connecting*the*dots

Artist: Lou Reed
Song: I’ll Be Your Mirror

==========

I’ll be your mirror,
Reflect what you are
In case you don’t know.
I’ll be the wind,
The rain and the sunset,
The light on your door
To show that you’re home.

When you think the night has seen your mind,
That inside you’re twisted and unkind,
Let me stand to show that you are blind.
Please put down your hands ’cause I see you.

I find it hard
To believe you don’t know
The beauty you are,
But if you don’t
Let me be your eyes,
The hand to your darkness
So you won’t be afraid.

When you think the night has seen your mind,
That inside you’re twisted and unkind,
Let me stand to show that you are blind.
Please put down your hands ’cause I see you.

I’ll be your mirror
Reflect what you are
I’ll be your mirror
Reflect what you are
I’ll be your mirror
Reflect what you are
I’ll be your mirror
Reflect what you are
I’ll be your mirror
Reflect what you are

Until this past July, I had never lived in a house with a working garage.

As a kid, my parents parked in the driveway and as an adult, the majority of my renting years were in urban environments paying for a spot. So all those tool commercials and images of garage mayhem over the years pretty much escaped me.

But I’m a perceptive person; I get how the image of a garage is one tie of many to homogeneous normalcy. So, over the years, I’ve taken notes while experiencing — first-hand — what goes down inside the signifier of friends and relatives suburban existence.

Because, quite honestly, I’d be nothing if I weren’t a contributing part of the whole.

An example of my apperception: My Uncle Bob attaches a tennis ball to a string and dangles it down from the ceiling of his garage for his windshield to touch, marking exactly how deep his car can be parked without blocking the door to the house.

Ingenious, right?

Well, with my recent venture into home ownership, I think my car stopper has his version beat, hands down.

I’m sure those that know me can picture the grin plastered onto my face each time I maneuver my truck in and out of the garage.

To those that don’t know me, well, it’s a simple case of me hating the very concept of corporate management — either being in the position or reporting into the hierarchy.

Actually, it’s not that simple.

I have no issues working with corporate management from a consulting perspective; I can work with anyone and their internal politics as long as my rate is being paid and I have no long-term skin in their games.

But from within the system of corporate management itself? Let’s just say that my years within the machine taught me a hell of a lot about real world politics… and in ways that I regret and despise today.

Corporate employment provides you with more than a dress code at the job; it encourages you develop multiple personalities — or masks — in order to encourage and coax ridiculously high degrees of throughput from your employees, all the while dealing with similar two-faced assholes as yourself who are attempting to climb their own corporate ladders.

I’m now 18 months free of that game and I couldn’t be happier.

Especially when I park my car.

The Wikipedia page for Coon Cheese is even better.

(sent to me by Odannyboy in Australia)

I moved connecting*the*dots over to Sue Polinsky’s TechTriad servers a few months back because Dreamhost was chugging and crashing all over the place.

Not a bad decision, eh?

(Artist: HelloBard, Oslo, Norway)

If anyone deserves a coloring book that illustrates their colorful quotes, it’s Pat Robertson.

And if 56 artist’s perspectives of Pat Robertson’s most discusting utterances isn’t enough for you, be sure to pick up David Kuo’s Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction — a well reviewed read about the Bush administration’s attempt to use Christianity for purely political ends.

Kuo’s two-part 60 Minutes interview can be found here and here.

(coloring book via Neatorama)

Courtesy the Tillman Family

TruthDig
After Pat’s Birthday
by Kevin Tillman

[…]

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow� was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman,
Kevin Tillman

The day that I heard Pat Tillman left the NFL to serve our country, I sat back and shook my head in amazement.

The day that I heard Pat Tillman was killed in action, I got off my ass, walked down the street and became a Big Brother.

The day after Pat Tillman’s birthday, I’ll be doing my part.

(originally uploaded by BombDog)

Dig the orange TV in the background.