I think I might have been born in mashed potatoes...I'm going to ask my mom about it.

Looky what I made the other day! And it's not creepy finally because this time it's not a painting of some random person that I don't "really" know. Sorry the picture is a little blurry...

I’m currently reading three books. This is a very rare occurrence for me. I just don’t read that many “books” any more. I’m not going to go into exactly why that is right now. But the point is, it is pretty crazy that I am reading 3 books at once.

The first book that I’m currently reading is a book called Eleven Minutes by a guy named Paulo Coelho. He wrote The Alchemist if you’ve ever heard of that one. Anyways, it’s a really intense book just cause of the subject matter. It’s about a prostitute and the tagline would probably be something along the lines of “A gripping exploration of the potentially sacred nature of sex within the context of love.” (I stole that line from the back cover of the book) Anyways, this guy is one of my favorite authors because he’s very universalistic in all of his writing. I kind of like having to sift through and decide which parts of his philosophical and religious arguments I believe and which parts that I do not believe. And he makes all of his arguments through the use of brilliant stories that really get into what is going on inside of people’s heads. In a nutshell, he loves to explore the nature of man. The thing I find most interesting in his books is that, in the end, when he has made his discovery about a particular piece of human nature, I am always left with this feeling that he has gotten so close but has just completely missed the real point. He reaches these conclusions about what man really desires in his life but then misses the point that Jesus is the fulfillment of those desires. It is just really interesting.

The next book that I am currently reading is Catcher in the Rye. As for this one, I’m not really going to go into how I feel about the actual book other than to just say that I’m really liking it and that I love the way that JD Salinger writes. Good style. The interesting thing about my reading this book is that I’m actually co-reading it with THE Warren Shamburger. By that I mean that we sit around in my room and switch off chapters reading it out loud while the other person listens. Warren uses these great voices for each character and then I try to mimic them whenever I read but I generally fail miserably. The point though is that it is a BLAST to read the classics out loud with a buddy. You should look into it. I think we’re going for Treasure Island or Pride & Prejudice after Catcher in the Rye. One of those is a joke.

The third book that I am reading is a book called The Gift of Prophecy by a dude named Rick Joyner. I’m still assembling my thoughts on all the things he’s saying though at this point. Plus, they’re kind of more serious things that he’s been stirring up inside me and they deal a lot more with what I’ve really been searching God about lately. And though I would probably be down to share my thoughts about it with you in person, that isn’t really the kind of thing that I like to write about on here. This blog is for me to therapeutically release all my ridiculous thoughts. Not my unridiculous ones. Anyways, I guess I should be perfectly honest on this one and say that I’m not actually “reading” it in the traditional sense. I purchased my first audiobook!! No but I got this on audiobook so that I could listen through it while I work out. Whatever, I’m still reading it..just not really…

If you put your car in reverse twice, you really end up putting it in neutral. However, if you put your car in reverse thrice, you end up in drive. Then you can go wherever you want. Think about that.

The other night I went to dinner with a few wonderful people. We were definitely looking for some food, but even more than that, I feel like we were all looking for a good margarita as well. Our first choice (due to prior good experiences) was El Jalisco’s. Unfortunately, once we arrived, we very quickly learned that El Jalisco’s had lost their liquor license. We can only assume that this is because they were serving alcohol to minors considering that they were well known around town as the place that doesn’t ID. Anyways, we all sat there for a minute, not being the one to first admit that we really wanted to go somewhere else just because there were no margs…Eventually though, somebody stepped up and we quickly all agreed to move on over to El Tapatia down the street.

We went in there, got our table and all and began looking at the menus. They had 4 sizes of margaritas. There was the “Regular”, the “Jumbo”, the “Regular Pitcher” and the “Jumbo Pitcher”. The waiter finally came over to take our orders and as we went around the table, two things became apparent very quickly. A of all, this nice little Mexican dude definitely did not speak much English at this point. B of all, the margarita sizes were not actually anything like what the menu stated. Most people asked for a regular marg, medium marg, or large marg. However, in the end, they all received the exact same size. I however asked for a jumbo margarita (what I believed to be the correct term from the menu for the bigger sized margarita glass). Unfortunately, when my drink came out, it was as you see here:

So anyways, it was going to be much too much trouble to send it back. Thus, I just drank as much of it as I could and gave a bit here and there to the other people with me. It WAS a good margarita at least so it wasn’t that big of a deal. I mean my check ended up being a little steep but whatever.

That actually reminds me of something else. I never used to be a huge “Sonic Happy Hour” kind of guy but then my roommate Adam started making me go with him in the afternoons to grab a Sonic drink and I quickly realized that it’s just insane to NOT go get Sonic drinks every day! This brings about it’s own whole new set of issues though. A of all, you start formulating opinions about which Sonic makes the best drinks. Inevitably, the best Sonic will be the one that is the furthest away from you. That’s just how it always is. Then B of all, you will find yourself complaining about having to tip Sonic people almost every time you go. Either that or you will be the person going with the person who complains. You’ll be the one who is always talking about how you “feel bad” for not tipping the person and you’ll talk about how much their tips must have decreased since the credit card machines came in. I am not that guy though. I’m the guy that almost never tips the Sonic people. And I even like tipping too. I love tipping people at a restaurant. But for some reason it bugs me that they think they deserve a dollar for walking my food out to my car for me. I’d rather do it myself and keep my dollar. Or I’d rather them do it for me and still keep my dollar. The point though is that if you are going to Sonic every day and getting a drink that is only 1 dollar, you just don’t feel like you should have to tip the delivery person above that dollar. Thus, you’ll inevitably talk about it in your car…usually immediately after the person leaves. And you’ll probably start off the conversation with “I feel so bad for not tipping them BUT…” That’s bulsh. The only reason you say that is so you don’t look like a jerk.

OK, paragraph break to lead us into the C of all. C of all, you’ll begin to be a Sonic drink connoisseur. Whereas you used to be happy with whatever drink they brought out to you as long as it at least slightly resembled what you ordered, now you’re not truly happy with the drink you receive unless it is the “perfect consistency” or unless they put “just the right amount of Vanilla” in it or the “perfect amount of fruit” and such. That’s just the nature of the beast though. The more we love something, the more we expect perfection out of it.

