May 2000, 8 entries

i have the same birthday as cocky bastard. i learned this by making fun of powazek (whom i only linked to in order to get money and fame, you were right josef. although you did make me laugh by saying that we should love him only for his body and not for his brains.) but look what i got instead: reaction (see may 28th’s blog). probably not only to me, but to a hateful world in general.

don’t worry though folks, he’s already received his carefully earned supply of rays of hope. no need to make this ugly.

let’s dissect.

but before i do that, thank you anonymous readers for the plethora of tasteless ecards that you have sent to me with meaningless messages for my birthday. it makes me think that there’s at least one of you out there who has nothing constructive to say, and that makes me happy.

okay, back to powazek: first of all, i’m surprised to see that the same reaction was given by him as was given by so many diarylanders when they encountered negative criticism. it makes me think that the ratio of good to bad feedback he’s received recently has been heavily weighed towards the warm and fuzzy. either that, or this is the best reaction to actually give to such feedback, and i’m immature to expect otherwise.

another possibility: he has invested so much of his life into his blogs that there is no way that we could have misunderstood the most personal core of his inner being and therefore there is no chance in hell that the person i think i hate is any different from person that he really is. that would hurt, i think. i don’t think it’s true though.

another possibility: he wants to be the nice guy. it has gotten him so far in life that it’s become a well oiled act that has him roll over belly up at the first sign of roughplay.

most likely possibility: i call this possibility the britney spears possibility. you are a smart guy, powazek, you have a good job, you have a good eye for design, and here you are on the internet in a place where even your fans that understand you least have a pipeline straight to your ear with the ability to say anything for free and anonymously at that. britney spears fans, i’m assuming, are much like us—bold, angry, and very dumb. we say whatever’s on our mind, with hardly a thought to the personal investment that you’ve made, and to the respect that you no doubt deserve after working so hard. how can i, someone who’s never written a britney spears song, someone who’s never been hired been respected by people that i in turn respected, so easily put forth criticism that is designed to hurt. britney spears has a lot of fans, but she also has a lot of people that probably hate her for no fault of her own (other than that she represents something that some people have come to believe is false and wasteful).

enter powazek. what do you represent. the positive blogger, the happy successful man, the innovative nice guy. mr. spears. is there not plenty to hate, that you represent? i think there is, and like any creative innocent man, especially one that has so much influence over a portion of a community that i eventually want to enter as well, i feel the need to cry out to the PTB (powers that be) and tell you, hello powazek.

i saw ray charles last night at the paramount. he looked just like he did in those pepsi commercials a few years ago. the crowd was interesting—mostly middle aged richies that probably hadn’t gone out to a concert in several years and who now found the opportunity to get wild and drunk. ray left the stage to a standing ovation and the reaction from the crowd was enormous—we wanted him back on stage. normally, this is an acceptable thing to expect, but not when your star is in his 70s. ray was carried off stage and had probably taken out his dentures and put on his bunny slippers and was flipping through pay-per-view by the time it became clear to us that he wasn’t coming back out. lights were on. muzak was playing. the night was warm and wet.

hi powazek.

tonight i’m going to try to see the smashing pumpkins at the paramount—it’s sold out though. but they broke up and everything, and even if their music isn’t that great, the members of the band still come across as beautifully tragic cartoon characters and i need to see their spindly legs.

hi mr p, let’s be friends.

it’s my birthday. weee. and at this moment drunkgirl and sami have gone home. what for, i do not know. bad drunk girl.

i got some feedback from my last entry. i sort of wonder if i really am a blanket of hate. i don’t think i am. and neither do i think i’m a lexicon (i had to look that up). i mean, i have sort of used the dissatisfaction of youth as my staple during my time here, but to use the word “hatred” in the most general sense is to use it negatively. i really don’t think that i’ve been using it negatively. i have been trying to express dissatisfaction as a fact of life, and as a catalyst for bigger and better things. write better. be better. you know the show. i want to be honest here, and although i am sort of 80% water and 20% hate, i do not want to alienate those who are like me, those who cannot find a definition for themselves and fit in.

goodnight. wish me a good two four.

i was watching the fight club again and saw edward norton smoking. it reminded me of something i had forgotten. yesterday there was a going away party for me and i had a few drinks. some beer and then a few shots of tequila. almost everyone was buying me tequila and i think there were two stolen from me while i was gone to the bathroom, but i’m not sure. anyway, near the end when people were leaving i remember holding a cigarette and being burned as it got shorter. i don’t smoke. i remember holding the cigarette to my mouth, i remember it being given to me half-smoked already, i remember pretending to smoke it (but actually exhaling through the cigarette rather than inhaling), but i don’t remember whose cigarette it was, nor where it went when i dropped it.

i think it’s funny how i didn’t have the judgement to stop from taking a stranger’s cigarette, but i did have the judgement to realize that it’s not healthy to smoke. my dad died from lung cancer.

i remember flirting with my gay co-worker as well, and stealing his ring, and i also remember fighting him away as he tried to get it back. i woke up at 4:30am on my couch frantically checking to see if i still had the ring—i didn’t. i don’t remember how he got it back.

the movie isn’t bad.

before you read anything here, go read this from drunkgirl, if you haven’t already. it is pure artwork. for those who don’t know kevin, he works at kinkos (see fine print).

there’s this strange hierarchy of diaries on the internet—a topic i’ve been thinking about because i’m sort of ready to start participating again. here’s who i’m looking at now:

the elite ~ those who get nominated for webby awards, the diarist awards, and all the diaries that are linked to from the “diaries I read” sections of the winning diaries. one thing i notice about all of them—they aren’t hosted by diaryland. another thing i noticed, they don’t even use a cgi script or templates to make posting entries easier (they do use frames though – yuck). they’re really old school and probably handcode everything from scratch and update links manually. however, on the other hand, most of them have iBooks or pocket PCs and frequently update their entries from 30,000 ft in the air while flying hither and thither on important business.

what do i think of this? these “professional” diarists. these diarists who update on a daily basis, and sometimes can’t stop themselves from updating several times a day. frank, maybe you do have a place in the world.

they sometimes use bloggers. it’s tempting, you know, to be able to post and organize many miny entries several times a day from anywhere. they can use their PDAs to update from anwhere, and soon they’ll be able to update by e-mail. maybe phone. except i rarely if ever feel like i really have to update my journal now gosh darn it why can’t i do it while i stand here in line at the Starbucks. it can almost always wait until i pay the cashier and walk home and drink my mocha and listen to a few songs and get online.

the strange thing about these elite sites, and i haven’t really been able to put my finger on it until now, is that they aren’t very interesting. they’re dull, in fact. they’re all a little too content with this world. they fly around going to awards ceremonies and saying poetic things and promoting themselves that i rarely visit more than once. there are some people on diaryland who are better, is all i’m saying.

today was my 4th to last day in customer service, possibly forever. if i were a micro culture, this would be a time for a micro ritual of coming of age. no longer serving the customers. who do i serve now?

in 6 days, i’ll have a new job. in one month, i’ll be married. in one month and a day i’ll be in paris. and then, what then. 15 days in paris, then back home. maybe then i’ll have a baby, or be a guest on TRL or something just cause i’ll be so used to the hustle and bustle of life.

but even all that doesn’t sound like a lot. oh, i’m sure all of my readers are doing even more than that in the next month. oh i’m sure of it. guilt runs through me, what more can i do?

i’ve been called mean and nasty things lately by people who used to like me. at first, it makes me defensive, and then, it makes me feel like i should underscore the defense and appear sincere, and then it makes me feel like i should underscore the sincerity and cut to the bone, and then it makes me say what’s on my mind with as much vulnerability as possible. does it take everyone as long as it takes me to just say what they’re feeling? why is it such a huge game for me just to get back around to my first impression. do people who come across as always acting on their first impression have a trick, or is their first impression the same as my first impression (which is false). would it do those folks good to slow down and think longer, or not. tell me.

am i making things more simple or more complex than they need to be.

So this story is complete. Now for my favorite part: revision.

Anyway, so I have this problem with hang-nails. I know, gross. But today I decided that I would focus on my hang-nails at every opportunity. Feel the ugliness. Be conscious of it at all points of the day. And so there was this nice, textured, thought in the frontest room of my attention all day, and it was one of the most comforting things I’ve ever done.

I sat in meetings, thinking about my fingertips. Everything else became more real. How often do we keep that front room of our attention empty, void of visitors? That, I am now convinced, is the cause of our stupidity. How can you think about anything when you’re using the back rooms of your attention to entertain all your guests? No, bring them to the front room, the one that has the view of the present, that lets you step into the now and be conscious wholy of one thing: your guest. It is a transforming experience.

