Finally, something for me to write about!

Today was a good day and yesterday was a good day. Oil prices took a shit, and it was all because of me. Sunday, I came to the conclusion of what to do with the money from the sale of my truck. Sarcastically, I said that I would invest in the oil market, and the oil market took me seriously. No need to thank me because now that the market knows what my real intentions were, oil prices will jump fifteen dollars and close at a higher price than they did on Friday, which was a record day for the price of a barrel of oil.

This kind of happened to me when I bought my house. In May 2005, I started feeling like it would be a good time to put my family and myself in a safe place. I already had to children and a baby on the way and I just didn’t feel like we were safe, safe from the weather or safe from poverty. We were living in a manufactured home, a trailer…in a trailer park. I’m not going to get into how I got there, that’s a another post, so stay tuned. In May 2005, I set out on a journey, it was a journey to be a little more stable, and a lot less crazy. It was time to settle down and follow the rules, and I did.

A lot of this comes from a guy I met a year or so earlier. I graduated from high school with this guy’s kid. He was the vice president of Michigan’s largest demolition company, and we were on the same page about Governor George Bush (George Carlin said that governor was the only position he was ever elected to). We fuckin’ hated him. This guy was a Chaldean (kal-ˈdē-ən), a Christian Arab, and I was raised Catholic. We had the same views on religion, ethics, and politics, but we certainly didn’t share the same taste in music. The relationship (non-sexual, don’t get excited) will be for another post.

Anyway, I always had my earrings in, one in each ear. He asked me if I wore those to fight the system. I kind of did. Needless to say, the earrings came out shortly after that conversation and a couple of years later, I got them put back in. Right around the same time, I was reading a book, “Conversations With God” by Neil Donald Walsh. These two influences basically told me the same thing, “You gotta get in the system, before you can fight the system.” This guy and this book got me on the track to living my life a little bit differently, ok, a lot differently. When you realize who god is, you can follow the path that leads you to god so that you can ask him all those important questions that you have been wanting to ask him for years, starting off with the easiest “What the Fuck?”

Why did I get screwed on my house? Why did I lose my job? Why is gas so expensive? Why is it raining and chilly in Michigan right now? Why? Why? Why?

Do you know what God is going to tell you?

“YOU, you are the problem. You didn’t get screwed on your house, your house payment for the next thirty years will basically be the same as it is today. You didn’t lose your job, you quit doing your job, so they got rid of you. Gas isn’t expensive, you just don’t get good gas mileage. The cool, rainy Michigan summer days aren’t really a problem, you just think they are.”

I don’t see being unemployed as a problem, I see it as an opportunity to liquidate all of the garbage I have accumulated. I see it as an opportunity to find my direction and set my goals higher than they have ever been before. I see it as an opportunity to find out who is willing to make this incredible journey with me and who isn’t. Even though I am unemployed and broke, I am probably happier and more stress-free than I have ever been.

I won’t ever buy a barrel of oil, a gallon of oil, yes, but not a barrel. When FoMoCo hit $10 a share, I had $2000 in the bank, and I wanted to buy 200 shares. Thank god my laziness didn’t allow that to happen, and thank god for the 10 Outback Steakhouse dinners I got to share with my family, and the 15 Olive Garden dinners that my family and myself enjoyed, and thank god for all the nonsensical shit we bought with the rest of the money. Some of it is coming in handy right now, while I have a bunch of time on my hands.

Problems aren’t problems until you think its a problem.

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My Heroes

George Carlin (May 12, 1937-June 22, 2008)died two weeks or so ago, I loved that guy. I listened to every word he said, whether they were funny or not. He made sense unlike most of the people on tv or in my life. He spoke the truth about our stupidity as a society and the beliefs we have from what the tv tells us. He had a whole bit on cleanliness and it made absolute sense to me. He talked about our need to be clean and how wrong that was. I’m not a dirt ball, but I also believe that if we are too clean our bodies can’t do the job they were built to do, which is fight off germs. Once our bodies get a taste of a germ and fight it off, our bodies become less susceptible to that germ, thats Biology 101.

He also despised our government and the lies they tell us. Right now, as I type, our country is embroiled in a bunch of shit because of lies our government told us. He also shed light on truths, like smoking and obesity. Did you know that the number of people that die because of smoking is almost equal to the number of people that die from being fat? We have too many people on this Earth anyway, we need to stop people from living so long and let them die whenever, wherever, and however they want to die.

