Last night I attended a meeting over at 2400 3rd Ave. home of the Free Sheep Foundation.  It was a good sized, slightly run down, single story, Belltown corner lot.  A number of installations were set up in what I presume to be a former store front.  Within the main entrance, the walls were cover with scribblings, writing and sketches directly on the plaster.  Among them, some words of encouragement caught my eye.  "Stop sucking, and get awesome now, bitches!!!" it read.  Other rooms contained numerous framed pieces, most of a contemporary urban flavor.  In the back was a large empty room with a dark stage resting in the corner surrounded by red lights.  D.K. and four others are temporarily living in the space, producing artifact inspired by a structure waiting to be renovated.  The vision of Free Sheep Foundation is to be a steward of dormant resources.  In particular, they are trying to secure unused real-estate for artists. 

Check out a related article with a more in-depth mission statement:
More Time-Based Goodness: Free Sheep Foundation  

Mate Steinforth was recently featured on the Advanced Beauty website.  These are experiments that integrate sound and computer animation.  The result is an experience that targets both the visual and the auditory channels in a mutually complementary manner. 

Click on the photo below to launch the website and the video.  Just so you know, it takes a little while to load.

I have been doing a lot of thinking the past year about reality versus dreams. Here’s the problem, the best I can deduce it: if a person just submits to the harsh facts of reality, she does not try to re-create that reality. And yet, if she is always looking at her dreams, she is naïve. When I consider the reality of what I want to accomplish with my writing career, it is rather a dismal picture. Writers need platform and influence these days; publishers want important names. At this point in my 27 years, I have neither. I just have a passionate heart and a devotion to the craft. I also have gumption, says my friend Letha.

When I was 14, I remember my best friend Debbie and I deciding we wanted to live on Lopez Island for part of our summer break. We had fallen in love with this little gem of an island just off the coast of Washington. It is small and quaint and the friendliest island in the San Juans. After having taken a short weekend camping trip there with my mother, we were smitten with its charm: Everyone who passes you on the road waves, even if they just lift two fingers off the steering wheel. I noticed a cat bite actually made the news in the crime section of the Lopez newspaper. The dandelions that line the island roads have the look of dainty wildflowers. The island “dump” has all the hand me down books, furniture, clothes, and old appliances stacked and ordered and available to anyone in need. The bakery is the gathering place in the tiny village and home to the most amazing, fresh baked goods you will find.

After my first trip to Lopez one summer, I was determined to return and stay longer. So as 8th graders, Debbie and I went downtown to the Spokane library and asked the lady at the reference desk for the phone book to the San Juan Islands, which is a book the thickness of my thumb. We proceeded to look up the names of all the businesses on Lopez (I think there were 40) and sent letters in the mail offering our services in exchange for room and board. We eventually heard back from the lady who owns the Lopez Bakery. She did not want us to work; she wanted us to come and play and delight in the island. Which is exactly what we did. The summer before I started high school, my mother drove Debbie and I the 7 hours across the state and then we all took a ferry to the island. After meeting Holly B. (our hostess), my mom confirmed we had indeed found a kindred spirit. My mom left the next day, feeling good about my adventures.

Debbie and I had our own little cabin on Holly’s property. We dug potatoes in the garden, enjoyed her outdoor solar powered shower, ate strawberry scones and cinnamon rolls, rode bikes around the island, made friends with her 3 sons, and learned the pace of island life. It was a dream–the re-creation of reality. We infused reality with our desires and were able to live what we had imagined. And yet, we needed others to help us create it. We needed our mothers to believe in our adventures and we needed Holly’s exuberant hospitality to two strange girls.

I have been thinking that any one person’s dream requires many midwives. I am happy to carry my writing dream, nurture it, and let it gestate. I am grateful for the many people in my life who have offered love and grace to my journey– who have, if even for moments– been midwives to the life inside of me. But I am aware that reality is very stubborn. So, today, I find myself telling reality that I am more patient, more creative, and more persistent than it. I want to discover many “Lopez Islands” in my life– those places where reality gets to participate in my dreams.

