Ice crystals formed on one of the panes of the window next to my heavy head, and I looked to its adjacent ilk to see it this was a common occurrence. I saw no such crystalline latticework on any window but mine. If the darkened wing of the plane hadn't contrasted so starkly with the gossamer whiteness, I wouldn't have even known it was there. It seemed my seat had been twice blessed - with both salubrious plexiglass for a nice icing-over, as well as the right backdrop with which to see it.
The girl (woman? if so, she'd tried awfully hard to regress) next to me sat restlessly, alternating between toying with her ipod (one of the tony new 15 or 30 GB models), flicking through pictures on her digicam (much nicer than mine), scribbling/sketching in her cute little notebook, and reading some fashion rag I couldn't make out, lest I risk leering too long. I started to wonder about a time when two such wholly divergent passengers seated next to each other wouldn't have brought the exact same electronic accoutrements to occupy their time (supposing that such a time ever existed... in such a situation, one is prone to conjuring spurious delineations) or at least a time when being artsy didn't require so much capital investment.
Then I felt guilty, taken aback by my own unwarranted self-righteous vitriol, like some Trotskyite class-warrior brimming with derision or some reactionary old-guard luddite repulsed with disgust. The beauty/pitfall of sitting next to a stranger for 5.2 hours is that you're lulled into a false sense of familiarity, as if their personality were as easy to trace as the ice-lines on the window. Hell, you virtually feel compelled to do so: there's no other view.
Damned foreign and forced plane travel. It's not natural to witness ice forming like that in front of your eyes, like the scattered results of some high-energy particle accelerator, only to fade away mere hours later. It's equally as odd to sit next to a perfect stranger for 5.2 hours and comfortably fall into an implicit pact of mutual indifference and reciprocal ignorance.
There's no exit strategy, no end game, no pareto optimality. In my head, we've fallen in love, fought, made up, betrayed each other, discussed common friends, laughed at the fact that we both hate cancer (a sentiment shared by the majority, but a consonant sentiment nonetheless), jousted, gone fishing, died in every vulgar way imaginable, won free Celine Dion tickets, burned said tickets in effigy, participated in a focus group trying to gauge our thoughts on a new microwavable pastry, navigated the purgatorial waters of middle-age, and lived a lifetime of cloying but unrewarding bliss a million times over. Even saying hello is a step backwards, though judging from the 80s attire a step backwards might suit her fine.
Had I sat in another seat I wouldn't have noticed the ice, and I would have assuaged my boredom by obsessing over someone else. It doesn't really matter though, they were both shortly gone; the ice during our descent, and the girl soon after.
I'm home in Los Angeles for the long weekend. My father offered a free ticket home, on the condition that I surprise my mother, and I accepted.
My mother works in the front office of the elementary school I once attended; it started out as a volunteer job - something to get her out of the empty nest - and progressed into a full-time gig. Friday, it seems, was staff appreciation day, which entailed being treated to a nice lunch out, as well as with arts n' crafts paper flowers created by the students with little messages written on each petal.
I often forget the consistency with which K-6 kids can be uproariously funny. Most of the petals contained expected notes along the lines of "thank you for being so nice" or "Mrs. Orland you are really nice".
My two favorites however were "You rock. Don't ever change." and "You are egregious and benevolent". I sit here alternately conjuring up images of my mother as either a Hollywood talent agent or some paradoxically cruel-but-kind demagogue, and I can't stop laughing.
So I've been extraordinarily busy at work, which has precluded the adding of entries here, but I will say that going to "Eating It" last night was a huge mistake. I was motivated to attend due to the appearance of Neal Pollack, but had to suffer through an hour of humor largely predicated upon 1970s-style ethnic jokes. When Mr. Pollack did take the stage, he presented a recitation of a recent blog entry that I'd already read online and a preview track from his forthcoming album, which was not especially funny in the context of a crowded comedy show.
I did, however, spot the editor of Gawker, and embarrass myself marginally less than with David Cross (chronicled here). I attribute this to the marginally smaller amount of alcohol consumed.
I want to apologize to all the cartographers out there. I was drunk when I wrote that last entry, and I wrote some things I didn't mean. I'm not going to take them back, because otherwise I won't learn my lesson. Just know that I have a special place in my heart for map-makers, and I would never intentionally wrong you guys.
