Misplaced Mississippian, Real Talk

Dressing Like Christmas

My car has this thing that goes into the center console. I guess it’s just a tray or something, but it has dividers, so it’s more like a cafeteria tray than a normal tray. Since it’s a little odd to refer to it as “the cafeteria tray that goes in my car’s center console,” I just refer to it as “this thing.” That’s all it is. Just some thing.

That thing spent the past year in the back of my car, far from where it belongs. It had to happen, because for the past year, I haven’t had a glove box. All my normal glove box stuff went into the center console, and there just wasn’t room for the thing in there anymore. I would feel sympathetic to that poor thing, but it’s just a tray, and there are far more important things going on in the world.

For example, I’m currently sitting in a Starbucks north of Cincinnati, Ohio. Now, there are many unpleasant truths to that sentence, not the least of which being that I am stranded in Ohio, some 11 hours away from home. But it’s all for good and kind of terrifying reason:

Taking advantage of an opportunity nearly six months in the making. Continue reading “Dressing Like Christmas”

Real Talk, Useless Observation

One Year Later

On May 28th, 2011, I posted my first essay on The Greatest Blog Of All Time. It was a stupid look at the fact that we study and debate things that happened hundreds of years ago, and it set the tone much more than I expected it to. One year later, and I’ve not only made my website something that embraces the absurdity of life, I’ve gotten that way myself.

One year ago, I never would have expected that writing a blog would impact the way I view the world. I needed a creative outlet. Outside of college, I didn’t have the time to do all the stupid things that I used to in order to channel the energy I had. I couldn’t just grab a few friends and make stupid videos as easily as I used to. I figured a blog would accomplish that, and that’s all I wanted. Stanton Martin and I would joke around about becoming “Internet Famous”, because that’s totally a thing, but I had no desire to build an audience or anything. I just wanted to create something, and if people laughed, that was perfect. Continue reading “One Year Later”

Craven On....

Blogging

America was founded under the belief that everyone was created equal. Early Americans wrote all of these beliefs on papers, signed them, and then decided that this made them law that could be punished for breaking. Then, Americans decided to ignore the whole “equality” thing for a while.

“It’s cool, guys, I didn’t really feel like VOTING or anything”

After about 200 years or so, Americans actually reached a point where we believed people were equal. And even 200 years or so later, people were still very interested in writing things down on paper, which had finally become common for everyone to know how to do. This was important because Americans believed in something called “free speech”, a right that people have been trying to either defend or destroy ever since it was created.

Continue reading “Blogging”

Real Talk, Useless Observation

Person(a)

It’s no secret that you have to be careful on the internet. One or two seemingly minor mistakes, and then you’re on the phone trying to explain that no, you are NOT making major purchases in a former Soviet state.

The amount of personal protection or publicity that the Internet provides can go wrong, though. You can’t reveal everything about yourself, because then that information is readily available to anyone and everyone, and that’s TERRIFYING. On the other side of that, it’s really easy to hide and never reveal yourself. It’s very easy to be fake in the process. And to an extent that’s fine, but also to an extent, that’s not cool.

Between all of the talk of building a platform and finding a niche, it’s really easy to become something different. To become what you really aren’t. Instead of building a brand, you’re building a persona. Continue reading “Person(a)”