Help Save the 5 Pointz

Intermediate-term readers of this blog will already be familiar with the cultural touchstone that is the 5 Pointz building, a mere block or two from the Long Island City tower in Queens, NY, where I work.

Needless to say, this wondrous but not-particularly-profitable space will be torn down and replaced with yet more condos, unless the miraculous happens. Of course, the miraculous is what happens only after all humanly possible alternatives have been exhausted, so to get there we need YOU to exhaust those options and send in the form, available here.

Meanwhile, here's a photo of the place, which is in an old converted school, and which I've seen Eurotourists on the 7 train photographing:

My Post on Dangerous Minds about aid to Oklahoma

Wow. A little firestorm as a result of my Dangerous Minds post about aid to Oklahoma. It's fun.
One great thing about Richard Metzger and the gang at Dangerous Minds is that they really encourage turning the volume up to 11, so to speak. The point of that post isn't to try to prevent them from receiving any Federal aid, but to point out the incredible hypocrisy and, indeed, moral hazard stemming from the way aid has been distributed to such states in the past.

Why weren't the schools equipped with safe rooms? They weren't required to have safe rooms for children because folks don't like the idea of being required to do things by the gubmint. And that's OK, I guess, if they want to live that way, but the flipside of that point of view is that Federal aid should, arguably, stop. Or at the very least it should be tied directly to the creation of tornado-proof housing and safe rooms. Otherwise, we will have participated in murdering future children who were caught in collapsed schools.

As I considered writing the piece, I looked into which impacted OK counties had supported Romney-esque notions about eliminating FEMA. And when I found out that ALL 77 OK COUNTIES voted for Romney, well that's when I decided that it had to be said.

Hey! MORE Tales from the Orbservatory!

Tales from the Orbservatory by the Orb came a few days ago and it is kicking my ass. Meanwhile, they're releasing a second record in a few weeks!
 
Here's a video from the first record...

I'm proud because...

I'm proud because today, when I woke up this morning, the word Fucktocracy popped into my head and was quickly incorporated into my post over on Dangerous Minds, about New Yorker's new Wikileaks-like submission system, Strong Box, built by the late Aaron Swartz.

View of lower Manhattan from Williamsburg

Annoyance TORTURE CAR!

The boy and I have been hatching up a plan to capture the car-burglar in this neighborhood. The burglar gets into unlocked cars and then takes whatever he finds of value. This has been going on for a year or so now.

Well, our plan is to actually put out a car with, like, a $10 bill plainly visible. When the burglar gets into the car, the car then automatically locks him inside and summons the police. As the police (or anyone else, for that matter) arrives to see the trapped burglar, a videogame control emerges from the side of the car. Mashing the controller buttons, the police can set off loud horns inside the car, heat+steam, putrid spraying fluids and so on. In place of the airbag there will of course be a boxing glove, Little Rascals style, that the controller can use to bop the burglar in the chops with. Pretty much anyone can have a go at annoyance-torturing the burglar until the cops have declared enough is enough and open the car to extract the frazzled, putrid furious criminal.

Oh, and need we say that this would all be streamed via live video to the web?

Spire

As a kid my Texan grandfather took me to see them digging the vast foundation for what would be the largest building(s) in the world: The World Trade Center. Years later I would work at a bookstore in the basement or "concourse" of the WTC while in college. And years after that, of course, I'd watch them cleaning up the aftermath of their destruction.
So it's kind of interesting to see this single replacement tower get crowned with this spire today.

The Legend of the Civil Defense Boxes

Over at Dangerous Minds, read my post on Civil Defense boxes and supplies.

On Facebook, my old friend Professor David Sutton (whose house I could walk to from my family apartment in Washington Heights) posted this little beauty in response:

Can you imagine? The whole world has now been obliterated in a nuclear war. Are you really going to worry about trash in your front yard? It's almost like the makers of this were in denial about what they were discussing here.

Pee Wee Marquette at Dangerous Minds

Hey! My piece about Pee Wee Marquette is up over at Dangerous Minds.

The Squid's Answer

If you could communicate with a deep sea creature like, say, a giant squid, and ask the squid, "How do you breathe under all that water?" The squid would most likely answer, "Under all that what?"

May Day Drug Data

As sort of follow-on to my Dangerous Minds post a few days ago, take a look at these statistics on drug fatalities from the Centers for Disease Control:



Do you notice something? Of course, that tiny, almost too-thin-to-see gray layer at the top consists of all those "highly dangerous" and illegal drugs, including pot, LSD, mushrooms and so on. Those are the drugs handled by street dealers and small growers. Smaller businesses, if you will. And despite the extremely low fatality rate (actually, zero with pot), all of these drugs are illegal.
See that green area at the bottom? Those are phamaceuticals, including your oxycontin, vicodin and so on. Those are the drugs made by a handful of world-dominating pharmaceutical giants, headquartered mostly in the US. Those are the drugs that are overwhelmingly killing people. And all of those drugs are legal.
On this fine May Day, are you getting the picture here? If not, let me spell it out for you: It certainly looks like the US FDA, DEA and ATF are acting like gatekeepers to block access to US consumers by small-time growers and dealers, while throwing the door wide open to those manufacturers of powerful, highly addictive prescription drugs. Once again, it looks a hell of a lot like the US government has become a mere shell around giant corporate interests.
You might argue that there's some deep conspiracy here. That the government is in cohoots with the US medical establishment. But it's simpler than that. It's worse than that. Basically the funding model for FDA drug trials doesn't really allow for the FDA to investigate the true harm (and harm-minimizing practices) due to, say, pot (which originate from countless little growers). There's no money there, no lobbyists. In other words, there doesn't need to be a conspiracy.
Don't get me wrong: I think the FDA does a lot of good stuff. At this very moment there are probably hundreds of Chinese trying to smuggle US baby formula across the Hong Kong border into China, precisely because China has even less protection for consumers than we have here in the US. (And if the Koch brothers and their minions the Tea Party have their way, that's exactly what they'll reduce us to.) But the FDA has a giant blind spot, induced precisely by right-wing infiltration of our better social institutions which co-opt anything they touch into a mere agent of their filthy, murderous greed, slashing budgets in the name of "efficiency". Well, fuck them. Fight the power. Legalize pot, MDMA, LSD and occupy the FDA.

And no, I haven't personally partaken in anything but caffeine and alcohol for 3 decades, so I'm not really advocating widespread usage. I'm advocating legality, which is an entirely different matter, as the great experiment undertaken by Portugal proves. Controlled, taxed legality causes drugs to be no longer viewed as the "forbidden fruit", so that teenagers are no longer skirting rules and authority to partake. They know that, in a few years, they'll be old enough to try things for themselves. But as it turns out, postponing drug usage past the age of 21 has profound effects on those younger, formulating personalities that didn't learn how to be themselves while en-drugged. (Plus, the tax revenue allows for direct treatment options for those far few users who fall prey to addiction.)

Dear FDA please get off your FAT ASS...and Brenda!

Check out my post over at Dangerous Minds. It's about how the FDA has no reputation when it comes to psychoactive drugs. In other words, due to their pretty much hands-off treatment of drugs like pot, LSD, MDMA, mushrooms and so on, no one takes their scheduling seriously. This has impacted Americans' health quite significantly in the past, but now (with legal marijuana starting in two states), the consequences will continue to grow.

Meanwhile, word from my old UK Bank. "Brenda" (as I call her), has become a minor Risk bigshot in the area I used to work in. You may remember that I worked with Southern Belle Brenda fairly briefly over at American Express and had this to say about her:

One day I'm going to turn on the physicist intellect on Brenda and completely put her in her place. I hate that pudgy little Brenda swastika-tassled hillbilly redneck bitch.

I also imagined getting kidnapped in Mexico with Brenda and trying to keep Brenda alive as she lectured and talked down to our narcogangster kidnappers:

Brenda: Whoever is in charge here I want to see him right now!

Kidnapper #1: I don' give a damn about what you want. (To me) Tell your bitch to shut up or she's gonna get killed.

Me: She ain't my bitch! Brenda! Shut up or I'll shoot you myself.

Brenda: (Slaps Kidnapper #1 across the face) "Bitch!" That's no way to talk to a lady! (Shaking a finger in the kidnapper's face like a child) Mind your manners!

