still waters

well hello.

i bought myself one of them shuffles the other day, (thanks Tracey, i'd link you but the site is down on account of hurricane wilma) I bought it because i keep having to send my mini back for battery troubles, and you know, new york isn't the same without my rock and roll soundtrack. As it turns out Mio's mini is having the battery plague as well, so i think the shuffle is a good hold-over while the little guys are in the shop... what's funny about the mini is that:

a) it doesn't mate with my eMac
b) it can't get enough power from the eMac keyboard either
c) my headphone ensemble is bigger and weighs 10 times more than the player.

I didn't know that the shuffle wouldn't work with the eMac, so that was a disappointment, but it does work with Mio's iMac, and that's just a short walk from mine. maybe 10 steps. I do like it though. i never listen to all the music on the mini anyway, so i wonder if i'll go back to using it when it comes home from cupertino.

i'm listening to a lot of Spoon today, it sounds good to me, and goes well with the painterly quality of the sunlight and clouds today. Reminds me of a walk from midtown to downtown with the headphones bashing my brainstem and i'm discovering various tags along the way. feels good.

i've been watching the DVD collection of that show, LOST with mio nightly, and it's pretty addictive without commercials or a one week wait between episodes. i like most of the characters, the good guys and the bad, but i think my favorite is that dude Hurley.

Today begins my fade away from the studio. I had been hoping to not be just like some guy that worked at some place and got fired, and then as the weeks turned to months i became just a memory in the place, and as the months turned to years, the memory would only be shared by none of the new replacements. I never thought of myself as that kind of person. I think i'm tuned more to the "better to burn out than to fade away" mindset, but i've been sent back to school to learn what the meaning of friendship, respect, and integrity mean as defined by the city of new york. It is a very interesting class. I learned yesterday that if there is a force that wants you to fade away, you will fade away. It feels almost biblical in its magnatude, like judas and jesus having their last chat. (Me? albeit far from christ, am now dragging my cross through the masses. it's heavy)

i'm finally reading Motherless Brooklyn, a book i saw in many hands a couple years ago on the trains and busses of new york. It was recommended by a friend of mine whom i hold in high regard, probably a bit higher now as i muscle my way through the chapters. An interesting element to the story is the main charactor's tourretic episodes. they are strangely familiar, and i begin to identify with his characteristic tics. One in particular that i really enjoyed reading was an outburst in the middle of a serious conversation where he shouts, "Dickety Daffodil! Dissident Crocophile! Laughable Chocodopolous!" I don't know. Maybe it was the part about chocodopolous, but i get it. However, when i googled it, i got nothing, so it could just be in my imagination. Something about it though. Laughable Chocodopolous. It's weird how that makes me smile.

another thing that makes me smile, is i bought one of those iStudioLink cables yesterday. it's great man. i can plug my guitar right into the eMac, fire up garage band, and i've got every effect pedal and amp configuration right there for free. it's awesome.

let's see. the pictures up today are what was on the cards when i downloaded last night. covering way back from that day in the park with JT, up through David's birthday, and as i mentioned before, the Inked party and drinks thereafter.

it's a nice day out there right now, so i want to get out there and see what i can today. still interested in seeing some of the movies out there, and you know, i haven't been to the moma since they reopened. I mean, i'm not going to sit here and lie to you, i won't get there today, but it's on my list of things to see before i fade into the darkness.

oh. also, there's a photo of my workstation at home up there today. i wanted to make this like, blow-up diagram where i label everything so you could get a feel for it, but it doesn't translate in a 400px image, so i thought i'd put letters on everything and make a key to follow, but even that doesn't translate, so what i'm going to do is, i'm going to open up that image and just write it down as i see it, and you can maybe get a feel for it that way. this way, you'll get a sense of my process.

here goes. all you gotta do is open the link and scroll your way to it. (open a second window right? and go to danconnortown and click on most recently and then scroll to the end.) by the way, you might also notice that some of my images are getting that tell tale noise familiar to the pinnercam's ccd chip failure. yes. it's happening again. But i'm going to buy another camera soon to make it nicer. just waiting for the 8mp canons to hit the market so i can see a price drop in the 7.1megapixel variety.

okay. here's my faux workstation key.

the first thing you'll notice is my eMac. it's garden variety. 700 mhz, 1 gig of ram, running the tiger. On the screen, you see Alex Jones of prison planet and infowars. i'm watching a documentary on the bohemian grove out by guerneville california. it's not as interesting to me, but he did have some stuff about 911 that i was very surprised by, and i'm actually pretty up to speed on all the 911 stuff. i've got a subscription to his site, so i get to watch all that stuff. to the left of the eMac, you will see an ikea drinking glass which is harboring a doomed quantity of organic rum and pepsi from a 3 liter bottle with a wedge of lime in there.

