No, that was totally my idea.

As I was walking with a friend tonight under the Williamsburg Bridge, we passed a large, black building.  The entire thing was black, including its windows.  Peter Luger — the steak house — apparently owned the entire building.  I guessed that it was filled with a giant meat locker for the famous steak house.

“You’ve been watching too much anime,” he quipped.

Then it struck me.

The entire building houses one giant cow form which they cut small slices.  The upper floors were filled with grain.  In other words, it is a giant, terrible veal box.

Yummy.

What I Run About When I Talk about Talking

Starting Slow.

Track ID#72JL (Running) | Brooklyn, NY, USA

Running is annoying and painful.  There is nothing about it that one should like.  It takes time, requires expensive shoes, isn’t good for the knees or back, and did I mention that it hurts?

It is for these reasons that I have decided to start running.  I have never understood runners, why they would take the time and deal with the pain.  In school I learned to hate running because I was told to do it before baseball and tennis practice.  I was subjected to Presidential Fitness Programs that told me I could run faster.

Running became symbolic of everything I hated: compliance, buying in, and obediance.

And then I read Haruki Murakami’s Everything I Talk About When I Talk About Running.  He explains how he uses running as a side dish for his writing, how running until you can’t think is a cathartic escape from the complex world that is the writer’s mind and emotions.  Running, he said, wasn’t about the pain, but about not feeling the pain.  About being aware of it, but choosing to not give in to it.

It is the ultimate lonely act, the ultimate way to train one’s body who is boss, and, for some reason, I’m suddenly on board.

Hopefully for good.  Writing, like marathons (or is it marathons, like writing?) require endurance.  As I try to finish this post, I see the Publish button beckoning me to finish, to quit, to say “Okay, this was enough.”

I’m not about to get into why writers or runners choose to do what they do, why they look past the pain, why they accept it, why they don’t just go and get a real job (or an elliptical machine), but those questions are certainly interesting.

Okay.  Publish.  I’ll run a bit more next time.

Biting the Apple

Or, in other words, AT&T and Apple can bite me (more on this here):

Apple, please.

England May 22-28

He will pour me a drink. He will.

Because Charlie is heading to England and I am a poacher, I’m hopping on board for a trip to London and Bristol. We’ll be in London May 22-26 and then Bristol until the 28th. He’ll remain on for his sister’s wedding, but I’ll make myself scarce to head back to NYC.

We’ll hang in London, meet some people, rent a flat in hipstery Shoredich, and then take a train to Bristol, where we will drink (with the barkeep above) and drive (not at the same time) a rental car to Bath.  Or the Henge.  Or both.  Who the hell knows.

Then, on June 1, out to LA for E3. Be sure to hit me up if you’re in other place. Or not. Just hit me up. Because I like being hit. Up.

Escape To Cyberia: Subcultures as Agents of Change

Escape To Cyberia:
Subcultures as Agents of Change

Joshua A. Fruhlinger

Copyright 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2009 Joshua A. Fruhlinger; University of Chicago

Note: This is my graduate thesis, originally written in 1994 when the Internet was the stuff of UNIX command lines, LYNX, and a couple dudes in California starting a “portal” called “Yahoo!”.  You’ll find delicious words like “cyberpunk” and Internet frontiers like Usenet and IRC.  We were all wide-eyed then.  Currently, the references are dead.  If you have any particular reference requests, feel free to drop me a line and I should be able to dig it up for your reading pleasure.

…

My gratitude to David Laitin for helping me sort out my normally entropic thoughts, Kristin Croteau for finding every possible flaw in my premise and making me come up with answers, and Daniel Schatzman for raising possibilities even I hadn’t thought of.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Here comes my thesis

University of Chicago in 1901 (no, I'm not that old)

In 1994, graduate students at the University of Chicago studied real things like shifts in finite resources, institutions and cultural change, and social inequality in Spielberg’s films.  It should come as no surprise, then, that more than one faculty members were not so supportive of my decision to study a thing called “The Internet.”  What’s more, I was studying it as a social space.

“People don’t really interact online!” I was told.

I set out to prove them wrong, and to show that the Internet was not only a place where people can feel social, but also a place where people were forming real social groups like subcultures.  Heck, I even found that it was a place where actual cultural shifts could occur!

Turns out I was sort of right.

