How to Lead a Normal Life

  1. Do what everyone else expects of you
  2. Never challenge the status quo
  3. Abandon creativity
  4. Don’t try new things
  5. Live inside the box
  6. Stop learning at high school
  7. Take the easy way
  8. Stay in your comfort zone
  9. Complain about problems
  10. Watch lots of TV
  11. Don’t read anything but magazines
  12. Never leave your home town
  13. Always spend time in the company of others
  14. Refuse help from anyone
  15. Have one sexual partner
  16. Get married asap
  17. Aim to be slightly better than your neighbor

There are lots of other fascinating ways to lead a mediocre life, if you are interested in learning any more please feel free to email 95% of the population for their thoughts and opinions.

For the other 5%, keep doing what your doing and let the rest of the planet know when you change the world

Living extraordinary

Gabriel

| Category: I Am Tired of Trying To Catagorize | Leave a comment

Flamenco Dancing or Line Dancing

Do you dance?

Maybe you are like Scott Hamilton on hardwood and can melt the opposite sex with the mere flick of your feet.

Maybe you suck at dancing so much that the mere sight of your fee ton the dance floor causes toes to curl back in one’s shoes.

Luckily, this post has nothing to do with dancing and everything to do with the nonlinear vs the pragmatic.

In line dancing, you follow a specific set of moves that are perfectly executed and then repeated after a definite period of time. You are always striving to be in perfect harmony with the music, but never deriving from the preconcieved notions of the dance.

Its systematic, routine, and has a specific set goal that you strive for.

What about flamenco dancing?

Flamenco dancing has a baseline for how the dance is performed, but that is where the coordinations end.  The minute a pair of dancers enter the floor, all preconceived notions about the dance are thrown out the window as the pair enter a frenzy of dance moves that move succinctly with the beat of the music.

What type of dancing is more interesting to watch?

Unless you are a computer programmer with a ram stick the size of a baseball bat stuck up your ass, flamenco dancing is the clear winner.

Is it the crazy sequenced outfits? The music reminiscent of a mexican folk singer on a bad acid trip?

That stuff is great, but its the unscripted and non linear nature of the dance that gives it spades over its line dancing counterpart.

Watch people do the same thing over and over, or get knee deep in a unilaterial combination of unscripted dance moves that will make your head spin?

The question is, how do you dance?

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South Park Insights

I have a confession, I love South Park

You know? The TV show that gets all sorts of shit for its foul language, racial injustices, and general air of lewd absurdity.

I revel in stuff like that, because more often than not, those types of shows have a lot more to say than talking about how Sarah Jessica Parker looks like a horse headed transvestite.

While the show is certainly not PG and takes its time to make fun of everyone, it does pass along some great moral points at the end of each episode. Some of the ideas are pretty corny and make one’s eyes do a 360 in their head, but others really are deep and insightful enough to be featured on a banana hands Anthony Robbins conference.

One such example took place during an episode when the group of kids went on a field trip to one of those god awful reenactment towns, the ones where everyone dresses up and refuses to break out of character unless they are out back by the butter churner getting high.

At a certain point during the episode Cartman (the fat and notoriously racist one) and his inadvertent partner in crime, Butters (a naiveté good kid) ditch the lame camp and head to a local arcade.

After Butters starts complaining about them getting caught and how they should go back to the camp, Cartman makes a side point that literally caused me to hit pause on my computer.

Cartman: Life goes by pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once and a while and do whatever you want all the time, you can miss it.

If you know anything about me and my site then you know that I practically live my life vicariously through this statement.

The selfish lifestyle is essential in order to maintain ones insanity. Sure its fun and games meshing with other people and their ideas (read: marriage, relationships, friends, family, etc) but if you constantly find yourself on the tail end of other people’s desires and feelings you could find yourself in the middle of a jungle oasis, surrounded by lush white sand beaches and still want to kill yourself.

Taking time to enjoy the things that you want, when you want them, is a sure fire way to make your life that much more worthy of having a movie crafted over it.

So, say what you want about the racist bigotry that occurs in South Park, but its writing examples like this and the fact that they poke fun at every racial, religious, and political group on the planet that will keep this crazy sob watching season after season.

