I’ve been thinking for a while about writing more reviews for this blog, and its something that I’d really like to start doing. But the question is why don’t I just do that? I mean, its easy to really just quickly review something, so why not just do that? The fact of the matter is because of the time I spent working for the UCF Independent? Its just not that simple for me.

Back from 2001 through mid-2004 or so, I was a writer for one of two campus papers before it folded and was bought out by the main paper. And my specialty was writing CD reviews, so I got it quickly down to an art. And when you’re writing reviews, you need to have it all down to a formula, especially when you’ve got two to three albums that you’re working on weekly like I often do nowadays. So what’s my formula?

I start off with a casual listen through of the album as a whole from start-to-finish. I let it sit in the background and then just do what I need to do. If it catches my attention, I’ll let it do that. If it just sleeps in the background? It does that. I just let it pass by and be there. After that, put it aside. Over the next day or so, I’ll not listen to it and see if something’s stuck with me. If I remember any of it, if the riffs or lyrics have caught me. After this day or two passes, I’ll take another listen to it, trying to pay a little more attention to the album. I’ll let another day or two pass, and then after that, I’ll play the album a third time (at least) and start writing the review while I’m listening to the album. I find that when I do it this way, it lets the album grow on me and be a lot more than a precursory glance to the album. If you just listen to it once, or listen to it back-to-back in one day are you really doing it justice? You need to let the music exist with you. Music is not an individual process but part of the biggest picture of life and expression. If you just take it as music and entertainment? Fine. But really if you let it live with you, you get so much more from it.

And that’s why when I reviewed She & Him and Joe Hedge’s albums? I feel like I did a crappy job. When I did the album reviews, I had only heard both of those albums only one time. I felt like I didn’t give them that chance to really grow on me, but in my quest for content to fill on those days? I felt strong enough to write up more of a “commentary” on the album. I wish I could feel better about them, and maybe eventually I’ll write a “part two” to the reviews, but still. The originals stand as they are, and I just hope that they were enough to give my inital opinion…

9 Things to Stop Worrying About Right Now - Source: MSNBC.com

It seems that every single day there’s some new study that’s well founded that tells us what we should and shouldn’t do in regards with this or that diet or food concentration. One day its water, then eggs, then salt, then sugar, then fiber, then meat, then…

You know what? I’ve got the secret to healthy living right here:
1) Laugh
2) Smile
3) Love
4) Live

1) Laugh - Like the Readers Digest column, “Laughter, The Best Medicine,” there’s a truth to that. If you can laugh at the stupid things and see the lighter side in life? You’re starting things out on the right foot…
2) Smile - Okay, so some of us have shitty humor. If you do? I’d advice that you at least smile about things if you can’t laugh about them. A smile invites another smile, and we feel good when we see someone smile and have to smile ourselves. Contageous and healthy.
3) Love - Share yourself in any way possible with anyone possible (except for beastiality, infidelity, and incest). Love is something you never run out of. And when you do, you can always find more in what people give you in return.
4) Live - This is the most important one and what we often forget. With all of the talking heads on TV and the new secondary glowing idiot box of our computer monitor, we forget sometimes that there’s a world outside… We should be active, energetic, and come back here and then tell all of our friends the cool things we’ve done away and invite them to join us next time.

And with that, its time for me to depart and get on to the four steps so I can enjoy my own healthy living…

Yesterday, I saw that as writing on a bathroom stall… I had to snap a picture because the line was so hauntingly familiar. I couldn’t make out what was underneath it. So I took a picture, and I put it on Facebook to remind me later to look for it… Plus, there’s something about intelligent bathroom graffitti that I actually enjoy.

A note on that: intelligent bathroom graffitti? Yes. I’m referring to anything other than the “[Phone Number/E-mail] for a good time,” “[Fraternity/Politician] sucks,” or the classic “I pooped here.” Every so often, like the nuggets that we let slip while we sit on that porcelain throne, we read a nugget of truth on the wall. Of course, this is coming from the guy who saw “The cake is a lie” on a bathroom stall and had no idea it was from Portal.

When I read that on the wall, it made sense, and at the same time, it felt really hauntingly familiar… I tried to rationalize what it could mean. When you think about it, the words “world” and “sky” are operative terms here. It all depends on how you take those two words. If you consider that “world” could be referring to an individual person and not the world as a world itself and that “sky” is a goal you’re reaching for, it’s as if you’re accomplishing something, fulfilling who you are and what you can be.

I think that’s where my mind first went. And then there was the direction that I started thinking religiously. I could only barely make out the “TOS 65″ underneath it, and ironically that was only after I got home. I was trying to think why that looked familiar and why it was something that seemed so simple and maybe just a quote from something else. And if it was a quote, what was it from and what meaning did it have?

When I got home and I did a google search for it, I felt stupid for not knowing it.

The quote was an episode title from Star Trek. That’s why it said “TOS 65:” The Original Series, episode 65. Well, that aside, why would you put a Star Trek episode title on a bathroom wall…

In the episode, the line refers to an ancient proverb that ties into the fact that the individuals are living inside an “arc” in space, of sorts. Just a giant asteroid/ship that’s floating around. And the line refers to being outside of this ship. Because, well, their world is hollow, and to get outside, you’re touching the real sky…

Not really too profound, till I found something else out, actually…

There’s a band from Sweden called Jeniferever that wrote and recorded a song of the same name. While I haven’t been able to find that song in particular, in sampling some of their music on MySpace, I can only imagine how it really would sound, and it makes me yearn to try to get my hands on it even more…

I read those lyrics to be longing, to be understanding… To just be living.

