Oh, you crazy bastards. A sewer-based broadband ISP? For free?! LOL!!!

The first painting to be sold from the latest series has just left my hands and entered the hungry whims of the US Postal service, I wish it luck and many thanks to my buyer, Mr. David S. Get them while they're hot people!

April 7, 2007 Press Release

On April 6, 2007 Zaadzsters Paul Salamone & Gwen Bell completed the paperwork to register their new start-up coaching and design company, Plunge Artist.

Building on their more than 10 years combined experience in the field, the founders now provide services for new and nascent small businesses and individuals ready to plunge into the world of the web and beyond in a graceful, informed and supported way.

Services offered include: 

• Entrepreneurial coaching
• Vision mapping
• Branding
• Logo and website design
• Graphics and Illustration
• Print Promotion
• Marketing and web copy
• Training (Wordpress, Basecamp, blog set-up)
• Consulting (sustainable business practices, GTD, streamlined systems)

Contact gwen(at)plungeartist(dot)com or paul(at)plungeartist(dot)com for more information on how we can help you grow your business and brand.

Plunge gracefully,
Gwen & Paul

Hey ya'll, my friends at Buddhist Geeks have been nominated for a Blogger's Choice Award, click here to vote for the geeks! [registration required]

A friend back east has a baby, sends photos. Knowing I won't see this friend for at least another year, I try to project the baby's crumpled image one year into the future, when hair has grown and locomotion sets in. This reminds of the baby across the street of my childhood home, who went from foetus to fourteen in the blink of an eye. One minute: blanket nest and cooing parents. The next: drinking Mr. Boston in the woods and thinking about girls. "They" don't grow up so fast; our eyes do. When I was fourteen I stood in my second-story bedroom and watched my brothers play basketball. The baby had a cousin over, she was fourteen too. Soon we were standing awkwardly in the neighbor's kitchen, watching an LL Cool J video. She had a Tasmanian Devil shirt on, I had Cross Colors. We didn't kiss. My neighborhood was a constant riot of soft-balled sports and trips to the toy store. People were putting bleach in water guns to stain other peoples' T-shirts; crushed beer cans dotted the grass by the post office, and every third night the white trash family had an argument. Greg and I collected for the newspaper: screen doors were slammed and dogs barked from behind plastic-covered couches. This was when I noticed that the older houses were made of wood, and the newer ones aluminum siding. The woodhouse people tipped better. The alumunim siders were easier to approach. When I was twenty-two the local energy company cut away three branches from the maple tree in our front yard. Suddenly, raw sky was invading the shade-cave of the front yard which had provided our imaginations with shelter for over a decade. Greg cried, Chris wailed: Jon bounced a basketball and stared at the netted sky through our adjustable hoop. Now the spaghetti sauce falls on deaf nostrils: we live in separate cities and play through the muted conversations of email. Babies sleep and slumber and get born anew: the trains roll on and the beer cans crush the lips of younger generations. And I am alive.

Grrrrrrreat post on Virginia Tech by Gwen on Buddhist Geeks today, check it out!. May all beings be safe, and informed....

Frankly, I don't know what to think about Stuart's recent -- and some might say over-blown -- rant against "personal development for smart people" blogger Steve Pavlina. [UPDATE: Stuart also did a video response, available here -- subscription required until they repost to YouTube] Like most Zaadsters, I've been reading Pavlina for the last year or so, and have found his clear, pragmatic approach to personal development to be of tremendous value. He's a certified geek, and seems like a really nice guy to boot. And I wouldn't be anywhere without such classic posts as "How to Become an Early Riser" and, ahem, "10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed". And even though Pavlina's been on a New Age of kick for the last couple months (influenced in no doubt by being married to a psychic), I believe he deserves a lot better than to be labelled "every bit as dissociated as the [Virginia Tech] murderer" by Stuart. Stuart bases this accusation on his perception that Pavlina is championing the subjective ego as the creator of all reality in Pavlina's recent comments on the VaTech slayings, "Subjective Reality and Nonviolence". In reponse to Steve's statement that "You are the dreamer of this reality. Why are you having this dream?" Stuart replies:

"NO. The ego, the level of subjectivity that craves, that desires, that conspires to acquire power, status, and success IS NOT THE DREAMER OF REALITY. The Infinite subject is, [sic] the Ground of All Being."

What's striking about Stuart's critique is that, if one seeks out what Pavlina actually means by "subjective reality" (found here in his Q&A on subjective reality), we find a worldview strikingly similar to Stuart's:

In subjective reality, “you” have a completely different identity. “You” are the consciousness within which everything exists — time, space, people, places, events… EVERYTHING. You are NOT a human being with a body and a mind. You are consciousness, and there happens to be a human being with a body and a mind within you. So everything you perceive must be interpreted relative to the perspective of consciousness, not from the perspective of any particular body-mind, including the one you identify as your own.

...If that's not a perfect description of the Witness, then I don't know what is. Here's Stuart's version:

The Witness is that which is aware of all that arises, but the Witness itself has no qualities, no location, no characteristics. It is aware of phenomena, it's ever-present, without birth or death, but is aware of birth, death, and everything that goes with the collastomy bag of Being (including Bliss).

Now granted, I think Pavlina's VaTech post is a bad representative of what he's all about. I can see how Stuart (and Ken Wilber, for that matter) could take a couple of Pavlina's more inept turns of phrase on "subjective reality" and confuse it with standard New Age thinking (whatever that is). But why such vitriol? Why accuse Pavlina of such "inflammatory, disgusting commentary" for writing a cogent post which is essentially a call for self-examination and non-violence? The cynic in me would see it as a marketing ploy: Ken and Stuart are so hell-bent on proving the necessity of the Integral Approach that they will blow anything that smells of even a hint of the dreaded Boomeritis entirely out of proportion. It's basic marketing to find an enemy and rally the troops against him, after all. But I know that Stuart's heart is in the right place, and that he wants to make the world a better place, just like Steve. And, to be fair, Pavlina's New Age schtick is getting tiresome. I'll take the lifehacking geek who wrote "Overcoming News Addiction" over Steve the "Lightworker" any day. But why let oneself get so triggered by a blogger? (Yes, I know I'm letting myself get triggered too ;)). I'm going to go out on a limb and say that... Pavlina touched a nerve. Like Pavlina (and myself, and maybe even you), I'm willing to bet that Stuart was not able to feel much "outrage, a desire to see people punished, a sense of addiction to the drama" himself in response to the shootings at VaTech, and I think it scared him. In fact, to Stuart, like Pavlina and myself, I bet that VaTech was primarily something that "just is". And if we are to get angry at anything, it should be towards that terrifying equanimity which prevents us from feeling angry in the first place, at VaTech or any of the other thousands of tragic deaths which occurred that day.

Hey ya'll, if you dug the RGB series from a few months back, you might dig this new set of work now online at IntegralNaked.org (subscription required). Or you can just check it out on Flickr. Special thanks to Corey and Angie for hooking me up with the gig on IN.

From Purple Cow, p. 96:

Marketing is the act of inventing the product. The effort is designing it. The craft of producing it. The art of pricing it. The technique of selling it. How can a Purple Cow company not be run by a marketer?