unnatural

can you believe that tonight, on jay leno, that the lineup includes President Jimmy Carter, followed by Mischa Barton? it's patently absurd! how dare they! this is everything that is wrong with America.

Mischa Barton follows NOBODY!

flying meaning of brian's completely different holy grail

i've been a monty python fan since i was 13. even at that young age, i appreciated the humor in people hitting each other with fish and dropping 16 ton weights on unsuspecting britons. when i got a bit older, i saw the hilarity of a cross-dressing lumberjack and a knight who doesn't ride a horse but rather has his mignon make the sound with coconuts. now, i watch monty python and see sharp, caustic wit and pointed satire. god, middle class values, european elitism, celebrity culture, sex, all fell victim to python's wit. python, not to be overly sappy, has helped me a lot in realizing that all the trivial things will get you if you don't watch out. life is about being happy, making others laugh, and putting food in your stomach. if you are happy with what you do and how you live, everything else is just gravy.

if ever life gets you down, listen to 'always look on the bright side of life,' from the end of "Life of Brian." if those guys can be happy while being crucified, you've got not right to grumble.

Tea and Vicksburg

i don't think that drinking a lot of tea is going to make me more productive. in fact, i think it will just make me remember my days as a Union soldier, grimacing as i wiped the dirt and blood from my eyes as i surveyed a battlefield where friends and brothers lay dead in an all-consuming struggle to preserve the unity of our great nation. no, tea is too painful.

i'll have a latte.

the 12

when i went to see ocean's 12, i figured i would see a poor imitation of the chemistry and tongue-in-cheek humor that made ocean's 11 such fun. i was pleasantly disappointed. the addition of catherine zeta-jones was a great call, as she adds her european vibe to this continental joyride. clooney, pitt, damon, roberts, cheadle, etc. are just so...cool. you want to be there for the laughs, the style, and the aching desire to be an international thief/bon vivant. sure, the plot holes are large enought to accomodate venus, but you don't see this movie for tightly coiled story. you go for the glamour, the fun, witty dialogue, and a few twists along the way.

plus, zeta-jones looks INCREDIBLE.

better late than never

ideally, any 'hey ya' parodies would have been completed last year. to do them now is sort of a reflection of laziness, but what can you do. here it is: in time for the holiday season.

http://home.nc.rr.com/keehyun/stuff/jew-heyya.html

damn you peter fonda/dennis hopper

on sunday, i watched "easy rider" on tv with my roommates. to be more accurate, i watched the last 30 minutes of it, which is a fine way to simulate an LSD trip. it was the most mind boggling thing i've ever experienced. peter fonda and dennis hopper blew my mind as they tripped out in New Orleans. i was so confused, and my roommate just kept saying, 'i feel so drunk watching this.'

next time "easy rider" comes on tv, i need to make sure there are no narcs in the room.

the giving of the thanks

yeah, ok. so i gave thanks. i have a wonderful family, great friends, food, shelter, clothing, health, sense of sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste etc. i am blessed with all these things, plus other luxuries like money in my pocket, an education, and whatnot. i have reflected on all these things and i fully understand how incredibly fortunate i am. but that doesn't answer the real question on my mind in these post-thanksgiving days.


when do i get my presents?

death, eh?

i never used to be scared of death. moreover, i never understood people who claimed to be afraid of death. it seemed so foolish. death is an instant, and after there is nothing. even more so, death makes sense to me. when people around me wrestle with the idea "why do we die?" it was so clear to me: we die because life needs an end. i never believed in hell or heaven, for no reason that i can articulate without ending in "i don't know, i just don't get it." nevertheless, i always felt like death was a termination of life, not a gateway to anything else. death seem so final, and therefore, extremely neat. you live, and then at one point you die. to worry about something that was both inevitable and rational made me feel like a nattering naybob of negativism.

then recently, and i say recently meaning in the past week or so, i started to think: what if there is a hell? what if hell is like pittsburgh, in the sense that it is a real place. saying "i don't believe in pittsburgh" is not going to keep you from going there. it seemed so self-satisfying to dismiss any chance of me going to hell by saying "i don't believe in it." i seemed to wholly overlook the idea that my belief in hell is totally irrelevant. it would be like me saying, "i don't believe in 7th grade." that's all well and good, but my refusal to accept 7th grade doesn't diminish its existence, it only blinds me to it. i started to become anxious when i realized the notion that hell may be very real, and if that is the case, i will certainly be making residence there for the better part of eternity. i have not come to a conclusion, because doing so would be impossible. i will instead to what i do best: analyze something until i have deconstructed the hell out of it (pun fully intended) and it becomes meaningless to me.

i wonder what nietzsche would say about this.

listening to: "dust in the wind"

startling confession

i am, in most ways, a normal guy. i like most guy food, most guy movies, and most guy things. looking from a birds eye view, i am a typical american male. however, i have one feature about me that probably divorces me from most of the english speaking male species.

i like wham's "wake me up." i'm very sorry, but when that 'jitterbug' gets into my brain, it goes bang bang bang 'til my feet do the same.

sincere apologies.

irony defined?

