Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
The Four Day Blog Week
Since mankind has been doing too much for too long, a natural recession has taken place.
However, what is a recession but a fiscal representation of the necessary action: Get rid of the bloat and focus on the meat.
So, starting today, we will be moving to the four day blog week. I know, I know, how will you live without my five posts each week?
To survive with only FOUR? That’s a twenty percent decrease. HAVE I GONE MAD?
No…but comes a time when a man gets busy and the blog has to be a little less and the other work has to be a little more.
An adjustment.
We’ll all just take a deep breath…and adjust.
Namaste.
However, what is a recession but a fiscal representation of the necessary action: Get rid of the bloat and focus on the meat.
So, starting today, we will be moving to the four day blog week. I know, I know, how will you live without my five posts each week?
To survive with only FOUR? That’s a twenty percent decrease. HAVE I GONE MAD?
No…but comes a time when a man gets busy and the blog has to be a little less and the other work has to be a little more.
An adjustment.
We’ll all just take a deep breath…and adjust.
Namaste.
Friday, May 15, 2009
All Nighter
Hilarity?
Insanity?
Both?
I had a big emailing project to do and during the day, I cannot get anything done…emails and phones and things…work out…eat. It just takes over.
I’ve always been a late night person, but tonight took the cake.
Hitting the hay at 6:30 AM.
How did I do it? CAFFEINE! It so works. Three cups of Typhoo tea…honestly, I could walk to Montauk right now.
Lucky (or Unlucky) me---I am very affected by drugs. I take a swig of Nyquil, I’m out for eleven hours. I drink three cups of tea, I can stay up for twenty-four.
The one area where this is very positive is in avoiding alcoholism. I never got used to alcohol, still get pretty tanked on two glasses of wine, so I have been spared becoming an alcoholic and I am a notoriously cheap date.
But friends…staying up all night is fun. The dawn dawns. The birds chirp. It has been peaceful all night long with no interruptions and now---I get to sleep until at least noon.
I highly recommend it. Makes you feel like a kid again. And then, you can just relax the next day because you got all that stuff done.
I could see how you could really write a novel this way…in like three months.
I wonder if you would hit a wall?
Insanity?
Both?
I had a big emailing project to do and during the day, I cannot get anything done…emails and phones and things…work out…eat. It just takes over.
I’ve always been a late night person, but tonight took the cake.
Hitting the hay at 6:30 AM.
How did I do it? CAFFEINE! It so works. Three cups of Typhoo tea…honestly, I could walk to Montauk right now.
Lucky (or Unlucky) me---I am very affected by drugs. I take a swig of Nyquil, I’m out for eleven hours. I drink three cups of tea, I can stay up for twenty-four.
The one area where this is very positive is in avoiding alcoholism. I never got used to alcohol, still get pretty tanked on two glasses of wine, so I have been spared becoming an alcoholic and I am a notoriously cheap date.
But friends…staying up all night is fun. The dawn dawns. The birds chirp. It has been peaceful all night long with no interruptions and now---I get to sleep until at least noon.
I highly recommend it. Makes you feel like a kid again. And then, you can just relax the next day because you got all that stuff done.
I could see how you could really write a novel this way…in like three months.
I wonder if you would hit a wall?
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Bird Orgy
Like locusts they are!
Pigeons are fucking everywhere you turn.
Lucky for me, I can open my bathroom window and toss water on the pigeons that are trying to start a family under my air conditioner in the main room.
I wouldn’t mind them so much, if they weren’t so loud!
All the guttural mating. And the fluttering of the wings.
And the girl, she wants it! Bad! She sits below the A/C on the windowsill, hunkering down, shaking her tail feathers (I finally know what that really means).
And Mr. Pigeon is all puffed up, making his noise.
I say, CHECK INTO A MOTEL 6!
As if the busses and the kids on their skateboards aren’t enough outside my window four stories below…now I have to listen to this bird fucking?
I just keep tossing water at them. It’s my form of avian birth control.
Probably, the stress of this water boarding is going to kill these damn birds. I bet they need to mate or they get sick with the backed up sperm and useless egg.
But I don’t care. We certainly don’t need any more pigeons in Queens!
A few days ago, there was a seagull flying around. I kind of liked that. Then, I thought, “Must be a load of garbage nearby.”
Birds… they really are filthy. I say…stay in the trees and away from my appliance.
Pigeons are fucking everywhere you turn.
Lucky for me, I can open my bathroom window and toss water on the pigeons that are trying to start a family under my air conditioner in the main room.
I wouldn’t mind them so much, if they weren’t so loud!
