En vivo y en directo...

blogging about blogging pt. 1

2007-03-10T02:29:00.000-05:00

What else can I say, but after 100 and one posts, and a few unpublised drafts, I'm moving onto bigger and better things.

*insert sad face here*

Since that fateful day in October of 2004, I've had pretty interesting ride here with blogger. Not to say that I haven't had my fair amount of issues with it, but it's been great for the most part. It introduced me to a whole other aspect of internet life, heck, life in general, while providing me with my very own initiation to this web 2.0 business.

My experience with blogger is one akin to scoring a seat to a big game. My first game ever. I'm sitting in row 10, on the 30th yard line and everything is lovely. I could do without the humidity and the dude in front of me, wearing the big ass foam hand piece, but the beer is great, the game is exciting, and it's beyond a gratifying first experience. I have the time of my life.

Couldn't get any better.

That is, until I get a hook-up to sky box seats. I mean, I thought it couldn't get any better, but it just did. You can call it Web 2.1, I call it WordPress. It makes Blogger look like Fisher Price, my first blog. Ok, it's not that bad, but WordPress is definitely a step up. A few steps up.

I'm not quite done with blogging yet, just upgrading my center of operations. You can find me at:

http://quinceminutos.wordpress.com

I'm leaving Blogger for greener pastures, hope to see you there.

*remove sad face*

hooking a kid up

2007-02-17T12:05:00.000-05:00

A friend hipped me up to this great cause and hopefully you can help spread the word.

For anybody who's not familiar with FIRST BOOK, what they do is collect and donate books to children from low-income families.

Right now random house is running this deal in honor of the Cat In The Hat's 50th birthday where if you send a birthday card to the cat in the hat and they will donate a free book to First Book, up to one million books. (This is *online*- the process is: color the little picture if you want to, put your name and state, and hit send. Hell, help move FL up the charts)

hit it up (& repost) people:

send the cat a birthday wish & support literacy!

Cuz you know, reading is fundamental.

around my blogosphere

2006-12-27T21:30:00.000-05:00

Nothing like unintended humor with a pinch of violence and hacker savvy to throw into my quotidian commute thru the internets. A good ol' dose of honesty never hurt anyone, right?

*shrugs*

And every now and then, you just can't help but sit through one of those, all the way thru the end. All I have to say, after reading that, is that my pantry never seemed fuller, and it's been over a week since my last trip to Publix.

R.I.P. The Godfather of Soul

2006-12-26T00:00:00.000-05:00

James Joseph Brown, Jr. (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006)

However troubled his life may have been, James Brown's influence in music and the culture of music is undeniable. To all those fun filled days of dancing to Get On The Good Foot, Get Up, Papa's Got a Brand New Bag and so many others -at the Indian Hammocks Park, the Lounge at Jenning's Hall, the Reitz, and wherever else we found a good spot- this dedication goes out to the Hardest Working Man in Showbiz.

how you say... apology in french?

2006-12-20T23:09:00.000-05:00

Public Service Announcement: protect yourself

2006-12-18T22:38:00.000-05:00

click on image for more info

they're bringing sexy back

2006-12-18T22:21:00.000-05:00

so, you just don't know it but snl keeps getting better and better.

m*therf*ckers do know how to act.

Art Basel: the'06 edition

2006-12-12T00:48:00.000-05:00

So many things to see. So many objects to admire. So many concepts to ponder about, like and dislike. If anything was accomplished by Art Basel this weekend, was that it got many of us talking about art -even if it isn't something we normally do.

I have to say, I had a great time, a few laughs, and came to the realization that penises, vaginas, and bodily fluids don't hold the same shock value as they might have many years ago...

Can't wait till next year.

the art basel experience

2006-12-11T12:30:00.000-05:00

15 seconds of fun.

where's the beef chicken?

2006-12-08T00:20:00.000-05:00

I give up.

I never thought I'd ever say this, but today was the last time I'll ever eat at The Chicken Kitchen.

I'm tired of putting up with bad service. I'm tired of putting up with dwindling portions. I'm tired of putting up with this increasing feeling of dissatisfaction within me.

At one point, I thought The Chicken Kitchen was the best thing to happen to fast food, and most of all, fast food in Miami. I could eat there every day without complaint. When I had to move up to Gainesville one of the things I missed most was that curry-mustard-sauced chicken and yellow rice. When I'd come back down, I would eat it almost every day. You couldn't imagine how ecstatic I was when they branched out in G-ville (I figured I could finally stop cheating myself with that bland-ass California Chicken Grill) but alas, it sucked!!!! They kept running out of yellow rice for God's sake!!!!! My guess is that I should've taken that as an omen.

Now, it's all but a memory and today was the end of my run.

Do they all (everywhere I go it's the same damn thing) get together and just decide to fuck with the customers? How are you going to call something a CHICKEN BREAST Platter and not include ~~a whole~~ at least half a chicken breast? Whatever happened to hooking somebody up?

Long gone are the days of the one size-fits-all chop (a LARGE chop). I remember one time we actually bet a friend he couldn't eat two chops-chops back to back. He won -eventually, somewhere on the road, sometime before we hit Orlando, I think. Now, they have those measuring cups that fit about 2/3 rds of half a breast. That'll be $5.00. Plus tax. Rice not included.

OK, I keed, you do get the rice. And at least, you're not getting fat... I think.

Sadness fills my heart.

As for my stomach, it's currently being satisfied by THE NATURAL CHICKEN GRILL*.

*Particularly the one on 8th street (and 87th Ave), specially when the hatian (constantly-getting-tips-from-me-for-the-great-service-)dude is doing the chopping.

let's get social

2006-11-26T15:22:00.000-05:00

I've been doing a lot of surfin the internets lately and can't help but notice it all reminds me of high school. The internet as it turns out is nothing but a big popularity contest. I remember hating that particular aspect of teenagedom being that I wasn't a terribly social person to begin with. College fixed that little problem... sort of, but I digress. Nowadays, I can't help but to find myself surrounded by all that is the internets and I guess it was just a matter of time till it regressed to that state of tweenery.

Yeah, it's come to this. By now, who hasn't heard of myspace? I mean, my boss still has no idea of what a browser is; but he knows myspace. I'm willing to bet he's even got a page up. In some instances it may seem like it's just gotten out of control. It's myspace this (which btw, speaking of, I have to thank for my H.S. Re), facebook that, with no sense of privacy whatsoever. Add blogs, flickr, and youtube to the mix and plenty of people are acting like they've been waiting all their lives to submit themselves to this state of invasiveness.

It seems terrible, but aside from the fact that you can avoid all this by not quite putting yourself out there, all this behavior has a great upside to it.

Social networking/bookmarking has sprung up from this big and sometimes entertaining mess. Through services like digg, reddit, and del.icio.us you can rank, approve, or bookmark what you deem worthy or unworthy. Then you can see what everyone else thinks about it. And within them you will find many other tools that make your online life more efficient.

It's the masses taking control of the internet.

(SAVE NET NEUTRALITY!!!)

Of course, it extends well beyond the internet and onto every day life. What we read, what we learn, and what we watch; where we get our information, where we get our entertainment, etc.

Eventually, IMHO they will help filter out all the other crap. You know, once we get this whole 15 minutes of fame out of our system. But until then, blogger beta will stay the pain in the ass it needs to be when it comes to staying ahead of the curve (and by ahead I mean behind*).

Testing, testing, one, two, one, two.

*honestly, I had no complains on beta whatsoever till it came to this. AHHHHH!!!!!!!

four days left

2006-11-01T21:15:00.000-05:00

In case you're wondering, early voting is going on till Sunday.

For more details visit the Miami-Dade County Elections webpage.
(which btw is firefox friendly)

the nine eleven lexicon

2006-10-31T21:05:00.000-05:00

All Things Considered is running an interesting series on post-9/11 political language. Straight from their site:

"The idea behind this series is to explore five terms that have gained new prominence in our lexicon since Sept. 11 -- how they are used in different contexts, and their impact on policy or discourse."

The five terms they explore: jihad, islamo fascism, war on terror, imperialism, and democracy.

i jus wanna bang! bang! bang!

2006-10-31T19:58:00.000-05:00

Miami, the kick ass dudes at Miami Nights are giving away a pair of tix to a banging ass concert next Friday: The Bang Music Festival.

Sadly, due to a prior engagement, I won't be able to attend. Best of luck to the rest of ya.

happy halloween!!

2006-10-31T07:25:00.000-05:00

internets v2.0

2006-10-29T23:43:00.000-05:00

This post over at Critical Miami reminded of the dark days of floppy disks, 33.6k modems, and having Microsoft's Internet Explorer as the only viable choice for surfing the web. Some tech millenia after that came two of my personal innerweb saviors: the Google, and the firefox web browser.

Originally, I made the switch to firefox after succumbing to one too many browser hi-jacks and going through pop-up hell; and with all the bells and whistles and tweaks it offers, I never looked back.

Well, as of last Tuesday, 10.24.06, firefox got badder and better with version 2.0.

As always plenty of customization to work with and it's not a pain getting the hang of it. For starters, here's a link to tweaking 101 and another for tweaking 201: chrome customization.

Enjoy.

dedicated

2006-10-28T21:49:00.000-05:00

R.I.P. Lobo 1992 - 2006

gator done

2006-10-28T18:21:00.000-05:00

FLORIDA 21 - GEORGIA 14

No surprise here, 'cept that we didn't cover the line. Tebow still led in rushing yards, Chris Hetland continues to suck (I mean, people get excited when he nails those extra points).

Big shouts to USC for helping us keep the dream alive.

...and in other unrelated news, the 'Canes get done (in all fairness it was a good game... till they got ran over in the 4th).

the miami double standard

2006-10-27T20:39:00.000-05:00

A few days ago a cuban-american politician got in trouble for calling someone a n*gger. Tis not the first time he's done it -last time some were irate he got off so easy- and many people in his party (Rep) are calling for his resignation.

It hit the news and the paper, but only StuckonthePalmetto mentioned anything about it. Not even a peep from anyone else.

After the rant the 26th Parallel responded by saying the situation didn't bear much importance being that the politician didn't represent the local cuban community -which is something I could not disagree more, especially because he is an elected legislator.

Regarding his comments, what bothers me is not that bloggers decided not to talk about this situation but rather, that anyone would dismiss such a prevalent and serious issue so callously.

Say all you want to say about Arza being an idiot but dismissing the seriousenss of this is way beyond shortsighted in itself.

Arza's mouth off wasn't simply an ignorant slip, it was blatantly racist. Being latino and a majority demographic in an American city is one of those aberrations people here in Miami take for granted. The scary part is how that level of comfortability makes you lose sight of the big picture. You might think people are outside looking in and already getting the wrong idea about an entire community.

But are they are they really?

writing short stories

2006-10-22T21:30:00.000-05:00

sex. survival. control. retreat. chaos complete.

dos años

2006-10-17T00:00:00.000-05:00

En vivo y en directo...

and I'm still getting the hang of it. but as they say, practice makes perfect. or at least I can fine tune my imperfections. Dificil de pensar que comenze a bloggear el 2004. I should post in spanglish mas amenudo.

to another meaningless (yet by that very nature, meaningful (read: Longtail)) and not-so-anonimo blog related event.

*sopla las velas*

*pops champagne*

...and that's an L

2006-10-15T12:23:00.000-05:00

Florida 17 - Auburn 27

Thanks to the Auburn *insert mascot here*s, our season of glory, i.e. the double whopper Gator championship special (basketball and football), is officially just a mathematical probability.

I blame North Korea.

And even though, the score makes it look worse than it was, it was pretty bad.

Thank God for UM/FIU altercations, hopefully nobody will notice.

*keeps fingers crossed*

número 2

2006-10-09T07:40:00.000-05:00

(A.P. poll only/No. 3 in the coaches poll)

It's been a long time so it sure feels good, but we're only halfway done with the season. Next up the former number 2, Auburn (and then Georgia).

grand opening finale

2006-10-08T00:03:00.000-05:00

If you're looking for something to do Sunday, get your ass downtown and be part of the Miami Carnival (i.e. the Caribbean Mardi Gras) and the last day of the inaugural celebration of the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts. Maybe that way, you'll actually believe this thing is up and running.

The CCPA event is ~~getting funded by~~ officially being called the Target Global Beat. It will feature everything from afro-peruvian music (courtesy of Peru Expresión), to tango; and local performers from the Spam Allstars (the most awesome live band), to MAYDAY!

It's a free event, but the bummer is that you need a wristband to enjoy the CCPA related festivities (both indoor and outdoor). That means that unless you got a voucher sometime last week, you need to go to the Target Globalbeat Tent (NE 14th Street and North Bayshore Drive) to redeem your wristband. Again, check the website for details (scroll right).

Teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeebow knows

2006-10-07T22:00:00.000-05:00

LSU 10 - UF 23

So after having lost 2 in a row to the Tigers -the first of which was the last game I attended- this was sweeeeeeeeet. Plus we got a glimpse at what's to come for (at least) the next couple of years.

Those Canes better watch out b/c '08 ain't that far off.

GO GATORS!!!!!!!!

can we say, foreshadowing?

2006-10-05T20:08:00.000-05:00

An accident along 8th extended my morning commute by an hour. Now I know a lot of people have to travel this long on a regular basis, but this is me complaining.

And, in other Palmetto Expressway related news, today on my way back home, I caught some dudes standing on the Bird Road overpass holding signs of some sort. I believe one of them said "911 was an inside job" in (not so) big letters. I definitely couldn't read what the others said.

Now, lately I've been kicking myself for not having my camera on hand, but even though I had two this time, I completely forgot about it.

random public transportation thoughts

2006-10-04T21:37:00.000-05:00

yes, it is one of those few and select reasons why I'd love to become a former resident of this adorable city. And by few I speak relatively, of course.

