Stumptown Magazine

Your SM editor (and maybe others?) will be attending Ignite Portland 8 tonight. We are attending this deal because it includes some of our favorite Portlanders speaking about things we imagine will be some combination of funny/informative/completely mind blowing. Although the good folks at Ignite provided little snippets of what the talks will be about, any possible preview we could do would be based entirely on conjecture and imagination. So instead, here are your provided previews of the speakers and their topics, followed by a random story that may or may not have anything to do with the speaker’s topic.

• Digital media pro Andy Beach will present “Drinking Your Way To A Better You.” Here’s Ignite’s preview:

You don’t have to drink more to be a better person, but you should drink more interesting things! Drinking your way to a better you will show you some simple options for upgrading your bar to make it on par with the pros. Topics covered will include infusing, making homemade mixers, and provide some sample recipes that will impress your friends and family.

I’m still trying to understand what compels college-aged kids to invent awful, foul tasting party drinks. It’s like some weird, unspoken right of passage, to invent some terrible concoction that you serve out of a fish tank or a rubbermaid bin at whatever “Pre-finals Bash!” party you’re having that week. Do people learn this from their older siblings? From their parents? Is it included in the welcome pamphlet they hand out on college campuses? My old friend Jason made this stuff he called “Nitrus.” It was, if I remember right, a mixture of vodka, everclear (or, as I like to call it, “vomit potion”), whiskey, soda water and Mountain Dew, all served out a bucket that you might give your dog a bath in. It was great, except that: 1) everyone got rotten, night-ending sick after drinking it, and 2) it tasted like ABSOLUTE DOG PISS. Why did we make this stuff, this “Nitrus,” or “Jungle Juice” or whatever? Was there some chance that the gin and tonics wouldn’t do the trick? Was the $4-per-case beer we used to drink not cheap enough? I’d like to commission some kind of congressional panel to investigate this issue.

• Computer science student Erik Chevalier will present, “A Fabber In Every Household.” Here’s the preview:

3D Fabrication is the process of taking a digital model, either created from scratch or scanned from an existing real life object and printing a physical copy out in a variety of materials. This amazing technology has been used in design industries for years but is finally becoming affordable to the general public. At just under a grand home sized 3D printers, such as the Makerbot, are closer to a reality but still beyond most people’s financial grasp. I propose we gather resources and start a 3D printing coop right here in Portland. Thus I present OBJECTIFIER!

This sounds useful. I think I’d like to print out little fake furniture for my cats and then try to trick them into sitting on it. Ha ha, FAT FUCKERS, joke’s on you! And also: Voodoo dolls. This would be the pinnacle of voodoo doll technology. You could have one at the drop of a hat – a new doll every day. If your barista throws you some attitude at the coffee shop that morning, just snap a photo of them on your phone, take it home, print out a miniature model of them and start jabbing fucking exacto knives into that thing. Thanks, technology!

• Anomaly Incorporated co-founder Gene Ehrbar presents, “Dr. Seuss and his Secret, Evil Mind-Control Plan: A Cautionary Tale”:

The information we feed our children’s developing young minds is as important as the food we choose for them. For the last four years, my wife and I have navigated a sea of children’s content, sometimes stumbling upon hidden gems, often enduring bad, stilted verse, and frequently being infected with the most vile of children’s-music ear-worms. We took notes.

All too often, reading between the lines in our children’s books and videos, we found not-so-well-concealed agendas, and attempts to politicize, indoctrinate, and market to our kids. Here are the highlights, shockers, and funny bits, plus some tips to help you avoid pitfalls as you prepare to introduce your little ones to the wonderful world of media.

Children’s television sucks. I grew up watching Sesame Street – maybe I watched other stuff, but Sesame Street is all I can remember, television-wise – and for as much as that show was (is? is it still on?) fluff and songs and shit, it at least had some pretense of education. Numbers, letters, words, concepts. There was all of the social commentary going on as well – people of different colors living on the same street and hanging out with one another, the startling economic reality of one of the show’s central characters actually living in a fucking trash can, a stark introduction to the perils of addiction (Cookie Monster let cookies ruin his life and the lives of those around him), etc. It wasn’t just trite bullshit meant to get kids to shut the fuck up and sit there for an hour while mommy talked on the phone or whatever. But now…I mean, Teletubbies? Every parent who let their kids watch Teletubbies can eat rotten dicks. That show was just a bunch of retarded puppets fucking squeaking at one another. It had the intellectual worth of a goldfish. You might as well let your kids watch Jersey Shore. That said, I really hope this talk isn’t about stopping your kids from consuming any media that has some kind of social/political/economic undertone to it. I mean, sure, it might not be exactly what you want to teach your kids, but shouldn’t kids be exposed to all kinds of different ideas and belief systems and so on? And isn’t that better than just letting them watch the televised equivalent of gummy bears their whole childhood?

• Kristin Webb-Tomson presents, “Ugly Is The New Beautiful.”

Sometimes we humans expect only beauty, permit only perfection. But what about Ugly? By “ugly” I mean the non-beautiful. Charm is deceitful and beauty is fleeting. What if we were all Barbies and Elijah Woods with piercing blue eyes? Something would be missing.

I think Profoundness hides behind ugly. If you only look for beauty you will bypass the Best. If you only care for Shiny you will miss hidden Royalty.

People always say that, “This new thing is the new old, traditional thing.” I don’t know if it’s ever exactly true. “Pink is the new black,” they say. Really? Are we sure that pink is actually “the new black?” Or is pink just moderately on-trend this season, while black is still in-season and on-trend, because IT’S FUCKING BLACK and it will always be in style until the end of time? Anyway, this should be an interesting presentation. Beauty is often propped up as something more than it is – Kant, Emerson and about a billion other people have pointed this out – but it still exists, and humans have a habit of recognizing it without any help from the media. Like that French Silk pie over there behind the glass at Random Order. That thing is fucking GORGEOUS. I didn’t need a commercial to tell me that, I promise. And as for ugly being the new beautiful? Even someone like Kant, who believed beauty was disposable, still believed in the concept of intrinsic physical beauty – be it art, nature or the human form – that was completely separate from virtue or whatever other qualities people are instinctively drawn to. See? THIS IS A THINKING MAN’S BLOG.

• Wikipedia editor and administrator Steven Walling tells us “Why Wikipedians are the Weirdest People on the Internet.”

Wikipedians. They’re the people who actually write that free online encyclopedia you use every day. But who are they?

Wikipedia isn’t written by the staff of a company or paid experts. It’s written by thousands of unpaid volunteers.

Though anyone and everyone can make an edit to the site, there’s an elite (read: obsessed) cadre of people who regularly give up their free time to write an encyclopedia. If you thought 4chan was weird, wait till you meet the Wikipedians.

I can’t wait for this one. Wikipedia is the most mysterious creature on the internet – right up there with Google’s search algorithm. Any light that can be shed on how the world’s official encyclopedia works is cool with me.

• Sarina Rodrigues presents, “This is your brain on people.”

I’m gonna talk about what happens to your body and your brain when you freak out and when you feel all warm and fuzzy.

Ok, Sarina. Then tell me this: Why do I always pace around whenever I freak out about something? I’m usually a pretty stationary guy – I’ve been sitting in the same seat at Random Order writing this goddamn blog for the past hour – but when I freak out about something, I pop up and start pacing around like some nutcase on a Max platform. What’s up with that? TELL ME, SARINA!

• Maxwell Radi presents, “How To Be Unemployed.”

During this tough recession many of my employed friends have asked me: How are you able to stay unemployed?

Do you have what it takes? Simply answer these questions:
Do you have access to your Parent’s basement? Are you free of dependents? Do you enjoy the taste of top ramen? If you answered yes to all of these questions, you are fit to be unemployed.

Some key points I will be going over:
How to lose interview opportunities.
How to bomb the only interview you’ve had in a month.
How to make a spelling error in your resume.
Where to find a job (hint: craigslist.com).
How to apply for something you can’t even pronounce.
What to wear when inquiring into job openings.
How to incorrectly pronounce the name of the secretary that’s handling your application for employment.
How to accidentally call your interviewer a lesbian.

Tired of getting paid? No problem. Be unemployed.

Oh, we like Maxwell. Another sad J-school grad looking for work. Well, if you ever want to write for a VERY PRESTIGIOUS blog for free, we’ve got just the place in mind, my friend.

