sorabji at WSBJ.com |

Sated

sorabji: STOP NETSEXING!!! IT’S UNSEEMLY!! >:P friend of yore: hahaha how did you know? friend of yore: 😉 sorabji: a d00d knows, somehow friend of yore: haha. i was just about to go to bed. friend of yore: how are...

Today’s Unexpected Mirror, Broken in a Trash Can and Wrapped in Tape

I Read This as “STOP EATING YOUR FELLOW FART BEINGS” and I Stand By That Interpretation

Under 150

This Poem Is Called “TIRE”

Reflection in a Heart-Shaped Mirror

A friend sent this photo, saying my “unexpected mirrors” series inspired him to get...

Today’s Unexpected Mirror

CXJKUN7ZZNBCDEFGHKLMOPRTU-[]\;./*-+NP;.,]56790

Throbbing Nuclear Egg

The camera on Samsung’s Galaxy S9+ is, for the most part, pretty impressive… Except when it makes the sun look like a giant throbbing nuclear egg, causing a bioluminescent pixie to dance on the ground in front of me....

AN-GEVS ARE SCREAAMS ECHOSA NEW WORLDS

This billboard looks like it says “AN-GEVS ARE SCREAAMS ECHOSA NEW WORLDS”, whatever...

MTA Bus: Evacuation Center?

Who knew an evacuation was underway today? And also, TIL: If you pay cash (coin) for a bus fare...

Did Not See This Coming But Guess I Should Have

A conEdison bill for zero dollars arrived yesterday. Since the pandemic started they did not read...

Ashbery as a Mousepad

I had not intended to use Ashbery’s “Collected Poems” as a mousepad. Somehow it...

I Started Collecting Pictures of These Things…

…and then I stopped collecting pictures of these things. They are obviously some kind of surveying guideposts, of which I found a couple others today. But the text on the others more or less explained the purpose of the...

Johnston Mausoleum: I Answered My Own Question

I feel kinda dumb for having thought this, but closer inspection today revealed that the Johnston...

Is the Mighty Johnston Mausoleum at Calvary Coming Down?

I was at Old Calvary today on other business, so I did not have time to find out what this is all...

Socrates Park’s Wall of Tombstones, Take 2

New York City Transit Benchmark Do Not Disturb MJELS BM#

Payphones in NYC are finally going away next year so I need a new piece of street furniture to...

181 Alignment

A couple of curious alignments of the 181 took place this week. Someone contacted me about doing an interview for their podcast. The email included a link to their YouTube channel. The channel had 181 followers. I later got this...

Today’s Unexpected Mirror

The Mystery of Socrates Sculpture Park’s Wall of Tombstones

I’m probably going to make a second attempt at this video, but I’m posting this version anyway in case I don’t get around to it. I sound kinda sleepy, I misspoke on a couple of things, and I seem to have not...

Siegfried Langgard: Liebeslied (Love Song)

This is what I did with yesterday’s unexpected extra hour (I forgot about the daylight savings time thing). This piece has fistfuls of notes but it’s not too difficult until the end with the long stretches in the...

Questions Answered

To bring as much closure as possible to last week’s existential discovery, I found a breakthrough piece of evidence on Saturday that led to the dismissal of virtually any questions I had left about whether I really did...

Unexpected Mirror at the Steinway Mansion Today

This Is How You Keep Halloweeners at a Safe Distance

“Genius!” was all I could say. I spotted this and one other Halloween candy dispenser...

When I Thought I Had Hot New Inspiration, Unexpected Mirrors, To Discover I’ve Been Doing This For 15 Years. Bah. Everything Is Cliché

This is from 2012. Rummaging through through what I thought was my recent breakthrough inspiration...

Today’s Unexpected Mirror

A “Sitting Area” With Nowhere To Sit

I’ve always thought it funny that this humble lot at 21st Street and Hoyt Avenue North in...

Rain Day, and “I Don’t Care”

It’s a rain day, and while I’m no wuss about most weather conditions I hate being in...

Today’s Unexpected Mirror

Another Walk Over the Ed Koch/Queensboro Bridge

This one came out better than the first one, I think. Near the end you see a dude on a bike make a peace signal and smile for the camera. I guess it’s not lost on passers-by what I’m doing when holding the camera...

