Broadcasting from Squaresville

The AL East is kind of like a soap opera, anyway

2006-05-02T11:35:00.000-04:00

Emmy-award winner A Martinez should fire his agent if he can't get anybody to make a movie about Johnny Damon ASAP.

"Shut it down" Sweeney lights it up

2006-05-02T11:08:00.000-04:00

Congressman John Sweeney (represents New York's 20th, just north of the metro Albany district of Creepy Unblinking Robot Mike McNulty) who was awarded a seat on the powerful Hosue Ways and Means committee for helping to orchestrate the phony "Flordian" demonstrations demanding an end to the recounting of the 2000 President election vote, went to Schenectady for the wake of a close friend and got drunk off his ass at a frat party at Union College.

I especially love the part where he's trying to talk about policy to drunken 19 year old frat boys and he's slurring his speech.

Gin bucket!

2006-04-30T03:31:00.000-04:00

Holy shit, I am so drunk.

Whose streets?

2006-04-29T20:41:00.000-04:00

I just got back from the antiwar demonstration in NYC. I'm not going to call it a pro-peace demonstration. I think being anti-war is positive and constructive enough.

I'm more than a little disappointed with CNN. Demonstration organizers are estimating a crowd of 300,000, which is probably generous. The authorities declined to provide a figure, which means there was no way they could underestimate the number to their satisfaction and retain credibility. So we're talking a lot of people. The AP, whose story CNN is running, began the story with the cautious phrasing "tens of thousands" (which probably gives an impression that's maybe ten times off), and then CNN puts a headline on the piece "Thousands in New York march." So if you don't click through and read the story, all you get is that "thousands". Which is true. Thousands were marching. And then, you know, maybe about two hundred thousand more on top of those. So that's pretty silly.

But on the plus side I did get to pick up a flyer describing The Booby Trap which (can you believe no one got there sooner?) was the first piece of musical theatre to deal with bras as the nubmer one cause of breast cancer.

Sprout

2006-04-24T08:30:00.000-04:00

Small green things are unstoppable. Witness.

Punctuation is everything

2006-04-24T08:18:00.000-04:00

This was on one of the windows of the old "Pathologisch Anatomisch Laboritorium" that had been turned into some sort of art and dance space, and which sat accross the Jacob Von Lennepgracht from the Emma Rosa.

The Emma Rosa

2006-04-24T08:16:00.000-04:00

While in Netherlands I was a guest of John and Hil in these delightful Deuce Bigalow-style accomodations.

And the man teaches writing

2006-04-23T23:48:00.000-04:00

So I'm trying to read my professor's handwriting on a draft of an essay. Can anyone figure out what the hell this word is? I'll even give you the context, it concludes the following: "this is intended for an audience who will react emotionally and passionately to an excitable, emotional..."

The best photograph ever taken

2006-04-23T17:17:00.000-04:00

I went to motherfucking Europe!

I have this in 2272 × 1704 if anyone wants to make a poster or something.

Serrated gables

2006-04-23T17:15:00.000-04:00

Toothy skyline. The buildings in Amsterdam lean outwards and have loops at the top. There's an interesting story behind that.

Secular humanists, too, walk on water

2006-04-23T17:01:00.000-04:00

John getting the shot, at any price to the soles of his shoes.

Smells like food in the hall and weed in the bathroom

2006-04-23T16:44:00.000-04:00

Just listened to the first place Red Sox (thanks for fighting off Baltimore for us last night, Yankees) finally beat Toronto. Should be a hell of a contest down the stretch.

I just realized that you can refer to rookie closer Jonathan Papelbon as Jon Bon Juvie. That's way better than saying the opposing team got "Papsmeared". So JonBon got it done.

I had been thinking, for a good while now, of going back to the flophawk. My hair is pretty gross at this point. In fact, last Thursday, my boy the Flipperbaby had agreed to shave it up for me, but the jetlag took me to an early slumber and I slept right through that engagement as well as a party and ½.

Speaking of jet lag, got up at 4 am for the third day in a row today, boo. Especially lame because it rained hard until late afternoon so there was super nothing to do, even if there had been anything to do at 4 in the morning.

Anyway, Papelbon won a bet because he kicked so much ass and had to get a mohawk (doesn't that seem a little backwards?) One of these WEEI clowns (I don't know which is Trupiano and which Castiglione) said something about it being high in the running for worst hair cut of the month, but the hell with those old bastards. Check it out, that shit is thunderdome and ½. Anyway, I'm even more enthused about shaving selections from my own head, now.

I read my named spelled "Willomane" today. I think that's a kinda cool typo. It was this girl named Mallory. Can you believe that I know two people named Mallory? Fucking insane, right?

This one's purdy

2006-04-22T07:20:00.000-04:00

Same area as the creepy photo of the last post. I plan to suggest using this as either the front or back cover of the Press' literary supplement.

Tops in creepy

2006-04-22T07:13:00.000-04:00

The creepiest thing I ever saw in Urlbany was one of these guys. He sat out front of what might have been a burger joint, or something. It was next to the Lamp Post (college meat market bar equivalent to Stony Brook's Park Bench, since renamed the Blue Moon cafe), and accross diagonally from that hippy cafe that closed down and was replaced by overpriced sammiches. The intersection of Western and Quayle, maybe?

Anyway, they had one of these guys there. Well this little tourist kiosk area, in a plaza behind the Van Gogh Museum, had more than one of them; exponentially creepy. They must hail from Europe--there's definately something a little foreign in the design. We had gone to the Van Gogh Museum on museum day, or museum weekend (I don't recall), when all museum admission is free, but of course, it turned out to be astronomically crowded, so we ended up skipping the actual museum and just chilled in this little plaza. We went back to Van Gogh on a weekday and payed the 10 euros.

I think what's really horrifying about the anthropomorphic hot dog is the sensual abandon (rosy cheeks and lip-licking pleasure) in the degree of cannibalistic self-abnegation. He's like "yeah, I'm gonna spread some sloppy condiments on my head and you tear me to pieces with your teeth".

