Holiday...

...party!

Well...not really. I'm in law school. The chrissmass present that they give you is a set of exams that last until 3 days before the stupid holiday. (I suppose they push right through Hanukkah, too...dicks).

Anyway, sorry I haven't been around much, but the Metanalytics tell me that no one really visits anyway, so whatevs.

GIFTGUIDE2010:


(Back in UMN, we celebrated Capitalism Day...I miss the old country)

What the hell is this thing? Can I drink what comes out of it?

What the hell is this thing and does it have an "intimate" setting?

What the hell is going on here and why don't I have one?

A Spiderman mask with a good eye-hiding to vision-obscuring ratio.
(Read the review by Thomas Eliot, you can't miss with this one)

A trip to Korea

Drinks to make this pain in my head go away.
(That website is definitely about car engines...har)

Cat therapist! (Thanks to Havana)



You should really click on that picture up there to make it bigger and get a sense of just how awesome it is...

Happy Holidaaaaaays,
-kevitalism day.

just becoming...

...a string of videos that i think are amusing.

For this, i apologize. It is simply the product of no time and lots to do + a modest commitment to posting once a week. Without some kind of theme to drive writing, it gets pretty hard to think of precisely what might be entertaining/engaging.

But enough of that!

I think Eddie Murphy is pretty funny. And this is probably my favorite bit of what he's done. It was really hard to find, NBC's a bunch of jerks.



-k-e-v my landlord.

Techno...

...fail.

(I've grown generally opposed to the 'fail' phenomenon, mostly due to being around someone who hates it more than I do, but nothing else really gets at the heart of this situation as well as that turn-of-internet)

First, watch this for some context:



Great song. Totally catchy. Also quotable.

Another piece of vital information: my phone is a blackberry that is highly prone to pocket calls.

Now, the story.

Wednesday night, I was sending text messages to a friend about the fact that I was drinking a whiskey that she used to drink a lot of, Old Crow. Basically, I sent her a text-toast.

She replied that she had long-since stopped drinking Old Crow and had moved on to drinking Bulleit, which is a respectable, if bourgie, choice.

In my mind, there was only one obvious retort. (See: video).

I slept whiskey-well that night...fast forward to the next morning.

Did the normal get up, walk dogs, walk to the train, hate everything on the train, walk to school thing, and right before I entered the building I thought it would be good to turn the ringer off on my phone (avoiding classroom embarrassment).

This is what I saw:



...plus ~14 of the same messages that there's not room on the screen of a phone to display.

"Abuelito" is my grandfather. He is a)very old, b) not really that tech savvy, and c)not totally English proficient.

God I hope he doesn't have a plan that lets him get text messages.

Oh you fancy, huh?

-pockev calls

This is just to say...

...I have eaten
the Cheetos
that were on
the kitchen shelf

and which
you were probably
saving
to eat while watching tv shows
on the internet.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so crunchy
and so covered in
powdered cheese

-kevin kevlos williams

Man...

...this is awesome.


Cee Lo Green - Fuck You
Uploaded by Warner-Music. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

I was going to just post something about fuck Williamsburg, but what a waste of cyberspace.

Cee-Lo is so...so...baller.

-kevlogreen

PS. Fuck Williamsburg.

On cloud....

...9.

Just met Dolores Huerta and shook her hand and said thank you for everything you've ever done for people.



I've never met anyone who radiated kindness and strength like that.

In the midst of a lot of reasons to feel tired and mean, i feel very happy.

Choosing not to skip class for this would've been stupid.

-kevntent (for now)

Just when i thought my obsession...

...with Katy Perry's 'Hot and Cold' was over.

This happens:



Aigghhhh...why won't Katy Perry just let me live my life1?!?!

-kevmo

ps. for related (jawesome) content, see: the first video i ever embedded

First of all....

...The Saint Paul Saints are awesome.

Minor league baseball is awesome.

At some point, The Saints were owned by Bill Murray...awesome! Scroll down a little ways, he is also apparently the team psychologist (thanks to laura for giving me the tip and thereby rendering my life a tad more complete.

Second of all, this is mostly just an excuse to post this video clip.



I fucking love Bill Murray.

-kevin and cigarettes

Sometimes you see weird shit...

...on the Manhattan bridge.

And sometimes bizarre things are happening, too.

I bike across the Manhattan bridge at least twice a day, most days. Today, I was wearing a backpack that brought my body weight up from 165 lbs to 210 lbs. I don't think that's healthy. That's neither here nor there.

Today, I saw three things that made me shake my head. Two of them made me smile. See if you can you guess them in a 'how well do i know kevin?' pop quiz:

A/ Family of tourists collectively ride into the oncoming biker lane in order to get into the frame of a photo being taken by dad, who has dismounted from his bike in the middle of the lane designated for bikers going in my direction.

B/ Guy has dismounted from his bicycle to scale the railing between the bike lane and the place where the train runs to smoke a J and stare into the Hudson.

C/ Man is huffing and puffing on a mountain bike pulling his baby in a Burley trailer. Closer inspection reveals that his baby is actually a small dog. Even closer inspection reveals that the dog is having a fucking awesome time.

If I knew how to put letters upside-down on blogger, I would post the answers below, newspaper-jumble-style.

Miss you bunches,
-kevley

5 musical performers...

...that changed my life in the last two years.

So, repeat thought from last week, law school makes it difficult to devote any brainergy at all to thinking, let alone what thoughts might be blog-worthy. And I refuse to make my blog about the life of a "1L" and what it takes to survive. Naw, that ain't me.

