a productive thursday

This past Thursday was one of my most productive days in weeks.

First, my sister Laura and I went for a 6 mile walk in the morning around the central Park Loop. Then I met up with a guy from craigslist who wanted to buy my 13" TV/VCR for $15. You see, I am trying to get rid of a lot of the junk that has piled up in this apartment over the last few years. Before I even moved in there was a ton of stuff that was just left over from the previous tenants, but during my stay, all the roommates that have come and gone have also left some belongings. So I'm trying to clean out a lot of the apartment before Maddy gets here so she'll have a clean slate to begin her decorating. Anyway, this guy met me downstairs in his car. He was Asian, but I would actually bet money he was Chinese based solely on how rude and impatient he was. It's not that all Chinese people are rude (and I'm talking about Chinese Chinese people, not Chinese Americans), it's just that if someone is Asian and they are extremely rude, chances are they are Chinese and not Korean or Japanese.

After the transaction, I met up with Greg (who had his bachelor party this past weekend). He just took the bar exam and is looking for a place in the city to move in with his soon-to-be wife, and he just happens to be checking out a place two blocks away from me, at 106 and Broadway. The apartment looked pretty awesome, very spacious, great location, and just really nice. We headed down to the Museum of Natural History to check out the frog exhibit. I used my awesome Citigroup ID to get us in for half price. The frogs were actually pretty damn cool. There were a lot of poison dart frogs that are really small and very colorful.

We walked back up town and met up with Greg's friend Tali, who just happen to be checking out apartments with her boyfriend right around the corner from me. So I figured what the hell, I'll check out what these other apartments look like and what they are going for. There were 20 people waiting at the building for the broker to show up. It was a pretty unbelievable sight to see in a few dozen people shuffle into a tiny studio apartment. The prices seemed pretty reasonable for a studio and a one-bedroom, but they just weren't all that great and the second apartment was in a pretty bad location. You can kind of tell as we all walked over to it, as a bunch of kids were playing with a fire hydrant and spraying people with water as they walked by on the opposite side of the street. Also, the broker was a huge asshole, which I guess can be expected, but that's ridiculous.

I then headed back downtown to 57th street to pick up my race number and information for the half marathon on Sunday. I was waiting for the walk signal while walking west on 57th St and I just happened to turn around and look behind me, and as luck would have it my friend Nina was standing directly behind me! I looked at her incredulously and she looked at me and said "seriously?" So we chatted up for a little while since I haven't seen her in almost a year. I gave the usual spiel about how China sucks and don't ever go and visit. She said she went skydiving. When we were sufficiently caught up, she asked me if my sister was still cleaning apartments, because her apartment desperately needed help.

Then I headed over to the Nike store to pick up my race information, and walked down to 36 and third to meet my mom and sister at Patsy's pizza restaurant. My mom was in the city because she had just made her first digital camera purchase (from B&H). She explain how she spent hours in the store, armed with several issues of consumer reports and went through each and every model of the point-and-shoot digital cameras to find the best value and one that would suit her needs. It will probably take her about a year to figure out how it all works.

Next, I continued walking downtown to meet up with my friend Pete, who I hadn't seen since before I left for China. He is a lawyer and works long hours, so we just never got a chance to meet up. But he said he recently got on a kick of mixing drinks and making up interesting cocktails and that if I came by his apartment (in the LES, which is insanely far from my apartment) he would make me a few. So I picked up some lime and mint for his concoctions and we drank and played Guitar Hero on his Xbox. Guitar hero is such a whack game - you just tap the shit out of the neck of a guitar, just like clicking a mouse at a feverish pace. So obviously it made my hand hurt. But it was kind of cool and there was a lot of good music.

Heading back was a real trip and a half. Because of construction, the uptown A/C trains were not running local past 59th St. So I usually just switched to the 1 train, but that was out of service also. So I had to get out and take the M7 bus. The whole journey was about an hour and a half.

augie march (an australian band, at the mercury lounge)

On Sunday night i cracked open 'time out NY' to see what was going on monday night. I never used to read it, but now i'm a huge fan of the magazine. it's all about NYC so it's cool and everything is mostly relevant to me, which is why it's a more useful magazine than, say, wired. some stuff is a bit too hipster, but whatever.

So Augie march was listed for Mon night at mercury lounge (east houston), and I remembered the name: when i was in australia, they were on the radio a LOT and brandon (friend who i stayed with) played their albums incessantly. I thought 'no, these guys are HUGE in australia, how could they barely be headlining on a mon night at a small club!' But yes, they were. for $12. greg and heather (who are getting married in a few weeks and had spent a year in sydney together) and i went. The show was awesome!

I ended up finding a $20 bill on the floor... and that seemed to be an ethical dilema. What to do? No one was standing near it, and it looked like it had fallen as someone probably walked somewhere, so the real owner was likely gone. Do you give it to the bar? And then how would someone even claim it?? "hey, i uh lost a $20... do you have it?"

Greg, who just took the NY bar exam, said that legally you are obligated to report anything you find that is over $20 to the police. Then you have to wait something like 3 years to see if anyone claims it. The amusing thing here, of course, is: say i was the one who lost the money... how would i claim it? Go to the cops, say i lost $100 did they find it. Seems mighty easy to fudge that.

fun weekend w friends and dispatch

I went to the Dispatch concert at MSG on Saturday night w my friend Larry (MHS and JHU). It was an amazing concert -- Dispatch reunion, 25 songs (about 3 hours!), and proceeds going to Zimbabwe. The problem was, somewhere along the illustrious Dispatch history, they picked up half a million high school kids as fans. I'm not sure how, since I was in college back in 2000 when they were pretty well-known, and then I thought they disappeared after their 4th and final original album came out around 2002. Apparently, they disbanded for a few years then had a huge reunion concert back in 2005 where 120,000 people came out. I think that's when all the high school fans emerged. See, i figured Larry and I (both in our late 20s), would see more of our ilk there. Instead, it was a swarm of 20,000 15-17 year olds. Not that I don't like high school kids -- after all, i make my living tutoring them -- but these kids were REALLY annoying and obnoxious, in ways Larry and I couldn't remember when we were in high school. It appeared as if they replaced smoking weed with taking speed, coke and other amphetamines. These kids were AGGRESSIVE, like at a sports event, roudy, loud and a little crazy. You'd think Dispatch, with their relaxing groove attitude would allure a much calmer crowd, but I guess the anticipation of the 3 successive nights of shows - several years of waiting -- made the teens anxious.

It could also be that Dispatch is from Boston, and many of the Bostonions had come out... and people from boston are generally a bunch of asshats. (not all, but most).

The show was great though. Dispatch played a few songs, then took a break to show a vignette video about Zimbabwe (filmed when they visited 2 months ago). They were good, encouraging, and wasted on most of these annoying little teens. They brought out some people from Zimbabwe to do some drumming and singing for a few songs, and even played an acoustic set sitting atop their beloved tour van, which drove into the center of the arena. They have 4 albums with maybe 45 total songs. They played virtually ALL of the "hits" and a few new ones, but we were worrying towards the end that they were running out of songs to play, and how much longer could this last?

Meanwhile, we were sitting in the front row of one of the levels, so people were freely walkng in front of us for food, bathroom, whatever. Halfway in, the nincompoops started all getting up and doing a bizarre conga line, jumping around, and, oddly, slapping hi five with anyone who would raise their hand. This was annoying since a virtual endless line of stupid little kids who probably dressed up for halloween last october continually came by and held up their hands like they were in a marathon or otherwise deserved a hi five. Well, they deserved to get out of my line of sight to the stage.

But it was a good night. We hit up the Gingerman afterwards (where NONE of those kids would have gotten into) and hung out w all the old Hillel hopkins crowd.

