Tag: Opinion

Forgotten Song of The Day: Oasis-Don’t Look Back in Anger

On By trustmeimnotadrIn humor, life, music, peaceLeave a comment

As the last drop of vodka from the “screwdriver” I’ve been trying to finish for the last hour  drips down my chin I can’t help but think of that special moment in my life where nothing yet everything mattered all at once. Sure it may sound cliche as fuck but the reality of it all is that we all get older, we all get just a little bit more fucked up with every passing day, and we all care about it no matter how much we pretend to not give two shits.

Everyone and their mother hates Oasis because, let’s face it, the Gallagher brothers are the biggest dicks alongside MANDINGO (if you do not know who Mandingo is, consider yourself lucky) that ever existed.

Aside from the bands relentless “GOD” complex, they are undoubetly one of the best and most important bands of the last 25 years. One of my personal favorites is “Don’t Look Back in Anger”.

Although the song essentially says nothing, it does so in such a way that makes you feel like you just witnessed the Mona “Fucking” Lisa through your auditory tracts.

The band may be trying a bit too hard to be “The Beatles” (which I loathe, might I add) but they definitely find their own voice as much as they may hate it.  It is one of the most influential bands of the 90’s and still continues to be on plenty of film soundtracks to date.

If you have not heard of them, I beg you to put down POKEMON GO and listen to some “OASIS”, I promise that it will forever change everything you love and/or hate.

 

Written by: Del Rivers

Forgotten Film of the Day: Vanilla Sky

On By trustmeimnotadrIn film, Food for Thought, life, poetry, Random ThoughtsLeave a comment

“I’ll find you again”, “How will I know it’s you?”, “The way someone looks at you, the way the wind blows in a cool summer day, a laugh you hear somewhere, you’ll remember a feeling…and that will be me…”

“What is happiness to you?”, a question that resonates continuously through this beautiful love story told through the mind of David Aames (Tom Cruise), the young and attractive millionaire who has everything in life going for him. The film is told in retrospect with David being in prison for the murder of someone who has not yet been disclosed. Back in the past, the love story begins when at a party he hosts, he meets Sofia (Penelope Cruz) who he immediately becomes infatuated with and the 2 share a great night together just enjoying each others company. The following morning, his scorned sex partner, Julie (Cameron Diaz) lures him into her car and attempts to commit a lovers suicide by driving off a bridge resulting in her death and his horrible disfigurement.

Upon his recovery he is having trouble readjusting to his new looks, in particular his scarred face, and decides to wallow in self pity. One day he decides to look for Sofia at her workplace and asks her to let him take her out, she agrees. That night, they meet at a nearby nightclub where they have a terrible time mostly due to David’s drunkenness and pitiful behavior. When the night is over she walks to her apartment and he passes out on the sidewalk only to be awaken the following morning by Sofia who tells him that she is willing to give him a chance and admits that although she loved his previous looks she mostly does not want to forget who he was on the inside. Shortly after the two begin dating a plastic surgeon contacts him and tells him of a revolutionary procedure that can fix his face to which David agrees to have done. He successfully recovers from his surgery and continues his relationship with Sofia. The two share one of the most beautiful and intense relationships Hollywood has ever graced us with until one day David begins to see Sofia as Julie. In a fit of anger and convinced that Julie was dead and that she was not Sofia he kills her by smothering her with a pillow only to find that it was indeed Sofia who he had killed and this is what had landed him in prison.

After a series of events it is revealed to him that in reality he is in a cryogenic frozen state and what was supposed to be a lucid dream turned into a nightmare due to a glitch. In other words, everything that happened after the nightclub outing was not reality but a dream created by elements of his subconscious. The most vivid part of his dream was his intense relationship with Sofia, a woman whom he had only met once in reality but was the only person to ever make him feel that love did indeed exist.

The film is a very close adaptation of Alejandro Amenabar’s “Abre los Ojos” and also stars Penelope Cruz as it’s predecessor did. What makes the story feel so beautiful yet heart breaking at the same time is the way the film captivates you emotionally, dragging you into their near perfect relationship and then tears you apart when you find out that it never happened. That this love story was not real.

The movie touches on many themes and there’s a slew of interpretations out there but to me it signifies something much more basic, our own lives; paths taken and not taken, impending crossroads with decisions that will mend our lives in ways that you cannot imagine and our subconscious showing us our deepest desires and the way things could have been through our dreams and imagination.

We can sit here and debate what’s real and what isn’t for the rest of our lives because reality is a relative concept. If something so beautiful and powerful as a kiss, a hug, a whisper, the sweet scent of that special someone’s perfume feels realer than the air you breathe, who am I to take that from you? As one of my favorite quotes from the movie says, “Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around”. Vanilla Sky tells one of the most beautiful love stories of all time that never happened.

Written by: Del Rivers

Six Degrees of Separation…Perhaps?

On By trustmeimnotadrIn Food for Thought, humor, life, peace, Random Thoughts, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Another day has gone by; another story to be told has been written. As I sit drinking my coffee at the nearby café, I can’t help but look at everyone around me and think how we all have our own stories, our own memories, our own problems, our own daily dilemmas and issues.  To think that I got it easy compared to other people makes me feel somewhat blessed but it also leads me to think about how things happen and how we are all linked in some way or another.

The guy that is sitting in the table next to me at this very moment, scrolling aimlessly through his laptop, quite possibly might have ten times more problems than I do and to be honest  I might never know. Although it does get me to think; could someone that knows him, know someone that knows me and could said person be what causes him some of his problems? Crazy to think how it really is a small world. With all of its vast oceans and continents we still  can’t escape the lingering fact that we are all connected in some way. I remember a song by a band I loved in my college years that  said “Seeing all those people on the ground, wasting their time.” Looking back now I find that song very interesting because a lot of people are literally wasting away their lives and weathering away in the tunnels of time. Funny how there are billions of people on this planet and we don’t even know 1/1,000,000th of them all and even funnier is that we may all be somehow connected. Perhaps it’s time I get up and introduce myself…

Written by: Del Rivers

The Pajama Chronicles: Why Working From Home Sucks More Than You Think!

On By trustmeimnotadrIn Food for Thought, humor, Long Reads, Random Thoughts, successLeave a comment

Now before all you “regular worker bees” go and grab your pitchforks and get the lynch mob ready to exact some “vigilante justice” let’s get something straight: working from home is pretty great and has many advantages and perks. There, I said it! Sure you get to rock your Batman pajamas all day (not that anyone would do that…) and theoretically get to pretty much do whatever you want and you don’t have that nosey co-worker who sits in the cube next to yours listening in to everything you say and do just so he/she can go tell everyone about how all you do is crack jokes all day while he/she is actually getting his/her work done and how unfair it is and blah blah blah! BUT, despite all of the good things that come with working from home, they’re quite a few downsides that only the 2.5% (latest statistics from globalworkplaceanalytics.com) of us who actually DO work from home understand and the other 97.5% don’t even know about or shrug off. So before you decide to break your bosses door down and demand that he/she let you telework before you go apeshit and burn his/her house down read on to learn why working from home actually does suck more than you think:

  1. Getting into a routine becomes an IMF (Impossible Mission Force) Task: The most difficult thing to accomplish whilst working from home is getting into a routine because, let’s face it, you no longer have a strict order you need to follow. Most home jobs are pretty flexible (most times) and if you lack discipline you’ll find yourself struggling. Let’s say you you start your work day at 8:30am and have a 20 minute commute; that means you would need to be up by 7:00am at the latest to have time to kickstart your day. You get up, brush your teeth, shower, get dressed, have some breakfast, grab a cup of coffee and jump into your car to beat the traffic. It’s this kind of routine that helps you maintain order and productivity and doesn’t vary much from day to day. When you work from home you can lose a routine very easily and become, for lack of a better term, extremely lazy. It’s very easy to just get up 5 minutes before work and then just do everything in between phone meetings which in turn leads to a severe loss in productivity and lack of motivation. If you’re trying to work from home with the intention of doing the aforementioned “waking up 5 minutes before work” I suggest you don’t even consider it or you’ll find yourself looking for a new job in no time (which we’ll discuss why below on number 4).
  2. Your social skills/life go down to about 0.017%: It’s a glorious Monday morning and the clock just hit 8:30am as you’re walking into your cube; as soon as your workstation comes up and you check your email you’re off to the break room to grab a fresh cup of coffee and shoot the shit with whoever is there about how the weekend went and how you’re all excited about this years Christmas bonus and what you’re going to do with it. This may sound extremely dumb but as soon as you start working from home these tiny interactions that help keep you sane throughout the day no longer exist. Your cube becomes a home office (which is really just a fancy way of saying “some empty room in your house that served no purpose until now”), the break room is now your kitchen, and the only ones who care about your weekend are the Lego’s you’ve placed on your desk to help simulate some form of humanity. Everyone, no matter how anti-social you may think you are, needs human interaction and this is something you will loose almost in its entirety once you begin to work from home full-time.
  3. Nobody understands that you are ACTUALLY working: This has got to be BY FAR the most annoying part of working from home. Everyone including brothers, sisters, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives, friends, your dog, that dude you met one time at the taco stand, literally EVERYONE will all of the sudden count on you to help them out with shit because according to them “no one actually works from home they just collect paychecks for sitting around playing Xbox all day”. Your “honey-do” list will go from 3-4 items to about 1,345,897 since you now have all of this “free time”; everyone suddenly has 1,500 errands they haven’t been able to take care of because they don’t have the time but hey, you “work” from home right? You’ve got all the time in the Universe and then some! Flash? Fuck Flash! Who needs to be the fastest man in the world when you have time on your side and according to everyone, way too much of it! I know this may be hard for a lot of you who work in an actual building or establishment to understand but YES we do actually have to work to get paid just like hmmm…. you! Working from home just eliminates the need to have to dress up in the mornings but other than that we do still have to attend phone meetings, finish projects, and pretty much all the shit you have to do at your cubicle except at twice the speed because…
  4. You have to work twice as hard to justify your job: Although this is something that with time and proven work ethics begins to go down a bit it is still a notable nuisance especially for the first year or so of your “at home” job. At most jobs, letting you work from home or offering you a position which allows you to tele-work requires building some trust and establishing yourself as a tried and true reliable and knowledgable asset to the institution or company you work for. It is EXTREMELY rare to just land a job that lets you work remotely from day one. With that being said, once you are granted the “privilege” of working from home you will be expected to have the ability to take on twice as many projects and be able to complete them in half the time because hey, you work from home so you got nothing but free time anyways right? Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if working from home eventually turns you into a TARDIS wielding TimeLord that can bend time to his/her will! Remember that meeting you normally skip because you’re slammed with work and your attending that meeting is really just pointless? Yea, expect to never be able to skip those ever again no matter how swamped you are. Got a project due tomorrow but woke up feeling like shit and need to take the day to go to the doctor? Yea, how about you take your laptop with you to the hospital because hey, you work remotely anyways right? Things like being over worked, sick, victim of an earthquake, etc. all become things of the past and excuses to everyone around you. You are now expected to perform no matter the circumstances because you have all your work with you which also leads me to my next point which is…
  5. You no longer have regular office hours: At a “normal” job you’d have pretty standard hours such as 8:30am-5:00pm; they’ll occasionally vary due to work requirements and such but for the most part they’re non-variable. Not anymore! So your boss needs someone to overlook an overnight data migration? Have no fear, “work-from-home-dude” can take care of it! I’m sure that since he works from home he has nothing better to do anyways! Someone is falling behind on their projects and they need someone to wrap it up because it’s due tomorrow? No problem, just shoot it over to “work-from-home-dude” and go home knowing that someone else will do your shit for you, besides I’m sure he has nothing better to do because he works from home anyways, the way I see it we just did him a favor by giving him something to do! All jokes aside now, say goodbye to having a regular schedule. Anytime a project needs some extra or irregular hours to complete you will be the first choice; you’ll quickly find yourself working 50+ hour weeks with sometimes weekend work tucked in between! Oh, and by the way, most (not all) “work from home” jobs are fixed salaried so guess what? You cap at getting paid for up to 40 hours a week, anything more and you’re working for free. But hey, you work from home so that shouldn’t be an issue right?
  6. You have no Sanctuary to retreat to: It’s finally 4:55pm and you start sending out the last bit of emails and reports before heading out for the day. You start getting your things together slowly to kill the last 5 minutes at work and before you know it’s 5:00pm and you’re home free! You rush to your car before anyone stops you to ask for a favor and get home by 5:30pm. Finally, time to kick up your feet and grab a nice glass of scotch while sitting in your living room couch listening to some Chris Botti and relax after a long day at the office. Doesn’t that just sound amazing? Oh wait, you work from home so that sacred sanctuary of Zen and relaxation is now also your fucking office so guess what? You never get to leave work! As stupid as this may sound, it is very difficult to separate your work from your personal life when they are two and the same. When you work in an office or any establishment you look forward to that time when you can finally leave and retreat to your home BUT when you work from home you’re stuck at the same exact place where you worked and it becomes very hard to differentiate the two. Your home will no longer be where you can retreat to relax because it looks exactly like where you work at! Hmmm, how can we get around this? Oh, I got an idea, let’s leave the house! Let’s call your buddy Erick up, I’m sure he would love to go out and grab a beer with you since I’m sure he’s had a long day at work too! Oh wait, Erick is tired and tells you that he just wants to go home. The very place you are trying to leave because you’ve been cooped up all week is where he wants to go! And here is the grim reality of it all, EVERYONE IS ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE FENCE THAN YOU ARE!!! What does that mean? That you are the only person you know that wants to get out of the house to relax whereas everyone else wants to get home TO relax! So now after a long week of being at work, guess what? You now get to keep staring at the same fucking walls you’ve been staring at all week! Doesn’t that just sound amazingly relaxing?!

