ELB's Jam & Eggs Eatery

Day 12

2006-09-12T22:00:00.000-06:00

Day 11

2006-09-11T21:43:00.000-06:00

Day 10

2006-09-10T21:42:00.000-06:00

Day 9

2006-09-09T19:26:00.000-06:00

Day 8

2006-09-08T18:54:00.000-06:00

Day 007

2006-09-07T17:20:00.000-06:00

Day 6

2006-09-06T17:52:00.000-06:00

Thumbnailed

Day 5

2006-09-05T18:11:00.000-06:00

Day 4

2006-09-04T21:30:00.000-06:00

Day 3

2006-09-03T21:53:00.000-06:00

Guess who forgot to do a self portrait today? This is taken and processed with thirty minutes to go before deadline. Wow. You'll notice the poor clone job I did to cover up the midnight snack crumbs on my lips. Lit by my bathroom lighting. Professional indeed!

Day 2

2006-09-02T02:17:00.000-06:00

Day 1 - Portrait Challenge

2006-09-01T20:23:00.000-06:00

Okay, so apparently my new blog on Vox is anti IE. Good for it, bad for the poor backwards schmucks using big blue. Anyways, I'll post here to make things nice for everyone.

Testing Ne Blog site

2006-08-27T19:18:00.000-06:00

Im testing a new blog site, its beta, but again, free. WHich is nice considering I am a poor schmuck.
its at http://elbradenabra.vox.com/

Ladies, do you experience . . . frigidity!?

2006-07-31T12:42:00.000-06:00

click to enlarge

The year is 1947. America has single handedly crushed the axis war machine. The whitehouse gladly gives Russia the "unsightly" half of Germany, and the coloured folk had their own bathrooms. Men were real, bread winning men. Boys had dogs and dirty knees and girl had tea parties. Women had only two real problems, frigidity and getting slapped for not bringing her husbands slippers fast enough. Yes, life was so much simpler back then.

Good grief, is this what womens magazines were filled with fifty years ago? Threatening girls that their smell could break up families and drive loved ones away? Call me naive, but I thought cold-war era fear mongering didn't extend beyond politics.

I love her horrified face. You just know that this is the biggest problem she's encountered today. "Oh sugar, first I burned my tea biscuits and now THIS!"

Reading this ad, it comes to mind how terrifyingly frank women are. I mean, have you ever seen the cover of Cosmo?
"What kind of skank are you?"
"How to seduce the pants off everyman in the room."
"Additional dirty article."

When guys have problems, we internalize. Beyond the occaisional commiseration of a well placed knock to the genitals, we don't talk about our . . . stuff that much. But wow, open a womens magazine and it's health class in overdrive.

Are you girls really that complicated?

For added fun, read the article in a strongbad voice.

Stupid Greeting Cards

2006-07-28T13:07:00.000-06:00

Greeting cards are a huge industry. I mean, what better way to make a few large than providing for middle america's inability to coherently express itself, with trite, store bought mishmash? Ah yes, the good ol' 1st world answer to problems, buying something. But I digress. Like any outlet of mass media conglomerates, greeting cards have their fair share of steaming crap. Some cards are just dumb, ugly or so bizarre you think you'd think you were back in college, dropping acid with Christopher lloyd. Behold, a terrifying example of what some people make for a living:

inside: Cha cha cha!

Well hey there, its the birthday Gecko. Nothing says Bonne Anniversaire like a reptile decked out in mariachi drag. Or maybe its just the Geico lizard, fresh off a Tijuana bender with a rough trick named Jorge. CHA CHA CHA, indeed.

inside: We didn't get you a birthday present together, too.

Speaking of reptiles, what the heck are these two? Someone call Jeff Goldblum because there's a pair of Sun burned Crapasaurus Rex's loose. And just what exactly is that second C-Rex steering?

Front: Do you have any books that aren't for Dummies?
inside: Lucky there are cards for dummies. Sorry I forgot your birthday.

Books that aren't for Dummies? Depends, do you have any cards that aren't drawn by drunks with cerebral palsy? Seriously, it's like some bent pop art over and raped it. And why is she clutching her stomache? Is she so appaled that someone would question her inventory, or does crappy art just give her gas? It's not enough that someone forgot your birthday, but they decided the best way to make up for it was to buy the the ugliest card they could find. If someone tried to give this to me I'd kick them in the teeth. Twice.

inside: Hope your birthday's the bomb!

Oh, the metaphors, the METAPHORS! Happy birthday, celebrate your conception with a card of men in phallic headwear. Where in america did they find a group of 18 middle aged men eager to be immortalized in an image of such sexual context? San Francisco? I can only imagine the Mahito's and body shots that followed this shot. Take off those missles boys, its time to see your guns! Bang bang!

inside: It'd be a cold day in your know where before we'd miss wishing YOU a happy birthday.

Look, its the Sunshine State Skinny Dippers, here to wish you a happy B-day. You got me birthday manboobs? You shouldn't have! I'd go on, but ugh, my stomache is just too weak.

blank

The cardmakers elected not to include any verse on the inside. They felt that the heartfelt message of the card was straight forward enough that it didn't warrant any further explanation. The tender warmth of these aquatic beasts makes them well suited to any sentiment.
"Happy Birthday, save the whales!"
"Congrats on your promotion, Save the whales!"
"Sorry about your dead gramma, remember, Save the Whales!"
"Happy Anniversary, honey, Save the Whales!" Wait, skip that one, you'd wind up on the couch at night for sure.

inside: Flourescent light is the enemy

Dude, I don't know either. This is just . . . WOW. What do you say to a card like this? Thanks for the nihilistic reflection on modern society? I love the lime green bikini made (apparently) of plastic wrap, I infer this because you can see right through it. It was also nice that the artist wanted to tart her up a bit with Cover-girl's new San Antonio Whore line of blush. How can flourescent light be the enemy? By reminding you of what an assexual humanoid in a garbage bag swimsuit looks like? Flourescent light is not the enemy, craptastic cards are the enemy.

J to the Eazzay, R to the Kizzay

2006-07-27T15:26:00.000-06:00

My life is not easy.

Now, before you size me up for tight fitting black jeans and an acoustic guitar, let me elaborate. My web-log purports that I am a "nice guy", and I am. I pet kittens, smile at the geriatric and supress the urge to slap people who ask if it is "hot enough" for me. But my genial appearance hides a very dark secret.

I am an astounding jerk.

Ho, ho, gentle reader, collect yourselves. Gentleman, retrieve your fallen monocles and tend to the women who have doubtless fainted with shock. Underneath this soothing, romanesque face is a raving lunatic waiting to escape and wreak general havoc.

You may be wondering, "Braden, if you are the stunning {donkey} you claim to be, why do we adore you so?" Well, this is caused by what I like to call a semi-premeable membrane of prickery. In similar fashion to the underwear models in bottled water commercials (though without the heaps of sexual ambiguity) the often divisive and caustic things I intend to say and do are quickly filtered and refined to something more civil and entirely unremarkable.

For instance:

"Augh, you hagrid sack of wrinkles, take these awful photographs of your disgusting mutt and hobble back on home to continue slowly mummifying yourself in ointment and Goldbond!" becomes : " Why yes, ma'am I would be happy to make your photocopies of this becoming bichon frise."

-aside: Who owns a Bichon Frise? It's the canine equivalent of that creepy effeminate guy you went to school with. The one EVERY one knew was gay, but not the gay you see on TV with spunk and sequins and fashion sense. He stays in the corner of the library rereading the illustrated encyclopedia britannica hoping for fuzzy wing-wongs in the anatomy section. I . . . don't know how that quite works as an analogy here, but it does, rest assured.

But the point here is that my inherrent jerk-barrier has upper limits, and I'm starting to think it doesn't replenish itself fast enough to deal with the startling array of stupid the city like to direct my way. And with university coming this fall, I'm all but certain I will reach critical mass and my unrefined acid will spew forth with startling urgency.

Brace yourselves.

Well to do

2006-07-24T00:20:00.000-06:00

I'm listening to dashboard confessional at midnight here, so forgive me if I wax thoughtful.

I feel like I'm setting out now. Like a sea-farer on a a ship sailing through the waves, I can't see anything but horizon and beauty. My life hasn't turned out the way I planned. At all. This is not where I ever wanted it to be. But I am happy. I make my life good or bad. I have my agency, my will. I can choose to be grumpy or I can choose to embrace what I have made. I may have regrets, and maybe its not too late to fix things, but for now I can only go forward and take this new era for what its worth.

My mum is getting a job that pays more and, more importantly, isn't at Southern Stationers. I'm starting University this fall. I got into the BFA program, so I'm happy. Its going to be hard, because in all actuality, I can't really afford school without loans. This is going to be a sharp change from how unfrugal I used to be. Ah well, here we go.

Wish me luck.

A visit to Angry Rant Farm

2006-07-20T14:07:00.000-06:00

I'm in a vindictive and malicious mood. So pardon the bite, Jace, but Im going to take a page from your book (err, blog).

People in need of a violent beating:

Well, lets start off with an easy one, The Church of Scientology. What kind of respect do you think you deserve when your building looks like a dirty backwater Vegas casino? The giant LED billboard doesn't help your credibility much either. Listen, stop acting like a bunch of delusional crackpots and maybe people will take your half-baked religion seriously. Of course this is contingent on Tom Cruise dying in a horribly fiery plan crash, but hey, his Thetan will just be reborn, right? Hopefully in something less annoying, like a bowling alley attendant.

The legal department at the RIAA and the MPAA. Yes, piracy is bad, we get it. We got it seven years ago when Napster got shut down, we got it three years ago when you started going bat-s*** crazy with your lawyers. But so is suing every man, woman and child. Here's a tip, making a signifcant portion of your per annum profits in LAWSUITS, is a despicable business model. Customers are not criminals, you insane jackals.

The people who charge $2k for logo design, spend months working on it, only to present something that looks like microsoft word found in the toilet after binge drinking Mr. Clean. A vomitous mass of traingles and circles accompanied by times new roman is not a logo, it is a design ABORTION. Y'know what? You hacks don't deserve a beating, you should shot. Through the teeth.

