Virtual Fridge - cont'd

Okay, so this is what I do for a living:



It started out as a demonstration on how to draw a pig for a girl on my left. The boy on my right was drawing a butterfly and somehow, the butterfly wings ended up on the pig. Then we added a tube top, clown hair, and alient antennae. Yup, I get paid for this.

This is what I get trained to do:




I really struggled with the colors on this one. The Gluck Method narrows their palettes down to two to simplify things when we teach - an "American" palette and a "European" palette, which is what this one was. Took about six hours to do altogether, from sketch to finish. Need to get faster and more confident about how to create the colors. But I love the colors and I'm happy with how it turned out.

Every day, I am grateful for this job because I would have never known I was capable of this. I've always wanted to draw and paint and it's so incredible to be getting paid to learn how to do this and to get to make clown pig butterfly aliens every day!

Don't hedge me out.

So what is it with men with girlfriends? Why don’t they want to tell you?

Cute Boy, who I still have a huge crush on, never admitted to having a girlfriend when we were having our most intense flirts. I found out through a friend of his. He didn’t admit it until I finally had to ask, and then he admitted he was flying across the country to see her. “Yeah, I guess it’s serious,” was his response when I asked him about it (her).

New Guy just did the same thing tonight. Have met a few times through a variety of things. Nice connection, nice flirting, nice guy. Three times we’ve had plenty of time to talk about many things. None of those times did the word “girlfriend” come from him. Tonight, after walking me to my car and spending a good half hour talking to me, he asked if I was going to see the show at the theater this weekend. I said, sure. He said, what night? There was a definite feeling of wanting to meet me there. I was just about to invite him to join me earlier for coffee or something – perfect opening to get some time with him to see if there’s anything there – and we got joking about how our cell phones have made us kind of stupid because we don’t know anybody’s numbers anymore because they’re in the phone and he said, “Yeah, like I don’t even know my girlfriend’s number…” Long, awkward pause. I almost kicked him in the shins and screamed, “Then explain all this flirting you’ve been doing, you ass.”

Are you guys just hedging your bets so that if things don’t work with the chick you’re with, you have one on deck? I am just the fall-back if your girl don’t do it for you anymore?

I have one thing to say – stop flirting with us! If you’re not going to date us, don’t give us the cute boy face and the flirty eyes. We think you’re flirting. We think you want us. We get all giddy at the thought that you find us attractive and maybe you want to be with us. Then you drop the “girlfriend” bomb and are surprised when we run screaming from the room.

Is it me? Am I so safe that you all think you can flirt with me and not think I’m going to get all gooshy inside? I hate to tell you but I’m not. I get gooshy, probably way too soon.

But mention the girlfriend immediately. Save us the days and nights of wondering about you and picturing you picking us up and taking us somewhere wondrous and beautiful and save us from naming our children and picking out the house. C’mon, you know you do that. It’s not just me.

If you have a girlfriend, save the flirting for her. Don’t waste it on me. I don’t have the time for this. Be nice, be friendly, flirt with me AFTER you tell me about your girlfriend so I can know that the flirting will be just friendly with nothing at stake and no hopes to be dashed.

And girlfriends, know that your boyfriends are out there flirting with us. Maybe they mean nothing by it – after all, men are a bit dense about the signals they’re sending. Maybe find a nice, polite way to inform them that harmless flirting doesn’t exist, especially when they don’t mention you to us. Explain to them that informing a cute girl about your girlfriend will make the flirting harmless. Otherwise, they deserve everything they get.

Men. Fuck.

Technological dysphoria

I am a technomancer (I hear Monica giggling off on the Westside). I love technology. I have an Iphone, a Macbook, various IPods, just about anything Apple makes, I have. I covet big screen TV’s and I have been known to salivate and envy anyone’s technology that is better than mine.

Technology has made it easier to communicate en masse to our friends and family about good news and bad news. It makes it easier to keep in touch with folks far away and makes it easier to stalk those we love who may not necessarily love us back.

Technology has made it possible to make a film in 48 hours. Or 24 hours. From writing through filming and editing. I know this as I have done it now almost a half dozen times.

Technology allows me to post this silly little missive into cyberspace and have tens of people read it at their leisure, including people that I will probably never meet who live on the other side of the country.

This makes technology amazing.

However, this ability to communicate quickly and efficiently has taken the human factor out of our communication. We now text message instead of call. That’s great for “I’m running late” or “are you busy tonight” kind of communications. We email our concerns and worries or post them in our blogs or comment on someone’s Myspace page when they post news. We seem to have forgotten how to pick up a phone and call. Or sit down and have coffee.

Technology creates the feeling that we are all communicating so much and so regularly, which we are. We’re communicating, we’re not connecting. We’re sending messages but we’re not relating on a human level. No amount of Myspace messages or emails or text messages can make up for a single phone call. You can’t riff off onto other subjects with text messages. You kind of can by email but it’s time consuming to type all that shit.

Maybe it’s the lingering part of me that is old-fashioned but I feel more and more disconnected by this advanced technological communication. When something goes well or goes wrong, I do the technological thing and post it on one of the social networking things I belong to or the Yahoo board for the Career Success Group and I get responses. But I have to admit, sometimes those responses leave me feeling even more disconnected because they’re letters on a page. While their intent is clear and their owner’s desire to communicate is appreciated, I think I still prefer more personal contact – a phone call, a coffee date, something.

We are creating a world where we all can communicate instantaneously and constantly, which we do. I’ve seen more groups of people standing around, all talking on their phones or texting away while the others in the group wait for them to finish. I know I’m guilty of texting or checking my email while I’m hanging out with someone. It used to be a social faux pas but now it’s acceptable. We communicate constantly through our IPhones and our Blackberries and our Sidekicks but I think that is making us less human as communicators. No wonder our children are growing up disconnected and cold. They’re learning how to communicate from us. And if all they see are grown-ups on cell phones and emails and computers, that’s what they learn. If we allow ourselves to only communicate through devices, that’s what our children will learn. If we don’t find a way to stem the contagion of children communicating only through their text messages, we are creating a cold and disassociated society, which is not a society I want to live in.

So I will do my part and try to communicate more through phone calls and coffee invites with my friends. I will reach out more personally instead of through texting and emails. And I hope that you all will do the same. Know that your text doesn’t have the same impact that a phone call does. Know that your email is taken in the way it is meant but that those techie communications can feel cold and disconnected, especially at times when a connection is really needed.

Let’s just try once a day to call someone who needs support, encouragement, a pat on the back, something, instead of just dropping an email or a text saying “way to go,” “don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” Let them know you’re still a person on the other end of the technology, not just a keyboard and a wifi connection.