Each morning this man stands on First Ave. in San Jose advertising his services. The headline on the placard reads Will Work for Six Figures and includes items like “Just Out of Retirement,” “MBA Degree” and “25 Years Experience in Technology Marketing” along with his email and website address.
Waiting on a friend, I notice a woman with purple hair and a Prada bag who has been handing out pamphlets stop to pray with a man passing by on a busy side street of Chinatown.
Thanks to all the kind folks who provided such warm company in the Bay Area recently. The design community is so wonderful out there.
I’ve been home just long enough to do laundry, to enjoy the detached inspection of each other on the subway, to see the first young lady in shorts sitting outside on her stoop, and suddenly I’m off to Boston. Would anyone like to show me where to get the really good clam chowder?
Just picked up the formerly-taken victorlombardi.com. And no, I didn’t use NetSol to register it.
I find it hard to believe my friends who worked serving ice cream as a teenager could have gotten tired of eating the stuff. But lately I find it difficult to simply relax and enjoy the Internet. I just reflexively unsubscribed from an email newsletter because they had opted me in without my permission. I didn’t bother considering if I liked the content, which I might have. Victor, relax, wait until after closing, until everyone leaves, forget that you’ve been scooping the stuff for hours, make your perfect sundae and close your eyes and let it melt in your mouth.
Jim recently taught me the phrase ‘MoinMoin’ which is a greeting used throughout the day in northern Germany. It’s derived from ‘Guten Morgen’ (‘Good Morning’) which gets shortened to ‘Morgen’ which somehow became ‘Moin.’
Only days later I stumbled upon MoinMoin, a Wiki clone made with Python. They say the name was chosen for its WikiWikiNess.
I received an answer to my can-roosters-fly? question. I’m sure you were all waiting on the edge of your seats for that one.
I won a new copy of Visio 2002 Standard, but can’t use it. Valued at $199, it’s yours for the low low price of $50. Sold.
My first job ever was delivering newspapers (maybe distributing information is a theme in my life?). So I felt a lot of empathy for the delivery guy I noticed out my window this morning. The Sunday New York Times is famous, even among people I know in Europe, for it’s bulk. Its ___ sections and ____ pages cost _____. Spending hours reading it while sipping coffee and eating bagels in a favorite pastime. Anyway, this guy had to double park midway down the block, load up a handtruck full of papers, and roll from building to building carrying a few papers into each building. Not quite the same joy I had riding my bike around the neighborhood tossing papers onto driveways, but his deliveries probably make people quite happy.
I thought it might be gimicky, but upon seeing it – for the first time from Columbus Ave at West 87th St. – I thought it was rather beautiful and majestic. I like the idea that it’s temporary, a tribute and not a momument.
“sechs-sechs-sechs, seiben sechs, seiben sechs” says the female voice over for the phone sex service, the German pronounciation of “6” deliberately punning on the English word “sex”. Late night television in Germany is full of these commericals for phone sex, complete with soft core video. Accordingly, they reflect the German standards of obscenity: nudity on TV is fine.
To an American this is weird, of course, as all manner of churches and parent groups would sooner slit the broadcasters throats than allow soft core on television. So an American might come to the conclusion that pornography, what Americans consider pornography, is alright in Germany.
So one night my German girlfriend and I are in bed in a hotel room. I’m flipping through the channels trying to find something in English that we’ll both understand. I come across the hotel’s pay porn channel playing a sample, hard core this time, and stop a moment to see what the German porn movies are like. She explodes. “What the hell are you doing? That’s pornography!” Uh, um, uh, I quickly change the channel.
It took a few minutes for me to explain myself. I’m thinking “Germans are OK with porn on television” and figure that extends across the whole range of the genre. And Germans are thinking, “A little skin on television is fine, but anything beyond that is pornography!” They don’t erase the line, they just move it a little further out.
My father once told me about when he was a young man, riding the subway from home in the Bronx to the dances in Manhattan. When he would dance with a young woman he would strike up a conversation and ask where she was from. If she lived not-too-far away – the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens – he’d keep dancing. But if the answer involved Brooklyn or Staten Island he’d excuse himself, go to the men’s room, and then search for another dance partner.
My mother was from his neighborhood.
I take for granted the accomplishments of people in the past.
Sometimes I think we have no new ideas, that all our ideas are variations on what came before. Even the language we use came before.
But our variations are new, sparked by the electro-chemistry of other’s brains mixing together inside our heads.
Nikki and Sarah
Andrew