Right, first off there's an interview with Nick Park over at the Guardian, which I noticed linked at Nausicaa.net a few days back:
Success brings with it pressure to conform. I always thought that success would lead to freedom, but the opposite is true: more people get involved and committees make decisions, and it becomes a fight to stay free. My colleagues and I have to constantly remind each other that we must keep our own view on the world while making films. With Chicken Run, we learned how easy it is to be influenced by outside forces, but you mustn't lose the heart and soul of what you are doing. Spirited Away is the most successful Japanese film of all time, yet it is very idiosyncratic, and personal. Miyazaki has managed to make his success work.
Yes, that Nick Park, if you didn't recognize the name immediately.
Yet I don't expect anyone to not know who Miyazaki is. Odd, that.
Spent the last two days doing my very best Professor Umbridge, Hogwarts High Inquisitor impression, visiting places with a clipboard and trying to look like I had the slightest idea what I was doing. I don't think anyone bought it.
Street Level Youth Media, one of the sites I spent time at, deserves much more of a write-up than I'm capable of doing at the moment. From the 1998 Coming Up Taller Awards page:
At Street-Level Youth Media, professional artists familiarize young people with new media technologies and the art making process, stressing teamwork, creativity, self-esteem and critical thinking. Street-Level is breaking down barriers between young people, their neighborhoods and the outside world, giving youth a forum to express their views on topics such as education, violence, families, racism and history.
That was Wednesday. I spent most of yesterday at Cabrini Green.
No, I wasn't worried. Why should I have been? I had a clipboard, remember?
As for the title, last weekend Tiny Insects Swarm[ed] Chicago:
University of Illinois entomologist Phil Nixon said this year's cool spring and recent summer rains could be to blame for the infestation. Normally the gnats are thickest in late April and May, when eggs laid in decaying vegetation warm up and hatch in a moist environment. "They should have been coming out a month and a half ago," Nixon said. Philip Parrillo, collection manager for the Field Museum's insect division, said he started getting calls about gnats on the lakefront late in the week. He said the magnitude is unusual, especially for midsummer."There's a tremendous flush of them this season," he said.
That last line is a slight understatement. We're talking Biblical levels here. Like looking at the world through rippling, light green gauze.
I blame Bush.
Cabrini Green? Oddly enough I know what you're talking about. It amuses me when that happens. Don't mind me I'm just a tourist....
Who gave you a clipboard?
Very good point Jason, very good point.
Well, if Bush is indeed the Antichrist, the biblical plagues would make a certain amount of sense.
Whi *did* give you a clipborad, dearie?
I can just see you over there in the Bricks with your armor of Holy Clipboard, fighting the gnats... as animated by Nick Park.
Jason (and company), I'll have you know I was an authorized representative of the Illinois State Board of Education.
Ok, I was temping through Manpower.
This did not diminish my authority in the slightest. See?
(tap tap)
Clipboard.
Hanne, great, now I have that image stuck in my head. Except my ears don't stick out that much. I think. Hard to tell under the dreads at this point.
The gnats are nappy this year. i made the mistake of leaving Chinatown at dusk last week, passed the river and thought I had stumbled in a wicked, swirling swarm of something that didn't bite but just annoyed the crap out of me.
i carried a clipboard with me to a meeting so that i would look prepared [i wasn't], like i had something to say [i didn't], and like i've been working hard [i haven't] and like i'm organized [i'm not].
you should see my meeting doodles. i think i will upload a whole bunch of meeting doodles.
i hope you don't have to go to meetings, aaron. imagining you in a meeting is like imagining a siberian tiger being declawed.
No, radar, you have to think of the matter as recon and intel for the coming revolution. He's no declawed tiger. Rather, he's keeping his friends close and his enemies closer. We will know all about their potential clipboard capabilities well before we flay them with our rhetoric nd heap the corpses of thier hideous hierarchy in the streets. . .
Uh, sorry. Delusions of left-wing grandeur. It gets away from me sometimes.
Grandeur, schmandeur.
I say "So mote it be."
London, I'm just thankful it only lasted a day or so. Whereabouts in the city do you live?
r@d@r, I'm perfectly capable of behaving in a civilized manner at meetings. As long as no one asks me for my opinion.
Garrity, Hanne, I'd worry that you're revealing too much of the ultra-secret conspiracy's secrets, but then I remember that progressives can't even agree on lunch, let alone a conspiracy. . .