Greater Satellites

I’m sorry, January. You know I didn’t mean that. I was just playing, that’s all.

I wanted to update because I haven’t written anything in quite a bit. So far this month has gone by very quickly and it shows no signs of slowing, either. I’ve worked a lot and played a little… which is something I would ultimately like to change, if possible. I’m just so tired after work that I feel like doing little-to-nothing. Couple that with the fact that this weather is getting more bitter by the day and you have the perfect formula for creating a shut-in.

Either way, I’m now taking steps to rectify that and hopefully see friends more often than I currently do (rarely). Goal number one is to get the car running by the end of the month. Just get some decent insurance going and have it inspected pre-emptively so there are no unexpected issues that crop up when driving to and from somewhere important. Goal number two is to buy some decent winter clothes to combat this stupid weather. It sounds silly, but I don’t own a really good winter coat that I like wearing. So this weekend I’m gonna buy a heavy duty Carhartt/Dickies work jacket or hood, so I don’t have to keep layering the shit out of myself everywhere I go. Goal number three also happens this weekend: get another god damn cell phone. I’ve lived in the dark ages long enough. I’m going to sign up for Cingular (soon to become AT&T) and get me a Blackberry Pearl so I can be one of the cool kids again. The job now affords me all kinds of interesting stuff, so I’m definitely sticking around there because they appreciate the work I do, and they compensate me fairly for the work performed. Gotta love respect in the workplace.

That’s all for now, kids. By the end of the month I also intend to have my new website provisioned at the very least. Maybe a February opening. So stay tuned for all that good stuff.

This commercial sucks and it seems to be on every single commercial break for the shows that I watch. It’s sad because I really dig that song and it fits very poorly with the on screen action, unless of course Microsoft’s brilliant marketing team is going for that audio-visual irony thing… Which I doubt.

Tomorrow we as Americans vote. I’ve never voted before, although I am registered. I’m considering going tomorrow for the whole 5 minutes it will probably take and just pulling the Democrat lever or button or rotary crank or whatever it is you tug/push/operate. I’m so disillusioned with politics that I want as little to do with it as possible. I know the decisions that they make will ultimately affect me, but unless I were to get seriously involved I probably wouldn’t be able to change much. I’m sure that’s the mentality of a lot of young Americans: “I’m just one of millions, how will my voice be heard?”. Winston Churchill (a pretty smart guy, in case you didn’t know) said something that made me laugh: “Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

I really dislike the enlongated processes for passing new laws, the slander campaigns that run non-stop on television right around this time, the “Vote For ______” signs that literally pollute major roads (I’m looking squarely at you, Boulevard), the bickering between the two sides, the fact that there are only two sides, candidates who tell lies, candidates who tell half-truths, and it downright infuriates me that those fucking clowns in Washington make $165,000 a year (after, of course, voting to raise their own salaries, something a surprising number of them finally agreed on) and only worked 93 days so far this year. You have to be kidding me.

I did a little research earlier today and found that not one candidate is standing for everything I believe in… Which doesn’t surprise me, for the record, I just wanted to establish that fact. I find it difficult to objectively choose a potential candidate based on political platform alone. Further, it’s difficult for me to choose someone just based on their individual stances. I need to know the person, not the politics, but you’d be hard pressed to find these wankers anywhere accessible the other 11 months of the year. I will vote for a candidate who I don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye with if I believe he or she is genuine, but I’m not willing to go above and beyond just to sit at an affair, albeit formal or informal, with said politician to really get to know them. Some of the ads, however, do give us a bit of insight from time to time. In the course of all these smearing campaigns, I’ll discover that Politician X was at a strip club with so and so and he was drinking *GASP* ALCOHOL. I believe those ads are attempting to make me think: “This man has loose morals and therefore is no kind of leader! He is stricken from my voting palette!” BUT, here’s what the ad actually accomplishes in my mind: “However he decides to spend his leisure time is totally up to him. If sipping on a Long Island Iced Tea and seeing a nice pair of titties bouncing in his face relieves the stress of a hard days work for him (it does, by the way), then right on. Hey, I could really go for a lap dance right about now…” The more “normal” a candidate seems, the more likely they are to get my vote (in my mind, and perhaps in actuality tomorrow).

