"Bill Murray & Wes Anderson (at Cannes) by Andrew H. Walker(Getty Images)

What we have here are two different, excellent uses of fame. 

Wes: I have achieved success and acclaim! I can wear expensive suits! 

Bill: I have achieved success and acclaim.  I CAN WEAR WHATEVER I WANT. I CAN HOLD HANDS WITH MY DIRECTOR. I CAN SHOW AFFECTION AND/OR SCORN AS I SEE FIT. I AM BEYOND THAT WHICH CONCERNS THE REST OF YOU, THAT WHICH PLAGUES YOUR DREAMS AND CONSUMES YOUR EVERY WAKING HOUR.  TIME IS BUT A WINDOW. DEATH IS BUT A DOOR. 

BILL MURRAY IS."

I'm with Bill on this one.

I'm there.

Life at the office has been crushing lately. Budgets keep getting cut and everyone is asked to act out the cliché, "Do more with less." My solo office began with less, so doing more with even less is difficult at best. Soul-crushing is a more apt description.

My starting salary nearly five years ago was pretty sweet. Since then, it's been cut each year while the benefits slipped away. The largest pay cut comes in the number of hours I must work now to chip away at an overbearing workload. Every day I work 12 hours instead of eight means another 30% cut in daily pay, and some days 12 hours is optimistic. If my work day rises to 14 hours, it's a 43% cut.

Yesterday, the office kicked off Memorial Day weekend by closing at 2:30. I left just after 6 loaded down with time-sensitive work to finish at home during the "holiday." I'm about to begin that on this beautiful Saturday morning, but wanted to unload here for a second for all of you to enjoy.

The frustration has to go somewhere, right?

Look for Julie's art to take over the South very soon. It won't be long before everything south of the Mason-Dixon is quilted or cozied and resting on some frilly thing, probably delivered in a snazzy handmade tote. She may even dress you up.

My wife is clever and talented, which makes her invincible in most situations. I'm just happy (and lucky) that I get to build things for her upon request (except the deck, I know dear) and stand at her stand. She is a great woman who makes me a better person (except for this old man back pain I'm suffering at the moment.

something something pinched nerve I probably won't sleep ow

Her custom sewing table isn't finished, set at an ergnomically correct 26 inches to match her seated height, but the healthy skeleton has come to life. Some sanding, some stain, a few finishing touches et voila. My back tells me I lost a few hit points today, but the day is mine! My manhood leveled up with the purchase of a circular saw to go with all of that lumber we loaded up on the borrowed Honda Pilot and applied my newfound power to produce this!

Good Luck Julie! I love you!

"Neil Gaiman Addresses the University of the Arts Class of 2012"

Great advice for artists (and isn't everyone an artist at the work they love to do?). Watching Gaiman's address is a worthy investment of 20 minutes.

"Thrown to the Wind

Beijing-based artist Wang Zhiyuan piece entitled Thrown to the Wind ascends 36 feet into the air. Zhiyuan’s tornado of plastic waste is a reminder of the trash that overwhelms his hometown and it’s surrounding environment. It pretty much speaks to anyone - the reality is that we are all living with it the effects of non-dispoable waste.

The very second I saw this I thought of Shel Silverstein and Sarah Sylvia Cynthia Stout, the girl who wouldn't take the garbage out. Don't remember it? Here you go.

Discovered via the always captivating Things Organized Neatly.

Out here in the daylight my OCD is pointing out every single speck of dust or skin or crumbs on my MacBook. Gross, and distracting.

We started out with Harper's dad (Julie's brother) Jamie grilling burgers by the river underneath the Walnut Street Bridge that holds pedestrians strolling back and forth over the Tennessee River. The Hunter Museum of American Art stands guard on the south bank and a carousel greets visitors to the north shore.

Now, Harper and the others are splashing in the fountains spraying up from the ground beside the ring of spinning wooden horses. Wild animals surround the fountain watching children and grownups play. Elephants and horses, a giant sea turtle, and a lion stand at eternal attention in concrete around the water.

The morning was overcast this morning and looked like rain, but blue sky chased the gray clouds away and left a beautiful day in their wake. As usual, we didn't want to leave the house and, following another pattern, we are having a good time now that we're out and about.

I think we've got some great photos from the day. Harper was dressed as a fairy or something--all wings and flowers--and smiling from ear to ear like a little girl on her first birthday. She may grow on my yet.

Coolidge Park is a pretty great place. Strange, but I think this is my first time here since it opened to the public years ago. What is it now? Five years? Ten? Maybe more. It's a gorgeous here by the water and smells like laughter washed in coconut oil and chlorine. Lots of wet people running and giggling in the sun while others sit watching and smoking cigarettes in the shade.

A bearded man with long hair and a hippie's bald spot sets his Bible down to watch children play and smile. Two boys in khaki pants and oversized golf shirts soaked to the bone. Over in the field, we saw two of the whitest guys south of the Canadian border trying to look cool while their shoulders redden in the sun.

Julie is taking her shift as photographer chasing our baby niece through the water. I saw a soaking Jordan astride an elephant a moment ago, his sister Kat on a horse. All of them are damped to soaked whether they are wearing bathing suits or their clothes.

Oops, I looked down for a few minutes too long and lost my family. I tracked them down again by the carousel. I sat down on a metal bench with bits of blue rubbery paint peeling off and almost immediately lost sight of them again. From outside, I can barely see them through the dark tinted glass protecting the painted horses from the elements during the day and vandals at night.

