Stuff from my Cell Phone

Thursday, January 26th, 2012 9:44 pm

lousy

i think that instead of the sage of the mundane my character will be the sage of the decision making process. i like that better, as it more properly illustrates the art and specialty of this individual and it mocks a former boss i had once in corporate, whose favorite question of condescension was “what was the decision making process?” that was his way of setting up for ridicule almost any explanation, and implying from the git-go that the results of the decision making process would not be subject to ridicule if the process itself was not similarly vulnerable. i could imagine that some of these explanations and recounting of every miniscule thought process that contributed to a single act could go on for years.

…..

i feel lousy today. the meaning of the word “lousy” is an interesting nugget i picked up from david letterman. if you say someone is lousy with money then that means they have lots of money. it could also mean they have poor money management skills, but that’s the interesting thing about the word. it seems to have contradictory synonyms. there are other such words, of course, but it was letterman who introduced me to “lousy” as a term of respect when he described — i think it was professional football players — as big, tough, and lousy. not lousy with anything, just lousy. i thought he would retract that comment, assuming as i did that lousy was used in the more common meaning of the word. but he never did. that’s because his knowledge of the word is the 3rd definition of Merriam Websters: replete.

i don’t feel replete with anything good today. just good old lousy.

…..

sometimes i see peoples’ faces as if they are etchings, or world-famous paintings studied by critics and scholars for centuries.

on a bus one afternoon, in some asshole part of queens, a crowd of middle-aged men stood at a bus stop. they looked like day workers to me. probably mexican, probably going home from some contract or maybe a courier job.

the bus i was in pulled up to the bus station, and i saw one man among the others start to walk toward the bus. then he realized, either through his own observation or the movement of the people around him, that the bus he and the others needed was actually arriving behind the bus i was on. he had already opened his wallet to get his MetroCard when, in mid-motion, he changed direction. as he turned i saw his face. his mouth tightened, and his eyes were distracted by the act of turning to get to the other bus while simultaneously continuing to withdraw the MetroCard from his wallet. then his eyes looked up toward the other bus, a tone of concern shot forth from the tired gloaming of his eyes. he did not want to miss the bus, and his body language adjusted accordingly to communicate to the bus driver not to skip the stop for any reason, for several people standing there had been waiting and needed to get on that bus for the ride home. (sometimes busdrivers will skip a stop if they think another bus of the same line currently or was very recently picked up passengers at that stop.)

another face i saw last night was of a pizza guy. i got a slice of pizza for $2.25 and paid with a $10 bill. the cashier/pizza guy had trouble getting the right change. he had to crack open a roll of quarters. there were no $5 bills, so he had to count up 7 $1 bills. 2 of the $1 bills appeared to stick together. all the while as he sorted the dollar bills he held in his hand 75 cents in quarters. he had some trouble but exhibited some skill at keeping the quarters in his hand whilst sorting out the dollar bills. throughout this transaction the man’s face had the keenest, strongest, most impementrable look of concentration i have seen in a long time. if you did not see his hands or did not kow what he was doing you might have thought he was engaged in the work of a great master: sculpting, perhaps, or performing a Paganini violin concerto. even as he handed me the money that look of intense concentration never wavered until the money was in my hand, at which point the man’s face resumed the friendly, ingratiating demeanor i saw when i first entered the pizzeria.

i wanted that face captured for all times.

…..

the other day i upgraded the publishing system for this web site. i had a moment of clarity when, unexpectedly, something went wrong. after the upgrade the admin control panel threw a php error. everything worked except the top screen of the admin section. my forehead commenced to sweat and i commenced to curse, for the most recent backup i had of the site was from about a week earlier, meaning the world might have lost the glories of the last 5 or 6 days at this magnificent web production. (hah)

the point of explaining is that it made me realize: i’ve been doing this little .MOBI web thingamajig since 2006.. i don’t really think twice about it any more. i just do it. the site is blocked from all legitimate search engines on account of the sometimes confessional content and the fact that this type of content simply does not benefit from drive-by search engine keyword mis-directed eyeballs looking for something about the corporate decision making process and instead finding my utterly irrelevant dream journal about the sage of such processes. i don’t know if anybody reads this stuff.

my point being, when the errors started happening the other day (they were quickly fixed) i discovered that for as long as i’ve been throwing text matter into this space it has taken this long for me to admit that i actually care about it. this site mostly survived the big blowout of 2010 — i think a bunch of images from 2009 are forever gone — and its native simplicity makes it hard fear that it’s going to crash to pieces the way my other web sites can and do.

what’s the point of this? i do not know. i have had an idea, since i was at Tosca on Tuesday, to add something new to this site. in keeping with my .MOBI reverse charter (whereby content here is not so much formatted for mobile devices but it originates from mobile and non-PC devices) i decided that my long-planned payphone-related project would make the most sense here, and not over on the old payphone site.

this project is simple enough in concept: i call a voicemail box from payphones aaround NYC, and i tell a story about something that happened to me (or did not happen to me) at or near this payphone. i have a bunch of these recordings in the can, but i consider those rehearsals. i was going to add it to the payphone site as a new section, but since a payphone is essentially a mobile device (albeit stationary) i think i’ll try including it here instead.

so, we’ll see what happens, and where that goes. the software to automate this process is already annoying me, and the seemingly simple process of recording voicemail messages is unduly complicated by the vagaries of public telephones. it’s not just that they don’t always work or that call quality sucks, it’s that sometimes you think you’re recording a call when you are not, because the mic on the phone does not work. you wouldn’t know that whilst recording a voicemail, though you would know if you were trying to talk to someone.

the precariousness of the project, of any project that relies on public payphones, is a significant factor.

why post this project here, when all search engines are blocked and but a handful of humans are likely to discover it?

well, i do not know, except that even at my steadily advancing age i still maintain the adolescent philosophy that i am at my best when i feel like no one is listening.

…..

i watched the first-released Star Wars last night. contrary to what i might have said before, the special effects in that film are not as timid as i might have remembered. Jabba the Hut looked pretty fake, but the rest of the special effects (are they still called that? special effects? they’re not special any more!) are pretty righteous even by modern standards. and of course the storylines and the characters are lightspeed ahead of anything that tried to rise up from Parts 1-3. i saw one of those last year and could not believe how bad it was. Natalie Portman: good actor and all, but in that film she’s as wooden as this table on which i type these words.

another thing about Star Wars that i think makes it stand the test of time is that the electronica and gadgetry still seem pretty futuristic. compare the light saber and bionic arm replacements to junky technology seen in James Bond movies and i think you’ll see that Star Wars was smarter about use of those things.

tonight i shall attempt to watch Cul De Sac, by Polanski. and i shall try out the new 3D glasses that arrived tonight. my bigass TV includes 3D, but all vendors were sold out of the required glasses when i bought the set last month. so i got them today. i am not thrilled about 3D, but it should be amusing.

…..

GOING TO SEE JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR IN MARCH. yeahs. spotted somewhere on the Internet that a revival was afoot, and i snapped up the first aisle seat i could find.

…..

Christ, i feel lousy.



Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 9:48 pm

sage of the mundane

about that last picture, the visually hoarse image of a chandelier, well, that was taken from grand tier, row b, seat 31 at the metropolitan opera house. i thought it might sparkle a little more like the actual object hanging there, but i guess the little camera phone lens couldn’t handle it. the opera (Tosca) was lackluster, in my opinion. i think this is the production that got booed a few weeks ago. it’s a great opera but this performance and production didn’t do much for me. my friend who came along seemed to think it was ok. for me finding a payphone in the basement was worth the price of admission.

after the opera i got a burger at the Brooklyn Diner on 57th Street. holy crap it was good. it wasn’t worth twenty bucks but it was mighty fine. i chose Brooklyn Diner over P.J.Clark’s, in the building which houses the infamous HOTEL EMPIRE. that hotel is infamous to me because of the discovery i made when my mother and i stayed there in 1985 or 1986 (when i auditioned for Juilliard). i was reading the room service card when i turned it over and found a hand-written note from Ruth to her customer, Peter. the note read “DEAR PETER. I HOPE YOUR SHIT IS COMING OUT REAL GOOD. WHEN YOU COME OUT (AND ON MY FACE) I WILL CLIMAX TO THE MAX.” i think there was another sentence or 2, and the note was signed “YOUR CUNT, RUTH.”

it was, i later discerned, a note from a hooker to her john. Ruth must have slid the note under the bathroom door while Peter was taking a dump. so romantic.

i brought that note back to suburban Tampa and showed it off to my high school friends, showing them that i’d been exposed to real New York City grit and depravity. i was proud.

somehow i lost that note, though i swear it must still exist somewhere, in a storage closet or a box somewhere.

…..

i’ve had further thoughts on the Sage of the Mundane, the character i assumed in a dream i had a few weeks ago. in the dream i was being interviewed by Sixty Minutes and a relay of news and cultural institutions on matters of great importance: how to pour a cup of coffee. how to use soap. today i added to the repertoire of my master knowledge an explanation of how to make a sandwich. this description came in response to a question from one of the interviewers, describing a food product that her mother used to make but that she bever knew how to make for herself. she described it as 2 pieces of bread with edible things in between. i quickly and triumphantly informed this woman that she had been eating a sandwich. i dutifully explained what sandwiches are, how to create one for yourself, and certain things that people do to either improve or enhance the experience of consuming the thing. “some people will take a knife, a sharp knife, and cut the sandwich in half. this has no negative affect on the sandwich. it loses no flavor or nutritional value if you cut it in half. it simply makes the concoction easier to hold in your hands.” this information was of such import to the questioner that she wept. at last, she said, a mystery of my childhood is solved. now i can go to the supermarket, purchase sliced turkey, cheeses, and bread, and i can make a sandwich.

i was being questioned by these august institutions because i was president of a school which teaches mundane behaviours. more than just teaching students how to sit in a chair or open a door i also inculcate them with explorations and question-and-answer sessions in which i explore their reasonings for doing what they did in some public situations.

a man walked into a park, intending to sit at a picnic table and eat a sandwich (which he learned how to make in one of my freshman-year classes). he reached the picnic table and found a plastic cup about half full full of ice, with a straw sticking out. he placed his lunch bag on the table and, before opening the bag and before sitting at the table, he picked up the plastic cup and took it 5 steps to his left, where h deposited the cup into a garbage can.

i asked him why.

“i didn’t need the cup. it appeared to have been used earlier by someone who sat at this picnic table. there was no beverage left, only ice that had been used to cool a beverage that appeared to have been consumed. the straw may have had saliva and germs from that person who had been here earlier. the ice was of no use to me. the cup was no use to me. the straw might have been contaminated with germs and saliva. i saw no reason to keep the cup there whilst i enjoyed my sandwich.”

“did you have a beverage of your own?”

“no.”

“you said the ice was of no use to you. did you not consider letting the ice melt, and drinking the water to wash down your sandwich? or did you consider even chewing the ice and, in the same way, using it to wash down your sandwich should it not easily be chewed and ingested into your body?”

“i did consider using the ice in both tthhose manners, but the possibility of contamination with the germs of the prevoius user of the cup made me choose to simply dispose of the cup.”

“and all of its contents?”

“and all of its contents.”

“the ice?”

“the ice.”

“the straw?”

“yes, the straw, too.”

“how did you decide to properly discard the cup, and the ice, and the straw?”

“i saw a cylindrical vessel about 5 or 6 steps away from the picnic table. the vessel seemed to be made of metal, and there were small flying animals circling around its top. i picked up the cup and the ice and the straw from the table and stepped toward the metal vessel with the small flying insects. i looked into the vessel and saw several other cups, and straws. other objects, as well, such as paper plates and plastic eating utensils, filled the vessel. i saw no ice such as partly filled the plastic cup in my hand, but by my observation it seemed that this vessel was a designated recepticle for plastic cups.”

“you deposited the cup and the straw and the ice into the vessel?”

“yes. recognizing the primacy and the importance of enjoining discarded materials like this with similarly discarded materials, i felt i had little choice but to deposit the plastic cup and the straw and the ice into the vessel which was partly filled with similar objects.”

“how much time did you need? from the moment you arrived at the picnic table and placed your lunch bag thereon, how much time was required for you to pick up the plastic cup and ice and straw and deposit it into the metal vessel?”

“4 seconds.”

…..

such are the teachings at the institute for the study of the mundane. no decision making process is immune from exploration. it is not scrutiny or interrogation, it is exploration.

i remember back in 1992 or 1993, when i had my first real corporate job in New York. the job was in a distinguished/distinctive office building on 57th Street. i never learned too too much about the innards of the corporation, and that sense of remove from the logistics of corporate from one who was, in a small way, contributing to its machinations, let my mind run amok with alternative realities that could be deposited into the corporate mold of offices, pods, conference rooms and conference calls. i imagined a pornographic corporation, one where men and women dressed in standard business attire sat at desks with prepared scripts of what they believed was the most intense erotica ever crafted. a fat business man with 40 years experience sat blithly at his desk, reading from a printout about how much he craved the hot cunt of the woman sitting in the chair before him. she responded with corporate staidness that she, too, craved his throbbing cock more than she needed air or water. the 40-year veteran of the company explodes with lust, and the woman returns the passions.

then they go back a few pages. they ask if the part about “fucking the dogs” was over the top, or even grounds for litigation.

in short, i imagined a corporate sex machine.

sometimes i still do.

…..

i watched every last second of “Independence Day” the other night. It is great entertainment, but hardly a great movie. Just good fun.

It aligns, however, with my current belief that human history should be obliterated, and a small sample of random humanity that survives shouild be allowed to start over. the communi/cations technologies that make us all naked, the abnormal technologies of aircraft and architecture which lift human beings off the ground to which we belong, the constipated and conflicting systems of government and law which serve no masters but themselves — these things need to be erased and human history should be granted a restart, a re-do.

that is the profundity i gleaned from “Independence Day.”

i thought along these line on the day of the earthquake last year. it was, of course, but a ripple on our shared earth. but the idea of natural cataclysm washing New York City into the washtub seemed, suddenly, inevitable. someday all this will be gone. all these towers, these pillars of concentrated wealth, these idiocies of conspicuity, Manhattan will one day be a common island, Queens a forest, Brooklyn a series of valleys, Staten Island a farm, and the Bronx a wilderness.



Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 8:19 pm

Tosca



Monday, January 23rd, 2012 9:31 pm

midtowners

i picked up my ticket to Godspell today. it was a spontaneous decision to buy it when i saw a tv commercial promoting the new production. but i had recently remembered how much i liked that show, and think it is even better than Jesus Christ Superstar in some ways. that got me to remembering the guy who insisted that “Too Much Heaven On Their Minds”, Judas’ jeremiad that opens “Superstar”, is the single greatest song ever written for Broadway. i don’t know if i’d commit wholly to that sentiment but i don’t disagree, either. it is a great song.

my sister was part of a production of Godspell when she was in high school and i in grade school. it may be the first stage musical i ever knew. i always liked it, and if it’s considerably more low-key than Superstar then maybe my feelings are correct: Superstar was the “Star Wars” of the Broadway musical. it was the first of the mega-shows, and the rock and roll-influenced soundtracks which are common today. by comparison Star Wars was the first special-effects blockbuster which, if it looks fairly timid by today’s standards, changed Hollywood for generations. it was Sylverster Stallone who said that if Rocky had come out a year after Star Wars then it would have failed. it would have been considered an art film, and would have played at few large theaters.

…..

while in midtown i had a couple of interesting encounters. the first involved the impeccably dressed old man who i think is insane. quietly insane. minding-his-own-business-insane. but still, insane. i noticed him a year or so ago. he was using a payphone, and scribbling notes onto a note pad with a pencil. i first saw this and thought nothing much of it, except to notice that someone was using a payphone. i notice these things. but then i thought about it. without drawing on any unkind stereotypes i can reasonably allow that this gentleman did not look like a typical payphone user of the 21st century. i imagined him a sales person, or even a door-to-door character like a character out of Glengerry Glen Ross. maybe his skills and abilities to work the phones remained, at his age, adequate for his line of work. it was kind of neat to see someone at work sticking to old school techniques of payphones and hand-written notes.

then i realized: it couldn’t be. it didn’t make sense.

one time i saw him working his favorite payphone. after he hung up and walked over to 5th Avenue i picked up the phone he had just been using. it did not work. no dial tone, no humming noise, no nothing. yet while i saw him using that phone he had behaved as if making some kind of contact, maybe setting up an appointment or closing a deal. the grist and grizzle of his demeanor made me think he was on the move, on the make, with places to go and people to see and hearts to break.

i followed him down 5th Avenue, studying his gestures and tics, noting the nervous manner in which he extended his right thumb into a semi-circle and nervously scratched the inside of him palm with his overly-lengthy index-fingernail. he looked around, his head held high and his sights set far. he is very tall, and most times i see him he is well-groomed and even debonnaire.

today i saw him again, in a place where i’d never seen him before. he looked a little haggard, but i think he got caught unprepared for the rainy weather (as did i).

today i got as close as i’ve been to his notepad. this is where he scribbles notes in pencil. i see him at that payphone and at other places, consulting his notepad and either scribbling new notes or crossing out earlier thoughts.

i was afraid to get too close, but i got closer to the man then ever before. he sat at a table in a midtown public space. he sat as if at leisure, his right leg crossed on his left knee. he seemed to be assaying the crowd of people at the public space. he stroked his chin and looked around, consulting his papers and scribbling new notes betwixt crossing out notes he’d written earlier. i saw the papers. i saw them not from as closely as i would have liked to be able to be certain of what i am about to say, but i saw these papers from close enough that i believe they were covered with gibberish. i could not see a single intelligible word or letter on the page at which he looked the first time i passed him. the second time i passed him i saw him writing something on to that page. the third time i passed him i saw him studying a completely blank page. he set his piercing gaze upon that empty page for the 6 or 7 seconds that i stood behind him, looking over his shoulder.

i had a dismal flashback to something my sister told me about our mother: years after mother retired she was still waking up at all hours and getting dressed to go to work. she might wake at 4am and race downstairs to get her work clothes from the laundry room. she sometimes made it as far as getting into the car and preparing to go to the office before either my sister or brother-in-law were awoken by the activity and came downstairs to stop her.

i don’t know if the man i have been seeing in midtown was always insane, or if he once held a job through which he now goes through the motions, remembering his glory days by re-enacting them in the same classy business suit he wore back in the day.

the more i see him, though, the more certain i am that he is insane. quietly insane.

…..

the other interesting encounter i had today was outside the Paramount Building on Broadway @ 50th Street. i was trying to find the theater wher Godspell is playing, for to pick up that aforementioned ticket. as it turned out the theater which claims to be on Broadway is much closer to 8th Avenue, but within a building the street address of which is on Broadway.

while looking about for the Theater On the Round (i think that’s what it’s called) i heard a strange splat sound. i looked down and saw that someone had dropped a notebook. i was quickly able to tell who had dropped it. i saw the person who dropped it descend down some stairs into the sub-terranean arcade area in from of the Paramount Building. the person may have been headed to the subway.

i picked up the notebook and nearly got intercepted by someone who either didn’t care or didn’t notice that someone had dropped the notebook, and that i had picked it up, and that i was attempting to return it to the person who dropped it.

i descended the stairs in slow pursuit of the person who dropped the notebook. i did not want to tap the person on the shoulder (remembering a scary incident with a street-tough kid in the early 1990s). i semi-shouted “you dropped this.” the person seemed not to hear me, and with a heavy raincoat and hat and other rain-ready attire i could not, from 5 or 6 feet behind, determine if this was a man or a woman. once again i said “you dropped this.” still no response. i looked at the back of the raincoat, the hood covering the person’s head such that i had a brief fear that the person would turn around to look at me, revealing that the person was walking dead and only the cackling face of a jabbering human skull would respond to my entreaties.

then i saw that the perosn was carrying a purse. this gave me some ammunition to cut in half the uncertainty i had about how to address this person whose notebook i was trying to return. OK, it did not fully “cut in half” the uncertainty about the person’s gender. in fact it partly populated my hurried mind into forgetting about the cackling skull and imagining instead that after i said “ma’am, you dropped this” then the person might turn to me and reveal himself as a man who just happens to carry a purse.

i took the chance, barking out “ma’am, you dropped your notebook.” she immediately turned and responded, seeming to piece together the sensational detritus of the past few moments to remember that she had, in fact, dropped the notebook. “yes”, i imagined her thought process, “i heard that splat sound of the notebook falling to the sidewalk.”

the woman was much appreciative, thanking me twice and expressing her appreciation before i said “you’re walcome” and turned back up the stairs, in search of my Godspell ticket.

…..

i think the Godspell ticket was about $146. the theater is near the Winter Garden, where my mother and I saw “Cats” in either 1985 or 1986. We were here for my Juilliard audition, and decided to see Cats while we were here. We went to the Winter Garden for same-day tickets, and were told they cost something like $85 each – an ungodly sum for my mother in those days. She and I expressed alarm at the prices. a fur-coat-clad woman standing nearby saw our response and beamed, smiling like a woman after her first orgasm. directly to me she said “Welcome to New York!”



