greta jeff sam (union feet)

greta jeff sam (union feet),
originally uploaded by jeffschwartz.

union sunset (drydocked boats)

union sunset (drydocked boats),
originally uploaded by jeffschwartz.

union chairs 1

union chairs 1,
originally uploaded by jeffschwartz.

union chairs 2

union chairs 2,
originally uploaded by jeffschwartz.

some photos (more to come)

These are for Sam, Kancher, Malkie, Fofo, TEDDERS, Hunter, and anyone else who is currently leaving such a place. 'Those were the days...'

last day!

So this is my first last day of this internship, and, as is usual with all of my 'last days,' it's pretty anticlimactic. The weather is actually grey here for the first time in over two weeks...but I'm going to the Sunshine State (the land of the hanging-chads) in about an hour.

This morning I spoke more spanish than I have in about 4 years, and I was quie surprised at how much I actually remembered.

A bunch of music year-end lists are coming out, but I don't know which one I like best--I guess Pitchfork's list is by default, but Stylus' slowly-unfurling tops of 2004 is pretty damn good, too.

Does anyone want to review my resume? ;) Last week my Dad's friend Chris Simms from London was in NO on business, and he was dead earnest about me sending him my CV, so I have to do that enmediamente. A few observations from that evening: he had this 21-year-old associate broker along with him, her name was Jemma, and british lilts make me RANDY. Shiiiiit.

I saw Finding Neverland last night; it's a pretty fantastic movie, and a little darker than I expected, but I say goddamn! about Johnny Depp. The man's fucking amazing.

I bought A.C. Newman's CD The Slow Wonder last night (can anyone say powerpop?), in addition to a book of John Dewey essays called The Public & Its Problems, which is gonna be golden if I can ever finish Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.

Sam, my phone absolutely suxxx, so true. I really did spike it on the floor of my dad's car, and it probably did more harm than good, but so it goes...

Anywho, I gotta do a few last cosas antes de I fly away for a week. Holler back!

flickr

flickr is the shit. Such a good idea! Here's my flickr site...

viaduc de millau

y'all, that's beautiful...

Foster + Partners
Viaduc de Millau

thank-you dad's laser-leveler 

quotes of a feather

There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.
--Saul bellow

We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are.
--Harold Bloom

It is by causing us to rethink our judgments of particular people that imaginative literature does most to help us break with our own pasts. The resulting liberation may, of course, lead one to try to change the political or economic or religious or philosophical status quo. Such an attempt may begin a lifetime of effort to break through the received ideas that serve to justify present-day institutions. But it also may result merely in one’s becoming a more sensitive, more knowledgeable, wiser person...The best way, as Nietzsche said, to “become who you are” is not to ask “what is the truth?” but rather to ask “what sorts of people are there in the world, and how do they fare?”
--Richard Rorty

of b-ball brawls and BALCOs

I felt compelled to write Ray Ratto this short email in response to this column he posted on ESPN.com yesterday. I think he's completely correct...

Mr. Ratto:

I read your column today on ESPN.com regarding the steroids
controversy and I felt compelled to let you know that I consider your
comments to be utterly reasonable--and by that I mean the only tenable
position that a sports fan who is also a human being can maintain.
Like certain political leaders, there are many people in this world
who are moral absolutists that never recognize their own complicity in
a situation--be it in a terrorist attack or a steroid-abuse scandal.
While I hesitate to use sports analogies, I think the comparison is
apt because it is not really JUST sports and it is not really JUST
politics we are talking about; it is the human urge to point the
finger when something we refuse to acknowledge publicly is thrown in
our collective face. If we stopped damning "those people"--whether
those people are of a different ethnicity or a different athletic
caliber--and started asking the more complicated (and more honest)
questions about WHY "those" people are acting the way they are, we
won't ever find an means to resolving situations that we can only
pretend to have simple resolutions. Keep writing brave words...

I know it's kinda sentimental, but I think Mr. Ratto is in the right--how arrogant are we to so enjoy professional athletes' performances, only to turn around and be so puritanical, self-righteous, and trigger happy? Why the disconnect between the joy we have for watching sporting spectacles and the mandatory public indignation when the players reveal their artifice? As Mr. Ratto insists, if we are going to have a witch hunt, then we should burn all the witches. I, for one, and I don't think I am alone, do not believe in double standards for professional athletes, as a privilege, a hinderance, or otherwise.

this was funny...

FuckTheSouth...and I took it more as a critique of the hypocrisy of American conservatism that a red-state vs. blue state thang, but it's a polemic worth the 32 seconds it takes to read. Check out the article about the mythologization of the American Cowboy to which this links.

end-of-the-day reading...

This is really promising! I read the Olbermann blog pretty much every day at this point because of my hope that Kerry can still be voted president. He's pretty much the only one paying attention to the voting irregularities story, which I respect oh-so-much. Check out the House Judiciary Committee's formal inquiry into Ohio's voting irregularities. Could be good...

Also, there's this New Zealand Paper 'The Scoop' that is compiling a whole bunch of literature on the election this year, and some of the stuff is from respectable sources--especially the article by Freeman from SAS at UPenn.

So does this make me a conspiracy theorist?

why i love new orleans

Because all of these really happened here:

Jefferson Davis' burial

City Park really did look that amazing...and will again

This is my neighborhood, which was pulled from the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain

I love seeing places in ways that make them so foreign yet so immediately recognizable...

'spoon'!

Definitely one of my favorite words of all time, and it also happens to be one of my favorite activities. And, to boot, Spoon is also an amazing band! Who knew?! I went to Tipitina's last night, which has to be one of the 3 most storied bars/music venues in all of New Orleans, to see those Austin rawkers, and they were great live. Britt did some solo stuff during the encore, which was fantasmic--gotta love those charismatic frontmen. He reminded me a little of Travis Morrison, both in mannerisms and the way they dressed. I think they'd both appreciate 'shirts that fit right'.

Not much else is going on. Yesterday at work (and today still, too) I started cleaning house for the big switcharoo. I had my shit everywhere on the floor, but now it is all in about 25 hanging folders which I have failed to fit into the filing cabinets. That's gotta happen sometime soon.

After I got back from the show I decided to install the new wireless networking card for my comp, which was so easy--but I didn't go to bed until 3AM, and now I am tired as fuck and I gotta sit here in work. It's kinda weird; I got here this morning and Dr. Stephens' secretary has herself locked in his office. I can hear her, but I have no idea what's going on. Office Space? Another development: if I go to Economic Development next semester (yes I'm still in school) I get to leave City Hell (the building) and work in 1515 Poydras, which is a much more appealing building, AND I WON'T HAVE TO WEAR A GODDAMN TIE. I can dress like the rest of the yahoos over there in jeans! It's the little things.

Not much else is going on. Still reading Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. I read an average of one page now when I sit down, then wake up at 4:30 in the morning drooling on the couch, at which point I want nothing more than to fall back to sleep, but can't because I have such a bad taste in my mouth that I have to go brush my teeth. It's working out well for me, although I want to read Rorty's next book, and at this pace I'll get there around this time next year.

OK, I have to go through the complex motions of looking like I'm doing something--which goes something like moving over so that no one can see me down the hallway (aka 'the green mile') and picking up the phone every few minutes...