rob is deep and contemplative...frowny face, grrr

i got called emo twice recently. both of these accusations were online, but the fact that they coincide at least interests me. i don't think i look emo. why can't i just look like me? i don't want to be categorized and i think that the only category under which i might fall is "rob-ness."
i mean...rob-ness might look kinda emo, but its not.
anyway, new york city is kinda crazy. i feel as though parts of me are starting to come together to make a unified whole. different stages of my life are colliding in this weird city. somehow i know people in the city. i know people here that i knew from highschool. i know people here that i know from undergrad. and, i'm meeting people too, so there are a bunch of different versions of rob that might be called on to exude a different kind of rob-ness at any given time. its weird...trust me.
i feel like all these different versions are so different, but i'm finding it so easy to slip in and out of different modes without causing any blackouts or anything. for some reason that makes me feel comfortable and uneasy at the same time.
watched a man on the subway today who appeared to be homeless. he sat low in his seat, leaning forward, face looking straight at the ground, all the time. his arm draped over his head so that he could gently rub the top of his head with his long, thin black fingers. his hair was patchy, longish in some parts, but shorter in others, not worn completely bald, but very close to his scalp. you could see the path his fingers had worn, over and over again as he gently rubbed the top of his head. he did this the entire time i watched him. i looked at him instead of looking out the window as we went over the williamsburg bridge. he never stopped, and never looked up, just kept gently rubbing the top of his head.
where does a compulsion like that come from? how is it that I exist in contrast to this guy, on the same train at the same time? new york city is the center of the fucking universe, and you will see things here, good and bad, that will make you want to cry.
on a lighter note, tomorrow is halloween and suzanne is throwing a party. i mean, the party is going to be at our place, so we are throwing a party, but suzanne is doing everything. speaking of suzanne, ask her about the guy she saw on the subway, her story is so much better than mine.
sorry this post was such a downer, i'll be funnier in the future...i promise. also, we keep promising, and you keep believing us, but sometime in the near future, we're actually going to put up pictures of the new apartment. we have one last thing to do, then you get to see it. until then, enjoy the fact that i finally put my technological powers to work and put my picture on my blog. boooyaaah!

a brand new post, with a brief visit from the old post

well...i got 12 comments on the last post...counting my own comments, but overall i think it was met with rave reviews.
but, i figured it was about time to get a new post up here to instigate new commentage.
dave has made his presence known and presented us with a new blog hosting opportunity with the command, "you're going to like us." i think that's brilliant in its creepiness.
traubie stopped by for a second or two but seems to have disappeared ever since i dreamed he got ate by an alligator. that may have been the night after i spent a bunch of time looking for the steve irwin stingray video to no avail, but either way it was a little creepy. especially since he hasn't responded to the comment i left on his blog, but i'm sure he's doing ok.
and wow, from outta left field andro shows up, but he doesn't have a blog for me to comment on...just a lame-o myspace crap-field that i can't comment on unless i'm one of his e-friends. i'm one of your real life friends, dick, i should automatically be allowed to post on your space.
ok, so now that i've effectively rehashed the previous post, let me move on to what's new. uhh...i've been reading a lot still. that's cool. i'm actually sorta keeping up with my assigned reading and starting to solidify paper topics, so that's good. friends are coming around slowly but surely and we even had a buddy of ours over to dinner tonight. we made falafel, and spanikopita with all the trimmings. it was rad. we killed two bottles of wine and had a rockin time talking about all sorts of crazy philosophical issues, but mostly just about crap.
so, last friday was friday the 13th and it was certainly a weird day. i totally meant to blog about it that day, but i didn't get around to it until now. basically the weirdest part of the day was when we were walking into our apartment and ran into a guy who runs a business from the first floor of our apartment building. not only is he doing fashion design down there, he also has set up some gallery space where i guess he has had some pretty serious art shows. he was dropping names all over the place, but the most memorable was the fact that i guess he's somehow getting martha stewart out to bushwick. i'm not completely convinced that this guy isn't full of shit, but i'd kill to see martha strutting her stuff down myrtle ave.
other life-affirming events were finding a cool little liquor store on university ave in manhattan where suz and i got a big ol' magnum of yellowtail shiraz and killed it over the next two nights. also suz got a lovely compliment from a random woman on the subway while we were coming home. nobody complimented me though, so i cried myself to sleep that night. its ok. i got a compliment from a random dude on the street who was walking past one of the new school's buildings. he was telling his kid about how he went there like 10 or 15 years ago and we started talking for a sec and then he asked me if i taught here. that made me feel pretty cool, but that wasn't on friday the 13th so it is only significant in that it bolstered my ego.
anyway, its cool to be making contact with people, both old and new. life is good and i'm feeling the love from philosophy. all is well in peep-ville.

insecticides usually kill insects, right?

