I know now why starting a painting always scares the crap out of me. I'm aiming for something I imagine in my head, not something I'm feeling in my heart. I might rarely strike the mental target I have, but I can always honestly express myself.
That took me a long enough to figure out... it just never occurred to me that I can't be disappointed for being honest.
I've been reading about the Occupy Wall Street / San Francisco / Baltimore thing, and while the exercise of free speech is fine, why in the world would anybody think that it's okay to sit around unproductively for days and weeks on end? And worse, to have it recorded for the world to see?
When I've been unemployed, and in fact even when I was homeless, I still worked at looking for work 8 to 10 hours a day.
Have a rally for an afternoon to capture attention for your cause, but if you're complaining that you don't share in the success that others enjoy, maybe the reason is that you don't mind being unproductive for extended lengths of time.
I'm a big Peter Gabriel fan, and panned his last effort at covering other people's songs with orchestration.
Three songs into listening to his new album, New Blood, there's an obvious smear on the album.
It lacks soul.
And it does so, I think, because Peter is being directed rather than directing. Or maybe it's because he's simply played these songs over and over through the years. I don't know, but it's stark and right out there.
Take The Rhythm of the Heat, the incredibly soulful first cut from his Security album. This new version lacks passion. It sounds rushed and disjointed. And Peter doesn't have the voice he had in his younger days.
It may be that I like the first version and am simply used to that. But that gets into another issue...
Artists get into dangerous territory when they take a perfect song and mess with it much. There are some songs you just don't cover because if you can't improve upon it, whatever you do looks pale against the original.
The only person I've heard who covered their own songs with orchestration and did it brilliantly is Joni Mitchell. She managed to actually increase the feeling in the remake. But not so here. It kinda feels like Peter found a new toy and wanted to show off with it.
I'm listening to In Your Eyes, and while the lead-in to the chorus is interesting musically, the verses are drained of the life in them. Put it this way: John Cusack wouldn't have held this song above his head trying to win Ione Skye's heart.
I came to like a couple of the songs from Scratch My Back, such as The Book of Love. I'm sure that I'll find a couple that I like here, but c'mon... some of this feels like a bad Glee impersonation.
I'm not accustomed to Peter being pedestrian. It's jarring.
I mentioned recently that the Tofino trip was in some ways life-changing. While a magical place, it wasn't Tofino per se. It was more the time with Tamara and the balance that was there.
Anyone who knows me knows that I work pretty much seven days a week. The schedule fluctuates, but you're as likely to see me up working on something at 2 AM as 2 PM. It's just the way my head operates. I haven't had a normal sleep schedule for a hell of a long time. And I don't think that's a bug... I think that's a feature. I am driven and I get excited about what I'm working on.
The change, which couples with our purchase of the new house, is a word I told Tamara while we were there:
Focus.
For the past few years, I've spent a lot of time rightfully dissing Obama for peeing all over capitalism and American business and success. My goal, in my small way, was to wake people up. I get a few hundred people a day coming to my Days Alive calculator. I get emails from a few of them, so I know that they see the content. I get hits from around the web, and I think I get about 2,000 unique visitors a day. I've had a small measure of influence, coupled with my Tea Party efforts and volunteered marketing / strategy assistance.
Government should not be something we watch daily. In fact, that's why we have representatives in Washington - to represent us while we necessarily focus ourselves on our own business.
But the representatives stopped representing and we had to stop outsourcing the oversight of protecting our freedoms.
I think in the last week or two, Obama lost the 2012 election. Oh sure - plenty of things can happen between now and then. But he's toast, from my line of sight. And good riddance.
Herman Cain's surge and his unapologetic and unwavering stand for capitalism is the game winner. Yep - it's early. But just to tout my prognostication skills, I picked Romney early in the primary season of 2008 and I said - long before she was known by anyone outside of Alaska - that Sarah Palin would be his VP choice.
I was wrong about Romney, though he came close. Just as he will come close this time. But the architect of Obamacare won't win the GOP nomination.
I was, however, right about Sarah.
I worried about whether a pro-capitalism candidate would emerge. Sarah is very pro-capitalism, but isn't running. Romney and Perry are pro-corporate/business, but it's not the same as pro-capitalism. Cain is all for capitalism, advocates for it like few others do, and therefore I believe Cain will win the nomination. (Capitalism is about a free market, and freedom ultimately wins the hearts and minds of the audience.)