A while ago, I thought a little bit about whether and how my taste in music has evolved since I left college. I feel like a lot of people apex during those 3-6 years because there's downtime to think about shit like how you might broaden your musical horizons. More recently, discovery hasn't happened so often, but I feel like when it does, I've come across something important.

List (some with little qualifiers, some with no qualifiers. I am pressed for time, yo).

1)Bo Diddley. (Probably him most of any of them. Dude changed everything about music for me and for the world.)
2) Lil Wayne. (Knew he was good, didn't know how good. Still remember his songs with Birdman from middle school before I knew who he was. The link is non-representative of what I love about him, but it's weird and awesome. Better)
3) The Mountain Goats. (So prolific that even though I've loved him since early in college, every new/old song with new/old lyrics I listen to speaks to me in incredible ways. His new stuff is less big for me, but there's so much old stuff that I'll be listening and learning for some time to come, I think. He's also hilarious.)
4) Dabrye (Shake your ass.)
5) Flat Duo Jets (Thanks, Athens.)

Hopefully someone reading this listens to something from the list and likes it. Even if that doesn't happen, I can be happy knowing that music still matters to me.

-kevolved

I know...

...kinda lame, but law school takes up a lot of time!

From Muggsy Bogues' Twitter:

"You know what's not cool? Confederate flags. You know what is cool? Horses."

Fucking. Profound. (Seriously, the man's statement resonated with my own feelings on both of those things).

Here's a picture of Mr. Bogues with Manute Bol (coincidentally, also an awesome guy):



aaaaand, here's a picture of horses from when I went to England.




Horses are cool.
-kevsy

P.S. Keep an eye out for a new post on my other blog Brooklyn Consumed.

Commentary on bureacracy...

...from 1886:

"The story of Ivan Ilyich's life was of the simplest, most ordinary and therefore the most terrible.
"He had been a member of the Cort of Justice and died at the age of forty-five. He was the son of an official whose career in Petersburg in various ministries and departments had been such as leads men to positions from which, by reason of their long service and the official rank they have attained, they cannot be discharged, although it is obvious that they are unfit to perform any useful duty, and for whom, therefore, posts are created, which though fictitious carry salaries from six to ten thousand roubles that are not fictitious and on which they go on living to an advanced age."*

(I was going to put a political cartoon up above it, but I just realized I've never like political cartoons all that much)

What a terrifying thing to find in a short story. What's more terrifying? That this is a real staple of human productivity. The list of examples is staggering. The process of dealing with it is soul-crushing.

-kev-rock-racy

*From: Tolstoy, Leo (1886). The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Penguin Red Classic edition, 2006


PS. My sister is a beautiful bride if such a thing ever was.

A couple of things America...

...got right: absurdity, and obliviousness to that absurdity.

BEHOLD!



Holy shit that is ridiculous. And hilarious. And we are all schmucks.

I can't believe that was actually on tv,
-keverican revolution

some facts....

...about lizards. More specifically, facts about short-horned lizards (check that dude out...so majestique!)

Yesterday, my truck was towed and impounded. The people at the impound were jerks. I was bored and hot and sad because they wanted lots of money to give me my truck back. I didn't know what to do.

Then, i remembered i had the internet on my phone. I still didn't know what to do. The cursor just sat there in the phone Google search box. Then, i knew what i wanted to type. This is what i typed:

'facts about lizards'

This is what i learned about horned lizards (from onlinemathlearning.com- Amazing animal facts):

"Can horned lizards spit blood out of their eyes?

Yes, at least four varieties of horned lizard do spit blood out of their eyes as a message for predators to back off! When threatened, a horned lizard has a detailed escape plan. First, it runs and stops suddenly, trying to confuse the predator. If that doesn’t work, its next line of defense is to puff up its body and show off its spiny scales. As a last resort, the lizard will increase the blood pressure in its head until small blood vessels in its eyes rupture. This causes blood to squirt out in a stream that can carry for up to three feet. The blood confuses the predator and tastes really bad, too—or at least canines and felines seem to think so.

The horned lizard is popularly called a "horned toad," "horny toad", or "horned frog," but it is neither a toad nor a frog. The names come from the lizard's rounded body and blunt snout, which make it resemble a toad or frog (see the picture above). The spines on its back and sides are made from modified scales, whereas the horns on the heads are true horns with a bony core.

The horned lizards have other ways of avoiding predation besides shooting blood. Their coloration generally serves as camouflage. When threatened, their first defense is to remain still and hope to avoid detection. If approached too closely, they generally run in short bursts and stop abruptly to confuse the predator's visual acuity. If this fails, they puff up their body to cause its spiny scales to protrude, making it appear larger and more difficult to swallow."

Look at this video!



First, the lizard's like, "MMMMMM...ants in slo-mo!" Then, this fox gets all up in his shit. And the lizard's like, "Get off me fox!" And then he gets all crazy and squirts blood on him.

Lizards are badass.

-horned kevin

cartoons,...

...i like them better than pretty much anything else i could watch.

I also really like reading comics.

My reasons are pretty simple. First and foremost, I remain pretty childish. I still enjoy the shows from Nickelodeon that were created and aired in the early an mid-90s. My best friends and I watched cartoons that were intended for 11 year-olds well through high school. I also liked the wildly popular "Adult Swim" lineup, but not as much. I guess i just never stopped liking weird non sequiturs and absurd exaggerations?

My second reason is more substantive. I believe that at their best, cartoons are more expansive in their presentations. Animated television shows, movies, and video games come directly from the minds of their creators and illustrators. Even in "direct" representation of life around us, where cartoons simply give us the stories of people, cartoon television, movies and comics can materialize fantasies and emotions, making life more vivid. In less traditional illustrations of life (my favorite!) we might get an insight into the lives of aliens, personified objects, or animals as people.



