for those of you {which is most “normal” folk} who are not wrapped up in the ghetto of christian media and entertainment: Derek Webb is an american dude who had a fairly successful christian band called Caedmon’s Call. i wouldn’t call myself a big fan, though i have a few of their albums. i appreciated the band and Derek Webb because there was an essence of authentic-ness to his lyrics and even his vocal delivery… i hadn’t thought about him or the band for a few years until i heard on the grapevine about some broo-ha-ha over his new album. i looked into it and apparently it’s because he says the word “shit” on one song.
sigh.
really?
are we -{and i am using the word we because i am a christian and part of the church in the truest sense of the word.} – still so immature that when one of our artists passionately expresses himself in ART he might use a “profane” word? are we that weak that we can’t take one little artists out pouring? could it be that he HAS to use whatever is in him to convey exactly what he believes Father has shown him?
Anyway…
so i finally heard some of the new album, and blow me down, it is excellent. Right up my alley. The production is fantastic, gone are the rootsy folksy christian nashville sound of Caedman’s Call, and instead there are loops, samples and chopped up electronics. I LOVE IT.
and as for me: i believe that on so many levels:
musically
creatively
artistically
spiritually
and just honouring Father because you are jumping out into that abyss of creating and loosing yourself in it all….
this is the best stuff that i’ve heard Derek Webb do.
but what do i know hey?
today is Blog Action Day 2008, and this year the theme is POVERTY…. and so here is my story in two parts:
part one is my working for World Vision as a display coordinator. part two is the amazing “co-incidence” of receiving the first letter from Xolo our sponsor child on the 15th of October 2008: the very date of “Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty”.
part one: the negative.
like you i have grown up in “average” conditions in a western country and pretty much live everyday thinking how life would be better if i only had more stuff; if i only could afford that new MacBook Pro… i can’t wait till that new 5D Mark II camera comes out… etc etc… and if you work for yourself then you know the joys of wondering how you will pay rent next week when you have no work coming in… this is the stuff of our lives, committing to going on a diet tomorrow but tonight i will cruise through mcdonalds drive thru for one last fast food meal. we are wrapped in our own worlds doing the best we can…
and like you i’ve grown up seeing starving children on my TV and hoping that one day i could make a difference, do something, anything.
but here’s the killer, MOST people {including myself} NEVER do ANYTHING. oh yes we are full of good intentions and we promise ourselves that one day we will get around it. {just like that diet, or that gym membership} and that is the killer. we just don’t actually do anything. we can justify spending hundreds of dollars on films, DVD’s, albums, phone bills and the stuff we “need”, but we just never quite get around to looking into sponsoring that child, donating that money or finding about that organisation.
for years i’ve been planning on doing something, and it never eventuated. until this year when i saw a job advertised for a part-time “display co-ordinator” on the Gold Coast for World Vision Australia. i had no idea what it entailed or exactly why i was doing it, but i applied, then got rejected, then got an interview, then got the job, then got the training, then was on the job…. and THEN i finally got a sponsor child.
yes it wasn’t until my first shift actually on the job that i actually signed up to sponsor a child.
my very part time {2 shifts a week of around 5 hours each, for about a six week “campaign” and then two or three weeks off and then another campaign} job with World Vision is what they call the grunt work, the face work, the rubber on the road work: i stand at a table covered in sponsor children in shopping centres and malls and try to get total strangers to stop and sponsor a needy child through World Vision. it’s pretty much the best and worst job i’ve ever had. i couldn’t even imagine what it would be like doing this job full time….
this job is actually lifting me to new ends of thinking too much and seeing life as this weird existential experience. i mean i stand in the middle of a shopping centre, surrounded by shops selling all sorts of useless crap and pampering services, the whole mall is designed to make people want to shop, and each shop within the mall is screaming out for attention with latest sparkly beads for sale, and here i am standing in front of a few card tables with a bunch of childrens pictures from around the world. it is seriously like sending out a Amish farmer in his horse and buggy to compete in the formula 1 grand prix… on a good day i like to think of it as David out to fight Goliath.
sometimes it is hard to not look at the entire western civilisation as some disgusting monstrosity, an example of the pinnacle of selfishness… i cannot tell you how many times i have watched a woman refuse to even return a “hello” to me when she realises what i am there for, only to walk straight to the display window of jewellery store. or to see couples in the twenties ignore you with their Boost juice and shopping bags in their hands. i cannot tell you how many families have walked past and said something along the lines of “we couldn’t afford it” and each of the children is chomping down on lollies while sitting in shopping trolleys laden with food, toys and the latest XBox games.
