Nice Blogs Finish Last

I guess the major question for anyone who logistically wants to write a blog and have it be popular is can you write something interesting everyday for months on end? In a world where everything moves fast so the scene girl with a sidekick, a twitter, a blog, and a half naked profile picture on facebook can update every last one of those things before you can even start to hate her, its very hard to keep anyone's attention for 2 seconds.

However, for whatever fucked up reason people like to read about the mundane lives of other sad souls from every walk of life. Anyone from a washed up writer to a preteen girl can have a blog that generates reader after reader to laugh at it or sympathize with it. Anyone can have a blog that is successful but in the end who really gives a fuck. 50 years from now no one will care about what you think about Obama and no one will care about this fucking entry.

Later,
Andrew

Drug Induced Similarites

The Pink Floyd "Wish You Were Here" vinyl is spinning behind me, Shine On Parts 1-5, a 70's machine played through a 21st century surround sound system. Just trying to keep a grasp on the past it seems. As a society we cannot just seem to let go of the fucking spinning disk and its lower sound quality. However, at some point a thing get so old and by the wayside that it becomes cool again. As a bunch of grunge and pop loving, raised in the 90's on anything from Nirvana to Hanson kids are proceeding into their live free, die young 20's, vinyl is back on the shelf. New record players are being produced and the pot smoking hippie infused generation of the 40 somethings who were raised in the 70's, can now join the pot smoking hippie infused 20 somethings as the only vinyl lovers still around.

Growing up through the 90's and into today (almost 2010, holy fuck) there was always this feeling of connection to that group of kids that grew up in the 70's, from clothes to music, examples, Dazed and Confused and That 70's Show. We wanted to be them and they just wanted us to do our fucking homework now that they are 40 and our parents. Everything seemed so fucking cool back then, nothing like the 80's where all the drugs from the 70's backfired and some dumbass introduced coke to everyone making way too much money. Kids were finally being kids, slacking off, smoking pot while listening to the guitar solo from Comfortably Numb in their parents basement. They dressed different, they acted different, and they grew up different. As a kid and now a semi-adult, going back and growing up in the 70's probably wouldn't of been much different than the 90's. No Spice Girls or one hit wonder techno but the fact remains that a 40 something can sit in a room while a vinyl spins out the opening to Led Zeppelin's "Over the Hills and Far Away", and get the same feeling as a 20 something when he throws on his ipod to the opening of "Come As You Are", they would feel like they owned those years.

Another month I drowned away

FUCK!!

It has been a month since I last blogged. Either A. I am a lazy piece of shit or B. I am a forgetful piece of shit.

I assume its a combination of both. I am like 95% percent sure of this.

I spent 4 days at Amherst this week and it taught me one thing...sometimes you just have to get in the car with some strangers and listen to The Island: Come and See

Yours Truly

Wanting to Leave Only to Return

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When I got back from my 3 week trip to Montana I said to myself and Dale (who was with me at the time) that I was retiring from hiking for a year. I guess I considered hiking and going on treks sort of a job in the same sense a baseball player considers baseball their job. For a while it was defining me as a person. I was always just living until the next hike. Thinking back on it I believe it was a much more relaxed and logical way to live. Instead of always being worried about what is happening and if your life is going the way it "should" you are focused on what is coming up and the times ahead. It is much easier to live in the moment and be content with things you cant control. I have not gone on a large trek in a while and I am beginning to feel that pressure to make things the way I imagine they should be. This is very often how you mess things up. So soon enough I would like to get away from everything this way I will want to return again.

Goodbye,
Andrew

I Thought You Were A Lifesize Paper Doll

"But whether it be dream or truth, to do well is what matters. If it be truth, for truth's sake. If not, then to gain friends for the time when we awaken."

Rarely do we realize how little control we have over those around us. We imagine, because we spend much time with ourselves, that we are the point from which all things stem. On those rare occasions where we step back we understand that we are just the opposite. We have the ability to be the beginning, middle, or end for anyone. The quote above by the dramatist Pedro Calderon de la Barca states the only thing we are is a variable. Most of the time we are in dream which is visible, isolated, brief with no actual beginning, middle, or end. During this time our goal should be to do well because when we do awake and things do stem from us we will have the people and knowledge we need to live up to our own self image. We have control over ourselves and to us everyone else is a variable. To them we are the variable. I believe we should make the best at being a variable for whoever is out there wondering why they cannot control us. For every variable needs a constant. This way maybe when we awaken all that crazy dream stuff may be real.

I thought you were a lifesize paper doll but then wouldn't we all be dolls?

Hi, How Are You? Part 2

How much do we hide from people on a daily basis? A few times a day I will be asked by either a stranger, acquaintance, or a close friend how are you? It seems no matter what the situation that day may be or how I actually am that the response is always some form of the word good. Very rarely do any of us respond to the question how are you? with some form of the word bad. As we grow further and further away from family I feel that no one knows us inside and out anymore. This may be why people take so much effort in choosing a mate for life. Not because of evolutionary need to reproduce but the newly developed need to have someone know us through and through. Subtly we are hiding bits and pieces of ourselves everyday even though there are people out there who we don't talk to anymore who know us well. Somehow we pretend that hiding parts of ourselves will protect us from losing ourselves to other people. My question is why.

I realized today how much "stuff" I have. Whether it be computer parts, books, movies, posters, or clothes I realized there is a lot of it. I am not sure what my life would be without all this "stuff". In a way I think we are defined by our "stuff" because it is solid hold in your hand memories, like a book you read as a child or an old t shirt. We connect "stuff" with people, some who may not be around anymore, and through this we can piece our lives together. Its funny how much you could look at my stuff and learn almost nothing yet I can look at it and see my entire life. This is why yard sales are so interesting because you are buying other peoples "stuff", you are buying their memories. (For sale: A piece of who I am- $5).

Song of the Day: Your Hand In Mine- Explosions in the Sky

Hoping you are all actually good,
Andrew

And everyday we will write something new

Yesterday was my birthday...I am 20 years old...20 years does not seem like a long time but when I think I am only 3 more of these away from 80 I think god damn...I do not feel older but I know I look older. I have begun to listen to records (vinyls)...and that must add some old points to my tally. I dont feel I know much more then when I was say 15. The world is still round..2+2 =4...girls are still confusing as all hell and I still am not sure what all of this schooling and training means. I can't picture myself in the real world yet people tell me that I am in it. I guess the only thing I have learned in the last 5 years and the only thing being a teenager taught me is that
A. You cannot control 95% of your life.
B. Don't ever be afraid to fail...worst thing you can do is not believe you are doing the right thing.

I am left with questions though as my birthday ends..as I was listening to my new Johnny Flynn album, the song Brown Trout Blues stuck out to me. "Time rolls the back wheels of my mind".."I wonder if I'm doing the best I could"....i guess we can never know we are doing the best we could. How do we judge ourselves as easily as we judge others?

I def. feel I have to get away for a little while...or at least start doing something different. I'm not one to worry about things but I have to make a change. I am going to start with a tattoo..see where it goes from there. I feel like my trip to Montana last summer started something that I never kept going on. So for my birthday I am giving myself a second chance. I hope to blog everyday for a month in an attempt to figure out what is actually going on.

Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit

And We Lit the Sky On Fire

When you look up happiness in the dictionary you get three main definitions

1. Characterized by good luck; fortunate.

2. Enjoying, showing, or marked by pleasure, satisfaction, or joy.

3. Being especially well-adapted

When you think about happiness and what it is to obtain it, the third definition seems to be the most appropriate. Luck is not a solid enough basis for a definition and not a very optimistic view of happiness, so it baffles me that this would be the first definition. If you can adapt to the world around you, good or bad, there is nothing stopping you from being happy. Sometimes you just have to accept that this is the way it is, luck or no luck.

I think that this summer I am going to post a smashmymac video in which I take my mac and smash it to pieces. For a number of reasons (most being my fault probably) my mac is barely functioning. The keyboard and mouse both stop working randomly...sometimes together...like just now. At times the screen brightness will go out of control and I will not be able to control it. So the plan is when we (Tim, Dale, Leland, maybe Jim, and I) make it to Texas I am going to grab my camera and smash this piece of shit into pieces.

Tim Kelly and Matt Good brought back lots of fireworks and we set some off at south cape beach. No 14 year old girls were present. Tim got hit by a rogue roman candle blast.
















Next stop Texas

Spring Break or Lack There Of

Could not seem to sleep tonight. This is my second college spring break and for whatever reason this time of the year brings on a lot of change and things to ponder. Which is most likely why sleep is evading me tonight. I guess it is always a time where you begin to think about next year or this summer and what life is going to bring. I have noticed however that no matter what I think or want to happen next life has a way of doing whatever it wants, regardless of my desires. Maybe it is not worth worrying about because in the end your going to do what feels right, and things will fall into place because of that. I have been sitting in bed for about 2 hours, and even though I was really tired earlier I cannot fall asleep. Life has a way of keeping you up sometimes.

A Return

After exactly a month away from blogging with time to reflect and sleep I still have nothing worth while to say...but I will continue to try. Currently I am sick, so that month of sleeping as not helped my health worth a damn. I make my return standing in a kitchen of a 2 story, furnished apartment that has been rented for the weekend for filming purposes. So besides making a movie for the weekend, we also gain the ability to play house for a while. Four guys play house?

So I currently stand around the table putting the finishing touches on a day, well in this case a nights worth of shooting. Though making a movie can seem stressful, I find it a relaxing experience for the most part. Everyone has something that they just understand, that makes sense to them, and is very easy for them to accomplish. Making movies is one of those things for me. Somewhere between planning shots, getting shots done, thinking about lighting, audio, and camera settings my mind just goes into cruise control and everything else fades away. It becomes that making this movie happen is the only thing in the world, and that feels ok.

There is also this bonding experience that comes along with movie making. Everyone feels apart of something special when you get that perfect shot with the perfect situation. For me this puts everything into place, because if this shot can happen, no matter how many times it has fails, then anything seems possible. With the right effort and maybe a little luck it seems that the world will self correct itself, and allow us to get the perfect shot in life as well.

Well enough of this philosophical comparison of life to well art. My sickness has forced me to need sleep more then I would like it to.

Bon Voyage

"That is not my shirt that is my sandwich"

A few days ago I was enjoying a trip to the mall with my friend Neil and our wondering brought us into the Gap. Lately I have found myself buying a lot of clothing items from the gap and probably should not be because of how expensive everything is. Yet I cannot avoid the waffle shirts. However, Neil was looking at the argyle socks and comparing which he has bought and how none of the others look appealing. I told him I liked one pair because it looked strikingly similar to a shirt I had just bought. As I went to show Neil my shirt in comparison to his socks I opened my sandwich bag and looked down to proclaim "That is not my shirt that is my sandwich" and immediately we both began to laugh and walk out the door. At the time it seemed like such a silly mistake to make and probably because of the snowy day and the fact we were bored out of our mind this joke seemed very funny.

It led me to start thinking about our easily our minds can jump for one topic to another. One second it is argyle socks and the next minute you are talking about Kevin Smith movies (which is what happened directly after the joke). For the most part I feel like my mind moves very fast and sometimes too fast, which makes me very aware when my mind begins to slow and that can be scary. I think this is why older people get cranky quite often, because your mind slowing down is a scary thing and I would complain about everything as well.

As I am writing this blog I witnessed a guitar hero commercial featuring Tony Hawk on drums, Michael Phelps on Bass, ARod on Guitar, and Kobe Bryant singing. I am in shock and quite blown, so writing the rest of this blog has just become a heavy task. That commercial just did not make sense, and I am pretty sure the sky is falling...actually it is.

Regarding the sky falling, I experienced a very similar scene today while traveling in New Hampshire. I have been up in this area to 1. visit my gf Selina and 2. visit my uncle Michael. However on the way back from the second location I found myself under the sky as it was falling. First of course is the insulation that comes down (snow) and it was coming down enough that I drove into one snow bank and could not exceed a speed of 40 mph on the highway, which has become one barely plowed lane. All I can say is thank god for rumble strips.

I now sit in Dover in a Hilton in a suite with two flat screen LCD tv's, a kitchenette, and an amazing hot tub. Funny how things work out sometimes, but maybe the end is near and I am just very lucky.

Anyways the end of this blog was supposed to be different but that commercial threw me very offtrack, and now I don't even want to play guitar hero. See For Yourself.









A Family of Trees Wanted, to be Haunted,
Andrew

Mix Tapes For Going to the Dentist

While visiting Neil at Amherst he stumbled upon this very interesting site, it is called Tiny Mix Tapes and the idea of the site is that people would post their mix tape topic ideas, then someone would respond by making the mixtape and the admin for the site would determine which ones go up. Not long ago I sent in a mixtape in response to the topic "You kissed another girl right in front of me and this is the mixtape I hoping you'd make to apologize".

To my surprise my mixtape was actually put on the site. I suddenly felt like the mixtape I had made and the others on the site were art forms, each song selected and placed in a specific spot for a specific reason. There can be a lot of thought put into the arrangement of songs and it seems that we have decided that meaning can be created by mixing various songs, to the point where we can create a mixtape for the topic "make me your girlfriend or you’ll never see me naked again."

I went to the dentist today, which is an appointment most people would not mind missing. However, I do not usually mind going to dentist since its pretty short and all you have to do is lie there, which is probably a reason some girls don't mind bad sex, sometimes.

While lying in the office though I noticed how each dentist had their own little rooms that they worked in, and in each room was a number of pictures. Some of them had paintings, mostly bizarre paintings that seemed not to mean anything. I wonder if they get to choose the paintings or if they have a guideline to what the paintings they must have. I imagine it would look something like this.

1. No pictures of clowns, because that is just creepy
2. No pictures depicting pain in any way, for the obvious reasons
3. All pictures must devoid of any meaning or appearance of order, unless its a painting of the sea, possibly with boats.
4. All pictures must make the room inviting, but not that inviting because we are still a dentist office.

All the pictures I noticed in this office seemed to fit the criteria above except for an over sized picture of a mermaid that covered the entirety of a wall. This picture seemed too out of place and colorful. However maybe that was the good room and I was not lucky enough to get it, which seems much more likely.

P.S- I have amended what I wrote in the last blog as I have again begun to use a space heater in my room, economy or no economy

Enjoy your trips to the Dentist,
Andrew

Time for Snuggie

I seem to be very unlucky when it comes to acquiring a room in a house. In the last two homes I have lived in I have been lucky enough to get the room with the outer walls. This means, since im not good at putting it in words, that the room has a wall and then immediately behind that is the outside world. Most rooms have some sort of wall or outer shell of the house or other isolation before the harsh outdoors. You might think that this does not sound that bad at all, however you have never experienced summer or winter in these rooms.

Every summer my room will get as warm as the inside of a snuggie no matter how many windows are open. This is because the room is getting directly warmed by the sun, which is very hot, at least I have heard. So throughout the summer months i find myself sleeping in the most minimal of setups, rarely using a blanket and most of the time sweating, and I don't like to shower that much. Needless to say it makes for an uncomfortable few months and makes me appreciate the ocean cooling that causes temperatures to stay below 80 most days.

In the winter time, the time this blog is being written, the room ceases to be warm or have an warm qualities at all. The thin walls that were probably thrown up by an intoxicated or at least sugar high builder put up no fight against a New England winter. This is where a snuggie should come into play, anyone want to buy me one? Regardless this horrible roll of the dice results in my feet never being warm, and my hands to constantly be frigid, which is great when girls are over. Every morning when I wake up and leave the room the rest of the house feels about 20 degrees warmer then the inside of my room. Its like the air vent is sneaking cold air in as I sleep just to spite me.

In turn I use various techniques to combat the air and have perfected staying warm, or I am just evolving. First I always wear socks, if I could give one piece of advice for staying in my room it would be buy warm socks. I also try to keep the room as light as possible so maybe it will appear warmer and I can trick myself into believing it, this is a very unproven method. I once used a space heater to alleviate the problem, this however is extremely loud and I am pretty sure doubles the electricity bill, so the economy has killed that dream as well. The best technique I have found is having some other unfortunate soul sleeping in the bed with you, thats why I would like to thank Selina for putting up with the cold and only complaining about it as much as I do.

If you cannot find a poor soul to harvest for warmth I suggest getting a pokephone, notice the invisible accent mark above the E. The pokephone is Selina's idea but I have taken the task of designing it. Essentially as she describes it, the pokephone will be able to do anything, including making you warm and allowing you to video chat with those you are on the phone with. Its a great idea and I have no idea where to start with the designing process. I don't think anyone has created something that can do everything, but I think apple is close.

The pokephone will look much better then this, I promise

xoxo,
Andrew

Meaning?

In every human's life there is guaranteed to be at least one time where they question the meaning of life. I think the obvious problem with trying to determine the meaning of life as a whole is that we miss the subtle, yet more important goal, finding the meaning within life. One would figure that discovering the meaning of all life is well impossible. However one can very easily determine what gives his or her life meaning, what it is that makes your life worth having.

It seems that people get tied up in the notion that success, whether that be through a career and how much money you have, or how you are looked at by others in society, is the key to having meaning in life. These of course are the things you have control over and on any day you can change these things all on your own.

Recently I have been discovering a underlying meaning that many may either take for granted or just ignore as a meaning because it is uncontrollable. This is the idea that other people create all the meaning in your life. What is love without this exact idea? Is it that difficult to throw all other reasons and goals out the window when talking about what creates meaning in life and put it all in the hands of those around you? Well of course it is difficult because as humans we need control, we need a plan, something that we alone can take, mold, and fashion into our own meaning. Human relationships are more complex then that and scare the crap out of us.

However I have come to believe that we can have a number of people from which all meaning in life can derive. In a letter I recently received was written this sentence "Whenever I picture my future, I don't see a job, or a career, or even the place I'll be living, but I do see you."(SMS) This is what sparked this idea, that everything that society deems important can be thrown out the window in the category of importance for one person, because more meaning can be derived from a person then can be derived from any controllable element. So maybe we should let go for a moment, give in to the uncontrollable and in the end everything will work out because the people around us will make everything ok.

Andrew