If you can think you know that there are things in the world that are good, things that are bad, and things that are everywhere in between. The moment you declare a taste that isn’t common to society two major things happen, (many other things happen of course, lets leave them for another time) and both represent a difference in personal ideology. One thing that happens is that you become completely sure of your decision to appreciate something most don’t as a result of your superiority in taste. (Intellectually, tastefully, whatever sort of superiority it is, it’s there). Your superiority may not even be something you consider, you might feel that your opinion was merely different. One doesn’t have to say “I am better because of “X”. But if someone appreciates “X” and considers “X” to be good while others do not appreciate “X,” then their judgment is superior—whether it is the individuals desire to be superior or not. I won’t go into what should be seen as good or bad, it’s hardly an answerable question—just be aware that it is a necessity that some opinions be better than others.
Another thing that happens is the personal doubt that comes with a decision that most don’t agree with. Am I just full of it when I say I appreciate something that society doesn’t? Is society more accurate than I am in their judgment of what is good and what is bad?
These two points of view represent, to some extent, every being whose enjoyments come from things different from what is typical in society. The difficulty with these beliefs is that the faith in them has to come from within, society does not support them and thus your everyday existence will continue to contradict your opinions more and more because they are so seldom found in the world. Imagine if the universe were found to really be a big bowl of spaghetti; (let’s assume we had a way to know this undoubtedly). No one would ever believe you, even though you spoke truth. The only thing preventing the truth from vanishing forever is your own knowledge of the truth, (the truth from within), and society will continue to condemn it and make you feel less secure that what you used to know for fact was ever true at all…
Until society comes along and creates something that reassures you of all of your uncommon opinions and ideas that have never helped you in society at all. Society creates/does something so horribly idiotic and ridiculous that you cannot, no matter how many tell you contrary, believe it is good. All of the opinions you have about how few people in the world you could have a profound friendship with; all of the opinions you have about how horrifyingly bad the movies and music have been that no one else had any problems with; all of the times you keep your 5 dollars in your pocket instead of buying alcoholic whipped cream. All of these things never completely reassure you that what you are doing is right—that “rightness” only comes in the beginning and as time drags on you can begin to lose confidence in the decisions you make. This is until society comes along and creates something so powerfully horrible and thoughtless, something that no matter how much you question your ideals, you are immediately revoked of all doubt that what you are thinking is wrong. Sex and the City 2 does just this, and it, and things like it, has helped save many intelligent but worn-down minds.
It’s an objective statement that Sex and the City 2 didn’t need to be 2 hours and 26 minutes long. It’s so painfully obvious that I won’t argue why it didn’t need to be. Some people at some point sat down in a room with this script, with a full team of educated and trained individuals and agreed: “We need ~$95,000,000 and 2 hours and 26 minutes to make this work (wiki), there’s no way we’re letting our generation’s most comprehensive satire of gender roles in society fall short of perfection.” (Or something like that). Either they actually believed that (I suspect that they didn’t), or they were betting on society’s lowest common denominator to come through and make them the big bucks. I’m being generous by saying “betting”—they knew. Their financial statement reveals they made $305,153,249 in Gross Revenue (again, wiki) which means hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. I’ll be generous and I’ll subtract from this total the boyfriends who got into fights with their girlfriends and saw the movie to show how much they cared. I’ll also subtract the parents who had to pay for their tween daughters—and it’s still in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The film, of course, did horribly even in society’s reviews of it; but the money the film generated speaks louder—it enables more creations of this kind. The only use for such things is to make everything else comparatively better. (This is a crutch that should be avoided--it promotes badness)
The next time you indulge in something that attracts no approval, labels you by others as a faux-elitist, and separates you from the warmth of belonging; remember Sex and the City 2, and all of Sex and the City 2’s. Sometimes something comes around where it is undeniable (to yourself) that you are not a faux-elitist douchebag. You simply dislike something that is worth being disliked, and the ones who like it could not convince you otherwise, no matter how many of them there are—even $300,000,000 worth of them.
-FR
Monday, February 14, 2011
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Article I saw on the subway today
I saw an article on the subway today, took a picture of it on my phone and transcribed it out.
"I've always been able to look at a woman and picture in my head how her tears would look, sagging from the whiteness of the eye, hanging from their eyelashes, touching the ground. I don't care for most of them, I sit alone watching them and their lovers and friends, and they probably look down on me for it. I've sat alone in small cafes for hours, touching ass-to-ass with all sorts of lovers and friends, watching the lights, and the walls, and them. I never intend to listen but somewhere along the lines their mannerisms tear their way through the carefully constructed environments they're in. Too much nodding, too much smiling, too American, too ugly, too French. Too stupid. It's these mannerisms that detract from the candles, the perfectly aligned bottles sitting at the bar--nestling on racks of wine too old and too good for me to understand or identify, the postures of the waiters and waitresses, the glimpses of Ecuadorian line cooks gliding through the kitchen as they prepare your Entrees.
