7 Observations on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [Guest Post]

By Jonathan Baker

My brother wrote this on Facebook and I felt compelled to share. Happy Friday!

Musings from watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the original series):

1. Apparently the word “mondo” used to be cool.
   
   
2. I have no idea why Shredder and Krang work together. They hate each other, and don’t seem to need each other.
   
   
3. Shredder seems to think the only thing standing between him and world domination is 4 teenage turtles. I think he overestimates his abilities.
   
   
4. You know the episode is about to end when everyone starts eating pizza.
   
   
5. Bebop and Rocksteady both wear turtle shells on their uniforms. Is that to signify how many turtles they’ve killed?
   
   
6. I’ve yet to meet a reporter who wears the same jumpsuit to work everyday.
   
   
7. I am a dork.

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Jonathan Baker

Today’s guest blogger is my brother. I agree he is a dork. Apparently he’s been watching TMNT lately. Among other things, he’s good at online marketing and started a brewing venture with his friends in Atlanta called Monday Night Brewing.

“After 541 Years in Nashville” (Letter Art Project)

Here’s the result of my Nashville Letter Art Project: “After 541 Years in Nashville.”

I asked folks to send me letters and answer the following question. After so many years in Nashville, what did you learn?

I added up the collective experience you mailed in and it came out to 541 years. I’ve been fascinated how letter writing contrasts usual writing on the web. Letters are one-to-one, intimate and powerful. I wanted to tap into this depth.

I was thinking I’d make a poster, but I wanted all the letters to be easily read in narrative form. All images are Share Alike if you want to use any for your own project. Thanks everyone for the letters!

Check it out.

Dear Nashville, write me letters so I can make you some sweet art?

I dreamed up this Nashville lettering-writing art project and now I need your help!

Coud you write me a letter? I’ll write you back in the form of digital art you can print out and hang on that blank wall in your bathroom. The prompt is:

After [number] years in Nashville, I learned _______.

The above image is a quick example of how I’ll build the art. I’ll add up the years from your sentences to name the work. So it might be called “After 324 Years in Nashville” if y’all decide this work needs some love.

I’ve been thinking of ways to encourage a deeper level of dialogue on the Internet. In the world of sharing for hundreds or thousands at the speed of a tweet, sometimes depth gets lost.

I wanted to engage in something personal, direct and rare: like letter writing. 

Letter writing is the new jam like vinyl. Turn off Facebook for the night, light a candle and feel the creative freedom. When you write in a new way, you’ll learn new things about yourself.

You don’t need to currently live in Nashville, as long as you’ve spent at least a year here. Just tell me something that’s true to you. Write as many of the sentence prompts as you’d like.

It can be personal, dark, funny, general or about whatever you’d like. Below are all the details you need. If you have a question, post it in the comments.

Please and Thank You!

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How to Participate

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1. Write me a letter!

Please send me a stamped letter by Friday 9/30 to participate.

1. Include one or more sentences in this format: 
   
   After NUMBER year(s) in Nashville, I learned _______ .
    
2. Write in your own handwriting on white, line-free paper.
3. Sign your name only as you’d like it to appear publicly.
4. Send your letter to:

Nate Baker
1414 17th Avenue South
Nashville, TN 37212

2. Tell others so the art is super sweet.

Please consider re-posting this on your blog and/or sharing this on facebook/twitter/diaspora/qwikster so I have a decent stack of letters, and therefore a sweet looking piece of artwork to share back with y’all. Something like…

RT @nathanTbaker: Dear Nashville, write me letters so I can make you some sweet art? http://natene.ws/letter-art

3. Get digital art.

I’ll license the work under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. It’ll likely be a poster-sized pdf you can print out.

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UPDATE: Here’s the result of my Nashville Letter Art Project: “After 541 Years in Nashville”

Should I join Google+?

The new social networking site from Google, Google+, promotes segmenting shares and potentially lowers your reach to smaller audiences, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It all depends on your goal.

