My Last 10 Google Searches

And yes, there really is a Cloud Appreciation Society (based in the UK). Google it.

Tweet that shit. (A bipolar Web 2.0 soliloquy starring me.)

Recently I’ve been on two ends of the Twitter spectrum.  When I first signed up (on an account whose name I don’t even remember anymore) I really did not understand the point of this thing.

It’s Facebook statuses without the Facebook, I said to myself one day in the past, sipping on a warm mug of french vanilla latte and reading the New York Times while listening to progressive South American jazz with my right leg lazily crossed over my left, the navy blue of my wool cardigan reflected onto the sides of my thick horn-rimmed glasses that don’t really help me see any better since I bought them from a vintage consignment shop that I took the subway to on my way to  Whole Foods the day before.

 

When I held onto my second (and current) account long enough to start tweeting, I thought it was even more useless in practice than in theory.  Going to the grocery store. I just announced to all three followers of mine that I am going to the store.  Technology has reduced itself to announcing your every move to absolutely no one who cares. Was I doing something wrong? Was it that I didn’t know enough people for it to actually be of any use?

Eventually I found more of my friends on Twitter and I’d read about how they don’t want to get out of bed and how they’re brushing their teeth after a really boring class and how one friend wanted to rant about something that took more than 140 characters no matter how abbrevated he tried to make it (Cnt blv prof gv quiz b4 cls evn strtd! Im so mad i cd…)  I was angry. I was angry with myself, my friends, and with God (because it’s not really a struggle unless you’re angry with God) for making such a successful useless piece of crap.

Then there were the celebrities. Currently I’m following Ashton, Martha, and Sam Champion of the weather. I know I could be following so much more interesting people, but that’s who I have now.  If they aren’t talking about lunch with Vogue or dinner with Mariah or post-dinner-cocaine-shoots with Gaga…

I’m getting off topic here. (And by here I mean the second sentence of the post.)  The point is Twitter is good if you have an interesting life. The best tweets come from those who are too lazy to get out of bed but do it anyway. They have something to tweet about. Twitter is good because if you want at all for your tweets to be anywhere as interesting as the celebrities you’re following or any of your more-put-together-and-socially-competent-than-you friends that you’re following, you have to be actually doing something worth tweeting. Using the Transitive Property of Non-sensibly Successful Media Trends, you get that Twitter is good because it encourages one to have a more interesting life.

I’m not saying my life is any more exciting than it was before I started using twitter.  To be honest, I get really jealous whenever someone tweets like an asshole (a Twatter, if you will). But I really shouldn’t, because things like that should be motivating me to one-up them, and that’s never a bad thing.

OR I could just have fun with it and stop making it more than what it is.

@ me: @markatique

Let’s procrastinate

Good job!

What are you not doing? I’m not reading my french essays. Oh crap. I just remembered I have to do research on Madame de Stael too. Oh well, already started on this, and everybody knows to need to finish what you started, or should I say, you need to let Taylor finish what she started.

A few things:

1) I was BEYOND impressed by the second-by-second Twittivity happening during this year’s VMAs (the first VMAs I’ve ever watched; things get interesting when you decide to throw yourself into Journalism and Mass Media at the exact moment our country’s cultural representatives to the rest of the world also decide to throw themselves in front of the Stupid Bus.) LOOK AT THIS FRACKING TIME CHART. Not only is it SEXY as HELL; you also realize that not once was Taylor Swift the big head in the middle; it was constantly a Kanye-Gaga Showdown (a Kangadown, if you will).  Now I’m definitely not a proponent nor am I a practitioner of celebrity sports commentary, but the only thing I can think of more impressive than last Sunday’s beatdown was my 10-page Final Poli-Sci paper last semester that I wrote in three hours.  The only difference was that one kept college kids everywhere talking about how much b.s. we’re exposed to and read about, and the other one involved Kanye West and Lady Gaga. (Kidding, Professor Rossi.)

2)  I just found out how much it costs to market a movie. Say a movie’s total production costs amounted to about $100 million. $30 million would go to marketing it. You could buy an African country’s land and set up a dance studio for the severely claustrophobic for the price of getting the American public to talk about a movie (but then there would be the problem of getting the claustrophobic dancers onto the plane). I have no links to these stats, and since I’m procrastinating, I shall put this off for another day.

3) I had a bacon, egg and cheese on a buttery croissant this morning with some Sobe iced tea.  I had a couple of dollars left over in my meal swipe, so I bought some Naked and am currently attempting to down its totality before it hardens and becomes an extremely healthy gremlin. But it’s proving difficult.

4) I’m wearing a vintage Dior tie I found in my parents’ closet a long time ago.  I had no idea of any previous relation with the world of Biannual Bryant Parkology and am proud of them now not only for coming to this country discovering that cottage cheese and cut fruits DO go together, but also for birthing me and alllowing me to find it and steal it from them at the tender awkward age of Junior year high school, making it my first legit vintage item and starting the growing dynastic collection that is currently my closet.  Speaking of which, I’m looking for something yellow to complete my apparel spectrum. And some protein bars, cus brotha gotta build up (I did some stretches yesterday and tripped while standing still).

Actually, since I’m already on here, I’ll just insert my research into this post =D (and by research I/we all mean wiki-and-paste) WARNING IF YOU HATE FRENCH WRITERS, BAD NOTES AND HAVING KIDS WITH A MAN YOU WEREN’T ORIGINALLY CRAZY ABOUT, STOP READIN HERE.

