While I’m not necessarily in agreement, I do think it’s not only a right but a duty to protest government actions you don’t like (and thankfully we still as yet have that ability).

Big demonstration tomorrow for those interested against the whole Iraq war.

More info at: unitedforpeace.org

A steep decline in birds, butterflies and native plants in Britain supports the theory that humans are pushing the natural world into the Earth's sixth big extinction event and the future may see more and more animal species disappearing.

Speaking of famous people getting busted, it’s always a hoot to go over to the Smoking Gun dotcom and look at the mugshots of the rich and famous - nobody takes a good picture when they’re being arrested.

“Holocaust on a plate.”

The posters, due to be displayed in Stuttgart from Thursday and in 11 European cities at later dates, show pictures of battery hens packed into cages next to historic pictures of emaciated Jewish inmates in Nazi concentration camp bunk beds.

In a word... Schmuck!

Dave is liking the ta-tas!



Hours before her arrest, Love, 39, known for her sensational, disruptive behavior, bared her breasts on the CBS “Late Show with David Letterman.” Love jumped on the desk used by Letterman for the late-night talk show and pulled up her shirt. She was not wearing a bra.

Oh lord! She wasn’t wearing a bra!?!?! God help us! What!?!? No Senate hearings? No fines from the FCC?!!?! Janet Jackson must be pissed!

Gotta give it to Courtney though, she’s still living that ‘rock lifestyle.’

Wonder what Frances Bean thinks of mommy on TV? Probably just embarassed by her parent like most kids?

Steve Rude returns!

The Moth, currently on stands now!

What becomes legends:



Holy cluster of Catwomen!

St. Patrick’s Day, Fact versus Fiction (from National Geographic.com)

“If the budget allowed it, I'd have a green ribbon in my hair. But that was the only green we wore,” said Haggerty, who now lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

This seems a stark contrast to the fields of green decorations, hats, and clothes found in the United States. While no one can confirm with certainty why wearing so much green became popular, there is a very good reason, according to the Irish, not to do so, Haggerty said.

According to superstition, the color green was thought to bring bad luck because it was the favorite color of the fairy folk. “As a matter of fact,” Haggerty said, “you should never say the fairies. They hate it! The Good People is the right term to use.”

Like Superman emerging from a phone booth, Armando Parra steps out from the bathroom of his old-time barbershop transformed into the Chicken Catcher, dedicated to ridding this island town of nuisance fowl.



and his website...

Please do not email me to pick up chickens, you must call City Hall. I turn all chickens over to The City of Key West so I cannot give them away or sell them

I’ve been working downtown for the last few weeks. By downtown, I mean lower Manhattan (The Wall Street Area).

I’ve been working for a client I had last worked for before September 11th, 2001. As a matter of fact, the number of times I’ve ventured to lower Manhattan since September 11th could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Anyway, I didn’t come down here that much before the event (which I’m a little sad about now), since I really hadn’t any reason to. After 9-11, while I can’t say I’ve intentionally avoided the area, I also haven’t come down to gawk. There is something I find distastefully morbid in the people who make the pilgrimage to see an open pit where the World Trade Center once stood.

That being said, over the last few nights, I’ve had my first encounters with the site since the event happened. Usually, it’s been after a particularly long day, when I’m tired and in the back of one of those ‘black cars.’ The driver has made their way over to the west side and we’ve driven past the site.

Like a kid, I find myself perking up as we pass trying to see what it looks like. While I don’t have the morbid fascination, I will admit to being curious to see what it looks like if I’m going by it.

Usually, it’s at a time of day when the city is very quiet, those wee hours of the morning that are the domain of garbage haulers, newspaper and bread delivery men. The area has these large, large floodlights illuminating the pit. They’re the kind of lights they’ve been using on night highway construction sites over the last few years.

There’s just this big open space where the complex once was. No rising smoke anymore, no heavy machinery, just a big pit.

It’s Manhattan‘s answer to a big gaping wound.

I’ve ridden past it a few times now on both the Church Street side and the West Street side - it’s all very, very strange to put it mildly.

I had gotten into a conversation with one of the drivers about it - he was amazed I hadn’t been downtown since 9-11. Over the course of the ride he began telling me about all the other changes there were downtown. Apparently a bunch of streets are closed off permanently.

