i've been doing some soul searching

went to sister's house tonight and she played me this song. this song is an old friend; it's been with me at every major crossroad in my life, and it is always as true as the last time. i don't know if there's ever been a song that has so completely expressed my thoughts.



thanks sister.

where i learn about my religion

so i was preparing a little message for family home evening, and since we're having a talent show i thought it'd be real swell to talk about talents. i thought of some scriptures, i thought of some hymns, and then i thought of this:



so great. so true. and that's my message in a nutshell.

i count myself overblessed with too much happy

while i can't help but wish there were a kid or two on that wall who looked a little more like me, i'm one proud aunt. more and more, these wildkidya's are the highlight of my vacations. doesn't the future look bright?

birthdays and brosephs

well today's been basically the best day ever, so who says getting older stinks? i'm lovin it.

i have so much more to say on the subject, but whet your appetite with this gem and this gem that my bro delivered to my inbox.

i'm willing to get older every year if an auto-tuned rap is always part of the deal.

this kinda describes how i feel about voting

this isn't a typical 4th-of-july-eve post, but i think independence day is a pretty good time to take a closer look at how american ideals are holding up. read on, patriots.

“The activity of giving form to things seems to be increasingly the business of a collectivized mind, and from the standpoint of any particular individual, it feels like this forming has already taken place, somewhere else. In picking out your [Build-a-Bear's] features, or the options for your Warrior or Scion, you choose among predetermined alternatives. Each of these alternatives offers itself as good. A judgment of its goodness has already been made by some dimly grasped others, otherwise it wouldn’t be offered as an option in the catalogue. The consumer is disburdened not only of fabrication, but of a basic evaluative activity…The consumer is left with mere decision. Since this decision takes place in a playground-safe field of options, the only concern it elicits is personal preference. The watchword here is easiness as opposed to heedfulness. But because the field of options generated by market forces maps a collective consciousness, the consumer’s vaunted freedom within it might be understood as a tyranny of the majority that he has internalized. The market ideal of Choice by an autonomous Self seems to act as a kind of narcotic that makes the displacing of embodied agency go smoothly, or precludes the development of such agency by providing easier satisfactions. The growing dependence of individuals in fact is accompanied by ever more shrill invocations of freedom in theory, that is, in the ideology of consumerism. Paradoxically, we are narcissistic but not proud enough.”

--Mathew B. Crawford, in Shop Class as Soulcraft

(read quote in context and entire article here)

charmed

i don't know what is up with all the vids lately, but here's another. by far the most charming part of my weekend was being serenaded with cielito lindo. i fell in love with the old man singing, and it's safe to say i might spend a lot of money this summer just to sit in an overloud overcrowded restaurant, watching the large-mouthed man sing to me.

this one sounds nothing like what i heard, but i like it:


and for those of you who speak japanese or like the three amigos:

are we doing all we should?