ad astra!

“Dante says: ‘A canzone is a composition of words set to music’.
Dante’s statement is the better place to begin because it starts the reader or hearer from what he actually sees or hears, instead of distracting his mind from that actuality to something which can only be approximately deduced or conjectured FROM the actuality, and for which the evidence can be nothing save the particular and limited extent of the actuality.”

Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (1934)

Ezra Pound rocks my world.

“If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.”

Let’s see… my Comparative Democracy class was interesting; we’re going to be looking at democratization and regime change over the world… the prof is probably as old as I am and she ended all of her sentences by saying “right” as if it were a question. But overall the material looks very interesting.

My ENG 220 class sucked. It’s British Lit 1, so I guess it’s supposed to be boring. I looked around the class and noticed that everyone looked bored out of their minds. Luckily, I had my iBook so I just started chatting with Joe. Wireless rocks.

That’s all. I’m home now and DSL is up and running.
YAY

iPowerWeb (the host of paulpellerito.com) has apparently taken a giant crap. So enjoy the look of the site without CSS formating or some images. Kinda feels like 1995. Hopefully it’ll fix itself or I’ll wait until after 9 when I’m on off-peak minutes.

Had my first class. ENG 383: Literary Modernism. Doctor David Ihrman confused about 3/4 of the class with his brilliance, as usually happens. It was wonderful, of course. Now I’m off to PLS 339: Comparative Democracy. Don’t have all my books yet, but hopefully they are coming in the mail. Media mail sucks sometimes. Free wireless from GVSU does not, however.

DSL stuff came today but Joe called and they told him it won’t be turned on until the 2nd. Joe’s going to Battle Creek tonight to hang out with is exboyfriend/friend Aaron, so he should be turned on tonight…

DSL stuff didn’t arrive Friday or Saturday. But we did get a working mail key. Joe told me the box was “stuffed”. A lot of it was bills… which sucked, but they are all paid for. That’s it. Still not paying attention to much in the world; I’m sure the RNC will be great fun.

School starts tomorrow. I’ve got about 20 pages left in the last Summer Reading book, hope to finish that tonight. Wish me luck with my academic career.

That’s all… I work at Cascade all this week; I don’t much like that store.

Joe and I went out to Rumors on Wednesday night to see the strippers (we didn’t think any of them were very good) and so Joe could see if he wanted to work there. He is of course not wanting to strip but I’ve been harrasing him about it ever since anyway. I gave this guy Mitch my number who looked cute, he hasn’t called but it’s ok—I’m more concerned with people to hang out with than anything serious. Still, he was really cute.

Joe and I got back and there was a commotion in the hallway: the girls next door were dragging each other down the hallway on cardboard boxes. Fun! So we hung out with them for awhile. One of their boyfriends I went to high school with but I don’t remember, since I really don’t remember a lot of people who weren’t in my group of friends in hs.

Then I worked yesterday and today. I’m tired. School starts Monday. I have a lot of laundry to do. No quarters. And my front driver’s side window won’t roll up or down, so it’s kinda stuck 1/2way. I think the motor crapped out. I might be able to fix it myself.

Joe and I went to Morningstar76 tonight so I could finish up my textbook order for school.

I happened upon an open wireless network with the SSID of linksys. As I do with every open network that has the default SSID enabled, I try the configuration IP, 192.168.1.1 and type in the default password (“admin”) to see if they’re bright enough to change the settings. I own the particular router they’re using (the top-selling BEFW11S4) so I know for a fact that even the quick setup guide instructs you to change the default settings. They weren’t changed. So I sent them an email:

Hello.
First of all, I want to thank you for your internet connection; I was able to buy my textbooks for GVSU tonight while sitting at Morningstar76.

Secondly, I want to warn you that you are broadcasting your internet signal wirelessly and unprotected. My primary concern was I was able to access your router configuration by using the default settings. Consult the quick setup guide that came with your router or the user manual for the way to change both your router’s configuration IP address and the default configuration password.

Additionally, you most certainly want to consider adding a WEP password to secure your network from unauthorized use. Currently, anyone who goes to Morningstar76 with a wireless-endabled notebook is able to access and use your connection. Anyone who was knowlegable could concievably change your router settings and make it unaccessable to you, causing you the inconvienience of resetting and reconfiguration.

You can learn more about WiFi security at http://www.wi-fi.org/OpenSection/secure.asp

Good luck with your network.

I hope I’m helpful LOL

Still no internet. We went with SBCYahoo! DSL since Comcast is 19.99 a month for two months, then it goes up to the low price of $42.99 and SBCYahoo! DSL is 26.99 for a year. Just waiting for the install kit to come.

The key to my mailbox doesn’t work.

We haven’t paid rent yet. Dunno what’s up with that, but Heidi hasn’t asked for money, so… haha.

I walked around GR today, over to Monroe where Harri’s Brooklyn Pizza is, pretty good New York-style pie. Then down to the gas station, then home. Later I walked to Calder Plaza to put my parking ticket from 2 weeks ago in the drop box, then down Michigan to the post office to send out bills and Netflix. I love being able to walk places. I went back to work last week at the Cascade store, they are kind of… unfriendly. But I worked with this pharmacist Robert who I used to know years ago from the gay coffee house in Grand Rapids.

Saturday night Brett and Joe and I went to a party at his friend Will’s place. I knew Will and everyone else there from a few years ago when we all hung out at Steak’n Shake… Becky, Paulie, Bob, Amaris, etc… Joe and I shared 2 fifths of rum then passed out in a tent. Awesome fun.

DSL should be set up in a few days. We did get DirecTV set up, but I don’t know how long until our building switches over to Comcast. So I’ll probably have a full DirecTV system up for sale (dish, reciever, TiVo) + a year programming. Any takers?

That’s about it. I haven’t been keeping up with what’s going on in the world. Almost done with the last summer reading list. Now I’ve gotta go find my textbooks on Addall.com.

This new blogger toolbar is fucking USELESS and ANNOYING.

This blog might be moving over to paulpellerito.com soon.

Gosh, it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to do an update.

We don’t have Internet access in the new apartment yet.

Let’s see… Wednesday I got back to Kalamazoo, I dropped off Barb Deibert’s present that I got her-a little poster from the movie Barbarella because that’s what I call her. I saw it in NYC and knew I had to buy it for her. She loved it, she laughed for a good two minutes. See Barbarella do her thing!

Then I started packing. I have so much stuff, I’d forgotten so in three months. We couldn’t get the size UHaul that I reserved, so for free they gave us the 34′ one. It was fun to drive, but a little scary.

Packing up Joe and me and unpacking took pretty much the whole day. His friend Jimmy from Lawton provided most of the muscle for us. We brought up back that night. For a few days our apartment was a sea of boxes. The living room is cleared out and set up: We have two futons in two rows set up in front of two TVs and 10 speakers wired to the surround sound, so it’s like a movie theatre. We’re hanging up movie posters for decor. It’s cool. My room is a mess still. The view outside is fantastic.

Today was my first day back at work; I was at store 50 in Cascade. There’s a really cute boi technician but I’m not sure if he’s gay or not. Maybe I’ll ask tomorrow LOL

Right now I’m at Discussions Coffee House since they have free wireless. Here’s why we don’t have cable or internet in our apartment. First thing is we don’t want to pay SBC for a landline phone, since Joe and I both have cell phones. So last-resort dial-up isn’t available… and it’s excruciatingly slow; I’d almost rather not have internet than dial-up. We don’t have cable (TV or Internet) because our building was never wired for CATV; the stupid company that owned it before the present owners has a single home sattelite dish on the roof and has split that signal 66 times to the coax that runs into each unit. So we need a DirecTV system in order to get TV, which I actually ordered because I got a deal from changing my address-I only had to pay shipping on the box and I got a free TiVo. We have to sign a year contract for DirecTV, but Eenhorn is going to buy that out once they set us up for Comcast. We’ll probably end up getting SBCYahoo! DSL, which for some reason is twice as much as cable internet, which is stupid, but Joe’s going through serious withdrawl.

So that’s it… that’s what’s going on. New address, new phone number (it’s ###-PAUL, in fact LOL) and new workplace. I think everything I was worried about for the past year has been resolved. Yay.

Check out this awesome picture of the John Kerry rally in Grand Rapids.

So Dino promised me a week of pizza.. and that kind of fell behind since we had the party in jersey this weekend, but one advantage of staying an extra night was we went to Grimaldi’s in Brooklyn.

BEST. PIZZA. EVER.

Dino had an entire pie, I had all but one piece of a whole pie.

Then we walked across the Brooklyn bridge and back to his apartment (3 miles) and are now hanging out and I’m stealing some music from him.

I leave (God willing) tomorrow at 9:30am.

Category I – The Hub

You’re a ‘people person’. Networking runs in your
blood. Consequently, you can move through most
social circles with ease.

What Type of Social Entity are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

The party last night was a lot of fun. I had a lot to drink, so I really only remember it in flashes:

Cute boys
Screwdriver
Cute boys
Charlie puking
Tequila sunrise
Bonfire
Someone with a penis piercing
Coconut rum
Cute boys
Hot tub
Str8 people fucking in the hot tub
…and being THE LAST PERSON STANDING at the end of it all.

Day Three, Thursday, was a true vacation day—I did next to nothing. I hung out along the Esplanade waterfront, then walked to the Financial District and saw the Stock Exchange building. Then I went back to Dino’s and we went to the grocery store to get stuff for that evening’s dinner. Dino planned on making a roast chicken, but it hadn’t thawed (much to his distress) so he ended up getting store-bought chicken. His roommate Brian, friend Bill, and I all ate in front of the TV while fighting over watching WWE Smackdown! or something else. We finally all settled on MXC. Hilarity ensued. After three episodes Bill left and everyone went to sleep.

Pictures from Day Three are here:
http://images.paulpellerito.com/nyc/day3/

Day Four consisted of more sleeping late, then I mastered the NYC subway. I took the A train up to 42nd street, walked through Times Square, then over to 5 ave, then up to Central Park. I walked through Central Park all the way up to 96th and got a picture of the Guggenheim, then took the C train down to Canal Street and caught the E to the World Trade Center. Today marked my first solo trip on the subway and my farthest trip uptown. Now Dino’s making the chicken planned for last night. Dino’s boyfriend Charlie shall arrive tonight.

Pictures from Day Four are here:
http://images.paulpellerito.com/nyc/day4/

Video of the A train:
Atrain.mpg [7mb mpeg video]

Dino just imformed me that Rick James died today at 3:30. Josh probably doesn’t know who that is.

While I have some downtime here, hanging at Dino’s apartment on the lower tip of Manhattan, I’d like to put out a plug for what is my favorite blog right now:

No Milk Please

This is where Dino’s new apartment is (he was up on Houston in SoHo), and where I am right now:

The pictures I took today are all available at
http://images.paulpellerito.com/nyc/day2

and there’s now links to them on the main page of paulpellerito.com.

No idea what’s going on tonight. I’m kind of worn out from walking all the way up Broadway.

I walked from Dino’s place in Battery Park City (right across from the Trade Center Site) all the way up to SoHo and the Apple Store…. I stopped at Dean & Deluca and got an apron. The new Cinema Displays are FANTASTIC. I wish I had the cash for one or two or three… time to go back into the heat. More pictures tonight.