That truth, and knowing the real truth, sometimes just aren’t the same thing and aren’t the best thing to do. And sometimes, we just need to “smile and bear with it” because we know all we need to know. There’s a longing to the truth and how we know things and how we live things, and in that, in everything we don’t know, there’s a good reason for it…

I’m not going to try to wax philosophical anymore on this one because I think this is a phrase that we need to take what it means to us individually to each of us if we can find meaning to it…

But leave it to me to psychoanalyze a piece of wall graffitti that ends up being the title of a Star Trek episode…

Following up my networking entry from the other day, I figured I’d delve a bit into how I stay connected with the world around me…

I mentioned the other day that I just started using a program called Newzie for my RSS feeds, and I can’t believe how much that really keeps me “in touch” with the world around me. Seriously. Not that I wasn’t in touch with the same world before…

But a lot of folks have been coming to me with the big stories recently, asking my take on them. The truth is, anyone and everyone could be up to date and in touch with the news: you just need a half an hour a day.

Just a half an hour a day to know what’s going on in the world? Yup. And here’s how you do it.

Wake up in the morning and choose a website you like from the following three:
MSNBC.com
Reuters.com
CNN.com
Spend about 5-10 minutes perusing the headlines and skim the stories that interest you.
Then, on your lunch break, check out another one from the above, and this time spend about 10-15 minutes heading into a bit more depth onto some of the stories that interest you.
Finally at night when you get home, at 6pm choose a network you like and watch just the headlines from the news report. If you choose to, you can watch the whole thing, but the headlines will give you a good wrap up of the daily events.

Is that how I do it? Oh no no no. I probably take a good 3 hours or so out of my day to keep up with my news, and here’s how I do it.
1) When I wake up in the morning, I skim my news feeds on Newzie, which come from MSNBC.com and a few other sources, including Drudge Report.
2) I watch a bit of Morning Joe to get a sense of what’s going on in the world.
3) After 20-30 minutes of that (unless its something good), I turn on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Daily Show with John Stewart, and The Colbert Report, which I’ve DVRed from the night before. I usually watch all in their entirety, and only occasionally skip out on Colbert.
4) When I’m done with all of that, I’ll watch Mika Brzezinski if she’s still on MSNBC or if their morning breaking news is still relevant, and if not, I’ll usually head back to my computer and see what’s popped up on my feeds. And I’ll admit it here: Mika’s probably one of my only two celebrity crushes. The second one being Alison Stewart. I can’t explain it, there’s just something about their newsperson charisma that I like. Sorry Katie Couric.
5) I’m always refreshing my feeds and reading new stories as they interest me, and when I’m away from my computer, I read MSNBC.com on my cell phone (it transfers really well to the cell, trust me).
6) Election night coverage is the ONLY time that I defer from MSNBC, but its only to CNN for their statistics. Their updates are to the minute, and county by county of who won, with popular vote and everything as it comes in. MSNBC is good, but not that good. Though the team of Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann on commentary as the results come in is what I’ll listen to. Come November, I’ll be watching them on TV and watching the numbers on my computer.
7) I also am a constant force in making very bad political jokes and references over the course of the day, and there are friends and folks whom I run into who I will discuss politics and policies that are going on just to see how things are interpreted. Through open and honest discussion, you can learn and know much much more than just by reading it.
8) At night, the wife and I settle down and watch Chelsea Lately. While its more gossip/Hollywood themed, it still has news pieces of interest in it from time to time. And she’s just funny, enough said.
9) Finally, I’m subscribed to a few news podcasts that I’ll listen to if I don’t have the time to watch my shows. You can get great audio feeds of Countdown, Hardball, NBC Nightly News, and Meet The Press, as well as other network’s news programs too.

Finally, to anyone who reads this and says “Oh fuck, another liberal blogger spouting off all of his anti-Fox sources with a pigeon-holed mindset.” I do watch Fox too for things other than Simpsons and Family Guy, but mostly their “news” and their reporting of said “news” makes me laugh. But, I do understand that I have a liberal bias, and I can look around this to a conservative argument. Heck, most of the people I’m going to school with are conservatives or moderates: it’s the nature of being a business major.

But there you have it: thirty minutes a day you can take to be a better informed citizen. Or, you could take my approach, but I’ll understand if you’d rather the condensed version.

I’ve been sitting here for the better part of thirty minutes working on drafts for this weekend because, in all honesty, I didn’t want to really think about he writing I’d be doing here and now. The fact of the matter is? I feel I must. I feel that because of what I saw yesterday when I originally watched this air, that I had to repost it here and I had to add in my two cents to it.

If you’d rather read it, then head over here.

Last night as I watched live as Keith Olbermann delivered that on Countdown. And as Olbermann unwound it all, I noted a few things that really were key to how I felt. I’d like to share those outtakes here, but I think the whole thing is worth watching.

