TravelBlog!

I have officially started a blog for my upcoming Quarter Life Crisis Tour 08. I'm not leaving until late December, but I thought I'd start off my travelblog by doing a few posts on the preparations necessary for such a journey. And maybe also to vent my mounting excitement just a little. =)

For those that don't know, I will be leaving in December to visit my best friend Nicole in Japan for a month, another friend Kevin in S. Korea for a week and then after a quick stop over in Sydney I'll head to New Zealand for a two week guided tour. It's the trip of a lifetime and I feel so fortunate to have this opportunity. I hope you will also journey with me through my posts and pictures.

Where are you going? Create your own travel map!

View Chariot13's TravBuddy Profile

More than Skin Deep

Here's the latest example of why my (fan)love for David Duchovny extends beyond the superficial:

David Duchovny: My Defining Moment

"The realization I had was that we go through our whole lives thinking we want answers. Really all we want is company, the presence of people we love in our lives."


Smart, articulate, moving and timely for my own life. Makes me appreciate even more all the wonderful time I had with my own father playing proverbial catch. I could always rely on him to throw the ball back.

Big Ideas

If you're interested in marketing, viral messages, or just some random bits of information, then you should definitely check out this blog I found recently called Gaping Void. It's written by a guy named Hugh from the UK who does marketing for a South African Vineyard and also creates interesting drawings on the backs of business cards. Many have to do with working in the advertising/marketing/creative world, but there is something there for everyone. Check out his gallery.

I'm particularly fond of this new one:


Think I'll have it put on the back of my business cards.

I have also added the Gaping Void widget to my sidebar, so you can check out a bunch of them.

Which one would be yours?

another reason to love Spain

Skinny models wearing thin in fashion shocker

gracias espana.

someone IMed me this link today:

http://www.paulsadowski.com/birthday.asp

it is one of those sites where you put in your birthdate and they give you a whole sheet about you and things that happened on your birthdate and birth year.

it also told me this about myself:

"Of unusual beauty, does not want to impress, well-developed sense of justice, vivacious, interested, a born diplomat, but irritable and sensitive in company, often due to a lack of self-confidence, acts sometimes superior, feels not understood, loves only once, has difficulties in finding a partner."

crap that's accurate, except the first part (Oh, wait, there's my "lack of self-confidence"). actually, come to think of it, it does say "unusual" and not "immense" or "breathtaking," so i guess that could be right too.

i also found out that Rachel Bilson (The OC) and i have the exact same birthdate, same year and everything. guess that's really not that interesting to anyone but me. but i guess none of this is. haha. oh, well.

what the dooce?!

i admit it, i am a daily blog reader. besides the few friend blogs i read (shameless plug here for becky, sara and steph), , i also read industry blogs (like this one for movie marketing), celebrity blogs (hello zach braff) and blogs of people i do not know at all. however, the blog that actually started it all, and the one i check almost every day is dooce. you can see that i first talk about this blog here (are you getting sick of the links yet?).

for most of you who won't follow that link and see what i already wrote about dooce, basically it is written by a woman named heather from utah who is a suburban-living stay at home mom (SAHM) or, as she says, a slutty ass ho motherfucker. just from that you can tell she's a housemom with an edge, and that's the reason why even as a young, non-married, non-mother i have still managed to get sucked into her life. it also helps that her husband is geeky-cute, her daughter is precious and her dog is adorable. but that's where the sweetness ends. the rest of the blog is real life. it's about being depressed, or constipated, it's about disappointing parents with your religious and political affiliations, and it's sometimes about being sick of your family and even your own kid. what it almost always is, is funny. it's the humor found in everyday life and crises that keeps me coming back and what, most likely, has made dooce an extremely popular and profitable blog.

