Hopeless Bleak Despair

a relationship paradox

By admin | Published: August 29, 2010

i don’t know what this entry is. this is something i was trying to fashion into a status update or tweet.

it’s more of an open ended question – one that no one will answer because no one is reading this. but it is this:

why is it, when someone you know only superficially hurts or slights you, it seems to wound and sting and bother you much more than someone you are very, very close to?

your immediately response might be to say ‘that’s not true’ – but wait.

when you are close to people, relationships are all about give and take. over time and growth you bond with people on a deep level. there is always the chance of hurt feelings, a cross word, an inconsiderate act, some other kind of misdeed – but what do you do with people you are close to? for the most part, you overlook their flaws, you work with them as they are, you forgive, you both move on. i know some of you don’t but i’m not talking about you folks with intimacy issues – i’m talking about the average, healthy minded bear. whether it is a marriage, a long time friend, family – you almost have no choice but to work with them and resolve the situation as best you can.

but with someone you don’t know too well – someone you just met, an acquaintance, some tangential friend – the smallest slight or wrong word or action seems to burn. it sometimes totally and immediately clouds how you feel about them, how you view them and how you feel when you are around them. the smallest thing sets you against them, sometimes forever. five years later you see that person and all you can remember is the time they said this or that – whereas with friends or family, you tend to largely forget that type of stuff, except for those times when you are at odds again and you have occasion to call up old hurts. am i explaining this right?

maybe it only seems that a wrong is remembered more intensely with a superficial relationship because that’s all you have to go on. you might not have much more material, relationship-wise. and so it comes up more often. whereas with deep, close relationships, you bury that hurt in the same pile as all the good parts of the relationship, and thereby largely remove the hurt from day to day instances? meh…

this sure sounded better in my head when i thought of it in the car…

Posted in blogging, family, friends, internet, rants, writing | Tagged anger, blogging, family, friends, hurt, random, relationships, writing | Leave a comment

car ad language decoder

By admin | Published: August 23, 2010

i buy and sell cars sometimes. i buy more cars in a year than the average person might own in their lifetime. i mean – at one point i had 12 cars at once – basically a car dealer without a license. i used to buy one or two cars a week. i don’t do this as much as i used to. but i still look. i get all the car selling books delivered – and i’m always reading, always looking – sometimes just absorbing prices and features and keeping abreast. all this is just background for why i am the person to give you the automobile advertisement language decoder. let’s get started!

whenever they say ‘bring in anything you can push, pull or drag in’ in reference to a trade-in, expect to be buying the same caliber of car from them on the other end.

whenever they say ‘we can get ANYONE financed’, it means you are going to pay about 40 percent more than the car is worth – OR – the credit department is doing some shady deals.

whenever they are having a sales ‘event’ that means the sales department hasn’t made enough sales to pay the bills and they are trying to jam the rest of their outstanding sales quota into that weekend. you actually often can get a good deal on days like this… just saying.

this falls more into the category of a tip than an language decoder – you do not have to pay a ‘dealer documentation fee’. tell them you will get your tags yourself. some places charge up to 400 bucks for this ‘service’ which takes most folks 15 minutes at the dmv themselves. also on the tip side – scrutinize the actual ‘contract of sale’ for ANYTHING that is not the price of the car, sales tax or your trade in. there are no other fees you should allow them to charge you, period. also – NEVER buy a service contract or even an extended warranty, EVER. they can also shove any ‘life insurance’ or ‘lose-your-job-payment insurance’ up their ass, too. ok. back to the lingo…

let’s delve into the person to person sellers. their language is cuter

i think my favorite person to person car lingo bit is the ‘i’ve had my fun, it’s your turn’ – as though the car was the central actor in a gangbang.

very popular is the ‘baby on the way, must sell’. but this is understandable. one that is not so understandable is the ‘i love the car, but the wife says it HAS TO GO!!’. all i can think is ‘pussy’!

one of my personal favorites is ‘too many toys’. awww – poor rich douche bag – he has too much stuff!

another good one is ‘i hate to sell her but she HAS to go’. why is it always a ‘she’ and why does she ‘HAVE’ to go? what’s wrong with her? why can’t you keep her? the sorrow….

it’s always fun when they say ‘no tire-kickers’. really? no one can come check out the car? fine. they often go on to say ‘serious buyers only’. wow. i mean, who casually goes to look at cars at people’s houses? sure – people will browse dealers, but those are very often people who can be talked into buying that day. i can’t be the only person who, on more than one occasion, has wandered into a car dealer on a lark while wasting time only to drive away in a new rig 4 hours later? i wasn’t a ‘serious buyer’, but nonetheless…

sometimes they protest too much. ‘never off-road, never raced, adult driven’. why would you say that? i’ve never said that when selling a car. ‘never off-road’? then why then do you have the 33 inch tires. ‘never raced’? then why the aftermarket exhaust and racing slicks. ‘adult driven’? then why do you have an eight ball gear shifter or the TWILIGHT sticker in the back window? usually when they say these things it means they have guilt about how they have treated the vehicle, or are sure they’ve damaged it beyond it’s being worth to keep.

another giveaway is the ‘no known defects’. no ‘known’ defects? haha. sure. do you feel lucky?

anytime they describe the car as ‘fun’ to drive – it means they were that fast guy who sprints to every light only to mash on the brakes. expect that this car has had it’s wheels driven off, frequently.

some are really self important. ‘no disappointments’. well, maybe they’re right

Posted in blogging, cars, classic cars, credit, driving, rants, shopping, writing | Tagged blogging, car-buying, cars, credit, rants, shopping, writing | Leave a comment

a big ball of mercurial, uncontrolled id

By admin | Published: August 2, 2010

a clockwork orange. this is a great film. not so much because it is fun to watch, at least for me. but because it is so complete.

however, i don’t think the film is eminently watchable. i watch my ‘favorite’ films over and over. but with this film, i can’t consume it like that, though i’ve known people who can. or who say they can. they are often the type who just like the bad ass violence, perhaps the rape. they often seem to identify with alex. no, i don’t find this troubling, just boring.

a clockwork orange is a film with a curious following. this is a film adored by many who might not be able to tell you why. when people love this film, they sometimes have a hard time describing what they like about it, what it means to them. but it’s detractors usually can speak volumes as to what is wrong with it, why it is bad, how it is harmful or even worse – evil.

the film is all about alex, played my malcolm mcdowell, in one of the most electric of all film performances. alex is an absolute caveman. he is man in his purest, most animal state, though he is also very intelligent and quite charming. he is a big ball of mercurial, uncontrolled id. and yet, there is no lying in alex – at least not the the viewer. he is undeniably honest with the viewer in his narration, and this helps to make him a more sympathetic character.

he is a product of neglect. he is immune to the intervention of his probation officer. the one he encounters conducts himself in the same corrupt manner in which alex behaves, and this type of interaction with authority does, to the right type of mind, inform a world view that does make doing wrong and/or awful things more approachable. i know this first hand.

alex seems to be a case of arrested development – arrested at a time when a child acts on evil whims and has no consideration of consequences. alex sees the world and other people only as they relate to him and how they can be used. but this also seems to be how the world views him. he is promptly and easily used when the time comes, too. still, he is witty and urbane, but his chipper self awareness seems to be limited to his own drives and malicious ambitions.

alex lives in some near-future time. his world feels like an odd combination of stylized futurism and a stolid old fashioned-ness. a future where erotic art is popular, sex is mundane, life is cheap and impulse is king. it seems to be a world where the individual is little valued – and this only serves to make alex more endearing to the viewer because he seems so vital and alive compared to those around him. it’s a post hippie, industrial wasteland with large gaps between the haves and the have-nots.

and so alex and his gang, between bouts of drinking drugged milk and cruising around wildly in a kit sports car, do some horrible things. some random beatings, some beefing with other gangs, some rapes. eventually there is a murder.

after his arrest, alex is given a ‘treatment’ designed to cure him of his lust for the aptly named ‘ultra-violence’. and in an interesting twist, alex is forced to be captive to negative imagery just as the film viewer had been during the first hour of this movie. and in the end, the treatment robs alex of his violent tendencies, but also the ability to really defend himself. and there’s a public outcry, and alex is changed ‘back’ to his original self.

then there’s the title. ‘a clockwork orange’. what can it mean? it’s not an invention of kubrick’s but rather of anthony burgess’. i can only surmise that it refers to the idea of something organic like an orange having machine or robot-like properties. like the idea of trying to ‘reprogram’ alex. the approach of society to alex seems to have this type of nonsensical basis to it’s approach. a person is deemed ‘broken’. how do you fix them?

a lot of people have tried to say that this movie glorifies or encourages violence. this is ridiculous. violence in art is always cathartic, it’s never a catalyst. the film seems to be largely about the gap that exists between reconciling individual freedom and societal order. kubrick seems to define humanity by its free will. using it we may do atrocious things, but take it away (or try to take it away) and we cease to be wholly human. kubrick said once that no one is corrupted any more by watching a movie than they are by watching shakespeare’s richard III. and he’s certainly correct.

kubrick, a master manipulator of audiences, plays a delightful trick in his depiction of alex by making repulsive things entertaining, and making entertaining things repulsive. and in the end, alex is hopelessly flawed and beyond rehabilitation. maybe so to are we?

Posted in blogging, cinema, film, movie reviews | Tagged a-clockwork-orange, cinema, film, maclolm-mcdowell, movie-reviews, murray-theatre, stanley-kubrick | 1 Comment

the book was better than the movie

By admin | Published: August 2, 2010

one of my biggest complaints with respect to movies is the sanctimony of the book-reading moviegoer. the book is always compared to the movie. the book is always better than the movie. the movie pales in comparision… and on and on. yeah – this is going to fall into the category of a rant.

comparing a book to a movie is like comparing a painting to a song. it’s literally comparing and apple to an orange. i mean, a trip to oregon is a lot different if you do it by foot vs. by car or plane, and by definition a movie can almost never ‘compare’ with a book because it can’t usually match the level of content.

when people read a book, they form images in their head. they make their own movie, of sorts – albeit at the author’s pace – and the pace at which they read. that’s the nature of literature. so naturally, NO movie can compete with that because it’s not YOUR movie. i wonder if anyone ever likes the movie in their head better than the book they have read?

the funny thing is, there’s a lot of books that most people wouldn’t even be aware of unless a movie was made of it. but there’s that same complaint….

Posted in blogging, cinema, documentaries, film, movie reviews, movies, rants, writing | Tagged book-vs-movie, books, cinema, film, movie-reviews, movies, victor-floyd | Leave a comment

public problems

By admin | Published: July 23, 2010

i guess this will just be a rant. but i travel a lot, by car – and it occurs to me that the one of the reasons we may be doomed as a species is evident in the status of the use, abuse and/or availability of a public bathroom.

it always comes up – a bathroom. will there be one? will we be able to use it? will it be clean? you can often just tell by the part of town that you are in. are you going to even be allowed to use one? are they easy to find? will you need to use a key with some GIANT, oversized appendage attached to it so you won’t steal the key?

what is it about humanity that a solid portion of it would steadfastly abuse something so vital and so necessary as a bathroom, especially when you are away from your home base and at the mercy of your surroundings?

whereas a good portion of the earth’s population suffers from lack of access to proper sewage, water and toilet access, in the western ‘advanced’ countries we have the ability to make the necessities readily available to all – but because of human nature, they aren’t always available. or accessible. because – people just can’t be trusted.

this was funnier in the car today as i bitched and bitched and bitched….

Posted in blogging, rants | Tagged bathrooms, florida, public, travel, utah | Leave a comment

inception

By admin | Published: July 21, 2010

inception was highly anticipated by a lot of us before it finally came out this past week. and maybe part of that is the problem. a work of art isn’t about my expectation of it, is it? it is it’s own thing – regardless of if i had high hopes for it, if i was totally ignorant of it’s brewing or if i had nothing but disdainful foreboding about it. but anyways – high hopes were what i had.

christopher nolan’s film work up to this has been stellar. i even include the batman movies – which maybe aren’t great ‘films’ but are tremendously good movies.

his first feature, following, is one of my favorite small films of all time. it’s clearly a first film, not necessarily fully formed, but wholly engaging and shows all the promise and many of the best aspects of his future film work.

his followup to that, memento – is in my top 5 films of all time, for a myriad of reasons. the film is highly acclaimed for all the right reasons. no need to rehash that here, it’s a given.

insomnia came next. and while for me it didn’t meet the level of clever suspense and masterful storytelling of his previous efforts – the film was still a better ride than most movies that are currently made. and nolan seemed to do a fine job of getting robin williams to be delightfully creepy, and getting al pacino to just reel it in a little and do some actual acting again.

then came a batman movie, batman begins. at first it didn’t seem to quite fit his oeuvre, but i think nolan has demonstrated he can handle a blockbuster and turn out something as ‘mega’ and exciting as the everyman seems to demand, while still giving his characters a pulse and providing them with a reasonable facsimile of existing outside the cinematic dilemmas they find themselves in. mostly. his batman blockbusters are about as good as those types of movies can be.

the came the presige. this finds nolan back to his insanely clever, what-is-reality film making. the prestige might not be a raucous entertainment, but it’s an engaging movie and nearly a perfect film in every way.

there was another batman movie in there – the dark knight. and again he achieved perfectly what he set out to do, doing about as much as you can with the genre.

and this brings us to inception. maybe i don’t get it yet. but for a movie about dreams it sure lacked a dreamlike imagination. it’s smart, but only in a mechanical way. it’s a little soulless, and mostly treats the dreamscape like a violent, multilevel video game.

this movie isn’t so much about the wonder of dreams, the nature of dreams or any of it. it’s about controlling dreams, people interloping in other peoples dreams, manipulating dreams and using them as a platform/excuse for a long car chase and three levels of gunfights and hand to hand combat. an hour of setup and explaining the rules of this movies ‘universe’ and then a good hour and a half of just violence, really. and in the end, the whole pretense of all this was just corporate espionage.

and the more i thought about it, the longer it went on, i didn’t understand the logic of the movie. maybe i’m just supposed to accept it while in the theatre but i was bugged. the bulk of the movie is a series of violent chases and gunbattles in one character’s dream. in the first level of such, he is told in the dream that it IS a dream. so why can’t he control it? this particular character has been ‘trained’ to defend against subconscious attacks (a plot artifice that seemed kind of silly) – so why can’t he just twist the dream to his making? but all the buildings, everything he encounters in HIS dream is DESIGNED by someone else ahead of time. i don’t understand why he can’t change it if he wants at anytime. i mean – his mind is making armies of men appear in cars, on snowmobiles, in hallways – all armed to the teeth with guns. But apart from that, he’s as captive an audience as us watching the movie. and exerts as much control.

i’ve never typed this before and meant it, but WTF!? why do events happen totally outside of his presence and they all still obey the needless laws of the snow globe universe they’ve set up? it’s a DREAM. maybe i’m not clever enough to get it. or maybe i was thinking too much.

i don’t think i’m spoiling anything here. the movie is the number one movie in the country right now. people already know.

also some of the main roles felt a little miscast. mainly ellen page and leonardo dicaprio. i like ellen page. i really am a fan of hard candy, and juno was a nice showcase, but she seems to be aging backwards, and her tiny form seemed almost childlike within the framework of this thing. added to which she doesn’t seem to have anything of value to say or do except to help us get spoon fed some backstory.

dicaprio – meh – he’s good enough i guess. he seems to be kind of a one note actor for the past 10 years. i feel like i have seen him play this exact character, even dressed the same, a few times before. i would have liked to see what someone like casey affleck might have done with this role.

but i end where i began (like most good movies do) – at expectations. maybe part of the problem here were my expectations. i saw one preview before seeing it and it didn’t make sense but looked stunning. that was good enough for me. in my mind, i conjured up something like a cross between alain resnais, jean-luc godard and alfred hitchcock. instead, i got an action film with a subconscious pretense.

like many movies from directors i admire, i’ll probably watch this a couple more times, but right now i just dunno what to think about this movie apart from the fact that i don’t think i liked it.

Posted in blogging, celebrity, christopher nolan, cinema, film, inception, movie reviews, movies, writing | Tagged cinema, film, film-reviews, filmmaking, inception, movie-reviews, movies | 1 Comment

wheeler dealer

By admin | Published: July 16, 2010

so i buy stuff. often i resell it. ok – almost always i resell it. but some of it i keep for awhile. a bike i could have never afforded as a kid in mint condition, a vintage car that i’ve always admired, a musical instrument i had only read about up until acquiring it. i make a little money, get to experience neat stuff, and almost always pass it along to someone who will love it and who otherwise might not have found it.

so – this thing above is a crudely home manufactured skateboard. i just acquired it. i think it’s something i would never sell. and not just because it’s not worth anything, but because of how i came to have it.

i found it in the middle of nowhere, idaho. was driving down the standard two lane state highway when i saw some bikes. one was an imitation schwinn stringray from the 70s of unknown manufacture and a free spirit 10 speed from 1980 or so, but both in really nice condition. now, i’m not a ‘picker’ per se – but i dug these bikes, knew i would like to buy them and was certain i could make good money on them eventually. so…. i did a uturn and went to the house to knock and inquire.

knock again and ring the bell. a minute goes by. it dawns on me that no one is home and because i’m just passing through, i’m probably NOT going to be able to get these bikes. i leave, slowly, a little disappointed. hoping someone in the house would spring to life and fly to the door to see who was there. but it did not happen.

so i start down a side street simply by virtue of how i had pulled over to knock on the door and i see three boys ahead on skateboards. being an avid skateboarder for 20 years i do a quick scan for anything skate-able but see nothing. no big deal. but then i notice the kids oddly shaped board.

it looks like something a blind sculptor was trying to make look like an elbow and gave up. it’s a wreck, but with 70s freestyle truck and wheels.

i pull over and ask the kid if he made it, and he proudly says yes, and kinds of shows it to me as he does. i look at the kid, i look at the board and i ask him if he would consider selling the skateboard.

when i asked the kid ‘so can i buy it’ he paused and i said ‘i know, you gotta ask your mom, right?’ and he said sheepishly ‘yeah’ like he was afraid to admit he couldn’t just sell it to me without consulting mommy, because he clearly wanted to.

so i said – ‘can you go ask her?’

he perked up and said ‘yeah – i live right over there’.

so i said ‘we’ll follow you’.

when this kid said ‘over there’ he meant six blocks away. he ran and ran the whole way, with the enthusiasm only a kid can have. i wish this was a short movie i filmed it was so cute. the kid was cute. he was the exact type of kid you picture in your mind living in a town with a population of 700. you already know his face just by reading this.

he finally gets to ‘the red house’ and ran in and emerged with his mom and we did the deal rather quickly.

i bought it. 10 bucks. the kid wanted 20. for 8 years old or so, he was a tough negotiator.

they were amazed i wanted it. i was amazed they would sell it to a strange guy with a truck full of bicycles.

as i pulled away the kid ran to his friends waving his money. i imagined a tiny mythology building up just then. the kids always thinking some random dude will buy what they think is junk off of them. i pictured the kid telling his dad that night ‘we should make five skateboards a day, we can sell em for 20 if that guy bought that one for 10′ and on and on.

it was a nice interaction. i’m going to keep this board.

Posted in antiques, automobiles, bicycles, blogging, documentaries, idaho, junk, kids, picker, random, shopping, skateboard, skateboarding, small towns, traveling | Tagged idaho, kids, picking, shopping, skateboard, skateboarder, skateboarding, small-town-america, thrift, travel | Leave a comment

twitter breakthrough

By admin | Published: July 5, 2010

i had a twitter breakthrough tonight. i’ve used twitter for about a year. basically, all i ever do is re-post the same thing i’m posting on facebook, often in a somewhat truncated form due to textual character limit.

i both follow and have as followers about 170 people. nothing. i haven’t tried to get people to follow me. and i basically follow everyone who follows me. and that’s it. and up until tonight i really didn’t get twitter’s usefulness.

sure – like everyone, i was on the edge of my seat during the iranian election. i was retweeting the pics and crazy stuff coming out of there like a battle hardened war correspondent, all from the comfort of my bathroom. but even that just felt like news ‘sharing’ and not really doing or accomplishing anything. i wasn’t involved in it, but it felt tangible.

but tonight i think i got it.

i posted a blog post about a ‘church of shakespeare’ idea i had while myself sitting in a baptist church service in florida last month. after a couple weeks i got an @thensaiwatchin reply on twitter expanding the idea to not just shakespeare but any and all music, knowledge and thought. simple enough. i should have thought of it myself. but didn’t. and the simplicity of that idea made me think, ‘maybe twitter CAN be useful’. even though it might not feel or seem like it now.

one person has an idea. maybe it’s not even fully formed. another person adds to it. maybe they change it. they change it based on a thought they wouldn’t have otherwise had without the FIRST guy – so even though he was on the wrong track, he got the ball rolling. and on and on.

i don’t know if twitter works this way, yet. maybe it does in scientific circles. or musical ones. but in general it seems like a bunch of jumbled narcissists and the pseudo-famous posers going on about how interesting things are. maybe i’m a jerk for writing that. maybe i follow the wrong people.

but i thought about how problems could be solved by mass participation via something like twitter. the people along the chain needn’t necessarily understand the ‘whole’ problem. history has shown us you needn’t be looking for an answer to find one.

in fact – this is how most true scientific breakthroughs occur. you don’t set out looking for a certain ‘thing’ or for a definite ‘solution’. you just seek. and in so doing you find all kinds of things. in fact – a lot of scientific folly in our current age seems to stem from setting out to find something specific – and likely along the way 1000 discoveries are missed or obscured due to tunnel vision. so it goes.

so it doesn’t have to be experts all the way down the line to help solve any problem or to develop any idea.

the idea reminds me of the SETI@HOME idea of using idle computing power to analyze signals from space. why not combine human intellect in the same way?

i wonder if i could get a screenplay idea to get ‘written’ via twitter. everybody adding to the plot. someone editing, discarding the ideas that seem to go the wrong way, but assimilating everyones energy into a direction and plot. maybe this has already been done and i’m late to the party. or maybe someone will steal this idea and do it. i don’t care. i’d be curious at the results.

maybe we’ll try this on twitter soon, IF we can log in. it’s often hard to get in lately. hence my picture for this post…

Posted in blogging, facebook, internet, random, rants, science, twitter, writing | Tagged blogging, facebook, random, rants, science, twitter, writing | Leave a comment

lane change

By admin | Published: June 22, 2010

this might seem dumb. but i had this thought the other day while driving. i wondered what it would be like if each LANE of the interstate had different speed limits. say for instance, the fast lane – 80. the third lane – 70. the second lane – 65. and on and on. i mean – how many times have you been behind some guy in the third lane going five miles under the speed limit? or the typical jackass who insists on passing on the left?

i have been trying to think of how it’s a BAD idea. maybe you have figured it out. if you have, tell me? but i like the idea.

i’d mostly be in that fast lane, just so you know.

Posted in cars, driving, traffic | Tagged cars, driving, speed, traffic | 2 Comments

church of shakespeare

By admin | Published: June 20, 2010

i’m one of those people for whom the comforts of religion long ago ceased to be sufficient to comfort my soul and satisfy my imagination. not that i am a pure atheist. i don’t currently believe in god. i don’t know what god means anymore. i don’t NEED to know, i am open, i am curious. eh – a little background:

i was ‘saved’ at the age of 12 years old. i think family ties was a big show at the time. reagan was president – a man who i admired at the time. i ate a lot of canned ravioli and ‘nighthawk’ tv dinners. they were a tiny steaklike mass of meat and a vegetable. my mother never cooked. i grew up a latch key kid. then my mother married when i was in sixth grade to a nice jewish man. i was still somehow a latch key kid.

i got interested in going to church on my own. my family never went. my mother professed a love of god, but didn’t read a bible and didn’t go to a church. didn’t pray. i guess it was lip service.

my new step father – a truly decent man, was a lapsed jew who didn’t put a lot of emphasis on faith. and like all jews, who do not proselytize, i had to pry religious information out of him.

but i was spiritually hungry. i sought out a bible. i read on my own. i did a little telephone research (pre-internet how did ANYTHING get accomplished!?) and found a churches i could attend and that would come and get me.

after a few months of going to various services, a brief stint trying to learn hebrew, and a failed attempt at my own personal buddhism, i ended up at bible baptist church in bradenton, florida. a good sized church. it fielded its own softball team – of which i was a member. i can’t remember what position i played. i remember once hitting a good double. that’s my only memory of it. that and trying to convince my family to buy me the church softball shirt which was mandatory. that was a battle royale. but i got that shirt.

i embraced my faith with a zeal unseen before in my life. this is before i started playing music. before i started skateboarding. before i really had an identity – which as a soul grabber, is the time to snag someone.

before i knew it i was reading my bible every day. i was going on home visits with the minister. i helped save some souls myself. i even got my mom (with the help of a deacon) to agree to save her soul and pray with us – as if saving her soul was up to us. it was a great time, though. i wore a sweater vest and a tie. i thought the path was clear. i really thought that the rest of my life must be already plotted out. i was engaged. it was real.

then i learned more and read more. somehow my ‘faith’ fell away and gave way to a cynicism that was just as strong. there wasn’t a turning point. there wasn’t a moment of realization. but slowly, over time and reading and thinking i came to the idea that what i thought was real and true about god and jesus seemed silly, almost comical. and this is probably nothing new and a path traveled by many atheists. this is all just brief background to get to the point of this post.

