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I think if cavemen were brought back through time, to the present, they would be most amazed by airplanes. What a complete reversal of what they held to be true, assuming they held anything to be true besides food=good and tiger=bad. Come to think of it, they'd probably be pretty floored by just about everything, good chance they'd have a heart attack right off. So, let's say a guy from ancient Greece. They were thinking, walking upright, wore robes. They had wheels, gay baths, brutal killings for sport, philosophers. They could probably come to terms with big cities, highways and pay-per-view pretty quickly; it's all just an extrapolation of what they had already invented or adopted. But airplanes? I think they'd blow their minds. They might have even thought of flying like a bird, but shit, I've never heard of a bird that could go from Athens to Constantinople in 75 minutes. They would freak out sitting on a rooftop in Brooklyn, watching the endless parade of jetliners from every direction. The steady, bright one is a star, or maybe a planet, but the rest are moving, fast.

I've rarely seen a sunset so beautiful as tonight's. I took some photos, but I'm convinced that it's not possible to capture the true colors in a photograph. I hope it never is. The photos look washed out or falsely iridescent, even though the real thing was more iridescent than even that, more than you can imagine, and I like it that way. Maybe the photos hint at it, or help in remembering, but they can't really capture it. Not "word for word".

What is it about sunsets and overtures that stirs something so unusual, but so familiar? Is it common, or is it just me, just now? Is that god? I could see how someone would take such feelings and run with them. Tell their friends and family, and they told theirs, and people were down on their luck then, and presto, buddhism.

The clouds seem to congregate at the western horizon, following the sun down. There are no other clouds in the sky, it's like sitting under a technicolor tv weather map, watching the front sail right by. As the clouds get closer to the sun, they seem to catch fire, from the bottom up, until they become a curved line of lavender smoke.

I'm sick today, came home from work early and went to see Men in Black II. A silly movie, in a way, but perspective-nudging too, which I think is why I liked the first one. I can forgive a lot of problems with a film if it makes me think. I sorted my toolbox, which felt like a particularly manly thing to do, and I got a particularly manly kind of satisfaction from it. It reminded me of the beginning of Amelie, which I saw again the other day. Amelie's father is described as loving to take everything out of his toolbox, clean it, and put it all back. Her mother is described the same way, but with her purse standing in for the toolbox. It's one of my favorite movies, added to the short list. I love the style, the look, the message, everything about it. It's the french Harold & Maude.

I'm glad I came home early today, I feel sick, but not necessarily bad. It's good to feel different than usual. Being completely congested with a slight headache, especially in this insufferable heat, has shaken me up a little bit, and that's always welcomed.

Bugs fixed.. Thanks to everyone who tried it out on their Macs for me, it turned out, for those of you interested in such things, that Mac IE 5 doesn't like images to have align="middle", though that's been a standard tag for years. So I took them out, and there ya go.

I also removed the stylesheet switching code because it seemed to be causing some problems. As I was taking it out, I realized that it probably wasn't the code that caused the problems, but me, because I put it in the wrong place. But I took it out anyway. Orange was the overwhelming favorite, and I'd like to come up with some more diverse designs before I go off half-cocked stylesheet-a-switchin'.

Oh, one more technical note: As usual, whenever I make any changes to coredump, my random quote thing on the home page is broken. It's a pretty crappy script, obviously, not very flexible at all. I don't think I'll fix it tonight though, it's too damn hot.

Went to a Mets game on Sunday in the stiffling heat with Sonja (Son-butt-ja to her friends). We had field box seats, about 40 feet from the field, so that was fun. The differences between a Mets game and a Yankee game (this was my first Mets game) were many. This felt like a minor-league game, just in a big ballpark. Jets fly over at about 1000 feet constantly, the announcer sounds like he's on qualludes, and the mascot has a giant baseball head. The Yankees are too stoic to even have a mascot. It was also Jewish Heritage Day, so the baseball-head-guy ("Mr. Met"), did traditional Jewish dances on top of the dugout. I tell ya, my Jewish side was moved. What a tribute to our heritage.

Baseball games and other weekend touristy activities show a very different side of New York. People are everywhere, and most of them don't look anything like the people you see day to day in the city. They must be from Connecticut. I would say Jersey, but they looked too fancy. Lots of khaki shorts and spotless tennis shoes with those little ankle socks. And the kids were all complaining that the pitchers wouldn't just throw strikes.

I've lost interest in work lately to an unprecedented degree. It's not like before, when I was just bored, or a bit irritated by one thing or another. Lately it's been downright depressing.

I have other interests, I seem to recall.

From "Dog Eat Dog", a new gameshow that we caught the last 10 minutes of tonight:
Question: In terms of land area, what is the largest country in the Americas?" (this question was repeated)
Answer given: Asia.
After the correct answer was revealed, this contestant defended herself by saying, "Well, I don't live there.".

She won $5000.

Notice anything?

Yeah, I redesigned the old coredump. Pretty snazzy, huh? I'm not sure entirely that I like it, the old design had a nice simplicity to it, but I figured for the one year anniversary, a bit of effort was in order. This design is probably the most "professional" I've ever done, I think I paid pretty close attention to detail and it looks pretty slick. I used some techniques I've never used before and I think it came out fairly keen. I think what I'll probably do is create some more designs and make it skinable, like The Mighty Geek, wherefrom I ripped the code to do so.

For example, I couldn't decide if I should make that title bar Orange, or Gray. What do you think? The gray is less frivolous, perhaps, but the orange is maybe too eye-catching; distracting. Obviously this is pathetic example of dynamic stylesheet switching, just changing the title bar color, but it took me so long to finish the first design I didn't have a whole lot of energy for the second. Maybe next weekend.

Oh, I'm also interested in someone checking out the archives page on Mac IE 5. On Liz's computer, that page seems to crash the browser, but I can't understand why. If it does the same thing on other Macs, I'll have to look into it.

Quick one, I'm exhausted.

I think my memory has gotten significantly worse since I started being such a techno-geek-boy. I have all these gadgets; cell phone, pda, various computer software, that do all my remembering for me and I think my capacity for it has gone down. I used to know everyone's phone number, not to mention what I was thinking about just 10 seconds before. Of course, it's possible there are other explanations for my short-term memory loss, and it's also possible that it's not particularly useful to be able to remember random strings of numbers, and it was an ability born of necessity and pushed by technology anyway. Now the technology has advanced to the point where the ability isn't needed anymore. Still, it represents taking the person and their mind out of the loop in a way, and that's possibly disturbing. If you can't tell, I'm of two minds about the whole thing.

Liz and I are going to try to learn sign language. She's doing a video piece on a woman acquaintance, hearing, whose best friend is deaf. She (the woman) learned signing from her friend and they have a very interesting relationship, unique in a lot of ways. But I don't want to spoil the movie.

Anyway, I've always had an interest in learning signing, seems pretty cool, and if we both know it, we can give up on talking about people behind their backs and talk about them right in their faces. I kid, I kid.

It had never occured to me what a boon recent technology has been to deaf people. Things like email, instant messages, and text messaging have completely changed their lives. Some complain that email and the like have replaced the telephone and takes away an element of personal contact in communication, but imagine if the telephone was never useful to you at all. Suddenly the entire world is opened up, they can communicate easily with their friends anytime. Liz described how they sat in a room, one on a computer and the other using a wireless text messaging device (a Blackberry or one of those Motorola things), chatting away the way best friends normally would on the phone or even face to face.

Our volleyball season started up again tonight, and we won 2 out of 3 games. It was fun to play indoors again, it's a very different game, and especially cool to see what a difference playing on the beach has made in my (and Liz and Luke's) playing. Mostly, it's just a lot easier to play indoors. You can move so fast.

Several recent milestones:

July 19 -- 3 years since I've had a cigarette.
July 17 or thereabouts -- 3 years since Oxygen bought Intype and along with it, me.
July 11 -- 1 year of pretty consistent blogging. How about that.

I'm not sure any of these deserve a celebration, some perhaps a wake, but let them be noted here, for the record.

Speaking of healthy relationships, I was just watching a little Blind Date, after fulfilling my patriotic duty by eating this pizza (god bless pizza), and I know there are those that will argue with me here, but I really think that show, and Shipmates too, is remarkable. It's far better than your Rickis and your Nay-Nays and your Jenny Jesse Raphae-raldos, because these don't even remotely pretend to be serious. It's all completely tongue in cheek, but that's what makes it so nice. 90% of the people on the show appear to be these people who will do absolutely anything to get on teevee. They'll seriously do anything. Lately the shows have been getting really pretty pornographic, I don't even know if they'd show this stuff on Cinemax.

After a seemingly brain-damaged sex kitten (she said twice, apparently trying to construct a compliment, I'm not kidding, "on a scale of 1 to 10; 1 being the best, 10 being the worst, I'd say he was an... 8"), and a perpetually grinning muscle guy had sex on Shipmates, I watched Blind Date. Now I find it very hard to believe that the people you see here, he a living version of Michaelangelo's David, but Austrian, and she some kind of alien creature constructed largely of silicone, would have to go on tv to get dates. In LA. I know I'm stereotyping, but come on. She looks like she's having an orgasm during the pre-date interview.

He said about himself, you have to imagine Arnold Schwartsineggah saying this, "I don't think that I'm a playah, I'm just.. I'm just very sexual." He proved this in the first 5 minutes of the date by telling his date she that "her boobies look huge".

She, on the other hand, loves "men who walk into a room and just think they're the @*#&!"

Anyway, they screwed at least a couple of times.

At the end of the show, they individually describe the date. She said, I'm dead serious, "I'm not really usually a big fan of people from other countries, but the minute his sense of humor and his personality came forward, I was really pleased." It's amazing they could get through all of his... foreignness.

To be fair, he said, "Her breast is... pretty amazing. It's really stunning, like a piece of art."

I won't describe the first date on the show, where a somewhat normal guy (well, relatively), and a she-male went to a Journey concert, but I have both of them on tape. Come over, I'll show you. You won't believe it.

It's really hot again. Soon I'll be in Nova Scotia, where it will probably also be sort of hot. Or maybe cold, and I'll complain about that.

Actually, looks pretty nice up there.

I just finished watching a bit of the 10 O'clock News on Fox. Thankfully, it only takes one partial viewing every 2 or 3 years for me to remind myself not to do that again for a long, long time. Unbelievable.

I made a little blog for the consuelo site to track what I'm working on there. My back is sweating. I think I'll go to law school.

Okay, let's call this a beta.

Presenting, for the first time ever, Consuelo.

Finally, I got a shirt cool enough to be commented on by New Yorkers. I wore my new Frank Zappa t-shirt today, I like it very much, and several people at work commented on it, then two people in a space of 5 minutes on the subway. I have arrived.

Oh, I forgot to close the story on the fasting experiment. (See what I'm reduced to? I'm doing pointless experiments on my own body to pass the time.) I didn't eat for about 40 hours, felt fine and considered continuing for another day or so, but I relented and had steak and eggs for lunch.

Since then I've been eating again, pretty regularly, but not everything was regular for about 3 days after, if ya get my drift. We're back up and running now, though, I'm please to note.

Weeken' Update, Slam-Poetry Style, bitch.

No, sorry, I can't do it. I thought maybe I could, but alas, 'tis not to be. If you could hear me do it, or at least hear it the way it's in my head, it would be cool, but I can't write it on the fly, and I never prepare what to write, or put any forethought into it whatsoever. That's why it's so mind crushingly mundane.

Maybe I can legitimize my laziness by calling it my "style". My "style" is to never think about what I'm going to write before I write it. Never write drafts, never write anything, really, since there are practically no kinds of writing that lend themselves to such completely ridiculous irresponsibility. Blogging is perfect, I can write about discovering that the little creases on the sides of my nose, if you really get in there, smell like my bellybutton.

Oh, also worked, played some volleyball, and went to West Virginia for a music festival with Dave and Cass (and Liz, natch). Photos.

I'd write something good, but I'm too hungry. I haven't had anything to eat (except water and a few pinches of salt) for 23 hours, and I'm a bit woozy. Actually, I don't feel too bad, just hot and light headed. Why not eat? I don't know, I guess I just got tired of eating. Ate a lot this weekend, and I think I'm getting fat.

I read this article today, because Rich called me fat, and I liked it a lot. Very interesting, and fitting with my reading lately, which consists mostly of things that make me ever more distrustful of just about everything. Now I'm going to eat nothing but bacon cheeseburgers (hold the bun). Corner Bistro, here I come. No fries. But I like fries. Damn, there's always a catch.

Fourth of July.. Woo Hoo!! After a particularly slothful half-week, we left for Parsippany Wednesday night. We had to escape the heat. Thursday we helped John and Naomi (Liz's sister and brother-in-law) set up for the party, attended said party, and went to bed. Friday we (Naomi, John, Chris, Gabe (Liz's brothers), us) went out to the Delaware River to do some rafting and kayaking. No whitewater here, just a leisurely float. Unfortunately they forgot to equip us with a follow raft for the cooler so we had to put it right in the raft. We went through half a bag of wine and probably almost a case of beer just in time to arrive at a 30-35 foot high train trestle straddling the river. I'm sure you can imagine what happened next.

Saturday was spent almost entirely indoors, relaxing and... frankly, I don't remember what we did. Walked the dogs.

Sunday we rose early (but not as early as planned) to come back into the city. We parked the Badunkadunk in Brooklyn and headed to Central Park to get in line for Shakespeare in the Park tickets before heading up to the Bronx for a Yankees game. It had been a long time since I'd sat in the hot sun at a ballpark, with the $7 beers, belligerent fans. I loved it. After the game we went back down to the park to see the play, Twelfth Night. The play was very well done and the theater is gorgeous.

The best thing I've got is a Roo story. We took him out to Jersey with us rather than face the prospect of a shit covered apartment on our return. Roo isn't too familiar with cars, the outdoors, or basically anything. He protested a bit in the carrying bag, so we let him out. The Badunk is a big car, he should feel pretty comfortable, right? He freaked out. He made this face the whole time.

Okay, it's not a very good story, but it's a very good face. Gave me the shivers.

Photos:
Fourth of July
Rafting
Yankees
Central Park

Oh boy, it didn't get any colder today. It's pretty much like sitting in an oven. I'm surprised my computer hasn't melted down. I have a large fan blowing a huge amount of very hot air on me, but it just isn't helping. We're leaving tonight for Morristown. Morristown and central air. Aaaaahhhhhh.

These kinds of days do make me feel good in a weird way. They remind me of growing up in Baltimore, of the pool, the cicadas, the pump house. The Pump House was the snack bar at the country club my parents used to belong to. (Thank goodness they quit that years ago, I quickly grew to view the place as vile when I got a bit older.) Anyway, the Pump House was right there next to the pool, and they had grilled cheeses, ice cream, milkshakes, snoballs, pizza, you name it. And of course the best thing was all we had to do was write our membership number and sign our name and it was ours. Will and I used to skateboard up there in weather like this to go swimming and eat free food all day. It was like some kind of elitist racist paradise.

These sweltering days also remind me of Do The Right Thing, especially living in Brooklyn. I started thinking of them as Mother-Sister Days. Mother-Sister is a character in that movie (in case you haven't seen it. you should.), an old matriarch of the block, with a tough attitude. The whole film takes place on an oppressively hot day in Bed-Stuy, and as the sun goes down, she says something like, "Thank god the sun is finally going down." It's a pivotol moment in the movie, and it always seemed to me to be a great depiction of the relief at felt at the end of a day like this. Of course in the movie it's relief at a lot more than the heat backing off a little bit, but you get the idea.

Oh, we saw Minority Report today. I enjoyed it mostly, though I thought a lot of it was pretty predictable. There was one good twist that caught me by surprise, but then everything that followed from the twist was not surprising. Tom Cruise gets on my nerves a bit, too. He always has that look on his face. So ernest, but so tough and uncompromising. Maybe it's because he's so short. He's got that kind of "just because I'm short don't mean I'm not a badass" kind of look.

I'm happy that everyone, including our friends at Court TV, is excited about my project. I wish I could say I made a lot of progress on it in the past day and a half, since I've been home from work, but it's been too hot. I occassionally wander into the computer area and try to do something, but it doesn't last too long. I added a feature or two this afternoon, when I should really be finishing the features that still don't work.

I will say this: It's the biggest, baddest, most unnecessarily long cgi script I've ever seen. But I haven't seen all that many.

Time to blog. It's far far too hot for this, but I have a feeling it'll be this way for a while yet, and at this rate I won't do a single thing until September.

Saturday - Beach Volleyball in Jersey
Sunday - Charity bike ride on Long Island
Monday - Hot as Balls.

I left work early today, wasn't feeling very well, and frankly, I have nothing to do lately. My boss is on vacation for 2 weeks, we have Thursday and Friday off for the 4th of July, and it's too hot to sleep. I also spent almost all of the weekend being all active in the blazing sun. Result: I don't want to do anything. We've been going to a lot of movies. So cool in there.

I'm almost finished with my latest project, at least with the first stage of it. Almost ready to put it together and.. I don't know. What will I do with it then? I guess, what I'm really saying is, Luke can see it soon. Liz has seen it, and I don't think anyone else who would care reads this. So Luke, it's almost ready.

What movie should we see next? Men in Black 2 doesn't start until tomorrow. Anyone seen that Minority Report?