start em young

Just flipped on the TV just in time to catch a commercial for a 14 year old pop star's DVD. Her name?

Hannah Montana

Good one, publicist. With that stage name, she'll transition to the porn industry with no problem when she turns 18.

Simple solution

Hey you! The week got you down? Well then put down that TPS report, tell the client you WILL NOT make the logo bigger, get out of the cube, take off that ridiculous blue shirt and those uncomfortable pumps, send the kids off to summer camp, go outside and run barefoot(just make sure to apply plenty of sunscreen because it’s HOT out there) and whatever you do, turn this song up to eleven! Because it’s FRIIIIDDAAYYYY !

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Simple pleasures

There is nothing I love more than when simple occurances in life that we usually ignore are presented in interesting ways. This is a video from a side project of some of the Sigur Ros members called Riceboy Sleeps. It's absolutely entrancing.

Try to get some rest.

I wrote this post on MOG the other day and liked it so much I thought I would repost it here as well.

There are moments where angels come into our lives.

About a little over a year ago, one came into mine. It was a time of turmoil and personal grief. I was watching my mother slowly lose her battle to cancer and at the same time dealing with the aftermath of a long-term stifling, relationship. She came in out of nowhere as they usually do when one is not expecting. One night early on, as we IM'd back and forth, sensing my pain, she sent me this song by the Summer Lawns. I wept. But then felt a sense of peace come over me that things were going to be okay regardless. That angel and I went on to have one of those Icarus-like relationships that flies so close to the sun, that you know there is now way it could last. One of those short term flings that kick starts the senses to unimaginable levels. And then a few months in, as abruptly as she entered, she flew away. As angels usually do. I didn't give chase because deep down I knew she was not mine. That she had other places to go. So I stayed back and cherished the gift she left me. Hope.

So now every once and a while, on those quiet nights where memories float through the air like whispers, I turn this song on, smile back on tender memories and hope for another chance that an angel will cross my door step.

I hope you enjoy "Piano Song" by the Summer Lawns as much as I did.

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boing boing boing

My mind is a bouncing piece of silly putty today. Flying in every direction but the one I should be going. What's the dog doing? What are my friends doing? I wish I was in the mountains. I should paint more or create a manifesto. Oh gosh, my boss has a Celine Dion songbook! I really shouldn't eat that chocolate donut but oh, so delicious. I should grow a beard back but, damn, it's almost July. Sometimes Conor Oberst sounds like goatboy. There are't that many attractive people on MARTA. SO much that I think average looking girls get a 3-5 point boost in the 1-10 scale due to the contrast. I should quit drinking coffee. I wish they would bring back the Muppet Show. Nevermind. They'd dumb it down for the Lohan crowd.

focus.

focus.

focus.

bugger…hey look! something shiny!

Elizabeth v. Ann: the smackdown

My respect for Elizabeth Edwards just went through the roof. Ann Coulter is in my opinion, a perfect representation of everything that is wrong with the state of American politics, particularly the self righteous right wing side. Ms. Edwards eloquently calls her out on her tactics. It baffles me how people continue to pay to read or hear her pompous, mean spirited drivel.

Reading between the lines

“One of the only things that we are guaranteed in life is that everyone that we love will be taken away from us.”

When I saw those words on the page my heart skipped a beat. I quickly closed the book and shoved it far down in my bag. Damn you Dave Eggers. Why did I have to read this now? A wave of emotion started in my feet and rushed towards my eyes. I had to hold it together. I was alone in a hospital waiting room full of strangers. I was freaking out inside. In that one sentence two years worth of fears and ghosts were released inside my head.

That happened around the end of last month month. Dad was in the hospital undergoing cancer surgery. My sister couldn’t make it down from NY for this surgery so I was the sole family representative. After having gone through the death of my mother to cancer two years ago, this was an all too familiar experience. Not one I had expected so soon. That line from the book, And You Shall Know Our Velocity, would continue to haunt me for next month. So much that it would cause me to put much of my personal life on hold for a month in order to regain my equilibrium and regroup.

My first reaction was in a negative way. Obviously I hid. I even refused to touch the book for at least a couple weeks. Of course it is not something I didn’t know. Of course everyone dies. But the context and location of the message made the reality seem as close as it had ever been to me. The possibility that I could be alone so soon in regards to being without the two people that we all grow up thinking are invincible.

For the next few weeks I went to work, dialed in, came home and just thought. Running every bit of my life through my head. About all the times I had taken the chance to love only to have it taken painfully away. Be it past relationships or my past with my mom and dad. I took everything apart. Put it back together. Reasoned with it. Prayed. For a while I felt like I felt like i could sink no lower.

