What makes you joyful? Not just happiness. But joy. The comfort and pleasure of joy. We set out to answer that question a couple years ago in my bible study group. We were to write about what brings us joy. I missed the group that week, but I still wrote my joy story. I'm told that mine was really long. lol. That's good!

What brings me joy is the awareness that God is here.

The simple things that remind me that God is present. That God's creation has design. How amazingly balanced our seasons are. Even though we may think of our seasons as extreme with the cold weather we have now, the fact remains that our planet has seasons that are within limits that sustain life. An amazing array of life. All the shapes of trees. All the different types of animals. All the amazing different ways animals behave. All designed by God.

Our awesome underwater world. Our Shedd Aquarium is wonderful. The creatures in our oceans instill awe. For awe is to be aware of God's AWESOMENESS. From Psalm 104:25, "Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great. "

Another thing that brings me joy is when we sing songs in church. Especially when the songs are about things that I've been learning. A few recent examples. Over Christmas I learned about how incredible it is that at Christ's birth, the shepherds were invited to share the praise of Christ's birth. That as they shared the good news of Christ's birth with others, they were in essence singing with the angels. What an incredible thought. To sing with the angels. Now whenever we have a song at church about singing with angels, it gives me great joy.

Also last sunday when we sang the song, "Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say again I say rejoice" is based on the verses in Phillippians we are studying now. I love to have the background behind the songs we sing.

What brings me joy is to hear others pray. And when I read prayers. For prayers in print are just like hearing other people praying. I have a Lutheran Book of Prayer that I read from almost every morning. The Monday prayer says the following:

Heavenly Father,
We thank you for the privilege of work.
Use our talents and energies in Your service for our fellowman.
Help us to see our tasks as expressions of trust from You.
Keep us from seeing our chores as cumbersom duties and toil.
Remind us we are doing more then merely making a living.
Give us the joy in Christ to do all things to Your glory.
Enable us to see in all our tasks that we are called as laborers in Your vineyard.
Keep us faithful and useful to all as men and women who have only one Lord, even Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.

I find great comfort that God uses our commonplace work as a way of sustaining our world as a whole.

I find joy in that we have the true word of God. Through the ages God has worked to perserve his Word, so we may have it. I find immense joy in the comfort that God is bigger than culture and He can achieve what He wants--which includes preserving his Bible.

I find joy our pastors preaching every week from God's Word. And in the sermons preserved in podcasts and text online. [note this was written in january 2010] I find immense joy in being able to share sermons with others. My mother who is currently in the hospital comes to mind. Joy is found in trials. James 1:2-3 says, "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness."

I find joy when I bow down. For when I submit myself, that's when I become more aware of God.

I find joy in all things deep, like the ocean. I find joy in things small and well-designed, like grapes. I find joy in things vast like the sky. What a wonderful reminder we have every day. As things can get so busy and cluttered down here, we can look up to the the open sky. God has kept our sky open, so we can be reminded of his vastness.

All reminders of God's love and forgiveness that is vast, deep and wide.

TV:
-- Uncle Iroh (Avatar Animated Series)
-- Spongebob Squarepants
-- Ron Stoppable (from Kim Possible)
-- Jazz (Transformers)
-- Balki Bartokomous (Perfect Strangers)
-- Rolf the Dog (Muppet Show)
-- Gonzo (Muppet Show)
-- Kramer (Seinfeld)
-- Tom Haverford (Parks and Recreation)

Movies:
-- Quorra (from Tron Legacy)
-- Buddy (from Elf)
-- Linkavitch "Link" Chomofsky (from Encino Man)

Books:
-- Orion Pax (Transformers)

Favs of mine that should have a favorite character, but no specific ones stick out:
-- The Office
-- Jack Chan Adventures
-- Star Wars
-- G.I.Joe

Matt: i'm having a hard time picking a favorite from Star Wars. UNBELIEVABLE. I don't have a fav character from Star Wars

Tom: Oh my, that would be hard for me too ... Star wars relies on the relationship between the characters. I love C3PO but he would be nothing without Luke or R2D2