And lastly, which I guess would be D of all, you will find yourself discussing all of these things with other Sonic lovers. You’ll be sitting around at night with some people and all of a sudden, you’ll realize that you guys are all talking about which Sonic is the best and about how much of whatever you love that they put in your Sonic drink and whether it was perfect. This is when you know you’re a real, true Hedgehog. (Hedgehog is a lame term that I just decided on for Sonic lovers. It is indubitably a reference to Sonic the Hedgehog from the Sega Genesis game.)

If I had to be stuck in a coffin forever (but still alive) I would hate it a lot. But I feel like I would hate it waaaaaay more if I was stuck in a coffin alive forever and I was a Dolphin. That would make it WAAAY worse. And how awesome is this picture?

Why is it so awesome to do weird stuff to food? I mean almost everybody loves to take a fork and smash food sitting on their plate so that it squeezes up through the prongs. And if you gave almost any person the chance, he or she would LOVE to take a watermelon in his or her hands and just smash it down on the ground. It’s just straight-up fun. I had my very own experience with it today. I was cleaning out my refrigerator. I had some chocolate milk that I had purchased a couple weeks ago on a “wow chocolate milk sounds so good right now! I bet I could drink the whole half-gallon” whim. Long story short, I didn’t drink it all. (actually, that story would have been hard to make long. It was just a short story kept short.) Anyways, I could totally have just taken it in the kitchen and dumped it out in the sink. But instead, I wanted to see it splatter all over the ground. So I took it out front and dumped it all over the dirt in front of my house. I don’t know why I did it other than just that it was fun.

Another thing that I found in my refrigerator was a carton of eggs that still had like 4 in it. This time they weren’t even expired. The desire that came up in me though to take them outside and break them was so unbearable and undeniable that I just had to do it. I smashed some perfectly good eggs. Worth it again. It was fun.

Ok I feel like this is getting to the point where it is so long that you aren’t even going to do that thing where you start reading it but then skim most parts of it just so I doesn’t take forever. Instead, you’re just going to take one look at it and be like “yeah, uh no.” So I’m going to stop.

Peace.

And the word of the day is...

I've been having an issue lately. It is focused around my jeans. Throughout the years of my life that I have actually purchased my own clothing (maybe age 15 to now) I have always gone through phases with my jeans. I don't think I'm really that out there on this one. I feel like this is something a lot of people do. What I mean by "phases" is that, I search for a pair of jeans that I like, and then I basically replace all of my old jeans with variations (different washes) of that same pair of Jeans. The first jeans that I began to do this with back in my Junior year of highschool was the Low Rise Boot Cut from American Eagle. I love those. I pretty much had almost every wash of those jeans that didn't come with complimentary gaping holes at the time of purchase. I stuck with those for a long time. You can see them in this incredibly Gay picture of my from Freshman year at OSU.

After those came a dark phase of my life. I moved on to the Levi's. This was at the bequest and recommendation of Joseph Harvey Hanson. Let me preface my following comments about these jeans by saying that Joe pulls them off. It's not that they're horrible, it's just that they were horrible on me. The problem with my Levi's phase was that I went with the 514 cut (Slim Straight). I wish I could say that the 514's were the extent of the problem, but the real problem came when I switched to the 511 cut (Skinny Jean). Let's just say that I was rockin a pretty emo, chicken-leggy look for a while. This is a picture of myself apparently getting my limbo on in the 514's. These aren't even as skinny as they got.

So tight. Ugh. So, needless to say, I was happy to move on from those. The reason that I think I gave up on that look was that it just literally wasn't comfortable. No thank you for really tight jeans. However, at one point I did have about 8 different washes of those jeans. They were really cheap online...

Next came a short phase where I got into Gap's low rise straight leg jeans which were still not loose but definitely not as skinny as their predecessors. I'm not going to linger here though just cause the real point I wanted to make with all this jeans talk is completely unrelated to all this stuff so far.

So now we come up to last year. I finally found them. Fossil's Relaxed Boot Cut jeans were straight up heavenly. Just the greatest ever. I wore them straight for over a year and a half. Like I completely dumped all my old jeans and just wore my pairs of Fossil jeans all the time. I even purchased the exact same pair of jeans two times so that I'd have two pairs of them. Anyways, this past January or so, Fossil started making a new "Slim Boot Cut" which I love even more than the original boot cut. So of course I had to purchase a couple of pairs of those. So as of right now, as far as jeans that I actually wear, I have two pairs of the Slim Boot Cut and 3 pairs of the Relaxed Boot Cut. However, the Slim Boot Cut pairs get a lot more play time these days.

This brings us to the issue I have been having lately. The Relaxed jeans have one button and then a zipper like normal pants would have. But then the Slim jeans (which really aren't that skinny FYI) that I love, have 4 buttons on the front instead of the traditional button and zipper. Now, I'm totally cool with the buttons. They really don't bug me at all. Honestly, I think I might even like them more. The issue I have been having though is that, with the button button button button jeans, I can just undo my belt and then basically pull on both sides of the pants at the front and open up all the buttons in one smooth move. And I have kind of gotten used to that motion. It's easy, simple, it works for me.

The problem arises in that lately, when I have reverted back to the original Relaxed jeans with the button and zipper, I instinctively try to "rip open all four buttons" and I have caught myself basically trying to rip open my zipper (which does not work anywhere near as well as the buttons). This became a very clear and present problem last night when I actually ripped one half of my zipper off of my jeans about halfway down. Ugh. So today I had to sew half of my zipper back on to my jeans because they're one of my favs. The point of this story: Life is tough.

And for all of you out there (cause there are so many people that actually read this...NO) who think it is ridiculous that I'm so aware of my jeans and what style/cut they are, be honest with yourself. I don't feel metro at all for caring what jeans I'm wearing. If you can say to me that you've never had a pair of pants that you just really liked and that made you feel more confident when you wore them, then I think you might be a liar.

That said though, I really can't believe I just talked about my jeans for so long. That was supposed to just be a short quip about how I was annoyed that I had to sew my zipper on today.

