To the left is a pic of me taken by Genevieve. Where’s the sun? I’m so pale! This video is from the party I attended last Saturday in Jamaica Plain. Through the rain, at 10PM, knowing I had to be up for work the next morning at 7AM, I drove over to J.P. (and didn’t get lost!) because it was important for me to reunite with my friend Genevieve from Chicago who I hadn’t seen since she went to Argentina with her main man, Emerson, early last fall. (For the blug-out story of their S. American journey, hit the mouse on this sentence.) At the party I was introduced to her friend Ashley and given permission to shoot some video of the discussion we were having up on the third flood. Kind of away from the the madness, or so we thought, but no! Wild boys found us and talked up some East African Concert, complete with a full color flyer. Jamaica Plain… My best line from this video is, “You’re on my website right now!”

Yesterday was the Mothers Day, and I’d like to briefly tell the tale of the brunching of the mothers. First of all, on Saturday night we had the entire electrical grid go down at the restaurant in a small explosion and had to shut our doors. Excess water (and I mean excess) had leaked through the 100 year old foundation of the building and infected some of the wires with moisture, causing a small fire. Damn you rain! It was up in the air whether or not we would open at all.

I decided to go out and meet my friend Genevieve at a party in Jamaica Plain. For those of you who are just joining the tour, Genevieve is my friend from Chicago times, who spent the past year with her sharp boyfriend Emerson down in the South American country of Argentina. Not having seen her in a minute I was happy to navigate the rain to Jamaica Plain. (The rain in J.P. falls mainly on the plain… then drains into the riverway.)

Amazing myself even, which is rare, I did not get lost on my over to Jamaica Plain. This is the first out of hundreds of attempts that I did not get even the slightest bit lost. Okay, I fess up to one U-turn. I stayed late over there* because I assumed there was a good chance that Mothers Day brunch would be called off for eletrical problems, and got home for only a few hours of sleep before waking back up at 7:30 am, Sunday morning, to see what was happening.

The phone never rang so I headed through the teeming rain to the restaurant at 9AM. Inside through the steamy windows I could see the head chef walking back and forth on the phone, and the bartenders setting up, and I knew that we were going to make it happen for the mothers. Even though the basement was a 5 inch deep river, and we had part of our dining room flooded, the doors opened at 11AM for the streams of mothers flying in through the rain like the bison pour into the canyon in the Lion King.

Personally, I served fifty six people which must have included at least a dozen mothers and perhaps two or three Queen Bee mothers. The Queen Bee mothers definitely were the most challenging customers of the day, as a sense of entitlement towards the world had set into their brain. Even though none of the mothers was my mothers, and I was super-polite as always and perhaps even ultra-polite because they were my guests and they were mothers and it was mothers day, I think the Queen Bee mothers assumed I should treat them with the respect I’d show to my mother on mothers day.

Which I tried my best to do to all the mothers, not just the Queen Bees. The Mothers brunch was really busy but the percentages of gratuity were not as good as a normal brunch. My theory is that the lower tips percentages were because of the pain of being forced to wake up early with the fam, come through the heavy rain, sense of duty, etcetera… But even if mostly the sons & daughters & husbands were feeling stressed out, hopefully all the mothers were rightfully chilling.

*Videos of the party in Jamaica Plain to be available soon.

The title says it all folks. That means that I am professionally trained to read cloud signs, star charts, precipitation meters, wind mills, & burlap bags of little chicken bones shaken and scattered on the dusty earth by medicine men. I know weather because I was taught in college by the main man of one of the NBC affiliate stations in the Greater Chicagoland area, which was a good thing fore the winds blow and the skies open, I thought I better have an edge or else I’d be one of those schmucks caught unawares and in heavy traffic when the tsunami hits & pulls California into the sea.

