this guy...nom nom nom.

this here is Hugh Laurie.. or really dr. Gregory House - yes I'm aware he's a fictional character and yes I'm aware he's twice my age HOWEVER I don't care. Hugh Laurie in real life is so sexy: clever, kind, smart, slightly uneasy, hard working, possibly even shy and then there's his character House, who is not only easy on the eyes [thanks to Laurie's breath-taking blue eyes and some wonderful folks in the make-up department that make him look 30 - not to say Hugh isn't looking mighty yummy for 50] he's also beyond brilliant with a persona that kicks you in the face. now like many people out there I find House to be so sexy it hurts but unlike most people I have no attraction to him because I "want to fix him"... no, I have no interest in fixing anything but cityscapes. what I like love about House is who he is, rough, cynical, rude, mostly always right, and extremely smart.. now I say this because a girl's got needs and simply I'm looking for someone just like House, only real because otherwise the obsession may get border-line wacko-ish. Yes House has his faults, addicted to pain meds, a bit of a limp, loves prostitutes, etc... but I'm willing to work with some of those, mostly the limp because it makes him who he is, the rest, eh well, I could most definitely do with out. I just want a nice, BRILLIANT human being whom is ok  with being a bit of an outsider and is sexy because of it [but hey I'll be shallow and say if this human happens to look like House it'll make the whole falling 'in-like' process a bit easier to some degree]. Really it'd be nice to have a combo of both House and Hugh: real, smart, sexy, foreign.. get what I'm sayin - I'm just looking for something sexy that, unlike a map, is alive and well.

we are...

if we're not looking for happiness is there something to that? what if we've grown content with who we are - is this something we should be concerned about? is it unthinkable that we have an outlook that differs from the 'norm'? we are not sad, we are not angry, we are.. that is all. 
- we exist like all others, we feel and think and imagine just like the rest - but we are.. us. we are a different breed that views happiness for what it is, the opposite of sadness, a feeling that should be treasured when it washes over us. we respect happiness like we respect all other emotions that are no less or no more important than happiness itself. we are not creatures of negativity, although we possess an energy that is undeniable - it is an energy that fills a room but can most certainly empty one as well. we are not unaware or unmoved by what is around us - in fact we are more in-touch and find beauty in all, especially the feral. we are connected to our minds in a way that frightens most and can become unbearable at times, such as those during which we attempt to deviate from our natural state in order to fall inline with the populous that we interact with. we view all as equal but understand the limitations of the individual - underscoring our own lack of strength. 
- we do not deny the power of humankind and feel a sense of worth every moment we exist. we find our happiness by simply existing and acknowledging the poles of the Earth, emphasizing differences that in collaboration with one another create the innovative and breath-taking world we inhabit. we are... what we are and make no apologies - if we did that would mean we have done something wrong, and yet we haven't. we are rising above any oppression that demands conformity if order to be who we are and love every moment of it. 
- we are who we are because it's the only truth we can ever be certain of. we know we'll change, evolve into more enlightened and self-aware persons, or perhaps not, but we know we may never be the same as we are at this very moment. we will, however, continue to have our same inner-workings, the same emotional response, however altered it may be due to all the wonderful knowledge gained over the years - we will always be us. we are not an easy pill to swallow but we quite like that about ourselves anyhow. we are different and we feel different about who we are because we understand what it means to be us while others only understand themselves. we do not view the world through emerald-tinted glasses but instead with just our own understanding of colors, both bright and dull. we are reality and we are very pleased to be here.

by Mike Luckovich

Just a Body - Nothing Left to See

so i'm obsessed with beets - no big deal

I know it's spring and all the wonderful juicy vegetables are beginning to sprout but I can't just push my love [okay borderline obsession] for root vegetables aside. Growing up I loved carrots - cooked, raw, dipped in dressings, covered in butter, hell put some brown sugar on those bad boys - I didn't care just all long as I got my daily dose of beta carotene I was as happy as a hippo. Then I grew up and met carrots crazy and juicy cousin, BEETS - i like to refer to them as purple carrots.  I love me some beets, so much so that I try to work them into everyday conversations like "oh yah I know that shoe store it's next to this place that sells beets" or "i love beet" kind of like "i love lamp".  So when I stumbled upon this little bit of heaven I literally wanted to go out into the streets of brooklyn and track down a little Italian man and force him to make me beet pizzas everyday until i started to turn purple and then I'd have him cut back to one every other day. what I'm getting at is I LOVE BEETS and if you don't, well you're insane.

hi there, i love you.

everything's always about bikes

click for bigness

this little bit of heaven has made my day.