Homo Sapiens Non Urinat In Ventum

2006-04-22T07:08:00.000-04:00

This is how I learned that neither google language tools nor altavista babelfish translate Latin. Educated readers, or those who have their Latin dictionaries near their computers, are encouraged to let me know what the hell that inscription means. I like to pretend it's something like "People don't piss in the wind" but that's a pretty wild guess.

So this whole operation here was accross from a nice little place of pancakery. If you were to proceed between those pillars and through the buildings you'd come to the giant chess set and the Guiness time building seen in a couple of previous vacation photos. And, then, I think, the vondelpark, pronounced "fondlepark". Just to give you a bit of a spatial sense.

Jet lag continues

2006-04-22T06:59:00.000-04:00

So my sleep schedule is still totally out of whack. Thursday night I was supposed to go out to a party, meet some friends, get my head shaved back into the notorious flophawk...anyway I had one drink in the early evening, so I headed back to my room to lay down and listen to the Red Sox on ESPN2...I passed out from like 8 to 10:30. And then I got up at 10:30 and I totally couldn't move. Couldn't get out of bed, I was wrecked with exhaustion. So I slept until like 4:30 am Friday morning. Yesterday I took a nap in the newspaper office from around 6:30 to 10:00. Woke up and dragged myself accross campus to my for real bed. Then I ended up sleeping until about 5:30 am. So not only was that at an inconvenient hour, it also represented an eleven hour committment to sleep. This time I slept through Ralph Nader on the Colbert Report. And it's killing me, because the web site video clip of the interview is one of two out of six or seven that for some reason don't display properly.

Boos all around.

The US dollar means fine Czeck dining on the cheap

2006-04-21T09:02:00.000-04:00

Most of the vacation photos are going up in chronological order. This image, of the outside to the entrance to Klub Architektu (should have a circle over the final u), from which can be seen emerging John and Hillary, is an exception.

You go into this building, near the Town Square of Praha's Old Town, and then you take a stairway down into some surprisingly elegantly furnished caves beneath. It's a nice restaurant for which I was underdressed, esp. given my fuzzy hat-slovenlized hair. I had, on the cheap, the best beer I have ever drunk in my life. The meal was awesome.

More fun for tourists

2006-04-21T07:55:00.000-04:00

It has turned warm and nice (at least during midday) for the last three weeks of classes here. Got in some frisbee time yesterday with sundry peeps.

Dutch rapper Riza asked me why I would want his song if I don't know what the lyrics are aboot.

Grenwich mean time ain't got shit

2006-04-20T12:55:00.000-04:00

Here you go, first Europhoto. This is in Amsterdamm, all up in the tourist area of the Eistensplatt or the Leiseplein or something like that. I feel it speaks for itself.

Fix

2006-04-20T12:21:00.000-04:00

Suffering from Dutch hip-hop withdrawl, I sent an e-mail off to rapper Riza (with an i), asking how I could, from the states, get my hands on the song and video of his latest hit, "Ik & Ali B", which was all over "The Box", and MTV owned music channel in the Netherlands.

Anyway, Riza promptly e-mailed me the mp3 and linked to me to a web page with the video. At first, I loved this video from an unintentional comedy angle, but he was such a pal that I find myself going over to more earnest enjoyment.

Check it out for yourself.

Comedy Central is a failure

2006-04-14T00:02:00.000-04:00

Just a few short weeks after caving in to pressure from Scientologists to pull the relevant episode, Comedy Central has refused to allow South Park to show the prophet Muhammed. What a bunch of jerks.

I assume this comes down from the honchos at corporate parent Viacom. I'm going to swing wildly in my mostly ignorance and blame Bill Clinton's 1996 telecom deregulation legislation for this bullshit.

A fine capper on another night spent dancing

2006-04-14T00:00:00.000-04:00

What does this tell us aboot the English? That they're very generous regarding unpaid utility bills, or that they should call their relatives more often?

Czecking out

2006-04-11T23:07:00.000-04:00

Leaving the hostel, walking to the square to the shuttle to the airport to the Netherlands.

Spent the night in "Largest Music Club Central Europe". Nothing like the response from a dance-floor packed with Czecks to the DJ segueing from the Ghostbusters' Theme to "Ice, Ice Baby."

Oh, yeah, and it was "Thriller" when I walked in.

Who care's about Ed's blog?

2006-04-11T19:06:00.000-04:00

Half past midnight in Praha. In about three hours I've got to get ready to make arrangements to get to the airport to get on a plane back to Amsterdam.

Took a hella lotta pictures today of the Charles bridge (over the churnnig Vltltlavltla), the Basillica at Prague Castle (much larger than you may have expected from my old photoshoppery) and a drawing of Steven Seagall, on sale to tourists.

I was going to take the Hostel bar up on their third tequila is free policy but it turned out that I didn't have change to tip the bartender.

This is going to be more interesting when I get the photos up.

Shiny wet cobblestones are for real

2006-04-10T22:15:00.000-04:00

It's the middle of the night in Prague, it's cold and there's a drizzle. If they light up the castle at night, they don't leave it lit this late. It's really something to be walking the crooked alleyways in the dark and hear a chorus of chuchbells ringing the hour from five directions at once.

Had I a notepad, or, better, a mini tape recorder to mutter crazily into, I would regale you with all the trite expressions for the delightful time I'm having, but sadly those thoughts are gone, in Rutger Haur's words, like tears in the rain.

I tried to get into a bar on the way back to the hostel, it was closed. I've a feeling it would have been open had I tried on the first half of my stroll.

Hope I can sleep now.

Beisbol

2006-04-09T03:37:00.000-04:00

I felt the need to use das internet to look up the baseball standings (I'm wearing my hey-I'm-an-American-a-hole Red Sox jacket thru Europe...actually saw two others wearing Red Sox in `sterdam `sterday, and 0 yankee fans because apparently they have sense enough not to wear this shit in Europe) ... and was thrilled to discover Boston in first place, New York in last (except for the Mets, who were also in first) and Milwaukee and Detroit undefeated. Hooray!

Are you getting somewhere,

2006-04-09T03:28:00.000-04:00

So yesterday I spent in Amsterdam. Probably the same today.

