just a simple note here, once again verifying my continued existence.

to all the many hordes of rampaging souls beating down my door: yes, i've been quiet with this particular weblog as of late. my less personal works are on display here:

dirty monkey bugspray fun

the dirty monkey is already in the holiday mood with the annual what's the awesome lists. note the spazzy new (nu) domain name, which was a wonderful present from graig's better half emma.

the big list

in some ways, that's almost my new home since it's rather sad when i'm the only voice on a collaborative website. it's like being the only person left at the party and that's sad, although the neighbours still complain about the noise. and i'm wearing a toga.

rest assured, faithful readers. i will strike back with a new web presence shortly. the past six months have been busy in their own way. not that i've been offline in any way; i'm figuring out a newer voice to say things that won't get drowned out in all the æther. i'll fill you in on all these details one day.

but you must continue to wait, for tomorrow, i fly to finland to spend my first christmas away from home and in my ancestral lands. chasing reindeer, capturing northern lights, fighting against the polar darkness, keeping warm amongst the winter chills. fun stuff. i'll be back in the new year, with a new arsenal of savvy technique.

happy holidays.

and to all you seasonal search engine people, there are no recipes here. keep looking. sorry for all the confusion. and don't send me any cartons of that holiday drink. i'm allergic, thanks.

nothing like filler until things get sorted out.

for something worth reading, amongst my insane week at work, i managed to hit a few shows that managed to exploit my sleeplessness by providing an energy outlet. wednesday night, 'twas radio 4 and last night, the rapture (no, not that rapture — i mean, i know the real reason why you're all still here).

there's plenty of interesting movies out right now, there's a few visitors coming to town, there's they might be giants playing apollo 18 at joe's pub on sunday, there's more imminent nightlife coming up, a long island compulsion, the quest for actual new york sunshine and a wedding in july.

and entertaining all three of you.
but don't pack those braces away quite yet.

just a token word here.

the past few days have been quite intense, what with various hardware problems here, mayhem at work and general life stuff going on wildfire.

the quick story is that the main hard drive on the sauna server failed on saturday, as i was working on two new things (all hush hush and need to know). the good news is that a new hard drive was quickly procured and most of the wee services are happy bipping about, doing their things when the people ask.

there's still plenty of loose ends to deal with, but it's also mad production time at work, meaning i'm not really looking forward to using the computer much at home. a shame really, since there's many interesting things going on but i can't relay.

nevertheless, i'll try to put in a few token appearances, but i might rejig the ship a bit first. eggnog hits eleven months now, but things need a bit of growth, which i'll solve shortly.

meanwhile, that fc kahuna song linked up there had been bugging me for months when i first heard it, since the main lyrics don't match anything findable. i'm gonna stay with you/there's nothing i can do. yeah. just sheer fluke that music choice aired it on the cable electronica channel, so now i can find the mp3.

boring shite this, but keep your socks firmly locked on. a brand new bag will be unveiled shortly.

nothing like a hung router to temper my productivity.

this afternoon, i was being rather useful, which beats my bouts of semi-usefulness, when connectivity to the sauna went kaput altogether. no idea if it was the mexican hackers, but i was riled up man. vicious. here i was, working on the big list move and the carpet underneath gets pulled and there's no floor underneath.

thank god for vice city; no other way to let out frustrations by making the virtual thug take out his virtual golf club and start wailing away on the virtual people who get in his virtual way. that and a walk in the misty rain to collect groceries. a rain not unlike my showerhead in steam mode, where you can't hear it fall but like walking through a cloud, getting drenched.

last night was the new york version of the i am spoonbender show. i might review it later, but my take is fairly parallel to what graig said. openers weren't much of a full mention and the foxy spoonbending futurists were amazing, but i should write up something since there's a few stories worth a mention.

so yeah, i will. i thought i would be tired for the show after a few more bike laps about prospect park like last week, but hey. i kept the energy level up.

now i will end this slice of meaningless and try to not lose my nerve about continuing this afternoon's ardour.

or not. my mind is spent, which means the creditors call for an audit of it and i won't accept the charges.

how many phototrips am i behind on? sheesh...

good evening;
how are you?

right – this is a quick response to all y'all who apparently miss my ramblings.

i know.

the past little while has been more of an active time, whereby i tried to not look at the world like an unborn story and just let it fly as it should. to me, sometimes being too meta doesn't help too much in life without balance. you can't always just have the sidedish after all.

by the same token, i'm still trying to rewrite what i do here, so you're just going to have to bear it out since if my voice is not in tune, i'm not going to sing. the importance of having something to say comes first.

that said, other distractions pop up. the canadian tax situation, aside from partial anxiety, has finally been bundled into an envelope with a clean resolution once it heads north. reading the news that doesn't get presented down here and comparing it to what gets reported make it look like i'm living in a parallel universe where everything keeps going more and more wrong, which saddens me.

bigger news is that some numbnut script kiddie managed to break into the sauna, causing another dose of panic and causing marko and i to run around, resetting passwords, locking accounts, upgrading patches, disabling services and whatnot in broad strokes of madness. not what the doctor ordered and i have no idea what state these fixes are in.

meanwhile, if you want to read a farewell, try gene spafford's 1993 farewell to usenet or the soon-to-be creative farewell to william gibson's blog.

otherwise, i'm going to keep plugging away at a few things for a while. maybe i should just redecorate, maybe i should start anew. you can check the dirty monkey for some recent reviews, which also need additional catching up from me. see, i still have material, a backlog of strange ideas, but i'm trying to mould them more into something more lasting.

and for my bro, i offer this:

Hi. This is a properly capitalized sentence, along with the next few that follow. Lake Nipigon is situated on the northern shore of Lake Superior, where it feeds the Great Lake.

doesn't that look all out of place?

not dead, sorry you pool listers. past week involved entertaining a visitor, doing even more taxes, re-organizing the living space and taking copious amounts of antihistamines, which i haven't done in ages, and i'm getting less and less immune to the drugs' pull, meaning i'm instantly drowsy the second i try to fight the sniffles that the spring brings.

