A Bob Ross Positive

It really is easy not to like things. Or rather, I should say, it’s really easy to express a negative opinion about things. Especially art. Especially your own art. Art is easy to dismiss. Art is easy to criticize. It’s easy to find the faults in a piece of art. Everyone with a mouth can criticize a movie, a book, a painting, a wood carving, a sculpture, a poem, a song, a cartoon, or a sand castle.

Bob Ross enjoyed calling mistakes “happy accidents.” Why? Probably to just keep moving. You don’t get very far as an artist if you get hung up on the mistakes. The faults will happen. But if you swing it more to your own corner, then you continue with the art. If you slow down even a little bit, the slowing can turn into stopping. Then what are you doing? Not art.

A perspective of “good mistakes” or “happy accidents” will get you so much farther than a perspective of “disastrous mistakes” or “dreadful, deadly accidents.”

You’ve probably experienced someone who couldn’t get over a certain situation—someone who saw a mistake as something worse than it really was—and you probably wondered how they could see it that way. You may have tried to help them get over it, tried to convince them that the problem wasn’t so bad. They turned it around, didn’t they? They told you the problem was the most serious problem ever. They told you it was devastating. They convinced themselves it was the end of art, it was the end of the world, and they tried to convince you of the same. You probably thought, “This person is hopeless. They claim the light that illuminates the path is too bright and blinding.”

How could you help someone out of such a mental state? How can you overcome such a self-defeating attitude? Isn’t it obvious? The cure is to show the poor downer dude (or dudette?) some Bob Ross. Bring peace to the world through instructional painting videos. Bring optimism to the lost with beautiful landscapes and “happy accidents.” That’s not the only way, of course, but it’s in the Top 10 of ways to cure a self-degrading funk. So right about now, you’re probably wondering what the other nine ways are. I could be funny and tease you: “Tune in next week…” but I won’t. Here’s the list:

Top 10 Ways of Developing a Positive Creative Mental State

  1. Watch videos of Bob Ross. Pick up the habit of seeing accidents as a positive.
  2. Build a sand castle. Sometimes the most temporary art forms teach us how to be less serious, less stressed, less negative.
  3. Start making mistakes in your art on purpose, then fix them.
  4. Consider a child showing you some macaroni glued together. They tell you it’s their favorite and they made it for you. What is it? Does it really matter what it is? Would you ever tell that child their creation was ugly? If not, then why do it to yourself?
  5. Meditation. Sit still and contemplate things that are beyond your art. After a few moments of separation, then go back to your art. Rarely does meditation ever make people turn toward the negative.
  6. Rorschach test. Rorschach test upside down. Did your answers change?
  7. Go for a hike. What do you see in nature? Do you see perfection?
  8. Carve a bear in a tree stump with a chainsaw. Too difficult? Maybe the chainsaw artist thinks your particular brand of art is too difficult? Did you ever think of that?
  9. List the worst, the good, and the great about your art. Throw away the “worst” list. Post the “great” list on your fridge.
  10. Talk to other artists, especially those who do different art than you. Find out what they do and do not enjoy about it. Chances are you’ll find things in common.

Funny Tweets

funnytweets

It’s funny.

Everything’s funny, really.

I can’t admit that I get out much. I’m the infonet version of a couch potato. My explorations into the far reaches of the infonet have yet to begin. If I were to draw you a map of the web I’ve visited, it would be a single line. Twitter? Yep. Wikipedia? Never. I avoid it like a plague. WordPress? Of course! Faceboogie? Sometimes. Darkweb? Pssh! Who has time for that? Not me. YouTube? Once every six months, maybe. Although I must admit, I watched a couple hours of Joan Jett videos one time. Would that be considered a binge? Probably.

I’ve seen the Kid Snippets and Bad Lip Reading and Studio C. All of those are worth your time, for sure. You wanna laugh? Check out any one of those on YouTube. For the most part, they hold up. They’ll get you chuckling.

The main thing I want to get across here is that even though I don’t extend my interests to Soundcloud and Goodreads, I can see that there are people who sincerely enjoy those sites. In fact, there’s a fellow named Fred Nolan who did a Soundcloud compilation of my one-liners for me. The best way to let you sense what I mean is to link it here:

Funny Tweets

Fred and I hope you get a laugh or two out of it.

Hiding in Plain Sight

brokenbonexray

Hiding things usually requires some use of clever intellect. Premeditated hiding. The kind of hiding you did when you were a child playing Hide-and-Seek isn’t so far different from hiding your valuables behind a loose brick in the fireplace. When you try to keep something from being discovered, don’t you put yourself in the perspective of someone who might be looking for that thing? When you’re hiding yourself, don’t you think, “Where could I go where they wouldn’t expect me to be?” When you’re hiding valuables, you probably look for locations people wouldn’t normally reach, places people wouldn’t normally search or poke or probe, places they wouldn’t stick their nose.

When trying to divine genetic secrets, shouldn’t we look in all the places we wouldn’t think to look? If they really are secrets, shouldn’t we be seeking like a child, hoping to find a friend in the dark corners, forgotten closets, or behind furniture?

The hideaways of nature are no more easy to define than the hideaways of Providence. Where would you put the genetic pattern with the secret of regrowth? Where would you put the genetic pattern with the secret of rebirth? Where would you put the genetic pattern with the secret of evolutionary advancement? Where would you put it if you were a million times smarter than you are now?

