a friend needs some help with a project. there is a due date on this project of Monday, I know you want to help and I have great faith in your abilities, so step lively.
the details are below:
Hi,
I’m doing a project on storytelling. The 3 accompanying photos are to spur your imagination. I need 30 total participants to write short stories between 200-250 words. The stories must contain the following elements.
What happened before the picture was taken?
What is happening in the picture?
What will happen next?
I ask that people write only one story, 5 women/men per. In the comments please let your fellow participants know which picture you chose using the following format: Picture A, B, or C, male or female, participant 1-5. Ex: AM1 or CF5.
To submit your story:
Please e-mail anonymuncule08_at_ gmail_dot_com with your story in the body (no attachments), your participant number (e.g. BF3), age.
If you are interested in writing a second story, I also need 10 people (5 m/f) to write about photo D. Please use the same participant number and submit both stories at the same time.
Thank you for your assistance.
PHOTO A:
PHOTO C:
PHOTO D:
i used to listen to the ipod on the way to work in the morning but i need to keep track of the traffic so i’ve taken to listening to the radio. this has subjected me to all manner of commercials but the ones that got me thinking are the jewellery stores. and that got me thinking about diamonds.
call me cheap, but i find the thought of paying the equivalent of three months’ salary on a rock more than a little ridiculous. actually the whole concept is kind of ridiculous, especially when you consider that most couples that get caught up in the hype are just starting off their lives together and of all the things they could spend that amount of money on is an over-inflated rock. pause for a moment and ponder on this – 40% of the world’s diamond production is controlled by de beers and approximately 50% of all rough diamonds in the world are processed though dtc ( a de beers subsidiary). so either through production or distribution de beers controls most of the diamonds that make to the retail environment, no matter who you’re buying from.
let’s take a brief look at the history of de beers. the company was founded in 1888 by cecil rhodes and if there was ever a man that turned a profit on the backs of others it was cecil john rhodes. he was an ardent believer in colonialism and before the ayran nation was but a glint in adolf’s eyes purported the superiority of the anglo-saxon race. he made his fortune by controlling south africa’s natural resources through his implementation of african forced labor. currently de beers owns 70% of the diamond mines in africa either outright or with partnerships with various african governments.
a few years ago i was in an airport reading a copy of wired about a company that manufactured synthetic diamonds and how freaked out the industry was by it. the basic premise is that a company in florida can produce what looks like a $10 – $15k yellow diamond for a few hundred dollars that’s good enough to pass muster with a diamond dealer in antwerp. the very concept has the diamond industry in a tizzy, so much so that the dtc has developed a special screen machine. interestingly there is a company called lifegem, that creates high quality diamonds from the carbon of your loved ones. now there’s a thought, when you that family heirloom on her finger it could actually be family. i find that concept a lot less distasteful.
remember items only have value based on demand and availability.
three months, almost to the day since i last posted here. how things have changed, there was once a time where i’d posted twice, sometimes three times a day. i suppose that’s life, when you reveal that much for that long, there will come a time when you really don’t have that much to say any more.
i think i do still have a contribution to make. there are a lot of things that have been on my mind lately – there is an election cycle in progress, my experiences with my new job, developments on the home front and of course the elephant in the room – the state of the global economy.
there have been a couple of milestones in the interim, the beginning of the month of march marked my fourth anniversary in the us and the end of the march marked our first anniversary as homeowners. as the subprime mortgage and equity markets continue to implode i watch in fascination. i understand chasing the dream, but to what ends?
when we decided that we were going to buy a house we worked out how much we were paying in rent and utilities, what size home would keep our utility bills in the same relative bracket and what we could afford if one or both of us were unemployed for a prolonged period. and there was one other major stipulation, no exotic loans. we wanted a standard 30 year mortgage, with a fixed interest rate.
even without a degree in economics or an accounting background, the details of these loans were insane and based on an assumption that the value of your house was guaranteed to go up. isn’t the concept of value based on demand and availability? basically this collapse was inevitable and like any good pyramid scheme only the people at the top got paid. i’d posted before about the similarities between the housing crisis and the s&l crisis and the inability of the middle class to provide a bailout. i stand by that statement, but based on the bear sterns bailout, i think we’re going to be forced to pay for it, whether we like it or not.
we approached the mortgage company with our info and asked for the magic number. with the number in hand we then started looking in earnest at houses. to most people it appeared as though we found a house in less than a month, but we’d been looking on and off for about six months with my usual degree of obsessive compulsiveness. in the two weeks before we found the house we’re in now, i think we looked at least 10 houses with a variety of flaws; too far, zero lot lines, too many koi ponds – long story, rotting floors, smoky. and at first blush, vic wasn’t sold on the house. it was only when we got a chance to go in that she was sold and it’s a good thing we acted as quickly as we did, we discovered at the closing that someone else put a cash offer about the same time as the fax with our offer was coming in.
