We were frankly, well...

2011-07-10T13:47:00.000-05:00

2011-05-14T17:14:00.000-05:00

Life I love you, all is groovy (finally)

Who Needs Realism?

2011-01-21T13:49:00.000-06:00

No one does, do they? After all, life isnt exactly and eternal carrousel ride with an accompanying soft ice and sunshine. In the world that is reality that scenario would amount to dizziness, obesity and premature wrinkles, and that is just all too depressing. so stay inside the bubble, please! Why cultivate things that are commonplace and not even pretty? Why take the bus when the people on it smell like wildebeests? Why buy discount groceries when they taste like metal? Why wear sensible shoes when life wearing an impossible pair is so much more fun? (Thank you, Mr. McQueen!) Realism stinks.

And nothing smells worse than the odour of self pity, lack of imagination and polite but misunderstood moedsty. Were confrtoned by the cynical being that is realism as soon as we laev our front door. It greets us when we open the paper-- full of misery and dark om ens-- anbd we hear its shrill laughter as the nth electric bill and parking fine arrive in our mailbox. All thats missing is the piercing sound of the guillotine. cut! There foes the Balmain jacket dream. realism is unsexy, depressing, gross and most of all distinctly unnecessary.

...

Retreating into my bubble, with blinkers and Muzak and all, is still an effective tool for spiritual survival. Because what does one actually need all this ugly realism anyway? Why get annoyed by it and surround oneself with it when one only has slight prospects of changing it, anyway?

luckily, the nature of fashion is anti-realistic and the perfect place to park one's own under stimulated, grey realistic everyday life. This is a place of dreams, a place where almost impossible beauty is created: a place where curiosity, wonderment and fiction thrive-- all the things that block out the sneaky boredom of mediocrity that threatens to take us down, with the immense power of gravity. So long live all the anti-realists; those who dare to do something outside the claustrophobic scope of the norm. This is dedicated to YOU

2009-09-14T20:11:00.009-05:00

Messy Messy Messy

2009-08-07T19:28:00.009-05:00

I was looking through a bunch of old tracks from my MR8. Most of this track is pretty bad, but there are a few points I really like.

To add to my list of things to do; make. music.

http://www.mediafire.com/?vczytaqj5ee

lomo land

2009-08-07T02:22:00.008-05:00

10 Things I Want to Get Done Before the End of Summer

2009-07-31T11:19:00.003-05:00

1.Read 7-10 books
2.Travel outside Minnesota
3.~~Get a job~~
4.~~Go Swimming~~
5.Work on my tan
6.Go Camping
7.~~Go biking A LOT with Danny~~
8.Fix my Peugeot
9.Play guitar more
10.Get FAFSA filled out for next semester

Wisconsin Death Trip

2009-07-20T13:27:00.001-05:00

Our motley cast of characters set out a little later than we intended; it's a three hour drive I think took us about four. Finally arriving, we eat some delicious, aluminum foil-wrapped cookies and headed down the trail.

Danny, Rosie, Sam, Mason, Steve. Ready to Rock!

Unsure if we're headed in the right direction, we stop at one of the campgrounds to check our maps, get our bearings, and go to the bathroom. As it turns out, we were going the right way the whole time!

The tunnels were our main attraction to the Sparta-Elroy trail. The bike trail replaced the North Western Railroad in the 1960s. The old rail tunnels were born of the earth, and drip cold, clear water on you as you walk through.

Railroad watchman circa 1900

Coming out of the longer tunnels is somewhat akin to waking from a dream

The tall doors of the tunnel, created to uphold the massive structure throughout the years

A sampling of the beauty of the countryside along the trail

Viewing the Presidency Through Rose Colored Glasses

2009-01-15T13:02:00.000-06:00

I wish I would have been more interested in politics the last eight years. More than disagreeing with everything Bush, that is. I'm curious about what the medias reaction to him was when he first became President.

Has anyone noticed how easy Obama seems to be having it in the media? I voted Obama, and I support him, but there is no way he is perfection, right? Don't get me wrong, I want him to be everything we think he could be, I just think it is dangerous to trust a politician, especially one with the wherewithal to become Prez.

I remember very clearly him saying his first order of business would be to close Guantanamo Bay, at the longest within 100 days, and now he is saying No Way! Not in 100 days, anyhow. He is also not going to look into Bush's illegal, immoral wire tapping, or use of torture or "terrorist" suspects. That's disappointing. To me, anyway. I was kind of hoping Obama would come in and smite the Evil Doers with his sword of justice (jousteece!) or something equally implausible.