Eczema. Get off my finger now or start paying rent, you psoriasis wannabe.

Telus. Alright, you conservative redtape fetishists, fess up. Your highspeed network works like it was built out of dog hair and horse crap. My connection is out more often than Courtney Love is drunk off her feet. And when it is up AND working properly, my 'high-speeds' that are supposedly 100x faster than dial-up barely touch over 30kb/s. And thats exactly what I think of your customer service, BS. If the signal is so weak that it
can't make it from an outlet, through a 20 foot cable, to my PC reliably, don't get your call centre drones to condescend to me about electromagnetics and currents and a textbook full of material those highschool dropouts only hear about on CSI. Please send me an executive, I want to spit in his eye. IN HIS EYE!

Parents who name their kids stupid, stupid names. I don't mean bizarre spellings like Amie or Kortney (which is a sin unto itself), I'm refering to parents who think carving up perfectly normal names and stitching together abhorrent franken-names. Refuse like Dreydon. Seriosuly, what is that? It sounds like something Hercules fought while knee-deep in minotaur turd. And actors, really, your kids will have enough garbage to put up with living in your shadow, do they really need names like Apple or Prince Michael?! You need a curbstomp, in a hurry.

The selfproclaimed 'EMO' crowd. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. You aren't introspective, you aren't mysterious, you aren't misunderstood. You are nothing more than whining, contrived and hypocritical consumerists. The artifical way your 'culture' dresses your emotional imbalance under the guise of 'suicide and teenage angst' belies a very real issue. Writing pathetic musical slop about how no one understands you is such a fallacy. People understand you very well, especially marketing executives. That's why you are a key sales demographic, that's why companies make huge profits off you. You aren't punk. You are a derivative mass, eager to suck at any corporate teet that disguises itself as underground. So hang up your etnies, whipe off that mascara, boys, and wake up. YOU ARE TOOLS.

And while we're on the subject, lets address the term emo itself. Six years ago it meant something different. It meant a kind of music. Now it gets tossed around as much as Bush tosses around terrorism. Emo is music. The pouty girls in fishnet and black, and sullen guys in mascara are morons. Let's get it straight. (Marshall, you are granted clemency from this, because you are a rocker. Rockers can wear make-up, but just barely)

PETA. Why am I a monster because I drink milk? You self-appreciative sacks are about as credible as a kidney transplant in Queens. Milk does not make me fat. Being a lazy man makes me fat. You know what, in for a penny in for a pound; Vegans and Greenpeace, you are ridiculous too. Cheese is not evil, oil is not evil. If you want to live on an island and experience a hedonistic granola life-style, be my guest, in fact, I'll help you find one. Vandalism, theft and public mischief don't further your platform of environmental stability, it furthers that platform that you are a troop of poorly educated miscreants.

Okay, thats enough hate to fill one post for the day.

Public Service Announcement

2006-07-19T21:10:00.000-06:00

Hey, just wanted everyone from Lethbridge know that I in NO WAY think you should ever buy office supplies from Southern Stationers. Besides the obvious fact I'm going to school, I do not approve of the unethical way they treat employees. Management is rude and belittling, often times bordering on harassment. Wages are not in anyway linked with to the job you do, your experience or net profitability (why else would a new part time cashier make the same as someone who has been with the company for 13 years??) The store has been sold because the owners, Gary, Leslie and Diane seem to care more about hot tubs, trips to Italy and Cuba more than they do about the staff that has worked for the family for 20 plus years. Now a good portion of the staff will be experiencing major changes to their jobs and entire positions and departments are being eliminated to make the buyers happy. In a few months we will be called Corporate Express. The name change is merely superficial. The same bosses will run it and then same seedy tactics will keep it in the black. Avoid us, please.

Am I writing this out of anger? Absolutely. What other emotion do you think is acceptable here?

Tents, Fireworks and scary bathrooms

2006-07-17T11:07:00.000-06:00

This weekend was the annual "drive -90-minutes-into-the-mountains-spend-a-day-watching-pass-folks-get-blitzed-watch-fireworks-and-spend-2-hours-in-traffic-fest" Also known by the admittedly less descriptive "Thunder in the Valley". There is a podunk lil town called Blairmore that has one of the biggest displays of fireworks each summer to commemorate . . . well, booze, I think, rum to be specific. HURRAY!

This year it involved driving up in a rented JEEP with some classy gals. Style! But the day would not be complete without a visit to the mountains neighborhood cesspool gas station.

Nevermind the fact we had to fight through two seperate bike gangs and a throng of fe-mullets to park, the station was infested in a more colorful assortment of the typical spring-break frat riff-raff. I made the unfortunate mistake of having a bladder and needed to relieve myself at this waypoint.

Oh no! No no no no no, I should know better. Rule number one of road trips is NOT TO PEE IN PLACES THAT SELL HOT DOGS, ICE CREAM AND TACKLE. As I had my wee, I was treated to the cheerful image of an alien prophylactic with cute prophylactic attenae emerging from
what must be some sort of interstellar spaceship designed for lightspeed birthcontrol. Zipping up, I moved to the sink with every intent to wash my hands. However, HOWEVER! There was not a soap dispenser in sight, nay nay, there was instead a styrofoam bowl filled with neon pink liquid soap. This was not a welcome sight in and of itself, but to further compound the problem, the bowl and soap were themselves quite dirty, having dark chunks of unflatering material floating about.
I'm sure you'll agree, the dilemma here was very concerning. But, using the combined power of my intellect and my intense fear of hepatitis I decided the best course of action would to be run like a little sissy out of there. I bought an ice-cream though. That managed to assuage my excited emotions.

The remainder of the day was unremarkably entertaining. Hamburgers, dogs, friends, that sort of thing. It was, however, punctuated by the realization that I have no idea how to put up a tent. I am, of course, familiar with the concept: Poles must be inserted and the tent raised, and eventually people may go inside of it. But that is about where I exit the realm of knowing. I can commiserate with my comrades in that none of us really knew how in the end.
It took a team of approximately 8 people working to get the beast of a nylon sleeping quarters put up. I won't even mention the time it required.

After the tent episode, we ambled into town and took our places among the great unwashed masses to watch the expensive display of things blowing up. The display lasted about half an hour, and I'm pretty sure it successufully punched a hole in that pesky ozone layer. So here is a heads-up, if you want that bronzed godlike glow to you, head to Blairmore AB, " We destroy the ozone, so you don't have to!"

Additionally I got asked to do some more engagement photos Sunday night for a good friend. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm getting better at this thing.

Isn't Alberta Grand?

2006-07-14T09:19:00.000-06:00

It looks like as Albertan's have a fascination with big things. Takle that, Texas! (Don't hurt me Amanda!)

BIG THINGS!!

Of special note, check out Lethbridge's wind gauge, boy that's funny, and not without truth. This place is wicked windy.

Portoflio is gone, now the waiting game.

2006-07-12T14:43:00.000-06:00

So I dropped off my final portfolio today at lunch. The Admissions Lady was nice enough, if a bit intimidating. If anyone cares HERE is a link to my portoflio, as a pdf hosted on rapidshare. Wish me luck.

Edit: Whoops, no, I lied, that is the original corel draw file. I wil upload the pdf later.

Porfolio Finished and New Photos

2006-07-11T22:29:00.000-06:00

Well, thank heavens, I finished the last of the new projects required for my art portfolio, and with 2 days to spare, no less! Now I get to agonize over whether or not the Faculty of Fine Art accepts me :S :(

But on the brighter side I took some pictures!

Here is a self portrait, because, well, you know.

And beside it is the photo I took for the portoflio theme "This container is too big". I really like it. I'm such a vignette whore on my photos (when I'm not entering on worth).

I am a terrible photographer

2006-07-09T22:55:00.000-06:00

No no, let me elaborate. I dont take pictures enough. My new camera has hardly been used. I feel like I should get out more with it. But I just never have the time or inspiration anymore. Why is that? Where the heck is my ruddy muse?! I did go to dragon boat races today and got this shot. Its awful but whatever.

and it also does have some ps work done to help with the background.

I am a university student, sort of

2006-07-06T23:21:00.000-06:00

Well I'm accepted to the U of L for general studies. My admission to fine-art is pending my portfolio, which is due in a week. Crap. Time to get to work.

Windows Genuine Advantage

2006-07-04T12:35:00.001-06:00

As more and more consumers adopt broadband internet connections, content delivery systems are evolving in a way to excise traditional retailers and physical storage media. The growing popularity of Apple's iTunes music store and the Direct-to-Drive PC game delivery are just two examples of this.

But this prevalence of true “all digital” content makes piracy even more of a concern than it already is. Traditionally, software required the actual disc to be in the drive to operate. When CD writing technology became widely available, the industry began using CD-keys and copy protection to ward of piracy. The problem is that all of the currently employed methods have required the disc itself to be physically present, something users are beginning to decry.

New anti-piracy measures to cope with disc-less installations and content are in high demand. Unfortunately, no one has yet managed to get the proper balance of bottom-line protection and user satisfaction. This isn't stopping Microsoft from taking another swing.

As is the norm for many of its announcements, Microsoft is raising the ire of users from one of its new OS features, a little thing called Windows Genuine Advantage. For seasoned watchdogs of MS the name itself raises the hair on your neck.

At it's core WGA is an anti-piracy maneuver from the company. PC's running the company's forthcoming Windows Vista will use an internet connection to connect to Microsoft and verify the authenticity of the Vista license. And it's this constant connection that has users worried.

And who can blame them, when the last sweeping attempt to stem piracy resulted in Sony's root-kit fiasco of 2005? It's especially concerning when you consider MS's less than stellar security track record; if its current flagship products are so riddled with security holes that patches are being issued at a startling rate. Can we really believe a guarantee from Microsoft that the frequent (and, for all intents and purposes, invisible) transmittal of system information will not pose a security threat?

Well, yes and no.

Obviously, MS will do its utmost to prevent that from happening. But that doesn't mean that some time down the road what was once secure will still be safe. CNN'esque fear mongering aside, it's a valid point of worry. Cyber crime has proven to be resourceful and creative when exploiting potential security.

