after weeks spent successfully adjusting my sleep routine i made it to the metropolitan opera house today, to see philip glass’s Satyagraha. it was a 1pm matinee, and since i tend to sleep till noon i had to plan ahead by waking up earlier than usual for a little while. the recent time-change came in mighty handy, too. the ticket was $257, so i didn’t want to fall asleep at the wheel. alas, i got up 40 minutes later than planned and left the house a half hour late, but still had plenty of time to get there. i just didn’t have time to eat much, so in lieu of being too tired to pay attention i was too starvated. all good, though, as i don’t think a full and adroit set of mental capacities would have brought much more insight. this was a marvelous production, one whose production values redeemed what is not one of my favorite Philip Glass scores. there are only 2 dsections of that opera that do anything fo rme (the opening of act III and the closing of act III) but even those passages don’t seem to go anywhere. Akhnaten is much more a favorite of mine, and I’d like to hear the Voyage again, but i’ll take a pass onSatyagraha from now on. i was all so self-important and passionlessly austere. it’s one of those things that i’m glad i went to, but i wouldn’t do it again.

i was especially peeved that my seat (Grand Tier Row A Seat 29) had a partially obstructed view of the stage. this was not mentioned in the online seating chart, and it was really, really annoying. i am not a big complainer but i plan to complain about this. first i want to double-check the seating chart to see if it really did say it was a POV seat and i just didn’t notice. i doubt that, since i remember staying away from the POV seats…

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speaking of complaining, i sent a polite but somewhat lengthy e-mail to the owners of a Queens cemetery. it seems their web designer decided to scoop several images off my website and re-use them on the cemetery’s web site, but without asking me and without attribution. really fucking obnoxious, but it happens so much you just can’t summon the outrage any more. it’s amazing how many of these little thefts I spot without even looking for them. if i spent enough time hunting down this sort of thing i’d probably make a phat living off the demands for payment. and i’d probably make a lot of enemies, too. i don’t have the energy to be that kind of an asshole…

so far i have not heard back from the cemetery in question, but even a casual glance at the images in question would be enough for even the most skeptical observer to agree that they are the same. i didn’t ask for payment, only credit and a backlink. that’s fair, right?

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the airdesk proved to be a quality purchase. it’s taken the weight off my balls and let me think about working, albeit on the couch, which is not the best position for productivity, but it’s worked out well enough the last 2 days. it is a little ugly, the airdesk, but mostly it does what i needed it to do. i worry a little bit that the enormously heavy Qosmio might break the thing some day, but for now it holds mostly steady. it’s amazing what a difference it makes taking 15 pounds of weight off your balls. i should do a customer review.

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the work of late has been on sepulchralportraits.com and wanderlic.com, with some followup work on discardedumbrellas.com. having good fun with all of it, plugging in PHP functions to cover for Gallery 2’s shortcomings. trying new things in photo essay management. yeah.