You do see all sorts in New York bars...
Saturday, March 31, 2007
A day of photos
it's been a day of phoos today. Our friends from London blew their reasonable carbon footprint allowance on a weekend in New York and I've been flashing the cam' at them and them at us ever since.
Too much food to date (and we have Japanese tonight) but a very chilled day that seemed to go breakfast, brunch, drinks in a bar where drunken homosexuals were drawing an overweight and near naked burlesque 'star', a quick Troy fix and then dinner.
Not exciting I grant you - but good to hang with the people that we miss most
Too much food to date (and we have Japanese tonight) but a very chilled day that seemed to go breakfast, brunch, drinks in a bar where drunken homosexuals were drawing an overweight and near naked burlesque 'star', a quick Troy fix and then dinner.
Not exciting I grant you - but good to hang with the people that we miss most
Friday, March 30, 2007
Friday
It's Friday, the sun is shining, the traffic lights are all on red, Alexa is eating toast (noisily) as I write (I'm at work)... we've already had an e-mail about overflowing toilets and a request for directions to a Bongo store. All rather suspect and oddly all rather typical.
I do love New York springs. They're short but the skies are blue, the air is crisp and for a month or so you can forget that you're breathing in the combined pollution of 12 million people who care less about smog than they do about CostCo's "Buy 144 get 144 free" offers.
We have Alex and Xtiana (Alextiana?) here for the weekend - a good excuse to stay out late, eat early and generally let down what hair we have left.
Good times
I do love New York springs. They're short but the skies are blue, the air is crisp and for a month or so you can forget that you're breathing in the combined pollution of 12 million people who care less about smog than they do about CostCo's "Buy 144 get 144 free" offers.
We have Alex and Xtiana (Alextiana?) here for the weekend - a good excuse to stay out late, eat early and generally let down what hair we have left.
Good times
Thursday, March 29, 2007
A window on the world
Took this pic on the subway yesterday, I quite liked it. I'm not sure why, because it seems like a pretty miserable scene. Not a great deal going on with Jude away and me busy - thinking about taking a couple of months out for a project in Seoul, South Korea. We'll see; it's a timing thing really. If it wasn't for dogs, cats and the like I'd jump on a plane tomorrow - but responsibility, even minor responsibility hangs heavy on my shoulders. At work now so this needs to be short.
America threw chubby back - Chris Sligh booted on Idol
America threw chubby back - Chris Sligh booted on Idol
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
More IDOL on FOX
So Gwen Stefani night on Idol. La Belle Gwen of course has a back catalogue shallower than pre-retreat Richard Gere and so the show was split into 'Songs by Gwen' and "Songs by people that Gwen quite likes" So likes The Police it seems.
Chris Sligh wrapped his lard lubed larynx around "Every little thing she does is magic" - racing through it at a pace that I imagine his (surprisingly lovely) wife insists he apply to any sexual liason between then. Like those liasons this was fast and messy. The lardy one is now there on his increasingly stretched sense or humor alone.
Gina Glockson dragged herself away from the mall for long enough to soldier through "I'll stand by you" like a suburban Bette Midler post lobotomy. She's 90% hips that woman and her boyfriend needs the red dye slapping outta his hair.
Sanjaya now knows that he's immune from ejection - and has decided to go with the Worst Idol Ever thing. This is a shame because he could be pretty good on the show if he wasn't courting Howard Stern, VotefortheWorst and every late, late night comedian. He has the show saboteurs, the ironic watchers, the pre-teeners and every gay man's vote, he's safe - but he should reallytake some time out during the week to learn the words of whatever song he's going to sleepwalk through.
Scarnato hid the legs and the personality on an insipid True Colors that had me looking for a bucket of cold water into which to plunge my head until it was over. I even started to daydream about hunting down Cyndi Lauper with a "WHat have you wrought?" question that I'd wield like an axe.
Every Breath you take proved, to me anyway, that Phil Stacey is probably great in the shower. He carries a tune well over minimum accompaniament, but when the band chimes in he sees it as competition rather than accompaniament. This was an 'in the shower' performance.
Mindy Doo sang something or other in the style of Gladys Knight - sang it well but still managed to hide her neck under a bushell.
Blake Lewis dropped the Police Academy theatrics and sang something relatively straight. Simon thought that he was the best of the boys, which is a little like being the most likely to succeed in a Southern Trailer Park.
Jordan Sparks channelled Hit Me Baby One More Time Britney (the short schoolgirl skirt) and that singing hippo from YouTube (everythig else) as she huffed, puffed and harumphed herself through "Hey Baby" in the way that a crowd more easily pleased than a frotter in Tokyo rush-hour lapped up
The last one is just too easy. Everything through the nose specialist Chris Richardson murdered "Don't Speak"... the correct riposte? "I'd rather you didn't sing"
Another fun night in
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
A time for breakfast
Velcro went to daycare today. Or rather I should say - she RAN to daycare. This is a good sign.
Yesterday had been her first day and she came home knackered, refused to move all night and was generally a joy.
Of course she'd earned her knackered status.
"Erm, she's very playful" quoth the harried dog watcher in what I think was a triumph of understatement.
But today she was up, ready and heading in a daycarewardly direction before I could say "Aye oop you, what's going on here?"
The good thing for me is that post drop off I headed for Egg - a local, sustainable, shared breakfast space that owns its own chickens and buys only local product.