so, despite the fact that our landlord got an exterminator in the building, and despite the fact that said exterminator sprayed our apartment, specifically our drawers that we keep kitchen utensils in because we've seen roaches in there, the roaches don't seem to be affected. this morning in fact we found a roach tragically stuck to a piece of tape. i made every effort to extricate the roach from this predicament in a humane manner but when it managed to unstick itself and start running around i had no choice but to kill it by stabbing at it repeatedly with a pair of scissors.
either way though, that fucker was going to die. i was happy he was stuck to a piece of tape because i was going to separate the piece of tape, carry it to the toilet and flush the little guy, but fate had a different end in mind for our friend which i've named gregor in honor of kafke and the metamorphosis. i think i'll probably be referring to all of our six-legged neighbors as such from now on.
in many ways, gregor will be like kenny on south park. gregor will be a major character in many blogs to come, but each time his death will be more complicated and presumably more tragic. though i doubt my remorsefullness will increase as weeks and months go by, there will always be a small part of my heart that feels bad that i am unwilling to share my dwelling with another creature. even if that other creature is the type of thing that will walk through piles of shit and then walk all over my kitchen utensils, i'll still feel a little bit bad for my repeated offence of insecticide.

domino's delivers

so, i guess we're on a major domino's route which is really funny because we get to see an 18 wheeler with the domino's logo on the side of it. invariably whenever it goes by we say something like, "looks like domino's got another order from michael moore," or something to that effect. it used to be marlon brando until we remembered that he was dead, and it was unlikely he was making delivery orders from the great beyond...that would call for a really big tip, like my mushroom tip, bitch...yeah, we live in bushwick now baby.
anyway, just another lovely slice of bushwick livin'. get it...slice!

what are you doing in bushwick

i just saw a white stretched limo...in bushwick.
the only thing i can assume is that there is a certain limo driver out there that is new to the job.

the weekend

this weekend has left me all kinds of f-ed up. i went from brooklyn, to jersey, to rochester and back. all this started thursday night at 10 and ended sunday night at 3 a.m. travel can be quite exhausting on its own, but when you compound it with the hustle and bustle of going to and participating in one of your best friends' weddings, you're pretty much going to be exhausted nomatter what you do.
i'm pretty cracked out right now. since we didn't arrive in rochester until 4:30 in the morning on friday, basically the rest of the weekend was screwed as far as sleep goes. i don't think i've gone to bed before 4 a.m. since wednesday night and as a result i haven't been able to accomplish much as far as work goes. in fact, right now i should probably be doing some reading, but i just can't bring myself to do it because i'm so tired.
let me start from the beginning though and then i'll get to my comments about the actual wedding.
friday: wake up at 9 to get to the mall to pick up my tux. shop at the mall for a little while, go home, relax for 3.5 seconds, get ready for the rehearsal dinner, go to church (get lost on the way, even though i grew up in rochester), rehearse for ceremony, go to dinner, get home late, stay up because somehow you aren't tired, even though you only slept for 3 1/2 hours, pass out from exhaustion.
saturday: wake up around 10, get showered, get pretty and get dressed for the wedding. meet the groom at his house to catch a ride to the reception hall where we'll get in the limo and go to church. get to church, usher people to seats, start ceremony, enjoy the spectacle of two of your best friends getting married. get choked up when they kiss, finish the ceremony, pile 12 people into a 10 person limo, go take wedding pictures, go to reception and party the night away. stay up until 5 a.m. watching jeepers creepers 2 purely because its clearly the worst movie ever made and you can't sleep because you're all screwed up anyway.
sunday: wake up, not hungover, just exhausted, get dressed, run back to mall to return tux, rush home, pack, eat dinner, drive back to new jersey with your brother, catch a train to new york city, get on the subways to get to brooklyn, realize that the train you usually take home isn't running all the way to your stop, double back, catch a different train into brooklyn, arrive at apartment at 3:30, stay up until 5:30 because you napped on the train for 20 minutes and it revitalized your weary mind while it had no effect on your weary body.
it was fun and exciting. the wedding was awesome. my best friends got married. the ceremony was beautiful, but laid back (it helped that the priest accidentally dropped the wedding rings while trying to bless them). the reception was even better (it helped that the groom gave all the groomsmen flasks the night before, and that i filled mine with some of my dad's finest scotch). after everyone was good an liquored up the dancing came easier and a feeling of love and togetherness began to fill the reception hall. before the wedding i was slightly uncomfortable calling these people my best friends because we haven't really been close for a while. after all this though i realized that whatever came between us before had little residual effect on our relationships. the groom expressed to me several times how glad he was that i was in his wedding and i told him just as many times how glad i was that i was able to be there, and we both really meant it. it was good to feel like i had my friend back.
suzanne caught the bouquet, and i caught the garter. the groom removed the garter with his teeth, so i felt compelled to put the garter on suzanne with my teeth. that surprised a few people. it sounds cute and romantic that we both caught our respective projectiles, but really the bride and groom had singled us out ahead of time. they're convinced that if we get married we'll move back to rochester and we can all live happily ever after and grow old as married couples. even if we cheated to get the bouquet and garter, the wedding in general caused several romantic and loving thoughts to pass between myself and my dear suzanne. we both got a little teary eyed thinking about love and marriage and all that silliness, but wedding plans are way off in the future.
for now it seems as though kant is calling my name, and despite my desire to curl up in bed and pass out i have 2 classes tomorrow with the same professor and if i'm unprepared for both classes, i might end up looking like a real jerk.