Scribbles: What a Dasterd!

None of these images hang on my walls.

Self portrait via computer this year. Was going to use one as my email signature. Nah!

Self-portrait circa ≈ school. 

When I hung paintings and prints I'd done at school and since 
on walls painted the colours I like ... it all matched? Perfectly.
That's why this painting has never hung on my wall.
But my point is that you'd better love yourself, just the way you are.

You are what you are.
And if you're a Dasterd ... you can't change. 
You can pretend - all your life, to all the world.
But the facts - they're lying in wait 'ou Dasterd!

Rehabilitation? Self-improvement?
Take a look at Gregory House! - Yes House has a friendly first name too ...

Go figure! But he's never, never, never friendly! He's a Dasterd!
He's proud of it. And we love it too! 
(Note "TOO" - not TWO or TO!)
You people who don't know the difference really peeve me.

If you're dasterdly - really, really dasterdly. You are going to Hell!
I know. It's spelt dastardly but I'm putting on an accent! So THhHrthrrr!
:P 
So this guy's on the radio going on about *delayed gratification*.
It's Radio National - honest, worthy, earnest ... G-F-C not S-E-X.
He said people have forgotten how to delay gratification.
Replace the word people with "consumers".
"Everything, all the time" - that's our motto.
Want a five-metre widescreen and an i-Phone? 
Whack it on plastic. What Global Financial Crisis? :D

We've not forgotten about delayed gratifcation. We refuse!
Just like our everyman Homer J. Simpson. 
Yep, Homer's to blame for the GFC.

This guy on the radio had another theory too. 
It's the media's fault.
Advertisers, marketeers, TV, journalists they make us unhappy with who we
are and so they force us to spend beyond our means... Love that line...
So I'm the dasterd! :?  (If you don't already know, I'm a journo)

The guy talking on Life Matters was Arun Abey: Co-founder now Executive Chairman
of international planning firm IPAC, head of Strategy at AXA
and a director at the Smith Family AND author of:
How Much is Enough? Money, time and happiness: a practical guide 

Scribbles: Someone still likes to read the newspaper even if it is upside down.

Got up and found a little bee on my breakfast table. I like bees so I think it's a sign that perhaps
this funk I've been labouring under is over. I ran up a steep, tall hill four times this
morning. And I mean run. The first time left me in respiratory arrest but it got better once
my heart and lungs moved up a few gears. I used to always exercise in the mornings but
for a year or so I've switched to nights in the gym.
Going to start mornings again. I think it makes you feel much better throughout the day.
Bee was in some kind of funk too. Must've been exhausted carrying all that pollen around.
I picked some nastursum leaves and flowers and place them nearby. Figured he likes colour.
He perked up and flew off at some point when I wasn't watching.
Isn't he cute? Almost bought a flip video camera this weekend but when I asked where the
menu was the salesman said there really isn't one: it's just shoot and zoom and not real
good zoom. So when I weighed it all up - even though it is HD - I like macro photography
and the video on the little Powershots isn't too bad for blogging anyway.
So I'm $30O less in the red. Phew!

Scriffles: #Duststorm one, #Spring Nil. Abandoning the garden to the powers that be.

So I planted little bulbs in Winter hoping for tufts of little blue flowers in Spring.
I didn't get many and now even they are being shriveled by the duststorm.
I got up this morning to a perfect day and took this photo of a crisp blue flower for an idea I wanted to develop.
I sat down to work at my computer at 7am.
I rang my sister in Sydney when I saw the red dawn there via Twitter.
I worked to 11.30am and thought I must've been coming down with a cold because I kept sneezing.
When I looked out the window I saw the dust haze. I locked the house up.
At 2pm, just for fun, I checked the flower. I took another photo.
I didn't photoshop it in any way except reduce it in size.
By 4.30pm, orange light went - sucked the radiance out of the flower too.

Scriffles: Imagine if you had dog sight.

Dogs, they just trot past a leaf without even noticing it - unless another dog has peed on it.
More important priorities than colour they have - as Yoda might put it.
Whereas people? This leaf caught my eye as I walked to the car. I was struck by the colours.

Yesterday, my niece was talking about dogs that watch TV and that they see very little colour.
So she was trying to imagine what it was like for dogs - seeing the world in black and white.
Now that's a strange concept for a 10-year-old (black & white).
Dogs, I said, make up for it with great smell and hearing.
My parents had a miniature sausage dog who was more useful than her younger
counterparts even when she was old and blind.
She picked up a car driving into the gravel driveway of the farm at the gate - about a km away.

And for the first time my niece asked if I was a painter. I said yes.
"Where are your paintings?" she asks.
I told her tucked away - thinking of the grand-scale polemics.
And later when we're watching TV she looks at an ink painting on the wall.
"Did you paint that?" she asks.
It was something done with ink and styrofoam cups.
"Yes," I reply, as she asks about every painting on the walls.
It hadn't even clicked in my mind to point these out to her earlier.
I barely register them any more - but it's the first thing people notice when they come in.

I hope that she comes to recognise that it's not about noticing and judging difference.
I think it's more about how the whole thing comes together that counts.
Being conscious.

All song comes from silence
All action from stillness...
Potential unfolds as opportunity arises.
Herein lies the seed of greatness.
Without action, only potential,
Without a core, incoherence ...

It's paraphrased but this is one of the contemplations I like.
It hangs in the toilet at Yoga in Daily Life.

Scriffles: Blockbuster closing 1000 stores in the USA. Visiting Hollywood writer/producer gives video stores five years.

I went along to hear a working Hollywood writer/producer, Paul Margolis, give a talk in Brisbane on Tuesday.

And I was shocked when he said Blockbuster in the US was closing 1000 stores: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10353762-17.html
Margolis (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0546803/), who's been working in Hollywood for 30 years predicts the demise of video stores within five years.
I believe him. I kinda been expecting it for a while. 
He compares it to newspapers. He quotes a belief that the USA will have only three newspapers in 10 years time.
The trade magazines Variety and The Hollywood Reporter announced last month the scrapping of hard copy prints.
They are publishing online only now.
Movie studios aren't green lighting projects just because there are big names like Brad Pitt or Steven Spielberg attached.
Now everyone's on an even playing ground.
He listed the obstacles writers face: self-doubt, writer's block, nervousness, rejection...
Like The Nothingness from Never Ending Story, these obstacles are afflicting whole new landscapes, whole industries ... 
I don't hear business complaining about technological change destroying jobs in the same way as they complain about carbon trading schemes and programs to address climate change.
Technological change is inevitable while climate change is optional? I don't think so.
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