As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been feeling all autumnal this week and I’m not sure why, as the weather is still indicating it’s the season for two cold showers a day and endless lime popsicles. I was cleaning out my desk earlier and found stashed in the back a bag of Halloween decorations I bought last November because they were on sale; I’d put them up now if I thought I could get away with bat garlands and paper pumpkin lanterns at the end of July.

I’ve always really liked Halloween more than any other holiday, probably because it’s in October. I remember in high school my friend Carly and I used to go to these big Halloween Balls in Salem, which is at its busiest that time of year (witch burning being a big tourist draw, I guess). Compared to even a regular weekly club event in New York I suppose the parties we went to then were quite small, but we had a lot of fun getting dressed up and figuring out how we would get in (being all of thirteen or fourteen at the time).

My senior year during the weeks leading up to the night itself I worked at a Haunted Barn run by my friend Heather’s family, which if I recall was actually quite a bit scarier than any of the haunted houses I went to when I was little. It was held in one of their barns normally used for storage; it worked particularly well because there were was a basement level with lots of smallish rooms and narrow little hallways. I was one of those people who would sit very still among several scarecrows or mannequins and then scare the shit out of you by being real.

Three years ago I think I went to the Halloween party with some people at Batcave and saw VNV Nation in what amounts to possibly the worst concert venue ever, but we had fun (sadly I can’t link to my post about it as I hadn’t started archiving yet). Two years ago I vaguely remember a pumpkin carving party with some people from nycgoth, and seeing the parade in the Village with Rich before getting sloshed at the Raven later in the evening. Last year was more of the same.

I know it’s a little early to be thinking about it, but this year? Perhaps whatever kind of party I can get away with in a one bedroom apartment is in order.

You know how when you’re two hours into what’s supposed to be a forty minute trip - shoved into a second sardine-packed train after the first experienced “mechanical difficulties” and was emptied into an impossibly hot subway station at which you waited long enough that late afternoon has now peaked at the delicate apex of rush hour, and the enormously fat Mets fan whose beer gut you’re squashed against is leering at you while bellowing into his Nokia about how much his wife enjoyed Disney’s Snow Dogs and he, like everyone else on both trains you’ve had the pleasure of riding, has apparently chosen this particular damp ninety-six degree day to stop wearing deodorant - how in the middle of all this, all the shrieking children and cell phones chirping their musical custom ring tones and the Russian lady squashed on your other side trying to eat a flourescent pink snack cake despite not actually having any free hands with which to do so - there’s a moment at which you realize that a) you’ve never wanted a beer more in your entire life and b) you’re one of those people lucky enough to experience their own personal vision of Hell?

Yeah, that.

Talking to SupaSupa today, she pointed out Naked New York (which I hadn’t seen yet), and reminded me of Naked Pictures of My Ex-Girlfriends (which I had).

Today was so impossibly humid that walking to the bank felt more like wading through mud than air, and not in a relaxing day-at-the-spa kind of way at all but more in an Artax-sinking-into-the-swamp kind of way. I’m dying for fall to come, and it’s not helping that very, very early Halloween things are starting to show up in stores. It’s not even August yet and I can’t wait for October. I want to wear turtlenecks and drink hot things and carve pumpkins again. I’m sure once classes start again - in just a few weeks now - it will be winter before I know it, so maybe it’s good that I’m already anticipating autumn.

I liked the Minority Report review over at catchdubs, and I think Sucka needs to update.

(Or: There’s Not All That Much You Can Do While Nursing A Twisted Ankle, It Turns Out)

Got yesterday’s mail from my neighbor, including a note from NYU about making the Dean’s List. Hurray!

Watched Following, which caught my eye at the video place because it’s by Christopher Nolan, the director of Memento. Following is slightly less polished but I liked it a lot; it reminded me slightly of Pi in some respects. Definitely worth seeing.

Gave myself another haircut. The back badly needed to be trimmed - which is of course the most exciting part to do yourself (exciting in the sense of “I can’t see what I’m cutting but hey it all grows back eventually”). A careful inspection with the help of multiple mirrors hasn’t revealed anything glaringly wrong; this is the fourth time I’ve done this now, if you don’t count shaving my head last year before I had any actual hair to cut. Right now it’s looking like a short bob rather than an early-stage mullet, which is probably for the best.

Played yet more with OS X; I’m still relearning all my keyboard shortcut reflexes but so far it’s all dandy. I haven’t had to reboot since I installed 10.1.5, which is as it should be. Apart from the stability, I remain wowed by Aqua - my current favorite detail is how most of the window chrome is gone, apart from the upper menu bar. There are god damned dropshadows like you wouldn’t believe. The Dock’s great too, of course; it’s everything I loved about DragThing (which I still love) and then some.

Noticed that everywhere I go on the web lately, everyone is switching to Movable Type, too.

Discovered that the Duane Reade down the street to which I hobbled in search of painkillers also carries Ginger People Ginger Chews, including the Spicy Apple ones. These things are fantastic; I got hooked on them the last time I visited my parents and one of their friends had a giant bagful. Now I can stock up without paying for shipping, whee!

After asking around for half an hour, finally found out the difference between Chow Fun and Chow Mei Fun, neither of which I ended up ordering.

I did finally get some sleep last night, but only for a few hours - I’m still downloading and installing and tweaking and generally having a ball. I haven’t seriously dealt with OS X since 10.0, over which 10.1.5 is of course a vast improvement. A couple of people warned me that I’d find it slow compared to 9.2, but I haven’t found that to be the case at all - if anything it seems much faster now that the OS doesn’t hang at all and boots in all of thirty seconds or something. Despite all the little embossed Apple logos everywhere, I have to say it feels less like I’m working on a Mac and more like I’m working on a BSD box with the best window manager I’ve ever seen - which is, of course, the whole point.

I haven’t actually had to use Classic yet, but since I haven’t grabbed the new Photoshop as of now I’m sure that moment will come. However, aside from Photoshop it doesn’t look like I’ll need Classic for anything else, which is fabulous.

iTunes 3 isn’t bad, but I have to say I wasn’t thrilled with the way it fucked up my mp3 naming convention; using the ID3 tags means that a bunch of miscellaneous files got named “Track 2″ or “-” and such; I can probably figure out what’s what and rename it all but it was mildly irritating. I am, however, looking forward to playing with Kung-Tunes, which I might get to tonight.

I installed bash, but more out of habit than any particular dislike for tsch. Either would really be fine for my purposes locally. The OS X gui for vim is adorable and TextEdit is sort of cute too; I also grabbed the new BBEdit just to have although I suspect I’ll end up using vim mostly.

All in all I’m really pleased with how the various installations and reinstallations went. I’ve still got a bunch of things to tinker with and keyboard habits from OS 9 to break (as well as ones for X to learn), but so far everything is exceeding my expectations.

It’s been a weary couple of hours, but at here at 3am EST I sit proudly running OS 10.1.5 (fucking finally). Had I not had a botched beta installation from last year sitting around and making things difficult, I suspect everything would have been very easy indeed - MrTails brought over a Firewire drive for backups, and after a reinitialization everything went very smoothly. It helped that Colin’s GameCube was in attendance to kill time during various installations and downloads; kicking Spencer’s ass just really never gets old. (I have to admit his SSBM skills are about equal to mine now - but give me a racing game and it’s all over.)

There was gaming, there was Donnie Darko, there was garlic pizza and an abundance of alcohol, and my g4 and I are much happier at the end of the night than we were running 9.2 this morning. I think I’m off to bed.

Today was once again breezy and gorgeous; I headed to Washington Square Park and lounged with some iced coffee and the new Voice for a while before running some errands. Even with most of the NYU kids home for the summer, the park was full of twentysomethings soaking up the sun. This is the kind of day that reminds me why I love living in New York, even if I’m not all that fond of my neighborhood. I’m actually coming up on the third anniversary of my move from Massachusetts; Last year I toasted it with some friends at the top of the Empire State Building just before sunset. I wonder what I’ll do this year? With only a few weeks left before classes start again (which I’m actually looking forward to) and a momentary break in my freelance work, I’m enjoying the first real summer vacation I’ve had in a long time.

