“God, how we get our fingers in each other's clay. That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other.”
-Ray Bradbury
Laura accused me of working this morning, so to prove her wrong I decided that I would put together a post on my favorite show. At first I didn't think that I really liked anyone from this week's episodes of So You Think You Can Dance. After that first episode last week, I think some of those guys really set the bar high for what I was hoping for. I really thought Twitch should have made the top 20 last year, and then the two guys from the videos I posted impressed me even more. I haven't been really impressed with any of the girls, but after giving it some more thought, there have been a few that are pretty good. Okay, so maybe there are some guys that were decent as well. I think I'm inclined to focus more on the hip hop dancers than the other ones, but there have been some good ones all around. Here are some of my favorites from this past week:
Kelli Baker
Matt Dorame
Sheila Kaiser
There were a couple of others that were pretty good. The first girl who did the ballroom routine in Salt Lake City was my favorite ballroom person so far. I think I've been holding off on doing a full recap just because I'm mostly anxious for them to get past the auditions and select the top 20 and get into the competition.
Laura...I know we already talked about this in the morning, but I don't understand your disdain for Cat. She's SO sweet. Yes, she is a giant imposing figure, but she's also way pretty. I just love the fact that she seems like such a genuinely nice person.
There was one black dude in the North Carolina (is that right?) auditions that was pretty good too, but I don't think he'll be able to to do much. I'm pretty much gonna guarantee that these three will be in the top 20. After watching Sheila again, I think she's going to be my favorite girl. She plays to the song wonderfully, and Mary was right, it was so sultry. Really cute girl swaying perfectly to the rhythm of the music. I think Tyce is one of my favorite personalities/choreographers on the show. He's a nice guy who puts together cool routines.
Couple of other things:
Did you guys love or hate how obviously Mormon the people were in Salt Lake? I loved it. From the mom who brought her four kids with her to the audition, to the brief segment where the show bothered to mention the common theme among those dancers - kids!
I didn't think either of the girls from Salt Lake who both teach a fitness class were that great, but I did like the chest bump they had outside the building.
Hated the tranny. Hated. And I'm only some guy watching the show at home, how insulting is that for the judges to have a person like that on there? Tranny, fierce, fierce, hot mess! tranny...
Also hated the super femmy guy from Julliard. Seriously, bro? So gay. Don't waste my time.
One last thing...we have to see a taping of the competition part this summer. Visit this site to get tickets, or at least to get on the waiting list. It is so absurd/gay how much I love this show, but I'm glad that I'm not alone. I think if more dudes were comfortable in their masculinity (or completely devoid of it?) they would realize how awesome it is. Did I miss anything or anyone? Can't wait until after Vegoose when the good stuff starts!
So I kind of love the site, Post Secret. Here is so more info on it.The presentation of some of the secrets is really cool, but mostly I love how personal it feels. I would think that in all of us there is something that we hide, or we try and ignore, or that sometimes we openly flaunt, so that we can better attempt to confront whatever it is that is on our minds.
There are funny ones like, "I like the smell of my own farts," or, "I am the fat man who wears speedos in public. I don't care what I look like. I do it because it makes me feel sexy." And every time I went to the beach and saw that guy I always thought to myself, "does he realize what he's doing?" Apparently, he does. Then there are the ones that are like, "you don't know this, but if you hadn't stayed up until 4:45 am with me in the dorm bathroom that night, I would have killed myself."
It just feels very real to me, and I really dig on that. Here is a video with a bunch of the postcards, but the blog updates Sunday nights. You can't look through the archive, but you can go on there and check out what's new.
I know in my heart of hearts that I should be more embarrassed about liking this kind of music, but I just can't help myself. How can you resist the open denim shirt? the long, permed hair? or the drummer with the shirt off? I think it's so funny, and I just love this music. I recently made a CD with a bunch of hair band songs and I'm screamin' these lyrics at the top of my lungs on my way to and from work. Watch the video and I dare you not to fall in love. My favorite just might be all the unintentional homoeroticism.
Don't worry about it ma'am...just them Damn Yankees!
There are a lot of things that I kind of want to touch on, but nothing I feel like writing at length about. Doing the blogcritics stuff is fun, but it takes my attention away from here, at least when it comes to posts where I comment on more stuff. We'll see about that one. I'm not feeling as excited about that one right now. I'm not really sure why it is. I think the main reason might be that I just don't want my own blog to suffer. Isn't that lame for me to think? ...like I'm so proud of this one in its current state, anyway. I'm still waiting on getting the MxPx album...I guess I'm wondering what the benefit of writing on there will be when it doesn't really seem like my writing gets much more attention there than it does here. Plus on here, I can be careless. I dunno...we'll see.
I've adopted some new internet habits. The bookmarks thing has been so great, and once I compile a bigger list of stuff, I'll link my bookmarks on here. Mostly what I've been using it for is linking articles - church stuff, politics, articles I find interesting. So for future reference, if you're like, what was that one thing Silva was talking about? You'll be able to link via the bookmarks thingee.
My search habits go like this:
Email
ESPN
Prosportsdaily
Hugh Hewitt
Powerline
National Review Online
Google Reader - incorporating this into my routine has been SO awesome. I can't believe I haven't started using it sooner. Or bloglines, or any of the other RSS feed thingers that are out there. It makes it so easy to follow all of your blogs, plus my recent favorite finance blogs. The fact that you guys don't ever really post has also made it pretty easy to follow your blogs too.
Investor's Business Daily (IBD) Editorials - this one is new for me, but I'm loving it so far. These guys I think come from middle-right on the political spectrum and comment on pretty much everything. I'll link some stuff I thought was interesting later in the post.
James Taranto's Best of the Web Today - this one is really new for me, but this guy is moderate and he gathers news and links from around the web daily. I really like his commentary, and going here as led me to...
Wall Street Journal Online - I've been wanting a national publication that didn't lean heavily in one direction or another politically. I guess some people will say that WSJ leans more right because it's owned by Rupert Murdoch, but I think that anything that isn't CNN, MSNBC, or New York and LA Times is going to look far right-wing, comparatively. It's really great though because they have world news stuff that I don't hear enough about, and a great finance section.
So here are a couple of items that I thought were really interesting from around the web:
Has there ever been such an epidemic of terrorist surrender? And the trend is growing. For the first time, the possibility of a world without major terror organizations is real. The world has shrunk for them, while the nations that fight back are getting stronger.
Significantly, those doing much of the winning are U.S. allies — the ones we supposedly don't have.
Fuel protests in Europe - Think gas is expensive here? How about $9 a gallon in Europe? As annoyed as we might be with our prices, it's really not that bad. Nobody is protesting and blocking others from driving.
I can't seem to find links to all the stuff I was reading this morning. And my attention has been divided as well.
About gas...on my way home from work there is a Costco with a gas station so I usually try and make a point to fill up there. Normally it's pretty busy after work, but yesterday was especially crazy. There are at least 5 stations, and two pumps per station with both sides to each pump open, so at least 20 available spots to fill up. Normally they are all taken up, but yesterday each line was about 4 cars deep passed what was already in use. There were a lot of cars there.
I know it's late...but I hope you all had a great weekend. There is a little memorial in Irvine that has pictures of soldiers and various other things and I drove past last night and a small crowd had gathered to sing songs and commemorate the day. I stopped for a few minutes and it was nice. My favorite part was a solo of God Bless America. It was a nice weekend. I feel like I should do more patriotic stuff to celebrate these holidays.