odd since it seems like there's less greenery when compared to thunder bay or toronto, but there my nose goes. maybe there's more pollen here, maybe ontario is secretly more polluted, who knows. toronto's SARS situation is getting more messed up by the day (blacklisted by the WHO? ha!) but i'm going to need more precious minutes of non-drowsiness before going off the deep end on that.

and other matters. i'm going to focus on a more coherent writing style in the next little while, bringing opinions, facts and storytelling into a better focus. better emphasis on photos with the dumb links going into its own sublog. but the next few days will be quiet for a while still. general catching up and other mayhem ahead.

and i need to buy a tiny table with two chairs with my newly uncovered floor space. the footstools and milkcrates are cute for a few days, but i'm left wondering how i managed this far. then it's time to drill little holes through the plaster and concrete, wrecking drill bits and nails to hang things on the walls. like curtains on one window that is now exposed and shines a light directly on the pillow, which makes the 6am gak show a nightmare (although bizarre ones, worth mentioning, but in the future!).

damn benadryl. not even caffeine can fight its powers.

[falls over.]

i'm not intentionally silent; i'm just working behind the scenes right now. drumming up some new little ideas and new sources of inspiration, but it'll take a while before it all gets sorted out. e's, wizz, otherwise.

meanwhile, aside from buying duplicate broadway tickets (groan), if you want words, see the modestly tweaked monkey for a philly sex mob review and the list of bigness for the purchaseable philadelphia.

soon, once i get cracking: my case for song once mike quits taunting me with hall & oates digs. you know, those two cause nothing but grief in philly, as i found out. sex mob had merciless fun with that duo on saturday, but unfortunately, now they're appearing everywhere! i almost freaked when josie's latest mixed cd had what i thought was one of their songs, when it turned out to be a david bowie cover.

modern love versus method of modern love.
the memory between my ears grows more cavernous by the minute, but oh, to drown in it a shallow puddle.

is this the happy accident i made this out to be?

thoughtfulness sets in my small skull in the diner car on the way back to new york from philadelphia. i'm left without the portable cd player, running at the eleven year mark, chewing through batteries like tiny bones. the new jersey countryside introduces more and more snow on the ground, wet and fluffy for an april downfall, ready to disappear with a moment's thought. the ride proves mildly bumpy, making my letters to family take on an even more illegible take on my already idiosyncratic penmanship.

one of the conductors talks about the slow interstate expansion around new hanaan, conneticut whilst the café cashier explains her difficulty on handling her thousands of digital camera pictures. a lawyer to the side along the angular seating proofreads article 41 of a printout and various people are drawn to the intriguing smells of the overpriced cheeseburgers.

suddenly, whisked underneath the hudson river to the halls of penn station, whereby i'm nonplussed by my mistake of exiting the 3 train at fulton street manhattan on not fulton street brooklyn. scuffling through the maze of corridors and steps to another line, not finding the J/M/Z and settling for the A, which brings me to high street, just underneath the brooklyn bridge. the spadetrees valiantly hold onto the teeming white masses, but fail, adding bursts of gentle thuds to the ongoing display of gravity.

the feeling after a great trip whereby you've become relaxed to the point that you stop thinking about the dirt underneath your fingernails and the food in the fridge. the thoughtfulness of looking at your first world with refreshed eyes, taking in what you suddenly think is not quite right or just perfect enough. letting go of those that caused strife before and reining in those that seemed okay a few days ago, but doesn't make sense in the current context.

i don't necessarily know where you come from and how you got here, but i like to see how you reflect the world. to encourage that, i'm going to start placing more thought into these diversions of the soul. because, as joey found out, blogs save lives.

and sometimes, they start them.

i'll post specific photos and nuggets of interest later. for now, i'll leave you with my esoterica.

(....so, yeah. philadelphia was a great weekend jaunt. i'll blame the omnipresent beer and the great food.)

(....and i didn't meet anyone. so stop thinking lasviciously.)

yesterday saw me dressed business casual and imbibing on spanish wine.
today sees me do a quick pack as i spend 4 days in wonderful philadelphia.
i received the latest auction winning from ebay: the contest seven inch record from soul coughing, which includes the eeriely beautiful adolpha zantziger.
of course, i still need to buy a turntable.
but taxes first.

posting will be light during the philly days, but i'll do my best and updated the travelogue appropriately. this little robot will be my guide.

meanwhile, stay beautiful and avoid the talking drugs.

today was jam-packed, much like yesterday. the deal yesterday was attempt three on switching long distance providers on the office's phone system. thankfully, take three held, meaning that the twenty-odd visits from verizon's technicians helped and now the company can experience savings galore (along with working caller ID, which everyone loves).

bad news arrived in that i wasn't able to leave three hours early as expected, thanks to unforeseen circumstances. luckily, i managed to be exceptionally productive, but i have to call in a half-day somewhere in the future.

good news arrived in the arrival of my new pager from cingular. meaning full wireless email again after... whenever i accidentally dropped the old one in the toilet again. and this one's new! and it doesn't suck batteries dry! huzzah!

today? well, after going to bed at 9pm the night before, i woke up to watch a pretty good mystery science theatre 3000 (it lives by night, squeak squeak). after some middling about, i took an extreme bike ride whereby i crossed four of the east river bridges in a haphazard fashion and got immensely soaked when the heavens opened up when i was at the farthest point. by the time i got home, it looked like i took the east river instead.

meanwhile, in the digital world, i've been rejibbing the h.m.c.s. eggnog, tweaking styles and adding new features, like the dirty monkey feed on the main page, near the bottom of the insanely long navigational bar. that uses a movable type plugin called otherblog, meaning that the other sauna moveable type users can pinch each other's headlines pretty easily (ask me, go ahead, i dares ya). i'm going to continue experimenting with additional plugins, provided i don't get tired and start breaking things.

well a few things went right this long day and a few things went wrong, but let's talk about dogs.