What do I make of what’s happening now? Well, basically my read on the situation is that a giant pinwheel system is sitting on the midwest with its browneye over Detroit. System has long tentacles, or arms, and many more of these appendages than 3. The arms are the moisturebearing cloud fingers that circle the eye. They are so long that as seen on my weather map below, they stretch like outstretched catching arm octopus tentacles (and they really do suck) down past the islands of the Carribean Ocean. Now because my college education only lasted 3 months, this meteorology class has remained very fresh in my mind, obviously.

Let me tell you all in the Biz Nation what to do. First, look at my weather map below and if it soothes you, then you’re one foot down the right path. Let’s all consider this a positive: plants need rain for hydrogen and we needs plants for oxygen. The time is right for this kind of thing what with nature just making a comeback and all. I encourage all readers of 3rdarm.biz to root it on. The Shaquille O’neal of rainy day systems is maneuvered like the alien mothership from Independence Day directly over the Capitol Buildings of U.S. auto. Be safe driving ya’ll!

Yesterday in the New York Times it was reported that in Colombia a wild tribe had emerged from the bush, ready to join the civilized world. For many this was news because the civilized world is so all-encompassing these days that a wild tribe existence alone amazes. For others, the political shades of the story were what made it news-worthy, what with rain forest depletion and civil war forcing the indigenous peoples out of the South American forests. The entire story can be read here.

It caught my eye because this tribe’s diet consists mainly of nuts, water, and monkey, and also because they keep pet monkeys. That’s right, these people eat monkey just like yours truly, but they also keep them as pets. Of course, now that they are in a village set up for them food is provided by the state, but that hasn’t stopped them from sneaking back into the jungle with blowguns to hunt for monkey-meat. Apparently its just so delicious that they can’t stop.

Few people know this, but actually when I was five years old I lived in the jungle with a pet monkey. His name was Lil Petey, and of course I had to eat him eventually. Lil Petey understood though, because we was cool like that. The incident really had me reconsidering tribal life, however, and so I emerged from the bush and found myself in a suburb of Hartford, Connecticut, where I eventually learned to use a toilet and enrolled in public school. I grew up to become a capitalist, and eventually, a street attorney.

But I’ll never forget that succulent little monkey.  Here are the only two pictures I have of me with my pet monkey so long ago…  “Rather mysteriously, a group of nearly 80 wandered out of the wilderness, half-naked, a gaggle of children and pet monkeys in tow, and declared themselves ready to join the modern world…” Juan Forero, NYT

“The men still go into the jungle, searching for monkeys, a delicacy the Nukak cannot seem to live without. Monkeys are grilled, dismembered and boiled, then eaten piece by piece…”  Ibid

Big ups to my boy Jhonne! This is my good friend who I handed off the original 3rdarm.biz digital camera to. We were chilling in Cambridge a couple of days before I left for the Netherlands and he used MSN messenger on my computer. When I started up the laptop at my sisters crib in Amsterdam all these young ladies started messenging me in Portugese and I had a panic attack! Thought it was the Brazilian spammers after me, again… but it was just the Jhonne fanclub.

Real rough babel fish & 3rdarm collabo translation of poem from Jhonne’s picture: “Some time before I believed to have conquered all my objectives. I thought that life if summarized only in conquest and lived peacefully, encircled of interesting things, was empty.

I had fear to perhaps believe that the life was so this, for feeling that it lacked something.

As the time makes with that the necessary move today and, more mature, I see that what really lacks in my life, was Great paixao, a Great Friend… Yours truly.”

Thursday my aunt and I picked the dog up from Hair of the Dog, which is the hound salon that fluffs up the pup’s fur. This is a fine dog grooming establishment down on the CT shoreline, comes highly recommended. The spaniel was sweet smelling prancing out of the joint, which was a fine change from the norm. Inspired by the beauty of our groomed cocker spaniel, named Hannah Berry, I took out the camera and started videoblogging on the spot. This is practically dogshow caliber footage: could probably be used as an audition tape into Westminster. If I sound somewhat spooked or mystified talking on this tape its because I get very paranoid around buildings far from the road that contain hundreds of barking, whimpering dogs, that’s all. Hair of the Dog did a fine job, and we’re very proud of our gorgeous groomed spaniel.