How far would you search for a friend in a playful game? Would you search the same way for some item of value cached away in an old house? Would you search the same way for your inheritance? What lengths would you go to for a glimpse into the future of mankind?

jellyfish

There is a not-so-secret system scientists call CRISPR, which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. It’s a long name which doesn’t mean much if you’re reading it for the first time. In a pinch, it means an easy and inexpensive method of modifying a gene. See? You might not have gotten that meaning from those words, unless someone gave you an assist on the definition. The part of this discovered technology that is fascinating to me is that it was seen in the actions of bacteria. Bacteria were found using the CRISPR system to modify the genetic constitutions of viruses.

This is where all the questions above come in to play. I question myself. I had learned a long time ago that viruses were the rulers. Viruses have long proven strong, resilient, and adaptable. The medical community taught me about the virus “kingdom” in which bacteria were the lesser, weaker forms. In the old, assumed system you could introduce a bacteria into a virus occupied area and the virus would destroy the bacteria to stay resident. Then along comes CRISPR, a method bacteria use to “unzip” or “cut” viruses. Did bacteria learn this behavior? Or has it always existed and we humans didn’t know about it?

My problem with learning this is not that it exists, but that I didn’t question the assumption of absolute rule I learned earlier. Beware the absolutes. We humans get hold of these notions of absolutes and we tend to think we suddenly have super intelligence. Getting stuck on a certain way of thinking is sometimes referred to as narrow-mindedness. Having a bit more flexibility in your thought is known as broad-mindedness. I regret not being a bit more broad-minded. Then I might not have slapped my head so hard when I learned about CRISPR.

You Won’t Believe This…

brekfastwithmeat

You aren’t going to believe this…I’m jealous of someone with diabetes.

My friend eats eggs and sausage ALL THE TIME.

Not that I’m a vegetarian, but I don’t eat a lot of meat. Meat just doesn’t appeal to me that much, until I see my friend with sausage and eggs FOR LUNCH. That lucky diabetic. Wouldn’t it be great to have certain meals at times of the day other than the traditional, other than the expected time of day? Breakfast for lunch, lunch for dinner, and for sure dinner for breakfast. And here’s this friend of mine who probably is jealous of my sandwich because, you know, the limit on carbs and all that.

What would we do if we went to a friend’s house and heard them talk like they were running a hotel or a cafe?

“What would you like? We serve breakfast all day.”

We’d tell them we wanted to move in and live there, wouldn’t we? I don’t really know about you. I would, though. I’d move myself in at least for a week.

It’s so enticing to think about being served whatever you want whenever the mood strikes. If you see your friend with delicious food, ANY food, as long as it looks and smells good, you probably crave it. If you’re driving down the street and you smell chicken cooking, you probably have a sudden craving for chicken. If you smell barbecue cooking in the neighborhood, don’t you think it’s barbecue time? And if you smell it and see it at the same time, oh yeah, you want to invite yourself to the party.

Bread baking in the oven? Forget about it! You want that first warm slice. You’d eat the heel on BOTH sides of the loaf, if anyone would let you.

Maybe, just maybe, even if you were diabetic. You’d skip a few other nutrients, just for that taste you haven’t enjoyed for so long. You’d exercise more, just to feel the warm bread on your tongue. You’d eat one thousand boiled carrots for the chance to make the first cut into the warm bread.

I’m not sure about any of this. I’m only empathizing with people with diabetes. See how much empathy I have for you? See how I managed to convey a little compassion there?

Now could you share some of your eggs and sausage?

How To: Job Interview

wildspotlight

How To: Job Interview—20 Easy-to-Remember Hints

  1. If showing up 5 minutes early is good, then 15 is better, and 30 is outstanding.
  2. Ask if there are any ghosts in the building or on the premises. This question sets a great tone of intrigue which will carry through the meeting. You’ll leave them wanting more.
  3. Wear extra clothes—more than necessary. Take a few items off during the interview, though not too many. Leave them wanting to know more.
  4. Tell a funny story. Practice the story enough that you can stop in the middle without finishing. Tell them you’ll relate the rest of the story after they’ve hired you.
  5. Ask about their policy on comfort animals. Tell them you have a pet snake, but it’s only considered poisonous in Australia.
  6. Tell them how often you feel sensations in your bladder.
  7. Talk about your family a lot! Elaborate.
  8. Make sure your ringtone is a cool one. Turn the volume up and have a friend call you during the interview. This trick will show them how important you are.
  9. If you don’t have tattoos, get some—-on your face! He who stands out, lucks out.
  10. Ask if they care what you do on break. Don’t elaborate.
  11. Tell them you never fail, but you know people who do.
  12. Instead of a resume, give them a copy of a completed application to another business. One good thing about this idea is that you won’t have to fill anything out more than once. Another good thing is that you show them you could potentially be the competition.
  13. Whether you’re a man or a woman, wear a necktie. Half way through the interview, loosen it. This will give everyone in the interview process an excuse. They want to relax too, but they don’t want to do it if they’re the only one.
  14. Compare the job hunt to hunting wild animals. Everyone likes to hear about hunting wild animals.
  15. Use lots of big words. Pompism=bossism. You’ll be promoted sooner than you think.
  16. Chewing gum will make your breath fresh.
  17. Bring samples of your work.
  18. When they ask, “Do you have questions?” Remember, cannibalism questions will leave a lasting impression.
  19. When they ask, “Do you have questions?”: If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? I bet they’ve never heard that question before.
  20. Bring snacks. Corn Nuts are the best! So loud! So delicious.