So far today...

It is 11:30 am. I have been at work for an hour and a half. And already today, I have seen:

1) the biggest German Shepherd I have EVER seen in my life, on a leash held by a similarly large police officer;
2) a man on a fine spring morning wearing a crushed purple velvet blazer;
3) a chihuahua so fat its legs looked like they were only about an inch and a half long;
4) two homeless people with a shopping cart just as decked out as their bodies were in hand-crocheted... everything. Multi-colored. Multi-yarned. Multi-crocheted.
5) And this article about Cheerios being a drug.

Hm.

The midnight train going anywhere...

Ah, the subway. The rich vein of scum that is the lifeblood of the city. The poor man's answer to transportation and the rich man's answer to "too drunk to drive home." Where one can hone one's ability to ignore the other 200 people packed into the same car despite their raised voices, gigantic feet that stomp on yours, and general stench. Where one can learn how to avoid eye contact with 400 eyes at once and fade into a crowd when a panhandler walks by. It's a city unto itself, possessed of its own social castes, snack vendors, and a code of conduct far stricter than one finds in most elevators, encompassing etiquette for food consumption, music playing and listening, conversational faux pas, drunken weaving... you name it, there's a different way of dealing with it on the subway.

The subway irritates me. I get very peevish very easily on long underground trips, particularly on weekends, when some small voice in my head is always saying 'Don't we do this enough on weekdays? Can't we just take a cab?' while the other small voice is saying 'No we can't take a cab, you idiot, we'd be bankrupt in no time if we took cabs everywhere!' The two voices usually get into knock-down, drag-out fistfights with each other, which makes me slightly more irritable. And when this is going on in my head at 3:00 am on a Saturday night local 2 train that I'm doomed to be on for 150 blocks, I get really antsy.

And when I'm that antsy and am suddenly confronted by obnoxious people on the train... well... I get VERY irritable.

So, at 3:00 am on Saturday, when Connor and I had finished a late-night sushi binge on MacDougal (which involved a whole lot of obnoxious drunk people in the restaurant), we clambered tiredly onto the 2 train and I braced myself for the coming grouchiness. So did Connor - he gets a lot of flack when I'm grouchy.

We got on the train and were immediately subjected to Obnoxious Columbia Students. There were four of them - 2 men who were very gay and 2 women who were way too tan, and all in very expensive looking clothing. They weren't doing anything particularly annoying, per se, but they were talking REALLY LOUDLY about the most inane details of their oh-so-completely-uninteresting Columbia undergrad lives. I was able to block most of it out and focus mainly on digesting the huge amount of spicy tuna, salmon, and yellowtail in my stomach, and wondering who the aging rock-star we'd seen in the restaurant was. Until I heard the girl next to me announce: "You should totally have picked up your phone, because if you had, I was totally, honestly ready to walk down 122nd Street, the WHOLE WAY to the D train, BY MYSELF, at like midnight. I was READY. I know it wouldn't have been very safe or a good idea, but I was READY. I would have DONE it."

Oh, for Christ's sake! 122nd Street at midnight? If you LIVE near Columbia and are on a train filled with other people who live near Columbia and are really dumb enough to think that 122nd St is THAT bad... 2 choices for you. Either A) keep it to yourself because everyone will think you are a MORON or will try to mug you now that they know you're easy pickings, or B) take a stroll through Bed-Stuy or Jamaica or the 155th Projects or even near Fordham - then see how scary 122nd St. is at midnight.
Twit.

Finally these upstanding young citizens got off the train and left us in relative peace. I was content for a few seconds to contemplate the fish in my tummy.

But not for long! Oh no, on this ever-changing, evolving, developing, degenerating world of Subway Travel, the worst is never the worst. Something far fouler is always around the bend.

Two young guys - Dominican, if the one guy's shirt can be believed - sat down across from us. They were having a lively conversation in rapid Spanish, seemed nice enough, weren't bothering anyone overtly. Except the one guy was... how do I put this? He was a big guy to begin with, probably 6'1" or 6'2", so he was having some difficulty fitting himself comfortably onto the narrow train seat. Makes perfect sense. But he was one of those big guys who: A) appears to have very recently become fat and doesn't quite know what to do with his extra skin, and B) feels the need not to just sit, but to LOUNGE, in order to be comfortable. Well, with his stature and the smallness of the train, there was no way he could get comfortable, but instead of just dealing with that fact, he instead chose to twitch and twist and gallumph about, crossing and uncrossing his legs, trying to fling his arms over the back of the seat - even though there IS no back to those seats on the train - lean back, lean forward, wrap himself around the pole nearby... and continuously lift up his T-shirt to... I don't know... reposition his gut? Air it out? Show as many people as possible a sneak shot of his gross belly? I got several peeks at it before turning away, now contemplating that the fish in my belly wanted to escape.