Yesterday, I was playing football and one kid who had just gotten back from his mission was talking with a non-member friend about another guy who was serving his mission in Argentina. This guy is going to be coming home in another month or so and they were talking about how he'll probably hate America because there is so much anti-Americanism in foreign countries these days. It mostly just sounded dumb to me, because I had plenty of people in Chile yell at me for being American, and if anything, living in another country for 2 years made me realize how much I love this one. I remember one guy was especially vile in yelling at my companion and I, but at that point in the mission I was very confident in how well I could speak Spanish, and in who I was, and I fired right back at him. He tried to spit on me and I just walked away, feeling that much more grateful to be American.
Can you guys believe I've been away for several days from the blog? And when probably my favorite show just came back for the summer too? I can't even tell you how much it tickles me to see these people perform. I must must must see one episode live before the end of the summer. There were several poppers that I thought were amazing, and some of the ballroom couples were pretty good, but I didn't think anything of any of the contemporary people. The one girl from Placentia was super cute, but her dance felt spastic to me.
I wish I could express how much I just love watching these people perform. I don't know why I love this show so much, but then don't care a lick about American Idol. Like at all. But I could watch people dance all day long. I'm surprised that this video is still up, but this guy was easily among the best of the dancers on the first episode.
And this guy was good too...he also appeared last season. Guys...I'm pumped.
I just finished another article for Blogcritics, so hopefully that will go up in the next day or two. The last one went up pretty quickly. There was a bunch of material sent my way when I initially got going with them, and I didn't bother reading a lot of it. After looking over all the guidelines for writing and editing, I'm realizing that it's a pretty legit site. If you bother looking at the author bios most of the people on there have a professional interest in those things that they are writing about. A lot of them are actually quite impressive.
I mentioned previously that there will be opportunities for movies, cds, books, tickets, etc. and only today did I bother to start looking through what things are available. Thinking that the site was pretty small time and would only have unrecognizable names and titles, I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were names that I actually recognized on there. Just today I found that MxPx came out with another greatest hits collection called The Ultimate Collection. It's a 2-CD set that compiles pretty much everything, including the last couple of albums which I'm actually not at all familiar with. What's really cool, though, is that I emailed the contact about doing a review for the band and she got back to me right away and will be sending me the CD, and asked me to send her a link of the review to forward onto "the guys."
I can't even tell you how exciting all this is for me, and I can't even really explain why. I guess it just comes down to the fact that this is exactly like something that I've been wanting to be a part of for some time now. More than a year ago I was talking with a friend about putting together an online magazine where people can go and contribute on things that they care about and are interested in. In just the last few months, as I've attended a bunch of concerts, I thought it would be so cool to put together a blog that would cover local shows and have interesting reviews on bands, artists, etc. that I'm actually interested in. And now it's here and it totally makes me giddy to be a part of something like this.
Not only did the contact mention that I could write the review for the CD, but she also mentioned that I could possibly do a live review for them when they come through the area. Guess what? I just checked it out and they'll be playing the Anaheim House of Blues with Lagwagon, October 3rd. Guess who's coming back from school for that weekend? Holla!
All information for this post is taken from the Powerline blog. Actually they're the most current three posts on that site, as of the publication of this post.
This is boring political stuff, and clearly I'm pro-war and mostly Pro-Bush if you've read anything on this blog. I think this question goes to a deeper issue that is not new for the U.S. - how much should the US become involved in international security issues? That is one of the posts that has been brewing in my mind for some time now, and this is so cursory, but I really think that as a nation we will never get away from policing the whole world.
Sometimes it has gone well, and other times it hasn't. I think what is more telling are those times when we didn't get involved and the results for those countries and people were absolutely disastrous - Cambodia, Darfur, among others. I think mostly we have too much of a global economy to ever let the rest of the world go to crap. Plus, we can help. We are in a position of power, and I really think that as a nation, we want to do the right thing. There is a right way of doing things, and we really do have a pretty good idea of what that is. I'm tired of people taking the PC route of always declaring, well you can't force other people to adopt your views just because you think you're right. What about when you are right? I'm not going to pursue this line of thinking right now, just sit on that.
Anyway...what follows is some stuff about Bush and the war.
In the eyes of members of both parties, George W. Bush seems to be the cause of everything from the recent GOP special election losses to a flagging economy to today's bad weather...
How about a dose of reality?
On the economy, there are indications the sun is coming out after a fairly mild economic storm. More data are showing a recession will be avoided, and it looks like a new bull market in stocks began in March after a short and shallow bear.
The report earlier this month of 20,000 jobs lost in April was far better than had been expected, and unemployment remains low at 5%.
NABE "anticipates a significant pickup in the second half" with real GDP for 2009 projected to be 2.9%. It may not even classify this downturn as a recession at all.
For the resilience of this economy, we can thank the president. He pushed substantial tax cuts on income and investment through Congress, which were followed by four years of growth, generating over 8 million jobs.
As for national security, Obama keeps saying the war in Iraq and the rest of the administration's foreign and defense policy have, as he put it last week in South Dakota, "prevented us from making this country safe." But the country is safer than anyone expected after 9/11.
There has not been a single terrorist attack on the homeland, and we have instead foiled multiple terrorist plots to kill innocent Americans. America has succeeded in foiling these plots because Bush gave the National Security Agency the authority to monitor any and all communications of suspected terrorists, by telephone, e-mail or other means.
When faced with the entire Washington establishment demanding an end to the war — including his own father's secretary of state, James Baker — President Bush stuck to his guns, placed a new general in charge and employed a surge strategy that is now winning the war in Iraq in resounding fashion.
And in war news...Iraqi troops were able to take Sadr City without the aid of American forces. This is the second of back-to-back successes for the Iraqi Army. There really should be very little doubt about how successful the war is going right now over there. If you want some more proof of that, this is an excerpt about an al Qaeda supporter lamenting the disaster that Iraq has become for them:
A prolific jihadist sympathizer has posted an ‘explosive’ study on one of the main jihadist websites in which he laments the dire situation that the mujaheddin find themselves in Iraq by citing the steep drop in the number of insurgent operations conducted by the various jihadist groups, most notably Al-Qaeda’s 94 percent decline in operational ability over the last 12 months when only a year and half ago Al-Qaeda accounted for 60 percent of all jihadist activity!
The author, writing under the pseudonym ‘Dir’a limen wehhed’ [‘A Shield for the Monotheist’], posted his ‘Brief Study on the Consequences of the Division [Among] the [Jihadist] Groups on the Cause of Jihad in Iraq’ on May 12 and it is being displayed by the administration of the Al-Ekhlaas website—one of Al-Qaeda’s chief media outlets—among its more prominent recent posts. He's considered one of Al-Ekhlaas's "esteemed" writers.
The author tallies up and compares the numbers of operations claimed by each insurgent group under four categories: a year and half ago (November 2006), a year ago (May 2007), six months ago (November 2007) and now (May 2008). He demonstrated that while Al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq could claim 334 operations in Nov. 06 and 292 in May 07, their violent output dropped to 25 in Nov. 07 and 16 so far in May 08. Keep in mind that these assessments are based on Al-Qaeda's own numbers.
The author also shows that similar steep drops were exhibited by other jihadist groups.