i still enjoy ‘services’ at church, as crazy as that sounds. i attend when it is convenient. sure i don’t believe. but it’s the dynamics and ramifications of faith and belief that now concern me, and this was the case a few weeks ago. i went to church with my family in florida. i can’t remember just now what denomination it was. maybe just a church of christ. maybe baptist. hell – it was the south and it wasn’t catholic. what else do you need to know?

anyways – sitting there in the pew, listening to this and that, singing too many hymns, i got the idea that church isn’t a bad idea. it just has, perhaps, the wrong focus.

churches (this one in particular) focus too much on the blood of the lamb, on christ on a cross, on prayer and song. fine. but for many of us, this is not sufficient.

and right there and then in the middle of a psalm i had a true revelation.

these people all come together every week to dissect, discuss, meditate on and reiterate a lot of the same principles. it felt to me like a junior college all of a sudden and i thought, as simply as i think things – why not have a church of shakespeare!?

every week, sunday at 10 am – we all get together to discuss and listen to shakespeare? one week it could be a study of ‘taming of the shrew’ and the next week a study of sacrifice portrayed in the various tragedies. it occurred to me that shakespeare has almost as much instruction in his compiled works as the bible might, and how satisfying it might be to instead study something of more pure literary interest like shakespeare instead of the bible.

shakespeare is one of the things i think most people would like to know more of if given the chance. so why not make it rigorous and required, like church!? maybe i’m being grandiose. but maybe it could be embraced.

my friend Lester Lou on twitter pointed out that it needn’t be just shakespeare. take a week on janis joplin. a week or two focuses on poe. and on and on. you could do it all – just embrace knowledge and work it all out. i still like the title, ‘church of shakespeare’ but surely it would probably be more interesting, exciting and challenging as she proposed it to me after she read this entry. you should follow her on twitter. maybe the ‘church of knowledge’?

i wonder now what role i could play? i wonder, could i dare to become a church leader or founder?

i’ve always wanted to be a cult leader. you know – play the guitar, sleep with lots of women, be an influence and trusted voice. this could be my chance!

to be or not to be!?

Posted in blogging, religion, writing | Tagged blogging, christianity, church, cult, learning, shakespeare, writing | Leave a comment

golden delicious

By admin | Published: June 17, 2010

don packard isn’t an actor, though he famously appeared as the storekeeper in troll 2.

i don’t know what don is, but i hope to find out.

my experience with him was at k-talk (ktkk am) in salt lake city circa 1995. he hosted a two hour call in talk show.

k-talk was then and still is the type of am radio station wherein, for the most part, the hosts themselves secure the advertisers on their show. or they buy the time outright. a two hour show ‘hosted’ by a guy who runs an ‘anyone gets credit’ car dealer is less a show and more an interactive commercial where he interviews customers or potential customers under the guise of consumer information. i know this because he interviewed me once for an hour regarding one of my businesses. he’s no larry king. but neither is larry king anymore, either.

back then i was kind of lost and i thought, ‘i’ll get into radio’. so i went to this craphole radio station which was then behind a trailer park in west valley city, ut and now exists in a strip mall. i volunteered to ‘produce’. at this type of radio station, producing meant screening the calls for the host and occasionally trying to get someone from the news on the phone. that was it.

the show i ‘produced’ was for a utah state representative named david bresnehan. he was a blustery, mormon napolean with a little bit of power. later on he got into hot water for pulling a gun on someone and chasing them over a very small matter, and i think that was the end of his political career …. or something similar – something involving a gun. i’m sure he’ll let me know where i’m wrong here. he was a little full of himself and often condescending but he was never cruel to me, just sometimes a little curt and often rude. so it goes. i was a nobody then. i still am.

his show, like just about every show on k-talk at the time was so boring as to be almost unlistenable. the majority of the listeners had to have been home bound senior citizens. that was the profile i developed as i answered calls. this doesn’t make for stimulating airtime and the hosts weren’t really that dynamic. who would expect them to be? a couple of them scrambled to find sponsors. some, like bresnehan, probably just bought the time to air their political views and agenda.

i would liken the station to those times in congress when a congressman will give his speech to an empty room, just to get his words into the congressional record. the shows often felt just like that.

often i would produce bresnehan’s show and sp romney’s who either followed him or came before. i cannot remember now the order. the shows were 2 hour blocks. evening would fall. then came don packard.

his show name was golden delicious. he was the only original on the station at the time, and the reason i went down to the station in the first place. at the time i was actually homeless and sleeping in my car. i had a job, i slept in my car, and i wondered how i could ever get an apartment because i didn’t have good credit and i had no references. it was a miserable time. i’d drive around aimlessly at night listening to talk radio and my secret joy was golden delicious.

when donald came in to do his show the station was all wound down. the receptionist was gone, the sales people (who sold for the fm stations that were housed in the same building) were gone. it was basically his place. he’d turn down all the lights, even in the studio. laying low and hunkering down. it was just him and only sometimes, someone to answer the phone on the other side of the glass.

he spoke extemporaneously. you probably think everyone in talk radio does, and while they do chatter freely, a lot of times it’s very structured either by the show model itself or the conventions of the talk radio format. not don packard’s. his show then reminds me of the great jean shepard radio shows of the 50s and 60s where jean was just foraging and talking. golden delicious’ monologues were genuine intellectual perambulations. he would think as he spoke. he didn’t seem afraid to learn as he talked or to expose his ignorance of an issue or idea or of himself even. he spoke slowly and with a languid passion of a hostage negotiator in the middle hours of a standoff when he’s just biding his time, waiting it out, but talking – always talking.

he didn’t drone on and one about the local or national news of the day. there were no real politics in his show. his show was about self exploration, the larger existential questions, and penetrating to the core of a caller. he was almost desperately interested in other people. he was fascinated with examining what it meant to be human and, if possible, more humane. his show dripped curiosity about life. his show was drenched in caring.

he asked rhetorical questions of himself, the audience and callers. often he would say ‘i’m not going to take calls, this is too important’. either through ignorance or lack of caring he discarded most of the call-in talk radio rules. it was sweet and amazing. and i loved to listen. i think his greatness in this realm was lost on much of the audience.

occasionally i would stay on and answer calls for him – though he didn’t need this utility. he would take a call and talk to a person for 45 minutes. it just didn’t matter. he was exploring, not entertaining. it was more like eavesdropping than a ‘show’.

i don’t know if don ever knew my name, but it was always my favorite time when he came in to do his show. often i had to go to work just as his show started, but i’d listen on the way to work as i left. when i didn’t have to work and he already had someone to answer the phone, i would sit in my car in the parking lot and listen to golden delicious. it’s not like i had anywhere to go. and there was nowhere i’d rather be in that space and time anyway.

he ended his show with a signoff that was sweet and endearing. it was a series of benevolent instructions and suggestions. sometimes it was short, sometimes he would add others and it would get longer. i wish i could remember them all. hopefully i can find a recording sometime. one of them was ‘when you hear a siren, pray for whoever might be in trouble….’. it went on, but that’s the only one i can remember just now. but i can hear him still say it very clearly. and all these years later, that’s the first thing i think when i hear a siren.

don revealed in the documentary ‘best worst movie‘ that he had been in the psychiatric hospital before getting that acting role. this was several years before i or anyone knew him as golden delicious on the radio. he’s a compelling character. at the premiere of the film he walked through briefly handing out some schwag and i regretted not catching him. at the end, when they asked for him to join the rest of the troll 2 cast on the stage, he had dissapeared.

i’d like to make a film about don. anyone know how i can contact him?

Posted in blogging, celebrity, depression, documentaries, film, radio, talk-radio | Tagged best-worst-movie, blogging, movies, radio, talk-radio, troll2, writing | 1 Comment

personalized plates

By admin | Published: June 17, 2010

maybe this ought to fall into the category of a rant. but why do people bother with personalized plates? the fact that someone would pay extra, sometimes making an in person trip rather than doing it online, to personalize something as, forgive the term, pedestrian as a car license plate?

some describe someones profession. who cares if you are a lawyer or doctor or plumber? some describe the car itself – 66NOVA or SWT VETTE. listen – you are DRIVING a corvette. i see that. what’s the deal with the plate?

my favorite are the ones that try to be profound or funny. these are often the most challenging, both to appreciate and often just to figure out. ever sat behind one of these great sages of the road just trying to figure out what the hell their plate even means?

what kind of personality type jumps through the extra hoop and pays the extra fee for that odd, anonymous attention they won’t notice being paid by a stranger at 40 mph!?

on the street i live on, this dizzy mom at the end of the street has a toyota corolla which she was custom rims and tires. don’t worry – i’ll get to ridiculous car customizing soon enough and all THAT stupidity, waste and goofiness. custom rims and tires on a t-o-y-o-t-a c-o-r-o-l-l-a. jeez. but her plate says ‘ICU LKN’. in english, this would be said as ‘i see you lookin’.

it could border on clever if she weren’t likely an out of control narcissist. the idea that you have to SEE the plate to read it and it says just that kind of makes it funny, much like a tshirt that reads ‘DON’T READ THIS’ or something. but her deal is that you are looking at her and most likely, admiring or even lusting after either her or her car. though i remind, it’s a corolla. i guess what i found dumb about it was, ok – you see me looking – for but you to see me looking, that means YOU have to be looking at ME to. maybe i’m overthinking it.

the point is – or the question is – do you have personalized plates? and why?

Posted in blogging, cars, rants, writing | Tagged blogging, cars, driving, license-plates, rants, writing | Leave a comment

best worst movie

By admin | Published: June 13, 2010

bad movies have an undeniable charm. and awful movies even more so. mediocre movies don’t quite cut it where badness or goodness is concerned – hence the term mediocre.

curiously, truly bad movies and the great movies share an earnestness and a deliberateness that cannot be denied, and which is palpable. they are not cynical about themselves. they bargain in good faith.

by definition, most films are average, mediocre – they are wrought with compromises, broad minded sensibilities and mixed motives. we can leave those where we find them. they might have their moments that we hang onto, both bad and good, but for the most part they fade. but we keep the great ones. and we treasure the worst of them for the same reasons. there’s nothing so attractive as when it all goes beautifully – and there’s nothing so compelling as when it all goes awry, despite the most pure of intentions.

troll 2 is this kind of movie. it had a delusional director, an earnest cast with a charming star, and a script and story that makes absolutely no sense and has nothing to do with the original film ‘troll‘. it features no trolls. and as the cast explained, on the set the director and crew were all italian. they mostly spoke only in italian. and they insisted script lines, though poorly composed for english (not to mention logic) be read verbatim. and it doesn’t matter.

best worst movie is a film which chronicles the making of this cult classic and gives the ‘where are they now’ to the participants. it is sweet. it is honest. it is funny. much like troll 2.

troll 2 was filmed close to where i live and it was fascinating to find out how it actually came to be. is best worst movie a great documentary? not really. and it’s probably not for anyone who hasn’t seen troll 2. but if you have seen troll 2, and it hit you just so, you should not rest until you see it. parts of it might make you a bit sad, because of some participants seemingly melancholy current situations, but most of it will delight and it will only serve to inform your further enjoyment of this classically bad film.

i saw this at a special screening at the tower theatre in salt lake city. much of the cast was there to talk about the film, which is always nice. they were very cool and accessible – many of them being from this area. it was a great time. they were fun and hospitable. and we all know you can’t piss on hospitality.

troll 2 cast q&a at the tower theatre premiere

Posted in blogging, cinema, film, movies, writing | Tagged best-worst-movie, blogging, film, movies, reviews, troll2, writing | 2 Comments

shamu theory of celebrity

By admin | Published: June 10, 2010

Shamu is long dead. Shamu was a specific whale – one of the early orcas to survive in captivity over a year or something. The ‘real’ shamu died in 1971. she, like so many of the killer whales in captivity, had an incident where she harmed a trainer. but showbiz is a gamble.

but most folks refer to every killer whale as shamu. much like q-tips are every cotton swab to most people, and xerox kind of became a blanket term for photocopying, sea world so totally branded shamu as THE killer whale of name that the show at sea world is still referred to as the shamu show and millions of fans go to see ‘shamu’, buy shamu dolls and all the rest of it. even though it’s generations of whales now since the real shamu was retired after the unpleasantness.

and at sea world the other day i thought what a great idea. why not do this with celebrities in general. every few years another performer of some type or another gets crowned ‘it’ for awhile. why not make them all go by the same name?

you wouldn’t go see the beatles in the 60s. led zeppelin in the 80s. michael jackson in the 80s. britney spears in the 90s. justin bieber or whoever now. and so on. you would just ‘go see shamu’. whoever shamu happens to be at the time, and it changes all the time, so wouldn’t that be simpler?

‘do you like shamu?’

‘i love shamu, don’t you?’

‘of course! who doesn’t?’

and on and on.

you wouldn’t have to keep up on trends, know the minutiae of whatever personality happens to be hip at any given time – you’d already know. it’s shamu. it’s always shamu.

and the same show all those years is still entertaining, though it secretly may be cruel and not natural and maybe perhaps harmful to the performer and once in a while to the ‘handlers’ – but true art is about sacrifice.

Posted in blogging, celebrity, writing | Tagged attractions, blogging, celebrity, killer-whales, orca, sea-world, shamu, whales | Leave a comment

thought crime

By admin | Published: June 3, 2010

thinks it’s unlikely you or i will ever have a thought that hasn’t been expressed already at some point by someone else. it’s only in HOW we express it that makes us, or it, special. that being said, if someone tells you something that they just realized which you ‘realized’ long ago, just let them enjoy their moment and experience with it. remember that you weren’t the first to realize it, either. don’t be such a prick (or a bitch) about it. it ain’t all about you, ya know!?

Posted in blogging, writing | Tagged blogging, writing | Leave a comment

season in hell

By admin | Published: June 1, 2010

so i’ve ignored this blog for awhile. i traveled, had some family stuff – but to be honest, i forgot about this damn thing for a couple weeks, too. who cares. nobody reads it yet. anyways – tonight is the season premier of hell’s kitchen hosted by gordon ramsay. i eat up all of his shows – both bbc and fox. i love the f word. i’ve tried to make recipes from this show myself. i love the kitchen nightmares series – both the bbc and the american versions. though probably, like anyone who has seen both, i prefer the bbc version because they don’t bleep out most of the outrageous language. that’s just refreshing to us enlightened colonials, given our puritanical nature and all.

we adore him over here. why is that? the uneducated probably see him as a self made, straight shooter. he gets angry. maybe. part of that might be theatrics, part might be persona. surely some of it is pro wrestling. but, he is passionate about food, and even when he yells at someone he seems to be trying to reach them. and the more educated probably see him as an astoundingly successful, driven gourmet who spreads the gospel of culture and cuisine as adeptly as billy graham did for jesus.

he’s world traveled. he experiences a great deal and shares much of the adventure with us. this is especially evident in his european shows. from the tenderness with his kids as they raise the pigs they are going to slaughter, the difficulty when he himself takes the animals to slaughter, the patient instruction showing unaware housewives how easy it would be for them to again cook an exciting sunday lunch for their families, or traveling to a frozen tundra, digging a hole in the ice, and diving IN to capture a rare delicacy which he cooks up immediately afterward for his guide there on the ice. pretty f-ing cool. (that was an f word episode, hence the f).

thinking about the difference between ramsay’s bbc outings and the american shows he does makes me wonder why the american tv shows are so much more narrow minded and myopic. is this a cultural difference? maybe it’s just what networks demand. every american i know who has seen these shows loves them, and prefers them to the FOX equivalent. anyways…

another reason i admire ramsay is for his kick ass driving on top gear. i love a gearhead with exquisite taste….

Posted in television | Tagged gordon-ramsay, hell's-kitchen, kitchen-nightmares, reality-tv, television, the-f-word | Leave a comment

magic market

By admin | Published: April 8, 2010

lately i’ve noticed a lot of commentary from people who seem to think that the free market is the ultimate achievement of mankind. that ‘it’ somehow knows best. that what results from it is itself the work of nature. that there is this unseen hand of the market place that magically points the way. it’s as though people forget that the marketplace was created by people.

a lot of these folk are of a religious background. and they imbue their marketplace ideals with many of the same qualities and thought processes involved in religion.

they make a moral objection to some things, but not to all. the free market is lauded as though it’s movements are tantamount to the workings of the mind of god itself. and therefore, to interfere with it is not only incorrect, it’s sinful. the market is perfect. it’s we who are flawed, or so the sentiment goes. so it would seem that if the market has a demand for something, it would be anathema to not allow that trade to naturally occur.

this does not follow for abortion. some people want that service to be done, even after the required counseling sessions to talk you out of it. but they try to curtail this service being provided in the marketplace, and seek to abolish it. in this instance the free market is somehow mistaken. people seem to want a service, there are those willing to provide it… and yet this isn’t quite good enough. a curious flaw in the diamond. well, there and with, say, drugs. the free market certainly seems to demand drugs. some are legal, some are illegal. some make you feel good, some just stop you from feeling bad. but this faction isn’t taking part in any epicurean/epictetusian debate about the merits of drugs – they just outlaw the ones that, to them, seem immoral. in this instance, the marketplace again seems flawed. otherwise, the free market supply/demand system is perfect. oh and except for prostitution. or liquor sales. or adult oriented businesses. ok – so, a lot of things.

so, any activity, interest or product that is deemed immoral is outlawed or policed as much as possible. fine. so why not immoral business practices? they seem queerly adept at making that distinction at many turns, so why not here? jewish law approaches this concept, but that is rarely practiced outside of orthodoxy. in general, immoral business practices aren’t outlawed and any regulation on them is called ‘big government’.

well, what are immoral business practices? well that’s a harder question. what is immoral vs. moral? it seems like a hard question – but there may be some obvious places we can agree on. certainly what some of the bankers did to cause the problems with the world’s economy in 2008 approach it. taking large portions of loaned money, dissecting it and reselling it as a new security, rating it as a better investment than it actually was and eventually putting so many layers between the original borrower and the big money makers that it had no other likely outcome BUT to fail seems immoral. the ironic thing is that many folks who lost their houses likely had retirement plans or other investments which were vested in those same securities which were based off their own mortgage (and 1000s of others just like them). a strange idea.

and so the collapse came. and we were told the banks were too big to fail. and most of us, we’re all too much of a failure to ever be big.

for me it seems to come down to the question of how many people can make money off of the same dollar? how much profit IS there in the world to be had?

what gets lost in the idea of the marketplace or ‘free trade’ is that for every dollar YOU make, it has to come from someone else. there are many times when you seem to make money from doing or producing very little. sometimes it’s luck. sometimes it is design. for the average person, it’s quite rare. but for many, this idea of making money by doing very little and producing nothing is the new american dream. a large part of our economy is the marketing of nothing. the marketing of powerless vitamins, the repackaging of ideas, the selling of fear, the notion of mindless, empty self improvement, and on and on.

the worst of it is the selling of the idea to you that ‘you too can make money by doing nothing’. what is this knowledge? basically it consists of getting other people to buy into you selling them this same idea. wow.

i always tell myself that money doesn’t come out of the air. somewhere it has to be earned. either by work or by production. although, production is largely a thing of the past in the country i live in. here in the united states, we’ve evolved into a consumer driven service economy with the marketplace watching over it all, apparently. i guess this is what the market wanted.

but, if someone makes a killing on a real estate property, there is a good chance someone else overpaid. and was probably over-loaned the resources to buy that property. and that was the basis of the problem we had in 2008.

none of this seems like ‘free trade’ – which is another term some folks throw around with a good regularity. but ‘free trade’ is just a slogan. it is just a name given to the current scheme by the people who wanted it in place. it’s the label they have given to a series of fiscal reliefs and trade regulations that allow businesses to take jobs overseas – where they can pay less taxes, take less care of the environment, and basically try to get away with a lot of what they can’t here.

free trade isn’t free – and it ain’t trade. it’s largely a one way benefit – towards the top – not to either side of the ‘trade’ (producers and consumers). the term ‘free trade’ implies a level playing field, which it is not. and even ‘level playing field’ implies that commerce is a game. i guess it’ll never end. i’d be all for truly free trade. but not the current setup which seems to have been devised to make simple consumers out of the third world, and to convert our economy into a service-based economy so that we have just enough money to buy what that third world is producing for us.

and the marketplace ain’t magic, either. those in charge of it, they are magicians, for sure. but any honest magician will tell you there is no real ‘magic’. only bluster, acting and fakery.

Posted in blogging, business, politics, writing | Tagged blogging, business, politics, writing | Leave a comment

defining each other

By admin | Published: April 8, 2010

it occurs to me that an ‘activist judge’ is just about any judge who makes a decision you don’t agree with.

a cult is any religion you do not follow or understand.

a nut is someone whose passion you don’t share.

an extremist can be anyone whose point of view doesn’t match your own.

and on and on…

Posted in blogging, writing | Tagged blogging | Leave a comment

another picture to painting dealy

By admin | Published: March 28, 2010

found this scene in beaver, utah. abandoned hotel. stagnant pond out front. the kind of thing i find interesting. pic above from iphone, pic below is the result after feeding it through a filter.

Posted in iphone, photography | Tagged iphone, paintings, photography, pictures, utah | Leave a comment

las vegas

By admin | Published: March 28, 2010

i really love to travel, but i hate destinations. rather, i hate places that sell themselves as destinations. i’d rather poke around wallace, idaho or baton rouge, louisiana than go to a resort or a place like las vegas. las vegas is where i am as i type this.

and because of work, various activities and it’s proximity to where i live, i end up going to las vegas several times a year.

las vegas’ new paradigm seems to be to imitate the best parts of other cultures, while simultaneously being the worst of ours. it sounds trite, but vegas seems to be just an overblown monument to consumption and waste.

as i walk the streets, taking mostly the same pictures a million other people are taking this year, i’m struck by the feeling that vegas is just manufactured iconography. it’s our national, year round christmas tree. but there are no presents underneath this tree. this christmas tree just takes.

i like to drink. but i’ve never taken a drink in vegas. maybe that’s part of the problem. maybe i’d loosen up and wander the streets carrying a giant daiquiri yelling at my friends ‘let’s go to the hooter’s casino’. maybe it was hunter s thompson’s book or maybe just my natural distrust of the crowd that, if they are largely doing one thing, i instinctually try a different tack. i spend most of my time in vegas lamenting the needless, awfulness of it all.

one thing that bugs in vegas is the CONSTANT construction. it never ends. vegas is uncomfortable in it’s own skin. it can’t just be. it has to evolve. the casinos and hotels have to constantly out-do each other to keep pace and ensure their future piece of the american pie. so if you perambulate, you will wander by this marvel, and that marvel – and then you’ll find yourself walking in a long, temporary construction hallway and if it’s during the day, the noise of the builders is often deafening. it’s an odd mix of new, old, bland and yet to be as you wander the strip.

i’ve been to some shows. they are good, but they are what they are. when you go to see a show where you live, it is a deliberate evening. you buy tickets in advance, you anticipate the thing – and then it comes. in vegas, a great deal of the patronage of live entertainment is an after thought. ‘we’re done here, that thing starts in a bit, let’s go there’.

i mean – how many people hunger to see george wallace? sure he’s funny. but HE is the best 10 o’clock show on the strip? he’s the new ‘mr. vegas’? and what of the original ‘mr. vegas’, wayne newton? how many people who have gone to see wayne newton in vegas would have bothered to see wayne newton at their local arena?

the point is – vegas entertainment is kind of it’s own genre. it is it’s own kitschy little thing. it’s widely varied, but a lot of it doesn’t seem to be the type of thing that would live beyond the artificial, overly stylized world of the strip. it’s a cash cow for the performers, many of who view vegas as a kind of piggy bank to break open when you feel you need or want to. i’m not just talking out of my ass here, i’m basing this idea out of some interviews with comedians and musicians i’ve heard and read over the years.

the food has it’s merits. although the ‘cheap’ buffet that used to be talked about doesn’t really exist anymore. they have nice buffets in las vegas, but so what? i don’t need a buffet, just good food. eating as much as you want of a great variety of foods really seems overrated to me. i’m thinking more about ‘great’ meals, cooked by renowned chefs. but frankly, i don’t have the money to enjoy the ‘great’ food of vegas. i’ve really only read about it. i grew up poor and am now just middle class. and so, i’ve only had few a ‘great’ meals because i’m cheap bastard at heart. and – i have limited resources. so maybe if i had more money to play with i’d enjoy the culinary part of vegas, but there are great restaurants in every good sized city in this country. so – food doesn’t seem that much of ‘vegas’ feature.

and now, they have a pool culture in vegas – giant, sprawling pools where the sexy, wild life never seems to stop. the bigger, newer places built them and did very well, so the older and smaller joints are racing to play catchup. when i was there last year, they had a horrible prostitution scandal at the rio casino pool. maybe too at the wynn. it was spreading as i followed the story. anyways, it’s like girls gone wild there 24/7 if the in-room marketing video the tv defaults to when you turn it on is any indication. IF i go there, i might get laid. vegas, i like those odds! nah…. not really. i don’t wanna chill at a sexy party pool…

vegas speaks to america’s puritanical nature. it’s ‘sin city’. ‘what happens in vegas, stays in vegas’. why is this necessary!? why do we need a place to go be whores, drunkards, gamblers, and party people in general? because the average american probably wants to be naughty. the everyman supposedly wants to be wilder than the trappings of his everyday life allow him to be. and vegas’ marketing strategy for the last decade and a half has been to sell itself as a vast, adult playground with no conscience or memory. and to which, the only admission is a fee. no initiation. no one to judge you or even care what you’re doing. come and play.

i don’t have a party persona. i’m not one of these people who if they have a drink they bellow a loud “WOO HOO” and start dancing on the bar. maybe i’m a fuddy duddy. i FEEL like a sexy, wild, adventurous beast, but maybe i’m just a square. still, i don’t care that a girl dresses skimpily, i don’t find exposure, in and of itself, necessarily sexy. i don’t care for the dirty sidewalks and the mexican guys in the funny shirts who hand out ‘escort’ cards to anyone – old women, teenagers, married couples, whoever. the people who live and work there seem to be great people, but i don’t need all that hospitality – and it all comes at a price.

but it is like a car wreck i can’t stop looking at, in a way. i’ve probably taken 3000 pictures there. and i find things there every time i go back that i didn’t see before. but then again – i do that in the city i live in every day. i don’t understand the draw of vegas. do you?