But, alas! When I turned away, my eyes were met with a far LESS appealing sight! Yes, it existed! There was a woman sitting further down the bench seat, picking at her eye makeup in a small mirror. She was shaped like a Hershey Kiss. As if she had been sitting for her entire life and her body had just taken up the least gravity-resistant shape it could. She had no discernable breasts - if there were any beneath her bright pink shirt, they were masked by the stretches of that shirt as it endeavored to envelope a bulging, flabby stomach that burgeoned out from the waistband of a pair of black ripped leggings. NOT PANTS - leggings. I could see a large portion of her thigh through a rip in the leggings. It was as unattractive as the rest of her. She was very unpleasant to look at. But it was pretty much stare at her, or the guy across from me, or risk falling asleep on the train - a fate worse than death. (The rats might eat you if you fall asleep!) So I continued to watch her placidly pick at her eye makeup. After a while she put her mirror away and started to... oh my god... she was like... PETTING her distended belly. Rubbing it, as if she were pregnant, but she was NOT pregnant. Make no mistake. I know a round, firm pregnant belly when I see one, and this one was neither round nor firm - it was gelatinous... oh my god was she tucking her hand up UNDER her roll? Yes she was! I almost vomited up my sushi. She was petting and LIFTING her belly now.

I had to look away. It was horrendous. But when I turned, there was the gigantic fat man again, pulling up his T-shirt and breathing heavily! I saw his stomach. The yellowtail in my own stomach made a leap for the esophagus. Dear god, where could I turn?

I turned back toward the gross lady, thinking I'd just look past her and further down the car, but I was distracted because she appeared to be REMOVING her almost-flattened-by-gravity breast from her shirt. It was morbidly fascinating, watching her try to resurrect her almost-dead, deflated piece of femininity and display it to the world. Horror-stricken, I watched as she pulled it upward from the depths of her pink shirt, before plopping it back down - mostly still covered, thank goodness - into her bra, now in some semblance of cleavage.

I managed not to hurl for the last few minutes it took us to get to our stop, but just barely, and I had to keep my eyes closed. But I've never smelled sweeter air than the rancid bouquet of the 3rd Avenue-149th stop's fetid track water when I got out of that car.

Here come the crazies!

The weather was pretty bad for most of this week - rain, drizzle, mist, chill, puddles, etc. Yesterday I went down to get on the 1 train at Columbus Circle and literally had to walk through a good two inches of water IN the subway station to get to the platform. It's been gross.

And as often happens during bad weather, the crazies seem to have been damped down by the humidity and shivery cool temperatures. But thankfully, the past few days have warmed up a bit and today we even had some intermittent sunshine, and just like crocuses and daffodils bloom to announce Spring's arrival, the crazies have jumped forth from the woodwork and begun to entertain me once more.

(Let me just make a note about my relationship with the crazies and other unfortunates upon which I frequently comment here on the ol' blog. I find that many people find my sarcastic comments and laughter at their antics to be distasteful, and I can understand why. It seems callous and downright mean to poke fun at these people, most of whom in one way or another have lost control of their lives and end up in unfortunate places, mindsets, and situations. I don't want anyone out there to think that I'm a totally evil person, although I guess if I really were trying to "Mimic Maleficent" I'd be unrepentant. But, the point here is, I'm not totally insensitive to the plights of these people. If there were a clear way in which I could help them, I usually would. However, living in a city like New York, one simply MUST develop a thick skin with which to ride the subway, walk down the street, and, of course, answer the telephone at the gallery. One cannot go through one's day with a soft heart worn on the sleeve without risking spending all one's time and money on trying to help people who need far more help than one person can provide, not to mention spending all one's money on beggars and risking getting chopped to pieces by truly psychotic people. You have to learn how to keep walking, eyes straight ahead, and be ready to laugh at things that, really, are just funny. It's part of living in the city. One that some people who haven't spent much time here might not think of.)

So, back to the crazies. Yesterday was a good day for them - it was very warm but still humid so they were out and about, but festering in the mushroom-y weather. They do well in conditions like that - they send out their spores. They needed to be heard.

