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Month: October 2011

Answer? Using an iPad is Equivalent to Being in Hell

October 30, 2011

NOTE: I am writing this post the good old fashioned way: using a laptop. Yes I am aware of how “six-months ago” that is… but read on….

Well it was certainly a noble question, “Am I in Hell? Or just using an iPad?” One cannot be blamed for posing the question. It’s an innocent and justifiable enough question. It just wasn’t the right question. The right question it turns out was “Why do I feel like I am in Hell whenever I use the iPad?” And of course the answer is “Being in Hell and using an iPad are the SAME thing”.

See, it all started about a week ago. I received this incredible looking device for my birthday from my even more incredible looking wife. I had been talking about getting an iPad for months. I had gotten used to the iPhone — bear in mind if you do NOT have an iPhone that there is a VERY large learning curve to using one. iPhones do not have regular keyboards – they are virtual, not tactile; and because they are an Apple product they are just about incompatible with every known device, website, app, software in the known universe. But still… there is a feeling one gets from using an iPhone — (scientists have actually just finished a small clinical trial that showed that using an iPhone elicits certain endorphins in the brain that are similar to the feelings we get when we are in love or being loved or being made love to by another. This is true. Look it up).

So i had gotten used to the iPhone after about a year of using it. And no, the marriage still wasn’t perfect. To this day I still cannot use more than half of the applications or tools that I use on my traditional PC-based hot-rodded laptop (mind you this thing is a monster if you’re a tech-geek. Custom designed and hand-built with a quad-core processor, ultra-high resolution screen, more ports than a space-shuttle, more RAM than is humanly fathomable, the most expensive video card money can buy along with the best sound card humanity can invent). So it should be fine, right? Well for the most part it is. Only problem being that it is still, alas, a laptop. In other words, it’s significantly larger and heavier than an iPhone.

Seeing that my job entails hunching over some kind of “content creating” device for hours at a time, there was a real need for me to be able to invent some kind of system to still be able to create content and not do real damage to my health. My back and neck are already severely compromised due to how many hours I have hunched over this thing. A Vegas book-maker could gamble that “yours truly has spent 20 hours straight hunched over his laptop without moving except to take bathroom breaks” and win 100% of the time. Unfortunately the statement is easily true. It is the nature of how much the industry I work in has changed. The music-making industry that is. But that’s another story. So… over the last few months I had begun realizing that I could do quite a bit using my iPhone. No it’s not easy, and it’s certainly not comfortable. But once you’ve hit the bed at 4AM and you’ve just put in an 18 hour day and you’re dead tired to the point of your eyes being crossed, finishing up that “last bit of work before you wake up in 3 hours to start the process all over again” is best accomplished on a smaller device with a less trauma inducing screen than a laptop. Hence the iPhone. I could write a three page blog post in less than an hour on the iPhone. No kidding. I have mastered that virtual keyboard. But again, it just doesn’t feel that comfortable, nor healthy. Not much does anymore in this high tech world. But again, that too is another story.

So my mind began to fantasize about the iPad. Not as large as a laptop and not as small as an iPhone. Should be the perfect solution. Right? Well golly Wally how I wish that statement were true. But it just has not been the case. It didn’t take that long to set up. Only about an hour. (yes, laughter is perfectly acceptable at that juncture in our story). What would one want to do first with this sleek slick high-priced and fancy device? We can’t use it as a phone, and it turns out that we also cannot use it to text. (Yes I know, we “can” use it to text if we want to text from our google GMail account… but that isn’t texting if you ask me. That’s IM’ing or chatting. I’m referring strictly to good old fashioned cell phone to cell phone test messaging, and it’s just not something one does on an iPad).

Ok… so what about surfing the internet? It must be good for that, right? Well, yes and no. If you want to just poke around and look at stuff, then sure, the iPad is a very expensive way to do that. It’s also not a bad tool for video conferencing like we do with Skype. And yes they finally added a dinky camera so we can take pictures with it. (Far be it from me to be the last man standing over the last two years pointing out how ridiculously short sighted it was for Apple in release a tablet device with no camera as they did with the iPad #1. My God what a stupid move. But surprisingly many, many people still ran out and bought one. I’m not sure what they actually did with it… A reviewer journalist from Time magazine said it best when he said “I haven’t actually found a use for the iPad, so I still need to carry my laptop around with me everywhere for work. But the iPad looks so cool that I find that I always have it with me, usually just sitting on the passengers seat of my car.” And this is what I had already guessed about the iPad when I first read about it. Hence the reason why I never bought one.