• Cyborg anthropologist Amber Case presents, “An Introduction To Hyperbolic Geometry.”

Traditional geometry is something we all learned in school. Some of us like it, and the rest of us don’t. In traditional geometry, parallel lines stay parallel, and triangles are always 180 degrees. Theses (sic) are the rules, and they cannot be broken.

Enter Hyperbolic Geometry. It’s not new, but it is an AWESOME field of mathematics. Basically, it breaks all the rules.

In this presentation, I’ll demonstrate some of the history and implications of this field, a field that has inspired Escher and sent Euclid rolling in his grave. I’ll also explain the mysterious 5th Postulate and how all of this applies to the web.

Sound complicated? Don’t panic! I’ll use a lot of pictures and analogies. And with all of the beer you’ll all be consuming, the ideas should enter your brain smoothly and enjoyable (sic). This won’t hurt a bit.

Amber Case is – and I suspect this is true for many of you – one of our favorite people in Portland. She could tell us anything – the story of how she went to the store one time – and we’d be listening attentively and asking questions afterwords. But let me just explain something: My brain is a simple machine. There isn’t a ton going on up there. The precious little space my human hard drive does have is filled with, in no particular order: Sports trivia, bad/terrible/inappropriate jokes, quotes from Rocky movies and about a 500-word vocabulary. So Amber, if you ask me what I thought of the presentation afterwords and I’m like, “Uh, it was awesome!” and then stand there silently, don’t take offense. It’s about the best I can do.

• Lee Williamson presents, “Deadwood, South Dakota’s most notorious madam, Influenza Pandemics, and why I’m probably alive today.”

While the news media continues to try to scare us shitless about the H1N1 Influenza virus, the present outbreak has nothing on what happened in 1918.

This is a story of how and why my grandfather, grandmother, and my aunt and uncle survived the influenza pandemic of 1918 – without Purell – and due entirely to the intercession of Deadwood, South Dakota’s most notorious brothel owner: “Poker Alice”.

Did you say “brothel,” Lee? We’re all ears! SPEAK UP PLZ,  kthx.

• Phillip Kerman discusses, “Video Production On The Cheap.”

At Portland Ignite 3, I encouraged everyone to make videos as a way to release anger (see http://tinyurl.com/make-a-video ). But I failed to show you HOW. In this presentation I’ll give you tangible ideas and real-world examples of producing effective videos–with practically no money. And my point is not that quality equipment has come down in price, rather I’ll show you that when you focus on a great message, timing, and perhaps some humor or just pure creativity–all the technical details become unimportant. In a world where “standard definition” (vs. HD) has become a pejorative term, this presentation will give you an excuse to have fun making videos despite the desperate economy.

We’ve been seriously considering doing more video here at SM. Is that something you people would be interested in? More little movie-deals about stuff that we attend or cover from time to time? I think one of the obstacles to us doing this is that we are highly weary of our videos looking like some crappy family vacation clips that were hastily assembled on iMovie and pushed out onto the vast expanses of the internet, only polluting it further, if such a thing is possible. That’s the thing: If we’re going to do video, we want to do it right and present it well. But we have ABSOLUTELY NO MONEY and very little time (even though this blog is taking a billion years to write). So, maybe Phil has some suggestions for us. Show us the way, Phil, so we can better tarnish the internets with our smut.

• Sheetal Dube presents, “The Bag Lady.”

I would like to share my learning’s from a recent interview I did with a heart patient who called herself ‘The Bag Lady’. This was part of a project I was doing to study the usefulness of a new medical device. My session with her made me pause and shed any misconceptions I might have had about people who walk on the streets with big bags, collecting junk. In many ways she set me straight on work and life. I would like to spend 5 minutes talking about how she did that.

We don’t have any jokes for this one. Should be good. Looking forward to it.

• Selena Deckelmann from Open Source Bridge tells us “How to un-rig an election.”

In the summer of 2009, Selena travelled to Akure, Nigeria to give a PostgreSQL training. While there, she learned about the ascendancy of a new administration in Ondo state, and how they managed to overcome a severe case of election rigging.

The talk is the story of a group of idealists and information technology specialists who put together some basic tools to prove that an election was rigged.

Elections everywhere are completely screwed. They drive me crazy. I spent both the 2000 and 2004 elections in newsrooms trying to cover the damn things, and let me tell you, that is only fun for complete political junkies who get off on the insane drama of democracy. I’m not going to say that any US election has ever been “rigged” – not the way they do it in places like Nigeria and Iran and El Salvador – but the combination of bad television coverage, shaky polling and (maybe) sketchy returns made both of these elections unbearable to cover and witness. Here’s a conversation I had with my wife, who was in Costa Rica at the time, during the 2004 elections:

Me: Hey, it looks like Kerry is winning. He’s way ahead in a bunch of swing states – Florida, Ohio, all of it. I think this thing is about over.

Her: That’s awesome. How soon do you think they’ll call it?

Me: I don’t know. Any time now, probably. People are saying it could be a landslide.

Her: Ok, call me back when you hear something.

About an hour later:

Her: Hello?

Me: Goddamn it.

Now, this is far different from elections in countries where the military sets up with AK-47s outside of polling stations to make sure no one sets off a truck bomb (or that people “vote the right way,” whichever). Anyway, this talk should be a good one.

• SyFy writer David Levine discusses “Mission to ‘Mars’”

In January 2010 I spent two weeks at the Mars Desert Research Station, a simulated Mars base in the Utah desert. Although the Martian conditions were simulated, the science was real, as were the isolation, hostile environment, and problems faced by the six-person crew. Although my official title was Crew Journalist, I soon found myself repairing space suits, helping to keep the habitat running, and having interplanetary adventures I’d never before imagined.

What will happen to the world when alien sex is a possibility? I mean, let’s say that in 200-300 years (humans will probably still be around then, right?) some alien life form finds us, makes first contact, and after SHITTING OUR PANTS for 10-20 years we finally settle in to the idea that we all have to live together in some way, because they’re here and no one is willing to leave. If it’s at all physically possible, it will only be a matter of time before someone has one too many wine coolers and says to their friends, “I’m totally going to hook up with that alien over there.” Can you imagine the total fucking freakout the Republican Party of the future will have when this happens? Christ, you think the dumb debate over gay marriage is bad – just wait for inter-species sex to become a reality. Right-wingers will be in the street with pitchforks and torches. Did this already happen, in Avatar? And why haven’t I seen Avatar yet? Maybe because it’s been sold out for the past eleventy months straight. STOP IT NERDS. LEAVE SOME AVATAR FOR THE REST OF US.

• DeeAnn Sole on “Travels With Our Cats: A Lazy Person’s Guide To Taking The Trip Of A Lifetime.”

Enjoy a tour through my crazy plan to pack my husband, our two cats, and all the necessities of life into one Toyota Prius for a multi-month driving trip around the United States.

We had discussed extended vacations before, but there were always questions. Could we afford it? What about our jobs? Don’t we need somewhere to live? Where would we keep our stuff? What about the cats? And, really, aren’t we too lazy for this sort of thing?

Our 2008 move to Portland provided a perfect opportunity for travel. Many of our questions (jobs, house, stuff) became moot. With a little planning, I was sure we could compensate for the rest.

This is the story of how we drove 16,800 miles, visited 25 destinations, and spent 153 days on the road with our cats–all while sleeping in proper beds and never getting up before 8:30 AM.* We did it, and so can you!

* (Except for the two days when we saw a Space Shuttle launch and visited Red Rock Canyon at sunrise, respectively, and those were both totally worth it.)

Traveling with cats is a nightmare. At one point during our drive to Portland from Kansas City, one of our two cats accidentally made a little poopie in their shared cage, and for whatever reason, a fucking MASSIVE CAT FIGHT broke out. Trust me, there are very few things more distracting to a driver than the smell of shit and a the clatter of a full-bore cat cage match happening a foot away from you. I will not be doing that again.

• Audrey Rose Goldfarb presents, “The Gatekeeper Phenomenon.”

With steadily declining happiness among women in the US, starkly contrasting to a slightly increasing amount of happiness for men (Stevensen & Wolfers, 2009), we have a problem. It’s played out for individuals, as well as for groups of people, with potential ramifications in the political arena, both locally & across the US: the Gatekeeper Phenomenon.

