A couple days ago I had an interesting chat discussion through the chat widget on my site, with a fellow blogger friend named Phase. We discussed Phase’s new blogging site, The Phase Files, as well as many aspects of blogging such as networking, site design, writing under a pen name, widgets, Google Analytics, SEO tools, blog carnivals, and commenting. It was a good conversation and covered many topics that every blogger should be aware of. If you’re a blogger, you’ll find some interesting tips and tidbits. Enjoy!

8:11:55 PM  plugoo_buddy: [My Plugoo] [Phase] Hey man

8:12:09 PM  Cold Philter: Hey Phaser.

8:12:11 PM  plugoo_buddy: [Phase] I just got your post — I’m flattered and glad u enjoyed it

8:12:20 PM  plugoo_buddy: [Phase] how did u find me

8:12:55 PM  Cold Philter: Through BlogCatalog.  I realized that if I need to start meeting other bloggers if I want anyone to check out my site.

8:13:22 PM  plugoo_buddy: [Phase] i’m glad u did man

8:14:01 PM  Cold Philter: Yeah, that’s a big piece of the blog equation I was missing.  The whole point of blogs is that you create a discussion…and I wasn’t.

8:14:04 PM  plugoo_buddy: [Phase] I have been blogging for about 3 months now and it’s going really well ever since i started networking

8:14:24 PM  plugoo_buddy: [Phase] yea totally man

8:14:33 PM  plugoo_buddy: [Phase] i like ur site a lot it’s fucking sick

8:14:38 PM  plugoo_buddy: [Phase] i just RSS’d u

8:14:40 PM  Cold Philter: Yeah, networking is awesome, it’s really good to get feedback from other bloggers.

Continue Reading…

“Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

- Tyler Durden, from Fight Club (movie)

I’ve been reading Chuck Palahniuk’s, Fight Club lately. I watched the movie again the other night. I can’t help but feeling that I relate to the men in the book, the movie, a generation of men who feel like boys, lost, and unsure what it really means to be a man to begin with.

To deal with these insecurities, these men create a Fight Club, a place they can all join together and try to discover their hidden manhood by beating the shit out of each other.

“We’re a generation of men raised by women. I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.”

What happens to a boy as he grows up without a strong father figure in his life? Does he grow up becoming less of a man…a man child?

Mother’s are great, but I don’t think they can show a boy how to be a man. They can’t give a boy that sense of pride, and inner strength that a man has. Some things a boy has to hear from a man, has to learn from a man before they can be truly believed and appreciated.

My mom raised me, even though my dad was around till I was 19. He provided for my family, but it was as little as he could get away with. I think about it sometimes, and wish that my dad had taught me how to play sports, or any sport, helped me with my homework, or showed me how to talk to girls. It may seem unimportant, but really I wanted a father who was involved in my life. I needed a father to show me how to be strong, dignified, and instill those values in me.

I didn’t have that example to learn from, so instead I had to learn from his bad example. I realized that when I grew older that I wanted to be nothing like my dad, that I would learn from his mistakes, so that when I had a family of my own, I wouldn’t treat them the way my dad had treated mine.

When I used to get into arguments with my mom and things got heated, she’d say to me that I was like my dad, and I wonder if she knew how badly telling me that had hurt. I ended up telling her at one point to never say I was like my dad again, because it wasn’t true, and she had no right saying it. A child shouldn’t feel this way about their father.

I think boys raised by their mothers tend to be more creative and expressive. I look at the music industry, and I know this holds true for hip hop artists. Tupac, Jay-Z, The Notorious B.I.G., Eminem, 50 Cent, and Kanye West all grew up without major father figures in their lives. I wonder how this relates to visual artists, writers, and other creative men. Does being raised without a strong father figure lead to an increase in creativity or expressiveness as an adult? How about increased femininity?

Who knows…but I’m thinking about starting my own Fight Club. Any other lost fatherless males care to join me?

“Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?”

          Here are some pics of me in costume shortly before I went to a Halloween party. I wasn’t going as anyone in particular, and I looked like a combination of the Phantom of the Opera, the Grim Reaper, and Zorro. Naturally, I thought I looked pretty badass!





          I discovered recently however that my costume looked a lot like a villain in the Trick r’ Treat horror movie preview on the 300 DVD. This character plays some sort of masked vampire…not too shabby. Unfortunately, even though this movie was scheduled for and October ‘07 release, it has been pushed back till sometime next year.

          I’ll keep a look out for this movie, I’m curious to see myself in action. MUAHAHAHAHA! Yeah, I’m a dork. Get over it.

I lost my job this morning…and I’m STOKED!


♫ Celebrate good times come on! ♫
     Losing a job is sweet when the job isn’t that great…or downright sucks. There’s a key word in that sentence there. Actually, it’s one of my favorite acronyms. J.O.B. - just over broke. Sorry, I don’t mean to start badmouthing jobs here (actually I do, let’s just hope that there aren’t any potential employers reading this), but I had to say that.

     This isn’t to say that there aren’t “good” jobs out there to be obtained, there are, however they are rare. I tend to think that the definition of what a job is prevents it from receiving a high status of awesomeness. Here’s the definition from my Oxford American Dictionary on my computer:

job - noun - a paid position of regular employment

     That’s a good definition to me of what a job is, but it points out what jobs are lacking, and that’s growth potential. I guess this is the primary difference between a career and a job. A career encourages growth and advancement over a length of time. A job in my opinion gives little focus on growth and advancement, concentrating in the present, which creates stagnation in the employee. The job I just lost was much like that, leaving you with a feeling of insignificance and expendability, with little if no chance of growth within the company.

     So instead of feeling much loss or distress from being told I lost my job because I didn’t switch my monitor screen settings the previous work night back from a vertical to a horizontal position (can you tell they wanted me outta there?), I felt relief. I almost felt glad…almost. I did like most of my coworkers, and won’t be able to see them as often now. One of these days though I hope to be fired for a legitimate reason like stealing from the vending machines, peeing under my desk or saying “cha-cha” too many times.

     Isn’t there something grossly wrong with this situation? To feel relief about losing a job instead of regret? Do companies honestly want to create employees that are completely indifferent about the place they spend the majority of their waking time? I suppose it makes the firing process that much easier, but it seems like a lot of companies have their priorities out of whack.

     I remember a few weeks ago being told to stop asking questions about my job/work because I was questioning authority (when in fact I was trying to learn), and was accused of insubordination. It’s hard for me to believe that the desire to learn and improve my performance can be looked upon as being negative. Yet again, I haven’t experienced many dictatorships either, but the rules by which that company governed its employees seem to fit in line with autocracy.

     Luckily for me I have faith in myself. I have faith in myself that I will become employed with a company that appreciates its employees. As long as I know and tell myself that my value to this world exceeds whatever dollar sign the corporate world wants to tag onto it, I’ll be just fine. Hopefully if you’re in the same situation as me right now, you have the same understanding about your worth.

I suggest reading the article: 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job, by Steve Pavlina. It gives some real insight on jobs and work in general.

     Oh, I’m currently giving dance lessons for a fee if anyone of you out there in the dubya dubya dubya needs some help gettin’ jiggy wit it or crunked up or………..you get what I mean. Just hit me up. Peace.

     The badass ninjutsu quartet, known as The Urban Ninjas begin their sword training the only way they know how…

By slicing the hell out of beer cans! This is rare, never-before-seen footage of the underground mercenaries in action…


Stay tuned as more video of the The Urban Ninjas becomes available on AlexLandis.com!