New Photos

Please check out my latest photo album. It contains some great shots. http://picasaweb.google.com/cjonny21/PostcardsFromNextDoor#

R.I.P JD Salinger

R.I.P JD Salinger, you were indeed never a phony, and in the process taught me to be myself.

During my sophomore year of high school, I was in a dark place, due to me not transitioning from middle to high school very well. See, in leaving my middle school I was forced to say goodbye to a small group of classmates, who I had know for the better part of a decade. This issue fueled by my arrival to high school. I was in a large unfamiliar place, and I considered the majority of my 1500 classmates to be complete and total strangers. However, reading the Catcher In The Eye, in my sophomore English class, was the outlet that I desperately craved. Reading about Holden and his struggles, gave me a comfort that I had never previously experienced from a piece of literature. Just knowing that I wasn't the only one who felt like a loner and didn't belong was incredibly therapudic, and in hindsight, served as the turning point for my high school experience. So in short, I must thank you Mr. Salinger for helping make me the person I am today.

This quote from Little Miss Sunshine sums up my high school experience perfectly

Dwayne: I wish I could just sleep until I was eighteen and skip all this crap-high school and everything-just skip it.
Frank: Do you know who Marcel Proust is?
Dwayne: He's the guy you teach.
Frank: Yeah. French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he uh... he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing. So, if you sleep until you're 18... Ah, think of the suffering you're gonna miss. I mean high school? High school-those are your prime suffering years. You don't get better suffering than that.

So one more time, thank you JD and Catcher In The Eye, for letting me suffer, being my therapy, and making me realize who I am, flaws and all.

New Poem

Rumpus

Gazing out of my bedroom window

Rain softly patters against the bare cherry blossom tree

Wanting to feel the water against my face

I contemplate meandering outside

However I falter

Chained by reason and responsibility

A decade since the time

I felt truly loved

Running through the woods

Air filling my lungs

Branches brushing against my face

Gazing at the sunset

We were wild

Gazing out the window

What have I become?

An interchanging part

In an increasing sterile word

Where I am not a man

But a number

Leaving my wild tribe

I ventured to the dark place

Feeling like a loner

No one understood me

I longed for my tribe

For the wild

Opening the window

I gaze towards to sky

Letting the water gently caress my arid skin

My fears and apprehensions wash away

My eyes dart towards a dash of pink

A lone cherry blossom swept up into the air

The rumpus has begun.

Massascrewups

Hey...maybe some people don't want health insurance. Maybe they also enjoy being forced to pay extremely large bills when they go to the hospital. Hey, they probably enjoy paying bills they can't afford.

I Love John Stewart

Stewart spoofs Beck. Spoiler: It's great.

http://tpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com/?id=3847878&ref=fpblg

Mad Men

I love Mad Men, but this is a great parody http://video.ign.com/dor/articles/996794/landlinetv/videos/landlinetv_prt_madmenyoutube_92209.html

Kairos

This past week I was on Kairos. It was amazing...that is all I can say.

Best Of 2009 Awards

Best Of 2009

Best Games

1. Flower

2. Everyday The Same Dream

3. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Best Movies

1. Up In The Air

2. The Hurt Locker

3. District 9

Best Albums

1. It's Blitz! - Yeah Yeah Yeah's

2. Merriweather Post Pavilion - Animal Collective

3. Veckatimest - Grizzly Bear

Best TV

1. Mad Men

2. Lost

3. The Office

Things I'm looking forward to most in 2010

1. Lost

2. Potential new Radiohead album

3. Graduating high school and going off to college

4. Mass Effect 2

5. Outsidelands 2010

Discovering A Revolution

During the short, but wonderfully satisfying winter break, my family and I loaded up our trusty mystery machine, and ventured up to the majestic dá’aw, or as people from the bay area enjoy calling it, Tahoe. However, in recent years the Tahoe region has become polarized between the weekend residents, who are rich enough to afford a second home along with fancy Bogner jackets, and the locals who are annually trying to scrape together enough money in order to afford a season ski pass. Yet, for how terrible this sounds, the system actually works as long as the bears or the beautiful cast of Twilight who are secretly residing in the woods, are patient enough to not eat anyone before their credit cards are maxed out. And in a really roundabout kind of way, this got me thinking about the subject of escapism.

