On Saturday night the kids downstairs had a huge party. Fortunately we were not invited. We also didn't hear their noise, other than a few smokers who sat below our window and chatted and listened to quiet music on a radio. I woke occasionally when one of them whooped which happened more often as sunrise approached. When the sky outside grew light, the kids descended like vampires to their subterranean apartment to sleep away the day.

The light of day revealed a terrible scene. The red panda bear lay some ways down the street, more lifeless than usual. It was surrounded by drifts of its own innards, white grains of styrophoam that blew in lazy cyclones around its cloth body. In some places the white grains were an inch thick as if a midsummer snowstorm had effected only the sidewalk outside and refused to melt in the heat of the rising sun.

There is no doubt in my mind who the culprits are but as the day wore on we all became culpable as each grain of styrophoam, destined to exist forever, drifted outwards from the murder scene, great white masses moving slowly downhill towards the river. I pictured the slow avalanche off the end of the street, gradually making a floating white ribbon of ex-panda that would drift and choke its way to the sea. I waited to see if any of my fellow renters would act to stop this from happening but I could have guessed that they wouldn't. The tenants in this building are insular and stand-offish, hipsters who are more concerned with wearing recycled clothes than actually recycling. Hipsters differ from Hippies in that they have no intention of changing the world if it means they'd have no access to hair product and faux-vintage t-shirts. I've grown from being fond of the scruffy-headed children of the 90's to being furious with their self absorption couched in the rhetoric of neo-liberalism, "complain but don't do". I guess 'doing' would bring them too close a system they'd rather seen overthrown by Anarchy, which they'd be too apathetic to ever bring about. I'd love to see them in an actual anarchy, like Rwanda in 1994. It wouldn't only be Panda bears who'd be torn to shreds. My favorite scene which has played out many times on the L train, the Hipster lifeline to Manhattan, is the following: Scruffy Hipster sits reading Kant or Conrad or more likely Rowling. An extremely frail old woman, who grew up in Williamsburg and is now skipping meals to pay her rent, boards the train. Immersed in a single dense paragraph, the Hipster remains oblivious and the old woman remains standing (Hipsters also tend to be the most vocal denouncers of gentrification, as higher rents severely cut into the monthly check from their parents) Of course the Hipster isn't the only one not standing for the old woman, but they are usually the only ones reading with the pretension of self-betterment.

I finally caved and grabbed a broom and dustpan to set about heeling a minor environmental crisis. I wasn't concerned anyone would finger me as the murderer cleaning the crime scene. The whole building is too apathetic to acknowledge a crime had even occurred. I rue the day when I lie unconscious and mugged on a Williamsburg side street, inert and blocking the way of a Hipster on his way to the local vegan restaurant. I do believe I'd be stepped over, the only indication I'd been noticed at all.

Our immediate neighbor, the quietest of the three, stopped to offer help and told me about the party that had gone on all night beneath him too. He was the only person to acknowledge me or my labor. Many others passed and glanced guiltily while I swept, if they glanced at all. One girl sporting tight, carefully chosen 80's vintage smiled weakly but walked on.

Honestly it was a beautiful day yesterday as I swept the sidewalks for an hour. It was extremely pleasant to be outside doing an activity of any kind. I chatted with our above-mentioned neighbor and a passing pedestrian curious about the fate of the Domino sugar factory. My sweeping led me past the ground floor windows of the culprits and of our direct downstairs neighbor but I saw neither the whole time. Finally I'd filled a large garbage bag with puffy bits of plastic, considered turning it upside down outside the offender's door, but thought better and disposed of it properly. Our downstairs neighbor did end up acknowledging my labors in his own way, he turned his music down at midnight instead of at two in the morning.

This morning the hallway is empty, the panda is gone. It was the only mark of friendliness in a white-washed hallway with florescent lights. How many bottles do you have to knock down to win a panda?

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.

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.

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.

• 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

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?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/05/29/venezuela.media/index.html

See, those who know me know I get annoyed when Bush and the American government are likened to Dictators and Nazis. Maybe that's because I grew up in a household where stories of actual Nazi atrocities, and the lengths to which a person would go to escape an actual dictatorship, were told first hand over the dinner table. When I was young I thought they were adventure stories. Now I see the truth whenever I start hearing about similar behaviors around the world. See, GW is evil, no doubt. He would love to be a dictator, and given enough time, I think he could manage it. But thankfully we have an amazingly good system wherein we have a Legislative Branch of the government that, when thinking straight, can nip any budding thoughts of totalitarianism in the bud. Unfortunately, during the majority of Bush's career, Congress and the Senate were run by his lapdogs, exposing a slight flaw in an otherwise sweet system of government. But then, last November, America did something else. It overthrew the government within the rules of the system that we've set up for ourselves. We kicked the bums out, suffrage style.

