this week i

want you to download this album. a band from my high school, they were 16-18 years old when this was recorded. still my favorite. just try the first song.

went to dewey beach with three female friends. they went to a bar, i built a google motion chart using our data from the consumer expenditure survey, after seeing these visualization tools presented in an hiv lecture. a wild night.

slept deeply. five hours felt like twelve, must've been the sea air. summer better than others..

think that shark attracted enough clientele to pay for itself in one season.

would never get a hermit crab with a designer shell, but if i would, would get this li'l buccaneer.

came home to rainy day sunshine.


saved a few bucks with the lifehacker stranger test.

think doctors withholding treatment until patients have signed away their right to complain is unethical and unenforceable.

saw deaf theater with my dad at the kennedy center.

aim to one day be at the top of the list of google search results for anthony j. damico.

saw a cheetah and these damn ethiopian superturkeys on my morning run. endlessly appreciate the national zoo opening at 6am. cage notwithstanding, always an ego boost to run past a cheetah.

netflix instant-watched city of men, the sequel to city of god. damn good movies, albeit not the best brazillian tourism p.r.

like this ad, and have read ft longer than i've know obama.

found a second article about the battle front where my grandfather might have been captured during world war one.
"around 100,000 italian soldiers died in austrian captivity, almost one in six of those taken prisoner."
"the austrians, outnumbered two-to-one, lost only 7,300...the attacking italians 36,000"
"the war cost the italian treasury a sum equivalent to twice the entire government expenditures between 1861 and 1913."

read a review of lincoln's statements and beliefs, introduced and edited by now (fifteen-minutes-of) famous henry louis gates jr.
"the clearest measure of lincoln's racism is his dogged devotion to a plan...to send freed slaves to colombia, haiti, or liberia."

also read..

(1) "i once asked a sudanese politician to name the thing that in his eyes proved a nation was a nation. he didn't hesitate: 'the ability to make cars'."
"walking a fine line between several competing forces...on one side of obama runs a growing populist opposition to bailing out any more big companies...on the other side runs an equally powerful desire ot stop a generation-long hemorrhaging of manufacturing jobs."

(2) "karzai, the mayor of kabul."
"donations from foreign governments make up 90 percent of public expenditure."
"42 percent of the population of 25 million earns less than $1 a day."
"afghan-americans are being hired to come back as translators at a salary of $225,000. plenty of indigenous afghans speak english but they are not trusted...meanwhile the taliban are hiring unemployed young men, paying them $8 for each attack."
(2a) ft related article

(3) "the us poured $11.9 billion into pakistan...the army bought $8 billion worth of weapons for use against india."
"the mean age for a suicide bomber is now just sixteen."

(4) us prisons: "monster factories"
"the drug trade is violent because adversaries battle out such conflicts with weapons instead of lawyers...no coincidence that murder rates doubled during prohibition, and fell sharply with the repeal."

(5) "joseph stiglitz, amartya sen, james mirrlees, and robert solow wrote, 'if the world is waiting for a calm, reasonable, carefully argued approach to climate change, nick stern and his team have produced one."

7/30/09

this week i

sat on the wolftrap lawn for joe cocker on wednesday, an unparalleled live performer.

paid nothing to see the northern kentucky brotherhood singers at the kennedy center on thursday.


artscaped on friday.
flashy cars

cop magnets

mica students or terps


dr. strangelove props

pledge to incorporate 'skulduggery' into my vocabulary. also this:

rollercoastered on saturday..

..not sure if six flags is going bankrupt due to..
business-casual janitors

front seat-filling inefficiencies


poor timing


or just trying too hard

..anyway, we had this much fun.

believe "one should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck." - iris murdoch

cooked some vacce's gnocchi.

read the americanization of benjamin franklin, the last founding father to support our revolution..

"converts to a belief tended to be more zealous than those bred up in it."

"hereditary legislators," he exclaimed. they were not fit "to govern a heard of swine."

7/23/09

this week i

renewed my contract with kff. i requested the title, "unrequited lover of data". we compromised on "statistical analyst". equally excited.

dropped off two passport photos and $112 at the italian embassy. the bureaucrats made fun of my not knowing my height in centimeters, then scolded me for not using the apostrophe between the d and the a in my last name. citizenship in a month?

spent the weekend at rehoboth beach with my father and a few of his friends. one works at the casey foundation; her office has become concerned about over-medication among foster children. i did some preliminary digging in meps and found an outrageous difference in their rate of psychotropic drug prescriptions as compared to all other children. hopefully they'll contract with an academic who has the full medicaid claims database and get this in stone. a big fucking deal.

involuntarily weaned myself off gmail's text messaging service.

want a secret bookshelf-door like this.

don't know what i think about theodore roosevelt's 1912 election loss after campaigning for national health insurance. pnhp, here's your spokesperson. equally crazy: the electoral map. also watched the fugitive (projected onto that bedsheet strapped against the side of that house), surprised to spot roland burris, more surprised to realize the plot is actually a screed against the pharmaceutical industry.

firmly believe that the internet will go down in history as the most potent vaccination against war and injustice in human history. good job, nerds.

give the neck pouch an f. i'd always traveled with an undergarment money belt, and while the pouch reduces sweat, it's visible under a t-shirt. f minus. not sure whether to try the leg stash or the belt stash.

can't believe i gave four years of my life to rural ohio. caught up with an old oberlin friend at sei: overpriced sushi + beer. the after-dinner dunkin' donut: worth every penny.

nominate suzie q for undisputed greatest song ever in the history of the universe (of the week). ccr also does a mean heard it through the grapevine, unsure whether i prefer their version or glady knight's.

enjoyed chronicle of a death foretold.

"the pursuit of love is like falconry"

"love can be learned too"

"i didn't want to be blessed by a man who cut off only the combs for soup and threw the rest of the rooster into the garbage."

"we killed him openly, but we're innocent."

"that day, i realized just how alone we women are in the world."

"she taught us above all that there's no place in life sadder than an empty bed."

"who the fuck would ever think that the twins would kill anyone, much less with a pig knife."

"fatality makes us invisible."

uploaded some old recordings: blues (3 min) / classical (2 min) / saints (5 min, video).. and the night we elected obama. video title "you know it's a party when: riot police whistle to the beat." 14th & u st, november 5th, 2008 1:30 a.m.


7/16/09

this week i

think my paternal grandfather might've been one of the italian prisoners of world war one discussed here.

would like to thank the insanity of the 24hr news cycle for scaring away tourism, lowering the nonstop dc-mexico city flight prices to the point you can't afford not to go.
aside from the infrared body heat-sensing cameras at immigration..

..and a few hand sanitizer shrines, you would never have known cnn/fox/msnbc were in apeshit mode a few short weeks ago..



..thanks again..



..and viva mexico.

didn't plan at all, ended up in a hotel with a mirror on the ceiling. too kinky, switched after the first night.

visited trotsky in exile (a.k.a. col. sanders, a.k.a. goldstein, my favorite from 1984).
killed.. in the study. with the alpine climbing axe.

perhaps it was the...
they made new york yankees monopoly, where's my leon trotsky clue?


reconsidered donating my body to science. at least need a no museum-display clause.


had to look again. mexican street vendors aren't shy about displaying pornography. first time i saw these damn tous bears, definitely thought they were obscene.


overdosed on tacos. in the spring of 2007, i stopped eating meat in the united states. now i live on fish and respond to meat cravings by booking international travel.



endured monumental doses of pda.

attended a wrestling match.

apologize..

..good ideas apparently need to cross our border in the other direction.


stumbled upon my favorite einstein quote..

..but more fitting for the trip would be indiana jones' "it belongs in a museum."


received offers to purchase every conceivable genre of music. cd hawkers board your metro car at one stop, yell their merchandise, blast their backpack-stereos (pictured), then walk up and down the train hoping to make a sale..
..a few others sold gum, sweets, or salvation. the most memorable carried a rag filled with broken beer bottles, hollered something, laid the cloth down with the glass exposed, whacked his head against it and shattered some of the glass, then walked up and down the metro car begging for change. i will never complain about my job as long as i live.


watched billy mays reincarnate.


need more green screens in my life. zoom in and scroll up to see who they're about to be superimpose-eaten by.

dropped by the home of frida kahlo and diego rivera..

..note to self: last will & testament needs to specify museums in my honor not have horrendous middle school cafeteria aesthetic.


understood the feline place in pyramids..

..less so wtf starbucks is thinking.



can't forget..
the original megachurches


nafta


personally prefer my koala ukulele


a nation of hipsters,


and forlorn spidermen.

probably an just another evil plot. prozac to the rescue.


when i want to join the x-men, i will paperclip this picture to my application.


she loves me


she loves me not



beauty in everything, even overflowing sewers


except, maybe, the leashed children


dedicated photographers


old art


new art


washington crossing the delaware: nile crocodile style



technoclowns


kanyitos (little kanyes)


a noticeable difference between the current old and new worlds: only the old has the presence of ancient structures next to modern ones, with mexico city the exception.


taxis sans passenger-side seats



here's fifty pesos, now slap me with some cabbage



diabetes peddlers


memo to korean pagoda enthusiasts, no more excuses not to visit



indigenous drum & dance troupes always satisfy



and babies. notice the baby.


you may be adorable, kid, but get back in line


now here's a knee-slapper:
q: where did the cat keep all his mice?
a: in his moustache.



toured the mexican museum of torture & punishment..
..also read this article on british torture & complicity - 'even in the mid-1990's, [britain] obstinately maintained the extraordinary fiction that mi6 did not exist.'

"the language used is itself a critical contributing factor. after the second world war the us was the first nation to transform traditional terminology, moving from ‘defence’ to ‘national security’ as the guiding ethos of its foreign policy, a conscious choice of words intended to reflect the expansion of the us’s desired role in world affairs, conflating a myriad different political, economic and military factors so that developments halfway round the world could automatically be construed as having a direct impact on the us’s core interests. effectively, every development the world over came to be perceived as potentially crucial, so that an adverse turn of events anywhere endangered the united states. american foreign policy goals came to be translated into issues of national survival, and the range of threats became limitless."



caught up on other old, worthwhile lrb articles..

(1) order and governance in modern china

(2) america's surge strategy in iraq

(3) guantanamo

(4) 'live long enough to live forever' - 'our chance of dying doubles every eight years we live'

(5) the history of hamas - 'paul volcker, chuck hagel, nancy kassebaum, james wolfensohn, and thomas pickering urged obama to talk to hamas.'

(6) moldova - "gdp per capita is lower than india's" "human development index...ranked just below mongolia and bolivia"

(7) wikipedia - "people who believe in truth and objectivity are at least as numerous as all the crazies, pranksters and time-wasters, and they are often considerably more tenacious, ruthless and monomaniacal." "one notorious failure came in 2005, when the editorial page of the los angeles times decided to experiment with a 'wikitorial', which would allow anyone to contribute to the writing of an editorial column using the same techniques as a wikipedia entry." "type in 'boiling a frog' and you go straight to a page that tells you everything you need to know."

(8) cuban-american relations - "the cubans saw their war of independence from spain - americans christened 'the spanish-american war'."

(9) amazon exploration - "of cannibalism, 'at least it provides a reasonable motive for killing a man, which is more than you can say for civilized warfare'."

7/9/09