Coupons!! Coupons are something that, if they are readily available, you're kind of stupid not to use. Like, if there are coupons basically laying all over my house and yet I refuse to grab the "free medium drink with purchase of regular sub" coupon for Quiznos but then proceed to go to Quiznos and purchase a regular sub and a medium drink, that is just stupid. (as a side note, I always get the Baha Chicken at Quiznos because it is delish. And who am I kidding, I'm a fattie and I almost ALWAYS get the Large sub.)

I'm getting off point though. Coupons. OK, so yeah, you're almost just stupid if you don't use a coupon that is readily available. However, it is not the end of the world if you forget to use a coupon or if you fail to realize you had a coupon available. Not that big of a deal right? Like if I had a coupon for 20 cents off of a package of sliced turkey at Walmart but I forgot to use it when I came in yesterday and bought my sliced turkey, I'm not going to freak out about it right? Right.

Now, I thought that that would be the general consensus across the board. BUT NO! I forgot about a very special demographic that is unable to be OK with themselves if a coupon goes wasted or if every coupon is not utilized. That would be the Old Woman demographic.

Here I am, standing in line at Walmart waiting to pay, and this woman walks up to me and asks if I mind her cutting in front of me to quote "fix a problem". I don't know how anyone has ever said no to a cute old woman ever. I said yes. I then heard her tell her story to the cashier which went something like this. "Ma'am, I was in here yesterday and I bought some sliced turkey breast (insert long and irrelevant description of the exact kind of turkey breast here) but I forgot to use my coupon. It expired today though and I don't want to waste it. Is there any way I could redeem it now and get the money back?" The cashier looked about as bewildered as I was feeling. This woman had literally come all the way back to Walmart solely to try to redeem this coupon that she'd forgotten to use the day before. IT WAS A COUPON FOR 20 CENTS OFF!!! It is a guarantee almost that she spent more than that just on gas to get back to Walmart.

Now, under normal circumstances, I'm guessing that the correct answer for the cashier would be "Ma'am I can't take care of that here but if you go over to the customer service desk, you can see if they could help you." And I'm guessing that the cashier would be saying that with full knowledge that the customer service desk is NOT going to give a refund. I mean it just doesn't make sense. However, this cashier seemed really nice. She kind of shot me a look as the old lady was explaining her situation (I think it was during the very detailed description of the turkey breast) that was kind of like "is this really happening?" I shot her back my best "hahahahahahaha" face. After the woman was finished, instead of giving what was probably the correct response, she just opened up her cash register, pulled out two dimes, and gave them to the woman in exchange for the coupon. She said something like "ok ma'am I can just get that for you right here." The woman was very grateful and then walked away and out the front door with an air about her that communicated that her business was completed. The whole situation blew my mind. I loved every bit of it.

Gosh this post is so long. The last thing I want to mention is that I recently read a blog post by a legit ex-roommate of mine who is on a sweet year long missions trip called the world race. The blog post is here:

http://danielstinson.theworldrace.org/?filename=loving-like-the-father

I read this the other day and it overwhelmed me almost. Maybe it's just cause I know Danny so well but it really moved me. I just feel like I could really feel the love of the Father in it. As I was reading it, I found that tears were rolling down my cheeks before I even realized how much it was touching me. Anyways, I just wanted to spread it around because I feel like God really connected with me through it and showed me a piece of His heart that I have really been treasuring these last couple days since I read it. I figured you might get something awesome out of it as well. I really had wanted to talk about it a little more but I am getting all kinds of sick of typing right now and class is quickly approaching.

Thus, I think I'm just going to have to peace out.

BTW though, I just reread through this post and I feel like when I talk about jeans, it's even more boring for you than when I talk about music. Thus, that will never happen again.

Love life.

Peace out.

I'm wearing my ridiculous hat.

I love this hat.  It is hard to deny that it is ridiculous though...

 

Well, everything in me wants to start talking about music.  It’s where my mind is and thus, it’s where my fingers take you via this keyboard, these words, this blog, your eyes, and your mind.  However, I’ve been told that it’s the bores when I just sit here and read WAY too into a few songs for so long that you have to do like 3 large pulls on the mouse scroller just to get to the bottom of it to see if there’s anything else.  So I’ll chill out this time and talk about something else.  However, before I do that and just to get my own personal fix, I’ll share with you a short 4-song mix that, if you are interested in getting your music on, you should check out.

1.  Heart it Races (as played by Dr. Dog), technically by Architecture in Helsinki

2.  Safe and Sound, by Electric President

3.  Save it for a Rainy Day, by The Jayhawks

4.  Sweet Disposition, by The Temper Trap

OK, I just needed to get that out of my system.  Everything in me wants to explain to you why those four songs are completely worth your time but I’ll resist the urge.  There's that though for those of you who are interested in finding a few new tunes to fall in love with.  I'll move on.

So I think that I walk faster than almost anybody when I’m just walking around.  It seems like almost no matter what, whenever someone makes the comment that he or she is “a fast walker”, everybody else sitting around will chime in with their own statement of “oh yeah, I’m definitely a really fast walker.”  People like to communicate that they “just can’t believe how slow some people walk.”  However, whenever you see people making these statements across the board, you have to take them with a slab of salt.  So I look to my experiences with people.  Now here’s the deal, I’m not trying to brag about how fast I am or anything but I’m just saying, people NEVER pass me.  It just doesn’t happen.  I am always the person passing other people.  So it’s hard for me to believe that all of these people saying that they’re such speedy little walkers really are as speedy as they’re saying.

And I bet that right now you’re sitting there thinking “oh yeah that’s the way it is for me.  I’m faster than everybody too.”  I just don’t buy it though.  There is no way that everybody really walks faster than everybody else when I still am always the one doing the passing.  It just doesn’t statistically make sense.  So yeah, you may not be a “slowass” (Mallory, Rachel, Betsy-ism there), but I just feel like the chances that you walk faster than I do are not high.