Monday, January 23rd, 2012 12:13 am

don’t really want to be here

would rather be home, but after a day of football i needed some human contact. not getting it here, but hokay.i spent the day mostly indoors (almost said moistly). I’m feeling like someone who hasn’t had any sunlight for 6 years. solitary confinement. D-deficient.

i managed some anti-hoarding today. disposing of books and magazines. it’s hard work for me becaue i feel like i can always make some use of virtually anything. for web content. scan and trash. i left stacks of books in the lobby of the apartment building, feeling a visceral sense of competitiveness. i want all my books to be taken by passers-by, for validation. i gauge the value of my print matter collection by how quickly they disappear when i leave them up for grabs.



Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 9:02 pm

that was weird

at the walgreens, looking at baby oil, when a woman pushing a baby stroller rushes up behind me. not at 40mph but way more rapidly than you might expect someone to approach you from behind in an anotherwise empty shopping aisle. she almost bummmpps into me as i maneuver out of her way. then i notice that a man is behind her. she is probably hispanic with an infant, he is a tall black man, unkempt and unshaven. she gets out of his way and he passes her, stopping at me to ask if i had 75 cents. i said no. i was starting to wonder if she was not part of a setup, or somehow working with the guy, but then she seemed unnerved by his actions, too. i mumbled “that was weird” and she smiled and said somehting in response but i couldn’t hear it.

…..

looks like i have someone to go to the opera with next week. i bought 2 tickets as a christmas gift for the now-ex-gf, but i determined rather quickly that i should either never have bought them in the first place, or at least i should have askd her first if she’d be able to go on a weeknight. i am an asshole for that, and i imagine that even if we did not end the relationship first then this opera thing would have been problematic anyway…

i am glad not to waste the tickets. i might have tried selling them if nothing else came along. i would not object to going alone, except that i would have that empty seat next to me, and i would expect that standing-room-ticket freeloader would grab that seat. and that would annoy me to no end.

last time i was at the Met i was surprised at how i enjoyed the dressed-up-edness of it all. i was not extravagently fancified in the sartorial realm but i fit in well enough. when i saw another opera at the Ziegfeld (the Met simulcasts operas around the world to HD-capable movie theaters) and the camera panned around the orchestra level, where it seeme dlliike everyone was dressed to the nines. i am far from a glamorous dresser but that time i imagined it would be pretty fun to get all gussied up. in fact, i had planned to impress my now-ex-gf by doing just that for this event, polishing off the old Bostonian dress shoes and maybe re-using the fancy Charlie Brown tie i wores to a friend’s wedding last year. i was going to go all in on that front, mostly to impress her and try to summon some happiness from her, but i guess it wasn’t to be. i’m in no way sad over the end of that relationship, but i was looking forward to getting dressed up for the opera.

now, i’m going with an old friend, and with no disrepect of any kind, i just don’t think the cufflinks are appropriate for a non-romantic outing. haha…

…..

today was good news. the dial tone returned to the cemetery payphone. i was somewhat astonished that it was done so quickly, and that it was done at all.

i filed an online 311 complaint about another payphone. that was over a month ago, and nothing has been done to fix it. i guess this one might actually be profitable, or something, while the one i inquired about is not profitable. no other reason to fix a public phone, right?

the cemetery payphone sounds about as bad as before, but i think i can work with it. i thought the upside to the phone being fixed might be that its tinny soundin gcall quality would be improved. i don’t think it was improved, but that’s ok. now to see if another payphone i need is fixed…

…..

i read some Kenneth Koch poetry this morning. i didn’t know he had such an interest in memory. maybe it was just a passing thing in the pages that i read, but his ideas of what constitutes and who is responsible for memory interested me.

…..

one by one, step by step, i am learning more technique in photography. the manual focus thing, in which one can focus on virtually any region of the frame, is an interesting breakthrough for me, though at first it was tinged with that form of regret that accompanies the discovery of some time-saving or otherwise game-changing device or skill. it is good to make these discoveries but sobering to remember how much time was wasted before.

i thought of that as i moved through the old magazines project, dutifully scanning an issue or 2 each night. the scanner worked well, but it was slower than most other scanners i’ve used.

when i discovered there was a newer version available i bought it, but out of skepticism and/or laziness i waited a few months before setting it up. i didn’t think it would be that much of an improvement, and the drivers for the old one were problematic, leading me to assume that the same would be true for the new one.

when i finally set it up i was happy to find that the scanner was exponentially faster than the old one, and the software was no problem — but it was a bummer to think of all the time i’d wasted working with the old scanner.

as far as the local area focus technique goes, it has thus far not proven to be a game-changer, and i don’t have much of that same feeling of faint regret at having not used this technique before. but it’s a nice new technique to add to the repertoire.

…..

everything seemed beautiful to me today. crossing queens plaza via the new and to me even more dangerous and bewildering than before crosswalk maze, i spotted a woman in a red coat, black boots, and a look of movement on her face. her big lips glowed and her mouth was firm but not clenched. the sun felt good, too. there is a payphone outside a pizzeria that i check into once and again. last time it smelled like pizza dough. raw, uncooked pizza dough. today it smelled like the kiss of a cigarette. sharp nicotine.

on skillman avenue i saw an awesome visual effect: the shadow cast by a sign for capital one bank laid itself out across a white fence. at firs ti thought it was some enormous graffiti, but it was only the graffiti of a passing shadow. the words CAPITAL ONE BANK were in obverse, since the sign faces the opposite direction. it was a cool thing to see, hard to describe, but a strange discovery. i plan to re=capture the image of that on a day when no cars are parked in front of the fence.

every building looked beautiful to me today. every window sparkled. even that strange dude at the Walgreens, panhandling for 75 cents, even he had a rugged elegance about him.i still think that was a setup gone awry, but no harm done.

…..

that endless dream from the other night, in which i lecture and sermonize on the grist and grizzle from the most unspeakably mundane decision making processes, reminded me of something, but as i stopped and sought out those words “grist and grizzle” i forgot what it was i was reminded of. dang.

…..



Monday, January 16th, 2012 7:25 pm

dial tone

too ay keys do’t work.

or is it possible to craft coeret ad readable prose wit issig letters?

issig M N ad H, toug i ca get to te via te oboard keyboard. last igt all te keys except 6 worked fro te start. a great day.

i ave ever bee so sad to fid a o-workig paypoe as today. te oly paypoe for a ile aroud ad o dial toe. tat is te poe i wat to use to start y prjoject. i already did use it but te call quality was poor. i wated to try it agai today but alas, o dial toe. tere is a potetial upside to tis, toug. if Verizo fixes te poe it sould work ad soud better ta before. i just ave to get tere wile te getti’s good.

saw a bad accidet, sased up car, outside a diig establiset tat i frequet. tat accidet was waitig to appe. te itersecito as eeded a traffic ligt for years. i guess te city eeds a fatality first before erectig a traffic ligt at a dagerous itersectio. i ope tey did ot get tat today, but i also ope tey put a da traffic ligt at te locatio.

i discovered local focus ode today. i ever kew wat it was, but it’s pretty cool. you ca focus o ay arbitrary poit i te frae. i tried it late tis afteroo but kew i eeded a better cotext for te effect to be ayting but very subtle.

well, i see to be victi, oce agai, of a screaig baby parade. wo brigs babies ito bars? suddely soetig sells awful. good God, did oe of te babies sit teir pats?



