Curfew

During the heyday of social media, I grudgingly opened a series of accounts online to reserve spots with my name on them, for sometime in the future when I had more time to devote to it, at the urging of a young acquisitions editor at the small Jewish publishing firm I worked for back then. Why not? It was summer hours, and I was already exploring commenting on websites and posting photography through this site you are now reading. I didn't know what to do with "social" media, but like any other social endeavor, most of it involves family grudges, drunk bitches posting crazy shit online with their ounce of "Dutch courage", some cyber-stalking, and good old-fashioned dating.

Like I've written before, it's a lot like "life" itself, because I've often said that social engagements online are like those first few introductions you make at a cocktail party: you want to be polite, make socially acceptable small talk, and avoid taboo topics like sex, religion, and politics. Of course, after several drinks in, the gloves come off conversationally-speaking (whether in person or online), as those partners somewhat engaged with you on social media conveniently forget that media is my world, and every time you hit the "post" button or "publish" tab, you are in my world, and this is where I rule.

But, that doesn't stop people from trying to pretend that they are on the cusp of a brave new world with no rules, like our initial explorations with the Internet as highly savvy media designers working in the famous Flatiron building of Manhattan on a DOS screen. Wow...sexy. Before more intuitive interfaces were built for the layperson, we used technology like that as a lark to our main business of making books, the benefits of which you reap today by reading my content for free. 

Back then, we were just tossing digital bottles into a large, dark, empty ocean that was devoid of the normal human warmth you might find meeting people in the flesh, like whether that dick hanging around the studio with his designer girlfriend really did meet some "hot chick" online, or it was just some balding older dude fucking with him, because it looked like this:

As I explored my online options with this new world of "online media" that now included nice things that are easy to understand, like pictures and photos with captions, I found the usual human suspects, including: that guy from high school who always wanted to date you but was too scared to ask you out, and his friend-of-a-friend who wants to meet you because you look "hot" in your profile pic, and your drunk redneck bitch of a cousin who not-so-secretly hates you for being prettier and more talented than her and her arty husband (whatever that means). Shit like that. Really common, easy stuff. And it did work. I briefly dated a guy I knew since junior high school days, a guy who knew an old co-worker of mine from my first job at SMP, and a former boss of mine from Denver, now back east again and dating as a rather new divorcee. Same type of stuff.

On the more professionally-geared social site, I met up with a few alumni looking to network and expand their projects through a less dating-themed kind of way that was too casual for their business worlds, which is also an obvious part of my life, too. And so, after a few casual emails traded on this corporate social site, I met up with an older alum who had his own small architecture firm on Long Island. We met at a casual burger-and-beer joint downtown when he told me upfront that he was married. Ah...good! He was balding and pleasant, but definitely not the type of guy I date. No pressure, then. We can just hang out and talk.

We got along well, as two RISD alumni working in the city as professionals, and he assured me that his wife would have no problem with our new acquaintance, because he often mentored younger alumni and attended alumni-based functions in the city socially on his own. Wonderful! I love clarity like that in conversations, especially with our very small pool of incredibly gifted working artists. Save us a lot of time to have that kind of speed, intellectually-speaking. Easy to understand, and easy to follow. Let's drink! You know? You don't want weird shit hanging over your head when you just want to relax and enjoy after-work drinks with a colleague.

After that first meeting, he invited me to an art book signing in "The Village" at an arty retail bookstore that catered to more rarefied artist books and large coffee-table editions with expensive photographic reproductions. In short, I knew I was walking into "Art Fag Central" upfront, but to what exact extent, I did not know, and that was part of the fun for my new alumni friend. He laughingly told me as we walked over there that we were going to meet a couple of mental patients he knew, through a young woman he met at another type of signing that was geared towards sexual content and explicit nudity. Okay...this, on the walk over there. 

Oh, and also, you should know, that at this book-signing will be the "artist" herself, promoting her new book of stupid photos about her dumb adventures as an S&M-themed cougar with severe emotional problems. Ah...so, fucking with me on a RISD-sized scale. Kudos! It wasn't exactly a heart-pounding request to build a DaVinci flying machine during studio class with only paper clips and rubber bands and a 1/2 hour time limit, but it was solid enough as an outing with rather extreme social tensions built directly into it. At first we did normal things, like tour the two-level store looking at weirdo books made about weirdo things, with overly-wrought covers that had weirdo thingamabobs stuck onto them, like a bad crafts project that retails for $400. So, basically, crazy rich white man shit. Got it.

We went back upstairs for the obligatory white wine and cheese course of the evening, served by suitably arty-looking waiters and waitresses, with the requisite "hipster" retail sales staff on-hand, in case you suddenly got the urge to buy an ugly book about an ugly woman who wants to have sex practically in your face for money. Like, a hooker. You know, just your average Wednesday night after-work kind of thing. And to make it even more awkward, she stood in front of the long table set up with a display of her horrible book dressed in a hooker outfit, with a really bad feather boa around her shoulders. Her hungry eyes that searched the room desperately for a social connection freaked me right the fuck out, but after a few drinks, "Fee" finally worked up the nerve to buy her book, ask her to sign it, and then engage her in conversation dressed like your grandmother in a Halloween outfit for a crazy "Times Square" hooker from the 70s that I could barely look at. Ugh...

