the purpose of tails
kind of a shitty day, because we woke up late and still drunk from matchless last night, where we met an aspiring author named matthew who plied us with drinks and questions. an inspiring conversation about politics, literature, activism, and anarchism ensued, until the shots of whiskey started. at this point, our collective self-loathing emerged and matthew began to probe the personal.
the night ended with us stumbling home at 4:30 am, crashing into parked cars and building walls that refused to remain still. prior to that, though, matthew and i sat on a park bench smoking, where he gave us the following sage advice: "take a shower." hopefully we'll end up as some minor character in one of his novels.
so, instead of waking up sober and early and getting to the mid-manhattan branch of the library as planned, we woke up super late and trashed. at least we took a shower, though.
despite running behind, managed to meet jqln for lunch. she took us to our new favorite place, cafe zaiya, where we had these crazy seaweed-wrapped rice triangles stuffed with bits of goodness [onigiri: tasty, cheap as hell, and not really that crazy, but any time food is so precisely geometric, we find it a bit wild. we had the spicy tuna] and this amazing japanese milk soft drink [calpis] [we think it may have saved our lives]. note to the ravenous—one cannot simply tear into onigiri, as we did. there is a format that must be followed to correctly open the package, otherwise one looks like a jackass [see fig. 1].
after lunch, we walked jqln back to work while talking about her iTravel, nanotechnology, and retractable tails. we parted on this question: what is the purpose of tails?*
intent on answering this question, we finally achieved our nypl library card and checked out the following books: notes from underground: zines and the politics of alternative culture—stephen duncombe; hacker ethic; hacker culture; power of maps—denis wood [and a bunch more that we can't remember right now].
feeling faint and the onset of a vicious hangover, we left the library early to acquire sustenance [a vain attempt to stave off conceptual shutdown]. returned to cafe zaiya for two salmon onigiri and more calpis. while the food didn't help us feel any better, at least we mastered the art of opening onigiri.
broke and with hours to go before our shift in no rio's computer center, we decided to swing by bluestockings to see if we'd been scheduled yet and to hang out in their café. while we're still not on the schedule, we had a great chat with one of the workers/managers and discovered that they need some immediate web help, which we're happy to provide.
for some reason, we felt weird just hanging out in the café after our discussion [do we pay for coffee at this point or no?], but still too early for no rio, so we wandered down to rivington where we remembered there was a bar with free wireless access we had never been to.
not only does it have the free wifi, but schiller's liquor bar has perfect ambiance and kevin [an old acquaintance from milwaukee] happens to work there! always nice to see a friendly face, kevin gave us a doughnut and informed us of the falk tragedy back home. two favorite new places in a single day[!], we intend to frequent schiller's every wednesday prior to no rio [plus the stella we had there did more to cure our hangover than anything else that day].
note—we weren't able to catch dorkbot due to our shift at no rio, but jqln provides a nice synopsis and images are available.
* we remembered that tails were used by dinosaurs for balance, but believed that for mammals they're nothing more than vestigial structures. we were totally wrong [nothing new there]: less the purpose of tails than the purposes of tails, including prehensile tails used for clinging to things, communication [snakes who warn would-be molestors and dogs], reservoirs for food, defense, etc.
