Adding Style to One’s Life

Friedrich Nietzsche states that, giving “style” to one’s character is essential in becoming your own person. 

What Nietzsche means by this, is that, one’s strengths and weaknesses are part of their inherent qualities, and should be utilized to their full potentials. Conformity destroys one’s self, and doesn’t all you to be independent.

Now, it’s obvious that, to be art, as Nietzsche would say, you must utilize your experiences and culture.  Art is always influenced by something else, whether it is in the smallest detail or not.  Pieces of Plato can be seen in Aristotle’s work.  Nietzsche himself, though he came up with radical new ideas, was based in ancient philosophy in various respects.  

Nietzsche says that we must fit all of our aspects together, until we become an art form in and of ourselves.  What we become will become beautiful in some respect, if we are able to fully recognize and implement our best qualities.  We must dig deep, find who we are inside, forget all the things culture tells us to do, and live a life of our own. (while recognizing our influences)

Greatest Sitcom of All Time?

The situational comedy has been a huge staple in American television since the 1950s.  From Ozzie and Harriet to Leave it to Beaver to Seinfeld to Frasier, the sitcom has been one of the biggest deals in tv.

A few of my favorites:

• Seinfeld
• Everybody Loves Raymond
• Frasier
• King of Queens

What are your favorite sitcoms? I’d love to get an idea of what the most popular sitcoms of all time are?

Top 5 Places to Educate Yourself Online

As I have mentioned recently, it is quite important and VERY lucrative to keep yourself educated.  Last time I mentioned reasons, and this time I will give you ways to actually improve your knowledge without paying a cent. (well, after your internet connection and computer. ha)

1. MIT Open Courseware This is probably my favorite, and one of the most useful sites out there.  There are more than 1800 courses available, many with audio and video lectures.  Some just have lecture notes and student work examples, but many have the whole suite of info that make it easy to learn what MIT students are learning. 
2. Fathom.com Very similar to MIT’s site, but quite smaller, despite the fact it has many large contributors, such as AFI and the University of Chicago.  Nevertheless it has some interesting courses and most of them have plenty of info. 
3. iTunes U All you need is iTunes, and if you so desire, an iPod.  Podcasts and Video Podcasts of lectures from Universities all over the world can be downloaded, with just the click of a button.  There are multitudes of courses on iTunes U, so you are almost guaranteed to find something to your chosen area of interest. 
4. Open Culture   Another amazing resource, with a multitude of links and podcasts to learn pretty much anything to your liking.  My current favorite would have to be Philosophers’ Cafe.
5. The Gutenberg Project Named for the grand old guy that gave us the printing press, this site is the leading provider of famous works of literature offered in the form of free eBooks.  You can find pretty much any great work of literature on here, downloadable in a quaint little text file. 

Hope you enjoy the list, and use it to its full extent!! There are some amazing resources here, and it would be a shame if you were to know about this and not utilize it to its full potential. 

Lovely List of Links–Sunday Edition

• Just because I love Nada Surf. 
• If you want to get hip on some of the greatest music right now, I suggest you check out Lollapalooza this August.  Headliners: Radiohead, Rage against the Machine, and Nine Inch Nails.  Also playing are some of my absolute FAVORITE bands: The Raconteurs, Wilco, Gnarls Barkley, and Kanye West.  
• I can’t contain my excitement that The Office is coming back this Thursday.  It’s definite watercooler chat for all you cubicle types.  Otherwise, you can be sure the majority of people around you will be watching it, so you best be as well!!
• Sweeney Todd has been released on DVD.  I can barely contain my excitement, it’s going to be at my mailbox via Netflix ASAP.  Well, after I get Peter O’Toole’s 2003 TV movie Augustus so I can write a paper on it.  But that’s a different story….
• For those of you who need it, WikiHow is featuring an article about how to Hire a Bodyguard….
• Probably my favorite page from Stuff White People like, this is insanely true.  

 

5 Things to Improve Your Health NOW

I’m going to try to be as inobvious as possible, but people really need to be hit over the head with the obvious sometimes. 

•  Cut out sodas, beer, and extra-sugary fruit juices.  This is one of the biggest things that catches up with you when you do it, and makes the biggest difference when you stop.
• Stop using the elevator! Use the stairs, you lazy bum.
• If you’re on a campus or in an urban area, ride a bike around.  Bikes aren’t usually too expensive, and they are great ways to not only help stay fit, but you can get places faster than walking, and with generally less hassle (and gas) than using a car. 
• Change your snack quality AND quantity. Instead of snacking five times between meals with chips and chocolate, have one semi-big snack in the morning, and another in the afternoon.  And by snack I mean fruit, pretzels, nuts, etc.  Keep it low on the salt and the artificial sugars, it’s easy and tasty!
• Get more sleep! Experts say the more sleep you get, the more time your body has to digest all the junk you’ve put in there, and put it all in the right places.  If you’re moving around too much, there’s nowhere for it all to go!

The Everyman

Who is the Everyman?Funny you should ask (or not) that question.  Unfortunately, there is no easy answer, but most of us have a good idea of our perception of the Everyman. Let’s start off with where and why this is really a discussion.   Fictionalized or not, there many times where men find themselves getting the raw side of life.  We see it movies, books, and finally at some point in all of our lives.  The Everyman is all around us as well.  He can be our neighbor, our best friend, our brother, a professor, anyone.  So again, who is the Everyman? Here is a guide on how to spot the Everyman.

1.  Awkward.  Now remember, the Everyman isn’t always the Everyman.  And awkwardness is no different.  A man in this phase of his life will almost always carry the torch of awkwardness, and it is very evident.  This is due to his lack of faith in pretty much everything, and is at a deficiency of self-awareness.  Whatever you do, don’t point the awkwardness out, unless you want more of it…exponentially.  More on cures for the Everyman below. 
2. Unaware.  This goes along with the lack of self-awareness mentioned above.  Most Everymen will be spaced out, and unaware of most of what is happening around them.  Their brains have been filled with disappointment, grief, or a multitude of other emotions, and have thus imploded on themselves.  They may continue like this, until everything settles down in their heads, but until then they may be hard to have any sort of useful conversation with.
3. Skittish. The Everyman, in his state of apathy and aloofness, is emotionally shell-shocked.  Remember this, and watch both your words and your actions.  What you DON’T want to do is set them off on some sort of tangent.  Nobody’s happy after that.  Trust me. 

So how does a man hit this stage of “Everyman-ness”? It can be a multitude of things.  

• Emotional stress/shock.  This is generally due to some sort of relationship trauma, and it can either be something that has been going on for a long time (lack of relationships, etc.) or it can be some sort of shocking break-up and the like that can really push a man over the edge. 
• Work stress.  This world is full of stressful things, and the dog-eat-dog world of corporate America is enough to drive even the sanest and hardiest of men into deep depression.  
• Moral shock. Another thing we can contribute to society is that of the degradation of moral values.  This is especially troubling for older men, who grew up in a much better age, values-wise.  A man like this can see something going on, and it can hit him deep down in his soul, showing him how much our society has degraded.  This can really cause stress for any guy, no matter who he is.  

So what can we, as friends and members of society, do?  Well, space is the biggest answer to that problem.  A man going through this stage of apathy does not generally want any help.  What he wants is time to think and figure out what the heck is going on in his mind, his soul, and his heart.  At some point, you may find it worthy to offer advice and help, but be wary and considerate when offering.  Use your best judgment when helping one of these poor guys out.  

 

Required viewing:

Dan in Real Life 

Stranger than Fiction 

Lovely List of Links (a.k.a. Your Culture for the Day)

• Lifehack. org has a wonderful article about self-education, and its definitely worth checking out. 
• In freelance news, Anywired and the always great Skellie have put a nice resource guide for anyone interested.  
• I will probably reference/link to this blog a lot, Whitney Matheson’s Pop Candy at USA Today Online, is just a great pop culture news blog that is always interesting.  Worth checking out.   
• This may be nothing else but to make you feel bad, but I just think these houses are spectacular.  The Cool Hunter outdid themselves with this one.   
• The Raconteurs have come out with their new album, Consolers of the Lonely, I encourage you to at least check it out if not go out and buy it.  The Raconteurs’ sound is spectacular, and really fits many different tastes of music.  
• Also out is Jon Foreman’s (lead singer of Switchfoot) new EP, titled “Spring EP”.  This is the third in his series of EPs based on all four seasons.  The first two were amazing, and this one is shaping up to be just as great as the first two.  
• Just because I like moleskines. 

 

7 Reasons to Keep Yourself Educated

7 Reasons to Keep Yourself Educated     

 1. You don’t feel like your time is wasted. The biggest thing for me is that I constantly use my free time in watching TV, playing video games, browsing facebook, etc.  While those are all worthwhile endeavors, one truly does not feel accomplished after hours upon hours of Halo 3.

2. Getting to be the “useless/useful information guy”.  This may sound unsavory, but during those awkward tensions at parties and other social events, it’s great to have some useful commentary on current events, the latest books/films, etc.  Would you rather be able to comment on the latest politician’s lack of tact, or who is dating who on The Hills? 

