Work must be keeping me busy — I just end up stacking tabs and tabs all day long now to post in one giant string for you. I hope you don't mind.

• The easy one first: Stuff White People Like. This was everywhere today, but it is funny, at least for a moment. (#49: Vintage.)
• This is another great craigslist post. Unlike my other favorite one, this one is safe for work, aside from the profanity. Bonus points for being posted from Richmond, Va. [via flickr]
• I don't usually like funny animal images, but for some reason, this one tickled me. I think it might just be slightly dirty in my weird mind.
• So, somehow, I missed the whole "anonymous vs scientology" thing that has been going on the last couple of weeks. What? You did too? Read this article and this article and maybe even this blog post and you'll learn about it. And then you'll have some context as to why this image is funny.
• kniiiiiiife eeeeeyyyye attaaaack
• rejected star wars merchandise. sadly, this is a serious article — I wanted a list of truly fake and silly merchandise, stuff like Tauntaun Steaks. Still, the Death Star grill is a pretty awesome idea.
• How to make Nutella icecream.
• Finally, to end the day right, go to this blog post and listen to Energy Flash by Joey Beltram. This is a fantastic blog about early rave/dance music, usually covering about '88-'96 (I'm totally guessing years here). I used to not love this song, but somewhere in the last 5 years or so, I have come to really really dig it. And it made my day today. Let it make yours.

PS — I am still laughing at myself about 'i can has man on ur boat.'

got this from meg in the mail and wanted to share, esp as the site is still get a lot of patrick power 2 traffic. It sounds like a great auction, with some great work, for a really good cause. I mean Nam June Paik, Edward Gorey, plus a bunch of others?

MEMENTO PMONK

An art auction in honor of Patrick Power 2

January 22 – February 2, 2008

http://www.forp3.com/auction

Announcing the launch of Memento Pmonk!

Memento Pmonk is an online art auction raising funds for Patrick Power 3, the 8-month old son of Dawn Bennett and the recently deceased Patrick Power 2. P3 is a very needy yet very grateful young man whose parents are loved by many artists.

Bid high and often! It really does make a difference for P3 and his mother.

Visit our website at http://www.forp3.com to learn more about P3 and to purchase some great artwork from international artists including:

Nam June Paik
Edward Gorey
Stephen Vitiello
Patrick Power 2
Dawn Bennett
and over 60 established and emerging artists

We will be adding more artists and artwork all this week, so be sure to check back often.

Please forward this information on to anyone who might be interested in our auction (either donating art or purchasing it). Patrick would have loved this thing going viral so definitely post on your blogs and sites about the auction – and get your friends to, also!

If you have any questions about the auction, please email us at auction@forp3.com.

Thanks from everybody here at The P3 Fund!

Best,
Kevin Power and Meg Mingione

Auction Co-ordinators/Uncle and Aunt to P3

just this morning, i said i had stopped reading comics. this was a slight lie, as what i really meant was 'i have stopped buying comics on a regular basis.' hm.

this became clear to moments ago, when i read an article that a student got suspended for having his own 'death note.' in richmond, va no less.

for those of you who are not familiar: death note is a manga series which "primarily centers around a high school student who decides to rid the world of evil with the help of a supernatural notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in it." and the wikipedia link, if you wish to learn about it…and the anime. and the film(s). it's quite popular.

and, right now, i am reading my way through it. and soon, i'll be reading showcase presents: superman vol 3.

so dammit. i made a liar out of myself. i would like to amend my previous statement to say: 'i am no longer buying single issues of comics on a weekly basis.'

though this sounds less dramatic, it is still a serious turn of events for a junkie.

i haven't been writing. this fact, as an isolated statement, doesn't mean much. but when taken in a larger context, when factoring in this site and my own creative writing, it is bad. bad. i have spent more time in the last 2 weeks writing documentation for an api than i have on my own thoughts.

i had decided this weekend that this was to stop. that i had plowed through enough of my own small projects and could easily dedicate 15 minutes a day to writing. and the assumption is that 15 will snowball into something larger.

one of these projects over the last weekend was dvd-ing more home videos. 9 of 13 done. but i woke up on sunday morning, climbed out of bed and took the most recently compressed video and marked chapters, setting it to export as a video_ts folder. and climbed back into bed.

as i was marking chapters, i was skimming the video. this dvd is footage from 'urban light works' in 2000. it has a lot of footage of yoffy, who i spent the day with setting up an installation. it has footage of kelly, who came out. it has footage of me, bald and silly.

but as i was scanning the footage, a face popped out. popped out from the past; i stopped breathing. i felt sick. lia was staring at me. lia is dead. lia has been dead now for almost 6 years. i feel sick typing this right now, sitting in a tullys in downtown san francisco, a life-time away from that day.

i went back to bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about her. thinking about the murder. thinking about life. i felt sick. i thought i might actually throw up. i was completely and utterly ill-prepared to deal with seeing her on video sunday morning. i still am. i might never be able to watch that dvd, just knowing the pain it will cause my heart.

another dvd had been made last week. a silly one, of another vcu project. on it, i had found some footage that qualified as 'behind the scenes.' it was studio footage, a group shot of the entire class, with the instructor's voice coming from behind the camera.

patrick power.

sunday, after i came home from brunch, scant hours after the above story, i got an email. from meg. again, i was unprepared.

patrick died. i have no details; i immediately answered her email, but have not heard back from her. below is the email she sent out.

I am extremely sad to share with you all that my brother-in-law,
Patrick Donald William Power 2, passed away unexpectedly on October
16.

Loved by many - and at the beginning of a great life with his new
wife, Dawn Bennett, and his 5 month old son, Patrick Power 3 - this
man will be very much missed.

In lieu of flowers, his family is asking for donations for Patrick 3.
There are lots of legal and medical expenses that the family has
recently incured and ANY donation will be super appreciated.
Patrick's brother, Kevin, and I have set up this website as a place
for contributions:

http://www.forp3.com

I am sending this to many of Patrick's friends already, but please
forward to anyone who you think would appreciate hearing about the
news.

lea was a student at vcu. patrick was an instructor; he taught me 'intro to video.' he was amazingly kind and amazingly cool. i got updates every once in while through meg — i heard when he got married, i heard when he had a baby. and now this.

i hadn't seen him after my first year at vcu. once again, it feels like a life-time ago. and, in many ways, it has been. but my mind still cannot process this information; i had to read the email several times before i could even begin to believe that it could be talking about the person i knew.

i got a vhs dub of bjork tapes from him. i have silly videos from his class scattered around my harddrives. kelly got a nickname from him that still gets tossed around once in a while.

the guy was great.

there is a temptation on my end to ascribe some meaning to this; i believe it is natural. but i don't actually believe i can point at richmond or vcu or any aspect of this and place any meaning or blame. it isn't fair or good or even understandable that this has happened. but it has.

i hate that this is where my life is heading, what my age has earned me — the people i respect, the people i love, are slowly beginning to leave this plane. my heart goes out to his family. i am overcome; i cannot imagine their grief.

the world already misses you, mr power.

later:
i posted this yesterday; it is now midday tuesday.

there has been a flurry of emails and im's from people i knew from vcu. but there has also been a flurry of emails to me, from people who knew patrick through his time at vcu.

i invite any and all of you to post comments. i don't feel right posting your private emails to me; i hope that you can share your memories publicly to help everyone smile and remember this awesome man.

i didn't expect to be a conduit with all of this, but it's becoming clear that a lot of people have a lot of things they would like to say. please, please share them everyone. (but you can also feel free to email me with the button below the comment.)

just know that you aren't alone; the sorry and loss and confusion has been echoed by everyone i have spoken to. and our memories are big and large and more than any of us by ourselves.

