9.29.2000
Check out recent reported crimes in Chicago. Just in the past week, there's been a car stolen and a burglary on the other side of my block, down the street there was a report of battery, and right across the street from my building, there was a homicide! How exciting!Welcome to Chicago.
said Jason, at 4:03:49 PM || remember
Today is my project manager's last day at work. She brought breakfast in for us all, so I felt especially bad that I didn't bring anything for her as a going-away present.
Until I saw the breakfast and the fact that it was made with cream of mushroom soup. "You don't eat mushrooms?" she asked.
"No--"
Our billing manager piped in, "He's not a fungus eater. Jason, you don't know what you're missing."
"I know what I'm missing," I told him as I headed back to my office. "Hives."
The bonus part of this allergy is that I never liked mushrooms to begin with.
said Jason, at 10:59:37 AM || remember
9.27.2000
I haven't slept well in over a week, closer to two, and possibly longer.When I say I haven't slept well, I mean that I haven't slept long enough to be able to face the new day in a bright and cheery way. Six hours have been a luxury. Last night I managed to net eight, wake up relatively consciously when the 7.30 alarm went off, then fall back into slumber for another hour against my will. I dreamt that I was involved with the production of some film project, a music video or a movie, and we were shooting in some penthouse-level schmancy hotel room. Lots of leather jackets and post-punk-participle. Somehow, it worked, despite the brightly lit, beige-colored surroundings. I was supposed to be the DJ, complete with turntable. (Jason, futuristic MC. I see.) We never got to shooting. There was too many attitudes and prima donnas in the cast crowd, one annoyance after another.
These are the dreams I'm waking from lately. Feelings of incomplete work linger in my head, only making me want to sleep longer. That, and the 50° nights sleeping in an apartment with no heat. I had to email my friends and confess that I was a suburbandork and had never had to deal with radiators before. I got instructions on how to turn them on (there's this knob and you turn it, they said, followed by much serious nodding and active comprehension on my part), and did so with the ones in my bedroom and bathroom, but they aren't warming up. I'm going to have to call about that, along with the other things that for which I still have yet to call. For some reason, I want to get unpacked first to give the supervisor room to maneuver. Then again, having no blinds in my bedroom window is probably the greater issue.
I can't remember things that happen lately. I can't remember what all I did in the last two days. I vaguely remember eating dinner. There was a blur of tasks at work that I'm trying to separate and report for billing purposes. There's emails that I've started and postponed that I may not get back to for days. I'm falling out of time again, and it's frustrating.
said Jason, at 11:14:33 AM || remember
9.26.2000
John, curse his scrumptious little... er, anyway, he got me reviving my old ICQ account at work. Say hi to #21747694. (And I'm still on AIM as null means null, though I'll be switching to Somnolentdotorg as soon as I launch the real version of the site. No, really, I'll get to that point.)said Jason, at 4:28:06 PM || remember
YES! Cafepress.com now offers shirts in 2XL, 3XL, and 4XL sizes. Now I can actually wear produkt to support sites I enjoy.
said Jason, at 4:00:11 PM || remember
Webloggers are invariably obscure computer geeks? Surely you jest.
said Jason, at 3:51:40 PM || remember
9.25.2000
Not to continue the coming-out theme that Steve and Ernie have started, but this weekend I finally came out to Matt and Miranda, my brother and sister-in-law, in an email, in response to Miranda asking about the hickie I had when last I saw them. As my only siblings, they were the last family members I would have felt a major loss for if they took it badly. (I don't get along so well with my father, and my extended family are, for the most part, in different parts of the country and infrequently seen.) As they're both pretty bright, they already had their suspicions; I just confirmed them.I wish there was more to write about this, if only for the sake of a decent-sized entry, but it was pretty anticlimatic. They didn't take it badly, they didn't go out of their way to fawn all over me in a well-meaning attempt to make me feel comfortable. They just remarked how the last several years make a bit more sense now. Matt said he didn't even blink when he read what I wrote. All in all, it was the best possible outcome. Sometimes our greatest victories are quietly mustered through.
