Hello! This is just the little boring page about me.

I'm Ken, I'm a guy (why do I mention that? because lots of people look at the site and assume that I'm not. I don't mind, I think that's neat actually) and I'm the person that does *everything* at this site. It's a one kitty show.

Rambling from a couple of years ago, when I lived in NYC (new stuff at the bottom of the page):

I'm a bit of a workaholic I guess, I really do spend most of my time working on orders and designs and new things for the site. I'm not the kind of person who can just hang out and watch a movie. I get bored, endlessly bored, so easily that I always have to be doing something or my mind explodes. That's why I generally watch movies while making buttons.

I'm not a 'normal' kind of person. You know that 'rat race' thing? I never knew what that meant when I was a little kid, I thought people really did race rats or something, but I knew it didn't sound like a nice thing to be involved in, and it isn't. I don't want to get ahead and I don't want to have a 'lifestyle' that must 'maintain'. I'm perfectly content just doing what I do. Some people want the whole white-picket-fence dream, some people want to be rock stars, I pretty much just want to be left alone.

Materialism, consumerism... I just don't buy into those things. A bit odd for a person who sells things, but really the selling things bit isn't the point for me and it doesn't really matter. Sure it's lovely that I can pay my rent without working for a soul-stealing corp, but it's more about saying what I think is important and getting it out there and having people say that they're glad I do it. There are people out there who do things just out of greed or because they're opportunistic. I'll never understand those people.

I live in New York City, in Queens to be more specific. I actually grew up in Queens before my family moved to Long Island in the 80's, though it was a very different part than where I live now. I live in a little tiny apartment with my pal Shan, Little Bub the Cute Kitty, and lots of chinchillas. It's on a busy street and there's lots of noise, but the activity is kind of comforting, like leaving a tv on in the other room when you're feeling lonely.

That's basically the whole allure of living in NYC for me, besides the fact that I've lived in NY all my life and the thought of going somewhere else seems odd to me. I just like having so many possibilities so close by, even if I don't go out and do everything. Sure, when things blow up it's scary, but I think I'd feel isolated living anywhere else.

I'm not quite in what I'd call a relationship - it was a relationship but now it's more a best-friendship and it's great that way - and I don't want to be in a relationship. They're too hard and there are too many expectations. People have these socialized notions of roles they want other people to play in their lives, scripted parts almost, and I'm just not an actor. I don't want those things. It's sad really, how so many people tie up their own feelings of self-worth with love and the like. Update: I'm available! hah yes I know kinda funny!

If you wonder where I get my button ideas, I have a little palm pilot that I always try to carry with me and whenever I think of something I write it down. I lose alot of ideas when I don't have something to write with. Ideas come from current events, things I read, movies, a ton come from my own life and the stuff I deal with, some are from suggestions that people send me, some are just plain odd and pop out of nowhere. Surprisingly few turn out to be really dumb ideas anymore, going by what I think and what people order.

There are alot of button 'series' ideas that I have, but those take alot of work, and well, I'm still working on them. They're going to be more than just buttons, they're going to be about showing people things about the world that maybe they weren't aware of.

I'm some ways I guess the site does that already to a degree, but that's more a function of the way the site reflects my interests and it's not anything that I really intended, though of course I keep that in mind now. I really love it when people write and say they got turned on to some new ideas and ways of thinking from the site, or found new bands that they like. That's very important to me because sometimes I worry that I'm just churning out buttons and nothing more.

I worry alot about what people think of the site, about what I do. It's very rare that I get a negative email but when I do it always bothers me, it makes me wonder if I'm doing the right thing.

It's odd, you can walk into a bookstore and on the shelf will be things you agree with and things you disagree with but there's never any question that both things should be there. Freedom of Speech, though not really, since anything at a bookstore has been filtered through the whole publishing machine and then the money-making machine that runs the bookstore, so a bookstore is really only a small slice of what's out there and more precisely, what sells. But I digress. The point is that at a 'store' you expect a sort of neutrality with respect to mass opinion, but not the case here. That's one of the reasons I don't think mushycat can be called a store. And indeed I don't want it to be, not if people are just going to come and think of it as any other store, where the purpose is to just buy stuff..

I don't know if things like that throw people or not, I don't even know if anyone really cares about my politics or not. I guess some people don't and that makes me sad. I don't mind if people don't agree totally, but I do want my politics to matter.

Anyway, what else. Oh yes, I'm vegan, I'm a gen-X-er I suppose, I write music sometimes but mainly I just doodle around and amuse myself, and the rest I guess you can find out from what's on the buttons.

Here are some year-oldish pictures of me that I like. I just dyed my hair blue but I'm not too happy with the shade. Maybe I'll take a picture later.

These are photos of some of my Chinchillas when they were babies, aren't they cute? They're all grown up now but they are still adorable. I wish I had the space to make them a chinchilla castle. They'd just chew on it, but still, it would be nice.

I'm trying to take photos at all the shows I go to, here's some.

-ken

August 23rd, 2005

A year and a bit ago I moved out of NYC, the city that (along with Long Island) I'd spent all of my life, to a mountainside an hour north of NYC. Okay, I really didn't move very far. Things are completely different here though. Instead of living over a shop on a very busy street in a tiny tiny apartment, I live in a nigh-rural area full of trees, wildlife, and the darkest nights I've seen (which isn't very dark, astronomically speaking, but still). It's nice, a bit isolating, a bit too white, but it has instilled in me a greater awareness of certain responsibilities we all share.

I've become much greener and environmentally-minded since moving here. I always have been, but now it's much more real. For example, I get my water from a well (not with buckets, silly, it's not that backwater) and my waste water is handled via a septic system. I had never dealt with systems like that before, I've always had municipal water and sewer access. The first time I ran the well dry I had no idea what could be wrong. When the septic started acting up I was equally clueless. When you're used to water always being available and wastewater always having a place to go it's very easy to take it all for granted, and that leads to irresponsible water use.

Now I understand the systems better and I understand where my water comes from and goes. I know that if I use chemicals in the garden or pour them down the drain they'll come back to me in my water, so I don't do that (not that I ever would have). I know that running out of water is no fun at all, so I conserve it as much as possible. My kitchen sink has a foot pedal to turn the tap on and off, I installed it to save water and it does indeed save tons.

I built a graywater system to water my fruit trees. It saves water and keeps the septic from handling more water than it needs to (septics are for blackwater).

I know that the trees shade my house in the summer and block the wind in the winter. They have a lot to do with why I've only had to run the air conditioner for a handful of days in the summer, and then only in one room. Too many people cut them down because they want big open lawns (that just waste water and promote erosion) or don't like to deal with the leaves.

I compost. Nothing gets thrown away that can be given back to the earth. It's actually illegal here to put yard waste in the trash. People still do it, those people are fools. I mulch and compost all my autumn leaves. It all gets tilled into the garden soil the year after.

The only bad thing is that I can no longer ride my bike everywhere like I used to. Everything is so far away that I have to drive and there's no public transportation either. Back in NYC I could go weeks without ever using my car. ah well. Now I just plan my trips more carefully.

I can come out and say I'm queer now, which was never easy for me to do before. A lot of things have changed, a lot of things have stayed the same. I still just do what I do.

My big plan now is to design and build a house myself. Built responsibly, green, self-sustaining, a test-bed of sorts for concepts I have for how to build a house differently. It won't happen for years and years, but until then I'll keep learning and I'll detail things in my wiki.

-ken

oh, and if you got this far... I also have a little personal journal...