I mean, who really enjoys being in a tight, confined space, promoting muscular atrophy, while steadily whiplashing yourself for miles worth of inhaled exhaust fumes? If I time my commute properly, it might take me just over 10 mins to get to the J.O. Now, if I don't, or say, a logic impaired driver decides that cutting someone (going at 70+ mph) off is the way to go -within my properly timed commute- then it might take me 2hrs, as it has a few times already. Can we say stuck on the palmetto? ugh.

I hate driving.

Maybe, it's an actual hate of being surrounded by numbnut drivers rather than driving itself, but yeah, I'd rather not drive.

Too bad this city has not much to offer. It is a big (overbuilt) city, but I've been to bigger, denser cities with Public Transportation Systems that makes this sh*t look like a the Fisher Price of transpo systems.

Maybe they could build something along the Palmetto (which I have to ride halfway every.damn.day.) and yeah, that idea of extending the Metro Rail along 836 was stupendous. And seriously, what self-respecting (major) city doesn't have a mass transit system out of their major airport?

What a mess.

Just to think how much lighter traffic would become, which in effect would clear roadways (and buses in turn could arrive to their destinations on time!!!). Just to think of all the benefits it would bring local business, universities (like shortsighted-ass FIU). etc. etc. etc. Just think...

If by some miracle this were to happen, I'd be the first in line. I'd have more time to find affordable real estate in our crappy local paper.

it's here

2006-09-26T22:26:00.000-05:00

and it's really, really good.

really.

same sh*t different day

2006-09-25T00:04:00.000-05:00

seriously tho, all sarcasm aside...this is yet another that-hiphop-duo-from-Miami-post...or rather, the weekend (read: Saturday night) re-cap.

Mayday! held their record release party at club I/O on Saturday.

What I like about these types of events, its that it is purely about the local talent, granted, there are times where you have to put up with someone's homey or cousin doing their thing onstage before you get to the good stuff (albeit sometimes, someone's homey actually turns out to be worthwhile, but I digress).

Saturday night, it was all about Mayday! Everyone, down to Bern Biz's moms and pops were there. Definitely a family affair. DJ Manuvers (Mayday!'s homey/2nd string stunnas) kept the crowd on ice with the ol skool joints, b-boy cipher enhanced and all. Wrekonize MC'd the event, until DJ Smalls hit the decks, Diego got on bass, Plexo on the keys, and Bernie on the mic. They performed about 7 tracks from the new album, and almost coaxed them to perform Quicksand, but that never quite worked out.

Needless to say, it was a great show.

And speaking of Quicksand, it's not on the new album, but I happened to get my hands on the video for the track that 'made it happen' for them. I figure I'd share it with the rest of you (whomever still checks for this =/ ).

btw, the video and audio are a bit outta sinc. enjoy:

un dia de mayo para la caridad

2006-08-14T21:45:00.000-05:00

errr... I hate to make this sound like a PSA but MAYDAY! and Wrek are gonna be performing at Mansion tomorrow night.

All for some sort of charity event, which I'm not exactly sure what the specifics of it is, but I bet a lil googling could probably answer that question.

It's $10 at the door, and it also features Garcia, Aboriginals, Keyrats, and Sofla Kings, which for the most part I'm am not familiar with, but rest asured they are local acts.

Doors open @ 10 p.m. and I have a feeling I'll be there.

today, I've heard it all

2006-08-01T11:51:00.000-05:00

From, "it's all a hoax, they're just trying to get the exiles excited over nothing."
To, "I bet you he's already dead and they're just pretending he's in recovery not to get everyone all crazy over this."

...hmmk.

Fact is we don't know yet, and fact remains that when the man dies, it will be the people in Cuba who will be the most affected by this change. Makes me wonder whether their future is as clear cut to them as some make it seem to be from over here...

showing miami some luh

2006-07-28T06:08:00.000-05:00

There's a "conflict" happening online right now.

Local artist MAYDAY! is going up for mtvU.com "Freshman Video of the Week."The gut reaction would be to immediately vote for the local reps (and if you happen to have any personal ties to the group, I'm sure not a second would be spent on processing these thoughts), and wouldn't you know it, that's exactly what is getting done... but by someone else.

There's another crew -Tanya Morgan- that is getting a ridiculous amount of support from their homebase. It happens that their homebase is an online community that spreads beyond any city limits...and they are doing it.

And who's trailing? MAYDAY! that's who. They happened to be leading the voting up until sometime last night, and some folks took it up to themselves to change this.

Anyhow, let's show Miami some luh, and like P.didadudoo said VOTE OR DIE!

a difference of opinion?

2006-06-23T06:00:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it's hard to fathom how someone could ignore all sorts of data and research when it comes to forming an opinion (nevermind either general consensus or conventional wisdom, because those hold as much water as a wiffle ball), but then I get to thinking of how many times I got called "un terco" (hard headed) by my mother and how many times she was right -and for argument's sake I'll disregard the number of times she wasn't... but I digress.

This thursday, both npr, and cnn reported on the new findings by the National Academy of Sciences (a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government of scientific matters) regarding the controversial issue of global warming.

A June 23rd article on the Guardian reads:

"US scientists have endorsed the contentious findings of a global warming study that showed humans are drastically altering the climate."

Basically, the world is the hottest it's been in 400 years and humans are largely responsible... that is unless you have a different take on the data and report... or definition of qualified scientists.

The recent release of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," has brought some qualified differers of opinion out and onto state that,

"We should listen most to scientists who use real data to try to understand what nature is actually telling us about the causes and extent of global climate change. In this relatively small community, there is no consensus, despite what Gore and others would suggest."
-Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Australia

Needless to say it's up to every individual to decide whose opinion matters, or better fits their own purposes. Maybe it's all a matter of semantics and the whole issue would be better off relabeled drastic global climate change? But with politics involved, who knows, I mean...

saturday night art

2006-06-11T23:03:00.000-05:00

Originally uploaded by djrue.
(please click on pic for a larger image)

(thank you)

un estilo de vida

2006-06-09T22:33:00.000-05:00

Growing up, I never considered futbol a sport, it was always more like a way of life. Mexico '86, Italia '90, US '94, France '98, Korea/Japan '02, and now Germany '06, are six years worth of exclamation marks in this lifestyle that I was born into.

From sitting with my uncles and cousins watching Maradona take out half the English defense and throwing up "la mano de Dios," to taking extended (and prearranged) bathroom brakes from Calc class to catch the score from U.S. game, to waking up at 5 am,on the last day of a school conference, to catch Turkey vs Korea (yeah the 3rd place match), nothing but good memories. Standard protocol. The type that goes with an event that comes along every 4 years.

This is the one time where the whole world goes into a synchronized pause, regarless of nationality, religion, or political afiliation. It's just too bad that as the world's pulse skips a beat, here in the U.S. we still find ourselves asking what the big deal is.

It's time for celebration!

(and congratulations Ecuador)

news bomb babble-on

2006-06-09T01:06:00.000-05:00

It seems that just about everybody is at least content, if not overjoyed at the news of al-Zarqawi's death. That said, this guy was nothing but a U.S. created mess, from the ground up.

If we had originally not made the erroneous connection between him, al-Qaeda, and Iraq, al-Zarqawi would still be running around -nameless- amid some subversive anti-west contingent (quite possibly in Iraq). Instead his cred was artificially built up, and his influence over-extended, probably beyond the grave even.

Now, I understand the value of the news factor in this situation, but I believe it behooved the forces fighting the insurgency to keep this under wraps and pretend it never happened.

Why?

Because there's nothing else we can do to Zarqawi's rep now that he's dead but send it on its way to martyrdom, giving plenty of those who are in favor of his and bin Laden's jihad, the slightest bit of inspiration.

Shortsighted if you ask me.

obligatory seis seis seis post

2006-06-06T20:12:00.000-05:00

One of my very favorite movies growing up, that I remember watching over, and over, and over again was "The Omen." It made me deathly afraid of dobermans, kids named Damian, and any type of numerical equation which would churn out a triple six. Yet, I never hesitated to catch Gregory Peck's futile attempt at saving the world from the devil over, and over, and over again. Hell, I even watched the sequels.

Now, twentysomeodd years later, I find myself wondering whether I should check out The Omen remake (out today, watch out!) or whether the world is gonna come to an end any time soon... And let's face it, despite the rampant warning signs, this is unlikely to happen; but you can always count on someone to make it seem like it is and whether you like it or not we will all reach our very own grand (or not so grand) finale sooner or later.

Last night, my cousin asked me if I was worried about something going wrong today. I told him I worried about something going wrong pretty much everyday. I'm such a worrier. And being that the Heat open their NBA Finals series on Thursday, and the World Cup begins on Friday, I told him I have been particularly worried of sudden catastrophes lately.

I mean, I did stock up in water and canned tuna.

(Meanwhile, what mayor Alvarez is really hoping for, is that whatever we stocked up for today's fateful deadline, will be enough to carry us over this year's big storm(s). He simply asks miamians to take it easy with the chainsaw purchases and not to go crazy with the fuel storing.)

In any case, let's take it easy folks and remember that today there are people celebrating in Hell, so rejoice!

una segunda oportunidad para el "caballo loco"

2006-06-05T22:25:00.000-05:00

"Crazy Horse" is getting a second chance after all.

Fear of the extremism presented by Humala -and exacerbated by Chavez- won over the majority of voters and placed Garcia back at the helm. This sense of desperation seems to have overtaken everyone from my mother to Mario Vargas Llosa, although it always seems to be about the lesser of two evils.

Here in Miami, the many red-shirted Humala supporters were deprived of their chance to cast a vote because of the lack of organization from the proper authorities -a total mess- at least till Tuesday (supposedly). Meanwhile Garcia already has an appointment with the movers to get his stuff to the presidential palace... let's hope those Humala fans plan to stay in the States for the moment.

As one full of fond memories of Garcia's first tenure, I pray he has learned from failure and that he wasn't just spewing your typical political rhetoric. He is definitely a master politician, the one thing Humala was far from. The one thing that at once made Humala the top candidate and the one thing that lost him the second round (with a little help from Chavez... let me rephrase that... A LOT of help from Chavez).

What bothers me, as of now, is the how of Garcia's masterplan; it isn't very clear. Sorta the way everything goes in politics. You can promise to give the people what they want, but as far as the inner workings, you can find them under the "have a little faith" file. If the focus of this election had not been Garcia vs. Chavez, the spotlight might have landed on the how, but that is pointless speculation now.

I sincerely hope this man is as shrewd an executor as he is a politician and orator. I hope that he becomes the statesman everyone believed he'd be his first time around and that he's eventually remembered as Pierola's second government.

Now, will someone tell me how the hell "the decade and a half after he led Peru into ruin were not kind to García????!?????????!!!!?" (He lived in exile in France and Colombia to avoid corruption charges at home, and a 2001 presidential bid ended in defeat).
POBRECITO?!
Alexandra please.

their demographics are graphic and labeled risky

2006-05-19T21:11:00.000-05:00

MAYDAY!

a sign of the times

2006-05-17T22:32:00.000-05:00

I laughed.

skepticism

2006-05-15T03:09:00.000-05:00

This Sunday, an editorial by the peruvian newspaper El Comercio calls for a debate between Alan Garcia and Ollanta Humala to to help settle the political dust and give Peru's voters a clearer picture of their presidential candidates.

It mentions that their biggest challenge is now to gain the trust of the 5 million voters who lack a candidate, by breaking down their platforms, showing how they plan to promote investment and how these financial gains at the macroeconomic level will benefit everyone, blah, blah, blah.

The reality of the situation is, that no matter what is said, it won't amount to anything unless real action ensues.

Now Alan is sitting pretty, 12 percentage points above his opponent, and most of what he has shown (aside from his glorious 5 years as president of Peru in the late 80s) is his moderate leftist stance which is up against Humala's contrastingly extreme leftism in the current political state of South America. I have seen voters flock to Garcia's side out of fear of what could be despite of what has been. The problem is nobody knows what could be, or what will be.

I managed to catch the last few minutes of Oppenheimer Presenta that night, right when they had Mr. Garcia say some words regarding the hopes and future of a socialist South America. In the short time he delivered his message, he came across as gracious and a very effective speaker... too bad he was saying much about nothing: if S.A. gets their act together they can compete with China; technology; education... empty rhetoric up until he gets elected. If he gets elected. It should be an interesting turn of events either way, and that's just due to the political atmosphere down there.

For now I guess we'll have to take their word for it, whatever that may be.

UPDATE!!!!

2006-05-14T01:56:00.000-05:00

I promise that I will not neglect my blog, for one, but I would like to inform my readers (all 4 of you) that I will be contributing to Metroblogging Miami as well (one post deep!!!).

And in case you were wondering, Metroblogging has to do with blogging about your metropolis and not about metrosexuals.

Thank you.

R.

mas vale mal conocido que Humala por conocer...

2006-04-23T12:48:00.000-05:00

On a recent late night convo, over beers, I asked my cousin the question that many peruvians will be faced with come May (or June, go figure that):

Alan García u Ollanta Humala?

Amusingly enough, it was more of a rhetorical question for him, since he didn't vote (and probably won't on the 2nd round) despite it being a requirement for all citizens of Perú. Needless to say, he responded without hesitation: "blank vote."

One of the lasting memories I have of Perú, aside from all the talk about turmoil and the economic downfall which the country was suffering under García, is the still unfinished, and apparently still standing "Tren Electrico" -aptly nicknamed "El Tren Fantasma," the most salient example of waste of resources and mismanagement in our government. Terrorism ran rampant and the political corruption trail led all the way to the top, eventually leading the then ex-president to seek political asylum in Colombia (while living France).

Right around the same time, my family settled in Miami, and my life and reality diverged from those whom I left in Perú.

Now peruvians are faced with another fork in the road. On one side, Humala, the man who has publicly stated that he admires Velasco -the former peruvian dictator who's ideals were very much like the current Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, and who led the country to bankrupcy and disorder. On the other end, Alan García, a man who's reputation precedes him. El mal conocido.

