Re-Thinking the Newspaper

Hello Little Printer, available 2012 from BERG on Vimeo.

The Done Manifesto

I found this infographic on FastCompany.com:

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

15 Songs to have on your Michael Jackson playlist

These are other options to “Thriller” and “Beat it” that you should most definitely have in your Michael Jackson collection. If nothing else, maybe you will enjoy this annotated playlist suggestion…

1. “ "Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”

- This music video is so ridiculous and this song is so “blast from the past” you cannot help but bust a groove or two.

2. “ "Rock With You”

- Who doesn’t enjoy M.Jackson whispering “gurrl” and saying he wants to rock with you…

3. “ "Billie Jean”

- One word that sounds like two: Moonwalk. Plus, killer bass line.

4. “ "Bad”

- He wears all leather in this music video, singing about stopping the violence and how he is baaaaad. Basically, its hot.

5. “ "Smooth Criminal”

- If for no other reason, listen to this to redeem the embarrassment of Alien Ant Farm’s version. Also, he says “dad gone it” or “doggone it”!

6. “ "The Way You Make Me Feel”

- This song will stay in your head all day, and it will make you feel light on your toes.

7. “ "Man in the Mirror”

- Snapping, talking about change…its all really catchy.

8. “ "Dirty Diana”

- This song is sex, with a lowercase “s”.

9. “ "You Rock My World”

- This song is Sex, with an uppercase “S”. Plus, Michael does it better than J.Timbo.

10. “Dangerous”

- MTV awards performance – ‘nuff said.

11. “Leave Me Alone”

- So many “oo-oo”s and “eee-ee”s.

12. “In the closet”

- Just watch the music video…

13. “Will You Be There”

- Inspire your soul. Plus, only MJ can grab his crouch and sing a hymn.

14. “They Don’t Care About Us”

- It’s true..they don’t care about us…and now there is a song about it – peeeerrfect. MJ wears jeans in this video- weird. Awesome drumline

15. “Scream”

- Michael has had enough and instead of “oo-oo”ing and “eee-eee”ing he wants to scream. Basically the only song he has with a curse word, quick go find it!

Water shortage

I love meat. I am a vegetarians worst nightmare by far. In a perfect world, I would frequent Houston's for a filet mignon or french dip sandwich. Or at least in a world where I do not attend college and live off pasta.

However, I am going to rethink my dietary choices after reading a recent article in The Economist.

Us Americans and the Europeans do everything but help the apparently growing water "crisis". It takes about 15,000 liters of water to produce A KILO of beef. Americans and Europeans require 5,000 liters/day. Put this in comparison to Africa and Asia's 2,000 litres/day..although I'm not positive that is entirely their choice.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of CA issued a state of emergency over the water shortage.

I found it funny in a twisted, not very funny at all way. A state of emergency for what? A state of emergency because we might not get the abundance of meat that our democratic free country demands? A state of emergency because we might not get to take that long shower or bath? WHAT exactly is the STATE of our EMERGENCY?

I would say the real emergency is that there are countries with the majority of their population malnourished..not from not having enough meat but from not having any bread. That there still exists homes without running water, people without the luxury of thoughtlessly wasting it.

TO ME, that is a STATE of emergency. An emergency to exist.

Survival Journal 2, Volume two, issue two

Things started to look up last night as cleaning products were introduced to the Queen and what was thought to be used to clean the filth she consistently produces. Nein.

Purely selfish reasons. She believes in false hope only to shatter, crunch, and stomp all over them. The bathroom was flooded once more by her lack of understanding of the invention of the towel. Never has cloth and paper products been more of a necessity in my life until now.

But quick! Stop thinking about having to put on your rain boots to take on the swamp to use the bathroom...the cake is burning. Her cake. The Queen's cake. Time is not a concept anymore and if it's not death by candle it will most certainly be death by food. BURNING FOOD THAT IS CHOCOLATE CAKE NOT BROWNIES. Silly little queen.

The next day...

I ever so carefully but swiftly clamored down the 2 inch wide "ladder" of my bunk bed as my senses stirred panicked at the sounds of dishes clinging, pots clashing. The Queen is home and Cinderella has been asleep.

The door is torn open, quickly holding on by the hinges as not to be ripped off the frame so unexpectedly. And there it was....not just a plate of brownies..but a plate of chocolate cake that the Queen mistook as convertible brownies. Her cake on my plate. My property defiled by her forgetfulness.

She can have her cake and eat it too just not on my plate.

Survival Journal, Volume two

It has been two weeks. Escape was found on 40th street for approximately 5 days, leaving pilgrims behind in savaged quarters.

I returned to worsened living conditions. Its dark and I am forced to live by candles. Hair has crawled out of the drain and now sits perched on the tiles of the shower. Dirty socks stake camp at the base of the toilet. A white towel serves as a rug, taking fingerprints of the dirt that collects.

The Queen of Siberia has draped our furniture in wax. Green wax. Now it is hard to recognize the brown of the desert from the seemingly green of the jungle.

The flicker of flame reminds us that fire is only a candlestick away but we can already feel the warmth of its destruction. When her eyes shut, our soul finds peace but now even the absence of her iris’ cause risk. Our sanity is at stake.

Survival Journal, Volume one

February 25, 2009
11:23pm

It's been two weeks, living conditions are rough. Mice with bones so little they can fit in the tiniest crack beneath our bedroom door. On the other side of that bedroom door live bed bugs. The scariest vermin known to sleepers...everywhere. Bites along my leg, I don't know when or how...just who.

It's so hot these days, grains of sand seeping up through the carpet while the dial on the heater is broken...it won't turn off high. The queen is the happiest she has been, since the big move to what is now...Saudia Arabia.

While there is a drought in the living room and sleeping quarters, the bathroom remains flooded at least three times a day. Toilet paper is constantly running low, forcing us to use paper towels that clog the new york sewer system. Water is going to have to be rationed soon..as well as toilet paper. Too many showers, yet I havent showered in weeks.

We ran out of mozzarella today. Asparagus in its rawest form. Thankfully, we have enough half-eaten apples to last us a while.

Space is low, books now take up residence in our bath tub, as well as using the Oxford Annotated Bible as both toilet paper and for cockroach squashing. Black seeps from its edges as it kills one more of the creepy crawlers that is the cockroach colony.

Mold is growing back. We thought we conquered it months ago. The paint is cracking and it is back with vengeance. Time spent in a closed shoebox bathroom is also being rationed due to toxic chemicals growing on the ceiling above us.

A week ago we ran out of room for the little food we have. Boxes of pasta and loaves of bread fall from the shelf...not that we could have eaten it anyways because the heat destroys all that is edible.

Victory though will prevail. It has to.