I live in a place that I do not interact with in any kind of significant way, and I have a hard time believing I’m the only one. My apartment is a space for me to live but it is certainly not home. I feel more at home in the many places I keep toothbrushes. How many more of us are there that, like me, also commute to their social lives. I make the drive every Sunday or Monday, and have for a long while now, either out of Dallas or Denton, where I spend my weekends. I join the gridlock caravan of the work-a-days only once a week and I wonder if the rest of this calvalcade of half-dead and half-asleep appreciate this weekly pilgrimage. They sip they’re coffee and curse the traffic, and sometime I do too, but I also know that this is living. A direct and very concrete consequence of the choices I have made. This, my weekly commute back to work in a town that, knows nothing about and holds nothing for me. Lewisville is too far to drive home to after an extended stay at the bars but is close to work and half way between my normal destinations. So I keep my change of clothes in the back of my car and a toothbrush where ever I can. My toothbrush, like the flag of some foreign invader in a bathroom proclaims that “Justin sleeps here some nights, and is a fan of personal hygiene” (I have quite a few out there, you might check the cup by your sink). I often wonder if this kind of existence is typical of others lives, or if I’m part of a minority of expatriates, forced by their professional responsibilities to live in a place that feels like exile. A displaced population longing to return to a place that feels like home. None of this is to say I am an unhappy person, the truth is, I am. It would just be a lot more convenient if my professional and personal lives could exist in the same locale.

I am a person that enjoys music. For me no matter what is going on in my life, there’s always a song about it (I take comfort in that fact). And for some reason the sad songs always do it best. Music is a huge part of who we are personally and culturally (except for those who really don’t get in to music, and there’s just no hope for them). Music taste is a strange animal as well. Recently I’ve noticed that I can track my musical tastes back through not only my friends but my family as well. My mother always said “you always like the ones that sing your life,” I got The Beatles (pop tracks with something to say), James Taylor (really pretty songs about being normal), and Jimmy Buffett (all is not lost, we’re flawed but we’re happy stuff) from her and her twin sister. My folk influence came from my Mom and my aunt, the reason I like stuff like Iron and Wine, John Vanderslice, and Sun Kil Moon probably has nothing to do with the fact that I’ve heard “Tea for the Tillerman” from beginning to end over a hundred times. My Grandmother gave me country (not that new-fangled stuff they try to pass off as country these days, real songs, about hard living). Some of mine and her favorites were always; Patsy Cline (why do I love you again, love songs), Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash (epic songs about damaged people, not unlike themselves). The other thing I got from my grandmother was the Crooners (sure none of them wrote their own stuff but they’re renditions were always the best). Frank Sinatra (the chairman of the board, he made you love the girl he was singing about as much as he did), Nat King Cole (does it get any better that “unforgettable”?), and Ray Price (Another great voice from that period of our musical heritage). This love of old “true” country is what brought me into the arms of bands like Bright Eyes, Jenny Lewis, and Band of Horses, and my entire addiction to sad songs in general. My Uncle bestowed on me the rock. I’ve always been a rock and roll kid but I truly learned the way of rock from this guy. Metallica (think black album, and “master of puppets” those guys are totally guilty of laterday douchebagery, I know, but at one point they rocked your face off), The Rolling Stones (another band guilty of some douchebagery as of late but a great band in their day), and of course Jimmy Hendrix (the space rock and post rock bands I listen to today owe their careers of the voodoo Jimmy wielded). To this I owe my taste for things like Reggie and the Full Effect, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and Modest Mouse (bands that just plain rock). My other aunt and uncle were always into new wave, having grown up in the 80’s. from them I aquired a taste for The Talking Heads, and Devo (silly sounding songs with strong social commentary layers), and They Might Be Giants (a band that may very well need to be credited with the indie music scene, and more silly songs that really have a deeper meaning) and the Clash (I still have my aunts copy of Combat Rock on vinyl and listen to it regularly). The influence of new wave and punk got me into bands like The Vandals, Vampire Weekend, and The Flaming Lips. From this foundation I have built, what I believe to be a very well-rounded taste for music. It’s funny how one can trace taste through not only themselves but through those around them. So now you know more about who I am. and here are my top 5 albums right now. comment with yours…or be destroyed…cake or death.

1. Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary

2. The Arcade fire - Neon Bible

3. Cold War Kids - Robbers and Cowards

4. Two Gallants - Two Gallants

5. The National - Boxer

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about pink Hummers…Yes…They paint them pink now…Paris Hilton pink. This is the bottom line for me with these things. Is there a more pretentious, self-involved vehicle on the road right now (I think the Escalade takes a close 2nd). What you’re saying about yourself when you decide to buy and operate a Hummer is thus. “I have no regard for the environment and I don’t have to care that I get 7 miles to the gallon because I’m special”. Now add to that equation the fact that you’ve painted a “look at me I’m really cool and special” car bright pink…well…my friend you must be really important and cool and cool and important. Hummers really are an obscene waste of resources, not only because of the abysmal gas mileage but also the resources that it takes to manufacture these monstrosities. Bam Margera has one because he’s an idiot, everyone else should know better. Why do I see Hummers parked in front of my local Whole Foods market…that just seems to be a conflict of interests. Does anyone ever wonder about vanity plates? Some of them are very straight forward THE-NO1, IMA-JRK, etc. Others are really cryptic I saw one this morning that said DBT-LSS. What does that mean? Do you not have any doubts? If so, about what? Why put an inside joke on your license plate? I don’t have the answers to these questions…I just ask them.

There has been a lot of talk swirling around the blogs lately (or maybe I’m just catching up with it now) about online dating sites and love in general. Or maybe I’ve just noticed it more lately. As human beings we all just want to find that one relationship that defines us. Where everything is easy and there’s no work involved because you’re just both so relieved to have one another. The kind of relationship that Salt and Pepper have (the spices not the 80’s supergroup). Salt and Pepper are your two friends that won’t stop making kissy faces at each other even though you’ve told them to stop it and that it makes you uncomfortable. They’ve been together for years but they still call each other by their pet names and say things like “no, you’re the greatest”. You never (ok, so I don’t want to say never because of the internet blog grammar Illuminati) but you seldom ever find one and not the other. You would never see a table with just salt and no pepper and you would never find “tubular” salt packets without the mini-packets of pepper close by. They never leave each others side. We’ve all have (or have had) friends like this. I guess when we become

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I was thinking about the internet dating schemes that have seemed to become so popular these days with 8 million kinds of compatibility and so on and so forth.Match.com, Eharmony.com, and I got to thinking. I believe that the match.coms and the eharmony.coms of the world could pose a much more sinister threat and be much more corrosive to society as a whole. Online dating sites may not even be the whole problem. social networks (Myspace, Facebook), MMORPG’s (Everquest, World of Warcraft). Do all of these things trivialize the benefit of real face to face interaction? I mean for all the good that they do and I have heard of people finding real happiness with another human being on the internet, they kind of take the guess work out of what we call “romance”. They are the fast food of the dating world, and could they do to human interaction what

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Sometimes I wonder what everyone else is thinking about. What is the average ammount of thought that people put into their everyday lives? If you’re anything like me, I think all the time, about really random things too. I wonder if stupid people know that their stupid. Why do people who can’t sing always think they can, and people who can sing always think they can’t? How does stupid shit get on TV? You would think someone somewhere would have put their hand up and addressed the pink elephant in the room. “Yes, Bob, you had a question,” “Just what kind of brain damage does everyone here have? I don’t think putting Jim Belushi in another sitcom where he plays a douchebag is going to help our ratings”. Sadly honesty has become a lost art here in America.