So this morning I'm at the North Station Green Line inbound and the announcer is yak yak yak but I've got Regina Spektor on the phones. Something about the Orange Line being fuxx0red.

I get to work and Ella tells me Boston is paralized due to "suspicious packages" being found all over Boston. She rattles off the locations, I know them all.

Later we catch a screenshot of one of the objects being removed.



Ella: Hey, look, it's a Mooninite.
Me: Holy crap you're right...

So amidst the sirens that have been screaming past my window all day long, we find out that this is an advertising campaign gone horribly, horribly wrong. Even better, this is happening all over the country.

And so Ella sends me this:

"I hope you can see this, Boston, because I'm doing it as hard as I can."


Which reminds me...

I'm an entropy fan, when I first heard of entropy in high school science I was attracted to it immediately. When they told me that in nature all systems are breaking down, I thought what a good thing, what a good thing, perhaps I can make some small contribution in this area myself.

     George Carlin ("Jammin' in NY")

[update] Christ, I really wish I was on that bomb disposal crew.



...because I would have just died laughing.

Me: merfy merfy merf merf.
Ella: Shut up, Muffy, or I'll punch you in the dash.
Ella: ... I got nuthin'
Me: merfy merf.
Thais: You guys are funny.
Me: You should see us when we're stoned.
Ella: That was funny. ... Where's Paul? Don't say that again.

• Got a raise. It was scheduled and it was deserved. Yay.

• Got a small bonus. It was mentioned, once, and described as completely arbitrary. I forgot about it. So that was a nice surprise.

• Apparently the Mexico office loves me. More good news.

• I don't have strep which is good and bad. Good because it isn't strep and bad because I just have to live with it. BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY, I ALWAYS SAY!

That's all for now. My life has been nothing but a blur of commute and shipping stuff so ...nothing worth adding. =)

This is an exchange I had with a co-worker in China. They're extremely nice.

From: Jason To: Sunny Sent: Tue 1/23/2007 3:13 PM Subject: 7-2870 | DS2434 x 1,050 早晨好, Kavin & Sunny!, Your 1,050 x DS2434s ship today via DHL, tracking # [redacted]. 恳切地, Jason

From: Sunny To: Jason Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 4:25 AM Subject: RE: 7-2870 | DS2434 x 1,050 Dear Jason, Noted with thanks! Your chinese is better and better. For good morning, we often say "早上好" not "早晨好". Sunny

From: Jason To: Sunny Sent: Wed 1/24/2007 10:43 AM Subject: RE: 7-2870 | DS2434 x 1,050 Thanks Sunny! It’s funny you should point that out – about ten minutes ago I was thinking, “I should probably ask Sunny if the translator is accurate or if I just asked her something silly. Like "have a large bowl of Polish icecubes." 恳切地!, Jason

From: Sunny To: Jason Sent: Thu 1/25/2007 4:59 AM Subject: RE: 7-2870 | DS2434 x 1,050 Dear Jason, I am very happy I can help you learning Chinese. Would you like teach me English? I am not sure what is meaning for "have a large bowl of Polish icecubes". Could you explain for me? Thank you very much in advance. Best regards! Sunny

Uh oh...

My throat is killing me. Feels like someone took a band-saw to it. But it's the only thing that isn't functioning right, so that's a plus. The downside is that coughdrops are barely helping.

Plus they taste like sh*t after ten hours.

This pretty much sums up the bane of my existence:



well maybe you should just drink a lot less coffee
and never ever watch the ten o'clock news
maybe you should kiss someone nice
or lick a rock
or both

     Regina Spektor ("Ghost of Corporate Future")

"So then she sticks her finger in my asscrack and says woooooOOOOOO."

Oh, this is a riot.

"Britain, Japan and Australia joined the United States on Friday in voicing concern about the rising militarization of space after China successfully carried out a test of an anti-satellite weapon."

This is what drives me absolutely batshit about this country; one set of rules for us, another for everyone else.

"It's politically sensitive, but it’s going to happen. Some people don’t want to hear this, and it sure isn't in vogue, but—absolutely—we're going to fight in space. We're going to fight from space and we're going to fight into space. That's why the US has development programs in directed energy and hit-to-kill mechanisms. We will engage terrestrial targets someday—ships, airplanes, land targets—from space."

     Commander-in-Chief of US Space Command, Joseph W. Ashy, Aviation Week and Space Technology, August 9, 1996, quoted from Master of Space by Karl Grossman, Progressive Magazine, January 2000

"The United States will preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space; dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do so; take actions necessary to protect its space capabilities; respond to interference; and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to US national interests."

     Bush's National Space Policy

"The United States has been researching satellite-killers of its own, experimenting with lasers on the ground that could disable, disrupt and destroy spacecraft."

     MSNBC.com

Some of the news stories actually point out this hypocritical stance but it's buried at the bottom 1/3rd of every story I could find.

This isn't isolated. The United States government lies, assassinates, installs puppet regimes, you name it -- then musters up enough chutzpah to expresses righteous indignation in the same breath.

We should be indignant. But if we weren't participating ourselves, maybe we wouldn't be laughed off the world stage.

Decided to spend my evening in Boston last night. The plan was to get some long-overdue sheets for my bed and take some shots of the skyline.

Bought the sheets, discovered that payphones no longer exist, shadows are against copany policy in the Apple store, there isn't a single place in that unholy monument to consumerism that sells musical keyboards and chalupas kinda taste like shit if you don't eat one for a long time.

Subway back to Kendall, walked ten minutes and set up my tripod on the bank of the Charles. It was fucking freezing. Cold enough to make you fingers no longer responsive after only a minute of exposure. Spent about :45 in 20°F plus wind to snap off a 9-frame HDR panorama.

Thought to myself, "I wonder if I should check the time? Naaah. ... Hm, maybe I should..." And so my cellphone reads 10:15PM and I stare at it for a few seconds doing the math. "That can't be right" but it is because cellphones don't lie.

I do the math. Twenty minutes to get all the way to North Station. The walk back to Kendall will take 7-8 minutes, the ride from Kendal to Park St. is maybe 2 minutes, the ride from Park to North Station is another nine. That leaves me six minutes of wiggle room to catch my train. I start jogging.

A cab passes which reminds me that cabs exist. I flag the next one down, get to the train with time to spare. Eight bucks. Ow. Cab fares always make me wince.

I process the pics on the train once I convince my fingers to return to active duty. The pictures all suck. The HDRs suck and the pictures won't stitch anyway.

I get home, so happy to be mere minutes away from lala land. I rip open the new sheets, start to put them on and ...they're the wrong size.

Six hours later I wake up for work.

95% of the time I shoot the left side of the train. It's more scenic and there are far less powerlines in the field of view. It also has the benefit of almost always being at right angles to the sun. But sometime around Bevery Farms I look back and see this:



All things being equal, this view is pretty much the most photogenic shot on my entire trip on any given day. This morning it was lit up perfectly with a blanket of cotton candy clouds floating over the water's surface. It was like the sky had landed on the water and it would have been one of my best pics to-date if I'd been set up for it. All I could do is snap off two shots with my camera settings all wrong and watch it float by.

Almost got off at the next stop. Came as close as you can without actually doing it.

My day had better get better. =)

"I've got to support the president," said Rick Johnson, a former serviceman and the store's owner, as he waited on customers. "I jumped in the boat when he jumped in the boat. I am not going to jump out now."

Even if the president left both your lifejackets in the pickup, dropped both oars into the ocean, forgot the map and is currently drilling holes in the hull?

Ok, so they're going to remain loyal. Stupid, but loyal.

But Johnson and other staff members said that even though they backed the Iraq war and the president, it didn't mean their support was automatic or unqualified.

Ok, so it isn't a matter of loyalty, really, it's a difference of opinion about whether or not Bush's mission of achieving a Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq is still possible?

Now they're just stupid.

"He [Bush] is saying we should stay in there until we fix it. It doesn't mean we shall stay in here until we all die," he said, adding that the world should look to the United Nations to solve problems rather than always turning to Washington.

Right, because the U.N. encouraged us to invade Iraq? WTF are these people smoking?!

Bush was apparently upset about the Saddam Hussein hanging video.

What's a bloody shame is ...if the guard didn't take the video, the world wouldn't know that this even happened. Perhaps someone present would speak up only to be squelched by the Pentagon as Iranian propaganda.

Unless, of course, you actually believe they'd admit to anything if there was any way at all to deny it. Remember when they denied using white phosphorus in Falujah until the evidence became too overwhelming? Then the story changed to "ok, we didn't target civilians..."

So why does our president only get upset when shown multimedia of his failures? Katrina, Abu Ghraib, this... Maybe someone should send Bush a documentary DVD about the last six years of his administration.

I've recently been prescribed Adderall. This, for a reason I neither forsaw nor comprehend, has caused me to lose pretty much all desire to smoke weed.

Much to my chagrin, that hole has been filled with another habit; coffee. Specifically, a two large iced caramel latte per day habit.

Ironically enough, my weed habit was cheaper. Go figure.

Best viewed large on black or white.

A quarry @ Halibut Point, Rockport, MA. 65°F in January. The ocean is actually visible between the trees to the right. Always a nice place to see a sunset but this was just spectacular.

I've been told there are a pair of freshwater eels that live here.

This is an HDR spanning -3 to +3EV, processed and tone mapped in Photomatix. I try to make my HDR shots look as close as possible to the scene I viewed and the view really was this amazing. I only applied moderate ("normal") contrast and pretty light unsharp mask.