u jus ain't down anymo

i was already having a bad day..and it got even worse. it goes a little deeper than the surface situation of what it may be. i dont care to ever mention it. i only told my sisters(+in-law) about it.

whatever happened..in my "bad day"..im still in a much better spot than i was just a year ago..bouncing from family/friends' houses, pretty much living outta my car..so despite the raw reality checks/realization that i did experience today..i still feel very blessed to be where i'm at.



im reading this book..

and it helps with being positive..with your life..no matter what the circumstances.
here's an excerpt i find useful in everyday life.. tests.. trials.. depression.. whatever it may be..

To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. The total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it - who are you? It constantly projects itself into the future to ensure its continued survival and to seek some kind of release or fulfillment there.
It says: "One day, when this, that, or the other happens, I am going to be okay, happy, at peace." Even when the ego seems to be concerned with the present, it is not the present that it sees: It misperceives it completely because it looks at it through the eyes of the past. Or it reduces the present to a means to an end, an end that always lies in the mind-projected future. Observe your mind and you'll see that this is how it works.

THE PRESENT MOMENT HOLDS THE KEY TO LIBERATION.


doesn't it sound like something Tyler Durden would say??..that guy is much deeper than he looks =)

hey dj, fuck u.

i remember i read this article like i dont know a billion years ago (ok like 5 yrs ago)..and thought it was quite humorous. came across it again, and wanted to share. so here enjoy.



You know that thing called DJing? Playing records in bars or at stupid art openings for money? Guess what DJing is? The biggest fucking bullshit con of all time! People who get over as DJs are making the easiest money ever, because they've convinced every PR person and club owner in the world that they're doing something only a few natural-born geniuses can do. It's laughable. A 70-year-old blind Ethiopian leper with 10 broken fingers can "spin" just as well as any B-list celebrity at any instore party for some gay snowboarding jeans company. I promise.

And those other guys who do all the little flick-flick, crabby moves on records that are covered with spots of adhesive tape that are supposed to mean something? Those aren't DJs! I don't know what to call them. Nerds, maybe? They called themselves "turntablists" five years ago, but I think that got embarrassing. One thing is for sure, though: Those guys don't DJ on the actual paying gig circuit that I'm on, because no hammered jock chicks or guidos from West Orange, N.J., will dance to an hour-long abstract scratch frenzy over a P-Funk B-side.

I've been making loads of supplementary income by DJing for a few years now, and I can barely even scratch my own back. All you really need is a CD burner, Kazaa, and passably cool taste in music. Here, I'll tell you all about my life as a party DJ:

TECHNIQUE
FLOW: The only slightly ephemeral skill to learn is flow. Have you ever made a mixtape for someone you had a crush on? Then you already know what flow is—the ability to maintain a mood. I was at a party once where the DJ kept playing one danceable hip-hop track, then one undanceable slow classic-rock track, one hip-hop, one slow rock, on and on like that for an hour! We would get up and dance, and then sit down, and then we finally just stayed down and shot him really dirty looks. It was the opposite of flow. To master flow, you just need to not be a fucking moron. Can you handle that?

Segueing from one genre to a totally different one is easy. You just build tiny little bridges instead of taking one big leap. For example, let's go from a hip-hop set to a punk-rock set. You play your last rap song, then a Prince track. Then maybe some ESG. Then the Slits. Boom! You're into the punk before they know what hit 'em.

LCD: This is your audience. It stands for Lowest Common Denominator. You are DJing for drunks and cokeheads, and they need the aural equivalent of safety blankets. What would you rather hear when you're high as fuck in a bar: Journey or some obscure acid-house? (If you're a geek, don't answer that.)
I used to spend all my time collecting the rarest tracks, stuff that when I heard it at home it would totally blow my mind. Guess what? No one cared. In fact, they stopped dancing. Now I stick to playing stuff that I liked when I was a teenager (the Misfits, "O.P.P.," and songs from John Hughes movies) and I'm golden. When in doubt, go nostalgic.