But the iPad 2 was supposed to change that. And so here we are. I’ve now owned one for about one week. I tried going to Facebook. But quickly realized that the iPad doesn’t work too well with Facebook. There are so many problems with it that you just get fed up and leave. Worst of them being that you cannot upload photos from your iPad to Facebook. Nor to anywhere for that matter. Why? Well no one seems to really know. Apple employees seem to think that it’s Adobe’s fault. And if you go to Adobe’s website, they seem to blame it on Apple. As a “regular Joe” consumer, I could care less whose fault it is, I just want to be able to upload photos. The solution we are told by Apple and/or “Apple afficianados” (of which there are plenty — and for good reason — I also own a badass Macbook and I must say it is everything they say it’s cracked up to be. it is for lack of a better word, “the BOMB!”) as I was saying, both will tell you that “you need to download the iPad Facebook app” if you want to upload photos or do other things on Facebook that you are accustomed to doing on a regular laptop. The only problem is that the iPad Facebook app is about as functional as attempting to use Facebook using Morse Code. It just isn’t a viable app. No need to go into the details. Just trust me on this. You’ll bail on it in less than five minutes. It truly is that useless.

Well, ok… that’s a drag. What about blogging? I do plenty of that for my job. I personally use two primary resources to blog: WordPress for the majority of them, and Blogger for one of them. This post that you are reading here in the infamous pages of the long-running Transcendence Diaries is currently being hosted by Blogger and has been for about five years now. Before that we had tried numerous other platforms. (The Diaries, as they are often called, are in their ninth year believe it or not for those who’ve been with us from the very start). At first I tried the obvious. I went to the Safari browser and opened up Blogger, logged in, and started writing a new post. Within five minutes the fiery smell of Dante’s sulfuric Inferno was so strong in the room that it was obvious that I was literally steps away from falling into the pit of hell forever and ever. Why? Because writing a new post in Blogger on an iPad simply doesn’t work. You can’t upload photos. You can’t adjust your settings. You can’t view your blog in a non-HTML standard form. And worst of all, you can’t actually publish the post you’ve just written. Worse than that, once it tells you that and displays a giant ERROR message on its bright shiny screen, it deletes the post you just spent an hour writing. That’s right. GONE for good.

“Oh man, that’s because you need to download the iPad for blogging app bro” Apple people will tell you. It’s true. You can’t actually blog using an iPad on Blogger or WordPress in a browser. You have to download yet another app. OK fine. Done. I first tried the tantalizingly titled “Blogger for iPad” app. No dice. You can only blog for as many sentences that fit above the virtual keyboard. Then you’re screwed. Besides, that’s ALL you can do. No editing, no formatting, no photos, etc. I then tried something called BloggerHD. Big price tag, but it promised the moon. And remember, promising the moon in the world of the iPad just means that you’ll be able to do the normal things you do everyday on your laptop. Not much moon there. But worth a try if it works I figured. Unfortunately it didn’t work. I typed a respectable one page post on a subject that I cannot even remember now only to hit publish and see it disappear. That was last night. I gave up and went to bed early, discouraged and disillusioned with my original fantasy that the iPad might somehow hold some saving grace for me or my health.

Next up was an app that looked even more promising. They call it BlogPress. Meaning that it will enable you to use your iPad for both Blogger and WordPress blogs. Oh what a beautiful morning. I jumped up and paid the fee and download it, logged into my account and began typing away. As a simple safety measure I hit the “Save” button just in case when I went to Publish the post it disappeared, and the app proceeded to close. I tried opening it a few times and it will now not even open on the iPad. Frantically and desperately I opened Safari to see if at the very least it saved this post i had worked so hard on for a little over an hour only to be reminded that when you log into Blogger on the iPad using the Safari browser, you cannot actually see a list of your previous posts. Not kidding. You also can’t access your dashboard. It is as if the iPad’s operating system, something they call “iOS,” is only capable of seeing or displaying about 50% of any given website’s content. God only knows why, but unfortunately it’s the truth.

So with a long face and an even longer sigh, I got up and walked a few feet over to my trusty old laptop. Blogger opened fine. It opened fully. And it functions perfectly. Just for good luck, on the rare chance that a miracle may have occurred, I checked my posts, both published and drafts. Unfortunately neither the post I wrote last night, nor the one I typed this morning exist. It is as if I had never typed them. So that, as they say, is that.

There may one day be an iPad app for those of us who want to actually do something with our iPads besides look at pictures or watch videos on YouTube. But I’m not holding my breath. I’ve just typed a blog without any trouble or error messages using my laptop in a short period of time and that’s fine with me. As far as the iPad goes, the thing that bgles my mind more than anything else is how could something so useless become so popular, at least in terms of “topical”… not many people actually own iPads. It’s more that just everyone likes talking about them and dreaming of owning one eventually. But like many things, the dream is far more fulfilling than the experience. What’s puzzling is how a machine ten times the price of your average iPhone not even be capable of accomplishing the same tasks as your average iPhone.

Last night, after hours and hours spent trying to salvage aforementioned blog posts or tens of futile attempts to use Facebook on the iPad, I eventually gave up and just pulled out my iPhone to do said tasks. There I was, 2AM, in bed, comfortably interacting with people all over the world on Facebook, through text messaging, and yes, even blogging, on my two year old $100 iPhone; while the $800 iPad sat lifelessly on the floor next to us. The irony did not escape me. I stared at it for a few seconds and all I felt was disgust. Outrageously priced, sleek, slick, and fancy looking but no actual use and incapable of being trusted. A lot like the people we dislike the most in this world. For them of course there is hope. I always hold out that each and every one of us is evolving, slowly, at our own pace, but human potential is remarkably surprising. After one gruelling week of trying everything imaginable in hopes of discovering something useful about the iPad, I don’t hold much hope for it. Too little too late for far too much money.

But I will say this. The iPad for as useless as it is does provide one invaluable benefit. It shows us that regardless of how utterly worthless something is, with the right amount of promotion and hype, we can find a way to sell it to others and make a fortune. And as a lifelong entrepreneur, that idea inspires me. Like “the Pet Rock” before it, the iPad is an anomalous entrepreneurial success story. If Apple can profit from it simply based on its beauty and hype, so too can you and I and everyone else profit from things we invent and bring to market and no we do NOT need to concern ourselves with how well they work. Functionality is optional. Much like our Senate or Congress.



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Uncategorized incompatible with Blogger Wordpress Facebook, iPad not functional, iPhone, laptop

Crisis in Syria – WTF are we meant to do about this?

October 11, 2011
This came in recently… An all time low. Using ambulances and “healing the wounded” as a way to lure protestors in so they can capture or kill them. The question that comes to my mind as a very staunch NON-imperialist is this: Are we supposed to help the people in Syria? Or not? America I mean. We help people all over the world. This is true. Sometimes we “help” when our help has not been asked for or even desired by the people. This is also true. (see Vietnam or Korea or Iraq or Grenada or Chile or Cuba etc etc…) Most of the time it appears to be only for political or strategic gain. True again. Every now and then we’ve been known to help “just because we should.” That’s true too. And that’s some good feeling stuff. The American government isn’t all bad. True again. But of course there are numerous examples of the US Gov not doing a damn thing in these cases because there’s just no “benefit” to the current administration’s agenda. Rwanda and Somalia and Darfur are all good examples. Not to mention the whole “Blood Diamond” crisis in Northern Africa. Nor Colombia where it appears we actually made things worse. Or Mexico. Or the whole Iran-Contra Affair… (not only did the Reagan Admin command and fund Iraq to attack and take over Iran (killing 200,000 Iranians); but after seeing that Iraq wasn’t going to win the war after six years, they then started secretly funding Iran too, figuring that regardless of “who won” we could then befriend that winning country and gain cheap oil in the process AND an additional security foothold in the Middle East to help us “protect Israel” — which still to this day I just do not understand the logic of… (unless of course these people are hard-core “christian fundamentalists” and actually believe that it’s “God’s will to protect Israel so Jesus can appear in the sky one day…” That’s some scary Shiite if you’re more of a humanitarian than a religious nut) — but of course they also got behind the wrong team in Colombia — “the wretched Contras” — in order to oust that country’s democratically elected leader, Sandinista). Truth be told, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to America’s imperialist history.  My God what a mess poor America has been in since WWII…

