I am presently ill

Euch.

Over the past two days my body has decided it would rebel in every sense of the word and resist at each moment my desire to make it work properly. You should know that am prone (whether by genetics, fate or some cruel biological conspiracy) to both lung infections and migraine headaches. To the glee of both maladities, they have swirled together to form a debilitating and bedridden-ing concoction of pain, a "Perfect Storm" of ailments, as it were.

So I have been in bed for the better part of 36 hours with only a 7-11 Super Big Gulp of ice water and the occasional passing of a cat to keep me company. This terrible news for several reasons, chief of which is that I am now even further behind at work. I can only imagine the bevy of irate customers that awaits me on Monday.

I should explain:

At work I am mostly concerned with small, consumer level art and design. I make business cards, wedding invitations (which I'll go on record as saying I hate, sorry Eury), various and sundry photo fixes, NCR forms, basically if it goes on paper and is for the use of small commercial entities or psychotic brides I have at some point made it.

Clearly, this job relies on a fully functional and well built computer. Trouble is, this is a thing our resident tech does not comprehend on even the slightest of levels. If I am unable to open a stable file or data is randomly being corrupted, his first instinct is to turn off my wallpaper. Now the simple fact of removing my desktop image is not so disturbing, it is more so the fact that he thinks this may solve the problem. I smile and nod as I watch him flounder his way across the landscape of my PC, while in my head I am a seething screaming fury of derision. On many occasions I have to interject as he scrambles about my software, cursor poised over the uninstall utility, "Uhh, please don't delete that, I need it."

In the end, we are able to determine on some level what may be wrong. Sadly though, remedying this situation is usually the act of applying a quick fix to subdue the symptoms, rather than the root problem.
I came back from the weekend once to find my videocard software removed and important windows and print dialogues not displaying properly. Strangely though, any attempt to reinstall the software was met with no success. I can only imagine what had transpired in my absence.

Anyways, I have begun to get rather longwinded here. My computer finally decided it was not going to be operational at all, and many files of quite large importance were saved only by virtue of an autobackup feature. Wonderful, wonderful autobackup. So, PC dies, Tech comes in spends several days poking around in this file here and that directory there, and finally we come to the conclusion which I have suggest several times before; the computer needs to be wiped clean and rebuilt. Because, quite frankly at this point the machine is as if the French, instead of using steel and bolts, had began to do major repairs on the Eiffel Tower with JuJubee's and toothpicks. We are talking ridiculous levels of instability, where typing a letter is akin to walking a dark L.A. street in a pink jumpersuit with wads of cash strung about your body. Doing any sort of work is just daring your computer to explode.

So long story slightly less longer, I am about a full week behind at work. Thankfully though, most of customers at this time are patient folks waiting for wedding invitations. And oddly, I have all at once couples who are actually doing things ahead of time, fighting against the foul beast of procrastination. You have no idea how elated it makes me when someone comes in and tells me that even if it isn't done in a month, it will still be early. I don't generally take that long, but its very nice to know.

But the same time, I have a customer who is very far ahead in the running for most annoying client of 2005. A substitute teacher who believes her business cards (250 only, of course) to be of paramount urgency, as if it were a matter of life or death that a school secretary has a piece of paper to use in the unfortunate happenstance that Mr. So-and-so is ill and now someone is desperately needed to read "Clifford the Big Red Dog." Believe me, in the grand scheme of things this just not that big of a blip on priority radar. Which isn't to say I don't care about her, I do. I just have several more pressing people to deal with.

if ever there was a use for 60's era drug experimentation, this is it.

The winds of change...

Yep, they're blowing alright, blowing harder than...well...nevermind.

Its pretty amusing to watch what happens when one well placed rumour about work can ripple through the staff like a wild, panicky, stupid fire. Basically management is reorganizing to compensate for stupid employees. I guess the driving logic here is that bad employees are bad because they "aren't right" for their intended task, not because they're brain-dead sacks of genetic refuse. Oh well, everyone is going to find out eventually anyways. Well, you'd think so, but not the way thing work here. One of our sales-folk has been here for a large number of years, and, now I'm just speculating here, has an IQ that I would equate to...oh roughly...a week old bran muffin. Things like looking at a customer square in the eye and then ignoring them and continuing to put sticker on your valentines junk while they wait at the till. If I didn't despise customers so much I'd almost be indignant.

All I can say is "Thank heaven I don't work on the sales floor. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

You probably don't understand my absolute elation at that fact, so let me elaborate. The sales floor here is not so much of a floor where sales happens as much as it is a hideous nexus of commercial idiocy, where the impotent ideologies of customer service and business combine to form a black hole of intelligence with a gravi-stupitational force so strong even a metaphysical concept like sanity cannot escape its awful clutch.

