poorboyoftroy

Riot Police Near Galatasaray High School on October 19 There is a manic exuberance to the always congested Istiklal Caddesi that is as enjoyable as it can be overwhelming. Conceive of Istiklal as a frenetic pedestrian rush hour that never ends. Tourists and Istanbulus alike traverse it at all hours of the day and night. Hipsters idle in its traditional and more European-style cafes. The country's over-abundance of teenagers move in tiny scrums down it and guard the entryways to the many intriguing side streets that feed it, smoking cigarettes and playing on their smartphones. Young families displaying various levels of Islamic religious observance walk down it in small yet formidable phalanxes. The iconic Tünel-Taksim tramway stutter-stops down the middle more slowly than a pedestrian, serving more of an ornamental purpose (a welcome one at that) as Istanbulus jump on and off it, exploiting it as an apparent break from walking. Somehow, cars, including taxis that really should kno...

"I'm really going to do  it this time. I'm going to write a blog!" he said with a feigned assertiveness, like some deluded, perennial failure over-compensating for his crippling insecurity and paucity of accomplishments. Think Willy Loman or, better yet, "The Simpsons'" Willy Loman analogue, Gil Gunderson. "This time it'll work out for old Nullprof! You'll see!"  I've started at least five blogs in my lifetime. Three never earned more than two posts. One was a text-intensive Tumblr that quickly devolved into a standard, image-intensive Tumblr (that's easier than writing, it turns out). One was a Posterous that was active for almost a year until I unceremoniously abandoned it. Earlier this year, Posterous' new owner, Twitter, killed it dead along with all other blogs on that service. So, yeah, I've had a bad history with blogs/blogging.  Regardless, I'm going to try to start again. I have things to say, and judging b...

...who should know I love "Singles" more than most things in life. @ nullprof @ cafepedlar Exactly the quality I was looking for."Action!" — Cameron Crowe (@CameronCrowe) February 7, 2013 For context, here's a photo of the cast of "Singles":

While visiting Portland over the winter holidays, my brother and I made a pilgrimage to the tiny village of St. John’s on the northernmost tip of what is still, surprisingly, Portland proper. I say surprisingly because to get there, you must wend a path through what are, to SW/SE Portland residents, the already far flung expanses of upper industrial NW beyond which surely, I thought, the city simply ends. And then...you keep going. Doing so takes you past the dense catchment of current and repurposed factories and warehouses on and around NW 23rd and up the bipolar stretch of Hwy 30 that runs along the train tracks. The city persists, it turns out, amid the lush, looming hillside of Forest Park and a sparse population of very active industrial buildings and port facilities. It all takes time, covers substantial distance, and I remain incredulous: by the time you get to St. Johns, it feels like you should be anywhere other than Portland. St. Johns Bridge, courtesy of ZnE's Dad (lov...

...if I need this.

And after a prolonged send-off of plangent well-wishing and affections, I find myself wending my way down a nameless road, an immense old-growth forest hunched over me as though it were straining to preserve its angle of repose and thus avoid eroding on top of me.  I’m driving a moped.  It’s raining and the sun is setting, the darkening verdure expanding to edge out the already attenuated light seeping through the canopy.  I’m bound for Montana, and I know this in the way one knows about the impending future in dreams, not as occurrences one can foresee by drawing inferences from preceding events, but in that gnostic, intimate way of knowing that always outclasses the empiricism of waking life. Similarly, I know that I am expected in Montana in an unreasonable amount of time.  I can’t be traveling any faster than 25 mph, which bodes poorly for my prospects.  Of course, I may as well not concern myself with covering a certain distance (600 miles) within a certai...

On his way out the door, a muscle-bound guy approached the girl sitting behind me, said, "You look really busy, so I don't want to bother you, but I wanted to give you this," and tossed a piece of paper with his number onto the table. Without a word from her in response, he about-faced and left.