I hope to do a blog every week or so with everything I'm listening to/watching/reading.
What I'm listening to:
Lupe Fiasco--Enemy of the State (A Love Story). I can't turn this mixtape off. I know it's nowhere near Food & Liquor or The Cool, but it's Lupe. His flow is better than ever on borrowed beats--this next album is going to be ridiculous.
Andrew Bird--Armchair Apocrypha. I'm not sure if Bird means eveything he says in his lyrics, but if he does, he is one deranged genius. And if his lyrics are just for fun, well then he's just a genius. Check out "A Nervous Tick Motion of the Head to the Left", it has the emotional punch with musicianship beyond belief.
Yo-Yo Ma--Bach Cello Suites. For work. It's awesome.
What I'm reading:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy--I hope McCarthy is immortal, because I haven't found an author whose imagery is as visceral and compelling as his. This book is downright bleak.
What I'm watching:
Magnolia--This movie hits so close on so many levels. Earl's dying confession makes me tear up. It isn't the best movie I've seen, but it's my favorite. "I loved her so. And she knew what I did. She knew all the fucking stupid things I'd done. But the love... was stronger than anything you can think of. The goddamn regret. The goddamn regret! Oh, and I'll die. Now I'll die, and I'll tell you what... the biggest regret of my life... I let my love go.This fucking life... oh, it's so fucking hard. So long. Life ain't short, it's long. It's long, goddamn it. Goddamn."
No Country For Old Men--I don't know how I hit my favorite and what I consider to be "the best" movie of all time in the same blog, but this movie is it. The imagery in this movie is so striking. Everything is so barren and dark, yet so beautiful. If you haven't seen it, do so.
Casino--What a mes. The characters in this story, that is, not the movie. Scorsese's most brutal movie yet. It isn't his best mobster film--that goes to the Departed, but it's certainly his most entertaining. It's just hard to like any of these characters, they're all terrible people.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Break without boredom
I remember catching up on entire seasons of TV shows during Christmas break last year. What happened this year?
Thus far I've been cranking out the hours with an internship at SCC. It's been great--I've met some fantastic people who are simultaneously helping me with my career while also getting me sick. I'm fighting off an incessant cold, thanks to touching probably three hundred different computer keyboards in three days.
Time slips away fast after the 9-5 office monkey session. I've started studying to become APICS certified, working out when I get time, and hanging out with the Hartford crew.
Classes are starting up again soon, and I hardly remember what I signed up for. China is coming up in less than three months and I'm jittery. Today I got through 150 pages on my China travel book, and the 24-hour bars is what is sticking out in my mind. Awesome.
I have a lot of goals for this semester, and I can't wait to start up again and see everyone on campus.
I hope to not have these kind of posts often, these are just to keep me on track (not to mention I know that no one is reading this right now, ha).
--apoclater
Thus far I've been cranking out the hours with an internship at SCC. It's been great--I've met some fantastic people who are simultaneously helping me with my career while also getting me sick. I'm fighting off an incessant cold, thanks to touching probably three hundred different computer keyboards in three days.
Time slips away fast after the 9-5 office monkey session. I've started studying to become APICS certified, working out when I get time, and hanging out with the Hartford crew.
Classes are starting up again soon, and I hardly remember what I signed up for. China is coming up in less than three months and I'm jittery. Today I got through 150 pages on my China travel book, and the 24-hour bars is what is sticking out in my mind. Awesome.
I have a lot of goals for this semester, and I can't wait to start up again and see everyone on campus.
I hope to not have these kind of posts often, these are just to keep me on track (not to mention I know that no one is reading this right now, ha).
--apoclater
Monday, January 4, 2010
Finding a purpose
Disclaimer: My writing is dull, I misspell words, and my thoughts are unorganized. I'm not writing this blog to please anyone, just to keep myself accountable. With that, I'll explain as to why I'm writing this blog.
Frankly, I'm not a huge blog fan, and yet here I am creating one. I'm writing this blog for one reason: I want to keep tabs on myself. College is a time to "find oneself", and I'm doing an enormous amount of soul-searching lately. Surely this will change, but for right now, I like to live by two principles, one of which precedes the other. My first principle is to always be dynamic. Never be idle, never complain of boredom and never be one of the enslaved "mouth-breathers" out there. Preceding from this, my second principle is to be passionate. One should consistently be passionate about the things they do. This is harder to describe, but it's a more personal principle for me. Essentially, if I'm doing something for reasons other than happiness or the anticipation of happiness, I'm not doing that activity anymore.