directly in front of that glass is my cowgirl zippo. a gift from an old highschool friend that i've had for about 12 years. i've only sent it in for repair once. it works scary good in the wind. To the left of the lighter is a little japanese saki cup that i use as an ashtray. I have a fancier ashtray that i picked up in Tulum, but when the window is open, it tends to blow ashes all over the place, and that doesn't make me very happy. To the left of the ashtray is my late night with so and so mug, that i bought one day at the NBC store at Rockefeller Center. it was freezing that day. maybe 3 years ago now. it's filled with water in this image. to the left of the mug is my analog palm pilot. (a pad of paper, with a pencil) Behind those items are a potted cactus, that if lit properly, or at least a little bit lighter, looks like mioko. she's my girlfriend, and we call that cactus Mio De Cactus. i know, it's not terribly original, but you have to see the accompanying illustration to appreciate it fully. Next to the cactus is a bottle of lens cleaner which i've owned since i lived in los angeles back in '99. Behind those items you can see a small blue book. It's called The Best of Bizarre, a sexy little number about the history of Harper's Bizarre. I tell you what. 40 years ago, it was much naughtier. On top of the book is my headphone ensemble. i run a pair of Shure E3c's underneath a pair of skullcrushers. yes. dual headphones is the way to drown out the racket of MTA. i take my rock and roll seriously. On the back deck you see 4 speakers, they're onkyo's and they sound fine. behind them is a stip of wood that says Aquirium by Michal "shirley hansen" it's an artifact i've saved since college. One day i turned in a photograph, and it wasn't just any photograph, it was a hundred of them or so, mounted on a piece of wood that i found and all hammered together with horse nails. (very arty was i back in 1993) well. i had started this sort of fringe movement where by the art of Aquirium, i would Acquire works of art and call them my own. So this girl, Michal, she got the bright idea to Acquire my project, and pass it in as her own. The professor loved this and gave her an A. I had to redo my project, but he didn't dock me too much for it being late. Anyway, that's all that's left of that old project, and it is one of my personal treasures.

Back around to the front of the machine, you will see one of my cell phones. and behind that is my salmon skin wallet which was made by my room mate rebecca's uncle. it's a great wallet. And there you see my iPod mini, and next to that a pack of luxury cigarettes. Between the iPod and the cellphone you see a large safety pin. I highjacked this from Mioko to use as a pokey stick for cleaning my one hitters when they get clogged.

On my keyboard, you can see a small blue d-link. that's my bluetooth module. but i have nothing bluetooth that syncs with mac, so it just sits there as a painful reminder that Nokia and Apple aren't really friends yet. moving further to the right, you see my other cell phone. it's on the blink. something wrong with the qwerty board, and i like to text, so it's sort of retired there for now. But, next to that phone you notice a small brown bottle with a shiny cap. That bottle is astounding. Inside are these chinese homeopathic herbal drugs that are for kicking the craps. i had the luxury of taking some while in mexico, and they are hands down the absolute best remedy i've ever used for when you wake in the middle of the night, go to the bathroom and proceed to blow the bottom of your fucking ass off. You are cured and back to normal in about 10 minutes. it's astounding.

Behind that bottle, you see the pinnercam. it's not really the pinnercam because the pinnercam died about 2 years ago, but it is the successor of the pinnercam. my canon A70 (3.2mp) it has many dents and dings, but it is the camera most likely to take the photos you see on this site. behind that are two hard drives. One is a Lacie, and the other is an OWC housing that i built myself with the heart of my old mac clone. i've affectionately named the lacie Seabiscuit, but the name of the other is not important.(when i had a day job, my internalhard drive was named WarTempo, so seabuiscut and wartempo shared my desktop.) Jumbled around there you can see various cables, iPod cables, Firewire cables for the bigger cam, and maybe a little black one for the pinner.

scanning further right, you can see the stereo i originally bought for use at the studio. I bought it at J&R music downtown because bang for the buck, it kicks the ass of any other computer speakers out there for the price. The center speaker is tucked behind the monitor. I had to bring it home when i got fired, though i've really got no place for it. it sits atop a little stacking table i bought at the salvation army store in bedstuy on franklin street about 3 years ago, and the table is straddling the subwoofer. on top of the amp is a cd player that i never use, and on top of the cd player are the two current issues of Truce Magazine. On top of that is my scanner, which i also rarely use, but if you look closely you will see a small stack of polaroids, one of which i used for the feeling froggy update, so there it is. and finally, scrolling all the way right, you see one of my guitar stands with a rag i use for wiping the bodies of the guitars or my crt screen if i have a coughing fit from smoking too much while i'm stressing about being fired from my job so strangely.

and that concludes a walk through of the danconnortown workstation.

oh. one last thing. on the left left, you see a radiator for heat. it's not on, and it's fucking cold in here. being on a limited budget these days, i have to keep the heat off as long as i can because as you know, gas and oil are quite expensive lately. over the radiator is the window that i look out over redhook toward the water from from time to time. it's where the ducky and the bunny like to sit to watch the sunset and also my birdseye view of the home of David Nicolas.

welp. that's the business end of my bedroom.
maybe one time i'll share with you the pleasure side of my bedroom.

sort of like MTV cribs, this is the part where i have to let you go.

love,
dtown mostly cloudy and 49˚