Described most simply, it’s a notable discrepancy where common behavior, trivialization and comodification of sex, does not align with our hard-wired (innate) drives: sex, particularly for women, is nothing to be taken lightly. It’s become a form of socialized cognitive dissonance. While cognitive dissonance happens when an individual’s behavior does not correlate with their deeper sense of right and wrong, socialized cognitive dissonance is when popular culture-induced behaviors don’t correlate with our more naturalistic tendencies, causing an array of social epidemics. With teen pregnancy on the rise for the first time in 15 years (according to the CDC in 2007), expanding pharmaceutical & illicit drug use and tidal waves of emotional health and relationship concerns everywhere, people are continuing to suffer from trivialization and comodification of sex.

My goal is to ignite a substantive discussion on the Gatekeeper Phenomenon, building upon decades of scientific sex-media-dysfunction research. What can be done to address these issues? There are steps to take at every level: personal, social and political. Lets make it happen!

No one should trivialize sex.

• Singer Matthew Douglass discusses “Legends of Rock.”

In 2006 I started singing with a Barbershop Chorus of men, many of whom are old enough to be my father… or grandfather. The lessons I have learned from these men, singing, sharing, growing a sweet mustache (or not), and growing as a collaborative artist, have forever changed my life. Rare are the places where generations of people gather to create together. In my presentation I will share some of the lessons I have learned from my intergenerational musical journey.

We thought for a minute that Matthew Douglass was the mayor of Random Order on Foursquare. Had this been the case, we would have challenged him to a duel in the streets, because obviously Foursquare does not understand or appreciate how often we patronize that place. But alas, it’s some dude named “Douglass R.” YOU’RE OFF THE HOOK THIS TIME, MATTHEW. Also: this talk should be great. There aren’t enough barbershop choruses for our taste. I want one on every corner in Portland, just like in the old days (which may or may not have been how it actually was back then, we don’t know).

• Jean MacDonald offers “A Beginner’s Guide To Psychiatric Hospitalization.”

If you have the bad luck to find yourself in the emergency room of a psychiatric hospital, you’ll be asked a standard series of questions in order to figure out if you are, well, crazy. I’ll cover what to answer and what NOT to answer, so you can avoid being mislabeled as paranoid, delusional, grandiose or any of a number of other things that you obviously are not. I’ll also have tips for those who still manage to get locked up, despite following my advice.

Finally, someone put together a presentation just for us. Thanks Jean!

• Writer Liz Argall talks us through “How To Hit Writer’s Block In The Face With A Shovel.”

What size shovel should one get to beat writer’s block?
Can you get a discount if writer’s block turns into writers’ block?

I will take you on a journey through strange, elaborate and mundane techniques that can be used to GET THE WORDS ON THE PAGE. Write that paper, finish that blog post, hammer out that short story or pull yourself over the broken glass of that novel.

BYO shovel

Writer’s block is an affliction that I suspect is almost entirely specific to fiction writers. When I write fiction (which is rarely anymore), I certainly suffer from it from time to time. But for this thing? I just string together a handful of words I know, a few I don’t, a few I completely  make up and click “publish.” Hard to block that.

• Beverly Fields presents, “Five Behaviors That Will Keep My Hot, Smart Friends From Dating You.”

Exactly what the title says. Approximately one minute each on such things as:
1. Thinking you are smarter than she is
2. Believing your great personality will make a supermodel love you.
3. Asking 14 times after she has said no for the 27th.
4. Failure to comprehend “consensual”
5. Being a complete asshat

If we were giving this presentation, we would just get up to the podium and scream, “GET A JOB AND STOP BEING SUCH A FUCKING DOUCHEBAG.” We’re curious to see what direction Beverly takes this in.

• Scott Rogers and Bob Ladewig from Curious Comedy Theater will present, “How To Write Sketch Comdey.”

Bob and Scott will provide instruction on how to write sketch comedy from brainstorming a premise, putting it through its paces with improv and finding the right POV for the sketch to setting up the jokes, finding the characters and knowing when to drop the curtain. They will do this without the benefit of a licensed pyrotechnican or pants.

Yes, there is no need for pants. We won’t have any on either. See you there, dudes!