As you can see, I REALLY didn't like Brenda, so I was somewhat disconcerted to find her still working in this particular odd corner of the financial world.

Atheists' God

Seems to me there are few true blue atheists in the world. Rather, an "atheist" keeps their God hidden deep down inside their soul, rightly refusing to give it name or shape or ascribe to it any characteristics derived from the human world of forms and shapes and ideas. And yet, most atheists still believe that there is a hidden order out there, and that if we can find it and acknowledge it in our actions and deeds, then the world will be a better place. Perhaps such a God, the atheists God, is holier and truer and closer to whatever actual God may be said to exist than the God declared by those who have given it name or ascribed to it characteristics.

"Year 2000 snacks"

Here ya' go, player. My brothers turned me onto this some time back, and it doesn't seem to get any less funny no many how many times you see it. I'll grant, however, that if you're outside the US this will probably be incomprehensible, but as far as I'm concerned it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

"Mansplaining"

My new favorite word. My only regret is that I just encountered it yesterday.

Guess what?

I've joined up with the gang of Dangerous Minds for the summer as a guest-blogger. Some of the stuff I'll be posting may be echoes of what you'd see here, but a lot of it won't. Do check out my first piece on Moondog.

Couple more photos

These were little celebrity cards from Waldbaums. The celebs were all famous faces from the 50s and early 60s.

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 Kane, Bill and Kol from UMOUR in one of the stores in that Williamsburg "mall" on Bedford Avenue. I knew it would be highly amusing bringing the old school UMOUR guys here, and I was right.

 These other little houses were part of an historic block in Washington Heights, and are within eye-shot of the 162nd street subway entrance I used daily for many years as a child, but I had no idea these were here

Ah, this neighborhood is that sort of interzone between Flushing and Shea Stadium (now called Citi Field). It's actually quite a large neighborhood consisting almost entirely of chop shops and places where you can get cheap-o car part replacements for the part of your car that got stolen. In fact, you may find that the 'new' part you buy here fits quite perfectly because, of course, your car is where they harvested the part from in the first place. It's a sort of karmic car part circle, a minor great chain of being.

UMOUR!

After a long period of inactivity, UMOUR came, well, not exactly roaring back to life, but close. The goal was to visit the site of 6 former baseball stadiums which, amazingly, we did.

This Ebbets' field plaque at the Ebbet's field houses in Brookly was all that was left of the former home of the Dodgers.

This building apparently goes back to Civil War times.We dreamed of converting it into a UMOUR headquarters, like the Ghostbusters'.

See below. But these houses in Washington Heights priginate in the 19th century and are a very strange site to see in Washington Heights.

C-Town on Wheels

If our local Supermarket ("C-Town") is a dumpster knocked over on its' side, then today I told the wife that she has transformed our car into a "C-Town on Wheels".

New Yorker Interactive Subway Tool!

Wow. This thing's really fascinating. New Yorker has posted an online interactive tool that shows US census bureau data on income for each stop on any line of the New York subway system. It's really fascinating, and says so much about how both rich and poor are packed in together here in New York. As a for example, on the A line you can see a difference of about $195,000 between the richest and poorest subway stops.

To The Bombers of the Boston Marathon

To The Bombers of the Boston Marathon:
Not sure what your goals are, not sure what your beliefs are, but whatever they are you guys are ASSHOLES.
What were you thinking? You're blowing up international RUNNERS? Huh? That'd be like me mad at the guy who overcharged me for work done on my car, and then I punch the local grocer in the face. What's the point?
Remember too that many/most of those runners are from other countries. Assuming that you're not from the US (and you might easily be, of course), then why are you bombing runners from Senegal or Nigeria? What the fuck?
It'd be different, of course, if you blew up folks in the car park of the Pentagon. It'd be different if you were blowing up soldiers. It'd be different if you were blowing up politicians. Of course, I don't agree with the use of violence (except in very rare circumstances), but I couldn't out-and-out condemn it. But blowing up runners? You might as well have blown up kittens.

Drunk Guy on the E Train

Unfortunately, I didn't get the best part, when the people next to this guy were pingponging him back and forth while he was drooling and basically unconscious. But you can see the residual laughter, and the lady at the end trying to get him to snap out of it and stop flopping over.

Polynesian Stick Charts

You ever heard of this before? Then why didn't you tell me? This is a photo of a Polynesian Stick chart. You may remember that, in the South Pacific, the stars are not nearly as useful as navigational aides because the North Star is over the horizon so that it's far more difficult to determine direction out on the vast waters of the Pacific. So one major technique used by Polynesian navigators is to infer the presence of islands and direction from the basic feel of the ocean and, in particular, wave and "diffraction patterns". Polynesian parents made their kids often on their backs in their boats so that they could feel the swell and wavepatterns of the ocean. From this they could often determine where they were, as even distant islands (ie, over the horizon) subtly change ocean currents in a way this is useful.

Moreover, they made "stick charts" out of these wave patterns, and, depending on the Island from which they came, may make the charts according to various different traditions. Amazing.

Wisconsin Job Creation

Although you knew Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker wasn't the brightest crayon in the box, perhaps you thought Well, he and those other Republicans seem pretty sure about how to create jobs, so even if he isn't that great for unions or the poor, maybe he'll get the economy growing again.

Wrong. Scott Walker's Wisconsin ranked 44th in the nation for job growth. In other words, this idiot doesn't know how to get the economy going either, even with the inventory of unsustainable and budget-bloating tricks the Repugs always use when they are in charge.

Historically, the Repugs just ransack any sustainable corners of value and then plow them into what are in effect public ponzi schemes: Short term "growth" that ultimately leaves everyone high and dry and paying for the Repug mistakes for years.

That Keystone oil pipeline is a good example. For 5 minutes I caught myself believing, Well, we need the oil and the jobs won't hurt even if the things going to fuck up a few communities that it passes near with the inevitable leak. But then I slapped myself across the face: Wait, that pipeline isn't TO the US, it's THROUGH it. We aren't going to get anything from it, but you can be damned sure we'll have to pay for it in the form of cleanups and wrecked local economies. So fuck that, and fuck those Repugs too.

As for Scott Walker and Wisconsin, after the great Recession there isn't a lot he can pirate or plunder in order to spur even a temporary boost in the economy. And after he slams down public sector wages (because they can no longer collectively bargain), things will get even worse as spending decreases.

Yep, it's a race to the bottom in Wisconsin and Scott Walker will win.

Kim Jong-Il looking at things

Go here to view the fascinating tumblr of Kim Jong-Il looking at things. So far my favorites are “looking at a grocery store refrigerator” and “looking at a glass bottle”.

Subway bar crows

Thank Sweet Jebus I Jettisoned Spongebob!

Just got back from a big community meeting here in the wonderful neighborhood of Forest Hills. Our local police folks were giving the community the latest on a 'wave' of (9) burglaries that have struck this particular neighborhood since February. Someone has been breaking into homes an grabbing stuff of value. Though they simply kicked in a couple of doors, they also seem to see if doors have been left open.

Of course, I gave Spongebob the boot late last year precisely because he argued with me about the necessity of locking the front door when he came in. He was telling me why it was sometimes not necessary to lock the door under certain circumstances, and my response was that he should consider very carefully how I would feel about him, Spongebob, in particular if something should happen.

But he didn't seem to catch my meaning.

That was when I had to give him the boot. I knew this was a guy that just didn't have the sense to be living here.

Well now I'm even gladder I jettisoned Spongebob because those burglars would have found a nice, well-stocked home and would have robbed us blind.

Meanwhile we keep hearing wacky stories about Spongebob getting himself into all sorts of social difficulties due to him basically being a numnutz.

Coupla' more...

Here's WK/Eddy talking about some of the boxes or other objects. Most of his pieces have some wondrously gnarly little hook, such as dynamite attached to a spray-can actuator or, as shown below, a skateboard with a chainsaw attached at right angles to the bottom.

 

Some of the pieces in this show were frikkin' enormous, and made me regret not being some kind of mega-millionare sos I could buy one and place it in my uselessly huge apartment:

Walking downtown

Though it didn't come out too well in the photo, that's one of the many cobblestone streets that remain in the far west village:

HL 23:

Here's the Standard Hotel, hanging over the High Line:

A fairly recent Revs+Cost mega-tagging:

Pretty girl door piece