Connect the following:

Part the First: There is a natural progression, described by a 'learning curve,' that leads through a state of Unskilled and Unaware, to conscious incompetence, to conscious competence, and ultimately to a state of unconscious competence. You could probably plot it out, next time you try to learn a new skill.

Part the Second:

I have a stock position on things like television shows, and maybe comic books. I say that I don't plan to watch Lost or Battlestar Galactica until they're done, and I can sit back with the whole DVD series, or possibly when it turns out they were in a giant snowglobe I'll just know it doesn't turn out in an interesting way and not bother.

Similarly, I like reading history, but can't really be bothered with news and politics. The very same ubiquitous news coverage that makes it possible for folks to become rapt with that stuff is the reason that it's all kept under tighter wraps than ever. You can't get a chat with the president these days simply by tagging along on his walk to the senate, and there's no hope of getting the real story on any current event.

So: not knowing whether there's going to be a worthwhile ending, I guess I'd rather just read up on the election later. That feels more honest than cribbing opinions from an SNL sketch.

What a letdown. Boo!

Today was a miserable day, but I don't feel miserable about it.

If you haven't anything nice to say....

Separate thoughts:

1. Some websites have a space for users to leave comments on content. This is almost never a genuinely useful feature. Some blogs, maybe your slashdots or your ars technicas, they can attempt to foster a discussion of some kind. This is their purpose, they take the good with the bad, for the sake of community. Your imdbs, your youtubes, those comment sections are part of What's Wrong With the Internet.

2. Websites that 'take over,' (whether it's by stealing focus, or sneaky pop up triggers, or playing audio unbidden, or redirecting users to a rick astley video) are also What’s Wrong With the Internet. These aren't sites with a well-meant feature gone bad (comments), they're aggressively taunting users, flicking their ears and stealing their erasers.

3. I've sometimes been good at getting people mad at me without trying. I think this is because I assume things will work out great. Sometimes this occurs while trying to make friends, in events that backfire in spectacular ways.

4. I listen to more podcasts than I can hope to keep up with, and starting in on new shows from the beginning of their run doesn't help the situation any. I've been burning through one in particular lately, maybe more because of how it sounds than what it says. I don't learn anything, I don't think about it, it's just background chatter.

SO:

Why on earth would I write a message to a stranger and include any kind of negative comments? About anything? What good could result? In what situation does that turn out well?

...and this isn't even the first time a radio host has told me not to listen to his show.

Honest-to-goodness updating!

Mostly just little things around the site. Did some work for the fine folks of Project Nightlight this past week:

Home, and back again.

I took a trip from the LA (to the Phoenix to the Chicago) to the Cleveland to the Columbus (to the Phoenix) and back to the LA lately. On the way home, I took pictures of all the empty aeroports. I also took some pictures of joyously reuniting family members, but you can just get a copy of Love Actually if that's what you're looking for.

The things the terminals had in common were being empty, festooned with holiday decorations, and being ever-so-slightly creepy. Apparently I wasn't just flying United anymore:

And over here, the stanchions keep people from walking through the big empty space:

The most remarkable of the considerably-larger-than-I'm-showing-you-here set of empty airport photos was this. I meant to capture the frustration of being in an airport for a couple hours and able to see food and beverages, yet unable to obtain them. Instead I seem to have captured the image of a child and his dog in the midst of a great adventure.

And last is something fantastic available in Chicago's O'Hare-port. There's a little placard nearby that explains that the bones are totally fake.

While I was home, I collected a lot of heavy books and DVDs that I then hauled back across the country. I saw more family than I expected to, and some other peoples' families who were all super, super-nice to me. I spent some time with Kristy, who is my favorite, and I gave her an enigmatic Christmas present that she has not yet solved. We found a geocache together and were finally rid of a cursed (dancing) pirate DVD. I won games of scrabble with words like 'squeeze' and 'zulu' and lost games of Mario Party with spaces like 'this one means you don't have stars anymore.'

Most of all, the weeks spent back in Ohio cast into sharp relief what I'm giving up in order to be in California, making movies, or jokes, or terrible terrible video projects that nobody will ever see.