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twilautect(ure)
May. 13th, 2004
01:34 pm - get out the vote
just one political rumination for the week: Am I the only one thinking that the GIs responsible for the work at Abu Ghraib prison should be court martialed not only for their obtuse actions BUT FOR BEING SO FUCKING STUPID AS TO PHOTOGRAPH EACHOTHER DOING IT!!!
These are just the type of people who voted for our damn president in the first place.
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aggravatedMay. 11th, 2004
04:02 pm - another post?
having one of those days - you know at work when I really just don't want to be here. I think I am starting to hate my job. Slowly. Steadily. Can you feel it building? I can. We have no work. We just finished a really big job, but now that it is out to bid, I doubt I'll touch any part of it again. There are supposedly a bunch of other jobs that have been on simmer so long I think the pot is out of water and is now smoking on the stove. Not being busy in the summer isn't really a problem per se, but honestly I haven't been really busy since Christmas.
I have 2 bosses: one is probably too laid back, lets me do anything I am willing to do, and is really a pretty good mentor. The other is complete control freak, who really never tries to teach anyone anything. No surprise that he hordes all of the interesting projects and lets his partner pick up the random extraneous crap that’s left over. Working with him I now realize totally sucks.
The thought of looking for something new is a bit daunting. Should I really sacrifice what I have here for the unknown? Am I just lazy or afraid of a truly shitty next job? Whatever. The work here is really pretty boring, and I constantly feel I could be doing something more interesting or difficult. But, I've been here only a year. I was at my last job a year. And the job before that 18 months. The job before that 7 months. See a pattern? At least if I leave on my own, I'll be batting 500 for my career: twice laid off and twice I quit. Arrgh.
09:36 am - haze lifted
nothing like following up a weekend of drunken madness with 2 weeks of relative insanity at work. I hope I didn't make too many stupid mistakes.
This coming weekend wedding number one of 5 ( and hopefully no funerals) is upon us. The forcast is black tie, 90degrees, humid with a chance of showers. Should be sweaty. I am in the wedding party, which I am really excited about. The best man is a total ass, so I imagine myself and the other groomsman being the only solace for the groom. Planning on taking him fishing on the morning of, which will make a great story, cause if they're really hitting, I'm sure he'll think twice about the ceremony. OK back to work.
Apr. 23rd, 2004
01:50 pm - poconos bound
off to the poconos for Russos bachelor party. Keeping a suprise is really funny sometimes. All he knows is that the trip involves a ferry, 15 people, vaseline, and a passport, none of which is true. The ferry was a last minute diversionary tactic to get his license plate number. I am pretty horribly hung over how, and probably won't feel like a real person again until sometime the middle of next week. Today is Michelles last day at her shitty job with crazy Cat and strange John. Mani and Peter took her our on the town last night. They called me at 1230 to get me to join them, but considering my already unconscious state I declined. Mani is tough to convince so he promised they were coming over to have drinks at my place. So, by 2am, there I was in my jammie, drinking Absolut chilled and neat in the backyard. Needless to say, my stomach has yet to recover, especially since it was coupled with about 3 hours of sleep-
Cheers to the weekend!!
Trevor.
Apr. 20th, 2004
09:39 am - keep it going-
things to learn from the weekend:
-no one really has to go to the ceremony of a bat or bar mitzvah
-Judaism seems much more serious that Chirstianity
-Hebrew is gibberish ( not that this is a bad thing)
-13 year old girls know everything about MTV and I know nothing ( except what I learn on Pimp My Ride)
-Dr Atkins was no Jew.
-The only way to make any pickle NOT Kosher is to dip it in pork fat ( Emeril would go for it)
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calmApr. 16th, 2004
03:59 pm - 5 days-
I managed 5 consecutive daily Journal entries. Neato. Jeff will be proud.
Off this weekend to my boss' daughter's bat mitzvah. Should be educational. Visiting Caroline and Mike too. Good times. Good times. I need to ask that boss for a review (ie a raise, since the only reason anyone asks for an annual review is as a segue into asking for more money.) I chickened out this week, but maybe after he sees the size of the gift his daughter is getting for her bat mitzvah, he'll feel more sympathetic.
All for now.
chipperApr. 15th, 2004
01:15 pm - the building department-
Went to the NYC Building Department today. Dom and I actually won our fight today, which is rare. The bureaucracy in this city is a truly amazing thing. Lots of people get paid much more than I, to simply justify their own existences in the workplace.
No one would ever bomb the DOB though, never!
In other news, OBL, or Osama bin Laden (good acronym for a gangsta rapper though...) "re-surfaced" today via a mysterious audio tape. He offered a truce with Europe if they pull all of their people out of the middle east. No deal for our Bush though: no truce, Americans stink, and America sucks: at least OBL maintains a fine status quo.
I stole this from some comedian, but its so funny I have to share it: OBL orchestrated the 911 attacks from a friggin cave in the mountains of Afghanistan, using a cell phone and a turban...Who the fuck is his service provider? My phone tells me I'm roaming in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge! Does Allah have a plan? How many minutes per month? How many virgins per month?
complacentApr. 14th, 2004
11:48 am - Why do we think we matter?
yet another blasé slow day at work. I could instigate some work by calling some clients, but why strain? Wednesday is great day to waste time, since Thursday is still not the end of the week, and I can be really busy then.
Joy of joys, I sent in my last IDP hours yesterday - soon I will be able to take the lovely ARE exam, and get in much more trouble as an architect. IDP is an insipid ritual, based on some novel idea that your bosses care about what you are doing and care about where your career is going. NCARB, the organization that runs this scam has no real clue what the average 20something architect really does for a living. But they sure know how to charge fees for the service.
I have been debating becoming a Mason. No, not a jar and not a bricklayer, but a member of the Masonic Order. My grandfather and now my grandfather-in-law are both involved in this thing, and I wonder if I would find fulfillment in becoming a Mason. What they do? I have no real clue. Do they have hats? Probably. The only obstacle I can see is that one must be committed to some faith or hold some belief in a higher power. I despise the notion of organized religion, and can't help but find fault in those who wield it as moral authority. I think it is fine to "believe" but as the French say "Chacun a son gout, Non?"
What do I believe in? I do feel that there is a greater order of things in our world. Something driving time, life, light, air, and earth more profound and omnipresent than chemistry and gravity. I often question why we do what we do. What is the point? The end? What does it all mean? Maybe my belief is indeed that we are part of something greater than earth - that we are not alone in the universe, that we are merely a member of some greater society that exists at a scale beyond the confines of our atmosphere. To think that as I sit here, virtually alone, that I am really a protrusion on a rather small chunk of rock, that spins uncontrollably fast as it hurls in an orbit through apparent nothingness, in a cosmos virtually unknown to me is rather heavy. And with all of the consciousness that I supposedly possess, I feel no sensation of this situation.
We are just one component of our consciousness - there are many parts that I feel religion denies. I think religion may be too human-centric: too obsessed with the travails of man, the morals of man. Why do we think we matter?
Apr. 13th, 2004
04:29 pm - Rain-
It is really raining. I will be really wet when I go home. I know there must be millions of people who have greater problems than this.
I hope George Bush is one of them.
Apr. 12th, 2004
04:16 pm - try this again-
things at work are slllloooow - so I think I will attempt to do a little journalling to pass the time...note the new picture.
Oct. 2nd, 2003
11:22 am - NUBLU and Greasy palms.
took a time out from the journal thing. Realized that mucking aroung LJ was encroaching on my productivity at the workplace. But what else? Am I really to spend my precious personal time typing away?
Last weekend was fun. Went out with my buddy Keith on Friday and got really stupid at anywhere from 3-4 bars in Soho. Met some interesting locals: Tommy, an artist who works at a lighting shop on the Bowery and magically pays his rent on Crosby street on $250 a week; some girl from Beirut and her boyfriend who have a dog that attacks African Americans ( a bit embarrassing at the outside tables); Rob, who lived above the bar, and is apparently very rich, and keeps lots of Coke on hand. Not the diet kind, and not vanilla. Coke man.
We were at this place Mekong, then VigBar, then finally NUBLU, where I dropped my wallet and totally lost control of the evening. There were lots of dingy hipsters dancing with their disproportionately attractive girlfriends, all of whom were in the way of a serious search an rescue for my personal effects. The search being fruitless, I left Keith, mumbling something about having caused enough damage for one night, and hopped a cab back to Br'klyn.
Saturday was a fun time of nausea in the morning, headaches through the afternoon, and general pain in the evening. A real tri-fecta.
Michelle and I went to dinner in Park Slope with some friends. We were looking for parking when a giant Infiniti nearly rear-ended us. Being the helpful sort that we are, Michelle immediately slowed down even more, and as they proceeeded to honk the horn and scream obscenities at us, we crawled and stop-n-go-ed down 10th street.