Beirut's 'My Night With The Prostitute From Marseille'

designing made easy

Time to play designer!   Little program to test out your design skills..

Anything but ordinary, please.

Extraordinary... this is so cute and it makes me wanna color!

this is wonderful

Happy Feet... Happy Me

happy weekend

okay... Robert Redford has nothing to do with maps... but he is an environmentalist and more importantly, he is the sexiest man [possibly person] to have ever walked this earth and I thought it was completely essential to share this with everyone as we enter our first full spring weekend! Enjoy yourselves, melting season is upon us.

just wandering

sweet 'green' commercial... blow baby, blow

reading about trains on a train

Atlas Shrugged: 

"you've borne too much, and there's a great deal that you have to learn to understand in order to lose every scar of the torture you never should have had to bear. all that matters now is that you're free to recover. we're free, both of us, we're free of the looters, we're out of their reach..... check your premises, Dagny. Contradictions don't exists.... we never demanded the one payment that the world owed us - and we let our best reward go to the worst men. the error was made by every man that fed the world and received no thanks in return. you don't know what is right any long? Dagny, this is not a battle over material goods. It's a moral crisis, the greatest the world has ever faced and the last. our age is the climate of centuries of evil. we must put an end to it, once and for all, or perish - we, the men of the mind. it was our own guilt. we produced the wealth of the world - but we let our enemies write its moral code." - Francisco d'Anconia,  pg. 618-619

"you - she thought - whoever you are, whom i have always loved and never found, you whom i expected to see at the end of the rails beyond the horizon, you whose presence i had always felt in the streets of the city and whose world i had wanted to build, it is my love for you that had kept me moving, my love and my hope reach you and my wish to be worthy of you on the day when i would stand before you face to face. now i know i shall never find you - that it is not to be reached or lived - but what is left of my life is still yours, and i will go on in your name, even though it is a name i'll never learn, i will go on serving you, even though i'm never to win, i will go on, to be worthy of you on that day when i would have met you, even though i won't....she never accepted hopelessness, but she stood at the window and, addressed the shape of a fogbound city, it was her self-dedication to unrequited love." [she: Dagny Taggart], pg. 634

be mine

break is gonna be fun

circa 2005....

you totally can

where's the social concern?

"the french architect alain guilheux "from an architect supposedly giving to others [the modern architect], we have moved in a very short space of time to the 'artist' architect [the postmodern architect] who speaks of himself, of his own genius". and Huxtable exclaimed: "the most fundamental change in architecture today is one of attitude. scratch a postmodernist and you will find an apostle of architecture for art's sake, something that would have had any respectable and responsible architect drummed out of the profession not too long ago.... with the renunciation of traditional responsibilities as beyond his capacities or control, the architect has finally been freed to pursue style exclusively and openly... with apology". she bemoaned the current state of architecture, saying "there is more pettiness and pedantry than passion in architecture today... there are no heroes, and no architectural giants, because there is no cause"."  ::  nan ellin's themes of postmodern urbanism p.154-55

WHO ARE WE DESIGNING FOR? What is our largely responsibility outside of paying bills and fattening bank accounts? There MUST be a social cause for something as monumental as a building that is meant to be used by living bodies.. there must be social awareness in all we do, not as martyrs but as responsible individuals that grasps the fundamental fact: we are just guests on this planet, we must act accordingly... and when we can't [roads, buildings, etc] we must know things that last longer than a lifetime should show respect to those who have yet to arrive.

google: bikini atoll

words cannot describe