Thoughts of a Canary

Good Guy Gossling When I'm feeling verbally frisky during a conversational outing, I'll casually suggest that today's culture treats movie stars as gods. Good ice-breaker for you, right there. I'm using a rather loose meaning of the word "gods", so I'll clarify what I mean. The universal mindset regarding actors and actresses is not that they are omnipotent or omniscient. I think people won't sink to that level. What I mean when I say that, though, is that they are regarded as being outside of the realm of regular humankind. To be honest, though, I would love to hang out with Nicolas Cage. I think he'd be an absolute riot. Another person I would be very excited to spend time with is Jennifer Lawrence. Why? I think she's a real person in the midst of Hollywood shams. That's the thing, though. When speaking of these people, our illustrious cousins of Hollywood Boulevard, it's not about just seeing these people or being romantic wit...

I can't dispute this one The Slogan: Marketing Jack-Of-All-Trades.   Sometimes it is the most simple things that are the most effective; such is the case with the ubiquitous slogan. It accomplishes a great number of objectives for promotion by one simple phrase. For the company, it gives credibility, brand recognition, and differentiation from competitors. For the consumer, it establishes a desire or need, a mnemonic seed, and a general ambivalence towards the company. In my humble opinion, the first thing a company should do is establish an excellent slogan. No one has ever asked for my opinion on the matter, but I have this medium of communication (aka my soapbox) where I can pretend that people do.  By my rough estimation, there are 189.43 billion slogans in the informational conglomerate that is the internet. I admittedly did 0 minutes of research to come up with that number, but every company that is or was has had one. There are some truly awesome slogans o...

Everyone knows you take Australia Putin The time is ripe for controversy. Here's some food for thought.  To start off on the honest foot (the right one) I must lead by saying that I am nowhere near a political analyst and I have very little knowledge of politics. I am, however, an amateur historian (I majored in it for my B.A. so at least I have that shred of legitimacy). I wrote my senior thesis on the topic of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union and how it could have succeeded. In my research for my topic, I had to focus on an extensive look at geopolitical and cultural factors that enabled Hitler's meteoric rise to absolute control over Germany, and how he was able to then extend that control country by country to almost the entirety of Europe. When the news broke about Russian troops occupying the Crimea, my mind immediately went to Hitler's occupation of Austria in March of 1938 which he termed the "Anschluss". Ignoring the terms of the ...

I guess making memes can be a fun hobby of a blogger? Ok, moment of truth here. My mind is kind of like the houses of hoarders (band name anyone?). I start with a somewhat simple idea. After deep thought I organically develop it into a decent-enough fodder for exposition, and then my mind jumps to something awesome and almost completely unrelated. I then spend an exorbitant amount of time trying to figure out how to reconcile my original, conservative concept with the outlandish idea that I thought of in my mental meandering. Those that know me well would probably not be surprised to know that I just spent an hour making the above meme before actually writing this. I found its concept so undeniably hilarious that I considered it an affront to mankind's affluent memesphere to keep it from actualized existence. Honestly I died laughing putting on the leprechaun earring. To get to the beer and potatoes of the matter, I would like to offer up a couple points of interest regar...

Don't make this difficult... As I was on an airplane to visit an old friend in Louisiana, My thoughts kept returning to something that my dad had always stressed to me. I never listened until that moment. Now I've flown my fair share over the years, but my dad's wealth of aviary experience makes me look like quite the neophyte, as he frequently reminds me. The thing that he stressed to me ABOVE ALL ELSE, OVER AND OVER AGAIN, is something that may be the last thing on our minds while getting through the trauma of travel. I remember it going something like this when I was the sage age of about 9:   "Matt, always get the middle arm rest. Always."       "But dad, what if the other person already took it?" "You politely tell them you have some kind of claustrophobia and you need it."      "Isn't that lying though? Isn't that bad?" "There is no lie when it comes to the arm rest on a plane." Moral discus...

Time to stop fighting it, I guess.      I am an upstream swimmer to the very core of my being. I won't watch Doctor Who or 24, it took me years to get on Twitter (to my chagrin), and I have never bought an Iphone, Ipad, or Mac. One thing that I cannot deny, however, is the fact that Apple is a truly amazing company. Alongside Google they are the most innovative company in the world. I don't normally make such sweeping statements of confidence, so I will explain in a short manner why I have the moxie to put that up for the world to see. I'm not going to write a comprehensive historical analysis because that's neither within my ken nor my overall intention. Apple's rise and falls are well documented both in Steve Job's writings and Hollywood's biased perspective. What I do hope to accomplish, though, is to highlight a couple points that may be at least slightly interesting to the casual reader.       Ibuy      The most apparent...

It looked pretty hoppin' .   0 Stars.      When I first went in to The DMV on Main Street, I came in with an open mind, honest. I figured that it had been around for so long, and was so established in the community, it had to be good, right? So I embarked headfirst on what turned out to be my worst experience in all my years. By the end I felt like it was managed by Nicolas Cage and employed by Oompa Loompas.      My first impression of the establishment was resoundingly positive. There was a good number of customers. This is the first thing I look for in a business. A good business has good happy patrons. The establishment was clean and polished. I approached the receptionist with an air of utmost optimism concerning service experience I was about to have. Sometimes, though, good first impressions just set you up for chaotic rides through a death valley of customer service and hope-sucking feelings of utter despair that you hope we'll not las...

I guess the suit makes up for the horns?      T he clothes make the man. That's the phrase that popped into my head during the Gospel this past Sunday.  The Gospel was a very compelling one, not for reason of shock value, but rather the hidden complexity of its structure.       In the passage, the three main sticking points are: not being able to serve both God and mammon, the lilies of the field, and serve first God and His righteousness. As it was read, I was honestly trying to analyze the progression of these three main topics and the correlation between them. The main point is the first: you cannot serve both God and mammon. You cannot serve good while retaining evil as evil is itself the absence of good. The second point is the longer one. It is the parable part of the reading. I find it interesting in two main ways: how its subject matter is seemingly disconnected from the point the parable is trying to reinforce (inability...