news on the work front. the contract that we're in is a specific category and our company graduated from that category, which means that the bid has now, (semi)officially, been given to someone else. which means that our management (at the very least) isn't going to be in charge of our contract as of the end of august.

so who is going to be in charge? good question. the dot hasn't officially given out the contract to the new company yet, so nobody knows nothing. my company would like to subcontract it's employees (us) to the new company so that we keep our jobs, something i support wholeheartedly. until we know who we're going to be working for, though, it's really tough to make those kinds of negotiations. so now we're in half-assed employement limbo.

but someone needs to make some decisions soon. and that's all i'm gonna say about that.

we had fun with lori last night. she had some great lines, too. classics like "there's a definate line between creepy and spooky. spooky good, creepy bad." and "you think about kangal too much."

there were many cute girls, dressed in many skimpy outfits. and who doesn't like looking at girls in skimpy outfits, really?

we were very catty, though.

i just recently finished pixel juice by jeff noon, which is a group of short stories from the pop-culture addled mind of that great british futurist. he uses words in a very interesting manner, coining phrases and puns like man. very good use of culture mixing that comments upon the contemporary uses of media and advertising.

i went from that to nobrow by john seabrook (which i'm still reading). seabrook writes for the new yorker and has been engaged in a long-form discussion of taste, culture and the relationship between mass culture and subculture. i'm particularly intrigued by this last bit, because it tends to overlap a lot of what i got from bruce sterling about how the subcultures tend to be harvested for art and attitude before they have a chance to ripen and mature. seabrook says almost the same thing, even though he uses different terminology.

so i guess i'm reading holy fire by sterling next. it seems appropriate to jump right into a critical discussion of couture and futurity as a counterpoint to pixel juice. one is more media-saturated and the other is more sub-culture oriented, but both have a very studied approach to the idea of media and how it influences and is influenced by society.

and there was a whole rant about strip mining popular culture in reference to the new scooby doo movie, but that also impacts nostalgia and the subtexts that we tend to read into media artifacts from our past. (my grandfather once told me that when he was growing up, there was no perceived homosexual subtext between batman and robin because that kind of relationship did not exist within his realm of understanding - very literally, he and his friends did not know to look for that.)

compare that naivity about batman to the amount of after the fact interpretation that is placed on scooby and the gang. shaggy may have been a stoner who could hear his dog talk, but that's not something that is ever stated explicitly. instead, we have read the context of the society into the text and come up with something completely other.

oh well. i understand why we strip mine culture - because it's a proven commodity. and i understand the impulse to nostalgia - because it reminds us of a gentler time. and i understand the impulse to apply contextual revisionism the media of our youth - because it shows that we have grown up and now "get" what was going on.

but why do we focus so much on the past. what's wrong with looking forward and finding something new to enjoy? are we that scared of wading through the dross of new art in the attempt to find the one book that will spark imaginations for years to come?

i dunno. it gets me down. that's all i'm saying.

ugh. i'm wearing a tie today because i have to represent the contract over at the dot headquarters for the monthly policy meeting. wunderbar. you have no idea how thrilled i am about this. honestly.

we didn't make it to dremo's last night because we got caught up in a whole big conversation about stuff and expectations and things of that nature. you know how it goes. anyway, sorry to anyone who was expecting us. it was very unexpected.

i did a complete windows 2000 install on our home computer last night, though. shannon's mom called, so i turned around and started the install. we were watching monty python on bbc america and every ten minutes or so, i'd get up and hit next or something. it was one of those kinds of nights. very low key.

so i was listening to a hard day's night yesterday and i felt like nice guy eddie in reservoir dogs. i must have listened to that song a thousand million times and i swear i never heard him talk about things. but there it was. i even went to this archive and yep, there it is: "You know I work all day/To get you money to buy you things." i knew there was a reason that i liked the beatles and now i know for sure. they were down with the whole stuff and things terminology. sure, they never mentioned stuff (as far as i know) but hey. if you understand things, you understand stuff. it's like reciprical or something.

once again, i have my reports ready by nine. that's a great feeling. and everyone polled, too! well, except for indiana, but she's an idiot. (maybe i shouldn't say that.)

shannon sent me some lovely photos of her being supportive on saturday night. there were a couple of good shots of carrie, too. i might make art with one of them.

not much on my plate for today. we're off to dremo's tonight and did we decide that shannon was going to graffix today to make the deposits?

and the situation with the dsl at home continues to resolve itself. it's working great, except that sometimes the connection drops, even though it shows as still being connected. like an idiot, i forgot to get the driver for the ethernet card from joshua and i don't have all the networking portions of xp installed, so i need to do that, too (which requires the cd). it can wait until they get back from convergence, though. i just have to remember not to let the connection sit inactive too long.

(update: this article from wired actually tells me much more about what's going on.)

oh yes. we made our list for the dinner on friday night when eccles is here. who knew we had so many friends? oy. we need to send out a general invite. and clean the house. and i have to make shannon's fliers. so i guess i do have things to do today, after all.

maybe write some, too. wow. that was easy...

howza. micheal and i decided to create a weblog dedicated to just links. it's called pubic hairs on the coke can of public discourse and you can find it here. (not that i think about it, the title "just links" never occurred to me. maybe i'm just biased...)

anyway. for those of you who enjoy my eclectic collection of links, this should satisfy. for those of you who prefer that i just stick to miles-long rambles about my life, well there you go. the content has been seperated for your reading pleasure. yes, you.

friday: it was girl's night out, so joshua came over (his wife was out being one of the girls) and we installed windows xp on my home computer. that was fun. the dsl is still having some issues, but verizon tech support informs me that that's a switch issue, not my modem driver.

funniest thing from the evening was seeing two girls who had driven onto a median strip, knocking over a wooden signpost in the process. i can understand not seeing the median, but the signpost? they were still there when we drove past in the other direction, only this time there was a tow truck to help them off the median and two cop cars (any event in east springfield tends to attract police cops 'cause there's not much going on down at that end of town...)

saturday: club night. we saw greg at the bar, hung out with lori and just goofed off. oh, and i teased carrie, driving her to drink. ("alcohol, my only friend...")

sunday: drove up to philly for dracula's ball at the trocadero. the actual event sucked (the venue was crappy and the drinks were overpriced) but everything else was pretty cool. we drove past maryland house and many museums, including the decoy museum (me: "that's not the real museum"). it was hot and muggy on south street and we drank more alcohol than we shopped, but that was okay, really.

we saw ian and shawna and batty and shannon didn't go over and talk to johnny indovina like she wanted to, but that's okay.

i talked to a literary agent (who handles horror and genre fiction) at the vendor area and she passed on a rumor that bantam dell is looking for literary fiction. i count that as a good thing.

oh, and we kept running into voltaire and his entourage of twelve-year-olds. that got old fast.

monday: we drove back and, on the way, stopped at waffle house in elkton but decided that it was too full (okay, i decided). we also stopped in towson to pick up tickets for the hives for next sunday. $3 a ticket, presented by mtv2 and all the way up in baltimore, but still...

so that was the short version of my weekend. very, very busy. and summer has arrived in dc. with humidity. oy vey.

there's something new up on the souvenir koan, too.

it's friday and my body is stiff and sore. not for any particular reason, just because it's friday and i tend to believe that i store all my tension in the lower part of my thighs, just above my knees. to be honest, though, i don't have much to be tense about.

work is going okay (although the management is being suspiciously close-mouthed about the status of the contract negotiations). nobody's getting back to me about any of the resumes i sent out, but i haven't been as assiduous about that as i could have been, i think.

the last word on my grandfather was that he's been transferred home and that he would be getting home hospice care. i'm not sure if i should call and find out how he's doing, though. maybe after the weekend.

i did 23 picture remixes in the past three days and probably more today, as work permits. i'm still contemplating what order i want to post them in, though. june 12 seems to be some kind of anniversary, though. i'll see what happens when that comes around. (what day did i post earlier? the 16th? that was wrong.) at any rate, i'm really happy with the general direction of these pieces, even if the specific presentation issues aren't quite sorted out in my head. and not all of the pictures make me really happy. but that's an aesthetic issue, not an artisitic satisfaction issue.

