Perhaps it is because I am tired and in pain, thanks to the slowly worsening pleurisy I have been dealing with for the last two months. Perhaps it is because I am sick and tired of inane political commentary and commercials as we head into the mid-term elections. And perhaps it is because I fought the good fight in owning an art gallery for 8 years, and tried to promote sometimes non-traditional artwork.
For whatever reason, I found this comment to be *really* grating:
This is art??? I sure hope the Federal Government didn’t for this through the NEA budget, but it sure has the feel of Obama “stimulus” about it.
Fuck me to tears.
Yes, it is art.
And no, the Federal Government didn’t pay for this. Because the goddam installation was created by a Chinese artist, and is on display at the Tate Modern – you know, the one in London. Which isn’t in the US, you idiot.
Now, I realize that the NPR article about Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds where I came across this comment doesn’t give the location of the Tate Modern. But both of the links in the article are to UK newspapers, one of which says the exhibit is in London in the opening paragraph. And I would fully expect anyone reading the NPR site (or hearing the news on NPR this morning) concerning such an exhibition would know this, as the Tate Modern is famous world-wide.
And yet we get this:
This is art??? I sure hope the Federal Government didn’t for this through the NEA budget, but it sure has the feel of Obama “stimulus” about it.
That’s not just ignorance. It’s proud ignorance. With a side dish of blind partisanship. It is the mindset that says that anything the writer doesn’t understand must obviously be not worth knowing, and besides, the fault of the damned liberals to boot.
Like the exhibit or not, that’s fine. Think that art is only pretty pictures on a wall, and that’s OK too. But pull your head out of your ass and be at least marginally informed about the matter before you decide to expound on it. Ignorance is nothing to be proud of.
Good lord.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to Daily Kos.)
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Failure, Health, Humor, J. K. Rowling, Publishing, Science Fiction
The last couple of days have been a bit busy, a bit rough (some residual annoying pain from the pneumonia getting in the way), so apologies for the light posting.
I did just put up a post about the infinity symbol video at Sixty Symbols. But I am rethinking whether I want to continue the project of writing about each of their videos – we’ll see.
No news to share on the book fronts. Neither word from the publisher about when they’re going to print Communion of Dreams, nor any positive responses from agents about Her Final Year. Feel like I am in something of a holding pattern, and it’s frustrating.
As I have listened to the news of the different Nobel Prize announcements, I did have an odd thought: what if someday they do indeed award the Prize for Literature to J.K. Rowling? If so, I bet in the web searches that news reporters would do, my spectacular (but fun) failure to campaign for that would probably pop up. That’d be amusing. Good thing I can laugh at myself.
And so it goes. I think I’ll give the dog a bath.
Jim Downey
We all die. Only some of us know that our death is imminent. If it turns out that I’m one of those, I hope I’ll be able to come to terms with it with the kind of grace Mike Celizic did.
Edited to add: No, there’s no subtext here. I’m not trying to prep my friends for any bad news. Sheesh, people, you know I’m more blunt than that. I just thought it was a good article.
Jim Downey
Via PZ.
That’s how many downloads of the novel there were in August. That puts the total number of downloads to 26,500. Who woulda thunk it?
Also, share a bit of other good news: I’d had some ongoing issues with complications of the pneumonia I struggled with most of last month, but I just heard that X-rays I had taken this past Monday are all clear, meaning that there is nothing serious going on. Yay!
Well, I have a Skype chat with my co-author to talk about Her Final Year, so I better get to that.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Gardening, Guns, Habanero, Health, Publishing, Writing stuff
OK, it’s been a while. But not due to anything bad.
First, I am feeling a lot better. I’ve communicated with my doc, and it looks like the last round of antibiotics finally did the trick with the pneumonia. I still have some recovery to do – minor lung pain and whatnot – but I am at least sleeping normally again and have a lot more energy. Now I just have to ease back into getting decent exercise and enough rest, and then I can start on making up for all the stuff that didn’t get done in the last month.
Second, we did another round of ballistics testing this week, focused primarily on a bunch of new ammo types in the very popular .380 caliber. Got some interesting results – more on all of that, later.
Third, got a rejection from the agent who had expressed initial interest in the care giving book. Here’s what she said:
This needs a lot of work. By “this” I mean both the proposal, which is really dry, and the material, which is uneven because of your source material. You need to put more effort into using the source material to tell a story, not sticking it into chapters and relying on it as the primary storytelling device.
Which tells me that she completely didn’t “get” the whole idea of the book. I don’t usually dismiss out of hand any criticism, but I also have enough sense to not over-react to the first response I get. We will continue to look elsewhere for someone else who may be interested in representing the book.
Lastly, got the first harvest of Red Savina habaneros out of the garden. Last night prepped and dried about two dozen. Here’s a pic of them before they went into the oven:
And here they are when I took them out this morning:
Once dried, turned them into about 3 ounces of delicious nuclear-powered spice. Yay!
So, things continue. Now I need to do a bit of yard work.
Jim Downey
to this post from Thursday. Saw the doc yesterday afternoon. The gold-plated antibiotics *seem* to be working, but we’ll see how the weekend goes. If I feel good by Monday, then all’s well. If not, then, well, it’s complicated. So hope for good. Besides, I have a new round of ballistics testing to do next week.
Take some time this weekend and browse these amazing photographs: Earth from Above.