It clearly isn't THE solution to OS piracy, Microsoft would be naïve to think so. But it's a step in the proper direction. And with big corporate support for downloadable software and upgrades it may be the push that starts the tech ball rolling.

Heaven help us

2006-07-03T15:10:00.000-06:00

To those who clumsily wielded democracy to get Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) elected to senate:
Thanks for that. It is totally comforting knowing that hamfisted, backwards-thinking, mouth-breathers like him are in charge of deciding how the shape of the future internet is being moulded.
I'm sorry, and Canada gets made fun of for our politicians? Thanks for trying.

New Music Blog

2006-06-30T17:31:00.000-06:00

I started a new music blog for discussion of music news and culture. I'm still working out its design and such but its at Audiophilanthropy

In which our hero discusses Soccer, Rugy, Design and makes very tasteless generalizations of the differently-abled

2006-06-28T11:56:00.000-06:00

Ahh World Cup Soccer . . .

A time when a young mans fancy turns to synthetic polymer balls and men kicking each other violently on well kept grass. Where else can you find the same rabid patriotism that begat two world wars? And lets not forget the occasional riot. Ah ha ha yes, what delightful fun.

Truth be told, I'm not sure how the World Cup works, I'm not sure the majority of the world North America does. It's like the soccer is the retarded cousin of the Western world. We're amused by its antics but don't really want to get involved. It comes over in its chronically bemused state looking for attention and we pat it on its developmentally disabled head and send it on its way, off to squish bugs and throw food at girls.

If soccer is our handicapped relative then what does that make Rugby? I'd venture it's the ravishing friend that takes care of soccer, feeds it and wipes up its messes. But away from soccer, Rugby is a real hot tamale. In between frenetic parties and whirlwind romance she finds the time to . . . compete in cage matches? This analogy is breaking apart fast so let's move on.

Rugby is such an interesting sport for me to watch. It's not as though I even understand fully the rules of it. But what I do comprehend I enjoy immensly. And that seems to be the way a lot of people approach graphic design, with retarded enthusiasm. I'm sure you'll agree that this is a dangerous combination.

Frankly I think the design world could take a few cues from Rugby.

Using comic sans, times new roman, or the lucida family? That's a sin-bin

Got your hands on a great design? Ruck over and keep the greater unwashed from mucking it up.

Rake the competition

Hit people . . . because, y'know, violence deserves more credit than its given.

What other penalties does bad design deserve?

In which our hero discusses girls and the weather

2006-06-27T16:45:00.000-06:00

I have been admonished on my dating habits. Apparently I don't date enough, and I'm inclined to agree. I've actually met a tonne of new girls in the last couple months and am getting to be pretty good friends with them. They're all fun and classy. And a bit crazy, and that's pretty important, I mean, who wants a Boring Betty or . . . a standard Sally, a Mediocre Madeline, Average Amanda. Right, I'm stopping now. I aced the poetry unit of alliteration.

Moving on, it is hot outside. I enjoy it, it means if I sweat profusely I'm not alone. Not that I sweat alot, but I'm very self conscious of it. Like, very very very. It's probably the part of me I freak out about the most. No one likes a sweaty pig. Not even pigs. Well maybe fetishists, but Lethbridge is a far cry away from Vegas.

/end digression

But don't get me wrong, I enjoy the weather. I'm not one to find fault with mother nature on any occasion. Except our annual brown muddy Christmas's. Those are wholly unacceptable. Most meteorlogical events are fine by me insofar as they do not cause my death. I love rain, snow is nice, hot is nice. I'll take what I can get.

Call me cliche, but you could probably chalk this up to our "get it now" society.

Boo its too hot, I can't wait for winter.

Boo its too cold, I want the summer.

Spring is too wet.

Fall is too dry.

blah blah blah.

Learn to cope.

My first day as a wedding photographer - summary: loads of self-doubt

2006-06-24T23:54:00.000-06:00

So today my friends Megan abd Bradshaw got married, and I was their photographer. All day. From temple to reception. I am tired. I am also incrtedibly worried that the picture will be terrible. I got some advice from other photographers and I enjoyed but I just don't feel like a did a great job. For one, I couldn't get the camera to meter properly when the ocuple was in shade and the buildings behind were in bright midday sun. Everything came out underexposed :(. but thankfully Raw means I can fix that.

Anyways it was a fun experience. I'd do it again, because hey, I'll learn and its money. I filled my 2 gigabyte cf card twice throughout the day, so now I have about 500 photos to go through. Oh I hope some were good. The awful thing is I won't know for a while. After I finished the first 250 off I dumped the card an another friends external hardrive and kept on going. She's burning them to dvd for me but I wont get that for a couple days. So, yeah. I'm kind of upset because the lights were so dim during the reception, even at iso 1600 I could only get shutterspeeds of about 40 and that with my aperture as wide as I could get it at telephoto, which was 5.6. I know I'm paranoid, but you would be too, and try and deny it.

Yeah anyways, i'll post picture some other time.

123 GO!

2006-06-22T13:25:00.000-06:00

I'm really quite surprised. This past couple weeks has been unusually eventful for me. This is in stark contrast to the eye-gouging boredom that usually plagues our backwards little town. Of course what can you expect when your chief enterprise is cattle and wheat (or corn if your from Taber but we don't talk with those people.).

Anyways, now the excitement comes on the wings of my wonderful . . . my decent . . . the news comes from work. Word through the reliable and ever-present grapevine is that the company is being sold. Most people would be worried, losing sleep and generally running amok in a panicy fashion. Not I, gentle reader, not I. Three years of grave servitude to this place has pretty much rendered my 110% apathetic to its well being. My mum is hopefully getting a new job, I'm going to school. Its like the start of a new era. I'm quantatively twitterpatted, to quote a cartoon rabbit.

Sure I'm a bit sad to see a fifty year old locally owned and operated store go under. What self-respecting hometown fanboy wouldn't? But when the very foundation itself if crafted by workers spawned from the shins of lucifer him self, ones loyalties wane. And yeah, its just one more nail in the coffin filled with the good ol' days of homegrown stores and ma & pa business built on family values. Still, I'm only too happy jump this sinking ship like the sea-faring rat I am.

Besides, when it comes to local legends we still have that bridge...and those 70 year old twin hookers.

PANIC AT THE MY PLACE

2006-06-21T18:35:00.000-06:00

SO I applied to university today. The deadline is the 30th and in true braden fashion I am cutting it close. However,, because I applied for a B.F.A I need to have a new portfolio ready by the 15th. PANIC PANIC PANIC!

Anyways, university is a funny thing for me right now. Its not my first choice as there were things I wanted to do with Church beforehand. But those keep getting postponed for family-like issues, so I'm shifting gears and going to school. My plan is to take a year at the University of Lethbridge in arts with a bunch of other subjects to make sure I really want to go for something art-related (photography, obviously) and then transfer to the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary for their photography program. I'd like to have gone to the Emily Carr in Victoria, but thats so expensive (in living costs, tuition wise its the same, maybe less) plus I can't drive home on weekends. But we'll see, I have a year to decide.

A Brief outing and Inset Macro's

2006-06-19T16:45:00.000-06:00

Went to the river bottom today. I got some nice macro's of bugs and such with my new canon. These are all ISO 400, which is astounding to me because my old canon would have output images covered in blue noise. I love you EOS 350D!

As I was walking it began to rain a really nice light summer rain. Rather than run home, I sat in the grass and got wet. It felt great, very relaxing and cathartic. I suggest everyone go sit in long grass in a shower. Its good for the soul.

Food banks and cameras

2006-06-18T23:33:00.000-06:00

Okay so the last couple days have been pretty cool. On Saturday I took a trip to the big Calgary for a dance. It was sweet. I went up with just a couple girls. No one I'm especially interested in, just friends. Woo, late night road trips. Things I learned:

I cannot crush cans on my forhead. It will hurt and I will not look cool. Also my hands will get sticky.
Tacobell food will stir up troubles down south that are not good for dancing on.
I am the almighty master of da- funk. Bow to my moves, yo.

On saturday there was a volunteer thang for the food bank. House all over town got bags to donate food on. Then they hung it on the door for collection. Then the collectors brought the food in by the truckload for us to sort. And I mean TRUCKLOADS. We had a semi ready for transport from sorting and there was a forklift moving skids full of food. It was awesome. But of course, some people just threw some ridiculous things in for donations:

Shampoo samples from the mail
Half eaten loaves of bread
Dried beans in ziploc bags
Hotel-sized soaps
30gram things of spices

Like, thanks for donating, but really, think.

Also, I haven't had a chance to really play with my new Canon 350D. But what I have done is fun and cool. What I love the best is that the noise is so low. ISO 1600 gets me better quality than ISO200 on my G5. And autofocus is a snap. LOVE LOVE LOVE. Also, I have a bulb exposure mode again (shutter is open as long as you depress the button) which means I can try some star photos again. I'd like to find a cable release though.

Everytime I sit downb to write in this blog I have expectations of some witty discertation on peoples foibles and follies. But I just wind of journalling. And my life is really boring. So umm, imagine some real fun stuff and we be cooling.

aight?

20 minutes to go...

2006-06-15T11:44:00.000-06:00

and I'm all a twitter! Three cheers for excitement mixed with premeptive buyers remorse!

UPDATE:

After a brief tussle with the interac machine (apparently the bank gets to determine how much of my money I can spend in any given day) I am now part of the DSLR club! Wootzer! Now to make sum money's!

Salad-bration

2006-06-14T19:46:00.000-06:00

Good new everyone!

Work hired a new person. This is a startling turn of events precisely because my bosses subscribe to the school of thought that if four people can do one job well, then one person can do it if they work twice as hard and get paid half as much. Wondering where the extra numbers went? Funding for the third Italy vacation in the past six months! Hurray for questionable workplace ethics! Streamers and party hats alllll niiiight!

Anyway, Buddy O'Newguy is mildly frightening. Mostly because he is like 7 feet tall and looks a bit like Lurch from the Adam's family. Except he has a british accent and make bad attempts at humour all day long. Yes I am being a bit mean. But I am also jaded. They balance out . . . somehow. Anyways, what this translates to, essentially, is me having a bit less to worry about at the price of having another person to clutter up our already cramped department. But it won't last for long though, since the chap is supposedly replacing one of our other lasses when she leaves for maternity leave.

