We are offcially on the cape after crossing a big iron bridge. The traffic leaving the island is insanee. It looks like a 4 mile long traffic jam. I would be so mad if I lived in one of these tourist areas.



Last night we met the laundromat woman, who came from Martha's Vineyard. She said she never goes back cause it's to hard with all the tourists.
That must be so strange to have you hometown tranformed into a tourist trap. I bet the people in Sedona, AZ feel the same.

On another note, I am having this crazy mobileexperience right now where I am mediating the capture of a silverfish in my bathroom at home over IM while traveling at 70 mph across cape code.

My brother (e:mike) is trying to battle it. I suggested a glass and a piece of paper to cover to open end. He is taking more drastic measures I believe.

His away message now says:
WalBumbalo: [AWAY] in the battle of my life with a silverfish in the bathtub, only one of us is coming out of there alive....probably the bug. Now all I need is some alcohol, a lighter, and a fuse......

I hope I see him again and that my house doesn't burn down!

While at camp we stopped at walmart to pick up some stuff for a potluck dinner. I would normally never shop there but we had no other real options. I am sure that this is the plight of many places in small town America.

This walmart was not a regular walmart. It was the most intense super-mega walmart I have ever seen, complete with grocery store. However, it was not red, white, and blue like other walmarts, it was a green and yellow theme which made the whole shopping experience seem highly unpatriotic, hahaha.

Everything was beyond big size and ultra cheap, I can see the appeal for poorer americans with no options. Surprisingly, the quality of food, although surely all genetically engineered and sprayed with chemicals, seemed at par with any main stream grocery store. They even had the same main stream brands, as well as, products like tofu and get this meltable, shredded, vegan mozarella substitute. I would have killed for that ten years ago.

For example you could get a gallon of heinz ketchup for 1.66 or check out the giant mayonaisse containers below. Matt said we should have bought them as weights to work out with.



Too bad all of the price reduction comes at the expense of child labor and sweat shops in asia. Remember, 10% of China's exports go directly to Walmart. It's also at the expense of nearly every other store in the surrounding town shutting down.
While at the liquor store, the man in front of me bought a bottle of wine and a cork screw. When he got up to the cashier he asked how much the cork screw was. She said something like 3.50 and he said he'l just pick one up at the walmart then. I think that's how everything eventually shuts down around the walmart.

Not to mention the other super-sized product of walmart, the regular customers. It may be that some ofthem had medical disorders, blah blah but not as many as I saw. I think they themselves had simply become the product of Walmart's food deals like the by one get one gallon of mayonaise. I mean we no longer have to expend any energy in the hunt or farming of food production. So when you couple that with cheap prices and mega sized stuff, you get mega super fat assess, a la walmart style.

My favorite part of all, was that in the jewlery department they has a machine (see picture, if it works) where you could send messages to the troops. Unfortunately, the messages we pre-programmed and and you had like 60 choices. That is so fake.

I bet the troops really bothered reading the form letters with repetitive messages they receive in the end. Maybe they just get a pie chart, lol with 20% said good job, 30% said kill more children.
Oh wait, that one was not an option.

Check out this poster about joining the army. I found this propaganda at the local laundromat in Middleboro.



I like how it looks like an Abercrombie and Fitch ad or some ski resort ad. I mean they have style, attitude, smiles, snow, sun, sex appeal (check out how they highlight the guy on the right's package) but even more fun (and more phalic) they have giant machine guns. Is this an army ad or gay porn?

The most confusing part is that the campaign to get new recruits is called "army of one" but then the slogan at the top says "Being a Soldier Means Somebody's Always Got Your Back" and there are two of them in the picture.

You could even interpret the slogan in a homo-erotic way. I think it's funny. Someone must have intended that way or they had really bad censors.

We drove from the Adirondacks to the Atlantic Coast. It was a pretty fun weekend. We will post some pictures from camp when I get a chance to get my hands on a computer.

Nick and other Safari users. sorry about the random blog button covering over the drop down list. I didn't know before I left and might not get to a computer till the 12th. Try another browser for now. The best one is mozilla firefox. See my recent blog about firefox, or just type it into the search.

(e:mike) and (e:jill) seem to be having fun at the estrip headquarters. Thanks for taking care of it for us.



So, I am sitting in the laundromat and reading the local paper here. Somehow,the department of homeland security has convinced four little towns around here (Lakeville, Raynham, Taunton, and Fall River, MA" to allow a test for a new type of multilevel surveillance system.

It involves a huge amount of video cameras that record what's going on around town. It extends the network of video cameras already in stores and allows the police to have access to it.

What makes it more fucked up is the way they justify it. First they say the average American is captured on video tape an average of 200 times per day, so we shouldn't think this is new and/or intrusive. They also wrote that

"You might think that information on the local level wouldn't be that important, but tiny pieces of information shared between the small police departments of the local level can make a differnce", Mr. Pacheco said."

He explained that on the day the Twin Towers were struck, people watched as firefighters were going up into the towers and police officers were coming down out of the towers. The two departments could not communicate with one another because their radios operated at different frequencies." - Middleboro/Lakeville Gazette July 1, 2004

This is so disturbing. How can they really relate these two things. Invading the privacy of individuals in the name of police communication error reduction. This is spying and it conveniently started at the same time the Department of Defense is asking for an exemption from the Privacy Act, which outlaws secret databases on American's.

In the article, Representative James Fagan (Taunton, MA) commented that he "would rather have my own gun and sit in my yard than have the government watching everything I do." Where is it going to stop!

Furthermore, it is not secure and I can't even believe this poor country schmucks believe it is. I guarantee with the right software and a laptop anyone could hook-in.



(e:matthew) and (e:terry) peed here after the laundromat at the strip mall.

This little town rocks. It's looks kind of resortish but it is chock full of nice non-chain restaurants and bars and has lots of outdoor local music stuff going on. It reminds me of Ithaca. We are in a rush now, but I would like to come back here sometime.

On the way here we went past Seneca Falls National Woman's Suffrage Monument. I have seriously been there about 10 times, each time in some unexpected way.

Right south of there on Cayuga Lake is Taughanock Falls S.P. which consists of a long trail through the woods with a giant high up waterfall at the end. I suggest you check it out if you are over near there. When Terry and I were there another time a couple years ago, this dude waited at the top of the 200 foot cliff and kept peeking over. Everyone aid, "watch out he's gonna kill himself" and then he jumped and fell. About 1/4 the way down he opened a parachute and landed safely. Needless to say everyone was terrifieds before they saw the parachute.

(e:matt) took pictures of the falls when we were their last month and posted them to his journal. Unfortunately, I can't make inlinks from the car!

So we are on the way out east and eventually we will hit the ocean and camp at cape cod. Tonight we are staying in the adirondacks at bear camp, could be crazy. (e:mike) is moving into our house for the week with (e:jill). It will be a good trial run at having their own apartment.

I am excited because this will be my first moblogged vacation. I think the only time I will reach unconnectivity is in the mountains till Monday. After that, according to t-mobile coverage map , which is a really cool flash application, I should be set. I will be using a similar "mapplication" copyright visco 04 in my epeeps tracking system for epeeps.net . (e:rachel) , I need to talk with you about this when I get back.

In cape cod we are staying near provincetown in a place called pilgram. We are camping right at the beach . I am pretty excited about touching salt water with my body.
I had another local web site idea where people can keep anonymous blogs about their deviant and erotic sexual behavior. I think we all know tons of people that would really get into this. I am sure it would generate cash that we could use the money to pay for estrip and epeeps.

I realized that Paul Visco's (my) tongue is really long and wide.



It would be like our digital prostitute and we, it's pimp. No seriously, I think it could really work for a lot of people and bring exhibitionists together with voyeurs. I just don't want my own journal, to be resposible for what it becomes, and I would need a lawyer. On the brrght side I think the audience would be wider and the potential for advertising money would be so great which means estrip, the more meaningful project could grow.
I would rather have my eyes ripped out than advertise on estrip but would have no bad feelings about advertising, on the sex site. Now I just need a catchy name and some details. What do you'll think?

By now I am sure you have all heard about the viruses on web pages that track your keystrokes. Even my parents heard about it, and they are by no mean computer savy.



According to the article
This week, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, part of the Department of Homeland Security, advised Internet users to "consider" using a different Web browser as a possible solution until Microsoft fixes the flaw that allows Explorer to be exploited.

I agree switch to mozilla firefox . It is what I use when designing and viewing elmwoodstrip.com. I have noticed that 60% of you still visit here coming from Internet Explorer. You are risking so much using software that is poorly constructed and hated by the millions of people that want to see microsoft collapse.

Mozilla firefox is open source and best of all its free. It is avaiable for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. You can get a copy by clicking on the "get firefox" link at the bottom of the (e:info) journal's link list or clicking here . I have made this so easy , you have no excuse not to protect yourself and switch.

Here is a link [inlink]paul,627[/inlink] to another entry I wrote a while back on this and other open source, free, and useful software.

I decided to venture on out of the house tonight to see elmwood first hand. Right now I amat Coffee& waiting for (e:mike).



Everyone thinks I am busy typing so they are talking freely about how it might close cause no one comes here. It is so sad cause newly corporosized spot is packed. As a matter of fact, I went by spot first and had to leave cause I remember how corporate they were getting and that they were going to franchise into the middle east.

I think there are two problems here at Coffee&. The first one is location. It is slightly more hidden than spot. They also don't appeal as much to the nouveux riche suburban crowd because of their deco. I mean it definatelt, appeals to the hippie elmwood crowd but that'snot the crowd with the expendable income.

I also heard their Coffee wasn't that great although, honestly, it tasted good to me. If they had the best coffee in town people would come no matter what.

The counter boys were saying they should make advertisments on their own initiative. When is the last time you heard a worker say something like that. They must actually repect their employer and enjoy their work.

The one dude just said, "I haven't even gotten paid yet and I would carry a sign down the street. We gotta do something" He is right.

I remember when Buffalo used to be full of coffee houses. Anyone remember the old topic? I used to be a chess champion there, I also used to love how the young and old would integrate their and share a cultural experience. None of that at starbucks. Starbucks sucks, first off cause it's full of corporate fuckheads and pretentious yuppies but also because its the equivalent of a coffee walmart. They clearly moved in here to destroy local business. I mean even if the coffee market sucks they will survive till everyone else closes.

I am so mad that elmwood is going corporate. And now that the coopisdoing their knock down and rebuild it crap, everychain store on earth is going to follow. When will they just put a glass ceiling over the top and open a rainforest cafe.

Everyone said the lunch crunchies [inlink]paul,1246[/inlink] were too cute to be effective, so I added this new one, that is the blackness of satan. By the way I was once called the blackness of satan by my old roomate in South Carolina.

Anyways, it worked for me, one week since I quit and I am willing to brave the pink tonight.

This lung crunchie is like the gremlin that got wet. I might just try and get a job with those canadian cigarette companies!

I was going through some of my backup files and found some old pics of me. My favorite is the fat one (I was never fat, its a camera trick.)

Here we go in chronological order.

Me as a kid at nonna's House.



Here I am in 1987 feeding some seagulls at Lasalle Park.



Going camping with Deidre (e:haikuster) circa 1994



1995 in my backyard



In Germany on the way back from Italy in 1996



In Flasgtaff at my mini apartment 2000 15 x 9 (3 dudes)


At the Volcano in Flagstaff 2000



Germany 2001, Terry and I hang this add up to find an apartment without having to write any words. It worked and we got a great one.



In my backyard woking on one of my early web projects . I was taking pictures of the site and transforming my Lexington Avenue Backyard into a tropical rainforest.