YOU HAVE TO BE PRETTY DUMB TO LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE

A couple of nights ago I was approximately where I am as I'm typing this; in the guest bedroom of my parents house surfing my life away online when something about the guest bed's amish quilt snagged a corner of my brain. It is certainly a quilt. Not a marvelous quilt, and it certainly does not clash with the rest of the room's decor. As a matter of fact the entire room is tied together nicely with a quaint little theme supported by a harmless color palette. I wouldn't say the room bores me or offends me, but I'm not impressed. Don't get me wrong, I succumb to the wholesomeness of my family visits. It's all so cozy and there shouldn't be a promise of fanfare in this type of situation, but speaking of fanfare I may have to toot my own horn to make any sort of a point from here on.

I'm smart. Sure I make bad decisions and have atrocious opinions about things that mix me in with the other asses in society, but I'm smart (according to my average after 4 separate IQ tests taken over 5 years), and I feel I have perceptive skills that help actualize my art abilities as well. My friends are more proof of my intelligence, because my friends are all of above average intelligence! We think. We create. We observe and communicate with each other this world around us. My friend John and I have often wished to have our 'curse of smarts' lifted so we could be more care-free in life. Our ringtones on our cell phones would become both our greatest concern and our greatest source of entertainment. A simpler life where shiny things can hold your attention as long as the shiny thing wants. I hope I'm making myself clear.

A tactic for maintaining sanity in life may be seeing the world with rose colored glasses, but my pair may be a shade less rosey than some. I grieve for the ignorance of man and desperately filter as much of the barrage of "entertainment" flung at me daily from the bowels of those producing and editing their bizarre stripes of pleasure.

So I can't help but wonder how far down the rabbit hole our smart curse can take us. Perhaps, not far. Perhaps the more you understand, the less dazzling everything becomes. The fantasy peels away and Alice would be no longer curious about her new psychedelic surroundings, instead she would have written the laws of the land. That would make for a dull 3D movie, don't you think? Maybe this is why I'm contemplating the tan and brown fabrics of my mother's amish quilt; I'm categorizing everything and filing it away to be understood more than simply appreciated. The everyday world is being filtered this way by me. I wonder if scientists who study mind boggling data about our universe do the same thing. How else do their heads not explode if a phenomenon didn't reveal itself to be a bit jejune after all. Think about it, or don't if you want to care about who just won this season's America's Got Talent (it wasn't the 10 year old who could sing good.)

FRESH AIR

Somerset, Pennsylvania is not where I grew up; However, it's where my parents live. I've been visiting them here for a week now and I'll be here one more week before diving back into the thick of Philadelphia. In Somerset, the stars are out at night, the air is fresh, and there's a breeze at this time of the year that paints your entire body with that fresh air, and it's just as wonderful as it sounds.

I come here to relax and at the same time, in small increments, I provide some relief for my family from their daily burdens of work, work related phone calls, household tasks, darting here and there for groceries or other errands, and frequent stress due to miscommunication between my parents and my sister (whom lives here with my parents.) It's interesting that I find it relaxing out here when my family and their neighbors and the denizens of Somerset, PA still manage to not find enough hours in a day to fulfill all their obligations. I suppose it allows me to realize the false sense of importance most people in this country place on their own actions. You have an appointment here, you have to go there, and you have to look good doing it, or at least gain some pride along the way while sacrificing a little integrity. I'm getting ahead of myself and I apologize for the shade of bitterness I'm beginning to cast * Deep breath * Exhale * ah. That's the stuff.

My mother, of course, misses me and always hints that I could move into town, to be closer to her, sometime in the future. I never could. I'm a fish out of water when I'm here, and over the past 11 years I've evolved to live in the swamp of the city. I would suffocate out here amongst pick-up trucks, trashy festivals, fat Christian children and other such wildlife comprising the landscape. The oxygen is nearly pure, though, and I'll be sure to come up for air every now and then.

Somerset County Dairy Princess.

SKREAM

Dubstep has slowly been infecting the United States via the UK. In my opinion, no one does it better than Skream! His latest album Outside the Box is amazing. Headphones a must.