January 30, 2003
Visions of bathrooms
I was walking home from work today and thinking about the future. I apparently should have been thinking about the present because I walked right into a rather large man, knocking him to the ground. Looking down at him on the sidewalk I realized that I probably should have seen him given that he was blue-skinned and wearing nothing but a vest and yellow pants.
"Congratulations, sir" he said and smiled at me, still not getting up.
I offered my hand to him: "Sorry about that, I didn't even see you". I was trying to ignore the blue skin as hard as I could.
"You have won my services for a few hours, don't feel sorry" he replied, still smiling and looking quite comfortable laying diagonally across the line between the sidwalk blocks.
"Ok, and what does that mean?" I reply sheepishly. I'm playing along now with this crazy person, all the while trying to keep the phrase 'Alien Male Hooker' below the surface.
"I am a genie, one of the last in fact".
"You mean like a 3 wishes sort of genie?". (This crazy person game is fun.)
"Well not really. You were thinking about your future and so I will give you 3 images from your future for you to look at for 3 seconds each. After this you can ask me 3 questions about each."
"Why all the 3s?" I ask, somehow suprised at how I am playing along. My only questions is why 3s? How about asking him where he got that vest/pants combo, the I-Never-Want-To-Have-Sex-R-Us?
"You said 3, I never did".
"Ok, so if I had said 40 then I would be able to see 40?"
"Yes, of course".
"Crap."
"Yep. So, are you ready to get started?"
"What sort of 'images' do you mean anyway? Like visions or pictures?"
"Well, I go and pick a random day in your life at a random time in the future. I then pick a random second in the day and take a snapshot of what your future self is looking at. I then show this to you. You then ask me three questions about what the hell you are looking at, and I answer them".
"Ok, sounds good." (I should run into strange mean more often. Ew, glad I didn't say that one outloud.)
"Ok, first one coming up."
He is suddenly standing, and looks over my shoulder - concentrating now, and then laughing like a little girl all of a sudden. Not good - my future is funny. He turns back to me.
"Ok, we have the first one."
Before I can say anything I look around and all I can see, no matter where I turn my head, is the wall of what looks like a very large bathroom. It is maybe five feet away. It is white, tiled, and clean. There is a magazine in the very corner of the image. The image fades and I focus on the blue teeth that are now visible from my companion.
"Can't do much about that, the times are picked completely randomly."
"Seriously, me taking a shit, this is just a waste of time. Half the time I am sleeping anyway - the other two could be just as bad."
"Ok, do you have any questions?"
"About what, my bathroom?"
"Yes. 2 more."
"What?"
"The bathroom. 1 more".
"Piece of crap... Ok, since the bathroom appears to be big, am I rich?"
"Well, I don't know your definition of rich, but it isn't your bathroom, so I can't really tell."
"What?, this is just a waste."
"Well, I didn't make you any promises, and it is not like you have anything to lose."
"Yeah, go ahead". (Maybe I am on TV - but how am I seeing these thing?)
I'm pissed off - I have important walking to do - and I am not prepared for the next image and only see it for a split second. It is of a person, sitting across from me in a restaurant. I can't tell if they are male of female, but they are smiling. My glance at the image makes it seem blurry to me, but the smile is front and center, and very clear.
"Who is that?"
"A friend".
"What age am I in this picture?"
"You are 35".
"Wow". For some reason this answer hits me like a ton of bricks. I had never really thought of what I would be doing that far from now. It is very strange to think of my future self. What am I like? Who am I? What do I look like? I am suddenly very afraid. There is so much that could happen to me.
"Am I ok then?"
He sort of gives me a weird look and then says: "Of course you are. I can only tell you what was in the picture, but you seem to be having a good time, and your friend is too. You know, that was a waste of a question, dumbass."
"Ok." (This is a lot to process. Shouldn't this be making me feel better? Did he just call me a dumbass? Am I on TV? Is his tongue really yellow?)
The next image is of a girl, a strikingly cute one, standing in front of me with one hand on her hip, the other one raised in an effort to get me to look at something off to the right. I don't - thank god-, and I am left staring at her profile and the way her hair is tucked behind her ears. She is maybe 17 - I am really bad at guessing ages - but she is very pretty.
The image disappears and I am left wondering. Who is this girl? I seem to be enthralled with her in some way - we are close enough to argue it appears. Then a very scary thought enters my head.
"Is my wife going to leave me?"
"No."
"Am I old at this time?"
"Yes."
(Crap, should have asked how old.)
"Well, then who is the girl?"
"Your daughter".
"My daughter?"
"3 questions only please."
Everything suddenly falls into place. I have a daughter. I am ok, and we are ok. Of course she was striking, she takes after her mother. I am breathe out slowly, I feel my hands tingle and I stretch my arms out in front of me and look past them to me legs.
I start to walk home. My companion goes back to hide in the bushes.
01:25 PM part of
stories
January 29, 2003
Today
"It's today!" said Piglet. "My favorite day," said Pooh.
05:20 PM part of
inspiration
January 27, 2003
Dreams
From my apartment complex's on-hold voiceover:
Come experience a type of living that you thought could only happen in dreams.
