pitting

today was another day of work. this time i was 45 minutes early, and had a bagel and cream chease to pass the time. i met some nice new poeple at work, among them Rob, a guy who used to work in a photo store near copley square where i shot my teen project while i was in boston in 2005. that store went out of bussiness and he moved to work in this store where i work now. he is an older guy with a long silver pony tale and tons and tons of knowledge, plus he is one of the nicest poeple in the world. i was promoted to a shirt wearing sales person instead of a blue apron i now have my Kodak Protra Zeff Photo shirt! this could not be any better. not only a logo, but the best you can have a commercial for somthing soon to be non existing but still looks mighty serious. i think i will like working saturdays.

settings

today i made a decision. i will build an awsome bed, that will look good and we will like it rather then buy one we like from ikea. the initial premise was that it would be much cheaper to build it on my own. after i found that it might not be that much cheaper, i said it will leave me with all kinds of tools that ide want to have any way and not have a reason to buy. at the end it was that i WANT to build this bed. the idea now was to buy the wood and tools and paint for the job and be able to do it at home. there were a few things i did not consider. my car is too small to carry all the wood, home depot cannot make exact cuts on the wood and i have no way of carriyng all that ship on my own. joe was kind enough to help me out again. we went to get the wood, and then had to go and swich cars, so we had to leave the wood there, when we returned there was all kinds of other stuff that wasent ours on the cart. i, the good semaritan gave it back but they messed up the check any way it was cheaper all over. we got the paint and brushes and other little bits and put it all in joes van. the plan then was to load it all in to my car so i can make a run up to boston. but then tess asked why not just ask joe to ride up in his car? well ofcourse he said yes. the end of the deal is that we talked all the way, and i think i was trying to ask joe somthing about living in america, and it ended up beeing that i was nagging him, and wining about how hard i have it and bitching about other poeple. i ended up not asking him about most of what i wanted to know way back when before i got hired, but then again i guess i figured most of it out my self. still i guess i have to break away from what i know about making a living and beeing able to afford the life i want to have and the things i want to do. joe was trying to be helpfull and i think it killed out conversation from that point onwards.
joe seemed to like the house in everett street alot, also there was the longest period with no trains and it does seem like an awesome house in those rare times.

the corbomite maneuver

today i played out a theory by Mr Spock, about time travel. i planned it all to the letter, with all the usual checking with the engeneering department about more warp speed, had the supplys and food stocks checked a day in advance, and set all chronometers to match my departing time. but as usual, the unexpected happened, the electric fazing shaver machine that was set on high stun setting ran out of power just when i needed it the most, and i had to switch to the olden time manual metal blade razor. this led to a small delay in the plan that would later grow. another problem i had neglecled to check was the amount of dilitheum charged liquid in the energy capacators of the car, and had to get more fuel on the way. i could possibly make it all the way on what i had, but making it in late was better then not at all. i then proceeded to open my navigation computer console that inform me of the distance and expected arrival time. i was scheduled to arrive at work at 0900AM. i left the gas station at 0734AM. normal travel time in avarege speed of 60MPH was 55 minutes. thus the GPS noted that i would be there at 0839AM. this left a total of 21 minutes to be delayed by interstellar traffic, and other thoughtless commutters riding by themsleves much like me, talking on their phones and paying no attention to their driving. just before the 95\93 split the traffic stopped. the clock on the GPS started moving forward telling me the my arrival time is getting closer and closer to the 0900AM deadline. it moved on up to 0852 when traffic started to clear. thats when i remmebered the words of Mr spock about the slingshot effect of time travel warping and so on, and i started to push on. as i was moving faster and faster, time started to move in reverse, and the clock and the GPS counted backwards minute by minute. for every 5 minutes of clear roads i gained back one minute untill the next jam. after that again i clocked the time backwards, i was able to hold it at 0859 drove in full power in to the parking lot and made it in by 0901... it was close and i was late. but i did bend the rules of physics and made time move backwards. for the good that did....

today started so early, i went out in search of a radiator. i found one and got it replaced. i wanted to take a picture of the old rotted one but i dident. i wanted to take a picture of the new shiny aluminium one installed but i dident. the does not heat up any more, but still looses more power then it should with the AC condenser on, and the oil canister light flickers now and again. i have gained my confidence in the all mighty japanese techinoligy superiority once again, though i am not sure for how long.

a watched pot never boils

today i started a new work.a new work place is always hard and makes you feel uncomfertable, but good new work place also makes you feel that you might find your place there, be one of the gang, know little things that poeple who work in places know and fit in as a respected worker. this new place did not bestow upon me such feelings, and i as noted before i am loosing my over all confidence in things. though on the way back a realization that i might also make money developing and scanning negatives might actualy happen some day and i might just be able to live off that. it still makes me wonder every second of the day when i work, how can poeple afford to do anything here, like buy a car, buy a tv or an over priced camera. there are many rich poeple i know, and if you are already somewhat rich you can get even richer easily. all i want is enough money to buy a fucking TV or a car. today i lost all confidence in my car. the oil canister light started flashing when i got in to stop and go traffic on the 95 split near milton. then the engine started over heating, unless i turned the AC off.on the way back it got worse and the car almost did not make it to my sisters house. i was sure i will not make it back to providence, and i called joe from the road and asked if he thinks he might be able to pick me up if i get stuck. he said sure. this is the second time i write about this in the blog that even though i dont know joe all that well, he is a good friend to have any time of the day and twice on a tuesday. i made it back with the AC off and the sunroof open i even pushed the car and nothing happend just the AC is bothering it for some reason. i did however find out the the radiator is all rotten and have little surface foil left and what is left is crumbeling if you just touch it. i hope this is the problem. i dont want to buy a car, not to mention i cant afford it with my salary. so the fact that the radiator is caput made me feel a bit better about the car that if that part will be replaced it will run another 10000 miles but its still not solid, that emotion. the imacon saga continues. i am back right where i was a month ago with having to make a descion i dont know if i should be making or if it is worth to take the same chance another time exactly for the same reasons. i wish i had more answers and more time. i feel like i am old and i will get stuck in a rut pretty soon and will not be able to get out of it any longer because i will not have the means to do so. kind of like those old poeple whose kids leave the house and the get too old to work and have no money and their kids live so far away they buy a caravan and travel to meet the kids but often to not make it and they end up parking in a temporary trailer park, putting up their trailer against a few months rent and burial services. i will be really old soon and have even less options then. i want to travel and see things. i am afraid i dont have enough time to do all that.