i find myself looking up to this woman and thinking i'd kinda want to be her someday. she might be considered a strange role-model to have because she did get fired for writing inappropriate stuff about co-workers on her blog. but since you need to have a job to be fired from one, i think i'll be okay. plus, i'm not much for writing insulting remarks about people; i much rather bitch to a live audience (it's more interactive and there's no paper trail). anyway, what does make me admire her is that she has made her mistakes and not only learned but profited from them. she is a full time blogger who is able to support her family by writing about and taking pictures of her everyday life. that is amazing.

i've always said i want to do freelance work from home once i have kids (i don't imagine my income will come from blogging), but some people look down on this and think that it means giving up a part of your life and who you are, and rolling back years of women's lib. work. however, what i think the best thing that women's lib. has given us is the right to choose what's best for us. if that means climbing the corporate ladder for some, great. if it also means i get to someday work in my pajamas, watch sesame street and smell like peanut butter and jelly every day, that's perfect too, because i know there are people like heather out there who have proven that you can be a stay at home mom (or a slutty ass ho motherfucker), and still be funny, sarcastic, potty-mouthed, a kick-ass graphic designer, and lead an interesting, crazy, fun, fulfilling life.

and speaking of crazy, check out her latest post . HIlarious. behold, the power of photoshop to corrupt even the most innocent of things. =)

i'd like some fries with that macnerd

clicking on the link above will prove to you how much of a computer/advertising dork my grad school friends and i are, because we find something like that to be funny. pretty damn funny actually. so funny that we share it with each other and say "take a look at this, it's really funny!" but if you don't know the difference between Mac and Microsoft products, you won't get it, and if you don't know how the companies package and advertise their products, it won't be funny, and if you like Microsoft more than Mac it won't be ammusing to you at all. so, don't say i didn't warn you.

you may procede.

the happiest town on earth?

tonight i was writing a take-home quiz for my contemporary mass media class, debunking an argument of the anti-FOX news documentary "outfoxed." to create my argument that the documentary never talked about the other big media companies and how they present news, i was looking up information about newscorp (the big parent company of FOX and about 100 other media outlets) and the rest of the "big five" (for those who aren't communication students, the "big five" are the five largest media companies in the world and basically own and control everything we watch, read, hear and see - aol/time warner, GE-nbc universal, viacom-MTV anyone?, newscorp - FOX, and everyone's favorite, disney).

so, i find this great site that outlines all the ownership of these companies (p.s. it is a little outdated - i.e. ge/nbc recently merged with universal). at the bottom of disney's entry it says "celebration, florida, a 4,900-acre town." i'm thinking, another resort area set up like a town or a place where disney world "cast members" live. but, of course i have to know for sure so, like everything else, i google it. what do i find? this.

it's a real town! but it's not like it's real. it's like stepford real. it's like pleasantville real. you can buy a house there or an aparment or a condo. it's all on the site. plus there's a hospital and public schools with subjects like horticulture and a community intranet that keeps you updated on town events. Oh, and my favorite part is in the town press release area - "snow returns to celebration". and just in case you can't link there for some reason i'll copy my favorite part right here:

"The day after Thanksgiving is known as one of the busiest shopping days of the year. But in Celebration, the day marks another tradition – the beginning of Celebration’s Nightly Snowfall down MARKET STREET. The snow begins Friday, November 28 at 6, 7, 8, and 9 p.m. for ten minutes and repeats every night until New Year’s Eve."

WHAT?!?! are you kidding me!? the town even has fake snow! i don't know whether to call the FBI to look into this place or start saving up for one of its $1,000,000 houses.

but really, i don't know about a major corporation owning my town. just think about that. think of your home town and now imagine mcdonalds owns it or warner brothers or, hey, disney. there has to be some sort of a catch. does the hamburglar show up for dinner unexpectedly? do they use your main street as a giant movie set whenever they feel like it? is your swimming pool not suitable for laps with all the rounded edges that make up the mouse ears?

maybe i'm just old fashioned, but i think i like my towns synergy/product integration/media congolmerate free, at least for the time-being.