The Road to the Top

It looks like I'll be starting my own practice again since my latest "job" fell through.

This time, I'm doing it right and doing it right starts with the right business card. Thank God that the internet is there to advise me on such matters.

This video is really more appropriate for Recon's blog so this is going to be one of those rare double posts.

Rip Van Blogo

Well, wing-a-ding-ding what the hell happened to me and my blog? One day I run off to India and the next we're more estranged than the original cast of Three's Company. I know that this isn't my job or anything and it certainly doesn't pay the bills but DAMN.

It's time for the third act, you know, the one where the hero gets over his own nagging self doubts, gets back to his roots and mixes some drinks epic enough to convince Elizabeth Shue to get back together with me.

I STILL GOT IT!!!

But anyway, not too much going on over here in DC. I have an interview tomorrow and thereby a real shot at some meaningful employment. That's good. On the other hand, I did just find out that I will was not accepted into any grad schools for the second year in a row. So, sometimes you gotta take the good with the bad and write a blog about it.

P.S. How bad of a sign is it that I've begun to confuse myself with Tom Cruise?

India Ahoy!

Not that I've exactly been the Carl Ripkin Jr. of blogs lately but I'm on my way to India for 2 weeks. See you on the other side suckers.

Summer Plans 08

Sorry folks. I've been out of touch with the internet for past month, only rarely peeping my head up to post something. The story is that I quit my job in mid July and moved back to Westchester where I'm living with my parents until I sort out what my next step is. In the meantime, my girlfriend got a great job in DC so we've been alternating weekends commuting to see each other.

I don't mean to complain because I've really been enjoying myself but the traveling to DC, looking for jobs, working on grad school applications and setting in are distracting me from posting anything. and that may not change anytime soon.

Moving Success

It seemed like I would never get through that long state of Pennsylvania but I finally made it. Special thanks to my mom helped me pack and drove my car while I took the truck.

Thanks Hanks

Thanks to everyone who called emailed and texted me on my birthday. I'm not that much of a birthday person but I really appreciated just how many people remembered the day and dropped me a line. I also would like to thank everyone for condolences on my cat Vinnie's death. Your sympathy means a lot to me.

A ton of my friends have birthdays in early July such as Recon, Boron110 (aka Turkeytoes), and Kid Dammit's little boy to name a few. Here's a birthday gif to you guys:

That right; it's the legendary Benjamin Sherman "Scatman" Crothers throwing some elbows. If you don't know who he is, let me just say Hong Kong Phooey to youey.

And in case you didn't know. I quit my job (last day this Sunday) and I'm moving back the East Coast. Where I'll end up, God only knows but my temporary solution is to stay with my parents until I figure out what S and I are doing next. I'm pretty excited about the move and the proffessional potential it offers. I'm not sure yet if I'll be starting my own practice, looking for employment or focusing on getting into grad school.

More importantly, the move means that many future posts will be coming from the one and only Bedford Hills.

Snow Everyday

The weather is back below the freezing mark after a few days respite. As a whole, this winter has been brutal - lots of snow, freezing winds, and gray skies. The recent warmth melted the snow just enough to leave thick layers of ice that will last awhile.

On the up side, I did get to go snow shoeing on a foot of fresh snow a few weeks ago.

(Cover of "Winter" sheet music via American Memory)

Poor Vinnie

My cat's not feeling so well. Sarah spent a long time with him at the vet today. The good news is that he doesn't have kidney problems and hasn't swallowed any buttons.

If you want to wish my cat well, wish him this:

"Please, vinnie, shit like crazy tonight so that you don't need to go to the vets for an enema tomorrow. I know how traveling and strangers make you miserable."

As Above so Below

In my dream, it is night and I climb up the side of a long embankment the size of a mountain. I get to the top and look out over a lake greenish and deep like Crater Lake in Oregon. The only sources of light are thousands shimmering yellow and white stars. I walk out on a long perch over the lake and look cautiously over the edge to see large dark moving shapes in the water far below me. I feel small.



I can't get a sense of depth beneath the water so it's difficult to tell exactly how large the circling shapes are. As I look down, I turn my attention to the lake's rolling surface and notice small points shifting back and forth with the waves. I look closer and realize that the points are yellow and white flowers catching the dim light of the stars. Then, I see the reflection of the stars in the water too. The stars and the flowers are sometimes distinct and at other times blend and transform into one another. It kind of looks like this video I took of the reflection of Christmas lights off a canal in Delft.

I get the sense that I'm supposed to jump. Part of me is to scared and walks back off away from the edge but another part dives. As I fall towards the surface of the water, I see my reflection rising up at me from the depths. When I hit the water, I go under and my reflection jumps out.

Taxiing Through Your Neighborhood

I had a dream last night that I was traveling to some exotic island paradise with a bunch of my friends. We all met at my parents house and climbed on to a 747 that was sitting in the front yard. The plane proceeded to taxi at high speeds along the tight swerving back roads of Bedford Hills presumably on it's way to the airport.

Every once and a while ,on a relative straight away, the plane would fire up its engines and try to take off. It was a mix of my fear of flying dreams and my "I'm back on the bus to school" dreams. Scary.

Down Time

I'm excited to have figured out how to embed sound links in a flash player on my blog. Go ahead and see if it works.



Ah, Devo.

I know that it doesn't seem like I'm doing much blogwise but just so you know I've been laboring behind the scenes just like your favorite sports team does in the off season. Setting up deals, training up key players, stealing the other team's playbooks and such. Let's just say that I've got my proverbial finger in many pies. Let's also just say, I feel like one of those jugglers trying to keep two balls in the air at once. It's hard work.

