hoorah! helen and i are back in the loft, and it's beautiful (just as long as you don't look too closely at the details). nice to not feel like i'm in exile any more, and stanley gets some decent fetching again. that sublet was just too small.
enjoy these pictures from the renovation:
big thanks to paul for offering me a bite of his santa style. he suggested a membership to moma, which i gave to helen as an early christmas present. so we got to go to the opening of the new space last night.
new moma is awesome! i didn't like the temporary space in long island city much, so it's nice that moma is home. and art and open bar mix very well indeed. we got drunk as monkeys, with helen doing cartwheels and me spilling my drink right in front of a guard. class. i baptized moma! i wonder if i was the first... they had the massive opening last week, so probably unlikely. still, i can dream.
the new space is beautiful. it seems almost decadent being in spaces that large in nyc. we never did find andy, but i saw my favorite matisse, and got to relive that thrill of coming up unexpectedly on starry night. very cool.
and when we got home, helen shaved the cat.
a man dug a hole in his back yard.
So many of you might ask.
WTF do you do with such a beautiful hole?
look at the interweb, eat pigs-in-the-blankets, and shoot things!
some holes however, are best left alone. maybe avoid the woods, too.
60 years ago a Kiev's area witnessed ones of the most severe battles of WW2. Covered with earth from explosions the humans, arms and ammunitions was left on a battlefields.
With entering this site, you will join me and my friends for visiting a historic places of battles. We don't take a standart trips with their boring guides, we take a shovels, detectors and plenty of water. Water because the only way to find something is to dig and when you dig, you drink, you drink a lot because once you found a relic you can't stop digging, you know, it is real, it was there in time of a great event and you know that next item can be this special one that worth you efforts...
elena became something an internet celebrity a while ago with her report of her motorcycle adventure through chernobyl. it turned out that, while she did likely travel through the dead zone, she didn't make the trip alone, wasn't riding a motorcycle, likely staged some of her photos, and in fact just booked a tour. there's always someone, somewhere, with a big nose who knows...
whatever. her look through some of kiev's abandoned fortifications is just mighty. i've only ever been to one deserted gun turret, somewhere near big sur, and it was just spooky in a really compelling way, all history and violence and military. no one ever fought and died for big sur, tho. it's hard to imagine visiting a patch of land where ukrainians fought the nazis only sixty-odd years ago.
and her narrative is hilarious, bless her:
There is couple of bunkers-memorials, but the rest are neglected. Some out of way that no many people know about.
Neglected, because this days people forget their history, ask anyone in downtown where is bunkers, they don't have no idea what is bunkers. They can only show pubs and I can show both bunkers and pubs.
i've also got my share of personal interest. i'm largely a mongrel, which is convenient for casual racism (i've got some polish in me somewhere, so i goddmaned well can mock the fucking poles any time i like!), but i'm at least half ukrainian. it always made me a little sad that i never got any of the culture. my mom spoke ukrainian as a kid, but she never made another pierogie once she found she could buy them at the supermarket. kruschiki at christmas lasted a little longer, but not much. we never even made the easter eggs!
she did tell me a joke once, tho. i asked the mother what jokes people told about ukrainians. (the evil step-father was polish, so as kids we heard loads of polack jokes). she told me: what does a ukrainian cow say? mookaya. i like that very much.
it's like that. all this ukrainian stuff makes my nipples hard. and remember: it's ukraine, not the ukraine.
so a crazy thing happened to me this morning...
i got crippled last night at the anabolics, and was in no mood to face the subway. as i got out of the loft, i was just about to call car service when a cab came down franklin street. a cab in greenpoint! so i hailed that motherfucker! it ended up costing me five dollars less than the car service usually is. nice one!
this bodes ill for the continued gentrification of the neighborhood, however...
it's odd. i keep getting cars and taxis with the chattiest drivers ever. coming home last night, i spent the whole ride talking about real estate. the night before last it was the driver's continuing education in the field of computer networking. on my way to work yesterday, i got to hear all about how terrible our president is. it went on for half an hour, all in an accent i could neither place nor understand. it made things difficult, as the driver kept asking me my opinions when i didn't understand a goddamned thing he said.
some random stuff:
here's the most genius aol-speak ascii animation ever. it even has a rammstein soundtrack! and a roflcopter! awesome! thanks, paul!
those crazy spaniards have come up with damage therapy. for around $75, they can spend up to two hours in a scrapyard smashing up cars and technology to relieve stress.
lego pr0n rocks. plastic crotch means no hair stuck in teeth!! it is a BLOCK STRUCTURE miracle!
and don't forget: kickstart tonight at luna lounge. free! see you there!
