JAGIV

A virtual gang recruitment

2008-11-12T22:33:00.000-08:00

This is a random IM conversation that happened several years ago, when my AIM name was DaiShinSkim. Random chatters always assumed I was Asian(I am).

VTC559: sup
VTC559: u want to join a krew?
VTC559: den come in this chatroom
DaiShinSkim: what kind of krew?
VTC559: VTC
VTC559: Viet CO
DaiShinSkim: What if I'm white?
VTC559: ur white?
DaiShinSkim: yeah?
DaiShinSkim: Is that bad?
VTC559: g1
VTC559: my boys say na
DaiShinSkim: Cuz I'm white?
VTC559: its an asn krew
DaiShinSkim: I see
DaiShinSkim: what is a 'krew'?
VTC559: gang
DaiShinSkim: An online gang?
DaiShinSkim: What do you do??
VTC559: real life
DaiShinSkim: Oh.
DaiShinSkim: Do you guys do drive bys?
VTC559: na
VTC559: we a koo gang
VTC559: we just represnt
DaiShinSkim: Rob people?
DaiShinSkim: Represent
DaiShinSkim: Cool
VTC559: we have ova 300 peepz
VTC559: all ova
VTC559: da place
DaiShinSkim: Deeeeaaammn yo
DaiShinSkim: Dtz tight!
VTC559: yea
DaiShinSkim: What y'all do when y'all reprazent up in there?
VTC559: we just kik it hang
VTC559: get mo peepz to join
VTC559: dat all
DaiShinSkim: Tight
VTC559: yea
DaiShinSkim: No fights?
DaiShinSkim: OR mugging
VTC559: only if they mess wit us
VTC559: no muggin
DaiShinSkim: Y'all break any lawz an shit?
VTC559: we aint like dat
VTC559: we just chill yo
VTC559: we have like 30 in fresno where i live
VTC559: portalnd about 25
VTC559: la about 30
VTC559: every where
VTC559: and we all kno eachnother
VTC559: just gotta chek our chatroom
DaiShinSkim: A'ight
DaiShinSkim: but I'm white>>>
VTC559: its koo
DaiShinSkim: I know martial arts though
VTC559: den
VTC559: peace
VTC559: can u say dat ur azn?
VTC559: say your chineese aight
VTC559: den i let u in
DaiShinSkim: I have Native American ancestry and the Mongols traversed the Bering strait land bridge approximately 30,000 years ago
VTC559: so u azn then
VTC559: just say u azn aight
DaiShinSkim: So due to that trace of my lineage I'd say chromosomally at least I'm Asian.
VTC559: asl?
DaiShinSkim: 30/m/CA
VTC559: dang
VTC559: yo my bad
VTC559: u a cop?
VTC559: or anything?
DaiShinSkim: no
DaiShinSkim: I can be one
VTC559: 30?
DaiShinSkim: Or play like I'm one in the chat room
VTC559: 30?
DaiShinSkim: Would you like that?
DaiShinSkim: Yes
VTC559: we lookin fo young member tho
DaiShinSkim: Damn yo
DaiShinSkim: I always wanted to be in a gang
VTC559: oh
VTC559: aight
VTC559: g2g
VTC559: man ttyl
VTC559: peace
DaiShinSkim: In Alabama we only had pigs and sheeps and shit
VTC559: ohz
VTC559: aight dne
VTC559: peace
VTC559: g2g
DaiShinSkim: awww
DaiShinSkim: deeeamn!

I am scared of mentally challenged people...

2008-11-12T20:59:00.000-08:00

aka "retarded" people, but that's not Politically Correct these days, although the word merely means: re•tard1 ( P ) Pronunciation Key (r-tärd) v. re•tard•ed, re•tard•ing, re•tards v. tr. To cause to move or proceed slowly; delay or impede. v. intr. To be delayed. n. A slowing down or hindering of progress; a delay. Music. A slackening of tempo. It's just that the over usage of the word by 3rd graders as an insult has forever changed it's place in the American lexicon. Apparently, even music can be retarded, that's awesome. Anyhow, when I was 4 years old, I went with my hippie parents to a hippie party, I can't remember what the occasion was, they were probably celebrating a newly harvested crop of marijuana, it was the 70's. They were burning a big bonfire outside and it was either Fall or Winter, I can't remember but I think it was cold. I guess it could have been Spring too or maybe a cool Summer night. Ok, it happened for sure at some point during the year, and the couple who owned the house had a boy about 8 years old, who was dressed as an Indian on this night. That really confused me. I kept asking my parents if it was Halloween. I mean, what other reason could there be for dressing up other than Halloween right? I really wanted it to be Halloween. I was thinking I'd missed all the pre-Halloween advertisements and huzzah, and it just snuck up on me. Nope, no Halloween. My parents simply explained that this little Indian was special. They might have even actually said "He's a retard" since this was the 70's. Either way, I didn't know what that meant, but I could tell he was different.

A few hours pass at this party and I found that I was scared of this special Indian. I felt he was unreasonable, which is to say I felt he absolutely could not be reasoned with because of his special brain. I don't remember why I felt like that just yet, but I do remember the events which sealed my intuitive inclinations as I went to use the restroom. My parents told me it was in the house and I just had to go up the porch, through the screened door and down the hall. I remember the next sequence of events pretty vividly: First, I was surprised that my parents just let me do something like that by myself, because I was only 4. They must have been on LSD or something, it was the 70's. Second, I was walking to the porch and I saw the special Indian warrior in the bushes, looking at me. I just kept walking and watching him watch me from a bush right next the stairs. He wasn't a very stealthy Indian by the way, I could totally see him. When I approached, he hopped out, raised a hatchet - a real fucking hatchet - over his head and started to swing it down at me. I remember thinking, "he's going to chop me in the head" and I stepped back in time to watch it swing by me, and lodge in the ground between us. I watched him struggle to get the blade out of the ground, and decided it would be best if I left. I went and told my parents, and they told his parents, to which they responded "Oh he's just playing around!" It was the 70's. Kids used to play with weapons all the time.

Fast forward 25 years later, and I am in San Francisco walking around the city with my ex as she checks out internships for her MSW program. We go to a local mental health center and I sit and read a U.S.A. Today during her interview. As I was reading, a mentally challenged tall skinny African American man wearing overalls walked into the waiting room. He was very friendly, talkative and social with everyone. Sigh.... Let me take a break here for a second to explain some things...

At this point in my life, I'm very aware of the fact that I have an irrational fear of mentally challenged people. I know it is stupid. I would like to not feel like that. It's exactly like a fear of dogs stemming from a childhood dog attack. It would be nice for me if when I'm in the food court of the Mall, and group of special people wander in to eat, squealing and gnashing their teeth as they do, and I'm not overwhelmed with the feeling I best expressed by the words "get the fuck out of here right now Jimmy". I have friends who have volunteered to work with mentally challenged people at schools and such, which I imagine is an occupation best compared to working as a cowhand at a satanic murderer/zombie ranch. The only good things I can imagine to come out of that experience would be the hilarious stories you get to tell your friends years later. Like the story my friend Peter Balabuch told me, about one Halloween where a special boy came to school wearing a cowboy hat, a tie-dye shirt, red Converse Chuck Taylor high tops, shorts and a Dracula cape. Peter asked him "Hey Brandon, what are you dressed up as for Halloween?" His response: "KENNY ROGERS." I love that story. I want to dress just like that and say I'm Kenny Rogers for Halloween too, but I elect to get the inspirational stories like these second hand, because I can't help but assume I will be killed every time I am around the Special Indians.

