New Blog (pt. 2)

Hi friends! I've started a new dedicated yoga blog today, it's at www.jaifive.blogspot.com I'm going to start that one out by simply re-posting the majority of my yoga related posts from here onto there. As I start to create new material I'll make sure to crosspost it here as well, I just wanted something that was a little more focused on the mechanics of yoga and playlists without the personal stuff and weirdness that I welcome here.

Jai!

Article

I've been asked to guest blog an article for another site and I've been going through more drafts and not quite getting the right tone. I'm going to spend the next one hour focused on this task and then go out to get groceries. Either I'll have a good article by then or I should at least have a solid state start. Wish me luck!

200th Post! (a.k.a. 100 Post Check In Pt. 2)

OK, so it took me about 3 1/2 months to do my first 100 posts to this blog and it's taken a year and seven months to do the next 100 posts so I think it's safe to say that momentum has slowed down a little bit! Once I got plugged into Facebook, I slowed down here and also once I got my managing at CorePower job I also slowed down. I've had a great time managing CPY, it's something that I genuinely believe in and it's the first time in my life where my primary passion is also my job. Before I'd always have a "This isn't my real thing, my real thing is (music, writing, yoga, fill in the blank)" attitude. As a result of marrying passion to work, my work takes up a lot of my time! As a result of that, when I come home I'm less likely to blog about yoga playlists! It's also very important for me to remain professional as a result of the roll I play and so I don't want the blog to give anyone an inappropriate peak behind the curtain.

So, the old blog went into stasis from Oct 08 to Aug 09. Since it's come back I've used it first as a place to post music videos I like and more recently as a place to make quiet asides and post pictures of my bunny rabbit and my wife! God only knows where I'll move with it next. Pretty sure I'll always be posting music videos here but I'm not sure how it will change. When I move to CA it may very well become more life update-y just for the sake of friends in MPLS, although Facebook will also serve that purpose. Perhaps, as when I move to CA I won't be managing right away, I'll get back into the whole Yoga Playlist thing.

I've got to say that when I started this blog almost two years ago I wouldn't have been able to predict where I would be in two years time. Not just in having a job that I genuinely love but also to the degree in which I am content with life. Not nearly as much pushing and wanting to be somewhere/something/someone else. It's a good little life! =)

My Old Time Radio and Pulp Magazine Reviews

I thought I'd pop by and let all y'all know that I've started a sister blog to this one where I review Old Time Radio Drama, Modern Audio Fiction and Pulps. It's at www.goldenmasks.blogspot.com Check it out my friends and leave some comments for fun! For those of you who have never learned the joys of old time radio, it's just about my favorite form of entertainment, and tons and tons of it are available for free download as podcasts on iTunes. Now that it's Halloween time, download some classic horror thrills!

My plan is to get at least 10 reviews posted a month. They are not professional level reviews, they're done for the entertainment of myself and my readers. I do hope to get better and better at reviewing but at the end of the day I'd rather get more reviews out and have them be less than perfect rather than a very few perfect reviews.

PS: Click on the ads to side on the Golden Masks blog and help make me big bucks! I'm up to 6 cents so far, financial independence cannot be far behind! ;)

Slight site re-design

I've slightly redesigned this blog because I think the huge Youtube videos look so much better. Now the blog archives links section comes after the 7 current posts. Enjoy the new look! I considered a new color scheme too but nothing looked quite as right to me as the current soft tones.

100th Post!

Here it is: another landmark in the thrill-packed journey that is www.mrmississippi.blogspot.com - the 100th post! It's taken about two and a half months to get here. That comes to more than a post a day average, which ain't bad.

Honestly, I didn't expect that I'd get into this as much as I have. Going into it, I'd assumed that I would have to write primarily about myself - past, present and future. Although that can be fun in small doses, I couldn't envision myself being quite to self-absorbed to manage daily doses.

I'm the kind of guy who doesn't have a lot of drama in his life, and I have no desire for that to change. When any drama does arise I like myself and my friends too much to want to air dirty laundry. So that cut out another chunk of material to blog about.

What I didn't realize back then was that Youtube and blogging are like chocolate and peanut butter. Youtube really lets you create your very own, very small scale TV station online and it also fills in those awkward gaps when you don't have anything to say. Without Youtube I would have fallen out of the habit of posting when I was either too busy or not in the mood to write anything conceptual.

Now, I've created something of a schedule: yoga playlists on Sunday, Chad Vader on Tuesday and a continuing text series about yoga playlists when I write them. I'd guess that as I go forward I will further schedule the days of the week in order to keep myself and my audience interested.

OK, well there's my 100 post check-in. I suppose I should ought to do one of these every 100 posts. Hey look, it's a new tradition!

PS: Dig the Crazy Tags Kids

I've now updated all old posts to include relevant tags so you can follow various threads of thought or just watch all the videos I've posted. Enjoy this free value-added service that I have provided at no extra cost to you, the valued mrmississipp.blogspot.com reader!

Gotta Say

I'm pretty impressed with myself for sticking with the blog and regularly updating it so often! Hurray! I think a part of me expected that I'd start this up, post 4-5things and then drop out. I think that's what would have happened if I hadn't learned the joy that is uploaded video from Youtube. That's saved me a number of times when I didn't have much to say.

Yesterday I went back and started tagging earlier posts. I think all of Jan is done now and I'm hoping to dig into Dec later on this month. That will make the blog a lot more useful for those of you just interested in following certain lines of thought. I know that what I write is all over the place. That's what makes it fun for me but I realize it might be frustrating to you, dear readers. See how much I care for you! So please keep the comments coming. Comments are what keep me motivated (I'm a simple man really).

In other news, did my first day of the first phase of the cleanse diet yesterday. I missed two snacks near the end of the day and that led to a headache and to me doing what I didn't feel was my best teaching last night (sorry 6:30 people - I'll do better next week!).

Noel helped me prep food last night (basically she did most of it, bless her) so I'm better prepared today. Then by Saturday I go into the second phase where I only eat broth and this Flaxomax style cleansing drink (no, for those who watch Tom Goes into the Mayor's Office, it's not actually Flaxomax but the container is a similar size).

I searched for Flaxamax on youtube and came up blank, so here's another Tom clip in its stead:

Aquarium Life

On living public:

Blogging is an interesting sensation. I've been going a bit deeper the past few days into some of my "weird" philosophies and theories and there's a moment where I think, "Hmm, do I want to put this out in a public place?". After all, anyone can read this. But on reflection I suspect most people have a good portion of odd theories floating around in their heads so I'd rather get mine out so you know who you're dealing with when you deal with me. I've never been a "cards too close to my chest" kind of guy, I guess. Privacy isn't that important to me. Space and time of my own is but people not knowing what I do in that space or time isn't. That's an important differentiation. Also, blogging about the weird shit is the most fun so why stop?

Blog organization:

I have decided that I'm going to start labeling my posts so that readers can more easily gain access to the areas that interest them. Please let me know what I can do to offer better usability.

Music updates:

I don't believe I've mentioned it here yet but I'm working on a new music recording project with Todd from Avenpitch (I used to play keyboards in AP a few years back). We're focusing on doing a few singles a year. I recorded most the vocals for our first cut last night and had a blast! I think they're some of the better vocals I've done and the song's a lot of fun. We'll do touch up vocals next Monday and then I'll take a month off recording to help out with the Nutrition Program at Corepower before we dive into track two. Definitely keep you posted.

That's all I've got.

DND

My Space is a Space of Strangeness

Before this blog I used to write off and on at my Myspace account (www.myspace.com/fadladder) but Myspace leant itself to parody, smart ass strangeness, project promotion, bizarre cut-up writing and little else. When major events hit (Matt Zaun's passing and the 35 bridge) I could write something actually about myself but otherwise it was back to obscure or snide. I'd try to write in my "actual voice" but the format subverted my ability to do that. I wonder if it's all the flashing banners and lights - the put me into a surrealist daze. I still post there but reserve it now fully for promotion and strangeness.

When I started this blog I wondered if I could write something regularly that didn't decend into strangeness. It's been easy enough so far. Maybe the soft blues and tans of the text entry portion of this site relax me into a better writing mind.

Today I had work off. I taught a couple of classes in the morning and then teach one at 7:30 tonight. Otherwise ate lunch with Nick and Brett Smith and then hung out with Nick and played the Wii. Great times. The Wii is a lot of fun when played in groups, though Nick's tennis skills are impressive (he beat me in three out of three sets - damn). I hadn't owned a video game system for awhile and the last one I had (a PS2) I got bored of really fast and sold to a friend. The Wii's great because it has a stack of addicting short games that don't eat up days on end. I can put it down for a week without a problem and then come back to it without any problem* and have a lot of fun with it. I find it neither compulsively addicting nor boring. Good stuff.

All for now. Have a nice Thursday.

DND

*the same cannot be said for comic book message boards, if you followed my entry last month you'll be interested to know that I've gone back repeatedly through the gateway to newsarama.com It's officially an addiction.

Depraved Lust for Fame Fuels Orgy of Verbiage

So, I've gone and got a blog huh... Well, the rent's cheap and there's not a lot of maintenance required, so why not? I've toyed with the idea over at Myspace but that turned into more of a surrealist poetry/comedy blog than a proper "here's what's going on in my life" sort of affair. After reading a lot of hoopala about Diablo Cody (who used to live across the parking lot from me and Noel back in our SLP daze), I got to thinking about the whole blog sensation. Of course I'm five years late to the trend and I'm not a stripper so the glaring spotlight of fame will probably miss me but who needs fame?

Who needs fame? Certainly not the legions of doom who inhabit the stages of run down rock clubs nor, least of all the Myspace cases who've found their fifteen minutes in a virtual Pokemon "collect 'em all" style orgy of friend requests and definitely not me. I’m nothing like those fame obsessed losers who populate “reality” TV shows who’ll do anything to get their face slapped on the boob tube.

Oh well, I'd better come clean - I've absolutely got a vigorous lust for fame. It's been a major motivating factor of my life. It's exciting to watch the constant struggle between how much I want fame and how much I'm willing to give up for it. It's my own personal tug of war match between the lily-white angel perched on my right shoulder and the crimson red 'lil devil on the left.

As I get older and more locked into my comfort it becomes harder to gamble it all but I still make my bids for limelight though they're a lot less "life and death" these days. I have this sneaking suspicion that I'll be happy about the same percentage of time whether or not I have magazine editors wanting to interview me.

So yeah, the fame lust is still there but it doesn't control me. I think that a blog might be a healthy way to have fun with the idea and maybe bleed a little of the juice out of it while I'm at it. Plus I'll get to babble about music I'm listening to, movies I'm watching, yoga flows I'm working on and all that sort of hoo-ha, which is also fun.

That’s enough from me for now. It's great to have you along for the ride!

Be good to each other.

David Not David

First Post!

Hello and welcome to the very first post of my brand new blog - Mr. Mississippi, I'm your host David Not David. Soon these pages will be filled with sparkling entries showing off my wit and wisdom, in the meantime please enjoy the empty space.