Some of the parts. Parts of the sum.

2012-01-03T22:50:00.000-05:00

I did a lot in 2011. More than I thought I would, or that I even think I did when casually thinking about it. In general, 2011 stands out as the first full adult year of my life, spent going to the same place to do the same thing almost every day. And that sounds boring and awful, because at least 2010 had some extended periods of unemployment to break it up. But surely I did more than that right? I saw Slick Rick look bored and tired at Brooklyn Bowl. I walked a mile in freezing rain to go to my boss’s grandson’s bris. In a moment of uncharacteristic hypochondria, I thought I might have had diabetes for half a month. I went to a few book readings and more than a few free happy hours. I got drunk. Very drunk. I passed out on my couch and gave my roommate too many opportunities to take pictures of me as he woke me up. I tried to swat his camera away. I saw The Boxer Rebellion, Theophilus London, The National (twice), and a few friends’ bands. I saw Doomtree and reverted into a fanboy, asking for their autographs. I spent federal holidays in Rumson, NJ, and Milford, CT. I went to Atlantic City for the price of a bus ticket. I managed to not gamble a cent. I spent a weekend in Rockland County, NY sitting by a pool despite clouds and rain. I took a road trip to Chicago to go to Lollapoolza. We got rained on and I had to throw away my shoes. I ran into my other roommate on my way home from a bar on a Wednesday during a snow storm and we videotaped ourselves jumping into snow banks and sliding over cars at 1 in the morning. I went to the zoo and a book festival. I had a cyst removed from my lip. I went to Cape Cod to celebrate a good friend’s impending wedding. I went to Cincinnati for said wedding. I’m still a little bitter about how high the bar for fun has been set by those two weekends. I went to Hackettstown, NJ and spent too long in a hot tub. I went to Smithtown, NY and helped convert a pickup truck into a pool. I was driven around in said pool, and then played many rounds of badminton. I lost more games of foosball than I won, but probably broke even on pool and shuffleboard. I went to a few museums. I went snowboarding once, and then won a free snowboard. I went to a pie baking contest. I put this blog off to focus on poetry. I got solicited to contribute a piece to a journal. I met a lot of great writers. I read more books but listened to less music compared to 2010. I saw more movies, and was disappointed by just about every one that I paid for, especially those in 3-D. I saw Drive twice in a week, and make a lot of jokes about watching it more, but really there’s a good amount of sincerity behind them. I really liked that movie. I saw Fuerze Bruta. I stayed in the Algonquin. I got a bonus and two raises. I probably drank my weight in bourbon several times over. I went to the gym a lot, then didn’t, then did, then didn’t, then did, then didn’t. I’m going to try and be more consistent with that. I hosted my family and finally shared a drink with my brother in honor of his 21st birthday, 13 months after the fact. I went home for Christmas and saw a lot of friends I miss. I took a red eye back and came in late to work for the first time since I overslept on my weekend shift at Hillel first semester senior year. I went to Smithtown, NY again for New Years Eve and started 2012 feeling pretty damn good about it.

I’m forgetting things. Karaoke. More brunches than I ever thought I’d go to. A lot of great home-cooked meals by myself and others. Flea markets. Parks. Food festivals and art festivals. Weekends spent mostly in lounge-mode. Having to stop reading news sites because they make too angry. Having to stop reading UCLA sports sites because they make me too sad. Worrying about money. Tricking myself into thinking I have less money than I do. Still worrying about money. Always. Hating it. Always. Failing on my coffee cutback resolution of 2010. Whatever. Caving to the iPhone like a hypocrite. Whatever.

Richard Yates’ “Revolutionary Road” was the hardest book to read because I felt a little devastated by it the entire time. Oscar Wilde’s “A Picture of Dorian Gray” was the hardest book to read because I hated it. Lyn Hejinian’s “The Cell” was the hardest book to read because I wish I wrote it. Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Almanac of the Dead” was the hardest book to read because it’s big and awkward to read on the subway. It’s the only book I didn’t finish. I also read a bunch of great chapbooks from friends and acquaintances. They’re a talented bunch, and I’m grateful to know them.

I enjoyed M83’s “Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming,” Thrice’s “Major/Minor,” Portugal. The Man’s “In The Mountain In The Cold,” The Joy Formidable’s “The Big Roar,” Young Widows' "In and Out of Youth and Light," Glassjaw's two EPs, and Tycho’s “Dive” more than most albums that came out this year. Wye Oak, Weatherbox, Doomtree, Dessa, Youth Lagoon, Fucked Up, The Horrible Crowes, Blink 182, Russian Circles, Wilco, Washed Out, The Roots, Mogwai, Amon Tobin, Tim Hecker, Pusha T, James Blake, The Boxer Rebellion, Maritime, AraabMusik, Animals As Leaders, TV On The Radio, My Morning Jacket, The Dangerous Summer, and Active Child all put out great albums, too. Bon Iver’s album was a wonderful surprise, and I’m willing to say I’m a Bon Iver fan despite hating his first album. Beyonce’s album was a happy accident, and feel bad that it seems like the consensus is that people don’t like it. Give it a listen, maybe you’ll be as surprised as I was. I was disappointed by Tyler, The Creator, Jay-Z/Kanye, Saves The Day, and Transit, but “Yonkers,” “Otis,” “Daybreak,” and “You Can’t Miss It” (all respective) are still in regular rotation. I was more disappointed by This Will Destroy You and Justice, but maybe I need to give them more time. All this being said, Reptar is the band of the year.

I’m still forgetting things, but I suppose that’s better than being able to remember it all.

East Coast Blog Times, One Year Later

2011-08-02T20:20:00.000-04:00

Two days ago was my one year anniversary of moving to New York. It's also fitting that this weekend I'm going to Lollapalooza with almost all of the people who came to Coachella last April, as that was the catalyst that made me set the moving-to-the-east-coast ball rolling. A lot has changed in a year: I've gone from sleeping on a couch in a stiflingly hot room to sleeping on a comfy full bed in a windowless room with a water heater, HVAC unit, and washer-dryer combo in the closet (but hey! central AC!); from being a full-time job-applier to full-time latte-slinger to full-time small business employee specialist (woo! insurance! awesome!); from negative income adding to negative net worth to positive income not adding and sometimes reducing negative net worth (workin' that 401k like nobody's business); from adventures on the vast expanse of MTA tracks to the vast wildernesses of Vermont (along with other, less wild but fun places like Milford, CT and Red Bank, NJ).

New York is a crazy place, man. Shit's always going, in most every sense of the word. It might be too much sometimes, but more often than not it's pretty great. Thanks for being good to me, looking forward to another fruitful year of business.

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What To Do If Your Child Is Stressed

This article makes me upset -- upset because with all of our "advances" in modernity we've managed to impose upon children those things which strip our childhood away (is adulthood really much more than being stressed and learning to cope with it? Yes, but no, not really I say). It makes me upset because every day there's new advice/rules/techniques/books/whathaveyou coming out about how to parent "better" and for what? I'm not naive enough to assume that stressed out kids is a 21st century phenomenon, and maybe it's important that people are asking them if they are, in fact, stressed, but what I get from the article is that we are forcing our kids into stress. Kids as young as 3 are saying they're stressed! They just learned to talk, why would they know that word and be able to associate it with an emotion? Why must we bring them into it?

For more on how modernity is ruining parenting from the perspective of a 24 year old with no interest in having kids and a general fear of anyone that has a malleable head, see: this post.

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"What that has done though, is that it’s made me (and PROBABLY Neil and Chris, though we’ve never discussed it overtly) hungry to stuff every record we ever made up everybody’s ass. The whole goal of our band has always been to subvert expectations within the very small wiggle room of our sound. I mean, I’m no dummy. The Lawrence Arms aren’t revolutionizing anything at all, (even though some of those bands I mentioned above may have been) but we tried to make a pop record when we’d never previously written a song with a chorus, then a weird, weird record that would shock the shit out of anyone who thought that we didn’t think things through or pay attention to craft, and then we decided to make a super jagged punk record that embodied everything we’d ever stored up about loving punk rock once we'd been written off as pussies. Then we made a record called Buttsweat and Tears. Ha!"
- via Bad Sandwich Chronicles

One of my favorite musicians and bloggers (writers? does the distinction still matter these days? is blogging not the new long-form writing of the 21th century?) talking about three of my favorite records, proving that punk rock is not just power chords, snotty attitudes, and socially deviant subcultures. Posting this mostly to save for myself, but partly to show the smarts of 3 people who do a good job of fooling people into sounding like they're just out to have fun (though, really, they're probably just doing that at the end of the day).

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MUSIC!

She can tell you're getting old skin

2011-06-06T21:44:00.000-04:00

This is part of an email that I sent a few weeks ago as part of a chain email with some friends:

"Last night, I too was drinking bourbon. In an old fashion. At a bar by my apartment. I find bar drinking that's not intentioned for getting drunk a novel concept that I'm not quite used to yet. Pace is an odd thing to regulate.

Things change as we get older. I get up before 7 every morning and am out the door by 8, despite the fact that my commute is only a half hr and I don't have to be into work until 9. I loathe the feeling of being in a rush, and commuting in New York is among the experiences I've hated most in the last 24 years. Senior year, I rarely woke up with enough time to do more than get dressed and usually made it to class a minute or two after it had officially started.

I'm also still not used to getting haircuts at regular intervals and being a local at a dry cleaners, but these things happen. I have a good rapport with the woman who cuts my hair. She was debating whether or not to take her sick mother in law out to a sushi restaurant for Mother's Day, and told me that I should visit Aruba in the winter like she did over New Years. Intimate strangers, can't explain that.

Getting older has also made me appreciate my dad's misanthropic leanings. I hate the people I read about who are in public office, on TV, and the people who block the sidewalk to take some picture of the Empire State building that will end up in a Facebook album called 'Spring Trip to NYC!!!'"

Why is this worth mentioning? Probably because I would have written the same thing in this post. New York and settling into adulthood are interesting things to be involved in at the same time. On an emotional/visceral level, I think get what James Murphy meant when he said "New York, I love you, but you're bringing me down." I don't want to be cynical about living here, I'm just getting a little tired of being constantly surrounded by noise and people. It doesn't help that being in NY on a first job salary and trying to be financially responsible means I'm more or less stuck in the perpetual "can't get ahead" cycle. Also contributing to cynicism/pessimism: tourist season and working right by the Empire State Building, New Yorkers' penchant for honking at EVERYTHING, lack of garbage disposals in the sink/NY's mind-boggling city planning that forces garbage to be put on the sidewalk, lack of note-worthy Mexican and Vietnamese places (now taking recommendations if you have them).

The flip side is that there are many good people here and there's a lot of noise (in a generalized, things constantly going on, not specifically aural sense) that's a lot of fun to witness. I'll never be someone who can be "on" without a break, and NY is not the best city for that. Fortunately, some of the good people come from places far removed from the city pace and are generous with visitors. Thanks, people! Also helping with the optimism: bars staying open until 4 AM; food establishments staying open later than bars; 24 hour public transportation; great sandwiches; mid- and south Brooklyn and its constant surprises.

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Love this track and any band that records an album live like the Young Widows did. More bands should be required to record live. It's way too easy to trick people into thinking you can play as a cohesive unit and sound good live these days. If I had a record label, every band I signed would have to record an EP live to prove they have their shit together.

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“If you have time to chatter,
Read books.
If you have time to read,
Walk into mountain, desert and ocean.

If you have time to walk,
Sing songs and dance.

If you have time to dance,
Sit quietly, you happy, lucky idiot.”

- Nano Sakaki

Don't waste time with bad books

2011-05-06T11:48:00.000-04:00

A friend once told me that if one is not engaged with a book after 50 pages then one has the right to drop it and start a new book. She told me this as I was struggling to make my way through The End of Vandalism, complaining that it would take me forever to finish it at the rate I was getting through it. At the time her advice had struck me as odd, as she was an English teacher and should have, in my mind, been promoting sticking through the book. But it made sense, and ever since I have given myself 100 pages to test out a book, and if it wasn't to my liking I would move on.

After giving up on Drury, the only books that were subjected to this page limit were the works of the Bronte sisters and a couple of mid-1800 American novels, and I had the expectation that I would not make it through them because I can't stand almost anything written in the Victorian period. Lately, though, I've been having a problem with giving up on books. Kafka's "The Trial" lasted 70 pages, and 80 pages of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" has not been much better. I'm trying to stick it out with Wilde, but who knows where he'll be in 20 pages. It's a bit hard giving up on two of the greats, and I can't help but feel guilty that I remain ignorant of what's inside one of each's more notable works.

If I do give up, anyone have recommendations?

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Of all the crazy things that have gone on in the time since Osama's death was announced, the craziest, I believe, is the amount of news outlets that "mistakenly" reported that Obama was the one that had been killed. Now, I understand that Obama has frequented the news much more often than Osama in the last few years, and that among conservative media channels Obama is the recipient of much ire, but really, there's no excuse. If you're an anchor/reporter, you should be able to distinguish between the two when reporting historic news. You should also be able to read your script or teleprompter accurately, because s and b are not similar in any way. Similarly, if you are writing the news ticker blurbs, you should know that s and b are nowhere near each other on a keyboard (even if you're using a Dvorak setup) and don't require the same finger to type. Same goes for mobile phones. Really, it's sloppy and insulting to everyone, and no matter how much you'd like to demonize the president there's no excuse for compare him to a known terrorist and murderer or for reporting him dead. It's embarrassing.

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I know that in this post I listed "Firefly" as the Saves The Day song I would take with me on a deserted island, but this song is probably my favorite Saves The Day song that I always forget about until shuffle reminds me it exists. I don't know if I'd revise the island list, but then again, I might have to.

"Oh, let me see now,"

2011-04-26T12:17:00.000-04:00

says the ancient man, tilting his withered head to wince and blink at the sun in bewildered reminiscence, "my first wife passed away in the spring of --" and for a moment he is touched with terror. The spring of what? Past? Future? What is any spring but a mindless rearrangement of cells in the crust of the spinning earth as it floats in endless circuit of its sun? What is the sun itself but one of a billion insensible stars forever going nowhere into nothingness? Infinity! But soon the merciful valves and switches of his brain begin to do their tired work, and "The spring of Nineteen-Ought-Six," he is able to say. "Or no, wait--" and his blood runs cold again as the galaxies revolve. "Wait! Nineteen-Ought-Four." Now he is sure of it, and a restorative flood of well-being brings his hand involuntarily up to slap his thigh in satisfaction. He may have forgotten the shape of his first wife's smile and the sound of her voice in tears, but by imposing a set of numerals on her death he has imposed coherence on his own life, and on life itself. Now all the other years can fall obediently into place, each with its orderly contribution to the whole. Nineteen-Ten, Nineteen-Twenty -- Why, of course he remembers! -- Nineteen-Thirty, Nineteen-Forty, right on up to the well-deserved peace of his present and on into the gentle promise of his future. The earth can safely resume its benevolent stillness -- Smell that new grass! -- and it's the same grand old sun that has hung there smiling on him all these years. "Yes sir," he can say with authority, "Nineteen-Ought-Four," and the stars tonight will please him as tokens of his ultimate heavenly rest. He has brought order out of chaos.

-from Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

If Vonnegut's quote is any indication, we should all have to read this book instead of The Great Gatsby. Sorry Fitzgerald, but watching the American Dream fail on a fresh-cut middle class suburban lawn makes so much more sense than watching it float around and spoil a millionaire's pool. Everyone should read this book.

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Last week, I learned that my brother is going to 100% enlist in the Navy. It's not surprising, but it's still strange to finally hear its confirmation. In a sort of convoluted way, I'm happy for him -- happy that he's taking the first steps to finally realizing what is basically a life-long dream for him. I don't know anyone who's had a more singular and focused vision of who they want to be than my brother. While becoming a SEAL stands outside my comprehension as a career/life choice, I whole-heartedly admire his dedication to the craft of the elite soldier. While the physical/athletic superiority is obviously praiseworthy, the intellectual sharpness and mental poise that must accompany it are what make me proud of his efforts over the years. It's scary to think of the places this choice will take him, the obstacles he will face, the unavoidable danger he will be put in, but he's not my kid brother anymore, and so I can't think I or my family knows better than him what is the right decision for him -- and in many situations, he's easily the best equipped of us to deal with them (there is no one I'd rather have with me in a fight, or to save me from a burning building, or to get lost with in some wild uninhabited place). But above all, I applaud him for not settling, for pursuing that one thing which his heart continually echoes the need to grasp, for choosing to be not just un-average, but exceedingly above average. Also, for giving me a great topic to entertain people at a bar with.

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This could be the first rap album ever recorded. I hope the irony of the song's topic does not escape you.

2012

2011-03-31T07:50:00.001-04:00

I worry about making sure I have enough money to cover my student loans. I worry about whether or not I can afford to buy organic eggs when they're $2 more expensive than regular ones. I worry about leaving the lights on and running up the electric bill, or making sure my showers aren't too long. I worry about whether I need to iron some shirts for the rest of the work week, or how much money I can take out for a Friday night. I worry about waking up with enough time to eat breakfast, and making sure I don't skip the gym again this week. I worry about whether or not I'm contributing enough to my 401k, or if I'll be able to save enough that if I somehow lost my job I wouldn't have to go into an immediate panic. I worry about whether or not such and such restaurant has vegan options. I worry about packed subways in the morning, and making sure I keep myself reading. I worry about flossing, and eating too much ramen, and making sure my cellphone is charged.

It's a wonderful, ugly thing to be burdened by so many first-world problems. In light of what's going on in the world, it feels foolish to worry about so many things. And mostly, the people telling me to worry about these things are people who have even less need to worry about them then I do. And I have less reason to worry about these things than a good amount of people even here in America.

I fight for space on a crowded subway. I fight for space on the couch, time in the shower, covers. I fight for my digital privacy. I fight through mobs of tourists gawking at buildings in the middle of the sidewalk. I fight for cheaper deals on life insurance policies.

I'm very lucky that these are the things I have to worry about and fight over. Sometimes I panic about everything, get anxious, feel like I'm falling behind. It's good to remind myself that what I have to worry or fight about is not severe. There's always a couch, my roommates have food to steal, the next train is only 8 minutes away, there's always tomorrow to go for a run, and those tourists were me 7 months ago.

Lots of people throughout the world have it way worse than I ever will, especially right now. Is there a threshold for how much can happen at any given moment?

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But let's lighten the mood some, shall we?

Let's watch videos of good bands playing music!

Like pop-instrumental 2 pieces like El Ten Eleven!

Or old blues men like Lightnin Hopkins!

Or guys absolutely slaying it on guitar like Prince!

And now I feel better.

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Also, I've got a shaved head. It's a little drafty.

Tolerance, round 3

2011-02-22T22:58:00.000-05:00

Things I will always tolerate:

-The mouth-burn of good Mexican food or high quality whiskey: cause it hurts so good.

-Kanye: I'll take one hundred awkward award show moments, a thousand overdone memes, a million inane all caps tweets and generally dumb opinions for a "My Dark Twisted Fantasy" every few years. Don't listen to the media, listen to the music.

-Bees: getting stung sucks, and the panic than takes over when you hear buzzing is awful, but honey is great, and so are fruits and flowers. We need bees way more than they need us (in fact, I don't know if there's an animal out there that needs us. We tend to be bad news for animals. Like, really bad news. We could very well be the ultimate virus). Plus, they're nature's kamikaze pilots, and you gotta admire any animal willing to disembowel itself to protect its home. It's bad ass. Bees are bad ass.

-Hangovers: because sometimes there's no other option.

Things I will never tolerate:

-The new Republican ilk: few things make me feel as fearful as reading about all the things the new GOP does (or doesn't) want to do and the voters who agree with them. It's scary to see lawmakers vehemently oppose higher taxes for the people most capable of affording them while shrugging at the notion that their plan for the US budget will cost people jobs. It's scary to see them introduce bills allowing for the homicide of practicing pro-choice doctors and attack women in a fashion that should be described as anti-choice. It's scary to see them exclaim that God has given us unlimited resources and that we should not worry about how we take from the earth. It's scary to see them persistently deny the hard evidence of climate change, collude with billionaire anachronistic energy companies on this denial, try to dismantle the EPA and block all federal agencies from doing anything to prevent climate collapse (despite the fact that a majority of people do not want this). It's scary to watch them attack young peoples' ability to go to college and get a job then charge them as lazy. It's scary to see them refuse to disqualify the conspiracy notions of birthers and Muslim president believers. It's scary to see them try to force America away from being the country everyone was trying to emulate and are now probably laughed about in parliaments, cabinets, and board rooms (the Chinese especially (I also have funny images of tiny foreign politicians and corporate types crowding in kitchen cabinets)). It's scary to see that "elitism" is grossly misappropriated and used as an insult, and that the people who least represent the "majority of Americans" are lauded as representatives of the "majority of Americans." It's scary that these people were supported and elected in such sweeping fashion. It's scary, really scary.

-Most Nirvana songs, most Red Hot Chili Peppers songs, Radiohead's "Creep": I'm well aware of the impact Nirvana had on music in the 90's. Many of the bands I like now probably wouldn't exist in the way they do if it weren't for Nirvana. But seriously, Nirvana is boring. Maybe it's because I've grown up listening to the bands who have expanded on or are derivative of Nirvana, and thus become more nuanced and complex representations of Nirvana's general sound. I find RHCP not only boring, but slightly irritating. They have one mode, and it's the same one they've been playing since they started. The best thing they've done is getting Flea to be a voice actor. "Creep" -- boring. That song kept me from listening to Radiohead for years.

-Watching nose jobs being performed on TV: corrective surgery is always gross to watch (ever seen a lipo? The doctor sticking that tube pretty violently up some poor woman's stomach/thigh/arm? So visceral), but nose jobs make me queasy. I can't explain why they bother me so much, but I have literally left the room before because I can't tolerate them.

-Sandals with socks: because if you really feel the need to wear socks, you shouldn't be wearing sandals.

Things I didn't use to tolerate, but tolerate now:

-Sarah Palin: just barely tolerable, only because she's always good for a laugh. You are so dumb, you are really dumb, for real.

-Pitchfork music reviews: verbose, self-serving, pretentious, but usually right, or at least close to it.

-New York City winters: not as pretty as Boston's, but not as bitterly, bone-chillingly cold. I think it has something to do with the lack of integrated natural space and trash berms that makes it slightly intolerable. Really, there was some poor city planning going on when they decided to have trash pick up be in front of buildings.

-Los Angeles rush hour: because being stuck in an hour of bumper to bumper traffic is always better than 20 minutes with a briefcase wedged up your ass.

Trying not to think too hard about it

2011-02-09T20:43:00.004-05:00

What is happening to the United States?

It's frustrating to me that such a large portion of our country is insistent on having the country regress so rapidly and so dramatically. Not just with this issue, but with everything. What happened to the people who brought about the Civil Rights Movement, the enormous innovations in the technological and scientific spheres, the EPA, the balanced budget we had 10 years ago? They must still be around, but why does it seem like they've all migrated to a side which seems to oppose every progression that's been made over the last 60 years?

Is it a last ditch effort of a dying generation? What kind of future are they trying to secure for themselves, when they'll see so little of it? What kind of future are they trying to secure for the generations that are noticeably opposed to the things they want?

I worry about the amount of problems my generation will have to clean up once they're gone. I worry that some things will be too far gone to save. I worry that not enough sensible people will be in positions to change was so direly needs to be changed. I worry that not enough people worry about these things, or that not enough people care about more than a couple issues.

I sincerely hope our generation will respond swiftly, strongly, and sensibly to what's trying to be laid out for us. While the regressions that are on the table may not come to fruition, they are backed by a movement that is scary, and our response cannot be feeble or without earnest.

There are little specks of hope coming through the side that helped fuel this movement. See:

Bush worries we're becoming 'Nativist'
Rumsfeld has regrets
GOP sick of the "nuts"

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On another note, I'm doing an experiment by not eating meat every Monday. Mostly because I'm too stubborn to give up meat entirely but feel that perhaps I eat too many animals in general. I blame it on Zooborns.

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February has been a bad month for great bands.

Jack White just "gave" us The White Stripes.

LCD Soundsystem is throwing a going away party in April.

The Gorillaz might be done, too.

Good thing The National is still around and playing shows I get to go to at the last minute thanks to a very dedicated girl willing to stand in single digit temps for almost 2 hours to get tickets.

2011-01-30T23:48:00.000-05:00

A five year old girl from a particular Aboriginal tribe can immediately pinpoint which direction north is when asked, but has no concept of left or right. Learning new color words improves one's ability to discriminate colors. In Chinese, the past is talked about as being in front of you and the future behind you because what is in front of you is visible and what is behind you is not.

I would imagine that most of us never think that language shapes our world, but instead that the world shapes our language, that language is a responsive act driven by the necessity to communicate about and to the world. This isn't wrong, but it's not a complete picture of how language operates. As English speakers, we easily imagine time running linearly, the past at our backs and the future in front. We orient ourselves in a relative spatial sense, with things to the left and right of us, but without any sense of absolute locality to cardinal directions. In certain ways, it's a language of immediacy and preciseness. We don't handle the vague very well, and even when we're confronted with it, there's often a binary that has a sharp definition of what it is not.

Time in Chinese is fascinating. Days exist with a top to bottom structure, the past is what you face everyday, the future exists in the void behind us (if light shines on an object but there are no eyes to see it, does it exist?), the philosophical/theological universe was not not born from a moment or event but always was. Binaries are also fascinating. In Taoism, binaries are born by the act of imagining one of the units (therefore, "good" cannot exist without "bad" being born in the same instant). These things inform their language and shape the way they relate to their world.

Are women taught to know more colors from an early age, or is it something that develops throughout life? From my own experience, there are tons of color swatches that look like a sick joke from the paint company, yet people (usually women) insist there's a difference. The learned differentiation between shades of whites allow for "ghost white" to exist with "ivory." I would love to learn more color names. Does the world look prettier with more colors in it?

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"If one day it happens
you find yourself with someone you love
in a café at one end
of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar
where white wine stands in upward opening glasses,

and if you commit then, as we did, the error
of thinking,
one day all this will only be memory,

learn,
as you stand
at this end of the bridge which arcs,
from love, you think, into enduring love,
learn to reach deeper
into the sorrows
to come – to touch
the almost imaginary bones
under the face, to hear under the laughter
the wind crying across the black stones. Kiss
the mouth
which tells you, here,
here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones.

The still undanced cadence of vanishing."

Galway Kinnell

I sometimes forget how nice it is to read good poems.

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I also sometimes forget how nice it is to listen to music that let's you simply be with it.

Favorite music from 2010

2011-01-09T19:40:00.000-05:00

This is a list of good music that came out in the past year. You should give them a listen.

Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Few rap albums feel this coordinated and condensed in their movement and energy. Nothing's wasted here, and every track stands well on its own.

The Black Keys - Brothers
Every band should strive to be as tight as The Black Keys are.

Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Song of Chico Dusty
This album makes me sad I never spent any time listening to Outkast.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
The Suburbs makes me feel like I'm back in California more than being in California makes me feel like I'm back in California.

Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
It's a great thing to see bands still capturing the vibrancy of punk rock like this.

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach
Remarkable to see a fictional band write an album that sounds just as good live as it does recorded.

LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening
I almost hope this is the last LCD Soundsystem album, because James Murphy deserves to go out on top like this. Not many people get away with a 9 minute opener.

California Wives - Affair
This band needs a full length immediately.

Frightened Rabbit - The Winter of Mixed Drinks
I read somewhere that this album was the first Frightened Rabbit album not recorded mostly live. Given how well coordinated and fleshed-out these songs are, they should get all the studio time they want from here on out.

The Dig - Electric Toys
It's a crying shame this album has been mostly overlooked by just about everyone.

Jonsi - Go Do
Polar opposite to Sigur Ros. Production and song-writing deserve Grammies. The overflowing exuberance deserves an award, too.

Delorean - Subiza
I don't know what Subiza means, but I wouldn't be surprised if it meant "the warm fuzzies."

Delphic - Acolyte
Thank god there's a band that remembers the times when Bloc Party was writing great music.

BT - These Hopeful Machines
The level of detail on every track is almost frightening. The house music style betrays how richly dense this album is.

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Option Paralysis
The song below is not representative of the album as a whole, but is definitely the highlight track on it. They could have even cut out the unfortunately requisite-feeling math breakdown around minute 4.

Glassjaw - Our Color Green
It doesn't matter that it came out on 1/1/2011. It doesn't matter than it's an EP. It doesn't matter that they still haven't released an album in 8 years or that there's still no date for the next one. They're still doing it better than everyone.

The Gaslight Anthem - American Slang
I railed against this album back in June, and I feel stupid for doing so. I was disappointed because I loved "The '59 Sound" and couldn't let that go. There's this great thing Brian Fallon does when he sings the second line of the chorus, where his accent twists "arm" into sounding like "heart," which sounds just as fitting as the actual word.

Crime In Stereo - I Was Trying To Describe You To Someone
Another criminally under-appreciated album. Doing Brand New better than Brand New.

Local Natives - Gorilla Manor
I have dreams of their Coachella set. That good.

The National - High Violet
The only flaw with this album is that it should have come out in the summer. The best thing that came out all year.

11 things I don't need in 2011

2010-12-20T23:41:00.000-05:00

I stole this idea from my good friend Natalie (who can be found here), who stole it from someone else, who stole it from some other person, I'm sure. It's a good thing to make lists sometimes. Order isn't a key component here, but putting them in writing as a form of accountability is.

So here it goes, 11 things that I want to try and do without in 2011

1) Biting my nails - the toughest and most immediate thing I need to do without. It's a long-standing bad habit done for a variety of reasons, none of them good enough to justify doing something. As a former nail-biting cohort said recently, "a GQ man wouldn't do this shit," and he's right. I suppose if I'm going to be an adult I should let go of such an unbecoming habit. So fingers, look forward to being a little less slobbery next year.

2) Procrastination - another long-standing bad habit that probably arose around the same time I stopped using nail clippers. Procrastination is a cruel friend to have. He makes you put off the things you know you need to do when you have a leisurely amount of time to do it, until you reach a point of panic. Then, somewhat miraculously, he squeezes you to extrude work that is not only passable, but sometimes laudable, a perfect plate of Play-doh spaghetti. This technique has worked well for me in the past, allowing me to write long papers in narrow time frames that receive better than average grades. But this isn't a viable way to work in the real world. Good work habits are.

3) Clutter - I'm pretty sure I made a post at one point that mentioned my pack rat tendencies. I made a conscious effort to minimize the non-essentials I brought to New York when I moved because I realized when I moved from Boston that I keep a lot of unnecessary junk around. So, in a pseudo-zen, Thoreau-esque move, I've moved away from keeping things for the sake of keeping them towards a minimalist approach. It's taken a bit of effort, to cease attaching unsubstantiated value to items I acquire here and there, but I'm sure my tiny room and limited wall space appreciates the space to breathe. I do too.