Humala's leftist leanings and comments have a lot of people (mostly middle and upper class) worried about history repeating itself. Otherwise, he seems to have the full support of the masses. Although unlike García, he has yet to hold office, but as the old saying goes "dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres." Humala por conocer.

The future looks bleak.

It took me a while to get my cousin to address the question directly. "Hypothetically speaking," I said, "given only those two choices, who would you vote for?"

To which he replied, "honestly, I don't know."

on: documenting your life (the remix)

2006-04-16T23:00:00.000-05:00

So many blogs, so little time.

So, how does one stand out?
Is standing out a good idea?
Do I want to look back and read developing history?
Or, do I want to see this as a series of disjointed stories and articles?
Do you fall into a particular format, or do you make a deliberate choice at one point or another?

I'm not sure what actual purpose this blog has served me or others as its contents sway from attempts at retelling stories, to picture posting, to article swiping, to poetry, to plain randomness. Not that I must have a focal point to justify my weblogging, but being exposed to some excellent work has left me with a desire to move this into a particular direction.

Among the many things running through my mind recently, is my fifteen minutes. I found myself thinking a whole lot about purpose. I've been trying to make sense of my very own e-real estate hoping that it doesn't get lost in the vast internet wasteland, hoping that mis quinceminutos finds direction, and most of all, identity.

I thought about removing all my previous entries but it wouldn't accomplish much of anything, so what is already there shall remain the way it is.

In any case, here I goes...

R.

Joakim Noah will eat your soul

2006-04-02T20:24:00.000-05:00

and we're down to the final two.

all I wanna do is have a little fun before I die

2006-03-16T01:05:00.000-05:00

One of the peculiar aspects of my travels, one that I have just recently noticed, believe it or not, is that aside from a complete lack of an itinerary, or any particular structure to my visits it usually takes more than a couple of days for me to gather some steam and get going. So, short-lived trips don't tend to be very productive, not till a second visit comes along.

I tend to have more success in travelling to places foreign to me, in every sense of the word. I will be more adventurous and have a lot less expectations when I find myself with out a lifeline, when I don't have a friend to show me around (yet. I really don't have that many to begin with, so tis a perplexing conundrum I find myself in).

It's difficult to separate the purpose of a trip when arriving to an area where friends and/or family reside. Exploration is always on my mind, but I consistenly find that personal connection takes precedence over any type of tourist ventures.

**note: I originally wrote this entry after my first full day in L.A., February 16th (i.e. this is one of those never before published posts -get it while its hot)

I feel like sharing

2006-03-05T17:45:00.000-05:00

London Underground
Originally uploaded by djrue.

Getting more acquainted with flickr (it's a movement) has engulfed me in a small wave of nostalgia as I decided to re-up some of the many pictures I happened upon, not so long ago, in the old country. And some others from the mother of all motherlands itself.

I felt like a kid in a candy store. Again.

With much to see and do, and show and tell. Couldn't help but to indulge myself and be part of the show. So for those who have not seen these yet, I give you the begining of my second Eurpoean journey, illustrated.

the los angeles set

2006-02-26T19:13:00.000-05:00

Here it is.

It's something. Not quite what I had in mind as an entry for the L.A. trip, but I've spent a healthy amount of time uploading, editing, and organizing these photos.

So this is what you get for now.

Right now.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

I haven't shot *anything* this extensively in a long time. About a third of the pictures I took were flickr worthy, or something like that. Hopefully, I managed to get things together as I moved along.

You be the judge.

As for Mike, he was the unwitting subject of many a shot, and I wanna thank him for his patience.

of reflections and aviators
Originally uploaded by djrue.

*side note: there's another smaller set of pics I shot with a 35mm. Once I get those developed, depending on how they come out, I might just scan them and upload them.

blogging ain't easy

2006-02-22T07:13:00.000-05:00

Take a peek at my dashboard and you'd see how many works in progress I have on deck, ready to be published (ha, the more I think about it, the smaller that number it seems; I mean, only 3 for my stay in L.A. -which might never see the light of day).

Meanwhile, I read this article on New York magazine regarding the blogging culture and its evolution as an enterprise. It really puts a downer to my hopes of staying online 24/7 ...oh well, there's always my own personal electronic black hole ...and I keep wondering, where all my time goes.

Okay player?

http://newyorkmetro.com/news/media/15967/

Blogs to Riches

The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom.

By Clive Thompson

Two years ago, David Hauslaib was a junior at Syracuse University who was, as he confesses, “totally obsessed with who Paris Hilton was sleeping with.” So he did what any college student would do these days: He blogged about it. Hauslaib began scouring the Web for paparazzi photos of Hilton and news items about her, then posting them on his Website, Jossip.com. (Sample headline: PARIS HILTON SPREADS IT IN THE HAMPTONS.) “My friends got a chuckle out of it, but it didn’t get really big or anything—maybe a few hundred visitors a day,” he says.

Then one day Hauslaib took a good look at Gawker, a gossip site owned by the high-tech publisher Nick Denton. Gawker’s founding writer, Elizabeth Spiers, had pioneered a distinctive online literary style and earned a large following in the Manhattan media world. What really got Hauslaib’s attention, though, was Gawker’s advertising-rate sheet. According to Denton, the site received about 200,000 “page views” a day from readers. The site ran roughly two big ads on each page, and Gawker said that it charged advertisers $6 to $10 for every 1,000 page views—almost the same as a midsize newspaper. There was also a smattering of smaller, one-line text ads bringing in a few hundred bucks daily. Doing a quick bit of math, he figured that the income from Gawker’s ads could top $4,000 a day. The upshot? Nick Denton’s revenues from Gawker were probably at least $1 million a year and might well be cracking $2 million.

Not bad, considering the blog had no serious expenses other than its writers—first Spiers and now Jessica Coen and Jesse Oxfeld, all working for journalist wages—and Webhosting fees of maybe a few thousand bucks a year. “The rest of it,” Hauslaib points out, “just goes into Nick’s pockets.”

“And I was like, I can do that,” he says, laughing.

So in June 2005, Hauslaib packed his bags and moved to a sparsely furnished sixth-floor walk-up in the East Village, where he parked his massive Dell laptop on his kitchenette counter, installed a flat-screen LCD TV to catch breaking celebrity news, and began working on Jossip in earnest. He’d start each day at dawn, trolling the Web for dirt about celebrities and media stars. (“You gotta have something posted before people get to work,” he explains, “because my audience is people who hate their jobs.”) By the end of the year, Hauslaib’s site was steaming along nicely. He had almost everything Gawker had: He stalked the same celebrities, posted with the same speed and frequency, and wrote prose in the Spiers vernacular.

The only thing he didn’t have was Gawker’s audience. About 30,000 visitors a day, Jossip’s traffic is a mere 15 percent of Gawker’s. Hauslaib was generating a “comfortable five-figure income,” but certainly not millions. He’d hit a glass ceiling, in a medium where there weren’t supposed to be any limits.

By all appearances, the blog boom is the most democratized revolution in media ever. Starting a blog is ridiculously cheap; indeed, blogging software and hosting can be had for free online. There are also easy-to-use ad services that, for a small fee, will place advertisements from major corporations on blogs, then mail the blogger his profits. Blogging, therefore, should be the purest meritocracy there is. It doesn’t matter if you’re a nobody from the sticks or a well-connected Harvard grad. If you launch a witty blog in a sexy niche, if you’re good at scrounging for news nuggets, and if you’re dedicated enough to post around the clock—well, there’s nothing separating you from the big successful bloggers, right? I can do that.

In theory, sure. But if you talk to many of today’s bloggers, they’ll complain that the game seems fixed. They’ve targeted one of the more lucrative niches—gossip or politics or gadgets (or sex, of course)—yet they cannot reach anywhere close to the size of the existing big blogs. It’s as if there were an A-list of a few extremely lucky, well-trafficked blogs—then hordes of people stuck on the B-list or C-list, also-rans who can’t figure out why their audiences stay so comparatively puny no matter how hard they work. “It just seems like it’s a big in-party,” one blogger complained to me. (Indeed, a couple of pranksters last spring started a joke site called Blogebrity and posted actual lists of the blogs they figured were A-, B-, and C-level famous.)

That’s a lot of inequality for a supposedly democratic medium. Not long ago, Clay Shirky, an instructor at New York University, became interested in this phenomenon—and argued that there is a scientific explanation. Shirky specializes in the social dynamics of the Internet, including “network theory”: a mathematical model of how information travels inside groups of loosely connected people, such as users of the Web.

To analyze the disparities in the blogosphere, Shirky took a sample of 433 blogs. Then he counted an interesting metric: the number of links that pointed toward each site (“inbound” links, as they’re called). Why links? Because they are the most important and visible measure of a site’s popularity. Links are the chief way that visitors find new blogs in the first place. Bloggers almost never advertise their sites; they don’t post billboards or run blinking trailers on top of cabs. No, they rely purely on word of mouth. Readers find a link to Gawker or Andrew Sullivan on a friend’s site, and they follow it. A link is, in essence, a vote of confidence that a fan leaves inscribed in cyberspace: Check this site out! It’s cool! What’s more, Internet studies have found that inbound links are an 80 percent–accurate predictor of traffic. The more links point to you, the more readers you have. (Well, almost. But the exceptions tend to prove the rule: Fleshbot, for example. The sex blog has 300,000 page views per day but relatively few inbound links. Not many readers are willing to proclaim their porn habits with links, understandably.)

When Shirky compiled his analysis of links, he saw that the smaller bloggers’ fears were perfectly correct: There is enormous inequity in the system. A very small number of blogs enjoy hundreds and hundreds of inbound links—the A-list, as it were. But almost all others have very few sites pointing to them. When Shirky sorted the 433 blogs from most linked to least linked and lined them up on a chart, the curve began up high, with the lucky few. But then it quickly fell into a steep dive, flattening off into the distance, where the vast majority of ignored blogs reside. The A-list is teensy, the B-list is bigger, and the C-list is simply massive. In the blogosphere, the biggest audiences—and the advertising revenue they bring—go to a small, elite few. Most bloggers toil in total obscurity.

Economists and network scientists have a name for Shirky’s curve: a “power-law distribution.” Power laws are not limited to the Web; in fact, they’re common to many social systems. If you chart the world’s wealth, it forms a power-law curve: A tiny number of rich people possess most of the world’s capital, while almost everyone else has little or none. The employment of movie actors follows the curve, too, because a small group appears in dozens of films while the rest are chronically underemployed. The pattern even emerges in studies of sexual activity in urban areas: A small minority bed-hop, while the rest of us are mostly monogamous.

The power law is dominant because of a quirk of human behavior: When we are asked to decide among a dizzying array of options, we do not act like dispassionate decision-makers, weighing each option on its own merits. Movie producers pick stars who have already been employed by other producers. Investors give money to entrepreneurs who are already loaded with cash. Popularity breeds popularity.

“It’s not about moral failings or any sort of psychological thing. People aren’t lazy—they just base their decisions on what other people are doing,” Shirky says. “It’s just social physics. It’s like gravity, one of those forces.”

Power laws are arguably part of the very nature of links. To explain why, Shirky poses a thought experiment: Imagine that 1,000 people were all picking their favorite ten blogs and posting lists of those links. Alice, the first person, would read a few, pick some favorites, and put up a list of links pointing to them. The next person, Bob, is thus incrementally more likely to pick Alice’s favorites and include some of them on his own list. The third person, Carmen, is affected by the choices of the first two, and so on. This repeats until a feedback loop emerges. Those few sites lucky enough to acquire the first linkages grow rapidly off their early success, acquiring more and more visitors in a cascade of popularity. So even if the content among competitors is basically equal, there will still be a tiny few that rise up to form an elite.

First-movers get a crucial leg up in this kind of power-law system. This is certainly true of the blogosphere. If you look at the list of the most-linked-to blogs on the top 100 as ranked by Technorati—a company that scans the blogosphere every day—many of those at the top were first-movers, the pioneers in their fields. With 19,764 inbound links, the No. 1 site is Boing Boing, a tech blog devoted to geek news and nerd trivia; it has been online for five years, making it a grandfather in the field. In the gossip- blog arena, Gawker is the graybeard, having launched in 2002. With 4,790 sites now linking to it, Gawker towers above the more-recent entrants such as PerezHilton.com (with 1,549 links) and Jossip (with 814). In politics, the highest is Daily Kos, one of the first liberal blogs—with 11,182 links—followed closely by Instapundit, an early right-wing blog, with 6,513. Uncountable teensy political blogs lie in their shadows.

In scientific terms, this pattern is called “homeostasis”—the tendency of networked systems to become self-reinforcing. “It’s the same thing you see in economies—the rich-get-richer problem,” Shirky notes.

To see just precisely how rich blogging can make you, it’s worth visiting Peter Rojas, the cheerful, skate-punk-like editor of Engadget—and the best-compensated blogger in history. When I meet him one December evening in his bachelor pad on the Lower East Side, he’s sitting at an Ikea desk bedecked with three flat-panel screens and looking relatively fresh, considering he’s just come off another eleven-hour blogging jag. Like most A-list bloggers, he hit his keyboard before dawn and posted straight through until dinner. “Anyone can start a blog, and anyone can make it grow,” he says, sipping a glass of water. “But to keep it there? It’s fucking hard work, man. I’ve never worked so hard in my life. Eighty-hour weeks since I started.”

For Rojas, the toil paid off handsomely. Last fall, AOL bought Jason Calacanis’s company Weblogs, Inc., which includes Engadget, for $25 million. Rojas himself didn’t disclose the precise amount he got from the deal, but he had a good deal of equity in the company and says that, technically, he doesn’t need to work anymore. Nonetheless, he’s still slogging away at Engadget because he’s still obsessed with cool new technology. His idea of a good time is hunting down samizdat pictures of the latest Palm Treo. “I didn’t intend to become a millionaire,” he says, “but I wound up there anyway.”

