Before the Deluge

I'm a Time Lord.

2011-04-16T15:55:00.001-05:00

I'm way too excited about this...

10 Covers II

2011-03-27T21:19:00.001-05:00

As I've explained before, I love covers. So here are 10 covers I've come to love in the past year, in no particular order.

California Girls - A, B & the Sea (Katy Perry)

O.N.E. - Ace Reporter (Yeasayer)

I Will Follow You Into the Dark - Amy Millan (Death Cab for Cutie)

Antonia Jane - Bryan Fallon, of The Gaslight Anthem (Lightning Dust)

Beast of Burden - Bruce Springsteen & Alejandro Escovedo (The Rolling Stones)

No One's Gonna Love You - Cee-Lo Green (Band of Horses)

The River - Crooked Fingers (Bruce Springsteen)

Halo / Cannibal Resource - Harper Blynn (Beyonce + Dirty Projectors)

Pursuit of Happiness - Lissie (Kid Cudi)

Young Hearts Run Free - The Swell Season (Candi Staton)

march 16, 2011

2011-03-16T00:47:00.000-05:00

in a world of bureaucrats and reporters

every second is documented to death

the poets are gone

the prophets forgotten

“information” is our economy

there is no more work

work is for machines and mexicans

still we must stay busy

we must press paper into plastic

we cannot sit still

we are not to dream

dreaming leads to understanding

the world must remain opaque

lucidity would tear it down around us

a potemkin world

a plastic world

a million culdesacs

nothing but fiberglass, plywood, and vynyl siding

still behind the hd touchscreen veneer

remains dirt, fire, and water

beyond the newsfeed

lie souls, blood, fear, and love

beyond the florescent glow of thousands of streelights

is the darkness of the night sky

beyond your healthcare

death still waits

behind the signal

is the voice softly whispering

Clarksville, Tennessee: The Sparta of the South

2011-03-07T18:52:00.000-06:00

I believe that a city’s “nickname” should reflect more than the poorly conceived “branding” attempts of its public relations department. Cities should choose a nickname which reflects the spirit and the history of the place. Nashville’s nickname “Athens of the South” is a perfect example: the moniker reflects the city’s long history as a center of higher learning in the region.

Clarksville’s current nickname is ridiculous: Tennessee’s Top Spot.

The phrase is a “clever” play on Clarksville’s location near the Kentucky border (i.e. the “top” of the state). Unfortunately not only does this nickname fail to reflect anything of the culture, history, or traditions of our city its also just plain wrong: Bristol, Tennessee is located both farther North (actually straddling the state line with Virginia) and higher in altitude.

Our last nickname “Gateway to the New South” was equally meaningless and uninspiring. How exactly is Clarksville a “gateway”? We don’t have an active train station or a public airport and, at the time, we didn’t even have a marina. The only reason we could be considered a gateway is because we are the first city in Tennessee you run into on I-24; of course that also ignores the fact that many people consider Kentucky a part of the South.

When I was growing up Clarksville was “the Queen City” or “the Queen of the Cumberland.” That nickname at least had some vague historical basis in our city’s (long forgotten) position as a major port on the Cumberland River. However “Queen City” is relatively uninspiring and might make the occasional person think of makeup-plastered gay men singing Cher.

Clarksville is in desperate need of a new nickname; a nickname that its citizens and business recruiters can use with pride, and a nickname that reflects our city’s history and traditions.

Clarksville needs a nickname that actually means something.

This is my suggestion: The Sparta of the South.

(Yeah, THAT Sparta.)

The reference to ancient Sparta is not only a nice little nod to our neighbors in Nashville, but also reflects our city’s long military history and the important reality that it serves as a home for thousands of veterans and active servicemen in the U.S. Army.

Clarksville is adjacent to Fort Campbell, a base that is home to both the 101st Airborne Division and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Many of those soldiers’ families live and work in Clarksville and a great number of them end up retiring in Clarksville.

Clarksville has been home to soldiers and veterans since its founding and its citizens have served in every one of our nation’s wars. Contrary to a common misconception, Clarksville is not named after the great explorer William Clark, but his brother: General George Rogers Clark, a hero of the Revolutionary War.

Clarksville is a military town, and I for one am extremely proud of that tradition. It’s a point of personal pride that my grandfather, while serving in the National Guard, was stationed at then “Camp” Campbell. Growing up in Clarksville many of my role models, teachers and coaches, were either soldiers or veterans.

Just as Athens is a name synonymous with eduction, Sparta is a name synonymous with military tradition and valor.

Just as the Spartans bravely defended their countrymen’s freedom at Thermopylae, the 101st Airborne has defended our nation’s freedom on the fields of Normandy, in the hills of Korea, the jungles of Vietnam, and the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan.

(The 101st: Real-Life Nazi Hunters)

That’s why I believe it’s time to change our city’s title once again. Clarksville deserves a nickname that actually means something. And our fellow citizens, both veterans and active military personnel, are deserving of our recognition.

Walker Percy and Old King Solomon

2011-02-18T09:56:00.001-06:00

Walker Percy was in my opinion, not only one of the great Southern authors, but one of the greatest authors of the 20th century.

He was also a man after my own heart:

"The peculiar predicament of the present-day self surely came to pass as a consequence of the disappointment of the high expectations of the self as it entered the age of science and technology. Dazzled by the overwhelming credentials of science, the beauty and elegance of the scientific method, the triumph of modern medicine over physical ailments, and the technological transformation of the very world itself, the self finds itself in the end disappointed by the failure of science and technique in those very sectors of life which had been its main source of ordinary satisfaction in past ages.

As John Cheever said, the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.

Work is disappointing. In spite of all the talk about making work more creative and self-fulfilling, most people hate their jobs, and with good reason. Most work in modern technological societies is intolerably dull and repetitive.

Marriage and family life are disappointing. Even among defenders of traditional family values, e.g., Christians and Jews, a certain dreariness must be inferred, if only from the average time of TV viewing. Dreary as TV is, it is evidently not as dreary as Mom talking to Dad or the kids talking to either.

School is disappointing. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering both dull. As every scientist and poet knows, one discovers both vocations in spite of, not because of, school. It takes years to recover from the stupor of being taught Shakespeare in English Lit and Wheatstone's bridge in Physics.

Politics is disappointing. Most young people turn their backs on politics, not because of the lack of excitement of politics as it is practiced, but because of the shallowness, venality, and image-making as these are perceived through the media--one of the technology's greatest achievements.

The churches are disappointing, even for most believers. If Christ brings us new life, it is all the more remarkable that the church, the bearer of this good news, should be among the most dispirited institutions of the age. The alternatives to the institutional churches are even more grossly disappointing, from TV evangelists with their blown-dry hairdos to California cults led by prosperous gurus ignored in India but embraced in La Jolla.

Social life is disappointing. The very franticness of attempts to reestablish community and festival, by partying, by groups, by club, by touristy Mardi Gras, is the best evidence of the loss of true community and festival and of the loneliness of self, stranded as it is as an unspeakable consciousness in a world from which it perceives itself as somehow estranged, stranded even within its own body, with which it sees no clear connection.

But there remains the one unquestioned benefit of science: the longer and healthier life made possible by modern medicine, the shorter work-hours made possible by technology, hence what is perceived as the one certain reward of dreary life of home and the marketplace: recreation.

Recreation and good physical health appear to be the only ambivalent benefits of the technological revolution."
— Walker Percy (Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book)

I believe Percy is echoing the voice of King Solomon, who wrote in the book of Ecclesiastes over two millennia before Percy was even born:

Vanity of vanities... vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
All things are full of labor; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.
There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

The earth abides. The sun also rises. All rivers run to the sea. From ashes into ashes again, from dust into dust.
There is nothing new under the sun.
All men are born fey.

So let us embrace our mortality, and take pleasure in our work, in our food and drink, and in our companions.
What will be dust tomorrow, is alive today.

That fleeting moment that is the space between the ashes is all the more beautiful because it is so short.

This Blog

2011-01-20T16:08:00.000-06:00

I want to get this out there for anyone who reads this blog: I am not looking for readers/followers, at least not in the traditional sense.

To me this blog is a place for to write down the ideas and questions that for some reason I feel that by writing about I can better understand. I have always felt a personal need to examine the deeper questions of life, politics, faith, and culture. Sometimes an idea just hits me so hard that I have to write it down. When I was younger I used notebooks, sometimes I still do.

However, no man is an island and, in my opinion, the process of personal growth requires not only introspection but active dialogue with people with more extensive or different life experiences. I believe that through those interactions, through others' eyes, we can come to better know ourselves. I see this as a small reflection, as through a mirror darkly, of the way in which only when we finally come to "know" God will we truly know who we are. He created us and he knows us in ways we can't even comprehend in this life.

Yet God "saw that it was not good for us to be alone." He made us as social animals and as individuals with distinct personality and strengths. To quote the Koran, "[God] created you from a single soul, male and female, and made you into nations and tribes, so that you may come to know one another."

So I keep this blog open to the public and occasional message or post links to specific posts only so that I can provide the people whose opinions and beliefs I genuinely care about some insight into my thoughts on that post's subject.

Of course, not every post here is deep. Sometimes I post lists or just music, for the same reason (althought without the deeper importance) of my more cerebral entries.

Remember the 90's?

2011-01-14T14:28:00.000-06:00

Man, i miss the 90's.

A Decade Full of Questions and Some Answers

2011-01-11T17:05:00.000-06:00

I am a bit of a pack-rat of sorts. I keep a chest filled with reams worth of papers: journals, postcards, playbills, bad poetry, scribblings, and love letters.

I recently considered piling most of the chest’s contents into a burn barrel and symbolically torching them. I thought that at 25 it was time for me to start a fresh.

Then I went through the chest’s contents and I decided I was wrong. I realized that pile of papers represented something to me. They chronicled a decade of my life- and a set of questions which I’ve wrestled with since it began. These questions came up again and again in things I’d written at 15, 19, 22, and just the past few months.

How can I relate or understand women? That was the first question I recognized in those papers.

I’d like to think I’ve learned a lot about the fairer sex during a decade of loves lost and won (but mostly lost). However reading back through the years, I realized how little I’ve been able to really grasp about how women think, feel, and love. They still baffle me. Women manage to be enticing, beautiful, a bit magical, inspiration to my soul, yet at times terrifying, hurtful, and often opaque.

I’ll likely never really answer this question and I’m ok with that now.

The second question I’ve been wrestling with for the last decade stems from the first: is it better to live a solitary life or suffer the slings and arrows of love in hope it’s undiscovered country holds a bit of paradise? Most people may find the first option absurd, but to an only child who has always enjoyed, and even deeply needed, a measure of solitude in my life, it’s easy to imagine life as a permanent bachelor. For the longest time my go-to call sign was “tin man” (from ausTIN MANess). In my most emo periods I have romanticized the idea of a missing a heart, because without a heart you can’t know heartbreak.

I’ve finally found my answer to this question: I don’t want to be alone, it’s no way to live. God said himself, It is not good for man to be alone. Love is worth the pain endured finding and keeping it; maybe it wouldn’t even be the same without them. Life wouldn’t hold the same meaning without death. Maybe love wouldn’t mean as much without heartbreak.

The last question is one I believe most people of faith have felt at one point or another: How do I relate to God?

I am a hopeless and often unrepentant sinner. How can I ever be worthy of God’s love? With all my faults and failings, how can I ever feel competent to teach or relate those things I have learned about God, life, and what it means to be a Christian to others?

The answer to this question is obvious to anyone educated in the tenants of Christian faith: we are all sinners and it is only through God’s love and grace, the sacrifice of Christ, and our faith in them, that we can ever hope to relate God.

That said, this is one struggle that I am almost certain I will always bear and I’m ok with that. I will always be a sinner and often a doubter.

I believe faith is a struggle.

King David, “a man after God’s own heart,” knew sin as well as any man that has ever lived. The prophet Jonah tried to escape God’s call by sailing away. Moses didn’t believe himself capable to speak for and lead his people.