15/32" (whatever that means...)

may 2010

today me and tess went to see the RISD graduate thesis show at the providence convention center, in downtown providence. this was an even smaller show then the smallish show last year with only 5 poeple, and only 4 of them doing photo related work, though one of those 4 also had an explanetory video with her work. so only 3 Photo PER SE work there. one piece that was by a graphic designer who i had a class with once, was the be all of all photography. he had 4 eggelstone like photos in 4X5\8X10 format aspect ratio, printed huge, in frames with glass, depicting empty parking lots of strip malls and dollar tree stores. the only thing is they were not photos, but illusrations with very little detail, infact only as much as you need to understand what you are looking at and trigger all your larry sultan, eggelston, Joel Sternfeld and the such and top all of them easily. only 4 of those, and fuck it was better then the whole photo show put together. i thought about it at length, what it means about me, what i can learn form this about my comming year, what should i do about it and so on, the only thing i understood fully and already knew to some extent is that i do not need to work so hard. i burned all my bridges at this school long ago, i will not have any recomendations for the future from any faculty here, and i can be nice and show progress play the game and still have time to get home for cornflakes (Vilos Cohaagen, Mark core reactor bomb 1990). or do other shit. like build a bed. i have been strongly motivated by maho and johnathan to build a bed frame like i used to and enjoyed doing, rather (quite colloquially by Mr. Spock) buy one we like from IKEA. this will also be a chance to buy more POWER tools yeah. but i need them anyway.
tommorow is the first day of work at Zeffs photo supply, the photo store i got hired by. im getting that tickle now but i am not sure its the starting a new job kind of tickle. i will keep the blog posted.

may 2009

star (ing)

i realized today that we have been here for more then a month and we havent done anything. well we went to new york and found an apartment and spent time getting it ready (though we even havent moved in yet) but we really did not do anything. when i told tess about this she asked what would i want to do, and that got me thinking that i actualy seriusly do not know what i want to do. where as allways in my past i had a clear goal of what i want to do and where i want go things i want to have and see and so on there all kinda lost now. i guess i was all tnagled up in the bussiness of having tess move here, and in the proses of being in israel for almost a year mumbeling the same mantra every fucking day about where i am going and what i am doing wiht my life i lost track of the path an what i really wanted to do. i went running today. 15 minutes out and then a planned 15 minutes back, that turned in to only 12 on the return, but i was thinking all the way. on the way out i was thinking that i dont know what i want to do, what is it that i would do if i had all the time in the world and no worries? would i go photographing? would i work? would i find a better nicer place to live? would i watch a movie? and other things like what am i? am i photographer? what do i do as one? i guess this month and half is fore-fitted as we cant realy do anything here. this is not our home and we dont have space here ot set up, it just seems as though we have been here for so long for it to not make a diffarence. and for me especialy, having been living in a temporary house for the past 3 years or so not being able to really settle down and do what i want with my time. on the way back it started becoming more and more clear to me. i am doing what i want to do. i am in the US with TESS, i am not lazying around on my ass and am trying to sort shit out for my self. i will have lots of work ready to show for by the begining of the year. i will go out shooting once we settle in and i will make work i know i want to make, and photos i have been thinking about for almost a year now. i will start a new project with star trek TOS models. i will take studio shots in BW. these are my three school goals. my work goal is already beeing fullfild, and wiht that my car\tools\small business will also get going.
after all i guess its not that bad. just like maho said about her and john. i guess i am not at al optmistic, but when i look at the bigger picture it seems like not such a bad deal after all.

for trubles made

i was trying to track back and write about the days past. i have forgotten almost all of it and i now remmeber only what happend yesterday. during these week, summery:
the scanner wet back to hasselblad. i gave my resume to 2 photo stores. one nice and one much nicer and closer. one answered, job interview, i got hired. hasselblad called to say they couldent find anything wrong with the scanner and i though i was fucked with it. then i called them back and they said they found the problem but dont know whats causing it yet. gustav climbed in to the wet wall in the attic and could not find her way down, we spent all the morning tying to pry her our and ended up breaking a hole in the plaster ceiling of the attic to get to her. at least there is a problem. we bought curtains and other things for the house. it is still in exactly the same condition as it was 2 weeks ago when we wanted to move in but couldent because "its not finished yet". we had lots of pad thais in boston. almost crashed in to somone on storrow drive while not paying atentuon to the road. had to change the read brake pads of the car. its started making strange engine noises lately, i know its on its last leg. i found another computer with 2 hard drives in it that were not cleaned. its funny, they are full of someones personal information and documents, no port this time.

yesterday at boston the scanner thing made me feel all fucked up and i guess even after it was cleared up i kept on feeling like crap, and all the optimism i had about it all went away and was replaced by bad feelings of failure. i am not so sure about anything, kind of like Captain kirk in "the enemy within" of star trek the original series, where due to a transporter malfunction the stuff beeing transported is duplicated but not exactly, one duplicate is all good and the other is all bad, and so is the captain, he emerges as the good natured part and the evil and aggressive part separately, who takes adavantage of girls and is combative while the other part is nice and calm and looses the ability to make descisions and command the ship, thats kind of what i feel like.
all i could think of, is that i wish i was rich, i wish i had lots of money and i could choose to do what i want and where i would live out of many options i like and not some i like less and some i hate. i wish i could buy a new car, a big ass TV but i cant even begin to understand where to money for all those things even comes from when you do work and earn an OK pay. shit. maybe i need to do more then one thing, more then school and really find work. i am feeling helpless as i dont know where to look for more profitable work, and i am not sure i can even find any.

track

if you put a gun to my head, i couldent tell you what we did today. this morning is a complete blank. as i dont use a digital camera any more and tesss camera had not evidence bith of us were sitting for about 30 minutes trying to remmeber what it is we did, where we were. its like the matrix maybe. that section is not in our memories any more. all we know is we did do somthing and we did leave the house and i tool a picture with the mamiya. it will be weeks untill i can develop the films and scan them to see what it was we did. for now its marked as a ? in my journal.