I forget how I came across this website, but I think it's my new favorite one: Best Article Every Day. Seriously, my favorite. I started reading a bunch of the recent posts, and usually I'll just skim and not take in everything, but I was reading EVERYTHING. I think my favorite might have been this post on 75 Skills Every Man Should Be Able To Do. Here are a couple I like:
**UPDATE - I meant to do more of the funny ones...
19. Approach a woman out of his league. Ever have a shoeshine from a guy you really admire? He works hard enough that he doesn’t have to tell stupid jokes; he doesn’t stare at your legs; he knows things you don’t, but he doesn’t talk about them every minute; he doesn’t scrape or apologize for his status or his job or the way he is dressed; he does his job confidently and with a quiet relish. That stuff is wildly inviting. Act like that guy.
22. Give a woman an orgasm so that he doesn’t have to ask after it. Otherwise, ask after it.
38. Tell a joke. Here’s one: Two guys are walking down a dark alley when a mugger approaches them and demands their money. They both grudgingly pull out their wallets and begin taking out their cash. Just then, one guy turns to the other, hands him a bill, and says, “Hey, here’s that $20 I owe you.”
40. Speak to an eight-year-old so he will hear. Use his first name. Don’t use baby talk. Don’t crank up your energy to match his. Ask questions and wait for answers. Follow up. Don’t pretend to be interested in Webkinz or Power Rangers or whatever. He’s as bored with that shit as you are. Concentrate instead on seeing the child as a person of his own.
41. Speak to a waiter so he will hear. You don’t own the restaurant, so don’t act like it. You own the transaction. So don’t speak into the menu. Lift your chin. Make eye contact. All restaurants have secrets — let it be known that you expect to see some of them.
42. Talk to a dog so it will hear. Go ahead, use baby talk.
I've started using some of the online bookmarking resources. They are pretty nice, and really I've been wanting something akin to this for awhile now, especially for storing links to favorite church talks, and political pieces. The most popular one I guess is Del.icio.us. This one isn't as popular, and is meant to be used more as a networking kind of resource is Diigo. I think I'm going to eventually start using Diigo more because it has a feature that allows you to highlight parts of a webpage, and insert post it notes. This might seem totally weird to you, but I've actually been wishing for that kind of feature for years now. I read a ton of stuff online, and I want to treat the internets as one of my books. Lame, I know.
Last night while running I had about a dozen different things that I wanted to explore deeply, and pen my thoughts to paper. If I thought I could get away with writing as a living, I think that I would probably go for it. The blog has been helpful in getting me to formulate my thoughts on a variety of topics, and I think doing the Blogcritics stuff will help me to take it more seriously. It's nice to have this place as my sanctuary where I can put my personal thoughts in the same place where I might post something that can be irreverent/offensive to some. Or maybe my personal thoughts can accomplish both of those tasks.
I read this piece by Thomas Sowell. It's just a smattering of thoughts on different topics. A couple of the parts that I liked:
Even if you think our presidential choices this election year are between disgust and disaster, anyone who has ever been through a real disaster can tell you that this difference is not small. It is big enough to go vote on Election Day.
One of the ways in which people are similar is in the lengths to which they will go in order to show that they are different.
The great Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that a good catchword could stop people from thinking for 50 years. The big catchword this election year is “change” — and it has already stopped many people’s thinking in its tracks.
Whoever said that overnight is a lifetime in politics knew what he was talking about. Just six months ago, the big question was how Hillary and Giuliani would do against each other in this year’s presidential elections.
Can you believe how much the presidential landscape has changed just in the last six months? That really was the case. And for Romney, if it hadn't been for an upstart campaign from Huckabee (and those snooping kids), and the virulent Bush hatred and Romney's distant, but related political perspectives, he could have been the GOP candidate. It's crazy how much can change in such a short period of time.
Have you heard about this flip-out? Bill O'Reilly is really abrasive, but sometimes he has some good stuff. This, however, is not one of his finer moments. This video I'm posting is not the original, but you can get an idea for what's really on it from this one. This has some offensive language so you might not all like this, but I can't help but love the countdown, and the use of troglodyte homunculus.
Dave, this is the article I was referring to, and for everyone else, this story is pretty crazy. Do you guys ever bother saving and using coupons at the grocery store? There is a woman in Atlanta who used to spend about $200-250 a week on groceries for her family of five. She decided she would curb spending and so now she looks for about an hour a week for specials, shops one day for about 3-4 hours visiting several stores and spends about $20-30 on her groceries. No joke. Read the story.
While serving a mission in Chile, I lived with my companion and one other companionship in an area that was close to this grocery store that was the Chilean equivalent to Walmart, Jumbo (pronounced Yumbo). It was a superstore that had everything. It was outside of the mission, just barely, and we were allowed to shop there for our stuff. While cruising down the aisles, we came across the game Monopoly. I don't know why it seemed like fun, but we got it and brought it back to the pinch and to play with the other set of missionaries.
We didn't get to play it until the next prep day, but we were so excited to play we decided to start on P-day eve, Sunday after the day was done. We played that night until about 2 in the morning. Even though we went to bed way late, we still made a point to get up on time and study and as soon as we could start again, all day long, multiple games throughout the entire day. We had to stop in the middle of a game because we had to go out and work, but as soon as we came back we resumed playing.
We realized that our obsession with the game was becoming a problem when we finished studying in the morning on Tuesday, and while brushing our teeth, all four of us were standing around the board that we had left on the kitchen table, plotting our next move. From that point, we decided that it would only be played P-day eve when we got home from proselyting, once we gathered all the zone numbers, until no later than 12am. (My mission started an hour later and ended an hour later, which I LOVED. So instead of 630, we started at 730 and came home by 1030 at night. That was perfect for me at the time.)
You guys...you have NO IDEA how excited all of us were to come home and play Monopoly on Sundays. It became a thing where on our walk home, we almost started running back to the pinch to get everything setup to play. My comp would do our numbers for the week, the other junior companion would do his, the district leader would do his and get his district's numbers, I would call the other district leaders in my zone for their numbers, and the junior companion would set up the board while we were getting everything taken care of. I honestly can't think of any specific time in my life when I was so titilated by anything as I was by Monopoly. It was so ridiculous, but I loved it so much. We could blast through 3 games in about 2 hours. To this day it is always the board game that I want to play with people more than anything else in the whole world. But it has to be with people who are competitive and take it seriously. The worst is playing with someone who just folds quickly and dumps everything onto whomever it is that he wants to win.
Anyway, it's fun to have those kinds of traditions. Have any of you ever had anything that you ever looked forward to with all of the anticipation and excitement of your whole soul? That's literally what it felt like for us playing that silly game. Last Friday I think I found something else that will quickly become a similar kind of thrill - Boomer's Batting Cage Fridays.
I don't know what it is, but I just can't get enough of the feeling I get when I connect on a ball and send it flying through the cage, even if it only ends up hitting a net 50 feet away. I just love it more than anything. Last week I was crankin' on 50 mph fastballs to the delight of a group of 8-10 year olds. I had them ooh-ing and ahh-ing. It's just so much fun though, and it's perfect because I got the bat for Christmas from Dave (ahthankyou), and batting gloves, and it's on my way home from work. Now I'm looking at the clock not only because I'm tired of blogging all day long on the job, but because I can't wait to get out in the cage and crush some dimpled, rubber, yellow balls. That's what she said.
Yup, today is it. The one year anniversary of the birth of this blog. Here is a reprint of the first post:
What is with the blogging craze? It's like a less personal journal that we want everyone to read. It seems so self-absorbed, but I'm inclined to indulge in the deluge of blogging. I like that sentence. We'll see how long I actually stick with this. Odds are that I do this for a month or two and get bored and move on to something else. What will probably happen is that I'll get focused on what I'm currently distracted from, then come back here, and wash, rinse, and repeat frequently. I've been wanting a forum to capture some of my thoughts though, and whether or not they are relevant to anything or even worth reading about, hopefully I can pump out a steady stream of consciousness at you. So be on notice.
I should have remember my addictive tendencies and realized that I would be hooked. Since the birth of the blog, there have been over 6,600 visits. Probably about 1,000 of those are between Dave and Caitlin. Greg probably has about 500. Karen about 500, although I'm not sure it registers visits through reader. I'm pretty sure it doesn't. 1,000 are rewarded each to searches for "Janet Reno Dance Party" or some derivative of that search, and "rollin' in my 6-4." Seriously, I get several hits a day on each of those searches. More recently some popular search terms include:
Josh Hamilton
St. George Marathon
Unwritten Law Anaheim House of Blues
Mother's Who Know (I've actually gotten a good amount from that one too). When you type in Mothers Who Know Petition, I'm actually the first that pops up on Google.
Some of the names that come up the most in searches - Kent Sommer, Robbie Haglund, Dave Axelgard, and Allison Rubino. Weird, huh? I think of those searches, Robbie's are probably from himself. Those of you who know him can understand that.
I want to dip my balls in it
And many, many more!
This is the 382nd post, which means I'm a freak. I don't think I'll ever clear the one a day post threshold again, just because I exploded last June when I started the blog with 60 posts. Since then it has been a pretty steady 5 or so a week.
Thanks everyone for the comments you leave and participating in the blog. Like I said yesterday, I did finally write my first post for Blogcritics, which is not located to the left of this page. However, it has to go through editors before being posted, so I'm assuming they'll notify me when it's up and then I can post it on here. And I'll include a link to the site and you can check it out there.
Approximate hours at work that I've wasted on this blog: 4,000. A serious guess at it...with 365 days a year, minus 104 weekend days a year, minus about half of my posts aren't at work...probably 130 days at work I've actually written at work, so a little less than an hour on a post, meaning about 100 hours of work on the actual blog. Including this one.
It is appalling. Incredibly, a feverish will to power on the part of small numbers of judges is rapidly eroding a citizen's standing as the ultimate lawgiver. Courts unbound by any sense of limits, by any sense of restraint, threaten the basic understanding that has long undergirded the Republic --that the laws proceed from the open consent of the people, and that the ultimate laws, the federal and state constitutions, are documents of fixed meaning and structure, not merely window dressing on the rule of judicial elites or empty phrases waiting for elites to fill them with meaning.
The question we must address is whether, under these circumstances, the failure to designate the official relationship of same-sex couples as marriage violates the California Constitution.
That was not in fact the central question. The central question was whether the representative nature of the California state government, including its initiative provisions, would be upheld.They were not. The California Supreme Court asserted its ultimate power today in a way that is shameful and deeply destructive of the ability of a free people to govern themselves.
The emphases are my own. Whether you agree with the decision or not is probably not as concerning the underlying issue of judicial activism imposing its will on the people. I, for one, do not agree with the decision and find this outcome doubly disconcerting.
In other news, I finally put together my first post for Blogcritics, but I have to put my stuff there before I put it on here. It's a nerdy piece, but hopefully it's entertaining. I'll post it on here soon enough.
White people love rules. It explains why so they get upset when people cut in line, why they tip so religiously and why they become lawyers. But without a doubt, the rule system that white people love the most is grammar. It is in their blood not only to use perfect grammar but also to spend significant portions of time pointing out the errors of others.
When asking someone about their biggest annoyances in life, you might expect responses like “hunger,” “being poor,” or “getting shot.” If you ask a white person, the most common response will likely be “people who use ‘their’ when they mean ‘there.’ Maybe comma splices, I’m not sure but it’s definitely one of the two.”
Some of you jerks are SO white. Just sayin'.
***WHOA!!! I'd like to direct your attention to Laura's comment calling me out on my grammar snobbery...when have I EVER corrected you on that kind of thing? It's precisely because I find that habit so grating that I actually pride myself on not doing it. Although I can distinctly remember having been corrected by YOU on subject-verb agreement and ending a sentence with a preposition - in my speech, no less! Not even in writing! Me so sorry that I onry poor asian boy who no speak the engrish quite as perfertry as you.
I was talking with a friend of mine the other day and he was griping to me about how is it that a country with so many internal problems can be laying off much needed teachers while spending so frivolously wasting American resources abroad. I just listened. I wonder how many people actually feel that way. I overheard some people recently talking about politics at the market and they were self-proclaimed Democrats, and talking about how they were going to be voting for Hillary because they were sure that with McCain in the White House, he was going to be raising taxes.
There are all sorts of problems with misconceptions and lack of information and perspective on the part of the public. Did you know that Kennedy had 9% of the U.S. budget dedicated to national defense? What do you think it was with Reagan during the Cold War? 6%. What would you say about now? 4%. Do you know what an overwhelming amount of the budget goes to? Social programs and entitlements. How many people thinks that bureaucrats are better at spending their money than they are? I'm sure most people would say they could do a better job themselves, but there are people who actually think that Democratic leaders would lower taxes while Republicans would raise them. For tax reasons alone, I can't believe more people aren't self-identified as conservative.
Right now we have an unemployment rate of 5% and headline inflation topping 4%. We have economic growth of 0.6%, extremely low consumer confidence and weakening consumer spending, small business optimism at a 28-year low, and of course a housing market that is showing declines in excess of 20% in some parts of the country.
These are hardly statistics to celebrate, but they are a far cry from the crises of the 20th century. Next time someone compares the present to the Great Depression, stop them. Between 1929 and 1932, the Dow Jones index went to 41.22 from 380.33, a decline of 89%. Today's hang-wringing about a 20% decline in the major indices (much of it since recouped) doesn't come close.
The unemployment rate in 1933 was 24.9%; seven years later, after the intensive efforts of the New Deal, it stood at 14.6%. Even adjusting for changed methodology since then, today's jobless situation hardly compares. While the recent collapse of Bear Stearns shocked Wall Street, in 1933 alone 4,000 banks failed, and millions not only lost their homes but were rendered homeless...
The rhetoric and the polls paint a bleak picture of America today. Yet it bears remembering that barely 10 years ago the mood was almost diametrically opposite. In the heyday of the Internet boom and the utopian spirit of the New Economy, the prevailing attitude was that anything is possible. Even with several crises – such as the collapse of Long Term Capital Management and the Asian currency crisis – the mood remained bright.
Take this from 1997: "This is the golden age of capitalism," said Leonard Riggio, the son of a Brooklyn cabdriver and head of Barnes & Noble. "The wealth is more expansive and deeper than in the past – not four hundred or a thousand rich, but tens of thousands." Others forecast the beginning of a "long boom" leading to widespread prosperity and the end of poverty. The gospel of the New Economy promised a magical fusion of the Internet and Wall Street that would finally solve the age-old riddle of how to make a society both happy and wealthy.
That all came to an end in 2001; and yet the technological advances of the 1990s led to incredible innovations and wealth creation, especially around the world.