speaking of this, though, brings me to our home computer. i have to go out and buy more memory for it so i can upgrade it to windows 2000. the stupid thing crashed twice on me while i was using photoshop last night. the first time was horrible because i had some great colors going on and i completely lost that image. oh well, art is fleeting. but i have to defrag the computer and that particular function seems to be not working so well. blah.

on the writing side, i'm doing pretty good. i had a good idea for how to intersect the souvenir koan with the sf ideas i had the other day. more on that when i actually get those stories written. but that's the future and this is the present and i still haven't typed up the piece i wrote on sunday. it's intimidating me. it's tough to admit that, but sometimes that happens. the emotional power of the piece digs right down inside me and makes me flinch. and i'm a raw enough writer that things like that are going to happen from time to time. knowing that they will and actually dealing with them as they come up, though, are two very different things.

i'm optimistic about the writer's relief project. the podium is a good book. it's just that i've reached the end of my abilities in terms of getting it published. i need help from here on out. and i'm glad to pay for that help if it means that i can realize my dream of seeing someone on the metro reading my book (this has always been my measure of success).

i heard a secondhand report that not fish; duck is a weaker novel than the podium, though. it's the truth and i know it's the truth, but that doesn't keep the demoralization from creeping in. i don't think i ever found the center of that particular novel and i'm acutely aware of the fact that i need a lot of external help to get it back on track. unfortunately, the prospect of tackling that book a third time is almost as intimidating as anything else i have on my plate right now.

there's something i want to talk to tony about, when we see him on saturday. and this is kinda funny.

so that's it. status check = generally okay. fairly happy. minor dips and dimples aside, things are looking good. oh, and the bobby-headed monkey on the dashboard of my car is now sitting up straight (the material came off his butt, so i revelcroed him). i know you wanted to know all of that....

allright. this is more of a links-heavy post. you have been warned.

let's see. what have i got? a chicken without feathers? ugly. brains? tasty braaaaaainsssss.....

i think i forgot to mention the real basil fawlty article. oops. why you shouldn't sleep around. good advice, really. the misanthropic bitch updated. not once, but twice. read. enjoy. laugh and be glad that someone has the balls to actually say that stuff out loud.

the best quote in this article about what the fbi are currently investigating is "If it's your job to hunt Islamic fundamentalist terrorists," said Rafael, "Then it's your job to know that they don't hang out with Jewish lesbians in San Francisco."

and, finally, more aotc-related material. both from locus. first, an honest reviewer. second, someone who may or may not be a fan.

bwah. my mind is a bit frazzled this morning (which would explain why i'm updating so late in the day. well, for me it's late..)

i got a response letter from writer's relief last night that basically said they couldn't help me because i hadn't given them enough material to work with. the postscript on the letter indicated that i needed to submit a bio, a synopsis and some indication of what it is that i expected to gain from them. taking that as a good sign, i called them up and asked for clarification.

the lady on the phone was very helpful and gave me a lot of pointers about what they were looking for. she also said that she would put a note on my submission that there was more on it's way so that i could reenter the submission process. so i spent this morning typing up the supplementary material and sent it to the lovely and talented shannon for review. she just got off the phone with her suggestions and now i have hardcopies that will be sent out forthwith. so there's that. fingers crossed and all of that.

speaking of art, i had a conversation with my friend about my digital artwork yesterday. it was insightful enough that i decided to hold onto it and reprint it: i had a very definate style with the polaroids and i deviated heavily into pseudo realism with the right clicks i'd been doing. but lately, i was drifting back towards the polaroids, to uneven effect. but now i'm really veering sharply away towards insanely abstract.

my friend thought that was funny, but i can't see the humor.

i noticed, though, that the first right click i ever did was made on june 16, 2001. it boggles my mind that i've been doing this particular series for almost a year. it doesn't seem like that length of time has passed, to be honest.

ah well. going with the whole subject of porn, here's an article about a teacher who forgot that his personal monitor was still hooked up to the main classroom display and decided to do some porn viewing while his students were taking a test. "sick leave." sure. whatever you say.

i'm currently reading "good in bed," which shannon recommended to me a while ago because she said it would help me understand some of the mindset of what big girls go through when they think about sex and dating and so forth. i knew a lot of it, but she's right: it does put the reader front and center in that mindset. a good thing, as far as i'm concerned. and a good story, too.

it reminds me of this book review that i read in salon yesterday. it's the sexual memoirs of a french woman who's had an open marriage for twenty years. it's very frank and honest and i tend to like that in a story (the fact that it has sex in it is just a bonus, really).

heh. i wonder if she'd heard the headline about how semen contains antidepressants? probably not.

rather than cram the rest of my archived links into this post and run the risk of veering from the theme of writing, sex and art, i'll just hold on to those until this afternoon. how's that sound? good. glad you approve.

oy. what a morning. first i have stupid people in the field who leave their applications open overnight and don't really think about how outlook could interfere with the operation of the ftp script. that drives me nuts, lemme tell you...

fortunately, that is about the extent of the complaints, which means that there are a lot of good things. nothing so crude as actual "this is what i did yesterday" content (although i did remix ten pictures and came up with a handful of good sf story ideas, all of which i'm really proud of). instead, you get links. but cool ones, so that's okay.

first, we were playing around with google on the culture list, googling for ourselves and i discovered that there is a more famous matt rhodes out there. (not such a big surprise, to be honest.) even more interesting is the fact that he has a livejournal and is only five jumps away from me, acquaintance-wise. weird.

what else? bruce sterling linked to a picture and had this to say about it: "Here are 56 Spaniards who play Quake. Instead of wiping each other out with nailguns and chainsaws, they've managed to stack their character into an awe-inspiring tower."

speaking of linking to celebrities, neil gaiman's post this morning struck me as really funny, in that distinctly deadpan british way that they have of telling stories. of course, he's british, so it makes sense that he'd write like that. but it's still funny to me.

here are some lessons learned from watching 24. great misuses of english from old videogames. and a demo page for realistic video game drivers. cool shit.

finally, we have friends. friends rock. like kyle, who can get away with saying things like "wearing your wife as a wristwatch" because it's funny and he's who he is. (note: edited because the entry i was pointing at was locked and rights protected. sorry.) and micheal, who posted the case for cocktails, which is pretty good. (the site also has a link to the ten greatest beatles moments which just rocks. pardon - rawks.) and kari, who sent me a very nice email this morning, which i have yet to respond to. but i will. this afternoon. probably.

(i stole this from the culture list, but i thought it was an interesting enough discussion that it's worth bringing up here. of course, this means that it's going to be a bit geeky. okay. very geeky.)

brad asked what order the star wars series should be watched in to maintain the maximum amount of dramatic tension. you know - the revelation that darth vader is actually anakin skywalker at the end of empire strikes back is the biggest flag and, if you watched the entire series in order, you would lose the dramatic power of that whole scene.

so. i propose (and so did brad) that you watch them out of order. but what order? what works to keep the suspense tangible throughout the course of the series?

(yes, i know that the acting and dialogue are bad in the latest two installments, but we'll leave that out of the discussion for the time being. the story's the thing and always has been.)

my order: a new hope, the phantom menace, attack of the clones, empire strikes back, episode iii, return of the jedi. see? darth vader isn't mentioned at all until episode iii (presumably) and this way, we get the flashbacks that lead up to the big scene in empire. plus, we get to compare the thematic echoes between the lightsaber battle in clones with the battle in empire. (come on, you didn't notice that the pieces of machinery that dooku throws at yoda are similiar in size and shape to the ones that vader throws at luke in empire? for shame.)

well, that's my geek moment for the day.

what else have i got for you?

google has a nice little collection of the logos they've used over the years, along with a happy dilbert cartoon. china has announced that they are going to build a moonbase by 2010. thank god someone is.

an article (with pictures - the most important part) about the woman who got a complaint from a neighbor who said that she pruned her hedges into phallic shapes on purpose. (see why the pictures are important?) maybe the neighbor should take the quiz to help her determine "is your neighbor a terrorist?"

good morning. i'm still waking up, but who isn't at this time of day?

i've put up a new picture in the right click gallery (updated daily) and a new piece about names in the souvenir koan (updated tuesdaily).

it was a quiet night last night. this is shannon's big work week, so she's going to be home late all week (sadly face) but that just gives me time to sit and be creative. and you all know how much i hate to be creative.

more later, in all probablilty.

it's been a slow day here at the hotline. i got so bored that i actually did some art. i started slowly, with a picture of joe's hands. then i remixed a picture of shawna with sam's head up her skirt, taken last year at neo in chicago. then i did some abstracty stuff (we watched the end of pollack just before six feet under came on) that came out okay. then i mixed two more images, to varied effect. i'm going to wait until i get all the way through my current crop before i start posting these images, though. just because.

however, online has been a different matter. online, i've been networking like a motherfucker.

shannon sent me the website for the law firm we went to for the graduation reception yesterday. i sent them a resume. fingers crossed there. and carrie's batting for me at her firm, too. (thanks)

i talked to michael for a bit about nothing in particular, but that's what most conversations are, anyway. he's a nice guy, though and i think he's got interesting things to say.

and valerie the merciless (robert's wife - and yes, i now know robert's last name. of course, i also know pysche's first name, so i'm just all that and a plate of cheese fries, aren't i?) got back to me about the podium. she'd inquired about it at dremos and i sent it to her. she read it over this past weekend and told me i should get it published. she's pulling out all the stops for me, apparently, and sent me the address of a published friend of hers. i promptly sent a note off to her friend. anything i can do, really.

like i said, it was a networking kinda day.

congratulations to flare for getting something published in uber. it's a good story and funny, to boot. i hope she didn't get too many comments at work about the smile plastered all over her face.

oh yes. if you have come to this site because you googled for "goth" and "sex," then turn around and go home. if you feel like staying for awhile, please do. but also understand that there is nothing especially kinky about goths having sex. except for special occasions.

it's monday morning, which means that there's not much that i would count as exciting in my world. our friend will graduated from george washington university yesterday and we went to his reception afterwards, which was held in a really nice law firm on pennsylvania avenue with a great view of the city. (i still wonder how indiana got hosed and ended up with such a short street.)

links, though, are here en masse.

everyone and his brother has been linking to the memorial for the death star from slashdot. it's cute, though. going along with the theme is this article that presents a case for the empire. and, of course, lucas chimes in to let us know - in no uncertain terms - that episode ii is not a parody.

the cover art for the new iain banks book is out. i think there's going to be some controversy, despite the fact that the book concerns the events of september 11. especially since the book comes out on september 5th.

oh well. there's a site about everything, including zippo tricks. did you know that carrots used to be purple? (i didn't.) james is putting out a live album. that would have been a good show. and an article about why continuity is just silly.

we saw the pet shop boys last night at nation. we had a good spot on the balcony level, which meant that we got to see their very beautiful light show - they were backlit through most of the show. have you ever seen a forest of q-tips backlit by the dawn, swaying in a low-lying fog? that's what the crowd looked like from all the way at the back of the auditorium.

the only problem i had with the concert was that it wasn't a $40 show. half that, maybe. they played some good songs, but the overwhelming majority of the show was from their new, slower, more mellow album. and that's not what i was hoping to see. (i realize that it's presumptuous to expect a band to play only their old material, but hey, i'm allowed to have opinions as a consumer, right?)

we caught the end of pulp fiction last night when we got home, which is still a great flick. every little bit of the film still stands up on its own, all these years later. and then we caught six feet under, which is getting really, really good. although i don't know what brenda is up to. ho hum...

yet another test. this should work. i hope. (if not, you'll never know.) (thanks micheal for the new script.)

i'm up early on a saturday because i had a nap yesterday afternoon before we went out to play laser tag. the event itself was a lot of fun (as it always is). we got a good group, too. the romper room magic mirror saw joe, eva, carrie, joshua, brian, rebecca and falafel. (i picked falafel up from the metro, so i can assure that that is her name.)

we're going to see the pet shop boys tonight at nation (followed by velvet nation). tomorrow is will's graduation party. we're going because will is our friend and even though he's moving away to go be academic, we're still proud of him. we're trying to think of a limp biscuit-themed gag gift for him. (the story would take too long to explain here.)

and that's our weekend. shannon's week ranges from busy to hectic and then we're going to dracula's ball on sunday in philadelphia. busy busy busy.

that's all for now.

before i forget, i want to thank michael and kyle for their javascript advice and assistance. it's not their fault that things aren't working right. that would be lj.

some links for the content-junkies who are finding themselves alone on a friday afternoon with nothing to read.

did you know that six-month-olds better than adults at differentiating between monkeys? it's true. and you can fool a contemporary fingerprint verification device with a simple procedure? (the cool thing about that one is that it uses gummi bears as an active ingredient.)

and then there is a writeup about the use of etherPEG in a room full of bloggers on laptops. very interesting application. even more interesting writeup.

and that's all i've got, really.

groovy. okay. that worked. good. good....

onto the content.

saw episode ii last night. before i get into my review, i just want to make it clear that i am a dyed-in-the-wool star wars fan. i have the utmost respect for the franchise. (and if that doesn't make you go uh-oh, i don't know what will...)

my expectations for the series as a whole were diminished by episode i. episode ii met those newly diminished expectations.

the film is nearly all spectacle. the broad-stroke storyline is wonderful. nuanced, interesting and gripping. unfortunately, i felt the film was just one step short of the reality that i have come to expect from the franchise. (i don't just mean the cgi, although that is also covered by this remark.) a lot of the movie felt posed and, outside of the fast-paced sequences where the film became an action adventure romp, there was very little spontaneity.

great pains were taken to tell a complex story of political intrigue and romance. neither story is really sold well. at no point, did i really feel the weight of the dramatic tension that moved the film.

you know the guy at the circus with the ten foot legs and the really long pants? the romantic dialogue was that stilted. i really wonder if anyone ever explained to lucas that you should really read the words out loud after writing them down. (if this is his take on romance, it's no wonder he's not married anymore.)

so what did work? hayden christensen, for one. he did a very convincing job of portraying a young man caught up in the swirl of his emotions with only a portman in sight. ewan mcgregor was (as always) wonderful. his sense of humor really carried through and provided a very effective foil for his apprentice. natalie portman was decent, although she was more screen-candy (nice nipples, natalie!) than anything else. christopher lee was very, very good as well.

on the whole? i say see it. but just remember that this is not the series that you remember from two decades ago. lucas is older and more cautious. he doesn't seem to trust himself or to trust his audience and it shows. as a fan, i wish it didn't.

test. one two three. this is just a test. if you can see this in a new window, then it worked properly. i'm still having teething problems, though, because i want that window to look very sparse and all, but the script i have needs to be put in the header of the page and i don't think that's going to work properly. if anyone has any info on how to encode stuff like menubar=no, scrollbars=yes, resizable=yes, width=626 into a href tag, then let me know. i'd appreciate it. a lot.

i think the best part about the lj link device is all the weird names that have come up. poop, elvis, jesus, god, satan, fuck, barbie, miss cleo. all of these are valid lj usernames. makes me wonder if fucknuckle is signed up... (nope. still available as of this writing.)

purgatorio was fun last night. interesting vibes from tony. but then again, tony always sends out interesting vibes. last nights were just... on a slightly different wavelength. more directed.

joe was there and we talked about his writing for a bit. he's got some good stuff. nice images. good turns of phrase. he has a story that he wants to tell and i encouraged him to write it down. i always encourage people to write their stories down. the world needs more artists. we need more people expressing themselves in healthy, artistic directions. repeat after me: "killing bad. art good."

work was a tad frantic this morning. we had to grab all of the 2001 data asap so we could run the data pump and do various databasey backup things with it all. (sometimes this job is sorta-kinda interesting. mostly, though, it's just whiny people bitching about deadlines and network connections and stuff like that. which really falls into the "this blows goats" category.)

anyway. i'm done with all of that (for now) and the arcane processes have passed over into the hands of the database doods at the end of the hallway.

sigh. i did have to deal with the idjit from virginia this morning, whose phone was cutting out. that was fun, lemme tell you. and then the lady from pennsylvania called asking me a question about the deadline that she was s'posed to meet last night. "okay," i said to her. "you've been dealing with kelly for the past two weeks about this stuff. why did you call and ask me?"

yep. the morons were out in force this morning.

