Getting My MBA

…because the movie career is not working out.

Link:
Devil Bunny Needs a Ham

Warning: presumptious

I can’t really call myself an artist. I am an amateur photographer with more enthusiasm than talent — see? And I design web sites, although this site and the linked site are both using templates I didn’t create.

Before I started trying to be creative, I was afraid of rejection. I thought that was what would really bother me about putting myself out there and exposing myself. Because that’s what it is, you know. And it’s a much more intimate exposure than being unclothed–it’s baring your heart and soul and letting everyone else in on what is going through your head.

It’s scary.

I heard a saying: you’re not a writer (artist/photographer/…) if you like to write. You’re a writer if you can’t keep yourself from writing no matter how hard you try. That’s getting more accurate for me with my photography. I have to take pictures and I have to share them. This is, ironically enough, happening to me as I pursue my business degree.

So now I can no longer hold myself back. And the response is not the dreaded laughter and derision. It’s something worse. It’s nothing.

Nothing?

Yep. Rather than getting a reaction, any reaction, I’m getting nothing. Nobody sees my site. Nobody comments. I’m just out here, all alone, a fire and brimstone preacher shouting to the rocks and tree stumps.

In Organizational Behavior we talked about people’s need to be with people. We talked about the tribes that punished wrongdoing by completely ignoring the offender. It must be awful to see. The person, who no doubt deserves punishment, feels that intense loneliness of not existing. Eventually that person wanders off and dies, alone and broken. One description of Hell, now more powerful to me than ever, is the description of being completely and totally cut off from God and everyone else for all eternity.

It makes me understand why some artists, politicians, celebrities, etc will do anything controversial. It’s for the attention.

Okay, I’ve learned this point. Now please visit my sites, make lots of comments, and send me money. Thank you!

I’m going to be a rebel. Yep. I’m normally a pretty straight-laced, follow the rules kind of guy. But this time, they’ve gone too far. They’ve pushed me beyond what any reaonsable human being should be forced to endure.

My grad school is telling me to buy a Windows PC. bleech, as Mad Magazine would say. What a waste! I’m going to get a free laptop, but it’s going to run Windows?

Well, actually, yes. I’m going to get a MacBook Pro. If I absolutely, positively have to torture myself by running the abomination from Redmond, at least I can do it in a closable window in Mac OSX.

In the bad old days, there used to be a program called Virtual PC. This let you run Windows on a Mac. It was slow and painful, but it worked. You could have Mac goodness most of the time and jump into the slime-encrusted pit of that other thing only when necessary. Did I mention that it was slow?

But now, Macs run on Intel chips. Not only are they seriously fast and competitively priced (for what you get, no stripper models here), but they’ve got all the right stuff to run, well, you know. Apple provides one solution called Boot Camp. This works really well and fast but you have to stop running OSX when you need to go slumming. The better solution, for me, is something called Parallels Workstation. It uses some tricky goodness baked into the Intel processor so Windows thinks it has the computer all to itself. It does what Virtual PC used to do, except it’s way faster. Did I mention that Virtual PC was really slow?

So, being a rebel doesn’t involve a motorcycle, a leather jacket, or flower power anymore. Maybe the punk kids’ll even think I’m cool! Naaaah.