Later we hit up a 7-11 which, in China, was as common as Starbucks here. In China, the 7-elevens all smell horrendous bc they all sell an odd meatball-like fish thing - basically 3 tubs of grease with lots of small meatball things, behind the counter -- you eat (definitely NOT me) with ketchup. Luckily this 7-eleven didnt serve that shit, but instead was all decked out as a KWIK-E-Mart for the upcoming Simpsons film! They had a lot of funny decorations, donut signs, slurpee machine signs, and even the guys behind the counter were forced to take part with purple simpsons t-shirts.

Good Stuff.

Last night Brandon and Ben (his brother) took me out to an amazing dinner for my 27th birthday at Cafe Sydney, a fancy restaurant with an unbeatable view of the harbor. This was quite possibly the best meal I've ever had. I had seared tuna, a curry cod, and a lucious chocolate thing for dessert w their suggested dessert wine. Delicious!

I forgot to mention... back in San Fran, Sarah and I spent Saturday sightseeing and doing touristy shit...
we went to the Fisherman's Wharf, had an In&Out Burger and then immediately the car was stuck in the midst of literally 20,000 pro-life protester parader idiots who took up the entire street and walked down with their signs. This was cute and kind of funny for maybe 15 minutes but as the parade of people continued to flow with no end in sight, it wore on us and got annoying because we wanted to drive out and see Golden Gate. Finally after about 2 hrs and a ton of idiots who all held signs reading bizarre things like "abortion hurts women" we got out.

Pam made an amazing risotto/garlic bread/cheese and crackers/salad dinner for all of us (her roommates and some friends she invited) last night. I neglected to take a picture of that.

Interestingly, her friend Reuben looks like the identical twin of my friend Tony from Hopkins. This probably bears very little interest for anyone reading this, but seriously, it's like meeting a good friend who you recognize completely, talks the same, smiles the same, wears glasses the same, laughs the same, except he has a different personality and a different name. It's wierd. I showed Reuben some photos of Tony online but I don't think he was as impressed with the comparison like I was.

Later on Pam drove me through Sunset Strip which seems like an exciting place. And we met up with Reuben at a bar in Beverly Hills and got some Red Stripes... good times.

Tonight i'll be meeting up with Mark (high school) and Adam (cousin I haven't seen in 5 years) and perhaps a few other stragglers.

Got to LA today to hang with Pam (college housemate) and others... The weather is perfect and I even broke out my sunglasses. We checked out Santa Monica, a fun walker-friendly place, and drove past the beach. Again, we opted for mexican food because, as I explained before, there will be no mexicans in China so i better get my fill now. (I've also begun taking photos of all the food i eat on my trip -- maybe this is the OCD part of me but I feel like this might be entertaining later on...)

Pam lives with a few roommates and she had to go drop her friend off somewhere far away so I hung out with her roommate Dave. We headed off to hike the nearby Temescal Canyon which was a gorgeous 2 hr hike up a steep rocky and dusty path with a great view of West LA from the top. I made sure to take a sunset photo of myself looking awesome.

Flights: 2/2 (on time, no lost luggage) I'm impressed with American Airlines, they haven't sucked yet. Next flight will be with Pacific Air to Sydney in 2 days -- hopefully I'll have good luck with them and it won't be my own personal version of Lost.

Pam is now cooking dinner - a mushroom risotto -- I will take a photo. Things are good...

I had a going away party / joint birthday party with Dave and Evan @ Kanvas on Friday. It was a pretty wild time and a lot of people showed up.

My photos from that night, completely unedited

Avi's photos, taken at PM, a club in the meatpacking district that we went to after Kanvas...

Teresa's photos...

Funny story about Kanvas -- they kinda suck. I 'rented' their downstairs private room for our party by signing an agreement that my party would meet a $2,000 minimum at the bar in 3 hours (from 10:30 to 1:30). I figured this wouldn't be too difficult to meet (Dave, Evan and I had a party at Kanvas 3 years ago in the same room and met the minimum). So I assumed it'd be no problem. Sure enough, tons of people showed up, and the drinks/shots were flowing. Dave pulls me aside around midnight and asks if we'll be ok. I said "dude, look at all these people, of course we'll be fine, don't even worry about it."

