I think I will write a post soon about what has been going on over the past year or so. From layoffs, to emergeny surgeries, to holdover jobs, to everything else, it has been a wild ride.

I say with reserved optimism that things are looking a bit more normal right now, or at least the possibility of normality may exist. Hey, I can hope.

Still, I do wish I could get some sleep. This is going to be a long day.

Cheers.

Isn’t she the cutest pirate ever? Hell yeah!

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Now, the next week, things are one hundred percent different.

My Godchild Mariella Lee Matthews was born on Thursday. On that same day, I got  a new job. One week unemployed in this current job climate is not bad at all.

Then, when Efie and I were out having a nice celebration day for the good shift of events, I found the desk I have been wanting for quite a while. Not by name, but a desk designed with all the features I have been wanting, but have been unable to find. Hell, it was on sale as well!

We have moved my previous command center desk into the bedroom and it is Effie’s new vanity. The desk is an antique leathertop that we bought in England. The desk was too small for what I needed, and with all the equipment on it, the beauty of the leathertop was hidden. Now it is being  put to better use.

Now, my RfL Command Center is living up to the title more thatn ever. Here it is.

And a Closer view of the work area.

I am in geek heaven.

Now, the new desk in no way is on the same level as Marialla’s birth or my getting back to the land of the employed so fast, but finding something you have been looking for as long as I had been looking, then getting a great deal on it is still pretty cool.

Cheers everyone!

Meet my God Daughter, Mariella Lee Matthews! She is brand new and so adorable! What a great day, Congratulations to Angel and Pat. Now get some rest guys.

Angel was a trouper. She was in labor for around 28 hours! She is tough!

Cheers!
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Has this been a good year for you? A bad year? I bet if you look back, the blessings outweigh the challenges. So with that, let me say ‘HAPPY THANKSGIVING’ to all the Lucidites out there.

Now get wasted on Turkey, Football, and any other great things to enjoy today!

(just if you were wondering why I have a pic of a squirrel instead of a turkey, it is because nobody expects a pic of a squirrel. Simple, eh?)

So what is this about getting some mojo back. Hell, I have tons of mojo, but pieces of it occasionally fall by the wayside. One of those Pieces was my urge to create art. At one time I was considered a pretty good artist following in the fauvist and colorist vein. I was mainly inspired by Mattisse and Gaugin and to a lesser degree, Van Gogh. But something happened in late 2003 that stopped my art. Effie almost died.

That was a bad evening. Effie had serious abdominal pains. By morning things had become worse. We rushed her to the hospital in Worthing which is right on the English Channel. It turns out she had a huge ovarian cyst that was toxic and had twisted. It was leaking toxins into her body.

Effie had emergency surgery and a lengthy recovery. Of course you know it all turned out well, but it was horrifying at the time. After the ordeal, I no longer had the urge to paint. That lead to my podcasting and web media adventures, but the art mojo was gone.

Well, it is back, big time. It is different though. Where before everything was color and bold, now I am more into illustration. Almost crumb-like. My first piece is an abstract experiment, and not too good, but it is leading to a new direction. I am going to be starting to illustrate books for Wee baby Mariella. Effie is onboard to help out as well. The first book I am doing is an abstract alphabet book. After that I am going to start creating modern and sci-fi renditions of popular public domain children’s stories. I may even get SJ in on this and produce some animations or audio to accompany.

This is not a way to make money, just a way to make memories, which is more important. The art mojo is back, and when that happens, there is no saying no to the mojo, so creating we go! I will be creating a site for the new stuff soon. I have not been excited about a new project in some time, so this is cool!

Plus, there may be at least one more actual painting in me. I mean, there has to be a piece to accompany ‘After a Hard Day At Play,’ which is of my niece Riplee.

Cheers!
Eban

I love magazines. I love the look and the feel. I know that in most cases I can find the same information online, but the experience is not the same.

With that said, let me also say that I stopped reading magazines for a while. The price kept getting higher for less and less information. Instead of more content the ads were taking over.