3. You start to understand the world around you.  Say you switched from MTV to the Discovery Channel and happened upon a special on global warming.  You had never really understood what was going on before, but now you see what the big deal is and you decide to go to the library/bookstore/internet and find out more so that you can truly have an opinion on this globally consuming issue. 

4. Your creativity gets not only stronger, but broader as well.   When asked to do a presentation, whether for a class, at work, or something just for fun, you now know about many more outlets of your creativity you never realized you had.  Your research skills have gotten better, and you realize that there are many more ways to express yourself than the ol’ powerpoint-with-a-built-in-template gambit.

5. It helps you to reinvent yourself.  When you’ve become educated on multiple subjects, and are able to have intelligent conversations with a diverse set of people, others start to see you in a different light.  This can be especially helpful when being on the dating scene, starting over in a new town, or trying to climb the corporate ladder.    

 6. Issues of life, faith, and the like start to become real to you.  So many people in our world go through life living the faith and politics of their parents, without truly thinking about the realities of their so-called beliefs.  Reading up on these issues, thinking about them, chewing on the ideas, and finding out what others believe can help you carve out your own, independent worldview.  This is very important in a culture that lives to command us what to believe as well.  Working out our beliefs on our own makes us not only an important commodity in this brainwashed culture, but a valuable member of the democratic process. 

7. The truth is more important than immediate aesthetic pleasure.  By this, I mean that if we go in and find out the histories of famous people (i.e. political candidates) and educate ourselves about what they have done in the past, we can properly guess about their futures that could affect our lives.  In addition, historical truth can affect our views on almost anything in our culture, and being educated in this truth could have huge effects on our lives. 

Wikipedia Encarta  Google  

Cloverfield: Exciting. Effective. Innovative. Forgettable.

Hype is hard to ignore, even for the most diehard of film nerds.  With Cloverfield, the hype has been going for months, and was something I know I and many of my cohorts were looking forward to figuring out what the heck is going on!  The teasers early on that ran before films playing in the theater gave me a real sense of foreboding, but I had NO idea what was going on.  

Interestingly enough, as the film’s release got closer, I actually didn’t really plan on seeing it.  I had heard some bad comments and stuff, and I admit I let everyone else define my view on it, even though it wasn’t even out yet.  People were hating on it and saying “oh it’s just Godzilla”, and all that crap.  It was like a crazy graph of interest for me–it was REALLY high early on, went down for a bit, and then after I heard about how well it was doing and that it was better than people though…I figured “why not?” and saw it the day after its release.   

Needless to say, it exceeded my expectations as a never-before-seen idea thriller.  Sure, it drew criticism for being similar to the Blair Witch Project, but that’s not what it was about.  The movie was shot through the view of a handheld camera, so it was all shaky and everything, but it worked for me.  It was not like a normal film that was perfectly shot from angles so you could see every single detail in every shot.  Nevertheless, it worked out quite well, and I was able to enjoy the movie regardless of what seemed to be utter chaos.  Cloverfield was a fun movie for me to watch, with the acting doing quite well in working with the way the movie was made.  The plot and script were not perfect by any means, but were quite believable (well besides the monster stuff), as in the characters felt real and their emotion felt raw.  Regardless of all of these great qualities, this movie is not going to be a classic.  It was an enjoyable diversion that was coupled with innovative filmmaking, but I will more than likely forget it in no time.  

  Cloverfield Official Website

Cloverfield At Rotten Tomatoes 

What is Life Is Culture?

Our lives are all intertwined.  In every country, every state, every city, every community, there is some sort of culture that binds us together.  Without this culture, we would all seriously lack the needed interaction with others.  Our worldview would simply to be focused inward all the time.  While some introspection is definitely needed, it must be supplemented by being a part of a community, and what comes with it–culture.

  Culture is made up of more things than a simple article can describe.  The music, film, art, sports, etc., make up what is a beautifully independent piece of every community in the world.  While American culture is incredibly broad, the culture in Los Angeles is somewhat more specific, and different than the culture in St. Louis.  The amazing part is that both of those are under the umbrella of American culture, which has been implementing ideas into culture since the first explorers set foot upon the shores.   I love experiencing and learning about all the parts that make up our culture.  

Music and film are my two greatest material passions, and those are the probably the main subjects of this bit of literature we call a blog.  Nevertheless, there are so many other random things that might come up in my life, and it might just show up here for your reading pleasure.  Could be politics, or celebrity antics, or some sweet new technology.  Whatever it is, it is something that defines our culture in some way, shape, or form.  So enjoy. Comment. Ask. E-mail. Mention me in your blog.