So, I actually turned back to the two outpatients my friend had introduced me to when they first arrived at the book-signing, and that's social life in the city on any given night, folks: the "artist" at the opening was wayyy weirder than the two mental patients on curfew I was talking to. You see, dear readers, in addition to their mandatory check-in at their housing facility for the insane, they also had (of course) a keen, shiny-eyed interest in weirdo sex that more often included beatings over any actual human contact. The small Asian girl thought she could talk me into it, and at the point, I was like, what the fuck? I'm already here. Sure, weirdo! I gave her my cellphone number so she could send me outrageous text messages that I could show people, because at that point, I was already close to changing numbers from the harassing texts that every ex-boyfriend or male mate I'd ever been with had already sent me.

And that's it. That's our grand future that involves you, your mental disorder, and society. We will provide you with supported housing that has mandatory check-in times with the on-site staff that includes social workers and professional healthcare aides, medical charts with your medication times (because you totally forget that, girl), and key-card access while you recover and rehabilitate from your serious illness(es). With or without the feather boa(s). That's optional, folks. And what a beautiful world it will be. Healthcare and healing, guided by the same two people you love you the best: me, and Your Loving Holy Father. Amen to you, on this perfect late Spring day, New Yorkers. We've earned it. Really.

https://www.omh.ny.gov/omhweb/facilities/rppc/

The Dead Can Speak

For most European Americans, the idea that the dead can speak from beyond their actual time on Earth—in other time-frames than our own—is a story told to them solely though pop culture, in cheesy Hollywood movies about evil Ouija boards or haunted houses rife with demonic possession. But, if you delve just a little deeper into better content than the kind offered on generic prime-time t.v., you'll find a lot more varied factual accounts of our relationships with our ancestors, as told in our very blood and bones.

Forensic science, in the duel branches of forensic pathology and forensic archaeology, can uncover the brutally violent truths behind the deaths and oppression writ upon our ancestors bodies (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/), ones that that were denied life in the history books and textbooks of our mutual pasts, as white America sought to exploit their often weaker economic poverty through a cultural dominance that's extremely one-sided, because cultural assimilation often goes hand-in-hand with bloody wars for land and other precious resources, which means your kind of reminiscently Asiatic eyes are a most inconvenient feature to be dealt with evenhandedly. You are that which they wanted to destroy.

And so, with the now-modern inconvenience of genetic testing and cultural databases, it doesn't really matter what an opportunistic liar or an immoral cheat says or does, because the truth will come out in your blood work, whether you like it or not (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3122205/White-NAACP-leader-pretended-black-pictured-time-scandal-broke-responds-atatcks-saying-don-t-two-sh-ts-gusy-think.html). There's no hairstyle or skin tone that a wack-job looking to exploit white America's guilt about race can play, because science has made gaming the system obsolete. If you are just 25% Native American, you can get money from the state for college, just like a person of partial African-American descent can score pricey contacts and seed money for businesses from the NAACP, making your genuine ethnicity a very lucrative thing of the past. 

With your latest genetic test in hand, your reality changes, or, as the case with me, it becomes the history of your name (as my name) as it is written on the features of most modern Americans, now as your factually-verified claim laid to rest. It simply is so. But, it's way more than ancestral land rights or fishing claims, important as those are to indigenous people. Enter into the scene every carnival barker of yore who proclaimed their psychic ability to contact the dead, looking to take advantage of that ever-grieving parent who lost a teenager too early to a drunk driver, or a car accident of any type, or perhaps a grisly murder/suicide. So many questions to ask them...are they happy? What actually happened?

Then, the mystical arts of speaking to the dead become the fodder of anyone with an open question or hard emotional case that needs solving, especially if it involves child rape and/or murder, in our bids to relieve the extreme pain of a parent lost to grief. It's hard not to imagine what avenues we would not explore for them as a culture, in an attempt to alleviate such anguish. So what if she's a crazy housewife from "Lawguyland" (that's "Long Island" for the uninitiated) with a harsh accent and a phonily exaggerated appearance who "reads" people in an audience really well through their "tells"? We want to believe. I was no stranger to the allures of a good ghost story as a kid, buying book after book about poltergeists, only to be disappointed by a complete lack of supernaturally spooky life experiences. So, where the heck are they anyway?

And then the people I loved the most in this world died, my beloved grandparents, and with them, my tether to their pasts, as our ethnic stories and personalities that we had so lovingly clung to in each other, now together again in this new land of hope, faith, and promise. I started visiting my grandfather's grave alone, just to see what I would feel. At first, it was small but beautiful experiences, like a young stag grazing alone in the cemetery's grass with new moss on his antlers, looking up at me at the exact same time I reached my grandfather's grave stone, or hearing his distinctive old New York voice so clearly that I knew I had connected with him in my mind's eye with a searingly accurate recollection.

