Blog of Josh Hall

I’ve always been taciturn, but usually that’s because I’m too busy watching any analyzing.  Sometimes I get a kick out the little things that people do, not because they need to or even want to, but because they’re conditioned to do so.

when people sneeze, perfect strangers will still say a variation of "God bless you."  From what research I remember, this has roots back into Egyptian cultures when they believed the soul escaped from the nose after death.  This is why the Sphinx has it’s nose broken off; grave robbers would break the nose so that demons and spirits could not come out and haunt them.  So saying "God bless you" seems like a polite thing to say, but it just seems like something so strange to do.

The camera of the yesterday was based on expensive and limited film cartridges.  People had to carry rolls of film, and if someone walked infront of your shot as you took a picture, they just wasted a picture, and if it was the last picture on the roll, you had to change it out, wasting precious time.  With digital cameras, that are so quick and easy to use, cameras are able to hold thousands of photos, and if you mess a shot up, just take it again.  So many people still act like they killed my cat if they walked infront of my shot.  It’s cool, we live in an age of technological innovation!  It should still be considered rude to walk infront of a camera, but don’t worry about throwing your back out trying to duck below the shot.

Chivalry in the workplace just doesn’t work.  Do men really need to let the lady in the elevator first?  that leaves you in front of them and if they get off before you, they have to fight around you.  That’s stupid.  How about we all just get on the elevator and be on our way?  At the end of the day, let’s just get off the blooming thing too!  The door will not close on me, so you don’t need to hold it awkwardly as I walk out. 

Sometimes people need tradition for the sake of tradition, or something familiar.  It’s a little unnerving at times.

Throughout my years of living in the Hill District, I’ve noticed a few cultural trends on pedestrian behavior.  One is just to stand around on the corners of Centre Avenue with nothing to do but watch people drive by or make obvious glances at women as they walk by.  This happens 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  They just stand there.  Not at a bus stop, not smoking, not harrassing people or cars, just standing around.  It’s weird, but pleasant in some weird way too.   The second behavior is walking on the street.  The sidewalk can be the cleanest thing and wide open, but they’ll walk right on the street.  It’s very frustrating as a driver.  sometimes, I liken it to the country, as you wait for cattle to cross the street.  I’m not comparing residents to farm animals, more like showing that both the city and the country have their obstacles.

BUT TO THE POINT!  Thanks to some engineering students at Pitt, the Hill District has designated walking paths!  This is a pretty cool thing, in my opinion at least.  Hopefully people will make use of the paths, I know that Erik does already.  check out the post-gazette story and the official site.

"No, I’m just stoic."

I posted some live songs from the show on April 4th on the myspace page, and 3 videos from the show on youtube!

Good ol’ Heritage Hills Christian Academy.  Bring your conservative christians, your social outcasts, your vagabond christian school seekers, your public school expellants, they’re all welcome.  I met some of my best friends there.  From 3rd grade to 9th grade, I learned a lot, grew a lot personally, and I attribute so much of my life’s foundation from lessons and experiences from there.  There’s probably some sort of metaphor tying into the fact that it was filled with asbestos and is now torn down, but I live in a world of self-denial.

So many stories I could tell you.  Getting caught in the library with my first real girlfriend by my mother, sliding a table into the stomach of my math teacher who would later turn out to be my step father, being kicked out of class by my english teach who just happened to be my mother because "she couldn’t stand to see my face.", how we used to ask our history teacher if we could go to the gym instead of having class; and we would, or how we’d skip the whole asking permission thing and just go right to the gym or to the closed off half of the 3 story ~30 classroom building to explore, or make our way to one of the numerous access points to the roof…Ah, the roof.  Such a huge building…100 feet?  We’d throw anything we found off of it.  One time, we we’re running around the many different sections of the roof and one of my best friends, Dallas, nearly jumped into a section with a 30 foot drop to the second floor accidently.

But I’ll spare the stories.  The real thing I look back to is what I made mention to in the first paragraph; How much I attribute that place in the forming the groundwork for my life, sense of humor, and attitude.  Could I have been a bigger achiever?  You betcha, but I wouldn’t have had fun.  Infact, I probably wouldn’t have learned how to have fun.  Life is a series of moments, and that’s all you get.  Would the Federalist Papers have expanded my understanding of the government?  Perhaps, but I wouldn’t have the pictures that I drew with friends that I have today.  Life can’t be a structured, scheduled, organized, predictable thing.  Free thinking and human expression cannot have boundaries and limitations.  There are so many different people that I’ve been exposed to, and we all have our histories weaved together, so much thicker than just a public school experience of the same faces day in and day out.  We all learned together and grew together.  Maybe some were able to walk away from there without learning or growing spiritually, academically, socially, personally, or even creatively, and to those people, I apologize, but to everyone else, students, teachers, and parents a like: Thank You.