[Edit: This is the first time I’ve read this since I wrote this back in May and yep, I still agree with much of what I wrote below. I don’t know why I didn’t post this until now, but when I espoused these opinions via Twitter, several people said I should ahve given it a chance before knocking it to the ground. Perhaps they’re right. So next year I’ll attend and see if my vitrol changes. There was also some hubbub about money with TedXGR and there were also major concerns about one of the TedX board members whose ideologies seemed conflicted with the spirit of TED.- Lisa, July 23, 2012]
Like many other edgier creative types, I am a ticketholder for the TEDx event that is currently happening right now in downtown Grand Rapids. But instead of being rapt in admiration or wondrous belief at the current speaker on stage, I’m taking off to see The Avengers and then I’m heading out to get a mani/pedi afterwards. Then instead of the after party down at the Pyramid Scheme where I could mix with other edgier creative types (read: white people), my husband will then grill filet mignons we’ve had aging in the fridge for the last week and perhaps get drunk on the bottle of mid-range champagne we purchased for our recent anniversary.
Tickets for the event were competitive AND expensive ($115 which also included a forced lunch option, which pissed me off), so willingly giving up something I’ve seen other people badly desire (and I offered to give them my ticket and received no response) seems all kinds of foolish. And on top of that, there is all kinds of fiscal stupidity for blowing that kind of cash on something I’m not following through. Plus you know, I may have actually, might have had a good time!
So then why?
I couldn’t be arsed to be with a roomful of people who were all dying to talk to me (per TEDxGR’s emails that they would be) while dressed creativity (again per TEDxGR’s email) and we were to talk about SPREADING BIG IDEAS and networking like crazy. Truthfully, the concept makes me want to bitchslap people.
A year ago, I would have given an eyetooth to attend the inaugural TEDxGR event if finances were willing. However, I feel the problem is as a society, we’re so overwhelmed with ideas on a daily basis, saturated beyond the tipping point, our language is no longer about carrying and putting these ideas to work but about how much jargon we can extraopolate from the current set of buzzwords while pretending we all look incredibly smart and well read. BECAUSE WE ARE SPREADING IDEAS. The library world has had its own share of TEDx-esque hypsters who are all about MAKING SHIT HAPPEN but you never hear about the outcome of SHIT ACTUALLY BEING MADE. We all want to buy into the idea propmachine that we’re creating and curating new content by becoming change agents to maxmimize our world.
I have no idea what that last sentence actually means but it’s a pretty good jist of what I’m against.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the concept of TED is wonderful. I think there is a lot of good that TED and some of the TEDx events bring to the world. I watch zillions of TED videos and podcasts. But it gets to the point, again, with the oversaturation being pushed by consumeristic media that we all must think these big thoughts that we never actually get anything done.
Can we actually stop having big thinks and put those thinks into practice?
The children will thank you.
x0x0,
Lisa
Author: pookiebear
If not then, then now
I knew it was time to take a break after working steadily on cleaning my office for a few hours when I put the carbon copy of a check in the envelope and sealed it without thinking. And my brain has been throbbing for half that time. UFYH rules say you should take breaks every so often to keep your focus up and your mind engaged, brain fatigue is painful when attempting to accomplish something, and when finding the simplest of tasks become too mountainous, it’s time to rest. (But am I not superwoman, who can do everything?)
I noticed that I am finding myself struggle with brain fatigue quite a bit as of late. Conversations that require me to think beyond the shallow depths of my knowledge, books that require me to be more engaged then a passive reader, thoughts that I should have but somehow I can’t find the words to express. My inner world seems so rich and yet, when I go to articulate it, I sound uninformed or even worse, like an idiot.
I can physically feel this barrier that is pitting me against the world, I find it even in my superficial thoughts to be a skim over the edge but when I dig deep, and burrow myself in to find what I’m looking for, then I find myself scraping against the wall, my voice shouting on the inside to let me pass! But nothing happens, no break through and no release. So my words are strangled in my throat, in the elbows of my arm, for they cannot get to my finger tips, in the unknown reaches of neverwhere, where everything goes to live and yet nothing seems to come back alive.
