Honest untruths and Circuit City

***I'm putting up a couple of links to some hot podcasts that I've discovered recently (hint, hint: look in the links section). Also, make sure to check out the Dusty Show on WFMU.***

Anyway, I ran into this girl the other day that I met when I was homeless and sleeping in H&M fitting rooms. It's funny how time changes people but at the same time sort of keeps them the same. Almost like being in a constantly changing, metamorphosing prison. When we saw each other, she looked at me with these piercing eyes...it was one of those looks that just sort of pierces your heart and you know that the person looking at you knows something about you that you've devoted yourself to concealing but for some reason...

On to more serious things.

I love Circuit City because they have a no questions asked return policy. This is particularly good for me because my mp3 player just broke and I'm in need of a brand spankin new one (this is where the trickery comes in). Now there are normally two things that can I would do in this situation.

1. Find the same mp3 player at Circuit City, buy it, switch the players and return the old one.
2. Find another mp3 player that I like, buy it at the Circuit City inflated price then get the same thing on eBay for cheap then return the Circuit City mp3 player. Or in the event that the eBay player is busted, refer to item number 1.

This may be unethical but as my friend Micah J. used to say, "Richard, you lack scruples."

April is drawing to a close and the course that I've been waiting to take

OK, there's only one more blog until May so that means that it's time for a new monthly goal. I've been thinking about a few and I'll let whoever is reading this drivel help me to decide what it's going to be. So, here's my short list:

• Subscribe to the New York Times (less than $4 a week for 7 day a week delivery)


• Start a weekly audio podcast centered on interesting news items.


• Have a conversation with a random person each day.


• Run 2 miles each morning (or something like that)

Just leave a comment on this entry and we'll take it from there.

Now on to the juicy stuff (and you'll see just how mundane my life has become in the next few sentences). I got a notice in the mail from Brooklyn College notifying me that they are offering two 2-day courses in both speed reading and the A+ study method!! LIke I said, pretty mundane stuff but this is the kind of thing that does it for me. Anyway, the courses are supper cheap (just $150 each) and I imagine that they will pay for themselves in a fairly short period of time. I remember one time when Taz, Naomi, the mystery man, and I were driving back from Geneva, I saw Taz practically flipping the pages of some tome and saying that she was speed-reading. I remember from that day on, joking about how she was just reading "and", "the", "you", and the occasional exclamation point. Either way, I've wanted learn how to speed read since then and the opportunity has finally presented itself. Furthermore, it's definitely going to be a useful skill that should enable me to enroll in more classes and get out of school faster and when it all comes down to it, that's the goal.

My new favorite mySpace ad:



Imagine them rocking back and forth in their chairs with their heads bobbing and their needles twirling...fucking classic.

Uneasy recognition

I was at dinner last night with a couple of friends and a young lady sitting at a table opposite ours made eye contact with me a couple of times. It was almost as if we recognized each other but just couldn't place it. At least, that's how I feel about the whole thing. Over and over, we just kept studying each other's faces (somewhat covertly) and I felt like I could place her in a million situations that were all equally plausible and therefore equally unlikely. As she left, we locked eyes one last time and as she turned around, I felt like I had lost an old friend.

Quick cool video

Strange days

What a fucking wacky night last night! Naomi and I went to Moe's (again) and I ended up running into all of these random people. First Lisa, who eventually got mad when we questioned her about her weave...I mean, the shit is obviously fake; I don't see why she would get her back up about being complimented on it. Next was this guy that I used to work with who was there to get a drink while he did his laundry. And lastly, I ran into Haley from mySpace. That was a bit odd, not only in that I actually met someone that I've only interacted with on mySpace, but in that I was so drunk that all I remember was taping her on the shoulder, keeling forward ever so slightly and looking at her beautiful face.

All else is a blur (which is to say that I don't remember how I got back home).

Maladjusted artists

I went out the Julie Saul Gallery yesterday out in Chelsea. As I was leaving, I had the displeasure of meeting a young lady that reminded me of Chloe from 24. We were in the elevator and I started some small talk just to try to find out what other galleries in the building were worth visiting. She told me about a couple on other floors of the building and mentioned that she found out about the one that we had just left in a magazine that she was holding called "Gallery Guide". So I ask her (and this seems perfectly reasonable to me) where she got it and thats when things got wacky. She gives me this look like "you idota!!" and tells me that she got it "in a gallery".

Last time I checked, Ms. Snippy, galleries didn't double as magazine stands.

Verify vs. Certify and Google Calendar

This is going to be a long one (Beanie, you may navigate away now).

Well, in the shower this morning I was thinking about word usage in a particular sentence. I mean that I thought of a sentence and then thought about if that sentence was grammatically correct. The sentence itself doesn't even matter but what is interesting is that the words certify and verify in this particular sentence can be interchangeable. Now, I bring this up because it got me thinking about word roots and the reasons that we have words that mean almost the same thing. So let's look at certify; basically this means "to assure that something meets a certain standard". Verify means "to authenticate" or "to make sure that something is true". Basically they mean the same thing though right? OK so do the following sentences mean the same thing?

• I'm calling to verify that the charges are correct.
• I'm calling to certify that the charges are correct.

Not really (plus this was a bad example and I've gone off on a tangent once again and have forgotten what my real point was)...either way. I love words that are similar because they allow me to accurately convey ideas.