This all comes to light because today, I was walking on campus and what I thought would never happen happened.  This dude was maybe 5’8” (and that is being generous).  So he was a fairly short guy and he was wearing this Jansport backpack that must have been just absolutely packed full of books cause the straps on it looked like they were one hard step from just giving up.  But there I am, walking briskly along in front of the library and out of the corner of my left eye, I saw him coming up around me.  It was the weirdest feeling.  Seriously I never experience having someone come up from behind me and pass me.  I generally just assume that the last person that I passed is the closest person behind me.  Sometimes I even bank on it and start singing a little to myself whenever I feel like I’ve gotten enough distance on the last person I passed.  But he passed me.  Fair and square.  So I don’t really know what to say anymore.  It made me feel like I am the person that I just accused all of you of being.  I’m the guy who just THINKS he walks really fast but in reality, I get passed just like everybody else.  I don’t know where it leaves me.

It was really messing with me for the next couple blocks or so until I came upon something else to take my mind off of it.  I came up on the situation that you see all the time and probably always chuckle about in your head when you see it.  Let me paint a picture for you:

 

You’re walking a short ways behind this guy who looks a little bit like he doesn’t know how to take a hint.   And by that I mean that he doesn’t know how to look around him at all the other college students and see that he should not be tucking his t-shirt into his high-waisted, tapered BLUE jeans.  That kind of thing.  So basically, a homely little fellow.  Seems like a nice guy though and he is probably just a little bit older than the average college student.  Let’s go with somewhere around age 28-29.   Then he sees her.  Here she comes.  She’s his female equivalent in every way.  He knows her from a class that they had a couple semesters ago but he only talked to her a couple of times back then.  He really wants to say something to her now but he hasn’t quite yet decided if he has the courage.  You know he’s decided to speak up and be a man when you see his butt-cheeks clench underneath those beautiful wranglers.  Then all of a sudden, she turns off onto another path!! Oh no!  She’s not going to pass right by us anymore!  What to do, what to do!?  Our little friend panics and doesn’t say anything until she’s almost too far away and then, in a moment of courage, he speaks up!   It was right at the last second; so when he says “hey Brenda!” she is roughly 15-20 feet away from him.  However, she hears her name and turns around.  SCORE!!!  Now comes the part that I love and that is special to these types of fellows.  In this situation, the socially comfortable person would walk closer to the other person.  However, because both of these people are mildly inept at social situations, they will have an entire conversation at 20 feet!  HAHA I love it!  And if you have the time to stick around, the closure of these conversations is well worth waiting for.  Often, it is even more riddled with awkwardness than the beginning.  It’s kind of like a finale to a wonderful people-watching show.  I can’t help but chuckle inside as I see them standing 20 feet from each other making what would probably have been an awkward conversation in the first place, 10 times more awkward by doing it at a distance.  Oh it’s so great.  Sometimes you wonder how some people ever end up with a soul-mate or ever end up finding someone to spend the rest of their lives with just because you wonder how they ever get up the gumption to talk to someone of the opposite sex, but this is where it all happens.  This is where frumpy-dude’s dreams begin to become a reality.  This is where the more-than-mildly-awkward girl’s dreams of a Prince Charming begin to culminate.  This is romance happening!!  Awkward people have awkward romance.  I think that’s just how it is.

 

So I know what you’re wondering right now.  You’re like, “man, I wonder what Christian’s favorite beer as of late is?”  Well, let me just tell you.  Lately I’ve been DIGGIN this beer:

 

It’s a Dunkel  (which means “dark” in German in case you were unaware) from Warsteiner Brewery, one of Germany’s larges breweries.  It is, as you might have guessed, just outside of Warstein, Germany.   I’m a little bit scared to give this recommendation because this is by no means a “standout” beer.  It receives average ratings and it’s one of those that people say is good not great.  However, I have been really really liking it for some reason.  I thought about recommending it earlier but I thought that maybe my taste buds were just off for a couple days.  But I had it again last night with my boy John and I’m just sayin, I like it a lot.  Enough that, even though the ratings are good not great, I am going to give it a great and say you should maybe look into it.  The awesome thing about taste is that you can’t really argue with me.  I mean if you try it and you don’t like it, it doesn’t change the fact that I think it tastes wonderful.  That fact, in and of itself, is wonderful.  And you are wonderful.

 AWESOME MOVIE

This movie comes out this weekend.  I want to see it way more than I care to admit.  At first, I wasn’t that excited about it because I thought it was going to befairly cheesy (mostly due to the horrible three second clip of “Zeus” aka Qui Gon Gin from Star Wars aka Liam Neeson where he’s got like this retarded looking glow around him as he says something in a voice that is hardly what you’d expect from Zeus).  BUT, I watched the preview like 8 times and now I’m pretty sure it’s going to be awesome.  So if you’ve seen the preview only once and you think it isn’t going to be that tight, watch it like 7 more times and reassess.  Of course, if you watch even a relatively small amount of TV, you have probably already seen the preview like 19 times.  And though it is usually a sign that the movie is going to suck whenever they push it so hard on TV, I am still holding on to high hopes.  Greek mythology is just awesome for some reason. 

They were just playing a Dashboard Confessional song here in Aspen and I was about to comment on how it was making me want to slit either my own or everyone else’s wrists, but then right as I began to type that sentence, they turned it off.  Like right in the middle of the song.  It was weird.  But now they just turned it on again.  Ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh.  BTW I don’t hate DC.  I actually kinda like some of Christopher Carrabba’s songs.  I do think it’s kinda weird though that he still writes high school, heart throb songs when he’s almost 35.   I mean I understand that when you find something you’re good at, you stick with it.  But at some point it kinda starts being a little weird.  Whatever.  I didn’t mean to talk about him.  And just to be clear, I didn’t REALLY want to slit anybody’s wrists.  It’s just the action that is generally associated with Dashboard Confessional.

OK, I have to go.  It’s almost closing time…

 CLOSING TIME

…and I need to get out of here and go do something awesome.  What a horrible song and video...

Also, as I look back over what I've written, I kind of wish I hadn't raved about Clash of the Titans.  It's probably going to be a blockbuster flop.  Maybe just maybe though it will be awesome.

Peace.

I don't think I'll ever go Where the Wild Things Are again...it wasn't much fun.

Originally, I was planning on telling you all about this short, 5-song mix that I came up with and I was just going to give you basically all of my thoughts about the 5 songs.  However, instead, I’m going to tell you all about this OTHER short, 5-song mix that I came up with because I told somebody about the first one and thus, I ruined it for myself.  It just didn’t feel right to use that one after I’d already talked about it to someone.

