least white ≠ most black

Campus Arms Race Continues

According to spokesman Dennis Nealon, Brandeis University thinks like everyone else*:

"What Brandeis is wondering now is, is it a different world, maybe? . . . This is post-9/11 and post-Virginia Tech."

Read all about the campus call to arms in today's Globe.

DanMeade- GarbageCake.jpg

Last Saturday, I was getting on the F train at Herald Square just before midnight when I noticed this birthday cake sitting outside the 35th St. entrance on the windowsill of a building. It was still in its plastic case, though with a very thin slice missing.

I met Meade at Wogie's for a few boring drinks, then walked for 2 hours around lower Manhattan. We saw the typical, tourist sluttery of the West Village, the quiet, condoized East Village and SoHo, then the instant hipification of restaurant-supply Bowery, and the throbbing nightlife explosion of the L.E.S. (also haunted by shadowy condo towers rising everywhere).

After running into a soon-to-be-ex-co-worker on the train at about 2:45, I told Dan about the apparition of the cake. We returned to Herald Squaure and the 35th St entrance at about 3, to find a drunk thirtysomething woman sitting on the sidewalk a few paces from the cake, having a cell phone fight. The cake sat just where it had been three hours before. Someone had taken it out of its case and peeled back a layer of frosting, but it was unclear whether more cake was actually missing.

Dan's phone created this image for posterity.

Apparent State of Trendy Photography on Flickr

Tilt-Shifts: out
HDR: on its way out
Lomo Fisheye: in

Roof job

I like this photo I took on March 19 in Ogden, UT.

Back from CA

Have not eaten in 19 hours. Brother coming tomorrow.

This Week's Goal*

To have at least one beer in each of the following cities by Wednesday: NY, Boston, LA, and San Francisco. At dinner tonight, I'll be halfway there.

Also, please see the comments section of the post below this one.



*THE ABOVE-STATED GOAL, WHILE HUMOROUS, IS SOLELY PERSONAL IN NATURE AND DOES IN NO WAY PERTAIN TO ANY PROFESSIONAL GOALS NOR DOES IT APPLY ANY LACK THEREOF. STOP READING THIS SHIT AND GET BACK TO WORK.

Time Magazine, the Voice of America

Jeffrey Kluger writes:

Of course, plenty of people fail tests and end romances and even suffer unspeakable abuse as children. And while there are a lot of narcissists in the world, many of whom crash and burn in their personal and professional lives, only an infinitesimal fraction of even the most unstable people lash out in remotely as violent a way as mass killers do. So what should we look for in people for whom such a homicidal rage is a real risk?

From this article, in which a journalist attempts to psychoanalyze a killer.

With all the cracks I make about terror, the truth is that you can be killed at any second by someone flying a plane into you or gunning you down. The arms race is on! As DB writes in a recent email, "Better get your pistol permit like I just did!"

F. Star Market

No one seems to realize how overpriced Star Market in Porter Square is. I guess it has something to do with the clientele: yuppies who will pay whatever things cost. I stopped in to buy orange juice last night. A carafe of OJ usually costs $2.50. Not here. $4.69.

That's an additional 88% for nothing (except, maybe, "convenience"). I call it the Cute Yuppie or People Watching Surcharge. But we all know that Market Basket has better peoplewatching, and we all know orange juice should not cost $4.69.

AOL deems VT murderer's shitty intro to playwriting assignments ripe for profit.

You have to look at at least three ads to read them. And they read like intro to playwriting assignments.

"Home"

For the first time in 2+ months, I've been "home" more than a week and a half. It's impressive! It's also time to leave.

"Action & Fun"

Check out the Walther P22, one of the guns used in the Virginia Tech massacre.

"Whether you are looking for a pistol for affordable training or simply the excitement of shooting, the P22 is the pistol for you."

Mmmm...Debt.

Sallie Mae, which owns your student debt, is now owned by someone else. Actually, two gigantic banks and two investment trusts. Your debt has made Sallie Mae worth $25B.

Patriots Day

It's that weird holiday again, when most people are working.

Urban Filth in the Sunday Times

This week, the City section takes the "road not taken, much" for a tour of "the antithesis of ultrahip New York." A food writer walks Jamaica Avenue in Brooklyn and Queens and reports on the human and architectural oddities that make up 80% of New York City.

There is also a real news article on the slow-going approval process for Flushing Commons, the massive development project about to happen in the Downtown Flushing neighborhood of Queens.

Here's an image of that plan that I linked to the blog in July of 2005:

The writing is on the wall.

And the floor, and the blog, and the ceiling, and many other places.

The Strangest Thing

If you live in Boston, and you don't have a car, you can't buy furniture. It's not that you can't bring it home yourself. You can't even look at it. There are no normal furniture resellers anywhere on the urban landscape. You have to drive out to the big boxes.

One day, this could be about something.

_______ ______________.

____________!!!! ____________________________________? __________________________________________. _____________________________??

Bad Buffalo at White Castle

Last week, I had the pleasure of lunching at White Castle in suburban Indianapolis with a colleague. The bacon cheeseburgers and fries were as good as they've ever been.

But the chain's Buffalo Chicken Bites (press release here) were just awful. Tragically, the sauce had just enough kick, but it coated an arid, supposedly fried, supposedly chicken, sawdust-like product. I couldn't have more than a few. And, sadly, they came with Ranch dressing, the fast food chain's answer to blue cheese's perishability problem.

Nice to see buffalo items in the chains, but we could do better.

Fake News Day

Imus nonsense everywhere. What are we being distracted from?