The next few days are going to be a little crazy, but tonight I’m curling up with a stack of freshly rented flicks and some Mike’s Hard Iced Tea, which is a little on the sweet side for my taste but better than you might think alcoholic tea would be. I think the cranberry lemonade is still reigning champion of the Mike’s family, though.

Incidentally: I tried adding Smart Bacon to the Giant Veggie Sandwich this evening, and while I’m usually not all that fond of meat substitutes (apart from soy chicken), it was delectable. As long as you pan fry the bacon (it’s microwaveable, but I wouldn’t recommend nuking it), you’ll be fine. The Smart Chick’n strips are also tasty, especially in stir fry. I haven’t tried any of their other stuff yet but with this encouraging bacon success I’ll probably pick up some of it the next time I go shopping. Boca Chik’n isn’t bad either, although I don’t care for Boca veggie burgers. The Morningstar Farms soy meat stuff, on the other hand, is almost entirely vile.

1. Dreaming of a world in which no one ever, ever uses “Born To Be Wild” in a car commercial or public service announcement (including those entitled GRATITUDE: PASS IT ON) ever again. Ever.

2. A new Chinese place opening in my neighborhood that not only has scallion pancakes and vegetable dumplings (both sorely lacking from my previous regular haunt) but also a startling selection of other vegetarian stuff - I had no idea General Tso made soy chicken, too.

3. A breezy Wednesday with a high of 72 and low humidity. This is the kind of weather that makes me actually happy to live walking distance from the beach, even if that beach is at Coney Island and is constantly populated with sweaty tourists and fellow Brooklynites selling mysterious things from within their deeply pocketed coats.

4. Freelance checks arriving sooner than expected, despite coming all the way from the mighty Canadia.

5. The fact that I haven’t cleaned out my inbox in weeks. Okay, maybe happy’s not quite the word for that. As the number of messages waiting in my inbox creeps into more digits than I’m fully comfortable with, I admit it’s becoming a little daunting. But I swear, I’ll get started on it tonight. Honestly.

6. The fact that Ernie has plans for yet another webgame. They’re voyeurlicious!

I’ve spent most of this particular thunderstormy, disgustingly humid Tuesday playing through the single player campaigns in Warcraft II again, as a prelude for that inevitable moment when I give in and pick up III. I’m still not sure where this particular copy of II came from; the last time I played was with Spencer years ago. I’m not complaining, though. Old games and Oreo ice cream are not a bad way to pass another horrifically hot July afternoon.

Thanks also to everyone who wrote in about Scarab of Ra; I downloaded it last night and spent a couple of blissful hours getting mauled by the lioness and saying dirty things about that god damned monkey. Why, why does he have to steal all twenty two ounces of food?

It’s been really unusually windy, even for a thunderstorm. It’s moderately entertaining watching other people’s trash cans roll around in the street (and other people’s cars try to dodge them), but the entertainment value starts to wear off when I notice my own trash cans bouncing happily down the sidewalk. My neighbor and I chased them around for a while and eventually got everything settled, but the wind hasn’t died down at all so I suspect there may be further rounds of catch-the-trash-can later tonight. Aside from that, though, thunderstorms are probably my favorite thing about summer weather. The heat is awful and the humidity is worse, but the storms are fantastic, and we frequently get them a couple times a week.

Tomorrow is supposed to be in the mid seventies (as opposed to the nineties) so I may head into the city to hit the Greenmarket and possibly the Apple store. There are iBooks just begging to be admired, I know it.

Cleaning under my desk today, I found a stack of CDs I haven’t seen in years - including Prince of Persia, Prince of Persia 2, and fucking Myst of all things, as well as a copy of Warcraft 2 I don’t even remember owning. I’ve been revelling in warnings about requiring System 6 or higher and those cuddly little orcs. What I’d really like to play is Scarab of Ra - I remember hours and hours of that game at my friend Anna’s house on her tiny little Classic. We were also awed by Cosmic Osmo, which I never knew was an early Robyn Miller game until I Googled for it earlier this evening.