In a Dictatorship, that doesn't work. They simply ignore the vote, if they vote. Then they kill everyone who voted incorrectly. Look at Zimbabwe for instance, classic Dictatorship happening there. For years Robert Mugabe pretended not to be a complete jerk, though he always has been. But at least he was the not so-duly elected Prime Minister. Then, things got sticky, or he made them sticky by screwing over the economy. When folks got upset and formed a political party to overthrow him in the coming elections, they were beaten severely and then imprisoned. I'm not sure anyone has been killed yet, but I wouldn't doubt it. When a Time Magazine journalist was imprisoned in Zim for, well, being there, he was held without trial, or proper sanitation, for a few days, and then released. His guard asked him if he could help get him a job in England. Read more about Mugabe who is a pretty classic Dictator here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mugabe

Anyway, when Bush is done, he'll be done. There is no doubt in my mind, or in yours (sorry, hate to speak for you, but you know it's true) that he will in fact step down. The same can not be said for Characters like Mugabe, Chavez or Vladimir "I Looked Into His Soul" Putin even. Putin might step down in name, when (if) they have elections next year, but he will be pulling strings in Russia for a long time to come. The problem is of course that old saying about absolute power, Chavez has the taste in his mouth. Mugabe is an addict. Putin, well, he's distilling the stuff.

Bush would love to taste it. It SOUNDS like it would taste great. He's even tried to break into the cabinet a few times, just like in the old days before he got bitch-slapped by Christ. But folks, he ain't a dictator. He can't be. The Constitution is too good, just look at it: Still (basically) Intact. It takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'. That and he knows he'll lead a plush plush life after office, no matter what happens in Iraq. He knows something else too, no angry mob is going to ever storm his mansion and tear him limb from limb like will probably be the fate of Robert Mugabe. Which is one reason dictators fight so hard to stay behind a very tall fence.

And in case you think I forgot about crazy Kim Jeung Il, don't worry. I wouldn't really call him a classic dictator though. He's so much more! He's elevated himself to the level of a God and wields power correspondingly. His dictatorship is one, of course, but it is at a level really never seen in the history of the world. My final link for you, you with strong stomachs, is what happens when absolute power is really allowed to corrupt absolutely:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/korea/article/0,2763,1136483,00.html

for those of you with weaker stomachs, you'll be happy to know that absolute power makes you a better golfer:

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2004/ea_nkorea_06_16.html

In the short term of course, our mastery of nature is total. This city has sprawled itself out over x number of islands, making itself comfortable. But the chez lounge is not inanimate, it is alive, and its concept of time and mastery is on a completely different scale than ours.

I was pondering all this while lying shoeless in Madison Square Park today during lunch. Shoeless Ian Webster. The air is fresher in these little pockets, and the cool shade cools the grass, and the cool grass retains its morning dew, and softly soaked my clothes as I lay, corpse-like, surrounded by hundreds of chattering New Yorkers who chose this 'natural' spot over the benches that line the scorching pavement. They talked of unnatural things, but I only heard snippets, and the words themselves became kindling for day dreams that soon lost any sense of the day. How is a siren different from the sound of a thousand crickets? It isn't really. Something living is trying to tell a specific other something living that it is there, all else who can hear it be damned. It is the shotgun approach to getting to its destination. They both are hard, they have to be to thrive in the city.

I opened my eyes and the noises were not gone, but had become part of the background, part of the river of noise flowing past me. I stared at the tree-limb above me, behind it a deep blue sky. Near me where I lay is a newly erected sculpture of what looks like two chrome trees fighting, or helping each other after a wind storm. Their branches connect, they are life sized and leafless. They look like naked robots compared to their living counterparts surrounding them. I am struck by the irony of the echo of nature in art, placed in a planted pocket of a city planner's design. Planted or not, the actual trees mock the sculptures with their elegant geometry, rough texture, and epic, sprawling branches shrouded in leaves. When the air stirs, the trees answer. The robots stay in frozen combat. They will be taken down at the end summer.

This city reclines in the palm of Nature's hand. But not because it has forced itself there, but because Nature hasn't yet begun to clap.

My eyes flickered open, and I pulled myself upwards. My clothes were indeed damp despite the midday sun, the grass quickly shrugged off my imprint. I returned to work.

I wish I could grow a better beard. And I wish I could grow it instantly. The main differences between men and women are as follows: Women can have babies, men can grow beards. Done. Health Sciences lesson over. The problem here with this equation is that babies (arguably) contribute more to the continuation of life on earth more than beards. And the fact that it turns out that beards are the only contribution men can make to life on earth is made even more disheartening since I can't grow a very good one. If I was from a culture that demanded I grow a beard, I'd be out of luck. I'd be weird beard. Point being that I wish life was more like the Play-Doh Barbershop (arguably) the best toy ever.

