moriartys.net

It’s been a sad state of affairs that someone who perpetrates to be in as many social media tools, toys, and sites as I do had no decent picture of myself, or “avatar” to use. Partly because most pictures of me look ridiculous (in my opinion), and partly because I never got around to correcting the situation, the end result was that on most sites I was represented by whatever silly default icon they used.

So when some cohorts in the Arizona Twitterverse started focusing on their avatars, I got curious. A local photographer, Tyson Crosbie, shot a session with Ms. Herr and posted the top 15 pictures online for people to view and vote which three they liked the best. I was curious, intrigued even, and set up my own shoot with Tyson.

The shoot was a blast, as was seeing the resulting pictures. It confirmed my belief that there is an innate screwball inside my skin that shows up crystal clear on film. We still found 15 good shots, which Tyson put on Flickr, and the voting began.

What a bizarre few days it was as people commented. I just do NOT like looking at pictures of myself, and here was a whole herd of them! I was like a ornithophobe at Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room. Not good. The comments ended up being insightful, supportive, and quite funny. Aside from a few pictures picking up nicknames like “the fart one”, it was far less painful than I feared.

End result - I have three good pictures of myself to use online, although they weren’t the ones I would have chosen for myself. To me, that was one of the best parts of the process because I had an image that appealed to others and not to my own view of myself.

	This picture is definitely the most animated of the bunch, and though it is perhaps a bit “Fonzie” it has some energy and fun in it that I was hoping to capture in at least one of the avatars,
	I was told this was both the “best smile” in the bunch, and also it “looked like I just let a fart.” Oddly (perhaps sadly) both of those do seem to apply, so I went with it. This one will likely be used for most of my corporate avatars, as I see no reason why business can’t have a smile in it once in a while.
	My wife laughed for a good five minutes at this one, as did a lot of others. I don’t quite see it, but that’s part of the point. This was the overall winner and is my new avatar on Twitter, Flickr, and elsewhere.

It was a fun and educational process, and Tyson was great to work with. You may want to read Tyson’s thoughts on your avatar being part of your online brand, and you definitely should check out his other pictures on Flickr. Ms Herr also posted her final thoughts about the process.

Thanks to everyone who helped me select this pictures, because we’re both stuck looking at them for a long time to come!

I think I’ve finally started enough blogs to fill my drunken, insatiable need for the things.

This blog was morphing into a writing blog, but now I’ve spun up Writing Is Cake with some folks from my writing group, so all my writing nonsense is now over there.

I’m also in the process of kicking off Ignite Phoenix with Halfacat, and that’s coming along at a reasonable clip.

Between all that and work (and my actual writing for myself!) my fingers are wearing down to nubs.  That should cover me for a bit, so if either of those categories interest you, please check out the sites.  If you just want info on me being me, that should start up again here.

If anyone sees me starting another blog, please shoot me.

I just finished listening to an NPR Podcast narrated by Howard Dully.  At the age of 12, Howard was the youngest person to receive an “icepick lobotomy”.  He never spoke about his surgery with his father, or his step-mother who forced it onto him.  Now, as an adult, he tries to understand what happened to him and why.

How could anyone ever think this is a good idea?  How do you come to terms with knowing that part of you who you were was scrambled in your own skull?  It’s not easy to listen to, but riveting.

My Screenwriting III class starts tonight for me (I missed the REAL first class last week due to work related travel), and they want me to start a brand new screenplay for it.   Let’s see… I have the “competition screenplay” that I worked on with two friends that I still want to rewrite, the screenplay I started for SW I, and the one I worked on for Script Frenzy last year and started refining in my SW II class.  Now with this new one I’ll have four active screenplays rattling around in my noggin.

Apparently each level of this SW curriculum  wants to start with a clean sheet of paper.  I get that from the standpoint of refining technique at script creation, which is a tricky process all by itself, but I think I’ve reached my brain limit.  I’ve taken the goal with my writing group to get Rev 2 of one of the screenplays done by end of March, which will be a nice feeling.  At least then the screenplays won’t all be at the same development stage.