* dogs that save their fellow dogs from shark attacks.
* dogs that take a day off to chase sheep.
* dogs that live on a island of their own. where the weather is BEAUTIFUL on the Island so shelter is not really an issue. Dogs LOVE hurricanes, too, which we recently discovered!
* dogs that use their millions and female groupies to bid on truffles in auctions. WHAT???

actually, make sure you read the full dog island experience before snopes explains a bit more.

which dog is luckier: the dog with the babes or the dog with his own island pack? there are huge disconnections from reality here. damn.

when the weather is in that limbo whereby it's too cold to turn the A/C on but too warm to leave the windows closed, my sleeping pattern is shattered somewhat. the only similarity i can place is like when you go on a week-long camping trip, where you stay up late and wake up early for the first five days, mostly from a combination of:

1. unfamiliar environs
2. general giddiness and
3. strange karmic energy.

then, right before the end, you hit a wall and you can sleep through anything. and end up sleeping through everything.

i'm in day 4 mode right now, meaning so far, okay, but the timing of when the sleep deprivation kicks in is crucial since i have to be in the office 3 hours early on friday to oversee what i consider to be the final attempt at cutting our long distance service over to a less gouging and less bankrupt provider. two failed attempts and twenty technician visits later, it's time to dance now or i'll blow a fuse. or breaker...i forget the wiring inside me.

in elsewhereland, the big list has been blessed by this morning's exotic fruit menu and the dirty monkey's having fun with live luna-scented bugspray from friday night.

my method blogging needs real world inspiration. i will not, however, eat 50 eggs.

the only way to follow up the best subject lines from 1995 is by listing the best subject lines from 1996, which makes for odd viewing, especially side by side since they're completely wacked-out cousins from the same collective hide.

and there's another list too: strange scrabble words, which follows up on the most recent literati game. i forgot to mention that you can have the computer check the spelling of words for you, which takes out some of the strategy i scrabble has, like hiding your tiles away so your opponents won't go on the defensive on you. not that i'm terribly proficient at that, but that's what i learned.

i'm on a roll, so let's go:

when preparing corn, at the same time as adding the butter, drop a little bit of honey as the water boils but before you add the corn. this is what scientists call spine-tingley.

after my exhausting bike ride today (a small journey to coney island via the saint patrick's day parade by prospect park), i had me a big meal, including said corn. now i sit and space out before six feet under further confuses me.

well, i've been running around this web over the past few days, leaving little puddles in my wake and here's a few sites that were hit:

• dirty monkey bugspray fun
  • radio 4 album review.
  • one monkey escapes.
  • two dozen monkeys escape!
  • one american president es---oh nevermind....
• thebiglist
  • 26 cities i'd like to visit, 1 for each letter of the alphabet.
  • telltale signs of spring, although it wasn't enough to tell it to spring, which promptly hid for the rest of the week.

  and i'm with jen: thebiglist has been abandoned as of late. sometimes, i post like the tank was running on the fumes of the fumes, but hey. it's a fun diversion. the list, not the fumes.

meanwhile, let's see how bad i look:

...why am i smiling? the hair has not been cut since new year's, meaning my big ears are starting to hide behind my silly hair. i was playing yahoo's literati (scrabble clone) last night with lala and pals (one being meg, other being mark) and they wanted to put a face to the non-tagalog talker who somehow won one game.

well, not to brag, but i can talk the tiles, but meg...damn. maybe i'll make a list of the words she used that no one ever heard of before. is to laugh.

hey! i'm going home!

fading fast at this hour, but here's what saturday brought to my senses:

1. discover something's freshly wrong with SSH.
2. 3 hours or so of instant messaging with graig.
3. decision not to vote for finland (anteksi...)
4. poke around with newly freed original grand theft auto.
5. try to fitz about with video drivers to correct choppy video (no luck).
6. warm weather.
7. my brooklyn bridge with many more interlopers using it as though it wasn't mine.
8. stop off at j&r to buy me my own birthday gifts: cd burner and scanner.
9. walk back home, carrying the goods, over the bridge, killing me hands.
10. finally burn my new york city tribute cd!
11. late supper at cosi (turkey gumbo, turkey melt and hot chocolate).
12. tidy up some web code (blockquote is drifting onto my bad side).
13. briefly panic when i realized that i didn't have 2 months of digicam photos on the computer. located on cd, backed up the recent shots onto a new cd.

i'll play with scanner tomorrow. because that involves another task i've been avoiding: the completion of the organization of the apartment. then i can start putting negatives and photos up like a madman. it's amazing the volume of information i've created: looking through the web entries for typos brought to mind what i've written and photographed before and i had forgotten some things. you question the depth and meaning sometimes when it's first uploaded, but the treasure fully shines once you step away for a while, as though your past has mutated and separated from you entirely.

thanks for the birthday props, y'all.

what i did over the past two days was upgrade the hardware and software of our office's sybase server (observation: sun's RAM is not of this earth as they have shredded my fingers and they don't look pretty) along with figuring out what's what with the phones, which is still never fun when more than three telco's have their own non-shredded fingers tying everything together and tying everything up at the same time.

as muted celebrations, watching criterion's dvd release of terry gilliam's fear and loathing in las vegas is both jaw-droppingly inspired and mind-spastically frustrated on how hunter s. thompson's original can be brought to life. the book's far better, but you're still sucked in. i'll put it on the dirty monkey in time.

meanwhile, everyone at work keeps wanting to borrow my office space. i'm more than happy since i had to be convinced repeatedly to see it (thanks graig! marko! laurie! uh...other people!) and then let it sink in. mike judge, where are you now!

my birthday in latin is pridie nones martius or the day before the ninth day before the ides of march. i don't know how this will help mankind, but it makes days take on lives on their own. the day before the nestafi, a nine day period of transactionless business, only to resume at the middle of the month. in this case, right before the ides of march.

meanwhile, my age will remain a mystery at this time:

oh wait, very few people use text browsers nowadays. that was one lame mystery. however, i'm not technically that number yet. not til 18.24 EST.

so let me dig out of the sleet and start the business as hand. i might regale a tale or two later, but for now, as you were.

there was a bit more work done on this server tonight, hence it's yo-yo response over the past few hours. new hard drive and a coat of paint and bam, we're styling highly.

mardi gras or fat tuesday or shrove tuesday or pancake tuesday today, all over. i had rough sketchy plans to hit new orleans this week, but i knew that some work would sneak in and alas it has, meaning i work not only through carnival but my birthday as well (thursday, if you're keeping score). or maundy thursday this year, which adds to the confusion.

