Honestly... I could not code my way out of a little brown paper bag. Anybody who looks at the code of this page will notice that it is a mix of the good the bad and the really, really ugly. I simply do not know how to code.
And that CSS stuff?... Hmm... only those with strong nerves might want to look at the stylesheet of this page... (not even the site, I think... hmm... not sure.)
So it is a really big deal for me that I somehow managed to add this little miniblog on the right hand side of this entry... (Okay, Chris Tom did help a little, but not much...) It was all long overdue... where else could I share my passion for all those things everybody else is talking about... (You know, all those New York Times articles we all love to link to and the Wired articles?) or something like that...
Oh, and I also removed the "10 most recent entries" pulldown. (Please simply scroll down the page from now on.) The pulldown was a good one (Thank you for the code, Chris), but I had to keep my entry titles really short and cryptic so this page would not simply explode...
Enough now... (I still need to figure out how to allow comments on those mini entries... without blowing the fuses...)
Look dad, no hands...

as I moved my feet in a slow continuos sequence, turning my head left and right, the little city walked right through me, the houses passed through me, the trees, the decks, the flowers on the frontyards did. Waves of air turned into sounds as they rushed through my head. I did not really change my location much, it was the surroundings that moved, I think... I stayed inside, quiet, afraid to make too much of my own noise and also afraid to be too visible.

And it feels as if the universe has began to collapse into itself just recently, a slow implosion that will devour me just seconds after I realize that there is no outside, just the though...

He had chosen the best teacher available. She had experience, she knew the insides of the culinary business like the back of her wings. Or the bottom of her feet...
Still, making letters with the tongue, ("a requirement for any job in the business"), sounded easier than it ended up to be. He really was at the end of his wits. He wanted to eat, thus he had to find a place to work, frogs could only get work in the restaurant business these days (so the teacher), this was a very tough business... he had to know the correct lingo... had to learn "tongue spelling"...
The lessons were not going too well, he was becoming hungrier and hungrier...
The teacher was not very happy with the progress...
All bad, all bad.

There are very soft layers of whitish ribbons in the sliver of sky I can see from here. The smell of the air is the softest, sweetest, late summerish kind. There used to be many bird sounds just a few minutes ago. Now there is a single bird, making one single sound. It is still good. The panels of the blinds are hitting the books on the window. Not very far away from here, a soft wind chime is trapped in a series of harmonious sequences.
The plant on the air conditioner in the window seems much taller than the trees in the distance. I guess this is how the world works anyway.
I think I can hear the train, parked in the station about a kilometer from here. It is the last stop. The operators never turn off the trains.
There is a new bird now, a different song. The chimes, the train. A car?... silence.
I woke up this morning and was surprised to hear that my neck sounded as if there were sand trapped in my spine. Just moved my neck again... and it is still there.
I think I wish I could turn myself into a tiny blue object and just float to a place where all things appear to have the same size. All larger than me, of course...
It might be time to walk out into this sunny, cool, quiet day...

The ice cream truck played its nerve wrecking song in front of the laundry place on the corner. There were no children buying any ice cream however. A group of maybe twenty or so young men stood between the laundry place and the truck, obstructing the passage. They were discussing something loudly, they seemed like two groups, even though the discussion seemed to happen between two of the men. They were the ones at the centre of a pack of friends, both had their supporters, observers, witnesses with them. Not sure how long the argument had been evolving, but it really felt as if something was about to happen, right there, within the next 30 seconds or so.
They were louder and louder, the words became more serrated more like sounds...
and there it was,
the first punch. Every person in both parties now started to scream something, at the same time, louder, louder...
What happened next took about four seconds. The guy who had been punched grabbed the attacker by the collar of his flashy trainings jacket, spun around with him, as if they both were about to perform a wild dance, he then smashed both of them against the large launderette window.
This was not a movie, these were not paid stuntmen, this was not a scripted moment...
This is when the large window burst.
It was not one of those slow motion motorcycle scenes in which a person in a leather jacket rides through a shower of little pieces of security glass.
The window broke more like a sheet of thin ice, large pieces, obviously sharp edges, the top portion of the glass caved in behind the two young men.
It really was as if both of them had been thrown into a bucket of cold water. All of them, the entire group went silent, surprised?...
One brave bystander pulled both fighters out of where they had landed in the launderette. Both groups moved out of the way, away from the scene, now shouting something else...
The ice cream truck never stopped playing this annoying song...
The owner of the laundry place might have been the one who called the police. Their syrens sounded after about 10 minutes... it was too far now to see what happened next...

It was a little challenge, every single time. They would take her out of the bag, load her up with unexposed memory tape, then wind her up and yey... show her stuff. She got to see so much. Did not want to miss a thing. The kids growing up, the travels, the landmarks, the Mona Lisa.
She had to memorize everything, as well as she possibly could. Sometimes they allowed her to blink 15 times a second, sometimes even more often. Whenever she was allowed to blink slower, the world in front of her turned into more of a dream. Layers of color, steaks of light. Such fun.
They would then take out her entire memory, send it away somewhere... and then later, watch it. They loved to watch the world as seen through her eye.
She was their favorite child...
At least until this one summer... when they left her in the hot, hot car...

He considered himself a healthy mix between a Mustang, an especially crazy horse, a human at core and... well, there was this other half. There was this part of him which he did not quite understand. It was a bit as if something had been switched when he was being manufactured, it was a bit as if he were destined to some day run into the opposite of himself, which would be more like him, the same part, complimentary, they would probably not understand each other at all, even though they would be made of exactly the same material, wait not exactly the same, the opposite, the same after all?
He just wished his brain were distributed better, maybe all over his body, so he could think more in terms of a we than in terms of a they...
He should have probably just spent more time on the prairies and less on the stages... but that's a completely different story, now is it?

They had traveled for weeks. They had to hide between trees, in the valleys, between rocks, in tiny tunnels they dug into the shaky ground, often in the middle of the night. They had to wait for the sun to set to come out and eat, anything, anything they could find. It was an incredibly harsh time. Very exhausting for all. Earthquakes, land slides, streams. The climate in this area was horrible. The rain was mixed with chemicals, hot, disgusting winds. Floods, were often followed by dry seasons, were followed by horrible, often deadly mists.
Most of them did not make it. Some were swept away, some were poisoned, some just died of exhaustion. In the end she really felt as if she were the only survivor, in this endless forest, on top of this incredibly deadly peak. She was tired, she was pregnant. She waited for the night.
She dug herself into the soft ground... and laid her eggs.

Why is there no outcry for what happened in Scotland today? I wonder if the event will even make it onto American Television... Castle gang snatches Leonardo... Wow... Did somebody order the crime after reading the "Da Vinci Code?" Hmm... Who will be next, Lady with an Ermine out of the Czartoryski collection in Kraków?
More here.
And a quite bizarre combination of article and advertising here... hmm...

Sixty eight degrees Fahrenheit (or about nineteen Celsius) is pretty much the nicest temperature one could hope for on a morning in New York. Things tend to get a bit extreme here, as we all know. It might be bad to walk straight into what feels like the humid mouth of a dog in the summer time, but freezing even under layers and layers of various garments in January might be worse.
The Subway still felt a bit toasty, not crowded, it appears that many New Yorkers are making this one an especially long weekend.
Those who rode the subway with me today were like little books of human character speculation.
There was the forty-something gentleman with a Leon Trotsky beard and some rather peculiar medical condition that made him look beyond the kind of potent any man might ever want to be. He rested a gaming magazine on that area, there, as if it were his favorite reading pillow. He sometimes scratched his head of freshly dyed jet black hair. (Something was telling me that he had to hide this magazine from his mother...)
The last page of the gamer publication screamed at all of us announcing that he could be the winner of a Million Dollars. I just imagined how he would decide to invest this king of cash, or if his mom would make these kinds of decisions, and how he would react if he in fact won...
Next to him was a lady in her sixties maybe, she could have been 80, perhaps older. I do not quite remember now what she looked like, she was the kind that used her makeup as if it were skin colored stucco. Then there were the jewels.
Large gem stones, dark, larger than life.
To her right was a gentleman of probably 70, his head barely covered with any hair, his neck very much like a human sized version of a water-turtle's neck.
His shirt was far too open. He seemed refined, interested, guided by what he saw, not by what he thought to see. After a few minutes he pulled out a little inconspicuous book. I could not see the author's names, the title was quite clear... "Geriatric Psychiatry".. I tried to avoid eye contact.
His neighbor was dressed in a shirt that seemed to be made out of the finest checkered cotton table cloth. His hair looked like something on the head of a 15 year old Swedish soccer player, except that he was maybe 40... He stroked over the top layer of his hair as if to make sure the velcro stuck to his scalp.
Something made me think that he could have been British. I do not quite remember what else he wore, but his features, his demeanor, it all pointed to some place where princes like to spend their time hunting foxes and other little animals.
The lady next to me had her ripe summer-picnic-banana ready, it was on top of some tupperware, inside of a rather old Bergdorf Goodman bag. Her fisherman pants matched the checkers of the English gentleman, except they were the salmon and white, not blue.
In front of us, at least for the last few stops, a man from somewhere in South America (what a wild guess). His too tight black pants seemed to attempt to befriend that Bergdorf Goodman traveler. His body appeared as if it were a soft and air filled dough, spilling just about wherever it could in ways permitted by his outfit. The Canary yellow tennis shirt met his pants in a place that was incredibly confined by a thin, shiny, leather belt. Even his sunglasses, placed around his neck, not on top of his shiny, shiny hair, were seemingly cutting into a soft mass of a body. The man with a soft outside and possibly a hard core also wore one of those pieces of clothing not visible to the human eye... a rather heavy cologne. It spilled freely all over the subway car, spread out and tickled all of the somehow tired strap hangers. Whenever the doors opened, there would be a new mix of fragrance. I was quite glad to finally reach my destination. As I was leaving the car, I noticed an incredibly beautiful African American woman, deep in the corner of the car. I only had a split second to see her, so I could not imagine any story as the ones that for me surrounded all the other characters.
Outside of the station the weather was still the perfect seventy degrees. The skies are blue and clear here in New York, I think I might need a little coffee...

He was the one hundredth sheep. He was the jumper that rarely got to actually jump over the fence. He barely even made it into the lineup. His brothers and sisters were the ones that got to do the fun work, jumping the fences, riding bicycles, performing magic tricks. He was just number one hundred. Everybody knew he was there, they knew that one day he might appear somewhere in a rerun of their performance, maybe even sing some cute song... but for now... all he could think of was the theory that he was not the only one. There was a second 100, somewhere, hiding, among the flock...
Well, well... maybe one day they could meet...

Ahem...

Some of the most annoying entries known to blogs are shopping bonanzas. Somebody buys a new toy and just keeps being excited about it for days, weeks. We all anticipate the arrival of the new baby camera, the new baby computer, the new baby who knows what. Then it arrives. Then we all experience the beauty of it, it is so cute, it is the best thing since the invention of the blog, it is just all that... then the next thing follows, often a complaint about the bad monay situation, the lack of food, then the site just goes offline. Okay, I made up the last few steps... but isn't it annoying when somebody goes on and on about their shopping experiences? Wasn't shopping invented to happen in private, secretly, for undisclosed amounts of money, diluted by very personal discounts, secret handshakes, hidden extras... hmm...
Why am I writing all this?... Oh, because nobody bought any of the cameras on my wishlist and because I somehow have the feeling that not having a digital camera these days is like having no radio in the 30's...
(Now I feel a bit stupid...)
So... I did not really think as high end as Florian's Nikon D100, as it is a serious professional camera... And don't we all wish that Sigma SD9 were built by somebody who would allow us to put Canon or Nikon lenses in front of that Foveon - X3 chip?...
I had to think of a more portable solution this time, something that would for easy happy snaps...
I was thinking a bit about this sexy little Leica - D-LUX (Since I really love Leica optics, and trust them in general.) But for more than $800 I would have loved to have the option to work with uncompressed files. Oh well...
So what about the loved Canon G5... It does look really nice in all the pictures, doesn't it?... I played with it at B&H and it was beautiful, but still a bit bulky and still somehow said loudly that it was a serious camera...
So what will I end up buying? It looks very much like it is going to be the Canon S50, wicked little guy, as seen in Digital Photography Review...
I will probably get a 1GB micro drive for it... and some other stuff, maybe not this thing..., most definitely one of those...
Hmm... Did anybody need to know all this?... Probably not... it will certainly help me buy the items...
Oh, and the Canon S50 is the camera used for Slower.net what is there not to love?...

Another case of me not speaking or reading any Japanese and coming across a brilliant little site (or three.) Take a look at these cute goods by hmm... Boo-Doo-Chang?... via Hiroshi Yoshii, apparently sometimes uses a crazy software called ZBrush... wow...

This entry should have been here this morning, when wild masses of international readers clicked their way through from Shauny's Mac Moron site. Harvey, her little iBook friend (700MHz/20GB/12inch) made it back home, healthy and in one happy piece.
So what happened and what did the story look like from my side of the screen?
Shauna's iBook died somewhere around the 4th of July. The symptoms that accompanied his death were too familiar. First there was this high fever, then there was the coma, then there were the casual blackouts, then there was the death. I hoped that Harvey could be just fixed in Scotland, where he and his incredibly gifted owner currently reside, but the estimate returned for the necessary repair was just obscene, dirty, an insult to any mac lover. The authorized Mac shop in Edinburgh charged Shauna £50 or so to tell her that the repair of her little white apple friend would cost £870! Absolute insanity. This is (according to the always "happy" captain euro) about $1,400... to have a computer repaired? Maybe?
This was not about to happen, my friends. Harvey did not travel from Taiwan to Australia to Singapore to Frankfurt to Edinburgh just to be fixed for an amount higher than the price of a new model...
I asked Tom if he knew a shop in London that could fix Harvey for les than, hmm... £300... He actually found some expert, who was willing to help, but then ended up not returning Shauna's calls. (thank you very much.)
This situation was just ridiculous. I asked Shauna to ship Harvey to New York, because here were at least two places where he could get help quickly and for less than the cost of a new computer.
Harvey arrived nicely wrapped, accompanied by a little diagnosis sheet a few days later. He was about as dead as they get. He did not want to start up, did not want to even make a sound. The screen remained blank...
At least for a little while. I have spent so many years dealing with macs, I know that it is sometimes important to just be nice to them to make them come back from the dead. I complimented Harvey on his shiny surface, the blinking lights on his bottom... connected him via firewire... pushed his big button and voilá, the screen went on and the little computer opened up to me completely, showing me the content of his harddrive. (Attention users of osX, Jaguar: If you think that anything on your hard drive is protected by this "password" you use for a log-in... think again. You are just one of the folders on the drive when it boots up in target mode... the only thing that will protect you is the discrete nature of the visitor... I did not look at any files...) I powered down harvey, wrapped him back into his protective envelope and decided to bring him to Tekserve, the trusted name in Apple repairs, since before there was an Apple store in SoHo.
I arrived at Tekserve during my lunch break on the next day. My number was 84, I waited for about 30 minutes or so, just to be called in to sit across from a guy who really tried hard to look as if he knew what he was doing. Harvey did not like him at all. The iBook did not start, it did not make a sound, the "expert" created an info-sheet based on my description of the issues... He then told me that the repair would cost $360... this was the standard fee applied to all repairs that needed to be sent back to apple. I asked him if it would be cheaper for me to bring the computer directly to Apple.... and he told me that yes, this would be about 50-60 dollars less... Ahem... what an honest soul... hmm...
I signed a waiver that confirmed that I refused to have the computer repaired on 23rd street... Next stop would be the Genius Bar at the Apple store in SoHo.
(As I was walking out the door, there was a little mountain of "Harveys" (exactly the model) for $800 each... check that out, Scottish repair man...
A day later, in a different setting, we found ourselves on the second floor of the nicely smelling Apple Store. Left and right from us were parents with their little Harveys, as dead as my little buddy... same symptoms, same panic mode...
The young lady who's iBook looked more dead than dead let me go ahead of her, as I was a bit in a hurry and the Genius I got to talk to was Pax. Pax means peace, of course, and this Apple Genius was really very relaxed and not worried about things... was he a real genius? would he be able to heal Harvey?... To my great surprise... well, not a great surprise, but still, Harvey just started up. It took a tiny while, some little spinning action, a few minutes of this, a few seconds of that and Pax and I were looking at Shauna's log in screen. This is where I realised that I did not know the password. I felt as if I had stolen the computer, dragged it here and wanted to perform some apple laundry scheme... Did I mentioned that Pax appeared very relaxed throughout the procedure?... When I told him that I did not have the password... (among other things... I did a lot of nervous talking...) he just typed something on the keyboard once... twice... and then simply stated: "Oh, it was ••••••• how funny."... (Did I hear an angel choir sing hallelujah? did the "genius" logo glow? Not sure, but this Pax guy was indeed an Apple genius.) How funny indeed, this guy needed just two tries to get into Shauna's private space, on a computer which looked all bright eyed and bushy tailed to all of us. Pax, the genius, did not want to accept an obviously healthy machine. He gave me some time to crash Harvey, while he brought away some left overs from some other customer...
I tried really hard to crash Harvey right there at the genius bar, I really tried... I wanted him to break into sweat, to break down in Photoshop, to go blank, do at least pretend to be dead...just for a minute or two? Please?
He only fell asleep... nothing spectacular enough to have him stay the night at his secret home in SoHo...
Pax created a case number for me, to make things easier once I had to call 1-800-APL-CARE, the place where he would have sent Harvey anyway.
I took the little iBook home with me again. Turned him on...
dead.

I must have been the first caller at 1-800-APL-CARE the next day. The dude on the other side of the line gave me the slowest tech support experience of my life. He was so quiet, apparently staring blankly at his screen?, that I suggested that there should be some sort of sound, letting me know that he was still there...
"I hear a sound..." he replied...
allrighty then... he had my case number, I knew the resurrection of Harvey would cost $299, so what was his problem?...
I spent 30 Minutes listening to him do something close to nothing. His conclusion was that harvey had a broken LCD... I repeatedly had to tell him that the iBook sometimes happened to start up fine, with a shiny, beautifully bright display... silence...
He prepared me for a number which would be the price for the repair... we waited in silence for another few minutes... "$690"...
Oh, comoooon.... I asked him if he would mind to take a second look at that calculation and if there could be any shadow of a chance that the special $299 fee applied to this kind of incident... silence...
"In this particular case..."... he paused... "you might be right..."

Harvey's ambulance arrived on the day of the blackout. It was a very nice fresh brown box, it contained a little room made especially for harvey, he also got a little pink sleeping bag. All I had to do was put him into that compartment, close the box, using enclosed stickers, remove the shipping label, revealing the return address in Memphis... and just give it back to the AirExpress guy...
Supersimple...
I was not sure where Harvey stayed during the 2003 blackout... he definitely made it to the repair center in Memphis, then to the Apple Store in SoHo (apparently sharing the ride with some other happy macs?) and was then sent to me...
Healthy, happy, resurrected.
There was a little note enclosed, stating that real Apple technicians were able to fix harvey by exchanging three real Apple-parts... A bill would follow in a few days...
I should probably knock on imitation wood now and hope that the Apple dude on the phone actually managed to put Harvey into the $299 emergency procedure slot...
I shipped Harvey back to Scotland on the following day, last friday. The friendly people at Mail Boxes Etc. on Broadway and 96th got a real kick out of Harvey's story. In order to save Shauna from the burden of improper taxation, the lady at the store wrote a mini letter outlining what had happened to harvey and how he had been manufactured in Taiwan, bought in Australia and was now returning to his owner in Scotland. This would have been a simple happy ending to my side of the Harvey story... had he not tried to make another funny intercontinental jump. Apparently addicted to travel by now, Harvey faked a little mini trip to Shanghai, via Alaska... but only for a few hours. Despite of "delays" in China, he was able to get back to New York, just on time to be shipped to England, where he spent a day on a truck, celebrating a british bank holiday on Monday...

So now Harvey is back in Edinburgh, he is a little helper to Shauna. I am certain that he is happier now, having traveled pretty much completely around the world, at least virtually...
I wish I had had a little camera to show you all the places Harvey saw, at least under my watch (nothing dirty, just pure Apple fun...) but that's a completely different story... and we shall continue it some other time...
: )

She was a real (looking) gun, just $9.99, or even less with a mail in coupon (Buy one, get a second one, for FREE*.). She was the loaded kind, ready to kill some time. Ready to see some action, ready to make sure there was great excitement, some realism, some preparation in the games played today. She was ready to point and shoot, to being pulled and to blast some tiny tunnels into the bodies of friends and pets and things... this would be such great fun...
And if she got the right people, if she got the right amount of people at the right time, in the right place, if she only worked hard enough to be effective, quiet and precise... then her owner could maybe make it to television, into the papers, onto the web... it was all about fame these days. Fame was good. Publicity was good. It was all really good, declared good, paid well, celebrated, on the covers, under blankets, in big printed sheets.
She was looking forward to being the beginning of someone's career.
Fame, fame, here we come.

* equal or lesser value, second toy unloaded, allow 28 days for delivery, please include 8.99 for shipping and handling.

This one is a little bit like that old question we used to ask each other in elementary school in Poland. "You arrive at two gates. One gate leads to heaven, the other to hell. Both gates have guards and both guards look exactly the same. You know that one of the guards is a devil who will always give the opposite of the honest answer and the other guard is an angel, who will always tell the truth. You are only allowed to ask one single question. How will you find out through which door to pass?"

I received the email below this morning. It looks like a reply to an email I sent, with an attachement that I sent. It is the Sobig.f. virus that is attached to this one, so we are talking about some serious action here. This is the virus that shut down networks of rather large companies (including the New York Times, I hear), it is a bit of a celebrity of viruses. The most powerful guy ever (so far...). So what made me send it to a friendly person at the UCP in Florida, A Program of united Cerebral Palsy of Central Florida?... nothing made me do it. I am on a Mac here, using several virus filters on top of that. I do not have the attachment that came with this email anywhere on my Harddrive. So... there are two possibilities...
Either the person who seems to be returning the email to me has now an infected computer and for some reason had my email address in their address book... the computer had been left on and performed the virus distribution by itself. (So if you work for UCP in Florida, scan your drive please.)
Or... and this one would be the slightly more vicious version of the event, somebody is using my email address to send spam, or viruses or what not, to users like the friendly person at UCP...
I recently found comments on somebody's blog, which were signed with my name (and they were not kind comments...), so such "soft" identity theft is quite likely.
Hmm... so what was the one question we should have asked one of the guards at the doors to heaven or hell?... You know the answer, don't you?...

There was not a single cloud in the sky over Manhattan, or over the river, or over New Jersey and the hills and somehow the entire rest of the continent. At least it seemed this way. The view turned slowly, just the way it always does, for years now, though it is less and less a view and more and more of a round trip between windows of offices and hotel rooms, condos.
There is still a relative wide sliver of a vista left facing New Jersey, which is in the west from there. It is the not so developed place where the sun sets. The large, orange, glowing sun. The large star behind layers and layers of glass. First there were the windows, of course, the serious strong windows, as they have to be on the 48th floor. Then there were these slightly curved sheets of glass, right by the tables, a barrier of sorts, preventing the guests even if beyond drunk, or angry about the $6.50 charge for non hotel guests, preventing them from just falling into the wrong direction, breaking something after the fall. Perhaps the neck?
As the nearly empty view turned its vacant seats towards the sinking orange sun, a whole group of serious photographers came forward to show the magnificent event to their very smart looking cameras. There was the Danish couple, both men agreeing on the little previews flashing between the graphic interface of their large lensed range finder camera, a quiet woman with a large black SLR, snuck between the chairs as if the sun were an incredibly rare, shy bird. The batteries in her camera must have been super fresh, as she flashed the sun with such powerful bursts of light, over and over and over again... I wonder how much of the actual sunset will make it onto her film.
She was the most professional looking one of the many who were just there, flashing the glass barrier.
In the bathroom, the concierge was very hesitant to offer a paper towel to the chef, who came here in his large white hat. It was good to see that the food professional used his towel and not his hands to open the bathroom door.
Outside by the elevators, a group of tourists from Switzerland contemplated about the great advantages of having numbered streets in a city like New York. The subway system did not seem to be as clear to them however. One lady admitted having been lost... several times. She now made it a habit to study the map very well before leaving the house. She did not want to appear as a tourist, of course.
I knew she was one before I even saw her. (Gell?)
About 44 floors below, the carpets and the music could have been ripped out and imported from a las vegas casino. Twirling leaves and rectangles in complimentary colors intertwined to a maddening composition, amplified by the castrated muzac pumped through the omnipresent hidden speakers.
It was a bit of a psychedelic experience, only healed by a slow escape through the hidden and prohibited fire emergency exit. There it was, an oasis with unpretentious lighting and no disturbing music. So beautifully calm.
So good to just stay there. Calm. More than calm. Happy. A short break in a successful escape from organized madness...
Then the door on the ground floor... "I Heart New York" T-Shirts for just $7.99, thousands of tourists, again, all drunk on the lights and sounds and ultimately themselves.
Such different spaces, right next to each other... so good, so incredibly good...
And the sun? It is now busy setting over the Hollywood sign... will it come back for more?... I bet.
Will there be photographers flashing at it? Most certainly yes.

There are shiny spots on the printed imitation wood of my desk. Right under my elbows. Polished edges. Reflective now. The space bar on my Powerbook has an incredibly shiny spot on it (left hand side). This is where the right side of my left thumb likes to rest and just move the cursor forward, whenever I want to take a written breather... (like... now). Most of the keys are shiny. Their imprints on the LCD screen will never go away.
The sides of my little mouse are also smooth. The headphones are falling apart.
The PowerBook sometimes falls into a sleep so deep that only a restart is able to bring it back... when we are all relaxed and lucky.
My ten year old leather mouse pad has seen many mice, many rooms, many table tops, many computers. The graphic tablet stayed in my bag today.
Managed to start a little drawing on one of the deeper pages of one of the many Moleskines.
Tired. We are all too tired to make any real progress today... but maybe it is not all about progress anyway.
Hoped so much to be rested and spring loaded. Instead, I feel as if heavy stones had been placed on all my limbs, my head, and even inside of me, piles of little stones on the heavy heart and lungs and soul...
I will try to smile a lot this evening. If I just try hard enough, there will be a series of joyful drawings here, when we all wake up to a new day tomorrow.
Tuesdays tend to be the busiest days anyway.

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(Sorry, could not resist.)

It was not very far from here, inside of a Wal*Mart, right next to the HotWheels cars, right next to the Barbies and the dancing giggle Elmos, about 3 yards from there...
Racoon urine spray (Link provided for illustration only). "Guaranteed to cover up human scent." Right next to it camouflage clothing. Gun Bullets, 12-pack. They were in the same plastic bubbles as the little dolls just around the corner. I was expecting a button in the back "try me" or "watch me kill". Across the isle: Bows. "Don't open the bow boxes." this is not looking good. Right next to the bows were the arrows, of course. Right next to the arrows, were the various weights of arrow heads. Scary, spooky, disgusting little pieces of engineering. Spring loaded razor blades on a sharp piece of metal. Loading device included. Razor blades with little teeth, designed to spring open when needed. Above it all, a 3D-deer, made out of "self healing material" a "replaceable vital area core extends the life of target significantly." Easy assembly, three pieces. A near-perfect replica of a 130-pound Whitetail Deer, made for bow hunters who are "serious" about their shooting..
At least the guns were in a locked glass box, like watches. The most expensive gun was $350... (Maybe they were air guns? "fun")
Attention Wal*Mart shoppers... now you can killer savings in isle 13!...
Oh, I am not kidding...

He would have loved to swim into that harbor, during the day, would have loved to get some fresh, delicious fish. He would have loved to swim by the side of a fisher boat, happy, jumpy, singing one of the current hits.
But whenever he showed up anywhere near a man made place or thing, and anytime there were humans who somehow even just peeked, there would be things thrown at him. Ropes and swimming rings. Somebody once even threw a boat. A boat!
What was wrong with this human species. Why all this throwing of things, why him, why him?
In the beginning things appeared relatively funny... a family on a little boat, threw him a rope, he grabbad it and pulled them out of the harbor... This must have been what they wanted, or no?... He pulled them for hours and hours...
A few days later, all they were throwing were pieced of wood and digested food. Disgusting...
So now he avoided any human interaction... definitely during the day. When humans could see him... they were such overly visual creatures...

At night things were different. He loved nothing more than finding lovers, embraced, in the not so deep waters by the beach... he would then... hmm... we should probably interrupt this story right here...

Looking young was so last century. Stupid little bimbos trying to remove the earliest signs of wrinkles and lines in their dumb little faces. Then all that body worship bulls*it. Those 60 year olds longing to look like 16 year olds obviously wanted to have that "unexperienced look" for a reason. They had peaked in high-school, college, maybe early in their law or medical jobs... They wanted to keep their look, did not want to accept that their bodies and their brains were becoming more and more experienced. They paid to make themselves forget. It was all about forgetting. Forgetting the years, the years passed by, the ones yet to come...
He was of a different breed. He was the next generation. He was ahead of his time, by at least 50 years or so. Waxing his head to make it look like natural, decade long hair loss was maybe one of the least painful procedures. It was quite difficult to find a dentist who would perform what needed to be done.
Aging the skin was a painful process, involving many serious chemicals... and many visits to Dr. Z...
The eyes... what insanely bright light had to be used to make the insides and the outsides of his eyes seriously deteriorate. He now spent days peeking between his private floaters.
It took a serious while for him to reach that ancient gentleman look. He stood out in a crowd of less forward thinking 22 year olds for sure... They did not know what they were about to do with their lives, he had at least the look of an experienced, serious man... He had made sure that not all of his body was aged... and so he was quite convincing in dances with those insanely young looking 55 year olds...
These were truly the good times... the blurry, barely heard of times filled with delicious soups and soft vanilla cookies...
No, not really... he made sure to enjoy the things he really liked... but that's another story...

Can you imagine living here in New York and not leaving the city all Summer long? I mean look at me, I recently started writing confusing little posts commenting on other confusing little post, posted at confusing times, drifting. I pretty much snapped yesterday, sent some really adrenalized (I know this word does not exist) emails, I am turning weird.
I do not think that I am going to end up like the gentleman downstairs who spread himself all over the sidewalk with his coffee and who smeared the butter off the bagel onto his face (he really managed to get it all over himself, even into his hair), but I obviously need to leave the city for at least a short moment.
And this is exactly what is going to happen. I am going to leave this place and take a ride in an actual car, (not a subway car,) one with a combustion engine, take that ride across the river and upupup... for a day or two. I seriously need that. This means that I will fall behind even more on my 360 drawings and the stories and all... but when I come back... expect great things... miracles. (Okay, maybe not.)
While I am gone, can you please find out some things? Some are really silly...
1) Is This Gentleman possibly related to Paul. (Sorry for deep linking, Eliot, your photographs are a true inspiration.)
2) Does anybody out there speak whale, and can you please find out what really happened here... I just do not believe this ridiculously human-centric (not a word, right?) point of view in this sad Story. Especially after reading this article. (I mean: A scuba diver even landed on the whale and shot video as the leviathan dove. Comoooon!)
3) Can you tell me if you managed to go This event... or maybe one of these events. (This question was actually for Alaina, who's little typepad site I like very much.)
4) Can you explain how a package (and it's content is going to be explained on more than one site, I promise) can travel from New York to Anchorage to Shanghai in a matter of hours, be delayed in China and still make it back to New York for a late dinner?
5) Would you be interested in hunting down a lost edition of some of the 360x360 drawings?
6) am I completely insane for liking This? (why did they make the price of it so ugly?)
7) Can you please forgive me?

So why is this post called "Prince of Whales?"... obviously because of poor Migaloo... the "white fella" (this is what his name means), that should be just left alone... (though things seem to be pointing into a rather different outcome.)
Sorry again for this very confused and confusing post. Have a glorious weekend.

