THE MEANDERWALKER

I haven’t found much to write about lately… there’s way to much going on in the world for me to keep up with and there wasn’t anything great to parody on SNL this past week — although I did love “Maaaarble Columns.”

But in light of recent events, as They say, (aka: endless amounts of consecutive tragedies)… I love the media. I spend hours each day reading the news, magazine articles, and blogs. I like knowing every little detail about junk like the VT investigation… But I think it’s a shame that even my just-turned 6 year-old cousin, Francesca, can’t avoid knowing it all, too. Since she’s become a good reader these days, it’s been impossible for her not to read or watch stuff in the news. But unlike most of us adult-types, she decided to write a letter to President Bush to tell him what she thinks of recent things. It makes me proud:

Letter copy: “Dear President Bush, I don’t think that we should have guns, only our soldiers and police. Too many people get hurt. It makes me sad. From, Francesca (NYC).“

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Other (Less Important) Things That’ve Distracted Me So Far Today:

1.) First of all, why didn’t I know about this happening?! A TEXT MESSAGE BEE? And second, even I think this is ridiculous(ly awesome). A few things they don’t touch on in the article, though, is whether or not there were restrictions on the type of cell phones the contestants could use. Did they bring their own? Could they use a sidekick or does that offer an unfair advantage over those who have that crappy LG phone that’s always buy-one-get-one-free? I feel like I could text more quickly than a lot of people just using my 2005 Motorolla crap-phone… as long as everyone had to disable their T9.

Either way, I think it’s only appropriate that a 13 year-old beat out a bunch of 20-something law students and junk.. these kids are young, they were likely born with a cell phone in hand, their brains (and thumbs) are more nimble, seasoned button-pushers. Didn’t we learn anything from that Cingular commercial?

Some sentences worth extracting and putting in quote blocks:

 

Contestants had to stand with their hands behind their backs until a bell sounded and a message appeared on an overhead screen. The winner was judged on whoever’s message — checked for exact punctuation — reached the judges first..

..So dedicated is she to the art of the text message that Tirosh apparently unwittingly uses abbreviations such as BTW (by the way), TTYL (talk to you later) and LOL (laughing out loud) in her normal speech…

…Pozgar said she trained by sending on average 8,000 text messages a month to her friends — an astonishing rate of one every five and a half minutes. She pays 10 dollars a month for an unlimited text package on her cell phone.

OMGZ! BTW, I 7073S PWN U. LOLZ0R! KTHXBI! =p

2.) I’d venture to say that the worst/best/most useless thing in the world is a basic-function calculator that is wrapped like chocolate, looks like chocolate, and even smells like chocolate… but isn’t, in fact, chocolate.

Receiving the Choc-U-later as a gift would be just as awesome as the Coca-Cola pens my brother and I got from our aunt and uncle three Christmases in a row. What a delightful waste of time and space! Thanks again, Japan!

3.) I know what I’m doing tonight. No, seriously. My roommate has a lot of construction paper.

4.) Wait, people who play rock music eat? I think I’m going to make Grizzly Bear their favourite food and bring it to them when I see them. That’s the point of this book, right?

It’s not?

5.) Okay, so that Broadway musical of the Goonies probably won’t happen… but at least XANADU the Broadway musical is. And the best part is that on their website you can “Share Your Xanadu” and send in tube videos of Xanadu performances and other junk, which they’ll then put on the website.

I think I like where pop culture is going these days… The Decemberists, Modest Mouse, Xui Xui, Bjork.. I hope that in time bands, musicians, movies, television shows, any products, etc no longer make their own promotional materials and begin to leave it 100% up to their audiences and the internet.

This one is by far my favourite:

XANADU (v.) To express oneself through the arts with abandon.

Yep, I think they got it.