Removing the limitation of simply capturing and then potentially manipulating the world around us gives people who create cartoons near unlimited potential in exploding the realm of possibility in storytelling. Their only limitations are what they might be able to fathom and then channel through their hands or their computer machines (again, my preference is hand drawn as I feel like computer illustrators have a tendency to strive toward 'life-like' instead of away from it).

In terms of storytelling, regardless of who they are intended for, cartoons are most often created by adults. As a result, audiences either get adult takes on reminiscences of their own childhoods/adolescences, animated representations of adulthood (see: Rocko, above), or stuff so removed from anything we've ever seen or heard that it could only drawn. This in and of itself should remove the 'cartoons are for kids' stigma.

This Scrooge McDuck comic from (from Videogum) sums up a lot of what i mean about imagination and stories.



You can read the whole comic here.

For a lot of people, the move Inception seems to represent an incredible example of innovation in the 'heist' concept, where dreams might be a place to commit theft given the weakness of the victim in a dream state. Still, making this idea stick in the 'real world' didn't happen until 2010, and when it finally happened, it was wildly popular.

Amazingly, this idea was printed and distributed to children in the 1950's. Even the 'kick' concept, if not directly ripped off from the comic, was already done:

.

To sum up, it strikes me that the most innovative storytelling, at least in the realm of fantastic cinema and television, is drawn. Unfortunately, animation doesn't sell like live action film or animation that's supposed to get really, really close to mimicking live action (see: the suck that was Avatar). I don't know why cartoons can't be marketed more effectively to adults. For me, Batman the Animated Series, a highly acclaimed Batman cartoon that appeared on the Fox Network while I was in elementary school was nearly as dark and just as compelling as the more recent and wildly popular Batman films. A feature-length cartoon, however, would never have been marketed so heavily nor as popular in theaters. The same is true of the new Scott Pilgrim movie, which, volume-length aside, is very unlikely to do justice to the original books. Nonetheless, it gets huge billing, television, internet, and print ads, a big name in Michael Cera, and probably (relatively) big box office numbers.

Me, i'd prefer it were a cartoon. Shit, i wish everything was a cartoon.

-kevillustrated

Czech...

...new wave.

Cinema.

I don't have any idea how I got to it, but I did, and it is magnificent.



I need to see the whole thing now. Supposedly, it is just as good as what these 4 minutes.

-kevimkrasky (1966)

oh my god...

...look at that fucking hipster.

Still hot. Still bored.

But I was in the uber-snotty hi-brow online music site The Brooklyn Vegan.

I was pictured here (scroll down about halfway).

I'll save you the trouble:



In a hilarious turn of events, I didn't actually get to see either Cap'n Jazz or Lightning Bolt play. I heard that they were both awesome.

Double dang,
-kevyn vegan

Slow, slow, slow...

...heat.

Felt like it was the right time to right.

With the summer's advance and a lack of a job or a school or a goal-oriented hobby, i've got much less to do, much less to describe. Perhaps coming here so early was a bad plan.

The frisbee thing worked out. So that's good, yeah?

I'm reading some things I've been meaning to read for a long time, but that usually tends to work out such that they take a while to finish. By the time i've finished 1/5 of what i meant to, it's time to do other things. Right now, i'm in the middle of the of Sinclair's "The Jungle." It's a great book. It's also a bad choice for having a kind of saddude (read: subdued) time in the city.

Last, we went and saw "Inception". It was great, except that Leonardo DiCaprio appears to have agreed to act in a movie with the same plot, 50 years later, plus Matrix fight scenes, minus socially uncomfortable subjects (mental illness) as another movie he starred in (Shutter Island), which was released in January. The one that came out first was better.

I'm really hoping that things and the blog pick up soon.

Until then, here i am.

-kevdog days of summer.

PS! Some of you will be getting presents soon!

Small time Kansas newspaper...

...wins Field Medal for Mathematics!!!!

The Manhattan Mercury, which has illuminated my hometown for decades with insightful news and analysis, has stepped up its game by drawing only the most important elements of current events and condensing them down to their most essential elements in a simple, summative equation. The veracity of simple calculation has never been so staggering.



Truly, a momentous day in word economy.

me+internet=yeah,
-kevin trouble

Commodify...

...your everything.

Ah, to walk the line between wearing/doing/buying cool things and not being a schmuck whose non-paid vocation is to make some rich jerks even richer by buying stuff that makes you feel like you're so different from those jerks.

I've always been a little wary of a few companies, but some stuff i'm finding out is totally out-of-the-blue-gotchasuckers!-type weird and scary. Like, while i've never worn Vans, i always thought that Vans was a benign skating company (like Adio or whatever) whose whole thing was "we make skateboard shoes and clothes for teenagers, sometimes you can buy them in the mall." More recently, lowtop Keds-looking Vans shoes seem to be the thing to wear, especially in New York. This doesn't seem skater-ey, but still, who can blame a company for branching out when a cultural fad (skating) becomes less of a big thing.

Turns out that it was never about skating. Vans is a company whose premise is manufacturing goods that fit well on people interested in bucking trends and living outside the norm. They make goods for people looking to voice their distinctiveness by purchasing stuff. Its goal is not a new one, but it's one that I've never seen so clearly articulated in a corporate charter.