This is a result of a cycle. Less people read the mags and revenue falls–so the mags increase the advertising which brings in less revenue from individual ads as the readership lowers–so the magazine sells more ads with less content until the end finally comes and the magazine goes under. How is that for a run-on sentence?

At times, especially now with the economy so uncertain, it seems like this is an unbreakable cycle. Blogs and news sites run stories about the troubles of the print media. People like Rupert Murdoch talk about the shift and suggest charging for online content that was once free. It is the start of a whole new cycle.

Well, I have an idea, and it involves everyone’s favorite price point, free. I put forth that the new paradigm of print is free. For free, people will accept more ads and less content. For free, more people will subscribe to magazines previously abandoned. More eyeballs means that the mags can charge a higher premium for the advertising content. A whole new cycle breaks the old.

Now, before you bolt from this blog calling me an idiot, let me give you some background on how I came up with this idea. It comes from the most frugal person I know, my better half, Effie.

Effie is the type of shopper that spends hours each week searching out deals, coupons, and offers. She sets out strategies, which she calls scenarios, and then hits the stores. It is not uncommon for her to come back from CVS pharmacy with up to $50 worth of stuff paying between pocket change to a couple of dollars out of pocket. She can hit the grocery stores and come home with $100 worth of stuff for around $25. She regularly makes Target and Wal Mart her bitch.

She does great in store, that is for sure, but on top of that, she has learned to find deals online as well. She is always getting free stuff in the mail, everything from free samples to actual product to–get ready for it, magazine subscriptions.

We get Forbes, Muscle and Fitness, O, Rachel Ray, Town and Country, Sports Illustrated, Good housekeeping, and more, all free. What I have noticed is that I don’t mind reading these mags, higher ads and lower content, when I don’t pay for them.

Now, sometimes these subscriptions are just introductory and a short run, sometimes it is a full year, but it is nice reading mags again.

This is where my thought comes from. My eyes are valuable, not just to me, but to those advertisers. If a mag goes under, so does all of that advertising real estate. I won’t even begin to say that I have the logistics of how this shift can work, but I still think it can be worked out to a winning situation.

The thing is, I don’t think anyone wants to work it out. The people on top of these industries have always looked for the money. The idea of a shift of this magnitude is scary for them. I mean, the subs we get do eventually end and the purchase forms eventually come. But think differently for a minute. How many people like to separate their reading from the internet and the computer screen? How many still prefer a book or magazine to a screen? How many people love FREE?

By offering the subscriptions for free, the sub rate would probably jump by double or triple or more. This is where the ad revenue picks up. No longer do the mags have to look to subscription purchases to make it, those extra eyes are like gold!

Some mags already do this. Most cities have local mags that are totally ad supported. Imagine that on a national scale. There are many more eyeballs on the national scale, every one an advertiser target. Of course, some changes would have to be made to the format and such, and more space would go to the ads. Maybe the mags would have to go bi-monthly, whatever. But still, FREE speaks to people.

Well, that is just my take. It works locally, it works for broadcast TV. The numbers are there for free. The numbers have eyes that can lead to greater advertising revenue. The print media world does not have to go under.

It would be a shift, but some shifts are a good thing. Still, the probability of this shift is unlikely, unfortunately,

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: Print Media, Magazines, Subscriptions, new ideas, advertisers, paradigm, change, shift, periodicals, online, media

This is a mindmap for changes to the website at Certified Golf, one of my clients. I do like some computer and online mindmaps, but paper still gets the job done for me more often than not.

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Looked surreal seeing in person. I really like the design of that school.

One thing. You would think a “digital arts college” would know that slow loading, sound inclusive, flash websites are just about verboten in the design world. Right up there with IE 6. Go figure.