On Facebook or Twitter, most people share to all their friends or even the world. It all depends how you use the tool, but as a general rule, Facebook Lists are inferior to Google+ Circles as far as the functionality of sharing to specific groups.

Google+ as a medium can encourage intimacy and depth by restricting reach. What is your goal of being on a social network? If you don’t have a goal, then don’t join. If you can pinpoint a goal, join and try it out.

If your goal is to share a message with as many people as possible, the answer is easy. Join Google+ and all major networks that allow you to broadcast your message.

Do you want to keep up with your family and friends? Then see where your friends are and try out a place with the best features. That may be Facebook for now (unless you invite all your close friends to Google+). Wink.

What’s my goal? I want to explore online connections with fewer amounts of friends in a deeper, more contextually way that throwing my random thoughts out to the masses. I see a trend towards over sharing and we’re loosing the power that comes from a private one-on-one connection. A letter. A circle of 5, 4, 3, 2 or 1.

That’s why I’m still on Google+. The reason may change of course as it often will, but that’s my current goal.

Weekstart comes after the Weekend

I’ve been playing with the idea of “Weekstart.”

Just as the weekend is the last two days of the week, weekstart is the first two: Monday and Tuesday. During the weekstart I block out any commitments after work for both Monday and Tuesday night.

See, I’ve been asking too much of my weekends. During the week I find peace in knowing I have time over the weekend to do item A, and then I add item B, then item C and D and E…

When the weekend rolls around, my expectations are that I can draw energy from alone time, spend tons of time with friends, exercise, catch up on sleep, go to church, work on chores, work on creative pursuits and catch up on email all in the same weekend.

Although this is all possible to do in one weekend, when I place unreasonable expectations on any chunk of time, my energy is divided and I’m left defeated and wanting by Monday morning.

It’s time for me to set manageable expectations for my weekends. Since a majority of my friends are available on weekends, it makes sense to make people a priority then.

So when do I expect to do the rest of the things that are itching the inside of my head? To answer this question, I created Weekstart.

If someone wants to watch a movie while I’m doing laundry over the weekend, I can watch a movie and still know my laundry will get done during my upcoming weekstart.

If someone wants to watch a movie on Monday night during the weekstart while I’m doing laundry, I can set expectations and already feel tied to my friends after fully engaging over the weekend.

During Weekstart I can work on the most pressing things I need to do to stay zen for the upcoming week whether it’s…

• laundry
• my weekly beard trim
• prayer
• planning my week
• kicking off the week with great sleeping patterns 
• remembering who I am
• grocery shopping
• cleaning my room
• walking
• my inbox
• knocking out a project
• drawing energy from being alone

Productivity writer David Allen recommends a time for upper-level planning tasks in what he calls a “Weekly Review.” I was a fool for thinking I could just add this as another task for my already booked weekends.

Setting expectations for my time doesn’t need a fancy name of course—it’s just more fun. I’m finding anything that’s a priority needs a home.

Creative Date Ideas #1: The “Gift Card Date”

Find all the gift cards lying in your purse or stacked in the back of your wallet. Combine them and choose your adventure. It’s inexpensive, and the restrictions create a game-like challenge.

Are you going to buy a game or movie at Target, or do you need to save the Target card for food since that would leave you with only Starbucks muffins for dinner? Or… do you really like muffins? (Not recommended for a first date of course.)

—Got to go. Off to see what the girl found in her purse!

Is your writing more original if you read others less?

A few of my friends have said not reading others makes his or her writing more original. They’re not copying anyone so his or her work is original, yeah?

Bollocks.

Reading widely makes you a more original writer. Let’s start with what makes one a competent writer. Professional writers speak in a unified voice when they say you become a better writer by writing and reading more.

Stephen King in “On Writing” writes “if you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

Reading is a necessity. Yes you could be highly influenced by what you read, but this too is necessity. In the longterm, reading widely makes you more original. Reading a lot “offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn’t, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page.”

The idea of originality is tied to context. Something isn’t original unless it’s different from what’s been done before. You need to know what’s been done before, before you can be deviant.

