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Ah here we are at the end of another decade. On to the…what, tens, teens? It’s going to be easier when we get to the twenties, to ease up confusions about the vernacular. Of course in 2020, I will be 43…yikes.

2009 was a lovely reset from the trials and tribulations of 2008. It seemed like everyone I knew was ready for the change. Break-ups, deaths, jobs lost. Mundane human events for sure, but the volume seemed overwhelming. Everyone I know was just hanging on for dear life in December, shouting, “enough already!” It seems silly and a bit of an illusion that the passing of one year into the next could solve our problems, but that fresh start seemed to find everyone I know on a more even keel, including myself. I found myself single, putting much emphasis on my new job, trying to craft a life on my own terms. No roommates, no girlfriends, nobody, save a few good friends, both new and old, geographically close and distant. Alone can be a good thing and as someone who requires a great deal of it to charge my batteries, I felt a sense of wholeness that I hadn’t known in a decade or so. A bit of travel, some adventures here and there and by summer’s end things were flying on autopilot.

And there’s the thing of it. Once you achieve your goals, if you are a restless person, you have to make more of them, otherwise you stagnate. And maybe this is the reason I like the idea of New Year’s resolutions. I mean, if you are going to mark out some heights to reach in your year, you ought to do it as soon as possible to give yourself a full 365. With two days to go before I have to get started, here they are, in no real order:

1. Learn how to make beer.
2. Go get that new gym membership (I know, cliché right?)
3. Save for a trip to Europe.
4. Find a couple new agency-level design clients.
5. Get out more! Make some new friends, meet some new people. Too much worry about work and future.
6. Continue learning how to make great gourmet food on a budget.
7. Give blood more!
8. Finish writing/designing my book.
9. Make at least a couple photography road trips to Birmingham.
10. Finish my website…even though I hate designing for the web.
11. Double down on dancing (badly) to 80’s music.

It’s really a modest list for a whole year. Some of this I’ll be doing for years and years anyway, like cooking and making friends, etc.

I also have some plans for beyond 2010:

2011

1. Sell car. Buy a Nissan 350z. Black. Or some other such fast car. It’s time.
2. Give up apartment life and rent a house. Get a big dumb happy dog.

2015

1. Buy a house (another argument for serving in the military…guaranteed home loans through the VA.)
2. Be nearly 40 and not suck as a person.

The vision of Darth Vader (and Storm Troopers for that matter) living in our position in time and space has become something of a cultural meme. However, most of the examples I have encountered have been non sequitur in flavor. This collection of photos sets the Dark Lord in a much more conventional light.

The video component of this mix is a little shoddy but that’s not why you want this. D-Tox (aka Darrell Carter aka DC) is one of Pensacola Florida’s very best house DJs and this live mix proves that. I especially dig the track in the very center of the mix called “My MTV” by Chris Lake. Very hot stuff. Really low-slung and groovy prog house…my absolute favorite sound from this genre besides that evil bass-heavy shit that used to come out on Pitch Black back in the day. Looks like Doria is finishing up for the very first part of the vid and DC takes to the decks a moment later.

If I was not so sensitive about inflicting music onto my site visitors every time they loaded my page, I think this mix would be the perfect soundtrack to my website.

D-Tox on MySpace

Matthew Rainwaters has some spectacular shots of men with equally spectacular facial hair. I love this simple portrait lighting. I think I shall add a ringflash to my Christmas wish list.

Tripwire Magazine posted a collection of experimental typography on their site. Go check it out.

We’ve come a long way with party flyers, graphically speaking, but in some ways we’ve remained exactly the same. The fact that many of these look high-tech and in fact almost had to have been executed by hand deserves much respect. Twenty years. We are coming up on thirty years since the term “techno” was invented. That is utterly amazing to me. The idealistic vision of a technological future that spawned our music (and secretly influenced and pushed forward pop and hip-hop) has been stunted and replaced by a more dystopian one, however our culture is still going strong and in fact is finally starting to see real mainstream appeal. Slowly perhaps.