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The 2007 Culture Awards December 11, 2007
Brought to you by the New York Times.
Opinions on the most culturally influencial people, events, entertainment, and other junk of 2007.
Check it out at: http://nymag.com/arts/cultureawards/2007/main/
Brands Benefit when Worldly-Cultured November 28, 2007
The Cool Hunter illustrates the point I was attempting to make in my previous post about The Worldly-Inclined….
“The Cool Hunter is an Internet-based hub for the best and coolest of everything. Created and engineered for today’s demanding and discerning pop-culture audience – highly invested in stylistic and cultural trends.
Global in scope, The Cool Hunter is a budding brand which aggregates all that is sought after in the worlds of urban living, design, fashion, music and pop culture. It stays relevant by staying ahead of the shifts in taste, style and the fascinations of its audience. The essence of the Cool Hunter is the ethos of ‘global information channeling’ that is not regionally specific, but rather based on worldwide relevance. In a society obsessed with the shiny and new, The Cool Hunter has become the reference point of choice for the latest in what’s hot tomorrow.
The Cool Hunter receives over 510,000 unique visitors per month (over 1.8 million page views) from readers all over the globe. (60% are from the USA). The unique subscriber base reaches out to thousands of subscribers each week by way of the ever popular Cool Hunter Newsletter. “
Japanese art influences Rap & Designer Purses November 28, 2007
It seems the more internationally cultured you/your brand/your personal life the more intriguing people find you to be. The worldly view is one of elite status and no matter if you’re an Artist, Rapper, Designer, or Furniture Store the more you incorporate worldly cultures the better off you will be.
Takashi Murakami is the leader of the Superflat art movement, a movement that introduced the Japanese art world to the Western world.
Takashi is currently best known for his design of Kanye West’s, Graduation album cover (above).
But he first blew up the Western-scene a few years ago for his colorful interpretation of Louis Vitton’s traditional brown logo.
View below.
Dumpster Diving November 4, 2007
Did you ever think you could find a working TV, a sofa, beautiful flowers for your doorstep, and gorceries for Friday night dinner… in your neighbor’s garbage?
Probably not! But an entire society of (let’s say) resourceful individuals with various objectives participate in the world of dumpster diving. That’s right, they dig through other people’s garbage to sustain.
And no, I don’t mean homeless or even poor people. Some may be, but some are VP’s of companies, come from wealthy families, and most work.
I know you’re likely disgusted or telling yourself, “I’d never…” but don’t be so sure. Hey, you never know what treasures you could find in what someone else considers trash. Weekly, grocery stores all across the country dispose of edible vegetables and bread just because it is dated for that week.
Again, you might be saying, “Of course, we can’t eat expired food!” But what is expired veggies?? Don’t you in your very own home only dispose of veggies when they get molded or too soft? The vegetables I’m talking about aren’t anywhere near that. They are good.
Yup.
Here you’ll see me with pretty flowers and pots I got out of someone’s trash. Also is a photo of my friend Dele with a shelving unit we found with the day’s trash. I plan to make that unit a hanging photo display and places the photos on top of it. 
On a deeper level, there’s something to said about:
1.) How much we consume.
2.) How much we waste.
3.) And how unnecessary neither really is.
Visit: http://anothertreasure.blogspot.com to learn more about the breavity of The World of Dumpster Diving.
Tarheel Mania October 30, 2007
Labor Day weekend, the step-father of my husband’s business partner invited us down to Chapel Hill, NC for a weekend of UNC football and deep sea fishing. UNC was going to be playing my husband’s alma mater, JMU.
I’ve been to college basketball games, and many highschool basketball and football games, but never college football. My alma mater didn’t have a football team –only a division one basketball team. I expected it to be a laid back experience. JMU and UNC hadn’t done very well in football in the past few years. Both teams had won championships previously but in the past few years struggled to get a solid team together.
Well, as we drove to campus the day of the game, the closer and closer we got the more and more carolina blue. Once within a few blocks of campus the swarm of carolina blue was so thick I began to feel very out of place. The blue was on the streets, in the signs, on the fire trucks, really EVERYWHERE.
I was in shock about how serious this town was about their university. And strangely enough I felt something even more shocking creep upon me… I liked the fanaticism. It’s human nature for us to bond together for the promotion of one purpose.
