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 justin's links:
dad mom grents /school classes homies /trip honduras sweden nebraska nepal summer '96 /speak /web 96 97 98 99 /flix /tech /warez/games likker bud lsd coke darrow sfrally astro holy (do it yourself)
not just justin:
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ellen just picked up amy - they're headed off to try to see atari teenage riot. i stayed at home because it was a cold day today, and i didn't feel like doing much besides being at homei was at home all day today, but the night time is different.
it's not nighttime yet, but the light is fading, and i've got a candle lit for good measure.
the cat fernando, that has shat on all three of the futons in the house, he's just climbed up in the window just beyond my microsoft windows and he wants me to let him in. i'm trying to be stoic in my moment as a writer here and he's meowing so i let him in
i'm happy. i'm behind in three or four things - my editor at rolling stone, a nice guy to be sure, a young guy who mostly seems to get it, he's been talking about us having a phone conversation but hasn't returned any of my calls in some time. somehow i wrote them two articles and after that all my ideas were already being covered by anybody else. so i'm torn a bit between staying on the cutting edge by hurling my friends habits at them like tomorrow's news or resting into what i love to do all the time, which is to hang out with those friends
i've been chatting up a storm recently - people i've known for years and weeks babbling at each other all day long passing urls and talking shit it's a great way to get content for bud.com. parade kid is probably the highlight of the week - what a link that was.
the budpub system is up for testing - that means that this bud.com thing will be run by other people and i'll be another poster and i'll be free to take up innerestin' side projects like chat and mailing lists and mike's radio station and finally allison's cat lady article and wilson's backed up artwork and mike sugarbaker's editorial. i never feel idle or short of stuff to do.
but in the last week i was hit by some kind of a deep drive to normalize. maybe it's a byproduct of seeing my girl get a webmonkey job for good money and stock options without much pavement pounding. she knows where she has to be, what she has to do, and if she does those things, she gets money that pays down her debts and affords her digital video dreams - somewhere down the line
i guess i'm dreaming now, because i just eat toast and butter and make chicken soup when i want to. or leave my computer because it crashed again and go out in the garden and finally tame that hoary old everygreen bush that was making shade for all the flowering plants below. that entailed getting on my back and hanging off the deck at a rakish angle using one hand to prune inch thick branches and the other hand to grip the painted red lattice work railing. below me, oakland kids of all colors tried to talk their camp counselor into letting them splash further down the creek - they wanted to see behind one more bend - "you shouldn't have waited til the last minute to take a hike!"
so i'm taking a hike here i guess - i was persuing some jobs, sent in my resume to a game magazine or two to be an assistant editor. i've never lasted in an editorial position for more than 8 months, but each was a great experience and i'm ready for another. i feel like i want to be a student of computer games. sometimes i think that means i should write a book, and sometimes i think that means i should broker content for some enormous corporate entity distributing the latest trends to the slavering millions.
enough of that thought and i return to realize that whatever i'm going to do, it profits one to work on the website. so i've expanded my coverage of computer games further - because whether i write a book or come to cover computer games for a magazine, this is good background and research and impressive resume stuff maybe.
krusty calls with some advice about reliquishing my control over the design for bud.com - that if i want to encompass backends by brian, it might be best surrounded by a design by wb or another more designy friend and so i should only keep my own aged aesthetic if i want it to stay small, but if i want to it grow to reflect a larger community, i might try a trusted designer. it's a thought.a thought that leads back to "why do you do this?" and it's like so much i've studied - kali, i ching, holy spirit, interbeing, whatever - there are things that attempt to answer everything - go back to honduras, where there's less modern bullshit. then what? move to oakland, where people are more real. then what? get a job. then what?
garden, eat lots of olive bread, make soup,
i'm doing that already.
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user URLs from webzine99:
freeguide.org i know i lost some - please send 'em along!
