Brain Sex & Nerd Out.

After spending a day getting lost in Semantic theory in the arid, sun I find the following idea very, very  sexy:

Semantic Web Theory

Hey, we may all hate the kindle, but something has to be said about the new form of digital literacy, hypertext, immaterial and the evolution of our cognitive process. Hey-oh, cultural shift.


Curveball:

Throw in the fact of a failing American Public Educational System, funding, the cost of technology (in relation to this funding), retention of these public school students into higher education and well, folks, you've got one big problem.


http://mediatedcultures.net




Hey and the idea of collaboration via web 2.0 

Back it Up to Early June

or 

Hiking Canyons and Climbing Trees

and

  Just Images

The Last 24 Hours

or 

Why has my life started to feel like a cliche teen-coming-of-age-b-movie?

and

Washington's Take on the Movie, "Garden State"

Yesterday started like any other day. I woke up, drank my morning coffee while listening to radio news. I pondered the way in which politics work, the news, the BP oil spill, the EU Economic system, etc, etc.  I took my dog for a walk along the sprawling suburban sprawls.  However, my day took a drastic turn once I was home and I realized I needed to be fingerprinted for my new job.

The court house in my hometown is located in an area dubbed, "Felony Flats." There are a slew of bail bond joints, cheap apartments for ex-convicts, high homelessness and social unease. I realize there is no where else I can get fingerprinted, suck it up and drive down. First, I get lost. I haven't "lived" here for 4 years and the streets are now unfamiliar and vaguely foreign. I lock my doors, pull over, walk past a man with scabs on his face (a sign of the use of meth) and go to a cop to ask for directions. He points a block away, tells me to park behind the truck.

I'm fine. I park, go through  security. I find the small, cream, window-less room. I see signs that read, "Guns: Our Right as Americans", "Support or Troops!", "Bush/Cheney 04" and "Patriot Act: If you have nothing to hide, don't be afraid!" I sit down, pull out a book while I wait, in ideal hopes I will look occupied and people will leave me along. Wrong.

Five minutes pass, and I feel a tap on my shoulder. I look up, only to see a scraggly woman with thinning brown hair looking at me. She hands me a piece of paper torn out of a notebook. On it, written in frantic, fast print is the following, "Pearls, white smaller than a dime, from Bali…Pearls, off-white, cream, small.." this continues to go on for the entire torn page. She tells me her son stole her pearls for drugs and now needs to write a description. She wants me to help her writing the description.

Let's pause: First of all, I don't know why she asked me this. Secondly, the way in which this note was written was strange. There were phrases repeated, nouns displaced and strange, non sequitur verbiage. Something isn't right, in fact,  something is very, very, wrong with her at this moment in time. The way this is written reminds me of Freud's coke writings, and keen attention to detail. I knew right away this woman was on drugs, but scanning the note just further proved it.

So, I kindly ask her to follow me. I take her to security.

The rest of my time in the court house was normal, a few weird tweakers, but that just comes with the territory.

Driving home, I see two mormons riding bicycles in full suits. It was 86 degrees.

Here, my day falls back into it's natural rhythm.

Until I go out later than night. This is a classy, classy town, with 1.00 pbr specials and 1.00 grilled cheese.  It's a hip bar. There's a lot of plaid. A lot of straight haired, indie-girls, a lot of men in clothes-too-tight for them with Buddy Holly glasses. Everyone looks the same in the "I'm trying to be different mentality." I try to make jokes with two scene kids about how I love Nickelback. They take me seriously. I throw in the sass, extra thick. They're drunk and they actually think I respect Nickleback as a band. They make a joke about the facebook page, "Can this pickle get more fans than Nickleback?" Knowing they are not getting my sarcasm, I just... give up and  I convince someone who actually got the sarcasm to play Johnny Cash on the jukebox. Success!  I order my gin and go sit down.

I then get into a discussion about vegans. Back-context: While I respect vegans, I think it's an elitist kind of lifestyle. You have the money and the choice to, well, be picky about food. I have nothing against the choice, but personally I do not agree with this. That's all. From my standpoint: I'd rather buy organic food and give the extra money to people who have trouble actually obtaining any food. The man takes this personally and gets really offended. His friend then takes out a pocket knife.

Whoa.

He wants to, quote, "Mark his cup."

At this point, I'm done with my gin. I'm done with the scene 20 somethings, I'm done with listening to music I heard in  my junior year of college and I'm done with the weird man pulling out a KNIFE AT A BAR. I put on my bitchy sass, and I tell him to put the knife away, ask him what was wrong with a pen,  I tell him it's illegal and I also personally attack his masculinity and the fact that he needs to assert his dominance.  He puts the knife away, gets up and finds another seat. I put away my bitchy sass and go dance to Neon Indian with some strange hipster who looks like every other hipster I've ever seen. He is not fun to dance with. I then go outside to  call my friends from Bellingham. Once outside, I see a firetruck, three cop cars and a crowd of people outside a building down the street. I hang up and go back inside.

We then leave to go grab something to eat. We walk down the street, around midnight. It's desolate, it's dark and I can only hear the thumpa-thumpa of a bar playing hip-hop for hussies.

Once inside the 24-hour diner, I see three things:
1) A lone cowboy, wearing a cream colored ten gallon hat sipping coffee.
2) Fake breasted drunk woman displaying an inordinate amount of  public affection
3) Old people from our High School

3) These two men are wasted. One of them went to jail.  I am going to not go into detail here, but it was a serious allegation. I wonder how the legal system let him out. He's not openly vicious, but still, he's an ex-convict, with  more than a felony on his record. Yeah.

My friends and I  eat our food as fast as possible. We leave. We get harassed by drunk men while we walk down the street.  One of them screams, "faggots" at us. Clearly, I am gay. CLEARLY. And, even if I was, why would you yell this to a group of women?

By this point, I'm envisioning my life vaguely resembling the coming-of-age "Garden State" and all of those, cliche motifs. Only in my version, there is no sexy Zach Braff, only strange hipsters, drunk men and a shittier soundtrack.

"This is All the Spanish I know"

Or 

Oh %*#?:! this Album is Amazing

Let me preface this by saying, prior to this, I never paid much attention to Neil Diamond. I have heard Hot August Nights, appreciated it's rocking nature, but it never really stuck with me like this record.

I am not a music critic. I am not a pretentious hipster who thinks the music you listen to sucks and I am not going to linearly depict this album. Instead, I am only going to tell you to listen to it, because it will lift your spirits. The energy Diamond gives off is absolutely amazing.  It's raw and uninhibited, like you've never heard  before, at least by Diamond standards. 

My *Amuurican* Penis

or

Never start a game of,  "Why I Love America"

with Pepe Lopez Tequila.

For the fourth of July, I thought it would be a great idea to make friends with Ms. Pepe Lopez, a fine, fine, classy tequila. As you can tell,  I was feeling like a fine, classy dame.

To provide some back story: I reside(d) in a very liberal town. People here tend to vote very left, are strong into large taxes, socialized medicine, education and dig Obama. The progressive words like 'Cunt' and 'Queer' are not faux pas. In fact, in conversation, most people I know use them. People are into green energy, composting and appreciating nature.  I love these people but I tend to be a bit more classically libertarian. We usually agree to disagree.


I, however, was born in a conservative, suburban, white area. People didn't really like taxes and most people I know voted for George Bush. Twice.  I had a neighbor who would go up to those using food stamps in the supermarket and aggressively critiqued their purchases. Often times, he scared away the person purchasing the groceries all together. At the time this seemed like normative culture to me.

Contextualized, it makes sense that I have a big 'ol American Penis. I love America. I realize there are many problems here, socially, racially, economically and well, structurally. But, still, I appreciate all the wonderful American things on a purely personal, hedonistic  basis.  Like,  very simply-- the ability to drink beer and blow things up.

To me, the 4th of July represents all that is wonderful (and wasteful) about our excess. We consume beer, eat cheap grilled food, converse with our friends, appreciate those who have fought for us and  in the meantime, "blow things up." (Fireworks, people, fireworks!)

So, you may think I'm a conservative, close minded asshole, but only on the 4th. It's the one day it is acceptable to be radically flashing your stars and stripes, your American Post- 9/11 Pride Masculine Penis. For one day, I don't care.

 So, back to Ms. Pepe Lopez. After several swigs of her, my friends and I thought it would be a great idea to start a little game called, "Why I Love America"  One shot for a "good" answer, two shots for a "bad" answer. This did not go over well and Ms. Pepe did not approve of any of the answers, so she gave no shots.

Soon, drunken discussions of sexism, racism and all the reasons NOT to love America came up.

Me, "Why do YOU love America?"
Response, "I don't."
Me, "What!? No Ms. Pepe for you!"

or

My friend, "Why do you love America?"
Response, "This country is sexist!"
My friend, "Yes, but why do you love America?"
Response: "You're a white male!"

Soon, I became frustrated, I grab Ms. Pepe and cuddled her with my big, hard, erect American Penis.

I then sneak into an old house of mine, which no one was home in and watch the fireworks from the roof. Realizing, I could get in a lot of trouble for this,  stash the Oly tall boy on the roof, tell my friends to leave, take a swig of Pepe and crawl back through the, small bathroom window. Needless to say, I saw the sunset, fireworks and cradled my big American Masculine, Capitalistic Penis. For this breaking an entering was a small price to pay.

I know. I'm an asshole. But, if you want to talk politic, policy, reform, let's do it any other day but July 4th.

Which leads me to my next post:

Educational Reform and the Idea of the Social Temporal Band-Aid

or

Why the System Will Never Change?

and

Can You Really Out Live Your Idea?

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have

vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. 

-Henri Cartier-Bresson

Sometimes it is nice to have a reminder about

 how beautiful and breathtaking a moment in life can be.

Limbo

The word limbo originated from a Catholic Definition, meaning  in-between the outer layer of hell, in accordance with Dante. It has since progressed since that time to just mean a stage of in-between. A time where there is no solidification,  no one place, no permanence, an texistence between two different realms. 

Limbo. Our entire life is a limbo.

 But, this is not what  I'm not going to write about.

----

I heard the whirling repetitive wind of the fan as  her small lips uttered words of Jesus. The pictures in the book were colorful, the words were simple. "Jesus was King!"  She sat back, her Jonas Brothers flannel pajamas contrasted the pale pink of her wallpaper. The corner of her room was peeling, exposing a weathered off-white wall,  the peeling printed flowers wilting. "Jesus was the King, and he was born in Bethlehem."

I looked over at her wall. There was a Psalm 2 on her written on a polished, shiny tree trunk that contained a blurry reflection half my face as I read it.  Next to it, a picture of Hanna Montana, that read, 'Girls Rock!'

"He was King." She kept reading, the fan lulling my thoughts, her words familiar yet as they left her mouth, floated into the air above her, the sound falling,  becoming foreign. Those words formed another language.

She looked at me, each Jonas brother on her shirt, smiling. "Wait. So, if Mary was Jesus's mother, how come her husband wasn't Jesus's dad?" she asked.

I paused. 

For a while back in high school, I used to teach Sunday school at an Episcopal church. Every Sunday I would pick a lesson from the Bible, read it to the children, grades 4-6. I would then assign them exciting art projects to do that adhered to the moral lesson. I asked them questions, like, "What is right and what is wrong?" or "How do you become a good person?" It wasn't so much that I held the words I read to them to be absolute Truth, but rather, I liked hearing what kids would say when you asked them philosophical questions. I was 17, selfish, immature, insecure and vapid. I was, an American  teenager. I had sex. I drank booze. I smoked pot in my hot tub while I was naked with the opposite sex. I snuck out of my basement window when my parents were sleeping. I toilet papered houses.  I was not moral.

 However, every Sunday, I was someone who could make the class of 6 kids think. I liked this. 

I guess, my Sunday's were cheap, knock-off version of  Bill Cosby's show, "Kids Say the Darndest Things."

When asked,  "What is the difference between right and wrong?" a little girl, named Sara responded, "Well, I guess it is when you know deep down what you did will hurt someone else!"

I still use that definition to establish and perfect my own binary of right/wrong in morality. 

So here I am, eight years later, realizing my own disconnect from this small girl reading me words of Jesus. Her world is  full of things I cannot understand, Ke$ha, Jonas Brothers, Hanna Montana, using Youtube to find dance music, texting her mom and emailing her grandmother.  Now, she thinks that the words and stories she is reading to me, to be real. To her, they are Absolute Truth. In her life, there is no limbo. To her, everything makes sense. If not, someone has the answer. 

I pause. I look at the Psalm, I look at her Jonas Brother Pajamas, the Hanna Montana on the wall, and I answer.

"Well, to some people, mostly Catholics, they believe that Jesus planted the Seed into Mary's belly. Mary's husband isn't Jesus's father-- Jesus has a father and that is God."  and then, I say, "Uh, Yeah, Jesus was also brown!"

"What? Well then, God could be purple," She said.

I read her another story, the one about the three wise men. I think about how awful the frankincense smelled every Christmas Eve for two hours during service.  I close the book and put it down on her nightstand. 

 I look at her, her room with the peeling wallpaper, the walls with the strange symbols. Here, Hanna Montana, Jesus and the Jonas Brothers are all smiling their straight, white teeth at me. I don't know how Mary got pregnant, I don't know what Jesus did, I just know he existed.  I don't know who the Jonas Brothers are and I don't know if God is purple. 

I close the door, turn off the light, shielding my vision from Hanna, Jesus, Jonas and her wilted, peeling flowers.