Back to the Mental Health Center. I saw the special guy and I thought "I'm in a new city, a new environment, beginning a new life. It's time to start making friends with the retards. It's the 2000's." So as he spoke with me, I spoke back to him all friendly-like. So far so good. There are no bladed weapons or anything. So, after our little talk had ended, I continued reading, proud of myself but still keeping a wary eye on my new friend. I noticed he kept walking in and out of the waiting room sitting down, and then leaving. I then noticed that when he was sitting, he was staring at me, and I further noticed that, when I paused to look at him he immediately got up and walked away. Hmm. The next time he came in the room, he sat a little closer to me. I decided to scope him out with my peripheral vision to see if I could tell what was going on. Awesome news! It turns out he was staring at me and beating off. That's all. Just staring at my face.... and beating off. Excellent. The truce is off. Special Indians: 2 - Me: 0. Not really knowing what to do, I tried to place the newspaper between my face and his field of vision. I found that he was fairly aggressive, as he repositioned himself so he can get a good view of my face. Why my face dude? That's disturbing.

So, I dropped the paper and stared right at him. He immediately left. Then he came back. Started jacking. I stared. He left. This process repeated itself about two more times, until I decided to run upstairs to the second floor and hide behind a potted plant, where he couldn't see me. I watched him walk back into and out of the waiting room in a mad masturbatory frenzy looking all over the bottom floor for my face. After he gave up and left, it dawned on me that I was a twenty-eight year old, grown up man, hiding behind a potted plant, running from a special Indian pervert and I had run into an area of the building I was not allowed to be in. The guy left finally and I right at the same time, my ex was done with her interview. We left the building safely alive and un-raped. Since then, I haven't had any more experiences with mentally challenged people, but as a result my fears of their ilk have not lessened.

Michi's cool family members

2008-09-08T21:05:00.000-07:00

First there's Michi's uncle Koichi Tsunoda, former President of Sony.

http://www.firstglimpsemag.com/Editorial/article.asp?article=articles/2004/e0206/31e06/31e06.asp&guid=

"The idea of a videocassette first was proposed by Koichi Tsunoda, a Sony engineer, in 1964, after seeing Philips' audio cassette," the CEA recounts. "But the question was whether consumers were interested in recording TV programs."

Just Google "koichi tsunoda sony"

Then there's her great grand father, Ryusaku Tsunoda.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%ABsaku_Tsunoda

Ryūsaku Tsunoda (角田柳作 Tsunoda Ryūsaku, 1877-1964) is known as the "father of Japanese studies" at Columbia University.^[1] He was directly responsible for developing the Japanese language and literature collection at Columbia's library

Once again you can just google him.

Also, her ancestors from Japan were Samurai according to her grandmother.

Pretty cool stuff.

Siggraph and nightmare combat techniques pt 2

2008-08-20T15:35:00.000-07:00

So during the week before my presentations, I was spending a lot of time practicing, and worrying. More worrying than practicing actually. As a result, I slept pretty poorly, and when I did sleep I had nightmares.

I know myself well enough to quasi-interpret my dreams. Granted, I have the occasionally totally bizarre, not-at-all-understandable dreams like the one with the surf-bro talking, human hating/killing stegosaurus mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, but those are usually rare. In all honesty my dreams are pretty lame these days. I think that's symptomatic of age, and familiarity with the reality of my existence. Instead of having dreams of wondrous events, flying or super hero powers, I have two modes of dreaming: 1) Dreaming about normal every day crap or 2) Dreaming about crazy terrifying situations that may or may not take place in reality.

The second mode is 90% of the time, a result of stress or anxiety stemming from something going on in my life, and typically it's work or school related. Somewhere around 10-15 years ago, I somehow managed to develop a strategy for dealing with my anxiety dreams. When I was younger, most of my anxiety dreams involved me falling from something, and during the fall, I'd wake up panicked. The way I countered this was what could be considered a temporary lucid dreaming technique. Whenever I'd start to fall, I'd realize that I was dreaming, and then tell myself I was either going to bounce, land in water or glide to safety. After I started using those techniques, my brain stopped feeding me falling dreams and then expressed stress via having some person or thing attack or chase me in my dreams. The way I countered that, was simply by fighting it. In some cases, I had Neo-like control over my body, and severely kicked ass. That was pretty cool. In the past 5 years, I have a new anxiety foe in my dreams and the only way I can describe it is 'evil concentrate'. Now, first and foremost, I don't even believe in the concept of 'evil'. 'Evil' as force is assigned to many things: people, objects, places, fictitious characters that people believe in(the devil), tigers that attack people when they are stupid enough to get into their cage in the zoo, etc. However, the only place I felt it was nearly applicable was to people, and after years of reading about the criminal mind as a hobby, I simply think that what people will describe as 'evil' is actually 'crazy'. Now with that in mind, the fact that my brain is telling me that 'evil concentrate' is attacking me in my dreams, makes me pretty powerless. How am I supposed to deal with something I don't even believe in?

It's hard to describe what the 'evil concentrate' feels like. I'd say it's a mix between a black hole and a bad acid trip. If you've never tried acid or had a bad acid trip, then a bad acid trip is like a living nightmare...wait that doesn't work, this is a nightmare. Ok, a bad acid trip is like questioning whether or not you are going insane and about to die at the same time. The black hole feeling in the dream comes from a feeling like my body is slowly being crushed to the ground, or that full body paralysis is setting in. It's kind of awful.

Last week, during my Siggraph stressing, I had one of these dreams. Usually these types of dreams take place in a house or some kind of confining structure, which usually makes it more scary because I don't know of an immediate escape route. However, this time, I was in an open field, and a huge hole opened up in the sky. Instead of being crushed, I was slowly being dragged upwards into this giant hole. The environment for the dream was very nice: Sunny day, blue skies, a big open grassy field, but this whole was giant and dark. It was warping the sky up and inwards. Once again I felt physically powerless, and just had to go along with it. Whenever this happens, I have a slowly building sense of terror as the force of the evil is more apparent on my body. This dream had a different variable than my standard nightmares - I wasn't alone. I had someone with me that, for whatever reason, I felt compelled to protect. I think this stems from the fact that I had co-presenters in each of my talks last week. With that in mind, I started to think quicker about what options I had to save this person, and myself from this fate. Even though I was thinking of all the ways I could actively combat the hole in the sky, I discovered the resolution by accident. This is going to sound cliche and cheesy but, I combated the evil by laughing. When I was heading up into the hole, I grabbed the generic human who was with me, and said 'Pretty terrifying isn't it?', as this person had never experience my nightmares before, and when I said it, I started laughing which is what I always do to try and calm someone who I'm concerned about. When I started to laugh, the force of the evil over my body lessened, and my sense of terror diminshed. So I joked and laughed some more and very quickly, the evil concentrate disappeared.

Now, normally, this wouldn't be so remarkable, or maybe I wouldn't remember it so vividly, but, when I was giving my last presentation on Friday at Siggraph, and I'd walked into the gigantic room full of people, I was overwhelmed with terror. I really felt like I was going to throw up. I walked to the front of the room, trying not to look at the crowd and just move to my seat. When I finally was settled a bit, I decided to face my fear and evaluate the situation. As I looked into the crowd and saw all the people, I just started laughing. It just seemed so ridiculous that I had expected to speak to about 5-10 people, and instead here was between 500-700. It seemed like a script. Of COURSE there were hundreds of people here, that's much more funny and terrifying, and makes the situation that much more interesting, because that's the kind of shit that always happens to me. So I started to laugh.... When I started laughing, this feeling of dire seriousness just seemed to leave my body. I thought 'huh...this reminds me of my dream.' So I decided to go with it. Instead of brooding over how I might fuck up, puke or faint, I just sat there grinning and kind of laughing about it.

It worked!

Granted, I was still nervous, but I was making jokes on stage, smiling, and essentially making light of the situation, which is exactly what it was supposed to be, a light-hearted fun(sorta) situation. Now, I realize this sounds kind of new-age-y, feel good, chicken-soup-for-the-soulish, but I absolutely have to stand by it as a means to deal with what is a danger free, but terrifying situation. For awhile now, I've had a suspicion that I'm problem solving in some capacity via my dreams, and after last week's experience, I'm sure of it. Now, if only I'd figure out how to get these solutions out of my subconscious faster, so I don't have to wait another 37 years to have my dreams tell me that smiling is the cure for suicidal tendencies....

