different stuff. last night, we went to go see zoolander, which was a very silly movie. still and all, it was very good escapist entertainment and just what i needed. on the way to the theater, we went into the pimp store and bought me a suit. electric blue, double breasted. it looks fly. only $150, which included a shirt, tie and alterations. very fly. pictures will follow eventually.

and today, we went to the baltimore book festival. on the way up, we did errands and bought the tenacious d album. more escapism, but very funny. we've got tickets to see them at the 9:30 club on the saturday after i get back from savannah. that's going to be fun...

and the book festival? well, i got some good information about publishers, talked to one lady about iuniverse and generally had an enjoyable afternoon. which is really what life is all about, isn't it?

day two of working in a place without morale.

my boss has this nasty habit of walking into my office and directing me to do tasks that she could do. why? because she wants to make sure they get done, but she doesn't have the technical expertise to do them herself.

and we had to have a meeting this morning because we were trying to clarify two issues for the conference and i couldn't get a straight yes or no out of her. do these computers need to be networked? yes. fine. tell me that. that's all i asked. do we need to ship this server down? no. fine. fair enough. very easy. just tell me. no need to get in an uproar. just give me the information that i need when i ask for it. if i have to call a meeting every time we need some information, then our productivity and morale are going to drop significantly, you know? how hard is it to say "yes"? or, to say "i don't know what you're asking me, let me find out more"?

sigh.

this is fun.

all kinds of stupid shit hit the fan today, including one or two bone-headed oversights. tim got all angry at carrie and sent her a nasty email that he cc'd to us.

so she's trying to cover her ass and said "i don't know what to do to keep you all from getting distracted. matt, take photoshop off your computers. i don't want anyone checking email, etc. on company time."

whatever. like she never does that.

so i'm off email at work (and bored stupid as a result) but we're not going to fuck up anymore! yeah, right.

time for a new job.

hurm. i spread the penguin around and now literally tens of people are losing hours of valuable work time because of it. whee! i didn't realize it was so addictive. (top score for today: 639,322).

work today has just been a long, agonizing rehash of last wednesday's virus follies. the clients aren't getting the updates and we can't figure out why. it's a puzzler. you'd think we had the brain power to work this out. but no, the crafty computers have defeated us again! damn you, dhcp server! damn you norton antivirus enterprise manager! damn you all!

nothing to report today, really. so far, i've troubleshooted our color printer at work and discovered an addictive little game. you shoot the little penguin at the ship and you get points for the distance travelled to get there, so sometimes the shortest way isn't the best. i like it!

i've started to reread look to windward by you know who. i guess it's penance for not having a new one to read this year. or something.

we went out to the maryland renaissance festival today. we walked around, i got a steak on a stake and bought a book called fishwives and courtesans - it's about commerce in ancient greece. hey, it looked interesting, okay?

i'm finishing up nymphomation by jeff noon right now. fairly strange breed of cyperpunk. it's about a group of people trying to break a lottery code. well, it's more than that, really, but i don't like to give complex descriptions of books. in fact, i'd rather just give someone the book itself and say "read this." it gets the point across better.

i have a sinus infection, too. this is caused by the overuse of air conditioning in my office building, i think. i went into a shoe store at the mall this morning and the pressure change nearly killed me. i have to fly to savannah in three weeks so i think i should do what i can to eliminate this pesky problem before i fly. (flying with a sinus infection is about as far from fun as i've ever gotten.)

i know you were happy to read about my green snot. that's why i put it in here...

here's something silly.... the camelot song from the holy grail, done with legos. heeee....

nothing else exciting today. balancing my bankbook at my desk (i'm off by like $90 and i've bounced a check or two, so it's necessary). but my bosses are out today and i've really got nothing better to do. so there you go.

i left work at quarter past seven last night. i'd spent all day trying to get the norton antivirus client to recognize the server to no avail. my co-workers told me to go home (i'd been in since 8 am). they stayed until 10, but they got it to work. finally. i feel bad because i left, but i wasn't accomplishing anything, really. so it goes.

i got home and shan reheated some food and we watched army of darkness, which was nice. i slept like a log, though. ugh. what a day. and last night, almost half the states failed to poll. we can chalk that up to the servers being down, but someone (me) has to go through and get the data. fun fun fun.

read this page about naming military operations. it's interesting.

