J-Sin

The days melt into nights and nights into days, weeks become months, months become years, decades become lost in a haze of uncertainty and trail off in a blue blur. Isn’t that how we all begin to feel as we age and grow older day by day? My son today asked me if I was old. He does that sometimes, or says things that are funny like, “Grandma is old”. But today it especially touched me. Wow I am getting old – 31 years old to be precise. Do I act or feel “my age”? No not really. Take last night for instance, I stayed up till 2am playing videogames by myself. My wife was in bed not only because she has to work but because she’s smart! Of course now I’m quite tired and since I have the kids by myself all day, they are draining me of what little energy I can seem to muster up. But now I’m losing focus of the topic at hand. Is this an age thing? Probably not. But should I really be staying up till all hours playing videogames of all things? I say why not! Who cares! Let’s all have fun, and become one with fun (rhyming is sweet).

I remember when my blog (before they were called blogs of course) was very stream of consciousness, so much so that innuendo could sometimes get me in trouble. But it was putting virtual pen to virtual paper and it was good unrelentless emotional outpourings. Am I too old to do that now? In this age of hyper-sharing, do we have to remain guarded with what we reveal about ourselves and our thoughts, our very imagination? After all, the kind folks at Google (who recently put out an interesting image parser/relationship matcher thing) and the Way Back Machine have lengthy memories…who knows we may apply for a job and have an Internet search disqualify us immediately. Will my children’s generation grow up with everyone’s dirty laundry fully accessible 24/7 and documented for eons? Perhaps. And perhaps that is a good thing. Do we really need to put up fronts for one group or another, when honesty at its very raw core is deemed the best policy? I say no. I say let go of it, and to the hell with any of the haters that would dismiss you or yours over mere words and thought patterns shared with anonymous trolls. (That said, I guess my blog post title makes a little more sense now huh?)

Speaking of old, I recently was reminded of my childhood as I watched movies from Hasbro’s heroes, “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” – everyone knows that movies with colons in the title are awesome. Surprisingly I enjoyed both a lot, though nods towards GI Joe in terms of repeat viewing. Also in 2011, apparently “The Smurfs” is coming out. I think it would be great if “The Smurfs” was dark and even more Marxist than the cartoon. I guess Thundercats is up next or something…

People that really believe that the climate change that our world is suffering under was not caused by humans are soiling themselves over the recent hack attack that stole a bunch of private data and conversations from scientists at leading research centers. Of course it’s completely taken out of context and what I’d like to know is what Big corporation hired these hackers to dig up this crap. Hmm, I wonder who has a vested interest in making sure that the public, who overwhelming support the notion that climate change is a result of human pollution, human agriculture practices, etc…

In unrelated news, it’s hilarious that Dave Lombardo totally busted Lars Ulrich’s chops. Literally and figuratively. In other improbable news, sometimes cops and anarchists agree only in Chicago though…

My favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, is coming up. Why is it my favorite? Well it’s the one opportunity every year that I get to see most of my family. While yes it is on my dad’s site of the family, if you count up my family members it’s probably about 90% of them on my side of the family – the wife’s family is huuuuge. This year I plan on bringing a Turnip Gratin, which I stumbled upon a recipe for recently. I think I look forward to showing off my kids almost as much as I do the food/family/conversations.

Are us white collar folks, allowed to be considered to be part of the “working class”? If so, then I think I shall tread lightly on this matter.

Talked to my brother for a long time last night, it was good hearing from him. He’s going to see Skinny Puppy on Sunday – I wish I could but unfortunately it falls under the “inconvenient” time slot. My daughter has been hectic today, not wanting to sleep at all. She usually has two or three naps at least an hour a piece. Well the longest she slept today was about 15 mins, maybe. She has passed out a couple of times in my arms or in her car seat, but really only for about five minutes at a time. She’s currently snoring on my lap right now. Funny in a “oh-my-god-I’m-so-tired-please-go-to-sleep” way.

Top Chef is kicking butt this season. All four of the final chefs are so good, I almost don’t know who to root for. It boggles my mind that these people can a.) cook under such immense pressure, 2.) use the given ingredients to craft a fine dish each and every time using techniques that are rare and intelligent, and iii.) often tell some sort of story or perform a theme with their food. To do all of that in less than a 10 hour period, blows my mind.

Music.

Well where do I start? The new Pelican is astonishing. A lot of the recent stuff I’ve been listening to has been extremely diverse, not that this isn’t somewhat of the norm. Gotta admit the new Weezer is great and, ahem, “Rad”. I really want to write some music soon – I’ve been so inspired lately and have been thinking about interesting effects and recording techniques. It should be a blast whenever I get around to it. I still really want to “build” a recording studio in the part of my unfinished basement. People are surprised when they hear that, thinking of wow that can’t be very big, but it could easily fit a whole band and several other people for that matter. It does need drywalling and other stuff to finish it off, so I guess I’ll have to make a call out to Bob the Builder (joke?…bad?…yes I agree)

Work-wise stuff has been slamming me lately. Balancing tons of projects all at once. It’s good to be busy but I’ve been frustrated lately because many of these I can’t just run with – indeed, the vast majority have other folks who I need deliverables from before I can move forward. Of course their level of participation and urgency is very lacking. Bummer. At least I’m learning a ton and contributing quite a bit at the same time.

Anyway, enough with this novel. Hope you enjoyed.