4) Frivolous dining out - I like cooking. I really do. I get a lot of satisfaction out of making a good meal for myself. But I also like not having to put forth effort to eat. I also like to eat a lot of things I don't know how to make or have the patience to make. To top it all off, I live in New York City, which offers more dining options available most any hour of the day than are good for a person. This combination of things has me spending far more money than I'm comfortable to admit on a blog dining out and a paltry amount on groceries. Of course, lunches will be forgotten to be made, groceries will run out, and sometimes sushi will sound too good to pass up, but at the very least I should even out the spread.

5) Losing touch - I'm not very good at keeping in contact with people outside my most immediate spheres of friendship. I'm sorry friends. I'll try and do better.

6) Not-creating - Writing, drawing, building. Things I like to do and have done with fair consistency in the past. 2010 was an off year, with complicated life issues, moves, new jobs, no jobs, then new jobs again, apartment searches, and a bevy of other things. All in all, creating got relegated to an occasional hobby, rather than a constant effort. There are many ideas waiting to see themselves be born into the world. Fortunately, I live with people who take time every day to be creative, so I'm planning on letting them rub off on me.

7) Creative hermitism - coinciding with #6, I've spent many years not putting my work out in public arenas. Many completed things are collecting dust in notebooks and harddrives. I need to be proactive and clear house a bit.

8) Not-reading - like #6 and #7, I spent too much time not reading this past year. In fact, I think I only read 4 books this year, which is far below my average. Recommendations are always nice, by the way.

9) Social Inactivity - the loftiest goal for myself. I've done little in terms of volunteering and helping society at large since my MS Walk days in early high school. I'm starting to realize there are too many problems with our world to sit idly and hope for someone else to take care of them. Too much ice is being melted (with too many politicians refusing to recognize the immediate reality of this), too many people don't have basic necessities like potable water, too many animals being driven to unnatural extinction, and so on. The effort of one person is minuscule compared to the overwhelming size of these problems, but it's an effort nonetheless.

10) Coffee - coffee and I go way back, all the way to 5th grade. It's a personal thing. She does so much for me and never asks for anything in return. But I'm on track to have a 4 cup a day habit by this time next year, and that's taking it a little too far. This isn't giving it up, it's just good management.

11) Bad whiskey - just 'cause.

Welcome Winter

2010-12-06T22:23:00.000-05:00

4 months. That's how long I've been in New York. That's a third of a year. That's longer than a semester at college. Enough time for 2 jobs, 2 trips out of state, 3 concerts, 8 trips to the grocery store, 4 trips to the cleaners, 3 haircuts, and a trip to the zoo.

Incidentally, I also turn 24 in 2 days. As our ability to contextualize time's passage in terms of a lifetime increase, the rate of passage appears to accelerate. This is similar to the notion of time slowing down when experiencing a traumatic or high-stress event. It's a fallacy made real by our ability to recognize it as common occurrence, something to bemoan when catching up with old friends, something that makes us sympathize with our parents. It is an old idea that we take time for granted, but that doesn't make it any less poignant. Perhaps it makes it more poignant in an era of instant, where it is difficult to take time to do things or let things bloom on their own accord.

So life now moves faster than ever for me and I've lived in New York for 4 months and will be 24 in 3 days, so 1/72 of my life has now been spent here. These thoughts make me happy.

-

I feel bad for Satan. Not the Devil, but good ol' biblical Satan. I don't know if there's any figure who's had a more tarnished reputation than him. And I'm not talking about a reputation where all the good things he did are relegated to footnotes for the average person like Genghis Khan *(seriously, the dude was more progressive than your average Tea Partier: equal rights, unbiased meritocracy, literacy, freedom of religion, all while controlling the largest empire in history whose expanse could only be stopped by freak weather (see: Kamikaze) or poor dilomatic timing). No, Satan was about as mean as an overbearing boss. If you look at the facts, God sucks in the OT. Forced a man to nearly kill his son to prove his faith, disseminated human language because of a tower, and reduced the population of every species on earth to 2 more or less (clear proof that God, and by extention creationists, are scientifically brain dead, since repopulating with 2 viable individuals is about as likely as me turning into a woman tomorrow). Satan, on the other hand, makes an appearance in Job, where he waigers he can make Job lose faith. God takes him up on it, and destroys everything he has to prove it (literally everything, including his family). Satan's simply a middleman. Oh, and the whole apple thing, not his fault. Who's the omnipresent guy putting forbidden fruit in a garden in the first place, or not keeping tabs on who he lets in? Flash forward to the New Testament. God isn't going around destroying everything in site, but it's not as if Satan takes up the torch. Yeah, he tempts Jesus, but it's Jesus' own fault for going to the desert in the first place.

Know where we got our modern-day Satan from? Faust. And 19th century paganism. And god-fearing Puritans. Bastards

Interestingly, Satan in Islam is actually a tragic and sympathetic character for his unfailing devotion to God. Long story short, Iblis, as he's called, refused to bow to a newly created Adam when God asked the angels to. His devotion to God would not allow him to bow to anyone but God, especially a lesser being. His devoted disobedience gets him cast out of heaven. Yeah, God's a dick.

-

This is a good song from a good album. One of the better ones of the yaer
Gayngs - "Faded High"

I'm still here

2010-11-20T19:44:00.000-05:00

"Events in time very rarely effect other time, soul wise. The moment you’re dying of cancer, that night spent banging the seven Hawaiian tropic models is a distant and unimportant memory that may have just as well been a movie you saw somewhere and the moment you’re up there watching your son getting sworn in as the president, that night a few years back where you sat there and contemplated chugging the bottle of drano because you were so broken up about your job seems likewise a dream.

...

The only things that really tie it all together are unproductive and shitty emotions like regret and anger. Happiness is like being hot. If you’re hot as balls and you’re sweating and about to just pass out and you can’t even see straight, you can jump into a pool or walk into an air conditioned room and BOOM! You’re no longer hot. You’re readjusted. Happiness is that fleeting.

Sadness, anger, regret, despair, and depression (which of course is a chronic and highly resistant cousin of these other negative emotions) are like being cold. You can get indoors, crawl under the blankets, or scoot into the hot bath, but you’re still cold. The residual shivers still get you. Your fingertips burn and you’re left with the unshakable physical reminder that you were very, very cold recently. Happiness rarely can trump something shitty happening right on its heels. SO, you get a promotion but your brother gets thrown in jail on the same day, you’re gonna be sad. If you find an out of print record you love in the bargain bin but some douchebag spits on you from the moving bus window, day’s ruined. That’s why sorrow is so enduring in this world. People remember it, and they want to because for whatever reason, the bad stuff seems like the stuff that defines us, not the good stuff.

...

No one wins life. Everyone dies and everyone has a great and fascinating list of successes and failures, joys and pains and unbearable ways that they’ve been fucked over or fucked someone else over and it’s all really nothing but the rich pageant of what being alive is (to paraphrase M. Stipe). There’s no reason to think that you’re fucked or there’s no way out because of some pressing immediate issue that you have. There’s one way out of this life, and you can’t get back in afterwards. And everyone goes there and everyone leaves dissatisfied if they don’t work actively on focusing as much on the good as they’re naturally inclined to do with the bad.

And there’s SO much good stuff here- You wouldn’t even have the ability to think about how bad you think you have it if it weren’t for all the wonderful things you love that seem to be endangered by whatever your issues are (and we all have these issues)- that the notion that you need to sequester yourself from joy to deal with the fact that you need to sit there and focus on your sadness is inhumane. It’s monk style shit. And here’s the part that everyone forgets, or chooses for some crazy reason to ignore: it’s COMPLETELY SELF IMPOSED! No thanks.

People think that the secret to winning in life is skating through without anything bad happening to them, but that’s bullshit. That’s impossible. Life shits on everyone. It’s not how little happens to you. It’s how you deal with what happens to you. That’s the measure of a person. That’s winning. Just saying. No one is alone. Kay? Good."
via bad sandwich chronicles.

I know I praise this blog often, and that posting this is a poor excuse for doing an actual post, but these are important thoughts that people should read.

Maybe I'm drawn to them because until recently I was fighting a bad case of being bummed. I'll never take for granted how relatively good I have it after spending a month working with a single mother in her 30's who has to work at Starbucks to support her kid, but it's pretty hard to face months of an unresponsive job market when all you want to do is do something gainful. The silence is worse than the rejection, and I started to feel like those satellites that send signal after signal into empty space and get nothing back. It was unfulfilling and exhausting and made it easy to focus on how bad it sucks to be unemployed and running out of money and 3000 miles away from home on the premise that you were going to make it on your own. And that stuff isn't even that bad in and of themselves. It's just the constant trying and the dragging of time that pulls them into happiness-preventing monsters.

But the important thing is that Mr. Kelly is right. There IS so much good stuff here and there, and even though life shits on everyone (perhaps more so now because of the times we live in) we should try to jump into the pool and cool off as often as we can. Fleeting happiness be damned.

Immersion and growth

2010-09-28T01:05:00.000-04:00

I feel this song rattle around in me, a bear running its thick body against the bars of a cage. Junior Kimbrough was from north Mississippi, but it's hard to imagine this coming from anywhere but the swamp. The distant metallic guitars, the echoing bays, low toad-like hum underneath it all, they create not only an atmosphere but a presence. This recording is an encapsulation, a haunting record of the dark brooding South.

I think of this song because I've been thinking about immersion. Into places new and unfamiliar. Not passing the time earning a living, hanging out a little, maybe going on dates sometimes, and being generally comfortable just being - instead, to come out looking, smelling, even tasting like becoming something different. That's the point for me, to be here in New York and make something of myself, not in the sense of finding something meaningful to do, but to morph into something different than I was before I came here.

But isn't that the point of going anywhere? Why travel if you end up exactly in the same place you started from? To travel with an absent or unwilling mind is a waste of gas. Mind your carbon footprint and give your seat up, bandwidth is cheaper and HD pictures can look better than real life anyway.

-

Going along with the art theme, I'd like to shift to one of my favorite webcomics, Questionable Content. I discovered it through Google Reader during one of my many spurts of boredom in California. Admittedly, I wasn't particularly drawn to it at first; it wasn't particularly witty or funny, it wasn't drawn especially well or in a way that grabbed my attention, and it didn't offer an enticing story line in small doses. But it kept showing up, so I gave it a chance. I'm glad I did.

What really struck me is how the entire comic is a public display of gradual artistic growth. In comics, the only facets that every really grow are the characters' personalities or the range of subject matter (I'm only speaking about comic strips, rather than comic books, just to clarify). This happens because over time audiences become with familiar with either the characters or the material, allowing the writer to add the nuance necessary to keep things fresh. Outside of this, comic strips don't typically grow or improve. Sure, the drawing style can become a little more clean or tight or expressive (I'm thinking about strips like Calvin and Hobbes), but the writer has an established look and the artistic skills to match that vision.

Questionable Content is different. Look at the first strip compared to the last. The difference is staggering. In this capacity, the comic is as much about the growth of the writer as it is about the characters in the comic. It's as if the world in the comic develops and fleshes itself out as its story develops and fleshes out, a sort of post-structural existence as a multivalent object where the abstract story and visual expression affect one another through their own dynamic activity, spurring the other to react in a similar way. This change is only obvious if you follow the chronology, since the differences are too drastic and spread out to have this kind of causal relationship in the first and last examples. The visual changes are so gradual they go unnoticed as you move further away from the beginning; eventually you reach the current installment and do not actively recall that what you you are seeing was once much cruder.

I think it's great to be able to see this kind of steady progress, to watch a writer/artist to develop and improve skills in such a subtle (yet obvious) manner. I wish this was more prevalent.

-

Big shout out to Friendship dairy products for their California Style cottage cheese. You might be a little salty for my taste, but you're the only palatable cottage cheese I've found outside of California.

-

My friend Dave is having adventures in Spain and is chronicling them in a blog whose name is a smart and subtle reference to the dialectic tendencies of the Spaniards. Read them here: Deliberate Lisp.

-

"Don't hold. If your mind is not holding anything, it is clear like space. Clear like space means that sometimes clouds come, sometimes rain or lightning or airplane comes, or even a missile blows up, BOOM!, world explodes, but the air is never broken. This space is never broken."
-Zen Master Seung Sahn

Zen, though notorious for being simple to understand yet near-impossible to practice, offers lots of sound advice. I try to keep things like this in mind in the face of unemployment frustration.

EST

2010-08-20T19:44:00.001-04:00

"Twice now I've had a dream where I'm frantically running around an airport looking for my gate. My flight leaves in 5 minutes, but time never decreases. I just keep running around, passing McDonalds, Hudson News', and crappy sports bars looking for the right gate like Mario ascending the stairs to Bowser without having enough stars. Just running and running and running."

That was something I had written weeks ago, saved for a post I was going to write before I left California. I am currently sitting in my friend's apartment in Brooklyn thinking, "oops." Honestly, there was just too much to get done before I left to sit down for an hour (usually what it takes me to write, then edit, then rewrite a post). Truth is, there wasn't much to really say that I hadn't been saying for the past year. Los Angeles still remains what it is, and I still feel the way I had felt before I left. The only difference is that it's now about the reestablishment, rather than the expedition.

I've been here for a 3 weeks now. While there have been many moments of happiness and excitement since July 31st, I have yet to feel relieved to be here. Joblessness is a wicked thing to contend with, and much of my time so far has been spent either in the pursuit of reversing it. When I'm not actively doing that, I'm usually (over)thinking about it. I understand that it's completely unreasonable to expect everything to fall into place after only 3 weeks, but I can't help it. I'm anxious to have something that lets me feel anchored, that gives me a space to occupy, that subtly reminds me I can't just leave because I have work to do and bills to pay. I would like to try and start an adult life, New York. You understand, don't you?

Luckily I don't have to worry about where I'm going to live. It was a mighty struggle finding a place, filled with close to a hundred listings, dozens of phone calls, running all over Brooklyn via foot and subway and bike and cab, many a Hasidic realtor, cockroaches, Ol' Dirty Bastard Murals, black mold, realtor gossip, bribes, intra-office realtor swapping, and losing 3 different apartments, but in the end we made out pretty well. We have a private back yard and roof access with views of Manhattan. Come hang out while the weather's still warm.

Despite feeling anxious, I am happy to be here. Almost overwhelmingly happy at times. Though I'm new to the city (and feel the pangs of looking like a hopeless tourist everyday as I stand at street corners flipping my phone around to try and orient myself in Google maps), there are no feelings of having to restart with the people here. It seems almost absurd to think that I had been gone for almost a year, because it feels like the time was much shorter. It's the best way it could be, and I'm lucky for it.

-

Things that have kept me going while I've been couch-surfing and job-hunting:

Maybe It's For The Best mixtape by DJ Terroreid, a guy I worked with back in California
Maybe It's For The Best Mixtape by DjTerroreid

Apartment Therapy, for helping in keeping my hopes up during the arduous apartment search

Convoy, for visually catering to my love for Hemingway

And Brooklyn in general, for letting hear this song being blasted from a car without a hint of irony in who was driving and what was being driven.

Meet me in the city

2010-06-28T18:25:00.002-04:00

"... LA - even the best parts, maybe especially the best parts, like flowering trees and neon signs and different kinds of ethnic food and music - made you feel agitated and like you were never really getting what you needed. Maybe LA had some untapped resources and hidden treasures that would make me feel full and happy and that I didn't know about yet but I wasn't dying to find them just then."

This little bit is from a story called "Wolf," written by Francesca Lia Block. It's a modern interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood, and is a pretty decent YA short story. You can read it here, on page 4: Wolf.

I have no interest in the story behind the excerpt. I'm only interested in because it nicely sums up the way I feel as I approach my last month living in LA. There's not much to say other than that. LA and California will always have a special place in my heart (and on my arm), and maybe I'll look back one day and feel like I never gave it quite the chance it deserved, but I know it doesn't give me what I need right now and I'm not going to worry about what it may be able to hypothetically offer me.

I'm ready for the whirlwind that will be July. I'm ready for traveling and cleaning house and packing up and starting life. I mean really start it. I'm ready for it. I'm ready.

-

This has been my favorite song for the past month or so, and is on its way to becoming one of my favorite songs ever. If you're a Black Keys fan you may have heard their cover of it, but it doesn't come close to this poor quality, one take acoustic version. I would consider selling my soul to be able to write and play something this intimate and expressive (not to mention the ability to play polyrhythms on guitar).

Junior Kimbrough - Meet Me In The City

"Meet me in the city
And see everything is so fine"

"I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep everyone's expectations"

2010-06-09T19:00:00.001-04:00

I had originally picked out the title for this blog (a quote from the endlessly quotable Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes) because I was going to talk about this unfortunate scenario: when an artist hits a creative peak and all subsequent work seems disappointing in the shadow of that peak. I was going to talk about this scenario in the case of a few bands (The Hold Steady, The Gaslight Anthem, and Minus The Bear) who have released good albums this year that ultimately fail to shine because of the albums that have preceded them. I'll talk about it a little bit at the end of this post, but since I'm writing this blog today, June 9th, I decided I'd shift gears to something a little more broad and encompassing.

Today is my parents' anniversary. They've been married 38 years. My dad is 59 and my mom is 58. That means that my parents were married when they were 21 and 20, and that they've been married for over half their lives. Forgive me for spelling out the obvious, but this really astounds me, and I've known then for my entire life.

We live in a time where marriage has become sort of a farce. In the past, marriage was a vital, necessary part of adult life. It was integral to social advancement for both men and women. An unmarried man past his 20s had to have a damn good excuse as to why, and an unmarried woman past her 20s had to have a damn good source of funds to find a decent place in society. Now I'm not trying to ignore the whole love aspect of marriage. I'm a romantic at heart, and would never try to disregard what should be the most important factor in such a serious institution. But to ignore the so-called business side of marriage would be naive. Marriage was as an important life step as getting a first job, a first house, a first promotion/raise, and was probably often the impetus for such events.

These days, marriage in America is about as valuable as a junk bond. It can be very rewarding, worthwhile, and fulfilling, but mostly it's too unstable to put much confidence in. It's a well-known fact that the survival rate of marriages has hovered around 50% for the last decade, give or take, so let's move on to some more subtle and pervasive ways marriage has become a farce. I think reality TV is the worst offender: we have the Bachelor-type shows, the Wife Swap-type shows, the Say Yes To The Dress-type shows, and the Bridezilla-type shows. Each one of these shows slowly erodes the legitimacy of the institution by making it a commodity. They turn love into a crash course in romance Darwinism; they turn for-better-or-worse idiosyncrasies into cheap it's-funny-because-they're-different plot lines; they turn the intimate journey of planning "the big day" into a dog show spectacle; they turn stress and frustration (whether justified or unjustified) into the televised equivalent of "Crazy Bitch in Wedding Dress Throws Cheeseburger at Stranger" Youtube videos.

The problem is that these shows are either entertaining or informative, and occasionally both. I can't deny that it's hilarious to watch the truly borderline psychotic brides on Bridezilla lose their shit over the fact that the catering staff only put 3 folds in the napkins when there were supposed to be 4. It's equally hilarious to watch Southern Conservative Christian wife deal with Northern Liberal Atheist dad + kids (Disclaimer: I don't actively watch these shows, but I can't deny that I've seen them on more than one occasion). The informative part comes with being able to see what you like and what you will avoid, be it table settings, bouquet arrangements, or life partner choices. In this sense, the shows do what they're supposed to do. But by no means do these shows add any value to marriage as an institution. Everyone on that show is being compensated for putting their lives on camera, essentially pimping out their marriage for the sake of a bit of screen time and the money to get that kitchen remodel the misses wants. Rather than having the business end of marriage be about socio-economic security and advancement, it's about those shining 15 minutes and a quick payday. Now, I'm not invested enough in these shows to be fundamentally against them, it just makes me a little sad that the most visible record of marriage in America circa-2000 is such a tawdry TV legacy.

Which brings me to why I've used the title I did. My parents have given me a bit of an unrealistic portrait to look at. I know I shouldn't compare their life to mine, and for the most part I don't. I've taken my lumps in the past and know that such comparison's only create unrealistic expectations (or as my dad told me, "My life's old, and you're young; stop trying to be so damned old"). But admittedly it's a bit unavoidable (they're high school sweethearts, for christ's sake; how do you not compare when your most immediate models for love/partnership/marriage/happinesswithanotherperson has a track record of over 40 years?). Fortunately, the state of marriage in the public eye is so low that the expectations for happiness seem rather easy to meet. So I guess I'm stuck in the middle of ground level social expectation and sky deck level personal model, and as long as I can make it to a vertigo-inducing story I'll be happy.

I don't know. I sort of lost track of where I was going with that analogy. Whatever. Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad. I love you both. Thanks for putting up with each other for so long.

-

Anyway, bands. That was the original topic, and I don't want to cheat myself out of it. In a nutshell, The Gaslight Anthem, Minus The Bear, and The Hold Steady have all released albums this year that are by no means bad but disappoint me because of the albums that came before. The cliff notes to the longer post I had intended:

-The Gaslight Anthem's The '59 Sound was a great example of that iconic rock 'n roll storytelling made famous by guys Springsteen and Petty. It was effortlessly engaging, intimate, catchy, and energetic. At times it almost felt as if Springsteen circa the Born To Run had been reincarnated in the wake of the Jersey punk scene. Because The '59 Soound was so good, I all but expected American Slang to fall flat. While there's some variation and expansion, it's not enough to prevent it from sounding like a continuation of the classically-inspired punk they're known for.

-I'm most conflicted with Minus The Bear's Omni. On the one hand, it is almost a complete 180 from the experimental, jammy prog-rock of Planet Of Ice. Hell, it's standing quite a bit of a ways from the cool, meandering noodling of Menos El Oso. In both cases, Omni disappoints because the band retreats into a shell of musical simplicity and rehashed themes (the drink/do drugs/have sex until our faces fall off trope was well covered early in their career). On the other hand, the album is undeniably catchy, fun, and sexy. They channel a lot of 70's and 80's funk and R&B on the record, making it their most accessible record to date and a great summer album. So I guess it's not a total loss.

-The Hold Steady's Heaven Is Whenever suffers the same fate as American Slang, except to a higher degree. Craig Finn is still trying to weave stories about going nowhere 20-somethings, and the band is still trying to write bar room Americana rock, but the album lacks the charm and sophistication of their previous records. Perhaps is the absence of their keyboardist, who brought a great amount of nuance and feeling to their songs. Perhaps it's just been done in exactly the same way for 5 records. Whatever it is, it just isn't clicking for me.

But all is not completely lost. Below you'll find a track from each record. They definitely don't suck, and you definitely should listen.

"It's not Our House. It's our home."

2010-06-04T14:33:00.002-04:00

I am, by nature, a talker. I talk a lot. Three probable causes of this (all working together, no doubt): my dad is a talker, filled with detailed answers and elaborate stories; I was not very talkative prior to college, for reasons that could be jokingly filed under "emo," and college was the breakout; and the obvious English degree. Whatever the reasons are, I know that I often say more than I need to, that I go on tangents for the sake of adding more color to what I'm saying, that I tell overly elaborate stories, and that my tendency to speak too much occasionally leads to me being totally inept at actually saying what I want to say. These facts have led me to have a reputation among my friends of being long-winded.

I should probably be embarrassed at the fact that I have this reputation. When I first learned about it, I was, because that's not exactly flattering. But in the words of that great American hero Popeye the Sailor, "I yam whad I yam," and since I can't really shut myself up, I've come to accept it. No one has stopped being my friend over it, and in spite of this blog's wordy tendencies, people still read it, so I'm not going to stress about what all of you assholes say behind my back (just kidding, I love you all).

Because of my long-winded tendencies, it's uncommon for me to be totally silent. Usually when my mouth is shut for extended periods, it's because I am preoccupied with a dilemma that has my mind working too much for me to engage the outside world or feeling far too unnerved and awkward by my surroundings to contribute. It often leads to the usual "are you ok's" and "is something wrong's." Bless the souls of the individuals who realize my silence is atypical enough to warrant concern.

This past weekend beheld a new kind of silent beast. Sitting in Allison's kitchen with over a dozen friends eating breakfast, I found myself without anything to say. Not that I was perturbed by something, or that I felt unable to add anything to the conversation, but that there was nothing that needed to be said. Being surrounded by these people, there was a palpable feeling of camaraderie, community, and dare I say family*. In that moment, seeing all these people that I have a tremendous amount of love for sharing eggs, bagels, hashbrowns, joy, smiles, and laughter, there was nothing for me to say. I just had to sit there and bask in how perfect the moment was.

*I hesitate to say family because of its gross misuse by my peers. Too often I see large groups of friends call themselves a "family" only to see it fall apart once the binding factor of being in the same place at the same time removed. There's always a core group of friends who stay in close contact, but that idealized "we're so close we'll never part" feeling never lasts. I also hesitate to call us the exception, for fear of sounding arrogant, but this weekend provides a pretty good case for it. When you have 20+ people all meeting in the same place for a reunion and carrying on like we never left a year ago, I think it's fair to say that you've got something true there.

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A couple of my friends from high school are in a band called The Reflectacles. They just recorded a new EP, and it's very good. Inspired by rock and folk bands from decades ago. They've got a guy who plays the banjo Willie Nelson's son is their drummer. You should check it out, because I wouldn't promote them if I didn't think it was good music. "Bessie Says" is a jam.

http://www.myspace.com/thereflectacles

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When I first started this blog, I would visit One Word daily, write for the word, and then post it. I did it 2 days ago for the first time in over half a year.

Today's word: Century

"the century stumbled on the tips of umbrellas, rolling off the dome to the puddles of leaves and girls. cars spray years on the sidewalk, careless of pedestrians who walk too close to the edge."

Support your right to arm bears

2010-05-28T16:46:00.003-04:00

"There is, historically and persistently, a belief in us that y'all just can't trust nobody who acts too smart or talks too good - in other words, somebody whose "general persona" indicates they may have once cracked a book or had a thought. Americans tend to believe common sense the exclusive province of humble folks without sheep-skins on the wall or big words in their vocabularies... More to the point, something is wrong when we celebrate mental mediocrity... under the misapprehension that competence or, God forbid, 'intelligence,' makes a person one of those 'elites' - that's a curse word now - lacking authenticity, compassion and common sense... I am tired of being asked to pretend stupid is a virtue."
-Leonard J. Pitts Jr.

I've sat on this quote for a long time, not really knowing what to do with it mostly because it unavoidably leads to a political discussion. A part of me really wants to go sling some mud, and a part of me wants to let the quote speak for itself. But the fact that it accurately describes the general climate of an entire constituency is scary. It's scary that a good half of our country actively promotes attacks on intelligence by supporting a man who's career has been nothing but a string of failures, or a woman who has a history of not commitment issues, or a man who espouses "knowledge" on a bevy of political, economic, and social topics, yet whose higher learning experience was one college class on "Early Christology" (whatever the hell that is). These same people are the people who have made disparaging comments about the "condescending" nature of certain political figures' oratory skills (because apparently forming a coherent sentence is a sign of elitist arrogance) and the fact that all of the supreme justices have Ivy League degrees.

I just don't understand it. This nation stands on the shoulders of men who were markedly more learned than the world they existed in (but wait, let's not forget that one of the brightest of these men has been reduced to an afterthought for an entire state of students). Somewhere along the way, though, common sense and intelligent thought got separated from each other, and now stand in opposition for many people. Intelligence, or perhaps an idea of "over-intelligence," cannot produce common sense, and common sense somehow sidesteps intelligence. So we come at an impasse, where some people would rather have a leader who they could see themselves knocking back a thirty with rather than one who they could sit in a lecture hall and learn from.

This isn't a political stance, per say, though as I mentioned before, it's hard to talk about it without making a political statement because of the culture we exist in today. I don't believe that intelligence only exists on the Left and ignorance only on the Right, but people make it hard to say otherwise sometimes. More so, I don't want to believe we're entering a regressive era, where many intelligent and well-thought-out ideas are rolled back because they are whatever they are to the people rolling them back. But the signs keep showing that perhaps that might be the case (Texas school board agendas, Arizona immigration laws, Rand Paul, ire over nuclear weapons agreements, the anti-climate change people who somehow hate the idea of improving the state of the earth with or without cause). These people exist on both sides of the spectrum, but they're almost exclusively led by a herd of pachyderm.

The quote at the top is an excerpt from an article on how a GOP nomination of Sarah Palin for president in 2012 would be a good gut check for America. I agree, and I believe that it would be a failed bid, but I cannot help but be unnerved at the idea of it blowing up in our faces. For all the myriad reasons as to why I fear this, there is a myriad half-baked but fervently defended retorts. So rather than harp on the obvious, I'll just say that I firmly believe that the way one treats animals is a good indication of his or her character, and any person ruthless enough to find it gratifying to chase and shoot animals from a helicopter is not a stellar choice for the leader of 300 million plus people. That choice would truly be death from above.

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In other news, I could listen to this song every day. I often do, actually. Why try to find joy in complicated, fussy things when it can be found in such simplicity?

Facebook I love you, but you're bringing me down, pt. 3

2010-05-13T14:20:00.001-04:00

To the fears and thanks I've given Facebook et al in my last 2 posts, I felt it necessary to add this one caveat to my sentiments.

I worry about what the openness and continual advancement is doing and will continue to do to younger generations. I appreciate what the movement from floppy disks and monochrome screens to 56k modems and AOL to Wi-Fi and Facebook has done in terms of communication because I've been able to experience the world without those things and have gotten to take part in adopting these new advancements. I'm sure we can all remember that day when the last member of our group of friends finally got a cell phone or when our dads finally caved and replaced the dial up with a broadband connection.

Maybe our memories before these technologies is a little hazy, but we all grew up in a world where the most advanced thing in our houses were the first Nintendo system, and even then, some of us had to actually go to our friend's houses to play them. Some of us never say the end credits of video games because there was never enough time to play that much. Some of us begged our friends just to let us hold a cell phone and pretend for a moment we were born with nicer, "hipper" parents. It sparked rancor towards our moms and dads because so and so had just got a new Playstation and we didn't even have an SNES. We ached for these things because they were so new and forward thinking and seemingly endless in possibility. The ability to call whomever you wanted from the beach? Getting to see pictures of a lion eating an antelope without having to go to the library? Not having to blow in the cartridge? Madness! Witchcraft! The work of the devil!

