Month: March 2006

So, most of you know by now I went to Florida. I have been all over Florida – Tampa, Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville, Ft. Lauderdale… I always had this mental image of what Florida should be, and it always seemed to fall short somehow.

This mini-away was the exception. The Florida Keys are rather akin to paradise. Not the true pristine paradise of the Caribbean, but quality nonetheless. There is a hell of a gay pride community, as well as a strong MA/Red Sox contingent. There are also about a billion bars, little shops, and tons of sand. I’ll be damned if I didn’t have a great time.
= ?

I went with my friends S and B, whose faces you see smattered throughout the photo set. This is a shot of them at the southernmost point in the continental US:

S is the tall one, in case you were wondering.

We got into Miami early Saturday morning. I was offered a first class upgrade for a pittance, and took it. I read the most of the way down, except for watching “Good Night and Good Luck” (which I really liked). My flight got in first, so I went to meet up with S and B at Miami airport. Because Miami airport is under construction, there are no moving walkways or trams or anything. I came in on one end of the airport, they came in on the other. It took me about 20 minutes to hike it. The place is that big, really.

After that we picked up the trusty rental car (a convertible), and it was vacation ho!

We spent a night in Islamorada (where we didn’t see the Supremes, but had some great food). There was this guy weaving grass hats there, and a unisex bathroom, which was VERY uncomfortable. I was asked (due to my Yankees hat) by someone if I was a New Yorker. Turns out her son was a regular at a bar I used to frequent in the long ago when I was dating a woman from Woodside. I probably bought him a round or two, if he is who I think he was.


The Supremes were there way past drunk thirty


This is the grass hat man – I was gonna buy one, but I already got one. it was a present on my 25th birthday.


The hotel in Islamorada had turtles on all the doors. B asked me to take a pic of one.


The view was pretty good from the hotel balcony.

We had a scrumptious evening at S’s Aunt/Uncle’s house. It was in an insanely opulent gated community a little northeast of Islamorada. The community had their own church, lake, dock, grocery store, gas station, and golf course. Everyone rode around on golf carts to get everywhere. It was a breathtaking house, with a screened in two story patio, and an indoor pool. I met some very cool New Yorkers, who were also there, and had a fantastic dinner. I got to get my grill on for burgers, and seared tuna, shrimp, and asparagus were served up by others. In the late behind the house were quite a population of fish (they had a dock in their backyard that led to the lake). S’s aunt fed the fish bologna – I got a few shots of them coming up to eat:


Oscar Mayer fishie


Screened in Patio with Pool

After the evening passed, it was back in the car to Key West! I learned that once crossing a certain point, my phone was spotty at best, and my battery soon died without regular recharging. As a result, it spent the majority of my vacation off, which was a good thing, really. From this point on, the recipe was pretty much, get up, chill in the sun, get dinner, drink/dance/sightsee.


Chillaxin with Frozen Drinks


What a mailbox!

Surprisingly, we saw some great live music down there, and it was mostly cover stuff. Lots of fun to see a gaggle of hot women crazy crowd dancing to songs everyone can sing aloud to.


Live Music


Dancing


Shenannegans

We did one day out at the docks for a sunset where I saw someone juggle fire on a tall unicycle, a dog that could walk a crosswire, a mime dressed as a midget, and ate some unfuckingbelievably good Cuban food.


Fire Juggler


On a Unicycle

The last full day there, we did some diving, and went on a sunset cruise in a wooden schooner (The Appledore from Maine) which my friend B talked the captain into letting her run for a bit:


B at the helm


Sunset and Sailboat (not ours)


Sunset From Sailboat

The last night was much fun. Good food, great times. The next morning, we went to the Southernmost Point in the Continental US, then got in the car to go back to Miami. On the way back though, we stopped at Treasure Island, a junk shop on the side of US 1. The only reason to stop there was, THEY HAVE A LOBSTROCITY!


DaDa Chum, DiDa Chick

I can’t tell if B is happy to see it, or scared that she is going to be eaten.

Flight home was delayed interminably, and I got home pretty exhausted from the travel. Since then, it has been grindstone city, but I am still basking in afterglow.


Afterglow

Good times, great place. I’d highly recommend the Keys to anyone looking for a good time.

More pics available on my flickr.

I’m still in a very aquatic mood. Any time I spend any duration near the ocean, the Pisces in me becomes rather overpowering.
My photos are up on flickr, I hope to do a recap post today/this weekend.