speaking of morons, here's a little piece about currency origami you can do to make the twin towers show up on a new $20 bill.

an interesting take on enhancing instant messaging with an odd plug-in. (haven't tried it myself, but it's pointed at giving text-based chat more inflection, which is always a good thing.)

finally, an article that is subtitled why cities without gays and rock bands are losing the economic development race, which sums it all up, really.

oh yes. and episode ii tonight. fun! friends, family, and a movie. what more could you ask for? except a midget lesbian with a monkey. but that would just be frivolous, really.

i can tell that this thing is going to be a great new toy. it's a little bit of programming goodness that tells you how many jumps away from another livejournal users. (it goes by friends you have in common.) for example, my username is only four jumps away from satan (through batty) and five away from god (through carriemonster). amusing? you bet.

on a slightly more sober note, all girls should read this when they turn thirteen (a random number i pulled out of the air, in case you were wondering). if i could, i'd say "don't let assholes push you around sexually. they won't respect you and you'll just end up feeling dirty when you look back on that time of your life."

so we picked up 18 by moby last night and i'm listening to it right now. i really like it. it's very atmospheric and melodic. not as bluesy and rough as play was. cleaner. more anaseptic. but not in a bad way.

i've noticed that i've been writing a lot lately. why, though? well, usually at this time of year, i'd be gearing up to write a new novel. this year, though, i don't have the motivation or a story i really want to start on. but the desire to write is still there, which is why you're getting more and more content. it's probably not a temporary abberation, though. i'm just a wordy bastard by nature. and sometimes i feel like just going wild with the whole self-expression thing.

there were three los angeles cops on the metro this morning, all in full uniform. probably on their way to the national law enforcement officials memorial. nothing wrong with that, of course. we get tourists of all stripes here. just odd to see cops from across the country on the metro with their guns on their belts and everything.

even stranger was yesterday's experience walking home from the metro. as i was walking under the overpass, i heard coughing. i looked up and saw a man sleeping on one of the concrete abutments that supports the road overhead. i just found it odd that he would be sleeping not five feet from the roadway above. it must be noisy up there. it's noisy enough on the sidewalk. when i walked past this morning, he was still there. and twenty minutes later, i was standing next to la cops. odd convergences.

anyway. onto the links. (which i've already collated and sorted and all. check me out!)

an article about how domestic cat meows have evolved to be more harmonious to humans. wasn't that nice of them to put our comfort first, for once? another article, telling women how they can roll their own tampons (posted without comment). a site with pictures of a tesla coil that has been applied to the job of shrinking quarters. and the obligatory george bush face that you can put silly hats on. and lips. and eyes. (courtesy of eccles)

other interesting bits include the gallery that clean sheets put up for their annual masturbation celebration. (take a wild guess about the work-friendliness of that one.) the side note to that one is the website for kevin hundsnurscher, one of the photographers in the aggregated gallery. i like his stuff and there's a lot of content there that i have yet to paw through.

last, but certainly not least is the offical site for donnie darko, which i mentioned yesterday. shannon turned me onto this because the movie was supposedly set in fairfax. huh. very strange site. very strange movie. but good. i recommend both. now.

note to self: tuesdays. the souvenir koan is updated on tuedays. right must remember that.

according to this article, though, memory loss is all about how your brain doesn't synchronize properly to recall the memories when you want them to come up. so i don't have a bad memory. i'm just out of sync. (insert bad boy band joke here.)

i like this article about the practicalities of geneology. one of the ideas it presents is that there are not enough people who have lived in the past to give every single human being a different set of unique ancestors. there is a lot of discussion about "most recent common ancestors" which i find interesting.

bored at work? play games.

apparently, nocturnia heard that eccles was on his way and decided to throw a party.

and finally, an interesting article about the current state of the interoperability of instant messaging systems reminds me of my homemade hierarchy of internet text. interestingly, the hierarchy is organized according to the expectation of privacy and the relative speed of dynamically updated conversations/commentary about a given piece of text.

accurate attribution is not an issue because the entire hierarchy operates on internet applications that allow entire conversations to be saved and verified using the same protocols as are used to conduct them. at the same time, editorial control is not an issue because chatrooms can (and often are) moderated, just like mailing lists, message boards and group blogs.

(this sort of kicks a lot of the struts out from under the whole blog vs. journalism arguments, but i find those silly from the word go. a magazine article does not automatically confer authority on a given subject. instead, it provides a wide distribution range that a weblog would have to work harder to create.)

the hierarchy is as follows:

chat
email
message boards
blogs
zine articles

that's it.

new story on the souvenir koan.

we watched two very interesting films last night.

first up was following, a short (70 minutes) black and white film by the director of momento. it was very obvious that the two films were by the same man because they had similar themes (betrayal and a peculiar, almost voyeuristic approach to interpersonal relationships) and both used a flashback/flashforward technique that was surprisingly easy to get used to, once you understood what was going on.

what was interesting about the film was that it only had four speaking parts, which meant that it was a very character-driven drama. there was no sense that the story was really building up to something until the very end. any kind of explanation of the story itself would very quickly find itself in spoiler territory, so i'll just say "watch this!" it's short, it's good and you have no excuse not to.

the second film was donnie darko, a movie about a schizophrenic teenager who is haunted by an evil-looking rabbit and finds himself obsessed with predestination and time travel along with the usual teenage problems of sex and bullies at school. it was an odd film, with very good acting, great effects and an oddly compelling storyline. like donnie, the audience is compelled to keep watching, if only to see what the whole thing is about.

the ending wrapped everything up nicely, but didn't provide a pat conclusion that tied up all the loose strings. instead, it gave the audience the final piece in a puzzle and left us to figure things out for ourselves. like a handful of other films we've seen over the past year, this one left us wondering how it got made on the basis of such an eclectic script. whatever the finacing story behind this one was, we're glad that it made it through production. hollywood should put out more movies like this.

ten minutes before the ending of donnie darko, the phone rang and we let it go to voicemail, which we really shouldn't have done (as it turns out). my brother, alone in my parents house, got freaked out because the area thunderstorms had knocked out power and left him alone in dark. one of the problems my brother suffers from is an inability to deal with situations that fall outside his normal routine. and blackouts fufill that criteria.

so we called him back, talked to him for a few minutes, then drove up and picked him up. we let him sleep on the couch last night and got him to the metro this morning so he could get to work. sometimes you have to do these kinds of things. we all have responsibilities.

i can understand where his anxiety was coming from, though. in between the movies, we looked outside and saw an eerie sight: sunlight on the parking lot across the street with dark, menacing clouds behind it. we got pictures, but i don't know how well they'll convey the absolute dichotomy between the two environments. it wasn't the calm before the storm because the wind was really moving by that point and even making the streetlights sway. perhaps, though, it was the last of the sunlight before the clouds took over and took us into night.

driving up to montgomery county on the highway, we really noticed the wind. my car has a very low profile, but the wind was pushing it all over the road. and dust from the various construction sites along the beltway was being kicked up in clouds and sheets. the old neighborhood was really spooky with no lights on, not even streetlights. there were leaves and smallish branches all over the streets, which got to be a minor issue when we drove back along the george washington parkway. nobody expects debris like that to be flying at you. i don't, anyway.

i'll probably get in trouble for writing this, but when has that every stopped me? besides, these are words. the only people hurt by words are the ones who allow themselves to be.

my subscription to red clouds ran out on friday. no big deal, really. it forces me to find a new set of source images for my art, though, which is not necessarily a bad thing. it's odd, though. i've been flipping through images of people having sex and displaying their genitals for the anonymous masses for so long that it's become somewhat comforting. i'll miss it a little. as you can imagine.

the thing i liked best about red clouds, though, was the fact that they knew their audience. they knew what their viewers wanted and they provided it. and not just the people who ran the site, either. content over there is provided by the viewers, for the viewers. it's a very democratic kind of place, really.

i put a new wrinkle on the subject matter because i used it for art, but that's a different conversation. this is about audience.

i was at an engagement party on friday night for a friend. there were a number of people there from within the scene and they were all very liberal in unloading their vitriol towards a certain local dj. (everyone knows who i'm talking about, but i'll preserve his anonymity anyway.) no one was willing to be the first to dis him, but once the subject was brought up, everyone joined in.

i find this interesting because of who this person is. he's a dj. he's a personality. and nobody seems to like him or respect him. i have my own issues with him because i find him to be an arrogant asshole who really doesn't have anything in particular to be arrogant about. i'd never seen hubris in the flesh until i'd met him.

the principle issue everyone seems to have with him is, again, audience. this time, though, the point seems to be that he doesn't listen to his. admittedly, a dj's job is to dictate to the audience and play music that other people are going to enjoy, but at some point, the audience gets to stand up and say "play this. please." whether or not the dj is willing to sublimate their ego to the requests of the people on the dance floor really is one of the markers of a good dj. in my book.

