alms

Male panhandlers in the subway are easy to pretend to ignore. But today a middle-aged black woman hobbled her way onto a crowded subway train. One of her eyes was screwed half shut and she had the most tragic and hopeless and crazed expression of anyone I'd ever seen in public. Light blue clothes hung off her body like ill-fitted hospital robes, and a single key was tied to one of the drawstrings, perhaps put there by someone who feared she'd lose anything that wasn't securely attached.

"Won't somebody please help me?" she uttered, and it was somewhere between a plea and a wail.

"Won't somebody please help me?" she said once, twice, thrice. Her cries, quivering with desperation and resentment and alarm, were identical down to the slightest inflection. A well-dressed young asian woman held out a dollar bill, which she accepted silently. She then made her way down the aisle in the opposite direction. I was unwilling to decide if something particularly horrible had happened to her today or if this was simply her routine.

The last time Andrew and I were headed to Penn Station, he was accosted by an angry young man who wanted to start a fight. "You stepped on my shoe and you didn't apologize. You were too busy looking at your pretty girlfriend. You're a tourist, huh? Somebody should teach you some manners." The strangest things happen on the 1-2-3. We came into the evening light on 7th Ave, but for a while I walked around Midtown South with a sadness headache, unable to forget the voice of this haunting, haunted woman.

Did someone seriously just go by shouting in a fake Irish accent, "I am the f*cking beer master!" to the hooting accompaniment of his friends?

The NYT declares Guangzhou to be the hottest new place to visit. Why does everything I read and do make me want to go to China?

Some post-apocalyptic landscapes and machinery from Terminator Salvation.

hypochondriac society

These are the new values of our enlightened post-embodiment hypochondriac society as set by the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health:

Masks carry both physical and psychological benefits, said Dr. Julio Frenk, former health minister of Mexico and current dean of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Masks are a "reminder to people that they should avoid close contact with other persons," he said. "They also have this effect of isolating people and reminding them that they should not be kissing people, shaking hands, things like that."

'inspired by music'

I love the new line of furniture by Diesel and Foscarini. One of each for me, please.

Tiffany lights

If you know me well, you probably know my social aspiration to one day own a Tiffany lamp. Well, in the meantime we can be green and a bit more thrifty by getting a Tiffany Flowers lamp for me. Yes, that means you.

A California vegan on the FBI's most wanted list? It seems a bit ridiculous for both parties involved, although I do have to admit this vegan gives us veggies a pretty bad name.