06 November 2009
Well, this has been an odd fall. I wrote a while ago that I would put other people before myself and not force anybody to do anything he didn't want to. I kept my promise: on the weekend of the 24th I was in Nashville, traveling to the Smoky Mountains with a group of people. Part of my reason for going to that area was to see a haunted attraction called Monster Mountain -- an amazing site. But at the last minute, the rest of my group started talking about going to the Smokies one night early, to get an early start the next day, instead of driving to the mountains in the morning and losing half a day in transit. Since one of the people in the group was one of my oldest friends, and knew how much I wanted to go to Monster Mountain, he left the call to me. I decided to put everyone else's desires first and forgo Monster Mountain -- which meant, in fact, I may never go there again, unless I find myself in Nashville on another weekend in October someday.
The past two months have been among the busiest I've had in years. Rarely have I been so busy and yet felt like I was accomplishing so little. I had some great times with friends and family, but I was very stressed out about (A) what my photography means and where, if anywhere, am I going with it? (B) how much longer am I going to live in New York? (C) when I leave NYC, where will I go and what will I do? (D) what are my short-term and long-term plans for a career and grad school? and (E) can I get away with skipping grad school and pursuing a life on the creative track? I didn't manage to answer any of those questions. I'm completely stumped.
Fall in the New York City area is crap this year. Just like last year, the leaves are turning late, if at all, then falling quickly. The color red is virtually nonexistent. Back in September everyone was saying, "Fall will be great this year because it rained so much this summer." But the rain didn't stop. I think you can have too much rain, and it somehow ruins fall colors. 2009 has been the rainiest year of my entire life.
Luckily, I traveled. It was better in other parts of the country, but all that travel wore me out. True, I didn't push other people around, but I pushed myself... hard. I logged many hours of flying, driving, and hiking. On Halloween I photographed the Greenwich Village parade, with rain pouring on me for two hours. Being soaking wet in a cotton T-shirt and jeans when it's 60 degrees outside is not a smart move; it took a lot out of me.
As a result, my upcoming Halloween III photo album already has over 150 images waiting in the wings. That would be quite a bit longer than even my longest gallery -- which isn't a good thing. With photography, you have to be ruthlessly picky with your work. Too many pictures at once is overwhelming. Nobody wants to look at 150 pictures in one sitting. You try to avoid using similar shots; it's your job to know and show the best, and withhold the rest.
This is hard when the crop of photos is as diverse as the latest one. I thought the Halloween Parade went very well this year, despite the nasty weather. In past years I got at most a dozen keepers from that event -- this year, it's more like two or three dozen. I went to Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Ann Arbor, Westchester County, and Tennessee, and on top of all that come my usual Central Park and NYC shots. There's a lot to show. I might have to split the gallery in half... but I'm reluctant to do it. The Halloween gallery represents my favorite pictures of the whole year, every year... the closest thing to a grand, ongoing project.
To make matters worse, my laptop is going into another round of death throes. Yes, I actually still use it, despite doing 99% of my home computing on my iMac. I use the Windows laptop for some of the steps of preparing image files for my website. Before I switched to the Mac, I thought the "Apple is so much better than Windows" hype had to be overblown. But after using the Mac computer for about 6 months, I hate using Windows. It seems like every time I turn on the laptop there is some new stupid bug or prompt nagging me with jargon you have to search Google just to understand. Some new process I never heard of is experiencing "unexpected errors" or "terminating" without an explanation. It's a major headache, and that shit simply does not happen on the Mac. It would be a lie to call the Mac perfect or problem-free, but it's a hell of a lot closer than any other computer I've ever used. Anyway, I still like having Windows around for a few tasks, so I might need to buy VMware. Bootcamp is too slow and inconvenient.
26 September 2009
I'm involved in a movie right now. My coworker, Charles Drexler, is directing a short independent film. I'm acting in the movie and also taking some production stills. This is very exciting for me. I've been making movies with my friends since I was 14, and we've always wanted to take it to the next level, but we never got there for some reason. Now, for the first time, I'm seeing a real movie set from the inside. It's a tiny production but still, there's a Steadicam, bounce cards and light-blocking stands, a sound crew, a shot list, a slate, and even gofers. It's awesome. When I'm on set I think, This is what me and the guys should be doing. All we need is a plan.
I've had trouble lately getting new Thoughts essays up on the site. I've written several, or started to write them, and never bothered to post or finish them. Sometimes I read one and I decide it's too mean or cranky, too political, doesn't add up right, etc. Right now the political fever, indeed the polarization, in America is palpable, and even though I have many strong opinions of my own, I feel like I can't publish them without annoying people or making everyone even more exhausted with politics than they already are. But the cynic in me keeps saying, these people are tired of hearing about politics because they're tired of having to hear opinions different from their own. They've spent years collecting data, perfecting a personal vision of what the world is and how it works -- I know I have -- and anything that conflicts with that vision is a nuisance. Well, it shouldn't be.
For years now I've been itching to write an essay on my generation: our narcissism, superficiality, herdiness, and worship of alcohol. Things like that.
Fall is beginning again. It doesn't really start in New York City until mid-October, and then it stretches on through Thanksgiving. In the old days in Ann Arbor I would start my fall activities, like the horror movie marathon, in September, but now I have no choice but to continue it past Halloween. In Ann Arbor, Halloween is sort of the last hurrah for fall, but here it's a midpoint.
The nice thing about fall reaching New York late is that you can travel to the places where it hits earlier, and miss nothing. This year I have at least two fall outings planned -- to Ann Arbor and Nashville -- and possibly a Saturday in Westchester with my uncles. Last year I went to Maine, and I hope to return someday. I'm already deeply nostalgic for that trip; I consider it one of the touchstones of my life.
But it's not all sweetness and buttermilk. I always liked fall, but I hit a point in college when I became obsessive about it. The fall of my sophomore year was such a highlight, so spectacular, that I've been chasing it ever since. Every year I went all out, craving more horror movies, more haunted houses, more leaf-peeping, more adventure, romance, all simultaneously (while always hating Halloween parties and punting on costumes). If the people around me didn't go along with my grand plans, I got angry... real angry. Last year in Maine I went too far, and paid dearly for it. The perfect is the enemy of the good. And yet, despite the frustrations that went with Maine, I still look back fondly on that excursion -- and now I must be careful not to chase the ghost of that, too.
This year I hope for a good photographic harvest, but I have to remember to put my friends and family first. There will always be another fall, but the people you love will not always be there to enjoy it with you.
03 August 2009
This summer I've embarked on a Western kick. When I was a kid I never liked them, but in college I got into the Spaghetti Westerns with Clint Eastwood. I loved the gunplay, the outfits, the machismo, and of course the music. But still, for the most part, Westerns as a genre didn't grab me. That has changed. It might have been reading Blood Meridien that did it, and Cormac McCarthy's incredible descriptions of the Western landscapes. I picked up a book of Louis L'Amour short stories, and they're a blast. Lately I've made a point of watching as many of the classic movies as I can, especially John Wayne films.
Stephen King once wrote that horror was an inherently conservative genre, both as film and literature. I don't remember his argument, but I think he generally talked about the presence of pure evil -- a common trope in his novels, much to my dad's irritation -- and horror monsters' penchant for targeting sinful, rebellious teenagers. If King can make such a generalization, I feel no pangs serving up a couple of casual ones myself. Obviously, Westerns tend to reflect a somewhat right-wing worldview, what with the white hats vs. the black hats, the romanticism of the past, and the glorification of individualism. While I'm at it, I'll take a swing at science fiction: I think it tends to fall into two categories. One brand of SF is quite progressive, H.G. Wells in particular, while the other is more libertarian, like Philip K. Dick. I can't think of any science fiction story I've read or watched that made me think, "wow, that was really conservative."
I'm just making these observations for fun... these are the kind of thoughts that bounce around in my head while I'm in the shower. You could drive yourself mad analyzing every movie you watched and book you read to seek out its hidden political message. Most of the time there isn't one. But it's a fact that some books and movies are produced with certain larger takeaways in mind. Rio Bravo was a deliberate ideological response to High Noon, even though both movies were intended first to entertain. H.G. Wells wrote some quite obvious suggestions about class warfare into The Time Machine, and yes, he was an avowed socialist.
By the way, I loved Funny People. I knew this movie would be hated because it's almost like the third movie in a trilogy, being the third Apatow movie. People want to believe someone like Apatow can't possibly be that good, can't make three great movies in a row. He must be human. The people who believe this will prove themselves right when they see the movie, and go home satisfied with themselves. But this movie is great and I won't let anyone tell me different. Here is my brief "review," without spoilers, which is also in my Movies page, but I liked this movie enough that I felt like plugging it here too:
FUNNY PEOPLE: Many critics complain that it was too long and that it was really "two movies," a weird rom-com awkwardly grafted on the end of an otherwise original comedy. But I thought they blended together smoothly enough. Indeed, without the love story, the stand-up aspect would've felt pointless. Unlike so much other crap out there, this movie presented a difficult and meaningful choice: do you destroy a family to be with the person you love, or do you put the children first? Amazingly, I can't think of any other movie, funny or serious, that would even touch this question with a ten-foot pole (or in Judd Apatow's case, a ten-foot dick). Seth Rogen turned in what I'd call his best performance; Sandler was so good it revealed what a crime it is that he makes movies like I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Oh, and did I mention this movie was really, really funny?
03 July 2009 - Transformers 2 Follow-up
Revenge of the Fallen is one of the most self-indulgent, outrageous, overblown messes of adolescent wish fulfillment I've ever seen. That is its beauty.
There is so much nonsense in this movie, so many plot holes and moments of barefaced stupidity, you'd think they did it on purpose. Like Michael Bay was aiming for a new record. Maybe he was. I don't care. All the better if it was a mistake: in which case, this is the best unintentionally funny movie I've seen in years.
Such "films" are beyond criticism. My only real beef comes from the 12-year-old kernel in my brain that the movie was made for: I wanted the final battle scene to be even longer. I wanted to see Optimus Prime own, but instead he just killed the bad guy in one hit, and it was over. Lame.
Even the worst sequence in Revenge of the Fallen -- that featuring the SR-71 Blackbird, a senile Decepticon with a terrible Scottish accent who can teleport -- is a welcome chance for the brain to cool off from all the neurons destroyed in the previous hour.
There is not one woman in the movie -- not even an extra -- of less than supermodel quality.
I was also pleased by the tiny dig at President Obama's foreign policy. As soon as the Decepticons attack Earth, an agent from Washington declares, "We're seeking a diplomatic solution," which may even entail giving in to our foes' demands (turning an American citizen over to them). The U.S. government (and Obama is referred to by name as President) treats our allies, the Autobots, with contempt, ordering them to leave Earth, while attempting to somehow cooperate with the Decepticons.
Michael Bay even employs metaphor: the giant robot, Devastator, with its enormous mouth sucking up everything in its path, mirrors the budget of the movie itself. In every single shot, you can almost hear the roaring sound of money swirling into a bottomless void. Many of the special effects, and quite a few entire scenes, are completely pointless. But all this garbage is served up with attitude. I can just imagine Michael Bay saying, "You know what, screw everything, I want to see these marbles turn into a robot!" No idea or visual was rejected, no matter how stupid it was -- not even the human tongue dangling at the end of a robo-tentacle.
I joke about how the new movies are made to sell cars. To be fair, the show was meant to sell toys. For me, the movies will never equal the original cartoon, but they're still pretty entertaining. It was worth the price of admission. Just check your brain at the door.
09 June 2009 - Seattle, etc.
I spent last weekend in Seattle with my homeboy Dan. It was a great, if brief, vacation... made more brief by obnoxious flight delays on the way there. I learned a few things, too.
1st lesson: Taking a strong 24-hour antihistamine in the morning and a Benadryl before bed is surprisingly effective at combating cat allergies (even though it didn't help me with spring pollen).
2nd lesson: It is a bad idea to go hiking in your everyday shoes. Better to wear boots or something you can change out of when it's over.
3rd lesson: Before going on a nature trail, make sure it's accessible/in-season.
4th lesson: Red-eye flights are no joke.
Downtown Seattle isn't that different from other big cities, though its size isn't as striking as that of Chicago or New York. It's very clean and neat, but there are quite a few bums. What is different about Seattle is that it's quick and easy to get out of the urban zone and into quiet, leafy neighborhoods... and from there, easy to get into mountains and forests. The appeal of that would be hard to overstate.
In Ann Arbor, a small controversy has come up. The school board is considering naming the Pioneer High School running track after Coach Westfield. Westfield is the women's Cross Country and Track & Field coach. I ran for Don Sleeman, who coached the men's running teams. Us guys want Sleeman's name next to Westfield's. But there are those forces who want only Westfield's name on the track.
The occasion has made me think about Sleeman, and the 3.5 years I ran for him. A fellow alum made the excellent point that a high school coach's job is to build character in his athletes as much as anything else. Many runners join a team as tender, ignorant young cupcakes. Sleeman whipped us into shape. Because a coach remains your coach for several years and works closely with you as an individual, he has a great influence on his athletes. Many kids who tried to run for Sleeman quit after one or two seasons; all of those guys cited hating Sleeman's personality as the main reason they left. In a culture of self-esteem in which we're surrounded by people telling us how wonderful we are, how we're winners just for showing up, Sleeman was that rare person who dropped the BS, took no excuses, and withheld nothing. If you were terrible, he came right out and said it. That approach was a big shock to a 14-year-old, and some couldn't handle it. Those who stuck with it were changed by it.
I never knew much about Westfield. He won state championships by the fistful, but he didn't talk to us boys. Neither did most of the girls under his wing. We used to joke about how the girls' team was a sort of cult and he exerted mind control over them. You would think when the boys' and girls' running teams were using the same track every day and racing at the same meets, things would be more unified and interactive -- but it wasn't so. Westfield's record is beyond dispute, but still, it feels wrong to name the track after him and not Sleeman.
I and several other alumni have emailed the school board about the issue. One member of the board has responded to each of our emails to express sympathy, but we don't yet know what will happen.
(I'm speaking about the coaches in the past tense, but both are still alive and coaching at Pioneer.)
You may recall that some time ago, when I was using a D40 camera, I conducted "surgery" to replace its focus screen. Modern DSLRs come with bright viewfinders that aren't very sensitive to depth of field, and the D40 required manual focus for most of the lenses I liked. So I installed a more old-fashioned screen.
Well, 18 months later, I'm using a D700 and I want to replace its focus screen, too. Experience has taught me that autofocus can and does get in the way. With all DSLRs, you get an AF box that you see in the viewfinder -- you move this box around the screen by jerking around with buttons on the back of the camera. Not only is the process tiring and slow, but the AF box can only go so many places in the frame. When you focus manually, you can put the focus anywhere: you see where you want the focus, and your hand "automatically" turns the focus ring to go there. Almost every time I take portraits of people, I find myself wanting to focus manually.
In addition, there's the lenses issue... again. Modern AF telephoto lenses with image stabilization are large and heavy and cost a fortune, so from about 100mm on up, I tend to buy and use old manual focus pieces. Nikon is still not making good fixed wide-angle lenses, so I've been looking at a few manual focus options there with keen interest. But I'm not so eager to do an operation on the D700, which cost far more than the D40. With the cheap D40, if my hand slipped and I scratched its innards, no big deal, it's only $400 brand new -- but if I wrecked my D700, I'd have one hell of a headache.
29 April 2009 - Saying Goodbye to Geocities
A friend pointed me to an absolutely brilliant link today: a final tribute to Geocities. Something of a memorial service, if you will. Wow... just, wow. So many memories. In today's slick internet world, one easily forgets how hard the internet sucked in the 90s. I mean, surfing the web back then was just not fun. You could barely find anything worthwhile, and half the good sites would be randomly abandoned by their authors without notice, leaving you with an infuriating Geocities "The web page you requested was not found" sign. The idea of actually getting work done on the internet in that time strikes me as laughable, yet now the web is essential to productivity.
I remember spending hours online searching for video game hints. I think I spent more than one evening trying to verify the rumor that General Leo, of Final Fantasy VI, could be resurrected by fighting a gray dragon 24 times or some shit. When I was 12, that was a big deal... something people talked hotly about at school. The internet wasn't good for much else. It didn't have the infrastructure to support wonders like YouTube.
Every web page took an eternity to load, and if you came across a thumbnail gallery it was time to grab a Snickers bar -- you were in for a long night. The gallery itself might take an hour to load, and then each individual picture was another minute or more. To "sign on" was a major event in the house: you had to let everybody know, so they wouldn't make phone calls and kill the connection, and then when you started up the internet, the modem made a horrible series of beeps and screeches that could be heard from anywhere in the house. This took several minutes. Having a mother and sister in the house meant you had to wait, sometimes for hours, for them to get off the phone before you could use the web.
I had forgotten how many silly graphics and animated gifs people posted on those old sites... and the truly hideous backgrounds. The pictures with thick, tacky gold frames. I had even forgotten just how many sites were under Geocities -- today, few remain. The awful "sponsored links" sidebar was once an accepted fact of life. Even though the tools available for web design were less advanced than today, websites are much cleaner and simpler now than the busy, overproduced messes of the past. Nowadays a site like Maddox's "Best Page in the Universe" seems primitive, but not so long ago his page was something of a leap forward compared to the illogical garbage we were used to sifting through. It used to be that if you saw a well-designed site, it was a corporate site like that of the Blizzard gaming company. And why was every damn page a member of a "webring?" Whenever you clicked on the "next" link in the webring, it would take you to an even stupider site than what you were already on, or a site that wasn't even related.
I don't miss that time, really. But now that I live in a time when the internet is the center of many people's lives; when people my age give up Facebook for Lent, and people of all ages are addicted to the internet; when everyone must be in contact with everyone else in their social network at all times, else they panic... well, I think there's some appeal in the idea that once, the internet was a special treat and a curiosity.
My new site is already nearly complete. Everything that's important has been moved over, except for a few last picture galleries. At this point, I'm just waiting until I have a meaningful update, a new Thoughts piece or gallery, to give people a reason to visit the new page.
24 April 2009
In case you missed it in the news, Yahoo has decided to shut down its Geocities web hosting service "later this year" (thanks for being so specific, Yahoo!). Geocities is, of course, the platform of this website. This means I will have to re-roll my site. At a minimum, that means the address will change. This is a good thing: I had long hoped to go to a new web hosting service and get my own domain name, anyway. Some people even make fun of me when they hear I use Geocities, saying "Whoa, that's so 90s, dude!" The fact that Yahoo is closing Geocities will just force me to get off my butt and do what I've already wanted to do for months. The tricky part is, I need to start the moving process sooner, rather than later. The sooner I get moved, the longer I can leave up a "this site has moved" link on Geocities, which would stand until Yahoo closes it "later this year." But I have a lot of files and pages to transfer... so it could take a while.
If anyone knows a good web hosting service to suggest, please email me.
17 April 2009 - Some news, some thoughts
My friends are well aware that I often get fixated on a certain topic or thing, and don't stop talking or thinking about it for months on end. It annoys everybody, which is the only reason I'm even aware of it -- inevitably, complaints start trickling in. Sometimes it has been a videogame, book or movie. For quite a while -- years, really -- it was drug law reform. For many months, it was photography. At one point last year, it was my urge to get a new computer. Right now it is guns and gun control. It's taking a lot of energy for me not to talk everyone's ear off about the subject. I'll try to limit myself to one or two Thoughts articles.
I should probably at least mention that I have another "shooting excursion" tomorrow, at the firing range at West Point. Just so people know where I am...
The Tea Parties on Wednesday (Tax Day in the USA) really hit a nerve. People on the left are convinced beyond argument that those participating were rich, greedy snobs who don't want to pay taxes. No matter how many articles you show them that prove the contrary, no matter if the articles reveal there were Democrats and Independents attending, they still think this, because it fits into a schema. The satisfaction of looking at the Tea Parties as inherently acts of greed obviates the need to contemplate that most of the people who showed up didn't fit that profile. It's much more pleasurable to lump them into a mob of "those same evil traders and corporate lowlifes who got us into this mess." Even when the critics see that many of the attendees were middle-class, they call them ungrateful for their tax break -- because that's all these tea partiers supposedly care about: their own wallets.
Somehow, it has become fashionable for hipsters to walk around with antique Nikon cameras. I am fairly certain they never actually take photos with these cameras -- and I've definitely never seen them do so. I find this incredibly annoying.
I went to a "vintage clothing" store in Williamsburg once. I was amazed at how much money people spend on clothes that make them look like bums.
Why do the subways always run more slowly and less frequently when the weather is warmer?
I'm horrified that so many people actually gave up Facebook for Lent, and by what that says about our culture.
Why was Wesley Snipes, an actor, hounded and demonized for evading taxes, yet Tim Geithner, a member of the political/financial class, was given a free pass for doing the same?
There are some people who just refuse to wear shoes other than flip flops, no matter how cold or wet it is outside.
I've read so many tips on weight-lifting, how I have to use the "full range of motion" and do my repetitions slowly and all these other rules and techniques to "get the most out of your workout." But the most ripped guys at the gym do the exact opposite of all the stuff the experts say.
On that note, here's a fun fact: my dad is 56, and he's in better shape than me.
If I see another "Top 5" list on Facebook, I will probably have an aneurism.
I'm torn over Observe and Report. The whole movie felt like a huge middle finger to the audience. If I admit I found it disturbing and not very funny, I'll look like I don't get it and have a stick up my butt. If I admit I liked it and did indeed laugh at some parts, I feel somehow insensitive and cynical.
Why does the Associated Press, in its reports, repeatedly call the prime minister of Israel "ultranationalist," "hard-liner," or "ultraconservative," in the same way Homer repeated the same adjectives before characters' names in the Iliad? Yet Ahmedinejad of Iran is simply referred to as President Ahmedinejad? To be fair, how about they put "antisemitic," "homophobic," or "fundamentalist" before his name every time it comes up?
Why are ice cream trucks outlawed from playing their obnoxious music in Manhattan, where it's noisy all the time, but it's okay for them to play music in Queens, where it's otherwise quiet and you can hear them from a mile away?
07 April 2009
I've learned a lesson over the past few months. I used to think that lawyers were insulated from economic recessions, because the job they must perform never really goes away; I thought that hyper-active, regulatory government was their natural ally, as it added the need of a lawyer to more activities, creating more work for lawyers. It turns out that's not true, at least not in the short run. Because one of the most important functions of lawyers is to grease the wheels of economic activity, when government aggression cows or slows the market, law firms are left with much less to do. That's when the lay-offs begin. What kind of government actions am I talking about? Hmm... try threatening bonuses (not just for bailed out companies, but for all), the president singlehandedly firing CEOs of private businesses, more complex and onerous taxation of economic activity, threats of nationalization, etc. Threats of upcoming government intervention are almost as bad, maybe as bad, as the actual intervention itself, as corporations and stockholders are then sitting around with their salami in their hands waiting to see what comes next.
22 March 2009
This recession keeps getting worse and worse!
As you can see, Macy's in NYC is like a ghost town. I don't know how that store makes any money in this economy (it's the worst it's been since the '30s). Shucks, we're not quite back to the soup lines and apple salesmen of the Great Depression yet, but we're close. Can't you see the privation and despair on these people's faces? (If not, check the woman in the white scarf.) They're not shopping, just looking for the unemployment office. Damn those greedy Wall Street bankers for stealing our money! I am so pissed. I am so righteously indignant. Capitalism has failed, just as foretold. The average New Yorker can no longer afford a half-gallon of Organic Blueberry-Vanilla Cultured Low-Fat Goat's Milk, much less a decent facial. My heart goes out to them!
10 March 2009
As some of my friends and family already know, something terrible has happened. It's in all the local (New York) papers right now. I'm unsure how to comment on it here, yet it seems inappropriate not to mention it at all. I'm still taking it all in. I might write a few words about it on the news feed later this week. Needless to say, yesterday was a very long and difficult day, and the situation had my full attention.
06 March 2009
I've been talking about buying an Apple computer for at least a year. Last Spring and Summer, when my laptop was sputtering, I could have bought a new computer without having to make any excuses for it, but I waived that decision for 2009 and bought various new parts to keep the laptop alive. Today I finally went ahead and bought an iMac. I am test driving it now, so to speak... writing this news update from the new machine. First impressions are very positive. The build quality is superb and the display is not only huge, but pristine. Everything is faster than I'm used to, including the internet. None of this is unusual going from a 4-year-old laptop to a brand new desktop, but I might as well make the most of the old "new car" feeling while it lasts.
Side note: I removed my NORML banner from this page. I may explain why, in the near future. This does not mean my political views on drugs have changed.
26 February 2009
To follow up on that last entry, here's another poop joke. At the subway station under Herald Square, there is a double escalator. One side of the escalator broke down years ago, and the city never fixed it; they needed those precious tax dollars to bulldoze Washington Square and Astroland. I mean geez, they can't do everything. Anyway, since one side of the escalator is immobile, people in a hurry walk up it when the moving side is too crowded. That's what I did this morning.
And lo, there was poop on the escalator steps, flattened by foot traffic so it was between the little grooves. Now, this may come as a shock to people outside the city -- are you sitting down? It was human poop. Dogs don't sleep on the subway escalators, after all; they're too civilized for that.
24 February 2009
Big Questions
Today at work, one of the bathroom toilets was clogged and leaking water onto the surrounding tile. This happens a lot. It got me to thinking -- I could call Maintenance and tell them about the malfunctioning toilet, but I didn't, because I figured, if I call them, they'll think I clogged it. Like I just sat down, unleashed hell, and called somebody else to clean up the mess, pretending it wasn't me. It's a natural human instinct, at the sight of an overflowing toilet, to want to know who dropped the bomb.
Then again, if somebody really did jam the toilet, wouldn't he be too embarrassed to call Maintenance? If so, wouldn't the Maintenance department realize this and assume that whoever is calling about the toilet is innocent? Or is that explanation too complex? In a perfectly moral society, the person who clogged the toilet should have to call it in himself, and be prepared to face the shame -- but I'd bet they seldom do. So, who is responsible for reporting the clog?
These are the kind of problems my Philosophy minor trained me to confront.
Well, if you're an attorney, you can just tell your secretary to call Maintenance... even if you were the culprit. If Maintenance suspects anyone, it will be him, especially if he tries to be clever by saying "An attorney on my floor wants to report a clog in the men's bathroom." You take the credit for reporting the problem, yet there's no way the dirty deed can be traced back to you. That was easy.
22 February 2009
I had a great vacation in Mexico last week, near the town of Cabo San Lucas on the Baja peninsula. This is a remote part of the country between the Pacific ocean and the Sea of Cortez. It was Winter there, thus "only" 80 degrees during the day, without a cloud in the sky. It was also the off season, so there were few tourists. It's a quiet area best suited to honeymoons and family trips. If you want to see "the real Mexico" it's probably not the best way, but certainly driving through the towns and inland you can get a glimpse. They drive huge trucks and SUVs and go to Walmart down there, just like Americans. The land in that locale is desert with few plants other than bare bushes and cacti, with a few palm trees by the coast. The Holevinski family (including the families of my dad's four siblings) rented a large house on the sea; from the patio you could see whale spouts off in the distance (too far for photos, though).
This was family time, so I was with my relatives all day, every day, swimming, playing games, clowning around, etc. This was the whole point of the vacation, and we had a blast. I took almost 400 pictures, and there will be a gallery on the site, but it will take time for me to sort through and process them. These are the kind of trips you only get a few times in life, so I made the most of it. I got to know my cousins well for the first time, since they're at least ten years younger than me, and they were too small before now to really talk to (they were also shy, like my sister and I were at that age). Even if frequent flights to foreign countries is impractical, I want to go to these reunions more often.
10 February 2009
Last Saturday, I went on a shooting field trip. I've wanted to learn how to use a gun ever since I was a kid. When I was six or seven, my family went to the Holevinski family hunting cabin in rural New York. It was a lot like the cabin in the movie Evil Dead, very creepy, deep in the woods, run down, teeming with spiders and so forth. I can't remember if we even slept there, or if it was just an afternoon trip. Anyway, my parents brought out an air rifle (a BB gun) and taught my sister and I how to shoot, how to aim using the sites and so forth. We shot some paper targets. I loved it. I understood that this was a toy gun (though you could still hurt somebody with it), and I asked to try the real thing. But I was too young. Real guns were for adults.
When I moved to New York, I thought about going to a target range, but I couldn't find any. That's because there aren't any, apparently. Gun ranges like you see in the movies are somewhat rare outside of law enforcement and military facilities. My friend Steve, who was studying in Alabama, got to go to such a place with one of his friends down there. I was jealous, so with fresh internet searches I found this program. There was no reason to put it off any longer.
The class was great. I got to use semi-automatic handguns, revolvers, rifles, and a shotgun. We shot mostly .22 caliber, but some 9mm later in the day. The recoils of the 9mm's and the shotgun were much bigger than I expected. There is a certain gratification in feeling that power directed by your hand, smelling the gunpowder, going through the rituals and motions of loading, readying the action, etc. But firing a gun is a strain. It requires physical strength and mental concentration (which is part of the appeal, and why there are shooting sports). The next day I felt pretty sore, as if I'd played tackle football. I was surprised, too, by how at ease I was at the range. I am much more nervous sitting on an airplane than I was holding a loaded gun and surrounded by people with guns. For all of their power, they are still just machines. As President Roosevelt said, "[a rifle's] usefulness depends upon the character of the user."
Why guns? Why the class? Why do I care? Well, there is the familial thing: almost every man in the Holevinski family has used one at one time. Another major factor was raised by my instructor: when you live in a big city, with the knowledge that a crisis could break at any time, the lights could go out, whatever -- if a gun winds up in your hands, you don't want to have to "read the instruction manual." If I ever encounter a gun out in the real world, especially in the hands of an assailant, I want to know what I'm dealing with and what to expect.
Then there's the general political principle of, we have the Second Amendment, and it wasn't planted in the Constitution by a gang of unwashed peasants fending off Indian raids. The cursory research I've done confirmed my suspicion that the amendment's purpose was to maintain the balance of power between citizens and government. Some of the founding principles of America, and part of what made us great, were notions of decentralization, of independent people governing themselves, defending themselves, and holding the federal government accountable for itself. In the movie V For Vendetta, which was arguably pretty leftwing (i.e., there is a heroic gay comedian who reads the Koran and is murdered by the fascists), a big to-do was made of the phrase, "The people should not be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of its people." If the government has all the guns, and the people have none, what does Big Brother have to fear, exactly? A government monopoly of arms strikes me as the ultimate in statism, the work of a society in which the individual has no value.
People like Mark Wahlberg or Matt Damon can talk until Doomsday about how guns are a curse on humanity and must all be destroyed, but you can't uninvent a machine. Like horses, trains, cars, and any other technology, they will be with us until something comes along that does what they do, only better. In the developing world and in modern history, guns symbolize conflict, like the grotesque image of the AK-47 on the Hezbollah flag. But in America, they embody the idea that the private citizen is equal to the politician who governs him and the policeman who guards his neighborhood... because they do so by our consent.
11 January 2009
George Will is one of my absolute favorite opinion writers. Appearing on The Colbert Report this year, he got the best of Stephen Colbert, verbally, which is no small feat.
I came upon one of his columns today, here, that captures one of the things I admire most about Will: his ability to articulate the insanities and horrors of our time in a reassuringly deadpan style. The topic is our litigation culture, and the subject is the ruin of American playgrounds and schools. I remember when I was a kid in the early '90s, and the complicated, metal and wood, "dangerous" playground structures we loved were being replaced with garish plastic Duplo-inspired structures on which even the dumbest kid on the block couldn't kill himself. Everybody my age hated it. Kids can see through bullshit. But it continues to this day, only now it's not just slides and jungle gyms -- now it's kids themselves, and everyone around them, whose every move is subject to regulation. It's sick. Let's pray for a backlash before we have kids of our own.
2 January 2009
I've come to realize that New Year's Eve is my least favorite holiday of the year. I always dread its arrival. You could say it's like the Sunday of the year, the bookend of a distinct unit of time that's never coming back. Like my birthday, it's become less a celebration of the future than a day when I stop and say, "Thank God I made it another year... I can't believe I even survived the last one."
2008 was a year that reminded us, or should, how horrible the world is. Russia flattened Georgia... China cracked down on Tibet only to get its butt kissed by the global media for hosting the Olympics (while Russia was flattening Georgia). The monstrosities of the Burmese junta were laid bare for all to see (and nobody cared). There were several fatal stampedes in India, and one in America the day after Thanksgiving. Mugabe, the man who ruined Zimbabwe, stole re-election by literally beating the opposition to a bloody pulp and running them out of the country... then blamed America. When our housing bubble collapsed and a handful of big name banks went with it, a chorus of smarmy know-it-alls rose up to declare capitalism dead, conservatism and even libertarianism dead, and free markets "discredited."
On a more personal note, my political rightward drift has turned me into a pariah among a number of people I'm close to. Which, of course, has the effect of making me hold even more firmly to my ideas... which makes people even more angry at me. The cycle is perpetuating even as I write this. I'm simply amazed by the longevity of this clash. People seem to calm down, everything is cool, then I open my mouth and it's like pouring water on the gremlins.
People seem to think that if they make emotional appeals, scold me, insult me, call me a traitor, say "I can't believe you actually think this trash," and kick and scream loud enough, they will bring me back into the liberal/Democratic fold. But it just causes everyone enormous grief and makes me increasingly disgusted with the left-wing culture as a whole.
I just hope more bridges will be mended than burned in '09... literally and figuratively.
29 December 2008
Since I get a kick out of reading various "random thoughts" pieces on the net and in newspaper editorials, I thought I'd try one of my own. Here are a few things that have been on my mind lately...
A new one 12/31: It's ironic that Democrats think most Americans are ignorant bumpkins too intemperate and clumsy to handle a firearm... yet believe these same Americans must vote in as large numbers as possible, which is far more consequential and powerful, as it places the future of the nation itself in their hands.
In Winter, small-town Michigan smells like gently burning firewood. New York City smells like car exhaust.
It seems like everybody is pro-Israel, except when Israel defends itself.
It bothers me that people smoke more cigarettes in Winter.
My consistent feeling is that the best and most fun computer and videogames came out in the 1990s (with a few exceptions), and that the best ever console overall was the SNES.
There are two kinds of people: those who avoid ideas they don't agree with and consider it "imposing" when someone expresses such ideas to them; and those who love to debate ideas in the light of day, unafraid to touch sacred cows (including their own) or to challenge what seemed to be obvious. My stepfather, a libertarian conservative, is the second kind of person, which may partly explain why I am a libertarian conservative.
When I was in junior high, my sister and I went to the airport and quickly heard our names called over the PA system. We were placed, for free, on a flight hours ahead of our scheduled one. Now I can no longer remember my last problem-free plane trip.
Slovenly people who don't take care of themselves, and dress and behave in public -- especially on crowded subways and airplanes -- as if they were children at home, never saying "please," "thank you," or "excuse me," increasingly irritate me.
Companies that once were leaders of innovation, from car makers like Ford to camera makers like Nikon and Leica, and even movie houses like Fox, became complacent, lazy and boring in recent decades. Knowing they were once great makes it even more painful to watch them flatline today.
The board game The Settlers of Catan isn't as fair and balanced as I initially thought. But it's also the first board game since Risk that stimulates enough brain cells to make me want to play it.
At the security checkpoint in the Detroit airport, one of the guards -- a gentleman who looked like Hulk Hogan without the muscles -- saw two HP Lovecraft books in my luggage and said, "Those are great books!" People might be surprised at how common reading is among Americans from the top income brackets to the bottom, from the city to the country, and at the quality of books read by people who don't appear to be "intellectual."
Does anybody actually like wearing button-fly jeans?
According to Wikipedia, Kwanzaa was invented out of whole cloth in 1966, by an American. So, why were "Happy Kwanzaa" signs and wishes imposed on me when I was in school, as if it were a legitimate holiday on par with the ancient traditions of Christmas and Hannukah?
A pundit in The New Yorker (where else?) argued a point against libertarianism: that the notorious decades of government expansion and activism in America, the 40s, 50s and 60s, also saw amazing economic growth and rising standards of living for Americans. But he left out what came next: the 70s.
3 October 2008
Well, that weekend was a mixed bag. Halloween night, especially the parade, felt almost like a Murphy's Law experience.
I've photographed a few New York City parades now, and one thing I've learned is that standing behind the barricade sucks. It stinks even if you aren't taking pictures, because there are 20 million people all crammed together and you can't even lift your feet for hours. At the Coney Island Mermaid Parade this summer, a woman next to me was throwing her arms out every few minutes and once hit the hood of my lens while I had the camera up to my eye, knocking the hood off the lens and banging the kilogram of magnesium that is my camera against my forehead. She didn't even notice she'd hit me. For photography, standing behind the barricade ensures the same boring shots over and over again. So this year I secured a press pass to the Halloween parade.
I took this task very seriously, and so I rented out a 50mm ?1.4 lens for the night. Of course I still have my dad's manual 50mm from 1983, but in last year's parade I had lots of problems pulling focus as I shot the event in the dark. I didn't want a repeat of that issue, so I rented the 1994 version of the lens with autofocus. I also hoped the newer lens would be a bit sharper in the ?1.4-2 range.
Oops! Even my camera's top-flight autofocus system couldn't handle such low light with fast-moving subjects, so shot after shot was out of focus. It drove me bonkers. So, I tried falling back on manual focus... wrong again. The junky early autofocus lenses Nikon made in the 1990s were not meant to be focused manually, so the focus rings were these dinky little plastic afterthoughts with no feedback. I would have done better with the manual 50, with its real manual focus ring made for a flesh-and-blood photographer. Oh, and optically the 1994 edition wasn't much sharper, if at all (at ?2).
There were other problems, too. For one thing, if you are taking pictures without flash, and the flash from another camera fires on a subject at the same moment you shoot a picture, the results are not pretty. This happened all the time at the parade Friday night. When I post the Halloween album later, I'll try to show some examples.
Another thing I noticed was that parade marchers were not as willing to stop for press photographers as they were for people behind the barricade -- the ultimate irony. Assuming I could get a marcher in focus, and nobody behind me nuked them with flash, on top of that half the time they were moving and the pictures came out blurry. These many variables aren't disasters all by themselves, but with so many spoilers in play at the same time, the number of technically acceptable shots gets decimated. And at least 6/10 shots anybody takes, myself included, is garbage anyway.
At least I learned something. I already have ideas for next year. I may have to rent a lens or two then, too, since Nikon doesn't make lenses anymore for people who shoot in dim light. Also, I thought this round at the parade would be easier after everything I've learned in the 12 months since last time. But it wasn't really easier. Instead I realized that the NYC Halloween parade is one of the most challenging events I could imagine, and one of the most demanding of good equipment -- the K-2 of photography, you might say.
Like last year, I'm waiting for the foliage to give its last hurrah before I post my big fall gallery. So, when the new album will appear depends on the weather and conditions "on the ground." But I'm getting images ready as I go along, so when I'm satisfied that I have all the shots I need, I'll be able to post the new page quickly.
Yesterday I went to Central Park for foliage shots, but it was as I feared. A few weeks ago we had terrible storms with very strong winds that blew down about half the leaves in New York City. It was a cruel, cruel coincidence. Many trees around town were stripped bare early. The iconic scene of the literary walk in Central Park lined with yellow leaves didn't and won't happen this year; what a shame. I'm still going to wander around the city and get what I can, but the fall color explosion has been rudely abbreviated and it might be over earlier than last year's. Which would mean the gallery comes sooner, at least.
30 October 2008
Why I voted for McCain
This was an exceedingly difficult decision to make. When you follow an election for 2 years, it's kind of unreal to sit down and make one final choice. But even as early as a month ago, I already knew I wouldn't vote for Obama. The choice then was, should I vote for Bob Barr the Libertarian -- the candidate who actually shares my values but has no chance of winning, to make the symbolic statement of trying to up Barr's finishing number by a millionth of a percent -- or should I vote for McCain and actually attempt to influence the race one way or the other? First, the reasons I did not want to vote for McCain:
By the way, I slept well last night.
30 September 2008
I won't be updating the site much for the next few weeks, as my girlfriend is coming to visit on Friday and we'll be doing some traveling. I'll take a much needed long weekend getaway next week, driving around Maine and hiking around the forests with her. The best thing about foliage hitting New York City in November is that you can go wherever you want in September and October without missing it.
A note about the last gallery update. I used to put big explanations of my photos at the bottom of the albums, but I always found it sort of clunky and it started slipping into sermons about how I could still make nice pictures with cheap equipment. Anyway, there is one thing I want to elaborate on from the "Late Summer" series: the guys in Statue of Liberty costumes.
I really dislike these guys. I didn't actively have a problem with them, though, until 9/11 this year. Every 9/11 anniversary, in Battery Park, a private group of 9/11 families and friends organizes an event called "Flags of Heroes." They make up these American flags with the names of the firefighters and others who gave their lives on 9/11, and post the flags out on the grass. This year, from the break of dawn when these flags were first set out, the Liberty suits swarmed the area. It was sickenly opportunistic and dishonorable. I took a shot of one of them to document the travesty. Of course, a number of unsuspecting tourists posed with the Liberty men in front of the flags during the day.
This will be my last new gallery for maybe two months. Last year I made a sort of preliminary gallery at the end of September, then made one giant fall page from my October and November photos, and I liked this way of doing things. I'm probably going to do it the same way this season.
Another reason to expect a delay is, Nikon has arbitrarily "updated" the photo editing software I use. The update doesn't give me any new features, but without it I can't even open my image files anymore, and it costs $100. My 60 day trial period just expired, and I'm too busy to run out and buy the upgrade CD. So come the end of October, I'll have at least 1,000 photos (a conservative estimate) to develop and sort through. That takes serious time.
16 September 2008
For the most part, life is good right now. I had some nice summer trips. One of my photos is going to be in an art auction tomorrow. I've managed to get some good work in under the hood on the website. It's September, and my favorite season is about the begin. Good movies are coming out. I've read some very good books recently.
On Facebook the other day I deflected an invitation to join the group "One Million Strong Against Palin." The invitation came from someone who had bullied me in 6th Grade, and who made friends via Facebook with everybody who ever went to school with him. I'm not sure why I accepted his friend request.
I've been thinking about an odd phenomenon lately. It seems like all the bullies from my school days are now liberals or "very liberal." The same people who used to make fun of my high-pitched childhood voice, who relentlessly called me a fag, who tripped me in the halls -- are now staunch liberals.
I wonder if Matt Damon was ever a schoolyard bully. On Sunday I had the priviledge to watch him lay it on Sarah Palin. He started out by saying "I don't know anything about her," then went on to say how scary and fascist she was, even though he freely admitted he knew nothing about her. I like Damon's acting, quite a bit actually, but he basically made a big dumb whining fool out of himself in this video. Looks like Trey Parker and Matt Stone had him nailed.
I don't like being told how to vote or think. I don't like being invited to join a silly Facebook group Against Sarah Palin by someone I know is not as intelligent as me and who I tried to punch in the face twelve years ago (he ran away), who probably knows nothing about her.
Right now I stand about 70-30 chance of voting McCain vs Obama. I haven't decided yet. They both have merits and flaws. But my decision will not be influenced by anyone my age, as far as I'm concerned.
11 August 2008
As I sign into my website this morning, I see that the site has been experiencing a bump recently. Daily site visits are up, though I don't know where my guests are coming from or exactly which pages they're going to -- but it's good news to me. I looked at the page statistics for the Thoughts page and this is weird: under "search query most used to find this page" it said, "closet jimmy johns near scio township." I've also found that my "Digital Cameras" page, which I wrote a year ago after I bought the Nikon D40, has been quite popular recently. I actually re-read that page a few weeks ago myself, and I'm a little embarrassed that it's getting so many hits, because it isn't very well-written and there are pictures of me where I look like an idiot. The boost there is probably coworkers impressed by my photos from the Support Staff Party; I hope they don't think the camera did all the work. I wasn't using the D40 at that event.
This feels like the shortest summer of my entire life. I have been so busy that I didn't even realize I was busy. A month after my last vacation, it feels like that vacation was days ago; a day after I hang out with someone, I feel like I haven't seen them in months. My sense of time is gone. I feel cut off from the world, and I don't know why. I feel like I'm not really living, but obviously I must be doing something because time keeps flying by.
This was one of the most eventful weekends of the year, but not for me. Russia is bombing Georgia, one of its former USSR slave countries. Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes died (RIP). A man stabbed two people attending the Olympics and killed one of them. The mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, went to the slammer after assaulting two cops, following many other crimes; and word is Governor Granholm still won't strip him of his mayoralty, because he is black. Ah, racism. John Edwards admitted to an affair, but denied having a love child -- but I'd bet the kid is his. This came as good news: finally the public is aware of what a slimy quack he is. The buzz before this suggested Edwards was angling for a spot in Obama's cabinet, possibly Attorney General -- can you imagine? Just like John Kerry is supposedly sniffing for a Secretary of State position. Now that I think about it, I wonder: why would Obama outfit his administration with losers?
6 June 2008
I'm not a great admirer of Yahoo! News, but this story is quite serious. Two important figures in Israel's government have said that an Israeli airstrike against Iran's nuclear sites is inevitable.
I think the Israelis mean business. Destroying nuclear sites in airstrikes is not new for them. For my part, I support Israel and I think it must continue to exist, and I'm sympathetic to the fact that they're surrounded by merciless enemies. I'm not one of the people who blames Israel for the problems in the Middle East.
This has potentially grave implications. As I understand it, Iran is more formidable than Iraq was under Hussein six years ago. If a war were to break out between Israel and Iran, it's hard to believe America wouldn't become involved. Then, would Russia and China sit on the sidelines and eat popcorn, or would they exploit the situation? Pretty scary.
Who knows where Iran really is at in its quest for nuclear technology? I recall hearing estimates floating around in recent months that they could have the bomb by 2012 -- another election year. Within a year of that, depending on who is in power there (this seems like a pretty important variable), we could lose Tel Aviv, New York, or London in a nuclear terrorist attack. The other possibilities are that Israel takes preemptive action, or an Iranian election between now and then puts a moderate in power who will negotiate with the West. I'm hoping for the latter.
15 May 2008
Geez... I haven't touched my website in a while, other than the new image gallery last month. Another one is in the pipeline. I was going to make a new "camera" page to compare my new camera to the old D40, but I've been too busy with other things, and it's not going to be that interesting anyway. I also tried to write about my lenses, which matter more than the cameras, but I'm somewhat embarrassed by the number of lenses I have. What is interesting to me, at least, is how much I learn and adapt from one month to the next -- that's one of the reasons photography is such a fun hobby. Like a well-designed game, it's easy to grasp the basics, but the finer points can take a lifetime to master.
