Dark Ages of America

Lets get a little political for a moment. I’m not a supporter of the George W. Bush administration. I feel that as a result of his presidency we entered into a sort of dark ages in this country. During most of this presidency we’ve been at war, we’ve been attacked at home to an extent not seen since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor back in World War 2, and US citizens have lived in fear of terrorism because it’s how our government told us to act. Fear is a method of control. You can see it in our movies, hear it in our music and watch it every day on our news. We’ve been consumed by this.

But I’m hopeful. To look on the positive side of things it has given us something to aspire to, a better peaceful tomorrow. It has given us material to talk, write songs and shoot films about for years. It is the bad that must come every so often in order for the good to look better. The contrast. Lets just hope the end of this presidency brings a brighter future for this country.
And while it’s true America must get it’s hands dirty in the mud every so often in order to maintain it’s stance, these last seven years were more like blatantly shitting on our own hands and smearing it around in some retarded defiance of ourselves. When its all over is there any way we can just pretend we were drunk for the last eight years and forget about it? Somehow I don’t think so. But still, lets look at the bright side, it’s the only way to overcome the darkness.

Electronic Tattoos

Last night I had a dream of a grand parade. There were sand colored roman columns nearly six stories tall that lined a mall that was easily a half a mile long. Think of the visuals from the film “300″ because that’s what this dream was like, probably inspired by seeing a trailer for the film earlier in the day.

At one point I was riding on a chariot being pulled by an elaborately decorated elephant. The guy holding the reins had a bald head that was covered in a tattoo. Face and all. The blue ink of the tattoo however was somehow controlled by him. He was able to make it fade in and out and control the design on his head. As he waved to the thousands of parade watchers we passed by he would make his ink swirl around and create strange designs, even simulating hair and a beard at one point. Then he did the most amazing thing, he made his entire head disappear. Thinking about the logic of this after I had awoken from the dream, it occurred to me that perhaps the ink was also some type of light receptor, like a camera lens. What it saw on one side it could display on the other and vice versa in a 360 degree manner so as to make it appear his head was missing when in fact it was an illusion created by his tattoo ink.
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The World Becomes One

The other day I was listening to National Public Radio on my way home from work and they had a commentary piece on from Philosopher Alain de Botton about how the worlds architecture today is all the same no matter where you go. It really made me think, he’s right. Sure you have your staple “landmark” architecture that has existed for years because it was built in an old world where there was more variety between one location and another. Back then the buildings were a reflection of the people and the society they were built in. Today, like so many things that exist in the industrialized cookie cutter world we no live in, architecture has also taken a hit, especially in America where one city looks the same as another.
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