...Quiet as a lion's roar

• 2012-03-21

  

  #marchphotoaday #challenge Day 21 #Delicious #Oatmeal #Cinnamon #Honey #Bananas (Taken with instagram)

• 2012-03-19

  

  #marchphotoaday #challenge Day 19 Something Funny #BatFight #WillFerell (Taken with instagram)

• 2012-03-14

  

  #marchphotoaday #challenge Day 14 Cloud (Taken with instagram)

• 2012-03-13

  

  #marchphotoaday #challenge Day 13 #sign (Taken with instagram)

• 2012-03-12

  

  #marchphotoaday #challenge Day 11 #shadow (Taken with instagram)

• 2012-03-09

  

  #MarchPhotoADay #Challenge Day 9 Something Red (Taken with instagram)

• 2012-02-11

  I make saying goodbye seem simple

  Blowing away like leaves in the wind

  In and out I continue to float

  Avoiding the beginning because I’m afraid of the end

  The rain allows me to hide my tears

  Dreams are muted by the screams of reality

  Impossible for me to take advantage of life

  Afraid to live for fear of mortality

  You gave me a reason to feel again

  To experience a feeling unknown

  You helped me realize what love can be

  And in turn, I refused to hold on

  Atonement is impossible to attain now

  Forgiveness can never be attained

  All I can do is express my regret

  And admit that my feelings still remain

  For a moment in time it was different

  Everything tasted so sweet

  Now when I try to enjoy my surroundings

  It only causes me to weep

  I cant pretend that I know what I want

  But I know that, somehow, I need you

  But instead of telling you, again I blow away

  What else am I going to do?

• 2012-01-28

  Mad Men is one of the best television shows to ever be shown. Every episode is one that some person, at some point, can relate to. Anyone who has watched the series finds one of the characters that they latch on to, and find themselves invested in.

  What does that say about me?

  ——————————————————————————————————————————————–

  Donald Draper is smooth as silk, to say the least. His words are stern, yet comforting; he is aggressive, yet passive; his entire life is a lie. The show is based around both his personal and business life, which – more often than not – seem to intertwine. He is a devoted family man, yet a frequent philanderer. He looks for anything, yet he is aware that he has everything at home. Too many traits that Don Draper exhibits are traits that I can find in myself, yet there is only one person that I continually relate to.

  Roger Sterling.

  Roger Sterling can’t help himself. He loves his daughter, values his wife, and knows that he should be….appropriate. But Joan Halloway is his kryptonite; a brunette call-girl is his weakness. He knows the difference between right and wrong, yet he can’t seem to adjust his sights so that they match up with his heart. And the more episodes of the show I watch, the more I find Roger Sterling to be the one character at Sterling-Cooper that I can’t escape.

  ———————————————————————————————————————————————

  We all have that ‘one’. The one person that we can’t escape. No matter who we fall in love with, or who we end up with……we always reminisce. The downfall of humanity is our own minds. ‘What if?’ is the most dangerous question in the world; Roger Sterling always asks himself (sub-consciously) “What if I met Joan Halloway before I was married?” I realize that I ask more “What If?” questions than I have answers to. I have tried to figure out the reason for this,  and then I realized: I don’t have the answer because I don’t WANT an answer. An answer equates to finality; if I don’t have an answer, then I could always make up a different ending, no matter how many times I replay the situation. An answer means the end. I would rather have the means.

  ———————————————————————————————————————————————-

  In every scene of Mad Men, someone is either drinking or smoking. It is supposed to show a commonality between the characters; a uniformity between anyone who lived in the 1960′s. But the more I watch, the more I see that the drinking and smoking is exactly how it is currently…..it’s a crutch. Employing an outside interference to mask an interior insecurity. We all do it. For the cast of Mad Men, its alcohol and tobacco. What is it for us? What is it for me? Blogging? By the time we (I) figure it out, it may be too late. Roger Sterling had two heart attacks…..yet, to this day (in the series) he smokes at least a pack a day and cohorts with women that he knows should be forbidden to him. He and I are the same only because we know what is best for us, yet we still do what is best for our image.

• 2012-01-18

  She asked me yesterday if I missed you. 

  I didn’t know how to answer.

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  Today, I put on my iPod while I was working out, and put it on shuffle. For some reason, every song made me think about you. My heart still hurts. They say that time heals all wounds, but how do you heal a wound that seems to be ripped open again every single day? 

  I pretend like everything is good; as if life has moved on without you. But whenever I have too much time to myself, I realize that I’m nothing if not lonely. I am lonely without you. I hate you. I love you. I can’t live without you. It’s not possible for me to live with you. So many problems, but never any answers. So many contradictions. My heart hurts. My eyes cry. My mouth smiles. 

  I just want you to acknowledge me. Tell me that you were thinking of me. Give me a reason to remember what it felt like to be happy. Remind me of that brief moment in time where I felt like if the world would end the next day, I could die a happy man because I had you in my life. 

