Showing posts with label Bahia de Los Angeles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bahia de Los Angeles. Show all posts

Saturday, April 03, 2010

516. "Strings, Boxes, and Plastic Wrap" A First Poem from the Bahia de Los Angeles

"Strings, Boxes, and Plastic Wrap." First poem written from the trip to the Bahia de Los Angeles, Mexico, with Jules, March 18-26. The PDF can be found here:

http://sites.google.com/site/stokastika2/stringsboxesplasticwrappoem.pdf.

What can I say? This is the first time I am writing in my blog for a long time. This is the first time I am sitting in my room in Goleta--my clean room, I finally cleaned up thoroughly (removing about 500 spiders, I'm sure!) this past weekend--this is the first time in over four months I am not running around like a graduate-student-maniac, and I am purposefully slowing myself down to inspect every thought.

This poem is an example of a slowed-down inspection. My mind invented a poem this morning when I was jogging along the beaches of Ventura, and I managed to hammer it out to some final version a couple of hours later. This poem is a metaphorical comparison of the lifestyles of "first world" and "third world" countries, and the resulting question is: who is more deprived? I feel I have much more to write about with our trip to the Bahia de Los Angeles, except I am feeling unhappy and creatively stifled being here in Santa Barbara. I will continue my travel writings tomorrow.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

520. "Colors Before the Sunrise" A Song? A Poem? A Piece of Vispo? (Plus A Discussion on Vic's Commitment to Cartoons)

"Colors Before the Sunrise" Poem / Song / Vispo in Poetry Format. The PDF of this poem can be found here: http://sites.google.com/site/stokastika2/colorsbeforesunriseSONGPOEM.pdf.


Image displays a typical state of pre-sunrise (dusk, so they call it?!) at the Bahia de Los Angeles, Mexico. Image taken toward the end of March of 2010.

A quick effort toward VISPO for the song-poem "Colors Before the Sunrise."

The end of March seems far off (it's now the end of April). I was in a state of a massive, tangled knot from winter quarter of 2010. I was intellectual roadkill that needed a giant restoration project. But Jules swept me away to his and Duke's place to the Bahia de Los Angeles for a good 8-9 days. It was a much needed calibration. Just crossing the border from the United States into Mexico, venturing into brand new territory for myself (south of San Quintin) opened up my eyes, loosened me up, and brought me into a state of establishing new inner-outer perspectives. The people of Mexico barely had any resources and they made the most of what they had. I noticed that people were more attached to each other simply because they truly needed each other's help... whereas in the United States... it seems like visceral attachment to others has been largely replaced by technology, and so there is not much need to communicate and collaborate with others. We commune with machines instead. For about a week or so I was thankful for some clean water and a flushing toilet. I was surrounded by a land of unfinished and abandoned projects... which kind of felt like my mind... externalized.... Quite soon I started realizing that things in the United States are a bit too easy for our own good and once we get in our habits, it's sooo easy for our minds to take for granted what we have and not realize that we have what we need....

So Jules gave me the best possible present... that even my parents haven't given me for so long.... He swept me away into a foreign land full of empty, serene landscapes and depravity/scarcity of human resources.... His presence allowed my inner self to unravel and untangle a little bit... and re-prioritize.... I largely focused on taking photographs in RAW format (man, I'm officially professional now... well... almost...) and downloading music and photography software... which took me a couple of days (even internet was a scarce resource!). I became a sensual, visual creature, visually absorbing the landscape, ignoring the Spanish (I actually enjoy being in a foreign country where I don't know what the hxll anyone is saying, so I view humans as chattering monkeys and end up only visually processing the landscapes). So I took lots of photographs and soaked up the landscape as much as possible--which was a strange ecosystem indeed. Bahia de Los Angeles is a desert right by an inland Sea of Cortez (hence in my poem "desert's ocean"), which totally threw me off because you don't get these kinds of ecosystems in California (or combinatory ecosystems--desert and ocean right next to each other?!!).

