OK, Thanks For Dinner

About a month ago I decided to sign up for OKCupid given that I had been on the market for several months (ladies that’s your cue) and found that meeting girls outside of work was, well, really hard work.

The first date I went on was a flop. She ended the date early, saying she wasn’t feeling well. Honestly I was happy she did.
The second date was entirely different. This one was tall, blonde and attractive to the point that I wondered why she had even agreed to a date with me. But we got along well, talking at length at a Starbucks until we were ushered out of the place around the closing hour. I suggested we see a movie and being a gentleman I paid for her ticket. Now, I’m not the type of guy to make out with a girl in the movie theater on the first date. Still, the three hours of The Hobbit weren’t  that awkward, helped by some extremely funny parts. After the movie it started to rain so we called it a night and she flagged a cab home.
The next day I text her to see if she made it home but really to feel out the possibility of a second date. She gives me the “this week is really hectic for me” routine. Several texts later I haven’t heard from her since.

In general, I’d say most girls on OKCupid are not trying to swindle hopeful dates for a free dinner, but even for the ones doing it subconsciously, guys ought to be forewarned. I recommend that your first date with someone you meet on a dating site involves doing something free or just taking a walk. I’m constantly trolling ‘freebie’ websites and I’m always disappointed when I have nobody to go see a free concert or art show with. Hopefully enjoying free stuff isn’t the only thing you two will have in common, but it’s somewhere to start.

HWY 61

Although I never intended to use this blog to write about day-to-day events, sometimes you just can’t help it. Today is one of these times I am compelled to relay my experiences, as today I dined in the footsteps of a foodie legend, none other than Guy Fieri. Face it: everyone wishes they had Guy’s job. What man wouldn’t devote his career to gorging himself on the greasiest, heartiest platters this side of the Atlantic?
I imagine HWY 61 Roadhouse, located at the brink of southwest St. Louis, once stood out with its neon guitar sign next to a humble dimly-lit side road. Since then the view has been obscured by luminous golden arches and Nordic sirens that compete for scarce real estate along the busy main street. Despite all this and the fact that we arrived close to five in the afternoon, the place was, as my brother’s gf put it, bumpin’. We walked in, forging a path through the couples in front of us and demanding a table, Fieri style. As I looked around it was clear that someone had indeed transfused the Fieri trademark into every nook and kindle of this quondam hole-in-the-wall. The overwhelming ‘as featured on Diners Drive-ins and Drives’ labels attest to the pitfalls of over-marketing. YES, most if not all of these customers heard about this place from recent episodes of DDD. BUT, is it necessary to make Guy Fieri the first and last image people see when they enter the restaurant? Is it necessary to have his face supplanted next to artwork of Ray Charles and other artists whose music was once part of the restaurant’s theme? SURE, the food was phenomenal, but I take pity on the ‘regulars’, the people who’ve been coming here for ten years and now can’t even get a table.

Matt Drake. Rollin’ out.

Idea for a Novel

I’m devising plans for a novel based on an episode of Doomsday Preppers, one of my favorite shows on television that documents the lives of real people preparing for end of the world scenarios. The episode features one prepper couple who has convinced the rest of their cul-de-sac to join their prepping efforts by dividing into teams and launching a mock attack on the couple’s house. Those defending the house devise tactics such as pepper spray, custom wooden boards to secure the lower windows of the house, and, obviously, guns. Fortunately, no one was injured, except for some folks who got pepper sprayed in the eyes.

Perhaps because of this show, or because of the wariness of the people in this country, prepping is a movement that is slowly gaining ground in certain circles. The advertisements on this show are almost exclusively marketing products like ready-made meals that will appeal to the prepper base. This begs the question, what if one prepper was able to build entire communities where preppers and like-minded people could live completely off the grid?
In my story the main character is an architect who sets out with a cohort of trustworthy childhood friends: a sous-chef, an engineer, a former fbi agent, a librarian and a barber. Together they build a new civilization inside the walls of a canyon. It grows so large that the prepper people declare themselves a new country. At this point the United States military declares war on the prepperians and threatens to launch a nuclear missile strike at the canyon. China and Germany get involved because New Prepperland has become a trusted ally and trade beneficiary of the palladium-rich mountains where the prepperians harvest livestock and grow perennial foods. With the advent of WWIII, the preppers have fulfilled their own prophecy.

Generations

Merry Christmas, friends, neighbors, colleagues and acquaintances.
This Christmas I received several nice gifts, one of which was Ayn Rand’s masterwork Atlas Shrugged. I am sure that Rand’s voluminous block of fictional prose teetering on philosophic dissertation will inspire many future blog ramblings. But really, why was this book not mandatory reading in any history or theory courses I took in school? The ideas proffered in this book would surely have been more useful than The Great Gatsby or similarly dubbed ‘classic literature’.
Nevertheless, my thoughts this day reflect on another book, a non-fictional manifesto on generational cycles called The Fourth Turning published by two sociologists William Strauss and Neil Howe. The premise is in essence that generational lengths of time (what they refer to as turnings) equate to the four seasons which we experience throughout the year. Thus a full cycle of our current society spans about 80-100 years, and passes through a ‘High’ period, an ‘Enlightenment’ period, an ‘Awakening’ period and a period of ‘Crisis’. When this book was written in the mid-1990’s our country was still in a period of awakening but we have since shifted into a period of crisis that will inevitably result in some major once-a-century realignment that will drastically affect the lives of all inhabitants (the last crisis period was WWII). I think the signs for this realignment are becoming stronger every day. Yes this process will be very painful, but it gives me hope to think of what could emerge from the ashes one day and the chance we’ll have to build civic institutions that once again protect the liberties of the individual, as they did during Ayn Rand’s era and numerous eras before her.
“May the Yule log burn, may the Year wheel turn. May darkness spurn, may the sun return…”

Introduction

If you’re like me, you have a million thoughts every day but no one to share them with. Fortunately that’s why people write blogs. This blog will be a little unique in that I will stipulate strict daily quotas on myself. Each and every day I will write exactly 300 words (minus the title) and post one picture. Why the strict word quota? For one, I know that if I don’t force myself to do something and if I don’t have a metric with which to measure my goal it, ain’t gonna happen. Which brings me to the second reason – the goal itself. Like Haruki Marakami, author and runner, writes in his memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,creation is something that requires more than just talent (although talent is inextricably tied to success); creation also requires focus and endurance. (http://99u.com/articles/7068/Haruki-Murakami-Talent-Is-Nothing-Without-Focus-and-Endurance)

If you don’t train your ‘focus muscles’ every day, they will inevitably atrophy. Likewise if you never practice something, such as writing, you can’t expect to ever have the stamina to achieve great things like writing a novel, something I have determined I will do by the time I turn 26.

I should note that I will mainly be posting these entries from my Kindle Fire, including the illustrations, which I will be using the free app, ‘Whiteboard’ to produce. This program, which is essential a mini-version of Microsoft Paint, is liberating because of how few tools you can actually use. And yet, I find it capable of remarkable sophistication.

Thank you for your interest in my blog, I hope that I can provide useful insight based on my experiences in graphic design, marketing, architecture, business and entrepreneurship. If you’d like to email me for any reason my address is located on this blog.