I forgot to bring the cable that connects my camera to a PC, so assuming John & Hill don't have one, even if I do take cool pictures (and so far I have not) you won't be able to see any until, I dunno, the 17th.

Coming in the airport (Schipoll? Is that it?) I had to walk an extra 1/2 a way to get to my baggage claim area, and going down this long corridor there was a little mostly empty room full of spare looking workstations labeled, in Dutch, as "Menzies". The woman walking behind me had to explain to her boyfriend why that was funny.

Jet laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag.

Springtime

2006-04-03T04:01:00.000-04:00

10 hours until Curt Schilling takes the mound.

Leftover image

2006-04-01T04:38:00.000-05:00

Chalk & Charcoal filter, baby! Totally spruces up this old photo I had lying around on my memory card. Pictures are various Pressites making the first "video news in brief", in which I briefly (chortle) appear.

Revival, 129 East 15th Street

2006-04-01T04:25:00.000-05:00

Took the old train in to NYC for The Chief's (top picture, con muchas Chemases) birthday party. Happened to mention La Ciudad in my instant messenger away-message, so Sam (bottom picture, conmigo) was able to swing by. Good times. Made the last train back to Long Island by like ninety seconds.

"And remember--and remember...Vote once, vote twice"

2006-03-30T01:36:00.000-05:00

So I went out of my mind working on the Press' coverage of the elections for student government. Voting started on Monday at noon and runs until Saturday noon, and our little limited print run mini-issue just came out late tonight, meaning no one will see it until tomorrow, after 3 of the 5 days of voting are over. I'm really super discouraged and pissed off about it. I suppose it doesn't have much of a broad audience appeal beyond Stony Brook students, but you can check it out at as a big ol' 23 meg .pdf file on the website.

World Baseball Classic

2006-03-13T01:52:00.000-05:00

The WBC is awesome. But, man, Japan got robbed on that bullshit call. That easily could have been the game, and it's clear that the umpires screwed things up.

What else is pissing me off? Facebook's got an add for For News Channel. That's two strikes right there. I was kinda pysched about facebook comparative to myspace when Murdoch bought the latter.

bster

2006-03-03T01:58:00.000-05:00

Not as cool as the apocryphal menSWEARHOUSE. But it'll do.

Facturacy

2006-03-02T11:20:00.000-05:00

So I just looked up the lyrics to Notwists' "One With The Freaks", which I've been listening to a lot, lately. Presuming the internet knows what it's talking about, I've had the lyrics wrong all along. I thought the line was, "Have you ever been honest-uh". I guess that extra syllable at the end there should have been my first clue that something was wrong. Apparently it's, "Have you ever been all messed up."

Huh.

Liminal

2006-02-28T02:43:00.000-05:00

Buck Rogers Conquors the Youniverse

2006-02-28T02:36:00.000-05:00

When my creative urge outlasts my capacity for coherent thought you never know what you're going to get, other than by, with a little help from your friends. If that doesn't make any sense, bear in mind that I've been awake altogether too long.

Anyway, the point is that Knockout and I made this thing.

Phantom whiskers

2006-02-26T15:09:00.000-05:00

I never cease to be surprised when, on shaving days, I have an itch on my arm or hand and I instinctively move it against my face.

RIP Don Knotts.

Chris Manly's birthday tonight

2006-02-26T02:43:00.000-05:00

Went to a party with these aholes. Got drunk, not for the first time today. Dropped my camera. Had wine spilled all over me. Rock and roll.

Resolution

2006-02-25T22:57:00.000-05:00

Entropy

2006-02-25T02:09:00.000-05:00

Regular readers of this blog may recall the story about the gum on my pants. Well, I forgot about it and ran it through the warsh. It's on there, but good, now. Kinda looks like I bird-crapped my pants.

Separately (although, ironically, joined into one photographic image) my shoelace exploded.

If this were a MyXangaJournal, I would let you know that my mood is pissed off and I've been listening to "Yesterday".

Simon? Is that you?

2006-02-24T20:18:00.000-05:00

I don't know what's up with this thing, but it's definately cool looking.

Welcome to Stony Brook...

2006-02-24T20:15:00.000-05:00

Let's play Trick the Blind. Or, actually, since that's just a perfectly flat piece of paper, I guess it's let's play Pretend we have Braille on our Doors.

In fairness, that's from a building (Heavy Engineering) under construction.

Check it out

2006-02-24T18:39:00.000-05:00

My pen matches my shirt.

More photographic leftovers

2006-02-24T12:11:00.000-05:00

This is how the news is writ

2006-02-20T18:14:00.000-05:00

High and low

2006-02-19T02:48:00.000-05:00

Today was pretty good. I got some pesky class reading out of the way, helped out with newspaper production, got some exercise, enjoyed alcohol in uncharacteristic moderation and watched two motion picture shows.

Read about the colonization of Africa. Had to look up a couple words, compradore and conessionaire, so I feel like, even if I don't remember what the hell happened in Buganda at the end of the nineteenth century, I may have learned something. Oh, I definately learned that if you're going to try and repel European domination, you want to luck into drawing the cupidity of the bumbling Italians, who I imagine looking an awful lot like Roberto Benigni on the battlefield.

We had a fiesty editorial board meeting in which I spearheaded the ultimately losing case for reprinting the notorious cartoons of Mohammed. Relaxed after that with a little hallway football. Those damn cielings are too low.

Caught Jarhead and Final Destination 3. I'm only going to talk about the second. It was pretty terrible, granted, but I had a great time watching it. I think I had the most fun of anyone in that theatre. It was the Island 16, where they serve drinks, like in Europe.

Oh, and my passport arrived in the mail.

Wow, I was on such a buzz until I just now noticed that Rodney fell down off my wall.

You are beneath Randall

2006-02-16T23:07:00.000-05:00

Washingtonspeak

2006-02-16T12:11:00.000-05:00

Congressman Curt Weldon, the Republican number two on the House Armed Services Committee, brought his "heated months long crusade" (so described by The Hill) to a climactic public hearing. Weldon has been pursuing the accusation that a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) "cell" (?) identified September 11 ringleader Mohammad Atta more than a year before the attacks, and that other government agencies failed to act on their warnings. Weldon further accuses the Pentagon of trying to cover up the story.