This is the longest I’ve spent waxing semi-intellectual about politics… probably in my whole life. It’s making my brain hurt and filling me with rage so I will stop now. I hope, at the very least, some light has been shed on how my mind operates when it comes to politics (hint: the answer is either not at all or with incredible fury). Good talk, good talk.

Did I mention this commercial sucks?

Note: I’m a little stoned. This is a work in progress.

After much deliberation, I’ve come to the conclusion that the American Dream is dead, or at least on life support. I suppose the dawn of the American Dream started with, well, the dawn of America. What were the hopes of the first immigrants to our great country? One could argue that it was because there were distinct social, religious, political, and economic structures in place that were totally new and innovative (see: radical) as compared to the oft-archaic policies of their former European homelands. So torrents of young, hungry families trekked across the pond here to America to pursue “the dream”. The dream, back then, was very simple: to own the land you lived on. As serfs back in fuedal Europe, the people who worked the land were never given the opportunity to own it and were taxed heavily just to dwell on it. In egalitarian America, they lived on the land, worked on the land, and were not taxed to be residents (although they were required to send goods back in the form of crops, textiles, and various other foodstuffs). It was a perfect setup because their respective governments were literally an ocean away. Do we own the land we live on nowadays? No. Furthermore, we’re (ironically, once again) taxed (in some states more heavily than others) to live on the land (history does repeat itself). So have we progressed since the days of (pre-America) America? Tough question. Let’s delve into the other definitions of the American dream for a moment…

In more recent times (19th century, so not that recent), writers like the great Horatio Alger used to pen books that glorified the American dream. He wrote about people who literally came from nothing but possessed three outstanding qualities that eventually led to their success and fortune:

1. talent
2. intelligence
3. a willingness to work extremely hard

Prime examples of this include Andrew Carnegie and the tycoon John D. Rockefeller. It seems that after the establishment of a unifed, centralized government, the definition of the American dream shifted from owning the land to making enough money to afford the land. The acquisition of money is often criticized in many works of literature, however, as not being a true American Dream. See Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” as a prime example of a story delineating the old addage “money can’t buy happiness”, a direct commentary on the modern American Dream.

The further convolution of the American Dream came after World War II. The soldiers who fought bravely to protect our country simply wanted to live in comfort, have stability, and start families. These families (the ideal archetype being happy wife, happy husband, happy son, happy daughter) were all one could hope for, a truly respectable dream: find a mate, get married, have kids, raise them well, send them to school, lather, rinse, repeat.

In current times the dream seems so superficial. People want to make the most amount of money for doing the least amount of work. At some point you should question the validity of social Darwinism. It’s nice to have dreams, but it’s even nicer and more rewarding to have a firm grasp of reality. I, too, am guilty of putting a lot of stock into gaining some sort of fame or fortune, but in the words of one of my most quotable heroes: “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact.”

Although I’ve been jaded with naysayers, skepticism, and criticisms, I would love to spend my life looking for and documenting the American Dream, like the late Hunter S. Thompson. I enjoy entertaining the belief that it still exists in some form remniscient of it’s early stages. Maybe someday in my lifetime it will be reimagined as something greater than anyone could ever hope for.

xAndrew

Holy shit, where did the summer go? If you used this blog as any indication of passing time, feel free to call me a terrible scribe. One minute it’s June 10th, the next it’s August 21st. Yikes. Well, I can summarize the summer (summerize, if you will) in a few key points and hopefully start making this an integral part of my life again. I miss writing dearly; I truly, truly do.