Something that is really interesting that Kudlow likes to refer to is the Intrade Prediction Market trends. It's a betting site that allows people to wager on things like who is most likely to win the Presidency, the Democratic Nomination, etc. Recently, they had Democrats winning control of both the House and the Senate at over 90%. And if Obama wins in November, that means Dems sweep control of all of the branches up for election, which does not bode well for investors, or more broadly-speaking, the economy at large. That is the truth, that's not just the convservative in me speaking.
Remember that website that I mentioned last week? Blogcritics. I know that I had said previously that I would be coming up with some original pieces, but I just went ahead and sent the contact a link to my blog and went for it. After waiting for a few days, I got a response today and now my homework assignment is to come up with something in the next day or so. Any suggestions on what to write? I've kind of got some ideas, so we'll see what I come up with. Unfortunately, I've got to first post it to the Blogcritics site before it comes here, but don't worry, it will work its way over. So that's on my plate for tomorrow, so I might not have anything up. But in a couple days Rollin' In My 6-4 is hitting its one year anniversary. I'll have about 380 posts at that point...more than one a day. I'm pretty proud of that productivity. That's a lot of work hours lost for anybody who cares.
Have you ever heard this artist, Atmosphere? I bought his (their?) most recent album tonight. I'm diggin' it. Taste!
I caught Unwritten Law over the weekend at the House of Blues in Anaheim. As has been our custom, we missed most of the opening bands, but sometimes I feel like I'm missing out on some potential up and coming bands, know what I mean? About a year and a half ago we discovered As Fast As, and it's always fun to find that band that you can love and keep in your pocket because no one else knows about them.
We did, however, catch the band just before Unwritten Law, The Dirty Heads. Most of the people at the show seemed pretty familiar with them, as the the band does hail from Huntington Beach. I actually saw these guys open for UL at the show right before Christmas at the Grove, also in Anaheim. Maybe it's just my recent mood of listening to Ben Harper, and Bob and Damian Marley, but I really like their sound. There is just something strangely engaging about a band with a look that's more befitting Lynyrd Skynyrd than the reggae/hip-hop sound that they have. At the same time, you could cut a scene from a late 80's to early 90's surf movie (think Point Break), and get an idea of what they look like. I'm not sure how many members are in the band because I'm sure that it has to be bigger than the 4-piece group that I saw on stage, but I love the duel set of regular drums coupled with the guy playing the set of bongos and hitting the cymbals with his hands. It's hard for me to listen to that kind of sound and not want to move. That was definitely the case for the girl standing to my left who looked like she was failing a dance-off sobriety test. Here's a sample:
As the crowd anxiously awaited Unwritten Law to hit the stage, the house music softened while the crowd roused in anticipation. The several hundred people were greeted by a skinny punker sipping on a beer alone on stage with a keyboard set-up. He took off his shirt to reveal an undernourished physique, sporting a distended belly sated by alcohol and not enough fruits and vegetables. To our delight he played a piano rendition of Teenage Suicide, hitting the pauses and climaxes in the song swimmingly. It was great. He finished his piece, the curtains closed and not too long later the headliners made their entrance.
They came out to a blackened stage and Scott's cigarette provided the only light as they manned their positions. Whether that entrance was planned or not, it was perfectly set. Seeing a band live really is about how much they can sell the audience on the emotion in their music, and these guys do it as good as anyone that I've ever seen. Much of their success has to be attributed to a lead man in Scott Russo that can carry the energy of the crowd on his back for the duration of the set. I think my favorite songs of the night were Shoulda Known Better which kills it live, but the Rest of My Life-She Says medley always tops it for me.
I wish there was somewhere I could find the actual playlist, but Unwritten Law's concert set is pretty standard, if you've ever seen them more than a few times. If you have the album The Hit List, then pretty much all of the songs that they play live can be found on there. My two main complaints with them live is that Scott tends to disrupt the flow of the show with too much talking and not enough singing, and their playlist is very predictable. I've been to five shows in the last two years and this was the least that he has talked in any of them, so I LOVED that part of it. The songs were no different, but that's not to say it isn't great to also know what you're in for. Just one time, though, I'd love to hear Harmonic again live, or ANYTHING from Oz Factor. He made the comment at the show that for the old-timers they would like this song, and then they played Lonesome off the self-titled album. Old-timers, really? That's from their third album. What about the people who first fell in love with your music with Blue Room and Oz Factor. I haven't heard Falling Down in show in so long. I think I've probably seen them about 15 times and they've never ended with another song other than CPK. I'm just saying...
In any case, you can pretty much guarantee a quality show from them every time they play. I love the customary rush to the front as the first song begins to sound off, and the girls who thought they wanted to be in the pit get dumped to the back. Scott has an amazing presence on stage, and I actually like them as a 4-piece band more than a 5-piece. It gives the lead more of a chance to shine and without that, I wouldn't have been able to see him hit himself in the head with the guitar during She Says. He really does define "cool" so well. My voice was hoarse about halfway through the show, my calves ached from the ebbs and flows of the crowd, but I never tired of soaking in their music. Below is a performance of Seein' Red.
By the way, I just saw posted on another site that Unwritten Law is coming out with a new studio album by the end of the year. Holla!
In baseball, sometimes it's said that the hardest part isn't cracking the Major League lineup, but staying there. Because my frame of reference is based on the team I follow, I'll refer to a couple of guys from the Angels to give you a backdrop for this story. Recently, the Angels called up Nick Adenhart from the Triple A affiliate in Salt Lake City to fill the roster spot for the fifth starter in the rotation.
As the Angels have been looking to acquire a power bat the last couple of seasons through trade avenues, Nick's name had been mentioned in every potential deal because of the type of propsect that he is. He's climbed through the ranks in the minors and was 4-0 with less than a 1.00 era when he was called up. Last Thursday night I was at the game when he debuted and I was hoping for something like when Jered Weaver made his first start in the bigs against the Orioles a couple of seasons ago - a solid outing garnering a win. Unfortunately for Nick, his nerves revealed themselves and he was wild. I think he had five walks in the three innings that he pitched, and from the way the A's were hitting him that night you'd think he was serving up softballs, not fastballs. They gave him another shot this week against the Royals and although he wasn't as battered this time around, he failed to make it past the 5th inning. He'll probably return to Salt Lake in the next week or so to make room for another person who is looking to make his mark in the majors as well. Another teammate of his, Jeff Mathis, knows this story well.
For several years now Mathis has been one of the most highly touted prospects in all of the Major Leagues. As a catcher, many consider him to be one of the best defensive prospects while also possessing the ability to hit, a skill that's obviously important but comes secondary to how well a catcher can manage the game. Since 2005, Mathis has yo-yo'ed between the Angels and the farm team because of how difficult it is to sustain a prolonged presence in the majors. It looks like he's finally here to stay. These stories are common around baseball and for most players. Not every great player that plays today gets up to the Major League ballclub and stays there. So when you hear about a guy like Josh Hamilton it makes his story that much more remarkable.
After having a great spring training, hitting over .400, Josh Hamilton was able to secure himself a spot on the opening day roster of the Cincinnait Reds. On April 2, 2007 the crowd of the Reds welcomed Josh with a 22-second standing ovation. Although he missed a good portion of the season due to injury, he was still able to hit 19 home runs and stay in the running for NL Rookie of the Year. These is an uncommon experience for most ballplayers.