CUEING: This is where you enact the flow thing I just told you about. You have two sides, right and left. When something's playing on the right, think of a song that would sound good after it. Cue that song up on the left by pressing the same buttons on a CD player that you've pressed 1,000 times before (or putting a needle down in the appropriate groove on a record). When the song on the right side is about to end, slide the little thingy in the box between the decks to the left. When you're a little less than halfway over, press "play" on the CD or "start" on the turntable. Congratulations, you're DJing. Can I get a "That was easy"?

PERKS
LINES: A huge guilty pleasure is cutting the line and marching right up to the velvet rope all casual, going, "Hi, I'm the DJ." I like to go to a gig dressed like a total slob. The nicer the club, the shittier I look. Then I can stroll past all the people who used to spit on me in high school and make a big huge deal about going through the door first.

MONEY: Depending on who you are, a DJ's salary for one night can range from a few free drinks to obscene amounts (for the big shots) that make you hate capitalism. I heard Paul Sevigny got fucking $15,000 to DJ at Sundance. I hope that is DJ urban legend. Most DJs I know are pretty psyched if they get a couple hundred. Art openings should pay more, like $350. And remember: Always get paid in cash on the night of. Within 24 hours all money magically transforms into cocaine blown up some model's ass.

COMPLIMENTS: One of the best things about DJing is when you play a really kickass song and people come up to you dancing, going "I love this song!" You get all proud and pretend you wrote it. You're like, "Thanks!" Yeah, I downloaded "Youth Gone Wild," I rule. It's like being told your air-guitar skills are fucking SICK.

GEAR
NEEDLES: Those sleek, aerodynamic, $500 fancy-pants needles are the second biggest scam in DJing besides convincing people that DJing is hard. For totally serviceable needles, go to one of those electronics stores on Canal Street and get the cheapest set possible. You can talk them down on the price, too. I got a pair plus some shitty headphones for $90 after I sweet-talked the sales guy for a minute. (BTW, the cheap needles are called hip-hop needles and that's mean against blacks.)

MIXERS: There are a few brands of mixers, but who cares. DJs would like for you to think mixers are all complicated, but they're really about as hard to figure out as a home stereo. I once spun at this lesbian party where I ended up giving girls DJ lessons all night. They were lined up across the room, and it only took me a few seconds to show each of them the basics. As Garfield would say, "Big fat hairy deal." Once I showed them how simple it really is, they were shocked at the big deal that people make about the whole thing. Yeah, there are cute little tricks you can do. If you're playing a hip-hop song, it's fun to cut out the bass after the second verse and then kick it back in full force on the chorus. It's a nifty party trick and it makes girls lose their shit. But you can also just say, "Fuck it," set them all in the middle, and read a book in between tracks.

WHEELS OF STEEL: Please don't call them that. Don't call them "the ones and the twos" either. It sounds like your mom saying, "Homie don't play that."

ETIQUETTE
OOPS: You're going to fuck up. The record will skip or you'll be distracted by some drunk kid telling you how much "Bizarre Love Triangle" means to him or you'll let two Wire songs play in a row. No big whup. Everyone's too wasted to care. You should be too. Just take the opportunity to make announcements. I usually shout out important information such as, "Don't stop the rock, motherfuckers!" or "I need to pee!"

REQUESTS: Try not to cry when people request Missy Elliott, again. Or "Hey Ya!" or "Milkshake." Or Cher when you are spinning Minor Threat. Or simply "hip-hop." Or any genre of music, in fact. You wouldn't believe how often people request an entirely different genre of music than what the DJ is playing. It's infuriatingly rude. You're telling the DJ that you hate his or her music. If you don't like what I'm playing, wait 10 fucking minutes and I'll be onto a new thing anyway.

If you simply must request a song, it better be within the scope of what I'm playing at that very second AND it better be such an insane song that it'll make me go, "Oh shit, yeah, why didn't I think of that?"

True fact: That's only happened to me once out of hundreds and hundreds of requests. The song was "Sweet Emotion" by Aerosmith, believe it or not.