In Gethsemane Christ himself asked his father to provide him another way.

At his death he cried out, to what must have seemed like a universe empty of all traces of the divine, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Faith is a struggle. If it were not so, it would not accomplish in us that which it must: transformation, transcendence, and enlightenment through pain, suffering, and sacrifice.

Those questions, answered and unanswered, are why I’m keeping the contents of that old chest- they remind me of who I am, where I have come from, what I have learned, and what I have yet to learn.

Yes.... More on Depressive Realism

2010-12-06T09:04:00.001-06:00

I was doing a little blog scanning this morning and I came upon an interesting article on Alternet entitled "Are Antidepressants a Scam?" link.

The article makes some points which support my belief that the psycho-pharmaceutical industry peddles expensive medications which are often unhelpful to patients (read: people), and which in the case of antidepressants may be no more effective than sugar pills.

One quote caught my eye and relates directly to my last post on depressive realism:

From several classic studies, we know that moderately depressed people are, in a sense, more critically thinking than are nondepressed people. These studies show that depressed people are more accurate than are nondepressed people in both their assessment of control over events and in judging people’s attitudes toward them. Researchers Lauren Alloy and Lyn Abramson at the University of Pennsylvania in 1979, studying nondepressed and depressed subjects who played a rigged game in which they had no actual control, found that depressed subjects more accurately evaluated their lack of control when either losing or winning. And researcher Peter Lewinsohn at the University of Oregon in 1980, found that depressed subjects judge other people’s attitudes toward them more accurately than nondepressed subjects.

Emotional reactions, and I believe that "depression" is often a prolonged emotional reaction and not a "disorder" in the true sense of the word (e.g. schizophrenia), are God's/evolution's way of alerting our conscious brains and those close to us that something is wrong in our lives. While sadness may be ourbrain's reaction to temporary stressors/problems, depression represents a reaction to the presence of long-term problems in our lives.

It is my firm believe that for most people the "cure" for depression is remedying those things which are wrong in our lives to the extent we can to do so (e.g. becoming physically healthy, improving interpersonal relationships) and perhaps more importantly, developing a healthy philosophy of life and a hopeful outlook towards one's own future.

The article speaks to this as well:

In The Thought and Character of William James, Ralph Barton Perry’s classic biography on his teacher, in the chapter “Depression and Recovery,” we learn that James at age 27 described himself as going through a period of a “disgust for life” in which Perry describes as an “ebbing of the will to live. . . . a personal crisis that could only be relieved by philosophical insight.” What was James’s transformative insight?

James was a critical thinker and had no stomach for smiley-faced positive thinking, but he also concluded that his pessimism might just destroy him. With his critical thinking, he came quite pragmatically to “believe in belief.” He continued to maintain that one cannot choose to believe in whatever one wants (one cannot choose to believe that 2 + 2 = 5); however, he concluded that there is a range of human experience in which one can choose beliefs. He came to understand that, “Faith in a fact can help create the fact.” So, for example, abelief that one “has a significant contribution to make to the world” can keep one from committing suicide during a period of deep despair, and remaining alive makes it possible to in fact make a significant contribution.

Believe in belief.

Depressive Realism, the World Today, & Me

2010-12-03T22:54:00.003-06:00

I've been around, you know. There was a time I could see. And I have seen boys like these, younger than these, their arms torn out, their legs ripped off. But there isn't nothin' like the sight of an amputated spirit; there is no prosthetic for that. - Frank Slade

I have a lot of friends who’ve “been around.” I’ve had the pleasure of running around with brilliant and exceptional men and women from all sorts of backgrounds through my time at Pepperdine and my brief involvement with the interfaith youth core and the foundation for the defense of democracies.

I’ve travelled a bit myself. I’ve lived in the suburbs; I’ve lived on a farm; I’ve lived in Malibu, Italy, and a concrete jungle. No, I’ve never been to Africa. I’ve never really been to a third-world country unless you count Tijuana or Frayser, TN.

I honestly don’t think I needed to. I’ve been all over this Empire. I’ve been to its borders and it’s forgotten corners. I’ve sat in the backyards and cafes of its most elite districts and neighborhoods. I’ve stared up at the sky in its last few empty places. Perhaps most importantly I have spent the last three years of my life in the training school of its oft-maligned bureaucratic enforcers: lawyers.

I have seen many beautiful things. A cloudy sky above while backstroking in the galilee. The sun setting over the Santa Monica Mountains. Families. Children. Forests. Deserts. Mountains and Oceans.

But what I have seen of the current state of mankind in the major, I have found repugnant and even nauseating.

I’ve seen walls going up everywhere. Walls around the neighborhoods and houses of the rich. Walls around my homeland. Walls through the heart of the Holy Land.

I’ve seen good people struggling to get by burdened by tremendous debts.

I’ve seen our environment raped, burned, and spit upon by shadowy things called “corporations” or “embodiments” which you cannot touch, you cannot see, and most importantly you cannot call to justice in a jail cell or on a gallows.

I’ve seen us all running against the wind. Running. Running. Running.

There is a theory in psychology called “depressive realism.” This theory holds that people like myself, with a moderate or borderline depression, have a more accurate perception of reality because we are not blinded by positive illusions.

In my case I’m not sure which came first: the chicken or the egg, the depression or the realism.

It doesn’t really matter.

I have seen.

I’m not sure if the state of our world is objectively worse than it was 5 years ago, or 10, or 100. I know there have been steps forwards and steps backwards.

What I am sure of is that the winds of change are blowing and that my generation grew up in a doldrum or perhaps just in the eye of the storm.

I am also sure that while this is certainly not the worst of all possible worlds, it is also not the best.

I have hope for tomorrow.

But not the blind, bullshit hope that we were sold in the 90s. Not the blind, bullshit hope that we were sold in 2008.

I have realistic hope. I thank God for the opportunity to have tasted failure, to have felt impotent, and even worthless. If you’ve never been there I’m sorry. I’m sorry because someday you will.

If your there right now, I congratulate you. If you have lost something or everything, I congratulate you.

It’s not just a platitude: freedom really is just another word for nothing left to lose.

Depression is a burden, but its also a gift.

If your interested in learning more about the joys of sadness, I’d encourage you to pick up the book “Against Happiness” by Eric G. Wilson.

Here’s the blurb:

We are addicted to happiness. More than any other generation, Americans today believe in the power of positive thinking. But who says we’re supposed to be happy? Eric G. Wilson argues that melacholia is necessary to any thriving culture, that is is the muse of great literature, painting, music, and innovation- and that is is the force underlying original insights.

When you take off your rose-colored glasses, or have them ripped off you, you can see the world as it really is, both beautiful and broken.

I’d also like to point you to two other depressive realists: Thomas Krenshaw of Freedom Guerilla and Mike Ruppert.

The documentary “Collapse” concerns both Rupert’s personal history and his worldview.

Here’s the trailer:

Solitary Man

2010-11-22T21:28:00.000-06:00

Don't know that I will, but until I can find me...

Recent Life Lessons

2010-11-21T00:08:00.000-06:00

Lesson 1: Retreat is not defeat. Retreat is not capitulation. Life isn't always the Charge of the Light Brigade. Sometimes it's better to live to fight another day.

Lesson 2: You can't change people. People must want to change themselves.

Lesson 3: What one cannot do alone, perhaps two or more can do together.

Mighty Mike Mashups

2010-10-17T01:23:00.001-05:00

some djs (e.g. DJ earworm) make mashups so good they might be better than the original.

Mighty Mike is one of those DJs.

"Simple Martyr" Lynyrd Skynyrd vs. Depeche Mode

"Every Beautiful Girl You Take" The Police vs. Sean Kingston

"Your 1979 Song" Smashing Pumpkins vs. Elton John

"Neverending" Rick Astley vs. Mika

tom cruise speaks truth to power

2010-09-23T22:03:00.005-05:00

I went back and listened to this interview just now. Through personal experience and research I have come to agree with Tom Cruise.

Tom Cruise may be a little "out there," and I do not agree with scientology, but he was right about this. He was ridiculed by the media because he was right. He was ridiculed by the media because the same corporations and people who own the media own the pharmaceutical industry. Notice how calm and rational Tom seems during this entire interview. He keeps his composure even when Lauer tries to trap him with inconsistent questions; he even confronts Lauer on his attempt to trick him into saying something he wasn't. These are not the ravings of a mad man. These are the rational thoughts of a sane person who is deeply concerned about our society.

We are medicating emotions!
We are medicating psychological reactions which humans exhibit in order to express that there is something is wrong in their life or their world.

Drugs are not the answer.

Confronting our problems and changing our society is the answer.

That's the truth.

Disclaimer: I do believe there are extreme circumstances in which someone should be sedated if they are likely to cause harm to themself or another person. My main concern is with the widespread medication of anxiety, depression and "ADD."

casualties

2010-09-13T21:24:00.000-05:00

possibly my favorite "sad song" of all time... and I love sad songs. this one just takes the cake. am I sad? no. sometimes you just want to listen to a chill sad song to put things in perspective.

J Tillman - Casualties - Luxury Wafers Sessions from Luxury Wafers on Vimeo.

500 miles

2010-09-12T02:02:00.002-05:00

meaning & life

2010-09-10T14:23:00.000-05:00

Last night a someone said to me: "I know you, you are searching for meaning in life, that is sweet."
I responded: "No, I have found meaning in life. There is a difference."

I am no longer a seeker.
I have sought and I have found.

So one of my best friends, Andy Canales, asked me "what is the meaning of life"?

This is my response:

Wow Andy, big question. That question can mean a couple of things: a) what is the point of life? why are we here? what is this all about? the answer to that is of course 42.

However, the important question for people, finite beings with limited power, resources, and intellect is b) what is the meaning of MY life? the answer to that it of course: whatever meaning you give it.

The meaning I strive to give my life is this: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." Matthew 22: 37-40.

Of course you could say that this is the goal (i.e. meaning) that every man and woman is born for. However it would be incorrect to ascribe this meaning to those who do not choose it.

If you choose for your life to have no meaning, then it won't. If you choose for your life to be about personal pleasure or gain, then that will be it's meaning.

Trascendance isn't obligatory.

That is why the real question is "What is the meaning of my life?" and not "what is the meaning of life?"

gotta be honest

2010-09-10T01:00:00.001-05:00

this IS me.

I believe the same things I always have in my heart, even if they are expressed differently.

How many roads must a man walk down? 42.

42 roads.

They all led right back here.

Escape will never mean anything but escape.

You can't serve two masters.

You will surely love one and hate the other.

Don't ever let anyone tell you life has no meaning. Those people have never lived.

never give up, never surrender

2010-09-08T15:32:00.000-05:00

Alcohol Culture

2010-09-07T20:36:00.001-05:00

This post is part of an ongoing series in which I discuss what I consider to be major problems with our national culture and touch on some possible solutions.

In my first post Fight or Flight I mentioned that one way Americans run from problems is through substance abuse. While prescription and illegal drug abuse are major problems in our nation, I believe they pale in comparison to the problems created by our national Alcohol Culture.

I want to make this very clear: I don’t think drinking is inherently destructive, wrong, sinful, or anything of that sort. Despite being raised in a conservative evangelical denomination, which for decades propagated the bizarre myth that every mention of wine in the bible refers to grape juice, I’ve done my share of drinking. I started drinking, and by drinking I mean “binge drinking,” in high school. I love booze: wine, whiskey, beer, or tequila, it’s all good to me.

Another thing I want to make clear: I am not, nor have I ever been an alcoholic by any definition.

Despite enjoying alcohol, I recently started to reconsider its place in my life and in our national culture. This has undoubtedly been sparked by a) being in law school and b) living three blocks from Beale Street.

The positive effects of alcohol are obvious: it’s an excellent social lubricant when applied in reasonable quantities and if you don’t drink too much, it makes you feel good.

The negative effects are just as obvious: mistakes, accidents, weight gain, etc.

So I’d like you to ask yourself some questions.

Why do you drink? Most likely because it makes you feel less awkward in social situations and relieves some stress.

You enjoy drinking, right?

When do you enjoy drinking? I’m not asking “when do you drink?” But rather, when do you enjoy the effects of alcohol?

Obviously you enjoy drinking while you are drinking.

When do you not enjoying drinking?

Are you still enjoying your drinking experience at the end of the night?

How often do you feel sick at the end of the night?

How often does drinking interrupt your sleep?

How do you feel the next day? Are you hungover the next day? Are you more tired than you would have been if you hadn’t drank? Did you wake up regretting something you did while drunk or just tipsy?

Do you feel like you have gained weight as a result of regular drinking?

Do you feel like you spend too much money on alcohol?

Back to my first question: why do you drink? After considering my other questions, do you still feel like alcohol makes you “feel good” in the long run? Does it really relieve your stress, or does it just add to it?

I asked myself these questions.

In my personal experience recently, it worked out something like this:

I enjoyed drinking while I was out. Often by the end of the night I wasn’t feeling so hot. Sometimes I slept later than I would have liked. I had even missed class because I slept through an alarm or just didn’t feel like getting up on time.

Over the last two years I made several major life mistakes as a result of drinking.

Occasionally I would spend way too much money on a night out.

I had gained weight and I was no longer happy with my level of physical fitness.

I don’t think my experiences with drinking are uncommon.

I’ve never had a problem with drinking and driving. I’ve never gotten a DUI or been in an accident.

I did however experience the drunk-driving related death of two childhood friends the month before I left home for college.

I have on some occasions gotten really sick while drinking. However I’ve never needed to go to the hospital. (When I jumped off a moving car freshman year, I was sober).

One of the friends who I had drank with during high school was not so lucky. He died due to the lethal combination of alcohol and prescription drugs.

For years I looked down on people who didn’t drink. I made fun of my friends who chose to wait until they were 21 to drink. I assumed that the only reasons someone wouldn’t drink were legalistic religious beliefs or because they were a recovering alcoholic.

I was wrong.

Now I’m six weeks into a year-long commitment not to drink.

This was my last drink for a year. Classy, I know.

I would be lying if I said it wasn’t hard. It is. You don’t realize how many social outlets for twenty-somethings involve drinking unless you don’t drink.

I’m not asking you to stop drinking. In fact, I’m still buying my friends drinks and throwing parties as if I hadn’t stopped.

I’m just asking you to open your mind.

Think.

Sometimes freedom means choosing to abstain from something because you can. It’s a choice.

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Just because you enjoyed something at one point in your life doesn’t mean you always will. Just because something is right for someone else doesn’t mean it’s right for you.

RIP Eddie 1999-2010

2010-09-07T13:43:00.000-05:00

Eddie was my jack russell terrier; you could say we grew up together. He was everything you could ask for in a dog: entertaining, loyal and brave to a fault. He survived countless run-ins with racoons, possums, and muskrats. One time he ran away and lived with a Mexican family for two months, so I'm pretty sure he was bilingual.

I really hope all dogs go to heaven.

Carter Blanton

2010-09-06T23:06:00.002-05:00

I’m devoting this post to my friend Carter. We've shared a lot of good times together in Tennessee, California, and Italy.

We’re really different people, Carter and I. He’s all old-school understatement and class. Many people have compared him to an old man. The truth is, Carter just acts like he’s been there, because he has.

A lot of people in our generation don’t know what they want out of life. They spend their twenties wandering aimlessly from place to place and job to job without any real sense of purpose or direction. Not Carter.

Carter Blanton is the epitome of a Southern Gentleman. He’s loyal. He’s a professional at hospitality. And he has a seemingly endless supply of polo shirts.

So here's to many years of friendship to come. I'd wish him success, but he doesn't need it.

Wheelchairs

2010-09-02T23:26:00.000-05:00

Today a man who lives in my apartment building stabbed himself in our lobby. He then wheeled himself out on to the sidewalk where presumably he was seen and taken to the hospital. [The wheelchair was sitting in the middle of crime scene tape on the sidewalk outside the building.]

I saw him the other day, looking particularly sad. I felt like I should talk to him and try to cheer him up.
I didn't. I wasn't brave enough.

Today another man made the world's first ever double backflip in a wheelchair. He was brave enough.

Righteous Indignation

2010-09-02T20:24:00.003-05:00

I'm angry today. I'm really angry. I'm mad as hell, as I'm not going to take it anymore.
I'm tired of running. I'm tired of sitting by while people with the spines of jellyfish slander me or my friends.

Yes, I know that Jesus said "turn the other cheek." Jesus also made a whip and drove the moneychangers out of the temple. He also told one of his best friends "Get behind me Satan." He also told the Pharisees in no uncertain terms that they were a brood of vipers and if they didn't change their ways, they would burn in hell.

You have to stand up for yourself, for your friends, for what you believe in and for those who are too weak or afraid to stand up for themselves.

If you know me at all the next sentence is not going to suprise you.

I hate law school with a passion.

The legal profession may be an honorable one. It may have a place in the better world we will build together. Today however, that profession and its educational institutions are a pit of vipers full of overgrown children. There's a reason that lawyers are the butt of everyone's jokes. There's a reason the legal profession suffers from extremely high levels of substance abuse, depression and suicide.
The profession is sick.

But I digress, that's not what this blog is about.

I hold malice in my heart for no man. I wish no one ill.

Some people though need to a good strong slap across the face.
Some people need to be called out on their bullshit.

If you don't like me for who I am, that's fine. If everyone liked me, I would be doing something wrong.
All I ask is that you be real. Don't act cordial to me when I'm around and then slander me when I'm not.
I would rather you spit in my face.

Grow some balls people. Be real.

I'm not always right. I'm not perfect. If you disagree with me about something, if you think I'm not living up to the principles I espouse, tell me. I will respect that.

Just don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

GNP measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile

2010-09-02T11:17:00.000-05:00

Via Freedomguerrilla This talk is exactly what I was talking about in my last post. Remarkably prescient.

Fight or Flight?

2010-08-29T01:23:00.002-05:00

To the Remnant,

When an animal is attacked instinct screams “fight or flight.” Humans, celestial souls in temporal bodies, are no different. There are many times when it is wise, it is best, it is right to flee the field. Pointless conflict holds no honor.

However, there are many times in life that honor, oaths, beliefs, and our hearts tell us that we must stand and fight.

For my whole life, as a nation, as a people, we’ve been running.

In the words of Jackson Browne: “I look around for the friends that I used to turn to, to pull me through; looking into their eyes I see them running too.”

No generation, ethnic group, or religious creed is immune to the massive “flight” reaction our nation seems to be exhibiting in response to the myriad of problems our world is facing today. Nearly everyone is running.

What do I mean by running? I mean young adults drowning out their anxieties and fears with cheap alcohol and cheaper sex. I mean middle-age men and women resorting to materialism and prescription drugs to allay the same fears. I mean christians sending their children to private academies and moving out of urban areas and into soulless suburbs. I mean a government that refuses to face hard economic facts and instead feeds the indigent with the taxes of its unborn citizens.

Escape is the primary focus of our nation today. Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow? Why engage problems yourself when you can complain about how others aren’t solving them?

This summer I decided that I am tired of running. I’m going to fight for the Kingdom of God, the principles of Western Liberal Democracy, honor, virtue and freedom because even if there is no God, no heaven, no point to the journey we call “life,” I’d still rather live like there is.

If you still believe in something more than the desires within the fragile, fleeting, and weak shell you call a physical body, then I hope you’ll join me.

Open your mind.

Love your neighbor.

Take care of your environment.

Engage your community.

Give out of the joy of your heart.

Remember the fallen.

Care for the hurting.

Comfort the lonely.

Hold up the weak among you.

Never give up.

Never surrender.

These are dark, dark times for our nation and our world.

They will get darker before the dawn.

The winds of change are swirling into a hurricane which will buffet us in ways which few people still alive in this nation have ever experienced.

At these times we must remember that true “courage” is knowing you're probably licked before you begin but beginning anyway and seeing it through no matter what.

Everyone of us a freedom-guerilla.
We stand and fight. Back to back. Shoulder to shoulder.

We fight house to house. Street by street. We target communities, cities, businesses, and institutions. Every person, every mind, every soul is a battleground.

We will leave no man, woman, or child behind.

We will come home with our shields or on them.

And they shall say of us,

“They went with songs to the battle, they were young.

Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.”

let the music keep our spirits high

2010-08-14T00:32:00.002-05:00

nice

2010-08-03T14:27:00.003-05:00

via audioporncentral.com

hot

2010-08-01T07:51:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it takes very little for us to learn that something is bad for us. E.g. touching a hot stove. One touch of the stove at 2 or 3 years old creates a lifetime wariness of hot metal.

Then there are the harmful things which don't ellicit an immediate pain reaction. E.g. Smoking.

Which is the more dangerous of the two?

dream

2010-06-14T13:34:00.000-05:00

I had a dream last night, a very vivid dream.

I was sailing on a huge ship off the coast in another world and we were approaching this string of great sea rocks off the coast. Suddenly we were engaged in battle with a larger ship and I was thrown overboard. I sank and sank into the deep, but as I went deeper it got lighter. The sea was reseding.

I found myself laying on a great tidal plain - endless wet sand - with the rest of the crew. Among us there were many who were injured.

Where the sea rocks had been, now there was a strand of huge, ancient trees rising out of the tidal plain.

In each tree sat a birdman with bright, beautiful feathers. One said to me that they were the "ifrit" (which is a kind of djinn in Arab mythology). The ifrit healed our wounded and then as we prepared to set out again, I awoke.

Needless to say, I was pretty upset to get kicked out of the sweetest dreamworld I've ever found myself in.

Thoughts on the LOST Finale

2010-05-24T20:44:00.001-05:00

Many devoted fans of Lost are up-in-arms over the series finale. They are angry because questions like “who built the statue?” and “what was the Hurley bird?” were left unanswered. While I understand the frustration of questions left unanswered, I think these fans are missing the point.

Lost was not a show about a mysterious island or a show about pseudo-science and/or magic. If you were expecting the finale to have been a two-and-a-half hour documentary covering the island’s history and providing explanations for it’s bizarre phenomenon, you were watching the wrong show. You can find plenty of programs about ancient mysteries and scientific phenomenon on the History, SyFy, Discovery etc.

Lost was a show about people, a core group of characters whose strengths, flaws, desires and backstories were developed over six seasons. In my view the finale provided viewers with proper closure to those characters’ stories. No, it wasn’t perfect, nothing ever is. I personally felt Sayid and Shannon’s reunion felt a bit contrived since so much time had been spent covering Sayid’s search for Nadia.

Beyond the characters, the finale did an excellent job reinforcing what I would call the show’s three primary “messages.”

The first message is a bit cliche’, “true love never dies.” While those specific words were never spoken, the idea was made abundantly clear by the stories of Rose and Bernard, Charlie and Claire, and most significantly, Desmond and Penny. While this is a lovely, romantic idea, I am glad those words remained unsaid.

Despite the inspiring nature of Lost’s love stories, they were never as important as the show’s second message: the importance of the familial, agape love that developed between the show’s main characters. This message was embodied in Jack’s motto “live together, or die alone.” Almost every major plot turn in the show, from the predations of the Others to being thrown around in time, required the Losties to work together to survive. Everything the characters went through served to strengthen the unspoken bonds or trust and love between them.

To me, “live together or die alone” is is a particularly prescient message. Lost began with a plain crash on a (seemingly) deserted island. This is much the same scenario presented in the once hugely popular “reality” show Survivor. Survivor’s motto: “outwit, outlast, outplay,” is a perfect example of modern America’s it’s-either-you-or-me, individualist culture. There is nothing “real” about Survivor. In the real world you are constantly forced to rely on those around you, even if you don’t realize it (e.g. how well do you think you’d make out if there were were no police in the world?).