Among the more inflamatory items in the hearings: according to the testimony of supposed whistleblower Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, DIA admitted destroying relevant documents (presumably in a closed congressional hearing); according to Congressman Weldon's chief of staff Russ Caso, the 9/11 commission was aware of but made no mention of "Able Danger" (the DIA project said to have identified Atta as a threat early) because "It did not fit with the story we wanted to tell".

But my favorite part of this whole thing is the response by Stephan Cambone, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, to Weldon's accusations that Defense is squashing whistleblowers (emphasis mine): "I can assure you that no one is being subject to threats that I'm aware of."

Don't miss the punchline

2006-02-16T01:38:00.000-05:00

Today was the involvement fair, a student clubs and organizations promotional jamboree. Here we see the Enduring Freedom Alliance, the College Republicans wearing their nonpartisan hats. They are seated, appropriately enough, next to the Ghost Hunter's Society. I don't know if you can see the T-shirt on that dude on the right, but it seems that he, too, is a Hunter of Ghosts. For you see, a spectre is haunting Europe...

Speaking of seminal texts in modern Western political science, I enjoyed watching Lost tonight, but I think they may have crossed a certain silliness line when they had the character named John Locke start talking about the ramifications of a state of war.

The world keeps all its best stuff in an old, unused fire hose cabinet

2006-02-16T01:15:00.001-05:00

Finding a discarded "The World Still Says No To War" flyer is the left's answer to shittily mass-produced "These Colors Don't Run" bumper stickers that have faded away.

Fishy!

2006-02-16T01:15:00.000-05:00

Fishy!

Fishy!

Fishy!

Fishy!

Self Portrait

2006-02-16T01:13:00.000-05:00

Here I am in Plato's cave.

This is, perhaps, more succinct

2006-02-14T22:46:00.000-05:00

My buddy James made this, it's even better than the cockroach.

Here's what I got for you:

This Unspeakable Crime
A found poem, taken from the Vatican Press' 1962 "On the Manner of Proceeding in Cases of Solicitation" as it alludes to "Sacrum Poenitentiae".

Whether by words or signs or nods of the head
Whether by touch or by writing whether then or after read

Whether he has had with that penitent
            prohibited
            and improper
            speech
            or activity

With reckless daring

Internet, will you be my valentine?

2006-02-14T03:28:00.000-05:00

I got you this giant cockroach.

Too many special days

2006-02-14T03:19:00.000-05:00

Tonight (before midnight) was Claudia's 21st birthday. It was cool except she did too much of the cooking/cleaning for her own party, got a second degree burn and one of her asshole suitemates called the RA on duty and got her party kicked out of her suite.

But we all got to enjoy this wonderful trifle, pictured above, composed by Mel B. Yes, Scary Spice came and made dessert. Claudia is that cool.

President Lincoln also came, because it was his birthday as well. He built a log cabin out of meatloaf. Sadly, most of the partygoers were vegetarians and he won't be invited back next year.

I guess it's Valentine's Day now. Happy one of those.

Confidential to Frank

2006-02-14T02:50:00.000-05:00

This is what snow looks like.

A'yuh, storm's a'comin'

2006-02-12T02:53:00.000-05:00

Some time earlier this evening, perhaps shortly after my last post, the car alarm finally stopped. A few hours later, the snow started coming down. I've started taking some staggeringly mundane movies with my lil' digital camera. I've got one of my phone spinning in place as it vibrates an alarm, and one of a water fountain issuing water. Groundbreaking work. I tried to take a movie of the snow coming down, but you can barely see anything, and you can't hear the loud wind that I thought would sound cool, and basically all I did was get cold.

bloopbloopbloopbloopbloop

2006-02-11T16:37:00.000-05:00

Fr3sh is strong!

A pound of fr3sh!

Fr3sh...he'll save every one of us!

From the grotto

2006-02-10T21:39:00.000-05:00

I was going to go on for some length aboot the Carnival Grotesque (which, according to some dude who deserves proper citation, is the slipperiest of aesthetics). It is in my mind because I have to write a paper aboot it. As it turns out, I'm going to dash of and get some food for me and café for a couple of Mel's, and watch some old Lost eps. So this is all you get on that slippery of aesthetics: some dude, who may or may not be the previously mentioned dude (I might edit in the scholars' names later), thinks that the grotesque is best defined by the emotional reaction it elicits (leading to shifting characterizations of the same artistic works as audiences change). If a work evokes laughter, astonishment and either disgust or horror--you got the grotesque. So, anyway, who thinks that Keith Schofield's video for The Notwist's "One With the Freaks" qualifies? Oh, I almost forgot to mention, the grotesque characteristically mixes people, animals and plants. So the anthropomorphicization of the jellyfish protagonist and the monstrous palm tree are right in line. Speaking of music video director Schofield, I just today saw his new video ("When I Wake Up"), and you should to, because it is tres cool.

Other news:
We are well into day four of the Fr3sh affair. That's right, the car alarm is still going off. Also, I picked up some new batteries for the camera, so maybe you'll get some pictures again.

Thursday night out

2006-02-10T03:08:00.000-05:00

I just got back from the bar (Velvet Lounge, they call it).

Fr3sh's car alarm is still going off, at least 48 hours since I first heard it.

I walk into my dorm room and I see something funny on my chair. It almost looks like there's a hole in the chair and stuffing is coming out. Nope...it's something sticky, turns out it's gum. Yes. Gum fragments on the chair. And, wait, what's that? Gum on my ass. All night, white gum on black pants. Nobody bothered to mention this to me.

It's been a wonderful week.

Crodberry and Vandka

2006-02-08T23:44:00.000-05:00

Lost was laugh-out-loud delicious tonight. Well, I guess I was the only one in the room laughing, but it was still pretty good, any way you're sliced. And to think I almost forgot it was even on.

