Things I haven’t outgrown:

This will be a painfully incomplete list. I’m very sleepy, and have been spending a rapturously pleasant day in Atlanta with my great friends Cat and Michael. Cat told me I haven’t kept up my promise to update like I said I would. I’m working on it.

Anyhow, listening to the really bad college radio on the way home tonight, we heard some really bad poetry. That got me thinking. I was thinking that I’ve sort of outgrown liking poetry, it’s just not for me anymore. Anyhow, some things that I haven’t outgrown at all-

-feeling like a kid on summer vacation whenever I have some free time.

-finding mirth in immaturity.

As we were riding around the city, my friends introduced me to the “in my pants” game, wherein one adds the previously mentioned phrase to the end of any signs seen in passing. The results are juvenile and silly, but quite fun. My personal high point in the game was this find: “potential multi-family development site in my pants”, perfect. And perfectly immature.

I may never grow up.

Stealing another post idea.

The iTunes meme is going around, so who am I not to do it?

Here’s my iTunes data-

 Total length-

7733, 22.3 days, 31.91 GB

First and last songs (by title)

(A) by mewithoutyou

!!!!!! by The Roots 

Shortest and longest songs-

Untitled by Pete Yorn, 0:04

Piano Concerto No. 1 by Chopin, 40:01

First and last albums (by title)-

Abbey Road by The Beatles

( ) by Sigur Ros

First and last artists- 

A. Armada

Zwan

Top 5 most played songs- 

The Professor Burns Vegas by Cinemechanica
Killed By An Angel by Sunny Day Real Estate
Fake Palindromes by Andrew Bird
Castling by Lovedrug
Sunday After You by Kenna

Search for the following words. How many songs show up?

Sex: 24
Death:  43
Love:  316
You:  777
Home:  46
Boy:  158
Girl: 75

First five songs that come up on Party Shuffle

Four by Miles Davis

In The Flesh by Pink Floyd

Still Crazy After All These Years by Paul Simon

On Your Side by Pete Yorn

Roses From My Friends by Ben Harper

So that’s that. Feel free to join in on the copycat fun.

Be well!

Absentee

Ok, so I’ve been something of a non-entity here for a few weeks. Sorry about that. My internet presence has been proliferating again (check the new iampolylithic for me and Taylor’s link-driven blog co-op). Anyhow, with the advent of that, as well as the end of Whiskerino (sad, sort of felt like the end of summer camp), I’m thinking that this place will be re-attended to with a more content driven focus. Time will tell. In the meantime, be well, and I’ll see you around.

Happy Friday

Hey Hey Hey. Friday is here.  There is an obscene amount of snow on the ground at the moment -at least where I’m at anyhow. To celebrate the weekend, here’s a little excerpt from an essay I really enjoyed. First the set-up. This essay is in a larger collection known as The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007, a book given to me by my brother. Anyhow the essay itself is called “All Aboard the Bloated Boat: Arguments in Favor of Barry Bonds” by Lee Klein. Without any further introduction, the excerpt:

“…I offer some final thoughts about transcendence in a freaked-out world, a world in which joys as simple as the home run, the corncob, and the tomato are tainted. Why do we question the long ball more than international difficulties caused by an out-of-control addiction to oil that makes us a sedentary society that drives to fast-food chains and then wants pharmaceutical companies to offer obesity pills that don’t make us crap our pants? Why do we holler about some naturally gifted, hard-working athlete’s semi-unnatural ability to hit a baseball hundreds of feet over a fence when a simple foot would do? how might one transcend the hypocrisy of booing Bonds when his homers are no more bloated than most everything else?”

It’s a very entertaining and thought provoking essay in a book that’s similarly entertaining.

Happy Fridays all around.

Rambo- by the numbers

I came across this chart via Yewknee. I had to pass it on; it’s fantastic-

A few things-

First of all, I just walked to lunch and back and my beard froze during the journey. Literally, it froze. The areas around my mouth were covered in ice from my breath. That’s just taking things to an absurd new low. Perhaps I should be expecting this sort of thing when it’s a reported -4 degrees out. Geez. This is just out of control. In further cold weather madness, some friends and I attempted some midnight sledding last night which lasted approximately 5 minutes before we were all too cold and went back to my house for an evening of Rock Band and hot chocolate instead; which was also fun.