Image by d r a k e via Flickr

The website actually does seem to be loading faster today.  Perhaps DVH really did make some improvements.  Nevertheless, it's still worth keeping an eye out for downtime and long loading periods.  Thanks to all those who are updating on problems they're having with accessing the site.  Keep 'em coming!

In other news, check out the movie Battle Royale.  On second thought, I'll tell you about it and you decide if you want to subject yourself to such captivating insanity.  First be warned, it's chocked full of child on child violence and awesome Japanese hair dos.  The premise is the youth of Japan are getting fed up with compulsory education and overcrowded schools so they decide to boycott.  To regain control and thin out the adolescent population, the government institutes a "game" where classes are drugged and taken to an evacuated island.  They are each provided with a random weapon and set loose to fight to the death in order to determine the one who will be allowed to return home.

The story is reminiscent of William Golding's Lord of the Flies and Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game.  Survival is a powerful force that has a unique way of latching on to each person and altering or exaggerating their personalities.  Add to the mix teenage politics and drama, with all of the cliques, outcasts, questioned loyalties, romances and grudges, and you end up with quite an intricate narrative.  Such an admittedly absurd story would have an abundance of opportunities for failure, however Battle Royale gracefully, albeit graphically, unravels without letting slip my suspension of disbelief.  And thought I'm not one to glorify violence, the film is well done and worthy of attention.

I received the following email from Drupal Value Hosting:

Dear Nick,

Hope you are liking the service improvements during the Customer Service Week (July 27 - Aug 2).

This is to inform you that we are going to run server maintainence and specific account rearrangements in the next 24 hours, to ensure an end of all those "500 error" message and intermittent slowness you must be seeing lately. Please expect some minor downtime (we will try and keep it below 30 minutes). The emails will keep on working during that period. We are sure that you will be pleasantly surprised by the speed of your websites after this exercise.

We will continue working hard and ensure that we uphold the trust that you put in us

Actually, I don't feel like it holds much weight.  So if I'm still experiencing downtime tomorrow, then I'll be moving the site elsewhere.  I've been researching and I think I've found a few good hosts.

In other news, I've finally broken down and decided that it would be worth while to learn PHP.  This will be useful in customizing a lot the the site's functionality and display.  This will be quite an undertaking.

Image via Wikipedia

Holy moly!  There has been some drama going down over at Drupal Value Hosting, the web hosting service I'm using.  Apparently they had some sort of security breach and quite a few sites on their server were hacked.  As far as I can tell, Wax Artistic remains intact.  Never the less, there has been lots of downtime over the last couple days.  So my apologies to those who were not able to reach Wax Artistic.  Even though I have rented server space for the year, it may be time to move on and cut my losses.  I've been rather dissatisfied with DVH for a while now but things are getting a little too crazy.  In a saturated market such as web hosting, there are plenty of other companies willing to bend over backwards for my business. 

Tod Seelie's photography aims to portray the gritty, quirky sides of life that conveniently slip from mainstream view. 

The pictures may not be pretty, but then again, take a look around. Not everything is. 

 -MoCo Loco

Image via Wikipedia

Oh wow, that was a close one.  I was trying to upgrade the site software (Drupal core 5.8), which involves making a backup of all the site files and then deleting everything from the server.  It's a bit nerve racking hitting that delete button.  I mean, what if...  So when I was trying to upload the new files, my FTP client (the tool used to upload) kept jamming and not being able to connect.  That's the reason the site was displaying Fatal Errors and Warnings over the last day or so.  However, I was finally able to coax the system into cooperating and got everything back online.  Hopefully the next update will go more smoothly.

Olger, a dutch artist, has designed a small, blue figure named Benjamin Baumgarten.  His latest outfit is an animal two-piece.  It's minimalist design with personality.  Adorable!

Matt Harding is a Seattleite and world traveler.  In the spirit of taking pictures of little gnome statues in front of landmarks, he videos himself dancing in exotic locations.  He then posts these goofy jigs on the internet.  Guess what, people took note and before long he gained corporate sponsorship.  But what's most impressive is the joy that oozes from these scenes.  It makes the world feel a little smaller.  You get the sense that solidarity and optimism aren't so far fetched.

The higher quality version is highly recommended.  But for the impatient, here you go: