Pick Me!

A weblog by Laura Moncur

12/18/2003

Starlings

Filed under: Philosophy — Laura Moncur @ 11:52 am

The swarm of starlings was resting on the Bud Light/Jazz Billboard last night during my commute home. They looked like thick black lines under the picture and along the top. I saw a couple of small flocks of starlings join them. The black line was upset for a second, but room was made for them and the line was reestablished, thicker and fuller than before. “They must live there,” I thought to myself.

When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius; lift up thy head!  – William Blake

The traffic was stopped cold. We were merging onto I-80 from I-15 North. Others were merging onto I-80 from I-15 South. Even more were coming from the 201. Of all those cars and all those faces, I didn’t see one looking at the birds. A huge flock of at least one thousand birds was less than 50 yards away from them and they were oblivious. In every car I looked, I saw quiet and neutral faces looking ahead.

There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.  – George Carlin (1937 – )

Am I alone in this world? It seems that so many people around me are not present. They are not in the room with me. They are in the past, thinking about what happened yesterday or fifteen years ago. They are in the future, thinking about what will happen on Christmas or when they finally meet the right person. They are five hundred miles away, thinking about power lines that don’t even exist yet. They are anywhere but here, with me.

I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.  – Herb Caen

I must admit that I’m the same. I think about yesterday, tomorrow and far away. It’s when I’m completely here and now that I realize how far away everyone else is. Is it possible to be here and now all the time? When I’m writing this, am I here? Am I across the world in Denmark and Australia, where you are, reading this? Why is it that I’m only here and now when I see birds swarming?

12/13/2003

A Flock of Starlings

Filed under: General — Laura Moncur @ 5:25 am

Starlings don’t flock; they swarm. I have said it before, but last week when I was driving home, they swarmed in such a strange manner that I had to make a note of it in my mind. I am stuck on I-80 driving home almost every evening. The traffic is so slow that I have the time to notice many things like the full moon and the flight of birds. On I-80 is a billboard for Bud Light and the Utah Jazz.

Sport is imposing order on what was chaos.  – Anthony Starr

The Utah Jazz is Salt Lake’s professional basketball team. In our best year, we were in the finals against the Chicago Bulls. Michael Jordan kicked our ass, but we took them to game seven to do it. It was a golden age for basketball. Karl Malone and John Stockton were young and still playing for us and we were there for that brief moment when basketball was about basketball. There was no talk of rape cases or haircuts. Charles Barkley was ridiculed for the kinds of temper tantrums that are commonplace now. I have no taste for the sport anymore.

Not every age is fit for childish sports.  – Titus Maccius Plautus (254 BC – 184 BC)

Back to last Monday and the swarming starlings. I’ve said before that I’m an atheist that struggles with superstition, and this is one of those superstitious things that I find myself clinging to: the flight of birds. I was stuck in traffic, watching the full moon rise between the mountains, but the starlings to my right distracted me. They were swarming clockwise around the billboard for Bud Light and the Utah Jazz. I watched them fly around it three times before I had to move on with the slow traffic. I thought to myself, “I wonder if the Jazz are playing tonight.”

Nature is just enough; but men and women must comprehend and accept her suggestions.  – Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825 – 1921)

They were. I looked it up a couple of days later. They played the Boston Celtics. They lost phenomenally: 80 to 102. Did the starlings predict it? They were to my right, which is supposed to be a good omen. They flew clockwise around the billboard, which is supposed to be a good omen. They were starlings, my favorite bird, another good omen. Maybe they were just trying to tell me that I should drink more beer.

10/11/2013

Vintage Photos Enter Spooky Afterlife as Animated GIFs

Filed under: Art and Photography,Halloween — Laura Moncur @ 10:00 am

Last year, Underwire at Wired.com had these vintage pictures that had been animated to make them spooky. Here are my favorites.

This one is called, “Clearing Away Debris from the Bangkok Fire.”

Clearing Away Debris from the Bangkok Fire

Ghost Cannon Kills Soldier

Ghost Cannon Kills Soldier

Mother Jones Turns Into Starlings

Mother Jones Turns Into Starlings

These photos remind me of one of my favorite books of 2011, called Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. I absolutely ADORED that book. Here’s a trailer describing it.

It looks like it might become a movie, which I would go see in a second. Please let it come to pass!

10/14/2008

Kearns High 1987 Video Yearbook

Filed under: Kearns High School,Personal History — Laura Moncur @ 4:47 pm

Here is the Kearns High 1987 Video Yearbook. There are only about 1500 people in the world who care about this, but I thought I’d post it here for them to see.

Click Here To See The Video

Download this video for your iPod

At the 14:20 mark, you can see me selling Kearn High Towels. I don’t know why they thought those little towels would be better than t-shirts, but we sold an awful lot of them. I still have one stored in my basement. I really need to do something about my hoarding instincts.

P.S. If you look really closely, you can see me wearing my Sir Swatch, complete with the old school Swatch Guard.

3/11/2008

Video of Jane Goodall

Filed under: Video — Laura Moncur @ 5:00 am

As always, I tried to get some video of the Jane Goodall lecture I attended last week. It didn’t take long for the usher to stop me from filming. Since Jane had talked about how amazing technology is and we could be streaming this lecture across the world to China, it seems odd that she wouldn’t want more people to hear her plea, but I stopped filming. Here is the best few minutes of what I got.

Click Here To See The Video

Download this video for your iPod

I have more video, but she didn’t get to complete her next thought before the usher asked me to stop filming. It’s always easier to ask forgiveness than permission, so I didn’t mind the reprimand. I’m just glad that I got a minute or two of her amazing lecture to show the world.

I DO have a new quote to add to our Motivational Quotes Collection:

“I think the best evenings are when we have messages, things that make us think, but we can also laugh and enjoy each other’s company.”

  • Jane Goodall, Lecture in Salt Lake City, Utah, 03-04-08

I am so grateful I was able to attend this wonderful lecture and meet Jane Goodall in person!

2/2/2008

Maggie Without Linda

Filed under: Linda,Maggie,Our Pets,Video — Laura Moncur @ 5:00 am

Before Linda died, I saw something like this every day. Now that Linda is gone, Maggie is so lonely. Even when she sits on my lap all day, she meows.

I can’t be another cat. I can’t bear to get another cat. This video makes me happy and sad all at the same time.

Click Here To See The Video

Download this video for your iPod

On another note, this video was filmed over a year ago. I never posted it because Mike is sleeping on the bed behind the cats. The reason you don’t get to see more of the cats playing is because they woke him up and he kicked them off the bed.

I haven’t been awoken by a cat fight on my bed for months.

8/7/2006

Robert Scoble’s Visit To SLC

Filed under: Living in SLC, UT,Utah Geeks,Video — Laura Moncur @ 8:15 am

If you don’t know who Robert Scoble is, you’re not going to understand how Internet Famous he is and why going to this lunch was like breaking bread with a rock star. M. David Petersen made a podcast of the lunch and recorded all the amazing things that Robert Scoble had to say.

I have about fifty minutes of video from the lunch. While it’s tempting to just post it all here, I’ve edited it down to just under two minutes of the coolest things that were said.

Click here to see the video

This is one of those rare times where I filmed the event, but didn’t live it through the LCD screen. I was able to just hold the camera and still enjoy the moment. Some day, the camera will become so much a part of me that I won’t even realize when I’m filming.

I'm not bored. I swear!David took pictures and he snapped this photo of Mike and me. He happened to capture me looking incredibly bored and sad. I’m not bored. I swear it! Do I always look this sad? It’s not the way I was feeling, I can tell you! I was totally stoked to be there!

I carefully chose my shirt that morning. I wore JETRIS from Threadless. I thought a pixelated Jesus was a completely appropriate shirt for Robert Scoble’s visit to Salt Lake City, Utah.

A special thank you to all who came to the lunch:

Robert ScoblePodTech
Patrick Scoble – I didn’t hear. Who are you working for?
Gilbert Lee and Tad GilesThe LDS Church Website (These guys have 10 hours of content to translate into almost 100 languages every six months. They totally ROCK!)
Ryan Hawley
Jared L Smith
Tim Stay – Know More Media
Michael Hoover
M. David Petersen – Thanks for recording the entire thing!
Me and Michael MoncurStarling Studios

P.S. There are three two people who came to the lunch and didn’t get on this list because I didn’t have a card. If you are one of them, contact me and I’ll put you on the list.

7/8/2006

BarCampUtah: Setting Up Camp

Filed under: Living in SLC, UT,Utah Geeks — Laura Moncur @ 10:54 am

Since deciding not to move to California, I’ve realized that we need to grow a geek community that I can associate with here. I feel so isolated and alone as far as work is concerned, so I decided to spearhead BarCamp here in Utah.

I am in the process of setting up montly meetings for BarCampUtah. BarCamp is a meeting that started up in San Francisco in reaction to FooCamp, which was an invitation-only party given by O’Reilly. Some of the people who weren’t invited to FooCamp, set up BarCamp.