Sunday, I went down and we walked around Chinatown trying to find a decent Dim Sum place. Afterward, even though it was cold, I (and my Dim Sum companion) walked around and explored.

I had wanted to see what the parking situation was downtown. I had been working down there the last few weeks and there had been a bunch of times when I had driven in but, not knowing what street parking was like wound up parking much further uptown.

I remembered at one time there was a public parking garage but, I couldn’t be sure it was still open anymore and wanted to check.

So, we made our way southward...

Chinatown is bounded by Worth Street to the south and just south of Chatham Square, Park Row branches off to run under the Brooklyn Bridge approach and down along the side of City Hall park (it’s where J and R electronics and also the place where the WTC’s antecedent the Woolworth building stands).

As you make your way down Park Row, there’s a bunch of Federal, State and City government buildings located along the street and to the west of it (between Park Row and Broadway). You have the Tweed building, One Police Plaza, DMV, a couple of courthouses and the federal building. The infamous ‘tombs’ (the Manhattan jail) is just on the northern edge.



So, we walked around and made our way south, through Chatham Square and lo and behold just below Chatham Square, Park Row was indeed closed!

“[The] city has [secured] a…greater area than apparently is necessary to provide security for One Police Plaza,” said State Supreme Court Justice Walter Tolub at a court hearing June 27. Residents of Chatham Green and Chatham Towers, and several local politicians have filed a lawsuit against the city to force officials to issue an environmental impact statement on the closing of Park Row and nearby streets to most vehicles. Judge Tolub, according to court transcripts, also told the city’s attorney that “you seem to have undertaken a rather massive approach to a security problem without any thought as to the impact on the community.”

As we walked down Park Row, there were a great many cameras and guard shacks. Each guard shack had the emblem of a different government agency.



The Gray Hole

There was an eerie feeling as if you were stepping into another land. It was like walking into a world that Orwell had envisioned, cameras and police on every corner. A checkpoint at each corner.

I found it very sad. I actually felt like crying. There was something that was just so wrong about the whole scene, it wasn’t New York. It wasn’t my New York. Certainly, not the one I grew up in and drove a taxi in.

We passed a policeman in a guard shack just north of Reade Street and just south of the intersection a Federal Marshall came out of his shack and asked if he could help us. Obviously we had crossed some invisible line into the forbidden zone.

It was surreal, to say the least. Don’t get me wrong, the guy was a nice guy and everything, it was just the circumstances, being on a public street in the middle of Manhattan and which was now closed.

I explained to him the story about my conversation with the taxi driver and he was quite understanding. I asked if the street would be open again and he replied he didn’t think it would ever be. I also asked him about the parking garage and he pointed me in its direction.

We walked another block or two (around 1 Police Plaza) and it turned out the garage was actually in Police Plaza.

There were two more guard shacks there. I asked the policeman if you were still able to park but, he said the garage had been closed since before 9-11.

July 9, 2001 -- FIELDS FILES LAWSUIT AGAINST CITY FOR CLOSING OF MUNICIPAL PARKING GARAGE IN LOWER MANHATTAN --BOROUGH PRESIDENT SAYS CITY OFFICIALS KNOWINGLY VIOLATED CHARTER REGULATIONS

Between the concrete barricades, the checkpoints and the guard shacks, it made a sad statement on our city.

There was this oft stated phrase that ended with... “won’t the terrorists have won, then?!” in the days and months immediately following 9-11.

All I could think of walking around downtown was that they had.

We pride ourselves on living in a free and open society. While the truth is our society isn’t quite as free and open as we may like it to be, it’s by far much better than a lot of the world. In every discussion about terrorism and the fight against it, no one wants to address the basic tenets of the struggle.

We are fighting extremists, groups who don’t like the fact that our citizens can live their lives the way they want as long as they’re not impeding on someone else’s right to do the same. When we sacrifice those freedoms to a false sense of security, we do ourselves a disservice as a nation and as a people.

To the Barricades Over a Police Barricade
By KELLY CROW May 11, 2003. New York Times

Danny Chen cannot invite friends, or even relatives, to his apartment anymore. That's because Mr. Chen, a software engineer, lives in Chatham Green, a 21-story co-op on Park Row that sits just inside a police barricade installed after Sept. 11 to protect Police Plaza across the street...

