What if I started blogging again?

What if I started blogging again? I haven't written anything in a long time. Football season was great, but I wish we were still playing. Now is the season for shredding! But this is not an entry about shredding; it's about music.

Yesterday on NPR-ATC(all things considered), Rob, Melissa, and Tom, the NPR music critic, reviewed the new release All Day by an artist I hadn't ever heard of, Girl Talk. I don't even know where to start. The album is a remix on steroids. I think it's made of 100% sampling, because there's absolutely nothing in the album that I've never heard before. But in the same breath, everything's been mixed to create something I couldn't ever imagine. I would describe the listening experience as an exercise in nostalgia and... well... let me start over. I would describe the listening experience as being lead through all the pop music of the last... Ok here's an example: Lil' Jon mashed with Simon & Garfunkel, but only for a second or two before Girl Talk moves on to mashing up at least 2, and sometimes 3 or four samples from oftentimes completely unrelated genre's and eras.

Get it. It's a free download from illegal art as either one continuous 70 something minute track or multiple tracks for easy management. I prefer having the album split into tracks, All Day really is one entire track and album that should be experienced in its entirety at least once!

A Poem!

My great friend Mike asked me to write a Poem to contribute to his blog and I thought I should post it here as well!

wtf buttons?

Content in waiting waned when a button unraveled from my shirt.
And Just before it rolled down my chest into the palm of my hand,
It held as fast as a loose tooth the Hole third from the top.
My shirt stayed closed but that tacky butonless hole cried out
For its button.
I can sew on my own button, but its void stirs a longing.
Look at my shirt incomplete and say "it is not good that the man should be alone
Semicolon
I will make a helper fit for him."

-Devin Colby Jones

Farewell Facebook

Friday, on the way to watch the worst team in baseball, our Seattle Mariners, I stopped off at the best place to shop for reasonably priced fashions, our North Bend Outlet Mall, and acquired a new pair of the best shoes for human feet, our Vans Authentics. The colour-way that I procured was black with black souls, a colour-way I had yet to own, but one that my good friend Cameron Grant had bought a full year earlier. So what is the first thing I decided to do? Put on my new shoes? Text or call Cam to tell him about the shoes I bought? Nope, I did the cutest thing I could think of at the time: Funny Facebook Status Update! BUT for some reason, 'suggestively morbid' was the funniest genre I could think of. It read something along the lines of:

"In honour of Cameron Grant, I just bought the Black on Black Vans Authentics. Rest in peace Cam. Cameron Grant (1984-2009). We miss you buddy."

For two hours, my status was broadcast to the roughly 270 people on my friends list. Sarah, Cam's wife and parents received calls by concerned and crying friends. Cam and Sara had to make numerous phone calls and text messages to clear up the mess I had caused. And as my guilt set in, I began to really boil down facebook and examine what it has done to my life. My guilt was genuine, but this ordeal revealed how people have made facebook their real lives (myself included). Rather than just asking me something like, "are you kidding Devin?" people, in tears, called Sarah. I'm sure that my closer friends and family knew in an instant that I was joking.

In the case of those who didn't, I realize that people know too much about me to know nothing about me at all. My influence has grown too wide for a 26 year old who knows essentially nothing about life. I think about my 270 or so facebook 'friends' and now realize that I've been trying to get to know these people by reading statuses, looking at vacation pictures, and reading profiles, all of which are only what we choose to project on facebook and not our real selves. I've even been neglecting my closest friends abroad; I haven't called Matt King, the Grants, Jake, in forever, because I can just read their wall and know what's up. Rather than calling my own family, I stay up to date via their facebook pages (I think they do the same to me). And it all breaks my heart. Facebook promises to be this social network that brings people together and keeps people in touch and makes our community global, but it's nothing more than a social crutch and Facebook has actually done the opposite of what it promised me. Social interaction should have the consequences that facebook robbed of relationships. Then the question arose, "What if I didn't have facebook?"

My response was really what scared me. "NO!" I cried out. And all at once all my fears arose. "How will people know what I'm doing? Who will laugh at my jokes? How will I get to know new people? How will I know what people are doing with their lives? How will girls get to know me?" I really want to know how I can hang on to something so insignificant as facebook. I clutch on to facebook with some crazy kung fu grip until it oozes out between my knuckles. My response to the question "What if I didn't have facebook?" is just dripping in bondage. All of my fears about not having facebook are squelched in light of the Gospel and how God truly created us to be in relationship with him and others. I can't honestly go on building my house in the facebook sand, relying on it to make me friends. I was fearfully and wonderfully made in the Image of God. He made me witty and charming and intelligent and good looking and generous and good hearted and if I'm blessed to have friends and influence they come from His plan in me alone. I will lean on his sovereignity for those things, not on facebook.