meanwhile, before i keel over, useless and unconscious, let me give mad props to densil, who became a canadian citizen this morning. i don't know if he threw away his jamaican connections completely, but he has the paperwork, he took the oath and he should have had plenty of beer up in toronto this eve.

to whoever keeps stealing my weekend times: i'll consider going halfsies, but only if you actually return the paper.

now i'm resorting to what i probably should be doing in the first place, which is getting the paper the second i wake up. the probability of locking myself out, though, will be quite high, for my first half-hour of consciousness is very lo-watt. focus slides onto the reptilian section of the brain, the one part where instructions involve placing one foot in front of the other, not touching hot things and remembering to have glasses and pants on before stepping outside.

after hanging around many typographers over the years, i've developed a fetish for fonts. lovely letters that hopefully have the proper ligature and a complete set of characters, since i try to toy around with layouts whenever i can. however, i've never made the leap into buying a font yet, mostly because they seem obscenely expensive.

this time, though, i'm tempted: twenty dollars gets you fifty fonts from the early 20th century. these fonts look great, show great variety and are relatively cheap. the only hitch is that these are issued from an h.p. lovecraft site, well-known for their devotion of that peculiar nightmaric creature, cthulhu. the fonts were created for a musical spoof (!) and also easily acquired are a fantastic set of props from the production.

we'll see who'll win the battle in my mind: the reluctant or the coolhunter.

meanwhile, for you font nuts (particularly free ones), may i recommend the following sites:
- da font, your preferred first stop for free fonts.
- 1001 fonts.
- old typewriter fonts.
- this japanese design house, although you probably have to hunt/peck for their downloads since they've rejigged their layout to the point of confusion.

as a sysadmin, i'm often engaged in conversations which i immediately derail by being snarky. a few of the canadian coworker contigency came up to me this morning:

coworker: in the unlikely event that we're laid off, can we file for candian unemployment benefits?
me: what do you mean by "unlikely"?
coworker: .....
me: i'm joking; what's the question?
coworker: oh: can we get canadian benefits working in the u.s.?

turns out the short answer is maybe, according to the human resources development canada, depending on previous canadian work history, claims and residence. of course, the reason why they're asking is a bit puzzling, but i'll hang loose for now since my radar's picking up nothing.

meanwhile, here's the eternal question: do you make snow or do you make snowflakes?

rannie has many an interesting link to photography tips, be they film choice, technique or photoshop trickery.

after reading a few of them through and then trying a small subset of them still, i've only successfully managed to pull off the faux lomo photo.

i am of the camp that believes in the lomo camera, but since i can't always have one of the toy ones around, it's nice to play "what if" with any existing photos.

here's one shot from bryant park, back in the sweltering august heat, which i sorely miss as i type.

parts of that just comes from contrast and saturation level changes, but i have to admit the shot becomes more rustic. for those of you who don't want to go through the steps, there's a melancholytron plug-in for photoshop that might make it braindead easy, but i don't feel like messing around with payware or something else that might otherwise freak out my setup.

meanwhile, i still want to get the cross exposure mimic down, but my experiments are, um, too wacky thus far. and this blurring technique doesn't seem to mesh with my first few test photos. but i try.

meanwhile, some photos don't need any doctoring at all (via kottke), except by conveniently adding yourself to the shot. inconspicuously yet casually, like you would be as a party circuit veteran.

[listening - mos def + massive attack: i against i.]

daredevil review's up, finally. little bit of summer fun for the february thaw, ably handling the coolness of the trailers that came before, like x-men 2, and the hulk before. as much as i dig chow yun-fat, watching the trailer to bulletproof monk didn't convince me at all ...partly because it's so bleeding obvious to me that it was filmed in toronto (clue: nathan philips square is so not america), which dispels the magic for me. toronto has its own twisted history, but it looks like its in drag, pretending to be another city. feck...compare that to daredevil, which is not just new york city but hell's kitchen through and through and you know the city helps further define the movie's mood.

anyways, this weekend, i might actually catch up with the rest of you souls: a co-worker loaned me the lord of the rings: the fellowship of the rings in its 4 dvd mightiness.

because i haven't seen it yet.

it was one of those things where a bunch of people want to go see at a time, but it turns into a freaky field trip. the school bus never shows up, so people figure out their own carpool rides and oops! i'm left out of the project.

as was the case with the matrix and l.a. confidential, i'm sure i'll encounter cinematic gold a little later than most. i won't keep my hopes too high, though, just as a safety measure. considering this part of the trilogy is the only one i've read, i shouldn't have too much trouble following the trail of bread crumbs.

meanwhile, it's time to relearn one thing: closing attribute quotes. i'm getting so sloppy...

the ladytron concert was brilliant, but i'll have to write up a review later – after work, daredevil (take 2), maybe sleep, food and other possible breathers in the mayhem routine. keep your eyes on the funny monkey for updates.

meanwhile, here's some best of the best of usenet humour:

1. starbucks toilet paper
2. iraqi pizza drivers
3. romeo and juliet txt msg
4. a right proper full-on flame
5. true espn history
6. saddam blaxploitation tribute

the internet must be the best book i've ever read. although someone keeps adding more and more pages.

[listening - solex: athens, oh.]

the original plan, yesterday, was to see daredevil, but the moviehouses, much like the rest of the city, broadway included, were closed, so i was left to my own amusement devices, which was looking at PHP scripts, watching dinner for five (with david byrne, janeane garofalo, dave eggers and joe pantoliano) and eating nachos and salsa for one.

this morning, anticipating the mayhem all the snow left, i went to work early, expecing an empty house. however, many people made it in, so a full plate of work awaited. picked up the developed holga photos (negatives and prints, since i have no scanner access still, so yeah, it cost $$$) and then figured the day would be over, but it was rescheduled movie time, except of a polar opposite style: the brazilian arthouse city of god, which was brilliant. i need every form of brazilian music, stat. intoxicating like a swim in a mojito.

and that's the day's play-by-play. standby whilst i collapse from shoulder pain to brave yet another day, whereby another late night waits with ladytron live.

mental list:

1. find earplugs.
2. remember witty 2nd point.
3. lay off the snow photos for a while.