Siggraph and nightmare combat techniques.

2008-08-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

All photos by Michi Tsunoda

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimmygordon/sets/72157606789945082/show/

So, this week at the LA convention center, Siggraph 2008 was hosted. I was asked about 2 months ago by my friend/co-worker Jen Bahan if I would be a co-presenter with her, in the Rhythm & Hues booth, to give a brief talk about my department. Jen is a rigging supervisor, and technical animation is a sub department of rigging. Knowing my fear of public speaking, naturally I said yes...

I believe it's good for my character, to put myself in situations I imagine to be humiliating, uncomfortable and terrifying. Now, this could expand to things like doing 'The Chicken Dance' at a wedding or performing in a poetry slam - but both of those things are stupid and gross. Siggraph is something someone in my shoes SHOULD do.

I really should have prepped my materials sooner than I did, but I got everything together in time. However, a week before Siggraph started, I was asked to participate in another panel talk to discuss the cracking system developed for Mummy 3, which I mentioned in my previous blog. I thought 'What the fuck? Why not?' So I said yes.

Jen and I prepared pretty well I think. We were talking about things we do everyday, so the subject matter wasn't difficult to generate, just the presentation, timing and actually saying it in front of a crowd. We rehearsed for about 2 lunch hours before our presentation day, and then the day of, we met early in the morning and practiced all day til we did it.

When it was time to go, we were both super duper nervous. There was a crowd of about 40-50 people who showed up, but there were lights shining in my eyes, so I couldn't really see them. Right before we started, Jen looked over at me and said 'Dude...I'm so nervous right now I could puke.' Regardless, she did awesome. She sounded like she did this for a living. As time went on, I settled into the talking about what I do in front of people role, and it became easier. When it was over, our friends in the audience said it went well and we received questions that made me think what we were saying actually made sense to the people listening.

Here are a few pics of the scene:

This is the booth.

Look here! Jen and I, all smiles, but really we're fucking scared to death.

Here I am with Ari. I think this picture better reflects my mood. The mood best described as 'supposed to be having fun, but instead, feeling nauseous'.

Here's our audience.

And here we are on stage.

After it was over I felt great! I ran my mouth like I'd just had an endorphin rush. Whew. It went well, and it was now over.

So, next was Friday's presentation. I was expecting Friday's presentation to be even easier. It was the last panel of the day. We were presenting in the 'Bend Me, Break Me' category, which focused on various simulations systems seen in recent films. There were two groups from Dreamworks, one group from Digital Domain and us. Me and Jason Bayever. Jason was the guy who spearheaded the 'crackHorse' project, and I was the end user who did most the R&D and developed the film ready aesthetic performance of the technology the programmers created.

I'd already spoken about this subject a little in my booth talk, so I wasn't as nervous. Also, Ari (Dr. Ari Shapiro - graphics scientist) had pretty much put the presentation together for us as a god damned sweet favor. During the week, Jason and I, being the types of pessimists who like to label themselves 'realists', discussed what we thought we'd see at the panel. We figured: a small room, 5-10 people, boring presentations etc.

A mild affair for all. No problem.

I, we, were wrong. When I showed up at the convention center, Jason met me out front and the first thing he said was "Dude...the room is HUGE. Like 500 people huge." me: "But it's empty right? There's no one here?" Jason: "No! They are all here, they are just in other conferences now." Secretly, I was holding out hope, thinking "Whatever. No one will show up. It's the last conference of the show. Who wants to go to that?" So, before our presentation, Jason, Ari and I scanned the material briefly and ran through some rehearsals. Jason, who is normally a great, lucid and smart speaker was running over his words, losing his train of thought, and getting very nervous. In watching him, I got nervous. I was feeling like a veteran already, due to my one little talk, but Jason's nervousness made me think I was in for something bigger, and oh yes I was. I pulled my part off just fine with a little coaching from Ari, and I felt ready to go.

While we were packing up, Jason said "I'm a little worried that our technology won't play nice when were up there." He's worried that the laptop we'd planned on working with wouldn't play with Siggraph's technology. I was like "Dude...it's Siggragh. They have mini-dv converter dongles out the ass". And so we were on our way.

On the walk to the room, I noticed a crowd gathering around us all headed into the same area. It was the room. The same room we were about to speak in. It was huge. Like 500 people huge as Jason said. Also..it was PACKED. I haven't been this scared since I've fought in a martial arts tournament, or actual street fight - ie several years. I thought I would puke and or faint. We get in there and realize somethings wrong - at least with my perspective on this.

Here's a break down of the room:

Room
403 AB

Dimensions
104 x 82

Square Feet
8,528

Ceiling Height
20'

Maximum capacity
1,000

Anyhow, I shucked the emotional assault my brain was dealing me to the side, and got on stage to test the equipment. It looked like it was going to work. So, feeling somewhat safe, we sat down to wait. I practiced my stuff while the other two demos went first, and Jason listened to them. I could not concentrate on any thing except the thought 'We need to get this shit done as soon as fucking possible.'

After the two presentations go, it's our turn. I bring my Mac up and plug it in. We wait.....hmmm......nothing's happening..... The tech assistant starts to go ballistic in that 'tech dude who's failing at his job in the publics eye' kind of way. We try to help, but nothing we do collectively, gets what we've written and been rehearsing, out of the lap top, and on the big screen. There were lots of psychedelic images on the screen jumping around rapidly. I tried to joke the audience out of their discomfort 'Hey guys I just shit in my pants! Who wants to wrestle? No no no, I said 'I'll be DJ'g in just a few minutes.' while pointing at the screen. I think I got a 5-10% laugh share. ie, 25-50 people snorted or chortled. That's not very good.

So we couldn't fix it. We decided to let the guys after us go first so they could their part done and over with, and we can sort our tech issues out in the meantime.

During this time, we copied our entire files over to a friends laptop, converted the file from ppt. to Keynote, rebuilt all the video file paths, and then it was time to go again.

We now try our friend's laptop.

It doesn't work.

We try my laptop again.

It doesn't work.

At this point Jason is mad, and he's very effective when he's mad. He essentially said to the Siggraph staff 'You do this, you do this...you do this and I'll do this.

It worked! Jason brought up the raw, out of order, unedited version of the presentation as it had been burned to the Siggraph server that morning. We said fuck it, and went forward with it.

Jason started out pretty nervous for about 30 seconds, but he then clicked into Jason mode and just owned it. When it was my turn, I simply said what I'd been planning on saying, but I had to improvise a way to get the order of the slides to match conceptually. I brought a little bit of science into the talk, but nothing too techy, because that would have lead me to pulling Hans and Ari into the talk and I didn't want to extend it anymore.

When all was said and done - it went really well! A lot people pinned me down after, asking about concepts in the film. The last guy was the Siggraph Beijing Chair and said he'd like to get in touch with me about talking in China sometime next year. That would be pretty sweet. We'll see if he follows through.

To be cont'd..

There's more I need to write...it will be in part 2. It's about the nightmare combat strategies and techniques I've used over the years and how/why they work.

Surf Trip to Oregon

2008-08-02T10:09:00.001-07:00

I've already sent this link out to a few people, but I tend to miss addresses often.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimmygordon/sets/72157606460499995/show/with/2721227934/

Here are some pictures Michi took from this past week, where my old friends from High School - Dax, Dirk, Roosey - and Michi and myself, rented a beach house in Pacific City, Oregon.

We mostly just spent the time either surfing or lounging. I'd never been to Oregon before, and Michi and I wanted to check the state out, and the city of Portland specifically.

Most of the surf pictures are from Kiwanda Shores in Pacific City, OR.

Which can be found here:

View Larger Map

The last set of surf pictures are taken at 'The Boy Scout Camp'. I don't know if this is a secret spot or what...

