To my handful of readers who have probably already stopped visiting my blog, I want to apologize for my negligent lack of posts. It is not that I have stopped thinking altogether since I have been home. Indeed, my mind has been overflowing with ideas both inane and sublime, many of which I did want to write here. Alas, I have been extremely busy with work (which could have supplied countless entries) and building a giant puppet (another entry!). Yes, I did say a giant puppet.
Anyway, I will try to be more diligent in the coming weeks to relate to you all of the goings-on in and around both my job and this giant monstrosity that bears a strong resemblance to Benjamin Franklin. I will too make an attempt to fill in the gaps between my last post and now, at the very least with topics about which are worth writing. You can be sure that I will also include various samplings of those aforementioned innane thoughts courtesy of youtube.
Thus concludes my apology.

Thank you, and goodnight.

Ha!

...so goshdarnit, you will listen to me.

While not everyone can have the opportunity to audition to be become the next American Idol, everyone can certainly have the chance to be their own version of Simon Cowell. A culture supersaturated by reality television, where contestants are constantly critiqued and "voted off" if found wanting, along with the rapid growth of the Web 2.0 community, has created a country full of people determined to have their opinions heard, and has provided them with the means for them to make it happen. While participation in the public forum is generally a good thing, much of the debate, critique and subsequent digression into name-calling, needless sarcasm, and petty accusations, has migrated to the least pertinent of areas. No longer is this type of talk exclusive to online political or video game forums. Heated debates rage on in the comments of Youtube videos. Disagreements in how-to forums turn into personal attacks. Varying personal experiences create raging arguments among photographers as to which camera is really the best for a particular purpose.
Recently, I was watching a how-to video on Youtube, showing how to economically pack a small, carry-on suitcase for about a five day trip. The guy in the video said he was packing for Florida, so his clothing mostly consisted of t-shirts, jeans, and the like. Even so, his folding technique allowed him to include about two changes of clothes for each day, two pairs of shoes, and that ever-necessary toiletry bag. I thought the video had some great insights for packing light on a short trip. However, the comments below the video showed that not everyone agreed. It would have been one thing if they were just disagreements, but the notes consisted of sentiments such as , "WTF. Won't his shirts get wrinkled?", "What a dumb*ss. He didn't leave any room to bring stuff back with him.", "Good luck when they search your bags!", "What if you're going away for two weeks and not just four days?", "Stupid video; a complete waste of time",or "What a tool!" And the list goes on. Needless to say, this is all quite frustrating.
It would seem, however, that many of these people offering their opinions rely only on what they're thinking at the moments, doing little to no homework on what they're saying. Often, these opinions are not backed by facts, are inaccurate, and are generally very one-sided. A prime example I saw this past fall was a person who passionately contended that the war in Iraq was wrong because "the U.S. has killed one million Iraqi civilians." I'm sure.
Online forums were initiated to encourage sharing of advice, discussion and debate. However, it seems that the cloak of anonymity that the internet provides allows people to take simple discussions overboard. As this type of Web 2.0 technology has progressed and become more accessible to the masses, these attitudes have started to bleed into offline life. We feel entitled to give people our opinion on something, whether or not they want to hear it. The attitude is that of "I have a blog, so goshdarnit, you will listen to me!" I have seen more people be openly harsh and critical toward strangers in the past few years than I have ever. Gone is the decorum; gone is common courtesy. And frankly, it scares me a bit. What will be the next digression? Perhaps we should turn off our televisions and pull away from our computers enough to get to know people for who they are, and not for how well they perform to our fickle standards.

Much more on this later

XLII

Most of you who know me well probably know that I normally do not care much for professional football. No, I do not find it to be a coarse and barbaric contact sport; I just usually find to to be boring. However, a fact I am certain most of you do not know is that I am also a New York Giants fan. And when my team makes it to the Superbowl and starts playing an amazing game of football, televised football happens to keep my attention rapt. Coming into the game as certain underdogs, their performance tonight was stunning. Instead of buckling under the predictions of a Patriot win and perfect season, they gave one of, if not the, most amazing Giant wins I have ever seen. Add in a performance by Tom Petty, and a Coke commercial featuring a Charlie Brown parade balloon, and you make for one spectacular evening.

Okay. I've gotten that out of my system.

Live from... Pennsylvania ?!?!!

I realize that I have been quite absent from posting lately. To be honest, I am not in New York at the moment. This semester, I am on medical leave and am living at home. Continuing to update this as if it was really live, from New York, would not be the most honest way to go about this. Instead, I plan on writing some more editorial posts, along with some memories from the past semester at Fordham. I'll use this font so that none of you gets confused and starts to think that the complaining about the new Turkey Hill down the road, and the proposed Target expansion are actually happening in New York. So, there you go.

A decent proposal

The other night, en route to food after visiting MoMA, my friends and I stopped by to see the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. (The fad for Christmas decorations this year in New York is "environmentally friendly", so the lights on the tree are LEDs. Way to be, Mayor Bloomberg. There is usually a small crowd of tourists around the area, watching the people who paid way too much to skate on the rink. However, tonight there were a few hundred people cramming around the edges, looking down into the rink, and our curiosity was thoroughly piqued. Perhaps some celebrity was performing? As it would turn out, there were no celebrities, only a man with enough money to clear the rink so he could skate with his girlfriend, and with a dramatic flourish, propose to her at center ice. The tourists loved it. My friend yelled, "Say no!" Perhaps Sarah wasn't able to make her voice heard among the cheers of hundreds of onlookers; the girl said yes.