SAVING YOUR BEST STUFF: This is tricky. You don't want to blow your load before the night hits maximum party time, so you squirrel away your guaranteed crowd-pleasing monster jams and you wait, thinking, "Now? Now? Do I drop it?" And finally you're like, "It's time, I'm gonna hit it." And boom! It's a fuckin' nuclear-bomb explosion. A roomful of people you would barely be able to look at in the daytime are freaking out like they just won the lottery, all because you pressed a button. That's why you do this shit. That, and the fact that you are a total fucking spaz.

mi amigo

i read this years ago..and found it online again. it's funny and has some good points. HA.

Want to know about all the different kinds of friends? Welcome to the Friendship Forest. It can be a treacherous place, but its rewards are warmth, hugs, understanding, and chuckles. The ultimate goal is finding your BFF, but you’ll really have to do some spelunking through thorns and brine to meet the magical unicorn that shits ice-cream cones and cries daffodils.

If you do find her, she will promise to be your best friend forever. If you ever betray her you will have to leave your whole scene and end up all Sex and the City with some cackling JAPs from your office that you hate (plus their assorted shitty dogs and moms) for the rest of eternity.

Here are some surefire guidelines to tell if the type of person you’re hanging out with is a friend or just some douchebag using you for your car/other friends/money/couch.

FRIENDS MAKE YOU THINGS
Starting in ancient times, girls made each other friendship pins and stuck them to their shoelaces. These are just safety pins ornamented with plastic beads, sometimes sparkly! They mark your friend territory. Think of them as the platonic girl equivalent of tomcat pee. As we grow, friendship pins develop into mixtapes and then mix CDs (although iPod-sharing is now ruining this fine tradition by turning everyone into mix sluts). My friend Cindy makes dresses for a living for lots of money but she gives them to me for free. Not because I deserve it, but because I don’t and she loves me anyway.

Friends like to exhibit friendship by returning from thrifting expeditions bearing gifts that pertain to your special obsessions. For me, that would be owls. Extra good friends will even make you a little book of photos of you guys together.

Friends will also give you clothes that maybe they got too fat to fit into but they fit you and your friend is actually happy to be able to have you wear them and she’s not jealous at all.

FRIENDS ANSWER THE FUCKING PHONE
This is a friend prerequisite. I hate when people screen calls. Everyone thinks they’re a drug dealer with their cell phone. Like my call isn’t important enough to take while they’re in the middle of checking Friendster? It’s stoops in charge.* Either pick up the phone or call me back that day. You are not that busy, Donald Trump. What do you have to do, get ready for the Governor’s Ball? We’re all fucking occupied, but we make time for what counts. Like friendship.

Also, if they genuinely can’t get the phone, a real friend will leave an outgoing voicemail message with a joke that only all their friends will get. Which leads me to…

FRIENDS ANNOY EVERYONE ELSE WITH THEIR STUPID PRIVATE JOKES
Would you know what I meant if you heard me say, "Dazzle, dazzle, scoop de jour, pride!" to my friend Derrick, or "Paint yourself a picture of an afternoon delight" to my friend Ben? No? Good, you shouldn’t. Those jokes are private.

Secret languages can also form an ironclad friendship bond. For example, consider Hanna and Emily, two BFFs since high school. They communicate in their own magical tongue. It’s called Swedish, and you can’t learn it from a book! Together they use it to talk shit about people in front of their faces, and it brings them closer every day.

FRIENDS KEEP SECRETS
Well, the important ones anyway. Like Jennifer really didn’t want me to tell anyone she had an abortion, but we’re not friends anymore because she stopped taking my phone calls. So I told everybody. To test out a new friend, tell them you used to have a weird little nubby tail, but make it a real sob story so they believe you. Then see how long it takes to ride the gossip express back to your station. If they don’t tell anyone, they’re a keeper.

Wait, they actually might just be boring. If it does get back to you that you had a tail, don’t trust them, but keep them handy for spreading rumors about other people.

FRIENDS COPY EACH OTHERThis is another ancient ritual, dating back to the Egyptians, when Ramses II totally copied the way Ramses I tortured the Israelites (with sticks). Ally Sklover, my BFF from high school, copied my Adidas Sambas, but I got her back by rocking a pink tracksuit. We’re BFFs, so it’s all good. Friends also copy words and claim they started them, which led to a great war among my friends in 1999 over who started the word fagét (which means "an effeminate straight guy").