So there's a car alarm that is audible in my room when all internal sources of sound are silenced, and it's been going off for more than 24 hours, and it's really pissing me off. I checked out the car. The license plate says Fr3sh. No word on dice in the mirror, or anything fun like that.

I've been missing, for a couple weeks now, my second pair of NiMH batteries for my digital camera, which is why I haven't been taking/posting any pictures. I'm far less inclined to take the camera out if I'm expecting to end up out of juice at any moment.

I'm more than a little pissed off at Office Max / Office Depot, neither of which will tell me how much my print job will cost with tax, requisite for the onerous soul-crushing paperwork engineered to prevent student groups from ever accomplishing anything. What are they, stupid?

Obligatory blogatory

2006-02-03T00:31:00.000-05:00

I think I'm finally getting over this broad, if not deep, influenzer that's been haunting me this past week.

I was playing with some web design last night and tonight, mostly because I captured this amazing (to me, at least) digital photograph that totally lends itself to backgrounding a web page. You won't find much there in the way of content, but check out my efforts. Propers to Daddy Warlegs for suggesting I space the lines out a little more.

So I had to memorize a poem to recite in my Voice of the Actor class. I knew there were lots of poems on the internet, but I didn't know if any of them were for me? But I am a success story, and you can be to! Well, not in terms of my first recitation, I promptly forgot the bulk of the poem and had to start over and read it off the sheet, but in terms of finding a little poem I loved by wandering through the internet. It's by Philip Levine (thank you, Mr. Holt), and it's called "A Theory of Prosody". It's pretty neat. If you're at Stony Brook, you should allow me to recite it to you, because I need to do more work on it. And get over my flu. And have a better respiratory system / back musculature. Then my recitation will rule.

I had this great sense memory of Werner von Kitty sleeping on my chest all lined up to draw on during my reading, but it was all I could do get something approximating the words out, and there was no room for anything fancy like that.

No more recursion tonight

2006-02-02T01:10:00.000-05:00

But, since you've been good, you get another in my fine campus at twilight series. This picture would have been super awesome if it wasn't shakeyhands blurry. Ah, well.

This one is for Jeff

2006-02-02T01:06:00.000-05:00

The State of our Union is dangerously sexy

2006-02-02T00:30:00.000-05:00

So I started watching part of the President's speech the other day with Cappy and (Y/J/H?)elena. It was s'posed to be a big ol' drinkin' party but nobody showed up, Yelena wasn't drinking, I had the inluenza majora and no cups with which to sanitarily share Cappy's booze, and then a fire alarm went off. We were in the Student Union, so you can make a joke there if you like, about the state of the union. Get it?

Anyway, the "party" turned out to be kinda lame and we all stopped watching. Then I kicked coffee on them because I am a spaz. But the point is I missed the part where the president raised the unholy spectre of human-animal hybrids. I didn't realize we had waltzed so close to that precipice. It's a good thing he launched that program to get to Mars, I would hate if the human-animal hybrids got their filthy paws on the Red Planet first.

He also want to cut our addiction to fossil fuels, he says. That's a good project to tackle, now that he has rid Africa of AIDS and baseball of steroids. What a president! The state of my heartbeat is excited with pride!

Last chance!

2006-01-27T22:57:00.000-05:00

Here's the casual blog reader's first glimpse into my dorm room. This is the part behind and above the computer, as you can see.

Oh, yeah, the main point of the post. Anyone in the Ten County Downstate Region who wants those CD towers, or borrowage of the books, all mentioned below, you've got like 30 hours before they get shipper off to sit in a room upstate.

Yeah.

2006-01-26T17:57:00.000-05:00

Online in the dorm room. Huzzah!

Monday, just another manic

2006-01-23T20:13:00.000-05:00

I "moved" into a single room in a dorm on campus, Greeley, in the sense that I have the keys now and I have been in there. Although I still have this apartment, which is about fifteen times bigger and has a private bathroom, for the next eight days. I don't know, yet, what I'm going to move into there and when The good news is that the room is like ninety degrees right now, plus I know a couple people who live in the building.

I've been careful not to schedule any classes before two in the afternoon the past few semesters. I found that it was a great boost to my happiness and success. I've got a 10:40 on Mondays and Wednesdays, now. Brutal. But I guess once I get settled in I'm going to be able to skip out on the time I would otherwise have spent commuting to campus and parking.

Ralph Nader's mom died. I don't suspect it'll slow him down, much. I just learned the other day that he had a hand in that whole deal with South Africa using generic AIDS drugs instead of paying grotesque rates for patented name brand US stuff. He's a busy guy.

I took a picture of a friend today but he didn't want it posted, and he pointed out that I got him up there in a group shot last week, anyway, so I'm going to honor his request. You, dear reader, will have to make due with straight text.

What's black and white and green all over?

2006-01-23T00:09:00.000-05:00

What does the Stony Brook Press do when the motherload of incoming freshman and transfer students (or as motherly a load as one finds in the Spring semester) are milling around the Student Activities Center (pronounced "sack")? We go to the cabinets and get out the heavy artillery, Executive Editor Rob (and Managing Editor Jowy, not pictured here) to get some attention and distro some news-papers!

You have to get these people while their minds are open and stuff some news-papers in there.

In other news, my man at the Green Party State Committee Meeting reports that that dude from that movie is looking to be our candidate for Governor. I'm cautiously optimistic. Apparently his appeals (to the wonkish State Committee Meeting attendees, no less) were short on specific policy proposals, which is a red flag, especially when you're dealing with "celebrity" candidates. You never know if this guy is just trying to promote his bookstore/coffee house. But there may be additional candidates, so we'll see.

In New York State, the Governor's race has special signifigance for political parties. Get 50,000 votes (that number will be good until they decide it's not enough of a barrier to stifle competition) and you are formally recognized as a party for four years--without this you are at a tremendous disadvantage in that you can't put any candidates on the ballot without going through an onerous petitioning process that saps your resources like a sap on a resource tree. Also, parties are listed on every ballot in the order of their vote totals from the last gubernatorial election.

