Brian McGloin

Brian McGloin wants you to join foursquare!

2011-05-25T17:23:00.001-05:00

Brian wants you to sign up for foursquare. You should give it a try! foursquare helps you meet up with friends and discover new places nearby. As your friends check in to places, your phone will buzz with messages like this:

Brian M. is @ Motorino Pizzeria (12th St. and 1st Ave.). Swing by and say hi!

when you check in to places, we'll pop up tips like this:

Since you're so close to Motorino, Brian M. says: It's not on the menu, but ask for the Sorpressa pizza. It's their best!

We'd love to have you using foursquare. To learn more, watch this video.

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The high water mark faded decades ago

2011-04-28T07:42:00.000-05:00

Some days have those rare moments of clarity, but they can go a few different directions with no warning or predetermined path.
The warm light of the rising sun may show infinite possibility and the means to make the machinery to fix anything.
Or the introspection can go horribly wrong and reveal the ire and thorns of just how fucked up the current state of affairs really is. The strange thing is the worst of days often have the best sunrises and the laughter in the distance is always hyenas closing in.

More notes on the death of the American Dream

2011-04-27T16:22:00.001-05:00

SAN ANTONIO -- Sitting here in this office is front row seat - or at least a good second-tier view - of everything wrong with the current period. If one pays attention to the abstract and negative space around and below us, one can feel the wave about to crest sending this experiment in new government crashing into the jagged rocks littered with the remains of Rome, Mayans and the Soviet Union.

Through the halls, overheard around cubicle walls, barely standing without gasping for a fat-laden breath, a cascade of treacherous morons and eager buffoons, permanently ensconced in some fear-soaked wet dream positive that if they try to be as lazy and dumb as possible, carry on the ritualistic drudgery of an existence where the only purpose is to make money for large corporations, then they will be rewarded in the end.

The sad part is no one actually benefits and everyone is painfully aware but oddly happy to comply. It's as if they stop reading the owner's manual right before the part where it says not to grab the spinning blade or get a necktie caught in the paper shredder.

If there ever was an American Dream, it died a long time ago, maybe in the 1950's, maybe in the 1930's. Maybe it never existed at all, but a layer of the cruel joke played on the proudly ignorant and compliant Americans too concerned with Ed Sullivan and wondering if their neighbor was a Communist.

Here we are, in the eleventh year of the New Century, struggling to regain the modern society we had before World War II, painfully unaware of just how much of our lives was given away to just a few people for their profit and amusement.

I must admit to the allure of a high-speed burn across an expanse of dusty former sea floor, with the image of this dreadful, spine and soul-less suburb fading behind a cloud of dust, a roar of an engine and the thump of KMFDM.

It can always go wrong

2011-02-25T21:33:00.000-06:00

SAN ANTONIO -- Some places everything is always wrong, be it naked girls, a nice winter day or a fucking slice of pizza. This is one of those places. I waste my days away in the pinnacle of incompetence, boredom and every means to define stupid.

It's the opposite of places where everything always works out or has the potential to, like New York, Austin or Block Island.

"It's all temporary," I reassure myself. "I'm only passing through, so maybe lower your standards."

Bullshit. However, I need to take into account my definition of temporary is measured against a different meter than other places. I can't accept that and can't stop wanting more, wanting to do better.

The days are counting down until my high-speed burn to the high desert in Nevada for a high speed burn away from the world, with 50,000 of my closest new friends.

The subwoofers

2011-01-17T09:16:00.001-06:00

SAN ANTONIO -- Sometimes the only cure is to find some disposable electronic music and turn it all the way up, past where the common sense of 36 years says to hear it. These times, the only way to do it is with the subwoofer all the way up, the volume on everything at 11. Loud, shaking, at the edge of distortion or possibly beyond.

Combichrist "God Bless" is good for this. It's clearly a cheap manufacturing job based on what bands like KMFDM, Meat Beat Manifesto Front 242 and Ministry did 20 years ago.

Sometimes my snobbery must be set aside.

Film in the digital world

2011-01-17T00:21:00.001-06:00

SAN ANTONIO -- The past two days were a good distraction from the drudgery of the horrible suburbs. The bike is still holding most of the 12 kilos of the sticky mud that washed over the concrete from the weekend's rain.

The Leon Creek Greenbelt is astonishingly nice for this horrible, culture-less and lifeless suburb, but its a joke compared to what one may find in the civilized world.

When I was in New York, I had pictures to post every day, I always had something to write about. Here, not so much. Every day is the same.

I try not to bitch about it too much because no one dragged me here, no one forced me. Hell, it seemed like a good idea to leave New York City. It wasn't of course. My leaving involved a Swiss girl for the most part, and probably some other excuses. The move was only meant to be temporary, but three years later I'm still here. The job I started in July gets worse every day -- I never worked with such petty, unprofessional, immature and clearly self-serving people anywhere. I'm sure one of those idiots is monitoring this and three months from now some complaint letter or "report" will surface, detailing every word of this. By then this will be a memory and I'll have to go back to read what they mean.

I'm sure it's some sort of subconscious thing, but it seems every attempt or means to return to NYC is derailed or something comes up.

Today was pretty fun, but I think my standards for fun have lowered, or maybe I'm so used to the boredom that anything is exciting. I think a move will help, but there is more to the story (and I'm going to get into the details) and it's more than just signing a lease somewhere.

The job thing, oh yes, the job thing. I lost count at how many times I sent a resume and cover letter -- changing it for each job -- to some distant place for a photographer job. I sent the things but I really don't think anything will come of them. Maybe that is part of it, maybe I need to be more positive.

One of my excuses for not moving (other than the more important aspect above) is the "what if" I'm hired elsewhere and have to break a lease. Also, I don't want to settle here, I don't want to just give up and commit myself to a life of not living, but just waiting to die. There is no life here, no culture, no personality. Nothing.

Maybe it's unfair to compare Austin and San Antonio to New York City. I don't care, I'm doing it anyway. Looking back, the best two years of my life were in NYC and I really need to get back. Leaving is easy, returning is difficult.

For a while, I was shooting a lot of film pictures. Some of them were panoramic pictures from an awesome camera that shoots 360-degree panoramic pictures, spinning on a handle and powered my a mechanical drawcord-powered device. I shot pictures with the Soviet Leica copy Dave gave me when I left NYC (It's my favorite camera) as well as the two Nikon n90s's I have (they both have the MB-10 battery/vertical grips with lithium AAs).

The past two days, I carried a digital SLR with me so I don't add to my film developing pile. I prefer film and film cameras for a number of reasons. I'm neither anti-digital nor afraid of technology, I just prefer how the cameras work. I don't know, maybe if I had a Leica M9 and a new Mac laptop I would think differently about digital.

One unchanging law of the universe is your camera matters about as much as your bike or guitar. As long as they work (ok, a broken camera isn't as good as a working one). An artist or professional can get whatever tools to work, finding the weaknesses and strengths and make magic.

I think there are many suburban wedding photographers and fans of HDR and photos of cameras and American flags who would argue that their new pedestrian, disposable plastic piece of shit of the week camera makes their crappy photos better. Look at Flickr for plenty of proof of that.

I just need to get out of here. It doesn't matter. Maybe I can just go to the airport, get on the first plane to wherever isn't here and just not worry about it any more.

A fine late autumn day in the city of the violet crown

2010-12-23T23:42:00.001-06:00

AUSTIN -- Austin is a good place to ride a bike compared to anywhere else I've ridden, except New York City. Sort of. New York is an odd exception in that it's both awesome and horrible at the same time.

This specific day, December 18, 2010, was an average day in Austin. I stayed at my friend's place in the northern end of the city and rode downtown. It's about 12 or 15 miles from her place to Cesar Chavez and Congress Avenue. I ride there and back and all around in between.

I normally stop by Juan Pelota, the cafe inside Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop on 4th and Nueces Streets for a chai. Sometimes I buy bike stuff, sometimes the chai, sometimes both. This time I bought some Gore Wind-Stopper gloves (they actually had my size and they're very comfortable) and a copy of Rouleur magazine, issue 20. It has a feature about Japanese Keirin that is just awesome -- great photos and wonderful writing giving some great depth into a rather secretive and exclusive sport.

I finished my chai on the patio as I gave the hefty magazine a perfunctory look-through while being distracted by the goings-on around me. As I began to leave, I saw a woman with Christmas lights on her bike walking it onto the patio. It was a green Surly Crosscheck with battery-powered lights wound around the top tube. She said they were from a ride or something earlier as she flicked the switch on the battery pack in a small, black seat bag.

After I left Juan Pelota, I rode around a bit, took a few photos. I rode past a Royal Blue Grocery on 3rd Street. It was more like a small urban grocery store than the other one across the street from Juan Pelota and I never knew it was there. I sat at a sidewalk table and looked a few things online. This location doesn't have free wifi like their Nueces one does, but that didn't matter much since I had the Sprint 4G mobile broadband thing with me. I decided I needed a hotdog and remembered Frank was right around the corner, confirming it online. I rode over, walked in and was seated immediately. The waitress was outrageously gorgeous (even by the high Austin standard of hotness) and very nice. For some dumb reason I had a bacon-wrapped hotdog with cheese and a side of poutine. Delicious, delicious regret.

I rolled myself out of there and out to my locked bike on the sidewalk. I thought I needed some coffee to blast all that grease and starch through. I remembered I've been meaning to go to Halcyon for a while. They have good coffee and make a motherfucker of a chai (yes, two in one day). The place has free wifi, a heated patio, comfortable seating that is loungy on one side and more like a bar on the other.

As I walked out to the patio with my coffee, I saw two people walking to a parked car on the Lavaca side of the place. The curb is very high -- maybe shoulder height if my memory serves me well -- and the car was parked close to it. The girl who was going to be the passenger waited as the driver moved the car out a little. I leaned over my locked bike (there are a few easy to lock places on the patio, which is really a wide, elevated sidewalk) and said she could come up there, jump over the railing and land in the passenger seat of the car through the sunroof. But I cautioned to aim carefully as to not become intimate with the gear shift. Yea, I got a sideways look for that ...

I moved from the Lavaca side to the 4th Street side -- the place is on a corner and has some funky and wonderfully dangerous stairs leading down to the street corner. They are round with a pole in the middle. I sat at a table on the edge of where the radiant heaters reached. I had my coffee and magazine and was almost reading it. Two girls and a guy -- all dressed in Austin "I need to be seen here, dressed like this" uniforms -- sat down sort of next to me. The guy was a very gay hair dresser at Bird's Barbershop in Austin. He had coping issues. The two girls sort of repeated what the other said. They all held on to their predictable stereotypes with heroic tenacity.

"I need to be single for a while. I need to drink whiskey," said the hairdresser about dating a guy 20 years older than him. He was sort of upset about it and everything else not fabulous. He told one of the girls he couldn't even handle his little dog and had to give it to a friend for a while. At first I was trying to ignore them, but then I was completely eavesdropping, it was too crazy and funny not to.

A different guy walked up the worn concave steps from the street with a cardboard box in his arms. I saw as he walked up the stairs a large trophy protruding from the top of the open box. When he got closer I saw either a wig or a human head taking up most of the space around the trophy. He walked into Halcyon.

My paper coffee cup was empty for a while before I went back in. I had no intention of staying but I figured I would I would check out the inside of the place and see what their chai was all about.

Guy at Halcyon said chai is similar to the Hebrew word for life after I told him it was the Arabic word for tea. I told him whiskey comes from a similar Gaelic word meaning water of life. We both learned something. The chai came with two animal crackers and they had soy milk.

I took a seat on a couch after resting my chai and it's large porcelain cup and saucer on the table without spilling a drop from the cup, which astonished the hell out of me.

The chai had the multi-layered, spiced and smooth flavor I expected but without the syrup-like consistency of the chai from Greenbeans Coffee. Starbucks chai can be a little weak. Juan Pelota, the coffee and gift shop in St. Davids Trinity Center and Halcyon do it right.

At some point I went to South Congress to look for Christmas presents at the small art thing there on the weekends. I spoke with a few people, bought a few things. I spoke with Jake Bryer, who had a very busy table selling photos printed on wood blocks of different sizes. He runs a gallery with photography but limits whom he represents to a geographic area around Austin. I packed everything into my well-worn, 10 year old Timbuk2 canvas messenger bag and headed back to the north side of the river. I think this is when the gastric assault began.

Some hours later after inspecting the nearly-finished Pfluger Bridge and the surrounding area, I headed over to the Nueves location of Royal Blue. Of all the photos I have of everything when I'm on my bike, I don't have many of the bridge, at least the end of it. I'll work on that. I went in looking for rootbeer and chocolate. I don't remember the brand of root beer, but it was good. Not IBC, Virgil's, Milligan's Island, Maine Root or any I remember. I washed it down with a Kinder Bueno Bar.

Inside two girls were doing some sort of last minute gift shopping. They wanted to buy the very large jar of pickled red peppers on the counter. An employee said they use that stuff for their mayonnaise, but maybe it was for sale. He asked the other employee to try zapping it to see if it was in the system. It wasn't. I suggested some sort of large cured meat product to one of the girls as they kept brainstorming for ideas. She asked the first employee about a large salami (no, not in a porno sense, although that would have been funny) as I walked out the door with my snacks.

I relaxed watching Austin go by in the quiet intersection of 4th and Nueces Streets as music played overhead. I headed back to my friend's place shortly after.

Bikes move the developing world

2010-11-30T12:44:00.001-06:00

SAN ANTONIO -- The Alamo city is slowly modernizing it's transportation infrastructure to 1930s levels, but it will take a very long time.

Or maybe not, at least as far bike riding is concerned.

Several groups hold various organized bike rides for different reasons; from the last Friday rides that center more on partying in dark parking lots to the two different Tuesday night rides. One ride is mostly fixed gear riders with a loosely-planned route, while the other is more "cyclist" and heads south east around the Missions.

The Friday ride leaves from the Alamo around 9:30 the last Friday of the month.

Bike World and Blue Star as well as other groups have rides. It's possible to go on a different group ride every day, some days have two or more rides.

San Antonio is in nearing completion of it's planned 40-something miles of bike paths as part of a green belt around the city. The green belt doesn't include the Mission Trails.

Sunday I spent some time in the Leon Creek Greenway, accessing it through O.P. Schnabel Park, in the north west side of the city.

The trails are mostly smooth concrete, although they. Vary within the park itself. The run from Potranco Road south to Bandera Road, with spurs and off shoots to trail heads at housing communities.

The trails pass park areas, ponds and trees. There isn't a car or street insight, which is a good change from the failed 1940s era policy of giving free infrastructure and subsidies to car companies.

More to come

Potranco bridges
Smooth concrete
Drainage
Commute by bike

Brian McGloin
mcgloin@mac.com
www.brianmcgloin.com

On a mission at the Missions

2010-11-27T15:54:00.001-06:00

SAN ANTONIO -- I spent time this afternoon riding around the missions where the origins of the Alamo City lay.

On the maps there is an easy trail following the San Antonio River, but the reality is something else.

Construction and sloppy or missing signs make navigating the otherwise very pleasant ride a bit of an adventure. While I'm always up for an adventure or alternate way somewhere, the Mission Trail is just confusing.

The northern terminus of the Mission Trail is in the middle of downtown San Antonio, the otherwise abandoned former urban area. Across from the Alamo is forgettable tourist attractions and corporate restaurant chains, much like the "famous River Walk," the over developed area around the river downtown.

The southern terminus of the Mission Trail is Mission Espada. Along the way north to south, one will pass Mission Concepcion and Mission San Jose.

The route runs along the San Antonio River and passes Stinson Airport and an aqueduct from the 1700s. The route is a mix of urban streets, physically separated paths and quiet rural roads. Navigating takes trial and error, but a map doesn't hurt either.

On a nice day the route is popular with polished and shaved-down cyclists, regular bike people and everyone in between. During periods of more extreme weather, bike traffic is reduced.

The Mission Trail isn't part of the 40-something miles of bike trails and greenway in the works in San Antonio.

Roger Christian, a local advocate for bikes and smart transportation told me some of the bike infrastructure here impressed "some folks who came down from Austin."

That impressed me given how advanced the bike infrastructure is in the city of the violet crown. The city is in the works of finishing the northern extension of the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge over the Colorado River and now Cesar Chavez Street. Austin has numbered bike routes, and extensive green way and miles of separated bike trails and bridges.

In a recent election, the people of Austin passed Proposition 1, which adds funding for modern and sustainable transportation. The measure includes funding for bike lanes, traffic studies, a bike and pedestrian bridge around a portion of Lady Bird Lake and other measures. The proposition passed by about 55 percent.

I don't know how many voted.

The plans for San Antonio include various types of bike paths, including smooth concrete and maintained dirt, connecting Leon Valley, the southwest and northeast sides and other areas making it possible to travel around the city without riding or running on city streets.

I don't have completion dates, schedules or other information right now, but a simple Internet search will yield plenty of information.

Brian McGloin
mcgloin@mac.com
www.brianmcgloin.com

Ghosts of Union Square

2010-03-19T22:52:00.001-05:00

Certain people I only see in Union Square. They seem to vanish once they cross Broadway or 14th Street. Sometimes they disappear into the clutter of Gramercy or the Garment District once they cross 17th Street. Sometimes they emerge from the dark shadows in the first warm day of spring, after hibernating for the cold winter. Sometimes they appear in the orange-hued darkness of night.

I don’t know, they may be real people, but they may not be. Maybe only I can see them, maybe there are more who are only visible to you.

Pamela and Dave

Michele Bayard and his pinhole photos

Dave, never in the same jacket twice

Some people I saw nearly every day, and maybe have some sort of contact, as with Dave. Other people I only saw a few times, but from a distance and never had any contact.
The break dancers were good and an odd group of people.
They’re ghosts as well.

The break dancers

There were others who had multiple roles in Union Square, like me. Nick was a bike messenger but also a tattoo artist. He was from Philadelphia, and last I heard, had gone back there. As for me, I may have been a ghost as well, on some days.

I spent my fair share of time in Union Square while working as a bike messenger. One company, Dragonfly Courier, had me start and end my day in Union Square, roughly. The area I covered was surrounded by the square, so I returned there when things were slow.

Like Dave, I was also a photographer there. I mean, I was before NYC and after (I still am now), but it was one of my roles in Union Square. It’s how I met Dave and Mickey and Natasha and Kasha and other people whose names I can’t remember. I met the ghosts with whom I communicate because of photography.

Nick and me, our bikes and newspapers

Natasha, Hoop Girl Extrordinare

Hoop Girl
And then, there are the ones who passed through one dark night and never returned.

Probably Kasha

I have no idea what her name is

T shirts and art late night in Union Square

The girls sold shirts, the guy stunk

Irina
And of course there are the ones who drift about in their own world.

No one is waiting for me

2010-03-19T22:24:00.003-05:00

Chloe waits patiently at her perch for Brendan to come home. I don’t think she waits like this for me.

Waiting for Brendan

Still others wait for the ride home, or maybe to work. Maybe they’re just going anywhere.

Waiting for the train

Waiting for the train, Lexington Ave and 59th Street

Waiting for the 4

While others are just waiting for bats to fly from under a bridge, dinner or maybe a package to arrive. Some are possibly waiting for a plane to arrive start a new adventure. We’re all waiting for something, but no one is waiting for me.

Awaiting Fed-Ex

Waiting for a connecting bus to go home

Waiting for a pre-dawn plane, after a very long day, which turned into a long night, then became an early dawn.

Waiting in a Manhattan Starbuck’s for the rain to clear and for that friendly face to emerge through the door, through with the city’s cacophony of uncommon speed and commerce slip through with a growl and a whisper. It’s a small city with a large population and everybody is waiting for something. She was busy with her book, punctuating her reading with looks to the street, but, she wasn’t waiting for me.

Dusk falls in Austin, waiting for the bats to fly from Congress Avenue Bridge

Ike couldn’t kill Galveston

2010-03-19T22:23:00.001-05:00

GALVESTON, Texas — This coastal city has its share of woe and celebration in the throes of calamity, chaos and calm after the devastation.

Along the island’s southern shore huge hotels of all sizes and conditions from grand palacial lodging to more modest motels with no fountains or valet parking remind passers-by of the easy nature of this crazy little city on the Gulf of Mexico. A city rebuilt as many times in modern history as any western European city.

The northern shore of Galveston is where the island used to make it’s money with transportation. At one point in history, Galveston was the biggest city in Texas and the busiest shipping port in the gulf. Or close to it.

Warehouses and loading docks line the streets. The grand Customs House is across from purpose-build boxes, separated by a crumbling street divided down the middle by train tracks. Grey dilapidated churches and homes are in the shadow of the great cruise ships moored awaiting passengers.

This side of this narrow island seems to be a world away from the bright and lively southern shore.

The storm snuck in Galveston’s back door and tore its way in the worst possible place where there is no seawall and none of the other protectins of the city’s southern shore. Ike brought category two winds, and worse, a 14 foot storm surge to it’s harbor and the low side of the island. It raped the island “prison-style.”

Sea Wolf park on Pellican Island, across the water from Galveston, still shows signs of Ike’s anger and fury.

On the island’s windward shore is a two-story concrete pavilion. The ground floor of the building has decorative walls which are triangular and continue the roof line to the ground.

The walls were broken off and laying in large pieces as if they just fell over. Rusting iron rebar extends from the crumbling stumps where the walls used to stand. The square sladbs of wide concrete sidewalk between the stark white pavilion and the bay were shifted and cracked like a collapsed pile of dinner plates in an abandoned restaurant kitchen.

Odd bits of debris line the island while larger things like cheap barbeque grills, barstools and grounded sailboats dotted the barren tree winter landscape.

East Beach, along Seawall Boulevard, has it’s share of scarring and misplaced debris.

Next to a building skirted by hastily-installed chainlink fence is a scattered pile of toiletries partially covered by windswept sand. The building’s ground floor was gutted leaving anlaege space where stairs went to the second floor. The staircase stopped suddenly before it could desend. Artwork on the walls festively depicting a woman in a green dress told of the laughter which absorbed into the walls before they were washed away violently in 2008.

Dead palm trees lay sandy and dormant shoulder to shoulder in the shadow of the decaying building.

It seems like life is getting back to normal for this storm-battered island. The storm just added to the morbid humor of the island’ citizenry. One can either laugh or cry, they choose to laugh.

Seawall Boulevard has it’s share of recovery, water-logged abandonments and structures somewhere in between. A former tourist t-shirt and surf shop had no roof but it’s front windows were in perfect condition, including the artwork. Other places still had rotting plywood covering broken windows in their forgotten frames.

It seems as if every block had it’s share of renewal and heartache, complete with morbid storm humor.

Many buildings had high water marks and signs describing the marks Ike left behind. It didn’t matter who or what occupied the building or why, they were all effected.

The buildings in their inanimate stone, wood and iron, stood as symbols of what makes or breakes any city: the people. The citizenry of Galveston, while neither angels nor devils, carry with them the scars of nature’s wrath and fury much like the broken fixtures and dirty high-water marks lining the clapboards and red bricks of The Strand and Seawall Boulevard.

A new beginning elsewhere

2008-02-20T11:24:00.002-06:00

I decided to change the location of my blog to WordPress instead of Blogspot.

It seems more professional and better organized. Of course I might be totally wrong.

Here it is:

http://brianmcgloin.wordpress.com/

Thank you.

I'm neither deleting this blog nor adding to it any more.

GOP and our Doomed Status Quo

2008-01-30T12:28:00.001-06:00

BROOKLYN, NY -- Michael Mukasey, the United States Attorney General, is on C-Span being drilled by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, about water boarding.

Patrick Leahy (D-VT) Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee
Mentioned acts of torture not only yield poor information but also put Americans in danger.

Mukasey is embarrassing himself trying to weasel out of answering questions about the legality of the act of water boarding, an interrogation technique where the poor bastard at the receiving end is made to feel like he's drowning. Part of the waffling from the AG was his inability to comment on water boarding since the USA doesn't currently practice water boarding or any other torture, he said. That seems neither accurate nor honest.

Mukasey dodged simple and direct questions about a range of legal atrocities committed by the current administration, circling around murky answers with weak and mumbling gibberish.

Part of the question of water boarding is if it's a war crime under the Geneva Convention as torture. Another point brought up is the quality of information gathered from "aggressive interrogation techniques", as Bush calls torture. The theory is anyone will say anything the interrogator wants to hear to make the torture stop.

At one point, Ted Kennedy (D-MA) asked the Attorney General if he thought water boarding would be torture if were done to him. Of course he said something non linear, admitting it might feel like torture. he repeatedly dodged questions relating water boarding to torture.

During a lunch break in the hearing, C-Span accepted phone calls from viewers.

The interesting thing is the Republican callers even disliked Mukasey and the GOP. The GOP falls for anything and believe whatever bullshit they're fed. When the Republicans are pissed off, and call for his prosecution (and of the White House) are made from the GOP, it's time to act.

I walked away and came back to a different show on the same network, U.S. Senate Today. Its a call in show with a host behind a desk. Here the callers were more true to their stereotype, redneck Southernors who think Dubya wasn't Republican enough and the news media is liberal, endless war is good, the complete GOP menu.

Even Arlen Spector (R-PA) drilled Mukasey about wire taps, violating the FISA act as well as the Fourth Amendment. Senator Leahy dug in about the destruction of video tapes containing the interrogation and recording of water boarding.

This hearing is a wreck, the amount it covers and the illegal and dangerous activity in the name of "national security" is frightening. Why was none of this brought to light until now?

I have no idea how anyone can look at any of the GOP candidates for anything and think the status quo is a good thing. Its beyond me.

If a Republican is elected (assuming the election isn't rigged like the 2000 election) it will be a bad day for this nation. Well, bad day in that any sort of change for the better will be averted to maintain the GOP course of action, or inaction. The nation will plunge into not only the recession we're in now, but a full-bore depression and civil war. If we're engaged in a civil war, the European Union will probably attack the South, Mexico may join in as well as China.

It will be a mess.

The Federal Reserve Bank chopped the prime interest rate by another half of a percent today, after last week's rate cut. We're at the low tide mark of the impending storm surge of economic recession. If we're lucky, we'll only have a recession and manage to outrun a depression.

Strong coffee and high speed

2007-11-19T14:30:00.002-06:00

MANHATTAN, NY -- I've developed a strong taste for cheap coffee, the sort of rot gut one can buy very cheaply from the stainless steel carts on the street. It tastes like a sweet mix of blood and dirt.

Last winter, while working as a bike messenger - NYC's finest; the fastest and strongest thing on the street - I kept a stainless steel travel coffee cup in a pocket in my messenger bag. It fit perfectly as if it were designed for the cup.

For $.75 I could refill the cup with the cheap coffee I've grown to love. It fueled my legs and lungs, warmed my core and kept me going for a very modest sum of money.

Sitting here now in Starbuck's with a cup of their Columbian blend, which is a light roast and supposedly a little sweeter, it is very bitter. Almost undrinkable ...

Coffee is the fuel of work and ideas and creativity. Coffee is a late night effort to sneak in under a deadline. Coffee is a lazy Sunday morning brunch in summer in a shaded seat on the Upper West Side. Coffee is a 35 mile per hour sprint with traffic on a bike with no brakes carrying extremely urgent packages labeled "triple rush".

Porcelain, Iron and a Violin

2007-10-02T23:54:00.003-05:00

18 September 2007
New York City

This evening on my way back to Brooklyn in the 59th Street subway station walking from the N to the 4, I saw a mysterious man playing a violin. He played delicately with a silent dignity.

As he played, he stood below a sign guiding the subway riders to the 6 train, a cloth between his chin and the chin rest of the violin. The bottom of the finger board was worn through the varnish. He had large strong hands that fingered the notes with passionate zeal.

I stood for a moment to listen, with no idea of what he played and no idea if it was played correctly. All I know is it sounded so serene, so out of place in the filthy subway under this rotten city.

I stopped mid stride in the stairway just behind the musician's promontory looking up at him playing so elegantly - no tuxedo, no orchestra, no conductor. The sweet melody rolled from the bow and glided along the round edges of the porcelain tiles, it curled around the stainless steel handrails that guided 10,000 passengers before. The music rode away through the darkness; over the debris, grey dust from electric motors and big heavy brakes down the tracks into the forgotten memories and lost souls of the travelers before it.

Unconventional Speed

2007-05-20T11:53:00.002-05:00

BROOKLYN, NY -- 22 hours after my day started, its easing into the final hours, or even minutes. The first predawn light is making its way over the horizon as 6:00 am nears. My day isn't beginning at this time, its ending and I like it that way. It was a high speed day in comparison to the near tedium of last two weeks.

Things have been slow in the cycle courier business, at least for Dragon Fly, my current employer. I can hear you scoffing to yourself asking how a guy riding a bike (that doesn't even coast downhill) can know anything about Speed.

Speed is one of the few American principles that wasn't perverted by the treacherous whores and thugs who hijacked this once-great nation of ours. It used to be By the People for the People, now it's By Haluburton and Big Oil for Haluburton and Big Oil - now buy shit at Wal-Mart on a credit card so we can rape you for 30% interest and sell your children into prostitution in a darkened whore house with no door in a forgotten Third World military dictatorship where they only take American Cash. Places where only a fool asks questions or makes eye contact. They know who are already just by looking at you, there is no need for talk. Shut up, sit back and watch NASCAR on that big screen TV that you will never pay off - even in 2 years when you throw it away for a new one.

Keep ignoring that we're in the early stages of World War III.

Speed. I may only be traveling at 25 or 30 but that's through traffic moving 5 to 10 MPH average, passing between taxis whose opium-addled drivers try to smash messengers for sport. The NYPD will pull you off of your bike or try to ram you off of the street and arrest you for littering as your crumpled body is splayed in a puddle of your own blood.

Slicing both eloquently and violently between and around police cars, ambulances, the big trucks the ghetto trash who drive while smoking crack, drinking 40's and rapping into borrowed Nextels. Or maybe they're the suburban kids living on Daddy's money ... smoking crack, drinking 40's and rapping into borrowed Nextels. Dodging j-walking pedestrians who stumble clumsily into traffic and wonder why they're slammed by heavy steel driven by crazed savages with Nothing to lose and have no time to waste. I think Bloomberg once said in reference to cyclist and pedestrians being killed on the streets in full view of the money-spewing tourists "New York is a Dangerous City".

They know nothing of speed.

We in the Courier Business, and many NYC dwellers know about Speed. We have our own brand of unconventional speed. Going fast in fierce conditions that change with each tick of the second hand. You plan to zoom around the cop, between the tourist bus and USPS truck - all at full speed on a bike with no brakes that doesn't coast, under inhumanly tight and unreasonable deadlines - when you're suddenly faced with the decision of slamming into the moron with the coffee and headphones who decided to walk into traffic without even thinking of looking or through the moose-sized, bottomless chasm of crushed and broken pavement surrounding a mysterious steel gate in the middle of the street.

That's nothing. Just a warm up. There are 50 more blocks to go and it's only going to get faster and weirder.

That is speed. It's Unconventional Speed and it's more addicting and more lethal than any substance, any rush. Anything. Last summer two messengers were killed in the same month - I think 4 died total but I'm not sure. There are no telling how many are injured or harassed because no one keeps track.

That is Speed and that's how we handle things here.

NYPD vs Bloomberg

2007-05-06T00:27:00.001-05:00

Bloomberg announced the other day a proposed tax or fee on cars and trucks entering Manhattan from 86th Street and south. I might have the streets wrong but it was something like that. The congestion pricing, as it's known, will be in effect from 6am to 6 pm on weekdays.

The fee, which would be waived for taxis, is $8 for passenger cars and $21 for trucks. I need to check these numbers. Its is based on similar fees charged in London and other progressive cities as a means of controlling congestion, pollution and other problems that arise from cars.

Supposedly, the fee will be enforced electronically by cameras similar to those used for traffic signals. I imagine this bypasses the NYPD and their ineptitude in enforcing traffic laws. Right wing groups of course oppose the idea of anything that reduces the number of cars on the city streets. I have no idea how anyone who lives in NYC can think more cars is a better idea. Nevermind the environmental effects and all of that, from a civic planning point of view, its insane to have cars. Period.

The congestion pricing is awaiting approval from Albany.

Opponents of the fee call it a "tax on the middle class". That seems a bit like right wing/Jesus/Big Oil spin to me. Other than delivery trucks and those who need cars and trucks for work (i.e. electricians and plumbers) who actually drives into Manhattan other than wealthy people or the criminal element? A vast minority of don't NYers drive or even own cars. The taxes the car people pay don't cover the cost of road maintenance and forget the noise, pollution, congestion and other problems from cars. I'm glad the city has started to turn around a bit and join the 1970's - far from the days when bikes were prohibited form Midtown and pedestrians were herded dangerously into cattle barriers to get around. Maybe some day NYC will catch up to the progressive cities but probably not in my lifetime.

Bedides, the DFR Drive will be out of applicable zone for the fee so it's still possible to drive from Harlem to Brooklyn without paying anything more than the standard tolls.

The mayor also introduced other means to cap the city's excessive production of carbon dioxide and other green house and smog-producing emissions. I'll get into his proposals later - he neither invented anything new or found new uses for existing technology. But, coming from a Republican, anything even remotely green and/or sustainable is shocking.

This month is Bike Month in NYC. Part of me is glad they're trying to get people out on bikes but, I know the reality of riding a bike in NYC. Its dangerous. Cyclists are seen as dangerous criminals by the right wing good squad, frat boy NYPD. The bike lanes are the most dangerous and debris-strewn part of the street and often have police cars blocking it.

If the NYPD is going to maintain its usual unchecked harassment of cyclists, will there be mass arrests for "parading without a permit" and "riding out of the bike lane" this month if more people are on bikes? Shouldn't the judicial system do something to impede the excessively wasteful practice of NYPD harassment? Why is it I'm pulled off of my bike in traffic for maybe thinking of committing a minor traffic infraction that might or might not exist meanwhile a motorist can run a red light, killing pedestrians and that's OK?

I'll never understand that.

SO the NYPD wants to add more cars to the streets and reduce the numbers of we dangerous cyclists but the mayor says he wants to reduce the number of cars, traffic and CO2 emissions (I'll believe when I see it).

Does this mean the NYPD will expand its autonomous, unchecked, reckless harassment of the law-abiding citizenry by not only breaking laws (or selectively enforcing the laws it creates as it goes along) but completely acting counter to no only City Hall but Albany? Will there be a military coup run by the NYPD to turn this former Great City into an autonomous police state?

I know its far fetched and maybe even crazy, but not impossible.

Underground

2007-03-18T23:23:00.002-05:00

MANHATTAN, NY -- I rode the 2 train from President Street in Brooklyn into Manhattan - changing to the 4 train at Franklyn Avenue or maybe Atlantic Avenue. At Fulton Street in Manhattan I switched to the A train, getting off at Canal Street.

Screaming and hissing through the gritty tunnels, the color of charcoal and foggy ocean nights, over rats, garbage and stagnant water the trains hurtle at what seems to be break neck speed from station to station. Each trip starts and pauses with a scream and puff of machine-churned air, the color of wandering thoughts and a million traveling souls.

My destination was the Moondance Diner on Grand Street and Avenue of the Americas in SoHo for pancakes and endless black coffee.

Above the train, through the iron and concrete, through a million coats of paint, layers of sediment, dirt, rocks, conduit, utilities, cobble stones and asphalt, the lay the dormant streets carrying the foot prints of commerce and art and science and the monday-through-friday business in the snow and frozen slush. Ice puddled foot prints left over from the last icy howl of winter the other day punctuate the streets, lined with piles of shoveled snow, ice and frozen slush.

Today the almost warm kiss of spring time sun is melting the snow into streams and puddles of clear melt water. Luckily, the City didn't dump its usual salt and dirt all over everything. The snow will take a few days to a week to melt but at least it won't be a gritty few days to a week.

I can deal with that.

Spring will be here soon and this will just be the memory of last winter.

>

The sun will rise soon

2007-03-11T01:33:00.002-06:00

BROOKLYN, NY -- My eyes want to be asleep in this rainy predawn night.

Each blink drags my eye lids laboriously across my tired eyes. Tired eyes that mask a mind not yet asleep, thinking about the day's events: Tom's Restaurant with my friend Liz, Tea Lounge, Prospect Park twice.

I can feel the early spring air - warm enough to carry with it humidity and with that, the first sign of the approaching spring:

Crocuses.

The rain is forecast to reveal a warm spring sun later today, this afternoon. And just an hour and a half ago, we changed our clocks forward for this year's modified Daylight Savings Time.

This winter was more mild than memory reminds - more rain than snow by a long shot. Its also my first winter working as a bike messenger in NYC.

So far I survived.

My eyes grow tired as my mind slows down for the close of this Saturday. I think it's time to sleep.

No free refills

2007-01-27T23:55:00.004-06:00

MANHATTAN, NY -- I'm sitting darkly in the corner of an East Village Dunkin Donuts (2nd Ave, between 9th and 10th Streets) watching the rainy night passers by on the sidewalk outside.

I was thinking about coffee as I drank the last stale sip of black mud from the Styrofoam cup.
No refills at Dunkin Donuts or Starbuck's unlike any decent diner at any time. No hemisherical ceramic cups ... each one with its own galaxy of mismatching stories. Each cup absorbs the dreams, nightmares and failed plans spoken over it during the coarse of decades.

Single use. No Big Plans. No dreams forgotten or promises lost. Even Starbucks' recycled paper cups have beginnings in a tree farm someplace. The recycled paper contained ideas, hand-written death threats, love letters ... it was held in human hands.
Styrofoam is a petroleum distillate. It was never held fondly in the hand of an anxious lover or hidden in fear of scorn.

I thought about my preference for Starbuck's or the gritty sort of coffee one gets late at night in a diner. Its good for planning big adventures over the ground-earth aftertaste of an unclean carafe. It has tooth to it, you know its coffee. You get a feeling of its organic beginnings - its "roots", if you will. This kind of coffee is an eagerly invited part of the group ... its like trying to escape an avalanche and tastes about the same.

I'm going to drink a lot of coffee

2007-01-22T20:34:00.001-06:00

MANHATTAN, NY -- I'm on my second cup of coffee for the day.

As of this past Friday I'm no longer a bike messenger. I welcome this change with open arms with anticipation of the positive changes in the works but also it leaves me with no income - as meager and unable to pay my rent as it was.

Interviews, phone calls, email, resumes ... the job-search process is itself a part time job for the casual practitioner. That, of course doesn't count the time waiting for editors and hiring people to read resumes, talk to their people, drink coffee and decide.

I just sold a camera to another photographer for exponentially less that I paid for it originally. I'm trying no to think about it so much and just moving forward. I still have 1.5 working 35mm Nikons and a collection of plastic cameras including a Holga. I have a mountain of film to develop and scan/print ... even if I never took another photo I still have quite a lot of work to do. At some point I want to get my Nikon F (with DE-1 prism!) restored to 100% working condition - at least the innards. I don't care about the dents and wear on the outside. Another wonderful thing would be setting up my darkroom somewhere in the city instead of having it in storage in Connecticut. I think if I have an apartment of some sort with either no room mates or other photographers where they wouldn't object to having a B&W darkroom in the apartment.

Outside of the window here: (asa 400) f5.6 @ 1/250 should work fine. I can get by without a meter ... maybe lose two stops for inside and maybe just one for the guy near the window. I'm rusty ...

As always, I'm limited by funding. That's a universal problem not just with photographers so I take some comfort with it. There are a wealth of resources and an almost equal wealth of money floating around to fund people like me. The real question or challenge is figuring out how to get it.

These few days of moving about slowly allow me the rare chance to see the boring details that I was previously unable to stop and see. Even on my busiest days as a bike messenger, I still tried to stop and look around once in a while but now I'm almost forced to.

I left the bike at home. I only have a few places I need to go today and my feet or the subway are just fine for that. We were supposed to have some icy weather which confirmed my decision ... so far, its just cloudy.

Never mind that.

I love this city that never sleeps as much as I hate it. I want to stay forever and study every brick and foot print but I want to get the hell out ASAP. Some days I feel the opposite; some days it just doesn't matter. Its as if anything can happen for good or ill. I have a renewed feeling of infinite possibility and a renewed passion to pursue the reasons I moved to this damned city in the first place.

I've decided to drink a lot of coffee, it seems like a good idea.

Memorial for Eric Ng

2006-12-09T19:02:00.001-06:00

MANHATTAN, NY -- This was one of the most difficult things I've ever photographed.

During the ceremony at the Ghost Bike Ryan spoke atop an impromptu promontory next to the bike to a densly-gathered congregation of those who came to remember, mourn and honor a fallen hero.

As Ryan spoke the silence of the astonishingly large group was punctuated by sobs and the sounds of choked-back tears. A scream from next to me tore through the dense sadness. It was followed by a few smiles and some gentle singing of a blues/folk song everyone seemed to know. I felt like I didn't belong here in this very private moment, witnessing this. I couldn't bring myself to photograph anyone crying even though I know it makes better journalism.

We the viewer know its a sad occasion ... Eric lived 22 years but only died in an instant. Why focus on that cruel instant when there was a life - albeit a short one - to celebrate?

I feel as though I missed out on something tragically good in never having met Eric Ng.

From the out pouring of love, the most wretched of howling sadness and laughter from such a diverse and expansive congregation of everyone in NYC one can plainly see the universe lost one of its brightest stars - extinguished in body by a drunk driver but immortal in spirit in the hearts of the many he touched.

The memory of his explosive and joyous 22 years on this great Earth was celebrated in a memorial bike ride from Washington Square to the site on the Hudson River Greenway where Visual Resistance placed a Ghost Bike in Eric's name.

Mere despair doesn't delve deeply into the emotional void left when such a Champion of Decency is ripped from our lives in such a meaningless, violent way. However, one can take comfort in knowing that his life and memory and love and energy were celebrated to the fullest extent of human possibility.

"Do not go gently into that good night." In an edit a few years later, I must admit some embarrassment in not knowing that was from Dylan Thomas, who drank himself to death at the famous White Horse in Greenwich Village. Still, it's always terrible when a cyclist dies, especially when it's from someone in a car. Cars are such a terrible burden and people are brainwashed into the false notion of "freedom" from them, when the opposite is more of the reality.

Love and Rage.

TIME'S UP! EXPOSES WASTE OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS ON EXCESSIVE POLICE RESPONSE TO CRITICAL MASS

2006-11-16T22:57:00.001-06:00

Here is the press release sent to me by Barbara Ross from Times Up. The photos are mine and as always, they link back to my Flickr photo page.

"FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TIME'S UP! EXPOSES WASTE OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS ON EXCESSIVE POLICE RESPONSE TO CRITICAL MASS

Details of Press Conference:
When: Thursday, November 16, 2006, 10:30 AM Rain or Shine
Where: steps of City Hall, Manhattan
**Video footage showing excessive expenditures on past Critical Mass rides will be available.

Participants:
Norman Siegel, Civil Rights Attorney
Charles Komanoff, Economist
Marquez Claxton, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care
Mark Taylor, Assemble for Rights NYC
Judy Ross, Time’s Up!

New York, NY (November 15, 2006)- - Since September 2004, the Bloomberg administration and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office have spent at least $1,320,000 harassing law-abiding cyclists on Critical Mass bike rides. The cost analysis covering the period from 9/2004 through 8/2006 was prepared by Economist Charles Komanoff and Time’s Up! to inform New York taxpayers of the monies spent by the City and State to suppress the monthly rides. New parade permit rules announced by the NYPD will add further to the expenditure of tax dollars on police actions against Critical Mass as well as other gatherings of 10 or more cyclists, motorist or walkers.

The $1,320,000 figure is a conservative estimate of what has been spent by the NYPD, Manhattan District Attorney and NYC Corporation Counsel to suppress and litigate a bicycle ride that lasts 2 hours a month. Time’s Up! calls on NYC Comptroller, William Thompson, to verify its calculations of these expenditures of taxpayer dollars.

“The use of helicopters, scooters, paddy wagons, cars and hundreds of NYPD personnel is simply overkill and contributes to the unnecessary hostile climate fostered by the NYPD toward Critical Mass bike rides,” said noted civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, who has represented Critical Mass riders. The goal should be to create an alternative climate that respects the rights of New Yorkers to ride their bicycles freely and simultaneously be respectful of NY traffic rules and regulations.
###

TIME'S UP! is a non-profit environmental group that has been using educational outreach and direct action for the last 19 years to promote a more sustainable, less toxic city."

Streetsblog Has an excellent write up of the press conference, which had an attendance of cyclists, the media, concerned citizens and a cameo appearance By Mayor Bloomberg just after it ended.

Protest in front of the Mexican Consulate for the shooting of Brad Will in Oaxaca, Mexico

2006-10-30T22:11:00.003-06:00

This morning started with a protest in front of the Mexican Consulate 27 East 39th Street to call attention to a local NYC journalist, Brad Will who was shot to death by a paramilitary group in Oaxaca, Mexico.

The press release:
"For Immediate Release

October 29, 2006, 12:45 p.m.

PROTEST AT NYC MEXICAN CONSULATE CALLED FOR MONDAY, OCT. 30, 9 A.M.

NEW YORK – Friends of Brad Will, the U.S. journalist/cameraman who was shot and killed on Friday by paramilitaries in Oaxaca, Mexico have called a protest rally for Monday, Oct. 30, at 9.a.m. at the Mexican Consulate in Manhattan, 27 East 39th Street. The protest will call attention to demands that the Mexican troops and police surrounding the city of Oaxaca be withdrawn along with the government-backed paramilitaries.

“Brad's death was caused by the violent atmosphere created by the army and the paramilitary thugs – not by the popular movement that liberated the state from a corrupt and repressive government,” said Brooke Lehman, a New York City activist and friend of Will. “People in the U.S. as well as Mexico have to send a loud and clear message that we won't tolerate this.”

For latest news about the situation in Oaxaca, please visit the NYC Indymedia Center at: http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/index.html

What I saw of the protest was what one would expect. Most of the protesters/gathered/spectators were calm and respectful and some of the cops actually were professional (completely unlike the irresponsible, overly aggresive, and wasteful abuse of power they display during the Manhattan Critical Mass). Of course some fo the cops pushed and shoved people - one asshole grabbed my jacket to tell me to move away from where another vop just told me to stand

Nothing new.

Of course a few of them don't seem to realize they're in public ... with the press watchng them.

I couldn't stick around very long, I had to work a little (if I could make money fom this blog or writing and/or photography I would be able to stay at rallies and protests all day). As I was leaving, the NYPD was in the processes of moving their dilapitated blue barricades around, moving the gathered with them. The press still had their small pen still also. In one way, I was able to move more not having credentials since I was confined to a blue box (I'm not sure if that's legal anyway). However, one cop actually told me to get in the pen with the rest of the press while I was shooting, and another one told me to stay where I was while another sort of shoved everyone around.

Halloween Critical Mass

2006-10-28T15:08:00.001-05:00

MANHATTAN, NY -- This is edited from the orginal post. I added content and removed some.

The rain started shortly before the Critical Mass got underway but it didn't hinder the riders from gathering and pedaling in costume. I was splintered away from the stragglers of the splinter group where I found myself. I stopped to take photos of the NYPD scooter squad riding the wrong way down a one way street and then through a red light ... I must have stopped too long because the other Massers whith whom I found myself seemed to have faded into the rainy night.

As I was looking for the rest of the Critical Mass, I figured I should head down second avenue, toward some NYPD I saw who parked their scooter in the Police Lane ... I mean bike lane.
A cop facing me at red light intersection stopped me to harass me a little. They asked me to stand out of the street but I pointed to the scooter and said

"The bike lane is blocked, I would rather ride there"

The cop asked where my helmet and fromt light were. I told him that I forgot my light at home.

"just like that? you forgot it at home" He questioned as if to quell some back talk.

The cop, Officer Schneider, questioned further asking if there was a helmet law in New York. I replied that I didn't know. I added that I knew lights were required an hour after sunset and were a good idea. He did the cop thing and asked there was a helmet law.
I said "although its a good idea I don't think it's a law - is it?" He neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the law.

"Yea ... I know people can't see me, I get lost in the headlights behind me, even with the reflective stuff on my jacket and bag" I replied, adding "and I know better about the helmet, I just don't have one. I'm not arguing with you on either point".

This is the second time in 2 weeks where I out-copped a cop and he "let me go" without a summons (for a non existant law).

The last one was on 7th ave when the cop decided I was going to go through a red light without stopping, although I was crawling along to make a left on red with the traffic and ... well, the cop was in my way. He grapped me by my arm with both hands while I was moving to ask me if it was illegal to such a turn.

I told him flatly that I didn't know and asked what the law was. He neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the law. After some back and forth, he gave me a lecture about protecting my safety (uh ... by pulling me off of my bike in traffic while I was moving?) and saying he would have to call my parents to tell them he had to hose me off of the street because I HAD to make an "illegal" turn.

I was going at a slow walking pace looking toward the traffic and not even at the crosswalk yet - nevermind the actual intersection.

OK, so the NYPD has ESP now? Not really. I imagine its part of some sort of power trip thing and I imagine it works sometimes.

I kept riding downtown, right onto Houston Street where I decided to just head to the Times Up! space for the after party, which was gets getting going as I aarrived. There was a bountiful feast of food ranging from ... well, it was loaded with chopped vegitables, cheese, baked goods, chips and other food stuff that escapes me at the moment. A DJ spun a mix of cheesy 80's pop and some party rolling, ass-shaking music while the costumed Massers rolled in. Bikes were parked on the sidewalk in a semi-organized bike valet.

Rude Mechanical Orchestra got the place bouncing. Really, the floor was BOUNCING. I never thought a brass band (well, drums, too) could get a crowd going like that. They played some covers as well as what seemned to be original tunes.

It was good to see people - some names I remember and some I don't. Tammy, Tracey, Rachel ... Rich (wait, is it Rick?), Irena on her swanky black chopper and the people whose names I can't remember like the guy who drives a burly cargo bike and pedicab. Possible a girl I only know by her Flickr account name: Blue Cinema.

The costumes were fantastic - both during the ride and the party. I was very impressed to see people riding bikes in some serious costumes.

Even though I ducked out at around 11:30 - ish I had a blast. I'm not always the most social but that didn't mean it was a drag.

I was the guy editing photos on the laptop literlly in the corner as the party got started.

Rainy day on 2nd Ave

2006-10-17T13:14:00.002-05:00

Super Evil Brian (Brian McGloin)

MANHATTAN, NY -- As I sit here in the Dunkin Donuts on 2nd Ave and 11 St, I'm watching the rain dripping from my bike outside, dripping from the trash bag the guy unloading the van has tied around him. I'm watching the rain roll down the umbrellas of the passers by ambling down the sidewalk. I'm watching the rain wishing I had remembered to put the rear fender on my bike this morning.

I read Bikeblog a moment ago, realizing I had forgotten all about the last Brooklyn Critical Mass. It seemed like a good time - I'll go to the next one in Manhattan, which isn't as fun.

I have to add titles and tags to the past 200 or so photos I posted to Flickr. The last batch that's uploading now if the first I've done from my iBook since getting it back. The others were done from Stacey's computer while visiting her in Connecticut. I'm sure I could have taken the time to title and tag everything but I thought that might be rude so I just uploaded.

Their voices echo the ideas of forgotten Good Times

2006-10-04T22:53:00.000-05:00

Super Evil Brian (Brian McGloin)

It took me 6 years of hard use to finally wear out the hard drive of my iBook. That partially explains my absence here.
The move to Brooklyn and working explain more of it.

Fear not. I'm working on a project about people in NYC. The travellers, laughers, screamers ... some looking for a good time while others are running from it.

Their voices echo the dreams they forget to let go and their souls hold the city at the edge of the cataclismic devastation that is just moments away but never seems to happen.

True nothing is new anymore but recycling is in this season and I plan consume it to the last drop.

Look for words, photos ... everything.

In the mean time, I'm accepting donations for a new MacBook.

Selah.

Why can't Lieberman just go away?

2006-08-20T18:24:00.000-05:00

Super Evil Brian (Brian McGloin)

Seriously, the Joementum is over. Go away. Connecticut voted you out, take a hint and take a hike.
Running as an Independent is a lame GOP sort of trick. This shows how out of touch Lieberman is and how out of touch some of his backers are.

I've been shying away from writing about my usual socio-political subject matter but I miss it. I've even shied away from the news and I miss that, too.

I'm a news junkie and I can't help it.

I'm moving to Brooklyn next week (officially I'm living there now as well as Connecticut) and I plan to get back into being a news whore. Of course I'm not giving up on bikes and the related stuff. No, Cletus, if anything there will be more bike coverage as well as more politics.

Soon I'll be able to post photos from a new digital SLR I've been using and also soon, I'll be able to post the photos. Its a deal with Nikon and a big ad agency in NYC working with a few other photographers in an ad campaign. I'm bound by contract to keep clammed up. Its a cushy deal and I don't want to fuck it up by blabbing - besides, anyone who has Internet access already knows what camera I mean and everything about it. I'll be able to give an honest opinion of the camera and body and show photos - the other sites and blogs (with the exception of www.kenrockwell.com) don't have the luxury of total honesty.

It's going to be awesome.

Come September first, I'll be completely moved (well, a week before) and also completely able to go into detail about the camera and post a zillion photos from it. I've been shooting with the camera since August 11th.

Many changes here. Its sad and exciting at the same time. I would be lying if I said I'm approaching this with not a hint of trepidation and a completely focused path before me. I'm not - I'm winging it still. And I'm still working on some sort of income.

It would be great if photography and writing paid the bills (sometimes they do, but "sometimes" doesn't pay the rent) but they're not so I need to get some work.

Its New York City - a walking graveyard of forgotten dreams, broken hopes but also a Sargasso Sea of possibility and weirdness - for good or ill.

Kings of New England - New Haven alleycat

2006-08-05T00:48:00.006-05:00

Super Evil Brian (Brian McGloin)

Kings of New England
Part three, New Haven

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- My second alleycat brought a new set of mistakes, serious dehydration (and the accompanying physical complications) and most of all, a damned good time.

Began behind the Devil's Gear bike shop in New Haven, Connecticut.

After a delay to clean up some errant urine, the starting horn choked a cloud of gas and we were off.

Our bikes were locked to a fence that was out through a gate and across the street. As we ran toward the gate, someone had shut it. One other guy and I figured it might not be locked so we slid it open and gained some time over everyone else ... they ran around the building.

Moments before the start, some burnout gave me shit about me locking my bike to his, saying I had better get there first. I didn't see the loser again until much later at Rudy's - at the pre-after party. I out sprinted him to the fence as was rolling immediately after. Mattio came charging around the corner just as I rode away.

I had a route in my head - roughly - but for some reason I decided to follow the guy who got away from the fence first. I have no idea what his name is but I do have a photo of him. He knew the streets of New Haven well whereas I didn't. I can get around in places where I'm not familiar and I can navigate where I do know but, as I found out, navigating to specific checkpoints while racing is something different completely.

Our first manifests were given to us in sealed envelopes along with the location of our Dispatch Point - where we were to meet after the completion of the first manifest. At the time, that seemed easy enough. In fact it wasn't too bad.

Many of the checkpoints were time consuming. One had us skipping around a tree, another involved hopscotch, still another has us rolling dice. And there was the one (after taking a very wrong turn) that had us run around a garden and the check point under the tree where we had to play a hand or two of blackjack. Time was tight and each moment spend rolling dice or answering trivia questions meant we had to ride harder to make the cut off time.

The second manifest proved to be brutal. Add to that the impending doom of dehydration. I should mention that the race had a cut-off time of 4:30 where ALL of the checkpoints had to be done to even finish. Somewhere halfway into the second manifest, at the checkpoint at the hill "that's a category", as the race organizer told us, the announcement came to return to the Dispatch Point. Here I lost my race companions and I was really starting to fade and get a little disorientated. I got near the Dispatch but the time cutoff had passed so I thought I just didn't finish and decided to find something to eat and relax.

I wandered up and down whatever street I was on not realizing there was a real finish line and a few extra checkpoints. I almost went home (for some reason I couldn't find anything that looked right - hey, it made sense at the time) after wasting a good 30 minutes.

Then suddenly I ran into one of the girls in the race who was looking for a certain street. I might have helped her out but I doubt it. We talked for a bit and she mentioned the finish line.

"Finish Line? There is a finish line!?" I asked. It wasn't far away either - it was in the direction of the other racers I remembered passing about 40 minutes or 17 years later, somewhere between there. I bolted down the hill toward the Devil's Gear bike shop where the ordeal began a few hours earlier.

There, in the shady oasis was Everyone. Everyone and water and watermelon.

I made it. I survived, although I think I placed a few spots after last. But, given that I almost went home and given how lost and confused and tired I had become (seriously, I KNOW better than let myself degrade like this) I think I did OK. The group went to Rudy's after to bullshit about race stories, drink beer and relax. I stuck with soda and a tasty cheeseburger (this of course, further deepened the dehydration) and the limited amount of socializing I can handle at any given point.

It was fun.

The proper after party was at Bar. The race results were announced, prized given out and general good times for all ensued. Well, I left after a few minutes so I imagine every one had a good time. The physical effects of dehydration were just too much and I crawled home.

For the record, I'm not a sissy - I had a serious migraine and a pounding abscessed tooth at the same time. There is more to it but I'll save that for another time.

The last race in the Kings of New England was a good time and I'm glad I went.

Arsenal of Democracy

2006-07-28T21:42:00.002-05:00

Super Evil Brian (Brian McGloin)

Here is my very late write up of the Arsenal of Democracy alleycat held on a rainy June 3 2006.

Arsenal of Democracy
Bridgeport, CT
03 June 2006

With Matt perched atop his wooden promontory under the bandshell in Seaside Park in Bridgeport, the race began. Off into the rain and mud and grit 15 or 17 or so of us sped away, throwing ourselves to the cruel mercy of the Park City.
As for what really happened, I'm not really sure. I mean I was racing, well, sort of.

I do know I had some trouble getting going and was bringing up the rear, I gained two and lost one place by the first checkpoint up the grueling Park Avenue.
By the second checkpoint, I made two places but blew them by talking to Chris at the Spoke & Wheel.

Oops.

From there it was a wet burn to the Congress Street Bridge - I think. Another mistake I made was not reading the manifest carefully and planning a proper route. I know better! Now, the next day, I'm having trouble remembering the order of the checkpoints.

At some point, we got to the GE checkpoint. I thought the guy manning the check point was kidding when he said we had to touch the building on the other side of the fence. I opted to slide under the fence at the wider gap, another guy went over the top. I touched the building, noted the 14 1/2 MPH sign and was on my way when the tight, dense traffic let it be.

Stacey was the checkpoint for Steel Point, I talked to her for a second blowing my two places again. Which I made up. She took photos of all of us I think and I owe her a beer for standing in the rain for our race.

I spent most of the race making up those two damned places.

I gained the places back more of less until just before the last checkpoint and finish at Black Rock Castle.

I forgot that Howard Street was only accessible from northbound lane of Railroad Avenue so I went waaay out of my way to get there. After, I took a route that went very far out of my way to get to Black Rock Castle.

"I know EXACTLY where I'm going, this is the Fast Way," I thought with a degree authority.

I went a route I normally go home that avoids Fairfield Avenue, which was a big mistake. I should have gone back down Rail Road to Fairfield and right down to the Castle.
Well, I took the DFL award. Oh well.

Back at Black Rock Castle, we settled into a darkened corner of the place like moss in a damp cave. Pitchers were ordered (I don't drink and one or two others skipped the beer) and the gritty battle stories started. To our surprise a band played - but this band was made up of kids who may have been in high school if that. They jammed some old Led Zeppelin covers while their parents egged them on. We, the damp and dritty, applauded and cheered with gusto.

I didn't take as many photos as I thought I would. I'm glad I had my digital P&S instead of the usual Nikon SLR ... well, maybe not. There were a few photos I missed because either it was raining too much and I didn't want to completely destroy the camera (It is already acting up) or because it was too slow - when the light is dark and crappy, the camera has a slight delay when it fires, unlike when its brighter.

Who cares?

It was a good time.

A huge thanks to everyone who helped us out and who traveled to ride in the rain, grit and mud of the Park City ... once known as the Arsenal of Democracy.

A New Begining - so much happening

2006-07-25T22:36:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

Look for some new posts soon:

A write up and photos of the Arsenal of Democracy alley cat from 03 June - a little late.

The New Haven alley cat from the Kings of New England - words and photos. This will be shared with Bike Blog as will my write up of my first adventure to the Kinessa Velodrome in Queens on Wednesday, July 26 -

Yea, that's also my birthday.

Also (oh, so much going on!) I'll have a little about a potential project for a Nikon print ad campaign. I'm meeting the ad agency tomorrow before the Ride to the Races

In more news, I finally sold the car and I'm moving to NYC in August. I'm still working on a place so if y ou hear of anything in the $600-$700 range that's not a shithole (preferably in Brooklyn sorta near Manhattan) let me know.

A job? Well, I'm working on th at, too. I've had one interview recently that went very well but I was still the third choice to hire. They said they liked me and would be expanding and hiring again soon ... we'll see. It looks like I may give the bike messenger thing a try.

I'm still on a quest for a job and a place to live - I'm totally winging it here but I feel NYC is the best place for me now. Of course I say that without ever living there ...

So what?

Ire and Thorns

2006-07-15T01:47:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

As I rolled home silently in the cool summer night air I wanted to keep going. I pedaled the Mercier through Black Rock, down the road past Viale, down Gilman Street, past the beach on Seabright Avenue - half moon and crystal clear, deep cobalt sky over the jetty and Fayerweather Lighthouse - I wanbted to keep going.

Here in the Nutmeg State my luck ran out a while back. I'm waiting to move away. Waiting for replies to ads for apartments and "room mate wanted" ads. Waitintg to sell the car I seldom drive.

Waiting.

Staying here is waiting to die. Waiting for something, reasoning why Connecticut isn't bad. Honestly its a nice state for those who love suburbs and who can afford to live here.

The median home price hovers over a million bucks.

I don't belong here. I despise the people - they're fat, lazy, stupid and dull rubber stamps of copies of each other.

These days, its become entirely too easy to find myself entangled in a web of the stuff that doesn't matter.

My room mates room is a cloud of cigarette smoke. I pulled the door shut after shutting off her window fan. Its hot and stuffy in there and stinks like a bar. She won't even notice.

It doesn't matter.

I have to remember to let myself forget. What needs to happen will happen. What needs to work itself out will work itself out. What needs to be remembered will stay fresh in my mind and what needs to be forgotten will leave me at peace.

I just have to remember to forget.

Critical Mass in the Rainy City

2006-06-04T15:51:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

NYC Critical Mass
26 May 2006

This months Critical Mass in New York City was the strangest one for me yet.
The helicopters seem to be missing as well as the SUVs being driven into the sidewalk and into crowds of people. The scooters were present as always - their numbers, although excessive, are difficult to pin down.

I'm very late writing this so there is no point to me just regurgitating what Mike Green has already posted as well as the other usual sources.

We know about the girl who was detained (arrested?) in Columbus Circle while standing on the sidewalk eating an ice cream. I think the reasoning was "she ran a red light 15 minutes ago". She was carried off in cuffs to the precinct house and released later.

And there were simultaneous tickets given for riding in the right, left and center of the street - there might have been one for not riding in the bike lane on a street with no bike lane. We can't forget the girl who was doored by a cop and received a broken collarbone or something similar.

I noticed a theme ... the NYPD only tickets girls and those who willingly stop instead of getting away. I ran into some riders from Atlanta (yea they were in NYC for the Critical Mass! - that's serious) who were ticketed during the ride. They asked me if I had ever been summoned or detained.
"No, I've been lucky" I replied. We had a moment to chat while waiting for a red light or other riders or something.
He continued, "How did you get away"
"I didn't stop when they asked" I replied trying not to sound like some kind of a rock star. "There was a ride a few months earlier when I saw a scooter weenie ride up to a small group and me - very close to me - and say 'Get off the Bikes!' ... I just kept going around the corner".

The NYPD doesn't identify themselves. Not even the plain clothes cops who pretend to be Critical Mass riders. Not the cops who pretend to be in funeral processions for fallen riders, not the cops who illegally videotape and photograph the Critical Mass from "unmarked" SUVs. I'm sure they surveil other NYC cyclists as well.

One would think with the recent 40% slash in Anti Terrorism funds from the Department of Homeland Security (for not following protocol and sloppy for planning and performance), the NYPD would make more of an effort to be professional and stop crime instead of wasting their scarce resources on a few bike riders.

The ride seemed to fizzle out or disperse early. It could have been the rain or just the mood of the City. A few of the Critical Mass riders rode through Central Park after the meeting in Columbus Circle. We rode around the loop a couple of times. At one point, a NYPD car was parked in the road in Central Park and the Riders had congregated around it. I'm not sure of they thought they had to stop or what was going on. I think some of the riders were the Atlanta crew (who, by the way, were very paranoid and interested in turning the ride into a full-blown race for some reason.) and other miscellaneous cyclists I recognized from the hours earlier.

Tammy and I stopped for a moment with the congregation but after realizing nothing was happening, I rode past the cop car and continued on. Tammy was right behind me. She and I continued on the loop enjoying a quiet nocturnal ride through Central Park. A few times other riders passed us in groups whooping and yelling in the damp night air - they were experiencing a rare sort of darkened, high-speed freedom one rarely enjoys in NYC.

I felt good for them.

They had no one in front of them, no cars, no cops - no cops standing blocking the bike lane, no pedestrians, no storm grates or road debris. They were Champions and nothing anyone could do or say could change that. It was their Park, their City even of just for the time they were rocketing through the Park.

They were Champions and I felt good for them.

After the lovely Tammy and I parted ways for the evening, amid a fierce and bone-crushing rain, I headed back to Grand Central Terminal destroying my rear tire along the way.

Stacey was nice enough to pick me up at the Fairfield train station at a truly unholy hour of the rainy night. I greatly appreciated that since I would have had to walk the 2 or however many miles in the rain in bike shoes with a flat tire.

Who knows what next month will bring? Maybe another fire truck that just happens to show up on the same street at the same exact time the Critical Mass got under way? Maybe another cop hiding in the woods in Central Park photographing riders (Just Tammy and I after we were long separated from the Mass) as they go by?

Maybe the NYPD will stop screwing around and deploy tear gas and machine guns. Maybe they'll use bombs or drive trucks through/over the riders. Maybe the City Council will jam through legislation making cycling in the City officially illegal instead of an (illegal) unwritten law. Maybe Fox News, NY Post and other propaganda networks will start an ad campaign portraying anyone not driving a car (no, a Hummer!) as Communist/Pinko/UnAmerican or whatever other rhetoric works on the sheep who actually fall for such stupidity.

Without regard to anything, we'll be there again next month in Union Square.

We are the Champions - Still We Ride.

Coming Soon: Doughnuts and Critical Mass

2006-05-29T10:22:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

I've been distracted the past couple of days.
Soon, in the place of this place-holding text will be my write up of the recent Critical Mass in NYC. It was one of the strangest so far ans also rather short - for me anyway.

I posted the photos to Flickr already, here they are:

For now, I'm heading out to find some doughnuts which maybe a fruitless task given the holiday. At least I'll be on my bike.
What will y ou be doing?

Sign up for email updates so you know when I write actual real content or at least look for the real writing to be in the place of this.

Alright.

Fog and the Park City

2006-05-26T08:46:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

A covering of morning fog rests on the roof tops here in the Park City. An unusual quiet grinds through the streets below - punctuated by the occasional singing birds. Well, maybe a lot of singing birds.

The weather forcast is for a moderate chance of thunderstorms this evening. That may be a problem since I'll be in New York for this month's Critical Mass. I have to make a decision about the weather soon - do I run fenders on my bike? Pack rain gear? If the weather holds out, this month's ride should be huge.

About Critical Mass: My past few posts have just been about that and not the other ranting and heavily one-sided screeds about the GOP, white trash and other filth. Every week the GOP (aka Big Oil) does something else worthy of a lengthy Prison sentence or at least impeachment but no one cares ... or they think its just partisan jabs by that oh so liberal Media. Right. Yea, sure.
If I don't write about the lefty/Pinko/Unamerican (or whatever they call it this week) stuff then ... well, I have to actually write about something not in the news already.
OK. No big deal. I have lots of decent writing about all kinds of things - road trips, music, people ... maybe it is a big deal. Maybe I'm looking for the Perfect Subject for which to write. That doesn't exist. I don't want to write about personal stuff nor do I want to pen a screed about what I ate for breakfast or my ride to work.
Critical Mass seems to be good subject matter. Mike Green does a fantastic job writing about the NYC Critical Mass as well as other NYC bike and non-bike events from Times Up!. He writes about the abundance of alleycats and other bike-related mayhem in a loquatious style that's funny where it should be and angry where it needs to be. If you have a moment, and even of you hate bikes, read his blog. Or at least read about what he'll write about tonights Critical Mass.
Speaking of alleycats - they're bike messenger style bike races generally through urban areas - there is going to be one in Bridgeport on 03 June. Next Saturday starting at 6 pm at Seaside Park in the Bandshell.

I'm one of the co-organizers along with a guy named Matt. He came up with most of the check points. He's a mad man, a total psycho. This will be a motherfucker of a race. Racers will wake up with mysterious tatoos, maybe missing teeth, dead hookers in the living room and a taxi crashed in the front yard. We're planning an after party of sorts at Captian's Cove. Well, its more like we're going to show up there after - nothing is really planned.
I joked with Matt about having sprints from one end of Railroad Avenue to the other and maybe back. He suggested having it after AOD race during the after party.

What a great idea ... wait for the drinking people to get shithoused and then race down one of the most brutal, darkest streets in the Abandoned City in the dark, on a weekend while the driving people are also shitfaced.
There will be blood, broken bikes, dashed dreams, mayhem, abductions - racers returning a month later not remembering a zombified state of mass killing and looting - criminal investigations. In other words - a fantastic race.

This should be fun. I can't wait - will you be there?

Fewer Riders, More Cops? What happened?

2006-04-30T16:19:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin
Critical Mass NYC 28 April 2006
Union Square North

This month's ride, for me, proved to be the best yet for a few reasons. I'm writing this two days later sitting in the Circle Diner in Fairfield - my plate of eggs benedict with lox arrived just in time to start my brain moving here. Leaning over my plate and typing isn't easy especially given how neurotic I am about table manners. Don't tell Martha.

Back to the Critical Mass. I had a good day in general in New York, which started out well at the train station in Fairfield. A random man walked up to me as I was eating a sandwich to inquire about my bike. He hailed from the Garden State and moved to the Nutmeg State recently and needed a bike. I happened to have a business car for Spoke & Wheel on East Main Street in Bridgeport in my pocket so I gave it to him. We talked about bikes and NYC and CT a little. I suggested Spike & Wheel or maybe Breaking Away Cycles in Fairfield in addition to Craig's List or eBay or even pawn shops. Times are tight and people are selling everything. The daughters are for rent and the sons are sold into child labor camps. The pets are for dinner. He said he needed a 64 cm frame (which is huge) which limited his choices.

After he walked off, the smartly-dressed woman sitting next to me holding some sort of display board asked "is there a bike shop in Bridgeport?". I told her there was and where it was and what the place was like. I apologized for giving my one and only card for Spoke and Wheel to the Garden State Man moments earlier.

The train arrived. The conversation departed. She got off at 125th in Harlem.

The train clunked and creaked its way to Grand Central Terminal at around 2. I was on my way up 8th Avenue to Central Park in short order. After the dreary hour-long train ride, I look forward to riding the Loop around the Park. There are always a few track bikes and ultra-slick road bikes as well as the typical assembly of NYC junk heap bikes and everything in between. I saw someone from the DVD "Red Light Go" ( I think ). Well, at least it was one of the custom red Cannondale track bikes given away at the Bike Messenger World Championships - or something like that. They're sweet bikes - light, fast and brutally stiff like a dead, anorexic hooker.

For as much noise and chaos as NYC has, I'm always astonished at the natural beauty and serenity of Central Park. I washed down an over-priced Gatorade as a man in-line skating while balancing 3 water bottles on his head rolled gleefully around in triumphant circles to music only he could hear. A scantly-clad woman accompanied him figure skating in her own unique way rolling in circles, backwards and other figure skating ways.
Wait, I heard it, too. The Saxophone Man who bellows rolling dirges with anonymous grace filled the voids between conversations, laughing children and bird calls. Behind me was a different story.
A trio bounced and swerved their own groves in a less dirgy and much more ragtime - but in a swing trio sort of way - celebrated the warm spring day. After plunking some change in their box I took a few photos, stalled to listen some more then headed across the road to where the fountain is. It was the usual sort of nice-day-in-the-park sort of thing one would expect. German students goofing around, people reading. I sat in the shade for a while then continued around the park on the Loop.

I changed office locations from Circle Diner to one of the tables beach side at Penfield Beach in Fairfield. The weather couldn't be more perfect. A gentle sea breeze is blowing in cool and light over the Long Island Sound. The waves gently crash as seagulls search in the skies for lunch on the beach below. A child speaks. A seagull crows. A barefoot woman in a light dress walked by, her heels thumping on the wood flooring.

Alright. I've gone way off track. Critical Mass.

The group gathered in Union Square North as normal with what seemed 500 people from all over NYC and other places - I'm in Connecticut, for example. One guy proudly rode his penny farthing (there was another guy on one in San Francisco or maybe Chicago) while another was reclined in his recumbent. I saw a red tall bike that was sort of a side by side tandem. It was two tall bikes connected to each other with the steering parts connected with joints to keep the steering in synch. The bike had 4 wheels on the ground and two sets of drive train. Another crazy bastard had what looked to be a tandem but with an upright riding position. The chain was about 12 km long and ground on bare steel. I can't imagine how much the bike weighs or worse, how it rode.

Regardless, it had style and that's all that matters at the end of the day.

The the usual 7:30 ish the ride got underway heading downtown. Missing, like last month, was the omnipresent hovering NYPD helicopter. This time, I stayed back a little and rode with a Nikon F4s around my neck. The cross strap from my bike messenger bag kept the camera's movements to a minimum as I rode while not encumbering my access to the camera. Past rides, I strapped a small Sony digital point & shoot camera to my handlebars to get motion shots. Well, I skipped that this time in favor of my Nikon experiment. I've had the F4s in past rides but I tucked it away while riding, only shooting the before-ride gathering. I was glad I kept it handy this time. It allowed me to get photos of not only the riders next to me but also the NYPD in their silly antics.

And were they silly!

The NYPD and their Queer Scooter Brigade never cease to entertain us at a horrendous expense to the taxpayers and their own pride. It started with some of the idiots in an unmarked Jeep Liberty with a red flashing light. The front, darkly-tinted windows were rolled down and a small consumer video camera poked out - two plain clothed cops were in the car.I guess they were either taping us or pretending to in some sort of bogus intimidation campaign. No worries, a Mass rider taped the cops taping us while I took still photos.

We have it covered.

The Jeep circled Union Square heading in the direction of the Critical Mass, blocking traffic and being a general menace to pedestrians and every one else on the road. The Ride continued downtown with few problems. We talked, people cheered, pedestrians asked what was going on. At one red light (I stopped for all of them during the ride, but neitherbefore nor after) one woman asked me what was going on (I excitedly told her) and another asked where my helmet was. I pointed out that my bike also doesn't have brakes and that I should not only wear a helmet but call my mom more often and pay my bills on time.

The light turned green and we went.

The Ride was cool and calm with the element of protest diluted by the comradery of this huge peaceful group carving our bit of serenity out of the inhuman maze of quickly-rolling steel and bike-sized holes in the street. This is what Critical Mass is supposed to be - not out running police trucks as they drive on the sidewalks and over bike paths.
As relaxed and law-abiding as the ride was, there were no shortage of NYPD's Queer Scooter Brigade. I've never seen so many scooters in one place - not even Block Island. Nowhere. In one intersection, after the riders stopped for a red light, the Scooter Brigade barreled through followed by two police cars that BLOCKED the intersection to everyone - bikes, pedestrians, cars, Chinese food delivery guys. Everyone. After a moment, another barrage of the Brigade rammed through then the intersection cleared. I guess causing gridlock by congesting intersections helps ... uh ... keep traffic moving.

After waiting for the green light we went.

The Ride went down one street and across an avenue. Honestly, I'm watching the bikes in front of me and next to me and the cops and not so much the street signs. Often I know where I am but sometimes I don't which doesn't matter so much. the group I was in approached a red light, I heard a drawn out car horn. A closer look showed a Masser stopped at a green light blocking a blue Toyota Prius from going. I'm not sure if he was a cop trying to pepper the Ride into running red lights and corking along with other offenses that, only during a Critical Mass, are not just minor ticketable offenses but get overnight jail time - this ONLY applies to Critical Mass riders. Everyone else continue to move through the City at your own pace as you see fit.
After the group stopped, as if on cue, the morons in the Black Jeep Liberty (different from the earlier one at Union Square) jumped out and declared the rider to be under arrest. No badges, uniforms, identification or anything. The arrested rider wasn't detained and actually he was talking calmly to the cops. As the driver of the SUV got out of the truck, he left the driver's side door open and no one was allowed to touch it. This blocked the Prius in place as the light cycled green, yellow, red again. Horns blared and the woman was furious. Some asshole in the back seat of the truck tried to get out on the traffic side with his car door ramming against the Prius. He told the now very furious woman that her car was fine. I think one of the cops was the pussy who pulled the girl to the ground by lock chain around her waist. Smolka, I think. This was yet another occasion where the NYPD not only blocked the very traffic they claim to keep moving, but endangered the people around them and damaged personal property of innocent bystanders. Maybe if the woman had a Hummer or something other than a hybrid, they wold have let her go.

The light turned green and the group moved on with the Prius matter still unresolved. We were on Christopher street when I realized there wasn't a "we", only an "I". I stopped to look around and after a few minutes I rode back in the general direction of Washington Square thinking people would be there eventually. Luck was on my side as I caught a group riding just to the north of Washington Square heading away from the park. I think I might be mixing up parts of the ride but who cares. If one looks at the Big Picture, its completely accurate.

The large group split into smaller groups criss-crossing all over Manhattan. Each had their own Queer Scooter Brigade and unmarked surveillance SUV or two. I'm sure many of these groups had their own fake Critical Mass riders and other under cover cops - which of course the NYPD denies. One group crossed our group at an intersection where we were stopped at a red light. I think this is where I heard a commanding voice call out "Let's cork so we can make the left ... ". I never heard anyone announce any intention to cork (blocking traffic in intersections to let the riders through, sort of what the cops do for themselves during Critical Mass) or run red lights or anything else like that. It seemed like another fake Masser. We waited the extra few seconds for the green and found the group who passed us.

Somehow I got separated again from the group and after riding around looking for cops or other riders, I ended up on 5th avenue. I figured I would give Washington Square a shot again. As I got closer and closer, the police presence increased dramatically with the NYPD completely blocking 5th avenue en route downtown. Vehicular traffic was gridlocked and jammed but I rode around it. I rode past a few cops and stopped at the red light.

Track stand, green light, into the Park. Again.

This is where the ride got a little strange but first a little loud. It seemed like the entire Critical Mass group. Someone had a canvas bad similar to an Israeli Paratrooper bag with a boom box stashed inside. Holed were neatly cut and hemmed in the bag for the speakers. Crackling and blaring music filled the park echoing all around as more and more riders gathered. Each wave or riders down 5th Avenue drew increasing applause from the enlarging mass of riders. The penny farthing man was a crowd and tourist favorite with deafening applause and a zillion photos shot - especially during his no-handed trackstand at the red light, while smiling. The red dual tall bike, a tandem ... more bikes. More and more ... each one bring more cheers. The NYPD had the Queer Scooter Brigade parked along Washington Square North on one side of the street and a paddy wagon on the other side. An unmarked silver Jeep Liberty was illegally parked on the corner by 5th as another surveillance car. The way the cops were parked there, I was expecting drag queens to jump out of the paddy wagon like something in a John Waters movie. Because, everyone knows its not a party until the drag queens show up. And its not a riot until the police start it ... oops, I mean until the Police restore order.

After some more time passed the group walked through Washington Square through the southern egress downtown. We walked down the sidewalk as the cops blocked the streets and zoomed back and forth. Yes, we walked. Down the sidewalk - all 200 or so of us. It took maybe 3 blocks to hold everyone. We were somewhere downtown when we rode on downtown toward the Manhattan Bridge. There was a benefit party in Brooklyn just over the bridge.

I think we were on the Bowery or near it in China Town at the base of the bridge when the ride stopped again. The police swarmed around, blocking not only the bridge but the intersections. Some fat, higher-ranking cops stood in the street and were almost run over by a truck. Cops drove without lights or sirens into on-coming traffic as if to show that they're allowed to be dangerous, irresponsible and a menace. A large number of the Queer Scooter Brigade parked by the bridge, another brigade parked around the corner. The surveillance SUVs that the NYPD doesn't have were parked hither and yon.

This was it. This is where it ended at about 10:00 - ish. At first I wasn't sure where I was and after asking I saw a sign for the Bowery, I knew where I was, roughly. or at least how to get back. For some reason I asked again how to get back to Grand Central which of course turned into a small conversation. Tammy and I rode back uptown on the Bowery until 43st where she went to the west side and I went to Grand Central - almost getting myself hit by a taxi in the process.

In the station, I had time to use the loo and get a snack. I boarded literally 1 minute before it departed for New Haven. I got off in Fairfield as always, rode home and walked in my door at 11:59.

What a great day. I can't wait until next time - the Arsenal of Democracy alleycat is the day after the next Critical Mass. Two illegal rides in a row in two different states.

Alright.

Still We Ride

2006-04-05T23:59:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

Well ... things only half went according to plan. I rode in the Critical Mass but not the April Fools alleycat in New Haven. And I never got to lead the B&W film so I used Fuji Press 400 which worked very well.

Before the CM, I rode around NYC taking a few loops around Central Park. I stopped at The Mall and whatever the area across the road is called - where the fountain is. I rode around Manhattan with no rhyme or reason ... keeping track of where I was but not really going anywhere.

I got to Union Square with a little more than an hour to kill so I headed down to Washington Square. There, I saw some people from the bike messenger movie, Red Light Go (and elsewhere) and also some really fantastic drumming - not the usual tourist-trap street performers.

There were three of them - or maybe two and a straggler, I'm not sure. The main drummers switched back and forth bewteen two similar but different drum kits. The odd guy played rhythmicly on what looked to be the large plastic container for wheeling the proper drums into the park and also a tamborine. Who cares - it sounded great.

As darkness stained the ground in the shades of artificial day, it was time to roll north back to Union Square where some 300 + cyclists had gathered for the March Critical Mass.

At about 7:30 or so the Ride slowly but enthusiasticly started out heading uptown on Broadway. We were in a tight group and moving along at a very easy pace with festive shouts of "More bikes, Less Cars!" ( holding bavk the urge to say "fewer" and not "less"). At some point, a cyclist got in front of a delivery van blocking the van's way. I was watching the other cyclists and traffic lights and everything else so I didn't see everything that happened with the van and cyclist at first.

After a moment and a one-van symphony of horn honking, the van driver was getting antsy and agressive - he was riding the rear wheel of the bike, accelerating and decelerating violently while beeping. I heard a metallic clunk and fearing the worst, I looked over toward the van.
It was just a manhole cover making the noise but then I saw the cyclist was joined by another biker and another until there were three or four in front of the van.

That crisis calmed down.
The ride took a left turn shortly after. I think it was a left.

I admit to getting the avenues and streets mixed up in NYC. I think we were on 6th Avenue (I think) when we passed w41st street ... at about halfway past the street, we turned the wrong way on 6th Avenue (I think) and headed toward w41st street.
That's where the NYPD rolled in on scooters in their usual pattern of 2-4 scooters riding into the group of cyclists. I'm not sure if the group turned because of the cops or if the cops attacked because the group turned.
Later, the NYPD CLOSED 5th Avenue near Washington Square (yes, closed ... at about 8:30 or 9 on a warm Friday night)

As the scooter cops closed in, I saw one within arm's reach. He shouted "get off the bike!" and at that cue, I took off into the middle of the pack on w41st. I was stuck behind some guy on a mobile phone - I don't know if he was calling other massers or his mom, either way ... he was in no hurry. As I rounded the corner onto Broadway I rode on with others but I decided to get over to the sidewalk for a bit. Honestly, I saw no glory in being arrested and I figured thre NYPD would have serious road blocks.
This gave me a chance to take a look around. I walked my bike along the sidewalk back to w41st. I saw 4 cops yelling at one cyclist demanding ID while more cops on scooters had part of the avenue blocked.
Moments later, 2 NYPD vans and one black, unmarked car roared violently down w41st toward Broadway at an astonishing speed.
I guess driving in such a reckless and dangerous manner is for public saftey? I think these idiots were heading toward the standoff at Washington Square.

During the pre-ride gathering it was established to meet at Washington Square at some point - around 8:30 or 9 - to continue if the ride was fractured, which it was. If I knew about the secondary meeting point, I would have gone there. Instead, after a few minutes of looking around and taking notes, I got back on my bike. There where no cops around at this point - they were probably all downtown.
I did see one cop in a marked car ... a Jaguar or Saab ( I only remember it was a Euro import) sped through the red light with no head lights on while two food delivery guys on bikes rode against the flow of traffic all went right by the cop without anything. That seemed fair.
So after this, I cruised around a little and headed to Grand Central Terminal to take the train back to Fairfield.

Critical Mass isn't about protest or pissing everyone off. Its not the cyclists' fault that bikes and those who ride them are seen as children and/or a petty nuisance. Crical Mass is a celebration of bikes and bike culture; its a celebration of non-polluting, healthy transportation. Its about taking the streets back and getting some laws both enforced and created in our favor.
Its NYPD that makes it into a dangerous an obscene waste of tax dollars.

Alleycats and Critical Mass

2006-03-31T00:07:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

Later today, I'll be in Manhattan again for another Critical Mass ride. Its a month later, warmer, brighter.
I hope the NYPD backs off a little - I honestly don't want to be arrested and I don't want others to be either. Critical Mass isn't about riots and anarchism (or other incendiary, inflamatory and plain Wrong words the NYPD, FBI, CIA use ... ) its abot riding bikes and promoting non-polluting transport in the City.

The protest groupie element is always present, but they're everywhere.

In other news, there is some problem with my registered URL, brianmcgloin.org, so I changed the link to the right to reflect that - my URL mirrors the Mac-hosted Website. Yahoo, where the URL is/was hosted, had changed their Web services around to the point where the information on my URL (or how to change where it mirrors) was no longer visible. Through some glitch, everything worked fine for a while. Well, maybe it wasn't a glitch.

I received a notice I now remember forgetting about - or maybe ignoring - about Web hosting through Yahoo or about my URL expiring. Well, the other day, brianmcgloin.org wasn't working. I've had that address since I lived in Ridgefield ...

Next week, I'll look into re-registering it.

Saturday I'll enter my first alleycat, a semi-legal (if at all) bike race through city streets. They're also known as bike messenger races. This one is in New Haven but they can be in any city anywhere - NYC has the biggest ones.
Here is a little more information: http://www.messengers.org/main.html - its a little tough to get through. I can provide more information if need be ... look for a write-up and some photos of the race and also Critical Mass.

I'm shooting the CM on black & white film (ooollld Arista 400, loaded from bulk, @ asa 1600) so give me a few days to develop and scan. I'll also use my handy little digital point and shoot camera either hand-held or strapped to my bike. I shot the last CM partially this way. The phone cam will be in use, also.

Lastly, my nearly-severed left index finger is healing. Its still partially numb and moves a little funny but I'm lucky to have it.

Alright, thank you for reading.

NYPD is Afraid of Bicycles - Critical Mass

2006-02-25T09:08:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

I was in Manhattan yesterday for a friendly Critical mass ride. The NYC Police, completely ignoring State and Supereme Court rulings that their cowardly and excessively wasteful attacks on cyclists in NYC were out in full guns.

With the usual helicopter over head (equipped with night vision, of course) 20 or so brand new scooters (the cops crashed 2 last CM ride with their dangerous and reckless driving) 3 passenger vans, 3 big SUVs, 2-3 paddy wagons, countless police cars and 100's of cops arresting people for riding bikes in NYC.

Until the Feb 14 court ruling barring the cops from arresting cyclists for "parading without a permit". Here is the press release from Times Up!, a direct-action environmental organization. The NY Times also ran an article about Critical Mass and another news organization that slips my mind at the moment. Here is a little more from Times Up! about the NYPD and cyclists

The ride started out peacefully in Union Square under the watchful, nightvision eye of a NYPD helicopter circling above in the February night. From the eastern side of the square the group headed down Broadway to the East Village. There were maybe 200 cyclists at first slowly making our way south.

At first I stopped for the red lights as did many others. The arrests started minutes after the ride started. At one point there was a cop on a scooter driving at an outragous amount of speed the wrong way down a one way street toward the cyclists. A few blocks later, a police van screeched up with helmeted cops leaping from the doors ready for a battle - cyclists can be pretty scary afterall. Generally the police pick off the girls and older fols and anyone riding slowly or alone. My stopping for the red lights put me way in the back of the group and in danger of being nabbed.

I started running the lights and staying with the group near the front. At this point, I wasn't sure if there was another group ahead of us since we were startign to splinter a little. Before and after the Critical Mass I go through the red lights if I can so what did it matter now? I even removed the red blinking light from my messenger bag to blend in a little more (I put it back after).

We went down various streets and avenues. I lost track after a while and I think I have the details out of order in my head. It was pretty fast and intense, wondering if there would be road blocks or other means of mass arrest. One good thing was the amount of vocal support from passers by on the street and cross walks - chants and shouting filled the Gotham shadows.

We were on 8th Avenue. I heard a voice or two say something about Columbus Circle which wasn't far from where we were. I thought about some escape routes from there like Central Park or a high speed run through Times Square to Grand Central. I could get through the traffic quickly on my bike, but cops can't on scooters and definately not in cars.
The group truned left on 14th Street I think. Left, right, straight ... too much traffic run the light. Cops behind us - lights flashing, sirens, helicopter above.
The group started to play it cool again. Stopping for the lights, talking, relaxing. The cops were a little behind and we weren't surrounded by paddy wagons and those annoying scotters. Three of us split off from the group taking a left onto some street then another ... through Greenwich Village and maybe Chelsea and again and onto Houston Street. I need to learn NYC more - not living there makes it tough to know the city like the people who ride bikes there every day. I only recently started riding in NYC - I'm usually walking with cameras.

The ride ended for us where it ended for what looks like most of the original group, the Times Up! space on Houston Street bewteen Mott and Mulberry Streets. I called Stacey to tell her I hadn't been arrested but a bunch of others were. Instead of joining the after/victory party at Times Up!, I just went home ... up the Bowery to Park Ave to GST.

Here is a story that ran in today's New York Times with photos and video clips. You might have to log in or subscribe to read it, I apologize for that. If you want just the story then here it is without photos and video clips:

"Aggressiveness of Bike Chases Stirs Questions for the Police
By JIM DWYER
February 24, 2006

The patrol guidelines for the Police Department strongly urge officers to be careful when chasing suspects with cars, and national studies show that accidents involving police vehicles result in one death nearly every day.

Yet since August 2004, the New York police have regularly conducted aggressive pursuits in the heart of the most crowded city in the country.

Police vehicles have driven the wrong way down busy Midtown streets and have cut at sharp, brake-screeching angles across Greenwich Village avenues, videotapes show. They have climbed onto sidewalks to skirt traffic jams near Grand Central Terminal, according to witnesses. Officers have been filmed driving a large sport utility vehicle along the Hudson River bicycle and jogging path.

On all these occasions, police officers in vehicles have been chasing bicycle riders who throng the streets on the last Friday of every month in a group ride known as Critical Mass. The dispute over the terms of the ride has swelled into bitter court fights and what have been, by New York standards, street chases of startling character.

The police and the city say public safety is at stake because the bicycles block traffic and the riders will not agree to a route. Many riders say the stakes are free movement on public streets for people who should not have to get police permission simply because they are not in cars.

Earlier this month, a state judge rejected the city's request to shut down the event and counseled "mutual de-escalation of rhetoric and conduct."

At last month's ride, two police officers on lightweight motorcycles were injured as they maneuvered into position to cut off the bicycle riders on Third Avenue.

"One of the motorcycles made an abrupt 90-degree turn, and the one behind just T-boned him — hit him perpendicularly," said Luke Son, a bicycle rider who said he saw the crash happening from a few feet away. "A really violent collision. The officer in front went flying."

Mr. Son, 23, a student at Columbia University and an emergency medical technician, began treatment of one of the officers.

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said that the officers were not seriously hurt and that the accident was provoked by bicycle riders who were breaking the law. It "would not have occurred if Critical Mass participants observed the law," Mr. Browne said.

A number of riders said the crash touched off an especially forceful effort by the police to round up cyclists. Later that night, witnesses say, police officers in two black sport utility vehicles chased 12 to 20 riders near Grand Central Terminal. One of them, Mark W. Read, said that the police drove against traffic on a one-way street, most likely Vanderbilt Avenue, and that as bicycles moved west along 45th Street, one S.U.V. followed them.

"The S.U.V. went up onto the sidewalk and drove on the sidewalk for 15 or 20 feet, then dropped back onto the street," said Mr. Read, 38, a filmmaker and adjunct instructor at New York University, whose account was first reported in The Village Voice. "It was unbelievable — a high-speed chase, something you think would be reserved for serious criminals, for people fleeing a murder scene or bank robbery." Mr. Read was later arrested on 43rd Street and Broadway and charged with parading without a permit.

Mr. Browne declined to comment on any specific chase, saying in general that the descriptions "are the exaggerated, self-serving statements of individuals engaged in breaking the law or opposed to police enforcement of it." Asked about videotapes that show the chases, he said that he stood by his comments.

The department's guidelines say that before starting a pursuit, officers should consider the nature of the offense and how crowded the area is. The guidelines also include an instruction, highlighted in bold type, that says, "Department policy requires that a vehicle pursuit be terminated whenever the risks to uniformed members of the service and the public outweigh the danger to the community if suspect is not immediately apprehended."

One police spokesman said that applies to the pursuit of motor vehicles, not to bicycles; Mr. Browne would not comment on that interpretation. The bicycle riders generally are charged with offenses like parading without a permit that are violations of the city's administrative code, which are not included in the state's penal code of felonies and misdemeanors.

At a Critical Mass ride on Sept. 30, bikers rode up Second Avenue, and turned east onto 14th Street, followed by two police S.U.V.'s. On a videotape, some of the bikers can be seen riding east in the westbound lanes, against oncoming traffic; the two police S.U.V.'s also can be seen driving in that lane, for part of 14th Street between Second and First Avenues.

John Hamilton, an in-line skater who videotaped the chase, said the sight of the S.U.V.'s driving the wrong way down 14th Street was vivid. "It was a very dangerous situation, and I certainly felt it," Mr. Hamilton said.

Mr. Hamilton also filmed a chase on March 25, 2005, in which a police S.U.V. drove across a pedestrian island on West Street and followed the cyclists onto the Hudson River bicycle path for about a mile. "The S.U.V. ultimately had to stop because there were metal posts or cones on the path," he said.

Shortly after the motorcycle collision, on Jan. 27, Rebecca Heinegg, 23, arrived and recognized one of the injured officers. "He was my arresting officer last February, and was as nice as someone arresting you can be," said Ms. Heinegg, a law student. "This incident is really sad, an entirely predictable result of the unsafe maneuvers."

Mr. Browne said the Police Department had tried to make the ride safe. "If they provide their route in advance and want our assistance in expediting the ride each month, the Police Department will be happy to assist," he said.

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company"

The Bush Boys Sold OUR Ports to UAE

2006-02-23T15:27:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

This recent deal with Dubai. Oh boy, someone is making a lot of money ... this is getting completely out of hand.
I wouldn't have as much of a problem if the company weren't a subsidy of the UAE government. If it were a private company/corporation then there would just be the problems associated with outsourcing.

Why can't WE manage OUR own ports?

Cheney getting drunk and shooting someone ... if I did that, or any other Democrat, there would be hearings, investigations, murder charges. But Cheney does it and all is well.

The other day, Rumsfelt said paying newspapers to run American propaganda as news stories was a bad idea and backfiring. Yesterday, he didn't remember ever saying that.

Strangely enough, there is suddenly a potential civil war in Iraq. Well, it's been festering since ... oh ... we invaded to topple the American-installed dictator. CNN was reporting yesterday about the tensions focusing their reporting around the destruction of a sacred mosque. Outlets like Back-to-Iraq.com started reporting ethnic tensions in Iraq from the begining.

McCain, being a GOP fluffer himself, said we should trust Dubya and that Dubya and the Bush Boys woul never do anything to comprimise National Security - even at the expense of commerce.

This made me think of 9/11. They let 3000 people die for nothing and then there was the illegal War for Oil, er, uh, I mean Freedom!

To Catch my Breath

2006-02-07T01:39:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

I've watched the sun rise over the Long Island Sound on a few occasions. More than once I was there under duress. Seeing the day begin with such subtle and cold but celebratory radiance filled with beginning and promise eased the razor-wire tension hacking at the ankles my soul - even if just for a moment - long enough to let me catch my breath.

Now, as my eyes are feeling the weight needing sleep and are dry from being awake too long, my mind is just about ready to allow me to rest for the night. The air is thick with the urban silence of the unholy side of the clock. Silence in a city is more quiet than silence over the open sea or in a forest or cornfield. I've marveled at the city by moonlight with a faint glimmer of a street light stretching faintly for my receeding heels as I slipped into the saftey of the shadows, retreating into the forgotten darkness.

Victor Navasky Spoke at the Westport Library

2006-01-22T19:52:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

"Victor Navasky, editor of The Nation since 1978, Director of the George Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism at Columbia University and a regular commentator on the public radio program Marketplace will speak about freedom of the press and its role in democracy." From a press release the Website of the Westport Library.

Paul Newman introduced Mr Navasky who spoke at the Westport Library for about an hour and twenty minutes on the subject of freedom of the press and the state of the media.

His words wouldn't have been favorable to those at the helm in Washington. Mr Navasky peppered his lively discussion with dry with commentary.
"Lying", Mr Navasky said, " has been a practice of this administration" noting comparisons between the current administration and that of Nixon, who believed he was above the law, having Executive Privlege

The McManus room was more than full to capacity with people standing in and beyond the room's door way.

Mr Navasky seemed troubled by the state of the inept press and the willingness of the People to blindly accept it, adding there were "300 rollbacks of open-record legislation".

Mr Navasky took questions from the audience after he spoke. This man asked about the press being simply "stenographers to power" and protections for journalists and their important anonymous sources. Mr Navasky said the reoprters were only as good as their sources and that protections vary. If an anonymous source misleads the reporter (he cited the GOP mouthpiece, Judith Miller here) then the source is of no use and jeopardizes the reliability of both the reporter and the greater institution for which the reporter was representing.

3000 + Counts of Criminally Negligent Homocide

2006-01-14T01:09:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

I may have my facts wrong, but if the Bush Administration had prior knowledge of the 9/11 Attacks, as the data and evidence strongly suggests, then they are responsible for the deaths of 3000 innocent, hard-working, tax-paying Americans. Ellen Mariani says something like this in her RICO Act case against the Bush Administration.

If they knew and did nothing, or worse, if they impeded reactionary and defensive measures like they did with the proceeding investigations then ... I see no difference between the Administration and the hijackers.

If the Bush Administration invaded Iraq with intentions other than the stated mission to remove WMD, which later became Plan B to remove Sadam (an American installation) from power, then the Administration is responsible again for Crimes Against Humanity in the deaths of 2000+ soldiers and many, many more Iraqis.

The list goes on ... Corruption, Conspiracy, Murder, War Crimes.

And people love the Bush Boys.

It Was a Good Year in the Funeral Business

2006-01-09T20:08:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin
These days have been slow but moving at a decent clip at the same time.
The freelance job with CoStar ended as well as my one day a week part time job at the photo place.

My contingency plans fell through one at a time, leaving one possibility still pending. I don't have much faith in this pending possibility.

This leaves me in a tight position with few options. Few paying options.

I was seriously considering a profession of doding traffic, road debris and pot holes ... yes, a bike messenger.
There are no messengers here in Bridgeport or even Fairfield or Westport ... nothing from Stamford on up to, well, at least New London if they have any at all.
Hartford has some and I hear they're pretty hardcore.

There is one caveat. Are there no messengers because there is no need or are there no messengers because no one thought of it yet.
Tomorrow I'm heading to the library and maybe City Hall to look into what I need to have a business - tax stuff, bonding ... then I'll need to look into advertising like flyers and so forth.

As a fall back, I need to have a part time job - at least at first.

For this week, I plan to not drive. Even today I made a Dunkin Donuts run at top speed from here to Fairfield ... I even passed a guy on a very slick IRO fixed gear bike. I blew past him (he was just cruising along and I was riding like a maniac). That was a strange sight given that IRO makes a fraction of what the big companies make.

I need a change.

I've lost my confidence in securing paying journalism or photo work, at least in Connecticut.

I can get from downtown Bridgeport to Downtown Fairfield in 10 minutes. I can get through the traffic and all over in no time ... no hassles with parking.
No walls, no offices, no flourescent lights or neckties.
Freedom.
And danger - mainly from the drivers of the big SUVs that choke the streets and from the truck drivers and bus drivers.
Still, it doesn't matter.

Maybe I can team up with other people and cover a good chunk of the Gold Coast from Stamford to New Haven. I know the business is there but I'm not sure if the business is close and continous enough to warrant bike messengers.

Park City Courier or Hurricane Messenger Service.

An Evening Bike Ride in Black Rock

2005-12-09T22:45:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

I jumped on my orange bike and cruised around Black Rock, Bridgeport. Here are some photos:

The only other people out were the 3 different guys walking dogs down different street. Down one street, a group of kids were standing on a street corner. After I passed I heard one of them bleeting like a lamb. It was funny.

Photo work and a free Latte

2005-12-02T12:29:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

On Tuesday morning at 10:30, I'm heading to Greenwich, CT for an interview about a staff photographer position.
For now, I'm saving the details.

The timing here is pretty good considering my temporary employment with my current employer CoStar ends at the closing of the year. We're already winding down now doing what seems to be busy work.

There is also the reporter job ... I have to call on that. Editors generally have poor communication skills and need 224,394,720 phone calls and emails to answer whether they received a resume or voice mail. It takes an even greater effort to get an answer out of them.

Perhaps I should take the hint ... often someone is hired from inside or the editor gives a nephew the job. They post the ads in a false attempt at honesty and to dispel myths of nepotism.

I'm not getting very excited over the interview on Tuesday, I'm sure they have several people to interview. My portfolio will be solid, I'll have high-quality copies of my resume (and even writing) and I'll do my best.

That's all I can do.

Waiting

2005-11-30T08:08:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

I'm sitting in Javapalooza in Middletown waiting for the IT guy from my employer to call. I have to load either images or data to a Dell laptop and it's not reading the CDs.
I've never used a PC that worked like it was supposed to or even well. Added the poor communication from my employer in Bethesda ...

In the front is this old iBook, behind is the questionable PC. Next to the computers is the pumpernickel bagel and Americano.

Moments later ...

Data is loading. I had to switch the drives in the two PCs - one had a DVD ROM and the other didn't.
The PC down there on the chair on the right is my company-issued Dell laptop. At best it's a piece of junk. Well, it IS a Dell and PC

NBC News WVIT 30

2005-11-28T12:38:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

Moments earlier, Lauren Petty from a local NBC affiliate interviewed a girl and I in Javapalooza, a coffee shop in Middletown, CT.
They were doing a story on "Cyber Monday", supposedly the biggest online shopping day of the year.

A phone cam shot of the girl being interviewed. I had the shot posted before her interview was finished.

NPR had a story on Cyber Monday on Morning Edition earlier today.

The newscast will run tonight at 5. I'm not sure if I'll be on there or not - who knows.

Incommunicado and the Muted Shout

2005-11-21T18:25:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

This morning on a local NPR affiliate radio station, they ran an essay by Penn Jillette as part of their weekly series "This I Believe".
Mr Jillette's essay nailed some of the anemic excuses given for irresponsible behavior and acts of treacherous violence in the name of God.

In the name of God.

What does that mean? What have words like Morals or Values ... into what have they evolved?

In the name of God.
In the name of Freedom.

Those who shout the loudest from their promintory have the least to say - or perhaps they have to convince themselves that what they're saying and doing (or not doing) is True and Good.

A lie repeated is still a lie.

It doesn't matter if it's a lie about WMD, about being a cowboy, about fake 'journalists' promoting awful and self-serving Government programs, about Government programs that take essential services form the poor and give tax credits to the rich, about tax breaks to oil companies, about leaking a name of Valerie Plame and the related cover up ...

A lie repeated is still a lie.

How is this Good or Right?
How is this Moral?

No one has ever been able to explain any of this to me in an effective manner.

Believers in the Bible and Creationism say Evolution is flawed and untrue. They say a century of research, experimentation, peer review, and throrough Scientifc Method means nothing. In the place of actual, proveable study are 2000 plus year old stories - complete with mistranslations and interpretations from a few different languages - with no proof, no study and with blind faith.

Why is blind faith so good? Look what happens to people when they stop asking questions. Look what happens when we're complacent.

Intelligent Design - repackaged Creationism - is fine to teach in religious environments but NOT in a public classroom. I went to elementary school at a Catholic in Danbury, CT. In that school my love of science and learning began ... and I was proud of my constant F's in Christian Doctrine.
Jimmy Carter, a devout Evangelical, a nuclear physicist, peanut farmer and Southern Gentleman says religion and science can not only coexist but flourish. Even Maimonides said science and religion can thrive and work together ... he said that in the 1100's.

I'll get more into this later.

In the name of God.
In the name of Freedom.
In the name of Patriotism.
A lie repeated is still a lie.

Selah.

Bush's Staff Infection

2005-10-30T21:56:00.001-06:00

Clinton lied about a blow job and the Holy Rollers and GOP and spineless Main Stream Media went crazy - like a bunch of starving heyinas let loose at the meat counter of Stop & Shop. Foaming at the mouth, they sunk their claws and ravenous infected teeth into the cold, dead flesh ...

Bush Inc lies continously and all is well. WMD's, Iraq, Meirs, 911, Plame, No Child Left Behind, Haluburton, Outsourcing, Iran, North Korea ... it goes on and on. It's well-established that no connection beteen Hussein and Bin Laden exists, Iraq was no threat to us ... now Iraq and Afghanistan have become training grounds for terrorists.

I don't get it. What's taking so long for The Great Unwashed of this once-great Nation to catch on?

The Whispers of the Ghosts

2005-10-19T23:05:00.003-05:00

Brian McGloin

If one listens carefully to the silence one can hear the distant echos of the whispers Ghosts in the decaying stucture.

Walls once dusty, dry and brutal are decaying from the moss and fungus growing where the dripping water and shadows predominate.

The men and machines are long gone. Their sweat evaporated and blew away like the life they fed to the sagging bricks and over-burdened wood buckling under the weight of a rain-soaked roof.

The humming and rythm only now exists in a distant echo thinning with each reflection.

I stumbled upon two abandoned places somewhere in Connecticut. I have to refer to my notes for more exact locations.
One was an industrial of some sort - foundations, smokestack, a steel skeleton, and a building with no windows or doors and a piece of the roof gone. The place was cleared of anything productive with the exception of a ghost's echo reverberating from two large faded yellow-painted, rusting machine parts - great gears with a bowl-shaped center.

I was the 5th or 6th day of rain and the structure was alive with moss and black fungus. I think I remember seeing grass or something green from where the sun shone on the decaying concrete floor.

The other was a left-over gas station. It's front door was ajar so I stepped inside. I didn't travel much further than the doorway - the place was small enough that I could see all the way to the rear wall. There wasn't much to obstruct the musty view - just a door way next to two ransacked and pillaged desks. The bulletin board and shelves above were equally a mess: crooked, hanging out of plumb.

I was only there briefly but the place looked like death after it's forgotten.

I have a fascination with forgotten and abandoned places and even roads. I'm fascinated by the history behind the inception as well as demise, the planning, life, death ... factories, tunnels, bridges, schools, asylums, expressways, highways, backroads ... all of these man made stuctures designed to provide something or a service. All needing people to run them, use them - designed by people and left to decay by people. I've always been fascinated in the world around me and I haven't outgrown it yet and I doubt I will.

I find these places and if I'm lucky, my size 7.5 (40.5) foot prints are the only ones there. If I have a chance I stand there and listen to the whispers of the ghosts in the walls, the ghosts floor and in the air. I wonder where they are and what they have seen and what their future holds. Maybe I'm reflecting upon myself and my life when piecing the history of the last days of wherever I am.

Its astonishing what we can see in ourselves when we forget to look.

The moon climed up an empty sky

2005-10-18T21:29:00.002-05:00

Brian McGloin

These days have me sitting here wondering about a few things. This is not the first time in history that our once-great Nation is at a turning point.

Times of question, uncertanty and self-reflection are nothing new.

What gets me is the sheer obese amount of information available and the abundant means in which to find information - and it's mind numbingly easy. Turn on a radio or a TV, open a newspaper, or even one of a zillion Websites with either news or links to news. Often, CNN is playing in stores or bars ... or a news station. Abandoned, current newspapers on the subway or at a diner ... it's all around us.

I know I verbally slap the GOP around like a rented mule in some of my writing here so I'll save further regurgitation of what NPR, Back to Iraq, the BBC and other proper media outlets broadcast.

I know I write this over and over but I need a change in direction. I'm fairly certain it's something that only I can do for myself. I make excuses:
- I don't have funding
- I don't have a media outlet or publishing deal lined up
- I don't have contacts

There are too many "don'ts". Too much negativity. As much as I enjoy looking at photo essays and photo books et cetera, I can't help but get a little down and maybe even a bit jealous. I want to be in the middle of a shit storm or in some forgotten corner of the globe with cameras in hand under a relentless sun or bone-crushing rain ...
How do I get to these places?

That's my biggest hurdle.

The local media - or at least the newspapers - are a joke at best as the media industry is becoming old and frail. The New York Times' decision to fire 500 workers, make their Website pay-based and after the debogle with Judith Miller ... well, they're not what they used to be.

About Judith Miller. It's obvious why the NYT let her rot in jail - for the bogus stories she wrote about Iraq and the phantom WMDs. She's one of the Bushies through and through. Her situation is a rare one in that I think she should have given up her sources (at least sought out permission to uncover them) given the nature of the investigation and for whom she was covering. The other day, she realized that she might have spoken with another source - whom she can't remember - after mysteriously finding another notebook.

Maybe the GOP ought to give Ms Miller the position vacated by Armstrong Williams - or at least officially give it to her.

As usual the White House is being tight-lipped about Miers. As it seems, the only qualification we know of is her being Evangelical. Of course she's white and wealthy. Whereas the situation with John Roberts discussing his religious beliefs was out of the question and all but forbidden, it's the ONLY thing Scott McClellan - or anyone for that matter - is willing to comment on. Dubya is taking on the role of the character Joe Isuzu from the car manufacturer's 1980's television commercials. Mr Isuzu was a sleazy (but funny) car salesman whose tag line was a smarmy "... just trust me ...".
Even the holy roller and other Ultra Right Wingers (who are sadly no longer a fringe group) question Dubya in his decision. Of course she'll be nominated and of course it will be shady.

Afterall, we're talking about Christians and the GOP. The base principles of both groups are Money, Power and Money.

I'm working on Website updates.
I'm removing the Cindy Sheehan section from my Website but the photos will remain on Flickr. I'm also removing the email, resume, and writing links and making a bio page instead for all of that.

Going in the place of the removals will be new sections - Providence, Boston and maybe one with motion or something like that. I'm open to suggestions and even a second set of eyes in the editing process.

It's Bad, you know

2005-09-07T21:35:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

I just heard that Haliburton is going to do the clean up in Louisiana. They're doing so well in Iraq that it only makes sense.

Bush was on vacation for two of the 4 days of the delay in action to the Hurricane. I guess there were no phones or means of communication in Crawford, TX.

The governor of LA was known to be an outspoken opponent of Bush and the Bush Boys War. There is strong speculation that the 4 day delay in planning any sort of relief effort was political backlash. The same can be said about the lack of planning and the neglect of the levee system.

When did the survivors of the Hurricane become refugees? They're tax-paying American Citizens, not from Darfur or the Sahel (which is another story all together).

Rush Limbaugh and other over-paid fools with their heads in the sand try to blame the hurricane and the aftermath on the people involved. Barbara Bush said something like "they were poor anyway ... now they have a good deal".

Why do people love this filth so much? I'll never understand why people vote so strongly against their own well being to keep these assholes in power.

The oil companies continue to make record profits and with the recent price gouging, there will be no end to it.
Where are the big corporations with donations? CocaCola and Pepsi with bottles of water, Procter & Gamble with Kraft food donations, Wal-Mart, Stop & Shop, and A&P companies with food and water donations ... they'll be happy to sell water or sell water for us to donate.

And of course, we have Pat Robertson's call for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, the president of Venexuela. Awesome.

Why is it that the ones who claim to be Moral and Right and Christian are anything but? When where Murder, Thuggery, Profiteering and any other American Family Value proper Christian Morlas?

I've never understood it. It seems like the ones who preach the loudest from the highest promintory need to heed their pontifications the most.

OK. Bush is calling for an investigation that he'll head up personally. Great, for a moment there, I thought someone Spineless, Evil and Corrupt was going to head the investigation. He'll have to dig a little for information since he missed a few days being on vacation.

Chertoff denied to Robert Siegel that anythign had happened. he said that reports of chaos in the aftermath were rumors. That was pretty funny considering Mr Siegel was speaking to a reporter in New Orleans in the middle of the mess. NPR wasn't the only organization to report on this. For some reason, however, FEMA and the military and the White House and Congress all were in the dark about anything happening.

On an unrelated note, R.L Burnside died the other day. He was a blues musician known for his loud and raw style. He did a great album with John Spencer Blues Explosion calles "A Ass Pocket of Whiskey". It's a loud, rough and raucous and recorded live in Burnside's Louisiana home. I'm not sure where he died but he'll be missed.

A Fork in the Road

2005-08-28T09:28:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

I'm not sure if this is relevant anymore ... or perhaps I don't believe it:

" From atop my Promontory, I can see the receding flood waters leaving a trail of broken homes, failed lives and lost souls. I escaped the most cruel of the ravaging tide's effects but I do show my share of scars and fresh lacerations.
After taking a step back to asses the aftermath I realized that I survived another devastation and came out ahead of where I was when the storm clouds first rolled in casting dark, evil and greasy shadows that stained the ground with filth and rotting debris.
All is well here and things are moving forward as planned.
Fuck you to everyone who got in my way and who tried to rip the skin from my back and face to cover their own excess largess and who purged the honor from my Name for their own gain. Fuck you all.
I will prevail. Madness, starvation, sickness - nothing will stop me.
And from atop my Promontory I will watch the savage sea wash the ground clean from your filth and degenerate treachery. I will watch foul and unwashed beasts more cruel than the darkest imagination of a revenge-crazed slave devour your unworthy human flesh as you writhe and scream in blinding, agonizing despair. They will plunder your Houses and humiliate your peers.
From atop my Promontory, I will prevail."

I wrote that in September 2004 with a heart full of ire and thorns. It seemed True and Right at the time but now, just about a year later, I have serious doubts.

I think I've done all I can here and I wonder where I'm supposed to be and what's supposed to happen. I'm repeating the same cycles over and over. I can see it with a small delay from a hazy and out of the way vantage point.

I managed to live 31 years and have nothing to show for it, personally, financially, professionally ...

Here, the Road forks. And here, at this time, in this place, I need to make a decision - not only which direction to go but if I should go at all.

Website Update

2005-08-21T20:40:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

I just updated my Website adding a new section of photos from a Cindy Sheehan vigil.

Next weekend or sooner, I should have another update in place. This one will include new beach photos, some people photos and maybe some other surprises.

Put your email address in the Notify Me thing so you'll know when I do updates!

My Pictures on MoveOn.org's Website

2005-08-18T17:19:00.001-05:00

Brian McGloin

I'm glad I went to the Vigil last night. I almost didn't go. It's good to get out and and be a part of the world around us and to take part in life.

Out of the 90 photos in the Flickr slide show on MoveOn's Website, I saw 2 of mine there. The photos are in good company.

So much needs to change and given my deep-rooted cynacism and distrust for all things GOP and what they have done to "American Values" and patriotism, I still feel that this Nation will be great again.

However, I think it will get worse first. The People will be forced to feed the Movement.

Here are The MoveOn Photos from the Vigil . Mine are in there someplace.

Vigil for Cindy Sheehan in Westport, CT

2005-08-17T21:36:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

Tonight in Westport, as well as many other places across the country, supporters of Cidy Sheehan gathered in a quiet candle light vigil in a show of support for her cause.

A little over 300 people stood on the north and south sidewalks of the Ruth Steinkraus-Cohen Memorial Bridge - it spans the Saugatuck River in Westport, carrying the Post Road - holding small signs illuminated by the warm glow of candles.

The signs expressed the holders' support for Cindy Sheehan in her efforts to get another meeting face-to-face with Dubya. Also expressed through simple text on the paper signs were concerns over the War, and soldiers dying.

At some point, a stereo-typical white trash kid drove through running red lights and hanging out of his huge, red SUV shouting some sort of unpatriotic jibberish about killing and war being good (why wasn't he in Iraq?) and then added something like " ... And I'm gonna run every fucking red light in this town!".

I'm sure his point was clearly understood by all in attendance. His banter went several steps further than pontification. it almost made me want to get some guns, beer and a bible and vote Republican.

Well, maybe not.

In another red car, a fat girl with a cigarette shouted something like "war is good! Why don't you support the War!?" as her tired car creaked past.

Click on the photo to see more pictures.
Other drivers-by simply inquired about the gathering. One guy in a grey, convertible Audi asked me who Cindy was. After I told him he almost seemed concerned. He drove off before I could hear the rest of what he said.

Still others showed support by beeping car horns and shouting as they drove by.

Go, Cindy, Go!

Click on the photo to see more pictures.
I'll add more phots on Satruday but there are a few there now as a teaser.

Misspellings and a craving for double gloucester

2005-08-16T21:30:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

I have a couple of errors on my Website. One was pointed out to me and the other I saw on my own.
Damnit.

No worries.
This weekend I should be able to produce some more work and do another update. I'll fix the errors then.
I was thinking of adding another section to take the place of the section I deleted: Agriculture.
Maybe something with movement or dogs, horses, chickens and a camel.

No word back from the Hour about the photo work. I'll send a follow up email either later tonight or tomorrow.
I need to get out of my present work but I need income - plus, I very much miss the newspaper work.
If I can find funding, I'd love to go to Iraq or Afghanistan as an independent journalist ...

Website Update

2005-08-15T21:48:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

I finally updated my Website. I was waiting to develop some color work so I could scan more work but I ran into a technical glitch.
I just used what I have for now.
This coming weekend I should have more work up.

In addition to my Website, I also add photos to Flickr (there is an orange link over there ~~> ) which is more of a dumping ground of photos. I have unlimited storage but only 2 GB of upload bandwidth per month. Bastards.

Lyman Orchards in Middlefield, CT

2005-08-11T20:06:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

I stopped by Lyman Orchards on my way home yesterday.

The Orchards and the surrounding hills are quite beautiful and very non-Connecticut in their landscape.
I need to stop back in September when it's still green but there isn't haze in the air.
Lyman Orchard Photos

Even the Pope needs clean skivvies

2005-08-09T21:17:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

Tonight was laundry night.

Computer problems prevented any work today. No, not the trusty Macs, nope. The typically useless Dell I use for my current (but temporary!) job.

In theory, tomorrow morning a shiny new/refurb Dell will be waiting at FedEx. My employer sent out the computer at 4 this afternoon instead of 8:30 when they knew about the problem. I know it takes a little while to gather the software and attend to any liscensing issues.
But 4?
Oh well.
They're paying me to wait.

SoNo Arts Thing

2005-08-06T21:23:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

Today we ventured to South Norwalk for the annual SoNo Arts Festival.

Here are some photos

I shot a bunch of photos with both my Nikon F4 and with a new Sony DSC-S40 digi camera.
For a cheap camera, the image quality and responsiveness are astounding. Look at the photos in the link above - you should be able to download a full-size image.
My only problem with the camera is it has no manual settings. However, the auto settings can be played with a bit.
Here is how I had the camera set:
Exposure compensation set to -1/3
Saturation=minus
sharpness=minus
contrast=minus
flash=off
ASA = 400
colorbalance=daylight/sun
and the LCD=OFF! I like the optical viewfinder better.

I was issued a Nikon D1h a little while back while at the Litchfield County Times/Housatonic Publications. I had to set the camera in a similar manner to get semi-decent image quality:
ev -1/3 or more, Adobe RGB colorspace, sharpening OFF and colorbalance set to daylight (or Flourescent or incandescent if needed).
The camera was durable but had a lot of design flaws. Some of them were fixed with custom settings, others just had to be dealt with.
This Sony camera has twice the file size and much better image quality. The batteries last much longer and I can fit it in my pocket easily. I just with the lens was wider.

While at the Festival, we walked around to various booths. As expected the white tents offered a variety of stuff from "fun art" to some very fantastic work.
One of the more fantastic offerings was from Zim Photography . I never got the woman's first name (I stupidly assumed it was on her card). Her photos were fantastic - and I never like anything I see. Even more strange, she actually spoke and had a great personality! We actually had a conversation. Her work shows that she has a sharp eye focused on the world around her. She utilizes a vast subject matter and presents it in a wonderfully simple and elegant style that is absolutely capivating. One can clearly see that she enjoys photogrpahy and also the world around her. Superlative work.

Another good showing was from Greg Stones Minature Watercolors. He does fantastic and quirky watercolors on a smaller scale. From what I remember, his paintings involve penguins and zombies and the occasional blue, naked girl. He has a fantastic eye for composition and illustration. Like some of the other artists at SoNo, we saw him in Westport at an arts festival a few weeks earlier. He does work that is different and fun without being kitsch (well, I mean bad-kitsch ... ) and it seems like he doesn't take the artwork very seriously. One has to be very confident and very skilled to be able to work like that. I don't mean sloppy and careless.
It's awesome work that puts just about all of the "serious" artists to shame - they need to learn from him.

The handcrafted Japanese lams from Lamps by Raul caught my eye. They're made from different papers and woods. In true Japanese fashion, they have an elegant beauty and a subtle but powerful design. The lamp we asked about was made with rice paper from Chinatown and oil-finished mahogany. The paper was red. Very red. Although the lamps looked similar, each was different and great in it's own way. I was impressed with the induviduality of each lamp and the craftsmanship. Added to the design and aesthetic qualities was an equally elegant price tag.

Tucked into a corner was Zuogeng Lu Watercolor. His work had a vibrant energy that seemed to move the paper to some hidden music only audible to the pigment soaked into the paper. The work had life and energy and weight. It was in the same family as the Weyeths and David Levine.

I neglected to write names down or take any notes - very out of character of me. At this point, I'll get the few names I remember wrong and I'm sure I'll leave a lot out.

The "artists" tend to hide behind their tents or be completely absent and I find that to be in bad taste. I don't know, maybe they think they're so good at it that people will just flock to them. I didn't see many people buying much art - not from the absentee artists anyway. Ms Zim was smart in her friendliness and so was Raul.

It was a good time with good music, interesting people and maybe next year, I'll have a booth.

Abandoned Factory in Norwich

2005-08-04T23:00:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

On East Main Street in Norwich there is an enormous factory that used to house the mighty Atlantic Packaging Company. It's still partially in use but mostly not. It sits there empty, rotting and forgotten.

I took a stroll through part of it - the part accessible off of 8th Street in Norwich - and of course shot some photos.
Norwhich Factory Photos!
Click on the link and it should go to the Flickr photo thing where the pictuires are stored. Also, take a look at the Exide Factory and Pleasure Beach photos.
These are just quick recon sort of pictures. I need to go back when I have more than a few minutes.

The factory is just over 1/4 mile long and rather wide. The parts in use are guarded but not ver well. It's sparsely employed these days.
The factory is a packaging manufacterer - the name escapes me at the moment - that used to employ 100's of people. Now a few machines do the same work of folding and cutting cardboard.

Anyone into architecture and/or history needs to visit Norwich, CT.

Let me know, I'll show you some good places.

Battle of the Convience Stores

2005-08-02T20:45:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

I saw these three nearly identical convience store/gas station/mini marts all next to each other in Norwich, CT.

I thought it would be funny if the employees from all three stores (one has a Dunkin Donuts in it and those employees are seperate from the other half of the building) suddenly burst into the street like somethign out of "West Side Story". Only instead of the Broadway-esque dancing, they were break dancing and doing Kung Fu and John Woo-influenced gun battles.

They would have to battle for superiority and the rights to the turf.

Photos, a blog and more

2005-07-30T16:07:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

I just looked at this blog on a PC and it's displaying strangely. Normally I use Safari on a Mac and it looks fine. I've never used a PC or any Microsoft products that worked the way they were intended. I'm spoiled by Mac (and Nikon!).

Next to the text are supposed to be the Archives with the Notify Me and the ads below that. Here, they're way down on the page.

I decided to change my Website a little. I'm limiting the sections to 20 photos with additional photos on Flickr . I'll also put additional photos there that don't fit in the sections on my Website in an effort to keep the number of photos to a more reasonable amount.

Such as this:

I've been developing and scanning film like a mad man these days. I'm still terribly behind but I'm making progress and producing some good work.

My day-to-day photos will soon be done with a digital camera in addition to the film cameras. Since they're mostly displayed on the Web it doesn't matter. In some ways, I'll be able to post a photos faster. If I had the means to develop all of the outstanding film I have and scan it all ... and keep up with daily shooting, I wouldn't even consider a digital camera.

Maybe they won't. The film cameras work fine and I just received a batch of film from B&H - some Fuji Press 400 color (one of my favorite color print films) and Ilford HP5+ black and white film.

If I had funding, I'd buy 2 Leica MP rangefinder cameras, one with a 24mm f2.8 and the other with a 50mm f1.4 or 75mm f1.4. When it comes down to brass tax, the camera doesn't matter really. The digi cams I could afford now (albeit barely) are of lower image quality and have fewer controls that what I would really want to have (Nikon D2x) so the trade-off for having some quick photos posted here is the lack of quality.

The way it is now, I have super image quality and versatility and the cameras are already paid for. However, one needs a repair and they all need a CLA (Clean, Lube, Adjust) which of course costs money.

There is no free way to do photography and most of any money spent is an expense - NOT an investment. Yes, even new digital gear is not an investment and no, spending $15,000 on new gear will neither suddenly make me a better photographer nor bring in business, contrary to what the advertisements say. 10 or even 5 years ago, the ads said the same thing about the current film cameras.

I plan to use more photos here and maybe elsewhere online as I produce more work. I'm shooting the same amount, just processing a lot of older film and current stuff.

Stay tuned ...

Wouldn't it be great to fly away?

2005-07-27T21:43:00.000-05:00

WiFi

2005-07-27T10:56:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

For some time now I thougt I should compile a list of WiFi hotspots.
Courtyard Marriot has free wifi - at least on West Town Street in Norwich.

The town of Middletown has it on Main Street as does Java Palooza, a coffee joint on Main Street.

I believe Danbury either has or will have soon wifi on Main Street at least near the Library.

NYC has it in the major parks.

In Norwich at 15 Town Street, or thereabouts, there is free, unsecured WiFI floating around. Park in the Gemini Auto parking lot as close to the red house as possible.

Every Starbuck's and Borders has WiFi but it's not free. It's a subscription service through T-Mobile.

In Bethel, CT on Greenwood Avenue, Molten Java has wifi that oozes out to the sidewalk.

The sandwich chain Schlotsky's (my spelling is an approximation) has free wifi at every one of it's locations.

Of course there are more. These are just the ones I know of off hand.

I need to make a better list. I even considered buying a wifi detecting deveice of some sort. They range greatly in price (I think they can be had for a reasonable amount) but are much better than opening up a laptop.

It would be great if you, my faithful readers, could add to my list - or tell me where a better one is published.

Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed, Sloth

2005-07-19T20:57:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

At night or around dusk and dawn, the City takes on a new life. It wears the cloak of artificial light bending and shaping the shadows into what they are not during the day.
For a brief time, it covers the unearthly sight of the downtrodden, polluted, neglected, corrupt and disastrously ugly monstrosities that line what once was pristine and beautiful marshes and coast line. They dot one's view from an equally ugly and polluted and grotesque display of careless self-centered greed, lust and self-righteous sense of clouded self worth - the Interstate Highway.

For a moment or two I forget about all of this. I lose myself in the shades of oranges, greens, purples, reds and blends shimmering in the water punctuated by the occasional Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry. I follow with my eyes the lines made from pipes, and massive steel tubes, brick structures and other means of belching rotting smoke and steam into the muggy night.

The night that no longer is ever dark.

I forget about all of this.

I forget about sitting in a restaraunt thinly disguised and a Call to Arms - a call for sloth, greed and wanton lust for food - for every 600 pound blob of fat. They sit there with handful of food oozing between their fat fingers. Fat rolls cover every part of their bloated bodies. The chair backs are on springs to accomodate these lecherous embarrasments of all things American.

As they pile empty plate after empty plate of of food into their mouths - elbows on the table, eating with their mouths open never stopping to breathe - they continue to shovel. The immense, repulsive skin-stretched whales attack the greasy mounds of 10,000's of calories with the type of zealous furvour saved for pulling oneself from the frigid winter waters of a lake after falling through the ice.
It would seem that their main goal is to consume.
It seems that our main goal as a once-mighty Nation is to consume. And that we do with an appetite greater than my imagination and understanding of complex numbers allows me to understand.

Staggering.

