connecting*the*dots

The Black Iris
The Charade

The leader never carries out the killing himself but will always get his hands dirty. So how will the execution of Saddam be seen 200 years from now?

A quarter of a million American troops invade Iraq. Hunt down its leader and set up a tribunal with all the trappings of ‘fairness’ and he is in the end found guilty for being involved in the killing of 148 Shias over two decades ago during a time when America was openly heavily funding Saddam and silent over all these killings.

Americans hand over Saddam to Iraqis to carry out the hanging. On Eid Al-Adha no less; a good PR move to make sure every Arab is at home watching on TV.

In the last 3 years the presence of a quarter million of American forces on Iraqi soil have been responsible for killing an estimated quarter of a million Iraqis.

American forces are still occupying Iraq.

What will a student of history ask himself 200 years from now? Or will history still be written by the victors at that time?

Will they ask about why so many Arabs remained silent? Will they ask whether it made sense that one leader be executed for killing 148 people while another be praised for killing a quarter of a million of those same people? Will they see ancient footage of Colin Powell at the UN displaying doctored satellite photos of now unfound WMDs? Will they understand that 200 years ago, suggesting that a leader from a ’superior’ nation be held to the same standard of accountability as everyone else in the world was unheard of? That suggesting an American is equal to an Arab is equal to a Brit is equal to an African is preposterous? Will they understand that someone like me who had no love for Saddam thought the whole situation to be preposterous?

Bush was right today: ‘a dark and painful era is over in Iraq’, but a new one, that he as a leader is directly responsible for, has already begun.

And the charade goes on and on and on… more Iraqis are being slaughtered…

So to anyone celebrating the execution of Saddam I’m forced to ask: what the fuck are you cheering for?

If you’re cheering the execution of Saddam Hussein, you damn well better be doing everything you can to voice your opinion that this war is illegal and that this administration needs to be held accountable.

Otherwise, you’re nothing but a hypocrite.

UPDATE: Here’s a video of the storm

Via: VideoSift

Jackson Pollock is my all-time favorite American painter. Now, thanks to Miltos Manetas, both you and I can emulate his signature “splatter” painting technique… online.

Apparently, the Flash site has been up since 2003, but I just stumbled upon it today.

Sheer brilliance.

Thank you, Miltos.

Suggested context: The next time you’re in Long Island, consider driving out to East Hampton to visit Pollock’s home & studio. I toured the grounds in the summer of 2005 and the experience expanded and edified my respect for both Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner.

Charlie Rose on the career of Jackson Pollock, below:

The Outline of a Skeleton, 2006
47,5×37x7 cm
Acid free A4 80 gms paper and glue in artist made frame

From Peter’s website:

[…] Most recent I have started to make white paper cuts/sculptures inspired by fairytales and romanticism exploring the relationship between two and three dimensionality, between image and reality. I find the materialization of a flat piece of paper into a 3D form as an almost magic process - or maybe one could call it obvious magic, because the process is obvious and the figures still stick to their origin, without the possibility of escaping. In that sense there is as well an aspect of something tragic in most of the cuts. […]

If the introductory small text is any indicator, this film was based on discussions around Tavis Smiley’s “Covenant with Black America.”

As it turns out, I stumbled into sitting in on a similar discussion a few months back at A&T, though the conversation was a bit more inclusive.

The film looks interesting.

(originally uploaded by SOUTHEN)

My Mom has always worked the financial system to the best of her ability — from triple coupon shopping at ShopRite to becoming a landlord three states away as a retirement investment — so back in my freshman year at Syracuse, she co-signed an application for me to get an American Express Gold Card. She felt that by simply holding it, it would go a long way in establishing my credit rating.

It did.

Over the years, I’ve made large and small purchases alike, while making sure to be on-time with payments. As a result, my credit rating spiked and just recently, I was able to purchase a home at a decent rate — even though dotmatrix is in its first year as a business.

So, as much as I dislike paying $85 a year for a credit card, Amex has more than paid me back in return with customer service that has always been extremely helpful and courteous.

Until today, that is.

Can We Just Upsell You Instead?

In moving from freelance mode to building a design consultancy, I figured it was about time to completely separate my personal expenses from my business expenses. So a few weeks back I applied for an Amex Business Gold Card and tonight, with Christmas finally behind me, I called to activate my recently delivered card.

