Strange 9-11-01 Graffiti

What's the story on this weird 9-11 graffiti that I spotted a few times around midtown Manhattan?



It reminds me, indirectly, of the receipt I got from Carusos Pizza and Pasta on Fulton Street. The receipt was issued on June 7, 2007; yet the receipt carried the date 09-11-01.

You're not a pianist

At The Irish Pub on 7th Avenue and 50-something Street. A conversation with the bartender reveals that this place has always been called The Irish Pub. "Always" meaning that it might have been called something else 50 years ago, or before the current collective memory of the place.

This is the place I thought had been called The Slaughtered something. Lamb? Sheep? The Slaughtered Elephant Pub?

The bartender says people still come in asking about Mulligan's, which was an old school pub a half block away. Mulligan's has been gone for 15 years but people still come asking about it.

This place is surprisingly low key for midtown. As I walked over here I was virtually subsumed by a mass of tourists. Well dressed, all of them, it was a procession of well over 100 individuals who seemed nervous about their conspicuousness. The conspicuity of their numbers.

Snipers on their lunch break see this mass of people and think "No one will notice if I lop off just one of them."

That's when the carcasses start piling up in the streets. The mass of tourists thinks its flock has lost something, but none can define what, or who. The casualties are all from the rear of the crowd -- the ass of the mass.

I remember a friend describing Las Vegas as "all of America laid out to dry." Midtown is something similar, but I'm not sure what. America at Sunday School? America at its college graduation? I don't know, but it is not New York.

This is one of the first midtown pubs I ever entered. I never frequented pubs until 2002 or 2003, so I must have passed through here with the corporates after work, probably in 1996 or later.

One of my earliest midtown pub memories is from a place called Faces and Names, near this place. It's called Faces and Names because the bar hires an illustrator to come and draw the faces of the customers. The artist either sells the drawings to the customers or they get put on the wall of the place. The walls are covered with these illustrations, which also bear the names of the illustrated.

I was a that pub on a weekend afternoon -- probably a Sunday -- when I told the bartender that I was a classical pianist. The bartender mentioned this to the other customer at the bar -- a fat drunk woman in her mid to late 50s who could only scream where simply speaking would suffice.

I CAN TELL IF YOU'RE A PIANIST. I CAN TELL IF YOU'RE A PIANIST. I HAVE A QUESTION. ANSWER THIS QUESTION.

She was pointing at me, yelling. I wouldn't recognize it until years later but she was retarded drunk. I had never been around that sort of thing, so I just took her to be an obnoxious loudmouth, fully in control of her sense.

now, of course, I know a drunk when I see one. But that's another story.

Her question, the answer to which would determine whether or not I was really a pianist, was:

WHAT'S THE FIRST NOTE OF CHOPIN'S POLONAISE?

She didn't say which Polonaise but I assumed she meant the 6th, which is one of Chopin's most over-played piano pieces.

In answering the question I struck the counter with my hands as if I was playing the opening notes of that Polonaise.

"E-Flat," I announced. "Two E-Flat octaves."

Before I finished that second sentence she was already ripping me a new one.

YOU'RE NOT A PIANIST. YOU'RE NOT A PIANIST. THE FIRST NOTE OF CHOPIN'S POLONAISE IS F!

She then commenced to sing the main theme from Chopin's 6th Polonaise. That main theme does indeed start on F-natural, but it's not "the first note" of the Polonaise.

She sang and sang and sang the Chopin Polonaise in the stupid, spittled way that drunk people sing. I would not recognize her for what she was -- an all-day daytime drunk -- until years later. Until then I could only be a bit irritated at her accusing me of not being a pianist.

Holding court

Sitting in the kitchen. Underwear, grey t-shirt, white socks. The table holds this writing contraption, two stacks of paper, and a NEW YORK NEW YORK coffee mug that sprung a leak years ago. It finds use now as a paperweight for one of those stacks of paper.

This table also holds, ridiculously, a 2.62 oz. thing of McCormick' Hot Shot Black and Red Pepper.

I do not sit at this table as much as I imagined I would when I set it up in here. It shakes a bit under even the slightest activity, which makes writing onto those papers a , slipping, skidding adventure.

This is, of course, the table at which my family and I played board games and card games. As such the memories of this table are not altogether pleasing, but I guess my memory is selective at times.

I am laying low these days. These are the first days in months that I have not gone out to some place for some level of human contact. The other night was ridiculous. I went to one place, as soon as I walked in people were buying me drinks, buying me drinks, buying me drinks. I wasn't laying attention to how many I had, but I felt OK when I left that place and went to another. It was the same thing at that place. For some reason anywhere I went people were buying me drinks, buying me drinks.

