God DAmn IT…

Life is so much more interesting when I’m not studying.
At least there is life now.

New York City, after all, is one of the most alive cities there is.

I feel like I am a guest visiting the show of “Dustin’s blog.” Wow, the magnificent hallways of Dustin’s image-creating process.

That was Kerry. Visiting from academia world. Cool.

Now, why would I title this entry god damn it? Because I wanted to start a run of writing an entry everyday, and now, because I got über busy with reloading a Nextel job (yes, still reloading from the crash) I could not keep my run going. So, fuck it, I missed a night.

Anyway, good day. Busy at work, but I got alot of shit done.

Then, it was my work holiday party at Soho Cantina. Look, its all the office peeps.

And its all thanks to these to cooks, the bosses, john z. and jj l.

I had to cut it short because it was john’s 25th birthday, and his girl mary got him surprise concert tickets to Broken social scene.

What a band. Look at them.

And look at me and john and mary’s exhallmate James, having some fucking fun.

And look at the band again.

And look at the girl dancing in front of me that kept bumping into my ass.

And then kerry after that, helping me blog.

(don’t worry, you fuckers, the picts will come soon, just like someone i know.)
((HA! the picts did come!))

Poker right in the ass…

Bad week for me at the tables. Saturday at the Upper West Cash, I lost, then gained it back for a good lead, then lost it all again in a tragic hand. Everyone calls the blind, I hold K J suited, I raise four. John as the big blind goes all in for 16 more. I get the feeling he is full of it and call him, he turns over a 6 2 suited diamonds. I fucking knew it! I am in the lead until he flops two sixes. Fuck that.

Look at these winners.

Fuck ‘em.

And fuck these kids too, who won on Sunday at D-roc’ (the host who lost with broken aces).

Once again I lose, only to fight back for the lead, only to lose it to John. But it all goes around, right, because John convince the one newby guy Matt to buy back a third time, only to lose half his lead to him.

Smile winners, you’ll get yours soon enough.

Party, Play, Past, and Potitics…

Saturday night party at Sarah/Keith’s Micah/Paul’s. Did not take enough pictures of the over all scene, but here are half my hosts.

And this was Micah by the end of the night…

Passed out with people licking him (okay, just his girlfriend).

This, my friends, was not just a regular party, though. This was a reunion of a very magical play written by this guy…

“Every Speed and Distance,” formerly “Rebirth in First Person” (the title I believe fits the play better) united these six crazies

For some laughs we shant forget. It was a play that spawned three couples. A play great before its time. You wish you had seen it, I know.

But you never will. What you will get to see is Sarah’s checkered floor and crossword table.

Patrick Gallagher.

A man not easily silent. He can pontificate on many subjects endlessly. I had never seen him have nothing more to say then right here.

Yes I captured pat without a word left in his breath. Plays reunited, Patrick mummed, a night of milestones.

I shared a cab at 5:00 in the morning with patty, his girl Angela, and some random dude back to the upper west. I live at 98th and West End, Patt at 125 and Riverside, and the dude 72nd and Columbus. I nice easy share. I knew this would be no cheap ride, coming from Bushwick, but I guess randoid did not. On the drunk side, he pestered the driver for a quote. 45 bucks, he answered. Well, randoid was just not going for that. Fuck it, he said, that’s highway robbery, I could get a yellow cab and it would be 20 bucks. He kept pestering until the driver pulled to the side of the road, stopping to let us get off.

I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. And here we have the type of micropolitics I love to study: how small groups make decisions. Who leads and who follows and how arguments become actions.

As randoid went for the door, I let it be known I wasn’t going anywhere. Randoid had assumed the leadership role simply by chosing to act. What was this car ride going to cost us? He found out. Then he championed his idea of the correct path to follow. I disagreed. I declared a different path. One of not getting out in the freezing night on a barren Brooklyn street to look for what we were already in. Pat and Angela became our silent flock, a congregation ready to be swayed, or, a majority waiting to be understood. I felt I poposed a better plan. They said nothing, but stayed in the car. You’re going to stay here and pay that shit? Randoid asked. Yes, bitch. Now shut your fucking mouth and pay up the extra fucking bucks to get home at 5:00 am.

I didn’t say that. He has to drive all the way back after dropping us off, we are already inside, come on.

The rest of the ride, randoid belittled or didn’t agree anything I said, bitter in his political rise and fall. Right after we started moving again (I had to convince the driver that we actually wanted to use him, he had had enough with our underappreciation) it was one of the more akward silences ever. So I had to take pictures to commemorate and break the mood. Here, can you taste the tension

Not such a bad night after all.

A brush with canine pride…

Last night I partied till the sun nearly came up. But more on that later. Right now, you need to check this out.

Yup, walking back from the movie theatre, just chillin on the street, this herd of sled dogs caught my eye. I mean really, what can’t you find in New York?

And look at this hallway…

Doesn’t if feel like limbo. Like a THX 1123 never ending white, or a Matrix back door? I thought it deserved a mention.

And finally. Look at me.

And look at me now.

When photography met the computer for some sweet sweet lovin’, the world was just not the same. Hooray for fucking with contrast.

On board…

Interesting Friday, folks. Look at this church right by my doc.

Cool? I thought so.

Anyway, this city, for all its magnitude, is small as hell. On the way to my office from my psychiatrist, I got lazy, deciding to take F to R for just a block of rain instead of the 6 blocks from just the F. And who walks out from the same car as I’m in but young Miss Meredith.

And then at work, the PS 260 gift tradition continued. First, there was patches (picture coming). Yes I had to glue about 1000 patches to a hip instruction label, then put them in envelopes, tag them with addresses, orginize them, and deliver them to agencies all over the city.

Year two was belt buckles that said PS 260 (not PS 69, as pictured, that was just my own personal buckle). We had to put every single letter in a buckle, and screw the back in. It sucked ass. Once again, 1000 buckles. That shit was no joke.

And now, drum role please, skateboards! Only two hundred this year, because they are expensive as hell, and also quite a bitch to make. Observe.

You nail the screws through.

Loosely put the trucks on.

Drill the trucks tight (the hardest part of this assembly line. I took this step because I had not done a single thing for the skateboards the day before. Joe, pictured in the first two steps, drilled about a hundred boards that day, he needed a break. He also asked me to mention how many boards he did. Oh Joe, always after the glory.)

Put the wheels together, then screw them in.

Then tighten the trucks.

And finally, tighten the wheels to perfection.

Voila, finished product.

Now get drunk.

A room with a view…

What my young hovel looks like when I have not picked up for a bit.

Highlights you might have missed, my computer.

The toys over my tv

The sealed window

The voltron tats I was telling you about.

A mini disc collection that shall gather dust.

Don’t you wish you had a place like mine (or at least its price)?

Questions of Money…

Am I a whore? Are you? I suckle on the teat of a company. Giving them my days, sometimes nights, my weekends. Am i not just selling myself?

This line of thiking lead me to the

WHAT DO YOU COST LIST

How much would somebody have to pay you to…

Steal a breadstick from an out door restaurant table with people casually dining?

Kiss someone?

Kiss someone who was really ugly?

Shoot your own pinky off?

Give a lap dance?

Punch some random person?

Run naked in public?

Taste your own piss?

Give up a liver?

Shave your head?

Take naked pictures and publish them?

Have sex with someone random?

Have sex with your cousin?

Have sex with a dead person?

Have sex with an animal?

Shit your pants?

Pee on someone?

Pee on someone you love?

Work for someone that conflicts with your ethics?

Never talk to your family again?

Move to Europe?

Move to Asia?

Move to Africa?

Move to the Middle East?

Adopt the child of someone you hate and raise them as your own?

Marry someone?

Marry someone ugly and stupid?

Ugly and Smart?

Beautiful and Smart?

Beautiful and Smart, but a total ass hole?

Marry someone who does not speak your language?

Go to war?

Eat nothing but Mcdonalds for a month?

I could keep going… Worry not, i probably will from time to time… And someday i will fill in all my whore numbers…

My favorites…

Jews for Jesus. Really one of the most noble subsections of ethos you could ever find yourself in. Are muslims for Jesus far behind?

Voltron tattoos. I have had this 24 piece collection of voltron tattoos inside the third pocket of my LL Bean monogrammed backpack since junior year of high school. The significance of this cannot be understated.

Duct Tape. I mean really, what can’t you love about it: it’s silver, it’s hefty in your hand, but perfectly symmetrical. It can seal the badly screened edges of the window that carries your air conditioner. And, I’m not going to lie to you here, for most of my life I thought it was duck tape.

The New Yorker. Post graduation Dustin needed something to keep him abreast of goings on, keep his mental acuity challenged, keep his ken (oh juicy glorious word) expanding. The NY made all that happen, my train rides have never been the same. (I cant even think of having to commute by car. When would I read!)

