\t\t\t\tmy enthusiasm for the Unisphere and for the ruins at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park is not as avid as it once was, but i went out today anyway, just for the hell of it. it was a beautiful, warm day, and i’m feeling the sunburn now. the trip was surprisingly quick on account of the 7 train running express from Roosevelt Avenue. i wanted to take the Q66 bus back but that maelstrom of humanity around the cluster of bus stops near Main Street in Flushing kinda scared me off. not that i have a problem with mingling among my fellow human beings, but the crowds were intense and it looked like i might have to wait for 3 buses to come before i could get onto one. so i took the train back. that trip ran local but seemed to burn no time on it because i was so thoroughly absorbed in a video a friend shared with me of someone climbing the Unisphere. that matter of climbing the unisphere has been an ongoing conversation piece between a friend and i. he has a friend who grew up in Corona in the 1970s and claims that he and his buddies climbed to the top of the Unisphere on a semi-regular basis. i was never in complete disbelief of that story but i maintained a healthy skepticism. until now, now that i’ve seen what papears to be an authentic video of someone climbing the sphere with nothing to aid him besides what appeared to be a rope.<\/p>\n
i know what it was that made me want to see the big ‘sphere. it was the announcement yesterday that the Encyclopedia Britannica had ceased the print publication of its encyclopedia, apparently losing one phase of the battle with wikipedia.<\/p>\n
this reminded me of the Unisphere because of my favorite ridiculous bit of erroneous information found on the wikipedia. for over a year the article about the Unisphere claimed that it was also known as the “Globitron”. ever in its history was the Unisphere known as the Globitron, but that piece of bad information lingered in the opening sentence of the Wikipedia for over a year, making its way onto hundreds of other web sites as people who had pictures of the Unisphere simply scraped their informational blurb from Wikipedia.<\/p>\n
i sometimes suspect that this was a plan by someone to see how far bad information posted to Wikipedia could travel. ultimately it was someon from a Google IP address who corrected the error, adding in the comments section that the Unisphere is not known as the Globitron anywhere except on the Wikipedia. he wqs right in a way, but wrong in that the word Globitron had trvelled to so many other web sites.<\/p>\n
…..<\/p>\n
i honestly do not know what day of the week it is. is it tuesday or wednesday? it’s starting to drive me crazy.<\/p>\n
…..<\/p>\n
so the dentist in december told me that i grind my teeth and that i should get a mouth guard thing. i thought i’d try the $40 store-bought version before decising if i should go for the $400 custom-made set that the dentist would make.<\/p>\n
first off i did not readily believe the guy. why would i grind my teeth? isn’t that a sign of stress? and is my life not the least stress-filled life among us?<\/p>\n
alas, if i learned nothing else from the exercise of trying the $40 set it is that i really do seem to clench my jaw and grind the teeth a lot more than i thought. i dutifully wore the thing for 2 nights and now my head is fucking killing me. well, it’s not that bad, but it hurts, and i have to believe the in-mouth device has contributed to this.<\/p>\n
so i might see if the custom-made device is a better idea.<\/p>\n
…..<\/p>\n
i may have sold myself a Sony a77. it looks pretty much awesome on all merits, and would make quite a step up from the a5 i’ve been using lately. holy crap, the a77 shoots at 24 megapixels, which basically renders film moot. i’ve arrived very late to the game on this one but as i shoot more film lately i start to feel that it’s kind of a waste. all that physical material, the printing, the paper, the expense… the perpetual expense of film is what attracted me to digital in the first place, though i was thinking today that my innate Thomas laziness might also contribute to going digital at a time when film still ruled. of course i was mostly a hobbyist at that time, whereas now i’m only about 30% hobbyist.<\/p>\n
something like the a77 could give me some confidence that i am delivering from a strong foundation. that is, i’ve always been nervous about selling photos because i feel it makes your technique and shortcomings naked to all.<\/p>\n
i remembered today that picture i mentioned yesterday, the picture of my picture hanging on a friend’s dining room wall. i felt like i was seeing a ghost of myself, a spirit. that thread of vanity which sends artists to work so that they can achieve something like that to me is ghostly and weird.<\/p>\n
…..<\/p>\n
Aha, it’s Wednesday! i was about 70% certain it was Tuesday… that’s funny. the only thing that changes in my life is the year.<\/p>\n
…..<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
my enthusiasm for the Unisphere and for the ruins at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park is not as avid as it once was, but i went out today anyway, just for the hell of it. it was a beautiful, warm day, and i’m feeling the sunburn now. the trip was surprisingly quick on account of the 7 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-AM","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}