[listening - the new pornographers: the laws have changed.]

you know, having thirty browser windows open at the same time ain't healthy. so, for ye archæologists out there, here's what i'm currently experiencing:

1. the theme song to guy playing counterstrike.
2. the video footage of a crab explosively decompressing underwater.
   both from memepool.
3. cool javascript/DHTML code for hovering hypertext attribute data and metafilter's freaky demonstration with y2karl's music links.
4. ryn's goatee style site, and i forget how i got there.
   (ah! toastboy!)
5. stuart moore's meditation on the 25th hour and how bush continues to betray new york city.
6. vin diesel breakdancing and setting garfield on fire from the zany bad mouth.
7. dennis mahoney.
8. lockheart steele, talking about dell dude's pot bust in l.e.s.
   two strange things about the intersection of ludlow & rivington: 1) i almost lived there, except for the clued-out real estate dude who never showed up for the 2nd viewing 2) the cover to the beastie boys' paul's boutique is that very intersection.
9. manhattan's user guide on 17th street photo.
   looking for holga 120 film, i think.
10. the font thing, a tool for font management on windows, which i should look into so that i don't need 1000 fonts in memory all the time.
11. a scary tribute to white house spokesdude ari fleischer.
12. adopt a bison in oklahoma and blue mounds state park in minnesota where the buffalo roam.
13. how to be a better evil overlord to survive any RPG and their clichés.
14. quarlo's weekly photoblog.
15. fark's 2004 u.s. budget photoshop contest results.
16. an interview with ramsay clark on american militarism today.
17. the articles for impeachment of bush, cheney, rumsfield and ashcroft.
    good luck, kids...i'm with you, but i don't know how with you.
18. NORTH KOREA NUCLEAR MISSILES COULD REACH AMERICAN WEST COAST.
    is saddam really the biggest threat right now? i mean, really...
19. javascript text areas.
20. a few intranet sites at work.
21. and this lovely window.

my mind has just reached its saturation point. ouch.

[listening - tori amos: professional widow (armand van helden remix).]

nothing like dealing with the annual village voice pazz & jop musical review to understand the usual overwhelming aspects of music out in the world. i finally picked up the latest beck sea change (used), which came 2nd to wilco's yankee foxtrot hotel. not that i use the list as litmus for how cool i am, just an idea to see how people interpret what they hear and what i may missed or passed judgment on earlier.

of course, some of us have already moved to 2003's music. the monkey has my review of massive attack's latest album, which looks to be a creeper like their past albums, but is quite different already. i bought 4 other goodies as well, but i still have to sort through them, along with everything else i haven't touched yet. many a book, i'll tell ya.

that, and it's time to brush up my scottish brogue again. if i looks like the renton, i gots to talk like the renton as well - it's what the ladies ask for.

[listening - the catherine wheel: judy staring at the sun.]

here's the latest crack cocaine: bananabix, whereby old weetabix is shrunken and stuffed with dried bananas, packing the already addictive soggy wheat with the flavour of bananas. hypnotic.

buddy bob aside, it looks like the world trade centre redesigns have been pared down to two choices: daniel libeskind's crystalline tower fragments and think's world cultural centre. i was hoping for gaudi's rediscovered rocketship-inspired building, designed back in 1908 for a location eeriely close to where the towers were. that, or the buffalo, which apparently failed some of the criteria of the planning committee, or all.

watching a co-worker's copy of the russian solaris on dvd. it's not often i see 1970s soviet cinema and i'm surprised to see non-industrial landscapes and lush farmlands. the bleak concrete poetry of moscow's roads do appear later, though, but it's important to realize that nature wasn't completely hacked off by communism. then again, the film keeps switching between black/white and colour randomly, which is confusing to my inner analyst.

maybe i'll lay off the cough syrup for a while.

...scotch?
tonight's the night: robbie burns' day.
here's a happy ditty for the occasion.

when first my brave johnie lad came to this town,
he had a blue bonnet that wanted the crown;
but now he has gotten a hat and a feather,
hey, brave johnie lad, cock up your beaver!

cock up your beaver, and cock it fu' sprush,
we'll over the border, and gie them a brush;
there's somebody there we'll teach better behaviour,
hey, brave johnie lad, cock up your beaver!

other than that, don your kilt and go regimental.
as you were.

somehow, i managed to survive work today even though i sneezed approximately once a minute, resulting in long gaps of time where my eyes would well up from sinus pressure, my voice would change as my nose filled up with fluids and my concentration was shot. any impromptu medication didn't really help, but i stayed til the bitter end and managed to accomplish a few things.

i just woke up after a 3 hour nap and my nose is raw from all the tissue-blowing i've done. and i realize now i left the medication at work. genius on the air.

graig pointed this out to me: i'm one tangent away from being rogers tech savvy site of the day as the screen cap of rannie's photojunkie manages to include our picture together, part of his ever-rotating navigation graphic:

not really that important, but whimsical nonetheless. if you haven't seen rannie's site yet, it's a great read, mixed with his keen camera eye and his outgoing friendly circle. he also started up the photobloggies as a response to the bloggies ignoring photo-based web sites for awards. i know a good deal of the sponsors and i can't wait to see the qualifying sites.

eggnog probably won't qualify since my entire webspace is way too random to classify as being pure photoblog, even though i do have the odd page with strange shots (maybe i can organize accordingly by making a photo category). but i'm not concerned about that - i'm worried about running low on nasal tissue right now.

although i hear a lot of complaints here how cold and gloomy it's been here on the eastern seaboard, i don't quiet but it since i know that the gulf of finland has completely frozen over, meaning that you could theoretically walk from helsinki to tallinn instead of using the ferry (if it weren't for the icebreakers).

however, one side effect of globewarming is starting to manifest; the ice floes in greenland have been melting for the past 25 years, slowing down the north atlantic current. a direct result of this is warm water from the equator isn't able to make it to england before it cools off, resulting in colder winters with the ocean freezing at lower latitudes. in fact, speculation runs that any blockage of the northern currents help produce ice ages, which shows you that global warming isn't just about dioxides in the atmosphere. it means mammoths.