(to be clear, i'm not a good dj because i don't take requests. i am a dilettante, though, who is barely ever behind the decks and i usually bring an agenda with me.)

but, y'know, we all have issues. some are worked out in private and some are worked out in public. when you become a public figure, you cease to have the ability to determine how private your issues should remain. when you seek an audience, it should not be an unexpected surprise when the audience talks about you. makes jokes about you. complains about you. these are the joys of being a public figure. ridicule rides shotgun with celebrity. this is why it's always a good idea to pay attention to the persona that you are projecting.

i think about this stuff because i am attempting (in my own, cack-handed way) to move towards a degree of celebrity for myself. i am a writer of novels and i would like to be a writer of published novels. at some point, it would be nice to be a writer of best-selling novels. but not because i want to be famous. rather, because i want to get paid to do what i am good at and what i enjoy doing.

it's scary to watch someone who is a public figure because they were not cool as a teenager and they have a keenly-felt void in their lives to this day. i cannot imagine living that life. i cannot imagine wanting to be adored simply because i want to be adored. i like to think that my motivations are more solid than that. i like to think that my personality is more stable than that.

that doesn't mean that i am, though. it just means that i like to believe that this is the situation. honesty in all things - especially to yourself - is vital to maintaining a balanced world-view. after all, i have an audience. i have built it and i cultivate it. i enjoy it. there is a degree of vanity in this site. in these words.

recognizing these things is not bad, though. it is important to realize that just because you are a public figure (and i would not go so far as to call myself a public figure simply because twenty friends read my stoned, sunday-afternoon ramblings) doesn't absolve you of assholic behavior. in fact, it should make you pay closer attention to your behavior. you are responsible for your actions. even moreso when others are watching them. just because you do not feel the keen glare of the public gaze doesn't mean that it's not there.

strive to be the best. accept your faults and work around them. these are good things to remember. the audience is not there to laugh to you, but they will if you fall down. that is no reason to resent them, though, because if you have cultivated an audience, there's probably a reason. it may not be a good reason, but that never stopped anyone from enjoying their 15 minutes.

i'm sure there's more, but that's all that's coming out of my head at the moment. i'm tapped dry. my throat hurts and it's lunchtime. so i'll leave you to your thoughts. for now.

some good writing that i want to share. first, from warren ellis: "Five years of rich kids in pink dungarees twitching in time to car alarms,"

then from amanda on the culture list about why leather pants are sexy:

I wish I knew. They're shiny? They smell good? They creak in interesting ways? They're flattering? They're made from dead animal skin and as such the bovine spirit has entered the pantswearer and bestowed upon them the deep sexual magnetism of all things moo? Maybe it's some kind of genetic memory from the days when men who wore leather trouser-analogues were likely to stay alive long enough to bring home the brontosaurus? I myself have no idea what the appeal is (but only black leather, most brown or other coloured leather is a waste of good leather that could be black), nor do I know what's so appealing about uniforms, all I know is my old mantra that a man in uniform instantly has more attractiveness points than he would without it (unless "without it" implies...never mind).

still ramping up for a rant on audience. no time right now, though. i just hope i can remember all of the little points that i was hoping to make.

some links to keep you happy until then.

a really good article about a piece of blog technology that should be built. wired has an interesting article about a face found in an aphex twin song. wild site about found words that are very unusual. a site collecting vintage luggage labels. and another one with maoist propaganda posters. weird.

quiet sunday, which is how this weekend thing is s'posed to work. wake up, read the paper (sort of), grab lunch, play frisbee in the park. watch some of the tao of steve. you know, the essentials.

we had a fun night last night. we had drinks with tony at mccormick's, which was a lot of fun. tony's a nice guy, with interesting things to say and it's nice to be able to talk to him without having to shout over the loud music. apparently, he had a lot of fun afterwards, but i'd like to hope that he enjoyed the drinking with matt and shannon part just as much. or proportionally so (it's not every night you get to sleep with a rock star).

greg sent me down to archibald's to get cigarettes, which was odd. it didn't really register that it was a strip joint until i went in and the doorman asked me if i wanted to sit at the bar or have a table. i told him i wanted cigarettes and, as i went downstairs, i noticed the naked woman dancing on the stage. then it clicked. funny thing, though; the woman dressed in a lace bodystocking - that came down to just below the curve of her ass and was sheer enough that i could tell she was wearing a thong, a garter and nothing else - didn't really give me the clue. maybe because i've seen outfits like that at clubs and be able to not bat an eye at such a sight can do a lot to make you feel sophisticated.

still and all, the idea of a strip joint across the street from the capital hilton (where the president often has press dinners) is kinda funny, if not predictable. two blocks down from my cousin's bar and another block from there to our leetle gothic club. it's amazing how small our world is, when you really think about it.

we've been having an in-depth conversation about inversions on the culture list. the shocking part (for everyone except the four of you who actually got that reference) is that the conversation is 100% on topic. our mailing list is (re)known for being resolutely off topic. this is, perhaps, some sort of record or something. i'm also impressed because i'm holding my own in the conversation. i know the book well enough to give detailed conversational analysis about the events within.

the book is two stories by two unreliable narrators and the trick of the story is understanding what actually happened, because much of it is lied about, covered up or speculated on. clues are provided, but it's still a complex read. but satisfying. to be honest, literary conversations like this were one of the reasons i joined the culture list. i stayed because of the friends i've made and the community that i feel part of, but the literature was the bridge and i think that's fantastic.

literature is a very, very important part of my life. not only am i a pop-culture junkie, i'm also a geek for words and designs, which become stories when one is applied to the other.

that's probably one of the reasons why i have very intelligent, very interesting friends. i like being challenged, intellectually. my mind enjoys being engaged. solving problems, understanding things, absorbing new information, experiencing new situations. these kinds of things make me happy.

i may not like people, but i enjoy selected moments of humanity. i develop a taste for reliabilty, though, which means i reread the same books, relisten to the same music and talk to the same people again and again and again. if the experience delivers for me, then i want to be able to identify what it is that i am enjoying, so i can seek it out again, elsewhere. i do not want to get bored. i do not like to get bored.

the fact is, though, that boredom is not really my problem. i don't really get bored. i get creative. i write. i photoshop. i doodle. i make stuff up. my limitation is, though, that i do not like to leave projects uncompleted. there is a story idea in one of my journals with the words "write this, you bastard!" next to it in my handwriting. unfortunately, i can't really understand the notes as they are recorded. i write in shorthand that makes sense at the time, but is incomprehensible years later. so frustration at my time limitations tends to get in the way.

fuck. i think i've been rambling. sorry. anyway, no point there, just random thoughts. i've got two pieces written for the souvenir koan and i'm not sure which one to run. i'll figure something out. by that point, of course, i hope to have something on the nature of audiences. maybe dredge up some material about belief. i dunno just yet. time will tell.

the official number 3,000 went to eva.

now that that's sorted out, let's talk turkey. got a lot of stuff to say, but not a lot of time, really. so i'll just do little content bits. bites. whatever.

went to see spiderman today. good flick. it was a romp. sam raimi obviously had a blast directing it. that's good. i'm not a huge superhero fan these days because of what superheroes have done to the comics industry, but this reminded me of what i liked about the subject. and, to be honest, this was a good superhero movie. there are damned few of them that aren't parodies or just plan crap. it's good to see something where everyone was on the same page AND where the audience got the message. score another one for the good mr. raimi.

we went up and had dinner with my parents tonight. i forgot to get my mother a card for her day tomorrow, so we bought one and ran it up there. then we discovered that the visiting hours had extended over into evening meal time. so we ate and had a good time. my dad got pissy at us, but that's hardly surprising. he does that a lot. and we made plans with my brother for dinner on tuesday.

