When I pulled out of the driveway I spotted a pair of doves collecting twigs for their love nest. The bird song in the mornings has increased as well. I’m glad for it. It has been a long winter.
21
Mar 05
Rewiring the brain
I played basketball with some guys from work yesterday afternoon over at Anderson High School. See, normally I would decline such an invitation because I’m both anti-social and bad at basketball, but right now I’m trying to do the opposite of what my first inclination is since my normal way of doing things is not working for me. I’m trying to push the Chris envelope and do more things I find difficult.
It was a positive experience: good time with work friends and good cardio-vascular exercise. I had that deep chest ache you get when you’ve been breathing and working your body hard. It’s something I hope to do more of since I would like to improve my game and general fitness.
My brain spent all last night rewiring the basketball-related parts of my brain. I know this because I woke myself up several times during dreams where I would go for a shot or pass and then I would hit the wall with my hand or leg and wake myself up. It happened at least three times that I can remember.
21
Mar 05
Trendy
If you’re attuned to what people wear and do you’ll notice fads. Why do people follow the lead of other people? What are you thinking when you wear certain clothes or buy certain products? How do you decide what has value? Here are a few things I’ve noticed:
18
Mar 05
“Please mess with Texas” t-shirt
Some of the out of state visitors for SXSW might appreciate this shirt. You can get your own here at protoculture for $20. If you’re down on 6th street at Aaron’s Rock N Roll you can buy the antidote to this shirt that says: “F*ck y’all, I’m from Texas.” I don’t imagine they sell a lot of these due to the fact that they would only be funny outside the state or the country.
18
Mar 05
Feedburner
I was inspired by this post to start using Feedburner to supply the news feeds for letterneversent.com. If you subscribe to the original RSS feeds you do not need to change anything unless you wish to use the feedburner feeds, which will provide some useful features like integration with my del.icio.us links as well as browser-friendly display and nice statistics on how many people subscribe and what they use to view the feed.
17
Mar 05
For my upcoming birthday
If you have an extra several thousand dollars lying around we can throw a huge birthday bash and book Teddy Pendergrass.
Related:
17
Mar 05
Altruism and punishment
Very interesting stuff on the evolution of altruism. What is the evolutionary incentive for acting in ways that do not benefit the individual? From the New Scientist via Life With Alacrity:
17
Mar 05
The Paradox of Choice
I saw this interesting book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, at Border’s during lunch. The main thrust of it is that our lives are filled with an overwhelming amount of choice, which ends up restricting our own satisfaction with life. Modern life is filled with too much sometimes. I agree with that. I even felt this when I was in the book store. There were so many things I could have looked at that I felt uninterested in shopping around. I just didn’t want to deal with it. It’s the same reason I don’t go to a lot of places. It is too much trouble to navigate all the chaos and the array of endless junk. Maybe the human mind works on a much smaller scale.
17
Mar 05
Graffiti link-o-rama
- The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal: graffiti removal as art. The squarish areas to cover graffiti as minimalist works. Can graffiti removal be an artistic response?
- GRAFFITI REMOVAL: basic technical advice from English Heritage after damage by vandals to historic buildings and monuments
- Comprehensive Wikipedia entry on graffiti including types, methods, history, etc. Informative!
- Online graffiti generator.
- Banksy, graffiti as subversive art. His work is creative and effective.
In thinking about the subject, it is clear that graffiti can operate from many angles. In essence it is a mode of communication. I’m hesitant to use the word “expression” because it’s a loaded term that conveys legitimacy. As a form of communication, it comes in many varieties: political graffiti, graffiti art, advertising, gang-related tagging, drunk shaming, culture jamming (subvertising), etc. How do you decide when it’s a positive thing or a negative thing? I suppose it all depends on point of view, and if that’s the case whose point of view wins out when there is a conflict?