defeats

first imacon scan 35mm (again)

a few days ago we watched robin hood. the new one by ridley scott. it stinks. it really is long and boring and is absolutly a 3 hours long preview of the next movie in the series. what a waste. it did however inspire some hours of wiki reading wich at some point i already have done about these same topics, robbyn hoyde and so on in yaey olde eanglyshe. i find the middle ages fascinating, that is to understand how they did all those things they did with the thechnoligy of the time. no GPS to navigate the mediteranian with crued ships. how did theytransport food and how did they make swards and bows and build more then one story building. i guess the movies over state that poeple were dirty but pay little attention to how poeple actualy lived and faught wars. its still exciting. then we went to boston to drop off more stuff at the house and measure a few windows again, only to find that the land lady has not yet done anything to promote us being able to move in before june 1st. whatever. lior called me just as we were sitting down for lunch to tell me that the scanner had arrived. no one had told me its one the way so i dident expect it. needless to say, we rushed to get it and i set it up as soon as i got home and made a SCAN - yes it worked!!! ITS ALIVE i yelled as the negative carrier was pulled in slowly but surly. that 35mm scan was A OK, even at 60MB. then i said well lets see how it fares with 6X7. so i scanned a frame from the mamiya. man these negatives are dir T.

medium format scan, Tess with Efi and Miriam, Jerusalem April 09

but after a  preview went well, the scan started and the scanner was making some kind of uncharacteristic for an imacon to make ticking sounds as it pulled the carrier in. i said, hey its just been adjusted and needs to be broken in. the ticks were represented in smudge lines across horizontally, i guess as the motion of the scan was not smooth. so i moved in closer and tried again. the first time the ticking started at 70%.

the first scan at 85% pixels, see the horizontal lines on the right of the sunglasses.

the second time the ticking started at 30% then again at 60%.

second scan, same position, note the lines are now all over the place...

the third was ticking all along, and you get the point, from there on it was kinda the same. another problem, is that SCSI connections are not very stable under windows, especially when they are being converted with a silly converter box in to firewire, another unstable protocol. and that means that if the computer goes in to hibernate it will loose the SCSI address of the scanner and the whole system will need to be restarted at least once or twice or more just to get the scanner recognized under XP. a few scans later the negative carrier was not fully lodged in and the scanner went back to its banging noises of past. at this point i was sure there is somthing not so ok with it. after some scans and no change i gave up and called hasselblad (who now owns imacon and fixes them). the tech that fixed the scanner had left at 3pm i called in at 3:15. but they said he will call tommorow. on another note, boston again seems to be nicer and nicer with more stuff that is nice and easy for to accept.

here are the 16 photos my phone can hold. one is from today the rest are older, some more then 2 years old.
today i went bargain hunting again and probably saw 20 yard sales. i ended up not buying all the stuff i though my be good investments but i did get more AC units for the new house and the very first  piece of my tool box that one day will be full and awesome. this is just one of my quests of assimilation in suburban USA, a garage with lots of power tools and wrenches, so that one day i may hold my own yard sale and sell all this junk. the drill is actually not just for kicks, i got it because i want to build us a new bed frame from scratch and i thought that its not such a bad idea and also its an excuse to buy the tools for it. so here I start. for some reason this day has me all optimistic about stuff. i dont know why.

yesterday, again

today we spent most of the day in boston again. we went up for tess to have her hair done, and also to get a new credit card. we spent the first part of the morning getting to know the best american tradition of yard sales. this is the most american thing, very prevailant in new england, and right about this time of year every weekend is a crazy fest of poeple cleaning out all their junk and putting it on their lawns so that maybe other poeple can buy them and perhaps use them or even better if they can in turn sell them in a yard sale next year. there is everything and any thing to be sold and bought from clothes to tables and computers and whathav u's... its not a bad idea to know what you are looking for and having a keen eye for knowing what might be a good investement, buy for cheap then sell on ebay... or buy somthing you would have bought in a store or on ebay for less at a yard sale. there are hundreds in each town, but mostly they are selling crap or stuff you dont really want any way for the same reasons they probably dont want them in the first place. like VCRs or old TVs broken tables and shelves. on the other hand you might find a cheapo wireless router and maybe some cool stuff you dont mind spending a dollar on... it is addictive. it used to be that i would go out shooting in the early morning and cruise the yard sales of the east side after shooting mostly finding poeple have packed up or there is nothing cool left. this time though this was the main thing i went out for... i found cool stuff, and couldent help noticing that stuff was much much cheaper in RI then it is in boston for the same used junk crap... while tess got her hair done i drive around JP and browsed 20 or so yard sales... not much gained but nothing lost, except for fuel. i keep seeing all these cars with bug v6 and more then that ridiculous V8 engines that make no power but use insane amounts of fuel. this came after jay bought a new van, with the biggest possible engine, its a 6.8L V8 regualr gasoline engine. and its automatic of course. i spent about 3 hours on fords and others websites tying to find the posted fuel economy for this van or this engine in any other car. when they are selling the new ford connect (here its called the transit connect) a small european ford model, only wiht a 2L gasoline engine, they have a huge banner that sais 30MPG and there is a little line in the engine specs "fuel economy - 30MPG", but there is no such banner for the van, nor is there the "fuel economy" line in  the specs, i guess its just not very economic at all. and after all they simply do not post the fuel consumption levels for any of these big engines. the theory being that if you are dumb enough to buy such a car you most likely dont give a shit about what kind of millage it gets in the city, or that you might an american supporting the "foreign fuel dependency", american big oil money companies and the rest of the american industry based and rooted on crudeness uselessness non efficient wasteful economy.
i see all those tail pipes with little droplets of fumes coming out of them on the highway and hear the gargelling growel of those stupid cars and think, who much fucking fuel is used and all i can see is clear smooth liquidy slooshy gasoline flowing endlessly through some pipe spraying out in to the air filling buckets and gas tanks smelling the alcohol in the gasoline and seeing it corrode everything. its insane. toyota has got it right - they make an all american made for american market only car with a stupid non turbo V8 6L automatic. it used to be that japanese cars had the worst fuel efficiency compared to froogle european cars, but compared to american card Japanese cars are incredible. so think how a turbo diesel 4 cylinder engine would compare to one of these american cars? it cant really there are not enough zeros in the equation to make it a worth while comparison.