Well, when we got to the stoplight, a giant black driver man jumped out of the car, and came up on beside our car. Our response was simply to roll up the windows and wait out the light. After some more obscene remarks about my wife's driving, and further rage as Michelle's response was to laugh in his face, he offered to bust a cap in our asses. Then, his girlfriend ran up on my side of the car, and began hitting the window with her hands, covering the window with grease (yes grease.) The light was still red, but I thought we'd done enough for these two, and I said, "just go, go", and Michelle ran the light, turning right. Our greasy-palmed friend chased us for as long as she could, berating us with further offensive remarks.
Thinking they were jsut crazed enough to try to find our car and continue the free waxing, we called our friends, picked them up, and had dinner FAR FUCKING AWAY from that neighborhood....
Love NYC, love it love it love it...
Sep. 23rd, 2003
01:18 pm - notes on the annual feast of San Gennarro in Little Italy-
(Pacino after a plate of deep fried oreos, grilled pancreas, and an espresso from Ferrara's
-lots of B+T folks about.
-many bewildered looking asian americans just trying to get back to Chinatown.
-not really an event for the black or gay communities.
-a coronary inducing menu: fried oreos, grilled sweetbreads, funnel cakes, Zeppole.
-no booze ( Damn you Rudy, Damn you! (but nice job during the trade center disaster))
-plenty of goodies for sale: NYPD gear, bongs, rugs.
-Shoot the Freak
all in all, pretty much your standard NYC street fair.
amusedSep. 19th, 2003
11:42 am - in a de niro kind of mood-
wouldn't it be cool to be this guy just for a little while...
10:41 am - fair weather-
When I was young, Gloria came to visit.
I flew a kite with my mom as the eye passed over our house.
In the morning we got up in the sunshine. The giant pine that grew by the garage had blown over.
Had it fallen the other way, the garage and the green VW would have been crushed.
I remember playing in the branches for many days afterwards, before the men came to take it all away.
I miss being young.
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lethargicSep. 18th, 2003
11:19 am - on the news...
I always wondered when Soledad O’Brien would either hit Katie Couric in the knee with a club or split to some other network. Sure enough, Soledad is now on CNN, an actual news network, which chooses to report relevant daily journalism in the morning instead of worthless tabloid and human interest garbage.
e.g., Today a major storm is bearing down on the east coast threaten death, destruction, erosion, increased insurance premiums, and flooding
(bearing down is such a great term that all the networks are using it...too bad Bush can't bear down on Saddam, Osama, unemployment, the deficit, terrorism, or the economy. but I digress...) our teenage armies are being picked off by a rag-tag group of combatants in the Iraqi desert, and the chief of NYSE has stepped aside because he does a great job but is really overpaid.
Question for the day: what was NBC reporting this morning at 730 am, and what was CNN reporting?
Answer: Katie Couric and NBC was going in depth ( between 7 minute commercial breaks) describing the perils of people obsessed with celebrities to the point where they can't function in normal society.
Soledad and CNN were, ( how did you know?) debating Grasso's stepping down, the economic impact of Isabelle and the current GI toll in Iraq.
Hey Kate, maybe you should step down because you are overpaid and are really not contributing much at all to journalism or what people take with them to work in the morning?
A whole week of hanging with doctor Phil probably won't help much either...at least maybe Al Roker will get swept asea in the storm...
cynicalSep. 17th, 2003
09:34 am - Buffa-Log-
went on a business trip yesterday to Buffalo NY. Another very far away place, especially if you don't have a plane. It was a beautiful day and I spent it in a very tall building, trying quite hard not to stare at the views of Lake (Erie? Ontario?).
I think I could have stared out of the window all day.
And so I continue my tour of the northeast's most depressing cities...so far I've knocked Hartford CT, Harrisburg PA, and now Buffalo off my list of places I was trying to avoid.
My boss says that we may get to go to Albany soon...
At least Buffalo has the lake(s).
Sep. 15th, 2003
04:35 pm - friends-
I have just updated my friends list with one good friend. In fact he is the reason I have started this journal, as I have been reading his with great frequency. incidentally, he is one of my best friends, and was my best man in my wedding.
and unlike australia, I am sure he exists.
03:26 pm - opening shot-
This my first entry. Hmmm. I fear I have little to report, so here are some odd thoughts for anyone who may care to listen:
-I Love: Michelle and Stella; one is my wife, one our cat.
-I Mourn: the man in black.
-Hurricanes: bad yet oddly fascinating and romantic things.
-Bush: must be stopped in '04.
-My Dad: is in australia, a place so far away, it may not really exist.