Shorthand for Nothing

So, it’s been over a month since YawnLog was created. I still look back on the 24-hour hackathon and wonder what happened. Little fragments of the evening float through my head. I remember brainstorming, saying that, “No, we don’t want to be a dream tracker, there’s millions of those. We want to track sleep, and let people tell us if they dreamed.” The elaborate planning. The mild frustration. The occasional moments of terror: “Wait, did we check to see if someone has already done this?” “We can’t use this design mockup.” “I need more information.” “Are we even going to have a closed beta?” The now ridiculously small aspirations: “Maybe we’ll get a hundred users.” We just hit 4000 tonight. (more…)

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This is why I ultimately care about politics and social work: socioeconomic justice. I want a strong economy, of course, because a strong economy is good for all of us–but what I really want to see is a society which is truly blind to class.

I’m not saying classism is rampant or even necessarily the cause of most of the problems the poor experience, though it is part of it. No, I want to see a society where the poor are not kept poor, where they are given the same opportunities and education as the wealthy. Where a poor student doesn’t have to work his way through high school while the wealthy student has nothing but leisure time. Where the poor don’t feel that college is impossible for them without an utterly insurmountable debt–where college debt isn’t insurmountable for anyone, but is affordable. Where students are taught about grants and scholarships and other programs that many are simply not made aware of.

I want to give those less privileged the tools they need to rise above where they are–not just the homeless, but the poor, those who have enough to get by but only just, who can’t provide their children with the educational opportunities they so richly deserve. Not just by providing them work or job security, but giving them the tools and the path to move on to something better.

America calls itself the land of opportunity, and I care about politics because I believe we can be that. Maybe we really can shelter the poor, the sick, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

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I could talk about the YawnLog meeting tonight–mention how it sounds like we’re really going places, that we’ve got plans and a future and it’s going to be glorious–but what I really want to talk about is cheap boxed wine.

I was expecting bad. I mean, that’s what cheap boxed wine is all about, right? Something which is cheap and available in bulk and isn’t good by any stretch of the imagination? But no, it wasn’t like that. It was cheap–some California blush wine–but it had almost no flavor. It wasn’t pleasant by any stretch of the imagination, but it was drinkable. It was flavorless, but drinkable.

I never asked Tim Hwang why he had it. That would break the magic, surely. So we drank bad wine from a creepy sack, and discussed, in many ways, the future of our little organization, whatever it is. I think we’re on the verge of doing something genuinely impressive. YawnLog is both our proof of concept and our best and greatest hope for the future, our flagship.

And if anything tonight was its christening, not with champagne, not with ceremony, but with cheap wine and a bunch of kids sitting around a flimsy coffee table, joking and talking and maneuvering and generally getting there in the end.

I’m excited.

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I haven’t cleaned my electric razor for a while now. Or rather, I hadn’t before this morning. It was starting to pull and generally irritate me so I thought I’d open it up and clean it out. The resulting explosion of facial hair shavings was an impressive and messy sight. I spent the next several minutes trying to clean up the mess and also clean up the razor. It was mostly a success, but it probably left something that will bother others. It even shaved much more efficiently when I was done, however.

A failure of maintenance leads to unpleasant explosions. Make note of it.

I’m not sure what the point is of that, but now you know.

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Yesterday at midnight Central Time, NPR had a live broadcast of The Decemberists playing their new album, The Hazards of Love, in concerts. As live broadcasts of concerts tend to be, the quality was lacking, and through my laptop speakers it felt distant. Despite that, I knew I needed to purchase this album as soon as possible. I got on iTunes the next day and downloaded it.

In many ways it’s a continuation of what they started experimenting with in The Tain, The Island, or The Crane Wife (the song)–long, multi-part stories, epic in scope. This is not a new concept, but the Decemberists pull it off in a unique way–Colin Meloy’s unique lyrics and vocals added to some much harder edged sensibilities than most of their previous works (with a few notable exceptions). It captures the perfect balance between over-the-top and taking itself seriously. It’s fun, it’s epic, it’s scary, it’s creepy, it’s touching. If you’ve liked some of The Decemberists’ longer and more epic material in the past, this is the album you have been waiting for.