While activating, I asked the operator to transfer my points (close to 100,000 from 17 years of purchases) to the new card. Of course, that couldn’t be accomplished by the account opening specialist, so within a few minutes I was speaking to another CSR in the Membership Rewards department.

No problems there; the guy added the program to my new business card and proceeded to transfer my points over in one fell swoop.

Then I told him that I wanted to cancel my old Gold Card.

Wrong move.

Five minutes of hold time later, I was speaking to a guy in another department with a glossy title that, once decoded, equated with “card retainment specialist.”

I told the guy that I wanted to cancel my personal Gold Card, but before doing so, I needed to know that I would be receiving my End of Year Summary — essential documentation of my numerous business deductions over the past year.

The guy didn’t listen to one word I said.

Before I could say AOL nightmare, the guy began to upsell me about the benefits of the card. He said he could throw in a $40 credit due to my long-standing account status (for you non-math majors, that’s a benefit of $2.35 per year).

I repeated that I needed an answer to my question.

Instead of transferring me to customer service — who apparently held the knowledge as to when I was to receive my summary document — the specialist continued along the same line of reasoning.

Next, he tells me that it’s almost impossible to get an Amex Gold card and that I’d be missing out on a ton of great benefits. Getting a bit annoyed, I lost track of my request and challenged him to look at my account and tell me what exactly I’d be missing — especially now that just I opened a Business Gold Card.

Instead of doing what I asked, the guy took the opportunity to challenge me to name one of my Gold Card benefits — you know, ’cause I’m a dumb customer who doesn’t know what he needs.

Okay, now I’m starting to get pissed.

I returned to my original question about the summary and the guy just kept on going, telling me all about the great benefits of card membership, including more points with a second card. When I told him that I had that angle covered — for free with a non-Amex card — and that I didn’t need advice along those lines, he kept pushing, insisting that most people don’t know what they’re missing out on.

I tell him I’m an adult and don’t appreciate the continuous upsell.

He tells me that I’m not listening; everybody needs a Gold Card.

I hang up.

Next: Customer Service

So taking the only valuable info the retainment specialist gave me, I decided to call Customer Service to find out when I would receive my summary. The new guy must’ve checked his CRM tool (man, is this a call for VRM or what?!), as he was ready to deflect my question and continue to upsell Gold Card membership.

Only after I made it crystal clear to him that I just added another Gold Card to my account — keeping the beans coming in at a steady pace — did he stop his Lomanesque discourse long enough to put me on hold and find out for me exactly when I could cancel my card, yet still receive my summary.

After another five minutes, he comes back and tells me that I can’t cancel the account until March 9th — my anniversary date.

When I tell him that I receive my summary no later than early February, he pauses.

When I ask him on what date I was to be charged next year’s $85 fee, he meekly responds with “March 9th.”

Motherfuckers.

Learn Or Die

I ended up hanging up tonight, to wait until I receive my summary before I cancel prior to March 9th. I messed up: I never should have mentioned canceling the card before getting all the information I needed.

I guess I had too much faith that being a longtime card member should mean something — like not having to game my call to people who are supposed to be servicing me, the customer.

It blows me away that companies continue to develop CSR scripts along these lines, in an attempt to maximize profits. For 17 years, I considered Amex to be a great company — not based on the bills I received each month or the ridiculous $40 per year points program I’ve paid for since obtaining the card — but for their impeccable customer service.

Well, they’ve now joined the likes of Sprint as far as I’m concerned.

How much more money have they now lost through this piss poor brand experience? I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing for sure:

Momma didn’t raise no motherfucking plankton.

Once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker. She’s looking beautiful, no?

Thanks, Courtney.

Ethan Zuckerman — my former colleague at Tripod, co-founder of Global Voices and current Board member of The People, Yes — is a brilliant guy… and apparently has what it takes to drive Samantha Bee of The Daily Show mad:

Too funny.

(originally uploaded by dsearls)

Doc and company are working on making VRM a reality. Well, here’s my shout out to the ether: I wanna help!

(originally uploaded by mdessem)

Sorry for the bit of drama in my last few posts, but as I stared at the ceiling the other night — not able to sleep because of the sheer amount of stuff going on in my life — I came to the instant realization that I needed to simplify a bit, you know, wrangle my schedule back to being my own.