Stain

Just some follow-up, or follow-on, as I sometimes see people say, to yesterday’s existential weirdness: I remain in limbo, which is where I intend to stay for all time, as to whether I have a daughter. Such a strange and...

When It Comes To Airman/Air Dancer I Have One Word…

…and that word is YES. But this crazy beast was not enough to make me get a haircut yesterday. I don’t think I had a cut since January, maybe even December, and still find enclosed spaces such as barber shops...

A YouTube Intervention, Four Years Later

In August, 2016, I posted a longer version of this video to YouTube. It shows a daredevil dude scaling the surface of the Trump Tower using suction cups. Yesterday, over four years later, with zero human contact, YouTube’s...

Not That Kenny

This is my mail-in ballot. I was so hoping this Working Families candidate for New York’s...

Fell Down the Rabbithole

I spent much of today gone down a rabbithole I had no idea was out there. 25 years ago I had an affair with a married woman. I’m not proud of it, and don’t talk of it with a whiff of braggadocio or trying to impress...

When It Comes to Airman/Air Dancer I Have One Word…

…and that word is YES. But even this crazy beast was not enough to make me get a haircut today. I don’t think I had a cut since January, maybe even December. I still find enclosed spaces with people I don’t...

Turnout For Early Voting is Phenomenal

I documented this for my own satisfaction but thought it interesting enough to share, if only for the record. This is the first time New York has done early voting, and from the turnout today and yesterday it’s hard to...

Grocery Store Cashier Today Went Bananas When She Saw Me Wearing This Shirt

I mean seriously, it was like she wanted to elope. She kept saying “I love it so...

Astoria’s Anonymous Homeless Poet

I’ve been seeing these poems hand-written on pieces of cardboard all up and down Astoria for...

9/11 Mural on 30th Street at 37th Avenue

It’s showing its age after 18 years but this 9/11 mural in Astoria/LIC still looks good to me.

Need a HAIRCUT!

Smart City Fail: Change Password to Cross Street

It’s like I need a password to cross the street, and the one I use is not of sufficient strength. More #smartcity fail.

Just As I Started To Ask…

…why somebody painted white spots up the middle of the walkway on the Honeywell Street...

#InThePast

@InThePast: #CuteFeet. @InThePresent: #Don’tLook

Dephtus Keptus

Queens Boulevard Today

sed –Cars. Versus the grep –Grocery next Door. Trying to Keep Headline Case and Linux-case Aligned Here…

Kids Are Heartbroken

What this strip of signage needed was a bit of context. On its own it rang out like an abandoned...

FRESH TAR on Broadway in Astoria Today

Just Some Recent Maps

What

Halloween Creature on Crescent Street

Mirrors Galore at the Astoria Manor Today

It Was 30 Years Ago Today and I’m Just Getting Started

Posting this tonight because I expect to sleep 14 hours and way past 12 noon tomorrow, the hour of truth. It’s an October seasonal-adjustment thing. I’m sleeping 14+hours a night without wanting to. It was 30 years ago...

Unexpected Mirror, Sung to the Tune of “Some Enchanted Evening…”

Study Of My Cyclonic Hair And Face Before Getting Rid Of Most Of It. The Hair, That Is. Not The Face.

I do not like my jowels.

Gangsta Spraying Safe

My Mother Considered Letting Me Go Early.

She mentioned it twice, both times driving the car whilst circambcombanducantortadillaybewildered, saying it was always/only a woman’s right, not any man’s, a sentiment with which I never disagreed, on instinct,...

Unexpected Mirror at the Fantasy Curtain and Linen Shop on Steinway Street Today

Panties On Our Gimlet Glass

The last 72 hours have been quite the adventure. In no particular order: Sleeping has been a...

Putting My Hands Inside Your Olives

Spenkelink on Steinway Street, 1997.

My Classmates. Bay Crest Elementary School, Grade 2. 1975-76 .

I have little memory of Bay Crest Elementary School in Tampa, which I attended for one year, in...

Got My First Grade Report Card

Looks like I was just about average. The only S-minuses (which I interpret as Fs) targeted my...

A Random Map

Just pulled a GPX file at random from my stash of hundreds, even thousands of recorded journeys....

This Was Strange Getting This At My 181

Someone at my PO Box post office, home of my 181, must have had some reason to do this, but I...

TIL: Old Calvary Does Have a Street Address

One of Open Street Map’s most elegant features, one which Google does not implement, is the...

Lee Walton: Stacked (2005) at Socrates Sculpture Park

I was at Socrates Sculpture Park last week when something reminded of a favorite exhibit I saw...

Must Gurgitate

Awaking to the usual expectation of expectoration, that I must produce, must create, must continue to fill oceans with mountains, mountains of text, intellectual cardboard, impossibly forgotten photographs, mental effluvia of...

P.J.’s Lounge in Astoria

I find it somewhat intriguing to uncover evidence of a place or entity that existed but of which...

Have Scanner Will Scan. Stars & Stripes. May 29, 1975.

Just a random news clipping I found among my dad’s effects, some of which ended up in a foot...

SORABJ

Remembering when I had a pub video game rivalry with someone who could not finish spelling...

James Brown and a Christmas Tree

“I enjoy your web sites very much.”

Reliving Past Triumphs…

…but then asking: Who was Majella? How did I let her get away?

A Million Pennies at Rockefeller Center. December, 2007.

...

She Liked Me, I Liked Her. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Kitchen Stencils

One of the oddest typos I encountered, from 2007, at a dollar shop on Broadway that is now a Duane...

Today’s 7am to 8am Product

Oysters swallowed you whole, you and your boozed cult, mellowing youth, our greedless demise filtered through weakened language. Dollared jargon blanketed under freakish sucking, stacked under books paged by repeatedly neutral...

Today’s Unexpected Mirror

Let’s Go

1-833-PENDEJO. Hah.

This Unexpected Mirror Makes It Look Like I Am Wearing a Thawb, Or Something Close To It.

One Minute of “Hector”

This is one of the oddest things I ever encountered in the wilderness of the free telephone partylines I used to call. Context is everything, I suppose, and in this short bit I have none.

She Started What?

This Sunday opened with closure on a question that has desultorally lingered in the back of my mind since high school: What song did I hear on the radio that opened with the line “SHE STARTED LICKIN’ HIS ASS”?...

Today’s Unexpected Mirror Was Not Entirely Unexpected

Hello Baby

I’m not going to obsess over this but I can’t decide on the gender of this...

Top of the Rock Elevator, Coming Down. February, 2012.

This was that famous day in February, 2012, when a friend asked me to take care of her 10-year-old son for a day, while she (I don’t remember which) either went out of town or had to work someplace where she couldn’t bring him along.

Roosevelt Island Tram. July, 2018.

I’ve known people who say they’d be terrified to ride this thing. I am not, but can see where some might find it scary. This is from a couple of years ago, a video I had no memory of recording, though I had posted...

Yellow Lines on Ed Koch/Queensboro Bridge

Why can’t I get paid to do something like this? Paint yellow lines on a walkway. These...

EVergreen 4-497*. H. Zimmermann Iron Works.

Can’t read the last digit of this but it’s the first new-to-me sighting of a telephone...

The Luckiest Shithead Alive

I’ve been seeing this stuff all over Astoria for a couple of months now. From 19th Avenue...

A Periwinkle Gulp

Note From a Mother to Her Son, at the North Burial Ground in Providence

I found this depressingly inspiring note at the North Burial Ground in Providence, Rhode Island,...

Driving to Coney Island. September, 2006.

Found this random, forgotten video of a friend and I driving to Coney Island in September, 2006. It was a spontaneous thing, as my friend driving the car was prone to indulge in and sometimes get me to go along. It’s rough...

Just Like Feathers

I spotted this joyfully banal poem on the Ed Koch/Queensboro Bridge today. At first I thought it...

A Stroll Through the Rockefeller Center Concourse

A little herky-jerky but the low light can’t have helped the Galaxy S9+ record this. It’s incredible to me how Rockefeller Center remains so empty this far into the pandemic. I have some money coming tomorrow so I...

From Eaches Ability to Eaches Need

As Karl Marx might have said: “Life is a game of eaches.”