Senator, their words, and your own, are now slowly killing the chances for any Democrat to become President. In your tepid response to this Ferraro disaster, you may sincerely think you are disenthralling an enchanted media, and righting an unfair advance bestowed on Senator Obama. You may think the matter has closed with Representative Ferraro’s bitter, almost threatening resignation. But in fact, Senator, you are now campaigning, as if Barock [sic] Obama were the Democrat, and you… were the Republican. As Shakespeare wrote, Senator — that way… madness… lies.
This, is the first thing that I noted. To go back to my words from March 6th–two days after the VOTR (Vermont, Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island) primaries–this is no longer a presidential campaign, but a Vice Presidential War of Attrition. And its not one for her to keep her name up there to have to be nominated for him, but for her to overthrow his voters and try to tell them that a vote for her is a vote for him as a Vice President. Even as Jon Stewart showed a clip from CNN that showed all of the far-shot chances for Clinton to be able to overthrow Obama’s vote lead, the magic number is now 64%. That’s the number of contests that she must win with a decisive lead to overtake Obama’s delegate lead. That includes Michigan and Florida being re-enstated.

And when this despicable statement — ugly in its overtones, laughable in its weak grip of facts, and moronic in the historical context — when it floats outward from the Clinton Campaign like a poison cloud, what do the advisors have their candidate do? Do they have Senator Clinton herself compare the remark to Al Campanis talking on Nightline… on Jackie Robinson day… about how blacks lacked the necessities to become baseball executives, while she points out that Barock Obama has not gotten his 1600 delegates as part of some kind of Affirmative Action plan? Do they have Senator Clinton note that her own brief period in elected office, is as irrelevant to the issue of judgment as is Senator Obama’s… …while she points out that FDR had served only six years as a governor and state Senator before he became President? Or that Teddy Roosevelt had four-and-a-half years before the White House? Or that Woodrow Wilson had two years and six weeks? Or Richard Nixon… fourteen… and Calvin Coolidge 25? Do these advisors have Senator Clinton invoke Samantha Power — gone by sunrise after she used the word “monster” — and have Senator Clinton say, “this is how I police my campaign and this is what I stand for,” while she fires former Congresswoman Ferraro from any role the campaign? No. Somebody tells her that simply disagreeing with and rejecting the remarks is sufficient. And she should then call, “regrettable”, words that should make any Democrat retch.
Retch is right. For the last debate for her to call upon Obama to do more than just reject Farrakhan’s support and for him to announce so amicably his rejection and denouncing? Bravo. (Watch from 3:00 through till the end, unless you care about the Clinton tax statements, which is a story for another time.)
And add to that, drawing a comparison to Samantha Power and the “monster”-incident, which I think is key. The biggest thing with that is that the comment that the two points are not equal is important, but I think that its important to note how the two campaigns did take care of these things. Obama was quick to remove her from her position, whereas Clinton left Ferraro in her position for two weeks afterwards. Its the difference in the two campaigns: Obama taking a less political road and facing more on the issues than mud-slinging, and Clinton taking the role of letting everyone say what it is she can’t say.
Another thing to point out with this is a Time magazine article on experience from a week or so back that I’ve cited before in conversation at least with friends. I wish they had part of the graphics online for this one, but they tallied up all of the experience from Washington all the way to W and showed it graphically and there were Presidents with less experience than any three of the candidates and those with more–which Olbermann briefly touched on the above.

This week alone, your so-called strategists have declared that Senator Obama has not yet crossed the “commander-in-chief threshold”… But — he might be your choice to be Vice President, even though a quarter of the previous sixteen Vice Presidents have become commander-in-chief during the greatest kind of crisis this nation can face: a mid-term succession. But you’d only pick him if he crosses that threshold by the time of the convention. But if he does cross that threshold by the time of the convention, he will only have done so sufficiently enough to become Vice President, not President.
In other words, this goes back to my Vice Presidental War of Attrition remark. There have been some great statements back and forth by Clinton and Obama about who would be Vice President, and its noted to that this one is one for you to research on your own and to keep watching for on the news as it replays as a talking point.

This, Senator Clinton, is your campaign, and it is your name. Grab the reins back from whoever has led you to this precipice, before it is too late. Voluntarily or inadvertently, you are still awash in this filth.
I am not and have never been a Clinton supporter, but this statement is true beyond all words. More often than not when they’re talking about policies or talking points from one campaign or another, I feel like I hear Obama’s name more than I hear Clinton’s when they refer directly to the campaigns. I feel like they’re always mentioning Wolfson for Clinton as the person speaking, and not some direct statement from her. I know that they both have staffers that speak for them, but the difference I see are like a glove and a mitten.

A glove and a mitten–an interesting way to look at the two campaigns. Clinton is the glove: with many tentacles of statements and individuals reaching out from her, she’s a lot more effective at letting you move around and do what you’d like, but they’re all attached back to the palm, and in the end work together. They can sound off in 5 different directions, and choose to do so as they like. Obama, however, is the mitten: while it might be awkward to have to move all four fingers together, you have a unified movement and there’s no worries about any one of them doing something wrong that might hurt it or the others. Sure, there’s the thumb that shoots off from it all, but it helps the other fingers and works with it, and not in-as-much alone as a thumb works with a glove.