In the offseason the Rangers acquired Josh in a trade from the Reds in a deal that is widely considered one of those rare mutually beneficial deals when both ball clubs clearly improved with the new addition to the team. Currently, Josh is second in the American League with 7 home runs, and leads the league in RBI's. He was named American League player of the month for April. Not only has he been able to avoid any kind of sophomore slump, Josh has been able to thrive in his second season. Again, most players fail to experience the sustained success that Hamilton has been privy to thus far. Then again, most players are fortunate enough to not have to take the circuitous route that he has taken either.
I'm going to leave it to Jeff Pearlman of Sports Illustrated and ESPN to tell you the rest of his Hamilton's story. Here is Pearlman's story from a year ago about rediscovery for Josh Hamilton, and his follow-up story from this past week about the uphill battle that Hamilton still faces from some of the fans. I will, however, leave you with an excerpt that will hopefully entice you enough to read the stories; it is a great story:
Over the ensuing seven years, Hamilton went from golden boy to addict.
He replaced Gatorade with crack and bowls of Wheaties with lines of coke.
From afar, I watched with profound sadness. This was Josh Hamilton -- the guaranteed future star. My guy.
In June 2002, I flew out to California to profile Hamilton, who was struggling with Single-A Bakersfield. We grabbed a bite to eat at a diner near the ballpark, and I was taken aback by a striking physical change.
Though Hamilton still maintained his boyish smile, coating his arms were layers of tattoos, one more intricate and odd than the next. It seemed so un-Josh -- at least the Josh I had briefly known. When I asked him about the artwork, Hamilton went quiet. "Yeah," he said. "It was a mistake."
If you've come this far then it's worth your time visiting the links above.
I was sorely disappointed last week when I was watching 30 Rock and Tina Fey's character Liz made the comment about the strange weather in New York being due to the resulting irregular weather patterns that result from global warming. I love Tina, but I hate her politics. And Alec's too, for that matter. A cold couple of days do not irregular weather patterns make. In spite of the fact that we just finished one of the coldest winters worldwide in the last couple of decades there are still so many global warming alarmists who will use anything and everything to support their belief in their superstition. It bothers me that smart people get so convinced about something that is unclear at best (at least in their favor).
As I had mentioned yesterday, I love the I Will Teach You To Be Rich blog, but I especially enjoyed this article about the Shrug Effect. Basically, the Shrug Effect comes from wondering how someone can be so successful, attributing the success to external factors, and shrugging your shoulders and doing nothing because you don't have the same qualities. This happens in a number of different areas - we wonder how people can lose so much weight or are in better shape but we can't or aren't, how one person seems to have time to be a super parent and we're not, or how someone can be so well-off while we continue to just scrape by.
In psychology there is a concept of locus of control (very closely related to Attribution theory, if not basically the same thing) which explains personality and behavior in terms of the attributions we make about events that occur, and whether they arise due to internal or external factors. People that exhibit typically healthy behaviors and attitudes tend to attribute negative events to external factors, and conversely, credit positive outcomes to internal ones. For most people, there is a certain amount of self-deception that is involved with these kinds of things. Without going into too much more detail, whether you're content/satisfied/successful/happy or not really depends on how you ascribe the events and circumstances to internal or external forces. The author of the article that I linked uses this example to make his point, while I do the same:
I want to tell you a story about a guy named Jim English. Many of you know that I co-founded a wiki product called PBwiki. Well, when I started my series on personal entrepreneurship a few weeks ago, I used one of the posts to ask for interns to help make PBwiki bigger and better.
Jim English responded and, among the other applicants, he was the most passionate by far. So we brought him on board and gave him some small tasks. In just a couple of weeks, it’s become clear that Jim is a superstar. He’s taken high-level goals like “Make this site better” and he’s achieved real, measurable goals by going step-by-step. Now he gets much bigger projects and increasing responsibility. Actually, he’s such an asset that I plan to continue having him work with PBwiki and, eventually, I want to recruit him to other companies I’m involved with in the future.
So if you see Jim as a senior executive in the future, I suppose there are two reasons you can attribute to his success: Maybe it was his connections, pedigree, luck, superlative intelligence, blah blah blah that got him so far.
Or maybe it was him seeing something that interested him, stepping up, and taking a chance on an unknown project. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was the small step of sending just one email.
It’s easy to do The Shrug Effect and attribute others’ success to qualities you don’t have, shrugging because you can’t equal them. But that’s simplistic, and it’s an excuse to stay in your current state and do nothing differently.
Be patient. Do things with uncertain outcomes. Analyze why you haven’t taken advantage of opportunities in the past (for example, why didn’t you apply for the PBwiki opportunity? Was it a fear of rejection/qualification? Was it simply a lack of interest?). And start today.
When you do, soon people will wonder about you and your success.
Somehow busy people seem to still be able to do amazing things. It's easy for me to train for a marathon because I have no other obligations, but what about my Branch President who is a marriage and family therapist with four kids and a very demanding calling? I feel like people who achieve great things do it because they focus on the things that will facilitate their success rather than what will hedge up their way - their eyes are on the finish line and not the stumbling blocks in front of them, and a hundred other metaphors that illustrate the same point. I just thought that was worth mentioning.
I have been very distracted at work today. I can read online stuff all day. No joke. In fact, I'm pretty close to doing it today.
I came across this article on the ESPN website. The story goes...a few years ago a college basketball player was killed by a teammate during the summer at Baylor University. When the murder had occurred, nobody had known that the teammate who had been killed had also been the recipient of some improper tuition payments made on his behalf by the coach. Upon hearing news of the murder, the head coach had decided that with the increased attention on the player that he would float a story about it being drug related as a smokescreen, so as to avoid any potential unsavory news surfacing about his NCAA violations. The article covers the travails of the assistant coach who alerted the NCAA about what the head coach had planned on doing, and the resulting blacklisting that he suffered because of his whistle-blowing. I thought these quotes were quite significant:
"I'm thousands of dollars in debt, no longer in the profession I went to school to pursue," said Rouse, whose $42,000 annual salary at Baylor was the most he'd ever made coaching basketball. "And I can tell you right now, five years later, working nightshift at a factory, making barely the minimum to survive, I don't regret it for one second. I wake up every day knowing that principles mean something..."
"I do believe. I do have hope," Rouse said. "I have faith in not only my God but in the goodness of people. There's no event in my life that could turn me into a cynic. None. I would have a hard time convincing young men to do the impossible if I let this situation make me a negative person. It won't happen."
I just wanted to say thanks for your comments and suggestions. Jared, I love that I Will Teach You To Be Rich blog. Through that blog I also found this blog, Get Rich Slowly. What I think is so great about both of those is that they are well written sites that teach practical principles in simple terms. It's the kind of general, broad-ranging advice that everyone should listen to. I think I spent most of my morning perusing those two sites.
And thanks in general for all of your comments here and there. I seriously love to hear feedback, even if it's a putdown, Laura (I sure as hell did come up with that phrase. You know you'd be doing the same thing too if it were your blog. I think you're just jealous that I'm more black than you are now, admit it!). It really is nice to get your words of encouragement, well wishes, input, or anything else you might have to say. I live for it, so thank you.