Watching my . . . coworker . . . train the new guy is kind of funny. Its like watching Helen Keller teach Anne Geddes how to photograph babies. I'm sure she means well, but it all sounds like a bunch of nonsense, random grunting and hand flailing. The end result is about the same too. The thought of someone actually learning how to do this job from her is so preposterous it makes 50 cent look like a legitimate entertainer. It's like a mirror-world type thing.

So to wrap up, its camera day tomorrow! Celebratory keyboard mashing! a4trp89awefhiavd80 4qt*YUICI**IKLKJ

Bah

2006-06-11T23:16:00.000-06:00

Today was a pretty bipolar day.

Some screwed up stuff at home that ended well. But during the spat is was really unpleasant. Afterwards went out with some friends from church ate some cake and played a game that basically involved throwing a pillow into faces. Great times. But its ending nicely.

Listening to some strings music. There is this guy Todd Mark Rubenstein, that takes popular music and lots of indie punk stuff too and arranges music for a string quartet to play. It was all the rage a while back on the 'net. Really great. Always makes me a bit introspective. So I'm afraid you'll need to indulge me here. I only hope I don't go emo, because I don't think Garth's pants will fit me.

Life is just so rollercoastery lately. Frankly it's all my fault. Making stupid mistakes, making people mad, or sad. I always think of myself as pretty people pleasing, but sometimes Im really self centred. Anyways....
It's major life change time, in that I resolved in winter to quit my job at the end of summer and move on in my life. The limbo I've been in is really awful. I need a catharsis of some sorts. I just don't know what kind. Oh well, life moves on, is it so bad just to go with the flow, so to speak? Not the worlds flow, because thats chock full of screwed-uppedness, but just let decisions make themselves? I worry way too much.

I need a haircut...

Im excited for thursday though, its camera day! Being pay day my intent is to plunk down the cash for a Canon Rebel XT. I have two reasons, one, I have a camera obsession, second is that a friend asked me to be their wedding photographer on the 24 of june and my dinky g5 is not up to the challenge. Speaking of wedding, everyone I know is getting married soon. As in ALL of my friends. I'm not ready to get married, but still its kind of weird.

Of course, I wouldn't oppose any offers . . . anyone? . . . anyone?

Lightning Round

2006-06-09T09:50:00.000-06:00

Fine, peoples want an update, peoples gets an update.

So no real blogging in about a year. Given my award losing attention span (I blame video games, and if the US media had anything to say, they are the root of all evil. Yes, even Hitler) it really shouldn't surprise you. So...what have I been doing. Well, not a whole lot. My eternal soul is still harnessed by the unquenchable hell-thirst of the family owned stationery store. Pencils and pens and demons, oh my!

We moved again. This time to a nice house in the nicer part of town. THATS RIGHT, I SAID IT (you know who you are). This house was owned by my uncle who, shall we say, had a certain affinity for illicit substances. Like when I say he had a closet grow-op, literally, in his bedroom closet, there was a 4 cubic foot grow-op. Apparently all those traffickers who get nicked when they establish big basement hydroponic labs with specialty lighting never truly appreciated the MDF door and febreeze method.
The house is nice enough, its key points are that I have my own bathroom, that I get my own bathroom and oh yes, I have my own bathroom. Im especially anal retentive (no pun intended) about my bathroom and it gets kept really clean. Which is difficult when you share a commode with two other females. I am prone to 12:30 am cleaning fits and nothing puts me to rest like sparkling porcelin and a streak free mirror.

Concerning work again, I made a resolution that I'm quitting at the end of summer and moving on with my life. Exactly to what, I don't know, but I'm done being suspended in employment limbo. I've sent resumes (or CV's to you UK types) to a few other design jobs. But I heard nothing back. Which is fine. All of them were long term, which I don't want. Bah. I'm not a big fan of long-term commital decisions. Not that I don't like moving forward, I just get paralyzed by the fear of making a wrong choice. Like some sort of precognitive regret. Augh.

But that doesn't matter,for today, it is raining. If you know me, you know I love rain. As in, move to Oregon or Vancouver or London and be happy ALL THE TIME! What about Seattle, you may be asking? I don't like their needle. Just what are they trying to prove? Its just another example of what scientists refer to as a "big city wang complex". You know it.

So thats my life, mostly. In a nutshell. To sum up. etc.

Holy Crap and update! and some pictures!

2006-06-07T19:43:00.000-06:00

At the bequest of Eury, some pictures I did for my best friends engagement! I didnt colour manage them, so excuse the profile mismatches.

For some reason Capture onePro (my raw processor) is cutting off the tops of some of th shots when it converts the files. Jerk program.

2005-09-05T14:55:00.000-06:00

On race and racism...

2005-07-28T09:33:00.000-06:00

In my circle of friends we have a very relaxed view of race. What I mean by that is, we really don't care about it. And so I'd wager about 80% of all the jokes and fun we have is based off of each other nationalities. Since most of my friends are primarily your average hodgepodge of european whiteness, most humour is derived from, well, me.
Its a great icebreaker for new people. Nothing sets a room at ease than someone yelling out something to the effect of "Pass the chips, ya dirty asian". Maybe some of you think this is incredibly rude and very politically incorrect. To you I ask, how long has that stick been up your bum and how deep. Race matters very little in the grand scheme of things. I'm more interested in whats going on in your head than whats going on on your skin. Or with your eyelids, as the case may be. I don't get offended because its harmless. I know my friends don't really care what nationality I am, I don't really care all that much.

Which isn't to say that I'm alright with people who are actually persecuting other based on race, or making actually very rude jokes. Stuff like that isn't cool. But at the same time, getting all up in arms over an off the cuff remark is rather sensationalist, in my opinion. To be quite frank, my solution to racism and resultant hurt feelings, wars, bombings and general unpleasantness is to make race a global non-issue. People need to stop caring where their ancestors came from, and stop caring where Joe Onthestreet's genetics lie.
And then, once no one gives a second thought to our racial histories, everyone will be free to make hilarious jokes about ourselves.

These are some of my favorite jokes that have been made about my inherent Japanese-ish-ness:

Jace: You don't want anything to eat?
Braden: Nah, I don't like that (particular food) very much.
Jace: What if I wok'd it up for you? Would that be more your style?

Someone: How many fingers am I holding up?
Braden: 3
S: How can you even tell with your eyes half closed like that? (which is funny because I'm half german and I don't really have your stereotypical "asian" eyes)

Oh, yeah, this place. I forgot about it

2005-07-08T17:26:00.000-06:00

'Not really. Life has either been too boring to warrant a post, or too busy to leave to post. So here's the readers digest version.

1. We have to move because our landlord is selling the house we rent. I'd like to step on their throat, bu local customs and and good manners forbid that sort of behaviour.
2. I'm a juror on worth now. Hurray!
3. this:

My pirate name is:

Mad James Bonney

Every pirate is a little bit crazy. You, though, are more than just a little bit. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate's life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

courtesy of lette's blog, well, courtesy of the address linked to in there.

Anyways...

yeah...

Noah would be nervous . . .

2005-06-07T08:42:00.000-06:00

The amount of rain we've been getting is silly. Just plain silly. Almost a week of it now, straight and pretty str0ng. Everyone is complaining about it. Not me though.

I love rain. L O V E

I dream about places like Seattle or Vancouver Island. Which isn't to say I don't like sun. I just think rain has this wonderful poetic quality to it. Plus I'm a hopeless romantic and what's more sweet than being caught in the rain with your honey.
Mind you, one needs a honey first to get caught in the rain with her. Bah, details.

The region here is on severe flood alert and heavy rainfall warnings. I'm still grinning though. I wonder if this is some hint as to a deep seating sadism, whereby people being wet and miserable is the chief reason I'm so happy when it rains. And since I find that notion amusing, when it rains my good mood is self perpetuating. I don't like deriving pleasure from other suffering, but its just water so I don't feel that bad.

Heaven Help me

2005-06-01T12:38:00.000-06:00

I have "It's raining men" stuck in my head.

please turn it off . . .

I blog like a middle aged couple for whom romance has become a chore

2005-05-31T10:32:00.000-06:00

Wilted and saggy, world weary and heavy laden.

That or I just forget to all the time.

I am happy now. Work has slown back down to easily manageble and last night was the first time in a long stretch of wretched months I didn't dread the coming day. I'm still frustrated by people, but now I have time to cope with it, rather than cramming it down into my already crowded psyche.

I imagine its something like a kegger in there. All my old thoughts and fantasies running around sweat soaked and screaming, my brain pumping out Bob Marley while my more rational thought processes run around nude screaming the lyrics to My Sharona. No small wonder I think the way I do, what with the rampant disorderly conduct going on up there. My bizarre and abstract thinking that some how used to link name-calling to bacon and lampshades (as a child) is probably wholly responsible for the weird and wonderful ideas I get for artwork. My head is screwed up and I like it that way. Well, some of it anyways.

My mental state aside, I've been doing lots more photography. I shot some portraits for a friends daughters graduation and I'm really happy how they turned out. One of them, I feel, could even pass for a shot from the top rated studio in town. I do lots of work for them all, so I feel like I have this deep secret that should never see the light of day. My dream is to one day usurp their strangle hold over the professional photography market in town. I'm an ambitious man, a photographic despot, if you will. Of course these are all dreams now, little more than the sociopathic muses of a young man.

As I web-log, I realize that I haven't written like this in months. I think it a sign stress is on the decline. At the risk of sounding like the geek I am: w00t

Gearing up for some really great photography

2005-05-20T09:19:00.000-06:00

This weekend is going to be a great weekend for my photography. One Saturday, the Nikka Yuko Japanese Gardens will be starting off the season with a midnight showing. The gardens are simply one of the most beautiful and tranquil areas in Lethbridge and at 15 dollars for a season pass, pretty economical as well. I fully expect to use up both of my memory cards and a few rolls of film Saturday evening as I plan to be there from just before sundown until well after nightfall. I hope the weather is conducive to good photography, nice clean light with a few clouds to add some splash to the sky. After it gets dark I couldn't care less what the sky wants to do.

