What an awesome experience, and great job done by the organizers. As an organizer myself, I learned a few tricks and got some ideas for the next WCBUF. One thing I want to consider is killing the whole lunch thing altogether. Too many variables that inevitably go wrong. Provide coffee and water all day long, and people can bring their lunches.
I’ll write more when time permits.
Because it looks bad. When someone builds your house, they don’t put “built by houses-r-us™”. When someone replaces your roof, maybe they’ll stick a sign in your lawn saying “Roof by roofs-r-us™”, but you’re gonna yank that thing out pretty quickly.
If people want to know who built my site, they’ll contact the site owner.
So, for my sabbatical rundown of things to do:
I often think of Picasso’s famous quote, “Art is the sum of my destructions”. I’ve always gotten that. Whenever I make art, I feel like the second I’m close to that perfect line, shade, shape or texture, there’s all this pressure that I’m gonna fuck up.
When that happens, I imagine a little Picasso sitting on my shoulder, going “So why not fuck up royally?” And I give in. It’s easy, freeing, and I embrace the fuckup. I slash the pen, gouge the surface, rip it all up.
It never quite works, though. More often than not, I end up with a pile of mess. I chastise myself for wasting my time, paint, paper, canvas. I feel like a failure in little Picasso’s eyes. “You didn’t fuck up hard enough” I can hear him saying.
The little voice is easy to dismiss. Of course I can make something nice. Not destroy it. Nurture it, coax it along in its lousy, spineless, eager-to-please formulaic predictability. Eventually I’ll end up with something having at least a few people gazing, stoking my ego-fires.
But the best stuff I’ve always made happens when I give in. The only way to find that thing, the thing I want to leave behind, is to fuck up. Intentionally. Destroy that clean line, that perfect texture, that awesome font. Force myself to do it again, but better this time. And being aware of my doing it.
My dad came up with this thing-if you bet against your team, you’re happy either way. Either your team or your wallet wins.
I don’t know if I agree, but I do like the idea of it. Especially when taken to the extreme.
I don’t think you can ever be happy either way, but I have to believe at a specific point, you can feel neutral about the outcome.
I posted this question on X to my meager following: “How much can you bet that a team WON’T win a game you want them to win so that the outcome is never disappointing?”
Take the Bills NOT to win the AFC championship game today. I don’t know if you can even bet that, but if I could, I wonder at what point would them losing make me happy.
Say I bet $1000 on the Chiefs at -125. Chiefs win, I win $800. Bills win, I lose $1000. Essentially, I just paid $1000 for the outcome I wanted. Was it too much?
We have ivy all over the front of the house, and lots of little birds live in it. They also crap all over our front entranceway. Eli and Nancy like to watch them out the window in my closet; it’s almost totally covered in ivy and you get an up-close view of the birds.
So we are having the house resided, partly because all the ivy has worked its way inside the siding, but it’s also pretty dingy and old. The siding will all be ripped out, including the ivy. The kids are crying and upset about the birds, but I don’t know what we can do about it. They are cute, and make pretty bird noises and flutter/fight around, but there are also bees and wasps living in there too (it’s a jungle). Sometimes the birds fight with the bees! I bet there are fairies living in there who will make all sorts of bad things happen to us.
Anyways, I wonder if there’s anyway to save the birds; E and N were crying so hard Jeanne told them the birds would move to the tree, but that ain’t happening. Oh well.