I want my life to be an open book where anyone has complete access to anything and everything about me, which is what I thought I had with Facebook. Rather than an all-access, open book, facebook is just the cover and the synopsis on the back. Facebook isn't even the spark-notes version of you or me. Let us buy each other's books and read them in full because God made the world too big to be as small as facebook has made it.

Dual Blog! a. What I do during Japanese class b. Hipstamatic iPhone App.

Whenever I tell people that I 'facilitate' a Japanese class, people ask me, "can you even speak Japanese?" And I reply, "No I don't, but I have a student teacher who teaches the class for me and he is great." And naturally, people want to know what I do with the extra two hours, when I'm not teaching. These two hours have become my favourite hours of the day and I always try to be a good steward with the extra time.

Every day I start out by checking my email.

The stapler is no doubt covered in germs so I use a lot of hand sanitizer.

These two hours are an excellent time to drink some coffee. Kyle left this mug in my car. He said I could have it.

Grade some papers.

Star Sticker. Kids love star stickers.

Also, I use the time to plan ahead and organize my notes and thoughts for teaching future Freshman World History classes.

If there is time, I might chat up a buddy on gmail or try to do something creative like write a blog entry.

Hand sanitizer is vital to teachers.

50 year plan for never living alone: or how I hope life works out.

Last night, for listening club, we watched a depressing and beautiful documentary about the Hlemmur bus terminal in Reykjavik Iceland; specifically the homeless people who spend their time around it. Depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, and mental illness were some of the issues connecting each character, but the one heart wrenching aspect of each of their lives was parenthood. Each of the characters had children, mostly grown up and independent, whom they were no longer in contact with. This common theme lead to overwhelming depression which also contributed to the alcoholism and drug use. Everytime a character would speak about their children, my heart would break. I'm not afraid of being alone, nither do I run from silence, but it is a Biblical truth that we aren't meant to be alone. (Gen 2:18)

You can call me a momma's boy, socialist, whatever, but here's my plan for never again in my life, living alone if I can help it. The entire plan, which is in no way revolutionary, revolves around the extended family unit and my empathy for my own parents. "He's gonna be changing our diapers someday," my dad often jokes. What he doesn't know is that surely some day when he is elderly and can't take care of himself or my mother or visa versa, I will indeed refuse to send them to any assisted living community. I'll build an extension onto my house, buy a new house, pitch a tent in the back yard, or do whatever I need to do to have my parents live with me.

Both of my parents are fairly healthy and relatively young, only 24 years older than me, so I don't forsee them needing assistance for a very long time. Also, if one were to die, mine or in-law, I will in a moments notice take in the other. I would even like for them to live with me earlier. I can think of a ton of benifits to having my parents live with me:

Free childcare. A live in cook who works for hugs and the occassional scrabble or golf game. Wisdom for my kids to learn from. And a bit of heart wrenching entertainment when they start to get loopy. There will be books that need reading, crosswords that need finishing, and kids to spoil.

If I have my children though within the next 5 years or so, chances are very high that my children will be out and on their own around the same time that I need to take in my own parents and we can all just be old together. And to complete my cycle, hopefully I was as awesome a parent as mine were and my own kids will be willing to take me in!

Music! Jay Reatard! Watch Me Fall!

What just happened? I'll tell you what just happened. I was just checking out Duksjen the Movie on myairblaster.com. When a song came on. An insanely catchy punk song. And in that instant, nothing made sense. I looked down at my green Van's and felt my beard and asked, "Who am I?" After a moment the Shazam app told me that the music playing was a song called Rotten Mind by a young man named Jay Reatard. Needing to investigate, I stopped the movie and went to iTunes to sample whatever I could find and decided to buy his latest album. And listening to it a couple times sparked some intense emotions. I'm stoked obviously to have found this, but at the same time...

Jay Reatard (pronounced Retard, but I say it Re Atard because I don't like the "r" word) plays a brand of early punk very reminiscent of The Clash and other various '70s punk bands, but a helluva lot catchier. Produced at my ideal level of lo-fi, this punk album has hooks catchier than a pop album complete with a forced brit-punk accent.

...I'm borderline pissed that this human existed and no one bothered to tell me. I honestly thought I had friends who were good at finding music, but this album makes me the indie rock finding king of my friends...

I started out by buying 'Watch Me Fall', his latest album, but shortly I'll be expanding my Jay Reatard stash hopefully to include his entire prolific collection. I can already tell that 'Watch Me Fall' will take a long time to get stale, but next on the "to buy" list is 'Blood Visions.

...It's also tragic that I only discovered Jay Reatard days after he died (May 1, 1980 – January 13, 2010). So in memory of Jay, I highly recommend that if you're reading this post, at least go on iTunes and sample some of his licks...