Is This It?

So I... just turned in the final paper of my college career. Unless you consider grad school. Which is something I very much intend to not do. Rubbish paper, but, well, quality takes time, and I was in no mood to provide that.

Ba da dum. And cue the winsome music. Time for me to wax nostalgic.

Or maybe later...

We Invented the Bloody Sport!

I'm currently doing a rain dance instead of working on the final paper of my college career. It's a case of prioritizing, and right now, if I can butterfly just enough to provide some rain showers in Perth Australia in the next few hours, then I will happily accept being lambasted by my upcoming grade report. English cricket needs me! So if you're bored, which you might well be, then please help us out. Here's some tips to get you started:

http://www.raindancefortheashes.co.uk/

And if none of this makes sense to you, that's ok too. Just think of lovely summer days on an English lawn with a cup of tea, a cucumber sandwich, crumpets, and 20 odd cricketers dressed in white sweater vests, playing silly mid-wicket, nurdling through the slips for a couple, and tonking Aussies!

I'm sure you'll agree it's an idyllic view.

Look What I Have Found

Smile... bow... small wave... and exit stage right. But not too quickly. Let the feeling linger, and the applause wash over you as you step back from the light. Close your eyes, and I'll kiss you, and we'll prove that only the good die young. And wait... there's the soul you left behind you. Behind the curtain, bargain price for the rest of the world. Dime a dozen and a penny for your thoughts. No? Oh well, look what I've become.

A seashell in a sea of shells.

People Are the Problem

I think that Douglas Adams had the clearest understanding of the world when he wrote that the problem with politics, and thus with life, the universe, and everything, is that anyone who possesses the desire and ambition to run for elected office should absolutely, under no circumstances, ever be allowed to occupy that office. And I'm thinking about this on the heels of the installation of Mexico's 'alternate' government following a botched election, early disputed results of an election in the Congo, the French media's fascination with the Socialist presidential candidate, and the clamour for Tony Blair's resignation. So much for democracy saving the world. And communism's had its fling. I think the world's been too quick to condemn the best form of government. A dictatorship. The problem though is that its just always the wrong dictator. Hitler was the problem, not the system. We just need to find a benevolent dictator and catapult them to the top of our government. And then I can stop being frustrated with the flaws of our system.

My Gran should rule the world.

This Is All True

D'I ever tell you I don't like chocolate? Or soup. Or ice cream, unless it's melted. And I wish I'd have been a marine biologist. Or a folk rock singer. Or a talk show host, 'cause I really am a good listener. And that Thursday is my favourite day of the week, but only when it's followed by Friday. And if I could go anywhere right now, it'd be just left of the middle. And if I could play any instrument, it'd be the cello. Oh, and red really is my favourite colour. Likewise, fall is my favourite season, and yes is my favourite answer. And Fuzzy Navel will always be the best flavour of sno-cone. And spring days in November make me smile.

But I think I might have told you that.

سلام عليكم

إسم دافد. ذهبت إل المغريب في الصيف الاخير. و هي جميله جدا. بعد أعمل فى فرنسي، سأسكن فى المغريب. و سأتعلم كل لغه العالم. أحب اللغه، و أحب انت. إن صادق. أحب انت

It's not that I don't have anything to say in English, it's just that I don't feel like saying it.

I'm a One Man Band

Somebody told me yesterday as I was walking into the library that my sandals had good rhythm. I think though that they were just passive-agressively telling me that the flip of my flops is too bloody loud. But I'll take it as a favourable critique of my musical talents. I'm a good whistler too. Especially through my teeth, so no-one knows it's me. Remind me, I'll show you sometime.

I can play you any song you like.

Yo Soy Sauce

So I just spent ten minutes steaming rice and making a stir fry, and then twenty minutes searching desperately for some soy sauce to accompany said stir fry. And utterly failed. So instead I ate dry white rice and vegetables, packaged the remainder in a tupperware, opened the fridge, and casually glanced in the door to see a bottle. And I slowly turned this bottle to see the label, and there, plain to see, was the soy sauce. Frustration? Shyah. Whoever said 'better late than never' had obviously never finished dinner without the single most important accoutrement to that dinner, and then found it afterwards. But then, there're prob'ly a lot of things they've never done.

And I don't even like soy sauce.

Abu! Abu, This Is No Time to Panic!

So graduation's barely a month away. And I still have no idea what I want to do. And have so far resolutely avoided applying for any jobs related to architecture in any way. So what to do? There's the thrilling lure of the Peace Corps and a couple of years spent in a wholly foreign place, the more placid lure of Teach for America and the like, the fairytale lure of a year spent travelling the world, the immodest lure of writing the 'Great American Novel,' the altruistic lure of volunteering for salvage operations in New Orleans, and the intangible lure of floating in the purest sense of the word, living in a golden place and working whatever odd job appears. No rush for the real world right? Tell me that's not simply wishful thinking. Oh please say it ain't so. I need more than a general soulless existence as a part of the corporate machine. Any ideas where to look? Or where to acquire a soul? 'Cause I need help.

Start panicking...

Say What You Really Mean

I hate the phrase 'Have a good one.' Passionately. It's so absolutely meaningless it cuts. I mean, have a good what? Day? Night? Life? And it's not like it could even be claimed to be a condensed version of some traditional farewell, 'cause you never say 'Have a good one day,' which would naturally shorten to 'have a good one.' It's just a lifeless, non-committal phrase; one more step in the devolving of language. Someday we'll all speak some banal language like Esperanto, devoid of all colour, all grammatical complexity, all nonsensical sentence structure; all in an effort to bring the world closer together. Well forget it. I dont' want a reduced, streamlined language. Give it to us raw and wriggling. With a dash of salt to enhance the flavour. And so, to prevent this ignominous fate, my new life goal is to become a linguist and move to Australia to record dying aboriginal languages for posterity. And learn to speak with wallabies. And race kangaroos through the outback. And then I'm moving to Tahiti.

