Vast

December 28, 2004 | Laughing Knees | Leave a Comment 

As of this writ­ing 55,000 peo­ple have been con­firmed dead from the earth­quake and tsunami. The num­ber seems likely to climb to 100,000. But 55,000 is hard to imag­ine. 55,000. It is all hap­pen­ing out there in the Asian night, mil­lions of peo­ple in pain, wait­ing, in grief over their lost ones, or in ter­ri­ble anx­i­ety over whether their loved ones lost to the sea will re­turn. And among them per­haps some of my In­done­sian and Sri Lankan friends. I hope not. I dearly hope not.

CNN shows the news about it all, as does, in­ter­mit­tently, Japan’s na­tional tele­vi­sion sta­tion NHK. But the news is flip­pant, the CNN news­cast­ers speak­ing as if the whole event is some ex­cit­ing head rush, the ques­tions about the dead glossed over with lit­tle time to ac­tu­ally feel any­thing. NHK has been giv­ing the re­quired time to air the in­for­ma­tion, but aside from an­nounc­ing the num­ber of Japan­ese dead, it is right back to reg­u­lar pro­grams. It was show in­ter­rupt­ing news when the earth­quake hit the Ni­igata area last month and the news car­ried the scenes for days. But this, per­haps the worst calamity in hu­man his­tory, re­ceives the cold shoul­der. In com­par­i­son the news played and played, all over the world, the in­con­se­quen­tial New York tragedy as if it was the end of the world, over and over again un­til the im­ages can never be cleared from our minds. But this tsunami dis­as­ter seems to move few peo­ple in the same way. They are only poor peo­ple in a “far­away” place, af­ter all. They don’t de­serve 24 hour news cov­er­age by every tele­vi­sion station.

I’ve been rack­ing my brains over what to do. I’ve con­tacted some of my In­done­sia and Sir Lankan friends and asked if there was some­thing I could do from my end. I’ve pro­posed set­ting up a Ya­hoo! dis­cus­sion group for peo­ple seek­ing fam­ily and friends lost in the tsunami. I’ve do­nated to sev­eral re­lief groups. ANd I’ve thought of propos­ing to blog­gers to think of go­ing on va­ca­tion to the af­fected ar­eas next year and in­stead of do­ing the usual va­ca­tion stuff, ac­tively par­tic­i­pat­ing in some vol­un­teer re­lief help. I’m sure the whole area is go­ing to need mas­sive amounts of help and re­sources in re­build­ing all the set­tle­ments and in­fra­struc­ture. Many of the peo­ple are too poor to get back what they lost.

But this is just not enough. There must be some­thing more we can do. I was think­ing of go­ing hik­ing to­day, but I may just sit here at home and brain­storm. I don’t want to feel help­less again like af­ter the New York tragedy or the at­tack on Iraq. This is some­thing we can all ac­tu­ally do some­thing about.

Foiled Again

December 25, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 1 Comment 

Pieces from the pen and ink on etch­ing pa­per com­po­si­tion called “The Life Tree”, by Miguel Ar­boleda, 1992

It’s the morn­ing of the 26^th and I’ve been up all night, un­able to sleep. Af­ter ly­ing in the dark lis­ten­ing to the voices in my head I fi­nally de­cided to just get up and bat­tle the demons with the light of my desk lamp and the reach of the com­puter screen, where at least I can talk back. I was hop­ing to get through this hol­i­day sea­son with some mea­sure of still­ness in my heart, but I guess the hol­i­days al­ways shake loose some of the frayed ends.

Aside from the usual wrestling with re­la­tion­ships, one par­tic­u­lar in­ci­dent from the last three weeks kept sur­fac­ing: the ex­change I had with some­one who had been in charge of an art ex­hi­bi­tion I did 12 years ago, but whom I hadn’t heard from since the ex­hi­bi­tion. Sud­denly, out of the blue, he con­tacted me three weeks ago, in­form­ing me of the fi­nal show­ing of my pieces that I had left at the host­ing hall, a re­cep­tion for all the artists, and the up­com­ing auc­tion of my art­work. I was fu­ri­ous; though I had left the art­work there, I had never been in­formed about the ne­ces­sity to re­move them or they would be­come the prop­erty of the art house. Now they were go­ing to be sold, for money, even though they had never been pur­chased from me or even ap­proved for ownership.

I wrote to the guy in charge and told him that I would not al­low my art­work to be sold. He sent back this (ex­cerpt) note:

”Re­gard­ing the im­ages called life-​​tree I have to in­form you that they are
the prop­erty of the OAG. One of my re­quest 11 years ago was to clean them
out of the OAG, you and also A. did not re­sponded to that re­quest, later
they have been tech­ni­cally disposed.