In other photography news, I'm trying to get in contact with a printing company out of Calgary, Alberta that furnishes Lethbridge's Museums and other tourist outposts with postcards for us and other parts of Southern Alberta. I'd like to try and sell a few images. I think I could get it done because, to be perfectly frank, the stuff they have now is total crap. All of them are photos in harsh midday sun with dark long shadows and uninteresting angles. Any silly bugger with a point n' click could have done them. I'm confident I can outdo them. Add into the mix that I can also do lots of digital manipulation and enhancement, well . . . you see where I'm going with this. The only question is how best to set about doing this. I have a few ideas, but I'm not certain the contact information I have is going to lead anywhere. I wish they were a local company and I could meet in person, but through the wires is about the best I can manage now.

Blood, sweat and jeers

2005-05-11T17:17:00.000-06:00

The reason for my title?

As of tomorrow I will be finished by awful, grueling project for a financial insititution. Total gain for the store is something like 5 or 6 grand, which, rest assured, I will be sure to let my bosses know. In the grand scheme it isn't a whole lot of profit compared to other contracts, but for one guy (plus the odd grunt nabbed off the sales floor) to do single-handedly from start to finish, I think its something.

The whole thing has taken three weeks to finish. 2 weeks of occaisional work and then 1 week or frantic rushing about. Frankly I'm exhausted. Tomorrow I have a few last pieces to finish up, double check my quantities and off to shipping I'll delightfully skip.

I'm now so far behind in my other work that I really ought not to be blogging at work, but there really isn't too much to do just before close. I never heard back from the other print houses in town as to what someone like me can expect in terms of wages, so I'll need to use this as a main bargaining tool. To be frank I only expect my employment here to last another 6 months or so before I have plans to move on in my life, but thats 6 months I could be earning what my work is worth, thank you very much.

Once I'm done I plan to take some vacation time. I just so burnt out from doing ridiculous amounts of work. But I know what I leave behind will fall to pieces without me. And I'm not being pretentious. I left work one hour for lunch and...no, its not worth it, I'm not getting worked up over this again.

I enjoy the responsibility of my job. I have a lot of stuff to do and I get to make all kinds of big decisions, not to mention telling some people what to do :)

Its good experience and will help me nail down a real career later on. Co-worker issues aside, I'm thankful to have it.

My Life is like a...

2005-04-28T16:42:00.000-06:00

No, sorry, nothing. The analogy pumps are dry today.

Life has been especially taxing lately. Work has been ridiculously busy. I have some jobs that are months behind schedule. That notion makes me feel ill. I hate being behind in anything. I'd almost say I'm starting to get borderline workaholic in that I wish the day had an extra three hours so I could finish things up.

My co-worker has evolved beyond simply annoying and is seriously beginning to grate on my nerves to the point that I'd estimate a week or two or her current attitude before I blow up.

I don't like to go into depth about people I dislike, because I don't like being a gossip.
But on the other hand I need to vent:

She will never answer the phone. Well, that's not fair, hardly answers the phone. This in and of itself is no problem at all. The problem stems from the fact that I get more projects for myself because I answer the phones all day. I get more work. Hurray.

Its a struggle to get her to help customers who come to the counter. It basically becomes a contest to see who will budge first. She'll sit at her computer and tick tack away with someone looking right at her. Sometime for several minutes. It just irritates me that she expects me to handle all the customers and phonecalls. Then on top of that do work for her when it involves more than point and click on the PC. Anything involving photoshop is suddenly "A job Braden would like to do". When in actuality its a job Braden only wants to do because he likes to see quality results come out of the shop and he knows he is the only one who can do such. I've taken over several projects just because I don't want to see them bunged up. Good on me for being ambitious and results driven, but its taking its toll on my sanity.

Sigh, oh well, complaining isn't going to get me anywhere, I'll stop here.

In Good News:

I bought a really nice pair of New Balance running shoes and have embarked on that wonderfully difficult to commit to path we call physical activity. I went for an hour long run on Monday, which put enormous strain on my lazy muscles. But I felt great afterwards, and had far more energy in the morning than I did on days without a run. Of course though, the universe can't leave well enough alone and it is now snowing. I like being healthy, but I don't want to be freezing while I'm at it.

Mentoring Photographers at Worth has been a fun experience. My mentee has come quite a ways, I feel. The recent photo she took for the Soft contest looks great! Loads of improvement over her older photos. Personally, though, I feel like I haven't been the best of mentors. Doing things over email has just been...so disjointed and difficult. I feel most of what she has improved upon has been her own self exploration, rather than my instruction or guidance. Our month is almost up, sadly, but I'll throw my name down again to help another person.

because helping is fun!

I have an online portfolio now!

2005-04-20T09:44:00.000-06:00

The URL is rather ungainly and I still have some bugs to work out, but I now have a nicely composed place where I can send people to when they are interested in my art and photography. It isn't very full right now, but that will change as I track down all the paintings I've moved or given away to friends and find other good photos hidden deep in my hard drive. This is really quite fun because a) it will give me something to obsess over for hours, tweaking this and that, b) I won't have to go into the tedious and unaesthetical process of logging on to worth or artalyst to show people my work.

Oh and free is a lot cheaper than smugmug, (also much faster loading, since I can control thumbnail quality).

For the interested, you can hop over to my site, Images Missing an Audience
I hope to have all the bugs worked out and soon add small articles and guides that I'm working on for the photography beginners at worth1000

I break promises almost as fast as I can make them...

2005-04-19T08:26:00.000-06:00

Well, promises to myself anyways.

I didn't blog as much as I wanted to last week, mostly because I spent three days being sick and feeling generally miserable. And the weekend was mostly crap too, so we won't go in to my week.

But this week should be better! I started working on my online portfolio again last night. A completely new design than what I started with 6 months ago. If I work on it for a few hours tonight, and if everything goes according to plan, namely I don't bugger things up to an incredible degree, I should have something halfways functional to show for by the end of the night. Yay me.

In other news, I'm thinking of spending a couple weeks living with my dad. Kind of a getaway from real-life. Not that there is anything wrong per se with my home, it will just be a change of scenery and probably really beneficial to my mental health :) . Plus I hardly see him anymore, and that really hit home this weekend when we celebrated my sister's birthday.

And that has absolutly nothing to do with the fact he has a trampoline, either.

none . . . whatsoever . . .

I am blogging way past my bedtime...

2005-04-12T00:24:00.000-06:00

Why? Because we went bowling on a Monday at precisely 11:00 pm. I was hesitant at first because I am usually eight miles to dreamland by then. Well I went and had loads of fun. Two guys wanted lifts to the bar, we fixed their wagon.

This isn't an spcially interesting update, I'm just holding up my end of the bargain. Perhaps tomorrow will bring new tales of dizzying heights and swashbuckling adventure! Or perhaps I'll go walk the dogs in the thanks-to-DST-sunny after work hours.

Spring forward indeed!

I realized tonight....

2005-04-10T23:31:00.000-06:00

That I blog far too much about work. This may be partly in fact due my lack of a social life. Coupled with a tendency to come home and hunker down infront of various monitors and screens, or books if I'm feeling intellectual.

That said, this week I will try my durndest to

a) blog shortly every night
b) NOT blogwhine about how abhorrent work is
c) Blog instead about the things I do at night that will differ from computer screens and playstation games.

wish me luck in my carpe diem-esque endeavours.

Everytime I read something my writing style changes...

2005-04-08T12:34:00.000-06:00

From the early days of my childhood, weaned on Full House, Bill Cosby and the low-brow antics of Family Matters, I had always imagined what life would be like if it more closely bared a semblance to sitcoms and Friday night television. As I progressed in age, my tastes in comedic stylings matured. In school years the warm glow of the Simpsons, Drew Carrey and the odd British comedy (Keeping up appearances, for example) were oft reflected in my vibrant youthful, albeit naive eyes.
With somewhat of a quiet moment of surprise, I realized today my life, or at least the occupational portion of it, is rather harmonious with the decades old tenets of prime-time comedy. Would you like to know what I have discovered?

I don't like it one bit.

The bitter reality of having numerous co-workers inconvenience me with trivial and utterly stupid matters is not something I've taken a shine to. Looking in my files for their work, asking me question about clients I don't associate with. They are very minor infractions against my sanity, but they tend to snowball to Olympian proportions quite speedily.

Most customers are also viewed in my mind as impediments to my work. But I'll write a discourse on them another day.

Aw crap...

2005-04-08T09:12:00.000-06:00

Today is off to cracking start. And by cracking I don't mean the British colloquialism for great, I mean the desperate need to crack my head against concrete so as to render me incapable of work thereby absolving me of any and all design-related obligations. Everytime I claw my way to the top of my work pile, the nasty little buggers seem to clutch hold of my ankle and wrench me back down into the thick of it. Jerks.

In other news, my dad won a trip to Egypt!

EGYPT!

That would be really beyond amazing. I mean, after museums and all that great stuff, I'd probably be bored. But imagine photographing Egypt? That sort of stuff is my dream! Of course, I'd be terrified to walk around Cairo and...other places (they have other places right? :) ) by myself, but the opportunity to do travel photography would make me weak at the knees.

But, my father, being the ridiculously down-to-earth man that he is, has opted to take the cash payment instead. Which I don't find entirely surprising considering he is on workman's comp after having injured his shoulder. Still, a large red exclamation mark is the best the English language can do to display the excitement of such an opportunity.

!

(I don't know why I am so excited, its not like I would get to go anyways...)

A rather busy week

2005-04-05T10:18:00.000-06:00

So, the last little bit has been pretty hopping for me.

At work we finished store wide inventory over the weekend. That wasn't a fun thing, however. Think "counting pens" for 4 hours.

Why, oh why, do I work in a stationery store!?!

