Paul's Journal

10/16/2008 01:27 #46137

Busy Day Gone
Category: life

work
After a nice long weekend, I had a crazy day of programming, demonstrating, writing letters, meetings and quick hacks. Hopefully, tomorrow will be better. I am feeling frustrated with how slow everything moves at my work and how every conversation requires 75 minutes of small talk before the matter at hand can be addressed. I am so bad at small talk when something time dependent is waiting. Maybe I am just a boring person.

Home Life
The anniversary was nice. We spent the day just hanging out together and fixing things. We fixed a drain and installed a new lamp in our bedroom closet. Then (e:matthew) and I took a bath while (e:terry) studied and at the end of the day we went to Mother's for dinner where I had an 18oz ribeye steak that was so delcious.

So were these little neck clams

Along the way we went shopping at some antique stores and I saw this tray. I always wanted one of these. I also bought a lamb roast to match. Friday, they will meet each other and then my stomach.

They also had these crazy lights in there basement. What were they for. Medical use, disco lights?

Robbers
About 10 people/cars/houses on our block have been robbed including our neighbors the other day. We saw a dude enter their house through the door and we just assumed it was a worker because when I checked the door it was locked. The dude then stole all of their electonics and shipped them over the back fence. I wish I had realized what was going on.

Then last night on the way home from dinner some very capable look, young black guy begged us for money - that annoys me more than anything. I am fine with the cripples and crazzies and old people but when young people who are clearly in better physical shape than me ask for money - I find it hard to believe they can't do something to for work. On the way out the woman who sat next to us found her window smashed. He was still there bothering people for money. He either did it or saw who did it.

I think they may have caught the house robber and it was the same guy that robbed out house two years ago ;(

Other forms of robbery include food costs. I just can't ebeliev how much food costs keep skyrocketing. Look at the cost of these freaking cookies.

Here is a pic of (e:terry) looking cute just before his haircut.

gardenmama - 10/16/08 13:13
My niece's apartment on Linwood (near Utica) was broken into last week. The thief took a knife block/knives and had some other stuff piled up outside in the back, but aparently got scared off and left the other stuff behind. They've also had a car with someone(s) sitting in it outside the front of their house pretty frequently (maybe casing). They reported it to the police and the cops chased them off but are now thinking that it was a stolen rental car.

fellyconnelly - 10/16/08 10:14
where do you guys shop then?
Those cookies looked good though... mm cookies...

tinypliny - 10/16/08 10:11
Weggies is an upscale suburban store. Why are people so infatuated with it?

james - 10/16/08 10:06
Wegs is so expensive I don't even shop there any more.

tinypliny - 10/16/08 09:36
They look like operating room/exam room lights to me. Disco lights cannot be this dull.

Can't they put those few cookies in a paper bag??!! Geesh, talk about plasticking *everything* . :/

THAT is shocking news about the robbery! Did they recover what they lost?? These people must be waiting and watching everyday! Who knows who is watching me and you guys!?? I vary my routine everyday and never go to school/come back at the same time. But then I may not be high on their target list because I neither own a car or any electronics or even furniture. Plus they need to be spidermen to climb to the fifth floor. They could potentially climb in from the terrace of the other building. Ugh. Disturbing.

10/13/2008 16:18 #46096

Conservatives in Leather
Category: politics

So after the Scion show (Communist Party) (e:terry) and I came home and tried to go to Ohm but it was shut down so we decided to sprint on down to underground and see if anyone we knew was out.

When we were there we hung out with our friend Christoph and some older guy in jeans and leather v-neck open furry chest teeshirt came over to talk to us. He said and I quote:

We better vote for McCain beacuse if we don't its gonna be the beginning of the Niggers and Spics ruling the streets.

I am not even sure what his reasoning was or if it was just that Obama is black, and what do the "spics" have to do with it? I wish I had paid more attention so I could have gotten some better quotes but I was too drunk and didn't want to get into a fight.

I mean think about it. There we were in the gayest of all gay bars, where you would expect people to be the most liberal. It just goes to show you that no group of people consists of just one type of person.

metalpeter - 10/13/08 19:40
I have found in my life that many minorites don't like others. As an example NYC Puerto Ricans and Island Puerto Riccans often don't get along and both of them and Mexicans don't get along. I've heard Hispanic and Blacks both talk bad about the other race. I have heard blacks talk about bad about Gays. There is something really weird called Colorism (not sure if it still is around) Where light skinned, dark skinned and High Yellow blacks don't get along. I also do think that Homosexuality is is just sexual preference like hertosexuality it doesn't make who you are politicaly yes it can effect it but it doesn't change your views on things. I think one reason is that in some cases (some cases the other way around) people have there politcal ideas tought to them or they learn some of them as kids and so they have that foundation before they know what they like sexualy because the hormones and desires haven't started yet.

james - 10/13/08 16:56
Joshua, I know openly gay men who support Bush and subscribe to his authoritarian philosophy. Their sexuality is second, or third on a long list of unnecessary prioritization (they are patriots first and gay second. I manage to do both at the same time). It is really mind boggling and I presume the result of a brain disfunction.

hodown - 10/13/08 16:54
Wow. Just wow.

joshua - 10/13/08 16:43
Larry Craig? Where are you (allegedly)?

You've blown my mind. The title of this journal entry was captivating enough (who couldn't click on that?). Log Cabin Republicans doesn't exist for naught. There would be nothing more funny, particularly if you don't agree with me, if you watched me stumble into a political argument between two gay guys. I am not sure I'd know what to say about it. I can only assume that liberal gay guys would say to the other that he is self-loathing and is fighting against gay causes. Why shouldn't there be hawkish, small government, low tax gay people out there?

I think many gay conservatives relate to the old school style conservatism of the 60's, that had nothing to do with sexuality as part of the deal. The Moral Majority really ruined it for those who might have been attracted to conservative principles.

I had to get some perspective so I found this - :::link::: - I don't mean to sound flippant but reading this made me feel like some of these guys have had to live behind two closets, not just one. From your experience how are gay Republicans treated amongst the gay community in general?

10/13/2008 10:48 #46082

My Letter to the Mayor
Category: buffalo

The corner of Franklin and Linwood by my house is ridiculously dangerous. Its so weird that intersection is in the middle of a city, does not even have a sidewalk on the southside. You guys who have walked downtown from our house have all seen how crazy that corner is, especially at nighttime. I wonder when they decided to make the street curvy like that. Both sides Franklin and North Pearl are curvy.

Dear Sir,
I am writing to express my concern for the safety of pedestrians at the corner of North and Franklin. I own the house at 24 Linwood, the first house on Linwood after the intsersection and have witnessed many near accidents as pedestrians, including myself, attempt to cross the street. The southside next to the park is especially dangerous because it does not even have a sidewalk. It is so strange, right in the middle of the city, to have a busy intersection with no sidewalk and just a dirt path along a stretch of it. When you add to the mix the extreme traffic from rush hour or that many drunken drivers head home from Allentown and Downtown bars via Franklin->Linwood, the confusing corner becomes even more of a danger.

I encourage you to please include the final stage of funding for the Franklin, North, Linwood Intersection project in the 2009 Capital Budget.

Thank you for your time,
Paul Visco

matthew - 10/13/08 11:40
Linwood Ave and Franklin Ave did not originally connect. I think they changed that in the 1960's when they put in the subway and redid mainstreet. I think it's crazy that the traffic is so dangerous on that cornor when you have Tapestry elementary school on one side and a senior citizens housing building on the other. It's next to impossable for anyone to cross the street. The city hasn't even painted a crosswalk on the street, the simplist thing to do to make it safer and more pedestrian friendly. Im glad the Linwood Association has raised the money to fix this and better the neighborhood, god knows the city needs a little push every now and then. I also wrote a letter.

james - 10/13/08 11:35
good grief, the buck sure gets passed around a lot.

paul - 10/13/08 11:32
The block club already met with the councilmen who told us to write to the mayor. In their email to the residents it said: Do NOT send a copy to the councilors. I think during the meeting with the councilors they suggested we write to the mayor.

james - 10/13/08 11:21
You should also mail that to your city councilman David Rivera
darivera@city-buffalo.com

10/11/2008 21:44 #46069

Bathtub

I freakin love the bathtub in the back bathroom but I hate the shower
connector faucet. It is so relaxing to take a bath. If you javent
taken one in a long time, you should try it. The heigt of our tub
gives you that wild west bathing in a bath bucket feeling.

So back to the faucet. It's an ugly, dripping piece of crap. I
stopped at home depot and bargain outlet to try and find a nicer
replacement but neither sells bathtub facets sans shower. At home
depot the guy acted like I was crazy to even ask. I guess no one has
just rubs minus shower anymore.

The rejuvination catalog has fancy ones but they are like $300-700+
and I want to spend like $100.

iriesara - 10/13/08 13:24
I had a cold this past weekend, and took THE BEST bath. I set my humidifier up in the bathroom, and let the room all fill up with steam while the bathtub slowly filled up with VERY hot water. It was so hot it took me like 5 minutes to be able to fully immerse myself. Laid back, snorted some good steam, and sipped a strong hot toddy....I felt like a whole new person!

matthew - 10/13/08 12:15
it's not a claw footed tub, it has a skirt. But it is free standing. I'm embarrassd to say that I've lived in the house two years now and I still haven't used that bathroom tub.

james - 10/13/08 11:36
When winter comes there is nothing better than a hot bath, a book, a tall glass of whiskey and sinking into oblivion.

johnallen - 10/13/08 01:42
Hello Legs. You should try Seneca Plumbing on the corner of Seneca and Michigan. I get the stuff for church that i can't find anywhere else from there. In the rariety you can't find something old there, I've had luck with Buffalo Re-Use too. (think I got the name right)

theecarey - 10/12/08 17:03
This picture/post reminded me of one from back when you lived at 444, where you took a picture of yourself sitting in a tiny little tote box placed in the bathtub. You now seem all so grown up to me in your big-boy claw foot bathtub, lol. (which I miss, baths are so not cool in anything else)

metalpeter - 10/12/08 11:29
The first part of the journal sounds like you are inviting people to take a bath in your tub. I know that isn't what you mean. From the tittle I sure thought there was going to be the showing of someones junk in this post. I know baths are supposed to be comfy but that doesn't look that way. Yes they are more relaxing then a shower however unless you do the lots and lots of bubbles then you sit in the dirty water. But if someone takes a bubble bath don't they then have to get clean and get all the bubbles off of them. In terms of the romance part I think sharing a shower is more about lust and sharing a bath is more about romance.

libertad - 10/12/08 00:37
I forgot to say I have the same type of claw-foot tub and they are awesome.

libertad - 10/12/08 00:37
I take so many baths now. I really do love it.

tinypliny - 10/11/08 21:50
I find it hilarious right now that you take your phone whereever you go. :)

10/13/2008 11:26 #46084

Scion and the Communist Party
Category: advertising

Everyone kows how I feel about marketing. Especially, in your face marketing but what i saw a the Communist Party

at Sound Lab - took the prize for most digusting in your face advertising I have ever witnessed. It got so bad that (e:terry) and I left as we couldn't even enjoy the music anymore. I know that events are sponsored and sponsored events have advertising but this took it is a new more sinister direction which intergrated every aspct of the event with the advertiser and every surface with advertisment.

When we first got there I was really enjoying the music. The DJ was

and she was totally amazing. I think my favorite party was her playing a childrens light up electric sword during her live set. None of my criticism for the event has anything to do with her. Her blog is also pretty entertaining

I wish she blogged here.

Back to the event...

If you haven't been to soundlab the setup is pretty cool. They have a bar on the right and booths in a corner to left. The stage is in the middle. When we first got there, we went over to the bar to get some beers and I noticed that on the side wall there was a scion video advertisement playing. I thought it was weird but then i thought, maybe it was just a TV channel. Then it kept playing and playing. I just ignored it.

Then the place was so packed that we headed over to the booths for a bit to sit. In the booths were hundreds of scion keychains. I thought, I started to take pics.

Well someone must have noticed because with like everytime we moved from the booth and came back, the table was re-decked with more merchandise. After the keychains came Scion music CDs. Well actually the CD's were from iheartcomix.com

but it also seems to be a scion marketing front.

Then the last time we visited the booth there were even Scion winter knitted caps which people started wearing truning even the patrons heads into fucking advertisments.

We move away from the booths and decided to just watch the music and dance. But then while we were dancing, someone went and put up a giant 6 ft across scion banner across the stage. At first it seems like a joke. I mean the event was called the communist party and (e:terry) thought maybe it was a challenge to see if we would react to such extreme advertising.

So we move back to the bar to talk about it and low and behold there was a table with more scion keychain, scion metal boxes, and scion headphones, as well as, other scion merchandise and marketing material.

I was out of my mind irritated at this point. Every surface every direction except for the artist herself was 100% scion.

Its so weird the way that they slowly built it up to this nauseating advertising crescendo. And then the final straw. I say to (e:Terry) specifically, well at least scion is not in the art itself. I mean that would be the most ridiculous thing even. Within a minute the artists video screen from her dj set turned into these high tech graphic scion collages and advertisments as her set was ending. I thought I was going to throw up. There was no direction without it anymore. I know I am particularly sensitive to advertising but this was something I just never imagined and I could hear other people talking about how unpleasant it was.

In the end (e:terry) went around and just threw the merchanidse off the tables and onto the floor. Then he started chanting scion, scion, scion and some of the dudes around us jokingly joined in, making it totally insane - we had to exit.

Apparently, for some scionistas it wasn't even enough

After that we went out on the town, invited people to our halloween party and maybe made a new friend. We tried to stop at Ohm at like 1am but it was already closed. Thats sad for that place. Tabu is also closed now. We got home at around 4:30am.

tinypliny - 12/12/10 01:03
heh - I didn't like the communist party music so much. It sounded very systematic and monotonous compared to latin/arabic/african - which I am playing a lot these days.

tinypliny - 10/15/08 02:04
Imagine if the medical community were able to pull this performance art off, how many lives could be touched, influenced and saved due to early screening and compliance. Alas, enviable skill always lies in the "wrong" hands...

tinypliny - 10/15/08 02:00
I am a big sucker for advertisements as well. I intentionally check almost every ad on gmail and try to track down interesting ones on the many websites I visit. I sometimes even check out the ads handed to me on the streets/fairs/festivals etc. But the fact is, despite this almost borderline crazy ad-loving, I hardly shop for big-ticket things, if ever I deviate from the grocery route. I am probably everyone's worse customer. I just like to follow ad-trends and admire them like people admire art. Manipulation of people's buying power and imaginations is a huge performance art. :)

BTW, those little metallic pen thingies look pretty cool. :)

mike - 10/13/08 17:46
that is insane! but i secretly would of loved it!

metalpeter - 10/13/08 12:37
I went to school for the wrong thing I really did, what I should have gone for was marketing, it is a big business and there are lots of types of it. You have to take into consideration that people like free stuff so you give it to them for free and then they advertise your stuff for you for free. Scions are marketed for the Young and the hip. When I went to the Stemm/As Summer dies show Jagermeister was a sponser of Stemm, and they even have there own tour and they have bands on it. On there tour they have Jager girls who sell shots and if you buy band merch you get there stuff free. It is cheap advertising. It is pretty smart. I went to a Concert Years ago at the show place that Was called the Cutty Sark Tour and it had a bunch of Metal Bands and Hot girls selling Cutty Sark. When I went to the last Warren Miller movie they have all kinds of add tie ins and you can get deals from the sponsers and discounted ski trips. After the event they had this thing where they gave away free Corona/Warren Miller gear and cheap Corona. Again the babes there where amazing. This new form of advertising a prefer to when you don't know someone is doing it to you. There is a fine line between we are a sponser and here is free stuff and it being over the top. This is the new face of advertising. I have heard of the communist party and do find it Irronic that they are sponsered by someone, I wonder what real communests would think. (sorry for the shitty spelling)