After that, it was game on. It was no longer a process driven internally by me and my strong memories, however great they were at alleviating my profound sense of loss. No, I could hear my grandmother laughingly explain to my maiden aunt living with her that now I was splashing around like a little girl in my bathtub, and then she would say the date and time in a future that held a middle-aged me alone in an old Hudson Valley home without her actual physical presence. It was so cheerfully normal, that I knew our sound waves were actually reaching each other in a way other people could hear, too, which is a discovery that's not without a rather extensive scientific past. 

Lots of audiophiles have sworn that they connected with their loved ones through a radio tuned to a particular frequency, like a son hearing his father (now deceased) talking to his grown son in the future using the same old device, ham radio aficionados both. Lucille Ball famously told the story of her dental work transmitting radio broadcasts through her mouth on live television back in the day (http://altereddimensions.net/2014/lucille-ball-picks-up-morse-code-radio-through-dental-work-fillings)! Hollywood made a sensationalist version of it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_%28film%29) by skirting around the real physics behind radio frequencies and audio signals that bounce around the earth's atmosphere, coming back around again and again after the earth's rotation is complete. 

What was once wacky science fiction becomes our reality with time, backed by real hard science (http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/k-4/features/F_Hearing_Voices_From_Space.html). Your grandparents and mine would no more have believed that you could hear voices from space anymore than my grandmother thought she would live to see the day we bought water from plastic bottles, free as it was for her in the city, the source of some of the best water on earth. It would have been unthinkable that such a vast resource as readily available clean water would be sold back to us through superficial hacks like "beverage companies", but such is the case as it is now. Why would anyone drink from harmful plastic bottles when the minerals of city water have amazing health benefits that come straight outta the tap? And my grandparents were right.

The same goes with our digital imaging advances and microscopic investigations. What was completely unbelievable a few short years ago is now our day-to-day reality. Computers and the Internet? When was the last time you went a full day without your smartphone or tablet? When was the last time you didn't have Internet access? Contemplate that, and you're already more than halfway there. The far-out astrophysicist who launched the best photographic lens we developed at the time weren't just looking for space dust out there. They were looking for the Eye of G-d and His Creation of the Universe we live in, beyond time and space, in this here-and-now for all times, because our real natural phenomenons come from the source of all life itself. Welcome to the space age, kids. It's a groovy place where we're one, even you there, that curmudgeonly old guy afraid of average machines like the common PC. This galloping mechanized horse engine now as wings to fly. See you out there! Now I can hear it.

http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/hubble_essentials/

Free the Internet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass

In typical twist of fate, today is the anniversary of Frederick Douglass' birthday. It made sense to me when I explored the graphic on Google's search engine, because I created the title for today's piece last week, in another bit of fortuitous timing that marks vocational life. It's the type of head-space that has no quirky coincidences for us, only excellence. We live our lives deeply through intelligent design, the harmony that thrums through the universe or, in the words of the now-immortal Carl Sagan, “... the nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” 

We are all made of the same stuff, so it makes sense to me that we would align ourselves accordingly, in harmony and perfect agreement. Mr. Sagan also noted the necessity of variation among life as essential to our shared successes: “Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos 

Did we not at times share living spaces with humans so vastly different in perspective that we fought our most heart-wrenching, bloodiest war over it, so much do we believe that all men are born free as a manifestation of G-d's will that His children live together well? In fact, He tells us that if you do not fight hard enough for the lives of your women and children, then it is also your fate to accept gladly your rightful enslavement at the hands of your victors, because you have not properly defended what is yours by rights, and that is also what I ask of you today: to give more, because it's not enough. 

Yesterday I was talking to my father, a man of another generation who struggles with change before he converts to the newest technology and who was, at the onset of my career, a staunch anti-technologist made more so by his avid desire to preserve what he felt was his precious toehold over me in my work as an apprentice desktop publisher, by refusing to participate in this "New World". I could understand it, even as I worked to make the change from the hand-made to the digital easier for everyone around me, as it was not available to me, because I hadn't initially signed on for computer science, but here we are, and yesterday he (finally!) agreed with me that the Internet is the greatest advance in worldwide communications that we have ever seen, because he finally adopted the very technology I cut my teeth on as a young leader in business. Only after finally giving in to my greater expertise did he see how all the pieces fit. Aren't they beautiful?

What became his avid denial about my greater gifts became his grateful acceptance in old age, which is none too soon. Pride goeth before the fall*, and as someone who was tasked with excelling in business while learning impaired, he often made do with his challenges while he struggled to reconcile himself with the worlds I trafficked in, varied universes unto themselves that he doesn't always understand, but that's my job to bear up under. I want you to join us as an "early adapter" to a movement that's actually quite old, and free the Internet, just like you did with t.v. networks. As the astonishingly high price tag behind our superior technology initially frightened off the non-artistic layperson (as it rightfully should), then so has this initial phase of tool usage passed into worldwide acceptance. 

