Books

I'm a very sophisticated man. I'm so sophisticated, that sometimes I open books and turn the pages. And every once in a while, I even read the pages. If a book says, "Joe ate a turkey sandwich," I read the words, "Joe ate a turkey sandwich. Or if a book says, "Joe ate a bologna sandwich," then I read the words, "Joe ate a bologna sandwich." Whatever the words say about Joe and his sandwich, that's what I read. Turkey sandwich, bologna sandwich--even a burrito. That's how I do things. I'm a book reader. I read books. Books like The Cat in the Hat. It's a magnificent tale of a cat. Spoiler alert: the cat wears a hat. You flip through 61 pages, and guess what? Even if you read all the words on those pages, you still never find out why the cat is wearing a hat. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. 11 million copies sold. Don't forget to read the book's bestselling and even more ludicrous follow ups: The Goat in a Boat, The Ape in a Cape, The Whale in a Pail, and The Cheetah in a Fajita.

The Thousand Dollar Bill

The United States used to have a $1000 bill, and they got rid of it. They took that sucker out of circulation, in favor of relying on the hundred dollar bill. Hm. Interesting. I'm not an economics expert or anything like that, but isn't there, like, inflation and shit? Shouldn't you increase the max denomination instead of decreasing it? "No. The heck with that. We're the US government. We're expecting 137 consecutive years of deflation, which is why we need to get rid of thousand dollar bills." 

What if you want to buy something expensive and use cash? Do you really have to bring over a bunch of hundreds? Me personally, I wholeheartedly support higher denominations. Otherwise, you feel poor. Loading up your wallet with $100 bills--that ain't balla, you know what I'm saying? It's hard to really elevate your feeling of status if you have $100 bills. 

I think I'm going to load up my wallet with some foreign currency, as in some sort of unit, some denomination that's worth a shitload of money. You know what? There should just be a shitload of money bill. If you want to buy a Bentley, you tell the dealer, "Here you go. Here's a shitload of money bill. It has a picture of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates wrestling each other. There you go. This is the type of bill that's hard to find, unlike them bitch ass hundred dollar bills, which I don't believe in, cuz I'm a straight up balla, you better recognize, you know what I'm saying, I'm not fucking around, I'm trying to buy some shit that's expensive, so, like, put some truffles in my Bentley, you know what I mean, just load up the trunk with truffles."

Going For It

Back when I was a car mechanic, one day I thought, "Today, I'm gonna shoot for the moon. I'm just gonna go for it!" Some guy came in and had an issue with his radiator. I told him, "Alright. I can fix your radiator. It'll take half an hour and cost $400,000." And he replied, "Well, that's too much. I'm gonna go to a mechanic who charges less." So, I didn't get the $400,000. But at least I went for it. I went for it in life. I had ambition. Moxie. Enthusiasm. 

Shooting for the moon. It's an important ingredient. You gotta go for it sometimes--and that's precisely what I did that day. I'm very satisfied with the fact that I shot for the moon. Although I suppose the specific way I went about the whole thing might not have been particularly great. There are different ways to go for it. My approach might have needed some sort of modification--for instance, I could've talked for a few minutes about radiators, and then followed that up with the whole thing about $400,000. So, my approach was a little bit off. Nevertheless, I really went for it, and I can really hang my hat on that fact.

Songs I Recorded in 2014

OneDrive folder containing songs I recorded in 2014:

https://1drv.ms/f/s!Aqx0o_4e7wjBoUndtUM-W_N8X8SP?e=mNPdi3

Songs I Recorded in 2019

 OneDrive - 19 

Mainstream Media?

If you call up the typical American lottery winner and ask him what he bought with his winnings, which of the following three answers are you most likely to hear?

A - "I bought a coffee shop--the one I always go to with Phoebe and Ross and Chandler and the rest of the gang."

B - "I've built myself a portfolio consisting of real estate, stocks, bonds, and fine art. I own two Renoirs and four Cezannes. I'm also planning to take a trip to Europe. I hear Croatia is quite breathtaking this time of year."

C - "I bought a white F150, and I also bought a grey Silverado, and a blue F150, and a red F150, and I bought a black F150 for my brother Billy, and a green Dodge Ram for my cousin Bobby, and a blue F150 for my grandma Billie Jean, and a grey F150 for my other grandma Bobbie Joe. I'm currently homeless--but I got a fleet of pickup trucks parked on Flatbush Avenue." 

The correct answer is C. The fact of the matter is, in 70% of America, the general public pretty much has a love affair with pickup trucks. Does the mainstream media educate you on such matters? Hardly. Instead, the mainstream media focuses on showing you sedans and compact cars and SUVs in Los Angeles and New York City. 

