jonsi at the wiltern

last night i went to go see jonsi (lead singer of sigur ros) up in LA. it was incredible. here are some pictures:

this was the opening band, mountain man. funny that they were all girls. mostly a cappella. amazing voices.

jonsi:

sigur ros and jonsi are the best band at creating atmosphere in their live shows. so i guess pictures don't really show how amazing it really was, but i thought i'd share.

oh, also for those of you who know broken social scene, kevin drew was standing right next to me at this show. did not realize it was him until half way thru the set. broken social scene are playing at the same theater tonight. bummed i'm missing that show.

mcdonalds and hellenism

i pass a mcdonald's everyday. it's on jamacha in between jamba juice and denny's. i haven't been inside it in years, but i see those golden arches everyday. when i go to school, i see another mcdonald's. i'm sure most people see a mcdonald's on their way to work or to school. mcdonald's has approximately 58 million customers a day, and has 31,000 locations around the world. there are mcdonald's in 119 countries. they have made 22.6 billion dollars since they have opened. everyone in my generation would be able to recognize ronald mcdonald. the reason i am spewing all this information out is not because i find mcdonald's as some evil corporation, or because i just watched 'super size me' and i think it has a good point on unhealthy eating in america. i find a more troubling fact in all of these statistics. americanization can be found everywhere. 

"do you know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese in france?... a royal with cheese." - vincent vega

back when alexander the great was conquering the world, he made every culture "greek". during this time when you saw the buddha he was shrouded in a toga, looking more like sacrates and less like siddhartha guatama. when you went into the city of alexandria (city in egypt) you wouldn't see plays based on the culture in egypt, but rather traditional plays from greece. everyone spoke the same language and everyone used the same currency. my point is that diverse culture was lost and globalization was in full effect. that time period is known as hellenism.

american culture can be found in almost every crevice of the globe. our american dream has become the dreams of other cultures. culture is diverse, but america can be seen around the world. capitalism is a philosophy that has taken over each continent. we are by no means the original capitalistic nation, but we promote it proudly. capitalism has done great things for our nation, but the truth is, at some point it will cause our demise. capitalism gives opportunity for greed, and greed, in history, has lead to the downfall of every single important empire. greece, rome, egypt, assyria, persia, ottoman, they all fell due to this fact. 

i am no way promoting some sort of socialism or communism, but we need to realize what we are. we are the rome of now. we are the modern greece. and like those before us, we will fall. the recession has proved that we are not at all invincible. i'm scared that our greed and need for american culture to be present across the globe is going to cause us to be a cautionary tale. i want to start embracing the importance of diverse culture. 

i know that this all sound preachy and lame, and "america bashing" but i am legitimately scared for us. and with the facts that we are behind many countries in education and domestic dominance, it makes my fears feel very real. we may not literally control the world, as far as owning their land, but it is obvious that our culture is everywhere. 

somewhere in france their is a person eating a royal with cheese and we are scrambling making sure our economy doesn't crash and that we don't lose our homes. we aren't exactly hellenistic, but we come as close as any modern civilization can, and that scares the hell out of me. "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." let's stop making sure the ideology of capitialism is spreading through out the world, and let's fix what we got going on over here. before we know it china will be taking us over, and we will be left wondering, what the hell happened?

my imagination exceeds my reality

i find myself daydreaming a lot lately. i know this is something that most people my age do, but the daydreams have shifted in theme. it used to be about big houses, fancy cars, amazing vacations, and a model wife that all my friends envy over. in some sense of the word, my daydreams have matured. maybe this is par for the course of moving out of my adolescence and into my young adulthood. the daydreams now consist of who i want to be as opposed to what i want to have. i want to be someone who reads cnn.com on a regular basis. someone who cares more about what is going on in other peoples' lives instead of my own. someone who has a glimmer of insight on what is important, and sharing that insight with those i love. i have a deep desire to be someone who lives on means and doesn't exceed them. i want to take all of my poor qualities; laziness, failure to finish something i start, selfish desires, and put back some positive energy into the atmosphere. i want to create something beautiful and be proud. the irony is that these daydreams stop me from doing these things. i sit and think about these things but fail to act. i never start, but there is something deep inside all these ambitions that are starting to bubble on the surface.

i think about my brother. someone who applies his ambition, to be selfless, to his daily life. i want that. there's really nothing stopping me except for myself. i catch myself saying things in my head like; "i'll start tomorrow" or, "you have plenty of time to change your habits". application of ambition is harder than i think it is. they say the first step is the hardest part, but i can't determine the first step. i have the desire, but my willingness to act is severely lacking. stick to one day at a time is what my dad would tell me, but i like to look at the big picture rather than the baby steps that would get me to my final destination. can someone who applies their ambition to their life tell me how to apply?

i'm scared of failing, so i quit before i start, but my change in daydreams is leaving me optimistic about my call for action. acting on positive actions is much more nobel than acting for self gain.

The All Important Topic

I wonder if past generations were as obsessed with themselves as we are. I have to assume that they were, but maybe that's because I don't want to feel narcissistic. I can't help to thing about the Modest Mouse song 'Paper Thin Walls'. I know that many who know that song will think that really the song is about our fascination with other people and the lack of privacy that we now have. And as true as that may be, I think that the fact still remains we will never get tired with the one topic that always floats around our heads... ourselves. And it could quite possible be true that our voyeuristic nature also stems from that one fact.

It is safe to assume that the majority of our generation has a Facebook, and it's also safe to assume that a large portion of that population also have a Twitter account. The basis of these technologies are to show our 'friends' what we are up to, and what we are thinking in that instance. We also use them to see what other people are up to. But for every clever and deep thought I think of, I seem to think it's much too clever or much too deep to let it not be heard by all my 'friends' and all my 'followers'. I post and wait patiently for the comments to role in. Usually about two or three people comment, and my self esteem rises, and reassures me that it was in fact a clever or deep thought. Even this blog proves that I am infinitely the most important topic to myself. I can't be the only one who thinks about these things. But at the same time, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I think it's just human nature. Our inability to understand anything else besides what we experience. That's not to say that I don't try, but it's hard to try to understand life through other peoples experiences.

That brings me back to voyeurism. We so desperately want to know and feel everyone else's experiences, and we want to know that feeling immediately. But not so much as to feel empathy when someone tweets, "totally bombed that mid term" or puts up the status, "great night tonight, things got crazy". What we really want is the understanding that we aren't the only ones experiencing these things, that we share all share the same essential need of feeling important. Social Networks like Facebook and Twitter give our generation the platform to instantly explain what we are thinking and share those thoughts with the World. My question is: Is this something that human beings always felt was important, or are these platforms giving us that importance? I'll mull that over while sharing my latest momentous event while everyone else does the same thing. Everyone's a voyeurist, their watching me, watch them, watch me right now.


'Paper Thin Walls' - Modest Mouse

second time around

it's been a while since i have written anything recreationally, so i apologize in advance for how sloppy this is going to be. i will start this whole thing off by saying i used to have a blog, but i stopped writing on it. probably out of boredom, but i don't remember my exact reasoning. now i feel like there are enough free thoughts roaming around in my head that it only seems fitting that i write out these thoughts in some form, and rather than hiding a journal in my room, for only myself to see, i decided i would make it public (and mostly error free). i'm assuming no one but my friends will read this, but that's enough for me.
i wish i could say that this is going to be a revolutionary blog. a blog that changes the world of blogging forever, but that will not be the case.
i don't really have anything to say right now, but i will soon enough. i figured i'd get this thing up and running. so i hope this goes better than my last one. thanks for reading.