Anyway, I'm just worried about being let down. I hope we have a President who is going to turn things around, a President who cares about poor people, middle class people, minorities, seniors, children, education, the environment, peace.

Someone said the reason the French have a remarkable standard of living is because they demand it. They fucking riot. Take it to the streets, so to speak.

I hope that if Obama lets us down, we will feel more like rioting than readjusting to ways of governing that disappoint us all.

Rooftops and Invitations

2009-01-01T23:52:00.000-06:00

"Come out onto the rooftop with me."

I grab your hand and you steady yourself enough to awkwardly step out the window.

"We used to watch fireworks up here on the fourth of July. They set them off from that park over there... We would bring blankets even though it was summer, the bugs were horrible and you'd really regret it if you didn't..."

I stop myself from rambling, like always, and try to enjoy a silent moment with you and wonder what you are thinking.

"You're lucky your room goes right onto the roof. I would have loved that as a teenager." Pause. "Not to sneak out, although I might've--probably would've-- like every fucking person would say, just to be outside and be kind of a secret, watching unnoticed on the rooftops of Brooklyn Center."

You pull me into a clumsy hug. "I would have invited you, a real invitation."

"I thought you were afraid of heights."

"Not here."

Sesame Street My Heart

2008-12-21T15:14:00.001-06:00

I also needed to write this down somewhere:

"Don't worry about life, you're not going to live through it anyway." -- ?

Feeling Minnesota

2008-12-18T15:10:00.000-06:00

I was riding the bus to my sisters yesterday (which, honestly was a whole story in and of itself), I noticed an out-of-state license plate. It made me so jealous.

I wish I was in Minnesota only temporarily--just for kicks-- instead of loathing almost every second of the god forsaken weather.

I'm also jealous that driving around Minneapolis is probably at least somewhat exciting for them. New buildings and street names can go a long ways when you've been stuck in one city for a year, or your whole life.

I'm not only jealous, though, I'm morbidly curious. What propels you to Minnesota in December? Death, marriage, shopping?

It's not that I hate Minnesota, I just don't see why anyone would come here in December if they didn't have to.

True Life: I Have Embarrassing Parents

2008-12-15T12:58:00.003-06:00

The premise deepens as a something-teen girl hates her father for being a clown--showing up to parties with fifteen jesters, throwing confections at her and her unbearably banal friends.

Honestly, who could complain about that? What more could you want out of life than to have clowns randomly show up, and pie ya? I could rant something unoriginal here about my generations lost sense of adventure, being glued to their iPods and MySpace and such, but why bother?

I crave a life of surprises, unexpected and perhaps unmerited merriment.

Absurd, balls out, fun.

1 Hour Later Edit:

The next True Life show featured a girl complaining about moving to New Zealand.

Who are these people?

Auckland

And let's not forget where Lord of the Rings was flmed

(snow)

2008-11-19T15:54:00.000-06:00

Something I remembered:

When we were going from my dads funeral to the burial, we were listening to KQRSs a-z library, which was something he always did. We're driving through the snowstorm on the way to the cemetery, and "Spirit In The Sky" comes on. If you don't know it, you should, it's a great song.

On the way home from the burial, we turn on KQ again, and it is Stairway To Heaven.

What a coincidence.

To, From

2008-11-12T00:05:00.000-06:00

To the Girl With the Chain from her Nose to her Ear:

Thank you for being the only one to say "Bless You" when I sneezed and thank you for not being offended when I asked if it was purely out of reflex or if you actually wished me well being.

When you got on the bus and saw me without my iPod you thought I was one of the few young people left in the world who wasn't addicted to musical solitude. I only didn't have it because I forgot it and lamented it the entire ride.

When the bus couldnt stop for the red light in the first snow of the year we shared a quiet gratitude that the bus didn't spin out of control.

As you exited the bus by way of the stairs, you paused and gave me one more smile.

And that was that. It wasn't much but it was a missed opportunity.

2008-11-09T16:38:00.000-06:00

A Case of Mild Realism

2008-11-06T15:31:00.000-06:00

There were tears (sort of, I held back, didn't want to catch anything people felt like throwing). I can't remember the last time I felt so overwhelmed with positive emotion. Party in the streets like the Twins just swept the division.

Positive Positive Positive

That's what I think is going on here. I don't completely trust Obama. He makes me feel good and he makes me believe him and that worries me. He is, after all, still a major party President. The fact that I can buy into his messages of hope and change so easily concerns me.