My recent Tahoe excursion, along with the recent news that James Cameron’s latest epic, Avatar has grossed a billion dollars world wide, led me to the realization that as human beings we need escapism in order to survive our own lives. Throughout my investigation, completely based on my own biased observations and devoid of any scientific principle, I have come to the conclusion that we jump down our rabbit hole of choice, movies, in order to enter a world that is ultimately fair.

True Fact: without any stylization or exaggeration life would make a terrible movie. First and foremost the rewards for the protagonist at the end of the film are completely missing. This is evident, because if they were there, girls would occasionally return my text messages. Unacceptably often, main character and their acquaintances will die for reasons that weren’t their fault, such as getting hit by a drunk driver or slipping in the shower. However, the worse offence of Life: The Movie is that the bad guys rarely die in a climatic final battle. After 8 years, two wars, billions of dollars, and thousands of lives, there is still a certain somebody the US Military still can’t seem to find.

I believe that we essential reject our world every time we sit down to watch a movie. Take for example when you are watching Star Wars Han Solo will never say to Luke Skywalker “Sorry Luke we can’t afford to fly the Millennium Falcon into battle with you today, budget cuts.” Another example would be Die Hard. We know Hans Gruber will not have a sudden surge of common sense and rig every floor of Nakatomi Plaza will explosives, even though he knows John McClane will be the cause of his demise, again.

However, escapism does have a dark underbelly, and that is when it manages to transforms into sexism. Every Friday night, myriads of people flock to their local multiplexes to view movies that could all share the same title: Scantily Clad Women, Explosions and Guns. Or if you like, Scantily Clad Women, Explosions, and Guns 2: More Explosions and Less Clothes. Now these movies are all well good up to a point, they usually fill their role as two hours of cheap entertainment. However, when I stop to contemplate the potential effects of these movies, I become a tad frightened. See there is nothing wrong with having sex symbols, until you remember that you are turning real women into just that, a symbol, and despite what certain actresses may say during interviews with gossip magazines, no one enjoys being a blow up doll. Yes, some argue that men are objectified as well, and to some extent that argument is correct. However, I find it very hard to believe that the objectification of men in the film industry is for the benefit of women. Because most of the women I know don’t enjoy the company of steroid abusers that solve all of their problems with chainsaws and one-liners.

Yes it is a sad fact of life that sex sells extremely well. Yet, do you know what also sells? Education. So maybe with few chainsaws and Michael Bay in our escapism and a lot better-developed characters and plot lines, we can take these new lessons of fairness found in movies, and apply them to our own society. Hell, maybe our world isn’t too far-gone, and we should do everything we can to improve it. Just a passing thought.

This is almost has good as the infamous maps incident.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCK53x8nvjE

Time Flies

I just found out that today is the one year anniversary of the 1UPocalypse...how time flies. Hope all of you that were laid off that day have moved onto great things.

Special Congrats to Area 5, Rebel FM, Geekbox, and Bitmob.

Wow...

That last post was a rant in the very essence of the word. It has been a long and/or bad day. Therapudic to say the least

An Open Letter To Society

Today was my first day back at school after my winter break, and I came to the realization that our world is truly fucked. Yes you may say, "Jonathan you idiot" how did you not accept this fact of life sooner? But, it wasn't until I zoned out in calculus class today that I truly realize.

All of us are living in a world fulled by hatred and ignorance. We may try to hide it and disguise it with holidays and loving after school specials, but in reality hatred is the fuel that keeps our world turning. It is in grained in our psyche to be afraid of the unknown, but that fear should not have the opportunity to transform into hatred. In truth we hate because we don't understand. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Blacks, Whites, Asians, we all worship the same fictional entity, believe in the same arbitrary borders, and will kill to protect ones family. We do these because we believe that we love the previously mentioned items. Yet, let me ask you this, when can presumed love for ones own country, lead to hatred for another?

