photo retrospecticus

last summer's digicam purchase has paid dividends in the form of digiphotos. here are some of my favorites.


from a crazy august fair in connecticut. we went inside, the aquatic life was pretty underwhelming, though it was, as the sign promised, 'alive.'


i also bought some fries from this place. they were pretty underwhelming as well.


the aforementioned fries upset my stomach, preventing me from going on rides like this. my girlfriend is on it though. she's the hot one.


this is a patrotic mailbox made by one of my mother's students. i guess they love america or something.


here's a chicken i spotted in the stop and shop parking lot, just minding its own business. i guess the poulty in the rotisserie is local.


murry.


i just like this picture, i don't know why.


the furnace.


the carport. i cleaned it.


a cactus (plastic) on my automobile, the iron eagle.


about an hour down i-89 there is this antenna cheaply disguised as a tree. a tree with a perfectly vertical trunk that sticks up about 50 feet from the surrounding foliage. let's see a close-up.


oh yeah. there it is.


my personal favorite. at first glance an ordinary cat lounging on a table, yet on closer inspection an evil doppelganger cat is evident.

the wonder of it all

i had a dream that i was on a mission to kill whoever it was who made the foxwoods leprechaun commercial that has been running almost non-stop on nesn since st. patrick’s day. despite the fact that it was a secret mission, red sox nation, acting as a single cohesive unit and also somehow, totally in secret, sent me a sacred bat with which to carry out my sacred duty. in the dream, i did not find this mysterious. i woke up in the wee morning hours, tied a red bandana around my head, hooked the bat to the inside of my black overcoat, slipped on a pair of those fingerless gloves worn by dickensian orphans or homicidal maniacs and got into the back of a black limo that was to take me to my fateful destination. unfortunately, this is the point where i woke up for real. whether the subject of the “mercy killing” (as i’ll call it) is the leprechaun guy, marty of u.s. rv, or bob of bob’s nasal and extremely annoying furniture, i’m pretty sure that i’m not the only person in new england who has had this dream.

Ryan to 15-day DL

there was a period of my life, roughly 9-16 years of age, where I contracted no illnesses whatsoever. barely even a cold. those days seem now so far gone. for in the stretch of a mere year and a half i've gotten the sampler, a little bit of everything. listed chronologically, these are my health mishaps:

-stomach flu (the night before a final)
-stomach ulcer (probably brought on by fresca and following politics)
-sinus infection (probably brought on by the sox falling down 0-3 last year)
-wisdom tooth surgery
-pinkeye

and now, my crowning achievement:
-dislocated knee!



a few hours ago, in what was a truly bizarre moment in recreational softball history, i managed to injure my knee not while dramatically sliding into a base, not while making an amazing catch, but somehow as i was batting. yes indeed, while jumping backwards from an inside pitch as i simultaneously attempted to swing at it i was able to inflict probably as serious an injury on myself as possible given the relatively sedentary nature of batting practice. i feel that words alone are not sufficient to fully express how stupid a maneuver i was attempting. my right leg planted while my hips turned. instead of bending front-back, the joint went left-right and my knee made a crunching, popping sort of noise as i crumpled over.

most importantly, i completely deserved it. this is what a lifetime of flailing, uncoordinated movement gets you. what's really amazing is that it didn't happen earlier--somehow this was the first major injury i've ever sustained. it seems that all those years of taking two stairs at a time, losing my balance as i turn corners, playing squash without goggles, and general clumsiness had been adding up to that moment yesterday, and it finally all caught up to me.

the sg

every aspect of food service here has some kind of social component. since all the food is made to order, you usually stand around for a while as they make it. i feel bad for the cooks, since i know that i hate nothing more than being watched while doing something by the person who asked me to do it, and this is what they go through all day long. (it’s also why i don’t order stuff that isn’t on the menu. as much as they oblige, there can’t be anything worse than not only being watched making food for people, but being watched while you make someone’s special food, exactly the way they asked you to, like you’re following directions from these prissy kids.)

anyway, this whole look-at-people-while-you-wait thing extends to every aspect of the food preparation here, which of course, includes smoothies. so naturally, when i found myself in the uncomfortable position of waiting for my order to be completed i felt obliged to make small talk with the smoothie girl, apparently, a fellow student. as best as i can recall we exchanged about two sentences and some forced laughter. at this point the girlfriend, mistaking my social discomfort for flirting, made the frighteningly direct suggestion that she and i get to know each other better and walked off in a huff.

knowing that i would no longer be able to obtain smoothies due to this imbroglio, i was able, by recalling past evidence of my obliviousness to interpersonal signals from strangers to convince her that what she just stormed away from was not flirting. though she believed that i wasn’t, she maintained that the food service worker thenceforth referred to as “smoothie girl” was. i had my doubts, but i had to admit that it was possible.

and so began an uncomfortable standoff. occasionally encountering s.g. in dining halls, campus sidewalks and never at the smoothie dispensary i was forced into a lifetime of avoidance based on the embarassing memory. over time she grew into one of those miniature celebrities that people on the inside of an inside joke sometimes share (as in: “did you see crazy pigeon-feeding man today? he was wearing a newspaper hat!”). smoothie girl came to represent my girlfriend’s irrational jealousy; a walking reminder of the fact that i was way too boring to flirt with random food service workers and she was too blinded by my movie-star looks to realize it.

so when we encountered her, sitting a fair distance away at a table brunching, i naturally said, as per custom, “hey, smoothie girl is in line for waffles”

“is she holding hands with a girl?”

“yeah. hm. it’s probably some sorority thing…ok, now they’re kissing”

“waffle-line lesbians.”

“that’s hot. so i guess she wasn’t flirting with me after all.”

escort me away! (pun warning in effect)

for how many years did it seem this day would never come? finally (as of 7-1-05), a car to call my own, and such a stylish one too. ok, actually, the above picture is a bit of a decoy. mine is a '97 ford escort wagon, but i challenge you to find a picture of one online, its total absence is a bit of an internet anomaly in my opinion. expect a 1984-esque purging of all 1997 black ford escort wagon owners carried out in the near future under the auspices of the war on terror. the current derth of photos is an obvious indicator of the bush administration's effort to wipe us from america's collective memory before they carry out the extermination.

some recent weirdness:

-i recently spotted a large gregarious “girls gone wild” bus parked in an alley in downtown providence. no colleges nearby. no big sexy parties anywhere in the region upcoming. if they wanted the homeless guy on the corner to take his shirt off, i doubt the bus was needed.

-a few blocks away i got to witness two guys getting arrested. one of them was simply walking down the street and showed neither resistance nor surprise to the cop who screeched to a stop next to him and swiftly got him into the car. the next guy was pulled out of a dumpster by three policemen with guns drawn. i have no idea what they had done, but i think we can be sure that it wasn’t something that required a lot of planning. “ok, so afterwards you walk down the street in broad daylight while i try to blend in with some trash. i’m telling you, this one is fool-proof…”

-at dunkin donuts a few days ago i ordered at the drive-through and then realized that i was short a buck thirty-two (i really wasn’t, unbeknownst to me i had lost a twenty in my pants). so when i got up to the window i said i only had $5 so they should just keep one of the coffees. the woman looks at me and deadpans “just bring over the money tomorrow.”
“you’re kidding right?”
“no, seriously, just come back tomorrow with it.”
so the next day, i did, in fact repay them. there was a different person working there and she seemed sort of taken aback that i wanted to add $1.32 to the bill, but i held up my end of the deal and felt pleased with myself for not taking advantage of the kindness i was shown.
the next day, at a different d and d (hey, when there’s one every two blocks in rhode island, they’re a big part of your lifestyle), when i pulled up to the window the woman just said “here you go, have a good day” handed me a coffee colata and went back into the store without asking me for money. so there you have it, karma may not exist in the real world, but within the realm of dunkin donuts a system of supreme cosmic justice is always at work.

coming in at 4 stars on the unintentional comedy scale...