So here I was, at the gallery, trying to get through the day without tearing my hair out or screaming at the dumb questions I get asked by tourists or the insanely haughty demands I get from the super-rich a-holes that frequent our establishment. It had been a tough day so far - lots of idiots and high-falutin' snobs in and out. I was trying to write, I think. I was feeling flustered.
The phone rang.
I picked it up.
And elderly woman's voice said: "Kenneth Snelson."
He's one of the artists we represent. We just took down a show of his work last week at our Chelsea gallery. But he sure doesn't have an office here.
"Excuse me?" I said.
"Kenneth Snelson," she repeated. "I have to talk to Kenneth Snelson."
"Oh, well, ma'am," I stuttered, "we represent him as an artist but he does not have an office here. I can't put you directly in touch with him."
"Well can you give me his phone number? I know him personally, I'm an old friend." Just about everybody who comes into the gallery tells me they're a good friend of some artist or another. "I mean," she continued, "I haven't seen him since 1968 but I know he'll remember me. It's very important that I talk to him."
"Well," I started, "you could mail the gallery and we could forward it..."
"We knew each other when we were very young," she interrupted. "when he had his work on display in Bryant Park, but it was before he was famous. He liked me and he made me a sculpture out of straws. I'm sure he'll remember it. I lost it, but don't tell him that. I've become a very successful photographer since then." Pause.
"Uhhh..." I said. "Well, I'm not able to give out contact information, but if you'd like to send a-"
"Is he in New York? Does he live in New York??"
"Well, ma'am, I don't really know off the top of my head," I lied. He totally lives in New York. But this woman did not sound like the kind of person you want showing up on your doorstep with her straw sculpture.
"Well I mean I just was thinking of him and I just have to speak to him and I hope he'll be happy to hear from me," she started up again. "I could leave just a message there with you. Will you call him for me? I'm sure that-"
I cut her off: "Ma'am, what I would recommend would be to send a letter or an e-mail to the gallery and we can forward it to him from here. Especially if you have any personal matters you'd like to discuss with him."
"Well, we didn't sleep together or anything," she said hurriedly. "I mean I want to introduce him to my husband and everything. But the other day I was just there and I saw his face in blood red in my mind and I just knew I had to talk to him."
"Uhhhh...." I said again.
She gave me her name and told me that if he called I should tell him she was looking for him and that he should Google her, and that she would send an e-mail to be forwarded right away. I cannot WAIT to read that.

...I can make it anywhere!

I also wanted to tell you all about my other New York experience yesterday morning, which was trying to send one package and pick up another at my friendly local South Bronx post office. And by friendly I mean... well...
Ok, firstly, I had to be at work at ten and I normally leave my house around 9:15. So I figured, if I left the house before nine and got to the Post Office right when it opened, I'd beat the inevitable line and get to work on time. Well, after finding the Post Office, which would not have been possible without Connor's help since he's been there before and the Post Office building looks kind of like a really dirty and chicken-wired methodone clinic from the outside, upon walking in there was already a line of at least 20 people. It couldn't have been more than 5 after 9:00.
This didn't bode well, since it appeared that the people there had been there before and knew that you have to arrive BEFORE 9:00 to get service. I left Connor in line with the big package I was sending to my sister for her birthday, and took my "You've Got a Package that We Were Too Lazy to Take Off the Truck And Leave In the Hallway, As Per Your Previous Request, Which We Will Pretend Not to Have Seen" Slip(I'm a little bitter about the postal service already... long story) to the window marked "Package Pickup" in the other room.
I stood there for a good five minutes in line behind one other lady, who was waggling her hips in a very pissed-off fashion. Nobody was on the other side of the window. Now normally, picking up a package at the New York City post office is an ordeal not to be taken lightly. Wherever it is that they store packages in between "Delivery Attempts" must be located in some sub-basement accessible only by a rope ladder and unlit except for mining helmet lamps or something, because it always takes FOREVER. So I assumed the lady in front of me was just waiting for her spelunker to return with her package.
But after a while I wasn't so sure. There was literally no movement from behind the window, whatsoever, and the BLINDS were drawn over the part that the person usually stands at. Finally I asked rhetorically, in a comisserating tone, "Is anybody even back there?"
She whirled around and shook her head, snapping her tongue over her teeth and drumming her fingers on the counter. "No." She said. "I sent my momma through the other line in there to tell them to get somebody over here, but I ain't seen nobody yet. This ain't what they fuckin told me at the passport office!"
I glanced to the window and noticed a smaller sign offering passport services. Just then I heard a shout from the other room and looked over to see a small woman waving at us - the other lady's momma.
We both went into the package drop-off and postage-purhcase counter room, with the long line, where I got in line with Connor. "Yeah that window's not open today," he told me. "The lady at the counter just told that woman, and now she's freaking OUT." I looked back over to see my friend from the passport coutner and her mother - the small lady who had yelled - involved in a heated discussion with the small woman behind the window. There was much flailing and swearing.
The lady's mother had a mustache, and I don't just mean some dark hair on her upper lip, I mean like a bona-fide, could-be-trimmed-with-clippers, black, coarse-haired mustache. That's the kind of thing you should really DO something about if you ask me. Cultural norms be damned, it's ugly on a man OR a woman. Shave that shit!
Anyway, this duo of angered women continued to yell and scream for at least ten minutes, while the twenty-something of us still in line peered around at each other and the scene they were making. Finally somebody yelled, "Hey, there are other people waiting here! Hurry UP!"
After a good ten minutes of screaming and confusion, the two ladies were given some paperwork and went on their way. The rest of us were all relieved, for the next five minutes, until we realized that despite their being a growing line stretching out the door, and several other people working on the other side of the five windows, only ONE window was open.
And, let me just say, people in the South Bronx are often from other countries. They do not always know how the US Postal Service works. Most of us who were born and raised here don't even know how it works because the 'workings' of the Postal Service don't actually WORK. So basically everyone in line seemed to assume that they would be able to perform some sort of action (buying postage/dropping off a package/picking up a package/doing anything vaguely mail-related) that they were informed they could not in fact perform when they got to the window. It took FOREVER.
We were in line for so long that the guy in line behind us, this very large man with a beard, actually began to SNORE while standing there. He FELL ASLEEP on his feet.
Uck.
Anyway, eventually they opened up a second window and things began to move along. Sometime around 9:35 I stepped up to the window. Connor put our big box up on the scale, and we immediately got a chuckle, a head-shake, and a hopeless tongue-clicking from the woman, who informed us that we couldn't put the address on the END of the box, we had to put it on the LONG SIDE of the box.
I had flashes of terror at the prospect of being sent back to the end of the line, but she -THANK GOD- said she would take care of it and helped us get postage, etc. As of the time she put it into the outgoing packages bin, I had not seen her re-address it. If my sister doesn't get her present, I'm going to be angry.
Anyway, at this time we realized that Connor did not have his $81 monthly metro card and both proceeded to flip out because he wasn't sure if he'd dropped it at the bar with his classmates the night before.
Meanwhile, the lady had put on her mining helmet for the foray into the caverns of package pick-up storage, so we had plenty of time to work ourselves into a tizzy about how long this was all taking, where the hell Connor's metro card could be, whether my package would get where it was going, how late we would be to work, etc...
Finally the woman returned with my package and all was well.
I was only 15 minutes late to work.

...this story has a lame ending...

But it's the point that counts: the Post Office is a den of horrors. And long lines. And moustachio-ed women.

If I can make it there...

Ok, firstly, today I had an appointment during my lunch break to have my private parts waxed. I have never done this before, but I have been hearing that it's the cat's hairless pajamas for some time now from my dearest darling friend, Diane. She hooked me up with her cheap and clean and supposedly very friendly spa, and I decided to give it a shot.
Needless to say, I was nervous about having a total stranger look at, size up, and then mrecilessly rip the hair from, my tender down-there, so as I got off the subway at 34th St and tried to fight my way through the crowds of tourists and businessmen and travelers, I was in a bit of a tizzy. But then I heard a girl behind me, who must have been from Jersey from her accent, say very loudly:
"What's with all these TOURISTS? Seriously!"
...dude, it's HERALD SQUARE. You're right next to Penn Station, where every Long Island Railroad and Amtrak train in the city comes in! And it's literally UNDERNEATH Madison Square Garden, where bands play, circuses show, and the damn hockey and basketball teams play! And all that happens to be about two blocks away from The Empire State Building! How would there ever NOT be tourists there?

Anyway, I went to the vag wax place and got a very competent but very stern Russian lady named - appropriately - Natasha. She was exactly what a vag waxer should be: accented, severe, polite, and merciless with the pulling of hairs. She taught me lamaz (?) breathing techniques to control the pain. I'm not joking. Imagine the feeling of ripping a hair out of your head prematurely, then multiply it by about a few hundred being ripped out at a time, add to that the feeling of almost-burning-hot wax being placed on the skin right beforehand, multiply THAT again by the fact that this is the most sensitive skin on the human body we're talking about, and then imagine a middle-aged Russian woman with really crazy eye makeup is doing it all. Yeah.

But, now I'm all waxed and smooth and stuff and it doesn't hurt anymore, so, there's that. New York!

Pt. 2: The Landlord vs. the Neighbors

So, current story:

Now that the landlord has officially moved into our building, he has started to take offense to the dogs on our block. I can see his point. He has a front door that leads directly into his apartment from the sidewalk, and there is a chihuahua that lives in one of the apartments next door that just shits on that sidewalk every day. Its owners do not clean up after it, ever. Now, granted, it's a chihuahua, so the shits are pretty small, but when it happens every day it adds up to a pretty steady stream of shit. And on top of that, this is literally the hugest chihuahua I have ever seen in my life. I don't know if it's like, 3/4 chihuahua and 1/4 Great Dane or what, but it's seriously got to be like a 20-pound dog. It's huge. So they're not like gigantic Rottweiler shits, but they are pretty substantial.

So the landlord realizes that this dog is not being picked up after the moment he moves in. For about the first week that he was living downstairs, every morning when Connor and I left for work, he would be standing in his doorway, front door open, blasting bluegrass music (he's way into bluegrass) onto the sidewalk in his grey wife beater and jeans, arms crossed, just waiting for that dog to come out and take a shit. I don't know what he'd have done when it did, but I'm assuming it would either involve threatening the owner with his notorious sledgehammer or nailing the dog itself to the outside of the building. But it never happened. The neighbors must have caught on to what he was up to and just waited till he went inside, then let the dog out to shit all over the sidewalk again.

So one night, Connor and I were out rather late, and when we came in we noticed a sign, hand-written on cardboard, that was posted by our building. It read: "Clean up your dog shit, you dirty, uncivilized low-life."

Yes. Our rich Jewish landlord wrote a sign that said that to our black and hispanic neighbors. I was terrified! I was afraid people would surround the building with pitchforks and shit, and our landlord - if he didn't have time to grab his sledgehammer - would be f-ing lynched in our backyard.

Thankfully, the next day, the sign was taken down. But, when I got home from work, instead of the sign, there was an ear-splitting high pitched noise coming from the window of the first-floor apartment. Dude had up and bought one of those dog-deterrant noise makers that supposedly makes a sound too high in pitch for humans to hear, but which will send dogs running. Well, let me tell you, I can sure as shit hear that noise, and so can everyone else I've asked. It is annoying as all hell and if I open my bedroom window I can hear it, so I have to sleep with the windows closed even on warm spring nights.

But, I figured, if it would keep the neighbor's chihuahua from shitting on the sidewalk and thus keep all-out warfare from my doorstep, I could deal with it.

Not so.

Last Friday on my way home from work, I turned the corner onto my block and saw two guys from the block standing around talking in front of my doorway. I prepared myself to make the requisite overblown show of how annoyed I was by the dog-deterrant to show my solidarity with the neighbors, but when I got closer I just stopped in my tracks and started to laugh.

Sitting there, directly in front of the neighbors, who were mere feet from the dog-deterrant high-pitched squeal, were two dogs. The giant chihuahua and another dog I didn't recognize. Literally laying on the sidewalk, relaxing, and completely and utterly unfazed by the noise.

The neighbors saw me laughing and gave me curious looks. "They don't even care, do they?" I asked, gesturing to the dogs.

The neighbors looked very confused. "You hear that noise, righr?" I asked again, pointing to the speaker in the window. They slowly nodded. "Well it's supposed to keep dogs away," I explained, then started laughing again. "But your dogs just don't give a shit, do they?"

The neighbors looked at their dogs, back at the speakers, and then shrugged. I really don't think they had even considered that the squealing noise had anything to do with them or their dogs, and the dogs really just couldn't care less.

So, I guess that makes it:
My Landlord: about 5 points
The Neighbors: 1.

Pt. 1: First, some background on my landlord.

Ok, so before I tell this story, I have to tell you all a bit about my landlord. The story, in itself, is not all that impressive. But in the context of my landlord and his way of looking at things, it's pretty funny.

So, I live in the South Bronx, on a relatively quiet block in a relatively nice neighborhood. Sure, there's a halfway house on the block, but the halfway house is also a community center so it's a well-kept group of vagrants and ex-cons that gathers outside to smoke cigarettes. And, sure, there's an abandoned house with a hole in one window (read: crack den) right next to the halfway house, but there's also a police precinct literally around the corner, so nothing too blatantly ridiculously criminal is going on, at least not on the street.

Enter into this scene, my landlord, who just moved into the first-floor apartment of my building. This guy is flat-out one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. He is great to have around because he is always willing to help if you have an issue. He's a hands-on kind of dude. He single-handedly (or sometimes with literally ONE guy helping) gutted and renovated every one of the now-seven apartments in our building, installed a low-energy and low-water use washer and dryer on the first floor, put in energy-saving air conditioners in every apartment, and he's involved in every neighborhood and borough council there is so he has a hand in planning the development of our neighborhood for our benefit. He's a great landlord.

He's also pretty... um... how do I say this delicately? Batshit crazy. The guy made a huge amount of money in finance, basically brokering real estate and other money-making deals all over the city, then got sick of the posturing and esoteric-ness of the market, and bought a bunch of property to fix up hands-on. He still makes occasional forays into the business world when it suits him, since he has a rolodex of about 300 names of very rich people to do deals with, but he mostly sticks close to home in the South Bronx now. But, he's definitely a high-powered businessman kind of guy in his outlook on the world, so he basically wants to control the South Bronx. So far, he has always gotten his way.

As I said, he's on every neighborhood planning committee there is. He knows all the local businessmen and other landlords in the area. When an MTA bus was rerouted down our block because of construction on 3rd Avenue and Melrose Avenue, he not only went to the neighborhood council office at least once a week to bitch and complain, but he got all his tenants and even tenants and landlords of other buildings, to go and complain too. Of course, the bus was kind of loud and annoying, but nobody really minded that it was going down our block except for him. But they went to the council office to complain because he bothered them about it until they did.
When that didn't work, he started putting up signs all over the block. Some were just paper printouts with big pictures of buses with X's over them. Some just said "No More Buses!" Some said things like, "Tenants of 154th Street Say: No More Buses!" or "The MTA Is Ruining Our Quality Of Life!" He tried to get the neighbors riled up by convincing them that the MTA was actually discriminating against them specifically by ruining their quality of life by putting a bus on their street. He got local business owners to claim they were losing business because the bus had been rorouted and no longer went past their stores. He put up a 15-foot hand=painted wooden sign on the side of the church across the street - WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION - that said "No More Buses!" in huge blue letters. He put up electrical tape on the "Caution: Bus" sign, so it said "Caution: AbusE"! And he graffitied - let me repeat that: he illegally painted - on a building across the street, the words "Bus = Death".

The bus no longer goes down our street.

There used to be some guys that would hang out on the block, right across the street, on weekends. They apparently (don't know how the landlord knew this, but he told me all this) were from Jersey and knew someone who lived on our block, so they would drive in every weekend in their minivan and set up on the sidewalk with the speakers in the minivan blasting their music, and just chill all weekend with the music turned up. Well, needless to say, the landlord did not like this. So one weekend, he sat outside on the stoop of our building with a ten-pound SLEDGEHAMMER and when they came around actually threatened them with it, made them leave, and then told the people they were visiting on our block that if it ever happened again he would bash their windshield in with said sledgehammer.

They have not been back.

There are numerous other stories along this vein, but let's just say this guy is something of a control freak loose cannon who you definitely want on your side.

....more tomorrow...

Re-boot

Ok, so it has become clear that my hands and wrists do not appreciate being overused, and that they really don't have much time for fleshing out my conspiracy theories, because they tend to get long-winded.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still anti-robot, and I will try to post short bits about their constant attempts to take over the world when I can, but I want to keep this thing afloat. It's important to write stuff I enjoy amidst the constant other writing projects for other people. And obviously, you guys need me.

So, I'm going to try to write up short bits and pieces more often, chronicling... chronical-ling... chron... however you spell it... the daily weirdness of living in New York. The weather is warming up, and the crazies are coming out to play from wherever they winter (subway tunnels? subway cars? who knows). This makes the daily commute and experience of simply being in the city much more entertaining. I'll share:

Tuesday, 4/28:
The gallery was closed to the public as the art handlers finished hanging a show that was to open at 6:00 pm with free wine and people-watching. At 5:00 a gentleman walked in - having somehow gotten past the security guys in the lobby - and proceeded to explain to me that he was good friends with the artist, but had to catch a plane that evening. He had the air of "I'm a very important person so just let me look around," and he was nice, so I let him
When he left, I took a peek at what he'd written in the guest book. It was a personal note to the artist, signed:
"Your friend on a wire,
Phillipe Petit"
...and there was a little cartoon of two tall buildings with a wire strung between them, with a little dude walking on it.
Yeah...anyone heard of the documentary "Man on Wire" about the tightrope walker who walked a tight rope between the Twin Towers in 1974 in a daring act of illegal performance art? Phillipe Petit.
He obviously wanted me to recognize him, but as the movie is on my Netflix queue and has not yet arrived, I didn't. Felt kind of bad for not pandering to him as he obviously wanted me to do, but oh well.

Later that evening, after a glass of wine at the opening reception for Julio Larraz's new exhibit and a good hour of watching horrendous examples of plastic surgery, bizarre-o outfits and little dogs, I made my way toward the subway to head home. As I stood waiting to cross the street at 59th and Lexington, I heard the very distinct sound of someone 'blowing a raspberry.' You know, sticking your tongue out and blowing, producing a hilarious and spittle-flinging fart noise?
Turned out it was coming with a fairly dignified-looking older gentleman who was dressed normally, clean-cut, totally normal looking. But he was sticking his tongue out and blowing raspberries as he hurtled down the sidwalk at high speed. There were two women about twenty feet behind him, one of whom was pushing a baby stroller, who were looking at him over their shoulders in the stances of people who had obviously just been bumped into or pushed aside as someone moved past them.
The raspberry man turned a bit to scream over his shoulder, "Come on!! What the fuck is your PROBlem?!" before hurling himself through the crowd on the corner, blowing raspberries the whole time.
I laughed the whole way home.



More to come, I'm sure, but I'll leave you with this delightful tidbit from OverheardInNewYork.com:



Suit to man with cat on his head: Why is there a cat on your head?
Man with cat on his head: Why isn't there a cat on your head, douchebag?

--Union Square

http://www.scificool.com/category/the-sorcerers-apprentice-2010-movie/.


Oh. Oh no. This is all wrong. This. Is. All gone horribly wrong. I Thought I'd just post the link because it actually is going to give me pain to have to describe it. But, if I don't describe it, in ... you know ... words... You might not click it. Ok, I'm taking a deep breath. Calming...

That link up there, is going to take you to information and - dear god - screenshots, of Nicolas Cage in... The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Yes, it's a film. 2010. Live action.

I'm just. This makes me feel the same way as this:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/filmNews/idUKTRE51P0YR20090226.

That sonofabitch right there is a link to an article about talks to remake The Neverending Story. Peter Jackson is mentioned. I just. I don't quite know what's happening here.

Oh, wait... Holy.... Oh no.

http://ontheflix.com/2009/03/31/original-actors-will-appear-in-the-new-ghostbusters-3-remake/.

Oh, it's Ghostbusters. I don't care if Jesus were in this, like really honestly Jesus, I probably would still be pissed.

And the end of times, ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Drum roll...

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117989391.html?categoryid=13&cs=1.

Rocky Horror.

Well, that's it folks, I'm cuttin' my ties and up and moving to Tibet. I plan to start farming yaks and using their strong but very soft wool and selling it to designers. I'm out. And I'm taking this guy:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3416/3196188065_3025768ab9.jpg.


SO stay away from me.




Happy 420 Everyone!

Brain vs. Machines

Oh, thank you. Thank you, Sandra Ammodt and Sam Wang. Thank you for having some sense. Featured in the NY Times today: "Computers vs. Brains" . A ringing confirmation of my logic. Proof that I'm not the only one with common sense! Hallelujah!

Read it:

Inventor Ray Kurzweil, in his 2005 futurist manifesto “The Singularity Is Near,” extrapolates current trends in computer technology to conclude that machines will be able to out-think people within a few decades. In his eagerness to salute our robotic overlords, he neglects some key differences between brains and computers that make his prediction unlikely to come true.

Brains have long been compared to the most advanced existing technology — including, at one point, telephone switchboards. Today people talk about brains as if they were a sort of biological computer, with pink mushy “hardware” and “software” generated by life experiences.

However, any comparison with computers misses a messy truth. Because the brain arose through natural selection, it contains layers of systems that arose for one function and then were adopted for another, even though they don’t work perfectly. An engineer with time to get it right would have started over, but it’s easier for evolution to adapt an old system to a new purpose than to come up with an entirely new structure. Our colleague David Linden has compared the evolutionary history of the brain to the task of building a modern car by adding parts to a 1925 Model T that never stops running. As a result, brains differ from computers in many ways, from their highly efficient use of energy to their tremendous adaptability.