'65 Chevy Corvair (stock image)

at one of the yard sales there was an old guy cleaning a chevy Corvair, a strange car, with one of the smartest ideas of engine placement ever, it has a rear mounted air cooled engine, that earned it the distinguished honor of being the subject mater of the great ralph nader book "Unsafe at any speed" as this car had no breaks no suspension and that along the rear mounted air cooled engine meant it overheated and tended to crash and burn, having no safety features like seatbelts or heard rests poeple would most liekly die when driving this car. they also made a Turbo charged version that was even worse. of course after a few years they fixed all the problems, but it was all dead in the public eye thanks to nader. even though they fixed the car in the end nader did show that the biggest car maker int he world would sell a car that goes on the public road with regualr poeple in it, that is so unbelievably dangerous. it did little good for GM had no effect on the future of car making as they re did all the wrong doings of the corvair on other cars later, and even today, and ultimatly made nader a persona non Grata at chevy vorvair club meetings. i was considering voting for him. the guy had alot of rage against nader for this book, i guess they all remember it as an awfull thing, he aso pointed out that his midel a 65 is better then what the book sais since they had improved it buy then and so on but that nader is full of shit. well.he drives it. he sais it over heats but handles "OK". he would recommend the turbo engine at all as that might not be a good idea for health reasons (yours, not the car). i guess he does know this is not the greatest of them all after all. i took a picture of him, i will post it when i can develop c-41.

Seekonk Speedway, Rt 6, Seekonk MA april 2009

i wanted to go to the Seekonk speedway to see the new racing season, but we dident make in time. ill go next week. we ended up being so tierd and just watched top gum and went to sleep.

surplusing

today was a day full of surprizes.

stuff wierdly sold on ebay, tess found the glasses frames she has been looking for since forever in the least expected place and i started belieiving in our new house a viable place to live in.

it started with us getting to our new house to meet the land lady and get the keys only to find the bed delivery poeple rolling down the street as we were walking in to the house (more or less), well what happend is we walked up and put our stuff down so we could go down to the car and start moving stuff in, but then i saw the bed truck and realized i had left my phone upstairs... still it was cool and all in time. we checked out the house more closely this time around and found many nice thins about it and a few limitations we dident consider the first time but nothing major. still it was nice to find that it is going to be cool moving there if we ever get there....

we had vegan pizza for the second time and it was still as good we were also super hungry as last time and it hit the spot. after that i convinced tess to try two ice cream places, one in arsenal mall, not so good, and the other in cambridge, across from harvard yard (for the second time we end up there trying out ice cream thank to Mr GPS) but this time i guess we both made the wring choice and paid more then we wanted for more ice cream then we could eat and it wasent that good anyway.... home made my ass. we asked for one scoop and good more like 2 and half large scoops of this muck. how can any one eat so much icecream????

after that we tried another glasses shop, the 20th by now but this showed some promise as tess really wanted to go in after she saw some nice things. they had all kinds of hipster things an models and it was across from a shop called "tess" see tess blog for pictures. more then that the seller in the store talked and dident shut of for a second and told us about his time in Sdot yam kibbutz and his daughters bar mitzvah in messadah and all kinds of other things. no discounts for ex israelis, i wouldent be giving any either. he made her the glasses in 15 minutes that was great, we walked thorugh harvard yard and got some brains on. i was telling tess about the famous harvard stairs i guess you have to watch lots of movies to get that kind of stuff.. still this was enough of cambridge.. there is a limit to how much of that student fest i can take, its not very high.

monitaring

a trained eye might have noticed the new ads on my blog. this is my new money making scheme.

in a sense it is more of a page counter on the blog. it says 185oo poeple have visited the page since july 2007. maybe... who knows. we shall see if this works soon enough.

this computer is turning in to a mess of temoporary things.

this picture is not from today but who cares, a photo blog is a photo blog.

mosltey nothing

form some reason i am not doing anything. the first few days that we were here were full of stuff to do lots of resting, and more things to deal with. go here go there work on this thing that thing. go shopping looking around. after about 2 weeks or so that all passed. finding a house has passed, and even though we havent moved in yet i doubt there will be much work about that, defently not 2 weeks worth. still now just less then a month since we got here i have been sitting on my ass for so long doing nothing. i forgot, we went to new york and that did take up time. still this must have been the laziyest week i have had in my life. i really did not do anything. i have nothing to do. hopefully the scanner will return in a week or so and i can start working soon. hasselblad the greatest camera company in the world probably has some of the worst service representatives in history, especially in the US. they gave me the wrong qoute for the repair, then it got delayed a few more days and the only reason someone cought up with this "mistake" (me of course) was because i noticed the serial numbers on the qoute and the actual RMA number are not the same. fuck, the guy who sold me the scanner said he told them its a good thing its not a medical issue. i would be sewing them at this point. but whatever. they are still far more orgenezied then in, say, the middle east. all that behind me, that was some excitement yesterday. for about 3 minutes. i havent been going shooting since we got here. even though the sun was out almost every day. joe said we will have more time now, maybe i will take him on his offer, but there is another problem or reason for this. i cant bring myself to leave the house with out tess for some unknown amount of time, because i feel she is trapped here and has no way to get out if she needs to, may that will change in boston, but then there are not that many things i want to shoot in boston. i am sure that once i am out there i wll go and find them though i think i will be concentrating hard on building my developing and scanning service if i ever get the scanner back and working. i have almost 100 4X5 plated to scan from israel and i will have more then 10 rolls or more from the mamiya to develop and scan by the time we move.

i guess this whole telling the world about how i fell makes me feel funny and i am not sure its in a good way.

i read mahos blog just now about all kinds of things they are doing while renovating thier house. she writes about jonathan all kinds of things that he did or does, and in a way i can see how he does them or how he did them but it strange to think about him doing things. its funny to know someone for so long and not know about parts of his personality. i guess i do know about them, and he told talked about them and maho told me about them and maybe i actualy also saw this stuff my self but still now reading about how he built a hand crafted door frame seems strange on one hand, but perfectly a jonthan thing on the other. sound like somthing i might have done if i needed to, that my refrence point about jonathan.

this photo is form a negative, film camera and it was shot prosseced and scanned today. this is how i want my life to look like. full service.

yesterday and today (double feature free time)

tess has been takingsome time off her studying and we used this off time to fill our extreme shopping experience deprivation, i think niether of us ever did this kind of thing before, defenitly not for so long. these past 2 days have seen endless amounts of department stores, malls, discount stores, and house stuff stores. on one hand this is a nice opprotunity to actualy build a house from the bottom up, the way we always might have thought we wanted to, kinda remenicent of mahos rennovation scheme. on the other hand this is torture. at the end i have some what of a new perspective on this whole thing. i have a better vision of how i want my home to look like, almost like an ikea catalouge but with little to no ikea things in it. both of us are no on track towards actualy getting real thing for a real house, not a temporary one like where both of us were living untill now for the past 3 years or so. temporary meant not buying house things, not investing in how they look or how they will be used. so now we are following this line and after realising that this is what we both want (mostly matt black clean cut stuff) its made it much easier to choose between things and styles. there is a million of everything, and one day when i am grown up and we will have a real house with a real kitchen it will have all those things i want, and i know what they look like, along with a garage that will have a fill craftsman tool box on wheels.

yesterday we bought a bed. this is the first time i ever bought, after sleeping on hand me downs and feebees for ever. so not that it was exciting as much as it was fun to choose. also we checked out about 50 diffranet matresses before choosing so this was kinda the real thing. after that we let loose a bit but still had to check everything 5 times just in case it was cheaper or better at another place then sometimes ending up buying the more expensinveless good thing at a place just because we were so tierd of looking at it. we spent most of yesterday and today doing exactly the same thing. the last place we went to was IKEA where we instantly found almost everything we were looking for and at peice we could afford. i dont know if this was because this was the last place and we had given up on many other things and places, or one of these:

1: ikea makes things we like

2: we have been nurtured to like what ikea makes.

tess says its probably both of them combined. i thought this is an interesting question. not like the fight club kinda interesting but more like the what kind of music they play at restaurants to suite the most prominent client base and how that changes over time. when you consider that, think about all the old poeple who shop at ikea and all the young poeple who walk in to awfull american furniture stores that sell fluff and kitch by the ton. also think about how poeple perceive sweeden as beeing a dull place and america as exiting and full of opportunity.

after that i thought about the fact that a new imacon costs more then a new Toyota Camry, the best car in the world (or a honda accord for that matter). i tried to think about what that says about the imacon, or what it says about the camry as far as cost and production and so on. makes you wonder.

an imacon is small and complex and has lots of technology, but a toyota camery most likely has much much more.

rod

today we went bed shopping. this will be the first official thing that we both buy together for our new home in boston. this whole day led me to think about all kinds of diffarent things about this. i called my mom to consult about bed sizes and what not and she said well, it depends on how long you are planing to be there. as in saying it depends on how long you are planing to stay in the US. i dident think about it right then but it seems that i am the only person who thinks i am here for good. i dont ever want to leave here. i moved here out of choice, to try and make it for my self. true i am spending all of not my money to get around have no job and prospects dont look to good. but this is where i want to be. not boston in particular but one of any number of nice places in the US i would like to live for the rest of my misarble life as long as it lasts (my life or the US). another thing i guess all this official shipping made me think about is that this is really building a foundation. anything from now on is here to stay and will go on with us from now on. a bed, a knife sharpener. it also led me to think about again about photographing, and why i am not yet out there shooting. its friday today and its friday night now. i want to go out. i miss going out, and here you can go out and not come back smelling like a burning torch. maybe we will go our later.

i felt today that i have tess's full cooperation in this, with the decision making and it made me feel so secure about how stuff will work out, that all the other how will we... questions about the future kinda dissapeared leaving only the how will we.. questions about the NOW with i am still strugelling with, like school and work. again i am thinking about joes show and how he seems like he has it all nailed down it might be simple but he knows what he is doing. i would not be surprised to see his book printed in 5000 copies while i still chase 10$ around on ebay bullshit.

old

today was joe and jenyas final show opening at the school. me and tess went. it was funny, joe and jenya had brough beers and i helped them smuggle them in to the gallery. having that beer in a plastic cup sneeking around fearing the public safety guy was funny, kinda like when i was young and doing somthing i knew i shouldent but still did it just for the sake of doing it (not that i actualy do that so often ech ech). the show was amazing. joe is a real artists. i wish i could make negatives that look like that and prints that look like that. he really knows his shit. the photos look nice too. jenyas work seems to be influenced by joes presence, more then the fact its large format black and white. i guess beeing around joe for long enough does that to you, i think that had i not left i would be buying in to his pyro long developing time bullshit by now. it was also a chance to meet another one of my fellow class mates for next year, whose name i cannot remmeber right now, but he seems like a straight up guy with a string and seriuos agenda, well it nice that he at least has an agenda. the other half of the class whome i have already met and seem more and more like a highschool teen girl gang with a prominent leader with extreme self asteem and variuos followers were sitting right on the other side of the wall as he was introducing him self. but the show really did blow me away, i am still thinking about how it all worked out, and how come i havent been shooting all the time i have been here even though i have had long hours of sunshine and had nothing i really needed to do. there are lots of stuff i want to shoot. i guess i am shooting with the mamiya 7 but its not the same. i guess i need to work closer, with less detail less clutter that not manageble in order to make clean and calm pictures, that somehting i learned from joes work. cleanliness is next to godliness.

after the show we went to have thai food. the GPS did not fail us but i made a poor choice of not sitting down at the first place we went to abd decided to try the other one, they also did not have a bathroom that tess needed to use so we went to the other place, a thai chineese indian cambodian viatnameese restaurante, that was jam packed with a small wait list. about 10 to 15 minutes the guy says. 45 minutes later, and 10 minutes before closing we sat down. we were all help up buy a birthday party group for a JAP riding a skatebaord wearing a golden star of david on her neck. she looked as if she was 17 or so but all her friends looked in their early 20's. and they were moderetly quiet, unlike the poeple who waited for an hour to leave their fucking table after being served with the check, and made an effort to lough out loud for each and every word said, and they were a bunch of fat loud ugly girls. being loud like that is down and simple rued. i hate rued poeple.

