may 12what can denmark offer the net?
it's been so long since i've updated my personal site i almost forgit how.i just got back from my first paid speaking gig. some young danish blokes doing "reboot" in copenhagen, denmark, invited me to give the opening talk and hand out some awards. they paid me about 10% of the cost of a swarthmore semester.then wilson says, tell me about copenhagen some other time
and i spew a trip summary and he laughs and i remember the joyful committment of short storytelling:
the talk went fine, blah blah blah,
my (gooder and gooder) friend caroline of space invaders asked me a good leading question:
and i replied, after commenting some on the amazing scando-design, that this country, denmark, which taxes income up to 70% to provide full health care and astonishing unemployment benefits and art grants, if danish people could bring that sense of social equality online, we could all stand to benefit. so, balance your information entrepeneurship.
(if you lose your job in denmark, maybe even if you quit, they government pays you 2 years of 85% of your salary. something like that. makes it easier to think about quitting the rodent race to write or paint or do something otherwise especially useless!)
webfriend and sucker carl steadman was there, he was funny - he was hit by a certain eureka! when he realized that he did better at public speaking when he had someone to make fun of, like justin. he wasn't too unkind - he mostly tried to counter my idealism or optimism with sardonic capitalism.(one of) the founder(s) of tripod is a 27 year old Beau Peabody, who aspires to retire soon to return to pro-skiing. he had a mean animated powerpoint presentation, and delivered it succinctly. he couldn't believe that i got paid to speak. hey, he runs a company just purchased by lycos. he can even affort to bring his girlfriend abroad with him some times. give me a break. he celebrated his birthday in the car coming back from the airport to our hotel, his 27th birthday. he took a picture of our group he says will end up on the web; we'll see. few executives i've met put stuff online.
steve johnson spoke, from feed. he's written a book now, so now he talks about interface culture, and said some clever things, like something i thought about a few weeks ago: it'd be useful to have different link colours for things on a site, and things off a site. but his other remarks about (web) interface lead me to envision a day when it is not so possible to build a site with just simpletext or note pad off your recently purchased computer - you'll need commercial software to make your web page web-ready. maybe. hmmm. technology creates it's own solutions to problems we didn't know we had.
and speaking of interface, he was talking about the web and i did feel a little arrogantly offended that he didn't consider my realm of links here - after a few danish interviewers astonished at my nonlinearity (realaudio interview with i), i expected some recognition from the academy. then after a little while i realized, hey, i've always had a weird relationship with the academy. get over yourself.
and the other thing, and this made me feel better about being left off his example list, his own magazine interface just hurt small screen surfing last winter. they're working on it, he said. he's a nice guy, well bred. literary, clearly. like he actually read most of the theory i just skimmed here. poor chap.
somehow the reboot guys decided i might dj, and somehow i had a few old cds accidently packed with me. i played curtis mayfield superfly soundtracker, duke ellington's soul call, some public enemy, fishbone, and cream rollin' and tumblin' cover. i cleared the dance floor, exept for one bald guy, so i dedicated the cream song to him and joined him for my own show-off wiggle - them shy danes needed to see the extent to which one could groove to music more funked out than the ace of bass. they did later on play some james brown, and it was explained to me by one of my hosts, the danish are shy, meaning they'll only dance to tame straightforward stuff, or the now familiar wedding and bar mitzvah funk anthems. celebrate good times, come on!
i was preceeded in my djly duties by denmark's leading george michael cover band, the george michael jam. they did a good wham! and a good george michael, from what i could tell. it was a little surreal, to come on after them and clear the floor with my old favourite songs. i promised the rebooters that i'd bring more cds with me next time, dance tunes and electronica. (i was inspired by this opportunity to dj that i made a page soliciting disk jockin'.)
otherwise i spent about 40 hours on the ground in copenhagen, 14 sleeping, played some kyle's quest in my hotel room, ate four meals, all of them in the convention center and one in my hotel. the convention was in a large converted navy warehouse, now called "base camp" with the largest winches i have ever seen hanging from the ceiling. mmmmm. nice and industrial. so hip. everyone in black, and smoking. a warehouse ful of smoke. i was dying, i left there with secondhand cancer.
there was a national strike going on while i visited so while the airport was very nice, sandinavian design, there was litter all about ("like the airport in delhi," my host noted). a nice touch for such an ordinarily sanitary country.so what is that like to travel? disorienting and i guess i might not do that kind of thing a year from now unless i was getting paid. i would either want to spend more time there, so i could relax a little, or stay at home and work on my thesis. that travelling for 40 hours and four meals in a convention center is prematurely aging. was i wrong and egoheaded or were there cuties interested in grouping with a little bit of the web here? strange to think so - i kept focus on my amy and being as rested as possible for the wedding. i didn't even have the heart to jerk off about anything - by the time i got home and alone to do so, i had a flight leaving in four hours and packing and etc. hoe boy.
