Hey, there’s big doin’s going on at the WoodChips Tree-Shirt factory.  They’re all designing away.  As you can see, Maple got her’s done first and she’s thinking about putting it up for sale.  So if you like her Tree-Shirt, just click like below.

Have a nice day – J. Daniel

For those of you following the status of brave little penguin Happy Feet, who became ill after swimming thousands of miles from Antarctica to New Zealand, it looks like he may be getting better.

You may think it was the long swim that made him sick, but no, it was simply a lack of tourist information that got him in trouble.

Penguins eat ice to cool themselves down, and little Happy Feet, being rather warm on the New Zealand beach, mistakenly started eating sand, thinking it was ice.

That gave him a rather bad belly ache and he was seen spitting the stuff up, presumably thinking New Zealand has some very low grade ice.

This is clearly just a case of misinformation and goes to show it really pays to get local information well in advance of swimming off to a hot vacation spot.

Happy Feet is resting in the hospital chiller for now and has been offered a free ride back to Antarctica after he recovers. He has also been given a copy of travel experts Frommer’s New Zealand Travel guide to read during his recovery.

Good idea.

And get better, Happy Feet.

Have a nice day – J. Daniel

So what would life be like one second after all of our electronic devices stopped running – permanently! 

Just our electronic devices, you say.  Well, that includes your car, which is now a computer controlled electronic device, unlike cars of just twenty years ago.  In fact, electronic device probably fits just about everything you depend on these days. 

I’ve often joked with my friends that one day we will find out the common yellow number two pencil now has a computer chip in it. 

So now everything you depend on has stopped working and there is no electricity, no air conditioning, no refrigeration, no nothing.  Think of it as a power outage that is going to last months or years – like a winter storm or hurricane outage – just much longer. 

Things start getting serious real fast in the story, as they would in real life and civilization starts breaking down as people try to cope with being instantly hurled back to the 1800’s. 

The cause is something called an EMP – an electromagnetic pulse set off by a nuclear weapon detonated 100 miles above the earth.  There’s no fallout and no blast effect – just everything stops working.  

The effect has been well known since the cold war, but we have taken our eye off the ball since the end of the cold war.  But others have not, developing weapons that create an even greater EMP effect.

 The seriousness of this effect is so real that members of Congress have discussed its homeland security aspects and some have read the book.  The book even has an intro written by Newt Gingrich.  It’s also not without a touch of humor, particularly since the only car that works for the hero is an old Edsel (since there were no electronics in cars when it was made). 

But overall, if you’re looking for a real thriller ride, you will want to read this book — I couldn’t put it down and had to tell all my Facebook and Twitter friends about it. 

Here’s a link to the book if you’d like to check it out – http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_16?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=one+second+after&sprefix=one+second+after. 

Have a nice day – J. Daniel

I ran into the classic self portrait of Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney a couple of years ago at, of all places, Disneyworld, here in Orlando.

I quickly sketched (and I mean sketched) the gist of the portrait since I was in a rather long line at the time to go on some fun ride.

And I knew at that moment I would have to do a WoodChips triple self portrait as soon as I could.  I think it’s a law that all artists or artists’ wannabes do a self portrait.  I’m pretty sure it’s in the United States Constitution or Magna Carta or something.

The Mickey Mouse portrait had an eerie familiarity to it, and eventually I began to think I had seen a similar Norman Rockwell triple self portrait.  Sure enough, some quick research showed that he indeed had done the very same thing.

This got me thinking and I began to wonder, who did this first, Norman Rockwell or Disney?

I found out that Norman Rockwell’s portrait had been published on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1960.

And Rockwell and Disney even knew each other.  In fact, while on holiday with his family in New England, Disney noticed many Norman Rockwell paintings on the walls of the restaurant they were eating in, and asked if he lived nearby.  He was told yes, just three miles down the road.

So they all went to Norman’s house, unannounced, and tried to see him.  Norman’s staff didn’t recognize Disney so they started to leave.  Just then, Norman, who was out mowing his lawn, saw them and came over.  They went inside and visited for an hour or so.

