Shallow Thoughts: Another Year of Proscrastination

Shallow Thoughts: Vapid headline grabbing, meandering nothings and a false sense of importance.

Posted by: Casey

Cold Outside

After an amazing end of the game drive, the Packers walked away with a come from behind victory, eliminating the Bears from Playoff contention and setting up a first round home game against the San Francisco 49ers. The thing about January in Northern Wisconsin is that it is a little closer to Siberia than most West Coast teams are used to playing in. Actually as far as I can tell, it looks like it’ll be a little bit warmer in Irkutsk (Siberia) come Sunday night than Green Bay, where the game is expected to have a high of 0 and a low possibly getting down to -18 Fahrenheit. It’s hard enough to walk to your car in that weather, so we’ll have see how football looks in that kind of cold.

The Wolf Of Wall Street

I haven’t gotten around to seeing all of the likely best picture candidates of the year yet, but I did get a chance to see the Wolf of Wall Street. I have not enjoyed a movie that much in quite a while. The characters are deplorable, their actions over the top, the definition of excess. Is there any reason to really root for them? No. Are they terrifically entertaining to watch? Yes. I think in a time where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer the Wolf of Wall Street is able to look at this problem with a critical eye, entertaining us along the way. The chemistry between Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill is fantastic, and all-in-all, the film justifies it’s long running time of three hours.

John Hopkins

If you have any interest in digital music, John Hopkins Immunity is a must-listen album. The tracks have a fantastic energy that often stays frantic and uptempo, while still having underlying slow-building elements. The sound is harsh at times, and embodies a sense of urgency and energy that makes me keep coming back to it. Jon Hopkins is a classically trained musician, and his respect for structure and complex manipulations of sound seem to display the talent of someone with an incredibly trained ear. There are so many layers of sound to his music that it will take quite a few listens to get the most out of this album.

New Years Resolutions

Another year has come and gone. Now we can get a fresh start towards putting off our goals! This year I was able to stick to my resolution to read two books a month, just hitting my mark at twenty-four. But this year I think I’m taking a slightly different approach to resolution setting. When it’s a check-list you are trying to accomplish, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the number of tasks and goals you have set for yourself, and ultimately to ignore them. This year I am sticking with one goal, to minimize my time spent idly surfing the web. Sure I would like to get in a certain amount of reading, to work out a certain amount, and so on, and so on. But I think all of those possibilities open themselves up to you once you do something to address one of the largest obstacles to productiveness, and that’s the black hole of the internet. No, I don’t need to watch eight cat videos after I finish typing this post. I also don’t need to see what the differing opinions are on the likely winners of this weeks football games. And because I won’t be doing those things, that means I might actually find myself doing something productive. Oh, what the hell, here’s my favorite one for old times sake.