I don't know, back in the day (every day until coming East) I never cared about baseball (or football, either, until the Broncos). I don't know if I'm getting older and letting go of some things that in the past I spent a lot of time on and "believed" in and now find only to be mostly idealist crutches.

I don't know, maybe it has something to do with Heideggar's Place Theory and my lack of said place, spending all of my work hours these days in various online forums, and (probably too) many of my social hours (and some work hours) in Facebook. What I do know is that there is something "normal" (insert your best definition) about watching baseball (and football and Futbol, but no one watches it here in the U.S.) and having teams to root for that was missing in my life before -- a life largely made up of roaming the countryside, a little Mexico, a little Europe, meeting those on the fringes, writing poems. (I still write poems.) Somehow, sport is part of planting one's feet, which is part of having a family, raising a daughter, and having a content life. I figure such things fit gracefully into Aristotle's Eudaemonism. If so, good enough for me. There is a lot to it, but that is a quick mention of the process.

Sprint is broadcasting the Broncos game tonight over the phones. Better go get ready. No, wait, I already am.

If you, the conversation initiator, walk up to or call up a stranger in their office or home and introduce yourself, this person, the initiation receiver, is immediately involved in a socially obligatory situation. Sure, if you use the telephone the person could hang up on you. If you approach them in a hotel lobby they could look you in the eye and walk straight away. But for the most part it seems that normal, social beings accept this social fate and, in some way, attempt to deal with it whether they have a genuine interest in it or not. Aside from the beggar-in-the-street, the outright "dis" of another human being is uncommon.

The a-synchronous nature of text based correspondence allows for this removal of social obligation. Therefore, the remaining element to determine if a person will respond to your letter, electronic or otherwise, seems to be the content of your writing: If what you wrote to a stranger is interesting, they may write you back. If it is not, they probably won't. I find this to be particularly interesting, especially in what I call The Age of Image, the prevailing cultural condition in which we all currently survive where image -- the image, an image, your image, their image -- is often times all that matters. Or, at least, that is what a lot of people think (or don't think, because the image gives them their answer.) Flusser said ancient image (sculptures, cave paintings, etc.) marked our place in the world and acted as map points to orient ourselves in the real. Then text came along and tried to explain image, decode it, make it linear, organize the magic. Later the mechanical image, the technical image has further removed us from the real world and, perhaps, in its tertiary position, has created the hyper real, an image of the real where the image is taken as the world instead of the uncoded message that it really is.

So, maybe we should hold on to text a bit longer; read it, think about it a bit more. Write more, People! Write well, write often, and, depending on how well you do -- and if whether or not what you write is interesting -- someone, somewhere may just write you back.

She walked away when our conversation was over. It was a genuine conversation, I thought, as I glanced down at the wooden rack of magazines with the words "Store copy leave here" scratched across them in marker in different hand writing styles and in different pens. I like when those conversations happen, I thought some more, the bikini bodies of television stars staring back at me, some with bright white teeth. Every magazine had another beautiful face, another manipulated body, more words about why we should care about these two dimensional strangers and their perfect facades. The genuine conversation I'd just had seemed at odds with the Hollywood in front of me. I felt bored again, drained. The human contact is warm-ing; the magazines are cold. It is getting worse, I think, too. Our culture is not anymore only influenced, entertained, distracted by these images, our images, our cultures images, but it is becoming them.

I recently did some consulting work at a very large and very well known corporation in the Midwest United States. Thousands of people are employed at the corporate location where I worked. I was brought in to do some writing, which I did, alone, in my cubicle, day after day very well. Then they decided my soon-to-be Ph.D. would look good on a business card. They said I'd be impressive to the client. I don't deal with the client, I responded, I write these technical documents, I document the application. They pushed the matter continually. I disagreed. They insisted still, beginning then to tell me, in fewer words, how I needed to change my dress, change my attitude, be more extroverted, fast talking, deal making, figure out how to make this company some more money. I refused to take the bait and I am certain that it showed. Because I was not changing my image, talking like them, walking like them, acting like them, I began to be devalued to the team even though my work, my technical expertise was actually very important to their success -- over time this no longer mattered. Eventually, my contract ended and was not renewed, like it had been many times before.

The images we have in front of us, that surround us, that pervade our very cultural existence are no longer simply entertainment for the society in which we live, they are the society in which we live. They are the foundation on which this culture stands, and it is one that is none too strong.

There were several interesting images that came as a result of these experiments, but this one seemed to most closely retain the combination of characteristics we were hoping to end up with, which were: 1. A sharp facial subject; 2. A sharp hand holding the flashlight; and, 3. An interesting and precise shape caused by the flashlight.

Last fall I showed the image in one of my digial imaging classes. At first the students thought is was a mashup of more than one image. When I explained that it was one image derived from one exposure, one student's comment was: "One shot huh? That is incredible! I still do not understand though....I do not understand how you moved the light without the camera exposing your arm moving. I am really interested in how (you) did this. Can you tell us more, or is it kinda a trade secret?"

The answer goes like this: some things in photography are fast, some are faster, and others still are fastest. Understanding this relationship is often times the key to creating interesting visual effects. This knowledge can be the difference between having an idea and manifesting it for the world to share. In this case the "Fast" is subject and physical motion (i.e. the person in the photo); "Faster" is the shutter and aperture, the capture settings, of the camera; and "Fastest" is the light emitted from the flashlight. It goes that if the camera's capture is faster (with enough ambient or strobe lighting) than the subject's motion the image will be at least relatively in focus. This is the case with this photograph. However, on the other side of the exposure speed is the flashlight. It appears at first as if the flashlight ring is sharp and in focus, which it is. This would lead one to think that the camera is faster, such as in the case of the camera being faster than person-subject. However, on further contemplation we know that the string of light is not the flashlight's light but a blurred motion of one single instance of the flashlight's light. In other words, if the camera was faster than the flashlight-subject, we would see one instance of the flashlight light, or a luminescent circular area at the end of the flashlight. But here we see many of those trailed together which appears as a string. Here what we are looking at is the camera being faster than person-subject and capturing person-subject in focus. At the same time we are looking at camera being slower than flashlight-subject which allows for the photograph to contain the "trailer" effect that is the light as a continuous string.

"Watch out," I told the students, "for the new Sprint commercials, they're doing all kinds of exactly the same thing."