It takes a different kind of person to catch their mannerisms--to understand that they don't really appreciate the live music in front of them, or the atmosphere around them. It takes someone who doesn't clap at the loud solos from the band just because they're the most audible or because they're the fastest, it takes someone who genuinely cares about the environment they're in. It's the people who are willing to--who prefer to--drink the expensive scotches in plastic cups, the angry bar patrons who slug down hundred year old wines like malt liquor, who understand what an environment is about. It's about enjoying yourself. Do you remember why you're at a nice restaurant with your lover or your friend? Of course you do. You're going to have a nice time, you're going to impress. The ones I look at, the ones who would use a fork to hold a fork to eat their food if they were told it was classier, these are the ones to stare at. They sit uncomfortably, worried about their back protruding out below their necks if they slouch, worried about their legs slipping from their neatly tucked positions between the legs of the table, contemplating the horror of their linen napkin dropping to the floor. Ooing and awing at the leather-bound menus, anxious to show their friends how they will be ordering in french, taking the better part of an hour before they arrived to perfect their accent for their particular choice.
I guarantee the bum drinking something brown out of a styrofoam cup is enjoying himself more than you, wondering what fork you're supposed to use for this next bite, or what romantic line you'll spew next to get somebody wet. And not just in that moment either, that bum's probably sucked a dick or two just to get the money to have that one drink. I bet the cum residue on his teeth doesn't bother him as much as it'd bother you if I grabbed a piece of kobe beef and ate it with my hands."
Enjoy,
FR
"I've always been able to look at a woman and picture in my head how her tears would look, sagging from the whiteness of the eye, hanging from their eyelashes, touching the ground. I don't care for most of them, I sit alone watching them and their lovers and friends, and they probably look down on me for it. I've sat alone in small cafes for hours, touching ass-to-ass with all sorts of lovers and friends, watching the lights, and the walls, and them. I never intend to listen but somewhere along the lines their mannerisms tear their way through the carefully constructed environments they're in. Too much nodding, too much smiling, too American, too ugly, too French. Too stupid. It's these mannerisms that detract from the candles, the perfectly aligned bottles sitting at the bar--nestling on racks of wine too old and too good for me to understand or identify, the postures of the waiters and waitresses, the glimpses of Ecuadorian line cooks gliding through the kitchen as they prepare your Entrees.
It takes a different kind of person to catch their mannerisms--to understand that they don't really appreciate the live music in front of them, or the atmosphere around them. It takes someone who doesn't clap at the loud solos from the band just because they're the most audible or because they're the fastest, it takes someone who genuinely cares about the environment they're in. It's the people who are willing to--who prefer to--drink the expensive scotches in plastic cups, the angry bar patrons who slug down hundred year old wines like malt liquor, who understand what an environment is about. It's about enjoying yourself. Do you remember why you're at a nice restaurant with your lover or your friend? Of course you do. You're going to have a nice time, you're going to impress. The ones I look at, the ones who would use a fork to hold a fork to eat their food if they were told it was classier, these are the ones to stare at. They sit uncomfortably, worried about their back protruding out below their necks if they slouch, worried about their legs slipping from their neatly tucked positions between the legs of the table, contemplating the horror of their linen napkin dropping to the floor. Ooing and awing at the leather-bound menus, anxious to show their friends how they will be ordering in french, taking the better part of an hour before they arrived to perfect their accent for their particular choice.
I guarantee the bum drinking something brown out of a styrofoam cup is enjoying himself more than you, wondering what fork you're supposed to use for this next bite, or what romantic line you'll spew next to get somebody wet. And not just in that moment either, that bum's probably sucked a dick or two just to get the money to have that one drink. I bet the cum residue on his teeth doesn't bother him as much as it'd bother you if I grabbed a piece of kobe beef and ate it with my hands."
Enjoy,
FR
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Profile
I had to write a profile piece for an english class earlier this year. I liked it, here it is, hope you'll get something from it.
http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/w4m/1698559815.html
Blue
We were walking around New York City streets at any time between midnight and two in the morning. The people around us were winding up and winding down, and there was a hint of oppression the air, which added weight to our steps and deflated our postures. I was with Pierce and a few other friends on a Friday night in SoHo, drained from the nights’ activities, waiting on call from my mother. Everyone felt like I did; no one said anything.
We passed trash bags piled on the corners of streets, watching the occasional rat scurry into a pile of trash, or out the door of its’ studio loft. In one of the piles of garbage lay a computer chair; one of those computer chairs that all of us had seen telemarketers sitting on while they called us during dinnertime, with three wheels and a mesh seat. One of the three wheels was missing, and as a result the chair sat on its stump with the other two wheels locked in place. I walked past the chair and the trash, through the green light across the street, and paused when I heard a yell and turned around. “WOHOAH!” Pierce grabbed hold of the chair for a second, looked around with hopeful eyes and a determined swiftness of motion, and located the entrance to a garage. The entrance was massive, with the ramp extending upward so far that I could not see the top of it from across the street. He picked the chair up, ran towards the entrance, and I let out an elderly sigh. We all did. “Come on Pierce…”
We moved towards him in the garage, there was nothing that could be done to stop him. We all sat on the park bench, watching our child play in the sandbox, biting our nails feverishly hoping that our boy wouldn’t fall off the swing and scrape his knee. He ran up the ramp with the chair dragging behind him, it’s stump scratching against the cement as it bounced on and off the ground, creating sparks of friction between drops. He reached the top, standing long-legged in the skinniest raw APC Jeans one could buy. He was wearing his new Nike sneakers, and was smiling from cheek to cheek, which revealed his teeth and the brightness of his undisturbed youth. He could see us watching nervously, annoyed even, and it made it all the more enjoyable for him, this harvesting of our worries. He laughed and threw the chair in front of himself, planting his left knee into the seat with his right foot kicking at the ground as he flew down the ramp. Every time it looked as if he might fall, he simply let out an excited yell followed by an exaggerated and put-on display of nervousness and caught himself. He reached the bottom of the hill, hitting the curb and jumping off the chair—letting it fly into the street with a crash. He started running, so we followed to keep up—laughing at the awkwardness of his thick, down, multicolored vest bouncing up and down in contrast to his oppressively skinny jeans.
