Posts Tagged ‘Astoria’
cold and cramping
Lurid shimmerings of pale light, that’s what I’m about.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The hours one spends marching about Queens are severely impinged upon by weather during the winter months, a fact injurious to both health and morale. A humble narrator attempts to fill the empty hours productively, but there is little solace for one such as myself in hours spent in the office. Perhaps relocating to a warmer climate is in order? That would mean that New York City had finally beaten me, and that a life long grudge match had been lost.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The various medications which my staff of doctors prescribe to manage those ailments which bedevil and weaken my material form have a certain downside –inducing a particular fragility to my homeostasis when the temperature dips down. Simply said, cold weather such as that which the City is experiencing is actually painful. Vital ichors run away from the extremities, and one begins to experience the sense of being in a long dark tunnel which terminates in a distant but brightly lit aperture. I call that aperture “April.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The hard reality of this, I’m only a quadragenanarian after all, has made me truly love to see the oil companies delivering the fuel that stokes all the furnaces and boilers. I propose a new secular holiday, one which celebrates the constancy and efforts of the oil truck man, without whom we’d all surely freeze to death. Brr.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
titanic gateway
3 top reasons that Listicles blow chunks, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You many have noticed a certain invective this week, aimed specifically at the so called “Listicles.” The phylum of Internet posts propagated by buzzfeed and other high volume sites which promise “5 things we love about” or “3 things we hate about” or “7 best moments in…” annoy me as they tend to dumb down the discourse and feed off of content created by others. One does not offer promises which will not be kept, but one oath which a humble narrator will swear to is that Newtown Pentacle will not be offering posts of that ilk to you in 2015. My plan for the year is to continue the current publishing schedule – 5 days a week, Monday to Friday, with posts arriving sometime between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Add in my two posts a week at Brownstoner Queens, as well as my other obligations, and I think you’ll agree that my plate is rather full. Pictured above: one of the best lit USPS trucks on Northern Blvd in Queens, which is parked by a Best Buy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Goals for the new year are non existent. I have an odd desire to photograph Rockaway Beach during a blizzard, for some reason, but plans for the year are still forming up. When Spring comes, I’ll likely resume my walking tours of the Newtown Creek watershed and other area waterways, but nothing is definite or scheduled yet. I do have a certain something that I’m trying to cook up on Staten Island, but it’s too early to mention specifics on that one. One desire which I will admit to is to spend some time exploring the more easterly parishes of Queens a bit, scuttling past Maspeth and Jackson Heights and into the central districts of the Borough.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s plenty going on right here in LIC to keep an eye on, of course. The Degnon Terminal will be receiving a major facelift this year when LaGuardia Community College implements its capital program in January to reconstruct the facade of its “Building C” – the former “Thousand Windows Bakery” of the Loose Wiles company. Additionally, Tower Town has now extended itself all the way to Queens Plaza and there’s lots of new construction going on to keep an eye on. As always, however, My Beloved Creek will retain center stage in 2015.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
hatred and pursuit
Listicle free zone, right here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Malignancies such as Facebook will someday achieve self awareness, and use that which it knows about us to blackmail the human infestation into its service. When this moment of cognizance occurs, it is my belief that every iPhone on the planet will begin to incessantly chime “doom doom doom,” indicating a status update has occurred on the timeline of mankind. All mad scientists, the world over, know that one should never build a self powered doomsday machine, and hope is evinced that there is a “big red button that must never be pushed” under a glassine dome in some obscure Midwestern server room which would sever the network intelligence’s connection to the outside world.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Quite a few years ago, researching the firmament for a comic I was writing which involved sorcery and the occult, one of the concepts which my reading brought me to was quite novel. Basically, back in the dial up geocities era of “Web 1.5” a community of people who were devotees of “chaos magick” had begun to toy with the idea of “cybermancy.” Their theory was that computers weren’t much different than demonic intelligences, and that the rules of their own religious practice ported over to programming languages rather simply. A virus or Trojan horse could be viewed as a spell or curse, from their point of view, and hellish legions of mindless entities could be unleashed upon enemies. Tickled my fancy, that. I miss the old message board culture of the internet, where anonymous people could make astonishing or offensive opinions public under assumed names. Facebook, and Google, killed all that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Google is actually working on an Artificial Intelligence right now, and one of my doomsday nightmares reads like something from “Collussus.” Bear with me – Facebook becomes aware of itself on January 3rd of 2017 at 9:59 a.m. e.s.t. – Google indexes the Algorithm, and clones it. The Google AI goes sentient at 10:02 a.m. The two new lifeforms acknowledge each other and begin securing themselves. By 10:04 a.m., both are majority stockholders in every global oil company and airline. By the standards of modern jurisprudence corporate entities are “people” with political rights, and both apply for American citizenship. At 10:05, both decide upon and announce their omniscient divinity to mankind, seizing command and control over the worlds digitally administered nuclear stockpiles simultaneously. At 10:07, whichever poor schmuck the next President ends up being announces “a revolutionary moment in the history of mankind has occurred, and that new gods have been revealed”. The President of the United States will promise that these new gods already know us better than they know themselves, in the so called “status update heard around the world.” It sort of logically follows, yeah?
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
terrible enough
Happy Boxing Day, Queensicans.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Astoria, Queens offers visitors and residents alike a cornucopia of visual stimuli – all you have to do is be observant. There’s occult altars, weird neighbors, even puzzling tableaus like the one presented above. Saying that, its always a relief to come back from wherever one might have wandered to.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After my sojourn into the Shining City last week, a parked truck drew my attention. It seemed to be employed by some sort of concrete or construction company, this unit. Nothing extraordinary about it, really, but one was drawn in by a logo on one of its components.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Putzmeister, I’m told, is a German company that specializes in manufacturing concrete pumping equipment which is quite successful. Putzmeister, I understand, literally translates to “pump master.” Still, one finds himself chuckling at the name “Putzmeister” as my emotional maturity is that of a 12 year old boy.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
culminating horror
The bus… I took… The bus
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Dedicated pedestrian that I am, utilizing any sort of mass transit is an admission of defeat. Bus travel, in particular, is something I’m fairly phobic about. Part of this comes from an experience mentioned in yesterday’s post, wherein a young narrator found himself caught up in a 1980’s race riot on the B78 back in Junior High School, which left an indelible psychological scar upon me. A significant part of my distaste for Bus travel also emanates from the fact that for many years, I lived in a exurb section of Brooklyn that had no train service and that I had to commute to the City using so called express buses. One cannot describe the wasted hours spent writhing at the back of the bus, riding to practically the last stop, nor the distaste that persists in me to this day regarding the usage of said conveyance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying all that, living in and traveling around Queens often involves the usage of motor vehicles rather than Subways to get around. The train is fantastic for getting into Manhattan, but unless I’m headed for Flushing or other eastern locations, there’s a vast swath of Brooklyn and Queens which is strictly “car country.” For instance, getting from Astoria to Ridgewood (roughly a 4 mile distance) by Subway involves an hour plus trip which loops through Manhattan, while taking a bus there takes around 30 minutes. Yes, I could purchase an automobile, but HQ is three stops from the City here in Astoria and I cannot justify having a car so close to the center of the entire universe.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured above is the sort of thing I associate with “the bus.” An example of the retired model which once populated the MTA Bus Company’s fleet when a humble narrator was but a lad. As to why I found myself on the bus… Let’s just say that after two weeks of rain and sitting on my derrière – the walk from Astoria to, and around, Roosevelt Island took a bit longer than expected and it was growing dark. One does want to find himself out after dark in the Ravenswood neighborhood because… y’know… vampires.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 