Had the most amazing omlette. Ate tomatoes (I know) and generally chillled out. Breakfast in the sunshine (it's 22C here today) is a good thing. It's put me in quite the laid back mood. Which is cool.
The people above btw aren't naked (sorry it was a public place and they weren't for the convincing) but they are lovely people that I once worked with once upon a lifetime ago.
Yesterday had been her first day and she came home knackered, refused to move all night and was generally a joy.
Of course she'd earned her knackered status.
"Erm, she's very playful" quoth the harried dog watcher in what I think was a triumph of understatement.
But today she was up, ready and heading in a daycarewardly direction before I could say "Aye oop you, what's going on here?"
The good thing for me is that post drop off I headed for Egg - a local, sustainable, shared breakfast space that owns its own chickens and buys only local product.
Had the most amazing omlette. Ate tomatoes (I know) and generally chillled out. Breakfast in the sunshine (it's 22C here today) is a good thing. It's put me in quite the laid back mood. Which is cool.
The people above btw aren't naked (sorry it was a public place and they weren't for the convincing) but they are lovely people that I once worked with once upon a lifetime ago.
Monday, March 26, 2007
end of privacy?
I've been thinking a lot about
the end of privacy and the generational debate that it's sparking.
On one side you have young people spilling their every thought and detail
for the the world to see on community sites, in blogs and (increasingly) in
the on-campus porn magazines that seem to be popping up everywhere. Of
course Madonna was way ahead of this trend as far back as 1991 when she
released her sexual fantasies to the world with the book Sex, her life to
everyone with Truth or Dare and forced an exasperated Warren Beatty to frame
a debate still 15 years hence with this little outburst
"She doesn't want to live off-camera, much less talk. There's nothing to say
off-camera. Why would you say something if it's off-camera? What point is
there existing?"
So on one side we have 'the kids' asking What's the point if it can't get me
hits in You Tube
And on the other hside of the coin you have parental hysteria - either
wrapped in concerns over pedophile access to kids (imagine a day when every
kid has a camera in their bedroom and every pervert has access to the
machine that it's on... Ooops did we really buy Timmy a mac with built in
i-sight camera?)
Then there's the Orwellian objections being stirred by concerns such as this
(from today's newspaper)
"It is not entirely absurd to imagine that supermarkets' loyalty card data
might one day be used by the Government to identify people who ignored
advice to eat healthily, or who drank too much, so that they could be given
a lower priority for treatment by the NHS"
"With sensitive personal details readable over a distance, it could even
become possible with appropriate antennas and amplification, to construct a
bomb that would only detonate in the presence of a particular nationality or
even a particular individual."
As I said I'm not entirely sure where this is useful but it's splitting the
Western world across generational lines in a way that we haven't seen since
Punk and that's got to frame how we judge the ideas that we're having?
Personally I gave up on privacy years ago. Google me long enough and you'll
find pictures not just of me, my family, my various weights, beliefs,
disease history and hairstyles but pics of my innards (I have CT scans
posted), and of course my thoughts on the 2006 UK
panto season.
the end of privacy and the generational debate that it's sparking.
On one side you have young people spilling their every thought and detail
for the the world to see on community sites, in blogs and (increasingly) in
the on-campus porn magazines that seem to be popping up everywhere. Of
course Madonna was way ahead of this trend as far back as 1991 when she
released her sexual fantasies to the world with the book Sex, her life to
everyone with Truth or Dare and forced an exasperated Warren Beatty to frame
a debate still 15 years hence with this little outburst
"She doesn't want to live off-camera, much less talk. There's nothing to say
off-camera. Why would you say something if it's off-camera? What point is
there existing?"
So on one side we have 'the kids' asking What's the point if it can't get me
hits in You Tube
And on the other hside of the coin you have parental hysteria - either
wrapped in concerns over pedophile access to kids (imagine a day when every
kid has a camera in their bedroom and every pervert has access to the
machine that it's on... Ooops did we really buy Timmy a mac with built in
i-sight camera?)
Then there's the Orwellian objections being stirred by concerns such as this
(from today's newspaper)
"It is not entirely absurd to imagine that supermarkets' loyalty card data
might one day be used by the Government to identify people who ignored
advice to eat healthily, or who drank too much, so that they could be given
a lower priority for treatment by the NHS"
"With sensitive personal details readable over a distance, it could even
become possible with appropriate antennas and amplification, to construct a
bomb that would only detonate in the presence of a particular nationality or
even a particular individual."
As I said I'm not entirely sure where this is useful but it's splitting the
Western world across generational lines in a way that we haven't seen since
Punk and that's got to frame how we judge the ideas that we're having?
Personally I gave up on privacy years ago. Google me long enough and you'll
find pictures not just of me, my family, my various weights, beliefs,
disease history and hairstyles but pics of my innards (I have CT scans
posted), and of course my thoughts on the 2006 UK
panto season.
Amazing what a smell can do...
So this morning I opened the cupboard just to the left of the sink, the one where we keep the dog's cookies and I was immediately in a dull green recliner waiting for chemo. The smell of the cupboard just rushed over me, enveloping me in a churning wave of nostalgia, nausea and sensory recollection. This was the cupboard where we'd stored my chemo drugs. Weirdly the sensation hasn't hit me before but I really did get dragged under by the smell this morning; very odd. And somewhat disconcerting - now wondering whether this was memory or premonition.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
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