What all this means is, even if I did like putative Democratic nominee Elliot Spitzer (and I guess I'm up in the air about that), I'd be looking to move some votes for a Green for institutional purposes--even if there was a close race with a "spoiler" situation (I just vomited in my mouth), which there won't be in 2006. Which is why I want a decent candidate. Maybe Hicks is that candidate, maybe not.

I'll settle for any crazy to run against Hillary Clinton. She's a menace.

I don't care if it rains or freezes...

2006-01-22T02:07:00.000-05:00

...as long as I got creepy lifesize wooden Jesus (photoshopped with pasted, oversized, my unevenly dilated eyes from the previous post) sitting on the dashboard of my car.

I work the angles sharp and precise

2006-01-22T01:43:00.000-05:00

While I was in Earlbany I had an eye exam. For six hours afterwards, this is what my pupils looked like.

AFray = The Greek

2006-01-22T01:31:00.000-05:00

Andrew Fraley came back from Colorado with long hair and stubble. If only he squinted, he would be virtually indistinquishable from former Clinton administration figure and current television-yammering-idiot George Steophanopoulos.

On a dark and dusty highway / East of Omaha

2006-01-21T14:06:00.000-05:00

I just got back from a three day trip up to Albany. Good times. No good pictures. My reading list to follow:

1) The Shroud of the Thwacker: a novel by Chris Elliot. Jackpot. Bumped Brinkley.

2) Brinkley's Beat: People, Places and Events that Shaped My Time by David Brinkley. Definately worth the $1 I spent on it; Brinkley, you old sentamentalist! Wry, indeed.

3) The Aventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. I gave this recent Pulitzer Prize winner to my Dad for Chrimmastime and he has generously lent it to me.

4) The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time by Karl Polanyi. Great for falling asleep to.

5) The Gentle Art of Making Enemies by James Abbot McNeill Whistler. Letters by, and papers about, the bellicose artist.

6) Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity by David Allen. I stopped reading this book one third of the way through. Ha ha.

7) Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Class reading I never finished. Stephanie says it's good. Labeled "unabridged" to take some of the sting out of the intimidating 124-page length.

8) Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter. I've been meaning to reread this for what must be at least fifteen years. I'm pretty sure I didn't understand most of it as a child.

I'm trying to draw LBJ

2006-01-17T21:28:00.000-05:00

Eh?

WTF?

2006-01-17T01:20:00.000-05:00

I guess. If you're really hungry. It does take forty minutes to prepare in a conventional oven.

The secret of NiMH

2006-01-16T22:25:00.000-05:00

It's so weird in here. And not just because I cleaned the other half of the main room, so it's tidy for the first time in about a year and ½. I moved the lamp from the corner to a position close to the center of the room. It's significantly brighter and the shadows are all not where I expect them to be. It's very disorienting.

And, it turns out that the cheapest vacuum cleaner you can find in the low cost big retail box isn't neccessarily the best vacuum cleaner. Today was only the third time I've ever used the vacuum cleaner, so it's only just sinking in now.

Oh, snap! Check out that crazy glare on the Ted Williams picture. It's an ordinary, dark black and white photo that looks like a sun-faded sepia. I think it's the ghost of Teddy. It means the Sox are going to win the World Series with Alex Cora at shortstop.

The Reverend Doctor

2006-01-16T14:16:00.000-05:00

The Boondocks on Cartoon Network is a good show, significantly better than the daily comic on which it is based. Last night's episode, The Return of the King was the best I've seen and, no hyperbole, exceptional television. It's got me reflecting on the holiday I would have otherwise ignored, and King's unfinished business.

The show's web page says they are rerunning the episode twice next weekend. Check it oot.

While we're at it

2006-01-16T12:25:00.000-05:00

Does anybody want these guys? Two lovely little CD towers? They were a gift when I moved into this apartment, but I've never actually used them. They don't gibe with my current CD storage methods (big book for audio, shoebox for data).

The federal Books Progress Administration

2006-01-16T11:34:00.000-05:00

So does anybody (who I see in person) want to borrow either Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs, Now I Can Die In Peace: How ESPN's Sports Guy Found Salvation, With a Little Help From Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank and the 2004 Red Sox, Confessions of a Tax Collector or Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans? Because they're just sitting around my apartment like shiftless hippies.

I'm forever yours

2006-01-15T03:55:00.000-05:00

Faithfully!

Later that very night...

2006-01-15T03:49:00.000-05:00

Here we see Sean's going away to Japan party. Sean not pictured. Isn't it ironic?

They didn't like the indoorbq idea

2006-01-15T03:41:00.000-05:00

Inclement weather (and I do mean inclement--we got some hail for real) put the stop to any talk of BBQ, but we got some Chinese food (easy on the snow peas, hot shots) and the conventional festivities sufficed (pictured above).

Laundry day

2006-01-14T19:23:00.000-05:00

Jim Rice isn't the only "quite a handsome man". (See update to the previous post.) Check out my sartorial supremacy on and around the foot region. This is how I roll when my sneakers are in the warsh. How far am I going with that warsh? All the way to plastic sandal, bootie sock, track pants junction.

This just in, sources indicate that pedal is an adjective meaning related to the foot, so that sartorial supremacy phrase could have been further ossified and gussified. I leave that operation as an exercise to the reader.

I got up late in the morning, cleaned another half of another room. In the process, I did a little planning/organizing of my various extant projects, as many of these manifest themselves as stuff that I have tossed somewhere in a haphazard fashion. Then the warsh, discussed above, where a friendly stranger asked where the women were at, whose laundering on our behalf would allow us to enjoy playoff football.

No football for me. It's off to some sort of barbeque-ish like happening at Fort Standard and then a birthday / going-away-to-Japan party for Kempleton Sean.

I almost forgot to mention

2006-01-14T02:20:00.000-05:00

The Baseball Hall of Fame writervoterjerks are a bunch of jerks. It is a nutrage that they have once again passed over Jim Rice, the premier slugger of his era, for inclusion. I guess he should have et more steroids.

Oh...so sleepy...2:22...222222 is l33tsp34k for zzzzzzzzzzzz

Update: weighing in, as he is wont to do, with his dissenting opinion, Coxswain Jeff (after complaining about the muted commenting options on my blog) wants it known "that the premier slugger of Rice's era was not Jim Rice, but Reggie Jackson."