“My motives, (laughs)…well…yeah I was hyper. I mean it was a slow night we weren’t doing anything, we were just walking around. And so—I—just took that chair and I thought it was a good opportunity to ride it. And so I found the most dangerous thing I could do with it—you know, besides getting hit by a car or something—and rode it down that huge ramp. Just to do something fun and outrageous.”
Pierce gives reasons for these sort of things if you ask him, but you don’t really need to. You can see the desire to do something, or to go somewhere in his disposition, and he’ll always do it even if you don’t feel like it.
He grew up in a household in Flatbush Brooklyn as an only child with two parents and an abundance of pets. His father is the head of a veterinary hospital and his mother does a fair amount of volunteering and holds part-time jobs. As an early child he lived in a stable household, and went to Poly Prep Lower School. Chubby, and formally dressed in outfits of his mother’s choice, he spent his days in checkered turtleneck sweaters and khaki pants.
I met him in 7th grade, after a year of being at Poly. I came to school one day to find the front of my off-white locker covered in Coca-Cola; I had been the victim of a prank. I asked a few friends and learned that Pierce had done it. He didn’t know it was my locker, or who I was, he was just flying down the ramp and I got in his way. We started playing guitar through $5 portable amps in the boy’s middle-school locker room until the late bus, talking about music and our aspirations. His home life became messier between his parents, as did mine, and we both looked to music to foster our independence so that we wouldn’t have to depend on anyone at home.
When it comes to talking—not speaking—important talking, there are few better than Pierce. He looks at you with vulnerable blue eyes, his bottom lip pursed neatly under his upper lip, and watches you, waiting for you to say something no one has said before. It makes you feel like you’re going to be someone when you’re in his presence, the admiration he has for you gives a gift of confidence.
Even five years later, without the rounded face from baby fat, he still carries this innocent effect. It attracts men and women, this aura of benevolence. On people in general he said,
“I like people who ask questions, who have interesting things to say. The girls I like; beyond physicality, they understand the feeling. Like even if they don’t listen to some band, I can show them, and they understand it. They can express a feeling that they get, or like an imagery, like if you listen to a song and say, ‘oh, I feel like I’m falling,’ that’s very interesting to me. It’s beyond an emotional thing.
“People give off smells, or so I’ve read. People give off smells that you can’t actually smell, but it’s like a scent. It’s like animals, it’s like this animalistic thing that people still have. You can just smell something and, I don’t know, you want it.”
This animalistic style of life is what Pierce has adopted. It is not animalistic in it’s primal ways, but in its impulsive and natural manner. He believes in people and in things in a time where all most can foster is skepticism. Under this amiable innocence though, lies a serious figure, devoted to a career involved in what fostered his independence, his music. This figure makes its appearance in his band, The Revelry, which he has been a part of for years now. His eyes contain the same blue when this figure of independence is revealed, but there is a stern confidence in how he speaks. He does not act cocky or all-knowing, he says interesting and knowledgeable things and gives no opportunity to be analyzed, only to be heard. What feels right is right, and what looks right is right. His perspective is that of a pallet of vibrant colors, visceral and distinct.
I showed up at 9:30 PM to The Revelry’s most recent and most anticipated gig at Don Hills on Spring street, fifteen minutes before they got on stage. I’d planned to show up early to catch a few songs from the warm-up band because of the notoriously terrible reputation they had built up, but I ended up coming too early even for this and suffered through nearly half a set. Standing with a few friends of mine, Pierce, and the rest of The Revelry, I was almost sure that I wouldn’t be able to foster any energy from his show because of the horrible state of mind that this band had put the entire room in. This is all necessary to know because the crippled state of mind that the crowd was in before The Revelry went on was unsalvageable by even the greatest of bands. In the tens of times I have been to Don Hills, there has never been a more restless crowd of youth—all looking for blood.
The band sets up on stage and the warmth of familiarity spreads throughout the audience, people like these faces, they have seen them incrementally for years and have watched them evolve physically and musically, as if they were their offspring. Everyone is immediately screaming, cheering, and chanting. It’s a sports event. The collective audience experiences a catharsis of anger, and within a minute of the first song mosh-pits and violence develop. The music is barely there, it only provides a rhythm for the brutally primal audience. What is most interesting is the effect this has on Pierce and the band. They play louder, better, cleaner, and with more energy. Pierce hops back and forth with his guitar—all motions are exaggerated, just as they are in the audience. There is a living organism taking and giving energy between the audience and the band, battling for supremacy. With a guitar and a microphone in The Revelry’s hands, there is a small revolution being held and no one knows it, they just feel violently ecstatic.
