Aug 2000, 6 entries

This is my work for the last week. If you do a search on amazon, you have a 50% chance of seeing a button that looks like this in the top right corner (it’ll be 100% in a couple weeks):

If you see it, first, buy the new Radiohead CD, then take a look at this new feature we’re calling the Search Explorer, but which is probably going to change names soon cause nobody likes the name:

What do you think it should be called? We can name it anything you like.

You can continue to add items to the box by clicking “More like this”, and removing them by unchecking their boxes and clicking “Update” until you have items that you know you like in the Explorer Box. All the items in the list, then, will be items that Amazon thinks you’ll like. Who else does this? Am I the first? Come on, be a consumer.

As much as I want to take credit for the lovely phrase “fake shit plastic,” in reference to the very weird Jim Morrison-like fellow at the club last night that drunkgirl attributes to me, I have to admit that it was K who said those beautiful words. Me, I only called the bronze pig “Pig faced shit!” as I kicked it in the face and body, and I only yelled “Shit fantastic!” over the railing and down the alley.

Other reasons I felt like an antagonist last night: I burned a boy’s finger who looked like Fred Durst (he had a red ball-cap on backwards, very cool) with a match. I pushed numerous boys away from me as they tried to kiss me because of the tasks that were being handed out by the Jim Morrison fellow and others. I didn’t want to kiss them because they were ugly. I flicked the dice that were used to make the tasks off the table when they tried to give me a task. I directed boys into the girl’s room and girls into the boy’s room.

Halfway through the night I knew the signs weren’t good when I was waving my fist and dancing saying “I wonder who this fist is going to meet tonight!” We were back at that same spot a few hours later, still wet from the fish ice, I noticed that yet another boy had joined our group and was trying to get a ride home with us. He was listening to a portable CD player, which I quickly opened and snatched the CD out of and ran across the street and placed it up on a ledge of a sign or something. That’s when he grabbed me by the collar and said, “Don’t mess with me!” and I said, “Or what,” and he said, “Or I’ll fuck you up!” and I said, “I don’t believe that you’re the violent type,” and he said, “You’re right,” and then I got the CD down for him and asked him if it was any good, and he said it sure was and let me have a listen.

But we were only friends for a short while cause later on I somehow offended him in the car and he got out at a red light.

Meanwhile K and Laurabeth had approached a group of scary people and asked them if they would sing a Backstreet Boys song, cause they sure did look like the Backstreet Boys. And when the boys didn’t, K and Laurabeth sang it for them.

Then we all went home for more champagne and fun until 5am. At 10am we went to church with Laurabeth’s parents who were in town from Maryland and we listened to a great sermon on the two types of freedom: freedom FROM bad things, and freedom TO DO good things. He said a lot of people, especially us young folk, spend a lot of our time guarding our freedom FROM things we don’t want to do—school, parents, laws, regulations, traditions, etc—but not enough time excersizing our freedom TO DO productive things. K found the point particularly relevant as she now has the freedom of not having to have a stupid job, and it’s important that we make sure that she uses that freedom to do good things like paint and look around the neighborhood for lost kitties.

Yesterday we called a girl because we saw that her kitty was lost and I’d seen the exact same kitty near our house several times, and in fact drunkgirl and K and I saw the kitty on the roof as we were walking home from sushi last night and yeah so we called the girl on the poster and said we’d seen it at this house, but we weren’t sure if it was actually owned by that house because they had just moved in and I’ve seen it walk in and out of the house a couple times. So maybe they share cats. Or maybe they stole it.

A couple years ago we lost our cat named Truck and put up posters for it around the neighborhood and someone called us a couple months later saying they’d found it but that they weren’t going to give it back because the kitty was in such bad shape and they thought we were mistreating it. Maybe they’re doing the same thing. Maybe they’re the same people. And that’s how I make my typos in good memory.

do you like the new homepage?

K and i have been on a good talk streak. first, we talked about what we should be doing. i should be doing exactly what i’m doing, easy answer. K, though, should be painting more. so, we decided, instead of having her continue looking for a new job, i’ll just be the one that works, and her new full-time job will be to paint. i am very jealous of her situation, wishing that i could write full-time, but i’m actually enjoying work quite a bit at the moment and we have to make money somehow. maybe once she gets a high paying job, we can switch. that would be good.

another talk: realism versus cubism. realism lost.

another talk: chubleton, the cat. he was put to sleep this morning after we realized that he wasn’t happy anymore. he hadn’t eaten at all in the last week, and he has been throwing up everything else he ate for the last month. his eyes were yellow from liver problems and he was anemic. we walked him all the way to the vet in a towel, as his curious face looked out from underneath and he marvelled at the passing scenes. he was very skinny. i think it was for the best. they gave him a shot that should have put him to sleep in about a half an hour, but after that time passed he was still breathing (he’s a fighter, in his own passive way), and so they gave him another shot that put him to sleep in about 10 seconds. other kitties looked on from their kitty motels rooms.

another day in pseudodise.