The other big topic right now is the Presidential race. CNN is running a new slogan: "CNN = Politics." I think it should be "CNN = The View." 24 hour content (read "entertainment"), as opposed to 24 hour news. (Unless of course you host an "on demand" news radio station like WBBM in Chicago where the same stories are repeated over and over again every four minutes. That means they have four minutes of news content. Not 24 hours. But I digress.)

The media coverage of the Presidential race is interesting. I am no expert on Baudrillard's "hyperreal" but I know some. The Presidential coverage is hyperreal. Right now, you turn on this coverage, you hear the runners saying all this stuff. They stand for this and they stand for that and they'll make things right and bring troops home and fix the mess we're in and that is how it needs to be so vote for me, Iowa, and you'll be ok, too. That's it. They all do it, that is their job. That is fine. But there is a separation, as we know from history, often times between what a politician says and what a politician does. Candidates for bigger offices, I would say, are no different. That means we also know from history that we cannot necessarily trust what these candidates are saying, can we? There is, for all intent and purpose, right now, a separation between what they are saying and what they may or may not do once office is taken. All we can do is watch and decide who we think may be the most honest one up there. We gamble. We guess. We use intuition and think: "This person might be more apt to do what they say, that one seems less honest." etc. That separation distinguishes the reality from the hyperreal. What the media sends our way is the hyperreal. It is hyper because it doesn't really exist, or, it exists beyond or separate from the actual events that will take place once one of them becomes the next President and either does or does not do what they are saying now. It is great show, a monstrous media facade, and we are told endlessly to buy into it as if it really exists.

The world depicted in the Bruce Willis film "12 Monkeys" is, in my opinion, economically accurate and environmentally significant, not because people won't care in the future, but because as time goes on, due directly to technological proliferation, the individual will become more and more segregated from co-worker, colleague, neighbor, and student; each in his or her own pod with the personal-mass-joined media tools around them to perform every task necessary to fulfill a day's work and play. ...And sleep.

This, however, is a dire situation for those world citizens on the far side of the access digital divide. As soon as we cure AIDS and fix Global Warming, we can focus on this.

But, dear reader, they've gone and done it. The colossal giant, the scaly corporate monster who single-talonedly fire-breathed the twenty-four hour "News" cycle into our world has admitted a great deal of value in user generated content. And they've dedicated a brand new show to just that. "News To Me" debuted on Headline News on Saturday, May 19. Now anyone can go to CNN dot com and submit what they call an "iReport" made up of videos, photographs, and commentary. Maybe it will air, maybe it won't. Indy DIYers, keep to your guns and don't waste your time -- the filters are still run by the powers that be. Cheers once more to Father Vint Serf. I wonder what Tom Wolfe would have to say about this; I better include him on my next blog.

In Capital Vol. I Marx writes that there are two fundamental characteristics of commodity owners: formal freedom and formal equality. Formal freedom comes as a result of people's will over their commodities. Their will over their land, for example, if land is intended as a commodity. An owner has the power to do with his or her commodity as they see fit. Formal equality, however, takes the form of the relationship between the commodity owners which is mediated strictly by the commodities that they have come together to exchange. In other words, in a Capitalist system, it is the relationship between commodities which mediates the relationship between commodity owners. It appears on the surface that the relationship between commodity owners inside the sphere of exchange are autonomous and having self-powered motivations, but in actuality, these relations are indeed successively determined; human interaction as a direct result of the need for exchange of commodities owned.

So we have here the view that all social relations in a Capitalist system are indeed not freewheeling and autonomous, as they first appear, but are of a condition bound by and to the commodity exchange process. Surely we can agree that this law does not apply to bonds that are of a familial, neighborly, or communal nature. I do think it is safe to say that although family relations in contemporary times may still be strong in a lot of cases, neighborly and close community ties, at least in many parts of the United States, are very much a thing of the past. Aside from family and close friends, then, in a Capitalist system, does this render the social relation into one purely of an economic nature?

As I got bored with video number two on their list, I changed the channel again. I came across Desperate House Wives and stayed there for a minute. Some underwear-model-type "housewife" was pulling a bag of groceries out of the hatch back of her SUV minivan hybrid -- that silver color everybody likes these days. The groceries she needed fit precisely into one brown paper bag. You could make out some French bread and some kale sprouts sticking above the top. A kid rode by on a bike wearing a helmet in the background. The woman's GQ style ex-husband pulled up in his slightly more sporty SUV, they argued for a minute, he drove off. She sighed really big, life is tough. Then the commercial break broke and a string of advertisements in this order ran, bee bopped, sang, shone, and spectacularized themselves silly for twelve full minutes: Chemlawn; de-aging, glow-enhancing, skin-tightening cream; Lexus; and, of course, the grand finally, a mock runway show of winged Victoria Secret queens with seven foot legs and enormous breast showing off the latest and greatest motion picture digital imaging techniques. I now felt I had at my disposal all of the necessary ingredients and consumer wants to successfully turn myself, too, into a perfect house wife, running the perfect family, driving the perfect car, having the perfect weed-free lawn, with not a single outward sign of one visible flaw. Afterall, my drinking buddy McLuhan once said to me. "life is perfect in commercials." I agreed. Baudrillard laughed.

As usual, this morning on my way to work I was walking down a perfectly manicured row of large 2800 sq ft houses backed up to some Boulder Colorado Open Space. The lawn hydro-systems were spraying full glory onto dewy, mowed yard at eight o'clock a.m. The sun was shining. Most of these houses seem to hold an average of three people, three cars, and come constructed with a three car garage. Makes sense to me, I though: roughly one thousand square feet of living space, one car, and one garage space for each person involved. I mentally spent three seconds on each person which added up to nine seconds -- apparently, the same amount of time as a goldfish spends ruminating on things.

My attention was caught by an egg that lay on the sidewalk in front of me. I imagined the egg being transported from its nest for some reason, and then being accidentally dropped in transit. I felt bad this had happened, unholstered the Sanyo VM4500 mobile phone camera and snapped a few off for digital memory's sake.