However, it does make it fun when "Office Supplies" pops up for a photo contest. I'll have to rummage around on my lunch for things to take and photograph tonight. :)
Work is going swimmingly, the bulk of my major or very late projects are delt with, which makes coming to work and dealing with stress much much easier. Its nice when things just flow.
Co workers, however are, well, less than amicable. Besides being technically incapable of the job they have been given, my colleague/supervisor is now spending a couple hours with a sales rep for one of our giftware suppliers, leaving all the customers to my lonesome. Hurrah. I like all the various graphic work I get to do, but when three peoples work (There are only two of us, but we are quite understaffed for the volume we have) gets shovelled on to my shoulders because I "know how to do all that kinda stuff", I can very quickly get behind and burned out. Which makes for lots of malcontent when I get chewed out for being late on work from both customers, management and the very supervisor who is responsible for adding to my workload daily. Suddenly I can empathize with all those people who snap and cause random bodily harm at the work place.
Outside of work, things are hunky dorey. (/me makes a note to look up the etymology on that one). At church I got called to be an assistant primary teacher, basically sunday school for little tykes between 5-11. That'll be fun, I love kids. I was a substitute for a couple times and the kids are really nice, but jeeze, are they ever nuts! I plan out about a 45 minute lesson and wind up spending half an hour trying to calm them down. Like I said, I love kids, I just can't control them (but candy bribery can easily remedy that)

Later today I will try and finangle a raise. I going to email some other print shops in town and see what they would offer as a starting wage for someone with my experience and use that to put the hurt on management here. When you consider I make the same amount per hour as our cashiers, I don't think I'm being overly presumptious or greedy.

Wish me luck!

The $1300 mistake no one cared about.

2005-04-01T16:24:00.000-07:00

So, I have been less than faithful in updating this page.

Sue me.

Or, if you would prefer to keep your toes out of legal whitewater, let me amuse you with tales of woe and misfortune. On Wednesday this week I got in paper for a big big order that was going to be delivered the next day. More correctly, the paper arrived a week ago, I didn't do anything with it untill Wednesday. Anyways, It is Wednesday and for whatever reason I am seriously sleep deprived (which is odd considering I went to bed at a quasi-reasonable hour) and this all makes for a very cranky and easily distracted Braden. Long story short, I spend about an hour cutting 6 cases of special order paper the completely wrong way. I don't know this untill I stumble back to my desk to write up an invoice and go over the order information. I'm not a swearing man, but the inside of my head was more colourful than a hippy commune in 1960's San Francisco.

At this point, I decide it would be a good idea to find out eactly how much all this paper has cost the store. A few computations reveals a total loss of $1330.

I am now in full on panic mode. The paper is cut, it can't be uncut. The cases were a special mill order and took nearly 3 weeks to come in. In 60 minutes I have single handedly (Actually because of safety locks on the cutter, it was technically double handedly) destroyed a months worth of work. It is late in the day and all managers have gone home or are leaving shortly. This means that I got ALL NIGHT to sit and stir over how angry my bosses would be, and how hard and how fast their foot would deliver my rear end to the curb. This did nothing to assuage my already hot temperment.

Morning comes, and I sheepishly drag myself to work, dreading the coming confrontation. I approach Lindy, my supervisor/co-worker. Our conversation went something like this:
Braden: "Ummm, Lindy, I made a really big mistake..."
Lindy: (Very cautiously) "What was that?"
Braden: "You know that paper for Glenwood? Yeah, I cut it the wrong way."
Lindy: "All of it?"
Braden: "Yeah..."
Lindy: "Hmmm...well, that's too bad."

and off she goes about her morning.

And once again, we have clear proof that I am a chronic worrier and am prone to making monumental mountains of eeetsy bitsy mole hills.

Besides, I mean, $1330 who cares right?
/sarcasm

I'm making money as a photographer!

2005-03-20T14:52:00.000-07:00

Well, sort of.

A couple people at work asked if I would do portraits for them. Still its pretty exciting. I'm not exactly charging much, I just said "pay for your prints, and give me $20 for my time." Because, honestly, I'd do it for free jut for the practice, but I won't tell anyone. Shhh.

Brain Implants

Some neurologists at a New England hospital have successfully implanted a device into a quadriplegic man brain that allows him to interface with a computer using only his mind. How amazing is that?!
I can't wait till this kind of technology is perfected and made publicly available.

RSS and DQ

2005-03-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

Acronyms abound!

Well, gentle reader. It has finally happened. I have recieved my first disqualification at worth1000. It brings a tear to my eye. A good one, mind you. I feel like now I belong, like I'm one of the many. For those who don't know, its kind of a warm feeling; I liken it to being surrounded by your favorite flavour of jello before it has set completely.

Why was I DQ'ed? Simply put, I decided "Carl" was a two syllable word. Admins disagreed. To them I declare: "Fair enough. I shrug happily in your general direction". Besides, it was only for the Haiku Wars contest. No big.

For the curious, here is the offending poem:

----------------------------------

Wow! A Hot girl in
Leather pants! Why is she named
Carl, anyways?

---------------------------------

Non-issues aside, I have decided I need to learn how XML and RSS feeds work. Currently my knowledge of them is roughly equivalent to my experience in dating: Startilingly lacking.

Somehow I can finangle a way to make a program work in such a way that news sites and blogs etc. that I find of interest deliver their respective updates to a single webpage, for ease of reading and edumacation. But, alas, I am confused and brutally brain sacked when it comes to figuring this stuff out. Oh well, I like ignorance anyways...

worthiversary!

2005-03-08T00:49:00.000-07:00

I realized tonight I've been coming to worth for over a year, since Jan 20, as a matter of fact.
That pretty durn cool! I've met a lot of awesome people and totally sparked up my love for art again. I refuse to make self-agrandizing posts in the 'shack, so I won't but I'll post here so, like two people can see it. Well, atleast I'll have some corrboration. :)

Elb's AUDIOPHILANTHROPY Pt. 2

2005-03-08T00:03:00.000-07:00

AUDIOPHILANTHROPY: Pt. Deux

This week: John Wort Hannam
"Pocket Full of holes" & "Dynamite and Dozer's"

As a general rule, I strongly dislike anything vaguely country. But, man, this guy is beyond amazing. I used to think nothing good could come from Southern Alberta, boy howdy was I wrong.

John Wort Hannam (or John Wort Hannam and the Sound Merchants) is more folk and grassroots though, than country. In fact I don't know why I even wrote that as an introductory statement. I retract it. In thought, at least.

What I like the most about JWH (acronym power!) are the amazing song writing ability he has. Whereas many people will tell you the best songs are written from actual experience, JWH defies that sentiment and sings amazing stories of people in small prairies (and small maritime towns as well). Hannam does a fantastic job of putting himself (and by association, us) in the shoes of the various people he portrays. Ranging from Albertan farmers to Nova Scotian (or thereabouts) fishers, to cowboys, to a gunslinger from my own Hometown, Hannam shows his great versatility in song writing.

His lyrics are full of nuance and introspection. One of my favorite songs is the title track of "Dynamite and Dozer's", JWH's latest album. The song is written in response to the death of the old grain elevators around the southern part of my fair province. Through out the track Hannam makes mention of the tension between past and future, and laments the loss of the old ways. "Another's up for closure, dynamite and dozer's, Tradition ain't no match for progress....thats the way things go these days I guess." "whats that in the picture? your grandkids wll ask, standin in the history museum. A small scale model, some old photographs, likey the only way they'll ever see 'em." To me, this song epitomizes Southern Alberta and the farm and ranching culture thats existed here for a century at least.

Another reason I count myself as a huge JWH fan, and this is something no one else can really appreciate, is the local quality. Everyone loves a song that written about them. Now none of these songs are really about Braden, but I have grown up with lots of the stories and culture and historic refrences and allusions he uses. "Above ground" is a great example. Hannam writes a pretty chilling ballad about the life in the colleries up in the mountains a few hundred kilometers away. "Everyday is a good day when its above ground". The lone guitar plucking away really gives a great sense of the drudge and monotony of hauling 'black-gold' from the earth. The climax of the song records the frequent explosions and cave ins tha occur in these workplaces. " Early mornin', chill in the air, her blood runs cold as the sirens blare, underground is so unforgiven, check the name on the list of the missing. All in all 28 bodies are found, everyday's a good day when it's above ground."

I could gush for hours as to why John Wort Hannam is someone that everyone who likes folk and grassroot music should listen to. What it boils down to is great musical story telling, fantastically toe-tapping instrumentation, and a great voice. Love it!

Policies and Politicians

2005-03-05T10:17:00.000-07:00

It really doesn't affect me in a direct manner, the US border's closure to cattle trade; but since I live in the heart of Canada's ranching area, the decision to keep the border closed for the time being impacts my city heavily. The economy has really shifted in the past year or so since the first BSE case. Maybe thats just my cow town finally entering the 21st century, maybe it is the fact that businesses are diversifying in light of the economic impact one mad cow (or several, as the case may be) has. But I digress.

I have friends on both sides of the border. So I feel I am not entirely biased when I say both our respective governments need to take the sticks out of their arses with regards to foreign policy. The Bush government needs to learn to compromise and give a little before they take. Paul Martin needs to grow a backbone and take a stance that will best serve our countries interests. I'm not a big fan of missiles being put anywhere and Reagan's idea to test warheads over Canada strikes me as particularly self concerned but like it or not, America is a military focused country and Canada shares nearly ten thousand miles worth in border with it; eventually Canada is going to need to take a position on things of a militaristic nature and it ought to well do a better job than the waffling Martin's cabinet has done on the issue.

My personal thoughts on the Missile Defense project? Unecessary. Remember the last time the US went cuckoo for missile stuffs? You might have heard it called something like...oh yeah, the Cold War. Granted political tensions aren't what they were between Stalin and Truman/Eisenhower, but to me it seems this will only result in a new collective action problem, a "race to the bottom", if you will. What do I mean by that? Country A builds a missile supply, but says they are purely for defense only. Country B doesn't belive Country A's benign intent and builds a larger supply. Country A, percieving a threat in Country B's action increases its weaponry again. Rinse and repeat.

So yes, I support parliaments decision to back out of Bush's missile defense program. I also support our governments decision earlier to back out of the Iraqi conflict in terms of the initial assault. Canada has a history of being a peacemaker before a despot-toppler. But I think in light of recent insurgent attacks in the area, Canada should step up its military spending and take a more active role in that region. By no means do I have the desire to become a world super-power like the USA, but when we are sending our soldiers out with decades old vehicles that have the potential to turn into several thousand pounds of shrapnel in an armed conflict, and an airforce comprised of near-to-death craft, it says someting about how much we value our young men and women in the armed forces.

