A brief list: I can, from the freshly sneaker-scraped 3 pointer groove on our driveway, make a hookshot without looking. Sometimes. (This superpower is sort of hit or miss, so to speak, depending on the day/angle of sun/temperature/blackfly-to-breathable air ratio/etc.) Asleep, I can detect which family member is climbing the stairs. I can also make [...]
For some reason, I have this long held belief that writing frequently will cause me to think more clearly. And as thinking clearly is a something of a rarity for me, I try to write just about every day. For the most part, it ends up being the angsty scrawl common to directionless 26 year [...]
About fifteen minutes in to my drive up from Boston yesterday I realized that I was going to spend the two hour stretch between South Station and Lebanon in a state of relative solitude. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t on a bus. No one would be sitting behind me talking [...]
you know what that’s like? its like closing up the Eggars storybook and feeling vaguely disappointed that the long one you read first didn’t include any steamy midnight scenes on the beach (even after reading patiently through ten pages of buildup) and then turning off the lamp and remembering that the one you liked, the [...]
Peets Coffee & Tea. At five, this place was a noisy hive of caffeine addicts, shoving their way towards the front of a line that reached the door. Just three hours later, the afternoon crowd has subsided. The whining two year olds in their neon safety suits are no longer clogging the doorway. The lipstick [...]
Wherein the author reveals his true nature to be that of an egomaniacal hermit who created this overfed pseudo-biographical tabloid as an incubator for his various delusions of personal celebrity. But first, France on a cool summer day. Just over two months ago I was sitting on the TGV from Bordeaux to Rennes, staring out [...]
Mike dropped me off just near the gas station at the corner of Massetana Romana and Cassia Sud last night. After collecting my things from the trunk, I managed to hang it all off one shoulder and headed down a narrow little sidewalk towards Buonconvento No. 26. I poked the doorbell a couple times, Lisa [...]
After having a very productive morning, my day fell to bits when I realized that next week is SIS’s student break and people will be taking trips. Not wanting to be left out, I decided to sneak a little peek at Google Maps. Y’know…just to see. I can’t wait for the day that Google Maps [...]
Instead of writing about finding something to write about and then squeezing a few paragraphs out about how it came to be written, (the first topic that pops in to my mind every time I start a new post) I thought I might write about dead people. Specifically, Ted Kennedy (though if anyone has a [...]
Dear They, You have made rocket ships that land on Mars. You have made computers that will soon take over the world. You have invented Nutella. Would you mind thinking up something better than 1 ply toilet paper for those of us stricken by both crippling cheapness and a runny nose? Clearly you have the [...]
Leaving hurts. Until that first bite of homemade waffle on Sunday morning, my progress from west to east was marked by increasingly limp, chemical foodstuffs: Portland: Fresh coffee and a bag of delicious treats. PDX > MPLS : “Organic” peanuts. Minneapolis : Boxed microwave pizza and a coke . MPLS > BOS : Tasteless cookie [...]
It has been a strange week. I’ve woken up on two couches and seen 4am pass me by while conscious three times (and the second time wasn’t even a long night, I just happened to wake up then.) Thanks to some dark mixture of serious caffeine and a few concentrated bouts of sugar consumption, time [...]
I’m tapping this out on my telephone, so it will have to be brief. We just left Putney VT, and are heading west along a newly prescribed route – thank you Emily – which will take us farther South, so as to avoid the nasty weather sweeping down from Lake Erie. This won’t be the [...]
Today, at approximately 10:15am, the mailman (or UPS guy or FedEx grunt or whoever it was that leaves treats on doorsteps at this time of year) delivered my BRAND NEW CAMERA. Briefly: it rocks, and features technology hereto unused by your humble photographer: a lens. It will take me a while to get used to [...]
I’m not sure why, but over the past few days my brain has decided to shut off mid-sentence. Not when I’m just muttering to myself, no … there has to be someone else around to impress. Phone calls in particular seem to bring out the worst cases. Several times – more than I’d like to [...]
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In the past forty-eight hours I have found (with help) two totally fantastic articles written by the commie pinko terrorist left which I cannot recommend enough. (Even if they don’t come from “Real America”:http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=188632 ) “Act I – Matt Taibbi”:http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/17504 “Act II – Robert Draper”:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/magazine/26mccain-t.html More soon…
I thoroughly enjoyed this. Photos by Callie Shell
After laboring over a ‘listen-what-just-happened-to-me’ post for several hours, I inadvertently deleted it. I am taking this as a sign from above that it wasn’t meant to be, and nobody really wanted to hear about my inability to digest peanuts anyways. (Thought it _was_ a pretty exciting read.) Instead of having another go at it, [...]
A few days ago, in a typical buffoon moment, I spilled coffee all over myself. Atypical – to me at least – was that this time the spill ended up covering not only my crotch, but laptop as well. I swore quietly, and looked around to see how many people were extending pity in my [...]