It was a suicidal quantity of booze. I spent the next day feeling like a toxic sponge, with no let-up in the misery from waking up at 11am to going back to sleep 12-13 hours later.

There are, it turns out, a lot of productive things I can do in that condition. Mainly I play piano. Somehow that part of the brain gets a pass and functions just fine. I practiced from Bach's Well Tempered Clavier for much of the day.

I removed the Hot Shot thing of pepper to a less conspicuous place. The table, those blank pages, those things are my mental desert for the night's wanderings.

I got the expected mail from my mother today. I was amused to see that she used two 37¢ stamps to mail a small letter. Those stamps, of that denomination, must be several years old by now, since the standard postage rate went up to 42¢ very recently.

I had a strange encounter with a postal delivery guy a few weeks ago. I went to a corner mailbox intending to drop some envelopes in. A delivery guy was at the box, taking mail from it and placing it into his bag for delivery.

Somehow I could tell from the look in his face that, as he saw me coming, that he waas happy to see me. He welcomed this opportunuity to interact with a postal customer,and to demonstrate his expertise.

Without asking he took the enveloppes from my hand. One of them, rather heavy, had I-don't- know-how-many stamps on it. He looked at it and weighed it. He weighed in the trustworthy, scientific manner of holding it up in the air. Holding the envelope he calculated the postage liability, assessing the job I did preparing this envelope for delivery, and preparing his evaluation of how delivery-ready this package was.

It passed. He approved. The same thing happened with another similarly sized envelope. Several seconds of weighing the thing, studying it, checking for openings or tears. Then, congratulatory glances my way as he approved this envelope for delivery.

Success.

Then came the third envelope. The smallest of the three, it contained a three page document. Three pieces of paper, plus the envelope. Doing my own calculations I estimated that a single Forever Stamp would be sufficient for such a standard size letter.

The delivery guy disagreed. He looked at me and frowned, saying "ooooooh, this needs more postage. I can't take this." I expressed some disbelief, though I found his charade charming enough that I did not want to intrude on his opportunity to hold court. I sensed he seldom had this opportunity to give customers feedback, and I further sensed that he craved this interaction. I gathered that he was fed up with the half-ass job his customers do of sealing envelopes poorly, not applying enough postage, leaving the Plus-4 numbers off the zip codes, and other sins of the postal life.

He insisted that 41¢ was insufficient postage for a three page letter. An elderly man looked at me and said "What can you do?" I think he added "He's the boss."

I ended up paying 82¢ to mail a three page letter. I went home, found another stamp, and placed it on the envelope. I thought about putting 10 or 12 stamps on this envelope, to show this delivery guy how seriously I took his scoldings. I imagined that the act of overpaying for delivery of my letter might appease the failings of his many other customers who irked him so.

It was ludicrous, but I suppose most of us are prone to foisting our expertise onto others when the setting seems to call for it.

It reminded me of the insane round of questioning I got from one of the clerks at the Rockefeller Center station. Someone addressed a certified letter to me in a way that put my father's name first on the envelope. I was listed as Trustee of his estate, but the estate was listed first, leaving my name on the second line of the address. The clerk implied that I could go to jail for this, then asked me, among other things, "Where's your father now?" I responded "Who cares where is, he's dead." She considered that an insufficient reply, then she barked out other random questions, meaningless to the situation, and obvious grasps for authority.

The questions suddenly stopped. She either realized she was wrong and let me have the letter, or she honestly believed she had just spared me criminal charges.

I read that Elvis, toward the end of his life, was in the studio recording virtually 24 hours a day. Why? Because it was the only place in his life where he felt he had any control.

I these these postal clerks were in that frame, seeking control over something -- anything -- in their lives.

This table shakes even as I type onto this little thing. I try to type lightly enough to prevent the shaking. Rattling.

Gone

i like making legitimate use of a new http status code. a few months ago i discovered 503, which proved useful in telling greedy searchbots that they were overloading my site with their bot traffic and could you please try again later.

this week i used 410.

last year i set up sorabji weather for myself. along with a dict server and a web-based universal whois lookup the weather station is just one of those silly thing i've always wanted to do.

i thought i would be clever and connect the weather station to my payphone project, and to my mailbox locator. it made sense, as a search for outdoor objects like mailboxes or phones might benefit or at least be pleasantly complemented from knowing what the weather was like.

connecting weather to the mailbox site proved no problem. landing on my page for a mailbox at 1259 Sixth Avenue at 50th Street shows the current weather and offers links to New York Weather and weather 10019. this set-up is generally reliable because the quality of the database is generally GOOD.

the links from the payphone numbers, however, were another story. the quality of that database is, on its surface, very very poor. however its use was not intended for detailed screening, and precise accuracy was never assumed. collected from numerous sources, including law enforcement, telephone companies, and individuals, the collection is more of a guide than an authoratative resource.

