Fax Us Your Unwanted Faxes
Sketch for a Guidebook to Singularities
While walking near Hook Mountain yesterday I thought it would be a funny idea to emulate the style and structure of a guide book. But instead of referring the walker to vistas, ruins, and possible sightings of wildlife, I would describe the particular events and intersections of a single walk: “After a good thirty minutes of somewhat disconcerting silence and solitude, you will round the final bend and scramble up a rocky, treeless path to the summit. There you will find a group of eighteen fifty-to-sixty year-olds wearing Patagonia and North Face jackets and poking the ground with aluminum hiking poles. One of the men will be particularly vociferous, holding captive a small audience, and talking about his daughter, who just called in to report she completed the first fifteen miles of a bike race, leaving only eighty-five more to go. He will quiet down a little and comment only intermittently while the group’s guide explains the view: ‘Those far off buildings are actually the Bronx. If you look further to the north, that most distant ridge is Long Island. And the Empire State Building can be seen directly behind this hill. Note the Tappan Zee Bridge below us. The Hudson is just over three miles wide at this point. Those buildings to the very south are Jersey City. If you turn to the right, you can follow this ridge to that very large house that looks like a hotel. It is actually a private residence, but the surrounding land has recently been acquired by the parks department. Let’s take another five-minute break and then continue on down the trail.’”
24 March – 20:46 and 21:01, Respectively
Tribute to Vladimir Tatlin and Martha Graham
Not a Tribute to Vladimir Tatlin and Martha Graham
On the Way to Work
Lateness, compounded by one late train, then a second late train, on which I gave wrong directions to a family communicating via sign language while an a cappella group sang “Return to Sender.”
On Abandoning Single-Ticket Requests in Favor of List Requests
The man worked at the camera store for many years after he lost count of how many years he had worked there; although he insinuated his way into a niche (perhaps more of a nook), he never excelled in any of his various positions, which he held one after the other without upward movement. He started out selling lenses for telescopes. Recounting the recommendations that he suggested to management was an inexhaustible subject for him. His unsolicited advice took the shape of volleys of common sense, aimed bluntly, but indirectly, at management’s short-sightedness and lack of vision. He was like a clumsy appendage that had to enlist the help of other appendages to get the job done. In this regard he had the instincts of a manager, but lacked the authority; and so, he was relegated to a singular position in the company, something like light comic relief, but with more respect, because of seniority. He was just there. He was also a confusingly distant relative of one of the owners. No one knew how they were related; those who did know had died or otherwise moved on. One of his pet recommendations to management was that a request-for-product order be done as a list, instead of one at a time, which meant the sales rep had to type in his name and the SKU each time a customer requested a product. The managers had, in fact, looked into abandoning single-ticket requests in favor of list requests. The computer programming and employee retraining, however, not to mention the chances that a “deck hand”—what the men who schlep the merch to and fro are called—would not be competent enough to check off multiple list items. They, the managers that is, concluded that single-ticket requests may be slightly less efficient but in the end are more accountable. Of course, no one ever told our man this. He often said “no one ever tells me anything,” and in this case—although his coworkers were apt to refute him, not because they disagreed, but because they thought him disagreeable—he was right.
Adapted from Erasmus
Every man likes the smell of his own dung.
— “Of the Art of Discussion,” Montaigne
Flooded Lot
Heavy rains flooded this construction site in Brooklyn. The northwest corner of the pool was blackened after rising water spilled open containers of oil.
Pay Phones in NYC
According to the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications there are 16,358 public pay phones in the city of New York. That is less than half as many as there were in 2000, which weighed in at 33,335. NYTimes.
Work-Live: Controlling Air Flow
An office worker uses company brochures to restrict the flow of air from a vent.
Work-Live: Living in Industrial Spaces
A lightly used freight elevator outfitted with wall decorations, radio, speakers, arm chair, and ottoman (also a chair). To accommodate large freights the chairs are wheeled out.
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