moriartys.net

Esquire has an amazing article about the story of one of the most famous photographs from the September 11th attacks in New York City… that of a single man falling through the air after having lept to his death.

One of the most fascinating things to me was how the family of the man presumed to be in the picture refused to believe it could be him.  They felt that his suicide would have been act of cowardice, and his love for them would have kept him working to return to them.

I cannot remotely assume to know what it was like to be in that situation, in those buildings, on that day. Most pictures of the jumpers were censored inside the United States, but some estimates place the total as high as 200 people.  They fell for 10 seconds. They reached speeds of 150 miles per hour.  They fled a hell of chaos, terror, and burning jet fuel.

How you exit this life is an important part of how you live it. Whether those people jumped out of fear or in act of defiance, they most assuredly were not cowards.

Tags:   death · lifeNo Comments.

Just cleaning up and getting this place up to Wordpress 2.6 and refreshing a few of the plugins. Once upon a time it used to be a pain to maintain web sites, then blogs came along to simplify the content management and posting.  Now blogs have become so feature rich I sometimes think we’re back at Square One.

Most of my blog time has been going into Ignite Phoenix and Writing Is Cake, but I hope to restore the balance a bit.  Also trying to get my wiferoni blogging here, which should be an interesting prospect.

Tags: 2 Comments

Up at OSCON in Portland, in the conf hall, writing this from my iPhone. Could this be cooler? Could it be lamer?

At least I got a green Google moleskine out of the trip!

Tags:   geek · techNo Comments.

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!

Tags:   avatar · brand · local · phoenix · twitter1 Comment

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.

Tags:   blogs · igniteNo Comments.

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.

Tags: No Comments.

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.

Tags:   ideas · screenwriting · script frenzy2 Comments

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.

Tags:   crazy · musicNo Comments.

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.

Tags: 1 Comment

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.

Tags:   books; charactersNo Comments.