From the prospectus of a new company called "Vans" in the early 90's:

"the Company has developed a strong brand image which the Company believes represents the individualistic and outdoor lifestyle of its target customer base. The VANS brand image coincides with what the Company believes is a fundamental shift in the attitudes and lifestyles of young people worldwide, characterized by the rapid growth and acceptance of alternative, outdoor sports and the desire to lead an individualistic, contemporary lifestyle.

The company's success is largely dependent on its ability to anticipate the rapidly changing fashion tastes of its customers and to provide merchandise that appeals to their preferences in a timely manner."*

Apparently it's not just a company for skating. It's a company for youthful rebels. For everyone who wants to show their solidarity with other 'individuals'. And i'm sure that this language pervades the internal corporate documents of hundreds of companies, dozens that I like...

I don't like that the approach i'm taking here is only troubling and not constructive or proactive. It's a problem I have with the book that the quote is taken from as well.

*From: Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from The Baffler. Edited by Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland . ISBN 0-393-31673-4

Sometimes we all need....

...a box to hide inside of.



...just a small box. Maybe a rug came in it. Maybe it's full of bubble wrap.

Things haven't been the greatest around here. Money problems, mostly. I think most people have those sometimes or a lot. And on the tops of all that pile of money problems sometimes people just don't feel that good. And I don't feel that good.

But I !dew! have an apartment in the summer. And I've got some very good mixes of music (thanks frunds). And a yellow cat.

I guess I'm really not short much except maybe some bubble wrap. I could probly find some bubble wrap somewheres.

Hot time, summer in the summer.
-lovin kevful

BONO! TINY!

My feelings on country music...

...are pretty simple.

Mostly, i like it.

Especially if it was made in the late-eighties through mid-nineties. These songs are what i cut my musical teeth on. I used to listen to the top-10 at ten-type program on Manhattan, KS' "Hot Country," B104.7 religiously. I would actually call in pretty often. I won a Clay Walker cd one time.

At that point, i felt it was probably going to be one of the greatest moments of my life.

Because of three 14-hour road trips i took along the east coast recently in a truck with loaded with things (pictures later), with a broken tape player i had to listen to radio. Lots and lots of radio. In some parts of rural Virginia, it was only country music. I was totally alright with that.

I definitely thought I was totally alright with that. As it turns out, sometimes I don't like country music. I made a computer drawing about the pretty clear line that separates good from bad country music, in my opinion:



Pretty simple.

I like most everything Allen Jackson has ever recorded. He sings about the country. And simple folks. And drinking by rivers and then later trying to have sex with girls. And sometimes about Mercury automobiles.

Things that pretty much guarantee I won't like a country music song:

Singing about killing someone like you've done it and think other people should too.
Singing about the life of fame that country music has brought you and how tough it is.
T-shirts, short skirts, and creepy boy-stalking.
Autotune.

Thank you, Allen Jackson, for being awesome at country music.

-hot country, kev 104.7

I was birthed...

...today 24 and some-odd or maybe no-odd days ago.

Fuck. 24 definitely seems to be that line you draw where you're an adult now. At least that's what the Manhattannites (big kind, not small kind) I met the other night seem to think about it. They say that you can tell the difference between the ambitious, naive new New Yorkers and the old ones by gauging which ones seem older than 24.

I am not supposed to be young and stupid any more. That went way way way way way too fast. I want to be young and stupid so bad. So bad.

Aaaanyway:



That was my celebration song.

I love you.

-kevune 18th 2010.

P.s.

New York...

...state of mind.

Yeah. Lame title (thanks, Nas). But that shit has become REAL.

Signed a lease on an apartment. It's small. And expensive. BUT.

It has a huuuuge yard. Which is RAD.

It's down the street from a place that has a $3.50 falafel sandwich. And some banks. And something called the 'pillow cafe'.

It would appear I will be able to access both morning and night drinks. FAB, RIGHT?

Thought I would post some pictures of it. They are below.







Finally. Shoutout to Will, Jeff, Devin, and Melissa for making "suckin dick and cleaning house" this year's "kickin ass and taking names."

Also shoutout to them for pointing out that 'shoutouts' are even something I can do. SHOUTOUT.

-kevinewyorkcityerwhatevs

A few...

...things from the internet.

1) If you have a blog, you should read the comments. If there are comments to read, you should click on them to find out who is commenting, especially if you don't know them. Someone named "Crazy World" thinks that I write things that are funny to read.

This is their blog.

It is my favorite thing on the internet ever.

2) Dear America,
You are so fucked up and weird.
love,
-kevin

3) I went to Denver to present at a conference and see my mama this weekend. While the conference and its receptions complete with free drinks were sweet, I got to go to Denver's May 1st immigrants' rights march. I always forget how much going to marches makes me want to be a better person. They make me want to be a better person so much it hurts. I took some photos, and these are my favorites. I'll probably put the rest up some other time.






soaking up all the normaltown afore i'm about not be here anymore,
-kevmal

Popopopo...

...popopopo-ker face.

There's a lot going on right now, not much to write about. I feel a little bit like someone put me in a small capsule capable of traveling great speeds (think smartcar if you attached like 6 million bottle rockets or one enormous bottle rocket to the back of it) pressed the go button and told me i wouldn't have to do anything until i got where i was going. So i sat in the tiny little space, waiting and watching where i went. And things happened and i guess i did something to make them happen but i just watched them happen and sometimes i thought about doing different things but i didn't do anything different and my brain feels very strange in that way that is associated with going so fast that time skews a little bit (think post-plane ride) and so now i just feel tired and maybe kind of helpless and a little confused about how i got to where i am.