Until the week before last. I woke up one Wednesday and there was a peace in my head. A peace I had not had in a while. The answer was suddenly clear. That quote was not a beacon of hopelessness but a beacon of setting me free. Because once you realize that it is all temporary then it gives you all the more reason to grab on to what you have now. To not hide from experiences in life and with others in fear of being hurt. Which is, once I gained the courage to open the book back up, what happened to the hero of the story as he traveled the world with the loss of his good friend running through his head. He learned to live.

So for the past week I have felt lighter. Passions that had gone numb are slowly coming back. I’m am falling back in love with design. Reconnecting with friends. Finding the will to create again. Dad is recovering nicely from his surgery. Things seem to be coming back together. WHich brings me to close on a passage my mother kept hanging up in our house. One that I had seen every day but never taken the time to truly consider until now:

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not very Shag-tastic at all.

If there is one dance that I wish would be taken off the face of the earth, it is the Shag. Popularized in the 1940’s by beach music loving fraternity kids in the Carolinas, it is in many ways the bastard stepchild of swing dancing and the not too distant cousin of country line dancing. But more importantly, shagging may be one of the primary reasons that black people make fun of the way white people dance and a large cause of bar fights. Here are other reasons of my aversion to the dance:

1)Shagging is the IED of dancing.

You never know when it is going to break out. And it is indeed explosive. You could be in a packed bar with not an iota of room and if Brown Eyed Girl comes on the speakers, there will always be at least three couples in the room that decide that there could be no perfect place to shag than in the inches of free space which they occupy. And we all know what comes next: A Chip and Mitsi buzzsaw, sending everyone in a 10 foot radius and their beers in disarray.

2)Shagging has no conscience.

Once Chip and Mitsi return from their pastel-laden, erotic, caucasion spinfest, they will almost always give no acknowledgement to the destruction which they have left in their wake. At best, Chip will brush his frop(mop haircut preferred by most current and 1-5 years removed Southern fraternity guys) to the side, glance around, and give the person closest a curt,” What the fuck are you looking at?” or my personal favorite, the silent blue blood “eat shit” smirk.

3) Shagging acknowledges no musical style or taste.

Certain people will find a way to shag to ANY form of music. Case in point, last night at a local bar festival. Band playing Metallica? Shag faster with the occasional devil horns hand gesture added in. Tommy Tutone? Use more of a new wave skip to your shag. I have even seen the occasional indie rock show shag. I wondered how they stumbled in there. It was hilarious. You would have thought from the look on some of the local indie crowd’s faces that the couple had drawn lewd doodles on a Ben Gibbard portrait.

4. Shagging is the equilavent of shaking your drunk girlfriend or prospective hookup up like a beer can.

First of all let me say that despite my despise for the shag, there seem to be a wide array of girls of all types that love it. I even admit have even performed the dance(begrudgingly) to humor a girl or two in my past. But I don’t really get why they like it, other than to possibly reclaim that odd sense of euphoria one got as a kid when they spun in circles in the backyard until they got dizzy, fell down and in some cases yarfed. But back to the main point, in almost every case of the rowdy bar, shag induced IED explosion, Mitsi is almost always found later, as you leave the bar, either being drug comatose by Chip out the door or sitting on the asphalt in the parking lot with her head buried between her legs as her friends chatter away on cellphones circled around her. So if you think of it, the shag as a pick up form is much like playing russian roulette. While it may pay off and create the perfect rush to get her a little closer to ones bedroom, there is a good chance the wrong chamber loads and good ole Chip is now the proud owner of a projectile launcher for the night.

Quote of the Day

"Destroying human lives in hopes to save human lives is not ethical." - President George Bush

Come on Georgie! Will you never stop sticking that shoe in your mouth? It must be quite flavorful. This is too easy. Refer to the contradiction blog.

What happened to the family house?

Since I started taking MARTA to work a few days out of the week I have had to enjoy a three quarter mile hike to my place of work. Of which most of it is spent walking through the bustling new neighborhoods of Brookhaven. Each day as I slog through the June heat, I am taken back with the sheer size of which the suburban house has taken on. In place of the modest ranch with the front porch and the nice back yard, has been placed imposing 3 story brick and stone monoliths. Gone are the back yards because the house has taken up all that room. From a walkers perspective, you almost feel like a dwarf walking through a forest of angry giants. The welcome mat has been replaced with "Go the fuck away!". Sometimes these houses remind me of turtle shells in how if a person walks down the street, instead of waving and saying hello, the occupants duck back inside.

Which makes me wonder why it has come to this. Why have our homes become fortresses of defense instead of welcoming beacons to our fellow neighbors where community is formed? Is it because of our current society of fear? Where 24 hour news and even our authority figures seem to delight in scaring the shit out of us like a demented uncle? Or is it Keeping up with the Joneses 2.0? A aggressive belief by a society with more disposible income than ever before that one must continue to "one up" the neighbor in order to polish frail egos by buying bigger, shinier, faster?