The sad thing here is you think I'm kidding.

Consider, si vou plais, that all retail products, for the most part, have a barcode on them. Now, unless you've been living in a big dank pit with a large hairy Swedish man named Sven, you know that a barcode is a little thing a computer can read to instantly tell your retail software what the product is, how much it costs and so forth. The whole point this thing was invented was to increase commercial efficiency and help more customers, more quickly.

But no. Oh, sin of sins, no. This is a convenience fate doesn't afford to our store. Not only do some barcodes not scan, AT ALL, but then the actual code for the product is not a number or identifying sequence on the box at all. Its as though someone took Jessica Simpson and told her, for a big shiny nickel, to imagine the dumbest code possible for a particular item. And then she, in all her gloriously ignorant enthusiasm, takes a deep breath and smashes her head face first into the keyboard, thus producing the identifying code for said retail item. This is why when a stapler, for instance, has the code STP11234-67 or something, the code might as well be"sw0113n-M0nk3y-B411s". And believe me here people, I don't bander about 1337 like girl-guides do their awful cookies.

I don't work the salefloor, no, for this I give thanks every waking hour. Now, physically I am still on it, but there is a small chip board desk and cubicle wall keeping the residual fumes of dumb wafting in my direction. I can hide behind my computer and only venture out on to the floor to smile devilishly as I stroll by those less fortunate and head for lunch.

Mind you, my work brings its own brand of stupid with it, but thankfully it comes for the most part from painfully dim clients. Like people who really haven't figured out that you don't need to push the space bar thirty times to centre a word. Or people who think Microsoft Word is a good tool for graphic design. Yes, you read that correctly. This town is literally FULL of them. I'd say 7 / 10 files I get for a design job have been built in MSWord. If I could be any superhero, I would be one who at night, dressed in a slick leather jacket and big ol' rear-kicking boots, would fly about town dispelling the demons of assinine application use. In my utopia MSword and Publisher would be roughly equivalent to our degenerate terms for intercourse or anatomy.


I wrote most of this post two days ago, saved the draft and just came back to it. I think I may have been entirely too harsh. Maybe its more like a five day old muffin. Seriously though, the people aren't that dumb. Everyone knows how much I like hyperbole.

Much more than the stupid superbole.

Shortcomings

**Warning: grumpy blog post ahead**

Ugh. Do you ever feel like a complete loser at the things most important to you?

I'm just kind of melancholy today, forgive me if it turns infectious.
I like to think of myself as progressive. What I mean by that is I try to identify faults in myself and correct them. Nothing stupid like "Ohhh, I'm so fat. Lookit the lardo in the mirror." or "Augh this hair totally sucks. I'm so not going out, no one should see this freak. Sob." I'm not a 14 year old girl.

I try to improve upon my character, like being more honest, working harder (updating my blog at work notwithstanding) and overcoming the stupid things we do that often times go against our better judgement. I just feel like I'm wallowing in stagnation lately. I keep doing dumb even hurtful things without blinking an eye. Nothing really devastating, I'm not ruining lives or tripping the elderly, but seriously far removed from the kind of person I'm aiming to be. Without going all Barbra Walters, it honestly makes me pretty sad.

But thats the point of life isn't it? Learning from our mistakes and moving forward. It just seems like I can't move forward now, that something's blocking me from doing so.

Angst Revisited

So I percolated a bit more on my thoughts and Eury's comment. What I feel boils down to this:

To me, photography is the art of showing people what you see. Everyone looks, not everyone really 'sees'. Using film or pixels, if I can make someone stop and really SEE something, even if they don't cull some life or view changing message from it, then I have done my job as an artist. What do I mean by "see"? The way I see it, looking is 100% sensory. Light hits rods and cones, becomes electrical signals which a brain interprets and recognizes familiar shapes. But actually seeing something, that's maybe 25% sensory, everything else involves your heart, your memories, emotions and spirit. Giving a photo a hidden deep meaning simply exacerbates that function. Some of the most beautiful photos that I've seen involve little more than people dancing with swirls of colour on their costumes or the thickly painted face of indigenous people.

What's my mission as a photographer? To show people how to See, to show to them that what they perceive is less than 10% of what's really going on around them. To see beauty where there wasn't before. To make them reflect, make them think. And most importantly, to make them feel. Granted this is easiest done when a photographer uses symbolism and metaphor in his visual presentation. But Jackson Pollock did no such thing, and I consider him an artistic great. Sure once in a while I may fail at that mission, but everything takes practice and dedication.