Posted in las vegas, travel | Tagged blogging, las vegas, travel | Leave a comment

pure cinema

By admin | Published: March 20, 2010

there is this place in salt lake city where i live. the organ loft. they have this crazy wurlitzer organ with so many thousands of pipes that it uses and a whole host of instruments that the console controls. they rent out the place for parties and dances. they also show silent movies there. this is why i go. i’ve been going off and on for….13 years. a film professor of mine told me about it back when i was studying film and since the first time i went i’ve probably been there 300 times for movies.

keaton, chaplin, lloyd, fairbanks, griffith. the choice of movies they show is what you’d expect. i’d actually like to see some of the more challenging films there. i’d like to see ‘birth of a nation’ or ‘greed’ there. i suggested they show one of my favorite silents there, abel gance’s ‘napolean’, but hunter hale kind of laughed me off. to be fair, it’s quite long. he picks the movies. so it goes.

the organ is usually manned by mr blaine gale. a virtuoso organist with many years of experience accompanying silent films on the organ. he rarely disappoints.

i actually pay to see as many silent films as i do to see regular, current movies over the course of a year, now that i think of it. that fact hadn’t occurred to me until now.

it’s an interesting place. but it’s not my favorite place to see something. the seats there are uncomfortable and the drinks they sell are way to small for my appetite. added to which you are usually seeing a movie with a bunch of older, mormon couples and they really pile it on with the laughter in the obvious places of the movie, and they swoon at the slightest cornball. but i still love the place.

why do i go to silent movies so often? the experience is certainly novel, even though i’ve had it many times. but that’s not it. it’s not the atmosphere of the place and it’s not the crowd. i think it’s just the films themselves. the masterful telling of a story without words. the best silent films have the fewest titles. it’s pure cinema. it is simple and honest motion picture construction. the stories are as simple as it can get, but the films are still wildly compelling – and the greatest of the filmmakers stories still affect and rivet me today as they did the public when they were first made.

i still break down at the pivotal moments in chaplin’s ‘the kid’ and i’m on the edge of my seat because of the action in keaton’s ‘steamboat bill, jr’. some of these films are approaching 100 years old. it amazes me everytime.

Posted in cinema, movies | Tagged cinema, movies, organ, silent-movies, wurlitzer | Leave a comment

more fun with photos and iphone apps

By admin | Published: March 20, 2010

i buy and sell cars on the side. people are always calling me or coming to me with cars. i prefer to deal in old cars and trucks, but mostly i get offered a lot of crap. dodge neons, pontiac grand prixs, chrysler minivans. i don’t buy that garbage. i’m mainly looking for interesting older cars and the like. the truck pictured above was a wasted errand. the engine on it is shot, there’s not a panel on it that doesn’t have horrible rust or some flaw, the interior is useless in every way. there was a big, fat, cute but unfriendly feral cat living in the cab where the window has been down for several years. i wasn’t interested in buying the truck at all. but i still snapped a couple of pics of it. then on reflection i fed one through the painting-based photo app on my phone and got the result below. the image is nicer than the truck.

Posted in photography | Tagged iphone, photography | Leave a comment

the sum of its parts

By admin | Published: March 19, 2010

the truck above is my truck. when i bought it, it was the nicest automobile i’d ever had. i bought it at a great time. credit was easy to get, car dealers were selling a lot of cars, gas prices were stable and my business was doing well. i think it was in early 2006. snow was still on the ground. january or february. and man, it was a great truck. the truck was a ford F350 with a power stroke turbo diesel. a powerful monster. and though a lot of people have negative things to say about this generation of ford’s consumer-diesel power plant, i find it to kick ass constantly. it’s powerful, smooth and has never let me down. i do a lot of pulling with my trucks – trailers with cars on them, giant dump trailers full of this or that. i’ve pulled down buildings with my truck. i’ve taken pretty good care of it – giving it synthetic oil, new tires, repairing the brakes. by feb 2010 i had driven this truck about 80,000 miles. i drive a lot.

i put down no money when i bought it. my credit was good and it didn’t matter. about a year and a half into my having this crazy, powerful truck, gas prices started to creep up. it got crazy for awhile. then the financial world has a little crisis, and then diesel was often just under $5.00 a gallon. it was awful. i kept thinking ‘the gas prices will go down, so i’ll just put 10-20 bucks in at a time’. it kept going up. so i looked into trading in the truck and getting something smaller or cheaper.

this is where it got strange. when i bought the truck, the book value on it was $22,000-$26,000. i have always been good at negotiating car prices – mainly because i don’t hesitate for a minute to say ‘screw this’ and walk out the door. and i purchased the truck originally for around $20,500 after several hours of back and forth, and maybe even leaving the dealership at one point. i had a medium range apr on my car loan through a big, jackass of a lender – 8.9 percent. not a great rate, but better than i expected at the time because when i bought it i had all manner of other outstanding loans for my business, and didn’t really expect to be able to get the truck financed at the time. i paid my car loan on time for the first couple of years – until the gas prices kept creeping up. my business started to slow down and things got a little hairy from time to time. but i never went over 30 days. it just felt like my car payment was too much for the new circumstances the economic climate had left me in.

so i found some smaller, cheaper trucks and started inquiring about trading it in. i was told that, because of the high gas prices, the values of large, heavy duty consumer trucks like mine had dropped, and it was worth significantly less than what it should be, and even less than what the consumer value guides were telling me it was worth.

this is a curious aspect of the car business. the car YOU have is NEVER worth what the book says because of market conditions, the condition of your car (the tires, the stereo, the broken cup holder, the miles, good god the miles you have on that!), demand or whatever other alchemy they want to cite. but for the car THEY have, the book value is always artificially low, and through that same unknown logarithm they tell you their car should be worth more. the miles are always highway miles. the trim package is hard to find. this has aftermarket rims. whatever… and on and on. it’s a funny game.

i expected my truck to be worth about what i owed. i was told that no, it wasn’t. my truck was worth about $4500-$6000 LESS because the values had fallen. i found this hard to believe, but it’s the answer i got everywhere. so after a few weeks of trying, i gave up and figured, ‘fine – i’ve got to keep this albatross’. the payment was higher than i would like, but it was, after all, a nice truck and i didn’t mind keeping it. i just wished i had lower payments to offset the crazy gas prices i had to pay.

after several months and seeming ages of people complaining about gas prices and the economy, a new president was elected. gas prices went down and sort of stabilized. after some months, the economy has started to pick up a little. and so, i assumed that perhaps the ‘value’ of my truck had gone back up to a more realistic place. i’ve recently found out that no, the opinion of the market place is that it has not. i’m still getting the shaft value-wise on my truck.

so, i got to thinking. which for me, can lead to adventure, danger, or both.

i really wanted to be out from under this loan and get into something smaller. when the economy was down i vowed to change how i earn a living so i won’t need so much truck anymore. so now i have even less incentive to keep this truck. and i had an idea.

why not sell the truck, piece by piece, and part it out? most every car is worth more as parts than it is as a car. this is what happens to a good majority of stolen cars – the get taken apart and sold as parts and the thieves and parts people make out like….well…. bandits. even though as a whole i am upside down in it currently – by the time i am done selling it piece by piece, i will be just about even with my loan and basically the truck will, in a way, be making the payments for me as i part it out. so, i’ll sell the engine and transmission. the bed. the interior. the transfer case. the rims and tires. the cab. the remaining body parts. there are a surprising number of expensive parts in every car, even those that don’t run. i sat down and added it all up and sure enough – if i sold every part of the truck it would add up to just under what i owe in total.

does this sound like a crazy idea to you?

Posted in automobiles, credit | Tagged blogging, credit, diesel-trucks, f350, ford | 1 Comment

black and white

By admin | Published: March 18, 2010

black and white pictures are my favorites. black and white seems to strip a moment bare while still seeming to give more expanse and potential to it. i never studied photography, i just really like to take pictures. and i really like to take black and white pictures. and so, here are just a few pictures i’ve taken recently that i like and are offered in lieu of some post where i rant about some nonsense that doesn’t matter that much.

Posted in photography | Tagged black-and-white, photography | Leave a comment

the writing on the wall

By admin | Published: March 16, 2010

i traveled a lot by car. more so than the average bear. not as much as a trucker – but with a lot more spare time. and boy do i find bathroom graffitti entertaining. it seems you find it more the closer you get to an interstate. some truck stops and stores seem to be on top of it – and you find little, if any. but the bathroom graffiti artist is a pernicious creature. and he uses permanent marker from time to time.

i am that ridiculous breed of individual who will ‘respond’ to it. if there is a number, i will almost always call it, usually while i’m still ‘using’ the facilities. ‘becky (or jeff) gives great head – call _ _ _ = _ _ __”. i’ve called ‘becky’ (or jeff) many times. she (he) is usually not surprised to get the call. i explain how i came to have their number. i inquire as to whether or not she (or he) would like to me obliterate their phone number from the stall. you would be surprised at the number of times that ‘becky’ or ‘jeff’ says not to bother – go ahead and leave it there. curious. i’ve talked to many ‘becky’s and ‘jeff’s over the years – once or twice for several minutes. one time it occurred to me that, in that particular case, ‘jeff’ knew precisely where i was, and while he had me on the phone, i made a hasty exit to ensure no uncomfortable meeting. i don’t scoff at adventure, but i know my limits. sometimes instead of a specific act it will advertise the more vague, but popular, ‘for a good time, call’ – but i don’t take any chances.

it’s not all tits and ass on the bathroom walls, though. often it’s political. or poetic. or racist. the best is all of these AND sexual at the same time. but this caliber of bathroom leavings requires an intellect and more importantly, the time to craft an entry than most mainstream stops will simply not allow for.

it’s probably a risky gamble to opine this way – as surely the creaks, scribbling and tiny whistles of the marker will make themselves known to the other users of the restroom – and thus you risk exposure. the only thing i can think of that’s riskier is the sound (or worse, the visual flash!) of a camera shutter as i’m taking pictures of these entries. that makes for some unspoken and uncomfortable exchanges as i emerge from the stall….

Posted in blogging, photography, travel | Tagged bathrooms, homosexuals, hookers, photography, travel, truck-stops | Leave a comment

‘old’ friend

By admin | Published: March 16, 2010

i am quite lucky. i bought the perfect house. not so much because it is a nice house – because it is not. it’s old and crummy in a lot of ways. there was almost no insulation anywhere in the home at first. the electric is really screwed. the driveway isn’t paved – and i had to spend weeks of bringing small loads of gravel to make it navigable in the fall puddles – and now it’s all wonky again a few years later. the yard has no real grass, only weeds. there isn’t a cabinet in it that pre-dates the vietnam war. who cares. i still bought the perfect house. mainly because of the old guy next door – who is one of the best friends i’ve ever had. he is a car nut. an overview of his main garage is above with some individual snaps edited in. he’s my buddy. he is quite famous in this state/region. he is an aged car restorer. now retired. sometimes he rents cars out to movies that film in this area, but mostly he just tinkers. he is old, more than twice my age now, but he is far from done.

the pic above is his most cherished car. it’s sitting behind my truck being pulled on one of my trailers. that idea makes me strangely proud. oh, his car wasn’t broken down. not in a million years. i sell these car trailers that tilt and he thought it would be good exposure for me to trailer his most famous ride down to the car show we happened to be going to that night. isn’t that sweet? we spent most of the night explaining why we didn’t just DRIVE his car down (which we normally do), but it was still a great night. that’s the type of guy he is. i’m not going to use his name. if you are in the know you already know his name. and if you aren’t in the know, his name won’t really matter to you. what matters is the man, not what i call him. what matters is the art of the automobile, the craftsmanship, the hum of an engine and the absolute beauty of his pursuit. he’s been at it since he was well under driving age. this car on my trailer was his fathers car, which he got as a teenager and which he immediately began to ‘butcher’ in the eyes of his parents. they can’t be expected to see what he was going for.

the pic above is a 1914 model t. just crazy and amazing. you drive it like you might imagine you would drive a small locomotive. my old friend loves to drive this car. he’s got a lot of cars. once in a while he will see me pulling up in my truck midday after a shorter day of this and that, and he’ll be outside checking the mail, taking some soiled rag to the garbage – whatever – and his eyes will follow me – and i’ll know. he’s going to come over. maybe he’s going to just come and sit in my desk chair and play with my cat, whom he really seems to adore, and talk to me about this guy or that guy who is trying to do this or that. but usually, this means we’re about to go somewhere.

we go either in my truck or one of his cars. sometimes we go in the classic ‘hot rod’, sometimes in the model t or the model a. if we go in my truck, that sure SOUNDS boring, but it is not. we’re going to look at something else that’s beautiful, interesting, or otherwise available. a 39 international one ton flatbed with a round, art deco type body, or the 66 t-bird i ended up buying myself. really it doesn’t matter. it’s nice to be out – whether we are buying, looking or just goofing off. sometimes we are just finding reasons to go to the store. doesn’t matter.

here’s one of this states most famous project cars. parked in front of my house, waiting for me to come outside and go somewhere in it. i don’t quite remember where we went, but it doesn’t matter. i love old cars. i love my old friend. it’s almost 2 AM as i write this. see you tomorrow, buddy.

