Mr. President, would you join our Art Directory

Years ago I met a painter in Fells Point named Davis. He's plays chess in the dive bars and calls me "Mr. President." I reply, "Well hello Mr. Secretary." These introductions are the continuation of a joke that began five years ago. The joke involved me winning the Mega-millions, buying an island, starting a government and declaring nuclear war. Money is nice, but going down in history as the only other country to detonate a nuclear weapon in a time of war (on another uninhabited island, no one dies) is worth the cool millions it would take. Davis is a painter of photorealistic skill. His oil paintings (those he keeps anyway) cover his house. They hang on all exposed walls, even inside closets. He asked me for the fifth time to join a directory for local artists in Baltimore. I'm reluctant to place my name on anything, but now I think it might be time to be more open to it. The directory is located at http://www.baltimoreartsdirectory.com./

Absurdist Fiction

Why does Absurdist Fiction have to be for the scholar? The concept of writing stories in this wholly imaginative state intrigues the (a gross bile liquid) out of me. So why get all high brow about it? I don't want to much intrpretation, just let the guy by a bug. Surprize, it's Kafka's - The Metamorphosis, but you knew that. The idea that this form of literary fiction can be funny and creepy and entertaining should be embraced and then allowed to roam free. I don't think we need to think about it so much. I've read Tom Stoppard's - Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, but when I was much younger and didn't have the feel for such literature yet. Now I can read this book and boil down to its roots, but I'd rather stare at it, take it in and see it for the simply weird ass tree it is.

User Testing, the site editor

When I started reading about how user testing and how most people don’t fully understand how things work, and yet muddle through them, I thought “well no s%@t.”

This is human nature, at least in this C student culture we've got. We don’t care how it works so long as it does. Ask your average person where water comes from and they’ll probably say, “ the pipes,” or “the water company.”

This wasn’t a revelation to me. I sure it's not to you either. I figured most people only scan web pages, because no one really cares about something they can’t benefit from.  They are trying to find out if this will work for them. That is why websites with no entertainment value are rarely looked at beyond small clans of counter culture emo-geeks who like being different as a way to feel special, but hey it works for them and it beats the alternative. Who am I to judge. Having said that I expected this from user testing I must conclude that I would still use it in a heartbeat. I’m to close to my own website to judge its user merit with objectivity. I need an editor to go over it and find the typos and flow problems. This makes my site better and that’s the bottom line.