i really wanted pad thai. we both got the same dish (mine wiht pork) and after having a few bites tess found out her dish had eggs in it and had it replaced. after she got her dish i felt kinda stupid that when she said it has eggs in it i realized that i had noticed the eggs before and paid it no mind. then i thought maybe hers dident have eggs, or that maybe i thought about it having eggs and did not tell her in case she dosent find out. i wish it was somthing i noticed and stopped her on it when i figured it out with out all this after thought. but i guess there is a first time for everything. waiting in line that long to be seated especialy when the staff moves extremly slowly and ineficiently kinda makes me mad and loose intrest i guess thats why when we sat down we just rushed through the order. it seems as though all of the 200 dishes on the menu are all variations on the same basic idea - rice\noodles some meat\veggies sturfired with sweat and sour sauce. and peanuts. lots of peanuts. oh yes and a diffarent cuisine name. chinese style, cambodian style and so on. it did have all kinds of rewards from the jewsish comunity magazine, goes to show what they know... i will make it a rule form now on not to wait for a seat, just move on to the next place in line that has an open seat.

director (from monty python)

due to some comments and self reflections about the previuos entry in this blog, i noticed that it has straid away from what i wanted to talk about and do with it, yes yes pictures i know. an therefore, untill i find a real and new pen pal i will try to get back on route.

this is a strange day, other then having to do all kinds of earnds and waiting for other things to happen, we were able to get to the phone shop (again hail mr. JPG AKA tom tom) and have it unlocked only to be late to my sisters new born jewish circumcision ceremony conducted by a doctor who also happens to be jewish. as we walked it my mother whispered that they were only waiting for us and now they can go ahead and cut. this is truly unbelivable. poeple have children to satisfy some personal need they have, that often condradics the actual needs and wants of a the new human beeing they have brought in to the world, and this blog has been around long enough for me to discuss this matter about my sister at length for her previuos baby. but not only do they selfishly make children they also submit them to all kinds of rituals and painfull experiances that bear absolutly no meaning to the rest of their lives and they dont even ask if they might be intrested in any of that bullshit. so they dont ask the baby if we even wants to be born, they dont ask any one else if this is actualy generaly a good or bad idea and they dont ask the baby, probabl because he will not understand what they are saying, as young poeple are stupid, if he wants to have his dick sliced. for girls i guess its only some words mumbled with over dramatic theatrical expressions. but here we had a doctor who translated all the hebrew and aramiac prairs in to english and said things like jewishi place is still there sh this and geritage that. so yes this is a better deal, having a real doctor, who wears surgical gloves and uses precise instruments and does not suck off the blood after cutting and translated the stuff so that every one who is listening might understand agree or disagree, and not some old dirty jew but the basis is still the same. every one thought it was cute yet disturbing, important yet poinless\meaningless. there cannot be a good reason to do somthing like this. hey we think female circumcision is such a bad thing but we dont say a ritualistic thing like this is bad, infact they pay money to have it done.

at least the shinu express sushi place is still there, though prices have changed a bit. one day i will be able to go around boston wiht out the gps and know exactly where i am going and what i want to do.

NYC Day One + Day Two

11/12/05. the diner is gone, so is the camera. film stuff later.

before going to sleep yesterday i called the taxi dispach to order a cab for this morning. we needed to be at the bonanza bus terminal at 6:30 in the morning for the bus to NYC, so that we will have enough time to get from the station to eddies party. i googled the whole thing and it seemd close or walkable like anything in new york. i orderd the taxi for 5:45 so that we will have enough time to be late to bus station that is about 10 minutes away. we got up just before 5 after going to sleep later then 1 am. i was really tierd but e got up and going and got all the gear together. at 5:30 i called the cab place and they said the driver is right on the way 2 minutes away. at 5:45 when he still was not here i called again and the dispacher was getting the driver on the radio, it was funny, he called him "car 10? how long to that waterman?" no answer. "guys everyone get of the radio for a momnt, car 10 car 10? how about the waterman?" no answer "car 1o? bob you there??" and then the radio answerd, " uhh yeah just on exit 4 2 minutes". my plan was that after reading the awfull reviews form googlers about the cab compnaies of providence and east providence alike i had enough time to tell off the cab driver and take the car down to the bus terminal. i was going to actualy drive down there the day before to find out what parking is like there but i never did, and when we got there we found out that we could have taken the car there for 2 bucks in guarded parking lot for the 2 days we would be gone, and not have to get up so early or scramble to get a cab ridethe way back. i guess there is only one way to learn, though i like to be informed. i met this girl once who had all these sex books, sex guides and manuals and when i asked about it she said she got them as a teenager cos she wanted to be good at it... i guess there is more then one way to lean. but the cab was there after that long radio call, and it was an old cabbie that gave us a 16$ extra ride because he dident want to use the highway... never mind. all this money spent, i guess you spend more then you need to the first times untill you know what things actualy cost or worth. the bus termianl was just waking up with only a few other poeple there, infact there were about 9 other poeple on the bus in total for the whole ride to new york. we got student tickets that were about 20% cheaper, and never got asked for an ID that was nice. the driver was an gram-pa with good manners and seemed like a nice old guy. we got a bagel and coffee in the DD that just opened 2 minutes before the bus left. after finding out about the parking thing we found that the bus went through kennedy plaza, the main bus station for providence where we could have taken a bus... and left 30 minutes later as well. this was the day of the providence marathon so the roads were partialy closed and it took a few more minutes to get there. its a shame we missed the marathon here, we also missed the Times sqaure bomb thing that was the day before and missed the boston water crisis the day we left... well what can you do. the ride was ok and we got to the port athourity bus terminal just after 10. we had time to go to BH to get films and then move on to eddies party not far from there. i always like going to BH especialy if i need to buy somthing there as its a fun experiance even though they are all these yids everywhere and there antics never end. last time i was there it was quite awfull because i ended up not buying anything and just beeing an annoying customer, i guess they expect it with such a big store and so many things to see. its really more of an amusment park then a store. the real camera poeple say once needs to go to adorama. ive never been next time thats where we will go. but we did buy film and i think it was quick and painless. i asked about imacons and got only a few answers.