They did, however, share their suspicions, which echoed mine, that Dad wouldn't want to know about it. At this point (though I hate to say it -- sort of), I couldn't really care. It's been two months since Dad's moved to Virginia, and he's made no point of contacting me to let me know he made it safely. He's called Matt and Miranda once, and only to return the call they made to him to check up on him. I guess the pretenses are gone now.
said Jason, at 12:14:50 PM || remember
9.24.2000
I've had the webcam turned on lately, so stop in and... stare, I guess.said Jason, at 12:44:07 AM || remember
Alicia Silverstone on Basic ISDN Configuration. Who knew? [courtesy o' my old boss, Barry, via email]
said Jason, at 12:33:02 AM || remember
9.23.2000
Happiness is a new Stereolab EP and the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs box set.Do you think the spirit of Charles Schulz gets pissed off every time someone says "Happiness is (yadda)," or does he experience the transcended bliss of memorium post-mortem?
said Jason, at 9:03:38 PM || remember
I ended up dragging three of my cohorts to Art Night last night, after dinner at Moody's pub (quick plug: Moody's is on Broadway north of Hollywood, south of Granville. Take LSD to the northernmost end, stay on Hollywood, make a right on Broadway and it's on your left. Incredifuckinble burgers and a great atmosphere). I was expecting Art Night to get started, as the website stated, promptly at 8, which is when we got there, but fortunately it didn't get started until later.
All of the performers and assorted artists (painters, video editors) were outstanding. I got to meet Ann, among whose talents is getting a bunch of people together to do this sort of thing, and Joe, whose collection of web goodness was one of my original inspiriations for getting into this whole web thing in the first place. They're great folks, interested in getting people to share their talent. (And here's a secret: Joe can rock the mic with an incredible singing voice.)
My only regret: not going karaoke-ing with some of the folks afterwards, as the original plans got bollixed by going to the wrong Cubby Bear bar (the North one, instead of the South one, I guess) to see a friend of my cohorts play in his band, so we ended up seeing nothing. Live and learn.
said Jason, at 11:45:32 AM || remember
9.22.2000
Anyone who has suggestions for neat-o(tm) Palm software, drop me a note. I recently caved and got a Visor Deluxe -- exactly, it turns out, like the one Crazy Uncle Joe has. Oh, the horrors of keeping up with the technoJoneses. (TechnoJoeses?)said Jason, at 11:36:16 AM || remember
9.21.2000
Right now, I have the very acute awareness of having fought and fought and fought for hundreds of years, and the ennui, the inertia, the exhaustion that accompanies finally putting one's sword down and coming to rest.This is very, very hard to overcome. But there is so much yet to do.
said Jason, at 4:18:12 PM || remember
9.20.2000
Blog of Holding. Swank.said Jason, at 5:38:47 PM || remember
So remember about the women, women, women? I had forgotten that someone had taken pictures.
said Jason, at 3:20:14 PM || remember
Ohgeez. I'm talking to other weblogs through my weblog again. Alright, dear Jay, let's have at it. "Higher, higher, higher, higher;" you're practically there. And I have never heard that song before. The next word is.... macrame?
said Jason, at 2:45:52 PM || remember
I'm wondering how old Jay thinks I am. Hey Jay, can we play this like that game on The Price is Right? Right on. "Higher."
said Jason, at 11:38:26 AM || remember
Strange things have been afoot. Not just at the Circle-K (of which we have none in Chicago), (n)either.
Monday, en route to picking up my new contact lenses (unbespectacled vision! unbespectacled vision! woop woop!), there was this bug that landed on my car's windshield while I waited at a stoplight. Out of its thorax was a smaller version of the same bug, attached at its thorax. I can't tell if it was giving birth, or it was like a siamese bug, or if the smaller bug was fucking the bigger bug and the bigger bug couldn't be bothered to notice and decided to go flying around to run some errands, or if it was a fractal bug, or what, but damn. It had to be inconvenient.