Around 1:30 as people are trickling out, the manager comes over to me and says we are short, way short, of our minimum. I'm like "uh, it cant be that bad... we filled this place for the last 3 hrs". He's like, "you're at $1300. I'll give you another hour."

I honestly don't know how that's possible, and if it is, then their minimum is way to high. Anyway, an hour later, Avi and Evan both talked to the guy for a while to try to have them write off the "loss", which is ridiculous...Kanvas was actually not very full that night, and nobody was trying to come downstairs into our 'private' party -- so in other words we gave them huge business and it'd not like they lost money because they reserved that room just for us. Our party filled the place, too, so it's not as if another group would have been so much better unless they normally book alcoholics with expense accounts. Perhaps they do.)

In any event, I signed the form, so whatever, it's my fault. Avi was pissed because I could have done it at his bar, Aspen, for free. Finally, we were within a few hundred dollars, so Evan bought a bottle of vodka from the bar to meet the minimum. It was a little ridiculous because the bartender was one of those awesome guys who gives away tons of drinks and doesnt charge much ... evan got 10 shots and the guy charged $20. So obviously there was something amiss in their calculation of our bar minimum.

It was an awesome time though... I can't believe I got to see so many people before I left, it was awesome. I think I have photos of pretty much everyone I knew.

Funny moment was when roommate #2 (Vince, dave's friend who lived with us for a few months and painted his room a crazy red) met roommate #3 (nathalie, who, shocked to find her room a horrible red, painted it brown). Nathalie's reaction: "you're the guy who painted my room red!!!"

Amy (my friend from Trevor high school where I worked a few years back) told me she actually reads my blog and finds it entertaining!! She said she actually forwarded my Bill O'rielly rant to her friends because she liked it so much. That's awesome! Amy, there will be more rants, don't you worry. I'll be living in China. There will be ranting... I'm sure one will include my having to use the Pepto and Immodium AD I just purchased yesterday. Haha.

I forgot to post about our kick-ass new years party my roommates and I hosted at our apartment. I guess there's not a whole to say that these photos don't already make apparent. Uh, people came. They brought a lot of booze. More people came. Booze was consumed. Happy new year.

Actually we had quite a good turnout. Meinon (from hopkins) and Marionada (my old college housemate) came, which was awesome. Marionada, we're still eating those truffle chocolates you brought but the cookies were gone the next day. And hoff came with Papa Shi. Chung brought her people. Zak has no friends but still managed to bring Greg (who we went skiing with several years ago) who brought a few of his people. Lots of other people came too, and I can't remember much else which is why I took pictures. Enjoy!

Chung begins preparing an incredible assortment of finger foods. I begin eating them.


People start making our apartment look like a real party zone... Not just a cramped apartment. Ok, it's just cramped. Whatever.I am on the phone with Maddy -- it is just after midnight, so Greg decided to swoop in for some photo action.

On my run today in unbelievably warm 70 degree NYC winter weather, I ran/bumped (whatever) into Joke (pronounced Yoka) and Anuj (pronounced a noodge). Joke was the first attractive girl I met at Hopkins and Anuj was the first student I met at Hopkins (right when I got out of the car just before orientation began). I haven't seen them in over a year and a half at least. They're married and live in Amsterdam but were visiting NYC for a few weeks and just walking around the park. This is why I love running central park -- the random run-ins!

So I got a funny email the other day. It was from my buddy Dave, a guy I went to college with. Turns out, he wanted to make good on his promise to "pay me back" for a Jethro Tull concert ticket I picked up for him back in 2000 when they played Baltimore. Yes, he wanted to remit payment for a ticket I completely forgot about, 6 years afterwards. How ridiculous! I just got his paypal payment for $50.

I was thinking, though, that with even a modest interest of 10% would make that about $90 today.