It was here that it became clear to me where the roots of Pierce’s amiability come from, as I was pushing and being pushed back and forth, covered in sweat, teetering in and out of consciousness. I entered a state of numbness in which I could only describe sound as muted. I looked at Pierce singing for the first time ever in the band while I sat down, recovering from my crowd participation, and I was crippled by the image of it. I could not think of anything, my entire head was filled and overwhelmed with this open-mouthed image. The root of this amiability came from the ability to sense energy, to sense emotion, and to feed off of it and to replicate it for the pleasure of those around him. This sort of aesthetic beauty is seldom found in characters, beauty that goes beyond analytics and symbolism. It can only be described as nature, or natural, and though I could not say whether I was the only one in the audience who felt it, I knew Pierce was feeling it as well.
So where does that take us, the idea that Pierce’s amiability lies in the ability to tap into natural beauty. Ironically it can’t be analyzed, where it comes from, or what it’s purpose is. To do either of these things would be to change the very meaning of what it is, and that is all it is—it. The only way to describe it is to look at the sky on a semi-cloudy morning and watch chaos play out beautifully and uncontrollably without any explanation of order, and to feel overwhelmed and overjoyed by it for a reason that doesn’t exist in words. It is simply blue.
“I’m a huge blue guy. I can’t get enough of it. Depending on the shade its kind of a moody color, but also, you can think of it in a bunch of, I mean, you could, depending on your perspective of blue, it could be a sad color or a very happy color, you know”
“It makes me feel like a wave.”
“It just makes me feel like a wave, I don’t know. I feel like blue is a very honest color. I feel like red is very flamboyant and then black, black is like maturity, I think, and then red is very…I don’t know–I just have a feeling. Maybe it’s just what I’ve connected it to. Like I’ve seen mature people wear black. But I don’t know. Red is a very flamboyant color. Cause, I mean, scientifically with like rays and things it’s just the first color you see always if you look around. If you look in one spot it’s the first thing you see. Everyone is flamboyant, and you want people to see you. Blue blends in. But it can stand out. Once you see it, it can stand out a lot. “
http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/w4m/1698559815.html
Blue
We were walking around New York City streets at any time between midnight and two in the morning. The people around us were winding up and winding down, and there was a hint of oppression the air, which added weight to our steps and deflated our postures. I was with Pierce and a few other friends on a Friday night in SoHo, drained from the nights’ activities, waiting on call from my mother. Everyone felt like I did; no one said anything.
We passed trash bags piled on the corners of streets, watching the occasional rat scurry into a pile of trash, or out the door of its’ studio loft. In one of the piles of garbage lay a computer chair; one of those computer chairs that all of us had seen telemarketers sitting on while they called us during dinnertime, with three wheels and a mesh seat. One of the three wheels was missing, and as a result the chair sat on its stump with the other two wheels locked in place. I walked past the chair and the trash, through the green light across the street, and paused when I heard a yell and turned around. “WOHOAH!” Pierce grabbed hold of the chair for a second, looked around with hopeful eyes and a determined swiftness of motion, and located the entrance to a garage. The entrance was massive, with the ramp extending upward so far that I could not see the top of it from across the street. He picked the chair up, ran towards the entrance, and I let out an elderly sigh. We all did. “Come on Pierce…”
We moved towards him in the garage, there was nothing that could be done to stop him. We all sat on the park bench, watching our child play in the sandbox, biting our nails feverishly hoping that our boy wouldn’t fall off the swing and scrape his knee. He ran up the ramp with the chair dragging behind him, it’s stump scratching against the cement as it bounced on and off the ground, creating sparks of friction between drops. He reached the top, standing long-legged in the skinniest raw APC Jeans one could buy. He was wearing his new Nike sneakers, and was smiling from cheek to cheek, which revealed his teeth and the brightness of his undisturbed youth. He could see us watching nervously, annoyed even, and it made it all the more enjoyable for him, this harvesting of our worries. He laughed and threw the chair in front of himself, planting his left knee into the seat with his right foot kicking at the ground as he flew down the ramp. Every time it looked as if he might fall, he simply let out an excited yell followed by an exaggerated and put-on display of nervousness and caught himself. He reached the bottom of the hill, hitting the curb and jumping off the chair—letting it fly into the street with a crash. He started running, so we followed to keep up—laughing at the awkwardness of his thick, down, multicolored vest bouncing up and down in contrast to his oppressively skinny jeans.
“My motives, (laughs)…well…yeah I was hyper. I mean it was a slow night we weren’t doing anything, we were just walking around. And so—I—just took that chair and I thought it was a good opportunity to ride it. And so I found the most dangerous thing I could do with it—you know, besides getting hit by a car or something—and rode it down that huge ramp. Just to do something fun and outrageous.”
Pierce gives reasons for these sort of things if you ask him, but you don’t really need to. You can see the desire to do something, or to go somewhere in his disposition, and he’ll always do it even if you don’t feel like it.
He grew up in a household in Flatbush Brooklyn as an only child with two parents and an abundance of pets. His father is the head of a veterinary hospital and his mother does a fair amount of volunteering and holds part-time jobs. As an early child he lived in a stable household, and went to Poly Prep Lower School. Chubby, and formally dressed in outfits of his mother’s choice, he spent his days in checkered turtleneck sweaters and khaki pants.
I met him in 7th grade, after a year of being at Poly. I came to school one day to find the front of my off-white locker covered in Coca-Cola; I had been the victim of a prank. I asked a few friends and learned that Pierce had done it. He didn’t know it was my locker, or who I was, he was just flying down the ramp and I got in his way. We started playing guitar through $5 portable amps in the boy’s middle-school locker room until the late bus, talking about music and our aspirations. His home life became messier between his parents, as did mine, and we both looked to music to foster our independence so that we wouldn’t have to depend on anyone at home.