Posted in blogging, cars, classic cars | Tagged automobiles, blogging, cars, classic cars, friendship | Leave a comment

tv crime documentaries

By admin | Published: March 15, 2010

i watch a lot of these shows. it started years ago when i was trying to write a movie about serial killers. somehow these things have become regular watching. i should probably reprogram my tivo and watch more educational things, although TLC seems to be far from being about ‘learning’ anything – and more about copying A&E’s programming model. but there are literally 10s of channels to choose from, i guess.

there’s probably some decent educational stuff out there, but i am drawn to this darker stuff. probably because i’m dark. probably because we many of us have awful thoughts from time to time – and sanity, rightness or fear of consequences stop us in the daydreaming-planning phase. but the oddballs among us who take up and go through with these things, they are strangely fascinating. they are all almost always unapologetic and deny everything, and that too, is curious to me. i mean, at some point, don’t you say ‘ok, you got me, look, i got greedy, i wanted the business to myself so i killed my partner’? not these guys. they stick to their denying guns, often to the end. i think i’d be the type to give up the ghost and tell all once i got caught – but i guess that’s why i don’t do it in the first place. and it’s probably precisely why these sociopaths go through with their savage crimes. anyways…

the tv crime documentaries are too many too mention. forgetting the 20/20s, datelineNBCs and 48 hours’ of the bunch, each cable channel has several of their own. the style of them varies quite a bit but they all really share the same format. they often structure the show based on ‘cheats’ – presenting information out of order and holding key information back that, in reality, was there from the beginning. they often times will create a ‘hole’ in the case by withholding certain facts that were always known, then spring it on you like a reveal near the end and dramatize it up. really, when someone kills their spouse or abducts and murders someone, isn’t it already dramatic enough?

then you’ve got the ‘reporters’. the hosts. they engage in over-reporting. language always gives it away – and the more verbose the narration, the more of the reporter you see IN the story, the worse it bodes for the content you are being fed.

often the interviews are done in such a way to feed people lines and sound bytes. they will repeat a line to the interviewee, baiting them to repeat it. the reporter solemny states ‘she was your little girl’ and the interviewee naturally replies ‘she was my little girl’. sometimes the person will stifle the reporter without meaning to, answering simply, ‘yes’. watch closely. the reporter will repeat the bait or feed another one. “and you miss her’. eventually the interviewee with pick up the subconscious cue and reply ‘i miss my little girl’ or something similar. the guys daughter was killed. i get it. you don’t have to feed him lines. and if you do, edit the feeding out, eh!?

a lot of the shows share some of the same characteristics in their editing. when you make a documentary, a lot of time is spent with still photographs. they give a great background to narration or exposition and are invaluable as content. but some of these shows insist on doing a flashbulb/shutter sound when they show you a photograph, or do a visual flash effect upon the introduction of a photograph into the shot. and if they show you two or three in a row, you get two or three foley camera effects or flash effects. this is needless and kind of annoying. one show in particular, called ‘crime stories’ has a needlessly elaborate sound effect, i swear to god it’s a canon ae-1 complete with severe shutter ding. the sound effect lasts almost a second – and they’ll do it three times in a row with three pictures. wow.

probably the worst thing about these shows is the shared phrasing just about every one of these shows uses. every new development ‘breaks the case wide open’. every town is ‘not the type of place you’d expect this to happen’ – as though there is a city in this country where you expect to be murdered in your bed by a cheating spouse or randomly abducted. they also love to refer to places as ‘the type of town where everybody knows everybody else’. these places are always ‘the type of town where you don’t lock your doors at night’. what places aren’t? new york, chicago, and los angeles, i guess. and only in the cities proper – the suburbs are safe. or are they……

another blog entry with no real insight, just a rant. maybe i should title rants as such in the future?

Posted in blogging, documentaries, television | Tagged blogging, crime, documentaries, drama, television | Leave a comment

the if factor

By admin | Published: March 15, 2010

i was just meditating on the veracity of ‘public apologies’. beware of the word IF. ’if my words/actions offended’. it seems all the public apologies i’ve heard over the past several years have all been written by the same people. a true apology comes out of shame, out of wrongdoing, out of right vs wrong. when they say ‘if’ it seems to indicate that they are merely sorry they got caught. ’if’ it offended. is the implication that ‘if’ you weren’t offended, they would have said or done it without regret? it just occurs to me that you are honestly apologetic ‘if’ and when you are truly sorry. ’if’ you aren’t, you are a lot more likely to use the ‘if’ in your apology.

Posted in blogging, politics | Tagged bill-clinton, blogging, politics, racism, tiger-woods | Leave a comment

tunnel vision

By admin | Published: March 13, 2010

the above is a boring entrance to a tourist attraction in wyoming or montana, i can’t remember just this minute where i was. but in this light and with my phone it was made interesting. i was working on some ‘go into the light’ type of post about near death experiences but i got really bored with it. but i really like how this phone pic turned out – so here it is on it’s own.

Posted in iphone, photography, travel | Tagged cameras, iphone, photography, travel | Leave a comment

roadside attractions

By admin | Published: March 11, 2010

as previously noted, for a long time in my life i kept a list, on paper – of various things i would like to photograph, if i ever got a camera. chief and several among these were many motel, hotel, lodge and inn signs i had found locally. i don’t know precisely why but i adore them. i like the older ones. i like the ones that are broken up into different signs – ones that have ‘air conditioning’, ‘color television’ and ‘vacancy’ as separate lines or separate bodies of the sign. i have collected 100′s of these from various cities across the US as i have traveled by car. and now that i fancy myself a smart photographer, i’ll often take 10-12 pics of each sign i encounter. you know – different angles, different parts in focus, black and white – on and on. tedious stuff, really. but – interesting to me.

this pic above is a sample. this hotel sign above lives in idaho – in jerome, idaho – which is near boise. for some reason, i bought an old truck from that municipality – and whereas i had to think about why i made that trip, i remember distinctly the sign. this pic was taken with my iphone and put through a filter.

why do i like the hotel signs? i’m not sure. i’ve thought recently that if i ever had any real money, i’ll collect the signs themselves, not just the pictures. this leads me to think it’s the signs themselves and not so much what they represent that i’m interested in. but i could be wrong. i could just want to ‘own’ what they represent to me.

what could they represent? travel. freedom. sex. america. all of the above? i travel a lot but i’ve never stayed in one of these types of hotels/motels. they seem to be the province of people up to no good. people who rent ‘by the week’. people who want a microwave in the room. people hunkering down. i dunno.

i don’t quite know what the represent, but i like them. i think they are cheesy, beautiful, retro, and wonderful. so it goes.

Posted in photography, travel | Tagged blogging, hotels, motels, photography, travel | Leave a comment

the internet as instrument of social change

By admin | Published: March 11, 2010

i don’t know how useful the internet is, yet. it’s an amazing media delivery and dissemination vehicle. it’s an immediate way to get into and get back into contact with just about anybody in the world that you want to. it’s a quick, easy way to get information on just about any topic or idea that you want. it’s a way to find precise, honest information about any product you might ever want to buy. it’s a seemingly more interactive waste of time than television.

it transforms life, in a way, though it doesn’t make most of life better. it makes many facets of life less cumbersome, yet it doesn’t seem to make life any easier. previously when i wanted to learn something or find out what something was, i had to buy a book, ask someone, or go to the library. now you simply google it and you get the idea pretty quickly. i said once on facebook that the internet makes immediate experts (and eventual fools) out of everyone, for just this reason. in some ways it is enlightening, but the knowledge hardly seems as valuable, because it was obtained so cheaply and easily.

staying in touch with people is a breeze, what with chat and social networking sites. but i am not often sure it’s a positive thing. previously in life if i wanted to get in contact with someone i had to pick up a phone, write a letter, or make a stop at their house. now i am in ‘touch’ with 100′s of people. many of whom i only know peripherally, or only online. many of whom i would have lost track of. i am in contact with long lost people – people who i otherwise would just have continually romanticized through memory are now real and immediate and i can scroll through the family photos they post daily. it’s nice. but i don’t know if it’s so great. instead of having a couple deep, real friendships i have 100′s of internet based friendships. some friendships that once were real, are now just digital. whether we live across the miles or across town here, we may never actually come into contact again. but we are ‘in touch’, online – so it feels like it’s still there. i don’t know how real it is.

earlier in my life, when i would read about some band, movie or tv show i had never seen, i had to track down someone who had a tape, or find a way to buy it or have it ordered – even to get a taste of it. now, even for free, i can snag the entire discography of a band, or run of a show or just about any movie, no matter how obscure – and often in just a few hours. my entertainment bug wants for nothing. that doesn’t mean it’s sated. but it wants for nothing.

the internet also makes shoppers more educated. it makes homework and research easier. it makes sharing your work and looking for a job a cakewalk. it makes dating less daunting. it brought porn into every home. it is user friendly, but again, i don’t know how useful it is. it would seem to free us up to have more time, for all the things it would save us having to look, buy and work for – but it seems to consume as much time as it saves. really it just transforms how we spend our time.

the internet has a tremendous immediacy about it. anything can be shared, at any time. but, this power of immediacy is wasted. it’s used more often to mourn celebrities, to pass around meaningless news and gossip, or to anonymously criticize and ridicule others.

but i see it being used, adapting and evolving eventually towards an instrument of social change. eventually we’ll probably get all our movies, music, information and the like over the internet. but i think we should be able to also utilize it as a real instrument of social change. you can kind of see it in twitter. we all bemoan some of the things that are happening in this country and the world – but we don’t actually DO a lot about it. whether it was the election tyranny in iran, the aftermath in haiti, the election of the first black president of the united states – the internet was abuzz. a lot was ‘posted’ but little was ‘done’. but what if it was?

what if there was a twitter or facebook group that actually took action? if a message went out – we are all going on strike for one day to really show our stance on health care in the united states, or to protest the killing of whales and dolphins in japan, or towards any real thing? simply joining a group, sending out a txt message that you are on one side or another only solidifies the opinions of people who already agree with you. it doesn’t change anything. but what if you did something as a result of one?

i think it’s easier for our leaders and for society in general to write off large segments of society because their voices aren’t really heard. it’s easy for them to say anything because there isn’t an immediate, quantifiable response when you or i disagree – or, if we agree. if a politician came out and said that most americans don’t want health care reform and 100 million people made a clear message that they DID, what do you think would happen? it is in this type of immediate mobilization where i see the internet’s true power. if we want to use it. but still – my idea is flawed, because it still requires people do actually DO something, and not just sit there clicking send and submit.

i’m wondering what might have happened if twitter existed during the vietnam war. would some people have been content just to tweet and join groups and all that nonsense instead of actually protesting?

anyways i’m sure this is ground well worn with tread prints. this is the internet, surely someone has said all this before. but what has anyone done about it? what can we do about it? maybe i’ll create a twitter and facebook group!? funny…..