It can be found here:

View Larger Map

Oregon is essentially a secret spot on it's own from what I can tell. Whenever I told people here in LA that I was going to take a surf trip to Oregon, the response was unanimously "Oregon???". With the exception of my friend Evan who said it would be huge, windy, cold and sharky (he wasn't totally correct, but I could see how it could get that way), no one seemed to know that Oregon is surfable. You can chalk that up to either typical Angelino ignorance of any geographic location that isn't, LA, SF, NYC or Vegas, or the fact that Oregon is not typically featured as a hot surf spot ever. I imagine Oregonians would like to keep it that way - sorry for this blog dudes.

The surf was uncrowded, and the surfers I encountered were not aggro like you'd find in Ocean Beach, San Diego. I'd heard they hate CA surfers, but I didn't speak with any of them. As far as I'm concerned, surfers hate other surfers in general. All that brotherly love talk is just that, talk. You love your surfing friends, but any douchebag that paddles over to the peak you were alone on a few minutes ago, is the enemy. The average surfer skill in OR reminded me of what you'd see in LA at El Porto, but not on the level of Orange County or San Diego, so I felt pretty comfy as my surfing skills have rusted tremendously since I've left San Diego. The water was freezing cold. It was as cold as it gets during a SoCal Winter. The first day, I got ice cream headaches so bad from the water, that I thought I was going to puke. The days after that, I just timed my paddle out to the set intervals, in order to avoid duck diving. The wind was pretty intense one day, enough to blow us down South, but it never seemed to destroy the wave shape. The waves were thigh to shoulder high pretty consistently over the trip. Despite any wind present, the waves always seemed to keep their shape, until the last day where it had rained over night. The ocean all up and down the coast was very stormy and messy.

The best part of the trip was reuniting with Dax, Dirk and Roosey.

Roosey and I live in the same city, and have been around each other consistently for the last 23 years. So it wasn't a reunion so much as another trip out of town for us. However, Dirk and I only see each other once every few years, and I haven't seen Dax in somewhere around 15 years. It's great to reunite with people and see how they've changed, yet how core elements of their personalities still remain. I'm mostly happy to see how many of my friends have done very well for themselves after leaving High School: Dirk has a permanent exhibition at The Smithsonian and continues to work as a fine artist, Dax is a product pipeline manager for Dakine, Roosey has a sweet job at Yahoo!. I especially love it because all of us were either held back, or failed one grade in the public school system in Huntsville, AL. Clearly we are not the retards our teachers thought we were. At one point on the trip, we all copped to having the same thoughts of "Would you ever have thought, 20 years ago, that we'd all be together, surfing off the coast of Oregon??"

My only regret is that I was so tired from the surf sessions, that Michi and I didn't get a chance to go looking for Bigfoot. Next time Sasquatch....next time.

omgitsover

2008-07-12T13:51:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday was technically my last day on The Mummy 3, although I haven't done any work on the film since 1 am Wednesday morning. The rest of the week has been spent busting my ass trying to get a character ready for Land of the Lost. Oh yeah, so I'm on Land of the Lost
(LOL) now.

I was supposed to take 3 weeks off, but I had to shave a week because LOL is expected to deliver a trailer this coming week. So, out of the one miserable thing, into the thing that's just as bad if not worse cliche....

Anyhow, Mummy 3 has been the most challenging project I've ever been a part of in my life, ever. More challenging than school ever was and more challenging than any other film before it that I've worked on. I'm very grateful that I had an amazing team to work with. A lot of them were fairly new, and had to learn a lot of standard techAnim methods and brand new techAnim tools. They all did great. That was the saving grace of this film for me - the team. I've never had a team of people who were all so pleasant and willing to work so hard. If I didn't have those guys, I don't know that I could have been able to deal with 5 months of 70-80 hour average work weeks.

I kept saying "I can't believe I'm using my brain SO much for something SO stupid". By stupid I mean, it's 'The Mummy' franchise. I just find it funny how much energy goes into what ultimately will be written off as "mindless summer fun!!" The greatest challenge we had in our department was to create a system that simulates cracking and healing skin for characters made of bronze and terra cotta. The problem was rooted in the fact that we shared this show with another FX house - Digital Domain(DD). Initially, DD was supposed to build a system that allowed for surface cracking and healing for a character, in the effects package program Houdini. Well, they built it, but they only had to use it in 3 shots. We had to use it in over 90. The system they built took almost week to simulate one shot, so one can imagine the hell that would create for 90+ shots, not to mention attempting to art direct those shots after they've been simmed once. Therefore, we built our own system to do it in our proprietary software. It worked! It took almost 3 months for the programmers to build it, have me test it and say what was needed and what was working, and it's very calculation heavy on it's own, but it reduced simulation time to about 45 minutes for an average length shot. That's much better than a week..... Also, the Siggraph people asked us to submit some new tech as a possible 'sketch' topic for the convention this year. One of the programmers, Dr. Ari Shapiro, submitted the cracking technology and it was accepted. That makes me happy to see the work recognized in an academic sense at least. because I'm sure the internet will be full of the inevitable 'THE CGI SUCKS!' from the unpleasable fanboy crowd.

LOL has a longer schedule and very professional production team, so this will be a different experience. I'm guessing it's not going to be as much 'fun' but the workload will be more efficiently managed. The Visual Effects supervisor on Mummy was great in my opinion. He is a sci fi geek, and especially a huge Battlestar Galactica fan and ALL of the supervisors of the other departments on the show were really cool and fun people.

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to being a normal work week type of person again, and possibly using this blog more than once every six months.....

Craziness.

2008-02-26T18:26:00.000-08:00

What a crazy week so far.

1) Last Thursday we went to court to sue our former landlord, in small claims. Not only did he dress like some kind of hippie clown, but he lost his temper with our judge, after the judge awarded us our initial $500 of $2500 we were asking for. The judge had us leave the courthouse so he could deliberate on it later. Yesterday, we received the judgment in the mail and were awarded all of our money back, plus court costs. This is a grand total of $2658.84. That's great! But, in the middle of the former landlord's meltdown, he told the judge, he didn't care what the judge said, he was taking it to superior court. I imagine that means he'll appeal and we'll go to superior court. And then sue his ass again.

2) My mom has been getting pretty deep into our family genealogy, and recently I've taken a gene test which traces mtDNA(matrilineal side) and y chromosome DNA(patrilineal side). We figured it's best to test the kids since we're a package of everything in our most immediate family. However to get the female DNA from my dad's side, he'll have to get an mtDNA test and the male DNA from my mom's side, her brother(my uncle) will have to get a y chromosome test.

I haven't been sure what to expect out of the results, but the first batch came through yesterday. It's the results of my mom's, mom's, mom's, mom's, mom's, mom's etc. mtDNA. On that part of the female side, it said I am part of the haplogroup U5a1a, which is defined here:

Haplogroup U5a1a lineage within haplogroup U5 arose in Europe approximately 30,000 years ago, and is mainly found in northwest Europe. In the context of its rather ancient origin, the modern distribution of haplogroup U5a1 suggests that individuals bearing this haplogroup were part the initial expansion tracking the retreat of ice sheets from Europe. Bryan Sykes in his Seven Daughters of Eve book named this mtDNA haplogroup Ursula.

With Haplogroup U5 described as:

The oldest mtDNA in Europe that's human, Homo Sapien and not Neanderthal or other archaic individual is U5. The age of U5 is estimated at 50,000 but could be as old as 60,500 years. The first place scientists find U5 in Europe is in Cyrenaica, and artifacts are found in Iberia, as it's the first in Europe and evolved in Europe.

The presence of haplogroup U5 in Europe pre-dates the expansion of agriculture in Europe. Bryan Sykes' popular book The Seven Daughters of Eve says it shows up 45,000-50,000 years ago in Delphi, Greece and named the originator of haplogroup U5 Ursula. It shows That U5 is the first out of Africa into Europe, and that it shows up as the first Europeans in two places, Delphi and Spain around 50,000 years ago.

