I’ll take my $5million now, thanks.   

Dear Reality TV execs that read obscure and rarely updated blogs,

“AMERICAN SLUMLORD”

Obviously, this would be a reality TV show in which 10 slumlords would compete for the title of AMERICA’S TOP SLUMLORD. Here are some challenges that slumlords could compete in to determine who “gets the rent” that week (”There are ten of you, but In this old grocery bag I have only 9 envelopes full of soggy cash):

1. Do shoddy repairs at the lowest cost and with the least effort (fix this broken coin-op washing machine using only sandpaper, rubberbands, dried up wood glue, and a bic lighter!)
2. ‘Obtain’ rent out of crack addicts, prostitutes, and ‘writers’
3. Sniff out corpses behind closed doors

I don’t want to give away the whole pitch here, but I think you get the gist. Bids may be submitted in the comments.

P.S. All Hail Our Robotic Overlords

Time Travel and Other Daily Activities   

Time is, in my view, the single most absurd theory that is widely accepted by sane people. It’s probably more ridiculous than the Single Bullet and Trickle Down theories combined.

Think about it. I mean, really take a few moments to consider that you are probably trying to quantify those moments into a standardized unit of measurement, and how crazy that really is. How long does a moment really last? A few seconds? A minute? A few hours? A fraction of a second? It really depends on the context of that moment, doesn’t it?

An hour at work could seem like a lifetime when compared to spending an hour doing something you love. While an hour you spend reading as an adult probably passes infinitely faster than an hour you may have spent reading as a child.

It seems funny to me that perhaps the only people that have really started to get it right are people like Einstein and quantum theorists who have realized that time, among other things, is really relative to the observer.

Now the question that really remains is how do we reverse the quirks of time? Not its flow, but its tendency to make us gloss over the moments we would most like to be allowed to enjoy, and extend those that we would rather skip all together.

The reality of the matter is most likely that we can’t, but if it is possible the power to do so resides solely in our minds and will.

Word of the Moment: Brekurrito   

Brekurrito noun ( pl. -tos) - a burrito with breakfast inside

“I would like a brekurrito with bacon, please hold the beans though; beans are not breakfast.”

I should do this more often that and combat blog spam… I just deleted like 30 spams!

Beware of the Gears…   

Last week my buddy and temporary room mate, Vince, went out of town. He left a note on the counter telling us that he was leaving and asking if we could move his car for the street sweeper and then some other stuff that was mostly asinine. He signed the note and left a post script “Beware of the gears.” What an ubiquitous gem! Beware of the gears, the ether, the flotsam and jetsam that push and pull ones destiny at any whim, the gears. This simple statement sent me into a whirl of self-reflection and deep thought; the gears, in the machinery of my destiny were grinding relentlessly forward and there was nothing I could do about it.

“Accept it.” That’s what the great master, Lao Tzu, would say. Or would he? Perhaps acceptance is too active, too involving for the true sage. To really overcome the gears perhaps one must become the gears, become that very driving force, embody it, allow it to act through you.

Become the machine.

To thank Vince for this enlightening tidbit, I decided to move his car for him. I found it on the street, a hulking SUV from the late 90’s, the make and model escape me, but as I put the vehicle into reverse I realized the true meaning of his wise words. The gears of on his car don’t work properly.

Layout Design   

I have been going through The Union’s archives and trying to dig up some examples of layout design that I have done, so I thought I’d share a few here as these are the ones that I have selected so far: