…the almost right word

I’ve been MIA lately and will be, even more so, next week when I’m on my way to Akumal, Mexico. Until then, here are a couple links for you to enjoy…

Style Rookie: Jamie at Oh! How Lovely! turned me on to this blog, written by a 12 year-old (yes, you read that right). It’s mostly a “fashion blog,” with a little of her personal flavor thrown in. I find it endlessly amusing. 

matt pond PA has released a free, digital EP appropriately titled The Freeep, which I discovered via I am Fuel, You are Friends. If you haven’t already heard matt pond PA, go check it out.

Enjoy your pumpkin pie.

Some good stuff around the interwebs lately…

Nilsa at SoMi began a movement, of sorts, which she called “BlogSecret” — “you write a secret and have it posted anonymously on someone else’s blog.” Nilsa notes, ”It is said (through the results of lots of research) that the simple act of writing about a secret is highly cathartic and has been found to have genuine health impacts up to several months later. But, what the research doesn’t say is it takes courage, lots and lots of courage to reveal something you’ve held close to your heart.” Nearly eighty bloggers responded to Nilsa’s challenge and the results all make for good procrastination reads. 

As a Southern Californian myself, I found In Which I’m Californified (courtesy of This Recording) to be hilarious and well-written. After living in L.A. for only one month, Meredith Hight reviews the city with great accuracy. Think L.A. Story. Think In-n-Out burgers, no parking and multiple freeways. Read. It.

Jamie at Oh! How Lovely! has started a discussion regarding blog annoyances and then she presents the flipside. The comments alone are worthwhile — It’s interesting to see what people hate about blogs. The number one annoyance seems to be a tie between partial feeds and light text on a dark background. Jamie’s blog has been recently profiled by Paste Magazine as “one who gets it.”

Ben from No Ordinary Rollercoaster  ”recycled” a post for Who’s Your Dauchsund. I’m not normally a dog blog fan, but A Year of Calvin: Part One is an irresistible story of bringing home a puppy for the first time, and the fear of fatherhood.  

And for a laugh, check out the two bloggers who were simultaneously named “Sexiest Man Alive” by People magazine.

I wake up, make my coffee and sit down at my desk. My work commute is a full four feet from my bed. I spend my entire day sitting in the same chair, staring out the same window, speaking to few. I both despise and need the solitary. 

I listen to my mixes. Broken Social Scene. Some Iron and Wine. Modest Mouse. The latest: Electric President.

I wonder where I’ll be in two months. I wonder where I’ll be in four years.

I swim almost every day now. I do laps in the community pool around the corner from my house. It is the only thing that clears my head. The only thing that makes me relax and feel whole. 

I wait, impatiently, to hear back from grad school. I convince myself that this is what I want, even though I have no idea.

“I’m thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I’ve got something important to say and the power to say it — only I don’t know what it is, and I can’t make any use of the power. If there was some different way of writing…Or else something else to write about…” He was silent; then, “You see,” he went on at last, “I’m pretty good at inventing phrases — you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though you’d sat on a pin, they seem so new and exciting even though they’re about something hypnopædically obvious. But that doesn’t seem enough. It’s not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too.”

                              – Aldous Huxley

At the beginning of my college years, I discovered Pinback through the campus radio station. They had just released Summer in Abaddon and I was lucky enough to find their other albums at a local record store. I consumed their music much like I now consume spaghetti — I wanted it all day, every day. Some of my coworkers began to associate my music taste with Pinback alone. 

After recently hearing “Hard to Find,” The American Analog Set has become my new Pinback. Coincidentally, the two bands toured together in recent years. 

Originally, The American Analog Set, or AmAnSet, was formed in the mid-90s in Texas. When the band began, they had dreams of a Monkee lifestyle: they would all live, practice and record in one house. Needless to say, their neighbors weren’t as excited about this concept. Subsequently homeless and scattered across Texas, the band was offered an opportunity to tour with The Magnetic Fields which they happily accepted.

Over the past years, members have come and gone, rumors of disbanding have circulated, but AmAnSet has continued to produce a unique, mellow indie pop-rock sound. Rolling Stone believes they “can be credited with paving the way for Death Cab for Cutie, among others.” 

the a.r.w. recommends: “Hard to Find” from Promise of Love and “Punk as Fuck” from Know By Heart.

Last night, I dreamt that I was on a plane to South America. 

It’s been too long since I had an adventure — an out-of-the-country, speak-in-a-foreign-language, spend-way-too-much-money adventure. In less than a month, I will be on a beach in Mexico. Adventure? Definitely.

Nevertheless, I find myself waking up on this cloudy Monday morning with a sense of dissatisfaction. Reasons? 1. My job is neither challenging nor stimulating. The pay is wonderful, and the experience will be good (in a long-run sort of way), but working from home limits my social interaction and I miss feeling…exhilarated. 2. My friends are either a) broke or b) addicts (in many cases, both) which means that I no longer “fit” (I did, at one time, fit quite well. Or maybe I just fit enough. But now I don’t fit anywhere). 3. Numbers one and two mean more t.v. time, when I really should be doing something productive like reading or writing. 4. More t.v. time means that, when the week begins again, I just want to spend all day watching t.v. It’s like a downward spiral that simultaneously feels good and dangerously self-indulgent. 

I’m not depressed. I’m not even really that unhappy. I’m just very dissatisfied. 

Remedies? Graduate school, perhaps, if I get in. If not? Major revisions will ensue. The kind where drafts are tossed through the open window, words are crossed out and marked in red. The kind where I list goals and write myself notes like “More books, less t.v.” The kind where I reconsider the next two years, feel very lost and then, eventually, excitement..??..hope..??..optimism..??

A change has come. Even more change will be coming.

Today, it’s Sufjan Stevens (To Be Alone with You), Jose González (Crosses), Halloween, Alaska (All the Arms Around You), The Album Leaf (Eastern Glow), matt pond PA (New Hampshire), Ryan Adams (Wonderwall), pajamas and coffee.

It does restore some sense of faith in our democracy, some pride that, perhaps, we can elect a leader who represents the people. 

The best post I have seen today was at I am Fuel, You are Friends. The images alone represent my hope for our country and, dare I say, my pride. 

Thanks Nico for the image link.

Recount directed by Jay Roach — Remember the long past 2000 election in which we waited weeks to hear a verdict? This HBO film tells the story of what went on behind the scenes, while I was busy being a depressed freshman in college who hardly noticed that there was an election crisis on our hands. If, like me, you have vague memories of what transpired during those two months, this film is a must-see. The cast includes Kevin Spacey, Laura Dern, John Hurt, and Denis Leary, among others, and Jay Roach was also behind popular projects like “Borat”, “Meet the Parents,” “Austin Powers” and more. 

In addition to telling the story of this historical election, the film raises the controversial issue of election fraud, one which, coincidentally, as been discussed at length over the course of the past eight years and, more recently, in a Rolling Stone article titled “Block the Vote.” In 2002, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed in order to remedy the errors of the 2000 election. The goals of HAVA are, according to Wikipedia,

• replace punch card voting systems;
• create the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections; and
• establish minimum election administration standards.

When nearly two million ballots were discarded in 2000 (because they registered more than one vote, or no vote at all, when passed through the ballot reader), HAVA was created to give the American public peace of mind. However, as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast have determined in their article, 

…thanks to new provisions of the Help America Vote Act, the number of discounted votes could surge even higher…HAVA was corrupted by the involvement of Republican superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, who worked to cram the bill with favors for his clients…In practice, many of the “reforms” created by HAVA have actually made it harder for citizens to cast a ballot and have their vote counted. In case after case, Republican election officials at the local and state level have used the rules to give GOP candidates an edge on Election Day by creating new barriers to registration, purging legitimate names from voter rolls, challenging voters at the polls and discarding valid ballots.

“Recount” provides a look at the inescapable reality buried deep within our government and, unfortunately, the possibility that corruption and fraud are systemic truths. Perhaps, on certain occasions, your vote doesn’t count, despite the election rhetoric we have all grown accustomed to. Perhaps, no matter who wins today’s historical presidential race, the United States will face four years with a leader not chosen by the people, but by the system itself.