This christmas a nigerian terrorist was on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit and tried to detonate explosives during flight. This attack comes on the heals of the controversial decision Obama made on sending more troops to Afghanistan, and has more to do with my previous point then most of you may believe. This man had ties to Al-Qaeda, was on the terrorist watch list, payed cash for a one way flight to Detroit (come on he wasn't heading their for a job), and did not bring a single bag. It just shocks me that after two wars, billions of dollars, thousands of lives, the best defense we have against these assailants is a concerned passenger who notices a guy is attempting to light his own dick on fire. Yet, when the news of the attack breaks, the focus is not on how to improve air security, but how the two parties are viciously attacking each other. Hoping to build ground for the next election. This political jargon just illustrates how little politicians care about the people, and how selfishly they will work to help retain their seat come next election year. Next after the party mudslinging, cable news channels turned their attention to how Muslims are destroying the world. Yes, that statement alone should illustrate why I hate cabel news channels. Most muslims I know are peace loving people, no different from you and I, yet after 9/11 a vast portion of America seems to have adopted the notion that muslims are the lone source of evil in this world. Yet, these Islamic extremists have more in common with the KKK than you average muslim. In short, I am just fed up with how the world can generate so much hatred towards a group of people, solely based on the decisions of a few individuals.

O yeah, and if you haven't noticed our planet is fucked too "The most progressive U.S. President in a generation comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well have made it on speakerphone from a beach in Hawaii. His aides argue in private that he had no choice, such is the opposition on Capitol Hill to any action that might challenge the dominance of fossil fuels in American life. And so the nation which put a man on the moon can’t summon the collective will to protect men and women back here on Earth from the consequences of an economic model and lifestyle choice that has taken on the mantel of a religion.

Then a Chinese Premier who is in the process of converting his Communist nation to that new faith (high-carbon consumer capitalism) takes such umbrage at Obama’s speech that he refuses to meet – refuses, in fact, to do much of anything beyond sulking in his hotel room, as if this were a teenager’s house party instead of a final effort to stave off the breakdown of our biosphere.
Late in the evening the two men meet and cobble together a collection of paragraphs which they call a ‘deal’, although in reality it has all the meaning and authority of a bus ticket, not that it stops them affixing their signatures to it with great solemnity. Obama’s team then briefs the travelling White House press pack – most of whom, it seems, understand about as much about global climate politics as our own lobby hacks know about baseball – and before we know it the New York Times and CNN are declaring the birth of a ‘meaningful’ accord.
Meanwhile a friend on an African delegation emails to say that he and many fellow members of the G77 block of developing countries are streaming into the corridors after a long discussion about the perilous state of the talks, only to see Obama on the television announcing that the world has a deal. It’s the first they’ve heard about it, and a few minutes later, as they examine the text, they realise very quickly that it effectively condemns their continent to a century of devastating temperature rises.
By now the European leaders – who know this thing is a farce but have to present it to their publics as progress – have their aides phoning the directors of civil society organisations spinning that the talks have been a success. A success? This deal crosses so many of the red lines laid out by Europe before this summit started that there are scarlet skid marks across the floor of the Bella Centre, and one honest European diplomat tells us this is a ‘shitty shitty deal.’
This deal is beyond bad. It contains no legally binding targets and no indication of when or how they’ll come about. There isn’t even a declaration that the world will aim to keep global temperature rises below 2 degrees C – instead leaders merely ‘recognise the science’ behind that vital threshold, as if that were enough to prevent us crossing it. The only part of this deal anyone sane came close to welcoming was the $100bn global climate fund, but it’s now becoming apparent that even that’s largely made up of existing budgets, with no indication of how new money will be raised and distributed so poorer countries can go green and adapt to climate change.

Over the past few years I have slowly come to the conclusion that corporate america is perfectly fine with destroying your soul. Every day millions of people travel to a generic office building, to sit in a seemingly identical cubicle, in order to do arbitrary work, so just they can make enough money to drown their sorrows in alcohol and the occasional weekend to Vegas. We are all too willing to trade in our identity and our soul for a steady 9 to 5, and some benefits. That previous statement scares the shit out of me. As a society, we should be harboring individuality, art, and expression. Yet, in reality we have a group of people, who when it comes to layoff time are numbers on a spreadsheet as opposed to real people with real emotions and ambitions. This militarization of the workplace is a key cause of hate in the world. We are all too willing to hate and fight with our fellow co-worker, for what, a corner office, a new title before our name? Seriously ask yourself, what is the point?