you know what's a good idea, but a bad word?

moblogging, or "mobile blogging". the name's a misnomer since what's actually happening is that you're posting to your weblog via email, which makes it a definite feature for in the field posting via a wireless device, like a RIM pager or a cell phone (even one with a camera). live reporting, instant updating, no web interface.

it looks cool and it's almost breaking through. movable type doesn't have it quite yet, though they're working on implementing moblogging on MT hands-on.

meanwhile, a better term's needed:

• mobbing?
• moboing?
• remote blogging?
• farposting?
• mailblogging?
• mailbagging?
• piggyposting?
• eblogging?

potential marketers: your branding future doesn't start here.
let's leave it for the frontliners to brand this new hotness.

one of my favourite things with surfing multiple sites along different ideas is when my trains of thought start crossing the same tracks. when memes collide, memewrecking or memecrashing don't sound like appropriate terms, but it'd be along those lines when two pursuits of idea all of a sudden madly intersect into each other.

this morning, i was trying to look up something about criterion's dvds after a colleague at work sent me a spreadsheet full of his 300+ collection and loaned me his copy of the original version of solaris. at the same time, i was catching up on the free weeklies online and was reading the austin chronicle. the chronicle was dealing with the sex pistols stop in san antonio 25 years later at the same time as i found out about the out-of-print sid & nancy dvd, which included the infamous (and then blasphemous) television interview with bill grundy. this version of the dvd is now out of print and is worth a pretty penny off ebay; mgm's re-issued version has no extras included.

maybe i should keep my eyes peeled in case someone doesn't realize how much it actually costs. like those people who throw out records into the streets, or used toys.

the computer's back out of its semiwonky state and now back in the wonderful WON'T BURN A DAMN CD FOR ME state that otherwise governs my life.

really: how can it read a full cd but not read a blank cd, saying
"The device, \Device\CdRom1, has a bad block."
that so doesn't help. grrrrr....

anyways, let's catch up on my other site links:

• dirty monkey
  • the discovery of monkey culture
  • the layoff of middle-aged monkeys from a zoo
• the big list
  • important dates on the 2003 gak calendar
  • the names of the streets, roads, avenues, crescents, boulevards and cul-de-sacs i've lived on throughout my life

meanwhile, i have to find out what side effects expired echinacea has since mine's apparently a full year bad. one day, i'll be healthy again. and look it for a picture.

minor changes have come forth.
to the eggnog? no!

first off, my beautiful transatlantic drawl is now starting to be polluted with a soft gutteral new yorkese. my crisp canadian pronounciation, tempered with a meandering muted finnish tongue, mildly chiseled from british programming and southern ontario's wild mix of accents, stretched occasionally with a colorado drawl now is starting to sideways shuffle with consonants dropping back in the mouth and some cheeky twang. in a few short months, i will completely incomprehensible, meaning it's time to either retreat or go into a wilder speaking place, like texas: america's america.

oh: that and the faux-mo's gone as of new year's eve:

better/worse pictures here
(better hair appearance, worse photo quality):

(nice how turtlenecks creep on my chin. that, or it's time to start exercizing again. holiday food fiesta, bah.)

so no faux-mo (or faux-hawk or whatever) fo' now. fortunately, my hair's half bamboo, meaning in three short weeks, it'll be back like a weed for me to figure out what to do. for now, i'll enjoy the low maintenance and the still freakishly silky texture. as will the rest of you.

as new york city readies times square and 2003 already struck first in new zealand, it's almost ready to go all hogmanay on the new year, which the scots do on december 31.

my plans aren't still formalized yet, but with the office closing at 2pm today, i'll go catch confessions of a dangerous mind by union square and wonder home for a quick nap. i know adult swim has a marathon for new year's, but the vcr is misbehaving still. the remote lounge has an interesting gameplan for the evening, but space may have already been taken.

maybe i'll just ramble through the streets.
probably avoid times square though.
dick clark must be stopped, at all costs.

i'll figure something out. most of my new year's have tended to be rather quiet. the past 3 years have been spent up in thunder bay, well into the bush (what we nor'westers call "forest nowhere near civilization") around a huge bonfire with lean-tos, glögg and predicting what the new year holds by melting tin and then throwing it into the cold. the tin re-solidifies into a new shape, which you "read" to see what will happen. my 2002 shape was a something with wings, which seemed to foretell my move down to new york.

not that i keep track of these sort of things, or you should care, but:
hey.
welcome to post two hundred.

now wipe your feet already.

i did a thing where i posted my seven essential albums for 2002 on the fun that bugspray is to monkeys in the dirt. me all haughty like, sharing my silly little universe with you; not to encourage mass purchasing but to twist your ear in a new way.

then there are the re-releases from this year (or an excerpted list), which although memory messes with me (and graig has 65% of my 2002 content), i think i'm on the level.

okay.
back to the packing.
thunder bay doesn't call itself.
or, if it does, i'm not tapping.
or taping.

i told you about it, my pop9.
i finally found the roll of film after i moved from the hotel, almost lost it again as i packed, but it finally got developed. so here's proof:

yes, hooray: a meta-photo. a photograph of a photograph. i have no scanner access and i don't think i'll be buying one soon. but as you can see, same shot, nine different frames.

