As I begin again my 9 Days Of Resolve, I thought I'd republish 2007's resolutions with an update as to how I fared. All told, I consider them a success. They were conceived as a plan to improve the quality of my life, and while I did not manage to adhere to the letter of the plan, my life is much richer than it would have been without it.

Day 1- Increase Creative Output: Specifically, one photograph a day, one journal entry a week, one short film a month, one article per quarter, and one novel a year.

How'd I Do? Well, I have taken more pictures and shot more video than I have in any year since college. I don't know if I have 365 of photos, but I'm sure I fucked up the initial plan of taking at least one a day. Better about that with the new MacBook and the built-in camera. Making a time-lapse of my moustache growing back. As mentioned in a previous post, the breaking of my video camera slowed down my cinematic ambitions, but I ended up participating in a lot of things with other folks, including a bunch of Noisician Coalition footage that has yet to be edited. The Coalition has done wonders for increasing my creative output, though not in the way originally laid out here. The novel was going pretty well until I fractured a rib and couldn't sit at a desk for more than a few minuted without being uncomfortable, but I have all the groundwork for it, in case I feel like picking it up later, I have also realized that November is a sucky month for me to be attempting that. It is when I am at my busiest. While National Novel Writing month may be November, I may be starting a New Orleans Novel Writing Month in July. Nothing going on here in July. I cannot journal worth a damn. Most of my writing seems to be suffering from my slow-ass typing. Perhaps the new voice recognition software I have will improve things for this new year.

Day 2- Obligatory Paean To The Care Of The Self: Specifically, at least thirty minutes of physical exercise every odd numbered day and thirty minutes of mental exercise every even numbered day. Drink 1 gallon of water per day.

How'd I Do? 100% on the water drinking and I feel much better for it. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to do something simple to improve their health. That and chewing your food a bit more (or at all, some of you). The scheduled exercise thing has not gone so well, but I have been more physically active than I have been in years. Getting a car has put a dent in my primary form of exercise, the bike, but I've supplanted that by parking far away from where I'm going and walking a lot more. The mental exercise is actually where I've fallen down the hardest. But I work with my brain, so it's not like it is going to atrophy. I just need to use it for other stuff. I talk with my room mate about stuff that flexes my brain fairly regularly, but it is not following the regimen I'd laid out above. I still think the odd/even scheme is a good one, but it wants some clearer parameters.

Day 3- Forsake Material Possessions: Specifically, rid myself of at least 50% (by volume) of my personal belongings by this time next year. I do not need 100 pairs of socks or 12 computers. If anyone needs anything I might have, just ask, especially anyone still replacing what Katrina took. I'll be keeping only what is used or treasured. Everything must go. I'd prefer it go to a good home, or eBay, but it will go by dumpster if need be.

How'd I Do? I gave and/or threw a ton of stuff away this year. Did I reduce by 50%? No, which will give you an idea of the scope of the problem. In the last few months I have implemented a "one in / two out" policy. For every new thing I get, I have to get rid of two other things. Even if the new thing is a car and the two things are a ratty pair of socks that needed to be out of my life it all adds up to less overall stuff. I need to start thinking in evacuation or zombie apocalypse terms. What would I fill my car with to start a new life somewhere else or hole up somewhere comfortably until the walking dead have run out of steam. Make a list and pare down to that. 50% wasn't a deep enough cut. It would help if more people wanted my stuff. But I have friends moving to town now that need things and that should help pare me down to the previous 50% goal by February's end.

Day 4- Trade Quantity For Quality: Specifically, eliminate redundancy in my remaining possessions (except in the case of emergency backup) by employing a technique Of trading or selling off many redundant or unused items for fewer items of higher quality. Compressing my paperback collection into a handful of first editions by way of the used bookstore. Selling my P4 and G4 laptops and using the money to buy a Intel MacBook that can provide the functionality of both. You get the idea.

How'd I Do? Did the MacBook thing. Haven't had much success with the rest of it. I still have used bookstore credit from the last time I did this, but no room for new books. Much of that will be solved by the plans laid out in 3. Need to work on my eBay plan, too. Group like things together and sell them off in lots. Craig's List might be a better idea, just so I can avoid the whole shipping nightmare.