Yeah. So that was mostly just so i could post this next thing without feeling like it was my only reason for getting on the brog. Because i know who reads this thing, i know that i already watched it with half of you. This is mostly for my sister, though, so it's all good.

Here you are, d.


Man i like that guy.

rg. slpy.

-kevjectile

A quick word on...

...Frank's Red Hot Wing Sauce



Made some fried chicken last night. It was...pretty good. Nice texture, served at the right temperature, breading stayed on. Unfortunately, it came up wayyyy short on flavor. Chalk it up to inadequate marination and not enough seasoning. Checked the fridge, no ketchup, no quality barbecue sauce, no dry seasoning that could do it. Clearly I'm DOOMED, right?

Not to be, friends.

Turns out we had some Frank's Red Hot that was left by my old awesome roommate whose husband loves chicken wings. We put that shit on the fried chicken and BAM! TASTE. SENSATION. Today, I mixed it accidentally with some bizarre salad dressing i made this week out of beer and mayonnaise. TASTE. SENSATION. These events alone probably wouldn't normally be enough reason for me to devote an entire twenty minutes to writing a blog post lauding a chicken wing sauce.

The fact that they play this ad on my favorite hip-hop station definitely is.



It's definitely better on the radio. Still, you get the idea of why i might have grown to love this hot sauce product so quickly.

I put that shit on everything.

-kev's red hot

It's a week for...

...masters.

I guess i'm officially one. A 'master' of international affairs. Whatever the fuck that means. Technically, it means i defended a thesis last thursday and i'll get a degree conferred upon me in May that indicates that i'm qualified to...well, to do something. Not sure what yet.

I also took my dad to see the Masters Golf Tournament. It's not something i would do for myself. But he likes golf. Look how much he likes golf!:



We saw tiger woods.



My dad tried to give him a fist bump. Tiger was having none of it.



Here i am with Vijay Singh. I think Vijay Singh is a good golfer.



Really, as pro golf tournaments go, this one was pretty awesome (admittedly, I've never seen any other pro golf tournaments). I saw a bunch of good golfers up close, i got to hang out with my dad, the weather was nice, the beer was cheap. There was one thing missing, though.

Shingo Katayama. He may have overtaken some other guys as my favorite pro golfer ever.



You'll notice that this is the one foto pulled from the internet.

This is because even though we made a frantic effort to find one very awesome Japanese guy in one very tiny cowboy hat, our mission was not accomplished.

His cowboy hat is so tiny!

-kevgusta

p.s. I'm moving to new york city.

I'm...

...pregnant.

April Fools.

-kevster

Seriously...

...y'all still say shit like this? As supposed heads of state? I know your country is in a bunch of turmoil...but what the hell is wrong with you?

From the World this Week section of the March 27th edition of the Economist:

"Sudan's president, Omar al Bashir (almost accidentally wrote 'batshit'), refused to postpone elections set for April 11th, despite fears that the country is not ready and that the poll could be chaotic. After the Carter Centre, an independent American monitoring group, suggested a "minor delay in polling for operational reasons", Mr Bashir said "we will cut off their fingers and crush them under our shoes."

Whose fingers? The people messing up the election? The Carter Center's staff? The fingers of Jimmy himself?

Perhaps the quote was taken out of context. Maybe he just said that about something else. Like, uh...yeah I really can't think of a harmless way to say that about anything ever.

very very strange.

-kev-dan

Monsieur, your...

masseuse.

Got my first massage today thanks to a valentimes gift certificate. I had a bunch of thoughts about it, which probably made me more tense.

1: My feet. I cleaned them, but they were still really close to the lady's face. That made me wicked nervous.

2: They play this sort of elevator-esque flute/harp/warbley violin cd while they rub you. I thought just the birds out the window would have been quite enough. On the other hand, the music did drown out the lady's incessant sniffling. And also...I think she burped a couple of times.

3: Experimental theater thing where you make your whole body go limp came in real handy. It's also really weird that professional massage-ers really have to toe the line between acting like they're dealing with an inanimate lump and acting like they're touching a real human more than any other professional I've ever dealt with. I feel like the lady today acted much too much in the way of the former. Shit was pretty uncomfortable.

4: At the end of the thing, I felt less tense than i did when it started, but then in trying to feel whether i was tense or not, i tensed up again. I give the overall effect of the thing like a 6.5 out of 10. When i was leaving the lady said she thinks i need to come back for an hour, i was one of the tightest individuals she'd ever massaged. That makes sense i guess. Maybe i simply did not have enough credits at my disposal to beat the last boss i.e. the way my hamstrings, hips, lower back, upper back, and neck are all fucked up in these ways that are complex and interrelated.

I think sitting at a computer is also causing problems.

-kevassage

Some days...

...the intense sunshine and the overwhelming desire to be outside and ride your bike and pet your dog and work with your hands and be in love right at this very second and bare your arms and legs or your whole torso if you like and drink beer and laugh and laugh and laugh makes you feel like what you're doing isn't probably the right thing and...



what're you tongs like?

-kevinned in

Lurking, waiting...

...to bite your foot off.

The other day I was thinking about animal sneak attacks. While I was thinking about it, I remembered that the wobbegong shark is my favorite kind of shark.



Look at that thing! It's awesome! It belongs to the subfamily called 'carpet sharks'...really! Carpet sharks! Say it out loud!

And the best thing about this shark is that it's a clever shark. It just sits there on the ocean floor...biding its time...pretending to be dirt...THEN IT GETS YOU!

I mean, it kinda gets you. It probably just gets your foot, because it's not a very big shark...but still...*CHOMP*.