I think I'm losing my train of thought here and turning this into more of a rant. Whoops.

What that was a round about way of saying, Canada needs to lend a bit more support to the US, and since they are very active in military roles world wide, that is presumably the easiest way to do so.

But at the same time, I'm getting tired of US protectionism. I can appreciate where people like R-CALF are coming from. But honestly, it isn't as though the geological structure of the plains changes at the Montana border. An American rancher and a Canadian rancher are the same. Stop looking at things in terms of governmental affiliation. What hurts you hurts us and vice-versa.

Similar is the protectionism over soft wood lumber and fisheries. I can't understand why congress (my apologies if thats the wrong branch of government) wants to shut out or at least severely limit Canadian trade of these resources, and at the same time expect unconditional support for things on an international front.

Does that makes much sense? Not to me, it doesn't.

Well, thats my tirade for the day. I'd love some input as to your thoughts. I have fairly thick skin, so let fly with examples of how I am wrong. I'll still love you...

...probably.

I enjoy videogames

2005-02-24T11:08:00.000-07:00

And as such I am prone to such social stigma as:

Nerd/geek/dork or any other variant
I have no friends
I do not shower regularly
I have fantasies about Elf Princesses and their heaving elven busoms.

I'll have you know that three of those are wrong. I'll let you decide, because every likes to judge.

Anyway, that aside, the next few months will be a trying time for me, or more correctly, my bank account.
No fewer than five of the coolest games ever are coming out with awesome sequels, starting from the past couple months to the next three or so. Each ones arrival on the shelves will be greeted with an internal struggle as "fun" Braden and "rational" Braden duke it out in a metaphysical match of the Titans. Rick Flair said he'd be a guest ref.

Since I don't really do much else, I figure I can justify $60 a month for three months or so. Well, maybe not so much justify, as drown out any second thoughts with deep space epics and the sound of finely tuned digital cars gunning down circuits in Tuscany. Mmmmmm

But this doesn't mean I'm the kind of reclusive, nerdular shut in, desperately trying to horde treasure in some digital kingdom. I likey friends more, and thats that. Also, those Everquest type games frighten me, just a bit. I'm not sure why. Mostly I dislike the price. In the end I think most games I play have an intial 4 month or so life before I move on to other things. And in the end the bill for that game will have broke $100. I wound up doing the same think for the Sims. Curse you Electronic Arts!

Yeh, anyways...

Audio Philanthropy - Part I

2005-02-16T22:26:00.000-07:00

Because I love music and more so because it pains me to know that people listen to bad music, I'm starting something I hope to do weekly. This is, simply put, to introduce the two or so people that read this blog to excellent music they may or may not have ever heard. I have alway wanted to write about artists I felt were not getting the recognition they deserved. Though this is in no way going to bring them popular accord, it makes me feel good and thats always a nice thing. So with out further adieu:

Braden's
AUDIOPHILANTHROPY: Pt I

this week: Jeremy Fisher - Let it Shine

I picked up his CD (I belive he has a previous release, I haven't seen it yet though) not too long ago and I'm very happy the record store decided to do a little spot on him at their "Check out this CD and spend your money on it" booths. This guy jumped the ranks of artists I like and frankly is quickly becoming a new favorite. His lyrics and voice just have such an earnest quality to them. They make me want to listen, something I wish more music did. Something about Fishers down low, homey sounding songs illustrate that warm idyllic vision about childhood hometowns we all share, and how we interact with those memories, true or not.
The biggest reason I like Fisher's music is that it has actual substance, it has weight and reality to it. The lyrics are intelligent, (the graveyard is full, grandma used to say / if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything) and the instrumentation, though not groundbreaking, fits his style prefectly. Plus he plays harmonica and the world needs more of those little metal music-makers. Bit of folk, touch of country, plain great acoustic rock. The album has the standard teenage/highschool ballad, oddly enough its named 'Highschool'. Nothing really great about it, its what you'd expect, no more no less. Thankfully the disc has many far more interesting songs. 'Living on the Moon' is a dark little song with what I think are great vocals and nice steady beat. "Lemon Meringue Pie" has fun quick lyrics and is simply great for singing along to.
The store compared him to Hayden or Jack Johnson, I don't know if I agree with that. I can think of a number of artists to draw similarities too, but I doubt you'll have heard of them. As far as mainstream goes...a rougher, less brighteyed and more realistic Jason Mraz; maybe the b-sides to some Nashville country bands.

Anyways, the album is fresh to me still, so my opinions are hastily formed. check out his website: www.jeremyfishermusic.com

Hope over to 'music' and have quick listen. Like him or not, it'll be a refreshing break from whatever the radio is playing.

Knock knock...

2005-02-11T16:54:00.000-07:00

I haven't really been around much....

You might be wondering exactly where I haven't been around. Well, Toledo, for instance, but thats a whole different story involving state troopers and animal cruelty charges. We'll save that for another day.

No, I mean the Mos Eisley of the 21st century (ooo an obscure star wars reference, cranking up the nerd today!), the good ol' cyber space. To be frank, I haven't touched my computer at home for more than a couple minutes over the last few weeks. To be franker, I haven't exactly filled that time up with anything more healthy or even active. And to be the frankiest, I've been watching TV and whiling the hours away on the playstation.

So I'd say my life is far from balanced. I spend 8 hours a day running around frantically trying to meet deadlines, then I come home and crash to a speed that sets a lethargic snail to shame. To be honest, I kind of like it. Except on Fridays, when I feel that unless I am doing something exciting, I've wasted the weekend. Last night was a Valentines Dance for some 20 something's. I'll add in here that I hate valentines day. But thats a rant for another day, possible two days from now. But it was fun. I was so hawt looking in pinstrip black pants, black shirt and furiously bright pink tie. Soooo Good! Mind you now I am exhausted and my legs feel like jelly, but whatever.

augh, I'm so hungry...time for a bagel melt!

Screw you, mother nature

2005-02-04T11:13:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has ever lived in Southern Alberta, or even knows the slightest bit about them good ol' prairies, knows one thing:

The weather here is, without a doubt, completely and wholly 100% screwed up.

If SouthAB is good at anything, its a fake spring. And I don't mean it stops snowing for a couple of days.
No, that would be reasonable. Nope, the snow dries completely up, skies are bluebird and we hit between +10 - +15 degree weather.

In January.

Its very nice, and I can't complain. The problem is I am too easily fooled by the duplicitous weather. I bust out the spring CD's, throw open the windows in the home (nevermind the fact that the windchill still puts us at about +2) dance around like some pagan sprite and come this close to lighting a fire to my sweaters and long underwear. Then I snap out of it and realize that in two days the faux equinox will come to a crashing end up against -40 degrees and penguin freezing blizzards.

Stupid weather, this is all Mark Campbells fault.

I am presently ill

2005-01-29T15:29:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-01-20T17:01:00.000-07:00

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

2005-01-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

**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

2005-01-11T16:55:00.000-07:00

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

2005-01-08T18:11:00.000-07:00

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

2005-01-05T17:10:00.000-07:00

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.

Festivities abound!

2004-12-24T08:53:00.000-07:00

Oh joy of joys, its Christmas Eve-day!
Know what this means? Parties, family, friends and general merriment?

NO, bzzzzzt, wrong

It means today I will have teeny-boppers hopping in wanting to get all sorts of touchy-feely crap made for a last minute Christmas present. I may be only 19, but I already have a healthy dose of contempt for this crowd. I'm slightly hypocritical in these regards, considering one of my good friends is merely 16 (he's my best friends younger brother, but one of the coolest kids you'll ever meet). But that doesn't stop me, history is built on double-standards. Last year I made the mistake of being a bit to generous in terms of my time and effort spent on customers. As a result, I was at work for nearly 3 hours overtime. Children beware, the Braden will not be showing mercy today. Added to that I am going on vacation next week, and need to have umpteen million things done by 4 pm tonight. This means I probably ought not be blogging or surfing the forums at Worth, but really, would that be a healthy thing to do? I think not.

Last night I received news that our intimate family dinner tonight would be trespassed upon by my thirteen year-old cousins boyfriend. To which I replied with a resounding, WTF!? Of course, this did not please me, and I griped as much in Hyjinx last night. 'Tomi held that I was been miserly. I suppose I was. Maybe he doesn't have a good family to be with, and maybe if we are all welcoming, it will be the highlight of his holiday. Maybe it will take his mind off of his whiskey swilling mother, tossing bottles about the ramshackle apartment as she scrambles to find her bra, gone missing in a fit of passion with an as yet nameless bar fly from the local pub. Worn pots piled high in the sink, as if to suggest a T-FAL Tower of Babel. Daddy won't be calling on Christmas, cause he's busy 'consulting' with his new buxom (best word ever) secretary, memos and files flurrying through the recycled office air.

Sorry, where was I? Ahh, yes...

But its equally possible he could be Steven Price. My stomach wrenches at the thought. If ever there was a candidate for pointless medical surgeries...

Of course, my cynical musing are distracting from the overall cheeriness of the season. A warm fuzzy glow that even Elvis' worse Christmas carol could not dampen. Serious though, I am so glad he left the mortal coil. If he was still making songs, I would wish I was deaf. Its not that I hate his voice, the instrumentation for each and every Christmas song he ever wrote is a startling cacophony of brutalized festive melodies. Nat King Cole must be spinning in his grave.

Maybe you'd never know it from this post, but I am quite happy the big night is upon us. For all my bitterness, Christmas couldn't be a merrier time. In fact if you'll notice I'm starting to run out of synonyms for merry and happy, and their ilk.

So, Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, Freuhe Weinachten, Chimchiminey Chiroo...

And all that jazz...