Day 5- Hone My Skills: Specifically, begin regularly doing things I'm not particularly good at, like playing the trombone. Or things that I've fallen out of practice at, like knife throwing. The practice will do me a world of good, if for no other reason than that action is the enemy of worry. Also, begin using my left hand again. No nuns to stop me anymore.

How'd I Do? I'm fencing and throwing knives ambidextrously now. Still haven't practiced the trombone. I need a mute so my room mates don't kill me. I did buy a new ukulele and have learned how to tune it properly and play it a bit, but I still suck. My swordsmanship has improved wildly with practice. My musicianship still needs committed practice.

Day 6- Explore The Unknown: Specifically, say yes to things I'd normally say no to. Not everything, mind you. But when there is no other reason for me to say no aside from "I don't feel like it" or "I don't think I'd enjoy that", it deserves a try. Also give those foods I've always hated another go. Remember that curiosity is the cure for boredom. Feel free to make suggestions, just no law-breaking, please. My life doesn't need to be that interesting.

How'd I Do? I have said "yes" instead of "no" quite a bit this year with very little in the way of negative results. It is another thing I can wholeheartedly recommend, with the caveats listed in the original resolution. Avocado makes a tasty beverage. Helping strangers can make new friends. Helping friends with seemingly onerous tasks frequently makes for hilarity and can occasionally be lucrative. All valuable lessons learned with substituting one word for another. And even though I still hate pickles, olives and capers, I feel better having reconfirmed that. Knowing what you don't want helps place what you do want in sharp relief.

Day 7- Create New Lines Of Communication: Specifically, reclaim the hours "wasted" in high school Spanish, German, Latin, & Algebra classes by actually going back and learning those languages and more on my own. Yes, math is a language. And one I used to enjoy until it was ruined for me by cranky teachers who hated their jobs. And find people to use them with. Part of what made them all fall out of my head was not having a use for them in daily life.

How'd I Do? Not so good here. I need to find playmates for this one. Communication skills are honed by communicating. 40 hours seated in front of Rosetta Stone won't change that. I did realize I retained more of that stuff in high school than I thought, so I have a good base for this once I find some folks wanting to learn more languages. Anyone?

Day 8- Follow Through To Completion: Specifically, examine my life for tasks begun but too long left unfinished, yet eminently capable of resolution within the year. Make a list and don't stop until it's all checked off.

How'd I Do? The biggest source of failure in any of the other areas. Lack of follow-through. It has eluded me yet again this year. While many have considered this list a bit ambitious, the only things on it that didn't get done were due to lack of commitment, discipline and follow-though. This must be the axis around which all of 2008's resolutions revolve.

Day 9- Have Bigger Problems: Specifically, recognize that when one is confronted with problems of great scope and depth, that most, if not all, smaller concerns slide off to take care of themselves. And in choosing my problems, I become the cause of my life as well as the result of it. The first order of business will be to find a great work that will merit the bulk of my attention. I'm sure there are some big problems out there to which I am a possible solution. Something to keep me busy until the Robot Apocalypse, anyway.

How'd I Do? No real raison d'être yet. But to that end, I have decide to form a think tank with folks that would also like larger problems to put there minds to work on. And I live in New Orleans, so we have plenty of problems to work with. Looking into the legal paperwork / business end of that enterprise now to see how one founds such an entity beyond just calling it into being as I have just now. The initial idea would be to start with a list of common concerns within the group and attack them one at a time, on a quarterly basis, by outlining first the problem domain itself and then breaking it into steps and actual workflow. Once the projects are clearly outlined, the plans will be freely available to any organization willing to implement them. Anything that turns out to have a solution that could also be lucrative would be arranged into a proper business plan in search of venture capital. This idea is just starting to gel and there will be more on it later.

I've chosen to create 9 new resolutions this year, some of which will incorporate and refine those of 2007. But the idea was to create new habits, and no matter what the new 9 are, I will strive to maintain the positive behaviours engendered by this list.