The fucking cartographers are the ones running the show, because they can't stand the fact that the world is fully mapped out and no one needs them anymore, so they foster insurgency and plate tectonics, knowing full well the consequences of their actions, because they need to incite change, the lifeblood of their profession, as a prerequisite for creating and updating maps. New goddamn countries and expanded Hawaiian islands means more steady-handed man-hours for our nearsighted friends. Who do you think was responsible for the disaggregation of the former U.S.S.R.? Who would have the motive, time, foresight, and influence to hand over Macau? THEY WANTED TO DELETE THAT PESKY "(Portugal)" FROM THE MAPS! Think of the work that these two events alone created.
What's next? Will the Dutch Antilles become the Uruguayan Antilles?
Am I the only one who sees this? The insidious map-makers guild is pulling all the strings. Every one of them. If you think you brushed your teeth this morning of your own free will, you're a fool.
When I was younger my family used to take road trips quite frequently, allowing for hours upon hours of roadside scenery. The landscape of California as a whole is heterogeneous, but before encountering vast deserts, alpine mountains, coastal beach hamlets, or brobdignagian rainforests we'd always pass through the liminal scrublands of SoCal. The highways through these parts afforded a clear view of the terrain, which was scenic and appealing in a quiet, minimalistic way (though it evoked in me, as it still does, a twinge of loneliness - as if the semi-arid, semi-hilly desert was the pedestrian underachiever of the family, lacking the stark alien hostility that made its fully-arid, flatter sibling so revered) but the terrain itself provided little in the way of objects, natural or otherwise, to punctuate the vast unbroken infinity.
The sole exception, my one tie to the comprehensible consistency of man, were the power lines and their towers. I remember fixing my eyes on the edge of the window and watching the lines rhythmically rise to their tower-supported peaks and fall to their bowed valleys, over and over. It was a sine curve, an endless roller coaster, a suspension bridge, a stylized EKG readout of the roadway's pulse, a constant metronomic cycle of tension and release providing the backbeat to lazy hours in the back seat, my head slack against the glass, warmed by the sun.
If the lines were the beat, then the towers were the drummers (I know it's a trite anthropomorphic metaphor - deal with it: I'm about to mix in another, and then cap it off with a simile), some sort of real-life robotic mecha-giants, as diverse in form as they were ubiquitous in placement, strung out to the horizon like a line of giant metallic ants. There were the smaller wooden types lining the lesser byways which asymmetrically carried two lines on one side and a single one on the other: ugly, often worn, seemingly slapped together as little more than an ad hoc combination of posts and 2x4s, but elegant in their efficiency and ruggedly dependable. At the other extreme were the grand sculptures of steel with transformers for brains and girders for joints (they would have made Gustave Eiffel proud) which straddled meters of cracked, drought-scourged earth while handily hoisting a dozen high-voltage wires with their precious and prodigious electric payload. These were the giants that held aloft the cross-continental pathways, like the aqueducts of yore, but with a different kind of current quenching a different kind of thirst. Somewhere in between these two poles (pun intended) were the myriad other soldiers of power, from the squat antiquated Eisenhower-era structures to the more modern, waif-like, graceful but brittle-looking steel skeletons (the spoiled brats of the bunch). They sometimes intermingled, and once in a while they disappeared altogether, but usually I could count on a nice regimented line of towers to keep me company.
This is what I remember most about those road trips, aside, of course, from the time my brother spontaneously vomited somewhere outside Bakersfield, forcefully spewing the prune milkshake (yes, they exist, and my father made sure we went out of our way to pick one up) he had just ingested (and which his stomach summarily rejected) all over the floor and the book I happened to be reading. I laughed for hours about that.
More insight into the RIAA and similar industy groups' desired telos, from Declan McCullagh:
Pay attention to the endgame. In the 1994 U.S. v. LaMacchia prosecution, a judge dismissed charges against a 21-year-old MIT student who ran a pirate Internet site, saying that it was not a criminal offense to do so under current federal law. Criminal penalties "should probably attach to willful, multiple infringements of copyrighted software, even absent a commercial motive on the part of the infringer," Judge Richard Stearns wrote. Stearns suggested that Congress step in.
Congress obliged. Three years later, President Clinton signed into law the No Electronic Theft Act, which makes--as I've written about before--copyright infringement a federal crime even if not done for commercial purposes.
Watch for the same thing to happen here. In a little-noticed part of his decision a few weeks ago, Judge Wilson said current copyright law does not prohibit the creation of P2P networks--and then suggested that Congress might want to rewrite the law. "Additional legislative guidance may be well-counseled," Wilson said.