By another source haplogroup U5, age is estimated at about 52,000 kya, being the oldest subclade of haplogroup U.[5] Haplogroup U5 and its subclades are most common in Sami, Finns, and Estonians, but it is spread widely at lower levels throughout Europe. U5 is found also in small frequencies and at much lower diversity in near East suggesting back-migration of people from northern Europe to south.[1]

Here is Sykes' description of 'Ursula'

Who was Ursula? According to Professor Sykes, Ursula was likely born about 45,000 years ago in the mountains of Greece. This time period is close to the beginning of the Ice Age. Ursula and her family likely encountered Neanderthals. Her people were slightly taller than Neanderthals and much slimmer, a trait that helped her ancestors adapt better to their previous homelands of the Middle East and Africa. Neanderthals were shorter and stockier, with large broad noses, built better for the colder weather of Europe where they resided for the past quarter million years. It is thought that Ursula's people did not "kill off" Neanderthals, but rather, they were a more social animal, and their communication skills allowed them to more efficiently gather and share the living supplies available in the new land. The average life expectancy at that time is estimated to be around 35 years. Both Sykes ("Seven Daughters of Eve") and Oppenheimer ("The Real Eve") agree that Ursula's Clan, and her mtDNA haplogroup U5, were the first permanent Homo sapiens in Europe. Today, the highest proportion of Ursula descendents are found in Scandinavia, Germany, and the area of the United Kingdom.

So this is pretty interesting. Basically my female side is like, super-whitebred. Not really, since Ursula all but came straight from North Africa, but the neat thing is, the DNA test I took linked me to living people who I have recent common ancestors with, all over the world. The majority of which are clustered in Eastern Europe.

In a few weeks, I'll start to get the results of my male DNA lineage, which is alleged to be Dutch, Scotch, Irish, Native American, so we'll see how that ends up.........

3)

I did not expect to be taking this picture yesterday. Man, it's crazy, happy and in some ways sort of sad. I thought Transformers had overall better looking FX than The Golden Compass, but what Compass was trying to do was very difficult and 90% of the time, they(we) pulled it off. Also, Rhythm was ripped off a few years ago by King Kong versus Narnia, so this was payback. Naturally, it's been very happy here at work. I'm very happy too. Receiving an Oscar is a pretty god damned tremendous way of having your work acknowledged and approved. I never thought I would have such an experience. The sad part comes from reading the backlash against Compass's win, as written by movie fans on forum boards and whatnot. I can't get too upset about it, since 99.999% of those guys have never won an Oscar or made a freaking movie, but I don't want to defend it either. I don't want to be that guy who argues with people on the internet, about whether or not he did a good job AFTER he's won a fucking Oscar. So I just got to let it slide. This makes me think about what it must be like for people who are heavily spotlighted in their artistic careers - musicians, filmmakers, fashion designers, actors etc. When you do something so public, no matter how well you do, or how hard you work, there is always going to be someone judging you harshly, telling you that you didn't do a good job, that your work sucks, you didn't work hard enough, etc. Like the old saying: You can't please everyone. That doesn't mean I don't want to fight all those fanboy nerds in the Dairy Queen parking lot though.

Anyhow, time for my own little Oscar speech: Mom, Dad and Michi - thanks for all your love and support. Without you guys, there is no way and hell I'd be where I am doing what I do now. I love you guys.

Some thoughts

2008-02-14T19:30:00.000-08:00

1. I wish that they'd hurry up with this whole cloning humans thing, so I can carry out my plan to abduct the toothbrushes of movie stars people fantasize about and open a Vegas brothel in 18 years.

2. Patty Smyth is the woman who is not Pat Benatar. My friend Lisa says her first woman who is not Pat Benatar is Linda Ronstadt, but Patty Smyth is also not Pat Benatar. Regardless, what's happening in this video?: http://youtube.com/watch?v=jC-BWHAiYYA

Cirque du soleil dance fighting?

3. You should read my friend Adam's blog. He had 10 days off and decided to drive to the Arctic Ocean. 'Nuff said.

4. I don't like the new Indiana Jones trailer, mainly because Harrison Ford looks so damn old. Why did they wait so long to make this one? He would break a hip in most of the 'action events' you see in the trailer. The jokes are bad.

5. Monster Quest is a really great show. UFO Hunters is pretty disappointing and boring. Paranomal State is so bad I watch it whenever it's on.

6. The movie I'm working on is looking really good. It's funny how during the post-production process you absolutely cannot judge how well a movie will do. Golden Compass had awesome effects, looked very interesting and it was considered a box office failure(domestically), Alvin and the Chipmunks looked like it was going to be a piece of shit but it kicked ass in the box office. The Mummy 3 has a pretty stupid script, but the FX look great. It'll be interesting to see how it does in the theaters.

7. The new American Gladiators is very exciting. It's not as good as Ninja Warrior though.

8. Once again, I hate my neighbors. It's not me. It's them.

9. I'm going to court in a week. I can't wait to get this issue out of my life.

10. There's a good chance I'm going to be working on Land of the Lost, which is some kind of 'life comes full circle' event for me.

cya
J

Mayweather Sr. on Mayweather Jr. entering MMA

2008-01-02T18:37:00.000-08:00

This made me laugh.

http://www.mmanews.com/other/Mayweather-Sr.-Says-Son-Would-Be-Destroyed-Fighting-MMA.html

"He needs to leave that shit alone. He’s going to get the same fucking thing Vince Phillips got; leg broke, arm broke or whatever. Vince Phillips got his arm broke. You can’t mess with that…that’s what they do. You can’t beat nobody at their own game."

"All of this he talking about right now, this martial arts shit, I’m telling you, he about to get broke the fuck up right now. I’m telling you, he could forget all of that stuff being cute and how you supposed to hit somebody with a check hook. Man, them motherfucker’s going to take that check hook motherfucker and squeeze your guts out. I’m just being real with you man."

"If he ever want to take a motherfuckin’ loss, you bout to take one right now motherfucker. Go ahead and try that. One of them motherfuckers grab you and bing, bing…hit the floor twice motherfucker and it’s over with."

"Lil Floyd about to get his ass tore up man. He ain’t about to whoop them motherfuckers. He can forget that shit!"

"Man, let me tell you something, they don’t even need a referee for this shit right here. They ain’t going to need a referee because he’s going to tap his own self out if he’s able."

"They going to break his fucking limbs. One of them motherfuckers hit him upside his fucking head and he may never be the same. I’m just telling the truth."

"He ain’t got to worry about retiring. When they get through with his ass, he will be retired. He will be retired fucking with them motherfuckers. They would love to fight him. This ain’t no fucking boxing; ain’t none of these motherfuckers scared of his ass. I’ll fight one of them motherfuckers if they just want to throw their guards up. I’m old and I’ll beat they ass, but when they start talking about that going to the ground, elbows and knees and all of that, man fuck that shit. I ain’t about to go in there. Them motherfuckers dangerous man. One thing about it, them guys can take a fucking punch man. Those guys will laugh at Lil Floyd when he hit them."

Here's Vince Phillips versus a young Masato. Not in MMA, just K-1.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2bxvm_masato-vs-vince-phillips_sport

Primer and film criticism

2008-01-01T22:30:00.000-08:00

Primer

After watching Primer, and then doing what I hate - reading critic's reviews of it, which infuriate me for any film - I noticed a common theme amongst negative and positive reviews. It's the notion that people without a higher education in hard science, wouldn't be able to 'get it'. I never felt that at all after watching it, and in this diagram of the timelines in the movie, that some obsessed soul created - http://neuwanstein.fw.hu/primer_timeline.html - I think it's proven that it's not a matter of knowing a whole lot about science, so much as it's a measure of one's ability to listen to/view stories and connect events.

I've watched the movie several times now, and I can't say that I'm even close to understanding all 9 timelines laid out in that diagram. Instead, I'd estimate that I got 3 or 4 out of the 9 said to exist. Many critics would attribute my less than 50% comprehension of the film to "poor film-making". To those who truly believe that calling 'Lack of immediate coherence!' on a film, is an acceptable tool for film criticism, I'll ask: Did you fully comprehend all of the symbolism in DaVinci's 'Last Supper' the first time you looked at it? I'll guess no. This is where most movie critics get confused doing their jobs. Are they looking for entertainment or art? When they don't get over-the-top cinematic formula to entertain them, then it's up to 'art' to make them enjoy the film. If they can't understand the art of the film, then the film is labeled as 'bad'. This is such a common occurrence, that I can only attribute it to this: A movie critic lives for feeling superior to his/her subject, film and film-makers. If they feel they aren't 'getting' the film, then that could imply that they might not be qualified to do their job. So, what you get is a gut response born from insecurity. You get a review that says 'It's bad'. Later, if the critic is questioned about his/her negative review, that's when we'll hear the weak, cover-your-ass, get out of cerebral jail free card being thrown: 'Lack of immediate coherence!' Whenever I hear a critic begin to condemn a film due to his/her lack of immediate coherence, I think two things: 1) Never read his/her review again(Michael Medved and Jeffrey Lyons, from that Siskel and Ebert rip off show 'Sneak Previews', are notorious for doing this. Jeffrey Lyons was once so confused by a later Star Trek movie that he said he couldn't follow it or make any sense of it, so therefore it was just 'bad'). 2) Maybe I should check this film out?

It is my opinion, as a fan of science fiction, that Primer may be the 'best' science fiction film ever made, due to it's lack of cinematic glamour, it's lack of FX and it's satisfaction upon repeated viewings. I read recently that Shane Carruth the writer/director/composer/editor/actor for the film said that 'All the President's Men' was his greatest influence in making it, simply because of it's 'realness'. I didn't realize until after reading this, that my emotional response to both movies is near identical. They are both films I hear people label as 'boring' mostly, but when I watch either, I find myself caught up in heart-pounding suspense because they both seem so real. Granted, 'All the President's Men' is based on real events, but so many movies out of Hollywood that are based on true stories fall short in convincing me that I'm watching something that actually happened. Primer's only 'unreal' caveat, is that it's a story about time-travel. In the last few years, the movies I've felt that come closest to this type of film-making are 'Zodiac' and 'Syriana'. Something to note: Syriana can be a confusing movie due to it's pacing and deep cast of characters, so, I watched it twice. The second time around I tried watching it with subtitles on so I could catch every morsel my ears missed the first time. It made total sense. The story is based on the writings of a CIA spook who'd come out of the cold due to his dislike for Bush's Middle East policies. It's a great, timely, and I think important movie. It received a 73% rating on www.rottentomatoes.com.

Guess why?

Overly ambitious and too complicated.

Full Review

Comments

Betty Jo Tucker
ReelTalk Movie Reviews

It's hard to get passionately swept away by a movie when you're struggling continually to figure out who's doing what to whom and why.

Full Review

Comments

Ruthe Stein
San Francisco Chronicle

A well-meaning, yet meandering and confusing political thriller.

Full Review

Comments

Collin Souter
eFilmCritic.com

Didactic and muddled to the point of incoherence.

Full Review

Comments

Nick Schager
Lessons of Darkness

You keep straining to understand the bits and pieces of information that you can make out, but it still adds up to a lot less than the sum of its parts.

Full Review

Comments

Bruce Newman
San Jose Mercury News

Convoluted, disjointed and extremely dull...amounts to a bunch of ciphers having esoteric conversations about who knows what.

Full Review

Comments

Chuck O'Leary
Fantastica Daily

...despite exceptional pacing it's so convoluted it is incomprehensible, except for George Clooney's message about America being the bad guy in the world.

Full Review

Comments

Tony Medley
tonymedley.com

You get my point.

With a small bit of effort, Syriana is perfectly understandable, it's not convoluted, the sum of it's parts add up to an entire film, and it's anything but dull. I mean, if a movie seems too hard for a film critic to understand, then maybe they should go watch it a few more times.

IT'S THEIR GOD DAMNED JOB.

Back to Primer. The only reason I say it 'may be' the best sci fi film ever made, is because Blade Runner: The Final Cut was released in theaters and DVD in 2007, and I don't know what exactly Ridley Scott did, but the Final Cut changed the way Michi and I thought about characters in the film in a substantial way. The uncanny part is that Michi and I both had the same revelations of change. I'll try to sort that one out after I get the DVD shipped to me. Until then it's a tie between Primer and BR for me.

I'm eagerly awaiting Shane Carruth's next project. I like it that he didn't immediately jump into Hollywood after winning an award at Sundance. On his IMDB page, all you see is links to Primer. No 'rumored', or 'in production' listed anywhere. However, in an interview with a French film journalist, he gave up some info about what he's working on:

(excerpt)
"Is your next movie like Primer ?"

"My Next movie will be different but there will be some similarities. It's a bigger story. It's talking about children growing up. It will be very different from usual movies. It'll be focused on technologies dedicated to magic. It's close to supernatural but still based on scientific and logical basis. There will be no blah-blah tech. It's talking about what we observe and what we see. Characters will have to deal with decisions at the origin of life..."

The complete interview here (in french) :http://www.commeaucinema.com/interview=76736.html

I think it's great that he seems to be so completely off the Hollywood map, that the only place I can find any information about what he's doing is a French website. This builds my hope that he's taking his time to blow my freaking mind again.

Maybe.

I think good art takes time, so take your time, Shane.

ps - When I read what his latest project was about, I was mostly excited but a little bummed too. I've been researching a lot about the occult, demons, and magic in my spare time. I was trying to imagine a scenario that sounds very similar to what he's writing: A technological, or logical, explanation for how magic can exist and be controlled. It was inspired by Hellboy, Allan Moore and the Encyclopedia of the Occult. The bummer comes from the fact that I doubt I'd be able to create something as brilliant as Carruth could, within the same context.

pps - I'm not into occult practices. I just think it's interesting that people can believe in that stuff, and what lengths they will go to, to try and harness 'power' for themselves. It's fascinating and bizarre.

I like turtles

2008-01-01T16:15:00.000-08:00

In case you were wondering....

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CMNry4PE93Y

Follow up interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obCYntpTV2g

I can relate to Johnathan Ware.

Behavioral Genetics: Religion and Fear

2007-12-31T08:42:00.000-08:00

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/behavior.shtml

That's a quick rundown of what Behavioral Genetics(BH) is all about. I bought into the notion as soon as it was explained to me. That page in particular has some great links to the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) which "contains bibliographic references and a summary of the scientific literature describing what is known about a particular gene, trait, or disorder." Some of the OMIM traits listed are 'Ability to move ears' or 'Ability to roll the tongue', which aren't the BH I'm interested in, though it's still neat. Instead, I'm thinking about the traits listed like 'alcoholism', 'homosexuality', and the most interesting one on that page 'Novelty seeking personality trait'. Essentially, BH states that the way we act is a mixture of hereditary and environmental factors, but before environment has a chance to influence us, the core of 'you' already exists. I'm no philosopher, but I'd imagine this research eliminates some branches of belief in free will.

In addition to the traits the link above lists, some recent research has scientists positing that a belief in God or the supernatural is also a genetic trait. This makes complete and total sense to me personally, solely because I never 'felt the spirit'. I promise you though, I really tried to. I wanted to be 'saved', I prayed at night, I wanted to 'witness' the spirit in church, but I never felt anything. At one point I thought there was something 'wrong' with me, as all the people in my grandma's church seemed to have this amazing ability to communicate with God. I was hoping that, open dialogue with The Lord would show up along with with my body hair, that it would be kicked off by puberty. Seeing how this never happened, I stopped looking at myself and started questioning the people around me. I had a kid tell me when I was very young, that his dad was Superman, and I completely believed him. I even argued with my dad about it. I mean, why would someone tell you such a crazy thing unless it was true?? My father's victory in that debate probably led me down the same path of questioning people's beliefs in those who are super-powered.

So, I gave up.