Going back to what I said about making people feel, that's why I love photos of people more than anything else. Humans are capable of so much subtlety and nuance in photo. Laughlines, crows feet, piercing eyes, dull eyes, perfect skin, crooked teeth. You know, as tacky and new age as it sounds, if I could have one job, it would be to take picture of people who don't think they're beautiful, and show them that they really are. I watched a really interesting show on genetic mutation in humans and there is a photographer who specializes in taking photos of people with afflictions like Albinoism. They portraits he shot were simply gorgeous, and I couldn't agree more with why he did what he was doing. People are too obsessed with looking as good as someone. Someone said once that somewhere in the world there is another person who thinks you are the most beautiful thing they've ever seen.

So I guess there's hope for me yet ;)

Angst of an Artist

I've considered myself an artist for a while. I studied and was involved in it hard all through highschool, went on hiatus after graduation, and now that I've found Worth1000, I'm back in full art mode. Its quite nice, to be perfectly honest.

But there's a problem.

I was taught in art that the driving purpose behind all art was to express or convey ' something'. Art had to have a meaning behind all the pretty. So what the issue, you say? Well, I hang mostly in the photography section of Worth, because that's my forte. But lately I wonder if all I'm doing is making pretty pictures that serve no real purpose. I don't know, I know that's a fairly pretentious way of thinking, and I don't think less of any of my friends behind the cameras on W1K, still its been in my mind all day. Like taking the photos I do doesn't show any measure of skill or degree of prowess. Its mostly an issue with my own photos, so its more of a self depreciation issue. This my train of thought:

Read the theme
Brainstorm Ideas
I come up with an idea that looks nice
Then I think "what, you think its going to win because it looks nice? Big deal, what's the point of the photo. Oh it fits the theme and it looks good. That's soo shallow. Ptui"

It seriously creates a lack of motivation

I'd like to think: 'So what...", and argue it away. And usually I can do that with dilemmas. But this time the words to defend myself won't come. What's a boy to do?

Growing pains and working stains

The Christmas season is passed us now.

But our decorations are still up. I like it that way. Its Christmas sans the frantic panic of buying gifts and over crowded malls. Frankly they could stay up till the tree fell dead and rotting to the ground...which may take a while considering its plastic.

Went back to work yesterday. What a party that was. Oh well, at least I'm all caught up on my projects, which is a good thing; it means a significant decrease in the amount of people breathing down my neck.

Warning: Embittered Digressions Ahead

When people have a problem with me, I think I deserve the respect of hearing about it first, and in person. Not several people down the line. Yes I may 19, whoop-dee bleeping doo, I'm not stupid. If you want a shortcut to making me mad, then by all means, do this. Sometimes at work if I neglect a detail on an order or give misinformation, it only ever gets back to me through the grapevine. That really isn't a sound business practice, as nothing ever gets learnt. Not to mention most errors of that type fault from a lack of training. I've been here over a year, and honestly, I find out something new weekly. Most of it is not common sense, just ridiculous things that people do/want to make their jobs easier. People that need their heads knocked together.

It's times like these I really want to get into business. Throw aside photography and art, and take up a suit and briefcase. I feel that marketing would probably be a good area for me. I hate sales, anything like that. Management would be alright, though apparently the Uni's management faculty is full of meatheads, students and profs alike.

Problem with business is, in theory I have a "killer instinct", so to speak, but in practice I'm far too nice. At work, I make lots of exceptions and bend over backwards for customers. I'm getting over that now, as I've come to realize (maybe selfishly) that I'm not on commission and that how much money I bring won't affect my pay. So why work myself to death for a $50.00 client that I won't ever see again? Its sad thinking I'm not giving 110%, but the cost is usually stress and headaches (literally, migraines suck). Mind you I have yet to get the perfect balance of give and take, but I'm young, I can still figure it out.

Which is kind of hypocritical, considering the beginning of this post. I should work on that. In all seriousness though, I'm the kind of guy who never, ever wants to be referred to both literally or figuratively as a boy. I want to be taken 100% seriously, and given the responsibility etc., it requires. Yes I admit there are times I'll regress, but who doesn't? I'd much rather deal with a displeased customer (note that I chose displeased instead of angry, people need to control their emotions better over business cards and stationery), than have to deal with management. I'd rather work for myself than have people do favours to "help me along". I'm more than capable.

Ew. I just realized I sound like Andy from the Apprentice. Sigh, I guess as much as I would like to be respected as an adult, I need to grow a bit more. Things like this take time, I should enjoy my youth.

Curse you reason and enlightenment, give me back my opinionated, ignorant dank.