other stuff is floating around in my head, but i'm still in composition mode. so nothing more for now. i'll let you know.

okay. the numbers aren't going to increment any higher, so i might as well go ahead and post and push the counter over the top. (it's at 2,996 now.) yes, i'm a dork. i pay attention to my referrer logs. it's a little vanity, but i forgive myself. (you'll note, though, that there is no site meter on the right click gallery. that was deliberate. i don't want to know how many people are looking at that on a daily basis. i'm still very torn about how important that kind of art really is to me. i could continue on in this vein for a while, but i won't. not here.)

so. instead of real content from the brain of me, i'm going to dump a large handful of links onto the table. other people's stuff. interesting stuff, though. (everything is work-friendly unless otherwise noted. shannon, i'm looking at you.)

like the worst in website design. (from the culture list.) and an article about how people with body piercing are obviously looking for trouble. subversives. defiling their body like that. how long until people start to declare that piercing is a gateway activity for further mayhem? i wonder.

a very weird site from italy about dentistry. great pictures. speaking of pictures, bert is still evil. when will he ever learn?

ben brown is publishing daily again. let the heavens open up and the choir of angels rejoice. or something to that effect.

this link goes to a questionable site, but the text on the page is quite nice, actually. it's lessons that one couple has learned in thirteen years of marriage. funny, interesting and good for everyone to know. just don't click on any of the links on the page and you should be fine.

this is a cool site about different kinds of art generators that people have developed on the web. run your mouse over the title graphic. groovy, man. while we're on the subject of weird stuff like this, allow me to point out the secret life of numbers. very interesting. if you're a geek, that is.

let's see. what else? instructions for a woman who wants to learn how to pee standing up. twenty billboards along a random someone's commute. checks that say wage slave and other cool, anticapitalist slogans.

and a really well written college entry essay. i agree with a lot of what she says. we are defined by our works. or we can be, if we let ourselves. (courtesty of the rotten lil girl.)

okay. i'm starting to get little glowy lights in my peripheral vision, which means that my body is starting to process the lsd stored in my body fat. and that means it's time for lunch. read. enjoy. talk back.

d'oh! and i need to get mom a card before she goes to sedona on sunday. oops.

fucking risperdal. my brother has been on anti-psychotic meds since before i got married. if you looked at the list of stuff he's been on, it would be like reading the street names of some middle european small town. they had him on zyprexa up until last week and then decided to take him off of it. okay. except that they gave him risperdal as a crutch for when he was having anxiety attacks. now, i used to work in a pharmacy (two pharmacies, actually) and i know how often the fucking doctors prescribe risperdal. it's like fucking pez to them. got a headache? seeing things? not making sense? risperdal is the answer.

except that it isn't. it's the first drug they turn to because it has so many potential uses. but any drug that requires a secondary drug to keep the body twitches in check isn't necessarily a good thing, in my book.

so. my brother. they put him back on zyprexa at a lower dose and he seems to be okay. except that my parents are going out of town for a week, so i've been tasked with making sure that he has someone to call if he needs anything while they're gone. no big deal, really. i don't mind. i've done it in the past and it's all part of being a good son and a good brother. i'm just glad that dad told me about the medication change before they left, though. it lets me know what's going on and to keep an ear out for the phone. but i'm still pissed about the risperdal.

anyway. on to other things.

i finished the manuscript found in saragossa. interesting book. longer on structure than actual detail, but still a good book. not something i'd idly recommend, though. more a book for authors to read. now i'm reading island of the sequined love nun. i love christopher moore's book titles. it's actually pretty interesting. about cargo cults. i like cargo cults.

we went to alchemy at nation last night. that was odd. there was some kind of urban contemporary concert in the main space and the goths were confined to the side room and the patio. so that was okay. the fun part was my hair. i hopped in the shower before we left and starting messing around with it. when shannon and i were done with it, it was somewhere between flock of seagulls and the lead singer of prodigy, with a misfits lock in the front. cool as fuck, really. i got a lot of really positive comments. well, some, anyway.

i talked to vlad and neil (hi neil!) and commiserated with phil about planetary. it was fun.

2,985 as of this morning.

i have done fuck all today. and enjoyed myself while i did.

i was going to edit my article for the city morgue, but alas, i do not have that file on my hard drive at work. bummer. i thought i did. guess not.

something approaching content: a faux front page about the local genre discussions. and the new eu logo. (i like the logo, personally.)

two things i forgot to mention:

1. this pipe bomber in the midwest doesn't seem to have the most coherent friends. predictably, they were all baffled by his behavior. no kidding. the one statement that really stands out, though, is the acquaintance who said, "He used to have long, bleached blond hair and kept to himself, kind of like the grunge Seattle scene." huh? did he just say that the entire grunge scene had bleached blond hair and kept to himself? did he just anthromorphize an entire scene? i know i keep going on about improper use of language, but this just seems like such a perfect example.

please note: when talking to reporters, it is important to use clear language (short, precise statements are recommended) so you don't sound like a fucking dumbass!

2. my site meter tells me that i'm creeping up on the big 3,000. very close. 2,944 as of this morning. sarah daisy was the big 2,000 last time. who will it be this time? i wonder.

(okay, i'm just a dork. but that's okay. i embrace my dorkiness and say "you shouldn't be reading what i have to say if you are in some way offended by my dorkish behavior." right? oh, and just to add to my wonderful reputation that i'm building up here, i totally identified with wil wheaton's little story about trading a landspeeder for the death star. except that the big kids down the block used to steal my action figures. i swear they got both greedo and walrusman. honest to god.)

stoopid internet. so here's a funny story for you:

i picked shannon up from the metro yesterday and took her out to dinner at bennigan's (the fry cook was in excellent form last night - the chicken strips were beautifully golden brown). during the course of dinner conversation, i told her about the links that i'd put up here yesterday. (she doesn't follow my links from here because they aren't always work-friendly and i've been lax about labelling them in the past.) i told her about sweetrelease. predictably, she didn't think that a product that changed a woman's odor was necessarily a good thing - women have enough hangups as it is - but the idea of changing a man's flavor. well, that's a good idea.

she said that if i bought a bottle, we could conduct a scientific research project. you know: day 1. still no change. day 5. still no change. and so forth. the only problem is that i don't have actual credit cards. i have a check card. and the stoopid internet seems biased against it. first ticketmaster spit it out at us. then this place. so i'm slightly bummed. but i shall recover. scientific progress shall not be impeded!

in other news, they're doing work on the parking garage at the springfield metro. over the past few weeks, they've been stripping out the sealant between the concrete slabs, which was slightly disconcerting. i'm not sure that i wanted to see the next level down when i was walking through the garage. it didn't fill me with a huge sense of confidence about the structure. well, now they've started to reseal the gaps. the funny thing is that if you walk around, you can see the dribbles from where they sealed the gaps in the ceiling. very odd. okay. that story really didn't have a point.

moving on, here's a article about the top ten new copyright crimes. funny and nonsensical, as all copyright crimes tend to be.

purgatorio was fun last night. we saw all kinds of people through the romper room magic mirror. mr. and mrs. the merciless, tony, the super-organized girl and almost a host of others. (well, what do you expect? it's on wednesday night in the back room of a pool hall in arlington.)

and, to cap off the morning update, this is the info for next week's event.

various things that are coming out soon(ish) that i'm excited about:

-new albums by moby, david bowie and underworld
-the film about a boy with soundtrack by badly drawn boy
-the fact that planetary should start up again in the fall
-new books by michael chabon, iain banks and neil gaiman
-a new collection of sandman comics

who says supporting data collection isn't glamorous? dateline did a piece about the most dangerous roads in america. and they used the data collected by the program i work on! check that out! in your face, national registry of historic places!

you can tell that it's spring/summer in dc because they put water in the fountain in the courtyard at the department of transportation. i'm over there once a week, so i get to track these things. just one of those little indicators, really.

catching up on my emails from various friends in europe. fionna swears that it was shannon she saw in helsinki on may day and refuses to listen to any arguments to the contrary. rik just mailed to say hi, which is always appreciated and eccles has bought his plane tickets. which means that we'll be hosting an honest-to-god culturnik here in dc in june.