Today’s culture too often dismisses the importance of cooperation and community. What else can be expected from a nation which views Ayn Rand as a saint and Karl Marx as a demon? During our decades-long struggle to defeat the threat of monolithic, authoritarian communism we placed ever-higher levels of emphasis on the free market system, self-reliance and our individual desires. The 20th century’s “American Dream” was at its core about attaining a comfortable level of isolation: moving to the suburbs (so our kids won’t have to go to school with “their” kids), buying a three-bedroom house with a yard (no more noisy upstairs neighbors or sharing a room with a sibling) and a car for every adult (who wants to ride a bus?).

I do not mean to say that self-reliance, freedom of choice and freedom of expression are not important principles; they just aren’t the most important principles. We have forgotten that in reality we must always live together or we will die alone.

The third message, “whatever happened, happened,” reminds us that no matter how many times we revisit our past mistakes, we can never change them (even if we live in a world with magical time travel). I struggle with this all the time. I’ve made more than my share of mistakes over the last 24 years. My main comfort is that I believe most of my mistakes have stemmed from wrong actions, not inaction. But whatever happened, happened; we learn, we keep going.

So those are the reasons I really enjoyed the finale. If you didn’t enjoy it, I’m sorry. But hey: whatever happened, happened.

LO[ur]ST[own]

2010-05-24T18:47:00.007-05:00

There’s been an unsurprisingly large amount of griping concerning the finale of LOST. In my next post I’ll explain why I think the episode ended the series nearly perfectly.

Right now I just want to make a couple of quick observations regarding similarities I noticed between the finale and Thorton Wilder’s classic play, Our Town, likely the most performed play in the history of American theatre.

In Act 3 of Our Town the character Emily, recently deceased, is allowed to relive a day of her life. In the final season of LOST, the deceased Losties relive their lives as if they had never crashed on the Island.

Through reliving a day in her life, Emily was able to see and understand how little importance people actually place upon their interactions with their loved ones. In death Emily has become aware of how precious and fleeting life is. After Emily reliving her 12th birthday, she speaks to the character referred to as the Stage Manager, who serves as the play’s narrator. She asks if whether anyone realizes the preciousness of life while they live it, and he replies, “No. The saints and poets, maybe--they do some."

At the end of the finale, after the series’ foremost protagonist, Jack, has relived a portion of his life and has come to realize he is in fact dead, he speaks to his father. Jack’s father, the bluntly named Christian Shepherd, explains that the Losties have come together in limbo/purgatory/heaven’s lobby so that they can move on together, because the most important part of their lives was the time they spent together.

While not mirror images, Emily and Jack’s revelations both point to the timeless and oft-ignored truth that the most important part of our short time on Earth is the time we spend with those we love, the things we share (e.g. births, celebrations, work), and the times that we carry each others burdens.

Both Our Town and LOST end with a scene in the afterlife, where the characters sit together, still, and facing the audience. They are characters we have come to understand. People who are both flawed and beautiful. Looking at the them, on stage or on the screen, we are meant to see ourselves. Looking at them, we remember that everyone dies, and though we are alone, we are alone together; and that hopefully, someday, we will never be alone.

blog roll

2010-04-19T23:44:00.000-05:00

I believe in:

sustainability,

peak oil,

and urbanism/newurbanism.

I currently keep up with the following blogs which focus on those ideas:

Freedom Guerilla

Dimitri Orlov

James Howard Kunstler

Charles Hugh Smith

Emergent Urbanism

The Bellows

New Urbanism Blog

Becoming a Good Human

WebEcoist

James Kunstler also has an excellent podcast that you can listen to hear.

A Conversation with Pate

2010-04-16T10:55:00.000-05:00

Pate: So, why does she hang with them?

Me: For the same reason most people in their twenties "hangout" with people: mobility means that people go to college in different places than where they grew up and then move to another city to work or go to grad school. Our generation is constantly forced to establish new social groups because our nation no longer participates in the old organizations like bowling leagues, bridge clubs, etc.

Pate: Right Putnam and all that.

Me: We end up establishing "drinking crews" of coworkers. Alcohol provides a social lubricant which allows you to "like" a group of people you have nothing in common w/ besides location and job.

Pate: But part of the Bowling Alone phenomenon is people not moving back home after school.

Me: Yup, exactly. We came to believe that moving home was failure, that "going out into the world" meant success; anything else meant complacency and fear of the unknown.

Pate: Like in October Sky. Where the only way out of the mine is a football scholarship, until the boys build a rocket. We were taught that small town=death from the black lung. At least figuratively.

Me: Yup, which is reinforced by the reality that jobs with upward mobility are largely located in a few major cities.

Pate: Right. I mean, for me personally, it would have been failure to get stuck moving home, because you can't do what I want to do in Lenoir City.

Me: Memphis isn't really one of those cities, which means that educated 20-somethings here are not only in the "where are my friends?" state, but also without a ton of people in the same position and the accompanying communities of hipsters and yuppies you find in cities like NYC, LA, SF, and even Nashville

Me: There is an additional factor: the American system accustoms us over 17 or more years of education to building friend groups from people in our schools. We are never forced to make friends with neighbors or people with similar beliefs in our city.

Pate: Right.

Me: So becoming accustomed to that takes us years, some never do it

Pate: We are 25 before we actually get to choose our friends by anything except proximity.

Me: Yup, doesn't that seem like a system which would naturally breed lonliness, anxiety, depression and "boredom"? As well as an increasing lack of social cohesion

Pate: Yeah.

Me: Our society's answer is to self-medicate via: mass media, prescription drugs, weed, and alcohol. As well as to remain connected via social media and vacations to the friends we really like.

It's that time of year again

2010-04-08T19:38:00.005-05:00

Spring is in the air, quite literally. My car is covered in a layer of greenish, sticky pollen. Finals are once again approaching, and so I will be temporarily withdrawing from the social media world. However, I thought I'd leave you with some of my current thoughts on social media.

Last night's episode of South Park dealt with the time consuming and often annoying entity which is facebook. Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman have become obsessed with Facebook, but Stan wants no part in it.

Unfortunately his friends have already made Stan a Facebook profile and he is soon drawn into the insane world of social media, quite literally. You can watch the episode in its entirety here.

The part of this episode which struck me the hardest was the character of Kip Drordy, a sweet but awkward student who has 0 facebook friends. Kyle feels sorry for Kip and adds him as a friend. Kip is ecstatic to have a new "friend."

Unfortunately Kyle is eventually forced to "defriend" Kip because he is "bad friend stock" and is turning Kyle into something of an outcast himself.

I know it's ridiculous, but I actually felt sorry for Kip. I was a huge nerd in elementary and middle school. I doubt I would have 0 facebook friends, but I certainly wouldn't have had more than a handful. Middle school is an especially hard time for most kids, there is a constant LordoftheFlieseque struggle to keep from being on the bottom of the social ladder.

Now imagine being in middle school and being on Facebook. Even if you don't really want to be on Facebook you would know that absence would be just as conspicuous as your presence. So Facebook could easily become the perfect measuring tool for the popular kids and bullies to determine just who is "unpopular" or "nerdy." Maybe the cut off is having less than 50 friends, maybe it's 100, it doesn't matter. Furthermore, photos, events, groups, and videos allow the elites of the middle school world to quickly broadcast their inclusion and self-created importance to their social inferiors.

Social media is an exciting AND frightening new frontier in interpersonal interaction. The membership and influence of flasgship websites like Facebook and Twitter is growing exponentially.

The latest estimate is that 116,010,760 Americans have a Facebook profile. Via Mashable.

That's over 1/3 of the American population, not excluding small children and the elderly.

Everyone is getting on Facebook.

Social media is quickly becoming the primary way many people: communicate with friends and family; network and find jobs; learn about new music, t.v. programs, music and movies; express their political and religious beliefs; and even keep up with current events.

Isn't it time that people with foresight and knowledge [behavioral psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and ministers (and yes, even lawyers)] begin to not only observe and study social media interaction, but explain it to us? To provide their fellow citizens, their clients, their friends and fellow believers with their insight and advice? Isn't it time for our culture to consider guidelines for the ethical,healthy, and responsible use of social media?

Why? Why not just let everyone figure it out for themselves?

We are already seeing the results of that approach, and they aren't pretty:

An angry and immature mother's MySpace hoax leads to a girl's suicide. Story.

Students expelled for drunken photos posted online.

Employees fired for online indiscretions.

How far does it have to go before we as a society realize that we are interacting in ways that people never have before? Before we realize that our lives are now more open, and consequently more vulnerable, than they ever were before?

Ben Stiller's mashups... wtf

2010-03-29T21:34:00.008-05:00

Ben Stiller (Mashup Germany) consistently puts out awesome mashups. Well, at least mashups that sound awesome until about half way through the song. Then, out of nowhere, Stiller will insert a completely incongruous sample.

Example: Matisyahu vs. John Lennon vs. Blink 182 vs. Bob Marley vs. Gentleman - Imagine One Day (so far away)

This song is awesome until about 1:20 when Blink 182 comes in. WTF. Why? If Stiller would just cut out the crappy middle school pop-punk and add more Lennon or Marley, this mashup would be killer.

Example 2: David Guetta feat. Akon vs. Mashup-Germany - Sexy Bitch in Memphis

Hotel California? WTF? WHY?!

I want you to know I understand

2010-03-24T20:54:00.002-05:00

we all carry our own burdens

are covered with our own scars

I wonder

if we could touch each others’ hearts

broken, burned, and ripped apart

pieces stitched together again and again

their edges frayed

some hardened

others worn raw and bleeding

if we could hear each others’ thoughts

the recent regrets

the old fears

the unspoken longings, and

constant insecurities

if we could see each others’ stories

in vibrant colors and 3D

parts bright and dreamy

like childhood polaroid pictures

others dark and gritty

with more pathos than The Glass Menagerie

I wonder

if we could touch each others’ hearts

broken, burned, and ripped apart

and know that

we all carry our own burdens

are covered with our own scars

addendum

2010-03-20T20:22:00.000-05:00

A while back I posted my favorite zombie movies.

I'd like to add "Return of the Living Dead 2," if for no other reason than that at about 1:23 there is this awesome cameo of Michael Jackson's zombie from Thriller:

Yes, that's the MJ zombie being electocuted. Pure Awesomeness.

The "Return of the Living Dead" movies are hilarious zomcom romps. They're also the reason that zombies eat brains.

Here's the trailer:

MASHUPTOP10¡Ay, caramba!

2010-03-19T14:30:00.001-05:00

Hey ya'll, it's the weekend.

Here's my current 10 favorite mashups (minus the obvious, and now over-played, U.S. of Pop 2009: Blame it On the Pop). Criteria? I like listening to it. BAM.

10. Pour Some Hot Sugar on Me - A Plus D

9. I Want to Get Away - Mashup Germany

8. I Fucking Bleed Purple and Gold- Super Mash Bros.

7. Use the Same Old Song - Mighty Mike

6. I Got More than a Feeling -MADMIXMUSTANG

5. If I were a Free Fallin' Boy- Earworm

4. Walkin' Out Yo Girlfriend

3. Always With You - Divide & Kreate

2. Good Girls Burn Miami - Titus Jones

And... #1 BAM

1. Forever vs. Halo - Pinto

Ya'll have a great weekend.

My Parents Were Awesome

2010-03-16T20:26:00.001-05:00

Don't Mess with Memphis

2010-03-01T14:39:00.007-06:00

A while back my good friend Amy L. jokingly allerted me that Memphis had been listed as the #3 "Most Miserable City in America" by Forbes Magazine. This sort of Memphis bashing is surprisingly common place, and I've written in regards to it before.

Growing up in Clarksville, TN, an ex-urb of Nashville all I ever really heard about Memphis growing up was that it was dirty, poor, crime-ridden, and filled with "them" (i.e. black people). There's a running "joke" that Tennessee should sell Memphis to Arkansas or Mississippi (a ludicrous idea which if feasable would actually remove a huge chunk of TN's economy, history, and culture). I'm not bashing middle Tennessee here, I was born and raised in middle Tennessee and I love it.

