This is journal entry number 700.

I started this online journal on August 9, 2006. These were the first words that I typed out:

So here is the first journal entry. I felt like having as pretentious sounding name as possible for my journal. I have a few goals about this journal. My main goal is just to actually write in it. My second goal is to be as truthful as possible towards my true thoughts and feelings. I have another journal on another website, but it is really just a collection of sarcastic statements and cheap jabs at open faced sandwiches. This journal is meant to be about what my achievements and failures are in the world of art. What projects I am working on and what I have accomplished and what I have failed to accomplish. What I am photographing and what I am thinking about entering in photo contests. What I am thinking about. It might not always make sense. It might just be things I need to write down because they strike me as poignant or inspirational. This is in a small way an online “idea box”.

I do also have a goal of producing something that makes me worthy of having a pretentious sound journal title like: “An Artist’s Notebook”.

For better or for worse, this journal has enlarged its scope to include a lot more about me and my every day life than was originally intended. I think that is okay. It is dangerous to remain static.

I mentioned in The Jupiter Chronicles that Jupiter had helped clean out my Grandpa’s garage.

We arrived at the garage under the pretense that we were going to take a cursory glance at some of my grandpa’s tools. I had already made up my mind that I didn’t need any more tools, but when I got there I noticed the most wonderful pile of garbage.

I didn’t take any tools, but I did take a couple of trunks, a milk jug, a milk crate and a small old barn door. That is just to name a few of the treasures that I saved from the landfill.

In one of the old trunks I found an old newspaper that my grandpa had saved. It was a copy of The Daily Iowan (Iowa City’s newspaper) from Thursday, February 10, 1949.

I found it interesting to look through the old newspaper and I found one picture in the paper particularly fascinating.

It is doubtful that the picture is the reason he kept the newspaper. I think it is more likely that he kept the news paper for an article on Robert Mitchum getting busted for marijuana possession.

Family lore holds that Grandpa shared a bunk with Robert Mitchum during WWII. It also holds that Grandpa hated Robert Mitchum because he was so lazy. It might be where I get my general disdain for lazy people.

The picture that I found fascinating was of a passerby giving first aid to a man that was shot by a gunman who had barricaded himself in a YMCA.

In light of the tragedy at Fort Hood, it reminds me that this type of barbaric behavior is not a recent invention. It has been around for a long time.

I have not decided whether or not I consider that to be a reason to be hopeful about the future of man or pessimistic about the future of man.