No Touch Monkey!

Joss Whedon, the creator of acclaimed cult favorites “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Angel” and “Firefly,” is returning to Fox and reuniting with “Buffy” regular Eliza Dushku for a new action-drama called “Dollhouse.

Step 1. Watch it.

Step 2. It gets canceled.

Step 3. I don't watch it.

Fool me once, shame on you.

Charles Moore, the marine researcher at the Algalita Marina Research Foundation in Long Beach who has been studying and publicizing the patch for the past 10 years, said the debris - which he estimates weighs 3 million tons and covers an area twice the size of Texas - is made up mostly of fine plastic chips and is impossible to skim out of the ocean.

Jesus Christ, that's a lot of garbage. Crazy amounts. I think we need to drink more bottled water to protect ourselves.

Sorry if my posts are curt. The one below was posted by proxy by Ale today because I can't blog (shouldn't) blog at work. I get errors.

Motherfucker! I just hit "Post" while watching last nights Colbert Report right as he mentions this garbage patch thing. Bastard! I'm so not voting for you.

Aw, who am I kidding. Of course I will.

via videosift.com

Labels: Halloween

This is a Flickr set of Me and Alessandra's Halloween costumes throughout the years


You can go here to see our friends costumes and parties from the past.

Labels: Halloween

Now with 50% less space, but 100% more window. Is it a "cube", a "cubby", a "cubelette"? What?

That little stand to the left is where I put my personal laptop with a 17" screen.

Let's try to find a name for my tiny little space.

Labels: work

Halloween 2007

Just 1 photo to post until Ale cleans them up tomorrow.

We had a much better time this year because we had more guests who stayed longer. We had a great surprise when our friends Khena and Vivek drove all night down from Minneapolis for the sole purpose of attending our party! Sweet!

Labels: Halloween 2007

Things I learned in the few days.

It can take DreamWeaver 3 hours on a PC to do a Find and Replace on a 133,000 line xml file and crash while saving. It takes 30 seconds to do the same on a Mac in TextEdit.

In New Zealand at the end of the 70s and the beginning of the 80's that there were often fights between the the whites who embraced Punk Rock, and the "Blacks" who were fans of Disco. The routes of cultural transmission were quicker from U.K. to New Zealand than Los Angeles to New Zealand.

That a smart, beautiful woman with a sparkling personality and a can go on a date, wait at a restaurant with said date, leave for a change of venue, then get dumped in the car on the way because the date "Doesn't think it's working out." and "Your laugh annoys me."

It's difficult not to smile when you hear a Dolly Pardon song on the radio, especially when she's doing a cover song of a late 90's one hit wonder.

IT Departments have everyone at the company that isn't IT.

A 16 oz energy drink costs more than a 24oz beer

While it's pretty well known I hate getting together with family for holidays, this year's Thanksgiving will be especially disappointing because I'll be out of town that weekend instead of going to Dr. Sketchy's Drink & Draw session which will be featuring the Burlesque DuoGravity Plays Favorites and their pole.

Apple service warranties extend to their power cords, and even if someone on the phone says they don't have one in stock, it always helps to go down and ask in person, as my cord was replaced today.

No matter how tasty your crepes, your framed picture of Rudy Giuliani and you at a fund raiser, can and will cost you a couple of customers.

Last but not least: Alessandra Rocks because she did the detail makeup work on my Halloween mask this year (photos forthcoming) using a cat whisker

Part the First

Motherfucker! I leave my power cord at the office one night and it appears a mouse ate it.



I don't have proof this happened at the office. However, I do take my computer to work every day and bring it home every night where I plug it back in. I think I would have noticed a tear beginning in my cord. Plus (and this is very important), I coil my cord, I don't wrap it, and I have done so for over a year since I learned that wrapping fucks up the cord. But my office has probably miles of cables and cords and no other cables around have been gnawed. I think all my coiling rubbed off some tasty, tasty hand cheese which attracted the little rodent, while all the other cables are untouched.