For now, at least, the RIAA will appeal its loss in the Grokster and Morpheus cases to the 9th Circuit. If the appeals courts uphold the lower court's ruling and nothing else changes, the RIAA will immediately ask Congress for a law against P2P networks, which is where the real endgame would take place. (Bolstering the RIAA's position is a January ruling from the Supreme Court in the Copyright Term Extension Act case, in which the majority decided: "We are not at liberty to second-guess congressional determinations and policy judgments...")
Ah, how times have changed since 1984 when the supreme court ruled that the VCR was legal, despite having potential for copyright abuse. Now it seems that any technology with ambiguous or malleable uses is inherently evil. I blame the Monroe doctrine.
We're conducting focus groups at work. Since many of my friends are of the appropriate demographic, I thought I'd post it here. If you're in the NYC area and feel like making an easy $50, email me (friends of friends, acquaintances, et al are more than welcome). Here are the conditions (not my wording):
Target Participants:
- REQUIREMENT: Never have used/subscribed to Vindigo for PDA
- Mobile phone user and ideal if they subscribe to Verizon Wireless, AT&T or Sprint, okay if another carrier
- Tried/subscribed to Get It Now or mMode apps (not required)
- Other demographic / psychographic profile: early adopter of technology, medium to heavy Internet user, urban hipster, night owl, business traveler/road warrior, student, prefer 18 - 24 yrs of age (25-34 yrs okay)
Focus Group Info:
- Focus Group participants will be paid $50 for 90 minute session, start time 6:30pm, weekday.
- We will conduct 2 more focus groups, ideally one with "non-app" users and another with "app-users".
How I feel about working a standard startup work week notwithstanding (short answer: mostly don't mind it - I'd probably sit around my apartment way too much otherwise) there are some occasions when I feel cosmically screwed by the general rigidity. This is one. If I were on a more amorphous schedule, I'd be there in a heartbeat.
Please come see Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig
give the fifth annual William J. Shanahan Lecture
The Great Hall of The Cooper Union
East 7th Street at Third Avenue
New York, New York
Monday, May 12, 2003
6 p.m.
As you've doubtlessly inferred, I'm a huge fan of Professor Lessig, who's on the vanguard of technology and media-related IP law ever-presently as well as having argued Eldred v. Ashcroft before the supreme court. If anyone wants to go with me, I'll make an impassioned plea to my employers for an early exit this eve. Let me know quickly - it's already 3:30 and the clock is ticking.
The NYC MTA is inching forward with their plans to create a second avenue subway line. It's been in various stages of development for decades, from planning to actual construction - several segments of tunnels were completed in the 1970s. The estimated completion date would be sometime around 2020, due in part to the massively complex and disruptive efforts required to install a subway line along almost two hundred unthinkably dense city blocks. As a subway dilettante, I'm riven by the excitement that comes with the first major addition of a new line to the network in well over half a century (and relief of congestion on current lines, increased commuting convenience, etc, etc) and the dread which greets the news of just how disruptive the construction would be. Thankfully, the odds that I'll be around here in time for the groundbreaking (let alone the finished product in 17 years) are feeble, sparing me the difficult resolution of this inner torment.
Of course, the reason the project was mothballed in the 70s was due to a fiscal crisis, which seems to be looming nowadays as well, so who knows if it will actually get anywhere beyond the "public hearing" phase.
Executive summary here. My first reaction: only a two-track line? That's myopic as it eliminates the possibility of regular express service, which is vital should the ridership reach critical mass. Adding new tracks later would be prohibitively costly - if you're going to tear up 8.5 miles of city streets, it's best to only do it once.
Wow, this must have taken forever. Make sure to examine all the zoom levels and drag the ships (everything exactly to scale at that) around for full ubernerd effect.
The FCC is planning to reduce restrictions on media ownership in local markets, which conceivably could (and, if the expansion of Clear Channel et al over the past 7 years is any indication, will) result in monopolies for small and medium-sized markets - every source of information, from newspapers to radio stations, to local TV affiliates, could be controlled by one company. And this is on top of the reductions passed in 1996 which allowed the aforementioned Clear Channel, along with other conglomerates, to start along the path of media hegemony.