Keep up the great work Cartman

Gabriel

| Category: Motivation | Leave a comment

Get Your Hands Dirty

dirty hands means hard word

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I was a night club manager of a prestigious nightclub.

During the course of that career pathway there were many moments when we would be down to the wire of hosting an event and trying to setup for the evening’s festivities when all that stood between us and success was grunt labor.

Tables needed to be taken down, posters hung, furniture moved, floor décor repositioned, basically a excruciating amount of moving and lifting that could only be summed up as a moving company on steroids.

The other managers on premise barked orders around to their perspective subordinates and watched as they scrambled and often failed to achieve simple acts of labor and time.

I took the less traveled road

I took off my suit jacket, tie, cufflinks, and all other unnecessary attire like a Persian warrior and told my team that we were going to attack these tasks like a wrecking ball.

Every time it came down to those final fleeting moments that would separate victory from defeat, I would step up to the plate with my team and make shit happen.

Many times we can find ourselves in situations in life where we might be forced to get our hands dirty.

It doesn’t matter if it’s “not your job” or if it would be easier to get the neighborhood kid to do it, part of owning yourself and being an adult is doing hard work that no one else wants to do.

From helping a friend move a massive piano into their studio apartment to moving a bunch of 70s era printers to your car for a donation to good will, these situations come up regularly in our lives, especially in regards to things of great importance to us.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or woman, everyone should be willing to go the extra mile for something that matters.

The question is, do you balk and recite orders like the managers of yore? Or do you step up and make shit happen when everyone else is busy complaining about breaking their nails or some other bullshit excuse.

Complain to me about how you pulled your hamstring moving your friends couch and I might just then offer you an icepack, bitch to me about how you can’t get sweaty before you go out on a Friday night and I might just laugh in your face.

Get dirty

Gabriel

| Category: Action | Leave a comment

The Breaking News Mindset

The Breaking News Mindset

How often do you watch the news?

What are the typical top stories you hear on any given night?

Newscasts will slightly vary from region to a region, but a quick glance at CNN, MSNBC, NYT, Wall Street Journal, etc, will show that the majority of the news is ubiquitous.

Immediate political problems, celebrity gossip, stories of senators have orgies in their apartments; all of these stories hold precedence in the world that is, breaking news.

As a result of this instant gratification news style, a consumer style society, and a plethora of other social and economic stressors, much of the world has developed a mindset that only focuses on the immediate and present.

If something is not staring one in the face, it’s not worth mentioning.

The breaking news mindset is only concerned with what is occurring right now. There is no focus on the long term impact of bigger and more important issues.

This is how most of America demands and expects their news, no one wants to hear about how childhood obesity and poor education systems is going to make our nation a group of fat retards, they would much rather hear floating heads fight about some in topic political issue that will all but forgotten in a few weeks time.

Just like how nearly everyone fails at their New Year’s resolutions, or tries to lose weight, the long term focus is nearly impossible for people to gain any sort of focus on, and as a result, shift their efforts and attention to issues that truly have lasting impact.

Occasionally these issues get plugged because of some breaking development (holy shit, my 7 year old has 20 pounds on me) but as a whole they are lost and forgotten like some far away countries at war.

But what if people demanded coverage of more important issues?

Could you focus on the long term goal of losing weight in order to put down the Snickers bar?

Can you stop buying Costco portions of bottled water to prevent the pending pollutional doom for Earth?

Can you brush your teeth without the faucet on in order to save money on your water bill at the end of the month?

There is nothing wrong with living in the present, taking action, and generally getting shit done, but if your entire life is focused on a marathon of American Idol, chances are that you will not have enough time to start on that new project you have been daydreaming about.

The breaking news mindset not only causes for worthless television and information, but it also warps your  mind to believing that a bag of Doritos in your son’s lunch, a new bracelet from Tiffany’s, and a constant download of political bickering is going to somehow make your life better.

You and both know that you’re wrong though, so do something about it

Take back your mind

Gabriel

| Category: Happiness | One comment
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