as we were walking out i was telling tess all about the american fire fighters and how they are respected and poeple behave diffarently then they do in israel when a fire engine is flying down a ceowded street, and just as i was saying that 3 trucks were tearing down the road next to us just out side BH. we ended up going half a block down to see whats what, and found a huge T bone crash between a car and cab. they had to cut off the door of the car to get to the girl inside. the cabbie was not there. but there were about 10 diffarenct rescue and police cars in the middle of the road. we hung around to see whats gonna go and i was getting some news worthy stuff out of the mamiya 7.. it was fun... i think i just missed the frame i was aiming for, but time will tell. when ever i finally get the jobo up and running and a scanner that works.... tess read about this thing were the shutter lens blog or whatever its called wanted poeple to take pictures exactly on 1100 tha day and send them in, this happend to be about 10 minutes too late or so. but tess thought initialy it was gonna be at 3 or somthing so she wasent preapared for it. we got to eddies party after about 30 minutes of heavy walking in the soup soup wet humid hot and yucky NY style typical weather that was going on. we were bith sweating and wasted by then. but eddie and eric are genuinly extremely nice poeple so much so that it dident really matter. the party was funny as it was mostly a crowd made up for eddied old NY friends who are all his age or so in their late 70's. it was a nice little thing and always enjoy hanging out wiht eric, even though the last 2 times we actualy were in the same place at the same time i was behaving terribly and i was upset and making everyone else upset because of it. i guess i cant have anyone in m family for mroe then 2 seconds except for him. they yacked and rambled and made speeches and had a nice lounch and cake. we said goodbye and left for horesh and tals house in lower manhatten. suprisingly i felt verry confident navigating the NY subway system and we were able to use with relative ease (and lots of $$$$) over the 2 days, well expect for our last ride. we got out of the station in astor place, wich is 2 blocks away from the house, this was a good thing to do since this was move out day for the NYU studios or somthing and the shit was on the floor lining all the way to the house. as we were walking by there was a guy loadin ghis car wiht stuff and lots of stuff still on the ground, among them a canon Pro9000 PIXMA that seems to be just sitting there. i figured as this was not broken or trashed that the guy is loading sutff for moving. i said ill walk down in 30 minutes to see if its still there and if it will be ill take it wiht me. ofcourse it was still there and i took it. fuck it was heavy. but this was a good deal, it had all the inks in it and it works! i was happy it kinda made the whole truble and the NY thing worth it. i dont really like new york and it was really hot and stucky, i later found that i am allergic to this place.

we later met uri lenz and had drinks at a cool soho bar. it was funnt for me to see tess and uri in times square doing their thing as if they were both outside the zion police station in jerusalem waiting for arraignment's to come out. it was really cool. they did that for a good part of the time we were together.

tals house in NY has a huge collection of Z rated movies on VHS of all kinds wich i usualy enjoy watching at the end of a long hot day with the AC on there, but it was fun enough this time just reading out the whole list of tapes there. uri came up to have another beer and spy on the poeple in the niehgboring buildings and then we hit it. we made plans to meet early and get stuff done. this was after a mission to fnd sellery for tess and beer for us, wich in NY after 6pm is not an easy thing with all these silly liquer selling laws... and of course the fact u cant just have a beer on the street. well actualy i guess thats not such a bad thing, as it prevents all the arsom and other poeple u would rather not meet having a beer on the steet corner by your house as they often do in other places. so no one can drink on the street, is actualy not so bad. but not beeing able to buy beers in the super market is kind of stupid, even more so in NY where you can buy a beer in s uper market but no other liquer like wine for wich u need to go to a special store. all this nervousness is kinda the same as with the guy in the bank that is now closing all the barn doors after all the horses have already died from aids...

monday is the definitly the worng day to get any culture in NY as all the fucking galleries and museums are closed for no good reason. on the other hand having a press card is pretty nifty as mostly you do not have to wait in line for ticketes and of course you dont need pay. this was fun the moma and the googenhiem. we found a place for food early enough but tess feet were already wasted and i was not in much better shape i could have stayed another hour or so at the moma, but it was time to go and get ready to leave. the moma had a HUGE show of cartier bresson, and when i say HUGE it was really extremly very bigf so much so that after just walking through it, it was way to much for me to see and understand, not to mention i have seen much of this work before and so i really needed more time to look at it closly but here was just so much there that i couldent really do that. i guess thats what lving in NY could give one, that chance to see the never ending photo show at the moma met and whitney and numeros other galleries. in the main entrance hall of the moma there was a small ircing penn show who also dies last year.

the plan was to get ready and get the printer to the nearest subway station and go to the station. i read the map and it said that we need to either swich a train or walk 5 blocks to the right trains station to the bus terminal. so we left a bit early as i had to carry the printer by hand about 20KG all the way to the bus. we had flafel and a salad right outsude the house and (of all things a falafel MAOZ sounds like somthing i would not want to eat anywhere thats out of jerusalem, but it was the only place we foudn that had a real salad bar. and it was on the way. they also had real shivka perers that are hard to find here unless you want to buy abother thing made in israel...

the station was further away then i though and tess foot was hurting wich meant we walked slower and carrying the printer was prooving ot be harder then i thought it would be. when we got off the train at the station i saw that we could have taken the fucking train that runs under tals house and not have to walk anywhere, and it would have also been a shorter walk through the station to the bus terminal anyway. shit. well next time we will know.... the bus had a safty video, wich said the bus was at least twice as fuel efficiant as a train... who knows maybe thats why they dont have trains here. i read a long article about it and i know what the real reason is. the same as with the drinking and economy, if more poeple take the train and not the highway, the highway will be less congested and people will see this and imideitly use the highway so trains will never work.... what a stupid equeation but both democrats and train enthusiasts as well as republican bulshitters think this just the same. just like one of those what of every one did... this or that. what a waste.

slowly the smell of the old america i knew and remmebered so well is comming back to me here and there and its exciting. i like this smell. the smell of a new better world.

new york delays

new york untill tuesday so no posts until then.

mayday mayday mayday

this is image # 9999. i have shot 10k with the 5d.






