what goes up...

Suha: One day things will be better.
Taxidriver Suha: Sounds like you're not from here.
-paradise now [imdb]

in addition to upping the number of music blogs i subscribe to, i've started investing my internet time in digg, a user-driven website that links to and rates news articles its members find worthy of note. which is broadening the rest of my perspectives. it puts me back in touch with the technology news i used to pour over in my dad's waiting room, in magazines like popular science and popular mechanics (popular popular popular), which the nerd inside me is singing about. and with my being a mac guy, the growing... popularity... in steve jobs and apple give me a lot to read up on, too. but what i'm most happy (happy?) to hold digg responsible for is my finally-growing interest in politics and society. i used to pick up a newspaper and feel like i was drowning in too much talk i didn't know anything about. i've kept relatively afloat -- i know there's this big, shitty war in iraq, troops are dying, the world largely disapproves of our presence there, etc; i know we also have troops in afghanistan, so apparently the terrorists are still out there; i feel like, more or less, the middle east has just gone to shit; i know south korea [edit: north? thanks, jbu. told you guys] is out of its mind and possesses insanely dangerous weapons; i know congress was overwhelmingly republican and just rebalanced itself (i think), which is a good thing (i think); a woman and a black man are both hopefuls for presidency '08 (which, not for any sexist or racial reason, frightens me; who knows how this crazy, redneck country would react if either one wins) -- i've got the gist. and i've got teeny, tiny opinions on some things, but ones i would never voice because i still feel so ill-informed. somewhere along the line i turned into a very selfish person, and spend most of the day in my own head, only concerned with me and my own, which, when i do step outside and look around, doesn't really, substantially, amount to a whole lot.

i like to think i've kept a "work hard, play hard" attitude through life, but i've realized, sometimes that's all i do. i've become uncultured. i don't really read, other than about what's happening with the shins' new record or which project brad pitt is taking on next. i took my education for granted every step of the way, and while i remember a lot about the experiences i had (plays i was in, jobs held, friendships found and lost), my retention of anything textbook is pretty small. i guess my theatre courses were more about experience and training, from which i did learn a lot about myself, but i was burned out by the rest of academia. i mostly skated by. which, mostly, worked.

anyway... i don't know what i'm trying to say. today is another off day. and after being in such a good mood almost all day yesterday. i text messaged jeff about ten o'clock last night, to say that i could almost feel the good chemicals at work in my brain. and i could, i wanted to dance. but today... eh. it's complicated. and i have no doubt that my continuing enlightenment of the state of the world, with its fighting and its dying and nuclear weapons, and its poverty and its heartache, has a lot to do with it -- i dream of saving the world, but the truth is, i'm the least capable candidate out of everyone. what can i do, play everyone a song on the radio? make everyone a mixtape? polyphonic spree for kim jong-il...

but to today's credit, it is beautiful outside. i wish i'd have woken up earlier and enjoyed some of it. i did wake up to old compadre mario's humbling account of a family wedding in jamaica:

"I felt very tourist, very American, bumbling blindly through this other world taking mental pictures and being laughed at in Portuguese. I wanted to strip off my clothes, tear out my braids, peel off my nationality. I wanted terribly to be anyone but me, drunk and stoned on the last night of my vacation, bloated on college pizza, paying for beers next to an open bar not knowing how to tell these people that I really was poor back home."

i've been out of touch with mario, though my admiration for him and his writing keeps trucking. we did just befriend each other on facebook... maybe a reunion isn't too far.

back to work.