All the guttural mating. And the fluttering of the wings.
And the girl, she wants it! Bad! She sits below the A/C on the windowsill, hunkering down, shaking her tail feathers (I finally know what that really means).
And Mr. Pigeon is all puffed up, making his noise.
I say, CHECK INTO A MOTEL 6!
As if the busses and the kids on their skateboards aren’t enough outside my window four stories below…now I have to listen to this bird fucking?
I just keep tossing water at them. It’s my form of avian birth control.
Probably, the stress of this water boarding is going to kill these damn birds. I bet they need to mate or they get sick with the backed up sperm and useless egg.
But I don’t care. We certainly don’t need any more pigeons in Queens!
A few days ago, there was a seagull flying around. I kind of liked that. Then, I thought, “Must be a load of garbage nearby.”
Birds… they really are filthy. I say…stay in the trees and away from my appliance.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
No Longer Waiting for Godot
I have never seen a production of Waiting for Godot before tonight. I have read the play many times. When I was a junior in college, studying in Paris, Oliver Platt was starring in Waiting for Godot at my college, Tufts University, which I obviously missed. I missed the Lincoln Center production with Steve Martin and Robin Williams (thank goodness). There was a production at Harvard in the 80’s. I was nearby. I missed that one, too. I simply never saw Waiting for Godot before tonight.
With great pleasure, I must announce that this is a wonderful production and well worth seeing and if you are near New York, you should see it.
This play is so monstrously sad. It is funny, in its way. (The woman next to me, all dark curls, would laugh at something particularly strange and dark and turn toward me for approval of her experience. I have never liked that.)
You had to be Irish and depressed to write this play. It is so deeply lyrical and so densely filled with pessimism. It has this oddly light touch with a survivalist instinct marked by intimacy and the floppy inability to get it together to find enough strong rope to hang oneself.
Bill Irwin as Vladimir was a bit too light on his toes for me. Very clownish in that he walked and elbowed around very angular and loose, I would have liked to have seen him more authoritative. Nathan Lane, ever a crowd pleaser, could have been more of a sad idiot instead of a borscht ham. These attributes, heady boss and bumbling fool, are right on the page. Why not play them? Stage stars will play their tricks. Their tricks did fit, though, so the spirit of the play remained completely intact. I say, then, this play must be so good…because all you have to do is bring your humanity to it and it works.
John Goodman as Pozzo was perfectly overbearing, huge and pathetic. And John Glover as Lucky delivered the insane, repetitive “thinking” monologue that is the true heart of this piece in such a way, you just want to go out into the streets screaming over your wretched humanity.
The set is all gray Joshua Tree Moonscape. Having lived in California for years, I liked that the whole thing felt very America West.
Human souls, unprotected, waiting for a savior, with questionable memories, needing each other but desiring to be alone and to die, repeating the same thing day after day, with nothing but their own pain and games to distract and amuse themselves….this is quite the crux of the modern era. It howls. It howls. It sticks to you.
With great pleasure, I must announce that this is a wonderful production and well worth seeing and if you are near New York, you should see it.
This play is so monstrously sad. It is funny, in its way. (The woman next to me, all dark curls, would laugh at something particularly strange and dark and turn toward me for approval of her experience. I have never liked that.)
You had to be Irish and depressed to write this play. It is so deeply lyrical and so densely filled with pessimism. It has this oddly light touch with a survivalist instinct marked by intimacy and the floppy inability to get it together to find enough strong rope to hang oneself.
Bill Irwin as Vladimir was a bit too light on his toes for me. Very clownish in that he walked and elbowed around very angular and loose, I would have liked to have seen him more authoritative. Nathan Lane, ever a crowd pleaser, could have been more of a sad idiot instead of a borscht ham. These attributes, heady boss and bumbling fool, are right on the page. Why not play them? Stage stars will play their tricks. Their tricks did fit, though, so the spirit of the play remained completely intact. I say, then, this play must be so good…because all you have to do is bring your humanity to it and it works.
John Goodman as Pozzo was perfectly overbearing, huge and pathetic. And John Glover as Lucky delivered the insane, repetitive “thinking” monologue that is the true heart of this piece in such a way, you just want to go out into the streets screaming over your wretched humanity.
The set is all gray Joshua Tree Moonscape. Having lived in California for years, I liked that the whole thing felt very America West.
Human souls, unprotected, waiting for a savior, with questionable memories, needing each other but desiring to be alone and to die, repeating the same thing day after day, with nothing but their own pain and games to distract and amuse themselves….this is quite the crux of the modern era. It howls. It howls. It sticks to you.