our house was a realtor flip and going over the closing documents, by the time the realtors paid their cost and what the owed to the bank the made less than $10k. i don’t know if i’m not looking at the big picture but that seems a really small profit margin and with the markets being what they are now, how much smaller are the margins? how many flips do you have to sell to break even? or does the commission on selling the house help? looking at the nashville market, there has been a slowdown but now as drastic as the rest of the country, however it looks like the majority of houses still being sold are older homes and remodels.
the foreclosures and abandonments are reminiscent of trinidad in the late 80s after the ‘money is no problem’ era ended. in 88-89 just before my grandmother moved to trinidad we started looking for a house and with the market being what it was the banks were more than happy to provide their foreclosure lists. we saw a lot of house that still had furniture in them as people just walked away from mortgages they could no longer afford. all the precursors to the recession then are visible here, now and what’s worse is that in this case it’s going to be global. the mortgage crisis is going to continue to ripple out, food and transportation costs are already rising while wages remain stagnant, the value of a dollar decreases every time the federal reserve tries to shore up the economy. greed put us in this situation and it’s going to be interesting to see how we get out of it.
while i was in trinidad for my grandmother’s funeral, Viacom, the parent company of MTV and CMT, decided that they were going to subcontract/outsource/farm out payroll for permalancers (that’s what we’re called – we’re freelance on the books but we work 40 hours a week, we have to ask for time off, so for all intents and purposes we’re staff). the gist of the announcement was payroll was moving outside the company and we would lose 401k and paid holidays and our health care package would switch to the payroll company.
the holidays pay kind of irked me, but what really pissed me off was the healthcare, the new package sucked. the cap was $25K of coverage (not including hospitalisation) for the year, whether it was an individual or family and $2K for hospitalisation. that about started a riot. actually it started a protest at MTV NY at least. the freelancers started walking out on a daily basis from 3 – 4 in Times Square around the time TRL was going on, so after a couple days they sent out an email saying that those who were already on the existing health plan would keep it and the transition would be put off until February and during the intervening period they would convert some of the positions to staff.
in the midst of all this bacchanal i decide it might be time for me to make a move and see what’s out there. now this is where it gets interesting, the night of December 6, i go home and start to massage my resume and portfolio with the intention to get it up to date and start sending it out, get as far as i though i could and go to bed. i get up the next morning and there’s an email from a recruiting firm on the email address that’s on my resume. i get all these crap offers on this address so i’m a little skeptical but it’s address directly to me and in my field so i respond and they ask me to come in the following Monday which i do and i hit it off really well. they tell me about the job and who it’s with and say they’ll submit my name as a candidate.
i agree not really expecting to hear anything so imagine my surprise two day later when i get a call from the HR offices of the company to conduct a phone interview. i spend an hour on the phone with the lady and at the end of it she tells me that she’ll pass my info and her notes to the director of marketing, the woman who would be my boss if i get the job. this is December 12, two days later i get a call asking me to come in to interview in person on the 18. i put my nice dan dan on and go in and interview and the end of which i’m told, expect a call the following week for me to interview with her boss and the other managers that make up the department.
by this time i’m excited and kind of freaking out, the day after Christmas, my phone rings it’s the HR lady again and i have a two hour interview in two days to meet basically the remaining managers of the department and the head of the division and the end of which i’m told i’ll hear from them in the new year.
First week of the new year comes and goes and i’m not quite panicking but i’m a little edgy and then last Monday, i get a call from the HR lady asking me to come in one more time. this would make my fourth interview and i don’t know what to expect. it wasn’t so much an interview as a final opportunity for me to back out. i think they wanted me to realise that i wasn’t going to be working for a ‘hip’ tv company but a more conservative corporate client (and no i don’t have to cut my hair or my beard). i got the offer on Tuesday afternoon and after a little discussion with the wife accepted it.
so there is my little tale. i have to believe this job was for me. it’s the first job i’ve ever taken for the ‘right’ reasons – better pay, better benefits, opportunity for growth and i have a really good feeling about it and i start Feb 4, as the communications and concept developer. i’m going to miss CMT, i have some of the best co-workers there, but i think it was time to move on.
it’s the day before christmas and there is still no end in sight to the writers strike. although some of the talk shows are heading back without their writers, the next year of television looks to be bleak with reality tv and mid-season replacements.