on that note, may i say that a military operation in afghanistan is a spectacularly bad idea? very bad. first off, alexander the great was the last military commander to win a war in that region against the locals. beyond that, though, we have the problem that the west trained the locals in guerilla warfare so that they could effectively fight against the soviets. we did that to the vietnamese, too - except then it was the japanese we were training them to fight against. either way, people we trained are coming back around to bite us in the ass. isn't there a lesson here (beyond "don't go fighting against people you've trained in guerilla warfare")? something along the lines of "don't train people to fight oppressors unless you're 100% certain that you're not going to have to invade within the next 50 years or so"?

oy vey. i can see another vietnam coming already. wonderful....

pictures from chicago are up, finally. we had fun, as you can see. i don't think we stopped laughing the entire time we were there.

but geocities is being a collective butthead. in addition to not allowing pictures to be linked externally, they've imposed bandwidth limits. and instituted random pop-up ads, which is oh, so classy.

and my work network has the new virus, so we're busy. so busy...

agh! work is getting me down. my manager basically yelled at me (via email, so she could keep a copy for herself) because i chose to delegate my tasks to someone who knew what he was doing instead of me flailing around and potentially fucking something up. it wasn't the delegation that she objected to: it was the fact that i didn't stand over his corner while he did the investigation. which really sort of tells you what kind of manager she is. she has no technical knowledge and no desire to gain any and yet, she's unconcerned about giving her employees the impression that she doesn't trust in their ability to do the job right. (particularly me.)

what a morale boost, huh? sigh. so i went on washingtonpost.com and applied for a new job or two. or three. something different, please god!

for something different, here's the image that my friendly neighborhood tattoo artist, the reverend fish made. he included a caveat with the image, which i reprint below for your edification:

Here is a memorial I drew (a few of you have seen it). If you want to put it on your site, feel free. All I ask, is that you do not market it. If someone is serious about producing items with this image, contact me in private so we can discuss the charity that the proceeds would go to.

Fish

(i put in the mailto. neat, huh?)

it's a very nice image. i printed out a copy for shan yesterday so she could take it to work and put it on her wall, which she did. please respect my friend (which is ironic, considering what i just posted about copyrights yesterday). the difference here is that fish genuinely doesn't want to make any money off of this. it's an expression of sorrow more than anything else and he just wants to show his support, which i can appreciate.

so there you go.

i completely forgot: i started writing again. granted, it's only been 500 words, but it's also been weeks since i put anything down except here or in email. so weapons of devotion is moving again. rejoice! rejoice, i say!

grief. this sort of thing keeps happening to me and i'm not at all pleased about it. normally, i'd get really angry and go into some kind of self-righteous blather about it (beyond ranting in my blog, of course. that's what blogs are for: to capture the sentiment of the moment so you don't have to drag people into it), but fuck it. too much has gone on recently and i just can't be bothered. i'm angry and (yes) disappointed, but oh well. i have more important things to worry about.

so here's what happened: i consider myself somewhat of a photoshop artist. that's who i am. i right click every single image that i see online if it interests me. and i dump those images into a folder on my computer and i make photoshop art out of them. there is no significant difference between doing that online and if i went dumpster diving behind cosmopolitan world headquarters and used photos i'd snipped from magazines. it is collage. it becomes something other. but it is also considered theft. and, like people who sample music, i get spit on when i try to share what i've created with the people whose work was the source of the creation. even when the final result is something different and could be considered mine. did mickey mouse belong to warhol? did he include a copyright on any of his canvases? i wonder...

so. i was at nerve, looking at images. one of them, by leslie lyons (a prominent new york photographer), did a series (you'll have to create a free user account and log in) that was inspired by egon schiele. i liked the images. i liked them so much that i went and looked up herr schiele and looked at his original work. i liked it. i did an image or two with them and that was it. but i liked what leslie lyons had done, so i grabbed some of her pictures and went to work with them.

thinking that she might appreciate the sentiment, i put six of them up on a temporary page and sent the link to her. (i'd put the link up, but i've taken it down for reasons that will be explained in a second.) my original email read as follows:

hi.

one of the things i do to stave off boredom at work is to grab pictures that i find interesting and photoshop them. it's not that i think the originals are wrong or bad in any way - quite the contrary. i tend to believe that a good picture makes very good photoshop fodder.

with that in mind, i manipulated some of your photos in interesting directions and i thought i'd share.

i'm not trying to profit or anything from these images. it's just something i do to pass the time and garner a bit of artisitic expression while i'm on the job. (i say this because one person that i sent an email like this to wasn't been very happy and called me a thief instead of being polite about his objections...)

let me know what you think.

matt

well, i asked. this is what she said:

Dear Matt,

I have to say that the months of inspiration, time and money that go into my projects are intended for something more than "photoshop fodder". I don't know who is visiting your website or what your intentions are but not only have you committed copyright infringement but you don't even credit the original source of creation. Unfortunately, whatever flattery that could have come from your interest in my work is overshadowed by violation. Please remove my images from your site.