Possibilities were endless? Almost endless... Having an incredibly clustered and branched out brain had maybe incredible advantages theoretically, but practically... hmm... a completely different story... Millions of completely different stories... all of them calling for attention... most of them brilliant...
He would often have elaborate conversations about the silliest, tiniest things, really. Lifting a leg soon became impossible. The consequences of any action, (lifting legs was one of them), were just too grave, too complex to be simply accepted, executed, thrown into the mix.
Lucky players who had to deal with primitive games like... chess. There was a finite number of possible moves in chess, a very limited game... Life?, any action in life? Moves in real life?... The place that does not consist of 64 black and white fields and does not not only have a black and a white army of 16 (15+king) but billions, and billions of players with their almost unlimited variations of possible legal and illegal moves... The interaction of several living beings? Yes, the possibilities here were also finite, but the quantity was so much higher that the calculations and predictions of any series of events became a more than serious task... a paralyzing, immobilizing task... aagh...
now what about breathing... the beating of the heart?...

A lady from the office of the dentist I went to visit a few weeks ago called me yesterday. She was speaking with a slight, cold Russian accent and really tried to push some kind of button on me.
"You missed your last week's appointment!" She sounded as if she were the bad mother I never had. "Where were you?"
I was ready to jump into my time machine and go back to that date which I apparently missed. (Why did she call me now? So odd...)
"The Doctor will have time this Sunday."
She was obviously a woman used to speak in important, yet simple sentences.
I had to somehow stop this Stalinesque conversation and told her that I would have to think about this whole thing and that I was not even sure if I would be able to ever see the doctor again. I was not quite ready for the visit to the dentist just yet. I had really forgotten all about the date.
It was after we hung up that I realized that the appointment I had been given was for the removal of a wisdom tooth. The doctor had decided to pull my wisdom teeth one by one, in four separate fun sessions. I was not even ready for the treatment in general. I have been shown x-rays of my wisdom teeth so many times. I have to say that they look better every time I get to see them. One of them might be a bit pushy, but the othes are turning really more and more into pretty healthy mouth citizens. They just happen to be a bit late for the performance and this only got the cheaper seats in the house, ahem, mouth. Oh well. Doctors obviously love removing large teeth. They can not quench their desire with those large front carrot cutters, so they have to settle for the next best thing. The teeth of wisdom. As if those were to give the one who pulls them out some sort of intellectual advantage. (Are they magic teeth?, do dentists have rooms in which the walls are packed with taxidermic plaques of wisdom teeth, the same way a hunter might have a room filled with antlers and ivory?)
This particular doctorchik was just very particular in general. He and his assistant looked as if they had been tele-ported from a Russian version of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. I was really expecting Capitan Nemovitch to enter any minute, as I was sitting there, on the slightly uncomfortable chair, waiting, for about 30 minutes or so.
The bearded assistant entered the room after a while and began to clean some instruments. I thought that I could maybe start a conversation and asked him how long the practice had been in business. (I expected him to say something like... 1866...) Instead he answered about himself. He had been in the country for a year or so. He then continued to tell me that he was a very important professor of dentistry in Moscow. I was almost intimidated. No I was not.
The Doctor had an even more fascinating background. Once I actually got to see him and once he told me about his plans to pull four pieces of wisdom out of my living mouth, he replied to my serious concernes about the procedure in a way an auto mechanic would have reacted (dude, I have fixed Ferraris, I will be able to soup up your Camry.) He told me that he had performed much more complicated operations in Russia. Serious reconstructions of jaws and very complex cosmetic procedures were in his past in Moscow, ... I then helped him to find his pen.
The entire experience was really something of me being a lab monkey in a State subsidized experiment, abandoned, things going wrong, the scientists being high (low) on tranquilizers, the whole big package. It all happened weeks ago, I did not want to write about it then, but it is still in my memory as a very oddly fresh experience.
I still remember how the tool that was supposed to be used to clan my teeth fell apart, how the doctor pulled out some serious wrench and reassembled the whole apparatus with me sitting there, the light still on my open mouth, the suction tube still gurgling in my throat.
As the doctor was cleaning my teeth, he told his assistant about the army spending the entire morning trying to reconnect matter and time. They both laughed as if it had been a real killer joke. I made an asking noise. The doctor repeated the joke for mem now in English. I still did not understand... he then said that I would not be able to understand, because it was a linguistic kind of a joke... "You will not understand, because it is a linguistic kind of a joke."
I thought that matter and time and something being a matter of time and that time mattered... well all these connections did make sense, and it was very nice that they all did... but to laugh about it, as if it were the greatest joke under the sea?... hmm...
I think I am glad that I completely forgot about my appointment last week. I think even if the lady had called me on time... I would have probably kept my wisdom teeth to myself...
Matter and time?... or was it Rhyme and reason?... Why the army?... The Russian Army? hmm... will I ever discover the hidden joke inside of the hidden joke? Will the laughter that is going to follow going to be harmful?... Healing?
Will I grow a beard? Find captain Nemo Nemovitch Nemanov? So many questions... no answers. No answers. At least not now. Too late...

it appears that drawing is a bit painful but still somehow possible in the evenings. Stories are best brewed up freshly in the morning, before coffee, before water, before even the alarm rings.
And things will probably appear more steady in the long run than they actually are. This means that I managed to add three images last night, and then wrote their little accompanying remarks this morning... Not the greatest way to interact with the readers here, but it just makes more sense for me... oh well...

Took a new look at the improved William Wegman World this morning, and I had to smile. Not because of the admittedly sweet dogographs but because of the way Wegman writes about his work (like an actual nice human being). It is just so nice and straight forward that I could not help but smile... Read Art - School and Drawing and Writings... and Painting...
Yeah, this is more like the guy who took those really funny and inspiring Photographs... back in the day...
He does sound like a really nice guy, doesn't he? (And there were no pictures of puppies, see?) : )

Standing on the shoulders of giants was so last summer, worse, so last two summers ago. Beautiful George picked a tired and quiet giant, made his way all the way through his pants and shirt and climbed to the very top. Now he was standing on the head of his giant. The view was much better, he did not have to listen to his stupid pedestal, he did not have to say anything either. This was the perfect place to command a view, to battle the elements, to win the hearts of those who were as clever.
The only thing he needed to do now was to keep his giant standing, walking, maybe even running. Who cares if one stands on the shoulders or the head of a giant, if the giant is so tired and burned out that he needs to sit down. Or can you imagine standing on the head of a giant who collapses? Better not think about such stuff now.
Let's play with birds.

Three little animations for BBC Three, by Lambie-Nairn. Oh, these are going to be burned into your memory, I promise... especially the second one of the three... Terrible damage... yes it is... (thank you Tom)...
(More info Here...
Oh, wait, there is more... BBC - BBC THREE - Blobs (Holy Plastiloni.)

Could this possibly be electric-radiation-deprivation? Could I be suffering from something like that? Could a night spent in a Manhattan apartment without electricity, only filled with microwaves from cellphone transmissions and the unavoidable radio signals (allright, there were quarks involved as well,) have such a long lasting effect? I feel as if I had traveled through several time zones and ended up in a parallel New York that appears to have all the elements of the city I love, but which really is a completely different place.
It must be me. The tiniest disruption in my silly routines makes it barely possible for me to draw, to write, to do anything... seriously...
This is really quite odd. (Maybe it is the peanut butter and Jelly?, the avoidance of perishable foods?)
Who would have thought that my ability to do things could be so dependent on outer factors... wait no... who would have thought that my perception of my ability to do things could be so dependent on my perception of what influence outside factors have on me... who would have thought that my perception of the perception of... (aagh, stop that.)
(Am I just looking for something, or someone, to blame?)
I should probably close this entry now...
Please disregard, please disregard, draft mode, draft mode, delete, delete, delete...

They had all a great past, and an even grander future. The box from which they all came said it loud and clear:"Certified Non-Toxic * Brilliant Colors" and most importantly: "Never Dries Out!". Perfect.
Each one of them made it to be an elephant, a monkey, a bird, a car, a thing, a man, a dog and then again some sort of other monstrous thing. New shapes every day, new adventures.
They all came from the same box, there were mixing instructions on the back (right next to those "how to make a turtle" instructions,) but they never actually "mixed". They remained in their "Richer, Smoother Colors!" state. They changed shapes, they did not become one.
The white piece seemed most afraid of being crushed into the others. It somehow had this weird idea that it had some extra kind of shape, even when it did not, well, that was funny for a few days or so, but then it just became annoying. Even now, the white piece was claiming to be an elephant. Comoooon, what kind of elephant is that, where is the trunk?, where are the ears? It maybe used to be an elephant, maybe a few days ago, but they all had been all sorts of things since. Just to avoid the argument, the other three agreed, that white was an elephant... he had to promise not to make elephant noises though... and yes, whale noises also counted as "elephant".
Dark green had a very different issue. She somehow read somewhere that she was not even supposed to be part of the box. She had been manufactured to roam free, to climb up walls, maybe go into standup (work as silly-putty.) That was obviously a pretty strange idea to her three siblings. She was the same thing as theys, just got a bit more dye after (after!) they had been manufactured, following the same(!) recipe. She did not want to hear that, tried to escape several times, now carried the scars of these attempts, the pebbles, the dog hair, the who knows what, the dust, supposedly even a quarter. (Nobody had ever seen the quarter, she just claimed that it was a california one... oh well...she saw it as "savings to be used for her later life", the others just saw it as a figment of her imagination...)
Bright green was a bit of a name dropper. Who the hell wanted to know about somebody called: Fra Luca Pacioli, Giorgi or this guy Brunelleschi... Then came some talk about Platonic Solids, Kepler, Rudolf Steiner, R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz...
When light green started about Carlo Suares and some anthropocosmic ideas they were still able to bear it... Claiming that Copernicus had been wrong and that "Light Green" was in fact the center of the "known universe", seemed so outdated and bizarre that the others just hoped for the day somebody would just step on light green and turn him into a two dimensional object...
Beige wanted to be less than that. Beige imagined himself as a moebius strip at first... an elegant one, thin, almost translucent.
He then dreamt of turning himself into something even less dimensional... maybe a moment in time, a dot, a blip, a spark of a thought, a distant memory?...
He was also the one who somehow foresaw that not only would they all end up as a grayish, plump piece of modeling clay with some enclosed dirt, well, they would probably end up being mixed with the toy soldiers, which they would then slowly by surely dissolve, since "Never Dries Out" meant that they had this hidden, quite destructive superpower of greasing and softening their surroundings.
He hoped that maybe some of his ideas of self removal would survive, once they turned into a dirty, hairy, forever soft boulder...
Maybe this was the solution... if they just turned into dirt, maybe they could just mix with some potting soil, turn into nutrient... die?...
No... death was unfortunately not really an option. They were created to be "moldable" forever... somebody would probably find them in a few hundred years and shape them into something that was going to prove this person's theory about the current times, the thing all four of them called "now" (at least for now)... "Never Dries Out" meant being moldable forever, slaves to the good and more often really bad ideas by others, others who even though barely ever really born were always allowed, had the privilege, to actually die.

Verizon wanted my money, T-Mobile wanted my money. I happened to have a username and password for T-Mobile... from back in the day, when I tested the access point in the Starbucks, just across half Broadway from me... So I am back, I am paying for not even a frapuccino... the connection is incredibly fast.
(Wasted on my typing here.)
I am on one of the benches that are placed on center lane of Broadway, above the subway tracks, on every street. I a, facing south. With me on the bench a gentleman reading a printout and a man who appears to be slightly dazed, half asleep. Could this be his corner?
Across 93rd Street, a group of five gentlemen, they are having lively conversations.
Cars are rushing past us. Uptown downtown.
Advent Lutheran Church invites: "Come Share Spirit."
I could not log in on West End Avenue. Users seem to use passwords wherever I tried. Are they experts? Do they know what they are doing?
Am I insane for writing here, connected to a paypoint, when I should just walk two more blocks, go home and post from my own desk?
It is just so much fun to sit outside, to watch the city turn dark, punctured by yellow rectangles. It is fun to listen to tiny pieces of conversations...
Five more minutes please...

It was a very brisk walk down by the river. The sun set now, I think, just a few minutes ago it could be seen behind high buildings on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River.
I assumed that the Boat Community on 79th Street would have an open WiFi channel, but not yet. I had to walk up to Riverside Drive, and happen to be on 90th street... the Signal is very strong, the access point is just a default setting of a linksys router. My favorites.
A security officer with a radio walked just past me. There will be thunderstorms in the near future. He also gets the best reception here on the corner.
I would have liked a bench, but this fire hydrant is just fine for now.
The officer is moving on.
I am breathing in this fragrant evening air. The trees around here are just turning into black silhuettes. There is a singing sound from chirping insects. Cars make noise too, of course, somewhere over the river was the distant whisper of a helicopter.
But this is a very quiet corner here, well groomed plants hug, no kiss the pre war apartment building. There are perfectly manicured flowers here too. The street is patched in many ways but still manages to look quite elegant.
(I saw geese by the river. They were enjoying their grass... A monarch butterfly swam through air towards the monstrous Trump condominiums.)
Some joggers are returning from their evening rounds by the water. The cars have all their lights on now...
I will now continue my walk...
Next Stop... West End Avenue... ? (perhaps)

A souped up, white BMW 7 just pulled up to the building entrance here. The licence plates look as if they were not even American, the windows are all dark. Behind the main car, a large dark van. (Bodyguards.)
The "important guy" got out od the BMW and walked smoothly like a dressed up cat into the skyscraper. He was sporting a white trainings outfit with large blue and yellow triangles. (Enyce.)
Two bodyguards got out of the van and followed him... in a good distance.
The cars are still parked there, their lights on... the "important guy" brought back a woman, a few friends, they are talking. She is using her cellphone.
We are all relaxed here, the weather is perfect, there is a light breeze. The light has this soft shimmering quality to it. If I could live off air, I would probably like it prepared exactly this way. Soft scents from nearby restaurants mixed with other natural and designed fragrances. Perfect temperature.
I will now close my PowerBook and take a good walk... wanna come?

There was no internet access from the office all day. No email either. A virus had brought down the servers, the firewalls, the whole nine yards. All PC users will need to restart their "units" in the morning, accept new patches, virus protection, and if all goes well, things will be fine again tomorrow.
But what will happen a week from now, a month?... Will there be a new virus, new obstacles put into place to "improve" the security of things?
I am writing this from a park, from a bench. I just picked one of four available WiFi networks. The access here is free. I am certainly not being secure right now... but I am also allowed to write...
Will the future be a mix of "secure" networks that will become the bait for those who will want to attack and bring them down and those "insecure" completely open access points to almost the same thing?
Will it be like being able to buy some special designer water in a very fine place, designer water which somebody will try to poison, while just a few yards further there will be a well, an open fire hydrant of information?
How long will it take those who provide the "better" services to claim that what is available for free is "dangerous"... is this vilification already taking place?
I could be inside of the starbucks now, paying for internet access, per minute, or I am outside (really just 10 yards outside) and I can access the web and post this here via "default"...
Hmm... what a future this will be...