Next topic. (Still here Bean?...good.)
Motherfucking Google Calendar is here!!! For a while I was using 30 boxes which is cool as ice. It has this entry field (I forget what they call it) where you can enter an event in plain text so instead of filling out a form and choosing a date then entering a time then entering the event details, you can just write "Masturbatory session in McDonald's bathroom at 8AM on April 25th" and your entry automagically appears on the calendar. It's also got a feature where you can see your friend's calendars and edit events between them plus subscribe to RSS feeds...blah blah blah. Anyway, Google Calendar does all of this but there's one feature that even though this is the first day that I've used it, I just can't live without. This feature is absolute genius. It is the feature which puts my whole day in context. As a matter of fact, I bow down to whoever came up with this. Google calendar emails me my daily agenda every morning at 5 AM.

This is the part where you all think "Richard, what fucking difference does this make? Hurry up and finish this shit, my Easter Vienna sausages are getting cold!!!" OK, maybe not all of you...either way, all of my email (save for spam and the letters from my African money laundering email squad teammates) is automatically forwarded to my phone so this means that when I wake up in the morning and roll over, I look at my phone and I remember what I need to do that day. As you can see, I'm blogging on a Sunday so it worked.

Make an appointment

OK, so I was in the shower this morning and I had this amazing revelation; I need to start making appointments. For those of you who know me, you know that I'm notorious for coming up with ideas and not really following through with them. If you don't know that Richard, then you know the one that waits until the last minute to do something that I knew about weeks in advance. Either way, the problem is that I'm so obsessed with having a good time that I procrastinate like no other. Now here comes the solution...wait for it...wait for it...I'm going to start making appointments with myself. I'm really good about keeping appointments with other people and as you all know, there's no one more important to me than myself so I certainly won't be missing any of my dates with myself (twisted logic, I know)

I suppose that this isn't that groundbreaking of an idea since I already do this to an extent. I mean, I'm on a strict(ish) schedule when I go to the gym. I guess the difference here is that I'm aplying this to "non-relaxation" time. So I'll actually start scheduling an hour or two for textbook reading, an hour for sketching, an hour for laundry, magazine time, so on and so forth. Same thing every week, week after week...sounds exciting doesn't it? Not really...let the meetings begin!!

Goals for the month of fools

OK, for those of you who don't know, I had this idea at the beginning of the year that I would develop a new habit each month. Fuck a New Year's resolution, no one ever keeps them (why, that's a discussion for another time).

In January, I stopped smoking. Some would question this but ultimately, one cigarette every couple of weeks is quitting as far as I'm concerned. My goal for February was to stop drinking. This one turned out well because a bunch of my friends were also doing it so we sort of made a little game of it. After a long month of sobriety, I discovered that I didn't really have as much of a desire to drink as I had prior to February. Anyway, in March my goal was to get back into shape. Those of you who know me might say "Richard, what the fuck are you talking about???" Well, when you run up four flights of stairs and are out of breath for the next ten minutes, I think that there's a problem. Especially considering the fact that I used to be able to run two miles in about 15 minutes and barely break a sweat. So I joined a gym (and actually went). After a month, I definitely feel like I've lost some of the belly fat (from the peanut gallery: "What the fuck?!?!") that I've accumulated over the last couple of years. I can run for the train and not feel like I have to beg an old lady for a seat.

This gets me to the point of this entry, the goal for April. Now, let me give a little background on what's been going on before I reveal the goal. In my Marketing Management class, we've been discussing a number of various uses for everyday products. In case this surprises anyone, the fucking iPod came up (more on my love/hate relationship with this device later) and one of the uses, aside from zoning out on the train to the latest Kelly Clarkson album, it is being used as a learning device. It seems that some professors (no one at Brooklyn College) are offering their lectures as podcasts. Why is this interesting? Well, primarily because students in these courses no longer have to go to class. I think that this probably works well for classes like English or any class where there isn't too much need for visual demonstrations. Of course, for those classes, the professor could always employ video podcasting. But the long and short of it is that I decided that I would no longer veg out on the train but actually get my learn on. So the goal for April is that I will listen primarily to podcasts on my mp3 player.

So coming up with the goal was easy, but the problem is that it's hard to implement. Apparently, podcasts now outnumber radio stations worldwide so that means that there's a whole lot of digging to do. I started at the iTunes music store where they're offered for free but soon discovered that the selection there was somewhat lackluster and that I wasn't easily able to transfer the ones that I downloaded to my mp3 player. Next stop was google where I discovered podcast alley and podcast.net. The problems with these is that it isn't easy to browse through the thousands of podcasts that are on offer. So I asked my Professor Hirakubo, master of all things Marketing, which podcasts that he listened to. Sadly, it was mostly CNN, ABC, and NBC. Either way, that was a start.

My next problem was that I needed to find an aggregator. What's an aggregator you say? Basically, it's a program that automagically downloads your podcast episodes. Back to Google to look for one. A couple of months ago, I tried one called ipodder but for some reason, decided that it wasn't really what I was looking for so I skipped that one when the results came up. There was one that I found interesting called Happy Fish that allows for automatic device synchronization which definitely comes in handy since I'm not using an iPod. What I found out was that not all of the feeds that I wanted to listen to were parsed properly by Happy Fish and on top of that, it took forever to download anything...so I scratched that one. After trying out a couple of others, I decided that I would go with ipodder (which is now called Juice). Lesson, always go with your first instinct.

I'll tell you why I like Juice. First off, it allows you to subscribe to OPML feeds (what does OPML mean? I don't know...google it) which basically means that I can share the same list of podcasts between my three computers (that means my HTPC, windows half of my laptop, and the mac half (don't ask)). I can run scripts after each download (which will come in handy in a couple of seconds) and clean up old episodes from right within the player (not to mention the automatic cleanup feature that is offered). Again, there are some feeds that aren't parsed properly, but not as many as in Happy Fish and I can set the number of simultaneous downloads as high as six at a time.

OK, this is getting really long, so I'm going to stop here, put links to a couple of my favorite podcast feeds in the sidebar, and resume this tomorrow.