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Girl One: He's so cute yo, you should get wit him.

Girl Two: He's like 5' 2", and I'm like 5' 8". That shit just don't look right.

He had no shame or concern for the opinions or reactions of others. He took two steps toward me, stopped and crammed his finger up his nostril, removed it, inspected his finger, then made a flicking motion towards the curb. He took two more steps, repeated the process, and then a few more steps, and so on, and so on, until he passed by me. This process repeated at least five time before we walked by each other. You'd think I would be repelled by this behavior, or at worst I would look away from his finger stuffing spectacle. Yet, I could not turn away. This man's simple act of pure disregard for basic social graces had me mesmerized. We we're on a crowded street in the middle of the day, but he felt no need to hide his grotesque behavior from the view of others. He barely noticed that he was on a public street surrounded by people.

In a way I respect his unwillingness to conform to the mandates of social pressures, the unwritten social rules that govern what is decent and what is offensive behavior. His nose mining hurt no one, and it seemd to bring him great joy. Can I fault a man for that? I may be inclined to praise him, as long as he starts walking down White Street instead of Franklin.

Postrel...is a libertarian apologist for globalization. Her Buffy essay was another example of her braindamaged world view. She believes that "government is bad and that "free markets are good". I think both government and markets are artificial constructs that can be used for good or for ill. Free markets are not fetishes, they don't possess magical powers for good, they aren't a panacea. Similarly, governments are not inherently evil or wrong.

Remember Ishmael? "There is no one right way to live" ...

and some of Mike's photos from the present

• Evil exists.
• Redemption is possible.
• Evil must be fought -- sometimes literally, with lives and weapons.
• Evil never goes away.
• We don't get to choose our reality.
• We do get to choose what we do.
• Life's pleasures are precious.

...some photos from Battery Park

I do believe Grilled Chicken Planet was where Kahn was originally stranded.

The first car I remember was a white two-door. I remember climbing in as my mother held the front seat forward so I could slip into the back. It has been said that this car caught on fire when we were in it. My Mother saw smoke, and told us to get out of the car, that it was on fire, but we just stared at her, maybe too young, probably too stupid, to realize we were in danger. The fire marked the end of the white two door. I have only vague memories of that car. It seems it was a Corvair, maybe a late sixties model, rusty and old and destined for the junk yard with a brief stop at our house before it committed suicide.

The next car in the line was the black four-door. Our neighbor owned a gas station, and he picked it out for my mother. It was an exciting day when he drove it down our street. It was a black Comet with red interior. I vividly remember the shiny ashtray set in the very middle of the back end of the front seat. I loved the black car, and I have fond memories of riding to Centerport beach in it's back seat. This was a car of the late sixties/seventies. It had seat belts, but they were lost hopelessly beneath the cracks of the back seat. Safety was of secondary concern in this car, set aside to allow for my Mother's smoking. The back seat was always a dangerous place. Hot ashes would flick off the end of my mothers cigarette, float out of the front window, then fly into the back window and occasionally blow in our faces. "Ma, your burning me again", I'd yell. "Ohh, sorry honey", she'd reply. Mind you, the cigarette was never snuffed out, the ashes were flicked a tad more carefully for the next few minutes. On one trip to the beach, me in the back and my sister in the front, I came face to face with mortality. The road to Centerport beach winded towards the northern shore of Long Island. We rolled around a fairly sharp turn, and the back door flew open. I sat stunned looming down at the pavement flying by. Not really sure what to do, completely unencumbered by a seat belt, I became hypnotized by the speeding asphalt. My sister yelled to my mother, "Ma, Mark's door is open." "Mark, get away from the door." she replied as she pulled the car to the side of the road and slammed the door shut. Somehow, I felt responsible. I spent the rest of the trip, and most others, in the middle of the back seat double and triple checking the door locks.

In around 1972 our father died. For all practical purposes this should seem like a bad thing. However, we had very little money, and my Mother was working as a cafeteria lady a the local school. Our father lived in California and never sent us a dime. His death became a bit of a windfall. My mother received a fair sum of insurance money, and as his children we were able to start collecting some of my father's social security. In an instant we went from poor to not so very poor. In our new state of fiscal fluency my Mother decided to by a car. Not a used car, not a broken down junker that tries to fling unsuspecting children out the backdoor at a whim. She wanted a brand new car. A car that would start (almost) every time. A car that had a lighter that worked, and a radio (if only AM). I don't remember the decision to purchase said car. I don't remember shopping around and haggling prices. I just remember the day she came home in it, a 1972 green Plymouth Duster. When I say green, I mean green. The entire car was green: the paint, the seats, the carpet, floor mats, radio, steering wheel, dashboard, the ceiling, door locks. It was as if the car had been steeped in a vat of green paint. It was GREEN. Only the tires and the antenna were able to avoid the green bath. It was the base model duster. It had a lighter, but these came standard back then, and it was green. I loved the duster. The burning of hot ash seemed that much sweeter sitting in the back of the duster. The working AM radio serenaded us with actual music in the back seat. The duster didn't smell like burning oil or musty mold or cigarette smoke (at least for a few weeks anyway). The duster didn't stick out like a sore rusty thumb in the supermarket parking lot. It didn't leave puddles of oil/transmission fluid in its aftermath. It didn't trail blue smoke behind it. It didn't say, "Hey, I'm filled with poor people." It said, "Hey, I'm filled with not so poor frugal people.", and somehow that seemed so much better.

