Do Your Part

In light of the NYPD's decision to institute a policy of random bag searches, the proceeding is the result of my first counter-terrorism measure.

1 (One) cigarette case cum credit card holder, polished chrome
1 (One) beaded Union Jack coin pouch
1 (One) Waterman fountain pen, brushed chrome
1 (One) Sheaffer fountain pen, emerald plastic
1 (One) C-shaped key ring, aluminum
7 (Seven) keys, various
1 (One) Brooklyn College ID Card on ball chain
9 (Nine) Fresh Nap Moist Towelette, refreshing
1 (One) index card, pink, with 3 (Three) Stereotypes inscribed
1 (One) Book, The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
3 (Three) empty soft drink containers, various
1 (One) Honest Tea beverage container, unopened
46 (Fourty-six) fliers, "APC Rhythm Spring Concert"
1 (One) passport holder (Royal Traveler, Samsonite)
1 (One) notebook, blue
1 (One) pullover, waffle-knit, apricot and burnt sienna


Citizen is now free to move about the city.

This Deserves a Comment

i had a dream that i was at a family function. it was one where my family was meeting another family, but it was big with extended family, because i don't remember my parents being there. it was like a cousin's wedding or something like that and we are doing rehersal or something. but somehow we end up in this crazy field/playground that turns out to be the primate area of a zoo. so we're all joking like haha, we're monkeys, look at us. so we're jumping around and fake throwing poop at each other, and then, the craziest thing--all these monkeys show up in the viewing area and they're all dressed in fancy clothes with vests and ties and whatnot. everyone starts cracking up and now we totally step up the show for the zoogoing monkeys. people are squatting down to poop and i get a litte too into it and start humping someone's wife on the other side of the family. not sexual, you know, just a show for the monkeys who are watching. well this didn't go over well. the mood sort of changed at that point and there was tension between the families and then i woke up.

online poker

Is it good? Is it bad? Will writing this post make those who search for online poker on google find ithacahasgorges.com? I was planning on writing a post about how evil online poker is a few days ago. Before I got the chance I got a call from our old friend Nathan Lucash who you may remember from Ithaca, NY. After a protracted converstion with our friend Nate about how infrequently we post on our blog, I no longer had the energy to post on our blog. Well the reason I was so disillusioned with online poker that particular evening was that I had just lost five tournaments in a row, bringing my total bankroll down to zero dollars (which is hard to do since the tournaments cost $5.50). It was a classic display of addictive behavior as with each loss I became more and more crazed and idiot-playing. Like any rational person who foresees dangerous addiction in its nascent stages I swore off online poker that night. Hold on for a moment, I have to play this ace-queen..nothing came up on theflop so I'm back. So anyway, I swear it off but as I'm closing the poker site for the final time I notice an inexplicable six dollars in my account. Six dollars! Enough for a final tournament with 50 cents to spare! Too many exclamation points?!?!?! No! I was excited. I'm still not sure where those dollars came from. They appear in my account summary under "deposits" as $6 (Bonus). (Bonus)! I think they're from God, or perhaps an online poker site with an especially keen mastery of addiction psychology. All I know is that I now have 32 dollars in my account, and I see no reason why I can't make $20 or so for the rest of my life. Of course it will require me to spend many many hours, but it's so much fun!

Anent The Finest Town In America (Or 2005's The Burning of Kingston)

The medical world must be bustling these days, because Ross let this little jewel slip between his fingers:

Moorestown, N.J., named best town to live [presumably "in"].

Someone said, "It's a point of civic pride. It ends up on all their stationery, on all their Web sites." Well now it is.

In further MacDonald homestead news, South Carolina's up to no good again. A group called Christian Exodus, fed up with the overwhelmingly liberal trend in American society, is planning a coup à la Bleeding Kansas (an ominous and inemulable epithet) and will attempt, through aggressive resettling, to reform the state county by county and establish "God-honoring governance." The Palmetto State hasn't seemed this volatile since 1860, and we all know how that ended up. Some would believe that Christian Exodus chose South Carolina for its already-conservative political landscape, or even for the Atlantic Coastal breezes, but I'll be the first to say what we're all thinking: Conservative Christians love Cocks.

Re: Philanthropy

The G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, has ended with a pledge of $50 Billion for development in Africa. The world leaders who signed the accord were no doubt bullied into action by various performances at July 2nd's Live 8 concerts. Prime Minister Paul Martin, in a show of solidarity with the literally dozens of people watching the Barenaked Ladies in Canada, vowed to fight the economic inequities represented in "If I Had A Million Dollars." While watching Shakira sing "La Tortura" in Paris, Jacques Chirac commented that the real torture is poverty. And Silvio Berlusconi, in tears during Duran Duran's "Wild Boys" in Rome, declared "It is time for we world leaders to act like Wild Men."

The videos for these performances and more can be found here.

Be sure to watch the Robbie Williams "Angels" video; about halfway through, there's a close-up of a girl sitting on someone's shoulders, arms in the air, in the classic "We Love You Robbie" concert pose. She waves her arms back and forth but realizes that something stinks, buries her nose in her armpit, then decides "Fuck it. They're Robbie Williams fans. They'll deal." You'll have to endure some corny crowdplay and some worse cameraplay to get there, but it's a brilliant moment where one fan affirms her commitment to helping poor Africans.

Heaven and Earth are about to collide.

Oceans rise. Cities fall. Hope survives. These are no longer just the taglines from Deep Impact the movie; they're also important considerations for Deep Impact the eccentric NASA project that will orchestrate a collision between a spacecraft and a comet on the 4th of July. Scientists are theorizing about the subsurface ices inside the comet, but I think it's time for us to start theorizing about what's inside the Impactor as it speeds toward its Independence Day execution. NASA has included a list of 625,000 names of people who signed up wanting to have their name destroyed by a comet (weird..). Has the Alberto Gonzales torture memo been included? The cube at Astor place? Leave your best idea for comet-bound object in the comments section, and the one that starts the whole world laughing will get a free Pale Ale (see below).

PS: You can watch the collision in real-time at 1:52am on July 4. Pick your favorite viewpoint.