BOGO MONDAY!

Today's recommendation from me is a double-whammy. As in, two for the price of one. Yes, two recommendations. And since the recommendations are free to begin with, this all works out to an EXCEEDINGLY GOOD DEAL.

My first recommendation is participating in Infinite Summer. Of course, those who read my other blog already know about this (and are probably wishing I would shut up about it), but Infinite Summer is a kind of virtual, online reading group, a communal project with the goal of slogging through David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest during the summer. Yes, all 980 pages plus 100 pages of footnotes. It started yesterday, but you can totally catch up.

Infinite Jest is a book I had been meaning to read for quite some time. Haven't we all, really? But that is about as far as many people go with it. I am firmly convinced that a large portion of its reputation is due to the cliché of pseudo-intellectual hipsters who continually see fit to namedrop the novel and discuss its importance and influence without having actually read it. To me, this project is at least partially about destroying this image with which the novel has been saddled. It's about not being the stereotypical pseudo-intellectual who skims Wikipedia entries for a faint grasp on a book so that one can name-drop it in conversation. It's about setting an achievable goal and turning it into a small but not insignificant personal success. It's about following through on things. 

Speaking of following through on things, that is the topic of the second recommendation: knowing when to say when. I am overextended and overwhelmed and exhausted right now. I have too much on my plate:

• Infinite Summer
• various other books I had intended to read this summer
• preparing for the impending semester
• my goddamn job
• packing things to move out of my apartment by July 31
• At least 2 cds worth of cover songs to record as thank you gifts for the autism walk
• An entire EP to write and record
• artwork for these two projects
• the increasing demands of Its Flaws Were What Made Us Have Fun, which appears to be developing the beginning of what could almost be considered an audience.
• a few other stressors of a more personal and private nature that I will not be discussing here.

The point of all this is to say that I am going to be taking a temporary break from writing recommendations on this blog. A hiatus. As you can see, I do have a lot I am dealing with right now, and I think that the pressure implicit in a blog like this to produce content daily, as well as the irrational guilt I feel whenever I don't produce anything, has taken its toll on me and only caused more stress and anxiety. I know that I often joke about plans as being promises to be broken, but I don't like breaking promises, and therefore, I am not making these promises. Maybe I will be able to resume posting after I've moved out of this apartment; time will tell.

In the meantime, though, I do intend to follow through on Infinite Summer, and I hope you do, too. Not to push the other blog again, but I have posted links to some valuable resources and tips over there. Until next time, have a great (Infinite) summer.

be excellent to each other.

i kind of had a whole conceptual recommendation post planned out for tonight, but recent events have curbed that for the time being.

today, i recommend respecting your fellow human beings and treating them with the dignity and respect that they deserve and with which you yourself expect (and rightfully so) to be treated.

the anonymity of the internet, unfortunately, leads some entitled/insecure people to inflate their own egos ignore their own problems by lashing out at others and trying to strike at their vulnerabilities. and, let's just lay down the guidelines here and agree that this is NOT COOL. people say some pretty unforgivable things from behind a keyboard and thousands of miles of wires, and i for one am sick of it.

i refuse to bring myself to the level of these people, but honestly, when you see people wishing for slow and painful deaths, it can be really hard not to give in to the instinct to try to hit them where it hurts also. so instead, i'm just going to take the high road and call them out on their shit. 

i doubt any of the people this post was written about (and they know who they are) read this blog, but on the off-chance that they do: life is so much easier and more pleasant when you don't push everyone else away. i promise. you should try it sometime.

oh, and also, in case anyone who prompted this recommendation is reading: i expect that i will not have to write another entry like this. i mean it.

in the end, apparently we have something to learn from keanu reeves. who knew?

Sure is nice to be able to see the floor again.

Today’s recommendation is going to be a quick and self-explanatory one: clearing out clutter.

Tanya and I have had a 2-bedroom apartment for the past two years. For virtually that entire time, the small second bedroom has been a room for storage of my guitars, records, CDs, and desktop computer. As I accumulated more “stuff,” that stuff ended up accumulating in the room. Eventually it got to the point where the room was a disaster of clutter and junk through which one could not safely walk without breaking something or running the risk of tripping and seriously injuring oneself.

Lately, between my growing desire for more privacy (ever since the breakup I have more or less been spending all of my time at home out in the living room or dining room), and the fact that I have a BRAND NEW STEREO (expanded recommendation coming soon!), I have been wanting more and more to finally remedy that room. Well, today, faced with the prospect of researching Shakespeare or writing about critical theory, I finally decided to declutter.

It is a process, of course. I had a LOT of shit in here. But, I have thrown out probably about three tall kitchen garbage bags worth of crap. A lot of it was stuff that I found amusing, or sentimental, and still had some meaning to me… but I had come to terms with the fact that I no longer needed it. One can’t spend all of one’s time dwelling on a past that is out of one’s reach, to which one cannot return. That’s what the next 8 months need to be about – jettisoning that past. Getting ready for the future (ready for the world about to come).

There’s still a lot more left to go through and throw out. Boxes of stuff in the closet I need to sort through. But, the room is almost to a point where I feel comfortable sitting in it playing my records (have I mentioned how great my stereo sounds?), almost to the point where I wouldn’t feel embarrassed having friends in *to show off my stereo, of course).

Post Script: And before anyone scolds me on my comment about throwing things out… I’ve also been recycling what I can. I’ve only genuinely been trashing things I can’t recycle around here.

it's been a long cold lonely winter

Good morning, Internet. It's a sunny Saturday as I finish my coffee and think about how next to procrastinate on my mountain of work. No better way than Recommending Things to People, right? I'm really good at it.

I was going to recommend Hiring Me for Summer Work, but that seemed crass. You and I barely know each other, Blogging Audience; who knows if we'd work together well?

So today's recommendation is... going outside and enjoying the extremely rare beautiful weather.

8 months ago, I moved to Bloomington, Indiana, which has pretty awful weather. I was surprised by how completely awful, and varied in its awfulness, the weather is. This town / state / region of the country is pretty unremarkable otherwise. But no. in the past 8 months, I have been hailed upon, tornado sirened-at, flooded, snowed, sleeted, frozen, and forced to exist under a grey, depressing haze of ominous clouds. Granted, I have been told that true natives everywhere complain about the weather. I have also (somewhat condescendingly) been told that "nobody moves to the Midwest for the weather." Well, this may be true, but I still have the right to complain about it. Besides, I went to college in stunningly-beautiful Sarasota, Florida. Of course my weather standards are high.

But today is beautiful. It's warm, but not sweltering and disgusting. It's sunny, but I went outside and didn't get sunburned.

Go get on it. I don't need to say anything else. Get off the Internet and go play.

See you tomorrow, loyal blog readers.