The boy’s craft table had a ribbon of markers in holders of toilet paper rolls. Mama glued them together in groups of four and six. It’s a nice modular system that the kids decorated with markers.
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OPM.51 Do what?
Describing my job as an OPM is easy and hard — I’m the ultimate middleman.
The architects, contractors, and users bring specific expertise to the project. I take take care of the weird stuff so they can focus on the work.
I navigate the peculiarities of my institution towards a successful outcome.
- Guide the team through the process and the timeline.
- Provide extra feedback during design.
- Chase information the architects can’t find.
- Watch the big picture so let the field guys focus on construction.
- Manage expectations with the user groups.
- Advise the team sidestep mistakes.
- Encourage them towards their best work.
- Celebrate the end.
I don’t bring obvious value, but done right, project succeeds naturally.
~
I’ve been subscribed to Grant Snider for years. His Incidental Comics always brighten the day.
The Daily Overview posts an aerial photo (almost) every day. It’s a regular reminder about the greatness of our world — and our intrusions upon it.
I just stumbled across this brilliant 24 hour comic, The Gaeneviad by Boulet, about an old woman who rescues Zeus, who is thus in her debt. Do yourself a favor and read it!
~
Burnt Pancake, 2022 ~
Thanks for reading!
Justus Pang, RA -
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Lounsbery, Eritherman, Sharpsteen, 1977
A great movie, and one of the few feature films that stayed in the ads-free kids section in Disney+; I’d happily watch it again.
Loved their use of a physical book as a frame throughout the movie; the animators used the page transitions in fun creative ways.
Also loved the imperfections of the animated lines; it breathes life into the movie that is often missing in modern projects.
And of course, I enjoyed the surreal song Heffalump and dance number; the boy seemed a little disturbed by the sequence.
-
At some point, clothing optional won’t be so cute.
he ran into the kitchen without underwear
Mama told me to grab one from the dryerhe ran to the laundry
Mama told me to watch himMake sure he doesn’t pull out all the clothes!
M-A-M-A 我每天是 careful 的!(M-A-M-A I’m careful every day!)
䷱䷠
yellow ears
gold handles
happy tripod -
San Diego, Z to A
- Zoo is the truth. Visit it. Get a membership. Visit it a few times.
- Yes! The carousel started running again that week at Balboa Park after a six month rehabilitation. What a gem! Gorgeous carvings. It has character, which the carousel at Legoland lacks.
- unfortunately, the miniature train at Balboa Park, is uneXceptional.
- We’ll be back next March and with another set of 2-day passes to Legoland. (They charge almost nothing for the second day, aside from the $30 parking charge.)
- Visit the ships at the Maritime Museum. It’s awesome. We spent all day (without even taking the harbour tour). I could not imagine packing myself with a bunch of dudes to explore the world. I hope to return ten years later when they’ll be old enough to savor the exhibits. They also enjoyed the park across the street.
- Unimaginably bigger is the Midway Aircraft Carrier. After the Maritime Museum closed, we walked to this ship and holy hell, that thing is massive. We’ll visit in five years when both kids are old to understand its enormity.
- The years as a project manager of large construction projects taught me the value of money. What we saw ain’t cheap, forty or four hundred years ago.
- Several active warships were docked across the bay. Super-empire!
- Regrettably, the kids (five and nine) aren’t old enough to enjoy art museums. But that’s not so disappointing when it’s a small free jewel box like the Timken Museum of Art.
- Quirky Spanish Village Art Center was also fun, but nerve-wracking while manhandling a five year old to keep him from touching everything.
- Preferably, art should be touched, but that’s not my call in someone else’s studio.
- On the other hand, you can touch the art at the New Children’s Museum. Not cheap ($76 for the four of us), but the Whammock! by Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam is worth every penny. My daughter is aging out of the museum, so it was a bittersweet visit.
- Nighttime festivities at the zoo freed me to wander Balboa Park on my own for two nights (we only bought one adult membership for my wife since it came for coupons for my entries).
- Mingei International Museum was cool. High craft meets high art. Next time I’ll pay to peruse the second floor gallery.
- Lovely to hang out at the May S. Marcy Sculpture Court and Garden. I sketched a few sculptures, eavesdropped on a couple of conversations, and enjoyed the evening as the sun set.
- Kicking it on the the stairs in front of the Timken Museum was a joy as a group of youngsters danced to a bluetooth speaker. I miss living in a real city.
- Jump! One young fellow was lying on the ground. As a middle aged fool, I assumed he was stretching his back. He suddenly twisted himself upside down in a flash.
- I enjoyed a couple of hours at the Natural History museum. I wasn’t into the taxidermy, but stared for a while at bones and hand-drawn botanical illustrations.
- How did he grow up so fast? After the zoo closed, we checked out a moth event outside the Natural History museum. The boy asked great questions for the entomologist. I didn’t realize he was so fluent in English.
- Go to the Fleet Science Center. (According to my coworker who grew up in San Diego)
- For $229, the Balboa Park annual pass (2 adults and 4 kids) is a no-brainer in future visits.
- Even though the AirBNB was in a great location, it was a little grimy. But we had a place to sleep and cook for a week at a reasonable price. It came with fleas.
- Dogs! But the landlord’s dogs were super cute. Our boy Drew During our waits for Dinner. I also started watching Bluey with the kids. It’s Dang great!
- Cute library alert! Vegas libraries are big community centers, so it fun to check out the little University Heights public library. I found a Mutts alphabet book and an illustrated copy of Kipling’s Just So Stories.
- Bordertown Primm has a dead Outlet Mall on the way home. There are only two stores still open with the rest filled with murals. The only reason it hasn’t been abandoned is because it’s attached to a casino. I hope it stays alive, it’s the best rest stop, clean, unused, and air conditioned. Especially since the claw machine gave us a Pickachu for $1!
- A week away from podcasts and writing, though I sketched a little. Before the trip, I suspected that I needed a break. In retrospect I sorely needed it. If you’re not sure, take one.
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Mythologies, Roland Barthes, 1957
I bought this book for freshman rhetoric (or art history?) to fulfill one of my English requirements at Berkeley. I kept the book because loved his essay about professional wrestling and I finally read it over the pandemic.
The book has a surprisingly contemporary feel, since it’s a series of short essays with a deep analysis at the end of the book. In our contemporary era, this would be a collection of posts with an extended coda.
Then again Barthes was French so the essays are deeper than your typical tweet-storm and the closing discussion on semiology was an absolute ass whupping since I haven’t tussled with high theory since 2006.
I’m fortunate to have taken those grad school theory courses before reading that last essay. I don’t remember much from Houston, but I knew just enough to roughly grok his game.
Wikipedia Barthe posits that “mythology” is a second order semiological effect. The “full” Sign of language becomes the “empty” Signifier for myth which is paired with an unspoken Signified to create a new Sign.
The main effect of myth is to distort knowledge in the service of power by making dominant values invisible. Myth makes ideology natural.
In contemporary parlance, mythology hides privilege.
The duty of the mythologist to untangle the web of obfuscation and expose such rhetoric for analysis.
I might be 23 years late to the game, but it was totally worth lugging across the continent and back again.
~
Two years later, my current reading obsession is “ancient wisdom”. Editing this draft reminds me that I need to re-read of this book — the ancients were no less susceptible to corruption than we are today. And if I’m gonna keep writing these notes, I should grab his baton to question today’s mythologies.
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Intelligent ibises intuit iridescent indigo inkblot is irreligious interplanetary impala icon.
The kids created their own “little house” inside the playroom. The fluorescent green circles are teleportation stations between rooms. They debated about making this an amusement park but chose a domestic setting.
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OPM.51 Electronic Erasure
Team,
We’ve updated the documents to reflect the retirement of our Administrator – the Boilerplate Word Documents, AdobeSign Workflows, and AdobeSign Templates.
Along with Letterheads, we also revised the Administrator signature section to be entirely blank so we won’t have to change it again in the future. As such, all AdobeSign templates have been revised to auto populate the Full Name and Title for those sections (like the Consultant or Contractor signature sections).
For the next few weeks, please double check all typical documents and templates – both in the signature section and in the letterheads. If anything slipped through please email me. I’ll jump on it.
Regards,
Justus Pang
Project Manager / Architect
State Public Works DivisionPS: This exercise has been a grim reminder about the ephemerality of our careers. A few months ago, I deleted Debbie from our workflows. Now Ward. The day you retire, someone like me will quietly scrub you off the servers. Give your family a big hug tonight.
~
Some Links
Accented Cinema has been on a run of great videos commenting on movies and life. His last three on Overwork in China, Bad Fight Scenes, and a bad sequal to Journey to the West are all worth watching.
I found Ashlyn via her great series on fountain pens and I’m staying for her joyful weekly newsletter. I grok that some people need tough-love suck-it-up motivation, but I fall on the side of working for the fun of it!
Paula Borchardt tells the story of her desert environs with drawings and words. It’s a weekly reminder that the image of the desert as a dessicated wasteland is only a human mirage from our lack of observation.
Empty Coliseum, Chicago, 1912, Bain News Service ~
Thanks for Reading!
Justus Pang, RA -
They excavated the bathroom during another afternoon expedition in the northwest corner of the natives’ primary dwelling.
he discovered
plastic baby syringes
in a drawer of oddmentsshe dripped
shimmering glass beads
along her forearm䷐䷚
truth lagoon
merit thunder
magic cheeks -
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Chris Columbus, 2001
I only watched this because of my daughter. I was just old enough to miss the book phenomenon, and I couldn’t be bothered to the watch the movies.
So far, it’s done nothing to interest me in reading the books, but I’ll be fine with watching future movies if she insists (tellingly, she hasn’t insisted in the months since we’ve watched it).
She had fun, though as all good readers she was disappointed in some of the changes.
Voldemort is a properly horrific villain. I could only imagine how much more scary this movie would be with modern CG.
But really, I’m realizing I’m an animation fan. Maybe it has something to do with watching very little TV (aside from documentaries) while growing up. Or I just prefer the surreal possibilities of that medium. Or the pure craft of the art.
Real life is magical enough, I don’t feel compelled to watch other humans live their lives on the big screen.
Maybe it’s cause I’m getting older. I feel a slight pressure of time and yet still harbor a desire to develop a deeper subject knowledge in a few cool subjects. The only way to square that circle is to start actively cutting things out.
Like in jazz. I ain’t ever giving up Coltrane, Thelonious, Kind of Blue, or Keith Jarrett’s solo albums. But I’ve recently decided to focus my listening on jazz trios. If it’s not one those greats, there better only be three folks on stage.
Or my recent trend towards avoiding books that are younger than me (Calvino and Murakami excepted), letting the ravages of time simplify my choices.
Then again, I thought I’d do something similar with EDM and Glitch Hop, but it doesn’t seem to have panned out. I’m back to listening to whatever banging noise gets me through work.
Who knows. It’s a time of flux.
It’s always a time of flux.