Sunday, January 15th, 2012 10:53 pm

hhhhmmmm

hey hey, hmmmmm, hmmmmm, the H and the M keys work tonight, unlike last night. now i can say HMM and MMM Hmm all night long without having to go back and peck out the lipogramaticaly missing letters one by precious one.

…..

i plundered PACER.gov last night in search of vast troves of data, but was disappointed on that count. there was a lot of interesting testimony about payphonery in NYC, though, so it was worth the expense on that basis. i was imagining that a database of a certain profile was entered in to the record as background, but it was not. not surprising.

…..

what was today? football. that was entertaining.

i decided to re-arrange the apartment somewhat. or else move to a new place. but moving is expensive, and if i don’t really need to do it then the expense is needless, and not even tax deductible…

i talked online with an ex-GF last night. i offered to take her out for a fabulous steak dinner before she moves away and gets married. i offered this before but she conveniently ignored me… we had a nice chat. i remembered how i used to like her, but never let myself love her. she said she loved me. i don’t have any real regrets about that relationship, though i sometimes wish i had tried harder to enter into her world. she is Muslim, so a white guy like me entering that world is no simple matter.

…..

i was rediscovering some Schubert sonatas this week. the A Minor that i so love for its chant-like first movement, but not so much for its plodding second movement, actually has more to recommend for its 2nd movement than i had thought. in some ways it evoked the slow movement of The Wanderer Fantasy, but all in all i hear the piano sonata as if it is a string quartet. it could work as that, in a higher key.

…..

looking at new apartments. some are stupid cheap, others stupid expensive. one is a 3-bedroom in some asshole part of Queens, for $2150/month. nothing there. i know the area. quiet. deep country quiet. a truck drives past at 3am and the whole neighborhood wake up.

…..

going to ‘Cesca tomorrow. ‘Cesca is hte fancy restaurant where the shit hole lobby of the Parc Lincoln used to be. i went there some months ago. i will go again tomorrow, on MLK day. i was once (or twice) reduced to a quivering mass of white man jelly on the floor of Room 317 at the Parc Lincoln, listening to the speeches and feeling all the rhetorical glory but also the meaning of America. i never thought of MLK as a black man or a racial symbol, but as someone simply stepping up for all America to simply request equal rights.

…..



Saturday, January 14th, 2012 8:42 pm

wisdom for the ages

a day of wondering what the hell am i doing with my life. a day of asking, right out loud, what the hell am i doing with my life? WITH MY LIFE. no especial reason or instinct, just a sense of directionlessness, and asking myself an honest question to which i do not know the answer.

i dreamed i was being interviewed and interrogated by people interested in knowing what i know. i was a fascinating individual, a man of worldly wisdom and breadth of experience in important things.

asked about the most important issue facing new york city today i responded that there was a cement block lodged in a hollowed-out tree trunk on 37th Street in Astoria.

then i explained my new theory of efficiency. i call it the coffee cup theory. at present i use 12 ounce styrofoam cups, amassing stacks of these cups for my morning breakfast regimen. i would like to suggest that this routine could be made more efficient if i purcased a single, re-usable coffee cup. it could be glass, or plastic, or porcelain. it could even be metal. but i think that this will prevent both the wastefulness of discarding used styrofoam cups, and peraps even improve the coffee experience with decorative patterns and artwork on the coffee cup.

i explained my theory of the coffee cup to the interviewers and they were impressed, improved upon, and the younger ones were even awe struck.

i next sermoned on te matter of sandwices, cold cuts, and lunch meats. too many people, i explained, denied themselves the pleasure of a more flavorful eating experience because they chose not to use condiments on their sandwiches. a turkey sandwich, i explained, could be made more flavorful and appetizing if, for instance, a sprinkle of black pepper was placed on directly on the turkey. similar options could include mayonnaise, mustard, lettuce, tomatoes, even sliced pickles or any number of other toppings. te coice of wat to put on your sandwich is left only to your iamgination. people need to realize, i said, that a sandwich can be more of an enjoyable experience with condiments.

i made additional, extended comments on sartorial matters, matters of grooming and bathing, matters of personal hygiene, including the use of soap, shampoo, and hot water.

the dream was endless. the dream never ended. my areas of expertise were all of the most and only the most mundane, inconsequential matters of diurnal forgetableness. my wisdom was no wisdom at all, yet in this dream i held court like a Zen master, like i spoke wisdom for all the ages.

…..

i got myself an accout on PACER.gov, to try and get background on something of interest to me. i probably will only need a dozen or so transcripts of court procedings. PACER charges 8 cents a page, but they charge nothing if you download less than $10 worth of stuff. $10 minimum.

the funny thing about it is that i found that the commplete PACER.gov content throughh 2008 was available for download off a non-profit Open Data site. the content for the Southern District of New York was wadded up into a whoppingly huge 68GB file. i commenced downloading this uselessly gigormous archive and laughed when the status said that the estimated download time would be 2 days and 14 hours. this was like the old days of downloading movies off the Library of Congress site over dialup. a 2 minute film of a NYC subway in 1904 took 2 or 3 days to download at the then-sizzling speed of 14.4.



Saturday, January 14th, 2012 5:07 am

Cane



Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 9:54 pm

grist and grizzle

ba, ore of te sae troubles as last nigt, te M and H keys don’t work on te foldable keyboard, only on te device. ow can i talk about e witout M?

tonigt i tried out a backup approach to te pone project i’m doing. i am recordinng voicemail messages from payphones, but some of the call connections are so bad that i don’t know if i can use themm. so as backup i brought a recorder and icrophone and spoke into both te telepone and the mmicrophone. the obvious question becomes… wy bother calling fro te payphone at all? well, see, i don’t know, really. i ean, y idea here is to make the call stereo. phone calls, of course, are onoraul. but doubling the chhannels and synchronizing thhe recorder wit the voiceail could let ,,,m,mmmmme fuse thhe 2 tracks, or somehow mmix them in suchh a way tat the poorest qualities of te payphhone track could be supplemmented by thhe clearer track. this would aintain te grist and grizzle of te paypone call quality.

i like tat prase. grist and grizzle.

or, i could just let thhe lousy call quality go troug as-is, and supplemment te recording wit full transcript of y monologue, mmmy sermmon, my jeremiad.

alas, i did not need te reinders, but eac day seems to present new callenges and weaknesses of te project. tat does not boter or deter e, toug i wis i ad better audio production and editinng cops.

i wonder if siply batting te pone againnst te paypone enclosure would straigten out te connection?

i could iagine contaqcting Verizon to see if tere is a scedule for reoval of te pones, but i like to keep te urgency, even if it igt be artificial on soe level. i alos would not expect to get eaningful response fro Verizon.

…..

tis is too annoying. usually te keys tat don’t work at first start to work eventually, and i can go back ad punc i te issig letters fro te lipogra… not tonigt, evidently

…..



