where art collides philosoperontap

16h18-18h15, 15-March-2013

A thousand words on multi-tasking…OK, go!

I don’t remember when the first time was that I heard the term “multi-tasking”, but I can say that for me it required not a lick of explanation. And yet…what is multi-tasking? What? Doing more than one thing at a time? Big whip! Of course, time is relative (No shit, Sherlock…er, Einstein), and whether it is even possible to do more than one thing at at time really depends on how “time” is defined in context. For instance, at this exact moment I am typing, but less than a minute ago I was checking both Facebook and my Twitter feed and my email, and before that I was looking in on my torrent downloads (kinda hot to test-drive some disk utility software today after having read Joe Kissell’s Macworld article Do you need a third-party disk utility?), all immediately following a round of click-click-clicking to establish my place on the free wifi network at my Black Market Café perch. Is this multi-tasking? The answer is both “Yes!” (if “time” is defined in increments of 5 minutes) and “No.” (regardless of one’s level of keyboard prowess, even at the proverbial speed of light it is simply impossible to simultaneously perform any of the tasks I just described).

OK, science geek. Get over yourself, bag the theoretical and pedantic, and move on.

Juggling is often used to as a metaphor for multi-tasking. However, still I consider myself to be the one of the original multi-taskers, despite my absolute inability to keep more than one ball in the air at a time. And although I cannot play the piano with more than one finger (and slowly with that finger, at that), I can play a keyboard like nobody’s business, all ten fingers working in tandem to accomplish individual tasks towards a common goal. So can touch-typing be considered a form of multi-tasking? No, that’s just silly. Are you really so desperate to get down a thousand words on multi-tasking, Kory? Come on.

One of the sharpest insults heard during my teenage years was the labeling of a person as someone who couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. The line is decades-stale today and is seldom used, but that doesn’t mean I don’t continue to hear it in my unspoken thoughts…except these days I tends to ascribe it to uncooperative computer operating systems…Hello, OSX! Yes, Windows, I’m talkin’ ’bout you!

It used to exasperate my Mom when in high school I would do my homework while watching Late Night with David Letterman and talking to friends on the phone. And as glad as she no doubt was that my grades didn’t suffer, I think it irritated her greatly that said formula worked so well for me. Poor Mom. What was she going to say? “Just imagine how much better your A in English would be if you concentrated harder on your work!” Later, when I struggled during the first semester of my Freshman year at Yeshiva University, Mom saw her moment. Harping at me (lovingly, of course) that college was so much more difficult than high school and that it was time to bear down and concentrate on my studies, she was quite gratified when my grades rebounded in second semester. It has been nearly thirty years since then, but I am reasonably certain I gritted my teeth in a smile and swallowed the response I no doubt ached to offer, that being that my letters were back up due to my having recovered (somewhat) from the first semester breakup with my first love (we’ve all got ’em) and had as a result returned to watching David Letterman while studying (and whatever rerun whatnot WNBC ran after that).

One man’s concentration is another man’s desolated desert of distraction. Oh, somebody please poison me slowly for not editing that sentence out!

Hopped away for a moment to check Facebook and Twitter, track my Raspberry Pi order (how cool it would’ve been if the darn thing — which I ordered back on 12-February — had shown up yesterday!), send a couple of iMessages to My Missus, grab a glass of water (writing is thirsty work!), gab with Yusef about his terrific decision to fire up some sweet Chet Baker, and to wag a finger at The Boy for doing face stuff (imagine things 11-year-olds do unconsciously that involve fingers, fingernails, noses, mouths and you’ll have enough information to go on). A multi-tasking fiend, am I.

I want to write here that following university my work habits matured and that I no longer required distractions to achieve my best work, but that would be akin to saying that I no longer enjoy comic books or dig good sci-fi or organize my music collection. No, not only do I still need to have a glorious mess of various-and-sundry going on that has nothing to do with work to have any hope of doing my work and doing it well (e.g., a documentary running on the screen to my left, social media humming away, some kinda music running underneath, an article open on Pocket, 25+ Chrome tabs open…), but I remain a world-class procrastinator. Rough estimate? To get in my 8-10 daily work hours I only need 12-14 hours in front of AppleKory, with sleep paying the multi-tasking freight.