But let’s forget about all that for a minute and just turn our attention to Syria… I’m not a techy. Nor am I much of a pure-aesthetic’s kind of person — we’re all too busy at this point in today’s world for that… so I am going to do what my techy-friends consider “the unthinkable”. I’m going to copy and paste the content of an email into a blog. Yes it will look messy as all hell and contain tons of code that will fuck up all kinds of search engines. But honestly, compared to getting the word out, I really just couldn’t care. So see the below. And let me know what you think we should do about our brothers and sisters in Syria.
Sincerely,
The Ambassador

Dear friends,

Syrian death squads are killing protesters in their hospital beds, whilst Russia arms the regime and blocks international action to end the carnage. But pressure is building in the region, and if enough of us speak out now, we could persuade Turkey and Germany to use their leverage to get Russia to stop propping up this murderous regime. Sign the urgent petition and tell everyone:

Sign the petition
The Syrian regime has reached a new low, its death squads have begun using ambulances and hospitals to lure and kill wounded protesters. To end this carnage, we urgently need to bring global pressure on Syria’s key backer and arms supplier — Russia.

German Chancellor Merkel and Turkish President Erdogan both have strong inclinations to global leadership, and a great degree of influence in Russia. If we make a massive and public call to them to act, they will press Russian President Medvedev to stop blocking UN Security Council action on Syria.

Syria’s horror hospitals are the latest in a string of unspeakable crimes against peaceful protesters. So far, Russia has faced little condemnation for its complicity in these atrocities, but we can change that. Together let’s build a massive public call to Merkel and Erdogan to act and work with the Arab League to press Russian President to stop supporting Syria’s brutal repression — it will be delivered to their Foreign Ministries this week.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_the_horror_in_syria_a/?vl

At least 5,500 people have been killed in Syria, as many as in the entire Kosovo war. According to hospital staff and witnesses that Avaaz has spoken to, Syrian security forces have been using hospitals and Red Crescent vehicles to arrest, kill and torture dozens of pro-democracy protesters and detain doctors, blatantly defying international law.

Shamefully, two weeks ago, Russia led the United Nations Security Council in blocking global action to stop the Syrian regime’s slaughter of innocents. Russia recently delivered high-powered weapons to the butchers and has given no sign it intends to stop.

But, right now, the pressure on Assad is mounting — economic sanctions have left his army under-resourced and exhausted, and the Arab League has given him two weeks to enter negotiations with the opposition leadership. And there are two countries that can make a difference: Turkey, Syria’s neighbour and emerging regional power and Germany, who is Russia’s second-largest trading partner and traditional intermediary to Russia.

Both Turkey and Germany are sensitive to global opinion and vocally support the Syrian people — and a strong push from all of us could get them to pressure Russia to stop propping up the regime. Sign the petition now and forward widely — it will be delivered it to the Turkish and German Foreign Ministers this week:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_the_horror_in_syria_a/?vl

While some governments are despairing about what to do, Avaaz members are making a real difference in Syria. We’ve helped push through tough oil sanctions that funded Assad’s crackdown — Syrian activists have told Avaaz staff how crucial this support has been. We’ve broken the media blackout and worked tirelessly to document disappearances and other crimes, dismantling the regime’s lies. Let’s keep the flame of hope burning brightly and light the way to a peaceful, democratic Syria.

