Mermaids

A lesson in entrepreneurship:

Two fishermen are at sea casting their nets.  Near the end of the day, they catch something heavy and haul it up to the boat.  In the net, they find a mermaid so beautiful that she'd make a man's heart melt.  As they stare at her, one of the fishermen lifts her into his arms and releases her back into the sea.

Blankly, his partner asks, "Why?"

"How?" responds the first.

Loose ends and next steps

It's Saturday and raining, and I am tying up loose ends and preparing for the next steps in my career.  I am first finishing the last two academic papers that I hope to write.  One is my Master's thesis, the other a paper I gave last December at the British Institute in Florence that is being published in a volume about Bronzino.  I will send them off on Monday morning.

Every week, Pandoodle gains more momentum, interested investors, potential clients, and strategies for going forward.  We are meeting today to discuss the company's business plan, and I plan to recruit interns and sales people this quarter.  It will be my first experience managing people directly, which is exciting.  I wanted to teach art history primarily to assist young people develop their thinking and potential, and managing a team of sharp marketers and sales people will present that opportunity with perks that academia does not support.  I can choose whom I will work with and directly support them, and if we are all doing our jobs correctly, then we all get paid accordingly to our efforts.  This should be great fun.

I recommend seeing Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  I don't recommend drinking heavily beforehand and grumbling your boozy observations to your sober date in the front row of an independent theater while swigging a Fat Tire tall boy.  Make sure she's at least as drunk as you first.

Bravo, Fry

The British six-part series Stephen Fry in America is amazing.  Fry's analysis of the differences between the South and North, in which he rightfully includes Florida, and the complexity and often hypocrisy of American culture, ideals, and history are spot on.  It does not surprise me that an Englishman felt most at home "culturally and spiritually" in the Southeast.  If you have Netflix, I recommend watching it.

Enjoying meeting with independent filmmakers and studios throughout the state -- interesting, creative people.

Oh, Cola Town

Starting to grow bored with Columbia -- surprise, surprise.  Threw a dinner party with a friend on Saturday.  We ate gumbo and grilled doves on the back porch, while the most people planted themselves on the couch inside to watch football.  Then it was bars, binge drinking, and drama.  Same conversations, same concerns, same nonsense.  Although I'm growing frustrated with my it environment, this discontent could be a good thing.  Having exhausted Columbia's unchanging and unchangeable social scene, there's nothing to distract me from work, the gym, and books.

The weekend was not a total wash.  Spent the warm Saturday afternoon working on a paper that I'm publishing.  I found a booth in a coffee shop, watched the flow of busy people, and turned and molded phrases in my mind.  I believed that academia had beaten any pleasure I might take in writing out of me, but I truly enjoyed the exercise.  Still don't want to teach.

On Sunday afternoon, with a slight hangover, I shot doves (or at least shot at them) out on the small track that's left of my late grandfather's farm.  The rest was sold last year.  Not much was flying, but it was a warm, beautiful afternoon.  After the hunt, I went home and wrote for the rest of the evening.

The Pandoodle team is back in town, and we're developing strategies for selling our technology.  Work is good.

2011 Gamecocks

Thus concludes the 2011 Gamecocks football season, and how wonderfully it ended.  Eleven wins in one season, a new record for the fighting gamecocks' football program.  SEC sports have become one of the pleasures of moving back to South Carolina, and I am ready for the baseball season to begin in February.  I have no use for basketball.

Sore as beejesus after starting to workout again.  Ready for the team to return from various holiday destinations so that together we can generate more momentum at Pandoodle.

Hello, 2012

The last four months have been rife with transitions and changes, and while I have not yet documented them, I have decided to write more frequent, shorter posts.  To ring in 2012, I am sharing my New Year's resolutions:

1. Give 'em hell at work
2. Make a pile of money
3. Move into my own place
4. Get into shape

My resolutions have regressed.  Instead of goals lofty or specific, I am now pursuing ends that most twenty-eight year-olds should have already accomplished.

New Year's was a hoot with a karaoke party awash with champagne at Alekapalooza 2012.  Great fun, interesting conversations, and not one glass broken.

In other news, I purchased a new car on Friday.  It's a 2011 VW Golf TDI.  When people ask the dreaded question "Have you ever been in love?", I can now answer, "Yes."  There are no finer modes of transportation than horses, diesel engines, trains, and speed boats.  There is no mode worse than sailing.

Two weeks ago, Pandoodle opened its first office in Columbia in IT-oLogy on the corner of Gervais and Sumter.  We are on the ground floor in an area know as the fishbowl or human aquarium.  Its glass curtain windows separate the long narrow office from the sidewalk, and there is no where to hide from public view, which I enjoy.  It gives provides a mild distraction, which helps me to focus (I do my best work in noisy bars), while offering free advertising for Pandoodle on a busy corner.  I pace from one end of the office to the next while making sales calls, mirroring the pedestrians outside, and from my desk, I have a view of the old oaks and tombstones in the graveyard of Trinity Cathedral.  I recognize the graves and monuments of many of my ancestors, a personal momento mori.  Keeping in mind that death awaits intensifies the sweetness and grief of living; it offers a touchstone and perspective for all priorities.  If the soul is not immortal -- that is, if it doesn't exist as a qualified and individual personality (which is problematic since temporal events can alter personality.  Is one's soul before and after a lobotomy as different as the person?) that survives after the body dies and rots -- then death can bring nothing else but oblivion, an empty peace.  If it the soul does exist, crucial questions such as what form it takes, what it does, its intent, and all sorts of questions that cannot be answered without revelation truthfully thwart further discussion of this topic.  But if there is an afterlife, I hope that it's such a grand disappointing mess as the soul's instance in manflesh.  I hope.