The chronological recounting of events. Such a noble pasttime. My cat had an epileptic attack, and is currently close to the point where we would begin to consider putting him to sleep. He’s only 4 years old, but is deep in the throes of FIV (feline AIDS). Unfortunately, our previous veterinarian did not inform us that this was what has been making him sicker and sicker over the last couple years even though she had done the blood tests and KNEW that he did. Only after we went to get a second vet’s opinions, and they received the old papers from the previous vet, did this become apparent. So, it is too late to put him on the super kitty diet that may have allowed him to live a couple years longer. Now, he is refusing to eat, and sometimes has strokes that make him shake and become weak and throw up and other stuff that isn’t very good for kitties to be doing.

Then, I went out dancing at a club. It was an old band that we used to see a lot back when drunkgirl was dating the lead singer. Oh, that’s his picture on her page now. We saw them a few years ago and they filled about 1/3 of the Showbox, not bad at all. This time, several years later, they fill about 1/3 of the Showbox. Same sets, same costumes, they’re older, most of the audience is the same age as before. Except, of course, for us old-timers. The comfort of being the same.

Then, I posted a new story on my page: Lily. I like this story, it is sort of the kind of story that is meant to be liked (unlike my other stories that are meant to be baffling).

Then, I worked on bustercafe.com some more. Perhaps I’ll send out a mailing to those who’ve subscribed to the list soon, so that I can get some feedback on what I’ve been doing and not turn out something that only I think is the coolest thing since Hans Vuyolwethu (K’s sponsor child—a recent report card said, “He is doing well in school. He is the slow learner.”)

Then, I had a diet coke. Oh wait, that hasn’t happened yet. Give me a second. Okay, now we’re up to the present. Let’s continue living…

Later that day… drank that diet coke. Now working on another. Decided that I would put up some pictures taken of my workplace, here they are:

From the outside:

From the inside:

Question: Hey, so what’s up with that bustercafe thing? I’d like to contribute, and I’ve got some ideas, but I need to know what it’s all about besides the general stuff found in your diary. If you have a minute, could you fill me in?

My response: Yeah, so what IS up with that bustercafe thing. It’s coming along, and I’m just now getting to the really fun part—the creative part. There is about the most complete articulation I’ve come up with yet on the index page at bustercafe if you haven’t seen that yet, but I’ll paraphrase.

I want to use what we’ve been given on the internet—I want to take the online diaries, the accessibility of information, the connectivity of the people, the design possibilities, the scalability possibilities, as much of it that I can and use it. Creatively. I want bustercafe to be a place where we aren’t just given a great thing, but we’re learning how to use it. Interacting in a way that doesn’t have to end in negativity. Bringing people together for a purpose. Okay, so now we all know what we’re doing all day. But why aren’t we making things? That’s what I want to answer. I want everyone to come together and make things and learn. So, basically, that means that there will be courses—courses where you can sign up with other diarists or journalists or anything and be given an opportunity to read each others’ work, or to go through assignments, and to be assured that a small group of people will be looking at what you’re doing and give advice on how to improve. Of course, with that as the foundation, it’s possible to think of a bunch of ways to make this more fun, and more interesting, than that idea alone is.

What are your ideas? Check out http://bustercafe.com again if you haven’t visited lately, and then tell me what you’re thinking.

I might as well post this e-mail as an entry. Since I haven’t had much time for that lately.

i sometimes watch big brother even when it’s boring. and yesterday the girl, Jordan, said something that i think i’m going to take up as a daily prayer, a daily question to God. it was, “do you think i just kinda suck?” she was trying to figure out why people were voting her off, and it was so refreshing to hear one of those characters actually question the possibility of sucking. if we all asked ourselves that perhaps we would be the first person to realize that yes we do in fact suck—hopefully before anybody else finds out and holds it against us.

i’m working on bustercafe.com, but don’t feel like linking to it in order to get more people to sign up. i finally figured out how to work with cookies and log-ins. i’m not very big on security or privacy concerns, so i’ll probably try to make it so that you never have to put your password in if you don’t want to.

i also find that the only thing i’m really concerned about at this point in the development is the look of it. if it doesn’t look right, i can’t work on it, so i keep on fiddling with the design instead of getting the actual difficult part out of the way.

hey, if you want to see what i’m working on at work, go click around at amazon.com. first, log out, then, click on a few different detail pages. then go back to any of the homepages. see how it’ll recommend you stuff based on what you looked at, even if it doesn’t know who you are.

hey, guess what, dirtygirl’s back. if only she could make drunkgirl come back too. i haven’t had anything to read lately. why does it all suck? or, is it just me.