I mind wanders away from my excessively childish, cripplingly self-centered, stupid, clot of a coworker whom I am trapped in a gas-guzzling mini van all day. My mind wanders away from the endless rubber-stamp corporate chains of everything from bike shops to restaurants to porn stores.
My mind wanders away from the lack of work and any sort of jobs paying a minimal living wage compared to the astronomical cost of living - and it's rising at an exponential rate.
My mind wanders from that as I think about where I would rather be.
The constant feeling of agitation and the urge to drive a high-explosive-laden, stolen truck into every mall and shopping center recedes even for a moment.
I go back for a bit to my bike ride on Sunday morning through the misty pine and decidious forest in Trumbull and how at ease I was.

Calm. Relaxed.

I'm not an angry man nor am I jealous or greedy. But I can feel the negative energy or the lack of anything positive floating about.

It's all fake.

It's all corporate-owned.

We're just the scapegoats.

We don't count.

We're for sale.

The ignorant among us are happy about this.

I think the Deadly Sin of Anger should be replaced with Ignorance.

A kind word to Bill O'Reilly

2005-07-14T18:26:00.000-05:00

I sent this as an email to Bill O'Reilly, the yutz from Fox News.
The subject line was: "I completely agree with you!"

Actually, I don't.
You're a ratings-whore like the rest of the GOP and the Bush Regime. You sold out the Great Unwashed. If you were a man - or at least a real person - you wouldn't (poorly) fabricate "news". Of course your target audience are the proudly ignorant, self-centered, fat, lazy Americans the rest of the world disdains with tremendous Gusto.

When did the Principles this once-Great Nation were founded upon become Anti-American or Treasonous?

How does an obvious charlatan such as you and your network (part of the GOP's propaganda machine) so successfully fleece so many people - effectively slightly less than half of this Nation.

At some point, this will all end in a spectacular display of failure and show of deception. Or maybe it won't.

If it does, I'll be one of the many urinating on your grave and celebrating the Death of the GOP.

Brian McGloin
Bridgeport, CT

HST the Champion of Anger

2005-07-04T09:32:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

In a world full of proudly fat, self-serving, uneducated, lazy filth our departed Hero was a one-off. Too bad ...
People are stupid. They want to believe that the moron they were fleeced into voting for is Honest and True and represents the American Values and American Way that our grandparents believed in. Of course those days are long gone.
The GOP is working on cutting the funding for NPR. In the eyes of some this is bad, in the eyes of others, this is awesome - get the government's hand out of the last bastian of accurate information. Unless, of course the FCC decides to pull NPR's license for being too "unAmerican".
I imagine HST had Anger and Fury in his heart. In fact, I hope he was drunk on the power of it.
In these Strange and Ugly times, it's good to step away from the Circus - away from the isolated, corporate-sponsored, oil and plastic laden lives we lead and take a look at what is happening.
Why aren't more of us like HST?

I need a new Direction

2005-06-07T22:43:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

For a few weeks now - maybe months - I muttered sarcasticly and angrily about the current goings on of the GOP and the (very) obviously doomed path We as a Nation are stomping. I sat down to write my thoughts a few times but I couldn't get the thoughts down.
Maybe I was distracted. Maybe I was too unorganized. Maybe there was just too much or too little.
I don't know - it just didn't happen.

If one were to read my past posts or see the PDF of my writing on my Website, one could easily deduce where my socio-political ideologies reside so for once I'll stay away from that. I'm writing this as I think so bear with me here.
I feel stuck in this place in my life.
I feel like I should be doing more but I don't knwo what, exactly. I have the urge to go someplace but I don't know where. It's not a feeling of paranoid flight or a desperate escape but a desire to find or discover something. Man, this sounds hokey.

Often I feel disjoined from this once-great Nation and from Americans in general - or at least whom I've met.

All I ever wanted to be as a child and a grown-up is/was a journalist and artist. I'm fascinated with the world around me and I have a nearly endless energy to propel myself forward.
Or at least that's what I want to do.
I have lots of excuses: I don't have funding, there's no work, no one cares, et cetera.

Well, so what?

As things are now, I'm just getting by. I work 6 days a week doing work that doesn't matter. Even worse for me is that I've done worse. I've been homeless (not a street-walking bum. I worked my ass off) I've gone hungry, I slept more cold nights alone than with people and wondered how I would make another week. I live in a rotten, corrupt, self-serving city that should be burned to the ground, covered with earth and forgotten about. Well, it's mostly forgottem about.
However, I enjoy my life. I do. I live in a very nice part of that rotting city in a very nice apartment with a fantastic Stacey. I'm in awe of the joy and life and beauty around me.

But, it's not enough.

I feel like I need to be doing something important but I don't know what and I don't know how to find out.
Every day or maybe every week, there is more bad news about the war in Iraq (what a mess - based on lies), about Civil Liberties and the sinking economy, about another crooked thug appointed to another important position.
it seems like the people most affected care the least.

I just want to get out of here. Not to run and hide or even to find a comfortable place. No, I want to run toward the chaos, the decay, the ugly people and places not seen on Fox News.

I want to get away from the self-centered greed, the proud laziness and ignorance, the paranoia and other American Virtues.
I need to do something better - and I don't mean making a pile of cash.

There is so much more going on - facts, details, places ... that Story that was told by Frank Cappa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, W. Eugene Smith is still current. Sebastiao Salgado, James Nachtwey and Tyler Hicks now and Larry Burrows, David Seymour (these are a few names from the top of my head of photographers I admire) in years past all reported and added to the story.
What do I want?

Not fame and glory but a chance to work in the less-than-glamourous, forgotten places on Earth outside of the reach of the 30-second soundbite War. Not just a photo of another starving but somehow beautiful kid in need of that pocket change we waste on a cup of coffee ...

We all know that the GOP will win eventually and this once-great nation will become a Crisitan version of Iran or the USSR only the rich here will be MUCH more wealthy and a much smaller percentage and the poor will be much poorer and a much greater majority. And they'll like it that way because it will be for the benefit of the People and the Good of the State.
I need to get out before the entire circus crashes in on itself in a firey mass of burning canvas, charred fat and forgotten promises.
All I want is a chance.

Cold Dead Ground

2005-05-10T20:41:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

Pleasure Beach off of the coast of Bridgeport, CT wears an old silence that reminds me of forgottenness, mismanagement and death.
Along one of the overgrown driveways that lead around what once was a great midway of an amusement park ( or maybe housing, I'm not sure - both were in the area) are a large group of mysterious dead trees. I wonder what killed them.

Dead trees scratching at the distant clouds above - broken limbs greyed, bleached from the humid sun and firce winter weather ripping holes in the memories of those who laughed, smiled, loved and cried under the once-mighty canopy of lush green. What is left of their skin lay in pieces littering the untouched ground.
Neglected, forgotten and old, the trees are serenaded into an endless slumber by hollow, icy winds of the Long Island Sound whispering their songs of death.
The trees reach toward the distant sky as if they were the dead souls of the island hopelessly clawing with their last breath of life from a rotting sarcophogus deep below the cold, still earth. Clawing to break out. Clawing from the grip of their long-forgotten death.

Dubya's Press Conference - the Tale of a Babbling Redneck Puppet

2005-04-28T20:36:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

Oh boy ... I saw Dubya's press conference moments ago.

I have a few issues:

If Bush wants to set up private accounts to bolster perceived short comings in Social Security - at a cost of one trillion or more out of our pockets - by reducing revinue to Social Security ... these private accounts will be backed by the US Government but investment by the Government in Social Security isn't backed by anything but "a filing cabinet full of I.O.U's" ... Bush has no plan. It seems like he has some secret aganda - a plan or a deal with a financial brokerage of some sort.

And Bush made what I HOPE is a faux pas. He said something like finding the people who cause harm to Americans and get them out of harm's way.
Was this just a blunder or a slip?

He also said he didn't pay any attention to polls equating the polls to a "a dog chasin' his tail...".

George Stephanopolous, whom I actually respect, did a good job of poingint out flaws and contradictions in the press conference however he lost a point or two when he said the President was on top of his game tonight.

To me, it sounded like a dumb redneck puppet.

Our grandparents had to dig bomb shelters to protect them from a false threat the government instilled with propaganda.
We, in this later generation, have a more real threat. We need to build GOP shelters.

This can't be Good or Right

2005-04-27T18:18:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

I'm bothered these days by what is happening in the Senate. The thought of any one political party having complete control over the entire government is unsettling - it is
against most of what this once-great and hopeful nation stands. The idea of the GOP gaining such power is disturbing at its most comfortable level.
Frist and DeLay need to be stopped.
It seems, however, that the media spotlight dimmed on other crooked Republicans (Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld...) to shine more brightly on some new thugs.
Of course all Republicans.
I'm glad they represent the best interest of Americans and darn those silly Democrats for obstructing the Real Americans who just want to move government along.

We're doomed.

Soon Education will be eliminated. Science will be outlawed. The Media will be fully state-run instead of just its whipping post and low-rent prostitute. Freedom, we we used to know it, will be auctioned off - or what's left will be auctioned off.

Assume false identities and horde Cash. Learn to farm and make what you need. Prepare for canibalism.

Judge Brown and the End of Freedom

2005-04-18T19:10:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

I sent this letter to three local newspapers: The Hour in Norwalk, CT; The Minuteman in Westport, CT; and Fairfield Citizen News in Fairfield, CT. I imagine it won't be published.
Also, after sending it to three editors, I realized the present wording refers to Judge Brown as a Whore. Oops - that was an error. A degenerate Thug maybe but I doubt a whore.
They'll be kicking in my door at any moment ...

To the Editor:
I'm concerned about the future of our Great Nation.
Judge Janice Rogers Brown is a lecherous Thug like the rest of the Whores, Degenerates, and Perverts in the GOP who are hacking our Rights and Freedoms away with the giddy elation of a child playing in the light first warm summer day. DeLay, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush (I and II), Rice and the rest are a disgrace and flagrant misrepresentation of what is Good and Decent and Right.
The GOP throws around terms like "Freedom", "Patriotism" and "moral". They accuse everyone else of lying, cheating and sealing while they have their hand in the cookie jar. They know nothing of those three terms nor do their followers - at least I hope their followers are just too dumb to know better.
And the Press is complicit. Everythign is Fine. OK. No worries - the world hates us, we're in a financial situation that should make even the most inept of accountants blush but, all is well. We made a muddled mess in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East that makes England's mess in India and France's mess in Vietnam (or OUR mess there!) look like well planned family gatherings.
Our rights to choose (abortion or not ... ), our rights to die with dignity, Social Security, et cetera are slowly being hacked away. The Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, Minimum Wage ... all at great peril and doomed to be butchered and twisted like No Child Left Behind is doing with Education.
The appointment of Judge Brown is just another step for the ultra Right Wing who seem to want a Christian version of Iran or North Korea.
This is very unChristian.
Or maybe it is. I'm not a religious man.
As a fellow Citizen, Patriot, Journalist and most of all American, I'm exceedingly cranky about what's going on - and NOT going on.
We the People cannot keep heading in the direction we're headed. We're doomed to disaster and we'll have no one to help us.
We all should become familiar with cannibalism and further treachery.

Senator Dodd and Resolution 138

2005-04-12T21:48:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

US Senator Dodd replied to my email - or maybe his office did. Either way, it was strangely almost personal sounding as if a human wrote the letter. Senator Dodd's reply informed me of Resolution 138. Read on and pack your bags.
We're doomed - I see the White Horse ...

Dear Dr. McGloin:

Thank you for contacting me regarding judicial nominees and
the use of the filibuster. It was a pleasure to hear from you.

I share your concerns about this issue. As you may know,
under the Constitution, the Senate is charged with the duty to
provide "advice and consent" to the President with regard to his
nominees. This function is particularly important regarding the
nomination of federal judges, who are appointed for life. I have
voted to confirm conservative as well as liberal nominees.
However, I also believe that it is the Senate's responsibility to
ensure that members of the federal judiciary possess an
appropriate judicial temperament and respect longstanding
American values such as equal opportunity and the right to
privacy. For that reason, I have supported many nominees with
whose views I have disagreed, because I believe they demonstrated
the qualities that, ultimately, are vital and essential to being
a good judge: independence, fairness, thoughtfulness, and respect
for mainstream legal thought.

At the heart of the current controversy regarding nominees
is President Bush's decision to nominate judicial activists
possessing a far right-wing conservative ideology. While it is
reasonable to expect that a President will nominate judges whose
philosophies are similar to his own, it has also been a long-accepted
practice for Presidents to send to the Senate moderate
nominees capable of winning bipartisan approval. Unfortunately,
President Bush has nominated a substantial number of candidates
whose views, and judicial practices, are well outside the
mainstream.

I am also gravely troubled by Republican proposals to
effectively eliminate the rights of a substantial number of
Americans by making it easier for nominees with extreme views to
be confirmed. On May 9, 2003, Senator Bill Frist (R-TN)
introduced S.Res. 138, which would amend Senate Rule XXII, to
change the number of votes required to invoke cloture, or cut off
debate, on an executive branch nomination. This proposal
threatens to allow the majority to turn the Senate into a rubber
stamp for a president's chosen nominees. It would fundamentally
undermine the Senate's role in our constitutional democracy, cede
enormous power to the Executive branch of government, and upset
the deliberate system of checks and balances intended by the
Framers of our great nation. To change the rules of the Senate
in this manner would do lasting damage not only to this
institution, but to the Republic that it has served so well for
over two hundred years.

Thank you again for contacting me. If you would like to stay
in touch with me on this and other issues of importance, please
visit my web site at http://dodd.senate.gov and subscribe to my
online newsletter, the Dodd Digest. Please do not hesitate to
contact me again if I can help you in any way.

Sincerely,

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD
United States Senator

Senator Dodd:
Thank you for informing me of Resolution 138.
With work and my other projects consuming most
of my time, I have trouble keeping up with world
news and events.
The GOP is running rampant and no one seems to care or want to stop them.
We're doomed.
Maybe Hunter S. Thompson was right when he checked-out. He was outraged by Nixon and Reagan but Bush H.W. and Bush W. and their handlers drove him over the edge - or maybe he saw Death on the White Horse. Maybe it wasn't Hell who followed but the GOP. And maybe it wasn't Death on the white horse, it was Bush.
He came for our souls and minds.

Dr, Brian G. McGloin

Meyers and Foul Vermin

2005-04-07T20:47:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

Senator Dodd:

I hear some senators are actually considering William Meyers III for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
This is a bad bet any day even with borrowed money on solid terms.
Things are getting uglier and uglier for those of us not blindlingly wealthy or Proudly Uneducated and Ignorant of the ways of the GOP.
I must admit a slight lean to the left but I don't follow any Party Line or any school of thought other than my own observations.
Please keep one more foul, Corporate-sponsored thug from polluting the Government.

Dr. Brian G. McGloin

I have so much to write my Congressman about. I'll just write a little at a time. I'm sure no one actually reads any of this - especially rants like the one above. It's not abrasive enough for my taste. In fact, it's too polite and benign.
Fear not.
After a string of my letters, he'll hope to read about Death on a White Horse. He'll hope for Hell.

A letter to Senator Dodd

2005-04-06T21:43:00.000-05:00

Brian McGloin

Senator Dodd:

Frist's attempt to dump the 200 year old Filibuster is disgusting - even for the GOP, who are a bunch of degenerate swine on their good days. The better among them are spineless thieves with maggots for eyes and silk underwear lined with fresh 100's.
Generally I'm not in favor of the new 'everybody wins' methods to reduce the playing field, but in this situation, I'm absolutely in favor of giving everyone in Congress a say. That's why they're there - not to make money. This was forgotten long ago, but maybe someone on the Hill is watching my back.
Judicial appointments, and other high-powered appointments, must be considered on the merits and qualifications of those in question and not on Greed and foul Politics. I know this is confirmed to the Fourth Estate and the People, but only fools and thieves and liars believe this. They vote GOP and have no soul, Patriotism, or minds.
I don't vote GOP and I pay attention.
Lately I've been rather pissed-off with the buggery going on in Washington and the witless thugs at the helm in the Press are no better.
The entire System is headed for a Major Crash and the rest of the World will stand there gawking gleefully at us while pointing and poking us with sharp sticks.

Dr. Brian G. McGloin

I discovered his Webforum to submit opinions. Oh yea. It lists several subjects and luckily leaves an "other" topic. Awesome.
I'm certain my comments will be ignored but it's my Civic Duity to antagonize my Senator and to question Authority.
I'm a Patriot - not one of the morons screaming about "morals" and other faceless arbitrary nonsense. Real Patriots do what is better for the People, not a fringe group or a group like the GOP/Church who are bent on self-fulfillment and Greed and misaligned, clouded versions of Right and Wrong.
It makes no sense and seems to be a ticket straight to complete System-wide Failure.

Sea Gulls and Erosion of Time

2005-03-28T22:09:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin
A large seagull crowed angrily as the violent sea air lurched the bird's wings upward and slightly back. With tremendous pride and grit, the mighty gull pointed his beak into the setting sun and rode the fierce gale high to the furthest reaches of my eyesight and off out to sea.
The wind howled around my ears and blew extraneous tears to the corners of my uncovered eyes. The cold does this sometimes.

GOP and the End of the Fun

2005-03-25T12:52:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

I have a few things in mind as I sit in my Mobile Command Center in a secure but non-disclosed location in the Nutmeg State.

I believe Congress is setting up to approve Federal Judges of some sort or another - Supreme Court? Federal Appeals? I must confess my ignorance here. What I do know is that our Freedom and Way of Life is in jeapordy.
Deregulation of the Media was the begining - or at least one big step forward for them. A step backward for us.

Holy shit, Bubba. What next? Mandatory Prayer? Burquas? Morality Police? I have a feeling one day we'll see those come to light. Our grandchildren face the possibility of living in a 'Christian' version of North Korea or Iran. A closed, ultra-right wing dictatorship (or maybe a Theocracy). Slowly, one law, one act, one right wing nut on the Supreme Court, one complacent newspaper at a time. Slowly. One day we'll wake up to find we're choking in the black tar binds of 'moral' oppression.

We'll be a Rogue Nation. Maybe we already are.
We fit the M.O. Whay not? Who cares? We're making money. Right?

Are you a millionaire yet?

Congress is butting into people's personal lives - making 'moral' laws involving feeding tubes in brain-damaged women. The GOP is working on outlawing Filibusters in Congress. Decency Laws are on the books. Shield Laws - the Laws that protect we evil and honest Journalists - are being viewed with a treacherous eye by the GOP. The Administration broke the Law twice with the recent deceptive practices of hiring bogus journalists to write bogus stories about seriously flawed and one-sided GOP Agenda policies like No Child Left Behind and Social Security. Bush's plan - I mean his new gimick for fucking us out of money, he has no Plan - is another step to sell the People to Corporations. First our Health, Schools, and Prisons were sold; then our Media and sources for fair and accurate information were sold; then the Military was sold (this might have been sold earlier - this isn't as exact timeline) now our old age is up on the auction block.

Remember, they still work for Us. We, the People. Well, maybe not so much these days. But they used to.

Add this to the Quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't think our Secratary of State should have an oil tanker named for her. I don't think D. Rumsfelt should be let off the hook or swept under the Press rug. He needs to be fired - at least. I have more severe ideas but I'll save them. Bush and his handlers need to go. Half of this Nation (by population) and the rest of the World hate the Administration

Where will the Rednecks, Hillbillies and Military/Holy Rollers be when the Fun stops. Well, I guess the Proudly Stupid will be fine as long as the steady supply of Budweiser, McDonald's, Wild Turkey, guns and television keep rolling. The Blindingly Wealthy (the Proudly Stupid, of course, are gleefully lining the pocket of the Blindly Wealthy and they like it that way!) will be fine almost no matter what.
Where does that leave the rest of us? We, the People need to form a More Perfect Union.

Nuke the Park City

2005-03-24T20:20:00.000-06:00

I'm sick of this degenerated, acerbic city of filth, whores and foul beasts. Burn it to the ground, char every scrap and splinter to black, chalky soot. Grind it all to sand.
Round up 90% of the population - theives, murderers, rapists, pimps, hustlers and people of lesser sects - and slowly incinerate them or perhaps gas them. Maybe put a few to work tending the ovens and digging open, stench-ridden pits to dump the ashes and debris. Put the worthless filth to work removing the garbage they throw on the streets, in the water and the unholy pollution that slither from their unwashed loins and suckle fom the nipple of the Greater Society. Remove them - they are no longer of value.
I have anger in my eyes and hatred of the most treacherous kind in my heart.
Shotguns are cheap - shells are even cheaper if one knows the Right People. A mixture of gasoline and alcohol in a glass bottle with a burning rag hanging out makes a very cheap and quick party favor.

I'm fed up.

Our freedoms are being stripped away and the Stupid White Trash, Holy Rollers and Hill Billies (aka Republicans) are proud to move to a very comfortable facist state. It's happening slowly - we won't see any major changes. No - slowly. An Act here, a Law there ... Deregulation, Shield Laws ... slowly.
And add to that another useless group - the (for lack of a Proper term) pimp thug gangster types. They, too need to be incinerated. Or build a wall and give them guns, cheep beer and lots of ammunition. Lock the gates and walk away. Give it a week and fire-bomb the place. Grind their lecherous women and children into Low-Grade sausage to feed to prison inmates.

Its time to start a Revolution.

Fuck being politically correct. We're drowning in a quagmire (sort of like Iraq) of red tape, Corporate Greed, selfishness, proud Ignorance and poor manners.

Let the Dirty Hippies stand around with signs getting drunk and high - let them stay safely in control of the big Alcohol and Tobacco corporations they support. Let them stay in control of the Drug Cartels and crooked governments they so gleefully endorse. Let then stand there wiht the signs and silly protest chants.

We need to fight fast and dirty from the Inside. Kill our way out.

Target. Assasinate. Fight. Revolt.

