There is no one I disapprove of or believe in more than myself

The thing about writing about your birthday is just that...it's your birthday and while your coming of age means a lot to you, it's something personal and people would more likely classify it under the "don't really give a shit" drawer than on the "I really care about that!" pile. But anyway...

It is my twentieth and yeah there is a big difference between being nineteen and trying to get into a bar and being twenty and trying to get somewhere in life. I guess I could have been a lot more prepared for the latter if it weren't for all those nights that I forsook studying in order to learn how to play some John Mayer song on the guitar. But you know what they say...a B is temporary but impressing girls with "Daughters" at some lame party where douches play the acoustic guitar to impress...that's forever. (They actually don't say that)

Given all the opportunities and encouragement that my parents have given me, the advice my brother has bestowed upon me, the chances to do well that college has offered me...I can honestly say that I've underachieved pretty amazingly. I don't have to worry about being able to afford to go to college or travel somewhere in order to do research in a lab yet I've pretty much failed in taking advantages of any of those things.

But you know, that's why I wake up and put my two legs through my pant legs every morning--because this isn't the end and I guess it's time to put the last twenty years of dicking around behind me. And if I wake up and don't put my legs through pant legs then either that day doesn't count as a day where I feel like doing anything productive or I will have turned into a girl and decided to wear a skirt or something. Hope I have less days like the former and absolutely zero days of the latter.

Two Songs

Here are two songs. By their titles, one is pretty obvious of what it is about and the other one is just the opposite. Both have this weird shoe-gaze, beautiful cacophony quality to them though.





If I were to have one supremely impractical but genuinely novel super power, it would be the ability to emit music. Not in the way singers use their voices or someone who plays an instrument performs though. Whether from my head, torso, or just a general ambiance of sound emanating from my body, I want to be able to project music in a way so that everyone in the room I were in would hear it with a perfect volume and not be disturbed by it, but just recognize its presence. Like a boom box I guess. But I would do it subconsciously, each song changing to the fluctuations of my emotions.

It's a fear, it is near. The shape becomes ever clear.
It bears teeth extra sharp, that'll cut you in the heart.
It attacks really quick, try to fight it with a stick.
It's not use, give it up, this is life and this is love.

On My Mind

Honey, you've been in my head,
Like homework on Sundays when I've been laughing instead,
Cigarettes for cool kids behind the garden shed,
Love for lovers and the elephant by my bed,
And pearls for those girls,
Who always have their hair in pretty curls,
And football for English boys,
Who always had the latest toys,
You're on my mind.

Is This Happening To Anyone Else?

You know that point in your life when the home you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place to put your stuff in, that idea of home is gone. It's all familiar--from the entrance way to the kitchen to that shitty toilet that wouldn't ever flush right. Even that bathroom mirror that you'd scrutinize yourself in every single day and never notice a change from the day before even though you've been doing it every morning of your life. All of it's the same, but somehow that security and sense of satisfaction of home is gone.

Maybe it's just one giant cycle or a rite of passage. Once you move out for a long time or even forever, you won't ever find that feeling again until you create a new idea of home for you know, yourself, your kids.

And then again, maybe I've been looking at it the wrong way. 'Home' isn't your bed with Ninja Turtle sheets or the yard you learned to played catch in. Maybe it's the people you've filled yourself with... acquaintances, co-workers, friends, close friends, family members. Maybe that's all that family really is...just a bunch of people who miss the same imaginary place when really it's each other they miss.

Leaving just in time
Stay here for a while
Rolling in the ocean
Try to catch her eye
Work hard and say it's easy
Do it just to please me
Tomorrow will be different
So this is why I'm leaving

Au Francais

There is something especially poignant about the way the French say "I miss you". Actually, I should correct myself, they don't say "I miss you" or even " 'I miss you' ". They express this feeling by saying "Tu me manques" or simply "You are being missed by me". Brilliant. The sublte change, putting the person you are talking to in the front of the sentence (and in doing so, making them the most important part of this sentiment) allows the message to be a lot more about who you are talking to. After all, communication is all about the "you's" and expressing yourself to someone else. Just another thing along with A.P.C. jeans, Lacoste polos, croissants and aerospace innovations that the French got right. Heh, maybe the only things.

One last thing that is French and cool--J.Crew commercials.

Rebel Styling

I came across this picture while checking out some vintage photography on The Sartorialist's blog. To say that this person's sense of style is "rugged" is like saying that getting your leg amputated "stings". The subject, Russian futurist poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky, personifies his own type of rebel styling. Not just because he's effortlessly wearing boots with a suit or because of his don't mess with me--I'm a POET way of carrying himself. But look at how he manhandles his three-piece suit, adapting it to the rhythm of his life. Check out his breast pocket that's filled with pens and pencils--tools of his trade. No dainty pocket square or otherwise extension of a supposed elegant and refined choice of attire. Functional. But not in the way cheesy cellphone belt clips are. True rebel styling at its finest.

For My Father