If their is a purpose to this rant, it is in the following. I cannot possibly fathom what in todays modern society motivates people to do such terrible things to each other and the environment. This past week we celebrated a new decade. Yes, we are now a corporate focused society which enjoys destroying the environment and others for our own gain. Oh and an iPhone has a slightly higher net worth than a human life. Happy fucking new year.

Only On The Internet

Best Of 2009 Awards

Best Of 2009

Best Games

1. Flower

2. Everyday The Same Dream

3. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Best Movies

1. Up In The Air

2. The Hurt Locker

3. District 9

Best Albums

1. It's Blitz! - Yeah Yeah Yeah's

2. Merriweather Post Pavilion - Animal Collective

3. Veckatimest - Grizzly Bear

Best TV

1. Mad Men

2. Lost

3. The Office

Things I'm looking forward to most in 2010

1. Lost

2. Potential new Radiohead album

3. Graduating high school and going off to college

4. Mass Effect 2

5. Outsidelands 2010

Escapism: Tits, Guns, and Fairness

During my short but o so sweet winter break from school, my family and I loaded up the trusty mystery machine, and headed up to those great snowy mountains people from the bay call Tahoe. Now I like skiing a lot, I did it every weekend for 8 years, but during this trip the comforting snow covered woods couldn't help but remind me of twilight. Yes twilight, the terrible film/book series which I have condemned on the basis that vampires should not every sparkle...and that Kristen Stewart has a total of two facial expressions. Yet, in a really roundabout way this got me thinking about the subject of escapism.

Be it watching a movie, listening to a cd, or playing a video game, we all try to escape. However, I have recently come to the realization that the thing we are all trying to escape is not the hard grind of our daily lives, but instead unfairness. Take video games for example, they are all fair set within a world with unchanging constant laws. Life on the other hand would make a terrible video game. For one thing, its class system is extremely unbalanced, and I don't predict investments bankers giving away some of their gil any time soon. Quest rewards, are really fucked, because if they worked, the girl I have been trying to court for the past two months would at least return my desperate text messages asking to hang out. However, the worst part of this life game, is that far too frequently players will die for reasons completely beyond their control. The development team is obviously ignoring our pleas for help, because according to the stories I have read, they usually just drown everyone for complaining.

We essential reject our world every time we turn on a video game. Take for example when you are about to level up in a role playing game. No one is going to stop you and say "O sorry no leveling this year, budget cuts." Another example would be in Mario. Bowser will never just put a giant wall in the middle of the level even though we knows that the fucking red hatted plumber at his feet will be the cause of his ultimate demise...yet again.

For every naysayer on Fox news who believes video games do nothing but rot the minds of the youth, I would argue the following point; every time we play a video game we are able to ignore all the pointless politics in our world, and for a few hours are reminded that life should be fair. Hell, maybe we should work to make the world fair? Just a passing thought.

After romanticizing escapism I will not reveal to you the dark side; sexisem in the movie industry. Every friday night myraids of people flock to their local multiplexes to view a movies that could all have the same title: Tits and Guns. Or if you like, Tits and Guns 2: More Explosions. Now these movies are all well and good up to a point, they usually suffice as two hours of cheap entertainment, but the more I thought about the actresses in these movies, the more I feet sorry for them. See their is nothing wrong with being a sex symbol, until you remember that you are making them just that, a symbol, and in truth no one want to be a blow up doll. Yes, some argue that men are objectified too, and to some extent you are right. However, I find it very hard to believe the movies objectification of men is for the benefit of women. Because most of the women I know are not into steroid abusers, and guys that solve all of their problems with a chainsaw. Sex sells, and thats great, but do you know what also sells? Characters and plot lines I give a shit about.

If I was to leave you all with a simple message from this ramble it is this. Maybe with a few less tits, chainsaws, and Michael Bay in our escapism we may actually become a more civilized race. And with this new found sophistication we can all work towards making the world a fairer place, and if this utopia every happens I call dibs on Samus.

The End

All my college apps are officially submitted...It has been a long road, but I am alive.

Steal To Be Heard?

"One need look no further than the music industry for an example of what happens when consumers feel taken advantage of by an entire industry."

That was from the mouth of a Time Warner spokesperson. Uh, did my cable company just tell me to start pirating to make my voice heard?

via New York Times

In The Eye Of The Beholder?

"Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded."

via BBC News

Some People SHould Not Be Allowed To Have Kids