just some pictures.

Long week

haha

from this DuPont MSDS:

"Warning. Melamine Resine is a formaldehyde donor. Formaldehyde is an IARC, NTP or OSHA carcinogen. Wash thoroughly after handling and before eating or smoking."

Smoking! Don't want more cancer on my hands while I suck on my cancer stick! hilarious.

Also, apparently it's only Wednesday. This week has been filled with Fridays, followed by a Monday. Over and over. I feel like it's been at least two weeks since my band's last show. Calendar wise, it was only 5 days. Ridiculous.

And, it's 81 degrees out. Mmm. Hello Summer. I love you. Now if we could only get some palm tree growth happenin.

Simplicity.

Copyright 2000, Linda Breen Pierce. You may reprint this article, provided you include the byline at the end of the article.

"Simplify, Simplify…" More than a century after Henry David Thoreau uttered these words, his plea for simplicity has more significance now than ever before. We work hard and play hard, filling nearly every moment with activity. Most families believe they need two incomes to pay for a standard of living that has doubled in the last 50 years. But do we? Based on my three-year study of over 200 people who have simplified their lives, I found that we can work less, want less, and spend less, and be happier and more fulfilled in the process. Here are ten suggestions to simplify your life. Don't try to simplify your life in a few weeks or months; most people need an initial period of three to five years to complete this transition. Small, gradual steps are best.

1. Don't let any material thing come into your home unless you absolutely love it and want to keep it until it is beyond repair. Too much stuff - it's suffocating us. Purchasing, maintaining, insuring, storing and eventually disposing of our stuff sucks up our precious life energy.

2. Live in a home with only those rooms that you or someone in your family use every day. Create a cozy home environment that fits your family. You will find this is much more satisfying than living in a museum designed to impress your friends. Spending time and money to maintain a home that is larger than you truly need diverts these resources from more fulfilling endeavors.

3. Limit your work (outside of the home) to 30 hours a week, 20 if you are a parent. To live a balanced life, we need "down" time - time to daydream, to relax, to prepare a leisurely meal, to take a walk. If we surround our structured activities with empty spaces, those activities will become more productive and meaningful.

4. Select a home and place of employment no more than 30 minutes away from each other. Commuting time is dead time. It nourishes not the body, the mind, nor the soul. Preserve your energy and money for more rewarding life experiences.

5. Limit your children's extracurricular activities to one to three a week, depending on age. Otherwise, you will exhaust yourself and your children will grow up addicted to constant stimulation.

6. Take three to four months off every few years and go live in a foreign country. Living in a different culture fascinates, excites, and vitalizes us. It teaches us to live in the present, a core practice of simple living. We gain perspective when we experience a foreign culture. We learn how much we have to be grateful for.

7. Spend at least an hour a week in a natural setting, away from crowds of people, traffic, and buildings. Three to four hours of nature time each week is even better. There is nothing more basic, more simple, than the natural world.

8. Do whatever you need to do to connect with a sense of spirit in your life, whether it be prayer, religious services, journal writing, meditation, or spiritually-related reading. Simplicity leads to spirituality; spirituality leads to simplicity. Cultivate a practice of silence and solitude, even for 15 to 30 minutes a day. Your spirituality will evolve naturally.

9. Seek the support of others who want to simplify their lives. Join or start a simplicity circle if you enjoy group interaction. Living simply in our culture can be a lonely journey. Your friends and family may still be on the work-and-spend treadmill and are unlikely to give you support. Participating in a study group will give you support and validation for your choices.

10. Practice saying no. Say no to those things that don't bring you inner peace and fulfillment, whether it be more material things, greater career responsibility, or added social activities. Be vigilant with your time and energy; they are limited resources. If you say yes to one thing (like a job promotion), recognize that you are saying no to something else (perhaps more time with family). Live consciously and deliberately.

Linda Breen Pierce is the author of Choosing Simplicity: Real People Finding Peace and Fulfillment in a Complex World and Simplicity Lessons: A 12-Step Guide to Living Simply. She can be reached via email or at (831) 626-8486 (Pacific time).

practical, of course

here's several posts in one:

by request.



okie dokie.

p.s. don't hate. congratulate.

STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING RIGHT NOW.

CLICK ON THIS LINK NOW.

okay. you have to watch this. otherwise we can't be friends. That's just how it is.


p.s. "treat her right"

hahahahahahahahaha.

p.p.s. if for some reason you haven't watched this yet, it involves Mr. T and tight shorts. what else do you need to know?

EDIT:: here's something for you old school kids out there.

this is what I do at work.

fa-bo-lo-us

here's a new background for everybody. to ogle at.

all day long.

.

P.S. lemme know if you use this. Even for a day. It'll make me happy.

P.P.S. here's one I did of will, you know, in case you want him on your desktop.



There's a link to the full size image (more of his suit and what not) here.

hmm

"in 2005, three Colorado Supreme Court judges have declared Bibles as biblio non grata in United States court rooms and jury deliberation chambers. The case involved throwing out the sentence of a man who was given the death penalty after jurors consulted the Bible in reaching a verdict. The judges decided that "Jurors must deliberate in that atmosphere without the aid or distraction of extraneous texts." Merriam-Webster describes extraneous as "having no relevance." Do those three judges really believe that in deciding the fate of a man's life the Bible is irrelevant? A significant problem we face today is that many judges believe there is no higher power than themselves."

yes.

Shaving and things

so this article on shaving is really informative. I don't really know the first thing about shaving, except I understand the object is to get the hair off my face. What I do know, is that it does take too much of my time, and I don't really care so much about how much hair is on my face, just so long as it's not like wolfman jack's and gets all in my face.

Maybe I'll take some time to experiment with a good brush and good cream, perhaps even a double edged razor, like the man suggested. Perhaps not. I suppose only time will tell.

Last night Josh and I replaced the vents on my mom's attic - those things that let hot air escape while preventing things like Bee's and Wasps from entering your house and making it their home. On a side note, I'd like to add that bees, wasps, hornets, etc. all collectively blow massive amounts of ass. As in, I want them to die big death, never again to roam our wonderful planet. Now, I know bees help with pollination and all that. There has to be a better alternative. Something that doesn't stick its ass-rod directly into my skin would be preferable.

Anyway, back to work.

The sickness

I woke up this morning with a stuffy nose. Ick.

Last night I watched AVP. And you know what? It wasn't terrible. Maybe it's just because I was expecting the worst movie ever, thanks to this link here. The action sequences weren't the best, the plot was spotty, and the character development was crap. The visuals were sweet though. I liked what I was looking at. And the plot, while not good, wasn't necessarily bad either.

The whole time I was watching the movie though, I kept thinking how this could be totally made into a metroid movie. You know, with Samus and everything. Except one problem - Dialogue. A metroid movie wouldn't have the opportunity for any dialogue, unless you gave the huntress a talking computer, or a com link to some other team. She's a hunter, so it could be feasible to have to roaming around the planet with some other team of people, but that's never been done before in the games.

In any case, if there ever was a Metroid movie, I'd definitely go see it. Why? Because Samas Aran is bad ass, anyway you look at it.

Dear Google.

Thank you for finding this link for me. It has broughten me unmitigated joy for the past 2 minutes. Broughten apparently isn't a word, but that is of no fault of mine, so I use it freely.

People are the best. Ever.

You know when you see something, and...something just doesn't quite add up? Like it's a round hole and you have a square peg? That's what this sign brings to mind. Like making someone guilty of committing suicide. Doesn't make sense, really.

I went for a longer run today. Almost 3 miles. 3 treacherous miles, involving one of the biggest hills I've ever run up. And now my legs feel like flubber. But I figure another couple weeks of this, and then I'll be able to tackle five miles, no problem. The way I figure it, as long as I can run five miles, I'll always be in shape. Because you never see fat people running 5 miles, now do you?

I've also stopped shaving. I just decided shaving took too much of my time, and I could really care less what I look like. Well, that's not true. I just don't care as much as others do (about themselves...not..me..nevermind). JUST so long as I don't end up a contestant on this reality show, or..contest rather..and everything will be all right.

Seriously though. Check out that first guys "beard". It's out of control! Not like whatever the hell it is this guy does with his dolls...that's just creepy.

It's the sleeper

can't fall asleep? try some music! don't have any that makes you want to sleep? try here, a site with streaming audio that plays sleep conductive ambient sounds. Here's the F.A.Q.

Here's a bunch of photo's of people that are..well..angry. because the RIAA is a whore. Can't really blame them, now can we? No. We can't. We can help though. By gathering knives and other sharp objects and politely yet sternly hurling them at several select persons faces.

Want to find out more about Grokster? Here ya go.

Also, someone is going to hell, and it ain't me.

dumbness

so i read this story about people who are incredibly stupid. And it makes me chuckle. It reminds me of this story, which is equally as awesome (well, maybe a little better actually...).

In any case, I can't wait to see what happens. I wonder who knows this girl. I've got to know somebody who knows somebody who knows her.

sigh.

phantasms. or something.

so over the past couple days I've sworn I've seen something moving quickly in my peripheral vision, only to turn and find nothing out of the ordinary there. Or I'll see things in reflective surfaces, but then upon close inspection find nothing.

And it's starting to worry me.

Things

Do you ever realize that when you take pictures, they never come out like you see the object your taking a picture of? For instance, you'll see a sunset, in all of it's glory, and then you'll take a picture of said sunset, and it's just so...flat, and lifeless. It's not fair, really, to yourself or the sunset. We need new cameras. Or bigger cameras. Maybe if I had a camera that was able to take pictures of monstrous proportions, I would be happy. I don't mean big images, I mean the field of what was able to fit in the lens, the scope of the thing, was magnificent. Like a panoramic camera except in every direction. That would make me happy. Life is so big, I can't section out a small portion of it to take a picture of. I guess that means I'm a bad photographer. Which is fine by me. I mean, I like my work, I just can't capture on film what I see in my head, and it makes me angry.

Well, I'm pretty tired right now. Out.

the ace dizzle

whilst walking downtown today, I encountered the strangest soul. He was a wee lab, not 5'5", and he stared up at me, face full of beard, head full of hair, and said "Michael, my good man, how art ye?"

No really, that happened. Sometimes I wonder about people I knew in highschool . I wonder if they're ever going to make it in the "real world" (whatever that means) or if they're doomed to die a slow death, just like everyone else. I also ran into chad with a K downtown tonight. We talked on the street corner for about 30 minutes on why windows blows ass and that's exactly why corporate america loves it. He's got some crazy hair as well.

Also, the michael jackson dancing man in the Liberty street ally is amazing. he's the coolest man ever, save maybe myself. maybe. As I was walking by him tonight a small crowd had gathered (as if it had ever dispersed) and they were silently cheering him on, as if their fists pumping in the air goaded him on further in his impersonation. I couldn't help but wonder - where does someone such as he get his never-ending supply of batteries? But then I thought - maybe that's why he dances! To get more batteries! It's the self serving cycle. I doubt that's actually the case, but wouldn't that be wonderful. One's existence is to find a means of continuing that existence. Maybe the michael jackson dancing man just has it all figured out, and we're destined to remain the spectators.

ah, destiny. have at thee.

I'm in the Rendez-vous cafe, and there are all these people here with laptops. And they ALL RUN WINDOWS. makes me sad on the inside. I've had three people come and comment about how my iBook is the whip-shit. They don't even know, they don't even know. I made a track tonight in Reason. It's pretty awesome. I think I want to get a MIDI controller, so I can, you know, actually make things without having to constantly click the little button or knob-like-thing. heh.

alright, ciao

p.s. caps tonight. you know what that means. someone's going to be drinking a lot of beer. And it ain't gonna be me.

well, not because of the game.

Good.

Today I:

1) Said Goodbye to Casey
2) Went for Sushi and Bubble Tea with Jesse
3) Watched lots of Star Trek
4) Discovered, Downloaded, Installed Reason 3
5) Backed up my laptop's hard drive, didn't work though because my firewire drive blows gigantic monkey testicles
6) Ate a shit-load of Burger King
7) Went to Church

yeah. That was about it. So lately I've been talking on my phone using the headset thing. I feel like I'm in the CIA or something. Like I need a handgun or something. And a badge.

Also, I think my computer is overheating or something. Every so often I'll get this weird problem. w3rd.

¡Hoy es el dia!

So today I met with my faculty supervisor about my Senior Project. For 4 hours. Gah. But we made a lot of progress, so that's cool. My advise to anyone who is about to do a Senior Project, pick something that directly impacts your supervisor. Then they are much more helpful to your cause. Not that they aren't helpful already, but sometimes they just don't care. Because, like, you know, they're busy and all.

Anyway, I might get this job working at a church in Wisconsin. That might be sweet. It's a pretty big church, which means they have a lot of money and awesome people. Which means that I'll be able to do a lot of things I wouldn't get to do at a normal church. So that would be way sweet. Of course, I wouldn't get to look at pictures like this very often.

Or maybe I would. I've never been to WI. There's cheese, from what I hear. I like cheese. Apparently it's good cheese too. Bah. Or maybe I'll stick around here. Ann Arbor is pretty sweet. I might be able to talk my way into a job someplace around town. If everything else falls through, I can made some badass images in photoshop. And build a page around them. And then sell them to lazy/non-intelligent people with lots of money, of which there are a lot. As in, lots. As in, way to fucking many.

And I find that these are the people that run the world. At not "so to speak". They actually run the world. Which is terrifying, when you think about it. Do you trust your safety to Uncle Sam, who doesn't know shit about learning how to learn? Which means that he has to learn by, you know, the old way. In which you made mistakes, broke everything, and then attempted to fix it the best way you knew how, which was the way you fixed the last thing that was broken, which isn't the way to fix this problem, but that's the best they know how.

**sigh**, oh well, it'll sure make for some good reading.

driving

does it ever amaze you how incredibly bad some people can be at driving? I mean, it just mystifies me. Sometimes I think that people completely forgot about, you know, the whole learning how to drive process and just jumped right into a vehicle, gas blazing. I swear that at times I'm driving behind a 5 year old who doesn't know his right foot from his elbow. Makes for very precarious driving situations.

Or people who will argue for 10 minutes to save like 18 cents. This woman at the cash register in front of me was arguing that caramel cream easter eggs should be on sale like the chocolate ones are, and she sat there. And argued about it. For at least 10 minutes. and since it was like, 9:30 at night, there were no other registers open. I almost gave the woman a dollar and been like "here. take it. shut the fuck up." I mean, seriously. if she saved 18 cents a day for a whole year she would have a grand total of **drumroll** $65.70! Whoptie fuckin do! I'm mostly certain I've FOUND that much money over the course of my life just by remembering to empty my pockets when I do laundry. Blar.

In other news, I got a camera case for my...uh, camera. It was $.94, which was way awesome. And my camera just barely fits in the bag, so it's all secure and shit. like you are, when you wear a seatbelt in the car. Cars. Driving. ack. We need to rethink the whole driving process. It seems really inefficient to me. I mean, you've got all these people, going to various places, and they need a 2-ton hunk of steal, rubber and gasoline to get there. Something just doesn't seem right about that. It seems like it's a huge waste of time, money, resources in general. Imagine all of the things that could be here if cars were eliminated in favor of...something else.

sigh. star trek better get here. with it's teleportation goodness. huh. teleportation isn't in my dictionary. that's a little depressing. I guess we have a long way to go

mmm. gigantic laser beams

yeah, they're not all bad.

cash money

so, the minimum wage hasn't been upped since 1997, but simple things, like, gas prices, have increased over 50%.

Casshern

Just got through watching Casshern for the first time. I say "for the first time" because I feel this is one of those movies that you can't say you've seen until you've "seen" it at least twice. It started out all crazy like, with jilting camera motion and random story elements. It settled into it's groove about an hour in, if one could call it that. It mostly consisted of the same things as the beginning, plus gorgeous scenery and plenty of Japanese cultural references that I'm sure I misunderstood.

I did like the movie. It was about humans and war. Or just humans, if you understand us correctly. The movie is very sad, attempting to offer a glimmer of hope but really just showing further how far we've fallen. The movie could be summed up as "greed death pretty death oh wow death hate death death pretty death boom".

And there you have it.

In other news, I was walking today and I heard a loud noise above me. I turned skyward to see what I could see, and there above me was a magnificent gigantic B-52 bomber. I was awed and terrified at the same time. I have no idea why it was flying overhead, or where it was going.

Anyway, I gotta go play dodgeball.

one day

this is only a test.