Written by: Del Rivers

Be Grateful For Every Breath You Take: A Story About ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis)

On By trustmeimnotadrIn Food for Thought, humor, life, Random ThoughtsLeave a comment

As some of you may already know, just a few weeks ago  (August 29th, 2015) marked the 10 year anniversary of the disastrous Hurricane Katrina that caused massive damage to the coastal city of New Orleans, Louisiana here in the United States. Hundreds of people, including celebrities, came together to share stories and anecdotes of their life experiences both before and after the powerful storm transformed the city forever. One of the stories that really drew my attention was that of ex pro-football player Michael “Steve” Gleason.

Gleason was a professional football player for the New Orleans Saints who at the age of 34 was diagnosed with a super rare disease referred to as ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. In a nutshell ALS is a degenerative illness which slowly causes you to lose voluntary movement. From the ability to walk and talk and speak all the way thru to your ability to eat and breathe. He came to the peak of his career n 2006, just a bit over a year after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and gave the devastated and demoralized city hope by blocking a punt from the opposing team. This in turn lead to the first score in the Saints first game in New Orleans in nearly 21 months due to hurricane Katrina having devastated both the city and the morale of the team. Unfortunately his heightened career ended when he was diagnosed with ALS in 2011; right around the same time him and his wife were trying have a child. Despite his everyday battle with ALS and being confined to a wheelchair, Gleason’s spirits are high and his optimism and passion for life have all but been lost in the midst of his struggle with a widely misunderstood disease.

Imagine wrapping your arms around your significant other and feeling the warmth of there skin tightly pressed against yours, imagine walking down the beach and feeling the cool wet sand beneath your feet, imagine driving down the highway with the windows down and the warm summer wind caressing your face, imagine eating your favorite slice of chocolate cake and savoring it within every corner of your mouth. Now imagine what it would be like if no matter how hard you tried you couldn’t wrap your arms around the one you love, imagine not being able to walk down the beach because your legs won’t move, imagine not being able to place your hands on a steering wheel because your arms refuse to respond, imagine not being able to enjoy your favorite chocolate cake because you cannot chew. Imagine that one day, everything you normally do, everything you take for granted, all become things that you will never be able to do again.

If you haven’t been grateful for anything in a long time I implore you to walk outside and while you take a breath of air and feel the warmth of the early morning sun on your face you can at least be grateful for the fact that you were able to step out that door on your own two legs and live to see another day. As Carlos Mencia once said, “What makes life beautiful is the essence of the fact that it can go away”.