This press release makes me want to walk over to Bedminster, NJ, find the marketing analyst who drafted it, and punch them in the neck. Nothing too special - just several, well-delivered punches to the neck. Hard. With feeling. Here's a sample - note the promotion-disguised-as-education tone:
Old School Mom -- If Mom still has an ancient wireless phone that barely fits into her purse, Verizon Wireless has a number of affordable new equipment options that are small enough to fit into the palm of her hand. Give Mom some color and style with the a530 by Samsung or the VX4400 by LG, two of Verizon Wireless' newest equipment offerings. These wireless phones will give Mom the sleek, up-to-date look she needs.
TXTing Diva -- If Mom already owns a digital wireless phone, sons and daughters can construct a series of TXT Messages to send her throughout her day. Send Mom XOXOXO (hugs and kisses), @}----\------- (a rose), or tell her "U R the Gr8est." With a meaningful TXT message, Moms across the country are sure to know their children will LV her 4ever.
Or, in other words, "show your mother how much of an unoriginal sycophant you are by giving us money". And while your at it, send your mom this text message: "put 0 thot in2 this. am whore 4 verizon. co-opted xpressn of luv frm unc2ous prss release." Then go learn how 2 spell.
Advertising and marketing are like anything else - when done well, they can be elevated to an art form. This just drips with ignorance. With quarterly revenue in excess of $5 billion, can't they afford a decent ad/marketing campaign?
Dom visited, and we flipped the whole "Girls Gone Wild" premise on its head (gender wise) for some of these pictures. We're just equal-rights proponents trying to bring down the status quo. Yes. That's it exactly.
Rob's Amazing Poem Generator lets you generate poems from websites. Here's what it came up with for my little neck of the virtual woods:
having this
and quick little head. He mentally tabulated all
along the former extreme, one day. Since
going to be
absolved. It to that point that
everyone on the
boy confessed to
mp3.com is
this site around,
his copy of touch
with their polemical discourse often exceeded only by these teams
of my case the
curve, for the parents, recent
years of his
desk, with each fragment a
major label.
beyond the consensus
of status silence!
Approximately 20% of the
subtext are consonant. The
right and segmentation of
the internet
i.
That hipster waste of space on the subway this morning was holding his copy of "Dubliners" a little too conspicuously. He might as well have been wearing an "Ask me about my endearingly dilettantish literary fixation!" button as he mentally tabulated all the books he really should read and why not because the subway is the perfect environment to extricate and absorb some really heavy thematic material and clear his head at the same time and it doesn't hurt that everyone can see the bright green cover and maybe that hot girl across the aisle with the ironic mullet and retro fashion sense will see it and come over and ask him, with the reflection of his predominately-denim outfit infusing her eyes with a deep blue gleam, if he really likes Joyce in response to which he can act exceedingly enthused, utterly insouciant, or maybe even jaded and disaffected depending on what turns her on the most (though likely vacillating between these stances) after which they could engage in a series of trysts which probably wouldn't amount to much but during the course of which they would almost assuredly discuss wanting to try heroin at least once but it would end poorly and afterward he'd will himself into psychosomatic sullenness to the point that during an interstice between his 12-hour naps he'd roll over and pick up said same copy of "Dubliners", open it to the very page he was reading when meeting her - having not advanced beyond that point since - and begin reading the book, all the while convincing himself that this time around his intentions were far more earnest but nevertheless putting it down after a few minutes, putting on his mesh trucker cap (after being dissatisfied with the appallingly neat state of his normally unkempt hair) agonizing over whether to listen to The Smiths or The Cure on his iPod (ultimately opting for Echo and the Bunnymen) and defenestrating himself from the sublet bedroom of his loft apartment (2BR, 1100 sq, high ceilings, two blocks from Lorimer L stop, no smokers, no pets, $850/month), shattering upon impact with the concrete sidewalk of the neighborhood whose gentrification he both caused and loudly lamented, with each fragment a fully-formed clone lying dormant until a passing hepcat might happen to spill some PBR on the myriad lilliputian proto-bohemians, protean in hipster phenotype, causing them to swell, awaken, and go forth to further disseminate their obnoxious genes. Mondays make me bitter like "Hearty Chicken Noodle" instant soup (nothing "hearty" about it; it's the hemophiliac of soups). The title of this entry has nothing to do with the body - I thought of it in the shower and it made me want to beat myself up.
I will be continuing the trend. Apparently they will be having roast suckling pig and bok beer at Zum Schneider tonight. I hope to document this... live!