Warren Ellis in “Do Anything: Thoughts on Comics and Things” describes collective creativity in terms of an ideascape, or where all creative thoughts live. He argues the more you hang out in this creative space, the more likely you can see what is left to be done.

It’s this “place where everything connects to the same central ocean. Where we all share the same strange air. Where unthinkable complexity becomes visible, speakable, drawable. Where we can see the paths through the jungle that others have trod, and can see where they’ve crossed, and can see what foliage has not yet been trailbroken.”

You’ve got to first explore to see what is left to be explored. You need to read widely if you expect your words to be original.

All artists are apprentices to those before them. Kirby Ferguson in “Everything is a Remix” quotes Henry Ford on the idea that inspiration is a culmination of all men’s work.

I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.

So, if you’re an aspiring writer and you think reading other works is going to make you less original, I can think of one way you could create a completely original work based on this logic.

1. Find a newborn.
2. Dump them in a cave to be raised by wolves without human interaction.
3. Hope they create language, the tools to transfer language and then a story.

If you’re still alive by that time, you’ll have a completely original story—well if there’s something about your kid’s cave painting that hasn’t been done before.

Let’s play irl Four Square on a ship

See this pirate ship thing in Centennial Park? Take a look from the top.



It’s perfect for Four Square—not the social network. NERD. Put that phone in your pocket. It’s time to mingle and sweat in a competitive setting. I’m talking about some In Real Life (irl) Four Square. I’ll bring the chalk and a ball that bounces. You in?

Wednesday’s a great day, as once it gets dark you can walk over to Movies in the Park if you want some more adventure. Here’s how to find the ship in Centennial Park. Meet you at 6 p.m.

RSVP for a good time and if you want to work on your fear of moderately high things.

Road Trip Discussion Topics

1. How would modern architecture change if dinosaurs still roamed the earth?
2. How would those in your car rise to political power during a zombie uprising and instate a philosopher king among you?
3. How long would it take the members of your car to find a Con Man you don’t know, then con him?
4. If the members in your car immediately quit their jobs and pooled $15,000, how would you start a profitable business in a month with your combined talents?

What would you add to this list?

Homebrewed Recipes for Monday Night Brewing

My brother and his partners are launching a new line of beer in Atlanta called Monday Night Brewing. I’ve seen him work on this for years. It’s quite, quite exciting.

The recipes have been finalized, and I recently was able to secure a few beers before they’re available to the public—whatever, jealous much? All you need is a brother who brews beer like it’s his business.

They’re leading with some incredibly tasty stuff. You can’t just taste it the first time with a bowl of mac-n-cheese. This is craft beer. Get your fancy forks out. Colby and I decided new beer deserves new food. We invited some homebrewing friends over to experiment on. Colby came up with the following recipes…

Drafty Kilt Onion Rings paired with Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale

We discovered Monday Night Brewing’s Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale tastes amazing with some onion rings. We of course had to use Drafty Kilt to flavor the onion ring bater and dipping sauce. This was the right decision.

For the pizza, we infused Monday Night Brewing Eye Patch Ale directly into the crust. I almost called it a day and carried that dough into a romantic setting, but we had plans.

In true Scotch-style, we heartied up the dish with meat. We had some excess Jalapeño Bacon Explosion on hand. Now the Eye Patch Ale is “a unique take on the American IPA – sweet caramel, citrusy flowers and swashbuckling adventure abound with every pint.” Good thing too, as it was an incredibly refreshing counterpoint to a dish involving a bacon-wrapped log of pork. Pirate-up and give what we call Bacon Beer Pizza a shot.

Use your favorite homebrew or craft beer till you can taste the real stuff down in Atlanta.

Bacon Beer Pizza paired with Eye Patch Ale

You can follow the last and first leg of the race for my brother’s brewing adventures at MondayNightBrewing.com and on twitter. Did I mention I’m really excited!? Who wants to plan a road trip to Atlanta?