When it comes to talking—not speaking—important talking, there are few better than Pierce. He looks at you with vulnerable blue eyes, his bottom lip pursed neatly under his upper lip, and watches you, waiting for you to say something no one has said before. It makes you feel like you’re going to be someone when you’re in his presence, the admiration he has for you gives a gift of confidence.
Even five years later, without the rounded face from baby fat, he still carries this innocent effect. It attracts men and women, this aura of benevolence. On people in general he said,
“I like people who ask questions, who have interesting things to say. The girls I like; beyond physicality, they understand the feeling. Like even if they don’t listen to some band, I can show them, and they understand it. They can express a feeling that they get, or like an imagery, like if you listen to a song and say, ‘oh, I feel like I’m falling,’ that’s very interesting to me. It’s beyond an emotional thing.
“People give off smells, or so I’ve read. People give off smells that you can’t actually smell, but it’s like a scent. It’s like animals, it’s like this animalistic thing that people still have. You can just smell something and, I don’t know, you want it.”
This animalistic style of life is what Pierce has adopted. It is not animalistic in it’s primal ways, but in its impulsive and natural manner. He believes in people and in things in a time where all most can foster is skepticism. Under this amiable innocence though, lies a serious figure, devoted to a career involved in what fostered his independence, his music. This figure makes its appearance in his band, The Revelry, which he has been a part of for years now. His eyes contain the same blue when this figure of independence is revealed, but there is a stern confidence in how he speaks. He does not act cocky or all-knowing, he says interesting and knowledgeable things and gives no opportunity to be analyzed, only to be heard. What feels right is right, and what looks right is right. His perspective is that of a pallet of vibrant colors, visceral and distinct.
I showed up at 9:30 PM to The Revelry’s most recent and most anticipated gig at Don Hills on Spring street, fifteen minutes before they got on stage. I’d planned to show up early to catch a few songs from the warm-up band because of the notoriously terrible reputation they had built up, but I ended up coming too early even for this and suffered through nearly half a set. Standing with a few friends of mine, Pierce, and the rest of The Revelry, I was almost sure that I wouldn’t be able to foster any energy from his show because of the horrible state of mind that this band had put the entire room in. This is all necessary to know because the crippled state of mind that the crowd was in before The Revelry went on was unsalvageable by even the greatest of bands. In the tens of times I have been to Don Hills, there has never been a more restless crowd of youth—all looking for blood.
The band sets up on stage and the warmth of familiarity spreads throughout the audience, people like these faces, they have seen them incrementally for years and have watched them evolve physically and musically, as if they were their offspring. Everyone is immediately screaming, cheering, and chanting. It’s a sports event. The collective audience experiences a catharsis of anger, and within a minute of the first song mosh-pits and violence develop. The music is barely there, it only provides a rhythm for the brutally primal audience. What is most interesting is the effect this has on Pierce and the band. They play louder, better, cleaner, and with more energy. Pierce hops back and forth with his guitar—all motions are exaggerated, just as they are in the audience. There is a living organism taking and giving energy between the audience and the band, battling for supremacy. With a guitar and a microphone in The Revelry’s hands, there is a small revolution being held and no one knows it, they just feel violently ecstatic.
It was here that it became clear to me where the roots of Pierce’s amiability come from, as I was pushing and being pushed back and forth, covered in sweat, teetering in and out of consciousness. I entered a state of numbness in which I could only describe sound as muted. I looked at Pierce singing for the first time ever in the band while I sat down, recovering from my crowd participation, and I was crippled by the image of it. I could not think of anything, my entire head was filled and overwhelmed with this open-mouthed image. The root of this amiability came from the ability to sense energy, to sense emotion, and to feed off of it and to replicate it for the pleasure of those around him. This sort of aesthetic beauty is seldom found in characters, beauty that goes beyond analytics and symbolism. It can only be described as nature, or natural, and though I could not say whether I was the only one in the audience who felt it, I knew Pierce was feeling it as well.
So where does that take us, the idea that Pierce’s amiability lies in the ability to tap into natural beauty. Ironically it can’t be analyzed, where it comes from, or what it’s purpose is. To do either of these things would be to change the very meaning of what it is, and that is all it is—it. The only way to describe it is to look at the sky on a semi-cloudy morning and watch chaos play out beautifully and uncontrollably without any explanation of order, and to feel overwhelmed and overjoyed by it for a reason that doesn’t exist in words. It is simply blue.
“I’m a huge blue guy. I can’t get enough of it. Depending on the shade its kind of a moody color, but also, you can think of it in a bunch of, I mean, you could, depending on your perspective of blue, it could be a sad color or a very happy color, you know”
“It makes me feel like a wave.”
“It just makes me feel like a wave, I don’t know. I feel like blue is a very honest color. I feel like red is very flamboyant and then black, black is like maturity, I think, and then red is very…I don’t know–I just have a feeling. Maybe it’s just what I’ve connected it to. Like I’ve seen mature people wear black. But I don’t know. Red is a very flamboyant color. Cause, I mean, scientifically with like rays and things it’s just the first color you see always if you look around. If you look in one spot it’s the first thing you see. Everyone is flamboyant, and you want people to see you. Blue blends in. But it can stand out. Once you see it, it can stand out a lot. “
Thursday, October 8, 2009
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
This week was the first episode worthy of being in the new season. The theme song makes me feel like a little kid again. Wonderful.