The real bummer is this: there are only 3 stores in St. Louis where I can buy an Apple Power Cord. 3! And none of them have the item in stock.

The upside is: my company may buy me a new one. They cost 80 bucks.

Part the Second.

I stumbled on this extra sappy piece of "wisdom" this morning over cereal:

Tendering My Resignation
Author Unknown

I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult. I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of an 8 year old again.

I want to go to McDonald's and think that it is a four star restaurant.

I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle, skid rocks across the mill pond and make a sidewalk with rocks.

I want to roller skate and play ball in the street, play 'Rover Red Rover', 'Hide and Seek' and ride my iron wheel wagon down the hill.

I want to think M&Ms are better than money because you can eat them.

I want to lie under a big oak tree and run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summer's day.

I want to return to a time when life was simple. When all I knew were colors, most of my multiplication tables, and a few nursery rhymes. All I knew was to be happy and I was blissfully unaware of all the things that should make me worried or upset.

I want to sleep in a tent in the back yard without worry or fear.

I want to think the world is fair. That everyone is honest and good.

I want to believe anything is possible.

I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be overly excited by the little things again.

I want to live simple again. I don't want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive more days in the month than there is money in the bank, doctor's bills, gossip, illness, and the loss of loved ones.

I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, kind words, truth, justice, peace, dreams, imagination, mankind, and making angels in the snow.

So here is my check book and my car keys, my credit card bills and all my statements. I am officially resigning from adulthood.

And if you want to discuss this further, you'll have to catch me first, cause...

TAG! YOU'RE IT!

I thought I would snark it up line by line because, well, because I'm compelled to by my hatred of this sappy shit.

I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult.

I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of an 8 year old again.

Just remember 8 year olds don't have sex. Really I could end it right here with that argument.
Ok, you can resign and go suckle at some imaginary parent's teat, but you aren't allowed to have sex ever again.

I want to go to McDonald's and think that it's a four star restaurant.

It is a four star resaurant, if by "star" you mean "heart valve" and "resaurant" you mean "clogged". Good luck with that Antibiotic-resistant Staph infection you'll pick up in the play area.

I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle and make ripples with rocks.
Ain't nobody stopping you.

I want to think M&M's are better than money because you can eat them.
With money you can buy LOTS of M&Ms whenever you want. FYI...you can eat money. I just wouldn't advise it.

I want to lie under a big tree and run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summer's day.

Look, you can't lie under the tree AND run a lemonade stand. Who's going to do the work if you're lazing about you bum? Your friends? They're giving the shit away and having water balloon fights while you goof off.

I want to return to a time when life was simple.

Ah yes. Those days before personal computers way; back when you had to ask permission to use the bathroom, or were you thinking back to horse and carriage/kids working in a textile mill days? Yep, the "Good Ole Days" when life expectancy was 50...if you were lucky.

When all you knew was colors, multiplication tables, and nursery rhymes,
but that didn't bother you, because you didn't know what you didn't know and you didn't care.

Huh? Look, I knew a guy who was in a triad relationship and was more thrilled to watch Sesame Street on Noggin because Mr. Hooper was on it, than to watch his wife and her girlfriend get it on. Is that what you're talking about?

All you knew was to be happy because you were blissfully unaware of all the things that should make you worried or upset.

Ohhhh. Yeah, willful ignorance makes you easier to lead around by the nose. Maybe that's why you want to think McDonald's is a four star restaurant. You want to be a shill.

I want to think the world is fair.

We actually learn this before we can even really reason. This is why babies lie.

That everyone is honest and good.

You won't hear me say this often, but I do believe this: for the most part, the majority of the 4.5 billion of us are generally are honest and good (except for those lying babies). As for the rest, learn to discern who they are and keep away from those that you can. Unless you're 8. Then it's ok to go off with the first stranger to offer you candy.

I want to believe that anything is possible.