  You are my Hurricane of Love. You came, blew everything off of its foundation, and left just as fast, leaving nothing but destruction and pain. But I would build it all back up again, if only I could have you blow into my life again. Destroy me again, so I could be happy once more. I beg of you. 

• 2012-01-11

  Tweeting Into Oblivion

  I am going to attempt to speak in complete sentences and express whole thoughts in this blog. It is going to be hard, but I am going to do the best that I can.

  Twitter has taken over the world. 

  We live in a hashtag-happy society. It seems as though anywhere we turn, we are bombarded with images of that damn blue bird or lowercase ‘t’. Go to your favorite restaurant, and you will see a sign (or sometimes a whiteboard) that says “Tweet Us!” Turn on the television, and every show is telling you that you can now find them on Twitter. It is everywhere. Hell, even once I post this blog, a link of it will be added to my Twitter account. 

  Last night, I was watching a basketball game on NBA TV, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Every Tuesday night, NBA TV has what the call ‘Fan Night’, where the fans get to choose which two basketball games that are being played that night are shown on the network. Previously, the fans would need to visit www.nba.com to cast their votes; last night, I noticed something different. In the top right corner of the screen, in white lettering, was #FANNIGHT. Fans could now vote via Twitter! On Storage Wars (on A&E Network), they had a scroll on the top of the screen, displaying tweets from various watchers of the show, along with the hashtag #STORAGEWARS. Inside the NBA (on TNT) constantly shows tweets from fans and athletes during the pre-game, halftime, and post-game shows. It is hard to escape.

  The most egregious, shameless self-promoting use of Twitter that I have witnessed, however, has to be every Monday night, when I (a grown man) watch WWE Monday Night Raw. The phrases ‘Twitter’, ‘Trending Worldwide’, and ‘Hashtag’ have become as much of the pro wrestling lexicon as ‘suplex’ and ‘bodyslam’. The WWE, for the most part, shied away from the social media outlets, sticking mostly to their own website (www.wwe.com) to relay news to the fans. It wasn’t until the summer of 2011, when the wrestling company noticed how many of their stars (notably CM Punk and Zack Ryder) were becoming huge stars OUTSIDE of the wrestling ring (Ryder, however, was mostly known for his YouTube clips, and crowning himself the “Internet World Champion”). Once it was seen that there was a medium where large numbers of people could communicate (or attempt to) with their favorite wrestler, Twitter become almost a necessity for the organization. Now, starting each episode, we see ‘#WWE #RAW’ flash at the bottom of our screen. When the wrestlers come to the ring, along with seeing their names, we get their Twitter handles (ex. ‘CM Punk’, then below it ‘@CMPunk’). Whenever something that is said or done during the show that registers on the Twitter richter scale, we are made aware by either the annoying Michael Cole, or a popup on the screen saying that it is trending. 

  Initially, seeing Twitter everywhere started to upset me. Why is it that, whenever I am trying to enjoying something, Twitter shows up? Why can’t I just enjoy one of my favorite TV shows without coming across some emblem of the website? How is it possible that Twitter has surpassed Facebook as being the social media outlet that is brought up the most in casual encounters? I didn’t have an answer for any of those questions. And I still don’t…..

  …..But I do have the answer to another question: Why has Twitter become so damn popular?! Why do we care about what someone is thinking 24/7? When, before Twitter, did you ever find yourself pondering “I wonder what (insert celebrity A) thinks about (insert celebrity B) and their current breakdown?” And if you did, isn’t that what gossip rags such as US Weekly and Entertainment Weekly were for? The answer to these questions is much simpler than the ones posed above. The answer is this: our attention spans can no longer handle an entire magazine full of information. As a society, we are unable to process anything that is more than 140 characters. We are a ‘satisfy me now’ society; if the information does not come easily, we no longer value it. We want to be spoon fed as opposed to cut our own meat. Twitter allows us to put out short bursts of information, hoping that SOMEONE will come across our thoughts, agree with them, and then follow us. We try so hard to get our point across in 140 characters or less, and that has spilled out into our normal lives. When was the last time you had a conversation of substance with someone face to face, that wasn’t work related? 

  To be honest, I am a victim of this as much as anyone else. I initially joined Twitter back in 2009, but didn’t start to use it frequently until early 2010. Since then, I have tweeted almost daily, and I have noticed that my ability to converse in my everyday life has regressed almost to nothing. I find myself ‘LOL-ing’ when I don’t have anything to say in response to the person I am talking to; I speak in short sentences, rarely allowing myself to expand my point of view when speaking face to face. And this bothers me.

  Every generation has left some sort of calling card by which they will be remembered. Every person who was a part of that generation will forever be associated with said calling card. We are now a week and a half into 2012. What can we do to avoid our calling card being “The 140 Character Generation”?