Recently, I find that I take fewer pictures (less of the old spray-and-pray), but I get more hits. A year ago, I'd go outside, take 200 shots, delete 50 of them, and 1-2 of them would probably wind up on my website. These days, when I go out I take maybe 50 pictures at most, delete 20 of them, and 3-4 of the day's catch might make it to my site. In part thanks to shooting with fixed lenses instead of zooms, I usually know a picture without having to look through the viewfinder. It always amuses me when I see someone with a new digital SLR (you can tell when it's new) taking a picture in the city. He sees something cool, raises the camera to his forehead, then plays around with the zoom for at least 20 seconds, trying out the wide angle, trying the telephoto end, trying to find the composition. He snaps the shot, checks the LCD, and by his face you can tell if it worked or failed. I'm sure I used to do this, too. The number of variables going into a shot that you must control, the choices you must make and the potential mistakes, is staggering. It takes a long time to internalize these things. I'm not there yet.
I read a fantastic story today here* that partly prompted me to order the photography book in question. This guy, Robert Frank, traveled America in the 1950s, taking street/documentary style pictures (one of the most challenging, and respected, schools of photography). He had a masterful skill for catching people at the precise moment they thought nobody was looking and let their masks slip. The article in the Telegraph points out that Frank's unique collection would be near-impossible to amass in today's surveillance age. I agree with that. In America and Europe especially, people have become deeply accustomed to cameras. Our masks rarely, if ever, slip. In New York, people wear a "subway face" in public -- which I've been pondering how to document without getting my nose broken. Wherever I am, a compact camera is somewhere within 10 feet of me, usually being used by teenage girls to document themselves. How many street photographs are floating around of expressionless people talking on cell phones? People have a level of self-control and self-awareness that is, when you stop and think about it, incredible. The people that don't are either mad or so ill-tempered that you'd better not get caught snapping their picture.
*If you follow the link, there is a picture taken in Ann Arbor, Michigan on the second page.
6 March 2008
Uh-oh, looks like I bought another camera. This time it's Nikon's new D300, the semi-pro model. I gave this a lot of thought, and tried the camera out in the store many times. Every time I held it, looked through the viewfinder, and fired the shutter, I could not help but be amazed. The analogy I'm repeating to everybody is, the D300 is like a Corvette to the D40's Honda Civic. There's nothing wrong with a Civic, and nothing wrong with the D40 -- but with the D300 I can do more, and do it faster. My two screwdrive autofocus lenses will actually autofocus now, and my 50mm manual lens will gain exposure metering. That's three lenses with dramatically increased functionality. All of these lenses were free or bought second-hand: I refused to buy a new copy of a 20-year-old lens.
Playing with it in the store brought to mind, once again, one of my favorite movie one-liners from Dawn of the Dead: "The only guy who could miss with this thing is the sucker with the bread to buy it." Well, now I've got the bread to buy it, and after manually focusing most of the time for five months, I'd say I'm ready to graduate. I'm done waiting around for Nikon to bring out lenses and cameras that will never come; spring colors are near and my girlfriend is about to visit. Will I be able to take pictures with the D300 that I couldn't with the D40? If vastly increasing my rate of in-focus shots counts, then yes. If less time menu-surfing to adjust color-balance and set up timers allows me more time to find and take shots counts, then yes. There's more to it than that, but do you really want to hear about all of it now?
One year ago, at about this time, I upgraded from an old compact to a new compact, and it was a waste of money because it wasn't much of an upgrade. Then, I upgraded from the digicam to the most beginner, entry-level SLR imaginable -- more baby steps. I should have gone for the D80 then, but I was arrogant, naive, and stingy. I decided this time around not to make the same mistakes. No more baby steps.
But there's one catch: it's 12 megapixels, meaning the picture files will be massive. The D40's files are more than my computer can handle already, and they're half that size. Which brings me to the next consumerist topic: I will need a new computer soon. Maybe not this week or this month, but it's coming. The iMac is at the top of my list right now. I'm intrigued by Apple because my relationships to Windows computers too much resemble combat. However, I want to make the laptop last as long as possible.
The only way the laptop will survive the onslaught of D300 photos is with more ram. A site called Crucial.com sells ram extremely cheap, so I've ordered 2 gigabytes of it for a mere $50, the maximum my computer can accept. This will act as a "stimulus package" for my Inspiron, which is running on fumes at this point. If it works as hoped, it would extend the computer's useful lifespan long enough to overlap with a new Mac bought sometime before the end of this year.
19 February 2008
Yesterday I saw a preview screening of the new horror movie, The Signal. It was a lot of fun, a good, creepy movie. After the show, two of the actors, the composer, and two of the three directors came down for a Q&A with the audience.
It has to take guts to come out and give Q&As. Half the people in the crowd did something that would drive me crazy. There was the I'm A Drama Student at Tisch asking the actors how they got into character, and by the way Did I Mention I'm in the Theater Program? Then there was the guy who thought the composer was an actor and gushed for five minutes about how great his acting was. Winner of the night though, is the crazy lady in the back who asked, "Did any of you know Heath Ledger?"
"No," said one actor, "I mean, we all know of him and his work, but none of us ever met the guy."
Trailing... "Heath Ledger? Anybody know him? Heath... Heath Ledger..." She continued to mumble about Heath for the rest of the Q&A. If I were one of the guys up front answering questions, I probably would have gotten nasty with her. Who are these people and why don't they have anything better to do than obsess about dead celebrities?
Bill once told me about an interview with David Lynch in which he bemoaned the fact that you can now watch movies on your cell phone. My goal now is to catch someone actually doing it. I can already imagine people at high school graduations and in church opening their phones to watch a movie in their lap, which is funny enough. The idea of viewing a film on such a tiny, un-immersive medium runs totally against everything making movies is about, but what's really hilarious about it is that people could be watching "serious" movies on their phones. I want to see the ultimate travesty: someone on the subway watching Schindler's List on her cell phone, with her "subway face" on (a frozen mask of disgust and crankiness). Only then will I be satisfied.
Something starting to get on my nerves is how people retain into adulthood the habits they formed as infants. It doesn't get me fuming mad, but I just notice these things. The most common is the napkin-raid. In every cafeteria or fast-food joint I pass through, people hit up the napkin rack and grab a million of the damn things. Unless you're eating Buffalo wings, only one or two are needed per person -- not ten. I'm pretty sure the reason is because people remember when they were kids and they couldn't eat even the simplest foods without making a mess. I was like this once. Now they are cleaner, but they still have a vestigial fear of running out of napkins.
The same seems true of getting water in restaurants. When I was a kid, there were no free refills on fountain sodas. One glass was all you got. So you had to go in with a strategy: usually I would drink my water through the appetizers and save the soda for the main course. Otherwise one might face the humiliation of running out of soda with nothing else to wash the food down, always right in the middle of the meal. For this reason, people still can't stand not to have a glass of water with their meals at restaurants -- even if they never touch the water anymore, because they can get all the soda refills they want. Of course, I can't blame people for avoiding the water because nowadays it always comes with a lemon.
7 February 2008
Just when you thought talking points couldn't get any stupider...
Power-hungry politicans have coined a new cliche to justify the prohibition of marijuana. The relative harms of the drug aside, and the failure of the drug war aside, they can't decriminalize drugs because "it sends the wrong message to young people." Bullshit.
As of this writing I am 24.5 years old, and since 30 is the new 20, I can still count myself among our nation's "young people." Dear John Edwards: stop condescending to us. We're not stupid. We're not just confused fools incapable of making our own decisions in a complicated world (that would be politicians).
I've heard the exact words -- "it sends the wrong message to young people" -- from no less than three politicans this past week alone, including England's prime minister Gordon Brown, who's supposed to be left-wing. The idea here is that whether or not drugs are harmful, they are morally wrong and "not a solution to life's problems," therefore legalizing them is tantamount to encouraging sin. The image lawmakers seem to have is that, if mj were legal, a high-achieving student would stop and say, "hey, it's legal now, so it's cool if I smoke." Anyone under 30 knows that such a scenario is hysterical.
What about the message sent by throwing thousands of "young people" in jail for a victimless crime? What effect does that have on impressionable people and on society? These questions are never asked, though. This was never about protecting children or young adults -- it's about treating all our citizens like children. I can't stand the way politicians make everything about "the kids" when America's youth has been consistently the most pampered in the history of the world since 1946.
Politicians also act as if prohibition is free. Things being free is quite popular in the minds of lawmakers these days, from the economic stimulus plan to universal health care. They whine that people would think drug use has no consequences if it were legal, yet they act as if prohibition has no consequences -- as if it costs not a penny to put out This Is Your Brain On Drugs ads, hold legions of harmless people in jail, or send swat teams to the homes of cancer patients in California.
28 January 2008
Well, I met former President Bill Clinton today. He was visiting my law firm to speak because some of our attorneys have donated to his campaign for a third term. In some ways it wasn't exactly what I expected.
Bill Clinton was less impressive than I had imagined. I thought he would be taller and friendlier. He had a weak handshake and didn't look me in the eye either one of the two times we shook hands. His face was red and pitted; politicians are rarely as good-looking in person as they are in pictures or on television. It's strange to meet famous people in the flesh because you feel nervous, yet when you see them up close you instantly know that they're just regular folks and they don't radiate any powerful auras or anything. However, the man's effect on women must truly be seen to be believed. They don't call some politicians "rock stars" for nothing -- Bill's still got it even at 60.
What they say is true: Bill makes a far better case for Hillary than she does for herself. He also makes a stronger case for the liberal/Democratic movement than perhaps anyone else I've ever seen. A lot of my concerns about Hillary seemed to dissolve listening to him speak. Of course, that was only temporary; there's no punch line, no ultimate driving message behind their candidacy. I think all of us like to believe we lead some sort of charmed life and that when we encounter larger-than-life people they will notice us and shine on us for one moment, no matter how fleeting. But Bill didn't even look me in the eye when he shook my hand. I mean, here's a man who is storied as being one of the most engaging, vigorous personalities alive, and this is the best he can do? When I shook hands with another former president, Jimmy Carter, he looked me full in the face and smiled at me; he gripped my hand confidently; I felt important to him.
He talked us (or me, at least) to sleep about Obama and how the press has distorted the competition between Obama and Hillary. In one recent public event he said, "this isn't what the people care about, they want to hear about issues." Well, then why did you talk about it so much, Bill? People asked him unrelated questions and he used them as springboards to talk about Obama vs. Hillary. Nobody ever asked him about Obama. I'll grant Bill that he was conciliatory and spoke well of his competitor, but I just don't want to hear about it anymore. Clinton himself was right, I don't care about the game, I care about the "issues." They say the Clintons' attacks have gotten under Obama's skin, but I think something about Barack gets under the former president's skin. I got the impression he isn't doing this only as a deployment from Hillary, rather that he enjoys this bizarre relationship he's developed with Obama.
I'm aware that meeting a president in any circumstance is a special priviledge and I'm being kind of an ungrateful turd (I am grateful to have seen President Clinton today), but it's important to me that I give people an honest, no-fluff account. So there it is.
Oh yeah, I took the picture above, if there's any doubt. Associated Press, here I come! (I wish)
24 January 2008
What is with this sudden spat of whining about how 10 million kids died in 2006? Good grief. The media have to make everything look like a catastrophe, and people just gobble it up. Every time a kid buys the farm, it means the rest of the world is cold and evil and that a few rich people at the top are stealing the medicine that could have saved those poor kids. We adopt this fantasy that all those babies died crying into the night while the rest of us turned our heads in apathy.
Have we forgotten that there are almost 7 billion people on Earth now? How much of that is 10 million? About 0.14%. Our population is getting so big because so few children are dying. I dare anybody complaining now to look up how many kids under 5 died in the year 1906 relative to the world population at the time. 10 million is a big number, but not when you put it into perspective.
I hear no complaining about all the Chinese parents who murder their newborn daughters because women are considered worthless there. That's old news. Yawn. But here Hillary-haters are smeared as chauvinist or sexist, denied the right to disagree with her policies. People here are crying like babies about incandescent light bulbs, SUVs, and John Edwards's hair, when the Chinese government just displaced thousands of poor people to build a hydroelectric dam that submerged some of the most beautiful countryside on Earth -- and drove some species to extinction. Who cares about that, though? The almighty U.N. has given America an F for health care and says 10 million kids died last year. In Burma, the military dictatorship slew a bunch of freedom-seeking monks for crying out loud, and the world did nothing but say "tut tut." But whoa, 10 million kids died in 2006, HOLY SHIT, stop the presses!
Small children, like old people, will always die in greater frequency than everyone else. It's natural. These two groups are weaker and less independent than people at their prime. It's painful, but true. They can't all be saved, but more are living now than ever before in history. It's not a tragedy that 10 million kids died last year; it's progress.
In other news: am I the only one amused by the pictures in the news of stock traders slapping their foreheads? I swear, no matter what is happening in the stock market, the newspaper (and Yahoo news) prints a photo of some random trader rubbing his forehead, as if this distills the complexities of the economy into a human, emotional context. I don't care about these guys and their damn headaches. It just makes me laugh.
23 January 2008
It's time for some nerdy technology ruminations. Today's subject: photography. Anyone who has browsed my online picture galleries has probably figured out that I love lenses. If all you've ever shot is a compact, the appeal may seem pointless, especially because compact zoom lenses today generally have more range than SLR lenses. No SLR lens ever zooms as far as 18x -- from 24mm to 432mm, as can some compact lenses -- they're still mostly limited to 2x or 3x. The best SLR lenses, in fact, don't zoom at all.
Once you hold an SLR in your hand, and you experience the act of removing and replacing its lens, it sets off a spark deep in your brain: think of the possibilities! Lenses become an addiction, and so does learning about them. You come to know certain legendary lenses as if they were celebrities, and wonder how great it must feel to look through them and take pictures of your favorite subjects with them.
Anyway, next week is PMA, the camera companies' equivalent of the Detroit Auto Show, when they will announce all their new stuff. And I dearly hope Nikon has something to say.
My problem is that the market right now is all for zoom lenses, so that's what camera companies keep pinching off -- but we don't need any more. Every year another pile of crappy zoom lenses drops out of the pipeline, and 3-year-old zooms are updated rapidly (lenses are updated every few years, kind of like cars). Nikon has an allergy to updating their fixed lenses: in other words, the lenses I want.
What I really want, more than anything else, is a 35mm f/1.4 lens from Nikon. A new 50mm would be nice too, but on a digital camera, 35mm is equal to 50mm (and 50mm becomes 75mm), so 35mm is what I need. Nikon has not updated the 35mm fixed lens since the late 80s: 20 years! A lot has happened to lenses in 20 years. To wit:
Lenses let in light through the aperture, and the photographer controls how much light enters by opening and closing the aperture. A bigger aperture means pictures can be taken in darker conditions. But old lenses shot at their maximum apertures exhibit a form of distortion called spherical aberration, which makes pictures look fuzzy and low-contrast. Because of this, an f/1.4 aperture lens was really an f/2, an f/2 lens was really an f/2.8, and so forth, because shooting a lens wide open had too many compromises. My 35mm lens is f/2, so I have to shoot it at f/2.8 if I want good results. Now they make lenses with aspherical elements, and these new lenses can open up to much brighter apertures without the old compromises.
The other big revolution is that old-fashioned autofocus was done by screw-drive: a servo in the camera's body would crank the focus ring back and forth. In modern lenses, the focus ring is turned by a motor inside the lens itself.
My camera, the D40, is one of the smallest SLRs around. It's small in part because it has no screwdrive to work old autofocus lenses. My 35mm could autofocus on another camera, but not on mine. Manual focus is a pain. I guess it helps me think more about each shot and get creative with choosing a focal plane, but that doesn't compensate for the hundreds of pictures I've lost to poor focus already, or the hundreds more to come.
I prefer to shoot with fixed lenses because they have bigger apertures and are smaller than zoom lenses. Their pictures often have this magical, three-dimensional quality that I don't get with my zooms, and even though if you put two photos side-by-side to compare and a stranger couldn't see the difference, I can see it in my own shots (it's probably related to contrast). But all of Nikon's fixed lenses that any sane person would use are artifacts from the Mesozoic age of screwdrive autofocus. Why Nikon hasn't updated them in the last 20 years, Lord knows.
That's what I'm waiting for, fingers crossed. That, or I'll have to buy a new camera with screwdrive autofocus. The rumors, unfortunately, are against me. The big rumored fixed lens update is a 28mm from Nikon. There's more demand for it because 28mm is the new 35mm, and because even those who shoot digital where 35=50 say "50mm-equivalent isn't wide enough for me, because I like to 'get it all in.'"
If Nikon ever designs a new 35mm f/1.4 with true f/1.4 and an AF motor inside it, I feel like I should celebrate in some crazy way to mark such an unprecedented event, like hang-glide naked across Central Park from Rockefeller Center.
The weather isn't the only thing keeping me inside. In spring, summer, and fall the fun of being outdoors draws me out, but in winter here where it never snows, I need to be excited about my equipment or it's not worth braving the awful climate. If spring comes and no new toys, I'll resume taking pictures anyway, but I still need something to look forward to.
22 January 2008
I just realized that I haven't updated my news page in a very long time. Well, not much has been newsworthy for me lately. Some bad stuff, little else. The state of America is bad. The weather is grievously bad. As often happens this time of year, the extreme cold + extreme dry one-two punch has destroyed my sinuses and lips for the next few weeks.
I've grown a beard and taken it seriously for the first time in my life. The last time I tried to grow a beard was over two years ago when I lived in Rome, and it was pathetic. I have marginally more facial hair now. I hope to follow my dad's old tradition of maintaining a beard in the winter and shaving it off in the spring.
Anybody have advice on how to leave New York? Some amazing job I just don't know about, that involves being outdoors all the time, 40 hours a week, for 70k a year, involves a lot of travel, and isn't too dirty or dangerous?
I've been super lazy about photography, mostly because of the cold. But the energy and love of the art is still there, just in hibernation. The fall is, of course, my peak season, and I'm refueling for a while, focusing on other things like procrastination and computer games... and writing, but I don't share that in the same fashion as my photography (unless you count what I write on this site).
Once again my site has gone through a politics binge. What can I say? I was "caught up in the emotion," Obama excited me, but the excitement for all the candidates has since faded away, replaced by fear.
I'm considering writing more movie reviews and things, especially a reprise of my Spiderman 3 speech on behalf of Cloverfield, which is being poo-pooed by the masses for the usual wrong reasons but was actually a great movie.
Since I created an internal portal with all my favorite links instead of bookmarks and made it my Firefox homepage, that link has racked up several thousand hits, all from me alone -- and because of this, my other pages are no longer recording visits. This is driving me a little bit crazy, because I have no way of knowing if anyone actually visits my website.
28 November 2007
I returned from Rome last night. It was a great trip even though the weather sucked. Being back in Rome so briefly was kind of like a dream, in the literal sense. Jet lag put me in an almost trance-like state some of the time, and wherever I went, my head flooded with memories. It's amazing how in only a year there I accumulated so many experiences in so many different parts of the city.
After catching up on my political news, I'm ready to predict that by 2012 the Democratic party will attempt to make Spanish the official language of the United States. Mark my words. Why? Because the system in America is rigged so well against the tyranny of the majority that small interest groups are able to force their will on everybody else. This is one reason why medical marijuana is still illegal on a federal level even though 70-80% of Americans think it should be legal (about the same percentage believe English should be our official language, and I count myself among them). The other reason for all this is that congressmen are mostly cynical swine who hold contempt for those they represent.
11 November 2007
I've been very busy lately. I spent much of the last month (other than my time at work) exploring the wilderness of Westchester county, Nashville, and New York's city parks taking pictures of fall foliage and of my friends and family. I've accumulated so many photos of good quality that I'm considering splitting the next gallery into a two-parter. My goal is to post the next gallery before my vacation in Rome, because I figure that trip will result in many new pictures, too.
Every time I'm at the bursting point and want to move out of New York, I'm forced to see how cool it is in one way or another. Between Central Park and Prospect Park, it's hard to get bored of New York's nature getaways, because both areas are so big and full of fun things. The skyline of course is one of the best I've ever seen, and there are interesting buildings and locales all over the place. The food may not be quite as good as it was in Italy, but you can get so many different foods, it's staggering.
The subway is really one of the worst things about New York. The layout and lines themselves are excellent, and the system has the potential to be great. But oh, how it falls short... I don't understand how they can screw something up with such high frequency, or how high the prices are for service that never improves.
I'm spending more time on airplanes within this 6-month period than I have in my whole life put together. Flying isn't so bad, but it's starting to drive me nuts. At least every flight means I'm getting to visit someone special.
21 September 2007
The last time Bill and I were at the movies, we saw a new preview for Good Luck Chuck. I didn't realize the obvious until he pointed it out to me: they've redesigned their whole marketing campaign. The movie is no longer about Dane Cook, but Jessica Alba. Even though the movie is about Chuck and how he brings Good Luck to those he F___s (you fill in the blank! hint: it rhymes), the preview tells us the movie is actually about Jessica Alba, the bad luck girl.
I can't believe I almost missed this. There are so many hilarious explanations. Clearly, the movie is getting bad buzz and was horribly received at preview screenings. Via the new trailers, we get to watch the studio's marketers scramble like clowns in a clown-car to sell this turkey. The best part is, by doing this they're digging themselves into an even deeper hole when people see the movie and get angry because it's not what they expected (if they missed the old previews, that is). Perhaps they re-edited and re-shot the movie, but I don't see how it's possible to change it that much.
Dane Cook looks like a pug, and Jessica Alba is universally considered hot. Therefore, they're selling the movie on her, not him. Good call. But that's not all. The elephant in the room is...
Who wants to watch a movie about a fratty guy who gets laid non-stop until he suddenly discovers that in order to have a real girlfriend, he has to hold onto his meat? Gee, sounds like fun! In one pitch, we've already alienated families, smart/nice guys, and 99% of women. The only remaining audience is frat boys who won't see it anyway because they're too busy holding circle jerks and perfecting their collar-popping techniques in the mirror. Who green-lighted this P.O.S.??
A while back I commented on this movie in my Thoughts section, and on Dane Cook. I'm happy to find that that post might gain some relevance already. I knew it would, but not this soon. I guess you could say it's like a vicious circle: it comes back -- to get you!
11 September 2007
Well, it's 9/11 and I'm in downtown New York City. It's both unnerving and sad. It's gray and rainy outside. My perspective has changed. Back in Ann Arbor, in college, I thought 9/11 was somewhat overblown and I was especially turned off by how it became politicized over the years. But when you live here and get to know the people of New York, and see how the disaster has affected them, that day takes on a different meaning.
Today I read through some of my old News entries from my time abroad. It was interesting how much I complained yet how much I was clearly enjoying the adventure at the same time. Obviously it was worth it and the memories from that year are spectacular, but it's easier to forget how unhappy I was a lot of the time because it was impossible to make a living. Sometimes I think I could go back there long-term, but if only it was just a little bit more... like... America...
Anyway, I booked a flight to visit Rome over Thanksgiving weekend. Because I get Thursday and Friday off, taking just two more days off gives me almost a week there to kick around. I wish I could go for two weeks, but I simply can't afford that financially. I hope I'll be able to see some old friends, but even if I don't, I'll get to spend quality time with my girlfriend like in the old days, which is the primary reason for the trip. The nostalgia factor will be off the charts.
Europe is a little cold in November, but Thanksgiving is a swell time to go there. The prices of domestic flights skyrocket because people are all going home to visit family, but for that same reason, international flight rates plummet. The round-trip set me back only about $600, half the usual cost. There will also be few tourists at that time -- a nice bonus. Considering all those factors, it was hard to say no to such a vacation. I may even be sold already on doing something similar in 2008, if everything works out as hoped.
10 July 2007
I've been too busy to update lately. In the past month I've taken a million pictures -- I'm at over 3,000 with the D40. I'm not sure how many pictures it's rated to survive, hopefully at least 10 or 20k. I want to create a new image gallery since I have more than enough good shots waiting in the wings to justify it, but alas... no time right now.
What have I been doing? For one, rehearsing for a play my roommate Bill is directing this month. I'm performing as the lead role, a cranky horror writer (not a big stretch for me). Ask me for details if you're interested in attending. The show is in New York City.
I have a few Thoughts updates also on deck, but I've been too busy to write up those, too. I want to thank everyone who visited and enjoyed my web pages last month: you helped make June 2007 my website's biggest month ever. It's already too late to make July quite as good, and I'll still be pretty tied up through most of August, but I'll try to do at least a little bit.
The strange thing about making more money than you used to is that you start feeling confident about buying stuff. I see something I want and instead of thinking, "Someday I'll get that when I have a real life and a real job," I now say, "Hey, I can afford that now. Sweet!"
I bought a telephoto lens for my camera. As I said on my camera talk page, the point of buying new equipment is to be able to take pictures you couldn't get before. The D40 came with an 18-55 millimeter lens, which is wide and short. The new lens is 55-200mm, taking up where the other lens leaves off. There's no overlap and neither lens is better -- they're for different kinds of picture-taking. Most of the new photos I want to post on here came from the telephoto lens.
I also bought a custom-made oxford shirt for about $45. It was worth every penny. For the average guy with a big waist and broad shoulders, standard shirts fit just fine, but they're uncomfortable on me and I feel like a clown in them. $45 is a nice deal for a custom made shirt that is actually shaped like me for a change and that I can wear to work every week. It just feels right; that means a lot coming from me, when it comes to clothes. It doesn't constantly drag my boxer shorts and undershirts up my back the way "normal fit" shirts do. If you're skinny like me, I recommend getting such a shirt. Mine came from Land's End.
That's all for now. More updates to come soon, I hope.
19 June 2007
Today I picked up the first prints I've ever made from digital photos. I admit that it's pretty strange, since I'm so into photography and currently take an average of 60 shots a day, that I've never in all these years ordered prints of a single digital picture. The pictures I printed, no less, are not featured on my website and mostly came from my ancient two-megapixel Nikon 2100.
Getting the photos printed was a striking experience. First, it made me realize how much I missed the thrill of waiting for my pictures. Usually, back in the film days, I hated the wait because a lot of the shots turned out useless, overexposed, underexposed, or featured hideous (sometimes heartbreaking) light leaks. But the feeling of getting that one good shot out of the roll, and holding it in my hand and looking at it, was quite special. Going to the photo lab today I felt that same mix of excitement and fear, wondering what the images would look like as physical pictures rather than just collections of electrons as they were before. Happily for me, the shots looked exactly like they did on my computer, as far as color and light are concerned. The only minor disappointment was that they did look somehow "digital" but I can't put my finger on how or why. They simply look a little different from film-derived photos.
The second thing I realized was how far removed from the process of photography digital can make you feel. For the last few years, I've been immersed in the flow of taking pictures, uploading them to my computer, blowing them up to various huge sizes, and exploring them with my mouse. By doing so I forgot how it feels to look at a real, physical photograph that I took. The whole act of taking a picture feels much more complete when you have a tangible print, much the same way that a written work doesn't have the same impact read on a computer screen as it does on old-fashioned paper.
It also drove home the silliness of the whole megapixel madness. As I said, most of the prints I made were from my two-megapixel camera. For this set of prints, I ordered 4x6", a typical size that we were all used to back when we used 35mm film. A couple of the pictures are from my newer, seven-megapixel Canon A710, and honestly, there isn't much difference between the image quality. The 2100's prints look just fine -- they look much nicer as 4x6 sheets of glossy paper than they do as JPEG images filling up my whole computer screen. As I explained in my page about cameras, the major advantage of my newer cameras is their speed of use and depth of control. If you look closely even at the 4x6 prints, the old camera's images are slightly grainier and slightly less detailed, but you won't find a two-megapixel camera sold new nowadays, anyway. Still, it demonstrates how overblown all this megapixel stuff is. Yes, it is nice to have extra pixels in case you want to crop off the sides of the image, but a telephoto lens does the same thing far better.
Now that I've seen the light, I want to print as many of my photos as I can. At the place I use, 4x6 prints are only 19 cents apiece (what else can you find in 2007 for 19 cents? not much). 8x10" prints are 99 cents. I'd be careful about printing the 2100's shots at that size, but the D40 should do it no problem.
30 May 2007
Today I upgraded to Geocities Plus. That means I have much more content storage and also greater bandwidth, so when people visit my pages, they can actually see the images and so forth. It also means the annoying ad bar on the right side of every page won't be there anymore.
In light of this, I think it's time to do some long-pondered renovations to the website. Because I'm gearing this page more towards photos lately rather than written material (though I'll continue that, too), my biggest project is to put together a centralized image gallery from which one can access all of the various pictures on the site in an orderly way.
The most obvious change, for now, is that I reorganized my home page. At this point, the idea is to put my basic information and update notice on the left side, and have descending links to all the pages at the right, where the ads used to sit. It's not pretty, yet, but maybe it will be sooner or later.
I'm trying to scrap as many of the image backgrounds and icons as I can. I don't want to collide with fair use issues, and the busy backgrounds made it harder to read the words anyway. Plus, a plain background color uses less space and bandwidth than a big image file.
In real life news, I'm full-time now at my job (legal secretary) and I'm enjoying the benefits, sense of security, and all that. It's granted me the financial breathing room to buy myself a great camera, and I take dozens of photographs with it every day, faster than I can process and post them.
Lately I'm extremely busy. I don't really have much spare time. My weekends are packed between social functions, wandering around New York with my camera tourist-style, cooking, exercise, doing laundry (which I hate), and whatever else pops up.
25 March 2007
Not much has happened in three months. I just got a new digital camera so I'm hoping to update my photo page soon. I'm still a temp at the same law firm in New York. I don't see many cockroaches in our apartment lately.
My recent exercise regimen is paying off. Since the last year of college I had serious shoulder problems and couldn't really do any exercise at all because it hurt my right shoulder. Before I left for Italy, I saw a specialized physical therapist who told me my shoulders are naturally weak because of their shape and my narrow frame, and that the muscles in them had atrophied to pathetic levels of weakness. There was literally not enough material, fat or muscle, to cushion my right shoulder joint, which was pinching the tendon that runs from my collar area into the shoulder. In order to recover shoulder strength I would have to slowly and carefully build up my shoulders from nothing and stabilize them before I'd be able to do more substantial exercise like weightlifting, swimming, and so forth.
Then I went to Italy where I was constantly broke and hungry. It wasn't conducive to exercise. When I came back, I stayed at my mom's house and hit the home weight machines and the exercise bike and ate like a lion, vigorously working to build a base of muscle on my shoulders before I would go to New York. It worked, but then I cut my fingers and couldn't hold a dumbbell for a month or two.
Since January I've been slowly working my way back up. I'm up to 60 push-ups now. I don't exactly feel like a powerhouse, but I feel stable and solid in a way I haven't since the early days of college.
I bought a jade plant for my window. It's my second attempt at gardening. In Rome I bought two plants, basil and sage, at the supermarket but they died within a day or two. This plant seems to be growing successfully. If it works out, I'll try growing plants from seeds.
9 January 2007
The first week without Fiammetta has not been fun. The strange thing is that, though I'm lonely now, I'm still just as busy as ever. I'm trying to come up with a plan for next year, but it's getting off to a slow start.
In my last update I wrote that I didn't have health insurance. That was a misunderstanding -- my dad and I thought the insurance-extending cobra would last for 18 months, but it's actually 36 months. So, I have another 2 years of insurance, if I want to pay $350 a month for it. Not that I have a choice right now.
Today I read my old updates tracking my year in Italy. I complained a lot, but even then I knew I'd miss it terribly when it was over, which I do. I wish I could do something like that again without having to be poor or work a job which could, at times, be unbearable and humiliating. But maybe that's part of the nostalgia, is knowing that I was man enough to actually hunker down and do it all in the face of so many challenges. I was a real tough guy for that one year and I don't want to think of myself becoming mushy and predictable.
Also interestingly, I've been going over my page-view statistics for my website recently to watch visiting patterns. The clear peak of my site's popularity was last Winter, which was of course in the depths of my Italy stay, the time when I started my Thoughts section but it wasn't political yet, and when I was posting the most pictures. Since then it's been a steady decline, especially after my return to America in July. That doesn't surprise me. Naturally my time in Italy was more exciting than anything I've done here has been, and I take responsibility for the fact that updates slowed down this past Summer and Fall. But I'm working on breathing life back into the website, and I hope that I win back more visitors again in the coming months.
3 January 2007
The last month or so has been exciting and dramatic. For New Year's weekend, Steve came to New York and stayed with Bill and I. We all, along with Fiammetta and Bill's date Kate, went to Times Square for the midnight watch -- more or less. Actually, we were about fifteen blocks away from Times Square and couldn't see anything except on a big Target Corporation-operated T.V. screen, which sucked. They didn't show the ball drop, opting instead for Target-style advertising and cheesy prompts to the crowd. We didn't get one square of confetti, while the early-birds (who stood there for 12 hours) and rich kids in Times Square apparently got 3.5 tons of it. I have a love-hate relationship with New York and that moment was definitely on the "hate" side. Just up the street, in near-empty Central Park, there was a spectacular fireworks display which I'd rather have sat and watched comfortably if I'd known about it. We stood for two hours in a space so packed with people that we couldn't lift our legs -- and it was for nothing.
Fiammetta, my girlfriend of a year now, is going back to her home in Italy today
to take exams and try new approaches to getting work in the US. At this point, my view on immigration is: any of these super-conservative xenophobic cocksuckers who want to limit immigration and blame all our problems on non-natives can blow me. Idiots like Virgil Goode should have their citizenship stripped and be forced to taste life as foreigners. They'd change their tune in about five minutes.
In follow-up to my article in the Thoughts section on using salvia divinorum, I have in fact made good on my word and done it in the weeks since I wrote that piece. It's not dangerous, "terrible," or otherwise destroying America's youth. In fact, it was pretty fun.
The coming months will be busy. I plan to get involved in local organizations a little, make more friends, look for something to do next year, etc. In follow-up to my last update, in which I discussed my hospital bills, I've since learned a little more about that issue. The $350 bill was merely my monthly health insurance bill with a copay for the ER visit included. I just didn't recognize it, but I don't want to explain that here. I sent the next bill for $432 to my insurance company and they seem to have paid for that, since I haven't heard about it again. Now I'm in the fun position of having no insurance, because my college cobra plan expired with the new year. "Happy holidays -- don't hurt yourself!"
30 November 2006
I've been on this job for almost two months now and so far I like it. The money is great, but that's kind of negated by the expense of living in New York. If this city wasn't so expensive, it would be worth living in long-term, but I'm not sure I can put up with it for more than a few years. The biggest problem right now is my trip to the hospital one month ago for cuts in my fingertips. I took ten stitches and the fingers are just now getting back to normal. For that lovely visit I paid $350. Two days ago I got another bill in the mail for the ambulance ride -- which provided me no special care but some bandages I could buy in a pharmacy for a couple of bucks, to a hospital I could've easily reached by the subway or by even calling a taxi -- of $432. When I saw that bill, it was the single moment since I've returned to America that I seriously, deeply questioned my choice to come back here. I sincerely, desperately hope that my insurance company will cover some of this or all of it. Whether they do or not, my respect for America has taken a huge hit.
Other than that, things are fine. Last weekend I went to Florida with Fiammetta to visit my mom and stepdad, which was a great trip. On the flight back to New York I met President Jimmy Carter. Almost every week, Bill and I see movies in Times Square which are mostly very good (especially Casino Royale). Even though I don't lead a luxurious lifestyle, with my income I'm able to live comfortably and eat well. I have little free time, but I'm slowly learning to manage my time better so that I have more.
December should be a busy month. Steve, and maybe if we're lucky, Dan, will be coming to New York for New Year's Eve weekend. Hopefully we'll make a movie at that time. On that subject, I want more than ever to put together a script, especially in collaboration with all the guys, and save up for a nice digital camera so that maybe in the next year or two we can start to make a real movie. But at this point I can't think that far in advance.
7 October 2006
On Monday I'm starting my job at the law firm. The first two weeks will be training, I believe, then I start working for real. Everyone has told me to expect a great challenge, but with any such challenge comes great rewards as well.
It's strange for me to be in New York. I don't feel at home here yet, and may not until I've been working for a while and built up a base of memories. It helps a lot to have my Uncle Bill so close by, because he's very special to me. It also helps to have my friend and roommate Bill, and Fiammetta, to hang out with. Last weekend I flew to Ann Arbor, spent one night there, and then drove back up here with my dad and all my stuff in his van. Even spending just one night in Ann Arbor made me super-homesick and I didn't want to leave. We spent the next day driving through the beautiful countryside of Pennsylvania and the night with my father's uncle and aunt there. As they spoke of their ill feelings for cities like New York, it only made me sadder again to be leaving that small-town, quiet world for the big city. But for many reasons, at this stage in my life I have little choice. Hopefully someday, when I have established good working credentials and such, I can find a way to move back to the smaller places I grew up in.
I do, however, feel more comfortable here than I did a month ago. The skyscrapers of Manhattan, while no substitute for rows of maple trees, are pretty awesome. On Wednesday for an odd-job I walked from Brooklyn to Manhattan across the Brooklyn bridge during the sunrise, and that was something I think everybody ought to experience once. And while the Fall here hasn't been as spectacular as in Michigan, it's not so bad either.
20 September 2006
In just two days, Fiammetta will be arriving in New York City. I can't wait, although there is still much to be done before I can kick off my shoes and sleep easy. I just moved into a great apartment in Astoria, across the river from Manhattan's Upper East Side. I'm starting to get, and be capable of using, some of the local lingo. I'm also getting good with the subway system. One must think on his toes at all times while taking it because half the time some line segment is closed and bizarre detours and line changes become necessary.
Today I interviewed at a law firm to work as a legal assistant, and the commute from my apartment, which isn't all that far from the business, was about 90 minutes because a subway train's brakes weren't working. I sure hope I get that job, though, because then I could rest a little easier after all. Once I get the job I can fill this apartment with stuff and make it a place worth occupying.
Since I moved in I've fought a depressing battle against cockroaches we inherited from the previous tenants. My weapons include quick hands and toilet paper, and a keg of poison I can spray at them -- yet the poison mostly seems only to redirect them from one part of the apartment to another, and the smell is nauseating. Tomorrow it will be time to set traps.
29 August 2006
I haven't updated in a long time, but that's because little has happened, rather, it's the future where the excitement lies now. Following my agreement with Fiammetta, I'm moving to New York and hoping to be settled in properly by the time she arrives in late September. One of my best friends, Bill, is also planning to move with me so we can find a place together.
We also don't have an apartment or housing of any kind lined up yet, but I'm not as worried about that. I've heard from just about everybody this side of the Atlantic that finding housing in New York is impossible and I'll get stuck with a $2000/month doghouse 3 hours away from downtown. But, for all the little frustrations of finding a place in Rome, I found something quite reasonable in that city within a week, entirely on my own -- twice. So, New York can't be that much worse. Can it?
30 June 2006
In about 2 weeks, I'll be back in Ann Arbor. It's hard to believe, as it's hard to believe I've been in another country for this long. My birthday was this week, and it was relatively low-profile; I just went out with my girlfriend. Now, she plans to go to New York City in the Fall to study more English and look for a job, so it looks like I'll be doing the same thing (less the studying English part). I never thought I'd live in NYC, mostly because I've never had a strong desire to. I'm apprehensive about the idea, but I can't imagine it could be harder than living here has been.
It's so hot here. It never rains during the summer; it just gets hotter and hotter. It's sunny every day, and around 90 degrees, at least. The city's urban heat island effect makes it substantially worse. I sweat 24 hours a day. I spend most of the day, when I'm not working, sitting in my boxer shorts reading in my room. It's too hot for much else, especially since basketball doesn't exist in Italy and I don't like soccer.
I'm glad I made this trip and stuck it out. I have problems with Italy, with my lifestyle here, the biggest of which is that I generally feel unaccepted by the country and its people. Italians have this awful xenophobic distrust of foreigners thing, and while they're not all like that, at least once a week I'm reminded that I'm not "one of them," and it hurts after how long I've been here and how much my Italian has improved. I think I'll be more relaxed and sure of myself at home, where I can speak my own language and work legally.
One example of the ugly reminders is my roommates. I have two of them, and one of them can be a dick at times. He likes to get angry at me, blame me for something that went wrong around the apartment, and yell at me very fast in Italian. He does this because he knows I can't verbally defend myself. It puts him in a position of power and superiority which Italians seldom enjoy next to Americans.
That said, there's not much to hold me here. I'll miss the food most of all, but even that isn't all better than American food. As much as I appreciate and am fond of this experience, I'm not very sad that it's ending (yet).
6 June 2006
I spent the past two weeks with long-time friends Dan and Steve, much of it outside of Rome. Each of us has now seen more of Italy than most Italians -- in 22 years of living in America, I never saw 90% of the country, yet in 1 year in Italy, I've seen most of the major cities, regions, and sites. And for me, it was relatively inexpensive.
The trip was a strong mix of some of the best and worst of times. We first went south to Catania, Sicily, on an overnight train from Rome. The overnight train was a hell, but it was nothing compared to the same train going back Catania - Naples two days later. That train arrived 4 hours late; it ranks up with my layover in Paris as one of the most physically tormenting travel experiences of my life. Conversely, the locations were all great in their own way. Florence and Venice, the top tourist hives, still both rub me the wrong way. But Sicily was fantastic, Naples and Turin were great cities in different ways, and Cinque Terre lived up to the hype.
There was also lots of arguing, sometimes about money, because Dan and Steve were much more willing to spend it than I was. Some of the arguing was about which things to do at which places, while some was just the natural grumbling that comes from physical exhaustion and lack of sleep.
That said, though, this trip did bring to light how valuable an experience my time here in Italy has been. For months, when all I could think about were my hardships here, I thought that I might not do this again if I could go back. But now, I'm starting to think it's one of the more definitive, character-building, and worthwhile periods of my life. Coming to Italy for this year was one of the best decisions I've ever made. As people visit me from America, they tell me how much I've grown up, how mature I've become, that my confidence has grown, my temper has softened, that I seem to be a generally more reasonable, relaxed person.
I'm now looking at about one month left in Italy. For some time I'd been planning that after returning to Ann Arbor, I'd stay there and "lay low" to recuperate for awhile. Now though, chances are that I'll stop in A2 to catch up and get my bearings again, then start looking for the next step as soon as possible. In the meantime, I have to learn how to say goodbye to Rome for a while.
12 May 2006
The past month has been highly eventful. My family came for the end of April and we toured Italy a bit. I posted some of the photos we took on my Europe picture page. The trip was brought down a lot though by the fact that a policeman randomly pulled us over on the road to look through my parents' passports. He looked mainly at entry dates into the EU, and had he seen my passport, I don't know what would've happened. Nothing good, that's for sure. I feel like I live in a police state, there are police everywhere you turn, and they all have this stupid OK Corral swagger.
After that, I was trained to teach adults at my school -- something I've been doing since October. I learned a little bit at the training, but it didn't revolutionize my teaching style or make it easier to connect with difficult students. As a nice little reminder of corruption, yet another of my favorite classes was given away to another teacher. The bubbleheaded secretary, who makes fun of me because I read and always says I'm too shy and that's why they give away my classes, because students complain about my shyness, was lecturing me about it and I was telling her more firmly than ever to plant it, when one of the teachers I'm friends with came by and saw who the class was given to. He explained that they'd passed it to a union teacher, and he and I are freelance teachers. What that means is, union teachers get a fixed salary whereas we get paid by the hour, so the school fills their schedules from our own freelance schedules to save money. Pretty depressing, huh? Apparently the school doesn't care that I have to pay rent and eat with that money. I almost went postal.
Speaking of being poor, either someone got a hold of my credit card number, or as my dad theorized, I may have "failed to refuse a service," and about $250 was drained from my bank account, leaving it nearly empty. (Yes, I am taking action and in contact with my bank to fix this, but it may not be fixable.) This comes at a time when I'm already brought almost to tears regularly by my financial problems, which I have no way of alleviating at least until I'm back home. I got a nice miniscule paycheck this week to add the final touch to this period of misery.
The bright note is that Dan and Steve are coming here in one week, and then we're leaving on a massive tour across Italy. It will be great, as long as I don't get deported in the process, or deported before they arrive. At the end, of course, I'll be completely broke, but I'm used to that now. I'm counting the minutes to their arrival.
15 April 2006
Spring has finally arrived and I'm feeling much better because of it. As I spend more time outside, get more exercise, and somehow, sleep more (probably a combination of exercise and increased sunlight in the day), I continue to become a little happier day by day.
Some friends in Rome lent me a bicycle for the rest of my stay here, which I will return to them when I leave. Riding the bike to work reminds me of Ben Hur, on good days. People warn me repeatedly about how dangerous it is, how I'll die a horrible death, but frankly I need the exercise and I also need the money it will save -- especially considering the bike is free. Drivers provide me with a persistent reminder of the dangers with the endless curses, honks, and angry hand gestures they direct at me. My girlfriend tells me that Roman drivers in particular have a kind of hatred of bikers, which just makes me more angry and happy to spite these turkeys with my presence. The initial setback I had was with the air -- as I've said before, there's a lot of pollution here. So I bought a gas mask. It makes me look ridiculous, but I couldn't care less.
Rome is an amazing city in the warm months. In Winter, it's a pit. It's cold and rainy and empty, except for the tourists, who I don't exactly adore. But in Spring and Summer, it's gorgeous and full of life day and night. Last night I was very happy; I walked around downtown with my girlfriend, and everywhere Romans were drinking beer and smoking hash, and I made fun of the rich American girls and their stupid accent. We had the high quality chocolate, coffee, and ice cream that you can't find in America. It was once again the world that I fell in love with when I came here.
For roughly the next month I'll be visiting with family and friends from America and traveling. As that period ends, I'll be close to the end of my time in Italy, a very significant year in my life. I wish I could stay in Europe another year but someplace else -- however, I don't want to teach ESL anymore. Not for this kind of pay, at least. A major part of this experience I expected was the possibility of extensive travel, but I've been economically crippled from day one. It probably won't change. Lucky me, I could've picked worse places to be "stuck."
I'm still not sure what I'd like to do next year. I'm basically torn between trying to find a job and apartment in Ann Arbor, my hometown, to relax and recuperate, and going someplace like NYC for more adventure.
20 March 2006
I still work at the same private school, and they still underpay me badly, but this may change through no action of my own in the coming months. The building where I work is closing soon, and then, in theory, I and my classes will be moved to one of the other branches in Rome. And, in theory, this will create an occasion for them to give me legal working papers, because tied into all this is that a labor union is coming down on the school for hiring people illegally without processing them for legal work (hey, whaddya know?).
I live in a closet with a window facing another building. I haven't had a temper for a long time, but I've been down and out since August; I feel like I can't recover from the wear and tear of city life, being disconnected as I am from any tranquillity, clean air, or closeness to nature. When I visited home for Christmas, I genuinely did not want to return to Rome at the end of the vacation.
When I have free time, I drift into English bookstores and salivate over all the books I can't afford to buy. I brought lots of reading material with me that should last me through July or August, but it's these little reminders I find everywhere that I have nothing extra that get under my skin. I don't fritter away my money on booze or drugs, I don't buy myself any luxuries like DVDs or Italian clothes -- just the occasional sweets to keep me going. And yet, every first of the month, I have nothing left once the rent is paid. People tell me ad infinito how jealous they are -- "but Eric, it's ITALY!" -- but the question I ask myself is, was this worth it? I've learned a great deal, but the price has been terrible. Would I do it again? I won't know the answer to that until long after it's over.
30 January 2006
For the most part I'm doing great right now. Two weeks ago I moved into a new apartment as my old sublease expired, and at first I hated the new place, but I've since come to like it. I'd still prefer the old one, but this one is livable. My roommates are two working men both over 30, one from Calabria and the other from Sicily. They're a lot of fun to live with, and my old roommate pointed out quite rightly that I could have a superior room in a beautiful part of the city and live with assholes. And I've lived with assholes (and almost did again during my flat searchings) enough to appreciate my current roommates. My new room is closer to the city center, which I in fact didn't want, because I liked the tranquility and clean air of the previous apartment. It's not bad, though.
Something I noticed when I visited home was how "amazingly amazing" Americans think living in Europe, particularly a place like Rome, must be. They're always jealous and overflowing with excitement for me, which is nice, but when I came back to America that kind of behavior seemed odd to me. My father wisely advised me last summer not to go with great expectations but to just take things in and find my own way here. So, here are my thoughts about this experience and some of the realities.
Most of the people who talk to me with such excitement about my journeys have paid a tourist visit to Rome or someplace similarly legendary. And they all, of course, had a great time. Yet they look at things with a certain logic: if spending a few days or a week in Rome is so amazing, imagine what spending a whole YEAR there must be like! It's the logic of "if less is more, imagine how much more more will be!" What they don't realize is that the shock and awe of those first days or weeks in a foreign land wears off. I still stare at the architecture; I still stop frequently just to breathe in the air and admire the way the light hits the city. But the glamor has faded away, for the most part. I have a job, I have to work and pay rent and all the typical life expenses. It's not a year-long vacation. It's living. The older people I talked to, especially professors who had done similar things in their lives, were more understanding of this.
I'm still infinitely grateful for this experience, and I've learned much that I never could have in my hometown. I know the city now, I know its corners and where to find good cheese and all that -- but I learned these things not during exploration and tourism, but through the sometimes very hard experience of living. I learned almost everything I know about the city's layout, getting around, and the public transport systems during starved, showerless, sweaty hikes to interviews with heads of schools (usually dicks), to visit apartments to meet potential roommates (who usually turned out to be jerks, too), to wait in the smoky immigration office all day long for a visa, to challenge public transport fines, and on and on. Not fun things, any of those. But without them, I'd know very little about Rome. It might seem more glamorous -- but it wouldn't be real.
I hardly talk to the Americans I know anymore. Most of my friends here are Italian, and from the South of Italy for that matter -- like my ancestors. I try to keep in touch with the Americans, but they seldom want to see me, and I don't know why. Whenever I do see them, not much has changed since the last time. Most of them don't date, most of them don't seem to have much going on in their lives here, and their Italian doesn't seem to generally improve from one month to the next, either. While they're here, they spend the majority of their spare time drinking, going out and drinking. In a way, it's as if they're really still in America. And I don't see anything "amazingly amazing" about that.
Again, I want to talk about women. I have a girlfriend now, and this is far more special and meaningful to me than simply being in Italy, although we'd never have met had I not come here. What amazes me is that while she's stunningly beautiful, she's also very clever and sharp-minded, and has a personality. I didn't find that much in America, and the girls who struck me as interesting people never found me all that interesting myself. Here, though, a number of good-looking Italian girls have expressed some kind of attraction or interest in me, whereas in America few ever did. People told me ad nauseum back home that I should "take what I can get," lower my standards because the girls I liked were all "supermodels," yet here, that's not an issue. It feels great! What a relief to find out that I'm not just a superficial nerd, but that I'm capable of attracting good women. I don't feel like my girlfriend is "what I could get" -- she's the best girl for me, and I wouldn't trade her for anybody on either side of the ocean.
8 January 2006
I just returned to Rome after spending three weeks in Ann Arbor. The vacation was great in some ways, but pretty disappointing in others. First of all, the transport was a disaster. I flew Air France for the first and hopefully last time. On the trip out, they wrested my carry-on luggage from me at the door to the plane and checked it. It was lost (hey, what a shock!), and took them over a week to send to me in Ann Arbor. Coming back, my connecting flight was delayed (DTW-Paris-Rome), which caused me to miss the second flight, leaving me stuck in Paris for six hours for a total voyage of 20 hours. For those who know how I feel about planes and airports, you can imagine I was a tipple upset.
I didn't feel a big shock or anything when I hit A2. It was more like a huge sense of relief at being home and knowing it still all exists like I remember it. I missed the snow and northern climate, and found I hadn't become any more sensitive to cold than before (which has always been a lot, to be fair). It was great to be able to talk with people in my mother language again.
I spent much of the break visiting my past professors at the UofM, which was awesome. They were all very enthusiastic and friendly. But in terms of catching up with people, it doesn't go much further than that. Of course I saw my core group of best friends virtually nightly, which was worth the price of admission, but a lot of other people talked about visiting with me and I ended up hardly seeing anyone at all outside of those aforementioned. That kind of took the wind out of my sails -- in fact, I ended up having to meet a gazillion people I didn't know who wanted to hear my tale, mostly friends of my dad's, and that was exhausting.
The worst part, maybe, was the true "reverse culture shock" I experienced only in the last days home. My friends and I went to a night club on campus which was overflowing with good-looking girls. Maybe the most I've seen in one club or bar ever. But here's the catch: they were all snobs! All my conclusions had been true. Watching girls look at us like we were dogs, the way they groaned with their whole bodies when we approached to talk, or say "oh shit, look at the time" when I introduced them to a friend, reminded me pretty damn quick why I got sick of A2 and left. What a shitty scene. I could live in that town forever and never meet someone the way things were going. By the end of the night (and the vacation in the general sense), I had forgotten how it felt to feel like I look good. What really pisses me off is that these girls think they're all that, when really they ain't exactly in a position to be so picky.
There were enough attractive girls in that club that a guy could probably afford to be a bit choosy, yet each and every girl in there thought she was the hottest shit on the floor and that she was entitled to indulge in only the most discriminating tastes in her men. Mostly, too, there would be several girls fighting over one guy -- way to go, ladies. This attitude extends out to the whole damn college. The girls there are always holding out, assuming "I can do better than this guy," playing a game that they're not going to win because as we all know, most guys are just assholes anyway. But I guess a good guy isn't what they want -- they want a status symbol. I could talk about how I think this is mostly caused by the MTV/Pop culture, but that's for another time. But it's so clear now: the reason people buy 7-foot-tall SUVs when they could do much better with a small Toyota sedan is the same reason girls would rather have a gross-looking guy off the street with too much gel in his hair than a skinny guy who's funny and cool.
Anyway, that's the biggest reason I'm glad to be back out of A2. A lot of people were really jealous of what I'm doing in spite of what I told them about how hard it is. It seems really romantic to be poor but in an exciting place when it's not a reality. I can't seem to illustrate to people my age how it feels not to make enough money even to live like a normal person, and to have little prospect of finding better work. Or how it feels not to be able to trust anyone in a country because they see you only as an illegal alien with no rights, being pushed around and screwed over and not being able to put your foot down because the only alternative to bending over and taking it is to go back home. I really hope things are different in this round.
23 December 2005
For diplomatic reasons I thought it wise to remove my last post. Hope I'm not disappointing anyone. My life is a mix of extremes right now. First, the bad news. Air France lost my luggage when I flew from Rome to Detroit, with a stop in Paris. Throughout the process, they've been rude and complete dicks to me. When I got on the plane in Rome, the pilot literally grabbed my suitcase out of my hands and passed it to a luggage-checking officer without any warning, much less asking first. I knew then that they'd lose the suitcase. It was no surprise to me at the DTW when it never appeared in the luggage claim. Northwest airlines has to handle this for some reason, but they're being comparatively friendly and helpful. Now I know where a lot of French stereotypes come from.
I need to find a new job, or a new apartment, or both. I've visited with several past professors this week and they all agree that my tale is a cautionary one. After almost not finding a job at all, I now work for peanuts at a respected and world-famous language school. It's not enough to live comfortably on. Something needs to change this January.
The good news is, I've met someone. I find that about once a year (if only it were more often) I meet a girl who really gets under my skin. This time, it seems like she actually feels the same way about me. It's hard for me to judge where I stand because I've gotten so close to something so many times and then been wrong. But this girl really does seem different. As far as signs go, there's a much larger predominance of good ones than usual, and we've made it to three dates, which is great. And, most importantly, we're both showing a virtually equal degree of interest in each other. So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
1 December 2005
Briefly: things have improved since my last notice. Since I'm feeling so much better and more optimistic now, I wondered how that last entry would look to me, because I know it's unapologetically whiny. But, I just read it, and I don't have any real desire to edit it. Even when things are going well for me, a lot of what I say in that update is still valid and a part of my personal history. And I have friends who suffer the same problems, and we deserve representation.
My sleep has utterly crumbled lately. I have a lot going on, "great expectations" are in the air, as I like to muse. I'm a nervous wreck half the time, unwilling to get out of bed because it's too cold, walking with a bounce in my step a lot of the time, too, I'm starving one minute and have no appetite the next. All tell-tale signs of a certain thing -- can you guess what it is?
22 November 2005
Barcelona Trip and Other News
This past week, my mom visited me in Rome for a day and then we went to Barcelona to hang out with her fiance. They tried to fatten me up, I tried to eat like a machine, but no weight gained. Let's face it, the weight I lost was probably from chemicals and preservatives and transfats or some other crap that American food has been depositing in my body for the past 22 years. Food outside America isn't pumped up with this shit, but for some reason the American system isn't changing and probably never will. So it goes.
Barcelona was very beautiful, but I wasn't expecting it to be so cold. I feel like I didn't see the city in its real form. There were, though, tons of tourists even though it was late November. I noticed that, overall, people were a bit colder there; less friendly and jovial than here in Rome.
A disturbing thing happened when I saw my mom again. I realized how much I've aged here. Or grown up. I felt like a different person than the doughboy who flew out of Detroit in July. I'm not sure I like who I've become, although I'm probably not a good judge. I feel so hard. Like I was put into an oven and came out all crunchy. Yes, awkward analogy, but it fits. My mom reminded me how much I've been through here, and that more than explains it. But I'm beginning to see why people dislike this transitional phase in life. You cannot go out into the real world without becoming a different person. That process really brings home the reality of what you've lost in the transition (and gained), especially when you come across someone or something from before to measure yourself by.
And of course, there's the trouble with women. That is the constant that never goes away no matter how old I get. I choose the wrong women, and then I act like an idiot and they're gone. And repeat. On, and on, and on. I've come very far in terms of courage and making moves and talking to girls. But when it comes to my style, I'm still getting a big fat F . I don't get it. It shouldn't be this hard. I get told all the time here how attractive and cool and funny and nice I am; girls talk to me and flirt with me almost every day. But when I make up my mind and say, "Wait, it's you, you are the one I want," it's "Bye-bye!"
I'm generally good at reading people. Usually before the official point when it's clear I've struck out, I have an exchange with her that tells me, "ok, I just got that subtle, crushing vibe which means this girl is a no-no." By the next time I see the girl I've overcome the resulting depression and paranoia and am confident, so I know it's not a self-fulfilling prophecy. But soon enough, it's over anyway. Why do I have to be so right all the time?
Long before that point, or even, like today, just before that "uh oh" moment, I feel without a doubt that this girl likes me too. She's smiling, laughing, holding eye contact, agreeing or offering to hang out, seems interested in who I am and what I'm about. All the signs are there. Then, *poof!* What happened?
Maybe I rush things. When I'm seeing all the signs that a girl likes me, I get excited and want to do something about it before the time of opportunity has passed. Maybe, in my excitement, I act too soon and it throws the whole process out of kilter irreparably. But come on -- this shouldn't happen all the time. And anyway, I've restrained myself and asked for advice and made absolutely sure I acted at exactly the right time before, and still failed. And yes, I've done the "waiting it out" game before, too. Women play no game better than that.
I'm also told I'm awkward, jittery, twitchy, shy, always something along those lines. Well, what am I supposed to do? I am nervous no matter how drunk I am, and no matter how much I talk to girls in all the different situations. Is there some trick that I never learned to this? I mean, I can't be the only guy who gets a little nervous when he talks to girls. Throw me a bone, here! This is what I'm sick of hearing the most, especially because it's almost like a physical characteristic that I can't control. Anyway, it's stupid. Who cares if I'm nervous? If a girl was nervous about talking to me I wouldn't give a shit, I'd be too flattered that she liked me that much! Welp, I heard this again today, and now I hate myself 100% more than I did when I woke up this morning. Sweet.
Yes, that's right, I'm whining (picture Bill Murray in Ghostbusters if that makes it more palatable). I'm a man, and I have needs -- emotional needs. I'm 22 years old and have never had a serious girlfriend, and I've tried, and done the whole "not trying" and "not looking" and "not wanting anybody" things, and those didn't work either (they work only for girls), and I have a right to say "What the Hell?" Yes, I feel lonely, let's get that on the table. I'm a very lonely individual. Is that a crime? Is it wrong to want somebody and to not just want anybody, but specific people who also like to read and watch Horror movies and vote Democratic, etc? Tell me that, willya?
Any advice? Please let me know, before I become a sad old man. Or move to Antarctica.
3 November 2005
Halloween weekend was cool in some ways, a drag in others. First I'll list the good things. Rome is pretty nice in October and November, kind of like Ann Arbor in September. The smells of Autumn come out -- dead leaves, apples, pumpkins -- but not as dramatically. My roommates and I bought two pumpkins, one to cook and one to carve, and while they made a pumpkin risotto thing, I made a pumpkin pie. Then, we watched a horror movie. All in all, Sunday was a pretty fun night.
Halloween itself was retarded, though. My older roommate had work, and my younger roommate and her boyfriend opted to stay in all night doing stuff in their room. So, I had to fend for myself. And I just didn't have it in me. My part of town was so dead that I didn't get any willpower to explore or go out. I was real depressed about that. Italians don't celebrate Halloween. I just have to face it. Another drawback was the trees. The leaves here don't do what they do in the northern USA. They turn a yellow-gray and then drop. It's pretty subtle and dull. I guess I'm spoiled in that way, coming from Ann Arbor, a major Midwestern tree town.
24 October 2005
The Neurosis-Unemployment Diet
Hey, I've lost weight WHOOOOOOOOH! Oh wait, I'm a guy, and we're supposed to be big. That's right -- I've unintentionally lost ten pounds since I moved to Italy.
I don't consider it a good thing, but I don't look any different. I haven't turned into Jack the Pumpkin King from The Nightmare Before Christmas, although I certainly bear similarities to him.
I stand about 5'8", and I weighed 120 pounds since I was seventeen years old. And then I came here, and somehow lost ten pounds. I wonder where those ten pounds came from. I didn't think I had ten to spare! The correct weight for a man of my age and height is between 125 and 140 pounds; more than I've ever weighed.
This is probably a result of either the food being higher quality and low in fat and protein, or the philosophy of eating in Italy (smaller portions, light fare, and no breakfast), or of my lack of money and a job and therefore my eating only 1-2 meals a day. I'm not a fan of this diet by any means, believe me. I tried to keep the weight on. I eat anything and everything I can get my bony fingers on. But it's not enough.
I'll be home for the holidays, so I hope my parents can successfully fatten me up again to my glorious old weight. I might naturally gain some back also now that I'm past all these huge stressful situations that plagued me for my first three months in Italy.
22 October 2005
Some Good News
I've finally found a job. That's good news, for the most part. I did enjoy certain elements of the unemployed lifestyle (doing whatever I wanted, waking up at noon); but others were really getting on my nerves (walking all over the city for hours a day, being treated like dirt by potential employers, being hungry all the time, having no money).
As planned, I teach English as a second language. I work with both children and adults. I've found working with children much more difficult, due in large part to the fact that I'm teaching them a foreign language and kids don't like learning foreign languages even though they're good at it. The kids are animals. They pretend not to understand when I reprimand them, and when I give them disapproving looks they pretend not to know what they've done wrong. I have no way to discipline them. If I make them sit by themselves or by me, or separate them, they just move back when I'm not looking. I really don't like that part of my job. In fact, if I taught only children, I'd probably be impelled to quit and do something else with this part of my life. It's that awful. I love kids, but I think I love chilling with kids -- not having to teach them stuff.
Teaching adults is much nicer. The people I teach are very friendly and interested in learning my language; they also like asking about me and my culture. I feel that this part of my job is quite rewarding.
I have some bad news, too. There's no apple cider in Italy. I looked far and wide, and finally just asked my Italian teacher from college where I might find it. She said I wouldn't find it. So, so much for that. I have to remind myself that Italy offers many things, including foods, that America does not. They also don't really celebrate Halloween, so I'm working on a celebration of my own and hope to get my roommates involved.
30 September 2005
Italy Strikes Back
Last Monday I met with a manager at the school that trained me, Interlingue. She has a contract with the Ministry of Defense to send them teachers, and she wanted me to work there full-time teaching English to the Italian army, essentially. I took the job and signed a contract on Wednesday. I still have a copy of this contract.
I come from Ann Arbor. It's a cynical little town, but not in the way big cities seem to be. If you sign a contract with somebody, it fucking means something. It's an agreement that my employer will hire me and I won't just get another job and not show up.
This Monday, I went in to Interlingue to pick up my schedule. My boss showed up 20 minutes late for our appointment and told me that the Ministry pulled 5 of my 10 students, so she had given the remaining 5 to other teachers. Thus, I had no job. She told me to start looking again, "but don't wait too long -- places will fill up shortly, but this is the perfect time to be looking."
Every day of this week I have spent several hours visiting schools and handing them my CV. One third of the schools on my list don't even exist (the only website that lists schools is a few years out of date). Another third of the schools say outright that they're full already -- "If only you'd come last week..." Ah, the irony. The other third of the schools I've applied to said they would call me back and never did, or would call me when they knew how many students they have, which hasn't happened yet, I guess.
I'm hungry, exhausted, and my feet hurt. I don't know how much more of this crap I can put up with. Every step of the way, my experience in this country has been nothing but one lie, scheme, cheat, or screw-over after another. I was originally going to post a lengthy entry about the Postage system here, which was also an adventure. But the severity of my current situation makes it hard for me to look back on that one with much interest.
I may not be able to find a job by mid-October, which would put me on a fast track to debt and make it nigh impossible to catch up with my financial burdens in time to lead a normal lifestyle here. If that happens, sad as it is, I may come home. The expense of doing all this over again from scratch somewhere else in Europe is too risky for me to pull off at this point. At the beginning of September, had I known what I was getting into, I may have done that. But now it's too late.
16 September 2005
A new pattern has turned up. In my last message I mentioned that I make no attempts to hide the fact that I'm American. Often now, though, Europeans call my nationality into question. I've been told I "look European" a few times; that I'm "an atypical American"; and one person in a night club said "You know what? I don't think you're really American!"
I don't know what to make of this. It's true, I'm a pretty unusual fellow.
In other news, I made a personal zoological discovery the other day. I've long been aware of the mosquitoes here being large, black and white, and more powerful than their American counterparts. I thought that was just because of the warm climate. But, the truth is that these are a special kind of mosquito. They're the Asian Tiger Mosquito, and they're an invasive species that is spreading all over the world now. They're much more aggressive and evil, it takes them less time to get your blood out from the moment they land, and their bites leave huge red welts that last for days. Horrible little bastards, eh? Now I have the pleasure of knowing I've contributed my delicious blood to their cause.
People here have some interesting strategies for resisting mosquito bites. To avoid using chemical repellants, they will:
- Rub a lemon slice over their skin much as you would sunscreen
- Eat garlic -- it supposedly makes your blood/skin less desirable (and your breath)
- I've heard taking Thiamin or B Vitamins regularly gives your skin naturally mosquito-repellant qualities
So there you have it. The houseflies here, too, are unreal. You know that old Vincent Price movie, The Fly? That picture on the box -- that's an Italian housefly. Some of them get so big they even pass for human beings and can find lucrative careers as landlords.
4 September 2005
Estremi
Finding an apartment here isn't like in the USA. Landlords don't let you just sign a lease and take an apartment when you walk in. They want to keep their options open, shop around for tenants, until they find someone Italian or rich or whatever. I've only found two housing classifieds, one in a biweekly newspaper printed in Italian, and a website for young English-speaking professionals looking for roommates, which isn't worth spit.
I'm not sleeping, I'm incontinent, I feel like I'm wasting away underneath this stress. It's a big thing for someone who has spent his whole life in a relatively small American town to put himself in one of the world's biggest and oldest cities, in a country where English is not the main language, and where he doesn't know anybody. I've been building my own network of friends and connections from scratch, hunting out jobs and places to live all on my own, picking up the language and learning how to call and negotiate with landlords in Italian without lessons or anybody to hold my hand when I fumble or get screwed and say, "It's okay, you're trying and that's what matters." I can do this, but there are time limits.
24 August 2005
Almost There...
I've completed my week-long trip around Italy's thigh and am now in Rome. Here's a quick summary of the journey.
San Gimignano was a tourist trap in every sense of the word. The only problem is, the countryside there was so idyllic that the town is almost really worth a day stop, especially at a point in a journey when you need to rest and recuperate. There's almost nothing to do in the town except walk around and spend money, but there's a great cheap campsite a mile down the road where you can live like a king for 19 euro a night.
Siena is a great little town, it feels very authentic and old-fashioned and full of character.
Florence is pretty neat but I wouldn't want to live there. It's very cosmopolitan and artistically oriented, and like San Gimignano, everything costs a bunch of money. It's a good place to spend a few days in, slowly wandering around and learning the lay of the land while looking at only one or two museums a day.
Bologna was a ghost town when I went there, at the peak of its holiday season. All the people and students were gone, so nothing was open and there was nothing to do except walk around and sweat. But it is a very pretty place, and feels like a Midwestern, Ann Arbor-esque place with a lot of maple trees and parks.
Right now I'm leaning toward living in Rome for this year/semester. A second trip to Bologna to live there while I look for work and accommodation (while also deciding whether I want to live there) is just a little too much of a mouthful for me at this time, while I know I love Rome and would enjoy myself living here for a long period of time.
I need to find a job and an apartment, and while neither should be especially hard to find, I have to wait until places of work reopen. This lag period is very irritating; it's costing me a lot of money and I don't have much to do while I wait except look at all the places I want to apply to and other housekeeping types of errands. Last week's trip was extremely exhausting and my roommates seem anxious to have me out of their apartment, which isn't making me feel any more at ease.
13 August 2005
TEFL ended 2 days ago. I hope to keep in touch with the people from the class for as long as possible, especially while some of us remain in Europe. Many of them went home to America or Britain, which was disappointing for me, but everyone in the class had their own reason for being here, after all. I've gotten over most of my home-sickness and now all I can feel is this desire to inhale everything I can of Italy and Europe. I want to hold on to my place here and see it all, while I'm young and I still have the flexibility in my life. Many of my classmates, and other Americans I've met here, are older than me and even in their 30s, and they all tell me how jealous they are that I'm doing this now, at 22, and not after I've had a chance to find a girlfriend or a career or anything else to tie me to one place. It took me a month of living here to realize they're right.
1 August 2005
I've been here for two weeks now, and it's been a pretty mixed experience. I'm beginning to feel a little homesick for America, but it's not the kind of home-sickness you might expect. Rome is a lot like northern Florida, and I miss the Midwestern environment in which I have spent my whole life. I miss turkey sandwiches, and I miss cheeseburgers (I won't even go near a McDonalds here). I miss my friends and family the most. It gets very lonely in a country where no one has English for a first language. Even when I want to, I can't really interact with everyday people. I have to wait for parties or other social situations where I'm with Italian people my age, who are friends with people I know, who are down for repeating themselves a million times to me and listening to me massacre their language.
Speaking of which, I've been asked lately how well I'm picking it up. It's very slow going. Had I lived with all Italian-only roommates and only been able to speak Italian in general, I might almost be fluent by now. But it's like a game here, fooling people into thinking you're Italian so they won't speak to you in English. I feel like a spy -- a lot of people here hate Americans and it makes me miserable when they figure it out and start treating me rudely. So I must learn to blend in.
Some things I don't miss: the tomatoes, the milk, ice cream, pizza, butter, parmesan (I miss cheddar though). I've become addicted to gelato in spite of my initial disappointment with it. It really is a lot better than American ice cream, although there are good flavors over there they don't have here and vice versa.
When it comes to employment, I'm guaranteed to get a job, at least in Rome. Apparently when you're hired to teach English, you essentially start within the week. You also have to apply in person. So, I could easily wait until September to look for a job and pick something up right away. That's if I want to look outside of Rome for work, which I'm not sure if I have the time or money to do. But I'll look into that soon.
Italy is closed between 1pm and 5pm. Italy is closed on Sundays. Italy is closed for the month of August. Which makes August travel appealing and logical. The question is, how far and how many places can I afford to go?
21 July 2005
Lately I've been having some very strange, unpleasant dreams. Yesterday I dreamt someone had been turned into a pizza and could only speak to me, and I tried to escort him to a place where he could undo the spell, or whatever. I lost track of the pizza and I guess it got eaten. Last night I had a mild nightmare about a serial killer. My roommate said the pizza symbolized my identity, caught between American and Italian. I thought that was pretty funny, but he had a point.
18 July 2005
First days in Italy
I heard so many stories from people about how everyone in Europe is fluent in English and all they do is sit around drinking vino, I was quite pleased to find that untrue. It's arrogant and ignorant to just walk up to someone here and throw English at them and wait for them to figure it out. Even if you speak terrible Italian you can generally get around. Right now I'm in an internet cafe with a pack of spoiled American girls who just marched in and started whining at the clerk in English in tones that are rude even in the U.S. Of course, it's not easy to cross the language barrier and become fluent. I've been very disappointed in myself -- today I bought some allergy pills at a pharmacy and it did not go well. It is much harder to listen and understand when spoken to than it is to get across your own thoughts or needs.
14 July 2005
My Last Night in Ann Arbor and the USA
It's 4:00 AM right now. This week has been nuts and sad. My flight leaves in about 14 hours, at 6:30 PM. There's still a lot to do before then.
Unfortunately, because I won't have my own computer for the next 6 weeks or so, I may not be able to post any pictures (though I will take quite a few in the meantime). So there will suspiciously remain no pictures of me with my recent haircut. I want to say a temporary good-bye and wish everyone the best.
8 July 2005
Today marks a major event for me, although it has little relevance in the grand scheme of things. I got a haircut for the first time in 5 years.
My haircuts have been by my own hand since I was 15 years old (except for my senior portrait 5 years ago, when my parents insisted). This is a frequently misunderstood thing about me. I've always gotten a lot of compliments on my haircuts, and most people can't tell I do it myself. When I say so, though, they usually cringe or utter a disappointed "oh." I'm often accused of cutting my own hair only out of stinginess -- because I supposedly mind paying $15 a month (or whatever the rates are, that's what I paid today, anyway) for something as necessary as a haircut. I thought I could do a good enough job to get away with it. But it doesn't matter now whether or not I did, does it? It felt good and empowering and I learned a lot about how I like to look.
The difference, I think, is subtle but important. In 7 years I've gotten pretty good about doing the deed, but even with all that experience I can't do a professional job. I slowly realized that this morning as my friend from Gratzi (who also works at Aveda) worked her magic. She has more fancy tools and expertise than I could ever have and still call myself a guy. When I look in the mirror I can tell my hair has been cut by a pro, and that I didn't spend an hour with a trimmer, scissors, and two mirrors in my dad's basement.
For the record, I was nervous as hell about this. I've gotten so used to cutting my own hair that it felt quite alien to pay for it and to be in a beauty hub getting groomed. If my friend hadn't invited me, this would never have happened. I didn't feel much better when I entered to find a bunch of pretty-boys with crazy, bottle-of-gel hairstyles working there -- I like my hair to look as if I just walked out of The Sandlot. But Sarah did a great job; I gotta hand it to her. I just may be converted.
7 July 2005
Goodbye Gratzi
Last night was my last shift at Gratzi. My feelings about that place and its employees have been mixed during my 3-year gig. My shy, soft-spoken nature did not mix well with the restaurant atmosphere. People I initially hit it off with often gave up on talking to me after a while, probably because during school I only worked once or twice a week. It was very hard to create lasting friendships, which has long depressed me and caused resentment toward Gratzi.
Some coworkers have rubbed me the wrong way and some have been revoltingly fake, which has made it challenging for me to enjoy my job. I consistently had a crush on at least one girl there, usually several at once, and whenever I acted on those feelings it came to nothing at best or, worse, created awkwardness and distanced me even more from people. Sometimes I thought of the job as some subtle, insidious torture designed specially for me. At times I openly hated Gratzi so much that my anger at the restaurant was all that kept me working there, much like finishing an insipid movie or book only to marvel at how much it can tick you off.
But there have been numerous coworkers who I liked and who maintained their friendship with me in spite of my scarcity and in spite of how difficult it is for me to show people how much I appreciate them. The more I think on it, the more I realize that these folks and the laughs I've shared with them far outnumber the unpleasant people and experiences I've faced at Gratzi. My shyness (and possibly other qualities of mine) tends to make others think I don't give a damn about anybody but myself. But the aforementioned people mean quite a lot to me. It's always been a very sad time for me watching them come and go, and now it's my turn to move on. I didn't realize until last night how much I would miss the people I'm leaving behind. Hopefully, though, they'll keep in touch. I certainly will.
25 June 2005
Sometimes, life is too f'ing complicated.
Lately, I'm disappointed in myself regarding women. My departure has been set in stone since February, and I've not once been able to stop thinking about girls and getting crushes.
I have to be honest with myself, though: I get crushes on the wrong girls. There's a certain type of girl I always meet: the girl who's very shy and quiet, but when I make the effort to talk to her and be friendly, she opens up and seems to really like me. This stuff drives me out of my mind. The trouble is, 9/10 times those girls are shy and quiet because they have boyfriends.
The right kind of girls, who bring out the best in me and make me feel good, are the ones who are engaging and interested in me right off the bat, who take the initiative to get to know me. They're usually really awesome and even very attractive, but something about their style just doesn't get under my skin the way I like. I don't know how to fix this. Am I like this because of some inborn quality, or because of the various unusual circumstances I grew up in?
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