Retro Parade

i was rooting through the basement and had a typical postmodern family moment - i found a crapload of boxes of old Kodachrome slides that my grandmother had taken in her travels throughout Europe in the 1970s. they provide an interesting glimpse into the continental life of that decade and how it looked pretty much the same as (a) the 1970s everywhere else (as in ridiculous hair and clothing) and (b) Italy and Europe of today.

Some things, thankfully, never change - such as fully stocked bars


of course, i had to drag out the slide projector and screen from the basement as well, and subject my family to an impromptu viewing of mostly blackened slides, where you can tell the difference in the year from my grandmother's well-coifed hairdos. but though everyone was chomping at the bit to toss the treasures in the trash, when the finished project arrived on flickr the nay-sayers were overly satisfied. though it was a complete pain in the ass. but worth it.















the sun sets on a very brown and yellow decade


This post is a recit personnel.

portrait of an all star running back

photo sharing">
portrait of an all star running back
Originally uploaded by stardove07.

went to VA this weekend for some much-needed R&R. we were gonna go camping but it was cold as balls. so instead we made a fire in Alexandria and drank homemade NC moonshine and watched japanese cartoons. then we ate our wheaties and hit the gridiron and pounded each other like men.

grunt.





This post is a recit personnel.

Fainting Goats

what's with the bastard opening the umbrella?



This post is inane absurdist nonsense. Go YouTube!

scary scary

so, a friend of mine sent me this stupid little halloween video that is a scary sort of fucked up joke. in a sort of self-possessed rage i sent it to basically everyone in my address book who i didn't think had a serious heart condition.

i won't post it here because i don't want to be responsible for scaring the shit out of anybody else, but i think some of the responses i got were funny as hell, so i'm pasting them below. no names, you know who you are.

• dammit
  i knew it was going to be a trick, but it still scared the shit out of me
  
• oh my god, heart attack. you suck. jesus. heart attack. hahahaha. jesus.
  
• that scared the shit out of me, you bastard. i actually jumped and ripped off my headphones.
  
• I now live to seek revenge on your ass!!!
  
• That's just cruel, Davide. I was on the phone and jumped a mile high! Of course, I sent it to everyone I know!
• it's quite past halloween, but i just opened it, and i wanted to tell you that you're a bastard. that scared the crap out of me.
  
  

i hate fox news

tell it like it is. i don't care who you work for, you're talking to the former fucking president.

This post is a bitch du jour.




This post is a political tirade.

from the homeland of hitler to the city of I dont give a damn

here is a quick comparison of Vienna to Rome.

trains from airport to city centre
Vienna: walk around the corner from where you get your bag and down a set of stairs. very explicit instructions on buying ticket from a machine. train comes every 15 minutes and takes exactly 16 minutes to arrive at the hub of the metro system.

Rome: walk 9/10 of a mile from the baggage claim (without having to show anything at customs apparently including your passport) and choose the correct one of 3 machines to buy a ticket. if you dont happen to know that Roma Termini is the central station of the city, you are screwed, because there is also Roma Tiburtina, Roma Trastevere, and 3 other stations called Roma. once you buy the ticket you must validate it even though no one will ever check it or take it from you. the trains come about once an hour and take 45 minutes to get in the city. there is no air conditioning and you will not get a seat because yes, everyone else missed the last train, just like you. once you arrive you will be dropped off 15 minutes from the actual entrance to the station in the shittiest neighborhood in the entire city.

four star hotel
Vienna: balcony, marble bathtub, free breakfast and wireless internet, pleasant staff, air conditioning.

Rome: hair dryer.
hair dryer will not shut off.
hair dryer will heat your unairconditioned, tiny room to about 500 degrees.
friendly staff only if you are italian. shared internet on a 10 year old computer inside a former vatican war conference room. free breakfast at 6 AM.

i do not like rome. i am leaving rome tomorrow to go to the countryside where people will cook for me. yay.


This post is a bitch du jour.



This post is philosophical and introspective-y.

OVERCOME ME

OVERCOME ME
Originally uploaded by kwerfeldein.

this post is a bitch du jour. Well, kind of.

does germany really look like this?

israel must be stopped.

i have been quiet on here for too long now. i must deviate from the traditional bitching about my job or posting random bits of procrastination to make a political tirade.

there is way too much dying going on.

it's been twelve days of nonstop fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. i didn't feel confident commenting on the situation until i had studied it in some detail, but now that i have, a word is due.

by killing a bunch of israeli soldiers on routine patrol and kidnapping a few others, hezbollah has managed to pinprick arguably the world's most unstable nuclear power (or, that in the most unstable region) to the brink of a two-front war that cannot be won. first point - nice going, hezbollah. you pissed one of the most militarily powerful nations on earth, and there is a shabby fellow in office who has no military stars on his belt and who is just itching to blow shit up to prove that he's mighty when it comes to security (sound familiar america?) now israel has retaliated by destroying lebanon, a third party to this conflict that just fucking happens to be occupied by more than just Hezbollah!!!! HELLO!!!

anyway it's less than two weeks and we have several hundred civilian casualties and no goddamn end in sight. of course more people are dying in lebanon than in israel. and gosh darn it, these random, sporadic wars have done a lot of good, killing some threatening little buggers like this:

granted this is a complicated situation. hezbollah, which israel identifies as "terrorists" along with the USA, is actually a political party in lebanon with a military wing, sort of like sinn fein in ireland. the lebanese army doesn't go near southern lebanon; hezbollah is in charge down there. the lebanese government is weak and can't stand up to hezbollah, which many people view as defending their southern border from israeli occupation, which seems to happen anyway.

my take is that we need to avoid taking sides and swoop in to keep the peace. this conflict has the unruly potential to escalate to cataclysmic proportions, especially if iran is feeding Hezbollah chemical agents and Israel is revving up the engine on a nuclear warhead. all parties involved need to be drawn into multiparty talks (which never happened in the first place) to sort out a compromise. lebanon has to grow some balls and shut down hezbollah's militia so they are in compliance with international law. and somebody needs to tell john fucking bolton to dye his mustache the same colour as his hair, or not to dye it at all.







jackass -->











This post is a political tirade. Bitchin'.

C is for Cookie

i haven't actually seen this real movie yet, but this is just to bizarre to ignore.




this post is inane absurdist nonsense.

it is what it is

this is a phrase that i have heard almost daily since moving to new york city. i am uncertain as to the etymological origins of this phrase, but to me it seems to be a general (un?)reaction to the multifaceted nature of everyday events in one of the busiest and most distracting places on the planet. sort of like a "che sara', sara'" with a bit of manhattan "i don't have time for this" disdain and brooklyn "fuhgedaboudit" apathy. the latter phrase is heard pretty much ubiquitously in this neighborhood as well.

well there's always this to remember




yeah, well, thanks jesus.



This post is philosophical and introspective-y-ish.

looking for home in brooklyn

it has been so long since i have last written, and as i look upon my last entry i realised that i was probably too hard on the establishment (is that possible?) i do not have it quite so bad as the superfriends do, even though it may feel that way sometimes. but they prove what i have come to learn, which is that even fighting the bad guys can be pretty dreary sometimes.

adjusting to new york has been a gradual and consistently difficult process made easier by my loveliest of company here but also difficult by my separation from people who i had close to me for such a long time. especially on windy and quiet nights like this one, i think of the first brisk autumn evenings we had on my porch in virginia drinking beer and watching the moon wax higher and redder. in the spring i remember going to the steps of the rotunda and holding our heads upside down to switch the starry sky with the green grass beneath it in our minds' eyes. you can always take those memories with you; they stay in your heart for as long as you'll have them. but it's impossible to impart them exactly to others you meet.

new york city life is an adjustment, but brooklyn is the happiest of mediums. it feels more like philly home, though the omnipresent traffic and black spots on the sidewalks remind you of the urban jungle gym which entraps you. but i can cruise around on my bike to local markets sporting the best and cheapest NY has to offer its hungry denizens. i can easily affix myself to either the hipster neighborhood to the west or the authentic Italian bastion to the east, where i have befriended longtime residents and neighborhood fixtures, like the two old guys from salerno who make the biggest and best ovoline di mozzarella i've tasted in the states. i've pretty much shunned the trendy "cafes" all around frequented by waify black jean-clad wannabe rockstars in favour of the pasticceria where i garnish more than a few stares from the old paesani, who warm up a bit when i reach over and insist to the girl behind the bar that i want a macchiato ristretto senza zucchero. it helps to know people. even the "Brooklynese" mass at the church across the street helps brighten my day.

went out for a crazy japanese meal the other night where our host was a japanese guy named Sonny who wore this purple sharkskin suit with blue paint streaks all over it and a glitter bowtie, and had spiky hair and a moustache. he actually looked like a neo-glam Asian fusion Sonny Bono and i wanted him to break out and sing I got you babe-san. anyway i ate like a school of raw fish and afterwards -- or rather in the middle -- i felt like this:


This post is philosophical and introspective-y.

take this job and...

only the superfriends can tell how i feel sometimes.

livin it up at the hotel california

i always loved palm trees. i never thought i'd be scared of palm trees. then i came to san diego.

this is a city of abundant good weather. it is also for all intensive purposes a cultural wasteland.

but, the people are swell! especially those of the cooking and coffee drinking persuasion.

in san diego there are no clouds. there are also very few genuine breasts.

they have neon signs over the gateway of every neighborhood. i think instead of using the names they should give the neighborhoods epitaphs. e.g., "the gay one," "the dangerous one," "the drunk one," "the really drunk one," "the [insert minority here] one(s)."


This post is a recit personnel.



This post is philosophical and introspective-y. Except the part about breasts.

isn't global warming fantastic?

i think we have done the weather gods some terrible offense since they can't seem to figure out what to bestow upon us. yesterday i went running and had to take off my shirt since i got so warm. today the arctic wind is seeping in through our closed windows. anyway, here are some "telefotos" from an unseasonably warm day in washington.


This post is a bitch du jour. Duh.

grace

there is a woman who works at my office, across the hall from me. she is small and thin and advanced in years. the office she works in is chaotic and often filled with voracious banter. it's not unique - everyone around here complains. yet she always remains quiet and composed. she is mellow and sweet, like almonds swimming in honey. i have never seen her angry, nor complaining, and she has only the most quieting effect on everyone she passes. she would wish well on the devil himself.

yesterday i almost murdered the copier. i had my leg fully cocked and was about to kick my foot into oblivion when she strolled in and smiled and said, "boy, they're keepin' you busy." all i could do was smile, embarassed at the futility of my situation and enchanted by her becalming demeanor.

one day i found out her only son was shot dead by drug related gang gunfire.

i guess, for the least fortunate, with tragedy, grace remains.



This post is philosophical and introspective-y.




This post is also a bitch du jour.

i will be there when you die

returning from japan to new york city is a bit of a reverse culture shock. you go from a country where everyone apologizes, says excuse me, then apologizes again to a city that doesn't give a shit if you're dead or alive. from an immaculately clean subway where nobody talks on the phone to a dingy, piss-riddled mudhole full of self important idealogues and sex-in-the-city divas.

it's funny how things can seem annoying when
you are immersed in them, only for you to miss them when they are gone. even if the excess of politeness does indeed bemoan its disingenuity.

anyway, i am super-jet lagged and it's more about missing the company than anything else. more can be found at my photoblog.






























we visited tokyo, kyoto, osaka, and nara. some highlights included ringing the temple bells on new year's eve, eating fresh hot green tea flavoured machi, downing sake with dissident young locals, getting a heating patch from drunk japanese chicks, arriving at a zen garden after wandering down a highway just as it closes, a lot of empty stares and overwhelming cuteness ad nauseam, cheapass cell phones, most excellent food (including japanese pizza and octopus pancakes), matcha, japanese pajamas, and visiting the oldest Buddhist temple in japan and largest wooden building (and bronze Buddha) in the world.


This post is philosophical and introspective-y.




This post is a personal receipt.