I think that thanks to early instances of waiting and longing and awe we are well equipped to see benefits of new technologies while still recognizing the potential dangers of them. Open Graph appropriately scares us, we're cautious of signing up for just any old thing online, and some of us don't even access the internet on our phones. We're not like older generations that shy away from openness and connectivity like it's a block of cheese with mold on the end (I could cut it off and know it'd probably be OK, but do I reaaaaally want to risk that?), we're just aware that danger could lurk around the corner if we don't make sure to peek first (remember the first time your computer got hit with a nasty pop up virus?).

But what about the kids growing up in the wake of our technological revolutions? A world where Myspace was already populated by millions, everyone literally does have a cellphone, and CD is an anachronism. They're born into a world where privacy is something that needs to be continually reinforced, not instilled as a given. They get cellphones at the first day of kindergarten, an email address when they graduate 3rd grade, their headshot for their Facebook profile during winter break of 4th, and throw a party for their 1000th tweet by the time their ready for middle school. A 12 year old in Kentucky ranks in the top 100 Call of Duty online players and gets a kick out of beating the original Super Mario in only 2 hours, thinking at least it only cost him $1.99 to download. Rather than climb the tree in his back yard or sit on the sidewalk starting little leaf fires with the matches he stole from the kitchen cabinet, he scales the side of a cathedral in Assassin's Creed and sets fire to 3 cop cars with the flamethrower in GTA. They don't lament the 2 week's worth of allowance they spent on that SR-71 album that only has 2 good songs on it because they just had to go to iTunes and download the "Right Now" single (like all responsible 21st century parents, allowances are given in the form of online store credits and debit card transfers).

These good parents. I wish parents would stop worrying that playing outside invites the dangers of sickness and infection and ZOMG other people upon their children. My parents let my brother and I walk to the nearby Carls Jr. when we were 12 and 9. This was about a mile away, and meant walking past a gang-owned pool hall, drug-run Vietnamese restaurant, seedy dive bar known for it's place on the 911 speed dial, and crossing two major 6 lane surface streets. They even let us do this on bikes. WITHOUT HELMETS! They let us climb the 50 foot trees that had branches going out into the streets and swim when no one was home and fight with sticks and throw water bottle bombs down the storm drains and even let us play after dinner when it was dark outside. I almost think it's worse to have parents who are too worried to let their kids be kids and get hurt and sick and touch gross things and ruin clothes and get yelled at by the neighbors for running on their lawn than parents who are too lazy to care whether their kids do it or not. Almost, because it's not really, but it's just as much a shame in my mind. Kids don't figure out their limits of strength, fear, fortitude, daring, and ingenuity pretending to be other people on a screen in a WWII simulation or having their friends tell them how much they actually have these things in a chat box.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just sounding like our parents and parent's parents who say we don't know what hard work is and lack necessary life skills and will perpetually be in pride purgatory, never quite satisfying some roaming target of adulthood because instead of balancing a check book or learning how to calculate an ERA or being able to name the state capitals we can just say that we have an app to do it for us. I get the sentiment. I feel totally inept sometimes when considering that my father could quit his job tomorrow and get hired as a computer technician, mechanic, contractor, electrician, plumber, landscaper, bartender, chef, draftsman, or audio producer the next day. It's that disheartening motivator that makes me both unequivocally admire him and worry that I will never achieve the level of "manhood" he has.

But this is part of a larger epidemic. It's why sites like The Art Of Manliness, who's mission statement is basically to preserve all of those practical longstanding things men of a hundred generations except the most recent ones have known, have sprung up in the last decade (I don't know if there's a female equivalent, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was). I agree with the mission statement. I'd rather have my children break a bone from falling off a roof before they break a record on Xbox Live and burn their fingers learning how to light a grill before they burn their friend for having slow fingers while typing a text message. I want them to be able to embrace technology for bringing them the world to their fingertips, but appreciate it because those finger have callouses and cuts and and maybe a character-giving bend from smashing it with a hammer that one time.

Facebook I love you, but you're bringing me down, pt. 2

2010-05-12T18:25:00.002-04:00

Lately, I've been recognizing just how much I like and am dependent on social media (and internet technology at large). These feelings are due mostly to my recently posted-about plan to move, but have been lying under the surface for a long time. Truth is, I could not imagine my life without these tools ("tools"? Are they really tools? I suppose they help us accomplish a purpose, which is a very loose but appropriate definition for tool, but what that purpose these technologies help us accomplish exactly, I don't know). The shrinking of the world through social media and instant, real-time communication has been nothing short of pivotal in terms of me moving back to the east coast. Back in 2005, Facebook radically changed the way college freshman socialized with one another. Rather than being dumped on campus with thousands of others sight unseen, freshies could scope out who else was joining the class of '09, who was going to live in their dorm, who else liked both "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" AND "Kind of Blue," and who would make good eye candy in their SOC 101 class. The anonymity of the freshman was eroding under the blue banner of a site made just across the river from my alma mater.

Facebook's beneficial features weren't really apparent to me when I was in school, and especially while I was at school. Sure, it was nice to accumulate a little network of acquaintances I'd meet at various parties over the course of 4 years, and the photo album addition was great for having an online record of good times that would otherwise not be seen (though given the tendencies of certain friends, it's likely there are hundreds of dope pictures out there that will exist on an SD card for eternity), but Facebook was a novelty, not something my friends and I took seriously (the phrase "it's just Facebook" thrown out on a weekly basis). The precursor to my feelings now were the summer months, when I'd relish in the opportunity to make a post on the wall of a friend stuck on some island floating in the north Atlantic or see pictures spring up from that last week of school in mid-July. The ability to stay connected without having to rack up long distance charges, use one of your precious limited text messages (it's amazing texting limits still exist, now that I think about it), or god forbid send a letter or post card again seemed novel, but was more revelatory, as in "how the hell did people stay friends during the summer before this? 2004 must have been the pits!"

Flash forward 5 years: Facebook has grown into a Web 2.0 behemoth, surpassing the only other 800 pound gorilla in the room (Google) to become the most visited site in the world while systematically relegating notions of front end privacy to cute ideas that will be entertained once the big men handle their business. The ultimate usurpation of consumer power in their just-don't-care attitude. Scary stuff. But, and this is a big but, a but so big Sir Mix-A-Lot would be satisfied, Facebook has just about been the ultimate resource for staying in touch with all those wonderful people I shared countless hours running around that quaint little village they call Boston or sometimes Beantown. Facebook chat has all but replaced AIM, with good reason; it's mostly easier to talk to communicate with a real name attached to a real picture, rather than trying to remember the number combination at the end of the screen name or where the x's go exactly. Photo albums keep us actively redistributing memories of the past 5 years without the wax-nostalgic "remember when..."; no, I can make fun of that photo of you with that just-took-a-shot-of-something-awful face without having to coax the details of that particular Thursfrisaturday night. Wall posts allow us to share thoughts the latest Beiber spoof, buzzing news topic, or new song release without suffering the awful lag of the postman (sorry John, I mean no harm). There's no anonymity, but there's also no excuse for letting good friendships fall into the pits of time and distance. If you don't want to maintain a friendship these days, you have to really not want it.

I take back the ultimate statement, actually. Other tools (still don't know how I feel about using that word) like Twitter, email chains (bless the developer who thought of email threading), and video chat have been actively used to bridge the distance between Los Angeles and the other side, making them seem like only a stone's throw away. Without these things, I would have never been able to orchestrate the month of July. Hell, I would probably not even have considered it and would have accepted a fate of being stuck. Maybe the inability to keep such close contact would have changed my attitudes towards my hometown, but I'm happy I didn't get that chance. LA's a fine place, but not for me.

So thank you Facebook, Twitter, and stupid-fast internet connections with bandwidths as big as the 405 for being the enabler of the ballsy and making sure I do as my mother told me last month: "Whatever you do, don't ever lose contact with these people. You'd be an idiot of you did."

Facebook I love you, but you're bringing me down, pt 1

2010-05-11T17:52:00.001-04:00

Lots of people stirring about Facebook these days, huh? I hear ya. Shit's crazy over in the Disneyland of social media. People are copy-pasting irate statuses about the new changes, top execs are talking about why they are deleting their Facebook accounts, tech blogs are posting things about it at a 1:2 ratio. OK, the last one isn't true, but lots of Buzz for sure (/social media puns). Working in social media, I have the privilege of reading about these changes almost as soon as they happen, so the introduction of Open Graph API wasn't a surprise to me, but I understand the ire that most of the 400 million users experience. If it wasn't obvious before, Facebook's primary mission isn't having iron clad protection of user data. But then again, it never had to be, and expecting it to be is a bit like expecting a Sigfried and Roy tiger to never, EVER attack the men with the shiny one-piece suits beckoning them to do handstands and cartwheels and half-gainers into the deep end of the pool.

Facebook is only beholden to its us in so much that it provides the basic principles it was founded on: a free way to exist in a digital space and connect with the digital existences of people we know. The operative word there is free. Because we don't have to pay a dime to utilize 90% of what Facebook has to offer, we have minuscule control over the changes Facebook chooses to implement. Sure, users have prevented some changes from becoming permanent through lawsuits from consumer groups, but these concessions are few and far between. There's no free lunch, even when you get to eat for free. Because we take advantage of the zero cost, Facebook can take advantage of the skewed leverage they have.

While I'm not even lukewarm to the Open Graph idea, I don't exactly hate it. In the grand scheme of new technology, it was bound to happen. How many futuristic movies are based around the idea of super-connectivity with one profile. To be "on the grid" is to have the world available at your fingertips, and that's an idea we love to see, but apparently only in theory. Facebook is moving us closer to having one identity for everything, and we are scared because it seems intrusive, too far reaching, perhaps even unethical (though that's quite a stretch). But then we forget that beneath the glossy blue-and-white scheme we're about as obvious as a man in a tux at a nude beach. It doesn't take that much digging to see just how exposed and connected we are because of technology already: cookies remembering you on websites, IP addresses tracking every time you are on the internet, online banking monitoring how you move your money, credit card swipes, phone call logs, even your cable box can be monitored. There is no such thing as anonymous or invisible existence in the modern world. We're just fortunate enough to have an insignificance that affords us the piece of mind that no one would ever really want to look for us, save for maybe future employers looking for that one picture your friend posted from that one summer party where you got wasted and jumped in the hot tub with your clothes on.

I also understand the motive to move into a business-oriented online environment. While Facebook doesn't really need this (their online credits market is estimated to be worth over $1B), if you had the most visited site in the world with 400 million people using it you'd want to be able to tap into the enormous online marketplaces that exist, too. Facebook is capitalizing on the latest abilities online connectivity can offer, but because it's on such a large scale it comes across as devious and threatening. I bet that if a smaller social networking site were to do the same thing it wouldn't be met with such an outrage.

But in the move also lies the ingenuity of Facebook. There's a reason why Facebook has succeeded while competitors like Myspace and far lesser known Bebo, as well as social media companies like Digg, have run into serious trouble. That reason is that Facebook has never remained static for too long, choosing to release new features incrementally as they've been developed rather than unveil a new package with a slew of features every year and a half. In a world where stagnancy is a punishable offense, Facebook has pushed ahead and made sure it was on the forefront with something new, even if that new feature ended up falling flat. It's a pioneering business model, not one that rests on the laurels of what works. Unfortunately, with that engine moving in what seems like perpetual motion, we are at the hands of the operators, and while we might not like the new openness that fully validates owner Mark Zuckerberg's statement "public is the new private" (not verbatim, I don't believe), the only option is to jump the train.

So where does that leave us? I know that personally, it's a mixed answer. While I understand and in some ways admire the progressiveness of the Facebook agenda, I don't exactly like the approach. Their rejection of privacy is a bit unnerving, their attempt to be everything to everyone is an ambition that usually ends up failing, and their ahead-of-the-curve penchant for change is not exactly what I had in mind when I signed up for it 5 years ago. But then again, I could have departed back when the regionals, high-schoolers, and everyone-elses got access; or as the limits of default settings continually got pushed into the largest pools of the internet. Social media is scary in how much it's shrunk the world and opened up our personal lives to it, but the truth is, as long as nothing outrageous happens, I don't think I'd abandon Facebook or any other social network, for what I think are good reasons.

But that's in part 2.

No turning back

2010-05-05T03:14:00.004-04:00

A part of me thinks I may have finally lost it. A part of me thinks the part of me that thinks I've lost it is stupid. The former part loses in the end, though, so the point is moot.

Why?

Because in 87 days I will be embarking on a one way journey back to the east coast. Brooklyn, NY to be exact. There's no real plan other than that. No job line up, or job prospects. No place to live other than the couches of the gracious friends I'm fortunate to have there. No savings account or graduation money or other large fund to supply me with the means of survival.

Not having a real plan doesn't mean a lot of planning hasn't gone into this decision. I've actually spent what is probably at least 100 hours going over the whats, wheres, whys, and hows of the decision. It started during a 3 day car ride from Boston to Los Angeles 8 months ago, became a vague dream with a firm line between the present and January 1st, 2011, turned into my existential crisis as job prospects looked dim, morphed into a tangible idea when I got a job, and became imperative that I do it as soon as I could once Coachella passed.

Obviously I'm nervous about this whole thing. I've never been someone to make big decisions without some sort of carefully laid plan to follow. Every choice up until this point has had a path and target guiding it, minimizing the room for error. But as the saying goes, the best laid plans of mice and men can quickly turn to shit (that's how it goes, right?), and being in California has taught me that plans are about as fool-proof as a line in the sand. Eventually a tide has to come in.

Just because I don't have a plan, that doesn't mean I'm doubtful of my chances in succeeding. In fact, it's quite the opposite: for the first time in my life, I feel completely confident in my ability to make it work without needing a plan to lead me. It's a strange and liberating feeling. I'm going to make it work because it's what needs to happen.

So here I am, acting completely out of character because it's what I have to do. Have to, not want to. There's only so long one can sit at the edge and wonder what's on the floor below, and so I'm stepping off the precipice. I can't wait to see the bottom.

I've been listening to this song fairly regularly for the last couple weeks, and it was the first thing I listened to when I booked my ticket. It was then that I actually paid attention to the lyrics, and they are surprisingly appropriate.

(All you Glitz, you know what's up)

Chico and Rockfort

2010-04-23T18:59:00.002-04:00

"Most people vastly overestimate the extent to which more money would improve our lives... According to one study, joining a group that meets just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income. According to another, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more that $100,000 a year."
-David Brooks, via The New York Times.

There is so much truth in this statement that it seems a bit unnecessary to say very much about it. But I can use it as a way to talk about the implication (that happiness is based on the people we're around first and foremost) and how this was clearly present this past weekend.

Coachella has come and gone, and I can say without hyperbole that it was easily one of the best experiences I've ever had. It may even be the best. Better than backpacking Europe, better than driving across the country, better than going on tour or playing big stages. I simply can't think of anything that compares. There's be no experience I've had in my life where immediately afterward (literally, as in getting to the car after the Gorillaz's set to leave the camp ground) I wanted to do it all over again without changing a single thing about it. The whole weekend was flawless.

Of course this owes a lot to the experience of camping at a large music festival and seeing a ton of great bands play fantastic sets and sound awesome thanks to big production budgets. But moreover it's because I spent the weekend with 6 amazing people who took the long trip out to Southern California, some for the first time ever, just to go. It could have been easy to spend the weekend lamenting about the expense of it (which ran all of us hundreds of dollars we may or may not have), but never once did any of the assumed costs of the trip become an issue, be them monetary or temporal or jet-lag-based.

I think it's safe for me to say that my sentiments about the weekend are shared by the rest of the group that went. I don't want to assume that we've figured out some deep secret, because it's not really a secret at all; I just hope everyone else had as good a time with the people they were with as we did with each other. Happiness is really only limited by the people you can share it with, and if "hell is other people" then I don't really want to know what the other side of that coin is.

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In other news, this blog will officially be a year old in two days. It's interesting to think about what has gone on in the past year and how so much has changed and how these things can be tracked in one way or another in this blog. Armadillo Hotel was originally a distraction tool, a way to get myself thinking about anything other than the thoughts that were consuming my mind last spring. I had no idea whether or not I'd follow through with keeping it up, and I certainly never thought I'd still be using it a full year later.

It's also interesting to see just how far reaching this blog has been in a year. There have been almost 1,200 visits from 31 different countries. While a vast majority of these visits outside of the usual suspects in the states are probably accidental Google searches or stumblings, it's truly flattering to see that people in Australia decided to hang out on it for a minute and a half or that someone in Denmark went on to read a second page. I also have to say thank you to all the friends, family members (maybe? maybe not actually), and random people in California, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey who have been a vast majority of the people from America who have read this blog. I have to give Maine special recognition as well, as it's right behind New Jersey in terms of visits and I only know one person from Maine, and she isn't even there anymore.

It truly means a lot to me that every one of you have taken the time to read the stuff I have to say when I feel like "hearing myself talk" (as someone half-jokingly put it last night. Admittedly, it's true. I can't possibly claim otherwise and continue writing this without sounding like an ass). If you read this regularly, I hope it's because you somehow enjoy hearing me talk as much as I do, and I hope it's been a tolerable ride. I make no promises as to the future of this blog, but I don't think I'll shut up anytime soon.

How I can love a Mexican restaurant without loving the food

2010-04-07T21:00:00.004-04:00

Sometimes, acts of altruism and benevolence happen so casually and naturally that them seem unreal, even inhuman. For the past month, I've been eating lunch at this tiny Mexican restaurant, Michoacan Carnitas. I've known about this place for years, but until I started working near it, always passed it in favor of the Subway right next to it (obviously I'm not some great champion of small businesses, but I'm working on it). I tried to go there once years ago, but honestly got intimidated by the tiny dining area filled with the cacophonous sound of fast-moving Spanish phrases and 97.9 La Raza radio playing (though a self-identifying Hispanic, I'm also very aware of how white-washed I am and how un-Hispanic I look). Fortunately, during my lunch hour, the place is pretty empty, leaving me time to navigate the above-counter menu with my broken Spanish.

Now, if there were any other options for Mexican cuisine in the area and I was solely dining at a restaurant for the taste of the food, I'd go somewhere else. While it has good food, it's by no means the best I've had in any category. But if I had another choice, I would still choose to eat at Michoacan Carnitas. Why? Because of the generosity of the staff. For starters, on more than one occasion I've watched guys clearly on hard times come in just to chat with the staff and walk out with free quesadillas and tacos without so much as hinting to being hungry for anything other than to bullshit about Chivas USA. I've watched the owner buy the cheap leather wallets, bootleg DVDs, and crappy kid toys that poor street hawkers bring in to try and make enough money to buy food for the week (and pay way over what is asked). I watch him throw in free refried beans, chips, and rice with every a la carte item on the menu.

But what takes the cake is what happened to me last week and then today. Outside the restaurant is the universal Visa and Mastercard symbols - a great sign for someone who rarely has cash on hand. I go in, order my torta, and pull out my card. The owner looks at me and says, "No cards. Our machine is broken." A little defeated, I tell him I can run out and get some cash really quick, otherwise I won't be able to pay. He shakes his head and says, "Don't worry about it. You're in here all the time, you can pay next time you come." Disbelief. "Are you sure? I don't know if I'm comfortable with that. I'll only be ten minutes." Insistence. "No, no, it's OK. Just pay next time. Don't worry." There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but if I never wanted Mexican food for lunch again I could have gotten away with it, karma aside.

Today I went in for lunch and for my debt. I get to the register, and he nods in that "hey, how you doing" way. I go to pay for my meal and pull out my receipt from last week. He looks at it confused for a little bit, but then recognizes what it's for. He rings me up for both meals: $12.78. I hand him a twenty. He looks at it for a second, then hands me back eight. I try to give him back a dollar and he says, "No no, it's only twelve. You want ice for the water?" Seamlessly passes my insistence on paying my full bill off.

This guy has me floored. The restaurant is obviously not pulling down big bucks, despite its dinner rush. Yet this guy consistently gives more than anyone in this day would ever expect. He represents, as my parents said when I told them my you pay later story, that old neighborhood drugstore owner that died when profits before people became the implicit slogan for businesses at large. It reverberates strongly in me, reminding me that I need to work somewhere that allows whatever I make and take to be given back just as much (need here being an imperative, something that my future happiness depends on).

-

I've been reading Nabokov's "Lolita" for the 3rd time. This is not exactly an easy feat for a man. "Lolita" is not a book that can be read comfortably in public. Most people know that the general premise of the book is old dude likes prepubescent girls, and that's it. The premise strikes at some visceral core of most people. The act and action of the premise is reprehensible, abhorrent, vile, and a bunch of other not so nice sounding words. I get this 100%. Most people, though, judge a reader by a book's cover (It sucks. I know I'm guilty of it. All the Stephanie Meyer and Nicholas Sparks fans do not get very much respect when I see their well-worn spines facing me. I must admit I'm a little bit of a Literature snob; it comes with the degree). Because of this, people tend to give "Lolita" readers, espeeeecially men, the sideways glance. They ask themselves why someone would be attracted to a book with such a horrible premise and if it's an indication of horrible tendencies in the reader.

I feel bad for Nabokov's book. While it certainly is the book true to its public image, it's so much more, and far less about what it appears to be. People don't know about the poignant critique on America's consumerist gluttony, penchant for things wrapped in shiny packages and slick phrases, and tendency to make all things remotely foreign seem exotic, strange, and desirable. People don't know about the self-reflexive narrator who is quite aware of his abhorrence, or how the story really is, to steal Vanity Fair's words, "the only convincing love story of our century" (the only being debatable, the convincing being wholly accurate). People don't know about the complete lack of innocence of the child girl in question, and how she is, in a word or two, a total manipulative bitch, completely aware of what she's doing. People don't know that "Lolita" is one of the shining examples of written English (and written in a style after my own heart, complete with parenthetical phrases and everything).

This isn't meant to be apologetic of the subject matter, or to say that somehow the book is lighter than it is. I just wish I could read it at a coffee shop without getting strange looks.

-

New opportunities and ideas are popping into my head everyday, it seems. I'm trying to chase every idea because I think there has got to be something worthwhile at the end of at least one of them.

I tried to avoid this, but it seems unavoidable.

2010-03-22T16:35:00.008-04:00

In this volatile political time, a lot of people have been throwing around various ideas of "exceptionalism" in the United States. People use it about the status of our health care. People use it about the status of our civil rights. People believe in it so much that they radically alter textbooks to laud it.

Maybe it's because I have grown up in a cynical, hypercritical era, but I struggle to understand how Americans today can extol our country as exceptional when we so clearly aren't. How can we praise our exceptionalism when an entire political party is fundamentally against reforming a system that is so clearly broken. We spend twice as much of our GDP on health care than other developed nations, and yet we have nothing to show for it. Our life expectancies aren't the highest, our infant mortality rates aren't the lowest, and most estimates suggest that 40% of bankruptcies are related to health care costs. FORTY PERCENT! It's absurd that we, in what is supposedly greatest country on earth, allow that number to be that high. How can we call ourselves great when we allow so many people run themselves into the ground over simply trying to maintain their health? I'm sorry if you don't agree, but I think it's a horrendous statistic, one that needs to be changed. And I find it encouraging, despite all the ire, that things are finally moving in the direction of change.

I know there are people out there who would strongly disagree with my support of the new legislation. People get upset over the amount of money spent on it. Health care costs money, and there's no way things were going to get done without spending money. Sure, we could just not do anything, like a lot of people want, but that is retaining the status quo and I don't think that's ok. What would people rather spend money on fixing? Because everyone loves to complain about this problem or that problem, but no one wants to deal with the actual cost of doing things. Scaling back government spending is another way of giving up. Just as that broken garage door is going to take money to fix, so are the big issues. Want to end the war? It takes money, even just to get the troops out. If we wanted every troop in every foreign country to come home tomorrow, it would cost millions to orchestrate that mass exodus. If we wanted to kick all the illegal immigrants out, it would cost money to round them all up, ship them back home, build up barriers (both physical and abstract) to keep them from coming back, not to mention pay for the invariable racist charges that come with doing such a thing (since we all know we're talking about Latin Americans, mostly). For that one, you'd also have to spend money trying to reorganize the distribution of labor so we can keep up with production, lest we suffer huge trade losses because we can't keep up with being the world's largest exporter of several thousand food products. You want to fix education? That costs money, a lot of money. Being from California, home to one of the worst public school systems in the nation, I see first hand how the system we use to educate our kids is so horribly broken that it will cost us huge amounts if we are ever going to try and provide kids with a real education. It's embarrassing when high school kids who go to a school in an affluent area don't know what 1/2 x 2 is. I kid you not. I saw it with my own eyes.

I'm getting off track. Some people think that health care in a free market system would drive down costs. It would take far more than just opening up state boarders to do this. Insurance companies would need to take out insane insurance policies with the FDIC to make themselves solvent for the increase in policy holders. Insurance also doesn't work like other industries in that ownership of insurance is based on risk-pooling, not business to consumer purchasing. With larger risk-pools, especially on the cusp of the baby-boomer retirement wave, you deal with increased pressure to impose limitations on payouts and policy holders. Trust me, insurance companies don't like to pay out. That's why people get denied for stupid pre-conditions and have lifetime payout limitations. Prior to today, if you lived to 100 on a universal life policy, you were considered statistically dead, and your policy was ended. You could extend those terms, but of course that comes with a cost. Insurance, like most business, is a money-making endeavor, and while there are a lot of people who are in the business to really help people, these companies are worth billions, and you can bet there are a lot of people no interested in paying out from those billions.

I'm still off-track. People get angry about America becoming an entitlement country. That's understandable. I get why people get worked up about having to into something that's for everyone; some people inevitably work harder, some people inevitably are lazy. It's an tired argument, but if you're against a program that requires you to pay into a pool for everyone, then by default you must boycott using emergency services, public libraries, the post office, any and all community centers, and public schools. These things are all funded by tax dollars, made available to everyone, despite their level of contribution. If you think that people should not be "entitled" to health care, then why should anyone be entitled to have law enforcement protect them, or books made available to them, or education required of them? People say that making people pay for health care is unconstitutional, but by that same token so are these mentioned things. No where in the constitution does it say you must pay for education, or that you even have a right to education, but if it suddenly became an privilege program majority of people would lose it.

I don't care if you think health care reform is unconstitutional, or if you think it's socialist, or if you think it's not government's place to fix it, or that you don't want to pay more into a system that gives you and everyone else at least a pittance of security when you are old, retired, or poor. My interpretation of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" involves health. If we are going to say our nation is founded on these 3 RIGHTS, then health care is absolutely a right. If our health is compromised, our life is compromised. If our health is compromised, our ability to pursue happiness is compromised. We are given this abstract idea of health by nature of being born. Being in some form of health is a requisite of life. Being in good health should not be a privilege, unless we are going to say that life and happiness are not rights, but privileges. But we founded our nation on these inalienable rights, on the idea that these are fundamental to us being alive. In this sense, our nation was founded on the "socialist" principle that these rights are invaluable and that we must secure them as a nation. The security of these things, centuries later, is dependent on government. Sorry, that's just how the world works, not just here, but everywhere. Move to the Moon if you don't want government involved in your rights. I will continue to believe that people have the right to remain healthy, and that it is our job to give that to everyone, no matter what the cost, if we are going to continue to call ourselves exceptional.

2010-03-01T14:12:00.006-05:00

I've been considering moving this blog over to Tumblr or Wordpress for about a week now. It's a tough decision. Both sites offer a much richer blogging experience, but now that I'm 50 posts in and have gained at least a small recognition for being here, it seems a bit frivolous to just uproot the whole thing. I don't know. Thoughts, anyone?

*

I've been recently obsessed with the phrase "break your voice." It appeared in a short story I read online, then in a modified form in the Jonsi song I included in my last post, and now it's entered my dreams, meaning I dream-wrote about it. The context of the dream was unclear, but like most dreams where I write, I felt like I was waiting for someone.

"Break your voice like it's all you have left and lost the fear of not being able to speak for yourself. Do, instead, good things with your hands, or your heart. Say what you mean with your eyes. Tell compliments with your ears. Love the world with your nose. Break your voice, shut up for a moment and listen to the universe careen through your hair - then blame it on the wind."

Sometimes phrases just get into my brain and don't let go until I cast them out again in some fashion. I wrote a couple of poems earlier, but apparently that wasn't enough. It's strange how words can have such creeping effects.

*

Speaking of dreaming, I recently read about a sleeping disorder I've experienced before. Hypnagogic hallucinations, as they are called, occur in the transitional phases between being awake and falling asleep. Essentially, people affected by this believe things occur around them like they are awake, but in reality they are imagining things in a weird pseudo-dream. The things that are imagined can be downright spooky, like disembodied voices or creatures crawling on walls. It's also believed that this disorder may be the true cause of alien abductions (especially when coupled with sleep paralysis, which I've experienced once after the most terrifying dream I've ever had).

None of my hallucinations have ever been scary. They always occur in the presence of other people, and what ends up happening is I imagine having a conversation with the person. I end up talking to them, and while what I say is coherent, it's absolutely nonsensical. I think it's pretty funny, and most people find it funny too, though occasionally it's freaked people out.

That last bit makes it sound like this happens all the time. It doesn't. In fact, it hasn't happened to me in years. But just a heads up if you ever have to share sleeping quarters with me.

*

Some more haikus:

What's black and white and
red all over? The zebra flees
lions in pursuit.

You wait for endless
summers. Fleeting spring blossoms
wave "hi," distracting you.

*

Oh, and I got a job after nearly a year of searching. The long title is Social Media Networking Specialist. The short title is Facebook & Twitter guy. The position is a true representation of the 21st century, in that my main duty is to develop and implement strategies to gather friends and followers for the sites. Other duties are involved, and surely more will arise, but in the words of my interviewer, "I hope you don't use the sites to kill time, because you will surely be bored with them at the end of the day." It's probably a good thing, because the duration of unemployment is directly linked to time spent of social media sites, and it would be nice to not use them as much. But that's secondary. Point is, I finally have a job, which means a paycheck, which means I can finally start working towards all goals stated in previous posts.

The shortest month also gets the shortest post, I suppose

2010-02-28T18:33:00.001-05:00

I've been getting into writing haikus for fun. This is weird, because I am generally wary of haikus (at least haikus written by contemporary poets). It's not that good haikus can't be written; it's that working with such a limiting form tends to lead to lame poetry (lame here meaning deficient more than un-cool, though certainly the latter applies as well). Such minimalism makes creating a potent, viable, effecting work an extremely difficult task, as I would suspect is the case for most art forms.

I say none of this because I think what I've been writing somehow escapes the "lame" designation, but because in spite of these feelings towards haikus I still try to write them. Sometimes there's no explaining why we do the things we do, especially when they truly are of no consequence.

Here are a couple:

Our love is mostly
inefficient - we live wedged
between couch cushions.

The new white bath mat -
I walk in and leave footprints
in the fuzzy snow.

And here's one that isn't mine and isn't even a haiku, but was written down in my moleskin as a haiku inadvertently:

"It sounds like white noise
everywhere, which is like si-
lence but not empty"

Thank you, Mark Haddon, for I might steal this and call it mine anyway.

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Reinterpretations of Calvin and Hobbes.

There's not a lot to say about Calvin and Hobbes that hasn't been said before. Simply put, the strip demonstrates Bill Watterson's total mastery of the form. On a good day, I'll read through one of the three volumes in the complete anthology (which interestingly isn't complete, since it's missing two strips for reasons I don't remember). I also admire Watterson's dedication to integrity. His refusal to license C&H has allowed it to maintain a purity that's hard to come by in an era where every possible way to turn a character into a money-making machine is done to the nth degree. Sure, Calvin's been pissing on various things from the back of truck windows for at least a decade, but it's not really Calvin. Just some even doppelganger, perhaps escaped from the duplicator.

The reason why I've included the link above is to show that just because the strip's been gone for 15 years, the legacy lives on. It's still relevant, as it should be. If you've never read Calvin and Hobbes, stop reading this blog and read it instead. I won't be mad. Promise.

-

I am having a hard time putting down the right words for this song and video.

Jónsi - Go Do from Jónsi on Vimeo.

But maybe sometimes we don't need words. Maybe all that's needed is an emphatic "Yes."

Yes.

Lotsa quotes

2010-02-14T19:30:00.010-05:00

"Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them."

This quote comes from Mark Haddon's book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, a book about solving a mysterious death of a neighborhood dog, told from the perspective of an autistic child. Brilliant book akin to Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and The Sound And The Fury, complete with prime numbered chapters and mathematical diagrams.

But I'm not trying to plug the book. I'm trying to plug the idea in the quote, because it's (arguably) right. Life is in so many ways a compelling set of patterns. Aging is a pattern. Schooling is a pattern. Meeting people, making friends, and falling in love are patterns. Working, having kids, saving money, retiring, dying are all patterns. Everything mentioned is part of a bigger pattern. Indeed, it's all very logical; we know this because it makes sense to us (even when we question why it makes sense or if it should make sense), and because we adhere to it (even when we doubt its effectiveness, its sensibility, its ability to fulfill us and make us happy). But there are no rules to this pattern, no predictable route to follow, no method to learn or work out. Everyone ages differently, when measured in maturity. No one has the experience or opinion on their education. We all socialize differently, form different friendships (even with the same people), and fall in love with vastly different speeds and trajectories. We work different jobs, have different kids at different age intervals (both ourselves and the kids), save various amounts of money (if at all), retire differently, and die in numerous, hopefully bad ass ways (to beat the statistics).

Point is, we accredit our entire lives to patterns, but there's no pattern, and I imagine that a lot of our unhappiness-es stem from the fact that we expect these patterns to hold true. For example, I thought going to school for four years and working my ass off to get a substantiated degree would get me a pretty decent starting job on the East coast. Clearly, this isn't quite where I find myself 9 months after graduating. But while it sucks, which any reader of this blog will know, there's another quote that explains, perhaps, a change in my thought process behind all the anti-patterns of life: "I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe" (Albert Camus, The Stranger). I've spent most of my teen and adult life planning for the future, believing that if you just try to fit into patterns they can work out. But they can't because life is prime, divisible only by you and life itself. You can't whittle it down into smaller pieces, I've learned. And that's why the quote makes sense. Because the universe doesn't have a pattern, and doesn't support the patterns we wish we could follow. I don't think the quote is applicable in the sort of semi-cavalier nihilistic/existential way Camus means it, but that accepting the fact that life cannot be dissected by the patterns we're taught to follow because the universe is apathetic to patterns. It's easier to deal with life having this open heart, because you lose the expectation that things are supposed to work out in this way or that. Like most of the long-winded philosophical things I talk about in this, it's hard to say how deep this idea has taken root in me, but it's definitely there.

Taking another quote out of context in a way that sort of contradicts the last one, "Nature is cruel, but we don't have to be." This was uttered by Temple Grandin, an award-winning autistic woman who was one of the pioneers in the humane treatment of farm animals. She was talking about treating animals with respect and dignity before they are killed; I'm using in in the sense that the universe does not care for plans, that we can think nature is mean because it doesn't care, but that we don't have to be cruel to ourselves. Just live.

-

Some easy listening that makes me want it to be summer.

Washed Out - Feeling It All Around

Shortest month of the year deserves the longest post of the year thus far

2010-02-02T20:22:00.009-05:00

I'd like to open this blog up with a rather old and stupid joke:

"Did you hear that actress got stabbed last night? Reese... Reese something"
"Witherspoon?"
"No, with a knife!"

Hah! Comedy! Wordplay! Miscommunication!

Obviously I'm not trying out for Slow Kids anytime soon.

-

If something mimics something else long enough, does it become its own real unique thing?

I'm thinking specifically of Kraft Singles, which are more accurately described as pasteurized process cheese product. Cheese product is the key word combo here, since it means that while it's made from cheese, it's not just "cheese" but a by product of cheese. In fact, Kraft Singles are composed of less than 51% cheese and cannot by law be called cheese. But we call it "American Cheese," and so I ask, does this make it cheese? Can we assume that because it displays many of the properties of cheese and is used in the same way cheese is used that it deserves to be called cheese, even though it's not?

In some ways, pasteurized process cheese products are better than cheese: you can use the scraps of PPCP (way easier to type) to make more slices of PPCP, whereas with real cheese you have to throw away any scraps that may arise in the cheese-making process; PPCP has more even and lower melting points, making it ideal for a quick grilled cheese; PPCP is individually wrapped, making it a perfect portable snack or kindergarten lunch appetizer. On the flip side, you're not going to win any points serving PPCP on baguettes at your pinot noir tasting. You're also not going to get into the Food Network Challenge with your PPCP cheeseburger. So where does that leave PPCP?

If something is treated like what it mimics, does it attain a sort of honorary membership into the club (John Mayer recently made some remarks about this phenomenon, if I remember correctly)? Or is it the wishful thinking of the Kraft Single to be considered cheese? If it walks like cheese and quacks like cheese and we call it cheese, are we fooling it or are we fooling ourselves? Is it all a wash because we know subconsciously this pale yellow square is just pretending, and that all the smoked Goudas and Jalapeno Jacks know he's just a scrub?

These are important questions to ponder next time you find yourself scraping Kraft Single goo off the pan you just used to make yourself a grilled cheese at 3 in the morning to satisfy the drunkchies.

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The price of helium has more than doubled in the past decade. No seriously, the price of the second most common element IN THE UNIVERSE costs more than twice as much as it did 10 years ago. To me, this is a crazy notion. How is the demand for helium such that it has driven the price of helium over 100%? Are party clowns being contracted at record numbers? Have promotional buttons been replaced by promotional balloons? I know! Balloon arches must be at their all time peak usage, what with all the car deals going on. What's the average number of balloons in one of those arches? 400? More? That's gotta be at least 3 tanks of helium right?

Actually, after doing a little bit of research, a 260 cubic foot tank could take care of 500 12 inch balloons and would only set you back $190. But still! That's expensive for a gas whose only use for 99% of people is to float plastic bird hazards and provide grandpa with 15 seconds of squeaky entertainment.

What's scary about this is just how demanding we are on our environment. Usually we're only aware that fossil fuels have a finite limit and that our dependency is a dangerous thing. But according to science, helium is trapped in pockets within the earth's crust, and though it's the second most abundant element in the universe it doesn't fare so well on earth. Apparently the universe wants to place limits on the amount of Alvin and the Chipmunks cover bands that can exist at any given moment.

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In other news, my writing is beginning to propagate over the internet. I recently had 2 poems published in The Catalonian Review and 1 poem published in Anastomoo. I'm particularly fond of one in Anastomoo. It's not because it's a favorite of mine (or really a poem I planned on doing anything with outside of sit in my documents folder), but because it's handwritten. The guy who runs Anastomoo is starting a collection of handwritten work, which I think is a fantastic idea. With so much of our written communication in the form of fonts, making people handwrite their work brings us a little closer to the character of the artist who wrote it. Handwriting instills a bit of personality into the words. For example, you'll see that I don't use lowercase r's. I've done this for years, all because I hate lowercase r's. Seriously. Hate them. Weird, right?

Anyway, I've started a section to the right that contains the links of where I've had poems published, so have a gander and click if you'd like.

I've also been writing articles for an SEO/social media company. They pertain to cars and watches. More specifically, stuff going on in the auto industry that doesn't affect me and watches that I've only seen in pictures on the internet. But it's a nice change of pace to write about something (yes, this blog is by definition something, but really, it's nothing of any importance. Except when I write about the iPad. You guys have opinions then, which I like). If you want you can check out what I've written at Buzz About Cars and TAG Heuer Reviews.

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The music nerd in me has been bugging over this band for the last couple of weeks. Technical wizards on every instrument, showing 90% of the rest of the world just how much they suck.

Animals As Leaders "CAFO"

Who's afraid of the iPad?

2010-01-25T02:50:00.007-05:00

"So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery."
- Virginia Woolf

I've own To The Lighthouse for at least 3 years. I believe I bought it for a class I ended up dropping, and instead of returning it for the $.30 BU would have given me, I kept it. I'm not sure why. Maybe for posterity, maybe to fill up my book case, but probably not (OK, definitely not) because I intended to read it any time soon. For one, she wrote on the cusp of the Victorian era, which is, as far as I'm concerned, the worst era of English literature. For two (why is this never the appropriate way to introduce a second point? It sounds dumb, but it could work, right?), her literary criticism conjured little interest in reading her fiction. For three (not gonna buck the trend), the amount of 1970's feminist critiques I've read on her just sort of scared me (not that feminist critiques scare or threaten me; I think they're very much worth reading. It's the intensity in which some of these women have used Woolf's work that make me a little uneasy, as if to set me for a disappointing reading experience).

After reading the included quote, I feel I should probably give Virginia a chance. Not because I have to, but because she's right.

-

Let's talk for a second about the iPad. First of all, Steve Jobs and the guys over at Apple really did a great job naming that one. I'm sure that meeting was quick: "Well, it's sort of pad-like. You know, like a notepad? What if we just called it that?" "I don't know, Steve... That sounds, well... I think people are going to be reminded of other things." "Like what?" "Feminine hygiene products..." "What?! No way. Guys, trust me. I'm a visionary. This will work. Meeting adjourned."

So first we get what could possibly be the worst named product of the decade, and we're not even a full month in. Fine, great. It's an Apple product so it should be totally awesome, right?

Wrong. So very wrong. First, how is it that the first major piece of computer hardware of the decade DOESN'T EVEN HAVE MULTI-TASKING?!?!?! I don't know about you, but if I'm going to drop at least $500 on a piece of hardware, I want to be able to do more than one thing at once. The beauty of having the most complex brain of all animals is that by nature I am fully capable of handling the mental and physical requirements that doing more than one thing at a time, so why would I spend serious bucks on a product that is not going to let me listen to music while I surf the web or chat while I read a book?

I understand why the iPhone doesn't multi-task. It's a phone. It's small. While there may be times when it would be convenient, I feel like it's reasonable for me not to expect me to do everything at once on it. But why base the OS of what is basically a stripped down computer on the iPhone's OS and not the OS that's frequently at the core of Mac elitists' arguments of superiority over Windows? This decision makes the iPad a steamrolled iPhone, not a computer.

The iPad looks like it'd be great to watch videos on, but wait, Apple's essentially declared war on Flash, so no, no videos will be watched. Much of the web (and nearly every web video) relies on Flash exclusively. But, instead of Apple supporting one of the foundational elements of the public's web experience, it's decided to become a bully and try to force Adobe to convert their product to suit the iPad's needs. This is the same kind of bullying North Korea does to receive attention from countries like the United States. It's a move that serves no purpose other than to get companies to cater to a product they shouldn't have to cater to. Frankly, I was shocked at this kind of douche-baggery, and I hope Adobe gives Apple a big "Fuck you."

What else can I complain about? No webcam, but on a product that I can't watch Flash videos on I'm not surprised. No USB or firewire ports (in fact, I'd have to pay over $600 just to get a fucking Micro-SIM tray). Oh, how about the touted iBook feature? Yeah, let's look at that. You know what I've always wanted? A $500 product that has a bunch of books that still makes me flip pages. The idea that swiping the pages of a book on the iPad is in any way superior to the push buttons of other readers is asinine. It doesn't make the reading experience better, because flipping the pages of a book is actually easier swiping 7 and a half inches across a screen (though given how many people don't read these days, I'm not surprised at the praise this is given); all it does is put finger prints on your screen. The iBook store? No thanks, I'd rather look at books the way they are in libraries: with the spines facing me (the ultimate waste of screen real estate). I've also read articles about how the iPad's support of epublishing right out of the box will change the reluctance of publishers to switch. This is a dumb argument, because it has everything to do with the price and margin of epublishing, not the availability of support.

Basically, Apple has released the great new media appliance of the 21st century. Everyone who's convinced this is a computer in any way is kidding themselves. But in a way I'm not surprised by the overall mediocrity of the product. Apple has constructed one of the most sinisterly profitable business models in the world: release a terribly overpriced product that lacks features it could very well include from the get-go, then within four quarters release the second version which will include just one of the features people want, then continue on the path of fast upgrades until the product can literally do no more and relish in the fact that people have been duped into buying 7 different iterations of the same product. Really, I applaud Steve Jobs and all of the guys at Apple for creating a culture in which people go ape shit for a "must have" product whose planned obsolescence is most likely less than a year away.

2010-01-05T14:42:00.006-05:00

"Man's awareness of Self supersedes the primitive awareness of a fleshy body. Man demands an explanation of the mystery of his being and the wonder of the world around him and the cosmos above... Man has an almost infinite capacity for preoccupation with things other than Self: he can sacrifice himself to an ideal, immerse himself in the joys or sorrows of another; love, deeply and unselfishly; create and appreciate beauty in many forms."
-Jane Goodall

For spending most of her time with dumb monkeys, Jane was an astute lady.

I kid. Mrs. Goodall is actually an amazing observationalist. In The Shadow Of Man, her first book, shows that it does not take a fancy degree or high tech lab equipment or specialized training to figure out the ways the world works. No, it really is as simple as caring enough to take the time to watch what's going on around you.

I doubt I should say anything more. I've already talked about Goodall's chimps, and I have a feeling I'm just going to be redundant. But I wanted to put this quote here because I think it's is a good summation of what makes us "special" (if there is really such a thing). It's interesting that for thousands of years philosophers, scientists, and your general thinking man have talked ad nauseum about man's capacity to think about the world outside himself, to think and dedicate himself to ideals, to experience joy and sorrow and love and all the existential crises that come along with those; these men have used thousands of pages exploring these capacities, and yet Goodall made the point as succinctly as one could from watching chimpanzees.

Either we are not as complicated to figure out as we want to believe we are, or we are so complicated that it's only through observing more simplistic beings that we can figure that out.

-

I've been having a lot of weird dreams lately: dreams about Ryan Reynolds showing card tricks to little kids; dreams about rescuing poodles from lives of accessories to the rich; dreams about being a sniper team with my brother; dreams about single-handedly switching the lockers at my old high school with cubbies; dreams about building guitars out of small pieces of drift wood; dreams about having dreams.

None of these have been had as a singular dream; each night has given me multiple dreams. It's nuts, exhausting, and a bit hard to keep track of all of them. I try to make notes of all the ones I can remember, but in the process of recalling one I lose others.

Unfortunately, I haven't had any dreams where I write anything, but for some reason I've performed the same card trick in three separate dreams. It's one of those "Is this your card" type tricks. It involves some sort of mental processes of elimination, I'm guessing in an attempt to make it more legitimate than mere sleight of hand. But, like many things in dreams often are, the processes are complicated and murky and can't be explained here.

-

I found a brand new record player in my garage. I hooked it up and raided my parents' vinyl collection. Without any snobbery involved, listening to actual records makes me feel... enlightened. It must have to do with listening to real sound waves, instead of digital reproductions.

Happy New Year

2010-01-01T02:24:00.003-05:00

I've been meaning to write a blog about the end of the year for a while, and seeing as how I'm stuck at home because I'm sick, I suppose it's only fitting that I write it on new years eve.

-

"I loathe the expression 'What makes him tick.' It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.
-James Thurbe

For the most part I'm pretty happy that 2009 is going to be over soon. 2009 has been a rough year. No, the roughest. No hyperbole or melodrama there. I can't think of any other year where I've dealt with so many things that were, well, bad. Breakdown, break up, graduating, moving, joblessness, and the occasional mentality of hopelessness. And while there were definitely things that made it good (I suppose there's some sort of universal compensation in the fact that I had what possibly was the best summer I've ever had this year), there was always the emotional strain of all these things that threatened to undermine them; in other words, there were no free rides in 2009. So, I welcome 2010 with open arms.

I included the quote above not only because I think it quite appropriately describes the human spirit, but because I think that I learned half of those things this year, and I want to spend this new year learned the rest. Nothing sounds quite as spectacular as figuring out what will make you "stop like an electric clock in a thunderstorm."

I'm actually feeling pretty optimistic about the coming year. I'm in a position where I don't have a lot holding me back and I can focus on doing the things I need to do to get to where I want to go. Maybe 2009 didn't work out the way I had planned, but if I stay motivated there's no reason I can't be where I want to be doing what I want to do by the time 2011 is on the cusp of the calender. Where I was pessimistic in 2009, I'm going to stay as positive as possible. I know that it could be a lot worse, and this year would be even worse than '09 if I waste it.

With that in mind, I guess you could say that one of my resolutions is to stay positive. To coincide with that, I'm also making the resolution to be kind to myself. I spent a lot of time in 2009 beating myself up for reasons both justified and unjustified, and I now realize the kind of mental abuse I gave myself does nothing to solve anything; bad thoughts just breed more bad thoughts. I resolve to finally start finishing what I've started creatively. Too many ideas and projects have fallen by the wayside by my own laziness, and I need to stop dicking around because I believe that some of these could go places. Maybe even big places. And maybe I'll try to drink less coffee... but probably not.

I read this yesterday, and I want to say that I can definitely thank 2009 for that. '09 may have been hard, but I know I've come out with a stronger resolve, and everything that's going to happen will be better appreciated (and maybe just plain better) because of it. So thanks, 2009. For all the good and the bad, you've given me something I will use for the rest of my life.

Best music of the year

2009-12-15T22:50:00.009-05:00

I recognize that this is basically an exercise in self-indulgence, making a list of what I think is the best music to come out this year. When I was younger and had a Live Journal, I really believed that by putting out this list every year I might convince people to go and buy these albums if I talked them up enough. I know realize that it's really more for me, and that most, if not all, people don't care about what I think is the best music that came out this year. Oh well, I say. I'm going to do it anyway, because it's my blog, and it'd be nice to have a record to look back on so I can either laugh at myself or commend myself when I'm older.

With each album, I've included a song, because the internet lets me do that.

10) Brand New - Daisy
I really surprise myself by starting out this list with this album. I was really hesitant when it first came out, and immediately dismissed it as a crap album. I could immediately recognize it as Brand New's weakest album, and I wanted to condemn them for putting out something so poor. But I kept finding myself putting it on, in spite of all this animosity towards it. As I gave it more listens, it dawned on me that my issues with it are because of who wrote it, not because of the actual music I was listening to; if it were any other band, I might actually really enjoy the album. Then I saw them live, and watching Brand New perform these songs sold me the the album. It's a good album. It's still weakest album they've put out, but even their weakest is better than the albums many other bands put out this year.

9) Silversun Pickups - Swoon
I loved the Silversun Pickups' first album, and their sophomore release did not disappoint. They've got a knack for driving rock songs with big, fuzzy, distorted guitars, interesting leads and vocal lines, and a nice sense of dynamics. Great album for car rides, as my cross-country trip taught me.

8) Every Time I Die - New Junk Aesthetic
If Every Time I Die releases an album, it's pretty much guaranteed to make it on this list. I'm infatuated with their unique style of hardcore and really can't get enough of it. This album is their most visceral and potent since Hot Damn! and definitely their best since that effort. Gone is all the Southern rock influences, which, though they made for some fun tunes, always felt a little more gimmicky than not.

7) Imogen Heap - Ellipse
I was excited for this (now) Grammy-nominated album practically all year. Masterfully crafted and produced, Ellipse demonstrates that Imogen Heap is not only one of the best electro-pop song-writers around, but that she is an incredibly creative and talented musician. Look no further than the third track, "Earth," to see this, as the music consists of well over 100 vocals tracks and nothing more.

6) Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
I tend to be very adverse to albums that receive enormous amounts of hype and praise when they're first released. So, when I read stuff like "This is the best album of the year" a month after it was out, I naturally went on the defensive in regards to Phoenix. I then proceeded to shit on it when my first listen failed to impress me. Well, I feel stupid having said anything now. This is one of the catchiest pop albums I can remember in a long time. Phoenix manages to capture all the good parts of bands like The Killers and Bloc Party, throw in some ambient electronic ala Ulrich Schnauss, and make it sound cool in their own French way. I'm not even sick of "1901," even with those Cadillac commercials playing 15 times a day.

5) Cassino - Kingprince
I liked Cassino's first album, but it never quite quelled my sadness over Northstar breaking up. While the vibe on Sounds Of Salvation was markedly different from Northstar, it still sort of sounded like Northstar-lite to me. With Kingprince, Cassino has not only made me a total fan, but even makes me a little happy they broke up Northstar. It's a pure folk album, stripped down and fully Southern without a hint of irony. Nick Torres' brilliant voice and lyrics have found their perfect fit. The song I've included below, "Maddie Bloom," is one of, if not the most, beautiful song I've heard all year.

4) Thrice - Beggars
Another band who, like Every Time I Die, is practically a shoe-in for this list when they write an album. This time we find Thrice moving far away from the post-hardcore sound they've spent most of the decade perfecting, instead opting for a sound that I can only think to describe as hard blues. It sounds weird to say that a hardcore band decided to play around with blues, but it works. Really well, in fact. This is both the most cohesive album Thrice has ever written and the most cohesive Thrice has ever sounded as a band. Unlike other albums they've released, Beggars is more than the sum of its parts. Nothing is out of place or overwrought; just a rock band writing fantastic rock songs.

3) Paper Route - Absence
I can't remember the last band that has captured my attention as completely as Paper Route. Absence is easily the album I listened to most this year, with good reason. They're a band who, like M83 or Death Cab For Cutie on Transatlanticism, manages to expertly combine the dynamic and strength of a rock band with the subtly and nuance of electronic music. This album is also one of the most emotionally poignant albums I've heard, if only because the themes permeating throughout the album aptly coincide with those I've felt throughout 2009.

2) Lucero - 1372 Overton Park
In the last 4 years, 3 bands have emerged as direct descendants of the Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen: The Hold Steady, The Gaslight Anthem, and with their latest album, Lucero. While the first two bands manage to capture certain elements that made those E Street Band albums great, neither manages to encapsulate the pure Americana that came through those albums like Lucero has managed. This isn't an album trying to emulate an older style, nor is it trying to push an Americana agenda purposefully. It manages to be a great American rock record because of the economy and un-fussiness of the songs, the whiskey and nicotine stained voice telling simple yet poignant stories, and the ability of the band to capture a sound that, in the hands of another band, would sound ironic, hackneyed, or pretentious. This is the kind of record that reminds me why American rock n roll is the best music on the planet, and if all was right with the world, this song would be a top 40 hit:

1) P.O.S. - Never Better
This album has been out longer than anything on the list, and I still listen to it more than almost every album mentioned before it. I sincerely believe that this is a watershed album for hip hop. It might not be the best hip hop album released this decade, but it is certainly the most unique. P.O.S. has managed to capture the sonic ferocity and urgency of punk rock and put it into rap music without sounding gimmicky, hokey, or just plain stupid like so many bands have while attempting to write "rap-rock." He is the type of artist I greatly admire, not only writing smart lyrics paired with fantastic flow, but also playing and producing more than half of the beats on the record (from which the most interesting and though-provoking beats on the record come from). P.O.S. is fully immersed in this album, and even after almost a full year of listening to Never Better, I have to admit that I am, too.

Honorable Mentions

The Dangerous Summer - Reach For The Sun
The Appleseed Cast - Sagarmatha
Passion Pit - Manners
Dead Weather - Horehound
Monsters of Folk - S/T
Manchester Orchestra - Mean Everything To Nothing
The Big Pink - A Brief History of Love

Well, there it is. Me in all my self-indulgent glory. Hope you enjoyed, or at least took the time to read past #9

2009-11-18T19:47:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I feel like I'm slowly trying to sabotage my youth. I'm turning 23 in less than 3 weeks, and yet I feel like I am not at all in sync with my age. The things I concern myself with the most are the things that I should be worrying about in 5 or 10 years. Things like investments and net worth, retirement plans and life insurance, loan payments and how much credit I've used on my cards. Many of my choices, maybe too many, are directed entirely towards things that maybe should not consume a 23 year old so strongly. I often feel guilty for spending time writing or drawing or playing music because I don't feel like any of it is a pursuit in something productive in terms of all the aforementioned ideas. I dissuade myself from doing these things every day because they don't get me a job or pay the bills.

Honestly, it sucks. It sucks because I love writing and drawing and playing music more than most things I do, and yet the more professional-minded part of me doesn't get down with these things. For example, when I was in high school, I made an active choice to go the college route rather than stay at home and pursue music. I loved being in a band, but underneath that I was too concerned about money, jobs, and general opportunities I might pass up to dedicate myself to trying to make it. The same sort of ideas pop into my head when I realized I just spent 45 minutes to change 2 lines in a poem or spent 3 hours sloppily recording songs that will almost certainly never escape my hard drive. The potential for these things to advance myself beyond living in my parent's house is almost nil, and so I stifle myself from doing these things.

I feel I'm becoming my own saboteur because this is the time when I should be pursuing the things I love do to, not sitting around and worrying how much the actions I take now will affect my savings when I'm 30. Not that I should just sit around and write/draw/play without any effort towards getting myself a job that will provide myself a source of income; I couldn't start on a cycle of perpetual unmotivation. But preventing myself from doing these things isn't right, either. Really, the only thing I'm beholden to is moving out of California, so right is the only time before I'm retired that I'll realistically have a chance to do any of these things with some sort of purposeful dedication.

In order to make sure I don't waste this opportunity, I'm starting a few of projects that I intend to do something with beyond being a bedroom publisher. Some involve collaboration, others are on my own, but I think I need to do this before I get too deep in destroying youth's ambition or dedication to those things that are more fanciful in nature.

Details will come when plans are more solidified.

-

I wish sometimes that I had another pair of legs to stand on. These ones feel a bit worn out right now. Maybe for Christmas, yeah?

On art and babies

2009-11-04T15:47:00.007-05:00

The saying goes that if you put a million monkeys in front of a million typewriters and gave them a million years they'd produce Shakespeare. I think you'll end up with a bunch of broken type writers, a mess of ink and gibberish on the page, and a ton of monkey poop.

Monkeys are smart, don't get me wrong. I'm just about finished with Jane Goodall's first book about living with the Chimps in Africa, and there's no doubting that monkeys are capable of emotional, mechanical, and practical intelligence. They are shockingly human. Actually, I'm tempted to say that we are shockingly un-human, that the things we cash in as being our edge above all other species are really not that much of an edge at all. We just have the means to rationalize and verbalize our understanding of these tools better than the rest.

But that's not the point I'm trying to make. While monkeys may be smart (and many other animals are, too, not just monkeys), they do not CREATE in the same way humans do. Create, what does that mean? Well, the best way I can define it for my purposes here is that it is the contradictorily unnecessary yet necessary urge to make something that is not vital towards our most basic sense of survival. Unnecessary in the sense that as living beings, we do not need music, literature, art, movies, architecture, etc to survive. Yes, you can deconstruct that and say that these things can be means of income, which in turn provide a means of survival yadda yadda yadda, but I'm not talking about survival within a societal structure. If you had to name 3 things essential to making sure you don't die, you would not say "Food, shelter, and a Rembrandt." These things are second tier to sustenance, shelter, warmth, all the things that all other living creatures need to maintain life.

Yet these things ARE necessary because of our innate drive to make something. I would not die if I couldn't write or read or make music, but I would not feel like I could necessarily live if I were not capable of doing these things. Without creating, life becomes stagnant, filled with debris and bugs, unsightly and avoided at all cost. It is through our creations that we express our humanity, that we are able to show that you are here, living and breathing and thinking and being more than just being. We recognize this need often, make movies and books about characters who stop trying to create and fall into a perpetual unhappiness, express lament over the unbearable thought of not being able to do what we feel we must to express ourselves, make comments to those who feel others are not utilizing their creations to the fullest extent (yes, I'm looking at you Ms. Fava haha), and pity those who we see as being deprived of their opportunities to create and to enjoy the creations of others. In a world where there is too much stuff already, there is never enough stuff, and that's because we are driven to always push for more. We don't need more movies and books telling us the same stories, more paintings and pictures to express the same emotions or show the same places or exhibit the same talents, more music to show us the same sounds and patterns, but we do, absolutely. We do because we can never settle on the fact that we have heard and seen and read and experienced all that there ever can or will be.

And I talk about creation in an artistic sense because it's an easy default, but it goes further than that. We redecorate, remodel, and retool ourselves and our surroundings for the same reasons. I even believe that we get into relationships and start families for this reason. Barring the stupid, forced, or irresponsible decisions in this category, we seek out partners and desire to start families because we want to create and push the boundaries of our world and our understanding of that world. This, too, separates us from animals, gives us a sense of humanity. While many animal species demonstrate great care for their mates and children (I'm thinking of the Chimps, who demonstrate familial awareness and care), so much so that you could say they demonstrate love for their families, there's no evidence to show that they desire to enter relationships and start families for reasons outside of the primal instinct to advance the species. While we are most certainly governed by that instinct, too, we do not and are, I would dare say, incapable of thinking of our desire to be with people and have children strictly in these terms. Perhaps the only time we become motivated by this instinct is when we are reaching the apex of our possibility to have these things, and we do not want to miss out on our opportunities. But even then, it is not simply "I have not done my job at providing my species with a viable offspring and found a mate with which to do so," but rather "I have spent so much of my life not with someone and do not have much time to make sure I have a family of my own" and thus we are motivated by the panic of the thought of a life without these things.

