Class...

Random Observation, if you don't like pointless rants... STOP... reading... now.

I went to Target tonight and I feel like a better person because of it. I don't know what it is about Target, but it's just so much classier and better than Wal-mart. I don't think there are a lot of people that get excited about going to Wal-mart. In fact, I think most people find it to be a drag but it's always the closest store with all the necessities. It's the easiest answer.

However, like I just said, no one really likes Wal Mart all the much. It's always understaffed and I think subconsciously you feel like you are buying lower quality. Plus, Wal mart always seems trashed. There are only a few Wal-Marts I have been in that didn't seem just thrased, with trash strewn through out the aisles and little kids running around screaming and pulling things off the shelf while their parents look on with hopelessness, like they gave up trying to control their kids and keep them behaved and now live in some fantasy world where they are mute to their childrens' scream. Maybe they are pretending for one second that the kids aren't really theirs and imagining they are in a better place, like target.

Target is just classy. You feel like a good person while you are in there. The store is clean and the people that work there seem legitimate. I had a good friend that worked at Wal Mart for a while, and he always laughed when he mentioned where he worked. We all felt it was some kind of joke. And it kind of was... just like how my first job was a being a janitor. Plus, target is somewhat in tune with current clothing styles. At Wal-mart, you can buy t-shirts with the Halo logo on them... the halo logo... that's all I have to say. Target, you can at least get a decent wardrobe. I am by no means a fashion expert. I still have to run each outfit by my 16 year old sister. FYI, I am 23 years old. But even for someone as fashion and style impaired as myself, I know enough to know that some of the clothes Wal-mart sells should be a crime.

And my final and most compelling argument for Target, it's where all the good looking girls shop. You know how there is that website peopleofwalmart website, Is there one of those for target? Nay, there is not. If they tried to do make a peopleoftarget website, modeling agencies would start sending talent scouts to local target stores. I always said I was going to marry me a target woman, ever since I was in high school. I still plan on it too. My wife is gonna do all the necessity shopping at Target.Now, I know that I am generalizing here and I know there is the argument that you can't beat Wal-mart's prices but when it comes to your self esteem, isn't it worth the extra fifteen cents on laundry detergent? Plus, target has 5 dollar DVDs, just like walmart. I really don't see that big of difference.

Now, I know like I am sounding snobby and overly-ideal here, but I just had to point this out. I don't understand why we don't talk about this stuff more often. I know I am not alone in my opinion. However, even I give in to the easy answer most of the time anyways. Wal-mart has the 24/7 thing going for it, which could contribute to some of it's dirtiness and the feeling of chaos and hopelessness. In the long run though, I want to have a fufilling and comfortable lifestyle, a target lifestyle, with a good looking wife who takes care of our family with target quality products. I want a target life.

Bullseye,

A postcard from the lost (but opinionated)

Genius

I just want to express my appreciation for genius, for originality, for everything good.

If you haven't listened to Tallest Man on Earth, I would highly recommend you do so...

Please know that my particular thing is lyrics... words... I listen to his songs over and over again just to hear the words, not to mention he has a great voice, very folky. You hear the stories in the voice.

Check out this song...

Share your thoughts...

Share your love...

Share you...

Talk to me,

A postcard from the lost

Homesick

Where did you go? What happened to that boy who left his home four years ago? How come he never came home? Did he get lost while he was trying to save souls?

What happened to your plan? Instead of standing your ground you ran. When will you leave your youth to become a man?

When will you realize your home is no more? When will you see that now you are all on your own? Sorry, but there is no where for you to go home.

Sometimes I get homesick. I can't exactly pin point what exactly I am homesick for, i just long for somewhere, something, someone. I just want to feel at home again, something I haven't felt since I left the haven of home for the great state of Texas. After two years I came home, but home went somewhere while I was gone, and I still haven't found it.

"You can't go home again, you can't go home..."-Straylight Run

I watched Garden State the other night. That movie is genius. I highly recommend it to anyone. It's one of those movies that could be a song, there are so many parts that connect to me that it's like music. One line in particular...

Andrew Largeman: You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your sh*t, that idea of home is gone.
Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
Andrew Largeman: You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.

Is that all it is now, an imaginary place? Do I yearn for something that doesn't exist? Do I keep praying for an answer that doesn't exist? I think at this point in life, I am supposed to feel this way, and this feeling will compel me to something. I just can't figure out what. I just can't seem to shake the feeling of now or never. As if I need to have myself figured now and never deviate from that for the rest of my life. As Joshua Radin says "I should know who I am by now."

It's not to say that I haven't felt glimpses of home since I embarked to the Lone star state decked out in a suit with a black name tag and a part in my hair. Texas became home to me. I actually felt more homesick for Texas when I came back than I did for my own home when I left. It hurt, it still does. I know what I missed wasn't just a certain street, or a house. It was the connection, the sense of purpose and sense of being.

