First snow of the winter

Taken from my living room.
What to do today?:
-watch football
-see a movie
-go shoot outside
-buy tobacco for my pipe. I have this fantasy of smoking a pipe on my leather couch while reading Russian author

City Uprising

My buddy and Judson Morgan recently collaborated on a video for a non profit called City Uprising. They are conducting an HIV/AIDS test in conjunction with St. Lukes hospital next spring.

The hope is that several hundred college kids will come to NYC and help facilitate the testing. Apparently there is a new form of testing with a mouth swab and the person will see the results in 20 minutes versus 2 months.

Doing this video, at least for me, was an awakening experience. There is so much emphasis placed on Africa and finding a cure, that the idea that things are getting worse here in the States gets lost in the shuffle.

I was reading this article this morning in The Washington Post that stated:

New government estimates of the number of Americans who become infected with the AIDS virus each year are 50 percent higher than previous calculations suggested, sources said yesterday.

For more than a decade, epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have pegged the number of new HIV infections each year at 40,000. They now believe it is between 55,000 and 60,000

The ability to create compelling short form media for non profits with nominal media budgets is a really interesting prospect. I have several friends involved in the non profit sector that have expressed this very need. Hopefully more opportunities like this present themselves in the future.

Odd

The Rothko Chapel

without a noise, without my pride

"all my instincts, they return and the grand facade, so soon will burn
without a noise, without my pride, I reach out from the inside"~ Peter Gabriel

"we are a product of our perception of the environment that we were raised in"~ Tim Keller

"beauty...where mystery can dance with truth"~Matthew Perryman Jones

Not sure how all these dots connect with my sister's right eye, but when I look at this I'm looking at where I have been. That's all I know.

Junky Car Club

So basically these guys have formed a community around driving p.o.s. cars, lemons if you will, in order to give more money away to just social causes. These guys give to Compassion International. Whats that you ask? They sponsor children.

"The Junky Car Club is a car club whose members are learning to live with less so they can give more. We're a bunch of happy drivers who are politely rebelling against consumerism by driving junky cars. We encourage our members to support social justice causes instead of making fat car payments. Junky Car Club members sponsor kids living in poverty through Compassion International and help other great organizations. We believe in environmental stewardship and hanging onto things a little longer." ~Junky Car Club

I think this mind set rocks, buuuuut .....I don't have car. whats a man to do.

• Smaller/cheaper apartment?
• Move out of New York City?
• Don't go out as much?
• Stop buying stuff?
• PB&J?

Seriously though, I think social justice issues are easy to talk about and easy to debate. I think its easy to want to hold people accountable to incredibly high standards and pan them for ignorance/apathy while i just sit on the sidelines thinking about all the "helpful" things that should be done.

Definitely not....Elvis

Ragnar Kjartansson- Folksong

Can't say I get it...at all. I saw him getting ready to perform running and jumping in place like Apollo Creed before he fought Drago. You know what happened after that...

This guy, who's from Iceland, plays the some chorus, over and over again for 6 hours straight while dressed like a cross between Elvis, Brian Setzer and Marty McFly (circa Johnny B Goode not The Pinheads).

Only in New York.

Carpe Diem

It is on! I have an iPhone and now there is no excuse. "Yes, I love
technology. Always and forever." $12 to whoever nails that one.... I win.
I'm the big winner!!!.... I am my readership and my
readership is me. How awesome does this make me? I'm blogging to
myself. I love technology and technology loves me.