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I'm trying to focus my thoughts on a more defined subject these days. www.in8years.com

The Beat of the Union

It was a lovely speech - the group who wrote it must be very proud!

I decided to grab this year 2006 by the horns and watch the speech online. After a few minutes of watching the mechanical delivery of misty-eyed American aspirations and the knee-jerk applause from the hard-liners, I decided I was going to take advantage of the context in which I was viewing the speech; my PC. Blending some beat-heavy Dabrye (thanks Mike) into the drone of political tail wagging. What a great way to spice up the dry heaves of that political sermon! Give it a try sometime!

Good Morning!

12:11 AM

I decided to get a head start on this Saturday morning. In fact, I decided to bypass going to sleep altogether and just get right down to business. A number of projects have been clouding my mind recently and it's for the best that they are taken care of now and not left to fester longer.

These projects include:

-taking out the trash (done about 8 minutes ago)
-finishing up some basic updates to some websites I've built
-splicing and naming of songs from a bootleg recording of a White Stripes show Tia and I went to back in September (I've had the continuous live track for about 2 months now)
-learning something in the tune of programming that will make me feel a little less stupid for a few days

To keep my fingers dancing across this keyboard and my mind loose enough to focus, I've decided to start the day with a dignified two fingers of Southern Comfort (with one rock). Not the traditional breakfast choice of champions I realize, but just what the productivity doctor ordered!

No time to chit-chat! Time to get to work!

The Tree.

I hate Wal-Mart. Everything about the place suggests something very shady is taking place deep beneath the surface - merchandise simply shouldn't be so inexpensive and readily available. Being a semi-stingy person, I'm always up for pinching a penny, but the growing murmur of bad press (which Wal-Mart has deflected with lower prices and sappy commercials) has left me with an increasingly uneasy feeling with the company. I remember my first trip to Wal-Mart, shortly before my first Christmas in the US (1994). I recall my Mom being very excited by the price of brand-name laundry detergent and bottled water. As humans, and more specifically as Americans, we are programmed to get more for less (i.e. spend less energy hunting the animal by throwing a spear into its side). We believe that we gain if we get more than we think we give – Wal-Mart exploits this instinct.

This morning, Tia and I stopped at the aforementioned Wal-Mart (which has recently “gone Super” putting unneeded competitive strain on an even broader genre of local merchants) for just “a couple of things”. The Sunday Paper, a bottle of generic Windex, and a couple of Christmas candles later, we found ourselves thumbing through the electronics section and even clothing – all of which was substantially cheaper than I’ve seen it on our many shopping trips in these recent and crazy holiday weekends.

Needless to say, the $10 I planned on spending, turned into $116.31 after the $40 cash back. Those crisp and bright 20’s looked like they had just been printed on location. They looked noble, but tender, as though they had no place outside the cash drawers of corporate America. They were intended to be spent on McDonalds or at Exxon, or on a later trip to Wal-Mart. It wasn’t to be, for today was the day we bought our Christmas Tree!! That special time of year when the non-tax-paying black market becomes everybody’s friend, and spending absurd amounts of cash on temporary décor is the norm.

Those two crisp 20’s knew something was going terribly wrong as we drove deeper into the rural hills and over the frozen brooks of Southern Maine. Down one dirt road, and up another, we finally arrived at the “Cut Your Own Christmas Tree” place. We found the perfect pine, we cut it for what seemed like hours in the blowing snow, we tied it to the roof, and in a magic moment handed those two crisp 20’s to their new owner; a young man with a Carhartt jacket and a busy grin on his face. They had been liberated! There would be no tax paid, and no paper record detailing this transaction. I know it won’t be long before those crisp 20’s find themselves back in the corporate money drawers, but when they do – oh the stories they will tell! For tonight they rest in the breast pocket of a Carhartt jacket.

The (Too Much) Information Age - Part II

I'm trying to come up with a cleaver explanation as to why this video intrigues me so much. Perhaps it's the theme of fresh enthusiasm for a better life, or the amateur footage of Stanley Park in Vancouver (a place I'm quite familiar with). Whatever it is, you might just find yourself intrigued by it too. I'd suggest putting some music to it and seeing how the unlikely match works out. If anyone can find a more random video on Google Video - please post it!

The (Too Much) Information Age

As I sit here tonight, perusing through my collection of 3136 of my favorite songs for something to listen too, I'm wondering if perhaps the ever-shrinking, ever-cheapening, and ever-quickening megabyte is spoiling our appreciation of art, news, memories, etc. etc. Are we becoming more diverse or more scattered as a culture (and by "culture" I mean those who Google, listen to music, and have digital photos of their parents)?

I find myself rapidly developing an interest in late-night Dutch radio, as presented by iTunes. The line-up streaming from OngekendTalent.nl seems to be primarily comprised of sappy lounge songs (all of which sound eerily familiar as though they have a close American cousin buried somewhere in the top 100 charts), and deeply bizarre dub-house/trance spun by some 'rolling' Dutch DJ at some insane hour. This interest in Dutch radio will fade quicker than the sharpest tangent, but tomorrow I will again venture into my music collection in a desperate attempt to scratch that itchy desire for musical bliss.

Long gone are the days when two or three good albums could fill a summer and much of a fall with enough memories and good times to be filed in the long-term memory bank. Gone too are the days when a single photo could summarize with just enough significance an occasion of any magnitude - a wedding, a holiday, a trip, etc. I challenge you (all 1-4 of you readers) to find a single photo in your collection of digital photos that speaks as clear as a Rockwell painting of a situation/event. Here's my best attempt:

(Me, Tia, and Georgie had been driving all afternoon on our way home from Ottawa, and out of exhausted desperation we found a little dive of a motel in the White Mountains to sleep in for the night)

The Magic of Technology

How would we discribe this to the Greatest Generation? - the people who gave us chocolate milk and automatic machine guns.

(skip through to about 2 minutes into the clip and read the description on the right)