General Lordisimo’s Apocalypse

Hi folks!  I’m back!

For some of you (like 99% of you) this probably means squat, but for those of you playing the home game, you may have noticed that I have not written a post in ten days (since Nov. 20th).   “Why?” you may ask.

Because I was on vacation, and to get the full worth of it I decided to for go more than just my employed work, but to also avoid things like blogging, twitter, coffee, 6:00 am, etc.  In fact, in general I did pretty good at staying away from my computer as a whole, using it only to occasionally check my email, browse the headlines in the New York Times, and to watch movies on Hulu/Netflix.  All and all it was a great escape of sorts.

So what did I do?  Did I go to far off exotic places and interact with strange and wonderful people?  Well I did not go to far off exotic places, in fact I did not even leave Greenville.  As far as strange and wonderful people that is a matter of perspective, but I will say I greatly enjoyed my time with everyone whom I hung out with over the past week.

Basically I bummed around a lot, ate a lot of food, drank a lot of beer, and all around just enjoyed some mental health time.  About the extent of heavy work I did was confined to brewing a beer last Tuesday, washing my car on Wednesday, and cooking/eating a lot of food for Thanksgiving on Thursday.  Besides that I just made good being lazy and relaxing.

But now it is 7:00 am on Monday, Nov. 30th and I am due back to work in a little over an hour.  I have my first cup of coffee.  I know what I am bringing for lunch today.  I won’t claim I loved hearing the alarm at 6:00 (especially ’cause I had a fucking shitty time falling asleep last night) but I am ready to go back to work.  And the nice thing is that I only have less than three weeks until I am on vacation again, and then I will be traveling up to Vermont for Christmas with my folks.

So yup, getting the gears grinding for work once again.

Good to be back.

The primary idea/thing which I have liked today is that fact that at 5 pm (Eastern Standard Time) I will officially begin my one week of vacation, in which I will likely bum around a lot, probably drink a good number of beers (and maybe brew one), eat a lot of food, and all around just revel in the pleasure of not having to work.

But beyond that, I have encountered a few other things that I have enjoyed thus far this Friday.

First off, two things, both made aware to me by Jason Kottke on his blog.  One, is a wonderful discussion by Milton Glaser on the joys of drawing and how it is a form of thinking. Another is a great little piece of designing creativity done by Scott Campbell, Marcelo Lourenco, and Pedro Bexiga.  It is truly wonderful.

Also, I have to admit that I am pleased to encounter Mr. Campbell’s artwork.  I find it quite refreshing and enjoyable.

One of my favorite pieces of Mr. Campbell's that I have found. Flying whales are awesome (via Scott Campbell's Flickr stream)

 Other things that I have liked so far today?  This discussion about the language used to describe “co-brothers-in-law” is pretty great in that it points out an often overlook detail in regards to how family works, in that essentially a lot of it is based on the language of inclusion within a family unit.  Greaf stuff.

Also, Folk/Bluegrass music.  It has just been making my morning so far, that and drawing doodles of shrimp cocktail on sticky notes.

Good times.

I have for a long time been fascinated by letter writing and reading (and personally wish I did a better job at writing more of them myself).  I remember finding a number of various letter, written by people I never knew (nor ever will) in my grandmother’s basement some years back.  They were amazing!

As such, perhaps one of my favorite blogs of recent weeks has to be Letters of Note which collects and transcribes letters written by all sorts of people of some fame throughout the years.  Many of them are absolutely amazing and wonderful and provide us insight into a world most of us don’t get to encounter.  Two recent favorites appearing on the blog are from two of my all-time favorite authors.  One by Philip K. Dick on weird, worthless dreams and one by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. about his experience as a POW in Dresden.

I must admit that part of me wonders if it is altogether proper or ethical to read letters that were intended for other people.  Probably if I didn’t find letters so interesting I would feel that reading another persons private correspondences is something like spying.  But I do find them too fascinating, and fascination tells me reading the letters can’t be all that bad (especially when you place moral judgements on any number of other things that people do on a daily basis).

