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Do you ever get comments to elderly LJ posts and wonder how and why the commenter ever happened upon your post? In case #1, it's no mystery: last October, I posted briefly about Toronto's Royal Society for Adventurology. ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) goutwort, one of the founders, happened upon the post several months later and left a comment pointing to the URL of his art/design studio. Some gorgeous stuff there—I am particularly enamored/mystified by the extensive Science & Sons site. The Adventurologists have also staked out the URL adventurology.ca, but it seems to be under construction as yet. The RSA remains active: I see they organized an "Abandoned Object Safari" around Earth Day, and continue to meet for bicycle polo, polite society, penmanship, and tea. ("Naughty librarians and derelicts welcome.") Well met, friend Adventurologists! And if the croquet commandos do return to Boston this summer ( my_tallest and that_cad will correct me as to the official name of their august affiliation), I hope your two like-minded societies can swap visiting cards or Flickr tags or whatever is done nowadays. Case #2 is more random. Back in February, I posted a link to a story about my evil ex-landlord, Snidely Whiplash Leonard Samia, profiteering Katrina victims in New Orleans. In April (on Yu-Jo's birthday, actually, so it was mixed in with all the congratulatory posts and emails), I got the following comment from a Samia sock puppet tenant: BS
Well i cant agree with any of that. No one did die from the accident, remember accidents do happen. I also do live in one of Mr. Samia's apartments and I haven't had any problems. ... I have met Mr. Samia and he is a very nice man, very easily to get along with. I feel bad for him that he is being singled out like this. In reference to Katrina. It was a disastrous hurricane. People did die and building did get completely ruinied. His complex still stands and is running as we speak. Reasons for eviction was because of the water that got into the building, the water created pesticides, and if the body recieves pesticides one can die. If one did die, or even got ill and he didn't evacuate, not evict. Then the only person getting more press than Mr. Samia himself, would be George W. Bush. So I guess I was wrong about anyone dying in the Boston balcony accident ("accidents do happen," excellent point), and also, apparently water creates pesticides. But I'm awful curious how much time my anonymous commenter devotes to defending Samia's internet honor. If you Google Samia's name (the only way I can imagine my post would be discovered) you have to scroll through several pages of Samia-hate from disgruntled tenant-bloggers before you come to my own modest (and relatively sedate) contribution. Finally ( case #3), if you cast your mind way way back, you may recall my post about Bernhardt Hurwood's Invisibles. Some time later, I got an anonymous comment to a different post which appears to be from a friend of the mysterious but totally awesome Bernhardt Hurwood: I'm sure that if Bernie were alive today he'd be flattered at your thinking he's someone else. He actually wrote 62 books before his untimely death of cancer. Hurwood was really his name, though he sometimes also wrote under the name Mallory T Knight and a few other pseudonyms. His full bibliography is somewhere online. I still say he's a time travelling Morrison avatar, or vice versa, but at any rate, I salute you both, Bernie Hurwood and his anonymous friend who has difficulty using LJ's comment function properly, where/whoever you are! Tags: boston, samia sock puppet
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 Leonard Samia (artist's conception)One of my Adieu to Boston posts last summer mentioned that when I lived in Allston, I had the pleasure of being a peon/tenant in Leonard Samia's sprawling fiefdom of slummery. We knew he was a sweetheart when a balcony on one of his other Boston properties collapsed (killing a tenant, I believe). While stoutly denying responsibility for the accident, he pulled his guys off the repair job they were doing on our house, leaving us without siding or insulation for several months of winter, in order to "fix" the crappy unsafe balconies on all his other properties (for "fix the balconies," read "nail boards over any doors and windows that open onto them"). But his crapulence extends even farther than I knew. My old homey Joe just sent me this link to Sunday's Boston Globe: Landlord with Boston ties lashed for Katrina evictions. Apparently Samia also owns some of the most rundown parts of New Orleans. And even though his apartments survived Katrina intact, he's used the chaos from the hurricane as the perfect moment to evict his low-income tenants and do a little profiteering on skyrocketing post-Katrina rents. Wow. He's like the villain in some 19th century melodrama. Or The Simpsons. ''In a situation where horrible landlords are a dime a dozen, [Samia] stands head and shoulders above everybody else in the worst landlord category," said Quigley.
(The picture accompanying the article, my buddy Steve points out, looks a little like our Allston place.) Tags: boston, samia sock puppet
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 Just a heads up: papersource, the polka_roo, and I will be visiting Boston the week/end of February 9-12. I guess that means we'll miss the influx of "girlfriends from Canada," which is too bad, but maybe that will make it easier to schedule face time with people when we do come. Watch this space for more info and planning. We can't wait to roll with our Boston homeys again. ("Polka-roo" is of course the Fetus Formerly Known as the Seamonkey / Secret Squirrel, so renamed because (a) it does an awful lot of poking lately, but (b) it has a way of quieting right down and running silent whenever its Daddy puts a hand on Mommy's belly to see what all the excitement is about. As in, "The Polka-Roo was just here!" "Aw, I missed him again!" Get it? Those raised in Ontario know what I'm talking about.) Tags: boston, cancon, they have a plan
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Do you know what today is? Of course you do! It's Saint Amnesty to Post About Random Out of Date Stuff's Day! For it was on this very day back in, oh, let's say the 80s, between the day that the eponymous Saint Amnesty to Post About Random Out of Date Stuff, patron saint of unpaid LiveJournal accounts, finished his grading for the term and the day that he went away on holiday, was killed by a car bomb—a holy car bomb, mind you—and the rest, as they say, is history. So it is that on this day every year, people with unpaid LiveJournal accounts honor St. Amnesty by posting about stuff that they meant to post about months ago, and get toffee. ( The thing is, I kind of always knew my brother would grow up to train an army of killer of Asian 4-year-olds... )Tags: best of, boston, clan robotnik, drawerings, nostalgia, toronto
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I'd better skip ahead a bit, brother: yesterday was eaten up by moving stuff, and my desktop gets packed up tomorrow, and everything else gets packed up Thursday, and then we're in limbo for two weeks and I don't know how much I'll be online.  My 2001 entry was going to be about moving to JP, and the night my car was stolen and we were inexplicably traumatized by a little girl jive-dancing on the subway, coming back from a fancy dinner we couldn't afford. By extension, it was going to be about class and race in America and coming to terms with all that. Though I could have also talked about giving up finger-quotes for Lisa, or getting traction on the dissertation, or the time these dudes flew a couple of planes into some buildings. And then 2002 was all about weddings, ours and the seven others we went to that year. But some of you have been waiting patiently for me to get to gaming, and since it's half of what we talk about around here, I've got to cover it. I just don't know how to do it justice. ( Big pile of gaming memories behind the cut. )Yeah, you probably had to be there. But if you were there, thanks. Because we were there together. Tags: best of, boston, boston 7, dungeon majesty, gaming, love warrants a post, nostalgia, owlbears, red madness, unknown usa
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We just got in from Doyle's, and you guys are the Fonz. Thanks for coming out, everybody. I hope you had as much fun as I did. I'm so touched by the present, and blown away by the song. I know I was supposed to wait to listen to it, but I didn't, and man, I knew peaseblossom could write a song, but head58 is great, toy guitar or no! (And jeregenest and peaseblossom, you were there in spirit, and I hope you enjoyed the concert and getting to be a couple tonight. Plus, thanks for dinner last night, which was astonishing as always.) Now I'm all nostalgic and blue about leaving, but in a good way, I guess, if that's possible. Thanks again. :) Tags: boston, nostalgia
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Hey, kids: do you remember 1999?  Do you remember when there was a New Economy and we called the internet "cyberspace" and websites "new media" and the stock market was going up and up and up and "nobody can be told what the Matrix is" and every week another kid was a software billionaire? In 1999, half my students were cutting classes to sweet-talk venture capitalists and launch IPOs, and I thought about when I was 12 and split my time between playing D&D and programming Apple BASIC, but then I only kept one of those geeky hobbies going over the years, and in 1999 I asked myself, is it possible I backed the wrong horse? ( Well, do ya? )Tags: best of, boston, boston 7, love warrants a post, nostalgia, real life, rob explains the interwob, simpsons references, toronto
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I'd better talk about 1998, because I'm three years into my memories of grad school, and I've managed to say nothing about school itself. ( Here goes. )Don't forget: Doyle's, 3484 Washington Street in JP, tomorrow night at 7. Tags: boston, boston 7, clan robotnik, history, real life, school, telephony
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