Editorial note:  This was back in the day before 911 when life was simpler.  Had this happened today, the Disney family would have needed to go through a security scanner, the women would have had to throw away all their jells over three ounces, and everyone would have taken their shoes off and visited barefoot.

So which came first, the chicken or the egg?  Did Norman Rockwell imitate Disney’s triple self portrait or was it the other way around – kind of an art imitating art thing?

The answer will surprise you.

Walt Disney never created the triple self portrait.  It was done by one of his illustrators named Charles Boyer, who did it as a parody on Norman Rockwell’s painting.

So that’s the answer.  Norman Rockwell did it first.

And the WoodChips one came later, kind of a triple parody, triple self portrait (chuckle – bet you guessed that one already).

Back to the requirement/law that all artists do self portraits, one of the more fascinating and informative articles I ran into while researching this subject came from Tom Shawcross, formerly of St. Louis and currently in Delray Beach.

He has a great blog on this subject, illustrated, with many insightful comments.  You can also see the self portraits of Rembrandt Van Rijn, Vincent Van Gogh (strange, there’s a bandage over his ear), Leonardo Da Vinci and other luminaries.  You will want to go check it out here at http://tomshawcross.blogspot.com/2006/03/self-portraits.html.

Now all you budding artists out there, get to work on your self portraits.

It’s the LAW!

Have a great day – J. Daniel

By the way, you can purchase the Disney and Rockwell classics shown above at a very reasonable price at these two web sites below – both under $20 I believe (and no – I don’t get a commission, just giving credit where it is due).

http://www.best-norman-rockwell-art.com/1960-triple-self-portrait.html.

Isn’t it amazing what procrastination does to us?

This cartoon puts me in mind of my night school days years ago.  I had a more than full time job managing the corporate IT department of a Fortune 500 company plus taking a full load of night school courses at Lindenwood University.

So while my friends were out partying and drinking I was a home every night with a load of homework staring at me.

In this situation I would sometimes find myself cleaning my house.  Amazing.  Because house cleaning is my least favorite thing … well, except for taxes … hmmm … and that death thing … so anyhow, housework is my third least favorite thing, to put a fine point on it.

That’s still a really unfavorite thing.  And yet it became more attractive than doing my homework.

Which just goes to show  that you ALWAYS enjoy doing something more if you should be doing something else.

For example, right now I should be filling out a small questionnaire for an IMC Golden Ticket business seminar sponsored by Early To Rise that I am attending next Friday.  It’s simple – only four questions.  It will take no more than fifteen minutes.  I know the answers off the top of my head.  I voluntarily asked for this and want to go to the seminar.  I must fill it out – should have Friday, really.  And I’ve been putting it off all day.

So I came into my computer room to get it done – and suddenly became more interested in writing this post.  Now that I’ve finished this post I suppose I’ll find some compelling reason to go to Facebook.  Anything but the simple thing I need to do.

Hey, I might even clean my house up a bit.

This whole “doing something when you should be doing something else thing“ is an immutable law of human nature, I suppose.

So I hope you’re having a lot of fun doing something this weekend,

And I hope it’s because you should be doing something else .

J. Daniel

Isn’t it amazing the perception and truth that comes out of children’s mouths.  Haven’t we all experienced that many times in our lives?

Which reminds me of Art Linkletter, who made a successful living from the wisdom of children.  The most popular segment of his radio and television show House Party was called Kids Say The Darndest Things.  In this show he interviewed schoolchildren between the ages of five and ten.  The segment ran for 27 years and it is estimated that he interviewed 23,ooo children.

He must have picked up a great deal of wisdom from those interviews.  Art was a very successful investor.  How successful?  Well he was one of the early investors in the hoola hoop, if that gives you a clue.  He went on to become a significant philanthropist in his later years.

Maybe we could all learn a bit more from children.

The next time one is talking, give a listen.  They are the most honest reporters out there.