Relationships and babies, like art and projects, are treated much the same. When we have a creative outlet, we pour the same attention, care, dedication, loyalty, and protection into that as we do into our relationships and families. We put forth as much time and energy into their development as we can, worry about every little detail and nuance that pops up to make sure it's right, and agonize over whether or not you do everything you can to make sure the future is secure for them. You try to project them from the harsh blows the world subjects on them, but know that eventually they'll have to stand on their own. I guess the only real difference is that you're allowed to say which of your projects you love most. Well, actually, that's not true; you hopefully get back what you give in a relationship (other creations are very mean this way; they take and take and take and don't even give you so much as a pat on the back), and babies are cute and hopefully grow up into handsome adults and can help around the house and hopefully take care of you when you're older and have awesome milestones like first walk and first words and first day of school that you get to sit there and shed a tear over. But, and this is a big but, non-human creations don't spend the first 2+ years of their existence almost exclusively crying and pooping and eating and crying and pooping some more. Hopefully.

I usually try not to be didactic here, but most of the people who read this blog are like me and are at that age where we must entire the work force and thus are faced with the challenge of maintaining our passion and dedication to creation in the face of having to work, and so I say don't ever let creation slip from your priorities. Don't let yourself become stagnant, and if you're lucky enough to have a job that makes you use your passion for creation, don't let it become work. The moment it does, find a new job; passion is not money in that it cannot be found in other ways if its source is lost. Know what drives you and let it drive you to where it wants to go.

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We often give to others the advice we need to hear.

2009-11-02T15:29:00.007-05:00

"Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite[...]Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men."

An excerpt from Steinbeck's East of Eden. I was flipping through the book and came across this. It's simultaneously inspiring and disheartening. Inspiring because I feel fairly certain I know the emotion and action indicated in the quote, disheartening because I struggle to find how any of these things have led to my own importance to the world. But I think that comes from a place of feeling like a small cog in a big machine. A lot of what have I done and what am I doing questions come to mind.
_

I've been having a lot of weird, vivid dreams lately. Weird in the sense that they have some sort of basis in reality, but then take crazy diversions or make wild tangents. But the strange thing is that these diversions/tangents aren't necessarily off-base with reality; they're not so fantastical that they could only exist in dreams. In a certain sense, they represent both a revisionist's past and a convoluted future. The situations I'm involved in with the people who show up in these dreams depend on a past that didn't but could have happened, and a future that could have happened if said past had been lived.

I've never been all that great at interpreting dreams or ascribing certain meanings to them, but these dreams have been leaving me pretty bewildered. On the one hand, certain aspects of them make me a little hopeful. I don't think that they're unachievable, or are too fantastical to happen. At the same time, they're not things I should put stock in, because to try and make these things my goals would all but be a guarantee of being disappointed and unhappy, lest they somehow (rather miraculously) become real and become real quickly. And I refuse to do that to myself. The other hand of this whole dream thing is that it makes me feel a bit sad. If there have been themes to my life in 2009, two would have to be things not working out according to plan and trying to find balance in situations I never expected to find myself in, and these dreams sort of punctuate those.

It's not that I wish things had gone differently, per say (though I do believe that if I were equipped to have done things differently from January to say, August I would be kicking myself for being where I am now); the lessons I've learned in the past 11 months are the most important I've learned in my almost 23 years of life, and I'm sure will be among the most important for decades to come. Not always and not frequently, but sometimes it's hard to keep focus on things like positive change, forward momentum, and self fulfillment when you're somewhat forced to take stock of the things you lost in the process of gaining these things.

What it all comes down to is that California continues to be a bewildering and frustrating state of mind (oh, woe is the cliche). It gets easier and harder at the same time: easier in the sense that I feel more settled and adjusted to being here, harder in the sense that the longer I'm here the farther away I feel from where my heart wants to be. What frustrates me is that I feel like I'm taking baby steps when I want to be taking the biggest strides I can. I keep hoping that one day Monster or Craigslist or something will offer me that opportunity that I can jump at and make an early escape, but it's just another hope I try not to put too much stock in. I am forever the wishful thinker, but '09 has taught me some restraint, which I begrudgingly assert upon myself every day.

-

All of these dreams have given me some more dream writing. This one was a bit of coffee shop napkin writing I was doing as I waited for an unknown friend to join me:

"Of all the things my father taught me, that people are either worth investing everything or nothing in with no in between is perhaps the most prevalent. If the heart was a stock broker, I would have thrown myself out some very high window a long time ago; my investments, for the most part, have been of the bankrupting kind. But other than dad, she might be the only investment I made right, even if there's never a return, because she is beautiful and I have gotten the chance to say that about her."

At this point, I was turning the napkin over to write more, but I caught sight of my friend and got embarrassed and crumpled it into my pocket.

I don't know where such a seemingly morally depraved character came from. I don't think I'd ever write a story through the lens of such a person; moral depravity ain't my thing. Though of course he'd be waxing romantic. It's just too easy, coming from me.

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I feel like my posts have been almost wholly negative for the past few months. I'll try and post something positive next time.

2009-10-29T13:07:00.003-04:00

Well, this is it. The concluding post of the 65 songs in my desert island playlist. I've saved these three songs for last because, quite simply, they are my three favorite songs. Ever. Period. And they get their own post because I want to force everyone to listen to them, since I know 90% of the people that I know personally who read my blog probably skip over them.

"Motorcycle Drive By" by Third Eye Blind
Third Eye Blind has been a band I've always liked but never really qualified as being a band I would consider among my favorites until relatively recently. I've always thought that it's a shame that for 90% of people they are 90's hit band and thus have neglected almost all of their catalogue, which is fantastic. This song is from their first album (you know, the one with "Semi-Charmed Life" and "Jumper"?) and I think serves as a perfect representation of the band. It demonstrates their dynamic and well-thought song construction, emotional intensity, and lyrical potency. I think the best part about this song is that it's written in a way where you do not expect the song to explode into it's rocking middle section. When a band can surprise you in such a way, you know they've done something right.

"Disconnect, Disconnect" by Osker
I think this song, this album, and this band will always be sort of like the ugly child drawing you know isn't really all that good, but you love anyway because your child made it for you. Majority of people who listen to this song will not find it particularly good or interesting; the music is decent at best, the musicianship is is less than average, and the singer's voice is pretty bad. But I can't help the fact that "Idle Will Kill" is one of my favorite albums of all time, and that this song is the centerpiece of it for me. It's honest and sincere, it doesn't try to be anything more or less than it is. It also helps that there is not a single minute of music I love more than 2:30-3:30 in this song (I love the fact that it's one minute exactly, too); each part of this minute represents a balance and harmony that works together to capture a single emotion, and does this perfectly.

"Aside" by The Weakerthans
I end with this song because The Weakerthans are the last part of that trio of bands that are my favorite band (and if someone put a gun to my head, would be the band I would choose as over The Lawrence Arms and Thrice, so I guess in reality you could really say this band is my favorite, sort of like the difference between an A and an A+) and because this song is without a doubt my favorite song by them. The Weakerthans have been a band who has always fit into my life, who has never lost any favor in my ears, and who has grown with me as I've grown up as a music listener. Lyrically, John K. Samson stands head and shoulders above almost anyone in music. Musically, the band has never written a bad song; hell, they've never written a song that was just ok. This song has never lost anything to me, even though it's 9 years old, and I doubt it ever will. It's a song I will play for my kids one day, and hopefully they'll love it and this band as much as I do.

Posting like it's June again

2009-10-28T18:05:00.002-04:00

Recently, I've found myself getting into more than a few conversations about what ways my sense of spirituality manifests itself, if it manifests itself at all. I'll admit that I've had a pretty hard time giving a thorough or well thought out definition of it when asked this. I think this is because while I'm decidedly not religious, I can't say I am completely devoid of spiritual or pseudo-religious ideas. 99% of the time it's just easier for me to say that I'm agnostic, because I neither believe anything that fits into any sort of religious model, nor do I have conviction strong enough to prescribe myself to a set of beliefs. I also usually seeing through a lot of the social constructions religious models create; it's nearly impossible to look at a religion from a purely spiritual identity since so much of the way religions work are in social contexts.

But I seriously digress. It's easier for me to say I don't believe in God or an equivalent because I think the word God (or it's equivalent) is too rooted in the Western context of big guy upstairs running the show. And to say it's some sort of equivalent force is too similar to the idea of god, because it would mean that I believe that there is some prime mover or motivator that has caused or continues to cause things to happen. And that just ain't me. I believe that the universe has all the tools and materials it needs to have created the world which we live in right now. There is nothing that is too great for nature to have spawned from it's own forces, and that which we believe is out of its realm is simply too mysterious or obscure for us to have figured it out. I truly believe that there is nothing so fantastic or wondrous that it HAS to have been made by some outside force (considering that while God could be present in the natural universe because it's his creation that he stands necessarily outside of it because he is not subject to its laws or limitations), and that the only reason why we can't understand why something could have been made naturally is because we're merely a product of the process as a whole, and thus probably incapable of ever finding out how the entire process works.

That all being said (very long-windedly), there are things that I have experienced that are beyond my full understanding. These are things that are not beyond by ability to experience them with my senses or my ability to comprehend them mentally. These are things that even when sensory input is working fine and all synapses in my brain are firing properly, I find myself unable to fully process the totality of it, unable to explain the why's or how's of the things I'm feeling. Off the top of my head, these things include:

-Places like the Grand Canyon, the Matterhorn, and Big Sur with all of its seaside cliffs and red woods; places that show me the world is entirely capable of creating beauty when it's simply given enough time.

-Works like The David, St. Peter's, The Persistence of Memory, Beethoven's 7th, 100 Years of Solitude, and East of Eden; works that show me that people are capable of creating something which validates our existence and viability as a species. These things demonstrate that while we may never actualize our ultimate potential (that achievement being the thing which keeps us trying to achieve, and perhaps nothing more), we certainly can actualize our penultimate potential.

-Certain precious and important moments I've had with people that go beyond emotional compartmentalization like "fun," "exhilarating," "inspiring," "comforting," "romantic," etc. I could probably count these moments on both of my hands (maybe with a foot thrown in), and I could most likely count the people I've experienced them with on one hand. These moments show me that in a world where billions of people exist and the possible connections and relationships any one person could have are in the trillions, thus logistically reducing the possibility of anyone finding anyone to relate to on that level we call kindred spirits or soul mates, that these ideas are real and exist. In other words, these moments have shown me what I could only describe as pure, unhindered, undiluted love. I don't mean love in strictly a romantic sense (though it's certainly represented in some moments); I also mean familial and platonic love, which are equally as important.

I guess where I'm going with this impromptu list (I swear I didn't plan on writing all those things out) is that in these places, things, and moments, I find that inexplicable bit of life that people always want to ascribe to someone or something. In a sense, it's in these moments that you might say I find God, if He is allowed to represent that which CAN be comprehended but manages to avoid ever being so fully.

Who knows, maybe accepting even this possibility demonstrates that I'm not as much of an agnostic as I thought. Perhaps I'm growing soft as I get older. Or maybe I'm just growing?

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Second to last post of the Island playlist. I'm still continuing the whole one song representing favorite bands thing.

"Firefly" by Saves The Day
I once got into an argument with the drummer of the band Melee (who I went to high school with) over why this song is a great closing song to a record. To me, it not only captures the sentiment of the lyrics well, but it also captures the feeling of the record ("Stay What You Are," forever my favorite Saves The Day album) perfectly and sends it off on the right note. Oh, I won the argument, too.

"Silhouette" by Thrice
Thrice is the second of three bands that share the title of my favorite bands. I've been a fan ever since they released their first album back in 2000, and they have always impressed me with the way they continue to push themselves with every album the release. To me, they represent a certain consummate musicianship in the sense that over the course of their career they have demonstrated a dynamism, flexibility, and integrity in their music that few (if any) bands have. They push themselves to create music that they love and are proud of, even if it means writing music in completely different genres from what they've written in the past. In this sense, I almost feel bad picking a song that is 6 years old for my playlist; it's like a 60 year old man picking a picture of when he was 25 as the best representation of what he currently looks like. But this song is my favorite from the album that pushed Thrice into that top band status, and so to pick any other song seems a little bit disingenuous to me. Sorry Thrice.

"Get It Together" by Midtown
Once again, Youtube has thwarted my attempts to have all the real versions of the songs here. Midtown will always be my favorite pop-punk band, and this has been my favorite song by them since the demo version came out in like 2001. The emotion in the lyrics has always felt more real to me than other Midtown songs, especially songs from the same album. Man, I miss Midtown.

I never spend weekends in CA

2009-10-27T00:41:00.002-04:00

So this weekend I was in Arizona because my dad was being inducted into his high school's hall of fame. Now, to be honest, Nogales, Az is not my favorite place in the world (it's rather boring for a 20 some year old), but I'm happy to have gone to support my dad. In short, my dad is my hero and the person I try to model myself after (not one of the 5, mind you; they are strictly non-family). It was also interesting because being inducted along with my dad was my grandma on my mom's side's cousin, making him my third cousin. It's funny how small the world is sometimes.

I went to a UCLA football game for the first time in like 8 years, too. It was hard to watch UCLA embarrass themselves, and even harder to do it while wearing a UCLA shirt in a sea of UofA fans. But I got to barhop with my dad beforehand. He showed me bars he drank at before games when he was in school, and I bought him a jello shot because he was fascinated by the concept. So everything kind of evened out, I guess.

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The Law of Attraction: You are a living magnet. You attract that which you are. You also attract that which you need to become.

This was something I read while I was at my grandma's this weekend, and it got me thinking (I realize this is my usual prompt for writing blogs, the things that run through my mind so much that I need to write them down in order to get them out). Normally, I'm pretty dismissive of the motivational literature I read when I'm bored at my grandma's, mostly because it's either simplistic or obvious or overtly religious, so I was pretty surprised to read this little gem in a book overwhelmed with otherwise throwaway phrases.

Anyway, I think this is a pretty accurate description of the company people keep. I look at my own life, and I can say that this is definitely accurate. For 99% of the people I know and have known, I can honestly say that they fit into the "attract that which you are" category. Some people might think this is a bad thing. The way I see it, I'm pretty happy with the way I am, and so I feel that the people I've attracted (I feel this sounds a bit narcissistic, but I really only mean it to use the language of the phrase) into my life are people who coincide with and complement myself. Not to say that these people are all similar to me; every one of them brings at least a few key differences to the table which make my friendship with them dynamic, worthwhile, and generally awesome (as all friendships should be). But this 99% are people who, when I look at my relationship with them, are not in my life because they intrinsically represent something which I need to become. I don't mean this to be insulting at all; the people in my life are in my life for a reason, just not for reasons of personal development or growth.

Before I get into the 1%, I'd like to clarify how I interpret the second part of the phrase. We've all had people in our lives who we gravitate toward because they reflect something we'd like to see in ourselves. Perhaps it's being well connected or powerful or charismatic or generous or any number of things; but what attracts us to these people are one or two defining qualities that we identify as lacking in ourselves and overtly present in the other people. So we attract in one way or another these people to us in hopes that whatever quality we are looking for will rub off on us. This is not "attracting what we need to become," but simply trying to make milk a supposed benefit of someone. It doesn't help us become anything, but rather tries to alter what we already are through artificial means.

The 1% of people who fall into the second category are actually only 5 people, so really their not even 1%. They're probably closer to like, .4% or something. Anyway, with each of these people, I realize that there is something intrinsic about them that I have always recognized as being either different or even at odds with myself but that I am in one way or another attracted to and want to aspire to (for most of these people I didn't realize I felt this way until I thought about it, so it's not like I've sat around and thought about how these 5 people are people I've attracted into my life because they represent how I want to become). For a couple of these people, the things I see myself wanting to become are more theoretical and might not actually happen, but are certainly ways to keep myself inspired to work on my mind and spirit. For the rest, having them in my life keeps me conscious of the ways in which I hope to motivate myself to be the person I'd like to become and achieve what I want to achieve.

I think it's important for everyone to occasionally think about which category the people who they surround themselves with fall in to. It makes you realize who's there to keep you grounded in who you are and who that person is as well as who's there to keep you motivated to avoid stasis and continually try to improve yourself. It's ok if the latter people are only a few, just as long as they are there. You never want to surround yourself with people who won't push you to become more than you already are.

For the sake of both myself and my friends, I am not going to say who these 5 people are, or in what ways these people help me in my life. Perhaps one day in the future I will reveal to them the impact they have, but it seems like to call attention to it would be to spoil it for both me and them, and that's the last thing I want.

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One of the coolest names for an animal ever is the Deathstalker. What is it, you might ask? It's the 3rd most venomous scorpion in the world, native to Northern Africa and the Middle East.

Another cool name for something: the Napoleon Blown Aparts, who are a band I've never listened to.

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Speaking of bands, it's that time again where I post videos of music for my own enjoyment, since no one ever listens to what I post. I'm getting down to the last three entries of the Island playlist, and so for the next two entries the only theme I have is that they are the songs I would choose to have with me to represent some of my favorite bands.

"Wayfarer" by Hot Water Music
I often find myself a lonely HWM fan among my friends. I'll admit, a part of my love for them is based on the fact that they're named after Bukowski's great collection of short stories, but HWM is the only band from my school punk days that I listen to because I still like them (as opposed to nostalgic reasons for bands like Rancid, Dropkick Murphies, or Bad Religion). In fact, I would probably rate HWM's "The New What Next" in my top, oh, 30 albums of all time, as it's one I still throw on about once every two months or so.

"Eleven To Your Seven" by Hey Mercedes
I've tried to avoid posting live videos for quality's sake, but I couldn't find anything other than that for this song. Sorry. I actually had a really hard time picking the Hey Mercedes song that would end up on this list (the other two being "The Frowning of a Lifetime" and "Go On Drone"). At the end of the day, though, this song won simply because I've listened to it almost as much as the other two combined (thanks Itunes). I wouldn't dare say this is the best song to represent Hey Mercedes (they have songs that far better show their talent as songwriters and musicians) but I really appreciate this song because it demonstrates how a band does not always have to utilize their full technical abilities in order to write a great song.

"Quincentuple Your Money" by The Lawrence Arms
This was the first song I ever heard by The Lawrence Arms, and it sparked a ridiculous love affair with this band, who share a part of the three-way tie that is my favorite band. Admittedly, I lied in my little HWM blurb, because this is the other punk band that I still listen to often for non-nostalgic reasons. What struck me so many years ago is how poignant and smart the lyrics are (which is the standard for this band anyway) and how their quality has not diminished as I've gotten older, unlike many of the lyrics I used to think had the same qualities from the same time period in my life

2009-10-13T14:53:00.002-04:00

So, I’ve definitely been slacking on updating this thing. Seeing that I only posted once last month makes me feel like a negligent pet owner or something, which is stupid when it comes down to it, since it’s not like my blog cares if I use it or not, and it’s not like I have a large audience that demands posts from me. Most of what’s in the blog is really inconsequential to most everyone except myself, so really all I’m feeling is unreasonable guilt that doesn’t quite have any sort of actual foundation.

It does make sense as to why I wouldn’t update as much, though. This blog was really started to be a distraction for myself, a way to occupy my mind during times that I would otherwise have spent ruminating on stuff that I shouldn’t have been. Since I started this blog my own state of mind has greatly improved, which is good, since it means I don’t have to spend my time blogging; conversely, it means that I don’t have a stake in writing about anything, ultimately leading to the lean posting schedule that has dominated the last couple of months. I guess this post is an attempt to try and motivate myself to start writing more frequently, but I make no promises. The Armadillo Hotel may be doomed to a life of half-vacancy.

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Lately I’ve been feeling very contradictory. Both my heart and my mind are in states where nothing is really harmonious. My wants and my needs are not in synch; some of the things I need are not things I want, and some of the things I want are not what I need. It’s not that I am necessarily in a bad place right now. In fact, objectively I feel the best I’ve felt in over a year; I have the purpose, ambition, and drive that enable me to know that I don’t have to worry about anything. I have confidence in who I am and what I am doing. At the same time, I’m entirely restless because all the places I want to be (physically, mentally, emotionally) are situated almost entirely in a hopefully-near but as yet undefined future, and it’s making me feel like what I’m doing is not “right” (even though the things I’m doing are steps in the direction I want and need to be going in). This restlessness also makes me put pressure on myself to get things done at an accelerated pace, which is both a blessing and a curse. It’s good to be motivated so I don’t spend longer than I have to accomplishing what I need, but it could be hazardous if I rush, and so a balance needs to be reached.

I go back and forth with fatalism. As I’ve said before, I’m not the type who adheres to life as fate driven, yet I feel like I’m at another point in my life where things are happening with an unmistakable feeling of underlying purpose. More and more, I find myself thinking that it’s ok to let life have a little fate, that like a magnet I am drawn to certain things. I have yet to feel let down like the places where I’ve been drawn to by fate. I guess what I fight is the idea that fate means I am not in control of everywhere I’m going, but at the same time I’d be lying if I said that I’ve felt like I’ve been in control of everywhere I’ve been thus far; I know that I’ve been pulled in directions that at the end of the day, no attempt to control would prevent me from going in. So I suppose I’m ultimately admitting that my attempts to scoff at fate (as I’m pretty sure I did in a previous post) were attempts to somehow relegate the things that I feel have happened to some lower position of importance/significance. Now, this isn’t an admittance that “everything happens for a reason,” because I will always feel like we are 99% in control of our lives, but I’d be a liar to say that I believe we are not at all subject to things outside of our control.

Despite feeling restless, anxious, unharmonious, and generally unsatisfied with where I am at presently, I do feel good about things, and I’m excited about my chances. I just hope that what I need and want can be actualized sooner than I imagine them happening. It would be nice to not have to feel this way for too much longer.

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This segment of the Island playlist will actually be four songs instead of three, because that’s the way it must be. These are songs that can be summed up as sad songs, or songs that invoke strong feelings of melancholy to me.

“Lord I’m Discouraged” by The Hold Steady
There are a lot of songs about friends who have succumbed to drugs, but none have ever hit me the way this song has. “I’m almost busted, but I bought back the jewelry she sold” gets me 9 times out of 10, and the solo is straight out of Slash’s handbook.

“Arch Drive Goodbye” by Eve 6
OK, I first must apologize that the only video of this song is some stupid photo montage of Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhall It’s too bad Eve 6 will always be considered a 2 hit wonder band and that most people will never bother with the rest of their material, because I think All In Your Head is a fantastic record. As lame as it sounds, I once had a dream where I was playing a show with a band who wasn’t Eve 6 but who wrote this song, and that’s what solidified this song’s place on the playlist.

“The Butcher” by Matt Pond PA
This song is more about sounding melancholy than actually being sad for me. It’s gotta be the cello and the whole theme of “wanting more” that makes me feel this way. Unfortunately, there isn't a full version of the song anywhere on the internet, so you're stuck with only the first 1:20. Not a good day for the playlist, I guess.

“Kill” by Jimmy Eat World
There are plenty of sad Jimmy Eat World songs that could be in this song’s place, but this song gets me because while I’ve never had this song encapsulate exactly how I’ve felt at one point in my life, I’ve certainly felt everything in this song at one time or another.

Until further notice, all posts will be coming at you from Pacific time.

2009-08-26T16:28:00.005-04:00

Well, I've been home for a week and haven't taken the time to say anything about it here. I think it's because I've avoided doing a lot of things I know I need to do, such as unpack. In a way, doing things like unpacking or writing about being home solidifies it, makes it the present reality, forces me to settle into being here (anyone who knows me or reads this regularly will know why this is an issue).

So here I am in CA, still living out of my suitcase, boxes of stuff sitting in my backyard unpacked, miscellaneous bags sitting in my room with the compiled messes of things I threw into them.

I almost don't want to unpack. I'm highly motivated to get back to the East coast, and while my plan to make it happen doesn't see me there in the next 6 months at the earliest, I sort of want to play it cautiously and not let myself get too settled, since I'd be the first one to jump at an opportunity to uproot myself the second it arises.

I want to talk more about plans, but not here. Next post. Promise.

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I suppose it would be appropriate to say a few things about my cross-country road trip. Let's do that here. I'm just going to bullet point these, since I don't really feel like composing full paragraphs about it. Some of these are coming from the notes I jotted down while we were driving, some are things I'm thinking about right now.
-Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, it only takes about 7 tanks of gas to make it from Boston to LA. This surprised me, especially since neither my brother nor I are gas-conscientious drivers.
-I wrote down that the Midwest was "flat country," which I determined by the fact that both the land and the clouds felt like they had been pressed by the same... press? (I hate using the same word for nouns and verbs... it always sounds dumb to me). This was further perpetuated by the overwhelming presence of billboards, which yielded the interesting juxtaposition of advertisements for strip clubs next to advertisements for engagement ring companies.
-Iowa and Nebraska are easily the two most boring states to look at. This fact doesn't help with my largely unfounded (based on personal experience) opinion that these states are generally boring to begin with.
-The drive from Denver, CO to the Grand Canyon area of AZ is home to some of the most stunning landscape I have ever seen. I am determined to make that drive in the near future, once I have a car and some time to do it; seeing it once from the windows of a passing car is criminal.
-Surprisingly, my brother and I did not fight once. If we had taken this trip four years ago, we wouldn't have been speaking by the time we hit Indiana. I'm extremely happy we've hit the point in our relationship were we can get along this well.
-Even though it was a grueling sprint to get from one coast to another in 3 days, I didn't hate it one bit. No, not even the boring 18 hours we spent driving through cornfields. In fact, there was not one point where I wasn't happy to be on the road (well, other than at 3:30 am on the first day when the toll lady decided to be a condescending bitch after I paid the toll in quarters and then ended up staying in possibly the most disgusting motel in the country).
-Going along with the point above, I think it's safe to say that all I need to be happy is a set of wheels, a map, a full Ipod, and someone in the passenger seat who loves the road as much as I do.

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Below is a blog I started writing on my second to last day being in Boston. I'm not going to bother finishing the thought, but I figured I'd post it so you could see what was going through my head at the time:

"I usually blog in the recessed corners of the night or the arbitrary hours of the early morning, so starting a blog in the middle of the afternoon is a strange occurrence for me. I guess it makes sense, seeing as how I no longer have any obligations in Boston other than waiting for Friday to come, so I'm trying to find things to do with myself. I'm currently watching my friends dismantle their apartment, and it's very odd. In a sense, watching this all go down makes leaving Boston far more real than my own move out of my apartment made it a couple weeks ago. While moving out of my apartment was the start of the end, all of my friends' apartments were still intact, so the places I spent most of my time did not see the same changes, thus making the whole leaving Boston thing not as real and in-my-face as it is now.

It's a bizarre spectator sport, of sorts, to watch the stress of burrowing through the accumulations of the last four years, the analysis of all these things and deciding whether to keep or throw things away, the trying to find the most efficient way to pack all of these items. It's a process in evaluation and problem solving that I'm happy I don't have to go through again, but that I'm equally as sad to watch happen.

It's funny, though, to watch how things that are really in the grand scheme of things "junk" become meaningful through the ascription of memory. The silly posters, the stupid trinkets, the random pieces of paper with sloppy drunken scribbles, hats that served a purpose for only a couple of hours a year ago, stolen street signs, things that really don't matter now and especially won't matter in say, 10 years, but are hard to give up because at the end of the day (which for the first time is an actual, real, and foreboding day) these things matter."

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Island playlist time. This post's offering is part one of a two part series in songs that I can only describe as beautiful.

"Saeglopur" by Sigur Ros
Seems pretty obvious to put Sigur Ros in the "beautiful" category. Obvious and too easy. But I don't care. This band radically changed by opinion of how music could be made when I saw them live four years ago. I think it's almost impossible to imagine how this music could be composed by four musicians until you see it done. It's sure to be one of the best concerts I've ever been to for the rest of my life.

"Cavanaugh Park" by Something Corporate
Not exactly the most original tune (lots of bands in the last decade have done the piano ballad backed by an orchestra, many with a lot more widespread appeal than SoCo), but still a great song. I laughed when I discovered that the only video of the version of the song that I could find was a Harry Potter montage.

"It's In Your Blood" by Lydia
I think Lydia is one of the most underrated bands out there right now. Their approach to music is a pretty unique one (not necessarily evident in this track, but when you listen to their albums it's a bit more obvious). The singer's voice is also one of my favorites. This song never fails to get to me when it gets to 2:30.

2009-08-21T13:02:00.003-04:00

My friend Marissa requested that I blog so she would have something to read at work, so here I am, doing just what was asked. Actually, I'm happy to do it. It's nice that someone actually enjoys reading these long-winded mini-essays about things of little consequence to anyone but myself enough to request one. She's probably not the only person who enjoys reading them (I hope), but she's certainly the first person to make such an overt statement of enjoying them, and so to you, Marissa, I say thanks.

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I've actually had a blog topic in mind for a couple of days now, so I'm happy that I have the motivation to write about it. The idea comes from a friend of mine who told me about an encounter he had with his ex. The back story: dated for 1+ years, go to the same school, broke up around April/May, hadn't seen each other all summer, realized they were going to be in the same classes or whatnot, decided they needed to have a meeting in order to make said classes less awkward.

This meeting, as it turned out, was the classic exchange of property meeting that goes on after couples break up. You know, the ones where you gather all the things that are still technically the other person's and give it back in this weird trading of boxes or bags, and you want to look to see what's in them but don't because it would probably be construed as rude, and then when you get home and look you're like, "Shit, she still has that faux-vintage AC/DC shirt I bought back in high school. Man, I loved that shirt." No? Never happened to you? Yeah, me neither.

Anyway, the reason why I'm writing about this not at all unusual occurrence is that my buddy's ex not only returned the stuff that was his (though I don't think he owned a faux-vintage AC/DC shirt), she returned all of the gifts that he had bought for her during the course of relationship. That's right, she not only went and rightfully returned his property, she went and decided that the stuff that was her property should be returned to him because he had a hand in making it her property.

To this I said: What a heartless, shallow bitch. Seriously. When I heard this, I got livid, which seems like a really inappropriate response because a) I have absolutely no knowledge of this girl outside of the fact that she's my buddy's ex and b) her action has zero consequence on my own life.

Now, before I go any further into this, perhaps I should explain a little bit about myself, as it will make my response seem at least a little more justified. I am a very sentiment person by nature. I often speak of past events with an awed sense of nostalgia (probably to the unspoken chagrin of my friends. Sorry guys). I save copious amounts of unimportant items, trinkets, and pieces of paper because I believe that they in fact have a certain value in my life and that I will want them for future reference. Don't get me started on looking through the volumes of Facebook photo albums. I definitely blame my parents for this sentimentality, as they are very active pack rats who feel the same way I do about saving things, and so instilled this sense of importance on sentimentality. I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining, necessarily. I know some people who treat the past with a relatively cool disconnect, and I would never want to be that way. The past is important, and I like the fact that it is such an active part of my life; to me, the past is the most important referent for the future, it helps to provide the trajectory (I think a part of this stems from the English major side of myself, since studying English is mostly a process of actively engaging the past in order to move new ideas into the future). Sometimes the accumulation of so much stuff can be overwhelming, and I definitely have taken steps to stymie the collection of this stuff, but that's really the only thing I can complain about. Really, there's no reason to fear the past.

