Democracy In Action

I found this sign outside Government Center in Boston. I assume there was some kind of protest and this was left over. I've been to tons of protests, and the one thing that unites them all is that in the end people leave their signs all over the place.

Anyway, it really is Ted Kennedy's public office number. The most unusual thing about this sign is what's on the back:


At first glance it's an ordinary memo sent home with kids at school... but it's from 1975. I mean, I re-use paper, but as much of a pack-rat as I am, I don't even have school memos from recently, much less from 33 years ago!

YMCA directions

I had no idea there was a YMCA in downtown Boston. Whoa, looking at their website, they have a pool and everything. Rock on!

Unfortunately, 14 Beacon St. is the Congregational Library, not the YMCA. Maybe the writer of this glaringly yellow sticky note was simple listening to the Village People?

Call Higgins

If you were to diagram my brain, it would probably look a lot like this note. It has everything-- telephone numbers, random scribbles, to-do things, appointments, the works. The thing that sets this rather untidy note apart are the descriptions of the people whose phone numbers are on here. For example, Marie Claire has "short gray hair" and "glasses" (underlined).




Another person is 5'11" and has a short, blond girlfriend who's 5'6". On what planet are either 5'11" and 5'6" (for a girl) short? The writer of this note must be 7 feet tall.

Christmas was like, totally rad, bro!

Though he has the baggy pants and sweatshirt, and his hat is barely holding onto his head, you can see in his awkward stance and semi-smirk that he knows how tough it is to look gangsta while standing in front of a Santa Claus made out of wooden boxes. This apparently wasn't a high priority photo-- it was taken 12/26/04, but not developed until 02/02/05! Found on the sidewalk near Park St. Station.

Special Pass

I found this note stuck to a bench near South Station. It's at the place where you get the shuttle bus to take you to the concerts being held at the Fleet Pavilion or Bank of America Pavilion, or whatever they're calling that tent thing with overpriced beer now. Perhaps the bearers of this Special Pass weren't able to get backstage since they left this behind!

Passport girl

I hope this girl isn't trying to leave the country soon, because she dropped her passport picture in the box of Snickers bars where I work. I saw a girl that I thought was her the next day, but she hadn't lost any passport pictures, and looked kind of confused and creeped out that I would mention such a thing. Oh well.

James P. Walsh

Sear God? Sean God? I'm not sure what this sticky note says. There are a lot of James P. walshes out there, including an economist who wrote several books, a couple of lawyers, someone who directed a short film in 1998... I'm not sure what this note was about. Alas. We probably shall never know.

gbfb.org

This attractive button is advertising the Greater Boston Food Bank.

I found it on the ground near Park Street Station in Boston. Park Street is one of the major stations in Boston for both visitors and locals alike, so I always find the most dropped items there.

Yellow Box = 016, 354

Most of the fun of picking up other peoples' lists is trying to decipher what they mean. Grocery lists are generally fairly straightforward, but to-do lists and whatever this is are usually more of a puzzle.

I can't read this person's handwriting too well, and I can't begin to guess what this is about. I thought maybe it was a list of books in a library to find, but the numbers don't correspond to the Library of Congress cataloging system. If it were the Dewey Decimal system, there are too many numbers...

Whatever this person needed to do, it looks like he or she did it all, judging by the X's. Good job!

the dreaded FAFSA

I don't envy this person's life one bit. Filling out the FAFSA (a financial aid application for college; you have to fill one out every year) is one thing I'm glad I will never have to do again as long as I live.

This poor soul has job classwork to do (correct papers, finish grades), his or her own schoolwork (research, outline) and still find time to pay rent and pay off a student account. Ah, the life of a budding academic.

Found in Kenmore Square a few weeks ago

Re-Enter Long Island

Jermaine C. can re-enter Long Island now. Well, I hope he still can even though he seems to have lost his paper. Found on the Common, Boston.

Hi, My Name Is...

I found this sticker on the ground near Park St. Station-- it was folded in half, so I scanned both sides and put them together. It's written in black marker on a name tag-sized sticker --perhaps someone is known as the "Bi Polar Express!"

After Treatment

This person's life doesn't sound like it's going too smoothly -- he or she has to fill out an accident report, but only "after treatment."

Red Sox vs. Detroit Tigers

It wasn't long after May 16th that I found this ticket... it seems remarkably beaten up and crappified for only being a couple of days old. but then, looking at the Red Sox website, the May 16th game was postponed until the next day-- maybe the ticketholder was standing in the rain waiting for the game. I found this near Government Center in Boston.