And to me, Obama/Clinton is like a mitten/glove difference: when we’re young, we wear the mittens and we have that warm comfortable feeling. Its a childish hope and wish. We’re tied to them and we dream for the gloves and maturity. But, when we get those gloves, we lose them or forget where we put one. And we always dream about the days when we wore mittens and had hope…

As a whole, I didn’t like Ferraro’s statements about Obama, and I did feel they were thinly veiled racism. And I really hope that Clinton can do something to repair the damage from these statements, but as a whole? I like the rest of America will have to wait… Racism and sexism are two big issues in this campaign. It’ll be a talking point that we’ll hear no matter who the Democrat candidate ends up being…

And me? I’ll just look for my other glove while I dream of childhood mittens…

If you thought the first time I talked about these might have been the last? Believe me, folks, it far from won’t be. The introduction a week or so back was only the beginning…

First of all, I should get into what the chai tea latte is. Classically, its really just the brewed tea and frothed milk, as commented on here. But, at the same time whenever you go to any shop, you don’t get that at all. What you normally get is some form of concentrate and frothed/steamed milk. I’ve seen them in different forms: there’s the pump syrup that you see at some shops, powders at others, and some its a carton concentrate. Its not bad, but some of them are better than others. For me personally, I like the Barnies one better than I do the Starbucks one. I couldn’t tell you why, I just do. And when it comes to campus, I liked the Java City one better than the Starbucks one.

Until Tuesday.

See, I have a fairly regular studying routine. I grab a soy chai latte at the library, head to the 5th floor, and hit the books. Its one of those things that helps me to study and focus (more on that tomorrow). Puts me in the frameset that I can do it. Well, on Tuesday, the steamers were down at the Java City, so I just studied with some water. I was having issues focusing and so I grabbed a quick lower carb and sugar snack at Subway, and then headed back. And I walked by Joffrey’s Coffee in the union. One of the first coffee shops on campus that I visited when I first started here at in 2001, I figured I’d give them a try. They’re usually fairly slow, and I’ve never had a chai from them, so it was worth a shot.

By far, I have to say that they have the best one on campus: its smooth, well mixed, good flavor, and fast and hot and right without me having to keep an eagle eye on them. Its also the cheapest one (even if by only 16 cents), and their large appears to be larger than the other large that I was getting from Java City, even if it is the same 20oz. Its the powder concentrate spiced chai, and the girl didn’t ask me for whipped cream at all. When I told her that she was the first person to not do that? She laughed and said “Who’d want whipped cream on a chai?”

My sentiments exactly.

Well friends, I’ve been avoiding talking about it for a while but after talking with a friend last night and after my friend Goob’s post the other day, I feel its time that I leave my footprint of my opinions on the election here on my blog.

I haven’t hid that I’m a supporter of Senator Barack Obama, but at the same time, its not because I’m some biased yuppie college student wanting change. Its because I’ve done my research. Let’s back up a bit and I’ll explain.

As I’ve said many times before, I keep up with the news fairly regularly. Now with the install of Newzie–which I’ve fully embraced and love–I get my MSNBC.com so much faster and with many articles that I think I would have missed had I not been following it regularly. With this, with all of the news that I watch and read (CNN/Reuters/AP Wire), and with the fact that I’ve taken the time to try to look over all of the candidates? Well, for me, it was about making my own independent educated decision.

First of all, I’ve always been a registered Democrat. I’m proud of that, and I believe that I’m a bit more of a moderate liberal with only a few outlying ideas. I believe a lot in social and individual freedoms and the lessened power/force/impact of big business on our world. I believe that big government is not the answer, and that a military impact against terrorism as a “first strike” as we did in Iraq was not a wise move, but that I support our troops and I want to see them well funded and brought home fast because all projections for the area show that there would be the same military collapse if we were or weren’t there. That’s an entry for another time.

Needless to say, when it came to the early run of the Democrats, I had no idea who Obama was. All I knew was that Senator Hillary Clinton was running, and I didn’t like her really. Oh sure, I thought her Soprano’s rip off advertisement was funny, but that wasn’t enough to do it for me. She always grated on me. There was something about her as a female figure who walked that line between being soft and powerful and balancing that in a very unbalanced fashion, always leaning away from the femininity and more towards a butch masculinity. And there’s nothing wrong with that because it works for her and her supporters believe in her.

In the early races, I actually favored Governor Bill Richardson and Representative Dennis Kucinich. Both well spoken men, they had powerful presences and good platforms. And as a matter of fact, Kucinich matched up to me on most of my political beliefs with Clinton/Obama falling next on most of the political questionaires that I took when I was early researching the candidates. I know that those questionaires get it wrong most of the time, but if you use a few of them, it lets you see different platforms and ideas, and from there it gives you a good sounding board to really delve further into researching the candidates.

So, what from there, right? The next step is to really look at voting records of the candidates and see what they’re about, you could say. And a lot of people say that Clinton and Obama are exactly the same. Well, while that can be shown to be a bit true in a lot of regards back and forth there, the easiest way is to pull up voting records. Now, you could go through congressional websites, or you could pull one of many articles already written about this one. There’s a great one on the DailyKos which if the link I just provided there doesn’t work, you can read it over on Jonah Matranga’s blog. And if that isn’t enough, there’s a nice little article from The Washington Post that details it in a bit more reader friendly terms rather than just listing bills and support. When you look at the supports side-by-side, they do agree on a lot of issues, but there are a few things where Obama stands out: health care, Iraq, and education. You can delve further into those articles, there’s no use in me beating the ground on what’s already been traveled.