I am thinking of the current work place. Cubeland. What used to be the nine to five office and quickly (and effortlessly) became the eight to six or seven office without many people noticing the change. The water cooler, the over-stuffed communal refrigerator with TGIFriday leftovers, and the bad cheap Maxwell House drip coffee maker with three burned pots; two regular black tops, one decaf red. The small talk, the corporate slang language, unclean conference board dry erasers, and the lying, laziness, and creative numbers in Accounting. The office where you cannot sit at your company issued Dell flat screen and browse MySpace because IT blocked it for its potentially lascivious content. The same server wrack, button down khaki clad folks who block your grown siblings family photo web site because blocking them all is better than only blocking a few. I recently have taken to reading Al Jazeera English and am waiting for the white collar inquisition to start. At any rate, we know this environment well (if you are unsure, see NBC's "The Office," or rent Mike Judge's "Office Space," they are both hilariously accurate).

I am deciding now on a formula of sorts that disproves a machined simplification in our current times. Below are the time frames depicting through history the media that have been available to us. I coupled each of these media stages with a hypothetical (but based on my average work day) number of tasks the worker can be engaged with at any one point in time. Here is what I have so far. See the sum total for each listing; you decide if things are simpler now. I wonder how increasing the speed of our technology will affect these numbers.

Current: Internet 5, Telephone 1, Desk 2, Person walking by talking 1 = 9 Total

Before the Internet (w/ typewriter): Typewriter 1, Telephone 1, Desk 2, Person talking 1 = 5 Total

Before telephone: Typewriter 1, Desk 2, Person talking 1 = 4 Total

Before typewriter: Desk 2, Person talking 1 = 3 Total

Before printing press (w/ written word): Desk 2, Person talking 1 = 3 Total

Before written word: Desk 1 (making tools, farming, cooking, etc), Person talking 1 = 2 Total

Before spoken word: Desk 1 (making tools, farming, cooking, etc) = 1 Total

(Internet = common use of the internet for emailing to communicate and complete tasks at work; Telephone = common use of the telephone to communicate and complete tasks at work; Desk = papers, forms, etc. paperwork on the desk as a way of completing tasks at work; Person (walking by) Talking = coworkers coming by your desk in person to talk and discuss tasks at work; "making tools, farming, cooking, etc" = tasks humans would be performing during their day.)

My fascination here is with the media, though, and the fact that Jamal sat interviewing on CNN, a quote-un-quote news channel that dominates our 24 hour cycle. He talked about how he'd been early on the scene (a meeting with his advisor) of this awful crime, recording as much as he could with his mobile phone camera. Sure, the PR people for the Tribune Company will quickly tell you that newspaper sales are not dropping due to the internet, that blogs and podcasts need content on which to comment, and that this needed content necessarily comes from traditional news sources. This is true, partially, I'd agree, but only at this moment. What about the fact that CNN has now relied heavily on Jamal's N70 in order to do its coverage the way it sees fit? What about CNN interviewing Jamal on television in order that he talk about his citizen journalism? Has Jamal not generated at least a large portion of CNN's content for this story? Earlier I wrote that people do not need CNN anymore, they have the internet. Well, this may not have been so accurate right at that moment, but it is changing. And what we are surely seeing (right before our eyes) is a transition from the dominant corporate selection of what is broadcast and therefore considered news, to a more gracious and inclusive nod toward the citizen, an admittance of the importance of the commoner and the potential of his/her mobile capture.

But back to the dream.

In the dream my brother was referring to my agreeing with Marshall McLuhan that the first World War was a war of the railroad, meaning, the railroad was the most influential of media, the effects of the railroad on the war were immense; the second world war was a war of the radio; and right now we are in the third world war and that it is a war of guerrilla information tactics and great propaganda. It is my inference that we are nearing the end of capitalism as it's been known to us. It is foundational in capitalism the idea that the faster and faster technological advances in the ways we work in this system are, according to Karl Marx, rendering the individual tasks we perform within set labour-time, less and less valuable. If the technology moves into infinitely faster realms (and it will with the demands of global profit), the value of the work we do inversely becomes infinitely less valuable: Poof, capitalism gone.

But, I said to my brother in an email after reading about Kurt, "ice-nine" was an interesting choice of words in the bigger context. Now let's see how much air time CNN gives to Vonnegut seeing as though he was an avid speaker-outer against and always critical of the war machine we see in our late state of George Bush's Capital.

But in this late progressive state of our capitalist economy it is seen as a boon, a benefit, a great goal to always be "doing more in less time." I'm starting to get dizzy. I'm trying to do less in more time. The only thing I want to do more of in the time I have is spend it with my family. I will explain this all to my daughter when she is ready.

Which leads to my 'everything is a brief conversation' comment. What I mean is sure we feel good due to accomplishments made, goals attained, but my question then is why? Why do I feel good when I make a long list of papers to write, poems to have published, etc.? On one hand, the accomplishment is something that will grow my ego. On the other hand is may improve my resume, making me a stronger candidate for a better job. But why do I want a better job? So I can sit at the next dinner party, or hang out at the pub and say I have this better job now? This would be a brief conversation. Or I could think I want the better job because it pays more, I could more easily pay off the graduate school debt that is sitting on a zero percent credit card right now. Paying that off is good. It feels good to say to someone that you have no credit card debt in a brief conversation.

I don't know, walking through the woods thinking my way out of the rat race might be the best way to go. At least there my family can come with me and we won't be wasting any time. Just the knowledge, perhaps, of this is best. Which brings me back to my opening question: What is knowledge? And the idea that information is everything, that everything is information? Everything that you know is information that was either already inside your mind (Plato's Doctrine of Reminiscence) or gained through observation and the use of your senses (Aristotle). That's that. That's the basics right there. Leibnitz would say you know something confusedly, and as soon as you attain the 411 needed, you can pay the proper attention to recognize truth. From where then does the old 411 come? Well, I think, later, wandering around San Francisco's Yurba Buena Park, it can come from the Internet. Information, or Leibnitz's "attention" is what you need to find truth. The Internet will provide you with all the information you will ever need. It is a clearing house for every human idea ever had. This Google can help you out with, because organization and direction at this juncture is key. With a bit of experience, your gained information turns to knowledge and with a bit of age, your knowledge turns into wisdom. I've attempted a practical four step elucidation of the result of the walk in the woods, and the walks in San Francisco:

1. The responsible, individual adult is held accountable for their own inner research and exploration to distinguish what it is that they love; what it is that makes them happy; what it is that they feel is of the highest significance in their life.