What I’m trying to create is a geek community in Utah. I want to have a monthly meeting where we can “show and tell” or maybe just “hack together.” This video, created by Ryanne, is my inspiration. I want BarCampUtah to be like Super Happy Dev House.

Click here to see the video

We don’t have a spot where things can go all night, but at first, I’m just hoping for a few hours where everyone can talk and share ideas. This video, also by Ryanne, shows what our little meetings could eventually evolve into. BarCamp in San Francisco is a full-blown conference with sponsors and hosts and lots of ad hoc sessions.

Click here to see the video

I have been struggling for a good venue that has wireless Internet and room for us to grow. I think I have found us a spot, but I need to wait to announce it until I get the application back.

In the meantime, if any of you have been wishing for a geek community in the Salt Lake area, we are growing it right now. Please send me your information on my Contact Me form, including your full name, email address and phone number and I will make sure that you are included.

7/6/2006

RocketBoom Self-Implosion

Filed under: General — Laura Moncur @ 8:05 am

I just feel sick. My first instinct was that Amanda Congdon’s video announcing that she has been asked to leave RocketBoom was a publicity stunt. God, I wish it had been.

Click here to see the video

There has been a lot of infighting and speculation on the Yahoo Videoblogging Newsgroup:

At first, Andrew said that Amanda’s video was the first he had ever heard about it.

Then, a post was made on RocketBoom stating that Amanda was moving to L.A.

Then, Amanda refuted Andrew’s statement of surprise.

As of this point, Andrew says that Amanda’s For the Record entry is out of context and he’s going to bow out of the conversation.

Finally, Jason Calacanis offered Amanda a job at Netscape, saying that Andrew doesn’t know how to “keep the talent happy.”

This whole thing has become such a drama. Watching it from Utah, it seems like a junior high fight. It reminds me of the episode of The Office when Dwight goes to Jim to form “an alliance.” As far as I can tell, they both need to stand with their noses in the corner until they can play together nicely.

Worse still, I feel this overbearing guilt because I have been so jealous of RocketBoom and the attention it has gotten over the last few months. I know I don’t control the universe, but right now I worry that I inadvertently put a curse on Amanda. I feel like my jealousy somehow caused their self-implosion.

What a drama…

7/2/2006

Why We Call Ourselves Starling Studios

Filed under: General — Laura Moncur @ 5:00 am

Scott Fraser shot this awesome video of starlings swarming. They flock to one tree, weighing it down. When they fly, they all jump up at once, bouncing out of the tree with force.

Click here to go to Rocketboom and see the video

I love the way starlings fly. They act like a swarm of insects far more than a flock of birds. I love to see the black clouds of birds above my town.

Starlings are our favorite birds. That’s why there is a Starling Fitness and a Starling Travel. Everything we do is under the Starling Studios name. When we take off, we all jump up at once and with such force that you can’t help but look at us.

6/27/2006

Why Sometimes Calling a Tow Truck Is Not Enough

Filed under: Video — Laura Moncur @ 5:00 am

Click here to see the video


Music by: Vortex from Experimental Royalty Free Music

6/15/2006

My First Interview

Filed under: General,Video — Laura Moncur @ 10:58 am

Francisco Daum interviewed me while I was at Vloggercon. I didn’t think much about it when it happened, but he posted my interview on his weblog. I think this is the first interview I’ve ever had on film. All other interviews I’ve done have been for print, so I’m stoked.

Click here to see the video

I am the second person interviewed. After two days of conference, I look frizzy and tired. I was. It’s funny, but Francisco was able to capture exactly how I felt on film that evening. I was hungry and waiting for everyone to decide where we were going to eat.

You can see more of Francisco Daum’s work here:

6/14/2006

A Rainy Flag Day

Filed under: Personal History,Video — Laura Moncur @ 10:12 am

Until age twelve, I was a Jehovah Witness. I was not allowed to say the Pledge of Allegiance. I was not allowed to put my hand over my heart during the National Anthem.

Click here to see the video

Today is Flag Day and I’m an adult now. I can say the Pledge of Allegiance whenever I want.

6/10/2006

Zen Moment at the Apple Store

Filed under: Video — Laura Moncur @ 9:07 am

While waiting at the Apple Store for one of the Vloggercon events, I had a zen moment. I thought I’d share it with you.

Click here to see the video

5/13/2006

Sid’s a Good Dog

Filed under: Our Pets,Sid,Video — Laura Moncur @ 5:00 am

Click here to see the video

He always comes when I call him unless he knows he’s in trouble.

