Saturday, December 23, 2006



Christmas gifts for my daughter. She wants gift cards but nobody ever says "dad, you remember that great gift card you gave me in 2001!?"
Before spending his last night in the Governor's Mansion, Gov. Jeb Bush confided Thursday what he really likes about the place -- including unlimited fresh towels... ..."I don't know how it is in your life but it's -- most of the time, you know, most people take showers and you use towels six or seven times," he said, "but here, although I've been trained to do otherwise, any time I want, I can have a new towel."

Trained like "sit down, roll over, play dead?" That kind of trained?

I'm sure the unwashed masses of Florida are going to miss you too, Jeb.
Hey, look! A breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hoo.

Hope for peace in the Middle East looks more like a 50-year marathon of Groundhog Day to an atheist. Every three years. Every three years they play the same game and they sing the same song. And every time the process breaks down. And it's not that it fails, it fails the same way every single time. Somebody will invariably claim they're getting fucked out of something owed to them by god.

After 50 years of this movie whose ending never changes, maybe it's time for a pardigm shift. I'm not saying I have an answer. I'm just saying maybe it's time to consider the possibility that this is not what god had in mind.

Just putting it out there.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

From MSNBC.com:
WASHINGTON - Teens increasingly are getting high with legal drugs like painkillers and mood stimulants, and they’re turning to cough syrup as well, says a government survey released Thursday. The annual study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, conducted by the University of Michigan, showed mixed results in the nation’s longtime campaign against teen drug abuse. It found that while fewer teens overall drank alcohol or used illegal drugs in the last year, a small but growing number were popping prescription painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin and stimulants like Ritalin.

Let's take a look at some raw facts. Not opinion, facts.

A standard scientific measure of toxicity is the LD50. It means "the dose at which half the test population dies" and is normally written as the amount ingested per kilogram of weight of the subject.

        LD50 of grain alcohol:   11  g/kg
LD50 of nicotine (cigarettes): 50 mg/kg
LD50 of THC (marijuana): 1270 mg/kg


Another way of looking at this term is a ratio of how much of a "normal dose" it would take to reach the LD50. In alcohol, for example, a 150lb male would have to drink about a beer per minute for twenty minutes to hit the LD50. Since the average "dose" is two drinks, the LD50 ratio is 1:10 (20 / 2 = 10).

On the other hand, the LD50 ratio for cannabis is about 1:9,000. That's about 9,000 joints in twenty minutes to stand a significant risk of killing yourself. That's not just difficult, it's physically impossible.

In economics there is a thing called an "externality." It's when you do something to cause an effect but wind up getting just the opposite of what you planned. One of the more famous examples is Mexico which once tried to cut down on pollution by only letting half their citizens drive on any given day. The method they chose to enforce this is by letting people with license plates beginning with A-M to drive every other day, drivers with plates beginning with A-N drove the opposite days.

Unfortunately, what actually happened is that people bought a second car. This not only caused the primary goal to fail but it caused people to keep the older car around longer and older cars emit more pollution. So the planners got the exact opposite of their well-intentioned goal.

And so we, as a country, make a drug with zero toxicity illegal while allowing the sale (and even advertisement) of alcohol. Alcohol being a substance which is physically possible (even easy) to OD on and truly has a high potential for abuse.

And you want to talk about a gateway drug? How many heroin addicts do you know that didn't start with cigarettes or alcohol?

How can we, as a nation, look at news reports like this and have absolutely no honest, fact-based dialogue about how we can mitigate abuse of drugs that are actually dangerous?

This is a problem of your own creation, a problem of your own, blithely ignorant drug policy, America.

Friday, December 01, 2006

So Jim Webb, senator elect of Virginia, snubs Bush (the lesser) during a photo op. Bush tracks Webb down and...

Bush: How’s your boy?
Webb: I’d like to get them out of Iraq.
Bush: That’s not what I asked you. How’s your boy?
Webb: That’s between me and my boy.

Webb is so incensed that he tells a friend he almost slugged the president. Good. It's about time someone put that national embarrassment in his place.

So then George Will calls Webb a "pompous poseur" and "a boor."

So here's my open letter to George Will.

No, you dumb fuck, everyone who didn't insist on honesty and candor about the trainwreck called 'Iraq,' (read; the entire conservative movement) but supported it nonetheless is a poseur and a boor, not to mention complicit in the death and maiming of thousands of Americans. I'd bring up the 100,000+ dead Iraqis but since you're more bent about slighting the president than dead Americans, I doubt the dead Iraqis phase you much.

Speaking of which, what is this BULLSHIT about neocons coming out of the woodwork talking about how Iraq is the result of inept planning and not really an indictment of conservatism? The entire United States government for the last six years has been controlled and enabled by the neocons and the all-too-willing, puckered asshole Congress and their media-hating O'Reilly colorguard.

You've been discredited. Thoroughly. Shut the fuck up.
I don't like Mitt Romney. At all. But the idea that he's responsible for the documentation of workers of companies he hires is pure bullshit. I don't know the immigration status of ANYPLACE I shop and I don't know anyone else who does, either.

Thursday, November 30, 2006

It's nice when Stephen Hawking expresses the same sentiment you've been ranting about for years.

Started coding again. I cobbled together what I could remember on the train ride home, did this with 21 lines:



Just meant to get my feet wet again. Necessary when you forget the simple sh*t like how to print an array.

It was 65°F in Cambridge today. 80°F in my office because the boss is loathe to open the windows. Ugh. I like heat but it's a bitch to work in.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Bush says Iraq is not in a state of civil war.

Hadley also dismissed the notion that civil war has begun in Iraq. "The Iraqis don't talk of it as a civil war. The unity government doesn't talk of it as a civil war," Hadley said. "You have not yet had a situation also where you have two clearly defined and opposing groups vying not only for power but for territory."

Oh really? Mr. Hadley, meet Muqtada al-Sadr, spiritual leader of the Mahdi army.

And who cares if the Iraqi government calls what's happening a ham and swiss on rye? When did the group that sold us visions of nuclear plumes and WMD become the gold standard of truth?

Wikipedia
A civil war is a war in which parties within the same culture, society or nationality fight for political power or control of an area. Political scientists use two criteria: the warring groups must be from the same country and fighting for control of the political center, control over a separatist state or to force a major change in policy. The second criteria is that at least 1,000 people must have been killed in total, with at least 100 from each side.

Merriam-Webster
noun: a war between opposing groups of citizens of the same country

This homicidal refusal to accept the obvious sure puts Clinton's "that depends on your meaning of 'is'" in perspective, doesn't it?

Friday, November 17, 2006

Holy crap. One of my photos reached position #16 on the Flickr Explore list.
                                             friday
rockport, ma
mid november and 58°f
nikon d50 w/Sigma 28mm f/1.8
leonid meteor shower begins in precisely 2 hours
the last clouds are being swept away as i type this
weather.com says six hours of uninterrupted sky

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Best Cobert EVER.

Someone ought to write a book called "How Comedy Saved the West."

With a posthumous foreword by Bill Hicks.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

these wrinkles masterfully disguise
the youthful boy below
who turned your way and saw
something he was not looking for
both a beginning and an end
but now he lives inside
someone he does not recognize
when he catches his reflection
on accident

     Death Cab For Cutie ("Brothers On a Hotel Bed")
called you from the hotel phone
i haven't dialed this code before
i'm sleeping later and waking later
i'm eating less and thinking more
how am I without you?
am I more myself or less myself?
i feel younger, louder
like I don't always connect
like I don't ever connect


     Everything But The Girl ("Single")

It's not the song per se it's her goddamn voice. Ugh. This is exactly the type of stuff I'd like to play in the subways. And yes, with a live female singer. Heck, this would probably be one of the songs I'd cover.

Started learning French via Rosetta Stone this morning. Figure it's a good way to spend an hour each day.

Friday, November 10, 2006

If you still believe that Karl Rove is a genius, wizard, architect or anything short of overrated, you must shut the f*** up. One popular vote loss, one win, one near loss to a disorganized opponent and one outright loss means one thing and one thing only: mediocrity. Racking up this kind of record by means of dirty tricks, race-baiting and questioning the patriotism of decorated war veterans makes Rove a mediocre hack at best."

     Bob Cesca @ HuffPo

Tuesday, November 07, 2006



Eat a dick, Rick.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) -- Nicaraguans waited in long lines Sunday to vote in an election that will decide whether Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega returns to power, 16 years after the end of his leftist rule and a U.S.-backed war to topple him. The U.S. has warned against an Ortega win, with Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez saying that aid and trade "will be endangered" if "anti-democratic forces prevail." The race is also watched closely by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a U.S. foe who is hoping to find a new ally in Ortega.

How badly would the neocons freak out if some country, any country warned the United States against voting Republican? And not just warn, threaten economic retaliation? They'd huff and puff about sovereignty, threaten to bomb the country responsible and blame Democrats for being unpatriotic if they didn't go along with the whole ridiculous, hypocritical pile of bullshit.

Here the Bush administration is, doing precisely that and nobody bats an eye. That's because there is a rich American tradition of what's good for the rest of the world isn't necessarily good for us. And yet I still hear the O'Reilly zombies on the public commute wondering why "they" hate "us."

No newspaper will point out this double standard. This factoid, this split ruleset either isn't printable by the so-called "liberal" or "independent" media or it is, but it hasn't occurred to the reporters.

I, being optimistic about the nature of man, can't figure out which of these possibilities sucks least so I can root for it.
Thirty-two hours until the beginning of the November election or, as I like to call it, Schadenfreude 2006.

Friday, November 03, 2006

Nevermind. He's fucked.

What's this? He bought a few hundred dollars woth of meth and a massage from a gay escort but he never did the drugs and he didn't do the guy?

Right. I think we can all read between the lines. "I didn't impale."

Has a familiar ring to it. Hell, it has LEWINSKY RETRIBUTION stamped all over it.

PS: Watch that Olberman clip! This means you!! CHEW YOUR FOOD!
For the record, I'm backing Haggard until some evidence comes forward.

I can't in good faith expect an even-headed and impartial peer review by the court of public opinion for the progressives but then consider it ancillary when the person targeted has a different worldview (ignorant and riduclous as it may be). I HOPE it's proven to be true, and I suspect it will be, but despite Bush, this is still a country where a person is innocent until proven otherwise.

Evangelical or not.
Freakin' figures.

You scored as Tom Zarek. You began your career as a terrorist, but that was so your voice could be heard. You alone know the right path, and anyone who gets in your way is fighting against the good of you all. Still, you can wait, and you can fight your war in any arena.

CPO Galen Tyrol

81%

Capt. Lee Adama (Apollo)

81%

Tom Zarek

81%

Commander William Adama

63%

Dr Gaius Baltar

63%

Lt. Sharon Valerii (Boomer)

63%

President Laura Roslin

44%

Col. Saul Tigh

44%

Lt. Kara Thrace (Starbuck)

38%

Number 6

31%

What New Battlestar Galactica character are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

Thursday, November 02, 2006

"I say what this says to voters if you think Katrana was a success, Iraq is now Katrina. Iraq is the foriegn policy version of Katrina and this President cannot handle the reality. This is not an election anymore, it's an intervention."

     - Some random guy on CNN's Situation Room.
Me: [to office] What's a word for 'bilingually stupid?'
Ella: [pausing from phone conv.] 'Puta.'

["How long has she been calling you a 'puta?' Here's a knife, do something with the knife..." -ed]

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Out of a field of many, this is the best Olberman to date. Who the hell does his writing?

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Sometimes I like it when old ex biker guys heckle me on the train ride home for a half hour, solid, without any provocation whatsoever. I especially like it when they assume a karate stance, wind up and punch me in the chest.

I like that a real lot.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Been doing four hours of commute and ten hours of work, five days a week. I can spend forever doing something if I think I'm useful. Right now I just feel like a drag on the entire office. I ask questions and I get answers but there is never any time to take notes, only to solve the immediate problem, and so I wind up asking the same questions every day. Nevermind my notoriously steep learning curve.

Last week I got frustrated, confused and so worried about making a mistake on a shipment that I snapped at my boss. In a sense I'm lucky she didn't fire me. I would have deserved it.

I don't mind the hours and I don't mind the commute but this is either going to have to become second-nature to me very quickly or it won't last. Yeah, making $9/hr in retail sucks but not as much as spending two hours on a train every day with little to do but contemplate all the day's fuckups.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

That which I thought could withstand anything has collapsed over nothing. Three point five grams of a dried plant delayed for six hours and a decision involving less brain power than I generally allocate to clipping my nails has put an end to the only important thing I've ever owned.

I'm done. This isn't for everyone.