by far my “favourite” top two responses from the public walking past in shopping centres are:
The Head Snapper & The Concerned Lips. The Head Snapper is someone who is usually slowly walking thru the Mall/Centre in that shopping induced haze, they are not in a hurry, they are just idly walking and gazing around when their gaze slowly lands onto our World Vision display and before they can help it they are staring at all these children’s faces, they are trapped by all the orange of the sponsor children’s little cardboard picture folders. then all of a sudden they realise that i am there, a human being who wants them to actually do something about it, and they realise exactly what they are looking at. and then: WHA-CRACK! they snap their heads away from me and the display so fast i can almost feel the whiplash. The Concerned Lips is someone who walks past and maybe nods at you and the stand, but they have no intention of stopping so they give you that i-am-concerned-so-i-will-tighten-my-lips-a-little-and-give-a-concerned-tilt-to-my-head look, if you are really lucky they will even give you one of those and even a slight concerned moan or sigh as they slightly pause at a child’s picture…
but can i be straight up honest with you?
getting the everyday jo public to sign up for a sponsor a child is HARD. REALLY HARD! and even though i’m pretty new to it all, it’s getting harder every week.
personally i think the whole world vision approach at the shopping centres is a bit soft, i would love to do something radical and have massive banners and television displays with really confronting messages and images. we cannot compete for peoples attention in a shopping centre, but we could get attention with the “rude” reality of truth and the power of contrast. Big signs that say “SAVE CHILDREN NOW” or “YOUR CONCERNED LOOKS DON’T FILL HUNGRY BELLIES” or “STOP FEELING GUILTY, DO SOMETHING GOOD”… i know, i know we’d be booted out of the centres with a chorus of boos. because people don’t like to feel judged.
that commercial above is excellent in my opinion, it gives it to people straight, BUT the advert was considered a flop because jo public complained because it was too judgemental. people don’t want to feel like World Vision or the little starving children are judging them. well the bad news for such people is that they have already been judged, and they have been found wanting. history will look book at our generations with disgust, how can we in the west be spending so much on ourselves when we could easily make a massive blow to poverty? 700 billion just from the USA to bail out the rich crooks and banks? 70 billion just from China on the Olympics? we sit back in the glow of our televisions while Africa, the most amazing country on earth, implodes….
so how do i go on? what will keep us from throwing our hands up in the air and saying “too hard!”? stay tuned for part two: the positive.
in light of me writing to all these photo storing / sales websites and getting back some great / good customer support responses… i turn to a company that has probably the very worst in customer support and general helpfulness: Yahoo!.
For starters let me state the obvious: the user experience with Yahoo is HORRIFIC. the main yahoo home page is like someone ate every magazine and newspaper in the store and then threw up a website. it is totally confusing, services all over the place, news, weather, ads… but the worst thing is the stupid “region” thing. i get to experience the scintillating “YAHOO!7″: australia’s version of yahoo. i don’t want to experience the dumb aussie site just because i am in australia! anyway, i don’t want to talk about that today, i want to talk about my experience with Yahoo! 360°….
when Yahoo! 360° first started i joined up and played with it for a few months, got bored and then i deleted my account. {mistake} but recently, due to great usefull services like Ping.fm, Yahoo! 360° is looking like it might be fun to use. so i head over to sign up and basically i can’t {details later}, so after trying everything i can, i look for help and the closest thing to help i can find is “Yahoo! Answers”, where yahoo get’s everyday schmucks to answer their help calls for them. i could find people who had the same problem, but nothing i could find in the “answers” actually helped. so i asked my own question {after being forced to “join” answers} – and you can read it “after the jump”-
from the story: {emphasis from me}
“The U.S. financial crisis making global waves is no excuse for governments and companies to walk away from helping the world’s poor, former U.S. President Bill Clinton and rocker Bono said on Wednesday.
As Congress debates a White House-proposed $700 billion bailout for the worst financial crisis since the Depression of the 1930s, Bono questioned why wealthy countries had not been able to come up with enough aid for the world’s problems. “It is extraordinary to me that you can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion to save 25,000 children who die every day of preventable treatable disease and hunger,”the U2 lead singer told Clinton’s fourth annual philanthropic summit in New York. “That’s mad, that is mad.”
The Group of Eight wealthy nations vowed in 2005 to raise annual aid levels $50 billion by 2010, $25 billion of which was to go to Africa. But under current spending plans, the G8 will fall $40 billion short, according to a June report by the Africa Progress Panel set up to monitor implementation.
“Bankruptcy is a serious business and we all know people who have lost their jobs,” Bono said, referring to the bankruptcy declared by Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. “But this is moral bankruptcy.”
i love the POWNCE network of people. i have found it to be a great community of mostly really interesting people. i have two free accounts on pownce that i like to use – one for djp photography & one for mustard empire - i use my djp account the most, i love to post new pictures, setting up friends groups, posting some pictures just to people who are more friendly etc. i have my awesome ping.fm account set up to update my pownce/djp account and that works great for simple status update style bits… also i love pimping some of my favourite music on the mustard account, and getting into interesting discussions about the music etc… awesome.