Matt: Oh good reasoning tom! That's totally why. Oh man. Maybe that's big part of the reason why like Star Wars and Lost.

word:
lll

definition:
laughing laughing laughing. Not just a short laugh. Not just a laugh out loud. But a prolonged laugh of good length.

example:
Did you see that potato? lll

tags:
laugh, laughing, long, extended, length, happy, funny, hilarious, acronym, netspeak

Thanks to unlikelymoose for coming up with this definition over IM. For those curious how it developed here's the original conversation:

Matt: what do you think this word is? putemup
Erik: putemup? some kind of computer blip
Matt: nope! Branden got it on the first try

Pause.

Matt: put em up
Erik: i have no other guesses!
Matt: that's what it is! putemup = put em up
Erik: what? i can't put up any more guesses
Matt: lol. you thought i was just saying "put em up" to you. l o l
Erik: l l l
Matt: l l l that's cool! What's it mean?
Erik: laugh laugh laugh
Erik: lll
Matt: lll
Erik: lll

Matt: are you going to submit that to urbandictionary?
Erik: no. be my guest

Matt: that definition is not on there!!! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?
Erik: LLL
Matt: lll

Matt: what should be my sample usage for the definition?

Matt: Did you see that potato? lll
Matt: I should make all my examples on urbandictionary involve a potato.
Erik: when you're not laughing out loud, you're just laughing, hence lll.
Matt: no. lll means laughing in a long seuqence. It's a long prolonged laugh.
Erik: oh. ok.

Matt: right?
Erik: right

UPDATE: urbandictionary did accept my definition.

Dick Durbin is selling American flags for a mere additional $4.05, you can have your flag flown above the U.S. Capitol. Pretty rad. However, you have to PRINT out a pdf, MAIL it in with a CHECK. What’s a check?

The asterick on the page is pretty funny:
* Requests for flags not flown over the United States Capitol should deduct the $4.05 flying fee from the total amount.

How about the other way around? What if I pay Dick Durbian $4.05 to fly my own flag over the capitol? I’m going to mail them an Estonian flag and send them a check for the $4.05 flying fee. And a $4.00 check for them to mail my flag back to me. I already bought the Estonian flag for $6.47. I can't wait.

Spotify. Why use Spotify? "Millions of tracks, any time you like. Just search for it in Spotify, then play it. Just help yourself to whatever you want, whenever you want it."

Here's my reasons why you need to sign up now.

1. I really like being able to play any music i want at any time. And not having to buy it all.
2. Make your own playlists and share them with other people. I have 18 playlists including "Beat it remixes and covers," "Hand Clapping Songs," "My most-played songs of 2011."
3. Playing other friends playlists. Think of playlists as mix tapes.
4. It scrobbles to last.fm, so you can keep track your most played tracks, artists, and albums. Anyone who listens to music should be on last.fm. PERIOD. All the music services I use connect to last.fm: Spotify, iTunes, Mog, even Pandora. Pandora requires a firefox add-on.

Bad points:

1. It doesn't have all older music. Some of my favorite albums from the 90s aren't on Spotify. That stinks. But heck to pay $5/month, I'm happy to have all the current recent music.
2. Intrusive to facebook at first. I don't want all the music I listen to to be posted on facebook. But there's a setting to turn that off.
3. Spotify itself really isn't a music discovery system like how pandora or last.fm works. Where you put in an artist or song and have it play similar tracks. BUT. There is a website that people post their playlists and that is a great music discovery system. http://sharemyplaylists.com

Third party mashups

One of the great strengths of spotify is its API, which allows some very interesting third party mashups. I've been keeping track of them on my delicious account with a spotify tag, http://delicious.com/spudart/spotify. Here's the highlights:

BRITify - Daily Spotify Playlists from Awesome BBC Radio
http://www.britify.com

biblify.com - the latest album reviews for new spotify releases
http://www.biblify.com

Spotibot.com - Generate Spotify Playlists powered by Lastfm!
http://spotibot.com/playlist

