Apartment 53...or WWDIKD?

Everyone has those neighbors that are obnoxious. Mine live in apartment 53 and I share a very thin wall with them. They are the dirty slacker indie kids so they have obnoxious parties all the time and play videogames really loud at 3 am. I am not going to lie to you. I am partially pissed because I am jealous. I want to go back to the days when i could play games till 3 am. But i wasn't a dirty slacker indie kid back then. If i was playing games at 3 am it was because i just got home 12+ hours in studio. And i didn't play it loud enough to wake up my roommates let alone a person in a different apartment.

So on Friday and Saturday this past weekend apartment 53 had parties both nights. Saturday's party ran late into the night...probably 3am or so. I was pissed. I called and left a message at the rental office in the middle of the night and everything. As satisfying as that was I was still pissed. Sunday, as I was headed out the door to see the musical "The Drowsy Chaperone" with Jenny I noticed the inside of the elevator door was covered with spit. And I thought "dammit!". Then i got to the lobby and it was destroyed. There was glass on the floor and the glass front door was cracked from top to bottom. "Dammit! again!" I thought. I dont live in animal house. Those days are behind me!!! curses!!!

The musical was great and it distracted me from the reality of the dirty indie kids next door. The musical was appropriate because it was in part about using musicals to escape from the harsher reality.

Monday, on her way to feed the meter for her car, Jenny ran into my landlord who was examining the lobby. She told the landlord about the weekends disturbance and my landlord gave Jenny her number to give to me. I called on my lunch hour and discovered on friday that apartment 53 had run afoul of my landlord. hmmmmm so i thought to myself ,you've just pissed off your landlord......What Would a Dirty Indie Kid Do? The only thing that dirty indie kids know how to do.......

..........make it big, make it red and set it on fire

Forms of Be

I used to annoyed that facebook put the "is" in your status line for you. I really hated it at first. I just learned that "is" will no longer be implied in the status. I thought about it and I realized that I am really going to miss it. Sometimes I would be listening to a song and hear a line that I thought would go great after the word "is". Examples:

Nick is "throwing a party, but you're throwing knives"
or
Nick is "just a toy that is broken"

And as I walked around everyday I found myself thing in that weird third person format. "nick is tired of doing revit." etc. I thought it was really interesting that it had gotten into my brain to that degree. And now that I can write anything in there it just isn't as exciting. At least I haven't asked to define the word "is".

I have something better than a Dream...

I have....a couch. How is a couch better than a dream? Because it is the couch that enables the sleep from which a Dream comes. Martin Luther King must not have a good couch because he only had "a dream". My hope for my couch is that it will allow me to expand my dreams so that I may have not a single dream but plurality of colorful and lively dreams.

The couch itself measure 89" in length, a mere 3" shy of the maximum height of the elevator. The fabric has just a bit of texture that makes it soft to the touch. It is the right mix of firmness and mushiness. The lines are simple and very clean. The color is a sage green. I like to call it "a little slice of sage green heaven"

Delicious

Today for lunch Jenny and I made chicken breasts wrapped in bacon with some marinade. Well, to be honest, it smelled delicious. And it prompted me to make a decision. When I die, I should be cremated and wrapped entirely in bacon. At the cremation ceremony my surviving friends and family will treated to the savory smell of cooking bacon instead of charring brimstone.

Something Old, Something New

Ideas grow and ideas evolve. And it is usually impossible to guess the shapes and forms that an idea will take during the process of its growth. It is like planting a seed that you have never seen before and not knowing what will grow from it. Countries begin as ideas. I think it would be interesting to study how the ideas that drive a country have manifested themselves. I am speaking in part about about America because i think that few countries have had its driving ideals expressed and translated so directly and so clearly at its outset. While I think that other countries would provide an equally interesting study, I happen to be in america so I am biased. How have the ideas that founded this country manifested themselves in our generation?

(disclaimer:Since I don't have the time to do vast amounts of research most of my information will be scrupulously gleaned from wikipedia)

The founding fathers were dedicated to the idea that America would be a republic. John Adams said it like this

"a government, in which all men, rich and poor, magistrates and subjects, officers and people, masters and servants, the first citizen and the last, are equally subject to the laws"

Similarly, Thomas Jefferson describe a republic in this manner:

"a government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally, according to rules established by the majority; and that every other government is more or less republican, in proportion as it has in its composition more or less of this ingredient of the direct action of the citizens."

...Fast Forward 2 Hours...

I started this note with the idea that America had morphed and deviated from its original principles a great deal. When I set out to look up what those founding ideals were I realized that the ideas haven't changed as greatly as I thought. The same debates still continue: The Jeffersonian private yeoman farmer tending his business versus Alexander Hamilton's vision of the industrialized commerce friendly nation. Our government is a government of balance. Our government is least effective when the balance is tipped in one direction or another. So we need both the industrialist and the farmer working and understanding each other for the system to work.

It isn't the elected officials that have lost sight of what america's ideological ancestory is made of; it is the people who have forgotten. Politicians pander and patronize us just to get elected. I don't blame the politicians, we made them that way through our own ignorance. We look at politicians as tools to carryout our own personal agendas. We see them as nothing more than vehicles for bringing our personal versions of what we think the world should be into existence. Too many people believe that they are better than the other people around them. These " better" people believe that due to their "betterness" they have the right to determine what is best for "lesser" "unenlightened" peoples. People who think that their way is the best, and only, way have forgotten what America is. America is not a "one-way" place, it is a "any which way you can" kind of place. There are many roads to life, liberty, and pursuing happiness. We need to keep as many open as possible.

First Post Since the Last Post

I figured it was time to open a new blog. Its been over a year since the last post and I figured it is time to start fresh. If you would like to visit the original "Army of the Five Monkeys" blog and learn such useful information as the origin of the name or maybe something about me it is available in the list of links.

My last post was July of 2006 . A recap of the last 14 months would be seriosuly ridiculous. Part of me would find it funny to write it just so that I could picture someone reading it then realizing that it is several thousand words long and giving up after a couple paragraphs. But I won't do that.

Instead, I will use some quotes from famous people to describe July 2006 to July 2007:

"It was the best of times, It was the worst of times"

"Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours." Mark Twain

"Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only far more expensive." John Sladek

"The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time" Friedrich Nietzsche