we're watching star trek right now because it's a wesley crusher episode and shannon likes wil wheaton. i think she's a silly girl, but she's cute, so that's okay. besides, i'm partial to silly myself. not to the extent of watching an episode just to see wil wheaton, but whatever floats her boat. (now shannon insists that i insert a codicil that "there's nothing else on television." she seems to think that's important for you to know.)

i finished messiah and returned it to carrie last night. it was an interesting book. good sentances and ideas-to-make-you-think. i'm curious enough to read another book by him. of course, i have a ton of other books to read. (i'm trying to get through the vurt series by jeff noon, for example.) but, like i said, i returned the book and lent her the wasp factory and voice of our shadow. both thin books by very good authors. iain banks and jonathan carroll. stories to make readers dream.

and i'm working my way through chronospace, which is annoying me with the howlers about dc. the guy lives in arlington and gets off at the huntingdon metro station, for example. and he gets off at huntingdon, but thinks about staying on the train for another stop. *errr* that is incorrect. huntington is the final stop on the yellow line in alexandria. not arlington. aside from that, though, not too bad.

commentary

oh yes. shannon seems to think that i'll get a lot of "huh?" responses. maybe i will. let me know if you are part of the "huh?" portion of the public.

we went out today. everywhere is closed, but we went out anyway. we went to pentagon city and laughed at ourselves as we drove in big loops, trying to get to the mall proper. first we got off too soon, then we flipped around and missed the exit from another direction, then we went too far and did another full circle. it was entertaining. to us, anyway.

i saw my cousin rob last night at the bar. we went to catacomb and i went up the street to say hi to greg. just talk to him and see him for ten minutes. it's important to acknowledge the existence of people, especially if you are only a block away from them. besides, he's my friend and this is really the only chance i have to see him. anyway...

my cousin rob came into the bar, also to see greg. so i got to see rob, too. not talk to him that much. i don't have much to say to him. not much in common, really. but it was good to see him. again, with the human contact.

shout outs to my peeps. karon, kyle, carrie.

commentary

okay. so that worked. if you find it obnoxious after about, oh, eight posts or so, let me know and we'll discuss it then. otherwise, pay attention.

so. easter sunday. it's raining on easter sunday. god's tears. yesterday was a beautiful day and there were people on the tidal basin all day, celebrating a japanese festival in the american capital. we absorb everything.

we drove up 14th street yesterday afternoon, as the sun fell. it was a beautiful night and we had underworld pulsing in the cd player. because we're young and healthy and happy and it was a good song. we had dinner with our friend will in cleveland park and walked down connecticut avenue, past the park, through one of the more beautiful residential neighborhoods in the district, to baskin robbins by the woodley park metro. refugees from the day were walking around, enjoying the night air. there were couples on dates and more couples on more dates. and groups of people. it was relaxing, to see this many people. to enjoy the feeling that the world was fine. just for today.

but it isn't. not entirely. the world is exploding. the sun god has been killed. the darkness passes over the world. just for a day. or three. and we pay attention to the fact that the day is beautiful. because there's nothing we can do. and god cries on sunday.

but that's just me. thinking again. sorry. enjoy your day. happy easter. tomorrow is monday. relax and remember that six feet under is on tonight.

commentary

testing. this is just a test, to see if this works. if it does work properly, there will be more content along presently. if not, never mind.

commentary

shannon's hair looks really cute. she was in a great mood this morning, listening to good riddance and just being energetic. of course, she got up at quarter to eight because the sun was shining into our bedroom and she can't sleep with that kind of pressure. i rolled out of bed at a leisurely 10:30. ah, saturday.

i'm trying to finish messiah (which is a good book) so i can start on chronospace by allen steele. he's written some good books and some not so good books, but i read them all because i like his vision.

i'm watching jon stewart on the daily show, but i'm not really in the mood to laugh. shannon is getting her hair cut tonight, so i walked over to the mall and got burger king for dinner. but i'm not really in the mood to enjoy the beauty of the day. i just talked to my cousin greg about our grandfather and i having a hard time tonight. i don't think my grandfather's mind is ever going to come back. not entirely. and i have this feeling that he's not going to survive the year. i feel shitty for having that feeling, but there you go. and the thing is that if his mind is gone, so is he. he is a brilliant man, with a strong mind and imagination and if all of that goes, so does he.

fuck.

that's not good. they made such a cute couple.

and here's something random. the three hundred most commonly used words in the english language.

in other news, i keep finding sites that are link-o-ramas. like boing boing. and this post that's in response to an article that says the web is boring. so everyone trotted out interesting links. tons of them. this shit will keep you surfing for a week.

you say you want to blow things up? boy howdy, have i got a game for you.

kill! kill! kill!

and, in other news, shannon's getting a new haircut tonight. so it'll be like living with a totally different woman. first she stops smoking, now a new do. it's like i don't know her anymore!

this is good. my bosses have decided that they don't trust us hotline people anymore, so they're going to implement a system where everyone who calls gets a tracking number "so things don't fall through the cracks anymore." except that "if you don't get a tracking number, you can call the management and let them know. just like at burger king." great. so now management is getting ideas from burger king. wonderful. that makes me feel so much better about their ability to renew our contract, lemme tell you.

so resumes are going out this weekend. what? like that surprises anyone?

ah. and the white stripes have sold out at the 9:30 club. bummer, man. major bummer.

four hours to the weekend. and counting. let me tell you what...

ah. my boss can't write her way out of a paper bag. she asked me to take a look at a document last week (mind you, it was two months late by then), so i did. yesterday, she came down the hall and asked me and my co-worker to look it over again. we're both english majors. we're going to be brutal (we don't like her very much and we've both been doing software documentation for a while now). this should be fun.

science is cool. (as charlie from the culture list put it so succinctly.)

and, speaking of the culture list, we get some strange stuff. odd people. at last count, we have a spambot, another mailing list, a komodo dragon and a data repository subbed to our list. and now we have someone odd. this was the email she sent:

[Transfer path: Astarte Local Nexus > Kuranishi Entanglement Conduit > Interbranch Transcoherence Service > Yahoo]
[Language path: Cartan > Inter385 > English21]

[Bradford DeLong quotation]
> One more question: is "infomation" a typo

It's obviously not present in my local ideoplast construct. I think it's probably a typo in the Inter385 to English21 dictionary. The semantic instantiation at that transcoding is the most likely place that such an error could occur. Or perhaps it's a problem with the generic English21 dictionary not reflecting your local dialect. In any case, you really should upgrade your deep linguistic structures. Those linear languages you guys use are obsolete in essentially all branches. (My library says there are deep connections between your use of linear languages, your perverse attachment to one-dimensional algebras and your fondness for decoherence, in which case you really should upgrade your entire neural architecture - decoherent architectures are so third millennium.)

So all pre-S1 lower toposophic entities were hexapods?
How odd.

Mari

only on the culture list.

different things. first of all, i barely realized that this was easter weekend. it seems that i don't look at calendars anymore. oh well. i need to start paying closer attention to stuff. like the listings for bands and such. i almost missed the white stripes, for example. can you imagine?

i'm a geek. how can you tell? because i actually check things like how many people have linked to me as friends on my livejournal page. for a service that i only plan to use passively, i'm awfully interested in it, aren't i?

oh well. work sucks. that's not new, so i'll stop right there.

shannon's doing very well with her whole no smoking thing. she was really happy and chipper and upbeat yesterday, which was a real change from wednesday, when she was in tears because she wanted a cigarette so bad. (kyle told me at lunch yesterday that he was driving home one time during a period that he'd quit and he started hallucinating from lack of nicotene. that's bad.)

nerve has a new gallery up that i really like. it appeals to the raw voyeur in me because it's pictures surrounding the theme of masturbation (female, natch). not just the obligatory hand on crotch shots (although those are there, too) but also shots of the facial expressions, which has it's own appeal. i think sensuality is a whole-package deal. not just the physical parts, but the expressions and the intimacy and the mood. and this gallery captures all of those very nicely. very nicely indeed.

okay. yes. shannon pushed me into it. i signed up on livejournal. but it was just for the articles, i swear. er, wait. the comments. yeah. it was just for the comments. y'know. so i could comment on other people's posts without being all anonymous. i have been assimilated. my ass has been laminated. i am dyslexic of borg. gur.

d'yugh. the analyst from new jersey sounds like carmella from the sopranos.

lunch was good and tasty. black bean soup at mccormick & schmick's with kyle. he's a nice guy. we talked about comics and movies and other, fanboy-related stuff. he mentioned the nine-year-old idea that he's been kicking around but has never managed to finalize and i mentioned an idea that i wrote up on tuesday. he's leaning towards working with me on a comics project of some kind and i told him i'd type up my idea and throw it back at him to see if it bounces. you know. networking. talking to people with similar interests. that sort of thing.

other than that, not much is going on. we're just goofing off here at work. taking things slow. nice pace, not too busy. relaxed. just the way i like it.