The mainstream media specializes in selective information and disinformation. They even promote the myth that New York City is in New York State. New York City is in New York State? I beg to differ. New York City is in Puerto Rico State. I know. One time I went to New York City, I approached 100 random men there, and I asked each one the following question: "Is your name Luis Rivera?" The survey said, 4 out of every 100 New York males are Luis Rivera. I went through the city records, and it confirmed my findings. A plethora of Luis Riveras. There are also 8,873 women in New York with the name Jennifer Lopez. In any given month in New York, you can find a wedding where a man named Luis Rivera is marrying a woman named Jennifer Lopez. 

Meanwhile, the show Friends is set in New York--and yet, if you go through all 236 episodes with a fine comb, there's no Rivera-Lopez wedding of any kind to be found, and furthermore, all 236 episodes contain a grand total of one Puerto Rican person: he makes his sole appearance in Season 10, Episode 3 and has a delightful exchange with Ross, which involves Ross assuming that the man has a spray on tan, and the man correcting him by saying that his tan does not come from spray, but rather, from his Puerto Ricananness. I am not making that up. 

The point is, don't rely on the media to educate you on what the world is like. I've never been to Mexico, but I'll bet that it's vastly different from the Mexico presented to us by the media--especially if you visit the real parts of the country, as opposed to the touristy spots. If you go to an authentic Mexican restaurant in authentic Mexico, here's what will probably happen. As soon as you order a "taco," the waiter will say, "Taco? What the hell is a taco? Oh, you mean that fake Mexican food created by Americans. In Mexico, we don't eat tacos and burritos or salsa and guacamole. We eat real Mexican food. It's made of six ingredients total: nanche, pitaya, jicama, mangoes, pig intestines, and Chicklets. It's a good thing pigs have intestines. Otherwise, the average Mexican diet would be very deficient in selenium and magnesium." 

The point is, if you want to know what America and Mexico are like, don't bother watching Friends and a bunch of Taco Bell commercials. You need to go through a 100 step procedure. I'm not entirely sure what steps 9 through 100 are, but I can give you steps 1 through 8 right now: 1 - buy an F150, 2 - drive the F150 to Mexico, 3 - eat the intestines of a pig, 4 - drive to New York, 5 - attend a Rivera-Lopez wedding, 6 - purchase the complete series of Friends on DVD, 7 - open a trash can, 8 - throw the DVDs in the trash can.

Kant

Immanuel Kant wrote Critique of Pure Reason. Here's one thing I can say for sure about that book: it's way more intellectually demanding than Kim Kardashian's Critique of Duck Face Selfies. Kant has a style of communication that is not very Kardshianesque. If you read all of Kant's books, you'll end up with two primary conclusions. (1) "I'm not sure what Kant said." And (2) "I am sure Kant spent 9324 pages saying whatever he said." Kant wrote a dozen confusing 700 page books instead of writing one understandable 63 page book in which he makes statements like, "...And, to make a long story short, my moral philosophy is that people shouldn't act like buttheads. Okay. And now let me talk about how you can't know the thing-in-itself. This is gonna take about 15 sentences, and it's gonna be very easy to understand." 

Kant's writing style is not that easy to understand. That being said, I would highly recommend reading Kant's 9324 pages and mastering the fine points of his philosophy. If you do, you'll be able to integrate it all into most of your day-to-day activities. 

Here's a fantastic example. Suppose you're ordering breakfast at IHOP. There's a Kantian way to do it, and there's a non-Kantian way to do it. Let me describe the Kantian way. Tell your waiter the following: "The manifold content of the meal can be given ostentatiously in an early consumptionary period which is merely palatal and copasetic--in other words, it delivers an abundance of qualities that, conjunctionally speaking, categorically makes pretences towards being rooty and tooty; and the form of this can exist a priori in the faculty of the batter, without being anything else but the mode in which the pancakes are stacked perpendicular to the handkerchief. This meal cannot therefore be contained in the pure form of the fresh and fruity sensuous intuition, for it is a multi angular, omni group juxtaposition of starch and sugar dominant sustenance materials, with the wheat based (as qualitative) complex carbohydrates and the general appellation of maple syrup, originated by the maple tree itself, in an act (homo homini lupus) of purely spontaneous syrup generation, modulating the salivary reaction of the man seated at table 23 (tabula rasa). But the conception of conjunction includes, besides the conception of breakfast sine qua non, ameliorates the 'I think, therefore I am,' but quagulates the 'I eat huevos rancheros, therefore I pass gas in Spanish.' The language of the flatulence has no pertinence to the nationality of the breakfast order, distinguishing it from empirical notions of allegorical sophistry, which relates to the use of Frosted Flakes as part of a balanced but wholly intuitive breakfast. A tiger, when not in a cereal commercial, is neither verbally expressive nor non-carnivorous. This breakfast, then, is, given a state of credo quia absurdum, and, having been attended to the consumptionary qualities of the person in question, will elucidate the manifold synthesis of the foundation anteceding the antecedent if approbated by the Corn Flakes rooster." 

At that point, after the waiter stares at you for a few seconds, tell him, "Don't you get what I'm saying? It should be obvious to any intelligent and educated person that I'm ordering two slices of French toast and three scrambled eggs."