Written by: Del Rivers

Forgotten Song of the Day: Debussy- Clair de Lune

On By trustmeimnotadrIn humor, life, music, peaceLeave a comment

After a long week at work and my brain having to soak in about 25678799898 TB of information I needed a moment to recollect my thoughts. So what did I do? I pulled out my trusty rusty Ipad 2 (yes I’m a heathen,  that’s right, I still own an Ipad 2) and instead of doing what I normally do, which is put on Pandora, I started browsing around to see what I already had (which had been on it for years untouched) and found a playlist I created during college named “relax”. A playlist full of orchestra, piano, and jazz trumpet music to help unwind after a long day. I’m  glad to have discovered it once again after about 6 years of it just sitting there because it was exactly what I needed!

If you haven’t heard “Clair de Lune” by Debussy you truly are missing out on one of the best songs of all time. The French really have a way of pouring their soul out onto every form of art they touch and every page they write. From composers such as Debussy all the way through to  the literary works of Alexandre Dumas, every single word or note written is more beautiful then the last. If you haven’t heard this song go ahead and pour yourself a glass of wine and click Here .

Written by: Del Rivers

From Warrior to Citizen: Things I learned in The Military That Helped Set Me Up For Success That Everyone Should Learn.

On By trustmeimnotadrIn humor, life, military, success1 Comment

Joining the Army was one of the most difficult decisions of my life. I had just turned 19, I was flunking pretty much every single one of my classes, and was getting tired of hearing my dad lecture me on how he was spending a lot of money so I can go to college  just for me blow it all partying (looking back now he was right but if you were like me, a young selfish asshole, you didn’t see it that way). After serving 6 years, a few tours, and being out in the Civilian world for almost 3 years I look back at what was the biggest challenge of my life, so far, with nothing but gratitude and a huge sense of accomplishment.

I had an NCO once tell us “The Army isn’t a career for those who want to be rich”. Perhaps he was right, you won’t make millions or swim in a vault full of gold while you’re in uniform full-time but one thing the military did give me was the tools to succeed and this to me is worth more than having all the Ferrari’s in the world (although I can’t say I would mind having a few of those in my garage…). After the military I’ve been working in the Civilian world for almost 3 years and have found that there are many differences between a civilian and a military mentality, most notably when it comes to work ethics, problem solving, and the way we approach every hurdle that is thrown our way. Is there a “right” way to succeed? Perhaps, perhaps not but I want to share what I feel were the things I learned while I was in the military that helped set me up for success:

  1. Teamwork is everything: In the military you either succeed as a team or fail as an individual. We’re trained from the very beginning to work, think, share, heck even shower as a team (dropping the soap optional). You’re assigned a partner (or Battle Buddy as we call them) and are joined  at the hip throughout trainings and deployments. This kind of mentality helps create an atmosphere where everyone works for the good of everyone and thus leads to success in every task you tackle. There’s a reason why the expression “There’s no I in team” exists.
  2. Hardship is a part of the path to success: Ask anyone who is truly successful (please, don’t go out and ask that buddy we all have that daddy sends him $10,000 a month to cover his cocaine and hooker expenses) and I can guarantee you that they will all tell you that they had to go through some very difficult times before they got to where they are now. Having gone through some pretty intense combat training and then deploying to Afghanistan for over a year taught me many things; among those things was humility, gratitude, and most importantly perseverance. I can almost guarantee you will go through some very difficult times in life but I can promise that if you hold on and keep pushing forward you’ll come out the other side stronger and more determined then you could have ever imagined.
  3. Never give up or accept defeat: In the military we are trained to never quit or give up on anything we need to accomplish (the mission). Something doesn’t become impossible until you stop trying to accomplish it. Every single person who has made their mark in history was at some point against unsummable odds and what led them to success was their unwillingness to accept defeat. You will never be a failure as long as you never stop trying.
  4. The courage to make difficult decisions and not looking back: In combat you need to make split second decisions, that could even end up getting someone killed, on the spot and pray that you or the person above you made the right call. Having gone through this I realized that the worse that could happen on my journey to success would be the loss of money and money is something that you can recover or make more of unlike someone’s life. Always remember the ancient Roman saying “Audentes Fortuna Iuvat ” (Fortune helps those daring). If you don’t have the courage to make that tough decision that you’ve been putting off out of fear of failing you’ll never know what you could have been capable of.

Part 2 Coming Soon…

Written by: Del Rivers

Music Albums, of the last 15 years, You HAVE to listen to before you Die! (PT.1)

On By trustmeimnotadrIn humor, life, musicLeave a comment

Throughout middle school, high school, and your college years you’re always in an evolutionary state. Everything from music and art all the way through science and religion will influence you in ways that are unimaginable. If you’re a music junkie like me then you know that one of the things that will always take you back in time will be the sweet or bitter melody of a song that defined a certain stage in your life. I grew up during a great time where music (or pretty much anything you can think of) was starting to become as accessible as the air we breathe through the use of the internet and P2P programs such as LimeWire and Napster (I graduated High School in 2004 so you can do the math). A time where if you had a computer with CD-R capabilities you were considered wealthy and God forbid you had a CD-RW because that’d mean you were richer then Uncle Scrooge (a stuntastic, swimming in a vault full of gold coins mo’fo who wipes his ass with a roll made of hundred dollar bills and gives less fucks then a coked up rabid Honey Badger).

Now, before you go off and start an international debate as to why my list is flawed and go into detail as to why you think Oasis or The Spice girls or whatever you still have on your 1st Gen Ipod or Zune (which is now considered one of the long lost artifacts right after the Dead Sea Scrolls) is better than anything I chose I think you should read my previous post about Life Lessons here and at the very least scroll all the way down and read point number 10. Once you’ve done this make yourself a fresh cup of coffee (vodka optional) and come back ready to accept that we are all different and as a wise man once said “opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and everyone else’s stinks except yours”. So without further ado, I present part 1 of Music albums you HAVE to listen to before you die:

  1. Blink 182- Take Off Your Pants and Jacket: Blink 182 is arguably one of the most if not THE most influential band of the punk/rock/pop era that took over during the late 90’s-early 2000’s. They hit the spotlight at a time when music was too serious and successfully reinvented the industry by making satirical catchy songs about everything from teenage angst all the way to having sex with your grandfather (that’s right, there’s a song on this album about incest with grandpa and how he likes to rub his dick in broken glass). What made them so iconic was the fact that they were irreverent and didn’t take anything, including themselves, seriously. They helped create a fun era where being the class clown was celebrated, being the underdog was cool, and where even complete morons could become celebrities (if you don’t believe me just remember one word, Jackass…..enough said). Listen to this when you need a good laugh. Songs to look for: Online Songs, The Rock Show, Time to Break Up
  2. Papa Roach- Love Hate Tragedy: Although their previous album “Infest” is regarded by many as their best work I feel that they hadn’t really found their own unique sound and direction until “Love Hate Tragedy”. Their combination of going back and forth between singing and rapping mixed in with some aggressive guitar riffs helped set them apart from other rap/rock artists of their time. The thing I love the most about Papa Roach is how the singer/writer, Jacoby Shaddix, pours his own life into the lyrics and tells a story that continues to unfold with each passing album. They are the only band on this list, in my opinion, that has a great repertoire of awesome albums and is still pumping out amazing music that doesn’t sound dated or regurgitated. Listen to this if you’re in the mood to hear a story told through rock music. If you really want to go all out, start with their first album “Infest” and continue all the way through to their latest which is “F.E.A.R.”. Songs to look for: Time and Time Again, Decompression Period, She Loves Me Not
  3. The Used- In Love and Death: When emo bands became mainstream the rock community was divided; you either loved it or you absolutely hated it and wished it would die via a shotgun to the dick then burn in the fiery pits of the 8th circle of Hell along with all the rapists (because of course, you felt that they mutilated and raped music in every form imaginable). This is arguably one of the music genres that has received the most hate since its mainstream success in the early 2000’s. Was I into the emo scene? No, but I certainly didn’t hate it either and if anything good came out of it, it was a band named The Used. Although “The Used” is arguably more post-hardcore than emo, it still received a lot of hate from music “purists” who associated the band with the emo movement due to their appearances and having music that sounded somewhat emo-esque.  Nonetheless they delivered a mixture of sound and lyrics that was unlike anything else at the time. This album delivers the perfect balance between mellow and bat shit insane; if I had to take a wild guess at what someone with “Borderline Personality Disorder” has to live with on a daily basis this would be it. Listen to this when you’re in for a rollercoaster ride and don’t care about whose listening. Songs to look for: I’m Melting(In your eyes), Light With a Sharpened Edge, Sound Effects and Overdramatics

To Be Continued…

Written by: Del Rivers