Very few bloggers have come anywhere close to Rojas’s struck-by-lightning success, of course. But putting that sort of good fortune aside, the blogosphere is slowly developing solid business models, which take roughly three forms.

The first—and most common so far—is the accidental tourist: A lone writer who starts a blog as a mere hobby but then wakes up one day to realize his audience is now as big as a small city newspaper. The liberal journalist Joshua Micah Marshall went this route: He started the Talking Points Memo blog during the November 2000 election recount “just for fun,” and his audience grew slowly, reaching 8,000 a day in the first two years. Then, in December 2002, he broke news of racially charged comments by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, and his audience surged to 40,000 daily. The blog was eating so heavily into his paying gigs that Marshall began soliciting donations from his readers; in 2003, he signed up with Blogads, an advertising broker, and by this January he was grossing in the low six-figures. Talking Points Memo has become a small company with three full-time staffers and an office in Manhattan. His daily traffic is 150,000 page views, and he now charges advertisers up to $5 per 1,000 views. “When I started it, I had no idea it would become a source of income,” he says.

A variation on this theme is when a lone blogger teams up with the mainstream media. Andrew Sullivan is the first example of an endgame strategy that may become quite common in the future. In 2000, Sullivan started his blog, The Daily Dish, as a part-time sideline, funding it via donations and ads for five years. Then in January, Time magazine agreed to lease his URL for one year, making it part of its online offerings. Though Sullivan says “I didn’t get rich,” he figures the deal will earn him almost half his income this year.

For advertisers, the whole lure of blogs is that they’re cheaper than regular newspapers and TV. Plus, blogs offer tightly focused niches, which advertisers love. “You wanna reach New York, you buy on Gothamist. You want to reach mommies, you buy on Busy Mom. How does traditional media match that?” asks Brian Clark, an ad buyer who orchestrated Audi’s blogvertising last year. The Audi campaign—which ran online for three months, and got 68 million page views, and cost only $50,000—was cheap compared with the $500,000 for a Yahoo front-page banner that runs for only one day.

According to Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads, the first big wave of advertising emerged during the 2004 election season, when political campaigners and interest groups realized that advertising on political blogs was more powerful than direct-mail appeals. “It’s really the audience—younger voters who are motivated and interested,” says Michael Bassik, a political consultant who ran online ad campaigns for John Kerry and other Democratic candidates. Perhaps more important, blogs are buzz-creation machines: If an ad campaign appears on the blogs, it’ll often become a subject of conversation among the bloggers. “They’re social connectors,” Bassik says. Yet each blog has a different sphere of influence. To get a message out widely, he’ll buy on Daily Kos because it has the largest readership of any liberal blog (though it’s also the most expensive, at $4,000 a week). If Bassik needs click-throughs—someone who’ll click on a candidate’s ad, visit his site, and perhaps make a donation—he might buy Talking Points Memo instead, which has a smaller audience but a much higher click-through rate.

Since blogs set their own ad rates, each one offers a different value proposition, Copeland explains. A gossip blog like Perez Hilton has a huge readership—220,000 page views daily—but since the audience is broadly based, the rates are very low, costing $202 to run an ad for one week. Meanwhile, a smaller blog might have only 10,000 visitors daily—but if it’s a lucrative, tightly focused niche, the blogger could charge much higher rates per visitor.

For Pete Rojas, blogging paid off handsomely. Last fall, AOL bought Weblogs, Inc., which includes his blog Engadget, for $25 million. “I didn’t intend to become a millionaire,” says Rojas, “but I wound up there anyway.”

How big and lucrative can an accidentally professional blog grow? The biggest so far is Boing Boing, a pioneering site run by five former Wired editors and writers. By posting wittily, and more voluminously than almost any other blog—up to several times an hour—they built up a devoted audience of 1.7 million readers. (Boing Boing is also the most-linked-to blog in the world, according to Technorati’s rankings.) The site began running ads two and a half years ago, and the expensive ones can currently command more than $8,000 a week, according to John Battelle, whose ad co-op, Federated Media, manages the blog’s finances. Despite those premium rates, the five Boing Boing bloggers still retain their day jobs, blogging only part time. “I always figured my life was fueling my blogging, so I didn’t want to be just a blogger,” says Cory Doctorow, a novelist, copyright activist, and one of the Boing Boing five. “We could make a living at this. I mean, we’ve got the circulation of a good-size magazine—better than a good-size magazine. And our overhead is much smaller.” Or as Shirky puts it, “The Boing Boing thing is, they have more readers than Wired and yet they have a part-time staff of five. That’s the new math.”

The second basic blogging business model is the record-label approach: Crank out dozens and dozens of sites and hope that one or two will become hits. The pioneer here is the new-media entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, who founded Weblogs, Inc., in September 2003 and began rapidly shotgunning new blogs into obscure niches: Tablet PCs, Microsoft Office, “telemedicine,” and the like. It is not, many note, a recipe for quality writing. “What do his bloggers get? Two dollars a post?” jokes Brian Clark, the advertising buyer. Nonetheless, Calacanis scored an enormous hit with Engadget, the second most-linked-to site on Technorati. “AOL basically paid $25 million for Engadget,” more than one envious blogger carped to me.

The third and final model? The boutique approach: a publisher who crafts individual blogs the way Condé Nast crafts magazines—each one carefully aimed at some ineffable, deluxe readership. This is Nick Denton’s modus operandi. Though he set up shop three and a half years ago, making his the oldest blog empire around, he has launched a mere fourteen blogs. They are all, however, in niches that target high-spending, well-educated readers—such as gossip, sex, and politics. The aim is to hit the sweet spot: big readerships, but not hoi polloi. Gawker even claims to turn away advertisers that are too low-rent; the site’s ad manager boasted to Mediaweek that it takes no Ford or Chevy ads because “we hate American cars” and no pharmaceutical ads because “our readers are healthy and beautiful.”

Denton is famous for spending months hunting for writers with the snark and wit that his audience likes. (Obligatory disclosure: Denton sometimes calls to pick my brain, and last year hired somebody I recommended.) He’s also equally famous for being tight with a buck: His bloggers work from home, get no equity, and make salaries that are by all accounts unremarkable, even by the paltry standards of journalism. (Health insurance starts on March 1.) Indeed, before Calacanis sold his company for $25 million, Denton was fond of proclaiming that there is little money to be earned in the blogosphere. “Blogs are likely to be better for readers than for capitalists,” he wrote on his personal site in 2004. “While I love the medium, I’ve always been skeptical about the value of blogs as businesses.”

But as his critics note, this is precisely what you’d say if you wanted to scare other people away from competing with you. “When Nick said you can’t make money at it,” says one of his frenemies, “everyone believed him.” Denton and partners, veterans of the dot-com boom, sold their last company for $50 million, so . . . why would he need any more money? “But that was just his strategy, and it works.” One terrific way to stay alone on the tall side of the power law is to discourage anyone else from trying to climb the curve.

Among bloggers, few things provoke more rancor than the subject of the A-list. Much as in high school, C-listers quickly suspect the deck is stacked against them, and the bitterness flows like cheap wine. No one knows this better than Elizabeth Spiers, the original Gawker girl. She is arguably the most famous professional blogger, since she invented its dominant mode: a titillating post delivered with a snarky kicker, casual profanity, and genuine fan-girl enthusiasm—sonnets made of dirt. Yet no good deed goes unpunished; the player-hater e-mail she received during her tenure at the gossip site was astonishing. “I’d get these e-mails saying, ‘You’re a dirty slut who can’t get laid,’ ” she recalls. “How can I be dirty slut and not get laid?”

The very subject of the A-list is so toxic that Denton refused to be interviewed for this story and told his bloggers to refuse interviews, too. (Calacanis also refused.) For her part, Spiers argues that Gawker is now so well entrenched that it is virtually unmovable.

“You’d have be a total fuckup to ruin that site right now,” she says. “It’s got so many links, you’re just going to have a positive growth rate.”

If the star system rankles the C-listers, it is partly because they have such a weirdly submissive relationship with A-listers. They envy them, but they need them, too, because one of the quickest ways for an unknown blog to acquire traffic is to feed scoops to an A-lister, in the hopes that the editors there will use the tip and include a thank-you link pointing back to the tipster. Even better is becoming so well loved that an A-lister puts you on his “blogroll,” a permanent list of favorite sites—the blog equivalent of Best Friends Forever. Over at Blogebrity, the gossip blog born out of the original A-/B-/C-list joke site, the writer Nick Douglas told me he’d often used another common trick: posting things about an A-lister—Gawker—to try and catch the editors’ attention.

“Any time I run something on Gawker, even if it’s a little mean, they’ll link to it and send me some traffic. They’re watching. All these bloggers are watching each other.” He laughs. “It’s a tricky balance there, because you’re trying to get a high-profile link but not be seen as a sellout. I get accused of sucking up.” (Indeed, Denton just hired Douglas to edit his new tech-gossip blog, Valleywag.) Less-sophisticated supplicants will simply e-mail an A-lister, begging to be linked to, a technique that’s about as successful as wearing a will you be my friend? T-shirt. “I’ll get these guys who start a blog and e-mail me like every single new post they put up, hoping I’ll link to it,” says Rojas. “It’s not polite! I’m like, ‘Dude, if you send me a really cool news item, I’ll totally link to you. But don’t spam me.’ ”

Yet one can understand why the tiny blogs are so hungry for approval. A single mention from an A-lister can provoke “firehoses of traffic”—as John Battelle describes it—that can help pluck a neophyte blog out of obscurity. (This has even happened to me. I run a small science blog—avowedly C-list, a pure vanity project—and the times that Boing Boing or Gizmodo have linked to me, my traffic has exploded.) When Gawker linked recently to a posting at Blogebrity, it nearly tripled the smaller site’s traffic, from 1,200 visitors a day to 3,500. Even a link from a smaller, B-list blog can help a struggling newcomer. In his first two years blogging, Trent Vanegas—the 31-year-old creator of the gossip site Pink Is the New Blog—barely rated 200 visitors a day. Then in January 2005, a few medium-size New York blogs—including Ultragrrl and Thighswideshut—gave him a shout-out, and his traffic doubled. The virtuous cycle began, and today he has 1 million page views a month, VH1 is calling to use him as a commentator, and he’s fielding job offers from E! and Bravo.

“It’s crazy,” he says, laughing. “After a point, you’re like, Where are all these people coming from?”

Regularity and relentlessness,” says Arianna Huffington. “That’s how you break through the static of the 5,000-channel universe.”

In May 2005, Huffington, the political columnist and sometime candidate for California governor, started the Huffington Post, a blog where her celebrity friends post their rants about politics and culture. By the end of the year, it was clocking 18 million page views a month and had become the fifth-most-linked-to blog in the world. Its ad rates are at the top of its class, about $10 to $30 for every thousand views. With financing from a slate of investors including Ken Lerer, former executive vice-president at AOL Time Warner, the Huffington Post launched with a full-time staff of four and an office in Manhattan—and the ability to post around the clock.

Huffington also neatly intuited the importance of linking, putting scores of A-list bloggers on her blogroll, realizing they would probably return the compliment. But even more important was the sheer force of the site’s famous names—not just Huffington but the spectacle of her friends Nora Ephron and Norman Mailer blogging merrily away on her site. Mainstream media lavished attention on the site’s every move, giving ever more publicity to the venture.

Huffington showed that it was still possible to quickly move up to the top of the charts. “You think the A-list is the A-list is the A-list,” says David Sifry, the CEO of Technorati. “But I’m telling you, boy, does it shift—and does it shift fast.” Cultural winds can drive blogs in and out of favor: When Sifry founded Technorati in 2002, many of the bloggers on his top-100-most-linked list were computer geeks, such as journalist Doc Searls and programmer Dave Winer. But as blogging grew to encompass politics and pop culture, Searls dropped to No. 96 and Winer to No. 126.

What’s more, a blog is like a shark: If it stops moving, it dies. Without fresh postings every day—hell, every few minutes—even the most well-linked blog will quickly lose its audience. The A-listers cannot rest on their laurels. Federated Media owner John Battelle recently published a book on Google, and while on the book tour, he neglected his own well-trafficked blog (No. 81 on Technorati’s rankings) for several days. “And suddenly I was getting all these e-mails going, ‘If you don’t get your shit together, I’m out of here,’ ” he recalls. He stayed up late that night frantically adding posts. “If you start sucking,” he says, “it’s through.”

Yet the rapid rise of the Huffington Post represents a sort of death knell for the traditional blogger. The Post wasn’t some site thrown up by a smart, bored Williamsburg hipster who just happened to hit a cultural nerve. It was the product of a corporation—carefully planned, launched, and promoted. This is now the model for success: Of Technorati’s top ten blogs, nearly half were created in the same corporate fashion, part of the twin blog empires of Jason Calacanis and Nick Denton.

“The good news is that it’s still possible to create a top-ranked blog,” says Shirky. “The bad news is, the way to get into the top ten now seems to be public relations.” Just posting witty entries and hoping for traffic won’t do it. You have to actively seek out attention from the press. “That’s how they’re jump-starting the links structure. It’s not organic.” Indeed, when Huffington announced her venture and her celebrity guests, bloggers grumbled that it weirdly inverted the whole grassroots appeal of blogs. Larry David and Danielle Crittenden are hardly what you’d call outsiders to mass media.

Will professionalization turn blogging into media-as-usual? Or will the idiosyncratic voice of the lone blogger prevail? Elizabeth Spiers thinks that both statements are true. After she left Gawker, she learned about the power of the first-mover advantage the hard way, by trying to repeat her success. Last year, she spent three months launching eight media-gossip sites for Mediabistro, a career-development site for journalists. They amassed an impressive 1 million page views a month, a healthy amount, but hardly Gawker-class. Then in January, Spiers jumped back into the blog pool with a splash, announcing that she was launching her own blog empire.