I will say that you seem to be interested in artistic expression and I would encourage you to push yourself toward an original creation...inspiration from others is always evident but you must make your art your own.

Good luck.

Leslie Lyons

i wonder if she even looked at the pictures or if she just scanned the page and went "oh, no mention of me. that's bad." i guess i'll never know, huh? she certainly didn't spare a moment to give me a critique. thanks, lady. and i appreciate being called a thief, too! cheers!

(it's down, by the way.)

she cc'd her email to someone, probably someone at nerve. i wonder if people actually know the copyright rules? or what appropriation is? it angers me, frankly. i'm trying to express myself and all i get for my troubles is "do your own thing." thank you. i wonder if we should tell that to the beastie boys, beck, picasso, negativland... you get the idea. i'm done ranting and i'll probably add an addendum to this as it gets later, but i want to make it clear to people that i don't like this. it makes me not want to share. and if i don't want to share, then why am i looking at someone's photos? the sheer, erotic thrill wears off after a while, actually. artistic inspiration (egon? is that you?) is the next step. isn't it?

sigh. and i wanted to use a picture i made in photoshop for my next book cover. it uses one of leslie lyons' images from that collection. and i was going to ask her permission. hell, even pay her for the use of the image (it's a book cover. that profits me, so i should pay. simple. yes? webpage free - who cares? book cover not free - muy importante.) sheesh.

dunno what i'll do now.

final note, then i'm letting shannon check her email: yes, i understand what goes into art. i write novels. i understand the concept of copyright. but that's why i don't post my novels online so anybody can get them. duh. right click on any image and it comes off a website like fresh paint on your hand. anyone who doesn't know that shouldn't be posting photography online. or walking down the street where someone can be videotaped without consent. it's a very easy concept to grasp, once it's been pointed out to you. or you can get paranoid and lose perspective. which is why my original work is in a format that is not so easily pirated. (if you could call what i do piracy. i don't.)

so the misanthropic bitch is gone. i, for one, am saddened by this. i thought she was funny and irreverent towards everyone and everything. she had no sacred cows and that kind of gadflyism is necessary sometimes. predictably, her site came down because she got in a dispute with her webmaster over the content that she was going to post about last tuesday's events. i'm on her mailing list, so i got her side of the story, along with approximately 3000 other devoted fans.

you may ask how i can support someone like tmb on one hand and someone like halcyon on the other. well? how do i do it? easy. it's a balance thing. yin needs yang. we need to mix the good and the bad. the sweet and the sour. the sweet and the tart. hold on. yeah, fuck it. anyway... as i was saying....

one balanced the other. i got idealistic (in a good way) content from one and pessimistic, pragmatic content from the other. i saw no contradiction in being a fan of either until one got yanked. now she's just another net casualty of terrorism and high emotions and he's not doing so good, either.

so i'm reading wil wheaton instead. (yes, that wil wheaton. he's actually pretty funny. read him!)

and that's all for today. i hope.

it's nice to know that even with all of the craziness in the world, the porn sites are still up and operating. there is some strange comfort in that. even with all of the death and destruction, the porn remains. (you may think i'm being facetious here, but i'm not. i appreciate the fact that there's something as innocent and innocuous as people showing the photos that they've taken on vacation where they are nude in london. it's refreshing. it's almost life-affirming.)

halcyon is having a tough time lately. he went to burning man the week before last, which was a powerfully life-affirming experience. and then he had to deal with this along with the rest of us. that kind of emotional turnaround has got to be devestating. my heart goes out to him (among others). we had more or less the same experiences, though. we've spent the past two weekends laughing and enjoying ourselves. now, it seems like laughter is in short supply. and that's a shame, really.

