Mindless Thinking

I get most of my thinking done when my body is on autopilot. I call them "mindless activities." Such activities include, but certainly aren't limited to, washing the dishes, cutting fingernails, driving, stuffing envelopes, and watching mind numbing TV shows like Jersey Shore.

Mindless thinking; now there's an oxymoron if I ever heard one. I like it though. It makes sense to me. For some people mindless thinking is actually an accomplishment because they're so brain dead throughout the day as it is.

My mind is always zooming backwards and forwards in time. Presently I'm thinking about the future while simultaneously remembering the past.

I like to think about the origins of the universe. It's fascinating, really. I can't imagine everyone ever agreeing on the same how-it-all-began theory. Not in this lifetime at least. There is so much we don't know. We barely explored all the land-masses in the last 100 years. That's not even including the ocean depths. Forget space being the final frontier. I think we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's divert our attention to proving whether giant squids exist or not by exploring the ocean depths.

Occasionally there are times when my mind goes completely blank. I'll think too far ahead in my lifetime and my mind will short-circuit. It's hard to imagine the future without yourself being around. It's not in our best interest. After all, our basic instincts are to survive and replicate. Why would anyone want to waste their time thinking so far ahead like that? I don't know.....but my mind just blew another fuse.

~Anthans

Feeling of Renewal

I just heard a song of hope. It's called Need You Tonite by Mylo. You definitely need to listen to this song to know what I'm taking about.

Last weekend I did a lot of things I'm not accustomed to. Riding on a motorcycle with my good friend through LA, drinking alcohol, and eating vegan are just a few things that come to mind. If I had known the restaurant I was going to was vegan then I probably would not have ordered from there in the first place. But once I came up to the counter of M Cafe and ordered the Tuna Burger I was told at the point of transaction that I was in a vegan haven. The cashier encouraged me to try it out, so I did.

At first my body rejected the food. It wasn't used to it. I only finished half of my burger which is rare because usually I finish all my food plus the remaining food of anyone nearby (preferably strangers). As I struggled with wolfing the burger down my friend kept trying to sell me on how purified I would feel after eating it. Boy was he right, and boy was I dumb.

The next morning, my body felt completely renewed. A strong new pulse ran through my entire body. I felt like anything was physically possible. On top of that, I still had another half of sandwich to ingest and feel rejuvenated from. After eating that my body felt a body high it has never felt before. This is how I explained the feeling to my friends that morning.

"It feels like my entire body is asleep. That's how good I feel."

Like Southern California, I myself was in a drought before the rain came this week: a Download Drought. I had no new music in my life to keep me going. No soundtrack to play in the background as I made history for myself. Nothing to remember this era of my life that I'm currently in. For two weeks I rode the train to a job that wouldn't even last to the end of the month. I don't have an Mp3 player so I don't listen to music everywhere I go. Music was not allowed at work. And by the time I came home I was too tired to explore any new music avenue. The mute button was on in my life.

Mylo - Need You Tonite. There aren't many lyrics in this song, which are the types of songs I usually generate towards. It brings me out of whatever kind of funk I'm in. I found it by cruising through related videos on Youtube. I can't remember where I started but somehow I ended up on this song. It's nice when things happen like that. Just let yourself go. Preplanning can be overrated. I personally think planning is something society made up. No other organism plans its life out; they follow their instincts. My instincts led me to this song. I wonder where they'll take me tonight.

~Anthans

Another Throwback

When I look at things I wrote more than a year ago it mollifies me to see that my writing style has improved. I'm still working on using words correctly. But flow-wise I think my story telling skills have seen some updraft. The key to improving on anything is to do it frequently, preferably everyday.

This next piece is another article that was left out of USC's daily newspaper, The Daily Trojan, circa 2006. I won't ruin its premise, just read it. You may knowtice that my use of words has changed as well. See? I make up my own now.

Living in the Past

It seems as if capitalist companies will always have some form of control over our lives, from the computers we use, to the cars we ride in, to the cell phones that connect us. Technology just continues to get better and better, as our reliance on it also seems to increase as well. What happens though when these products let us down and we become at the mercy of the companies that bestow them upon us as we remain helpless to abide to the terms under their contracts and warranties?

The effect that derives from this tyranny is misery and drudgery, for in the past month or so I have been forced to live in the past. And no, I didn’t build a car that could travel back in time like from “Back to the Future” or bend the space time continuum like Hiro Nakamura from the new hit show “Heroes” on NBC, but my cell phone screen did short out on me.