“Re­gard­ing col­lec­tions, in­ter­na­tion­ally their is no need to in­form artist if
you have an in-​​house show, the OAG ex­hi­bi­tion space is the prop­erty of the
OAG and we can present our col­lec­tion when­ever we like.

“Don’t waste time, be happy that we did not de­stroyed your work, and I hope
to see you at the auc­tion on the 16^th of March 2005 at the OAG.”

I would un­der­stand if I had been con­tacted about the pos­si­bil­ity of clear­ing the art­work out, but since I had never re­ceived any no­tice from him I don’t see how, legally, he can claim that my art­work be­longs to the art house. What makes me even more an­gry is that the whole art ex­hi­bi­tion was not an of­fi­cially spon­sored event; it was just a friendly show­ing be­tween the man in ques­tion and an­other friend. He had of­fered the space for free.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m a buf­foon for let­ting my­self get duped two times in one year, but I’m tired of feel­ing help­less while work that I did gets used for profit by oth­ers. Then again, since the work was hur­riedly done in the first place and I wasn’t very happy with it, maybe if I did the en­tire com­po­si­tion again, but this time with more de­tail and care, I might come out of the whole dis­ap­point­ment in so-​​called “friends” with a feel­ing of accomplishment.

Would any artists are there have any le­gal ad­vice on this?

So ironic… the art piece is about the de­struc­tion of the earth and about the lone­li­ness of hu­man be­ings in their com­mer­cial­ized world. Seems no one ever gets the point.

Christmas Joy and the Sales Representative from Hell

December 19, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 1 Comment 

A last tuft of Plume Grass encircling the late autumn sun.

And there I was, like a good lit­tle elf, sit­ting at my great, big stu­dio desk, hum­ming to my­self and think­ing, “Okay, this year I’m go­ing to make an ef­fort to show peo­ple I care and let them know that things are quite as bad as they’ve been imag­in­ing, and per­haps un­der­min­ing Santa’s in­sid­i­ous Black List of Bad Lit­tle Boys and Girls… maybe I’ll buy my­self some Skype on­line tele­phony credit and give a few lonely peo­ple out there a call.” Stll hum­ming ver­ily, mer­rily to my­self, I skipped on over to the Skype home­page and checked out the deals. “Sounds pretty good!” I chimed to my­self (as elves are wont to do), and went ahead to the Skype­out credit pur­chas­ing page, clicked the but­ton for $10.00, and, still hum­ming along, com­ing to the “Billing and Ad­dress” page. “No prob­lem!” I fluted (as elves are ever fond of do­ing), “Just fill out my per­sonal in­for­ma­tion.” Every­thing went well un­til I had to fill out my ad­dress form. No do­ing. The text field only ac­cepted a very trun­cated ver­sion of my rather long ad­dress (as elves like do­ing things the hard way), which would never do, what with the stern ad­mon­ish­ments of the credit card com­pany. Again and again I tried dif­fer­ent ways of get­ting the ad­dress in there, but no doing.

So I clicked on the LiveSup­port link and waited for the Skype rep­re­sen­ta­tive to ap­pear in the chat win­dow. Here is the transaction:

Please wait for a site op­er­a­tor to re­spond. We are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing high vol­ume of chats. Your wait time may be longer than anticipated

Paula: Hello, my name is ‘Paula’, how may I as­sist you to­day
bu­tuki: Hi Paula,I am think­ing of pur­chas­ing some skype­out credit, but when I try to in­put my Japan ad­dress in the or­der form, the ad­dress line does not per­mit long ad­dresses.
bu­tuki: Is there some­thing I am do­ing wrong?
Paula: May I know what is the er­ror mes­sage that you are get­ting?
bu­tuki: Hmmm, there is no er­ror mes­sage. I start writ­ing the ad­dress and then the win­dow just stops al­low­ing ex­tra let­ters. Every­thing else in the or­der form seems to work fine.
Paula: Please pro­vide me with your Skype user name

bu­tuki: bu­tuki
Paula: Please wait one mo­ment while I check that for you
bu­tuki: Thanks very much

Ten min­utes go by in which I re­sume hum­ming to my­self (as elves can­not help them­selves do­ing) and fid­dling around with my other com­puter, try­ing to get a scratch­board draw­ing right.