Either way, there is a positive thing going on right now, and I can't deny, debate or negate it.

The Little Girl Who Lives Above Me and Dannee

2008-10-09T15:03:00.000-05:00

We hear this little girl day in and day out, stomping around, yelling to her mami, and generally behaving the way a six or seven year old would. After hearing her piercing cries for the better part of an hour, we can’t help but start to wonder what she is like, what her room is like…

We know for a fact she must be cramped; there are double the amount of people living up there as there are on our half of the whole, and it’s tight down here already. I imagine she shares her room with an adult couple—staying just slightly out of the way, perhaps in the corner with a Dora the Explorer doll, or more likely, a portable play station. I imagine when they want to make love, they shoo her into another room with a perfectly reasonable seeming excuse. “Papi needs to cut mami’s toe nails; if it sounds like she’s hurt, it’s only because she doesn’t cut them enough!”
Danny says she’s the princess of the house and is the only one with her own room; toys everywhere, books and single pieces of paper strewn around carelessly (she knows where everything is).

There’s a tiny bike in the driveway, which must be hers but never moves. Danny found the chains rusty.

One thing we do know is that she has a little brother; two, three tops. It’s often impossible to tell who is screaming—children’s’ lungs can do surprising things--but she likes being an older sister, and pretends her brother is her live doll. She spends most of her time with him while madre cooks, cleans, then takes a break from cooking, cleaning. She is not the kind of child constantly asking “what is there to do? Soy Abburido!” She’s also not the kind of child who worships television; Dora is the only show she really watches, but occasionally she gets sucked into the banal celebrity dance shows her mami and papi take guilty pleasure in (she’s too young to understand it, but loves to watch the dresses fly around).

But her absolute favorite activity—above and beyond anything else; bath time. Her Barbie dolls become mermaids, the bath faucet a waterfall. The yellowed, once white walls of the tub are limestone cliffs for Barbie to jump off romantically into Ken.

I wonder what a seven-ish year olds idea of romance is.

------------------------------------------

One day we see mama bringing a basket of laundry to the car, little imaginative-child-above-us in tow, and she’s whining. She doesn’t want to go to the laundry mat. (No one wants to go to the laundry mat.) She’s crying, pulling on mami’s hand, pouting, being very difficult. Danny and I sit on the steps, out of sight; smoking our cancerous Parliaments, silently rejoicing that we haven’t been pregnant, don’t have a baby.

Suddenly we don’t like the little girl.

All that noise upstairs is her stomping her little feet, being a brat, whining about her mom wanting her to be organized—only so life can be easier on everyone.

The Barbies in the tub become a nuisance, nothing but a pointy annoyance.

As it turns out the stomping upstairs is nothing but our little girl throwing fits; dropping onto all fours and pounding them in tandem. The reverie is all but gone, and now all we can do is pound the broom stick against the ceiling in protest…

It's Hip to Hate

2008-09-21T14:21:00.000-05:00

We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.

This is an interesting piece, although I feel like I have had this conversation with many of my friends, whether they are hipsters (which, yeah, no one will admit to being a hipster, strange self loathing) or whatever superficial label they have applied to themselves, let someone else apply, or fought to rebel against.

I think this essay, it's author, it's readers, and all 2000+ people who commented on it, are really commenting subconsciously on everyone-- everyone's-- desire to be accepted. What I think most people want, though, is to feel accepted by just a few people; at least I think that's what they need. Or is that what I need? I don't know. I think most people cover up their longing to be accepted, loved, genuinely paid attention to, with preemptive bitterness against easily targeted subcultures. (Although I think this author makes a couple of really good points about the state of our supposed "sub" cultures, when everyone looks the goddamn same, and their whole look could be bought at target, sears or JC Penny.)

Anyway I'm sure many people would put me into this category of hipster, but I wear what I like. If someone can find something wrong with that... It seems to me the people who are most often lobbying against hipsters are those who have high ideals of being very independent and intellectual. I don;t find a high level of intellect in judging people who are doing what is right for them.

I guess everyone needs to feel superior, right?

*community community community*

read the whole essay
here

and check
this out as well

Never Turn Your Back on a Cat!

2008-09-16T20:01:00.000-05:00

Anyone notice how MySpace spies on your interests and generates ads that are seemingly appropriate?

After proudly proclaiming on my page "This Kittens Got Claws!" I have been bombarded with kitten adverts.

1.Draw A Kitten!

2.Kitten Grooming School

3.Find the BEST Cat Food!