To you though, it is really neither here nor there because you never new about the first one.  As such, this one might as well be the only one I ever came up with.  And to be honest, I didn’t change EVERY song in the first list.  Some of them are still in here.

OK first song is Cutting Off the Blood to Ten by Right Away, Great Captain!.  NOTE: this song is mildly depressing and intense.  Consider yourself warned.   A of all, I’m pretty cray cray about this band.  (cray cray = crazy for those of you not up with the lingo of future generations)  This band is the solo project of the lead singer of the band Manchester Orchestra.  Also a really good band though nowhere near the caliber of the solo project. 

 

I feel like the picture should help validate my argument that he’s legit.  And by the way, if you’re going to try to look up Right Away, Great Captain!, some good songs are actually Right Away, Great Captain!,  Right Ahead, Young Sailor!, and Devil Dressed in Blue.  So start there.  But anyways, this song is intense.  Which is why I like it.  He starts off with talking about “cutting off the blood to ten, with a  rope around my wrist”.  I’m not positive, but I am pretty sure that is a reference to committing suicide via tying something heavy to your hands and throwing it overboard.  (he likes nautical references so this may be talking about an anchor?)  Then he moves on to talking about how he knows his wife cheated on him with his brother and how pissed he is about that.  Ok, this is sounding like the kind of song that you would usually label as “too intense”, so let me explain why I like it.  If you listen to the song, it starts off really slow and quiet.  Then later on in the song, there is a part that get’s really loud and intense.  Then it quiets back down at the end.  I like it how this song illustrates that you don’t have to be screaming for a song to be filled with emotion.  There is almost more emotion and intensity in this song when it’s being all slow than there is when it picks up.  I think it’s cool.  Also, look up the lyrics.  They’re crazy-poetic and, if you haven’t already figured it out by now, I’m kinda into songs with good lyrics.

In the end, you can make your own interpretation of what he’s talking about in this song if anything.  My take on it is that he’s basically sitting there at the end of his life, completely pissed about how his wife and brother hurt him so much.  But yet he’s having this realization that he’s even more angry about the fact that he was never able to move on.  I feel like the point of the song is that no matter how crappy a situation is, or how mad something makes you, you’re always going to be better off in the end moving on than you are going to be holding onto it.  I can relate in a much smaller way.

Next song!! (I may not get through all these before I choose sleep)  California English by Vampire Weekend.  If you start listening to this song, you will immediately find that you can’t really understand what he’s saying very well.  He sings in a really broken voice and says the words with strange inflection and very quickly.  BRILLIANT!  The reason I think that is so cool is that, if you can decipher the lyrics to this song, you can see that basically he spends the whole song basically talking about the differences in the way that people in California speak from the way that that the rest of the country speaks.  He does this by “telling a story” about a girl  he likes and all that jazz, and as he’s telling the story, he just throws in a bunch of ironic California stereotypes.  Take the first line for instance.  The first line is  “wouldn’t ever gag you with a spoon, my only true love”.  In this line, he’s referencing the phrase “gag me with a spoon” I’m pretty sure.  I’m also pretty sure that is a phrase that comes from the valley-girl-type girls in California.  And he continues to make references like that throughout the rest of the song I think.  I can’t figure out what some of them mean but there are a bunch of the lyrics that are definitely referencing California-talk.

So as a band from California, I think the point of his song is to say that California English is different from English everywhere else and that really, we can’t understand the band in the same way that someone who has experiences Cali could.  On top of brilliant lyrics, he sings the song in a way that is ironically hard to understand.  So awesome.

Before I move on, I would like to state that obviously, I might be completely wrong on the meanings of these songs.  If you hear something completely different in them than awesome, tell me about it.

The next on my list is a song called No Intention by Dirty Projectors.  I’m going to go ahead and start off with telling you that I have absolutely no idea what this song is talking about overall.  I mean there are individual lines that I think are really cool and really clever.  But I can’t seem to make sense of the song as a whole.  The reason that I’ve added this song to our playlist is for it’s bobble-head quality.  You know what I’m talking about.  You know when you see people moving their head all around the place while keeping their shoulders completely still?  That’s exactly what happens to my head whenever this song comes on and I hear that simple but inspiring beat.  Thus, I love it.  Dirty Projectors is a band from somewhere in the northeast of America.  New York maybe?  I can’t remember right now.  However, they are coming to play in Norman for the Norman music festival which is debatably either this weekend or sometime in April.  Nobody really knows at this point though I’ve heard it from a reliable source that multiple people have been saying it’s not this weekend as we originally thought.  Either way though, I’m going to be there in Norman when they are and I’m going to be right up front when they sing this song straight to me.  Plus, don’t they just look really cool and down to earth?

 

Ok, I’m kinda tempted to keep typing about the other two songs cause they really are legit but I’m getting really really tired and I don’t think I’m going to make it much longer.  It’s about 3:30 AM right now so I feel like my sleepiness is justified.  Unfortunately though, I probably won’t be able to post this until sometime tomorrow afternoon because our internet is being all kinds of weird tonight and I just don’t have the will to go fix it right now.  So what will probably happen is that I’ll shut my computer here in about 45 seconds and then, tomorrow, I’ll reopen it at some point and either continue typing about the other two songs or I’ll just take this post as is and put it online for you to do what you will with it.

Peace.

**NEXT MORNING**…well, let’s be honest.  **NEXT AFTERNOON**

Well, I woke up today pretty much ready to just keep typing my little heart out.  So this may be one of those posts that is just so long that many give up on it.   That’s alright…which reminds me.  “Jesus is still alright with me! Jesus is still alright!”  The word alright always makes me think about that song.  Whatever, that’s neither here nor there.

The next song.  Mansions of Los Feliz by Eels.  No.  It was going to be that song but I just changed my mind.  I think I’m going to change it to A Shot in the Arm by Wilco.  Yeah, I like that one better for the here and now.  I should inform you again that Wilco is easily one of my absolute favorite bands.  They are the only band that I have ever seen 3 times live (other than like Hero Factor or other local bands).  Originally, when I listened to them, I wasn’t a big fan.  I wasn’t just a one song and done, but I probably was something like a 6 song and done.  They just didn’t catch me.  WOW, how did they not?  I’m almost embarrassed about it.

