A three-photo series featuring flowers and bugs, all cropped square.  These were taken this weekend at Westchester Community College’s Native Plant Garden.

Photo 1/3

Photo 2/3

Photo 3/3

A day in my life shouldn’t feel like going 10 rounds in the ring with Ivan Drago, even if Rocky wins in the end and all the Soviet spectators cheer his name.

Recently I’ve been feeling like life has just been pummeling me.  I haven’t been hit with a devastating uppercut, but that quick jab has been keeping me off balance and those body shots are starting to wear me down.

But something occurred to me the other day; I don’t have to go toe-to-toe for 10 rounds anymore, I can just get out of the ring.  Their are no more homework assignments to be completed, no more finals to be taken, no more semesters that will come and go.  So long as I can muster the stamina to get back in the ring everyday, throw a few punches, take my fall and collect my paycheck, I’m golden.  I don’t really have to do anything responsible or productive at all, and everything will still be just fine. 

So yesterday I did something I haven’t done in years.  I went to Best Buy after work and plunked down a twenty dollar investment in the greatest of all forms of modern-era escapism: a video game.

For the next few weeks my priority-number-one will be to become a great Jedi warrior and save the galaxy.  All the concerns of the “real world” are gonna have to take a back seat.  And after I’ve defeated the evil Sith Lord, I should be rested, healed and ready to rumble again.  So, look out Drago.

All men should try to learn before they die
what they are running from, and to, and why.

Lucky Numbers 6, 31, 27, 16, 28, 44

All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies.
  — Verse 1 of the First Book of Bokonon

The moral message of Kurt Vonnegut’s book is simple: People are fools and life is pointless.  This sad little nugget of wisdom is woven into a science-fictiony plot that is utterly preposterous and pointless.  That Vonnegut must have been giggling to himself devilishly while writing this book is apparent on nearly every page (The New York Times actually proclaimed Vonnegut a “laughing prophet of doom”).  The result is one of the great examples of contemporary American literature.

In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.

And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.

“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.

“Certainly,” said man.

“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God.

And He went away.

  — Verse 2-4 of the First Book of Bokonon

A Photo from this weekend in Central Park.