The wobbegong shark is so badass that sometimes it messes people up so bad they think that they were attacked by Jaws or something.

Here is a video from youtube demonstrating why the wobbegong shark is the coolest shark*.



Carpet shark!
-kevegong

*I couldn't actually find any video of a wobbegong shark eating other fish in the wild, but trust me, i remember it from 3rd grade and it is awesome.

I now have...

...a camera! And I use it!

Poorly!

I've been/will be going lots of places in the last/next few months. I've never been really good at providing visual proof that I went somewhere. I'm going to try a little harder now. I've started a photobucket or flickr or whatever (i really don't remember which one it is now, honestly) from when i went to England. I'll put up the web address sooner or later.

Don't have a lot of time just at this moment, went to San Francisco, here are three (un)mentionables.

1: My own personal philosophy on moovin' and groovin', succinctly presented on a Chinatown billboard:



2: Run for your lives!



3: While we were driving through San Francisco, Cameron, my traveling buddy for the day exclaimed, "Holy Shit! Jack Nicholson!"



Not exactly, Cam.

W00000! Spring break Oh Ten! Take off your shiiiirt!

-kevin gate bridge

The shit...

...you say in your sleep. It's ridiculous sometimes.

Last night, totally unconscious, I muttered to Emily:

"Your love is worth 211 dollars"

"That's all?" she asked.

"...for 75 ounces," I replied.

That's $2.81 an ounce!

There's another blog that's totally devoted to this lady's husband's hilarious sleep talking.

Funny stuff.

-kevpor

I won't....

...be compelled to buy stain remover or dishwashing liquid or a new car or a television so i can watch tbs' new lineup or a coca cola or 8 coca colas or a movie theater for a night so i can host a corporate meeting there or tickets to the olympics or more popcorn than i already bought because you advertise these things before the movie that i already payed $19.50 to watch.

(Breath)

1/ Let me start over. I don't watch very many movies in theaters. I prefer to rent movies that came out 5 years ago and have been thoroughly recommended to me and cost a dollar because a) they cost a dollar and b) i can pick which previews to watch and if i don't like them my remote control gives me the real ultimate power to skip through all the bull. If i'm ever at the movies it's because Emily likes them and so i go because i like her.

2/ I don't watch too many moving ads. I don't have the cable on the teevee. And when the ads attack my computer screen i can just switch to another window or check out what's going on in the living breathing world or whatever.

So there's your preface.

I think you can put 2 and 2 and diatribe together. I don't know when it happened but sometime between when i stopped watching big-picture movies (10th grade?) and when i started up again cuz of a relationship, they switched from still picture ads and cool little trivia stuff to the asinine practice of cramming loud commercials for 'the shit that no one needs, which drives our economy higher and our collective existence lower' into every minute prior to the beginning of the advertisements for other movies. (I can actually vaguely remember the initial phase of all this for some reason...It was a very strange bunch of advertisements, with a gender-split set of perfumes that came out of spritz bottles. Everyone remembers seeing commercials for "Bod Man" fragrances at movie theaters, "Hot Bod! Lean Bod! I WANT your bod.... I think everyone remembers this because it was fucking bizarre. What no one remembers is the commercials that came either immediately before or after Bod Man with animated fairies and a female chorus singing something about fantasies but it was obviously just the same bottle with a different name printed on it. They were equally bizarre but nobody remembers them. But so yea, i think that was the start of the pre-movie product adverts and it also might have been the direct antecedent of Axe Body Spray. A low point for humanity indeed).

So, now, you have the pre-ads, the ads, and then your movie. In the foreseeable future, it's reasonable to assume that 'previews' for network television and 'film entries' by amateurs intended to creatively express their love of a particular soft drink or t-shirt or ribbed condom or whatever will be preceded by even MORE ads that are just commercials like you'd see on television. It's totally possible that i'll bitch about how much i hate the pre-pre-pre ads on the internet in a few years.

It ain't right, i tell you. Just ain't right,

Kevsumer

P.S. Shutter Island is a quality piece of movie-work. I licked it.

P.S.S. They should really think about serving popcorn shrimp at movie theater concession stands. That would be the jam.

Dear....

...Everyone,

I have something to say.



Tights. Are. Not. Pants.

Apparently, there is an entire website devoted to saying as much (linked above). There's also a blog. http://unfashionableindecency.wordpress.com/page/3/

I don't care. I need to write it myself. Because Athens, Georgia is so full of people whose butts and other crevices have overwhelmed my eyes by that i can no longer remain silent.

Tights are not pants!

Tights are designed to keep your legs warm if you want to wear a skirt on a chilly day. Tights should be worn under jeans on an even colder day. Tights are a totally functional and acceptable piece of clothing. But they are not pants.

To those with nice butts: Even beautiful things become less so when their most intimate details are highlighted. I wish i could say that i appreciate your generosity in providing these details.

To those with less-than-nice butts: I am now painfully aware of your gluteal curse. Painfully, painfully aware.

By extension, your oversized sweatshirt isn't a shirt. Your large men's button down isn't a shirt. Your trashy skirt isn't a less trashy skirt if I can still see your butt, only it's a different color.



Tights as pants person, i can't even respect you like i respect the dreadlock rattail guy. (I love that guy). You gotta respect yourself.

And everyone who doesn't want to see your butt.

Which is most of us.

Tights aren't pants,
-kevin police

Teh....

...swamped.

I'm really-super-not-even-joking-migraine's-coming-on-type busy right now.

But: i committed to writing a letter to the internet at least once or twice a week. I'm afraid if i don't write now, i won't write later (interesting to use a colon there rather than a comma. Legit?)