brendan posted this today. it's pretty, so i put it up. it's a change from all of the horrific images being posted these days. (they're necessary, in a way, but i'm tired of seeing them. we watched the news for ten minutes last night. long enough to see what had happened and then we turned it off.)

we also went out last night. getting into the city, we drove past the pentagon. shannon hadn't seen the hole yet and it was sobering. the capital building was visible from the club we were at, and that was not an entirely settling sight, either. she's flinching when she hears helicopters or sirens now. everything seems different - scarier. more ominous.

and shan's building just had a bomb threat, so she's outside standing in farragut square park. she's not in a good place. i wonder if she'll ever be? when is this going to end?

two more items (added more for my benefit than yours, although if you want to know what i'm reading these days, this might help...). item one is about alan moore and the movie from hell, based on his comic. item two is about the open conspiracy that hg wells promulgated.

so i'm back to work. i doubt anything interesting will happen to me today.

some thoughts, though. i talked to my grandfather, who retired from the agency in the early seventies. he said basically the same thing that this guy did: the cia just doesn't have the capabilities to get real intelligence anymore. the current thinking at langely is that satellite intelligence gets you where you want to go. and that's just not the case. satellite intelligence didn't help at all.

something else that's getting me is the fact that they've started to broadcast voicemails that people from the planes and inside the wtc left with family members. that's just creepy. doesn't matter if the family is right there. the mere thought of it is just scary to me.

other stuff....

now the small press expo has been cancelled, which is a major bummer. i was really looking forward to meeting a lot of the creators. bryan talbot, art spiegelman, scott mccloud, alex robinson, terry moore... oh well. it makes sense, but it still sucks.

something else that didn't make me feel all that safe: the plane that hit the pentagon had "it's choice of targets." okay. i'm just a few blocks from the capital building here at work. i don't need this kind of moral support.

and the leaves have started to change color. that's not really a current event, but it makes me feel like fall has started. on an ominous note, no less.

whew. what a strange few days. i guess it just takes a few things to change your entire worldview. i found out about the first plane hitting the wtc from rik, who's on the culture mailing list. i was following the story online from work right up until the point when the third plane hit the pentagon. at that point, our office was sent home and things got a little odd.

i work maybe four blocks from the capitol building and right in the middle of all those federal office buildings in south dc. prime targets, really. so leaving was a good thing. on our way out of the city, we had to drive by the pentagon, which was marked by a huge cloud of black smoke. it was just crazy.

getting home was even crazier. i was fine because i left early. shan left at eleven and didn't get home until one thirty in the afternoon. those hours until she got home were nerve-wracking. i knew she'd be okay, but some part of me just wasn't okay until she was home. it was an irrational feeling, but events weren't rational. it hasn't been rational for awhile now. our friends are all okay, but the mood here(from what i can tell) is just calm and sort of stunned. i can't imagine what work is going to be like tomorrow. so many messages to answer - so many people to reassure.

the culture list was really supportive. they kept asking if i was okay and, when i kept them posted on shan's status, they were happy to hear the news. i liked that, frankly. i liked the fact that they were concerned, even though most of them were elsewhere in the world. that concern made me feel like i belonged - like i was part of something. it was a life-affirming feeling, which is pretty much what i needed yesterday. the catacomb list did more or less the same thing, too. everyone checked in to make sure that people were alive. clubbing this weekend is going to be a somber affair but it will be a good chance to see our friends and feel alive. i, for one, will be happy for that chance.

neither of us went to work today, which was nice. but the only thing on television has been the news. and there hasn't been enough news to justify that sort of saturation. not in my opinion, anyway. i'm ready to get back to work - if only so i have something different to do. something different to concentrate on.

i still get chills when i see the footage of the second plane hitting the second tower. that fireball still makes my hair stand on end. several times in the past two days, i've been on the verge of tears. tears of relief that my family and friends are alive and well. tears of frustration at the carnage. it doesn't seem real, somehow. i get the feeling - from time to time - that if i switched of the tv, it wouldn't be happening. if only it were that easy.

i like this. i found it on blogdex, which is just really cool all on it's own.

good weekend. i went out and got drunk and played video games and pool with my cousin greg on friday. didn't get in until 3 am and, when i did, shannon woke up long enough to tell me that she'd bought me the remaining bionicles. (my fun with them is taking them apart and making mutant bionicles with them. shannon says it's like living with an eight year old. i say that i still have a child-like sense of wonder.)