~R

ps- Anybody who wants in on any of this stuff, let me know.

This is how we go when we go like this.
~R

This is the first chapter of Guy Debord's Situationist classic "The Society Of The Spectacle" where I have replaced the words "the spectacle" with "MySpace". Makes for an interesting read. Is posting this on MySpace fighting fire with fire, or gasoline? Am I part of the problem or part of the solution? Who can say? Enjoy.

~Starnes

"But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence . . . truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness."

—Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity

1) In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.

2) The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudoworld that can only be looked at. The specialization of images of the world evolves into a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. MySpace is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving.

3) MySpace presents itself simultaneously as society itself, as a part of society, and as a means of unification. As a part of society, it is the focal point of all vision and all consciousness. But due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is in reality the domain of delusion and false consciousness: the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of universal separation.

4) MySpace is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.

5) MySpace cannot be understood as a mere visual deception produced by mass-media technologies. It is a worldview that has actually been materialized, a view of a world that has become objective.

6) Understood in its totality, MySpace is both the result and the goal of the dominant mode of production. It is not a mere decoration added to the real world. It is the very heart of this real society's unreality. In all of its particular manifestations — news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment — MySpace represents the dominant model of life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production and in the consumption implied by that production. In both form and content MySpace serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system. MySpace also represents the constant presence of this justification since it monopolizes the majority of the time spent outside the production process.

7) Separation is itself an integral part of the unity of this world, of a global social practice split into reality and image. The social practice confronted by an autonomous spectacle is at the same time the real totality which contains that spectacle. But the split within this totality mutilates it to the point that MySpace seems to be its goal. The language of MySpace consists of signs of the dominant system of production — signs which are at the same time the ultimate end-products of that system.

8) MySpace cannot be abstractly contrasted to concrete social activity. Each side of such a duality is itself divided. MySpace that falsifies reality is nevertheless a real product of that reality. Conversely, real life is materially invaded by the contemplation of MySpace, and ends up absorbing it and aligning itself with it. Objective reality is present on both sides. Each of these seemingly fixed concepts has no other basis than its transformation into its opposite: reality emerges within MySpace, and MySpace is real. This reciprocal alienation is the essence and support of the existing society.

9) In a world that is really upside down, the true is a moment of the false.

10) The concept of "MySpace" interrelates and explains a wide range of seemingly unconnected phenomena. The apparent diversities and contrasts of these phenomena stem from the social organization of appearances, whose essential nature must itself be recognized. Considered in its own terms, MySpace is an affirmation of appearances and an identification of all human social life with appearances. But a critique that grasps MySpace's essential character reveals it to be a visible negation of life — a negation that has taken on a visible form.

11) In order to describe MySpace, its formation, its functions, and the forces that work against it, it is necessary to make some artificial distinctions. In analyzing MySpace we are obliged to a certain extent to use MySpace's own language, in the sense that we have to operate on the methodological terrain of the society that expresses itself in MySpace. For MySpace is both the meaning and the agenda of our particular socio-economic formation. It is the historical moment in which we are caught.

12) MySpace presents itself as a vast inaccessible reality that can never be questioned. Its sole message is: "What appears is good; what is good appears." The passive acceptance it demands is already effectively imposed by its monopoly of appearances, its manner of appearing without allowing any reply.

13) The tautological character of MySpace stems from the fact that its means and ends are identical. It is the sun that never sets over the empire of modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the globe, endlessly basking in its own glory.

14) The society based on modern industry is not accidentally or superficially spectacular, it is fundamentally spectaclist. In MySpace — the visual reflection of the ruling economic order — goals are nothing, development is everything. MySpace aims at nothing other than itself.

15) As indispensable embellishment of currently produced objects, as general articulation of the system's rationales, and as advanced economic sector that directly creates an ever-increasing mass of image-objects, MySpace is the leading production of present-day society.

16) MySpace is able to subject human beings to itself because the economy has already totally subjugated them. It is nothing other than the economy developing for itself. It is at once a faithful reflection of the production of things and a distorting objectification of the producers.

17) The first stage of the economy's domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having — human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing — all "having" must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. At the same time all individual reality has become social, in the sense that it is shaped by social forces and is directly dependent on them. Individual reality is allowed to appear only if it is not actually real.

18) When the real world is transformed into mere images, mere images become real beings — dynamic figments that provide the direct motivations for a hypnotic behavior. Since MySpace's job is to use various specialized mediations in order to show us a world that can no longer be directly grasped, it naturally elevates the sense of sight to the special preeminence once occupied by touch: the most abstract and easily deceived sense is the most readily adaptable to the generalized abstraction of present-day society. But MySpace is not merely a matter of images, nor even of images plus sounds. It is whatever escapes people's activity, whatever eludes their practical reconsideration and correction. It is the opposite of dialogue. Wherever representation becomes independent, MySpace regenerates itself.

19) MySpace inherits the weakness of the Western philosophical project, which attempted to understand activity by means of the categories of vision, and it is based on the relentless development of the particular technical rationality that grew out of that form of thought. MySpace does not realize philosophy, it philosophizes reality, reducing everyone's concrete life to a universe of speculation.

20) Philosophy — the power of separate thought and the thought of separate power — was never by itself able to supersede theology. MySpace is the material reconstruction of the religious illusion. Spectacular technology has not dispersed the religious mists into which human beings had projected their own alienated powers, it has merely brought those mists down to earth, to the point that even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable. The illusory paradise that represented a total denial of earthly life is no longer projected into the heavens, it is embedded in earthly life itself. MySpace is the technological version of the exiling of human powers into a "world beyond"; the culmination of humanity's internal separation.

21) As long as necessity is socially dreamed, dreaming will remain a social necessity. MySpace is the bad dream of a modern society in chains and ultimately expresses nothing more than its wish for sleep. MySpace is the guardian of that sleep.

22) The fact that the practical power of modern society has detached itself from that society and established an independent realm in MySpace can be explained only by the additional fact that that powerful practice continued to lack cohesion and had remained in contradiction with itself.

23) The root of MySpace is that oldest of all social specializations, the specialization of power. MySpace plays the specialized role of speaking in the name of all the other activities. It is hierarchical society's ambassador to itself, delivering its official messages at a court where no one else is allowed to speak. The most modern aspect of MySpace is thus also the most archaic.

24) MySpace is the ruling order's nonstop discourse about itself, its never-ending monologue of self-praise, its self-portrait at the stage of totalitarian domination of all aspects of life. The fetishistic appearance of pure objectivity in spectacular relations conceals their true character as relations between people and between classes: a second Nature, with its own inescapable laws, seems to dominate our environment. But MySpace is not the inevitable consequence of some supposedly natural technological development. On the contrary, the society of MySpace is a form that chooses its own technological content. If MySpace, considered in the limited sense of the "mass media" that are its most glaring superficial manifestation, seems to be invading society in the form of a mere technical apparatus, it should be understood that this apparatus is in no way neutral and that it has been developed in accordance with MySpace's internal dynamics. If the social needs of the age in which such technologies are developed can be met only through their mediation, if the administration of this society and all contact between people has become totally dependent on these means of instantaneous communication, it is because this "communication" is essentially unilateral. The concentration of these media thus amounts to concentrating in the hands of the administrators of the existing system the means that enable them to carry on this particular form of administration. The social separation reflected in MySpace is inseparable from the modern state — the product of the social division of labor that is both the chief instrument of class rule and the concentrated expression of all social divisions.

25) Separation is the alpha and omega of MySpace. The institutionalization of the social division of labor in the form of class divisions had given rise to an earlier, religious form of contemplation: the mythical order with which every power has always camouflaged itself. Religion justified the cosmic and ontological order that corresponded to the interests of the masters, expounding and embellishing everything their societies could not deliver. In this sense, all separate power has been spectacular. But this earlier universal devotion to a fixed religious imagery was only a shared acknowledgment of loss, an imaginary compensation for the poverty of a concrete social activity that was still generally experienced as a unitary condition. In contrast, the modern spectacle depicts what society could deliver, but in so doing it rigidly separates what is possible from what is permitted. MySpace keeps people in a state of unconsciousness as they pass through practical changes in their conditions of existence. Like a factitious god, it engenders itself and makes its own rules. It reveals itself for what it is: an autonomously developing separate power, based on the increasing productivity resulting from an increasingly refined division of labor into parcelized gestures dictated by the independent movement of machines, and working for an ever-expanding market. In the course of this development, all community and all critical awareness have disintegrated; and the forces that were able to grow by separating from each other have not yet been reunited.

26) The general separation of worker and product tends to eliminate any direct personal communication between the producers and any comprehensive sense of what they are producing. With the increasing accumulation of separate products and the increasing concentration of the productive process, communication and comprehension are monopolized by the managers of the system. The triumph of this separation-based economic system proletarianizes the whole world.

27) Due to the very success of this separate production of separation, the fundamental experience that in earlier societies was associated with people's primary work is in the process of being replaced (in sectors near the cutting edge of the system's evolution) by an identification of life with nonworking time, with inactivity. But such inactivity is in no way liberated from productive activity. It remains dependent on it, in an uneasy and admiring submission to the requirements and consequences of the production system. It is itself one of the consequences of that system. There can be no freedom apart from activity, and within MySpace activity is nullified — all real activity having been forcibly channeled into the global construction of MySpace. Thus, what is referred to as a "liberation from work," namely the modern increase in leisure time, is neither a liberation of work itself nor a liberation from the world shaped by this kind of work. None of the activity stolen by work can be regained by submitting to what that work has produced.

28) The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From automobiles to television, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to produce also serve it as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that engender "lonely crowds." With ever-increasing concreteness MySpace recreates its own presuppositions.

29) MySpace was born from the world's loss of the unity, and the immense expansion of the modern spectacle reveals the enormity of this loss. The abstractifying of all individual labor and the general abstractness of what is produced are perfectly reflected in MySpace, whose manner of being concrete is precisely abstraction. In MySpace, a part of the world presents itself to the world and is superior to it. MySpace is simply the common language of this separation. Spectators are linked solely by their one-way relationship to the very center that keeps them isolated from each other. MySpace thus reunites the separated, but it reunites them only in their separateness.

30) The alienation of the spectator, which reinforces the contemplated objects that result from his own unconscious activity, works like this: The more he contemplates, the less he lives; the more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. MySpace's estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual's gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him. The spectator does not feel at home anywhere, because MySpace is everywhere.

31) Workers do not produce themselves, they produce a power independent of themselves. The success of this production, the abundance it generates, is experienced by the producers as an abundance of dispossession. As their alienated products accumulate, all time and space become foreign to them. MySpace is the map of this new world, a map that is identical to the territory it represents. The forces that have escaped us display themselves to us in all their power.

32) MySpace's social function is the concrete manufacture of alienation. Economic expansion consists primarily of the expansion of this particular sector of industrial production. The "growth" generated by an economy developing for its own sake can be nothing other than a growth of the very alienation that was at its origin.

33) Though separated from what they produce, people nevertheless produce every detail of their world with ever-increasing power. They thus also find themselves increasingly separated from that world. The closer their life comes to being their own creation, the more they are excluded from that life.

34) MySpace is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images.


ps- Anyone interested in the full and original text can find it here.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle

Here's a video of a beautiful morning in New Orleans circa the Summer of '05. It stars my friend Clint, was directed by my friend Henry, and features a bicycling horde of other friends of mine. I'm even in it, though I can't be seen for the cute girl on my handlebars. We laughed and chatted and ate free fried chicken and drank before noon between takes. It was a grand day for all involved. It was the kind of day most people don't think can be had here anymore. They are wrong. Despite the changes, the problems, the deaths and departures, we endure, as do the freedoms, alien to most of this country, that allow such days to occur. It is a music video of Clint Maedgen & The Preservation Hall Jazz Band covering The Kinks song "Complicated Life". And it goes a little something like this...



It's not the video or the song that I want you to think about, though both are good. What it represents, however, is the kind of thing we're fighting for.