I remember asking my mom a question, that only a kid would ask "Mom....Will I go to Hell if I don't believe in God?" My mom replied "No! Of course not! You can believe whatever you want to believe Jimmy......Did your grandma tell you that??" No she didn't, but that's what church and the other kids tell you. I could never really rationalize my lack of a belief in God, because it was a gut feeling, or lack thereof. I didn't logically deduce that it was unlikely that God existed, I simply didn't feel anything, and had to look to my atheist friends and famous philosophers to explain myself. I found very often that atheists were the by-product of a very religious upbringing which they resented, and had incredible contempt for organized religion. I didn't feel that hate, nor could I relate to a religious upbringing since my parents were not religious at all, so I settled on 'agnostic'. To this day, that's still what I would label myself. Because face it - no one knows. Not Christians, Hindus, Jews etc. If you say you know, well then, you're lying, because you're not a ghost. If you were to ask me if I believe in God, I'll say no. Which is atheistic, and I'd like to point out, a belief system. Technically - scientifically - I'm agnostic, and if you're reading this, which is to say you're alive, so are you.

When I first met Michi and she linked me to articles about 'The God Gene'. It was as if a metaphysical rock hit me in the face. Or, maybe I dodged a metaphysical rock, because this made more sense to me than any philosophy I'd encountered yet, and I'm sure some would say it's a superficial approach with the least amount of thought involved. Well, it's not. It's simple and it makes sense. Instead of wondering "People feel God because they were raised that way, but how is it that they FEEL God? Are they liars??" Now I think, "Oh. Most those people feel God, because their brains are telling them to, and they don't have a choice really. Cool."

No, not cool.

If the God Gene is real, then I'm in a genetic minority on this planet, and that's just another note in the pile of notes that's been gathering all my life to tell me I'm an odd man out. When I see the religious conviction in the U.S., in the Middle East, and Buddhist riots in Asia, I can't help but sit back and think "What the fuck?" I've gotten to the point where I think of belief in a higher power as a form of socially functioning, mild insanity. To follow that, I think about how most people on the planet believe in a supernatural higher power and I say "Crap." It makes me feel like I'm living in a time which my genetics are not fit for. For some of the best examples of a person who is genetically unfit for a religious environment, I'll refer everyone to Michi Tsunoda. She has some great stories about her upbringing in a religious environment and trying to 'fake it' through the experience until she was old enough to be honest about how she felt. I specifically like her 'speaking in tongues' story. I'll save that tale for her to tell though.

What this has led me to believe in the past few years is a train of that would be labeled as 'immoral', 'pseudo scientific', and 'discriminatory'. What I'm getting around to expressing is the notion of how awesome the world might be if we could genetically engineer religion out of our brains. Yep. I'm a fascist I guess? But, hell, I'd say the history of tens of thousands of years of war, cruelty and oppression all due to what maybe a genetically dictated behavior might indicate things aren't working so well out as it stands. While we're at it, let's engineer out the over-amped human sex drive which has no place in our current world, until we colonize another planet. If people actually cared more about the technological progress of humanity, and less about whether or not Lance and Steve are playing grab ass against the wishes of The Lord, or when their own next sinful sexual liaison will occur, we'd possibly have taken a step towards a long term solution, which would allow crazy ass religious people to exist in their own areas if they so wish. I'm talking about MARS BITCHES!(thank you Dave Chappelle) Let them have Mars. Or course, thousands of years after Mars is colonized, 'Star Wars' would be a reality. Think Planet Islam versus Planet Mormon. I don't have a solution for this problem that's not immoral, physiologically brutal, or maybe even premature. However, the religious state as it exists is, in my opinion, immoral, brutal and full of outdated concepts. And yes, I like the idea of segregating myself away from religious folks. Screw it, give me and my kind Mars. Of course we'd also suffer planetary warfare due to the outrage of sinful stem cell research and abortion, all of which would be fully tolerated on Mars.

So yeah. I'm an internet, geno-xenophobic, armchair, pre-Hitler.

Anyhow, this blog came about due to a dream I had last night. I had a dream that I was on vacation and surfing, or about to surf, and I was on the East Coast. I was with Michi, and she was going to go somewhere else in the town we were in. I said "Bye" to her and she reminded me that this was the Atlantic, so I should watch out for sharks. I thought "Oh yeah", so I started scanning the water from above looking for sharks. Sure enough I saw one, and then I saw another, they were pretty big too, about 15 ft long. Then I saw another one, and then an.. - wait a minute, that shark is about 100 feet long. So is the next one! Then, a gigantic black stegosaurus looking dinosaur with flippers crawled out of the water on to the beach. It was about 500 feet long, and what's worse is that it could talk. What's even worse than that was that it spoke with a dude-bro surfer accent. The stego-flipper-saurus started chatting up another surfer on the beach who was checking out the waves. The surfer on the beach was also very dude-bro, and seemed to be acquainted with the dinosaur. He was listening to its stories and responding with the manner of someone who was intimidated, but wanted to be respected by the person(dinosaur) who was running the conversation. A small talk, yes-man, full of attention. So, when the dinosaur started speaking casually, about how proud he was that he'd helped his Komodo dragon brothers in the zoo kill those 8 people recently(dream headlines I guess), and the surfer was responding "Right on brah!" I was a little freaked out and woke up. The most notable element of the dream was how, upon seeing the stego-dolphino-don as it crawled out of the water, not only was I terrified, but I was repulsed. It made me think of spiders or really disgusting giant bugs. Scared and repulsed. That, in turn, made me start thinking about phobias, and how humans are naturally afraid of certain creatures, items and concepts, for good reason. "BH would make perfect sense out of these phobias" I thought:

Spiders- Spiders are poisonous, lethally so sometimes. They are also aggressive. Snakes - Same thing. They kill folk good. Heights - It's good to be scared to run up to a cliff, and instead approach it slowly and cautiously. No need to explain. Crowds - People are awful! Look at the soccer mobs in Europe. What a nightmare. Look at Mardi Gras when it's featured on COPS. Fear and disgust. Fear of open spaces - If you're out in an open field, well duh - a tiger can run you down, and you have no place to hide. Balloons - Okay, this is where I think fears start to get a little abstract. I see fear of balloons as either a fear of 'things that have a lot of pressure in them and can explode in your face' or maybe it's a metaphorical expression of fear of tense situations.

Then I stumped myself.

Clowns - a lot of people have a fear of clowns. What in the world of ancient genetic memory does this mean? Was there once a race of clowns who lured children into their tents and then eat them? Were there once animals that looked like clowns, who lured children away into their caves and then ate them? Did people once dress up as clowns and eat children? I have no idea, but all the scenarios I can imagine are really creepy.

Then I remembered this: http://youtube.com/watch?v=GjxOt2u2BGM

And I quit thinking about it, and decided to stick with explaining God.

Hello + some updates.

2007-12-26T17:36:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone, whoever you may be. I've not had much of an internet presence for the past year or more, and it's mostly due to the fact that I live in a Visual Effects Cave, obessessing over hair and fat(not my hair and fat)((well, sometimes my hair and fat)). The only time I'm really seen 'out' is typically at a MMA PPV event, or at a party in Fullerton with a bunch of kick ass motherf*ckers. Part of my hermit-ude is due to the fact that between June and November of 2007, I only had 6 Saturdays off total, and I was usually working 10-12 hours a day. Also, I haven't had a drink since Dec of 2006. So, naturally, when someone invites me out to a bar, I'm inclined to say 'no'. It's not the whole "I don't want to be around people who are drinking when I'm not drinking because I want to drink'"thing, it's more of a "I don't want to be around people who are drinking when I'm sober, because their jokes are terrible, their stories are stupid, they smell bad, they step on my feet and bump into me spilling their drinks, the music is so loud I can't fully hear how terrible their jokes are, and I don't want to pay $5 for a coke." kind of thing. I always disliked drunk people to begin with, and any of you who've seen me drunk, have witnessed my hypocritical, open, animosity with them. I will confess, that on two occasions in the last year, I drank Absinthe - which Michi claims is 'drinking'. No it's not Michi! It's different. It's like, smoking pot and drinking, with a little bit of Lunesta thrown in, and it doesn't make me want to punch anything.