saturday was just a day of down-time. we went out and got comics and went to maggie moo's for ice cream. it was nice. we also hit catacomb on saturday night - the first time in two weeks and the first time since our little altercation with kangal. it was a lot of fun. we made a shirt for robert for his birthday that he really liked and i bought a book containing original fiction by jonathan carroll and neil gaiman and rachel pollack and dave mckean. it's a good thing. i also watched mel make out at the bar with a woman, which was kinda hot (hey. she was doing it at the bar. in full sight of everyone, okay? don't give me any shit about watching. you would have done the same thing.) oh, and kangal acted like i was not even there. even when he walked by me like four seperate times. i love it when i can make someone so uncomfortable about my presence that the only thing they know how to do is not acknowledge my existence.

john and sarah came over on sunday. we got messed up (euphemizing here for the public record) and went out to lunch. then we saw jay and silent bob strike back, which was just as good of a romp the second time as it was the first time. then we came home, polished up our respective buzzes and watched trainspotting. that was fun. we kicked john and sarah out at nine, though. it was a long day. nine hours is enough time to spend with anyone, really. but they were good company and we were glad they came over for a visit. we laughed. that's the best way to spend a weekend: laughing.

okay. fuck it. i'm cleaning out my links. i don't know that i want to dump everything, though, so i'm going to post a whole hell of a lot of them here. these are all the links i don't want anymore. okay? don't get mad. don't go to every one of them. just know that this is what i had in my favorites folders that i don't use anymore.

comics:
absurd notions
bobbins
argon zark
cool cat studio
friend bear
goats
life on forbez
bizarro
penny arcade
player versus player
real life
red meat
sinfest
sluggy freelance
bob the angry flower
userfriendly
waiting for bob

ahhhh.... i guess the rest of it really isn't that important...

uhrm. tuesday morning and it feels like a monday. hardly surprising, considering that i just got back from four days in chicago. one of the best vacations i've had in a long time, too (since new orleans, actually). so what did we do, you ask? we went clubbing. a lot. every night we were there, we went out and danced to good music and drank copious amounts of alcohol and just had a generally good time. i don't think we really ever stopped laughing or having a good time. exactly the way a vacation is meant to be conducted.

we stayed with our friend boa, who owns a fabulous apartment just outside of downtown chicago (and boa was a fabulous host - much love to the boa!). he and the fantastic carrie monster took us around to hex at the mutiny, neo (three seperate times) and exit - some of the varied goth nightlife that chicago has to offer.

hex was wild because it's just a tiny little scene night in the back of a redneck bar. we helped them set up and, i have to say that they do a fantastic job taking that place from dive to something where people can hang out and enjoy themselves. along with the aforementioned boa behind the bar (and he was one of the most entertaining bartenders i've ever met. who else busts out whack-a-mole when things get slow?), we had the bar that was falling apart and the world's largest urinal in the men's room. friday nights at the mutiny in chicago. make a point of showing up.

exit was fun. sort of like a biker bar, but with crazy freaky goth-type people. shonda from kansas city hurt her knee after tripping over a pothole outside and it was entertaining watching the hookers on north avenue after we left. still, an interesting place. i wore the leisure suit jacket and candy-striped pants that i bought on saturday to exit and got a lot of compliments. it was fun.

neo was the crown jewel of chicago. we went there every night (after hex and exit, too) and had a great time each night. the place is like a giant underground crypt and was wall to wall people every night. the crowd was great and the vibe was fantastic. again, something to watch for.

we went shopping on saturday and sunday and spent waaaaaay too much money. i got the leisure suit, a military greatcoat, a new pair of ten hole docs, too many comics (box office poison, replacement god, strange kiss, blue monday, metabarons, and some lesbian comic that shan wanted), a punk rock purse, some underworld singles to round out the collection and some clothes that shannon wanted. she got some big stompy boots, too.

i finished cryptonomicon, too. i read it every chance i got when i was in chicago (and there really weren't that many opportunities, really) but i wasn't done. so i took it on the metro with me this morning but i still wasn't done. so i sat at my desk this morning when i got to work and read the last twelve pages of that novel. 900 pages and i couldn't wait until this afternoon to finish - because i would have been done with those last twelve pages by the time i got to the pentagon and that would have sucked. great book and something i'll have to read again. eventually. probably visit chicago again first, though...

the pictures from chicago will be up eventually. as soon as we get around to posting them. i'll let people know.