ok, peeps.

the time has come for me to bid you farewell and head off to the far east.

at the crack of dawn, i will be on my way to beijing, china! the journey there and back will be horrendous. we leave buffalo at 6am heading to detroit, where we will sit for 7 hours. we'll then board a plane to tokyo, which will last over 14 hours. once in tokyo, we change planes again and head to beijing for 4 hours. we leave tomorrow morning and will not arrive until 9pm tuesday night.

oh i am so super stoked! i will try to smuggle my camera everywhere and take pictures of everything, hoping the commies don't snatch it away. but if they do, i'll just proclaim my polish commie-hood, pay a few people off, and pretend it never happened.

i'll try to check in from some internet cafes and give a few updates, but i'll save the pics for later and i'll make sure to eat enough dim sum for each and everyone of you.

ok, peeps, time to pack. see ya in a while. dsai-jian!

sure, the one day that i pick to invite people to swim, is the day that it rains.

i've decided to hold off the swimming till i get back. will do to the movies instead, so anyone who wants to join ladycroft and i, just holla.

who ever wants to come swimming tomorrow before i leave for china, the pool is a whopping 85 degrees!

so

come by and bring your swimming apparel. let me know if you're coming i'll give you directions.

who ever said it is better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all is a fucking moron.

maybe it's passion that's the problem, not love. passion is what makes you do stupid things, passion makes you sick and demented. it's funny because i was working on a post about how i figured out that it's passion that i was missing and that's why i was feeling miserable, but now i've changed my mind.

passion is an infection, a sickness. it's like drug, when you don't have it you want it, and when you do have it, you STILL want it and you become completely blind sighted when high on it.

i want an off switch for desire.

i just watched the most depressing movie ever made. asylum and it features my newest hottie Marton Csokas
god, that man is the hottest thing walking on two legs, i probably would throw myself off of a building for him too.

shit, there it goes again.

oh good people of estrip, it seems that your funk has finally infected me.

i feel so sad and hopeless. i am the greatest underachiever that has ever lived. i'm getting old and lame and have nothing to show for my 30 years of existence.

unlike jenks, i don't and never will have a successful career.

unlike paul, i will never have passion for any particular thing and will never dream about coding.

and unlike leetee or ladycroft, i'm not a very nice person. i'm not happy and friendly and don't have nice things to say when i see you.

after watching all day, the weather man, the matador, must love dogs, notting hill and a few travel channel specials, and eating 4 bowls of ice cream, i feel like jumping off a cliff.

i want to cry. i can't connect with people. not because i don't know how, but because i just am not interested. people don't make me happy, things don't make me happy, food doesn't make me happy, alcohol (and other substances) don't make me happy. relationships don't make me happy. i've lost faith in humanity, in fact, i don't think i've ever had any. i'm not spiritual. i don't believe in god, i don't believe in love. we're all just animals, we fight to survive and shit and sleep and do nothing selflessly. those that do things for others do them because it makes THEM feel good in return.

i am miserable today because i know i'm a selfish fuck and i know that everyone else is too. and those far and few in between who are a little bit unlike the rest of the beasts that roam this earth, i don't like you either, because i resent and envy you.

i don't know who i am, what i want, where i want to go and especially where i want to end up.

the only thing that brightens my day is travel but you need money and time to do that and it depresses me to know that i will never have enough of either.

and now i have a proper pity post.

• WARNING, IF YOURE EASILY DISGUSTED BY BODILY FUNCTIONS, DO NOT READ*

ok,
so,

i didn't crap for about a week. so since i didn't have to work yesterday, i figured it would be a good day to take some laxatives, and since i had a serious case of back up, i decided to take three. whatever. i take a lot of pills.

OH MY GOD! LORD, JESUS, YAHWEH, ALLAH, BUDDHA. what a mistake!

1pm rolls around and the upset stomach feeling comes.
2pm the cramps begin.
3pm the god damned REVOLUTION starts!!!!!

it was as if the french revolution, the communist revolution, and the industrial revolution all came together and decided to stage the biggest protest known to man inside my large intestine.

i felt like i was trying to shit out dry ginormous pine cones with thorns. i sat on the toilet crying for my mommy and for god and for george bush and hezbollah and lebanon....oh wait....wrong post......well...take it from me, being in labor was a walk in the park compared to this.

incidentally, i also forgot that i had dinner plans.

but since i thought the worst was over, i went to dinner to grab some sushi and promised myself i would not eat much of anything. unfortunately, my promises are worth nil, and i ended up eating tempura shrimp roll and tempura vegetables and the cold sweats began again. i felt weak and hot and cold and shaky and had to speed home in my little hundai accent like i was dale earnheardt, muttering under my breath, seeing double, dripping sweat while rocking back and forth.

and so today, the storm was over when i woke up feeling ok. i was able to eat breakfast, even though my stomach was a little sore, but no biggie. so i took a trip to the farmers market and bought 2 lbs of cherries.

i forgot what cherries do to me.

so i'm doubled over in pain two days in a row and a new revolution has begun and i'm cussing at myself for doing this once again.

fuck.
shit.
fuck.

owwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!

HA HA AHAHAHAHHA.......my exgirlfriend was named MR. GAY BALTIMORE 2006!!! was in the paper and everything......hee hee hee.

so here is a recap of my NYC trip on Friday.

we got up at 4am to catch a 6am flight.

arrived at 7:30 am and caught the M60 bus out of LaGuardia to 125th and St. Nicholas to catch the A train. This is the first time i took the bus and i must say it's definitely worth not spending $35 dollars on a taxi. we then bought an all day unlimited subway pass for $7, which proved to be a great investment.

we went to the Chinese consular office to drop off our documents and quickly headed to the MET. although the admission policy states $15 RECOMMENDED, most people miss the recommended part and pay the full $15 per person. for a family of four that ends up being $60! last time my mother went, she too paid the full price because no one told her it is not required. as long as you make SOME kind of donation, even if it's dollar, you're in. so that's exactly what we did, being that i'm super broke, and i tried to inform a few other tourists of the misinformation. they were kind of pissed that they ended up paying so much money when they didn't have to. my feelings are, if you are going to make the admission to the MET donation only, make that well know to the visitors. don't trick them into paying $15 dollars without letting them know that they have an option to donate just a few dollars.

once inside, we were able to catch a free tour and saw some of the museum highlights.

here is the outside of the MET. it reminds me of the Spanish steps in Rome, where everyone goes to hang out and pick up members of the opposite sex. (well probably the same sex too)







ancient samurai gear.



my knights in shining armor.





this was part of the house that the tiffany's creator built. in the 50's the house burned down and this is all that is left.



this was acquired from Egypt, where it was submerged under water for 3/4 of the year because of a small damn on the Nile. when they decided to upgrade to a much larger damn, this would have been submerged entirely, forever, so instead they decided to donate it. both the Smithsonian and the MET fought over this structure. the MET won because it promised to build an enclosure (the one that is pictured here) in order to protect it from the elements, whereas the Smithsonian was going to have it displayed right on the mall in D.C.



this is a tiffany fountain. it is a beautifully constructed mosaic. the entire piece is constructed from tiny pieces of colored glass (and possibly colored stone, not sure). but it is absolutely amazing.



some stained glass windows, salvaged from some really old church.



we stumbled onto some kind of television production on Broadway. it was for some new show airing on TNT. as much as i wanted them to turn the camera on me, and make me the star of their new show, they did not seem as enthused about the idea as i was.




this seems a little inappropriate for public display....don't you think?



here we are chillaxing (credit to hodown) in front of the CBS building, waiting to get into MOMA. faben seems to be having a case of the sneezes.




we then headed to the MOMA where the lines were huge!

ok, here is the thing. i appreciate art, but i don't understand some kinds of modern art. i don't get how you can paint a canvas one color and call it art?

faben was so aggravated with this that by the end of the visit she was in a foul mood. she could not understand how so little effort, can get so much recognition.










and here are a few pieces of three dimensional abstract art stuff, which i still didn't comprehend.







this stuff was a little more interesting.







here is a monstrous Pollack piece with faben pondering (again) why this is art.



things got a lot more interesting when we got the the upper floors. this is where all of the Picasso, Klimt, Van Gogh, etc. stuff was.

Kandinsky



Klimt



i don't know who this is, (forgot to look) but we've seen it before and can't place where exactly, (maybe a children's book?) can anyone help me out here as to who this is?



Seurat (the guy who painted with dots)



Gauguin, a friend of Van Gogh's who hung out in the south pacific islands and took a 13 year old as his wife.



the infamous starry night by Van Gogh.



in between the museums we went back to the Chinese consulate and picked up our visas. the whole process went a lot smoother than i expected. being the uber bureaucratic country that china is, i thought we'd have to jump through a lot more red tape. although i suspect that the process was not as smooth for others, as i over heard a man throwing all kinds of fuck's and shit's at one of the Chinese representatives. somehow i tend to think that yelling fuck this shit, in a Chinese consulate office is not the best way of getting YOUR way....don't know...might be wrong...but that is just my general hunch.

we caught the 10 pm flight home, which as delayed by a half hour, and were home in 45 min. i slept for 10 hours that night.



p.s. new user sound.....the chemical brothers with beth orton, where do i begin

Don't forget about shakespeare tonight.....

look at post below.

We are organizing an outing for shakespeare in the park on sunday, (tomorrow).

you shall bring blankets.

you shall bring munchies, such as cheese and grapes, and other fancy foods.

you shall bring alcoholic beverages so that we may be intoxicated and more so inclined to understand shakespearean speak.

you shall all meet early enough to snatch a good place to sit, so as to not be off in the corner of the stage where we can only see the asses of the actors facing the real audience.

you shall be there or you shall be square, tis the fate that awaits those who choose to ignore this plea.

6:45 we need to meet at the park, all those coming let me know in the comments