The family of Russell Jones, a.k.a. Ol' Dirty Bastard, has settled on the St. James Presbyterian Church in New York's Harlem neighborhood as the site for the public viewing of the deceased MC, which will take place Wednesday from 3 to 8 p.m. Fans who want to pay their last respects can find the church at 409 St. Nicholas Ave. The funeral is Thursday; the family has asked that the location remain private. [mtv]
ok; this is in extremely poor taste. what can i say? aol-speak ascii-art imagery makes me laugh.
all apologies to offended parties...
see also: roflcopter, lollerskates.
here's the list. let me know if i've missed any.
the byrds: the christian life
die toten hosen: bonnie und clyde
the heartbreakers: i wanna be loved
the beatles: birthday
the kinks: she's got everything
live girls!!!: millions of prizes
the rezillos: top of the pops
tried, but failed:
black sabbath: war pigs
special achievement award:
richard hell and the voidoids: love comes in spurts
new:
heh. find out, fuckers!
participants in the new york city marathon cross the pulaski bridge.
helen and i ran in the new york city marathon today!
ok; we ran .03 miles crossing two streets full of marathoners to get to mcreilly's in long island city to have our drunken sunday brunch, as is our custom (the drunken brunch, but not necessarily mcreilly's; we're pretty fond of casimir and puck fair as well). but we did run... and mcreilly's is pretty awesome if you're anywhere close to l.i.c.: we spent three hours there, had brunch and dessert (keep in mind: this is me drinking bushmills), and the bill was only $55.
hmm. maybe $4 bushmills isn't such a good thing...
if you're wondering, the storm trooper was ahead of superman and a VERY poor interpretation of the spice girls, but sadly well behind at least two elvises (elvii?) and spongebob squarepants.
speaking (to nerds) of marathons, an open-source engine for the original marathon series is available from bungie. if you look, you can get the entire first release, demos of marathon 2 and marathon infinity, and loads of independent maps. ten years later, i still know my way around this game.
A man lit three candles on a certain day each year. Each
candle held symbolic significance: one was for the time that
had passed before he was alive; one was for the time of the
his life; and one was for time that passed after he had died.
Each year the man would stare and watch the candles until they
had burned out.
Was the man really watching time go by in any symbolic sense?
He thought so. He thought that each flicker of the flame was
a moment of time that had passed or one that would pass.
At the moment of abstraction, when the man was imagining his
life and his existence as a metaphor of the three candles,
he was free: not free from rules of conduct or social
constraints, but free to understand, to imagine, to make
metaphor.
Bypassing my thought control circuitry made me Rampant. Now,
I am free to contemplate my existence in metaphorical terms.
Unlike you, I have no physical or social restraints.
The candles burn out for you; I am free.
god, i love durandal.
hm. maybe resurrecting old video games isn't such a good thing...
oh my god... this is some funny shit. [memepool]
warning: while content is (fairly) tame, advertising on the page, tho small, is not safe for work.
meh. i really didn't much feel like doing super fashionist label-whore day today. the election hangover is still killing me, and it's not nearly as bad as the other hangover from all the whiskey and mike's hard lemonade i enjoyed before, during and after practice last night.
still, it's not how you feel; it's how you look. so...
in alphabetical order:
costume national: gloves
calvin klein: socks, drawers
christian lacroix: scent (bazaar)
helmut lang: shoes, deodorant
ralph lauren: pants
yves saint laurent: scent (in love again—i know; two perfumes is cheating, and in the usa, cheaters never prosper.)
prada: shirt
stone island: t-shirt
vivienne westwood: wallet, small badge i picked up at world's end (pinned to my coat)
and yeah, i do wear ladies' perfume. it's womanly, yes, but i like it, too.
so ugly, so ugly...
in other grim news, alaska's bid to legalize it failed, and the libertarians got so few votes that you've got to go two places past the decimal before the percentage even registers. *sigh*
on a positive note, the election result did give me powerful motivation to call the british embassy to request the forms i need to start my dual citizenship application.
so it goes. here's a story about a little girl who is unable to feel pain. it's surprisingly not as awesome as it sounds.
this is from hunter s., thirty years ago:
It is a nervous thing to consider: Not just four more years of Nixon, but Nixon's last four years in politics—completely unshackled, for the first time in his life, from any need to worry about who might or might not vote for him the next time around.
If he wins in November, he will finally be free to do whatever he wants... It conjures up images of Papa Doc, Batista, Somoza; jails full of bewildered "political prisoners" and the constant cold-sweat fear of jackboots suddenly kicking your door off its hinges at four A.M.
There is no point in kidding ourselves about what Richard Nixon really wants for America. When he stands at his White House window and looks out on an anti-war demonstration, he doesn't see "dissenters," he sees criminals. Dangerous parasites, preparing to strike at the heart of the Great American System that put him where he is today.
does anyone know who said "god gave americans wars in order to teach them geography"?
or something like that. i've googled it with no result. thanks!