I found this site, Blogcritics, and I love the concept of it because it was something that I was talking about with a friend not too long about developing ourselves. Essentially it's an online magazine and they have many different authors contributing to a number of different topics. I've actually been looking for something that maybe I could contribute to myself without too big of a commitment, but that would be a forum where I could be more widely read, and have some feedback on my writing. Now that I'm considering it more seriously, I'm a little bit intimidated by it. I'm not a real writer, I don't have a real portfolio except for this blog, so would my little tidbits be of any worth to them? Can I write to an audience wider than my little circle of friends and random people that pop up here and there? I'm really hoping so. I think what I'll do is over the next several weeks come up with 3-5 original articles on different topics and post them here, and reference them when I ask for their consideration. I'm really excited, and slightly nervous, about it. So if you have any input as to what subjects I write best about, what I speak most knowledgeably about, or even just other things I can do to improve my writing, I'd love to hear it.
I feel like there are 10,000 different things I want to do and there just aren't enough hours in the day to do it all. I'm running four days a week now, playing soccer one day, but I still want to incorporate weightlifting and jump rope into my exercise routine; I want to attend church activities as much as I can, but I also want to see my brother and my dad on a regular basis; I want a night for TV-palooza, but then I also want to hit one game in every Angels homestand; I want to blog consistently, but I also want to write seriously in a different kind of forum. And read my scriptures, go to the temple, see my friends, enjoy myself, but then have 4 hours every once in a while to look at a shady Russian music website that I pay with currency units. And go to the beach every Saturday. Thankfully, I have yet to reach the Jesse-Spano-defcon-level.
And I just like this song right now. It's happy. Happy.
Do you guys use all the other Google applications? They're so great - Reader, the IGoogle homepage, everything. I've been using those a little bit more lately and they're fantastic.
So Karen has been utilizing a foreign download service for music and I've been hesitant to jump on board...until this past Saturday, at which time I proceeded to spend about 3-4 hours looking up music, purchasing and downloading a lot of it. For about $15 I got about 80 songs. I couldn't stop myself, I just got so excited about it. I was seriously like the lab monkey who figures out which button it is that sends the electric pulses into the pleasure areas in his brain and keeps pushing the button until he dies of hunger. Luckily for me, the beach was calling me on Saturday. I'm almost afraid to go back to it because I know I'll get sucked in for another several hours the next time I go on. This is one of the gems that I came across. Can you believe I like this crap? And I don't just like it...I love it.
Does anyone know of any relevant art critics? I'm looking for a blog or something that is worth reading. And finance websites or blogs that would be interesting also. Something enjoyable enough for someone with a basic knowledge of each, but looking to get more immersed. Send me anything my way that you might know of.
This week I'm tranisitioning into exclusively running as my workout routine in anticipation of the marathon in Chicago. Well at least not relying on the gym until the marathon. I can't believe you are bailing on me. You know who you are. I've thought about using this resource at this website, Stickk. It's an interesting concept. A Yale professor formulated the idea behind it, essentially being that having a known public contract can greatly aid in people fulfilling their goals. You can even pay money and they hold onto it until you say that you actually completed the task.
There is so often a gap between the things we say we want to do, and then the things that we actually do. Sometimes I think I thrive off that challenge of not just talking, but doing and I really hope that's true when it comes to finishing that marathon come October 12th. We're really doing it Harry!
I don't remember if it was last week or the week before, but with the recent first quarter reports in it looks like we're already coming out of the recession that we never got into in the first place. I think the simplest measure of whether or not we're actually in a recession is if GDP goes through two straight declines. For the first quarter of this year it grew at a modest 0.6%, and prior to that the GDP had yet to show any kind of decline. I've recently been reading more of Larry Kudlow's stuff on NRO and he wrote about this subject in this article here. He has a blog that he regularly updates here. And here's one more article for good measure.
With the Democratic campaign turning into the war of attrition that it has become, the party as a whole is trying to portray the economy as being in the worst possible shape. The way Obama and his wife talk about it, you'd think that we're going through another depression. The crazy thing is, with unemployment being just under 5%, it's historically low. If you look at times when the country actually was suffering through real economic downturns, those numbers range from 7-10%. For a fifteen year period from the mid-70's to the last 80's, the number never dropped below 5%, hovering mostly in that range I just mentioned. In fact, for the last 5 years that rate has remained remarkably static. Again, this is an attempt by the left to paint the GOP presidency as a failure. Even the Dow crept up over the 13,000 mark a few days ago for the first time since January. It's been hit pretty hard with the rising cost of oil the last few days, but the economy has been very resilient as of late.
This is an excerpt from Kudlow's article:
President George W. Bush may turn out to be the top economic forecaster in the country.
About a month ago he told reporters, “We’re not in a recession, we’re in a slowdown.” At a White House news conference a few weeks later, despite the fact that reporters pressed him to use the “R” word, Mr. Bush refused. And on Friday, after the most recent jobs report — which produced a much-smaller-than-expected decline in corporate payrolls, a huge 362,000 increase in the more entrepreneurial household survey (the best gain in five months), and a historically low 5 percent unemployment rate (4.95 percent, to be precise) — the president told reporters: “This economy is going to come on. I’m confident it will.”
We’re in the midst of the most widely predicted and heralded recession in history. Problem is, so far it’s a non-recession recession. Score one for President Bush. In an election year, it could be a big one.
First-quarter GDP growth came in at 0.6 percent. It wasn’t the widely predicted decline, and economists expect that number to be revised up. GDP growth for the fourth quarter of 2007 was also up slightly, while the prior two quarters averaged over 4 percent growth.
My pal Jimmy Pethokoukis quotes Stanford professor Robert Hall, who heads the recession-dating committee at the National Bureau of Economic Research: “It seems unlikely that we would ever declare a peak-date when real GDP continued to rise.”
Interesting — isn’t it? — just how durable and resilient our low-tax, free-market, capitalist economy truly is. Hit by soaring food and energy prices, a bad housing downturn, and a Wall Street credit crunch, the economy continues to expand, albeit slowly.
As I think you all know I will send out a weekly employment bulletin at work. I've made it kind of into my only little forum to make a joke here and there and for the most part it's received well, except by the President of the company. I actually get rave reviews from everyone about the bulletins I send out, like the Halloween one, or more recently, the April Fool's bulletin. Unfortunately, my most ardent critic has been the one with the most say in what's appropriate or not to put on the bulletin, or in the email itself. More recently, to tone things down, I thought playing it safe would be to include a new image of some piece of art each week on the bulletin. To my surprise today, I got a call from the President asking me why I had posted an image of breasts on the bulletin. I didn't even know what she was talking about. I knew the image she was referring to, but couldn't even pick out what she was talking about, I even had it sitting right in front of me. Then she asked me to recall the message I had sent out a week earlier, which I obviously couldn't do, and advised me that I cannot include anymore obscene images. I just couldn't believe the Mormon kid at the company was getting reprimanded for not being conservative enough. I was really annoyed.
I was referred to the painting by a friend and it's called Hallucinogenic Toreador and is actually really cool. For some commentary on the piece you can go here, here, and here. I was just surprised that the images of the Venus de Milo was referred to only as "breasts". Sometimes I hate the rigidity at my work as much as I appreciate it at other times.
