I’m heading back to Ft. Lauderdale today with a lot on my mind but also with a lot of clarity. I’m being vague, I know. But for now, I can just say that things are starting to make a little more sense to me then they have in a long time. All of the forks in the road and even some of the U turns have brought me to where I am at today. Its a good place to be. I can’t wait for tomorrow.

I’ve always thought that air travel was an interesting thing. You get in this machine, and a few hours later, you are hundreds or even thousands of miles from where you started. This is especially weird when traveling to the western states because you have the time zones changing on you. Not to mention how different the topography is. Its like traveling to an entirely different continent.

That’s all I’ve got for now. My brain doesn’t start working until about 11am so this might be the worst post I’ve ever written. I don’t care. I’ve killed some good time.

I took one of those dumb quizzes online and apparently, I would fail a written driving test if I had to take one today. Pretty embarrassing.

I actually think the Everglades are (is?) beautiful. And in my area, they did manage to keep a few acres here and there natural and devoid of houses or strip malls. That doesn’t sound like much but for the concrete jungle that is South Florida, it’s like being in a Hippie colony. This particular area that I live in also has a lot of artificial beauty. All of the streets are lined with huge, beautiful palm trees, and the landscaping in the area is very nice. So it’s beauty via trees and plants, but they were not there naturally. Either way it’s very nice. And if you are into birds and that sort of thing, they are all over the place. Big cranes, egrets, ibises or whatever they are called can be seen flying around and killing stuff in those preserved natural spaces I was talking about. They are very cool. All of the homes and businesses are relatively new (no more than 10 years old if that) and strict community codes ensure that all of the yards are immaculate in appearance.

"Your lawn is overgrown by .25 mm. Resolve this issue immediately or WE WILL RESOLVE IT FOR YOU" -Homeowners Association President Heinrich Himmler

But as is the case with much of suburbia across the country, all is not as perfect as it seems. About a week ago someone decided to steal the rims off of my next door neighbors truck. My neighbor seems like a nice guy, but I have no idea what his name is. Of course that’s part of the problem. I’m not saying that nobody knows each other’s name here (I’m just really bad about that stuff) but I don’t get the sense that anyone REALLY knows their neighbors very well in this area. And I’d bet my life that 99% of the people don’t know half of the other folks names on their own block. A big part of that has to do with this being a very new community. It’s not like families have had generations to bond with each other since this area was swampland a decade ago. So I feel really bad for my neighbor because I’m sure he has to be not only wondering who did this, but could it be someone who lives in the same subdivision? Or the same street? It wouldn’t surprise me at all.

Not knowing your neighbors very well is one thing. Rampant douchebaggery is another. And we have a surplus of that in western Miramar as well. There is a gas station across the street when you leave the sub division. Being that it’s the closest place for me to get gas or buy cigarettes, I’m there every day, sometimes more than once a day. And half the time I’m there the following scenario plays out: Some asshat, usually in a really expensive car or SUV, pulls into the station with their radio playing at the same volume as an F-16 at takeoff. And that’s fine, we all like to blast the radio now and then. But then they pull up to the pump or grab a parking space, leave the car on with the windows down, and the radio at full blast. Immensely annoying, but I can get over it. What I cannot get over is that it is often the radio un-friendly version of a song that I think many parents would rather their kids not hear. Look, I grew up listening to hip-hop and I’ve heard just about everything. Hell, I can remember when 2 Live Crew’s album was literally banned from stores down here and going to a friend’s house to listen to it because he was able to buy it when he went to the Bahamas. So that stuff doesn’t offend me. But it does offend a lot of people and if you can’t understand that or just don’t care then please, go fuck yourself.

Once you leave the gas station your life is in immediate danger. I’m only half-joking. Road rage is a big problem in South Florida. And it’s not just limited to the major highways. People around here drive with a hostility that’s impossible to describe. I swear that I’m not trying to be dramatic when I say that there is a palpable sense of hatred that’s directed toward you on the road. And unfortunately, sometimes it continues off the road as well. I won’t even get into the fights that happen in the parking lot at the Super Target down the street.

I don’t know what the reason is for all of this hostility. I go back to people not really knowing each other all that well. And I don’t get the sense that anyone really wants to get to know each other. Like I said, I’m guilty of this as well. But with people like this living around you, would you really want to get to know them either?

That is all.

I continue to be impressed by the good people at WordPress.

A lot of people say that music brings people together. But music also keeps people apart. Lets say you meet someone and the first conversation you have with this person is about music. You come to find out that this person loves the music that you hate. Nickelback, The Jonas Brothers, Dave Matthews Band, whatever the case may be for you. Would you be a little judgmental of this person? Would this persons musical preferences shape you opinion of what kind of individual they are, what places they might like to hang out, who they surround themself with? I think the majority of us would admit that their musical tastes say a lot about someone. I would argue that you could make a very detailed profile of someone strictly based on what type of music they like and what their overall attitude about music is.