So then, and this is back during like my sophomore year I think, one of my best buds Joseph Harvey Hanson basically forced me to listen to them again and he walked me through some of the songs and why they were so awesome.  So I’ll give him 50% of the credit for getting me hooked on Wilco.  The other 50% is split 48% to Wilco and 2% to me for being awesome (I couldn’t go unaccredited)

Out of all the heaps of absolutely amazing Wilco songs, why did I pick this one?   Well, the reasons are three-fold though you might be able to combine two of them so that the reasons are only two-fold.  That doesn’t seem necessary though so I’ll keep the reasons at three.   A of all, this song has a lyric in it that is in my top 5 lyrics.  And I’m not saying that it’s PROBABLY in my top 5; it is EASILY in my top 5.  The lyric is the opening line.  It is as follows:  “The ashtray says you were up all night.”   Oh my face how awesome of a line is that?  It is beyond brilliant.  Actually, give me just a second.  I’m going to look up brilliant in a thesaurus and find a better word for it.  Ok I found it.  That lyric is PROFOUND.  I don’t even know how to talk you through how awesome it is if you don’t get it.  I mean if you can’t read that  line and see the poetry, than I don’t know that any kind of explanation by me would even help.

Ok, before I go to B, I’d like to make it clear that this entire song is lyrically awesome.  It’s not just that first line.  But B of all, this song is just plain fun to see live or to listen to loud in the car.  About halfway through the song, he starts freakin out.  The reason that this freak out is one of my absolute favorites is because he starts singing with almost a mix of yelling and singing.  And the pitch is the kind of pitch that is in everyone’s range.   So if you blast this song in your car, you can basically just lose yourself in yelling/singing these lines.   He doesn’t worry about keeping his voice pure and smooth, so you don’t have to either!  And he doesn’t try to fly up out of your range or anything, so you can really just easily start having a blast with this song.  I hope that kinda made sense.

C of all, (and this is the one that probably could have been worked into A because they’re kinda related)  I have a funny memory associated with this song.  There was one time that I was writing a song (probably not a very good song), and the aforementioned Hanson boy was my roommate. ..you know what?  I’m going to stop this story right there.  I’m going to leave you hangin! And you know why?  It’s because yesterday, this girl started telling me a story but then she had to leave all of a sudden and I didn’t get to hear the end of a story that I was genuinely kinda interested in.  After she left I wondered how horrible she must feel about herself for not finishing the story.  So now I know…man, it really doesn’t feel bad at all.  I could move on right now no problem.  And I think I will.

Ok the last song that I was going to talk about will no longer be talked about.  It was actually two songs by the same artist but I just feel like I’ve hashed out enough about music at this point.  I’m ready to move on to something else.

 

Lately, my little brother, my little sister, and I have been going rock climbing a lot at the indoor rock climbing place here in town.  It’s kinda disconcerting to see my brother climbing around because he’s the kind of good that I’ll NEVER get to.  Like it just won’t happen.  And it kinda makes me realize that I think the time of my life where I’m better at things than my little brother is over.  It’s a weird feeling to see your little bro surpass you in basically every arena.  I can deal with it though cause I’m a big boy.

 

Seriously though, how do you compete with that?

Next on my list is the next big craze in the United States.   First came "Do tha Heizman", then came the "Superman" where we learned to "superman that hoe".  Now, we're all about to experience the FLEX!!!  My buddy showed me this video a little while ago and even though these dudes are nothing right now, I'm calling it, this song is gonna be the next big song in the genre of "Introducing New Dance Moves".  See it here: Party Boyz - Flex

There’s something else I kinda want to write about but at the same time, I don’t want to write about it.  I feel like I’m just cutting off all my talks and I should probably just shut down this post.  Save my other thoughts for another time.    So I think I’m just going to have to…

That's not to say I've found, or that I ever will. It's just to say I'm looking, and I'm sick of sitting still.

I’m a pretty big fan of Bon Iver.  He’s pretty much what I’m about to talk about for the next paragraph or so. (also, note that Bon Iver is actually a band with multiple members, but the band themselves talk about Bon Iver as if it is a solo person…a “He” if you will…so I shall too.)  So if you’ve never heard of him, you’re going to need to look him up and listen to at least a couple of his songs, otherwise you may as well skip these first couple paragraphs and get down to the stuff for which you’ll at least have a bit of a frame of reference.

So about Bon Iver.  Let’s start with what I knew before a couple days ago.  I knew that I was crazy about literally every song on his album For Emma, Forever Ago.  That CD is beyond legit.  If you’ve never gotten into it, then the obvious first song you need to check out is Skinny Love.  “I tell my love to wreck it all.  Cut out all the ropes and let me fall.”  Mmmm…get it boy.   That song does a beautiful job of contrasting emotion and passion.  For the beginning of that song, he’s singing and all of his words are overflowing with emotion.  They are all so completely heartfelt.  Even if all the words themselves don’t connect with you, it’s easy to feel the emotions that the words are coming from.  Then, when he hits a certain part of the song (it’s obvious), the emotion in his voice changes to passion.  If you’re singing along in your car, you can feel the change in the way that you sing it.  You may be trying to make it all sound smooth and pretty during the emotional part of the song, but once it jumps to passion, if you’re still singing along, you don’t even care if your voice is cracking or straining.  You just want to belt it along with him.  At the end, you’re just left with the feeling that you just experienced something usually kept private. 

I could go off on tangents about LITERALLY every song on that CD but I won’t.  Anyways, I listened to that CD a ton of times and waited patiently for more Bon Iver to come out.  Finally, I got a small amount of fulfillment when the movie New Moon (Twilight 2) came out.  There was a song on that soundtrack with Bon Iver and a girl named St. Vincent (she used to be in Polyphonic spree I think.  I looked into the other St. Vincent stuff…not my favorite.  I think Bon Iver is the one who really makes this song what it is..)  Oh man. This song is amazing.  It’s called  Rosyln.  Just thinking about it was enough to make me basically have to turn it on.  So I’m listening to it as I type.  This song is literally one my favorite songs ever.  I don’t even care if it’s on the Twilight soundtrack.  The lyrics on some of his songs are a little hard to understand sometimes but look up the lyrics when you listen to this song.  They’re so eloquent.   The space that he captures in this song is one of my favorite parts.  I can be laying in my bed at my house in Stillwater but when I turn this song on loud enough, it feels like I’m listening to him playing the song across the sanctuary in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City.  It’s so huge and the song is so cool.

Click on that picture.  It's really high quality and is a sick picture.

So anyways, then after this song came out and I listened to it like a hundred times, I was again strongly desiring more Bon Iver to come out.  And of course I was happy when the Blood Bank EP came out.  But that pretty much brings you up to this last Friday.  I had purchased a CD earlier in the week that I hadn’t really listened to yet but I decided to give it some air time in my Accord.   As I’m listening to the first song, I was happy that I’d finally found a band that was similar to Bon Iver.  As the song went on though, it simply became undeniable that this HAD to be him singing.  So once I got home, I looked it up and, sure enough, this was the same singer.  I’m ecstatic at this point because not only was I happy to find out it was him, but I was happy to find out that it was awesome.  Also good to know what that his real name is not Bon Iver.  That was good because people are always arguing about how to pronounce that name.  So know we realize how much more irrelevant that conversation is than I‘d even previously thought.  His real name is Justin Vernon.

So of course when I found that Bon Iver was an alias, I had to look up his real name and see if there was any music released under his real name.  Sure enough, he’s put out two CD’s as Justin Vernon…and they’re AWESOME!   Also, he was part of a band called DeYarmond Edison, which also has some really tight songs (his full name is Justin Deyarmond Edison Vernon).  So anyways, I’m basically in heaven right now because there’s so much of him out there that it’s going to take me a while to listen to all of it.  All of these bands have a really different sounds though so you may or may not like each of them.  Here are my two favorite songs from each that I’d say you should listen to to see if you love it:

               Bon Iver:  Skinny Love, Flume, and Rosyln

               Volcano Choir: Husks and Shells, and Still

               DeYarmond Edison: Love Long Gone, and Silent Signs

               Justin Vernon:  Hazelton, and Frail Sail

Also, I found another band called Isbells that, if you’re into Bon Iver, I think you might really realy like.  Maybe check out Time’s Ticking as well as As Long As It Takes by them.  Good stuff.

OK so if you were trying to skip down to all the stuff that isn’t about Bon Iver, this is the paragraph you would have wanted to skip to. Sorry, I wrote a little more there than I’d planned.

So much has happened since I blogged a couple of days ago but it really doesn’t matter because I never really talk about anything that has anything to do with my schedule on here.  It’s pretty much just random thoughts.   However, I did go see Tim Burton’s new version of Alice and Wonderland last night with Patch in 3D!  I made the decision as I started typing this sentence to NOT give any kind of a review on this movie.  It’s not that I don’t have a plethora of thoughts and opinions on the many facets of this movie, it’s more that I don’t want to take the time to write them all out right now because this is already very long.  So I’ll just say that the movie get’s probably a 7.4 out of 10 stars for me.  You really don’t know what that means though because you have no frame of reference for how I rate movies because this is the first one I’ve ever given a rating on here.  I’m hoping that this will be the first of many ratings for me though so that, in a couple months, you’ll understand how I rate movies and maybe they can start to mean something. 

The reason I bring up this movie though is just because Patch (Patrick Williams) and I got some SWEEEEET 3D glasses at the movie.  I’ve been wearing them around all day and it’s crazy that this little pair of cheep shades can make it so that I can see the entire world in 3D.  Technology these days blows my mind.

Plus, we have decided that they are fashionable!  You have to agree right?  Right.

I don't wash my strawberries before I eat them.  And that's not gross.

Achouffe Brewery puts out some really good beer.  It's in Belgium and all of their beers come in large 750 mL bottles.  One thing I like about that is that it promotes sharing the beer with a friend.  I've only had the Le Chouffe (a blonde) and the Mc Chouffe (an unfiltered dark beer) but they were both mind-blowingly awesome.  I had the Mc in Australia with Kelly a few times and then I found the Le here in Stillwater at Brown's.  If you actually care what the beer you drink tastes like, look for this in the liquor store.  So tasty and a great beer to have an awesome conversation over with a buddy.  I look forward to trying their other brews.

I ate the above-mentioned, unwashed strawberries in my bed the other night.  I ended up staining my sheets with strawberry juice.  Awesome.

It's kinda gross cause it kinda looks like blood...but I swear it's not.  It is strawberry juice.

I’m sitting here looking at the beginnings of a stencil that I’m working on and the longer I type, the more I wish I was stenciling instead of typing.  SO I’m going to have to go ahead and get to it.

Peace out.

This dude in the elevator is looking at me. Who does that?

Last night, I was having dinner with some people at the greatest margarita in Tulsa…wait, no. I was having dinner at El Tequila which serves the greatest margaritas in Tulsa. Yes, that’s right. But one of the people there having dinner with us was Christopher Tyler(?) Cleveland! How crazy is that? It’s weird when you see these people in music videos on yahoo! Entertainment or you hear their songs playing on sweet shows like MTV’s the Real World, and then you find yourself one night just kickin it with them. Haha little bit of sarcasm there but also a little bit of not sarcasm. Either way, Chris Cleveland is a tight dude and we were sitting there eatin our burritos straight from bomb.com when the conversation turns towards Chris’ new living situation. He’s living with a dude whose name, I believe, is Bong. Now I may have heard that wrong, but every time people say his name, that is what I hear. Thus, that is what I assume his name is. But the main part of this convo that I want to focus on was what he said next.

Here's Chris Cleveland by the way...HOTT haha:

Apparently, Bong is a cat guy. He has two cats that live with Chris and him. I’m not gonna lie, that kinda weirds me out a little bit. I’m trying to stay open-minded but you just don’t meet guys between the ages of 20 and 30 who are into cats. So anyways, it’s beside the point but I definitely have a weird mental image of this Bong guy. At the same time though, I like him. And this brings us to what I hope you will agree is the climax of this story. I don’t remember one of his cats’ names because I didn’t care about it. I just know that the other one had the greatest cat name I’ve ever heard. What was it? “Gray Kitty” !!HAHA!! I love it! Seriously I started dying laughing. You can ask Chris if you want. I really did. Or if you don’t have the ballsticles to go up to the lead singer of Pop-rock band Stars Go Dim and ask him whether I thought that cat’s name was funny, you can also ask Rachel Read. She was sitting right there as well and witnessed the whole thing. Or you can just trust me..