He loved words, he loved people’s reactions to words, and he loved using words that were in the dictionary and ones that aren’t. Unfortunately, he will be mostly remembered for his filthy words bit that was brought up before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court of the United States of America, what an honor to be judged by those fucknuts for speech that came out of his mouth. One of my many goals is to kill someone with my words, they hear the words, the words hit a spot on their conscience, and they subsequently kill themselves. How fucking cool would that be? The difficult part is finding someone that deserves that punishment.

George Carlin inspired people, people like Bill Maher and Jerry Seinfeld. I enjoy Bill Maher a lot more than Jerry Seinfeld but they both have George Carlin traits to them. Bill is a very political and very common sense oriented, and when it comes to politics common sense is funny. Seinfeld takes those little every day petty things and blows them out of proportion, just George (not Costanza) did with the whole cleanliness bit. I have great respect for all people mentioned here, especially me and Costanza, and I am going to miss George Carlin, the philosopher, and his incites. I hope I can carry on his tradition of pissing people off.

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The 3rd of July

I love the Fourth of July, Independence Day, I love it. I love blowing shit up, I love getting drunk, I love getting drunk and blowing shit up, and I love throwing some Delmonico’s on the grill and eating like its Thanksgiving, but I didn’t get to do that this year. Instead, I had a porterhouse, I didn’t blow anything up, and I didn’t get drunk, I could have, but I didn’t. I had an unplanned celebration on the third, it didn’t involve steaks, explosions, or meat, and it was pretty terrific. On July third, I sold my Ford F-150 to a Mexican bricklayer from Southwest Detroit. I had an epiphany after the truck was gone. I realized that I can do this.

I went back to school in September ‘007 with big dreams of being a website designer. Since going back I have had enough focus on the ultimate goal to manage a 3.7 GPA. The first three times that I attempted this whole school thing I had enough focus to garner a 1.7 GPA, I would say that I am right where I should be. My first attempt at Political Science ended with a 1.6 and this time it was a 3.3, I am right where I should be.

Sorry, I had to toot my own horn, it makes me feel better about what I’m doing. Anyway, I was driving down the road in my economical car and I realized something. I feel better. My mind feels free. I haven’t worked since March 1998, but it wasn’t until November 2008 that I stopped having a place to go everyday and stopped getting paid on a regular basis. Being a DJ, you get paid to have fun and be the life of the party, something happened and I couldn’t do that anymore, now I can, but I couldn’t back in the fall of ‘007. I felt like I should be doing more to contribute to the segment of our society that doesn’t get drunk everynight.

When I was handed the cash for the truck, the gears started turning. I had a million questions for myself as to what to do with the money. I’m down a vehicle, but I still have another. I’m behind on my bills, but they will still be there next month. I won $200 at the casino last week, maybe I should take it down there. Maybe I should buy some speakers and start Djing parties. There are literally millions and millions of things I could do to make money.

Guess what I did, it wasn’t one of the choices listed above. I bought a book, a real $50 book, I don’t read and I bought a book. It’s a book about Flash and ActionScript. It is written by Todd Perkins (by the way, he looks like he’s young enough to be my kid) and it is published by Lynda.com. I trust the Lynda.com site, it is one that has been recommended to me by instructors I trust, so I am certainly going to trust Lynda.com books. I am about a quarter of the way through the book and I am already able to put some of my own tidbits and ideas into a Flash animation. I will be through this book and know how Adobe’s Flash program works by the end of the week, July 11th.

I think that this book was probably the best thing that I could have done with the money. Just because my Flash class doesn’t start back up until the fall, doesn’t mean that I can’t learn it on my own. I have learned HTML, CSS, Javascript, and now Flash. After I fully understand the Flash, I’m off to Dreamweaver, InDesign, and beyond. Buying only the book gives me time to figure out how to use the rest of the money wisely. I think I’ll invest it in oil.

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I’m Back

That’s enough about gibberish, now it is time for non-gibberish thoughts. I just posted the Kid Rock public service announcement about downloads and I have something to say about it. He is right, let’s steal everything. Walmart, I hate them and wish that they would perish into the bowels of our fiery Hell. I don’t need to go to China, China came to me and I don’t like it. I don’t like the products, their business practices, or their god-forsaken smell. I know what all of that is and it is Walmart.

I do want to go to Japan. Their chicks and technology are HOT. Chicks like Toyota’s and so do I, so let’s steal them.