(turns out cody has an excellent post on patrick as well.)

i am spending my first night in my new place in the fan. weekends spent in dc retarded the process a bit(and i mean that like the french, as in slowed down - although when i use the word in french/french-arabic, i mean it like the english - retard). waybright's carpenter was in surgery again last week so the small two-inch hole in the hardwood floor is still caved in like someone pulled a karate kid on the floor during some vcu party last year; i know this is not true, however, because the previous tenant was an older guy and had bad hygiene(personal and apartmental). wait a minute - that totally could have been from a vcu party.

the hole in the floor is easily fixable. i almost cut a piece of salt-treated pine to fit the hole until i realized i could whine to my new management company and make them fix it(which was a fun idea until their carpenter was having extended eye surgeries - a family member commented that my floor might have hit him in the eye). more disturbing, however, is the corrosive substance next to my bedroom window which resides beneath the wall -

me on walkthrough: what's with the water damage in that corner by the window?

waybright girl: oh, that's from hurricane katrina, from a year or two ago, you know.

me, in head: lol, noob. i mean liar. my construction experience tells me to think you are dumb.

me on walkthrough: oh ok. so what's with the hole in the floor, and that bulge in the wall?

needless to say the bulge in the wall popped like a bubonic sore and had to be fixed up, and the hole in the floor is yet to be fixed. but goose and tripp warned me these guys sucked so i was willing to put up with it. and still am. said corrosive material will have to be dealt with, but it's obvious it's coming from an apartment or three above me, or maybe even an external issue since it's on an outside wall. i just have to remember to burn the 30-step ladder lying in the alley beneath my window(WHAT?!). yeah, i forgot how ridiculous richmond could be. having recently watched 'the departed'(such an entertaining movie) - i guess richmond is a product of me.

peace

so we returned from VA today. amazing how fast it is now to get from RVA to NYC and back now that jetblue is flying cheap flights and competing companies prices are coming down as well. took some pics, saw some peeps.
i was just informed by tripp that my pics were not showing up in firefox and IE, so im now going back to correct them. so if you've been reading this crap i write on here, and you're interested in seeing some of the crap i draw/illustrate, then you might want to check back on the last few posts, starting with 'rainbow brite and her minions'.

so i went to megs apt to pick up the dog today, and as i was coming out, getting ready to hit the turnstile, i see 3 black guys who like pretty ragged. homeless i assume. they are standing right inside the turnstile on the train side and the MTA booth is about 30 feet from them. there is a guy in the booth, but i myself didn't see him until i went thru the turnstile and looked to my left.
so as I am passing these 3 guys standing in a semi circle with their belongings strewn around them on the ground, i nonchalantly observe their conversation and actions. it goes a little something like this:
guy 1: has hand in fritos bag, is eating fritos.
guy 2: standing there talking to guy 3.
guy 3: says 'man, this shit is bunk.'
this is when i notice that guy 3 has a crack pipe in his hand, and this is the 'shit' that he is referring to.
i keep walking, go thru the turnstile, notice the oblivious MTA employee in the booth, and i walk up the stairs to the street. this was at the 14th/6th ave station in NYC.
this was the only moment where i considered for a minute those ads you see and hear everywhere, 'if you see something, say something'. i definitely saw something, but was it worth saying anything? i decided not. i just didn't feel like it would make any difference. these guys were trying to get high. they weren't bothering anyone else, and they weren't hurting anyone. yes, what they were doing was illegal, but I'm somewhat of an anarchist, so i didn't really feel like it was my place to go rat on some homeless guys. after all, if i had said something, what would have happened? they might have gone to jail for a night, where they would have a bed for the night, then back on the street to get high again.
whatever. its good to be home again. new york definitely feels like home now. richmond definitely does not. i can only take it in small doses really. 3 days and then after that i start to suffocate. i hope im not starting to sound like some snobby new yorker, but i think there is something about the whole south that really just grates on my nerves. sorry, no art today. more later.

the better the weekend trip to VA, the shittier the return trip to NY. a day's delay also has not seemed to help these particular blues. nor the gloomy weather. nor being premenstrual. nor pre-mother's day emotion. nor pre-my-mom's birthday emotion. man.

i might have to force myself not to post anymore during or about these mope sessions. if i annoy myself to be voicing these same feelings, i can only imagine what it must be like for you, my dear reader. feel free to quickNote me if you have any suggestions on how i can get my shit together doing this long distance relationship thing. but please be nice. my emotional fragility could crack with meanness right now.