I was going through some footage of a central park video I made with a friend a few months back. We needed to get some footage of the Reservoir so my friend went and shot some while I stayed back on the road and hung out with the rickshaw driver guy we had hired for the day (long story).

Anyway, I'm going through the footage today and I notice a familiar guy's back running away from the camera on the reservoir. I took a screen capture of it and sent it to my friend Evan to see if he recognized himself and sure enough it was him! What are the odds of catching him running on the reservoir the same time my friend is actually filming!

So for your viewing pleasure.... evan's bare back while he runs past the camera. Enjoy!

Oh yeah, last weekend I went up to the Berkshires for an engagement party/weekend retreat thing for Benny and Keryn at a friend's house. There were 10 of us or so and we mostly ate and drank but also took a little hike through a trail. Here are the photos from that (I didnt have my camera but Dave took some sweet photos). This is benny and me.

Last night I filmed Nicole Baguer's performance at Crash Theater. (Nicole is a friend and fellow JHU Alum and she has some of the most amazing vocal cords ever, plus she's hot and puts on a sick show!)

Check out her album through her website, or listen to some songs online at Rhapsody

See for yourself...

So cute... Teresa's photos from race day and the weekend.

Such a productive day today:

1- did my stint as Bobby Flay's double. In and out of the food network in about an hour.
2- went home, called people, emailed people, bought my TICKET to australia
3- watched 2 episodes of "weeds" on my non-ipod X5
4- went to the UN to visit a friend of a friend. She is a lawyer and Israeli and working as an intern at the UN for 2 months. Apparently the UN hires 200 interns and doesnt pay them dick. that sucks!
5- back to apartment, submitted an article I wrote about Skype to PC Magazine, RES Magazine, CNET. Heard back immediately from PC Magazine -- may begin doing some freelance tech writing for them.
6- Tutored 2 students.
7- Went to a Hopkins happy hour down at Aspen (22nd/6th) and chatted with some Hopkins friends. go blue jays.
8- back to apartment to argue for several hours with zak about global warming and statistical significance of data.

Whew, i'm pooped.

I'd like to discuss a problem I think is plaguing a lot of people, including my roommate who is smart but ill-informed and stubborn. That problem is bottled water.

People who drink bottled water in Manhattan piece me off for a variety of reasons. Let's go through some typical reasons why people drink bottled water and spend upwards of three dollars per bottle when they could get cool, clean, tasty water from our apartment tap.