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I have found myself in the same argument over and over again through the years. The argument is that there is no indie movement, or alternative, or anything of the type. The second something becomes a movement, it no longer really exists, at least not as it started. I was reminded of this argument again yesterday when I was followed by two guys that were the white boy hip-hop version of the ‘Night at the Roxbury’ guys. It would have been funny if it was not so sad. They were so indie with their cred………..NOT!

Take hippies for example. They were counterculture, they were broke, they were pretty smelly, but at first they were genuine. Then the marketing guys and retail outlets latched on. If you were buying your bell bottoms at Montgomery Wards or Sears, and ordering your ‘paint your wagon’ patches from magazines, you missed the hippie movement. Sorry to say it, but you did.

Let’s look at the ‘alternative’ music scene. If you were listening to Radio Free Europe in the 80’s, you were part of the ‘college scene’ or alternative scene as it would start to be known. If you liked Husker Du, you may have been alternative. If the Replacements were in your tape deck, you still had cred. If you listened to any of these bands after seeing Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ or were turned on to REM with ‘Losing My Religion’, then no, you were not really part of the scene. Grunge? Give me a break.

I remember having this conversation with my ’sort of’ niece. I would try to get her to understand that if something was being played on top 40 radio, it was not alternative. She would say it was called alternative. At this point I would try to explain the bastardization of words, but it never got through. This was also the time when wearing those sparkly butterfly tee shirts was so popular and would show off your individuality. Proof of this was that you could buy them anywhere from Macy’s, to Wal Mart, to Hot Topic. And yes, this was another argument I could never win.

The whole myth of indie culture is laughable. I have said it before, the coolest guys I have ever known, real coolness, were the folks that could care less about following trends or fashions. They really did their own thing and to hell with everything else. These were the guys I looked up to. At times I have been able to emulate them, but I am still an bit too much of a trend follower for my taste. I do care a bit too much about appearances and what others think. Just being honest about it.

But one thing I have gotten out of my system is the need to be ‘indie’ in any way. Hell, being indie can just about make you go broke. I mean, it costs a lot today to look ’so cool that you don’t care.’ Also, the indie scene is so crowded. I mean being an indie individual person type is very popular, with all those individuals wearing the same thing, attending the same functions, talking alike, and basically doing everything else the same as well.

Back in August The Art of Manliness had a great take on why indie is bunk, hell that was the title of the post, Why Being “Indie” is a Bunch of Bunk. Check it out, it is a good read. Probably more coherent than my take.

Now, back to your normal programing.

Cheers,
Eban

I won’t even say ‘enjoy’ this time. Just point and laugh.

Cheers

Crazy 80s workout

At least that is my take. Otherwise, entertaining, in that mildly disturbing way. You know, in that, “you are going to dream about this crap, and not in a necessarily good way,” kind of way.

Hmmm, enjoy?

Poodle Exercise with Humans

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To say that I feel that my true life started at 20 years old when I married Faith and we bolted from Louisiana for Denver, and my stint in the U.S. Air Force, would be an understatement.

I still don’t like talking about the first 20. Hell, I just got written out of another family will. No kidding. I don’t have many good Louisiana memories, and it does not look like there will be many in the future.

This story I am linking to below comes as no surprise to me. In a day and age where we are arguing over same sex marriage, this buffoon, Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell, wants to jump back many decades and take on interracial marriage yet again. In other words, he refuses to perform them.

Seriously, even with my warped imagination, I can’t make this crap up.

Bardwell serves Tangipahoa Parish in LA. He claims his experience tells him that interracial marriages don’t last and the children born to such couples suffer. What a crock of shit.

I have two of the loveliest and sweetest, and definitely not suffering, nieces that are born of an interracial marriage.  My niece Kellie and her husband Derrick are raising these girls wonderfully. On top of that, They are doing this while Derrick is serving this country in Afghanistan right now. So, yes, this ass monkey’s comments and prejudices really hit close to home.

Maybe he should stop in when he is in Houma and see just how horrible life can be.

Get the full story right here.

I almost need to do another RfL episode just to give Bardwell the world famous RfL Bitchslap!

Cheers,
Eban