for those just joining us, the Writers’ Guild of America is on strike following a breakdown in contract negotiations with the media companies over royalty payments for digital distribution. basically, in their current contracts the writers get paid for writing the shows and then a predetermined percentage for syndication and dvd sales. the writers want a cut of the digital pie, ie shows that sold on amazon’s unbox, aol, itunes, walmart, xbox marketplace, mobile phone viewing and services like comcast’s on demand, the media companies are claiming that there’s no way to determine the value of the online/digital model and that they’re not making money from that particular business model, but as this youtube video by some of the writers of the daily show point out there seems to be a disconnect somewhere. the last writers’ strike happened in during March and August 1988 and cost the movie and television industry approximately $500 million and was over reduced residuals and overseas re-airs.
with no resolution in sight, most of the shows that have gone on hiatus over the holidays are not likely to be back before late 2008, possibly 2009 and there isn’t likely to be any new scripted television before 2009. new shows are pitched during the middle of the year at the dog & pony show called the upfronts, where the networks show advertisers and affiliates, how well their shows have done during sweeps and present what their ideas are for the coming year, but unless the writers’ strike is resolved quickly there isn’t going to be time to write and shoot pilots before the upfronts. with tons of money on the line most people are wondering why the media companies don’t just settle with the writers and get on with the business of television, the answer interestingly lies with the Screen Actors’ Guild, whose contracts are up for negotiation in June 2008 and are likely to be requesting the same concessions as the writers’ guild thus cutting into the ‘dwindling profit margins’ of the media companies.
according to this list, there are only a few scripted series with episodes left to air and most of the soap operas are likely to run out of new episodes by the end of January which may sound the death knell for the genre with reality programming, game shows and daytime chat filling the void. with the exception of talk shows, prime time programming is likely to follow the same path, it’s going to be interesting to see how viewers respond, particularly during the sweeps.
don’t forget to read mark’s take on Babel, here.
aside from funerals and working and retail and the holidays, i’m involved in a little project called whiskerino which involved me shaving on november 1 and not shaving again until february 28. you can track my progress and the progress of the 300 plus other participants atwhiskerino.org or if you just want to see my photos and make fun of me, there is an entire flickr set dedicated to the endeavour here
i’m back. safely and in one piece. been back since friday, just haven’t got the motivation to write anything before today.
as much as i generally dislike american, i have to say i was impressed, all my flights were early. don’t know if it’s the days i flew but we left on time and arrived early. although flying through MIA, i’m not sure how much of a blessing that is.
miami international airport is one of the worst airports i’ve ever been in. classing it with third world airports would be an insult to those airports. it’s grimy, it’s hot, even at night and you’re hard pressed to find a power outlet. that may be my own pet peeve, but how the hell could you not have a power outlet at the gate of an international flight?
trinidad was… wow. too many cars, not enough roads. so much construction. i vaguely remember the oil boom of the late 70s, early 80s and the behaviour seems very reminiscent of those halcyon days, but we all remember how those ended.
thank you all for you condolences.
i’m heading to trinidad tomorrow afternoon. and there can be only one reason for such a sudden trip.
interestingly i’m not as freaked out or stressed as when my mother called last week. even my mother seem calmer, 90 plus years is a long and fruitful rally and my grandmother told my mother she was tired. i guess she was ready to move on. i can only hope i’ll live as long as she did. in her lifetime she’s travelled by horse drawn cart, train, automobile and airplane, been witness to the two world wars, communicated via mail, phone and electronically. she had an amazing life and i’m proud to be her grandson. i have her stories to pass on and in that small way i can keep her alive.
a day late and nowhere as funny.
my grandmother is better, home from the hospital suffering from the same complication that put her in there the last time. it’s something that isn’t normally serious but at her age, everything’s serious. but she lives to fight another day.
thanks for all your prayers and good thoughts
it’s 5am as i sit here writing this and i’ve know in the back of my mind this day has been coming. it’s not quite here yet, but it’s close enough. i rarely remember my dreams, but about a month ago, i dreamt my mother called to tell my grandmother was dead.
i’ve been waiting on that early morning call since then. she’s not dead, but when you’re older than 90, a second trip to the hospital in less than 2 months isn’t good. i’m worried and sad. but at the same time, the woman i saw a year and a half ago was just a shell of her former self and if it’s her time, then she’s lived a long full life and i’m glad to have been part of her life.
i have her stories, she’s seen me grow up and i hope and pray that i’m turning into the man she expected. i’m worried now about my mother, who seems stoic now. i wonder what she’s going to do with herself without my grandmother around. what’s going to keep her motivated and active. i once joked that through all their arguing, they were keeping each other alive, i’m afraid it might be true.
i’m so far away and i feel powerless. i can’t hold my grandmother one last time, i may not even get to do that for my mother. all i can do is wait, i’ve never dreaded a ringing phone so much.