2. Pursuit of these top priority elements in daily context equates to happiness. Ignoring or not being able to pursue these top priority elements for a considerable amount of time each day can lead to fundamental unhappiness.

3. Time management on a grand scale (not on a company scale) i.e. the full compository context of the individual adult's life, not just their job, their hobbies, an NHL playoff game, etc., is the key to success of point no. 2.

4. It is the individuals' responsibility as an adult to apply these skills of time management to the significant elements of point no. 1, therefore pursuing the significant elements of life (discovered in step no. 1) which, in turn, results in the conscious pursuit and successful accomplishment of happiness in one's life.

I have a feeling you'd be happy with the Canon model you're looking at, at the same time, I am positive you'd be more than content with the Nikon D80. By this I mean they are probably both more than adequate for what you're uses will be, right? I mean, you probably aren't going to find yourself with one of those 4000mm lenses on the sidelines of the Super Bowl.... but then again, maybe you will. In that case, you'd want to have the Nikon because, as a rule, the Nikon company has created all of their bodies -- I mean all, since back in the 1980s -- with the ability to switch out all of their Nikkor lenses. So when I had this old Nikon body in Montana that my Dad gave me as a gift for graduating high school, I could actually use on it a brand new vibration reduction auto focus 70 - 400mm Nikkor lens. Of course, with it being an older model mechanical body, the auto focus quickly became manual focus, but you see what I'm saying. This might be something to keep in mind because I know people buy great photo equipment and then don't use it, and try to resell it, so you could easily build up an arsenal of great lenses and gear for the D80 fairly inexpensively via eBay for example.

Anyway, what we all like more usually are the concepts we are most familiar with and for me that would be anything Nikon. Maybe just go off the price if you cannot come up with any reasons to go either way concerning features and functionality of the two choices. Nikon I know is not usually the less expensive route, but I long ago adopted the philosophy that in this world (or this country anyway) you absolutely get what you pay for. Besides, its all electronic debt anyway, its not real money. Ho ho ho.

Also check into peripherals, meaning, how will either connect and act with your current computer station. I just recently acquired a Mac Mini to replace a hand made PC I've had for a few years that crapped out. We love the Mac but now I have to get a firewire to transmit my video from the video cam. Not a huge problem, nor an expensive solution really, but the video is just sitting on the cam waiting for me to have time to go get the cable, etc. With the PC I just used the old USB.

Happy St. Pat's.

One hour turned into 3 hours in one-half-hour's time.

I noticed the "No Photography" signs posted near the scroll case. I imagined the copyright holders not wanting any 'art in the age of mechanical reproduction' being reproduced, especially in a digital print-on-demand world. It seems my mobile phone cam fired itself off as I hovered over the words, reading "I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk about&" And on and on.

Imagine: the few leftover troops that can be siphoned from their nine-to-five nanny households across the United States will be summoned, a broken, middle-aged platoon will deploy to Iran by air, (because reaching Iran any other way is not possible... think Tehran 1980) the first signs of which are taken by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the Ayatollah's faithful and well-positioned, and will be fastly radioed back to headquarters where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will slide up his hand, cock the nod, and blammo! JASON (the computer from the movie War Games) has gone ahead and left us without the trouble of deciding how we'll pay for our kids' tuition.

"The first major effort by the George W. Bush administration to substantiate its case that the Iranian government has been providing weapons to Iraqi Shiites who oppose the occupation..."

Interesting to note how a large portion of the subjects in this article are actually power point presentation slides...

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0214-03.htm

So, Law + Order. These fictional (fictional, that is, on the show, but not necessarily in the show) bloggers called themselves weepingwillow17. They rallied their millions of viewers religiously on a post-your-own-videos web site called YouLens. There was a staged kidnapping and ransom plot of the stars of the blog. This, of course, was all caught on tape and available for the already converted millions of fans, which, of course, the blog pulled in, day after day after day. The kidnappers claimed that 100,000 of weepingwillow17's disciples needed to pay their share of a "download fee" (digital millennium ransom) of $1.99 each. They got it, but not before the adventure took a sour turn and one of weepingwillow17's stars lost his left ear a la straight razor, tied to a chair, Quentin Tarantino-style (think "Reservoir Dogs" minus the lighter fluid bath).

As they tend to do in TV, the cops eventually got smart and used their Internet Forensics Specialist (that should be the job I get!) to Way-Back a Craig's List posting (which was cached on a Google server, of course) for an apartment-for-rent classified ad which retroactively became Studio 1 for the early days of the filming of weepingwillow17. From there the incarcerations ensue.

The remainder of the show was spent orally examining the characters - some dead, some still alive (but maimed) at this point - to decipher what was real and what was scripted, and if it was scripted was it illegal and if it was illegal who was going to pay. It was all very dramatic and the ear guy never got cleaned up and so played out the entire second half with a huge bloody bandage stuck to the no-ear on his head. Riveting, I say. Like Shakespeare. Or Blake. Only Modern. AND utilizing the communications technology available to the everyday citizen on an everyday basis.

To further blur the line between American Corporate Commercialism, reality, virtual reality, and who makes how much where, NBC announced after the show that there were "additional weepingwillow17 video blogs available to download at NBC.com." Someone, too, (probably NBC but I don't care enough to find out) actually made a functioning video blog site at www.weepingwillow17.com. See for yourself.

I pondered a theory the other day positing the demise and eventual crash of television sometime this century. We see it in the lack of quality (due to lack of finances) in the current shows airing across the spectrum. People use the internet now to get their information, not the network news. People use the internet to get their weather, financial updates, interpersonal communications, gossip, and entertainment essentials. TV can keep you company, the newspaper is nostalgic at the coffee shop, but nothing compares to the speed, omnipresence, and user-friendly accuracy of Vint Cerf's love child.

People have Tivo or get their favorite episodes on iTunes or YouTube. They skip through the commercials. The advertisers know this. They see it in their spreadsheets and talk about it in the grey conference rooms across the world. No advertising on TV means no money in TV. No money in TV means no actors, no extensive, interesting plots or stories or stages or anything. Just crap like Survivor and Dancing with the (B-movie and child TV) Stars and that garbage game show with a bald-headed Howie Mandel. Jesus. The stuff is scripted fast-food. It's the entertainment equivalent of Target and Walmart and the worthiness inherent - whether considered before or after the subject object relationship - is completely non-existent.