now, i'm not a very smart guy. i am confronted almost daily with people who are more witty, articulate, and better at math than i. but, i do think of myself as having a keen sense of irony, useless as that may be. i did notice that today i saw a health insurance building/university health center located next to mcdonalds.

isn't that entrapment?

seriously, what is that thing?

i know jack about photo composition, but this is pretty damn good. 

the perfect blend

i was listening to cheezy 80s pop music on the soundtrack to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and i discovered the song "Hold the Line" by Toto. if there was a holy grail for power ballads that can totally wail, this would be it. whenever it plays, you have to shake your fist vigorously and act as though you are playing an enormous purple axe. if you are endowed with an active enough imagination, you can imagine a lot of neon strobe lights and girls with big, jersey hair mouthing the words to your song. they never do it right, but god bless 'em for trying. after the show, you turn to your manager, who despite being from detroit has a liverpool accent, and say, "that's how you rock and roll niles."

man, i miss the 80s.

urban archetype

looking at the windows open on my mozilla browser and on my taskbar, i see:

1. npr website
2. my gmail page
3. the new republic website
4. my blogger page
5. my itunes

i'm sure this probably pigeon-holes me into a very specific hole, and i don't know how good that is. but it's probably tragically accurate.

Nov 3

i wonder what is going to happen tomorrow.
scenario 1. bush wins
scenario 2. kerry wins
scenario 3. nader wins. nation's jaw hits floor, only to be found poking through the ground in shanghai
scenario 4. riding the wave of popularity from "american idol," write-in candidate randy jackson wins

i won't write who i am pulling for, but suffice to say in my dream administration, you'll hear a lot of this:
"wow dawg, you're really doin' your health and human services thang dawg."

ahh, dreams.

being on the train with a headache is bad enough. in fact, it's torture. but having two 16 year old girls dressed like TaTu singing terrible russian pop songs and just generally being a nuisance to everyone on the train really makes me want to show them what Halloween is about: respecting the power of evil and fearing death from angry train passengers.

bud light presents real american heroes

bud light presents real american heroes
(real american heroes)
today we salute you, mr. really bad toupee wearer
(mr. really bad toupee wearer)
more than any neon sign or exploding scoreboard ever could, your chrome dome cover says "hey guys, look at me"
(what could you be thinking)
you think it looks natural, but it couldn't look phonier if it had a chin strap
(couldn't fool a blind man)
made of space-age fibers, it can repel anything: rain, wind, snow, and especially young women
(i don't think so)
so crack open an ice cold bud light mr. stud in a rug, then crack open another for that thing in your head
(i don't think it's on straight)

this was probably one of the best ones they did.

Team America

team america is probably the funniest movie out there right now, and i can say with great certainty that it is the best movie involving puppets currently in theaters. i laughed myself into a euphoric stupor during the 1h45 i was in that dank theater. it is a fine parody of action movies, celebrity activists, and hollywood in general. go see it.

it's not even an issue.

david ortiz for president

how one man can win two games for his team in extra-innings to keep his team alive is beyond me. david ortiz is a clutch player that comes around once a century. maybe more, but still.

i'd vote for david ortiz right now. no joke.

i don't know why i continue to drink coffee to stay awake, when i neither like the taste of coffee nor staying awake. i should just drink warm milk and resign myself to a fate of sleeping like a little baby.

current tune: rhapsody "rain of a thousand flames" (if you have not heard of rhapsody, they are an italian symphonic death metal band. if you think that is the most contradictory description you've ever heard, you would be correct. listen to it. www.mightyrhapsody.com

while it is true that i tend to go back and forth on this blog, i am trying to be more consistent with my loyalty to this page. overall, i think blogs are a healthy way to chronicle your life, and also give you some semi-intellectual activity to do when you're bored. even a recap of your day requires some brainpower and can hone your writing skills.

as it gets colder in the city, the window to my apartment remains stubbornly open. this has caused my room to resemble something of an ice box. it makes it less conducive for studying and other things of the like. much focus is required. to bad i haven't any.

i went to a comedy club the other day. more than the actual show, which i enjoyed greatly, i really liked hanging out with the comics afterward. i've always really liked stand up comedians. i think the camraderie and the feeling of brotherhood that comics share is admirable. talking to them, seeing the genesis of their act is really cool.
last night i was hanging out pete, noah, drew, et. al at their apartment. i think we managed to take strange subjects and really intellectualize them. it was a lot of fun.

medical malpractice

there is something to be said about the profound psychological impacts, along with the associated health impacts, of getting a haircut. for the past two days, i had been having crippling headaches, the cause of which eluded me. i pointed all the blame at my inexcusably long hair. i made up some intensely lame excuse about my hair trapping heat in my head, which in the summer can only have negative consequences. i went to get a haircut today, and i felt better instantly. i cannot explain why doctors have not been prescribing haircuts as treatment for migranes and other head pain. it is irresponsible, and i won't stand for it. i am trying to set up a lobbying group in washington in the interest of hairstylists around the nation, because failure to utilize their full potential in the medical community is nothing short of criminal.

watch out for the Big Hair lobby. it's a force. get on board, or out of the way.

here we are, starting anew. this will feature my thoughts, opinions, sometimes pictures, and a overall canvas of who i am. this website will not be devoid of substance. that was me being ironic. get used to it.