Ozone Man's Revenge

Former Vice President Al Gore Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today along with a United Nations panel that monitors climate change for their work educating the world about global warming and advocating for political action to stop it.

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Good Friday, everybody. I'd like to take a moment and congratulate former Vice President Al Gore, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today for his work on educating the world about global warning. The Oscar, the Emmy and now the Nobel. For an honorable public servant whose heart was literally broken by losing to Dubya the way he did in 2000 (current polling says still about half of us think he was robbed), I believe that he deserves the fruits of his present labors. Do I want him to run for president in 2008? No. Do I think he will? I really don't think he will. I think I want him to be happy, happy and content in what he's doing now. Look to former Pres. Jimmy Carter (another Nobel winner for Middle East peace brokering) to see what really can be done, what really can matter more than the White House. And that's that. Congrats and enjoy, Mr. Vice President.

Scrapbook'em, Danno!
Well, my brain is painful from too much toxic taxable income. I feel like I've been locked up for too long and made to watch too much porn (which would be *any*). Such is the accounting life. Concentration's awfully hard to come by. Just a few more days left, then I can take a vacay from Deadlining: rest, relax, recover, and slowly pick up the pieces of the packaging of the paperwork I don't finish by deadline, since it's mostly an electronic filing job nowadays. (Versus when I began, in 1983, when we did all tax returns *by hand* literally, no computer involved at all, just the poor typist to type each final copy on her IBM Selectric.)

And, I want to apologize for the next 3 days, in advance. I may or may not be able to keep blogging (like today, part of this post was written at around 6 a.m. But then I fell asleep before finishing, sleep I desperately needed after staying up working wayyyy too long). So here it is almost 10p.m. and I'm just now finishing this post, on a break from working again. Who knows when and how I'll be able to fit my blogging in, but by Tuesday I should be back on schedule, a more luxurious and slower-paced schedule I might add. So, please bare with me....

So, anyway, I'm feeling near death mentally, but I completely made it worse last night by getting involved in lurking on several (probably a dozen or more) message board threads that were abuzz about the latest scandal involving Creating Keepsakes Magazine's Hall of Fame 2007 winners, or rather, one in particular. I decided not to name names or provide links, but if you just go to 2peas' message board index and search the Pub or the NSBR forums for "CK", "HOF", you'll find plenty of threads.

Seems the scrapper in question broke a CK rule by using professional photos of her taken by a former HOF'er, and this is a violation of the rules. However, the HOF book has been puiblished and released, so it's not really effective to strip the scrapper of her title...it's just too late. Plus, in my opinion, it is not really right to lay the blame anywhere other than at CK's feet for not disqualifying her. She ended up breaking the rules, but do we really really know for sure what her mindset was on that when she did it? Did she just disregard the rules or did she have a brain fart about them? I know I've had some brain fart doozies in my time, where it appeared there was no way in hell I could have forgotten something yet I sure did. Honestly and totally did. So, while I kinda want to judge her, I'm not going to. And frankly, the girl is super-talented. That's a whole nother can of worms about how I'd feel if she was not worth the title (and I doubt she'd be in this position at all if she were not worth it...)

Anyway, lots of drama and feelings over this, but I predict it'll end up coming to nothing. And life will go on. Should it play out that way? No, but that's what will happen. As many scrappers as there are who will begin to see the program for what it really is and be disgusted, there are tons more who will only see opportunity knocking for their own dreams to come true. Cutthroat competition at its ugly finest.

I tell ya, I've never been so relieved to not be caught up in all that publication / design team ambition right now. I've never really been interested at all in that route. I saw long ago that most of it is done for the income statement bottom line and the egos. I apparently have a radar for noticing kissing-up, shameless plugs and other assorted shallow gestures. Yes, it feels good to see more scrappers seeing that, but I do sincerely feel bad for those who bought the dream, have tried to keep it ethical and pure, and worked their little hearts out to obtain HOF and other titles honestly and on their own merits. It's not a large group but they are out there. Many of them are posting their guts out right now. I wish eventual peace for them on this, whether they come to look at it as I do or not.

But even a mega site like 2peas is but a drop in the bucket to the number of scrappers as a whole. That was brought home to me personally when I joined my IRL Saturday group. A lot of scrappers don't even get online, much less have a blog. Yeah, who's the dummy here? They are scrapping layouts! They're like, Ali / Donna / Stacy who? Oh, yeah, I've read this or that book. End of discussion. No celebrity-love, gossip-hounding, or other real time wasters to keep them from you know, actually scrapping.

And ever since 2Peas was taken over by the Kaboose people, it has been losing members to places like SIStv and Digitalk. Such is the evolution of social cultures. My hope is that it makes 2Peas a bit more like my kind of place, with down-to-earth folk who like to share their creations in a nonjudgemental, noncometitive way, because we've worked hard as heck on our stuff and just want to connect and share with others who understand why we do it. Like the old days. I doubt it'll ever become a pure version of that hope, but even if it approaches it somewhat I'll be happy.

Daily Card Trick
This card has my hearty-heart. Doesn't that woman look like she could actually be a real relative of mine? Gotta love it. She's actually just a magazine clipping. And I have tons upon tons of these Creative Imaginations heritage diecut embellies. They are so old that I believe they were early purchases of mine, which would put them circa 2004-2005, because back then I was convinced you couldn't do a heritage page without them. Hehehe, what a greenhorn I was. So, they've entered my pile of vintage materials. I believe that here they will finally be used. You'll see this kind of card again, that's a promise (hope you are happy about this, lol).