What I love is how they throw only one in the mix, to make it seem totally random. Wait, you have an interest in, or are somehow affiliated with, cats? Who knew!

But most importantly,

Can you seriously get a job grooming kittens!? Don't get me wrong, I love a full grown cat, but kittens? Holy. Shit.

I feel like my (totally made up, symbolic) guidance counselor should've clued me into this a long time ago, like 5th grade. Thanks a lot, standardized aptitude tests!

Pack your Parcels and Hit the Road

2008-09-14T14:09:00.001-05:00

I love this. This is dreamland. And my dreamland is Europe. So, here are some instructions, in no specific order; pack your bags, buy a ticket, get a passport, buy earplugs, Dramamine, and something to read for 12 hours while we fly to Europe and live in a world where we can pluck bicycles from trees like fruit. I'd race you, but I'm embarrassing slow.

Chapter 1: Saying Goodbye

2008-09-11T13:33:00.000-05:00

I have been experiencing the unspeakable terror of anticipating winter. I’ll be biking on my merry way, getting warm; a little sweaty even, from my body’s produced heat. Then suddenly—Stop biking, get to class or get home and you are cold. I can feel it in my fingers but especially in my feet—they just never seem to get warm, even on modestly warm days--, and I remember last winter. It dragged on and I feel like I lost a part of myself and replaced it with a much more sinister and pessimistic portion of Rosie.

Also, here are some characteristics I just cannot stand in people

1.(And this ones pretty all-encompassing): People who talk shit about the people they wish they were.

2.People who don's listen. People who talk to hear echoes.

3.How about I don't go down such a negative list-making route today. There will be all of winter for that, right?

"Hypocrisy is only bad when it is improperly used"

2008-09-09T18:36:00.000-05:00

I wanted to rant about this Sarah "Barracuda" Palin veep pick, but I read this editorial in Newsweek and it summed up my feelings pretty accurately.

I never thought I would live long enough to see the day when the Republican presidential candidate would cite membership in the PTA as evidence of executive experience, when the far right would laud the full-time working mothers of newborns, when social conservatives would stare down teenage pregnancy and replace their pursed-lip accusations of promiscuity with hosannas about choosing life.

The Republican Party has undergone a surprising metamorphosis since Sarah Palin was chosen as its vice presidential candidate. In Palin I recognize a fellow traveler, a woman whose life would have been impossible just a few decades ago. If she had been born 30 years earlier, the PTA would likely have been her last stop, not her first. Her political ascendancy is a direct result of the women's movement, which has changed the world utterly for women of all persuasions. It is therefore notable that Palin has found her home in a party, and in a wing of that party, that for many years has reviled, repelled and sought to roll back the very changes that led her to the Alaska Statehouse.

But expediency is an astonishing thing, and conservative Republicans have suddenly embraced the assertion that women can do it all, even those conservative Republicans who have made careers out of trashing that notion. James Dobson of Focus on the Family once had staffers on his hot line saying, "Dr. Dobson recommends that mothers of young children stay at home as much as possible." He now applauds a woman who was back at work three days after her son, who has Down syndrome, was born.

Even to state that simple fact resulted in outrage among those at the convention, who screamed double standard. But the double standard was mainly theirs. The governor was aggressively marketed in terms of her maternity, yet questions about how she managed to mother five and lead the state were dismissed as sexist. The governor's two years leading Alaska, which in terms of citizens served is the equivalent of being mayor of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., was said to be the linchpin of her appointment, but questions about her breadth of experience were dismissed as sexist. Her surrogates wanted the press to write about mooseburgers and ignore how the governor had once pursued the kind of earmarked federal funds she now insists are anathema to her. Conservatives have probably used the word "sexist" more in the past week than they have in the past 50 years.

This would all have been entertaining if it were not such rank hypocrisy. These are people who have inveighed against affirmative action, a version of which undoubtedly played a part in this selection. These are people who inveighed against personal attacks on their new nominee when the wingnuts of their own party elevated such attacks to a fine art by accusing Hillary Rodham Clinton of fictitious misdeeds ranging from treason to murder. To try to suggest Sarah Palin might garner the Hillary Clinton vote, that one woman is just the same as another, that biology trumps ideology, is the ultimate evidence of true sexism, and I hope Senator Clinton will travel the country and say so.

It's interesting how this election has been an election of firsts. The Republicans' answer is incredibly transparent, but it definitely keeps things spicy.

Begin at the End

2008-09-05T18:41:00.000-05:00

I'm finding out I'm at my most ambitious and adventurous when I have obligations to run from.