One striking feature of brain tissue is its compactness. In the brain’s wiring, space is at a premium, and is more tightly packed than even the most condensed computer architecture. One cubic centimeter of human brain tissue, which would fill a thimble, contains 50 million neurons; several hundred miles of axons, the wires over which neurons send signals; and close to a trillion (that’s a million million) synapses, the connections between neurons.

The memory capacity in this small volume is potentially immense. Electrical impulses that arrive at a synapse give the recipient neuron a small chemical kick that can vary in size. Variation in synaptic strength is thought to be a means of memory formation. Sam’s lab has shown that synaptic strength flips between extreme high and low states, a flip that is reminiscent of a computer storing a “one” or a “zero” — a single bit of information.

But unlike a computer, connections between neurons can form and break too, a process that continues throughout life and can store even more information because of the potential for creating new paths for activity. Although we’re forced to guess because the neural basis of memory isn’t understood at this level, let’s say that one movable synapse could store one byte (8 bits) of memory. That thimble would then contain 1,000 gigabytes (1 terabyte) of information. A thousand thimblefuls make up a whole brain, giving us a million gigabytes — a petabyte — of information. To put this in perspective, the entire archived contents of the Internet fill just three petabytes.

To address this challenge, Kurzweil invokes Moore’s Law, the principle that for the last four decades, engineers have managed to double the capacity of chips (and hard drives) every year or two. If we imagine that the trend will continue, it’s possible to guess when a single computer the size of a brain could contain a petabyte. That would be about 2025 to 2030, just 15 or 20 years from now.

This projection overlooks the dark, hot underbelly of Moore’s law: power consumption per chip, which has also exploded since 1985. By 2025, the memory of an artificial brain would use nearly a gigawatt of power, the amount currently consumed by all of Washington, D.C. So brute-force escalation of current computer technology would give us an artificial brain that is far too costly to operate.

Compare this with your brain, which uses about 12 watts, an amount that supports not only memory but all your thought processes. This is less than the energy consumed by a typical refrigerator light, and half the typical needs of a laptop computer. Cutting power consumption by half while increasing computing power many times over is a pretty challenging design standard. As smart as we are, in this sense we are all dim bulbs.

A persistent problem in artificial computing is the sensitivity of the system to component failure. Yet biological synapses are remarkably flaky devices even in normal, healthy conditions. They release neurotransmitter only a small fraction of the time when their parent neuron fires an electrical impulse. This unreliability may arise because individual synapses are so small that they contain barely enough machinery to function. This may be a trade-off that stuffs the most function into the smallest possible space.

In any case, a brain’s success is not measured by its ability to process information in precisely repeatable ways. Instead, it has evolved to guide behaviors that allow us to survive and reproduce, which often requires fast responses to complex situations. As a result, we constantly make approximations and find “good-enough” solutions. This leads to mistakes and biases. We think that when two events occur at the same time, one must have caused the other. We make inaccurate snap judgments such as racial prejudice. We fail to plan rationally for the future, as explored in the field of neuroeconomics.

Still, engineers could learn a thing or two from brain strategies. For example, even the most advanced computers have difficulty telling a dog from a cat, something that can be done at a glance by a toddler — or a cat. We use emotions, the brain’s steersman, to assign value to our experiences and to future possibilities, often allowing us to evaluate potential outcomes efficiently and rapidly when information is uncertain. In general, we bring an extraordinary amount of background information to bear on seemingly simple tasks, allowing us to make inferences that are difficult for machines.

If engineers can understand how to apply these shortcuts and tricks, computer performance could begin to emulate some of the more impressive feats of human brains. However, this route may lead to computers that share our imperfections. This may not be exactly what we want from robot overlords, but it could lead to better “soft” judgments from our computers.

This gets us to the deepest point: why bother building an artificial brain?

As neuroscientists, we’re excited about the potential of using computational models to test our understanding of how the brain works. On the other hand, although it eventually may be possible to design sophisticated computing devices that imitate what we do, the capability to make such a device is already here. All you need is a fertile man and woman with the resources to nurture their child to adulthood. With luck, by 2030 you’ll have a full-grown, college-educated, walking petabyte. A drawback is that it may be difficult to get this computing device to do what you ask.