This is too, too funny: "I, Jane Doe, scanned my boobs in October of 1999.""
(I can't believe I only stumbled onto Escribitionist today—it started over a year ago! Why didn't anyone tell me about it?)
October 2002 Archives
Friends do nice things like, say, send you links to a nice interview with your crush.
George is my friend.
I wasn't feeling too good Tuesday afternoon so I decided to skip Red's class in the evening, because the last place you want to get sick in New York is the subway. Had I known Jaron Lanier was our mystery guest speaker for the night, I would've probably ponied up the money for a cab both ways.
But I didn't know. So I missed his talk.
Fuck.
Lovely lovely redesign over at moonmilk.com, yet another site that mine would sacrifice many a beautiful goat to be like when it grows up.
I'm moving to an apartment on the Upper West Side this afternoon, a lovely place except for the fact that it has no phone line, cable internet or DSL, so I won't be able to check my mail and blog from home for a few days—unless a kindly neighbor has an open wireless network, but I'm not holding my breath.
I keep forgetting to post this, so likely many of you have already seen it, but reive's things about nyc is fantastic and oh so true.
I don't know who he is, but Mr Dan Kelly sure has a mighty entertaining about page.
I'm only slightly embarrassed to admit this GMA in 2004 campaign poster made me laugh so hard I almost peed myself.
Tomorrow's Anthony Townsend/NYCwireless lecture has been postponed to next Friday, November 1. If you'd like to come, please let me know through email or by leaving a comment; you'll have to be at the lobby of Tisch (721B Broadway) at 6:15 so I can meet you and bring you up to ITP.
...if Tancangco is allowed to get away with what she has done to delay and frustrate the mandate of Congress and the desire of the Filipino people to modernize the election process, we will have little hope of the Commission on Elections ever doing things right. And because the correct and firm action by Congress will be a warning to the appointing power and appointees to constitutional offices that Congress is ready to impose the sanction of impeachment to those who would use the protective mantle of tenure to abuse or misuse the prerogatives of appointment and of high office.
update: "House junks ouster move vs Tancangco"
Jerks.
Check out these Friendly Dictator Trading Cards, circa 1990: "three dozen of America's most embarrassing "friends", a cunning crew of tyrants and corrupt puppet-presidents who have been rewarded handsomely for their loyalty to U.S. interests." Most of the dictators in the cards are deposed, dead or both, but have things really changed much since the deck was made?
This one is of course my favorite:
Under Marcos, the Philippines' national debt grew from $2 billion to $30 billion (and his wife Imelda's shoe collection grew along with it to over 1,000 pairs), but U.S. corporations in the Philippines prospered, perhaps explaining why the U.S. didn't protest Marcos' imposition of martial law in 1972.
The Carter Administration engineered an $88 million World Bank loan to Marcos, increased military aid to him by 300% and called him a "soft dictator". But a 1976 Amnesty International report identified 88 government torturers and stated that alleged subversives had their heads slammed into walls, their genitals and pubic hair torched, and were beaten with clubs, fists, bottles and rifle butts.
By 1977, the armed forces had quadrupled and over 60,000 Filipinos had been arrested for political reasons, yet in 1981, Vice President George Bush praised Marcos for his "adherence to democratic principal and to the democratic processes".
*cough*
[ via jwz's LiveJournal ]
Having spent the last seven years dressed mainly in t-shirts, shorts and slippers finally caught up to me this past week because it's been so damn cold all day every day and I've pretty much run out of weather-appropriate things to wear (i.e. items of clothing with long sleeves or pant legs).
So I went shopping this afternoon and finally came to terms with why I will never be a fashionista like PePs, BDF or Tara: I am much lazier than I am vain.
Take today, for example—I saw a long-sleeved shirt that came in four different color combinations, three of which I liked. I thought to myself, Why prolong my shopping agony? and bought the three. Then I found chinos that actually flattered my legs and butt, something that's never ever happened before (I mean, chinos!), so I got them in two colors. I mean, I enjoy shopping, I really do, but when I'm looking to fill gaps in my wardrobe instead of a particular piece (like for a wedding) I shop just like a boy.
Can we still be friends?
Okay, I don't care if the Big Apple Comic Convention's National Expo is known for having lousy panels, I'm going anyway so I can meet Sergio Aragones. I've been a fan of his since the fourth grade!
Make sure to check out this infographic of the other day's explosion in Bali. The last frame literally took my breath away and for all the wrong reasons, which is of course the whole point of the thing.
