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That’s right, I said a taco with no, tomato. No, tomato, you got that?

Ah well, I guess every cloud, and every delicious taco, has a silver lining. Oh, damn it, I said I wasn’t going to get all emo. Shit, fuck, damn it.

It’s been a fuck of a week, I’ll tell you that much. But I had to put something up, if only because that loser in the Spider-Man costume was really starting to bug me. Oh, that wasn’t very punny. I mean funny. Spiders aren’t even a type of bug, er, insect. God, it’s been a fuck of a week.

That’s all for now, folks. Or BBL, for the kids.

And now we enter… the rainy season.

Copy-and-pasted straight from the pages of Wikipedia is an interesting tidbit about New York City’s climate. I quote, “although located at around 41°N, Manhattan has a humid subtropical climate.” Sure seems like that.

Not the kind of diagnosis you want to get at the onset of summer, particularly if you enjoy hobbies that are a lot less disgusting when you do them on dry pavement, like falling asleep in the gutter, or drawing chalk murals that look 3D from one side on the sidewalk, or like, skateboarding or whatever.

Good day, girls and ghouls. Here’s a fairly random assortment of photos from the weekend.

The Empire State Building was green on 4/20. Coincidence? I think not!

Where do birds go when they need to migrate home in the spring? To the train station, dummy! Duh!

Been doing a little light reading lately.

Rain, rain, go away, so I can go skateboarding today.

Stay dry this weekend, kiddies. Saturday’s supposed to bring a wintry mix of nasty proportions… granted, not nearly as nasty as a work week. Plus, who doesn’t like an excuse to smoke herb and stare out the window? Not like I ever needed one before, but I’m just sayin’ is all.

This is not a welcome sight when it’s already been raining for three days.

Ah, fall in New York. “Moist” would be an appropriate adjective… as would “horrible.” It’s enough to make someone with SADD downright sad.

Anyway, this commercial from Savage Wheels may be only 41 seconds long, but with weather like this that’s all it takes to make me pop a raging skate boner. Maybe one day in the future I’ll actually be able to go skateboarding again, or maybe it’ll never stop raining, all the oceans will merge into one huge water world, and I’ll evolve gills and spend my life scouring shipwrecks around the globe for skateboard remnants, even though I’ll never be able to use one again. That should be a movie or something.

The clip is a nice reminder of what it’s like to skate in New York — I know, it’s been so long, I’d forgotten as well.

Here’s another bunch of pre-hurricane shots I took while foolishly risking my camera to the elements, which consisted of… well, primarily just misty rain, some wind, and a whole lot of freaked out people at the grocery store buying all the bread and beer they could carry. Why is it always that other people are the scariest part of natural disasters and evacuations? Granted, I’m only speaking from my limited experience, which consists entirely of a handful of viewings of War of the Worlds, so I’m willing to accept that some minor generalizations may have been made.

It seems my own trials and tribulations in capturing the storm are just as overhyped as the coverage of Hurricane Irene’s track up the East Coast was. Nonetheless, for the few moments while I was taking these shots, it was hard not to feel like something was happening. Maybe it was the just the rain distorting the view out of my glasses, but things seemed different for a day or two there… if only for those sentiments to get washed away with the dying storm.

New York City was in a state of mind, one less likely to be featured on a Jay-Z / Alisha Keys collaborative cash grab anthem. It was definitely a bit surreal, and watching windows get boarded up and moving trucks packed up around my neighborhood only added to the sense that the apocalypse was very certainly en route to The Big Apple. And even though said apocalypse ended up being little more than a Big Nothing, at the very least it stirred our routine for a couple days and reminded us all of who’s really boss — fear-driven consumer culture, that is

Even with a freshly-repaired Apple desktop accessory, it’s mighty hard to get a drawing on the Internet without a working scanner. After yet another afternoon wasted on fighting with fickle technology, I feel like this scene from The Matrix sums up my relationship with computers fairly accurately:

I just have a very strong inclination that the machines don’t really like me anymore, that’s all.

Other aspects of the world that I haven’t exactly been getting along with lately? The weather, perhaps the only thing more fickle than technology. With a forecast predicting pretty much nothing but rain, I figured a rain-related drawing would be pretty appropriate. Indeed, even last night as I was laying down the preliminary pencils, the downpour outside reassured me that my work would not be in vain. When I awoke this morning, sun shining in my weary eyes, it looked more like irony than a nice day.

I don’t know… I guess the drawing worked?

It figures, the one day I actually want it to rain, it’s all sunny skies. And I know I really can’t complain, but… are you fucking kidding me, Gaia? Cut a Planeteer a fucking break already.

After a week of blistering temperatures, the weather gods seem poised to bless us with some rain. Typically, I hate rain as it prevents me from partaking in my manchildish hobby of choice (skateboarding). But right now, I’m actually almost looking forward to it. It’d be nice if some of the wetness soaking the streets of Brooklyn wasn’t just the sweat pouring down my back for the first time in a while.

Anyway, speaking of that manchildish hobby of mine… I think I’d better get to it before the rain does prevent me from partaking in it.

Here are a few photos from a rainy night back in April. Insert obligatory April showers crap here. Being that it was, um, night, and therefore reasonably dark, the photos are unfortunately rather noisy. But hey, so are the nights in New York City.

Like how I weaseled out of that? Dear readers, language is a bear trap. Use it well and you can snag the ears of others, but do try not to get snared by it yourselves.

I figured after all the sunsets and joy and shit it was time to crawl back to the shadows from whence we came.

This encyclopedia had a very interesting diagram in its entry for Turkey. Or was it a diagram of a Turkey’s entry? Ew.

The photos don’t do a good job of indicating the cyclonesque winds that had sent my umbrella to a watery grave deep within a trash can earlier in the evening. Apparently, this window frame didn’t stand much of a chance, either. Bastard wind… WHEN WILL YOU HAVE YOUR FILL?

A big batch of rainy photos for a rainy Wednesday. Although they could almost pass for Spring-time shots, a close look at the trees will reveal I actually took these back in November. Yes, it seems as if constant, drizzling rain is the predominant type of weather in New York for most of the year, doesn’t it? Nonetheless, the day I shot these, I noticed a strange light coming through my window, took one look at the sky and was already halfway out the door with my camera. The aftermath of storms often make for a unique ambiance, be it an oddly serene fog, or in this case, a very surreal sunset.

God’s menstruation?

One of the city’s many fine umbrella graveyards.

Were you aware that shoe-tossing is a pretty hotly debated topic? Indeed, there are many different explanations for the motivation behind throwing one’s shoes over a power line. When I was in college in the Bronx, it was typically assumed that hanging shoes signaled a locale where one could acquire crack cocaine, since crack, as it was once explained to me, “keeps yo’ feet strong.” However, here in Williamsburg, crack cocaine isn’t nearly as popular as regular ol’ cocaine, and by regular ol’ cocaine I mean shitty cocaine mixed with baking powder. In this neighborhood, the practice is probably more accurately described as “shoe-fiti,” an incredibly stupid term for a manifestation of the innate human desire to leave their mark on their surroundings. Although considering the general population of Williamsburg (retards with mustaches), it’s likely a contrived form of the genuine instinct, an emulation based on a desire to seem more “street”. And let it be understood, should anyone ever try to toss my shoes over a telephone line, I will gladly make them an indelible part of said street.

Somebody once told me that framing your photographs is incredibly important. Well, snack on this, photo nerds.

It’s a little blurry and more than a little grainy, but what the fuck. How could I not post this? Susceptibility to skylines is a major weakness.