We will always have cheaper machines to do small tasks for minor chores done by smaller people than you and I (as is appropriate with any truly sophisticated social hierarchy), but for those of you who want to soar with us in the skies, then come along for the ride. Make the Internet free for all people, regardless of price. That's what Frederick Douglass deserves. A place where freedom reigns.

http://everyoneon.org/

“ If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. ”

* http://biblehub.com/proverbs/16-18.htm

 

Ice Age

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_Park_%28Brooklyn%29

We had a snowstorm recently in the tri-state area, which means every kook with an ax to grind about the seasons comes out in full force on our local news broadcasts, either as deniers for global warming brought on by mass consumption and clogging pollution, or some out-of-towner brought to New York City by corporate from another marketplace that's way warmer (and naturally much better, duh), who just fucking hates it here. Both are annoying and often the same person, but much like the turning of the earth on its axis, New Yorkers accept posers for who they really are: thrill seekers looking to make a quick buck in the heart of the empire, hopefully at our expense, because we're that good at weathering storms every year, like in preparation and stuff. 

Of course, it never really works out that way for the bluesy bipolar broad bored with life itself, because this town spits out people like candy. We have every type of season existing in the Northeastern U.S. within perfect balance, divided neatly into three months each with four distinct seasons, which we often like to explain to any type of human from any spot around the globe in excruciatingly long (and highly technical) detail, if need be. Meteorology, ain't it a kick? It's actually fun to mess with 'em sometimes, like the mayor pretending that Saturday's snowfall was "the worst one ever!!", as a direct contradiction to the near-constant snow we had just last year, but such are the devotees of "the idiot box" and its' voodoo priestesses promising heightened hysteria they can all "get high" off of, in some delusional end-of-the-world type of scenario, rampant with overly dramatic words in description of a simple snow, so that they can nod along with some droning talking head. Yeah! So cold, so dreary....gasp! Like death itself!! Go global warming! We love you! Sooo warm.*

Meanwhile, we're having downhill sled races in the park, with cool Park Rangers handing out hot chocolate to the kids for free, happy as ever in a landscape turned magical with sparkling snow, but...uh, yeah...sure, it's the end of the world in a northern climate. Meet you at the rink? No need to rent. I have my own ice skates! Oh, right....booooo, that's bad fun >:( I forgot! In a way, we use our environment to weed out the kind of people who wouldn't make it anywhere let alone here, so much so that we've kind of perfected life in all its aspects, complete with a southern colony for those retired exiles we call "Snow Birds", those charming Grandmas you all see in Florida, dope, with the strong native accents. And that's why it's hard for whiners everywhere; they have a lot of competition, too much for us to even notice them all, thus sucking some of their joy out of killing our fun, which never works. What a pattern! Almost predictable, like the weather itself....right?

But, that's what major shifts are all about. It was the same thing in the workplace, when publishing transitioned from the purely manual to the computer desktop: people who couldn't make the leap in thought necessary to move forward didn't excel, and the rest did. No one specifically asked me about that "sea change" either, but you didn't hear me complaining about it overmuch. I didn't have the time for it, what with teaching myself graphic design for books on the computer at night, running my own household with roommates and boyfriends in tow, and staying alive long enough to do it again the very next day. Boohoo. No one cared because work had to be done, so you just learned what you needed to get through the day, and in the process, I became the greatest apprentice the industry had ever seen.

Our families were like that, too. My grandmother's parents decided at some point that they had enough of working after the ice industry went bust with modern refrigeration, choosing instead to refuse speaking English to their children while forcing my studious grandmother to work on their behalf, thus depriving her of her dream about advanced education, not that it worked. She excelled far past them anyway, because she had to, and because she could, and isn't that what they saw with me, too? I could've done without the abuse, domestic violence, mental illness, and addictions that seemed to spring fully formed all around me, but like my grandparents, I knew I could bridge the gap if I had to. I didn't have the choices that I make easy for the people who depend on me to survive, because this isn't exactly my first "Ice Age" to gap, nor will it be yours. Welcome to the same evolutionary theories as then, newly packaged for you in the Digital Age because we had to, for you to keep up with us, so do. Keep up!

https://www.prospectpark.org/news-events/news/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial

20 Years After Man

http://on.mash.to/1roxBi5

By now you know all about the angry zeitgeist behind GenX methodology, because we want to blow the whistle on how we see the world, which takes us to some very strange places indeed, first and foremost is the human condition as it exists out in the world, because we sometimes stand up openly and in violent contrast to pop culture and its' requisite artifacts around us. It's hard: you're the problem and we clearly know that, but how to change you, a broken human? Answer: through intelligent design, and very often mindless repetition, resulting in positive growth. 

It's excruciating slow in genius-time, which means me and my peer group often outsource intellectual capital (in the form of expert consultation) to do the more dreaded monotonous and daily grinding of your ax. We feel anger at you, but since you're the patient, we can't in all good ethics hurt you, so we seek to heal you. But, where does the energy go? Oftentimes, we channel it into our art, music, dance, clothes, speech, etc. You get the point: Mommy is mad, but it's against the law for me to slap the shit out of you at this point in time because I'm a registered human weapon, so I won't. Feel me?