I am guessing that this dream is the one where I am drowning in my own apartment due to an unfixed roof leak.
08:49 PM part of
personal
Intelligence and arrogance
There is nothing more confusing to me than someone who is arrogant about being smart. I have met many, many such people in my days and it just doesn't make sense. Let's break it down.
There are two types of ways that you could be arrogant about "being smart": being arrogant about having a lot of intelligence and being proud of knowing a lot. Now, I will not go into what "intelligence" means here (the ability to remember, to process, to identify trends, etc.) but this seems like the natural divisions of silly arrogant smart people:
1. I am a genius.
2. I know everything about x
I will start with 1.
I am a pretty tall person, about 6'2". There are a lot of people taller than me in the world, but overall I am probably in the top 5% of people in terms of height worldwide. I am not proud of this fact and do not hold my head up high to show people how tall I am. This is because I had absolutely nothing to do with me being tall.
People who are arrogant about being smart are bragging about being tall. Science thinks that smart kids are born smart and are influenced by their environment to be smarter. This brings us to our second point.
If you know everything about x then this is because you studied it for a long time. While I personally believe that you can never know everything about any subject without being silly, stupid, or blind to your own ignorance about the world, let's assume that you do.
You have worked hard, and are a worldwide expert in microwaves. You know everything about microwaves and you dominate Microwave Jeopardy at parties. For years you have studied in a graduate student cubbyhole, pouring over thousands of articles and user manuals, learning everything about these fascinating machines.
After all these years of study how can you be arrogant about your knowledge? Do you feel that other people could also reach this level of knowlege if they put in the same amount of work? Hmmm. If you do then you can't be arrogant about reaching this level; that would be like being arrogant of crossing the street. So you must feel as if only you could reach this goal only. You are uniquely destined to master the microwave. Why? Because you are smarter than most people and have the dedication and ability. This is just being proud of being smart.
So, what I am trying to say is the following. To be arrogant about anything is silly because to get somewhere you do two things:
1. Use your inborn skills, which are given to you through genetics, environment, and anything else beyond your control.
2. Work very hard.
To be arrogant about 1 is stupid because you had nothing to do with it. To be arrogant about 2 is silly because anybody can work as hard as you if they want it.
In order to be truly arrogant you basically have to believe that you are smart and that you are the only one that has the dedication to reach where you are. To believe this or that you are the smartest person ever born is quite simply immature given the changing nature of the world.
So overall I feel that arrogance about being "smart" or general arrogance about anything for that matter, is a form of immaturity.
05:38 PM part of
a balanced breakfast
You
I am sitting in the dark in a large place with hundreds of people, watching a Christmas pageant. As Frosty the Snowman makes his much anticipated appearance somebody starts to cough, then another, then someone right behind me.
My first thought is not of allergies or of them coughing up tears, but of gas. Nerve gas, mustard gas, tear gas brought upon by you.
03:21 PM part of
personal
January 24, 2003
Snow
Driving along a familiar road.
"There's a house there, what the fuck?"
"With a lake! It's only like fifty feet from the road!"
07:58 PM part of
personal
January 22, 2003
At Lunch
I am at lunch.
I take a bite of the spinish orzo dish that has been prepared lovely for me. I am taken to the apartment of my now sister-in-law but then just my brother's girlfriend. It was in a bad neighborhood and my parents didn't want them to live there; she was alone and it was dangerous. "So close to the river!" they said - visions of the swamp thing danced in their head? I went there twice, and ate there the second time. The first time they had baby rabbits, and I remember them being cold and lying next to their space heater. We didn't know that they were both living there so she was pretty safe since my brother was trained in the killing of the various river creatures that might appear - salmon was his specialty. It is very strange to see them there in that tiny apartment, smaller even with the bathroom and kitchen than their living room now - the one with nothing in it but the old rabbit cage (and rabbit).
Take another bite.
I am alone, sitting in my apartment at two in the morning. It is a large studio and very quiet - like a tomb almost. It is raining and every twenty minutes like clockwork I hear the bus go by. I open the window to hear the rain, taking off my headphones - not sure what noise prompted me to experience real sound. On my way back to my desk I smell the couple next door's cooking. They don't speak very much English but are very polite. We have never spoken really, I can just tell by body language. I wonder if they think that I can't either since I walk the same way - with my head down - avoiding.
Again.
We are all sitting at my Uncle's table, the cousins and us. He has cooked and since he is a chef it is something very simple - pasta with butter it appears to me but I am too young to understand. This was before the divorce so his kids were there and happy to be there - a strange sort of memory this one, so foreign now.
I wish I had more.
06:09 PM part of
personal
coffee
I am bitter and hot, burning your mouth and causing that sweet part of your tongue to moan about your inattentiveness.
The fact that I am comforting on a cold day is a coincidence only, a consequence of me being out of my natural habitat. I was meant to burn more than the hot sun under which I grow, to cause bitter little burns on the tip of your tongue on the first sip, to cause your face to squint in like your eyes do.
But you cover me in whipped cream and carry me around like little hand warmers when it is bitterly cold outside. I am bitterly hot but you splash me with caramel and cinnamon, rock sugar and white mocha. That way when you sip me I am sweet and sour, cold and warm.
