Interpretation of a road. (because it's really just a road)

in Ali Hembree's blog, she critiques the following photo:

Where Ali interprets the picture as a road, going straight, than in all sorts of different directions, than straightening out again, I see the picture as a straight road, with the line just painted weirdly.

In life, there is a road, it's only one road, as depicted in the picture, but some people, in this case the 'people' is the person who made the piece of art, interpret it in different ways. As most road painters choose to paint straight, double yellow lines on a road for safety, he chooses to say that the road is open to his interpretation.

So, even when there is something as concrete and [quite literally] set in stone as a paved road, we can choose to see it how we want, and interpret it as we like.

Invisible people

I chose this man, probably because I can relate to him the most.

Michael from InvisiblePeople.tv on Vimeo.

Not saying that I was ever homeless for years, but I have been on the streets from time to time, and playing guitar on the street is usually the only way to make money when you don't have a place to shower for a job, or an address to get a check sent to.

I totally sympathized with Michael when it came to the issue of cops, after ten is probably one of the best times to play music on the street- many people are leaving bars and are much more likely to hand over a ten or a twenty than the change in their pocket, and it's just a low blow for the cops to give a homeless man a ticket. They know that it is difficult for someone to pay a sixty dollar ticket when they might be making forty dollars a day, but they do it anyways.

I wouldn't say that homeless people are any less invisible than others, they might need more help and it's harder for them to achieve, but especially in a crowded city, you never know what's going on in the life of the guy next to you on a bus, or the guy sitting on a bench reading a paper might be a CEO on his lunch break or it could be a homeless person. It's not that they are more invisible than anyone else, but people don't want to concern themselves with everyone they might encounter on the streets, either we don't have the time, or we don't want to face that kind of reality, but that's just how it is.

I know we don't have to do this over spring break, but it's good for me.

Saturday

Did some substances with friends, went and played baseball until it got cold, then we all went and watched a battle of the bands that a friend of ours was in. Went back to my friends place and felt the meaning to 40oz of freedom.

Sunday

Drove back to lawrenceville, it's really not an exciting town. It's about the equivalent of somewhere in the East Atlanta Village, just more people over 40. Went to the coffee shop where all my friends used to hang out, and as it turns out, still do.

Monday

My buddy picked me up and we went back to the coffee shop. After a while of realizing how nice of a day it was, we went to the park and played football. For a few hours. I haven't done that in years, but it was nice. Later we went back to the coffee shop and I ran into an old girlfriend of mine, Ashlan, and we started to catch up. I think we're going on a date tonight, but I don't know if I'll want to.

Later, we went to visit my buddy Michael when he got off work. Funny story about that; Adam's car was there, a cop ran his tags and had to speak to Adam. As it turns out, someone with the same first and last name, birthday, and similar address is wanted for all kinds of murders, stabbings and all other sorts of good stuff. They just had different birthdays.

Today

I got my job back at an old photo studio I used to work at. I'm just waiting to leave to go.

And maybe later today I'll give Ashlan a call.

Adios,

Davey Jones

Friday op/eds

Finding it totally relevant, I chose to write about this video, found at utne.com:

Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.

It's all about procrastination. Substitute coffee for tea, and exclude the fire escape plan (note to self: construct a fire escape plan) and I have done each one of those things instead of doing work that I should have been doing. Some more than others, like drinking coffee, smoking a cigarette, getting drunk and re-arranging my workspace (which can turn out weird the next day if you were doing it fairly drunk), and there are many more not even on that list that I have done. It's just something that I assume lots of people do, especially college students. I've seen my friends do so many other things instead of homework, it is almost an epidemic.

For example:

My friend Adam had a take-home exam, and because of procrastination, it was due the night after. But instead of getting it done, he spent the whole day trying to find other things to do. And being a fellow procrastinator, I was happy to assist in someone else's procrastination. We went out for lunch, went to a park and played catch, went to a bar and had a few drinks and then went to the movies, the whole time weighing the consequences and benefits of doing his exam, or going on to do whatever else it was that we wanted to do.

Like now, I was going to do research on my essay for English 1102 before I went out to the bar tonight, but I realized it would be better to write in my blog. And the time it took to read Miller's blog, other blogs I follow, find a website to find an article from, to find the article, to watch the video and think about what I was going to write, and finally, to drink a cup of coffee, smoke a cigarette, organize my workspace and write this blog was all time I could have spent researching. But no, now it's nearly eleven, all my friends are at the bar and I'm about to leave. I'll research tomorrow.

-Davey Jones

Spring Break 2009

Deciding not to go to Panama City Beach, or Miami, or anything else that all the cool kids did last year, me and my friends loaded up my car with fishing poles, guitars, a tent, and about 15 jugs of bottom shelf wine and headed to the north Ga mountians. It was about a three hour drive, about an hour of it was composed of me driving at about ten miles and hour, alternating between first and second gear up what was the steepest dirt/mud road i've ever seen.

Once we got there, we set up the tent, gathered firewood, caught a bunch of fished, and just kicked it for three days in the middle of the woods. It was probably the best spring break that could have been achieved for less than one hundred bucks.

The campsite we were at was virtually untouched by man, except for a booth with a clipboard and a wall of mailbox like things. Campers are supposed to sign up and say where they camped and for how long, and put money in the box corresponding to the location of the campsite they were at, but me and my friends being the people we are wrote a note that read something like this:

"Dear wilderness, thank you for letting us stay here, we picked up all of our trash, put out our fires and left it as it was when we got here. Sorry for the bits of broken glass that we couldn't pick up, and for the loud drunken singing in the middle of the night. Also, we're sorry for breaking your "no alcohol on premises" rule, but we were responsible. Unfortunately, we have no money, but someday we promise to return and spend time with you.

Signed,

Allen G.
Jack K.
Charlie B.
Scott F.
The girls that tagged along.

P.S. The underwear flag was there when we got here. We promise."

It was a great experience.

How to write a bad article

Make it an advertisement in disguise.

This article is totally just an ad for the website quotewizard.com in somewhat of a disguise. It's got the luring title, aimed at letting people know "hey, we're here to help YOU, read this shit, and then go to this website that's giving us money to nonchalantly slip in a mention!!!" But it was completely obvious to me.

Had the article been titled "SAVE MONEY WITH QUOTEWIZARD.COM" it'd be a different story, because it would simple advertising article, and i'd be much happier.

This article reminded me of the time that i interned with my aunt at her studio, evil twin productions in L.A. She told me all sorts of stories regarding the business, and ways that people get into it. How sometimes, musicians will not know anything about music, but have some trait or quality that a big company can relate to a population and market the hell out of it. Like hanna montanna. Then there are the others who try all their life, and might get one big break, and a tiny little bit of money, or more likely, people will work extremely hard their whole night, and never even get that break.

it might have been unrelated to the article, but it's what I felt.