Saturday, October 21, 2006


DSC_2285, originally uploaded by bodhisoma.

Opposite the bus stop in Watertown, MA. 10PM, windy, cold and raw.

Blech.

Friday, October 20, 2006

I completely missed this.

"Diebold Election Systems Inc. expressed alarm and state election officials contacted the FBI yesterday after a former legislator received an anonymous package containing what appears to be the computer code that ran Maryland's polls in 2004."

Oh, that's interesting.

It gets better.

"Morrill said two of three disks were never used and that the third was version 4.3.15c, which was used in Maryland during the 2004 primary."

...which is complete BULLSHIT. If the thieves got, for example, version 2.1.1, then they have perhaps 95% of the source code that appears in version 2.1.2. Saying a specific version of compromised code was never used in an election is another way of saying "we pray to god that the version bump fixed every vunlerability that existed in the version we submitted last week."

Assurance that every citizen's vote is counted is effectly gone. What? You think it's beyond the pale to imagine a discussion in a public park involving the question "so how do you want to steal an election" and Karl Rove's lips? Do you have any doubt whatsoever that this administration would press that button if the opportunity presented itself and their power was in jeopardy?

Bush has suspended habeus corpus which means the difference between being in prison or not is the tolerating nature of the president.

Two nuclear powers emerged on his watch. A war that's completely out of control that we can't sustain and we can't extract ourselves from.

No WMD. Myers. Plamegate. Foley. Haliburton. Abu Ghraib. Abramoff. Rove. Libby. Ney. Shit, I'm just rattling off the ones that come to mind.

To everyone who reads this neurosis of a blog, please access it (and update your bookmarks) by going to blog.pho7o.com, which is my domain. The short story is that blogger has been obstinant about letting me log into my account. Synching the new blogger beta with the old system seems to have quashed the login. But it lets me in sometimes. *shrug

[note: this might take a few hours to kick in]

Some new pics up.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

[00:43] GypsyKitten: Oh.. believe me.. I told her everything.
[00:43] bodhiFive: I don't suppose an unhappy Nikki is a pleasant thing to behold.
[00:44] GypsyKitten: I beat down with logic.. not with screams or anger.. I'm a pretty mellow bitch.

_______


My daughter used her first swear in front of me. Not at me, wonder of wonders, but in the act of describing "ABC." A slang acronym meaning "this is private/an inside joke." But also stands for "Ass-Backward Country."

_______

I'm making a music video. Possibly to the Postal Service song We Will Become Silhouettes. And it'll take a year to plan and shoot. Who wants to put money on whether this project outlives this month? *sigh

Thursday, October 12, 2006

It's stuff like this that makes me cringe. And realize how fucked we really are as a nation.

Monday, October 09, 2006



"Fifteen of Dongducheon's leaders shaved their heads last week and went to Seoul to hoist a protest banner outside the National Assembly building. The banner was written in their own blood."


Enjoying the late Rockport summer.


I upgraded my blogger account to this new beta thing. Remember, Google owns blogger.com. So I upgraded and now Picasa's blog feature is broken.

Which is retarded because Picasa is owned and distributed by Google.

Anyway, train ride home.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

 

Spotted.
 

Flowers in Rockport. I can't remember the name but Tricia knew it off the top of her head.
 

Out of the subway and into the world.
 

An excellent jam band outside Kennedy Plaza, Providence, Rhode Island.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Open letter to Tony Maciulis, Senior Producer at MSNBC.

Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 18:00:24 -0400
From: "Jason"
To: Maciulis@MSNBC.com
Subject: Worse Than Fox

In your article, "Foley's Conduct Was No Secret To Bloggers," you conclude:

"That eerie prediction from [blogger] Mike Rogers, insinuating that more would be revealed in time for the Midterm election, is alarming. Have both parties put political advantage ahead of the protection of children?"

This parallel boggles the mind.

On one hand we have the chronic inability of Republicans to do the right thing for months (if not years) when confronted with information that a powerful Republican on the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children has been soliciting sex with minors and treating the pages program like a dating pool.

On the other hand there is a single, anonymous blogger that may or may not have sat on this information in order to inflict the most danage on the GOP for the November elections. Of course he might have been a person talking out their *** who got lucky.

This, in your mind, begs the question of whether both parties have put children second? Both PARTIES? Really?

When did Mike Rogers become representative of the entire Democratic party?

Do you even think this stuff through before you publish?

Jason

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

 

Dangling from the floor above us, mid-renovation. Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

 

Ruby was napping as Ruby is wont to do on a Tuesday night around 9PM. Adjusted all my settings, got myself in close, quietly, framed the shot, autofocused and then...

Ruby woke up. And that's when this picture was taken. Posted by Picasa
 

I saw her camera and it looked comparable to the nicer models from, say, 1960. Blew me away in an anachronistic way. So I just asked her if I could take a picture for my portfolio. Her friend seemed less than enthusiastic but agreed for want of a good reason otherwise.

I snapped a few shots and this is easily my favorite.

Apparently the girl on the right is from Poland and ridiculously nice. Wound up bumping back into her five minutes later while boarding the outbound commuter at North Station. Here on a quasi vacation for business down south and some big-city hopping on the way back, said she was a city girl.

My kind of person.
me: HAHAHAHA. On CNN's front page... "Former Rep. Mark Foley allegedly interrupted a vote on the House floor in 2003 to engage in cyber-sex with a former page, ABC News reports."

ella: So...was he drunk then, too?
From the NBC Nightly News podcast:

Late today Foley's lawyer held a press conference, he said Foley takes full responsibility for the emails and added "Foley has never had inappropriate sexual contact with a minor. He absolutely is not a pedophile."

This is kind of like saying a person who is attracted to men and desires gay sex is straight if they haven't actually done it yet. Since when is the descriptor predicated on the act?

Since these fuckers are so big on waving around their faith, I wonder what the Bible has to say about a sin being relative to the thought or the act. Hmmm...

"But this is what you concealed in your heart, and I know that this was in your mind..."

     Job 10:13

"Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord. Perhaps he will forgive you for having such a thought in your heart."

     Acts 8:22

Monday, October 02, 2006

 

Foley and Musharref and Woodward. Oh my.

I use Picasa to post pics to this blog but it's been acting flaky lately, hence the shift to flickr. But flickr, despite its greatness, isn't really geared to act as a blog. So screw that.

So here's a pic of Tank being his normal, chilled out, charming motherfucker self. Posted by Picasa

Friday, September 29, 2006

For the time being, I'm moving my blog over to my flickr account. Entries will simply be attached to photos. Sometimes the entries will be related to the pictures but more often, not.

And if you use an aggregator, you can subscribe to the feed.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

 

North Station. Getting a grip on this thing called 'exposure.'
 

Government Center, Green line.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

 

Harvard Sq., Cambridge, MA.
 

Brain [        ]
Barry. Shut the fuck up. ... Seriously.
 

How Ella signs off on my paperwork...

Saturday, September 23, 2006

 

It's not my fault that you lost your way.
 

New England rural.
 

Autumn red tree under sodium vapor streetlamp.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

 

Just north of Boston.
 

Oasis.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

 

Dyson sphere?
 

Harvard Sq., Cambridge, MA.
 

Focus. Something I have none of. =)
 

Watertown, MA, heading home.
From MSNBC:

U.S. researchers said Wednesday they had identified an “on-off” switch in the brain that controls the emotional response to fear, and said it might some day be manipulated to help patients with anxiety disorders.

Yeah, I'm sure helping people with anxiety disorders is going to be the prime motivator of the government when it tries to learn more about this interesting find.

And not, say, the ability to induce fearless soldiers or narcotize it's populace.

Perish the thought.
 

I've been trying to hit this shot for weeks. *shakes fist

Monday, September 18, 2006

 

Tight quarters.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

 

My angle on Motif #1.
 

"HE'S SAFE!!"
 

Italian greyhounds are one of my favorite breeds.
 

Gloucester; 25¢.

Friday, September 15, 2006

 

She had a bird on the back of each tricep, too.
 

Lynn. I think.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

 

Dusk outside, blinding fluorescent inside. Can't see shit off the glare and you sure as hell can't sleep.
 

I wonder what's behind it...
 

My Winslow Homer ripoff.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

 

A small Japanese schoolgirl.

*shrug. I got nuthin'.
 

Ella, waiting for me.

Monday, September 11, 2006

 

When ya gotta go, ya gotta go.
 

Happiest. Meter. Ever.
 

Harvard Square, Red Line.