The crazyness never should have progressed to this point; I know better.

When describing elements of good design to clients, I use the term “reduction,” more often than not to make clear that an additive approach to design — whether it be loading up the interface with features or extreme typographic combinations — is bound to fail, or in the very least, produce a garbled result.

Low and behold, when designer-boy paused to self-reflect the other night — rather, when my brain put me on repeat, caught up in a whirling broken record of commitment-paralysis — I clearly saw that my life was chock full of projects and passions with not many getting the attention they individually deserve.

Especially, my most important passion.

So when I crept out of bed the other night, I attempted to express what I was feeling — that I needed to reduce — without being too wordy. A couple of posts later, my brain felt as though my short-term destiny had been altered by just enough degrees to graciously allow the cycling of rapid thoughts to end and let me drift off to sleep.

Well, based on the comments, email and calls I’ve received from friends, family and distant readers, I figured that I need to provide a bit more insight as to where I am and why blogging has become so much of a drain.

Ridiculous Information Retrieval And Digestion Patterns

I spend an awful lot of time tracking blogs and sites of interest — upwards of 110 to 130 feeds at any given time — covering numerous industries, local and world politics, friends around the globe, etc. Many of my posts over the last six-months have amounted to short quotes from people talking about issues that I find interesting; I used the WP asides feature to drop these quick thoughts (or “pointers”) as an effort to push information out quickly, instead of sitting on it to form a larger essay post down the line. That was a smart solution to upping my output and reducing post paralysis, but I quickly became the idiot who’s addicted to checking Bloglines every 15 minutes for more material.

After pausing from blogging for just a few days, I’ve been able to treat Bloglines like my backup email account — checking once in the morning and once in the evening. I don’t know if it’ll last, but so far so good.

Forgetting Why I Blog

I’ve been writing on the web, one way or another, since 1997. Up until June of 2005, I never even glanced at web analytics — my personal state of mind was always my indicator of happiness or success. Shit, I’ve changed my domain name so many times in the past to reflect personal shifts in mood or focus (digitalportfolio, squareone, apperceptive), I never even paused to consider that my writing/poetry/blogging was being read by anyone with any degree of consistency. Well, in this age of Mint, Feedburner, Technorati, etc., I’ve come to understand that I am being read.

I rather enjoy the benefits of having a readership — hearing from old friends and meeting new ones through conversations found in comment threads, trackback pings, industry conferences or local meetups — but not when content production begins to replace blogging at my pace. Up until last week, I thought I had been publishing at my own pace, even though I knew that I was spending way too much time in the blogging process. After a bit of self-reflection, I’m not so sure that’s the case.

Moving Forward

My life is currently chock full of responsibility and not enough time in the day. I’m working with five different clients on a variety of projects, building my first non-profit and design consultancy, living with the love of my life and trying to keep up with my little bro back up in Jersey. Not one of them has been receiving enough attention from me. Throw in my friends & family and trying to get back in shape, and, well, I think you’re starting to feel me. Blogging is important, but it can’t be my central focus.

So where do I take my blogging from here?

• My Technorati profile reads: connecting*the*dots attempts to frame the convergence of political, technological and cultural memes through pointed essays and captured moments of communication across the web. It’s time to change up the editorial premise and make it much more geared towards my life. I’ll probably remove the name of the blog all together at some point.
• I’m going back to dropping poetry and writing longer essays when the mood strikes — getting away from keeping up with an intra-day, consecutive posting streak.
• John Ford and I are working on developing a collaborative blog project at dotmatrixproject.com. I’ll probably use this spot as the publishing interface for those design/tech posts, as John is working on code to scrape dotmatrixproject tagged posts from a universe of indexed sites and add them to dotmatrixproject as authored posts.
• I’ll continue to post perspective on items that outrage or move me — whether it be in the form of a video, a pointer, or an essay — but I’m going to pick my spots moving forward. Feel free to keep sending me items of interest; the random email pointers I’ve received from readers over the last year has made blogging extremely rewarding

So yeah, that’s the plan more or less; less posts, but with more personal and professional meaning and published on my schedule.

I do hope that you’ll keep your subscription as I attempt this transition. While I won’t be presenting as much info anymore, I’d like to believe that what I do publish will be worth the wait.

We’ll see.