Long tangent, sorry. What made me so angry about this girl's action was how defiantly un-sentimental it was. It's one thing to not want to hold on to an ex's property; you're merely the keeper of it and are meant to enjoy having something of the other's because it's a sign that they care enough about you to allow you to be in possession of something they care about. It's another thing to give back things that the ex purchased FOR you so that they would be solely yours as a sign that they care enough about you to spend their time/money in an overt way. On the one hand, I believe that those items are meant to be saved; they are the connection to a piece of the past that is (whether one chooses to recognize it or not) an important facet of one's present and future life. Each long-term intimate relationship has a strong hand in shaping who we are to ourselves and how we are to other people, and it's important to carry with us some sort of memento given to us by these hands, even if it's just an act of sentimentality (perhaps I think it's important to be sentimental; it keeps the heart from growing too hard). On the other hand, if you don't want to keep these items, then you get rid of them in a way that doesn't involve the other person. There's no need to make a scene out of a somewhat defiant act to the relationship. I feel like giving the items back to the person is an incredibly selfish and self-serving act of malice. It's done deliberately to hurt the other party, and done in an attempt to appear above the other person and the relationship, if only in the sense of "Look how much I don't care." The shallowness of it all shocked me, clearly, since I've been writing about it for quite a while.

In closing, if you break up with someone, keep the damn gifts. You might regret it 50 years later when you suddenly find a piece of yourself thinking fondly of the other person and realize you have nothing but some digitally maintained photos in a public space, meaning they aren't really yours to begin with. Oh yeah, and fuck that girl.

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The Fadeaways (John of The Pursuit and I) plus a few friends (Sean H, Sean P, Tim, and Deal) have spent the last 4 nights recording what will be an EP in the abandoned Brainerd. It's been a crazy experiment in spontaneity and ingenuity, as every song has been written and recorded in 4 hours or less and our recording equipment are just about as sparse as you can get (we're talking one $30 microphone and a laptop running the free version of Audacity). The only instrument any of us are good at is the guitar, and John is the only one who's actually good at it, and our recording abilities are probably the lowest on the skill level for this project. It also stands mentioning that we're recording in the smallest room of an un-air conditioned apartment during a heat wave, huffing thick coats of lacquer and throwing a little (and sometimes more than a little) alcohol into the mix. Objectively speaking, the result will be a lo(west)-fi suckfest that garner almost exclusively laughs and pity "It's good"'s from our friends because they feel obligated to not tell us it out and out sucks.

Subjectively speaking, though, it'll be awesome. Not because the songs are well crafted, highly original or unique, or even moderately fresh sounding, but because of the creative and collaberative effort that has gone into the project. The fact that we have managed to write and record four songs the way we have is pretty cool, I think. No idea was too crazy or ambitious for us to try it, and I love how the atmosphere inspired things such as using a closed cabinet for a bass drum and bottle caps on a stove for a snare, or learning how to say words backwards so you can reverse the track to hear the original word. Most importantly, though, it serves as a time piece for the summer and for the last four years. We can listen to this far down the road and remember how at the edge of the precipice of our time together in Boston we came together to create something that was ours, and that everyone who couldn't be here can share in.

OK, I honestly don't think they'll suck nearly as much as I made them sound. If we mix them right, you might not think they suck nearly as much as I made them sound, either.

The working title for the project, btw, is The Brainerd EP, alternately titled The Lacquer Tracks, jokingly titled The Grundle Crab EP. Links will be posted when the project is ready.

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Perfect time to transition into the Island Playlist. The theme here can be summed up as high school tracks, meaning these are songs that were quintessential parts of my high school music (but are still among my favorites, obviously).

"Baby Blue" by The Early November
One of the reasons I was happy to work for Drive Thru Records was because I got so much free TEN stuff. I love this band, and I admire the ambition of Ace Enders. One of my favorite moments in all music is when they break out into the gang vocals of "No Love" by The Get Up Kids (another good song), then go into a hell of a breakdown/outro; if I'm in the right mood, it gives me chills.

"Great Romances of the Twentieth Century" by Taking Back Sunday
This was the first song I ever heard from TBS, and it's still my favorite. This song contains much of the essence of what made TBS such a great band back in 2002. It's unfortunate that TBS never managed to pull all the pieces together in quite the same way, and so it goes without saying that Tell All Your Friends will always be the best TBS album.

"Seventy Times 7" by Brand New
Unlike like their Long Island cohorts (TBS), Brand New has continually improved as they've matured. Yet, that doesn't change the fact that Your Favorite Weapon will always be my favorite Brand New album and that this song will always be my favorite Brand New song. It's Jesse Lacey before he became self-aware of some sort of lyrical prowess (meaning unconcerned with pretensions or constructions that make his other efforts seem contrived or trite, even if only slightly at times), and it's Brand New before they became hyper-aware of the need to make seemingly unique music (it sounds like I hate them, but I don't; I like Brand New, promise). In my opinion, this album is one of the best pop-punk albums ever released, and this song manages to capture the spirit of the high school romantic in a way no other song has.

Written rather furiously, as to keep everything as it's been thought

2009-08-17T19:48:00.007-04:00

I am surprisingly and begrudgingly growing optimistic, despite numerous situations which should dictate otherwise. I don't know if this will grow into something or if it will last, but needless to say, it's left me a little bit winded and I'm not at all hating it. Things don't always have to be as bad as they seem, much like the start of a new school year used to reveal. And as my departure date grows closer, I find myself anxiously intrigued by the possibilities of my trip (which are mostly mental, and not at all involved with the actual journey west). I feel like the spirit of Westward expansion has manifested itself within me, however minutely (and yes, that was a Manifest Destiny pun). It's all wildly scary and unexpected and ACTUAL (uppercased because in so many ways things have felt only possibilities, or perhaps unrealities. Nothing as of late has felt like it could be the manifestations of things that might actually happen). Where I was maybe a little bit terrified and very disappointed to move home, I realize that this is the necessary course, that all things must come to be as they should, and that with every misstep there's the possibility of another stone being just below the water's surface (ugh, weak metaphor). If I sound deceptively positive, it's because maybe I'm trying it on for a change. I figure it'll make this week go by a lot smoother, and might make next week a little easier. Plus, there's only so many melancholy posts I can make before people start thinking that I should quit my whining, right? Right?

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I might be in love with Imogen Heap. Here's why: Ellipse. I've only listened to it once through, but I can already tell it's going to be a musical highlight of the year for me. Definitely a headphone album I'll scrutinize and pick apart until I know every detail of every track. She is an incredible talent. I'm also really enjoying the fact that the tracking graphic is the wave file. A nice sensory touch on her (or the PR team's) part.

If there's any other proof you need for this, watch (I feel like I've posted this before here, so if I have, I apologize):

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For someone who doesn't prescribe to the idea of "signs," I find myself at times being pulled rather strongly in the direction of them existing. My own sense of logic and reason tells me that these things are just very well timed and well executed coincidences, but there have been times when I am assaulted by them from all sides and I must throw up my hands and say "How coincidental can one's life truly be?"

Sometimes it feels like the cruel joke of the astrologists, the fortune-tellers, the sages: to get things so inexplicably right, or at least make them feel so inexplicably right that you begin to doubt how you could ever doubt them.

But I choose to be a realist, and avoid this temptation. Though these things do make me consider the circumstances in a different way, so perhaps I'm still susceptible?

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This post's selection of the Island playlist is the easy listening section, the songs that will rock you to sleep and maybe make you weep (I needed to make the lame joke).

"The Sad Waltzes of Pietro Crespi" by Owen
Owen is the stage name for the guitarist/vocalist of the previously featured band American Football, so if you hear the similarities (which I'm sure most either are quite familiar with or will not bother checking and so will take my word for) between the two you're right in assuming it's the same guy. Another song with a lot of memories tied to it, and another song too good to leave off. It's nicely layered and paced, and all the proper elements are allowed to shine at the right times. It's also one of my favorite songs to play on guitar, though my feeble attempts feel futile when watching videos like this.

"Sunrise" by Norah Jones
I don't care how it makes me look, I love Norah Jones. She makes me smile. I think my trivia team is pretty OK with me knowing her as well as I do to (apparently she's a trivia-worthy gal).

"Sweet Avenue" by Jets To Brazil
Another band fronted by a former playlist band member (Jawbreaker). A deceptively simple song (three chords in total and a lead riff that the 7 year old with his first guitar could learn in a day or two), but it's got a lot of lyrical firepower. A song that does not try to overstep itself where it could very well have gone off the deep end in dramatics, and in the end, it becomes a bit more dramatic than I believe it intended to be, but it's dramatics are not at all inappropriate or misguided.

Coming clean

2009-08-15T12:52:00.004-04:00

Two days ago, I spent 16 hours packing up my stuff, moving it to my friends', and then cleaning out/up my apartment. Physically, I'm exhausted. My feet are blistered and cut up, my hands are raw and sore, my arms have bruises and scratches, and my body is generally in a state of disrepair. Hopefully I won't be too out of commission; the summer of dreams is winding down, and I need all the strength I can get.

But the physical pain is not the worst part (sappy, emotional part coming up, and surely not the last one in the coming months, so if you don't care to read it, I suggest leaving this blog and returning at a later date). Over the past two years, so much time, energy, pride, money, and care had been poured into that apartment that it really, truly felt like home. Some friends have apartments they love, but in the sense that it's a place to hang, party, chill, do whatever in a way that they can't do at home (real home); it's a placeholder, a bodyholder, a memoryholder, but it is not home. Egmont really was home for me, though. Maybe it's dumb to consider a place you know you're only living for two years home, and maybe it's dumb to consider the place you lived during college home, and so maybe I'm dumb, and everything that's been said before this sentence and will be said after is dumb, but I don't care; Egmont really was home for me.

It was a really surreal feeling to watch all the boxes and bins of my stuff pile up in my living room as I was packing. To see everything I've accumulated over the past four years physically compartmentalized made everything feel all too tangible. When everything is spread out in their places among your living space, it's impossible to fully quantify how much stuff you have. You have a rough idea, since it all fits into a given space, but you can't really comprehend your material... I don't know... being, until you see it packed away into these neat cardboard and plastic containers. To see it all stacked there, looking like some makeshift Aztec pyramid, produced a sense of finality I was not prepared for (I know that I've talked at some lengths about how I feel about the word, but no musing means I'm incapable of feeling it when it presents itself to me). To see all the stuff that I would be taking back with me ready to go told me "This is it. This is where it starts to end."

After I moved all of my stuff out, I began the arduous process of cleaning Egmont. Granted, this is a process I have to do in accordance with my lease, as well as in accordance with my desire to get as much of my security deposit back. But I know for a fact that I cleaned far better than anyone would have expected. Everything I could clean, I did: gettng the little lines of dust off the siding, scrubbing fingerprints off the walls, mopping the insides of the closets. I didn't set out to do these things. They just happened as I was cleaning, they were out of my control. Looking at it now, I think it was precisely because of my feelings about my apartment. It was MINE, and if I couldn't be in it, then I didn't want any remnants of myself or my roommates left. The new tenants would not be allowed to have even my dust.

It sounds crazily possessive, especially over something as inert as a few rooms surrounded by walls. But that's the thing: Egmont wasn't just an apartment. In a lot of ways, Egmont is Boston the place. To be in Egmont would be to have a place in the city that I could point to on a map and say, "Look, I am here. I am a part of this city. You cannot remove me, for I own a piece of it." To be in Egmont was to be rooted, however flimsily, in my favorite city.

But looking further still, Boston is not just a locale. It is a concept, one that has morphed and grown over the years to be the most important concept of my life so far, and what is going to be one of the most important concepts of my entire life. Four years ago, it was very much like a reverse Manifest Destiny for me: it was traveling great distances to a place that was little more than a mystic coast. It was the promise of a revolutionary shock, one that I could not wait to have for a good part of high school. It was the promise of things completely and totally new. Over the past four years it's become a thousand different things, all in light of this promise. These things I could spend an entire day typing out, and chances are I will before the month is over, but right now is not the time or the place. I need to stop this before I let myself go entirely.

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A few of thoughts on music:

1) Gustav Holst's "The Planets" was a great purchase. I've already listened to it 4 times through, and it's quickly growing to be one of my favorite classical pieces.

2) I am very excited for the rest of this month musically. Thrice, Third Eye Blind, As Tall As Lions, and Imogen Heap all have albums coming about, and from what I've heard from them, they're all sounding like they'll be in my list of top albums from the year. Well, scratch that, Thrice is already out... but still.

3) Sometimes I think that I should have been born in the 40's so I could have lived during the heyday of Motown, but every time I put on albums like The Get Up Kids' "Four Minute Mile" or Jimmy Eat World's "Static Prevails" or The Appleseed Cast's "End of the Ring Wars" or Mineral's "The Power of Failing" or Jawbreaker's "Dear You," I know I should have been born a decade earlier so I could live through the 90's era of emo. Real emo, not the bastardized monstrosity that word has come to erroneously represent. All of these albums remain in regular rotation, while far too many of the albums I've bought from this decade have fallen into the realm of seldom played. In fact, with the first two in the list, I would go out on a limb and say they are my favorite albums of the bands' discographies. Now, I know objectively and empirically that The Get Up Kids' "Something To Write Home About" is their best, and that "Clarity" and "Futures" will always be considered the high points of JEW's career, but "Static Prevails" and "Four Minute Mile" will always be played most, will always get my attention most, will always be my favorites precisely because of the time period they represent through their style.

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Island playlist selection: tracks from bands that were unfortunately too obscure to get the credit they deserve.

"Jesus is Alive and Well (and Living in Mexico)" by Audio Karate
Lady Melody is one of my favorite albums of all time, no question. It's one of the most refreshing and interesting takes on pop-punk I've ever heard, one that isn't afraid to be a little blurred around the edges or to go out past the precipice of what perhaps should be expected of a pop-punk band. This song is but one of a ton of gems (the song I would most like to put on this is absolutely nowhere to be found on the internet, unfortunately, but this is an easy substitute for it). I also must say that I love the guy's voice, not because it's good or nice-sounding, but because he's not afraid to sing with total passion (go here and listen to "Hey Maria" to see what I mean).

"Billy" by The Stryder
The Stryder is one of the bands that make me wish I had made friends from Long Island far earlier than I did. Now, I'll admit that the lyrics are on the weak side, but this track is all about the music to me, plus the lyrics somehow work with everything else to make a solid song. It's got a certain edge and aggression that's also got a good deal of technical skill to make it well calculated. Reminds me a good deal of the RX Bandits.

"Keep Your Voices Down" by Days Away
First of all, sorry about the stupid video this song is attached to. It's the only one I could find with the version of this song that I could find. Anyway, I love Days Away. I still kick myself for missing what turned out to be my one opportunity to see them 4 years ago. This version of "Keep Your Voices Down" is not the real, finalized version, but I think it's a better version. And even if I didn't think it were better, there are a lot of memories tied to this one, so it would be impossible for me to deny it being on this list.

This is far longer and surprisingly more coherent than a blog started at 7:30 should be

2009-08-03T14:23:00.004-04:00

So, at this point in my Boston saga, my stuff is just about the only thing left in my apartment, minus myself of course, which I am trying to keep out of as much as possible (sorry, that was a weird self-referential statement). At times, which are mostly times at night, I get some overwhelming senses of melancholy and malaise. Egmont has really, truly become home to me over the last 2 years. Even during the times it was awkward or uncomfortable being there, it MY place in a very possessive way, meaning that even when I didn't want to be there, I would want to be there; at the end of the day, I wouldn't choose to stay somewhere else because it was the place where I felt the most comfortable, the most situated, the most at peace. Of course, my house back in CA will for a long time coming be referred to as my "home," but that's more of a reflexive statement due to the fact that I grew up there, that it was for most of my life my home (not in the quote, unquote sense). But as we all know, growing up leads to leaving home for a new "home," which eventually becomes home (true home). Los Angeles is a place I feel still feel comfortable in, but is not at all my home anymore; it's too separated, too disparate from my mindset and acclimated lifestyle. I think for most people, this doesn't happen until they find a living space that's theirs in a more permanent sense than the four year stint we go through in college. But not me. Somehow, and I know I've talked about this before, so I won't go too much into it, Boston became home and Los Angeles became "home." It's a weird, somewhat sudden transformation, one that elicits some raised eyebrows and considerable questioning when I talk about it. People don't believe me (or at least need a reasonable explanation) when I say that Boston is where I want to be, is my favorite city in the world, precisely because this was just supposed to be college, some four year vacation of sorts where I got an education, made some good friends, expanded my mind and experiences, and then moved on. I'm moving on, but not exactly in the way I want to.

My friend Karen (Same Weddings, Same Funerals), a much more experienced New Englander and person in general than myself, reminded me that "You can never go home" recently, and I've been mulling over that sentiment for a while. I responded to it, but not in the way I should have. I whole-heartedly agree with the sentiment, and in a sense, I am refuting it by going back to California in a couple of weeks. But in another sense, a more true, real, and actual sense, I am not; I'm leaving home, going somewhere that's simultaneously old and new, familiar and unfamiliar, comfortable and scary; a paradox, indeed, but certainly not home. And when I come back to Boston, because I will be back, it will be the same thing. It will be returning home, but not returning home at the same time. In a way, I feel this gives me traveling across the country a great power, for I don't have to worry about going home and the "never" part of it.

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If there's a silver lining to all that jumbled sadness above, it's that I get to drive cross country with my brother to get back to California. This is quite possibly the only way I could travel without being overwhelmed by leaving. I've always wanted to do a cross country road trip. Actually, if I had to make a list of the top ten experienced I wanted in my life, it would absolutely fall within the top five, possibly even the top three. I love road trips. With very few exceptions, I would drive anywhere just for the experience. Unfortunately, I only rented the car for four days (a money issue for one, a school issue in regards to my brother for two), but Google maps tells me that the driving time will only be about 48 hrs, and my brother and I are both young, spry night owls, so we may be able to pull off some serious driving time and give ourselves some cushion for visiting other places.

The biggest problem is deciding where to go. There are so many places to see, things to experience, food to eat (perhaps the thing I'm most excited about) that I haven't seen/experienced/eaten, and trying to cram as much of it in productively and safely will be a challenge. Biggest dilemma right now is wanting to do a trip through the South (perhaps Georgia/Louisiana/Texas or something like that), but also wanting to see places like Chicago then head through Colorado and some of those states considered Western but are not really in the West.

I'm also excited to do this with my brother. As I've mentioned before, my brother and I have just gotten our ground as friends recently (well, relatively recently, meaning the last 3 years or so), and I think this road trip will be an awesome experience for us. Hopefully we'll do some cool stuff, maybe even some crazy stuff. Stuff that I can text my friends and they'll send to Texts From Last Night or something.

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I've been sort of marveling at the postmodern-ness of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations recently. More particularly, I'm fascinated with the metafictional portion of postmodernism. I suppose a brief primer in this is warranted before I go further: metafiction is roughly the idea of fiction (or more generally and in this instance, art) being aware that it is fiction. The art uses its self-awareness as a way to pose questions about the boundaries between the fictional reality of art and the reality we experience. A perfect example of this, one which a few choice readers will immediately get, is the movie The Neverending Story, which is a film version of a novel about someone reading a novel (the act of reading self-reflexively being referred to in the novel, and the film version turning the act of reading into a film about watching a film (almost)).

Anyway, Anthony Bourdain is absolutely aware that his show is a show. While most shows of this sort try to uphold the mystical "fourth wall" between the fiction of the show and viewer's perception of the show, Bourdain regularly and quite actively destroys that, talking about scenes that go awry, scenes that are staged, scenes that are done strictly for the viewer or network or focus groups, or scenes that are done strictly for his own enjoyment. I think he gets a great deal of pleasure turning his show into a meta work; I also think he is quite aware of his own meta-ness. He's a smart guy who knows that all TV is fictional and relishes in the duality of taking part in it and destroying it at the same time. This isn't by any means a new thing (most cartoons from the last 4 or 5 decades are usually the most actively metafictional things on TV, directly addressing viewers or referring to their own sense of unreality by recognizing things that are possible only through their own cartoonness), and it's actually symptomatic of the Travel Channel's shows, but no one does it like Bourdain.

This also makes me think of shows like Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which are fictions that depend on fitting into our reality, rather than creating their own "realities." What I mean is that they operate within a world where real people (actors) play themselves, so that these shows COULD be misconstrued as "reality television." But these actors who are playing themselves are not just being themselves, but are acting like themselves, which invites the question: what does it mean to play yourself as a character? How much fiction goes into creating a fictional representation of yourself? And how weird is it to essentially play a caricature of yourself?

Unfortunately, no celebrities who do this read this blog, so my questions will go unanswered. Boo.

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I'm glad I have my island playlist on my Ipod, because I would never be able to remember where I am in it. Today's helping are my favorite rap songs. Well, almost all of them. I already posted P.O.S's "Purplex" in an earlier post, and so while it's on the playlist, I'll refrain from posting it again, though I will post a link to that particular entry because it's my blog and I can do what I want: link to that particular entry.

"99 Problems" by Jay-Z
This song has everything I love in a rap song: an aggressive beat, cool samples, smart editing, and of course, smart lyrics. But it's HOVA, so of course lyrics wouldn't be an issue.

"Great Expectations" by Jurassic 5
Jurassic 5 is easily my favorite rap group, and has some of the smartest, most fluid lyricists I've heard. Another band that has great samples and beats, too.

"Mo Money Mo Problems" by Notorious B.I.G., featuring Puff Daddy and Mase
Biggie was one of my first musical loves (even before I got into punk), and this song has stayed with me for over a decade. It's one of those songs where everything just clicks for me. I would never try to argue that this is one of the greatest rap songs of all time, or that it's even one of Biggie's best tracks, but I will also never be deterred from my belief that it's both.

I wish we had all been born birds instead.

2009-07-29T18:58:00.005-04:00

So, this weekend I acquired my first set of stitches on the bottom of my foot. Frankly, I'm surprised it's taken me 22 and a half years to get them, seeing as how I spent most of my preteen and teenage years skating, snowboarding, and generally doing things that could result in opening myself up enough to need to sew myself shut.

The thing about this injury that bothers me most is that the methods used to heal me are far worse than the injury itself. The bottom of your foot is surprisingly sensitive to needles, and having it numbed is up there as one of the most painful things I've ever experienced, not to mention crutches are a pain in the ass. All I know is that I'm angry at whatever it was that cut my foot for inconveniencing me in my last month in Boston.

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More dream writing:

"She had become a phantom, a conditional apparition there but not. The conversations became a stretch, I could almost feel the bones in my ear straining to hear the minute vibrations of the absent speech. Every 6 o'clock brought about the haunting, gone by morning, never malicious or severe, but not at all comforting... I can't keep the light on, the city night not at all dim. The fan, though, was not a threat to blow her away. There are no wispy ghosts these days."

This one was weird, and not at all as coherent as the last. There was more, but I couldn't remember. I really need to work on my lucid dreaming ala John (The Pursuit).

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I was recommending some Eastern philosophy books to someone the other day, and he said that he had avoided reading anything Eastern because he felt his Western upbringing would hinder his understanding of it. I can relate to this, because when I was studying it I encountered the same problem. The problem is largely because we as Westerners have such an ingrained sense of personal importance. We are a culture that focuses exponentially more on the "I" than the "you" or "we." In fact, in the US companies of the altruistic sort make a big deal out of using "we" to define their goals and hopes. Companies and groups attempt to get people involved by demonstrating how important focusing on "we" rather than "me" is, appealing to the sympathetic/empathetic (or perhaps just guilty) part of our humanism. But these techniques are needed because US culture is founded in very self-centric ideas. The ideas of personal life, liberty, happiness, property, etc are all focused on the "rights" of an individual, making the primary focus of the American's spirit be on him/herself. Hell, the second amendment is the right to bare arms, the idea that your individual person is so important that you are allowed, by law, to own a machine that will take away the life of another "I" if it should so threaten your own "I." Pretty heavily self-centric, if you ask me.

These ideas are also propelled by the Bible, the basis for a lot of American thinking. Man is given a ridiculously high sense of self importance in the Talmud: dominion and naming rights over all creatures, single-handedly chosen to save the animal population or the population of a people, or even just being chosen to have contact with God. All these things focus on one man's importance over other people's importance. Even while some of these instances are for the salvation of other people, it's not a demonstration of the importance of and equality among the "we." What's more, even the most altruistic Western religions, the ones that try to preach the word of universal salvation for all and try to save the world through their faith, have a distinct focus on the "I," as the preaching and attempted conversions are pivotal for one's one personal salvation; your preaching/conversion rate is often a big part of your heaven-achievement quota.

Getting over this idea of the all-important "I" is the first and biggest challenge when running into traditions like Buddhism or Daoism. The whole notion that the "I"
is all but annihilated in these traditions. Buddha was not told by any power that he would be the salvation of a people; he deliberately went against the idea of his own self-importance and destroyed the notion of the "I" in favor for a loosely defined, universally applicable "we." Daoism doesn't even have this sort of humanized mythos, as Laozi is simply a placeholder on a philosophy. As much as these traditions appeal to me for these and many other reasons, I struggle to think of myself as even a remote Buddhist or Daoist, precisely because I still think "I" is an important idea, and to hang it up on a line and pretend it's not would be a sham.

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I just finished reading "Hocus Pocus" by Kurt Vonnegut, and for once, I left the book feeling a little disappointed. It was funny, witty, philosophical, humanist, and clever like all the other Vonnegut books I've read, but there was a distinct lack of charm that made his earlier works things of genius. While I was sad to see that there was a bit of a dive in his consistency as he got older, I was also happy in the sense that I realized he was not a mythological infallible author to me. It made one of my heroes seem human, like me. It's comforting to the writer in me. Another bit of me that was sad came with the fact that in the book Vonnegut clearly was a man bitter with the progression of the human race, one who had lost his hope that we could improve our planet as we moved farther away from what I can only imagine he regarded as an temporal ignorance. I'm only sorry we could not provide a glimmer of hope before he left.

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This post's installment of the island playlist is focusing on a particular epoch of music: 90's emo. Yes, emo. The last true iteration of the genre before it became a grossly mis- and over-used term to describe music of the "pop-punk" persuasion. Aggressively sensitive, sincerely forlorn, and often lo-fi, I can't think of a time period of music I wish I would have experienced first-hand more.

Coming Clean - Get Up Kids
"Coming Clean" by The Get Up Kids
Neither found on the most beloved and popular Get Up Kids album nor the most popular song from "Four Minute Mile," this song goes into a long list of openers that immediately suck me into an album on first listen. The poor recording quality only adds to the charm of this song, and I probably would pass over it if it sounded as polished as most recent albums sound.

"Back and to the Left" by Texas Is The Reason
My second favorite band from the 90's and definitely one of the bands I've listened to most over the past 8 years (and that says a lot, seeing as how they released less than 20 songs over their career). I still kick myself for letting Thanksgiving prevent me from seeing them play their only reunion show ever 2 years ago. Anyway, I digress. This song is sort of the song that launched a thousand songs, since I (at least) can hear countless bands who've come after TITR in this.

"Accident Prone" by Jawbreaker
My favorite song off my favorite album by my favorite band from the 90's. Another song I can use to pinpoint who Jawbreaker influenced, it's got great pacing (especially for being a 6 minute punk song), great lyrics (which unfortunately come across as a bit hackneyed these days, since many bands have used the same imagery and metaphors in the 14 years it's been since this song was released), and a great melancholy tone that isn't at all melodramatic (the most important piece of the puzzle). 3:45-5:15 is one of my favorite moments in all of music.

I feel like a lot of this is just verbal wankery. Sorry.

2009-07-17T17:56:00.002-04:00

So, I have no internet in my apartment, thanks to the guys doing construction downstairs. Somehow, they thought that cutting wires that go into the ceiling of a room would have absolutely no effect on the number of apartments that are above said apartment. Clearly, they do not go about they're job with any sort of logic. This all being said, I had this blog to write, and no website to write it in, so I had to dust off the old Word 2003 (which hasn't been used since early May), type most of this up, and then save it on a flash drive to bring it to work. You'd think I'd be doing something important, right, with all the effort I put in to getting this blog out to the 15 people who have this come to their Google reader who will probably only skim this anyway? That was a long question, one that didn't really end on the appropriate spot for the question. I apologize, you 15.

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I had another dream in which I had to write something and managed to remember a bit of what I wrote when I woke up. I had to try really hard, because the dream was barely lucid, so I couldn't really control what I was writing and make a conscious effort to remember, so I wrote down as much as I could as soon as I woke up.

The context was I got a publishing deal and needed to put out a book in a month, so after my meeting with the demanding publisher, I rushed to the nearest library (the one in Brookline, which I've actually never been in) and typed this opening out:

"Before I get started with this story, I'm going to tip my hat to the person who I owe the ability to write this: Mr. Kurt Vonnegut. What I'm going to do is give you some pretty important details from the start, not to detract from any sort of mystery or discovery you might uncover while reading this, but to provide you with a context that will be useful in your understanding the motives and circumstances that take place throughout the novel. I'm not doing this to disappoint you, but to prepare you, so that you may appoint your own meaning, rather than have to deal with me appointing my own, which would be these points anyway:

1) I'm fairly certain that I have wasted time telling the people I am in love with them, in that they were the wrong people to tell it to. Not that they are bad people undeserving of having someone be in love with them, but that my own in-love-ness with them was perhaps misguided. And consequently, I'm fairly certain that the people who I should have been telling this to have already come into my life in ways where it is no longer possible to tell them I am in love with them, circumstantially or otherwise.

2) The biggest problem with the Bible, as I see it, is that we were told that we would have dominion over all the earth and its creatures. As humans, we've proven time and time again that we are barely capable of asserting any kind of competent control over our own lives, let alone be able to DOMINATE anything. God's faith in us, as indicated by the above mentioned statement, was far greater than the faith we as a collective humanity could ever put into him. Nevertheless, because we were told we should dominate, we've attempted time and time again, and will continue to attempt, until we have no choice but to throw our hands up to the sky and say 'You expect too much!'
(This bit was absolutely inspired because I managed to mention Vonnegut in the first part)

3) Dramatic irony is perhaps the greatest evil a person can face. To discover that all along that things were not what they seem, and that others knew this disparity while you were alone in the dark, destroys the human spirit more than anything I can think of."

There were two more points in that opening (I know it seems unbelievably long to remember in a dream, but I'm not surprised, given how long-winded I can be), but I lost them before I could write them down.