In a couple upcoming articles here, I will republish my graduate thesis entitled: “Escape to Cyberia: Subcultures as Agents of Change” for your reading – and giggling – pleasure.  In it you will find such delicious terms as “netiquette” and early uses of “spam.”  Yes, we had spam back then.

Enjoy.

Why the hell do you live in New York, anyway?

People often ask me why I live in New York.  It rains, snows, pours, and does other nasty things here.  In Southern California, where I grew up, the weather is always great, my neices and nephews frolick there, my mom and sisters have brunch every Sunday basking in Long Beach sunshine.

My answer changes by the season.  I’ve told people it was the food.  I’ve blamed it on the museums.  Hell, I’ve even told my guy friends that it’s because the women are so incredibly beautiful here.  Lately I tell people that it’s just where I ended up as a writer and editor and, after some time, I fell in love with it.  I learned to love it, like a preteen in an arranged marriage.  She — New York — doesn’t smell so nice all the time, she can be ugly, and she can be a total bitch.

But I love her.

This weekend I was reminded why I love New York.  An out-of-town guest was visiting New York for her first time, and it was my duty — my obligation — to show her all those things a tourist wants to see.  Now, remember, these are the things that real New Yorkers love to hate: Times Square, Central Park on the weekend, Coney Island, and food food food.

I didn’t hate it.  I loved it.  I ate bagels, cheesecake, hot dogs, and burgers, and I saw New York through her fresh eyes.  Everything was huge, delicious, and strange.  Even the curb your dog signs with the cute pooping canine were the greatest things ever.

I had to agree.

Early Morning Rain

I won’t make a habit of posting links or videos here, but this, Early Morning Rain, by Peter Paul and Mary, is a sonic snapshot of everything one feels when stuck between loneliness and hedonism, those moments between too much attention and none at all, when one sits on a runway waiting for takeoff on the way home from things better left unsaid.

Early Morning Rain, Peter Paul and Mary

Why do men fight?

I’ve been studying karate for about 8 years now.  When people hear this, they act surprised, size me up again, and then ask if I have ever been in a fight.

I have not.  I’m not sure why.  People have threatened to beat me up, but when I agree to said thrashing, they tend to decide they’re no longer interested in touching me with their moving fists.  I don’t think bullies like it when their victims jump on board so easily.

Why do men fight anyway?  And no, don’t worry, I’m not about to go kick someone’s ass.  This has just been on my mind lately.

1. To get what we want.  Sometimes there’s just something – or someone – we have to have, and there’s someone else standing in the way.  This may be the most basic form of dudes fighting for a girl, the proverbial beach fight with one-piece-striped-bathing suit girl screaming in glee/horror in the background.
2. To prove we are ideologically superior.  The problem with ideologies is that they’re world views that are usually not malleable and opposed to one another.  Take, oh, I donno… religion, for example.  When words can’t do the job, we raise fists.  To the victor goes the spoils, or, at least, the theocracy.
3. For fun.  Physical conflict is enthralling.  Adrenaline is delicious.  Squaring off for a fight with the knowledge that you will likely soon be in a lot of pain is in some stupid way exciting for men.
4. Because it’s in us.  What’s the first thing young animals do?  They practice fighting.  Going to the grocery store to buy packaged meat just isn’t the same thing as punching a goat.  Did people punch goats at some point?  I mean, before they figured out that sharp things were a lot more effective?
5. Because we’re drunk.  I don’t think I need to dig deep this one.

And, yes, I know women fight too.  But I’m not a woman, and I’m not about to try to explain why they do what they do.  Ever.  With that, I will go sleep and dream of kumite.

Scraping away

I don’t normally quote lyrics, but, I need to get away for a few.  Mexico?

—-

Your twisted cynicism – makes me feel sick -
Your open disgust for ‘idealistic naive’
You’ve given up hope – you’re jaded and ill
The trouble is your thoughts a catching disease.
Oh – you need to get away
Oh – you need a change of pace
Because you’re all dried up and you don’t believe
You reckon I’m dreaming when I say I still feel real,
You say you work for yourself and it’s the only way
But I look at you talking and to me you just scrape away -
What makes once young minds get in this state,
Is it age or just the social climate?
You’re talking like some fucking hardened MP
You’re saying power’s all
And it’s power you NEED!
Oh – you need to get away
Oh – you need a change of pace
Because you’ve given up on hope -
You’re emotionless -
You’ve no need for love it’s just hate, hate, hate.
But I look at you shaking and it is you -
Who is scraping away.
You who is scraping away..