So...uh...here's this Fergie video.



If any of you got my 15 songs, this was one of them. I like this song very, very much. The video takes it to a whole new level. It very well may be in my top multiple of ten which is smaller than 50 of all time.

I don't like the Black Eyed Peas. I don't like Fergie very much at all. I love this song. There's a grip of incoherent reasoning behind all that, which I won't go into here. Ask me about it sometime.

So in love witchoo,
-my lovely lady kevs

Apparently...

...Del tha Funky Homosapien



is Ice Cube's...



cousin.

Crazy! I had no idea!

(I am SO happy i decided to google image search cousin)

A warm blanket wrapped around your heart,

-all in the kevmily

i been...

...in a kinda blue-ish hue.

That's prolly why i been writing a lot about music and my life's little oddities and not much stuff i think about real stuff.

I think i've also avoided heavier topics cause my brain's been pretty gummed up recently. Nothing's coming out particularly clear. My sister says that this thing i wrote about the mountain goats reads like a confused high school girl's account of her new BF's erratic behavior. That's fair. If anyone were actually reading my space letters, it's prolly pretty clear that i'm preoccupied about some stuff.

Stuff.

But whatever!

If you've been feeling kinda this way too...this song's for you! It is my Mildly Depressed Person Late Winter Jam!

It's pretty much perfect for when you feel like you might lack some things, but things are going right, but you can't quite appreciate them cause of the things you're worried you might be lacking.

The song is called "I ain't got no...I got Life." It's by Le Volume Courbe. i don't know anything about the person/people who made this song except that they made it.

You can listen to it here.

I heard it because of a music blog called a Motel de Moka that i'll peruse now and then. I dislike 80% of the music they put up there. I really really really like 15% of it. I have a feeling it wasn't created for folks like me, but i'm glad it's there nonetheless.

I hope you like that song.


-kevbruary

A quick word on...

...messenger bags.

I have worn one as my primary mode of carrying things for schools since I started as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota. I think it is time for me to stop.

Here is the short version of why this is so:



(Photo credit to Emily for managing to avoid both my face and my nipples)

As much as I like have one extremely pronounced trapezius muscle, the ensuing back problems as a result of this imbalance aren't quite worth it.

I started wearing this Jansport messenger bag that my mom bought me (thanks mom!) for a few reasons:



1/ Cuz all the cool kids were doing it.
2/ Kept my laptop safe.
3/ Pretty much the only reason was #1.

When I learned to ride a bike again, I also discovered that the bag fit very well on the small of my back (and again, adding the bike reinforced #1).

Problems started when I started having to carry a lot of heavy books AND a laptop in the bag. I could see little tears in the bottom of the bag. My left shoulder would be sore for days on end. I started noticing hump on my left shoulder when I would shrug. All of this culminated in the sturdy little plastic piece of my bag responsible for regulating strap length snapping loudly as a dropped the bag in place as I'd done hundreds of times one spring day in 2008.

The Jansport bag was dead after 4 solid years of service. I honored it by refusing to buy a new bag until last March. Using a bag with a bad strap is a stupid, stupid idea.

So, I bought a new bag. It was this Chrome bag, which I believed would better distribute the weight of the shit I put in my bag.



Among my other rationalizations for getting this bag were, of course, reason #1.

I had coveted the bags when I worked with a bunch of hipsters at a cafe. And when I was crushin on bike girls at about the same time. And when I frequented nasty basement house parties. I always dismissed impulses to buy one because I "didn't want to be one of those jerks." Here in Georgia, however, we are so far from Seattle that I deemed it safe to be one of those jerks because would know a Chrome bag from a Timbuk2 (or whatever your flavor pretentious commuter carryall). So...I ponied up and had one shipped from Portland via Craigslist.

I was definitely wrong in my assumption. People still wear those bags here. And those people still suck. I try to avoid thinking about whether I am one of those people (read: probably).

I should have mentioned earlier that I've actually measured how much weight I put on one shoulder on a daily basis using the scale at the gym. With just some shorts on, I weigh ~173 lbs. With my bag, my weight is usually between 205 and 215 lbs.

Knowing this, I've concluded that no strap width can ease the back pain and weird muscle growth that continues with my current bag. It's time to go back to elementary school. It's time to blend in with the chemistry nerds. It's time to really deserve those scoffs of the fixed-gear kids.

It's time to get...a...backpack.

I'ma get this one!



And that's the story of how I carry stuff for school.

Jesus Christ, the longest post I've written in a long time is about bags.

Disgusted with myself,

-kevpack

Audience...

...and intent.



For most of the time of the time that I have been writing on this thing, I've made it my goal to kind of fluctuate between personal updates about what's going on with me and thoughts about cool stuff and problems as they occur to me. I hope you've had fun with it so far.

On a recommendation from Emily, i went ahead and wrote the tracking code for google analytics into my blog and immediately started spying on the people who are spying on me. I kind of imagine there's an google metanalytics, where interested people can see how often and how long neurotic folks (!!!) spend checking to see who's looking at their blog.

Aside from being an occasional ego boost/crusher, the analytics thing's got me thinking about why i write and who i write for. Is it for me? Is it for all 2-6 of you who intentionally come to this website to read about me and what i think and then wonder why you did it? Or is it for that 11 year old in Melbourne who mistakenly ended up at my blog, thinking that it was written by representatives of Kevtronics Inc, which offers "a variety of specialized computer & electronics services for both residential & commercial applications."