Your taste in music may change over the years. Not only are we introduced to new music all the time, but our personalities evolve and the variables around us change with time as well. The situation we find ourselves in at a given time without question shapes our musical interests. Everyone at some point has been in a dark place and found an album that matched their mood. Or maybe they found the inspiration from a song when they needed to pick themself up.  And we all have that song that played when we were having the night of our lives.

I was driving home Saturday night (a good night for sure, but not the “night of our lives” I was referencing) and Tears For Fears’s ‘Head Over Heels’ came on the radio. I like the song but it has never had any real significance for me personally. ‘Head Over Heels’ has been on the radio for 25 years. I’ve always felt that the song had a nostalgic feel to it. After 25 years it’s taken on an even more nostalgic feel. But the song hasn’t changed. Everything else has.

As I said before, ‘Head Over Heels’ never before had any personal meaning for me. But more then two decades after it was recorded, as I’m driving home on a random Saturday night, it did. It wasn’t so much because of what the song says but rather that nostalgic feel I was talking about. It wasn’t  a regretful or somber feeling of nostalgia either. The only way I can really explain it is that whatever place Roland Orzabal was at in his life, I kinda felt like I was in the same type of place.  Which is a little creepy since some have speculated that he’s talking about man-boy love in the song. Whatever. I don’t think that’s what its about. Whatever it’s supposed to be about is one thing. But for me, it feels like a song of reflection and about a time of transition. The fact that the song is a quarter century old already and sounds very 1980′s anyway really made me think of a lot of things that I’ve done, things that I never was able to do, and of an era that all of sudden seems so long ago.

“Its funny how time flies. “

My failings of keeping this blog updated are pretty obvious. I’ll try to add some posts here and there but hoops305 should be a lot more active since I’m hoping to have a little help.

I spend a good portion of my day on the road. My family owns a small office supply company in Florida and I’m the one who does most of our deliveries to our customers. It’s not the only hat that I wear but it’s usually the first job that I complete during my average day.  Coincidentally, I had this exact same job from about 1999-2001 but I was working for different companies at that time. The point being that I’ve spent a lot of time traveling the streets of South Florida. It’s very, very, rare for me to ever reference Mapquest as I can pretty much tell you exactly where something is if you give me an address in Dade or Broward.

So as you can imagine, I’ve seen some pretty interesting shit during those many hours on the road. Some of the stuff I see may only be interesting to me but I imagine there are others intrigued by seemingly ordinary minutia. You would think that I would have realized a long time ago that I should keep a camera with me to document some of this stuff. Well, the thought has crossed my mind many times, but have I ever brought one with me? Nope. Sure, I have a camera phone but it’s not the same. I hate camera phones. I don’t subscribe to the “Its better then nothing” philosophy either. The beauty of photography is it’s timelessness and camera phones are the embodiment of not having time to do it right. Nobody would ever confuse me for a professional photographer but you don’t have to be to take a great picture. A great photographer can make a picture tell a story. But anybody can see a story and take a picture of it.

So I’ve decided I’m going to bring a camera along with me from now on. What will I take pictures of? Well, aside from the endless amounts of hilarity that the denizens of South Florida provide, I really would like to take pictures of the area itself. More specifically, the, um, buildings. No, not the architecture (not exactly anyway) but just the essence of the buildings and their surroundings themselves. I’ll explain. Recently I’ve become increasingly fascinated with commercial buildings constructed during the late 1950′s -80′s. The “Suburban Sprawl” era. (Hang in there with me) To be even more specific, I’m damn near mesmerized by buildings from that era that are either abandoned or are rapidly deteriorating. There is something haunting about these buildings that were built during an era of “optimism” and “progress” and are getting older and more obsolete by the second. I would go on and maybe even go into detail about some of these buildings and why I’m infatuated with them but that’s really what a lot of my future posts are going to be about in the not to distant future. Same goes for the other stories that I see on the road every day. In a way this is actually in keeping with the idea that I don’t want my blog to have one specific theme or subject. I will just be recording some of the things that I see in everyday life along with other thoughts and rants.

To finish up, let me get back to what I was talking about at the end of the first paragraph. The wonderful thing about writing on the internet is the permanence that it has. You’re thoughts are recorded and can’t be lost in a fire or thrown away in the trash like they could be if you were writing in a journal. The Internet can’t suffer from Alzheimer’s or get amnesia. Yes, a website can get deleted but in theory your work can survive indefinitely. Once something is on the web, it’s very likely to stay on the web at least in some form, somewhere. This is not true for all of those moments that we all encounter every day that are gone as soon as they happen. This is not true for all of those different places that I see every day that are hanging on for dear life, and are destined to be destroyed for the sake of “progress”. But with a camera and an Internet connection, you can preserve some of those moments and give your future-self a tangable memory. That is, if you actually remember to bring your camera with you.