When you've got a moniker like mine, you don't expect to see it too often. And you certainly don't expect to see it on a deli counter, or an antique tractor trailer. Such is the fun of doing domain name searches with your own last name.
I particularly like that first one. Classy.
I am now an Apple Certified Techinician. That means I can heal Powerbooks with the power of my mind. I can cure stricken hardware with the slightest touch. You could run over your iBook with a steamroller and kneel before me with a garbage bag filled with the broken shards, and I will smile gently and hand you back your computer, whole, functional, because I am a benevolent and merciful god. But I am also a vengeful god: mess with me, and I'll wipe your hard drive just by looking at it.
I am certified. FEAR ME.
Seven-thirty at night, and it's still 91 degrees. This summer's gonna suck, big time. On the way over here I ran into my comic-book-writing friend, who complained about moving to San Diego in a week. It's 70ｺ and sunny in San Diego, you jackass!
I suppose it could be worse; I just saw that it's 108ｺ in Phoenix. Which must mean that everyone in Phoenix is dead.
A request to friends, neighbors, co-workers:
if you've got any Pixies CDs, please let me borrow 'em. The iTunes Music Store ain't got none, and ever since Radiohead cited them, along with the Smiths and, surprisingly, U2, as their chief musical influences, I've been wanting to give them a listen...
Forty-Second Street is hell at the best of times. Oppressive to the point of being offensive, packed to the gills with clueless tourists and rushing business types, garish, loud. Forty-Second Street sucks. And in 95-degree heat, it's worse. In the heat, it's like nails in your skull, and it'll drive you insane.
That is, unless you can make it to Bryant Park, where the noise level drops to an acceptable muted hum, and the fountain and the grass provide a little respite from the heat radiating off the pavement, and the free high-speed wireless Internet access allows you to sit in the grass and check your email and post to your website. Like I'm doing right now.
Yeah, the Power Mac G5 is great and all, but the neatest thing Apple announced yesterday is iChat AV, which enables users to do full-screen video conferencing over a broadband connection, with digital audio sound. Which means, basically, that you could talk to your friend at Sydney University over your computer. With no long distance charges. This is a very, very cool thing. And they even came up with a nifty little firewire video camera, to boot...
A couple nights ago, I had a dream that I was finally sitting in a theatre watching THE HULK, only to find that the movie was incomprehensible, a foreign arthouse flick with lots of talking heads and weird transitions. I woke up in a cold sweat.
Okay, well, maybe not in a cold sweat, but I was a bit disturbed. The point is, I have more than a bit of emotional investment in the Hulk, both the film and the character, and that the green guy has infiltrated my subconscious to the point when I'm dreaming about him. (I also had a different dream in which I had finally obtained a pair of Hulk Hands, and was walking around gleefully punching things, but that may have just been more an emotional release than anything else.) So my mood in walking out of the actual theatre last night, after viewing the actual film, is a bit hard to describe.
A letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, received October 15, 1945, in its entirety:
From the FBI's released, and then recently un-released, file on Adolf Hitler's post-World War II whereabouts. Some interesting reading, courtesy of The Memory Hole.
"One of you, specifically John Lee, will spend most of your time just hanging out in your car eating nachos. You will all come back from time to time to this beautiful campus for reunions, and ask the question, 'Does anyone ever know what happened to John Lee?' At that point, he will invariably pop out from the bushes and yell, 'Nachos anyone?!' At first, it will scare the crap out of you. But then you'll share a laugh with your classmates and ultimately look forward to John jumping out of the bushes as a yearly event..."
(5) Find the item and stand around it. Unlike in MOB #1, where the participants were not to acknowledge one another, here you should greet even those you do not know. Talk among yourselves about the item and its relative merits and demerits. Only if you are blocked from seeing the item should you stray to examine other merchandise at the site.
(6) If you are approached by a salesperson, explain that everyone present lives together, in a huge converted warehouse in Long Island City, and that you
are there looking for a "[secret phrase]." Explain that you make all purchases as a group...
And so, earlier tonight, a mob of a couple dozen people showed up at Macy's to debate the merits of a $10,000 rug.