I have no idea, really. It's interesting to think about it though. Having an awareness of the fact that random people from all over the world stumble on my blog even for 00:00:00 units of time makes me a little hesitant to post pictures of myself kissing my dog.

I'm definitely chewing on this.

blah blah,
-kevincarnate

In a total blogging aboutface...

...i bring you a jam.

Thanks to Zoe, for cluing me in to the "Best of Bootie 2009 V.2 Mix," specifically, a mashup of Miley Cyrus and the Notorious B.I.G titled "Party and Bullshit (In the USA)."

THIS,

my friends, should be played at your next party, regardless of who is coming or what the event is for.

I was never a big mashup guy (thought the Girltalk thing was a bit overplayed and all that), but i certainly think they have a place in music and can be great. This is definitely one of those instances of greatness. Not only do the guitar part and the beat sync to near perfection, Hathbanger doesn't include any unnecessary filler samples or coverup beats to compensate for rhythmic imperfections.

Best of all, the all important content of the songs makes them perfect for pairing. Miley's singing about how incredible a party she's never been to in her life is. Biggie's celebrating a party that he seems to live for.

Unfortunately, i've been singing the Miley Cyrus parts to myself nonstop, giving lots and lots of people the wrong idea.

Nodding my head like yeah. Moving my hips like YEAH,

-party in the kta

Even when desperation calls for compassion....

...sinister things lurk.

Haiti's earthquake is incredibly disheartening when understood as the fragility that comes with a colonial history, constant political instability due to internal and external pressure, and almost total dependence on aid and trade from abroad. This idea gets reinforced over and over again when rhetoric like "saving Haiti" gets thrown around the media, even when it is intended to provoke donations from people around the world. In world affairs, the country is made to be a helpless infant adrift in the ocean, constantly falling prey to tempests it cannot stave off.

While Haiti's economic, political, and social problems and the language people use to describe them are issues in and of themselves, they tend to be readily apparent. The frightening thing, then, is considering what we don't see in the context of a relief effort. Learning that millions of dollars have been sent to Haiti via text message is easy.

Learning how staunch free trade advocates would like to use widespread devastation and human suffering to produce profit for the wealthy is a little more difficult. This release by the Heritage Foundation is an incredible illustration of what Naomi Klein has called "Disaster Capitalism," using natural and human disasters to push pro-corporate agendas in poor countries.

Deleted from the Heritage Foundation's original release:

"In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region."

Sinister things lurk.

humbled and hoping,
-kevlar

Everything changes...

...when you love some(love some LOVE SOME)one.

It appears that my favorite musical act in the world has become fodder for the Indie Christian Youth Movement.

In the grand scheme of things, this is pretty much insignificant. And yet, in my current place of physical, emotional, and intellectual stasis, it has managed to make me kinda sad.

I am in no place to speak for a guy who i said "hi" to once and whose music i tend to get a little fanboy about, but this whole thing is really a no win for me.

Either,

A) the Mountain Goats did something really brave by naming all of their songs after parts of the Bible and then sincerely writing music about the conflict between having a pretty messed up go of it in life but finding deep faith in that depth without necessarily being "church-going indie-rock royalty" (as revelife would have it) who have unquestioningly submitted themselves to Jesus as an alternative to the secular madness they've explored in previous work, but they've been pegged that way because they mention stuff that Christian youth can dig.

or

B)They actually are "church-going indie-rock royalty" (as revelife would have it) who have unquestioningly submitted themselves to Jesus as an alternative to the secular madness they've explored in previous work.

It's rampant misrepresentation that shouldn't bother me but does on one hand, a message I'm conflicted about on the other. I should probably buy the record and stop worrying about what people have to say about it. It's a bizarre development regardless of whether or not I choose to do this.

Adrift,
-prosthelytevin

Can you...

...paint with all the colors of the wind?

I am not a movie critic. i hate movie critics. Almost as much as i hate Michael Cera (but not quite as much as i hate Michael Cera). That was my superficial and unnecessary preface to this, uh, discussion of a movie i just saw. i think you can guess what comes next.

Avatar was a terrible movie. Everybody i know who was not a wonky wonk liberal arts nerd (see: everyone i was friends with in college) loved this movie. Visually pretty? Yes. Prettier than District 9? Not really. Rife with thematic elements from District 9? Yeah, pretty much.

400 million dollars was the budget for this film. We could treat half the cases of malaria in the world with that amount.

This, however, is not a relative cost of entertainment versus real problems thing. It is just astounding that a movie that bad could cost 400 million dollars.

Avatar was essentially a computer-rendered combination of: Fern Gully (Awesome movie, btw) and Pocahontas (hence the title of this thing. there is definitely a scene where he owns the earth and still all he'll own is earth until...), complete with the _exact same_ mech robot driven by crazed military commander versus guy coming to terms with his alien identity climax fight scene.



I love a lot of people who told me they liked it for the quiet messages it sent to the audience. I did not have the heart to tell them that the "ecological awareness" and "anti-war" themes were baseball bat subtle. I should note that most of Cameron's message was appreciable given the enormous number of people that will go see this film.



Anyway. Emily and I saw it for free. My first theater hopping experience definitely showed me that crime doesn't pay. On the other hand, the movie we actually paid for, Sherlock Holmes, was very, very good.

There, thorough reason to hate myself.

-kevatar(d?)

It's a new year...

...bros.

And my rez is as follows:

Do more with less.

It isn't nearly as specific as last year, but none of those worked out all that well. I think that's kind of a cool thing about blogs, you can track yer human progress.

I hope you all ate some black eyed peas and greens and ham (or maybe not ham) for luck this year,

-kevty-ten