Well I'm out of here for a much deserved vacation w/ GF in Florida. What really disturbs me though is that right before I leave, I read about a giant black waterborne cloud o' death that's apparently floating around the area I'm going... Not to make today's topic all about environmental holocaust but really! I mean I'm getting out of new york to try escape a totally devastated ecosystem and now whamo, I'm right in another one... I swear.
posted by Robotpolisher 8:11 PM :: (0) comments

I'm not trying to sound needlessly alarmist or anything but something about seeing a map of post global-warming North America sends a bizarre shiver down my spine...
posted by Robotpolisher 8:04 PM :: (0) comments

You know, as the world's last remaining super power, I guess it's part of the perks to blithely go around offending the rest of the world. What scares me is that I think more than often we manage to do it entirely unintentionally.... Witness the U.S. Military's new super field artillery piece of the future, The Crusader.

I think what scares the bejesus out of me most is that they have an online store! Must be anticipating the traffic...
posted by Robotpolisher 1:23 PM :: (0) comments

All hail the endless treasure trove that is the Nixon tapes. If nothing else than giving us wonderful nuggets of populist wisdom such as the following:

May 26, 1971:
"You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists."

It makes ya wanna laugh, it makes you wanna shudder. All in all it makes me afraid of the great voting masses of this country and more than anything makes me wish that they hadn't removed the whitehouse bugging system after Nixon's departure. Just imagine all the fabulous dirt we could be privy to in 25 years or so when the Bush tapes go would public. Sigh.
posted by Robotpolisher 11:50 AM :: (0) comments

Okay, why wasn't I notified?! Like Fred Savage's weird little brother in The Wizard, I think I am now officially convinced I need to hit the Worldwide Boobietouch Tournament!

For those uninformed, boobietouch is that MegaTouch game you can play at bars where you have to "spot the differences" between two pictures of incredibly sileconed badly photoshopped skanky women. Me and a bunch of my friends play this regularly whenever we get together, but mostly just for the hell of it and because, well, we're drunk... You mean there's cash money involved?! JEBUS!
posted by Robotpolisher 8:00 PM :: (0) comments

WE HAVE CAT!

You know, the weird thing is, I used to hate cats.... I used to live with 3 of them. they'd piss on my bag, they'd eat my clothes, they'd be constantly underfoot.... And then I moved in with GF and my life (catwise, and in every other way I can think of) changed radically, and for the better. :)

So as of this morning, in addition to Simon the gay french alarm-clock-cat, me and gf have been blessed by the presence of Amelia.

Amelia = not taking shit from nobody. Amelia = a beautiful cat that needed a home that I swear to god we plan to give her. Amelia hides under couches for bits, and then when her new-in-the-house braveness really kicks in, she hops up on the couch with us and sleeps with her beautiful hereford lookin' head on gf's lap. She's incredible.... She's the first furry out-of-a-cage pet I've ever had in my life, and from all of my childhood dreams of having a dog to run around in the yard with to all my jealousy of new york cat owning friends... Something's just kinda fit into place... in the best way I can imagine...

I paid for the adoption fees for gf as her birthday present. And I hope that she's an amazing present for her, becuase god knows she deserves it.... Oddly enough, though I never really thought about it at the time, I think I'm
loving her being here just as much as if I'd gotten her for myself.

So thank you gf, and thank you amelia. You'll be so happy. I know I already am.

posted by Robotpolisher 1:26 AM :: (0) comments

The Future. Today!
posted by Robotpolisher 7:52 PM :: (0) comments

Ya know, not to enter into a complete topic about this whole group, but it gets very amusing to me the kind of things obsessive fans of a group will do, especially when said group drop entirely off the face of the earth but are seemingly still working on something.... Witness the pages and pages devoted to whatever scrap of music Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine fame might release into the world, and of course the rampant speculation about whether he has or hasn't recorded anything new, and if it's been rejected by the record label. etc. etc.

The interweb is a great tool for obsessiveness like this. Of course, for my money, the people most adept at this are fans of German proto-electronic godfathas Kraftwerk, a group who haven't released anything new since 1986, release a remix CD in '91 and an overblown jingle as a single back in 2001, all the while quiet and mysterious. Since then, apparently they're still working, showing up every day at their fabled Kling Klang studios in Dusseldorf like the factory workers they claim to be. But just what on earth is going on in there? It's a sign of how obsessed people are with finding out that someone actually made their way in, and took exciting pictures like this through the windows: In the storage room of genius. Pictures of the courtyard to the studio even lead to discussions as to which band member owned which car.

Going back to the whole cargo cult analogy, I guess you just gotta watch the horizon and see what washes up, but it doesn't hurt to invent some binoculars : ) Egads... workweek ALMOST over....
posted by Robotpolisher 5:33 PM :: (0) comments

Me and the coffeemaker. Day 3

Yeeee-aagrrrgh!!!!! Ladies and gentlemen, I can't feel my scalp.

The easy availability of fresh brewed coffee via a fun to use clicking and whirring one cup at a time machine (See below) has somehow accidentally turned my workday into something akin to a drinking game. How much can I take before I totally crash? How often will I have to go to the bathroom? What will this REALLY end up doing to my stomach lining in the long term.

Jim claims he's a "house blend man" referring to one of the types of coffee packets that come w/ The Device.

John? Red tea.

Me? I just fear the thing like a cargo cultist who found a washed up case of Glenlivet. I don't trust what the box produces, it makes me feel all weird but strangely fullfilled, and if it washed back out on the tide I'd miss it like crazy and probably go into some kind of withdrawal...

howzat for a shaky metaphor! :)
posted by Robotpolisher 11:43 AM :: (0) comments

Oh sweet Kraftwerk skateboard why do I covet thee so? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that today feels like spring and I just wanna get out and roll around at high speed dodging taxis and people and potholes (and preferably holding gf's hand while doing it)... Maybe it's because of the sheer humor of Kraftwerk, easily the least X-Games people I can think of putting out a skateboard along w/ their myriad mousepads and tshirts. Maybe it's just because they're the only people so self-absorbed and anonymous, yet famous and revered that they could get away with putting up an ecommerce site as stripped down and mystifying as that.

Customer service contact information? Nein!

Product description (is this skateboard actually as flat and square as it looks?! It must weigh a ton. oh and do I actually get trucks and wheels w/ that?). Nooo hooo....

Shipping Information? What you need to know when it might get there? How gauche.

I love those fucking whackjobs.
posted by Robotpolisher 1:51 PM :: (0) comments

All good robots need a little fuel to make it through the day. In their infinite wisdom, my fellow-robot employees decided to order one of these beautiful little fuckers. It's a coffee maker for people like me who are a) too dumb and or lazy to measure b) too selfish to take the time make a whole pot of coffee for the rest of the office and/or c) hopelessly addicted. I like to think I qualify on all three counts. I give myself 3 months before the first ulcer.
posted by Robotpolisher 11:58 AM :: (0) comments

So okay, it's fair to say that the Swedish government manages regularly to do a million things wrong. But one thing I'll give them credit for is supporting da rock. Witness their anual program that gives block grants to indie labels. Try to imagine congress trying to pass THAT one. But upon realizing that music is a bigger export than say lumber and ball bearings (Which we apparently also excel in shipping elsewhere) they decided to drag a whole batch of bands over here to play CBGB'sthis past weekend. That's fucking cool. Plus apparently our bald but relatively groovy general consul apparently invited them to chill out at his place for a bit and then went to the show. Oh my national pride gland is swelling out of control. whimper.

On a more frustrating note, why on god's green earth didn't they do this eye study when I was a kid! I had to wear one of those damned eyepatches around for months at a time. Grrr... Okay so on the upside my eyes don't point in two different directions constantly. BUT STILL! I feel a "back in my day..." kind of rant coming on...
posted by Robotpolisher 11:45 AM :: (0) comments

Rock!: My old neighborhood (Fort Greene) and my new neighborhood (the Smith Street area) are apparently and officially played out!


posted by Robotpolisher 10:44 AM :: (0) comments

Worth noting: I've been meaning to do something w/ this damned thing forever. I'm just sorry it's in such a half assed state of affairs right now... But it'll get better. I think. Hah, just what I need... another distraction at work : )
posted by Robotpolisher 7:52 PM :: (0) comments

Six months on and I still feel like crap and the events are refusing to go away quite the way I'd like them to.

Quick background:
When it happened I was still at home in Carroll Gardens/Red Hook Brooklyn, which is across the river from the south tip of manhattan and unfortunately right downwind that day. So as the buildings were still burning there was a surreal flutter of burnt chunks of bank statements, documents and that day's new york times raining down on the streets, and as soon as the collapse happened a thick noxious fog shrouded all the streets as people scampered off to find somewhere they could breathe better. When I finally came back around midnight there was a snowlike layer of ash (of people, of the buildings of god-knows-what) covering every car, awning and stoop. That all blew away over the next few days or got washed away with the next rain, but it's hard not to remember. And the view out my apartment's back window just feels oddly empty.

But the days after are still stronger. Like a number of new yorkers, me and my girlfriend spent the next 4 days doing relief and rescue work w/ volunteer organizations. I ended up working near the site w/ the huge amount of supplies people sent in while my girlfiend ended up working at ground zero doing unspeakable things like bagging body parts, bringing water and new clothes to rescue workers and stampeding away w/ the crush every time one of the nearby buildings was thought to collapse.

So okay, these are all big things but they're the past, and there are a lot of other people who went through worse and sacrificed more. I should probably just get on with life.

But the news keeps showing battlefields and editorials about widening the war and the lack of support for even the simplest questions about where our country's going. My backyard is what got fucked with, but I still can't force myself to get angry enough. More than anything, the more supposed revenge is meted out in our and my name, the worse I feel about the whole damned thing and the less I feel like I can put it behind me.

And every time a huge convoy of fire trucks or cop cars whizzes past on its way to somewhere, I still freeze, and my first reaction is to find out if something new has happened. Every time this happens, I feel like a complete moron and wonder why I can't just relax.

Every time I read another news report about the air quality at ground zero and how they can't quite figure out exactly what's up with it, I wonder about that first morning in Carroll Gardens and the time me and the girl I love spent working down there. But that's probably just me being paranoid.

Whenever the cops and firefighters or their dogs get a 10 minute segment on everything from the olympics to the Westminster kennel show to the home shopping network I wonder why nobody ever mentions the thousands of average new yorkers who made the whole thing work and had a hell of a lot less training, like the group of young high school kids I met who were just walking by one of the donation centers w/ some clothes and the next thing they knew they were on their way to ground zero w/ hardhats. And just what the fuck was the Salvation Army doing sending teenagers down there anyway? And why do I even care at this point. It's all a little petty right?

So six months on, of course life's picked back up and gotten some sheen of normality back. But I think maybe the disconnect between the horrors and uncertainties of that day and the resulting warfare, deaths, backwards social legislation at home, well meant but hollow tributes on TV in print and in the movies is what makes me unable to leave it all behind. Either that or I haven't been drinking enough. No, I suspect it's the former....

posted by Robotpolisher 7:44 PM :: (0) comments