locale

i am here.

stone free

i just chanced upon the orlando magic website, and something about the aesthetics of it just made me YEARN something FIERCE for the experience of being out and about at night in florida. wide and pristine streets, immensely clear night skies, a soft breeze, all that perverse art deco... new york is killing me. i have to get out of here.

i'm having good nights with great people, but the sensation of being stuffed in a bar with a handful of friends and hundreds of strangers reminds me of scenes from the holocaust where they crammed people into traincars.

the snow today almost made me want to shoot myself. i content myself with the fact that in little less than a week i will be chatting with accented girls on the corso while holding a basket of fish & chips.

dead bodies

a week ago i hopped into a cab on a monday morning after a weekend of drinking and chatting up all the girls i almost got with in college, who all remained as girls i almost got with (save one. booyah). i cheerfully told the southeast asian driver my office address. the sky was clear, the sun was shining, i was looking forward to work. in a nutshell, i was feeling great.

as we barrelled down broadway i began to notice a subtle but insistent smell. i couldn't place or identify this smell but it began to gradually overpower me. my mind raced trying to think of what it was. the smell was sickeningly sweet, but at the same time bore the unmistakable mark of rot, decay, and pestilence.

the driver turned onto 100th st and waited to enter the park. i was feeling a little uncomfortable, so i cracked the window. it didn't help. as the car rushed down the park drive i felt queasier and queasier. i wanted to ask the driver if he could smell that rotten rotten stench, but i was afraid that if i spoke i'd vomit, and taxi drivers aren't thrilled when you blow chunks in the backseat. trust me on that one.

i writhed and hyperventilated in the backseat, surrounded by the smell of tropical corpses and gasping at the sunny dusty air of the street. i felt a wave of sympathy for all those poor foreign bastards languishing in hot hot indonesian jails for decades for getting caught with a gram or two of heroin in their surfboard bag. when the cab pulled up at the office, i hopped out immediately and took a second to gather myself. i gave the driver a fat tip and strolled into the office feeling much better.

later i told one of my awesome coworkers about my experience with that smell and he said "what, like a durian?"

motherfucking durians.

nas - n.y. state of mind

"i don't think i'm too sane
life is parallel to hell
but i must maintain"

i need projects. huge undertakings that have a clear beginning, middle, and end. i enjoy my job very much but every weekend i feel unfulfilled. i have lots of freedom and a fucking fat stack of dinero but i still feel absurdly restless. orwell really was right. freedom is slavery.

12-step plan:
step 1: categorically avoid B&T nightlife. sorry to all my friends who get a perverted thrill from such pursuits.
step 2: regiment and beast all NASD and CFA tests.
step 3: stay diesed up.
step 4: shop more, mainly for clothing.
step 5: plan travel.
step 6: execute travel.
step 7: write more emails to friends and eminent people.
step 8: watch more movies.
step 9: attend more events: basketball games, boxing matches, indie shows, "rap" "music" concerts.
step 10: collect more music via itunes and whatever tower records stores still exist.
step 11: organize my stuff and clean the apt more.
step 12: talk more to everyone.

boom. making things happen.

devil's pie

ofili at zwirner through nov. 3

chris ofili, british-nigerian star of the young british artists movement, has a mini-exhibition at david zwirner on 19th st. i've loved this guy since seeing his work in "sensation" in high school. art is a process of decision-making. now that i am an old fuck i only have time to study art recreationally, rather than academically. despite forming close friendships with several members of the boston art community, i never took an art course in college, misguidedly deciding instead to pursue a joyless concentration in biology. when i look at ofili's work and roll thoughts around in my mind, i think about how history of art and architecture is about picking apart at something a person has created. just like the study of literature, studying art is about deconstructing and analyzing the minutiae of another person's decision-making process. ofili's work embodies the process of making art. every step of his pieces is fun and full of action and youth.

i feel exhausted. work is so deliciously intense and frenetic but it leaves me wiped out. all i have strength for when i get home is reading the journal and maybe a quick jog. i don't get any rest on the weekends either, just 4 or 5 hours in the gym, then 4 or 5 hours of things to do, then 4 or 5 hours of going out.
"chillin in that drop. and still i feel
as if i'm nothing more than a hamster in a wheel."
i can't go out any more. it's burning my energy and also a huge hole in my wallet. i need all my money to buy luxury consumer goods and extortionate plane tickets.

my last complaints ever

i have no time. and i feel like a mexican gang beat the shit out of me with truncheons. except the truncheons are actually substance abuse.

... moving on

seth green says:

"TIME IS HONEYS"
- can't hardly wait

clipse - young boy

"what's my excuse?
cartoons were the root
started with yosemite sam
with the gun in
palm of each hand
what couldn't i demand?"

phone

in my freshman year of college i began dating a girl who was a very good friend of mine. she was everything to me. despite treating her poorly, i really valued being with her and she was my home. last friday night i came home late feeling like death. i then remembered with an incredible surge of dread that she was leaving for india the next morning. i lay in bed and called her. her voice made me think of all those nights during the summer after freshman year i would wait in bed late at night for her to call from los angeles. this habit led to at least one sleep-deprived financial statement analysis mistake at my PE internship, but it made me feel so happy and loved. it still does.

she's gone now.

welcome to the jong-il

"i make the purple bring the green"
- 50

this week the treasury announced the new purple and green five-dollar bill.



this new bill looks like a well-drawn weed leaf. i remember when i was a kid i thought to myself "the most outlandish combination of colors has got to be purple, orange, and green. i should avoid placing these three colors in close proximity." the government is an orange pumpkin away from making this the craziest bill in the world.

this is the first of (i'm sure) many measures designed to make earning a living harder for counterfeiters, and the first of (i'm sure) many measures that will take our currency closer to but not quite as far as other multi-colored currencies like the AUD.

who's the biggest counterfeiter of USD you ask? the democratic people's republic of korea, known to the layman as north korea. to clarify: motherfucking kim jong-il is the biggest counterfeiter of american currency. possibly the world's only remaining producer of supernotes (essentially indistinguishable $100 bills), he has produced at least hundreds of millions of US dollars. a year ago, $50 million in supernotes had been confiscated, which should give a picture of a fraction of his operations. Dear Leader uses this dinero to maintain north korea's only fleet of benzes, a 7000-car stockpile sitting in some warehouse in pyongyang. he is also rumored to annualize USD0.7M in hennessy expenses. the bastard.

what a guy.

extra credit:
the times
wikipedia