A Cappella


Xylophone stylings


Live recreation

I keep buying more crap. I know I shouldn't but I want a Nintendo DS lite so badly. I've basically stopped playing video games since college. I've always always wondered if it was because I was getting to old for video games, or were the games that were coming out were complete rubbish. I think I have my answer, the Sony PSP. My wife got me one last year right when it came out. It was great, she even got me 3 games for it. And after a month's playing. I realized most of the games for it were completely bland and I found out I could load old nintendo games on them. I rediscovered why I loved video games so much when I was a kid. They were actually fun! These days, they're really glitzy with 3-dimensional realism, but they blow hard chunks in terms of keeping me entertained. Its just a lot of repetitive crap dressed up in a nice outfit.

After reading about the games that Nintendo is cranking out for their relatively new handheld, I wanted one, then I found out they redesigned the system and its actually smaller, more svelte, and with a brighter screen, I really wanted one. Today, I saw the 3rd installment of the Cabel's funny review of his DS Lite and I am having to refrain myself from dropping 200 bucks on an imported version knowing full well that the US is going to get theirs soon enough and I'll feel like a complete ass for paying a 60+ dollar markup just because I can't be patient.

This could be the kid in me wanting to relive my nostalgia and simplicity of having some fun, or this could be the adult in me buying stuff to fill the unavoidable void we all have when we realize that life as an adult is nothing like it was when we were kids. I don't know, the optimist in me hopes its the former, the realist in me thinks its the latter.

Ever since I was a kid, I was fascinated by small things. These photos make me think of Mister Rogers with one exception, they're actual real life scenes. Its a photo trick to make it look like its a toy model. Full explaination and flickr set here.

[via digg]

Ok, this stuff reminds me of the old school board game Mouse Trap. There's also a video out there floating around with the Honda car parts system. I don't know what the hell it is that makes me mesmerized by this dinky 50s-ish machined systems.



[via Luca's email]

This video always makes me want to 2 things. Buy another BMW and visit Italy again. Ok, 3 things, gawk at the hot women.

I'm realizing how messed up the currency system we have in this day and age. I'm starting to become one of those old farts that say, "back when I was a kid, we could buy a cone from McDonald's for only a quarter!" Also when I was a kid, I'd always ask myself what I'd do if I won a million dollars. Now? I'm realizing winning a million dollars would still require me to work for my retirement. Funny how currency/money works.

So I've been posing to people the Office Space question now though to anyone I'm having a conversation with. What would you do if you won 10 million dollars? I mean, after all, 10 million is enough for a person to quit their job if they wanted to. This also tells me if a person actually loves what they're doing or are they just doing it to pay the bills. I know that's not the point of the Office Space question though, I mean, usually they ask you this crap in a job interview or at a career counseling to get a better understanding of what your passions are.

I think I'd want to travel for a bit. I realize that while I've had a lot of schooling in classrooms, but very little of the world itself and I feel like traveling would open my eyes up a little more. I'd also probably indulge myself in a business venture of some sorts, be it in music or film, but I've always been drawn to the line where the arts and business meet. Other than that, I don't really know what my aspirations are. I spent too much of my 20s being complacent or distracted and I guess I'm paying for it now, I'm just stuck in "paying the bills" mode. Its not a detrimental routine, at least not in the short term, but I guess I'm starting to ask myself what kind of goals I need to start setting and where I want to be at the end of my 30s while I'm just at the beginning of it.

Its starting to escape me. Everyone says Time is a constant, but I keep seeing it as something flexible and non-linear. The older I get, the less time I seem to have. I blink and half a month has blew by, I blink again, and its a new season. The funny thing is, I actually try to structure my time better now, I try to categorize and manage it, and then life somehow flips around and does the opposite thing. Its almost like I'm being mocked.

You wanna try to manage time better? Well its just going to slip away quicker if you do. I still remember the days of being a kid where afternoons would stretch out and feel like there was no end. I could lay on my parents bed, stare at the clock and wonder when would the day end, it was moving so slow! And now? Friday comes, and next thing I know, its Monday and I'm trying to recount what the hell happened over the weekend. Such is life I guess, the more you're cognizant of something, the more it slips away faster. Or at least that's how it feels like.

I remember a time during elementary school where time was compartmentalize for us. There would be holidays, and of course the school was always be dressed up in the appropriate theme. Then when you hit highschool and college, milestones were set up in terms of friendships, relationships, accomplishments. But now that I'm living an adult life, and its up to me to set up markers and terms on what changes and what stays in the same in my mind, its more difficult to grasp onto a routine concept to say, "yes, this time has passed." Its harder to say to myself, "you used your time wisely." And its easy to buy into the hollywood cliche of "seizing the day" but really, you can't say that in the moment. I can prepare to create those moments, but the reality is I can't really do that until its passed and look at it in retrospect. And well, its just difficult to wrap my mind around the fact that even if I try to resist change and time, it will always be flowing and if I don't drink from it, I will squander it.

The only good things on Wednesday night Television is Lost. That's if its not the umpteenth repeat of the season. But I'm starting to figure things out after reading a million geeky posts from http://dharmasecrets.com and piecing things together.

From what I gather, all the people that are on the island are not there by chance, but everything has been manipulated up to this point to get them there. Everything is too neatly packaged and things can't be that coincidental.

Also, the island is surrounded by some huge EMP/Magnetic force. This gives the "others" their heightened abilities, what drove the french woman's team mad, and is what healed Locke and Rose. This also is driving a lot of the plots and subplots up to this point, minus all the relationship melodrama.

I got all of this just recently, and I didn't actually start avidly watching the show until the second season. Hopefully the show won't jump the shark prematurely, although it could. Alias, produced by the same guy, used to be a razor sharp show, and now its going out this year on pretty much a whimper.

Took the day off, spent the day with the one I love. Pictures are from Old Town Alexandria, Virginia.

The big news in the news/entertainment world is that Katie Couric is giving up her morning job for the bigtime evening news. What got me wondering is how is it for some people can grow up and keep their "kiddie" names and not get made fun of and some can't? Or is Katie going to be known as "Kate Couric" now that she's a hard hitting journalist again? I don't think that's possible, her name is ingrained into the american pop culture lexicon. You can't just change something like that.

Meanwhile, I've met tons of guys that should have made the transition years ago but they're now in their 30s and 40s and they're being called names that only boys should have. Jonny, Tommy, Joey, etc... I mean, I had a friend once named Donny and he had the sense to shorten it to Don after we got to college. Maybe it seems more infantile with guy names rather than girl names. Or perhaps its just me being fixated on what should be adult-like and what shouldn't be.

So this is like my umpteenth blog creation. I guess this one will stick, along with my livejournal since I don't have to pay for domain hostings nor do I have to maintain anything besides the content. So, right, why I'm starting another blog.

I'm turning 31 next week and I think I'm slowly crossing the midpoint gap of adjusting to being adult. Mind you, I said "midpoint gap" which means, I still have tendencies to act like a kid. I guess I'll have to straddle that mindset until I'm ready to give something up to grow up a little more.

So why have I crossed the midpoint? I guess I realize that I'm married now, I live in the city, I own my own house, and I have a steady paying job are some of the points. I also worry about having health care, not having to live paycheck to paycheck and also planning for my "future." And when I say future, I guess I'm just saying I don't wanna cry and file for bankruptcy if something bad happens in my life. What kind of bad things? Well, loss of job, lose of limb, or loss of something else. Robert Kiyosaki, aka Rich Dad/Poor Dad guy, is right, there are only really 2 things that motivate people in this world, fear and greed/desire. I'm trying to rise above that but then again, it is hard to break habits. I guess that's part of growing up.