Also when I was down in Bahia de Los Angeles, I figured out how to use my new SANSA mp3 player, and retroactively, I'm quite happy I purchased it. The new versions of the IPOD shuffles are appallingly bad (way too small, no control of audio on the device, forcing you to wear ear buds which hurt my ears in an ergonomic sense). I went on fantastic jogs along the beach and through the salt marsh, even one jog from the LA Bay dumpster site all the way down the hill back to Duke and Jule's house. The final jogs I took were toward the south end of LA Bay toward Larry and Lois' house. There was a lot less traffic (quite a bumpy dirt road!) and the last structures I passed were open-ended houses where squid fishermen were staying... and even a micro squid processing plant. And it was these jogs where the poem/song started formulating. The idea of "Colors Before the Sunrise" came to me in my half-sleep I think on the 4th day of the trip. I told Jules and he liked the title. Then during my last two jogs along the bumpy dirt road, out by the cordone cactus and the spindly cirios and other interesting vegetation structures I was listening to a song entitled "The Passenger" by Iggy Pop (to be honest, I was attracted to the initial melody but I had no affinity with the vocals) . And through this happy backdrop melody (with a few minor chords), I began to formulate my song/poem. It took two jogs along the same road to get the main bulk of the poem worked out (plus a few ideas in my car drive home, back to Riverside and Santa Barbara to start spring quarter). On the last day at the Bahia de Los Angeles, I woke up extremely early in order to have the opportunity to take photographs of the sunrise (which I was procrastinating to do) and last minute images of Duke's neighbor's yard (Carolina's?), which is where the above photograph came from....

I suppose I had been sitting on this song/poem for a while because of my personal epiphanies on how to channel my energy in this society. After my initial experiences in approaching "literary journals" with my poetry and short stories, I had become increasingly frustrated. I talked to Barry Spacks about facing my "string of rejections" with poetry and short stories, and not only that, how literary journals are now failing to respond to the input of work. What a complete waste of my time, waste of my life to endlessly send off pieces of writing to literary journals, only to receive thousands of rejections, and more "no responses." Barry Spacks commented that "things are starting to slip"--that the sacredity of human transactions is vanishing as we interact as if we are in a plasma state as a pinball machine only found at the center of the sun. The Rejected Life is the only life that most writers know nowadays. Barry told me that if he were stranded in the desert for seven days without any food or water... he would crawl to the nearest computer and his death words would be to write a very polite rejection letter to all the people in the world he never had the time to respond to (given that he were an editor of a literary journal), wishing them well, hoping that one day their poetry and short stories would finally find a home. This was so visually striking to me, I hope one day to make a short film featuring Barry and the Rejected Writer Life. Good advice for all his students... in the form of a flick!

After that conversation, which was about a couple weeks ago... how Barry said this society was "slipping" whether it was about even providing a nice or even RUDE rejection letter... it was that moment where I just completely gave up on the idea of submitting my poetry to places (except every once in a while to particular people and specific circumstances). My poetry is published here on this blog. What more could I possibly want? Literary journals are not my venue, not my audience. What is the chance that any literary journal editor would understand the fusion of science, art, creative writing, and human-environmental change? 0.000001%. Sorry, it's a nearly stone-solid truth. Most "creative writers" don't have much comprehension of science, let alone incorporate science into their writing or processing of everyday life. So, whatever. What a waste to deal with people who don't even know how to diagnose your validity and contribution to society.

The other problem is that anyone can be a poet or a writer. Little ten-year old kids can write poems and short stories, let alone little old ladies on their 20th year of retirement who have nothing else to do but sit on their porch and write the 5 billionth poem on the metaphorical representation of sunsets in their lives. Writing is analog. Linear.... But combining writing and art requires one to think spatially-temporally... non-linearly... in essence... right brain left handed. And just through this thought, I am eliminating 90% of the population of storytellers, which consist of linear-thinking, left-brained people who express themselves in writing. And then to combine words with images to tell a story with a consistent set of characters, settings, and plots?! I think I am eliminating 50% of the remaining right brained people. And then for this story to make a contribution to society and the environment? Basically, there is close to no one left. I have no competitition. My Biologically Incorrect Cartoons are so unique that they stick out like an eyesore. And if I want to write a poem... it's gotta be in cartoon format. I can dump most of the rest of my artwork into cartoons. I have my own niche and close to no one having the ability to compete. I just have to keep chugging along and cranking out as many cartoons as possible, while simultaneously building a compilation of emails of people who I know will appreciate the cartoons and can provide editorial advice in the process of making my first few hundred cartoons (before expanding to a subscribed email list service).

Plus, through all the pressures of my Ph.D. committee meeting in February of last quarter... combined with an overstimulating environmental history course with Dr. Peter Alagona, Terra and Buz became fully resurrected into my mind... except this time, it was a near-completely visual format (rather than a long manuscript). I came to grips with the notion that the Question Reality manuscript was not a failure. My Question Reality manuscript will never die. It is the fundamental baseline for all else to grow with my cartoons. I will give interested folks a piece of my mind in mentally digestible cartoons (a little bit every day), that will create a continuum of experience form the QR manuscript to my acquired knowledge as of today....

The other thing I noticed in the publishing world is that to approach a publisher (for writing), you need a literary agent. But to approach a publisher of independent or alternative cartoons? You directly submit to the editor and publisher. It goes to show there aren't that many in the pool of storytelling through cartoons. Bless my right brain... take good care of it, and give it a work out every day! Nevertheless, writing is always a part of the creative process, I will still have to write to even evolve my cartoons and films! It's just that in order to make my WRITING financially viable, I am going to have to prove to people that I am unique and that I'm going to have to EARN MY RIGHT TO WRITE through multi-media arts (cartoons, music, film) before I return to the pursuit of writing... safely... with a little bit of financial compensation....

And after a week of panicking before my Ph.D. committee meeting, I established my own SI Units for cartooning. Fine Point Black Sharpie. White Computer Paper. Portable Scanning Machine. Photoshopping the Fine Details. Black and White and One Shade of Gray and Occasionally a Gaussian Blur Effect with Lighter Lines to establish a Hierarchy of Lines. My cartoons are evolving to higher quality... and slightly different proportions... just like how Calvin and Hobbes evolved. Barry has been very supportive and I send him lots of my cartoons "fresh off the press." We agreed that once a narrative has become apparent to the reader with my cartoons... and/or once I reach about 200 cartoons, we will choose 12 of the best cartoons and approach the Santa Barbara Independent to start a weekly run... which would be so exciting (Barry knows two editors and I know two editors, one editor overlaps)! Barry recommended I check out the "independent" magazine scene, with"Village Voice" being the top (in New York?). He said that incorporating the themes of science into cartoons in a very satirical, but mentally digestible way... is unique and a very valuable pursuit, especially in these times, eh?!! Ya... Science should be culture. But American "culture" is so divorced from science. We have become a user-friendly-push-button-gossip-about-your-neighbor's-clothes type of society... and it's rare for conversations to go much deeper than the shallow schmoozing... even at a university donating charity event loaded with nerdy professors (which I witnessed LAST weekend).

So, here I am, bitterly Blog-publishing this poem that expresses my "inner soul" at a given point in space and time, which separate from standards of society--is a beautiful thing to pursue, self-expression--except that society has destroyed the enjoyment of self-expression through the persistent psychological devastation of Rejection Letters (or No Response, better yet), only to redirect my thoughts toward the abandonment of efforts toward being rejected 5 million times in attempt to publish poetry and short stories through the traditional BS avant garde avenues (though Barry said it would be a grand idea for me to start a science-art multi-media literary journal, scientific research exploration through multi-media arts--so the door is not completely closed!). And then I am again redirected toward the positive route of cartooning about science, politics, and human-environmental change through my charming little innocent kids, Terra and Buz.

I didn't expect all this information to come out on this blog, but stream-of-conscious venting is all for the better for my own clarity of thought. I am going to have to now condition myself... mentally divorce the PROCESS OF WRITING POETRY AND SHORT STORIES from the PROCESS OF PUBLISHING. I have to convince myself that none of my ideas are in final form (or an audience magnet) unless they take shape of a cartoon (or a cartoon-driven poem-short-story), a piece of music or performance slam poetry, or a film. It's amazing to think that my mind can construct any story format--ranging from scientific articles to poetry to short stories to photographs to cartoons to paintings to pieces of music to film to websites to whatever the next new medium is--but I'm starting to feel the pressures of establishing a unique niche in society--the need to be perceived by society as a "needed storyteller" that needs about $20,000 a year in order to have health insurance and a roof over my head to continue storytelling. Certain doors are "closing" (but not completely) right now but other doors are opening full-wide open. Creative survival is a matter of desperation. As one of my recent cartoons discussed my need to avoid the MacDonald's hamburger flipping treadmill that close to everyone else is pursuing, whether in a science lab or at MacDonald's.

I have more to write about with my positive experiences in the Bahia de Los Angeles... plus LOTS of PHOTOGRAPHS! This poem was just an introduction.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

503. Wild West Commercial Fishing Graphic Design / Multi-Media Package (Completed in Early May of 2010)



Blurb for the Multi-Media Collection Above:
Wild West Commercial Fishing Graphic Design Multi-Media Package. Wild West Commercial Fishing Logos / Graphic Design Package. Graphic Design Packets Can Include: (1) logo(s) "brands" and (2) other associated logo elements (3) personalized fonts (4) letterheads (5) banners (6) optimized website graphics (7) business cards (8) cartoons (9) posters (10) bumper stickers (11) t-shirts (12) posters (13) gamut of products from the "cafepress / zazzle / printfection" portal (14) complete website design (15) short film.... Logo features Rocky the Rockfish with his cowboy hat and gun in a holster, hitching a ride from Mr. SeaHorse. Jules requests wordings as this: "locally caught seafood" and "Mission Bay, San Diego, CA" accompanied with simple images of SPINY lobster (NO CLAWS like the east coast lobster!), fish, and crab (rock crab of course, continuing the "rock theme" here).

I don't believe in "love," but I am aware in being "addicted" to someone--a person--at multiple levels and multiple scales--and that is most certainly a truthy-ism. From visceral to emotional to super-conscious, over various disparate landscapes, over short and long periods of time. From two little fuzzy reptiles under the bed sheets to the adventures of cavefolk in the boonies of Mexico to the satirical commentary of everyday life of science and fishing and politics "culture of the masses" of America. And for such compatibility to occur over all these complex layers of strings enables a complex, growing, symphonic relationship, I would perceive it to be a whole symphony of inner and outer instruments that would enable the stability and growth of such a relationship.

(Though it has taken me a couple of days too long) Being heathily addicted to someone has driven me to produce beautiful things. For example, this near-complete graphic design multi-media package for Jules (except a film at the moment)... as an act of reciprocation for housing and good food and friendship and a few fancy dinners at Cass Street and Emerald Bay (fine seafood! the most expensive restaurant I've been to) and the least I can do when Jules swept me away to the Bahia de Los Angeles after a hideous Winter Quarter 2010 that destroyed my health and morale and nearly overall outlook to life. I literally was "frozen" after that barbaric quarter and the best possible thing anyone could have done for me was TAKE ME AWAY FROM MY LIFE and ALL FAMILIAR LANDSCAPES. Implant me in a novel environment and play with me exploring the world like a little kid all over again.... Anyhoo, the best part about this graphic design multi-media package is that it's a first professional package I have done, and I can showcase this to others who need this done (except next time I get paid and probably no bartering).

There was quite a bit of frustrating "trial and error" that was involved with the design of the Wild West Commercial Fishing Logo. To start me off, Jules suggested that I watch Blazing Saddles (with Mel Brooks, 1969) which seems to be a cult film among the fishing community. I held onto that film for about a year; it was sitting in the car. And finally I returned the film to Jules in February of 2010 and said I can't watch the film alone. I will have to watch the film with you. Ironically, I never watched that film until AFTER I finished the final designs of logos. And I can see how Jules and several fishermen can relate to this film: a humorous wild west comedy film about the interactions with the wild west characters, and African-American "slaves" at the time with the boundaries of "uncivilized civilization."

Blazing Saddles was refreshingly absurd. I began to notice that since Hollywood had no access to special effects, the quality of acting from the characters was refreshingly superb (and parly improvisational, you could tell!) and I walked away from the film thinking that I could EASILY make a film like that today, in 2010 (with digital film and final cut pro). But I have to transport myself back in time and think about how film technology has evolved through time. Back then, people had to manually cut and paste slides and strips, which was fairly messy... so given the time and technology, the film was of course, great quality. I walked away from the film also feeling like any form of moral attachment to a film about the insanity of interactions between the Wild West and Civilization was a very sophisticated person. And so yes, I have Jules by my side, eh? Yay, Jules Citizen Scientist. Lucky me.

I recall that my first drawings came about in April or May of 2009. I think at that time, our relationship was fresh and that I was experiencing hesitancies in my art. I drew the rockfish and the seahorse as Jules requested (independent from the Blazing Saddles movie), but the first iteration rock fish was a bit too chunky and the seahorse didn't exactly look like a seahorse (at least to Jules). Jules suggested that I move the mouth to the end of the snout, that the seahorse have "poofier hair" like a "mohawk" kind of look that I imposed, and that the little fins on the seahorse' back had little "motion lines" to make the fins look more like fins. I remember Jules pointing me in certain directions with images in local papers like the San Diego Ocean Magazine. I also remember negotiating with Jules about what information to place on a t-shirt and logo, and we settled with "Wild West Commercial Fishing" "Locally Caught Seafood" "Mission Bay San Diego CA." At one point we were thinking of words "fresh" and "sustainable" but I think those words have so much rhetoric and baggage (especially with the enviro community) that it might repulse certain people. But "local" is a very attractive word, and I think it will work just fine. After the second round iteration, which took me 2-3 days of cranking out variations of the logo into headers and banners and t-shirts and sticker and poster forms... Jules and I thought we had a winning logo. Jules showed my work to about 5-6 of his buddies around October of 2009 and two of them mistakened the cowboy hat as a "big nose," as Jules and I were both frustrated with TWO of these strange remarks that were not apparent to us. So, by that point, I was super frustrated and didn't want to look at the work for a while, though Jules proposed a simple solution. Placing a sea star (maybe with a smiley face) on cowboy hat. My interest in finishing the logo project re-sparked in April as I became addicted to drawing bazillions of Biologically Incorrect cartoons and was in the "Cartoon Mode." Jules lured me in and made me forget all my past work. He said over the phone, "It's so simple. All you have to do is add a starfish on the hat and a squiggly line to show the hat in motion." Ya ya, so simple at the core, but I would have to re-modify every variation of this logo such that it's suitable for headers and banners and stickers and t-shirts and pins, etcetera... Shxt!

But just this past Saturday, I woke up with a confident, blazing work ethic (largely derived from the epic trip to the Bahia de Los Angeles) and was able to unravel the tangled knot and modify all the parts and pieces and variations. And then on Sunday I went to Kinkos (FedexOffice) to print out about 15 sheets as color prints on regular size paper and, and I was lucky that two of the Kinkos employees had difficulties black-and-white poster printing the Wild West Logo, and they ended up giving me three posters (two correct and one mess up) for free (which was about a $17 value). It was super cool--just in the last two days having this Wild West artwork laying around, I attracted the attention of three different people--mostly commentary-based conversations, and one guy for "It's Clickable" was more like a salesman, and he ended up trying to recruit me to sell products, which is not very... enticing to me.... I told Jules that he was going to win over the girlz with his logo because they're going to "cooo all over you" about how cute your Rocky the Rockfish and Seahorse are....

Also on Sunday afternoon, I spent time decorating Jules house--living room and office--and ended up taking pictures of him and the Wild West Poster, which kind of looked like a movie poster (so cool!). Jules was all cross-bug eyed too, just like the rockfish and the seahorse! And finally of course, this prompted Jules' ultimate commentary: "I have lived this long--for fifty years--and my life has amounted to this: a bug-eyed fish, a bug-eyed sea horse, and a Chinese Bunny Rabbit." (referring to the great Mr. Bun, a stuffed bunny rabbit I rescued from Kmart a day before our trip to the Bahia de Los Angeles). "Well," I said. "You asked for it. You said you never wanted to grow up. You are 5.0 years old." And then Jules said, "Well then, that makes you 2.8 years old." We then established a new metric for age. I think it's nonlinear... or we just shift the decimal points....

To think of the insanity of scientific consensus... I just endured three or four rounds of artistic consensus with Jules. The most important issue is that I ENDURED... and that I FINISHED MY PROJECT (or finished a crucial phase of my project), as Michel Gondry greatly emphasizes, "to start... and to FINISH your project, no matter how much you like or don't like your project." Unfinished projects will eat your brain alive... as I know. Creativity and creative projects is a SYMBOL of on-going commitment--continuous renewal--to an evolving relationship. When people commit to "wedding rings," it's a sign of laziness. Rings are usually made of metal and they rust slowly. But mostly, you wear them every day and they are static, unchanging in the human lifespan. It takes much effort to evolve a relationship before the grand "wedding" event, but after that the only thing left that can happen is stagnancy. But when I am making a sincere effort to tell stories with cartoons, with artwork, with poetic words... I am working every single day to perceive change in myself, in others, in my environment, and grasp and document and harness this change, whether gradual or sudden. Creative storytellling is a renewed commitment to your relationships classified as "addictions" (whether familial or acquired) but also is a commitment of relationship with yourself and your interactions with all other elements within you, and around you. Hence, my wedding rings take in the form of stories and artwork. They take the form of my two kids--Terra the Biogeek and Buz the Geobum. Chronic evolutions, eh? Ya.

