Author: Aaron Weber

It’s not a family event without an argument about the middle east

Went to the family reunion this weekend. Thirty-some-odd folks, including several I hadn’t known about: Dennis Skinner, Labor MP for Bolsover, UK, and a couple who descended from one of my great-grandfather’s brothers.

The whole weekend was filled with insistent voices. My clan is stubborn and well-read, and that means there was a lot of declaiming about Thomas Friedman, Hezbollah, Israel, and Iraq, in addition to the standard gossip about whose kids are being raised wrong, or who ran off with someone Poppa didn’t approve of back in ’36, and how many years they went without speaking to each other. Breakfast with my grandmother included a ninety-minute lecture on terrorism, the clash of civilizations, and how Arabs treat their women, plus a twenty minute lesson on what constitutes proper yogurt and how Americans all oversweeten all their food. Good breakfast, though.

Tattoo

Via the Inked Blog, a link to a new blog by a graphic designer and tattoo apprentice. He’s been doing freelance graphic design for awhile, and wanted to add tattooing to his body of knowledge to provide a steadier stream of income.

The post about practicing drawing things he doesn’t like was particularly interesting for me, because it reflects a lot of how I feel about the commercial arts. Whether you’re a professional writer, a fashion designer, or a visual artist, you’re going to end up with commissions you don’t really care for. How you react to those determines a lot of your success and it’s a fine line between taking a few not-very-interesting jobs and whoring yourself out, never doing anything you actually like, and ending up with a portfolio of crap you can’t be proud of.

I’ve written a lot of things that aren’t great art, but which I’ve still been proud of, because they’ve been useful. And I imagine a visual artist is the same way: you might not like your client’s idea, but you can steer them to something that will be better, if not perfect. And that way, even if it’s not perfect, you both end up happy.

Then, there are the things I’ve written that I’d just as soon disown: advertising writing aimed at search engines as much as humans, brochures that nobody was going to read, web copy that was just a string of slogans and buzzwords. And I’m guessing it’s the same for the other arts. You’ve got your good tattoos, your good paintings, your good buildings, in your portfolio. Then there’s the tasmanian devils, the portraits of jerks, the giant McMansions where the owner says “just make it bigger than the Jones house down the road.” And you swallow your pride and ink it, paint it, build it, and hope it never comes back to haunt you.

Not everybody can be the pure artist who only does the work they like. Not everyone has that luxury. And not everyone is enough of a jerk to deny a paying customer something they want. So, we try and advise or educate, and when we can’t, we let them make their own mistakes with their own money.

It kind of makes me want to be a better customer. I’m not commissioning houses or portraits of my family, but maybe I should go into my local tattoo shop and say “I want a tattoo you’ll be proud of.”

Only the Rich Make Good Parents

Ezra Klein discusses the impact of good parenting. Apparently there’s a lot of conflicting data about various child-rearing methods, but one thing that everyone agrees on is that you have to at least show up. Babies that get plenty of time with their parents do better in all sorts of ways.

Conservatives are all in favor of stay-at-home parenting, but somehow they oppose anything that will make it available to the average family. The wealthy are offered the luxury of spending time with their families, and the rest of the country does the parenting it can afford.

Just like health care: a well-fed, well-raised, well-exercised child will be a healthier, taller, fitter, more long-lived, smarter adult. And in the US, that seems to be the territory of the rich. So, where’s my minimum-wage and family-leave act now, Family Values Party?

On the next episode of Ask A Man Who Thinks His Blog Will Change The World: An Inconvenient Truth and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, with special guest Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms.

Bookdwarf’s Cousin in the News

Stephen Karpiak, the research director at ACRIA (and cousin to the famous Bookdwarf) announced the release of a new study on HIV in people over 50 years old.

Apparently a lot of new HIV infections are in the 50+ and senior citizen populations: people who have been out of the dating pool for a long time, but are now widowed or divorced and hopped up on Viagra. They’ve ignored a lot of the STD information because that applies to sailors, or college kids, or people having promiscuous sex– not to grandma and her new gentleman caller she met down at the library.

Improvements in general medicine mean that people live longer and stay active — phsically, socially, and sexually — longer. And so, now we have to address HIV+ seniors. It’s a good thing our medical establishment is well-equipped to provide for the needs of large numbers of chronically-ill adults….

Notes on Media Consumption

I’ve been digging Chartreuse (Beta), which has a very intelligent tone, a great layout, and good analysis of what’s going on in the media world.

In contrast, NYT Mag this week asks us: “Does shopping for weird new stuff make you subversive?” No, no it doesn’t.

In its defense, the Times also has several really delicious looking recipes for chicken wings, and no media commentary blog ever made me that hungry.

Speaking of motorcycles

Today I went to start the bike up and most of the electrical system seems to be offline. The headlight works, but the turn signals, brake lights, and instrument displays (all the -ometers and the “idiot lights” that tell me when I’m in neutral or low on gas) are nonfunctional. So I won’t even be taking the damn thing to this wedding tomorrow in Connecticut.

Also, it occurs to me just now that I can remember how to spell Connecticut but I still have a hard time spelling Massachusetts, despite living here for six years.