Doesn’t it strike anyone as odd that although New York was attacked, none of the attacks originated from New York, they originated from elsewhere but, somehow because New York was the target, security was intensified here as opposed to the places the attacks originated from?

His depression escalated in recent years, exacerbated by a major car crash in 2001 during a vacation in Ireland. The accident also left him in physical pain.

I just wanted to comment on some news that happened this week.



Yes, unfortunately, it was confirmed... Spalding Gray had in fact been successful in his attempt to take his own life.

NEW YORK - Spalding Gray, the monologuist with a swath of silver hair and an ability to lay bare his soul in a soft, New England-flecked accent, didn't believe he was a great extrovert. “People want to have me to dinner,” he told The Associated Press in 1997. “I’m not Mr. Quick. I'm not a great social satirist. I need time to absorb life. I spend a lot of time mulling, cogitating.”

How very, very sad.

...though he embodied the stereotype of the self-absorbed New Yorker - looking at the world through the lens of one who had known intensive psychotherapy, fad diets and mind-expanding drugs - his pursuit of a story had a degree of selflessness that often put the amiable, all-too-accessible Gray in harm’s way.

and...

For his 60th birthday, Russo took Gray to Ireland. They were driving back from dinner when a van crashed into their rental car, leaving Gray with a cracked skull, a broken hip and nerve damage to one foot.

After he returned to the U.S. he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and placed on a potent array of drugs.

He attempted suicide a number of times. In 2002 he nearly jumped off a bridge in Long Island, where he had recently moved with his family. He later spent a month in a Connecticut psychiatric hospital. In September, he phoned his wife to say he wanted to jump off the Staten Island ferry, but police were alerted and removed him before he could carry out his plan.

Saturday already! Where does a week go?

So, I’m in the home stretch of the whole ‘work experience.’ There’s probably just another week left before I’m once again numbered among the unemployed, gainfully seeking work...

...know what?

I’m looking forward to it.

This is probably my ideal, work like crazy for a few weeks, make a bunch of money and then be off to recharge my batteries and get stuff done. I’m looking forward to sleeping again. Sure I'll miss the money but, I wouldn’t want ot be working like this incessantly and truthfully as season’s go, this one really hasn’t been altogether bad (and a site more profitable than most).

There are a couple of things to look forward to. First off is the warm weather, since Spring is just around the corner. Second, is just getting back on track after feeling really pinched for the better part of the last three months.

Life mirrors art?

Well, it probably wasn't Bart's handiwork, but he'd no doubt approve of the prank that forced Dear Abby's editors to pull next Monday's advice column, which included a letter that mirrored an episode of "The Simpsons."

One of the most influential men you’ve never heard of:

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center said Wednesday that George Pake, the founder of PARC who oversaw the development of what would be several common computing technologies, died at 79.


Dr. Pake is best known for leading the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) from its inception in 1970 until 1978 and overseeing Xerox Corporate Research from 1978-1986. He was responsible for fashioning an institution whose unique and enduring culture spawned such innovations as laser printing, Ethernet, the graphical user interface, client-server architecture and many of the ideas that define modern computing.

The top link is to the news story on Yahoo and the bottom is to Xerox’s PARC website.

“So, what is it you do?”

People have been asking that question of me for as long as I can remember. Most of the time, I have a hard time describing it to someone who has a ‘straight’ job.

How do you describe the life of a freelancer?

You go from place to place in a vagabond way, working on a project until it’s completed and then moving on. We are the gypsies of the workforce.

Here I am now at work, it’s almost 1:30 in the morning. The office is quiet, there are people here but, they’re sputtering. Me, I’m just annoyed I missed the last train.

There’s something about that last train out of Grand Central, there’s a certain finality about it. Grand Central which is a place of great activity throughout the day is deserted as people make their way desperate to catch the final train out. You get a small sense of what those people felt like when they were trying to get out of Saigon (or some other such place).

Also, those last train of the night conductors, my but they’re a rare breed. One guy in particular has the most annoying nasal whine, “Yoonnnkkkeeerrrss... station stop is Yooonnnkkkeeerrrrsss!”

I often thought it was purposefully grating if only to make you stay awake and not miss your stop.

Here it is a Monday and all I can think about is all the stuff I have to do, that’s the problem with working, it distracts you from getting your s**t done.

Men are pigs.