Last night, the lesson to be learned was "he who hesitates is lost." My friend Seanan is back in town on a sudden business trip, and as she's a big convention circuit nut, it turns out she knows the lad from whom I desired a kiss. And that he is family. And that I should've asked, because I probably would have experienced the "ye shall receive" portion of a particular idiom. The upside is that Seanan offered to pass on a message to him the next time she saw him. "Hey, that guy that was standing in front of you at the Hawai'ian party at ChiCon when (the Fabulous) Lorraine and the boys were playing? The fuzzy brown-haired one with the curly ponytail. Yeah. He wanted to kiss you. He says hello and that he needs to stop being timid in regard to boys."
The mango juice is back. It just reappeared on the shelf by the front door. It's still half-drank, like someone made sure not to spill any when they had it.
Nah, just kidding, that juice is long gone.
said Jason, at 11:22:42 AM || remember
9.19.2000
More Serial Experiments Lain fun on a DHTML heavy Japanese fan page. [courtesy o' Wire Mommy]This morning I'm continuing the trend of more linkiness, less journalness, from needing to calm down. I should, of course, just sign up for traffic school, suck it up and cope. What's done is done. Chicago cops run red lights all the time, though. Why should I get ticketed for accidentally doing the same? It seems like a rip-off. Ah well.
said Jason, at 10:47:38 AM || remember
9.18.2000
This is the best American history lesson ever. Flash required, and worth it.said Jason, at 3:40:27 PM || remember
Chicago folks: Friday night at 8 is the summer session of Art Night. I'm trying to decide if I'm heading that way, or to see Dahui play at the Heartland Cafe, which would be a short three-and-a-half block walk away.
said Jason, at 3:39:44 PM || remember
Saturday, I had all sorts of women attending to me and making me feel all sorts of good about myself. Women playing with my hair. Women sitting on me in ways that would get a movie an R rating, at least, and an even stricter rating had we not been clothed. Women pulling me into bed with them. Women, women, women. All these beautiful women.
Don't get me wrong -- any attentions I receive are appreciated -- but if just one of them had been a guy, the day would have been perfect.
Actually, there was a guy, but that was just someone pretending to hump my leg for a couple seconds. That didn't really compare.
said Jason, at 2:34:43 PM || remember
9.16.2000
Duck, it's incoming meta.So my office internet connection has been down for the last two days, and with the exception of Monday, I haven't gotten out of work this week before 8pm, usually later, thanks to the Project of Doom. Right now I can't bring myself to look at a computer monitor.
Greek Chorus: He says, while using a computer to update his webpage.
Um, I'm doing it with my budding powers of psychokinesis. Today I'm practicing electrokinesis. Yeah, that's right.
In the mean time, I'm still thinking designwards (I've decided to keep this one to tweak it a bit -- I know, I know, fucking indecisive drama queen), still thinking of getting some sleep at some point, and still trying to get my apartment cleaned up from the guy who used to live here. I've been pretty incommunicado, and plan to stay that way until Monday. It feels nice to pretend to be a spy. Very Laurie Anderson-esque.
For now, you can keep reading this page repeatedly until it becomes a string of meaningless sounds, or you can go and send Joe some love (for not losing the will to fight) and Steve some congrats (for telling it like it is).
I just need a day off. Or six.
said Jason, at 11:04:32 AM || remember
9.14.2000
You know you've been watching too much anime when "chotto matte kudasai" falls out of your mouth instead of "hey, wait up."So, to not look like a complete white boy, I found an easy Japanese primer to fill in the gaps. (Here's one more.)
said Jason, at 10:10:50 AM || remember
9.13.2000
Someone's chronicling my sex-o-matic! Now that's comedy.said Jason, at 10:11:40 AM || remember
An interesting article appeared in WebMonkey recently on the web-safe color palette and its current relevance. And the word is: bollocks. [courtesy o' the ever-swell KIPLog and, according to prol, everyfuckingbody else]
said Jason, at 12:47:55 AM || remember
9.11.2000
This was my horoscope from Free Will Astrology this week:
Near the end of a walkabout through Germany's
Black Forest in November of 1978, I had a
startling vision. I'd been sleeping outside and
eating nothing but apples and brown bread for
three weeks. My brain was scoured clean and my
whole body surged with an erotic pantheistic
strength. Gazing up to the top of a leafless ash
tree, I seemed to see hovering there in the grey
sky a silvery winged creature resembling a cross
between Joan of Arc and Lucille Ball. "In the
ninth month of the year 2000," she murmured,
"you must deliver to Aquarians this wonderful
news: They will have a joyful opportunity to
cure the ignorance that if unchecked would many
years later be the source of their death."