With hope,

Wissam, Stephanie, Sam, Ricken, Luis, Benjamin, Diego, Carol, Rewan and the whole Avaaz team

SOURCES:

Europeans spar with Russia, China on Syria at UN (Reuters):
http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/10/14/idINIndia-59902020111014

Turkey Steadfast on Syria Sanctions (Al Jazeera):
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/10/2011105134748573461.html

Syria Keeps Pressure On Protesters, Ignores Critics (National Public Radio):
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/16/141240546/syria-keeps-pressure-on-protesters-ignores-critics

Arab League Discusses Suspension of Syria (Wall Street Journal):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204479504576634931272379572.html

Germany Russia’s second largest trading partner (German Foreign Ministry website, in German):
http://www.avaaz.org/german_foreign_ministry

Support the Avaaz Community!
We’re entirely funded by donations and receive no money from governments or corporations. Our dedicated team ensures even the smallest contributions go a long way.
Donate to Avaaz



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Uncategorized Grenada, Human Rights, Iran-Contra, Iraq, Labels: Colombia, syria, Vietnam war

Hanging Tough

October 10, 2011
Wish I had more time for this. But that’s part of the problem with tough times isn’t it? We don’t have enough time for anything. Except for work. Or not. Times can get so tough that we can’t even afford the time it takes to work. Unless we’re out of a job .Which means we are working harder on trying to find a job than we would be working if we had a job. But that’s just tough times talk re work or no work. But times can get much tougher than that. Much tougher. Indeed that’s exactly where we are right this very second. So when it comes to not having enough time, it’s an understatement. Forget about “not having enough free time.” We’re talking “not having ENOUGH time. Period. Forget about “free time.”

Friends call or text or email or Facebook. They wanna talk. Wanna hang out. Wanna find out if you have some time. I try explaining that we don’t have any free time. Don’t have enough time period. But I can tell they don’t realize what we’re talking about. That we literally don’t have any time. As in none. Zero. As in even if I keep up this same pace of working around the clock 24/7 and don’t stop except to sleep (yes that means working while you eat, working while you’re in the bathroom (on your iPhone), and working every other waking minute of the day from six am to one am the next day, that we will still not be working fast enough to keep up with all the work that is being thrown at us.

The King calls or texts every now and then. He wants to schedule appointments to talk. Rather than just texting a hello that could then yield a pretty decent two to five minute conversation that could at least keep us communicating, he only texts to try to arrange “an appointment to talk.” Which of course there’s just no way I can guarantee I can keep. Not with what we have going right now. And he also refuses to use Facebook. Which is dumb because part of my job is staying on Facebook 24/7, so there’s a damn good chance that if he really wanted to talk to me all he’d have to do is jump on Facebook and grab me. We could at least share a few sentences back and forth.

Craiger’s much better about it. He gets it. He texts whenever he has a second. We communicate thru whatever means necessary in order to keep the fire of our friendship together. We text good morning. We text good night. It’s gay, sure. But it also helps us stay in touch as well as offers us a minimal but still impactful amount of the support we derive from friendships. 

Spoke with Father Bloopy this morning. Both of us work at and own a company together, along with a few other people. And even with that, we go weeks and weeks without actually speaking in person. The rapid pace at which we work necessitates that we communicate with one another primarily thru email, Twitter, Facebook, or texting. We don’t question it. It’s just the nature of our lives right now. This morning we were both celebrating and complaining about how busy we’ve become. Yes of course it’s good news. And at the same time yes of course it’s terribly frustrating to be working 24 hours a day and not even have time to spend any QT with your friends or family or wife etc. To feel guilty when you take the time to shower or eat dinner with the family as opposed to at the office. Truth.

But more to the point, I told Bloopy that it wasn’t just that we’re busy here in the West Coast office with work. That every time he sees an email or a text from me or Princess Little Tree regarding “work” it should be viewed as a miracle. Because in addition to the 24/7 seven days a week work grind, we are also: still recovering from a devastating miscarriage that turned into a medical nightmare that is still going on now, two months later, in the process of a legal battle with our leasing company for our apartment in Manhattan and are being threatened with eviction for no apparent or stated reason, reconciling the fact that and trying our best to help my mom who is about to have to file bankruptcy and short sell her house, our family house! Horrible. Not to mention the constant battle over this strange illness I contracted eight months ago which refuses to go away. So it’s doctors doctors doctors all the time — either for her, or for me. Five minutes without wearing this Scopolomine patch behind the ear and I’m in the bathroom puking followed by passing out cold for an hour or more from the headache and dizziness that go along with it. No one can figure it out. Next up are the MRIs and the catscans of my brain. That’s our last resort. We’ve been to them all, doctors that is. No one can tell us anything. Of course there’s also the fact that financially we are way in over our heads like most people and on the verge of the unspeakable — so the only thing we can do is work hard and fast in an attempt to try to improve things as quickly as possible.