Just resolved to drop “multi-tasking” from my vocabulary and to replace it with “multi-tracking”. This new term — during this introductory period please feel free to use it at no cost — benefits from the shedding of the connotation of simultaneousness that the now-replaced term shouldered for so long (and badly), and it also sounds way cool. Bit of a feeling of movement and kinda music-y at the same time. Got a “one-track mind”? No multi-tracking for you! Got an eight-track mind? Wake up and smell the digital.

00h32-02h21, 15-March-2013

I just spent nearly 4 minutes trying to come up with a clever opening line, something that would poke great fun at my neglecting to fill this space yesterday. First I tried a clever take on Genesis 2:2, and when that didn’t work I made a stab at paraswiping a lyric from Hot for Teacher but it really sucked, so…

I clued into “The Walking Dead” somewhat late but caught up quick, blowing through issues 1-72 over the course of a little less than a month in late 2010. What with the the much-ballyhooed (and really really thick) The Walking Dead: Compendium One making a bunch of 2009 “Best Of” graphic novel lists and the building hype over the imminent launch of the TV series, I could hardly avoid it any longer. And I wasn’t the least bit disappointed. Well-told and beautifully rendered comics are my red meat even when they don’t touch upon or hint at the End of Days, but throw eschatology into the mix you can be sure that Dark Kory will come out to play…and to feed. I love so much about the story that writer Robert Kirkman started telling nearly ten years ago, marveling both at the myriad of rich characters with whom he has populated his post-Apocalypse American South and at his ability to employ these characters in portraying the best/worst/what-the-fuck of humanity. And it continues. Thank the devil in hell, it continues. This in spite of the epically awful Bizarro World television version of it depicted on AMC’s “The Walking Dead” (on which Kirkman serves as a Producer), which recently I was horrified to learn is currently the highest-rated scripted show among viewers 18 to 49 (horrified, but not surprised, as the lowest common denominator has long had an insatiable appetite for blood-and-guts and various viscera).

Over 100 issues into “The Walking Dead” the reason behind the Zombie takeover has not been revealed, may never be revealed, and it doesn’t need to be revealed because that isn’t the crux of the story. In the 6th episode of the 1st season of the TV program our heroes are told by a scientist at the Center for Disease Control that Zombie-ism is the result of a virus and a possible cure is hinted at, produced by the French! Over 100 issues into “The Walking Dead” and still we do not know the extent of the new Zombie reality and an undefined but very real — and wonderfully tortuous — hope for redemption remains. Three episodes from the end of the 3rd season of the TV program and already it is dead-bang established that all hope is gone, that those who continue to survive have only war and strife and the constant pursuit and fight for food, shelter, and safety to look forward to until a relentlessly inevitable extinction that only makes the stories told seem like so much wasted effort. No future equals no reason equals no interest.

So I just slammed “The Walking Dead”, the most popular scripted television program currently in production in the English-speaking world, and a show that offends my sensibilities on many levels (artistically, culturally, integrity-wise…). But, of course, I watch “The Walking Dead”, and I’ll continue to watch it. In fact, I am watching it now, this past Sunday’s episode, a gorgeous high-definition .avi file. Dark Kory must eat.

21h28-23h13, 12-March-2013

Previously…on ‘Dallas’.

Between the time I left for Yeshiva University in October ’83 and July ’86 my folks moved once again, this time into a split-level house…a house that came complete with a designated For-When-Kory-is-Home room that was situated squarely at the top of a flight of stairs leading up from the den (which is really just an extremely wordy way of saying “above ground-level” or “2nd floor”). And though most nights my head was not hitting a pillow in this house, during the breaks and holidays that did require I lay me down to sleep at 10431 Shadow Bend Drive in Dallas, TX USA you can reasonably drop coin I was performing my security haunting…that is, until 21-July-1986.

The summer of 1986 began for me in New York, couch-surfing first with a friend in Washington Heights and later with another friend in Brooklyn, while working to hold down a sales job with a lower Manhattan Your-Office-Out-of-the-Office company located somewhere in the shadow of the World Trade Center. That didn’t last long — how could it? — and by mid-July I was back in Dallas, camped out on the 2nd floor of my parents’ house and splitting my time between two part-time jobs, one slinging frozen yogurt in a strip mall and the other ringing up puppies and tropical fish for an awful Valley View Mall pet store.