Have a nice day – J. Daniel

P.S. Art died not that long ago in 2010 at age 93.  Apparently longevity comes with hanging around the young at heart as well.

Today’s cartoon features WoodChip’s artist and new cartoon character –  Van Bough.

Van Bough just loves to draw and paint, which he’s pretty good at, although sloppy when he does it.  He’s always spilling his paint all over the ground.

He’s also often confused by art critic hacks who write about his paintings.

For example, one recently wrote that he was “Illustrating the term ‘objectivism’ to denote a mythopoetical reality.  Thus, the subject was interpolated into a dialectic paradigm of discourse that includes narrativity as a paradox.”

Van Bough doesn’t know what all that means.  He was just painting a tree, really.

All we can say is don’t worry about it, Van Bough.  And welcome to the WoodChips Forest.  We are quite partial to trees .

And have a nice day – J. Daniel

P.S. The new Van Bough WoodChips character was inspired by Iain M.’s comment on Drayton Bird’s Facebook post today about meaningless gibberish from art hacks – go figure.  Drayton’s Facebook posts always seem to foster interesting dialog.

I was drawn to the phrase “Mythopoetical Reality” like a moth to a flame, and obsessed with drawing a cartoon about it, even though I was starving, wanted to cook breakfast and go to the beach … which I am going to do RIGHT NOW.

P.P.S. Iain is hereby designated an Honorary WoodChip for his inspirational comment and will be enrolled on the hallowed Honorary WoodChips page this week as Iain M.

I read recently that companies lose $350 billion a year because of employee disengagement.

Wow.  I knew the divorce problem in this country was big, but I’d never thought about the business cost of disengagement.

This is probably all due to a lack of teamwork.

Teamwork is important in companies; although I’ve seen a few of them take it a bit too far.  I’ve attended a few sessions which bordered on outright silly.

You know, the ones where they have you all stand in a circle and randomly throw a ball from one person to the next, trying to remember who passes to you and who you pass to.  I guess the first one to miss is a proven, outlaw non-team player.

Or taking you out in the woods and having you all help each other squeeze through the center of a tire hanging by a rope suspended from a tree about five feet off of the ground.

You think I’m kidding?  Nope.  Not kidding.

Of course, most of these are all “voluntary,” right.  And we all know they are “not.”  So we do them for honest, genuine teamwork reasons — like keeping our jobs.

This particular series of teamwork exercises I mentioned was called “Stream.”  I jokingly commented that next year we were all going to have to jump out of a plane together holding hands and singing Kumbaya.  My working title for that program was “Scream.”

I didn’t say this too loud however, because I was afraid someone might think it was a good idea.

All in all, this is probably a poor use of the concept of teamwork.

Speaking of which, Mr. BigTwig in this week’s cartoon has a long way to go on teamwork, wouldn’t you say.  What a concept.  He thinks teamwork is “a bunch of people doing what I say.”

I worked for a boss in my past that had that attitude.  Hmmm … come to think of it, maybe a couple of them.  But the one I have in mind actually wrote and published a book entitled Do What I Say.  I’m not sure how sales went on this masterpiece – I’m thinking not particularly great.  Sounds a little heavy handed if you ask me.

Interestingly, I liked the guy and we got along well.  He was one of those polarizing figures people loved or hated – there were no in-between opinions about him.

I liked him because he knew what he wanted, knew what he was talking about, was fair, defended his people, never talked behind their back, made sure we had the resources to get his challenging assignments done, was not afraid to make tough decisions, and he communicated well – some thought a little too well, as memory serves.

Those are leadership qualities, aren’t they?

And I think they foster teamwork – far better than squeezing team mates through the center of a tire in the woods.

So if you want to be a good team leader, or team player, maybe foster some of those qualities in yourself.  I think you’ll have a lot more success with that idea.

And by all means don’t write a book entitled Do What I Say.

Have a great day – J. Daniel

P.S.  Have you ever had to do one of those silly teamwork exercises?  Or have you worked for a Mr. BigTwig boss in your past?  Feel free to comment by clicking here and scrolling to the bottom of the page.