When I call her, she is at her desk in her new company’s offices in Tribeca. She’s being backed by two angel investors—Carter Burden, head of the Webhosting company Logicworks, and Justin Smith, president of The Week, a news magazine. Their first blog, launching in March, will be called Dealbreaker, and devoted to Wall Street gossip. Her advertisers would be? “For Wall Street? Pretty much everybody,” she says. “It’s a high-income demographic, pretty attractive.” The start-up money lets her pay for a full-time blogging staff, which she’ll need since she wants her writers to actually do reporting and break news. And this, she argues, is the future of the professional blogosphere.

“It’ll be more like the mainstream media, really,” she adds. “Blogging is increasingly becoming a survival of the fittest—and that all boils down to who has the best content. The blogs that are going to stand out are the ones who break news and have credibility.” Plus, it can’t hurt that Wall Street scuttlebutt is one of the last truly huge unfilled niches in the Manhattan blogosphere. “This is a business, and we’ll build business infrastructure from the get-go.” The age of the blog moguls is here. For Pete Rojas, blogging paid off handsomely. Last fall, AOL bought Weblogs, Inc., which includes his blog Engadget, for $25 million. “I didn’t intend to become a millionaire,” says Rojas, “but I wound up there anyway.”

18 again.

2006-01-22T00:01:00.000-05:00

On my way out of Starf*cks, from a 2 hour GRE session, I found myself explaining the different sections of the self test to one of my "connections" there. The words analogies, sentence completion and reading comprehension rolled out of my mouth and were apparently overheard by others. As I turned to walk out the door, this young looking fellow gazes in my direction and asks, "SAT?"

Now, I understand I'm on the young side appearancewise, but damn. For a split second I felt 18 again... or 16 rather, which is the last time I involved myself with such task.

Nevertheless, as my 27th year of existence is set to begin, I don't believe I have ever felt more my age; nor have I felt more like being my age.

Whatever that means.

Maybe I'm finally getting used to being pegged as a youngin, albeit the act of my writing this is hilarious. I've always felt like a toys'r'us kid. I mean, it's not like I don't wanna grow up -I know I can't help it- just don't take away my video games, my hopes, dreams, and aspirations.

"Passion is crushed by perspective," I heard someone once say. God knows I've gained some perspective on life, and my passions have remained somewhat elusive but not forsaken. And now I find myself in a state of pursuit.

It's amazing all of which can go through one's mind in the second or two that transpire between being asked a question and materializing a response (while simultaneously reaching for the door).

"Nah," I finally said, "it's the GRE."

What's wrong with giving up a little liberty if it protects me from death?

2005-12-27T00:41:00.000-05:00

I don't mean to innundate this blog with cut and pasted articles from the newspaper, but very seldom do I run across a piece which manages to capture my very own sentiments toward such a serious (and seriously neglected) issue as this, down to the tee. And for that reason, I dedicate this entry to Mr. Steinback's piece.

AFTER 9/11
Fear destroys what bin Laden could not

ROBERT STEINBACK
rsteinback@MiamiHerald.com

One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help.

If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled.

Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat -- and expect America to be pleased by this -- I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated.

If I had been informed that our nation's leaders would embrace torture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret prisons overseas -- and call such procedures necessary for the nation's security -- I would have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them.

If someone had predicted the president's staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic, defy a law against domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and ridicule a 37-year Marie Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy -- and that the populace would be more interested in whether Angelina is about to make Brad a daddy -- I would have called the prediction an absurd fantasy.

That's no America I know, I would have argued. We're too strong, and we've been through too much, to be led down such a twisted path.

What is there to say now?

All of these things have happened. And yet a large portion of this country appears more concerned that saying ''Happy Holidays'' could be a disguised attack on Christianity.

I evidently have a lot poorer insight regarding America's character than I once believed, because I would have expected such actions to provoke -- speaking metaphorically now -- mobs with pitchforks and torches at the White House gate. I would have expected proud defiance of anyone who would suggest that a mere terrorist threat could send this country into spasms of despair and fright so profound that we'd follow a leader who considers the law a nuisance and perfidy a privilege.

Never would I have expected this nation -- which emerged stronger from a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars, endured the Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign in Southeast Asia and still managed to lead the world in the principles of liberty -- would cower behind anyone just for promising to ``protect us.''

President Bush recently confirmed that he has authorized wiretaps against U.S. citizens on at least 30 occasions and said he'll continue doing it. His justification? He, as president -- or is that king? -- has a right to disregard any law, constitutional tenet or congressional mandate to protect the American people.

Is that America's highest goal -- preventing another terrorist attack? Are there no principles of law and liberty more important than this? Who would have remembered Patrick Henry had he written, ``What's wrong with giving up a little liberty if it protects me from death?''

Bush would have us excuse his administration's excesses in deference to the ''war on terror'' -- a war, it should be pointed out, that can never end. Terrorism is a tactic, an eventuality, not an opposition army or rogue nation. If we caught every person guilty of a terrorist act, we still wouldn't know where tomorrow's first-time terrorist will strike. Fighting terrorism is a bit like fighting infection -- even when it's beaten, you must continue the fight or it will strike again.

Are we agreeing, then, to give the king unfettered privilege to defy the law forever? It's time for every member of Congress to weigh in: Do they believe the president is above the law, or bound by it?

Bush stokes our fears, implying that the only alternative to doing things his extralegal way is to sit by fitfully waiting for terrorists to harm us. We are neither weak nor helpless. A proud, confident republic can hunt down its enemies without trampling legitimate human and constitutional rights.

Ultimately, our best defense against attack -- any attack, of any sort -- is holding fast and fearlessly to the ideals upon which this nation was built. Bush clearly doesn't understand or respect that. Do we?

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/13487511.htm

It's the most wonderful time of the year

2005-12-26T00:18:00.000-05:00

In keeping with the spirit of giving day, I'd like to share with you a holiday piece published yesterday in the Herald and written by a friend of mine. She's quite the goof, funny, sarcastic, and sometimes I wish they wouldn't edit some of these things she puts down. I hope you find it as enjoyable as I did.

This time, Aunt Marta, I'll know the answer

BY JENNIFER ROBAU
jennierobau@hotmail.com

The slow torture of the wind-down of the holidays always seems to go something like this: 10! I will not be single next year. 9! I will not be designated driver next year. 8! Who am I going to kiss at midnight? 7! (Expletive deleted)! 6! I have to hug someone in three seconds. 5! Make a plan, woman! 4! OK, just scream ''wooo'' until your friends are done with their boyfriends. 3!2! Friends? Check. 1! HAP-PY NEW YEARRR! Woooooooo! Champagne? Check.

In single-person (yes, we have our own language, like Pig Latin, or Teeny-bopper), ''woooo'' is a way of saying, ''Praise the One you believe in, the holidays are over!'' Otherwise it just means, ''I've had too many cocktails.'' So as the DJ proceeds to ''remix'' (or butcher) some classic song, signed, sealed and delivered, the shame of being single for the holidays is gone with the passing year.

Now, however, is when the real work begins. Single people are like athletes, training for the Olympic event that is the holidays. The season begins at Thanksgiving and enters the home stretch with ``wooooo!''

Many people get picked up mid-season and escape the solo sport of being single for the holidays.

We exercise, we tweeze, we get phone numbers, we give phone numbers, settle for text messages, and dish advice to friends as much as we take it. The hope, is of course, that next holiday season, you will have met someone who makes you believe in the whole soul-mate phenomenon that you swept up, put in a dust pan and threw away 100 Mondays ago.

Then it happens, a whole entire year passes and you're still single, but this year you're more prepared. You've jogged, opted for salads, put in your mouth guard and dodged relationship questions like a young prize fighter. You even survived Christmas shopping without crying as you walked by the engagement ring displays in those windows, wondering always whether they have bullet-proof glass.

Don't get me wrong -- there is a special glow about this time of year that may or may not be attributed to the lights of the winter wonderland the neighbor built on his estate because he is no longer afraid of that ladder he conquered while hoisting and lowering hurricane shutters. The air is also crisp this time of year, similar to that cool freshness of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney that relaxes you after you've been winding around in line for approximately 2 ½ hours. But I digress . . .

The holidays are back, and I dread that Christmas Eve dinner when that distant Aunt Marta takes a break from eating her ham, or pork (or both) to ask me that dreaded question. (Cue the drum roll, and turn on the spotlight.)

''So, Jennie, my eldest single niece, is there anyone special in your life these days?'' (Cue crickets chirping.) This is when my cousin's big brown eyes tell me, ``This is a critical moment. If you say the wrong thing, she'll ask me next.''

The younger you are, the more the holidays are about family and toys, pure and simple. I remember Christmas before the age of Hurricane iPod, which involved my dad driving to the edges of the county (which then was somewhere around Kendall) for the last Cabbage Patch doll in town just to see me do the happy dance.

It has occurred to me that this is precisely what Aunt Marta is attempting to do with the yearly inquisition. She's just trying to make sure we are all happy and fulfilled, since Barbie dolls and a box of nerds don't do it anymore.

This year, when asked if I have anyone special in my life I will sit up straight, swallow my food, ruffle my feathers and say, ``Yes, I do. I have a father who no man in my life will ever compare to. I have a mom who has been nothing less than everything I ever wanted and needed her to be. I have approximately 88 other family members and friends who will get mad that I mentioned Tia Marta and not them. And that makes me happy. Wooooo!''

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/13472155.htm

don't take this personal but, best wishes

2005-12-24T13:17:00.000-05:00

Complementary insights into my psyche

2005-12-09T18:27:00.000-05:00

rolling on your weak production!!!

2005-12-06T00:41:00.000-05:00

Basel Art...

2005-12-03T03:28:00.000-05:00

If you happen not to be within the confines of the South Florida region, then you probably have no idea of how Basel does... or what Basel does (or is for that matter). If you are, I suggest you reach for that small 'x' on the top right corner of this window and click, that is, unless the masochistic art of infoporn is your cup of tea.

Art Basel Miami Beach is happening now. From (danger *pdf* link) December 1st through the 4th many artists will get a chance to showcase their work to the masses.

My brother will be among the many displaying their goods (with the exception that you'll have to chase him and his partner in crime to get a glimpse of their products). Anyhow, this art fest is getting mad press from various sources: The Miami New Times, The Miami Herald, and many on the innanet who will fill you in on what is planned with more detail.

I, on the other hand, will not. I will be attending tho, either today (technicalities), or tomorrow. Plus I promised my brother I'd buy a couple of his shirts off his modified ice-cream truck...

...even though I'm staring at 5 boxes full of them right now in my living room. Yeah, there's two more not displayed above. No biggie, I mean, I did promote his previous brand 'round the world pro bono.

R.I.P. Thick.

*sheds tear*

oh, how suite* it is

2005-11-27T12:14:00.000-05:00

University of Florida 34 - Florida State University 7

GO GATORS!!!

*inside joke people

...and then, there were two?

2005-11-21T20:28:00.000-05:00

how did this happen?

and she hates him. actually, she pretty much hates anyone else.

not a very nice kitty.

<~~gringo

eh

2005-11-20T16:16:00.000-05:00

too bad this thing doesn't upload movies.

I've been trying to upload one of the videos I took in the desert, but no luck.

sorry folks.

*takes a bow*

*exits*

The Theory of Everything

2005-11-02T00:07:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, not long ago (although it seems like ages), I used to be so enthralled by all that was physics and went out of my way to find material to read out of sheer pleasure. Nowadays the focus of my concerns and interests have gravitated toward a whole other spectrum of life. Still, every now and then I will come across interesting articles that will re-ignite sparks in my curiosity, albeit somewhat temporarily.

This morning I read an article, in the NY Times, about physicist Lisa Randall and her involvement in the search for "The Theory of Everything" a.k.a. "The Grand Unification Theory," i.e. the holy grail of the world of physics. For those who have no clue of what I'm talking about (and managed to read this far), basically, it's the theory that explains how everything interacts with everything else; it unifies the two theories currently used: the Theory of Relativity (developed by Einstein), which describes everything on a large scale, and Quantum Mechanics, which describes force interactions at an atomic scale -hence the grand unification.

In other words, everything will be explainable and predictable. At least theoretically.

This is such a hot topic within the physics community that a whole new science was spawned in the search of the elusive: string theory. The problem is that despite being founded on physics, it is not considered a part of physics by many scientists. It's controversial. The Paris Hilton of science. Really. The main beef here is that physics cannot find a way to bridge the gap, while string theory is all over it.

Anyhow, without further ado, I hope you find it interesting and enlightening:

On Gravity, Oreos and a Theory of Everything

By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: November 1, 2005

The portal to the fifth dimension, sadly, is closed.

There used to be an ice cream parlor in the student center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And it was there, in the summer of 1998, that Lisa Randall, now a professor of physics at Harvard and a bit of a chocoholic, and Raman Sundrum, a professor at Johns Hopkins, took an imaginary trip right out of this earthly plane into a science fiction realm of parallel universes, warped space and otherworldly laws of physics.

They came back with a possible answer to a question that has tormented scientists for decades, namely why gravity is so weak compared with the other forces of nature: in effect, we are borrowing it from another universe. In so doing, Dr. Randall and Dr. Sundrum helped foment a revolution in the way scientists think about string theory - the vaunted "theory of everything" - raising a glimmer of hope that coming experiments may actually test some of its ineffable sounding concepts.

Their work undermined well-worn concepts like the idea that we can even know how many dimensions of space we live in, or the reality of gravity, space and time.

The work has also made a star and an icon of Dr. Randall. The attention has been increased by the recent publication to laudatory reviews of her new book, "Warped Passages, Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions," A debate broke out on the physics blog Cosmic Variance a few weeks ago about whether it was appropriate, as a commentator on NPR had said, to say she looked like Jodie Foster.

"How do we know we live in a four-dimensional universe?" she asked a crowd who filled the Hayden Planetarium on a stormy night last week.

