I noticed the following poem this morning, spelled out in red decal letters on a tiled crossbeam in the 51st Street subway station.

the shadows creep
deep beneath the buildings feet
trains thunder speaks
leaking over beats
beneath these streets

Oh my god. It really is Suntory time.

I can't quite believe that the Galileo spacecraft is gone.

My dad started working on the project around the time I was born, so I don't remember ever not hearing about it. He's still working on it now, but the spacecraft has now been reduced to it's component atoms. I like what Jessica wrote about it, and that these people have written an opera from Galileo's point of view.

September 21st was also my birthday. Happy birthday to me!

I like movies where nothing much happens. I also like cinematography, sardonic humor and Japan.

If you like any or all of these things, then Lost in Translation is the movie for you.

Also:

1. There is not nearly as much sexual tension as you might think. In fact, there is almost none. That's really unusual in a movie that is only about two people, isn't it?

2. Scarlet Johannson's lips. I don't know how Bill Murray's character could keep away from them. I would have been a lost cause from day one.

3. "For relaxing times...Make it Santory time." Bill Murray is the most brilliant actor on earth.

Why didn't anybody tell me my shirt was on inside out?

Well, I have bitching for weeks about how lame it is to say that flash mobs are over just because the media knows about them. As though you are somehow so very "authentic" and so much more "interesting" if you do something amusing and the media doesn't find out about it.

(Especially irritating when said by people who work in media about an event made up almost entirely of other people who work in media. I mean really. What did you expect?)

I have also been whining about people who find flash mobs disappointing. Because after all, they didn't come up with such a cool idea. And also, no one is forcing them to go, are they? So who are they to complain?

Well, now I have to eat my words because flash mobs are now, indeed, over. And I found them a little disappointing.

When we got the announcement for the final mob, it instructed us to bring 2 dollars and gather at a bar near 9th Avenue in the 40s. Now, 9th avenue in the 40s is just littered with homeless people. They are depressed and they are grimy and they are sitting on cardboard, and they are everywhere. And I thought, wow, I really hope they are going to have everyone give their two dollars to one of these homeless people. Wouldn't that be such an excellent way to end the mob?

It turned out they were just planning to have a Mob party afterwards, with a two dollar cover. I hope you can understand my disillusionment.

I ended up giving my two dollars to a homeless dude anyway, and we went to check out this (and these) instead. So all in all, it was a good time. You can't go wrong with Murakami.

The berry key. Of course, it's a sex thing.

I got into the class I need to take towards my teaching certificate, but the restaurant I was going to have my wedding reception at just canceled. I can't handle this much good and bad stuff all at once.

I wish they would post the submissions for the World Trade Center memorial on the internet. I'm really curious about them. My idea (which I didn't submit) was to suspend a missing persons flyer for each victim in a huge block of lucite, to kind of evoke the storm of paper that fell out of the building and carpeted downtown and Brooklyn after the disaster. The block would be at least twenty feet tall, and would fill up with light when the sun hit it...which would be especially striking in the sunken plaza.

Oh well.

On a more upbeat note, I was amazed to discover that mozzarepas have their own website. They certainly are a delicious treat (available all summer at a street fair near you), and you won't know until twenty minutes later that you have swallowed a concrete hockey puck. The website has an appropriate horror-movie aesthetic.

Here are the answers to four questions that were emailed to me by this guy. I don't know who he is...he just emailed me them to me on friendster.

1. The fence between me and the strawberries is only about waist height, but it's a little hard to climb over because the slats are pointy at the top. On the other hand, I can reach some of the strawberries without having to climb over.

2. I can only eat about ten or twelve strawberries before I start to get tired of the taste.

3. I was really hungry. But I know that's not a good excuse. I would offer to pay for the strawberries.

4. The berries were exquisite. But I feel very embarrassed and a little guilty.