despite all of this activity, i find myself with absolutely no desire to do anything. at all. nothing creative. nothing work-related. is it wrong to want to sit outside and enjoy the sun and not think? for some reason, i have this nagging feeling that it is.

huh.

anyway. here's a (non-work friendly) link about an herbal suppliment that will improve the taste of um... well, your secretions for your partner's enjoyment. during oral sex, that is. it's funny. with different flavors, too.

oooh. and a response to the two towers petition from yesterday. (thanks rik!)

this is cute. pooh punditry.

and this is the relaunch of the souvenir koan. it's not fiction this time around, even though it says it is on the side. this time it's recollection. memories and the patterns those memories have created for me. read and return next week.

i didn't really do anything i intended to do last night. i wanted to mail my submission out. i didn't. i wanted to write a bit. i didn't. so what did i do? i worked on my setlist for my (still tentative) return to purgatorio. funny: i sat down and planned out a list by dead reckoning. when i added up the times, the first list came to 30:37. the second one came to 30:47. then i listened to both and decided they needed more work. so i have no idea what they're like now.

shannon was upset that i included no kompressor.

strange things on the links plate this morning. this is so very, very wrong. sort of like novelty buttplugs. but not quite. and a spoof about atomic physics. a really neat building that hasn't been built yet. and a group of people that just need to step back and relax just a tiny little bit. yes, i understand that this is a sensitive subject, but come on. political correctness should only extend so far. grab a straw and suck it up!

there was a good line in a review in this month's spin: "the lyrics read like magnetic poetry on the fridge in a group home. someone buy this man a proper noun."

what i did today:

1. installed an outlook patch for california. six computers later and we're only one state from declaring that project officially done.
2. inspired by moby's post about jeff koons, i went in search of some art with ciccolina (the italian porn star who was married to him). do you know how difficult it is to find a complete set of artwork featuring those two? i still haven't entirely succeeded.
3. i played the helicopter game i found on micheal's blog. (side note: micheal says the nicest things.) based on my results, i'd say that letting me be the pilot on a two-dimensional helicopter ride through a massive cave featuring floating rectangles is probably not a good idea.
4. thought about writing up something for the souvenir koan. i'll probably tackle this tonight, instead.

and that's been my day, so far.

nothing new or interesting to report since last night. instead, here's an article from the new york times. it's interesting. i promise.

April 30, 2002, NY Times

Fun With Your Zip Program: Sort Through Texts, and More
By BRUCE SCHECHTER

One of the basic truths of the digital age is that almost anything - the plays of Shakespeare, the genetic sequence of DNA, or the twitching of a seismograph needle - can be reduced to a sequence of ones and zeroes. More striking is the discovery that these sequences are largely full of hot air - redundancies that add nothing to their meaning. Clever computer programs can "zip" or compress these files, streamlining them for speedier transmission. Zipping programs have long been a boon to computer users with slow modem connections.

But now a group of Italian physicists has shown how these same programs can be used to analyze and categorize text quickly. Using little more than the zipping programs found on most personal computers, they can easily distinguish between texts written in 10 different languages and almost unfailingly tell which of a large group of texts were written by the same author.

Writing in the January issue of Physical Review Letters, the scientists - Dr. Dario Benedetto, Dr. Emanuele Caglioto and Dr. Vittorio Loreto - explain their work with an analogy to Morse code.

To keep the number of dits and dahs to a minimum, Samuel Morse considered how often each letter was used in an average English message. The letter e is the most common in English so Morse encoded it as a single dit. The next most common letter is t, so he assigned that a single dah. A relatively uncommon letter like Q takes four taps to encode: dah dah dit dah.

Compression programs work in a similar fashion, except they invent a new code for each message based on patterns unique to that message. The program might, for example, find that a text uses the word "compression" frequently and save space by substituting a two-letter abbreviation.

The Italian physicists understood that a compression scheme invented to compress a text written in English would do a poor job on one written in Italian.

"Transmitting an Italian text with a Morse code optimized for English will result in the need of transmitting an extra number of bits," they wrote. They conjectured that just how many extra bits it takes would be a measure of the distance between English and Italian.

To demonstrate this, the researchers used a zip program to compress a text written in one language. They then appended to the original text some text written in Italian or another language and compressed that document. As predicted, the compression program did not do as good a job when the languages of the two texts were different. They tried the same trick on a group of texts all written in Italian, but by a variety of different authors. They found they could distinguish between the authors more than 90 percent of the time.

The scientists performed a further test of their technique by analyzing a single text that has been translated into many different languages - in this case the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The researchers used their method to measure the linguistic "distance" between more than 50 translations of this document. From these distances, they constructed a family tree of languages that is virtually identical to the one constructed by linguists.

The researchers say linguistics is just a "playground" for them to sharpen their techniques. The same methods, they say, might help create order out of the rapidly accumulating libraries of DNA and protein sequences, earthquake catalogs and other geophysical data. They might even lead to a solution to one of the most troublesome problems of modern computer science: filtering the junk e-mail from your in box.

we did so many things this weekend.

friday night, shannon and lori headed out to see hedwig at the signature theater in shirlington. by both accounts, it was fantastic. i like the music and i thought the movie was good, but the girls deserve a night to themselves sometimes. i don't feel like i missed anything, though. although lori's comment was good: "you stick something in my face and i'm going to lick it."

booger gave me a ride up to dollhouse and we swapped mates around (although lori is still conviced that we did it wrong because she went home with her husband that night and that didn't seem to be the way swapping worked in her mind.) the space was, as always, hot as hell. but the music was good and the people were fun. i had two seperate conversations that i'm holding onto, which leads me to my next paragraph.

i've had a few (or more) conversations over the past few months that i want to hold onto, but they are slightly disconnected from the day-to-day inanities of this blog. luckily for me, i have somewhere else to post those kinds of interesting interludes, be they real, fictional or somewhere in between. before, they were fictional. now i have some non-fiction to post. i'll let you know when the souvenir koan kicks in again, though. should be soon. i have four or five things on a list so far and i know i can dig out a few more. i find them interesting and that's enough for now.

so. saturday. we headed out to congressional cemetary, only to find that 14th street was blocked off. not a problem, though, because the cemetary is at the end of 395 and we were headed in the same direction as the detour anyway. we got there early and wandered around looking at some of the stones and such. over the course of the day, i saw the cenotaphs of henry clay, john calhoun, and john quincy adams. and the graves of mathew brady, john phillips sousa, tip o'neil, j. edgar hoover and the guy that explored minnesota.

it was a fun day. a lot of our closest friends showed up and there was much drinking and laughter and general merriment. we wandered around the cemetary on a tour and, when we got to a grave in the back where a very famous madam of the nineteenth century was buried, we discovered that the cemetary backed up onto a jail. we were all standing around the grave and we started to hear a lot of thumping from behind us. when we looked, we could see faces in the windows and hands pounding on the glass. very odd.

later, after an alcohol auction (box o' wine went for $20), we went back to the madam's grave to pour out two remaining cans of mgd that nobody wanted. as soon as we started pouring, the pounding from the jail got really, really loud.

the money that we raised ($425 that is matched by a congressional grant) went to help maintain the cemetary, which is actually really cool. it's a neat place, but it is in terrible shape. there are a ton of tombstones that have fallen over and the roads are potholed something fierce.

that night, we went to catacomb. joe and jenny showed up with their narghile and it just got funny and crazy. tony and joe agreed to dance at amateur night at wet on some upcoming tuesday night (tony has joe's moves down pat, but smoother). we just have to get them each a pair of breakaway cargo pants, so they can do it right. tony actually said that anything we want him to wear ("including a pink tutu"), he'll wear. he just thinks it's a great idea.

he and joe were both on fire last night, actually. it was good to see tony in such a good mood. he's been going through some rough times lately and it's good to see him smiling and happy. joe and jenny hadn't been out in a long while, either, and it was good to see both of them, too. all in all, it was a good night. (joe lost the directions to the afterparty at scott the 70s satanist/pornstar, though. he was disappointed. apparently tony went, though. we have yet to hear details.)