i knew, of course, when i published the entire database of about 750,000 payphone numbers that it was filled with mis-spellings and other seemingly ridiculous errors.

nevertheless, having had success with linking the mailbox locations i thought i'd try the same with the payphones, for whatever value it might bring if and when it worked.

the problem was apparent almost immediately, as my error logs showed all kinds of crazy stuff related to the weather site. the pages tried to pull in weather snapshots for mis-spelled cities like New Yirk, NY, New Yor, NY, and Washingto, DC among thousands of others. searchbots followed these links like anything else, landing on a FRIENDLY http status 200 page telling you that new yor was not found.

the problem was with the status 200 header. searchbots gobbled up these garbage pages like anything else, polluting their indexes with useless typo pages. well, they are not totally useless, but they don't belong in search indexes. i checked to see how many pages from my weather site were indexed and there were thousands. problem was, most of them were nothing pages like Washingto or WSHNGTN. Abbreviated spellings like these were perfectly acceptable in their original context but not too useful for my particular weather site.

i could build my own weather suite. it's not that hard. but i bought a third party app instead. it's proven a bit sour in its way, but it's all good i suppose.

anyway, to purge the search indexes of these garbage pages i still send up the error page asking if you spelled something wrong, but now i send it with http status 410 headers, which are supposed to tell the search engines to remove these pages immediately. i like the wording of it, too: GONE! as in, WHOOSH!

i am interested to see if that works, and how long it takes. i never intended to litter the indexes this way, but i should have seen it coming.

fascinating, no?

no?

wapedia.mobi carrying ads

am i the only one to have noticed that the mobile version of wikipedia is showing ads from taptu.mobi and maybe other places? it's been this way for months. i didn't think wikipedia did advertising.

check wapedia.mobi/en/Johann_Sebastian_Bach for evidence.

Maybe it is love

I feel like I had an interesting day. It felt interesting before, during, and after. It is slipping away from my memories already, like the dreams I had last night.

I dreamed that I woke up in the middle of the night in the house I grew up in in Tampa. I stepped from my bedroom into the hall to turn off the light in the hallway.

As I reached for the light switch the light turned off. By itself.

Looking down the darkness of the stairwell I heard a voice say something like "You don't need to worry about turning off the light."

This was presented as a good thing. The tone of the voice suggested that modern technology knew when the light should be turned on or off.

Advanced!

I tried to turn the light on, though, and the automated system turned it right back off. Twice, thrice, I don't know how many times. I batted the light switch to the on position over and over, but the automated thing kept turning it off.

I stopped. Looking down the stairwell again I heard a gentle cackling. It diid not say the words but it communicated to me that it was in charge of the lights in the stairwell outside the bedroom in which I grew up.

I screamed, trying to silence the stupid thing that was doing this. I thought if I screamed and bounced around in the stairwell it would get scared and leave, turning the lights on as it left the house.

That is when I woke up. Screaming with that sublingual, pigeon-like gobbling of waking up from a nightmare (but not bouncing off the walls).

I did have an interesting day. I imagined talking to someone about it, but everyone I know is busy.

I will share the day's tremors with my stack of Mead filler paper.

Sitting in a bar by myself. No one here knows me, though the bartenders occasionally try to get my chit-chat going on. That is nice of them, though I feel inadequate. My voice is not loud enough to be heard over the AC/DC song on the jukebox, and even if it was loud enought o be heard conversations with me usually require that I complete 2 or more sentences.

Otherwise I give up.

As I just did.

Boo hoo.

Ah, the song just switched from AC/DC to The Band, The Weight. Good song.

Often lately I wake up from my dreams thinking "I need to change my life." It would not take much. Move to another street. Find another bar. Issue press releases announcing my days as interesting as today. Get a Dux bed (spelled D-U-X). Throw away my thousands of Time Inc. magazines. Throw away the Ascot-Chang shirt I bought and never wore. Throw away everything, then buy it back cheap.

I actually do know a few people here. Conversations from months ago, mostly forgotten. This is the place where the fat bald 60-something dentist holds court with another beautiful 20-something babe every single time I see him here.

To his credit, though, he seems to be sucking face with the same girl tonight as the last time I saw him here a month or so back. Maybe it is love.

I know that is what it is.

Qob

Today was out. Outside. Outland. Confluence of random energies singled into quarters of my minds.

Junkle droof. Blurrfish. Oushtart. Bläsh kull grommund dreskin qiffle. Muttle fluz, müttle fluz.

Muttle fluz.

Napper livruq drabbim porf.

Ikkliuc joz wull frangowl nopplé, shohegac picc puvaxid qob.

Qob! Qob!

Napper livruq qob!