Having a cell phone without being able to see what I was dialing or who was calling me was like something out of the dark ages or life during medieval times. Their lack of enlightenment and electricity was the equivalent to my inability to see the numbers I was dialing, the calls I would receive, and the lack of saved numbers that used to be at my disposal.

But it didn’t hit me just how much I had traveled back in time until I had started to get used to the limitations that now entrenched my phone, as I would soon find out.

How many of us can remember the good ole’ days when saying “Hello is so-and-so home?” and asking, “who is this?” were used on a regular basis? Such phrases are outdated as we wouldn’t catch ourselves twice using them today, especially in this modern day age of cell phones and after the advent of caller ID in the mid 1990’s.

Another retro practice I saw myself executing was the need to write phone numbers on hand, rather than being able to punch them into the address book of my once beautifully lit cell phone screen. Who still carries phone books with them these days? Certainly not myself, although maybe I should have since most people’s numbers I had acquired over the past years were never memorized but were instead stored into a database I felt I could rely on.

I was naïve to rely on technology so much.

One other difficulty that I was forced to grow accustomed to was the uncertainty surrounding my mobile phone to be able to function as a mobile. Let me explain this. Because I could no longer see my screen I was never sure whether my cell phone was charged or not, as I would constantly need to connect the charger to an outlet.

There never was a guarantee that my cell phone would be charging, for sometimes cell phone chargers break down on us as well and need to be fidgeted with. This inconvenience left my mobile phone immobile, as it constantly needed to be plugged into the wall as it left me feeling like having an ordinary house phone of which I was accustomed to having in the past.

When it comes to cell phone companies these days, it’s hard to get out of a quick fix, especially when the terms and circumstances of the agreement you made over a year ago are stacked against your favor. I was unable to change my living conditions and held to remain in the past because I was stubborn enough to wait to be eligible for an upgrade with my cell phone provider, Cingular Wireless.

Cingular Wireless is an excellent cell phone provider; I could hardly hold them in contempt for my blasting into the past. My real scorn though is and will forever remain with Motorola. I didn’t have the popular Razr that is so often seen pressed to people’s ears on campus, but I did have a similar prone-to-breaking-down equivalent.

I strongly advise against purchasing a Motorola cell phone to anyone in the future; their cell phone products have been known to fail on people. Common breakdowns include loss of screen image, earpiece malfunction, and faulty buttons that quite often press themselves.

At one point in time three out of the four people who live in my apartment (including myself) had a malfunctioning cell phone; they were all Motorola.

I have recently come out of my dark age and have again acquired the means to telecommunicate with others. I now have a Sony Erickson and have decided to permanently say goodbye to Motorola.

Their assortment of different colored phones and sleek looking products are not enough to keep me as a customer; having a phone that works is far more important than having one that is perceived as being cool.

~Anthans

Movie Mode

Movies: they shape our lives in so many ways. Movies provide us with values, stories, a sense for history, entertainment, education, fantasies, and a means of escaping your job as the guy who picks up the shit after a horse on parades. Whatever it may be, movies serve us all in different ways.

For me movies have always been a way to see the world differently. In Movie Land (for lack of a better name) the only perspectives you see are the important ones: the ones that move the story forward. You could be in the head of the hero, the villain, and the audience all at the same time. Cuts, special effects, and editing make this possible. In Real Land that's not possible. The only visual perspective you have is your own. We see what our eyes see. Nothing more. But if you're creative, delusional or have the tendency to let your mind wander then you might have multiple perspectives going on at one time. I call this "Movie Mode."

So here I am, typing away on my computer, seeing the words that are being typed in front of me. The second I go into Movie Mode I can see a montage sequence developing. A series of fast cuts and motion blurs start to occur that make the cumbersome process of writing a blog pass by at a fraction of the time. In my mind I can see myself from a third-person perspective, body hunched over on my desk, baring the soft glare from the computer screen. Now comes the music. Some fast techno/new age melody will do. This ties well with my fast montage scene of typing a blog really fast. The words are just coming to me. What really takes 15 minutes is being cut down into 15 seconds!

And before I know it I'm sitting at my desk, satisfied – relieved. The blog is finished. And then there's a cut scene to me clicking on the "Publish Post" button and the blog goes online.

Fade back to Real Land.