While I'm sure I'll write about politics on occasion, it won't be the near-monocular object of my site any longer. My fight is done - at least here. I'm gonna get back to being multi-faceted me. I'll go from BeatPoliticians.com (in effect) to beatcanvas.com.
For the record, I'm tired of watching the government. I'm tired of politicians reaching too far into our lives. I want freedom, just as any reasonable and sane person does.
I'll be helping in other ways, but beatcanvas.com can return to its more personal nature.
This is my new office, off the entrance of our home. Having a space devoted to my work is wonderful. I've already had a couple of clients come to my home for meetings, and being able to entertain them in an environment conducive to what I do makes a lot of difference.
The new house itself is about perfect. We got a ping pong table for the family area in the basement.
Tamara and I were the first to play. She, if you didn't know, is an extremely good player. I rarely see her lose to anyone. Needless to say, she beat me. It was awesome.
A bit down the street is an access road to the lake. The path is beautiful.
There is this weird notion that the Left has where anybody who had a hand in providing materials and resources to you shares in your success. After all, they reason, you couldn't have done it without the contribution of others. Nobody gets rich on their own, you see.
I've come to realize that the single pivot upon which you can determine the political stance of someone is their view of property rights. Is what you achieve, earn, and acquire in your life yours to own and manage, or is it collectively owned by the community and theirs to manage? In other words, do I have the right to reap the reward of my individual achievement, or is everything simply collective achievement?
So I'll start with the notion that I don't achieve anything without standing on the shoulders of others. That's a true statement, so - duh. My conception was not my own doing, my education was not initially my own doing, and my actions started out being what my parents and other adults dictated for me to do.
But as we get older, we're taught to become independent. To make our own choices, determine our own actions, and reap the reward or consequences of those choices and actions. The Left very much wants to retain their personal choices, whether it is to abort a baby or have sex with anyone they choose. Freedom of expression is oh so important to the Left. They not only crave independence, they demand it. And they should. They have, according to our nation's Constitution, the inalienable right to express themselves, and it should not be taken from them.
Now, if I were to try and claim for myself the words or artwork or baby of someone on the Left, in the name of collective achievement, they would launch every assault on me to take back what they achieved. I cannot claim "I have a dream!" for myself. I cannot share in Obama's Harvard degree. Robert Mapplethorpe's amazing photography? I would be forever haunted and shunned for trying to lay claim to his work.
The Left clearly recognizes individual achievement of their creative efforts. But somehow, that doesn't translate into recognition for the individual achievement in the creative effort of starting and building a company. Why? Because business creativity generates a lot more money than writing poetry.
So this notion of paying forward and insisting on the recognition of cumulative community achievement to pull money from the successful, it's just a rationalization. Whoopi Goldberg would no more let me employ her comedy skits than she would let me enjoy the money she makes from her movies and TV work.
To be clear here, no one in that Lefty bastion called Hollywood ever sees the work of the janitor equal to the work of the director in terms of payment. No movie could ever be made without the stuntman, and yet, he's not making Brad Pitt's wage. Collective achievement? Bah.
But somehow it's okay to presume that the business owner should divested of the earnings from her choices and assumed risks because she couldn't have achieved anything without the roads and bridges paid for by everyone.
Bullshit.
Tell you what - the day that Michelle Obama lets me enjoy her husband's golf schedule and the White House chef is the day that I'll reconsider my position. But since that will never happen, I'll stick to the simple understanding that my life is the sum of my choices. My wages, my belongings, my property - these are my rewards for my choices. Any argument otherwise is a disingenuous effort by thieves. And heaven help you if you try to take from a thief...
"Tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now. Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus."
- John F. Kennedy, Nov. 20, 1962, news conference
"A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues."
- John F. Kennedy, Sept. 18, 1963, radio / television address to the nation
Kennedy was smart enough to know that cutting taxes not only helps families in the short term and long term, but that greater personal income means greater income tax revenue for the government.
History shows that tax hikes hurt the economy every time they're applied. Tax rates reduce personal income, job creation, and income tax revenues because incomes are reduced.