-FR
-FR
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The Luther League of America
Recently I was given a pamphlet that was found in a Church in Canada and brought back to America. It's a small 6-7 page booklet; I won't ruin any more details. The following is the exact text from the pamphlet with picture information included, I put my comments at the end of the piece so you could skip them if you weren't interested. The pamphlet is a worthwhile read though.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/elcaarchives/sets/72157621760720258/
This piece left quite the impression on me when I first read it; mostly comically because of the abrupt change in voice at the mention of God, but also from it's "I know something that you don't know" style of speaking to the parents of these 'teenagers (I liked the quote mark infront of that too). Page 2 reads like a commercial from Saturday Night Live in a 60's household when a housewife is acting out the instructions of a narrator to her children. (Aside from the "night clubs" reference, which probably had more of a sinister connotation in those days)
The piece reeks an Industrialist aura of hot pink flamingo's and tin lunchboxes, and with the mentions of "my Mary and my John" I began to suspect that this pamphlet was going to tell me something interesting about how lives should be lived. I expected a radical point of view, but at the same time I figured it would be a point of view that I might be able to empathize with.
The line "God has." shocked me. I didn't see it coming at all. It was so abrupt that it was comical; and after I read that line it was clear what the rest of the pamphlet was going to be about: Religious propaganda bullshit. But I had to keep reading to be sure.
Page three is my favorite page. It is composed of different metaphors of what your child is and what he or she could be with the help of the League, but it doesn't say anything about the League at all. After explaining nothing with any logic, it tries to use logic to say that with "This being true, there’s only one logical conclusion: every ‘teener should be a Leaguer." The only way a parent could believe this is if they were caught up on the lines "there's only one logical conclusion." Someone would have to be brainwashed to accept that line as a fact. It's easy to see a blond Woman with curlers in her hair yelling at her son Jimmy with this pamphlet held high in her hand that the only logical thing for him to do is join the league. Very scary.
Page four is where the pamphlet starts to use words and expressions that aren't real to attain a positive image. Speaking of things such as "pietism or rank modernism," and "Americanism," the pamphlet is attempting to confuse the reader into inferiority. Americanism doesn't mean anything; it is literally anything particular to America. To the reader in this context though, it could mean a four person family dinner with pleases and thank you's, or even an A+ on that Geometry final. Americanism is the best; simply put. This sort of nationalism exists on a more subtle level now in Modern advertising, people can feel "Americanism" and have a desire for something because it contains it, but the entire feeling isn't conscious. This pamphlet is unbelievably cliche in matching our perception of the early 60's family by using words such as "Americanism" and phrases such as "rank modernism" (A term which also doesn't mean anything, it's simply negative actions in the present, leaving the reader to decide whatever that may be.)
The whole concept of "Americanism" is reinforced on the next page with the mention of "A number 1." When I heard this description all I could think of is a jock in a varsity jacket, sliding over the hood of his car as he runs through his screen door, excited to describe to his mother the girl he just dropped at home from their date at the drive-in movie theater.
"She's A number 1 Ma!"
After reinforcing the benefits of joining the Luther League of America (which are factually none according to the pamphlet) while using "American" based words, the pamphlet poses a question: "Are you with us?" Us is the division between the teenagers and the adults, the good and the evil, the "pietism" and the "rank modernism." This sort of separation is contradictory to what the pamphlet is trying to convince the reader of, the harmony between teenagers and adults. By creating an "us and them" instance, the reader is scared into sending their kids to such an institution. After all, they have no choice.
"you can’t give to others what you do not have yourself."
-FR
This Younger Generation…
--- plain talk to PARENTS about YOUTH
Page 1:
You may as well know right from the beginning that this is coming straight from the shoulder…no soft-pedaling…no pulling of punches. This is something you parents ought to know. If it’s not too bad, stick with it all the way to the bottom of page seven. After that --- well, then it’s time for you to go into action.
(Picture of an angry man (I assume a father) in a business suit with his index finger pointing up with the expression of anger (he is yelling). No eyes, no nose. Just eyes and ears)
Page 2:
(Picture of Two people holding hands, a woman and a man. Both happy. No eyes, mouth, or nose, just ears.)
This is about he younger generation, the “teen-agers – your sons and daughters. Being a perfectly normal parent, you’re interested in them and you know that they are having rough times these days. The whole ‘teen-ager’s world is dizzy. It’s a crazy set-up and youth itself had nothing to do with making it that way.
If you want to be specific --- there is the current trend to load a lot of responsibility on youth’s undeveloped shoulders. Man-sized jobs…bringing up brother while mom gets herself a job for the sake of the mortgage…helping to carry the family load financially ---all of which makes the adolescents another generation of premature old men and women.
Add the frequenting of night clubs, the definite trend toward immorality and belittling of the sixth commandment, the intoxication of too much money and liquor, the short-cutting of education, the devil-may-care and anything-goes philosophies, and parents who are “too busy” to be bothered, and you have a wide-open world for adolescents.
Are you saying, “Tsk, tsk, isn’t that dreadful? But I’m not worried. My Mary and my John are perfectly safe!”