thank god for open-minded artists. this lady on the artinnudity community posted a challenge. which i met. because the challenge seemed to be pointed directly at people like me. the crazy ones who pirate art and turn it into.. um, different art. yeah. but that's where the spirit of cooperation comes from. open-minded people.

and here's something funny, from the other side of the copyright coin. yes. the absurdities rack up. one day, people will understand that if they don't want their work distributed without their permission, they shouldn't release it. photocopiers, scanners, cd players, tape players. where do the lines begin and where do they end? is tivo next? the mind boggles.

you know how i can tell that i'm not paying attention? i packed a lunch today and didn't realize that i'd already made lunch plans until i was on the metro. yep. that's some solid memory loss right there. and my sweater seems to be all out of proportion. the sleeves are longer than the torso piece. maybe i could take some of the material off the arms and put it on the bottom part. or maybe i could grow a pair of shoulders so i can support the sleeves better. that's a thought.

shannon made it through yet another day. yesterday was really tough, though. but she made it. and i'm proud of her. paul is proud of her. everyone's proud. go shan!

it's a quiet day and yet it seems to be easter weekend. how did that happen? is it just because i don't look at a calendar on a daily basis anymore? huh.

i'm going to link to this site (found courtesy of blogdex) and see how long it takes for her to notice. i mean, eventually, right? maybe? i dunno.

what image shall i put up today? the daily conundrum continues...

and i think it's really cool, in a geeky sort of way that the culture list's pet database sends out emails when it gets a new entry. it's entertaining. and insightful (okay, not insightful). but it's cool.

so i'm bored. yeh? and i'm surfing the livejournal pages because there's really nothing cooler than reading the private thoughts of people you know. except that i really don't know them. more like i talk to them and am generally acquainted with their names (online and off) but i wouldn't put myself out there and say that i know them. y'know?

and then i found this little nugget of praise buried in an entry from last week. i know the guy who wrote it. he's really cool. but i don't know him that well that his reaction would be a pure, knee-jerk "he's my friend so i'll say nice things about him" kind of thing. in fact, i doubt that he even knows that i know where his journal is (if that makes sense). or even that he has a journal. so that's praise right there. pure and undiluted. i didn't play sting, but that's okay. it was different and he liked it and i'm satisfied that i did a good job.

so there.

some random things. like the fact that the graphic about masturbating and cats dying comes from older memes. i'm warning you now, though. do NOT click on that last link. (the one with goatse.cx in it. i'll be able to hear your screams from here if you do...)

i've seen this around, but i didn't realize that there were any in dc. but apparently there are. so now it's time to take a pilgramage down to the center of the city. some of them are near where shannon works, too. yet another thing to look at. no idea what it means, mind you. but it's cool.

yes, i'm bored at work. why do you ask?

yes. stupid teen girl has returned. sometimes the bitch is merciful.

i may be feeling better, but i have this feeling that work is not. we're in the middle of trying to renew our contract and i think the people who are in charge of these things over at the dot don't want to keep our management around. not that i can blame them, frankly. it may be heresy to say such things, but the choices that our management has made has not made anyone very happy. one manager, in particular, is not very well liked by anyone - here or there. the thing that sucks is that my promotion (potential) is on the line. i have a better-than-fair chance to make operations manager if we get this contract back. which means that i have to root for the status quo.

such are the quandries that life are made of.

good morning, faithful readers. i'm back from my mental health day. i'm feeling better. more relaxed. less productive. not thinking too much. fitter. happier. but not, i repeat - not - tied to a stick.

the osbournes was fucking hysterical last night. best. show. ever. nothing is making me laugh more than ozzy. or his wife.

the cool thing about coming into work after a day off is that you're out of sync with everything that's going on. you can read the emails, but you really don't know what happened. you have to wait for someone to show up and give you the real story. the electronic version just doesn't cut it. so i'm maxing and relaxing for the moment. getting my chill on. ah. just the way it should be.

apparently, it's christmas at giant. they've gone through their music and spun the music rack and came up with christmas. in march. which makes so much sense.

and there's lots of rain. lots. lots an lots.

the osbournes is on tonight. yay!

six feet under shows us that everyone can enjoy a good showerhead. honestly. if you're a girly, that is.

i wrote some today. that was good. i needed that.

shannon was having problems with cigarette cravings today. i talked her through it, but she was having a tough time. she pulled through, though. take a moment to wish her good luck for tomorrow. i know i will.

well, it would appear that our printer doesn't recognize the fact that it has any color ink besides blue and black. this despite the fact that i have red, yellow, blue and black ink on my fingers from manually checking the ink. next step. hurm.

carrie asked how i'm doing? bored. relaxed. letting my brain go slack. like that.

she also sent along an article about work. yes. i can relate to that. karl marx? paging karl marx.

i saw this article in the paper this morning (the second one - about winnie-the-pooh). i think it's wild that reality can be rearranged so blithely like that. that rocks. read the article. it's interesting. i promise.

and dan (also from the culture list) passed on this interesting story this morning:

I talked to a friend still at uni about this over the weekend and it turned out that Emmanuel College is just up the road from where he lives. He was slightly amused at the coverage that they were getting (and as critical of it as anyone on this list), but pointed out that when he'd read/heard interviews with the kids at the school their general reaction seemed to be "Well, we listen to what the teachers say and what their beliefs are about creation, but really we think it's a load of bollocks. Go evolution!"

encouraging news, i'd imagine, even if it is purely ancedotal.

good morning. i am taking a mental health day, so that means that i'm at home, listening to the white stripes on repeat and generally letting my brain relax. the problem, i've discovered, is that my brain won't let go of work. i've been dreaming about work. and i want it to stop. i need to get other thoughts in my head. something. anything. this art stuff isn't doing the trick, though. i might go over and deface the comments section of the right click gallery. i dunno. something to keep me interested. interested in something besides work, i mean.

i'll figure something out. and i'll even recalibrate the printer at home. just for something to do.

here's a videogame about operation enduring freedom. no shit.

and i had this conversation with scott (on the culture list) today, which sums up my postition vis-a-vis tom green.

[Scott wrote:]
> > xGCU Daddy Would You Like Some Sausages

[i wrote]
> i never saw the movie, but i saw that bit during the coming attractions for monkeybone and laughed more at that two seconds than i did during the whole of monkeybone (i know, i know, but it was a saturday afternoon..)
>
> i thought about seeing the movie, just to put that bit in context, but i can't stand tom green and couldn't bring myself to deal with everything else just for two seconds of funny.

[Scott wrote:]
Precisely. Of the few times I saw his TV show, probably 90-95% of it I thought was crap, with a few very funny bits sprinkled through. The sausages bit was the one thing in the preview that really had me laughing, but I wasn't going to subject myself to the whole movie for the few bits which I'd find amusing.

[and he signed it:]
xGCU Laughter To Noise Ratio

which i thought was a great phrase. something to keep in mind for later use.

shannon and i went out to mongolian barbeque for dinner. right around the corner from nick's. ha. we could have gone to psychoburbia if we'd wanted. fun night. and my head hurts, but not as much, now that i'm home.

not much else to say for right now. "i'm finding it harder..."

grr. my head hurts. owie.

this monday thing isn't really working out. i think i'm going to have to try again on wednesday.

the funny thing is that i spent the day playing around on photoshop. tweaking images and making art. comparing techniques with my friend carrie, who's making her own remixes of the bowler hat picture.

i'm taking home a collection of them so shannon can see what i did today. the rest of you will have to wait until i put them up on the right click gallery. (there's a link to the right of this page, if you're all that curious).

i'm reading an article from salon about the oscars. good stuff. and one of the funnier things i've read today.

I must warn the world about Tom Cruise. I feel he is an utterly terrifying Superior Life Form, with the power to melt heads and braid spines. His eyes are as hard, shiny and brutally penetrating as diamond drill-bits. The new braces on his teeth suggest that he is erasing all that remained of his tiny imperfections, and he is now metamorphosing into Ultra Super Perfection Man 3000. I fear his intense, mind-beating politeness, his titanium imperviousness to human weakness, his barking power-laugh.

shannon has decided to quit smoking. she starts today. i watched her break up her last handful of cigarettes last night and throw them away. i'm so proud of her. she's doing this for her and i'm going to be supportive, but not the bad guy. she doesn't need someone frowning at her, anyway. she needs someone to cheer her on. so i'm cheering. but she'll be fine. she can do this on her own. she just thinks she can't. but she's wrong.

we went to sarah's house to see the oscars last night. that was fun. her friends were great. they knew just how to exagerrate a point for maximum comedic effect. that's entertainment. and ian mckellan was robbed.

my head hurts. i think it's my job. i haven't not cared this much about a job in a long time. i think i'm just getting burned out on answering phones. and my manager is not helping me much. not much at all.

in fact, i get the feeling that all of the passion (okay, not all of it) is getting drained out of me. did i mention how much i hate late winter? a lot, okay?

and i got an email from my grandmother this morning telling me that my grandfather is not in very good shape at all. and that's not encouraging news. she doesn't think that i'll want to see him. not in the shape he's in now.