Listen Spotify Playlists
http://www.listenspotify.com/en/playlists

Playlistify.org - Bake, share and discover playlists.
http://playlistify.org/

Spotify Mac Remote is a plugin for Spotify that allows you to use your Mac’s IR remote control & multi-touch gestures to Play, Pause and change tracks.
http://themacbox.co.uk/smr/

freshspotify notifies you when new music from your favourite bands is added to spotify's library and lets you browse the latest new music
http://www.freshspotify.com

At my work desk, I have a round table by me that rarely gets used. It's now an art pedestal for the 1400 Gallery. (The gallery being my workspace in the Tribune Tower). This particular work of art is three leaves laid out in a composition. One might say it's inspired by Andy Goldsworthy. Or perhaps Robert Smithson.

The leaves are found from the local foliage (the official work plants on top of my storage cabinet).

Normally these would be just three leaves sitting on a table, but it's interesting how a mere sticky note with a caption activates the leaves into artwork status.

"3-leaf composition"
leaves
2010

Photos by Miss Construed, Amadika, Jheppcatt.


I have a bunch of BuckyBalls sitting in the 1400 Gallery (my desk at the Tribune Tower). At the time the gallery was showing an exhibit of 10 puddle jumpers curated from a list of 56 puddle jumpers from flickr.

One day one of the sales people came over and started playing with them and put them on top of the puddle jumpers. He quickly realized that they can be put in a string and make the people into jump rope jumpers.

It was really cool. Even how in the orange photo, the rope is cut so it appears to go under the boy's leg. The BuckyBall jump rope really fits in well with these photos, because these are already happy photos. As if leaping over puddles wasn't fun enough, now the people are having even MORE fun jumping rope over a puddle.

I look forward to implementing the BuckyBalls into future exhibits of the 1400 Gallery.

I bought my niece all the plush mascots keychains from the 2010 Winter Olympics. To make mailing stuffing to keep them from jostling around, I made 11x17 xerox enlargements of each figure. A couple extra copies were made to hang up in the 1400 Gallery.



The tiny cute little keychain mascots become much bigger. A portrait of each mascot. But since they are so short, their heads sit down lower in the frame. Except for Quatchi, he's the big mascot.

I'm told the xerox style looks like Blair Witch Project. The irony is quite nice. These friendly little mascots with the stark black background and intense lighting.



To have some extra fun, I also put one of Sumi by the magazine rack peeking out.

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Current museum projects

I've got several art projects that take place in art museums. Last summer I got reciprocal art museum pass from the Walker Art Center and it allows me to go into over 400 art museums nationwide. With this freedom, I’ve been attending art museums more. Ideas have been sprouting for how I can create art in the museum. And how that art can interact with the existing collection.

To help me aggregate and see what's on my plate, here's a collection of ideas and projects:

1. Origami made from Felix Gonzalez-Torres paper

Felix Gonzalez-Torres' stacked paper has much potential. A stack of paper waiting for your imagination to take hold and shape it into something. This origami series is to show some of the possibilities of what this stack holds. As the origami object is photographed on top of the stack, it moves the stack upward into the world of creation. This is how the typical museum functions. The final product is upwardly shown.

Read more about this project on the flickr set.

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2. Autograph Aesthetics

Some baseball player autographs have wonderful aesthetic qualities. I went on eBay and purchased the autographs that looked most visually interesting. Then I went to the Art Institute of Chicago's modern wing and matched up the aesthetics of the autograph with modern paintings. Read more about this project at this blog post. The Art Institute of Chicago's official twitter account calls this series "wild card."

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3. Self-portrait reflections in modern art

Little did Joseph Albers know that 46 years later his "Home to the Square, Soft Edge--Hard Edge" would be used as a self-portrait by the admiring artist Matt Maldre. I want to start a series of self portraits in modern art. (flickr set, facebook post)

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4. Ewok and ______

The first ten photos of this set are images of an Ewok action figure and artwork in my parents house. I plan on bringing my Ewok action figures to art musems and take photos of the ewok and the art.