according to the super brains at pownce war i am the number 5 powncer in the universe, check it:
about a month ago i satrted getting some serious issues logging into my pownce accounts. i went to one of the greatest ideas on the interwebs: get satasfaction, and started a discussion:
“i am on a mac and have the same problem in both safari & firefox. if i am not logged in to Pownce i can go to pownce and surf around no problems, i can even go to my own pownce profile page and look around no problems. i can create a dummy account and then sign in and be fine. no problems. but as soon as i sign in to my REAL ACCOUNT then i cannot get into my pownce. once i sign in i can view other people’s pownce accounts but i CANNOT get into mine. HELP ME! this is severely annoying. my awesome pownce account is http://pownce.com/djp”
then from the pownce community manager Ariel i got this: “Just a quick update – we’re still looking into these isolated issues. In the meantime, if you want to create a new Pownce account, I can transfer your username to it afterwards. Let me know.”
well of course i didn’t want that so Ariel went on to say:
“Can you try logging in on a different system (e.g. different network/computer)? If not, I would need permission from you to login and test your account. We’re wondering if this is potentially a problem w/ the network or computer you’re using due to the browser errors you’re encountering and the sporadic nature of it. Any additional details help – thanks!”
i was up for them to log in and see what the problem was… so i gave permission. Ariel and the pownce team tested and here’s the reply.
“The issue seems to be caused by the fact that you’re a fan of an unusually large amount of people (DJ Paine, you’re a fan of 6,872 people and friends with 2,878 people). Unfortunately, it’s difficult for us to make the site perform for people who are a fan of such a large amount of users. In order to make your accounts accessible again, you can login (in which you might encounter the white screen) and then navigate to http://pownce.com/djp/fan_of and cancel some of your friend requests. We’re very sorry for this and we hope to be able to accommodate these types of situations in the future.”
woah woah woah! i had some questions:
“ariel, how many people can i be a fan of? what is the sweet spot?
and when is this going to change? if ever? i like being fans of lots of people!”
she relied:
” This is really a trial and error and it depends on the quantity of notes coming in to your home page more than how many people you follow. I’m *guessing* that following more than 500 people will start to slow the page down….. No current timeline on when this will change. We’re always working on improving the speed of the site, but this typically requires long-term work. Apologies for the tediousness of the process!”
so i went and had a good look at all those people i was fans of and i realized that 90% never post anything, they don’t use pownce. so ok, i’ll get rid of them! away with all those people i am a fan of! {on pownce you remain someones “fan” when you friend request them and they do nothing or deny you – that’s why interweb celeb kevin rose has 15,623 fans and a didly 132 friends…} to see who YOU are a fan of on pownce go to www.pownce.com/YOUR USER NAME/fan_of/ – once there you can see a list of people and the “cancel request” button it looks like this:now how easy is it to do a mass cancel of people you are fans of? let’s take a look {excuse the voice}
now mind you, i WAS a fan of 6,872 people and as you can see from the video above i have now go it down to 4,860. it has taken me days of mindless clicking to do that {i’ll watch a video podcast or a movie on the imac at night while i click on the pownce page to one side… yeah i know what you’re thinking; dj paine you know how to live it up!}.
i’ll end this blog entry with a few points i’ve gleaned from this experience:
1} be careful of “social networks” that keep people you want to “friend” as people you are fans of – this whole concept sucks big time. friends and fans and all those words are stupid.
2} if you are planning on building a social network {why bother?} please do not cripple users for really using your site.
3} pownce team – fix this. or at least make a mass delete button or something!!!
EDIT / UPDATE – for those interested… other people are having this issue, big time:
i’ve decided to keep all of my websites, blogs, online stuff add free. i had a revelation that i hated website ads with a passion and i have super respect for people and groups who have no advertising on their sites… so why was i wasting time researching about ads on my websites? i dunno. temporary lapse into douchebag-ery? maybe… caught up in the hype of “professional web douchebags”? more like it….
two quick observations in my weeks of researching the whole idea of websites and advertising:
i love creative types who have websites that have no advertising and yet plug their own quality product in subtle and creative ways…
the web is full of douchebag hacks who don’t care.
i am determined for the “me online” to be honest, true, good, caring, encouraging, sharp, & opinionated… basically the opposite of most of the crap that is peddled online.
hmmmm… can i say the word “crap” and still be all those good things? i hope so.
listen up:
i really dig the simpsons, great show, all time classic show.
i dug the movie too.
my son drummond loves the show and the movie full on…
and i know you probably love them too.
but i can’t handle it anymore.
there is a simpsons OVERLOAD at the moment, not only is the dvd of movie everywhere, tie in marketing with everyone and their dog…
but by far – my major gripe at the moment is people who are {still} using an avatar that has them as a simpsons character.
come on!
it was funny for 5 minutes when the film first came out months ago, but now it’s just plain annoying.
and cannot understand why anyone would want to be represented as a springfield type…
anyway.
just had to get that off my chest.
well my trusty eMac is well and truly sick – it definitely looks like it falls under the faulty capacitors problem that apple is aware of – the have it listed here.
so now i’m trying to decide which apple repair service provider to take it into…