The hosts, the people from the NBC Today show, were lined up all three across the screen with the Macy's front door behind them. NBC bought the rights to be the network showing the event. NBC paid a lot of money. NBC, then, in all efforts Adam Smithian, chopped up the timeslot by the second, scripting out as many one-word advertisements over the course of the parade as possible.

This was all too depressing. I remember the hosts, when I was younger, just up there, holding a huge microphone, 1970s hairdos in the cold November breeze, just yapping away, commenting free-form about the floats, the dancers, the clowns, the bands. Just like that. Simple. Talking. Describing the cultural manifestos as they rolled down the block. Matt Lauer, however, read verbatim off a teleprompter that, of course, we the audience at home couldn't see. But you sure could hear it in his voice. Trying to sound conversational and witty and off-the-cuff out in the cold rain and snow, eyes glued to a translucent message in front of you in front of millions takes skill. Matt, yesterday, did not have it. But neither did Al Roker or (I think her name is) Meredith Vieira, the blond woman who said she was teary-eyed when Santa Claus came out. Jesus. Their monologues were ripe with ads, referencing everything from the pop-stars on stage's record companies to brand name appliances.

When the Scooby Doo balloon came down the street Matt Lauer went on and one how Scooby was the "crime fighting dog" in the so-and-so new film from so-and-so studios, and when the movie was coming out and how Scooby fought with "hi-tech Scooby snacks" that, if they were to feed the balloon-size Scooby, would be "the size of a brand new 40 inch flat screen plasma TV."

I turned it off and laughed. Adam Smith is rolling over in his grave.

See "The Headquarters Around Us: Still Life From Ground Zero" online www.kodakgallery.com/otoole/main/the_headquarters_around_us_still_life_a

Later that day, I went out to run and HHDL was leaving the performing arts building. He got in the back seat of a limo and rolled right past me 5 feet away as I stared into the car. I was the only person standing there, the motorcade ripped past, five motorcycle cops roaring, his window was tinted and rolled up by the time he was even with me on the curb, but I bet he must have looked right at me.

To view the film, visit www.gregory-otoole.com/film/

The first game I watched was the first game of the tournament, Germany winning against Costa Rica 4-2. The second match I watched was Ecuador over Poland 2-0. That was the same day, second game of the tournament. It went on like this for days and weeks. For a while there were three games each day around the Rocky Mountains of the USA which aired on ESPN2 at 8:30 am, 10:30 am, and 1:00 pm. Ritualistically, I rolled out of bed and turned on the first half of game one for the day. I made coffee or tea and checked my email between games one and two. I got the days news just before the third match began and went running when it was over. I set up a web cam in my living room that broadcasted the summer of greg as it has been called, which for the past thirty-one days has been me sitting on the futon, drumming the Infusion size 5, watching the matches that one cannot make out through the web cam anyway. My brother in Chicago had the idea to set it up in the first place. He and I and the Danimal in ATL thought it was pretty funny and amusing. I checked the statistics server for the site yesterday and some how, the web cam page logged 4,000 worldwide visitors during the month of June. Funny. To me it was just something to do between matches.

So, Italy just came out on top in the final game after penalty kicks. Penalty kicks! That's great for Italy, hell they haven't won a Cup since 1982 (when my parents bought Joe the red three-quarter-length sleeved iron-on-decal Italia World Cup t-shirt on the boardwalk during our family vacation that year). Those were the days. Atari, Activision, knee socks, and Union Oil Hoffman Estates soccer every Sunday, rain or shine. It seems now things were so simple then.

Simple is how I like it, and, for the past thirty-one days, simple is how things have been. I learned a lot over the past month. I learned that Brazil's Ronaldhino has Velcro on his boots and hardly ever stops smiling out there. I learned there are many English immigrants and fans in Boulder and they all love Wayne Rooney like a brother. I learned that Conor O'Neill's is a great place to watch the international matches, 10:30 am is sometimes not too early to have a couple pints, and that high definition TV really is way better. I learned a while back that Argentina's Maxi Rodriguez put himself in the history books with one 18-yard-line full volley that sprung me from the couch like a wet-handed electric shock. I learned Zinedine Zidane wears golden shoes and why. After the final today, which was aired on ABC, I saw that someone somewhere put together a really nice music video of sorts which visually oscillates between cuts of a live U2 on stage playing their song One and highlights of the many great matches of the past thirty-one days. I've railed pretty good on the institution of television in the past, but it was the medium that enabled me to be a part of the World Cup 2006 so I have be at least party OK with it. And I am. And after getting a bit misty eyed sitting in headquarters, summer of Greg cam rolling, witnessing the closing highlights with U2 playing their song, the fans screaming, fans crying, faces painted in loyalty, the beat up players playing, celebrating, and giving everything they have out on the pitch, I realized the value of it all and reminded myself that I sure didn't mind having ABC and ESPN2 over the past thirty-one days. Most of all, I guess, I learned that even television sometimes really ain't that bad and that soccer really is the greatest game on Earth.

See you in South Africa, 2010.

A person is a person's mind, yes? A person's mind is where it is, yes? "Wherever you are, there you are" as the bumper stickers say. Physically, this person is being pulled across the hot grass by an animal. Mentally, emotionally, intellectually, whatever, this person is with the person on the other end of the phone conversation. A person cannot fully be in two places at the same time, can they? This person, therefore - the dog and cell phone person - is neither here nor there. The dog, on the other hand, is like Buddha.

You know who isn't like Buddha? Luis Figo. Figo just scored one hell of a goal for Portugal, which aided in their win over Angola. He was elected, American Idol-style, as T-Mobile's Man of the Game by text-messaging fans dialing in their votes from around the world. Interactive global television is an embryo just yet. Good game, but its hard to be like Buddha with 50,000 screaming fans over your head. But, that's ok, I think, who needs to meditate and play futbol (soccer) at the same time. Right now, to be honest, I'd rather be playing soccer. At least soccer is free to play. It's not free to watch, especially if you got yourself and a few buddies over to Germany for the World Cup. But, aside, soccer is always free to play.