today, shannon and i watched the end of shanghai noon (owen wilson is so hysterical). then we headed uptown to see party animals at the old woodward and lothrop building. unfortunately, the walk for the cure was still going on, so traffic around 14th and pennsylvania was awful. we tried to head up 11th street and found out that we couldn't go any further. i asked the cop at 11th and e how we could get to 10th and f from there and he said that we had to go up to 17th street and loop around.

shannon was ready to just say "fuck it" and go home, but i refused to admit defeat. we took 395 under the mall to l'enfant plaza and parked right in the heart of the ugliest part of the district (next to the hud building and all those industrial nightmares that house the postal service and the l'enfant plaza mall). we walked through the garden behind the smithsonian castle and got on with the tourists at the smithsonian metro and took the metro up to metro center.

the exhibit was wonderful. there are two hundred animals on display (100 donkeys and 100 elephants). i don't know when they get put on the streets of the city, but it was cool to be able to see them all in one place, all at once. there were a lot of really neat designs and we took a handful of pictures.

afterwards, we went across the street to check out the new digs for grafixx tattoos but they aren't open on sundays yet. then we had lunch at potbelly sandwiches. yum.

then home. shannon's napping and the laundry is almost done. it's been a beautiful day in the neighborhood. i hope your weekend was as fun as ours was.

small things today.

a review of episode ii (from michael). it looks really, really good. i'm looking forward to seeing this movie like you wouldn't believe.

on an unrelated note, here's an article about how much sex education should be pointed at children. and the random masturbation synonym generator. because it's silly.

oh yes. and if you don't read nerve, you should read today's issue. many good articles. hie thee there at once!

rereading my post from last night, i see that i forgot to mention one of the big things that's dragging on me: the fact that i haven't been able to make solid, reliable long-term plans. my ex-wife used to hate that about me. she hated the fact that i had accepted the fact that life is mutable and that anything can happen between now and six months from now.

i see what she was talking about now. i want to make solid plans. i want to have a future to look forward to. to work towards. but right now, i'm so wrapped up in "catching up" that i can't do that. and it pisses me off. i don't want to be an irresponsible twit. i want to be the guy that other people can rely on. i want to have something tangible after several years? months? of effort. i want to have something to show for all of my work. (something besides a trio of unpublished novels, i mean.)

when did life get so uncertain? i hate that.

i also hate the fact that i disappointed shannon last night (money and the fact that i threw away our home dry-cleaning kit by accident. the second one wasn't a big deal, but it was adding insult to injury). like i said, i want to be reliable. and yesterday i wasn't. big time. and i hate that. this is the last apology i'll offer about it, but i still feel really bad.

we watched buckaroo banzai last night, which was funny. it was good to laugh and be silly and not worry about things for a few hours. i liked that. escapism did not fail me.

tonight, we're going to dollhouse. i get to swap booger for shannon once we get there (it makes sense if you know that shannon and lori are going to see hedwig beforehand and we'll meet them at the club). and that's my morning. nothing exciting. just me, fretting at my own stupidity.

i'm spitting off my balcony just now and i look down at the tree directly below me. last week, it was a bare twig sticking out of the ground. now it has leaves. when did that happen?

there are two good quotes from the manuscript found in saragossa. "An animal wills, remembers, combines, weighs up alternatives and decides. It thinks but it doesn't think about its thinking..."

and

"Conscience is partly man's own creation, since what is bad in one country is good in another. But in general, conscience warns of what abstraction has placed under the one or the other sign, that is, good or evil. Animals are incapable of such abstraction. They therefore have no conscience and cannot be guided by it. So they are therefore not susceptible of reward or punishment other than that which we inflict on them for our convenience and not for theirs."

i found them to be compelling statements, which means that i spent a good ten minutes on the metro staring off into space rather than actually reading the book in my hand. it's an odd sensation, because i'm used to grappling with these kinds of things from time to time. the culture list is there whenever i feel like exercising my mind. and i appreciate that. but lately, my brain has been shutting down. lethargy has set in.

some of it comes from situation. i'm destitute (not horribly so, but it's a bummer being in debt. and overdrawn. and a week away from payday.) i'm in a state of limbo over a number of different things in my life. my grandfather is in the hospital, i'm looking for a new job, we've decided to not go to our favorite club anymore (which is a big step for us - we've been regulars there for two years), i'm taking what i hope to be substantial steps towards getting my novel published. y'know. things are going on. but that's the problem, i think. my brain is too active on the "let's do things" side - of necessity, mind - but not so much on the "get organized" or the "be creative" portions of my brain.

that's a problem for me. i'm a mess. i'm organized only when i have to be because i like clutter. or i can't be bothered to maintain organizational structures (which means i'm lazy). i'm leaning towards laziness, myself. so i have things that it would be good to get organized for. finding a job. getting my finances in order. getting published. writing out the story idea lodged in my mind so i can give it kyle for feedback.

the other thing is my creativity. my mind is active (or needs to be) but lately i've been travelling over familiar ground. only because the authors that i'm reading right now are travelling it as well and they do a much better job of using the territory than i ever could. so i'm envious. not a cardinal sin, you understand. but it galls because i can recognize the limitation in myself. i think. and, in doing so, i think about thinking.

i can see the creative apathy in my art. the fact that my subscription to red clouds is running out is probably a good thing. it will force me to look elsewhere for good images to work with. when i get around to working with images again. i think i'm going to stop for a while. i have enough for the right click gallery, but i'm just redoing the same effects over and again. i'm not saying anything new.

which is part of the problem. i'm a writer. i write because it's good for me to express myself where and when the mood strikes me. otherwise they get trapped inside, spinning around like a moth in a bottle. and the impulse is to set those moths - those ideas - free. but lately, i've only had one set of ideas in my head. granted, they're fully formed and waiting to be set loose. but i just don't feel the pull to write them down.

the drive is not gone. it's just that i don't feel like working with these ideas right now. i want to get ambitious. and i know i can't. not right now. it's frustrating, let me tell you. circumstances. what a pain in the ass.

okay. funny story and then it's time to go get shannon.

oops. i was on the modem line and wasn't paying attention. (which got me into a bad place today. blah.)

funny story, then dinner. someone on a message board was talking about how "threesomes are a pain in the ass."

my comment to a friend who'd read the same thread was "if they're a pain in the ass, she should be using more lube." heh.

enough. dinner time.

various weird things on the internet. another odd clock. from the same site is this wild ribbon (try leaving the browser window open and going about your daily business and see what patterns your mouse movements have made). a weird flash movie about peanut butter. the oddest lyrics you've ever seen (i like the one about the hippo).

and a neat looking sci-fi book. the link thing from boing boing won't work, so here's the description:

The book is set against a backdrop of copyright-maximialist galactic civilization in which all sensoria is mediated, and depending on which license fees you pay, you see and hear different parts of the real world (i.e., banners, facades, etc). Nanofabricated artefacts and genetic material is all copyrighted ad infinitum, so that rightsholder robber-barons extract royalties at light-speed-lagged removes. In the foreground is a cult whose mission is to prevent humanity from artificially evolving itself into a post-sapient species that builds spaceships the way beavers build dams.

let's see. what else? not much. shan beat me at othello last night. we didn't even finish the board. we just got to a point where neither of us could play anymore and the game was over.

tonight we're planning to watch buckaroo banzai. that should be fun. and life is just meandering along. so no real news, y'know?

again with the blahs. i think i'm burnt out at this job. maybe i should listen to something other than tommy dorsey first thing in the morning. something peppier. with more pep, that is.

so. links. i know you want them. you know you want them. how about something interesting about attention rights? like we don't have enough advertising being shoved down our throats, right? we need to have the judicial system telling us that for every song we listen to, we're also legally obligated to listen to an ad that supports that song. uh huh. pop up ads for intellectual property. wonderful. as copyright infringement becomes less cohesive, the best bet is always to put things in that are going to make people respect intellectual property less. good strategy.

and here's something from clean sheets about masturbation. just because.

i'm thinking seriously about what to do with my writing. where to go. what direction to head in. that sort of thing. just pondering, but getting ready to make a move, too. more as i get details and am ready to release them. and i'm ready for nerve to get back to me about my article. any time now. (yes, i know it's only been two months, but still!)

and i've noticed that i'm back to once-a-day posting. sorry about that. i've been lethargic. nothing interesting to say, really.