And all of the above? That’s just the “super hard challenging stuff.” That’s not mentioning the kids, the dogs, the mail, the office, planning and rehearsing the upcoming tours, the seven hour flights back and forth between New York and Seattle, the upkeep of the houses. Life itself is busy enough. Throw all these other things into the fire and you’ve just lit half the northern hemisphere with the golden blaze you’ve created.
So yeah, times are way more than tough. And that means we are way more than “too busy to have any free time”. I go to sleep at 2 AM in order to sneak some more work time in after everyone in the house goes to sleep. By 6 AM I am awake, wide awake, my mind buzzing a million miles an hour, thinking, brainstorming and strategizing all these different crises we have in our lives right now. It’s impossible to fall back to sleep when dealing with any one of the above mentioned problems, let alone all of them at once. My head just gets so wired and scrambled that I have to jump up and head to the office to try to improve or fix things.

But how DO we handle life when it looks like this? When you don’t have enough time to pay attention to your personal life because your professional life is too busy; but your personal life is so fucked up and filled with crises that you don’t have enough time to pay attention to your professional life. What DO you do?

You hang tough. That’s what you do. You put everything and anything that you can off for a while in order to battle each and every one of these fuckers till they’re dead and buried. You wake up earlier and you go to bed later. You do nothing but work. Around the clock. You also do a lot of praying. Remembering the old adage that God doesn’t give you anything that he doesn’t think you can handle. Which means you trust. And you have faith. And you don’t give up. And you fight like there’s tomorrow. You keep your eyes on the prize, look at the bigger picture, realize that “this too shall pass” and one by one, layer by layer, you bring down the beasts that haunt you. And in the end you become a stronger person by having to fight for yourself and fight for your family and always believe that you’re going to come out winning.

Of course if you’re like us, you also most likely possess a giant arsenal full of useful tools such as Avatar, Abraham, the Sedona Method and Tony Robbins. I still to this day just don’t get the people out there in the world who refuse to take continued education in self-empowerment courses that are used and proven to work by millions of people and offer nothing less than “a better and easier ride through life.” You see, it’s not that you aren’t going to encounter any problems or challenges in your life… you will. We all do. That’s life. But it’s how you handle those problems and challenges. THAT’s the key to living the life of your dreams. It means that life may throw you a few curve balls, or even a few dozen, sometimes all at once! But you know without a shadow of a doubt that not only will you survive these life challenges, you will THRIVE.  

I told Princee the other day that “i have absolutely no doubts that we will get through each and every one of these challenges, no matter how insurmountable they seem in the moment.” And this is the truth. I’ve experienced life blowing up in my face and crapping all over me. But I’ve never let it get me down or hold me down. I hang tough. I keep my attitude one of gratitude. For things could always get a lot worse. And so I am grateful as hell that this is all we are experiencing; and for all the numerous blessings that God and life are throwing our way. Believe it or not, with everything we are going through, I still feel like we blessed beyond measure. And to me that is hanging tough. Life will always have its challenges. But it’s how we deal with them that determines how successful and happy we are. Or not.

If I were a betting man, which I’m not, I would surely bet that despite how many problems and crises we are presently dealing with, we are still going to continue becoming more and more successful and more and more happy. If YOU are reading this and have experience with life throwing you curve balls the size of coconuts and the explosive power of hand grenades, you already know about what I speak. More power to you. And more power to us. If YOU are reading this and are experiencing similar challenges in your own life, trust me when I say that there is absolutely nothing that can happen to you that is stronger than we are as conscious human beings. You hang tough too. And I’ll see you on the other side of this mess.
Peace love truth art beauty and happiness,
Fishy

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Uncategorized

When it rains it pours…

October 6, 2011
Where to start….? Woke up to a series of “good news” items so nearly overwhelming that the moment was hard to believe. First off, speaking of waking up, I am currently in Seattle, Washington. No big deal right? We’ve got two homes, East Coast and West Coast. No problem. Except for the fact that besides the fact that my entire band and staff live on the East Coast, so too do most of the innumerable companies who work with and for us. None of us have any idea truly just how many companies and various consultants and publicists and consultants are involved in “working a new campaign.” The figure is mind boggling. The bigger you get and the further you go the more people need to be signed on to help the campaign. And so it is that 99.9 % of them all live and work on the East Coast. All except for one that is. Our UK publicist. They of course reside in the UK. So… Where does that leave yours truly? Somewhere between dead tired and exhausted. East coast is three hours ahead of us here in rainy but beautiful Seattle. Which means that in order to jump on it early enough to be alive and ready to rock by 9:00am EST I’ve got to wake up at 5:00am. Only problem is that foe the last twenty years my mind heart soul and body have been staying awake till and going to bed around 2 to 3 am. Tough? Nah… More like BRUTAL. Combine that wretchedness with a sensible desire to communicate regularly with our UK and European publicity team I need to either stay awake till midnight in order to catch them at 9am their time just as they’re hitting the office, or wake up, yet again, around 5 or 6 am at the latest in order to have a chance to spend a mere hour or so with them before they leave for the day. I often begin my communiques to them in my bathrobe freezing my tail off asking them “Whats the future look like guys?” An hour brainstorming reviewing and strategizing with them, it’s time to jump over to begin working with all the companies and people on our east coast team. Sure they’re awake aware alive and feeling fine. Showered coffeed breakfast’d maybe even lunched. Me? I’m still seeing the dead darkness of early early morning outside my windows. The strategy sounded perfect when we finally came up with one. I go to bed way earlier than I’m used to, then wake up at 5:00 am and work like a dog knowing that I’m racing that clock turning 2:00 pm because 2pm here = time to go home time for them. Then another hour or two of work and Im supposed to take a nap around 3 or 4 pm to catch up on all the lost sleep and just make sure that I’m up and refreshed in time for dinner at 7 with the fam. Only problem is that by the time you’ve worked yourself into a mad frenzy attempting to accomplish everything everyone has requested of you that day or the day before, you’re just too wired to go lie down and “take a nap.” Sometimes it’s inevitable and unstoppable. As in by 1:00 pm I’m cross-eyed exhausted and passed out dead on my feet. Yep, it’s hard. And no I’m still not accustomed to “going to bed early,” as this new blog post illustrates. So… Where were we? Yes that’s right. A droopy eyed morning full of heaps of good news. Current single “New Orleans Dreams” has not only managed to break into the Top40, but it’s jumped up to #33. This is no less than ten times more incredible unbelievable and exciting from this end than it may appear from the outside. Let’s not fuck around and kid ourselves here. I’ve been recording music and touring since I was 17 years old and have yet to have a bonafide Billboard Hot 100 hit song. Right now “New Orleans Dreams” as it stands does still not qualify for that coveted success story. The song needs go all the way to #1 on it’s current chart and then dominate yet another and then and only then will it have a chance to hit the Billboard Hot 100. Yet after more years than I’d ever publicly admit to being in the business this is the closest we’ve ever come. And it feels AMAZING. In addition there were three different magazine interview requests waiting and the announcement that “new Orleans dreams” was headed towards the charts of another radio format, Triple A. Think Jack Johnson or Fleet Foxes on a good day at a good radio station. That’s what Triple A sounds like. It’s a damn good bit of news. Of course we could head right into the countless problems encountered today — as everyday in thr music business when you’re sn artist on a small indie record label. But why bother talking about the two different singles and albums that are due by Friday of this week to different companies but were under ordered in the first place and now have to be rushed in order to be made in time to hit all the different deadlines. Nor shall we speak of my beautiful wife who is generous in spirit and kind to a fault and the near nervous breakdown meets meltdown she dramatized this morning over “being overwhelmed by how impossibly chaotic this business is and overworked we all are despite having all the help in the world from all these various companies on boars trying to make things easier and flow smoother for me and this totally unexpected string of recent successes we’ve been experiencing the last few months. Even if every single one of us involved in these campaigns and careers stayed awake 24/7 and worked nonstop we would still just barely scratch the surface of all the tasks that are due or overdue. It is for lack of a better series of words an utterly complete and chaotic nightmare. And we’re on the plus side of the equation right now. We’re winning bigtime right now in every arena. If we only had a moment of free time this would surely be a time to go out and celebrate. But we don’t. So we won’t. But what we will keep doing is working at it. Dreams do come true. You just need the perseverence and resilience to realize the dreams. That’s the payoff. Everyday now is a “pinch me” day. But speaking of dreams fulfilled… IT happened today. The unthinkable. Late in the day, though three hours earlier than east coast time, we learned that renegade visionary and sometimes tyrant Steve “his Holiness” Jobs passed away today. The news hit me so suddenly casually and intensely that I found myself during the first few hours after hearing it that I couldn’t even go there. I just kept working. Trying not to think about it. Today, a day like any other, will in the years and decades to come will mark the end of an era. Like BC and AD before it, BS and AJ will stay with many of us until our own eventual passing. Twitted crashed more times than can be counted due to the endless outpouring of Tweets running through it’s system heralding the news and mourning the loss of who some call one of the most important Americans in human history. And that’s a damn impressive group of people to compete with. Yes it’s ironic that the majority of human civilization heard about and shared the information of Jobs’ passing on a device that he himself invented and introduced to the world. And again yes I believe that a few took it a bit too far when comparing the passing of Steve to the assasination of Martin Luther King. But surely Stevo passing will mean more to more people on planet earth in years to come than if almost any US president died, except maybe JFK; the importance of which lies more at the feet of the circumstances of his death than to anything to do with his noble yet few accomplishments. The passing of Steve Jobs leaves rhe world devoid of one of it’s greatest thinkers and visionaries of all time. Those are big shoes to fill. And thus, we all know that they will never be filled. New shoes will have to be invented entirely. And that precisely that is why we will miss Jobs so much. He was a genius at inventing new shoes to fill that the majority of people on earth didn’t even know needed filling. Like Einstein or Edison before him, our entire world has been transformed, for better or worse some would argue, in ways we never even dreamt possible. Out of all the hundreds of thousands of things that were said today about the early and sudden passing of Steve Jobs, one stuck with me more than any other: “When we look at the incredible amount of life transforming inventions that came from this man and his company over the last thirty years, it makes you wonder what he would have come up with over the next thirty had he stayed alive.” That was an incredibly insightful observation. And from what I know it came from Anderson Cooper. Of course we will never know. And neither will Steve. At least not a here on earth Steve. But it is at the very least a fascinating subject to contemplate. What more really can be said? Except, God will we miss him.