Be angry. Be focused. Be driven.

Revolt.

Canon, cannon and a canon

2005-03-16T11:39:00.000-06:00

I realized recently a few things:
The first thing is how crappy PCs and anything running Windows actually is.
The second thing I realized is how much of a genius Bill Gates really is for getting so many people to continiously buy and use his crappy opperating system. Maybe he's more like an evil genius - at least he and Melida Gates give a lot of money away.
The third thing I realized - and like the PC thing, this was really a confirmation of what I already knew - is that Canon cameras really are junk. Maybe they're acceptable at best - certainly not deserving of the hype they receive.

In Manhattan, there is the strong possibility that a 30-year-old sculpture lovingly called The Wall might be removed in the name of advertising. Art being replaced by more advertising. I guess in some circles this is a good thing but to the Community at large it's a bad day.

On an unrelated note, take a look to the right of page. You'll see I added a place to add your email address if you wish to be notified of updates.
For now, I don't follow any schedule or have any deadlines. That should change in the future as my personal life gets settled a bit.

Don't forget to call your senator and remind him/her to vote in favor of sheild laws for the Press and to not let the Administration shove the current budget down our throats without the proper time to mull it over.

Thank you for reading.

I was Born an Explorer

2005-03-03T08:37:00.000-06:00

In my youth (from which I am not far) I was more drawn to old, abandoned places and anywhere a story stood dormant in forgotten dust, broken glass and peeling paint than anything new, shiny and anonymous.
I remember a few abandoned houses in Danbury, CT and the odd farm or two in Tilghman and St Michaels, MD. I'm fascinated by old churches, abandoned mental institutions.
I love to stand alone in these places and listen. I listen to the nothingness, or maybe creaking doors, singing and fluttering birds. I try to piece together what happened, where the people went.
I recently adventured to Pleasure Beach in Bridgeport, CT. That was a thrill. I'm going back when the snow melts.
Yesterday I checked out what seem to be abandoned dormatories or barracks of some sort - maybe just old government housing. There are a few buildings in a cluster sort of inbetween the slick Black Rock neighborhood of Bridgeport and the crappy industrial are. Not long ago, this neighborhood was over run with crime, drugs and a lot of murders. One can see the scars in the buildings, roads and people from when the life was ripped from what was a beautiful city.
Most of the windows to the buildings are covered with plywood and the doors are very securly bolted shut.
Not all of them, of course. In one building, a door was pryed open and the window in the stairs above it was also. This let a rare bit of daylight into the building and called me closer. Many of the basement doors are open and don't seem very inviting upon a distant look. This one, however seemed a little better. I took a photo from the doorway of the shot hall infront of me - trash strewn about, paint and plaster from the walls on the floor.
I stepped in.
I felt the wooden floor give a little. I took another photo forward into the hallway - it curves a little after goiing up a few stairs - and I took a photo up the staircase. I left just after that.
This place is one I wouldn't go in alone and maybe I should look up information on. I'm sure I can find floor plans or something similar.
The other day, I ventured into the factory on the Post Rd in Fairfield. It's on the western side of the downtown area (on the right heading toward Westport).
The ceiling of this place was nothign more than a steel skeleton where glass and wood used to be. Strangely enough, old exhaust fans are still there and turn with the breeze.
On the brick exterior walls is some grafitti and a few beer cans and other trash strewn here and there. Some ceiling-height trees took room in the concrete floor. I wandered around a bit but I really want to go back when the snow melts so I can get a better idea of what I'm walking on and I think the pictures will be better.
Around here, the population is so dense and everything changes so fast, it's an adventure to find some forgotten place. And even more of an adventure to find one that isn't sealed with concrete and bricks like the former great industrial areas of Bridgeport.
And as an added bonus, in the areas where those former concrete and steel icons of industrial might are waiting to fall into their own basement graves, one can leave a car or dead hooker one doesn't wish to own any more. Drop it off and walk away.

Hunter S Thompson died on Sunday. He was 67.

2005-02-21T09:16:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

I was deeply saddened but mostly shocked at the news of Hunter S Thompson's death on Sunday night.
Here is a link to the Denver Post story. The NY Times' story is dull and has errors.

Among other things (good or ill) Thompson was a champion for truth and freedom. Arthur Miller, who passed recently, was also such a champion - even going before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities during the McCarthy era. And the NY Times Sunday Connecticut section ran an appallingly bad story on him.

Thompson was a hero and a disastrous scourge - sometimes simultaneously - who influenced my life and writing. Unlike him, I never took a drink, or did any drugs and I never smoked. He did all of these with a gusto that, I hope, was over-emphasized.

Thompson acknowledged that he should have been dead a few times over and many of us thought he was somehow bestowed with immortality - or maybe too weird to stop and too strong to die. That reminds me of a line from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which I never get right. It was referring to the movie's fictional character Raoul Duke based on Thompson's personal attorney (whose name I forget). Now that I think of it, the line may be autobiographical also. It was something like: "...there goes one of God's prototypes, too crazy to live, to weird to die..." I need to review that book again.

The world lost a Hero and a Champion on Sunday. And now I imagine there will be a serious glut of Wild Turkey and high-powered blotter acid.

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2723492,00.html

Drawbridge

2005-02-18T18:37:00.000-06:00

The text below is the begining stage of a story I'm working on. It's fiction derived from memory, reality and other sources. It's not very developed yet and I have two ideas where to take the story. The outline here has two memory/flashback parts in with the 'present-day' thing. The first paragraph is a look back and the last paragraph is also.
At the moment, there aren't definite names other than "boy, he, and she" - I apologie for that.

Here it is. Some feed back would be nice but there is no pressure. I apreciate the time taken to read this:

From a window the car arriving in the driveway is visible under the canopy of lush green trees. The gravel of the driveway made the welcoming crunching sound of shifting stones.
"I see a car" announced the boy as if reading a script. He stood with both hands at his sides.
"Shall I notify the authorities?" The boy inquired speaking in a guarded tone turning toward her.
She looked at him with a small sideways smile, replying "no, you know who that is".
She looked back toward the approaching car and lightly touched the window pane. With her right hand she held the curtain back to the window frame.

He found himself standing at the foot of the bridge in awe over the force that destroyed the once mighty span. He walked slowly up the approach ramp of the bridge where the now-idle bridge tender's house sits empty, toward the span. He stood at the entrance to the steel deck that used to span the small narrows separating the island from the mainland.

Bridge of twisted steel broken at the point where the halves of the span meet - it's a drawbridge. The mighty span hangs broken and sad to the right, it's end in the water, the mechanical parts partially working - partially moved by the force of the water. The narrows below is choppy, rain and wind starts.
The steel is painted white and shows bits of rust in the corners.

His mind wandered again as the wind picked up. The gentle breeze developed to gale force. He closed the front of his coat. Rain is tapping on his eyes and collecting in his right ear.
He stopped for a moment while closing the storm flap over the zipper - securing the snap at the bottom and flattening the Velcro flap up to the collar. He made sure the collar was closed to the top and not folded down around his neck. Whenever he does this he gets the image of a sea-thrashed sailor competing in an off-shore race. He sees himself there on the deck or at the helm.
Looking closely at the deep blue color of the Nylon fabric and the embroidered logo on the left wrist near the cuff he took a quick mental account of where the coat has been: Dog saliva from petting dogs being walked at the beach, wind-driven sea spray from the Long Island Sound and the Chesapeake Bay, Ice, snow, bone-crushing rain, mind-numbing cold and everywhere in between. His mind continues to wander around the coat: At one point, ski jumpers were flying over him while wearing this coat, swimmers in a swim meet splashed him turning in their lanes, a forgotten island off of the coast of Connecticut and its cottages and buildings were explored, thousands of photographs were shot in all kinds of weather under all circumstances, underground, in the air ... back to the present moment.

He takes a step toward the side of the bridge and looks at the broken skeleton, studying with his eyes and hands the rivets and bolts in the bent steel.
He leaned down and grabbed a hold of the steel and stepped over the edge of the bridge onto the structure below. At this point he is a step away from the embankment leading to the sea below.
He climbed slowly toward the angry sea, placing his feet on the wet steel and holding with his hands.

The steel moved almost crushing his hands. Moving just in time, he grabbed another member and for some reason, it also moved, and another. It was as if the bridge was alive and was resisting him. He found a rest on a platform and looked above him to a series of bent cables and conduit deformed from the impact. The bridge did actually move, especially during bad weather.
"That was dumb" he quietly scolded himself. "I should know better than that - to climb down without looking, what if one of those cables was electrified, what if ... ". He let the thought wander off on it's own.

He looked across the narrows to the island. "How strange it is to look across the water and see a bridge in the way" he thought to himself wondering if he said that aloud or to himself. He looked up and saw sky where a bridge should be, a seagull caught his eye.

Below him on the banks of the narrows, the sea was alive and angry pounding furiously against the fence lining the edge of the dirt area where storage trailers were parked like faded blue blocks.

His mind wandered back to a dusty town they visited too long ago to possibly have actually happened. It was just after they met and they were there for one reason or another - the details are hazy - maybe to see a show or visit someone.
They had to barter for way too much for a warm, flat cola.

Football - The Great Ad Campaign.

2005-02-06T18:06:00.000-06:00

I fail to see how football is a sport. It's an Americanized version of rugby dumbed down and simplified for Americans - it's basically an adcampaign to sell beer, pizza and ridiculous clothings and accesories emblazoned with team colors and logos. Training for football players involves eating steaks, drinking beer and slapping the wife and girlfriend around (don't forget all of the ass-grabbing and crotch-feeling). It's not a sport, it's a joke - part of the great hoax to keep the Dumb White Trash entertained so they don't ask too many questions.

Don't get me started on baseball, WWE 'wrestling' or NASCAR.

Pleasure Beach - Bridgeport, CT

2005-02-04T18:08:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

Pleasure Beach, an island just off of Bridgeport to the city's eastern side and partially in Stratford used to be the place to go during the hay days when there was an amusement park and entertainment.
In 1996 the one and only way to and from the island burned mysteriously cutting off pedestrian and car traffic. The City of Bridgeport had to employ ferries to get the people back to the main land. Bridgeport has fallen a great deal since the days when it was a strong force in industry, commerce and all things involving money. The City had no money to repair or replace the bridge so the island was 'temprarily' closed, the leases on the island's cottages cancelled (some are technically in Stratford, some in Bridgeport). The Island was left to decay and return back to nature.
The island isn't exactly an island.

Pleasure Beach connects to a small, sandy strip of land dotted with small trees and lush sea grass, that makes Long Beach in Straftord.
One can walk across this land bridge of sorts to the island. The mile long strip of land terminates at Pleasure Beach with a two-cable fence ( small piles driven into the ground to form a line of stumps about a meter high with two hefty cables strung along the piles to make a fence or barrier of sorts) and a sign that says something like someone is watching the island via closed circuit television and Web cams. O.K., whatever.
I stepped over a low part of the fence and onto the island.
Immediately I found an eerie but strangely fascinating aura in what seemed to be a hasty retreat. In some of the beach front cottages, childs' toys lay idle faded from nearly 10 years of forgotten, sand-blown isolation. Same with the houses. They were all in good shape as if everyone happened to be out of town at the same time - which they were - but were to return. No one was returning home.
The small road that in some places was also the driveway, was slowly sinking and crumbling giving way to grass, trees and earth. Untouched but melting snow drifts took refuge in the shade where summer residents used to relax after a long day at the beach or amusement park.
This trip I didn't venture very far onto the island because I got there a little late in the day. Next time I'll arrive in the morning and explore much more of the island.
Anyone want to go?

The fine line between Journalism, blogs and making money...

2005-02-02T10:16:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

Where is the fine line between accuratley reporting news and information and reporting for profit or other coersive reasons?
I think some make the naieve assumption that newspapers aren't profit-driven businesses, basing editorial coverage on the Advertising Department and not on ... well, editorial worthiness.
Housatonic Publications, a subsidiary of the great, evil Journal-Register Corporation, was especially good at promoting their bottom line editorial policies.

Bloggers should have the protections that journalists in more traditional media enjoy.
When local newspapers stop covering Boy Scout bake sales and kayak lessons offered by a local proprietor for a fee and when bloggers stop covering news and offering unfiltered opinions, then maybe they should not have protection.

I heard it said that dissent is the highest form of Patriotism. Ignorance and largasse are not American values - well, they weren't in the begining but they seem to be now.

More on this later.

The Ghosts in the Machines

2005-01-20T20:15:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

Around Bridgeport and New Haven, Connecticut, the red brick skeletons of a former life spent manufacturing wither away to empty, open-air morgues of a time older than our memories or the memories of our parents.
The buildings' large, dusty windows are perforated - the frames rusted shut, the hardwear missing or broken too long ago to even forget - anything copper or aluminum was stripped away by looters who have since died of old age. The floors are coated with snow (in the winter), dust and the skeletons of dead birds. The walls are green and black with mildew if any are even standing. The great machines that were the heart of the buildings either now hold bird nests or were melted down a long time ago. The workers who were the soul died anonymously of old age before the looters.
From the Interstate, they look awful and decayed to the point where it's not possible to think of these broken, rotting hulks of once-proud, once-productive buildings as anything but dead. But if one looks closely, one can still see the ghosts in the machines and hear the howls, screams and moans of not only the long-forgotten workers but of the long-forgotten factory.

Teodoro Obiang

2005-01-20T18:28:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

I'm in the midst of applying for the W. Eugene Smith Fund with its additional Chapnick Fund. This is a photojournalism grand for the pursuit of humanitarian and human condition work - much like W. Eugene Smith did often at the expense of his own career.

Teodoro Obiang, President of Equitorial Guinea on Africa's west coast, makes Saddam Husein look like Jimmy Carter high on ether. But unlike Hussein, Obiang isn't an American installation. But, much like Iraq and the Middle East, Central and South America, Equitorial Guinea is an oil-rich nation and is run by a self-serving and vicious dictator. In 1995 (1998?) this arid nation found it's oil...

The people are horrendously impoverished, uneducated, and malnourished. the government buildings are squalid and the West African nation has very little, if any, infrastructure.
However, Obiang lives a very lavish lifestyle and dubbed himself president for life.
Of course he is pals with the US and routinely flies to Houston...

I'll build more on this as I learn more - taking advantage of the immediacy this medium affords. This also allows me the opportunity to check my sources and while adding more.
I want to spread the truth in this type of writing, I want to present information to you, my one and only reader - OK, maybe there are two or three.

The Sea

2005-01-07T18:18:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

Yesterday, the sea at Penfield Beach in Fairfield, CT was alive and angry. They scowling sky above was haunted with the screaming souls of those who toiled and died by the wrath of the sea. And by those smiling from down above who were lucky enough to breathe a cold, damp lung full of the fierce briny air.

The sand wore the cold, wet blanket of fresh snow blown to fill the long-forgotten foot prints and the voids around the small, sea-blown debris.

New Year's Eve

2005-01-01T11:07:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

I was in Rockerfeller Center where the MTV guy Carson something was doing some sort of live show. Well, he was doing the 'live' bit 2 hours early and the live music was shot 3 weeks before. Awesome - It was shot live, just not when the viewer is led to think.

The night went down with out any problems. The weather was kind and the City was alive as usual.
Part of the night I noticed that it was eerily quiet. The normal sounds of rushing taxis, buses and normal commuting was replaced with the moving, festive sounds of schuffling feet, din of 1000's of conversations in every language and of course, the blowing of plastic horns and other means to create excessive noise.
Helicopters hovered high above just over the roofs of the buildings and police of every rank and sensibility manned each corner. Some of them congregated lazily in threes, fours or fives leanign on blue NYPD barricades.
Our New Year ticked into life aboard the 11:34 train for Westport - en route home. It gets dull after a while even on New Year's Eve.

The Job Hunt Continues

2004-12-29T23:45:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin
This is the worst time to look for work. There is nothing listed - well, nothign I can do or want to do. I wonder why employers advertise $10 as great pay - the wages have stayed the same since the 80's but everything else has increased exponentially.

I sent my resume out a zillion times in the past weeks. Phone calls, follow-up emails, et cetera. Finding work is a part time job.
The photo work fell apart about a year ago and since then it's been a series of false starts and dead ends. I do plenty of work, just none of it pays anything. The paying work I had didn't pay much - but it was startgin to lead to other work. Now I'm completely 'out of the loop' as they say.
The frustration is beyond belief.

I'm antsy these days

2004-12-23T00:59:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

I need more work. I try to keep myself occupied with self-assignment work but I'm limited by time and money.
At the moment - and what seems to be for a while, I'm limited by finances or lack theoreof so I need a 'job'. The pay is awful at best and it wastes my valueable time.
Film is piling up but we don't have the funds to develop any of it. Well, not at the moment. Soon.

The cool night air wears the mask of early winter and it draws me near. Near its flourescent and merc-vapor other worldly charm where the non-conforming suspicious among us slither along the oddly-hued corridors of shadow that, during daylight, are washed clean of their wretched honesty.

The Night, for me, is a time for work. A time to create. A time to go. A time to slither silently along the oddly-hued corridors of shadow. This is another world and it's where the creators of the daytime lurk when it's time to do the ugly, honest work that can't be done during the Holy hours.

Bush must go!

2004-12-20T22:22:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin
Today I heard Bush's last-minute press confrence and he was a bit sassy. The press as normal, these days, were spineless and pandered to the Dumb Cowboy who dodged most of their questions anyway.
One thing Dubya touched on was Social Security. I admit to not paying as close attention as I should have here. I believe Bush said in his press conference that today every retiree is supported by three working people. It was said after that during the time of Social Security's inception, maybe 10-15 workers paid for each retiree.
My facts may not be right so don't quote me here. I'm fairly certain a transcript of the press conference can be read on WNYC.org or NPR.org. I heard it on the Brian Lehrer show this morning on WNYC.
Maybe if more people worked better jobs for more pay, the entire economy would be in better shape. I don't mean the failed Trickle Down Economics...well, it failed to those of us who aren't millionaires. Which reminds me, when did the Bible Belt and the Midwest go from economic shambles to being a collective wealth? - unless they vote against their own well being for...for...um... maybe they were tricked into voting against their own well being and the well being of their children and the rest of the World to make a vast minority of the people even wealthier. Those people live here in Connecticut by the way. Not iowa or Illionois.
Back to my point. If more people had better jobs and made a decent wage then everyone would be better off. More money would go to schools, churches, maybe even health care. And of course money would go, as a matter of course, to Social Security.
Which brings me to another point. Only maybe 3 or 4 counties out of the 3000 or so that make up this Nation have housing ( one bedroom apartments) that is affordable with minumum wage. If minumum wage kept up with inflation and other economic variables to stay equal in value from the year of its inception, then it would be about $14 an hour instead of $5.15. Then, I believe, most counties in the Nation would have simple but decent housing an average, hard-working American could afford. If more people make more money then everyone is better off.
Of course suddenly tripling the minimumm wage would be a huge financial burden on employers but in the long run we'll all be much better off. That includes the poor, dumb, backwoods rednecks who voted for Bush and we, the more intelligent and educated who financially support those morons.
maybe instead of the costly privatization of Social Security and tax breaks for the rich, maybe the Government should give very attractive incentives to employers who pay their employees more - or increase minimum wage to a more current level and have it automaticly increase with rises in inflation - or drops in the Dollar overseas.
Some will argue that this will make the US less attractive in the Global Economy and/or will drive jobs overseas. Maybe legislation should be enacted to keep the companies here and make them accountable instead of pandering to them. I'm certain a balance can be reached. I'm certain there is an honest way for people who are willing to work and be productive members of society to live deent lives. Not lavish, rock-star lives but able to pay rent, utilities and other living expenses with a few dollars left over. To use a Bush train of thought from 2000, if people have money in their pockets, they will spend it and bolster the economy. The context in which he used that was deeply flawed and superflous. If people have a constant and steady income, they will be more willing and able to put money back in the economy. Real money - not credit. If more money goes back into the economy then consumer confidence rises and the Consumer Price Index rises. If we're on more stable footing as a Nation then we will look better to foreign investors - that is if we stop attacking sovereign nations.
We as a Nation need to choose a better path. One that benefits not only us but our brothers and sisters around the World. It's not the immediatly easy path but one that will benefit all of us greatly in the near future.
Our Government is corporate sponsored and corporate controled. Our Military, Education, Corrections, everything is privatized and corporate sponsored.
I'd love to hear another opinion on this.

I never stop

2004-12-19T22:18:00.000-06:00

Brian McGloin

I'm not sure why I need to keep recording - taking notes and telling a story wiith images. Sometimes the shots stand alone for either aesthetic values or subject matter or sometimes both, but sometimes, the images hold more than their collective value when grouped together.
I'll keep shooting. I'll keep recording. I'll keep seeing. If not with images or graphic imagery then with words and text.
I never stop working.

14

2004-12-19T21:41:00.000-06:00

14
Originally uploaded by SuperEvilBrian.

This is a test - I'm working on adding photos to this Blog.

KMFDM serinades the damp night

2004-12-19T19:34:00.000-06:00

Snow is threatening to fall on the tree-lined streets of Black Rock this evening. In Boston, they are supposed to have typical New England weather, in NYC, I think it's supposed to rain or not snow.
My quest continues for full-time work. it's not like in the movies or even how it was 20 years ago: One doesn't just walk into a local news paper and 'get' work and build a career from there.
Today, fewer and fewer perpetually growing companies own more and more papers employing fewer and lesser people.
There is no work.
So that makes every stinking little, low-pay job a serious challenge.
My quest continues:
Norwalk Hour, Danbury News-Times, New Canaan Advertiser and now the Norwalk Citizen-News.
I don't ever quit or stop.

A New Start

2004-12-19T19:04:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting at the computer on a Sunday night thinking about the future and the present. Or maybe I'm not.
Who knows where this will go or what will happen.
I also have a blog on Live Journal.