You know who is like Buddha but is also not nearly free? The supposed incarnation of Buddha, Tibet's 14th Dalai Lama. Communist China couldn't get to him, but apparently Capitalist America did. I saw he is coming to the Pepsi Center in Denver. It's not free, I'll tell you that. In fact, it's so not free that they aren't even putting a price on the tickets to see his teachings. The promoters (and probably H.H.D.L.'s A & R man) know how many people are going to be banging down the doors to push their way in to see the reincarnation himself. The Dalai Lama is the new pop star for the good team. He's Michael Jackson popular all over the world, infintesmally looked up to in the United States. ("I'm just a simple monk." He says, and I love him for that) But, Colorado? The neo-hippy-skipper capital of the West? "Fagetaboutit" (Soprano, Episode 1). So many people are going to try to see the guy give a teaching and a prayer, that these promoters, Ticketmaster, etc. aren't even putting a price on the tickets. Not even a $250-a-head stunagio like the crappy Rolling Stones' current capers. In order to see the Dalai Lama's one night stop at the Pepsi Center in Denver this summer tour 2006 you'll have to bid on the tickets. And as it goes, the highest bidder wins. Translation: the more money you have, the closer you now become to enlightenment and the teachings of the Dhammapada by a spiritual Tibetan elder.

Come on folks, this is Colorado: land of the "open space", millions of acres of BLM tracts, state parks, national forests, national parks, land of many (ab)uses. If money is not the major concern and motivation here, and spreading the good word is, than why would Mayor Hickenlooper or Governor Owens not realize the worth of holding such rare and beneficial festivities in a wide open, outdoor location. It doesn't even rain here. Bring in the vendors, set up the tents, don't charge admission at the gates. How about that for an idea? Everyone who cares gets in, everyone who gets in gets to learn, and everyone, then, can go home happy.

Text your votes to 1-555-money=happiness. (Service charges apply.)

In an interview I watched a while back, I saw Chris explaining to a journalist his theory of why he does what he does. His meaning, he said, is simply this: to be a part of The Big Song.

To explain: the idea of music stretches far back, but is not limited to, the sounds of the rhythms of rainfall on a cave entryway, or the percussionistic rants of stone on stone of a bored, excited, or, perhaps, religious and prayerful caveman or woman. Surely the changes of the high plains wind and the melody of the oceans waves were playing themselves out (for no person to hear) well before the first humans, and continue today, along with the rest of the world's developed music, right up to the present moment. The Big Song, then, for Chris, is eternal. His purpose, he said to the journalist, is to borrow from, interpret, and contribute his own visions back to the historic concept of music: to be a part of The Big Song.

A concept that contains the power to define a persons very existence; one that is the backbone of their everyday, in one way or another; one that runs continually as the answer to the ontological "Why?". This, dear reader, is, indeed, a person's God.

Mine is The Big Theory: the more narrow, but omnipresent overlap of academe and the creative process. Imagine a white canvas. A big white canvas and in your hand you hold a ten inch paintbrush. You dip the brush into bucket A containing Cadmium Yellow Hue. Draw your brush across the canvas. Now pick up brush two of any size, dip it into bucket B which contains a basic Ultramarine Blue. Paint a simple stroke of blue along side the yellow and put down the brush. In one area you have yellow, this is academe, higher learning, the university, teaching, all of it. And in the other area, you have your blue, this is the creative process: innovative human thought and it's impending manifesto. Surely it is obvious you can have your yellow areas of your canvas which do not contain any blue. Inversely, then, and equally true, is the observation that you can have your blue areas without any yellow. The interest, to me, and the not so obvious, is the much smaller areas where the blue and the yellow meet, the pigments join together mixing in unequal parts. The resonance between the two hues. The vibration of the result: Philosophy. The green area (because mixing blue and yellow pigments makes the color green) creates an entirely new level to what was previously existing. In other words, to me, Philosophy, ontology, is the overlap of the creative process and academics.

Chris takes one instance of music, the song, to recapitulate and generalize his purpose. I take one instance of the field of philosophy, the theory, and recapitulate and generalize my purpose: to take part in The Big Theory.

Now, if I could only get paid for it, or go on tour for it, or contort the history books with the likes of Allen Woody of the Allman Brothers and Government Mule for it. All in good time, I guess. All in good time.

One morning on toward the flip of the New Year, I came out of the kitchen with a cup of coffee. There, on the wooden, hand carved, passed-down, antique mahogany table was the issue. It laid spread-eagle as if it had been tossed there casually. Carelessly, I guess. The back cover and front cover of the multi-million dollar magazine, laid facing each other, in stark contrast of their respective content, and I could not help but notice how perfectly American this contrast was. It said loudly: "Have the heart (and money) to buy this magazine and read about sick kids around the world who don't even have parents, and if they do happen to have parents, the parents don't have enough pennies to scrape together some grain to feed the crying child. However, as soon as you are done having your heart strings tugged by our articles, you can check out the tempting ad to get yourself something that is totally and undeniably necessary: the iPod. And not just the regular old 40GB iPod from last year, but this brand new, credit card sized, slick version. In fact, you can use your credit card right now to buy it. It only costs three hundred American dollars." What Newsweek doesn't spell out is that this one iPod costs more than enough than it would to feed the child on the front cover's entire family for months. But by the time you see that cool-ass advertisement back there, man, about the starving people around the globe you've long forgot. Oh, the inverted propaganda and the perfect American bubble is tricky in that way.

The characters are all funny and amusing and, since it runs on HBO and people (not us) pay HBO to watch HBO, we don't have to sit through, or better yet, flip through, mute through, whatever you want to do through, commercials.

Another character, Turtle, is one of the cling-ons. He does odd jobs for Vince's crew: totes posters, finds weed, things like that. He succeeds as a twenty-something in Movieland with his oversized football jerseys, NYC slang (hilarious), verbally bashing everyone who comes on screen with him, all the time wearing backwards the fitted baseball hat of the episode. Turtle single handedly personifies a New Hollywood run by ordinary, motivated American rats, the drones of your High School, on Starbucks, iPods, and Hummers. It's the exact same scene I see crossing campus at the University of Denver every day. Technology allows for that. Gerbner's Cultivation Theory ensures it. The only difference between Turtle's character on Entourage and the smart ass Junior sitting in class is that Turtle gets paid exponentially more than Smart Boy could ever hope for. That is, unless at some point he finds himself the subject of the keen eye of the producers of some aspect of (what the late great Edward Abbey refers to as) The National Lobotomy Machine.

