Since Latif Learned is me and I'm Latif Learned, I'm going to be posting his songs here. I often make songs for people to send them in the email when I'm thinking about them, but why not post them here, too?
for sara - 09242006
Latiflearned.com has more
... asked me "why not just delete your account?", if I have such a problem with Friendster's message. Well, I thought of that, but it doesn't really send any message back. In fact, it's exactly what I did with my MySpace account, and immediately regretted it. I want to be able to send a message to the world at large about the way I feel about Friendster, and there's no way you can convince somebody of the way you feel by being absent from a place where presence is voluntary. Once I deleted my profile from MySpace, the fact that I had a problem with MySpace was lost, because I just became, from the eyes of the internet, another person without a MySpace account.
And so on. Have a nice weekend.
Latiflearned.com is far less preachy than this site. Well, a little less preachy.
I've talked about this before, so I won't belabor the point, but I'm accumulating problems with the social networking sites (friendster/myspace/blah blah blah) at an alarming rate. First, I was just worried that advertisers would see my friendster profile, and use my favorite bands against me by putting them in a Volkswagen commercial. This has been done, granted, but it doesn't stop there. Now we can all safely assume that if you're applying for a job, you're going to get Google searched, which means that anything posted online about you (with your real name attached to it) is going to be found. So your MySpace profile that professes your love for 311 and has naked ladies in a y-repeat pattern in the background? That's going to keep things from happening for you.
So I've deleted all pertinent information from my friendster profile, and left in its stead a message to the future... I reccomend that you all do the same.
Latiflearned.com is less paranoid.
I'm a big fan of public transit. I think that we should all use it. We should have rail! More trains! More buses! Fewer cars! More personal interaction. I think that the car/highway system is arguably one of the worst things to happen to American culture. That combined with our culture of rugged individualism turned us into the bunch of fuck-you cowboys that we are today.
Boston is trying to kill my love for public transit. The MBTA hates people. Take, for example, when I tried to go to work on Friday. To get on a bus at Forest Hills, you need one of two things: cash, or a weekly pass. Lacking cash due to an oversight, I simply figured that I'd get some cash out of the ATM, break it up by buying a bottle of water or something, then get on my bus with time to spare.
Unfortunately, the ATM at Forest Hills doesn't work. Bummer. I'm staring at my bus, which is going to leave in about two minutes, a bus that if missed will mean that I get to work half an hour late, and I can't find any way to get cash. So I go to the "Charlie Card" terminals, thinking that there *must* be some option there to allow me to get a pass so that I can ride the bus. I even go so far as to consider purchasing a weekly pass, just so that I can ride the bus on Friday. Unfortunately, the machine doesn't let you buy this week's pass, you can only buy next week's.
There is literally no way that I could get on that bus legitimately.
To rub some salt in the wound, I have a Charlie Card that'll work fine on the subway. So I tried to feign innocence and get on the bus with that. The driver says "those don't work on this bus." So I'll have to get cash? Yep. But the ATM doesn't work, how am I supposed to get cash? I dunno, what do you want me to do? All I'm saying is that I would love to pay you to get on this bus, but I have no way of doing that.
So she let me ride the bus for free, after I swore that I'd try to remember to bring cash from now on.
I'm just going to ride my bike from here on out. Seriously, folks. You can't even pay the MBTA to ride their buses.
Latiflearned.com doesn't talk about buses at all.
You might think that your high school mascot was pretty cool. Well, I've got news for you. The Cougars, Wildcats, Oscelots, etc. of the world have nothing on my high school mascot: the Sandstoners.
Now, being the Sandstoners would be unremarkable, except that that's not what we call ourselves. We call ourselves the Stoners. Parents call us the Stoners. Newspapers call us the Stoners. It's official. Think you can top that?
Latiflearned.com is basically the bomb.
Today at lunch, my coworker Dave came in and asked me if I'd be down
for some free indoor skydiving in a wind tunnel. The only catch is
that I have to leave work a couple of hours early to do it. I paused
for about one second and said
"Okay!"
It turns out that a former coworker of mine (or rather, a former
employee of my organization) is a champion skydiver, and his team
gets free shots at the new indoor skydiving center they're building
in Nashua, NH, a mere hour from Boston. The organization is
called SkyVentures, and I'd link their web site if I was writing this
post with internet access. Alas! I'm writing from my new apartment,
and there's no internet here.
So I and a coworker left work early, hopped in the truck, and drove
to Nashua, NH. The people there were all like, "Are you ready to pay
us a ton of money?" and we dropped the name of our coworker, and they
were like, " Oh, go right in for free."
It turns out that a camera crew was coming that day to do some shots,
so our class and subsequent "jump" was me and my coworker, some lady,
and a TV anchorwoman for a local news channel in New Hampshire, with
her cameraman. We did a brief class in the basics, suited up in the
incredibly flattering newby air gear, and headed into the chamber.
The entire building is built around this massive chamber, that can
reach vertical air speeds of up to 190MPH. When it gets that fast,
the whole place starts to shake, and if you're sitting in the benches
inside, you kind of bounce around. When they started the air up, we
bumbled around in the air for a while, with our instructor pointing
out cryptic hand gestures like "relax" and "bend your knees" at us
while we caromed off of the walls for a while. At one point, I gained
enough balance that he let go of me, and I flew about ten feet in the
air. When I got back inside, I realized that I'd been drooling over
my face the entire time. Classy.
There was a fellow there who was a veteran of the Orlando wind
tunnel, up to teach everybody the special wind tunnel tricks. He gave
us a show of the crazy shit you can do in a wind tunnel, and suffice
it to say, the guy is an air ninja. He can walk on walls. He can
levitate. He can disappear. It was the most amazing thing I've ever
seen in real life.
So the point of my story is that if you want to drop $50 on half an
hour, several minutes of which are in a wind tunnel, you should drive
to Nashua, NH. I'd recommend skipping work to do it if you can.