I had dinner with my best friend and his fiance last night. We laughed like we always do, talked about the NBA draft (cause the jazz season is a lost cause. My sights are set on the lottery now), talked about the stupidity of our high school antics and laughed at how stupid we used to be. If he only knew how much I envy him now. It's not to say he has it made, he is one of the hardest working guys I know, nothing has been handed to him. He just seems to know where he is going and who he is going with. I don't know either. He looked like he was home, and my face just showed how lost I really felt.

I am just scared of being left behind, of having to find home by myself. It seems like everyone else is moving on to the better days promised, and I am still stuck trying to figure myself out. I just want to get it right.

If there is a song to sum up the feeling, it would be Transatlanticism by Death Cab For Cutie.

Home is good conversation

Home is long drives

Home is Christmas

Home is filled with friends

Home is my haven

Home is meant to be shared

Home is you...

I hope you find home, and when you do, will you tell me where it is and who is there?

Traveling,

A postcard from the lost (and trying to be content with what I do have)

Sing like you think no one is listening...

"If you want to be completely honest, sing..."-Dan in Real Life

Music defines me. Music talks to me. I talk to music. Music is me...

I am taking American popular music this semester. It almost doesn't feel like a class, except for the midterm I had to take yesterday, which I am pretty sure I aced (not to brag or anything). I don't know what it is, but I think I may be a savant when it comes to lyrics. I can't remember anything useful, like how to do math or the structure of a cell or how osmosis works. However, I can remember very detailed things about music, like the track listing to a certain album or the lyrics to an obscure B-side. My talent: I can remember pointless things in extreme detail.

I wish I was musically talented, or at least could play or sing decently. I still daydream about rocking out on stage with my band as the crowd goes nuts. I see myself screaming into the microphone and seeing the sea of people going crazy. Twenty kids just being thrown into the air crowd surfing, and I will just stop singing and just rock out. The crowd will know every word to every song... this will forever be my dream. I just want to learn how to write those clever tunes, make a record, tour the country and the world with my band, just playing music and living the dream. I don't care if I make a single dime... I just want to experience that, just once. Just one album, just one tour, just one dream. Just give me that one dream, I will walk away from it all when it is time. I am still in my youth, let me live my dreams before I change my mind...

I am starting to gain a real appreciation for a lot of different genres of music, I think they all weave together to tell the human story. Music is a history book that anyone can contribute too, not just scholars and elites. It is the history book of dreams and nightmares, the history book of the soul.

If you ever get the chance, listen to the album The Wild Hunt by The Tallest Man on Earth. Just listen and feel... feel whatever you want.

If you want summer, listen to Hi, Everything's Great by Limbeck

If you want answers, ask

Music is my tongue, speak to me in yours...

I am open for suggestions

Please, sing to me....

A Postcard from the lost (and looking for a dream)

"Sing me something soft, sad and elegant. Or loud and out of key, sing me anything. We are glad for what we've got and done with what we've lost. Our whole lives lay our right in front of us."-Straylight Run

P.S. A recent discovery that has been discovered by a million others before I came upon it, but if your ears yearn to be soothed, listen to the album Break Up by Pete Yorn with Scarlett Johansson. I hope you enjoy as I have. Also, check out Scarlett Johansson's cover of Steel Train's "Bullet". I hope you find it worth your time...

The possibility

I am not going to do my usual tangents this time. I know I usually sound like a broken record with thoughts even more scattered. Not this time... This time I will try to be coherent and forward. What I wish to write about has been on my mind for some time, and I hope to explain my thoughts in a way which most people can decipher. However, I am not making any promises.

I just spent a long weekend in sin city, Viva Las Vegas. However, I wasn't there getting wasted or gambling away the small amount of money I do have. I was there to watch maybe my favorite sport in the world, basketball. I had tickets to the Mountain West tournament. This year I have followed college basketball more than I have in the past. Usually I will pay attention to my team (which is BYU by the way. true blue through and through) but other than that I will watch highlights if they are on sportscenter, and of course you are always gonna hear about Duke, North Carolina, the ACC and all the powerhouses back east. However, this year, a kid came along named Jimmer Fredette. We BYU fans have known about Jimmer for sometime, but the world didn't, that is, until this season.

I can't tell you how exciting it has been to be a BYU fan this year, especially when the eyes of the sports world have been on Jimmer and the Cougs for a good part of the basketball season. There is a sense of pride in every Cougar heart when you turn on sportscenter every night and Scott Van Pelt is going off about Jimmer dropping 40 points here and 43 point there. After years of lamenting how BYU never gets enough love from the media and the nation, this year we finally felt valid, we felt like we were the big show, not just that school that has good sports teams but never any champions, at least in recent memory. That all changed this year and I felt like I was part of the history, part of the madness, part of Jimmer-mania. It gave me something to look forward to and enjoy, especially at a time when everything else in life seemed to offer little hope.

I have often wondered what it is about sports that drives my dedication and attention. I have spent hours discussing this with many people, sport fans and non-sport fans a like. I don't think I have a definite answer but I may have reached an answer for myself and that answer is: it's an escape.