Paula: Presently we ac­cept pay­ments us­ing ma­jor credit cards (Visa /​ Din­ners /​ JCB/​master card ). We also ac­cept pay­ments us­ing Mon​ey​Book​ers​.com, and are cur­rently in the process of adding more pay­ment op­tions :)

I smile with un­con­trolled glee (as elves for­ever find them­selves do­ing) at the cute lit­tle smi­ley emoti­con. Such friendly service!

bu­tuki: ??? Er, I’m not sure why you are quot­ing the credit cards… I have to get through the “billing name and ad­dress” form first be­fore I can get to the credit card form. My guess is that an ex­tra text field line needs to be put into the or­der form be­fore peo­ple with longer ad­dress can fill it out.
Paula: We have re­cently added a new pay­ment method called Mon​ey​Book​ers​.com which is now avail­able in your ac­count page. You will get this op­tion to­wards the end of your Credit pur­chase process where other credit card op­tions are also listed. Please try us­ing this method if your credit card pur­chases are not go­ing through.
bu­tuki: I think we are mis­un­der­stand­ing one an­other… Let’s see.. When I click the ten pound but­ton for en­teri­ing the credit pur­chase process the first page I am pre­sented with is the ad­dress page. This is the page I can­not get through. I can’t even get to the credit card page yet.

I pause a long time, dur­ing which my elvish earnest­ness takes a se­vere beating.

Paula: May I know which coun­try is your credit card reg­is­tered in,
bu­tuki: Japan. But, I am not re­fer­ring to the credit card page right now. I’m not sure if you un­der­stand what I mean.
bu­tuki: or maybe I’m not un­der­stand­ing what you mean…? (I add this hastily for courtesy’s sake. as elves are no­to­ri­ous for good man­ners)
Paula: Please try to buy with money book­ers

An­other very long pause on my end. Elves don’t han­dle anger very well. So I de­cide to bow out gracefully

bu­tuki: Okay. Do I just go straight to their home page, in­stead of go­ing through the Skye­out credit pur­chas­ing process?
Paula: Please try with money book­ers to buy credit

bu­tuki: Okay, thanks. I’ll see what I can do. Thanks again. And Merry Christ­mas!
Paula: Thank you for us­ing our live sup­port chat! Should you have any ques­tions feel free to con­tact us. Please do rate my sup­port af­ter end­ing this chat ses­sion. Bye!

The elf sat for a long time af­ter­wards con­tem­plat­ing the de­f­i­n­i­tion of in­tel­li­gence and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Luck­ily, to the elf’s sal­va­tion, the sky had opened with a cape of stars, sprin­kled upon it like scat­tered gems. Time seemed to lose all mean­ing and the words “skype” and “sky” be­came one. This is the age-​​old se­cret to elvish peace­ful­ness and cheer. Ig­no­rance surely is bliss.

Suiting Up

December 8, 2004 | Laughing Knees | Leave a Comment 

Some­times no mere mor­tal can pre­vent the scourge of the Moth­ers of All Evil! When that tor­rent comes falling and you’re at work and you re­mem­ber that your bed sheet is flap­ping in the wind…. When those cute lit­tle Lady Bugs that scut­tle like lit­tle red but­tons up your rasp­berry vines sud­denly mul­ti­ply into hordes of fe­ro­cious, scar­let, winter-​​woods car­pets, when the an­tenna on your roof breaks loose and threat­ens to make con­tact with the an­tenna of that loath­some Mr. Pink­ley next door, when, Lordy no!, Mrs. Igglefleur’s pa­per gro­cery bag loses its bot­tom and her or­anges go bounc­ing down the hill straight to­ward Mr. Dor­per­me­yer dri­ving his Cooper Mini while ogling Miss Lukeshins wad­dling up the street, not watch­ing where he is going…

Who do you call!? Why….Wa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Never fear! The Laugh­ing Beast, of course! None other! Other than none! None the other! The none of other! Nei­ther none, nor other! Other or none! An other none!? Or none too other? Other when none? None for other? Other, then none? Ohhhh… give me that!

Wah-​​hah-​​hah-​​hah-​​hah-​​hah-​​hah-​​hah-​​hah-​​hah-​​hah (more “h’s” have more ef­fect). It is I, Laugh­ing Beast! The Mas­ter of Dark­ness, when no light there be, but shad­ows form where there be no light! And among the shad­ows be I not other than when I am! Me, the Laugh­ing Beast! Hah-​​Hah! Take that! And That! And that! That-​​that!

Via Rana, us­ing The Hero Ma­chine. This was a lot of fun to make, but I’m afraid I’m more of a Japan­ese hero fan. I grew up with Gatcha-​​Man, Cassh­ern, Ogon-​​Batto, Tet­suwan Atomu (Atom Boy), Tes­tu­jin 28 (Gi­gan­tor), Ul­tra­man, Eito Man (Eighth Man), Mahha Go Go (Speed Racer), Cutie Honey, and Cap­tain Harlock.

I’ll (try to) be back! Wah-​​hah-​​hah-​​hah-​​hah-​​hah-​​hah-​​hah!

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