I’m not as big of a music fan as I once was, but I’ll be more than happy to have an Ipod, but it does have video for. Kid is right, Bill Gates and Lil Stevie Jobs are rich, fucking rich, so let’s take their stuff. We really don’t need to worry about stealing from them if we steal it from Walmart. It’s Walmart’s responsibility to make sure that the stuff is paid for and not stolen. If these items are stolen from Walmart, it is like kicking them in the nuts twice. First, they don’t get the money for the products and second, they still have to pay for them.

The Tommy Hilfiger stuff, I really don’t care, I wear Levi’s, which unfortunately Walmart doesn’t sell. I’ll be damned if I’m going to wear some Wrangler’s. I not suggesting that YOU go out and steal anything, what I am suggesting is that you find a crackhead to do it. If you give a crackhead $10 they’ll try to rob a fucking bank for you. They will break into The Whitehouse and attempt to kill the President, not that I am suggesting anyone give a crackhead the $10 he needs to do that.

Not everyone knows a crack head but if you go to your local inner city, I’m sure you will be able to find one. One thing that you must remember though, is that crackheads don’t have cars or homes and whatever you want them to steal must fit on a bus, unless you want to give them a ride, which I don’t recommend that because they don’t have showers either, and not only that, someone may have just paid them the ten bucks to steal a Toyota, your Toyota.

The whole point of Kid Rock’s PSA was to discourage downloading music for free. My whole point of this post was to give a big “FUCK YOU” to all the artists that are bitching about the free downloading of music. Don’t preach to the choir, we aren’t listening. Preach to your record companies about the cut you get from record sales. There are still enough people out there purchasing your CD’s and tracks and paying too much for your concerts to make sure that you get paid. There are still enough stores, restaurants, bars, and clubs paying ASCAP and BMI fees that you should be getting paid really well. Downloaders aren’t pissed at you, their pissed at the record companies for charging the prices that they are charging.

They are also pissed about $4.00 for a gallon of gasoline, $4.00 for a gallon of milk, lead in Chinese made toys, a foreclosure “crisis”, a horrible unemployment rate, and a trillion dollar debt for a war that we shouldn’t be in. If people take Kid Rock’s PSA seriously, I don’t blame them. I put Kid Rock in the same category as George Bush, fucking crackheads.

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NOW IS MY TIME?

Life is funny. It has it’s ups and downs, and sometimes when you look back, what you thought was an up, was actually a down, and vice versa. Sometimes, you get to a point in your life that you never wanted to be at (like broke), and once you are there, you realize, it really isn’t that bad, actually, it is better than where you were when you thought you were happy. I get to spend more time with my children and I like that.

Now that I am done speaking in code, let me tell you my story. I was a DJ, not a radio jock, but a club DJ. Not just any kind of club DJ, but a strip club DJ. I wanted to be a radio personality, but I didn’t want to make a eight bucks an hour for ten years, bounce around from city to city, and never get discovered and never really make a difference. I didn’t have the talent of an Armand van Helden or a Darude to be a $10,000 an hour dance club DJ, so I ended up in the strip clubs.

It wasn’t a bad gig, not bad at all, well, not until the end. Bars aren’t the most honest businesses in world and when you are in that environment all the time, it starts to become part of you or you start becoming part of it. I don’t know which was happened to me, but I wasn’t happy with the way that I was living my life, at work and at home.

It is also a business that attracts the lowest common denominators. I’ve gone to six interviews in the last four days and they all ask the same question, “Why did you quit DJ’ing?” I’ve given all of them the same answer, “I’m done dealing with drunk people.” That’s the answer I gave them but the real answer was, “I’m done babysitting 18-35 year-old strippers.” “Don’t put that in your nose, get that out of your mouth, what are you doing?” I have two daughters, eight and two, and they are more mature than the dancers I had to work with.

It’s also kind of weird actually knowing some of the people that you meet in bars. I’ve worked with heroine addicts, crackheads, pill poppers, cokeheads, drunks, self-proclaimed golddiggers and hookers. I’ve worked with drug dealers, steroid freaks, and people that just got a kick out of beating the hell out of people. I’ve been friends with people that have gotten shot and killed, and I have also worked with a girl that killed a drug dealer, cut him up, and put his body parts in a freezer. Have you met any of these kind of people at your job? These are the lowest common denominators.

I’m a little reluctant writing this because I might have to go back and work in these clubs, but then I remembered, strippers can’t read, and the ones that can, don’t. These girls did teach me something, though, be a father to your children, don’t be stupid. When the going gets tough, don’t walk away.

Don’t get me wrong, I had fun and I made great money having fun. In the end it wasn’t fun anymore and when that happened, the money wasn’t there. I am in school for website design now and it is going well. I never liked school before, but NOW it makes me happy. I know I can get back to making the money I was making before and now I can take a child to work with me.