So I took the Personalization job. I feel very good about it. Doesn’t pay much more than I’m making now ($37,000) but I think it will be much more rewarding. Aren’t you shocked that I told you how much I’m making. Honesty is a result of living in the frontest room. I weigh 160 and am 5’11”-6’0” tall. I have hang-nails. Gross.

Also, I discovered Napster for the first time—well I’d heard about it but didn’t really think it was so cool as I do now. Downloaded “You’re the one for me, Fatty.”

I have a new idea for a website. It will take a long time to make, but with all my new ego that I’ve gotten from new jobs and up-coming wedding and first draft of story, I think a long solid project will do me good.

DJ Erik Benson

I win but I lose.
I am not Erik.
I have discovered his password and basically I have him by the balls.
But I don’t really feel like screwing up his site.
I do feel like bragging a bit.
Aside from that I guess I don’t have much to say.
It took me about three hours of trying, but I did figure out his username and password.
I wanted to kick my own ass after I figured it out because it was so easy.
The funny thing is that Erik can just erase this as soon as he sees it. Then he’ll probably change his password so I won’t come back.
But maybe not. I think he likes crazy shit like this. Sometimes he even starts it. Maybe he won’t even erase this entry I hijacked on in here (even though it sucks). Whatever.
I could go screw up his story, but I don’t feel like it. I could even erase all his shit. I wonder if he could get it back. But I’m not a dick like that.
Well, I guess my work here is done ya’ll.
Love,
W.A.

I’ve gotten so used to having things instantly accessible to me at all times and from all locations. I think: Oh, I wrote a story a few years ago—where is that story. Is it on my computer? No. Is it on my other computer? NO. Is it in my box full of old stories? NO! So where is it. Where did it go. Why is it not instantly accessible to me at all times from all locations? Think, think. Last time I saw it, I was in London. Turned it in to a professor. Professor supposed to return it through the post. But never did. It’s still in London. Confined to the jail cell of one single copy on 14 pieces of paper. Graduated from that school. No way to contact. Story is gone.

But it’s beautiful. It was a story in 14 pages, each page like one line in a sonnet. I wrote the whole thing in the museums of London, instead of the pages rhyming in the tradition of the Shakespearean sonnet, they rhymed in medium: ABBA BCCB CDDC DAAD. A is for First Person Prose. B is for Illustrated Manuscript. C is for Third Person Omniscient. D is for Poem.

He gave me a 4.0 and kept the story for himself. Or maybe it got lost in the post and it is lost in the bottom of a beautiful mail bag somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.

Beauty on the Web. When will it come. I’m going to write a few things then call it a blight.

Vocab we’ve inherited from the web:

Offline: noun A place where things are talked about apart from the current situation. We’ll talk about this offline. To be used in business meetings and with absolute surety that everyone knows what you mean. Where is the beauty on the web, and when will it come.

Disconnect: noun Something that happens when the medium of communication is not sufficient to properly transmit the meaning meant to be communicated. We’ve had a disconnect on this issue, let’s talk about this offline. To be used only if you make $50,000 or more a year, and only if you’re in the presence of people who make less than $20,000 a year. To be despised by those who make less than $20,000 a year.

Bandwidth: noun The amount of resources any person place or thing has. We just don’t have the bandwidth to take on that new requirement. Apparently there was originally a disconnect between us, probably due to the fact that we didn’t take enough time to chat about the true nature of the e-mails that were shot between us.

Here I’m sitting and it’s quiet. There is a screaming in my head: Produce! Do something! It won’t leave me alone. I take a shower. I find a story to write. I think about how writing is what I do. I think about how singing is not what I do, but how I wish it was. The cat meows sadly. Is thrown outside, to throw up (not on the couch). Where is the beauty on the net. When will it come.

I got the position I interviewed for on monday. They had given me the impression that there was no position to get—that I was just meeting people. I left unfulfilled. I came in late the next morning to a person telling me that they would make a position for me. If I could express myself any other way, I wouldn’t say: Yay!

The depression oozes through the walls and climbs into my lap. The dog nextdoor has caused the mailman to refuse to come deliver our mail. We must now move our mailboxes to the other side of the house. The duplex, excuse me. Did you get your invitations, or were they lost in the mail as we suspect.

Those are the few things I will say before I go to the night. Goodblight all. Read my story. Tell me what you think so far or I will stop writing it.