The negativity Memphis drew was strange to me because my family has strong connections to Memphis, my dad's siblings and his aunt live here, and my experiences in Memphis had been overwhelmingly positive. When I was younger I would often spend a week or two in Memphis during the summertime, staying with my Aunt Karen and taking swimming lessons from my Aunt Michele. I loved Memphis. Memphis was a great place to be a kid; there was the pink palace, the zoo, big parks and great food (all stuff Clarksville lacked).

Then in high school I spent a month at the University of Memphis for the Tennessee Governor's School for International Studies. We visited the National Civil Rights Museum, the South Main Arts District, Beale Street, and of course the Zoo (they had just received two pandas from China). I even met one of Ghandi's grandsons who was in town for the annual Ghandi-King Conference on Peacemaking. That summer I really fell in love with Memphis.

When it came time apply for college I applied to both Rhodes College and the University of Memphis. Although I ended up attending Pepperdine, when it came time for me to apply to law school the U. of M. was honestly my first choice.

So yes, I love Memphis, and the Forbes post hit home. So when IloveMemphis mentioned Mayor Wharton's letter for Forbes today, I was estatic.

I encourage you to read it. But here's the heart of the letter:

Memphis is not a miserable city, not by any definition, not by any metric....

Memphis is a city of joy. You can hear it coming up from our high school gymnasiums and football fields every Friday evening. You can hear it rocking on Beale Street late every Saturday night. You can hear it in our churches every Sunday morning....

Memphis is a city of resilience. Floods, fire, pestilence, and poverty may have tested us, but they have never broken us. We are a city built on a bluff, positioned to withstand storms that other cities cannot. If the rates of unemployment, high school drop outs, and crime are to be our new battlegrounds, then we will join those fights, and we will prevail. For all of the problems you might show me, I can point to a legion of government agencies, non-profit organizations, churches, volunteer groups, and grassroots activists working together as one Memphis to find the solutions.

Maybe it’s something in our water. Maybe it’s something in our soil. I think it’s something in our souls that makes us Memphians. We know who we are – and miserable is not part of the definition.

We know too that our city’s song is not complete. It is being written every day, and it is sung by a chorus of hopeful, energetic voices that will resonate for generations.

Covers

2010-02-28T15:59:00.001-06:00

I love cover songs. This probably dates back to my highschool "emo" phase when I was obsessed with "Punk Goes Pop" for some strange reason.

A cover song is truly great when it takes a song you know already and just completely flips it around. So here's ten of my favorites. I haven't included any of the amazing covers (Buckley, Wainright, JT) or Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" because they could probably fill up a blog post of their own. Also, I didn't consider songs first made famous as a "cover" (e.g. Hendrix performing Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower").

In no particular order:

A.A. Bondy: Bruce Spingsteen's "I'm on Fire"

(couldn't find a video)

Ben Lee: MGMT's "Kids"

Bright Eyes: Elliott Smith's "The Biggest Lie"

The Gaslight Anthem: Kelly Clarkson's "I do not Hook Up"

Wilco: Daniel Johnston's "True Love Will Find You in the End"

Magnolia Electric Company: Warren Zevon's "Lawyers, Guns, and Money"

(mainly because I love this song, and not because it's a particularly novel take on it)

Matt the Electrician: Journey's "Faithfully"

Rufus Wainright: Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel"

(embedding was disabled, but this is by far the best version)

Stevie Wonder: The Beatles' "We Can Work it Out"

... BAM

And finally, a personal favorite-

Steve Carell & Dane Cook: Pete Townshend's "Let My Love Open the Door"

David Guetta in Music Videos

2010-02-19T15:03:00.000-06:00

Last night Pat and I went to see Maria Sharapova at the The Racquet Club of Memphis.
After we came home, we ended up randomly watching the video for "I've got a feeling."

I noticed that David Guetta makes a random appearance in the video (he apparently produced the song) at the party with Will.I.Am, Fergie and those other two people in Black Eyed Peas.

So, I decided to watch basically every video Guetta has ever made.

First up there's "Sexy Bitch" or "Sexy Chick" with Akon. (Guetta has requested youtube not let his videos be imbedded for some reason, so I have to use links.)
I love how there are all these ridiculous scenes in this video of Akon and Guetta playing in an around a pool. It's like the reunion scene at the end of a cheesy 1980's buddy comedy.

There is a certain awkwardness to all of Guetta's videos because no sound ever comes out of his mouth. It's like Akon or Kelly Rolland are sharing the video with a mixmaster mime. On that note, Kelly Rolland who? Wait, Beyonce wasn't always a solo artist? You're shitting me.

Then there is Guetta's "Love is Gone" video, a real acid trip piece. I think it would be a stretch to say that the director spent more than 20 minutes planning the "story." Once again Guetta makes an inexplicable cameo, this time reading a book entitled "The Essentials of Trigonometry."

Finally: "Every Time We Touch," one more Guetta video that looks undistinguishable froma GAP ad.

I seriously can't tell whether this man has achieved a heretofore unseen level of self awareness and irony, OR if he actually thinks these videos look "cool." Seriously Guetta, it's 2010 here, not 1993.

Winter

2010-02-08T20:50:00.000-06:00

It was another nasty day here in Memphis. Woke up to a text from Pate at about 6am telling me that school was cancelled. Then mom called me at 7:30 to ask about snow and Patrick woke me up again at 8, also to tell me it had snowed.

When Pat got off work we drove to Arkansas to get some groceries (it's cheaper).

We came home and made breakfast for dinner.

Pat really enjoyed it.

Now I am tired and going to bed early. Goodnight.

Don't settle.

2010-02-03T13:54:00.000-06:00

(photo via ilovememphisblog.com)

yeomen farmers and sharecroppers

2010-02-02T16:19:00.001-06:00

"Farming is everybody's bread and butter" (bumper sticker on my grandpa's truck)

I grew up on farms like this one:

(yes, my grandfather's truck lacks a drivers' side door)

And this one:

(that's my backyard)

It's weird to me that so many people in this country have never even been to a farm. Most Americans have lost all connection to the soil, and whether you live in LA or NOLA, it is the soil which keeps you and I alive. Farmers feed you at every meal, every day.

Farms are beautiful, wonderful places. Places where I learned about how plants, animals, and people grow. Places where I learned about seasons: nature's seasons, and the seasons of life.

My grandfather is old now, but he still tends his farm, the same farm my mother and aunts grew up on.

When I think of "home" I think of a farm somewhere in the green, rolling hills of Tennessee. A place where you can reach out and touch "life"; a place where I feel a part of time, feel connected to my family, and remember who I am, and where I came from.

To that land every drop of my blood, every fiber of my being, every pulsation of my heart, is consecrated forever. I was born of her womb; I was nurtured at her breast; and when my last hour shall come, I pray GOD that I may be pillowed upon her bosom and rocked to sleep within her tender and encircling arms. - Edward Ward Carmack (1858-1908), United States Representative, Tennessee

When you're on top of the world

2010-02-02T11:00:00.002-06:00

Sometimes the only place to go is down.

I love mac. I own a MacBook and an Iphone, and somewhere a second-gen ipod.

But this week's announcement of the "Ipad" was disapointing. When you've produced two highly revolutionary devices (Ipod and Iphone) in the last decade the temptation to crank out another must be overwhelming. But Ipad? Really?

Then comes Toyota. I grew up in Toyotas. My family had owned at least 10 Toyota automobiles since I was a kid (we're now fully transitioned into Hondas). My first car was a 96' Camry. I was an unwaivering believer in the quality of Toyota products.

But when you develop the kind of consumer trust that Toyota has enjoyed, it is unfortunately all too easy to lower your standards.

Hopefully both Mac and Toyota will learn from these mistakes (I'm assuming Ipad will eventually be seen as a mistake), and return to what made them great: quality.

blogging

2010-02-01T22:32:00.001-06:00

I'd really like to write something interesting. But I can't force it out.

I've had all these epiphanies lately, the big kinds.

It's hard to put big, beautiful, wonderful things you realize about your life down into words. Especially when you're handicapped by not being a particularly good writer.

Here's a small thought:

Women + Children = Beautiful.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the kind of woman I want to end up with some day.

One major requirement: she has to love kids.

I love kids. I want kids. Yeah, I'm 24 and sometimes, sometimes I feel that "nesting" instinct kicking in.

This is my cousin Laney (and that is MY corn, which she stole off my plate). Someday, I want a daughter like her.

Climate Change

2009-12-06T11:56:00.001-06:00

This whole "scandal" thing is really screwing with my worldview/life plans.

However, even if climate change isn't real, I'm going to continue to live as if it was. Why? Because I believe that people should either have a positive impact on the environment or none at all... whenever possible.

Just because our cars' CO2 emissions may or may not be causing the Earth's temperature to rise is not the only reasons we should be concerned about the environment. [That sentence makes a lot more sense in my head than it does when read outloud.]

We still have lots of things to worry about environmentally/economically/socio-politically speaking, e.g. peak oil, peak water, mass extinction, and the violent global robot revolution (fyi, robots are the new zombies).

New Blog

2009-12-05T22:33:00.001-06:00

So I shut down b4td for a while in order to pursue some other blog ideas.

My first idea "Preapocalyptic" has temporarily been shelved because I decided it's hard to write about the apocalypse all the time if you're not crazy (ok, if you're not REALLY crazy).

My second idea, "the bachelor blog" was taken. I'm still firmly committed to blogging about what it's like to be a single twenty-something dude living in Memphis, eating mac n' cheese, playing x-box 360, watching too many movies on Netflix, etc. But, I'm waiting a while to debut it, mainly because I am lazy.

In other news, I have grown some SWEET mutton chops.

Social Media, the End of Living?

2009-10-15T19:10:00.006-05:00

The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it. - Morpheus

My roommate Pierce went to a Wilco concert here in Memphis last Saturday. At the concert, Wilco's lead singer asked the audience not to film. Then he added these remarks (ironically posted on youtube):

My roommate Pat got a job recently. At his job he researches social media. He reads books on social media. He tries to improve his twitter ranking.

To do this he has downloaded a program called "Tweedeck."

I downloaded Tweetdeck. Suddenly every few seconds my laptop would beep and a tiny little black and red box would tell me that one of my friends had a new status update

or tweet.

So I wonder what is the real cost of social media?

Why do I need to know what 1,000 people are doing today?

Why do I care if other people know what I am doing right now?

I've blogged about this before.

But my mind keeps coming back to it.

I can't help but wonder: what are we doing to ourselves?

This guy over at Orion had some interesting thoughts on this conundrum.

"Addiction, neurologists say, changes the physical shape of our brains. Each time... another text message, another headline, another update, my brain injects a little dopamine into a reward pathway. 'You’ve got mail!' squeals the computer and—whoosh!—here comes a shot of dopamine...WHAT IF, while you read the last few paragraphs, something in the world has changed? What if, during the past five minutes, someone, somewhere, sent you a text? Shouldn’t you go and check?"

We weren't always like this. We didn't always have to document every moment of our waking lives. People used to just live.

We used to have cameras, but cameras were difficult enough and expensive enough that we only used them on special occasions like family vacations and weddings.

Then came digital cameras, the internet, cell-phones, cell-phone cameras, and of course the real catalysts for the way we now live, or don't live, our lives: myspace, youtube, facebook, and twitter.

And at some point I actually found myself playing farmville, a game where I pretend to maintain a farm. Why? I don't fucking know. Everyone else was doing it?

The crazy thing about farmville is that my parents have a farm, and so do my grandparents. But those are real farms. Farms that grew real plants and real trees. Farms where people put in real work, real sweat, and real blood and tears.

What is social media doing to us? What has it done to me?

