.:Colter:.

I was walking by an anarchist book sale[1] recently, and I noticed a surprising uniformity to the attendees’ mode of dress. Why is anarchism the only school of thought that has its own dress code? Given the tenets of anarchism, I would expect a much wider variety of clothing styles to go along with the “self-government” theme. Yet they all seemed to be wearing variations on black. Curious.

1.) Seems appropriate. I can’t imagine the anarchist book industry is very profitable.

I was posting some new pictures to Flickr just now, and i wanted to name this picture after an old line from I Love Lucy. I typed in the title, and later Googled it to see if I spelled it right. I didn’t, but the #1 result in Google was THAT VERY PICTURE. Google now takes less than 14 minutes to update its cache.

I went to the office on Saturday to get some work done, but the weather was so nice that I gave up around 3 p.m. and just walked aimlessly around town. I visited a comic shop, bought some old back issues of Starlog magazine from my childhood, picked up some cookies and a beer and sat in a park in the Village. The streets were really alive with people for the first time. Or rather, alive with people who were on the street by choice, not because they had to be somewhere. The gelato stands were a feeding frenzy and park benches everywhere were packed. Every business’s windows were open, every outdoor table was full.

Later on I ambled my way to a coffee shop to set up camp by the open door.

Here are some of the photo highlights for the last week:

the last unicorn
amusing trash
my early morning transit ride
bear runs loose in Union Square
Fab 5 Freddy runs loose in Union Square
the privacy of homelessness
the complaints of homelessness
F stop symmetry
specializing in male DVD
clock tower one and two
nothing to see here

Life just got creepier and more exciting in equal measure. Apparently I was home when Google Street view drove by. Street View is now available in 40 major cities in the US.

I once had some friends[1] who were your typical Rush Limbaugh-loving conservatives who loved to complain about welfare programs. CNBC offers a nice slide show on your tax dollars at work. It basically breaks down like this:

42% - Military
22% - Healthcare
10% - National Debt
8% - Anti-Poverty programs
4% - Education and social services
4% - Law enforcement
3% - HUD
3% - DOE, Environment, Science
1.5% - Agriculture

So let’s say welfare programs as we know them are split between social services and anti-poverty programs. Let’s be generous and say welfare programs take up 5% of your tax dollar. So if you gave the US $1,000 in taxes, that means you spent $50 on welfare programs. I realize $50 is a lot of money for something you hate, but when the money is pooled, can’t you just pretend you didn’t spend that $50 on welfare and that I gave $100 for it? Does it really matter that much to you?

1.) They are no longer my friends because when I repeatedly requested that they not send me pro-Bush, pro-Iraq War emails, they did not stop doing so. I told them I would block their email addresses if they continued, and they did, so I blocked them and have not spoken to them since 2004 or so. I wonder what they think of Bush, Saddam, WMDs, etc., now.

As many of you know, I’ve been under a great deal of pressure these last few months. I can honestly say it’s been the worst few months of my life. Of course, that’s not saying much. Every time I complain about my job, someone trumps me: my roommate had a friend in Tennessee who was recently murdered, my friend Holly recently adopted a puppy only to watch it run into traffic and be torn apart, and my friend Arika has severe back pain that makes life difficult for her being the mother of two very young children. So the universe continually presents me with healthy doses of perspective. If this has been the worst few months of my life, then my life is still pretty damn good.

Still, it’s all relative. I put in my notice at work. I have some other offers, but I’ll wait and see how they pan out before I say too much about them. My posts will most likely continue to be rare in the coming months. I will be back in Arkansas May 20-29 for Riverfest, though.

Meanwhile, here is a song that continues to lift my spirits.

I just noticed that, as of today, if you look at my Last.fm tunes in the right column, you’ll see this song, “Nine in the Afternoon,” displayed three times.