Twitter / atb20

Monday, January 28, 2008

cramming

i start my photography class tonight... i'm pretty excited, but i'm also a bit nervous... going into a classroom situation where i don't really know what i'm doing or what kind of people will be there. are they all going to be art snobs or talented photographers? or west village moms who need something to do? i don't know. in the meantime, i am sneaking peeks at my camera manual under my keyboard because i was supposed to have read it before the first class.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

grrr...

there's something about sheryl crow complaining that "people feel like music should be free, that the work [she does] is not valued." huh? later talking about touring around with her 8 month old son and her two yellow labs. yes, sheryl, life is very tough for you. no one values your work... they just pay for your fancy tour bus and your farm in nashville. i'm sorry, but mix tapes have been around as long as i've been alive. people have shared the music they love with friends and family for as long as there has been a tape recorder*... and most people, if they really like an album still go out to buy it. some even pay hundreds of dollars to sit in nosebleed seats to listen to you and your musical cronies in concert. yes, the music industry is on the verge of demise. i think of her in her luxurious farmhouse, and then i think of the people who flip burgers at micky d's or traverse dangerous new york city streets on their bikes to deliver food to people like me making maybe $7 an hour... yes, it's the musicians who are suffering.

anyway... sorry for the randomness. i was actually going to write something about obama and the fact that he's irritating me... what with the not answering questions in any kind of strightforward way. why can't politicians just be themselves for a minute? i would have been much more impressed if he said, "yes, i complimented reagan on his methods... not his policies" rather than saying, "no, i wasn't really complimenting him... i was just saying that he was able to cross party lines and get the opposing party to vote against their entrenched interests -- the way that we should learn to do as democrats." um, that's a compliment.

* i realize that internet music sharing goes well beyond the the mix tapes of my youth, but i still think that plenty of people buy cds and mp3s... and ridiculously expensive concert tickets!

Saturday, January 26, 2008

new idea

so, i may or may not have mentioned that i'm starting a photography class next week. hopefully it will be one small step toward a new career. we'll see... with this in mind, i've decided that i might switch up my blog a bit. i think it would be fun to start blogging my photographs as a way of telling the oh-so-exciting story of my day-to-day life. i'm hoping in the process it will help encourage me to take my camera with me more often and maybe, just maybe, help me become a better photographer. i just went by b&h yesterday to get a new lens for class, and now i know that a 1.4f = large aperture = good dim light shots. see, i'm learning already.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

new experiences

so, i spent the weekend in houston. i had two experiences i never thought i would:

1) having a child and a dog watch me pee.

2) waiting up for my dad to come home.

i had forgotten that when you babysit a small child, you can't just close the door when you go to the bathroom lest they get into certain dangerous mischief in the two minutes it takes for you to do your business. i also hadn't accounted for the curiosity of certain canine and human residents at my brother's house... it was very awkward to say the least.

i also didn't realize that now that my dad is single i would worry about him coming home late at night from dinner out with a friend. as the clock ticked past 3am and i couldn't reach him on his cell phone, i found myself pacing back and forth wondering if i should call the police. i think he finally paid me back for the few late nights i kept him waiting up for me in college. (and, yes, he's fine... i found that out only after waking mil up at 4am new york time to express my panic.)

the highlight of the weekend, however, was hearing my name uttered by lmsp. pretty friggin' cute.

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Saturday, January 12, 2008

primary season

since i pretty much dropped off the face of the earth as the nominees started ramping up toward the primaries, i feel a little behind the game. i haven't actually even picked a candidate. i like different candidates for different reasons... i like obama because i think he's pretty electable (barring any major gaffes between now and november... which is always possible) -- in the sense that he is charismatic and intelligent and doesn't have a long history of partisan politics... though he is most definitely liberal. i like clinton because she's smart and seems to know the politics game backwards and forwards (then again this is also what i don't like about her). part of me wants to support her just because she's a female candidate, and she's getting sh*t for things a male candidate would never have to deal with. a male hillary would probably have half the hurdles she has... but they might also be half as interesting... this is where we come to edwards. edwards is cute... he seems pretty smart and charismatic, but there's no there there. i feel like he could get the independent voters that perhaps hillary could not (perhaps just because he's male and has a good smile, and he hasn't been in the limelight as long), but i don't know that he could get enough people excited about voting for him. i'd worry that he'd wilt under a strong republican campaign...

when i don't think about november, i actually think that hillary would be the best president. she knows the scene, and i think she would know how to get things done. i think her goals are in line with moderate liberals -- health care, education, getting out of iraq with as little fallout as possible. sometimes i wonder if she'll get us in deeper in iraq and iran, but i think her pro-war vote was more a political maneuver than a representation of deeply held position for war. i think she's the smartest and most prepared of all of the candidates, but then i think about november. i worry that middle of america independents won't be won over to her side... either for personal (she stuck with bill after the whole monica business... wtf?) or political (um... whitewater) reasons. what are you guys thinking??

if you aren't already reading obsidian wings, i highly recommend checking it out...


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Thursday, January 10, 2008

why i love new york

this happened in my neighborhood. nuts!


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Wednesday, January 09, 2008

new digs

so it seems mil and i might have found new digs... there are still some hurdles between us and our new place, but we're getting excited nonetheless. the biggest shocker -- to you and to us -- is that it's not in brooklyn. its a mere 11 blocks from our current abode... 11 blocks further from brooklyn, in fact. mil seems to be entranced enough by the second bedroom and the washer/dryer to ignore this rather glaring flaw. the walk-in closet might have helped as well. i, of course, will then be 11 blocks closer to work, so it doesn't work out too bad for me either. i will keep you apprised of the situation as it moves along, but long-distance friends will hopefully have a room of your own to stay in when you visit. yay!


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Monday, January 07, 2008

a bit of magic


this morning as i was riding the subway to work, "invisible ink" by aimee mann started playing on my i pod. i don't know what it was about the song, but i started to think about how much i wanted to call my mom. thinking about the sound of her voice, i started to tear up as i walked up the steps behind earl hall. i felt so empty, i just wanted her back. i thought to myself how nice it would be to see a hawk on campus today. i only saw a hawk once before on campus, but i thought if my mom had an emissary on this physical plane it would be a red-tailed hawk... after a few glances at the empty branches of nearby trees and the blue-gray sky, i finally saw one... just sitting quietly on an upper branch of an oak tree several yards away. i stopped to sit down on a cold, cement bench, overwhelmed by my emotions, and the hawk flew down to a lower branch closer to the path. as i walked by her, i was maybe five feet from where she sat, glancing at me briefly before returning her gaze to the squirrels scurrying beneath her, ultimately chasing one down a grassy knoll alongside low library.

i've was never raised to believe in a biblical heaven, but i've also never really doubted the existence of some kind of "life" beyond the physical one we experience with our five senses. little events like this one make me almost sure that our consciousness lives on in some non-physical way. sometimes it's comforting... knowing that my mom is still there... somewhere... other times it just reminds me of how much i miss my physical mom... the sound of her voice... the feel of her cheek next to mine. other than this morning, i've been feeling a little better since coming back to new york after the holidays. the pain is a little less constant. maybe it's just having the holidays over and done with. maybe it's a little didstance... maybe it's guitar hero... i'll take it though.


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