title fight

my dear new orleans,

it's a shame we didn't get to know each other better. i was nearby once, out in the boonies a couple hours away from baton rouge, but i was young and couldn't really make a case for visiting on my own. i would have liked to stroll down your streets, sip coffee and eat cajun shrimp right off the boat. i might've taken a ride up the river on the deck of an old paddle boat. and i would have marvelled at the feats of engineering that kept the dark waters at bay for so long.

just last year, the hand of god seemed to keep the hurricanes at bay, sending them off east and west and saving you for four more glorious seasons. you have a short memory; you flicked your fingers at the near misses, shrugged at the numbers, and believed nature incapable of breaching your boundaries. and you told yourself, this city is great. we can beat anything.

but nature is a feisty woman, and she doesn't take to being dismissed. with not even a direct hit, your houses folded up in the current. your children swim for their lives and now the rescue boats have to ignore the floating dead to tend to the living. i want to help you, to save my brothers and sisters from being washed away by the tides, but your greedy basin won't let the waters recede enough to let me in. this is the earth's revenge, a man-made life crumbling under this great power of wind and water that we can never hope to equal. you will hold your head in your hands, and shake with grief, and wonder how this could happen. but you saw it coming. you met it with open eyes. and you will never, never make this mistake again.

don't worry--this is fleeting. the levees will be rebuilt. the rubble will be cleared. we'll find a way to put the walls back up, and the people who call you home will come back to their houses and saxophones and beignets and risk. maybe you'll take from warsaw and build yourself back exactly as you were, replicating photographs and paintings and memories. or maybe you'll stage a reinvention, making yourself better and stronger and more beautiful than ever. either way, you'll be back, having not been gone so long after all, and only one or two generations will remember the pain of losing and then clawing back up to zero.

i'll miss the thought of you, the potential of what you used to be; i'll mourn the loss of a relationship we never got to develop. and when you feel better, when some of the scars have healed and the bandages have come off, i'll be there, waiting to introduce myself.

get well soon.

all my love,
sai

yo' MoMa

i'd been planning to have a "weekend off" to recover from the busy chaos of the past two weekends, and so far i've succeeded. i got to see bay today for brunch at la rosita before heading down to the new MoMa, which i hadn't managed to visit yet. it's a great building. they've got a new sculpture garden and the whole place feels much more spacious and thought-out. it was crowded, and i wasn't feeling too adventurous, so i stuck to the special exhibitions. after all, i can use my free admission to see the permanent collection on a weekday when it's less hectic.

the photography special exhibit (on the second floor) is about the aftermath of the 1980 mount st. helens eruption. the artist (whose name i don't remember) went to the volcano many times between 1981 and 1991, so the exhibit included some really neat 10-year time lapse shots. there were pictures from inside the crater, and of lava flow, and lots of shots of the dead forest (and its replanting). in one set, the first picture showed a group of hikers on the top of a ridge. the second had no hikers and a chunk cut out of the mountain. apparently there was a landslide that scared the adventurers away and dropped tons of dirt down the slope. the title of the second picture was "ten minutes later."

i also saw the pissaro/cezanne and lee friedlander exhibits on the sixth floor. i got a couple postcards of friendlander works. by then i was getting tired, so i just did a quick browse, stopped in the gift shop, and then hit the road. walking up sixth avenue i found a jamba juice (yum yum) and bought some nice necklaces. since then i've been lazing around the house, cooking chicken, and studying for the lsat. now gone in 60 seconds is on TNT but i think i'm going to turn it off and read instead. i've got a new book by carl hiassen (south florida writer) that's itching to be read. my bookshelf is full now. i need more space to fit all these brains i'm gathering up.

in the family

a conversation, verbatim.

sai: [tells a story about a mother teaching her toddler son to pee in the street]
kevin: that kid's got no chance at life.
sai: and grown men pee in the building!
julian: men? not their dogs?
sai: men. they piss in the elevator shaft. it's disgusting.
gina: they piss on the early shaft?
julian: what? yeah, there's some dude out there pissing all over old richard roundtree movies, screaming, "samuel l. jackson was a way better shaft, motherfucker!"

yes.

teenage wasteland

mara and i used to have the same cellphone. i still have mine - broken antenna and held together by a rubber band - but she's upgraded to something sleeker. when we'd hang out, sometimes i'd steal her old phone and play with the banner, which is one of its coolest features. it's really easy to change the banner text and, since it only shows up when you open the phone and pay attention, it can take a while to notice the difference. mara's name lends itself to fun puns (and we all know how much i LOVE puns) so i had a good time with my banner game. dirty berde. pretty berde. the berde's the worde. i remember once changing the banner to "free as a berde." i think she didn't notice for a while. it made her laugh. and she has one of the best laughs i've ever heard.

who is mara? where is bobby fischer? what is fight club? how many licks DOES it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop? the world may never know.

ask the ayatollah

all you ever cared to know about shia islam at your fingertips!

Q: is it permissible to drink beer that says "alcohol free" on it?
A: it is not permissible to drink, if "beer" means the drink made from barley that causes mild drunkenness. but if it means a drink made from barley that does not cause mild drunkenness, there is no problem in it.

Q: when a woman is in her period, can she have anal intercourse?
A: if wife is consenting to it, it is permissible but it would be extremely abominable.

Q: is oral sex by husband or wife allowed?
A: it is permissible provided no liquid coming out is swallowed.

weekend update

i'm exhausted. i'm not used to having two full weekends in a row, and it doesn't take much for a weekend to qualify as "big" in my book. only the thought of bowling finals today is keeping me going. how is it only 10am? whine whine whine...

so, last weekend mara came into town. i was so happy she decided to stay with me. we rented the sixth season of sex and the city for down times, and of course went to lunch at tomo right when she got in on friday. that night we went to lion's head and hung out with everyone. i got to catch up with matt, who was also in town. we slept in until after noon on saturday and then went to hang around the city. it's so different in the summer. we had brunch and spent an hour trying to tan in the park, got our nails done, and hung around in bath and body works. we met up again after dinner and spent the night in.

sunday was the wedding. it was a rainy day, but there was a lull in the weather long enough to walk downhill from the train to the site and have a ceremony outdoors. it was hard to hear, but still really sweet. once we got under the tent for the reception it started pouring, monsoon-style. i got to have a lovely dance with the groom. they had wedding cupcakes instead of cake, and they played good music. all in all, the wedding suited them to a tee. good luck, kids.

after the wedding we went up to the 70s to hang out. we stumbled into a bar called dive 75, off columbus. it's a pretty neat place. they've got a large stockpile of board games (this couple was hogging the connect four, unfortunately) and comfy couches, and it was pretty empty. we took over a corner, ordered a pizza, and chatted for a couple hours. it was like reliving an ultimate party, in black tie - matt, makiko, eytan, rachel, jieh, mary, and marisa. what a great bunch. mara, rachel, and i decided to head back around 2. we watched a couple satc episodes (rachel was hoping to stay up until her flight). rachel got up at 4 and left. mara got up at 6 and left. and at 9 it was just me, on my way to work like a normal monday. i remember it being a pretty painful day.

my lsat class ended on thursday with a final practice test. gabi and stoops were around this weekend. friday night i met them and mikeliu and sarah and steiner and goose and tao and nicki and ben for movies at steiner's. kung fu hustle - so good. i think i was too tired to properly appreciate spaceballs, but at least now i've seen it. i couldn't really sleep, so i ended up staying awake until 6 watching a terrible movie with ryan phillipe and the actress from meet joe black whose name i can't remember. saturday night was tricia and kelsey's birthday party, which was a lot of fun. i randomly saw abhay and jeff there--it was so nice to see bay again after so long. i went out with them afterwards for a little while before heading home. sunday i went rollerblading in the park and then saw mike and sarah's new place in the bronx. watched the west wing and shaolin soccer - both very good. ordered $5 pizzas from dominoes. yay cheesy bread. stayed up late again. very sleepy. late for training. must go now.

happy humpday

it's been a surprisingly busy summer at work. considering europe is basically closed for the month of august, we've had a fair amount of this-and-that to keep us occupied for most of the time. but i caved into my post-lunch food coma for a minute and did some net surfing and found this one interesting thing, which i'm sharing with you in lieu of anything better.

on SUV guilt courtesy of slate.

that's all you get today.

microcebus lehilahytsara

hello, world.

bang bang

seems that late nights are the only time my cover-letter juices are flowing. by the way, in case you were worried about me, my writing has gotten much better in the past two days. i guess talking about blockage is the best way to get rid of it.

anyway, job 2 and job 3 are now applied for. these three are the ones that really caught my eye. who knows whether i'm at all qualified, or whether they'll want to wait until january for me to start, or whether they're actually boring piece of shit jobs that just sound cool on paper. anyway, it's out of my hands now. more on the horizon, but i probably won't post about it anymore.

tomorrow is my fourth LSAT practice test. after that we have two more days (including another practice test), and then DONE! hooray for no more classes tuesday and thursday evenings. i'll still have to practice on my own for a month, but it shouldn't be too bad. i'll be quite happy once october first is over and done.

i've started going to the gym again. so far it's wednesdays and weekends. i went on sunday for the first time in maybe a month, and i was sore until today, when i went again. i'd forgotten what a great feeling that is--being sore, feeling used. it's nice.

today as i walked down the street after work i had the thought that quitting ultimate was the best decision i made all summer. the quality of my life has improved quite a bit in the last month. it's easier than i thought it'd be, not playing--easy enough, in fact, that most times i don't notice that there's something missing. that's not to say that i'm done with ultimate. rather, i consider this period a much-needed break from the sport and a wise avoidance of an emotionally unhealthy team dynamic that was more trouble than it was worth. i've been to two non-ambush tournaments this summer, poultry days and wildwood, both of which were fun and frustrating. i'd like to go to a couple more, maybe in the fall if the option is there. i'd like to play pickup but please not in the dust bowl. maybe the first tuesday i don't have class i'll trek down to prospect park with corey and pick up with eytan and others. that'd be a nice celebration, probably worth the two hours on the f-train. it's been a while since i took the f. maybe it's time to go back and say hi.

have people stopped posting? there seems to be a sort of hiatus going on. maybe that's just me over-noticing slight drops in post frequency as i squirm at my freezing cold desk for 8 hours a day. work has been pretty slow with occasional frenzies of activity. august is usually a dead month since europe basically closes for business. september is two weeks of budget and then two weeks of vacation (pretty much). the last two months of the year, though, are going to be INsane. in november we have a seminar in kenya (i'm edging my way in there), then an advisory meeting in NY, then thanksgiving, then a conference at yale, then in december we're having another conference (on harm reduction--that'll be fun) and then my boss is going to indonesia and then the year is over and i might be moving. oy christ. when i see it all written down like that, i realize that five months really isn't a lot of time. i guess i should start saying goodbye now.

my work is done. goodnight.

tired of whys

i just applied to my first miami job: sexual health educator at planned parenthood of greater miami. there are three others on my list. but for now, i'm tired, and i'm going to bed.

dude. writing cover letters is harder than i remembered.

cheap

in recent days, there has been no shortage of totally outrageous news. take, for instance, this article in the washington post (a reputable paper, i'm sure you'll agree). i assume there's bias on the part of the reporter toward the judge's ruling and away from rat poison companies. so i can't help but wonder what else was in the statement from the VP of the National Pest Management Association besides "screw your kids, kill the rats!" come on - nothing about wanting to protect against accidental ingestion of a known poison? no voluntary measures the industry is taking to protect consumers? no regret at the fact that their product harms people, disproportionately young children, disproportionately poor young children? (who else would be unsupervised in a house with a rat problem that is protected by pellets of rat poison rather than glue traps or the orkin man?) "consumers will be losers with less effective products" and not a word about safety? no PR person in his right mind would make such a statement. i understand that the journalist wants to make a case, to prove a point, but doesn't she have an obligation to present something that at least makes an attempt at objectivity? the nytimes has a version that's even more partial here.

i'm as outraged as the next person that the administration overturned an evidence-based policy and provided no substitute as an apparent gimme to the pest management industry--is there anyone these guys aren't indebted to? i'm disgusted that the EPA--as usual practice--negotiates with the people it should regulate. but i don't want some journalist deciding how many of the facts she can give me while still keeping my point of view in line with hers. if i want an opinion, i'll read the damn op-eds. i read articles for news. how much does it really cost to add dye to pellets? what is the real change in effectiveness when you add bittering agents to rat poison? what's the difference in cost and is that cost passed onto consumers rather than absorbed by the industry? in other words, where's the real investigation in this article?

(credit to today's papers at slate.com for making me a more critical, and better, consumer of the news.)

oh, fuck the second amendment.

self-protection! bill of rights! self-protection! liberal pussies! self-protection!

JUST. SHUT. UP. it's not worth it.

let it burn, my man.

recently i noticed that a pirated copy of usher's "confessions" cd, complete with chinese translations of song titles, was lying neglected in our dining room. so, of course, i took the opportunity to repirate it onto my ipod. during this process, i looked up the tracklist on cdnow (now amazon, i guess). the featured album review mentioned that many of the songs might have come out of usher's breakup with chili, of TLC fame. this being news to me, i, of course, googled it. my search turned up this gem, excerpts of a telephone interview of usher by some (pretty crappy) rock journalists. so funny. the "????" question had me rolling off my chair laughing. head space? hah.

incidentally, sarah hepola writes for one of my can't-live-without sites, the morning news. if you like fun fiction, check out her series about elisabeth eckleman on TMN. new episodes turn up every couple of weeks, and at the end of each, you get to vote on what happens next! interactivity makes everything better.

lazy fucker

i'm blocked.

i haven't been able to write well for a while now (with the possible exception of my last post). and that includes all the shit i have to write at work--summaries and updates and emails and edits. i actually apologized to my boss when i sent her a draft of a memo she'd asked for. my thoughts get all jumbled up, and even when the ideas are clear in my mind, i can't seem to find the words to put them down so they make sense. anyway, that was a long lame-ass excuse for not posting much recently. no inspiration + no talent + no blogging. that's just the way it's gotta be.

i have a free weekend. on the list of things to get done: clean room, do laundry, go to beach or park, go to gym. maybe see "junebug" at the lincoln plaza theater; it looks like a cute movie. also, i have to apply for some interesting jobs before i miss the deadlines.

those jobs, by the way, are in miami. i've come to the (almost) conclusion that i want to move back home, closer to my family and my old friends and the beach. it'll help me save some money for law school, too (i'm going to have to pay for it sometime). plus, the city is starting to wear on me. there's more that i could say about that, but i won't be able to do my ideas justice right now, and really i'm just tired of typing right now. you'll just have to wait.

mara's coming on friday! halleluja, rejoice: the world is a beautiful place.