History repeating...

This image of a dapper gentleman below comes to us courtesy of SuitSupply.

     For those of you who haven't heard, SuitSupply is a company from The Netherlands which maintains an extensive website offering excellent menswear.  They have opened U.S. stores in New York (on Broome Street), Chicago, and in Georgetown, DC (on Pennsylvania Ave).
     Now then, their price point, quality, fit and attention to detail are all excellent.  Be prepared to wait for service in one of their stores, though, my buying experience was anything but expeditious. By all means, try a suit from them.
     This image though highlights one of their more casual products, a pair of chinos with an odd little detail you may have noticed on each thigh.  Pockets....cargo pockets.  These, dear friend, are cargo pants.
     Maybe this is a European trend, perhaps our continental cousins don't have such vivid memories of the 90's seared into their retinas.  It starts here, legitimizing cargo pants under the veils of haute couture. Unchecked it will spread, and before you know it we'll all be shopping at Eddie Bauer.
We owe it to ourselves to nip this in the bud, to take a stand and say "I don't need these extra pockets!"  Sure, maybe we could store our MiniDisc players in them while on our way to the Smashmouth concert, but the convenience doesn't outweigh the cost.  Instead, walk on over to J. Crew or down to the new Bonobos guide shop in Cady's Alley and get some proper pants, sans the sin of cargo.

This is fair....

Right, well the initial idea behind this site was to comment on fashion and cars, yes?

This deviates from the expectations, but then again the original idea was not to have updates happen many months apart, so there's that.

Read this article about Government Subsidies to Big Banks

Well, that's probably pretty O.K., I mean its not like the banks have fully recovered from the financial crisis, in fact, as you can see here, Citibank only made a profit of $1.2B in the 4th quarter of 2012.

Incidentally, Citibank was one of the banks who wrongfully foreclosed on the homes of men and women serving the country.  I mean, only about 100, and that was way back in 2009 and 2010.  I am sure that the banks have totally cleaned up their act in the meanwhile, what with the threat that bankers will be brought to trial for their crimes.  Oh wait, they aren't being prosecuted.

Look, the global economy and the banking systems are a remarkably complex thing, it's not like the little people (the ones being forced out of their homes, harassed by collection agencies, and trying to make a living while the so called service-providing banks levy ever growing fees) even have the mental acuity to understand its minutiae.

Come to think of it, I think even a simpleton can feel it when they're being fucked.

Midnight in Dewey

I just walked back from the beach where, rather sappily, I stood in the darkness and found myself thinking about Albert Camus essay "Myth of Sisyphus."

Here I am on Carolina Street, where I've lived for twenty three or so summers.  I've biked back here so many nights and wound up in this very spot, looking at the same houses and the same lights casting shadows across the beach.  I was a prince of Dewey once, and now I look out and see that although I am in the same place, it is not at all the same.

Even the notion that I am in the same physical location is false.  The Earth rotates on its axis, and traces a giant elliptical orbit around the nearest star.  As it rotates, the axis itself processes.   The chances that in a few short years I would be able to stand in the same place are tiny.

The beach is here, but dredging makes its physical form alien to me.  The hard pack trail over the dune isn't what I remember walking over after seeing the sunrise over the ocean.  The waves are still there, but that water has since been swept across the globe by various currents.

So I find myself wishing that by being here, now, in the same bed I used to sleep in, that I could wake up those few short years ago tomorrow morning.  That all I had to worry about was getting on my old Specialized Hard Rock and biking down to open the sailing club for the day, or maybe waking up to lay on the beach before biking down to wash dishes in the back of Ponos.

An allusion to the sand blowing against my legs to the "sands of time" would be cliche, so I'll leave it out.
What was it about those times that brought such happiness?  Do I really hate the status quo so much?

No, what made my reign in Dewey so wonderful wasn't the place.  It was the time and place.  It was the people, the friends I had, the people I love.  I don't miss the space, I miss the spacetime.

If there is one thing I can't stand, its a lack of control.  I don't mean in the sense of being able to manipulate others and get whatever I want at the time, I mean the fear of being unable to control anything.  It's that sneaking fear that the last time you kissed the one you love was the last chance you ever had.  The dread that I am nothing more than a grain of sand, tossed around by forces completely out of my control.

So I suppose one must be thankful for not only all the good things they have, but all the good things they've had.  Even if they happened in the past, their goodness isn't invalidated simply because the consciousness that experienced them, bound by perception, bound by a body, bound by time, occupies a different point in spacetime at this moment.

One cannot be lulled into a lackadaisical sloth by the helplessness they feel over this lack of control.  No, they must strive on and affect what little change they can.  And now one feels the struggle, pushing endlessly onward up the hill.  The chances that the boulder I struggle against will only roll down again are just as good as the chances that the spot by the lifeguard chair where I stood will not be the same.  Still, one strives to obtain the life they want, to grasp the things that make them happy and hold on.  And so, tomorrow morning, when I get onto a now different bike and press down onto the pedals, I'll know that the things I had still exist, and I can take joy in the ability I have to steer the bike, mobilize myself through spacetime.