And it is if you're a wealthy, white American Male. Come on, what kind of idiot are you? I this wasn't true the first time I heard this and realized there was no way on earth that I could stretch my newly-discovered, magical penis for the length of a mile, or fly by force of will. You just have to remember that while "anything" isn't possible, a very high number of things are. Some really, really cool things.

I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be overly excited by the little things again.

You know what rocks? A nice, solid dump. Poo is simple yet a surprisingly complex system worked behind the scenes to make it happen. You should grok on that.

I want to live simple again.

I don't want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive more days in the month than there is money in the bank, doctor bills, gossip, illness, and loss of loved ones.

...and people you don't know sending you withering hatred for being a retard.

I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, justice, a kind word, truth, peace, dreams, love, the imagination, mankind, and making angels in the snow.

free, free, hard work, free, medium effort with occasional repurcussions, very hard work, simple, depends which kind of love you're talking about: AGAPE, PHILEO, STORGE, and EROS...you can write off the last two because you're 8...these are adult loves, AGAPE is easy because you believe in "Magical Sky Man" it's the brotherly love PHILEO that's the hardest, especially when it's your brother who's slagging you online, imagination: easy, not sure what you mean, as easy as falling down.

So....here's my checkbook, my wallet, my car-keys, my credit cards and my 401K statements.

I am officially resigning from adulthood.

And if you want to discuss this further, you'll have to catch me first, cause,

"Tag! You're It."

Ok I'm It. And I'm just gonna sit down and draw while you run off to the Crazy House or the Homeless Shelter and live on the Government Cheese.

Everything's crazy here. I had to evac Solana Beach am in Carlsbad at a friend's. I will prob drive to AZ today for a couple days to get away and see my mom. Damn i hope the house doesn't burn! That place is my dream rental! Anyway all safe. Thanks for thinking of me. Erica's fine too.

The deputy mayor of the Indian capital Delhi has died a day after being attacked by a horde of wild monkeys.

SS Bajwa suffered serious head injuries when he fell from the first-floor terrace of his home on Saturday morning trying to fight off the monkeys.

The city has long struggled to counter its plague of monkeys, which invade government complexes and temples, snatch food and scare passers-by.

The High Court ordered the city to find an answer to the problem last year.

Solution elusive

One approach has been to train bands of larger, more ferocious langur monkeys to go after the smaller groups of Rhesus macaques.

The city has also employed monkey catchers to round them up so they can be moved to forests.

But the problem has persisted.

Culling is seen as unacceptable to devout Hindus, who revere the monkeys as a manifestation of the monkey god Hanuman, and often feed them bananas and peanuts.

Urban development around the city has also been blamed for destroying the monkeys' natural habitat.

Mr Bajwa, a member of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is survived by his wife and a son, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.

So of course it's wrong for humans to attack monkeys, but ok to train other monkeys to become killers. Yeah, that's going work. Perhaps they should try Fire Ants

Labels: killer monkeys

Fire ants have a degree of awesomeness that cannot be replicated by other insects. They are dangerous, relentless, stinging robots that attack anything that comes near their nest without any regard for their own lives. Even their name sounds menacing - putting other contenders like a 'stink bug' or 'dung beetle' in their place without even having to go to the trouble of biting out their intestines. Let's see how other challengers fare in the real world:

I have an amusing Fire Ant Anecdote: When Alessandra and I went to the Amazon, we were asked if we wanted to plant a tree to help repopulate the rain forest. We declined because we were pissed that the hotel had, the night before, killed a 15 foot alligator by chaining it to a tree for x number of years and letting it grow into its chain thus strangling it to death that very day.

Mind you, the hotel is stilted over a river and wetlands, so there are 3 miles or so of raised walkway built out of?...Amazon Wood. And throughout the place are meditation/healing power of Amazon stations for you to sit and grok.

Well, again, we refused because how did we know the hotel wasn't just going to chop down some more trees for more walkways? We didn't, and the tour guide didn't understand the concept of "Ecosystem" as I tried to explain that it's more than just trees to make life in the Amazon.

