Thursday, January 19, 2006
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Long Way From, Long Time Since-The Impossibles
Current mood: tired
Category: Blogging
It’s back to the rigorous routine where every last second must be expended to the resources of effectiveness and efficiencies (I know those are concepts and not resources. But hey I’m the one typing here.) It’s in these hamster wheel moments, that if one took a second to observe, the fictitious nature of time rears its undeniable face. Time too is a concept and according to the special theory of relativity thanks to good ole’ Einstein we realize that everyman/woman has his/her own relation to time. If you were to read a Brief History of Time the brain in the wheel chair guy explains it all. It’s crazy to note that when the sun dies it will be seen at different stages as compared to where you are on the event horizon and in fact would have been dead for a while before you’d been aware of its fate. To digress from theory for a bit, tell me you don’t feel it. Tell me there aren’t days that feel like minutes and seconds that feel like hours. We’ve all sat in the classroom or meeting while it’s snowing outside with the roads getting slicker and our stomachs begin to rumble. Have you ever been in that situation and looked at the clock? I don’t know about you but I swear it seems to move backward. Or how about waking up in the morning? In Spanish they call it despertarse. I can’t think of a more appropriate cognate. I know I- feel desperation in the morning when it’s 4:45 am and the cacophony of my two alarms siren their ominous orchestra. The snooze button always seems to get hit, at least once. Then in a mad rush to leave for work time seems to be anything but working for you…. it passes by in blinks and before you know it, your late. I’ve read a ton of Alan Watts and dabbled here and there in Buddhism for about seven years now and I can’t really give a tangible explanation of what the purpose of meditation is. All I know is I went to the Zendo and meditation is something my western mind is ill equipped to execute. If I’m going to go out on a limb and give a reason why I think they meditate I would say it was to get into the now. All of this rushing and running and sickening moving around like chickens with our heads cut off, we rarely find time just to be present, calm and observational. Time is fictisous but it’s got us wound up tighter than any nuclear reactor that can send spacecrafts to Pluto and one day we will explode…unless we learn to be present. My girlfriend’s mother gave me bit of advice that really drives this idea home. If you’re feeling overwhelmed with obligations and you feel like your grasping for time as if its water in your clenched fists (the harder you grip the more it gets squeezed out) then goes to your microwave and put the timer on for a minute. Turn away from the clock and just sit/stand there and do nothing. Just actually feel how long a minute is. A lot can happen in that time…now if I could just wake up.
WoW I'm listening to music...what a suprise!!!!
The Impossibles-Brick Bomb
Currently listening:
4 Song Brick Bomb
By Impossibles
Release date: By 12 June, 2001
9:44 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Dr. Mr. Jeff Foxworthy
Current mood: tired
Category: Blogging
Look around everyday and you see the signs. We live in the city whose best-known invention is the boot. You know that little yellow fucker that prevents your car from driving if you haven’t paid your parking tickets? When people across America can’t drive their car…they get to thank Colorado. We live in a city whose main claim to fame is the fact we happen to be 5,280 feet above sea level. I don’t know about you but I see a lot of people around town who look like their brain cells need every last oxygen molecule they can get. Face it all you fellow Colorado natives we live in a place that will stop at nothing to look like the cool square on the map. In Denver alone we’ll riot for winning sports teams while supporting a government who lies about ballot issues like referendum C and D so they pass. Once C passed what did they do? They pull back the promised money for higher education and public programs to allocate them to good old fashion suburbia sprawling roads. When I say sprawl, I do mean the very definition of sprawl. New housing developments are popping up in the metro area like zits on Jessica Simpson when doing those Proactiv commercials.
Since I’m a Coloradian I only get my information from the most prestigious of sources. Have you ever listened to Jeff Foxworthy? He has this astute theory on why Southerners appear stupid. He claims that television focuses more on the white trash inbreed culture of the south rather then on the doctors, scientists and lawyers; therefore giving Southerners a bad rap.
Well Mr. Foxworthy have you ever saddled up and gave Denver a pony ride? All one would have to do is pick up a copy of Tuesday’s local paper (The Rocky Mountain News January 17) and turn to page 5A to find Kevin Vaughan’s story, A tale of two cities. We don’t need a T.V. to under-represent our intelligence when we have the fine journalism of our own hometown writers to speak for us. Last week Denver beat New England to win a spot in the AFC division championship. To type it mildly, WE ARE A SPORTS TOWN so of course anything Broncos is deemed newsworthy and susceptible to reflecting our values.
Using delayed lead tactics to magically weave a fourth grader fluff story, Vaughn comes up with some powerful sentences like, “Denver and Pittsburg.” Or how about, “The Broncos and Steelers.” His eloquent use of vocabulary and creative verve also shot out a nice two sentence transition paragraph, “And yet.” Oh I too remember the good ole’ days of high school newspaper layout when words were nothing more than black icons used to fill the awful void called white space.
Not much for print journalism to educate in these neck of the woods the article grasps at everything to reach nothing more then the tried and true statistic hoopla of professional sports. We all know the roll call here where Mr. Statistico browses the web to come up with the most obscure and irrelevant similarities and differences. Like how many times a team has faced each other in the playoffs as compared to other teams they faced. Boring! (Did you like my one word sentence?) Then Vaughan ends it with the powerful and informative paragraph by saying the winner of the game goes to the Super Bowl. Really? (There’s that one word thing again.) He describes the game as, “…the battle with the Roman numerals in its name.” And I thought the XL meant the shirt size all those rough and tough football player guys wore???
To top this riveting sport’s poem off, the page came equipped with delightful compare and contrast statistics for all you math minds out there. These stats were so impeccably picked to paint only the most flattering picture of our Mile High city. Apparently men rule in Denver while Females rule in Pittsburgh. This concept is founded on the fact that Denver has a massive 1% more male population then women. While females out number men in Pittsburgh by almost 5%, guys tell me why this is a good thing? I can tell males rule in Denver because we were dumb enough to spend $132 million more on a football stadium built at the same time as our Pittsburgh counterparts. If our women tried to tell us Denver men to spend our money on more important things, then do you know how we responded??? (Well I do now because these lovely compiled stats rest on the page for all to be proud about.) We responded by divorcing them bitches because it’s apparently a good thing that we have a 3.6% higher divorce rate then our rival town. That’s not the end of the brilliantly compiled information…oh no, if you want to live it up in Denver good for you. They don’t call us the Mile High city for our altitude alone…no our median home value is 4X’s higher then that of Pittsburg which says a lot in regards to our quality of living when our median income is a whopping $10,000 more than theirs.
This story was like of a sophisticated haiku; it left the reader with more questions than answers. My personal question is:
“Rocky Mountain News, are you trying to make Denver look stupid?”
Hey who knows, maybe Foxworthy’s new stand up routine will be about us.
Long Way From, Long Time Since-The Impossibles
Current mood: tired
Category: Blogging
It’s back to the rigorous routine where every last second must be expended to the resources of effectiveness and efficiencies (I know those are concepts and not resources. But hey I’m the one typing here.) It’s in these hamster wheel moments, that if one took a second to observe, the fictitious nature of time rears its undeniable face. Time too is a concept and according to the special theory of relativity thanks to good ole’ Einstein we realize that everyman/woman has his/her own relation to time. If you were to read a Brief History of Time the brain in the wheel chair guy explains it all. It’s crazy to note that when the sun dies it will be seen at different stages as compared to where you are on the event horizon and in fact would have been dead for a while before you’d been aware of its fate. To digress from theory for a bit, tell me you don’t feel it. Tell me there aren’t days that feel like minutes and seconds that feel like hours. We’ve all sat in the classroom or meeting while it’s snowing outside with the roads getting slicker and our stomachs begin to rumble. Have you ever been in that situation and looked at the clock? I don’t know about you but I swear it seems to move backward. Or how about waking up in the morning? In Spanish they call it despertarse. I can’t think of a more appropriate cognate. I know I- feel desperation in the morning when it’s 4:45 am and the cacophony of my two alarms siren their ominous orchestra. The snooze button always seems to get hit, at least once. Then in a mad rush to leave for work time seems to be anything but working for you…. it passes by in blinks and before you know it, your late. I’ve read a ton of Alan Watts and dabbled here and there in Buddhism for about seven years now and I can’t really give a tangible explanation of what the purpose of meditation is. All I know is I went to the Zendo and meditation is something my western mind is ill equipped to execute. If I’m going to go out on a limb and give a reason why I think they meditate I would say it was to get into the now. All of this rushing and running and sickening moving around like chickens with our heads cut off, we rarely find time just to be present, calm and observational. Time is fictisous but it’s got us wound up tighter than any nuclear reactor that can send spacecrafts to Pluto and one day we will explode…unless we learn to be present. My girlfriend’s mother gave me bit of advice that really drives this idea home. If you’re feeling overwhelmed with obligations and you feel like your grasping for time as if its water in your clenched fists (the harder you grip the more it gets squeezed out) then goes to your microwave and put the timer on for a minute. Turn away from the clock and just sit/stand there and do nothing. Just actually feel how long a minute is. A lot can happen in that time…now if I could just wake up.
WoW I'm listening to music...what a suprise!!!!
The Impossibles-Brick Bomb
Currently listening:
4 Song Brick Bomb
By Impossibles
Release date: By 12 June, 2001
9:44 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Dr. Mr. Jeff Foxworthy
Current mood: tired
Category: Blogging
Look around everyday and you see the signs. We live in the city whose best-known invention is the boot. You know that little yellow fucker that prevents your car from driving if you haven’t paid your parking tickets? When people across America can’t drive their car…they get to thank Colorado. We live in a city whose main claim to fame is the fact we happen to be 5,280 feet above sea level. I don’t know about you but I see a lot of people around town who look like their brain cells need every last oxygen molecule they can get. Face it all you fellow Colorado natives we live in a place that will stop at nothing to look like the cool square on the map. In Denver alone we’ll riot for winning sports teams while supporting a government who lies about ballot issues like referendum C and D so they pass. Once C passed what did they do? They pull back the promised money for higher education and public programs to allocate them to good old fashion suburbia sprawling roads. When I say sprawl, I do mean the very definition of sprawl. New housing developments are popping up in the metro area like zits on Jessica Simpson when doing those Proactiv commercials.
Since I’m a Coloradian I only get my information from the most prestigious of sources. Have you ever listened to Jeff Foxworthy? He has this astute theory on why Southerners appear stupid. He claims that television focuses more on the white trash inbreed culture of the south rather then on the doctors, scientists and lawyers; therefore giving Southerners a bad rap.
Well Mr. Foxworthy have you ever saddled up and gave Denver a pony ride? All one would have to do is pick up a copy of Tuesday’s local paper (The Rocky Mountain News January 17) and turn to page 5A to find Kevin Vaughan’s story, A tale of two cities. We don’t need a T.V. to under-represent our intelligence when we have the fine journalism of our own hometown writers to speak for us. Last week Denver beat New England to win a spot in the AFC division championship. To type it mildly, WE ARE A SPORTS TOWN so of course anything Broncos is deemed newsworthy and susceptible to reflecting our values.
Using delayed lead tactics to magically weave a fourth grader fluff story, Vaughn comes up with some powerful sentences like, “Denver and Pittsburg.” Or how about, “The Broncos and Steelers.” His eloquent use of vocabulary and creative verve also shot out a nice two sentence transition paragraph, “And yet.” Oh I too remember the good ole’ days of high school newspaper layout when words were nothing more than black icons used to fill the awful void called white space.
Not much for print journalism to educate in these neck of the woods the article grasps at everything to reach nothing more then the tried and true statistic hoopla of professional sports. We all know the roll call here where Mr. Statistico browses the web to come up with the most obscure and irrelevant similarities and differences. Like how many times a team has faced each other in the playoffs as compared to other teams they faced. Boring! (Did you like my one word sentence?) Then Vaughan ends it with the powerful and informative paragraph by saying the winner of the game goes to the Super Bowl. Really? (There’s that one word thing again.) He describes the game as, “…the battle with the Roman numerals in its name.” And I thought the XL meant the shirt size all those rough and tough football player guys wore???
To top this riveting sport’s poem off, the page came equipped with delightful compare and contrast statistics for all you math minds out there. These stats were so impeccably picked to paint only the most flattering picture of our Mile High city. Apparently men rule in Denver while Females rule in Pittsburgh. This concept is founded on the fact that Denver has a massive 1% more male population then women. While females out number men in Pittsburgh by almost 5%, guys tell me why this is a good thing? I can tell males rule in Denver because we were dumb enough to spend $132 million more on a football stadium built at the same time as our Pittsburgh counterparts. If our women tried to tell us Denver men to spend our money on more important things, then do you know how we responded??? (Well I do now because these lovely compiled stats rest on the page for all to be proud about.) We responded by divorcing them bitches because it’s apparently a good thing that we have a 3.6% higher divorce rate then our rival town. That’s not the end of the brilliantly compiled information…oh no, if you want to live it up in Denver good for you. They don’t call us the Mile High city for our altitude alone…no our median home value is 4X’s higher then that of Pittsburg which says a lot in regards to our quality of living when our median income is a whopping $10,000 more than theirs.
This story was like of a sophisticated haiku; it left the reader with more questions than answers. My personal question is:
“Rocky Mountain News, are you trying to make Denver look stupid?”
Hey who knows, maybe Foxworthy’s new stand up routine will be about us.
# posted by Nick D @ 9:59 PM 