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photo: ryan junnell
i did get a chance to question san francisco mayor willie brown a bit. he read a proclimation affirming "internet independence" in san francisco and then was about to leave the stage. i asked him a bit about his own internet usage - i was curious whether his words came from a place of personal knowledge, or ready recognition of the booming business around him. eventually i wormed out of him that he does actually communicate with some grandchildren in new york "through the system" which was nice, especially as punctuated by his mimicing his single finger hunt-and-peck typing style. but later someone reminded me that i had not held willie brown to any answers to pending political questions - whether AT&T/TCI should be granted a cablemodem monopoly in the SFBay area. That was kind of an instictual notion of mine - the questions were in my head, but i felt that willie brown was not going to have useful answers, and i felt that he was doing a nice thing to come and act political and celebrate our event and to press him would not be polite. i guess i have not always been polite? so i'm either aging selling out or both. boy, selling out sure pays. willie brown said he liked my suit.
otherwise, the weight of living together two twenty somethings may be coming here home. many of our young friends are getting married. i toast them as my mouth hangs open admiring their confidence - amy and i continue to enjoy each others company as we fantasize about ourselves as artists anticipating the future by keeping our options open.
still we live together and ask for accompaniment to family rituals. amy's family stayed with me, us, in our house, for nearly a week, at her graduation time. i ask her to come to nebraska to meet my soon to be departed grandparents and she is more hesistant - she's not sure we are at the place in our relationship where meeting grandparents is appopriate. and living with her mother was? that was different, these are the subtle textures of the arguments that fill our house and scare our cat. she is coming to nebraska, and i am very excited. during burning man time, i am going to her sister's wedding. well, i've never seen minnesota before.
she speaks occasionally of some greater degree of autonomy - that we might live apart to have more space and to possibly rekind the romance by having to arrange our time together. no more take for granted. oh boy. i can't wait to call her and ask if she's coming over tonight or if i'm sleeping there. and hoping her roommate doesn't hear us carrying on in the next room. sounds like a veritable dream of double down bay area real estate i'll really look forward to after suffering through a warm body and a lively breakfast/lunch/dinner companion all these months.
i moved to this part of the world to some degree because amy went to school near here. it's a nice thing, i've found a place in my heart for patriotism. still, if i wasn't living here with amy, i might be best stimulated by moving to austin. if i truly want to be a computer game designer, there's a very many small companies there. or chicago -
mebbe i could start on the ground floor at bungie. after a few weeks searching for computer gaming jobs, i realize that my being tied to oakland, or even the bay area, it is a hindrance. potential employment becons me in irvine and florida.
i do love this house though, and if everything else in my life is unstable, i do enjoy this domesticity. it's like i grew up in some situation with my parents out of the house a lot and a fair amount of emotional moving about and so forth, and here i am fantasizing about my own private nebraska.
(i do think about myself as my grandfather, as i prune rampant hedges, or shoot the breeze with 93 year old mary who lives alone next door, or fix the step-trashcan with gaffer tape. making things, every day, being neighborly, keeping house. it's a nice thing to do
but how long can this last?
i saw eyes wide shut. i liked it because there were times i felt like i was in a heironymous bosch painting and that's a good strong heady feeling to get in a movie theatre. the lighting was superlative. using earnest tom cruise as the sex object of a million new yorkers was pleasantly unsettling as well - i thought it was subtle, if a tad undersexed. i wish there was just a little more clockwork orange in there. but i guess kubrick became more polite before he died.
i recently purchased a nokia 6185 cellphone. it seemed that we would all eventually be plugged in insects, antennaeing to each other, and so i would like to try it myself. plus when i go for a 40 minute drive, or stand in line somewhere, it's nice to actually get some communicating done. i haven't felt like much of an asshole yet, though there were times at webzine 99 i tried to keep my phone in my pocket like i was happy to see everyone.
still working over the brain as an interface to these pages - i find myself diving into all sorts of sections of these pages i just nearly forgot i had. i really can not believe i made this whole elaborate hypertextual technology consideration thesis thing (including jimi hendrix, stone age labour levels, and 40oz of malt liquor)!
- i did those things! how strange.
where am i now?
| technology | affects food | relationships | and death | determining potential | directions | for our society. |
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definition penetration expertise |
- composition: fortification msg olestra - pills: diet pills vitamins - distribution |
electronic babysitting |
fluoridation vaccines |
return stasis computopia technological determinism heart |
26 july
15 july
