KARLA PORTER

I have decided I am giv­ing a last hur­rah to “un”. It’s not a pos­i­tive pre­fix. While every­one is cham­pi­oning the descon­struc­tion of con­fer­ences I’m embar­go­ing the con­cept. I don’t expect it to be pop­u­lar but I never was a cheer­leader or prom queen so I’m OK with it.

My last unen­deavor is an unblog post, a ran­dom stream if con­scious­ness, no structure.

There are no social media experts, there are mar­keters, PR, HR, Recruiters, peo­ple who use social media appli­ca­tions to do what they have always done. This is just another tool. I went to the local com­mu­nity col­lege today and spoke with 8 sin­gle moth­ers try­ing to make a life for them­selves by jug­gling par­ent­ing, school and work. They were scared. They meet weekly to dis­cuss life skills, I’m glad because they need it.

A local museum is clos­ing due to State bud­get cuts, that’s not good for chil­dren who take field trips there to learn his­tory and cul­ture. Danc­ing with the Stars is rein­vent­ing Kelly Osbourne, she is matur­ing before my eyes. There must be a bet­ter alter­na­tive to the cat lit­ter cur­rently avail­able. When I lived in Mex­ico there was no cat lit­ter, I used to go the lum­ber mill and get bags of wood shav­ings. Sarah Palin just doesn’t go away.

Recently I pur­chased a Nikon SLR starter cam­era, a D3000 and I think I have a future in food pho­tog­ra­phy. I took a photo of a tray of canoli today that I couldn’t stop star­ing at. I don’t sleep much dur­ing the week because I have a lot I want to accom­plish but I make it up on the week­ends. When some­one asks me what keeps me up at night I can’t come up with any­thing. Noth­ing is worth los­ing sleep over.

Homes in Europe and other places last hun­dreds of years because they are built of brick and stone. Why are we like ger­bils spin­ning wheels build­ing houses of wood that get ripped apart in hur­ri­cane zones, rot and get eaten by ter­mites. Aren’t we smarter than that? Why do I get mail order cat­a­logs with web­site URLs in big let­ters on the front cover?

Hav­ing to renew dog licenses every year is ridicu­lous. Why are human births and deaths reg­is­tered but not those of other domes­ti­cated ani­mals unless they are pedi­gree? I’m try­ing to fig­ure out what law of physics gov­erns indi­vid­ual strands of fur to find one another and clump together to cre­ate fur balls, same with dust bun­nies. Some enter­pris­ing per­son should go around neigh­bor­hoods and offer main­te­nance con­tracts just like condo com­mu­ni­ties have. I would pay it. Kind of a one stop shop for yard work, handy­man stuff, snow removal, house­keep­ing, secu­rity, etc.

I want a neck­lace with a pen­dant that is a hard drive and mobile phone that I can acti­vate by the sen­sor read­ing my thumb print and it pro­ject­ing a touch screen mon­i­tor and key­board on the sur­face of my choos­ing. I want seam­less appli­ca­tions. I don’t want to have to sync my smart phone with my com­puter and I don’t want to have to carry them around either. I like to travel light. It needs to be scan­able to pay for pur­chases and be styl­ish. It should be cus­tomiz­able like a locket with inter­change­able cov­ers to match your mood or your cloth­ing. Actu­ally, I’m dis­ap­pointed. We have put peo­ple on the moon and we don’t have this yet? I’m sens­ing our pri­or­i­ties are mixed up.

Shouldn’t world hunger have been solved by now? I’m not a speciesist and I  view eat­ing ani­mals the same as can­ni­bal­ism. If I had no food choices I might eat another ani­mal to sur­vive but I would only do it for sur­vival. I can’t wrap my mind around mur­der­ing, cook­ing, eat­ing and say­ing yum.. I think maybe it’s why noth­ing keeps me up at night.

I can be as abstract as the next per­son but I want some struc­ture back in my con­fer­ences. Not lec­tures pre­cisely, more work­shop style. I feel like I’m uncon­fer­enc­ing all the time, it’s one of the things social media is good for. If I want to have a dis­cus­sion with like minded peo­ple I start a thread some­where and now a wave, and ask peo­ple to join in. I don’t need to fly or drive some­where to do that. To me that’s just good old net­work­ing so lets call a spade a spade..

That was cathar­tic. Now it’s time for some sleep.