A sign on the carousel building says Park Rules Prohibit:

• Alcoholic Beverages without Permit
• Other Intoxicants
• All Terrain Vehicles
• Camping
• Entrance to Closed Areas
• Pets
• Plant Removal or Destruction
• Skateboards
• Swimming
• Vending without Permit
• Solicitation without Permit
• Motorized Vehicles on Trails Except Wheelchairs
• Bicycles in Plaza Area
• Roller Blades in Plaza Area

The lights and mirrors of the merry-go-round spin inside. There goes an elephant and a lion, horses of course. Was that a llama? A bunny and an ostrich with its name "Oliver" painted on his side. A giant house cat and a tiger forever chasing a giraffe. Even a pig.

That reminds me we have two pork shoulders to prep and season to put on the smoker tomorrow. It's been months since we've slow-cooked any pork and I'm looking forward to it.

Chattanooga, nestled in the crook of the Tennessee River at the foot of Lookout Mountain, is a gem in the South. I hope to move to a home well outside of the city--any city--some day, but have no desire to wander too far from this area I've always known as home.

What I was trying to say is that at 40 years old I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I love most of what I do for a living, but loathe other parts of my work. I get to do a lot of writing and designing while collaborating with lots super smart colleagues. What's not to like? The crushing workload and immense sense of responsibility. The perfectionist overachiever in the clawing from the pit of my guts screaming that I will accept nothing less than overwhelming success.

Yes, I set high standards for myself. Yes, I have a lot of work to do. But that comes again tomorrow. Not today. For this day I am trying to focus on myself and my family, to regroup and recuperate and relax.

I really need to relax.

Photo found at Treesong's Blog

The perpetual churn of the news cycle is collapsing on itself like a dying star. The density increases until its own gravity crushes itself to become a black hole and suck the life out of everything nearby, even light. Bright becomes dark and all is lost.

That’s what “the news” has become today. A dark vortex that silently lures victims to violent death by extrusion. Neil DeGrasse Tyson describes the experience by its technical term. Spaghettification.

It’s science!

Funny thing, I’m not the only one who thinks news is broken today (yes, that’s a bit of a pun). David Weigel writing for Slate (How “Breaking News” Broke the News) also notes today that the concept of breaking news is broken.

Don’t let them.

They come in many forms and may arise from the death of a loved one, from those we have wronged, or from those who wronged us. Sometimes these modern apparitions come flooding back in the form of blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, invoked with the click of a link.

We scream at the hapless victims in horror movies. “Don’t open the door!” They never listen and the ghost consumes them. Likewise, our brain screams at our fingers not to click the link. Of course, we don’t listen either. We follow the link, throwing open the door as if inviting a vampire into our home allowing him to come and go as he likes and taking victims at will.

A ghost began chasing our family today, but we are luckier than those fools on movies and TV. If life was like an episode of Supernatural, we would know how to kill the ghost. We could chop off the vampire’s head. If we were smarter, we wouldn’t open doors in the first place by following links that invoke spirits from a haunted past. If we do slip and allow a ghost back into our lives, we have the awesome power to push it back out again and we don’t need even salt or fire or mysterious incantations to do it.

When I was younger and slinging medical supplies on a hospital shipping dock I dreamed about writing for a living. One day during lunch I was flipping through the local newspaper and an ad in the classifieds called to me. Reporter Wanted. I got the job as a writer for that same weekly newspaper and thought I had achieved my goal. I began to draw a salary by listening to people and sharing their stories about local events. Many of those events were boring government meetings, but hey, living the dream, right?

What I found was that when I began to write for a living, I stopped writing for me. After crawling back to my cave after work to try to write, my brain was mush. After spilling gallons of creative juice at work writing about the things I have to write about I often lacked the willpower to press on and write about topics I want to write about.

I still do.

Several areas interest me and draw out my passion, and that’s what it’s really about. One cliché says, “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.” That isn’t exactly true. It’s all work, and all work—everything from building spreadsheets to cleaning your house—has the potential to be art. It’s still work, but it can be work you hate or work you love.

“The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” —John Milton, Paradise Lost

It’s time for me to stop wallowing and whining about how limited my precious time is and begin to measure it out differently. It’s easy to reach for ridiculous examples of how people used time wisely. Thomas Edison. Albert Einstein. What does the president’s schedule look like? Anyway, I want to point out some examples that are a little more down to earth. Let’s keep it real, shall we?

In my previous post, I mentioned two people who inspire me: Colleen Wainwright (@communicatrix) and Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies). Here are two more:

• John Moltz (@moltz) tops this short list because he recently launched a Very Nice Website to write about stuff he likes, which he says will include issues such as “media criticism, general technology, science fiction, comic books, humor, baseball, competitive macramé and yachts.” Congratulations John!

• John Gruber (@gruber) writes at Daring Fireball and is one of the writers I’m not willing to cull from my list of must-reads. His site is simply the best source for a portion of the tech world. Make it part of your daily routine. Add it to your RSS feed and buy a t-shirt when they’re on sale.

These people, among many others, inspire me for a couple of reasons. First, they are terrific writers. The best of the best in my opinion. Second, they were not only able to shift their careers to focus on their passions, but they had the sack to do so (you too Colleen!).

Note: I know quitting your job isn’t the answer. Quitting your job isn’t the answer! Sometimes though, it may be the right goal. It isn’t my solution today, but it’s a good goal.