I'd write his name here, but as I've found out way too many times already, there are a lot of freaks and negative people out there scouring the internet, hanging out on the streets, causing trouble where it didn't used to be, etc. This will go on the internet. Therefore I will do my best to not attract those types of idiots. I'll tell you this, though, about that little guy's name: it's a strong name, a family name (at least part of it). It is an Irish name as you may have already deciphered. It didn't have to be an Irish name to be a family name. It could have been a half Polish name from Gerome, Pennsylvania. Or it could have been, I think, a little bit Russian from my maternal grandmother's family who we call Nana. I don't get to see Nana enough these days but I'm going to fly out there soon and have myself a visit. I like to visit with the family these days. I used to like to visit the local bars in Chicago and Missoula, but I got a bit older, I guess, and things change in interest and importance. And not in that order.

So yesterday was a great day because of my brother's son. It was an interesting day as well. I had going then, with the rest of my daily events, a bit of the good and a bit of the bad: the old ontological dichotomy. As I was walking home from the grocery store after work I got a call on the mobile phone clipped to my belt. Look at the incoming number. Curious. Pick it up, hello. Yeah, the lady snarls into her phone, you called my phone. What? I said. Somebody called my house, she said rudely, almost angrily, this number was on my caller ID. Well, I said, I'm sorry but I didn't call you. Somebody called my house, she repeated, I have this number. She was getting pissed. I laughed more animatedly than I needed too just for the vocal effect. What do you want from me? I said laughing, and then I hung up and finished my walk thinking about Chicago.

That's when you know its gotten bad, I thought, keying my front door, when people start calling up complete strangers just to bitch. Just to cause a conflict of some kind. Any kind. Crap. I let it go. I let a lot of things go these days. It's better that way. I'm like that new kid that came out yesterday. Eat a little, drink some milk, water, juice. Hang out. Check out the world. Don't take anything too seriously because it will eventually turn ink black and eat your insides. Dogs are like that too. Lounge around a lot and take in the warm sun coming through the no-cloud morning of a clear March day.

You should know a few things before you go any further -- the basic things, dear writer, that everyone aught to know. I was born in Louisville, Kentucky in nineteen hundred and seventy-three in August in a nice family home I don't remember. I ate food and drank water, various fruit juices and milk from cows, not plants. I went to school. First I went to pre-school and got scared one day that the visiting doctor and nurse were going to be our new teachers so I hid behind the coat rack and cried. Nobody saw me and nothing happened. I moved to the bottom hiding place in the indoor jungle gym. I cried and hoped those new teachers would be nice. Nobody came to my rescue. I got over it, stopped crying, and went back to play.

Something else you should know is that my favorite color is blue. Not medium blue like they used to say in special art in first grade. Not ultramarine blue like they print on the side labels of Gamblin Oil Paint tubes. Not sky blue like the goal in hopscotch. Navy blue. Dark Navy Blue it's called, and it is the color of the Navy Pea Coat I bought cheaply in a thrift store in downtown Missoula Montana when I lived there and drank often and heavily at the bars along the strip. I was bored when I wasn't canoeing with Ken or hiking or writing or painting or building the road up to Jack Castor's train caboose cabin on the mountain. I guess that is why I drank. Boredom. But it was exciting back then. When the bar closed once I drank cans of beer on the sidewalk with an old drunk Indian. It was easy because I was drunk, too. He told me stories about his traveling with the Freight Train Riders of America. He told me he'd seen people killed. He had tattoos and marker drawings on his old Army field jacket. He drank bad beer. He had no place to sleep so I offered him my floor at 410 Hazel Street across the river. He could have been a maniac and he could have went nuts in my house. Inviting him in was not a good thing and I'll tell my son or daughter never drink with a stranger and invite them home. It's just not smart. This guy was great though, and all he did, as I showed him some poems I'd written online through my dial-up telephone modem, was fall asleep at the kitchen table. He fell asleep hard. When he woke up he wanted to go get some more beer. I said no. I have to work. He gave me his knit shirt as a gift and went back out to the street.

You should know that apartment was rented to me by an old Greek man from Chicago. He used to live on Halsted back in his day, and we would talk about Chicago things when he'd come around. When I left, he said you ever need anything in Missoula you call me. I take care of you. Like that in slightly broken English. Then he gave me a hug. I told him to tell his Greek wife that I said goodbye. That apartment was number seven in a string of sixteen houses and apartments I've had since college. That's a good fact to stick in there as well, writer, because it's the little things that people find most interesting.

I used to get on the commuter train line from my Mom's house out in Streamwood, Illinois, ride that 45 minutes due east into the Loop, walk to the "long distance train" depots tucked away at Union, get on there and head to Washington, D.C. or Philly. There are no direct routes from Chicago to Atlanta, so you have to layover in one of these two east coast cities. Sometimes the stop can be four or five hours. Four or five hours goes by pretty quick walking around the Vietnam Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the National Gallery of Art. The National Gallery of Art could take up a week in itself. One time I ran (backpack and all) from the Washington, D.C. train station, also called Union Station, all the way to the NGA, just to make more time for my otherwise very brief visit. So, I walked in the front doors. And the place is enormous. It's one of those white marble foyers that fit you inside of themselves like an ant in a castle. I walked in about twenty feet and for whatever reason, I turned back around, and there, hanging over a crevasse to a lower level, was a painting, thirty feet wide, black paint on white canvas, by Robert Motherwell.

Motherwell's paintings. Robert Motherwell's paintings ----- Robert Motherwell's paintings are remediated versions of anything else printed, or painted, or signed, or drawn, or etched or sketched. They are so simple and that is the very point. Draw a line, or scribble a few, on paper. Now, take a one millimeter square pixel of your paper sample there and blow it up to thirty feet across. Pay no heed, really, to how high it becomes. I bet when Robert Motherwell painted from life, in his studio, or en plain aire in the forest or the desert, he just drug out this monster roll of canvas. Then he pulled out a scrap of paper from his pocket notebook and a scientific magnifying glass to view his subject matter. I would like if he toted around a jewelers spy glass on an antique chain around his neck, and no matter how many people asked if he sold diamonds, he never told them what it was for. I am into nano-ontology, he could say. I make paintings of things you cannot see. Motherwell was into criminal forensics. He could paint your incriminating DNA. You supply the strand of hair from your head. Motherwell was a master illusionist. Everybody in the world, who stands in front of the painting at the National Gallery of Art, says to their friend, where did he find paint brushes six feet wide? How did he dip them into a bucket seven feet across? Once we all decided his brushes must have been to that scale in order to make strokes of these proportions, we wonder how Robert Motherwell can get such magnificent detail of the dark side of a molecule with his paintbrush which we've already decided -- in some paintings -- must be six feet wide.