If you are interested check some of those letters out, you may be amazed at some of the things you learn or discover.

While I read a lot of articles and blog posts which I may ultimately disagree with, few get me as steamed up as the moronic dribble being expressed by Chris Milam in his piece titled “Bored New World: How the Zach Braff Prototype Is Slowly Killing American Music.”  The fact that I refer to it as “moronic dribble” alone should demonstrate my opinion of the content within, but, for sake of fair dialogue, I feel that I should provide some reasoning behind my dislike.

It is not even that I feel much of a need to defend the music that Mr. Milam describes as “carefully composed dullness” regardless of whether I like it or not (admittedly there is some of it that I do like and some of it that I hate, plain and simple).  No, my objection is that Mr. Milam is making the same callous and idiotic stereotyping that has been made again and again about youth culture in this nation.  Mr. Milan has found a branch (and truly it is only a branch as certainly not every youth of our day and age are completely ingrained in the music of The Shins or Death Cab or “the Art of Self-Entitlement” as Milam calls it) of this culture which he, personally, dislikes, and foolishly attributed it to the generation and culture as a whole.

Milam writes about the Elvis, and Lennon, and Hendrix, and Curt Cobain and yet, somehow, fails to realize that the youth who listened to these musicians back in the day had to suffer the same criticisms that he is now dropping on the current trending musical culture of a generation.  The good old music of artists like The Who or Pearl Jam incited the same degree of bewilderment and disdain in their time as  current music does in the present time.

But even more infuriating is in that Mr. Milam seems to envision a culture and society of increasing indifference and social malaise.  He rants in a long paragraph about all the things going on that some “kid” (as he repeatedly refers to “them” throughout his piece) fails to exhibit any interest in.  This just isn’t true.  While certainly the current youth generation in some ways may appear detached or indifferent, this is far from the truth of the matter.  Just consider the 2008 election year, where more young adults took part in an election than ever before in American history.  Consider the way that youth are redefining the way the world communicates through an increasingly electronic age.  Look around and see how this generation, arguably more than any previous one, has made headway in pursuing cultural diversity by being interconnected (thanks largely in part to technology), accepting, and questioning the established norms.

Is the current youth culture and its products (its art, music, styles, etc.) perfect?  Fuck!  Far from it.  There is an abundance of idiocy here too.  But that being said it is not the mire of civilization either.  Mr. Milam, I am not sure what generation you count as your own, but personally I think you should be ashamed of yourself for sounding like a broken record.  You are neither the first, nor last, person who will make the mistake of mindlessly criticizing a following generation for its aparrent lacks of worth, but I am hoping that you might take a second to reconsider your generalizations and your ridiculous paranoia about a mis-identified “end-times” of cultural worth.  If you can’t do that then I’d say you are stuck in your own realm of “self-entitlement” and should maybe just shut the fuck up.

~Nathaniel

Let me preface this post by saying that I don’t really like talking or writing about politics simply because it seems that the subject always proves to be a touchy one for somebody.  This isn’t to say that I don’t have political views or opinions myself, I certainly do, it is just that I tend to try and approach the subject with a lot of caution and consideration so as to avoid stepping on too many toes.  So basically, I want to ensure any readers that I am not writing this post to really criticize anybody’s personal ideas and beliefs as I do believe we are all entitled to believe whatever we like (regardless of how those beliefs make us look in the eyes of others).

All that being said and got out-of-the-way, I bring us to the question of the posed in my posts title.  Is the republican Party facing the risk of breaking apart?  I know for a fact that I am not the first one to wonder this, especially since the Democrats major electoral success last year.  And while I have seen the signs for a while now it was this article, in The New York Times, that has really made me want to raise the question about the future of the GOP.