The first few pages were already curling to the outside, slightly greasy from being opened and touched with just slightly sweaty fingertips too many times. The texture of the cover, now smooth, leathery, still soft, printed in more than four inks. So much information on the front, such a burst of typography and oversized color photographs, even though the model on the cover appears cool on the outside, yet really, really hot inside. So hot, in fact, that the front is only protected by a mesh of sorts, 35% air (inside info), one can almost sense the two large pulsating brains inside. Wow. Much more slender than the last model, cooler, much sexier, smarter, the smartest ever, most incredible ever to sit on the desk. Remember the commercials? Some dude just blown away, out of his house, through walls, past the kitchen, through the answering machine. And she, as cool as the next generation could only possibly be. Right on time, right here, ready for that ivy college lab, ready to crunch some serious numbers, all day, all night, so much smarter than all of us, and yet ready to play with us. Gosh, so hot, there are 9 different cooling zones in her...
I had to borrow the issue of MacWorld, read the story about the new G5, then about that new kitten: Panther, then about Quark6... This is really a wild new moment for all of us, isn't it? Geek Porn for all those speed hungry freaks who spend their dark days in basements, windowless offices, or maybe in places that only have three flimsy cubicle walls x1K. Oh, the dreams that this machine could bring them to a paradise of mindless 3D creation fun, DVD surround everything, all imaginable ports on the back, some important ones in the front. We imagine some Pixaresque fur in Maya being crunched by those two large looking G5 units, kept in mind by 8Gigs of Memory... wow
I remember the cover of an older issue of MacWorld, when there was an F15 in the picture and I think a girl, barely dressed, on an inflated raft, floating next to an incredibly fast Mac fx...
A few years later, me, barely holding on to my chair, friends visiting, to see my "wombat" a wickedly fast Quadra 800.
Why am I so excited about the G5 being shipped now? The fastest booting computer in my home still seems to be that Powerbook100, the most trusted one is my soft and lovely little PowerBook Pismo (G3/500/1GB of Ram)...
I guess I am just really excited for all of us. It is one thing to play that bombing game on the iPod (what scary stuff), but maybe now, finally, we will all be able to take that simulated tank through the streets of Santa Barbara?, just as some of us did, filled with excitement, when we tested out that big oven sized SiliconGraphics Reality Engine equipped machine, back in 1992?...
Boy, I really feel old now... my comparisons span too many years...
Wait, next year, next year will be even better!

He was a rebell. A serious killer. A major and historically important machine. The box had a painting of him on the cover. It was a real oil painting, there was fire, there were powerful, heavy, long killer attachments under his wings in that painting. He was somebody. A real marvel of progress, a true climax of advanced engineering. His specs were printed on the side of the box. His famous pilots were mentioned, right next to the "decal options"...
He saw all this information very clearly as he was being reassembled. He must have been taken apart to fit into the box. At least this is as far as he could imagine what happened. His oldest memories were from the moment when his body was being welded together by some polystyrene melting substance.
This was also the moment when he tried to explain to himself why his pilot was so incredibly powerful and yet slightly uncoordinated. How were they supposed to fly missions together? He was obviously not large enough now to carry even one of his pilot's fingers, let alone the entire plump body...
It must have had something to do with that 1:72 scale. It had obviously been used to transport him (and some other friends and foes) over long distances, to those special locations of secret missions? This was quite obviously a very secret mission. He had been chosen to be built in a very well camouflaged hangar and then turned back into the 1:1 scale again? The mission was so secretive that even the battalion markings were crumbled and turned more abstract before they were applied to his unpainted body. The glass of his cockpit was made cloudy to further disguise his true purpose. No weapons were attached, some other parts were also not affixed, as they would have probably played too much with the fine balance which allowed him to be placed on a clear plastic stand... and on a very high vantage point inside of the hangar... It was maybe not the highest point, but pretty high...
From here he could see the landscape inside of his pilot's world...
There were images of battle situations on the walls, the entire floor seemed to be the result of some serious bloody conflict. There were images of destruction everywhere.
There was a window in the hangar, rarely open. This would most certainly be the point of exit, the starting point of future missions. Once out if this room, he would be somehow turned back into his 1:1 scale, then the jet engine would roar, like in the picture on the box...
Or maybe not?... It was then that he remembered that his engine was in fact one of the "options" listed on the box...

It was in September of 2002 that I wrote a little post about Walter Smith, a very gifted photographer located on 526 West 26th Street here in Manhattan. Back in September his work on his site was buried under layers of a very overpowering interface. Now it is much more accessible, the site looks clean and is about the work. Take a look at some great photography by Walter Smith.

He did not remember the exact moment when he stopped thinking big. Big as in big context. Big as in changing other's lives before changing his own. It must have been roughly 10 years now since the world around him, or at least the world as he saw it, began to shrink. Getting rid of television was a good step, the paper was the next, then music, mail, electricity, water, air... no he still needed air... but barely. He barely moved.
Most of his universe was now confined to the few cubic inches of his still active brain. He was working on making its activity more of a relaxed one. More relaxed every day. Slower, slower, slower. He hoped to maybe one day turn his world into a single tiny point, a pinpoint, a one single photon size loop hole through which he could crawl to the other side of the universe, explode in new and unspoiled fresh ideas. He was preparing for that. Just that.
Any day now, any hour now, any minute now... he would somehow manage to stop even the tiniest thought in its tracks. Stop his lungs from wanting to pump air, stop his heart from beating. It was a tiny, tiny spot through which he had to squeeze himself. It would be worth it. Certainly...

The attempt to avoid perishable foods (or at least those needing refrigeration) for the next few days is making me walk down culinary emergency paths I never thought to have to explore. Today was a historic day for me personally because I actually enjoyed several slices of toasted rye bread with ...( achtung, achtung), peanut-butter and grape jelly.
Haha, this entry should be posted somewhere in the depths of 1974, shouldn't it? The four year old me should have been the one to discover that the taste of pulverized formica is "the good stuff" when put on top of a toasted slice of bread and under the layer or otherwise pretty cheap blueish jelly...
And it should have been the same four year old me who should have been fascinated by something that sticks to my teeth and palate...
But I grew up in the southern Poland, not in the south of the United States, so when American children were having their cereal and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I had my bread with butter and Cabanossy, or maybe Krupniok, or Leberwurst. There were days that started with Kasza, and some that had to be the most horrible ones, as they were kicked off by a bowl of milk soup. (Yuck.)
Eating meat products for breakfast was a serious luxury, of course... but don't we all like to remember the best of times?
So today was the very first time that I enjoyed Peanut-butter and Jelly on toasted Ray bread... what will happen to me next? Will I order a BLT? or even try to enjoy marshmallows? It really appears that my life is quite a serious scenic path on all levels... cheers.

She was not built to cover long distances, not built to be pushed between offices, not built to go dangerously close to staircases, not constructed to roll in and out of meetings in and out of bathrooms. She was not built to be touched by feet, or the head, the face. She always hoped that she would never have to be touched by large areas of naked, more than warm skin (and even this happened more than once). It was all too much really, seriously not part of what she was told she would need to endure when she was manufactured.
What she also did not know of was the slight weakens in one of her five legs. There must have been a bubble in the material perhaps, something that could have happened a long time ago, long before she was actually built? She would not really call it a flaw, more of a hidden secret issue...
And maybe the issue would have never turned into a problem, had she not been put through such strains and wild movements, such unexpected attacks onto her actually pretty well designed core.
So the leg snapped off, it simply broke off, in a moment of incredible, unpredicted stress. She fell, then fell down, down the stairs, tumbling, hitting something, someone, something somehow, somebody again?, down a long, long bank of stairs, slow, fast, slow, fast, slow again.
Things turned quiet as quickly as they had turned violent... she somehow felt comfort in finally not having to move... for an entire night... half a day.
She was found by a cleaning person. There were screams.
Hands arrived, she was given as much attention as everybody else involved.
She spent months in the offices of an insurance agent, next to other pieces of injured furniture. She was stared at, examined, scratched, parts were extracted from her, she was ready to die.
She was then moved into yet another room . She stayed there for the longest time. Maybe a year or so, maybe ten years? It definitely felt this long, maybe longer.
It was not until much, much later that she was picked up again.
She never understood why she was being rescued in such elaborate ways, at night, quietly. Oddly enough, she was not discarded... she was not put into one of those destructive trucks she heard about... and, frankly, was very afraid of.
She was given a new set of legs... shiny, polished. Her soft parts were shampooed, vacuumed, cleaned. The wood was polished, and so was the chrome...
It was all a very mysterious set of events.
Nobody ever sat on her again... but she felt complete, quiet... maybe a tiny bit confused... so incredibly happy...

Each one of the songs was a perfect hit. No misses, my dear. All of them were quite beautiful. All of them hit the right spot. Wherever she chose to sing, wherever she chose to let others hear what she had to say, there was less violence, increased plant grow, riper fruit.
She flew from forest to forest, inspiring generations of Chickadees, and not only her own species, others too. Soon there were bears humming her songs and rabbits dancing the dances she proposed. Foxes were writing down her scores, deer ran for miles to just hear her sing.
She was a true blessing to forests and parks... so good, so good.

A massive package of paper just hit the bottom of my door... outside there is the regular honking and the screeching sounds of the subway. I think we are back in Business, dear New York, I think we are back to a fairly regular Saturday...
Will I have a cheese omelette for breakfast today?, or should I wait for a few more days?...
How quickly can one be turned into one's own grandparents, who used to keep their money under their mattress and unbelievable amounts of canned food inside of the musty smelling closet?
I am considering adding a torchlight to my daily bag of wonder in which I carry my Powerbook, the mouse, the power supply, the mouse pad, the pens and pencils, erasers, a pocket sharpener, several sketchbooks, 4 Japanese brush pens (one with only water), a black Leica Minilux, several rolls of film (I am so analogue), the serious black swiss army knife (the ultimate size), printouts, forms, stuff... Yes it is a heavy bag and yes I carry it with me every day.
I am hoping to be able to cut out the laptop soon, as it is a heavy piece to lug around...
Hmm, let me walk over to the door and see what the New York Times has sent my way...
__
It is actually two papers. Yesterday's paper had not made it up the stairs, and so now I will need to catch up on looking at pictures and reading the captions. Not sure I will get to do much more. The amount of information appears massive.... ; )

It was a place where the inside was exposed to the outside. Two sided mirror, facing the street, intimate presentations to oneself, to others? to both.
So nice to call them matches. Such ready to burst greetings, wrapped in this paper made transparent material. Keeping the cover closed was not really an option. Tearing one of the paper sticks, grabbing it firmly between the sheets of rough paper and then pulling out the coated side, quickly...
light...

"What did you do last night?"
I took a cab from east harlem and the cabbie looked like one of the friendlier guys somewhere from the Caribbean.
"Last night? What I did last night? Oh it was a good night, last night! You know I rent the cab and it is $150 for the 12 hour shift, so do you know how much I made on top of that? I mean I drive a cab for 12 years now, and I drive the cab only two days a week. So yesterday, I had to go. Many drivers went back to the garage, because there was really bad traffic and they were scared. You know, we cabbies do not like traffic. This is why you will never see a cabbie go slow. We want to pick up and drop off and pick up and drop off, and fast. This is the only way we can make money. So many went back to the garage, but I had to go. Do you know how much I made after rent and the gas?"
He pulled out a bundle of money, some pieces of paper...
"Here, CitiBank, I made a deposit today. Look: $1020. I made more than a thousand bucks!"
He showed me the yellow deposit slip. (It was for $1020.)
"The traffic was really bad. Really bad, in the beginning. The first customer, to get from downtown to FDR, it was 1.5 hours! Just for 7 blocks. Really bad. The first four hours were really bad. But after that! It was good. Those people in Connecticut have money, I kept going to Connecticut. Round trips. Any price I gave them, they pay. This one guy gave me $200 and then a $100 check! One hundred dollars tip! Crazy money. Another one: I had six people in the cab. Four in the back, two in the front. We went to Westchester. It was a good night. And after 10 hours, most cabbies were out of fuel. They were just on the side of the road. Waving... but I was not out of fuel, because I knew that there was electricity in Connecticut, so I took a guy to Connecticut and refueled. I went through the entire night.
I could have maybe went longer, but I needed my 8 hours of sleep. This was a really good, good night."
What a man...
Another cabbie told me a different angle of the story, he had stayed at home. Because he lives in Brooklyn, he would have not made it into the city anyway. He said that most of his friends who drove last night made $800-$1000 but that was only because they were charging pretty much illegal flat-rates. He was very strongly against those increased fares. ... of course...

The weather is quite beautiful outside, warm, sunny, warm... just like the inside of the refrigerators in the bodega on 95th and Amsterdam. A little foot thermometer points really deeply into "SPOILAGE"... (It is the large yellow zone.)
I bought a few of the drinks that never spoil. Sugar water with artificial flavoring, some of the better stuff money can buy right now. As I am paying I notice that the counter is still filled with Ice Cream and other little perishable sweet gems...
"Too bad you will have to throw these all out now."
"Oh no, these good. Funny, many people ask about the ice cream."
"Hmm, interesting...", I did not want to argue with her on this one... "How was the night here?"
"I was not here, the boss was here, protecting the store, with another guy. Next door they smashed in the window at the jeweler at 5:30."
"5:30am?" I imagined a group of well prepared attackers who singled out the store after a night of searching for the most vulnerable spot...
"5:30 PM, daytime, they did not wait for no night."
"Wow." Now I imagined a bunch of drunk guys with a brick.
"The owner shot his gun, they ran like crazy."
"Glad nothing worse happened."
"I can see in your eye, you do not believe me with the ice cream."
"Well, I don't quite trust it."
"We checked the milk, we checked the juices. It is all good. Maybe because we run 24 hours. Always run..."... she paused.... "But I will not drink the milk either."
"No Milk, no eggs..."
"No eggs, no? Oh no, I had an egg sandwich today..."
"It will be fine... it will be allright..."

The pawn shop next door has indeed a smashed in window.
Duct tape holds together a constructed barrier on which somebody wrote "DON'T TOUCH"...
Otherwise, things look like any regular summer Saturday (more quiet than a Friday.)... It is odd to know that all thermometers are pointing to "SPOILAGE" all over the city... and I also wonder when it will be safe to buy ice cream again...
(Maybe it never was...)

Woke up at 6am, because of a dream that the light was back on. It was not. About an hour later, the Dunkin Donuts sign across Broadway was showing off its "open24hours" again. There were four policemen in front of the shop, tapping each other on the backs.
Looks like things are almost back in order.
My cable connection is not working yet. (And yes, the local TV station appears to be still down.)...
Let's hope everybody else is okay as well...

Wolfram was a hot, hot kind of guy. When attached to the right circuit, he could be like a little star: Hot, hot, hot. He was a truly bright guy too. Smart, natural, maybe a little on the reddish side of the spectrum, but wasn't this the pride of his family anyway? Back in 1879, his ancestors looked pretty silly, they had round heads, died quickly. He was the new kind, the smart kind, the 100W kind, the seriously advanced kind of guy.
He was able to attract some really good attention. (Not just moths, mind you.) It depended solely on him if somebody looked good, or did not look at all.
It was his job to inspire, illuminate, guide. One of his ancestors even became the synonym for ideas themselves. Who else could claim that?
He was an honest, serious guy. He could make criminals talk, if only left with them for a little while. He could make scary places look beautiful, he could make the invisible very obvious.
He was the sun of the night. He was mighty, truly the center of his universe.
Which made him certainly not believe in a "creator". Those who make their own shadows do not believe in that kind of stuff.

(Don't tell him that, but Wolfram feels relatively transparent and actually slightly lightheaded, if not even empty-headed... being able to shine the way he does, usually comes at a high price.)

it is so incredibly dark here in new york. Outside there is a whistling of the police directing traffic to red candle light. at least they look like candles. There is a mass of people walking mostly uptown. Laughter, whistles, bus sounds, conversations. Police. It is a different city tonight. The sounds are very different. I thought that this was pretty much what Y2K was supposed to be like. Nothing is really working... no ATMs, no cash registers, nothing that needs refrigeration will survive the night.

When I had lunch at a japanese restaurant today, there had been just a new delivery of tuna. Half a fish, an entire huge muscle, it seemed, so incredibly fresh... so incredible. The chefs were debating how to place some of the important cuts...
It will be rotten tomorrow... it will be gone.

JUst made a huge dinner, with whatever I thought could go bad in the refrigerator. It was a good candle light dinner...
the battery power is running out on my powerbook... I will need to stop posting now...
Good night... let's hope the night will be quiet and peaceful...
oh, and New Jersey has Power...
The sky might be too muggy to see the stars tonight, but the lights in New Jersey, certainly look as far away and as fantastic tonight...

managed to get home... the server in Texas is obviously up, Earthlink is also working, so is the phone, so I can post here. Will see if I can post more later (have very limited battery time).

So far, the lights just went dead at about 4:30... I began my walk home about an hour later. Not I am here, safely. Towels with water are cooling things down.
All seems calm so far.
Candles are in place...
waiting for the night.

They were casual drinking buddi