Whatever.

More of what happened early last week

2006-01-14T01:57:00.000-05:00

I came up with this elaborate sequence of brainstorms for ways to recruit for and promote the Stony Brook Press, and everybody else seems to be too busy intercessing to care, at this point. So when I noticed the day before it happened that orientation was beginning for incoming Spring freshman and transfer students, I decided to spring into action. I managed to corral a couple of fellow editors (despite a mysterious foot/throat ailment), pictured above, and get to the grim but hardy task of passing out the last issue of the Press. There were a lot of them. Issues of the Press. Still sitting on the loading dock to which they were delivered by the printer. Six weeks ago. Last semester. Not the best sign.

But, in fairness, they were pretty heavy.

The key to getting oriented students to taking the paper is in your approach. The last thing you want to do is say, "Do you want a copy of the Stony Brook Press?" This seems polite, to polite people, but it allows ample space for a conception of the world in which your new friends do not, in fact, want a copy. (Also, it is bad to use the word newspaper. College students find this off-putting because they are dumb and do not read). More than ½ of them will weigh their options and decide that, no, they do not want a copy. What you want to do is you want to give them the old, "Don't forget your copy of the Stony Brook Press." Then they thank you like you just did them a big favor. Which is appropriate, because you did.

It's also good to set up a shady little corner just outside the perimeter of the official orientation activities and get them on their way out. Then, tired and confused, it is easy for them to confuse your "don't forget this" line with some sort of official distribution of critical new student materials. Which is appropriate, because it might as well be.

US Rollergirls are bruising my heart

2006-01-14T01:27:00.000-05:00

My Chrimmastime toy vs. Rob's. I didn't know the US Geological Surveyors were issued sidearms. This is what greeted me every time I turned away from the screen during the new episode of Lost.

Not really; Rob frequently yielded the armaments to me to express my hostility towards advertising. Lost was prefaced with an hour long, grossly narrated clipshow piece of crap. Television is dumb. If they really can't produce more than seven episodes or however insanely thin they are currently spreading their paté, they should just divide the year into three seasons and run a different show instead of reruns. And then Lost comes back in the fall, with no weeks off, ever. As for the new episode itself, it was really awesome. Especially because I have been graced with the ultimate satirical tools to dismiss the solemnity of that "The Lord is my Shepherd" routine (thank you, Knockout).

There have been complaints (?) from my readers (!) about the dropoff in postings. So you get this random assortment of old news (Lost) and decontextualized tangents (Roller Derby).

VMFX, who has succeeded me as the Press's official in-house abuser of onerous initials, turned me on to the roller derby revival. Check it yourself at http://www.usrollergirls.com/.

Oh, yeah, I didn't post anything since my birthday. The day itself was mediocre. It was like any other Tuesday. But, no worries, I intend to celebrate at least three or four more times with peoples who couldn't be around for the actual event. So maybe five average birthdays equals one great one.

Stephanie told me that I have the same birthday as Pat Benatar (well, this after telling me that my birthday was in the same week as Dave Grohl, one of her personal faves). Pat Benatar? Booooooring. I checked myself on the internet, to see if there was anyone cooler with whom I shared that, my very special day. I immediately accused her of passing up great opportunities to link me with George Foreman and Rod Stewart...and then I hit paydirt.

Rasputin.

Green lights at the magic hour

2006-01-09T21:33:00.000-05:00

24 hours and 5 minutes

2006-01-09T19:27:00.000-05:00

My birthday isn't actually until tomorrow, but I couldn't wait to rip the Shatman's head off.

I had one of those humorous conclusion to a phone conversation, moments ago. My friend said goodbye, and then I said goodbye, and then she said bye again, quieter. This usually happens when you say something that may or may not substitute for goodbye, but in this case it was the pure stuff, uncut. A moment of levity in an otherwise unlevened day.

I was on campus a bit trying to arrange some academic affairs, and I tried to take a couple interesting photos, maybe some along the lines of the series I took when I was in that digital print class. Most of them didn't come out well, but a couple are fairly sweet. There's also two I got that would be excellent backgrounds that have large sky parts where you could put a lot of text and then interesting objects along the edges. Never know when those might come in handy.

I don't own a corkscrew

2006-01-07T23:28:00.000-05:00

I knew this wouldn't end well.

That part in the middle got me worked up

2006-01-07T16:00:00.000-05:00

Spent all afternoon doing positive chorish things like cleaning up the giant sprawling mass of laundry that occupied my bedroom, and planning recruiting efforts for the Press.

Went a little stir crazy at one point between bouts of productivity. It's too cold in the world. There need to be more places like the mall where you can go and walk around a lot in them but they are heated. Cuz I can't just go to the mall every day and walk around in it aimlessly. That's sick.

I paced in the apartment and tossed a softball into the glove my Dad got me for Chrimmastime. Only amuses for so long.

Last night I stumbled upon a PR piece from UCLA aboot a polisci prof who was publishing a study demonstrating (it was "found") the evidence of bias (they feel comfortable assuming their audience knows in advance it is liberal bias) in the media. The PR piece is written in a way to totally appeal to lazy journos who will then parrot their BS bottom-lining. They made a big effort to appear impartial and fair, not taking any funding from anybody and recruiting students halfsies Dem / Rep (I got news for you clowns, independants and nonvoters easily outnumber them), but they had all kinds of glaring methodological problems right under the surface. The most outrageous example is the researcher's assumption that the average member of congress (adjusting for the Senate's overrepresentation of low population states) represents the political view of the average American, which is taken as the baseline dividing liberal and conservative. That's wicked retahded for so many reasons I'm not going to get into them all. The biggest problem with that assumption is that if there is a media bias, which is what they're trying to prove to begin with, wouldn't that skew who ends up elected to define the average politician? And, then, again, with most people not voting, the elected are a godawful measure of the politics of the citizenry. Anyway, I got really pissed about it, and I'm getting mad again just thinking about it now. I might write a Press article on it later. But I want to read the actual study first, not just the university puff piece.

