen monitor. I was really pleased with it out of the box.
This is called “image persistence” rather than “burn in” (on my Viewsonic CRT I never experienced burn in) and it seems some Dell monitors really have a problem with it. I have tried all these tips for getting rid of it and have always used a changing screen saver, but the problems with mine seem to be irreversible. What I don’t understand about the idea of image persistence is how, on the left, it is this huge blotch encroaching on my screen and doesn’t correspond with any “image”. It’s just like the ocean eating up beach real estate.
I go between fits of trying to ignore this and weeping copious inner tears.
When I am able, I may go back to a behemoth CRT.
Site Search Tags: dell, monitor, hell, image+persistence