Nothing is static, everything is transient. I sat for a few hours today reading my old blogs. In case you didn’t know, this particular journal is an amalgamation of every other blog I’ve ever had since the early days of lostintheair.com. That’s five years going on six come this November. I think I’ve learned a few things about myself after reading that much, even stuff from the recent past. I’m becoming less happy. I’ve become less responsible. I’m becoming more apathetic. I’ve wasted a lot of time in gray areas. I’m becoming more removed. Detatched. I can’t explain a lot of it, and it’s not all self-relization. Some of the aforementioned becomings are the combined opinions of peers, family, and professionals. I don’t regret anything, but this pattern simply cannot persist. I was not born as what I’ve come to be. I want to improve and I’m having a hard time moving. Because things are so comfortable right now, I know any step towards a positive direction will become the epicenter of a difficult and possibly lengthy transitory period. A few recent catalysts have set forth a great incentive for change, but it’s a mind-over-matter situation. As soon as I can convince my stupid brain how much better things could be, I think a newer, truer, bluer me should emerge. Ahhhhhh shit.

Let me try to summerize in a few key points. July was hot and sweaty. I learned a lot in school, and took a whole bunch of personal days. I did quite a bit of work for Diztinct and was paid fairly well. Had a couple parties at the house, good times with good friends. August was a repeat, same kind of summer attitude and actions. Mom was on vacation for the past week and it was the most peaceful week I’ve experienced in quite some time. Here we are at current. It was an awful summary, I know, but there wasn’t one defining moment of the summer thus far, just a continuous plateau of goodness.

“How quickly words can become our hands, resigning everything we believe…”

So you’re probably asking yourself “Is his life so interesting that he doesn’t have time to update because of all the going-ons he’s a part of, or is his life so interesting that there’s no way I could comprehend it with 100% of my brain if he were to chronicle it?”

Unfortunately, neither of these plausible scenarios are the case with me. I’d like to say that I’ve been travelling the world, saving lives, playing legendary games of table tennis, or even contributing in some small way… but I haven’t. This fact shouldn’t suggest that there have been no new occurences in my life, however…

I have a new job now. Video City, as fun as it was, did not work out unfortunately. The hours were decent, but it was a labor of love. I needed to expand my horizons a bit and obtain a job that actually pays the bills; gets me caught up and things of that nature. I took a new job at a company called Diztinct Designs as an independent contractor. I’m doing web design, getting paid a hefty wage, and working at my own pace. Pretty much the embodiment of the American Dream, huh? So work is new, and going well.

School is going pretty well too. I need to focus a bit more, and dedicate myself to my work a bit more, but I’m pulling my weight indeed. I’m just going through one of those Good-Will-Hunting-Having-Great-Potential-Yet-Squandering-It phases right now. My GPA is still a solid 3.5 and with any luck it’ll hover in that region after this quarter. I did put off almost all of my work until the very last minute and am now suffering because of it, but I have a little more than 5 days to get it all done, which I’m thinking is a pretty reasonable amount of time.

As far as personally / socially, I’m just existing. Going along with whatever crowd I happen to be with at the time. It’s fun, relaxing, and interesting. I feel some tangents coming on:

I downloaded a few really great albums recently, they include: Dane Cook’s Retaliation, Darkest Hour’s Hidden Hands Of A Sadist Nation, Glassjaw’s Worship and Tribute (a classic), It Dies Today’s The Caitiff Choir, Tool’s 10,000 Days, and the as of yet unreleased but leaked on the internets, Muse’s Black Holes and Revelations. Not all new, not all released, but certainly all 100% good stuff.

I’ve been playing Enigmo 2 like it’s nobodies business, and it IS nobodies fuckin business, you asshole.

I’m starting a podcast soonly, when I find a suitable sidekick / partner to do so. Interested? Maybe we can collaborate.

I’ll call you later.

-A

It’s probably been used more times than a pole at a strip club, but it’s new to me…

To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

-EE Cummings

No real rhyme or reason for posting it, no relevence to any particular current event in my life, just me posting a quote that I’m partciularly fond of.