I'm going to be taking another break for a while- not deleting my accounts this time, but not checking them either. If you need to contact me, please e-mail me at austin.maness@memphis.edu or call me.

update

2009-09-19T00:17:00.001-05:00

nope- not that one either.

more thoughts

2009-09-17T20:37:00.002-05:00

I'm going to be honest in this one. If any of the five people who actually read this blog are bothered by that, I'm sorry.

I don't have a theme for this blog like a lot of people. It's really just a place for me to write down whatever I'm thinking. So here's what's on my mind.

Have you ever been laying in bed next to someone and it just felt right? It's a beautiful, wonderful, warm, happy, blissful, feeling that you just don't want to end- like saturday mornings when you were a kid and you wanted to the cartoons to just keep coming (or something like that). I haven't felt that way in I don't know how long. I have felt that way before, but I can't really remember when it was exactly.

Now, have you ever been laying in bed next to someone and it just felt wrong? Awkward? Like it just didn't fit? Something was out of place, namely that other person in the bed. You just want that person to be gone, to never have been there at all. That's most of what I've felt, whenever I've been "with" someone (get your minds out of the gutter), for a long time now (at least a year).

I guess that's the long way of me saying that I've been lonely for a while now. Not "friend" lonely. I have great friends, amazing friends even. I have creative, helpful, caring, wonderful friends. I don't mean that kind of lonely.

I mean love-lonely.

Love lonely is different- it's a "something's missing and I can't put my finger on it but damn so much of this feels empty" sort of feeling.

So, yeah, back to the awkward person in my bed. It's not that I can't date people. I have dated people, several people. I have had opportunities to pursue several women since this all began, but for some damn reason I haven't had any interest in any of them.

To me it's worse to be "with" someone just to be "with" someone, than to be alone completely.

If she doesn't do anything for me in my heart, it just feels pointless.

I've met a lot of nice girls.

None of them have done anything for me.

I thought I met one a while back. I think she might of felt the same way. I think the truth is both of us were just wishing we were really into each other, and the truth was, well, we didn't fit.

I'm rambling, sorry.

So yeah, it's weird because it seems these days like everyone is getting married. Even people who well, honestly, I never thought would find someone.

And here I am, not married, not even interested in someone. I'm a true bachelor. 100%. I eat pasta and frozen pizza. I play video games with my roommates. I stay up to late. I drink too much beer. I don't know how much of that I can change on my own. I'm rambling.

So yeah, I guess I'll keep trudging along, occasionally screwing up and feeling guilty about it. Trying to "meet a nice girl at church" which is fucking ludicrous because all the nice girls at church seem to be married or engaged or well, completely unattractive to me.

I'm not unhappy, I'm just confused. It wasn't always like this. Did I miss my chance(s)?

Is this just the way it's going to be?

I've got a date tomorrow night, with a girl who seems nice. Who knows, maybe this one will work out. If not, there's always beer and pizza.

2009-09-16T15:26:00.001-05:00

i am a leaf on the wind

watch me soar.

thoughts

2009-09-05T00:00:00.002-05:00

Food should be filling, and tasty. Who the hell cares what food looks like?

Music should stir something within your soul. Who the hell cares what anyone else thinks about what music you listen to?

You should live where YOU want to live: where you feel at home, or where you want to be.

However, just because you feel "comfortable" somewhere doesn't necessarily mean that's where you're supposed to be.

I think I may move to Detroit after I graduate.

I can't get Detroit off my mind.

It's like this great, epic, dying city is crying out to me. Telling me it's not dead yet. Asking for help.

Ethics Reading

2009-08-22T19:15:00.003-05:00

Several Years ago, Justice Harry Blackmun said that if he had his life to live over again, he would like to be a medical doctor. At the time he was a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. One would think that he was at the pinnacle of his career. Why would anyone want to trade that to become a doctor. One person who heard the story suggested, "People often want to be doctors so that they can help people."

But lawyers help people too. Granted, unlike engineers, we construct no bridges. Unlike doctors, we mend no bones. Unlike architects, we design no buildings. Unlike artists, we paint no portraits. There is little that we do that the human hand can touch. But- if we are doing our jobs properly- we take on other people's burdens, we relieve stress, we pursue Justice. We enable mankind to live a more peaceful and just life. We take the veneer of civilization and make it a little thicker.

-Morgan & Rotunda, Professional Responsibility, 10th ed.

I don't know if I agree. Sometimes I think I'd rather be building bridges

Tennessee

2009-08-22T14:09:00.004-05:00

Text from Carter: You always were more of a Memphian than a Nashvillian

My Reply: Never really been either bro, just a small town Tennessean who tries to make the best of wherever I am.

So yeah, I've written a lot of about Memphis this year, but that's just because that's where I'm living right now.

The truth is, I love Tennessee in general. Yeah, Tennessee definitely has it's negatives: white trash, rednecks, an extremely regressive sales tax, pompous evangelical churches, lingering racism, etc.

On the other hand, it is the musical heartland of America: Blues, Rock N' Roll, Country, Rockabilly, Soul, Gospel, Bluegrass, and Alt-country all came out of Tennessee.

You can't beat our barbeque, our catfish, our our meat n' three's.

Tennessee produced Andrew Jackson, one of the greatest men in American history. Don't like Jackson? Well you can thank him for the state of florida and the very existence of the U.S. for his military genius at the Battle of New Orleans; so bite me.

Yes, I may be a little more "Memphis" than "Nashville," but I still love our capital (even if it is painfully yuppified). It's a beautiful city, with gorgeous neighborhoods, great parks, good food, live music, and yes, a full-scale replica of the Parthenon.

So yeah, come to Tennessee, I can guarantee you'll like it.

hydra.

2009-08-21T08:45:00.006-05:00

woke up this morning a little hung-over, found this in my inbox:

Hey Austin,

I hope I have the right address -- if so, we spoke a while back for my article in The Chronicle of Higher Education about JuicyCampus.com

I'm doing another article on a related topic. It turns out several new gossip sites have popped up hoping to be the new JuicyCampus. One is campusgossip.com. another is collegeacb.com. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are about these sites? Do you think some sort of site will pop up to replace JuicyCampus? If so, what do you think students should do about these new ones?

Thanks for your time,
-Jeff

My reply:

Jeff,

Not a problem.

Sure, there will probably be more web 2.0 sites that pop up to fill the niche left empty by juicycampus.com. What do I think college students should do about them? Honestly, nothing. While we intended to make a principled stand, and I do not regret our decision to ban juicycampus.com, in the end we only drew more publicity to the site. Like I've said before, the internet is a free-marketplace of ideas. People make their own decisions as to what information they choose to consume there. I sincerely believe that few people are perverse enough to enjoy such a base and degrading sort of website, and that any that is created will eventually fail due to its own inherent lameness.

-Austin

home

2009-08-20T07:31:00.003-05:00

I think Memphis suits my personality perfectly.

Loud, southern, outlandish, and a little shady....ok, really shady.

I love it here- so glad I can say that now.

Kings

2009-08-17T22:58:00.001-05:00

What happened? You were so promising...

RIP John Hughes

2009-08-06T16:29:00.003-05:00

I just heard that writer/director John Hughes died today.

I just can't say enough about this man- he was probably one of the most underrated directors of all time. No, he never directed a "Casablanca" or a "Citizen Kane," but to be honest, I think his work was more important.

Yes, I am serious. Sure, Citizen Kane is "the greatest film of all time" blah blah blah, but I can guarantee that Hughes' work brought more joy into the hearts of the American viewing public than anything in AFI's Top Ten. Joy is important. Laughter is important. John Hughes, was a very important man. God bless you Mr. Hughes.

Here's just a couple of my faves.

The New Apt.

2009-08-05T22:06:00.004-05:00

We've decided to call it 'The Wolves' Den" since it's located in the old Wolf Brothers' Department Store.

We've still got a lot of work to do interior decorating wise.

I told you so...

2009-08-05T09:32:00.004-05:00

One more article about why having more than a kid or two is just plain irresponsible...

save the planet.

and my older blog post on this subject

wow...

2009-07-01T01:12:00.001-05:00

"andy never forget that the laws which bind society are not the same as the laws which bind revolutionaries - if you know a way to make things better, but it seems unrealistic, abandon all doubt and follow the will of God." - me, age 19.

How far we've come.

My Top 5 Favorite Zombie Movies of All Time

2009-06-24T01:30:00.004-05:00

If you know me, you know that I love Zombie movies (“z-movies”). In anticipation of the the upcoming “Zombieland” (which looks SICK), I decided to put up a short list of my five favorite z-movies of all time.

The criteria for this list? 1) High production quality 2) Excitement 3) High Zombie-body count 4) Humor.

#5: 28 Days Later

Some purists will tell you that 28 Days is not a zombie movie because the “zombies” are actually just people infected by a virus AND they don’t need head-shots to be killed. However, in my humble opinion, 28 Days is a z-movie; and the genre owes a lot to it. 28 Days later was probably the first z-movie with a decent budget, and it inspired the zombie-renaissance of the early 21st century. 28 Days is dark, no comedy here, but the cinematography and the acting are excellent. It earns a major bonus on my scale for the appearance of the tenth Doctor (i.e. Dr. Who) Christopher Eccleston as a fascist army commander. WARNING: the sequel sucks.

#4: Dawn of the Dead (1978)

George Romero is undoubtedly the God Father or all things Zombie. He came back with a vengeance with Land of the Dead, but sadly, it just did not live up to my expectations. On the other hand, despite a low-budget and cheesy 1970’s effects, the original Dawn of the Dead still rocks! Why? Redneck hunters combing the countryside on a zombie-safari; a mad-maxesque biker gang slaying zombies in a mall; AND an excellent screen play. Perhaps this movie’s biggest draw-back is that it lacks intentional humor.

#3: Dance of the Dead

This movie is definitely the dark horse of this list. It’s an indy film, with a fairly low-budget. BUT, the production quality, the acting, and even the soundtrack are awesome. The premise? “We’re going to prom to kick some Zombie ass!” This movie is fun, entertaining, and downright hilarious.

#2: Dawn of the Dead (2003)

I cannot say enough about this movie. Watching it during my senior year of high school inspired my love of z-movies. This movie DOES NOT STOP; from the first twenty minutes until the awesome finale, it’s a non-stop zombie-killing joy ride. The soundtrack is probably the best soundtrack ever made for a Zombie movie (e.g. “When the Man Comes Around,” Johnny Cash); and the cast is awesome (e.g. Ving Rhames). Humor? What could be funnier that watching the protagonists playing a sniper game and naming targets by the celebrities they resemble?

#1: World War Z (TBA)

No, I have not seen this movie. No, it has not even begun production. BUT, the book was amazing; and I can promise you that with J. Michael Straczynski writing the screen play and Plan B producing, this will be the greatest z-movie of all time. IMDB

Honorable Mentions

These movies are great, but I wanted to keep this post relatively short.

Shaun of the Dead, Army of Darkness, Night of the Living Dead (1968), Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, House of the Dead, Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

withheld vices.

2009-06-20T10:49:00.002-05:00

I hung out with a girl this spring who was big on the don’ts.

The things you’re not “supposed” to do.

I feel like that mindset is one of the major weaknesses of today’s evangelical christianity.

The petty morality of withheld vices speaks little of the hue of a human soul.

While i do not believe in predestination,

At times i feel some of us are born with a better compass.

A few out there have hearts oriented towards true north.

or perhaps some just listen to that little voice inside them,

that asks them to do the hardest thing of all:

to be selfless.

And that’s what I believe really matters- the doing. Yeah there are things you shouldn’t do. BUT if you focus just on the don’ts... well you don’t ever “do” jack s***.

Life is about action; not inaction.

family vacation

2009-06-14T10:52:00.004-05:00

For the first time in several years I am on a family vacation. As an only child, the whole "family vacation" model functions a little differently.

Here's are some +'s and -'s so far...

+ Dad/CEMC foots the bill.

-Mom constantly reminding of girls I have dated, how wonderful they were, and how she can't believe I didn't marry them.

+Spending 9 days with my family.

-Spending 9 days with my family.

+I'm back in California for the first time in over a year.