Holy fuck.
said Jason, at 12:13:18 PM || remember
Greetings from Wacky Land. (Voot!)
said Jason, at 10:35:38 AM || remember
9.9.2000
The mango juice/nectar/whatever is gone. I didn't move it. Someone had to have come into my apartment and taken it sometime yesterday (maybe Thursday; I would've been too tired to notice its absence when I finally got home).No one left a note. No one notified me that they'd be checking up on anything.
This is seriously creeping me out.
said Jason, at 11:28:34 AM || remember
9.8.2000
You can feel Tai Chi working as you do it. The energy gathers in your hands, and you can feel the heat centered there. The second night I did Tai Chi Chih, I felt like I could knock a wall down by pointing at it. It was amazingly intense for something that consists of gentle motions, shifting forward and back, side to side. The breathing is very controlled, and I've noticed how my lungs have improved. Before I started, I had gotten out of shape (a desk job and not having to walk anywhere will do that to you) to the point that climbing to the third or fourth floor of a building had me out of breath. At Tai Chi class tonight, I realized that one night at this weekend's convention, we climbed up eight flights of stairs and all I had to do at the end was take a deep breath to keep from getting dizzy from the stairwell's upward winding.said Jason, at 1:08:35 AM || remember
9.7.2000
I did finally get ahold of the gas company. I said, "Hey, there's this bill for Occupant and I just moved in and I'm not paying it." The operator said, "You shouldn't, that's not your bill." I love her, I love the gas company, and I forgive Lukas Haule, whose name I did not give to the gas company. I even forgive him for the closet rods, as I found the ones for the bedroom closet, if not the hall closet.said Jason, at 4:58:11 PM || remember
For those who haven't yet noticed, the actual email address associated with this site is theremin(at)somnolent.org. Iain asked me today why I picked "theremin" as a username. Good question.
About this time last year I was trying to come up with a new IRC handle. I picked theremin because it was a) cool in a phonetic way, b) an instrument featured in a lot of Add N to (X) songs (as well as a few Pixies songs), and c) the name of a character I created for Sam to play (Sir Theremin, sidhe knight of House Dougal) in a one-shot Changeling live-action game that Genna and I ran a year or so ago.
Then recently, when signing up for DreamHost, I needed to pick a username and all my usual ones (er, one, since I try to use "jason" everywhere, and I didn't want to use "nullmeans" for a domain name different than the one that the nickname stemmed from) were taken. I tried "theremin" and it took it, so there ya go. :)
I've always been interested with theremins, as you don't actually touch them to play them. In essence, you play their auras. That's too cool. They do sound spooky, but also somewhat dreamlike, which fits with the whole somnolent theme.
said Jason, at 2:09:27 PM || remember
I fixx0red this sitexx0rs for Netscapexx0rs. H4w!
(Note to Netscape: Learn to render a fucking table without me having to put in a spacer line of transparent gifs at the bottom. You're a big browser now, you don't need training wheels.)
[Editor's note: Of course, now I've gone and broken it in IE. Good grief. // Found the problem. A post using the <pre> tag was forcing the table cell wider than it was supposed to. Fix: change the font size of <pre> in the style sheet. Still, what a pain.]
said Jason, at 1:19:35 PM || remember
Happiness is going into Home Depot for some closet rods and coming out registered to vote. Screw you, Dubya! I am the closet rod of Fate!.... or something.
said Jason, at 12:30:31 PM || remember
9.6.2000
On the way back from lunch today, my coworker was telling us about this get well card he got his grandfather when he was sick:
outside: Life has its ups, life has its dips...
inside: But we still have potato chips.