The only Imus-covering article I barely agreed with was a (!) Fox News editorial that I could have written when I was 16.

Quest to become the most American Americans...

...continues.

New feeling!

So tired, no amount of sleep will fix. Day 9!

Massachusetts is a fucking shithole.

"The Department of Revenue is no longer supporting fill-in versions of the Forms 1 and 1-NR/PY. Taxpayers can access printable version of the forms from the links below."

Human Mail

USAirways account since January (does not include travel on Alaska, American, Delta, Continental, and JetBlue).

01/12/07 01/15/07 PHL BOS 1776 U BELLINGER/ROBERT 500
01/12/07 01/15/07 MSY PHL 1676 U BELLINGER/ROBERT 1,088
01/23/07 01/26/07 PIT DUJ 4683 Y BELLINGER/ROBERT 500
01/23/07 01/26/07 LGA PIT 3975 Y BELLINGER/ROBERT 500
01/23/07 01/26/07 BOS LGA 2125 Y BELLINGER/ROBERT 500
01/26/07 01/29/07 DUJ PIT 4737 Y BELLINGER/ROBERT 500
01/26/07 01/29/07 PIT BOS 3876 Y BELLINGER/ROBERT 500
02/12/07 02/15/07 CLT MSY 1409 U BELLINGER/ROBERT 651
02/12/07 02/15/07 BOS CLT 1891 U BELLINGER/ROBERT 727
02/19/07 02/22/07 LGA GSO 3135 K BELLINGER/ROBERT 500
02/20/07 02/23/07 GSO CLT 2669 K BELLINGER/ROBERT 500
02/20/07 02/23/07 CLT DFW 1105 K BELLINGER/ROBERT 937
02/22/07 02/26/07 DFW PHL 3436 Y BELLINGER/ROBERT 1,302
02/23/07 02/26/07 PHL BOS 1812 Y BELLINGER/ROBERT 500
03/24/07 03/27/07 PHL RIC 3653 Y BELLINGER/ROBERT 500
03/24/07 03/27/07 BOS PHL 0853 E BELLINGER/ROBERT 500
03/26/07 03/29/07 CHO CLT 2424 U BELLINGER/ROBERT 500
03/26/07 03/29/07 CLT BOS 0714 U BELLINGER/ROBERT 727
04/04/07 04/07/07 IND CLT 2288 Y BELLINGER/ROBERT 500
04/04/07 04/07/07 CLT BOS 1946 Y BELLINGER/ROBERT 727

Sun Oil Co, Marcus Hook, PA

Shot while landing at PHL.

Bob's Donuts, San Francisco

Catherine Foss

Shot on the same lunch break bike ride as the photo below. Island End River, Everett, MA.

APLANTA bow

Bulker (bulk cargo ship) delivering road salt in Chelsea, MA. Taken on a lunch break bike ride.

MBTA introduces supersurveillance buses

Three closed circuit cameras weren't enough. Now, new buses will have eight.

If they're going to be photographing me, I'm going to be photographing them.

Two posts from a plane:

Airport Whore

NOTE, 4.17.07. IT WAS RECENTLY SUGGESTED TO ME THAT THE FOLLOWING POST, IN WHICH I OFFER A THROWBACK TO THE WAY MY MIND WORKED IN HIGH SCHOOL, MIGHT BE "OFFENSIVE" (!) TO THE CASUAL READER. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!


Long ago, before I even had the ability to sometimes censor myself, I ran a joke website called the American Anti-Whore Society. On this late nineties website, I funneled the issues I had with Our Culture into a series of Cosmo-esque quizzes designed to help people diagnose whether they were College Admissions Whores, Car Whores, Pet Whores, etc. I came up with roughly 40 types of whore by the time I abandoned the project freshman year of college.

Now and again, I see things that automatically inspire me to create new whore subclassifications and quizzes. I usually shrug off these ideas and blog about barbecue food instead. But one type of whore has become so pervasive to me, that even I can't help myself. Something about air travel makes people behave and dress differently...

Airport Whore

1. Do your underwear stand out in a crowd?
   
2. Did you wear your cheerleading uniform on today's flight?
   
3. Can I see more than 45% of the surface area of your breasts by walking to my gate with both eyes open?
   
4. Did you purchase matching neon pink luggage with the goal of making EVERYONE IN THE AIRPORT LOOK AT YOU?
   
5. Were you sitting next to me in the Charlotte Airport California Pizza Kitchen in short shorts screaming into your cellphone about the "like TOTALLY hot guy" "in like Barcelona" that you "like totally hooked up with that first night" after you "like rode on his motorcycle"?

Just so you don't suspect that I harbor a pathological hatred of women, let me say that the male version of this societal ailment has not yet made itself known to me.

Old Men

Other people travel for work, too. Lawyers, salespeople, marketers, technicians. I am not alone on the road. However, the median age for these travelers seems to be about 43.8. Only once--on the very day in October 2006 when I first wrote about this phenomenon--did I witness a young businesswoman in the Salt Lake City Hampton Inn who appeared to be in her mid-twenties.

The number of potential fatalities is directly proportional to the amount of walking done.

So far today, I've walked about three miles around Somerville. So far today, I've almost been run over twice.

These orange flags, in desolate downtown Salt Lake City, are there to help innocent pedestrians not be mowed down. Can you think of any other downtowns that would need to resort to this?

While you're at it, check out my Utah set on Flickr.

Summer Projects gaining momentum

Looks like we'll be back in the good ol' USA this summer. KC is gaining momentum fast, and promises to be big. DM and I are not sure of the route yet.

We're also working on the Buffalo Wing Festival and the CPCCPC07.