IPW

Halcyon

I finally fixed my computer. Such a hassle though! I received the part this week but only screwed my courage to the sticking place - which is just under the Laughing Place - today. It was an all day affair, though most of the time I spent trying to figure out exactly what to do. Finally I appealed to my friend Mike who does this sort of thing a lot, and he found a nice link on apple's website to a video tutorial. Step-by-step. I don't know what I'd have done if we didn't have a second computer. I would have literally have had to go back to the drawing board. And I do mean literally.

I have a G4 Mirror Door Desktop, circa early 2003. Dual 1.25 Ghz. I replaced the power supply. I'm stating this so that those of you who need this help can follow my lead, as it was difficult to find this video, and perhaps a Google search will bring you here. If I can save one person in the world a headache, I'll be happy. Watch the "removal" and "installation" videos here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=26259

Anyway, it was a pain but I'm back in business. Firing up my computer for the first time in a few months was interesting. It was like a short-run time machine. I actually got a little melancholy thinking back to those halcyon days of March. My last mail received before the power supply blew was March 18, at 3:47 pm. It was like I'd stumbled across the Pompeii of my own personality. There it was, my life, frozen just as I had been living before the disaster. Only to be unearthed months later by a slightly more grizzled, sparsely bearded version of myself. If only I knew then... What? What would I tell myself? Probably not much. Probably just wave to myself and point at my pathetic beard and say, "Don't Bother!" And then tell myself the end of Spiderman 3 so I wouldn't waste my time seeing it again. (Spiderman wins) It actually is a little encouraging that I wouldn't really do much differently if I had the last few months to do over again. Oh there are a few snarky comments I probably wouldn't make again. I'd try not to break the port glass while washing it this time. What else? Oh! I would definately NOT eat a Grimaldi's, supposedly the best pizza in Brooklyn. It was not and insult to injury, caused a rather explosive situation that had me high-stepping to a seedy but welcome movie theater restroom ten minutes after our meal. That being said though, it was probably good preparation for India, where I'll be high-stepping to considerably poorer facilities.

Great Adventures!

I'm currently listening to Jules Verne's "A Journey to the Center of the Earth", which is exciting, but not as good as "Around the World in 80 Days" which truly stands the test of time. Visually inspired by some of the descriptions within this adventure, I googled the title to see what images other illustrators have been inspired to render throughout the years. I have not finished listening, so it is disturbing that most illustrations depict the sea-monster battle that the travelers witness while crossing a great underground sea. I'm disturbed because I assume that we will not be experiencing anything more visually interesting, since like movie previews, book publishers usually take the most iconic, exciting images to illustrate the cover. While searching though I found a collection of old book covers from the golden age of illustration. What a find! Many of the covers are so oddly rendered and are very much products of the time they were created.

Here are a few of my favorites, accompanied by by commentary:

I'm curious as to what is happening in this illustration:

Is a boy, a savage, dressed in seagull skins stealing a seal pup with glee? What terrible plan does this little savage have for said pup?

It seems here that a giant bowman, presumably one "Robin Hood", is drinking from a wine flask while staggering drunkenly across a miniature battlefield.

Here we have Abraham Lincoln starring with Heath Ledger in a steamy retelling of the pre-presidential salad days on the plains of Illinois.

Mr. Holmes kindly reminds you to please not write your name on his book, especially in your own blood, else you may be torn asunder by a salivating hound.

I think I have to continue with this project soon, it's good fun. In the meantime, here is the url for this fine collection of illustrated classics:

http://www.classicscentral.com/14-26.htm

Enjoy! Please send me some of your favorites.

Oh and one more:

"Me Frankenstein, me hate trees and me hate pants! Aaaarrrrrgh"

Okay, I know he does have pants on but at first it looks like he doesn't.

Scripts and Scrapts

I've had a horrible headache all day, which is unfortunate because I stayed home today because of it. Not unfortunate I stayed home, but unfortunate I had a headache since I have much to do. The pressure of our trip is building slightly, we need to make a decision soon about the second half of our plane tickets, we need to start checking into visas. M, bless her heart, has created a highly organized list of visas we need along with how much we are going to need to pay for them. Turns out is isn't cheap! I wonder if there ever will be a day when no one needs visas to go anywhere. I think we'd have to be attacked by aliens first.

A few funny things have gone down in the last few weeks that I want to catch up on. It is summer in New York, though you wouldn't know it by my cold, and people's windows are open, there are parties on the few scraps of lawn in town, and we are all generally looking forward to slogging through the humidity for the next few months. Right now though, it isn't too oppressive yet, so we've been trying to take advantage. We've ridden our bikes a bit, once, up to the scene of the big fire in Greenpoint. You'll remember that fire, it was the time it looked like the world was burning down and the air smelled of kielbasa. The nightmarish fire has given way to a landscape straight out of War. Some construction, and demolition has been done there, but in general it is sitting idle, dreaming of the time in the near future when it will be 40 story condos, and not the historic waterfront market it once was. I'd bet anything that the condos will be characterless glass and steel, mostly glass, without a glance back at its origins: a seedy Brooklyn waterfront scene, crowded with laborers, fisherman and sailors from around the globe. It will probably be called, "The View at Greenpoint" or something crappy like that. Anyway, we managed to climb through a hole in the fence in order to have the place to ourselves. Magda shot the crumbling brick walls and metal fire doors hanging ironically from their hinges. The light was excellent and looking between ruined walls you could see unhindered the skyline of Manhattan. It's hard to describe looking out at the greatest skyline in the world from a war zone, it was downright apocalyptic. Our footsteps on the fallen bricks scraped and echoed as we poked through the ruins. When we finally had enough, we started back to the hole in the fence, a swinging corrugated metal flap at the main gate. Undoing a piece of wire holding it in place, it fell open, but I immediately shut it again. Across the street, parked next to where we'd locked out bikes, sat a FDNY truck, engine running, a uniformed fireman in the driver's seat. He hadn't been looking, and if he did look up, he would have only seen a quivering sheet of metal blowing closed. We were cornered. I can only assume someone called them after seeing us squeeze through, or, he was sitting there randomly, out of all the streets in NY, across from where we were trespassing on the scene of the biggest fire since 9/11. Fortunately I have a long history of breaking into things for fun, and escaping capture by the thinest of margins. I was in good company too, M never panics at times like this, in fact, she seemed only mildly concerned, and I imagined that she was even thinking of continuing to photograph. The way I figured it, a disaster scene this size had to have a few human sized holes we could crawl through. Much in the same way our mouse slips in and out of our apartment unseen, so would we find another pest hole to escape from. It didn't take too much time to find another gate that had a big enough gap for us to climb under, making a mess of ourselves but otherwise freeing us outside of the sight of the fire marshal. Covered in dust we casually sauntered in front of his truck to unlock the bikes and head back on our way.

Occasionally in the city I see things that are surprisingly humane. Because of everyone's proximity to each other, you feel strangely protective of your fellow man. This feeling I think crosses all social barriers, save the Hipsters, who wouldn't cross the street to piss on you if you were on fire. I was walking down a sunbaked 5th avenue last week and had come to a stop and an intersection, standing with a paunchy, balding man of perhaps Italian descent. He was sort of a classic New Yorker, with what little jet black hair he had slicked down and wet looking. Our attentions were caught by a skateboarder who pulled up short at the intersection with the scraping of wood on concrete. He looked like he was a model, tall with chiseled good looks and very expensive black ratty clothes. We was carrying a huge black messenger's bag with several item of clothing hanging off it. I imagined he was commuting somewhere to go be fabulous. When there were no more cars coming, he kicked up down the street again, dropping a shirt from his collection of gear as he did so, but didn't notice. In no time flat he was kicking himself towards the Flatiron building like a bat out of hell, on wheels. I made a quick calculation that told me there would be no way to grab the shirt, and catch up to him on foot, but that didn't stop the man beside me from shouting loudly, the way only New Yorkers can, "HEY!!" and running into traffic to rescue the lost item of Prada. He stood just next to the moving cars, watching the skater disappear, when a white van pulled up next to him, breaks squealing perhaps on the verge of failure. An African man, perhaps picking up or supplying the odd African shopping district on Broadway, was at the wheel and in a quick word, told the man in the street he'd catch the skater. The man handed him the shirt, pounded on the roof of the van, and the African man accelerated in a mad attempt to catch a well-to-do skateboarding model who had been dripping designer clothes during his journey downtown. The balding man watched, pleased, as the van too disappeared down the road.

I'd like to say he caught up with him, I'd like to say he simply took the shirt home. But I'll never know. Either way it was enjoyable to watch three such disparate citizens path's cross in the middle of the street.

Hit the Diagonal

So, thanks to the poll recently taken about what you are most afeared of weather-wise, we've come to some conclusions:

• Furry things with teeth are scary, and it is really scary when it rains them.
• Scattered Showers frighten the very meek.
• Despite the fact that a Tornado changed Dorothy's life for the better, people still hate and despise them.
• Nighttime does count as weather, since I'm in charge here, so therefore you may be frightened of it.
• Finally, we are reminded that weather is not just an outdoors phenomenon. Know how the door sometimes slams in the other room? Very frightening. Who knows if it is the cross draft or not, maybe it is dead Uncle Sally and he's very very pissed. Just hope that he slammed the door leaving the room, not coming in.

The weather here remains calm, despite forecasts of thunderstorms. It was a beautiful evening to walk to the gym from work and as I was doing so, I fell into a game I sometimes play. A very very tall woman with long dark hair and a flower-print dress left the building just before me. She seemed to be headed in the same direction so I decided to race her. I do this from time to time, since it is fun proving to myself that by crossing the streets and intersections at angles I can shave several minutes off my walk. If I have a "patsy" to compare my progress to, all the better. But as I crossed East 26th street, at a diagonal, I noticed that the woman had done the same thing, but at a shallower angle, thus pulling ahead. I quickened my pace.

