It's 3:00 am and I don't have a witty or clever title. Goodnight folks.

Just something quick regarding what I read tonight...

1 - I love Mark Cuban.

I used to despise the guy when all I knew him as was a boorish NBA owner who ran onto the court to piss and moan and bitch at the refs. Then I realized he was like any other person who struck it rich and decided that instead of reading about the moves his favorite team made he'd make them himself.

Now he's one of the world's richest fans and he's doing what every guy who enjoys sports would love to do for a living: he runs a professional sports team, talks trash with opposing players, hams it up with fans and does it while sitting court-side in jeans.

I think that's basically awesome.

But he's also pretty fucking brilliant. You don't pioneer video on the web and sell it for a shit-ton without having having some ammunition above the neck.

He's got himself a blog (and a FB account and a Twitter feed in case you're wondering). Some of it is above my pay-grade but I follow along and I read with interest when he writes something new.

An entry from a few days ago caught my attention.

He wrote about motivation, a topic I've recently covered.

I loved it. But it was a quote at the end that made me stop and think:

"Success is about making your life a special version of unique that fits who you are."

I like that. I like that a lot.

2 - It got me thinking about my favorite quotes. Four have always stood out, you can find each in my Facebook info. I'm assuming if you're reading this you're also a FB pal so check 'em out if you like. Three of them start...

"Every morning in Africa..."
"I'm growing very weary..."
"The things you learn in maturity..."

I got them from my dad's office. For as long as I can remember, they've been framed on his walls or sitting at his desk, no matter what job he's held. I remember, vividly, being a young elementary school kid in Rice Lake and walking to his office after classes were finished. When I got there I'd sit while he worked and look at everything in his office. I used to love the copy machine a few doors down. I'd bring pictures and booklets from Nintendo games and he'd make blown up copies for my walls at home.

But what stood out most were the three quotes from above. I had them memorized by the time I was seven years old. Even if I hadn't committed them to memory they followed him from office to office as we moved. Schools changed, artwork changed, pictures changed, awards changed. Those three framed quotes didn't. Just simple black type on white paper in cheap frames. They always made their way to prominent places in the old man's office.

I like to think of myself as a traditionalist, so that's what I brought with me to my job in EC, the town I was born in. Those same three quotes, the same kind of black frame prominently displayed around my desk.

3 - The last quote is one I picked up on my own. Over ten years ago Bret Easton Ellis published Glamorama. It wasn't his most commercially successful by any means and it was absolutely slammed by reviewers. I picked it up because I had previously read American Psycho and The Rules of Attraction and they both made me fall in love with writing. The things that Ellis did were so unlike anything I'd ever seen. He made me wonder what could be done if conventions were challenged and laws of prose were broken.

Unfortunately, Glamorama sort of sucked. The writing was interesting, the plot wasn't.

But for whatever reason, one quote stood out:

"you show the world things and in showing the world you teach it what you want"

I actually remember where I was when I read it. I remember putting the book down and thinking about what Ellis had written. What he meant, why he might have buried it in a absurd chapter in a shitty novel.

But the quote stuck out to me. I thought about it a lot and it made sense. Everything you do in life is some sort of reflection of what you want everyone to know about you and how you want them to perceive the world around them. Whether you do it consciously or not, you're influencing others.

I don't know. I just thought it was cool concept.

3b - Before I wrote this I re-read the chapter in Glamorama that the quote comes from. If you want to experience a literary roller coaster just check out chapter 34 and try to keep up.