(e:southernyankee) and I hit the Tops stores yesterday for our impromptu seafood party. It was the first time I got to go to the tops on Niagara St. since they redesigned it. It has really come a long way, there are even rainforest noises in the vegetable department. Unfortunately, they did not have enough clams to satisfy our craving so we had to go on to the next tops but managed to buy 3 lbs of catfish nuggets while there and found pappy's sassafrass, see below.



The Grant St. Tops is as crappy as ever. I hate that one, if you have a choice go to the Niagara St one. Everytime I am there I am so amazed at what a different world and quality level it is from Wegmans which is only a block away.

Maybe it's a local business thing. Wegman's, although they practice many unfavorable business tactics such as strawberry picker union busting, they are local, while Tops is mega-super-ultra-trans-national. Let's at least pretned that Wegman's cares more about the community and it's image even if it's just pretending.

For me, tops is just too sterile. It looks like a hospital. (e:southernyankee) says bright white sells stuff, but I like the homey Wegmans orange - wood - brown scheme.

We also stopped at the coop and bought the necessary organics. My coop milk, eggs, 1 lb cherries and bacon cost as much as all of my other tops groceries combined(2.5 doz clams, 3 lbs of catfish, 2 sodas, collard greens, 1 block of dill havarti, .25 lb cured black olives, .25 lb greek olives, and baby portabellas.)

As for mega-store shopping what do you guys think, Tops or Wegman's?

(e:flacidness) and (e:lilho) stopped by for Dinner. Actually, (e:lilho) did much of the cooking along with (e:terry) who was master chef [inlink]terry,269[/inlink]. I steamed the clams and acted as a team supervisor, hahaha.

This is (e:flacidness) 's cousin frita. She was playing with the sidekick and I found this picture of her on it.

Here is a picture of my Grandmother with her brothers, sisters, and parents.



I have been thinking for a while about how I could use a new audio blog and this seemed like a good match. She is describing the names of the people in the picture from left to right, top row first.

::DOWNLOAD SOUND::

Here is Nonna during the scanning process.



If any of the rest of you would like to add audio to your entries, just remember you can simply use the add media box at the bottom of your journal entry form. Just make sure that it is in mp3 or wav format and is under 100k.

It seems like everyone is on vacation. Hopefully they are because we only have about 4 weeks till winter starts again. I was gonna do summer colors but the site went right from bright green spring colors to this fall scheme. I suppose Buffalo did almost exactly the same thing with the weather.

In wired magazine this month, they predicted that the latest craze is going to be social networks combined with P2P file trading software. I hate to tell them this has been around long before the beginning of napster, etc.

As a matter of fact, I think file sharing instigated some of the earilest forms of computer aided social networking.

I remember the when a friend of mine's mailman, armed with a database and a printer used to have a social network he created to trade Commodore 64 software enroute. Every month he would drop off a list of new software that people along the route had aquired and then you could trade by giving something to the mailman that somebody else requested. He would then deliver what you requested the next time he came around.

At the same time electronic bulletin boards, IRC, and later programs such as Carraacho for mac and Hotline for PC were made exactly for such a thing. They actually predated all the anonymous P2P trading possibilities of today.

In soem ways, these older forms of filesharing were cool because you secured online friendships and built trust. In another way it sucked because you had to spend time buildinh online friendship and trust! I mean say you wanted a copy of the newest DVD or video game, you would need to give the person that possessed it something they wanted in return. Over time you would develop a friendship that allowed you to give and take at will - all password protected of course.

I think nowadays, in the age of mass databases and breadcrumbs, it seems like a dangerous market. If you combine the social networking habits and data with your file sharing informtion, you begin to have a good case against you in court. A digital papertrail with all of the necessary information to figure you out.

Does anybody else have feelings about this?

We are heading home to e_town with some atkins on the way. This is a picture of my eye catching up on some weekend journals, using a microscope and taken with the sidekick cam.

(e:beast), I also think letterboxing sounds cool and so does (e:terry). (e:rachel) wants to do something similar called geocaching. Maybe it's even the same thing, she would know more.

On the way home, I decided to listen to my voice mail, something I had never done before. I've had my phone since Christmas Time. Almost each one was a pissed off call from my brother ((e:mike)) who was waiting for me at work to give me a ride home. I feel really bad cause I thought he knew I never listened to my voicemail. He must have been really mad, when I never responded to them. I am going to record them cause it's almost funny.

Camping was fun, we swam around a bit and collected wood. Pat and Terry showed up too and they have a dog.

Thanks (e:mike) for holding doown the fort. Have fun (e:chris) said he would look out for you

So yesterday, at the lamest Thursday in the Square I have ever been to, there was an exceeding amount of street christians. There were of the hardcore cult variety and all had giant banners, comic book, flyers, etc.

The two best were a sign that said "Believe now or suffer the consequences" with a giant sickle on it and another that listed all the people that would go to hell including my all time favorite - rebellious woman, catholics, mormons, budhists, partiers, pot heads, etc.

All of their womanfolk were wearing full length little house on the prairie dresses with sandals while some of the men were dressed in militant-style clothing. it was freaky to say the least and there was a police line around them.

This is only a fraction of the total protesters.



At one point, a younger guy from their group came over and gave me one of those Christian comic books - I am making my own one currently. I smiled, took it and in the most mixed message ever way threw it on the ground at his feet. Needless to say he got mega-angry and turned red like he was going to punch me. Then something happend and he was overcome by "Jesus" or the the fact that all his "christian" friends were watching him and said "let me pic that up for you and then walked away."

I felt like Satan tempting Jesus.

Anyways, I feel bad for the real Christians who get a bad name from these hate mongers. They were the same people that threatened to protest at our house a couple years back because I messed with the one guys video camera while he was filming around our house. They protested on the corner with loud speakers and told us it was their right, so (e:terry) got out and mowed the lawn (very loud) until they left.

On another note. I noticed everythign is becomming www.something.com. When at the square just about everything had a www.something.com address. It is definately mainstream now. HEre is a pic from the continental.



Also, on the way there (e:rachel) and I were ebhind this hard core Bush campaign and anti-mariage car. I got out at the light and took a picture of there mariage = man + woman bumper sticker. I am sure this is probably illegal and they must have thought I was doing something to their car but it's not like they were being secret about their agenda.

I am almost finished with the profile section and I completed the audio/video chat which can be found by clicking on (v chat) on the chat box when it is online. Please check it out.

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE FLASH PLAYER VERSION 7

While you do not need a microphone or camera, it does make it more fun. For DSL or Cable connections, make sure to choose "DSL" and not to leave it on modem or it will get slow.



I also made it so I can have customizable backgrounds, which I might make available to everyone later on. I haven't decided how I want to do customizations. Those of you that remember the site from March of 2003, know that we once had customizable backgrounds, colors, etc. However, I took that away in favor of having uniformity as we are a community and not just a journal site. I also don't want someone to fuck up the way it looks and have other people think, I made it that way! One way of dealing with it is that you see the site with your customization only when logged in. Who knows, I will have to think about it some more.

I will see everyone tonight at the various locations where I will be inebriated and slur my speech.

This is for anyone who does not think that the amry is about suffering and humiliation.



I had first thought that it was some dude who was in trouble, but my friend suggested perhaps that it was a german prisoner. Seems like we might have a policy about this
[inlink]holly,50[/inlink].

Here is my favorite new one out of Iraq. Hm , looks like gang rape to me.

Here is the to the project page. I ended up reducing the model from about 5000 polygons to 900 but it lost some detail. Here it is at 2800 and 900 polygons.

[inlink]paul,1383[/inlink]

This article from Ajay's journal [inlink]ajay,57[/inlink].

I don't want the soldiers to be trained to better cope with killing. First of all, as we are not living in a time of draft, I have no respect for their "innocense" and hope they all suffer and die with the same enthusiasm that they kill others.

I will never believe any of that poor people with no better alternative then selling their souls to the big killers crap. Personally, I would rather have them turn to jesus, sell drugs, get an education, or join gangs and kill each other in their own country. I see no reason it should be condoned that they should allowed to kill people in other countries.

Do we really want our soldiers to have the type of psychological training where they can simply cope/ignore the downside of killing? Does everybody realize they are coming home at some point? What types of propagandist excuses would they have to learn in order to feel better about killing and have less psychological side-effects?

I hope they all come home and shoot up woman and children at shopping malls and restaurants. Then maybe the people of America would think differently before they sent our young, vulnerable, mental softies to war again.

Does anyone remember or did any of the soldiers read about how people treated the vietnam vets when they came home. Because, the same thing is going to happen and many of them were draftees not volunteers. This is not going to be like WWII. Many people will not respect them but see them as ignorant pawns of the government and many of them will not adjust very well. Especially, if our regime changes and the war is not constantly bolstered by the neverending bullshit that the regime feeds us to uphold its necessity.

Let's also not forget how many street and near-street people here in our own e-town are vietnam vets which seems to be an obvious sign of mal-adjustment.

When I was at my father's house a couple weeks back, he told me that one of his friends who ended up in vietnam is really fucked up still. One time on the fourth of july, he freaked out during the fireworks and sat outside with weapons in his driveway to "protect" his family. That is scary, I don't even want to deal with these killers when they come home and I especially don't want them to trained to cope better with killing.

What happens when they move next store to a middle eastern family? What about all the middle eastern run convenient store workers and owners? Can they ever feel safe when these people return home?

I think soldier killers that volunteered and were not drafted should have to register as trained killers (like sex offenders) so that we can better protect ourselves from them in our neighborhoods.