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Just for fun

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the poor Carbs family

On the way back from the printer room I passed a table with some leftover meeting snacks and a few carniverous workers hovering over it. One of the workers passed a comment in response to a 4th hungry emplyee who asked, "Hey what's over there" HER RESPONSE WAS THIS. "Well, there is food and some.....bread". As I passed the table and took a glance the plate consisted of various kinds of fruit and breads. I thought to myself, "Has carbs become such an anti-heathly snack that we are now booting it out of its classification as a food?"

Bubbles in my brain

One year my father had water damage on the side of the house and decided that it would be fun to spend the summer fixing it as a family. All my father drank was seltzer for the week it took to fix the side of the house. He drank 3 cases in all. This post is in memory of that week.

A mouth full of Beauty

As I was packed into the subway this morning I noticed a tall women get on the train and stand directly next to me. As a proffessional people watcher I began to check her out. Starting at the toes she had on a gold colored moccosin shoe with an ankle strap and a small muke style heel. Odd look but hey, fashion is sometimes out their. Moving to her legs I could see exposed calves and then the bottoms of a pair of denim capri pants. It is supposed to be 36 degrees today. Yeserday was 52 BUT today is not yestarday. Covering the tops of her capri's was a brown, woven wool coat. light wool. Fashionable of coarse. More style than function. In starck contrast to the brown coast was a turquoise "MJ" bag mounted on her left shoulder. Shinny and full of all the bells and whistles "hot fashion" bags have these days it perch off her arm begging me to ask what was inside. But I refrained. She was tall. Much taller than me. Maybe 5'11". She had a pretty face and manicured nails.

The last thing I saw was what inspired this rant. She was chewing gum. 8:30am. One of those icebreaker, altoid, dentyne ice gums. Really strong. How do I know. I could smell it across the car. In her hand was a giant coffee. So I focused on the mouth,gum and coffee. Sure enough, as soon as the train started moving, BAM sipville. Now that was along winded way to say I saw a girl chewing gum and drinking coffee but the point of the background was to paint a picture of this "normal" NY women and then explain this bizarre, counterintuitive behavior.

In a world of looking our best, sounding our best and smelling our best have we lost all sense for function, or taste for that matter.

People, drink your coffee, enjoy it, and then snap on a piece of gum.

You better be blind or in a stroller.

It is absolutely unbelievable to me how people decide to interact (or not interact) with each other in our American cities. Specifically I am speaking about when we are programmed to “help” absolute strangers.

Aside from tragic and catastrophic events people rarely step out of their routine and help their fellow Americans. The exceptions to this are blind people and women with strollers.

For the past few weeks I have monitored the behavior on NYC subways and in their stations and witnessed this phenomenon. I have seen people step over homeless men on the platform, push through crowds of people to get through the turnstile first, watch a person drop a pile of papers and ignore it, see a $20 bill about to fall out of someone’s back pocket and walk away. That is just for starters.

But, every time I have seen a blind person making their way around the station or a women with a stroller trying to get up or down the stairs people have flocked over to then in hordes. In many cases the blind person was doing just fine and the women with the stroller wasn’t even going up or down the stairs yet.

If these people have enough sense and courtesy to ask these people if they need help why is all other circumstances dismissed?

Neckface Uncovered

neckface-bus
Originally uploaded by janello88.

One of the most recognizable street artists of the last few years, Neckface goes down in the books along side Andre the Giant has a posse and De la Vega.

Having left NY, to go live out west, with a clear vision of Neckface's tag burned in my brain I never expected to see him/her reappear in San Fran. Let alone in downtown San Diego and on a shoot in LA.

Street artists like this peek my interest because of the simple, viral nature of their work. Apparently Neckface is not as mysterious as I had thought. A book of his/her work is available in England.

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Brad Pitt is not your cousin, your friend or your mailman.

I was listening to a podcast this morning, pop culture rant #9, by my new morning buddy Rob. He got ranting on how much this world pays attention to celebreties. There are shows, magazines and now clothing lines all about them, their break-ups, hook-ups and babies.Rob negatively, associated them to english royalty. He went on to say that they can have whatever they want. (botox, free hotel rooms and comped trips to posh places).

The nerve he struck in me is, WHY DO WE CARE? People follow the happening and gossip of celebreties so closly its facinating. They get emotional when a couple breaks-up, jeolous when their hunk or beauty starts dating someone they don't like. This is a sad life to vicariouly live a hollywood life while stuck in western Pennsylvania. It's funny I wrote "don't like". What that really means is they don't like the way the media and their publicis presented them to the masses. We don't really know what they are like. We don't know anything about them. Unless the celebrity is your cousin, personal friend or your f&*$in' mailman, YOU HAVE KNOW IDEA WHAT THEY ARE LIKE!

Shut off the TV, Close the "US" mag and go talk to your real cousin, friend and mailman. Those peopel you know, or knew and they are ACTUALLY in your life.

Rob's podcast can be found at podcastnyc.net or by clicking on this

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Audio Blogging? Ohh yes, audio blogging!

Damn that lion

Well, apparently March is going to be a real bitch.

Quannum record label

quannum
Originally uploaded by janello88.

The Quannum label has been signing smart and cool hip-hop artists for some time now. Blackalicious, Lyrics born and Dj shadow to name a few.

The Maroons(made up of Chiel Xcel and Lateef) have just released an album named ambush, well worth picking up.

The artists run the gamet of sounds but are all grounded in the same message-with-a-meaning lyrics.

Check their site for discography, samples and tour dates. www.quannum.com

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Debit or Credibility

In a world of ever changing technology the introduction of new products is imperative to their success. As with most other things in the US we get lazy, especially when the use of the product does not hing on its introduction.

I am specifically speaking about our current credit/debit/half-serve check out registers. It seems to me that this technology is anything but an exact science.

A typical transaction can unfold in several different ways. Typically it is something like this. You walk up to the register with your goods. The cashier or cleck or sales associate scans the items and the total is deisplayed on the screen. This cancels out any communication that used to take place between you and teh clerk, but that is another rant. You take your card from your wallet and look at the machine that is ergonomically positioned in front of you for your use. Then one of the following happens:

1. You swipe you card and nothing happens. The cashier then takes your card and swipes it herself but flips the card over. You have misunderstood the terrible diagram on the machine that is supposed to tell you which way to swipe the card.

2. You swipe the card and the transaction begins. The screen refreshes and the options are ATM or debit. You swiped a credit card and the cashier informs you that she will need to swipe credit cards on her register not on the machine.

3. You swipe your credit card and the screen refreshes with a total and a question. Do you accept the charges? yes or no. You choose yes but nothing happens. The cashier reaches over and hits the enter button which is located in a completely different area of the key pad then the yes and no buttons. Apparently the answer to accepting charges is "none of teh above"

4. You give the credit card to the clerk and then she reaches over the counter and completes the entire transaction from an upsidedown position on the keypad you were supposed to be using.

5. You use the key pad in front of you correctly and the transaction is approved but the cashier needs to take you card and make an imprint, or punch in a security number from it to complete the transaction.

6.You use the key pad in front of you but the receipt prints out from the register and you have to sign that with a regular pen (not a computer pen for the machine) Then the cashier needs to take your card from you so she can match the signatures.

7. everything works perfectly but when you get down the block you realize you were overcharged because you were so busy worrying about the machine you forgot to watch your items get rung up.

8. You swipe your card too early and teh whole system jams up. The clerk needs to take 5 minutes to reset the system by hitting the same key over and over and praying.

I am sure there are more and I haven't even youched debit or ATM cards yet.

It would seem more effiecient if we could streamline these transactions to follow a few rules of thumb.
1. Print, BIG, on the face of the machine what the machine is used for (credit cards, debit cards, atm cards, amex, not discover, mastercard only, etc)

2. If the clerk needs to hold the card in their possesion at anytime during the transaction let them comnplete the entire transaction. That's their job after all.

3. Put 1 more button above the key pad that is 5 times bigger than the other buttons. It should say accept/YES and be the color green. No other button should be green on the whole machine. In fact, nothing else on the machine should be green, stickers, casing, signs, cables, all included. You wouldn't have swiped your card if you weren't going to accept so why do we even have the option to decline.

The one acception to this hodgepodge of hassles is Target. In Traget it runs as smooth as silk. You can put you card in when ever you want during the transaction. Noone needs to look at your card, ever and you can put any card you want in that machine. I even think it would take my health insurance card or a stick of wrigley's for that matter.

So please, technologists. Stop with the naps. If you are going to introduce things to make our lives easier make sure it is easier. We know you make more money with the machines, that is your whole point, but just think it through before dropping it on the country.