After I had done so, I happened to be sitting in front of the television on January 28th and I had on MSNBC like I often do. And this was the Kennedy News Conference with Obama and their public endorsement. There was something in that moment so beautiful and serene and perfect. I will openly admit that I was crying. I was inspired and I felt that despite these past 7 years under a very bureaucratic presidency that blurred everything our founding fathers stood for, that there could be something different. The only words I have that could possible describe that feeling aren’t my own: “It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. I simply can’t build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery, and death…and yet…I think…this cruelty will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.” - Anne Frank, 15 July 1944

So, at this point, you’re probably thinking “Well, Adam, you haven’t mentioned Senator John McCain at all, what about the Republican candidate?” I can not and will not lie about him. I’d love to give him fair coverage here in this blog post and give you some facts about him, but to me, I could never vote for him after 2004. I felt he gave good fair straight-talking runs in 2000 and 2004, but since then I’ve heard him flip-flop on very many views and even on simple things as knowing people and what people have been or not been authorized to say. For that alone and for not sticking to being “The Straight Talk Express,” I cannot give him a fair and unbiased coverage. Maybe I’ll come back to this as it gets closer to the election, but not right now.

All in all, though, why do I choose to write about this today? Four events have lead me to this:

Don’t go to Jared. Goob, this is my response to you.

About two years ago around this time, my father-in-law was helping me shop for his daughter’s engagement ring. Well, it was actually in June of 2005, give or take, but even still, that’s beside the point. At this point, Sarah and I had looked around at numerous shops in the mall, which is the worst idea that I could tell you.

So, let’s start at the basics when it comes to buying a diamond. Men, this is a key thing. Do NOT go out on your own and say “That looks pretty, I’m going to get it.” No. No sirree bob. What you need to do, is you need to find out what your woman wants. While you might have that friend who’s ever so right and tells you “Well man, you’re broke. You can’t afford to get her the best thing out there.” Yeah, that’s true, but gentlemen, this is the woman we love. We can afford to do anything we possibly can for her, so why not try to push ourselves that extra limit? When you find out what she wants, don’t take your eyes off of it. And with this, I mean the 4 C’s.

I’m no gemologist, so I won’t go into them, but you can find good articles online. Noteably, I’d recommend this one for information on the cut and this one for the color, carat, and clarity. There used to be a really good one that I was reading a while back that had all of them and was nicely presented, but I removed all of my linkage.

So, when you’re at the mall and you’re looking at all of these shops, they’ll push you these diamonds that are lower down. You’ll be getting somethign that’s an H or I, SI1, .6 carat, excellent cut, for about 2 grand. If you’re the uninformed consumer, a lot of that might sound pretty good. I mean, you only hear about the carats of the diamond when you hear about the celebrity rings, and to have over half a carat, you think that’s great! Fact of the matter is, its far from it.

See, the trick to buying a diamond ring is to get the diamond and the ring parts separately. Find a jeweler friend of your family that you trust, or you can shop around for the separate diamond, and there are actually plenty of internet websites that you can find your diamond on.

This is what leads me to Jared.

One of the many places that my father-in-law and I stopped at in looking for individual diamonds and settings was Jared’s. And the salesman was just that.

When we were looking for a diamond for my wife’s engagement ring, I was glad I had my father-in-law along for the help. He had done this before–obviously, if he’s my wife’s dad, you know?–and also he had done a bit of work with jewelers and custom jewelry in the past. So he knew what to look for. And me? I kept quiet and listened a lot. And at Jared’s, that was useful.

We were looking for a princess cut diamond, perfectly square table (top of the diamond), and at a high quality and colorless, roughly around half a carat. This is the woman I chose to marry, so I didn’t mess around with what I got her. I got her what she wanted. And when we were looking at Jared’s, the employee who was helping us out, he was helping us find these perfect square ones. And he turned to me and he said “In the twenty some-odd years that I’ve been working in the jewelry business, I’ve seen maybe seven perfect square ones. The one you have is beautiful.” Of course, this is a diamond that alone costs about $4,000 that we’re looking at, which was one of the more expensive ones in the case we were in front of. Makes sense that he’d try to make it “special” for us. Then, I looked down in the case, and I started counting. You see, there were some perfect square ones in the case. Five of them, to be exact. I guess he’s only seen two others over the past twenty years? When we were looking online to find diamonds as well, we probably found a good twenty or thirty in various ranges of color and such.

Hmmmm…. Yeah, I don’t think so.

Needless to say, whenever I see any Jared’s commercial or I hear someone talking about them? I immediately end up talking about the one and only time I went there. If the guy went to Jared’s? He wasn’t smart. He wasted his money.

Nowadays, we seem to have to have a flavor for everything: Coke, coffee, tea, and even water. Just drinking something plain doesn’t work–you have to flavor your coffee with syrup, drink your tea with honey or other additives, or have a Cherry Coke Zero. And add water to the equation, and you could have even more flavors and additives.

This brings me to what I’ve been thinking about recently. When I’m on campus, I’ve been drinking a lot of the Vitamin Waters. Why? Because they’re in the vending machines. And if I don’t have those, I’ve been drinking energy drinks.