I am Anti Anti-Trust
Look, my mobile phone, internet service, online stuff, all of it, is working so well now that I am a total slave to AT&T like in the old days.
Why can’t we just leave it alone? Isn’t my life fragmented enough?
It’s all AT&T all the time and I have no complaints. In fact, I love them. Their customer service works. I don’t feel totally gauged.
If my awesome liberal friends in Washington want to do something liberal with the monster corporations---WHY NOT JUST TURN THEM INTO UTILITIES??? Highly regulated, government watched utilities. If you are a very successful corporation, the price you pay for your big monopoly is you become utilitzed!
This breaking things up, in a weird way, is actually a right wing thing. It’s all about competition. The endless addiction to competition. Is anyone besides me sick of fighting?
I never have to fight with AT&T. Okay---I bet some of you hate AT&T. I am sure there are horror stories. As for me, I have none. I am pleased. I pay that bill online and the links always work and my phone always works, in Europe, too. Satellites, yay!
This political swinging—right, left, left, right---I understand it is the natural way of things. I say swing on, BUT KEEP THE THINGS THAT WORK!
Let AT&T be monstrous. Focus on something much more important my liberal friends: MAKE THIS HEALTHCARE THING WORK. I have allergies.
Why can’t we just leave it alone? Isn’t my life fragmented enough?
It’s all AT&T all the time and I have no complaints. In fact, I love them. Their customer service works. I don’t feel totally gauged.
If my awesome liberal friends in Washington want to do something liberal with the monster corporations---WHY NOT JUST TURN THEM INTO UTILITIES??? Highly regulated, government watched utilities. If you are a very successful corporation, the price you pay for your big monopoly is you become utilitzed!
This breaking things up, in a weird way, is actually a right wing thing. It’s all about competition. The endless addiction to competition. Is anyone besides me sick of fighting?
I never have to fight with AT&T. Okay---I bet some of you hate AT&T. I am sure there are horror stories. As for me, I have none. I am pleased. I pay that bill online and the links always work and my phone always works, in Europe, too. Satellites, yay!
This political swinging—right, left, left, right---I understand it is the natural way of things. I say swing on, BUT KEEP THE THINGS THAT WORK!
Let AT&T be monstrous. Focus on something much more important my liberal friends: MAKE THIS HEALTHCARE THING WORK. I have allergies.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
The Sun Also Sets
This is the view from my window in Queens. A room with a view is essential. When I lived in New York during my tender twenties, I always looked skyward or headed into the park to spend time with trees.
One of the greatest things about Queens, in addition to its reputation as being unhip, is the flat expanse. Perhaps it is because I have lived in Los Angeles for so many years, but I like a good sprawl loaded with plants.
Every evening, if I am lucky enough to be home, I sit in front of my window and watch the sunset over Manhattan. I look across five miles of trees that obscure most of the man made things. Then, there is the foggy rise of the vapor off the East River and after that, Gotham in all its sharpness.
I love Manhattan. What a marketplace. And furthermore, it has Central Park.
But what I cannot get over is how much my small apartment feels like a cabin in the sky because of all this light and these trees and the sunset.
I am a radical sunset chaser. At dinner parties, I beg people to come outside with me when the sun is setting. (I also love the early morning light, but I am so rarely awake for it.)
Living on the fourth, fifth or sixth floors of a building is clearly the way to go. You want branches.
And a view is so important. You can just sit there and think...
I did lift one of the screens and it fell down four stories. I went down and retrieved it.
One of the greatest things about Queens, in addition to its reputation as being unhip, is the flat expanse. Perhaps it is because I have lived in Los Angeles for so many years, but I like a good sprawl loaded with plants.
Every evening, if I am lucky enough to be home, I sit in front of my window and watch the sunset over Manhattan. I look across five miles of trees that obscure most of the man made things. Then, there is the foggy rise of the vapor off the East River and after that, Gotham in all its sharpness.
I love Manhattan. What a marketplace. And furthermore, it has Central Park.
But what I cannot get over is how much my small apartment feels like a cabin in the sky because of all this light and these trees and the sunset.
I am a radical sunset chaser. At dinner parties, I beg people to come outside with me when the sun is setting. (I also love the early morning light, but I am so rarely awake for it.)
Living on the fourth, fifth or sixth floors of a building is clearly the way to go. You want branches.
And a view is so important. You can just sit there and think...
I did lift one of the screens and it fell down four stories. I went down and retrieved it.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Something has happened. Spring. The trees in my neighborhood are leafed out.
Birds are chirping. The blooming cherry trees are dropping their final petals. Pink carpets everywhere. Yes friends, this is QUEENS I’m talking about.
What it does to me is very simple. I no longer notice buildings, cars, skate boarders, busses or trash. All I see is trees. Are trees? Trees.
I can stare at a tree for fifteen minutes. Let’s face it. We are monkeys. Serious ones with tanking Roth IRA’s. But who cares! We have trees! And bananas.
Okay, I bought the bananas at Met Foods.
In California, there is much discussion about “Beach People” “Mountain People” and “Desert People”. During one of these discussions up in Santa Barbara, a woman from Great Britain (or was it New Zealand?) said, “I’m a rain person.”
I guess I would have to say, simply, that I am a tree person. Flat out woods are fine with me. I think I’ll sprout a ringed tail.
Birds are chirping. The blooming cherry trees are dropping their final petals. Pink carpets everywhere. Yes friends, this is QUEENS I’m talking about.
What it does to me is very simple. I no longer notice buildings, cars, skate boarders, busses or trash. All I see is trees. Are trees? Trees.
I can stare at a tree for fifteen minutes. Let’s face it. We are monkeys. Serious ones with tanking Roth IRA’s. But who cares! We have trees! And bananas.
Okay, I bought the bananas at Met Foods.
In California, there is much discussion about “Beach People” “Mountain People” and “Desert People”. During one of these discussions up in Santa Barbara, a woman from Great Britain (or was it New Zealand?) said, “I’m a rain person.”
I guess I would have to say, simply, that I am a tree person. Flat out woods are fine with me. I think I’ll sprout a ringed tail.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
The Plumb Line of the Uterus
I have returned from leafy upstate New York not far from where I was born. You can feel it when you are at the latitude where you came into the world. It just makes sense.
Monday, May 04, 2009
Don't Go Into the Junglemix.in
Facebook is under attack, a phishing attack that is, and it is the second time in the past few weeks that the social netowrking giant has been under fire. The newest Facebook phishing scam, Junglemix.in, acts the same way as the previous FBStarter assault.
The Junglemix.in phishing attack redirects to a fake Facebook site called fblight.com where Facebook users are shown a fake log in page or assaulted by malware. To avoid falling victim to Junglemix.in DO NOT in any way accept the junglemix.in link if it is sent to you on Facebook.
The Junglemix.in phishing attack redirects to a fake Facebook site called fblight.com where Facebook users are shown a fake log in page or assaulted by malware. To avoid falling victim to Junglemix.in DO NOT in any way accept the junglemix.in link if it is sent to you on Facebook.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Murdertown
If you would like to make a call, please hang up and dial again.
If you would like to follow the twitter novel, MURDERTOWN, go to
twitter and sign up, do a search for DonCummings and follow.
In MURDERTOWN, read how they try to take Twitter down.
If you would like to follow the twitter novel, MURDERTOWN, go to
twitter and sign up, do a search for DonCummings and follow.
In MURDERTOWN, read how they try to take Twitter down.
Friday, May 01, 2009
Are We Hog Wild? Or H1N1--
People are running around like lunatics, washing their hands, wearing masks, keeping their kids home from school and eating, solely, canned foods.
There has been a push to call this swine flu H1N1…but how can you call something so piggy a couple of letters with two ones?
When you read about the definition of H1N1, apparently, it’s the general term for most strains of flu since they have been testing strains…the same strain as the Spanish flu from 1918 that killed millions of people worldwide.
So, if people really did call this flu H1N1, instead of Swine Flu, and they grew curious and then looked it up, they would see that millions of people have died from it during the Twentieth Century.
This might not make them treat pigs any better.
I don’t believe in contracting the flu. It’s bad for you. Furthermore, it could be deadly.
Swine flu is Swine flu by any other name. H1N1 sounds even worse.
Wash your hands. And wait for this media cycle to end. Hype. Or is it?
There has been a push to call this swine flu H1N1…but how can you call something so piggy a couple of letters with two ones?
When you read about the definition of H1N1, apparently, it’s the general term for most strains of flu since they have been testing strains…the same strain as the Spanish flu from 1918 that killed millions of people worldwide.
So, if people really did call this flu H1N1, instead of Swine Flu, and they grew curious and then looked it up, they would see that millions of people have died from it during the Twentieth Century.
This might not make them treat pigs any better.
I don’t believe in contracting the flu. It’s bad for you. Furthermore, it could be deadly.
Swine flu is Swine flu by any other name. H1N1 sounds even worse.
Wash your hands. And wait for this media cycle to end. Hype. Or is it?
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