Of course I saw it over the weekend. For just a three day weekend it opened with over $100 million in sales. And it's every bit as good as I had hoped it would be. I just love the characters that they've developed in the comics because they're all so genuinely flawed and real. The movie doesn't go into this as much, but in the comics Tony Stark is not only a millionaire playboy with the new heart condition, but he also sometimes has a horrible skin condition that necessitates new inventions that only he can produce, and one plotline that usually gets a lot of attention is his alcoholism. Although the powers and the superfluous events that occur are completely fictional, the people that exist in the Marvel and DC comics worlds are entirely real. When I first heard about Robert Downey Jr. being cast as Tony Stark I could never have imagined a better fit between actor and character. The appearance alone is almost exact, but the type of people that I imagine both to be are perfect as well. The story is entertaining, nothing feels overdone, and the performances are all great. I love Gwynneth in her role as Pepper. I'm sure I'll be seeing it at least a few more times in the theater. I also heard on the radio this morning that Tony Stark makes an appearance in the new Incredible Hulk movie coming out next month. And if you haven't seen it yet, do yourselves a favor and listen to this guy's advice (although if you aren't really familiar with the comics then you won't get all geeked up like everyone else):
I've talked before about a few people who, only a short time ago, faced some uncertainty with respect to things that really troubled them. I don't think I've mentioned all of their specific situations, but I've alluded to this theme before on the blog. One friend of mine had gotten out of a pretty serious relationship around September and I spoke with him soon after, reassuring him that he can never be sure of how things will turn out in just a few short months. Another friend of mine had gone through some financial struggles at around the same time period, and even reached a point where she felt like she had to move back home in order to get back on her feet, which was the last thing that she wanted to do.
Within months the former has been able to meet and start dating someone that I think is a much better match for him than the last girl he dated, and the latter has gotten a couple of big promotions and increases that has helped her see the end of her money travails. What has been really neat for me is that I have been pretty close to both situations and seen the beginning of the struggles, felt their desperation, and have since seen them fumble their way through whatever uncertainty they had been previously facing, and emerge onto surer ground where they finally have reached a place where they each can exhale in relief.
And as I've documented on here, in my own life I have been able to see the same a lot over the last year. So I'm well aware that usually it's just a matter of time before those uncertain times become more certain and those things that once seemed so cloudy, can quickly clear up. I think that I've even given that speech several times over the course of the last 6-8 months. One of my favorite things that I will cite comes from Castaway:
We both had done the math. Kelly added it all up and... knew she had to let me go. I added it up, and knew that I had... lost her. 'cos I was never gonna get off that island. I was gonna die there, totally alone. I was gonna get sick, or get injured or something. The only choice I had, the only thing I could control was when, and how, and where it was going to happen. So... I made a rope and I went up to the summit, to hang myself. I had to test it, you know? Of course. You know me. And the weight of the log, snapped the limb of the tree, so I-I - , I couldn't even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over *nothing*. And that's when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope. And all my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that's what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail. And now, here I am. I'm back. In Memphis, talking to you. I have ice in my glass... And I've lost her all over again. I'm so sad that I don't have Kelly. But I'm so grateful that she was with me on that island. And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?
I love those last lines because I really do believe in them wholeheartedly. In fact, it has to be one of my favorite movies because I think it drives home that point so poignantly, that no matter how bleak the situation may appear to be, there is no telling the kind of relief that lays in waiting. As long as we're doing what we're supposed to, and no matter how uncertain these times may seem, there are things going on behind the scenes that are working in our favor that we can just never anticipate. One of my favorite scriptures touches on this point also, from D&C 58:2-4:
For verily I say unto you, blessed is he that keepeth my commandments, whether in life or in death; and he that is faithful in tribulation, the reward of the same is greater in the kingdom of heaven.
Ye cannot behold with your natural eyes, for the present time, the design of your God concerning those things which shall come hereafter, and the glory which shall follow after much tribulation.
For after much tribulation come the blessings. Wherefore the day cometh that ye shall be crowned with much glory; the hour is not yet, but is nigh at hand.
However, in spite of how well I think I know this principle, sometimes there is still a disconnect between what things I know in my mind, and what I'm actually feeling in my heart. In spite of all of my experience with it, seeing it in the first person and many times over in the third person, sometimes it is still hard to confide and find comfort in a thought or an outcome that exists currently only in the abstract.
At times I'm worried about school starting in the fall, if I'll be alright in my financial situation, if I'll even do well in my program, or even if it's what I really want to do, or will get me the places I want to go. Sometimes I can't help but feel concerned for my mom and her situation, wondering if things will work out financially for her, and more importantly, if she's ever going to find the companionship that I know she longs for. For my own situation, sometimes I wonder when marriage and family will be something that starts to come into view. And I hate even admitting that because I don't want people to think that I'm so desperate for it to happen, or to even feel sorry for me that it's still not there yet, but nevertheless, I would love to have a better idea of when and how that's going to work out. The worst is when people in the church ask me about it like it's something that I've been avoiding.
I think this week I've just been feeling the weight of a number of different kinds of things like that. And I think it's only natural, and acceptable, to feel those concerns. What is most comforting about all of it is that in spite of not having a clearer answer to those questions, it is still possible to have those fears allayed through subtle reminders - tender mercies - that help me to know that The Higher Power is working in my behalf, provided that I'm doing the same. Recently, I have made a more concerted effort to be available to service opportunities, and to seeking after heavenly guidance, and last night while reading President Monson's General Conference address to the church, I came across this excerpt:
Mortality is a period of testing, a time to prove ourselves worthy to return to the presence of our Heavenly Father. In order to be tested, we must sometimes face challenges and difficulties. At times there appears to be no light at the tunnel’s end—no dawn to break the night’s darkness. We feel surrounded by the pain of broken hearts, the disappointment of shattered dreams, and the despair of vanished hopes. We join in uttering the biblical plea “Is there no balm in Gilead?” We are inclined to view our own personal misfortunes through the distorted prism of pessimism. We feel abandoned, heartbroken, alone. If you find yourself in such a situation, I plead with you to turn to our Heavenly Father in faith. He will lift you and guide you. He will not always take your afflictions from you, but He will comfort and lead you with love through whatever storm you face.
For a live performance, the sound quality is amazing on that video. As I mentioned in the previous post, I've been in a funny mood lately. It's interesting to me how much short-term circumstances can completely envelope my outlook on things in general. For the last week or so I've been in a reggae/Ben Harper-Jack Johnson kind of mood with music, although I don't think I could ever listen to Jack with the same gusto that I did 5-6 years ago. Lately I've been gravitating more to that kind of easy listening just because I think I kind of have a delicate frame of mind right now. And it's weird to me because nothing significant has changed from a month or two months ago, and it bothers me that I'm just not feeling more motivated or just excited in general, but I'm just not. My job is still the same. I'm still exercising about as much. I think you could go back about a month ago and there would still be the exact same headlines in politics. And sports, if anything, has gotten more exciting now than it did in February-March. The NFL draft just happened, the Lakers are killing right now, and baseball is in full swing and the Angels have the best record in the American League. And I'm going to my third game of the season tonight. So why the lack of excitement? I dunno. It's weird. You'd think with how awesome I'm getting with jumping rope that I would be feeling sunny and bright, but I'm just not there. At least not all the way. I'm sure it will pass, and I actually am pretty excited about the game tonight and Iron Man tomorrow. I think maybe the status quo is just not doing it for me.
I think maybe my mood was pretty affected by soccer last night too. There was one guy in particular that just really rubbed me wrong, and I hardly got to play at all because so many guys showed up. I think it's nothing that some extra whiffleball can't fix.
When I listen to Ben, I tend to think the same thing Peter does about Lionel in the clip below:
