This is for every fool.

Who has felt the need to stand in the overly long line at the Shake Shack waiting for their mediocre fare. You people really need to get out of Manhattan a bit more or at the vey least explore the island a bit. The Shake Shack line webcam.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane...

With the release of the new Superman movie right around the corner, when would there be a better time than to watch Robot Chicken’s Real World Metropolis! (Quicktime required - with the right plugins).

and if you can’t watch that, then why not solace yourself with the first new Beavis and Butthead short of Robot Chicken’s when Beavis and Butthead join the Teen Titans! (this thing isn’t even available on the DVD so watch it while you can!)

Dogs in space!

I came across this video through a link up on Dacia Ray’s blog (see Waking Vixen link in sidebar). People talk about animals being so expressive mainly because we attribute human emotions to pets but, I have to admit - I found the video tremendously compelling with the pictures of dogs over a driving techno soundtrack. Worth a look.

Getting the word out.

Sometimes you make new connections with people and then they want to share the things that are important to them with you. In that regard, I am just getting the word out on two things that were brought to my attention in the past few days.

First off was an appeal on the behalf of some homeless people up in Canada - take a quick look and if you would a moment or two out to maybe generate an email on their behalf.

Please I’m begging for your HELP! EVERYONE FROM CANADA AND THE WORLD!! Help my friends!!! (Please read all)

Please, I'm begging to you call the Mayor, David Miller 416-397-2489 and urge him to stop this eviction. Write him a letter and fax it to 416-696-3687 E-mail: mayor_miller@toronto.ca please watch this video too: homelessnation.org/node/1359 Please, this is a man that has been living on the streets for a very long time after a terrible accident. I met him 8 years ago when I was homeless myself and living in the same place he is still living now… I knew him as “Chris the penny guy” because all day long he was picking up pennies, and this is all he is surviving on. I remember I used to sit with him at Coffee TIme and help him count his pennies. I lived there for almost a year. Today he is still living off pennies, has build a house of his own, and doesn't bother anyone...

and also this appeal:

Dear friends who care about our earth,

Please take a minute to read and judge for yourself if you want to take action. In the Valle de San Felix, the purest water in Chile runs from 2 rivers, fed by 2 glaciers. Water is a most precious resource, and wars will be fought for it. Indigenous farmers in the region use the water, they provide the second largest source of income for the area and there is no unemployment.

Under the glaciers has been found a huge deposit of gold, silver and other minerals. To get at these, it would be necessary to break, to destroy the glaciers - something never conceived of in the history of the world - and to make 2 huge holes, each as big as a whole mountain, one for extraction and one for the mine’s rubbish heap.

The project is called PASCUA LAMA. The company is called Barrick Gold. The operation is planned by a multi-national company, one of whose members is George Bush Senior.

The Chilean Government has approved the project to start this year, 2006. The only reason it hasn't started yet is because the farmers have got a temporary stay of execution. If they destroy the glaciers, they will not just destroy the source of specially pure water, but they will permanently contaminate the 2 rivers so they will never again be fit for human or animal consumption because of the use of cyanide and sulphuric acid in the extractionprocess.

Every last gram of gold will go abroad to the multinational company and not one will be left with the people whose land it is.They will only be left with the poisoned water and the resulting illnesses.

The farmers have been fighting a long time for their land, but have been forbidden to make a TV appeal by a ban from the Ministry of the Interior. Their only hope now of putting brakes on this project is to get help from international justice.

The world must know what is happening in Chile. The place to start changing the world is from your own place.

We ask you to circulate this message amongst your friends in the following way. Please copy this text, paste it into a new email adding your signature and send it to everyone in your address book. Please will the 100th person to receive and sign the petition send it to noapascualama@yahoo.ca to be forwarded to the Chilean government.

No to Pascua Lama Open-cast mine in the Andean Cordillera on the Chilean-Argentine frontier.

We ask the Chilean Government not to authorize the Pascua Lama project to protect the whole of 3 glaciers, the purity of the water of the San Felix Valley and El Transito, the quality of the agricultural land of the region of Atacama, the quality of life of the Diaguita people and of the whole population of the region.

My first thought was that the email might be a misguided phishing email but as it turns out the Pascua Lama project is happening and is something of great concern for that region of the world. Instead of responding to the email if you want, you might just want to take the time out to write the people at Barrick Gold themselves and let them know how unpopular their pursuit of this project is.

It’s Hyde!