Am I lost?  No.  I have always been "lost", I know now that I just am.

Economies of Time

Do you ever think about how every morning you’re waking up a day closer to death?

I’m not trying to be morbid, or even depressing.  The inevitability of life’s termination surely provides enough fodder for angsty middle-school philosophers, but if educated adults allow ourselves to suffer the same pitfalls, then clearly the vast fortunes we pissed away on higher education have failed us.

So, rather than bemoan the fact we all must die, let’s look at the positives: we all have some number of days left to live.  We can’t know the number, so lets call it x.  Tomorrow, we’re at x-1.

What does that mean for day “x-1”?  Well, it’s supply and demand.  Let’s call demand for life constant here, foregoing the examples of those who choose to take their own.  Supply has just gone down, which pushes the price or value of the remaining days up incrementally.

So take today, it’s a Tuesday and because it’s around 9:30am most of my acquaintances will have pulled themselves from their beds several hours ago, put on presentable clothes and commuted to where they sit, now, at a desk.  Those who were spared such routine are likely sound asleep for the next few hours, until their alarms rouse them toward uniforms and labor.

In a world where every day of your life is more precious, is this the right behavior?  Doesn’t it leave a bitter taste that today’s toil is incrementally more wasteful than yesterdays?

Look around.  Are you happy? Are you fulfilled?  Is this what you want?

Say you wanted something that wasn’t in your current realm of physical experience.  I don’t know, you want to see Morocco or surf in Costa Rica, maybe it's as simple as bringing someone you care about further into your life.  Every day you’re missing a bit more of your chance, and every day the cost of your inaction grows.  This is your life, and every second is more valuable than the last.  Now I don’t even know if this is a pep-talk for you or for me, but it stands to reason that if you want something, you ought to say “fuck it” and just go do it.

Consider This...

Søren Kierkegaard made the famous argument that despair is the “sickness unto death”. That is, the implications of mans existential crisis are such that despair becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, clouding out the possibility of ever escaping one’s own overwhelming sadness. Simply put, depression is a hole and the longer one wallows in it the harder it is to escape.

Dostoyevsky, in Death of Ivan Ilych, shows a man who, when faced with death, re-evaluates his life choices. A “successful” man by the measures of his society, he finds that he his life choices were not made on the values he wished to live by, but as a means to a material end. His existential crisis is living with the decisions he made, and facing death alone.

There is truth in that: All of us will have to suffer the event of our own mortality, and when we do so it will be our own lonely experience, or rather end of experience, depending on one’s belief system. Perhaps this is why loneliness is such a painful thing, even when it isn’t directly connected to death or dying.

Standing on a street corner knowing that a companionship that had once defined your very person has been cut off, severed for reasons partially understood and partially in mystery, one is overwhelmed by the pervasive sensation of loneliness. It soaks through even the toughest façade, spilling out at inappropriate moments. One must keep moving, one foot in front of the other, to avoid collapsing onto the brick sidewalk, laying in the drifts of dirty snow in a physical manifestation of the intense feeling of helplessness.

Routine helps: having a reason to get out of bed in the morning, running on a treadmill to exhaustion in the hopes of a dreamless easy sleep. There are infinite ways in which things could be worse.

Maybe it’s the season, but the days are now tinged with grey. Can you imagine a world where the worker dreads the weekend? Spreadsheets, emails and the ringing of phones is usually enough to drown out the noise of festering despair, but come Friday: leisure holds no pleasure.

What then, is a plan of action? Trying to outrun one’s own emotion by staying too busy to think? Brief escapes into a world of unconsciousness thanks to various distilled liquids? Is anything recoupable? Could any of the pieces of an old life be picked up, superglued together in an imitation of its prior form?

I'm at risk of running on, so I won't.

Sometimes, things just suddenly end

I don't have a fancy blackberry, droid or iPhone.

It's not for lack of funds, its because I like my little flip phone and I also like the ability to be away from facebook notifications and emails.

Eventually I'll convert I suppose.

The only thing that bugs me, is that this phone can hold hundreds of images, mp3's, videos, all that crap.
Text messages though? Any more than 60 and it beeps at me that the inbox is full.

Phone, I'll make you a deal: I won't ever put music on you, and in return, you hold a decent number of texts.

What idiot designs this crap?

Another Rant

Have any of you heard that blackberry commercial lately?
I say heard because i never watch the damn thing but there is this part in the music where some guy is like "ahlahahlahalahalha".
I get it, business is global or whatever, and blackberries are for business so this is cultural or whatever.
Its goddamn annoying. Blackberry, get a new advertising agency. The fuckers you hired are deaf.