Think bodies of water:

they are trying to evict the best place in NYC for beer and sausage (no, not that kind of sausage gutter brains)!
hit the petition (not that i believe it will change everything, but still)…
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/zumschne/

I am quickly approaching the point where I am nearly 50% behind where I wanted to be on a very important writing project for me in 2006. This is overwhelming me somewhat, in terms of what recent thoughts/inspirations are driving me towards. I need to stick with it. I can do 6-7k words in a sitting if I really push, but my desire to maintain quality imperils the likelihood of this enterprise. This irritates me particularly whenever I write something well in a response email, or post in someone else’s journal.

I need to unplug and write dammit!

Time once again to review the winners of the Annual “Stella Awards.”

Here are this year’s winners:

5th Place (tie): Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was Ms. Robertson’s son.

5th Place (tie): 19-year-old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000 and medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman apparently didn’t notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor’s hubcaps.

5th Place
(tie): Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania, was leaving a house he had just finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up since the automatic door opener was malfunctioning. He couldn’t re-enter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut. The family was on vacation, and Mr.
Dickson found himself locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found, and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the homeowner’s insurance claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of $500,000.

4th Place: Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas, was awarded $14,500 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbor’s beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its owner’s fenced yard. The award was less than sought because the jury felt the dog might have been provoked at the time by Mr. Williams, who had climbed into the yard, over the fence, and was shooting the dog repeatedly with a pellet gun.

3rd Place: A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, $113,500 after she slipped on a soft drink and broke her coccyx (tailbone). The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson had thrown it at her
boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.

2nd Place: Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware, successfully sued the owner of a night club in a neighboring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. This occurred while Ms.Walton was trying to sneak through the window in the ladies room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000. and dental expenses.

1st Place: This year’s runaway winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski of
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mrs. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, (from an OU football game), having driven onto the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back & make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the RV left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mrs.Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising her in the owner’s manual that she couldn’t actually do this. The jury awarded her $1,750,000
lus a new motor home. The company actually changed their manuals on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any other complete morons around.

On the eve of the equinox, I dreamed the primal dreams. Dreams of the powers of nature striking back while they still could. Dreams that made me want to claw off my skin and howl at the lack of sanctity we have for the life we crush under heel every day.

I need to try and midwife these stories. They have been quickening for quite long enough.

What do I have to give up to have them? This makes me worry greatly. Always, the cost.

I had spoken to some/all about this possibility previously – tickets are now available online.

I am taking Friday off, and had no problem with a midnight show, but apparently many theaters are pushing a 10pm show on Thursday. I think this is probably nicer for people who don’t have Friday off.

I am proposing the 10pm show at Loews 34th Street 14 ( http://www.fandango.com/mapquest/default.aspx?label=Loews+34th+Street+14&streetaddress=312%2bW.%2b34th%2bSt.&city=New%2bYork&state=NY&zip=10001)

Tickets available via Fandango here:
https://www.fandango.com/TicketBoxOffice.aspx?row_count=1323720137&mid=89339&tid=AAQCR

Anyone who wants to come is welcome. Feel free to pass this along to anyone you may think is interested. I am thinking maybe dinner/drinks prior? Comment if you want to pre-movie game and didn’t get my lame email, and I’ll work out some options – please mention details in regards to eateries or food genres if you have any strong ones.

As an added item, anyone who is also taken Friday off (or part of Friday off) that has any plans, let me know. I am looking forward to drinking my way though the celebration of the patron saint of the drunk nation.

Beir bua agus beannacht!

had a fun weekend. went to kenka friday night, indulged in my fried frog delight.
saturday, hung out, then went to tao for dinner with misshellion, N., L., ,, and .
walking home from tao, i took pictures of this nifty building that was doing some neat light stuff. of course, i was too dumb to write down where or what the building was. go me.
yesterday, i hung around, played some civ4, played one of the best games of my life, followed by a bad game, then made some pasta and meatballs. watched neo tokyo, which i really enjoyed.
much excitement. aside from spending too much money on saturday, it was pretty low key.

i didn’t write all weekend. i feel like drek about it, but that is o.k. my fuzz went away around 3am on sunday, with no migrane to show for it.

two weeks to florida. wow.

i just designed a home automation center in 15 minutes of research and a phone call. hooray for the inter-nets.


yeah, i am one of those comic book nerd/geeks who distnaces himself from most comic book movies. except sin city, and a few other embarassing ones.

is it friday yet? revelers, have you picked any locations?

i had a very restless night. i am still in the fuzz zone. the only other time i ever had this happen was after i had a concussion at age 14, where it felt like i was on the verge of having a migraine for a week before it went away. as i recall then, i was less than pleased. lets hope that this either goes away, or ends up manifesting in time to get over with for the weekend.

i realized last night, talking to L., that while i may mention my migranes from time-to-time online, i usually only talk about the bad ones (which ocur every 3-4 months) as opposed to the mundane ones i have every 21-28 days. those usually only hang out for a day or two before they are gone, and, like my lj namesake, i guess i have just learned how to carry the pain as part and parcel of the day-to-day.

go fig. takes someone else pointing out how much i keep in to realize it.

i am also pulling a 12 hour day today. gotta love them.

