At Desolation Peak

I've been on the internet for hours looking for cheap Tyvek distributors.  This is stupid.

On a lighter, happier, more exhilarating note, I've been reading The Dharma Bums by my good pal Jack Kerouac.  And this is where it makes me feel like going:

Damn.

Too Cool for School

A few nights ago I had a little bit of free time after education class, so I decided to look up a documentary that had been mentioned in class.  We were talking about media literacy, and somebody recommended the PBS documentary The Merchants of Cool.

I took Visual Communications last spring and watched some Jean Kilbourne clips (Killing Us Softy, look it up), and I think I may have also watched some clips from Merchants.

Anyways, either way, if you have some free time and have any interest in the media's fascination/obsession with the teenage demographic, "the mtv generation," then I'd definitely suggest Merchants.

Also, if you have any interest in the portrayal of women/the female body in media outlets I'd also suggest Killing Us Softly.

Both are really interesting, thought-provoking documentaries.

I haven't finished Killing, but in regard to Merchants, I found the whole concept of the "coolness feedback loop" (media focus group sees a few kids do something, then market it as "cool," then in turn other kids do it because it's "cool") something to keep in mind... not only for teens.

Cold Blooded Murder

Big admission here: I've been wasting so much time.  I've been throwing it away by the the truckloads, just dumping it out the window, burning it in an incinerator.  I've thoroughly killed it.

And the murder weapon?  The internet, of course.  It's so deadly, sharp, vicious.  

Sure, the matador network is rad and gives me all these invigorating ideas and makes me want to hop on my bike and head north... however, if I'm spending all my time perusing instead of doing homework, I'm sure as hell not going to be able to just head off on a grand adventure any time soon.  Procrastination is enemy to that plan.


And then, of course of course of course, there's facebook.  Dreaded, awful facebook.  I seriously hate it, yet spend so much time on it.  What's wrong with me?  The whole affair fills me with such futility.  I hate it, yet I use it, thus I'm filled with frustration with myself.  What a terrible cycle.


So yeah, there ya go.  I assassinated time tonight.  Killed it dead, and now I'm ready to be sent off to the pen.

Jailbird Blues

If you have to spend some time dealing with traffic school, I'm here as your resident soon-to-be-graduate with all the tips and info.  Hopefully you'll be able to save yourself a little more of that elusive free time than I did.

Yesterday I spent the better part of two hours messing around online trying to figure out how to get my stupid ticket off my record, so now I'm pretty well versed in the ways of online traffic school.

First off, the lovely Court of California is nice enough to provide you with a due date and a list of approved traffic schools.  So I just went with cheap ($16.95) and quick (for the most part, less than two hours), and with those guidelines I landed upon abettertrafficschool.com.

This isn't an advertisement... I just thought I'd share the wealth.

So I copied and pasted all of the lessons onto a Word document, and when it came time for the quizzes, I just used my helpful little "find" tool to search the document for the answers. Easy peezy.

Oh, and one more thing:  if you get a ticket from an Oakland court, they require you to get your final exam signed by a notary.  So that's my last step.  UPS here I comeeeee

Free Time Ain't Free

Okay, so this isn't a supergrand amazing concept, but here I am immersing myself in the idea of free time.

Not to sound all pseudo intellectual, but is it really free?  My free time on Mondays is usually dedicated to doing all the things I don't have time to do on all the other days of the week.  Sometimes it's errands, other times homework, and some rare times it's catching up on sleep that occupies my free time. 

So here's the deal:  I'm going to work on it.  I'm going to work on understanding and really feeling out this whole free time thing.

And that's what it's all about.