I hope that somehow I'll be able to dream up more of this novel. It feels like it could go somewhere, but I don't know if I could take it where it wants to go. At least not right now.

-

Something I've noticed about myself is that I use the phrase "things will happen as they should" a lot. This probably doesn't seem like a big deal, but when I caught myself saying it the other day, I realized that it implies a certain thing about myself that I don't intend to imply. When someone says "things will happen as they should," they are subtly implying that life is dictated by fatalism, that things will happen according to some sort of plan, that life is on a certain trajectory that we obviously have no knowledge of, but are ultimately subjected to.

I don't believe in fatalism, though, and so I've been giving off a false perception of who I am when I say this (granted, I bet everyone I've said this to does not ever stop to think about the implications in me saying it, thus I'm creating my own sort of crisis here, but whatever). Anyway, I'm a firm believer in life being subject to chance and consequence. To think that I have a place already decided to me to end up, that things that happen are meant to happen the way they happen doesn't work for me, mostly because it eliminates the idea that we have the freedom of choice. Granted, there are a lot of ways you can argue that you still have that freedom with fate, but in the end there's always that little bit of predeterminacy that accompanies fate, and I just can't get myself to believe that it's there. Life is a crapshoot; hell, being alive is a crapshoot. All the data that goes into determining how likely it is that a planet like ours exists goes to show we are all the very fortunate victims of chance (I'm still thinking of the Moon John).

There was one single point in my life that I thought could only be the product of fate, but looking back at it now, it was, as all things that feel like they were somehow planned feel, the products of things like good timing, good planning, and complementary feeling. This doesn't, at least to me, diminish the potency of the instance, since it was GOOD timing, planning, feeling at the time, and that's a rarity indeed.

I've met people who don't like this idea of life being unsubjected to any force that gives it a certain direction. It stems from the need to be in control, and when you can't be in control, to feel like there is at least some sort of control being put upon you. I'll admit, it is comforting to sometimes think that life is taking you somewhere (a certain somewhere, not the open-ended anywhere sort of somewhere). It calming, it's security, it's why we believe in God and things like that.

But it's not for me. I like my chances with chance. That doesn't mean that I'm going to stop saying it. Things will work out as they should, meaning they'll work out as your choices dictate they should. I could have said that from the start, and saved you a lot of reading.

-

Continuing from last post's theme of music from my parents, I'm going to profess my love for all things Motown/old R'nB', which is all my father's fault. Listening to KEarth 101 when he would drive made me fall in love with it.

"Super Bad" by James Brown
First of all, sorry about the stupid bongos in this song. Second of all, James Brown is the man. He owns this song, and he barely does anything but scream and repeat the same phrase over and over again. But man, does he have a killer scream. It also helps that he had a great backing band that could record a groove like few other bands could back then.

"What'd I Say" by Ray Charles
I was bummed I couldn't find a video with just the audio track, but I think it's OK that it's live, since Ray Charles pulls this off pretty flawlessly. I wish I could have been in the club where he improved this song for the first time, and if I could play piano, this would be my standard.

"Ain't Too Proud To Beg" by The Temptations
Performed by the original Temptations, this is one of those songs that I just want to belt when I hear the opening drum roll (and I thank Disalvo for actually doing it). I've always loved the harmonies in Motown music, and this has some of the best. I wish bands these days could pull off vocal performances like this.

Something small, just to do it.

2009-07-13T18:36:00.006-04:00

Wow, it's been a while. Two and a half weeks, I believe. Such is the nature of summer, I suppose. Things come up, days get filled, and things like blogging get pushed aside. I'm sorry for neglecting you, my little blog. It's nothing personal. Please don't hate me.

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The inevitable winding down of the summer's clock makes me feel more and more anxious, mostly because I still haven't found a job despite my best and hardest efforts. I'm trying to remain hopeful, but with less than a month to go on my lease, I've had to come to the realization that I'm probably going to end up in LA at the end of the summer. This isn't easy to swallow. I love Boston. It's my favorite city in the world. I feel comfortable in every corner of it. I've never felt that way in LA. But the advantages of staying in Boston after summer are pretty small. It would literally be staying here just to stay in the city; almost all of my friends will have moved out, I'd have to worry about rent and utilities and food and loans and bills, and would likely have to take an hourly paying job, leaving me with very little wiggle room in the whole "having a life" department. At least at home I won't have to worry about rent and food for the (hopefully short) time I'm at home. I can work and save up money to move out, and start with a relatively clean slate. I'd want to stay on the East coast to be close to all of my good friends, but with no money to travel, when would I see them? I could save money and take some crazy vacation.

I don't know. I'm trying to rationalize not being in Boston so it doesn't sting as much, but it's hard. I definitely did not picture myself going home when this was all over. I know things could be worse, but it's hard to accept a fate that you didn't picture, that you didn't design for yourself. Such has been the lesson of the year, though, and it's perfectly fitting that things don't work out according to plan.

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The one thing I'm excited about in leaving Boston is that I will have a reason to get the Boston skyline tattoo I've wanted for a long time. Thinking about this reminds me of a conversation I had with a certain person when I got my first tattoo. They complained that I was "ruining my body" by getting tattoos, that somehow I was contaminating or desecrating it. I didn't really know what to say at the time; this person had sat with me through the whole process, as well as encouraged me to get it, and immediately flipped their view when it was done. At first I thought, "Hello, where the fuck were you when I mentioned I was getting PERMANENT INK on my body?" Then I just sort of kept quiet, because well, the damage had been done, and there was nothing I could say or do that would change that, plus I thought they were being ridiculous.

If I had to have the same conversation now, I would say something to the effect that I think that the human body is not just a medium by which to create art, but a medium that can contain art. Our bodies are just a vehicle to express a portion of our person. We dress them up in a certain way, do certain things to it through exercising and eating, clean them, all things which culminate into an expression of a part of who we are. Sometimes the visual expression doesn't match what we'd LIKE to be seen as, but it never the less is an expression of us. For me, I see tattoos as a way to express myself in a visual way. By looking at my tattoos, you'd see I'm a literature lover, someone close to their family, and a Californian. These are all things I would never change about myself, things I'm proud to be and have no problem visually demonstrating to the rest of the world. I would feel naked without them, and don't ever regret getting them (a question I've been asked a surprising amount of times, seeing as how I'm still young enough to be considered a "dumb kid" when it comes to getting tattoos). I want to get Boston to add to these expressions. Even though I might not be living here, it's a place I will always want to take with me, and while I'll have friendships and memories and pictures, I want something more permanent (for when I'm older and more likely to forget).

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This post's dose of music is stuff I love that comes directly from my parents.

"Born To Run" by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Bruce was my first concert ever. I was in the 6th grade and I went with my mom. It's still one of the best concerts I've ever been to, and is one of the best memories I have with my mom. This song just makes me happy, plain and simple.

The Second Movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony
One of the family traditions in my house was that my dad played classical music on Sunday mornings while he made pancakes. Beethoven's 7th has always been one of the few I've loved ever since I was little, and this movement is definitely the standout for me. There's something very tragic in it, but it's always sounded perfect to me.

"Fire" by Jimmy Hendrix
My mom's influence again. This one will always be one of those perfect rock songs to me.

Library thoughts in summer? Weird.

2009-06-29T11:58:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of finality and if there is such a thing as true finality. What sparked this was that I was digging through a box of stuff I have lying around my apartment and came across a DVD my dad made me that had both the first and last shows I ever played with bands. In an hour I was able to watch sort of the encapsulation of my musical heyday. My initially thought after I watched them is that playing a show with a band is something I will never do again. But then this weekend John (The Pursuit) and I spent about 6 hours working on music of a varied sort, and actually recorded some of it. Now, I'm not going to get ahead of myself and think that this is the start of some serious band that will write lots of music and play lots of shows and all that, but for all intents and purposes, we are a real band and could possibly make something of this, thereby eliminated the conclusive finality I thought about before.

This got me thinking about how much finality is something of a misconception we have about our lives and the world around us. Allow me to use two examples, one unrelated to me and one related to me. Consider a house: it starts as a blueprint, and is then translated into the finished product. But the house doesn't cease to go through changes once the coat of paint dries. On a conceptual level, the idea of this building being structurally complete is done, but the concept of it's house-iness will be continually evolving; if a family moves it, it will first be a new house, then their new house, then their house, then their home, then as beloved pets pass on and kids move out an empty home, then their old home, then eventually someone else's new house. Of course, if they move, then it will become someone else's new home much quicker than this. But regardless, the concept of the house is not a static thing by any means. It constantly changes as people become more settled and the house becomes more lived in and new members are added and mortgages are paid off. But that's only the half of it. On a physical level, the house will continue to change as well; wood begins the slow process of decay despite decay-abating chemicals, screws and nails not fortunate enough to be stainless start their oxidized deterioration, the tar between shingles develop the minute begins of cracks, and termites send scouts to search for ways to infiltrate. The owners change the carpet, change the kitchen counters, change the paint colors for the baby's new room, gash the walls moving the coffee table, put in new double paned windows to save on electricity, and put a doggie door in so Max will stop barking at 6 in the morning to go to the bathroom. Just because the walls have gone up and the house will remain the same structure for an indefinite amount of time does not mean the house is the product of finality.

The same is true for relationships. I think about the two serious relationships I've had, and that while they're done, they're not the products of finality either. On an obvious level, there are the non-dating relationships that form afterward that (if they do), though different, operate under the pretenses of the former relationships, forming both bonds and boundaries that would not be present otherwise. On a more subtle level, the relationships continue to exist by the way they irrefutably change your life: the way you see yourself, the way you act with and react to people, the trajectory your life takes, the amount of memories you gain, money/gifts/stuff gained and lost, anytime minutes used, and the simple fact that a significant portion of your time was being not an individual, but the part of a set. In these ways, the relationship, though over, avoids being the product of finality.

I guess what I'm working toward is the fact that nothing is really ever finished. The only finality we could possibly pin down is the fact that our universe will expand to infinity, which is still an ongoing process, so is never actually finished. Even something as trivial as this musing will continue on once I hit "Publish Post," if not for the few people who will read it, but for myself, since I will remember that I once wasted 45 minutes talking about how nothing ever ends.

So it goes.

-

Now, a collection from the Encyclopedia Brotannica:

Welcome to the brozone layer.
We're in the broduce section of the brocery store.
Somehow we get to watch the training camp for the Brofessional Baseball League
Playing for the Montreal Exbros right now.
You could power this town with a hybroelectric power plant.
I think we should all sing Brohemian Rhapsody.
Damn, I have to bro my lawn.
I'm gonna go play with my Yu-Gi-Bro cards.
But I prefer Brokemon cards.
Gettin' buckwild at the brodeo.
This place has more brotein than a steak.
The Broakland Raiders are in town.
When they get depressed they always take their Brozac.
If you listen closely, you can hear the manifesting wisdom of Brostradamus.
I hope I have a camera, this is a Brodak moment.
I'm hungry but all there is to eat are brologna sandwiches.
It's so bro in here I think we might get hybrothermia.
Not to mention there's a chance we'll catch brochitis.
I think I saw a Brotasaurus.
When did we get sent on a peacekeeping mission to Brosovo?

Word play is fun.

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More Island Playlist, I guess. These three songs are by bands that I would love to be able to sit down and just jam with. Each song has parts that I would like to think were written just by fiddling around like John and I do.

"Never Meant" by American Football.
I'm in love with the layering of the guitars in this song. I also think that "let's just pretend that everything and anything between you and me was never meant" is one of the most brutal break-up lines of any song. Ouch for the girl he wrote that for.

Serial Kisser (Album Version) - Over It
"Serial Kisser" by Over It.
I've had the privilege of watching these guys play many hometown shows, so I know they're a band that does write at least a portion of their songs through jamming. One of the better pop-punk bands from my high school years.

"Fishing The Sky" by The Appleseed Cast.
The main guitar riff might be my favorite riff of all time. The Appleseed Cast just released their sixth (I think) album this year, and they still have yet to write an album I don't love. This is the kind of song I wish could go on for an hour, rather than four minutes.

It was familiar to me, the smoke too thick to breathe

2009-06-23T12:42:00.005-04:00

Today was a 2 cup of coffee morning. It's getting harder and harder to motivate myself to do things with my time because of the ridiculous weather Boston continues to subject me to. I'm fairly certain we've had no more than 3 nice days in June, meaning we've had 20 of shit weather. Most days, I wake up around 8:45, pull back the blinds, see it's overcast, raining, and cold, and decide that it's not worth it to wake up early, so sleep for another two hours. I don't want this to be the case. I would love to have the motivation to get up before 9 and do something with my day. When I know I'm going out, I'm more productive while I'm in; at the moment, because the weather forces me to stay in places with roofs (rooves? Not the right word, but it feels like it should be rooves. Roofs is an odd-sounding pluralization), I'm not nearly as productive as I should be.

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Last night was a pretty quality night: First, Tim, Urby, Disalvo, John (of The Pursuit) went to Our House to play trivia and spend money we had won in previous trivia nights. We ended up placing third on a clutch, go-for-broke answer about Herbert Hoover by John. Our prize: a cheap bottle of champagne. Now, I'm not really a fan of champagne (though mimosas are a nice treat at brunch), but I see why it's the drink of choice by sporting event champions: it tastes much better under the pretense of victory (victory usually makes things otherwise considered undesirable suddenly valuable, substantial, and worthwhile. consider the heyday of Nickelodeon programming, where people were rewarded for winning by being slimed. Now, a part of the joy of being slimed was surely due to the general penchant for getting filthy that children have, but they fought for the right to be slimed because it meant that they were the winners. This also translated to the adult world once the Kid's Choice Awards started, because suddenly full grown and respectable (some of them, at least) adults now wanted to be slimed, because it meant they prevailed over their competition, that they were valued more by a higher percentage of their voting constituents. This is also a curious thing, the children voting thing, since children have a rather uninhibited sense of what they like; in this sense, you could argue that the Kid's Choice Awards is the most objective awards show we have, and that their choices demonstrate who is wholly "better." But I'm not going to take the time to argue that).

John and I also finally put plans for working on music in motion, (hopefully) ending the endless amount of verbal waste we've produced on the subject over the years. We are now official "busy" on Saturdays, meaning our music schedule is penned (yes, penned) into our weekend plans, thus giving us a sense of obligation and purpose to making things happen. I feel good about this; it's no secret the importance music has in my life, and working cooperatively on it is something I've been looking for for quite some time.

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In honor of this newly-sparked music schedule, I've decided that today's offerings of the Island playlist will actually be two offerings for the price of one, meaning six songs instead of three. The reasoning behind this is that for the last couple of years I've been motivated to create electronic music, and there are two portions of the playlist that are electronically-based. Since I'm going to be writing more, I figured I'd put where I'm coming from all out on the table.

"Teen Angst" by M83
This is the kind of song that I can't listen to just once when it comes on. Everything from the excellently arpeggiated main riff to the ethereally drawn out vocals in the chorus work in nice harmony to create a song that's both upbeat and low key (relatively, of course).

"Digital Love" by Daft Punk
I'll admit, when I was much younger, I used to make fun of my brother for liking Daft Punk (most of it coming from the fact that the band has the word "punk" in their name, and me, being a fan of punk music, felt this a huge transgression against me for some reason). I get this song stuck in my head all of the time, which makes sense, seeing as how its built around the earworm principle by having only two major parts to the song, both of which are pretty simple in their delivery but are structured around aurally pleasing riffs. I also love this song for a reason Tim shares with me: the solo at 3:30 is one of my favorites.

"This Is The Dream Of Evan And Chan" by Dntel
This song was the catalyst for The Postal Service, and I still think it's the best collaboration between Jimmy Tamborello and Ben Gibbard. It's got the pop-dance sensibility of The Postal Service without being pop-dance like The Postal Service. This song has influenced me more than any other song, mostly because of its great use of subtle background noise.

"Your Hand In Mine" by Explosions In The Sky
Ok, so it's not an electronic song, but it was the first song that really broke me out of the punk/pop-punk/ska shell I lived in when I was younger. I've always felt there was something magic in it because of that. The instances where this song shows up in Friday Night Lights (EITS did the whole soundtrack for it) are also powerful, and are the things that sold me on this band.

"...Passing By" by Ulrich Schnauss
The movement in this song really works for me. Coming off an album entitled "Far Away Trains Passing By," this song captures that sense of constant motion and changing-but-familiar scenery that I at least get when I'm on a train. This song demonstrates how effective layering can be the only thing you need to create a great song, since this is all just the simple addition and subtraction of parts.

"The Antikythera Mechanism" by BT
I do not have enough words for the praise I want to give to BT for his album "This Binary Universe." Not only is it one of my favorite albums of all time, but it's possibly the most complete album I own. Combining all forms of electronic music with BT's classical and jazz training, "This Binary Universe" is an achievement of consummate musical skill, and is quite possibly the first work of 21st century "classical" music. This track is my favorite.

A post on the art of being a thief (sort of)

2009-06-17T20:22:00.009-04:00

There have been a few times over the course of the past 5 years when people have asked me what inspires me to write. This wasn't something I was planning on talking about in this post, but I just read this from one of my favorite blogs, and I felt it answered the question pretty well (maybe not the part about Eminem):

"People often write in and ask ‘how do you write songs?’ well, here’s the answer everyone, take note: Read. Read tons of magazines, books articles, dumb self important blogs, whatever. Watch television and listen to music, but mostly, mostly you have to read. There’s no way to produce without putting gas in the tank. Listen to music that makes you think, not just the music that you want to make, although that’s important too. However, if Strike Anywhere went and listened to nothing but Rise Against for inspiration (or vice versa) there’d be no way to progress beyond that basic level. It’s always diminishing returns when you stay locked into a genre. My big influence lyrically, for a long time was Eminem, simply because I loved his ideas of how verses flowed and the intersyllabic rhymeschemes that he came up with. I don’t think that my music sounds particularly like Eminem, but I used that influence or inspiration to do something that I wouldn’t have been able to pull off otherwise. Does that make sense? I read books and find sentences that I think are super powerful and concentrated and I earmark them and come back to them, or just let them come out when I write words down. It’s a constant process of expulsion, consumption. Kind of like barfing up gigantic tubs of jizz and then eating them again…No, sorry. Not like that at all. It’s like eating all bran. You have to make yourself eat it, then it makes you shit more than you ever would otherwise, then you have to keep eating more and more all bran, and keep shitting and keep sifting through that shit for all the diamonds. Is that a decent metaphor? Good. See, kids, just keep reading and you too will be able to craft finely hewn uh…strings of sparkling shit metaphors."

This passage normally resides at badsandwichchronicles.blogspot.com, and is written by Brenden Kelly of The Lawrence Arms, who happen to share a portion of the title of my favorite band. His blog is actually quite good, and he has a lot of interesting things to say on a wide variety of topics (though he tends to be quite vulgar, if that's an issue for anyone).

Anyway, he's absolutely right in saying that reading is the most important part of any artist: musicians, novelists, poets, script writers, play writes, published scientists, speech writers, even the guys who write the instructions for your xbox. All of these people are involved in the art of using words to convey information to an audience. A song is nothing more than a piece of information about a subject (usually a set of emotions) set to music (which is also information in the form of musical notes, which are just a set of information indicating sound waves and frequencies), and the scientist who publishes a paper on the effects of sunscreen ingestion on mice is an artist of science and of technical prose (he being someone who excels at what he does and is able to convey his expertise to the world through his craft). All of these artists depend on reading because it is through reading that one sees what's been said before, how it's been said, and in which ways those things have been successful. The more you read, the greater the measuring stick one uses when composing their own words, and the more resources one has in their memory bank to compose something of interest. It's also important for the artist to look outside of their own particular genre, and perhaps rely on these other genres more than their own for the inspiration to do something more interesting than their predecessors. I know that I look at novels more than I look at poems when writing poetry. I look at poems and only see two things: verses that I could never compose, and verses that I would never compose; I don't see things that I could take and twist into something new or unique in poetry, only in other art forms. And if this sounds wrong of me to do, don't forget that TS Eliot said "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different" (and don't think for a second this doesn't apply to everyone else doing anything else. Almost all things new are old things twisted in a way where they become just unrecognizable enough to not draw a straight line back to where the original idea was stolen from).

In a perfect world, technical writers would take a page from poets. How great would it be if the toaster oven's instructions went something like,

"Set the oven to 350
And your chicken will be cooked;
Set the over to 450
and it will be covered in soot."

The rhyming quatrains practically write themselves.

-

I want to take a moment to plug two internet items that give my Google Reader some regularity that I really enjoy. The first is blow at life, the blog of artist Lawrence Yang. I'm a big fan of his washes and the robotic nature of his drawings, and they often make for good desktop backgrounds. The second is Qwantz.com, otherwise known as Dinosaur Comics. This is an internet comic I've followed for a few years now, and it still elicits good laughs from its random and obscure humor.

Now, if only some more friends would post with some consistency so I wouldn't have to rely on the feeds of people I don't know to be entertained...

-

The other night, I spent the night hanging out with John (of The Pursuit) and Sean (no blog to plug). Among the things we did is listen to various forms of metal, hardcore, and post-hardcore. Sean's roommate was also there, and not being a fan any of these genres, was notably unhappy with the music selection. While hanging out, he said something to the effect of not understanding why there was the need for these bands to have screaming. His argument was that there was no purpose to it, that it was done just to be done, whereas a band like Rage Against The Machine screamed to add a dramatic element to particularly poignant lyrics. Now, we all agreed with him, because these bands usually don't have any particular reason to be screaming. We then tried to explain to him that while this is the case, the screaming was absolutely necessary to the music, and that it's either something you "get" or you don't. There isn't a genre I can think where dissonance is such a pivotal part of the musical experience, and if you don't understand why it's there, it's easy to pass it off as ugly, bad, shitty, pointless, whathaveyou.

But anyway, the reason I'm going on like that is because today's music selection from the Island playlist happens to be hardcore and post-hardcore songs.

You Know Whos Seatbelt - The Bled
"You Know Who's Seat Belt" by The Bled
Until I heard this song in the 10th grade, I was not a fan of the genre at all. I still don't quite know what it is about this song that made me realize how much I liked hardcore, but I'm glad it showed me what I was missing. (Same drill with the Glassjaw song, click "Hear Full Song" or whatever it says to hear the actual song).

"St. Matthew Returns To The Womb" by Botch
There are a lot of bands I considered putting on this list, but I realized that all of them are just modern interpretations of Botch. I made the mistake of playing this song too loud once when I was home and subsequently scared all the animals in the house, who all ran outside. An interesting fact: the guitarist of Botch is the lead guitarist for Minus The Bear, who was on the first part of this list!

"Ebolarama" by Every Time I Die
I hated this song the first time I heard it. Now, I can't think of a hardcore song I like more than this one. This video also makes me laugh more than most.

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I think my new favorite place in Boston is the Comm Ave Mall, which is situated just next to Newbury Street. There's something about its large canopy of trees, many bronze statues of dedication (especially the imposing but unmarked one closest to BU's campus), and the abundance of dogs that makes it a great place to take a stroll. Even the crowd of stupid hipsters belting "You're So Last Summer" like it was 2002 can't ruin it.

While I was walking through a couple of days ago, I came up with a couple of super rough poem ideas:

"Someone's been drawing fish in the concrete,
like they poured an aquarium into the street,
and the tentacles of the jellyfish are like
the cracks we jump to avoid the sting"
(I wrote this after I saw an abundance of fish that had been drawn very childishly in wet cement)

"The rivets of the old plaque
bleed iron down the buildings,
time's stain, the rusting
workings of moisture,
looking like hands"

I'm not really happy with any of these, but maybe I'll be able to work them into something.

On Pandas and People

2009-06-12T12:07:00.007-04:00

So, I dreamt that I was a Creationist, and had to argue with someone who believed in evolution that they were wrong. Now, fortunately I've got a pretty solid grip on Genesis, so all the proof I needed was well-established for dream Kevin. And of course I used a bunch of circular arguments and theories that can't be substantiated and effectively nullified the evolutionist's arguments.

But fuck if I didn't wake up really disturbed by this. I am fully and totally a believer in evolution. I find it inconceivable that people can completely disregard the overwhelming evidence that we are indeed the product of billions of years of trial and error. I mean, first of all, the people who believe in a Young Earth (one that's roughly 6000 years old) have to disregard the fact that we have fossil records of homo sapiens that go back at least a quarter million years. They then also have to ignore the fact that there is an extensive fossil record of humaniods that go back more than a million years. These are not in any way, shape, or form ancient monkeys, but our biological ancestors. They disregard the fact that from what we know of the life of stars, that if the universe was only created 6000 years ago, that life on earth would be absolutely impossible, since the sun would in no way be in a form that would allow for life on earth. They disregard the fact that geological wonders like the Grand Canyon take way more than 6000 years to be formed. Most importantly, they disregard the fact that humans would be incapable of living with dinosaurs; the climate of earth necessary to support dinosaurs is far different than what we live in now, and we would not make it very far living with so many apex predators. We're smart creatures, and have managed to effectively conquer our planet, but we also have not had to compete with the sheer volume of mega fauna (and especially predators) that were present in the age of dinosaurs.

Creationists, and not just the Young Earth guys, like to tout the idea of irreducible complexity, or the idea that natural selection could not possibly create the complex structures of life, like DNA or an adaptive immune system. This assumes that the natural world, while able to support extremely intricate and complex macrosystems (ecosystems, food chains, elemental dispersal, heat transfer, galactic movement, and so on) is incapable of fostering intricate and complex microsystems (organs, blood clotting, organ systems, or my personal favorite of the irreducible complexity examples, the eye). Why is it so hard to believe that over the course of billions of years life can develop and fine tune such structures, but it's easy to believe that in the course of 150 years we've gone from having one telephone in the whole world to being able to receive a phone call from a tiny device in your pocket via thousands of satellites orbiting our earth? Why is it so hard to believe that we humans, which have been around for a moment about as long as a sneeze in the history of the universe, are the product of some chimp-man that came from something that walked on four legs that was once a pseudo-fish swimming in some ancient ocean millions of years ago, yet we have no problem with the fact that in just over one hundred years we've gone from flying some glider made of spruce a couple hundred yards to having jets that fly faster than the speed of sound or rockets that take men to the freakin' moon? Given all the accelerated "evolution" of technology that's taken place in the span of less than 200 years, you'd think people would give nature the benefit of the doubt over billions of years (though this doubt is very easy to erase, if people just spend the time reading up on the natural evolutionary processes).

Of course, you'd have to believe the universe has been around that long.

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It's the weekend, so I need to post a truth/revelation, I suppose:
I have been writing poetry for the last 4 years. It has become the most important way for me to express both emotion and creativity. I often think in lines of poetry, find myself writing simple things in prose or plain language poetically, and call out instance of poetry in every day speech. I find that the moments when I am most productive is when I am at moments of crises in my life, such as break ups or moves of location. I think that's because it's when my soul is most disturbed, and thus at it's most outspoken, and poetry just becomes the conduit for its restlessness. I also find that a majority focuses on relationships. This doesn't necessarily mean I focus on my own experiences with them, but rather that I find relationship-y things to be the best source to structure my poetry around. I love writing poetry almost as much as I love reading it, though I prefer to sit down with a big book of poetry than sit down with endless sheets of paper and a pen. One day, I hope to be able to call myself a Poet; in the mean time, I'm happy to call myself a person who writes poetry.

I know I do it a lot, but I figure this is a perfect time to plug my poetry blog, where you can read the first (and sometimes later) drafts of most of what I write, and which just celebrated it's 50th post:
ham-on-rye.blogspot.com

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I love rediscovering music from years ago that manages to get me excited in the same way it got me excited when I actively listened to it. This isn't always the case; while I'll throw on an Alkaline Trio or Ataris song every now and then, it's mostly an exercise of nostalgia. I listen, sing along, air drum a little, maybe pull out the guitar and play along for a bridge, but I just don't get into it like I used to. Recently, though, I've managed to find a few records that have eluded me for many years, records that I owned back in like 8th and 9th grade but either lost or were damaged to the point of unsalvagability and that I have been having a really difficult time finding. They are:

The Anniversary's "Designing a Nervous Breakdown." I listen to this album and see it as the direct predecessor of Motion City Soundtrack's first album, since it's got the whole early 00's pop-punk+synth thing, though I think The Anniversary did it much better.

"All Things Ordinary" (not the song I would have chosen, but the only one I could find. Also eerily similar to this Sick Animation's Band On The Run)

Propagandhi's "Less Talk, More Rock." I rocked this before every soccer game in 8th and 9th grade, because somehow fast, overtly political punk rock was the perfect way to get warmed up for games. This is also the band that led me to discover The Weakerthans, since frontman John K Samson played bass and sang on this record, so this one is an important record for that fact alone. I also recently found out that Propagandhi just released a new album, and that it's actually really good, which is nice for me since majority of the bands I listened to during this time either peaked back then and have fallen to mediocrity or have broken up, like the next band did.

"We Thought Nation-states Were a Bad Idea" (the lyrics were way over my head when I first listened to this song, but it totally kicked ass as a pregame song, plus it had all the cursing a 14 year old boy could want in his music)

Fairweather's entire discography. Part old Saves The Day, part old Further Seems Forever, part old Finch, and all bad ass, this band was definitely one of the better bands that came out in the whole early 00's emo-punk scene. Even though 6 years has passed since they're last release, I still find them more interesting interesting musically than a lot of bands that have come since then.
Since I can't find a video of one of their songs, I'm just going to link you to their Rhapsody page, where you can listen to their whole first album (and my personal favorite)
"If They Move... Kill Them"

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But wait! The music's not over! I haven't even gotten to the tracks for my ongoing playlist!

Today's playlist selection are songs that are very popular to the general public. This might not be the best theme, but it's the only one that I could think of, and it makes sense given the songs.

"Feeling This" by Blink 182
Hands down my favorite Blink 182 song. Actually, it was this song, and consequently the album it's on, that made me a fan of Blink and not just a casual listener. This song has been a perennial summer track for me since it came out.

Gin Blossoms - Hey Jealousy

"Hey Jealousy" by The Gin Blossoms
Easily my favorite song from the 90's, and one I listen to a lot more than you would expect. "If you don't expect too much from me, you might not be let down," while nothing special, is among my favorite lines of any song.

Actually, this would be my favorite song from the 90's, since I forgot this came out in '99. What's not to like about this song? I've always loved how this song is immediately recognizable after hearing only the opening 2 seconds because of its unmistakable riff and guitar tone. I wish I could have embedded the video, which was also unmistakably awesome. Oh well.