And of course, this work is a symbol of attachment to Jules. As people would use the term "boyfriend," (which has horrible baggage in this country, it has more so a meaning of territorial ownership rather than mutual relationship) I describe Jules as "my rock" in a fragmented, ephemeral society of non-commital citizens. A rock of evolving stability in a universe of flakes. A rock rooted to himself and to the land, the ocean. And I'm lucky I found him... it's easy to root onto Jules. I'm his little epiphyte, yay! And since then... it's been nothing but TRANSFORMATION in my life!

In addition, back in April of 2009, I started designing a website for Jules through Blogger as well as a Picasaweb album of photographs of our ocean adventures--boat rides and the like. Both Picasaweb Albums and Websites are works of progress, but heck, I've got a solid start. I started the Picasaweb Album entitled "Whatever's Left of the Wild West" (I have a poem with such a title) at
http://www.picasaweb.com/wildwestfishing and it contains a MATRIX of folders of with themes of specific elements of the ocean environment, which is evolving (Whatever's Left of the Wild West Profile Shots, Pieces of the Wild West AquaTechnological Puzzle, Mission Bay Catch of the Day, ByCatch: Because the Ocean is a Goodie Grab Bag, Bait: Because Everything Eats Everything Else, Physical Elements of the Pacific Coast Environment, Freeriders of the Wild West Commercial Fishing Boat, Biological Elements of the Pacific Ocean Environment, Human Elements of the Pacific Ocean Environment, Wild West Seafood Meals and Munchies, Graphic and Multi-Media Design, and a Couple of Hidden Folders). It's funny to think I look back at this folder and I'm frustrated that I shot everything in JPEG now that I know how to shoot and edit in RAW format. I have so much to work on in terms of PHOTOGRAPHY! I met a San Diegan photographer Art Wager (http://www.artwagerphoto.com) and showed him some of this portfolio. He was impressed by the originality of the photographs, but he was overall concerned with the quality since they were small images--the sizes of the photographs were not acceptable to be submitted for stock imagery. But nevertheless, what a confidence boost, and I'm about to resubmit a portfolio to Istockphoto in a few!

As for the website, I bought a domain
http://www.wildwestfishing.net on April 28, 2009 and I guess we both forgot to renew it on time and now the dang domain is up for bid minimum $70 bucks. Just two days ago, I purchased http://www.wildwestfish.com and http://www.wildwestfish.net from Google Apps and GoDaddy / Enom ($10 bucks each) and they both point toward the Blogger Site... http://www.wild-west-fishing.blogspot.com. At first, Jules and I were irked at changing the domain name, but then we realized the value of shifting "fishing" to "fish" because most "wild west fishing" websites were sport fishing, and Jules is involved in commercial fishing. He provides "wild west fish" not "wild west fishing experiences." Plus "wild caught fish" and "wild fish" are buzz words in the food industries, scientific world, and especially the enviros.... so there are certain advantages to shortening the domain name. Over time, it became apparent on how to best organize such a website--see the sketch below:


Folders include: (1) Main Page with Mission / Summary Statement (eventual video?) (2) Longer Page on About Wild West Commercial Fishing (3) Ocean Products, local, sustainably caught seafood (4) Final Products, tips for seafood meals and munchies (5) Photoessays of Wild West Commercial Fishing (hence Picasaweb) (6) Quoteology and Short Stories of Ocean Adventures (7) Wild West T-shirts and Such, through Zazzle, most likely (8) Local Resources of San Diego, referred businesses (9) Jules in the News (news articles on fishing) (10) Contact Wild West Fishing. Quite a bit of information to include in a website! I completely recommend Google Apps and Blogger for websites because Google invented the search engine most people use, and so somehow Google products climb up in the rankings much faster than any of the other websites....

Perhaps I completed a First Phase of a Milestone of Artwork affiliated with Jules.... I look at what I have completed and have come to realize that if anyone comes to me for the design of a boring corporate logo... that won't be possible. There's too much personality and sincerity in this neck of the ocean's woods.

To Do List of What Remains to Be Done
**Start an Istockphoto Collection of Wild West Fishing (shooting RAW images)
**Complete the "Matrix" of the http://www.wildwestfish.net Website
**Create a Google Docs Survey Request for Certain Fish, Certain Times of the Year
**Upload T-shirt Designs on Zazzle and/or Cafepress
**Print up a Run of T-shirts Locally
**Develop a small advertisement for Jules for the Ocean Magazine
**Vinyl or Laminated Print for Fisherman's Market or Farmer's Market Eventually?!
**Continue developing a script for World's Funniest Catch