A few minutes ago, armed with only a broom, I went monster ape-shit on a mouse in our apartment. I have never willfully never killed an animal before.

Partly there is a primal satisfaction, 10 minutes later I’m still bristling and shaking with adrenaline. Virtually no guilt, which surprises me. At one point I had the mouse pinned and was working to channel my inner caveman to finish it off, I was looking for help from that deep remnant of prehistoric hunter at the foundation of our genes. “Be a man, be a man, be a man,” was recited under my breath several times.

The actual killing involved a series of frantic slapshots of the mouse against the front door. The now-unconsious mouse (I didn’t check for a pulse) was then scooped into a small cardboard box. The box was closed, shaken vigorously and sealed in a plastic grocery bag. That grim package was then sent nine stories down our building’s trash chute.

The decision to kill the mouse was made because I’m a parent now. Lila is crawling and I was not about to have her sharing our floor with filthy, potentially disease-ridden rodents. And it’s not like you can just ask them to leave or give them a portion of the house to call their own. Years ago in another apartment I spent a lot of time devising complex and non-lethal mousetraps. One caught a mouse within 15 minutes of setting it up. Somewhere I have many, many hours of videotape of those traps in action. Those mice were released in Tompkin’s Square Park.

This whole episode will probably give me nightmares for quite some time.

Right, I drink it for my heath. Yeah, uh, my health.

(don’t mind my shaking, anxiety and bloodshot eyes)

Coffee Cuts Diabetes Risk

So long MeFi.

After reading Evan Izers statement about leaving MetaFilter, I’ve decided to follow his lead. I’ve been considering leaving for a while as the quality of discussion got worse and worse. People like Evan are one of the reasons I didn’t leave sooner. I’m planning on collecting my MetaFilter postings and compiling them into a timeline, my thinking has changed a great deal over the past year, and the things I contributed to MetaFilter should be a revealing look at where my mind has wandered.

Anyway there you go, I’m done too. Sorry Matt.

Famous Curves Index. I’m not going to pretend I have a clue about even one or two of these, but they’re fascinating to read and think about.

Several months ago I had the good fortune of meeting Adolfo Rozelfeld, a digital/video artist and photographer living in Argentina. He now has some of his work online (parts of the site aren’t finished).

Adolfo’s work is beautiful. So far, four fragments from his Paradigma video series are online as well as a small collection of photographs. The first video from Paradigma about stairs is amazing but they’re all worth watching. And all the people in the photo portraits have much cooler furniture and apartments than I do.

I generally don’t believe people are evil. There are exceptions of course, but in most cases most people try to do the right thing. Sometimes the foundations used for judging the right thing are unfortunately at odds with the rest of society. Most often though, good people simply fail to understand the consequences of well intended actions. It’s no fun to watch.

I’ve known Gilbert Flores for over a decade and throughout that time his creative vision and dedication have remained solid. As good as his work is, he’s equally as inspiring as a person. Gilbert has earned every drop of success that comes his way, and I’m convinced he’s still in the early stages of a very long and prosperous career.

Glimmer*
Paintings & Drawings
by New York Artist Gilbert Flores

October 19th – November 16th
Fluxion Gallery, Omaha NE