I am angy, quiet. Steaming in my own warm bath, brewing about the unfairness of the world. But my owners, my drinkers are perky loud people who are full of energy. I sustain them and they rely on me, only feeling like me when they can't have me at the very start of the morning, when the wind slices them to their core and their eyes squint and look out onto the world bitterly, another day.
04:28 AM part of
ever-growing evidence of a deep obsession with coffee
January 21, 2003
Without
I want to live alone on the top floor of a large apartment complex overlooking a park that always has somebody walking. I would place my laptop down next to a huge bay window and write or code. I would have no friends. Most of my days would be spent looking out the window watching people walk around. In the mornings I would get up and run through the park and then go get a coffee downstairs in a very large friendly coffee shop with many attractive customers who were always in a hurry. I would never speak to anyone but just sit with my screen and look out the window.
If someone wanted to speak to me, especially a woman or employer, I would respond with riddles and refer them to my website. I would be a mystery, and very attractive to some, who would peer at me from across the street with silly-looking FBI binoculars that look like bazookas. I would act like I didn't see them and then go for a walk through the park.
When I walk I would put on headphones and a hood over my head. I wouldn't play any music, but would just look around at people's faces.
10:10 PM part of
personal
McKee Recursion
Beautiful.
10:05 PM part of
linkage
January 19, 2003
Adventures in capitalism
We made it! Our little buzzer goes off, vibrating and lighting up frantically to show us and everyone else that we are now the chosen, the ones who makes it to the show. We wade through the crowd and proudly hand it over. Number 52. A proud moment. Prouder moment still as we move past the people waiting for space around the bar. What fools! Our method may be conservative, it may play by their rules, but where is your fucking table? Now I can allow myself to be hungry.
Later, in a bath store, we come across a large area full of pillows. All sort of pillows: feather, down, cotton, human hair, etc. All on display and ready for touching. A Pillow petting zoo. We take them down and lie down on the floor to try them out. Do a lot of people do this? I hope so, it is quite fun. Who uses the 'pure' feather pillows? I mean really - you can feel the end of the feathers like little freakin' razor blades in your head. SM people? Are there cameras recording pillow petting zoo behavior?
Later still we are waiting in line at an ice cream shop. The protocol is simple, step up and order. French Vanilla Yogurt with Oreo. What is the Oreo topping protocol? Do they buy Oreo's and then break them up at the store? Probably not, they buy them like that: from the Oreo people or from a third party? Do they have the cream center in them smushed up with the other stuff or is it just the delicious outer crust? If there is no cream then Oreo has two lines of business: cookies and parts. There are then separate managers for each. Hi, I am Bob Robertson, Director of Oreo Crumbs. Huge factories creating the crumbs. Are they smushed up in the same building that regular Oreo's are made? Are there division rivalries? I hate those crumb people, they aren't like us. They have no soul; no creamy center. Or maybe it is just a couple of janitors sweeping the floor of manufacturing. VP of Crumb Acquisition and his Assistant. Any way you get them they are quite good.
04:37 AM part of
personal
The breaks
Tonight (in the last 30 minutes) I have:
· Gotten our new XP system to talk to the router and learned about routers and Windows networking.
· Repaired a corrupted ext2 filesystem on my laptop and learned about how fsck, etc. work.
· Figured out why I couldn't import my blogger entries and fixed my template.
In the last few days at work I have:
· Lost a lot of code right before I needed it, requiring somebody to go get it on a backup from another office.
· Witnessed a database crash that lost two weeks of work.
· Witnessed a bug that actually caused embedded software to destroy hardware.
Them's the breaks.
01:07 AM part of
tech
January 17, 2003
Sweet Spot
There is a huge difference between software that works and good software. Good software provides you with the right set of options for what you do normally while providing you with a way to customize that application when you do weird things. Sometimes this means just a series of configuration settings; sometimes it means you have the source. This is the sweet spot where you stop fighting the software and use it to get something else done.
I just started using Movable Type as my weblogging software after using Blogger and messing around with GreyMatter, Radio Userland, and home-grown solutions. With each of these systems I found some major flaw that I simply couldn't deal with: doesn't produce good markup, too much upkeep, runs locally, costs too much, etc. When I finally found a solution that I was happy with I simply stopped thinking as much when I publish things.
Movable Types asks me simple questions:
- Would you like to customize the post page? [it has good common options already]
- Where would you like to ping when you update? [it can ping already to the two post popular sites]
- How would you like to do your archives? [it already is creating monthly and weekly ones for me]
- Would you like to enter Power-Mode? [regular mode is great, but not if you like to edit a lot of entries at the same time, a suprisingly common task]
If I ever decide that I would like to change the way I do things I can - but after my first few uses I am still simply using the default settings for everything, allowing me to forget about things that I used to worry about like valid markup, syndication in RSS, working archives, etc.
This software sweet spot seems to be getter rarer to me. As part of a series of New Year's resolutions I have decided to start being very methodical about keeping a family budget. Since I have never done this before I fired up Microsoft Excel and starting typing in numbers to see what I spend money on (number one conclusion: food and books, and I should start walking to work). Since Microsoft Excel isn't really made for this sort of thing I quickly tired of it and found myself wanting to do a few basic things like setup a template budget and create pie charts of actual spending, etc.
So I fired up Quicken New User Edition (why was Basic Edition not a good name?) that we bought apparently with our new system a few weeks ago. Quicken is very popular, but I know absolutely nothing about it except that you use it to manage money. So I fired it up and starting looking around for budget stuff. After some proding it revealed itself and I started plugging in numbers. It created pie charts, calculated weekly, monthly, yearly figures (I spend $900 a year on Internet access?!) After entering the basics like power and car insurance I spent a good ten minutes trying in vain to find out how to add a new category for Reading materials (my computer books and my wife's magazines). Looking at my Excel spreadsheet I had a few categories that weren't in Quicken and I had only been doing this for thirty minutes total. So after more gentle nudging I found that you could setup new categories but you have to setup your accounts (as in actual checking and savings) through Quicken and then create new categories. Quicken would then create the budget automatically for you. Not wanting to sign my life away I am still searching for a program that will hit the very large middle ground where I can do only a simple family budget.
Finding this sweet spot where the average user can do simple, common tasks easily while at the same time keeping them as users when they start doing uncommon, advanced tasks is very hard to do. Blogger is a wonderful weblogging tool, but as my needs became more sophisticated it couldn't scale with me. Most software companies have trouble with large products like Quicken or Microsoft Office because they are used by so many people. Although I am hard on Microsoft, I do understand that user-focus is very hard to do when your customer base is best described as the worldwide computer user market. How do you know how many users only want to do a budget? Ask them.
At work our specialty is user-focus because we are so small. It is much easier to find out what your users are doing when we are already tailoring each system for them to begin with. We deal with airlines, military, public transportation systems, etc. and we are constantly trying to figure out what each operator does often each day (For example, a 911 dispatcher needs an Emergency mode and Emergency clear button to set priorities on calls). Even in such a small company it is hard to define user needs because they change with time. After we deploy a system to a customer the operators change their behavior to the new systems and start using them differently. They complain and we fix. All in the name of the sweet spot.
11:37 AM part of
tech
January 16, 2003
Footprints
One night a man had a dream. He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the Lord. Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. For each scene, he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand; one belonged to him and the other to the Lord. When the last scene of his life flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of his life there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times in his life.
So in his dream he asked the Lord about it.
"Why are there only one set of footprints during my hardest times?"
"Those are your footprints; I was flying around during those times."
"Flying?.... Flying Jesus?"
"Yes. But the flying is a little redundant anyway; you wouldn't say Flying Superman would you? It is assumed that I can fly - I am Jesus Christ, I can do anything."
"Why were you flying above me during those times when I needed you the most?"
"Why do you assume that I wasn't helping you? Just because I was flying around doesn't mean I wasn't helping you. I can help you from anywhere. I multitask; I am Jesus Christ."
"Why weren't you flying around during the good times, but only the bad?"
"Well, to be honest you are sort of a dick when you are going through bad times and you tend to be a jerk to people for no reason. I like to not see your face so much when you are like that. I put some much work into you that when you are happy I like to be there then though."
"Did you just say di..."
"Dick? Yes. Oh, here we go."
"But you are Jesus, you can't cuss"
"The word dick is of the earth - just like asshole, fuck, shit, bitch, etc. They are simply words that you people have decided (without my intervention) are bad. Most, like dick, bad because they were used by a particular group of people that the majority didn't like. So if you said them then you were like the oppressed minority and so they were bad to say."
"But in the bible.."
"That is something completely different. When a group of people took over another group destroying their civilization they also took in small bits of their culture including some of their vocabulary. But some cultures were so against other groups that they thought that they could decide what you should and should not say, so they decided that words from them were evil and should not be said."
"Ok, that makes sense, but what about not cursing and not taking the Lord's name in vain..."
"Well, that pisses me off big time. "
"Which one?"
"Well I don't like it when people say goddamn or go to hell because those are orders and I don't like you guys bossing me around. I also don't like it when people say Jesus Fucking Christ because it sounds to me like Bob Fucking Robert (if your name was Bob) and I don't like the sound of that at all."
"So you are against faggots?"
"Well, now that is another term that I am not quite fond of. It is similar in some ways to nigger, which I don't like either. Here is why. All words mean nothing. Study a different language and you will learn this. You will also learn that all words mean everything; they have complex meanings that cannot be defined even by the people who understand them the best and use them everyday. Words like faggot and nigger are said during violent acts against fellow humans. They cause real pain to people even when they aren't followed up by violence."
"Well in that case don't words like asshole hurt to? I mean there are people who can be offended by words like this if they aren't used to them then they sound very harsh and can hurt."
"Very good. This is true. You see I don't really care what people say but what they mean by it and what other people think that they mean. If you says Jesus Christ when you stub your toe I don't really mind because you probably aren't really meaning it. When you say Jesus Christ when your car hydroplanes I listen."
"This has been very enlightening."
"Well, I am Jesus. That is sort of part of my job description."
"Can you create a rock too big for you to lift?"
"Salamanders"
"What?"