"You think gravity is what you see. We're always just looking at the tail of things."

Although it is the unanswerable questions that most appeal to her now, it was the answerable ones that drew her to science, especially math, as a child, the middle of three daughters of a salesman for an engineering firm, and a teacher, in Fresh Meadows, Queens. "I really liked the fact that it had definite answers," Dr. Randall said.

At Stuyvesant High School, where she was in the same class as Brian Greene, the future Columbia string theorist and best-selling author, she was the first girl to serve as captain of the school's math team, and she won the famous Westinghouse Science Talent Search competition with a project about complex numbers. She went on to Harvard where she stayed until 1987 when she emerged with a Ph.D. in physics.

Those were heady times in physics. Fired by the dream of a unified theory of everything, theorists flocked to string theory, which envisioned the fundamental elements of nature as tiny wriggling strings.

Dr. Randall, however, resisted this siren call, at least for a while. For one thing, physicists thought it would take a particle accelerator 10 million billion times as powerful as anything on earth to produce an actual string and test the theory.

String theory also stubbornly requires space-time to have 10 dimensions, not the 4 (3 of space and 1 of time) that we experience. Preferring to stay closer to testable reality, Dr. Randall was drawn to a bottom-up approach to theoretical physics, trying to build models that explain observed phenomena and hoping to discover principles with wider application. But Dr. Randall and string theory had their own kismet.

In the mid-90's, theorists discovered that the theory was even richer than its founders had thought, describing not just strings but so-called branes, as in membranes, of all dimensions. Our own universe could be such a brane, an island of three dimensions floating in a sea of higher dimension, like a bubble in the sea. But there could be membranes with five, six, seven or more dimensions coexisting and mingling like weird cosmic soap bubbles in what theorists sometimes call the multiverse.

"The stuff we're really famous for was really lucky in a way," Dr. Randall said.

In the summer of 1998, after postdoctoral stints at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley, she was a tenured M.I.T. professor ready to move to Princeton. She wondered then whether parallel universes could help solve a vexing problem with a favorite theories of particle physicists.

That theory, known as supersymmetry, was invented in turn to solve another problem - the enormous gulf known as the hierarchy problem between gravity and the other forces. Naïve calculations from first principles suggest, Dr. Randall said, that gravity should be 10 million billion times as strong as it is. You might find it hard to imagine gravity as a weak force, but consider, says Dr. Randall, that a small magnet can hold up a paper clip, even though the entire earth is pulling down on it.

But there was a hitch with the way the theory worked out in our universe. It predicted reactions that are not observed.

Dr. Randall wondered if the missing reactions could be explained by positing that some aspects of the theory were quarantined in a separate universe.

She called up Dr. Sundrum, who was then a fellow at Boston University and happy to collaborate, having worked with her before. A lot of physics is taste, he explained, discerning, for example, what is an important and a potentially soluble problem. Dr. Randall's biggest strength, he said, is a kind of "unworldly" instinct. "She has a great nose," Dr. Sundrum said.

"It's a mystery to those of us - hard to understand, almost to the point of amusement - how she does it without any clear sign of what led her to that path," he continued. "She gives no sign of why she thinks what she thinks."

They began by drawing pictures and making crude estimates over ice cream and coffee in that ice cream parlor, which is now a taqueria. What they drew pictures of was a kind of Oreo cookie multiverse, an architecture similar to one first discovered as a solution of the string equations by Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study and Petr Horava, now at Berkeley. Dr. Randall and Dr. Sundrum's model consisted of a pair of universes, four-dimensional branes, thinly separated by a five-dimensional space poetically called the bulk.

When they solved the equations for this setup, they discovered that the space between the branes would be warped. Objects, for example, would appear to grow larger or smaller and get less massive or more massive as they moved back and forth between the branes.

Such a situation, they realized to their surprise, could provide a natural explanation for the hierarchy problem without invoking supersymmetry. Suppose, they said, that gravity is actually inherently as strong as the other forces, but because of the warping gravity is much much stronger on one of the branes than on the other one, where we happen to live. So we experience gravity as extremely weak.

"You can be only a modest distance away from the gravity brane," Dr. Randall said, "and gravity will be incredibly weak." A result was a natural explanation for why atomic forces outgun gravity by 10 million billion to 1. Could this miracle be true? Crazy as it sounded, they soon discovered an even more bizarre possibility. The fifth dimension could actually be infinite and we would not have noticed it.

In this case, there would be only one brane, ours, containing both gravity as we know it and the rest of nature. But it would warp space in the same way as in the first model, trapping gravity nearby so that we would experience space-time as four-dimensional. This new single brane model did not solve the weak gravity problem, Dr. Randall admitted, but it was a revelation, that an infinite ocean of space could be sitting next to us undetected.

"So when we wrote this paper, what we were concentrating on was this amazing fact that really had been overlooked for 100 years - well, years, whatever - that you can have this infinite extra dimension," she said. "I mean it was quite wild."

This was not the first time that theorists had tinkered with the extra dimensions of string theory, dimensions that had been presumed to be coiled out of sight of experiment, into tight loops so small that not even an electron could enter. In 1998, three theorists - Nima Arkani-Hamed of Harvard, Gia Divali of New York University and Savas Dimopoulos of Stanford (a group known in physics as A.D.D.) - had surprised everybody by suggesting that if one or two of the curled-up extra dimensions had sizes as big as a tenth of millimeter or so (gigantic on particle physics scales), gravity would be similarly diluted and weakened.

When Dr. Randall and Dr. Sundrum published their first paper, describing the two-brane scheme, in 1999, she said that many physicists did not recognize it as a new idea and not just an elaboration on the large extra dimensions of the A.D.D. group. In fact, she said, the extra dimensions don't have to be very large in the two-brane theory, less than a millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of an inch.

When they published their second paper, about the infinite dimension, she said, even some of their best friends, reserved judgment.

But by the time a long-planned workshop on strings and particle physics at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara rolled around that fall, string theorists were excited about the Randall-Sundrum work and the earlier A.D.D. proposal.

The reason was simple: If they were very lucky and one of these versions of string theory was the one that nature had adopted, it could actually be tested in the Large Hadron Collider, the giant particle accelerator due to go into operation at CERN near Geneva in 2007. Colliding beams of protons with a combined energy of 14 trillion electron volts, the collider could produce particles like gravitons going off into the fifth dimension like billiard balls hopping off the table, black holes or even the illusive strings themselves.

"If this is the way gravity works in high-energy physics, we'll know about it," Dr. Randall said.

Although physicists agree that these theories are a long shot, the new work has captured their imaginations and encouraged them to take a fresh look at the possibilities for the universe and their new accelerator.

Dr. Greene of Columbia said, "Sometimes it takes an outsider to come into a field and see what is being missed, or taken for granted." At first the idea that extra dimensions could be bigger than any of us had thought was shocking, he said.

Andrew Strominger, a Harvard string theorist, said: "Before A.D.D. we believed there was no hope of finding evidence for string theory at the Large Hadron Collider, an assumption that was wrong. It shows how unimaginative and narrow-minded we are. I see that as cause for optimism. Science and nature are full of surprises, we never see what's going to happen next."

It was shortly before a conference that Dr. Randall had organized during the Kavli workshop that she had her own experience with gravity: she fell while rock climbing in Yosemite, breaking several bones. Only a day before, she said, she had completed a climb of Half Dome and was feeling cocky.

Another symptom of gravity's weakness is that a rope is sufficient to hold a human body up against earth's pull, but Dr. Randall was still on the first leg of her climb and hadn't yet attached it to the rock.. She woke up in a helicopter. For a long time, she said, new parts kept hurting as old ones healed. "I was very much not myself. I didn't even like chocolate and coffee."

Since she was the conference organizer, her ordeal was more public than she would have liked. "In some ways you sort of want to do this in private," Dr. Randall said. "On the other hand people were really nice."

After two years at Princeton, Dr. Randall returned to M.I.T. in 2000, but then a year later moved to Harvard, by then a powerhouse in string theory. She was the third woman to get tenure in physics there.

Dr. Randall, 43 and single, prefers not to talk about "the women in science thing," as she calls it. That subject that gained notoriety earlier this year when Harvard's President Larry Summers famously ventured that a relative lack of women in the upper ranks of science might reflect innate deficiencies, but Dr. Randall said it had been beaten to death.

Asked if she would rather be a woman in science than talk about women in science, Dr. Randall said, "I'd rather be a scientist."

She did say that part of the reason she had written her book was to demonstrate that that there were women out there doing this kind of science. "I did feel extra pressure to write a good book," she said, adding that the response in reviews and emails from readers had been much greater than she had expected.

She was particularly pleased that some of her readers were attentive and studious enough to catch on to various puns and games she had inserted in the book, like the frequent references to Alice in Wonderland, which, she said, is a pun on "one-d-land."

Dr. Randall is intrigued by that fact that her results, as well as other results from string theory seem to paint a picture of the universe in which theories with different numbers of dimensions in them all give the same physics? She and Andreas Karch of the University of Washington have found, for example, that the fifth dimension could be so warped that the number of dimensions you see would depend on where you were. Our own universe might just be a three-dimensional "sinkhole," she says.

"It's not completely obvious what gravity is, fundamentally, or what dimensions are, fundamentally," she said over lunch. "One of these days we'll understand better what we mean, what is the fundamental thing that's given us space in the first place and dimensions of space in particular."

She held out less hope for time, saying, "I just don't understand it.

"Space we can make progress with."

Is time an illusion?

"I wish time were an illusion," she said as she carved up the last of her chocolate bread pudding, "but unfortunately it seems all too real."

Simou

2005-10-30T01:00:00.000-05:00

We finally decided to take off for the small beach town of Sidi-Kauki after five wonderful days in Essaouira, mainly because Ottman promised private surfing lessons and the sea hadn't been very helpfull in town. All we knew about this other place was that it provided a great surf spot, it was about an hour and a half bus ride away, and that we had a place to stay -a friend of his who happened to be a cool guy, as Ottman put it.

Of those four pieces of information we recieved, two of them turned out to be true.

Our entourage -Ottman, Pius, Sabah, and myself- caught the early (read: only) bus, and the trip took a little more than an hour and a half. Once there we realized it was probably not the best time to go surfing. By we, I basically mean myself. Sabah wanted paragliding lessons -scratch that- and Pius was simply sight-seeing, as well as dangerously testing the waters.

We also got to meet Ottman's friend, Simou, and almost simultaneously came to the realization that we didn't really have anywhere to stay. Not unless we wanted to be cooped up in Simou's 10' x 13' living space, which by no means felt very welcoming. It naturally gave off a feeling of uneasiness.

Still, sitting here in his humble abode, is where I began to get a feel of this peculiar man.

Simou did not speak english as well as Ottman, so he refrained from saying much around him. Having no immediate way of directly connecting with him, you might just imagine our surprise at walking into his home: his walls were covered head to toe with what could be confused with satanic symbols and wicked messages, menacingly written on with red paint, dripping at all the right places for added effect. Were it not that I recognized some of the words as the names for some def metal and thrash bands, maybe I would've been astonished. It was still a sight nevertheless.

The evil dwelling came right along with the nefarious looking cat. Sadly, I don't remember his name, but I do remember Simou being very fond of him, and he being quite friendly. If it were not for the adventurous spirit within us, we might have been seriously apprenhesive and anxious, as far as first impressions are concerned.

After our brief stint at Simou's crib, and Ottman coming back with the news that we definitely had no place to spend the night, we decided to 'camp' out at the beach. No tents were involved in this process.

(Side note: this was one of the number of times where, by circumstance, we ended up fasting for just about the entire day. Sundown was indeed a joyous event and never was tajine ever so satisfying.)

Upon finding on a spot at the beach, we decided to build a bonfire. Somehow, Simou and myself ended up doing most of upkeep, and spent most of that very cold night awake and conversing.

Simou was very attentive and welcoming of us, despite the fact that we were complete strangers and really, we would've been lost and out cold without him. Throughout the night, he made sure that our water bottles remained full (which led to mine three days of agony later on in Fez), aside from keeping the fire going at all times.

It was a very fun night indeed. First, Simou provided us all with heavy blankets to keep warm, and he also let me borrow a sweater for the night, being that I had very little on me. We all chatted up while Ottman broke in my djembe and Simou silently took care of his uninvited guests. That night we were joined by a group of french men who had been extras and just finished shooting for the film Alexander. Along with them they brought an egyptian drum, a didjeridoo, and a slew of stories about the wonderous Angelina Jolie.

It was easy to keep warm while the music went on, and the stories were being exchanged, but as everyone fell asleep I found myself wide awake with Simou. And we talked about a few things. Mainly, it was me asking him questions about himself while, every now and then, he would throw a question about myself back my way.

That night, I learned that he liked his slightly isolated state, having lived in Sidi Kauki all his life and seemingly not having made any effort to leave either. I didn't ask him his age, but my guess would put him in the low to mid twenties. He abhored the moroccan government, having a general disgust toward their treatment of the people. He was very different from most local people I had met up to that point, and from then on. He was neither muslim nor catholic, and had no belief in religion or a higher being for that matter. He believed in respecting nature, and was a bit of an anarchist. He was definitely on of the kindest and most laid back human beings I have come into contact with in my lifetime.

Simou stayed up right through the morning. I went down as soon as the rising sun warmed body. I don't think he slept till after we left town that day.

Yes, as soon as we composed ourselves, we walked up to the pick-up stop, grabbed a quick breakfast, and caught our last batch of Sidi Kaukian sun rays as we waited for the next taxi to jam pack ourselves into on our way back to Essaouira.

I would like to thank Pius, a.k.a. the jerk, for some of the pictures shown here.
I hope you're having good travels man.

...and after.

2005-10-27T19:33:00.000-05:00

This was the view outside my living room window around 11 a.m. Not bad at all.

Sunday, October 23rd, 2005 circa 6 p.m.

