So far, so good.

This summer has started off well. Work is starting without the usual beginning-of-the-season craziness. I ended the semester on a high note. I'm seeing myself being able to balance work with a social life. The garden is a challenge, but is going alright. There's a possibility of a music festival in New York if all goes well. I've met someone via the internets that I'm wanting to get to know better with each passing day, (met her through friends, not randomly.) I have an awesome roommate. My car isn't working at the moment, but I have a back up. I'm going to get a summer membership at the UW athletic facilities. I'm feeling pretty good.

Life is going well here in Jayville.

More to come soon.

And the world keeps turning.

Chaos can reign supreme on some days. Your friends seem to be ignoring you. Your family doesn't approve of your new lover. Everything that can go wrong at work does. Your finances are a joke. Bombs are going off 800 miles away, or maybe right in your backyard. Either way, your day isn't going well.

Moments like these are a good time to reflect upon one absolute truth in this world: you are going to die someday and all of the bullshit your dealing with now will simply not matter. You will have bigger fish to fry.

Until then, bask in the glory that is chaos, for it will stand as a constant reminder that you are still alive.

It is in fact Spring...much to someone's chagrin.

It's supposed to rain almost everyday for the next week. This Saturday is currently the only day until next Friday that Mr. Weatherman isn't predicting rain. People keep bitching and making memes about how our Spring this year has been hitherto non-existent. I'd like to know exactly what the fuck they're talking about! The ice on the lakes continues to melt, the snow is almost gone. April showers, May flowers, motherfucker! Be patient!

Yours in Christ,

-Jay

The travelling carnival show

Some people in this world need a home base, somewhere they can "come home" to. Others, like myself, see home as a place where my stuff lives and where I can sleep at night after being out and about. Still others see the home base concept as something to extend into every aspect of life, to where even the most mundane tasks requires a "base camp" to be set up. I see some of my friends doing this and I laugh. They like to think they're "prepared", making sure the creature comforts of home are with them at all times and in any and all situations. But there's a difference between "being prepared" and the "logistical support systems" some people use when doing just about anything.

-Jay

Too many thoughts, too many questions

I have way too much banging around in my head right now to write a concise thought here today. This post has changed titles and topics five or six times since this morning. I have a number of realities bearing down on me at once, issues I will need to deal with soon. I'm trying not to let the pressures of the future tense get in the way of the daily grind. Maybe I'm taking some things too personally. Maybe I just need to organize and collect my thoughts, taking on each topic one at a time.

Maybe I just need to relax.

-Jay

Go, Speed Racer, Go!

I believe very strongly in the idea of trying your hardest to live your unlived life and to do so as early in your adulthood as possible. Your dreams and desires are there for a reason, to be realized. It's not always easy to do, especially if you dream big. I try not to have any regrets, but I do have one: when I was in middle school I had a dream of becoming a race car driver (insert Primus joke here) after I had driven a car for the first time, (a raspberry-colored 1977 Corvette, no less.) I have loved driving ever since then, but my dream has hitherto been unfulfilled. I would absolutely love to try my hand at racing. I have no fear behind the wheel of, well, just about anything, really. I have driven over a million miles since I got my license back in 1989 and have a pretty good "feel" for the vehicle underneath me when I drive. College is certainly putting a damper on all of this. There are racing clubs out there and people race street-legal vehicles all the time, but it's an expensive hobby and I can barely keep up with the maintenance on my 1998 VW Golf!

Perhaps I should start small, though I'm a bit big for go-karts!

-Jay

Spring is in the air!

It is too nice of a day to be cooped up indoors. So, I won't be.

See you tomorrow.

-Jay

Aummmmmmmmm...

I started a program of meditation today. With the help of an app on my smart phone that plays binaural beats and isochronic tones mixed in with some music, I am meditating first thing in the morning for about 15 minutes to start and right before bed for 20 minutes. I tried the bedtime meditation last night and I was asleep in less than a half hour.

I am one of those people whose mind is constantly racing and never seems to want to shut off. If you ask me what I'm thinking about I will probably lie to you and say, "Nothing." This is most likely because I don't think you're ready to accept just how warped my thoughts can be sometimes.

