paintedlines

Coming soon: The lotC CafePress Store! Buy all your lotC logo wear here! Shirts, coffee mugs, mousepads...

I have very few guiding rules of dress. For the most part I'm all about comfort. The concept of being label loyal strikes me as stupid. It really comes down to fit, price, and taste. No one line can nail it all the time, and if it comes to the point of referring to what you wear as a "line of clothing" you are probably paying out the ass anyway.

This ideology leads me away from clothes that are blatantly promotional. Logos as patterns, slogans stretched across your chest. You are advertising the company - the catch being the fact that you paid for the right. We will now take a moment for that to sink in.

The real kicker is that, for some of you, your ego gets fed from shelling out obscene amounts of money to be walking billboards. "Look at the labels I can afford - you bunch of piss ant Wal-mart shoppers!" Now, steady yourself for this one: Chances are your threads are being sewn in the same sweatshops as the K-mart "Mike-e" sneaker. And let me tell you: lil Juanita, her mother, grandmother and the slew of young Asian female "cargo container immigrants" she works with, hate you.

Seems most of my posts tend to start with a rant ... huh. Anyway, steering back towards the topic at hand.

So most of my cloths - t shirts in this case - have either no logos or small, less noticeable ones. The only notable exceptions come from the family's yearly trip to the Outer Banks. And these are somewhat of a tradition. One, of course, is the acquisition of the annual Brew-Thru t-shirt. I still find it rather ironic that I have so many yet I don't drink beer - go figure. The other being a few shirts from the Nautica outlet down there.

Those where basically the exception, until now. I am now the proud owner of a "Blogger" shirt for the GoogleStore.

Its a nice lil shirt, it was cheap and has a big ol "B" right in the freak'n center of it. Now one might think: "Hey! What about your ideals?" Well, I'm glad you asked, because as sad as this sounds, I had to rationalize the purchase as it sat in the digital cart. I actually had an intellectual battle before I could bring myself to click and confirm the order!

With my own streak for self effacement, I found this to be both utterly logical yet almost humorously psychotic. In looking back I'm not even sure how I ended up at the store, since I tend to use Yahoo over Google (insert sound of geeks groaning here) but thats a topic for another day. But I felt the urge to buy, but what?

I looked at all the options and ruled them out one by one.
• Hoodies: No, well maybe later but it is summer and I want a t-shirt damn it!
• T-shirts: Oooo so many options...
• The Google shirts: Nope, they all have big logos. And to be honest their logo sorta sucks.
• The Trailer shirt: Well now, this I could do – its green! The Google logo is small. Ewww, nope they have goner and made the "feeling lucky" tag even more pseudo sexual than it already is! Next.
• Orkut shirt: Who even uses that site. Sound like someone gag'n anyway.
• Goggle Earth shirt: Big earth on the front with a joke about being "beta" - both lame and a little too "eco-huggy"
• Blogger shirts: Finally we are getting somewhere. And hey, i actually use this site!
• Black: Damn not only is the logo bright orange, which looks like a target on the chest, they spell out "Blogger" in big white letters. That breaks all the rules at once!
• Brown: Nice color. Don't have many ringers, and the logo is tone on tone with no overstatement of the name. And cheap too!
• SOLD!

All that for a shirt. But I'm picky - this and that has to be just right. I don't mind a logo if I like what it represents, just as long as it doesn't beat passers by over the head. And the simple "B" maybe just subtle enough to be visible but not really recognizable, unlike the Google logo. I sorta like that. In away its just like my Dogma gear. Fans recognize the hat, but it takes a hardcore fan boy to pick up on the shirt. Its just ever so subversive. Sending a message out, open to the world, yet its meaning is only decoded by a few.

Yet that much mental back and forth over a t-shirt?

Now I know why my friends hate shopping with me!

You're so afraid of what people might say. But that's okay cuz you're only human. Nelly Furtado - "Afraid"

It is a common ideology that, if you do something for a month - 30 days - that action will become habit. There has always been a little voice in the back of the gray matter called my brain that says: lets give it a shot! That little voice is then pummel by a group of lead-pipe swinging thugs that work for the Mob Boss known as procrastination. A mutant gangland of synapses - ideas and notions routinely get whacked.

Damn fun to watch. In that epic Romanesque "feeding the Christians to the lions" sort of way. I'd invite you but there is basically only room for one these days. Between my wide ass, the phobias, neurosis, hangups, and a full section devoted to "well this sucks, I'll never be that, & screw them" - the Fire Marshal says we are at capacity.