I read a book called, “Conversations With God” by Neale Donald Walsh, I highly recommend it. “God” said, “Do what you love, the money will be there. Don’t work for money.” You spend a large portion of your life at work, why be miserable? It took me two years to come to the realization that maybe “God” knows what he is talking about. I’ll talk more about this book in later posts, but go out and buy it, it is my new bible, and thanks to Christine O’Kelly, my EBible will coming out soon.

I’ve never been one to read instructions before putting something together. I’ve lived my life in the same kind of way. I’ve done things in the wrong order, kids, house, then school, and soon a real job, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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How Creative Am I?

How creative am I? I am currently taking an illustration class. It’s basically a class to learn how to draw for companies using Adobe Illustrator. Instead of designing websites like I planned, I think that I want to draw pictures, and maybe that will evolve into the website thing. We’ll see.

Anyway, that was the plan. So with that being the plan, a self-evaluation of my skills is necessary. To the right you will see my first assignment, it was for an imaginary Japanese printing company. I liked it, other students liked it, and my instructor liked it. It started out a lot more elaborate, but having to reduce it to a half an inch kind of spoiled the complexity that I had created.

The next assignment was one for an actual company. My instructor owns her own graphic design company and one of her clients decided to take some time out of her life to amuse us with the possibility of using one of our designs for her organization. This was my design. Elaborate, not at all. Look familiar?

Both designs are based on the sun. The top one is based on Japan’s rising sun logo, for the Japanese printing company. The latter is also the sun. Healthy Traditions is an organization that brings local farmers together with people trying to live and eat healthier than the local supermarkets will allow, and what makes us feel better than the sun, especially after a long cold Michigan winter .

I think both of these designs are good, they look nice, and they serve the purpose of what is trying to be conveyed. My problem is that for both assignments, I used the sun. Now, if I really wanted to be a creative smart-ass, which I’m not anymore, I would use the sun for every assignment that I have, but is that really creative? I think not. Funny? Absolutely, but not really creative.

Send me a comment and let me know what you think. Is this creative? Do you want to hire me? Let me know.

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Am I in Kindergarten Again?

It’s funny, I’m 34 years old and I feel like I am in kindergarten again. I went back to school in September of 007 and I can’t believe how it feels. I just started my Adobe Illustrator class on Tuesday, January 15, 2008. The teacher was an hour and fifteen minutes late, but that was fine. I just got a new set of crayons, not crayola, but Adobe.

When I was buying my books I thought, “Hey, get the Adobe CS3 master edition, George Bush is paying for it.” Not only did I get the student pricing on it but financial aid paid for it since I’m a broke-ass. This is a $2500 program for non-students and teachers. Student pricing was $509 and with my books for my three classes it cost me a hundred bucks. How beautiful is that?

Anyway, I got it a month before school started so I wouldn’t walk into this class looking like a frigin’ idiot, even though we were all basically starting on the same page. I have a 13 year-old, a seven year-old, and a 2 year-old, and now I know what it feels like to be a child playing with my very first crayon. I knew what it felt like when I was two, but I didn’t remember, now I do, and now I know how to teach my children. I can’t get mad at them because they only know what they have experienced so far, and what they have experienced hasn’t been enough to get mad at them for the decisions they make.

Back in September, I took an HTML and a networking class. The only thing I wanted to do, even before I started, was build a website. I didn’t want anything major, I just wanted to see my work on the web, where people from all over the world could see what I have done. Then it got a little more intense when the bar I was DJ’ing at, basically hired me to build them a site. They paid for a years worth of hosting and their domain name. I was fine with that, in school for two weeks and already freelancing.

Needless to say, I got fired two months later. I would always tell people that got fired, that they didn’t get fired, they quit. If you are doing your job the way you are supposed to, you don’t get fired. If you were doing your job the way you were supposed to and then you quit doing your job the way you are supposed to, you get fired, but actually you already quit, you just weren’t ready to leave yet. If you never did your job the way you were supposed to and they still keep you on, you will be management soon.

As much as I hated school the first time around, and the second, and the…well, you get it, now I love it. I loved learning how to sell dog food and fertilizer when I worked at the feed store. I loved learning how to be a DJ, and a pretty damn good one at that, and I am loving learning how to be a designer. Whether it’s web, graphic, print, video, or maybe some new form that comes around in twenty years, I want to be there, I want to be part of it, I want to use it to change the world. I want to use it to change my world.

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