SEA-LIVING

TIPPING IS NOT A CITY IN RUSSIA

Saturday, July 25, 2009

New Blogs:

Robocratic-States is the blog I'll stay at for probably ever.

Alleged-UFO Photo-Blog is my current side side project of curating UFO photography.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Sometimes the wind picks you up n dusts you off n sets you down inside a Cracker Barrel restaurant off i-80

http://robocratic-states.tumblr.com/

Robocratic-States is another blog I started. If nothing new shows up here, check there.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Lunch hour

So today I was eating lunch at Chipotle, which is the healthiest lunch restaurant option around my office. Today was supposed to be a travel day, but my afternoon appointment was canceled, so I was cleared to take a full lunch-hour, with an emphasis on hour. Thank my lucky stars. I could enjoy eating and the prospect of an easy afternoon.

As I was standing in line, I was behind two guys who I guess were early in their college years. I can make guesses like that because I just completed my undergraduate degree, and I put myself into enough debt to be able to ascertain such things. Credibility: assured. I digress, but one guy asked the other guy what he had been reading. Before I get ahead of myself, let me describe them by their appearances. Dude #1 had the 'Ages of Empires' enthusiast caucasian look down pat, complete with overstuffed backpack. Dude #2 was wearing all-black and mirrored aviators, not like he was doing coke and listening to Fischerspooner in 2002, but rather, like he was spearheading some ill-advised beatnik resurgence. So dude #1 is asking dude #2 what dude #2 is reading these days. I'm trying to discern what kind of burrito I'm going to have. I love the Chipotle. If hell had beer and Chipotle, you now I'd be on evil like white on rice.

Dude #2 answers, without looking at dude #1, "This book, man. And it's changed the way I look at things." The attitude itself reinforces the all-black outfit and mirrored aviators as some messianic intellectual thrusting into the face of some sort of oppression that dumb white kids face, like boredom or perceived mundaneness. Then he holds up the book: Charles Bukowski's Post Office.

Because I can't figure this kid to be between jobs or women, I have to assume this kid is a little too into what he's perceiving to be the unmitigated allegory of what life is. I also assume that this boy must have been adhering to the same social norms and role in a way similar to his counterpart prior to indulging in the Bukowski novel. While I commend the boy for finding a work of literature he somehow connects with, I even as a life-long nerd sympathizer can take solace that I never so dramatically reveled in the book I was at the time reading. Certainly, among my favorite books, Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States or Thomas Pynchon's V never inspired me to hold the volume up high like some artifact delivered from on high, and never in a chain restaurant.

Intense fandom of things results in either prodigious inspiration and the continuance of something, like why people still go nuts about ensure the legacy of Black Sabbath (for example), but without conscience or the ability to have their dreams smashed every once in a while, a Mark David Chapman scenario could possibly occur.

Once someone wrote, that the Loch Ness monster was nothing more than a brontosaurus that never got its shit together enough to go extinct like the rest of the dinosaurs. And it makes sense to some degree as a social analogy. Perhaps we've been galvanized in our moronic ways so much by hydrogenated oils in our food supply and reality TV that when we find some work of art whether it be a novel or an album or whatever, we hold up high in a Chipotle, as a trophy won in a challenge we never knew we were forced to play.

If the Loch Ness monster / Brontosaurus analogy does make sense, I want to be among the first to go extinct: direct me toward where the doomsday comet will strike.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Difficult lessons to learn when you are learning about punk #1

I work with this 19 year old girl who is way into punk. Like most neophyte punks, being 'punk' is more specifically about displaying the trappings of such, ie dressing in old plaid pants, dyeing your hair, and seeing basement shows. One knows they're speaking to a neophyte punk when they say something like 'My band is covering an Iggy Pop song... "I Wanna Be Your Dog" ', or 'Sonic Youth, aren't they a generic grunge band?'.

One of the most difficult lessons to learn when you are learning about punk, is that about as soon as punk began, the band Wire reinvented that specific wheel, sans the usual boring trappings:





Consequently, there are seldom earnest covers of Wire songs, due to the many difficult lessons to learn when you are learning about punk.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

My photo-website exists now...

Sunday, August 26, 2007

"Jonathon Livingston Tick Farm"

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Important news...

Forgive the long times between posts, but I have important, important news.

This last weekend, my girlfriend Megan and I took a trip up to Lake Superior. It was her birthday and our anniversary, as well as a much-needed occasion for the each of us to get away from the pressures and somber occurences of Minneapolis / St Paul & Chicago.

While resting on a hike, I proposed to Megan with a ring, and she said yes. I'm still overwhelmed with a lot of positive emotions and I'm not sure how to channel it all into words, but it was the happiest day of my life thus far. The weather was perfectly sunny yet cool enough, the wine good, the scenerey beautiful, and that night we laid down by the shore and watched the meteor shower.

I will now be splitting my time between my beloved Twin Cities and the equally-beloved city of Chicago with my beloved. There are lots of details to follow.