Up ahead was the first of the big challenges: crossing 5th Avenue next to Madison Square Park. Here there are a series of oddly shaped intersections, confused by the merging of 5th, Broadway as they cross 23rd street practically overlapping. On the right day, if the lights are with you, you can cross at such an extreme angle as to save two or three minutes at this one crossing alone. The woman was walking straight down 5th (rookie) and the light was with me, I cut a steep diagonal across 5th, keeping an eye out for right turning vehicles coming from 26th. No sooner had I stepped into the street than the woman darted out and crossed at an diagonal parallel to my own. She wasn't pulling ahead anymore, but I wasn't catching up either. A bus passed behind me and as I reached the other side and prepared to cross 25th, at an angle, it also turned the corner onto 25th, and cut off my progress. The woman, just in front of me had beat the bus and disappeared from sight. I swore an oath. Darn Thee! And cut my angle behind the bus. In my sights again, she made a mistake. She rounded the unfortunately placed grave of General William Jenkins Worth* and as she approached Broadway she was foolish enough to check for oncoming cars. Fool! I took the opportunity and cut across Broadway diagonally from the corner of 25th to the corner of 24th, the perfect cross. I was steps behind her now, and she sensed it. She quickened her pace. It either occurred to her that she had met her diagonal crossing match, or that an unshaven lanky man had been following her since she left work, and was gaining. Either way, she attempted to lose me. She feigned a cross to the south side of the street as we headed east down 24th, but juked north again, back onto the sidewalk, as a tangle of parked taxis and vans tried to pass each other directly in front of us. I fell for her feint, and and found myself crossing in the middle of the street as the van reversed with several cabs zooming around to avoid it, and me. The reverse signal was not the usual beeping, but a little girl's voice saying "Excuse me, I'm backing up". Disturbed but undaunted I finally made it across but as I reached the other side I saw that I'd lost too much ground. The woman was 20 yards further down the sidewalk having hit a perfect 45er after the traffic jam. That's 45º for you unmathamaticalled. I doubled my pace. Sensing this, perhaps, she ducked into a Thai restaurant for safety. Ha! Double Fool! I roared by her, even thinking she was going so far as to cut through the restaurant to the other side of the block. At 6th Ave the lights favored me again, not a car on the road as I sauntered a victory lap, diagonally, down the Avenue of the Americas.

Being as I'd cut several minutes off my usual time, I had to wait for M to join me before we proceeded to the gym. I kept an eye on the corner of 6th and 23rd for my defeated opponent. I was hoping she had cut through the restaurant, as I felt a little bad for winning by frightening her off the track. Soon I saw M's head bobbing up and down in a river of pedestrians.

But, before she could reach me, who should appear from between two parked cars, having hit a near perfect diagonal from the corner of 24th street? My opponent brushed past me in a rustle of flower pattern. As she did so I realized that she had to have been at least three inches taller than me. I no longer felt sorry I'd scared her since she clearly could have given me a beating.

Just not where it counted; in the game of Hit the Diagonal.

Here is a map of the course taken, my route in red.

* General William Jenkins Worth is for some reason buried at this intersection, next to a water treatment facility I might add. It is unclear how he got the distinction of being buried essentially in the middle of the street, but you can try to figure it out here if interested:

http://www.aztecclub.com/bios/worth.htm

Actually they don't even mention that he's buried there, scumbags, try this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Worth

What Afeares You?

Weather.com (I won't even dignify them with a link) has a little poll on its site today, "What Weather Condition Scares You the Most?"

Your choices are:

Floods
Lightening
Tornados
Strong Winds
Hail
Blizzards

And that's it. Such is the state of polls today, and the pathetic state of sites like Weather.com that they think they can sum up two complex subjects like "Fear" and "The Weather" with just six choices. See, I would add some things:

Curiously Windless Days
Plague of Frogs
Clouds That Take the Shape of Demonic Creatures
Lava Rain
Imploding Sun
Sprinkles

I might also add some actual weather conditions like, Ice Storms or, God forbid, Hurricanes. Why wouldn't Hurricanes have reached the top six? Could it be that most people are more scared of Blizzards than Hurricanes? Unless they mean the Dairy Queen Blizzard™ which I'd understand. If I recall, it wasn't Hail or a Blizzard that destroyed New Orleans. Of course Hurricanes produce flooding and lightening and strong wind, but you can only choose one of those. So choose wisely, since after the next big one you don't want to be floating out to sea on a dirty mattress thinking, "Why did I say 'Lightening'? What the hell?"

As far as I know, lightening has never swept anyone out to sea in their underpants. Now that's scary.

So let's have our own little Poll: What Weather Condition Scares the Holy BeJeebus Out of You?