an ambiguous poster of a suspicious-looking uncle sam with the nation's "honor." looks more like it's up to you, amigo.

a nugatory post

there is a time after several days pass without posting anything on your blog when a week or so passes. and then you begin thinking "well, now if i'm going to post something it better be great to make up for my absence." you say to yourself "find some arty-looking pictures, write up one of those witty anecdotes that only you know how to write up so wittily and earn that period of unexplained absence." of course, you don't do this, and expectations go up and up. after a month and nine days this barrier is insurmountable (with or without my finals and crippling depression). instead, to simply break back in, i'm posting probably the worst post in the history of blogging just to get it out of the way. feel free to be underwhelmed*.

*whelmed is a word. it means submerged.

it's about freakin' time

my long absence? i don't have anything to say about it. there were some exams, there was some homework, there was a hell of a lot of apathy. i did, however, manage to attend a misty baseball game last sunday, and i can prove it. here's a picture:



yes, that's me on the left channelling bob dole. the game itself was pretty humdrum but the sox finally managed to win one that i went to. surely a monkey off their backs.

on the way out we saw a food cart with the slogan "see the food...be the food..." on its umbrella. chevy chase references aside i'm pretty sure they were cannibalizing their patrons. even more mysteriously, a car on the way home had the most cryptic bumper sticker i've ever come across. "no!, no! use a washer!" with a picture of an anthropomorphic screw chasing an anthropomorphic nut. now, enthusiasm for washers is reasonable enough, but i can't help but wonder why would someone be so open about it.

more depressing statistics

if you needed more reasons to be disapointed in humankind here is a recent study on basic science knowlenge. particularly troubling are the percentage of people who don't understand evolution (47%), the big bang (67%), or how long it takes the earth to go around the sun (46%).

egad

april showers bring uncomfortable social situations

the other morning i was in the shower here. the facilities in these old buildings are of the big horse-shower type design: they have two shower heads at opposite ends and a curtain in the middle. there is a locking door that opens into the middle of the stall. i was performing the morning cleanliness routine on one side. shampoo. rinse. minding my own business. repeat. then, out of nowhere, some jerk comes in and says, "hey man, let me get in there?"

horrified pause.

this fellow wants to get into the small shower area with me, separated by only a thin “curtain” (finest of all privacy devices), with the intention of becoming naked and soapy within 3 feet of yours truly. to say the least, i'm not really into that idea. so in the most incredulous tone i can muster i reply, "uh, are you sure about that?"

"i've got to get to class," he retorts, sounding not at all surprised by my reluctance to accept a scenario whose unremitting horror is not expressible in words.

needless to say, i was forced to cut my shower short because of this marauding jackass.

this is my 6th straight year living in a dorm and i must admit, it’s beginning to wear on me slightly. i don’t try to get into showers with other guys, i wait or use the one on another floor. nothing is so important that i need to get within 3 feet of another naked man. we don’t have to be savages here. i am getting pretty tired of living around these idiots. it is just so wrong to go around forcing people to either give up shower time, or participate in what could pass for the opening scene of a gay porn flick.

adage on the interruption of a particle physics lecture:

better to remain quiet and be thought a fool than to have your personalized cell phone ring speak for you and remove all doubt.

boogie woogie woogie

it may interest you to know that there exist fish with a “sense” of electricity. in addition to the usual five (and yes, fish can “smell”…i’ve done experiments) they possess the ability to detect slight aberrations in an electrical field of their own creation. these “weakly electric fish” live, obviously, in dark highly conductive waters and set up a 1 volt field around the electroreceptor in their tails (the “weakly” comes from comparison with their better-known counterparts, the electric eel and those ilk who can set up 600v potentials). they can then judge the resistance and conductivity of other sea creatures that enter their field, thus identifying them. the waveform emitted by the electric organ can even be used to communicate with friends. there is a great article about them here.

i bet my goldfish wishes he had a sense of electricity the way that people wish for sixth senses like x-ray vision or telepathy. these intrepid aquatics have one going for them, but to enjoy it they have to live in the gloomy depths.