As of exactly one very busy week ago, I am moved out of Mamaroneck and into Astoria in Queens, NY. At long last, after seemingly endless months of isolation, I’m done paying for my ex, literally and figuratively.

The flip side, of course, is that if my life continues to be a struggle — and I don’t think it will, since things are already looking up — I can’t blame anyone else anymore. As Trillian says early in Hitchhiker’s Guide, “We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.”

Once the dust settles, I might find myself saving a little money again. My rent is high, but lower than paying rent for two. I liquidated my car on Friday, netting a couple grand and saving me $100/mo in insurance (which would have been $150 at my new address). A monthly subway pass is only $90 versus $205 for an MTA North pass. Heating and cooling this place should be cheaper, since it’s smaller and a brand new construction. I’m saving $20/month on my gym, thanks to my corporate overlords.

I may be the only person in the world who can move to New York City and spend less money on the necessities.

I’ve been taking a ton of photos lately, including a large set from my trip to Illinois to visit family this month, so check them out if you like.

I have a few shots of my soon-to-be new apartment still on my camera, and I’m sure I’ll have even more photos to come now that I’m going to actually live in New York instead of just working there and living in the boondocks.

Seven months since my last post? Sounds about right. My life changed a lot during that time, and it isn’t done yet. It turns out, everything I wanted to say about any of it could be posted as short status updates on Facebook, with the added bonus of immediate feedback from friends and family.

I like having this page around as a repository of useful links, though, so I’ll keep it around even if I don’t blog. Anyone who wants to keep in touch should do so on Facebook (at least until it fades away like MySpace). If I want to write something super-long or HTML-heavy, I’ll write it here and post a link there.

(Oh, and I disabled comments. I logged in here last month to find 20 pages of spam to delete. Oops.)

Yep, it’s that day again. I’m celebrating by going to work, dealing with an internet outage at home, and possibly getting rained on later.

Meanwhile, here’s today’s theme song:

MC Frontalot – This Old Man

Yo, please save me from the wrist-hurt disease…

I had fun at Rifftrax live on Thursday, but it would have been better if the crappy theater in New Rochelle had bothered to turn on the audio for the first several minutes. It finally came on just after the short film began. The other guy who went out to the lobby to complain at the same time I did said the same thing happened at the last Fathom event he attended there, so I think we’ll be avoiding New Roc from now on.

Still, the rest of it was pretty awesome. The crowd seemed surprisingly young, considering that MST3K is 20 years old and hasn’t been on the air in about a decade. And it’s always a kick to experience Plan 9 with an audience that, by and large, hasn’t seen it.

With apologies to Bill Maher, whose show I don’t even watch except in clips online:

1. If you actually believe the health reform bill includes (or included or ever will include) “death panels,” you are too stupid to live. Please report to the death panels.

2. If you are a senior citizen and you are ranting at town halls against socialized medicine, you are required to give up your government-run, single-payer Medicare coverage to a younger person who has been refused service by private insurance companies.

3. Chain emails containing stories that “the liberal media won’t report” are the single least-reliable source of information in the world, with the possible exception of 24-hour cable news networks. (This one is less a rule than an observation.)

I don’t mind people being against the idea of a buy-in government-run health insurance plan, a.k.a the public option, but at least start the debate on planet Earth, okay? I predicted the conspiracy nuts would return back in November, and once again I hate being right. At least it’s not a new phenomenon — Nixonland author Rick Perlstein has a new piece about “America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.”

When John F. Kennedy entered the White House, his proposals to anchor America’s nuclear defense in intercontinental ballistic missiles — instead of long-range bombers — and form closer ties with Eastern Bloc outliers such as Yugoslavia were taken as evidence that the young president was secretly disarming the United States. [...]

Before the “black helicopters” of the 1990s, there were right-wingers claiming access to secret documents from the 1920s proving that the entire concept of a “civil rights movement” had been hatched in the Soviet Union; when the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act was introduced, one frequently read in the South that it would “enslave” whites. And back before there were Bolsheviks to blame, paranoids didn’t lack for subversives — anti-Catholic conspiracy theorists even had their own powerful political party in the 1840s and ’50s.

[...] My personal favorite? The federal government expanded mental health services in the Kennedy era, and one bill provided for a new facility in Alaska. One of the most widely listened-to right-wing radio programs in the country, hosted by a former FBI agent, had millions of Americans believing it was being built to intern political dissidents, just like in the Soviet Union.

Perlstein concludes by noting that the biggest difference between then and now is that now the crazies are invited to appear on TV news and treated as if their views have merit.

To be honest, I’m starting to think the only people who support reform are people like me in the private sector. Most opponents seem to be retired, military, or a government employee, all with government coverage. (Or are rich enough not to care.) Rationed care? Dropped coverage? I already have that — they’re called Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and I just spent 3 months trying to convince them that, yes, they do have to pay the $900 bill for my last routine physical. One more month and the bill collectors will be after me. Hooray for the free market.

To preface why I find this video so brilliant, you need to know that I live about a mile from Larchmont, NY. I frequently shop there for groceries. I could walk there if I wanted.

Stuff like this just drives home how I really do live and work at ground zero for 90% of what’s wrong with the US economy.

From my inbox:

RiffTrax LIVE: Plan 9 from Outer Space

Join the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 for the comedy event of the year!

Fathom Events presents RiffTrax LIVE: Plan 9 from Outer Space, an evening of LIVE riffing on the Worst Movie Ever Made beaming into movie theaters nationwide on Thursday, August 20th at 8PM ET/ 7PM CT/ 6PM MT/ Tape Delayed at 8PM PT.

Join Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo) and Bill Corbett (Crow T. Robot), now of RiffTrax.com, as they are reunited in HD for the first time ever on the big screen! This event will feature the world premiere of a brand new, never-before-seen short and non-stop hilarious riffing on a COLOR version of “Plan 9 from Outer Space”- a 1959 science fiction/horror film written, produced and directed by Edward D. Wood Jr.

This event will be hosted by Veronica Belmont, the Host of Tekzilla on Revision3 and Qore on the PlayStation Network, with Musical Guest Jonathan Coulton and a special segment by Rich “Lowtax” Kyanka of Something Awful.

A few things about this boggle my mind.

• Plan 9… in HD?
• MST3K + Ed Wood already combines two of my longtime interests. Adding Jonathan Coulton to the mix is almost Mike-baiting.
• It’s playing in 433 theaters, which is roughly 36x the number of screens MST3K: The Movie played in back in the day. Ahh, technology.

It took them long enough, but Rolling Stone has finally posted the full text of Matt Taibbi’s article on Goldman Sachs and its history of, you know, evil. And if you think Obama is any less beholden to GS and Wall Street than Bush or the GOP, then sadly, you need to read the beginning of the article. Actually, everyone needs to read the entire article, to be honest.

Bear in mind this was written BEFORE Goldman posted the most profitable quarter in the history of history, while unemployment hit 10% nationally and the world economy continued to crater. Taibbi has more on that and on the criticisms of his piece (criticisms that he’s “technically” correct but still wrong for, uh, vague reasons) over on his blog.

I have yet to sort through the mountains of photos on my digital camera left over from my trip to DC. Most of them were taken walking around the Mall and museums in the crowds and heat and humidity, and I’m afraid that the later it got in the day, the punchier I became and the more I just pointed my camera randomly and hoped for an interesting shot.

Unfortunately, the best parts of my week barred me from taking photos, so I have no sharable record of them.

First, I went to see the Senate in session on Monday. Not only do they ban photos, but they confiscate all electronics on the way in, just in case.

It was the first day of the Sotomayor hearings, but I got there way too late to see that. Instead, I saw Carl Levin (D-MI) rail against the procurement of F-22s in a room that was empty except for staff, pages, and a late-arriving John McCain. I listened to Levin read letters from Obama and Gates into the record for over half an hour before leaving. Sure, it’s not as exciting as a Supreme Court nomination, but it was still important enough for the Washington Post to write it up.

Then, yesterday I finally got into Mecca itself as I attended a taping of The Daily Show. The episode aired last night, with guest HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (who mostly stuck to talking points rather than answer Jon’s questions). Such a strange feeling to finally be in the studio after watching the show, almost without fail, four times a week since 2002.

Cameras and cell phones were allowed inside only if they were turned off the whole time. A few people snapped photos of the set on the way out, but I just left instead. Once I get around to organizing my DC Tourist/Fugue State pics, I’ll post a link here.