I guess leaving him alone and minding our own business is not an option

the text:
India

Here is a man of India.
He is praying to his god.
His god cannot help him.
This man must know about Jesus.
Can you think of some ways to help him?

(from a christian coloring book)

Beuy's hare and the seven boxes

Joseph Beuys had a performance piece I've always considered a favorite: "How To Explain Pictures To A Dead Hare". In it, Beuys, his head covered in gold leaf, cradled a dead hare in his arms and whispered to it (presumably about art) for three hours. It's striking as a piece of both great beauty and great futility. I thought about that poor leoprid as I cradled the last of my boxes of pictures in my arms while organizing the garage studio over this past weekend.

How, I thought, would I explain my picture collection to either a dead hare or living sane person? Here goes nothing: I've been gathering pictures to use in my art since middle school, sifting through tons of old printed matter for photographs, illustrations, clip art, and interesting typography. The collection started slowly, but got an early boost when I found a huge stack of 1930's magazines in the attic of one of my father's rental houses. It really exploded, though, during the time I was head nighttime buyer at the flagship Half Price Books store in Dallas.

I've always maintained that people are delusional, and my years of buying books proved it (Elle had similar proof driven home to her during the years she bought records from the general public). Someone was always trying to sell us stuff which was in no condition to be re-sold. Normally, my co-workers would just absent-mindedly recycle the paper, but I could never bring myself to condemn an old book to pulp before flipping through it for salvageable pictures. After so many years of this, I found myself sharing living space with seven full boxes, each containing from 4000-5000 hysterical/historical images.

The sources have been all kinds of printed matter from the period of about 1900 to 1960 - magazines, textbooks, catalogs, encyclopedia; medical, technical and scientific books; along with illustrated paper ephemera of all types. It was a time when illustrators could actually draw and photographers really had an eye - and all of it carefully graphic-designed to convey knowledge which is now obsolete, discredited, or politically incorrect - as dead as Beuy's hare.

I recall that Elle asked how many of these images I had, while we were preparing to make good our escape to Austin. After some ciphering, I said, "about 30,000". Last week, however, alone in the garage with those heavy boxes, it seemed like much more, as it has every time we moved them to a new house. I silently asked that lifeless yet art-appreciating bunny for his estimate, and could swear I heard him reply very faintly, but with a certainty which could only come from one who's seen the other side: "More than you'll live to use."

What's on for autumn

So if I list the projects, my twisted thinking goes, I'll be more apt to stay rapt and see them wrapped. Here, then, is what's on for autumn:

1. The Hallowe'en card. I'm now finalizing the choice of images. This one must have all the Photoshop and InDesign work done in time to have it printed and mailed by 12 October.

2. Elle and I are going to spend about a week's worth of evenings finishing up the redesign of her Yardbirds site. The URL will change to one I reserved for her a year ago: yardbirdsphotos.com

3. The podcast. Details withheld for now, but the code phrase is "Thrifty Listening".

4. Hiring my assistant. We've winnowed the resumes from 147 down to 50, then to 14. I need to get it down to the 5 we'll interview.

5. Finishing the garage studio.

6. And as always, there are plenty of things to read - mostly software and coding stuff this time: The iLife suite, the Adobe CS3 suite, Dreamweaver, SQL/PHP, the CSS Missing Manual, and the one I'm most excited about now: Logic Studio.

on the hi-fi: The Finders, The Razzles
on the reading table: See #6.

2 September

Good news this time, no kidding and (almost) no cynicism. The new fiscal year begins at UT on 2 September, and my promotion kicks in - a new job at a new pay grade. Which means basically I'm doing my old job, but they're calling it something different and throwing more money at me to do it. I lobbied for the title "Webbastard", but since there's no such title on the reclassification list, I'll probably settle for something more serious. I'll also be hiring an assistant to take over some parts of my current job, so I can concentrate on the web UI full time.

on the hi-fi: Stronger Than Dirt, the special Power Pop edition.
on the reading table: Tutorials on Apple's Logic Studio.