So, the boring part: The bed that I sleep in every night is getting old. It sags toward the middle. This has nothing to do with a weather station, but it does give me a soar back. The muscles along the bottom of my spine got so irritated a few weeks ago, on our way back from a 4,000 mile road trip, that I had to swing by the Lincoln, Nebraska Emergency room at midnight. The muscles were swollen and gross and I thought I was turning into something. But, I wasn't. I just had a bad back and needed to rest the muscles. So, now I ride the stationary bicycle for twenty minutes inside during the winter in Colorado; one, to warm up the muscles; and, two, to save myself from getting pneumonia when the weather station reads such a low number.

I ride the stationary bike for twenty minutes and then I get on the elliptical machine for, sometimes, thirty. This can add up to a strenuous workout. When I am on the bike, I can read to pass the time. I usually bring whatever book I am reading at the time, but today I forgot the book. I sat down on the bike and realized I had nothing to read. I went over to the magazine rack and flipped through the sagging, ripped, multi-tiered selection hanging on the wall: Cosmo, Track and Field, Teen (at a university?), etc. No Newsweek, no Wired, not even an issue of Transworld. I picked up the next best thing, I thought, and therein was my mistake. I apologize to anyone in advance who works for, likes, reads, or, heaven forbid, subscribes to Electronic House magazine. I know a lot of people like television. A lot of people devote a lot of their lives to keeping current with the NBC, Fox, and Reality Television line-ups. I have never been one of those people. I don't like watching sports on TV, I don't like watching the news on TV, I don't like watching Martha, or Oprah, or Desperate House Wives, or 24, or That 70s Show, or even Extreme Makovers. I was completely blown away the other week when I was flipping through the stations, out of boredom, and came across what can only be described as The Tony Danza Show. Sweet Jesus. (I should admit here I love the show ER. If ER is on in the morning, I'll be late to work in order to finish off the episode. And The Girls Next Door was amusing for about three episodes. But, now its much more interesting to have Hugh and the three women grace the stages of CNN and not back down to Larry King while he tries to be on The People's side and convince them that they are doing something wrong.) But, then there is Electronic House magazine. It's a full color periodical dedicated to creating the years most expensive and extravagant ways to watch television. Special chairs, special blueprints of rooms, multi-thousand dollar flat screens on walls, bigger, better hardware, suggestions, advertisements selling more ways to set up your TV, and more ways to buy newer TVs. I can't even stand, sometimes, to have the television on at home. Good thing we all can fill our gym time now with a magazine on how to watch more.

My wife sold her 1995 Jeep Wrangler recently. Shed had it for a couple of years. It was her main source of mechanized transportation before we met. Since then, shes mainly been using my newer, safer, smother-driving Ford Explorer to drive herself back and forth to work everyday. The Jeep just sat in the driveway using up space and two hundred of our earned dollars each month in loan payments and insurance.

She posted it online for free a while back. She used a widely utilized, populated and trafficked web site. She put up a few photographs. No one called. Months later she decided the $55.00-until-your-car-sells package on www.cars.com might be more the way to go. That was Saturday afternoon when that decision was made. By Saturday evening the advertisement was up and running with six photographs and a few brief selling points. On Sunday she got her first calls of interest. On Monday a gentleman said hed like to come and see the Jeep in person. On Tuesday morning he bought it.

As I was walking home from work at the University of Denver on Wednesday evening, the day after the aforementioned sale, I was thinking about what my wife, Carey, had said about how this man had been behaving since he had agreed to purchase the vehicle. Hed been running all over town, she told me on the phone Tuesday afternoon, making sure the title transfer and license plates and DMV paper work were all in order. He was excited, she confirmed, and very obviously was not wanting to loose hold of the situation that would allow him to secure this purchase. You see, the title transfer was set to happen on Friday, the guy knew he was getting a deal with the agreed purchase price, and he wasnt about to let it slip away. Makes perfect sense to me.

So Im thinking of this guy as Im crossing the street on campus. Im thinking about the serendipitous events (or luck) of getting the Jeep sold, out of our hair, saving us money, and being alleviated of these bills. Im thinking this was a good thing that happened for us. Im thinking how Carey said the guy got a good deal, knows he's getting this good deal and how I am happy and pleased that he got his good deal. As I was walking I wondered if he was the kind of guy who gets lucky with things in life often. If he's good to people and so gets treated well in return. I wonder if he is used to getting good deals.

I'm walking and considering this. I'm approaching a woman on the sidewalk who seems to be a young mother escorting her two daughters into the athletic center where I imagine they will be attending their weekly gymnastics lessons, or swim meet, or something else along those lines. Daughter A, who is maybe eleven years old, is dancing up ahead of her mother and sister, B. A is looking to me like she's amped up. She's hyper, as a lot of eleven year old girls, I would imagine, are. She's dancing, and skipping and twirling and singing a good ten paces ahead of Mother and B. B, on the other hand, is tired. She seems so, anyway. She is holding back, not dancing or singing, but leaning in to her mother, mothers right arm cradling her in comfort. They are walking slowly. I hear Mother, possibly, consoling her daughter, saying something nice to her, something encouraging. Perhaps B was not in any state to be entering into yet another session of high-diving, treading water, flipping on the floor mats, balancing on the balance beam. It seemed to me that B was just plain old tired. I was tired, too. I bet Mother would have taken a nap if one was offered her. A, however, was like Man O'War on Red Bull.

Just as I was passing the threesome to their right, I witnessed A take note that Mother and B were coming to some conclusion. A stopped in mid plies, turned around, and walked hurriedly back to her sister. She took her sister's hands and said this: Let's transfer some energy.

A, wi