Since this blog is brand new, I'll ask some hypothetical questions that my imaginary friends would ask:

Q: What's up Jimmy?

A: Not much, Brohamulus. Not much.

Q: When are you and Michi getting married?

A: I'll be honest, we really don't know. It WAS looking like this Spring, but I got a promotion to 'Supervisor' at my job, and the project I'm on for the time being will end in the Spring. I don't want to be a supervisor and plan a wedding at the same time. Therefore, we're thinking it will either be in the Summer of 08 or the Fall. I swear we're getting married and we aren't putting it off on purpose or anything. I mean, have you seen Michi? I'd be crazy not to marry her. Also, if I don't end up marrying her, well then...she's dead. I refuse to let her live. I'm sorry to all who love Michi, but she's well aware of this and as long as she says 'I do', then no one will have to see her on 'Forensic Files'.

Q: When are you coming to visit Huntsville?

A: I'm sorry Alabamian friends, but I've had one too many bad encounters with Old Man Winter during layovers between CA and AL to justify any more Xmas visits to the Rocket City. I DO like to visit in Spring, but no one seems to expect it, and everyone seems to be working. Therefore, I come and go nearly unnoticed. You'll typically find me in BBQ restaurants(because real BBQ does not exist in LA) or in an antique store, perusing various items of Americana. Yeah, I sound old huh? Well, I AM. But what the hell else do you do in Huntsville, but drink? Oh yeah, I love and miss my parents, so I like to spend as much time with them as possible.

Q: What do you DO at your job anyway?

A: Ack...it's hard to explain unless I can show you. For now, imagine this: A CG Animal Beautician. Thats the best I can do without stabbing you to death with a boredom knife. I'm not an animator though. I'm a technical animator. Most everything I do is in the realm of Secondary Animation.

Q: So what do you do with your spare time?

A: I eat. I don't watch a lot of movies unfortunately. Um, I watch TV. At the suggestion of mom, dad and Michi, I've recently taken a liking to Law and Order: Criminal Intent and Special Victims Unit. I watch a lot of Forensic Files to prepare for that day when Michi might break up with me. I like: Venture Brothers, the new Battlestar Galactica(when it's freaking on the air), a surprising amount of reality television, and pretty much any show on that's about Monsters, UFO's or the occult. I don't like ghosts that much. They are stupid. Besides that, I've been making up for the last 15 years of reading comics, and let me tell you something, comics are really kick ass right now. If you're at all interested in reading some, I'd recommend: Hellboy, B.P.R.D.(which is related to Hellboy, but better), Planetary, The Authority, Ex Machina, Invincible and Preacher. I occasionally go to the gym, and still dream about training in martial arts again. When I go to the gym and feel like puking after 40 minutes of not so intense cardio, I put that dream off for another few months. However, last years resolution was to stop drinking, this years resolution is to get into good cardio shape again. So, we'll see what happens. I haven't surfed since last November. I don't like surfing in LA very much. The waves aren't as consistent as San Diego, the decent spots are very crowded, and the water is sketchy with pollution.

Q: Are you still fat? I heard you got fat. So are you? Fat?

A: Shut up jerk! Yes, I started to get fat. I was up to 190 lbs in Jan of 06, and in about 6 months, I lost 25 lbs. So, I weigh about 165 now. I know none of you would really ask this, but I'm telling you anyway. Because I was getting fat and I hate being fat.

Q: I can't think of any more questions to ask you, is there any information you'd like to volunteer about yourself?

A: Yes. I got a new car. It's a Honda Fit Sport. It's blue, it's just little, and I love it. It fits anywhere(hence the name), it has an auxillary jack for my iPod, it's suprisingly roomy, but so far the gas mileage isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's been named The TARDIS, due to it's deceptively roomy interior. Michi and I are saving money to buy a house, but I really, really, resent the idea of paying 1/2 a million dollars for a little box in LA, when I could own a MANSION in Tellico Plains, TN. Granted I wouldn't have a job that I like there, nor any income at all I imagine, but I'd have a sweet 2 story 5 bedroom cabin in the middle of several acres of land, remote enough that a family of skunk apes could live in peace with me. I plan on getting an Xbox 360 one day, but that whole Red Ring of Death thing makes me mad, and hesitant to spend $300 so I can play Halo 3 in all its First Person Shooter, Larry Niven/Robert Heinlein glory. I think I'd like to move to Portland, but I've never been there. I've only heard LA expatriates speak of it's cyber-hippie superiority. I just want trees and seasons again.

Ok, that's all for now. I'm going to try to keep up with this blog and be entertaining with occasionally inspired, sometimes misanthropic thoughts.

J

Why I didn't pursue forensics.

2003-12-02T17:49:00.000-08:00

A lot of people I meet seem to be interested in forensics in general, and then my particular experience with it. While I never had a career in it, I helped my professor do volunteer work during my last few quarters of school. Here, I will give a very specific account of why I didn’t pursue a career in forensics after I graduated with a degree specializing in the field, over ten years ago. My professor, Dr. Bruce Wheatley, noticed I had a knack for identification of random bones and bits of bone, so he asked me to help him identify the bodies that the state would send him. We were in Birmingham, Alabama, and he would volunteer his skills to help find missing persons via the remains that the Alabama state police would send him. My brain has a tendency to work fairly well in a spatial sense, which was a skill that lent itself to bone identification.

Working with femurs, ribs, skulls etc., is relatively inoffensive to the senses when you are looking at bones that have been sitting on a forest floor for a few years. They resemble pieces of wood. In terms of psychological toll, it's very easy to objectify the situation and just do your analysis. I was all set to make this my career, until the last body I helped identify showed up. My professor asked for my help, and invited me to meet him in the lab after my classes were over. When I arrived, I opened the front door and immediately smelled the sweet sickly odor of decaying garbage mixed with some kind of boiling meat. I step inside and my professor says "this one is kind of nasty". I look up, and Dr. Wheatley has his wife's crockpot on top of a file cabinet with a femur sticking out of it. Tendons and muscles were hanging off its end. Apparently, the police didn't disarticulate the muscle from the bone like they were supposed to, and Dr. Wheatley was trying to do this himself. He was right, it WAS messy. Next, he gave me some details about the case: the body was a female wh had been found in a garbage dump in my hometown county. It appeared she had been there for about a year, and all that was left of her, besides bone, was what had been covered by her jeans. The rest of her had decayed due to the elements and scavengers in the area. He asked me where I wanted to start, so I asked for the skull. I get to work, taking measurements, writing them down, looking for peculiar traits in the bone, but the skull is covered in blood and slimy. It starts to get into my head that this girl was murdered. Who knows why she was murdered? Was it a jealous lover/ex-lover? Was she involved in shady business? Was she the victim of a serial killer? This train of thought begins to upset me. I was thinking about her family, and how they most likely missed her and probably had some tiny sliver of hope left that she might be alive. The blood really brought home the humanity of the situation. Like I said earlier, old bone seems like wood. I was losing my objectification of the process, fast, and beginning to get emotional, so I tried to stuff it inside for now and keep working. I finished the measurements, wrote them down, and I decided to lift up the skull to look at it face to face to maybe find some surface clues. Everything that was left of her brain dripped out of her foramen magnum, and all over my pants. I set the skull down, took off my gloves, gave my measurements to the professor and said, "Yeah, um, I have to go now". On top of the psychological discomfort, I had terrible Alabama style allergies that day and my nose was running like a faucet. I entered my numbers into the analysis program and I went home.

I knew that I technically could do that job everyday, but it would change who I was dramatically, and it would change how I thought about humanity, death, society, and probably not necessarily for the best. That was the last time I assisted Dr. Wheatley with identification. I think he was a little disappointed in me after that, but it was too much 'grim and bleak' for my young mind at the time. Now, I make stupid cute animals fuzzy.