I like how the ewok can be transplanted into landscapes or other stituations. It makes the artwork come alive and it makes the ewok come alive. (flickr set)

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5. Light reflections on art

Ellsworth Kelly featured in this photo. I'd like to do more explorations of how artworks look when you stand close to the work and see how the museum lighting reflects off the artwork. (flickr set)

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Upcoming art museum projects

On the Spudart Facebook Fan Page, I explore potential ideas for art projects. Here are the museum-related ideas I've posted in the last several months.

6. Color light reflections on art

Taking the light reflections project further and take photos of famous artworks with colored lights shining on them. (facebook post)

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7. Art behind fence

Bring a section of chain link fence and photograph museum artworks behind it. This particular photo isn't a museum artwork. It's a nativity at the Farmer's Garden Market across from my apartment. Seeing this inspired the idea to do it in art museums. (facebook post)

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8. RC car in museum

I really want to drive a remote-controlled car around in an art museum. The above are some tweets that I made with the Museum of Contemporary Art's response. (facebook post)

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9. Security guard answers

I'm starting a new Spudart series where I ask art museum guards a question, and then later I draw their portrait from memory with their answer. What would be interesting questions to ask the guards at art museums? (facebook post)

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10. Other people's notes in museums

Whenever I see someone writing notes in a gallery or museum, I want to ask that person if I can take a photo of their notes. What do you think of this as a new art series? (facebook post)

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11. Notes left on museum benches

I'm thinking of doing a series called "notes left on museum benches." (facebook post)

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12. Museum guest books

Anybody know of any museums or galleries in Chicago that have guest books that people can leave comments? It would be really cool to photograph the comments left in these books. Often the comments are more interesting than the art itself. (facebook post)

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13. Glass and art

It would be interesting to bring a sheet of glass to an art museum and photograph it in front of artworks. The idea is that it would capture other interesting reflections that would interact with the artwork behind the glass.

It would also speak to several points:
-- How we view artwork behind glass.
-- Who is viewing the artwork (as seen in the reflections).
-- What is around the artwork (as seen in the reflections).
-- What is sight/what is object (by the nature of glass itself).
-- How is the art object and object that needs to be protected.
(facebook post)

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Throughout 2011, whenever I saw a video I liked on Youtube, I would add it to my 2011 favorite playlist. Now you can enjoy all 68 fun youtube videos!

If you are curious, I already have a video in my 2012 favorite playlist.
There are 122 videos in the 2005-2010 favorites playlist.

Today Gapers Block featured a photo from my "Alley Giveaway" series. In effort to minimize my apartment, I got rid of a bunch of stuff. The alley behind me always has people trolling for things left behind. As soon as something is put in the alley, it's gone within the hour.

To have some fun with what I left in the alley, I put some fun notes on the items.

Please enjoy.

I’ve never been caught leaving my public art around. Until today. It happened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

The idea
The past couple days I've been thinking about what artwork I can leave in public elevators. This morning I thought of putting a sticky note by the ground floor button that says, "What will you discover outside?" And the sticky note will have a hole cut out, so I can put the sticky note over the ground floor button. (without covering up any of the numbers).

It's a nice notion. You are hitting the first floor, so I'm assuming you are going outside, so it's a nice thought for someone to have while going outside. "What will I discover outside?" Completely innocent and nice.

The first elevator ride
I go to the MCA for lunch thinking that will be a fun place to leave the first sticky note in this series.

Before I place the sticky note, first I have to ride the elevator and rub the note over the button, so i get an indentation of where to cut the circle. I got on the elevator at floor 2 and pressed "4." I got out my sticky note pad, put it over the floor 1 button and just as I got a succesful rub, a cute MCA worker gets on at the basement. It's perplexing that a visitor would be on the elevator at the basement because those are only offices. I guess I was so busy rubbing the sticky note that I didn't bother actually pressing the 4 button all the way.

She asks, "whoa. what are you doing here? exploring?" She wasn't mean at all, in fact, she was really nice (and did I say cute?). I'm like "uh, i dunno. i guess the button didn't get pushed all the way." She asked me where I'd like go to and I told her floor 1. So she pushes the 1 button on her side.

When we arrive to the first floor, it's weird, cuz the elevator doesn't open to the gift shop, it opens to soem weird hallway, and i walk out confused and she says the gift shop is through the door.

Ok, that was a bit awkward, but I'm still gonna make the sticky note! The gift shop on one doesn't have any place to sit, so I walk up the stairs to the second floor where i can sit down and cut out the circle and write the text.

The second elevator ride
I go back to the same elevator, I press up. It arrives. Nobody is inside. I walk inside and press floor 4, and i place the sticky note over floor 1, and take a photo. DONE!

But then the elevator all of the sudden opens on floor 5—the offices, and you know who gets on? THE SAME CUTE GIRL!!!! AND she's still very friendly and says, "are you still exploring the building?"

And i'm just all flustered at this point thinking she's surely gonna see what i just did, but she's talking with me and i'm just like uh duh uh duh uh duh. I go to hit floor one, but i can't see if the button gets light up because i have a sticky note over it!

I hit "1" on the other set of buttons and that lights up. She helpfully suggestions that I get off at floor 2, because it's easier to find the gift shop from there. She probably thought I got lost at floor one, and got back on the elevator.

I got off at floor two all dazed. She never saw the sticky note when i talked to her, cuz she was talking with me the whole time.

In 2011, spudart.org hit a milestone. There was over one million visitors to the site! :) That's not total since the spudart.org has been up, that's just for the year 2011.

Thanks to everyone who visited. Here's the totals for each year since I installed Google Analytics in 2007:

      Visitors   Pageviews
2011  1,248,678  1,503,290 
2010    970,898  1,167,951 
2009    924,205  1,147,885 
2008    670,514    857,089 

As they say in the business world, it's good to see growth year after year.

Deodorant aisles like Tron? Individual candy bag dispensers? Alcohol prediction machines? Yes, you have just stepped into the flagship store of Walgreens in Chicago. The energy was palatable. You could feel the excitement with everyone in the store. And the lines were not long at all since there were eight cashiers ready to check you out. Let's take a look at what's new, but also if anything was missing from the Walgreens we all know and love.

This Walgreens is brimming with shiny excitement.

• They have Tron deodorant aisles!!! I felt like i was on The Grid. The aisles and products were all illuminate as this was the place Kevin Flynn, Quorra, Zuse, and Clu would pick up their Secret and Axe deodorant.
• They had hair dryers hooked up so you can test them out. I tell ya, I had fun pushing all the on buttons for every hair dryer at once. That's probably why they have them in the back corner of the store. Kids like me like to turn them on all at once.
• There was some kiosk that helped you pick wine and beer. You could tell it what type of event you are going to and how many people were going to be there and what type of booz they like to drink, and it will figure out the math for you. Basically it could predict the your future of alcohol.
• Their candy aisle has these special holders for the bags. Everything is SO tidy and organized. It's SUCH a delight.
• Escalators! I felt like i was in Target. Helvetica lettering. But they didn't have shopping cart escalators.
• Lots of Argo Tea products. I kinda felt like I was in an Argo Tea.

Ok, so that's all the fancy stuff. But is this REALLY a Walgreens? What about the standards that makes Walgreens the Walgreens we know and love?

• They had dark chocolate peanut M&M's, so i got a bag.
• My cashier did not have a nametag. Her name wasn't on the receipt either.
• I didn't see a season aisle!!! A Walgreens without the seasonal aisle? I don't know if it's a walgreens! CORRECTION: I went back and they DO have a seasonal aisle. It's kinda buried up on the second floor.
• I didn't see any Slim Jims. I didn't really look for them though.

If anyone is going to the flagship Walgreens store, let me know. I will be happy to be your tour guide.

Things to do in 2012:
1) Visit more coffeeshops.
2) Whenever I see a bench I haven't sat in, to sit in it for at least one minute.
3) Always sit on the Giddings Park for one minute when I walk to work.
4) To not use my phone on the train during January.
5) Send more postal letters.

Anyone have any resolutions/goals for 2012?