something from 2004

Just a brief clip to figure out how to post it. Also to showcase my warbly voice.

Mirabar

Mirabar
Originally uploaded by boxedrobot

Hi were at the new piano bar drunk

Can't hardly imagine how long it's been

I haven't found myself with much to talk about, even with myself. I try to stay true to my self-enforced laws, rules and mandates and only update when something truly phenomenal presents itself. Hence, some pictures.

This first one takes place at Four Town Farm in Seekonk. They had a "U Pick Your Flowers" deal. I learned that whenever you, meaning you, are allowed to pick your own flowers (or fruit, or nose or whatever) it is customary to use the letter U, capitalized as such, to indicate 'you,' and not actually use the word you, You, or YOU. Only one person has told me this, but I believe it since I can't for the life of me recall ever seeing a sign that didn't indicate that U, meaning me, could indeed pick my own flowers.

Here's one with a butterfly. And, really, I have nothing insightful to say about him.

Finally, the best of the bunch, as of late. So we were at Home Goods looking for baskets or spatulas or something. As always, Home Goods (or indeed Marhsalls, or Filene's Basement) always produces something that stops me in my tracks. It might be the way some suburbanite is dressed (they love to shop in the most audacious get ups, with their kids in tow and not a nice thing to say to you the whole time), or the way one of the employees is talking about either their plans for the night, or the frightening let down of their last night out. Now, you can learn a lot from some of these people, often in the early 20's, espousing wisdom to their late-teen subordinates. Sometimes, rarely, they are cute. So, anyway, not cruising the place like a degenerate for a change, I saw this amazingly well (well, not well, but well-ish) crafted miniature baby (yes, two sizes smaller than you'd believe) toy piano for the aspiring Liberace you hide from the neighbors at home.

The faux-cabaret lettering spells out "A Star is Born," which is the same name of a not-quite-masterpiece of 50's film starring Judy Garland. Something you'd obviously be aware of if you were thinking of picking one of these delightful instruments up for yourself, your aspiring child, or your seriously spoiled Chihuahua. Please note, ivory lovers everywhere, that this instrument is not, in fact a piano, but a clverly disguised xylophone. A disctintion your discriminating child (or ferret) will evidently loathe you for mistaking. Idiot.

Grills

Grills
Originally uploaded by boxedrobot

Another daily sight to be seen in greater Providence.

notes on the side of my head

i wish i had electric fingers and a pencil mentality so i could ease away the hours doing rough sketches of the seagulls gathering in the parking lot

i tripped down a bland staircase wondering just how long things like fishing and chess actually take.

i still feel the sting of rejection, the labour of love so many practice. i get really into the art of being negative, i'm sometimes taken aback by the air guitar orchestrations of others, also good at it. twang.

IMG00123

IMG00123
Originally uploaded by boxedrobot.

This is the dead Lincoln Mall. There is almost nothing in the mall, but there is a great movie theater that is almost always empty on a weeknight. So this is the scene as I head to see "28 Weeks Later." Deserted, much like the mood of the film. Do you see the connection?

IMG00106

IMG00106
Originally uploaded by boxedrobot.

Here is Varla looking down on my laziness (while she is also being lazy). Behind here is the loft, and to the right of our view is the kitchen. I'm below the camera line, but I assure you I am wearing clothes.

IMG00108

IMG00108
Originally uploaded by boxedrobot.

Here's my new bookshelf. It's holding about 2/3 of my books. Behind it is the stairway to the loft. Next to it are boxes of more books, dvds, cds, body parts, and my dead soul.

My life in chains

I'm trying to make use of myself and capture some of the magic in my life. Here's a good one. Turning onto 195 West yesterday I spied this whole loaf of Wholewheat bread still in it's bag on the side of the road. I quickly tried to get a picture of it. I present to you, this little 'slice' of life. (If you click through it might look a little more obvious, but this was just a very quick shot).

Last night, at the movies

They put up these life-size replicas of the Simpsons. I'm sure they're all over the place. But UglyUgnes snapped these with my phone and wanted to share with the world. Click them for 'full' size.

At lilly marlanes

At lilly marlanes
Originally uploaded by boxedrobot.

We decided to head out for a couple of dark and stormies and the best 3 dollar burgers (better than most 12 buck burgers, too).

Sent via BlackBerry from Cingular Wireless

Friday coffee

Friday coffee
Originally uploaded by boxedrobot.

Blogged from the mobile as a test.

Sent via BlackBerry from Cingular Wireless

Find me in the dark, rub me till I spark.

Yes, I'm back. I know you missed me because so many of you sent in worried sounding emails.

"Where did your blog go?"

"Where is your blog?"

"Where am our blog #"

"I know you'll love this, really, I promise."

So many kind emails, as you can see from this small sampling. For whatever reason my hosting account sputtered out. It's still there, it's just not working. Fine, I switched back to Blogger. Now as long as I don't publish hundreds of nude photos I won't get shut down like all the interesting blogs I read. That's where this blog is different from all the others: Serious Lack of Content.