But why the Vitamin Waters? Seriously. I could very easily just have regular water. Matter of fact, I carry a 1L bottle on me at all times when I’m on campus. I could very easily just drink and replenish at a water fountain. Why I don’t? Its beyond me.

Water is great, I like drinking a lot of it. I usually do drink a lot of it. But sometimes, I sit here thinking “Why am I drinking more water? I could be eating ice cream or having a pizza now.” Well, not the ice cream or the pizza part, but you get the drift.

Water is water is water. And its just another flavor. Its like the lemonade stand growing up. You’re just selling sugar, lemons, and water. You pay maybe $2 for a bag of sugar and maybe $2 for the lemon juice, and all in all, charging $.50 a glass, you can break even fairly fast. 8 glasses. Or, if you’re an entrepreneur, charge more a glass. Inflation does that.

Speaking of inflation, I shouldn’t be getting any more Vitamin Waters: they’re $1.75 each. But… flavor is so good…

The other day, I picked up another nickname. And interestingly enough, its only the second one that I’ve ever been given other than some variation of my name. And its not even like I’ve been called anything other than Adam or Cohen. Yup, with the middle name of Jacob, I was never called A.J. growing up, if you could believe that one.

That came from a letter left in my family. When I was born, a dear family friend of my grandparents whom we called Aunt Bertha, wrote me a letter. In the letter, it described how my name was important, the meaning of it, and what it stood for and meant, and because of that, I should never go by A.J. I should never have that type of shortening done to what was already a great name. My parents still have that letter.

So growing up in classes, I was always the “Adam C.” when there was more than one adam in a class. Seeing there was an “Adam D.” and an “Adam F.” that I went to school with, quite often I was well used to being the “Adam C.” And I guess it was alright. Sometimes I was just called “Cohen” by my friends. It helped distinguish me there too.

Then in middle school, that all changed.

Around 5th or 6th grade, I met my friend, Dave Hall. The first time I went over to his house, I met his father, James Hall. I was never to call him Mr. Hall, that was his dad’s name, he said. So I called him Jim. And he? He called me Zeke. Where did he get Zeke from? I couldn’t tell you really. In his own words when he first met me? “You look like a Zeke to me!”

Dave would call me Zeke around our friends, around my parents, around anyone and everyone. So whenever I’d introduce myself, I always said “Hi, my name is Adam, but you can call me Zeke. Just don’t call me late to dinner!” It helped me stick in folk’s minds. I wasn’t just another Adam, no, now I was also Zeke.

Zeke is what I used in a lot of my old screennames and e-mail addresses. I would use it as an icebreaker in meeting new people. It just became me, and I guess it was because not only did I look like a Zeke, but I guess I acted enough like a Zeke to be a Zeke. For my 21st birthday, some of my friends got me a shirt that mimiced the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity on campus. It was green with the giant yellow greek letters Zeta Kappa Epsilon. Not only was I Zeke, but now I could wear it in pride.

And with that, it comes to my last nickname. Kotter. I’ve been affectionately called that on the 7M3 message boards the past few weeks before the show and it was sealed in place on Feb 23rd when the band came out to the “Welcome Back Kotter” theme song. I wish I had more on that joke, but I’ve got nothin’. Love the nickname, though. Works well for me. But if I was only as funny as Gabe Kaplan.

Anyways, for a kid who never grew up with a nickname? I think I’m doin’ pretty good right about now…

Ever since first installing WordPress on my site, I’ve had a lovely little bar that said that my version was out of date. It was something that I sort of got used to seeing and I just ignored it. And then, as I started adding plugins to my site, I started to get frustrated and feel like I fully wasn’t in control and that I was just letting my WordPress run me. That I couldn’t do something as simple as just upgrade WordPress.

As simple as. I didn’t know it was a simple upload and overwrite operation after backing up your files. Really I didn’t. Every time that I had thought about it or mentioned it to someone, it seemed like it was a grumbling gruesome effort. Like you’d be reformatting your computer, then installing Dos, then Win3.1, then Win95, then WinXP, just to have everything back to normal. A sort of “all day affair,” if you will.

Nope, a simple copy and paste. Overwrite all old files? Yes please. You know, I’m slowly getting the hang of things around here. And I think that scares me…

In other news, I’m going to probably have the other upgrades I want to do on my site done within the next few days… Not that I know of what I want to upgrade, but its just a few plugins here and there.

And I’m slowly queueing up my weekend drafts so I’ll be posting those before you know it… And probably on the run from my cell phone. Man, I’m way way too connected with this sucker…

There’s a very funny thing about marriage that I’d like to share as my post for the day. Its something that the more and more I look around me and the portrayal of it in pop culture that I really have to sadly shake my head at.

See, growing up and all throughout our lives, the institution of marriage is something that’s instilled as a bit of a “final goal” for successfulness in our lives. We’re set up with dreams of the marriage and a “happily ever after.” Disney has done a great job of placating this in our heads, as the rest of the media does as well. Seriously. Cinderella gets her Prince Charming, the Beast is really a prince, and Snow White only goes to sleep but doesn’t die from the poison apple. And the one true love and its kiss. All of that stuff.

And so when we head away to college or we move out of our parent’s houses, we see marriage as one of those things on a “to-do” list. Not everyone, I know, but a good number of folks. And because its so culturally infused, we have it subconsciously whether we’re really thinking about it or not… For me, I thought that. I’ve always gone into every relationship I’ve been in as if it was my last one for the sole reason that there was no reason for me to “line up” replacements–it meant that I wasn’t giving the person I was with my all and I would be setting us up for sabotage.

With marriage, we’re always shown it as a final beautiful snapshot. Everything in white and black and floral and colored and beautiful…

And the truth is, a shot like that is a moment in time. I look at that picture and I’m only 24. Sarah’s only 25 there. It’s almost been a year and now I’m 25 and Sarah’s 26. What about next year? And the year after that? And after that?

We look at these pictures and we forget that a marriage is work. Its a relationship. Its people working together to make what they have between them work. And its two people who have a shared love for each other, for life, and for sharing everything that comes between them, as one.

We overlook all of those things when we talk about marriage. It’s the final scene in a movie, it’s the coup de grace, the big cheese.

No, its not. Its only barely the beginning… There are always pictures we take after it, and there’s things that need to be worked on from time to time. Keep it as a well oiled machine, just keep on keeping it on… We can’t let life get in the way of a marriage or things like this. Not at all. Life is meant to be shared with those we take into it.

And that, is what a marriage is.

As a whole, I’ve been thinking a lot about a guest on last Thursday night’s The Daily Show. My friend Goob mentioned this recently on his blog and took the article to one angle, but I’ve been thinking in another means.

Folks who know me know that I remain glued to my cell phone quite a bit. I love my little Samsung M510 and I love my Sprint service. I’m glued to it. And when the iPhone came out, friends turned their heads my way and asked me if I was going to get one. I was already that addicted to my phone and its abilities and connectivities, what was the real difference to adding one more thing, right? Touch screen, full internet in the palm of my hand, what more could I want or need?

The thing is, do we really need all of that? Do we really need to be able to surf to all of that porn or news or video all at the flick of a finger across a touch screen? Do we need to be able to have a completely interactive fully integrated phone with our mp3s and calls?

I know that I can do a lot with my phone, and I know as a whole there’s a lot more I could do that I don’t, or a lot that I do that I can’t, but in this era of times where a text message has replaced a simple phone call, or if someone shoots me a MySpace or Facebook message and my phone flashes with a new text? Or I can read my Gmail or MSNBC.com or any of those other sites on my phone. I read Orlando’s Craigslist on my phone, and I even have a spare AIM screenname that forwards messages as text messages. I get so many alerts and other bleeps and blurbles that its a wonder that my phone hasn’t committed seppuku.

What I’m trying to get at, is in this modern world where we could drop a simple phone call to someone to say “hi” or make plans to meet at any one of the three Starbucks you find at any intersection (the fourth corner is either a bank or a Walgreens, seriously), we rely on these messages and this connectivity.

AT&T keeps claiming “more bars in every places” and the other carriers say they’re connecting families. The truth is, we’re so distant because we focus on just another screen when we’re away from the one here at home to deliver us anything that we can’t just let it be.

And we wonder why we call Blackberry devices “Crackberries“? We have no restraint.

I’m just as guilty as anyone else. Heck, I always watch out of the corner of my eye to see if my phone starts flashing… I mean, it is easier than obsessively refreshing my e-mail…

Yes folks, its true. If you’ve heard me rant about this one in years past, you’re going to hear it again.

I hate Valentines Day. I truely honestly do. See, I’ve also got a thing against the commercialization of most holidays, but Valentine’s Day especially gets me going.

There are many possible origins of where it comes as a holiday from the roots of St. Valentine. Being Jewish, I never really got into the whole Saints and Priest things, I sort of just make the vicar and the little boy jokes and snicker as much as I can at the confessional booths. The idea of saying a few prayers and being absolved of whatever wrong-doings you did is amusing, but this is coming from a guy who doesn’t eat for a day and begs to G-D to be put into the Book of Life each year, so I have no room to judge. Of course, there is that whole “asking around for forgiveness for humanly transgressions” before that part…

Needless to say, there are a lot of great ideas about today as a whole. The main idea is this great concept of loving each other. My friend Kevin Allen has invited me to “James Taylor Day” on Facebook these past few years, and I really like that idea. But the generic “Valentines” idea where we add in Hallmark and Russell Stovers to the mix? I don’t think so.

Commercialization, red hearts, candy, roses, cards, stuffed animals, everything just has swamped out the meaning behind this. I’ve seen advertisements for today as Singles Awareness Day or even more advertisements for the Vagina Monologues. Everyone wants to assign some meaning to it or assign something to their life. Its all endless sinks of money. Why do we need to do these special things on this particular day out of the year? Why can’t we just do it when we spontaneously see fit? I already spent the damn money on the engagement ring, and the wedding rings, and I already make my wife dinner and do the dishes and laundry on a regular basis, so why do I need to conform to these consumer standards?

For me in my life, the only time I’ve been in a relationship on Valentine’s Day? Since 2003 when I was with Sarah. I never had a casual dating partner or was in a relationship with the exception of my wife. Oh sure, I had a good friend or a close friend from time to time, but I always hated the day and wanted to have someone to shower with all of the monetary anchors that we see as staples of this event. The flowers, the chocolates, the cards, the huge stuffed teddy bears.

Just. Stop.