Books. Read, people, read. And not just this blog, though I am flattered that you would waste your companies money by procrastinating with me. But, seriously, though. There’s time enough for love. The tele and movies and masturbation and sleeping and working and eating and shitting and playing an instrument and video gaming and staring straight at the sun all have their place, but what about turning pages? Has America lost its love of the printed word?

Winning. Yes. Hello my name is Dustin, and I’m addicted to winning. (“What? You’re in here for some winning? I used to suck cock for coke?” “Ah seen ‘em!”) It drives me, fuels me, floors me, pedal to the medal, and every other cliché that relates to cars. I just want to win at anything I do, okay. So, for your protection, do not play me in scrabble, ping pong, foosball (okay, okay, I am a total loser, and you guys deserve this as it really should be: foosball) Golden Eye, descent, descent II, chess, connect four, charades, Chinese checkers, that couting pebbles African game, snood, pac man, street fighter 2-turbo, mortal kombat 1 and 3, virtua fighter, tekken 2 and up, and maybe even squash or poker, depending. Warning: arrogance closer to mirror than it appears.

Black black blackest ink on bright white paper. If you have seen my few art pieces, then you’d know. One day, I might just post them.

Home Movies. No, not sex tapes, the cartoon, Home Movies, on the adult swim area of cartoon network. Quite a diamond in the rough.

Ending postings with non sequitors.

Mars, bitches. M A R S.

Society in your head…

I shall continue my sexually exploring trend, because a question arose tonight, as I chilled at john’s place, about sexuality.

(side paragraph: the previous post re: (how much abbreviation must we get to before enough is enough) male female roles is one of many opinions slowly brewed in my head which I like to throw out from time to time to try and chisel them to a honed in argument. They are also good fodder for ripe conversation. And now, with this blog, I can start a compendium of them. The only weird thing is that I find myself saying stuff like “well, like I said on my blog,” (which reminds me of that incredible scene where the eric stolz character in “Kicking and Screaming” Chet breaks it down with “I hear you, Will, but, and I’m just paraphrasing myself here, if (blank, I can’t remember the specific guys) is a tom Collins, then (Hemingway) is a dry martini.) because I reuse certain spiels over and over again almost verbatim (the actor side of me), e.g. the answer to what is eclectic? for anyone who did not go to Wesleyan, which my friend from high school Robert (not a cardinal) can practically quote by heart because he’s heard me say it so many times.)

And I answered, haven’t you heard my little speech on it? I do believe that everybody is bisexual. That if we had not been raised in a predominantly hetero society that infuses a stigma on homosexual behaivior, sex and attraction would not be separated as they are. If our culture drove us to believe that bisexuality was the norm, nobody would blink an eye. Its all about how you grow up. Sure, your specific circumstances will make you unique, but you can’t escape the imprinting of the plurality, that common thread that binds a country. It takes a village to raise a child, but what power that village has, to raise said child as it sees fit.

That being said, the theorem of the sliding scale has been used before by people smarter than I, and I hear a ring of truth in it. Even if we all grew up bi, individuals would vary as far as preference, some more to one side than the other.

Because what woman cannot see the beauty in an attractive woman, what man cannot say that he would rather have a meal across the table from someone resembling brad pitt rather than some ugly chump. Beauty is beauty.

And every human relationship flirts on the edge of the sexual. That crazy mix of feeling, urges, power, tinges every interaction we go through. We all have bodies that like to touch and fuck other bodies. We have brains that need their ego stroked, that need to know where they stand. That need to be loved.

Even the time honored bond of friendship, the platonic ideal that allows for relationships between man and man, woman and woman, swirls with sexual tension. How can you not be attracted to your friends, the people that you gravitated to.

It’s not hard for me to realize that we all just want to fuck each other.

Except maybe not this guy.

He was on the bus on my way home, drunk off his ass. I wonder how the bus driver got him out.

The week you missed…

I did play poker on Thursday on the upper west cash game.

I was down forty dollars before I finally got my shit together, making it back into 35. Then I made two mistakes, and poof, all out, in a piqued rage. So I did not stay to the end to take a picture of the winners.

But I did make it to my psychiatrist the next morning at 9am. He just changed his locale to this little alleyway called Patchin Place where e. e. cummings lived.

And then, I finally made it into supercuts. I had a whole plan to print pictures of me with my hair too short after a cut, and one with my hair grown in just right. Like this.

But I got lazy and never did it. Once again I went with the verbal instructions. Here’s the before.

Here’s the during.

Here’s the after. Pretty good, she came closer than most.

Thank you supercutter.

Enjoy your Sunday, I know I will.