as you might have noticed out scheduels have been endlesly long these days starting early in the morning and ending late at night after many miles on car and foot. this saturday was no diffarent. after ending late wiht joe and jenya and a a few beers to top we got up super early to make it to our meeting wiht our prospected land lady. it was unclear untill yesterday when she called to say that all is well while we were in the supermarket and asked if its ok that my mom come over to co sign the contract along side me as i am student and have no income... but i have good refrences, thanx to jay, and i think also gary. gary was my landlord in boston when i lived here 5 years ago. i have tried to keep in moderate touch with him, and he was nice enough to vouch for me when i wanted to move in to jays house. again he was helpfull with the new land lady. when i called garry in febuary about looking for a house, after he told me that he is working in a realty office in JP, he said that his house where i lived might become available and that i should call again. and well it was going to be available june 1st and he was willing to take what we were willing to pay, after all it wa snot cheap but a brand new house in the perfect location wiht nice nieghbors and a washing machine and garden and no train through the back yard. but it was more expensive then what we could intialy pay, and he was verry slow on getting back to me as to how to actualy go and see the place since tess has never been there. but by the time i got his call we already had seen the nice place on everett st and decided to go with that. so we left, again super early in the morning, carying ALL the gear (almost) because tess was going to take pictures at the Boston May Day event in the commons. we had a nice sandwich with humus took the bus down to copley Sq, and walked to the commons. by 1 there were quite a few peoeple there with shows and signs and a few placebo anarchists, some forieng workers and some of our avrage american retirment aged person wiht somthing to say kind of poeple. verry few young poeple. they had way to many talking and speakers and stuff i couldent hear or couldent care less to listen to but then went on a march around govrnment center, right under the tall buildings where no one could actualy hear or see it. they marched for about 45 minutes thorugh abandoned bussiness district streets, with a few suits peeking out the windows, ending near a recruitment center, near the commons, where most of these protests start and end. stranly or predectivly enough this little or nothing to do with May Day and what it actualy meant even less to do with workers rights or social rights and almost everytihng to do with the american imigration and deportation policy. the plight of undocumented illeagal aleins seeking work or working in the US and their fear of the authoreties. well they should be afraid if they entered a country illeagally. so you may say there is no legal way for them to enter. and of course as a law abiding poeple or any other morals, you would say, breaking the law is bad, and never somthing that should be done. they had a never ending list of speakers telling the crowd about how they are no longer afraid to say that they are undocumented illeagal aliens in the US after their parents moved to the US from souther america in search of work and a better life then what they had in their country and then they were birn out of status and went to college inspite of the high costs (they kept saying each in her turn, only girls of course, about how they had to pay 30K to go to college an if not they cant go as if this is a tax imposed on them wrongfully and not on anyone else) and now they are smart and can live in the US and hope for a better life and so on.

but there is somthing i dont understand.

why the fuck do they have to come to the US for a better life then be upset about the work policies, ethics and imigration laws here? if life here sucks, why dont thy spend the same efforts and demonstrating in the places where they come from and ask for better working conditions, better pay and better social antics? whats so bad about their own countries that make them belive this might be a better place to live other then beeing to lazy or careless ot affect the change the place where they are?

yes i left israel since it is hopless to try and change stupid religous poeple. but at the same time i understand and accept (even though not always agree with) the american system and what it is based on. this economy is based on slave labor and surplus value (in invented capital with no inflation) once the slaves were brought here in ships against thier will and chained and forced to work. today poeple are risking their lives for a chance of beeing slaves. i am sure there is a direc connection between the poor conditions in the third world and in south america and american economic behaviuor. still i dont underdstand why there should be an open door policy. yes there is more then enough to share between everybody and still maintain the surplus society of american abundance even if another 50 million people move here from poor countries. the question is if all those poeple want to be americans with all it represents, or they are only after the money and good life??

more then that yo have to ask if socialism and an open door policy go hand in hand would that consitute extreme right wing economics and globalization? because if the border meant nothing even for moneys sake what would prevent mexico from becoming yet again just a slum province of the almighty free market, even if it just happens to be located entierly in the middle of LA.

in the end this is all pretty silly that all these poeple came out to march because of a new imigration law in arizona, regulating the slave labor trasfer from mexico to the US, and not about the fundemental reason for this law for even being conceived.

this was an ok thing though because i saw the local AP photographer and made an introduction, had a nice chat with him. its nice to hear the name of the jerusalem AP office carries some water here. this made me feed even more confident that tess can find work here if she wants, though it might take some effort, but just like i always belived that in this country if you try hard enough and you are white you can do anything you want.

the march ended with a nice ceremony in the wrong direction of the sun. after we got back to providence i rushed to fedex the scanner to the hasselblad service center. that sucker is about 30 KG heavy but i got it there. when we got back home the newly ordered phone i got for tess had arrived. when i bought it i was worned that it is locked to some local cell company in Ohio. little did i know that it is nearly impossible to do a remote unlock for this network and this kind of phoen in particular, i just though it would be as easy as cake as it was with my old nokia phone that was unlocked in 3 seconds and 9$ later. how wrong i was, i looked and looked and found no answer. i wa son the phone with 3 diffarent companies who assured me there is absolutly no way to do this, slowly my brain started hurting of this unfortunate shit i have been doing on ebay and how fucked up this all was and how much money i have been wasting and the time and hassle really made me sick. first the imacon (with all its 5 realted ebay transactions and driving mailing and phoning...) and now this shit. i was desparate and frustrated so much i was really not feeling so good. i was all ready to give up and try to sell it on ebay again and cut my losses, but then i saw a post about this company that unlocks phones from any compnay with no hassle at all and charges 50$, still not a bad deal, but you have to mail the phone in to them and then have it mailed back to you. i went to their website and tried to see if there was a way to do it on remote but only mailing in is what i found. i kept reading the post that was written by a guy who went there when he was on boston and had it done while he was having a slice of pizza. wait did he say boston???? fuck, it was in boston on newburry street of all places. it seemed so promissing that there i found a place that did this exact thing with this exact phone and exact company that i instantly felt much better and already made plans to go there and check it out. this was around 2300. but i felt this could be fixed so i let it go. we went to sleep at 1:30am, and had to get up at 5 am to get the taxi to go to the bus station for the bus to new york.