Now that I’ve had a Valentine for the past few years, I don’t care about the holiday. I really don’t like the fact that I’m expected to perform to these conformist standards of keeping this revelry in consumer extortion going. And even though my wife knows how much I hate this “holiday,” I know I’d be deep up shit creek if I didn’t do anything for it.

So as you’re reading this, friendly reader, I can tell you that my wife will probably soon find the small stuffed dog keychain and the card that I left in her lunch box. Sure, its not much, but its what I needed to do to show her that I do love her, and I do recognize today is special.

But the true fact of the matter is, why should we care about it because its today? I’d like for everyone who’s reading this to know plain and simple: I appreciate you and I care for you each and every day out of this year. So thank you for caring for me, and let’s remind each other of that daily. That’s to my single friends and my relationship-bound friends. I make no distinguishment. As long as you have a friend, you’re never alone.

Let’s do this not with a cardboard cartoon valentine, or a lacy heart, or a box of chocolates and a teddy bear, but with a sincere call or text message to those you care about. Because that’s the true meaning of today: telling those you care about that you really do care about them. If we can remember that, I’d say we’re doing a pretty good job.

I’m the world’s worst English major without a doubt. Uncontested.

From time and time again, I try to find words to express all of these thoughts that I have, and I get a bit pretentious in how I think about things. I can acknowledge that and I well know it, and if that’s my downfall, then so be it. But as a whole, I wish I wrote more.

My problem with writing is that I have a severe perfectionist complex and with that, comes the hatred of editing. Like many folks who toil over what comes from their fingers and keys or pen and paper, I don’t want to go back over it and rewrite it, so I take extra care in the time that I put into writing it in the first place so that I don’t have to revise and edit it. This is why working for a newspaper would never work for me–if an editor gave me back a piece and told me to revise it? I’d tell them to do something that I believe is anatomically impossible. Or if it is, I haven’t tried and have no desire to.

With this comes a problem with picking up the thoughts in my mind from the beginning. I try to start off with various prompts and I have books upon books of them that I keep buying because when I read them in the store, something about them really inspires me and makes me feel “Hmmm, I could write about that.” Then, I get home and they sit on my shelf. I just don’t feel a connection to pick them up and read them, which I should, but I don’t. I’ll flip through them and I’ll like a few of them and others I’ll think “Man, that’s a lame prompt.” I think mainly my issue is that there are things that I want to write about, but I don’t want to write about. Stories that I want to tell, but I don’t want to be known. And because you interject so much of your own life into what you’re writing, I don’t want someone to read one of my stories and go “So is that really what’s in his life?” Yes, I know, Stephen King’s real life isn’t filled with rabid dogs, demonic clowns, and possessed cars, so that means that if I write about cheating, lieing, divorce, and murder it’s not necessarily in my life. But sometimes we unintentionally write characters that might show something we’re not trying to show. I don’t think I’m hiding any secrets from myself, but I think I stifle these voices so I don’t write something and then hurt myself with it later. If that makes sense?

I’ve been trying to be good about writing as a whole, though. I had read an article a while back called “10 Reasons to Write and Publish Every Day,” which I really liked as a whole, but whenever I re-read it at times like now, I feel like it’s a cheerleader for a game that I’m sitting and watching from the sidelines and waiting for the pretty girls to leave the field because they’re just inane and pointless to the overall game. But, then again, the crowd does help folks get in to it.

See, the problem I have mostly with writing, is that I’ll read a site like McSweeney’s that has these wonderfully written vignettes that seem so absurd and have such a strong voice or I’ll hear songs like some of the new Seven Mary Three songs from day&nightdriving and I know I can do that. And as much as imitation is the highest form of flattery, and imitation in art helps you understand how to do that, I get stuck in my own little ways. I edit things together in fashions that stifles what I’m trying to accomplish, or I write something so contrived and pretentious that I see right through it.

And I’m my own worst critic, like any writer out there. I had done a freewrite the other day that I posted on my MySpace bulletins like a lot of my other freewrites. If you saw it, it was called “feeling like creation…” You can find it if you’re on my friendslist on the bulletin board, otherwise, I’ve got it saved around here if you want a copy, shoot me an e-mail. Needless to say, I received a few very very nice comments from friends about how they liked it. Nothing about why they liked it. And last night when I was re-reading it and working on a paradigm shift on it. Okay, not as much a paradigm shift, but a format shift from prose poetry to lyrical poetry. I consider my freewrites to be prose poetry often. Even still, I couldn’t pull out certain things from it, and when I did, it just didn’t flow right on the paper. Granted, it was about 3am at the time (and like Rob Thomas says, I was feeling lonely), so maybe I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. Maybe I should have come back and edited it later.

I had started writing something just before that this morning (around 2:30am) that I’m calling “Grow” for the time being, and looking at it now, 6 hours later, and putting guitar chords to it? I feel like I did something right for a change. And its because I tried to edit, and I didn’t accept the first draft. Oh sure, it was only a word or two here or there, and I rewrote the verses to make them read better and flow better, but it was enough. Revision is like cooking steak: you can do a little (rare), flip some things around and smoothen it out (done), keep the same ideas and completely redo it (well done), or trash it and start over (throw it to the dog and grab a new one and another cold beer from the fridge).

We’ll see how the day progresses. Sometimes, no matter how much I worry and think about writing as the process? It just turns out right in the end.