4/14/2006

Time To Cut The Grass

Filed under: Video — Laura Moncur @ 5:00 am

We had some nice weather, so I did my video in the backyard, which brought to mind all my duties. Time to cut the grass…

Click Here To See The Video

The strangest things come out of my mouth when I video tape myself. I don’t even remember talking about this.

“That’s always the funnest part of Spring: finding what the snow was hiding.”

4/4/2006

Self Portrait Tuesday: VideoBlog

Filed under: Video — Laura Moncur @ 5:00 am

Click Here to See the Video

Talking to a camera is so much more difficult than typing on my keyboard. Sometimes I feel like the ideas come out of my fingers instead of my mouth.


4/2/2006

Maggie Cleaning Linda

Filed under: Linda,Maggie,Our Pets,Video — Laura Moncur @ 5:00 am

Click Here to See the Video


I was sitting on my chair in the bedroom when I noticed that Maggie was cleaning Linda. Usually these sessions end up with a cat fight, so I ran to get my camera. Three minutes later, Maggie casually jumped down from the bed and it was all over: no cat fight, just a quiet moment in my life captured on film.

It’s no wonder that Maggie pukes up huge white hairballs on a regular basis…

1/26/2005

The Oil Refineries

Filed under: Living in SLC, UT — Laura Moncur @ 3:44 pm

I have been working at my present job for over two years. Every day, since October 2002, I have driven past the two oil refineries in North Salt Lake. They sit on the west side of I-15 and the activist inside of me thinks, “They are polluting my city.” I watch the billowing smoke and the dramatic flames jumping from the towers and the hippie in me shakes her head.

The thing is, those parts of me don’t win out. The logician in me thinks, “Sure glad they’re around so that I can drive my Beetle to work every day.” The husband of a friend of mine works at one of those refineries and almost lost his life there. I’m grateful for those hardworking individuals at the refineries.

The artist inside of me looks that the billowing smoke and dramatic flames and thinks, “Sweet Jesus, that’s purty.” My artist has a southern accent. She is a 350 pound black woman who sings like Nell Carter, paints like Rothko and writes like no one else on the planet. She loves the oil refineries. When they are silhouetted by the sunset, she wants to sing. She doesn’t know any love songs dedicated to oil refineries, so she usually just sings whatever is on her mind or MP3 player.

Somehow, the activist and hippie are subjugated by my logician and artist. The oil refineries are one of the two major milestones of my drive home, the other being the beer billboard I pass every day. Once a huge swarm of starlings kept circling one of the refineries. I almost ran the Beetle off the road watching them fly around and through and over the towers and machinery.

I’m never stuck in traffic when I’m driving past the refineries, so I don’t get to just sit and enjoy the grandeur. My attention is always divided, focusing primarily on the road. I don’t know how I would get a picture of the beauty that I see every day to share it with you. You’ll just have to believe me when I tell you, “Sweet Jesus, it’s purty.”

12/8/2003

Pigeons

Filed under: Living in SLC, UT — Laura Moncur @ 5:32 am

I don’t remember ever seeing any pigeons in Utah when I was a kid. I remember Burt on Sesame Street talking about how much he loved pigeons. I remember the Pigeon Dance that he did, but I don’t remember ever seeing them in Salt Lake. I vaguely remember asking my grandma why we didn’t have pigeons like Burt and Ernie did and I think she said pigeons only live in big cities.

God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into its nest.  – J.G. Holland

My first memory of Salt Lake pigeons was in 1991. I had been married for over a year and we lived in a 400 square foot apartment in the Trolley Square area. My friend, Dawni, lived in a different apartment complex just down the street, so I would walk over every day or so to see her, swim in their pool and play tennis on their courts. On the walk over, I passed an abandoned church. I don’t know how long it had been dormant, but it had been long enough for the birds to move in. I remember being shocked at seeing so many pigeons in one area. I thought we weren’t a big enough city to have pigeons.

Those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties, with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art.  – Izaak Walton (1593 – 1683)

Last Saturday, while I filled the gas tank on my car, I noticed a long line of pigeons on the electrical wires above me. They were intermingled with my beloved starlings that swarm the skies all year long here. The pigeons are so much larger than my beautiful little black birds that they were easy to distinguish. I began to think that maybe I just didn’t notice the pigeons when I was a child.