Anyway, this is mostly idle grumbling as I do love writing and am getting much better at the screenplay style as these classes wind on.   It’s all good.

If I ever go so nuts I’m fully Tom Cruise Crazy, I hope someone puts me out of my misery and sends me back to Xenu.  Fortunately, Jonathan Coulton (of Portal theme fame) has boldly gone where I hope never to go… and wrote a song about being Tom Cruise Crazy.  It’s a year + old, but still sadly relevant.

I wish I had some semblance of musical skill so I could even attempt stuff like this.  This guy really has a knack for the absurdly fantastic.

Found via WWdN.

ABC has an amazing article about Kevin Connolly, who was born with no legs.  He gets himself around on a modified skateboard, and with a Silver Medal in the 2007 X Games he seems more active than most people I know.

He’s also started his own photography exhibit by taking pictures of people who stare at him.   Many of his pictures are posted at therollingexhibition.com  and make for some interesting viewing.  I’m not sure where the line is between rude starting and just being curious about something different, but as much as Kevin gets stared at I wonder if the difference matters anymore.

I just finished reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and I’m mentally exhausted.  I’d had the book for months, picking it up in an airport bookstore and then never quite getting to it.

The Coen Bros’ movie “No Country For Old Men” led me to read McCarthy’s book of the same name, and I was, I guess the word is, impressed.  Throw in some awed.  Also a little intimidated.  It’s a fantastic book, and I’m glad I read it before seeing the movie.

The Road is something else entirely.  It has the same, taut, shattering use of English that I should be so fortunate to command for a single paragraph in all my writing endeavors.  It’s bleak and unflinching, and having read No Country I was under no illusions as to the likely fate of the main characters, the father and son.  Still, I could not stop turning the pages, hoping some ray of sunshine would hit these two nameless figures.  Their world is cold and cruel, but they have each other.  That is everything.

I’ve been warned that Blood Meridian is a difficult read, but I think I will have to work my way through the rest of this titles.  I’ll just have to pace them out a bit.

I cannot recommend The Road enough.  It’s not easy to read, but if you have a love of good writing and a willingness to go into some of the most hopeless and hopeful corners of our world, you will find it impossible to forget.

I’ve never been a big fan of Christmas, mostly due to the way the rampant commercialism has squeezed the joy out of things. I just grit my teeth and stay away from the malls between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’ve also reached a gift truce with most people I know, which makes that last bit easier. The last barrier to fall in my commercial-less Christmas was when my wife and I agreed to stop giving each other gifts each year, and instead spend the money on food for a local Food Bank.

Our holiday tradition now is to take the money we would have spent on each other, usually around $400, and head down to Costco and buy bulk basics. We go for the staples of fruits, vegetables, meats, pasta, beans, and peanut butter. We look for the best deals on individually packaged items so they can be split amongst multiple families if necessary.  We then take it to a local food bank.

We took our young nieces with us one year, and we set them up with the amount of money we could spend and helped them budget out the shopping list. They had fun and learned how a lot of other people need things much more basic than an iPod or a Barbie for Christmas.

So it may not be traditional, but it feels good to have all our Christmas Shopping out of the way on Nov 3oth!

I’m an unabashed fan of Cute Overload, but for some reason I can’t stop watching this baby sheep bouncing on the bed. He comes to the same end I did when engaging in this same activity…

I’d want to get our own baby bed bouncing sheep, but I think it would put our already neurotic Border Collie right over the edge.

I’m thinking this guy who is dropping trou in local shopping malls to pleasure himself here in Arizona has some holiday-based issues far worse than the Grinch.  I mean, I had my share of not getting the present I wanted at Christmas, but it never even entered my mind that this might be a good way to make up for it.

Considering many stores have policies forbidding employees from detaining lawbreakers of any kind, this idiot could be at it until the official mall security captures him (or maybe ID’s him from his videos).   I just hope they catch the sick-o before he decides to permanently alter the holiday decorations…