The Duster ran like a dream for over ten years. I spent a fair portion of my childhood riding in the back seat of that car. When my Mother bought a new car, and gave the duster to my brother, It felt like an era had ended. I watched in sadness as my brother hacked and chopped and slowly disintegrated the Duster attempting to build himself a hot rod. I'm not sure what ever happened to it in the end, but I have a few burn scars on my forehead to remember it by.

Big surf (at least for Long Island) thanks to Isabel. We drove all over trying to find an open surf shop, or just a cheapo boogie board with no luck. Mike's friend Andrew brought his board from LA (seen above).

I spent the morning getting pounded in the rough...

Hear the trumpets hear the pipers
one hundred million angels singing
Multitudes are marching to a big kettledrum
Voices calling and voices crying
Some are born and some are dying
Its alpha and omegas kingdom come

• buy a paper shredder;
• pay cash;
• discover that it is worthless crap;
• realize that the very first thing you shredded was the receipt.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

I'm a rolling stone, all alone and lost,
For a life of sin, I have paid the cost.
When I pass by, all the people say
Just another guy on the lost highway.

Lost Highway - Hank Williams

Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the making of action in spite of fear; the moving out against the resistance engendered by fear into the unknown and into the future.

The Road Less Traveled - M. Scott Peck

While nurturing my distain for school, a friend and I would skip on these fine September days, and head to the the nearby deli and attempt to swipe a few quarts of beer, most of the time unsuccessfully. We'd buy sandwiches and chips, and hike down to the local sump*. We'd spend the afternoon drinking warm beer, throwing rocks at bottles, beening each other with dirt bombs, and just plain old relaxing in the sun. The school councilors would lecture me about skipping school, and warned me that I was missing out on the important experiences of school/youth , and someday I'd regret it. Oddly enough, I never regretted a minute I spent in the sump or skipping school, and I am this close to skipping out early today to drink beer down by the hudson (don't tell Meg).

* In Long Island the rain runoff from the roads is drained into large basins that we called sumps. Most of the time they remained empty of water, and were a great place for kids to ride dirtbikes, light huge bonfires, or drink stolen quarts of beer.

Some proof for you non-believers: Does God control the weather?

On a side note: New York in its infinite wisdom has created a city area bike map.

And finally, the doodle's path for posterity: path

We can build our dungeons in the air
And sit and cry the blues
We can stomp across this world
With nails hammered through our shoes
We can join that troubled chorus
Who criticise and accuse
It don't matter much
We got nothing much to lose
But this wonderful life
If you can find it
And when you find it
...
It's a wonderful life that you bring
It's a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful thing


Wonderful Life - Nick Cave

some rockaway photos.

I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst...

And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life...

Six months after spitting in the face of the world, the Bush administration is crawling on its belly before the U.N.

[...]

Not even the world-class chutzpah of the Bush administration can conceal the fact that by turning to the despised world body, it is eating a heaping plate of crow...

freedom fries with your crow, Mr. President?

A few days Later I was looking for my Perl 5 book, and I was informed that Rolf had taken it home. Being a bit miffed, I made a small modification to the whiteboard.

And so a legend was born: faces of rolf

Often I wonder, "Where is Rolf today? Does he have a whiteboard with his name on it? Does he still have my Perl book? Did this really happen?" We may never know.

It's not so much about love and longing -- it's about loneliness and being satisfied with yourself.

Rufus Lets It Bleed

Top of the world Ma!

of course, the kid should be born at Shea...let's be serious.

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

- Sydney J. Harris

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.

- William Shakespeare

Do not click the following link if you are in the least bit squeamish. I can barely stand to look at it myself. I post this link through a wall of tears and a heavy heart: the horror, the horror...

We loved you Bruce, and always will...sniff...

some have a little anxiety about being left behind, and want to be sure they are coming along for the ride...

and other assorted pictures from labor day.