Monday, January 9th, 2012 11:53 pm

Jesus @ Night



Monday, January 9th, 2012 9:03 pm

greenpoint

today’s adventure took me, somewhat unwillingly, to Greenpoint Avenue near the LIE and the Queens Midtown Expressway. it is a spot i know very well, having passed through it most times when I go to Calvary, which is across the street. but the weather seemed rude as i walked over there, and i thought i might wait for another day to make this trip. but i persevered, for reasons of urgency, perhaps artificial urgency, but urgency nonetheless. the thing is that with the first of the year i’ve had a hunch that Verizon will route out all the payphones they possibly can. and, true to my suspicion, 2 phones near where i live disappeared this week, and another one lost its dial tone. the phone i chased today is in a no mans land kind of spot, a place that feels like the end of the road, even though it isn’t really, though it might as well be for ost people that pass through here, because this is where most folks turn and get on the LIE and get the hell outta Dodge.

so i have more fear about this payphone’s removal than most others, because it just seems like such an unprofitable location. today i imagined that i was the only custoer keepig this payphone in business, feeding it coins just for fuck’s sake but also making the long, long call that i had to make to see if the phone was suitable for this project. i sure hope it will be. see, this is what life is like when you rely on payphones for any goddam thing. perpetual uncertainty and running. Running.

…..

aha. or, rather, mmmmmmmm. this keyboard has issues with the letter M, but i think i understand now the wants and needs of the letter M. i mean, if the M doesn’t work then i can’t talk about me, can i?

i had been trying to type the above paragraphs as a lipogram, sans M, but that was too annoying and pointless.

…..

sitting at the big beer hall again, seeking anonymity in the comfort of unknown strangers.

,,,,,

tonight i got aftershave in my eye, my left eye, after i shaved.

…..

now that i got the M key to work i got nothing to say. waaah… correction: mwaaaaaaah…

…..

talking out loud to myself. talking alone at the beer hall. the triumph of my days.



Sunday, January 8th, 2012 9:15 pm

a nice quiet corner in an enormous and loud beer hall

football and revelry rage all around but i am in my private space of mind.

quiet day, quiet week. i’ve been out recording sounds of payphones, or sounds of recorded messages more or less unique to payphones. a favorite of mine are the ones announcing “you can not make this call from a
payphone.”

ah, disenfranchisement.

the GF and i called it quits again. this time she wanted out, and i was happy to oblige. she stood me up for New Years Eve and i would have called it off the next day on account of that and other things, but i thought we’d at least try to make it a few more weeks until the performance of Tosca, for which i bought us 2 tickets. that was intended as a Christmas gift but i realize now i was wrong to buy those tickets without asking her first… asking if she could be available that night, for starters, but i should simply have thought that attempted bit of Christmas cheer through more thoroughly. there was no Christmas cheer this year, for either of us, and i was ready to — and actually i was planning to — call it off after that performance of Tosca. so it’s all good, if a little earlier than i might have imagined.

this only confirms my cardinal rule of dating, a rule i should have honored when this girl and I hooked up almost a year ago: never get involved with a woman who sits alone at a bar.

i do not enjoy being alone in life as much as i used to, but it’s no crisis. i mean, i’m 43 and all, but i’m a man. no ticking clocks in me, though there may be a time bomb or 2.

…..

last night i decided i needed a certain Radio Shack product, a telephone recording suction cup type of thing that lets you record conversations by placing a sucky mushroom type thing onto the receiver and plugging thhe other end of it in to a recording device. it is intended for recording conversations but i only endeavor to record pre-recorded messages directed at payphone users.

i eention this partly to impress you with my surveillance gear, but also to say that i first went out onto the WWW, the public Internet, to see if this item was in stock at the local Radio Shack. the web site indicated that, indeed, the item was in stock at the local shop.

but, of course, it was not. the sales person said that i could go up to the other Radio Shack where, she said, “the web site says they have this in stock.” to which i thought, but was too nice to utter, that the fucking web site said *you* had it in stock, too, so why should i believe it now?

after wasting a full hour getting there and back i was so annoyed with Radio Shack, their Web site, and the poor quality of Internet content in general, that i was ready to get out my Smith-Corona and a Sears catalogue so i could order items via postal mail.

then i did some time-management analysis, decided it was better to waste time then then to wait until the next day, when time would be shorter. so i headed up to Ditmars to see if the other Radio Shack had the item, as claimed on their web site, and to my surprise they had it. whoopee..

just saying, though, that in my experience web site content of the “in stock” variety seems to virtually never align with reality, lurching instead into a new version of bait and switch, as i discovered at a certain unnamed midtown electronics store. the web site said a certain USB-VGA adapter was in stock at $49.95. i got to the store and found that no, that item was out of stock, but that a similar, more expensive product was available.

in this case, though, i suspect that the sales clerk feared blogger reprisal, or something, because he changed the price and charged me the same for the other item as i had expected to pay for the one that was allegedly in stock.

i thought of these petty retail agravations when i saw that a nearby Staples office supply place is closing its location. i was dismayed at first, until i remembered that the place has never, ever, had anything in stock that its web site told me was in stock, and that even for everyday attempts at purchasing office-type supplies i virtually always leave the store with nothing, and buy whatever i had in mind online.

i am going to miss that Staples, though. it is on 21st Street, near Queensbridge, where nothing else of interest to me exists. Staples was my excuse to go over there and explore the projects’ payphones, among other things, and it was my safe haven for when things got sketchy, as they often did. now my best bet for retreat in that area is the public library…

…..

i had a crazy fellatio dream last night. a black woman and i were talking, loving each other, bonding like old lovers though we had just met, when she unexpectedly started performaing fellatio on me. i didn’t even noticed it at first, as it seemed to be such a logical continuation of the intimacy of our conversation.

but she started going too fast, going up and down like a jackhammer, scaring me quite a bit and making me ask where my cock fit into this barbaric dance (not to provide TMI, but this much of the dream had some reality to back it up).

i asked her to slow down, but she just stopped. i saw that her face was covered with blood. my cock had a tiny cut on it, but the blood was mostly coming from her mouth. some dental work she’d had done recently came undone, and the rapid fire movements of her fellatio caused the metallic parts of the work to dig repeated gashes into her mouth and gums. i told her we looked like something out of a horror film, and she responded with some nonchalant concern by going to look at herself in a mirror and cleaning up a bit, leaving the bulk of the bloodbath between my legs.

(this dream is inhabited by a lot of true stories from the last few years.)

…..

this is the beer hall where i hope to find a home away from home this winter. i gave up on this place when they started carding everybody on weeknights, even weeknights when the place was deserted. and it wasn’t so much that they carded everybody, but they recorded all customers’ personal information by swiping their drivers licenses and recording the information onto a Palm Pilot, which seems wildly insecure to me, and a virtual identity theft machine.

the place is big, though, and i can feel anonymous here, so i may be willing to compromise my identity for anonymity. wait, what?

…..

i am going out to the cemetery payphone tomorrow. God, i hope it is still there. my current project relies on payphones, and though i needed not the reminder, this reminds me in streaks and whistles that anything that relies on payphones is in a disenfranchised, precarious place.

…..

aha, just watched my namesake, a Mr. Thomas, win the game for the Broncos. i don’t even care, but that felt pretty exciting to be here among beery footballers, screaming.

…..

last night it was a similar sense of outsider looking in, or listening in. downstairs from me, though barely audible without the windows opened, it was girls night at the studio apartment on the first floor. it should have been annoying, but there was something charming to me about the irresponsible, collegiate drunkardry of an apartment full of 20-something women screaming (because they could not sing) along with songs like “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and other chick tunes. so i stuck my phat microphone out the window and recorded the revelry as best i could, which was actually pretty good. i am going home now to listen to it.



Thursday, January 5th, 2012 8:16 pm

accu-temp

for years i have walked past a place called Accu-Temp. it is a business in a non-descript building under the subway. for as much thought as i gave to that place i had always assumed it was a temporary employment agency of some sort, maybe for accountants or some discipline in which accuracy is essential.

i was amused, then, to discover last week that the place is actually an air conditioner supply and manufacturing company. that makes sense, too, for a company named accu-temp.

a tiny amusement from my tiny life.

…..

i watched “Walk the Line” last night, the Johnny Cash biopic starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. holy crap they were good in that film, scary good at times. I watched it once before but was happy to see it again at 70″. all those movies i so laboriously downloaded over the years are finally looking like they were worth the effort. although i got a laugh out of a copy of the last Super Bowl that i downloaded yesterday. someone could have bothered to tag the game as being broadcast in German. it was hilarious for a moment to hear and see American football with German voices announcing. it reminded me of a friend who had some major surgery, and while convalescing in the hopital the doctors warned him not to laugh too hard, or it might ruin the stitches (or something). he was out of luck in following doctor’s orders, though, because the TV in his hospital room was showing The Simpsons — in Spanish. he woke up one afternoon to see Bart Simpson blubbering away in Spanish, and at the time it was just the funniest fucking thing he had ever seen. he damn near had to go back into the operating room.

…..

i do not feel good today. i feel poor. i may have slept far less than i thought, and i may have consumed more gin than i realized last night. these crazy swings in temperature can’t be good for the economy of my metabolism, either. it was nearly 3 degrees real feel monday, it will be 50 tomorrow.

…..

i wrote a bit regarding a Washington DC payphone owner who managed to scam $4million out of government agencies and private companies by robodialing their toll-free numbers. from his home computer he managed to program his suite of 100 payphones to automatically dial and redial and redial toll free numbers for a whole bunch of places. every toll free call made from a payphone earns the payphone owner about 50 cents. those 50 cent calls added up after a while, but he might have gotten away with it forever if he hadn’t gotten greedy, and if someone at one of the targeted companies had not noticed unusual calling patterns to their toll free number.

i thought it was ironic, then, that this payphone scammer was going to be using a payphone for the next few months: a PRISON payphone. bahahahaaaa. that would be ironic if he actually owned one of the prison payphones.

…..

someone told me a funny story:

back when 14th Street was a hooker hellhole this guy found himself walking home through that area. a large black women came after him, asking “Want some company?”

he laughed and said “I have a wife I have to get home to.”

she said “I don’t wanna hear dat, I’ll make you forget you got a wife.”

he said “I have a job, I have to get up early.”

she said “i don’t wanna hear dat, I’ll make you forget you got a job.”

so them he says “i don’t have any money.”

and she says “oh, i heard dat!” and they both laughed, and went about their separate ways.

…..



Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 8:10 pm

sore chest

having a sore chest is a strange feeling. i don’t know exactly what caused it, but a fit of situps the past few days is probably partly responsible, followed by an exhaust of anger and dismay at trying to set up a new web site last night. no sunlight to speak of for over 2 days can’t be good for the economy of my innards, either. did i sleep last night? i think i did…

one of my windows snapped off yesterday, from the top. it didn’t come all the way down, but it was annoying enough, so i had to call the owner of the building. i thought he would be impressed by my monster 70″ tv but he didin’t even seem to notice it. dang. i thought that a phat TV would improve my stature in the eyes of all who kne wme before i acquired this great and glorious (and gluttonous) monstrosity of a television. but alas, the owne of my building at least seemed utterly indifferent. waaah. how will i improve my standing as a human being now?

the owner of my building i about 60, i think. he said that his appendiz exploded on Christmas Day, leaving him laid up at the hospital for 4 days. that sucks, but he looks good now. maybe the appendix problem has made him blind to my amazing television. that must be it. what else could explain one’s ambivalence to such a magnificent platter of television? NOTHING. NOTHING ELSE. THERE IS NO OTHER POSSIBLE EXPLANATION FOR THAT HUMAN BEING BEING UNIMPRESSED BY MY ENORMOUS TELEVISION.

…..

i was talking with someone last night about digital paper, or interactive paper. i think it will be everywhere eventually, replacing all manner of paper product and even other type of materials, like fabric. digital paper would take flatscreen technology to its next and, i think, inevitable stage of development, turning cardboard-thick sheets of plastic into interactive screens with wireless connectivity to the Internet. that technology already exists, though from what i have seen it still relies too much on a tangle of traditional wires and cables to back it up. the future is in a self-contained sheet that fully replaces printed paper product, and which could also be used for things like video t-shirts, interactive labels on food and beverage products, and wearable or adhesive materials that contain custom-sized screens with software and online access. i even think there is a future in cuttable screens, where you start with something like a 30″x30″ sheet of this interactive paper and cut it into smaller pieces to fit whatever space where you might need a screen. and, of course, this all follows through to my long-held vision of foldable screens on cell phones, so that i could sit down as i am right now, with a cell phone and a foldable fullsize keyboard, but instead of typing into this relatively tiny screen i could unfold the screen so that it opens to a wider viewing area. and of course i would fold the screen up to compact size when i need to.

there’s your “PLASTICS” moment for the early 21st Century: digital paper. the stuff already exists, it’s just a matter of time before it becomes cost-effective. and think of the rain forest! think of the jungle! think of the tundra that will be saved as digital paper subsumes papyral matter.

huh huh, papyral matter.

…..



Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 4:33 am

This must be oblivion

Hours in the shower I do not know what time it is



Monday, January 2nd, 2012 8:48 pm

somehow…

i seem always to find a way to be alone on major holidays. my guess is that i must actually like it that way, or i would not repeatedly allow it to happen.

i found myself on my living room floor, sitting on a pillow embroidered with the word “SORABJI”, watching the ABC coverage of Times Square. i actually like watching those festivities but i would never want to be present on ground level. the only downer of the broadcast was when they let Dick Clark talk. evidently he’s had some strokes, and he talks like in slow-motion, like a 78rpm record playing at 33rpm. i guess i shouldn’t call it a downer, since he’s doing the best he can, and he’s earned enough respect in the business that his colleagues are happy to have him make an appearance. and in his pre-Iternet world i think these appearances might have been treated with more dignity. but the Internet’s makes cynical backwash so easy to transmit, and no one is afforded the dignity of respect any more.

the new TV seems to be working out well enough. i mean, it’s a TV, and it is a suitable device through which to see television programs and movies. so far, though, that’s about all i can say for it. i have not explored the myriad of bloatware functionalities lurking under the surface, the flat and very thin surface. i could not get the Internet to work at first, but maybe i borked something.

i hooked up the computer to the TV last night, and watched the first half of “Boogie Nights”. i forgot how that movie actually runs a little long (huh huh, I said long).

i have a 2TB hard drive full of movies and TV shows downloaded off Usenet. that Usenet service is one I might finally cancel, after years of gluttonous downloads. it’s becoming inefficient with lower-cost streaming and infinite libraries. plus, Usenet kinda isn’t what it used to be, even where the binaries newsgroups are concerned.

i was thinking how easy it would be to shave $500 or more per month off my useless, bullshit expenses. I am thinking of moving to a 2-bedroom place in this area, and cutting useless expenses could make a move virtually cost free. i need more space for various things, most importantly a home office, a dedicated room for work. at present i use the living room. other ueless expenses include: landline phone, one of my 3 leased web servers, monthly contributions to a poorly-performing mutual fund, pub beer, and … other things.

who cares…



Monday, January 2nd, 2012 7:36 pm

munchamuncha

i meant to send this on 12/29/11

…..

no meaning to the subject line, except that i am sitting near someone who is eating food. munchamuncha foodstuffs foodstuffs. this was a bogus, empty day in which i slept strangely until noon. sleeping until noon is not strange, but the manner in which i slept was strange. like poorly-stacked wood. i watched some more TV. oh yeah. part of my ambivalence about getting this gigormous TV is that as muchh as i hate ot admit it i really missed having a television on all the time. i like the game show network, the random movies and shows that wash past, and i like commercials forr the most part, unless i am trying to follow a film’s plot line.

last night i watched the better part of Rambo II, remembering how i saw it at the theaters in Tampa when but a sprig. people at the theater stood up at times throughout the movie, raising both fists and bellowing “RAAAAAAAAAAAAMBOOOO!” these exaltations often were followed by hoots and hollers and foot-stomping applause from the others at the theater.

i don’t think i’ve ever bene at another film with a crowd like that. later i saw Siskel & Ebert discussing that film, and other violent films, and describing similar scenes at the Chicago theaters where they saw Rambo. they said it was “disturbing” to see people react with glee at the gore and deaths, and to be among people who had obviously seen the movie several times over and had every gunshot memorized.

even then, at my young age, i thought siskel & ebert had no business crossing into cultural commentary of that vintage. i had similar feelings of inappropriateness when the fat guy (i can never remember which was which of that duo) talked about the sexiest scenes in mainstream filmdom. he showed a Phoebe Cates scene in which she dances, fully clothed as i recall, to some kind of red-hot sex-fueled music, ending up on the floor with her legs spread and looking exhausted from a faux-orgasm. then the TV cuts to the fat guy, looking hot and horny and with the gleam of sex in his eyes, saying “that’s the sexiest thing i’ve ever seen.”

they showed another scene from “Body Heat”, where William Hurt corks the woman, but he does so without the director resorting to pornography. that’s a good thing for William hurt, look at what that assfucking scene did for William Dafoe’s reputation.

i just didn’t want to think about Siskel and Ebert getting woodies. that is all.

…..

my back is sore from setting up the TV yesterday. the more i think about that, the more annoyed i am at not knowing ahead of time that i was going to have to do so much heavy lifting. what might this fellow have done were i elderly or infirm? maybe that’s why the 2nd dude was in the truck. for elderly/infirm backup.

i have to get a stand for this monstrosity. it is still on the floor, and looking a little precarious perched on a slab of plastic and 2 sticks of metal.



Wednesday, December 28th, 2011 7:26 pm

nice set

te new TV is nice. it’s a TV. it displays television shows and movies with grace and aplomb. i like to remember the first thing i see on a new TV, or the first ting i hear on a new radio. thhe first thing i heard throughh the radio in my kitchen was a gospel preacher. i remember not what he said but the ruggedness of his voice, and the rasp of te AM static as a turned the dial.

thhe first vision of loveliness thhat showed on my 70″ set was that my cable box was not authorized to show any channels. i expected thhat, since i haven’t turned on the cable box in 3 or 4 months. when i called the cable company to rectify this situation thhe first thing that came up was Channel 1, NY1, the little news channel that could, where all the newscasters do their own makeup, and they hate it. i got stuck on NY1 because i couldn’t find the remote control for the cable box. eventually i did, i tweaked the settings, i found the HD channels, and all-in-all i think the set is exactly whhat i expected. big, bright, sleek, and it does a lot more than i expected, including Internet/WiFi and some other bloatware stuff I’ll probably never use, but it’s fun to know it’s in there. i did not obsess over thhe decision making process to buy this ting, i just saw a screen i liked and said i’ll get that one, but in the bigger size. i wanted 80″ but they didn’t have that a 240hz.

i lucked out with te delivery guy. he was hhelpful in setting thhe thhing up, way more than hhe might hhave expected to be when hhe got thhere. no way could i hhave set this ting up myself, but i did kind of expect the delivery guys would do that. there were 2 guys in the truck but only one helped haul the TV, with me doing half the work in moving te set up the stairs. that was unexpected, but on that count i guess i could have obsessed a little more over the buying process. the set weighs over 100 pounds, and mounting it on the stand is not possible for one person.

i tipped the guy $35, which i thought was fair. he seemed amazingly appreciative of the gesture. the tip, that is.

i remmebered a conversation about tipping. it seems, in retrospect, that my mother was a complete bonehead when it came to tipping. i never thought muchh of it until i was in college. a pizza delivery guy came and i tipped him a few dollars on top of the price for the order. my mother noticed this and thought i was a dumbass for it. “nobody tips the pizza delivery guy” she said with disdain. i never noticed how or even if she tipped at restaurants, but something tells me she probably tipped around 3%, or else by rounding the amount of the bill up to the nearest 5 or 10 dollar amount.

i think she was among those who think wait staff get paid plenty enough as it is, and they should regard any tip as a gift.

i remember another incident where a waitress went to clear a table after customers had left. the waitress cursed at the amount of the tip, saying something like “fuck you!” to the people who had left but a skimpy amount of money for the tip. my mother thought this was repulsive, the attitude, the presumptuousness, the nerve of that waitress to assume that she deserved anything more than her hourly wage (which was probably in the $2/hour range).

when i was in high school i got to know a waitress at a diner in Brandon, Florida. we were not buddies, but we got to know each other better than what i thought was typical for a customer/waitress situation. among other things she said that she made $2.01/hour. she didn’t mention that she worked mostly for tips, and i didn’t know enough to assume as much, or even to ask. at the time i made $55/hour playing piano at cocktail parties, though i didn’t work enough piano-playing hours for that to really mean much. i think that was how the conversation started, though. i said that what this diner needed was some live music, some classical chamber music or a piano soloist. Me! she thought that was strange, this being a diner and all, a diner in a bumfuck town no less. she rolled her eyes but i continued, assuring her that this place would do gangbuster business if they got a Steinway concert grand, cleared away a few tables, and hired a pianist at $55/hour to play Tchaikowsky and Liszt for 3 or 4 hours a night. She thought that sounded delightful, then mentioned that she made $2.01 per hour working as a waitress at this place.



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