1. It tastes better: this is the biggest crock of absolute Bullshit I've ever heard. It is also one of the main reasons my roommate spends his stock options and life savings on bottles and bottles and more bottles of Fiji water. He claims it simply tastes better than what comes out of our tap. I told him he's completely full of shit and decided to have a little taste test to prove it. I brought out two identical cops, one with water from our tap and one with water from the Fiji bottle he was drinking from. Indeed, he was able to tell very quickly which was which, but this doesn't address a fundamental question -- which one actually tastes better (and what I mean better I don't mean noticeably different, I mean noticeably better). The other thing my spontaneous taste test did not incorporate was multiple types of water and multiple double-blind tastings. I decided that proving my roommate is an idiot did not require this much effort. Nevertheless, he claims that Fiji water doesn't have the metallic taste that New York City water has. The whole concept that one water could taste so much better than another water is absolute nonsense to me. We are not talking about the difference between Pepsi and Coke or two bottles of wine or two bottles of beer. We are talking about two substances that are identical in their chemical makeup. They don't contain any sweetener, no differences in flavor, nothing. It's just water. The only thing that gives it a different flavor is perhaps a cocktail of minerals and other natural contaminants in the water, most of which I'm assuming you can't even taste -- like arsenic. I tasted the two glasses of water in my blind taste test and as soon as I walked out of the kitchen I pretty much forgot which was which.
2. Cost: the other thing that really pisses me off about bottled water is that once an imbecile like my roommate Zach becomes convinced that bottled water is somehow better for him, or taste year than our tap water, he feels it is a good investment to be spending two dollars per 1 L bottle. After one week of drinking water, my costs of drinking gallons of tap water is zero while his gets up to $15-$20. After a month, mine is still zero while his is $60-$80. And after a year of this nonsense, the grand total of my water drinking comes to a whopping zero while his approaches $750. Thank you Zak for contributing to this multibillion-dollar bullshit industry.
3. It's cleaner: Zacks other brilliant argument for why he wastes tons of money on bottled Bullshit is that the pipes that bottle the water in Fiji are somehow cleaner than the pipes that deliver our water in New York City. I won't argue that our pipes are older, but I would argue against this notion of assuming that because they are older they must somehow also be dirtier. In fact, New York City water is among the cleanest in the world and tastiest according to some study that I'm not going to quote but that I remember reading somewhere in amNY or perhaps on the Internet. And we all know the Internet is full of hard data and bulletproof facts. In any event, we decided to look up just how clean Fiji water is. Apparently Fiji ran an ad recently comparing their water to Cleveland's water and implying in a snide way that Cleveland's water was inferior. Of course the people who oversee Cleveland's water supply took this as an insult and decided to do a little water testing themselves, comparing the two waters for contaminants and quality. What they found was that on the score of arsenic, Cleveland's water came up with 0 µg while Fiji came up with 6 µg of arsenic. Granted, the EPA allows up to 10 µg of arsenic in drinking water, but the point remains, Fiji is a bunch of crap. Now I'm not going to argue that some bottled waters are better for you than some tap water -- just go and watch "a civil action" and you may think twice about drinking what comes out of your faucet. But we are just discussing New York City tap water, which is among the best tasting and healthiest water in the world. And what pisses me off the most is this blind assumption that water coming through old pipes is somehow less safe than water Artesia and water in Fiji that is going through some water filtration system and bottling process. Our water has to be safe enough for 8 million people to drink, unfiltered, straight from the tap. Bottled water just has to be safe enough to pass an FDA test. I may be making this up, but who gives a shit, but I believe New York City water has to meet more standards than bottled water does.
4. Energy and resource consumption in distribution: even if all of the above arguments are Bullshit, one major argument still stands up to the challenge of bottled water. The distribution system. Not only is water either free or extremely cheap in most homes in the United States, but remember there is a fantastic delivery system that has been built to give us the water in the most convenient way possible. I wish there were distribution systems like that for Pepsi or for bacon. That would be really cool. Just go to my faucet and choose a type of food and out it comes on to my plate. Unfortunately, this technology doesn't exist just yet. but bottled water is a commodity just like bacon or Pepsi, and therefore needs to be distributed as such -- through a complex system of trucks, ships, airplanes, and of course packaging.

Let's take a look at the trip a single 1 L bottle of Fiji water needs to take in order to get to my stupid roommate's lips. And while we're looking at this trip, let's consider all of the energy (in the form of petroleum) and resources necessary to make that trip.

It starts in the cool, clear Artesia in waters of Fiji. I don't know if it's a mountain, a river, or a glacier, but who the fuck cares. It's crystal clear and really clean and it tastes great, so it's worth the trip.

The water gets bottled into a 1 L plastic bottle. That plastic bottle was manufactured in a large factory that has to use some amount of energy and oil to create that plastic and mold it into that bottle. But let's just assume that is a negligible amount of energy. Assuming the actual bottling of the water is also a negligible amount of energy, which it obviously is not because the Fiji water bottling plant is not a perpetual motion machine. But let's just assume that it is.