[ via emptybottle.org ]
Jason Mecier is an amazing mosiac portrait artist out of San Francisco who might just be one of my soulmates, if you consider that I found him while googling for "Jocelyn Wildenstein + Carol Channing"—his gallery of yarn portraits was the only real result.
These are my two absolute favorite pieces of everything that's up on the site, although I'd love to have anything by this guy in my house:
Veggie platter Martha Stewart is a close third, although the Tammy Faye Bakers are all also great, in any medium.
I wish Debra Messing would stop wearing low-cut tops and bustiers all the time when she looks to be even flatter than I am, and I'm only two sizes up from a training bra. I mean, really, how can you flaunt something that isn't there?
Anthony Townsend, co-founder of NYCwireless, is going to be talking at ITP next Thursday at 6:30 p.m. on "Building New York City's Wireless Parks: Merging New Media and Urban Design"—anyone who wants to go, drop me a line and I'll see what I can do about getting you on the guest list and into the building. This should be one of the most fascinating* forums of the semester.
More on Townsend and NYCwireless from the Village Voice in 2001: "High Speed, Freed".
*That is, if you are a geek. Like me.
The Onion's A.V. Club sent out a handful of people to ask celebrities, "Is There A God?" and I'm pleased to see some of my peeps were totally representin':
The Onion: Is there a God?
Conan O'Brien: Yes. Wait, hold on. No.The Onion: Is there a God?
Sarah Vowell: Absolutely not.The Onion: Is there a God?
Joss Whedon: No.
O: That's it, end of story, no?
JW: Absolutely not. That's a very important and necessary thing to learn.
More interesting to me though, especially given everything that's happened over the past year, are these two responses:
The Onion: Is there a God?
Andy Richter: I don't think so. I don't know. I don't think about it much, because I figure, what's the point? I don't know if it's agnosticism. There are things that are beyond our comprehension, so why bother? That's sort of my spiritual feelings. I feel like there might be some design. You can't think, like, "Well, how did everything get here?" I don't know. That's how it is. "I don't know, next, now what's for lunch?" When you pray, I don't think anyone's listening. Besides other people, I don't think anyone cares if you murder people or masturbate or shove things up your butt. I don't think there's anybody sitting in the sky watching you. You're on your own. All you have is other people around you, and how you treat them. I actually think that not having a focus on God would make life better, because there would be more of an imperative to be nice to each other. There would be no more brand-name wars over stuff, and pointless arguments over east side/west side, go-fight-win. But I don't know. People have got to worry about something, and there's obviously some kind of anthropological, almost zoological need. This particular animal does this particular thing. Instead of constructing a hive out of paper that they chew up, they create a God. It's just something that they do.The Onion: Is there a God?
Bill Maher: I think there is. We did a show last night about God and religion with Dave Foley, who I love, and we were arguing against this one woman who had a book called I Like Being Catholic. Someone said, "Oh, boy, a lot of atheists on this panel." I said, "I'm not an atheist. There's a really big difference between an atheist and someone who just doesn't believe in religion. Religion to me is a bureaucracy between man and God that I don't need. But I'm not an atheist, no." I believe there's some force. If you want to call it God... I don't believe God is a single parent who writes books. I think that the people who think God wrote a book called The Bible are just childish. Religion is so childish. What they're fighting about in the Middle East, it's so childish. These myths, these silly little stories that they believe in fundamentally, that they take over this little space in Jerusalem where one guy flew up to heaven—no, no, this guy performed a sacrifice here a thousand million years ago. It's like, "Who cares? What does that have to do with spirituality, where you're really trying to get, as a human being and as a soul moving in the universe?" But I do believe in a God, yes.
(Many thanks to Lille for sending me this while we were backstabbing others having a pleasant chat over AIM. Friends send friends quality linkage.)
Comictastic, which I've just taken for a spin, is basically NetNewsWire but for daily comics. It works well enough but I'd appreciate it much more if there were more comics I actually liked that were available on it, instead of just The Boondocks and Diesel Sweeties (I mean, c'mon, Brenda Starr? Does anyone know anyone who actually reads that? Ziggy? Who the hell reads Ziggy?), but then again, hey, it's free, and they'll hopefully be adding more (better!) feeds in the future.
Sculptor Chris Eckert recently directed one of his art classes at SJSU to "pretend that you are Leonardo da Vinci and design a device that will protect a large raw grade-A egg when dropped from the top of the Art and Design building."
Lucky for us Niem (whom some of you may remember from his ACME Novelty Gallery, which made the rounds some month ago) was in the class and not only documented the egg drop but put it online for all of us to gawk at. I loved Niem and Richard's entries, but my favorite has got to be Mike's:
If only there was video! I'd love to see just how that thing spiralled down.
The New York run of the digital film festival RESFEST starts next week, from October 16 to 20 at New School's Tishman Auditorium.
The line-up sounds fantastic and I'd really love to go but alas, the life of a student at ITP is no life at all. My classmate Quin said the other night her strategy for coping with the stress the program puts on her was basically decide that her life for the next two years was ITP—that way she wouldn't have to worry about anything else outside it. Part of me was appalled in an oh-my-that's-not-a-healthy-thing-to-do kind of way, and the other half was sitting there nodding, thinking hey, you know what? that just might work.
I've been here six weeks and already I feel like I need a long vacation!
This is my sexiest post ever, and that's because I'm typing it on my brand spankin' new TiBook. Eat your hearts out, kids.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who looks youthful at 55, said Wednesday she's still getting it despite hectic schedule and age.
"Plenty," she replied to [a] lady journalist's query about her sex life as the audience broke into laughter and applause.
"Please make foreign policy the headline," Ms Macapagal appealed, herself breaking into hearty mirth.
I couldn't be happier for her but, you know, TOO MUCH INFORMATION!
Also, I'm wondering where PDI writer Fe Zamora and her section editor went to J-school. I mean, "lady journalist"—wtf is up with that? And since when is 55 too old to be getting laid?
randomWalks's front page has given way to DAYKU: a thousand syllables for peace. Please visit.
Lille reviews friend Tara's new book Getting Better for the Inquirer.
It's a hundred bucks at your nearest posh Manila newstand and comes with a free copy of Cosmopolitan Philippines (heh), so make sure to get a copy. Or three. Give them to your best friends!
Movable Type celebrates its first birthday with the release of version 2.5. Congratulations, Mena and Ben!
This morning while waiting to catch the N train in Times Square I was standing beside a with serious facial fuzz. This was even stranger than it should've been because although she wasn't very attractive (even without the hair) you could tell she was making some sort of effort to dress up and look nice. (But, you know, it wasn't really working because, well, you know, she had a mustache.)
When I got in and took my seat, a had her cd player turned up so loud I could hear the sound leaking from her earplugs four feet away. I understand wanting to drown the outside world out, I do it too, but... four feet? I was surprised blood wasn't dripping out of her ears.
She got off before I did and a middle-aged man with Tourette's Syndrome walked in and stood right in front of me for the last two stops, also getting off at 8th and Broadway. He had the involuntary tics and vocalization but not the coprolalia most of us associate with people who have TS—only 15% or so of sufferers actually have coprolalia, but since it's so sensational it's the symptom that gets the most media attention.
When I noticed his tics I had an immediate flashback to the first time I ever heard of TS, watching "L.A. Law" when I was eleven; those of you too young to remember having watched the show might (unfortunately) be familiar with it because of "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo".
She's looking at me now in a way she never has. She's got nobody else. Her eyes are as blue as the sky that's about to disappear for a year or so in the nuclear winter and they are still wide with how wonked-out she is. These eyes are turning to me for guidance, but I never have listened very close to the prophecies and stuff that Pastor Lynch has been trying to explain. I've been too busy watching Jennifer Platt and thinking I didn't have a shot in the world at her and praying that I was wrong. God does answer prayer. I can finally testify to that.
Robert Olen Butler's "Alvin Happens Upon the Greatest Line Ever" reminds me why I used to love Nerve so much.
Why Lille's friend Easy Fagela should put his shit together and get his own damn blog already:
MANILA (REUTERS) - In today's historic breakfast meeting, the Easy Fagela council passed a resolution condemning US President Bush's "Bomb the Shit Out of Iraq" plan. "We were just eating, hanging out, smoking cigs, when it hit us, like, hey I think we should stop that war on Iraq thing," said Easy Fagela. "Giera giera stupida!"
The council's decision was met by stiff opposition from a photograph of George Bush on Easy's breakfast table. "The United States has suffered enough from these terrorists. It is in the interest of world peace that the US initiate a war on Iraq," said the photograph in a high-pitched voice issuing from the corner of Easy's mouth.
(Special related message to Lille's friend Ed: I know you're reading this, so. Please just get a blog already before I start to hate you. Don't make me have to fly back to Manila just to kick your ass.)
Tread lightly around this garbage can. Or you'll be sorry.
Speaking of weblogs, I think instantaneous photo blogging via cell phone has the potential to make blogging more interesting but then also more invasive than it currently is.
It would be very neat if I ran into, say, Gillian Anderson, managed to work up the nerve to ask to have my picture taken with her and was then able to upload it with a short post (probably all exclamation points) less than a minute later, but then again I know a guy who follows his crushes into the men's room to check out their dicks while they pee (who would probably take photos and share them with the world if he could) which makes me think maybe it's not such a good thing. I'm usually all about cheerleading free instantaneous access to information, but then again I can't bring myself to believe that everyone's going to be responsible and considerate of the privacy of others.
I mean, hello, anyone remember that time some guy posted photos he took of Megnut and Jason Kottke strolling in a San Francisco park, unaware they were being watched? WTF. I'm still creeped out that anyone would even think that that would be a cool thing to do.
Four design students from Central Saint Martins received Nokia 7650 phones, enabling them to send each other multimedia messages. Four weeks worth of photos and text from their daily lives is in the new book see what i'm talking about?, from Nokia and Contra Publishing
Tom, one of the participants, says:
Phone messaging to me seemed an iconic transfer of slices of memory, a frame from the film of your life. These phones, a portal into your friends' worlds really let you see through their eyes, prompting an urge to share the things you often only see yourself. (...) It's not voyeurism as such, but more rewarding, an allowance or permission to share personal experiences as and when they are actually experienced. In this new world there is no need to explain when you can just show.
I wonder when we'll get to see the first wave of cell phone photo blogs (if there aren't any already out there), and also if any of them are going to be as visually interesting as, say, lightningfield.com.
I'm so not a fan of Isagani Cruz, but he hits the nail right on the head here:
Of course. Sen. Vicente Sotto III is supporting Fernando Poe Jr. and says the King of Philippine Movies will be elected President of the Philippines in 2004. Sotto and Poe are showbiz colleagues. The first is a former television comedian of deplorable taste and the second is the mighty monarch of action and drama. They are birds of a feather who want to fly high but lack the wings to soar.
I do not mean to disparage the showbiz people in toto, many of whom I sincerely admire. I refer to those who, while competent and perhaps even brilliant as entertainers, recognize their limitations in other fields. The veteran actor Eddie Garcia, for example, declined entering into politics, saying he would stick to the calling he knew best. The immensely popular Dolphy would be a shoo-in in most any election but has also humbly refused to seek public office.
Many of their fellow entertainers do not have the good sense of these exemplary actors. On the contrary, they believe that the support of their fans-and that only-will equip them for the discharge of public office, including the highest in the land. The fact that their followers themselves do not have the intelligence to exercise even only the right of suffrage makes the presumptuousness much more ridiculous.
My question is, why would you call something "Mango Mama" when you've added so much apple, orange and lemon juice into the mix that the resulting drink is citric and tastes absolutely nothing like mango juice should? That's just plain wrong.
Walking into the Port Authority earlier this evening I saw an old man sorting through the stubbed-out butts in the cigarette butt receptacle just outside the entrance, carefully picking the "choice" ones out and placing them inside a cardboard cigarette carton, presumably so he could smoke them later on in the day.
I hate smoking and (most) smokers but was so sad I almost went and bought him a new box.
Mitsu says, "People in Manhattan walk slowly."
Mitsu is either lying or stark raving mad, because in my experience people in Manhattan walk too damn fast. My poor feet and legs have been aching non-stop since Day Two here, trying to keep up with everyone!
Some Bengay, morphine or a live-in masseuse would be super right about now...
I'm going to manufacture a reason to have to try this out soon:
sushiNYC was built by friends who like sushi and who thought it would be nice to have a place to house a database of New York City's sushi restaurants… We are not professional foodies, but we do share a love for eating yummy fish.
[ via kanai.net/weblog ]
I finally went and had lunch at Shopsin's today, which some of you might remember from this fantastic article from the New Yorker earlier this year.
Many thanks to Michael of Gulfstream for pointing it out then and to Judith for mentioning it recently—I had a lovely fifteen minute walk to Shopsin's from Tisch and an even lovelier meal because of them. I'm thinking of stopping in for lunch every Tuesday, although even if I do that without fail for the next two years and order something different each time, I still won't be halfway through the Shopsin's menu!
