Transformers

Alright, I'll admit that there's a ten year old boy inside me, and no matter how much I may fight it, I still have an overwhelming impulse to see movies based on things from my childhood, like super hero films and the like. But at least I've reached the point where I can usually wait until they've come out on DVD so I can experience my shame in private. And I knew when I rented Transformers 2 from Netflix that I was making a terrible life choice, but I had no idea just how bad an idea this was. All I can say is that I'm less than 15 minutes in and already there has been a flatulent robot.

Michael Bay, if you're reading, I'm embarrassed for both of us.

-TC

Highs and Lows

I came home to New England for the weekend, and I thought I would give a quick rundown on the highs and lows of my day here in small town USA. On the high side, within hours of waking up this morning I had a stranger tell me I was handsome, then had an attractive young woman give me a free cookie in exchange for flashing my winning smile. (I'd like to gloat about how dreamy this sort of thing might suggest me to be, but sadly I don't think that the title of Most Attractive Man in Walpole, New Hampshire is as difficult to attain as one might imagine.)

And on the low side, I went into an empty house and saw my first free-standing urinal in a residential home. Not, I should point out, in a bathroom. Just sitting there off the kitchen. Western Civilization at it's finest.
-TC

Master Race

Today I saw a man walking down the street with a cat sitting on his head, and a very nice homless man informed me that I "ain't no master race, bitch." Or, as we say in New York, it's Monday.
-TC

Yelps

Today I was reading The New York Times, and there was a story about a supreme court case where a man is accused of distributing images of animal cruelty for including scenes of a dogfight in a documentary. As part of his defense, his lawyers counted "at most, 25 seconds containing yelps." Some go to law school for the money, others to fight for social justice. I wonder if these people went in hoping they'd get the chance to sit with a stopwatch so they could stand before the supreme court seriously arguing over exactly how many dog yelps constitute animal cruelty from a legal standpoint. Still, better than being the bankruptcy attorney advertising on the subway.
-TC

Steve Jobs

Being a massive dork, I spent part of the day reading a live blog covering Apple's iPod announcement, once again helmed by Steve Jobs. I'm glad to see that Liver 2.0 seems to have launched without incident.

-TC

Finished

The big project I've been working on for the past two months is finally going in the mail today, which means I can have my social life back at long last. Or, to be more accurate, I can sit at home not talking to anyone again at long last. Living the dream.
-TC

Tompkins Square Park

I like to keep people up to date on teh strangest things I've seen lately. Today I was hanging around Tompkins Square Park with some friends, and of course, being in a public park in New York, we were surrounded by vagrants. One such gentleman was being a bit raucous, shouting things occasionally and hitting the ground with a big stick. But, whatever, that's not atypical New York behavior, so I paid him no mind. After a while, he got up, whipped out his junk as he was walking by, and wandered over to a corner, where he proceeded to urinate on a box. Again, whatever. I mean, you've got to urinate on something, right? But the bit that I found especially unsettling was that when he was finished, he put his hands in said urine and rubbed it all over his face. Then went back to hitting the ground with a stick as though nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred.

My philospy is that if I have to see something, other people need to visualize it. It's only fair.
-TC