cce blog

posters in inwood

Our neighborhood has seen some sad and unsettling news this past week: on Tuesday, the body of Sarah Fox was found in Inwood Hill Park. The vast, unlandscaped park has been a favorite place for outdoor exploration (especially for my roomate Michael), and apparently it was for her, also -- she's quoted as telling her mother "I’m exploring my neighborhood” shortly before she disappeared.

Images of Sarah Fox have been ubiquitous around here, from the missing posters on every pole last week, to the stories filed by all the TV crews that showed up this week, to the cover of the Daily News yesterday (alongside "West Side Rat Whacker"). The Times did a final profile on her today, and also provided further, troubling details on the investigation. It's all very sad. The prospect of a killer-at-large in my favorite park/neighborhood disturbs me, to say the least -- I'd always felt this was a safe, family-friendly place (as did fellow 207st blogger fshk), and used to merrily explore off-the-path areas near where her body was found. Now the crimestoppers posters and the police van blaring a recorded appeal for information have deflated this optimism considerably.

During my semester at Dinwiddy House in London's dodgy King's Cross district, a man was shot in a parked car right outside my dorm window. I was studying late that night, and remember being jolted upright by the shots, but assumed it was the local kids playing with firecrackers again. It never occurred to me what I'd heard until the police woke me up the next morning looking for witnesses; a shooting was just outside the realm of possibility, especially on a road I regularly traversed on the way to the chip shop. My neighborhood felt a lot grimmer/scarier after that; I hope the same won't apply to Inwood now.

Finally, on the subject of posters in Inwood, the Dominican elections are finally over, with the purple dude winning. At first, I assumed the posters with his face all over the neighborhood were for city council or somesuch -- but that didn't explain the purple cars, or the marchers I saw waving purple flags on Dyckman St. Turns out this is the first year Dominicans living in the US voted in the DR's election. So, neat.

atlantic

this month's atlantic monthly is quite good. the cover article on "tony blair as a tragic figure" was my favorite (but isn't online) -- now i've learnt the words manichaean (describes bush) and antinomian (describes blair, according to the author). there was also an article on how "opposition research" (mudslinging) has become much more institutionalized in political campaigns in the last decade or so, partially due to media/ad saturation and campaign-finance reform.

... You begin by planting some smaller stories so that you build a foundation or basis for the larger story you're going to want to have hitting in the fall."

Especially in a presidential election "you have to plant a lot of the seeds in the spring and the summer so that you can capitalize on it," Lehane says. "If you have a big story that's going to hit in the middle of September, middle of October, what you really want to do is build several things that come off of the story so that it's not just a one-day hit. ... (article)

also, just saw that pretty italian movie i'm not scared and it had me so frightened/anxious, i was jumping out of my seat. go see it!

did i mention my sister graduated on monday? she did. i sat, listened to her commencement speaker and tried to vicariously re-graduate myself; i suppose i'm ready for grad school now.

savage's untermenschen

need to blog more often or just stop altogether (also, it's time less personal information about me was on the web, but i'll sort that out later). with so many magazines coming to the apartment, sometimes it seems like i'm receiving more information than i can process. so instead of just leaving interesting articles lying open all over the apartment (and in browser tabs), i'll just dump them here, i suppose.

from michael savage's radio show: (via salon's right hook & mediamatters)

"And I think there should be no mercy shown to these sub-humans. I believe that a thousand of them should be killed tomorrow. I think a thousand of them held in the Iraqi prison should be given 24 hour -- a trial and executed. I think they need to be shown that we are not going to roll over to them. It won't happen. It won't happen because of the CBS Communists. It won't happen because of the CNN traitors. I won't happen because of the MSNBC empty heads. And we the people are the ones who are going to suffer today. ..." (mp3)

"Instead of putting joysticks, I would have liked to have seen dynamite put in their orifices and they should be dropped from airplanes. How's that? You like that one? Go call somebody that you want to report me to, see if I care. They should put dynamite in their behinds and drop them from 35,000 feet, the whole pack of scum out of that jail. Thank you CBS. Thank you New Yorker. Thank you Carl Levin. Thank you Ted Kennedy. Thank you Hillary Clinton. I'm sure that Mr. Berg's parents appreciate what you've done for them. I'll be right back." (mp3)

hmm, subhumans eh? better than "non-humans", i suppose.

lost phone

So I left my phone (okay, I borrowed it from my sister while she's in Taiwan) in a cab on Tuesday ... and didn't realize until Thursday. It was a small phone and just slipped out of my pocket! Since then, I logged into the Cingular website and found a few numbers have been called since the phone left my hands:

05/09 12:00AM BRONX NYC NY 646-260-XXXX NW 1.0
05/08 10:57PM BKLYN NYC NY 347-446-XXXX NW 1.0
05/08 9:12AM NEW YORK NY 646-283-XXXX NW 1.0
05/08 7:35AM NEW YORK NY 212-523-XXXX NW 1.0

Each call was only a minute long -- at least there were no international calls -- and the phone's been suspended now. But someone out there has that phone still, and I'm not sure what to do -- is it worth it to try calling these numbers? ("WHO DIS? YOU GOT MY PHONE?")

may

so it's may already. i've been a bad blogger again, eek. i suppose i was busy.

let's see, i've been to some good concerts lately:

Berio's Epiphanies, Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements and Beethoven's Fifth at Carnegie Hall. The Berio was one of those lovely 60's avant-garde pieces they never play anymore, featuring an orchestra, extra percussion, and a tricky atonal female vocal with texts from james joyce, proust, beckett, a few others. the stravinsky was nice too. the beethoven made everyone happy after all the scary epiphanies.

i also went out to see apples in stereo at maxwell's last week. but i was more impressed with apollo sunshine, who played before them, doing really great psychedelic-pop a la flaming lips, but with just a three-man band (the singer / bass player on guitar & keyboard too) and lots of rawk.

finally, looking abroad, i'll grumble about the battleships in victoria harbo[u]r. i was in beijing last month re-interpreted the basic law to clarify that the timetable for democratic reform was theirs to decide. i flew to HK a few days later, and left just as the first big protest started.

more recently they pushed it further, ruling out democracy ("unnecessarily", as wash post says) completely for 2007/8, as i'd guess to prevent potential embarrassment close to the olympics.

then, earlier this week they sent warships through the harbor! i don't buy that they're trying to drum up patriotic spirit; it seems more like they're trying to let HK know who's really in charge. plus, they get to put taiwan on edge:

'We are always on call,'' said Yao Xingyuan, commander of the battle group. ''If necessary, we have the ability to preserve the stability of the Taiwanese political situation.''

commie bastards.

the people's daily bluntly put it best:

Qiao said at the Thursday's seminar that it is very important to correctly understand "One Country, Two Systems." "One Country" is the premise on which "Two Systems" are implemented. Without "One Country," there would be no "Two Systems."

hrmm ... i guess he does have a point; the 1:2 country-to-systems ratio doesn't really reflect the situation on the ground anymore. perhaps it should be "one country, 1.5 systems"? that's the same ratio as 2 countries, 3 systems -- what you get if you include taiwan, i suppose.

okay, enough babbling about china. tomorrow's my birthday, apparently, so i guess i need to do one of those year-in-review things like i did last year ... dreading it a bit, though. okay.

p.s. speaking of my birthday, i want a swopper chair. apparently it makes your back straighter while you're sitting, and yogis like it, so that must be a good thing.