Oh, great.

Just great. Chicago is the most stressful city in the country. According to Forbes. [sigh] I would suggest moving, but that's too stressful.

[link via Gaper's Block]

No Greyhound

Gun crazy isn't the only kind of crazy going around, oh no. There's Rambo-knife crazy, too: A Greyhound passenger stabbed and then beheaded the kid in the seat next to him last night. With a "Rambo-style knife." WTF?

The kid (victim) was 20, sleeping with headphones on, and en route to his home in Winnipeg. I was the same age the last time I took Greyhound. It was a relatively short trip from Chicago to DeKalb, to return to school after a holiday break. I was held up, a gun stuck in my ribs, while using the urinal in the men's room. I only lost twenty bucks, though, and intend to keep my head when it comes to going Greyhound. Which is to say, I vowed to never associate with that station or that bus line again.

I realize I'm making a huge generalization, but... what is it about that bus line that attracts the bat-shit crazy element? And why isn't the visual luggage search at security catching things like Rambo knives?

More Photo Credits

Time for another shameless self-promotional post in which I continue to imply my fascination with and fondness for the Creative Commons.

Just discovered that I'm credited, but not properly linked-to, for this photo I took of Ennio Morricone performing at United Nations Headquarters* . Any ideas what language this is? The ".sk" domain is the Slovakia registrar, not that I can read a word of it. I'm guessing they got to my photo via this re-posting of it on the Wikimedia Commons.



And then I spotted this German site linking to a photo I took of Casa dos Bicos (House of Pointed Stones). I imagine they found my photo via this Wikipedia page about secular Renaissance architecture in Lisbon. Incidentally, we were informed by locals that the building's diamond-shaped stone protrusions were originally tipped with actual diamonds. There are more detailed pics of it in my Flickr set from the Lisbon trip.



* [see My Trip To United Nations HQ]

Holy Schmap, Photo Credits!

I had no idea what Schmap was until I learned that some of my Creative Commons-licensed photography is being used in Schmap's Prague and London listings.

First, I received an email about a photo I took at Prague's Hotel Josef:



Then I got another email, regarding a photo of the unassuming front of the Maharishi store in London (it's easy to miss, tucked away on Floral Street):



What's so cool to me about all this: it's practically effortless. Post your photos to Flickr, use a Creative Commons license that permits sharing with attribution, and you could have photo credits that used to take a lot more work to achieve. That's assuming you take photos that people want to use.

What's funny to me about all this: these are both relatively high-end locations - the type of place I explore when traveling on business, but not the kind of place I typically patronize on my own dime. I'm more of a low- to no-brow league of consumer in most respects.

That said, Hotel Josef was a great place to stay near the old town square of Prague. Especially when your employer is paying for it. I should also admit that I did convince myself to splurge on a very expensive, limited-edition sweatshirt (which I am afraid to wear very often) at Maharishi - who may be best known for Sno-Pants and the Encyclopedia of Disruptive Pattern Material (which is, incidentally, one of my favorite reference works).

Seven Hills Of Time Displacement

It's been forever since I posted anything. As if you couldn't tell by looking at the date of my last post. I'm in Lisbon for work this week. While I was here, Chicago turned up on Google Street View. Nice to be able to check on the place while out-of-town.

Rounding out the time in Lisbon with a bit of a head-cold. Thought it was allergies, but allergy meds are doing nothing to relieve the symptoms. Somehow, in the haze of jet-lag and work-related hang-overs, I am at this moment in the throes of time displacement. Why else would I by trying to get a new post up at a time like this? Rhetorical question. More photos posted once I get home. For now, see what I feel like while walking through the city of seven hills, on sinus medicine.

My Trip To United Nations HQ

I still have over 250 photos to sort and tag, but here's the video I took inside the United Nations Headquarters last week. It's Ennio Morricone conducting a full orchestra, in a concert reception for the UN's new Secretary General. We actually sat in the same seats the UN ambassadors sit in -- we were in the Palestine section -- complete with translation ear-pieces and desktop gooseneck microphones. It was pretty cool. More details will come in another post, when I have the photos sorted.

For now, enjoy this capture of the very first time Morricone performed "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" on US soil (technically, the UN is international soil... but we saw Morricone the next night at Radio City Music Hall... both venues are in NYC).

Crazy like a Fawkes

I'm in London for work this week, and arrived just in time for Guy Fawkes Night. Having only a cursory knowledge of the origin of this holiday, I felt I had to do a little research...

For those of you not familiar with the occasion, it is a celebration of the capture of Britain's most notorious traitor, Guy Fawkes. This frustrated military man - whose biography bears several resemblances to that of a more recent American - and his cohorts planned to blow up Parliament (Roman Catholics trying to disrupt Protestant rule with an act of domestic terrorism).

So how does England commemorate the foiling of The Gunpowder Plot? She co-opts the explosive approach Fawkes took... setting off fireworks, bonfires and flaming effigies of the Pope for a night. Okay, the Pope part doesn't happen so much anymore, as Catholics now celebrate the holiday, too. But the holiday was originally set to celebrate the saving of the King and to instill violent anti-Catholic sentiment.

All this drove me to the point that prompted this post:

When you get down to it, practically every recorded incident of terrorism revolves around the fundamental inseparability of a Church and a State. So are we ultimately fooling ourselves when we believe the two can operate independently of each other?

Jet Blue Flight 292, via Caural

I just found out that my friend Zachary (aka Caural) was on that flight. He's blogged his account of it here. Glad to know he made it safely, and that he appears to be taking this all in stride. What a good sport! I'm interested to hear what new music of his this event inspires. Here's a quote from his account, which is very surreal (blogging about appearing on the media, where you were talking about how you watched your plane make an emergency landing on TV - while you were still on the plane):

As I was exiting the plane I was talking with Take. Watching the news, he informed me they were filming everyone walking down the ramp and to the tarmac. So when I got to the door, he recognized me and told me to wave. We both started to laugh, and I was waving around my hand- holding the cell phone- saying hi to him through the news cameras. That is the story behind the photo so many of you have seen on what made front page of the LA Times and other publications.
...
Soon, a producer for CBS' Early Show named Alan approached me to interview the next morning, and I even turned down Good Morning America! This was the ultimate in surreal. I was driven to the Beverly Hilton where I stayed in a beautiful room on CBS' tab, and we relaxed for about 10 minutes while taking care of some more logistics with the network. We flipped through the channels, and I did double-takes seeing the footage of the interviews I had just done on the flat-screen TV. I had made CNN, Fox, NBC, CBS, and local stations like KTLA. Huh? I just wanted to eat- we went for sushi and Sapporo on La Cienega and Wilshire.

Cheers, Zach! Get to Chicago safely for your next gig, will you? (Would rather see you there than on MSNBC or CBS News [w/pic, video].)