Posted in blogging, internet, politics | Tagged blogging, internet, politics, revolution, twitter, writing | 1 Comment

bored of the flies

By admin | Published: March 4, 2010

so i’m on facebook. one interesting thing about it is touching base and becoming downright friendly with a lot of people from high school. i don’t remember a lot specifically about high school. i only remember the names of 2 or 3 of my teachers. i cannot remember ever going to the cafeteria – not even once. i remember a lot of loathing. i remember spending a lot of time alone in band practice rooms mastering the more arcane instruments – like bassoon, oboe, tuba, etc. other than that, i don’t remember much. i certainly don’t remember a whole lot of close relationships.

the closest friends i had were a couple years younger than me or were out of school already. they were the other skateboarders i knew. i didn’t have many close friends ‘in’ school. then, i ran away from home a couple of times. eventually i was shipped off to my grandmother’s home to graduate from a different high school altogether with a group of strangers.

and now we’re all middle aged and therefore, quite nostalgic. the ‘reunion’ is approaching. i’ve been asked by several people if i will go. i really don’t think i will. but i do find it curious that these folks and i seem to enjoy and like each other after all these years. they didn’t really know me then, they don’t know me now – nor do i or did i know them. still, we seem to appreciate each other and share a laugh or story nowadays. it may be a camaraderie based on a false beginning, but no matter how it starts, friendship is still friendship.

it does make me think that having the past ‘shared experience’ of high school doesn’t mean all that much. if these people had never known me before, we could be just as friendly without that ‘shared experience’ which, to me, wasn’t that memorable. and THAT just reminds me of how we should all be more open to the worth of others in general. a very simple way to enrich a life. if nothing else, it’ll help while away the time until we surrender to the eternal decay of death. doesn’t that sound cheery? another bold statement on my blog…. be nice to people. wow – i don’t care who i piss off, do i?

anyways, don’t take the pun that serves as the title for this post as any animus towards my high school contemporaries. they all seem like great people…

Posted in facebook, friends, high school | Tagged blogging, facebook, friends, high school, reunion | Leave a comment

coma man can’t ‘communicate’ after all

By admin | Published: March 1, 2010

this story’s genesis is the basis of how misinformation and outright lies can permeate our culture. and to those who never bother to investigate or follow up, this type of story becomes popular wisdom. in late 2009, a report surfaced that a man long in a coma was able to communicate through a special keyboard.

to a lot of people with a certain mindset, this was an exoneration of sorts. this was what they had been saying all along. this was the same group who fought to keep terry schiavo alive. her eyes ‘tracked’ a balloon, after all. those folks.

well it turns out that the coma man cannot communicate after all. this is no surprise, really. the techniques involved in this fake ‘discovery’ aren’t new. i remember hearing the story on the news as they reported it with all the earnestness of a judge and with the same amount of skepticism as a 10 year old playing a carnival game. i remember hearing the story on the radio news and thinking ‘ well, there’s gotta be more than just that to this’ – though it wasn’t reported as though there could be. and as it turns out there was more to it.

what is it about the media that a large segment of it just reports whatever it’s told? someone holds a press conference, announces a discovery, whatever. most ‘reporters’ don’t have a scientific background, i’m sure, but wouldn’t you hope that a media organization would have someone inside it with the ability to critically analyze this type of story before just mindlessly rewording it and parroting it out to the public?

what do they do when they report a story like this without ferreting out whether or not they SHOULD be reporting it in the first place? they confuse the majority of the public who are usually only going to hear the first, incorrect part of the story. followups don’t usually make headlines. and they raise false hopes in the hearts and minds of people who this type of story directly affects in a real way.

false hopes are still false.

Posted in science | Tagged coma, fraud, scams, science | 1 Comment

colorado city, az

By admin | Published: March 1, 2010

today i had occasion to drive through northern arizona and southern utah. i took the opportunity to drive around and photograph some in colorado city, arizona – which is a stronghold of the recently infamous flds church. i have driven by on the main highway many times, but i’ve never ventured off the main road. i spent about 45 minutes there today.

the flds are polygamists. the abuses inherent in this practice, at least they way they engage in it, are well known and i needn’t go into that part of it. the men of any religious polygamy seem to be simple control freaks who have issues with child rape and/or god complexes. it seems that they set themselves up as gods of small universes. the men all agree to orbit each others universes. they mingle finances, business and religion. they manipulate others to participate in this principle whose religious basis helps them enrich themselves and shore up their positions as masters of their tiny, extended family universes. and all the while, they build an earthly empire. maybe that sounds too simplistic – but that’s how it seems to me as i look into it not having lived through it and never really being exposed to it. nor did i grow up mormon so i don’t have that basis to my analysis either.

these men seem to want to emulate god on a small, earthly scale. all the doctrine and afterlife and all of it are just sugar to get this medicine down the throats of those they need as followers. i don’t think they are scammers – i think they are delusional. they’ve believed in this principle their whole lives and actually believe it’s true – as any religious person does. and like most religions, it has the built-in component idea that if anyone opposes you, it just means you are righteous and they are not. pretty typical. but polygamy is a racket, more so than the regular religion is. and it’s actually a pretty sweet racket as earthly rackets go – if you are into living life as a racket. i am not.

some of the houses are really HUGE. some are brand new with amazing masonry. the surroundings are of that northern arizona red rock variety – and some of the houses nicely incorporate the surrounding natural resources in amazing ways.

i have heard that some of these polygamists have a tight hold on lots of house building in that part of arizona and southern utah. i suppose they can outbid because they use a lot of ‘free’ labor (family members) and have over time developed clever ways to use different materials that are abundant where they build. and the craftsmanship seems to really be there with a lot of the structures. a lot of the newer houses are in neighborhoods totally surrounded by walls. it’s a strange mix, though. there will be a giant compound type structure that is new and meticulously maintained. then the next house is a mish-mash of styles and haphazard design, and will have a yard full of miscellaneous sheds, trash and broken down cars.

i’ve heard they also use herbs and various things collected from the desert, as well as the rocks even – to use in landscaping and to sell through various retailers probably throughout the world. if you can say anything about these folk – they are resourceful.

i saw many women and girls wearing the long dresses. doing yard work, playing with soccer balls, going to the single grocery store co-op. i took a few pictures of this with my real camera, but i felt like an intruder.

i had this sense that as people passed me i was getting the once over. i tried to be surreptitious about my picture taking. i was down there on an errand to flagstaff, arizona to pick up an upright grand piano i had bought – so that being in the back of my pickup truck probably lent to my credibility. in fact, most of the pics i took i’d get out and appear to be tightening this or that strap, double checking my load. but i felt stares on me. maybe i’m a little paranoid, but i had the same feeling i got in the shitty part of tijuana, mexico. i felt self conscious, at least.

strangely, a lot of the roads aren’t paved, or paved that well – especially in the older side of town and in hilldale. and yet all around, people everywhere were improving their houses. it is hard to find a house in those ‘twin cities’ that wasn’t being worked on openly in some way. many of the roads on the older side of town were red dirt. my idea was that folks are primarily more worried about their micro-communities than the larger community, maybe? the newer parts of town had better pavement INSIDE the walls, within the neighborhood. but the road leading up to the walled-in neighborhood were awful. they were rough and potholed. i found this approach to a community that seemed newer to be quite curious.

anyways – any native utahan or mormon probably knows much more about this sect than i do. i don’t have any insights here. i’m just sharing the observations i had as i drove through this curious little place for a small amount of time today.

Posted in polygamy, travel, utah | Tagged arizona, colorado-city, flds, hilldale, lebaron, polygamy, utah, warren-jeffs | 1 Comment

random iphone picture fun

By admin | Published: February 28, 2010

yesterday i had the chore of helping a friend with something they needed to get done. i have muscles, a big truck, a handtruck for moving things and lots of unfortunate experience doing manual labor. but this friend of mine is notoriously unreliable – and always late. so our ‘appointment’ at noon turns out to get pushed back to 1 – and then to about 1:20 pm. so it goes.

i am this person who hates to be late. i like to leave early for things – often because i just like to be ‘out’. i will stop and snap pictures, get a diet soda, just goof around really – which is often my only joy in the day. so instead of leaving my house at 11:50 for our noon appointment, i left at 10:30. he lives downtown-ish so i thought i’d go look for things to photograph. but instead of giving myself an extra hour or so to mess around, i ended up with almost 2 1/2 hours. i’m not annoyed at him so much. i find it hard to get angry at people for things that are just simply their nature to do, just as i’d wish for some leeway with my quirks. it gave me some time to myself. i took these pics with my phone while i lingered.

Posted in iphone, photography, salt-lake-city, slc | Tagged art, iphone, photography, pictures, salt-lake-city, slc | Leave a comment

sweet release

By admin | Published: February 28, 2010

the year now is 2010. but if you can, think back 20 years. this inmate prison intake photo taken above once just a goofy, pudgy 14 year old kid to me. he was nothing. his mom was a partying type of lady who ended up becoming a prostitute in later years. she may have recently died. but, when i first met this kid, his mother seduced me. i felt like some kind of stud screwing some middle aged woman in a trailer home behind a bar – little did i know i already sliding away, for awhile anyway.

but, at the time, this kid was just a goof to me. but a criminal one. i remember the first time i ever saw him. i was riding a city bus to downtown to go skateboard. he was a thuggish looking mook. he held onto the rear of an opposing bus (ala back to the future) in the parking lot. i thought to myself ‘this kid is the reason i get harassed while street skating’ and vowed to kick his fat ass if i ever saw him again. by and by i did see him again. and by and by i did kick his ass a few times, but this was before i got to know him.

back then – around 1990 or so, i used to go skateboard and play music at this same shopping center. i would take my saxophone or trumpet or guitar – AND my skateboard – and go skate/play music at the same spot. i’d skate a curb for an hour, then sit and play music into the ether for a while as the florida-sweat dried through my clothes in the middle of the night. then i’d skate again. and on and on.

this kid frequented the place. as sad as it sounds – the place was down the road from the trailer park at which he and his mom lived. the first time HE ever noticed ME, he sat in the shadows, entranced at my skateboarding. and he also stole my bicycle. this was his primary occupation – he was an uncommon thief. even then, at a pudgy 14.

a bit later he rode his own skateboard up to me. i took him on his face and made him a pupil. a follower. an acolyte. i had several of these at the time. the main reason for this wasn’t necessarily my talent or acumen – but just my willingness to spend time trying in a time and place when few people did. and i didn’t do so out of wondrous individualism. i was a simple dork. and i only tried so much because that out of my consumption of media and videotapes at the time that i assumed this is what EVERYONE did. i was wrong.

so, my early success at skateboarding and music was due to both passion as well as mindless idealism.

anyways – this kid became my shadow. it wasn’t until later i found out how dark his shadow was – but by then, i had somehow stopped caring. it started off with him and a few other kids being in awe of my ‘ollie lipslides’ on bus benches and their being in awe of my musical prowess. they’d come and ‘hang out’ while i skated and practiced either music or skating. but this kid really gravitated.

i was basically on my own at this point. i grew up in a well meaning but somewhat white trash environment, wherein i was given no direction but somehow, upon reaching critical mass, i was basically tossed out in the street. i secretly slept in my 1988 hyundai. this was in 1991 or so. at this point, i don’t think the ‘kids’ knew. i was just some mysterious skateboarder who always seemed to have nothing but time to skate and play music, and had no responsibilities apart from a part time job which paid my car payment and car insurance.

and this kid was omnipresent. he was always available. if i wanted to go street skate downtown tampa or sarasota at 2 AM – he could be company. but – he wasn’t always good company. he had a horrible morality and a tedious sense of humor. more than once i physically slapped or punched this kid in my back seat. i abhorred violence but sometimes could not abide his maniacal laughing in the backseat of my car. all i cared about was skating, music and perceived truth and/or beauty. all he cared about then was getting over on others. or getting high. somehow i overlooked the getting high parts – i just never noticed or cared about that part. it was none of my business.

but out of this rambling goofiness, over time, there developed a lawlessness and an endearing sense of familiarity and friendship. one night, we were skating at ‘jim boast dodge’ on tamiami trail in bradenton. this car dealer may now be defunct but it had a giant wagon facade/statue with a pontificating traveler who was both enthusiastically pointing towards the heavens and kicking at the earth. the kid got bored and picked up a rock. he broke a bunch of windows. he broke several windows on several cars. i actually got pissed! ‘you jackass! – now we can’t skate here anymore!!!”. i was angry – but only to the extent that now i couldn’t do slappies or switch ollie grinds on the thick, dark brown painted curbs that occupied this space. but on the drive home, it seemed funny.

weeks passed. months even. it became a real joke to our group. we all remembered the time he broke the windows. why would that ever matter or catch up to us?

months later we were skating another place – as it happens – a car dealer deep in sarasota county. this was almost to venice, fl – which to us dumb ass yokels, was near the end of the travel-able universe. this kid jumped a fence. at first, again, i was pissed. but he found a car, inside a fenced in area, that had the keys in it. he started it up. something happened to all of us – me, him, this kid named tosh, this black kid brian, this fat kid named nick – we became rabid, silly dogs. before i knew it, we were all taking turns doing demolition derby inside this fenced in auto body area. we basically killed some brand new toyota. we drove it straight into a wall. we sped it roughshod into the sides of other caged-in toyota vehicles of the time. we none of us knew it, but we were all sealing our fates. we caused many 1000′s of dollars worth of damage. but we mindlessly went on our ways.

