Writing reviews

One of the last things I have to do at work is complete a lot of employee reviews. I've been writing them for days now. I spent pretty much all day today working on them.
I take writing reviews seriously, and perhaps it's no surprise that I get writer's block while writing them just as I do when writing fiction. I also get the same pleasure from producing an insightful turn of words, or an appropriate metaphor or descriptive phrase. Writers take pride in everything they write, from e-mails to reviews to postcards and letters.
All this typing this past week is killing my fingers, though. My wrists are really sore.

Nephew

My new nephew Ryan...

Comedy

I caught bits and pieces of my first real episode of Joe Millionaire today. Unintentional comedy cubed. I'm not sure if Fox can keep this going because future contestants will know the premise, but this is reality TV executed at a very high level (some people will see that as taking us one step closer to the end of humanity).
So many things on this show crack me up. First of all, Joe is clearly no millionaire. I'm not sure what type of training they put him through, but it's hilarious to hear him butchering French words, gagging over fancy foods like foie gras, and saying things in his soliloquys like "And watching two women doing the tango, that lifted my spirits." I think he was supposed to have come into the money late in life, which is supposed to explain his lack of suavity and savoir-faire. By letting the audience in on the secret, a Hitchcockian device, we can laugh at his inability to hold his wealth.
Secondly, what's up with that goofy butler? His random and occasional unsolicited commentary is unseemly for a butler (hasn't he read the stories about Princess Di's tight-lipped butler?), and there's something salacious about him.
Thirdly...I can't remember what else I thought was funny. Maybe it's not that funny a show after all. Joe (whatever his name is) does seem like a pretty down-to-earth, nice guy. His commentary seems pretty heartfelt. To see him exploited in this way on the show does leave the viewer feeling guilty, and the catty, gold-digging female contestants won't inspire much faith in humanity.
Still, I have to laugh at the people who fret over reality TV and its influence over society. People have loved to revel in the faults of others since they could communicate. This can't compare to the conversation in an old Victorian salon.

Down with Love

Trailer for a new romance starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor. Period design (I'm thinking Catch Me If You Can, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) seem to be in. Zellweger seems to be hanging out, knocking on the door of the elite tier of money-making actresses. The romantic comedy route seems to be her best bet, as opposed to the gravitas of, say, Nicole Kidman or Julianne Moore.

Spam

A whole bunch of brainy geeks met at MIT recently to discuss solutions to spam. As long as smart people are peeved enough about receiving spam to work on the problem. there's hope that one day our inboxes will be free. To date I've been too lazy to try whitelisting, so I'm hoping filters will continue to improve. I used Cloudmark's SpamNet plugin for MS Outlook and it works fairly well.
Still, it's not perfect, and some of the material from the conference sounds very promising. Paul Graham gave a follow up to his fascinating article "A Plan for Spam" which proposed using Bayesian filtering on the likelihood that single words appear in spam mails versus regular mails. If you know the word viagra is appears in spam mail 99.9% of the time and in a regular e-mail only .1% of the time, finding it in a message is very damning. His follow-up, Better Bayesian Filtering, has some thoughts on how to improve his filters. Very interesting, readable articles since Bayes' law is understandable to even those who only took intro to probability. Clever.
Even more promising is Bill Yerazunis' CRM114. With some training, it has achieved accuracies of 99.9%. It's available for free for those reading e-mail on Linux or BSD. If you use Outlook on Windows, Network Associates recently bought Deersoft and plans to merge SpamAssassin Pro with their own McAfee SpamKiller. CRM114 can be used with SpamAssassin.
I still think strong legislation against spammers is needed. It's not as if the spam I receive is useful advertising. Usually it's so evidently disguised to try and get me to visit a porn site (spammers now disguise their e-mail as personal messages, using language like, "Hey, I finished that web page you asked about. Check it out: [insert porn URL]") that it clealry crosses some ethical line. And when you just receive overt pornography in spam it's just plain offensive. Either way, I'd love to see spammers nailed with big lawsuits and jail time.
Of course, the ugly truth is also that enough people click on these sex ads and marketing offers that spamming remains profitable, and perhaps that's the saddest truth in all of this.

They came bearing gifts

There are people who claim to not like receiving presents. When their birthdays come around, they ask you not to bring gifts to parties they host. If you ask them what they want for their birthday, or for Xmas, they say that your company is present enough.
What's wrong with these people?
I love getting presents. Things wrapped in colored paper. Cards, hand-written notes. Sometime later, after reading this, you may suddenly feel, "Gosh, that Eugene, he's a swell guy. When's the last time I showed him how much I love him? I need to get him something."
You'll want to act on this impulse. Trust your heart.
But instead of getting me something, what would really make me happy is if you'd make a donation to the American Cancer Society. Everytime someone I know loses someone to cancer, or someone I know passes away after a long battle from cancer, I think to myself that cancer is the most cruel teachers of the randomness of tragedy and suffering in this mortal sphere. Not as sudden as a heart attack or a fatal car accident, but longer, slower acting, more painful to the ones you love. it's not a sudden shock to your system. It begins as a shock to the system, then it's followed up by a series of emotional setbacks, then one final loss that you're almost numb to but aren't because you've convinced yourself that anyone that hangs on that long will pull through somehow. Physical and emotional attrition. All the time, you can hear the question being asked: do you still believe?

Music from a dream

The music in the new Two Towers trailer is from Requiem for a Dream. Good soundtrack, that was. You hear the music in this context and think it was from an action or adventure movie, but no, it's from an ensemble epiphany (think Magnolia) where a whole bunch of drug addicts are suffering from all sorts of horrific trauma.

Google Viewer

Can anyone get this Google Viewer to work? I just get a whole bunch of Javascript errors.
Google Labs are constantly cranking out wacky new services, like Google Webquotes. Must be a fun group to work in.

Hasselblad H1

So yes, I've slowly lost patience over the past few years. So the part of me that used to relish scanning negatives and slides and editing the images in Photoshop and then posting the images to web pages? It's dying. For a gadget freak, I've been very patient in holding out on the whole digital camera craze. The quality just hasn't been what I'd want yet. But cameras like the new Hasselblad H1 are oh so tempting. Fortunately this one would cost eighteen grand with a Kodak digital back so it's not as tempting as it could be.

Motorcycle wearable airbag

Saw this in slashdot today: a wearable motorcycle airbag vest. I've got to get one of these to wear during snowboarding! If I had one of these, who knows what sort of crazy things I'd be launching myself off of in the mountains.
As a motorcycle safety device? Well, I'm not sure how much good it would do. You'd bounce into the street and lay there like a giant bubble before a semi truck would run you over.

Digital cameras--is it their time?

Luminous Landscape has done a field test on the new Canon EOS 1Ds 11 megapixel digital camera. Exciting results, as it appears that digital is making huge inroads on film. Of course, some people will continue to raise the flag of analog, much as some people refuse to buy CDs while hanging on to their LP collections for dear life.
At some point, though, the cost equation will work out such that digital is more economical. Perhaps not at the price of this Canon (currently list price is $8,999!) but very soon. I really wish Nikon would come out with a high end body with this type of resolution soon. Even more exciting, these new digital cameras will shoot full-frame, without any magnification factor. It's a huge leap forward in the digital camera arena.
This, added up with the fact that you can preview digital photos, change the ISO on the fly, never have to worry about what type of film you have in the body (color or B&W) or carry two camera bodies, and avoid the delay and cost of film processing and scaning means I'll be in the market for the next high end Nikon digital camera body if I can afford it (the Kodak DCS Pro 14n is based on a Nikon body and promises 14 megapixels, but I haven't read any reviews of it yet).

I...love...football on TV

Sometime over the weekend, maybe it was last week, the intro to Sportscenter consisted of a spoof of those Coors Light football commercials. You know, the ones that go, "I...love...football on TV...shots of Gena Lee...and those twins." Or, whatever it is they say. Anyone, some news anchor clearly spent a lot of time writing up that intro, and I just want to applaud his creativity. I wish I had it on tape. Anyway, instead of those blond twins, the anchor substituted the Minnesota Twins.
All the underdogs have won in the baseball playoffs so far. The perfect rebuke to Bud Selig and his pronouncements of doom.
Go Twinkies.

Published!

That photo of Lance and Beloki I snapped on La Plagne at this year's Tour got posted on Lance's website.

Cure for poor customer service

For the most part, I've had a good time ordering online, and I'm a fairly prolific online shopper--I rarely go out to shop anymore. Occasionally, though, I still have that bad experience shopping online, and one bad experience will stick in your craw for months. The only relief in these cases when I can't get any help from the company itself is to complain about it on my blog. In a few weeks, several hundred people will see my gripe and think twice the next time they decide to do business with company XYZ. That means some more lost sales and market share for that company, and it feels good knowing you've hit them in the wallet and their reputation.
So here are a few of my recent gripes:

• Don't ever buy from PCNation: I made the mistake of getting all bug-eyed over a low price on PCNation for a photo printer. I placed the order in July, when the availability was listed as 1-2 weeks. Well, I haven't gotten my product yet, and I've only received a reply to half of the four e-mails I've sent to customer service over there. They don't have any information on when my product will arrive. At this point I just want my money and credit card # back from them. Sites like this remind me of why people buy from Amazon, because it's a name you know and trust.


• Dell: I received an e-mail from Dell pushing a 15% off memory promotion. Well, with all the massive file sizes I deal with while photo editing, my PC has been slowing down quite a bit and even crashing, so I decided a RAM upgrade was a good idea. I went to the website, punched in my serial #, and Dell pulled up a few memory chips based on their stored profile of my computer. Pretty nifty, I thought. Here's where customized customer profiles were going to simplify my shopping experience. So I ordered another 128Mb of RAM. Got it, plugged it in, turned on my PC, and...nothing. Didn't register. So I call Dell up, and the guy says that for my computer I have two channels and both must be filled with RAM for things to work. Funny, that wasn' t in any of the fine print. Fine, so I order another 128Mb of RAM. Plug that in, crank up the PC, and BEEEP. My computer doesn't even boot. Just beeps at me. I try reversing the RAM, shuffling the four DIMMs around, pulling them back out. I rummage through online documentation at Dell.com, and finally I find an old PDF file that says I must have the same size memory DIMM in every slot. Since I have 2 256MB DIMMs in my current PC, I have to buy two more. My two 128Mb DIMMs are worthless. Great, thanks for the heads up. So much for Dell's customized ordering wizard. Turns out if you don't return the memory within 30 days, you can't. Well, I ordered the first DIMM more than 30 days ago because the guy on the phone told me to order another one, so they better let me return both. I tried calling customer service today, and some guy who'd clearly been drooling on his keyboard in a slumber told me the computers were all down and to call back in the morning. Stay tuned on this one. Dell has a reputation for great prices and an innovative business model, but they need to make good on this one.


• Adorama: very impressive selection of photography equipment at this site, but a small incident recently has me peeved. I ordered 3 photo album binders from them. Each came with 100 sheets of sticky photo paper. Well, once they arrived, I used one and set the other two aside. Recently I developed a few more photos and tore open the shrinkwrap to the second binder. The binder rings were broken. They didn't close. So I called Adorama up for an exchange. No good--they had a 10 day exchange policy. Here's a site that might make hundreds of dollars off of me in future business on equipment like Nikon lenses, and they wouldn't exchange a simple photo album binder. What a short-sighted policy. I'm taking my business elsewhere until they make good.


• Air France: still haven't received an apology from them for not having delivered my bike and clothing for the first 5 days of my 7 day trip to France for the Tour de France camp in July. Hey, I defend the French when people denounce Parisians as rude and snobbish, but their damn airline isn't helping their cause. In fact, at this point, a damn apology isn't good enough. I'm making it a point to encourage all my cycling friends to fly another airline to France for next year's Tour, or for their next bike trip. Frankly, I've never met an airline I've liked. People think lawyers are evil, but at least some of them will get you out of jail in exchange for your money.

Aaaaah. I feel a little better already. Thanks for listening.

De Le Hoya vs. Vargas

Saturday, HBO re-aired the De La Hoya-Vargas fight from the previous week. I've never seen De La Hoya fight, but the story behind this fight was the stuff of high drama.
Vargas, the young, powerful up-and-comer, taunting the veteran De La Hoya for years, trash-talking, calling De La Hoya out. Vargas potrayed himself as the fighter who stayed true to his Mexican roots, representing his people against De La Hoya, who Vargas demonized as the rich, pampered pretty boy, corrupted by his wealth and the comforts of America, drained of ambition by his beautiful wife. De La Hoya, who many regarded as a finesse fighter with the quick hands, against Vargas and his pure punching power. Even their faces seem to conform to the story lines: De La Hoya with the softer features and handsome, boyish face, while Vargas had the fierce scowl and sharp, defined features of someone who survived the mean streets, the tough neighborhood fights.
Vargas goaded and prodded and shouted for years, and finally De La Hoya could take no more. Vargas had called him out, and they'd settle things in the ring. Nothing like a fight between two men who deeply hate each other. De La Hoya was the one with the most to lose. He had the greater reputation, and if he lost after being called out by Vargas, his reputation and legacy in boxing would be tarnished, perhaps irreparably. That De La Hoya put everything on the line after not having fought for 14 months is gutsy.
That's what I love about boxing. You put on a pair of gloves and settle everything in the ring. Talk isn't just cheap in the ring, it's free.
The first few rounds, Vargas came out in a fury, bloodying De La Hoya in rounds 1, 3, and 5, and the crowd was in a frenzy, chanting "Vargas! Vargas! Vargas!" De La Hoya had to be wondering what he'd gotten himself into. Or that's what I thought, looking at the blood dripping from his face. But De La Hoya continued to box, stayed calm, fought back his fear, and somewhere in round 6 or 7, Vargas began tiring, and De La Hoya knew it. Then he began to just box Vargas to death, left jabs and hooks peppering Vargas' face in rapid flurries.
In round 10, De La Hoya staggered Vargas with a left hook, and as De La Hoya moved in for the kill, the bell rang. In round 11, De La Hoya saw the opening. He waited and waited, and then Vargas threw the jab, and De La Hoya cracked Vargas in the head with a left hook. Down went Vargas, and he popped up just as quickly, but De La Hoya smelled blood. He moved Vargas into the ropes and then unleashed a non-stop rampage of left-right-left-right punches to Vargas' head--we're talking about Agent Smith with the body shots on Neo in Matrix--until Jose Cortes, the referee, rushed in to save Vargas who was just holding his fists to his face helplessly.
The interview was fascinating. De La Hoya is a good interview, extremely well-spoken and honest. He admitted Vargas was a strong puncher, and he admitted to accepting the fight because Vargas had finally gotten under his skin. When asked what he thought when he saw Vargas bleeding, he confessed, "I know it sounds brutal, but when I see blood, I want more."
There aren't many sports which have the confrontational drama of boxing. In basketball, stars routinely avoid guarding each other. In football, offensive players from each team don't play against each other, they play against the other team's offense. Mono y mono keeps everything pure and clean. Sure, you have your ringside support, but it's a bit ridiculous sometimes. You've just had your head knocked around by your opponent for 3 minutes, you're bleeding from your nose and both eyes, sweat is burning your eyes out, and your coach is slapping your face and shouting at you, "C'mon, man! Whatchoo doin? Get out there and whoop his ass! Move your feet! Don't let him hit you!" I can't wait for the day when some boxer gets up, throws his stool out of the ring, and shouts back at his coach, "Why don't you get your ass out there in the ring? Yeah, that's what I thought. Now shut up, give me some water, and let me rest!"
De La Hoya and Vargas. Great fight. And I didn't pay for it, unlike the Tyson Lewis fight, which cost $55 and was barely a contest.

Fantasy Island

Off to the San Juans for a weekend of R&R at Juli's family condos. Honey!
Toni's tying the knot tonight, and I've volunteered to be wedding photographer. Hmm, this should be interesting. Kinda wish I had the Nikon 85mm AF portrait lens, but gadget lust is a never-ending hunger. At some point, there's just the craft. I've been perusing the Joe Buissink site for inspiration.

Long haul

Good luck to my coworkers running Hood to Coast today. They're crazy, of course, and it's fantastic. The corporate weekend warrior is an easy target, but what's wrong with a desk jockey who makes the most of time outside the office to combat the ravages of time? It's a beautiful thing. It's a fine line between laid back and lazy.

A movie lover's fall

This summer's movies have not been all that exciting, but the fall brings hope...
At long last, Disney is bringing out the American release of Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away. Disney and Miyazaki is a good pairing; he is Japan's premier animator and purveyor of wonder. The Quicktime trailer is gorgeous.
I have it on DVD, but I've been waiting until my receiver returns to watch it. Can't can't can't can't wait.
Another can't miss event for film buffs everywhere: the digitally restored Metropolis (Quicktime trailer). I really hope it comes to Seattle. It inspired a Japanese animated film which fell far short of the original. Fritz Lang was a mad genius.
Moving on, we have the last in Godfrey Reggio's great "Qatsi" trilogy, Naqoyqatsi, with another sure-to-be-wonderful score by Philip Glass, arrives October 18. Naqoyqatsi is "life at war," while his previous two, which arrive on DVD in mid September, were life out of balance (Koyaanisqatsi) and life in transformation (Powaqqatsi).
How about a film from Werner Herzog, with a score by Hans Zimmer? That is the promising creative force behind Invincible. Also stars the always sharp Tim Roth. I didn't even realize Herzog was still making movies. Amazing. His Nosferatu and Aguirre: The Wrath of God are movie hall-of-famers.
Of course there's Punch-Drunk Love, Heaven by Tom Tykwer and starring Cate Blanchett (first of the Heaven, Hell, Purgatory trilogy originally planned by Krzysztof Kielowski, Bubba Ho-Tep (Bruce Campbell plays an aging Elvis who battles mummies!!!) and way off in the distance, The Two Towers, which I'm just about to finish reading again, and Gangs of New York. It's not a historic lineup, but it contains enough nuggets to keep it from being a dismal second half.

Entertainment news

Hard to believe the fall is just around the corner, with football and Fall TV. I arrived back to Seattle from France and it felt like summer was just beginning. Then the second day back it was about 55 degrees and rainy.
The season premiere of of the second season of 24 has been set on Oct. 29, a Tuesday, at 9pm. The entire first episode will be commercial free. Maybe we'll see Jack Bauer have to use the bathroom during that episode.
Sarah Michelle Gellar likely won't sign on for season eight of Buffy, so next season's it. Good long run for Joss Whedon.
Baz Luhrman has thrown his hat into the Alexander the Great ring. He's now competing with Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese, and Mel Gibson to be first to market with a biopic on Big Al. Very strange how everyone in Hollywood is always converging on the same ideas. I can guarantee that if there are four movies on Alexander the Great, not all four will succeed.

Stupid Stupid Stupid Human!

Aaaaaaaaaaaa! So I lug my camera and my big 80-200mm lens over to France for the Tour. The last time I used my camera, I was at a wedding, and it was dark, so I decided to shoot my 400 speed black and white film at 800 and then push process it later. Well, being the idiot I am, I didn't bother checking the rating when I loaded new film in France during the Tour. I shot two rolls of Provia 100F at 800 speed and the slides all came out predictably underexposed. Noonan!
I think it's partially Nikon's fault for not flashing an alert or resetting the speed when a new roll of film is loaded. Damn!
Fortunately, my one good shot of Lance was shot on 400 speed film. Everyone in the camp was so impressed watching me with my giant lens, lens hood, and monopod, running back and forth across the street to get angles on the incoming cyclists. They're going to have a good laugh at this one.

Best of the streaming music services

Listen.com's Rhapsody online music subscription service is supposedly the best out there. Their musical catalog is impressive, and you can play an unlimited number of tracks each month, but you're limited to burning ten tracks a month. That means most of your music listening still has to occur at your computer. Not my preferred mode of listening to music.
Pressplay finally unveiled unlimited downloads and streams for $14.95 per month.
All these services are inching their way towards usefulness, which makes it somewhat more palatable that the file-sharing services online are crippled. Still, lots of problems remain. The quality of downloaded streams is not CD quality, only 128kbps for Pressplay, for example, and streams are just at 96kbps for customers with the fastest online connections. That's weak, and insufficient for music like classical or jazz which counts lots of audiophiles among its audience.
These services try as hard as possible to not tread on the turf of CD sales, and that's their downfall.

Numero quatre Lance brings home

Lance brings home number four. Awesome. The man is like a machine, which is so impressive because he is so much a human in so many ways. Maybe the French will finally show him some respect.

Photo gear for the Tour

Famed cycling photographer Graham Watson posted photos of the equipment he uses to cover a typical race.
I brought along some camera equipment to the Tour as well. Not as much as Graham, but coincidentally, some of our gear overlapped. I used some similar film: Fuji Provia 100F and Fuji Velvia. I also carried the same flash as Graham (#3 in his photo: SB28) and two of the same lenses (#8: the 80-200mm f2.8 and #11: the 16mm fisheye f2.8). I wish I could afford some of those other lenses, but as an enthusiast it's hard to justify the expense. Someday.

Blech

CBS owns the rights to broadcast the last stage of the Tour. Well, they showed about a few minutes worth of actual riding from the last stage today. Basically, they showed Robbie Mcewen sprinting across the finish to win the stage and the green jersey. American cycling coverage is terrible.

Getting good buzz

A positive shout from Time about Episode II. Looks like they bagged the early mainstream media exclusive with Lucas and company on this one.
JetBlue--the next Southwest? I've heard about its leather seats and its cheap fares to New York.
Nikon D1X. I don't have a digital camera yet, but if I did, this is the one I'd want.

Random fame

On the web, it doesn't take much to get a massive infusion of traffic to your site. Make sure your computer has its sound turned up.

Fashion forward

Juli, my fashion consultant, helped me to pick out a pair of glasses on Saturday down at Marketplace Optical. As Susannah, the lady who worked there, explained, Marketplace specializes in frames that are "fashion forward." That basically means glasses that don't make you look like a geek.
Juli is a graphic designer, an illustrator, and one of the most stylish dressers I know. I highly recommend that you get to know someone like that to help you pick out clothes, glasses, artwork and furniture, etc. If I were wealthy and famous, I'd probably have names of people like that in my Rolodex (er, Palm Pilot, perhaps, in this day and age? that might be passe now also) for all occasions. I'm not, but I still have Juli, and thank heavens for that. Shopping will never be the same again.
I've never really worn glasses, but I'm a big fan. I can't wait to get my specs and transform into, mmm, someone else. Not quite me. Someone I'd like to be. A better me. Clark Kent.

le sangria-froid

Hola mis amigos. I'm back. My body exists in its own state of biological synchronicity, thus I am up at 5 in the morning. It's always easier for me to fight jet lag by staying up late, as is usually the case on the journey home, than to try and sleep, which is the case on the way over. Still, it will be a long day. Lots to catch up on around the house.
Oh, I'm loving this American keyboard. I was thinking, maybe they use punctuation in different ways, thus leading to a different optimal keyboard design. Fewer questions, less need for colons, stuff like that. I'm glad to say I fought that design for my week and a half there and continued to punctuate as necessary.
[Aside: Speaking of grammar and punctuation I've been browsing through my
new copy of Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, which is genius, and must point out a useful entry on the misuse of "aggravate for annoy or irritate." Garner recommends that this usage "be avoided in formal writing" as "strictly speaking, aggravate means 'to make worse, exacerbate'". I only note this because I heard it used on the trip a few times...if some of the Spaniards I encountered could speak English, they would be saying "gringo dumb American, you aggravate me." I would not have had the heart to correct them.]
My roomie Rich has taken a new job and is leaving for New York to study finance for five months. So much change happening around me. I'm glad I took a vacation, otherwise I'd feel like a slug considering the life changes folks around me are diving into (job changes, marriage, kids). Getting away helped me to clear my head and think some more about what my next steps are. One idea I had was to make a movie--I even have an idea for a short film. And an idea for the female lead, though I wonder if she'll want to act in it. Hmmm. As most amateur film directors know, finding good actors is one of the elements most out of their control and thus one of the most frustrating things about that field. I wonder which of my friends would make good actors.
I think my entire trip has influenced my aesthetic sensibility. I had a dream just now, before I ran to the computer, where I saw in a Spanish traffic circle the perfect composition for a photograph, and I woke up desperately groping around my bed for my camera. I started to hone my sense of composition with the camera while overseas. Don't know why I didn't think of it before, but I tried to make it a conscious consideration more. It's part instinct, of course, but I'm still a novice so I have to experiment and play around and see what I come up with. But I definitely think my photos from this trip will be better than those I got in Africa. My first few rolls of transparencies (i.e. slides) show some promise, though I got some vignetting in the upper right corner of my shots. Damn. Must have been the two filters I put on my lens. I definitely have to figure that out.
Flipping through some photography compilations, like that of William Klein, has helped me with my own feel for photography.
So so nice to put vacation messages on voicemail and answering machine. Come back to very few phone messages. E-mail, on the other hand, is another story. I'm not even going to begin downloading messages until I get into the office tomorrow.

Crisis of faith

Currently going through some soul searching. Haven't felt like writing in my blog. I think I really need to get to Spain. I'm totally out of focus.
A few random thoughts.
Watch Wong Kar Wai's BMW Film Follow just to hear the rendition of "Unicornio" he uses on the soundtrack. Lovely. Not sure if you can buy that version, but the original is pretty good.
William Klein's photos of New York are great.
Supreme Court ruled that Casey Martin could ride a golf cart on the PGA Tour. The sad thing isn't that he won the decision. The sad thing is that the Supreme Court had to rule on that on the first place. The PGA Tour should've given Casey Martin an exemption long ago. Then it wouldn't have gone to court, and the PGA wouldn't look so inhumane. I play golf. Letting a guy with a handicap like Martin use a cart is not a big deal. If a pro golfer can't walk the course when he doesn't even have to carry his own bag and still compete with Martin, who can barely practice b/c of his handicap, under those types of conditions, shame on him.
I've been thinking...