The pug continues snoring on, her cadence is reassuring and at times, the most honest thing in the world.
Super Moon
It is the witching hour here and magic is awakening for its nightly crawl across our world. It seeping out of the never, into our peripheral vision, those flutters of something that we cannot not quite capture in full sight. Magic is easy to ignore in the daylight for we can blame the light for whatever mysteries have seeped over in this realm, but we cannot ignore its rightful place in the night. For what we think we saw and that is gone, what we think we hear and is not repeated, and what we think we feel but do not feel again are those figments of the other that are stretching their gossamer wings as they tiptoe around us, their giggling muted to human ears.
We are interrupting their world now, with our presence, and they want us to hurry up and leave. We are the beings invading their space, this is their time to shine. While we curly up in our beds, covers tucked to our chins, the other is floating to around us, protecting us from the evil that lurks. The other are here to protect us, but we’ve never really understood that; not now. Not in a thousand years. They protect us from the unnamed and the ugly, the frightening and the mares that roam, looking for overripe innocence. Their words of protection are rapid fire and come as tickles in our ears, their skips across our forehead we mistake for loose hairs.
“Don’t look under the bed.”
Bagged & Boarded: The Best American Comics 2011
The Best American Comics 2011 (anthology) | 3/5
Quick Summary: Collection of sequential art works by upcoming and established artists, edited by Alison Bechdel
tl;dr Summary: The book merits a “meh” and is recommended to buy used or to get from the library but not something you want to necessarily keep in your collection, even for reference.
The Best American series and I have an interesting relationship. Something compels me to think I have to read the damn things, thus year after year I buy copy after copy of titles in the series, used/new/eBook, on the premise that I’m going to read them and each year, the books get stacked higher and higher on my to be read shelves, taunting me and of course, never read. (But don’t I look smart with them on my shelves?) When Amazon recently had a one day sale of the Kindle versions of the entire 2011 Best American series for $.99 per title, I snapped up what was available save for Comics (not on Kindle format) and Sports (zzzz). Much like my groaning bookshelves taunting me with unread words, my Kindle app winks at me with updates at its growing collection of books that gather digital dust.1
Now that we have started this review with an oddly charming, yet not terribly related back story of my passive aggressive affair with Best American, let me go into the review of the book.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Best American series, the purpose is to anthologize and introduce a wide range of work in a variety of genres that may go unnoticed (or unappreciated) by the public at large. Each year presents a celebrated guest editor, coupled with the regular series editors, that are big draws in that particular field. In a way Best American is a cheat sheet to being culturally educated. Don’t have time to read all the things? A Best American series has you covered!2
Edited this year by Alison Bechdel, known for Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and Dykes to Watch Out For, this years entries ranged all the gamut from the existential to the profane to the heartwarming. As someone who is fairly new world of sequential art, new at least in the sense that I dipped my toes into the water and now safely wading in water up to my ankles, I’m naively expecting anthologies such as Best American to help me down that primrose path. When I sat in a panel at C2E2 a few weeks back, one of the presenters mentioned there was something like over a thousand new release titles for graphic novels per year, with most stores maybe getting in a hundred or two. This is, of course, not including single issue books of comics and other works such as manga, which for someone who is geting interested in this world, it is really overwhelming. It’s also exciting because of all the content that you could be missing
Best American Comics 2011 isn’t a bad book, I was enthralled and engaged on various levels, but it’s not an awesome book either. In some of the works, we’re given snippets of story rather then the entire story line, which can be jarring when the editing between artists is not made clear. So if you’re reading a page about rainbows and sunshine and the next page is about dragons and pillaging, and the work between the artists is similar enough, you get really confused on what story is ending and what story is beginning. Additionally, some of the work apparently required explanation, which is provided the back of the book in the introduction to the artists and writers section. Being lead by the artist/writer on what I should be thinking indicates they themselves don’t know what the hell they were doing3 and that irritates me to no end.
And other problem with the work, is that since some of the pieces are taken as snippets, and thus out of the original context, some of the meaning is lost. If this art form, for it is art, is to be understood with the images AND words, moving it from its orignal location, in some instances, loses the intent of the meaning. This wasn’t prevalent in all of the snippets, but in others it was definitely was noticeable.
Maybe, ultimately, I’m disappointed because I didn’t fall in love with any of the characters, writers, or artists in this anthology. I felt like, even ironically, there should be some kind of guarantee with Best American that I will love at least one thing, but I didn’t. My interest was piqued by some of the work showcased but I felt like overall it was too hit or miss. I felt like some of the editing choices were phoned in and as a reader, I picked up on that. I did, however, appreciate that the series editors added a list of notable works for the year, that were not included in the anthology, in the index. The sheer number of titles alone here, many highly regarded, does give me other options to explore.
1. This smells like a new project. And yes, I concede that I’m hoarding Kindle books but in my defense, they were (mostly all of them) free! And they are (mostly all of them) classics! Except for that bad free porn I downloaded, which scared my eyes and brain, but that is neither here nor there.
2. Which explains why I am totally into this series. A lot.
3. I have a vague crankypants attitude towards Salman Rushdie for this very reason, In a fairy recently interview, someone asked Rushdie his thoughts were on critics or people who were not fond of his work and he stated that he hoped one day their tastes would be sophisticated enough to enjoy him.
Bagged & Boarded: The Best American Comics 2011
The Best American Comics 2011 (anthology) | 3/5
Quick Summary: Collection of sequential art works by upcoming and established artists, edited by Alison Bechdel
tl;dr Summary: The book merits a “meh” and is recommended to buy used or to get from the library but not something you want to necessarily keep in your collection, even for reference.
The Best American series and I have an interesting relationship. Something compels me to think I have to read the damn things, thus year after year I buy copy after copy of titles in the series, used/new/eBook, on the premise that I’m going to read them and each year, the books get stacked higher and higher on my to be read shelves, taunting me and of course, never read. (But don’t I look smart with them on my shelves?) When Amazon recently had a one day sale of the Kindle versions of the entire 2011 Best American series for $.99 per title, I snapped up what was available save for Comics (not on Kindle format) and Sports (zzzz). Much like my groaning bookshelves taunting me with unread words, my Kindle app winks at me with updates at its growing collection of books that gather [Continue Reading]
Originally published at: Lisa @ EPbaB
50 Lengths of Cable Ties
For some time now, Kristin has been collecting Sheik romance novels, as a sub-collection for her Arab representation in popular fiction collection at her library. What’s made this particular collection development fun is that she’s crowd sourcing many of her acquisitions, from people such as myself, who pick them up for used/new as we find them to donate.1 Thanks to people like me, she has almost 200 titles in the Sheik romance genre alone.
In the wake of a conversation held the other day between Alice and Kristin, Alice mentions she has some Sheik books for me to mule back to the States for Kristin when I head to England at the end of the month. Not long after, Alice creates the [Dear Reader]$_ Information Technology Romance! generator, that pulls many of the keywords from the titles of Sheik romances (and other romances titles) and pairs them with IT terminology to create an IT romance title generator.
Just refresh the page for potential Harlequin/Mills&Boon romances hits such as:
- Curt Technical Architect, Captive Predicament
- Surly Network Administrator, Furtive Assignation
- The Bespectacled Desktop Support Analyst
I smell a potential book series in the making.
1. Where’s my bookplate?
Bone chips and Felix
The last couple of weeks, I have become an emotional hot mess. My mind, and my dreams, has been everywhere and nowhere at once, shifting the lines of reality and maybe madness. My thoughts have not been racing, as they were wont to do in the past, but I am having trouble focusing on any particular thing longer than a few seconds. I’ve come out of a dead sleep several times in the last month or two when I’ve thought I’ve seen or felt things in the dark, only to discover they weren’t there. Then I feel like a fool for when I tell people about what I see/heard, because I sound ridiculous. The other night, I had a nightmare bats were dive bombing the bed and I could feel the bed shiver as each bat landed on the mattress. But of course, after waking with a gulping start, there were no bats, there was nothing over head, and the only sounds in the bedroom were the teeter-tottering snores of TheHusband and the pug.
Tonight, I heard the sound of something scratching at the wood inside of the walls in my office, some kind of persistant “scratch, scratch, scratch” that sounded more like something was trying to free itself from its wooden prison, but I couldn’t find a source of the sound. The sound was coming near a joint in the window in my office, and it was loud!, but of course as soon as I called Justin in to investigate, the sound immediately disappeared. Justin reasoned it was probably a squirrel or some other varmint hanging out in the gutters and the noise was ricocheting down into the office, since my office is in a corner room. To appease me, Justin pounded on the wall around the source of the alleged noise but nothing stirred at his thumps, and nothing has stirred since he left.
In the past when I felt like I was going slightly insane, at least my insanity had a rational to it – I could manage the craziness. But this time is different, between the dreams and the sounds, because what if this all in my head? How do I manage that?
It hurts to think. Sometimes, it hurts to read. I feel like I am drowning in information, struggling to clutch on to what is important rather than what wanted. The air is murky here, because there are no clear paths for me to go, there is vague directions, and no real sign for which way for me to wander.
I need a purpose.
Bagged & Boarded: House of Night
[If you’ve been following me on Twitter lately, you know that I’ve really gotten into comics in the last six or so months for personal reading as well as I’ve also been collecting graphic novels for work. Starting today, and every Wednesday, I’ll be reviewing comics and graphic novels that I’ve recently read. Some will be new stuff, some will be old, others will be about the theory and practice of sequential art, with the goal to not only learn more myself but to help other comic virgins navigate this world.]
House of Night (5 book miniseries) | 3.5/5
Quick Summary: Miniseries that takes place behind and between the scenes of Betrayed, the second novel in the HoN series by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast.
I picked up House of Night for two reasons: Issue #1 was staring at me in my face AND I liked the cover art. Since House of Night was released in November, I was able to find all five issues fairly quickly and read the series in quick succession. The story was pretty simple: main protagonist, Zoey Redbird, has become the unwilling leader of the Dark Daughters, an elite society at her vampire boarding school. Each issue covers Zoey’s journey to leadership while she masters the five elements bestowed on her while figuring out the lesson behind each element. As each element has its own goddess attached to it, much of the comic is spent on that back history of the goddess and the lesson Zoey is to learn. Think of this as Hex mashed with Twilight.
Continue reading “Bagged & Boarded: House of Night”
Bagged & Boarded: House of Night
[If you’ve been following me on Twitter lately, you know that I’ve really gotten into comics in the last six or so months for personal reading as well as I’ve also been collecting graphic novels for work. Starting today, and every Wednesday, I’ll be reviewing comics and graphic novels that I’ve recently read. Some will be new stuff, some will be old, others will be about the theory and practice of sequential art, with the goal to not only learn more myself but to help other comic virgins navigate this world.]
House of Night (5 book miniseries) | 3.5/5
Quick Summary: Miniseries that takes place behind and between the scenes of Betrayed, the second novel in the HoN series by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast.
I picked up House of Night for two reasons: Issue #1 was staring at me in my face AND I liked the cover art. Since House of Night was released in November, I was able to find all five issues fairly quickly and read the series in quick succession. The story was pretty simple: main protagonist, Zoey Redbird, has become the unwilling leader of the Dark Daughters, an elite society at her vampire boarding [Continue Reading]
Originally published at: Lisa @ EPbaB
Commonwealth of Lisa
I turn 40 in a couple of months.
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!, I yell while shaking angry fists to the sky.
And there is no answer.
At least not one that I can audibly hear.