This is not to be confused with friends who claim they started trends that they clearly did not, like my friend Peter who said, "You know how everyone is moving to L.A.? I totally started that!" Er, what?

FRIENDS CALL POISON CONTROL WHEN YOU OVERDOSE ON RED BULL
Let’s say you’re at a party, and the only free drinks are vodka and Red Bull, and you are currently on the wagon. So you proceed to drink Red Bull after Red Bull. By your sixth Red Bull, you start to believe that you are in fact, a red bull, so you go home and repeatedly ram your head into the wall. You start to panic when you can taste your heart beating. So you call your BFF and she races over at 4 a.m. with Xanax in hand. When you don’t calm down, she calls Poison Control, who tell her to take you to the hospital immediately. But you don’t want to go, so instead she rubs your back until you fall asleep, and then she quietly leaves.

FRIENDS CUDDLE
Or make out. On rare occasions, they even fuck. It’s true! Some friends can make love in the name of friendship and having orgasms, and it will still be cool. It does happen. Especially on road trips. In seedy motels. In Alabama. With a dildo you bought "as a joke."

The best thing, though, is making out with your friends "for practice." If you develop a crush on your friend after a steamy game of Seven Minutes in Heaven, you might get lucky and end up in a full-on Monica-Chandler love explosion. If not, get ready to cry 4-ever. Well not forever, but for a really long time (five days).

FRIENDS BEAT PEOPLE UP FOR YOU
I was at a show, standing on a chair, and I didn’t know where to put the bottle cap from my beer. I thought it would be hilarious if I silently placed it on top of this random dude’s head. And it was! Until the guy saw me laughing hysterically and realized what I’d done. Then he was like, "Stop laughing at my expense!" (He literally said that.) And he pushed me off my chair onto the floor. My friend Gus got right up in his grill and was like, "Dude!" and he pounded him, even though Gus just got out of jail. Now that guy and everyone around him know that shoving a girl is different.

FRIENDS ARE AT LEAST CORDIAL TO YOUR BOYFRIEND/GIRLFRIEND EVEN IF THEY THINK HE/SHE IS BORING, ANNOYING ON COKE, NOT ABLE TO PLAY "CELEBRITY," OR A FUCKING JUNKIE LIAR
That’s all there is to say about that one.

FRIENDS TELL YOU WHEN YOU’RE BEING A DICK
For instance, just a minute ago my roommate, Christi Bradnox, made an AIDS-baby joke, and I was all, "Whoa, dude, not cool. In a different context, maybe, but not this time." Then she made another joke about cancer, but that one was actually pretty good.

Conversely, a real friend is not allowed to get mad at another friend’s goofy and pointless jokes, like the time Amy stormed out of an otherwise fun Japanese dinner just because Gavin made a joke about not liking girls with asymmetrical labia. Come on, Amy. That doesn’t even mean anything. Asymmetrical labia?

They were in a fight for a year after that.

FRIENDS GIVE YOU A SECOND CHANCE, MAYBE EVEN A THIRD
Like my friend Judi, who let me work at her store. My first day there I showed up an hour late wearing a ripped Van Halen T-shirt and cutoff jean shorts, my eyes basically sewn shut with crackhead crud. She looked at me like, "What the fuck?" and I slurred, "Dude, if you give me a bump of coke or a bong hit, I’ll be fine." She looked at me sadly and said, "Lesley, go home." To this day, she is still my friend, and she even lets me work at the store sometimes. Also, I used to intern at Vice and do bumps of heroin in the bathroom every 15 minutes, and look, they still love me! I believe that true, true friendship is unconditional. I’ve seen guys hook up with their best mate’s girl, and sooner or later they forget about it, cuz most of the time you like your friends better than you like your slutty girlfriend. Holding a grudge is pretty annoying, and it sucks to ignore your funniest friend. Think about all the good times you’d be missing out on and all the giggles you won’t get to share.

Why are you crying? I’m being nice.