In case you're new to this blog address, let me be introductory and clear: This is a total vanity blog. Nothing on this blog means anything, to anyone. The people who read it are, for the most part, really sad individuals...and it's true, I know a lot of them personally so I'm really quite qualified to say that. This is not meant to offend them. It's not meant to, but I hope it will.

Why the long wait in taking care of this? My regular readers will know the answer: I have very little to say. I enjoy going months between posts. This makes my posts more exciting for everyone. There's a lot of anticipation and wonder that builds up. I also have some credible evidence that few people ever actually get to the end of my posts. Is it that they're lazy? Illiterate? Ugly? Yes.

I've also been very busy with my new apartment. Do you know how hard it is to wait while people do a lot of building and labour intensive work for you? It's HARD. I sweat a lot at the gym thinking about these things. I feel the strain when I'm eating really good pizza. When I get drunk and feel dizzy I'm like, hey, wow, I'm the KING!

Well, it's good to be back. I enjoy making your life sort of meaningful for a few minutes. But sadly, for you, this is now at an end. Please don't kill yourself or anything, things are going to get better. I hear the new Transformers movie is just for boys. Take that, My Little Pony.

You hear it here first: Ipod pHone!

So, word is out, but you might not have seen this yet if you’re not in ‘the know’ as the hackers say: the iPod company, Apple, is going to be making a cell phone you can play your iTunes on and they want to call it an iPhone. I know, sounds kind of repetitive and tedious, but really, this is probably going to be a big deal once people get to hear about it.

If you’re landing on this blog for the first time, welcome, you probably wanted some of the iPhone scoop so Google might have dropped you off. Well, you’re in the right place. I only wish I could have been there at the business meeting where they announced this news the other day. And if I had I would have tried my hardest to sneak a camera in to give you a little glimpse of this new marvel. Unfortunately I wasn’t there, didn’t have a camera and you’ll just have to rely on some of the rumors I have heard.

The blogging world being what it is you can never be sure who to trust, but I promise you I’m only going to deliver to you that information that I’m at least 95% sure of regarding Apple Computers new telephone device.

First, it’s an iPod. That means you can put music on it, take it with you and have your own personal ‘jukebox’ on you all day long. You be the DJ! The iPod is a pretty popular little gadget right now, almost a ubiquitous fashion accessory so it may be hard to determine if it’s popularity has more to do with it’s cultural cache than it’s actual usefulness. Some people are real trend hoppers. [This is not meant in any offense if you, like me, love your iPod for all the music it can hold and play in random order…better than a radio station, isn’t it??]

Secondly, it’s a phone. No duh, I hear you saying. But one of the best things I’ve heard about this new iPhone is that it’s revolutionary. That means it’s going to totally force us to rethink the way we think about telephones, fax machines, cell phones and probably even the internet. What’s the one thing all these things have in common? Keeping us in touch with our friends. Exactly. No matter what the technology looks like, no matter how many features and games we can add on, it all boils down to keeping close with our pals, family, friends, coworkers and people we know from social networking sites that we’re chat buddies with. All over the world, it’s about communicating.

Some other features of the phone will be video playback. Apple Computers are on the forefront of multimedia programming. This is why in almost any artist’s apartment or company that produces something with a lot of design flourish you’ll see the familiar glow of the Apple Macintosh apple. Apple has always been the open secret of the computing world, and that does make a lot of long time users cautious about every step Apple takes into the regular world of commerce. A lot of long time users also resent a lot of the new Apple products being able to work on, in their minds, the inferior operating system Microsoft Windows XP. These are battles that take place mostly on message boards and blog comment pages, so most non-computer obsessed people might think this all sounds kind of crazy. It’s like a mega soda war with a few potato chip skirmishes thrown in for good measure.

Now, the last part of this post is going to be the one thing I promised it wouldn’t be: speculation. Sorry guys, but we’ve got to at least wonder about some of the really amazing little secrets this iPhone is going to hold until it’s possible entry into the marketplace. A lot of people are really convinced it’s going to have almost 100% sync up with the Apple Computer. This is really likely. Also, you can bet that it will work pretty seamlessly with the iTunes application. If it can browse web pages it will likely be formatted to auto-detect those smaller better laid out (read: add free!) mini pages a lot of big news companies have for handheld device users. Ever check out the web on a Blackberry? Then you know what I’m talking about. This may even force big time Internet companies like Yahoo! and Google to rethink all the special java scripting they’ve been using on their email accounts. Anyway, you can also bet that it will feature one of those great click wheels we’ve come to know and love about the iPod. This may actually mean we’ll have to get used to dialing numbers the old fashioned way again. It will probably indicate there won’t be any text messaging, since there won’t be any keys, so I’m not even sure how the web browsing will work now. Probably a bug they’ll fix before going into the marketplace. Anyway, I for one look forward to picking up my new iPhone in the next couple of years now that they’ve let the cat out of the bag. Let’s hope the design is at least as fashionable as the iPod we’re so used to.