Category: General

I was digging around the archives of my computer and came across a bunch of poetry I wrote in the 1990s.  Some of it is cringe-inducingly bad.  Several have not aged well, particularly my "cyber" series.  But a few stand out as interesting at least to me for various reasons.  They all remind me of…

I love these kind of community policing / shaming techniques people employ in New York.  I have some insanely noisy neighbors in the building next to me, who I have been incapable of convincing to turn down the music after, say, 2am on weeknight.  I hope the folks on Elizabeth street had better luck than…

Lots of people would kill to be featured in The New Yorker.  Cheryl Horsfall simply had to die. My lovely and witty friend Cheryl was recently profiled in the "Talk of the Town" section of this week’s New Yorker for not being dead.  Apparently, in some Brazil-esque bureaucratic snafu the New York state government decided…

Here is a brief video of my birthday jam at a swing dance on July 6. Birthday jams are a tradition of various social dance communities, including salsa, West Coast Swing and lindy hop. It’s a very sweet way of celebrating someone’s birthday where a bunch of people line up to dance with the birthday…

Can anyone on the series of tubes of the internet explain to me what this sign means?  If you are colonizing the Philippines, I’d like a piece of the action. Thanks. (Spotted on the R train a couple of weeks ago.)

I just got home from seeing the Macy’s fireworks display for the 4th of July. My roommate and I found the perfect vantage point near the end of the South Street Seaport. It was an awesome spectacle witnessed by thousands of New Yorkers crowded around the East River. Few things in this world make me…

Last night was some geek goodness at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theater.  The machinima-powered comedy team Ill Clan teamed up with the folk music star of the blogosphere Jonathan Coulton to perform live last night at UCB’s midtown theater space.  Seeing Ill Clan perform their "Trash Talk" show live was pretty cool. The virtual characters…

Hanging out at Cindy’s place in mid-town, I peeked out the window and saw what looked like a little hawk standing motionless on the sidewalk. We headed out to check on the little guy, just as a small crowd was gathering around him. We debated about what we should do. Someone tried calling 311. Cindy…

I got a call this morning from the Citibank fraud prevention unit about some odd charges to my Mastercard.  I cleared that up in short order with one of their telephone reps, assuring me that my identity was not being stolen.  Been there, done that, got the bad credit report to show for it. As…