Antonio sent me a copy of the pictures he took Memorial Day weekend.

Love this picture from the Standard coffeeshop. Here's a larger version of it.

"IEEEEEEEEE REEEEEEEEMEMBUUUH YOUUUUU!"

I saw that first episode of "Fear Factor" with the rats. You know, where the contestants lie in a pit of rats for four minutes to get to the next round. It looks easy. I would've breezed through that first episode. Climbing out on the hood of the suspended car looked fun. Here's why it's not as scary as it looks. You won't get hurt on the show. Fear of harm, for me, is the biggest fear.

I got this note slipped under my door from one of the other tenants in my building:

*** FOR YOUR SAFETY ***

HAVE YOUR VEHICLE CHECKED OUT!

THE RATS IN THE PARKING LOT HAVE GONE INTO THE ENGINE COMPARTMENT OF MY CAR AND EATEN AWAY THE SPARK PLUG WIRES!

(I WAS BARELY RUNNING ON 3 OF MY 4 CYLINDERS)

I WAS TOLD BY MY MECHANIC TO PLACE CAYENNE PEPPER ON THE WIRING, HOSES AND OTHER VEHICLE INNARDS UNDER THE HOOD TO MAKE IT LESS PALATABLE.

GOOD LUCK!

Now, the rats in my parking garage are the size of cats and are dark and slick and dart. They can outrun you. They chew on metal. Not like the cute, furry, "domestic" rats that tickled the Fear Factor contestants. If I was a contestant and they showed me just one of those parking garage rats, fohgeduhaboudit.

If fear of harm is my biggest fear, what's the second? Cockroaches. That's the chink in my armor. Especially when they're as big as the one I saw the other night. There I am watching Letterman -- if those rats are the size of cats, then this roach was the size of a rat. The sighting of this monster is followed by a long string of expletives and a mad dash for a newspaper. This roach is HUGE.

WHACK!

"Ha ha! Everyone (what do they know?) says you'll survive long after humans have become extinct, but I got you! I gotcha good!"

I lift the newspaper expecting a huge mess, gallons of roach guts oozing, covering the paper.

IT'S NOT THERE.

God. No. Not this.

I could lose my wallet, my keys, my telephone to the Bermuda Triangle of Lost-Items-Right-Before-Your-Very-Own-Eyes (which regularly claims dropped loose change), but I can't, I won't, I will not let this happen. I will find this monster. I will kill it.

After half an hour with a flashlight on all fours looking under everything and regularly brushing myself off (in case the roach thinks it can hide close to me to avoid detection), I see it taunting me in plain sight, in wide open country.

WHACK!

It's still going! It runs for cover behind some paintings lying against the wall. I uncover it. It moves to the next painting. Repeat three more times until there is nowhere else for it to go.

WHACK!

Tough as nails, this thing won't stop, it's going for the corner.

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

It doesn't smush. It lies on it's back and looks dead, it's little feet twitching...

No! It's back. It's scurrying towards me! One last gasp effort to take me down with it! I am in jeopardy!

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! Jesus. New plan. STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!

Then with the roach rolled up in the paper, I take the flashlight and lift it high overhead. The flashlight is metal. It comes down hard. When I hear the crunch, I know I am victorious!

Downtown living at its finest.

I learned of another Slashdot-like site called Kuro5hin.org and I found a story there that revealed a hoax in a previously submitted story about Rasterisation as Art. The author of the Rasterisation hoax cited Alan Sokal's experiment on the editors of "Social Text" as inspiration. The experiment involved Sokal writing a Physics is Mystic parody piece, peppering it with big name quotes, and ideas that were fashionable at the time. When the article, titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", was published in "Social Text", Sokal exposed his experiment in "Lingua Franca", where he clarifies his intentions in the writing of the original article:

I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies -- whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross -- publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions?

It all sounds kind of fun, like a big fat pie in the face of the all the pedantic mumbo-jumbo out there. Sokal wants to point out that much of subjectivist thinking is mired in "obscure and pretentious language." But it also sounds a bit like gloating. HAHA! Suckers! Then before I can really think things through (my head still reeling from the dense, incomprehensible writing of "Transgressing...") and judge Sokal -- is he right or is he an ass? -- I realize that this is Sokal's university home page, the place where most scholars would collect their academic work. And every link on the page of this Professor of Physics concerns the hoax, called the "Social Text Affair". Will this be his claim to fame?

Publish or perish, I suppose.

Watch out, Sam Cassell!

The DWP guy came out today to investigate the meters. I'm averaging about $50 for every two months now according to him. We tried a test where I turned on the heater and he calculated the approximate wattage from how fast the meter turned over. 4000W. So most likely the heater is to blame. Still, he's going to charge me at my current rate of consumption and talk to the managers of the building about what they can do to make the building more efficient.

Here's the kicker. With a $650 bill, I wasn't even Top Ten. The DWP guy had a pile of meter reading requests from everyone in the building. Some people had $900 bills!