Okay, so now we have a nice, smooth bottle of refreshing Fiji water. Now we need to somehow get it to my roommate here in New York City. It gets loaded up on a huge vessel that takes a journey across the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean. I'm not sure which. Fiji is a bunch of islands right next to Australia, so it's really fucking far away, and I'm guessing you can take either the Pacific or the Atlantic oceans to get to America. In either route you are literally going halfway across the globe. This requires an insanely large amount of diesel fuel to power one of those huge ships with large cargo areas that hold several hundred thousand bottles of this Fiji goodness. I am making a blind assumption here, but it's probably pretty close, that this trip accounts for perhaps half of the base cost of that bottle of water. The bottle of water costs about two dollars in a store in New York. I'm assuming that most of that base cost can be attributed to fuel, so let's make this interesting and fill our water bottle up not with water, but with good old-fashioned diesel fuel.

After our huge trip across the world, we've filled up our water bottle about half way with fuel, approximately one dollar in associated costs. Now the Fiji boat has arrived, but we can't praise the Fiji gods just yet and bathe in their watery goodness. No, that vessel is still stuck in a port somewhere on the East Coast. Its cargo must be unloaded (labor) and packed into a truck to be shipped across the country. Keep in mind, trucks have the worst mileage of any vehicle on the road. Far worse than any SUV or Hummer, trucks achieve a whopping two or 3 miles per gallon. In fact, heavy trucks like the 18 wheelers you typically see on the highway account for a third of all of the carbon dioxide emissions from all vehicles in the US.

So now our bottle of Fiji water, still untouched by men, has in its journey to get to our mouths helped to contaminate the oceans it traveled on, and the air it drove through. Our Fiji truck finally makes it to New York City, probably burning several hundred gallons of fuel in the process. For every 1 gallon of fuel burned there is an associated 6 pounds of carbon dioxide that is emitted -- for diesel fuel. But even if there was no global warming (which would be devastating to the Fiji Islands), trucks are emitting enormous amounts of pollutants into the air we breathe, causing all kinds of medical problems like asthma.

The Fiji truck pulls up in front of our apartment to drop off a shipment of bottles. It sits, idling for 30 minutes while the diligent Fiji workers unload. During this entire process of driving a truck, we've accounted for another $.50 or so that we had to pay for fuel. Fill that bottle up another quarter of the way.

Certainly what New York City needs more of is a bunch of fucking trucks driving through our already cramped streets, clogging our already dirty lungs with even more of their Bullshit pollution. New York City already has an air quality problem, the last thing we need is a bunch of idling trucks near my fucking apartment.

In the meantime, my stupid roommate believes that it is healthier and safer for him to drink this water. Of course, by drinking this water he is encouraging the Fiji jackasses to bottle more water, and ship more bottles, and idle more of their fucking trucks directly in front of my god damn apartment so that I can come downstairs and breathe in their dirty air and fumes.

In the long-run, the little harm that some of the contaminants in the New York City water supply might do to an unsuspecting regular drinker of water, is infinitely less harmful than the impact that a single bottle of Fiji water had on the environment and people it came in contact with.

So the final cost of the bottle of water is $1.50, for 1 L. My final bill may not be free exactly, but it certainly doesn't require any of the energy necessary to transport that 1 L of water to my glass. And on top of that, I'm not filling up the landfill with non-biodegradable plastics that will be there for a thousand years.

Oh and one last thing. My roommate smokes half a pack a day. Maybe if he focused more on not inhaling carcinogens and less on drinking cleaner water, he’d be healthier.

This from my friend Jessica:

listen to this: I met this guy on the train last week, we were sitting across from each other on metro north. There was this coffee cup that kept rolling between our feet, thus began the conversation about how rude and gross people are, and how the MTA is trying to put an end to rolling food and beverage parts on the train. MTA conversations are usually long and fluid, I've taken part in many, but here's the clincher...the point: He all of the sudden says, "what's with the MTA advertisements, like the one with the cobra?" I told him about your blog, which is so fucking hilarious by the way, and he said that he was glad to know that someone else notices these things!

I filmed Whitney's band Socially Irresponsible at Sin-E in the lower east side . It was a rocking show! but dont take my word for it. check out this youtube video i uploaded:

I hit up my friend Dana's birthday party at Ship of Fools on the UES. Good times. she made this huge batch of tasty cupcakes.