Anyway, another couple who was in our group, were quite cool so we exchanged emails and so on. Later on, I was told that they had bought several trees to plant, and while they were planting one, the husband fell backwards onto a fire ant nest, which only goes to prove my point that the Amazon really doesn't give a shit and wants to eat you.

After having read about the special Lindt's 99% Cocoa bar that is only sold at the Lindt's Store located Mall of America and expressed the desire to try one, my friends Khena and Vivek (recently relocated to the Twin Cities), sent one down to me along with some Halloween Truffles.

99% Cocoa is not like Chocolate as you know it. It's unrecognizable, bitter and creamy like peanut butter when it melts in your mouth. It's wicked strange and wicked good if you go for that kind of thing. Which apparently I do.

Written on the golden foil in 4 languages is this: "To taste the boquet of coca aromas try accompanying your tasting with some coffee."

The joy of adulthood is coffee and chocolate for breakfast.

Thanks Khena and Vivek!

Labels: wooooooooooo

This past weekend I bathed my first child (3 year old nephew). He splashed around, covered me with soap suds (I was fully clothed) and a good time was had by all. Later he coughed up a lungful of sticky phlegm on me like a snotty St. Bernard. I had to wash all my sheets and clothes.

On the same day that I discovered that for the first time a rock cracked my car windshield, I was pulled over for speeding (80 mph in a 65).

I was pulled over right next to a huge landfill which is only 1.8 miles down the highway to a 1000 year old funeral mound built by the Cahokia Indians

.
The Trash Mound is 88 times the size of Monk's Mound (according to my fly-by-night calculations) because it is easily twice as tall as the mound.

Yesterday several hundred people walked by my workstation (not even worthy of the designation "cube"). Luckily I did not "accidentally" have any porn on my screen. If you want, you can watch them every Tuesday on my Yahoo Messenger Video Broadcast. My messenger name is CapnMarrrrk.

Alessandra has a cold. I have one circling around me. It's messing up my inner ear. Last night I had several dreams I was on carnival ride like conveyor belts. I woke up today and held the sensation most of the day of being on a trampoline or having "land legs" after getting off of a boat. It's pretty cool provided I remain not nauseous.

Xuxa (our cat) was diagnosed with diabetes. We think we are out of local friends who might be willing to come over and inject her when we go out of town this weekend.

As you can guess, Corporate is much different from Advertising. I have to greatly clamp down on both my propensity to say "Fuck", loudly and make clever jokes, zingers and statements which will immediately peg me as "weird."

I've currently given up guitar for drawing and I may be selling my Blue Ridge Guitar tonight, leaving me with two guitars. I kind of feel like a failure, but I gave it over 2 years of constant practice and I learned a lot about music even if I can't play it.

I think I may go with pen & ink as a medium. Crosshatching and such baffles the fuck out of my and totally hypnotizes me.

If you really want to fuck with your head. Remove all clocks from your bedroom, or cover the display with electrical tape. You lose all sense of relationship to night time. Your inner monologue gets jacked, "Oh it's x'oclock. Only x hours until I get up. Do I really need to pee that bad?" Of course the answer is yes. You always need to pee. Luckily for us, we don't need an alarm clock because our tv has a timer which is set to come on at 6:20 am right as the weather is done.

So I drive 30 miles NE to get to work every day and 13 miles due West to go to the allergist on Saturdays. I met a woman who also gets her shot at the allergist who lives a mile and a half from where I work, and who's husband works .25 miles from my house. Go Figure.

Labels: Things and Stuff

Hi Mark,

thanks for posting my "icon-language" website..

So - maybe you are also interested in my new as-if-book: www.icon-message.com

It's a language with amimated icons, small enough to fit into the MSN Messenger.

The good news: This Messenger it's also possible to type woman+ and get the icon, to type happy+ and get the icon ... and so on.

The bad news: Not a single mobile, or e-mail client has (as far as I know) similar features.