-I'm back in California, and it makes me wonder why I really love Memphis so much...

+ Double-Doubles.

-Everyone is so damn beautiful out here.

+ You can buy wine and liquor in grocery stores!

- I'm on a vacation with my mom, and every-time I drink I'm reminded of the "long-history of alcoholism" in my family. Yes mom, our family was primarily poor-scott-irish-sharecroppers- I hope for their sakes they were alcoholics.

Random Post

2009-06-11T12:48:00.002-05:00

I love Doctor Who.

It makes me sad every time I think about the fact that David Tennant is leaving the show.

I'm the Doctor
Uploaded by silent_howl. - Check out other Film & TV videos.

violence, or the threat of it, IS often the answer

2009-06-04T16:24:00.006-05:00

Yes, I believe in violence, or at least in the threat of it (this has absolutely nothing to do with my neo-con training with FDD).

So here's the reason I'm writing this post, an excerpt from President Obama's speech to the Muslim world today:

"Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered."

First off, I liked the speech. This post is not about the speech, but this excerpt got me thinking...

**Disclaimer: I am a huge Israel supporter. I believe in a unified Jerusalem under Israeli control; and I despise Hamas. This blog in no way is intended to support the violent actions of any specific group.***

Now, let's talk about violence, starting with the excerpt-

Obama said, "For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding."

This statement is patently false. It was violence, and the threat of it, that gave African Americans their rights.

Step 1: The American Revolution- a violent, bloody war fought to give this nation independence and establish that "all men are created equal."

Step 2: The Civil War- another war, much bloodier too, which provided the opportunity for the emancipation proclamation and 13th amendment (the two of which established the legal fiction of African American equality).

Step 3: The Civil Rights Movement- non-violent? Yes, but.

BUT, it is my firmly held belief that without the presence of men like Malcolm X ("by any means necessary") who were ready and willing to resort to violence if need be, MLK and his compatriots would not have succeeded nearly as quickly.

White people were afraid of the possibility of a violent black uprising- and that was a good thing.

People generally act in their own self interest, at least subconsciously. Sometimes, they need a push; they need to be afraid in order to accept change.

Does non-violent protest work? Yes, sometimes. It works most often in democratic societies with a free press. But even then, it often needs to be helped along by the fear of it's proponents resorting to violence.

In non-democratic societies, non-violent protest most often does not work (e.g. the buddhist monks' protest in Burma/Myanmar).

I caved.

2009-06-02T21:24:00.004-05:00

When I was 9, I convinced my parents to buy me a Sega Genesis.

That was the first, and until today, the last gaming system I ever owned.

Then today, sitting in my office, I thought to myself "you know what would be cool? playing a game where I could kill zombies."

I decided to consult my soon-t0-be roommate Patrick about this purchase. His response: "Dude I think that would be the best effin idea ever. Get two controllers and I'll pay you for one. I'll come over and we'll play tonight."

My resident "gamer" friend Pate told me "it's sublime" - whatever that means.

So, I got off work and drove directly to Best Buy in Cordova and purchased a XBox 360.

I was going to just by the basic system, but Pat and the sales rep. convinced me to buy the XBox 360 "Pro" for an extra hundred bucks.

Moral of the story: I am entirely too impulsive.

I need the join a Buddhist monastery...

Believe.

2009-05-31T21:57:00.008-05:00

There's been a lot of hype this year about the film Slum Dog Millionaire.

I have to say, I loved that movie.

Why? Because, to me, Slumdog is a story about believing. The world is a cold, cruel place at times- alright, it's always a cold, cruel place. But how much colder is it without belief? I can't even see the point in living if there's nothing more to life that the material, the obvious, the day-to-day.

Slumdog is a movie about destiny. Here's Danny Boyle on the idea of destiny is Slumdog:

Some people don't believe in "destiny"-

they throw it into the same heap as Santa Clause.

It's fun for kids, but why wouldn't an adult believe in it?

I need to believe. Furthermore, I think that humanity needs to believe.

We need to believe in that there is more to life

than what we can perceive through our senses.

Robert Duvall sums it up much better than I can in Secondhand Lions:

"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true

are the things a man needs to believe in the most."

Why? Not only because they're "worth believing in,"

but because those beliefs, beliefs in things unseen, are the things which drive humanity.

They always have and always will.

And I think that's the real reason I'm not an atheist.

I feel a need to believe there's life after death,

a need to believe that love overcomes,

a need to believe I will be forgiven,

and a need to believe in God.

C.S. Lewis used a fantasy character to voice this idea, in The Silver Chair.

The children have journeyed through the underworld to rescue the prince of Narnia.

When they finally find the prince, the evil witch queen of the underworld has convinved him that Narnia isn't real,

that it was just a dream he had. When the children start to believe the witch is right, their friend and companion,

Puddleglum, the consummate doubter and pessimist, makes a speech. He tells the witch,

"One word, Ma'’am...One word. All you have been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there is one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things- trees grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that'’s a funny thing when you come to think of it. We'’re just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world, which licks your real world hollow. That'’s why I'’m going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan'’s side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'’m going to live as like a Narian I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we'’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I shouldn't think; but that's a small loss, if the world's as dull a place as you say."

I think Lewis was right, I for one would rather spend the rest of my days believing in the dream, than give up and live in a God-less, hopeless, pointless world.

sick new trailer

2009-05-29T11:09:00.002-05:00

Mr. Nobody trailer

Possibly the greatest episode opening ever

2009-05-28T22:10:00.004-05:00

They played this one again tonight, I was extremely dissatisfied with the way the season ended, but there were a few moments of greatness....

the life

2009-05-27T02:09:00.004-05:00

We are lost amid a sea of ourselves
Our ambitions
Our desires
Our accomplishments

Lost – we seek shelter
In the comfort in our mothers arms? or…
In our drugs
In our beer
In our cheap cigarettes and midnight clubs

Are we a generation without purpose?
Or with twenty million purposes
To end hate, poverty, sin, intolerance, genocide, addiction, environmental degradation,
Or to be wealthy, happy, wise, successful
To hold that degree, that job, that fellowship, that medal, that girl
To be known, to be mysterious, to be desirable, to be loved.

Is God crying out?
Are our souls crying out?
Are we too tired to hear
From soccer practice, ballet lessons, meetings, training, work, play, groups, discussions, and yes –vacations

Vacations from what?
The home we built?
The family we wanted?
The wife we … loved?
The job we went to school for-
The loans that paid for the school we attended to get the job
That we take a vacation to escape from?

Is our future bright?
Or is it muddied-
With news clips, e-mails, that other woman, that other man, the friend, the boss, the neighbor
The neighbor we don’t know
Or we think we do
Or we think should mow his lawn
Or take better care of his kids

We buy magazines – and never read the articles
We buy newspaper and use them in our bird cages
We subscribed to 200 channels and watch one or fifty for thirty seconds
And we say “there’s nothing on”

Or is there too much on?
Our lights are on
Our sprinklers are going
Our car is running
And it’s out of gas
And it’s out of oil

We need three cars
We have two already
We probably need another TV
For the kids room

We just don’t have any more time for those kids
They take up so much time already
Driving them to tournaments, to haircuts, to awards ceremonies in the gym
The gym where’ll they sit in thirty years
Watching their kids
And thinking about the car needing oil

Or maybe they won’t
Maybe they won’t have kids
Kids are too expensive
College cost 50 grand a year you know
And clothes
And don’t forget books
And that new car

Maybe if they don’t have time for kids they’ll have time to work
Work for themselves
Work for their pet Chihuahua with worms

Maybe while they’re working they’ll find the answer
Or maybe they’ll just have all the new questions
Because there are always questions
Questions Questions Questions

And where are the answers?
In his book or hers?
In the bible they gave to you at 15?
You know – the one on your nightstand
The one you read last week when you couldn’t sleep

You read “I am the resurrection and the life”
And you thought-
Ohh isn’t that nice. Maybe I can get to sleep after all.

world of words

2009-05-27T01:43:00.005-05:00

intertextuality, the subconsciously collective conscious:

words tied together forming the fabric of our perceptions,

metanarrative, the grand, sweeping historical arc

composed of the marriage of all our lives and stories-

where Homer bleeds into Joyce, &

Dickens with the New York Times.

your high school prom meets Chaucer;

Washington embraces Gilgamesh.

all the words ever written form a net to support us;

simultaneously binding us as well.

we cannot perceive how we would perceive

if the web were not around us.

we could not leave it if we tried, it runs through us.

it is the blood of our external life.

it is in our eyes and the way we see.

it is in our ears and the way we hear.

it is in what we speak and what we mean.

without it we would be voiceless.

our every conversation

depends on the unconscious connection

to the intertextual web of the metanarrative.

and so all our lives are sitcoms and slasher flics;

we become the archetypes we know.

each one of us is a brain, and an athlete,

a basket case, a princess, and a criminal;

and one of the hero’s thousand faces.

intertextuality, the subconsciously collective conscious :

words tied together forming the fabric of our perceptions,

metanarrative, the grand, sweeping historical arc,

the voice made of ten million voices-

like the atoms which make up your body

from a distance as great as heaven-

all our stories are one,

and when the bell tolls,

it tolls for us all.

City of Graceland

2009-05-19T05:39:00.007-05:00

Memphis, City of Graceland, where has your voice gone to?

In cities to the East they speak only of your poverty and crime.

Have they forgotten how small they are in the stream of time

When held against your pillowed bluffs, drenched in history?

Surely when our Republic's day are done,

Memphis' name will remain, strung throughout the stories,

The songs and ballads of our people, the legends of our heroes.

Memphis, you are the great American crossroads.

You are always a stop along our national journey.

People come to Memphis with reason: to listen and to learn.

Your songs and stories give us comfort,

They tell us who we are, and who we are to be.

Memphis, you have always been a city of deep contrast.

The stark divide of black and white has almost torn you apart.

Sorrow and joy run down your streets like blood and wine.

But is human life itself not an exercise in contrast?

Are we not born somewhere between angels and animals?

Within your constant struggles we can see ourselves,

The good, the bad, the hideous, and the noble.

Surely this is your blessing, and your curse.

I believe that the American soul is a battlefield.

Our heroes and villains are forged in wars, both real and imagined.

And Memphis, to how many battles have you born silent witness?

Yes, you baptized the Forrest whose anger lit the Southern nights

With flaming crosses and the moans of your disinherited children.

But how many heroes have ennobled your streets?

Did you not crown a King of Hearts, and still hold him in his tomb?

Did you not bear witness to the selfless death of another,

There with an evil gun shot, upon a cold steel motel railing?

Is that prophet's dream now forgotten among your children?

Memphis, you have always been a city of song.

You do not whisper of days gone by like Charleston.

You do not scream to be seen and heard like New York.

Your voice, once deep and powerful, was heard across the world.

From Tokyo to London, men still sing your songs.

The energy of your Rock and Roll has made us dance.

The power of your Soul has made us love.

The sorrow of your Blues has made us weep.

Memphis, raise your voice again to us now.

Our nation needs your songs,

To light our nights, to lift our hearts,

To tell us we are not alone in our loneliness and sorrow.

Memphis, sing to us your songs; sing to us our songs.

Remind us where we have come from, and where we are yet to go.

so mote it be

2009-05-14T23:17:00.004-05:00

I finished my first year of law school.

I am now clerking for The Monroe Firm.

I am moving in with Pat O'Connor this summer (hopefully into a house in midtown).

Considering getting a tattoo.

That's all for now.

Lately

2009-04-13T11:24:00.004-05:00

So I decided to listen to my own advice and drop facebook for awhile. I'm shooting for no facebook until mid-august.

Why?

Why not?

Facebook just isn't the same these days, maybe it's the transition out of college, maybe it's the new "twitteresque" format (i f****n hate twitter). Or maybe I'm just tired of the bizarre voyeuresque, me me me, digustingly self-deluded arrogance of web 2.0.