"Words don't mean anything. Didn't I just tell you that? It doesn't matter what I say. It matters what I do."
"Umm.. So if you wanted to create a rock that you couldn't lift then you could otherwise you couldn't or wouldn't create it, right?"
"I don't think that you are understanding this at all."
"Well then if you can't do anything with talk then tell me how I can see your actions."
"Well, first of all they have nothing to do with rocks. You guys are so tied up in the physical it is amazing. The rock thing is not my favorite form of mental masturbation that you guys do. My favorite is your idea of heaven. I once heard this sunday school class talk about whether or not a crack addict's heaven would be a room full of crack for all eternity. Amazing, like twenty minutes worth."
"Well?"
"Well what? I told you, it has nothing to do with crack rocks."
"Very funny"
"What? You didn't expect Jesus to be funny? Who do you think invented humor anyway? Do you think it evolved?"
"Well, I haven't really thought of that. I just thought that humor is just part of us. In-born. Fish don't have senses of humor. Or maybe we learn it. Some families are just funny because the parents have a sense of humor while other people just don't laugh much."
"Physical again all over. Genetics or environment. Both of those are so physical it makes me want to teach you how to fly just to show you. What are you thinking right now?"
"What do you mean. Don't you know?"
"I do, but the point is that you don't. When I said I was going to teach you to fly you got all excited about what it would feel like to see everything from above, to feel the wind. Then you thought about how it would be cool to be the only person who had ever flown. This made you proud and then you thought about how you are talking to Jesus and how people aren't going to believe this - pride. Just a complex form of physical pleasure. Physical, physical, physical."
"Wow."
"Why are you so amazed? No physical explanation. No computer wire between you and me. You are so hard-wired to think about things empirically that you can't even imagine the fact that right now you are back at home dreaming in your bed unless you imagine time passing. But it isn't. I just took you away and talked to you for ten minutes, but when you physically return no time will have passed. Sounds like bullshit doesn't it?"
"Yes."
"Well, there you go. "
"Are you saying that the talk is over?"
"Well pretty much, you only have one question left to ask me."
"No I don't... Oh! What is the meaning of life?"
"Salamanders."
"What?... You have-"
"Just kidding. Man you are quick to get angry aren't you? Listen very closely as this applies to you especially."
"Ok."
"Be nice to people."
"That's it!"
"That's a lot! I, Jesus Christ, just told you to be nice to people and you are yelling at Me, the Son of God approximately .8 seconds after I told you how to live the rest of your life."
"Oh. Sorry. Are you mad?"
"I don't get mad, I can't. That is the point. I can do anything I want - from simply destroying the world to tripping random joggers to turning up the volume on pain. But I don't."
"But what about floods and earthquakes?"
"Rocks."
"So what do you do exactly?"
"Well that is what you will spend the rest of your life doing."
"Oh. Not very comforting."
"Oh, I'm comforting, but you asked."
"Ok. Well, thanks. "
"See you later. Hehe."
"Why do you laugh?"
"Inside joke. Wouldn't it be silly to tell your jogging partner see you later as you ran beside him on the first lap? Hehe!"
01:06 AM part of
stories
January 15, 2003
The end
"You know this is it for me" he said in between spitting out a little of the large chunk of tobacco that he had stuck between his inner bottom lip and front teeth onto the concrete floor of the auditorium.
We were trying to listen to the speech, trying to give the guy a break. After all it is pretty hard to speak in front of three thousand people who are older than you mostly about the significance of an event that they have already done and that you are doing: you don't know what the fuck you are talking about and everyone knows it.
He had placed the tobacco there while we were lined up behind the bleachers. Well, while we were lining up - there had been some confusion as to where everyone was supposed to be since most people just remembered who was in front of them and a few people either hadn't been at the rehearsal or hadn't shown up for the real thing. So we had a bunch of groups of people who were in order but the groups were all out of order. After a couple of minutes of a few people taking charge and figuring this out he had simply yelled down the row "Everybody just fucking ask the person in front and behind you what their damn name is and keep moving up or back until it is fucking right" and then turned to me and grabbed my little honors tassle gently between his thumb and index finger and said "See, we don't need none of this bullshit to do this". Bubble sort, parallel processing, complex adaptive systems. Looking back on it he was drunk but I didn't know it at the time not knowing what drunk people act like when they have managed to cover up all the obvious things like speech and smell and walk. After all this takes practice and you don't come across very many of this level when you are that young.
"Yeah" I said, not knowing what to say this is always what I said.
"Yeah" he replied with a little grin and then quickly turned away from me and looked out into the audience.
03:05 PM part of
stories
Daily Blessing
I came home from work today while it was still light for the first time in a few weeks. It was barely light, dusk really, where everything looks like a well-shot movie: the golden hour directors use for their best shots.
About five minutes out a huge flock of birds were sitting in a field on a very large farm on my way. Right, and I mean right, as I passed them they flew overhead onto some trees to my left, passing from the dark field where the sun had already exited behind the farmhouse to the brush on the other side where the trees were still soaking in the light. As each bird passed over they changed from black to a strong grayish white color Escher-like as they flew into the direct sunlight.
A million things could have prevented me from seeing this today - any delay during the long day for even five seconds could have caused the performance to happen behind my speeding car or around the next corner - but none of them did.
06:05 AM part of
inspiration
January 13, 2003
Between sleep and dreams
All these days are cloudy, dangerous, soon.
Last night as I was falling asleep at a very late hour I was in that state where I was asleep but could be woken up by sound or interesting thought. My interesting thought, which woke me up enough to make me remember to think about it today, was the above - and at the time it seemed like a nice way of describing my life right now although maybe a little more harshly than needed.
11:09 PM part of
personal
January 07, 2003
Stories beginning with 'who'
who she thinks to herself, the one and only question, the smallest question and the biggest echoing in her head as she stares out the window again. It was a very big deal for her to get the office with the window, the two windows; it is a big prestige thing but all it seems to have done is completely alienate her from everybody else as if she didn't have enough of that as is. She has tried all the configurations of her office, even drawing little charts that map out where her desk will go and where the electric outlets are and other design constraints - she has spent hours on this, weeks - all in an effort to avoid staring out the window so much. She likes to stay in her office during lunch and look down from there, it is the only time when she does it and doesn't feel guilty about doing it. It only takes about five minutes for her to eat her little sandwich because she eats it as fast as she can, not wanting the little terribly sad memory of her alone in the apartment making a week's worth of sandwiches to ruin an otherwise good lunchbreak. She used to get sad towards the end of the week, but now she makes three new ones every Wednesday and then four new ones every Friday so that they aren't so alone. Every once in awhile she wishes she had binoculars or a telescope, but maybe that would ruin the point - she is so high up here and she can't really make out people's faces anyway from here - of watching them move along in their little groups and making up stories about them. You would think that it would make her sad, but it is the opposite, she takes comfort in how very few of them walk in groups. Maybe she wants binoculars to look onto the other buildings and see other watchers eating their sandwiches by the window.
who's there? She is awake now and terrified. She could feel someone staring at her while she slept, she could see a figure next to her bed. The returning silence is almost too much for her to bear and she scrambles for the lamp and sees her laundry basket staring at her from the foot of the bed. She should have gotten a smaller apartment she thinks to herself as she cuts on the TV. The amazing thing is that the burgular was able to to move it into place without waking her.
who did you expect, fucking hulk hogan? And then I suddenly realized that this was who I wanted her to be.
09:28 PM part of
stories
Stories beginning with 'how'
How can I do this?
More people are killed each year by goats than by airplane crashes.
He is repeating this over and over in his head as he streches out on the pleather seat at the terminal. He is so scared, so completely helpless that he has gotten sleepy, like his body has just given up all hope of survival and shut off, and he is trying to milk it. Maybe he can actually fall asleep and then when he is awaken rudely by the announcement he can just board the plane in a daze and not worry about his life being in other peoples hands - people who used to crap their own pants, who masturbate, who make mistakes. He thinks about plane designers sitting in cubicles drinking coffee and looking at internet porn and shudders.
The announcement comes. Now boarding. Jesus. This is it. He gets up and gets in line without even thinking; cows to the slaughterhouse. He feels stupid and irrational, everybody else is fine, reading their papers and wishing they were just home. I mean if they were afraid of the bus ride to the terminal then he would think they were crazy, wouldn't he?
More people die each year in car accidents than in airplane crashes.
But that doesn't include buses. And that goat stat can't be right because it is international, how many people come into contact with goats? All over the world probably millions. Planes, probably millions, but not the same set, so it really doesn't make a lot of sense. I am in the set of people who fly in planes, so I have a better chance of dying in a plane crash than being stabbed to death by a goat. Have I ever even seen a goat in person, in animal, in real life? That car stat could be the same thing, how do they do these studies, just compare numbers of deaths? Mother-fucking interns comparing numbers, what a life. My whole life, my contentment at this moment controlled by people drinking coffee wishing they were somewhere else.
Boarding time. Takes his seat away from the window, careful to not even look to see if he is near a wing because it shakes and then he can't stop sweating and grabbing the seat in front of him. He tries to relax and leans his head down. The seat to his right is empty and a business man is asleep already leaned up against the, thank god, closed window. Happy place. His fear is so strong now that he doesn't even look up or around, just stares blankly at the seat in front of him and awaits it. He hears a sound to the right of him and turns. Somebody wants to sit down but his elbow is in their seat. It is a nice looking older man with a goat on a rope leash.
How in the hell did I get here he thinks to himself, clutching the map and trying hard to see without his inside light. Damned old car, no heat and no light - the only two things that he needs right now. I always do stuff like this don't I? Where is the hotel, this town is so small it seems like only an idiot would get lost. Or is it could get lost. Well, obviously I could and would get lost. Aren't they sort of another tense of can and will: could and would. I can get lost and I will get lost. But in the future, the unknown, since I am a fool I could get lost, and I would get lost, knowing me.
"How do you explain this?" the attorney says as he whips out a manila folder full of pictures of the victim with the accused when they were younger. This flies in the face of his claim that he has never met her and just happened to be walking by her apartment near the time of the crime. This is one of those Matlock moments about six or seven minutes before the end of the hour when everything falls into place that are so very rare in actual trials and instead of furiously writing down the details so that he can do an proper write-up later, he is captivated by the thought that there may in fact be Doritos in the vending machine near the smoking lounge.
09:27 PM part of
stories
Abscense
After an abscense I love the look of text on the screen, of the keys under my fingers, tapping away like two spiders. Like an author returning to a manuscript or just a return to a good book, I am amazed by the structure of the letters; they march along with monotonous precision, but hold great curves of captured imagination.
09:27 PM part of
work
Routine
On the day that she died Sally spent a full fifteen minutes tying her shoelaces. Recently she had developed this thing where she had to get them just right before she could go outside and so she retied the left one three times and the right one eight times before she felt that they were even in tightness and overall comfort. She then stood up, grabbed her bag, threw it over her shoulder, and walked out the door - this shoe business being the last item in her routine.
09:26 PM part of
stories
5 year plan
If I were to ever write a book I would write it about the process of writing books, much like some authors do as their last book after years of churning out good text. This guide to writing from a first-time author would discuss how to type, how to proofread, how to print out, and how to throw away your own work. It would also illustrate how to ignore those that don't like your work and think that you can't spell, allowing you to make up a world in which you can create without ever worrying about what other people think, which should be, after all, your ultimate goal.
My second book would be a romantic novel full of fifty-page love scenes. It would be distributed in its entirety on the back of chinese restaurant menus that I would hand out to people on the street.
My third book would be an in-depth study of something very boring, like the history of microwaves and how they work. It would be written in shorthand on a typewriter and would have no corrections. I will distribute this book by going into a very large university library and placing a copy at the same location on every shelf over a period of two months.
My fourth book would be an in-depth analysis of the rise and fall of a made-up civilization called the Hoowats. This multi-volume work would be quite comprehensive, with juicy primary source documents photographed and arranged nicely within its dense pages, backing up my previously outrageous claims of the overall silliness of the Hoowats. This book would also be distributed by hand in libraries, but will be placed in the Western History sections.
My fifth book would start each and every sentence with a different letter of the alphabet alphabetically starting with 'd'. This cycle would repeat and would serve to keep me, a highly successful five-book author, occupied during its creation. It would not matter what this book is about.
My sixth book would be a legal-crime-mystery-drama with an alcoholic-perverted-divorced lawyer leading an exciting case about a rich-arrogant-genius-teenager in jail for murder-jaywalking-stabbing-double parking-blackmailing. It will be written in French, which I will learn during its creation, and set in Paris, which I will avoid during its creation. It will be distributed only in the United States.
My seventh book would be a childrens' story about a cute bear named Shuggles who goes on an amazing journey over the course of 3,000 pages in very small text with no illustrations.
09:25 PM part of
a balanced breakfast
Death to win32
I hate Windows, and computers in general, often. For all those who share this feeling, I will offer the following advice to relieve your stress every once in awhile. If you ever want to uninstall Windows, do not simply reformat the hard drive, make it pay by deleting the c:\windows directory forcefully while windows is running. Now step back and watch what happens, since this is equivalent to chopping someone's genitials off while they nap and then waking them up. I have done this many times and it always leads to different results. This will help you get out some anger towards Windows, and will serve as a warning to all future computers that you are a crazy mofo who doesn't like unprofessionalism from his machines.
09:24 PM part of
tech
Guide
As part of my never-ending community service I bring you the latest installment of my guide to social situations in the middle class:
How to talk about race around your middle-class friends
1. When describing a small story be sure to mention each black character. White characters can be referred to as 'guys' and 'girls', etc. but all black characters must be specifically referenced as 'black guy', 'black girl', etc.
Example: This black guy ahead of me in line at the post office said that he had been waiting twenty minutes already.
2. To save time during descriptions use 'black', 'chinese', and 'mexican'. Please note that 'chinese' and 'mexican' are used to describe every asian and hispanic person on the planet.
Example: You know, Mary, that black girl who sits near the back. No, not her - the big one, Mary.
3. Use the term 'big black guy' to mean scary, violent, large, angry person. This term is so common it could almost be abbreviatted: BBG as in BBW: big bad wolf.
Example 1: As I rounded the corner at full speed I slammed into somebody, sending us both to the ground. I was ok, but when I looked up I saw that I had run into a big black guy (BBG)
Example 2: Yeah, I used to play a little ball. We used to go down the street and play with these big black guys (BBGS).
4. Feel free to use the term 'black neighborhood' in place of 'high crime neighborhood' or 'low-income' neighborhood.
Example: So we were lost, right, and after driving around we ended up in this huge black neighborhood and we were like oh crap now we better just forget the map and try to drive our way out somehow.
4. Pepper your language with the term 'ghetto' to mean cheap and bad.
Yeah, we went to the play, but it was really small; they all had these ghetto costumes on - it was really sad.
5. Never use the N-word. If you feel as if you have crossed over the line be sure to say 'you know what I mean' and 'not like that', but don't feel too bad about it, because you are a liberal and one of the good ones - you just slipped up while joking around.