Maybe so! But are you sure? What are you doing to counteract all these phobias and
Page 3:
upsets? What can you do? Who has the answer?
God has.
The youth who is centered in Christ can weather even the roughest storm without getting drenched or thrown overboard. He has an anchor…something to keep him on an even keel, so that he doesn’t get tossed about with every wave or crazy that comes along. All the abnormalities of these days make a lot of haze in the ‘teener’s life, and it takes more than parental “thou-shalt-nots” to steer a straight course through it all. It takes the love and protection of the Heavenly Father, the strength against temptation that only He can give, and the positive advice and guidance that are in His Holy Word.
And here’s where the Luther League comes in.
You may not have known it, but the Luther League is one of your strongest allies in keeping youth clean and pure, clear-eyed champions of Christian faith and practice. Its well-balanced program of worshipping, studying, playing and working together gives the Leaguer everything he needs for a fully-developed personality. There’s action, there’s fun, there’s work, there’s devotion to God. This being true, there’s only one logical conclusion: every ‘teener should be a Leaguer.
(Picture of four teens in a convertible, two men two women, man and woman in the front, man and woman in the back. The man has the arm around the woman in the front seat (he is driving), and the man in the back is on the opposite side with the woman’s arm around him).
Page 4:
(Picture of 5 people sitting at a table in work clothing, one man standing up at the head of the table in a suit very visibly different form the others. He is leading the meeting. Everyone is attentive, no one has a mouth, nose, or eyes.)
You know, this business of being a mother or a dad is a serious one. It’s a large order. Not the least of your responsibilities is guiding the adolescent into adulthood. The Luther League stands by, read for action. And, Mister, (or Madam!) it’s up to you!
What the Luther League Does
It teaches real devotion to Christ Jesus, not long-faced pietism or rank modernism.
It cultivates spiritual zeal. It fires youth to go all out for the Lord instead of remaining silent and smug, ignoring the spiritual peril of others.
It develops leaders…gives them a job to do – a job that captivates their zest and imagination and trains them for intelligent church leadership.
It encourages Bible study, regular church attendance – discourages spiritual laziness and delinquency.
It teaches Americanism…100% Amer
(Four people playing shuffleboard, two men and two women, on opposite sides of the court. One of them has a nose and a mouth, none of the others do.)
Page 5:
(Two ‘teens in churchgoing uniforms, holding a book (I assume the bible or some form of it) together. They have mouths and ears, but no noses or eyes.)
icanism…the king that follows through with actual service to the community, with Christ and for Christ, instead of merely waving a flag and shouting, “Rah, rah, America!”
It puts good reading into the hands of youth and takes gutter tripe out.
It is one of those places where boy meets girl – and she’s A number 1.
It encourages the proper stewardship of time, money and life…returning to God His fair share before budgeting for self, not after.
It gives youth a good time – without hangovers.
It puts Christ first, others second, and self last, in contrast to the popular me, myself, and I Policy.
O.K…parents! Now it’s up to you. Are you with us? Remember, you can’t give to others what you do not have yourself.
(Picture of 12 people, 6 men 6 women (couples), walking into a church with a glowing cross inside of it. The cross is literally radiating, it is the only light inside the very small piece of the church we can see through the open door.)
Page 6:
The Luther League Of America
825 Muhlenberg Building
1228 Spruce Street
Philadelphia 7, Pennsylvania
Printed in U.S.A.
My Comments:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/elcaarchives/sets/72157621760720258/
This piece left quite the impression on me when I first read it; mostly comically because of the abrupt change in voice at the mention of God, but also from it's "I know something that you don't know" style of speaking to the parents of these 'teenagers (I liked the quote mark infront of that too). Page 2 reads like a commercial from Saturday Night Live in a 60's household when a housewife is acting out the instructions of a narrator to her children. (Aside from the "night clubs" reference, which probably had more of a sinister connotation in those days)
The piece reeks an Industrialist aura of hot pink flamingo's and tin lunchboxes, and with the mentions of "my Mary and my John" I began to suspect that this pamphlet was going to tell me something interesting about how lives should be lived. I expected a radical point of view, but at the same time I figured it would be a point of view that I might be able to empathize with.
The line "God has." shocked me. I didn't see it coming at all. It was so abrupt that it was comical; and after I read that line it was clear what the rest of the pamphlet was going to be about: Religious propaganda bullshit. But I had to keep reading to be sure.
Page three is my favorite page. It is composed of different metaphors of what your child is and what he or she could be with the help of the League, but it doesn't say anything about the League at all. After explaining nothing with any logic, it tries to use logic to say that with "This being true, there’s only one logical conclusion: every ‘teener should be a Leaguer." The only way a parent could believe this is if they were caught up on the lines "there's only one logical conclusion." Someone would have to be brainwashed to accept that line as a fact. It's easy to see a blond Woman with curlers in her hair yelling at her son Jimmy with this pamphlet held high in her hand that the only logical thing for him to do is join the league. Very scary.