~Anthans

Good Sock Pairings

I like doing laundry. It makes me feel renewed. My clothes smell fresh and my laundry basket becomes empty, or at least near empty. It may take me one full load, or maybe two. I do my laundry fairly frequently. It depends on how many times I wear my favorite three pairs of underwear – usually around every three weeks or so.

After all my clothes have been washed, dried, and taken back to my room, the first thing I look for are my socks. There's nothing like a good sock safari to keep your day really interesting. Me, I've got all sorts of different types of socks. Green, black, white, brown, short socks, long socks, thick socks, and socks with holes in them. I've always found the last type of sock kind of oxymoronic. If socks didn't have holes in them, how would we get the damn things on?!

As I dive into my sock matching hunt, I always get excited as my sock scavenger hunt approaches the end. At this point I've matched the easy ones and put them to the side. Now it's a matter of finding the other matching Nintendo Wii Fit sock (or whatever strange socks your into). So after I find all of the matches I can find among the other scattered shirts, boxers, and shorts I'm left with maybe one or two socks that don't match. It's usually a white one and a black one. This is where it gets really fun. After I fold all of my other garments, and everything is put away except those two matching socks, and there is no trace of the original match to these two very different socks, I simply...put the two socks together! Maybe this is what Martin Luther King was talking about. White socks and black socks, finally together!

~Anthans

Outlets

And no, not the shopping colonies of the damned that you need to drive 800 miles out of your way for. I'm talking about the things we do to relieve our stress and anxiety. Some activities include (but certainly are not limited to) knitting, exercising, canoeing, weed whacking and the occasional nose picking.

I'm a guy with particular tastes. Refined if you would. I know what I want but don't want what I know. I want to know more than what I know. I want to know another language. I want to know how to use high tech editing software. I want to know what it's like to be fully independent. I want to know the feeling of being the guy whose fucking people out of their money rather than the one being fucked, in other words, own a business.

I have visions, dreams, and foresightings. I'm never quite content with living in the present. My mind is always wandering into the future. I started playing the piano again last month as a way to creatively out my creativity. On the first day of playing my mind was already fast forwarding in time and envisioning a recording studio with high tech recording software around me. I hadn't even learned Mary Had A Little Lamb yet!

Another one of my creative outlets for blowing off steam is dancing. My dance ability always seems to be retuning and fleeing at the same rate. I can't shake it off but at the same time I can't progress any further with it. It's more of a social skill really. I thought it would become a profession one day. Things don't always go how you planned them though.

Now dancing is just something I do in my room and also on the floor of a dance party. You should see it too, I litterally roll around on the floor. I call it the steam roller.

~Anthans

BBR (Beatles Beatles Revolution)

Nobody can show you how great The Beatles are; you have to discover them on your own.

My ex-girlfriend used to always talk about how much she loved The Beatles and why I should love them, too. I couldn't understand why someone would like music that wasn't from their generation. Three years ago I couldn't name more than two Beatles to save my life. Her favorites were John and Paul. She always talked about how great they were and how she wanted to see the Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas, Love, which features nothing but songs by The Beatles. She tried educating me about The Beatles, but it was futile. I also had a professor in my senior year of college who based his Strategic Business lectures on The Beatles. Buyer/Seller Power were likened to George Harrison because he did the grunt work for The Beatles by being an amazing guitarist, much like how buyers of companies have a knack for making good purchasing and selling decisions. John Lennon was likened to Rivalry because he stirred things up in the group and would eventually go solo. This cross-Beatles/Business education may have helped me do well in the class but it didn't help me further appreciate The Beatles.

I began my Beatles exploration three weeks ago after playing The Beatles Rockband in a Best Buy. My fascination with rock music had sprouted the weekend before from playing Guitar Hero and Rockband with some friends. I was hooked. Since my Best Buy live performance I have been learning one to three new Beatles songs a day, usually by watching a new Beatles cartoon and participating during the sing-a-long segment. It's meant for kids, but who cares.

My obsession with The Beatles is best explained through my actions. Two weeks ago I purchased The Beatles Rockband for the Xbox 360, even though I don't own an Xbox 360. I went halfsies with a friend, but still, this speaks volumes on how much I love The Beatles.

I have learned roughly 50 Beatles songs so far. Only about 200 more to go. I'm conditioning myself for Beatles Weekend '09 which is when I'll play with my friends and sing my heart out to every song I know.

~Anthans