Also, I own one single solitary sock with a nike swoosh on the neck. How does that happen?

Man, at least this table is super clean

2006-01-06T17:51:00.000-05:00

Spent the day as follows:

Phone calls/e-mails to arrange my troubled academic affairs. There was a moment of comedy when, shortly after I left voicemail for Stony Brook administrator Dr. Peter Baigent, he called me back promptly and I couldn't manage to depress the appropriate keys to answer my phone.

Cleaning the apartment. It's a job with multiple stages. Maaan, that table, under that table, the walls near that table...that whole area code is tops in neatness. Also did some dishes.

Considering problems facing the Stony Brook Press. I mailed a rambling brainstorming missive to the editorial board about recruiting and retaining new members for the upcoming semester. Planning some things I'd like to write aboot, principle among them a series of feature pieces on planned student life/activities to be published before they occur so readers can act on them by attending events thus described. That ought to give some newly recruited members something to do.

Watching Game Four of the Sox-Yanks ALCS on DVD. My DVD player was all wierd at first, it was super skippy at the top of the show. I think the disk is fine, so I dunno what to think. It settled down like D. Lo. Kevin Millar doesn't get his props for turning Mariano and the Yankees back into pumpkins at midnight on October 17, 2004 with that leadoff walk that started The Greatest Comeback Ever. Best part of this game I forgot about: when ARod struck first for the Yankees with the two-run homer, and the Sox fan outside the ballpark threw the ball back in. Then Johnny Damon gets the ball off the centerfield grass and throws it out of the stadium and back to the street. Then somebody throws it back into the stadium, and an umpire has to pocket it. That was a magic moment, with the Sox having just fallen behind in the ultimate do-or-die game, of fun-lovin' high spirits for both the players and the fans. Watching it again I feel genuinely sad about the Damon free agency loss for the first time. It's the seventh inning now, Keith Foulke just went in. I don't know if I want to finish this game unpaused or go get some dinner / make some phone calls.

Fort Standard

2006-01-06T04:13:00.000-05:00

Not a moment of respite for enjoying a phone conversation at that nervous hospital. Not shown are my feet and legs, currently under brutal pillows-akimbo assault.

Hungry

2006-01-05T18:05:00.000-05:00

For a "college town", Stony Brook is dramatically underserved on, among other things, the pizza front. The quantity and quality of orderable pizzas is grotendous, and the wait is muito boo! Im stahving and I'm halfway through the onerous 45 minute delivery time for wherever Mike Bling likes to get his pizzas. It must be the residual hostility of the community that never wanted the school here in the first place.

Funny story, literally moments after I published that post the pizza showed up early.

I got some The South on my windshield

2006-01-04T22:10:00.000-05:00

This is what it looks like right before you get to the Midtown Tunnel.

Nine days and fifteen hundred miles later, I am back on Strong Island, in the basement apartment that will continue to be my home for another three and ½ weeks.

Final thoughts: there are about a gajillion times more tolls due when driving from Albany to Baltimore than from Baltimore to Wilmington, NC.

Ok, one more thought. I'm not from The South. And I've never read Y'all Magazine: The Magazine for Southern People. So I'm not really speaking from a position of experience. But it sounds, on the face of it, pretty condescending and stupid.

More old news

2006-01-03T01:36:00.000-05:00

Hooray for sunsets, boo SUV-filled pahking lots. Also captured in the previous Raleigh stop.

Old news

2006-01-03T01:27:00.000-05:00

I took this photo the last time I came through Raleigh and never got around to posting it. On the right is the theater where we saw the Johnny Knoxville picture show and on the left is the chocolate store where I bought the chocolates for the grab bag gift exhange.

Look at how ornery I have become

2006-01-03T01:14:00.000-05:00

Damn you, North Carolina, give me back my phone!

That's me trying to express, via (perhaps silly) staged "upset" face, my genuine outrage over the nonfunctional cellphone.

Also bothering me at present...the Cotton Bowl was decided in the last five seconds. That would have been great fun if we didn't know the final score going in.

Homeward bound

2006-01-02T21:33:00.000-05:00

Reversing my previous journey. Got virtually no sleep last night and then I headed oot for Raleigh. Ken had "TiVo"d the Cotton Bowl. Sadly, in the course of this hazardous life, we were unable to avoid seeing the after-the-fact score. So we're watching it now, but I already know I have to buy the man a six pack. The good news is he's got a New Year's Resolution to cut back on his alcohol intake so maybe I can pull some kind of scam on him. Also good news: he can't read, so he'll never know aboot this.

Rainy today. I dunno if that's why, but my cellphone reception, already roamier than Rome, has gone in the crapper. Which is bad news. Fortunately, I managed to find my way without any confused celly calls. But I miss the connectedness.

Went to a pretty cool Fiesta Bowl watchin' shindig with some of Ken's friends, several of whom attended the victorious Ohio State. College Football not really my favorite, but I can appreciate a couple games a year. High Definition TV is definately superior for sports.

Oh, yeah, I finished both Franken and Simmons, so now all I have to read on the way back is a sixty year old dissident economics book. That ought to get me to sleep before the sun rises.

Today we celebrate Guido Sarducci's birthday...

2006-01-01T17:48:00.000-05:00

...but yesterday was New Year's Eve. An enthusiastic Mike (party host) hams up his armwaving hysterics for the camera. They were playing some hollerin'-happy card game for enthusiasts, while a few of us more reserved types played Texas Hold'Em at the less photogenic table adjacent.

Phone is phun

2005-12-30T23:20:00.000-05:00

So I arrived...in slightly boozed-town. No, seriously, I arrived in Wilmington, North Carolina, the site of the New Year's Eve party. I took some postable photos before now, maybe I'll back up in my journey and put them up later. What you get know is a snapshot of a few partygoers. Mike is our host. He's the one standing next to Mike.

I got here early, so Mike and I had a chat and watched some of his news Simpsons DVD. High hilarity, I don't think I ever saw the one where Homer replaces Smithers.

Ah, sounds like more people are here. I have to get off this beast and get back to the party.