So the other night, I’m working. The place I’m at is situated on a very high floor and there’s a terrace wrapping around the office. Since it’s been generally nice out, you can avail yourself of the beautiful weather and take a short break from time to time by stepping outside (it really does help quite a bit).

Anyway, there’s a bunch of other tall buildings surrounding the one I’m in the only difference being is that some of them are residential buildings. This is a bit unusual but, in recent years the part of town I’m in has given itself over to more and more residential space.

So, people are in these buildings, it’s night, they’re way up, they’re going about their business and...

...drum roll please...

...their shades are up.

So, at one point during the course of the evening, one of my co-workers comes in excitedly from outside urging every male within earshot to follow to witness what he has seen.

Needless to say, some hapless young woman was disrobing and providing quite the show. Hard to see from a distance but, apparent none the less.

I went out, I looked (there were a bunch of us, it was one of those male bonding moments that women find truly detestable).

I can’t explain it but, I really like looking at women.

They’re just a lot of fun to look at. I’ve tried at times to sit down and come up with some kind of rational for why I’m that way but, the only thing I can think of is that men are just hardwired like that. Women are just beautiful in a lot of ways.

So, ladies I’m sorry but, I guess it’s true...

...we really are pigs.

Courageous teachers at a Brooklyn high school - fed up with unprepared and even illiterate students - made an impassioned plea to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein yesterday to end social promotion.

Last week here in New York, a group of teachers got together and wrote the Schools Chancellor urging him to end the practice of social promotion. Apparently sometime after I left the hallowed halls of education, someone decided a child’s delicate sensibilities might be damaged if they were forced to repeat a grade because of lack of effort or just plain not making the cut.

Wow!

When I was in school, if you misbehaved you got into trouble and if you didn’t do the work you got left back. I don’t know who came up with the idea the system wasn’t working - it seemed to produce a good crop of adults in my parents generation and mine but, these are PC times so, go figure.

I just can’t see how passing someone along when they do a bad job is a good precedent to set - somehow, it seems to me that’s part of what is wrong with our society today.

Wow, where does the time go?

So, a week or two back, I was feeling like a veteran ballplayer that had yet to sign with a team as the baseball season began. It’s AR (annual report) season and I found myself on the sidelines.

It’s my own fault really, whether or not it was the combination of burning a few bridges with people and the market changing somewhat doesn’t really matter, I was looking at sitting out this season.

Strangely, I didn’t really mind, I had work scheduled and if it hadn’t been pulled from me at the 11th hour like it was, all would’ve been fine in my world. As it was, the work I had planned (and counted on) did get pulled and I was left in the freelance equivalent of musical chairs as the last man standing.

The fates have a funny way of working things though and just when things looked their bleakest, a good samaritan intervened on my behalf. I wasn’t surprised by the source of the help, it seems my samaritan has a way of working for other’s benefit (I know I haven’t been the only beneficiary of his largesse), it was just nice to have someone do me a good turn.

Consequently, much of the last ten days has been lost to trying to put in as many hours as is possible in an effort to maximize the benefits of working. Over the better part of the last half dozen or so years, my peers and I have toiled in this fashion. Migrant workers in the world of graphic arts, we come in for the AR season (picking the crop so to speak) and trying to earn enough for the lean times.

I’ve enjoyed the past few days. I have the luxury of being an unknown quantity at this particular client (although I’ve worked there before) and as a result the demands made upon me are much smaller than they would normally be. Fortunately, the biggest difference is that I’m not getting the most horrible, demanding project just because the people in charge feel I can handle it. This combined with the fact that the structure at this client is far less rigid than I am used to operating under have made the whole experience quite ‘freeing.’

There’s only another week or two left to the season but, it’s been good if only to reaffirm for myself that I have a good set of skills and I do good work (this is something you begin to doubt when you’re sitting around idly at home).

I have crossed into letcherdom



Fashion World Notices Scarlett Johansson

They’re not the only ones, Scarlett captured my heart with her appearance in Ghost World. I’m in my mid forties and here’s this girl who’s nineteen - I can only figure I’m a letch (sp?). She just is so damn beautiful though, kind of makes me think of her as a Grace Kelly for the new millennium - here’s hoping she has the smarts to pick the right roles and have a long career. She has the look and the makings of a true ‘star.’