damn.

we're going up to sarah's house for to watch the oscars tonight. should be fun. but that means that six feet under viewing will have to wait until tomorrow. as i'd previously indicated.

we went out to taco bell for lunchie-munchies.

and we had a conversation about drama. my mother and i talked about drama on wednesday - i asked her how things were at home with my brother and father and she said "same old, same old," which is what she's always said. nothing much ever happens at home. my family (my immediate family, that is) just does not thrive on drama. we push it out, away from us. and that tendency means that we tend to frown on other people's drama.

the issues that surround my family aside, i really do think that some people tend to go waaay overboard with their public bleating about how fucked up their lives are. (and if you think you know what i'm talking about, then you're probably right.)

i go the other way. i keep my life to myself. sure, i write novels that celebrate the more interesting, dramatic aspects of those interactions, but i wouldn't say that i wallow in self-pity. not publicly, at any rate. i do tend to wallow, but i always feel stupid and impotent when i do, so i pull myself out of the mire as soon as i can. just because i have better things to do with my life. in general.

anyway. on to catacomb and the events of evening last.

let's see. shannon had no pantyline, visible or otherwise. and she made a big deal about it. that was fun. and someone (she knows who she is) was wearing a short plaid skirt with whimsical undergarments. how whimsical? well, they were see-through in the back and lacy in the front. very lacy. and she was pointing out how the naked devil woman pendant she was wearing had pubic hair but she didn't. i swear that was but one of the conversations i had last night.

what else? we took a picture of carrie wearing my bowler. she looked very clockwork orangish. i remixed it this morning, emphasized her eyes and lips and made her hair brighter. and we sent both of them to her. one of them might even end up as her livejournal user pic. if she ever updates, that is. i'll link if either goes up.

we took lori out with us and she seemed to have a great time. she passed on a rumor of a comment to the effect that wednesday night had some great alterna-music. she said she'd try to find the link and send it to me, but we looked on dcfreaks (where she said she'd read it) but we couldn't find any mention whatsoever. oh well.

shannon came in and woke me up at 12:30. i'd considered waking up at 9:30, but i guess i decided otherwise. ah sunday. what a glorious day to do nothing. i'm still squinting and trying to wake up. not making too serious an effort, mind you. and now shannon's going to take a nap. hell, the bed's still warm. why not?

that's all i've got so far. i've only been awake for half an hour and i haven't even had my tea yet. i know - internet addict. well, i had a good excuse. i wanted to see when six feet under was going to be on later in the week. tonight's the oscars, y'know. and it's an either/or kinda situation. so the show that airs five times a week gets bumped in favor of the live awards show. funny how that happens.

weird. i should look at my old links more often. i found this one, pointing to the dada machine. in turn, it points to the postmodern generator (where i read this paragraph: "Sexual identity is used in the service of sexism," says Bataille. Thus, an abundance of discourses concerning posttextual narrative may be revealed. The subject is contextualised into a pretextual desituationism that includes art as a reality. whew. that almost makes sense, doesn't it?)

and another link from the same site is to a blog called the null device. and that blog has lots of cool, textual stuff on it. like the alphabet synthesis machine. how cool is that? it makes random, new alphabets that make no sense because they have no relation to real alphabets. like i said, weird.

we bought a hat for psyche that says "don't bother me i'm busy" that she can put on when she's djing or running around at the club. she'd have bought it for herself, but she was too busy.

we're picking lori up tonight to go out to catacomb. we've basically told her that she has to go. because she has fun and she wants to go out, but she waffles. so we made the decision for her. she didn't seem to mind, really. besides, she asked for a ride. so there you go.

i was rereading dave mckean's dustcovers and trying to tease some inspiration from the images. so i sat down and remixed a few images that i've taken. different things. interesting directions. because i like the idea that i'm reordering a particular recording of reality. my own version of reality, if you will.

so i was paging through my links here at home last night and i came across an old one for the erasmatron. very neat idea. something that's right up my alley. and i followed the link to some essays the creator of the erasmatron wrote concerning narrative thinking. which is very much up my alley. they're geared towards game programmers, but the ideas tend to be pretty universal.

blog police alert! some of you haven't been updating your blogs and journals. you know who you are. i know it's the weekend, but i'm just saying. fresh content goes both ways. you give and you get.

we watched 9 1/2 weeks last night. i'd never seen it before, but i'd heard whispers. good movie. interesting movie. good sex. and that's all i gotta say about that one.

and i'm being contemplative. that's all. it's early and the sun is shining (although it's very cold outside). go play. turn off your computer. more later.

ah. blogger is working again. i feel like a junkie, trying to get my fix...

a couple of links for you. like karon, saying hello from the warren ellis forum. isn't she sweet? we like karon.

and this is a fun little flash toy. try the dub selectors. it's fun! and musical! and colorful! and other things that allow me to use exclamation points!

two hours left in my week. i'm so ready to not be here.

ooh. and psyche put up my setlist. i'm all official and stuff...

shannon's feeling better. her neck isn't bothering her much at all anymore (well, about 90% better). so that's a good thing.

i got paid yesterday and i went right out to the comic store and bought my comics. metabarons, transmetropolitan, strangers in paradise, promethea, tomorrow stories, tom strong. you know. the good stuff. ah. little books with bright pictures. and incredible words. i'm such an addict.

brendan's talking about unsubbing from the culture list, which would be a bad thing. but he's getting very busy with his music and djing and whatnot and his work is pissing him off something fierce, which is making him less tolerent of people taking the piss out of him. i hope he doesn't go, but if he does go, he'd better come back.

this is pretty cool. a photoessay of jonathan carroll's vienna. i've been to this city and yes, it does look this beautiful. just don't go in late december. it's fucking cold then. and i've been to jonathan carroll's apartment building in vienna. just look him up in the phone book. that's what i did.

what picture should i put up today?

i just talked to my mother. they moved my grandfather to the psych ward at eastern long island hospital. so he's not doing so great mentally. but grandma's happier with the decision to put him back into the hospital now than she was the first time he was there. i'm concerned, but there's not a lot that i can do from here. even if i was up there, there's not a lot that i'd be able to do. so i have the knowledge and now i'll hold it until i get more.

can i tell you how much i hate "wait and see?"

in an effort to occupy my time this afternoon, i was playing around with this feature of blogdex. it's neat how it looks at my blog and decides whose blog i might find interesting. the process is still not very refined and i'm not sure i understand it all, but it's still a neat idea. and i'm all about the neat idea.

reading through my posts of the day, i just want to make it clear that the second half of my post from 12:13 this afternoon is about my boss, not shannon (i've learned to deal with shannon but i don't think she's an idiot, for example). i just went ahead with my train of thought and forgot to clarify my nouns. my bad. sorry about that.

do-de-do-dah. since i'm bored, i'm surfing around. and i found something in the archives of the warren ellis forum under the heading of "waiting for planetary." as you all know *koff* planetary has been on hiatus for the last six months. it's brilliant. wonderful art, terrific writing. but nothing since october. so somebody went and made this comic. two kids in a comic store. and here's the transcript:

Let's go.
We can't.
Why not?
We are waiting for Planetary.
Are you sure this is where we're supposed to wait?
"In the comic shop" I was told.
Are you sure it is this comic book shop and not another?
There are no other comic shops.
Yes.
*pause*
Do you think that we are tied?
Tied?
Ti-ed.
To what?
To your comic.
To Planetary? What an idea!
We must wait because it is hot.
It is hot in here?
Planetary is hot.
Yes. It is hot.
The artist us not hot.
No.
The writer is hot.
Getting warm.
Look! Someone approaches!
Is it Planetary?
No, it is a boy. Do you have a message from Planetary?
Yes. Planetary cannot come today, but surely tomorrow.
Tell Planetary you saw us! You did see us, didn't you?
Wasn't that the same boy as before?
*pause*
Perhaps we should buy another comic.
We are waiting for Planetary.
We could buy The Authority. It is hot also.
*pause*
Or were we already waiting for Authority?
I wish my mother would buy me a Playstation.

okay. so i'm a geek.

i talked to shannon. she's doing better. still not 100%, but far better than she was, which is a good thing. it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood and i wish i was at home taking care of her instead of updating the address book on our exchange server, which strikes me as being the worst kind of busy work. (my boss hates the fact that we have free time and use it as we see fit instead of working dilligently at nothing in particular.)

i've actually learned to deal with her, though. she's very direct and very opinionated (as well as being inflexible in thought and completely unable to hold a five minute meeting cause she just opens her mouth and won't shut up) and all you have to do is make sure her energy is pointed at someone who has upset her. and make sure you're not on that list. she has a very difficult time being objective and she has a difficult time keeping her opinions to herself. but she's actually really easy to lead around by the nose (which is not a good trait in a manager in general). oh well. it's not my job to review her. i just had to learn that her bark is far worse than her bite. she still intimidates me, though. and i still think that she's an idiot.

