Friday, October 31, 2008

flesh wounds

[monterrey, california; january 2008]

MOSCOW (AP) — There's no doubt what Vladimir Putin's favorite birthday present is this year — a rare Ussuri tiger cub.

State television showed the Russian prime minister affectionately petting the two-month-old female cub on Friday. The tiger weighs only about 20 pounds and sleeps in a wicker basket at Putin's residence outside Moscow.

Putin says a good home will be found for the tiger, presumably in a zoo or wildlife preserve. He hasn't decided what to call her, but is leaning toward Mashenka or Milashka.

Putin refuses to say who gave him the cub for his 56th birthday, which was Tuesday.

The Ussuri tiger is also known as the Siberian, Amur or Manchurian tiger. Fewer than 400 are believed to survive in the wild.

-Russia's Putin gets tiger cub for his birthday



Thursday, October 23, 2008

I just want to show my knees!

[brooklyn, september 2008]


Woman 1: You know, I heard McDonald’s is making lattes now.

Woman 2: McDonald’s? (initially feigning contempt) Well that’s just...(face lights up) fantastic!

Woman 1: Isn’t it?! (with tremendous relief; leaning in conspiratorially) Now we don’t have to
listen to jazz all day long!

Woman 2: I can start wearing heels again.

Woman 1: Read gossip magazines! (gleefully discards book )


Woman 2: Watch reality TV shows…


Woman 1: I like television!


Woman 2: I can’t really speak French.


Woman 1: I don’t know where Paraguay is!


Woman 2: Paraguay?


-Not "Lovin' It", Jennifer Byrne, 10/15/08

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

can't read hebrew like i used to

[williamsburg, brooklyn, september 2008]

"My work is very simple. I have come to New York because it is the most forlorn of places, the most abject. The brokenness is everywhere, the disarray is universal. You have only to open your eyes to see it. The broken people, the broken things, the broken thoughts. The whole city is a junk heap. It suits my purpose admirably. I find the streets an endless source of material, an inexhaustible storehouse of shattered things. Each day I g o out with my bag and collect objects that seem worthy of investigation. My samples now number in the hundreds--from the chipped to the smashed, from the dented to the squashed, from the pulverized to the putrid."

"What do you do with these things?"

"I give them names"

-
"City of Glass," by Paul Auster

Monday, October 6, 2008

opening of scarf season

[new brunswick, march 2008]

Gunnghilder Sveinbjarna and her friend, Anna Lara Magnusdottir, are ordering their second bottle of red wine in the Philippe Starck-designed interior of Reykjavik's Bar 5. Tonight the young women are feeling no pain.

'We come out at the weekend to forget our children and our problems, and this time we will drink extra hard to make sure we forget the economic crisis too,' says Gunnghilder, raising a glass. 'Tomorrow the sore head.'

- "The Party's Over for Iceland, The Island that Tried to buy the World," Guardian.uk; 10/5/08

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Birthday Mousse

[new brunswick, september 2008]

Thursday, October 2, 2008

[highland park, new jersey, september 2008]