for posting's sake

“We are passionate about ending the wars overseas, immigrant rights, protecting working families, and combating hunger and homelessness in L.A.  We want to present our fans the opportunity to get informed and get involved while we rock them senseless.” – Tom Morello, Rage Against the Machine.


It's been a minute since I rambled on about something, so I guess this post is for the sake of regularity or something. Two weeks from now I'll be visiting Los Angeles, to attend a concert that could be epic.

So maybe when I get back I'll have something interesting to write about. That means I'll be posting my very own pictures, and not those that I find on google images, like this one:

That's about it for now. Oh, I'll also say that coming up in October my little brother and I are going to Boston to help our other brother move down to North Carolina. That trip should bring some stories and additional pictures.

the plague

My sister is visiting from Florida with her kidweeds and they have brought the plague with them. Or it may have come from Boston, as my brother's daughter was the first to fall ill, but they left last week. It's the Florida kids that are perpetuating death in the household. Everything that is in common space has been coughed on by one or both of the children at least 40 times. Now my dad has fallen ill. He returned from the hospital today with a sore spot on his nalgas where he received an injection of antibiotics to combat the pneumonia he's contracted. There are currently 8 people in the house, and the plague has now affected 4 of them, with a 5th starting to feel some uneasy symptoms. I am happy to have now finished my semester, and, although I'd rather not catch whatever respiratory virus is prevailing, I now have time for it. Reason number 52 to not have children: the Plague.

this was my favorite google image result for "the plague".

a short story about guitars, mystery and directions

My dad uses Bing.

My little brother called the other day and needed help finding an address. My dad had his laptop open and proceeded to search for maps on Bing. He asked if he should look for MapQuest. I said, "Dad, go to www.google.com", and his reply was, "I like Bing". So I took over, or at least I tried to. "Is this a browser Dad, are you even online? Oh, I see, it's MSN or something. Lets close this puupy. The only other browser you have is IE? I guess that's better than whatever the hell was open before. Ok, google. Geez. What's the address little brother? See, Dad, just type in the address and hit enter. Bam, there's the map, top search."

Thanks, Google, for your constant expansion of global domination. "Look, Dad, you can even see a picture of the house he's going to." Thanks again, Google.

I wish I could have the working Les Paul google guitar here for your entertainment, but I just don't think that's possible. So feel free to take a few minutes to spend some time on google and play it a bit here. Or you can just click the photo. I linked 'em both. Yay!

I should be working on my homework

But instead I'm checking out music on youtube. I like this one.

The semester ends on Friday, and I've finished up all my classes already except for Intro to Hospitality. I have 2 papers to write and 4 chapters of review questions to answer/type up. It's easy to find excuses, and I'll say number 1 are the kidweeds. My sister is in town with her kids, and her 5 yr old and 2 yr old share my office with me as their toy room. I sat down here intending to do my homework, but they're just so distracting with their playing and their whining and banging on things and causing trouble. I read an article in Scientific American that talked about a study on people doing math problems and found their performance was consistently worse when they listened on their headphones to children whining compared to other annoying noises like table-saws. So I'll continue to try to ignore the chaos and listen to more music.
I like this one, too:

and on that note, Cafe Tacuba sings other songs:

Did you see Reggie Watts on Conan last night? This one's from a while back. Last nights was equally strangely entertaining. Yay Reggie Watts.

and now that we're into the strangely entertaining, how about Beck's weirdness?

that's it for today kids. I hope nobody with rights to these videos gets mad that my for-my-own-entertainment blog has them posted. Peace.

Super 8

Not the motel chain. My cousin, my brother, his friend and I went to see Super 8 last week. My cousin was apprehensive, not wanting to spend full-price on a movie, preferring to go to the cheap theater and watch Rio. We talked him out of it through democracy. Sorry dude, 3 to 1 means we're going to a good movie. Fortunately for our budget-conscious cousin the new theater by the mall was sold out, and the old Wynsong down the road wasn't. I've disliked the Wynsong, in the past driving an extra 10 miles to another mall until the new one opened, but not wanting to see an animated movie about birds in Brazil, the old theater had to make do. With student IDs tickets were only 6 bucks. Well worth the price for the movie we got to experience.

Are you sick of action sequences ala Michael Bay's Transformers that don't make sense, and don't matter because you could care less about the characters? How about dialogue that does nothing more than serve as trailer clips to get people in the theater? Yeah, me too. And the summer movies are the worst. You get hyped up CGI'd 3D eyecandy and you're bored halfway through the opening scene. Super 8 is a tribute to how movies used to be - Good. There's plenty of mystery, action, and adventure, but you actually care about the characters. Remember how much you loved all the Goonies? You'll feel the same way about these kids in the town of Lilian. And like every good heist movie, these goonies have their own explosives expert. He's the kid you grew up with who was always setting fire to things and modifying his fireworks with duct tape. Maybe you were that kid. You probably got a lot of your friends in trouble with your fascination with firepower.

I don't want to spoil the movie, because not knowing much about it is what makes it so great. I'll just say it takes all the good elements from Goonies (kids who curse, and work with a determination despite their parents' wishes) and replaces the cheesiness with scary and mysterious action. A huge train crash, followed by strange occurrences, violence, and general weirdness. And the government is probably trying to cover it up. Or something. The Air Force is there, and they're being vague. Go watch it. You'll smile and remember that summer movies aren't all bad.

I used to hate Dallas

And it was all because of this guy. I mean look at this tool making us all hate him with his doucheyness. Now I realize it is pure jealousy that made me hate him. After my Jazz didn't make the playoffs, I had to invest my fandom in something, and just being a fan of the NBA in general wasn't cutting it, so I toyed with the idea of liking the Mavericks. Once I realized what I disliked about this team, I realized my irrationality. As I said earlier, Cuban was because of envy. Got over it and respected the guy for his hard work to get to where he is. And you have to respect someone for doing what he loves. Dirk. Why did I hate Dirk? He was too good, and German. After I admitted half of why I didn't like him was borderline racist, and the other half was his incredible talent, I was able to embrace his quest to win himself a championship. He's another example of a hard worker. 6 years ago when he faced the same team, he lacked the extra skills to pull his team to a victory and they got beat. Those six years gave him the chance to put in the hours perfecting his shot, improving his floor play, and Cuban's guys then put the team around him to give him the edge he needed, and this was his year. They brought in Kidd to give some young guys the experienced leader. Barea got good, real good, and came through in a big way. Terry was hot and cold, but mostly hot, and when he got cold at the wrong time Dirk tactfully called him out on it and Terry stepped it up. Marion followed Dirk's example and worked hard underneath, cleaning up the boards, pressuring the D and shooting those weird looking J's that kept going in.

Yup. This team earned it. And they did it beautifully. They had to go through Portland, battle with the young legs in OKC and sweep the defending champs in LA. Then they got their shot at Miami, led by D-Wade and muscled (sometimes) by Lebron and Bosh. Miami had a real fancy team this year, and I think that's what did them in. They knew they were good, and they would get complacent, allowing Dallas to comeback in the final minutes in games they should have had locked in for the win. Congrats to Dallas. Watch out for Miami next year, and keep your eyes on Durant and his friends in Oklahoma. They got a sampling of what it takes to win it all and they're coming back with experience and determination.

The draft is coming up, and the analysts are all saying its weak. That shouldn't matter. The draft more than just getting a star. You can't have a Lebron/Carmelo/D-Wade lineup every year. The draft is more about recognizing talent and potential, and having the staff that can develop that potential into something big. Or sometimes that potential doesn't get drafted, so he walks on to practice with a team, works his ass off, gets picked up and plays a key role, where he then gets a huge offer in Portland and says adios and goes on to help lead his Blazers to the playoffs while his newly Sloanless Jazz struggle for, what was it, 10th in the West? Still miss your tenacity Wesley Matthews. Here's hoping for a good draft, and a continuation of Sloan's ability to develop young players into solid NBA competitors.

Sleeping in the Boy's Room

After class today I stopped to use the restroom and while I was at the urinal taking care of business, I thought I heard what sounded like snoring. I paused the stream so I could hear better and it was clear there was someone in the bathroom with me and he was asleep. His snoring seemed to get louder, and after I washed my hands I thought maybe it was a joke. If so, I figured I could crack him up by making snoring noises myself. His continued heavy snoring convinced me it was no joke, and apparently his movement was so exhausting, a deep sleep was needed to recover. Personally I find public restrooms extremely uncomfortable, and a small amount of anxiety usually accompanies me into any public restroom, so I don't think it would be possible for my mind to allow me to fall asleep in the stall knowing people will be coming and going, leaving their bowel stenches with them. I make my visits to the restroom as long as necessary and no longer. A few times in my own personal bathroom at home I've found myself reading while on the can, but any more then 5-10 minutes in that seated position will cause my legs to go numb. I would have liked to see the gentlemen this morning try to walk out of there dead-legged after spending 30+ minutes on the porcelain.