Just a thought:
If some 60,000 people can rally together for football (don’t get me wrong I love it as much as the next), fight for their country, blog, …. imagine what 60,000 people rallied together for a higher achievement can do. Say, clean up dirty neighborhoods so little boys and girls don’t have to play in playgrounds filled with garbage.
PodTech:Pandora bringing Internet Radio to Cell Phones October 29, 2007
I’m a huge fan of radio! Pandora I also enjoy. Listen to CTO of Pandora, Tom Conrad, talk about how Pandora plans to go mobile. I am very excited, like when radio could be carried down the block on a dude’s shoulder.
Deep Sea Fishing October 22, 2007
Reminisce
When I was a child my grandparents would rent a cabin in Spotsylvania, VA every summer. My sister and I and a bunch of cousins, aunts & uncles would stay at the cabin for a week.
The cabin sat on a lake. This lake was perfect for canon balls and fishing.
My grandfather, whom hails from Louisville, KY loved to go there and get out of the city, and cast a fishing rod. And I would be there right along him anxious to feel that rod tug. I always caught turtles.
New Bern, North Carolina
My husband and I were invited to North Carolina by our friend’s step father for a weekend of UNC football, joy ridin’ in the Maserati, and deep sea fishing. How could we resist?
I”ll talk about the Tarheels Club and the Maserati Elite in another blog entry. Deep Sea fishing will be the spotlight here.
Off the coast of NC everyone fishes. There were at least 30 other boats out on that gorgeous Sunday afternoon in the Atlantic. And here we were three “city slickers” novices.
Our Captain, Ed and first-mate, Matt had been fishing since they could walk. Ed’s biggest catch was a 400 lbs and Matt’s was about 150lbs. Now when catching fish the size of lineman it takes hours to wrestle the beast until it’s just too tired to fight anymore.
But on this Sunday afternoon we’d only be catching 5lb Spanish Mackrel. After five hours at sea it was time to head to shore for filleting. First-mate Matt sent us home with a 28lbs bag of this salty fish. In total we probably caught about 40 lbs of Mackrel but many had to be thrown back because they were under weight. The federal government protects young fishy with a mandate that requires fish to be a certain length in order for fisherman to keep them.
I thought our Captain and first-mate were fascinating. They went out on that boat just about everyday. When Matt wasn’t on the boat he was in school to become a marine biologist. He just loved the ocean… loved wild life. He didn’t just fish either, he hunted and was a camper. Matt told me that most on the Coast who fished, really just love the pursuit of a instinctual being. Man Vs. Wild. Interesting.
[Those are wild horse living on a small island.]
The Kingdom September 25, 2007
[Excerpt taken from the Summer of 2006]
Religion is a Cultural Marker
I was born into a Roman Catholic family. I went through confession, communion, praying the rosary, sunday school, visiting nuns, and my patron saint was Saint Mary of Guadelupe. Being a spiritually inclined child, I participated in Catholic traditions as much as I could. But I didn’t really understand.
The one question that always lingered was “why?”
Why: the rosary? confession? praying to Mary? Jesus is God and God is God?
At 14 I took my questions to the priests. Their answers didn’t come from the bible and they left me even more confused. I lost so much hope and faith.
By the time I went to college my need for spiritual food was being satisfied with yoga, constant prayer, and trying to live by the Golden Rule. I had lost faith in the Catholic church. But why should I have faith in the Church? I should have faith in God, right? I tried so many times to find God in the church… I looked for him in the priests, in the walls, in the roof, in the music, in the rosary. Empty.
College Years
I tried church during college and couldn’t stick with it. Whether it was me or the church, is debateable. But I know this to be true; between all of the trips, confession, sermons, 30 minutes long or 2 hours long, I was still completely devoid of a relationship with God.
My senior year in college I had a boyfriend who was like me in that he was searching for the truth about God. He and I had dated previously (unsuccessfully) and this time around he was doing something very different then the last time. He was studying the bible with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Once a week he would go to Bruce’s house and they would study the bible together. Interestingly, he never asked me to go with him nor did he realy tell me anything about this bible study, or these Watchtower magazines I’d see around.
One day I decided I wanted to know what was going on so I went with him to Bruce’s house for his bible study. In a ten minute conversation with Bruce I learned everything I needed to know about God and living a happy life was right there in the bible.
Interesting. No church, priest, pastor, or anyone had shown me God’s thoughts in the bible. But Jehovah’s Witnesses… who were they? Of course I had heard of them but I never really knew any. I had heard from my mom that my grandmother in Montreal went to a kingdom hall because Jehovah’s Witnesses would pick her up. But that was as close as I had ever come to an encounter.
Yeah, I’m talking about them as if they are aliens. Ha. The more I was around Bruce and his wife and two boys, the more I wondered could they be earthly? They were so happy, so full. They lived in a small, old two bedroom house. This house seemed so tiny to me but inside of it was the biggest love I had ever seen or experienced. These people didn’t even know me but they always showed me genuine love. –They’ve got to be aliens.
I asked more questions, and got more answers from the bible. I even went to one of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ weekly meetings with my boyfriend. I met more people like Bruce and his wife Nikki. There was more love like the love inside that tiny little two bedroom house. –More aliens.
I had learned in a Religion Class that agape was unconditional principally based love. The kind of love that God has and Christians strived to attain. Every time I was around the Witnesses I thought of what I had learned in this class about agape. I had never seen agape before now.
Even more striking to me was that everything done was based on the bible. I had never thought about taking the bible literally. And I realized I hadn’t ever been pointed in the direction of the bible by my church leader. I mean they talked about what Jesus did and how God felt but never showed me anything.
For example, Psalm 83:18, “That people may know that you, whose name is Jehovah, You alone are the Most High over all the earth.”
God has a name, and it is Jehovah. Yes, of course, I had heard that before –that Jehovah is God’s name. But I had never knew it was in the scriptures or what Jehovah truly meant. I had never heard a priest, pastor, or anyone use it before now.
Looking from the outside, Jehovah’s Witnesses are very kind, seemingly balanced, and loving. All the things we as a society find desireable in an individual. But why didn’t my father like the idea of me mixing with them?
The more I learned about the Witnesses’ organization the more I wanted to be around them. Everything was bible based. I had spent the last 10 years trying to find answers to questions about God and this was the first time anyone had pointed out the answer in the bible.
I was developing a relationship with God –Jehovah. The emptiness was disappearing; so were the questions. Undoubtably, God is with these people. He has to be. I’ve seen it from the outside. If you get close enough and if you believe in the bible –shoot, even if you don’t believe in the bible– you will see God’s spirit with these people.
Thinking about the little I had learned about the Witnesses…
1.) They always spoke God’s name –Jehovah.
2.) They lived according to the bible, seriously, majority of holidays stem from pagan traditions. Pagans were anti-Jesus and God, the distinctly told the Israelites and Christians to completely turn away from anything rooted in Paganism or spiritistic practices.
3 .) Despite opposition from millions of people, governments, and high ranking officials, they STILL go out and knock on folks doors! And they are successful!
I don’t think I could ever go knocking on people’s doors talking about a kingdom. Everyone hates that so I thought, but apparently not everyone hate’s it.
I’d never seen a religion like this one. They are all things encouraged in the bible and they reject all things that God and Jesus reject in the bible. Yet they don’t seem to be religious zealots, they seem to be very reasonable. They reason from the scriptures, which I’m sure most people don’t really like.
And the majority of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ I have met were not born into this religion, they left their previous religion. They are former Catholics, Prostestants, Jews, etc. and many of them were devout, avid participators; some even leaders in their churchs. Now they were all ministers, one of Jehovah’s Witness. That in itself is amazing, because religion is one of those cultural markers that most of us are born into and most of us never leave.
They spread a message of true love and they live by it.
[End of Excerpt]
—————————————————————————————————–
Today, my then boyfriend is my husband and our little tiny house is filled with the kind of love that comes from having a relationship with God –Jehovah.
We both zealously knock on doors!
If you are a person interested in knowing; give one a chance the next time they knock on your door.
Today we will care about Blogging July 16, 2007
The internet is fun and interesting, useful and very efficient but it requires you to sit down and be still. Sometimes you have to sit down and be still for hours at a time. For instance I had to sit down and be still to check my email, realize I really do have to maintain a blog for school, and then create one and then write in it!
It has taken me about an hour to do all this –to sit and be still. I couldn’t really talk to anyone, make a phone call, go get something to eat or play with the dog. Because that would have turned the hour into many more hours of –sitting and being still.
I don’t really care about the internet the world was probably doing a little bit better before it. People talked face-to-face more often.
I care even less about blogging. To sit and type a bunch of stuff instead of talking to someone… to sit and be still… for hours?
So why should I care?
(Besides the fact that if I don’t I won’t start off my cultural exploration class very well.)