Have a good three.

Yesterday's Stories of Tomorrow

A candle flickers, her shadows dance upon the wall
And a crumpled newspaper sheds a tear for the fears of the world
'Another coffee,' she says, 'another coffee for our souls,
And we'll wait, to sleep with the dawn'

She holds her cigarette like we always used to do
Lets the ash fall to the floor
She's reading yesterday's papers, while she tells me of tomorrow
But I've heard it all before, for it's the same dreams we had last year...

It's been a bad year
And the fallout, is tearing you apart
But please, please don't start...

Street lights blink on through the car window
As you're driving downtown at dawn
There's a sign in the window, of the only place you know
Saying 'Please, please don't go...'

One Smidgen More

Fall is here. Brisk mornings, clear skies... and nothing else that's really changed. For this is Texas, and the leaves don't ever change color, they just fall off sometime right before Christmas. Sometime during that one week of proper cold weather we have. Happily though, I've never been a fan of cold weather. I'm a fan of high-70's weather and sunny skies, with just a hint of a breeze. And I'm a fan of outdoor swimming pools and lounging in the grass. And reading on the rooftop, or playing guitar on a fencepost. And trick-or-treating, and dressing up, and jack-o-lantern's, and all things generally considered Halloweenish. And I like that Halloween's called a holiday. 'Cause it's not. It's anything but holy. Which is why I shall dress up as Pope John-Paul, find two friends to go as George and Ringo, and be the Beatles for Halloween this year. Restore some holiness. Wanna come with?

I like dropping portions of prepositional phrases. And I like pens. But I hate pencils, and I hate losing my pens and being forced to use pencils. Which is why you're supposed to always keep a pen in your backpocket.

Everybody knows that.

There's a System?

What if this is all we get? What if this firefly's existence is really all that's been gifted to us, and when we blink out tomorrow, that's it. Eternity's simply a fairytale we tell ourselves to stay sane. And because it paints a pretty picture; takes the sting out of 'the end.' Maybe there's no real point to anything we do beyond scratching out the most basic of subsistences. What's the point of building the tallest building, the fastest car, the deadliest missile? And the point of society creating this ideal and then creating the people to fulfill it? I mean, cosmically speaking, what's it all about?

And more importantly, if this is really all we've got, why am I inside reading 'Culture and Social Thought in the Depression Years,' when it's a gorgeous day outside?

Don't Panic

Do you know where your towel is? 'Cause I think it's high time to start waving it around to flag down a spaceship and catch a lift to the moon. If ya want, you can join me there and we can watch the end of the world with front row seats, before the sudden melting of our former home planet and the resulting loss of gravitational attraction sends us hurtling off to who knows where. The current rulers of the world can't seem to simply wait for global warming to destroy our world like any normal person would. They seem instead to be actively seeking it out. The Middle East is forever threatening to boil over, Iran are keen to continue researching nuclear weapons while the rest of the world says no, and now North Korea claim they've got them. Oh yes, and now that they have them the world is a safer place. So who's gonna press that little red button first? Dubya, now's your chance to be remembered forever, or at least 'til the end of the world. And who's gonna say it has to be done now, before it's too late? And when the hell is Tahiti going to become a world power and tell everyone to chill the fuck out?

Note to the reader- The views contained within this rant are solely those of the author, and he is well known to have a penchant for sensationalist writing and wholly making things up. To which I'd like to add that this is largely a fabrication, but I do think the moon is a groovy place, I do love to hug trees, and I quite fancy kissing the sky.

So 'scuse me while I...

When the Levee Breaks

You've seen it, but it doesn't make it any easier. All the pictures and movies and stories and images and stats. But you still gasp when you see that house on top of a car. A year after the fact, and New Orlean's Lower Ninth Ward is still devastated. Driving through and it took me a moment, a long moment, to realize that those fields going by the windows, with 4 foot tall grass half covering concrete stairs, were actually hiding the foundations of houses that no longer exist. And then the ones that do exist are so broken it's almost more painful. Where are these people now? I walked around a house where you could see the flood line 3 inches below the top of the door and inside you could see dishes still strewn about the kitchen, and broken records and books lying on the floor. No-one's been back in that house since the flood. And the desperately sad thought, maybe there's no-one left to go back in that house. But it's beautiful to hear a guy talking about returning to New Orleans and rebuilding his home. To hear him talking, with a tear in his eye, about children once again playing in the streets. To laugh at the pride he showed for his football team, the Saints, home at last. And to wonder how people go on.

Maybe it's easier to go on... when there's nothing left to go back to.

Who Are You?

I am a student, not just of architecture, but of human nature and all it's fallacies. I am tall, relatively that is, and have a mop top of dark hair, which, intriguingly, was bleach blonde for the first few years of my life. I have hazel eyes that flit from golden to green to brown depending on my mood, or more importantly, what I'm wearing, and for this I blame my inability to notice the colour of people's eyes. I claim to view eye colour as a temporal, fleeting adjective that might, or might not, have anything to do with who you really are, and what soul is lurking behind that window.

I love music, and reading, and swimming. I'm a writer without a novel, an artist without a canvas, a sportsman without a sport. I sing when I'm alone on the elevator and I always trip on sidewalks. I like walking in the rain and sleeping in the sun. I still put the sticker from a piece of fruit on the back of my hand while I eat it. I wear three rubber bands on my left wrist, and feel naked if one of them breaks. I haven't worn a watch since 1st grade. Or a baseball cap. I have a tendency to not pay attention when you're talking to me. I fall in love with someone new every day. I'm a daydreamer. I'm a believer. I'm a romantic.

I'm your new friend David.