The article considers the right-wing back lash against Florida’s Republican governor Charlie Crist for being too “moderate” or even crossing the threshold to being labeled as “liberal.”  Crist is not the first Republican in recent times face these charges by the more conservative side of his party.  Just a few weeks back the NY Times (amongst other news outlets) put focus on a vicious battleground for an upstate New York congressional seat.  Basically the gist of that whole thing was that the more hardcore conservatives didn’t support the Republican party backed candidate (who ended up dropping out of the race and supporting the Democrat) and so supported a third-party candidate who met more with the stronger right-wing ideology.  What was the conclusion?  The Democrat won the race in a region that had not seen a Democrat in over a hundred years.

Could the events with Charlie Crist produce a similar effect or will the more conservative faction prove itself to be the dominant majority?  This is the question I really have.  And if the stronger right-wing side cannot hold true against a more moderate voting population could this spar a schism that leads to a creation of a whole new party, maybe something called “The Conservative Republican Party of America.”

My personal guess . . . moderates will always win, even if they end up not being elected.

You may not all agree with this, but I think it makes the most logical sense (even considering the often illogical nature of politics).  Basically, the way I can see it, the vast majority fo people tend to gravitate toward the center ground as opposed to the peripheries of strong right or left.  Why?  Probably because most of us tend to hold views that are a mixture of conservative and liberal.  Certainly we may tend to stray one way or another (I fully admit that I tend to be a bit more liberal in my views, especially social.  I’m much more moderate or almost libraterian in fiscal and economic politics) but ultimately this stray is often balanced with some other moderate views.

This is not to say that there are not people with very strong leaning conservative right-wing beliefs or liberal left-wing beliefs, there are (heck I know people on both sides, I grew up in Vermont and now I live in South Carolina.  The difference is rather spectacular).  But I think that the history of politics in this country demonstrate that the extreme end of either conservative or liberal view is usually incapable of maintaining steady voter support for long.  People just tend to be more comfortable with moderation.

So what does this spell for the Republican Party, especially because it seems like in the news lately all we have been hearing about is the reenforcement of the conservative end of the GOP.  Really I can see a number of possibilities.

1). The conservative end could prove to be the stronger majority of the party and see to it that more right-wing, as opposed to moderate, Republican’s get elected in coming races.

2).  The moderate side of the GOP wins out in the long run over the conservative end and thus we see more center leaning Republicans take offices.

3). The fight splits the vote too much in the Republican Party and the Democrats end up winning out more so because of this.  Split votes within a party can be a very damaging thing to the party as is evident in the recent upstate New York congress seat race.

I foresee that if any of these options prove true there is that continued risk of schism because they will demonstrate that the ideology that the Republican Party thinks it has is not really as adherent as they may like it to be. 

My next question is, would a schism be a bad thing for this nation?

Personally I think not, solely based on my feeling that having a government system in which two parties pretty much dominate the political landscape is not a good thing for democracy.  While there are quite a number of political parties in the U.S.A., the Republicans and the Democrats have for the longest time held pretty much all the power.  Other parties tend to be just a bit too fringe to gain any significant voter majority.  But if one of the two major parties, such at the Republicans, were to break into two distinct parties, there could be a legitimate reason to see a powerful three party contention for votes.  In fact if the GOP were to break into a more conservative faction and a more moderate faction I would not be surprised to see some more right-leaning Democrats move over to the more central ideology side.

Basically, of personal opinion, I think that Jim DeMint (a SC senator and strong conservative) is mistaken when he says, “What’s going to happen, the voters are going to weed out these Republicans who no longer share the core principles that make our country great.”  I agree that the more conservative GOP followers will be reluctant to vote for more moderate candidates, but if people like DeMint want to keep the party intact then really they are going to need those people who hold more moderate views and are willing to participate in bi-partisan politics.  If not then the party cannot sustain as it currently is and changes will be imminent.

I am fascinated to see how it turns out.

I invite people to weigh in on this.  I am always interested to hear what others think about politics.  All I ask is that if you choose to comment please try and keep it respectful.  I have made a serious effort in this post to reserve my personal judgement on certain political beliefs within and hope I have not offended anybody with any judgements that did slip through (I apologize if I did, it was not really intended as such).  I like honest respectful discussion on these things, and if it can occur I am all for it.