With that in mind, take most local and evening news programs: it's made mostly for people who need the repeating of spoken words for their ADD/Dyslexia/BDP (like a lot of the anchors themselves), therefore it is the exact opposite of informative for someone like me. If I'm a regular viewer of television content, I often have to watch an alcoholic with shiny red-rimmed eyes sign his lack of comprehension live and on-air, in the form of the same question over and over again. Yes, it IS very painful. Thank you for not answering, and/or caring about me as a person, because your sickness takes precedence over me and my feelings each and every day.

So, I watch most stuff with a grain of salt. Oh, I know the anchors who are good at what they do, and the ones who are glorified actress/model/wannabes in tight dresses, but when I see and/or hear Ernie Anastos, that means "GREEK" to me in New Yorkese. He's been an anchor here for so long, that like The Mets or The Yankees, we would struggle with change; the real kind, not your temper tantrum over no chocolate ice cream left in the freezer.

It was with great trepidation and some degree of shock/awe/horror that I had to watch my man from New York sign weirdly easy questions at some New Age pale skinny gay gothic hipster in all black and some eyeliner from Ohio. Sorry, Middle American peeps, for your loss (sarcasm). The intellectual premise was thus: what to do when robots take over? I'm sorry....what the fuck did you just say? Did that fucking hipster just say "robots" in all seriousness to Ernie freakin' Anastos?! Dazed, I waited a bit, thinking this mess would right itself, but no; some 20-nothing "producer" even had the graphics guy throw up a cheesy (and quickly made) type graphic for this very serious and timely pertinent Robot Takeover story. Is it ethical to, like, be nice to them and stuff? Holy shit, yo. Excuse the fuck out of me? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?

By now, I'm very used to media dip-shits, because publishing isn't exactly filled with just Harvard, Yale, and RISD, so I know I can expect a complete fucking idiot at any time in life, but sometimes the very fact that some ass thinks that we would want to watch his gay friend mouth their shared mental disorder makes me, well...mental. And then I went off, shouting at the t.v. like any Mad Dog-drinking Times Square bum pissing his pants in broad daylight. That's how fucked up you and your choices are to me sometimes. I re-grouped, shouted many choice and very appropriate curse words at my t.v set, and then I did what I do best: I "depantsed" intellectually some kid who has the nerve to invade my space, just because I want free t.v. and not some rip-off cable channel that makes YOU richer, and not me.

So, here it goes: we humans make robots, we humans then service the robots, and (THIS IS FUCKING KEY) because machines break down all the time with or without humans, our metallic equipment doesn't last long. When I did have some satellite channels in Brooklyn, and heavily rocked the NatGeo channel (among a few other choice channels), I actually discovered things; you know, like you do with educational programming. Disclaimer: you should know upfront that I an a huger fan of free PBS channels, mostly for the nature specials, but some other stuff, too.

And so I realize that I had the privilege to watch informing and entertaining specials about what happens to our stuff 20 years after <insert latest type of Apocalypse here>, which formed this brilliant deduction: shit breaks down when we aren't there to take care of it. Your house falls apart, weeds sprout up everywhere, and wild animals nest in your old bedroom. Chernobyl is a radioactive human nightmare BUT wolf cubs are born there, irradiated. So it's like that, asshole.

The Mars Rover spent half the Martian year docked on the side of a small hill, parked there by code sent to it through NASA engineers, so that it's solar cells and other mechanical works won't get gummed up when they try to power it back up after the annual sand storm season, with, yes, yet more slow code sent to it via space. Except for that one time, when the images that came back to the control center didn't accurately predict the small depression in the sand, so the guys had to send it messages in painfully long Computerese to move it very slowly back and forth (like parallel parking in the city with an angry mad trucker cursing at you for blocking traffic), because if it breaks down, there goes $40 billion U.S.D. of our taxpaying money, and if the robot is done, it's fate is to be forever covered in sand.

Ditto with episodes of "Taboo" that highlight fringe carnival freaks as entertainment. Yeah, I know that guy jerks off in his car and pretends it's his girlfriend, but do you want him dating your daughter? Same thing with Diaper Boy; he can't talk to you, A PERSON, because some crazy human beat him every day of his childhood so, lo and behold, he wants to be held like a small child instead of loving you. It happens, it's disturbing, but at the end of the day, your stupid fucking robot toy that kicks a soccer ball to the President (you know, the man we freely elected to kick a ball AND save the free world on a shoestring. Yeah, that guy.) is just that: a very fancy and nicely designed piece of equipment that breaks down. And it doesn't get to save the world. No. It gets that crazy IT guy who costs $XXX/hour to fix it, because your dumb fucking machine costs us $XX billion dollars to make, no Presidential addresses included. How's that for a price tag? No?! 

Yeah, that's what I fucking thought. I have to monitor your usage of what becomes (conceptually to me) that fancy fucking color copier with it's own hard drive, and then fix it for you when you become weird about using it, because you are too cheap to outsource it to some wonk who specializes in gadget repair. Oh, then please douchebag me around in a phony budget meeting because you ONLY UNDERSTAND spreadsheet numbers from your learning disordered brain, (that's why you work in the text-based industry of literature) plus I'm way better looking than you, and you really hate that. I PASS. YOU FAILED.