(note: the painting in the picture is a pop-art-ish portrait of robert andrew millikan, the scientist who performed the oil drop experiment to determine electron size and charge. thought to be my best painting by many people, it's currently on exhibit somewhere with curator graig and needs framing desperately. note that i have attempted to get back into painting, but watercolours suck. where's my oils?)

meanwhile, since i'm lazy, i'll do a funky shortcut here and go even more meta: how about a pop9-ey shot of 9 pop9 shots via the digicam? brace yourself; you may experience more broken synapses during this bout of ocular turbulence:

mostly coney island and toronto bloggers, including (counterclockwise from the topleft) carla, jayme #2 (but #1 in everyone's hearts), rannie and 35% of graig's face.

and now you've been educated.
buy them as gifts!
(the cameras, not the bloggers, although it may be worth asking.)

schadenfreude: (german) pleasure derived from the misery of others [schaden (damage) + freude (joy)].

i wonder if the germans have a word for pleasure derived from the misery of yourself. oh wait: there is a word for that already. nevermind.

other than that, work's okay and i'm not sleeping well (just like graig) but i would imagine that the turkish version of my life would be as equally amusing to watch.

packing has reached the point now where only a few more boxes need emptying and shelf space organized and network configured and the piano...well, that'll stay in the box for now. but in one week, i fly to thunder bay for ten days, meaning that the whirlwind retains its funnel form until 2003.

and it's raining outside. in december?

today, the movers came, so i diligently arrived at the new apartment with a bit of my hotel belongings and helped the jersey guys offload my longlost articles, only to find out that i have to finish the move now, leaving me to open boxes in a vain search for component parts for the most important things, like the bed (damn missing screws). only one stereo speaker came a little damaged, but otherwise everything's intact, and man, does this new place look sweeter than i remembered. smaller too, but bright light, high ceilings and the new showerhead i bought from bed bath & beyond works wickedly (although the rain and mist features look kinda odd and it still needs a workday morning test).

bad news is i think i twisted my left knee and ankle from walking up everything to the 4th floor, meaning pain is uncomfortable, but bearable enough for me to bike through the slush along the windy east river and the slowly freezing brooklyn bridge. i'm going to pay for it though, along with 5 hours sleep. so now's naturally the time to remain awake to finish some laundry and eat all the perishable food (and to make something for the new place until i unpack the cookware there, although i have to figure out where to place the microwave after i finally noticed there's really no counter space (and no drawers? yeesh).

however, finally getting clear reception to npr made the first day of the big unpack go smoothly. remembering to eat in the afternoon was another bright idea.

sorry, electric prunes, but not for me.

two nights ago, i dreamed i was biking back in toronto, forest hill, except there were no houses along spadina and the trees were bigger yet bonsai trees and i overshadowed them all. i turned to go up a hill and smaller houses, cottage-styled ones, all in a row, before i turned onto eglinton, towards a thickly-congested brownstone collection, including the basement i lived in, except it hopped one street west and no longer looked over a playground, but more houses. it was summertime, but before i could really get into it, i woke up, which has been a recurring problem the past few nights, which drives me bonkers as it's only about 5 hours sleep, and i need more. a quick nosh of bread and oj from the fridge helps but it takes time and by the time i fall asleep, the usual less than interesting dreams start.

phooey.

here's my latest flashback queen: alt.humor.best-of-usenet. from 1994-1996, before the signal dipped into noise, i used to read usenet devotedly and met quite a few people who i still keep in touch with over some random discussion. fortunately, ahbou has been a moderated newsgroup for the longest time, meaning that spam or flamewars are kept off, leaving a rich harvest of the brilliant and catty humour that strikes in public.

the only reason i found this was i was starting to look through my 1996 mail to come up with another list similar to my best subject lines from 1995. whereby another flashback occured, this time in the form of a letter from graig:

New York... what the fuck are you doing in new york??? No one from thunderbay goes to new york... fuck, toronto is too much of a culture shock for the average tunder... ooooh right, you're no average guy from Thunder Bay, NO... your Gary of the desert storm twenty or whatever... riiiiight.. must remember (ARE.. . YOU THE... BRAIN SPE-CIAL-LIST? MY...B.BRAIN... HURTS)

outbored: my proposed replacement title for graig's weblog. the former spider behind the toilet has now become trepanning for fun and profit and comes in a less ominous colour scheme, so you can smile with your new hole in your head (rather than a head like a hole). i already miss the spider, both the digital tribute and the physical specimen, who was a big ol' arachnid of the highest order.

outbored: a mantra you can use to indicate how more uninterested you are with your situation than the other uninterested souls around you. they can be ultrabored, overbored or überbored, but you can outbore them to no end. they fall asleep during the meeting, you start flossing your teeth with vigour.

outbored: wordplay on outboard since that's the source. thinking of brooklyn heights as long island's outboard motor, in case we need to make a speedy escape from the mainland america. kick the bridges up, put the consolidate edison plant in the water and speed off, leaving the hamptons and the north fork way up in the sky. the metaphor quickly runs out of fuel, so we'll skip to my next point. next stop: españa!

out-bored: 'coss you can hyphenate. if you're feeling retro.

outbored: when you've drilled your hole too deep to the point where your skull can't maintain its structure. then you'll be left sitting around vacantly, like a vegetable, wishing you could be bored.

my brother used to have a list about what to do when you were bored, but that's long been abandoned. it was a strangely popular site back in 1995, to the point where it was compiled into other journals. i doubt he still has a copy, considering he accidentally deletes all his files or reformats his computer on a regular basis. (and yes, that does run in the family. thank goodness for backups.)

four day weekend for us in the u.s.a. it's been a simple short week for work here, but i'm glad i managed to get one big thing almost accomplished.

a place to live.

it's not finalized, but i jumped a major hurdle by proving that i'm not a credit risk, so once i assemble all the monies, i get the keys to a place in brooklyn heights.

of course, hopefully i don't jinx this, but one subtle drawback is that i can't exactly move this weekend since the cheques/checks won't materialize until monday. however, this works all right for me since i simply spend an extra week in the hotel with no problems.

one thing to avoid doing this friday though is buying anything, because it's that time of year again, which i seem to dig up on a frequent enough basis but the day after the american thanksgiving is normally the biggest spending day in united states, which makes it a fitting time for a buy nothing day.

ever feel like you've never accomplished anything in your life? no feeling of a defining moment in your existence thus far?

well, hope may lie in the skies. whilst applying to be the first private canadian astronaut may be far off from you, you can always follow larry walters into the history books. larry walters was the man who flew in a lawn chair tied with weather balloons for 20 minutes, reached a height of 16.000 feet, threatened a passenger plane with gun before somehow landing several blocks away from his backyard unharmed. the chair still exists and although larry isn't around anymore, his tale will live for the ages.