The etiquette of gift giving

2004-12-20T22:36:00.000-07:00

Scenario: Christmas Day, my fathers house

I love my Dad, don't get me wrong. Nicest guy ever, nicer than me, even to customers, (now that's nice). Except he likes to get me ugly sweaters. And not just ugly, ones that are far too big for me. Now, I am by no means a specimen of masculine form, but people, I am no Fat Albert. I fit comfortably into decently form fitted things, not too tight, but not too loose. Frankly I find loose clothing makes me feel sloppy.
But I digress.
This is not a huge thing, except its a dilemma of guilt. Do I accept it and feel guilty because I wont ever wear beyond Christmas day. Or feel really guilty when I tell him I don't like it? The social ramifications of this situation are far reaching, as one can plainly see. On the one hand, I'll be wasting his money, and I don't want to do that. But on the other hand, I could hurt his feelings. Being one to not make waves, I'll probably just accept ugly sweaters and wear it on Sunday afternoons to make me feel better about myself. A win-win situation I feel.

In other news:

I feel like I've betrayed my childhood. It is now December 20th, and I have not watched a single Christmas Movie. This is serious blasphemy. I have long held that it is not Christmas until I have seen "Rudolph the red-nosed Reindeer" at least once. I love that movie, Burl Ives is my hero, only he could play a banjo and make it sound like a piano. As a kid I would dream about the Island of Misfit toys. Maybe it symbolized some subconscious feeling of isolation and yearning for acceptance. Maybe I just liked polka dotted elephants and Charlie-in-the-boxes. Who knows, the childhood mind is fickle and transient.

Just like you, Winona Ryder

Today Braden is Happy

2004-12-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

No real reason, I'm just always happy Sundays. But today I just feel like I'm coming out of the funk I've been in for a while. Maybe its Christmas, maybe its the promise of snow and skiing (Should Mother Nature sort her crap out and delver us some snow. Yes you, you cold dirt loving harlot) maybe I'm just happy to be mentioned by KellenHeller in her interview. Yeah, I'm easily excited.

In other irrelevant to everyone but me news, at work we are getting a new printer/copier thing. This will make my life much easier. It's apparently going to fuse toner without oil. I'm sure for most that means approximately two tenths of nothing, to me though that means clean prints which is the number one source of grumpy customers. Something I think the world could do without.

Christmas is winding up for its inevitable brown climax. I don't believe I've had a white Christmas in six or so years, and everytime I get my hopes up when it snows in November, I just have my heart ripped out by the cold calculating heart of nature. Its not like its rocket science on the climates behalf. A little low pressure here, a bit of high pressure there and badaboom badabing, a less cranky Braden.

And in the end, isn't that what Christmas is all about ;)

Of Furniture and photographs...

2004-12-15T13:49:00.000-07:00

One thing people should know about me is that I am far from mechanically inclined, especially when comes to woodworking. Sure, I can perform basic repairs to most small machines, but put a desk together with any degree of competency? You'd sooner ask the Klein government to not waste our money. You know those stories about doctors botching surgeries by misconnecting arteries and leaving car keys in patients? Precisely the reason I will never go to med school. Case in point, my new desk. For its relatively low cost I was pretty impressed by the quality of it; nice good wood, and incomprehensible directions, because we all know anything with a clear, concise assembly will fall apart if an ant looks cock-eyed at it.

So this contraption had maybe 15, 20 pieces tops to it. But could I put it together with ease? Please excuse my self-depreciating laughter. I think by the end of the ordeal I had taken it apart and put it back together twice and had stripped the screws faster than you can say "idiot nineteen year old". In the end it was standing and I had lost only minimal amounts of blood. Yeah, good times. At least it wasn't like the chair Colin and I put together one Christmas. I swear it was forged by Lucifer himself. At night I could hear it whispering its murderous intentions, and honestly, I think glowed as the fires of hell...just a little bit.

In other news:

The final round of our photography tournament over on worth1000 went live for voting on Monday night. I feel my team deserves an apology, because I only got two shots finished for the whole tournament, despite numerous promises stating otherwise. We won't win, in fact I'll be impressed if we make 3rd, but who cares? I had fun, made a few friends, and took some pictures. A win-win situation...well maybe not, but its was great nonetheless.

Begin the Christmas Panic...

2004-12-10T11:13:00.000-07:00

I hate my brain.

Specifically, my terrible memory. I just remembered today, FRIDAY, several very time consuming and important projects I need done by sunday. I also work every day this weekend. Sometimes I wonder if my mind is plotting against me, or just find sadistic joy in watching me burn out ever so often. Sigh.

On the plus side, I've gotten to do more "work" at taking pictures. Our church wanted me to take some quick shots of everyone for our Christmas Dinner. It was a theme program (which I will go on record as saying was entirely ridiculous), and everyone was to wear bathrobes or towels to emulate the old style of clothing worn in Jerusalem 2000 odd years ago. All the families went around for an hour and a half with little bags of "money" and bartered and traded for food. A good theory, I suppose, but I was counting on endless amounts of stuffing and turkey. Needless to say, I was thoroughly disappointed.
But it was fun taking photos of everyone though. The light was terrible, and I'm much better at closer, more intimate shots. Let me tell you, families of 8 or more people are not conducive to that style of photography. It was fun but the photos came out par at best. But it was short notice, and I arrived late. Lets call it a draw.

I'm very excited, I got my Birthday/Christmas gift from my Mum today. Or rather yesterday, today I am bringing it home. Nothing too fancy, a nice small drafting desk to put in my room. Now, I finally have some place to read and draw, and at the same time, it can be set completely level, so it will double as a nice place to do photography.

Augh, why do all the cool things have to happen the weekend I'm so busy I could heave. And don't even try and make me think about the Christmas presents I owe. Well, a hermits life for me.
If someone sees me in#w1k hyjinx, yell at me, I should probably be painting or something...

I think I'm going to be sick...

2004-12-07T16:39:00.000-07:00

I am by no means ultra-modern in my school of thought. You're probably not likely to find me at a cafe having polite nihilistic conversation over some ridiculous sounding drink. Triple Schotz Mocha Flippity Bean Muncher is not the name for something I want in my body. If the meal requires more time to say it properly than to consume it, I want nothing to do with it. Caramel Apple Cider manages to squeeze by purely because of the fact it is a monumental achievement in the history of mankind. Seriously. For me I think its the lunar landing of beverages. Its just that good!
At the same time, I'm staying as far away from the similar thinking of the retired farmers swilling their coffee at Smitty's, talking 'bout them good ol' days. I like to think of myself as a bit of a hybrid thinker. Definitely a family oriented man, strong roots in traditional values, but also conscious of the new world blah bah blah. What it basically boils down to, people can think what they please. I'll just find comfort in the fact I know they are wrong and often times stupid. I like things that way. I'm very internal.

But things like Ashleymadison.com make me foam at the mouth, just a little bit. In a nutshell, this is a dating website, except rather than finding matches for singles across Canada, this site will help you cheat on your spouse. A study showed that of all the Canadian user of online dating services, about 20% or one in five users admitted to using the site for finding extramarital relationships. At ashleymadison.com the percentage is about 80%. Honestly, does the world really need garbage like this in it? Every other marriage is going to end in divorce, why on earth would we need a service to conveniently provide a catalyst? One of the points the sites creator makes in his defense during an interview is that "people looking for affairs are going to have them anyways", the site just facilitates that. Wow, thanks for that. That's like saying "Severely depressed people are going to kill themselves anyway." But do we give them Ginsu knives with diagrams to the major veins and arteries? And the site projects profits of $7 - 10 million dollars. This really stinks to me. Especially around Christmas time.
Stupid me for thinking everyone in Canada are alright folks.

Christmas is Here!

2004-12-06T16:34:00.000-07:00

If you'd allow me, I'd like to ramble on about my most favorite time of year.

I love this season. Christmas has always been very special, or rather, the build up to it. I love seeing our humble little mall all decked out in its Yule-tide finery, the city's downtown hung with gaunt, aged tinsel decorations and welfare-grade Christmas lights. Despite its resemblance to Christmas in a WWII bunker, Lethbridge is the only place I could ever fathom being for the holidays.
Of course, now that I'm well passed the rose coloured days of being seven years old and sitting on santa's lap, I find I really do miss the things we did year ago for Christmas. Traditions have withered away. I no longer see my extended family Christmas eve. In fact, the events of Dec 24 are largely in limbo until my parents decide to solidify them one or two weeks before. We don't go down to see the lights at the Brewery Gardens anymore (the city has cut back on the display, and I have no desire to go see dead plants and crappy wooden cutouts that the local gangs have pegged with bb guns, etc). The people that used to deck their entire lot as a sort of homage to every single piece of Christmas television have either died or moved or decided joy in the form of millions of electric lights was something they didn't feel like sharing. Actually I think we've all just forgotten where they live, I'm a bit of a drama-king.

Of course, I've started some of my own traditions. Now I can find gifts for friends and family. As much as I hate crowded stores (precisely the reason I stay away from Old Navy on weekends), I think there is something very awesome about people stuffed into thick jackets shuffling about to the tune of Nat King Cole and Wilson Phillips while they struggle to keep hold of their mountainous amounts of goodies. If you haven't noted yet, I'm a sentimental kind of guy. I'd like to have snowball fight with my dad and dance with my mom and snuggle with special girl-type-friends (could I find such a one) sooner than I'd like to do most things.
Also, skiing and playing videogames with my best friends during Christmas holidays (which sadly are non-existent now, Thanks responsibility) are great Christmas memories. You may not find gunning down your closest chum a cheery yuletide vision, but its frankly right up there with Christmas Morning and family dinners. Good times.

Chapter 1: Better late than never

2004-12-06T14:17:00.000-07:00

So, hi.

This isn't my first blog, mind you, but it is the first one I intend to update and hang on to. Somewhere out there are the digital bones of old blogs posted once or twice and then forgotten. But insofar as I can tell, I have managed to cull a bit more commitment for my otherwise ADD ridden life. This means that for the most part you can all have a pointless window into my mundane little hamster wheel of a life. Never one to pass up a bandwagon, I figured it was about time I shared myself with everyone. Among random musings, you can also expect to find tales of my stupid customers and recordings of my heavily videogame/TV influenced dreams.
Have fun, but you've been warned.

2004-12-06T14:12:00.000-07:00

my dimply mug