UPDATE!
Due to space constraints, I've removed the old Odeo flash player and just embedded live version of the song from boomp3.

Too Hot to Think

Yup. Call me a crybaby but it's been too hot and humid to think. And, thus, I haven't even tried to write anything substantial for the past few days.

(poster via NYPL)

Out to Lunch

Sorry folks but I've gone on summer vacation. Both of you'll have to wait until at least Thursday for more blogolisious action.

My First Gif

I love animated gifs. Watching those rhythmic 5 second loops is like having my brain pushed down a series of M C Esheresque stairs. I could look at a funny gif of jedis knocking over babies for hours.

What I'm driving at is that I've finally figured out how to make my own little brain lock inducing visuals. And it's all downhill from here.

I've been waiting to make this little animation for a long time now. I've updated the earlier post with it.

Trip to the Northwest '07

Yessir, I had an outstanding trip to Portland and Seattle. I'll give you the highlights

1. I got to see a lot of great people especially my girlfriend.
2. Portland is more bustling than ever.
3. I stayed right next to beautiful Green Lake in Seattle.



4. I read a lot of comics.
6. The people I stayed with in Portland had chickens and beehives.


5. I got to enjoy some great restaurants in Portland like Nicholas and Hot Pot City.

The Friendly Skies

I'm in Seattle hanging out with the kid dammit family unit and the weather is super nice. I saw this anime movie called Paprika which had a wicked rad parade. Overall, I'm having a great time.

In the Houston airport, on the way over, a voice over the loud speaker explicitly stated, "Any inappropriate remarks or jokes about security may result in your arrest." Now, I can understand how making insulting comments or jokes directly to a security worker would be an issue but this warning was a king sized blanket statement. I never thought that I'd hear something like that in this country but there it was.

Portland Ho!

I'm off to Portland to visit some old friends and a girlfriend. Posts may not be so forth coming. We shall see.


(Nocturnal Voyage by Ivan Constantinovich Aivazovsky via ARC Museum)

Libertine-a-tarians

American politics these days is less than 1 dimensional; it's binary. Are you a liberal or conservative? Those are the only options. But, as anyone who has discussed political and social issues for more than five minutes knows, the full palate of opinions that people can have about an issue cannot be forced into one of two camps.

Some libertarians have developed a two-dimensional chart that effectively expands how to think about where you stand in the political landscape. It's called the Nolan chart. I've including some links to various tests to place yourself on the Nolan Chart.

Here's the short version
Longer test 1
Longer test 2

And here's a decent explanation of how the Nolan Chart works with different issues. And here I am on the chart with some famous people. The blue dot exactly opposite George W. Bush is me.


SEMI-IMPORTANT NOTE! Some of of these sites invert the y-axis so that Anarchism is at the top and Authoritarianism is at the bottom. You should take this into account if you compare your results to my chart above.

President Hobo

So, I'm following JFK and Jackie O down the sidewalks of Dallas while they're on their way to some strange skyscraper/church to the wedding of one of the more obscure Kennedy brothers. The place is fairly deserted and the clouds cast a weird sepia tone over everything. Suddenly, a loud bang crackles through the air and Jackie O enthusiastically leaps on top of JFK to shield him with her body.

She's so into it that he's forced to cower against the wall while the secret service are scrambling around like ants on a freshly kicked anthill. JFK finally gets up and rushes into the church with the secret service close behind. No one is hurt. Then, even though the entire presidential party is safely in the church, some more shots ring out. I trace the sound back to it's source and discover a bunch of construction worker running around a building site firing rifles at the girders. Possibly because of their love of the second amendment, rifles play some role in the construction industry in Dallas.

But, the secret service still has no idea where the shots came from. So, they come up with the brilliant idea of disguising Kennedy as a hobo to protect him. To complete the illusion, they send JFK stumbling ahead alone while they follow about a block behind.


The plan works as far as it get the hobo president across town and into an old two story house badly in need of repairs. JFK stumbles through the front door to find the CIA agents all sitting around playing poker, smoking cigarettes in dirty wife beaters and wholly unprepared to see the president dressed in rags. But, being professionals, it doesn't take long for them to spring into action.

While everyone's setting up chairs and wiping down tables and moving large pieces of radio equipment around make things a bit more presidential, I take the opportunity to talk to the coordinator of the safe house. For no reason that I can discern, I ask him why he joined the CIA. He gets a distant look in his eye, then starts shaking his fists at the heavens and yelling "Damn you, Castro!". He picks up a sledgehammer that's lying around and starts smashing everything in front of him (including the flimsy walls). The whole house collapses.

I thought that dream was weird when I had it but now I find out that there's an actual conspiracy theory that JFK was killed as part of a hobo plot. I guess people who've seen the Oliver Stone movie already know about this. And now, looking at that combination of Rockwell and a JFK portrait is giving me some wicked deja vu.

Bob Ross is the Bruce Lee of Landscapes

Every day of high school used to end the same way. The bell would ring. I'd jump out the window and slide down the back of a dinosaur right into my car. Then, I'd race home like a maniac to catch some Bob Ross with my wife Wilma and neighbor Barney.

And it's all true too. Except, I didn't have a wife and my neighbor's name was Mike Noe but the point is that Bob Ross an the Joy of Painting was like crack for my developing brain. Somehow, every episode kept me riveted to the edge of my seat eating popcorn. Mike and I watched Bob Ross paint like we were dogs watching someone juggling ham bones.

Now I find out that there's going to be a Joy of Painting video game. How the hell will they pull that one off?

Part 2
Part 3