And NO ... you may not inquire as to why my skull even has a Fire Marshal There are even things I let be.

Alas back to the point: Blogging - just can't force myself to do it all the damn time. Then again its not like random is bad. But the whole idea seems to imply timely regular posts. Eh, there be no real solution here. And this paragraph will be nothing but an exercise in self debate - like those skills needed honed anymore.

So moving on...

I'm never leaving the house again! Well, not really. But if I ever get to the point where I have the overwhelming urge to board up the windows and lock down the doors in a Hurricane mode, I know I'll be able to survive. As long as I have Internet access from inside my plywood cocoon.

Why do I know this? Because Wal-Mart sells and ships lawn furniture online. We are the point where, if its fits in the Big Brown Truck, they will sell it to you. There isn't a damn thing in the world that one needs to live that can't fit in the back of the UPS truck!

Groceries, toiletries, and any sort of sundry. PJs, sheets, pillows and the matching bedroom set to use them on. Movies, magazines, books, porn, scholarly periodicals to entire encyclopedia sets. All sorts of toys, animals: stuffed to real, and even a mail-order spouse from some Baltic country! (Provided the latter two have air holes.)

Amazing, a technology that has spanned the globe and brought man closer to his international neighbors than ever before, may just have us living in hermetically sealed cement bunkers before you know it. Ah, so close to Utopia I can tasted it. No wait, its just the aftertaste of stale Frito's from Uni-Mart.com.

So close it makes me weep!

Plan was take a week to recover, but the account of Amusementparkapalooza (leg one) is on hold

Ah, summer. Don't you remember the days when summer meant a carefree release? After months you could finally relax. If only that was true.

Now, by default I'm just a tad neurotic, that just me. But this summer is not helping things. Although it started well, chances are the only thing I'll recall fondly will be Cedar Point, but time will tell. Damn, my thoughts are so scattered that even pulling off a blog post is taxing me!

Feeling lost - but why? Doesn't matter. Just keep smiling damn it! Looking happy matters more than being happy. Smile till it hurts... till it makes you sick... till no one can read you... till you no longer understand happiness... till emotion is pointless... till it becomes a matter of survival.

The raid was unsettling. Thats the best way I can put it. There was no point to it. Unless the Freudian slip of "if we ever piss you off enough to move out..." holds the the real meaning of the action. There is nothing in my life I haven't learned from. I take a piece from everything I experience, see, and observe. This event only forces a fact I have been trying to ignore: Time to move on.

My radical inner voice wants to be drastic - screw them: disappear tomorrow! What ties me here? Its no longer trust. And, as sad as it may sound, the strongest bonds seem more like guilt than love. The "what if" of leaving. Not so much the effect on me, but of those around me.

As always my core duality, my realistic and impulsive sides have fought. Reality has the conditional win. While a sudden exit would be both damning and dramatic - aspects of both make me secretly smile - the logistics just aren't there.

I'm a planner - I have to have some control of what seems like completely rash action. The finances and timing have to be right. Have a plan, and a back up. It was served me will in the past. I will only run if I have a destination. Sudden but planed. There then gone.

But thats only part of the feeling. Lost due to my own isolation. The isolation limits options. Limited, so oddly fits my life.

One friend moves away to the Midwest. Down to two. Another heads away for a few weeks, and the other doesn't return calls. Suddenly I'm alone. It just me and my thoughts again. I scares me, to be honest. And yet its not foreign to me. Solitary has almost become a friend in and of its self. When all is gone, its still there. Maybe I have just romanticized the idea. But it recalls my youth, when thats all I had, and I survived long periods of that, all the while, still smiling.

Could I do it again? If forced I think I could, I have limited options, I have to go with what is available. (Although I have had a serious offer to move to Philly - but thats almost too complicated to consider) It would still not be by choice. I bitch an moan, but there is still part of me that is a fighter, no matter how comfortable giving up seems.

I'm lost, but I have set a date - without a destination. Hopefully the span of time will fill in the gaps as I do what is needed to reach that date. A personal event horizon - a time to move on - a cut off point - the future - if I make it.

In the equation of life, I feel as if I hang there, like an unnecessary remainder. Would be easier for all if it just wasn't there, things divided out ... everything even. The loose change no one bothers with. The last penny for ignored thoughts.

If only I could smile