Best regards
Jochen

As a matter of fact...I am indeed interested. Thanks for contacting me Jochen.

Labels: i, Visual Thinking, Worth your time

Not much. Still working hard, driving long and drawing. Not much else going on. Tonight is the first Slumber Party we are having for my sister's kids ages 8 and 3. So at this moment I'm in communion with Holy Bean so as to tweak my energy.

Labels: Nothing to see here folks-move along

Thats Southwest Missouri State in Springfield, MO.

Clearly some people don't get it. Look for the media bias when the Captain says, "other groups." And what I feel to be a general scornful speaking tone of the voice over and theme of the piece.

Link

I would say, "To each his own," but Beer and Strippers? How juvenile. I'm the Grand High Jedi in the First Church of the Sacred Bean Dual. All Hail Coffee and Coco! It's a level of divine refinement above such starchy past times.

It's a toned-down, chair-dancing, arm-goosebumping kind of morning.

Why? Restless WInd. She starts slow, then halfway...BAM! Goosebump City.

for winning the Nobel Peace Prize!

Too bad your Presidential victory was stolen and America ended up with the Boobie Prize.

An Alabama minister who died in June of 'accidental mechanical asphyxia' was found hog-tied and wearing two complete wet suits, including a face mask, diving gloves and slippers, rubberized underwear, and a head mask, according to an autopsy report. Investigators determined that Rev. Gary Aldridge's death was not caused by foul play and that the 51-year-old pastor of Montgomery's Thorington Road Baptist Church was alone in his home at the time he died (while apparently in the midst of some autoerotic undertaking). While the Montgomery Advertiser, which first obtained the autopsy records, reported on Aldridge's two wet suits, the family newspaper chose not to mention what police discovered inside the minister's rubber briefs [Condom covered dildo up his ass-CM] Aldridge served as the church's pastor for 16 years. Immediately following his death, church officials issued a press release asking community members to 'please refrain from speculation' about what led to Aldridge's demise, adding that, 'we will begin the healing process under the strong arm of our Savior, Jesus Christ.'

viaThe Smoking Gun


Ahahahahah! I can laugh at this guy all I want, remember I used to dress like Don Johnson.

The Cap'n is back, but still in disguise in meatspace as I work pretty much publicly.

Know this: No matter who I may bag on, or talk trash about I will always remember that once upon a time I used to dress like Don Johnson on Miami Vice. My post-collegiate adulthood has been one long fight not to be "Sheeple".

Alessandra is on a huge Ricky Gervais so we've watched Extras and are currently watching The Office UK. We tried the Office a few years ago and quit because it was too uncomforatble. At some point we decided that cringe comedy is funny.

A few days ago I listened to Peter Gabriel 2 (Games Without Frontiers). I used to listen to it constantly in college while smoking weed outback in the storage shed of my fraternity. Having not listened to it in nearly 20 years, I realize, "Man, what a fucked up album. All the songs are about loneliness, isolation and paranoia. I wonder how that effected me?"

Time has compressed on me horribly this week. I seemed to be rushing everywhere. I discovered I cannot possibly get out of the house in less than 1hr and 15 minutes on weekdays, and even then I'm moving pretty fast at the end.

TV Roundup:

Chuck: Meh
Bionic Woman: Meh
Pushing Daisies: Yay!
Reaper: Fun/Mindless
Heroes: I like it even if I don't think it's that great.

That's it for now.

Labels: The Cap'n, Things and Stuff

An ad for Springy Pogo Boots for sale in the U.K. with hilarious ending "(We're not kidding—it gets Itchy & Scratchy violent without warning at the end.)"



via Consumerist via MeFi

Labels: Ahahahahaha

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A 2004 crash that killed everyone on board -- three crew members and three U.S. troops -- was caused by pilots from a Blackwater plane taking a low-level run through a mountain canyon in Afghanistan, testimony revealed Tuesday.

A twin-engine CASA C-212, similar to the plane pictured, crashed in 2004, killing all six on board.

"I swear to God, they wouldn't pay me if they knew how much fun this was," the doomed plane's cockpit voice recorder captured the pilot saying shortly before the November 27, 2004, crash.

In its November 2006 report on the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that Blackwater provided insufficient oversight and guidance of the pilots involved in the 2004 crash. Dispatchers failed to ensure that pilots followed their flight plan and did not adequately track flights in the air.

The NTSB said the military "did not provide adequate oversight of the contract carrier's operations in Afghanistan."

The company's chairman, Erik Prince, appeared before the committee to defend the firm Tuesday.

The twin-engine CASA C-212, a light cargo plane operated by Blackwater sister company Presidential Airways, crashed in a box canyon well off its planned route from Bagram Air Base to the western Afghan town of Shindand.

"You're an X-wing fighter Star Wars man," an NTSB report quoted the plane's co-pilot, Loren Hammer, saying during the flight -- a reference to the dizzying battle in the 1977 film.

"You're [expletive] right. This is fun," the pilot, Noel English, responded.

About eight minutes later, the plane slammed into the wall of the canyon, which was flanked by ridgelines that rose nearly a mile above surrounding terrain.

When rescuers found the wreckage three days later, they discovered one of the passengers had survived the crash only to die of internal bleeding and exposure, the NTSB found.

When an unidentified passenger asked about the plane's route before the crash, flight mechanic Melvin Rowe told him, "I don't know what we're gonna see. We don't normally go this route."

English added, "All we want is to avoid seeing rock at 12 o'clock."

English and Hammer had been in Afghanistan less than two weeks, the NTSB found.

Federal investigators found each should have been paired with a more experienced aviator, according to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California. Waxman is chairman of the oversight committee, which is investigating Blackwater's performance on more than $1 billion in U.S. government contracts since 2001.

He said a company e-mail stated the company had overlooked experience requirements "in favor of getting the requisite number of personnel on board to start up the contract."

"The corporation hired inexperienced pilots. They sent them on a route they didn't know about," Waxman said. "It seems to me that it's more than pilot error. There ought to be corporate responsibility, and Blackwater was the corporation involved."

Prince said investigators concluded the crash in Afghanistan was not due to corporate error, but pilot error. He rejected Waxman's contention that the pilots "acted like cowboys."

PROVIDENCE — Eight artists snuck into the depths of Providence Place mall and built a secret studio apartment in which they stayed, on and off, for nearly four years until mall security finally caught their leader last week.

The story of their audacious stunt — they call it performance art — spilled out in District Court, after the leader, Michael J. Townsend, 36, of Providence, was arrested. He pleaded no contest to a criminal charge of trespassing.

Townsend, a self-described “professional public artist,” said the clandestine project was born of a wish to explore the phenomenon of the modern American enclosed mall, its social implications, and his own relationship with commerce and the world.

Pointedly acting without approval from anyone, Townsend, his wife, Adriana Yoto, 29, and six others in a tightly knit artist collective produced the project and have documented it with video on Web sites.

The casually furnished, unheated apartment was in a 750-square-foot loft beneath an I-beam and above an unused dusty storage room in the mall parking garage that was accessed through a door in a stairwell, according to Townsend, his fellow artists and the police.

The collective labored mightily to haul in more than two tons of construction materials and furnishings to build out and equip the space, which already had a concrete floor. Some of the material was brought in through an 11-inch-wide aperture on the west side of the mall that allowed access to the garage interior. Larger items were brought into the garage by car and carried up fire exit stairwells, the artists said.

In order to section off and disguise the space, the artists cemented together 90 30-pound cinderblocks to make a wall and then installed a generic, beige-colored industrial door. Anyone who came into the storage room would see a steep metal ladder leading to the locked door.

Mall spokesman Dante Bellini Jr. yesterday pooh-poohed police detectives’ and the artists’ portrayal of the space as an apartment.