On that Monday afternoon a wicked height-of-summer storm rocked Dallas, with dark clouds rolling over the city with scary-movie lightning and too-loud thunder cracks along for the ride. I was putting in some hours at the pet store that day, probably spending 90-95% of my time looking out at the pelting rain and doing anything other than useful work (HATED that job, though I did make a friend-for-life out of it in the form of a marvelous cat I lifted from the shop and promptly named “Larceny”). Anyway, a raging thunderstorm at 5PM had become a bright and sunny summer’s evening by 6PM when my shift ended and I took to my car for the 10-minute drive home. At last, the day was mine, and I jacked the stereo volume and had just began mulling over potential nighttime plans when I found myself caught in epic traffic on Hillcrest Road heading south. “Fuck this.”, I said (or, at least, thought), as I took a left, knowing the area so well as to be able to easily skirt the traffic and make it home via neighborhood streets. And soon enough, I was moving smoothly down Boedeker Street and making a right onto Pagewood Drive, singing along to something LOUD and tapping the steering wheel (Talking Heads? Maybe Van Halen?). A minute later, still rockin’, I made a right onto Shadow Bend Drive, and there in front of me was the cause of that horrendous traffic jam I had so ably avoided: my parents’ house ablaze, firefighters in front of around and atop, with every available neighbor looking on. I parked Erin (my first car…faithful readers of this space for the past two weeks already know that) and got out. I then sat on the hood — having taken quick stock of my Mom and Dad and the family dog, Miko, in the crowd — and took in the spectacle, laughing, aglow with the joy of neurosis in resolve.

22h55-23h59, 11-March-2013

There must be no less than twelve things I would rather be doing right now than sitting down to write. Should I list them? Huh? Should I?

I have spent a lot of time driving down Iceland’s Route 1 lately, and like any good highway it has the power in its more mundane straighaways to trigger unexpected thoughts and recollections. For instance, today just after shooting past some outlet glacier tongue of Vatnajökull whose name I have no prayer of ever remembering I found myself dwelling on the latter half of the summer of 1986, when circumstance (and a lightning bolt) finally put ‘Paid’ to a long-held (self-diagnosed) neurosis of mine.

My obsessive fear of house fires began in 1971, immediately after being shown a Walt Disney/Donald Duck cartoon on fire prevention in the 1st Grade during a school assembly (along with at least one other short film on the subject, one that did NOT involve familiar animated characters and was thus a whole heckuva lot scarier). I vividly recall going home that day and immediately checking our basement for oily rags that could spontaneously combust. Also, that night — and countless other nights over the ensuing 15 years — found me lying awake waiting for my parents to turn out their light so I could sneak out of bed to make sure (1) the stove was turned off, (2) that there were no live cigarette embers in the ashtrays strewn throughout the house, and (3) that neither Mom nor Dad had fallen asleep in bed with a lit cigarette between their fingers. The fact is, all thanks for my being the quintessential “night owl” today should probably be set at the webbed feet of Donald, Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

Time passes. We move from a house in Hoffman Estates, IL USA (3rd story room, a 30-foot drop) to a house in Richardson, TX USA (2nd story room, window egress to a sea of concrete) to a house in Plano, TX USA (a ground-level room, and a breath exhalation held for nearly six years). I continue to make my tiptoe rounds each night, though, having added fireplace cinder waiting-out and door lock confirmation to my routine (the latter likely tied to Dad’s having made a career shift into the sale of home security systems).

More time. More moves (a subject for other days)…and more ground floor bedrooms. All good. College begins, and full-time residency with the parents comes to an end without my perishing in a blaze brought to ferocious life by a shoddy-wiring-and-insullation cocktail or the superheated creosote of a poorly-cleaned chimney. And of course I am aware that university dormitories come complete with up-to-code fire escape routes and evacuation plans.

And that’s all we have time for today, folks. Do tune in tomorrow, though, for the conclusion of this episode of…”Route 1 Reminiscing”!