flickrblockrs… keeping it real… anonymously.

you know those pictures…those absolutely self-incriminating pictures that were taken of you last night and subsequently placed on flickr, myspace, facebook, and has now (somehow… f-ing roommates) found its way to a craigslist posting with the title “looking for something physical” on its way to a wikipedia entry filed under S, for STUPID IDIOT WHO LET HIS FRIEND TAKE THAT PICTURE….??

well… i present to you flickrblockrs. oh yeah. no more explanation needed. just wear and you’re identity will be kept secret to any photographer big or small.

Here are a few examples of flickrblockrs at work…

i couldnt resist.

the unbearable lightness of being: first 100 pages…

with the first 100 pages complete… i can now breathe a sigh of relief. there are two things that have really struck me about this book…. you see, while i normally read at what one may consider to be a an aggressive pace… this book has slowed me down… not because of anything really other than my incessant desire to go back and re-read passages and/or sections because they are that good… because i fear that i may have missed something, and that is not a testament to poor storytelling.

here and there throughout the story there are a lot of insightful thoughts and ideas that are enhanced, countered, revisited, and reframed through different lenses/contexts… none of which are offered as absolute truths/falsities rather just a constant dialogue between the two and how it plays out through a rotating cast of four intersecting lives… it is of almost of dialectic proportions.

secondly, milan kundera does a wonderful thing here with language… not just the use of it, but the actual analysis of words and their meanings… how one word can have an absolute objective meaning but what it signifies to one person (how that individual defines it) can be the complete and utter opposite to another… The philosophy of linguistics never ceases to amaze me… and language/words play a very important part of the book.

chuck palahniuk’s new book (c-low, the bibliophile…)

all of a sudden i’m all about books. i hadn’t seriously read a book in a pretty long time… so i estimate this stage will last about a week. anyways, in light of my neo-ironic realtime book blogging, i started to see what’s new in the world of books amongst authors i like… most notably, chuck palahniuk, author of many books such as Fight Club and Survivor (my personal favorite), has a new book coming out next week (may 1st) called Rant.

the thing i love about chuck, is his unrelenting style of writing… which is gritty, fast-paced, socially modern, dark with irony, and (at times) strangely optimistic (perhaps more of a reflection of the reader. me) … and he applies that to content and plots that are similarly twisted and funky.

apparently Rant is no different… as it is a fictional “oral history” of what appears to be the greatest/evilest serial killer told by many different people whom he came across (how’s that for dark and gritty?). I like to simply think of it using this easy-to-remember formula:

Rant = fight club + red dragon/edward norton (a common denominator).

Oh well…we’ll see when i read it.

surfing in prague on the charles river?

don’t know if this is real. don’t care. just awesome.

einmal ist keinmal…

After constantly asking…. m-rod reluctantly handed over Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, only saying “this book changed my life”.

I read 15 pages of it today on the subway on my way home from work and immediately came to the conclusion: holy shit. Recognizing the potential magnitude/impact this book could have… i have decided to blog about the book as i read it (think of it as real-time book-blogging… ha!!!). this is an enormous feat because for many of you who know me, know that a) i don’t read books (but i wanted to read this) and b)it is so nerdy but i am so excited about it. So i will write about only what i know from having read that day and what i am willing to assume, having accepted the fact that my interpretations and assumptions could be either fundamentally flawed or just ill-conceived or both.

Prefaces, again, are overrated.

For the first 3 chapters (for lack of a better word, since they are not really chapters per say), Milan starts the novel with philosophical and/or existential fodder… coursing the reader through Nietzche’s idea of eternal return versus Parmenides’ idea of pairs consisting opposites… elegantly using that juxtaposition as the basis for his story.

I interpret that (loosely) as meaning that the idea of eternal return is in itself dichotomous, giving a moment such extreme weight that it can (conceivably) make that moment light… playing into Parmenides’ question of the opposites: which [heaviness/lightness, warmth/cold, etc etc]is the ideal, if any, if at all?

After conspicuously placing that thought into my head, Kundera introduces the story he has come to tell about Tomas as he ponders a decision about a girl, Tereza, who he basically just met but incites a completely new feeling. Tomas comes to this german adage: Einmal ist keinmal, or as Kundera explains…

“what happens but once… might as well not have happened at all. if we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.”

In light of the Nietzche/Parmenides discussion that Kundera started us out with… this is one heck of a way to start the story (it was at this point i decided, yup, i’m writing about this).

currently enjoying: (timbaland presents…)shock value.

Getting lots of airtime on my ipod is the recently released “(Timbaland presents…)Shock Value”. While some may argue timbaland’s solo album is more of a compilation cd – with pretty much every song having a guest on it – it’s more of a testament to the reputation he has garnered over the years. In addition to the guests you’d expect, he has also brought in a wide array of guest artists from other genres such as The Hives, She Wants Revenge, and Fall Out Boy. All of these songs are good, although at times they seem a bit forced.

Among the favorites on the album are the first single, “Give it to Me” featuring JT and Nelly Furtado, “Throw it on Me” featuring The Hives, and “The Way I Are” featuring Keri Hilson and D.O.E..

“if sexy never left then why’s everybody up on my shit?

don’t hate on me just because you didn’t come up with it”

knut-gonna threaten me…

apparently Knut, the oh-so-cute German Polar Bear cub received a death threat today… it was faxed in. seriously, some asshole faxed in a death threat (i don’t know whether to laugh or just stand with my mouth ajar in awe). aside from faxing it, the threat was pretty lame-o… who threatens a polar bear cub anyways? honestly?

so here’s to you Knut and here’s some cute cuddly pictures…

(btw…this is possibly/probably the worse title for a post ever… and i am proud of it!! seriously i laughed to myself when i wrote it)

springtime = crossword weather…

there’s something about the spring that makes me want to do crosswords… every year when spring comes around i get the crossword bug… i attribute it to the weather (whether good or bad, there’s something about chillin on a rainy april sunday and doing a crossword over breakfast and coffee… or sitting outside on our non-existent stoop in the sun). Crosswords are a fun mix of vocab and a variety of disciplines… i love words and language… i’m a nerd.

Anyways, while i’m merely at a NYTimes Wednesday crossword puzzle level… USA Today offers their crosswords online and their pretty fun(they time them too)…  it can be found here:

http://puzzles.usatoday.com/ 

who gives what to whom, how much and where…

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

semi-recent advances with online technology coupled with increased transparency and accountability regarding campaign finances has allowed for several websites to pop-up over recent major election periods in which one can search the campaign fundraiser database to see who is giving what to whom, how much of it and where they are…

in other words, you can easily find out how much money your neighbors (it is arranged by name) are giving to politicians. in addition to finding out where their political beliefs lie, you can also find out where they work… so just in case you were wondering what Mr. Smith (the strange guy who lives two doors down) does since you always see him doing nothing you now might be able to find out… or it might give you more reason to hate that damn next door neighbor who keeps letting their dog shit in your front yard… errr.

interestingly enough, the NY Times has quite a simple section of their website where one can access said database. though this is nothing new, there was a popular site in 2004 that provided access, i guess it’s just started a lot earlier this time around…

rainy sunday/nor’easter blog-iverse tour

All in all it’s been a slow week with most of my friends blogs (i’m guilty too)… but here’s a quick whirlwind tour as i lay in bed listening to john legend/amy winehouse…

just in case you missed it (gordon?), m-rod found the picture of the real life peter griffin from the cartoon show The Family Guy. it was a slow thursday night at babel so no pics (i suspect everyone’s tired from 3 er i mean 2 bday parties for cy).

cy over on papyrus discusses holding the elevator door (or rather the act of not doing so and pretending you didn’t see the person).

dave on the appalachian trail has been having to deal with this awful weather, except he’s in the midst of a 2,100 hike…

while laying on the beach ben has find the time to keep it real in south africa with some good music, including some cuts from his a capella groups recent cd (see if you can guess which song he is singing lead on).

new addition to the blog roll, monkiwi… in the wake of the ridiculous imus bullshit, she’s got a fun take on celebrity -ists (including but not limited to racial, sexual preference, and religious -ists)…

the love doctor over at m&c discusses the ramifications/consequences of having no interest in sex and how it would positively effect the doctor’s productivity (… wait a second, then what would the doctor write about then?).

And the song of the week (i know i know it’s kinda old, but i appreciate the 4am text messages referencing it… thanks Reena):