Monday, October 24th, 2005. 11:30 a.m.

Different angle.

This is how that same area looked post-Katrina.

Post-Wilma.

Another hectic day.

Free at last.

This morning on my way back home from Alvaro's, which seemed to be the story for every operating gas station in town.

My very own gas queue. A solid 2 and a half hours of wait. Enough time to finish a book, sift through a magazine and take pictures.

Now, if only my a/c would work.

Just your regular pre-hurricane day in Miami

2005-10-23T22:06:00.000-05:00

Anywhere else, it would be a most relaxing day, but not here.

A very sunny day indeed. I can't remember a day preceding a hurricane which wasn't sunny and generally pleasant (sans all the prepareness involved). Talk about the calm before the storm.

I drove down to my best friend's house, to find that he had imprisoned himself behind a wall of concrete and aluminum, but he wasn't the only one.

I looked for a spot to sit down and read but coffee shops and bookstores were all closed early in the evening and won't probably open till sometime on Tuesday, at the earliest.

This was about 5 hours ago, 6:30 p.m. Skies looked calm enough; wind didn't even start picking up till about an hour ago.

This is the parking lot right by my place. Last time we got hit fairly hard -Katrina- this place was a bit of a mess, we'll see how it fares this time around.

I was the first one of my neighborhood to get boarded up, but those who had the shutters, have boarded up by now.

We have a guest tonight. One of the neighbors always takes him in, but by 10:30p.m. he was still out there, so we decided to give him shelter.

Right now, 11:45 pm, I sit within the walls of my apartment, blinded from the scene outside (and not complaining) behind the safety of the storm shutters. I can hear the wind howling, and some random banging on the wall. Nothing big yet, but there is a tornado watch for all of South Florida.
Basically.In case you, haven't been following, or that the first hand account is just the thing that does it for you, Wilma isn't supposed to make landfall till about 2a.m. last I heard. The problem as far as my area is concerned, is the storm itself rather than the eye; and the strongest (baddest) part of it is on the East side. Which means I'm on the wrong side of the picture, literally and figuratively.

As of now it's 100 miles off the coast and it is currently a category 3. It's expected to downgrade quickly, and packs mostly wind as opposed to Katrina which packed a lot of rain. So relatively dry storm. It should be out of our hair sometime in the afternoon. And hopefully everything will be ok.

I doubt I'll update this anymore tonight. Hopefully I'll have power tomorrow, and my DSL line will hold up, so I can make an update during? But most certainly after the storm runs through this mother. Let's hope for the best.

But anyway, the future is looking bright.

Siete cosas

2005-10-10T09:53:00.000-05:00

A swipe from Kwasi's blog.....

Seven things I plan to do:
1. Stop doubting myself (swipe)
2. Get back in the gym and in shape
3. Take the GRE
4. Move....to another state
5. Sign up for that French class at Miami-Dade
6. Visit Peru and go on 'Los Caminos del Inca' (3 day hike)
7. Learn win chun, tai chi, or maybe get back to capoeira

Seven things I can do:
1. Take care of fam
2. Keep the crowds moving well after the alcohol runs out
3. Row a concrete canoe competitively
4. Speak in front of crowds
5. Fix a tie in 3, or 4, maybe even 5 different ways
6. Dance
7. Save the day

Seven things I can't do:
1. Speak French
2. Go without a meal for extended periods of time
3. Have a high tolerance for people who are too dependent (with a few painful exceptions)
4. Tie the stem of a cherry with my tongue (therefore disproving whatever myth is associated with the feat)
5. Remain idle while someone takes advantage of me or fam
6. Take someone else's credit (literally and figuratively)
7. Lick my elbow

Seven things I say most often:
1. esteee
2. whadayoucallit
3. from what I've experienced...
4. ahora que?!
5. son
6. *****, I need to get some sleep...
7. yo

and now...

*puts gun to your head*

no photoshop-o

2005-10-08T13:11:00.000-05:00

Letting the cat outta the bag

2005-10-01T10:47:00.000-05:00

I was a very odd sight in the least.

Bad kitty.

Let me in

2005-09-28T23:39:00.000-05:00

This song was on my mind all weekend. And after listening to it on my way to work this morning, it has been in my head all day. Normally, I would listen to morning edition on my way there, and market place on my way back, but today I chose a double dose of Carlos Vives instead. Maybe it's the good times I had while going through my colombian infusion, maybe it's the man's words, or the urge I have to move my body to the rythm, but he has a way of making all my ills disappear at that very instant his songs pump out my car speakers.

Simply and plainly great music.

Dejame Entrar.

Déjame entrar en tu mirada
quiero llegar hasta tu alma
déjame quedarme entre tus besos
saber lo que llevas por dentro
déjame entrar en tu silencio
déjame ver en tus recuerdos
para saber que si eres tú
la niña que llevo en mis sueños

La que huele a yerba en su pelo
la que lleva tierra en sus dedos
la que deja huella en su suelo
la que goza pariendo un sueño
que perfuma las madrugadas
con el aroma de su cuerpo
y me da buenos días al sol
en lo caliente de sus besos

Ser tu partida y tu llegada
quiero nacer desde tu calma
déjame ser tus pensamientos
saber lo que llevas por dentro
déjame entrar en tu silencio
déjame ver en tus recuerdos
para saber que si eres tú
la niña que llevo en mis sueños.

La que huele a yerba en su pelo
la que lleva tierra en sus dedos
la que deja huella en su suelo
la que goza pariendo un sueño
que perfuma las madrugadas
con el aroma de su cuerpo
y me da buenos días al sol
en lo caliente de sus besos.

déjame entrar en tu mirada
déjame entrar por la ventana
déjame entrar en tu mirada
por la ventana de tu corazón
déjame entrar en tu mirada
déjame verte en las mañanas
déjame entrar en tu mirada
cuando ya no caliente el sol

Cuando contigo me encuentro
se me enreda el pensamiento
se me corta la respiración...

Esto yo nunca me lo esperaba,
hace tiempo no me pasaba
para ti va mi canción.

Déjame entrar en tu mirada...

Déjame ver que no hay regreso
déjame entrar en tu mirada
déjame entrar hasta tus besos
déjame entrar, en tu mirada
déjame ver en tu recuerdo
déjame entrar en tu mirada
quiero nacer de tu silencio
déjame entrar, en tu mirada
y recorrer todo tu cuerpo.
déjame entrar, en tu mirada
para morir entre tus besos....
déjame entrar en tu mirada
déjame entrar en tu mirada
déjame entrar, en tu mirada

http://s58.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2AUJ1Y5LYUZUP1DZWRXLGYCMK8

My uncle, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

2005-09-23T00:02:00.000-05:00

Jose Gabriel Del Castillo, or tio Gabriel he was known to my mom, and her brother and sisters. As he is known to me.

All this talk about the confirmation of John Roberts has had me thinking of him a lot lately. All of those stories my mother recalls, so fondly, and with such detail, it makes me wish I would've had a chance to meet him.

There was that huge portrait of him my grandfather kept in his living room. The image of his older brother, and best friend, was always so venerable, so imposing, and forever etched in my memory. I really wish I could see that painting again. My aunts would always point out the uncanny physical similarities between us. My mom points it out whenever she tells me one of her stories.

I don't mind.

She tells me of how he used to take them to watch the movies at the 'Palacio de Gobierno' before they even came out to the public; or how he scolded my grandfather for cutting up her steak when they went out to eat. I believe she was 7. She remembers these stories vividly, and I love it when she sits there and tells me about the good, and the not so good old days. And specially the ones with tio Gabriel.

This evening while having dinner, she told me of the time when tio Gabriel passed away. She was 14 when it happened.

He was to review a court case, but never showed up. They found him in his hotel room; as he was getting ready for duty, he suffered a fatal heart attack. His body was flown out to his hometown, where they served him with a ceremony. All flags in the capital were set at half mast that day. Not unlike what was done for a recently deceased Supreme Court Justice here in the US.

I've been thinking a lot about you lately, tio Gabriel.

Jose Gabriel del Castillo Santillan, Presidente de la Corte Superior de Justicia de La Libertad del Peru.

this song caught my attention as it played twice while I typed this, hope you enjoy it.
http://s53.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1SCSHSOODSMUK3IX8CK3G06YRF

satin sheets

2005-09-22T06:19:00.000-05:00

http://s60.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=369555GFPEC983SGOBV59BFFQL

estesoyyo

2005-09-20T17:04:00.000-05:00

I had to do this for a computer drafting class believe it or not, and it was my second attempt. My first one didn't come out nearly as good (while this one didn't scan very well).

Aside from not having eyes that big, I've been told this is a fairly decent depiction of yours truly. That and I haven't had that shaved head look for quite a while.

Maybe I'll try doing this again sometime.

battlegrounds

2005-09-17T17:25:00.000-05:00

I've mastered the art of the double layer cup of joe.

What would you ask John Roberts?

2005-09-15T17:45:00.000-05:00

What do you do when you run out of questions?

You turn to cyberspace:
http://democrats.senate.gov/askroberts/

You'd think John Roberts would be the right person to come up with the right questions for Johh Roberts, and for a second I thought Schumer had finally nailed problem right on the head. But once again, the future Chief Justice proved too precise and well prepared for any sort of cleverness.

Ahhhhhhhh! I had a nice entry written up for this, but as I struggle to become one with my blogspot, it is now gone.

Get to know your future Supreme Court Chief Justice
http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/John_G._Roberts

That's right, if you're becoming a citizen any time soon, you will need to know this man's name.

John G. Roberts Jr.

The US (read: government) needs a bit of discipline

2005-09-14T18:30:00.000-05:00

Right up until Monday, August 29th, the U.S. (read: government) was on a proverbial roll. Despite our apparent failure in Iraq, the president, and congress have been acting as if everything was fine as Sunday and gone about their business, spending tons of money we don't seem to have on things we don't seem to need. Piling on the pork as they call it.

The U.S. could be your random not financially conscious college student: cutting their savings rate to zero and building up a humongous debt. Buying a brand new iPod nano when we're barely going to make this months rent, with no money to go see a doctor if we get sick.

At least we'd have the freshest pair of dunks to wear to the doctor's office if we did.

Having just approved two huge bills, both full of random vanity projects, we're suddenly hit with this calamity. The most powerful nation on the planet is caught with their pants around their ankles. Exposed.

If Dubya didn't know by August 29th, I'm hopeful he knows by now.

Politics is a complicated issue, but it is never supposed to exist in a world of its own. It serves a purpose: to serve the people, not itself. We shouldn't be worrying about securing the next election vote, we should worry about whether or not N.O. will have enough money to upgrade their levees properly; we should be worried about schools being overcrowded and not delivering a quality level of education. We shouldn't be shopping for real estate in Wyoming or calling a pointless midnight congressional session for one dying woman.

One can only hope some folks would own up to their mistakes. It's the only way to ever learn from them.

Same old place, same old people

2005-09-12T22:19:00.000-05:00

I remember the day I noticed she was a regular.

All clad in black. From her high heeled shoes, to her stockings, to her skirt, up to the sweater and the hat. All black sans the transparent white bow adorning her head piece. An enormous black hat.

Oddly enough, I might not have noticed her but for the thick black shades she wore. They gave her the air of an eccentric yet somewhat affluent woman. An eccentric, affluent woman wearing jet black shades inside a bookstore, well into the evening. Always well into the evening, -reading magazines, carting her luggage around the store, killing off precious time.

She could be making time, waiting for a cab, on her way to catch a flight; but instead she sits against the window pane, drowned by the scent of fresh best sellers and paperbacks, waiting till closing time. After everyone else leaves, and right before anyone asks her to do so herself, she grabs her baggage and hauls it away into the streets.

She's one of many, or rather, one of a few regulars I'm reminded of.

One of the many who get me thinking of where I am and of where I could be.
And where I call home.

3 am in the morning

2005-09-08T02:19:00.000-05:00

and I'm thinking of revitalizing this log when I should be going to bed.

Suceptible

2005-09-08T02:10:00.000-05:00

Entre llantos y suspiros
esta el silencio en el que vivo
cierro los ojos para sentirlo
para caer desprevenido
sin pensar en el impacto
de mi alma con lo abstracto
porque la realidad me es muy fria
escaparme de estos dias
es un sueño, mi sueño
sin guía, sin direccíon
sin saber que no se nada del tormento
y de la plena eternidad en que muere este sentimiento

Wednesday night's coffee shop chic

2005-05-19T19:40:00.000-05:00

Gibberish.
Gibberish is all I can make out from the girl's conversation.
Drowned out by giggles and the stray comments of a feuding pair,
So involved with their queens, rooks, and pawns,
They might as well be home.
So stray their comments
That I barely notice black's on black
And white's on white.
Black African American White.
But that is besides the point.
The point does gets lost amid their discussion.
The point is that girl with the pink top.
That girl that keeps on smiling,
Playing with an empty paper cup,
Whilst toying with my reactions.
Too shy and outnumbered
I don't go for the dead-on-the-eye,
But steal a few glances
And somehow manage to consume a 32oz. cup of steaming hot tea
Before coming to my senses.
Before I get back to attracting her attention.
Or at least attempting to.
Then there's the smell of bleach
Covering the wet floor.
It reminds me of home...
When I am looking to get away,
To get lost amid crowds and arguments,
To stray into someone else's world.

Maybe even get caught stealing those glances.
But it's 11 p.m. and it's time for me to go.