So this flippin awesome kitty name has got me thinkin. It’s hard for me right here because the name “Gray Kitty” sends my mind simultaneously down two different tracks. I know that eventually, I will take you down both of them with me but right now I’m trying to decide which to go with first…

So what exactly is the deal with grEy and grAy. Like what is the difference? I’m sure it’s one of those things that I could find out if I would just take two seconds and google it but I think that I’ll throw out some of my own hypotheses first before I do that. Ok, here are the facts that I know. I know that there is a singer-songwriter named David GRAY. I know that Dave Matthews wrote a song and called it GREY Street. I know that there is a TV show called GREY’s anatomy. I know that, to my eyes, the word GRAY looks more natural than the word GREY. I know that Crayola has chosen to label it’s Crayon GRAY. And the last fact that I know is that there is a major bus line called Greyhound buses. That is pretty much the extent of facts that I know.

Let’s evaluate. OK, the biggest puzzle for me here is that I’ve always thought the Dave Matthews song was referring to the color of the street. As in he was making a poetic reference to the street being dull and GREY. However, then Crayola (a pretty reliable source when it comes to colors I would think) goes with GRAY (I know because I’ve looked before and wondered). That’s confusing for me. However, I guess that Dave could have been referring to the actual name of the street. Like someone might live on GREY street or something. Definite possibility. But then there’s also the question of whether one of them is typically a name? Because we have both a Meredith (sp?) GREY and a David GRAY. So clearly both can be used there as well.

So the only thing that I can think of is that maybe there really is no correct or incorrect use of either one. I find no evidence that says that one is used over the other. So possibly nobody knows why there are multiple spellings of a the same word. Now I shall go to google and see if I’m wrong. Un momento…

Well, apparently, it’s a regional thing. I guess that GREY is the standard British spelling of the word but then there are a lot of places in America that spell the word GRAY. So I’m going to say that my hypothesis was almost fully true. There is a little bit of reason to the different spellings but I think that, in general, you can pretty much spell it however you’d like and the words are interchangeable.

I spoke of another road I might travel earlier but I think I’ll skip that road.

….hmmm. This morning I was supposed to take a shower. That didn’t happen. The night before, a shower in the morning sounds just amazing. Then my alarm goes off (clip from Skinny Love by Bon Iver) at 7 something and I’m like HELL NO I’m not getting up just to take a shower. So I lie in bed absolutely as long as possible and usually end up waiting too long to get up and I barely have time to even get dressed before I go to work.

So I’ve pretty much got my morning routine down to an art. Everything is a race. I deodorize with one hand while givin myself a little bit of the ol’ cologne with the other hand at the same time. I fly through brushing my teeth. Like I think part of the reason that my brushing is so effective is that the friction buildup between my toothbrush and teeth literally incinerates the evil that tries to destroy my teeth. (Don’t worry though, I am still thorough) anyways, etc. etc. I am quick with my morning routine. Then I hit this one point at the very end of my routine. I like to use this stuff:

I used to use the minty kind because just the thought of citrus mouthwash sounded wrong and disgusting. Having finally tried it though, I can tell you that if you ever felt the same way I did, flippin try the citrus. It’s awesome.

Anyways though, there is a big decision that I have to make the instant that I put that stuff into my mouth. Once it’s in there you really only have about a minute of having it in your mouth before it begins to burn more than you can take. The first option is to stand there with it in my mouth while I’m at the sink, wait out the minute, and then spit. This is the safer option but it does force me to basically waste an entire minute…and minutes are valuable when you play the last minute game that I play in the mornings. The second option though is to put it in my mouth, and then fly through the house trying to grab all the things I need for the day in time that I can be out the door and can spit into the yard on my way to the car. This is more dangerous because if there is even one little hic up in the move from the bathroom to the yard, you can end up with an extra 20 seconds of mouthwash time which is excruciating. The other issue is that sometimes my mother is sitting out in the living room and wants to say bye or something. Then I have to make some awkward noise that sounds like a goodbye and run out quickly. (part of the game is to not let her know that I have mouthwash in my mouth) Anyways, today I didn’t have the guts to go for it and I ended up just standing in front of the mirror wasting an entire minute of day.

This brings us to your last question for the moment. Does liking this man make you old?

That, my friends, is Louis Armstrong in case you didn’t know. This man’s music puts off one of the classiest vibes I’ve ever heard from music. Like I flipped on a little bit of the Louis yesterday and was like “dang, I feel underdressed for this.” This music sounds so legit that it almost seems wrong to have an electric copy of it. It should only be able to be played either through an old busted radio or from a vinyl record. Either way though, that doesn’t answer our question. The question was whether liking this guy makes you old.

I was talking about this with a young lady that I work with yesterday and I think, in the end, it depends on what else you listen to. Take for instance, if you’re 22 and you go from listening to Loius to listening to Sinatra to listening to Pink Floyd to listening to Pete Townshend to listening to James Brown, then yes. You are old and you need to join the rest of us 22 year olds in generation Y. However, if you go from listening to (insert cool, hip band name here) to listening to Louis Armstrong to listening to (insert cool, hip band name here) to listening to (insert cool, hip band name here), then I think the addition of Louis to your repertoire just bumps you up a notch on the scale of class and of the eclectic. So if you’re 22, by all means get in there and let Louis do his thing for your ears. But just mix it up a bit so that you don’t end up turning into an old fogey too quickly. That’s all. Louis Armstrong IS legit though. Right now I’m listening to the song Blueberry Hill by him and it’s changing my day into something beautiful.

I’ve gotta stop at this point. However, I do have a couple final requests. A of all, you should start a blog because I want to read about the random stuff you think about too. It’s only fair. B of all, I was going to request that everyone leave a comment so that I know who reads this but forget it. You just do your thing. C of all, get some Louis Armstrong and let him show you what’s up.

Peace out.