Every thousand years, this metal sphere, ten times the size of Jupiter, floats just a few yards past the earth. You climb on your roof and take a swipe at it with a single feather. Hit it once every thousand years 'til you've worn it down to the size of a pea. Yeah, I'd say that's a long time, but it's only half a blink in the place you're gonna be.
Where you gonna be? Where will you spend eternity? I'm gonna be perfect from now on.
I'm gonna be perfect, starting now.
[yeah, I've started listening to Built to Spill again.]
My own geekness sometimes overwhelms even me at times. Times like right now, when, after enjoying a wonderfully exhausting essay on THE MATRIX RELOADED, I fired off the following email to its creator.
Beware: if you couldn't give a rat's ass about THE MATRIX and walk around wondering loudly what all the fuss is about, don't even bother reading any further. When I dive into a subject, I dive DEEP...
The new Radiohead is good. Really good, in fact. I would almost go so far as to say it was superb. I would say even more, but I'm studying and exhausted and I would like to try to squeeze in one more episode of Buffy before I get to bed.
There's something indescribably Zen about flying in a taxi down the FDR along the East River, listening to Joy Zipper's "Check Out My New Jesus" on your iPod, in the moments just before dawn.
Then Sparklehorse's cover of "Wish You Were Here" comes on as you hit the Brooklyn Bridge and dawn breaks, as you know you've reached nirvana.
For your viewing pleasure...I'm messing around with thumbnail images. Click it to see the big picture.
"Nazis bad, kill that fucking teddy bear."
An excellent little story, with some perfect little drawings by fellow NYC weblogger Witold Riedel, who's got more artwork on his site. Good stuff.
Photo of Saturday's annular eclipse, a phenomenon that occurs when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun but is too distant from the former to completely obscure the latter, causing a ring, or annulus, of sunlight to be visible. Neato.
[found on Die Puny Humans]
It's now been raining here in New York for roughly three months. And I, for one, am getting sick of it.
Hey, I'm not above the occasional rainy day, and I'm well aware of that April-showers=May-flowers thing. But April showers aren't supposed to start in March and run through to Junem and going by that equation, we're gonna have so many flowers this summer that they'll overrun cities and evolve into a new form of life.
I'm a sun person, see. I need sun. Yes, I know every other living thing on this planet needs sun, but really, I NEED it. These grey wet days affect me physically, psychically, metaphysically, you name it, and I get enough of 'em in a row, and I just get all screwed up. Unproductive. Unmotivated. Useless.
So when I woke up at eight-thirty this morning to the sound of dripping water, I figured, great, bring on another useless day, and was about to roll over and go back to sleep when I realized the dripping sound was a bit too close for comfort. And upon getting up to check it out, I discovered that Mr. Weather, having tired of wreaking havok on my psyche, had decided to kick it up a notch and invade my home as well. My ceiling was leaking. With gusto.
Now I'm writing on my kitchen table with my laptop, rather than at my desk with my desktop, since my desk was epicenter of The Leak. Luckily, I pulled my Quicksilver out of there before it got lost in the flood, and the damage, apart from the ceiling, appears to be minimal. But I'm not setting up at my desk again until I get the waterworks sorted out.
On a completely different note, tomorrow I may be guest-starring on LAW & ORDER.
I watched BREAKDOWN tonight. One of my personal favorites, esteemed member of a selection of films I like to think of as B-Plus-Movies: a B-Movie taken to a higher level by quality acting/concept/writing/all of the above. Doesn't aim higher than it should, doesn't pretend to be something it's not. Basically, a B-Movie done really, really well. JOY RIDE's one of the group. So's PITCH BLACK. If you need another example, look at pretty much anything John Carpenter did up until 1995.
Kurt Russell, you'll notice, is the King Of B-Plus Movies.
Anyway, I watched BREAKDOWN this time around mainly to be reminded of the structure of the film and how the story progresses. And, suitably, the story progresses like a Mack truck: starts up, builds momentum, then just plows right on through to the end. The story beats are clean, and each one is hit beautifully.
Here's how the first thirty minutes of BREAKDOWN goes...