Tolerance, round 2

2009-06-11T12:18:00.007-04:00

Things I will always tolerate:

- Lamb. I make a point to avoid eating veal because of where it comes from. I usually make a point of avoiding lamb, with the one exception of when I'm at a Mediterranean restaurant. Unfortunately for the poor lambs, the Greeks and their Mediterranean brethren got something right when they decided to make gyro meat from lamb. I dare say that the lamb gyro trumps the centuries worth of philosophy, the overwhelmingly prevalent mythology, and the Olympics as the Greeks' finest achievement.
- Animal research. This is a convoluted issue for me. My dad has been a research scientist for the past 30 years, working almost exclusively with rats. When I was younger, I used to get into fights with him about it because I thought it was awful that he could do things to the rats. As I've grown older, I've come around to seeing the other side of it. For one, despite what I thought about it, this research has provided me with a very comfortable life, and is something my dad is passionate about, and far be it for me to lambaste him for doing what he loves. Secondly, animal research is of dire importance to my family. My mom has MS, and animal research not only has provided us with the medication needed to reduce the progression of it, but will also provide us with better, more effective ways of treating it with any luck. Also, I think that the people in PETA and those radical animal organizations are nothing better than terrorists. I can't tell you how proud I am of my dad and his colleagues for creating a pro-animal research group (aptly named ProTest) in order to combat the continual fear these scientists must live in because of the hostile actions of these ridiculous people (and I promise you I'm not being over-dramatic. One of my dad's colleagues had his car blown up in front of his house). This all being said, I still feel really bad for the little animals and wish there was a way we didn't have to conduct research in this way.
- Paula Dean's atrocious Southern accent. Southern accents are by far my least favorite accents of the world, and Paula Dean's is almost a caricature of it, but damn she makes the most delicious looking and sounding food I've ever seen, and I would subject myself to days of her voice for just a bite of one of her butter-laden, deep fried plates of joy.
- The embedded smell of smoke in your clothes after a campfire. I don't really like smelling like a chimney, but there are few things that foster the same kind of communal unity like a nice campfire, so if I must become a walking smoke box to reap those benefits, I'll do it.

Things I will never tolerate:
- Unhygienic people. People who begin to give off odors really get me all squeamish.
- Ina Garten. I hate Barefoot Contessa. Hate hate hate. Worst show on Food Network. Just shut up already.
- The way in which I've had to watch my mom's MS progress over the past four years. When I lived at home, it was harder to detect the progression because I was constantly around her, so the minute degradation was not really noticeable. As I've spent more and more time in Boston, though, it's become painfully obvious that it continues to get worse, since every time I go home it becomes more pronounced. It's really the only thing I hate about going home, and I dread it every time. That's why I keep my fingers crossed that research will hopefully find some way to at least stifle its progression sometime in the near future.
- The fact that I can't seem to avoid wasting money on milk, because no matter how fast I drink it, a portion of it always becomes spoiled. I feel condemned to a life of spoiled milk.

Things I didn't used to tolerate, but tolerate now:
- Spiders. I hate spiders. I think they are the scariest creatures on the planet. "Arachnophobia" gave me nightmares for years. I used to be unable to approach them, and so would have to have someone else remove (you know, from the earth) them when they came into my room. I'm still afraid of them, but somehow I've managed to squelch my fear enough to be able to ensure they have a nice Kleenex-induced (I hate how this has to be capitalized, too) death.
- Boston winters. I hate the cold wind of the Charles infiltrating my next and arm holds, making me all sorts of chilly, but I love the winter and I love Boston, so I guess I just have to live with it.
- The question, "So, you want to be a writer/teacher?" when I tell people I got my degree in English. I always felt like this was an ignorant question, because it assumes that every English major naturally either wants to write or teach, neither of which are things I naturally want to do for a living. Sure, I love writing and it would be great getting paid for it, but I don't want to force that to become my profession, because that will kill it for me. Teaching at any level other than the collegiate one has never been something I wanted to do, but over time I've grown to think that teaching high school is by no means the worse option in the world. Maybe my animosity to the question came from the fact that I definitively wanted to do neither; now, since I'm unsure of what exactly I want to do, I find myself softened to the question because both are possible choices and because I have nothing to sling back at the askers.
- V8 juice. Mostly because of bloody marys.

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To finish this lengthy post off, some more of the playlist. Today's theme is songs that made me go, "What the fuck" when I first heard them. These are songs that I was really unsure about liking when I first heard them because I didn't quite grasp what they were doing, but became songs I love after I got them.

"Gentleman Caller" by Cursive
The first half of this song is a pretty shocking. The chorus riff always reminded me of dinosaurs angrily stomping their way across Pangaea, and the verses are downright dissonant. It then opens up to a beautiful melody that greatly contrasts these parts. I think this is one of the most successful examples of music being used to tell the story of the lyrics; the music gives of the emotion behind the lyrics quite strongly and manages to avoid feeling forced or yoked into doing so.

Mu Empire - Glassjaw
"Mu Empire" by Glassjaw
To be honest, I could have put the three opening tracks to "Worship and Tribute" in both this category and on this playlist, but this one always stood out. The heavy post-hardcore opening misleads you from the jazzy bass riff in the verses and the psuedo-alternative choruses, not to mention some sweeping, breathy vocals that are pretty sweet. This one always reminds me of working at Drive-Thru Records and my co-workers holding up all ten fingers every time the bridge starts. To hear the whole song, click on that little button that says "play full song here."

"Are We Really Happy With Who We Are Right Now?" by Moneen
I remember playing this song for the first time for Philip and Ryan, and having them both go, "huh?" when the drums kick in at the first verse, which was the same response I had the first time I heard it. It's a rather chaotic beat, which throws you for a loop, since it starts off pretending to be a pretty standard pop-punk song. The bridge is another place that threw me, since it's highly syncopated. This started my love affair with Moneen, who have demonstrated to me that in the realm of pop-punk, they are a band of consummate technical skill and have become my measuring stick for the talent of all other pop-punk bands. What also amazes me is that the video here does not present a false image of Moneen; they play just as wildly live as they do in this video without the quality of the music itself suffering, something I have yet to see any other band do to this degree.

"Carol, hold my calls"

2009-06-10T18:32:00.005-04:00

Today I got back from a great semi-impromptu trip to Cape Cod. Some things I learned: croquet, while posing as a gentleman's game, is best played while shouting obscenities; Foosball tournaments are a great way to settle what music to play; Justice made a huge mistake by putting their best and worst tracks back to back; moths are nature's little punchlines; and artificially made fart noises are always funny. I'm sure we all got more than our money's worth (which we were all very happily surprised to learn was only a meager $21) of fun, and I would honestly spend every weekend of this summer caravan-ing to different places with the same group of people.

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While on Cape Cod, the subject of favorite animals came up. I don't remember anyone else's, but I realized I can definitively say that penguins are mine. I love penguins. On a purely physical level, they're cute, come in all shapes and sizes, and are funny to watch when they're bobbing around. They like to hang out together, and don't have a problem mingling with other penguin species, unlike other bird species who just can't get along with anyone. Also, emperor penguins are just about the most bad ass animal around. You don't see any other animal spending months threatening to become a Popsicle (it still weirds me out that Popsicle is supposed to be capitalized) just for one stinkin' egg. Honestly, find me a better example of perseverance AND teamwork (since the only way these penguins do it is by bunching up into a tight, constantly moving blob so that they can produce and then preserve precious body heat) operating simultaneously in the animal kingdom. We could learn a lesson from these birds.

I also appreciate penguins because while they're flightless, they've compensated by being able to basically "fly" in the water. There's something sort of poetic about it. Poor ostriches, all they can do is run. Their wings are a farce, really only imitating the taunting feathers of a cabaret dancer. Take an ostriches' wings away, and you still have an ostrich. If you took away a penguins wings, though, well then you'd have a torpedo with a beak and a couple of webbed feet; that's not really a penguin at all. I like the fact that over their evolutionary process they found a way to appropriate a use for their wings if they weren't being used to fly (though you'd think the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandpa of the penguin would be smart enough to realize it's fucking cold in Antarctica and would have used those wings to go some place a little warmer, maybe a place where a drink in a coconut and mini-umbrella would be appropriate). This "finding a way to be useful when there's no apparent usefulness" sits well in my mind.

Speaking of penguins, someone also brought up the fact that our generation might very well be known to later generations for the amount penguins appear in our popular culture, especially in movies. This might seem silly, but consider the following: March of the Penguins, Surfs Up, Happy Feet, Madagascar, Madagascar 2. See also: Linux, winter Coca Cola ads.

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Today I added a couple new albums to my Itunes, and I now have exactly 12500 songs. That translates to 34 days, 1 hour, 30 minutes, and 4 seconds of music. My first thought when I saw this was, "God, who needs that much music?" But then I realized that the obvious answer is, "Hey, I need that much music!" because, well, it's my music. Now, I haven't listened to every album I own, and I have the discographies to some artist that I really don't need to own the discographies of, but I don't know what I would do if I didn't have the amount of music I have. I need to constantly over-saturate myself with a bevy of different artists and styles, and the only way to do that is to continually add to the collection.

Now all I need is an Ipod with a battery that'll last me 34 days.

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Ok, I guess it's time for some more Island Playlist songs. These three songs are from bands that I don't listen to very much anymore but used to be among my favorite bands when I was younger. I couldn't be stuck on an island without a song from each.

"Nose Over Tail" by Alkaline Trio
Even though Goddamnit! is not my favorite Alkaline Trio album, no song ever tops this one for number of listens. "Whatever happened to that silly dream you had? I want to make it real: I'd love to rub your back" is one of my favorite lyrics of any song. The cuteness really defies the logic of the rest of the song, making a perfect paradox.

"Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start" by The Ataris
It's entirely fitting that the Atari code would be the song title of my favorite Ataris song. Youthful optimism at it's most appropriate moment in my life, The Ataris actually served as a great foil to the usually depressing Alkaline Trio. This song was also my first introduction to the Moog synthesizer, so it's got that going for it, too.

"Better Off Dead" by New Found Glory
If you've been keeping up with Armadillo Hotel, then you'll know I've already talked about this song way back in the first post (http://armadillohotel.blogspot.com/2009/04/so-this-is-new-blog.html), so for time's sake, just check that post out again and you'll see why I couldn't leave it off the list.

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Oneword of the day: "alarm"

I slept through the alarm, the house telling us all to get out because of the impending fire that was really just bacon burned too far. The house seemed self-aware, speaking not with the beeps that plague a million kitchens, but with a voice, a human voice that echoed off the hardwood floors.

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I'm thinking the next post will be another exciting round of Tolerance.

Everyone's saying it, but see The Hangover

2009-06-07T12:57:00.005-04:00

Every day now, I find myself growing more and more comfortable with the idea of teaching English abroad. At the same time, there's a feeling of resignation in it. I really want to teach abroad, but the countries that are most readily available are not high on my list of places I want to spend a year. Sure, I may love them and I know the experience would be ridiculous, but it's harder to get excited about when the places are not even in your top twenty.

Then there's also the whole leavingthecountryforayear,
notseeinganyfriendsorfamilyunlesstheycometoyou thing.

It's weird, because I really don't have anything holding me back. My friends will still be here, my family isn't going anywhere, and it'd be the experience of a lifetime, to live in a completely new environment and experience a culture for an entire year. These things are totally worth going for. It's just a matter of finding the courage to leave it all. We'll see if I do.

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I'm in love with the new Third Eye Blind song released. http://josericaurte.com/3eb/DBAW-Radio%20Debut.mp3

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Speaking of music, here are the next three songs on my list. These songs are grouped together because they are the three songs that got me into the whole punk scene when I was way back in 5th grade. I still listen to these songs after 11 years.

"Burn Out" by Green Day
I remember in 4th grade, Matt Group told me that I needed to listen to Green Day, mostly because he liked whatever their first single was (Welcome to Paradise? I don't remember). So I had my dad drive me to target and I bought Dookie. I didn't even care about whatever the single was. As soon as I heard this song I was hooked, and it's still my favorite Green Day song.

"Sugar In Your Gas Tank" by Less Than Jake
In fifth grade, I had a video game called Street Skater, and the soundtrack was a bunch of songs from late 90's punk and ska bands. This song was the first song that played when you started the game, and it is totally responsible for me spending middle school and a good part of high school being a ska kid.

"Superman" by Goldfinger
Goldfinger was my favorite band for the better part of 6 years. I've seen them almost a dozen times live. I own every album they've ever put out. I even waited almost 2 hours after a show to have their tour-only live album signed by the band. This song's to blame.

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I want to take a road trip more than anything right now. It's something I've always wanted to do. I love driving long distances with a purpose, even if it's purposefully purposeless. I like watching the scenery pass through the windows, I like listening to endless amounts of music, I love eating food on the road, and I love making pit stops. If I had a car in Boston, I would round up as many friends as I could fit and just drive in a direction and see where we end up. But, since I'm without wheels, I'm looking at you, Sit On Things writer. Bonnaroo's next weekend and I'd spend the money on tickets in a heartbeat.

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Oneword of the day: "Cards"

the cards soaked up the spilled drinks, shuffling becoming an impossible mess. we played on, though, each hoping to win back the quarters we used, because despite the times, laundry is still expensive.

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High ate us

2009-06-05T13:36:00.005-04:00

I put myself on something of an internet break the last few days. It seemed to me like I was spending too much time trying to take up too much time on it, with little productivity coming out of it. Actually the last week or so has been something of a waste; I've written and read very little, started working on some music but gave up too quickly, and had a million and one other ideas fly around that I passed off for no reason other than boredom. I want to be busy more than anything right now. I had this conversation last night, actually: I'm not doing much despite having all the time to do it because I'm not busy. Because I have so much time I carelessly pass of doing other things for the sake of having time. It's classic waste-management. But enough's enough.

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If you couldn't tell, I think about music. A lot. In fact, I would argue that music surrounds my unoccupied thoughts about 70% of the time. Why bring it up now? Well, two nights ago, as I went to bed listening to my music on shuffle, three of my all-time favorite songs came on right after another. These songs are three of the ones I would take to a desert island and listen to for the rest of my life and be totally satisfied. And then, instead of being happy with hearing these songs and resting my tired little eyes, I stayed up for an hour just thinking about what other songs I'd want to take to a desert island. I tried to stick to fifty songs, and spent all night trying to get it down to that number, but I couldn't do it; I ended up with 65 songs that I would need to have on my island. And so, in keeping with the theme of having regular little blog parts, I've decided to reveal this list three songs at a time (and yes, I know sixty five isn't divisible by three, but I'll make it work. Don't worry). Besides, I've already posted P.O.S.'s "Purexed" which is on the list. So, here are the first three, the ones that played last night in the ordered they played:

"Absinthe Party at the Fly Honey Warehouse" by Minus the Bear
The opening to this song might just be my favorite opening of any song. It's well-paced and is expertly constructed over a rather hypnotic riff that I would love to learn how to play, if only I were good enough to know how to finger tap that well. This song reminds me of a lot of things, but it reminds me most of sophomore year and hanging out with the guys in 1019 and using Minus the Bear as our drinking soundtrack.

"Time Turned Fragile" by Motion City Soundtrack
I've always thought this song was the gem of Commit This To Memory. It's punchy and catchy, with the right amount of snarky hopefulness in the lyrics. But what really gets me is the last two minutes of the song, which is the bread and butter of the whole cd, I think. Like Absinthe Party's opening, it's well-paced and well-built, and is definitely unexpected the first time you hear the song.

"Broken Parachute (alternate version)" by Northstar
Northstar's Pollyana is one of the cd's I've listened to most over the course of my life. It was my high school senior year soundtrack, and I definitely had to buy more than one copy of it. That being said, after I heard this song, I went and checked to see how much I have listened to it compared to any track on that album. As it turns out, I've listened to this song twice as much as the most listened-to track from Pollyanna. I was most shocked by this because I don't even like the original version of the song that much. I always thought it was too fast for it's own good and that the ending was rather weak; both of these points have been addressed in this version.

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Lately my dreams have been vivid to the point where I can remember things like full sentences of written word and whole chunks of dialogue. Last night was no exception. I was visited by a friend who I haven't spoken to in a couple of months. She told me that the best state to be in is the one where even when given a chance to go back and change things you wouldn't (time travel was a real possibility in this dream).

What's weird about this statement is that this isn't the first time I've heard this same idea in a dream. Maybe it's because sometimes I become preoccupied with the past that my subconscious has to tell me to not think about it, or maybe it's because I'm at a place where it's easy to look back at how I've spent my time over the last however many time increments I want to measure and think about how I could have done things differently. For the record, I'm not sitting here actively wishing I could go back and redo things. I don't bother myself with that sort of misconstrued wishful thinking. It's a waste of time to think about the past in terms of how you'd change it. It's just another way of saying you regret it, and if there's one thing I don't do, it's waste my time with regrets. What's the point? All regrets to is keep your mind preoccupied with the things you can't change, rather than letting you focus on how you're going to progress forward and maybe change things you can change.

Egh, that got really wax-philosophical in a trite way. Sorry. Basically, it was a weird if not appropriate dream, mostly because I've had it before and I remember it so vividly.

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Not only is it really difficult to type with a jammed index finger, but it's also really annoying how Brookline manages to make everything dusty the day after I clean my room. How is it possible for one place to have so much dust? It doesn't make any sense.

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I realize that last week I never bothered posting a truth/revelation. Here's the one for this week.

Dinosaurs and cowboy movies were two of the most influential things to me when I was young. I firmly believe that my early love of dinosaurs is what sparked my fascination with the natural world, especially animals, and that cowboy movies gave me my appreciation for myth. I could name almost any dinosaur I saw a picture of by the time I was like, 6, and I used to wear cowboy boots every day, not to mention that I frequently donned a cowboy hat. Apparently, my parents have a slew of pictures of me dressed as a cowboy, complete with six shooter holster and rifle. I spent more time than I can remember watching Jurassic Park and Silverado, two movies that are still among my favorites.

Sorry, that's not really a great one. I started writing something about my mom and her MS, but it just got too depressing, and I didn't want to start making this blog a downer.

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Oneword of the day: drip

You are the drip of dreams into waking moments. Nothing real ever feels quite real, but really I'm liking it quite fine. If this is the means to dreams, then dreams are not ours to keep in sleep.

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I feel like this post kind of sucks.

2009-06-01T12:30:00.003-04:00

I woke up from a strange dream where I was helping Hank Hill plan a forest to allow Bigfoot to live in Arlen. Hank and Bigfoot apparently are close. Most of my help came in the form of writing out the proper forms, actually. I remember a little bit of a letter I was required to write to the Mayor:

"It has come to our attention that Arlen is grossly underforested. Forests are an essential part of our ecosystem, providing habitats for wildlife both seen and unseen, beautifying the surrounding area, and giving us more air. Depriving us of this new air is like depriving the citizens of Arlen from using regular flow toilets."

I have come to the conclusion that dream writing is an odd thing, but I do enjoy waking up and having words already in my head.

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This morning was one of those mornings where you wake up and really have no motivation to do anything. I stayed in bed for an hour after I work up just for the hell of it. Boston's weather continues to be unpredictable, meaning it's currently sunny but in the low sixties with a breeze that makes it a bit chilly. Not fun. The current job situation continues to be a source of endless frustration and really takes the win out of your sails when you realize absolutely nothing is coming from this search.

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I think that perhaps something more believable than the idea of soulmates is the idea that there are people who are simply meant to be in your life. This, to me, makes far more sense. The manner in which your relationship with them manifests doesn't have to be in the context of a relationship (which simply adds an incredible amount of pressure to both find and maintain the relationship) but can be whatever it wants to be. These people seem to come into your life rather effortlessly and stay around rather effortlessly. These are the people that you can not talk to for very long periods of time and then once you do it feels natural, maybe with the semblance of nothing changing, even though time always changes things, even the rocks that look no different over decades.

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In other news, I hit my goal of getting 14 followers by June 1st.

Awesome. I guess.

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I, like this post, feel a bit aimless.

"His room is pretty cool though, and he's clearly made the most of it"

2009-05-29T14:00:00.005-04:00

Summer of dreams in full effect. It's a bit exhausting, but days don't get much better when their filled with narrated Harry Potter, Bananagrams, new guitars, pho and Vietnamese iced coffee, 2 for 1 burgers and appetizers, Clone High, wine tastings and subsequent drinkings, trivia and using your brain to pay for meals, riddles and puzzles everywhere you go, and the general aura of post-collegiate jobless camaraderie. The only thing to bring us down is episodes of Salute Your Shorts, which, contrary to the popular collegiate mythology, is horrible show with very little justifying this weird mystical nostalgia we have about it.

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Playing around on synths, drum machines, and vocoders at Guitar Center makes me sure that I need to buy these things and start creating music more than my meager attempts have been. I find myself playing electronic music most times of the day, with little intermissions of odd hardcore bands and the occasional Blink song.

Some of the listening includes: Styrofoam, BT, Dntel, Lali Puna, The Album Leaf, Justice, Toxic Avenger, Boards of Canada, Ulrich Schnauss, and even some Thrice, who've written a song I've spent a lot of time trying to deconstruct in Reason because the sounds are just that good.

Not the best audio quality to hear it, but oh well.

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All that being said, I'm kind of liking the new Taking Back Sunday album. Nothing special, just straight forward rock stuff, which is always a disappointment in the light of TAYF, but it's not 2002 anymore, and summer always needs some good rock, I suppose.

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A couple of friends had the brilliant idea of doing something creative every day, in order to make sure that while they are jobless they are not aimless. I love the idea, and will be participating. Results will be tracked here, of course. In typical fashion, my first creation can be found at:

ham-on-rye.blogspot.com

So go there and check it out. Follow it if you'd like, too.

I got a speech to make, followed by a big parade.

2009-05-25T12:23:00.004-04:00

"Don't break too many hearts,
Don't take too many arrows in the chest.
Cry comfortably, let us all know what you're thinking.
Is there a gesture I could use
To clearly express I'm at another loss for words?"

These lines, as well as the title of this blog, are some of my favorite opening lines from one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands: "Brickwall Views" by The Lawrence Arms. I've been listening to this song on repeat the last couple of days. It's not entirely appropriate to anything I'm thinking or feeling, but something about the tone of it fits really well.

Oh boy! This is an excuse to embed! Suckers!

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I had a dream last night in which I was given 2 hours to write an eight page short story. I don't remember really anything of it, but I do remember my opening sentences. Keep in mind, these were written in a dream:

"I was sitting at the corner cafe, sipping coffee, scalding mouth. The waitress, 45 black overworked grandma of 2, came by to collect tips from adjacent tables, which only amounted to about 3 dollars. I doodled something on the ringed napkin, something I wanted to keep, which you snatched and used to spit out your gum when you finally arrived, a half hour late. 'What'd you get me?' you asked. I told you nothing. Amusingly disappointed, joking I assumed, you went in and returned with over-sweetened cappuccino, a transgression I'm sure many pure-blood Italians would be mad about."

Interesting that I would write it in first person narrating it to someone in the second person. I'll have to keep this in mind.

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Speaking of dreams, I've been having a lot about ex-girlfriends. Not about the most immediate and predictable one, but of exes from years and years ago. Early high school and the like. And they're not dreams about anything related to the relationship at all. They take place at public places and involve weird catching up conversations with nothing even implicating there was even a relationship at all. It's just catching up on about 6 or 7 years of time that exists between the fictive now and the last moment I actually spoke to them. It's a weird thing, when people from a relatively distant past come up like this. Do you read into it and believe it means something? Or is it just a dream, the random thoughts of an active mind that has no realistic filter on it? I tend to side with the latter, though the repeating occurrences of these dreams push me to the ways of the former. Sometimes.

The past often manifests itself in bizarre ways, especially when futures change in ways that are unexpected. This is not a bad thing.

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Oneword of the day: "whirl"

"the whirl of a merry-go-round, the whirl of the children's sparklers, the whirl of a pretty girl dress. these things come with the weather."

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There's a great amount of irony present in the fact that today is Memorial Day and that there are reports of North Korea testing Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons underground. Also, the odd coincidence of me reading a book that speaks of the dangers of these weapons to the human race, and my own musing on it yesterday, and now this news has me a little unnerved in a way that news usually doesn't affect me. North Korea certainly has us by the balls in a way which is far more threatening than Middle Eastern terrorists (not at all an attempt to diminish their threat to us). These weapons seem more like the bargaining tool of a collapsing country than an actual threat to our safety, but the steaks are much higher than car bombs and suicide bombers. I don't mean to be pessimistic. It's just for once, I'm actually a bit shaken by something in the constant stream of tragedy that is the media.

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I just realized that I said "steak" instead of "stake" in the last section. I think this is a Freudian slip that came about because last night we talked about getting steaks to grill today for Memorial Day. I like it, and I'm leaving it.

Some family thoughts, some library thoughts

2009-05-23T11:08:00.008-04:00

I got home from being on Martha's Vineyard with my family a couple of days ago (my family here being my mom, dad, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin, and cousin's gf). While we were there, my brother said something to the effect of, "I'm really glad we're all here, but I'm also sad, because I realized that this is probably the last time all of us are going to go on vacation together" (a little history: the seven of us have gone on family vacations for as long as I can remember). It didn't dawn on me until he said it, but he was absolutely right. My cousin in going to Georgia, I'm staying in Boston, my brother will probably spend more time in Arizona; in short, the next time we're probably all together will probably be a wedding, or some far off vacation/reunion. And I got sad, too. I love my family more than anything, and I love the vacations we've taken over the last 20 years. I whole-heartedly believe that there are very few families in the world that have as much fun as we do on vacation. But this is what happens. Time passes, people age, lives that once shared the same trajectory take their own separate paths. It would be wrong to say that this is unfortunate. The whole purpose of growing up is to eventually separate from your family with the eventual goal to start your own. But it is something to be upset about when you realize how many good memories are tied up in that past. I don't know if I would extend time to allow us more time to do these things, because I'm not sure I would want to defy the way life leads us, but I certainly came home feeling a bit down-trodden from my brother's statement.

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I guess this would be a good place to do my usual truth/revelation: My brother and I have had a very tumultuous relationship, and it was only when I went to college did we begin to have an actual relationship. Growing up, we never got along. In fact, when I was in high school, the only time we talked was when we had family meals and when we had to go places with our family. Other than those times, we avoided each other for the most part, and the only times that we ever spoke was usually to argue. Though it makes me sad sometimes that we were never close when we lived together, I am happy that we are continually becoming closer, because I would like to be close with him. It truly is an instance of needing to get away from the person to realize how important they are to you.

Also, one of my favorite things about going home is going to all-you-can-eat sushi with my brother. It's easily one of my favorite meals to eat. It is something that will always be special to me, and hopefully will become a tradition we keep as we grow older.

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So, as I mentioned in my last post, I just finished reading "The Varieties of Scientific Experience" by Carl Sagan. He's something of an astronomer/philosopher, and is well-respected in both areas. Among the brilliant things he says in the book, he made two very similar points: one, that extinction is the rule to life and that survival is the exception; and two, that nothing is the rule to our universe and that something is the exception. These are shockingly simplistic, but have overwhelming implications. It's clear that survival, on the time line of life, is not the standard. If that were true, we'd be living with dinosaurs and trilobites still. Granted, the dinosaurs were wiped out by a catastrophic event, but still, their survival to our time period would be an astounding achievement in longevity. Though we live in a world with a vast amount of biodiversity, and are still discovering new species all the time, this is chump change compared to the amount of species that have lived before us. As Jack's pithy inner monologue puts it: "On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero." And for a vast majority of life, that point has been reached. Sagan is quick to point out that we as a species are mere infants in the evolutionary scheme of things. We've only been around for about a million years, give or take. Not that long. And the sad thing about it all is that we're at this weird cusp of time where we're fully capable of ending our own evolutionary future through means outside of nature. We don't need some catastrophic event like a meteor, we don't need a greater apex predator to push us to the brink of survival (a bigger fish in an ever diminishing pond, if you will), we don't even need pandemics ala 28 Days Later or Terminator (technology might possibly be the pandemic of the 21st century... think about it). We already have the tools to extinction; we used them on the Japanese 60 some odd years ago. We are, as far as we know, the only species in the history of the universe who has the capability of bringing about extinction unnaturally. That's fucked up.

The second quote is also easily proven. We prove it every time we look up at those little points of ancient light we call stars. They're swimming in a giant black well of nothingness: space is nothing (you can argue dark matter blah blah blah, but that's anti-matter, which is the opposite of matter, which is something, so is nothing anyway), the stars are the little straining bits of something trying to make themselves known. It's a bit daunting to think about how much nothing there is. But this nothing/something idea isn't just limited to the composition of our universe. Think about the cycle of our lives. We are born with nothing, literally, and our whole lives becomes this constant accumulation of somethings: speech, coordination, clothes, toys, friends, siblings and relatives, morals and ethics, vices, a degree or two, jobs, cars, loans, spouses, our own little nothings who will repeat this process, social security checks (maybe), medications, a will, until eventually we end up with nothing again. We are taught, both explicitly and implicitly, that the goal of life is to amass as much somethings as possible, that somethings are always better than nothings, and that more somethings equal more satisfaction. Of course there's the counter culture that champions a return to nothing, a view point shared by our Eastern brethren, and a lot of people listen to this, but most don't. I think we're taught this idea of something because on some subconscious level that is connected with the universe, we know that we are exceptions to the universe, that we are these little insignificant somethings that have sprung up in a big bad nothing, and that because we've been privileged with this exception that we must try to counteract the rule as much as possible. We attempt to build something to combat nothing, to prove that even exceptions are worth more than being just exceptions. This is what has shaped humanity's legacy: our attempts to not fall quietly back into nothingness. Of course, to go back to my first point, we now have the ability to obliterate ourselves back to nothingness, so we're really just a walking contradiction at this point. What's a person to do?

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This quote from Mr. Sagan is one more thing I've been mulling over:

"Some 5 or 6 or 7 billion years from now, the Sun will become a red giant star and will engulf the orbits of Mercury and Venus and probably the Earth. The Earth then would be inside the Sun, and some of the problems that face us on this particular day will appear, by comparison, modest. On the other hand, since it is 5,000 or more million years away, it is not our most pressing problem. But it is something to bear in mind. It has theological implications."

He talks about those implications, but I'm still trying to figure out how much is implied in it. Something to think about, for sure.

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I finally got the tattoo I mentioned earlier. It was not what I originally was thinking of getting when I first mentioned it. Much like my first tattoo, it was something that came to me much like a vision, and it felt certain and right. As much as I may not like Los Angeles (my hometown), I still love California, and will always be a Californian. That's something that no amount of East coasting will remove. I realized this over the last few months. I think I tried to deny my Western roots for the past few years, and now I've come to realize just how much I should embrace them, even if I never return to them geographically.