Currently, my office time is evenly divided between home and the two independent coffee shops near our house. The farther of the two is a friendly, crunchy little java-joint with excellent drinks, frequent Bob Dylan tracks and a proprietor who smiles when you walk in the door. They’ve even invented a mixture of condensed milk [...]
Welcome back! First of all, an apology to all of you who wore the pad on your index finger down from refreshing natelaffan.com on the eve of September 26th. I was not expecting the largest work rush I’ve ever faced, and I certainly didn’t expect it would coincide with the promised launch of this thing. [...]
In sixteen hours I’ll be rubbing the sleep out of my eyes on a bus bound for Rome. Provided the bus doesn’t blow up or crash, I’ll then get on a plane to Shannon; then NYC. Then Boston, then Canaan, then Minneapolis. I’m not sure how Siena will fit in to the next couple of [...]
It occurred to me this morning – as I looked up to check how much progress the mold near my window had made towards the already moldy door; a rather fixating chemical romance which I hope to see consummate before I leave – that in fewer than forty days, I will be twenty five years [...]
The Africa photos are up. Enjoy! Comments can be tagged to this blog entry. (for those new to the site, photos are gotten to by clicking the ’24′ in the upper-right-hand corner of this page.)
A month, a week, a day … an hour spent stumbling blind around the back of a grocery store in Chipata; it all boils down evenly. First lesson learned: Time is relative. African seconds fold in on themselves more quickly than I could keep up with, so my readjustment period might be a little longer [...]
I had meant to write this one in Italy…but things got a little cramped. For those of you who don’t know, I’ll be in East Africa until August 3rd. If I’ve met you along the way, please leave a quick comment with your email (it won’t be displayed) and I’ll send you my real email [...]
Hark! The herald angel is shrieking in tongues again! A broken half bottle held high, stabbing wildly at cheeky ghosts with his good arm, oratorical sweeps with sticky green shards of jagged truth, each catching the dim reflection of an empty room. Belch forth that white plume of unchecked, unread gospel and watch your wings [...]
The A.D.D Flambé Ingredients 2 recently distilled quarks 1 delightful discovery A half pint of random A couple shakes of downright strange Several boxes of beautiful And a slice of stunning Pour some of your random in to a large bowl, slowly mixing it in with historical significance and some deeply strangeWhile you stir, take a large handful of crushed beautiful and sprinkle it in evenly. [...]
Had I been twenty-four years old forty years ago, my life might have been in real danger of moving in some worthwhile direction. Not towards medicine and chemistry mind you, but the law? Maybe. Diplomatic corps? Very possible. Even Architecture has a nice ring to it. (Until you’re asked to hold up a building using [...]
This past Monday I drove a car down to the Rome airport to pick up the summer batch-o-learners Mike left early with the first seven, and I stayed behind to pick up the afternoon arrivals. Due to funky plane schedules and possibly my recent fascination with Richard Dawkins , the last flight was delayed, delivering the final [...]
This is just a quick update on the progress of my room’s octopus battle. As I’ve already sent photos to 90% of you, I’m doubling your incentive to stick around with some rough sketches and shoddy photos! (Update. Octopus post has been moved to Various & Sundry section) That pretty much covers the entire weekend. [...]
I’ve begun doing little speed-sketches while our afternoon coffee brews. Though I doubt it will become a real habit, it’s a nice way to pass an otherwise useless four minutes. Also, in a brief follow-up to the “stakeout entry”:http://www.natelaffan.com/?p=42, I recently took a look at the natelaffan.com visitor map and was stunned to find Massachusetts [...]
Let me explain. There’s no telling what can happen when you feed a picky designer some beer and then beat him soundly at four consecutive rounds of UNO. Nobody likes to lose, and a questionably sober me is no exception. After gamely congratulating Mike for his lucky streak last night, I retreated in to the [...]
*Ahem.* I spy on you. Thanks to the nerd-magicians over at Google, I get poked every time someone actually visits this website. It doesn’t happen very often, and there are some days where my magic poke-o-meter reads only a three or four …. or on the really slow days, a one. (Margaret, you deserve cookies [...]
Distractions, distractions. I’ve only strayed from work twice today, but both times have been due to LEVEL 5 DISTRACTIONS. (which, to give you some reference, is the same category assigned to gelatto pangs and certain songs by The White Stripes. In other words: extreme.) The first (and infinitely more time consuming) is the new-and-improved portfolio of Sam [...]
Design deadlines are tough, and due to my inability to say no to anyone, they often stretch late in to the night. At roughly the same moment Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy show up on their respective evenings to deliver hope, mine starts to evaporate. I’ll stop, curse, bang my head on the table, [...]
I never knew how much amazing you could pack in to 15 seconds. Cutandpaste.com recently had a competition to see who could pack the most in to a fifteen second advert for Adobe Photoshop CS3. A few of them are impressive, but only one did I have to watch again and again and again…. If you’re [...]