When I was an infant,
Butterflies were splotches of motion and color,
but they didn’t get anything but blinks or giggles.

When I was a boy,
Butterflies were for girls, except for the ones in ‘Alice in Wonderland’;
those were cool. Bread and butter flies.
Oh! And the troubadour butterfly from ‘The Last Unicorn’.

When I was a kid,
Butterflies became an analogy for life – metamorphosis;
ugliness in to beauty, death and rebirth, gasoline and tar rings.
Sometimes, I squashed gypsy moth caterpillars under my sneakers
during the summer infestations. There were always more.

When I was a youngster,
Butterflies were things of school projects. Mason jars and maple leaves,
crayola, paper mache, and plastecine told the story
of cannibalistic siblings, long flights from Mexico,
eggs, and the chrysalis vs. the coocoon.
In my head, David Attenborough was always narrating.

When I was a youth,
Butterflies were the power of women. Sex and sensuality,
in a multicolored whirl of wind and wonder.
The lightest caress of wingtips and lips,
the glitter powder smudge of close embrace..
Bright colors and soft skin
fragility and beauty wrapped in an impermanent shrine.

Now that I am a man,
I realize that Butterflies are dream powdered concentrate
of yesterday’s memories, women, and science projects. Their wing beat meter
finds a voice in the words flitting through my head.
A field of yellow flowers swaying in the breeze of sun-kissed August afternoon.
August is when the Monarchs lord over nectar, pollen, and the simple peon Whites,
while nearby swallows sing dirges and snack prodigiously.
I was such a jester then.

When I have children of my own,
Butterflies will have a place. They will be laughter and science
Last Unicorns and Lewis Carrols,
summer afternoons and songbirds snacking,
there will be no gas or tar rings. Who knows
if there will even be any trees for the Gypsies to infest.
I hope there are, if not
I have no idea what you could substitute.
Pictures are not worth a thousand words when describing butterflies.

When I become old
I hope there is still a world for Butterflies.
The perfect marriage of adaptive intelligence and seemingly
random beauty. The specialization makes them valuable
but susceptible to widespread destruction. Perhaps some
clever entrepreneur will make mechanical butterflies,
to flit about factories with bits and bytes of pollen data.
Metallic echoes of one of life’s great wonders.
That will sadden me beyond reason, that techno-origami would somehow
substitute the breath of a butterfly’s flutter on an infant’s cheek.

Video Shows Bush Was Warned Before Katrina
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP)—In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans’ Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.

Bush didn’t ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: “We are fully prepared.”

The footage—along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by The Associated Press—show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.

Linked by secure video, Bush’s confidence on Aug. 28 starkly contrasts with the dire warnings his disaster chief and a cacophony of federal, state and local officials provided during the four days before the storm.

A top hurricane expert voiced “grave concerns” about the levees and then-Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown told the president and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that he feared there weren’t enough disaster teams to help evacuees at the Superdome.

“I’m concerned about … their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe,” Brown told his bosses the afternoon before Katrina made landfall.

Some of the footage and transcripts from briefings Aug. 25-31 conflicts with the defenses that federal, state and local officials have made in trying to deflect blame and minimize the political fallout from the failed Katrina response:

—Homeland Security officials have said the “fog of war” blinded them early on to the magnitude of the disaster. But the video and transcripts show federal and local officials discussed threats clearly, reviewed long-made plans and understood Katrina would wreak devastation of historic proportions. “I’m sure it will be the top 10 or 15 when all is said and done,” National Hurricane Center’s Max Mayfield warned the day Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast.

“I don’t buy the `fog of war’ defense,” Brown told the AP in an interview Wednesday. “It was a fog of bureaucracy.”

—Bush declared four days after the storm, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees” that gushed deadly flood waters into New Orleans. But the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility—and Bush was worried too.

White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Brown discussed fears of a levee breach the day the storm hit.

“I talked to the president twice today, once in Crawford and then again on Air Force One,” Brown said. “He’s obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the Dome, he’s asking questions about reports of breaches.”

—Louisiana officials angrily blamed the federal government for not being prepared but the transcripts shows they were still praising FEMA as the storm roared toward the Gulf Coast and even two days afterward. “I think a lot of the planning FEMA has done with us the past year has really paid off,” Col. Jeff Smith, Louisiana’s emergency preparedness deputy director, said during the Aug. 28 briefing.

