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?

and i caaan't get you outta my mind

i can't stop thinking about this guy











and these girls (and their dresses)



and this lady.

i. am. hooked. and it's getting bad. rivaling, even, the time i read that one cooking blog so much that i started having dreams about the weekends i spent at the author's ranch. plain old creepy.

p.s. can you place my title? sis? amanda? anybody?

when the big winds come i don't want to blow away

today, because i just spent 20 minutes too long looking at people's holiday weekend vacation pictures on facebook, i am thinking about substance and weight, and why, after only 20 minutes, i feel less than before.

before i go any further (farther?), let's be clear about one thing. the problem isn't facebook or pintrest or twitter or blogs. the problem is that i haven't found a way to come out of these specific internets right side up and sure of who i am. 

i wish it wasn't so tempting to be paper thin, and i don't just mean physically. i mean the rewards for substance can be hard to find, which i guess is the point. if it weren't so tempting, life would be easy, and i would get what i thought i wanted by default.

life wears on me and i start to give in, start to drift, start to fade and lift. then i say a small NO and the word drops like a rock in my pocket, bringing me that much closer to the ground.

i will be me.

and if words aren't your thing, this song describes how i feel about it.

maybe just one more