I could write a book about how disgusted I am with the whole thing, but I won't. Why? Because this blog is just one more facebookish thing. Who am I? Who would want to read what I'm thinking about?

Blahh blahhh blahh torts.

Why I am proud to be an only child

2009-02-23T10:28:00.003-06:00

When you're an only child, you become used to the "you're such an only child" comments.

I hate these comments; mainly because when pressed on them, most people can't explain what they actually mean. Are you saying I'm more selfish than you because I didn't have a brother or sister? Are you implying that I am more emotionally needy?

Let me make this clear: either one of those assumptions is complete, unfiltered bullshit.

As far as I can tell, the only major repercussion of my growing up as an only child is that I don't need to be constantly entertained or comforted by the presence of other people. Don't get me wrong: I love people. But, because I spent a lot of time alone when I was growing up, being alone just doesn't bother me like it does some people.

Recently I read an excellent article at BCC News entitled Population: The elephant in the room.

I love this article because of its candor. The hard, naked truth is that in the future everyone needs to have less children. Humanity has probably already overshot Earth's carrying capacity; and unless we decrease the surplus population, the environment will never recover.

It is my hope that in the near future, having more than two children (i.e. replacement rate for a couple) will come to be seen as a civically, socially, and environmentally irresponsible decision. Maybe then the ludicrous stigma against only children will be erased once and for all.

New Mexico

2009-02-16T11:46:00.004-06:00

west on 40 from Tucumcari

this is the open road

this is the best road

nothing but the sky and the broken back mesa landscape

the occasional navajo gift shop offers fry bread and green chili cheeseburgers

the sky is wide

the sky is blue

the sky is wide and blue in the way it only is west of the big river

in the high desert

where there are few trees

and still fewer people

in Farmington there is a fine little Mexican restaurant in the airport

nearby

Shiprock stands like a sentinel

overlooking trailers hogans and kachina stands

in the valley of the gods the sun bounces off dry red rocks

a cool wind blows through the blood of Christ mountains

here,

in the land of enchantment

Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young

2009-02-13T16:51:00.001-06:00

...and if you can't be with you one you love, honey,

Love the one you're with.

Pet Peave

2009-02-12T16:27:00.002-06:00

Over the last couple of years a lot of restaurants and microwave-food companies have started selling toasted sandwiches which they called "paninis" or worse, "panini sandwiches."

Random fact of the day: panino is the Italian word for sandwich. Panini is the plural form for sandwich.

Therefore "panini sandwiches" means "sandwiches sandwiches."

Why does this bother me? (I'm sure this happens with other foreign foods, but I only have a working understanding of spanish and italian.)

It's just stupid.

The Italian word for pizza is "pizza," its plural is pizze. You don't see Domino's advertising for "Pizzes," do you? No, because pizze was properly anglicized into "pizzas." If you want to anglicize panini, it should be "paninos."

Finally, no one should ever say "panin(o/i) sandwiches"- that's like saying "carne asada roasted meat."

"Alas, Babylon"

2009-02-10T10:30:00.004-06:00

I just finished reading Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank.

Those who know me well, know that I love the post-apocalyptic genre of science-fiction (including the zombie-apocalypse sub-genre). I can't really explain my fixation with this subject. Perhaps it's a bit of my tiny little inner anarchist rearing his ugly cammo-clad head. Maybe it's my pessimistic side: I've always thought that things have been going too well for us for too long.

Whatever it is, I love this genre.

The idea of complete, unfiltered freedom excites me. I love scenes like when Will Smith went careening down an empty Wall Street in a mustang in I am Legend (overall a very weak film adaptation).

Alas, Babylon was a good, quick read- I finished it in under 6 hours.

After I've read The Postman and On the Beach, I'll make a top 10 list for these books.

New Media Hit

2009-02-09T20:36:00.004-06:00

My picture (or rather a picture of my neck) popped up in this month's Sojourners Magazine article on Eboo Patel and IFYC.

law school attention deficit disorder (LSADD)

2009-02-09T11:37:00.004-06:00

Why is it so hard to pay attention during these classes?

Perhaps if I didn't take my laptop to class I would be better off.

All I know is that as I'm sitting in class in this decrepit, Sovietesque building listening to professors drone on about contracts, deeds, and torts, all I can think about is how awesome it feels outside right now.

During really blah days I like to distract myself by thinking about replacement career choices if I decide to not come back next fall. So far my list includes:

1) State Trooper

2) High School Geography Teacher

3) Land Surveyor

4) Private Investigator

5) Youth Minister

6) Itinerant Wanderer

Last two interviews about juicycampus.com

2009-02-05T20:22:00.004-06:00

Today I ended up in:

Inside Higher Ed.

and

The Chronicle of Higher Education

The Death of JuicyCampus.com

2009-02-04T16:56:00.008-06:00

While sitting in my apartment this afternoon, I was called by a reporter from "Inside Higher Ed." Apparently my old nemesis Juicycampus ("Juicy") is shutting down. [Juicy is/was an anonymous online posting board, which encouraged students to gossip (i.e. talk sh!t) about their fellow classmates] The reporter told me that Juicy isn't making enough add-revenue to keep running.

Cheers to the free market!

For those of you who weren't at Pepperdine last year, here's the Reader's Digest version of the whole story:

Last year I was serving as a vice president of Pepperdine's SGA when an op-ed article in our student newspaper The Graphic discussed Juicy. At first I thought that website was just a little trashy, and maybe a tiny bit entertaining. Unfortunately, after the Graphic's article ran- Juicy's Pepperdine page blew up.

In my typical crusading, Che' wannabe fashion, I decided to do something about this. I immediately wrote up a resolution to have the website filtered (i.e. "banned") from the Pepperdine internet network. The resolution was really nothing more than a protest gesture. Everyone was aware that off-campus students, including members of the now defunked Beta Theta Pi chapter (who I still strongly believe were it's most active participants), would continue to use the site, as well as internet-savvy nerds who could route around the filter. The debate over the resolution was intense and emotional; in a last-minute vote it was passed by an overwhelming majority of the senate.

Pepperdine's administration eventually decided not to implement our resolution. They instead pursued an "aggressive e-mail writing campaign" (I hope you catch the sarcasm). The Graphic's editors and a number of more "progressively" minded students immediately began to speak out against SGA's actions, which they perceived to be unwarranted.

It didn't take long for the national media to pick up on the shocking story of a university's student government actually voting to restrict student internet access. Before long our SGA President, Andy Canales, and myself were being interviewed by all kinds of news groups. Our extremely talented PR director, Jonathan Younger, tried to keep his best to manage the situation, to no avail.

After CNN.com and the AP picked up the story, Andy and I were flown to New York to appear on Fox's "Mike and Juliette Show." We were put up in hotel in Time Square, and I got to use Neil Cavuto's bathroom. After that, we almost appeared on "Geraldo Rivera Live"- but our segment was cut last minute. Then CBS sent a news crew out to Pepperdine and we ended up Katie Couric's Saturday news show. Finally, I was interviewed by the New York Times.

While the media jaunt was fun, all it really accomplished was to further advertise the existence of Juicy. Surprisingly, a number of other colleges' and universities' student governments followed our lead and voted to ban Juicy from their networks.

Then a couple of state attorney generals even sued Juicy to no avail.

By that time, I didn't care anymore. I was graduating and moving home, and I felt that I had done my part.

So how do I feel about it all looking back?

Honestly, I think that what our SGA did, while it may have eventually backfired, was a principled action. I think that Pepperdine, as a private, christian institution has the right, if it so chooses, to limit its internet access. I don't think that blocking Juicy from the Pepperdine network would have been fundamentally any different from keeping 21-year-olds from drinking on campus. In fact, I think that trying to prevent its students from writing malicious, hurtful, racist, sexist, and homophobic things on a website has a firmer moral grounding than trying to keep them from drinking.

On the other hand, I don't think that state schools like UCLA, could have or should have done the same thing. I also don't believe that a state government, or the national government should be involved in the regulation of sites like Juicy.

I believe that when parents choose to send their children to a christian university, or when a student chooses independently to attend one, they should be aware that they are entering an institution which is guided by christian principles. Private christian schools have the right, and the imperative to create a positive, nurturing environment framed by christian beliefs and teachings. Among which are the beliefs that it is wrong to lie, to gossip and to insult other people.

That said, what I really learned from this experience is that it's sometimes best to leave evil, corrupting things like Juicy alone. Our crusade against Juicy only brought it more attention and in turn, more revenue. In this case it was the invisible hand of the free market which killed one odious website, and I for one am glad.

25 things about you

2009-02-02T21:31:00.006-06:00

Lately facebook has been inundated by notes entitled "25 random things about me."

These notes harken back to the days of annoying AOL survey forwards (e.g. "If you could kiss one celebrity, who would it be? OMG BRAD PITT!!!!! LOL :-D").

While I too miss the good ole' days of AOL (remember when having colored font on your profile was a big deal?), these notes disgust me.

Why?

It's simple...

It's not that I don't care about you.

It's not that I don't want to know more about you.

It's that this little online trend speaks volumes about our culture, and specifically our generation...

I have so far been tagged in 6 of these notes. Everyone who has tagged me, I consider a friend (and not in the perfunctory "facebook friends" sense).

I would be more than glad to sit down over coffee which each of these people and talk about their lives, their dreams, their pet peeves, and yes, even their first pet. I would even settle for a 20 minute cell-phone conversation.

But that won't happen...

Why?

Because our generation is so busy with electronic media (e.g. FACEBOOK) that we neglect genuine interpersonal interaction (please, don't get me wrong, I do too).

So please, if you want to tag me in a "25 things" note- don't. Call me; or better yet, if you live in Memphis, ask me if I'd like to get coffee, have lunch, or just chat.

If they ever write a biography about A. W. Maness, esq.

2009-02-01T11:53:00.003-06:00

2009 will be described as the year I was born again.

Tennessee Needs a New State Motto

2009-01-21T11:11:00.006-06:00

Seriously, when you compare our motto with the other states', it is most definitely one of the lamest. Agriculture and Commerce (TN's motto) is almost as lame as Crossroads of America (Indiana's motto).

Since our motto was only officially adopted in 87,' there's no reason we can't change it to something more fitting. I don't have a better motto in mind, but it should be something along the lines of the New Hampshire motto Live Free or Die.

For a list state mottos, see StrangeMaps.

this weekend

2009-01-18T16:47:00.004-06:00

There are always outliers and rogues.

Even though 99% of people will behave the way you would expect under a certain set of circumstances, a few will not.

That's why, while useful, PUA or any other system which categorizes people and predicts the way they behave will never be perfect.

As for me, I would rather keep looking for the one-percenters, the rogues, because they're out there.

One a complete non-sequitur: Civilization 4 is way too addictive for me.

synecdoche of this year's plans:

2009-01-16T10:46:00.001-06:00

this weekend I'm going to learn how to make pancakes.

Contracts Reading

2009-01-15T10:06:00.003-06:00

Last night I read an excellent opinion, in Contracts, the case was "In the Matter of BABY M." BABY M is a custody case dealing with a surrogacy contract, and custody of the child conceived under the contract.

Here's the best part:

There are, in a civilized society, some things which money cannot buy.

In America, we decided long ago

that merely because conduct purchased by money was "voluntary"

did not mean that it was good or beyond regulation or prohibition....

There are... values that society deems more important

than granting to wealth whatever it can buy,

be it labor, love, or life.

-Wilentz, C.J.

Written in '88, I wonder if Justice Wilentz was a Beatles fan.

First Blog

2008-11-25T12:10:00.002-06:00

I guess I decided to create this blog because I have a constant temptation to write things and then post them as a note on my facebook. However, I don't really want my rants and ramblings popping up on 1,000 peoples' newsfeed all the time.

So I created a blog.

I'm guessing that I'll use this primarily as a place to vent about law school, because after awhile you just have to start lying to people about law school. No one wants to hear "I hate it and I'm miserable," every time they ask you "How's law school going?"

For an interesting take on this problem see "law school musical."