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We don’t attract what we want; we attract what we are

October 3, 2011
Current Reads: The Biology of Belief. The primary these is obvious enough from the title, but this book goes one step further by using decades of clinical trials and research that scientifically prove that the collection of beliefs that we hold (consciousness itself is nothing more than a callection of beliefs), has a biological effect on the human body nearly equal to what we have normally relegated to traditional biology. What was once a new age oddball concept disregarded and dismissed by hard science has now become a commonplace and accepted belief. Our beliefs literaly so strong in their effect on our mental and physical bodies that they can actually elicit effects on our physical bodies as effectively and profoundly that these beliefs can often trump our biology. Yes of course for some that isn’t news at all, but rather accepted truth. Thr only difference now is that we the human race have actual hard science to back this concept up and prove it, that’s it’s not only scietificslly feasable but can also be very helpful as well. The potential offered from having such hard data to support this idea is staggering. Especially when it comes to medicine and the healing arts. And also as it relates to how successful we are and how much money we earn or have in rhe bank. It appears that this system of beleifs that consciousness holds and explores and changes and evolves and contemplates works much the same way as our current system of biology does. Again the potential for how we live and what we experience in life is staggering. Not to mention inspiring and uplifting. No more need to Defend argue or debate this belief.

Also check out the book The Virus of the Mind. Similar thesis. But rather this book shows how beliefs and thoughts and feelings and emotions can spread throughout our mind much the same way that a traditional physical virus can have profound effects on our physical bodies.

Conclusion? “The Secret” isn’t much of a secret anymore. Despite the crises we see around the world, and the battle between the right and the left in politics, we are as humans slowly but steadily evolving to more and more advanced understanding of these perinciples; making them less taboo as they were fifty or one hundred years ago. It’s encouraging.

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A private little world for me… a private little world for you. The online journals and musings of singer-songwriter author and activist Ed Hale. The Transcendence Diaries have been posting regularly online since 2001. Comments are always welcomed. And so are YOU.

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