As a fully developed story, it’s possible there will be a dearth of single- and radio-friendly tracks from this, but that is hardly a weakness.

It’s on iTunes for ten dollars, bereft of DRM. Go, buy it, love it.

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So, I’ve finished Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation, in which she explores the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. She describes it as a pilgrimage–the places they died, the places they were shot, the places their assassins died. While the book was primarily concerned with exploring facts, crafting a cohesive narrative for the assassination attempts that is interesting and readable, while still demonstrating the amount of research that went into the creation of the book.

What interested me most, however, is the underlying narrative of decline. The country in which Lincoln died is not the country in which McKinley was assassinated. America fell into imperialism. There’s a wistfulness there–a love for the country as it is but a longing to have it return to what it was.

It’s a very human story, highly accessible–to myself as a historical dilettante, and I imagine to others with varying degrees of interest. Though the book is about assassinations, it’s not a book of facts. It’s a book of stories. There are too few books that are willing to tell a story, and Sarah Vowell has a unique story to tell.

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Yesterday was a “Getting Things Done” gathering of the Hello Silo crew that hasn’t gone to SXSW, which, as is to be expected, was a combination between productivity, interesting conversations, and interesting conversations that completely hampered productivity. I very probably could have gotten more done at home or in smaller groups, but I accomplished a few important goals (but I’m not telling; a life needs secret plans) and wrote some things. Even if I didn’t get terribly far, I have a solid conceptual basis for a number of stories now, including the title that had until just then eluded me: “Follow All Posted Signs.” That is really the hardest part. I’m aiming for more writing-based productivity now, beyond the baseline of a blog post a day. So, exciting?

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Or, you know, whatever.

I’ve got about three years of material up on Dreamers Often Lie, some of which is less than stellar, but much of which is good stuff. I’ve always wanted to do something with it–compile the best of into a book, clean it up, maybe add some new content. I mean, this has always been an ultimate goal, but I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t something to the idea.

The problem: I have no idea where to begin. I’d prefer something more interesting than simply words on page–something to make it prettier than it is–but I have no talent in that particular field. I don’t know of any visual artists or photographers that seem like they’d be interested in working with me. And I have no idea who would even be interested in purchasing such a thing from me.

If I did make it, I’d have to publicize it, which I haven’t really made any effort to do before–and I’m not exactly sure where to begin there. I’d love to be able to tap into some of the brilliant PR that went into making YawnLog the hit that it was on such short notice, but don’t really want to ask, especially since none of them would have a personal interest in the finished product. And of course there’s the problem of ordering in bulk. I don’t want a bookshelf full of lonely copies of the Dreamers Often Lie book, but honestly, I’d consider it a smashing success if it sold ten copies.

I’m not sure what my options are, if there are any. If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions or would be interested in helping me out in some way, let me know. Maybe I’m just not looking in the right places.

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Variously, discussing the recent news concerning Bristol Palin has been described as cynical, an invasion of privacy, or otherwise something that should be avoided. While there are definitely snarky, cynical posts out there, I feel that it’s a legitimate conversation–and yes, even the snarkiness of Gawker is not going to kill anyone. (more…)

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So, I’ve been sick lately. It’s one unknown variable I’m never quite sure how to deal with–I generally avoid medicines for various reasons, but despite my intention not to let it interfere, it always manages to anyway. Somewhere between not wanting to infect the population and not wanting to deal with the malaise and the headache and the fever while also dealing with being in public, I find myself largely unable to do all of those things I’d been planning on.

All of this to say ‘I’m sick, I have been sleeping forever, etc.’ It really bothers me that the best words I can use to describe it are ‘general malaise’ and ‘generic sick-feeling.’ But that’s the best there is: it feels generally unpleasant and tiring, and focusing on dull, mindless tasks is best.

Fortunately I seem to be getting better.

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