Clouzog horp yik sqaag hust, koob bilsk fuzk gilleftroub crefqit fenstishrem pungoovbosh hukt spreem.

Hauvid wakkis ploq hish nummvört jicq, miggop vunt spoy crouxpun vizod brobbax.

Qob! Qob!

Napper livruq qob!

Uqown plish jub dreeplon basjevoon yabblez toosh pabb qob.

Ivijubboq fuh braasq lik gippizk jabbok richkub nazzib theppuc kliz nipcoz qob.

Boulevard

I feel like a bit of a twad living in New York and shopping at Target, but I was just sorta there when the pants called to me.

My plan was to visit Fresh Meadows. The Q88 bus to Fresh Meadows leaves from somewhere near Queens Place, a small mall which houses Target.

I describe it as small because it is small. I grew up in Florida where (as in most parts of the country/world) a mall covers many square miles in floorspace and parking lot. The only NYC mall I know that approaches that coverage is the Staten Island Mall, though I hear the Metro Mall in Maspeth (mmm) is relatively vast.

I heard something funny at the Target store today. A voice, which I thought was directed at me, said "Yo, look at this underwear."

Turning to see who might have said this to me, the person clarified: "Vito, come look at this underwear."

My name is not Vito. I turned away, letting escape from my mind the cultural space of men who shop together for underwear at Target.

I walked from Target back to my place. As the crow flies (or as I like to say: as the flow cries) the walk is only about 5 miles, but today it felt far longer. I have been tired and feeling weird the last couple of weeks. My sleep patterns are all over the place, and I bolt awake for no reason I can remember. A couple of mornings ago I jolted awake three times thinking I heard cracking noises -- like pops or thunderclaps -- inside my head. I have also burst awake thinking I heard a split second of thunderous laughter.

I did this same walk down Queens Boulevard last January, after an appointment with an eye specialist. After an hour of prodding my eyeballs with tiny steel spoons and giving me little confidence that my macular degeneration was anything but serious I wound up nearly blind from those wicked drops he used to dilate my pupils. I was badly depressed before and after that appointment (it was one of several), and the long walk back blew past in no time.

It was 70° today. I felt gawky walking down Queens Boulevard with a giant, pants-filled Target shopping bag. They had only the largest size bags at the store. They weerr out of the smaller bags. The guy in line in front of me bought a comic book and replacement blades for a Norelco electric razor. These relatively diminutive purchases were tossed into a mammoth Target bag, a bag big enough for two or three king size pillows or even a small mattress.

My pants filled a smiliarly enormous bag, a bag loudly speckled with bright red targets, Target© branding, and an inane list of things one could do to get additional, eco-friendly use of the bag before disposing of it.

A half mile or so into my walk I stopped and took off my top shirt. 70° was too hot for a heavy Woolrich shirt and a t-shirt underneath. I put the Woolrich into the Target bag, adding to the weight of all those pants (and shorts) and other items I threw in the bag -- including this amazing foldable keyboard.

I saw the Georgia Diner. Since a friend pointed out that the peach in the diner's logo looks like a vagina I can not see it as anything but that. Mmmm.

I saw the POP Diner. A year or so back I ate there with some documentary film makers/songsters. I managed to make myself useful to them by directing them to points of interest at Calvary Cemetery and New Calvary Cemetery, and they bought me a burger in return.

I can not remember any of those fine folks' names...

I passed those hourly rate motels. Queens Motor Lodge is one. I think 30 dollars for 3 hours used to be their Valentines Day special. I haven't noticed lately but their advertising used to shamelessly cater to the hookers/johns crowd.

And I saw a country of other stuff on Queens Boulevard. Who the hell cares. I was tired and oblivious, but felt better as the walk reached the half way point. The pops and snaps in my head receded as the afternoon trailed on. I do not know what is up with those crazy sounds in my head. Fortunately common sense remains to remind me that the sound of a car horn blasting could not possibly have come from the upstairs apartment or from my teeth.

I eventually passed the Flux Factory, an artists' commune and performance space which will soon be demolished. I never quite trusted that place as an art house but I liked knowing they were there on that bowels-like block of 43rd Street. Bowelsian. Bowelsesque.

I have not had as much time for these long walks as in months past. Things pile up. Things. I have been composing at the piano for longer hours -- longer than before. A lot of disciplines are like this, but I believe that composing or writing are creative endeavors which demand hours of time every single day. Composing is something which, if you are not doing it at least 6 or 7 hours a day every day then you might as well not be doing it. Others say that 6 or 7 hours is a joke, and that 12 to 14 hours a day is a realistic commitment if your work is to be taken even a little bit seriouly. I don't think I buy that. It smacks of the collegiate "pull an all-nighter" mentality.

I do not know what I am talking about. Nothing new there.