The Full Windsor

I must admit. I like clothes. Maybe it's because I was raised by my mother or maybe it's because I have two sisters, but I love to shop. More importantly, I like to look good. This is how I justify reading GQ magazine. So the goal for today was to learn how to tie a full windsor. For those of you out there who don't know this, there are actually multiple ways you can tie a tie. For example, the four in the hand or the half windsor. The type of knot you use largely depends on the type of collar you have. For example, the pointed collar or the oxford collar. Have I lost you yet? The majority of the time I just use the half windsor because it's easy to do but for spread collars, it just looks puny. So I decided to learn how to tie a full windsor to give my tie a more full look when I am wearing a shirt with a spread collar. Could I be any more vain?

What's the Matter With Kansas?

The goal for the day was to read a book entitled "What's the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America." Over the past few years I have heard rave reviews about this book, and only now did I decide to borrow it from the library. In a nutshell, the book examines the coalition that makes up the modern conservative movement. More specifically it examines why blue collar working class people vote Republican in spite of the fact that Republican economic policies are diametrically opposed to their own. I won't summarize why this is because it would take me too long, but I highly recommend anyone out there to read this book.

I also wanted to comment on something James Carville said on CNN tonight. His basic argument was that the Democrats wasted the first night of the convention because it was too positive. There were no attacks on the Republicans, who will surely be making it rain with negativity at their own convention in St. Paul next week. This argument was posted on Daily Kos and someone commented that Carville was an idiot and that the American people didn't appreciate negative politics. I got to thinking: Is this true? Do Americans really prefer positive politics over negative politics? I honestly don't know the answer to that. This type of politics originated with Nixon, and in the time period since then, the Republicans have cleaned the Democrats clock in Presidential elections. Is this a sign that negative politics does indeed work or can this be attributed to some other factor.

My last comment is that everyone should download the song "World Hold On" by Bob Sinclar. I can't begin to explain what this song does to me. I hear it and my heart starts beating faster, all my worries go away, and I just want to get up and get my dance pants on. It's fantastic! It's an electronic dance song, which is weird because I normally hate this type of music. It also has a great message. In the bridge, the lyrics are:

Love, don't take no for answer
Right here, spread love
Everybody join together now
One voice, one heart
Love and Unity

Go download it now!

Slow Day

Ah the second day. So what I decided to do today was go to see a movie. Actually I saw two movies, one of which was good and one of which was bad. First I went to go see Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which is in a nutshell about two girls who go to Barcelona for the summer who have two opposing views on love. Sounds pretty boring huh? Well I'm a huge fan of Woody Allen and I heard that Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johannson kiss in the movie, so I decided to give it a shot. I was pleasantly surprised. The best part about the movie though was that there was a scene in the movie where the characters are sitting in the same table in the same absinthe bar that me and my friends sat at when we went to Barcelona a few months back. Additionally the guy who served us our drinks was behind the bar serving drinks in the same scene. Crazy huh? The other movie i saw was the House Bunny. I've seen the trailer multiple times and I thought it looked retarded. The only reason I saw it was that it was in the theater right across the one I was in and I didn't have anything better to do. It was across the board dumb, but in it's defense there were a few parts that made me bust up.

Starting Small

So here we go! In keeping with my belief that doing something that betters my life can be something small, my mission for the day was to clean my bathroom. Filipino people are generally very good at keeping their homes immaculately clean and organized, but that trait is something that I did not inherit. I've been putting off cleaning my bathroom for months (Yeah I know gross) and today was the breaking point. I could not put it off any longer. It was disgustingly dirty. It took me about two hours to adequately clean it, and after I was finished, I complained to my mom about how hard it is to clean a bathroom. She just laughed at me and said, "Jamie, if you would just clean your bathroom once a week, you would find out that cleaning a bathroom is quite easy. This way dirt, mold, etc. does not accumulate for too long." So from now on, I will be cleaning my bathroom once every two weeks. I still think cleaning my bathroom once a week is overkill because my mom is a bit OCD about cleaning, so two weeks is a fair compromise.

The Beginning

Hello everyone out there in the blogosphere! After combating a lengthy bout of laziness and procrastination, I have decided to start a blog. The purpose of this blog is to help me chronicle my new mission in life. Rather than coming home from work and spending my time just sitting around, I thought it would be a better use of my time to do one of two things everyday:

1) Do something new
2)Do something that makes my life better than yesterday

Some of you might be out there thinking "Wow, that's a lot of pressure to be under day after day." To some extent you are correct. It definitely is going to involve more effort, but in my mind doing something new or something that betters my life does not have to be something big like taking a European trip or building a house for Habitat for Humanity (although sometimes it hopefully will be!) It can be something small like trying a new restaurant or reconnecting with someone you haven't talked to in a while. I don't have an exact timeframe on how long I will be doing this but in a few months time, I will reexamine this and determine whether it is worth continuing. Periodically, I will also be using this blog to comment about things in my mind but those will be few and far between.