Madame de Staël a.k.a. Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein

- Child of a Swiss statesman and famous mistress, who treated her like they do in the movies with the moms but the girl’s the good guy.

- Married a Swedish man with little direction and money, but that was fixed when the Swedish king made an ambassadorship deal.  Both parties got what they wanted, even though there was little affection between the two. She got status and he got money.

-  Decided to started blogging writing publicly under her own name, received much attention and renown for her comments on contemporary literature and Rousseau especially.

-  Husband died; they had like, four kids (WHUT).

- She continued to attempt the successful publication of her book de l’Allemagne, but Napoleon REALLY didn’t like her, and condemned her books and kicked her out of the country.

- She moved to Coppet where her father was from and had a sexy-time marriage with a younger man.

I also like to think I can write decent (historically inaccurate) poetry

 

This is no means to an end

For the means is the end

And I declare myself victor in this war

Between my limitations and my dreams

And my Purple Heart will be your lips

pressed against my lips

And my ticker-tape parade will be my smile

on your smile

And we will cheer, “No more war!”

And forget about the struggles of battle

and live in eternal peace but no tranquility

For our hearts will wildly dance

And I’ll scoop you up in the middle of Times Square

You and Me

Sailor and Nurse

Time brought us here

This kiss will keep us here.

Why today is the best day ever.

 

I keep forgetting he's white-ish.

 

 

Today’s Grandparents’ Day in these United States as well as the Great North, and what better way to celebrate than write a post about it that no grandparent will ever bother to read!

If you’re alive right now, or ever were for that matter, chances are you have grandparents.  That means this day is of value to you and them.  Except that you’ve probably never heard of tt.  The only reason I know about this is because it landed on my birthday one day and I noticed a flux in the things to honor on the ninth of September that year.  The crowning of Mary Stuart at nine months old in 1543? Check.  Elvis appears on Ed Sullivan for the first time in 1956? Got it. A moth gets stuck in a computer at Harvard in 1947? Cool.

So I was delighted when I found that that year I was to honor mine own existence and that of my favorite age demographic on the same day.  It was like Christmas morning, except instead of dear baby Jesus being born in a manger I was screaming into an old man’s ear about how cool I think his vintage maroon Cosby sweater was. 

What makes it such a great day is how much its inception back in the 70’s seemed like it followed a script for a movie written and directed by the head of the National Guild of Writers Who Want to Bring Attention to Absolutely Everything By Making a Day For It.  It was started under the presidency of no greater a people-loving hand-holder than President Carter (No disrespect, Mr. President, I love loving people. And holding hands, I suppose. And your ways make me nostalgic for church banners and neon windbreakers.).

LIke any “people struggle”, this holiday had to wait a very long time to see justice done unto it and its children (i.e. grandpa and nana) – exactly five years, which in Bureaucratese actually just translates to four minutes and 36 seconds.  But when it did see it rightful place on the Western calendar the Sunday after every labor day until someone in the Capitol loses the official documentation, not only did it have a name; it had “officials”.

The official flower: the forget-me-not.

 

That's right, friends and honored guests. The FORGET-ME-NOT.

Now, this might just be noticing the moldy food at the buffet at this point, but the blatant depression this naturally attaches to the holiday canNOT make this day a self-esteem fest for Pops and Gran.  I propose a flower change:

 

It's called the IMMORTAL FLOWER cus it lasts forever.

The official song: “A Song for Grandma and Grandpa”, by Johnny Prill.  This is what a real-life Senator said about this song:

“It is wonderful that “A Song For Grandma And Grandpa” was chosen as the official song of National Grandparents Day. You have put into words the unique relationship between grandparents and their grandchildren.”

God bless America. 

Don’t get me wrong; this is a beautiful holiday encompassing a beautiful effort to honor a beautiful group of people – whom I have never met myself; my grandfathers died before I was born, my one grandmother died when I was two months old and my other one had lost her mind and died when I was seven. Oh, and I’m from an immigrant family, so this all happened on the other side of the planet. RIP.  But it’s exactly that.  The Filipino culture of my family demanded perpetual love, attention and honor for grandparents, so setting aside a day for it out of a year is like a professor taking time out of a lecture to remind us that we all should be breathing (or should I say, BRIETHING! haha. ha.).  We ought to breathe without being reminded; we ought to honor without being asked. (Cue wind chimes and violin.)

In any case, if your grandparents are still alive, call them or something. Or if they’re anything like the greatest old lady ever, @ them and send them your love.

Peace and ukuleles!

And thus did Mark manage to spend another night not-sleeping-until-5-am.

You know that thing where you’re all ready to change the world with your words and thoughts and the colorful, touching images that sprint through your mind faster than Usain, and you lift your ready arms to your Macbook keyboard, watching that text line wink at you with its ever- seductive “give me all you’ve got” pulse, and then you….umm…uh…

Yeah, that was me the second I started typing.  This post just died. Really fast. I should try in the morning, when my eyes stop darting over to the pillow a foot from my head instead of concentrating on what I wanted to be the greatest introductory blog entry in the history of the future.  Stop looking at the pillow, Mark. The fluffy, pretty blue pillow.

So pretty. So fluffy. Good night.