I'm trying out meditation because I need to find a way to quiet my mind and maintain focus.

Back to the grind

I spent the last week on Spring Break...doing nothing...except writing an essay, reading two books (one for school, one for pleasure,) and eating out more than I probably should. I need to do a better job of scheduling  activities for myself during breaks. I spent one day out doing stuff, only to have my car break down. The rest of the week involved too much TV, YouTube videos, and me staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning. At least I got out of the house long enough to visit family and friends for Easter weekend!

Just imagine what Summer is going to be like!

Cheers!

-Jay

Thinking about SCOTUS today.

Just a quick thought: I am a big believer of term limits. Not only should the president have term limits, Congress should have them as well; Senators no more than two 6 year terms and Congresspeople no more than four 2 year terms. This should also apply to Supreme Court Justices as well. Keeping the same people in positions of authority for decades at a time can prove to be quite stagnant at time when the country needs to move forward. My thought is the limit should be 16 years, equal to four presidential election cycles. It's enough time to establish yourself on the court but not so much time that you become a liability to the process. If my term limits applied today, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Clarence Thomas, and Stephen Breyer would be gone and people with a more up to date view of the world would be making the hard choices that need to be made. Instead, we have vapid minds keeping us from moving forward.

Until next time,

-Jay

Jesus has risen... a day early... in the form of ham.

Easter dinner at the fam's today. Ham and tasty veggies. It is finished.

The kids are, in fact, alright

I'm slowly coming to terms with fact that I am 40: My body doesn't heal like it used to. My weight is harder than ever to maintain. My hair is thinning to where I no longer see a point in having it. (I keep my head shaved these days.) 20 year olds are starting to refer to me as "Mister" and "Sir". I rarely get carded at bars anymore. And some of my friends have kids old enough to be attending the same college classes that I'm currently taking. (I often refer to myself as a "born-again college student".) While I hardly consider myself "old" by most standards, I'm not young, either. To use the tired old cliche, I've been around the block a few times.

That being said, I'm finding more and more people my age starting to sound like their and my parents, bitching about "these damn kids today" and it needs to stop.

Yes, some of the concepts and ideas we grew up with are lost on the newest generations. Kids don't "go outside and play" as much as we did. There's less unstructured social interaction for kids these days. Pick up games of football, baseball, and to some extent even basketball are less common. Kids spend a lot of time staring at computer screens and smart phones instead of interacting with the world around them more directly. All these things are true. But while your lamenting on your kid's inability to build snow forts as well as you once did, they're posting videos on YouTube, interacting with people from around the world via social media, creating their own content, writing code, and being creative in way we couldn't have even imagined 25 or 30 years ago. While it may seem that kids are less connected, the truth is they are more connected than they have ever been before, just not in ways you or I grew up with. When we see disconnected kids, what we're actually seeing is a growth in the choices we have in the levels of participation with the world around us. We can be the person at the center of attention, in front of the camera for the world to see, taking in all that our surroundings have to offer. Or, we can be the person with ear buds in their ears, creating our own soundtrack, reading something on our smartphones, disconnecting from the world as it walks on by. That level of choice scares some people. It leaves them wondering whether or not the pretty lights flashing before their eyes are somehow being manipulated at their expense. It seems as if the world is tearing itself apart and the younger generations can't or won't see it, glued to their screens watching cat videos or writing memes, but you would be wrong in underestimating them. War, famine, greed, anger, strife, we are bombarded with these images every day, but they are nothing new. Our ability to see and readily connect with the world as a whole is new, forging an image that the world is a more dangerous place than ever before. In reality, it really isn't. Fear-mongering is a full time business these days, but most of it is utter bullshit. And I think kids today, certainly the college kids I interact with on a daily basis, understand this better than most. They're better connected to the constant flow of information we are now inundated with. And yet, they have an awfully bright outlook on our and their future, even in the face of uncertainty. I think the younger generation can teach us a great deal in how to proceed forward.

It would be wise for us to listen.

Cheers,

-Jay

They should teach people how to properly argue in high school.

I know they teach classes at the college level on how to argue properly, but for those whom college isn't an option, they should have the benefit of understanding the basic structure of an argument and, (in my mind more importantly,) what logical fallacies are and how to avoid them, and this should be a required class for all high school seniors. I was first introduced to logical fallacies when I took second semester English in my first year of my second attempt at college. The professor was adamant about teaching fallacy as we were deep into an election cycle that semester, (Barack Obama's first presidential bid,) and logical fallacies were bandied about on all sides. To me, a base knowledge of fallacious arguments works to combat bad arguments and misinformation. When you hear a logical fallacy being used, especially by a politician or a pundit, it can help guide you to a better understanding of that person's motivations and the level of truth or untruth that person is expounding.

Until tomorrow...

-Jay

I *heart* documentaries

If you get a chance and have Netflix, I recommend watching Side by Side, a documentary about the history of digital technology in film as it begins to erode the dominance of celluloid film. It was produced and narrated by Keanu Reeves, who acts as an interviewer throughout the movie. I was impressed by his knowledge and his ability to draw out the narrative by asking those he was conversing with, (George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, the Wachowskis, et al,) and asking the right questions.

It's definitely worth watching even if you have only a passing interest in the subject matter, which is a quality I find in most of the very best documentaries.

Cheers.

-Jay

I'm sure I have all kinds of witty or intelligent things to say

...but I don't right now. My car broke down in downtown Milwaukee and I'm stuck here for a few hours. I got to check out the Milwaukee Public Museum and the Public Market. Fun stuff and good company. Not a total loss.

Happier days ahead!

- Jay 

It's Spring Break and nary a fruity rum drink with a tiny umbrella sticking out of it

It's certainly something I could probably go and get somewhere. Jolly Bob's makes fruity rum drinks, and I'm sure they would put an umbrella in it if I asked for one. But it wouldn't be the same, would it? Twenty seven degrees outside and snowy is not what I consider to conducive to the consumption of fruity rum drinks. This is vodka and Irish whiskey weather for me. Spring is coming, despite the throng of naysayers' theories of  "winter-straight-to-summer", and I am ready for it to arrive. Not that I hate winter by any stretch, I love the cold. I just want to get moving again. Winter here slows things down tremendously. I have a garden to plant, spring cleaning to do, a semester of college to put behind me, a summer job to start.

But for right now, I just want a fruity rum drink with a tiny umbrella in it and a sunny, beach side hang out to enjoy it in.

Cheers!

-Jay

I'm a hypocritical, judgmental bastard!

Here I was, going off yesterday about the subjectivity of "Best Of" lists and concentrated my scorn upon food and restaurant lists specifically. And yet, today I'm headed to the world famous Mustard Museum, (home of Poupon U.) for the 2013 World Wide Mustard Competition as a judge. I get to spend three hours today and next Sunday trying out literally hundreds of different mustards from around the world and be the judgmental prick that I am. Should be good fun.

It's Sunday. Get off of the computer and go do something!

-Jay

Top 5 ways of starting a silly, pointless argument

Actually, all of the "Top 5 ways of starting a silly, pointless argument" are the same thing: "Best Of" or "Top 5 through 6 million" lists that newspapers, magazines, and blogs love to trot out for what I can only assume is an exercise in masochism. My personal favorite kind of list involves food, a category that is subjective to the point of absurdity. This is compounded further when these lists come up in big cities like New York or Chicago, cities that have literally thousands of restaurants and could conceivably have any number of restaurants taking the top spot in any culinary category. But even in smaller cities, like here in Madison, "Best Of" lists represent popularity, which is not necessarily indicative of quality, (the definition of quality itself can be argued endlessly.) I think it once again speaks to the power that opinion has on our society. Everybody has their favorite place to go for whatever, but why do people feel the need to get drawn into fits of pointless bickering about what are ultimately matters of personal taste?

More to come...tomorrow.

-Jay

I don't know why I get my hopes up

Whenever I discover, or rediscover a new social media website, I always go into it with the hope that the running conversations on that site will somehow be different. My hope is to someday find a website whose comments aren't dominated by mindless bickering about shit that really doesn't matter, propagated by the anonymity of the internet. I would love to find intelligent, witty conversations that don't devolve into petty squabbling about semantics or name-calling for the sake of defending one's ideology.

A man can dream, can't he?

See you tomorrow.

-Jay

Your opinion doesn't matter

Sort of.

Actually, opinion is often something that I think is quite frequently misunderstood. In the age of information we're currently living in, opinion has been upon a higher pedestal than it ever has before. The internet is often used as validation for one's own worldview and/or ideology, (this blog and others like are a perfect example,) and we have an expectation of respect for our opinions whether one agrees with them or not. However, we often mistake our subjective (brussel sprouts are disgusting) or normative (I think homosexuality is wrong) analyses with positive analysis (scientific observation with empirical data). When I say that I think brussel sprouts are disgusting, (and I do) or that homosexuality is wrong, (which I don't think, but I'm using it as an example,) there is no argument against this. It is a fact; I hate brussel sprouts. You may have a differing opinion, but my opinion as it applies to me is still a fact. But, when someone says, "I think homosexuality is unnatural." now we're dealing what would normally be a positive analysis, but has no basis in fact. And yet, it is treated as such by the person expounding upon that opinion and there is an expectation of respect for that view. To me, opinions that are presented as positive analyses should be exposed for what they are, ignorance disguised as fact. Such ignorance is not worthy of respect.

That all I have for today, and that's a fact.

-Jay

Steubenville, Ohio needs a bath

It's finally starting to calm down a bit here on the internet. The vitriol, the hyperbole, the anger is finally starting to subside as folks move on with their busy lives, ready to amp things up again when the next crisis occurs. In the wake of any massive wave of anger, such as the latest one involving the Steubenville, Ohio rape case, the more level headed and thoughtful of us begin weighing in. However, after considering not only the facts of the case itself, but the varied reactions to the case do we begin the process of composing our thoughts to be added to the glut of opinions floating about within the digital sphere. Unfortunately, as with anything on the internet, even the most heinous of acts has a limited shelf life in this fifteen-second-attention-span world we live in and the best of thoughts on "what do we do to fix this?" are lost in the ether, only to be read by like-minded people who also waited for the huff and self-righteous indignation to die down enough to try and get a word in.

That being said, it is obvious to me that we are dealing with not an insignificant amount of dysfunction when talking about Steubenville. You have a dead steel town whose only source of pride is a good high school football program. Players on these teams are, for a short time, treated as near-royalty, only to be relegated to a future of dead-end jobs and little choice. In that brief window, young men are nearly bullet proof. They're placed upon the highest of pedestals and anyone attempting to bring them back to earth are treated with disdain and contempt by the entire community. Talking about rape is still, even in 2013, a social taboo in most of America. We are still a culture of  "look at what she was wearing, of course she was asking for it". We don't teach young men that "no is no" in any and all circumstances. It's not taught in sex ed and there's no national conversation addressing it beyond the sphere of crime and punishment. The mainstream media, in all its dysfunctional glory, works only to exacerbate the problem further by glorifying the most atrocious of cases, dragging out the most lurid of details in the hope of drawing a larger viewership and selling more advertising dollars, rather than doing what the media is supposed to be doing: providing useful information.

There's plenty more that could be said here, but people smarter and more eloquent than I have already said it. We will learn nothing from this and it will happen again. There are those who have complained that the reporting and subsequent trial of this case has and/or will tear the town of Steubenville apart. I can only hope so. Places like Steubenville, Ohio need to die for good. They have no place in modern-day America. They are relics of a bygone era. They are our past, not our future.

That all for now. Tomorrow is another day.

-Jay    

Every moment can potentially be a beginning

Including this one.

I often have many stray thoughts swirling about in my head. I've always felt that I need an outlet for the random thoughts that keep me up some nights, but so many failed blogs I have created litter the internet. I think it is due to the fact that I always feel as though a blog should have a specific theme and cater to a specific audience. I'm not going to try and bullshit myself and pretend this is some kind of online diary. I'm doing this to share my ideas, feelings, thoughts, and observations with others. I'm going to try and post every day, even if it means that a post is a single, Twitter-length sentence. Random thoughts rampage through my head on a daily basis, and they should rampage through your head, too! Who knows, I may even allow other writers to contribute. We'll see.

That's all for now.

-Jay