This morning I arrived at the office will all SORTS of good intentions. I was going to get a weeks worth of designing polished off, respond to client emails, write a few letters and, if I could squeeze it in, try my hand at a new Shogunflathomepage. Everything was possible, and the clock hadn’t even reached [...]
We were walking to the Duomo this rather drizzly morning and came across these two, who were playing outside the museum entrance. This was the first time I’d ever heard a tsymbaly, and… well… I couldn’t get enough. According to their CD booklet (I couldn’t help myself) the Tsymbaly is the “Belarussian national musical instrument”. [...]
I don’t spend much of my spare time YouTubing campaign stops, but this might just be the best speech uttered by an American politician during my lifetime, so what could be the harm in posting? I won’t add any commentary; god knows there was enough of it BEFORE he took the podium, except to say [...]
I need a desk…. and maybe some sheets. I can’t remember the last time I lived in place that had too much space. For any number of reasons, I’ve always found myself in comically small rooms that barely fit ME, let alone anything I might have brought along. Why only last fall I was renting [...]
Quiet, cold and drippy. These may not be the most common words associated with Valentines Day, but at the moment, as I watch the clock unknowingly tick its way towards a solid twenty four hours of Hallmark Hell, they are certainly the most accurate. At just past one in the morning, all is peaceful. Mara’s [...]
I suppose it goes without saying that this blog has … languished a bit over the past month. Thankfully, I can assure you it wasn’t for lack of things to write about; rather just a lack of time to write about them (that, and the fact that that I’ve been spending time with this blog’s [...]
It has been a very busy two weeks, and as a result, this blog has been all but abandoned. Nothing earth shattering is going to be posted today, but I thought I should at least share some highlights from the past 336 hours if only to keep this whole blogging experiment relevant. A short list [...]
After a week of sitting on my ass in a windowless room making websites, I was looking forward to doing something computerless this weekend. I did. Then I went back and sat in front of my computer for 3 hours putting the whole thing online. Beh, It was a strange Sunday. You can see the [...]
It just isn’t one of those things you think about. Nobody warns you about situations like these. Your parents might have mentioned the unfairness of life, your pastor might have preached on the dangers of unchecked evil; you might even be a boy scout. I don’t care how level headed you are, there is nothing [...]
Every so often, when the day runs a little long, when lunatic Sienese driving doesn’t quite get your heartbeat up where it should and when Italy begins to seem like a reasonably normal place to live, you stumble across something like this: The Benito Mussolini Day Planner. if (AC_FL_RunContent == 0) { alert(“This page requires [...]
So this is what it’s like to have an honest-to-god compulsion. The twitching, the irritability, the relief…and oh…yes…the FIX. I just spent a beautiful, sunny Sunday indoors redesigning this blog; perhaps the last truly warm day we’ll have this fall, but I honestly could not pull myself away from the goddamn computer screen. Small things [...]
I haven’t quite worked out the kinks in my next post, but while you’re waiting, I highly recommend two links that I recently found at Drawn!. The first is Bill Watterson’s commencement speech to the 1990 class of Kenyon College (link here), the second is a rare set of comics he did while studying there. [...]
I forgot to plug my washing machine’s mystery tube in to the bidet. In retrospect, I was relatively lucky. It could have been a lot worse. The toilet could have backed up, the sink could have exploded and my clothes could still be dirty. But as I stood in my bathroom this afternoon, barefoot and [...]
Music journalism. It’s weird worried upside-down world these days, and one hell of a leap from the heyday of Rolling Stone, Billboard, Mojo or Spin. Those old guides through the mucky pools of new and questionable talent have all but abandoned the pursuit of fresh blood at precisely the time when we outsiders need their [...]
I was JUST about to take a nap before dinner (I slept roughly 2 hours last night) when the upstairs neighbors decided that RIGHT NOW would be a great time to pound nails in to the floor. Honestly, they couldn’t be doing anything else. Just as I pulled the sheets up under my chin, this [...]
I arrived at work this morning with a genuine desire to get things done, but Ms. Roni Kennison had other ideas. As soon as I sat down, she wrote me a quick chat-note: If you could have dinner with any five people that have ever lived..who would you choose? Now, this is one of those [...]
After having just started to settle in to the rhythm of my new life with new roommates, one of them has decided to leave. Antonello, who is – as far as I can tell – some sort of pre-med student, has decided that he needs to be closer to the hospital. This is troubling for [...]
*Item #1*: Today is my birthday. Gifts may be sent to: Siena Italian Studies / Strada Massetana, 38 / 53100 Siena, Italy. Please do not send anything alive or recently dead. Customs officials make me pay extra. *Item #2*: This blog … rather… this BRAND SPANKIN NEW blog is just chock full of spicy delights. [...]