6. Feel free to say whatever you want because, after all, you can.
09:24 PM part of
personal
Release
As he began pissing into the water fountain he took a moment to reflect about what had brought him to this point - pissing in the company water fountain at three in the morning. Pissing is often a reflective time, and this was not an exception. It can also be said that pissing anywhere at three in the morning on a Friday night is an ideal time for rumination.
Pissing in a public place, such as a company water fountain in the main hallway, is normally an act of desperation or revenge and you would expect him to be thinking about how miserable his life is, how lonely he is, how his job drains him of his essence, or how he has no purpose, but he was mainly thinking about how he got there. He remembers being frustrated and getting up to get a drink. He had no change. He then went to his car - completely on the other side of the now empty lot - to get some change and as he pushed the key against the lock the little piece of plastic around the top of his key, the part that holds it on the key chain, broke and fell on the ground. He then walked calmly to the fountain and began pissing. After he was done he sort of mentally giggled about how he felt much more refreshed at having produced liquid instead of consuming it. He then went back to his desk and continued working.
09:24 PM part of
stories
Brotherly advice
How to know about music to impress girls
First of all, you need to know the words to some songs. Listen to a song once all the way through without really paying attention to the words at all. This will allow you to hear the 'music' and read the meaning 'between the lines'. It will also free you from the awful realization that most music is really shitty poetry about people having sexual intercourse and then not having sexual intercourse and then talking about it. Next you should obtain the words to the song and listen to it again, this time reading along to yourself. Depending on how quick you are you may need to repeat this process more than once. Please don't spend more than a week doing this, as you will probably become dehydrated. If you cannot find the words, even in this the information age, it is probably best, as dehydration is not pleasant. In this case you should listen to the song many times and sing along to the syllables for months. Hold on to the belief that you know the song during this time, and feel free to substitute words that sound like what you hear. If you are caught singing something stupid in front of a girl, such as 'purple song' in the place of 'my love goes on' then face the laughter and finger-pointing with courage and calmly say that the meaning was lost in translation and that you were into this song months ago when it was popular in Europe.
Feel free to tell girls that you really 'get' the song and that it reminds you of some poetry that you wrote about similar experiences throughout your exciting life. Please note that this will simply not work with the themes from television shows or children's song such as "Mary had a little lamb". That last example sends a very disturbing message to your date.
Be sure to dismiss popular music but don't exert too much energy doing so. Save your disgust for people who are already edgy, creative, and tragic. Tell the girl that Morrison and Kobain were happy little girls compared to the depth and range of your emotions. Feel free to refer to geniuses as talentless idiots cranking out cookie cutters albums. Name a few well-known bands with utter disgust and then quietly whisper that Jimi Hendrix could not play guitar and was faking; everyone was just too high to notice. After you are done ripping apart the top twenty acts of all time, she will ask you what sort of music you listen to. Make up some names and be sure to include a violent one, an ironic one, and one that is sweet sounding. Good names include: "Eat a baby kitten every Sunday", "Roses are bled", and "Eternal tears".
09:20 PM part of
a balanced breakfast
Empty
I got a new chair today unexpectedly. It was very exciting. I was just sitting working when this guy that I only met once who works in the back, the building manager - the one who gave me the sign for my cubicle and my key - came in with a nice blue chair and said "more ergonomic chair" and then walked off. I sat there in my old chair and looked at my new brand new chair for a moment and then sat in it. I spent the rest of the day adjusting and playing with this new chair except for the time in the afternoon when I went to the bathroom and cried for about an hour.
09:15 PM part of
work
Inspired
Inspired by Michael's number 5 I am posting a lot of my stuff that has been on deck today.
09:08 PM part of
linkage
January 06, 2003
Lessons learned
What I learned on my vacation
- There is a gas station between Mobile and Montgomery that is a good forty miles away from any competition. In this gas station they have a sign that says that they are looking for help:
Help wanted
must work nights
must work week-ends.
must have car.
Absent from this list is a secret requirement that is absolutely essential to getting the job; you must be a Christian to even think about working there.
- Some people spend a large part of their lives worrying about things instead of beings.
- Very large casinos pay for the air travel, food, and lodging for people who gamble a lot. They do this because it makes economic sense.
- Families can destroy each other. By the simple act of holding on to pride or the belief that your children must act like you wish them to as adults, parents can rob themselves of the gift of sharing their adult lives with those of their children. Children can be robbed of the gift of wisdom from parents through the continued application of stubborn will. This is all made worse by the fact that families, by being so close, can hurt like no one else.
08:43 PM part of
stories
January 04, 2003
Life lesson
When I was in the first grade my teacher told us that her niece had almost died about a week ago because she swallowed a hard candy, which had gotten stuck in her throat blocking her airpipe and causing her to pass out. After she told the story she lectured us to always eat Life Savers candy because they have a hole in the middle so that if this happens you can still breath a little as opposed to the solid hard candy that almost caused her niece to choke to death.
At the time I was somehow aware of the strangeness of all of this and the fact that Life Savers was suddenly a very strangely appropriate name for the candy. I wasn't sure if her advice was wise or the dumbest thing I had ever heard. I'm still not sure. Perhaps she worked for Life Savers candy.
Here's the interesting part - I don't remember anything else from the entire first grade, including the teacher's name or face.
01:46 PM part of
personal