So, my video/digital camera is broken and it is killing my progress. The one in my phone has a busted flash now, too. Plus, I'm running low on funds and can't really afford to spring for a new minidv cam, even though they're crazy cheap these days. I have to squirrel money away as a hedge against possibly having to pay an extra $275 next month if we can't find a new room mate. This blows. I also lost a nice piece that I wrote for Valentine's Day.

On the upside, the Noisician Coalition's Krewe Of Joyful Noise Parade kicked the rest of Mardi Gras in the nuts. We marched 3 times during the carnival season. Each one was different. All were awesome. And not awesome like a hotdog. We shook the pillars of heaven.

In case you were wondering, the room available is $500 a month, water's paid, as is some of the electric. Cable TV,  Wireless, Pool, Hot Tub. Two of the coolest room mates ever. One of them is me.

At a little over a week into these new resolutions, I'm doing pretty well. A few pictures behind, as I forget that the phone has a camera in it, and I spent a few days with it not working anyway. Exercising regularly. I've had about 10 gallons of water, and feel better for it. I've found takers for many of my unwanted things, and sorted a few boxes worth to give away. No buyers yet for the 2 laptops. Began the process of selecting which languages to learn. Completed some long-standing work obligations. Said yes a few times I would have said no. It all seems to be going fairly well. Need to fine tune things so that they can become habit. Not much of a journal entry, but better than not doing it.

Here is the full list, as promised, including the first two from last week, revised and improved. As my friends, I trust you to remind me of these at any given opportunity, should my resolve begin to wane. Together we will kick 2007's ass.

Day 1- Increase Creative Output: Specifically, one photograph a day, one journal entry a week, one short film a month, one article per quarter, and one novel a year.

Day 2- Obligitory Paean To The Care Of The Self: Specifically, at least thirty minutes of physical exercise every odd numbered day and thirty minutes of mental exercise every even numbered day. Drink 1 gallon of water per day.

Day 3- Forsake Material Posessions: Specifically, rid myself of at least 50% (by volume) of my personal belongings by this time next year. I do not need 100 pairs of socks or 12 computers. If anyone needs anything I might have, just ask, especially anyone still replacing what Katrina took. I'll be keeping only what is used or treasured. Everything must go. I'd prefer it go to a good home, or eBay, but it will go by dumpster if need be.

Day 4- Trade Quantity For Quality: Specifically, eliminate redundancy in my remaining posessions (except in the case of emergency backup) by employing a technique Of trading or selling off many redundant or unused items for fewer items of higher quality. Compressing my paperback collection into a handful of first editions by way of the used bookstore. Selling my P4 and G4 laptops and using the money to buy a Intel MacBook that can provide the functionality of both. You get the idea.

Day 5- Hone My Skills: Specifically, begin regularly doing things I'm not particularly good at, like playing the trombone. Or things that I've fallen out of practice at, like knife throwing. The practice will do me a world of good, if for no other reason than that action is the enemy of worry. Also, begin using my left hand again. No nuns to stop me anymore.

Day 6- Explore The Unkown: Specifically, say yes to things I'd normally say no to. Not everything, mind you. But when there is no other reason for me to say no aside from "I don't feel like it" or "I don't think I'd enjoy that", it deserves a try. Also give those foods I've always hated another go. Remember that curiosity is the cure for boredom. Feel free to make suggestions, just no law-breaking, please. My life doesn't need to be that interesting.

Day 7- Create New Lines Of Communication: Specifically, reclaim the hours "wasted" in high school Spanish, German, Latin, & Algebra classes by actually going back and learning those languages and more on my own. Yes, math is a language. And one I used to enjoy until it was ruined for me by cranky teachers who hated their jobs. And find people to use them with. Part of what made them all fall out of my head was not having a use for them in daily life.

Day 8- Follow Through To Completion: Specifically, examine my life for tasks begun but too long left unfinished, yet eminently capable of resolution within the year. Make a list and don't stop until it's all checked off.