Moving on, I ran across this:

on PostSecret the other day and I have to say that I thought it was really profound. It just reminds me again of all the crap that people who are trying to live out a genuine faith are up against. Sometimes I feel like Christianity is its own worst enemy- always shooting itself in the foot with cheesy, absurdist, separationist, and inane actions and statements. I wish I could say to everybody on the outside “I’m sorry. We’re not all like that.”

It sort of reminds me of Dave Bazan’s song Selling Advertising -which he says is written about music critics (specifically those on pitchforkmedia.com)- I can’t help feeling that it’s a potent commentary on the state religion today. So many people are just concerned with marketing a set of morals and “selling the faith” that there’s no true focus on an actual faith or on the deeper and more loving aspects of it. Frustrating.

Lastly, and I feel that I may be doing it a disservice by merely tagging this on the end of this post rather than writing it up separately, but in light of MLK day, I’ll go for it anyhow. I can’t help but feel extremely disappointed in the state of race relations today in the states. I guess I’ve always wanted to believe that we’re over it, and that it’s all okay now, but that is so clearly not the case. Not just here in the U.S., but the world over. If you get a chance, watch a movie called “The Color of Fear“, it’s a powerful film that seems even more potent now than when it was first made nearly 20 years ago. I can’t help but feel hopeless sometimes when I think about it, but I think now more than ever, we have the potential to really make a change. That change will be painful, and hard, but it’s necessary.

If you haven’t heard the Bloc Party song “Where is home” it’s another potent reminder of the sad state of imbalance in our world. It’s heartbreaking chorus of “In every headline we are reminded that this is not home for us. Where is it? Where is home?” will haunt you when you think about it. And I think that maybe we should think about it.

I promise something lighter for next time! I just had somethings rolling around in my head for quite a while and it seemed like a good time to put them down.

Be well!

Kind of Blu

Blu is one of my favorite artists. I love what he does on walls, on paper, and everything else.

Check out his site here.

Check out his blog here.

And check out an awesome wall animation of his below:

Hilarity.

I stumbled across this picture the other day and couldn’t stop laughing. It still cracks me up. Enjoy:

Colbert: the “Warrior-Poet” is back!

I’m very excited about this. And while it’ll be great when the writers return to the show, I think the last two days have shown that Mr. Colbert is indeed a performer extraordinaire. Even without written segments like “The Word”, the Colbert Report is still hilarious, and doesn’t seem to be hampered at all by the lack of a staff.

Well played, sir. Well played.

An Open Letter to the Tools in Maroon 5

Dear guys,

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve tried to be less critical of others. So it is somewhat difficult for me to write this, but I feel that it must be said. Here it is-

Stop inflicting your crappy music on the world. Please.

Is that not descriptive enough? Fine. I’ll try and explain- first of all, it doesn’t matter how many times you arpeggiate major9 chords, it won’t be original. Your current radio release (Won’t Go Home Without You, I think), is a blatant rip-off of The Police; and while it’s painfully obvious to the whole world that your lead tool, er, I mean “singer”, is not Sting, his refusal to sing in anything except his laughably feeble, nasally falsetto makes me think that he may not be aware of this. I get the distinct feeling from Mr. Levine’s repeated attempts to perform vocal runs and other Mariah-esque effluvia that he is sorely over-estimating his vocal prowess. I guess I was okay with it when he was just a really bad Justin Timberlake impersonator (albeit one who can’t dance or sing) but when all of you guys start encouraging him with these limping imitations of The Police, it’s really just a travesty.

Further -and I realize that this has nothing to do with your music- but somebody really should let that guy with the Foghat hairdo know that the long hair and straight bangs look went the way of the buffalo along with people who listened to Kenny Loggins and those “Bad Boy” truck decals. Honestly, most people with haircuts like that end up here. Seriously man, kill the window sash on your brow. Not cool, man, not cool.

So please, just stop guys. Really.

Thanks in advance. I’ll be wishing you all the best of luck in your careers as panelist on VH1’s nostalgia clip shows.

-Jason