meanwhile, my closest level of accomplishment tonight is a boards of canada preview and yet another piece of somehow fascinating news involving monkeys.

not much, yeah.
but really, what's your excuse?

what a nothing weekend. saturday will go down as the most throwaway day ever as all i did was play vice city in my boxers ...and that's it. 15 hours or however long it took before the ps2 decided it needed a nap. the amount of devotion and humour that went into that game is unbelievable. example of humour? try kent paul's website, a nutter character from the game, except with his own outcast from the 1980s website. devotion? well, based on the radio stations you experience in the car rides, you can now buy 1 of 7 soundtracks based on each of the musical stations, ranging from new wave and electro to spanish and the damn scary power ballad station.

sunday was the amendmaker for saturday with actual errands, going outside, the initial search for a living space with actual cheques/checks with actual money in the account and laundry. punishment came in the form of the cold november rain (no power ballad link for you!), which definitely beat the ice storms to the north, but in comparison for the unknown weather of saturday, which might've been not rainy, wasn't too pleasant. of course, i then blew off the illegal art show with the evolution control committee at tonic, mostly due to my mercurial mood and cursed myself for watching the increasingly soap operatic sopranos and the ramshackle dysfunctional six feet under.

so, in tribute to a do nothing day/weekend, why not try a buy nothing day instead? (saturday counted for me, i guess...) or try to figure out this soy sauce advert which i saw off this modern world?

the poppy isn't worn at all in the u.s on november 11, so when my brother brought one down from canada over the weekend, i would be frequently asked what it was as i walked throughout town.

yesterday, on the elevator ride down, a woman got on and noticed it:

she: nice pin.
me: thanks.
what's it for?
it's a poppy, for veterans or remembrance day.
i've never seen one before.
well, it's made of felt.
[she scratches at with her fingertip.]
nice...i'm sorry, [looks down] that was very forward of me.
that's okay; i didn't feel a thing!
[laughter]

(paraphrased) kinda funny, especially if you wear it properly over your heart or nipple, making it strange. of course, under the denim jacket, you can't feel a thing, but bad pun aside (no, i never felt anything, ha ha, ha ha), um ....i should wear other strange buttons and lapels now. i guess my wooden zipper mouse is too invisible on the other jacket. what's distinctive on a jacket that you won't see normally (aside from those ubiquitous punk tiny buttons)? besides dead animal parts?

even though i'm far from the lads in toronto, i still end up communicating with my co-workers on a casual basis each day somehow. not intentionally by ringing up the long distance phonebill charges, but just through the odd email or work-related request that slips through.

that said, it's freaky how fast i can react. earlier today, a message went to our tokyo office, asking about the a squirrel that was terrorizing knutsford, england, which i found out had been solved after one of the victim's grandfather went all vigilante on the little rodent's derriere. afterwards, it was fark-time with the ubiquitous object of nut envy and the day descended the t-rope backwards.

still, i got plenty done, although i could have used a little more cowbell. aside from the corporate pleasures, i started to tweak the dirty monkey site a bit so it bailed out of the default template (at least on the index). in time, that little home on the IP range will look so shnazzy your brain will crawl out through your nostrils and try to embrace your browser, meaning you, the faithful participant, should start putting your fingers up your nose to quell the neurological flood.

speaking of flood, after five days of silence, graig exploded out of the rafters by posting like a mad idjit, leaving all his faithful shellshocked, but more so than usual. and more pretty too. yes, pretty pretty panda.

no costume on my bod, even though i had thought about possible costumes, so i went with a blues explosion werewolf shirt and black pinstripe trousers.

otherwise, let's give a brief moment of silence to the fallen jam master jay, who was the first man on the wheels of steel you ever heard as the dj behind run dmc.

behind the turntables is where he stands then there is the movement of his hands so when asked who's the best, y'all should say: "run-d.m.c. and Jam Master Jay"

in tribute to the movie title full frontal should have gone with, a real-life moment with me:

1. go to a hotel room.
2. turn on the gas range.
3. boil water in a pan.
4. attempt to pick up lid with bare hand.
5. ice hand.
6. use tea towel to pick up lid.
7. accidentally let towel drift towards open flame.
8. shake now lit towel in the air, occasionally blowing on it.
9. throw towel into sink.
10. turn on the water to douse the flame.
11. inspect now burnt edges.
12. pray fire alarm doesn't go off.
13. turn down heat on range.
14. find paper towel.
15. repeat step 6 with new implement.
16. do not repeat step 7.
17. remember to breathe.
18. write a damn weblog entry.

my talents are never truly hidden. they should be extinguished once in a while though.

this would have been a big list, which is currently a little listless, with my best subject lines of 1995 still the most recent, and i don't want to scare the troops too much.

well, maybe. although now i should check what's burning now in the kitchen.

the long silences are not intentional. there's no feeling of blangst on my part, since my webspace has to be adopted first prior to be orphaned.

no, it's just i've been accidentally quite lively the past four days whereby i wanted to merrily plug away at doing things rather than transcribing them. however, as the work week starts to fly along, mundane things pile on and photos get uploaded, you can see the majesty of a simple life making simple discoveries.

then again, this week will be far from mundane as i fly back to toronto thursday evening in preparation of marko's wedding and chilling with one of my homecrew's. besides, i finally solved one major snafu at work and my belongings no longer take up space in toronto, so this is a life falling into balance, although falling out of balance is completely natural. and i expect it some mutant way.

huh.
rannie made it into the city and he had my mobile number.
i wonder how that happened.
(hmmm? hmmm?)

anyways, looks like its meetup time again.
(how many international meetup days are there?
3rd wednesday of every month.
okay.
now i'm learning.)
i'm on zero mailing lists, simply because i already can't keep track of my life in general, so having more things to keep track of presents an exponential increase in organizational difficulty.
however, i eavesdrop, i'm notified, i get dragged along, i partycrash!
some combination of those will take effect then for the half king.
depending on what's what at work.

and now for today's instructions:
1. corrupt otherwise useful maps.
2. buy mr. show crap.
3. obey the giant.
4. strongarm foreign (or domestic) governments.
5. stop surfing.

man, soon i'm going to remember what i was originally going to post.