“Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of)” – The Mars Volta
HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYBODY (IN THE 3rd DIMENSION)
“Anytime people have ritual in their lives — a deliberate routine of choice — it’s significant to me. Being a vegetarian is one of my ways of being deliberate within my life. Eating can be so mechanical, something for which one feels exactly nothing. We eat merely to get full. It’s nice to have chosen approach to food; eating a certain way — even if it’s arbitrary, although my vegetarianism is the opposite of arbitrariness — brings consciousness to an everyday at that rarely calls for any.” – Jonathan Safran Foer author of “Everything is Illuminated”
Subsisting on a diet of mostly pepperoni and cheese sandwiches in my formative years, it would be difficult for many of my friends and peers to understand just how seriously I take my diet these days. Maybe because I have so many years of poor eating habits behind me, what I eat has become an act with significance. The key point to make here is that — barring allergies — people can acquire a taste for anything. Trust me I’m not lying to you. When you sit down around the turkey today, scoop out a spoonful of one of those dishes you’ve never tried. Once you realize that almost any food out there is worth eating, the act of choosing what you eat becomes more difficult and more conscious. Whereas my repertoire in my teenage years expanded from pepperoni and cheese sandwiches to pizzas, hamburgers, and fried chicken, I now regularly dine on broccoli, spinach, ham, turkey, and curry. It’s hard to believe (I was completely faithless myself most of my life) but try not to act to surprised when after a few bites you realize that you like what you picked out. While this post is not about forcing my diet (not the kind where you loose weight by exploiting your body but rather a healthy combination of exercise and rational eating choices) on anyone but rather bringing the eating decision back into the equation, I would like to quickly note that I am a Paleo eater with the exception that I avoid shrimp, lobster, and most types of fish (that is partly a product of taste/texture but mostly due to my concerns about overfishing the oceans and destroying the ecology by trawling the reefs and completely removing elements of the food chain). Today, though, I am not Paleo. Because today is and always has been the one day we Americans take eating seriously. This is the day — probably the only one with the possible exception of Christmas gatherings — where food is eaten ritually. We still cook ham and turkey. We still fill the tables with squash, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, and a bounty of pies. So today, gather around with your family, give thanks, and think about bringing the ritual of eating back into your daily life. For me, Friday is feast day. I drop all the tenets of my Paleo diet and drink beers and cheeseburgers with my friends. Call up your family on a random Tuesday and make it Caesar salad night. Bake a pie because you can. Bring the choice back into eating. Order something random at your favorite restaurant. Drive right past that drive-thru window. I don’t even care if your diet changes. Just stop and think before you eat. Peace, love, and happy eating.
-C.B. Robertson
HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM THE SHARK STAFF
“Run Into Flowers” – M83
“Tiptoe Thru the Tulips” – Tiny Tim
“Earth Angel”- Tiny Tim
“Living in the Sunlight” – Tiny Tim
“Santa Claus has got the AIDS” – Tiny Tim
“Time to Pretend” – MGMT
“Paranoid Android” – Radiohead
Every Monday, the team here at surrealistic sharks will compile mp3s in a .zip file and post them to mediafire for download as a single album. Click the picture to proceed to the full download or click the individual song hyperlink if you want to listen to a preview of a specific song (when provided). After you download the .zip, use a program of your choice (Stuffit Expander, Win RAR, etc.) to unzip the files and drag them into your iTunes, Windows Media Players, or Songbirds make a playlist and go to town. Playlist and quick links after the jump.
This week’s mixtape is about those odd moments around the dinner table at Thanksgiving when you meet your aunts and uncles for the first time. When you are no longer sitting at the kid’s table and find yourself quite suddenly there equals. This is about bringing home the wrong or right girl or boy to mom and dad and what happens next. Happy Thanksgiving folks. Give thanks for good music, good stories, and good friends.
#13 Happy Thanksgiving
“Dead Flowers” – Townes Van Zandt
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Harvey Langstaff
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