soon after i tired of these antics. i tired of nothingness. so, i got a job. i started at the ‘junior’ college. i thought i was on my way. i was a manager at my work, i had an american express card and a great credit rating. i had a newer jeep wrangler i just loved. i got a girl pregnant. life was busy but confusing.

then a detective, from the now disgraced manatee county sheriff’s ‘delta force’, showed up at my work. apparently, though i had just moved on with my life, my friends had not. and their crimes had grown in magnitude. someone got tripped up on something big, and to lessen the blow to them they talked about MANY things they had done, not the least of which were the events i was involved in all those months before. events which at that point, i never even thought about anymore. they seemed so far removed from my life.

so, the next thing i know i’m charged with many crimes – including several felonies.

let me shorten it up by saying that as a dumb, un-represented 19 year old, i was pressured into a true ‘deal with the devil’ by a douche bag of a public defender and have had nothing but grief and explaining to do ever since. i was placed on probation.

but this post is about this kid. he went on to become an arch-criminal. a true fiend. one of the counties ‘most wanted’ at one point, i’m sure. he moved on from breaking car windows to particularly stealing from cars. then to stealing cars – and not just for fun or transport as would happen in that time and place – but for PROFIT. he went on to burglarizing houses. but drugs got on him in the meantime and before you know it, he is robbing drug stores for whatever they have. and before i ever knew anything about it, he’s locked up for a longer time than i could imagine. he has been mostly ‘locked up’ from the time he was 15 until now

i’ve been ‘clean’ ever since i first got in trouble, really. eventually, i complicated my situation by means i will explain by and by. but as for this kid -well – he just kept on escalating. over time, out of morbid curiosity and occasional necessity, i’ve looked up my old ‘friends’. as it turns out, my old buddy is about to get out, again. he lives across the country and has had an experience i cannot imagine and probably has ideas i cannot expect. some part of me wishes i could convey what life CAN be, what you can MAKE it be if you try.

but, this is his mugshot. his name is none of your business. my hopes for him and his future are at the same time boundless and hopeless. part of me sees him much like myself, as i am now – or as i hope myself to be. but mostly i see him resembling the part of myself i realized was hopelessly flawed and which i abandoned 20 years ago. i hope for him the best.

… i still don’t know what to say, though

Posted in blogging, writing | Tagged inmate, jail, juvenile, prison, victor-floyd | Leave a comment

barber shop

By admin | Published: February 28, 2010

this picture is from a weird, goofy place in salt lake city. it was a barber shop. the proprietor of which was a man named charley andrus. he was in business for five decades. i took the picture (and several others of the weird, masonic-inspired art work that adorns the exterior) because it is unique, and partly because it stirs up memories in me.

this place reminds me a bit of the place i always got my haircuts as i grew up in and around palmetto, florida. this old guy was in business about 55 years, about as long a charlie andrus was… he went into retirement and sold the place when i was in 10th grade or so… but he mostly was the person who cut my hair through my youth

from the time when i was so small that they make you sit on that special shelf/cushion they put across the top so you are tall enough for them to cut your hair in the big boy chair until i was a teenager

i have this memory from when i was about 5 years old or so, of going in convinced i wanted my head ‘BUZZED’. the barber made sure thats what i really wanted, then obliged. i remember crying and being so ashamed when i got home…. i hated it. i got some hat. it didn’t help. …

i remember my grandmother telling me with pride that he was my barber, that i was lucky to have him as my barber, that he was the best. he was the only barber i was aware of until i was in 5th grade or so. i didn’t know there was another barber in the world until then. he was a nice, decent, quiet and kind man. and a pillar of the community, as it turns out. but in my mind, he existed only to cut my hair and only then

i knew him as the guy with the giant, all metal push button cash register. the guy with all the magazines. the man with the pay phone inside his store that doubled as the ACTUAL phone for the place (when they payphone rang, someone answered it – giving hours, prices, or taking appointments!). the man in white with all the authority and dignity of a country doctor but who had those round combs and that mysterious bright green hair tonic which at the time i thought was magic but which now, i can only compare to the color of my favorite absinthe

i went to this same barber, maybe for the last time, around 9th grade during the day. i was skipping school, going skateboarding somewhere, and had appropriated some car for the afternoon. i was just being a punk but also getting my errands done – which is my life script – being crazy but still taking care of the essentials. i remember as i sat there seeing him cut my hair. i was wanting to tell him what a big part of my life he was, though he was in his declining years and actually gave me a pretty shitty haircut at the time… i don’t know if he knew i was this little kid who had been coming there since i first got my haircut. i wonder now if he remembered. i wonder if service type business folk, especially in small towns like that, know how much a part of some people’s lives they are? i wonder if they know they made an impact or sorts – almost as much as any of my elementary school teachers, whose names i cannot now remember.

lately i get my hair cut at a place that used to be a ‘great clips’ but went out of business. a small asian woman runs it now. i’m convinced she doesn’t like me and talks awfully about me while cutting my hair. the ladies never stop talking, and it’s curious when people don’t speak your language are looking at you, chattering and laughing. when i first sit down, she always yells at me ‘what you want, how short? what number!?”. it’s not quite the same. they don’t have good magazines there, either…

Posted in blogging, writing | Tagged barber-shops, barbers, blogging, writing | 1 Comment

brand identity

By admin | Published: February 26, 2010

defunct is a funny word. it’s a strange thing to see a car brand go away, though it’s happened many hundreds of times since the automobile has been invented. did you know there were around 600 automobile manufacturers in the united states alone around 1910? it used to be the pursuit of anyone with metal, machining or engine skills. henry ford changed a lot of it – and made automobile manufacturing largely the purview of the corporate giants. and so, most ‘lost’ car manufacturers are of the smaller variety – though there have been many venerable, larger brands to go away. there is a nice list of defunct car makers here.

the united states is a car based country. not necessarily because of our great drivers, our passion for quality cars or our love of automotive beauty. it stems out of the great expanse of land we occupy, and the necessities of traveling across it. and it’s because of that necessity that we are said to have a ‘love affair’ with the automobile.

i know pontiac and saturn weren’t really great brands. pontiac had it’s heyday with the muscle cars of the late 60s and early 70s. they really have been a non-entity for some time. i mean – have you ever seen a pontiac aztec? and as for the saturn – the only thing that was really special about saturn was their early marketing and no haggle/no hassle sales approach. the cars were fairly nondescript and typical.

even so, it seems a shame to see them go. especially pontiac which has a rather long automobile legacy. the end of an era is a strange time to witness, but realizing that the ‘end of’ one era is by definition the ‘start of’ another, i can’t wait to find out what’s next.

Posted in automobiles, business, cars | Tagged automobiles, car-makers, cars, general-motors, hummer, pontiac, saturn | Leave a comment

animal people

By admin | Published: February 26, 2010

first off, let me say that i adore animals. i am always pleased when i go to someone’s house and they have a cat or dog or ferret or something and we get on well and have a nice pet, play or snuggle. i had a great dog for several years, and a string of cats over time. i tried keeping fish once but they didn’t live very long. i overfed, then forgot to feed. i think i do better with animals that can REMIND you they need to be fed. so it goes. if anything, i’ve learned i’m not a fish person, though i really enjoy someones well kept and beautiful aquarium full of scaly pretties with big eyes.

there are some people who say they don’t like animals. maybe there was a childhood trauma, maybe they are ‘allergic’. i dunno. but i don’t understand that whole deal. i had a dog almost bite my finger off when i was in 7th grade. i have a scar that goes all the way down my finger where they put it back together. but i am not afraid of dogs – never really was before or after. but there is a curious bunch of people who don’t seem to care for animals – and i find them curious. often these people are anti-children too.

i love kids, too. i have always said – ‘i generally like children much more than the adults they become’. kids are great. most adults are kind of boring to me – at least the people i run into and have to deal with on a regular basis are. i’ve always been uneasy around people who proclaim ‘i don’t like kids’. ever met one of those? what’s that about? i can see not thinking you want kids. maybe you think you’d be a bad parent. maybe you are one of those peculiarly selfish people who think kids will stifle their lives too much. these people are the ones whose minds totally change when life comes upon them and they become the most zealous of parents. life is funny that way. but the people who say they don’t ‘like’ kids – they are a puzzle. but anyways…

this entry is supposed to be about the animal people. the people who surround themselves with animals almost to the detriment of their human relationships – and sometimes, in place of them. the people who seem to use cats or dogs almost as insulation between them and an often harsh, judgmental world. animals, as relationships go, are easy. people are the difficult ones. people require communication, consideration, and complex interaction. and even after engaging in all of that, they can mistreat, betray, or abandon you.

animals are a different thing. feed them and they almost always come back. pleasure them with physical petting or distractions that they play with, or a nice warm place to plop down on, and they will provide you a world of cuteness. animals will ‘love’ you as long as you feed them and don’t exert cruelty. animals will ‘love’ you even in you live in horrid conditions. i got the idea for this entry after watching an episode of ‘hoarders‘ where the lady had a house crammed with cats. they lady ‘loved’ her cats and she thought they ‘loved’ her – even though they lived in squalid conditions and in which the carcasses of several dead cats were found.

i wonder – CAN animals love? people are constantly anthropomorphizing their animals. the worst of us dress them up or think they can truly communicate complex feelings. but, they are cute. they can do such sweet-seeming things. but i am not sure if animals love. have you ever gotten a ‘new’ cat or dog? usually the first night or two they hide somewhere, or lay low. they are scared. the people are new, the surroundings are new. but shortly thereafter, don’t they seem to quickly adapt to a new place after being fed, shown their space, and being treated decently? some animals seem more sensitive to newness than others. be it a new visitor or altogether new surroundings. but it’s usually a pretty quick transition from one home to another.

we took in a dog once – he was around 4 years when we got him. his whole life was spent with another family. he lumped around for the first night like his life was over or he was in imminent danger. this lasted… about 24 hours. then it was off to the races.

dogs are pack animals. they cling to others and need a leader. dogs really seem in tune with the master/slave aspects of interaction. they are happy to have a leader – and just about any will do. i’ve heard the stories of how a dog will travel a great distance to get to it’s owner, say after a tornado or after the owner has moved. these stories involving great distances, i’m sure they are apocryphal – i mean – if they weren’t, then that doesn’t really bode well for the idea that animals love – because why doesn’t every newly adopted dog set out for his previous home like some wayfaring hobo? on a more local scale, though, i can kind of see how that would happen because the dog is just seeking out his master. i would bet those dogs could just as easily adopt a new master, instead. i don’t know if it’s love – but habit, routine, and the dog doing what is usually expected of it – which seems to be how domesticated dogs operate.

and i’m sure animals ‘remember’ people – i have experienced this myself i think. but i don’t know if that’s love. and if animals can’t love, then what does that mean for the ‘animal people’? the single woman with several dogs or cats, the older person who is basically a shut in with their pets, the person who insists on taking their animal EVERYWHERE, like a security blanket with a pulse. sure they are delightful animals (usually), they are conversation starters – but they also seem to provide a kind of barrier between the pet owner and other people. a distraction. a hurdle. i’m not talking about the typical family with pets to amuse, comfort, and liven up a household. i’m talking about the ‘animal people’ – the people who make animals a focal point of their lives. if animals can’t love, what would that mean for those types of people?

there is nothing so adorable to me as a dog sticking his snout out the window of a car, getting some air, enjoying the ride. and my cat has been sitting next to my keyboard as i type this, occasionally demanding a little attention. but i am not sure if animals ‘love’. what do you think?

Posted in animals, blogging, kids, pets | Tagged animals, blogging, cats, dogs, kids, pets | Leave a comment

Blogroll
- hopeless bleak despair on facebook
- my photo blog
twitter
- hopes to one day resign under a cloud 3 days ago
- @stakerized 's awkward hour party is wrapping up http://yfrog.com/bd6h0j 3 days ago
- downtown salt lake city construction #slc http://yfrog.com/nbop6oj 3 days ago
- is an equal opportunity destroyer 3 days ago
- @JoniNadauld @ i need absolutely nothing at all. Just a line of dialogue I wrote and adapted for social media. thx for asking in reply to JoniNadauld 3 days ago
- More updates...
Posting tweet...
Categories
- animals
- antiques
- archer
- automobiles
- bicycles
- blogging
- business
- cars
- celebrity
- christopher nolan
- cinema
- classic cars
- credit
- credit cards
- david byrne
- depression
- documentaries
- driving
- facebook
- family
- film
- florida
- friends
- high school
- idaho
- inception
- internet
- iphone
- junk
- kids
- las vegas
- movie reviews
- movies
- music
- pets
- photography
- picker
- poetry
- politics
- polygamy
- psychic
- radio
- random
- rants
- religion
- salt-lake-city
- science
- shopping
- skateboard
- skateboarding
- slc
- small towns
- spam
- talk-radio
- talking heads
- tarot cards
- television
- thrift stores
- traffic
- travel
- traveling
- twitter
- utah
- writing

Blogroll

twitter

Categories