I thought (and said), "What the hell does that have to do with anything? That's supposed to be uplifting?" I mean, that's about as coherent as these:
outside: Sure, there are murders and rampant poverty...
inside: But we've still got toenail clippers!
outside: Sorry you have cancer, and are going to die.
inside: In the meantime, thank God for polka, then, eh?
outside: You're not feeling well?
inside: Remember the Hindenberg? No? Then what do you know from suffering!?
Probably the best and most appropriate card I've ever given anyone would be to Sam for his most recent birthday, before we quit the company we both were working for:
outside: I wanted to get you something more expensive for your birthday...
inside: ...but I work at the same place you do.
said Jason, at 2:30:13 PM || remember
9.5.2000
This past weekend (all four days of it) have been both fun and hell. WorldCon 2000 was happening in my own back yard this year, and my recently-moved-to-Arizona roommates came back up to town for the whole convention. Many misadventures were had, for both good and ill. Some of the high/low-lights:- My roommates did indeed come up for the whole weekend, which means that many of us piled on over to say hello, kibitz, and generally make nuisances of ourselves. Getting to see Sam and Genna again was wonderful, as I really do miss them and having them conveniently located under the same roof.
Genna and Sam had gotten together with some folks on the Friends of Liaden mailing list, and gotten a bunch of rooms clustered together with a suite. (Thanks to those folks for putting up with all of us invading!) There were a bunch of other parties to visit after con hours, too, and many of these were serving various drinkies and snacks.
Here's where it gets ugly. I've now seen some of my friends that I've never before seen drunk, drunk.
The short version, since apologies have been made and everyone's buds again and still, is that apparently I'm not the only one who needs to watch my tongue when angry for want of not being cuttingly cold. At one point, one of my friends came this close to slugging me, as close as I came to kicking him in the teeth. And I wasn't drunk. I had to leave one night to actively not practice dentistry, and early another night because I could sense them getting sloshed and having them become more and more grating on my nerves. Sunday, sans alcohol, was considerably better and easier on us all. - At the end of the weekend, I was feeling completely unsexy. There was one guy that I saw Friday night, dressed in a Renaissance-ish costume reminiscent of Ares' get-up from Xena. Long-time readers will recall that I have a thing for Ares (though I've recently had it pointed out that it is technically not a fetish, nor a kink... but let's face it, the look does turn me on). He didn't look like Ares, but he was cute and fuzzy all the same. At some point I had decided to determine if this guy was gay -- or at least bi -- and get a kiss from him.
Now, in hindsight, this was probably pretty innocent. I mean, it wasn't like I was planning to grope his ass and fondle his package as a means of introduction, but at some point on Sunday, or maybe after I left the con Saturday, I gave it up, not wanting to treat this poor guy like an object. Maybe I need to lighten the fuck up, and maybe I should just be glad I didn't make an ass out of myself. Maybe he wasn't gay at all and it's all a moot point.
Later, I went to a party held Sunday night by the Lambda LesBiGay SciFi fandom group, wherein I met a bearish guy who happened to live in my new neighborhood. Unfortunately, he also happened to refer to me at one point as the "boy next door," tell me about some D&D game he played in the mid-80s (and he didn't even get around to telling me about his character, just how a bunch of them died... believe me, that's bad even as bad goes), and even asked me when I took the El in the morning, presumably to arrange an accidental meeting. It was creepy in the way where you realize it's creepy as it's happening, but still have the power to walk away and not allow it to evolve into something worse than creepy. I suppose this was Instant Guy Karma for my earlier plans.
No big deal, really. Still, it left me feeling a little unattractive, being the evening's Creep Bait. (I suppose that should mean that I should have felt the opposite way, but it left me feeling slightly... sticky. Tarnished. Like I'd been slimed. Bleh.) - Cory Doctorow won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He gave what probably was the best speech during the Hugo Awards; he pulled out his Handspring Visor (I think... some palmtop or other), pulled up his speech, and, keeping it down to the first couple of sentences (and not the kind of sentences you need to write down -- go see the speech), ended it by giving us the URL to the full acceptance speech on his website, craphound.com.
Since we were in the Liaden Lounge with Sam's ad hoc network, I jumped over some of the other viewers and pulled up the speech on a laptop. We got a kick out of it, and Sam emailed him with some pithy comments about entertaining us and congrats and whatnot. Apparently, Cory got the email on his Visor before he had a chance to sit back down, emailed Sam back and asked to meet with him the next night.
I missed the 8:15 meeting due to tardiness, having to find parking, and running into some Jerry Lewis Telethon showdown when I got to where we were all supposed to meet (some disabled folks showed up to protest the telethon, chanting "no more pity..." apparently, this wasn't printworthy, as I can't find a link to the story anywhere on the web). Cory is also technosavvy enough to help found and work on the openCOLA project. He and Sam geeked out for a few minutes and became suitably impressed with one another and each other's projects. Punk funkin' rock. - Lieutenant Worf as John Shaft. 'Nough said.
- Monday was... well, let's just say that now I am utterly confused on the Boy Front, which, added to the funkiness still felt from Sunday night, has provoked me to take a break from the lads completely while I figure out what the hell it is I want at this point. If anything at all.
said Jason, at 12:32:25 PM || remember
9.3.2000
So last Tuesday I got home to find that several elements of my apartment -- pieces of furniture, items still leaning against walls or pushed against bookshelves -- had been rearranged. Not just moved a few inches, or other weird, random, maybe-it's-a-poltergeist, maybe-it's-just-you kind of rearrangements, but picked up, moved from one room to another, pushed away (and in one instance, leaving scratches on the hardwood floor), kicked over casually type rearranged. Also, on the shelf in the wall by the front door, someone had left a can of Jumex brand mango juice (mango nectar, the can corrects me). It was like a burglar with a very strange sense of humor had come to pay me a visit and wanted to share his or her snack.After determining that nothing was missing, I called my landlord and asked him if he or the maintenance guy had been in my apartment today, and he confirmed that the maintenance guy had been by with some folks to fix the water pressure in my apartment so that I could get hot water from more than just the bathroom sink. I had forgotten that they were going to be by today, so I thanked my landlord (who was surprised that the maintenance guy hadn't left me a note) for reassuring me that my life wasn't becoming unnecessarily eerie.
Now, ever since I've moved in, it seems like the maintenance guy has had trouble looking me in the face. The only reason I can think of to explain this is that he's seen some of the kitsch in my apartment that marks me as a homo, such as the "Sally's GAY with Midol!" postcard on my refridgerator, or the copy of the local Alternative Press phone book, or most recently, the button I bought for my leather jacket, which proclaims in a bold, white-on-black, sans-serif font, "I LIKE MEN," which he must have noticed sitting on my computer desk, since the chair was moved over elsewhere.
I still have a couple of things to get fixed around here, so I've left the can of mango juice nectar where it is, so when I do let the maintenance guy know what I need, I can have a little sign on the can, waiting for him when he walks through the front door, saying, "You left this here. It's yours if you still want it, but if not, I can add it to my collection of keepsakes from the men who have been in my life." The way I see it, I shouldn't be the only one to get spooked around here.
said Jason, at 5:25:06 PM || remember
9.2.2000
Right Place Right Time Division: Nelson finds someone else who likes the Pixies, when a week ago I had gone through some of my old cassettes, found the Pixies mix tape I had made in '93 or '94, and have been playing in my car nearly nonstop. I had nearly forgotten what an amazing song "Velouria" is, or how all over "Trompe le Monde" wanders. Before I had lost my heart to Stereolab, I had a home with the kids from Boston. (And Puerto Rico.)ps. I'm updating from here. Geekgeekgeekgeek...
said Jason, at 3:13:22 PM || remember
9.1.2000
So there.
said Jason, at 7:45:27 AM || remember