(my greatest dutch misery: they insisted on checking my leatherman after the copenhagen airport security checkpoint discovered it. never before have i had to check a glorified pocket knife - only in denmark. i argued with them, i pack light to purposefully avoid the time it takes to retrieve checked items. and here, one measly knife! but it could hurt someone they pedagocially responded to me, and then i saw the downside to protective social equality. grumble grumble.
but i arrived that morning at the airport woken up not by a wake up call but by the "mr. hall, your taxi is here" (and that, amy, is why i try to always pack the night before)
i arrived at the airport freshly skanky still unshowered from some dancing and not too much drinking and all together too much cigarette smoke contact. ug! so i was posolutely delightened to observe that the danish have showers for a small fee at the airport! strong water pressure, soap and shampoo provided, 70 kroner (about $10 - just most of the reboot money i had for cabs, perfect). i was so high on the danes by the time i left the shower, even if i was knifeless).after all that web page narrative, the wedding was tranquility. amy was able to leave work to attend with me and we cavorted in the hot tub and relaxed in sulfer springs with howard axil and abbe just before jonathan and marjorie tied the gordian knot in midst of lovely unknown ingallsteuers amidst the redwoods and appropriately timed shafts of sunlight. i love their friends, their friends are my friends, their friends are your friends, funny people, yep. and amy, i just can't get tired of amy.
i dragged her around some monday on my newfound enthusiasm for things like toothbrush holders and shower curtains and towel racks. mmm, hmmm, yep! tasty! domesticity! it's so hard for me to walk in the house and see it unready to be used fully - i feel like my grandfather wanting to fix and rig things. amy is going to buy a mikita, i'm glad to have a girlfriend whose next appliance purchase is a chordless power drill.as for me i return to swat somewhat reluctantly - hard to build a little bit of house and leave, and leave, again. leave. and leave. and come back. where? so i look forward to actually living somewhere. here at swat i will be only until early june and then i head out west. i think i'll have a half hour weekly tv show, "web workshop," with zdtv, at least they seem to think so (they're using my name and picture in promo copy not currently online). nice people, my producers, but i'm definitely out of the loop here in academia; i don't have a contract yet, but i do have a family-recommended lawyer. sheesh, this entertainment stuff gets complicated as you climb the career ladder.
i was hit - boom! - by a shot, like a diamond bullet, straight to the forehead,
well, i kinda had an idea what i would deep down like to do with myself for a while, it's been building. but i'll wait until after gradimication to write the personal/business plan. i'm just writing it here to remember myself, yep.now, to revise my thesis, and perform a paper and an exam in each of history of the language and film. time to resolve this here, and then i can move safely into scarier things.
i contemplated throwing the i ching for some big questions, but i've got friends, and amy, heck, i practically don't even need to keep talking to myself online to work through my problems. oh, but it's so much fun! and i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now! i remember now!
i remember now!
i remember now!
for posterior's sake, this is what was my site updates for april:
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holy jeez! my thesis deadline was just moved up three weeks to ma
y 4! goodbye links.net - hello thesis.edu!
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recent considerations:
may 1: new carew: brazil |
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today's muzzik: lee scratch perry, trojan records 2 disc compilation - old school dub when technology was more about knobs than buttons. tweakin'! porno for pyros, first album - like the summer after my senior year of high school, wandering chicago high in the sun looking for acid and somewhere to finally lay down. tried listening to bjork, but i'm not in the mood for homogenic. debut? how about willie mctell instead. aww, yeah, kill it kid. (atlanta twelve string album). and then, johnny cash, american recordings; how many times can you sing it to yourself before you need to hear the cash ring? and finally bjork's debut. human behaviour! if only a ship would sail in! there's more to life than this! i saw a room in base camp, a room with a little person door filled with inner tubes and murals, they say she stayed in there and danced for three hours during the danish music awards. gee.
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justin hall | <justin at bud dot com>