Thanks,

Nathaniel

I really wish I had discovered this list of the 25 best breweries of the past decade through my own exploration of all things beer. Unfortunately I must extend credit to OrangeCoat for posting it on their blog and thus alerting me (and it is worth noting that the OC credits @davidburn with the initial discovery.  I don’t know this individual but good for him and his find).

So the question is, “Why bother posting a link to this list if others already have?”  Well because isn’t that the whole point of this crazy interconnected communicating tool we like to call the Internet?  And honestly, Paste Magazine (one of my favorite publications, which I had no clue was located not too far away in Georgia) has done a superb job with the list.  As far as I can tell every one of the breweries that they mention deserve the credit which they have received.

I have had the great fortune of drinking beers brewed by almost every one of those breweries on the list.  The few which I have not had the opportunity to try will definitely be added to my “must drink” list of beers.  Ironically (at least I think it is), the only brewery on the list which I have visited is Brewery Ommegang from Cooperstown, NY.  The irony of this is that when I visited it I was much too young to be drinking and thus have not actually had any of their beer (we stopped in when my family was on a trip to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame). 

Anyway, there is something great about reading the phrase “the U.S. is now the greatest nation on earth when it comes to beer.”  Sure it is a patriotic sentiment, but I have to think that it is fucking true.  Sure a lot of other good beer is produced all over the world, but it seems that only in the U.S. (and only in the past couple of decades) has the sheer variety of beer styles and flavors been whole heartedly pursued.  As a beer lover myself, this makes living in the U.S. a very enjoyable thing.

For those of you out there who might not be much into beer, or have maintained yourself predominantly on only the domestic side of beer, I strongly suggest looking into some of the brews produced by the breweries on the list.  And I have to agree with Bear, that there are “legitimate arguments that breweries are being left out.”  So go get yourself a cold one and enjoy the delight that is American Brewing.

Aside: While I am on the topic of beer, I feel that it is only appropriate to extend a warm congratulation to my friend and brewing buddy Brian Cendrowski, of Untamed Beer, for his inaugural blog post on RateBeer’s HopPress blog.  Brian will be a regular guest blogger on the HopPress, with pieces going up on Thursdays.  And while he humbles himself in saying that he is “more of a beer idiot than a connoisseur,” I will stick up for the dude in saying that there are few (if any) people whom I put more faith in to provide honest and insightful opinions and ideas when it comes to beer and brewing.  The guy is prolific, and he brews some amazing beers (see here and here for two of our Big Brew Days).  I should also extend an apology to Brian again, for having to leave him to his own devices for having to find his own way back from the Brewtopians meeting on Saturday.  Hope it didn’t give you any trouble buddy.

Damn, nothing better than a good beer post to start the week.  It’s only the morning and I could already go for a frosty brew.

I am a big fan of Beck and pretty much all the music he makes.  I’ve been listening to him since I was in high school, and when I went to Bonnaroo in 2006 I had the pleasure of getting to see him perform live (one of the best overall performances at the whole music festival.  Probably second only to Radiohead).  Along with listening to his latest album, “Modern Guilt” I’ve also been replaying old classics like “Odelay.”  Beyond that though I am very pleased to discover Beck’s Record Club.

Basically Beck has been partnering with a bunch of other artists to record full covers of various albums by other musicians.  The list of artists contributing to this effort is fantastic and includes the likes of Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, Leslie Fiest, Devendra Banhart, amongst many others.  The albums covered so far have included works by The Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen, and Skip Spence.  Really it is fantastic stuff.

Personally I think that Beck is one of the most creative musicians out there right now.  He has been around for a long time and still continues to make some really original and awesome music.  Even his covers have a sense of newness in all their familiarity.  Check out his Record Club, it is very cool stuff.