I came across this quote today in reading, in which I'm giving some justification to the static nature of people today and why I want to avoid that archetype:
“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.” ※ Thomas Jefferson
Too many people are watching bad television right now while repeatedly refreshing their facebook pages. People listening to the same music, watching the same movies, doing the same tired things over again. I'm hardly a morbid person, but I can't imagine lying on my death bed and having trouble finding at least one hundred amazing things I've done with my life. Hell, two hundred. I can't get over the fact that people say they're "bored". There are so many things to do in this life. The only thing I want to be depressed about when I begin my next chapter of life is that I didn't have time to experience every possible thing I could do in life. Cheers, then, to living a dynamic life.
Similarly, another quote inspires me to be passionate about everything I do:
"I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived -- an entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables; or they're slaves with white collars. Advertisements have them chasing cars and clothes, working jobs they hate so they can buy shit they don't need. We are the middle children of history, with no purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression. The great war is a spiritual war. The great depression is our lives. We were raised by television to believe that we'd be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars -- but we won't. And we're learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed-off."
I recently had a conversation with my dad about work. A certain employee of his obviously hated his job and has made it fairly apparent for the past ten years, yet he has been working for him for over 30 years. I never understood that, I told my father--why do people do things they don't want to do? I answered my question--either out of a perverted sense of duty, or simply to buy shit he didn't need. He wasn't passionate about his job, and considering he spent 50-60 hours per week at this job, he was wasting nearly one third of his life doing something he didn't want to do. What a waste. I hope he figures something out, and I wish I could thank him for being a partial inspiration for this blog.
I suppose ultimately, in living by these two principles, I want the value of my person to be only me. Not my possessions, but simply my mind, my body, and the things I need. To quote DeNiro from Heat, "Don't do anything you can't walk away from in thirty seconds."
Now that I'm finished with all that, I can get on to the important stuff, like how Lupe Fiasco is my new religion and how I'm going indoor rock climbing tomorrow.
--apoclater
Frankly, I'm not a huge blog fan, and yet here I am creating one. I'm writing this blog for one reason: I want to keep tabs on myself. College is a time to "find oneself", and I'm doing an enormous amount of soul-searching lately. Surely this will change, but for right now, I like to live by two principles, one of which precedes the other. My first principle is to always be dynamic. Never be idle, never complain of boredom and never be one of the enslaved "mouth-breathers" out there. Preceding from this, my second principle is to be passionate. One should consistently be passionate about the things they do. This is harder to describe, but it's a more personal principle for me. Essentially, if I'm doing something for reasons other than happiness or the anticipation of happiness, I'm not doing that activity anymore.
I came across this quote today in reading, in which I'm giving some justification to the static nature of people today and why I want to avoid that archetype:
“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.” ※ Thomas Jefferson
Too many people are watching bad television right now while repeatedly refreshing their facebook pages. People listening to the same music, watching the same movies, doing the same tired things over again. I'm hardly a morbid person, but I can't imagine lying on my death bed and having trouble finding at least one hundred amazing things I've done with my life. Hell, two hundred. I can't get over the fact that people say they're "bored". There are so many things to do in this life. The only thing I want to be depressed about when I begin my next chapter of life is that I didn't have time to experience every possible thing I could do in life. Cheers, then, to living a dynamic life.
Similarly, another quote inspires me to be passionate about everything I do:
"I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived -- an entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables; or they're slaves with white collars. Advertisements have them chasing cars and clothes, working jobs they hate so they can buy shit they don't need. We are the middle children of history, with no purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression. The great war is a spiritual war. The great depression is our lives. We were raised by television to believe that we'd be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars -- but we won't. And we're learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed-off."
I recently had a conversation with my dad about work. A certain employee of his obviously hated his job and has made it fairly apparent for the past ten years, yet he has been working for him for over 30 years. I never understood that, I told my father--why do people do things they don't want to do? I answered my question--either out of a perverted sense of duty, or simply to buy shit he didn't need. He wasn't passionate about his job, and considering he spent 50-60 hours per week at this job, he was wasting nearly one third of his life doing something he didn't want to do. What a waste. I hope he figures something out, and I wish I could thank him for being a partial inspiration for this blog.
I suppose ultimately, in living by these two principles, I want the value of my person to be only me. Not my possessions, but simply my mind, my body, and the things I need. To quote DeNiro from Heat, "Don't do anything you can't walk away from in thirty seconds."
Now that I'm finished with all that, I can get on to the important stuff, like how Lupe Fiasco is my new religion and how I'm going indoor rock climbing tomorrow.
--apoclater
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