As the 36 Mafia have said “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp.” Well, I think one way to make the pimp life easier is to have a good name.

What is your pimp handle?

A few of my names that keep me legit:

• Reverend Soper Smooth
• Reverend Doctor Ian Silk
• Master Pimp Soper
• Tickle D. Magical I. Slither

These are just a small selection of my names that you’ll hear on the real, badassss streets of Fredericksburg, VA.

You gots a pimp name? Post it.

I found an interesting new technology that being marketed in the UK. It is a power generator that utilizes the energy that we are already using, our cars.

Ramp creates power as cars pass

Basically they are small ramps that are installed on roads (most likely on highway roads, not town or street roads, that is my guess at least). When the car drives over it generates electrcity, between 5 - 50Kw of it. Apparently this “is silent, comfortable and safe for vehicles.”

I love this passive power generation. Will people go for more of these, less intrusive, passive ways of generating alternative engergy? I hope so.

I personally would love the idea of roads filled with fuel cell, solar and hybrid cars, made of recylced materials, driving to their homes that are powered by the recylced energy from that same trip.

Let’s use energy smarter and not harder.

I like John Mayer. I really like John Mayer. I saw him first opening up for (of all people) They Might Be Giants at the dancin in the district festival in Nashville in 2001, shortly before the release of his “Room for Squares” album. Despite his excellent guitar skills with some sweet jazz licks that where textured by vocals mimicking his blues strings, scatting in harmony, I still discounted him as “a nowheresville DMB wanna be college dropout.” I dug on the music, but kept that frown, wrong side down as if to illustrate my musical snobbery and as an annoying time waster between me seeing TMBG.

Now after few years of healing, I am in a musical 12 step program. Hi, I am Ian and I’m a music snob. I spent years avoiding Top 40 charts in lieu of the sounds of jazz and rock that alienated me from many people around me. I even admit that there were times where I liked some musician or song, but I let myself not enjoy it, because it meant that I had to say that I enjoyed something that the “enemy” liked. The enemy being someone who liked something that was not cool, or something that I didn’t think was cool.

I admit that there were times that I felt uncomfortable or threatened by someone who liked an artist that I found amazing, and I would begin a pathway of relational destruction that included me listing all the things that I knew about the band, just to isolate my snobbery from another’s childish interest in this amazing group.

I admit that I took too much pride in having a music collection that almost everyone that I knew could not enjoy with me.

I’m recovering. And maybe John Mayer is a step in the right direction. This did not happen overnight. I admitted that I liked “Why Georgia?”, sometime in 2002 or 2003. I read comment by the amazing guitarist Ric Hordinski that sarcastically and sincerely described him as “A suprisingly good guitar player.” I saw him on Chapelle show playing the ballad of Jed Clampitt with the drummer from the Roots and Dave Chapelle. For a show that is pretty much an exclusively hip-hop outlet, the idea of him being there was intriguing. I saw him on VH1 with Paul Simon, that really made me respect him musically and as a song writer. I’ve seen a few interviews that show him as very intelligent, bitingly sarcastic and funny, albeit dry. I started listening to his albums and really enjoying them. And the other day I downloaded the John Mayer Trio album and have played it about 4 times. He is really good and I really like him.

Musical snobbery is a disease that can be treated. I recommend trying different kinds of music at all times. I recomment “suffering-through” to the end of each song and album. I recommend listening to more more and gossiping about it less. I recommend challenging your music listening in all the ways that you can: take risks, download songs from iTunes that you wouldn’t normally, go to the library ingest their music collection, borrow an album from a friend even if you don’t aggree with their musical choices. Above all, I recommend remembering why you began to love music in the first place. How can you take that childlike love and infuse it with your developed sensibilities and knowledge and really love music?

Emergent Logo Contest Update

Well, it was worth a shot. I kind knew that the few logos that I put together (I wasn’t terribly excited about any of them) wouldn’t be enough, and were really just small sketches to the bigger picture of what it is to set a visual brand.

People tend to think that having someone design a simple, quick logo is enough for a brand. But when they start looking at the whole process, they soon find themselves diving into the machinery that seemed so simple on the outside. I’m glad they have decided to get some professional help (hopefully from someone with branding experience).

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Originally uploaded by ReposNai.

Jamie and I had a nice picnic on Sunday afternoon at Chatham Manor in Fredericksburg. It started off with a feast of shrimp, black bean salad, hummus with wheat pitas, sharp cheddar cheese and sparkling pink lemonade. I let Jamie know that I would be taking care of all the food…so she obviously knew something was up.

We retreated from our red picnic table after cleaing up to a little shelter next to the picnic table. The light was pouring into the small room beautifully (see the photos). There I had a few gifts for Jamie, including a pair of green gloves… I said to Jamie, “Why don’t you try them on?” She said, “My hands smell shrimpy.” I said, “I really think you should try them on anyway.” She did, and tried the left glove first. It fit. And so did the ring (well, sort of) after I removed it from the glove and put it on her finger.

I said, “Would you like to spend the rest of your life with me?” She answered, “Ok (smiley face added for emphasis, she did not say “Ok, colon right parenthesis, as some of you might have been thinking)

I don’t remember uttering the words, “Will you marry me?” But it surely was implied as it has been since the first week we started dating. Some things you just know. And after a perfect weekend with Jamie, I realized how much I know her and how much God knows us, that he guides us to the right people and the right situations if we are obedient and allow ourselves to fall into that love. I’ve fallen deep into the love that God set aside for me. Don’t worry, Jamie caught me.

btw, the photo above is only a couple of minutes after I proposed to Jamie. She looks pretty happy, eh? To see more photos of this blessed occasion, visit my flickr page.

I’ve been designing like crazy today. I worked on some stuff for the nameless church and then some logo designs for emergent. They’ve got a contest that I’m pretty excited about. I’ll post some logo designs when I get some done.

I get stuck in the swamps of life forgetting the rest of the journey. I worry about losing a boot, or getting messy in the marsh before me when the bigger picture is that I am on a huge adventure, a giant, exciting story. That I must remember when I get bogged down in the everyday nonesense. Design, art, expression is my connection back to that bigger picture, that beautiful story. I’m going to keep reading, it looks like it is getting exciting

I suddenly realized that whether or not my blog is a figment of my own imagination or the imagination of some supreme being, it doesn’t matter because, “I post, therefore, I blog.”

Take that Ryan.

Chris, Ryan and I went camping last weekend at Shenadoah National Park. It was a good relief from my busy, busy life. We got a chance to relax, be silent, use our boots as drink holders and just really allow ourselves to be still and quite before God.

We after the first leg of the hike, we snatched an opportunity to sit on the rocks at the top of the White Oak Canyon falls and read, read, read. Then we prayed together. It was a good regrouping moment. I’m glad I got to share it with Chris and Ryan.

Chris has some great pics from the trip on his blog.

Ron and I launched the Real Life Commuunity Church site today. It has a couple of issues with it and there are some more features to add to it, but I say it turned out pretty good overall.

In an attempt to design a CSS saavy site, I learned some cool CSS tricks, struggled to overcome the differences between Firefox and IE and real just tried to make a site that used the least amount as images and tables as possible. I’m happy with the results.

Let me know what you think of the site… I’m curious to hear some feedback:
See the RLCC Site.