Record Club: Velvet Underground & Nico ‘Waiting for My Man’ from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

On Saturday I made a pie . . . well I made the filling at least (I didn’t have time to make my own crust so I used a store bought one. Oh well).  I don’t bake, so even considering that I didn’t make the crust, this was a big deal to me.

The pie I made was based on a recipe for winter pie.  Basically the filling was a mix of shredded carrots, some raisins, chopped apple and pecans, flavored with cinnamon, ground cloves, nutmeg, allspice, and a little ginger.  Oh, and a bunch of sugar (white and brown) and some dark rum. All this stuff was cooked up together and then put in the pie crust.  I topped the entire thing with pecan halves so that it ended up looking kind of like a Pecan pie.

I was impressed by how well it came out.  I really wonderful autumn/holiday flavor.  Not a lot of people tried it at the party I brought it to (which was a Pie Party, which meant there were a ton of pies to try).  That was okay by me because I got to keep the leftovers.  I think I will plan on making this pie again soon, for upcoming Thanksgiving celebrating, but this time I will aim at making my own crust and I think I’d like to add some maple syrup to the filling mixture just because the flavor of maple is amazing.  All and all my baking confidence has gain a few slight points (very few mind you, while I love to cook, I am not at all comfortable with baking).

So last night I attended Greenville’s official first Pecha Kucha Night.  Pecha Kucha is a presenting format/style in which the presenter is allowed to have 20 slides with 2o seconds for each slide, creating a presentation with a 6 minute 20 second length.  It was started in Japan but has since spread all over the world.  All and all it is kind of an interesting idea of a way to expose people to all sorts of material and information.

I had first heard about Pecha Kucha back some months before when a preliminary one was done in the city.  When hearing about this one I determined that it was called Pikachu, which it is not, but it is what I still like to call it.  I missed that first time coming through this area (cause I was busy eating Mexican food and drinking beers) and so felt pretty interested in making it to this one.

I didn’t really know what to expect going into the thing.  I understood the format, and had an idea about what I was likely to experience but this was all new to me and I tried to approach it as such.

My personal opinion is that while it was definitely interesting it could still use some more refining for future events.  I found several of the presentations interesting or entertaining, but there were several others that I think missed the point a bit or were just annoying or confusing.   All and all I think that there needs to be a few more events before we have it pretty standardized and well done here.

 This isn’t a critique of the format itself mind you. Or the folks who put in a lot of time organizing the event (great job to all you guys btw).  Personally I am very interested in the application of Pecha Kucha in different areas including my work life.  Because I work in a Staff Development department I have to do a lot of presentation and trainings in front of an audience.  In these presentation I often have a lot of information that I need to get across and often that has led to using PowerPoints.  But PowerPoints have long frustrated me because I think that there are so many pitfalls associated with them.  In college I took a pretty firm anti-PowerPoint stance and as such I think I only created one or two in my whole four years there.  This dislike of PowerPoints has not diminished because I’ve experienced too many crappy ones to have much faith in them.  But I think that formats like that utilized in Pecha Kucha could be really useful in making this tool effective and meaningful.  I am already thinking about how I can include something like it in my own work presentations.

Truth be told also, I’d kind of like to do my own at a Pecha Kucha Night some time.  I don’t know what I’d do it on (I originally joked that I would do a Pikachu Pecha Kucha and just say “Pikachu Pikachu” ofver slides of Pikachu for the whole 6:20 minutes). 

Part of my interest in doing one is that  while I am required to present in front of people regularly, I am very uncomfortable about this.  I don’t know if it counts as full stage fright, but I think it is pretty damn close considering how much anxiety I feel before having to talk in front of any decent sized crowd.  So why the heck would I want to do it?  Because of the challenge it presents.  In high school I performed in every single play as well as served in an improv troupe.  I did this because it was a very real, but relatively safe, challenge to face something that I find incredibly difficult to do.  I see this as a potential with Pecha Kucha too (though again I have no clue what I’d present on).

So anyways, I will probably plan on attending future Pecha Kucha Nights and I look forward to seeing what other people have to offer at them.