Just learn some real shit by clicking through the links below, yo, and more importantly: LEAVE ME ALONE.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_After_People
• http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/10/nuclear-tourism/johnson-text
• http://www.space.com/11773-nasa-mars-rover-spirit-mission-ends.html 


“I’ll be in the paper, the news with Ernie Anastos
They’ll even print my recipe for pasta with pesto”
—“Finger Lickin’ Good” by The Beastie Boys.

All That Jazz!

America, meet the Jennings: http://r29.co/1I8ZU1Q

I've been fascinated with the recent heightened awareness about the transgender community for awhile now, because I see them as cultural "outsiders" like me, but not for something of our particular creation. How can this be true? A gay man does not choose to have a brain shape that more closely resembles the brain of a heterosexual woman, a change that occurs during the earliest phases of fetal gestation, which makes it almost impossible for a mother to have any control over it, although photographic imaging technology improves our ability to see almost daily. 

It's given us the necessary scientific evidence we need to help treat our populations who have long suffered from false accusations of choice. How the heck does a small embryo "choose" his or her brain shape? Through sheer willpower?! It sounds absurd to us now that we know better, and yet during the Salem witch hunt days, Puritans wrongly believed women with moles were witches and burned them to death by tying them to a stake, albeit with the "holiest" of motives. Where was the compassion for a common skin feature then? 

What has always been taboo to the typically European "white man" has, in fact, always been accepted (not perfectly, but much better) by native First Nations of America** as a human part of tribal life. In fact, many societies accept the third gender as a natural part of life, the way a mother accepts her child's Albinism; it's a rare but beautiful thing.

Enter into the scene my favorite kiddie New Yorker, beautiful baby Jazz, a wunderkind dynamo if ever there was. From the age of two or three, Jazz told her parents she was a girl, because she is a girl. Not in all facets, yet (because she's still a teenager), but internally, deep in her brain, where we've yet to go where with our still-limited technical abilities, although I feel more confident than ever that we will get the correct results, because this mama ain't ever wrong about what she knows to be true. And so were Jazz's really "New Yawk" parents sure, too; two very normal Longyland people from totally normal backgrounds, who had no idea what "trans" was, let alone suggest it to their baby in utero. 

But what they did have (and still do) was the love, compassion, intelligence, and faith to understand that they did not raise a liar, or a cheat, or a sneak, certainly not as a cute lil' toddler. They choose to love, accept, support, and take care of their special little girl; not because you like it, but because they have G-d's absolute empathy and understanding, just like do you.

Oh, I know all about the wackos who can easily throw up Bible scripture like they wrote it yesterday and understand it perfectly, but as someone who has seen firsthand many people with learning disorders and mentally disabilities struggle to read one perfect, easy book (think of "Bible Study" as Special Ed for the spiritually inept), you know what I'm up against here. All I ask is that you let me tend to my own kind while I get you the information you need, in a way that you can understand. That's it. You don't have to do a thing. I got this one.

Special "shout-outs" to the wonderfully smart Dr. Marci*** for leading the way by honoring her Hippocratic Oath, and actively using her experienced background as a transgender healer to make a difference by saving lives one person at a time, and my man Chaz Bono for staying strong and true. It ain't easy being real in a world that can seem so fake at times, but that's exactly where all the gloriously good stuff is. Thanks for leading the way.


*      http://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2008/06/17/gayness_linked_to_brain.html

**    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-Spirit

***  http://marcibowers.com/

Eye of a Needle

Lately there's been a lot of headlines on t.v. news and entertainment media about ongoing struggles with the definitions of certain words that relate to human reproduction, which is odd to me, because we've sent men to the moon and back successfully, therefore demonstrating that as a society, we've mastered complex technological feats like astrophysics and space travel. 

Apparently the womb of a woman is still too difficult for some folks to understand? Please allow me to clear up any big, grave misconceptions you may have about words like "life" and "kill", because here's what an actual human embryo in the eye of a needle (that we cannot see with the naked eye) looks like: 

This is called "microscopic imaging". It's been around for awhile.

I know it seems weird to some people that I can have such mature conversations about microbiology, which is also somewhat strange to me, because my mother is a retired Microbiologist and Roman Catholic, and as such, we have no gaping divides between the arts of religion, science, technology, and the well-known (and very well-documented) aspects of mammalian reproduction. 

Of course, we are also an exceptionally well-educated clan, and I do understand that. But fears can grow in the darkest of places, sometimes attaching itself to a woman's body in utero*, in a process called "gestation" that we cannot see happening, because it happens inside our bodies without us seeing it (or being able to mentally control it), because we lack inhuman superpowers like see-through X-ray vision and telekinesis. Well, at least for now. Maybe we'll evolve into that some day! Wouldn't that be cool?!

An embryo sitting on the tip of a needle.

Anyway, that may sound kind of disturbing for a mom to do, but think of it this way: natural bodily processes occur every single day right here on Planet Earth, in every single carbon-based life-form on the planet, be they male, female, asexual, or not. Be not afraid of it!

In fact, cell division also happens each and every day, whether we want it or not, and again, whether or not we can visibly see it happening, regardless of gender and/or sex. 

Here's a series of pictures of embryonic cell division, also captured photographically under the view of something called an Electron Microscope** (thanks to "Dr. Diane" for the science lessons;) Don't be alarmed if you don't understand the caption beneath the image below. We do, and we live to serve.

Mesenchymal stem cells facilitate the derivation of human embryonic stem cells from cryopreserved poor-quality embryos. For more on this technology and others (like ultra-sounds), please click here: http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/1/4/576.

23 And Jesus, looking around, said to His disciples, “How hard it will be for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 The disciples were amazed at His words. But Jesus answered again and said to them, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 They were even more astonished and said to Him, “Then who can be saved?” 27 Looking at them, Jesus said, “With people it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.”

*    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_utero
**  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_microscope

For more on the concept of "viability" and its' linguistic roots, please see additional definitions by clicking here: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=viable.
 

Cybercrime

Much hype and paranoid thought is devoted to "Cybercrime", a word right out of bad sci-fi, if ever there was. Truth be told, shoplifting (http://wordhistories.com/2014/08/16/shoplifting/) is as old as the hills, as any ole descendant of a penal colony will tell you....or maybe not. Crime is crime, and criminals exist within any strata of society because evil, pathology, and bad DNA (much like cancer) does not discriminate.

I do have discriminating tastes however, and the two incidences of theft against me that occurred in my life were way before the common usage of computers. The one happened while I was in school and working solo (One of three part-time jobs I had while enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design. Yes, one of the hardest schools on the planet, I know.) at a pizza joint in Providence, Rhode Island, and the second involved a shopping spree in Virginia (caught by the card's red flag system for atypical purchases) because the thief dumpster-dived for old credit card receipts in Brooklyn which led me (through the credit card rep's sage advice to me over an old-fashioned land line rotary phone) to a lifelong habit of shredding old mail that has personal information printed on it.

In other words, crime exists everywhere people are, and some places where they are not. You can hedge your bets by being smart, careful, and level-headed as I am, by using common sense. Here's a quick primer: #1) DO NOT go jogging in Central Park after dark and/or at night, (no matter what century it is), #2) always have your back against a brace when the train comes into the station, as a guard against psychos who push people onto tracks and #3) dancers on the subway are cool to give money to but #4 (and this is an add-on bonus) buying candy in a subway car is a front for drugs because junkies use their kids to collect change by ripping off bodegas on the street for the candy, and then forcing their homeless kid to shake down white tourists on the train for some change. You're welcome!

Same thing with the Internet. No, you are not interesting (nor is your email, or Facebook page, or etc...) but you do want to keep your wits about you. Treat online content and engagements like you are meeting someone for the first time at a cocktail party. Do you tell them about all your surgeries or the nasty details of your perhaps fictional sex life? Hell, no...unless you're as crazy as the person talking to you.

Be careful out there, kids. Life can be one heck of a dangerous wild ride, so wash your hands often (but don't become OCD about microscopic germs), change your underwear, too (but don't get hooked on laundry as a cure-all for anxiety like some desperate suburban housewife), and most importantly, be kind (if you can) to those around you who deserve it the most.

And register with credit agencies like the ones pictured below that I am holding. Add on a security level or two (called "security freezes" and "fraud alerts") et voila! You may now buy from an online retailer, which is safer than talking to a human over the phone who might write down your information, because (and this is very important) a computer is a machine with no agenda that is only as good (or as bad) as the human who programmed it. Now get back out there and live!

Register with one, you register with all. Safety should always be this easy!

http://www.equifax.com/home/en_us 
http://www.experian.com
http://www.transunion.com/

P.S. - Recent emigres please note: the IRS does not, repeat DOES NOT collect taxes over the phone. They use our federal agency for mail called the "United States Postal Service" for official business (unless you're a criminal), because post offices use legal things like dates and time-stamps for verification purposes. Postal workers are also agents for the government. You should be able to trust them (unless they're having a really bad day, and look like they may go "postal". See link here for our lingo: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=go+postal.) Then, call 911 for help.

MakeupFree and MakeupLess

A "MakeupFree Me" in the morning!

I periodically go through phrases that are with and without makeup. Working at some plush "rich white man" gig in the city? Oh hecks yeah, I wear War-Paint to that meeting and lots of it, if that's what it takes to make the deal go down with you, idiot! 

Me: concealer set with powder and some blush, in the afternoon!

Humbly working from home on my own stuff, on an old (and supposedly) "outdated" system? Nope, just me and my old clothes here, y'all! 

Me: morning time, hairband and ponytail, then make breakfast.

But it's really not a series of hard-and-fast rules that I rush through compulsively. Sometimes I skip the face paint AND I work summer hours at a seasonally slow publishing house. Who cares? It's hot out, and maybe my skin needs a rest in the heat. 

Woke up, tied back the curtains, and looked out the window. Who's that?

Plus, I have a lot of work to do, and quietly so, too, while the rest of humanity leaves town to go on vacation. Go, and good riddance to you! Or, maybe I want to go to the store while I'm working from home AND I also dot cover-up on that stubborn blemish. Who knows? Who cares?!

Yeah, I've got a blemish. So what? Not in the mood. Got work to do.

The point is this: I'm not on some big anti-makeup "Crusade", because if I were on that particular quest, human, you'd sure as hell know it. I'd be sportin' a big red cross (hand-sewn by me) right across my chest in recognition of that fact, yo. Besides, we fought those old battles centuries ago, and moved on from it. Far from it.

Bathed, dressed, and brushed, but no makeup. I like my hair in this one.

No, I don't hate girls with face-paint, be it a little or a lot, because I don't hate myself with it on, nor without it either, and neither do my close family and friends. After all, they have seen me in all lights (as they see me still), and they've found me worthy of beauty, along with their beauty, too. That's real. See it here, for yourself.

Right before bath time. My love asked me to take this shot.

My "Nigella Lawson in the kitchen" look, with some makeup on.

I just woke up and my eyes are still red!

Parents in town taking you to a fancy steak house dinner? "Glamour Girl"!

On a technical aside: Please note that all of the pics you see here were snapped by me and posted by me, on my (again) "old" iPhone3. I don't have a design system set up (because, once again, it's old and outdated, thus rendering it unusable, as it broke down from "Planned Obsolescence"*), so all my magic comes from me, a good camera built into a nifty smartphone, and whatever filters that I sometimes choose to use on a Mac iPhone and/or an Instagram app. You're welcome!

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

Street Games: Whiskey and Sidewalk Chalk

A bottle of Fireball whiskey....

It's amazing the things you find when you're walking around, paying attention to the details. I regularly take street photos, and afterwards, I'm surprised at what at get, because it's usually more beautiful than I think it is, though occasionally it's the reverse. There's only so many sunset photos one can absorb with fresh eyes. I shoot regularly because I'm trained to, so the compositions and the juxtapositions happen automatically for me, but sometimes associations reveal themselves to me much later, after that quick, five-second pic.

...now turn this way!

In that sense, photography hasn't changed for me at all. Part of the excitement was seeing an image slowly ghost itself onto paper, floating in its' chemical bath, and watching that happen, only truly knowing then what you caught previously on film. Technology doesn't replace what I do, it just prevents me from breathing in the sulfur and selenium of the old, traditional, black and white chemical photography process, and for that, I'm grateful.  

What do you see around you today?

Keeping In Season with Cabbage and Beets

The Mix.

I've been trying to cook with the seasons when I can, given time, money, and location restraints. That means I follow and use a handy little iPhone app called "Fresh Right Now" (no longer available, so please petition the company that created it to bring it back: http://www.digitaloddities.com/apps/ios/FreshRightNow/), set to tell me what foods are fresh and available in the Northeastern region of United States. It's a more rigorous and responsible to shop, eat, and live. 

Reducing and simmering.

By choosing to stay within those guidelines, several things happen at once. Buying only locally-grown produce has deeper ramifications than you'd think: it's a brief shipping process between the fields and local stores, so it's fresher, needing less chemicals to stay fresh because of that quick turnaround (and staying "green" by using less fossil fuel and pesticides, so there's no leeching into the groundwater), it's American grown, which benefits our farms here, under the scrutiny of our USDA standards, and it pumps money back into the local economy, creating a healthy, small, manageable system that's less dependent on the financial ups and downs of the world at large.

Mellowing into a beautiful, rich, warm red.

Not an easy trick to do, admittedly. It helps that I know how to choose local foods well, and that I cook every day, so I bring a lot of experience to the table. But by picking local foods within season, I feel better physically because the food is fresher and grown with less chemicals, I support my community of farmers, and I get a more well-rounded and balanced diet that changes with every season, which pretty much guarantees that I am always eating a rotating group of fruits and vegetables. By not constantly consuming far away foods laden with hormones, antibiotics, and traces of chemical agents, I get nutrition which, after taste in food, is a big part of the health game.

Shiny, happy, cabbage and beets.

With spring and St. Patrick's Day, our hearts and minds here turn naturally to cooking with cabbage, the winter vegetable staple of so many Northern ethnicities. For sure, I am not a fan of the wilted boiled cabbage of yore, so I updated it with beautiful red beets and a balsamic vinaigrette, braised and reduced in organic coconut oil. It tasted better than any cabbage dish I've ever had, imparting a sweetness and complexity I've yet to discover in that blank canvas of a vegetable, the humble cabbage, now lifted to a side dish worthy of the moist chicken breast sitting next to it on the plate.

Chicken breast with worthy side dish.

Lick the plate clean, and you've made yourself a little piece of happy that was grown right near your home. A worthy goal for any family. What's your next taste adventure?

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Braised-Beets-and-Red-Cabbage-3191.

PS: I made some changes to this recipe, as you should, based on fridge and pantry items. I added honey, skipped the parsley, frying it in a combo of coconut oil and a butter-like product from Olivio that's derived from coconut, in lieu of butter.