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.  – Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)

I remember noticing the sparrows. They were the little birds that my cat, Sugar, hunted relentlessly. Sacrificial sparrow heads would show up at our doorstep every week or so. No matter how much we fed her, she never gave up hunting the little birds all year long. We removed our bird feeder, because Sugar was catching a bird a day when it was up. It hadn’t been a bird feeder; it was a cat feeder.

I remember noticing the starlings. They swarm like locusts instead of flocking like birds. The black cloud of birds would swoop and hover all over the fields of Kennedy Junior High. I remember watching them and wondering why they seemed more like insects when I looked at their flight patterns.

The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.  – Eric Berne

No, I’m wrong. I was the type of child to notice the shiny feathers and strange walk of pigeons. I had been on the lookout for them because Burt had loved them so much. If there had been flocks of pigeons in Salt Lake when I was a child, I would have noticed it. I guess Salt Lake is finally a big enough city to have pigeons.

11/23/2003

Atheist

Filed under: Philosophy — Laura Moncur @ 6:05 am

The word itself is a void. It defines what I DON”T believe. I guess as an atheist, I get to decide what I DO believe. I believe in the randomness of numbers. I believe that the human mind has inherently evolved the ability to find order in chaos. Furthermore, this order that is formed from the chaos is of particular interest to that mind. What some would call divination, I am more likely to call interpretation. Sometimes two humans who have spent quite a bit of time with each other can interpret the randomness of life in the same manner, causing a belief in omens and other supernatural phenomena.

That is why the occult can scare and tantalize people. Sitting at a table across from a tarot card reader, is really an exercise for your mind to find the tidbits of interest from the plethora of information that is given you in a half hour’s time. Most humans don’t realize how much can be said in the span of thirty minutes, but because I regularly transcribe recordings of meetings, I am fully aware of the huge amount of information that can be passed in that short amount of time. A tarot card reader gives you a large amount of information, and your mind organizes the significant statements and forgets the insignificant ones. You’re scared to death because a complete stranger could give you such good advice about an issue that was never even discussed and a fear and belief in the occult perpetuates. The same could be said for bishop interviews.

My Favorite Methods for Gathering Randomness

The Magic 8 Ball: There is a website that walks you through a dissection of a Magic 8 Ball, which is fairly interesting, but the most important thing I learned from it was that the answers are not particularly even. The distribution of answers is as follows: Positive 50%, Negative 25% and Undecided 25%. I started asking questions in which the answer I want would have to be negative, just so that when I get the answer I want, I can really “believe” it. The importance of this is that I finally realize the answer I want, when before I asked the Magic 8 Ball, I may have been undecided.

Tarot Cards: The pre-assigned meanings attached to Tarot cards provide the human mind with enough room for interpretation of any human condition. I find that it is best just to shuffle up your own deck rather than see someone who reads them for you because that person may not give all the interpretations for the cards that are possible and your mind might need something else for the calming or deciding effect to take place.

The Movement of Birds: This is an old gypsy custom. Assigning meaning to the flight of birds and flocks has been a method of divination for longer than I know. The traditional meaning is birds to your right are “good” and birds to your left are “bad.” Birds that fly from your left to your right indicate a bad situation turning good and vice versa. The beauty of this method of gathering randomness is that flocks of birds rarely fly in sync. There are always a few stragglers left behind on the “good” side that the human mind can notice and find hope in. It’s more about being aware of what your mind notices than about the flight patterns of starlings on a spring morning.

MusicMatch’s Auto-DJ: Since music speaks to me louder than words, I have become particularly attached to this form of divination. MusicMatch is a shareware program that will read music from CD’s and store it in any form you wish on your computer’s hard drive. I have almost every piece of music that I own on my computer’s hard drive, now. The Auto-DJ feature will randomly choose music for me for a user-specified amount of time. I can narrow the choice by stipulating a genre or artist, but I like the joy of letting it choose for me almost completely randomly (sometimes I need to hear Sleigh Ride, even if it’s March, because, to me, it’s a song more about friends and fun than about Christmas). The interpretation comes when I assign meaning to particular songs. Many times, I have found that my mind really needed to hear a particular song or even just a particular line in the lyrics and ignored almost everything else that was chosen. The solace comes from hearing the order that the mind needs in the chaos of the Auto-DJ.

In closing, I want to clarify that I have no belief in the occult or supernatural occurrences. I have a strong and fanatical belief, however, in the ability of the mind to interpret meaning from seemingly meaningless things. I spoke before about how much can be said in a thirty-minute time frame, but there are times when our thoughts run faster in our heads than even speech could express. At these times, it helps to slow down, concentrate on random numbers and be aware of what our minds find significant in this randomness.

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