Oh, and I’m a bit concerned what Communion of Dreams might inspire: For Creative Inspiration, Tech Geeks Turn To Sci-Fi.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Health
. . . for those who don’t belong to the great Facebook collective:
I’m still sick. On Monday I saw my doc, and there was indication that my lung gak has just gotten worse. After the second course of antibiotics seemed to not do the trick, he put me on another round of something a lot more powerful (and expensive! Sheesh – $30 a pill is obscene.) I have another follow-up appointment tomorrow afternoon, to see what is happening. But while a touch of pneumonia is nothing to mess with (and I’m not – I’m trying to rest as much as I can, and have basically suspended trying to get work done), my baseline health is good and this is not serious.
Time for me to get a nap.
Jim Downey
No, don’t worry – I’m not suicidal. Yes, I’ve been through a mild depressive bout recently, but nothing that severe.
But I have been thinking about the possibility of my own death. It’s actually something that I think about a fair amount.
Again – don’t worry. This is a natural outgrowth of losing one’s parents at a young age. You tend to be realistic about your own mortality. I’ve been like this all of my adult life. It’s not a bad way to be – I try and enjoy life in the moment, not take things for granted. I tell my wife I love her often, and my friends that I value their friendship. I have a preference for experiences rather than things, knowing that I won’t always be around to appreciate things. But I also see that things will live beyond me, and so prefer to have *good* things that others will someday appreciate. This last item is also part of the reason I do what I do professionally – both the book conservation and the writing. They are things which I will be happy to have outlive me.
Yesterday when I talked to the nurse at my medical group, she told me that she’d call in the new Rx for antibiotics, and that I should try and take it easy this weekend to let them work. She was also pretty insistent that I knew that if I am not feeling better come Monday that the doctor wanted to see me again.
I’m a little too smart for my own good. Upon hearing this (and promising to comply), I got to thinking about why the doctor would want to see me on Monday, given my symptoms. A couple of ideas occurred which explained it. One, he could just want to make sure I was getting proper monitoring for a lung infection, given my history of problems with pneumonia (which I have had four or five times). This is the most likely explanation. Or he could be concerned that I have an antibiotic-resistant strain of whatever infectious agent was at work. These days, that is not entirely unreasonable, and smart doctors are keeping an eye out for such problems. Lastly, a number of other possible problems could be manifesting as the symptoms I have, from whooping cough (not as severe in adults, but still…) to lung cancer (one of the most deadly cancers out there).
OK. So, those are the possibilities. Face them. Consider them. Consider the ramifications, from minor annoyance to “put your affairs in order”. There’s no reason to be afraid, just prepared. Fear is the mind killer.
Mostly, I live my life such that were I to be hit by a truck tomorrow, things wouldn’t be that hard for whoever had to clean up the mess. In this particular case, if I have some kind of life-ending disease, then that’ll be my wife. Some conservation work wouldn’t get done. My co-author would have to see to getting Her Final Year published. My dog would miss me. My friends would have to throw a decent wake, or I’d come haunt them. The cats *might* notice that someone else now feeds them. The rest of the BBTI testing would have to be done in my absence. Insurance would cover my debts. If I had some time (such as with a disease) I could find homes for the few things I would want others to have – otherwise, my wife would be happy to hold onto things as a memento (she’s very sentimental that way).
Chances are, if I am *not* feeling significantly better come Monday, that when I see the doctor it’ll turn out that he is just taking appropriate precautions. But, you know, I consider the alternatives. I hate surprises.
This is the way I think. Always have. Don’t dwell on it, but am well aware that I am just a temporary resident here. So I think it is better to be prepared.
Don’t you?
Jim Downey
A friend who knows I’m not feeling well, and also knows that I don’t generally go to see movies in the theater (antisocial bastard that I am), sent me a link that he figured I probably hadn’t seen. It’s Presto, a short film from Pixar which ran as a special before WALL-E when it was out. Just in case you didn’t get to see it either . . .
Thanks, Jerry!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Health, Promotion, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
Odd little thing I just noticed…
OK, let me back up a bit. As mentioned earlier, I’m fighting an annoying and rather stubborn lung infection. I was doing better the first of this week, after a course of antibiotics, but in the last couple of days have started another downward dip. Just got another round of antibiotics from the doc, with instructions to take it easy and see him Monday if I am not feeling better. Because of all this I am feeling a bit pathetic and non-creative, but I am not feeling quite like I just want to nap – I’m hovering over a no-man’s-land between sickness and health, unmotivated to do much. So I read through the stuff that needs work on the care giving book, but am not up to actually doing anything about it.
Anyway. Because of being stuck in this state, the most I feel like doing is poking around a bit. Which I started to do with the stats for Communion of Dreams. Usually, I just check to see how many downloads have occurred and leave it at that. Those are the numbers that I report on here. But a bit ago I decided to see just how many hits the site has been getting.
And this is what I found curious. It’s now running about 10,000 hits a month, and has been for over the last year. Low during that period was 8,500, the high 13,000.
These are not huge numbers – the BBTI site has been getting about 8,000 hits a day of late – but they’re not too shabby, either. And what is curious is that in the first few months of 2009, the numbers jumped from about 1,500 to about 4,000 and then to 9,000 – and they have stayed at that higher level since.
I’m not really sure why. There has been something of an uptick in the number of downloads each month during that time period, but it was nothing like a seven-fold increase. It just seems that more people are coming by the site on a regular basis. I suppose it could be tied to the BBTI project, in that there is a link in my bio there to the CoD site, but I’d be surprised if that accounted for all of it.
Interesting.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 