Grandpa, put down that chainsaw!

I found 2 contact sheets and one family photograph perched on top of a trash pile outside a photo developing place in Government Center a couple of months ago. the photos don't seem like anything extraordinary on first glance, but once you start really looking at them and realizing you have absolutely no context for them whatsoever, they get a little more interesting.

For example:
It looks like the dad and the groom are about to make out. The mom is obviously not paying attention, but doing a good job of pretending, and the woman fiddling with her necklace just looks bored.

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I enlarged some of the pics from the contact sheets, to see what they were. i thought perhaps I'd find pictures of a murder, Blow-Up style. No such luck. However, I did find that grandpa wields a pretty mean chainsaw!

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No Christmas would be complete without a disembodied hand holding some lightbulbs! -->

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<-- this baby is not impressed with the situation, but the Volvo in the background is pretty swank.

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<-- Uncle Bob was slightly drunk when he took this crooked picture.

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I'm glad someone thought to take a picture of the apple magnet on the refrigerator! I'm not sure what the thing in the middle is, but it looks important. -->

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<-- Grandpa is the king of his wood.

I'm a walking Nike ad

That bicycling guy who got his balls chopped off from cancer started the whole trend of wearing silicone bracelets with some kind of affirmation to raise awareness on them. The originals said "Live Strong," and the proceeds went to some charity. However, in the years since he started it, many thousands of different plastic bracelets have cropped up. These range from the ones I got out of the gumball machine at the local drugstore that say greetings in Mexican slang (I've gotten "¡Oralé!" and "¿Que Honda?" so far) to Archie McPhee's own collections which raise awareness of concepts such as "misanthrope," "ennui," and "apathy." There are also a whole host of religious type ones as well as bands for sports fans, bland people who just want to have something trite to say, vacationers, dead people, and to raise awareness of princesses. You can even get your own bracelets made in bulk! Whoa. This site even gives suggestions which colors can raise awareness for what (i.e., yellow is for "general cancer," dark blue is for "child abuse and colon cancer.")

Anyway, I found this lovely unblemished white bracelet on the floor of the store where I work. I've been wearing it ever since I found it a couple of weeks ago because it cracks me up so hard. No, I'm not suggesting you go out and buy Nike products right now. I just find it really funny that there is an actual bracelet that says, "ONCE I GET THE BALL YOU'RE AT MY MERCY." There are even quotation marks around the saying on the bracelet itself. It has a little Nike logo guy on it, which is how I realized I was a walking Nike billboard. The little guy with the basketball is Nike Air Jordan, right? Or is that something else?

Had I written the sentiment, I would have put a comma after the "ball," but I don't think it's 100% necessary. I think I want to get a bunch made up that say, "ONCE I GET A COMMA, YOUR GRAMMAR IS AT MY MERCY!" perhaps I'll just get some to raise punctuation awareness-- with various punctuation marks on them that say "SEMI-COLON POWER!" and stuff (the colon one would be dark blue, har har!). Wouldn't that be geeky and annoying?

S I love You

I found this orange sticky note on the floor of the store where I work today. I don't think it belongs to any of my fellow employees, as none of their names begin with S... I like the stylized heavy metalesque "S"-- it adds a certain charm. The fact that the "You" is capitalized makes you know that the writer of this note really meant the words he or she jotted down in pencil.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

I, for one, am glad that Social Security workers at least have good taste in music. I found this sticky note on the floor of the music store where I work today. That particular Ladytron song is on the CD The Witching Hour, which is their latest one. Being the music store dork that I am, I recognized it immediately (I'm also a giant Ladytron fan). I hope the government worker who dropped this CD found what he or she was looking for; it wouldn't be too hard as we carry that CD, and it's pretty much always in stock.

Magnet Shape Choice

In our free country, we are lucky to have the freedom of choice. This freedom extends to the choosing of magnet shapes. Some Communist was trying to take away that freedom by forcing (albeit politely) the recipient of this note to take the round one. However, this country is still so great that the note-getter was able to choose a magnet shape of his heart's desire for the first one, I presume. This is a Post-It I found stuck to the stairs leading to the Outbound Red Line in Downtown Crossing T station today.

No Birds

We re-arranged the display fixtures in the store where I work yesterday. One of my co-workers found this picture underneath one of the fixtures we moved. It's written in black ballpoint pen on cash register tape. Nobody could figure out who the artist is, or what he or she has against birds.