kinda faded

this morning i realized just how little the years have aged me. my second thought upon awakening was, ‘i can’t believe it’s finally happening.’ my first thought was ‘whatever happened to soul decision?’

while some contemplate knot tying i do research on how to win board games while watching breakfast at tiffany’s on amc for the tenth time. while others live with their wives in california i live with ellis and sallinger in anyburb, u.s.a. i had a discussion last night about turning twenty nine. i feel like that is my cutoff, and i will almost certainly panic in late 2009. not because i lack a wife or maturity, but because i will feel too old. and because i will finally realize that soul decision has broken up.

ugh

this terrific article from cnn has everything i look for: brevity, humor, and pointlessness. here’s an excerpt:

KFYE-FM hasn't budged from the Fresno-area dial, but it's about as far as you can get from the Christian music, sermons and Bible stories it was broadcasting until about a week ago. Now it calls itself "Porn Radio" -- "all sex radio, all the time," with a suggestion that people under 21 not listen. Songs with little in common except suggestive titles and lyrics fill the playlist, including "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" by The Beatles, "Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye and "Nasty" by Janet Jackson. Tamer songs are heated up by adding recorded moans and groans.

The change, made after the station was sold this month, was met with several non-sexual groans from some residents.

the non-sexual groan is actually the majority response to this blog, according to a recent poll. but don’t worry if you get turned on reading this text. i think a lot of people were lying.

keep dreaming

there is nothing american about a hot dog. take representation as far as you would like, and you still come to the same conclusion. obese fans at a cubs game, wife beating nebraskans on the fourth of july, yes, i understand your reasoning for why the lines had a chance to connect. why simplicity allows you to be as cynical as your limited resources can comprehend.

now understand this. we are surrounded by an idea. a practical implementation of a single glimmer of hope: that the act of being better than everyone, simply being the best at anything, is worth reward. we derive our worst case /best case scenarios from this, not because we know that anything is possible (because you cannot become whatever you choose to be) but rather because we calculate our chances to destroy those very same scenarios from another mind. to mold them as negatively as possible, in hopes that our own abilities may fill the void. sometimes, it happens. nobody owes you anything.

dead air

subtle are the advances that certain thoughts make in one’s head. barely noticeable until the fragments become coherent paragraphs. this is what some call a moment of clarity. some people spend their lives counting the hours in between these events, and i am not sure this is at all a waste. the conscious mind is strong, but subconscious thoughts may prove greater still. imagine how much better this paragraph would have been if i hadn’t thought about it first. or if someone else had written it.

heat wave

this is a nice summer read, in addition to being on topic with my post. according to media outlets it is hot outside. so i decided to do a little experiment…

i’ve spent the last few days without air conditioning in my house. by choice. normally i don’t’ use it much considering my ideal temperature is around 80F, but i’ll turn it on when the thermostat gets above 84 or the humidity reaches a north carolina-like 110 percent. recently i stopped cooling my house artificially (note--ice cube trays sprinkled about the house are naturally occurring) to see what would happen.

the most immediate consequence was a tendency to sweat most of every hour, followed by the tendency to put on tennis shorts and a headband (and pretend to serve every once in a while). i discovered the best use yet for rolling stone -- as a crude, inaccurate fan. also, drinking in the heat is not as fun as drinking in the sun, one of my most favorite pastimes. the sun increases your buzz and tan, while heat just makes you ill. as the temperature got to a humid 86 (its peak) i was on the verge of madness. not even the cosby show could calm my anxiety, and i’d begun alternating ice and towels over my skin. i made it through the night by humming genesis songs repeatedly and making synth drum sounds at appropriate times.

earning and taking

people are generally upset with air attacks. people don't like to be aimed at. people think, hey, what ever happened to life being predictable? what ever happened to consistent improvement?

this is how cnn depicts life. they don't talk about reasons, or desires. nobody comes out and says, hey, war is what prepares me for worse. starving is what lowers others' expectations of me. if i get out now, will they still want to interview me? no, leave me here.

most people want to feel entitled. they want air attacks. they want to be aimed at. they think, now i deserve it. now, give me what you have, because i've earned it. destruction improves both ends of the socio-economic spectrum. unless you live in china.

it's july, and i bend priorities

friday in philadelphia:

drinks at tonic, because the music was supposed to be better than it was. nobody voluntarily listens to house at 8pm, but apparently there are those that are willing to force the issue. we were there with a friend of mine, and a boyfriend of hers. this one was visiting from vienna, and possesses an occupation loosely describing a manner of time spent, but not so directly related to any manner of revenue generating professional activity. the austrian, as i referred him throughout the night, has spent ten of the last ten years in a state of constant travel-based leisure (there were two semesters at duke in the time period, which i knew to explain his relationship to my friend...having a mother on the un's board of atomic energy is apparently worth 24 credits at a respected american school...will i use this rate in the future?) . because i could not decide between jealousy and boredom over this fact, i moved the conversation to the subject of new york traffic. automobile patterns of eastern europe were widely ignored, due to a palpable level of unimportance surrounding the issue.

dinner at buddakan, which has become disturbingly routine of late. reservations at 10 were promptly ignored until 10:15, which furthered my desire to stay away for the foreseeable future. we were placed in the center of the ground level, which made up for certain transgressions. to the left sat two men with shoulder length hair, sternum length beards, and the recognizable attire of two parts of a well-known country band now more commonly described by their artistic output of 2 decades past. i have no idea what their band is called. a woman with impeccable facial structure sat with them, and caused me to notice: she was openly nursing a child at the table of one of the city's most desirable dinner locations. how many albums sold does it take to make this ok? will i use this rate in the future? not knowing how to react, we moved the conversation to the subject of property costs in the northeast. nobody had an excuse for boston. the hungarian wine chosen by the austrian was nothing short of tart in taste. this seemed like an unfortunate way to spend 2 hours and a day laborer's paycheck.

a saturday invitation to a client's beach house had me pushing for a cab ride back to my girlfriend's apartment. i was thinking of the morning. the girls suggested a club, hinted at a lounge, and generally wasted an undisclosed number of minutes in finalizing an opinion. none of this was discussed at dinner, because of the breast in full view and my discomfort regarding the wine. the girls walked us directly through the waiting lines of three venues, which the austrian and i agreed upon as being a positive thing. in no case was the girls' desired hit track being played, and while i did not know the song that we were in search of, two things were certain: one, that the odds were not fantastic of this event occurring at any point during the quest, and two, that there was a late-night establishment within walking distance that would have the album.

the cab had a cd player, which was a pleasant surprise. i've taken to making decisions for other people, and this is another example of why. in bed by 3, up by 8, and passed out on the sand by noon. 15 dollars spent for an extra two hours of sun. will i use this rate in the future?

futility

“why don’t you come hang out?”
“because the more time i spend with you the harder it is to go back to normal.”
“so don’t go back to normal.”
“i have to go back.”
“why?”
“because that’s where the rest of my life will be.”
“it doesn’t have to.”
“maybe not now, but it’ll end up there. it always does.”
“at some point there is no more later. you just have to do what you want now.”
“that’s not how i work.”
“i need some scotch.”

ticky-tacky boxes

i rented the first disc of weeds’ first season last night and i’m already hooked. er, as i am a man of many vices but no addictions let’s just say that i’m eagerly awaiting the next half-hour, not jonesing for it. either way the first four episodes were terrific, blending good storylines with good dialogue inside a bleak, nihilistic shell. the show is basically desperate housewives only good. oh, the materialism, gossip, and despair! ellis would be proud of this series. i’ve always had a fascination with the decay of the upper class, and this satisfies me on a spiritual level. even the show’s theme song during the credits is great. it’s that song that uses malvina reynolds’ poem “little boxes”. i watched the credits five times yesterday before i even saw the first episode. this is what’s been in my head all day:

Little boxes on the hill side, little boxes made of ticky-tacky.
Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one,
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses all go to the university
Where they all get put in boxes, little boxes, all the same.
And there’s doctors and there’s lawyers, and there’s business executives
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.

compressing automobiles

humidity. i don't get it. i mean, i get it, but what...who...well, i suppose that i understand now.

just drive through it. it's a form of efficient learning.

it's not a fish that you can catch

i found this article from new york magazine both entertaining and thematically relevant. in an attempt to let you glance inside my head, i’ll share my thoughts on some of these happiness-increasing strategies.

Decide where to go to college by picking two decent schools and flipping a coin. The relatively unexamined life is worth living. Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice documents numerous studies in which thinking too hard about multiple choices leads people to preemptively regret the options they’re going to miss out on. This triggers a stress reaction that tends to focus narrowly on random variables—producing unwise decisions, paralysis, and superfluous law degrees. Those who seize the first option that meets their standards (which don’t have to be low, just defined) are happier

i used average temperature, but you get the idea.

Don’t go to law school.
Lawyers are 3.6 times more likely to be depressed than members of other professions…

enough said.

Fire your therapist if he so much as mentions your childhood. Contra Freud and pro common sense, much of Authentic Happiness author Martin Seligman’s research suggests that rehashing events that enraged you long ago tends to produce depression rather than sweet closure and relief.

this is just common sense. don’t think about things that make you angry or sad unless you have a compelling reason.

On a day-to-day basis, caring for children creates roughly the same level of satisfaction as washing the dishes. In fact, surveys of parents invariably find a clear dip in happiness after the Blessed Miracle of Childbirth, which continues unabated for twenty years—bottoming out during adolescence—and only returns to pre-birth levels when the child finally leaves home

i like washing the dishes, but something tells me that is where this analogy ends.

avoid any bar named after an Irish person

now that’s just silly.

virtual threesome

slashdot has found its way onto google's personalized homepage option list. what does this mean? well, my friend, absolutely nothing. although...

i just happen to estimate that over the last few years, my personal web browsers have hit these two sites with more frequency than any others. this new development consequently conjures up an image of venn diagrams from the fifth grade. or that time i visited the u of kentucky during sophomore year, and my favorite two brunettes allowed me to explore with them. yeah, it's kind of like that.

the view from inside

it has occurred to me, though not as often as one may be inclined to assume, that a certain level of perception management is the simple and efficient solution to influencing levels of personal enjoyment. you see, i am mostly in favor of writing off, if you will, the majority of the world's population that has the scheduled occupation of connecting with me on one level or another. i am cynical, i am skeptical, and many times i simply despise the available offerings of those around me. extended to specific locations, events, and other such entities of interaction, i have come to expect very little of many connection strings containing my life as a node.

with that said, i return to my initial statement. because, through all of the disappointments that come from doing anything, there also exists a subset of emotions that drive me to want more from everything. i spent the past weekend with the ocean. i also hate most of what there is to know about new jersey. restrictions brought these two elements to a meeting point, however, and what i needed to know about the situation was this; that i need the ocean, in spite of the sacrifices necessary to bring it to me, and me to it. i need to feel certain things, at certain times, and this comes as a desire above and beyond the capabilities of limitation imposed by my deepest disappointments in the world around me. understand this, because it changes things. i am justified by it (as if justification were necessary). thank you, in advance.

descriptive

in the event that i die tomorrow i can at least be happy about the scene from my patio during the afternoon hours today. as i listened to agaetis byrjun i lay on a reclining chair. the sun, directly above me, cast golden light and spots across my eyes. the warmth of the concrete on my feet and the faint waxing and waning of traffic in the distance gave the impression of a summer day on the coastline, waves foaming and dying. as sigur ros played electric guitar with a bow a young doe came out of the trees and stood for at least a minute, catching my eye once. she knew what i was thinking. why should i ever be afraid in the suburbs?
on second thought, i can’t die tomorrow. i promised baby that we’d go dancin’ tomorrow night. she said it was cold out there, and i replied that it was warm in bed. they can dance; we’ll watch mtv instead.

red eyes

so perhaps it has been longer than i had originally realized. my apologies, of course, but european hotels make getting online much more difficult than it should be. and i'm speaking in absolutes. regardless, i am back to the homeland of the world cup's least attractive step-child, and tomorrow i'll even set foot on last week's flooded victim, also known as the east coast.

what i would be terribly interested in, if at all possible, is a decent vacation. vacation, in this case, should mostly be defined in an inverse comparison with the amount of time spent in front of any of the computing devices that i own. my recent international excursions, by the way, do not fit this category in any way.

subjects that will drive the content of my upcoming posts include north korea, the world cup, english women, ayn rand, mtv, and the funerals of billionare theives. for now, i'm just happy to have a wireless connection without a firewall.

the fight over the regulation of the web is this century's cold war...shiiiiiit daddy, even the russians know that.

va-ca

the last four days have been great. just lazy, hot, and damp – much like myself. i’ve seen so many temporary faces, all of whom will be gone very soon. i feel like those kinds of encounters make for the best vacations, although i could deal with seeing a lot more of one of those people during real life. but you can’t fight city hall.

i made real margaritas on monday using 1800, cointreau, and lime juice. these things are quite strong being that eighty four per cent of them are eighty proof liquor. they are good for warm drinking since the sun enhances the effects of tequila.

i can only assume that i am not victor ward has finally taken his vows to become a quaker and can no longer post on phlox without being cast down to hell. therefore i will take over as the condescending pessimist as well as my normal duties of witty observer/philosopher.

the hampton hills

jason is a fortunate dude. He gets to use the term “gnarly” and have the hot lauren keep wanting him after he plays the asshole character on both her shows. And he gets a set of golf clubs from lauren on his birthday. she’s either the perfect girl or really wealthy. maybe a little of columns a and b. the hills also played a feist song on the last episode. so that’s respectable. i wonder how my life would be different if my name was jason or i used less italics.