Last night on my way from work and out to dinner, who goes riding past me but That 70’s Show’s Danny Masterson. Everytime I manage a celeb sighting (and it’s a rarity just because of how oblivious I am to my surroundings), I am always amazed by how much tinier people are in real life than they appear on TV, just in terms of gauging their height and all.

Danny, riding against traffic down 10th Avenue over by Fifteenth Street (across from the back door of Chelsea Market) seemed quite happy to be enjoying his anonymity - until of course I yelled out, ‘DANNY, BABY!’ causing him to look around to figure out who was yelling at him (LOL).

That’s been the second celeb sighting I’ve had in the last few months, I was walking along 9th Street between 5th and 6th one beautiful day a few weeks back when I noticed this strikingly beautiful, if familiar petite girl walk past me. I was a few steps up the street when it suddenly struck me I walked by someone I had seen on TV or knew from TV even though I couldn’t quite figure out where. Sure enough, later on I checked and remembered it was from one of those shows that was really popular but I didn’t watch. Turned out the woman’s name is Keri Russell a very tiny but beautiful young lady.

Catches theives, just like flies.

If you are in and around Manhattan tomorrow (Sunday) - they will be filming Spider Man 3 in and around Madison Square Park. The posted signs say from 6am to midnight.

A brief respite.

I think I will be taking a bit of a break from blogging for a little bit. I went back and was looking at my original post and my intent had been to limber up my writing muscles in preparation for a larger project. Now, I find myself in the beginning stages of just such a project and so, the blog has served its purpose in that regard. The feedback I’ve gotten from the blog has confirmed something in my heart I already knew - namely I can string together groups of words into a cohesive thought. So, there’s really nothing left but to get about the business of actually sitting down and forcing myself to write or at least get all the brilliant snippets, fragments and ideas that have run around inside my mind unrealized down on paper.

It’s not to say I won’t continue to blog, because I think I will. It’s just it will no longer be a main focus of efforts. Time to make the leap and start writing about things and getting paid for it.

There will be new stuff from time to time just nothing extravagant because efforts are better focused in other directions.

A big shout out!

Congratulations are in order for Mister Dean (and Janet who did all the heavy lifting)! Welcoming Benjamin Charles into the world - nice to hear the news. Now Adelyn has someone to look after!

More from Flickr.

Where the hits are rapidly outpacing the blog...

Salam Pax is dead, long live Salam Pax!

Nothing new has been posted on the Where is Raed? blog since August 18th of 2004.

If you were paying any attention, the Where is Raed blog was one of those noteworthy places to go and hear what life was like on the ground in the days leading up to the invasion of Iraq and the weeks and months that followed. The blog was useful because it gave an unedited view of daily life in Baghdad, a view that wasn’t filtered through media outlets like Fox or CNN. It was one of the blogs of note, a place where people began to sit up and take notice of the blogosphere.

Salam Pax and Raed’s corner of the web has been quiet for quite some time no doubt their lives have progressed and they’ve moved on to other things but, it doesn’t mean things haven’t continued to happen in Iraq. Fortunately, while there hasn’t been a wealth of new entries on the blog, it is still a terrific gateway to other voices from that part of the world.

Personally, I’m a bit jaundiced by the whole Iraq thing as are many others no doubt. However, we live in a nation with a short attention span and currently we’ve moved on to another issue - what is it this week? Immigration?

Even so, I wonder sometimes whether or not any good is coming of this whole situation. I’m trying to look for that silver lining in the dark cloud. Funny thing is, I come to realize we are all of us very much the same no matter where we live. It all boils down to a matter of wanting to live a life in peace, free of conflict and availed of a certain level of comfort. So, it’s interesting to see what the reaction of bloggers from Iraq is on the latest news (the death of Zarqawi) - interesting because here we get a lot of spin to either justify or contest the decisions of our government and there you can hear about whether or not there is any positive impact on people’s lives:

Whatever it is that Zarqawi was planning, he succeeded. The civil war he so earnestly wanted has a life of its own now, and that is what Iraqi politicians should be concentrating on, instead of more military games. His life or death won’t matter anymore in Iraq; some would say he is a martyr, some would say he was irrelevant.

---

The reactions have been different. There's a general consensus amongst family and friends that he won't be missed, whoever he is. There is also doubt- who was he really? Did he even exist? Was he truly the huge terror the Americans made him out to be? When did he actually die?

---

The Prime Minister of Iraq Mr Al-Maliki just announced that the criminal and terrorist thug Abo-Mpusab Al-Zarqawi was killed by the Iraqi forces in the last few hours.

Zarqawi who is Jordanian from Palestinian origin was responsible for thousands of crimes against the Iraqis and the MNF as well as against humanity. He appeared recently in a video challenging the American and Iraqi forces. He beheaded by his dirty hands many Iraqis and foreigners.

This is very good news indeed and we will bring you more detail from the local sources when we get them.

---

An arch zombie has been blown to smithereens. You know, I am the sort of guy who gets distressed at the sight of blood and cannot bear the sight of even a dead animal, believe it or not. But you know, I was shocked at my own feelings of pleasure on beholding the photo of the dead face of Zarqawi. I would never have thought that possible. I have never felt this way my whole life. Yet the atrocities and outrages that these pseudo humans, these misanthropes, have perpetrated have engendered such anger, such sorrow, such rage that not even the most peaceful of souls can control their hatred of these criminals. My only regret was that the death was fast and sudden, and I felt pain that the true martyr of our country our beloved Ussama Al-Jadaan could not witness this day which he had predicted and played a big role in bringing about.

Are you an old fart?

Check for yourself - this MP3 file is the ringtone adults are supposed to not be able to hear but younger people are - if you can’t hear anything, you’ve crossed the line!

The mysterious ringtone of youth.

(Of course I didn’t hear it but then again, I already knew I suffer from significant hearing loss)

File under things I love.

I’ve only recently caught the podcasting bug. I’ve found myself enjoying various offerings via podcasting and iTunes. So much so, it’s making me rethink my initial resistance to getting an iPod. I’m sure there are a lot of you out there who already have the bug and for those of you that do, I wanted to share with you my latest guilty pleasure.

NOVA Vodcast

Watch NOVA and NOVA scienceNOW where you are with our video podcast, offering excerpts from our T.V. programs, outtakes, animations, and more.

and,

NOVA scienceNOW RSS Feed
Keep up-to-date with the intriguing stories our correspondents are investigating on air and online for NOVA scienceNOW.

Interesting read.

Came across this by way of Elayne’s blog. A very interesting article on the subject of Iraq, the oil business and dollars as a basis of trade and how the three are all interconnected. Worth taking some time out for:

Thus, the U. S. effectively controls the world oil-market as the dollar has become the “fiat” international trading currency. Today U.S. currency accounts for approximately two-thirds of all official exchange reserves. More than four-fifths of all foreign exchange transactions and half of all the world exports are denominated in dollars and U.S. currency accounts for about two-thirds of all official exchange reserves. The fact that billions of dollars worth of oil is priced in dollars ensures the world domination of the dollar. It allows the U.S. to act as the world’s central bank, printing currency acceptable everywhere. The dollar has become an oil-backed, not gold-backed, currency.

If OPEC oil could be sold in other currencies, e.g. the euro, then U.S. economic dominance-dollar imperialism or hegemony-would be seriously challenged. More and more oil importing countries would acquire the euro as their “reserve,” its value would increase, and a larger amount of trade would be transacted and denominated in euros. In such circumstances, the value of the dollar would most likely go down, some speculate between 20-40 percent.

Loving the new toy.

A week or so back the optical mouse gave up the ghost. It had been a long time coming I guess. In the old days, this usually meant popping the ball and doing some quick x-acto surgery to get all the accumulated gunk out of the housing. X-acto surgery never really worked forever, but it did alleviate the problem for a bit of time.

Now with the optical mouse, I never thought I would be confronted by something like ‘jerky mouse’ syndrome again but, sure enough over the last few weeks (months?) I had been noticed a lack of responsiveness. I tried blowing canned air into the ‘eye’ of the thing but, that didn’t work. What else was there to do? The thing is supposed to be sealed up tight as a drum the only other thing I could imagine the problem being was a short in the USB connection running from the mouse to the keyboard.

I have a big reluctance to go the whole wireless route - don’t ask me why and I had to admit to being quite happy with the optical mouse for the most part. I liked the styling too! It’s not as if the styling makes any realy difference but, I confess I was a sucker for it’s ‘Flash Gordony’ looking see through husk.

So, finally in frustration I bit the bullet and looked around for a new mouse. I got this:

The Apple Mighty Mouse



My inner geek has embraced this little sucker! I’m not as crazy about the ‘Sleeper’ styling but the damn bugger is so frikkin’ handy I find myself consumed with great glee while using it.

