brief moment of connectivity at home. thought i should (ab)use it to note that I'm now, as of about 36 hours ago, 25 years old and that's totally crazy. Phone conversations with friends about biological clocks and dinner with parents and Lev and then visited grandparents today before an undproductive five hours cloistered in the panopticon. The film version of The Witches was pretty great in that freakish and frightening Roald Dahl kind of way. In the book, he never gets changed back, right? My fourth grade teacher (you know, 15 years ago,) used to joke with me that she was a witch and would always complain about her shoes and scratch her scalp. Prospect Park's all right if you like watching small dogs get charged by angry geese. No, wait, what am I saying - that's totally hilarious.

I'll get around to posting something substantive some day. I swear.

Multimedia message

Shortly after mooning the crowd, this gorilla ran up to the glass and banged on it with her fists and then ran away. Guerrilla gorillas.

Happy Birthday to Tai Shan

Tai Shan, the baby panda, is 23 years, 364 days younger than me. That means today is his first birthday. The National Zoo threw him a party, complete with a birthday giant fruitsicle. Awesome.

Jeebus don't want me for a sunbeam

apologies for the recent lack of posts. I have a long entry about the last year I don't know if is should put on the blog or not, and I've been busy with stuff. But i thought i should drop in and point to this campaign USAS is carryiong out in solidarity with students and unionists in El Salvador battling murderous state repression. Please read the alert and support the workers.

patriot games

What i was listening to while walking to Manhattan today:

The Coup, Party Music. ("So when i say burn one, i mean the star-spangled.)
The Coup, Pick a Bigger Weapon. ("See they tryna break us off so they don't have to break bread/Cause Uncle Same ain't the baker, he's the butcher/We all on "Punk'd" with no Ashton Kutcher/Where ballin (no broke) cutthroats kaput ya/Ain't never took dope but them dopes done took ya/Stop flyin Ol' Glory man, cut it down/If your job ain't payin right, shut it down")
The Coup, "Piss on Your Grave." ("George Washington down in hell can you see me? I'm standing on your grave and I'm finsta take a pee pee.)
Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, "Big Man"
The Clash, "I'm So Bored with The USA." ("Yankee dollars talk to the dictators of the world. In fact they're giving orders and he can't afford to miss a word.")
Ibid., "Washington Bullets," ("As every cell in Chile will tell/The cries of the tortured men/Remember Allende, and the days before,/Before the army came/Please remember Victor Jara,/In the Santiago Stadium,/Es verdad - those Washington Bullets again")

You get the idea.

I guess this blog is ahead of the times. I still want to know how they got my address.

Great, now that it's an oasis is a sea of shoe stores and yuppie bars. Tripling the construction cost is pretty fucked up of the city.

Now this is interesting:

Federal agencies are investigating how Yale
University manages and accounts for millions of dollars in federal research
grants, the university said in a statement yesterday.
Three federal agencies
issued subpoenas to Yale late last week, the university said, seeking documents
on the allocation of research expenses, the way faculty members report their
work on research grants and other issues relating to the oversight of
grants.
The agencies requested information on 47 grants and contracts worth
about $45 million that were awarded to the university in the last decade, said
Tom Conroy, a Yale spokesman.
The university has received about $2 billion
in federal research grants in that time, Mr. Conroy said.
Spokesmen for the
three federal agencies — the Department
of Health and Human Services, the National
Science Foundation and the Department of Defense — either declined to
comment on the subpoenas yesterday or did not respond to messages seeking
comment. Such investigations could lead to accounting changes, administrative
sanctions or criminal charges.
In a report released in February on a $508,000
grant for research involving genes in stem cells, the Office of the Inspector
General of the Department of Health and Human Services said that Yale did not
comply with its own procedures or with federal rules, and that it had used money
from one grant for a different research project.

interlude: me turning 25

July 10th is my birthday. I'm celebrating in two ways - one, the generic bar gathering (at which i will of course not be drinking, but it will be fun anyway.) This is July 8th (this saturday) at The Library (Ave A right above Houston.) So if you're reading this and you aren't one of my anonymous antagonists and/or you have never threatened my person over union activity and/or I don't make you hate the left, you should come. (It's been an odd year, hasn't it...)

The panopticon (aka Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, for those just tuning in) isn't open to the public. Just as one enters the library through its revolving doors, one sees metal and glass turnstiles, hi-tech MTA chick intended to keep out the riffraff and keep knowledge private. As a result, every time i enter the library, I always accidentally reach for my Metrocard instead of my student ID, and thus, in doing so, feel rather ridiculous.

Happy Birthday to my cousin Kai, who turns 4 today.