Free Flowing Skitzos

2005-05-15T20:19:00.000-05:00

There she was.
Staring at me with her droopy eyes,
Crazy electric hair,
Shorts & t-shirt on this chilly night,
Sucking the life out of her square,
With a small steamy cup of joe
By her side.
As I took my first steps in her direction,
I heard her.
As I lifted my head,
I saw her.
Nudging and conversing with her "friend."
The emptyness filling the seat next to her,
Her friend.
Staring at me and talking about
Something extraordinary I pressume.
She nudged her friend repeatedly,
Maintaining her tired eyes
Steadily gripped on my presence.
It was maddening.
"Oh poor woman," I thought.
"She must be so cold."
So cold.
By this time I noticed the green seal
prominently displayed on her cup.
How nice of Starbucks.
I filled my mind with thoughts,
Hoping not to incurr in her own little world.
And eventually made it past her.
But as I took my final steps out of her immediate existence,
Her message hit me like a brick wall.
"Yeah, o.k." she said.
"I'll call you tomorrow hon."
"Bye"

grande mocha frapp no whip

2005-04-16T17:44:00.000-05:00

That's exactly what I have in my mind right now.

I'll hit up the Barnes and Noble down the street, read up for the Foreign Service Written Exam which I have coming up next week. Even tho right now it feels like a practice test...for next year...

What I really need is a beer.

I'm starting a photoblog

2005-04-02T21:25:00.000-05:00

time to put that camera phone to good use.

Plus, I need cheaper hobbies...

i left my wallet in el segundo

2005-02-14T18:55:00.000-05:00

So this Saturday, I didn't have a date, but I did meet up with this here girl to watch a movie (how ghey is that?). Needless to say I wanted to discuss certain things with homegirl, but that's beside the point.

I roll up to the parking building. $5 dollars flat rate all weekend long. Great deal no less.

I know I'm late, looong (Satur)day @ work, but she spent a good deal of time looking for a parking spot herself. I'll save myself the trouble, I thought.

I'm about to walk outta my car and WHOA, I am pennyless. I realize my wallet is resting comfortably on my kitchen counter top, not anywhere near my vicinity.

No wonder I was so comfortable on the ride there.

I did have my cell with me. I'll never forget the cell. Thankfully, I was able to work it out, not that it was ever that difficult. She said it was all gravy and that she'd cover for me, so we just headed out to the movie, which we never actually make it to. Instead we hung out at an Irish bar right around the corner and talked about things.

Many things.

But not really us. Like how uncomfortable this confortableness our relationship was reaching felt to me.

But that's besides the point.

In any case, she invited me to her friend's birthday "party" which she had mentioned previous to our meeting. Too bad birthday girl never made it. Instead, I was treated to a night's worth of drinks, and food, and almost made it out to the strip joint, if it weren't that I did not have my ID with me and the hostess mentioned that I looked 19 (thanks).

I guess I should mention that it was her and a non-birthday friend of hers.

Needless to say, it was a good night.

westcoasting

2005-02-03T06:34:00.000-05:00

I landed on the East Coast @ 5a.m. without even noticing.

I had slept a good two hours despite of the light and the noise, but then the freakn flight attendant had to scream in my ear: "anything to drink, sir? Sir? SIR?! Oh! sorry, you *were* sleeping!"

WTF.

What The Fuck.

My eyes were very closed prior to that incident.

Very many things were good prior to that incident. I was in L.A. not worrying about a thing. And although events were not going as I had planned (read: heavy overplanning by people other than myself as opposed to playing it by ear -as I usually do), everything went down with a sort of flair. Beginning, promptly, @ 3p.m. every day.

But I'll try to avoid being the negatory soul here, and mention what I did get to do as opposed to what I missed (the Getty, downtown, Hollywood, sneer), and also that I enjoyed it all in what was positively the best weather anyone this side of the Mississippi could ask for. Aside from the smog, which I was able to sense 2 days after the rain.

In addition to Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle (which is on my to do list next time I'm in the Jersey area) I did get a taste of the bubblegummness of L.A. So many boobs, and pretty people. It felt like the twilight zone. Specially when that chic across the room @ the Rainbow Room winked in my direction -twice. Personally, I was going more for a gritty scene, but I can't complain, although after I couple of hours at the Hustler store I figured I was ready to go.

I did take in a healthy dose of the ocean breeze over in Santa Monica, Venice Beach, and well, the air in Manhattan Beach did not feel that healthy, or look it for that matter. But I did get to snap about 300 pics, and we'll see how that goes.

Right now I have returned to normalcy, meaning, I have already overcome jetlag in but a day, but also meaning, I have to be @ work tomorrow morning by 7 a.m. wishing that someone would open a Coffee Bean franchise on the East Coast, while I absorb the aroma of a grande mocha frappuccino, sans the whip cream, courtesy of Starbucks...

Luckily I can see things clearly now.

Santa Monica California

2005-01-30T20:58:00.000-05:00

I'd like to thank the good fellas that created the greatness that is the APPLE store. Thanks to them I am able to keep up this blog. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

That and I need a PowerBook.

So this past Friday night, I came to the realization that Corey Feldman could easily fit into my back pocket. That guy is that small. I also made the acquaintance of a couple of porn starlets. Quite an amusing night indeed.

L.A. has been all that. A whole lotta glitz, and glamour. and very laid back. But I think it's a bit too laid back for my tastes.

I'm posting live and direct from Santa Monica right now. Very nice. But I think I should've wore a bit more than just a t-shirt and board shorts and sandals for a night like this.

Anyhaze, not much going on. And that is the moot point. I'm in serious need to hit up downtown L.A. Sadly I have not taken many pics as of yet, but I'll work on it as I have Monday and Tuesday left in my itinerary.

I need to catch some sun.

That and The Coffee Bean is the goodness mayne.

Live and direct from L.A. L.A.

2005-01-28T21:10:00.000-05:00

Haven't really done much yet, watched a couple of movies.......like wtf!!!!!!!

Although I must say Harold and Kumar is some funny isht. Anyhaze, I'm
at the place called "the Grove" right now. Posting on this BLOG
courtesy of the Apple store - and testing out what typing on an iBook
feels like.

L.A. is humongous (sp?). Too bad it's been raining all day, but maybe
I'll have better luck the following days......we'll see.

But so far, I can say I'd do just fine with the Coffee Bean,
Koo-Koo-Roo, and them waves in the Pacific. Someone got me on some
list @ Bliss tonight, we'll see how it turns out.

Time to eat a lil' sump'n.

--
peace
R.

a morning in the life of me

2005-01-24T20:14:00.000-05:00

...today for example.

Alarm goes off at 5:40 am.

I get up from bed and shut it off. Jump back in bed.
about 2 minutes later my cat pushes my door open and begins purrrring loud enough, I wouldn't be surprised if my next door neighbor could hear (thin walls).
I pick her up and tuck her under my sheets (which causes her to want to get the hell out of my room).
About 10 minutes after that I find myself picking out my clothing (say, which pair of khakis with which of the 3 different colored company shirts will I wear today?), then rushing to the bathroom. I shower.
Not if I am late.
I grab a yogurt, and a glass of O.J. and ready to watch the weather.
Like clockwork.
Noticiero Univision. Just in time for Jackie Guerrido. The tastiest form of eye candy ever to grace the television.
I finish up. My pops calls me, he's right around the corner. About 10 mins later (that's how long it takes him to get there from just around the corner) he and his big ass 4x4 rolls up.
I strap on my boots, and prepare for that 20 min ride (which should be less than 5 if it weren't for traffic) which includes the normal amount of bantering from my father. For him it's "me against the world" apparently.

I can't stand it.

And I can't wait to grace my lips with that delicious brew of whatever they'll have dripping at the starbucks right around the corner from my office....and get lost in my caffeine induced trance, and take care of my own business...

the options

2005-01-22T20:08:00.000-05:00

New York.
Boston.
Los Angeles.

anywhere but here.

right.

another sleepless night

2005-01-06T01:27:00.000-05:00

I've come to realize that I am trapped in a vicious cycle of restlessness that's ever perpetuated by the fact that I've known this for quite some time now. I just fail to accept it...and acknowledging the problem is the first step toward a solution...

I'm talking about that restlessness that is not due to a heavy dosage of caffeine, but rather that which arises out of weariness, and delusion. This restlessness you feel when you see so many things happen during your day, yet, so little change brought about in the end.

I am restless because I worry about what the next word in this sentence will be, but then discern tha....who the hell cares?

Yes I am weary. Yes I am a bit restless, but I am a worrisome mf by design (and I'd like to thank both my seriously paranoid parents for that). Yes I am taking precious minutes (hours!) away from my bed time, but I that's something I learned in college and I cannot complain about.

While in college I also learned that the internet is a great way to literally KILL time, and well, maybe trying to figure out what to say next wasn't such a waste...

Was it?

Garbage

2004-12-21T06:39:00.000-05:00

So why is it that people go to football games exactly?

Is it to enjoy the overpriced beer with friends?
Have a kosher hotdog along with a gigantic coke?
To watch the home team do their thing?
To have a good time maybe?
Or is it just to be assholes?

I forget.

But I don't understand. What is a pudgy fuck staring me down as he pushes his way past me, and then asking me "WHAT?" like I'm the one with the problem. I mean, this guy must've known some type of ill jiujitsu, b/c he looked like he wanted wanted something. Like what the hell is this, the 8th grade?

Guy, if you're going to push your fat ass through, have the decency to excuse yourself as you do it, and not get an attitude as someone returns your silly stare down, I seriously thought there was something wrong with me or my cousin.

But nah, the guy just wanted to make sure he still had some balls left underneath all that garbage.

Just garbage.

the fifteen minute appeal

2004-12-19T21:00:00.000-05:00

I don't understand what it is with this...

It seems like everybody wants their fifteen minutes, or at least a minute and a half. Could that rush be so empowering as to make you act a fool just to get some face time?

I was at the basketball game two days ago...it was an amusing sight. Limbs were flailing as these people kept jumping up and down just to get the camera to turn their way. Just to see their face on a TV screen.

Fans become hysterical. Hysterics become fanatical.
Some people strip their clothes of, some people eat monkey brains, but everyone seems to want their face and names to become a household item.

I just wanted another beer.
Too bad they were so damn overpriced.

Quien era Ahmed?

2004-11-25T13:53:00.000-05:00

Ahmed fue nuestro conductor por esos tres dias de aventuras que pasamos en el desierto Marroqui. Ahmed fue como un guia de a ratos, como nuestro rescatador de a otros.

Sabah, Jonas, y yo, lo conocimos por tres dias y tal ves nunca mas lo iremos a ver. Nos llevo de Ouarzazate al Todra Gorge, al Valle de las Rosas, al Valle de Dades. De oasis a oasis, al pleno desierto. Nos dejaba en cualquier punto y nos decia que nos encontraria en media hora al otro lado. Al otro lado de que? Eso nos la ingeneabamos nosostros. El detenia su Mercedes taxi cuando necesitabamos viveres para el almuerzo o agua para el camino. Y nosotros comiamos mientras el aynaba -celebrando el Ramadan- hasta la puesta del Sol. De vez en cuando rompia el silencio con datos sobre los alrededores, pero usualmente solia poner sus casettes de musica arabe nada mas.

El retrato suyo, lo hice en el ultimo estrecho del viaje. Ya muy agotados, nadie decia nada (aunque el hablaba solo frances) y el solo manejaba. Mirandolo por el espejo retrovisor, parece que feron casi cuatro horas que se pasaron, yo sentado detras de el, garabateando mis paginas. Justo antes de llegar al destino, nos aventamos a una mini aventura mas. Con un poco mas de dinero, Ahmed nos llevo hasta el Ait-Benhadou. Y de regreso haciendole carrera al Sol, a su casa para cenar y romper su ayuna por el Ramadan.

sex on the J O

2004-10-27T05:33:00.000-05:00

I am needlessly and precipitiously incorporating a bad habit into my daily routine.

Every morning, without exception, I find myself wrapping my fingers around a warm paper cup filled with this precious dark fluid. Even if I am wide awake, there's nothing like a daily dose of java in the grasp of my hand. I cannot help but make the promotion of dehydration an early part of my day.

What's my obsession with this?

I don't understand it, but it has reached the same levels as my obsession with sex...with the immense difference that with sex, I ain't getting none. On the positive side, my cotedian caffeine consumption enhances my stamina instead of depleting it. It's that little jolt brought on by this drug that gives me that feeling of invincibility, for those precious few minutes.

Just like sex.

3 conspicuously aged men, and a semi-plump disc jockey

2004-10-24T13:27:00.000-05:00

I'll have to say they were really good despite the fact that I only ever thought they were just aight (alright, O.K., just not mediocre).

Actually I'd like to say it was probably one of the best shows I've ever witnessed, but it might have to do with the state of awe in which I found myself for the majority of the performance as I attempted to accept the fact that these three conspicuously aged men were prancing and dancing all over the stage with such vitality it was contagious. All the while I had expected an oxygen tank to be rolled out from behind the dj booth, or at least some type of walker or walking stick.

Nevertheless, they rocked.

Still, I did notice the complete absence of melanin within the vicinity of the performance facilities. By vicinity, I mean a 3 mile radius.

Nevertheless, they rocked.

The Beastie Boys rocked. And Mix Master Mike is living in comfortable plumpness.

Talib Kweli was a minor disappointment tho. He was good. Surprisingly, he performed several of his older tracks (songs?), which is what made me a fan, but he doesn't quite carry a crowd the way, say, The Roots did when they had the same level of notoriety, but I see him working on it...and I still need to listen to those 2 albums. And maybe, due to this, and despite seeing him live (for the second time) I do not have the urge to run out and purchase his last 2, the way the roots made me go out and get Do you want More?! and Organix the very next day.

Overall, 2 thumbs up.

On another note:
Myspace looses it's luster.

on: documenting your life

2004-10-17T17:10:00.000-05:00

I'm a young male, mid-twenties, and single. I recently graduated college with a "respectable" degree (I'm not working for starbucks). I am currently employed by a small company which provides me with decent pay, yet I still took a pay-cut in accepting the job. (After some years of living on my own) I live with my mother due to many reasons, the main one being convenience. I need to pay BILLS, BILLS, BILLS. I am a professional.

My life has just started.
Currently, I live in a state of uncertainty.
I am documenting my life.
R.