I have to get a hobby.

The wrong mailing list.

This week I got one of those fervent emails that pop up in my inbox from time to time:

Republican Family Values

On this page I will be exposing the hypocrisy of the Republican Party when it comes to family values. Theyclaim to be the party of family values, but in reality often have reprehensibly low standards when it comes to family values. This is not to say that Democrats are perfect whn it comes to family values...

I hate things like this - aside from the horrible spelling errors of which there were a few.

See, while I can’t admit to loving the job the current admin has done, I don’t like when things descend to this level.

I must confess to being a bit of a swing voter. I rarely if ever vote strictly along party lines. Voting along party lines just never seemed to make much sense to me. You vote for the person, not the party. You vote for someone who is going to do a job. Party affiliations are all fine and good but, at the end of the day it’s people who make up the government and people are a lot more complex than what is put down on a party platform.

Just the title of the email made me cringe.

I’ve admitted to being a registered Republican before and this seemed like another one of those very broad based attacks. Something along the lines of making one party the party of the white hats and one party the party of the black hats. If that is as simple as your world is, a world so starkly black and white, I have to profess to being a little amazed. Amazed and at the same time I find my opinion of anyone who views the world in such a simplistic way is immediately lowered a great deal.

After the election in 2000, I lost a friend over an email like this. It was a histrionic email about how the country couldn’t survive the results of the 2000 election, how we were facing the end of days. It was just so incredibly aggravating and demeaning in tone I responded to it in an equally sarcastic manner. The unfortunate thing is when you’re dealing with someone who is caught up in that kind of emotional frenzy, you’re probably not going to have much luck in having any kind of dialogue with the person so, that was that.

Here we are, 6 years into the Junior legacy and we’re all still alive. Imagine that.

We’ll survive another two years too. Why? Because we’ve suffered through worse and made it through, that’s what we do, what our nation does, survive the good as well as the bad.

Now, let’s sit up shall we? All those forward thinking and intelligent people out there who really are unhappy.

The current admin... they’ve done a horrible job! They have failed to lead this country into any kind of positive direction. They have wasted the nation’s resources and money. They have shown themselves to be devoid of any kind of inventiveness when it comes to dealing with the nation’s poverty, they have spent money and squandered one of the largest surpluses on record, they at times have found themselves at odds internally over a disjointed and ill prepared foreign policy. We’re not talking about people who are necessarily doing a good job, they’re not.

My point is, why is it necessary to frame the argument for a change in the context of ‘family values?’ There is a wealth of missteps the administration has made through six years, it’s there all for the listing.

Hello?!?!

In a word, Katrina?

How about the latest slap in the face with the misallocation of funds regarding ‘Homeland Security’ (don’t even get me started on how even having a branch of the government called Homeland Security immediately makes me think about Germany in the 30’s).

All I’m saying is this, people in this country aren’t stupid - look at the president’s approval rating. People look around and can tell when things aren’t going right. Let’s try to focus on substantiative arguments rather than simplistic attacks. The reason I’m asking for this is because when you get right down to it, none of these guys are all that appealing - be they R or D. They’ve all got they’re own foibles and if you’re going to base your argument in a simplistic fashion, you’re more than likely to wind up offending the very same people you want to convince.

A jewel in the rough.

I know Sun from the semi regular trips to a favorite store - she logs days working behind the counter there. Over the course of time, I got to talking to her and found she was an alum of my old school. Consequently, turns out she is an incredibly talented artist. She just set up her Deviant Art site, check it out:

The Flypup Deviant Art Gallery

Another Wednesday night out.

Don’t know what it is, lately Wednesday seems to be the night out. Last Wednesday was an evening at the ballpark.

Presenting television!

The RCA film from 1939 trumpting the new invention of television! Worth watching, RCA’s television!

The Dildo Song!

If you remember the old Slinky ads from childhood, you’ll certainly appreciate this commercial for the toys for the new millenium - the Dildo Song

nsfw unless you wear headphones or have the sound turned down.

Life’s crossroads.

You ever come to a point in life where you feel you are at a monumentous crossroads? You’re looking for a clue of some kind to determine which road to take but, you can’t find one or if you do it’s not something that makes the decision any clearer or easier?



Just a crop of another photo I had put up in the Flickr stream. The resolution of the cropped image is too low to be of any use but I wanted to share it nonetheless.