Day 9- Have Bigger Problems: Specifically, recognize that when one is confronted with problems of great scope and depth, that most, if not all, smaller concerns slide off to take care of themselves. And in choosing my problems, I become the cause of my life as well as the result of it. The first order of business will be to find a great work that will merit the bulk of my attention. I'm sure there are some big problems out there to which I am a possible solution. Something to keep me busy until the Robot Apocalypse, anyway.

As is my personal tradition, I will be spending the 9 days between New Year's Eve and My Birthday making resolutions, to be implemented at the begining of my personal year, through January 9th of the following year. They are made at a rate of one per day, and usually involve things I'd like to do, rather than things I shouldn't do anymore (because if, at any time during the year, I realize I shouldn't be doing something, I stop. No need to wait for a special occasion.).

Day 1- Increase Creative Output: Specifically one photograph a day, one journal entry a week, one short film a month, and one novel a year.
Day 2- Obligitory Paean To The Care Of The Self: Specifically at least thirty minutes of physical exercise every odd numbered day and thirty minutes of mental exercise every even numbered day. Drink 1 gallon of water per day.

I'll be posting the complete list on my birthday.

For those of you I haven't seen or spoken to in the past few months, I thought I'd provide an update vis a vis my living situation. I have, since last post, found new digs. Twice. Some friends found me a great apartment with cheap rent, an old friend as my landlady and another as my neighbor. It was a little beat up, but any and all repairs would be applied towards my rent. The catch was that it was going to go on the market soon. "Could be 6 months or a year", they said, but I'd definitely have to move again. As it only narrowly edged out the prospect of walking the Earth like Kane on Kung-Fu, I had already made plans to be out of town for 3 weeks. I moved in over a week. The night the last box was moved in, a sign went up on the door. I woke up the following morning to the real estate agent asking when she could show the house. I then went out of town for three weeks, leaving a friend house-sitting and letting in the agent as needed. I got the call on my last day out that the house had been sold. The new owner had been lied to and told that we had been paying double our actual rent, so his offer to only raise the rent an extra hundred dollars was on top of doubled rent and an expectation that I'd be happy to pay that to live in the DMZ my apartment would become as it was renovated with me still  living in it. I found a storage space and started moving everything into it, once again expecting to walk the Earth. Then 2 friends offered me the third room at a place they'd found. I had already gotten a storage space (which was good because I had to be out of my old place on the 15th and couldn't move into the new place until the 1st) so I moved into it and went up to Seattle to be in a friend's movie as the Devil ("Typecasting", they said) and to visit my beloved cat. At any rate, it kept me off the couch circuit and gave me something to do. I moved up until the last minute, accidently breaking the key to the borrowed truck's padlock with the last load still inside. The truck's owner, being an extraordinairily laid-back individual, decided not to care, figuring he could cut the lock if he needed the truck while I was gone. He was even excited by the prospect of using his angle grinder. I returned home exhausted from the film's rigorous schedule (in case any of you Seattlites are wondering why I never called) and moved the final load straight into my new place. It was also, however, the first load of the move out of the storage unit, which would also be interupted by a quick overnight trip to Atlanta to see Tom Waits.
   I still have things in boxes, but I am finally settling into my new digs. My new place is very nice, though twice my previous rent. My landlady is nice. My room mates are some of the best I've ever had. The place itself is huge and luxurious, with any ammenites one could wish for, most of them included. I'm still a bit disoriented by this. Swank or not, I am just glad to have a place to hang my hat while I fight for truth, justice and the Orleanian Way, all of which are threatened here on a regular basis. My story's happy ending is the exception, not the rule. This is a subject I plan to write about much more extensively, but not today. I don't know when I'll update this. I hardly ever check this anymore. But I'm wound up enough to say things other people need to hear, so that may  be enough to overcome the disbelief in anyone's interest in the minutiae of my life that has squashed any desires I've had to keep an online journal. We'll see, I suppose.

I just lost a 20 minute diatribe about this that I haven't strength or patience enough to retype. The long and short of it is, since my last communique, I found a place in NO, only to have it sold out from under me before I could even unpack. I move again within a month. More on this situation as it develops...