“It was an area with stuff in it,” he said. Mall employees were seen removing some of the contents yesterday.

“It was wrong on a number of levels,” Bellini added. “It was certainly wrong in its irresponsibility. And it was illegal. It was like a person breaking into your basement or your car at night and sleeping there … [We] certainly feel violated.”

Mall security and the police say that the artists got into the storage room by manipulating the latch on the locking mechanism on the door. But Townsend insists that nobody broke in.

“I’m no lock-picker,” he said. The artists got into the storage room because the door was left unlocked and often even ajar, he said.

Police Maj. Stephen Campbell acknowledged that he and other police detectives were so intrigued by word of the apartment that they went over to see it for themselves.

“I was surprised at what he was able to accomplish,” the major said of Townsend. “But what he did was clearly criminal. That mall is private property.”

In a feat of derring-do likely to be savored for years by the Providence-area underground-art community, the artists illegally ate, drank, slept, read, held meetings, watched TV and enjoyed games on a Sony Playstation2 in a palace of American commercialism.

The apartment, which was relatively soundproof, contained a sectional sofa, a love seat, a coffee table, a breakfast table with four chairs, lamps, a throw rug, a hutch and paintings on the walls. Although the group had bold improvement plans, the apartment lacked running water, a refrigerator and a toilet.

Townsend acknowledged that the lack of certain creature comforts, after a while, tended to sap the thrill of being there and to curtail each stint inside.

The artists lugged in gallon jugs of water to drink, and to answer nature’s call, they would sneak out to use mall bathrooms. They did have a waffle iron, Yoto said, so meals tended to run toward breakfast food. They obtained electricity by running an extension cord to an outlet in the storage room.

In a bit of irony, the artists were startled last spring when their illicit apartment was burglarized. A thief forced in the door at the top of the ladder and stole the Playstation and a decorative collage called a shadow box.

“Maybe a home is a home once you get burglarized,” Townsend quipped.

The collective members stayed there for as long as three weeks at a time, and Townsend said that he and another member moved in three weeks ago, intending to stay for at least a year. He said that he had been sleeping in the apartment and then walking to work daily at a condominium in a nearby refurbished mill that he shares as an office with other artists.

Yoto said she, her husband, and a number of other artists have been tirelessly wandering the mall and documenting their findings — everything from the correlation of advertising billboards to the surveillance cameras within the mall to the sewer lines that serve it — for a project of hers, called Malllife

The apartment project was an extension of that obsession with the mall and its effect on the cityscape, she explained.

Townsend, who is preoccupied with the study of buildings, said he noticed the existence of the void that became the apartment during construction of the mall from 1997 through 1999, and that he later found a way to slip inside undetected. The collective first spent two cold nights in the loft in October 2003, then launched the project that December. The wall and door were installed by early 2005, allowing extended stays.

The collective’s ambition to, as Townsend put it, make the apartment “super-sweet” with laminated wood flooring and other embellishments was terminated Wednesday. He and a visiting artist from Hong Kong walked into the storage room and were confronted and handcuffed by three mall security men wearing dress shirts and ties.

Bellini said the mall discovered the intrusion in April and “secured” the storage room door. In a routine check, a guard found the door ajar and Townsend was snared.

“The only regret I have is that I didn’t get to continue,” Townsend remarked yesterday. “I’m really sad about it.”

Mall security turned over Townsend and the Hong Kong artist to the police, who let the visitor go. The police initially charged Townsend with breaking and entering in the daytime, a felony, but at District Court, that charge was reduced to trespassing by agreement of the police and Magistrate Joseph P. Ippolito.

Townsend pleaded no contest at his arraignment Thursday, and Ippolitio sentenced him to six months’ probation and ordered him to pay court costs and an unstated sum of restitution. That combination of plea and disposition does not constitute a criminal conviction under state law.

Before he was taken from the mall, Townsend was obliged to sign an agreement entitled “Notice to Depart and Forbid Entry,” which bars him from the premises.