September 2003 Archives

My car is a 1997 Saturn SL2 with 115,000 miles on it and I'm ready to part with it to help fund my adventure abroad. An earlier sale to a friend of a friend fell through, so I've entrusted its sale to my friend, Stephanie and her husband, Jim.

Here's another set of photos found in my attic this past week. These are also from my 1988 college photography class. This project used multiple images--being one set of photos I took of my friend Kelly overlayed on a set of photos I took of myself. This series is a dream sequence...though I don't remember now who was dreaming of whom. I'm pretty sure it was me haunted by her.

Here's two photos I found while digging through my attic this week. These photos are from my college photography class in 1988. This project's subject had to be people. As I recall I had read about and seen several photos by Cindy Sherman, a famous photographer who dresses herself in different costumes to create dramatic images and thought-provoking scenes. I wasn't prepared to do anything quite so serious, so I used it as an opportunity to experiment with some different costumes to show some aspects of my personality.

The first image is me in a Boy Scout uniform. I was in Scouts for over 11 years, so this is an authentic uniform.

I found this photo while cleaning out a box in my attic the other morning.

When I saw it I thought I recognized some similarities between this photo of me from 1990 and the cover of Jack Johnson's 2000 CD, Brushfire Fairy Tales. The photo of me was taken by my friend Debra while we were visiting Letchworth State Park. Mr. Johnson's photographer has nothing to worry about, I don't think Debra will want to sue him for using her photo composition.

I recently found a stack of Dilbert cartoons while preparing to move. This one came out of the box of crap that came out of my former office the day I left. I went out on disability earlier this year and only wish that my experience was as amusing, painless, and brief as Wally's:

Here's another great photo I found while packing the apartment. This one is of my family in April, 1969 around my first birthday. Going from left to right: my brother Peter (age 5), me, my Mom, and my Dad with the cool glasses.

The sad thing about this is that I have about the same hairline now that I had at age 1...though I probably had more on the back of my head then than I do now.

Here's three photos I found today while cleaning out my attic. Here's me at six months old:

In the process of packing for the move, I found this photo of me from my college graduation party in May 1990. I was feeling very silly.

I've spent the last several days purging and packing the contents of my apartment. I'm exhausted. Today's fourth straight day of packing and moving boxes into storage has inspired me to write a haiku:

Moving really sucks.
Moving really really sucks.
Did I say it sucks?

Here's a photo I found today while packing my apartment. This was a portrait taken by my Dad of my brother Peter and I in 1972. Pete's the one wearing the Cub Scout uniform, I'm wearing the clip-on tie with the smiley face button.

The school where I'm going to take the ESL teacher training course next month is called International House Barcelona. It is in Barcelona which is in the northeastern corner of Spain and on the Mediterranean. Here's a map of Spain:

In the process of purging, er packing my apartment for my big trip, I found this pair of Dilbert cartoons. While I'm in Spain over the next few months I'll miss having the hourly/daily access to the Internet. Hopefully, when I get on my feet in my new living environment I won't rebound to the same level of geekiness that Dilbert's Mom does in this cartoon, or be dumb enough to invoke the wrath of the illustrious Mr. Bill:

My cousin's husband, Bill, send me this. I don't know if it's true, but it's pretty funny.

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and! reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

I'm moving to Barcelona so I thought I'd start posting the answers to some of the frequently asked questions that folks have been asking about where I'm going. So, here goes...

Q: What's the weather going to be like over there?

A: I'm going to a training class in Barcelona in October. I found the answers on the World Climate web site (http://www.worldclimate.com/), so it looks like the temperature ranges between 59°F and 69°F, and averages about 63°F and there's an average rainfall of 3.8 inches.

The photo below, showing me and my Grandma B on her 80th birthday, was taken on July 25, 1990. It was about a month before I left Buffalo to start graduate school in Pittsburgh. I was, as I am now, at a major crossroads on my life's journey.

She passed away on August 13, 2001, at the age of 91. Though I miss her, I take strength in knowing that she is always with me in spirit.

Here's a set of haikus I wrote in honor of Madonna's pathetic attempt to demonstrate her relevance to pop music by kissing Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears at the recent MTV Video Music Awards show:

Lucky star burned out,
Irrelevance spurs action,
Still, looks good in black.

I was watching Bill Maher on HBO tonight and he had some good bits in his monologue commenting on Madonna's kissing both Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera during their performance on the MTV Video Awards last week:

"When Christina Aguilera attended the post-show celebrations she said that she had to go down on Old Dirty Bastard just to get the taste out of her mouth. No offense to ODB."

I just saw an ad for the Gwenyth Paltrow movie View from the Top, which comes out on DVD on September 9th. I just want to make sure that no one bothers to rent or buy this piece of crap.

I was one of the few unfortunate souls who saw this movie in the theaters in its not-brief-enough theatrical release, and want everyone to know that it sucked...bad.

Here's a set of redneck jokes I just got from my cousin's husband:

An Alabama redneck passed away and left his entire estate in trust for his beloved widow.
She can't touch it until she's 14.

Folks in Georgia now go to some movies in groups of 18 or more.
They were told 17 and under are not admitted.

"The United States is putting together a Constitution now for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It's served us well for 200 years, and we don't appear to be using it anymore, so what the hell?"

- Jay Leno

Scary, but apparently true.