This morning at 9:30 PST Nintendo had its annual pre-E3 (Electronic Entertainment Exposition) press conference and used that platform to shed direct sunlight on the future of gaming. The new console with the innovative controller (it can be moved in 3 dimensional space) and the low price point, codenamed Revolution for so long, has been named “Wii,” for its unique emphasis on bringing us all, gamers and non-gamers alike, together to play and perhaps because of the Wi-Fi network Nintendo has in the works…

E3 does not formally begin until tomorrow, Wednesday May 10, but it is traditional for the hardware makers, especially in a roll-out year, to hold press conferences today, the day before, to psyche everyone up and give an early glance at what will be on the showroom floor. For anyone interested in keeping abreast of the developments, which will, ya know, effect the future of gamers worldwide ya heard, I recommend tuning into IGN.com, where an enornmous nerd-herd staff of gamer boys and gamer girls will be delivering the latest news around the clock.

In honor of Nintendo Wii’s big coming out party today (the system has been secreted up until this point so as to avoid competitors stealing the designs and innovations) I am posting a video here that shows what happened last Saturday night. Okay, the video is a little ambiguous, basically what this video is about is me and Eliot fiending out for some playtime on the Nintendo Entertainment System, specifically 2 player Joust. To enable a session, we carried a large television and the NES up into my lil’ nuclear bunker and hunkered down…

Oh and I want to just express my annoyance that even with tight lips and secrets Sony still tried to copy Nintendo’s steez. At the Sony press conference this morning it was revealed that the approx. $1000 Playstation 3′s new controllers will contain “tilt technology” so that when you tilt the controller in your hands the movement is registered on screen. A far cry from holding the magic stick, that wily wiimote, and waving it in full three dimensional space! Ha!

Back in the twilight of the 16-bit era Sony was developing the original Playstation as an add-on disk drive for the Super Nintendo, but plans fell through. Didn’t stop the businessmen dolts at Sony, in releasing the Playstation as a stand-alone console, from lifting the complete design and functionality of the SNES controller for the PSX. Hey, they added an extra shoulder button! In the 32-bit console wars the analog stick and trigger (Z) button ideas were stolen, Nintendo inventions both.

Folks, its all just a little bit of history repeating. Here’s hoping that a 2-or-more-player Wiimote-compatible version of Joust (use the magic stick to fly your bird rider versus the bad birds!) is available on the delicious Wii by the end of 2006, and that the Dems retake Congress… Thank you god that will be all.

On May 7th at 2:46 AM Eastern Standard time (which would be quarter to nine AM in Western Yorp) 3rdarm.biz recieved the following comment from fishy… “i’ve been thinking that the thing this blog lacks is a steady stream of fish-sex. bring it on!”

When I was in Dutchland and my sister would have her friends and colleagues over for small dinner parties I would play music for everyone from my laptop. Usually I’d either play my own files or go to shoutcast radio and play Dutch internet radio, depending on the vibes of the room.

Once the computer is setup to play the music my screen saver kicks in, which draws my images from a giant folder I have on my desktop named, “2006 panorama.” These are all of the JPGs that I have been using throughout the year 2k6, and include pics of me out in Cambridge, in Connecticut with my family, as well as AP photos that I collect when I am reading the news.

Shocking to the Europeans was when raw images of fishsex (pronounced “fish sex”) would come up on the screen. I retain these images not for personal pleasure but for professional insertion (I get mad hits on my website everytime I post the phrase), and yes they are real shots of human to fish intercourse, and vice versa.

After witnessing the shrieks and giggles and reactionary jibber-jabber in Dutch a couple times, I asked if they had no fishsex in Europe. Basically I was told there is no fishsex in the Old World, only in the New. Long story short, hogwash! With my sister by my sister hustling through Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport to the check-in counter, we passed a MAINSTREAM ADVERTISEMENT in one of the shop windows depicting REAL EUROPEAN FISH-FOREPLAY.

I whipped out my camera and had my sister take pics of me with the ad, enjoy: