Scam Back

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Filipino gets $3 from Nigerian email scammer. I am so proud of my Filipino roots right now. (Link via MeFi.)

7. IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE SMALL TOKEN SYMBOLIC AMOUNT of $3.00 ARRIVES, Mr. Forwunine SWEARS on his heart that HE WILL TRANSFER my money of $19,250 to ACCRA-GHANA the SAME DAY!!!

Blood on the Red Line

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My trip to work in DC this morning was delayed by a closed Metro track at Union Station. Someone had been hit by a train, and apparently it was a suicide attempt. Quite a scene, it was: yellow tape surrounded a half-parked train with all its doors open, while personnel from WMATA and the fire and police departments milled about the platform. One policeman was nestled in the gap between the train and the outer wall, taking pictures of something hidden from view; blood on the tracks, perhaps.

No blood and gore in the photo I took; just security personnel milling about the platform. The Metro underground stations are all rather dimly lit, so I opted to use the low light camera artifacts to get a gritty, distressed texture. Photo taken with an Aiptek Mini Pencam 1.3MP.

It was a long wait for a crowded subway train this morning. When it arrived, it came in the wrong direction, on the opposite rail; and when it departed, there was a jolt and a heave as the cars switched back to their regular track, leaving the changes in the day far, far behind.

Don’t have sex with blacks?

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As I walked around Fells Point and Canton this afternoon, seeing the sights and buying sundry items, a green flier stapled to a telephone pole caught my eye, headlined, “PROTECT YOURSELF FROM AIDS!” The list that followed seemed pretty normal: “use condoms, avoid sex with multiple partners,” but item number three took me aback: “Don’t have sex with blacks! They are 14 times more likely to be infected!” A closer look showed that it was a National Alliance flier. White supremacist neo-Nazis.

Singling out and vilifying Africans on the basis of a crude statistical generalization: I can’t even begin to describe how wrong that is on so many levels. And equally troubling is the realization that I myself, a citizen of foreign ethnicity, am just as likely to be a target for this kind of ogrish hate.

I walked a bit further down the street and saw another flier: “Racist Scum, Your Time Will Come.” That didn’t make me feel very much better.

Geppi’s Barber Salon

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I just got a haircut today at Geppi’s Barber Salon in Little Italy, just a few steps from my door. I’d been expecting a plain old barber shop, populated by old men clipping away with their shears.

The word “Salon” should have tipped me off.

It was just a bit like walking into an FHM magazine, and having a supermodel cut my hair. Which certainly wasn’t a bad thing, I assure you. Felicia (I think that was her name) is a great hairdresser, plus, she likes cats. The price was surprisingly cheap — $15 and tip — and I think I look pretty good.

Maybe I should get my hair cut more often. ;)

Smart Pure Text

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I really enjoy text messaging, and SMS-craziness is one of my favorite quirks of modern Filipino culture, but this is ridiculous. A prepaid card should leave the phone’s basic functionality intact, even if reloading only adds text credits. Deactivating the subscriber’s voice calls for the sake of SMS is just too extreme and anti-user, no matter how well-documented the “feature” may be.

Class with Druckrey

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One of our core Digital Art subjects is a class under contemporary media mind Timothy Druckrey. It’s been interesting, if a bit unstructured, with richly varied content, and a fascinatingly expansive overview of media in the context of history and culture. I wonder if blogs are going to come into this as part of the modern media “revolution?”