Google images gives a lot of hilarious bathroom pictures. Here are some more of my favorites:

reading books

2 or 3 years ago I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I didn't really get it. I remember I mostly read it at night before bed, ending with the usual intended result of falling asleep. That is probably why I didn't get much out of it. The gist of what I got was the importance of caring about what you do and that is where quality comes from. Anyone can follow a plan and build a birdhouse, but it's the people that care about it that build exceptional birdhouses. I think that's what it was about.

I pulled the book off my shelf this morning and went outside to read in the sun. This time I'm determined to delve into Pirsig's philosophy a bit  more deeply. To do so, I'll need to take into account his statement on how he wishes to explain his outlook, "I just want to get at it slowly, but carefully and thoroughly..." I've finished the first two chapters, and deliberately took a break to reflect and be sure I understand what he's talking about. But the first two chapters don't really contain a lot of depth. I want to establish the habit early in order to avoid reading for too long and getting lost in my usual pattern of forgetting what I'm reading about and daydreaming of something else. Which is why I've made Moby Dick my bedtime book, and Zen my summertime book.

we feel fine

I came across this site via Roger Ebert's tweet today. Check it out. wefeelfine.org. Looking through their mission page, (or about us page) I got an idea what this site is all about. They have an automated system that scans public blogs for phrases "I feel..." and publishes those on the site in their categorized feelings, where you can organize the feelings by location, gender, age, date, etc and see all these emotions bouncing around. Hover your mouse over a location and you'll find what that person said in their blog post, and get an idea of how the blogging public is feeling. So it looks like all you have to do to have your feelings and a link to your blog appear on their site is to tell people how you feel. I think I'll start doing this daily, just to see if I can spot myself on their site, although I'm not sure if I can narrow it down to a specific person to find myself, I'll just be one feeling bouncing around with countless others. To get started and to make up for lost time, I'll let you all the feelings I've experienced in the last 8 hours since I got up this morning.

6:30 I feel reluctant to get out of bed.
7:00 I feel congested.
7:15 I feel relieved to blow my nose in the shower
7:30 I feel naked
8:00 I feel hungry
8:30 I feel like I need a coffee
9:00 I feel disappointed that I arrived too late to sit in my usual spot in class next to the cute girl I'm crushing on
9:30 I feel pleasant that we get out of class early today, but I feel bad for our professor who sounds terribly sick.
10:00 I feel enthusiastic to finally get my room cleaned up
10:30 I feel like I shouldn't be such a procrastinator
11:00 I feel like a nap
11:30 I feel like wasting time on the internet all day
3:00 I feel bad because I was so ready to get my room organized and now I've wasted all day online.
3:20 I feel itchy. Effin allergies.

the end. Later I'll pop over to wefeelfine.org and see if I can find myself.

that's great it starts with an earthquake

I expect my skepticism and assumed subsequent blaspheming will not allow me to join the condescenders in joyous rapture, so I plan to write more as the world falls into turmoil over the next 5 months before coming to a violent end sometime in October. But should I perish in the chaos that is certain to ensue tomorrow, I'll leave you with some inspiration from America's poet.

And I feel fine.

"I'm not clutch." - Kobe Bryant.

Memphis eliminates the formerly dominant old men. Kobe/Gasol choke in the final seconds. OKC continues to dazzle.D-Rose clinches the seemingly unanimous MVP. Randolph makes a statement for the finals MVP early (granted they're able to continue winning through the finals, which I don't think will happen. OKC aught to take it in 6 or 7, but if it does Z-Bo's locked in my vote). LeBron, D-Wade and I suppose I should at least mention Bosh we want to hate so badly, but continue to put together some highlights that make us love this game. And Danny Ainge worries he made some bad, albeit probably necessary considering the fate of the old men of San Antonio, moves.

I can't remember ever caring about every single game, every single match-up, and my Jazz aren't even in this one. Utah was out of the running a long time ago, and now I don't have to watch them get eliminated by LA. Already having been let down in the regular season has left me to enjoy the playoffs without the usual emotional involvement. Jerry, we miss you, and I hope you're enjoying your tractors.

The first round is barely over, we're getting halfway through the second round, and I don't know how much better it could get. Remind me, have we even seen a 7 game series yet? I don't think we have, yet the excitement has been too much to handle. Tonight, after the newly crowned MVP tries to even up the series with the Hawks - the Hawks! Where did that come from?! - I'll be cheering, probably for only the second time in my life, for another Mavericks victory in Los Angeles.

Does school really have to start next week? Can't we postpone it for another month or so?

One more thing. If you haven't read this already, do yourself and your coffee table a favor and pick one up.

Hot Sauce Committee

Step 1. Make Some Noise

Step 2. Nonstop Disco Powerpack

Step 3. OK

Step 4. Too Many Rappers

Step 5. Say It

Step 6. The Bill Harper Collection

Step 7. Don't Play No Game that I can't Win

Step 8. Long Burn the Fire

Step 9. Funky Donkey

Step 10. The Larry Routine

Step 11. Tadlock's Glasses

Step 12. Lee Majors Come Again

Step 13. Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament

Step 14. Here's a Little Something for Ya

Step 15. Crazy Ass Shit

Step 16. The Lisa Lisa/Full Force Routin

                                                                              Rinse and Repeat

I don't hate Alaska

I've spent two summers working in Alaska's tourism industry. My second post on this blog was kind of a rant about a futile pursuit for an ideal that is seemingly lost. It was full of cynicism. At times I think my cynicism is a positive attribute, because it is a great way of looking at things from an angle that could lead to some really great comedy, but usually, and this is why cynicism can be more of a negative quality, it just comes across as rudely apathetic.

The two summers I spent in the Northernmost State had their similarities. The landscape was beautiful, the air was clean, and the days off were generally spent outdoors enjoying the world. And the job of a tour guide - the first year as a bus driver with a headset microphone, the second behind the wheel of a Jeep at the lead of a caravan of Jeeps each equipped with a radio to receive my tour - is what led to my cynical attitude towards the middle of each summer. A person can only be expected to give the same speech, drive the same road, tell the same jokes and take the same photos of the same kinds of people, cruise vacationers, so many times before he grows to despise his day-to-day routine.

And so if I came across as someone who hates Alaska and turned you off to the idea of visiting what is really a fantastic place, then I urge you to reconsider. Just because I have vented my distaste to the tourists that frequent the cruise-ship ports of Alaska, doesn't mean I didn't give a genuine tour every time. Because when it gets right down to it, I always remembered that most of the vacationers I met had probably worked all year in jobs they hated, even more than I only occasionally did my own, just to be able to get away for a week or two in the summer and enjoy themselves for once.

Last summer, by mid-August I couldn't wait to get out of Skagway, AK. This summer I kind of wish I could go back for a couple months, but I've already committed and prepared for school year-round for the next little while.

I'll just have to settle with my favorite photo. This was from the first summer I was in the town of Talkeetna. You can see Denali way off in the distance. (or Mt. McKinley, whatever you wanna call it. I prefer its original name.) For having been taken with an old disposable camera, I'd say its a great picture of the peace you can find out in the wilderness.



Come to think of it, summer semester does end early July, and the fall semester won't be starting until late August... Maybe instead of trying to have my own Kerouac experience, I'll pursue a John Muir sojourn in nature.

www.nps.gov/discovery2000/photo-leader.htm 
(Library of Congress photo)

Earth Day

Congratulations to the Earth. Today is your day. Without you we'd be nothing. Well, we'd be something, I suppose. But the stuff that we're made up of would probably be something else entirely unaware that it is what it is. It wasn't until a great big sphere of a crazy conglomerate positioned at just the right distance from just the right star and started to rotate at just the right speed that somehow all the right stuff began to self-replicate, albeit imperfectly, and just the right amount of time passed to where the some of those self-replicators started to become aware of themselves, and told each other what they thought was the obvious reason for it all. Does there really have to be a reason? Seems like in what is an infinitely huge universe with an infinitely long amount of time on its hands, chances were good that somewhere in that universe a conscience being would eventually find itself asking how it all came to be. I'd like to believe there is more for me, but my skepticism reminds me, to quote Douglas Adams, "...once you know what you want to be true, instinct is a very useful device for enabling you to know that it is."

I'm not sure where this thought is trying to go, so I'll just conclude. Thanks, Earth, for contributing to my awareness so that for a few short moments in the vast spectrum of everything, I could marvel at what is and struggle with what probably isn't.

ojala que llueva cafe en el campo

It's only appropriate that the title of my blog is reflected in my very first post. Lately I've been really loving some Cafe Tacuba, and that song in particular. Now, keep in mind, this is not Cafe Tacuba's best song, 

 

I love it, but I can see how a lot of gringos who haven't lived in Mexico would hear it as unfamiliar, and therefore ugly, but give it a chance. They're no small deal, either, so maybe you already know them. I've been a fan for years after a dude in Mexico, Ivan, introduced me. He was a huge Radiohead fan, too, so I respected his opinion and was very pleased. Since then they've gone on to even more fame, and I would relish the chance to see them in concert sometime.


Thanks to this being stuck in my head for the last several days, I was curious enough to find out it was originally written and performed by a musician from the Dominican, Juan Luis Guerra, so props to that dude.