It wasn’t long before Smith and other state officials sounded overwhelmed.

“We appreciate everything that you all are doing for us, and all I would ask is that you realize that what’s going on and the sense of urgency needs to be ratcheted up,” Smith said Aug. 30.

Mississippi begged for more attention in that same briefing.

“We know that there are tens or hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana that need to be rescued, but we would just ask you, we desperately need to get our share of assets because we’ll have people dying—not because of water coming up, but because we can’t get them medical treatment in our affected counties,” said a Mississippi state official whose name was not mentioned on the tape.

Video footage of the Aug. 28 briefing, the final one before Katrina struck, showed an intense Brown voicing concerns from the government’s disaster operation center and imploring colleagues to do whatever was necessary to help victims.

“We’re going to need everything that we can possibly muster, not only in this state and in the region, but the nation, to respond to this event,” Brown warned. He called the storm “a bad one, a big one” and implored federal agencies to cut through red tape to help people, bending rules if necessary.

“Go ahead and do it,” Brown said. “I’ll figure out some way to justify it. … Just let them yell at me.”

Bush appeared from a narrow, windowless room at his vacation ranch in Texas, with his elbows on a table. Hagin was sitting alongside him. Neither asked questions in the Aug. 28 briefing.

“I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm,” the president said.

A relaxed Chertoff, sporting a polo shirt, weighed in from Washington at Homeland Security’s operations center. He would later fly to Atlanta, outside of Katrina’s reach, for a bird flu event.

One snippet captures a missed opportunity on Aug. 28 for the government to have dispatched active-duty military troops to the region to augment the National Guard.

Chertoff: “Are there any DOD assets that might be available? Have we reached out to them?”

Brown: “We have DOD assets over here at EOC (emergency operations center). They are fully engaged. And we are having those discussions with them now.”

Chertoff: “Good job.”

In fact, active duty troops weren’t dispatched until days after the storm. And many states’ National Guards had yet to be deployed to the region despite offers of assistance, and it took days before the Pentagon deployed active-duty personnel to help overwhelmed Guardsmen.

The National Hurricane Center’s Mayfield told the final briefing before Katrina struck that storm models predicted minimal flooding inside New Orleans during the hurricane but he expressed concerns that counterclockwise winds and storm surges afterward could cause the levees at Lake Pontchartrain to be overrun.

“I don’t think any model can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not but that is obviously a very, very grave concern,” Mayfield told the briefing.

Other officials expressed concerns about the large number of New Orleans residents who had not evacuated.

“They’re not taking patients out of hospitals, taking prisoners out of prisons and they’re leaving hotels open in downtown New Orleans. So I’m very concerned about that,” Brown said.

Despite the concerns, it ultimately took days for search and rescue teams to reach some hospitals and nursing homes.

Brown also told colleagues one of his top concerns was whether evacuees who went to the New Orleans Superdome—which became a symbol of the failed Katrina response—would be safe and have adequate medical care.

“The Superdome is about 12 feet below sea level…. I don’t know whether the roof is designed to stand, withstand a Category Five hurricane,” he said.

Brown also wanted to know whether there were enough federal medical teams in place to treat evacuees and the dead in the Superdome.

“Not to be (missing) kind of gross here,” Brown interjected, “but I’m concerned” about the medical and mortuary resources “and their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe.”

hey folks, remember that night we did a bunch of eating for our age a few months back? i just came across my notes on things that i was supposed to post about, in the urban legend sense. here they are for you:
Little Mermaid hidden sexual agenda (Link1, Link2)
Lion King hidden sexual agenda (link1)
Alladin hidden sexual agenda (link1)
Wizard of Oz dead midget (link1)
Ghost in 3 Men (link1)
Richard Stanley and His Antics on the set of “The Island of Doctor Moreau” (link1,link2, link3)

i have too much going on in headspace for me to write all the things i want to. as my backlog grows, i realize this is going to become a big problem. i need to edit a bunch of stuff, i need to rewrite a bunch of stuff, and, mostly, i really need to fucking get working on something really meaty which has been festering subsurface for months.

frustration, it seems, was the flavor for february. i’m hoping a new month changes that.

seems like apple is really pushing bonjour. i find that amsuing, sinc ei basically use my hacked xbox to do all the things it is touted to do, and more, if i wanted to spend the time to set it up. that is on a 300$ piece of hardware i bought in 2001, with another 200$ of parts i put into it since. i need to get on some DIY digital entertainment projects before all these “smart ware” appliance things shut out the indie market.

i am going to florida in the end of march. this should prove to be a good unplug, if i can make it.

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