Ekmark, Ullrich, & Dollars

I’m outside one cold evening around dinner time walking past restaurants and cafes with no intention of going in.

One in particular I had never seen before. Its no wonder - this restaurant is tiny. It could barely fit a family comfortably for Thanksgiving dinner. However tonight it is perfectly warm, candle-lit, and chatty inside, with guest’s tables inches away from the next. And its packed. Outside are three guests, all on their cell phones. Presumably it is too loud inside to have a cell phone conversation? Or maybe it is too socially intimate to carry on a conversation with someone only digitally present? In any case, how do you tear yourself away from the intimacy inside to engage digitally outside, alone? What do you say?

Let your napkin say it for you.

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De-optimizing

viafrank:

If the 20th century was about optimizing everything, I bet the 21st is about de-optimizing certain things. By de-optimizing, I mean making decisions about what is important, what is useful, and what is a distraction. Then, making the distractions less accessible, harder to get to, and more difficult to embrace. Think of it as a digital Walden. You optimize the important stuff, and de-optimize the superfluous.

It’s weird to say your life needs more friction. But I think mine does. Distractions are so easy to get to, there’s almost no good reason not to partake. Unless I count the one big reason: we all have big, important, useful work we could be doing.

I have essays to write, designs to finish, sketches to make, and friends and family to attend to. I’ve got enough meat for most of my day, and to gobble up more cotton candy than I need isn’t just dumb, it’s down right destructive. And I’ll be damned if that little bit of time I have left over is going to be devoted to fluff that isn’t nourishing. Give me fun, but give me substance.

What if my bookmarks were hard to get to? What if I stripped all the links out of the article I’m reading? What if I had to solve an algebra problem before jumping into Google Reader? Would I go? What if every time I turned on my TV, it told me that the average American spends 2 months watching television per year? Would I watch? What if I created a user account on my Mac with harsh parental controls called “Work”? (Ironic.) We can all do this on a personal level, but there could be whole businesses built on de-optimizing and short-circuiting distractions.

This might be the kind of curmudgeonly ranting associated with older people. But I’ll be damned if making harsh decisions that some things just aren’t worth your time isn’t the sign of an adult. Time to put on the grown-up pants.

Go ahead and believe there’s a such thing as a life well-wasted. We’re put here to be productive, not distracted.

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Lifestyle/Life Style/Life-style

Ekmark, Ullrich, & Dollars is pleased to debut a new work: a diet built specifically around the two major nutritional groups: Trader Joe’s Peanut-Butter-Filled Pretzels and Stimulants.

Here’s the low down:

Go to your local coffee house and stock up on beans of your choosing. Next, swing my a nearby college campus and stock up on Adderall. Finally, run over to Trader Joe’s for the afore-mentioned pretzels.

Each weekday should be something like this: Coffee, Adderall, Coffee, Pretzels, Coffee, Midnight pretzel binge

Weekends should commence on Friday afternoons and be something like this: Beer, Beer, Grease and sugar-laden binge breakfast, Coffee, Beer, Beer, Beer, Beer, Grease and sugar-laden binge breakfast, Coffee, Pretzels [end weekend]

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solo e sola.

Just found out sales of single cigarettes are illegal in 14 states, because it is thought it would lead to increased smoking. Probably.

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sketches done furiously over a whiskey 7-up at the rabbit hole

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Bicycle Racks

I’m interested in pursuing a rogue / guerilla project of installing bicycle racks in Williamsburg. One or many functional installations. Found-objects, heavy planters, and street sign posts immediately come to mind, but these are obvious. Any ideas?