For the last year and a half I have been in a line of work in which I have to deal with a lot of heavy stuff. Until recently, I worked at a group home for troubled youth and some of the things I witnessed and heard no one should have to hear or see. I worked insane amounts of hours and was in school full time. Every day I would wake up, go to class then head straight to work. I would work until eleven every night. When I came home there was no one to talk to, everyone in my apartment would be asleep by the time I walked in the door. I would perform my same ritual every night. I would throw my stuff in the corner and turn on Sportscenter. I never watched the news or anything. I felt like I heard enough bad news everyday being at work. Sportscenter hardly ever had bad news, at least when you put everything in perspective.

With sports, most of the time the worst news you can hear is that your team lost that night. Sure, players get hurt, maybe some players get suspended (the whole Brandon Davies situation still kills me, but I hope the best for the kid), your team may even be terrible at the time, but there is always seems to be at least something to look forward to. There always is a sliver of hope.

Hope... I think that is what may appeal to me about sports, the chance that everyone has to be the champion, to achieve the dream, to triumph over the odds. When I had to deal with many hopeless situations with work, I began to see the world just as hopeless. There wasn't much to be joyful or hopeful about. The only thing that seemed to be a bright spot was sports. I felt like I could escape the world for the three hours on Saturday when the BYU football game was on. I could read about the upcoming jazz season instead of reading about another crisis on the front page of the news. Sports was my escape, my therapy for dealing with many terrible things that go on in the world.

So it may not be an answer for everyone, but sports is my escape. It is one of my passions. It is one of my favorite things to talk about. It isn't my reason for existence by any means, but it makes the world I see a little more bearable. There are still many other things I am passionate about: faith, music, ideas, the possibility of a fufilled future. Still, if I ever have the privilege of being a dad, one thing I look forward to the most is passing on my love for sports to my kids. I can't wait to teach my son how to dribble a basketball, or teach my daughter about football (her knowledge will intimidate most of the boys). I spent this last weekend in vegas with my dad, and it already is one of cherished memories, along with the many BYU games which I have gone to over the years with my old man. My old man instilled in me a deep love for BYU, and I hope to make him proud by passing that love on to my children. I hope to show my children all the good things in this world with sports just being one of the many.

So to those who love sports, who watch sportscenter around the clock, who rejoice with their team when they win and lament when their team loses, I understand your joy and suffering. Trust me, the first half of the BYU football season was torture for me (just goes to show that a two quaterback system never works, EVER! It's ok Bronco, at least you admitted to the mistake. You still have my confidence). And to those who don't, I hope you can at least appreciate what sports mean to people like me. So when the game comes on, let us escape the world for a couple hours while we get caught up in the possibilities of championships and greatness. And when we lose, please be understanding.

Here is to hope... and BYU making a deep run in the tournament.

Watching the Jimmer Show,

A Postcard from the lost (but hopeful BYU fan)

"Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game."-Michael Jordan

Don't know when but a day is gonna come...

"A message read on the bathroom wall says 'I don't feel at all like i thought' " - Modest Mouse

It rained today, at least it wasn't snow... the finish line is close I can feel it. I wish I could rush time, or hibernate till early April. This winter feels like it has lasted years. I always come out of winter feeling aged, jaded, tired... This winter has been especially cold. I have fought the darkness and the light is starting to emerge. Then again... I am still fighting off the panic. Good things come with time, I just have to give time a chance to do it's work.

Time is pain

Time is healing

Time is patience

Time is frustration

Time will bring me you... eventually

at least I hope

"Well take it easy, tigers in a cage

We're pacing on our pads and waiting

For the time to come in reverie

Our lazy bones ache for our dowry"-Brand New

I spent the night talking to you and it played over like a tape. You just kept talking and still I couldn't be satisfied. I thought about our plans, where we were supposed to go. We had an apartment full of maps. What we needed were journals. I wish there were warnings for these type of things. I wanted to it be everything. I don't know what was more devastating, you leaving me on the street corner or me realizing it didn't matter. I found out I changed. I'm sorry but our paths differ...

"What we invented I am now ending"-Brand New

I think at this time in life... everyone just wants to know that everything will be alright. It's not so much that I need all the answers in front of me or even some of them. I just wish to know everything will be alright. Maybe it is my anxiety, my OCD brain needing to know every little detail of how everything is going to play out. I just want to know everything will play out for the best. However, I realized that the best things in life come in surprise packages. It is the days when you find yourself driving down the highway, having nowhere to go but still trying to escape the world for a few hours. Trying to find yourself on a long stretch of road with only music to talk to... This is where I make my plans. This is is my map, my map of uncertainty...

"On the back of a motorbike, with your arms outstretched trying to take flight, leaving everything behind. But even at our swiftest speeds, we couldn't break from the concrete, from the city where we still reside..."-Death Cab for Cutie

The answers I wish:

My home

her

where should i be

the traps

the job

the location

you...

The answer i know:

I know nothing...

"The future's got me worried such awful thoughts. My heads a carousel of pictures, the spinning never stops."-Bright Eyes

The truth is the future terrifies everyone... I am nothing unique. I have just written something that has been penned to paper a thousand times before. Add this to the list of thousands...

You will be ok...,

A Postcard from the lost

"Let the wind blow us to wherever it says we are supposed to go"-Joshua Radin