Page four is where the pamphlet starts to use words and expressions that aren't real to attain a positive image. Speaking of things such as "pietism or rank modernism," and "Americanism," the pamphlet is attempting to confuse the reader into inferiority. Americanism doesn't mean anything; it is literally anything particular to America. To the reader in this context though, it could mean a four person family dinner with pleases and thank you's, or even an A+ on that Geometry final. Americanism is the best; simply put. This sort of nationalism exists on a more subtle level now in Modern advertising, people can feel "Americanism" and have a desire for something because it contains it, but the entire feeling isn't conscious. This pamphlet is unbelievably cliche in matching our perception of the early 60's family by using words such as "Americanism" and phrases such as "rank modernism" (A term which also doesn't mean anything, it's simply negative actions in the present, leaving the reader to decide whatever that may be.)
The whole concept of "Americanism" is reinforced on the next page with the mention of "A number 1." When I heard this description all I could think of is a jock in a varsity jacket, sliding over the hood of his car as he runs through his screen door, excited to describe to his mother the girl he just dropped at home from their date at the drive-in movie theater.
"She's A number 1 Ma!"
After reinforcing the benefits of joining the Luther League of America (which are factually none according to the pamphlet) while using "American" based words, the pamphlet poses a question: "Are you with us?" Us is the division between the teenagers and the adults, the good and the evil, the "pietism" and the "rank modernism." This sort of separation is contradictory to what the pamphlet is trying to convince the reader of, the harmony between teenagers and adults. By creating an "us and them" instance, the reader is scared into sending their kids to such an institution. After all, they have no choice.
"you can’t give to others what you do not have yourself."
-FR
"The State of Social Society"
The following article is a paper I read many months ago and have forgotten about it until it popped up in an e-mail. The author (or authors) are clearly drunk while writing this; and that's what made me enjoy reading it, although none of the lines mean anything. I have made no edits or additions to the paper. Enjoy.
The State of Social Society
In order to describe the state of social injustice, the state of social justice cannot remain undefined. What can classify as social justice? Is one to classify this as trans-gender acceptance (attraction from one gender to another as a result of personal technique), or is one to clarify it as the ability to remain alone, without this acceptance? It is clear, at least in this day in age, that social conformity lies in the area of the former, regarding the attraction between one of a certain sex and the other. This social injustice is based off of not only a compromise, but of a pursuit, which roots from an incentive to agree rather than disagree. It is in this way that social injustice can be modernly be classified as a state of social agreement and compromise.
What is most important about the state of social justice is that it allows for further “justness.” This state of “justness” is heavily reliant upon the formerly discussed individuals desire to compromise and agree with the values of another who there attraction is based upon.
• People are encouraged to compromise because of the lack of need to survive. For example, the woman who desires a tailor has the optin to marry him because he can buy meat from a market and does not have to hunt, and thus not need to marry her desire for a hunter,
• Compromisation is a natural instinct because of it’s ease in choice. It is not detrimental to the individual to compromise because of it’s lack of necessity. If the individual is to compromise, he or she is allowed this choice, this choice is not made out of a survival instinct, but merely of desire.
• Social injustice roots from desire, and not survival.
• Desire links to success.
• Some do not have the capacity to succeed, this is social justice.
• Social Injustice is the acknowledgement of agreement over ability and pride.
• Safety encourages the concept of compromising, and because safety’s origins are not concrete, it cannot be defined. If safety were to be defined,
• Social justice in the majority, is social injustice. Social injustice in the minority is social justice in the majority.
• A social minority challenges and refuses to accepts.
• Social justice is survival, and social injustice is the lack of ability or desire to survive.
• Those who are not killed but are injust can survive and thus disprove the fatality of social justice, but do not disprove it’s inaccurate claims.
-FR
The State of Social Society
In order to describe the state of social injustice, the state of social justice cannot remain undefined. What can classify as social justice? Is one to classify this as trans-gender acceptance (attraction from one gender to another as a result of personal technique), or is one to clarify it as the ability to remain alone, without this acceptance? It is clear, at least in this day in age, that social conformity lies in the area of the former, regarding the attraction between one of a certain sex and the other. This social injustice is based off of not only a compromise, but of a pursuit, which roots from an incentive to agree rather than disagree. It is in this way that social injustice can be modernly be classified as a state of social agreement and compromise.
What is most important about the state of social justice is that it allows for further “justness.” This state of “justness” is heavily reliant upon the formerly discussed individuals desire to compromise and agree with the values of another who there attraction is based upon.
• People are encouraged to compromise because of the lack of need to survive. For example, the woman who desires a tailor has the optin to marry him because he can buy meat from a market and does not have to hunt, and thus not need to marry her desire for a hunter,
• Compromisation is a natural instinct because of it’s ease in choice. It is not detrimental to the individual to compromise because of it’s lack of necessity. If the individual is to compromise, he or she is allowed this choice, this choice is not made out of a survival instinct, but merely of desire.
• Social injustice roots from desire, and not survival.
• Desire links to success.
• Some do not have the capacity to succeed, this is social justice.
• Social Injustice is the acknowledgement of agreement over ability and pride.
• Safety encourages the concept of compromising, and because safety’s origins are not concrete, it cannot be defined. If safety were to be defined,
• Social justice in the majority, is social injustice. Social injustice in the minority is social justice in the majority.
• A social minority challenges and refuses to accepts.
• Social justice is survival, and social injustice is the lack of ability or desire to survive.
• Those who are not killed but are injust can survive and thus disprove the fatality of social justice, but do not disprove it’s inaccurate claims.
-FR
Mcdonalds
A website created by McDonalds solely for their African-American demographic.
http://www.365black.com/
-FR
http://www.365black.com/
-FR
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