Monthly Archive for March, 2003

Igor alerted me to Fox’s response to the New York “die-in” protests. They used their huge ticker to poke fun at the protesters:

Fox News had its own response to the demonstrators. The news ticker rimming Fox’s headquarters on Sixth Avenue wasn’t carrying war updates as the protest began. Instead, it poked fun at the demonstrators, chiding them.

“War protester auditions here today … thanks for coming!” read one message. “Who won your right to show up here today?” another questioned. “Protesters or soldiers?”

Said a third: “How do you keep a war protester in suspense? Ignore them.”

Read all about it at North Jersey Media Group. Perhaps I should be outraged at the news empire’s bias or whatever, but I’m just sitting here laughing…

A bit more site news. I’ve put up a new design that I think addresses most of my problems with the older one. It is more subtle but serves pretty well to differentiate the posts and the side navigation. I like it, and people I’ve talked to seem to like it. There might still be problems with IE/Windows, so I’ll have to look into that. Stupid Windows.

Posts are now being categorized, and clicking on a category takes you to the newest 10 posts in that category. At some point I’ll make a little category navigation menu on the left, but the left side is pretty big already as it is.

Finally, I’ve added a widget to the bottom of the page that allows you to go to the next ten posts. now when you’re on the homepage or click a month to view, it shows the newest ten posts with the link on the bottom to go to the next ten posts or back to the previous ten posts. I like it, hope you do as well.

Artists are people, but not normal people. Artists are their own species, I’ve decided. Shaina is an artist of sorts, in a school of artists, and she has become more of an artist because of it. There is something interesting and somewhat unique about an artistic high school like the one Shaina goes too — there is this fundamental give-and-take between the artistic pursuits and the academics. They aren’t entirely incompatible, but there is certainly a resentment between them. Like cats and dogs, each is unique, sometimes they get along, sometimes not. They have personalities.

If artisty is about creation, uniqueness, beauty, soul, inspiration, and learning is about study, repetition, fact, testing, proof, there is a disconnnect. And yet, both pursuits are about truth.

Still, artists are different. On the one hand, they have tremendous emotional drive that other people probably don’t have. More prone to mania, depression, or whatever we as society are classifying it as today, but it is raw and unfettered emotion, and that is what art is about.

While artists can be extremely insightful, they can also sometimes be extremely dense. While at times that they can be so thoughful and caring, at other times they can also be incredibly brutal and uncaring.

Artists are difficult to live with. Sometimes, you need to do some artistry of your own in attempting to mold them into a more subtle model…possibly slightly less artistic, which is a shame, but more livable, which is good.

It is the real world vs. the artists. It is the universal give and take. It is strange and scary and confusing and prone to small failures. And in taming the artist, one might dampen the artistry a bit. Sad, difficult, fraught with peril, possibly harmful, and yet so potentially rewarding. It’s probably worth it, I think.

While buying groceries the woman who sells the vegetables was talking to another about the approach of American armies to Najaf city and about what is happening at Um Qasar and Basra. If Um Qasar is so difficult to control what will happen when they get to Baghdad? It will turn uglier and this is very worrying. People (and I bet “allied forces�) were expecting things to be mush easier. There are no waving masses of people welcoming the Americans nor are they surrendering by the thousands. People are oing what all of us are, sitting in their homes hoping that a bomb doesn’t fall on them and keeping their doors shut.

Where is Raed? makes a very good read.

Looks like Matt Sachs finally got a blog. If he actually continues to post, I’ll have to add him to my friends list. His latest words of wisdom on family and relationships: …oh, and it was nice seeing my family, of course. They got a new couch.