Play-Doh Barbershop

Wouldn't it be neat to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning, tug on a lobe, and sprout any color beard you wished? Of course the PlayDoh Barbershop also took care of the top cover, which some out there might like to take advantage of too.

If you wanted a beard of cicadas, this would be the year. Every 17 years, the cicadas come out of hibernation and mate, or drink blood, or something. I don't know, I'd better look it up. But it turns out that this is that year, and the midwest is in for a bug-blizzard. Apparently the annoying thing about cicadas is the beastly amount of noise they make. So much so that outdoor concerts are being cancelled all over in places like Wisconsin and Iowa. Not that the concerts would have been very good anyway. I mean, come on.

Let's read more together about the coming cicada storm, let's self educate:

NYTimes Cicada Article

Cicadas in Wikipedia

Not reported on widely in the US's vastly comprehensive news outlets (currently CNN has "Mom saves daughter, 4, from sinking minivan" and "NBC 's fall schedule is out. Is your show on it?" As headlines) We are in talks with Poland to place an anti-missile base on its soil. Also not reported widely is that in our negotiations with the Poles, we sent them a pre-written response letter ready for signing. This audacious and arrogant method of 'negotiation' sort of sums up Bush's presidency and our current foreign policy. Russia is furious of course, as we would be if they placed, under pretext of defense against Mexican attack, an anti-missile base in Canada. I can't even begin to express my sadness that Poland's President and Prime Minister, the Kaczynski Brothers, have once again proved that they are the intellectual equals of George Bush in even opening talks regarding this subject, considering that despite Poland's support in Iraq, the US has made no change at all to it's visa or citizenship relationship with Poland. Pathetic. Meahwhile the Czech Republic, while being one of my favorite countries in the world, has once again capitulated* and is going ahead with plans for such a base within its borders.

*Czech capitulation has been a glorious thing over the years, which is the only reason Prague remains the only intact medieval city in Europe.

It is easy to be anti-America these days, the hard thing is to defend it without seemingly defending our disasterous policies of the Bushy years. But for as much pain as America has brought to the world, it has brought much more prosperity, knowledge and hope. America is a beacon. It's just that we currently have a big headed Texan (from Connecticut) standing in front of that beacon.

BBC News

I heard a guy on the radio today violently attacking religion, and while I found myself agreeing with some of the basics of his platform, his approach and lack of any understanding for religion's place in the human experience had me blushing slightly for being slightly critical of my faithful friends a few episodes ago. He was less critical of Judaism, with its lack of proselytizing and introspective nature, but in general he was 'preaching' against the idea of G-d as a "Cosmic Dictatorship" which is eternal in life and after death.

But really folks, there is no reason to be mean. Your belief system may not be mine, and mine not yours, but we all come to the conclusions we come to after a great deal of thought and personal choice. The only thing I mind is when one's personal choice starts trying to shove someone else's off the road, which is basically what this guy was doing. We're on the freeway together people, and not everyone drives a Mini. Or whatever your favorite ride is.

I'm watching 'American Idol' on the "Television" right now and I want to point out that for as racist as America still is, it is currently voting for the best singers in the competition and best happen to be black women. And Simon is right almost 100% of the time.

Sorry, devolved into American Idol talk, and it already gets more attention than it deserves.

On another more important note, concerning our trip, my Tibetan aunt has invited us to stay at her house in Katmandu. We have happily accepted of course and will be traveling across the border from the India sometime in late November. Also, my mom will hopefully join us there as she got exited when she heard about the opportunity, but has since started reconsidering given the state of the Maoist rebels in the country.

Two questions might arise from this piece of news, "You have a Tibetan Aunt?" and "Maoist Rebels still exist?" Firstly yes I do and she runs an amazing shop called Tibetan Arts in Santa Monica, and secondly, apparently some certain rebels haven't been reading the news about the collapse of every communist country in the world. Then again, I hadn't read about them, so we all have some gaps in our knowledge.

Final news concerning our trip is that a Nigerian Airlines airplane went down yesterday and disappeared into a swamp in Cameroon, killing everyone on board. Ordinarily I'd feel sad for a second and move on, but it happens to be that our travel plans include two legs on that very airline which at this point are two legs more than I look forward to. Ulp.

It appears that the Irans bought their prisoners new grey suits and gave them gift bags (???) to take home with them when they were released. As of this writing it is unclear where the suits came from. The Iranian government denies they bought the suits, and the British government claims they'd never seen them before. A Syrian tailor in Tehran has claimed that the suits may have originated from their shop, but was unable to say for sure. Where did the suits come from? What they heck was in those gift bags? Fascinating. Stay tuned.