last night went really well. i had a great time and everyone was really supportive, clapping at the good transitions and so forth. i missed seeing courtney's underwear when she showed the whole room, though. and there was a funny moment when cynthia made a joke comparing strange cock and strange caulk. (one is a gun-like object that spurts white stuff out and the other is, well...)

i'd originally asked to do the opening set for two reasons. 1. i figured that there would be little chance of someone complaining that i was taking their slot (not that that's a problem. psyche and vlad are both really cool, very laid-back people) 2. i wanted to play some ambient stuff. so i went on a nine and again at 10:30. and here's what i played:

first set:
badly drawn boy - the shining
radiohead - exit music (for a film)
james - alaskan pipeline
velvet underground - stephanie says
david bowie - seven
jimi hendrix - may this be love
bessie jones - sometimes
beck - lazy flies
tenacious d - kielbasa

second set:
chemical brothers - galaxy bounce
james brown - give it up or turn it a loose
the cure - the blood
james - jam j
cradle of thorns - behave
mika bomb - garage superstars
the hives - untutored youth
the white stripes - fell in love with a girl
sahara hotnights - allright, allright
concrete blonde - still in hollywood

it was a lot of fun. the guy that helped put up the lights earlier in the evening came over and thanked me for playing the white stripes, which was cool. i got a lot of good comments from everyone. so that was cool. and i thanked psyche profusely for the opportunity. i really appreciated that.

in the car on the ride home, though, shannon told me that my grandfather is back in the hospital. my mother had told shannon earlier in the day, but shannon waited until after i was done with my djing thing to tell me, which was actually very cool. there's nothing i could have done about it anyway and telling me beforehand would have just put a bad spin on what was an otherwise good night. my mother's going to call me today and talk to me about this. ugh.

when we woke up this morning, shannon couldn't move her neck higher than a certain distance, nor could she move it to the left very far. either way she moved, she was in excruciating pain. so she called in sick today and i put her back to bed. i made her take a flexeril and some ibuprofen (a muscle relaxer and an anti-inflammatory - the ibuprofen helped me when my neck did the same thing a while ago). i also put the heating pad under her neck and put flexall 454 on her neck. and i made her stop apologizing every time she cried out in pain. "i know how that feels," i said. "the same thing happened to me, remember?" "i didn't know it hurt this bad," she said. "oh yes. it's a pain in the ass. or the neck."

anyway. her job today is to get up, take a shower, eat some food and load the dishwasher. and keep moving her neck so the muscles can work themselves out. poor baby.

i'm listening to moby's early underground work right now. very interesting, except that there's a sample on her that sounds like a phone ringing. i hate that.

and joe sent over a new flash animation that he did. it's really funny.

and this site has some good features, including a crib sheet for the turing test.

every once in a while, i look at a picture i've done (the new one on right click being a good example) and marvel at what i can produce. not from vanity, but more from sheer incomprehension that i was ever able to do something that good. especially when i look at what i'm currently producing. and yes - for those of you who are wondering - the pictures on right click are from all over the place, chronologically. whatever strikes my fancy from day to day, really.

i'm having a fairly crap day at work. it's wednesday, which means that i have to deliver my monitor reports. and, for 2002, that means putting the reports together in an ad hoc manner (getting kelly to run the state reports, for example). but... the photocopier kept crapping out. and the other hotline guy (who's on vacaction so he can move from one apartment to another in the same building) forgot to clean out his voicemail. i nearly had a coronary when i heard "you have 21 new messages." most of them were from his wife and the volkswagen dealership, but still...

so i'm thinking that tonight is going to be a good night for me to go home, strap on the sombrero of doom and go spin music. i'm in that kind of mood, frankly.

this is funny: they put in a gold's gym downstairs in my building here at work. and the windows to the exercise rooms are all open to the internal corridor. i noticed this on monday when i went to drop something off in the fed ex drop box and was treated to a view of an aerobics class in progress. today, there's a sign on the windows that says "these windows will be covered soon." that's oversight for you. real elegance.

okay. we've got new bloggers out there and i want to give a shout out to them so that other people frequent their sites and give them a reason to keep writing. first, we have paul walker, another friend of mine from the culture list. he's new and he's still dealing with the whole "very little content" thing, but he's a good guy and he deserves our support. and then we have eccles, who we all know. he has finally bitten the bullet and given in to the livejournal community (who'd already welcomed him with open arms). so go say hi to both these guys. they're cool, they're british and they're here to stay. for a while.

hello again.

some interesting cnn stories. just so you can see how varied and decadent our lives here in the united states really are. first, we have an article about how the guy from aicn has seen a sneak peek at episode ii. (yes, i have read the spoiler-laden review and no, i'm not posting the link here. find it your own damn self.) second, we have an article about how a big-ass asteroid almost hit the earth last week. how's that for reassuring?

we live in a world of planet-killing asteroids and movie sets that are as secretive as high-level pentagon meetings. yeah. that's why i'm glad to live right here, right now.

i ran across something interesting during yesterday's sweep of bruce sterling's blog. a link from a link, you could say.

this is a site called suicide girls. very interesting. it's not quite a porn site, but it comes damned close to being one. the only thing is that the admission fee is $10 a month. a month! that's really fucking expensive. even red clouds is only $25 a year.

i dunno. i want to support them, but not at that price. maybe for a month. just long enough to browse and capture. some nice looking women there. beautiful tattoos. and happy people. happy people are good.

good morning. i'm dealing with upgrade scripts and i probably will be for most of the morning. it's an unfortunate side effect of the upgrade - new features. that's okay, though. this kind of thing happens. it's part of my job.

and - oh goody - my boss has realized that my coworker is on vacation for two days so she's bouncing tasks for him at me. they can't wait two days. it's not going to kill us to not have zip codes in our user tables. is it? apparently it is. great.

and i'm really enjoying the white stripes. the closest equivalent i can come up with is badly drawn boy, but i know that's a poor comparison at best. shannon, who has the more extensive musical repetoire, thinks they sound more like pavement. given that situation, the judges have to find in favor of the girlfriend.

and the work stupidity continues. now idiot wants a list *that she should have been keeping, seeing as how she's the one that gets them* of all calls pertaining to her corner of interest. grrr...

well, to tell the truth, i sort of have to do this other query first...

in other (non-work-related) news, my friend psyche is a goofball, which is why she's my friend. this is the text of the email she sent out about last night:

This Wednesday, Purgatorio welcomes Oletheros (aka Matt), who will be spinning some *real* alternative music -- the kind not heard all over commercial radio, and underrepresented at "scene" events. Plus, as always, the gothiest music in town spun by DJs Psyche and Vlad.

NEW LIGHT! Purgatorio has been tragically lacking in lighting effects since the premature death of our spinning star. However, this week we have a brand-new multicolored toy that looks a bit like this. We've found a positive correlation between the presence of blinky lights and butts on the dance floor, so come on out and let's get hopping!

okay. time to get some work done. right after i update my right click gallery.

you know how i can tell that the upgrade is over here at work? i actually have time to goof off now. so what am i doing with my newly-rediscovered time? making pictures. lots of pictures. i have all these images that struck me when i first saw them and grabbed them, but i haven't done anything with them. so now i'm going through and cleaning out my image folders and mixing up a storm.

something i've noted about the images that i'm throwing away: they tend to have certain characteristics in common. certain things that push the buttons that make me go "hey, i like this." you'd understand if you ever saw my raw image files. not like you're going to, but.. anyway. i noticed it.

and yet more random links. because i love being part of the ecosystem. i find them, take them in, digest them and share them with others. that's the way the hyperlink grows.

i was looking through my site meter logs and discovered that someone had googled black mobius, which is the name of my friend joe's band. this page came up, naturally. and so did a whole lot of others. including a site that has linked to his game dj hunter. i think this is hysterical, especially since the site is on the obscure server, which is where the old catacomb page used to be. someone has a sense of humor.

and, speaking of joe, here's a comic that r. crumb did about philip k. dick's religious experiences. reading these pages reminds me of some of what joe has talked about. interesting.

oh. and we got a little randomizer code badge so that we can sign into hawaii's computer (located on their dot network). very odd.

one more.

so i'm reading this article and i found a paragraph i like. so i thought i'd share. because it's appropriate and it makes sense and people should think about these kinds of things. i tend to.

For the most mature of men -- that's the short line over there -- sexuality is often as much a puzzle as it is a test. It may be compared to a choir of voices that seems to have been organized without consultation with the person involved. Despite rehearsals it never sounds like the Mormon Tabernacle choir. There are times when the harmony is almost complete but, as in anything human, it is never perfect and stray notes and flat tones are often heard. Sometimes the choir surprises us with what they choose to sing; sometimes they refuse to sing at all.

okay. so it's half an hour later and now fugazi is on. and i've got some links that i want to put up here. so bear with me. (it bears repeating.)

odd news stories from a galaxy far, far away. because, you know, we don't have enough news closer to home. and anyone, it seems, can make a bong out of anything. and something about asimov.

and i got one of those email questionnaires from my cousin eric. you know - the one where you fill in the blanks? it was mostly unremarkable. (except for the part that i'm going to remark on.) one of the questions was: WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE BOARD GAME? his answer was: Ones made up with Matt (like the one soon with Tarot, Chess, 3 man, and Risk)

i thought that was pretty cool, myself.

good morning. i'm still not quite awake, but that's okay. these things happen. the white stripes are keeping me company. good thing there's only two of them, though - this is a small office.

i made a picture of shannon on sunday and then i printed it out and painted on it. now that mixed media piece is hanging in my office. it looks cool. nice addition to the decor.

monday. blah. more later, as my brain congeals.

we went out to mccormick and schmick's for dinner and a st. patrick's day drink. yes, it's a christian holiday, but it's also an excuse to hang out with my favorite bartenders. then we went by tower records (or, as the neon says: ow r records. next door to hoppers food warehouse.)

i picked up the white stripes, the boards of canada and fugazi's new album. shannon got negativland and an early moby album. new music. it's a good thing.

six feet under is on soon.

ugh. my head hurts. hangover hurt, mostly. owie.

we had a blast at catacomb last night. it must be something in the air making people frisky. one of the highlights of our evening was the discovery that aleksa wasn't wearing underwear. so we had to keep checking, just to be sure that her pantyline didn't return. it was an onerous job, but i accepted it with equanimity. mel was going double commando, but she wasn't as forthcoming with the checking, for some strange reason.

and psyche just had a thong on. "cotton is my friend," she explained. that makes sense.

and karon was out again this week. she had an excuse last week - she was in texas with her family. it was a good night, all around.

greg dyed one of his service jackets green and it made him look like a leprechaun. a jaunty one, though. not one of those sour, depressing ones.

and kangal actually played most of out of control by the chemical brothers, so there was actually something for us to dance to. like i said, it was a good night.

post four for saturday.

i spent most of my afternoon goofing about with photoshop. i made a series of strange little pictures, some of which are good. some are not so good. i'll take them to work with me on monday and put them in the queue for the right click gallery. the ones i think should go up, at any rate.

and the very wonderful day is creeping away into evening. it looks like it's going to be a great night out.

an interesting note about various reality shows. celebrity boxing, for example. gladitorial combat for a self-absorbed, post-reality nation. decadence abounds. but most people just wanted to see vanilla ice get hit. repeatedly.

and the battle of the mtv seasons is like a bizarre love-child of survivor and battle of the network stars. it's just wrong. on so many different levels.

we have this bizarre need to be entertained. and on an ever-more sensational scale. this is not a good omen.

ah. it's one o'clock and we've finished with our spring cleaning. the windows are open to let the fresh air in and radiohead is on the stereo (although thom yorke looks like he's about ready to fall off).

i dug out a half-empty milk crate from under the table in the far corner and filled it with magazines. filled it. all the way up to the top. and then i put all the national geographics in a pile next to the milk crate. so now there's a whole shelf open for me to move books onto. check me out!

and i swept the kitchen and the balcony and the bathroom. in roughly that order.

and that's it for now. i think. i may come up with something later, but don't hold me to it.

anyway. shannon has to order flowers for her grandmother, so it's her turn to go online. sharing. it's very important.

shannon got up really early this morning (as she tends to on saturdays - our apartment faces the morning sun, so it gets really bright and really hot by about 7:30 - 8:00). and the little stinker did most of her spring cleaning chores by the time i got up at nine. all she had left to do was to clean the shower. and do the floors, but that's the last step.

well, hey. at least she did her chores. that's a bonus. she got up early and did her stuff. go girl.

now i have to clean up the living room. pick up books and magazines and put away some of our several stacks of cds. most of our cds. we cleaned out the car last night, which brought even more into the house. aaaah! so many cds. it's actually pretty scary, how much media we own.

okay. as soon as i finish reading the comics, i'll start working on the media. oh wait. breakfast first. then the media. heh. it should only take me two or three hours to get everything cleaned up. i'm hoping...

quick post. senor moby's house of music was da bomb. mtv has redeemed themselves. we laughed at the little bald man (and i wear my t-shirt from his tour two years ago as i write this). it was good. and we sang along to main offender by the hives. very cool. now i have to check out the white stripes. they had a good song and an excellent video. not that a video is going to make me buy the music, but the song was good and i want to hear what else they have to play.

so that's it. moby, sleep. good order to do these things in. more in the morning, after we clean up the apartment. (spring cleaning. ah!)

we are in countdown mode for senor moby and his house of music. if it airs tonight, we'll tape it. if it airs, i mean.

i made a banner for shannon's eccles campaign. it looks really cool. i used a photo from eccles's personal site. it makes him look like big brother. very ominous. but someone you'd want to talk to, too.

work was fairly good today. i was dealing with the verification scripts until almost two this afternoon, though. stoopid scripts. and then we had to do some hand-holding for one of the analysts. i mean, i was good at it, but i really felt a lot of contempt for her, too. compassionate on the phone, though. i've got a pleasant phoneside manner. i suppose. it's hard not to feel contempt for people who can't be bothered to read their email before they make a trouble call about something. especially when we've sent out information that will tell the analyst how to handle the problem.

and texas. oooh. that was a bad case. she left a message that "my microsoft isn't working." and then i had to walk her through some really basic operations. i despair.

ah well. i'm home now and that's what matters. we just spent the last few hours listening to various songs as i put together a pair of sets for wednesday night. this should be fun. it'll be different music, stuff that i've never heard played at clubs. an opportunity to stretch some minds. in a musical sense, i mean.

ahhh! updates! so many updates!

well, what do you expect? i've got spare links sitting around that i want to push out. like, f'r instance, some cool jesus-related gimmicks. you know you want some! buy! consume! be a good little capitalist and support the jesus-related industries! no more exclamation marks!

and this is kind of strange. someone did a google on oletheros to get to my site (i suspect that you know who you are). so i went to the google search results and found this. huh. blogdex has some interesting new features, lemme tell you what.

and as for what we did last night? well, we went out to nocturnia (or do they just call it alchemy now?). yes, the sun changed shape in the sky and the end times have arrived because matt and shannon went out on two weeknights in a row! we told psyche that she was lucky that her once a month friday night event, dollhouse, wasn't tonight, otherwise she'd be screaming "this defys the natural order of things" when she saw us four nights in a row. (catacomb on saturday is a given, naturally.)

interesting discovery: carrie makes a cute squealing noise when you grab her boob when she wasn't expecting it. how odd is that?

it was a good night, all in all. lots of fun. lots of laughing. i feel like one of the cool kids.

yesterday afternoon (after i'd posted - but not published - the links about the articles about google bombing and the like), someone on the list sent over a link to a bruce sterling article about sxsw. now, i like bruce sterling. i think he's got a great handle on the intellectual trends of the near future - the trends that are emerging now and how they will impact the culture at large in a few years as popular culture absorbs the trends of the fringes. it's a great topic to speculate about and the internet is a great medium because it allows you to speculate on it (in both senses of the word).

this article is pure sterling and i find it enormously fascinating. sxsw is, indeed, one of the great fringe gatherings. it's right up there with burning man. (and, if you think about it, halcyon attends both. (in addition to massive porn conventions in las vegas.) this isn't the first time that i've wondered if mr. styn is a bellweather about what's important on the fringes of pop culture and what is about to break through.) sorry. random thought drift.

anyway, back to sterling.

in the course of reading the article, i discovered that sterling has a blog. and it's full of interesting and varied links of weird things. i haven't gone through everything yet, but i know that it'll provide me with hours of surfing enjoyment. when i get the time. when i get the time...

drifting slightly from sterling and his fringe cultures, i come across the term otaku, which was discussed on the culture list a few days ago, but i hadn't had the time to post anything until now. busy busy, y'know.

otaku is japanese slang for obsessively compulsive fanboys, the kinds of people that don't tend to leave the house very much and live in the fantasy worlds of computers, videogames and anime. it's a derogatory term in japan, but in the west, the term is a bit broader, but either way (i think) the people that sterling talks about at sxsw could be defined as otaku.

(well, i think it's interesting, okay?)

the okatu also show up in idoru, with a software construct called walled city, which is described as a "shared killfile," something that also fascinates the hell out of me, despite the dearth of description about what it actually is. but again, we're back to virtual communities. oh well. this is just stuff i'm pondering. not actively. just passively.

(speaking of fanboy tendencies, will someone buy me the pocket essential guide to alan moore? and yes, that is an amazon uk link. so sue me - i think the brits have better books.)

maybe blogger will actually publish this. if it does, i'll update some more as soon as i get things organized for this morning's meetings and stuff.

okay. nope. blogger will let me post, but publication is right out. so i'll just write something up in an open outlook window and publish it this afternoon. or whenever blogger decides to publish my stuff.

poking along today, starting to get back into goof-off mode (which is where i am, ideally).

and i'm running across various interesting links that really don't add much to the content here, but i think they're worth the read, frankly.

one, about those nigerian email scams that you see filling your inbox.

two, about these hyperlinks that you see filling up my blog here. i'm contributing to the spread of ideas in virus form! look at me go! the article is actually really interesting, as is the article that spawned the commentary. it's insidious, how these things can get interrelated and spread around. kill your hyperlinks!

shannon sez: "jesus rocks!"

sorry i didn't post more yesterday. work got busy and i didn't get out of here until almost five (weep, sob). then we went out to dinner at honolulu and then over to dr. dremo's for an hour of socializing with psyche and her friends. it was also a fact-finding mission to determine what the atmosphere over there was gonna be like next week.

good links from the culture list this morning. first we have some good jesus sports statues. i predict that shannon is going to want one of these. maybe jesus molesting the baseball player or him playing keep away with the basketball. the other one is a picture of jc's funky bunch. good fun. irreverent and heretical. but still fun.

and that's pretty much all i have for you this morning. more content this afternoon. i hope.

well, blogspot isn't publishing, which seems to be par for the course. but i'm going to post here on the off-chance that things get working later on in the day.

and here's another article about a damaged digital camera taking weird pictures. i really wish i had enough money that i could afford to buy a digital camera and drop it or something, just to see what kind of pictures i could produce. i don't dare try it with this one, but god. wouldn't that be a cool toy? toys are good.

so not much to report this morning. things are much more quiet, which is always a welcome relief. and that's it, really.

if life is like a roller coaster, we should be hitting a quiet, levelling off period sometime sooner or later. i just hope it's sooner than later. my work is quieting down and shannon's just went nuts. how's that for poetic justice?

i'm doing my best to make her relaxed and hold her hand, but there's only so much i can do beyond whisper in her ear that everything's going to be alright.

it's raining tonight, which is good - we need the rain.

and my friend psyche agreed to let me do two sets next wednesday night at purgatorio. so now i'm in line to be a dj. whee! of course, i'm going to be playing things like james and mika bomb. but who cares? it's fun. and something different to do. which was the point, really.

and ozzy's on in an hour. rawk!

so i'm dealing with a ton of user errors. not so much bugs in the application. more of stupid users who can't be bothered to follow directions. which gets frustrating...

but it's quiet now, so i'm updating various things. words here, images elsewhere. you know. things. stuff. that kinda idolatry. and i'm listening to mika bomb, too. it was the sahara hotnights this morning, but it's all mika in the afternoon, yo!

i finished the blind assasin last night. it was really good. kept my interest right up until the end. i thought i had it figured out about halfway through (and i was right) but there was just enough doubt that i had to finish the book to be sure. but the story was good and so was the writing. it earned the booker prize. i think.

and i was wrong this morning. eccles is up to nine. he's pushing double digits. how cool is that?

(i tried to post this yesterday, but blogger was having none of it.) no text on the right click side of things. (not from me, anyway.) i figure that's the best way to do things. just toss out a picture or two and see what people think. very minimalist. that's me all over. and the blog count just keeps creeping upwards.

speaking of counts, has anyone noticed that eccles is up to seven people? seven people interested in him. and six of them have never met him before. could be the start of a trend...

(now, everything from here on is new...)

had dinner with leah last night, which was really nice. we talked about writing and stories and things of that nature. it's always interesting to have those kinds of conversations, even if we do have a tendency to lapse into awkward pauses from time to time. but we talked at length about the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay and other novels. all in all, it was an especially entertaining evening. i kept throwing story suggestions at her because i'm trying to encourage her to write a novel. not just because i think she should, but also because she really wants to and tends to be intimidated by the process. and it is an especially intimidating process - until you've actually done and you see how easy it can be. so i'm trying to help, in my typically ham-handed fashion.

the osbournes is on tonight!

various things today. the upgrade is over, but we still have to send out a whole crop of updates, so it's still busy here, because we're putting out fires and trying to make sure the fires don't get out of hand. we're having a particular problem with some outlook forms. stoopid outlook.

here are some links for the day. a neat one that shows an aerial photo of your house if you type in your address. that's cool. and some different kinds of flamewarriors. see, i'm labelling my links so people know that they're safe for work.

and i might not be going up to new york in two weeks. greg called our grandmother and talked to her. she's of the opinion that she doesn't want a lot of people around until my grandfather stabilizes, which makes sense. and she just took him off his anti-psychotic meds, so that's going to take a few days to work it's way out of his system. i'll probably call her tomorrow night.

i'm having drinks with my friend leah tonight, who's in from louisville. that should be fun. a couple hours of talking about writing and stuff. whee. i love that shit. so i may not get a chance to update tonight. maybe, maybe not. nice way to leave an out, eh?

so we went out to the mall today. we went to target and spent too much money on things we don't need (simpson's trivia?). but, we did get to put the shopping cart into the little conveyer belt that took it from floor to floor. we put it on twice, actually. once to the downstairs and then again back upstairs. it was great fun.

and the lady that couldn't make change the other night was still working at target. we saw her working a register. right next to the second worst register person at target - the lady who helped us. our register person today couldn't figure out how to scan our coupons. bad. bad. bad.

i bought some books at wizards of the coast. i felt really impressed with myself because i browsed the clearance racks and got three books for the combined price of $25. cover price of each book? $20. that's bargain-hunting right there.

and we saw the time machine. good effects for part of it, laughable blue screen effects for other parts of it. overall, i'd say give it a viewing on video. we paid matinee prices, so i don't feel completely ripped off, but it wasn't the best thing i've ever seen. hot woman at the end, though. she was almost worth the price of admission. combined with the "time is passing very fast" effects, it was good eye-candy for a sunday afternoon. but the story was laughable. annoyingly so.

but shannon was a trooper and she came out with me to see it because she loves me and she knew i wanted to see it. so she gets girlfriend points. which she's already cashed in for a viewing of monster's ball. sigh. if i have to endure that erotic movie, i guess it's a small price to pay...

great times at catacomb last night. i spent something like three hours talking about comics with kyle, andi's boyfriend. if i was being cynical, i'd say that he deliberately sat out in the main room talking to me all night just to spite andi. but i'm not cynical. i just think he misses having conversations with people other than the people he lives with. which makes sense.

he and i were talking about maybe doing a comic together. see, he's an artist and sometime writer. and i'm a writer. and i've always wanted to write a comic. mind you, we don't have a story idea right at the moment. but hell, we can work something out. just the possibility is enough to make me happy. more on that as details develop. which might never happen. it's too early to tell.

i'm also thinking about creating a blog/gallery to display the images i've been making over the past few months. get some kind of comment system worked up so people can give me feedback, perhaps. i'll work on that this week, i think. don't expect an announcement, though. just a new link and that's the way it goes.

i felt like such an adult last night. we bought a camera case for our trip to london, but the case has a strap on it that we don't like. so, last night, we took the scissors and cut the strap off. just because it annoyed us and we knew we'd never use it. it was an empowering moment and it made me feel so adult and responsible. we made a decision and carried it out. that's so cool.

not much has happened in the past three hours. but i thought i should post something. so there you go. status check? same as it ever was.

should be a fun night at catacomb, in case you were curious. it's been a beautiful day today (raining now, but that's not such a big deal - we needed the rain). and the weather tonight should be nice. shannon bought some gel with color in it so she can make my hair look funky. she's gone from convincing me to put gel in my hair ("because the wet look works for you") to putting colored gel in. i'm just lucky that a sceptical expression works with this kind of ensemble. otherwise, i'd look uncomfortable.

grrr. apparently, mtv just decided to reschedule things at the last minute for no apparent reason. so no senor moby. we did get the osbournes on tape, though.

i got a haircut today. i was about a week short of a pre-mullet. and that would have been tragic.

i talked to greg yesterday and set up a road trip to new york to see our grandfather on the weekend of the 22nd of march. it's going to be rough, but i want to see him. it's one of those things that i want to do. soon. probably go up to see him every six weeks or so, too.

anyway, that's my content for the day.

parting question - why do the people on cribs feel the need to show us that they own a refrigerator? not what's in it. just the fact that they own one. that bothers me.

we're watching the monica lewinsky special, which actually does a fairly balanced job of looking at the whole situation. how tawdry it all was, etc.

the osbournes is meant to be on at 11:30. fifteen minutes. and we're going to get it on tape this time.

then it's senor moby's house of music. and then sleep.

because the upgrade was finished today! yay! we have to send out some bug fixes on monday, but the states are done.

and here we go with part two. imagine if both posts had been put together. you'd be reading forever...

random silliness warning.

pass the bong idea (you know, when you hear this conversation: "...wouldn't that be cool?" "shut up. you've obviously had enough. now pass me the bong."). it's a good phrase to know. and knowing how to apply it to certain ideas is even better.

like this one, for example: square dancing to industrial music. think about it. you get a room full of gothic industrial people (yes, i know that abbreviates to gi) and give them cowboy hats. give someone a microphone and make him call out do-se-dos and allemande lefts. it would be a hoot. for about twenty minutes. i figure it would work good at something like gothcon. at about midnight, just as the alcohol is starting to take hold and people are getting goofy.

and imagine the inverse - people showing up for country and western shows (real country and western, not garth brooks) with glow sticks and parachute pants. just to be perverse.

here's an idea for a commercial. dunno for what, but i think it would be funny

wide shot of a rock concert. an arena full of screaming fans. there's a band onstage, but you can't see who. then the camera focuses in on the lead singer. it's ozzy. and a voice starts singing. "we are ozzy's kids. ten million strooooooong.... and growing..."

now if only there were some kind of ozzy osbourne related merchandise to advertize...

and, just in case you didn't think that was silly enough, here's something that i submitted to uber, but never got a response back about. it's about penguins.

Recently overheard at the penguin habitat of the National Zoo: "Ooh. They're almost like birds." Which made me snicker. But then, after a few bong hits, I thought about it. Are penguins really birds anymore? Do they have the same needs and issues that "real" birds have to contend with on a daily basis? Now that I think about it, the answer is no. Right?

So my theory is that penguins are not birds. They're close. Inbred cousins, maybe. But they're not invited to Thanksgiving dinner with the rest of the family anymore because of their peculiar evolutionary decisions. I mean, seriously. Swimming instead of flying? How realistic is that? At least ostriches still look like birds. And they ditched the wings in favor of those big-ass legs. What do penguins have? The mystical ability to fall over backwards when a plane flies overhead?

The only thing that really comes close to that is the turkey. This bird is so stupid that when it rains, it will look up and, eventually, drown. That's probably why the other birds serve turkey at Thanksgiving. Anything that stupid deserves to be the object of interspecies cannibalism.

You want a real bird? Look no further than the common owl. That is one cool-ass bird. Designed to be silent in flight and its face has been designed to pick up sounds from hundreds of yards (almost a meter, for those of you who use the commie metric system) away. Hell, the owl can even turn its head upside down and twist 180 degrees around. That's a proper bird.

Don't even get me started on the dodo.

and we caught the tail-end of "are you dave gorman?" on bbc america last night, which was a clever little show. i don't know how it all started (missed the beginning, you see) but the whole show was about a man named dave gorman who travelled all over england meeting other people named dave gorman. he had a graph showing how many miles per dave gorman he's charted to meet all these people. and, well. i'm not explaining it well. so go here and read about it. (wonderful thing, google.)

thus endeth the intentionally silly bits. (the rest has some funny stuff, but it's not meant to be silly. well, not meant to be just silly, at any rate.

the events of last evening (because they were actually sort of interesting):

i went over to the dealership to pick up my car. it has somewhat over 5000 miles on it (5702 or some stupid number, i think), which isn't bad if you consider that i bought it back in july. i can't be bothered to do the miles per month thing, though. you work it out for yourselves.

the part i wanted to comment on was the service managers. they basically do what i do all day. that is, they interact with users who want someone to work on their machines. i do computers. they do cars. simple analogy.

thing is that they seem much snottier about the whole procedure than i tend to think i am. (i hope i'm not that snotty. i catch myself sometimes, but that's usually when the person on the other end is getting stroppy with me. maybe i'm a stroppy customer? i quite like that word. stroppy. stropppppy. strop. py.)

anyway, what prompted my trip to the dealership was an incident last monday. i was at the metro, picking shannon up when a guy in a jeep asked for me to help him jump start his car. no problem. he had a gore/leiberman sticker and a pride sticker on his bumper (not that i'd withold assistance if the guy had a bush sticker, but i'd be more terse, i think). but when i tried to pop the hood, i couldn't figure out how to flip the latch to get the hood open.

i must open the trunk once a week to change my cds, but i've never opened my hood, which is impressive if you consider that i've had my car since july. so i shrugged at the guy at the metro and went to the dealership to ask for help. the service manager who helped me was one facial expression away from outright arrogance. i knew my request was stupid. i said it was stupid before i asked the question. he really didn't need to act like i was an idiot. unless there's something in his contract...?

but i understand where he's coming from. stupid users are my stock in trade. that's what pays my bills. but at least i'm polite to them on the phone. that's important. customer service. service. first part of his job title. sigh.

so i got the car and i went to pick shannon up at the metro last night. and last night was a beautiful night. not cold at all and just starting to get warm. and not a cloud in the sky. wonderful days. i have a feeling that next week is going to be nasty again, though.

anyway. shannon. car. metro. right. we went to the mall and had dinner at bennigan's. and they know us there. we have a favorite waiter (charlie) and he treats us right. we sat in his section even though it wasn't a smoking section. when he saw us, he told us to go sit in the unopened smoking section. (now that's a good waiter.) he brought us our food and bullshitted with us for a bit. and then he didn't charge us for our drinks. so we tipped well. because that's the way it works. we've worked in the service industry. it's a brutal place. and we're sympathetic.

after dinner, we went down and checked to see if my atm card was still working. (the new one hasn't come yet.) lo and behold, the old one still works, which means that they never sent a new one. probably. so that whole "i don't have any money" thing from last week was just a red herring. thanks, chevy chase bank!

so we were down at that end of the mall and shannon noticed that target seemed to be open. (note to britishers: target is like k mart or wal-mart. only cooler. with better stuff. still downscale, though.) so we went in.

we went to toys and games first. i bought a couple of flying bionicle thingies. i built one of them and it goes *thwack*. ya gotta love toys that go *thwack*. and i got the other one to build tonight! toys! heehehheheh.

back on target. we saw a simpson's trivia game, which looked pretty cool. we stood there and thought about buying it and inviting people over for wine and trivia. the hoovers, maybe. greg, perhaps. y'know. simpson's fans. and we don't know any of those, do we?

target has this really cool conveyer belt thing where you can put your shopping cart into and it'll take the cart from one floor to the other while you ride the escalator. i didn't get to try it, though. next time, perhaps.

and we got the worst cashier in the world last night. she didn't speak english very well, for one. and when i gave her a $20 bill (fresh from the atm, no less) for a purchase of $18.57, she typed in $18.57 and gave me my receipt. but didn't give me any change. so i stood there and asked for change. she said "it doesn't say that he gets change." well, no kidding. she typed in the exact purchase price. not the amount of money that i gave her. a floor supervisor came over and helped us out and we were very patient with her. but she's probably not going to be working there for very much longer.

and maybe i sound insensitive to her plight, but i figure that if you're working a register, you should know how to work the register. and know how to give change properly. which she didn't know how to do. basic competency skills, really. not that difficult, i think.

okay. blogger is down for maintenance, so i'm writing this out in an outlook message until i can post it to my blog later. but i actually have a list of things to write about today. actually, it's a good thing that blogger is down. otherwise i'd have to update as i go through my day, paying attention to this only when the upgrade is going through one of those extended "please wait" phases.

so. ip addresses. i work with networks, so i actually know what an ip address is (an identifier for each computer on the internet). so when i saw that my sitemeter software could show ip addresses, i thought "huh. that's interesting." so i started checking them. i like seeing not just how many people check my blog, but also who they are. and where they come from. and how they got there. it's a chance for me to see who's looking at me. because, if you think about it, the internet is a very one-way medium. unless you're willing to set up one of those comment features. which i'm not. i mean, i had one. but no one ever used it. so i took it down. now it's just me and a wall of black text on a white background. pale, stark and minimalist. just the way i like it.

but i also like having that window. it gives me a sense of comfort. and it makes you, the reader, more human to me. so now i know who you are (for the most part). and i know i can wave. hi!

(okay. so blogger is back up, but i haven't finished my post. should i keep writing or post what i have? post what i have. because who knows when i'll get to finish this? not me. that's for sure.)

so... more to come.

eccles has requested that i post more often because, well, he works for the government. and yes, he does work. but he also has periods of boredom. it's one of those things that happens when you work for the government. sometimes you're busy. most of the time, you're bored. because he's in england, he reads my posts at lunch. then, as the day grows old, he thinks "here, i'll see what matt has posted today."

but... i've been working really hard, so i can't post first thing in the morning. hell, i think there have been days when i posted at 2 in the afternoon or something. work. most of the time it's boring. sometimes it's so busy that you don't have time to be sick. or collapse. or post in your blog. but i don't want to let eccles down. he's a friend. a mate. and he's not alone. rik checks this. and rich. and they're in england, too. i have an obligation to my british friends.

so. as a commitment to my british friends, i shall try to post more in the evening. because they read what i write and like it so much that they want to see what the next day will bring. and because they're my friends and they want to see what's going on in my life (which is cool). and because they're bored at work. granted. but that's not the only reason. i mean, it's not like i'm some way to pass time, like some old mailing list. wait...

anyway. so there's that. and now i have to get off the computer because shan is meant to be calling soon. (if that's not a british turn of phrase, i'll eat my hat. the ugly grey one that my dad gave me.)

what's really sad is how crappy my memory is. i see so many little things that i think are really neat and i want to share but, in the end, i completely forget about them. take yesterday. perfect example. the man sitting next to me on the metro was dressed in a business suit and was drawing on his sketchpad. most of us were reading. he was drawing. good stuff, too. but it was one of those random things that you don't see every day. but all of the nuttiness at work completely overwrote all of that. and that's too bad.

some random links from the culture list. this one is funny. this one is odd. and this one is very strange. so there you go.

and it seems that i've become very popular among the government workers in england. what's up, eccles? have i become the new "must read" at the patent office?

in susie bright's latest newsletter, she talks about decorative buttplugs:

"Half the reason that people laugh at the mention of dildos and buttplugs is because of the visuals. Who wants a hunk of hallucinogenic pink rubber hangin' out of their hoo-hoo? We have to close our eyes and think of sweet sensation. A carrot or zucchini is usually a better aesthetic alternative to the stuff marketed as "Swedish Erotica," et al.

However... as my fellow toy snobs are aware, since sexual accessories became more popular, more artisans have become involved. The best dildos today are like fine jewelry- Holly Golightly would trip the light fantastic over their array.

The finest place to buy erotic objects d'art is Blowfish, because they seek these precious things out like only the best snobs do. Their latest offering is from France, no less, a series of buttplugs designed by Julian Schnelling. These sculptures are so gorgeous that even if you have never given anal sex a second thought, you might just now become compelled to take a look. If the Museum of Modern Art carried buttplugs in their catalog, this is what they would look like. If Martha Stewart wore a buttplug this is what she'd wear.

The idea, brilliantly simple, is that if you are going to put something in your body that is accessible, then the "handle" of that object should be as lovely as a jewel, or a flower, upon your upturned bottom.

You can also use these dildos vaginally, of course, although they can't be "worn" in that position, obviously. You could also put them on your coffee table and have people compliment you all night about your taste in contemporary art."

and she's right. they're beautiful. scary, but beautiful.

we stayed up and watched the osbournes on mtv last night. if you've been living in a cave (or are located over in england, where such kinds of culture don't automatically permeate), the show is a documentary about ozzy's family moving into their new house. and they had tenacious d singing a song about the show beforehand, too! that was hysterical. new best show ever. after six feet under, obviously. and we saw an ad for senor moby's house of music, too. that looks good. and funny. moby, basically.

(funny moment. i was on the phone with one of the states. she called me back and i was ready to start her upgrade. just then, aldwin walked into my office, asking who he was going to upgrade today. coincidentally enough, the state i was on the phone with. so i transferred the phone call to aldwin and let him sort things out.)

i'm reading the blind assassin by margaret atwood right now. it's very good. i'm flying right through this book. and it's getting progressively better, which i appreciate in a novel. i still have over half the novel left to read and i have no idea what's going to happen next. i love that. enough for today, i think.

i talked to my grandfather tonight. he's doing okay. actually, he's not sure how he's doing. literally, he doesn't know what happened to him any more than anyone else does. i think that freaks him out a bit. (it freaks me out more than a bit.)

the sad thing was that he was able to hold a conversation, but nothing he said really came to a point. he just rambled until he came to the end of a thought and then rambled his way onto another thought. that's usually how he talks, but usually he has a point to make when he's telling a story. tonight, not so much. in fact, not at all, really.

i told him about my trip to england and he told me different recollections about when he was in hamburg and when he was in england when he was in the navy. interesting but, like i say, neither of those stories really came to a point.

i'm just a little bit scared about what's going to happen to him. i like to think that he'll get better and all of the mental facilities that have degraded will return in time, but i'm just not sure that's the truth. and that sucks. he's got a great mind and he's got a great ability to tell stories - to tie seemingly unrelated items together in a way that illustrates some feature or another of human nature. and he's a great observer of human nature.

you could say (if you were so inclined) that he's the one that taught me everything i know about observation and storytelling. and, because of that, it's hard to deal with the knowledge - firsthand, like the conversation tonight or even secondhand, like when my mother tells me about what she knows - that it's slipping away. in some ways, i think it's almost more difficult to deal with than if he'd died outright. that's a horrible thing to say, but it's true. the truth should never be negated by the severity of the detail involved. i like to think that my grandfather taught me that.

his mind is going away. he's going away. slowly, but that's the way it happens sometimes. and i'm sad about it. and that happens, too.

sometimes, just sometimes, i think it would be nice if some of my users actually gave some thought and consideration before opening their mouths. i've been working my ass off for a week and a half, trying to get their upgrade to work properly and all they seem to be capable of is complaint. i have never heard so many bitchy old woman griping all at once. no, wait. yes i have. last year, during the installation.

their most common complaint? "it's new." which implies that it's different. and different is bad. from the way some of these people are acting, you'd think that we'd threatened to park dump trucks full of manure on their front lawns instead of chaning the way the message system looks. not the functionality. just the way it looks. i guess if your job was to do data entry, you'd want things to say the same, too. but not being able to deal with change? i'm just glad that i have the level of access to their computers that i have. i can't imagine having to deal with these luddites when they're at home. "what's wrong with your computer?" "i'm not sure. can you fix it?"

and completely clueless. one lady actually said "what was wrong with the old one?" "well," i said. "remember that error that was coming up? that's why it changed." dur.

sorry. venting. better now.

work sucks. but shannon's home, so yay!

i have the hives (untutored youth - "would you like lemon or lime with that piece of advice, mister?") on as early morning motivation.

that's all from over here. monday. dull day. i wish.

this is one of those "i have to share" moments.

i used to work at saylor's pharmacy when i lived in pennsylvania. it was a neighborhood drugstore and i was a pharmacy technician. it wasn't a bad job, but it took intelligence to do it well. and a very good memory for exotic names. one of the pharmacists told me that pharmacist was the second most trusted job in a poll conducted during the mid-90s. they asked people who they trusted the most and the answer was 1. priests. 2. pharmacists.

i wonder if cvs knows that they are eroding the perception of trust that their customers have?

i went to pick up shannon's prescription for necon (if you don't know what that is, i'm not going to tell you). i'd used the automated refill line that cvs runs to call in the refill. when i got to the counter, there were two customers ahead of me. one of them was still waiting to hear about her script. the other one was asking why some of the more expensive scripts couldn't be generic. when they switched them, it took $30 off the cost. the first customer got her script filled and discovered that it was going to be very expensive. she, too, asked about generics. that took $10 off her cost. in both cases, they had to rerun the scripts. just because cvs is trying to jack up their prices.

and none of the scripts were ready for any of the customers, including me. they looked for shannon's script, ran it and i was told that she'd already picked it up. i went over and asked her if she gave my girlfriend's perscription to another person. she dithered until she noticed that the pick up date was 2/2, not 3/2. that's good. attention to detail is important. then she told me that the automated refill line hadn't picked up the script yet.

they filled the script, i paid for it and left. when i got there, i was the only person in line. when i left, the line was ten deep. and none of those people were very happy.

i wonder how many of them trust their pharmacist now?

sunday. what a nice way to end the week. a slow, relaxed day, with very little to do (shopping, read the book world, pick up shannon, watch the new episode of six feet under, hot monkey love in the bed, sleep). see? not much at all.

tugboat? (courtesy of the culture list)

last night was catacomb's third anniversary. it was actually pretty good. the lights were interesting and varied, along with a laser, which looks pretty impressive in the small club. i thanked kangal for coming through for me - i'd emailed him asking for carriemonster's phone # and he got back to me quickly with the right number. and i appreciated that. it was a good thing to do and i am a stand up guy when people do good things for me. even if we have argued in the past and not seen eye-to-eye, at least he was there when it counted. and that's really all a person ever needs to be.

good conversations last night with various people, too. karon was out ("two weeks in a row!") and we sat around talking about comics. one of our friends ("i'll perserve his anonymity," i say in my best stuart smalley voice) confessed that he wants his girlfriend to dress up as wonder woman and ("force me to tell the truth.") there was a cigarette burn from an under-the-skirt panty check (thong). and i wore my shirt that said "your story has truly touched my heart. never before have i met anybody with as many problems as you. you have my deepest sympathy. now fuck off. and stop bothering me." which was appropriate. one of our casual friends asked me how i was doing. so i told him. "i'm sorry," he said. "you asked me," i responded. i wasn't going to tell people unless they asked.

i had dinner at the bar last night while greg dealt with all the little tickets the drink order machine kept spitting out. at about 8:30, the city morgue staff came into the bar and we sat and had a round before catacomb opened. it was unintentional, but it's always impressive when you can tell a group of people that they just have to toss in money for a tip. as greg says, "it's not about who you know, it's about who knows you."

carrie and i talked about ego and human nature for a bit at the end of the night. i mean, it was an odd conversation, but i had a lot of them last night. i talked to karon and peter about tattoos and listened to lexi describe her recent stint as a babysitter. shorty critiqued the city morgue for joshua and some woman that i've never seen before was slinking all over the dance floor and dirty dancing her way across the club. during the cure. which "isn't a grinding song!" as one woman shouted.

and that was my evening. the hoovers drove me home last night and i crashed at about 3 am. which is appropriate for a third anniversary, i suppose. if you like that kind of symmetry. which i do, apparently.