Someone anonymously bought me a 3 month re-activation gift. Thank you to whom ever did this. I'm curious about who did this. I haven't used my SG account in years, so I can't imagine who might have payed to re-activate me. It's a mystery...

My efforts not to be judgmental and to remain accepting of most

Yesterday at the Seattle Zoo throngs of people gathered to celebrate their three day weekend with their screaming children. I love the Zoo. The sadness of the creatures in captivity does not escape me, but I still love going to the zoo. Unfortunately with parks like the zoo, comes the idiot, undereducated, rude and most obnoxious examples of humanity one could find. Still, I try to ignore them…oh do I try.

Lately, I've been practicing acceptance and patience. I've practiced my breathing exercises and meditated on placing myself in the perspective of others I may disagree with. Understanding is my ultimate goal and I would like to think I've made progress. Well, my trip to the zoo seems to have set me back a bit. As I looked out to watch and study the various animals (as an artist I always take my sketchbook) I found I was increasing cringing at the idiotic behavior of those next to me. Kids aside, because kids are really just representations of their parents, it was the adults I was finding myself being annoyed with. Comments like; 'Hey, I wonder if they'll fuck!', or 'Damn, look at the size of its pecker!' or even 'This is boring' (at which point the make bad animal impressions and try to entice the animal to 'do something'. I'm sorry, but no matter how wonderful your monkey noises are, you are still being a complete fucking asshole! This is the part where I practice my deep breathing.

The cynical side of me rears its ugly head and I find myself suppressing feelings of disgust and sadness for these individuals. My mind cries out and I struggle to not say something mean spirited or roll my eyes. I was unprepared for this assault of stupidity and ignorance. Practicing patience and understanding is tossed to the wind and I find myself just being slightly pissed off. Thoughts about people of this ilk being the ones who hold back humanity and are responsible for every horrible even that has, is and will happen. These are the people promote bigotry, ignorance, hatred, censorship and laziness. And now I've gone too far. I've lost my patience, my ability to see the world from another's point of view and all because I was standing next to redneck dumbass.
I catch myself mid-thought and realize I've hit cynical and judgmental. I take a few steps back, breath a little and clear my head a bit. Wondering where this knee jerk reaction came from I analyze myself and ponder about why I felt such intense anger. It hit me like a bus and I wasn't prepared for it. The rest of my time at the zoo I focused on my drawing and managed to muster up a good time despite my ill feelings towards my fellow human beings. Upon arriving home I put those feelings aside and let myself get caught up in cleaning the apartment. A mindless productive task can work wonders and now I was ready to explore these angry and resentful feelings I experienced.

Anger is a natural reaction. I am human, I will experience anger. This is a given and unavoidable outcome. The ability to choose when one becomes angry and how to express it is one of our greatest skills if well honed. Yesterday my choice was to either allow the anger or to fight it. I did choose to fight it and even managed to overcome it a bit. Controlling my anger is something I need to practice more. It is my feeling that we can all use our anger as a productive force to bring about change, but only if properly controlled and focused. There are things in this world that should make us angry but not uncontrollably angry and never hateful. Hate is the outcome of uncontrolled anger where resistance to ignorance and evil may be a positive outcome of anger. Much like the actions Gandhi, anger may be used to move people and be expressed peacefully. One does not need to sit by and let others create misery. The power of anger is to change and drive people to seek a better way.

So what does this have to do with me and the zoo? I found myself becoming angry and annoyed at what I perceived as the stupidity of others. My solution; I need to realize I may have just caught many of these people during a moment of idiocy and realize they may be wonderful, intelligent and interesting people. It isn't about seeing them in the moment, but accepting how little I truly know about each stranger who makes a stupid comment in public. The other point of realization is the hypocrisy of how I felt. I am definitely guilty of making a complete ass of myself in public and to judge others in this way is simply not fair. Now the tricky part, remembering my new perspective and practicing it the next time I venture out into the world of stupid comments. Maybe I should go to pike place market today and simply stand and listen to the tourists at the fish throwing stand. If I'm to overcome my judgmental tendencies, the Pike Place fish market would definitely be the place to practice.

I'll leave you with a quite from the fish market. "Look Look honey! They throw fish! Isn't that just amazing??? Wow!" *followed by them standing there for fourty-five minutes watching grown men throw fish at each other*

If you should ever be in a silly mood and happen to have a bible near you, try reading the Psalms with various accents. I was in tears!!

For instance: Yelled at the top of your lungs with an angry Scottish accent recite:

(from Psalm 83, with slight alteration due to accent)

ACK! God, don't keep silent!!
Don't keep silent ya bastard!!!
and don't be still!!.... God!!!!!
For, behold, your en'mes are stirrrrred up!
Those who hate yah have lifted up their heeeds!!!
They conspire with cunn'n against your payple!
They plot against your cherished unes!!
"Come," they say, "and let's destroy em as a nation,
that the name of aysrael may be membered no morrrr."

Yeh ye fek'n bastards!!!! Ima goin tah Hell fo sure!!! Yah!

Saturday, November 04, 2006

Casting today

Today is the casting for the 4th film project I've been involved in. I'm curious to see who will show up and how many we can fit into my meager art studio.


Sunday, November 05, 2006

casting was a success!

I'm very happy with how the casting went for the Seattle Erotic Art Festival piece we are doing. My only concern is that we need more people. The piece is a study of the human body, the texture of skin, diversity, and the eroticism of the body in it's basic form. It's nice when so many people are just willing to do the naked without any weirdness. Everyone seemed to work really well together and there wasn't any awkwardness. I hope anyone else we get to work with us will add to the fun and comfort level of the whole project. While everyone was here we managed to do a test run. For just practice I have to say the footage looked just the way I imagined it. There are still plenty of things we are going to play with and I want to do some more light tests before the actual shoot day. I'm constructing several frames with various colored gels attached to them to create a pattern. They effect is turning out quite nicely and looks beautiful on skin.

More to come soon...

The day was Saturday, April 22nd 2006, the time was 2:05PM. Many a tourist and shopper were quietly wondering the streets of downtown Seattle. Suddenly, with the blow of a whistle, chaos ensued. Pillows appeared from shopping bags, backpacks, and even a guitar case. Pillow in hand, these feather flinging assassins descended upon each other with a vengeance. Woman pulled their children out of the way, innocent by-standards leaped to safety and security smiled knowing they were not involved. The pounding continued for several minutes among a tumult of feathers and fabric, the participants fighting for breath. Finally, after the crowd started to wear down (5 minutes) the whistle was again blown and the crowd dispersed, pillows returning to their concealing bags. Several of these warriors were heard whistling as the disappeared into the crowd. Feathers, like the blood of angels, was all that remained to tell of this tremendous event in history.

Below is a picture depicting the scenes of carnage. I warn you, the image is not for the faint of heart....

So, I was reading on my zombiewalk discussion board and people were coming up with new and interesting places to invade dressed as zombies. For those who are unfamiliar with this concept, a zombiewalk is when a group of people dress up like zombies in public and play the roll. It is often best when it is a large group of them, like in the hundreds...

Back to my point. One person brought up going zombie bowling. A wonderful idea, but the next was much much better. Zombie ballroom dancing!! This is brilliant!! Can you imagine? Hundreds of zombies ballroom dancing! This would be awesome to do at Seattle Center on a holiday...hehehe I'm wondering how many children we would traumatized. HAHHAHAHAHA!!!!

My page looked way to lonely without a journal entry, So I decided to write a bit here....ok, I did it. Maybe ya'll will get more later, but for now this is it.