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03.31.04 so unbelievable i thought sure it was an early april fools; google plans to offer webmail with 1 gig of storage, free. (free as in free with ads; at least they're google ads, nowhere near as offensive as some of that crap you catch on yahoo/hotmail.) i'll be interested to see how this idea turns out. # 03.29.04 well, today it's official. in three weeks i will start my new job as the senior print production coordinator for in-store marketing at a major retail clothing brand that we all know and love. the position's not quite as glam as the title might sound, (coordinator is one of the lower rungs on the ladder) but it represents a huge shift in focus from what i was doing and promises to be a terribly cool job. i've been working on this for the past three weeks now and i'm really excited that it's finally come together; i've been trying to get a road in with this company for almost two years now. of course, now more than ever i will need to adhere to my personal policy of not posting about work-things, but rest assured that you'll at very least get the scoop on the plethora of cute guys i will be working with (and believe me, there are plenty). again, i'll avoid going into details, but it's been really hard, emotionally, to make the decision to leave the company i work for now. there are so many great people that i work with there, and i'm leaving the company at a really exciting time. unfortunately, excitement in the corporate world tends to breed uncertainty and change, often for the better but often at a price. and this was the first honest-to-god real job i've ever had. there's a certain connection i feel to the company and to the people there who made me feel welcome, appreciated and understood. there were a lot of really terrible moments, but even in those times, there were always the same great people who were there to support me. it's an interesting emotion, part sorrow and part joy, part relief and part trepidation. kate compared it to breaking up with 90-some-odd boyfriends at once, which i suppose is kind of what it felt like, that moment when you know it's over but you can't help feel sorry as the light flickers out. # worst part about being sick? i think i just sneezed out my eyeball. it really hurts. # 03.28.04 a few months ago, i did a project with some folks at work for an online ad spot we were developing. normally i don't talk very specifically about work here, but this is just too funny to pass up. you can see the small, low-bandwidth version of my ass sashaying across banner ads on such esteemed properties as developer.com for a limited time. and if you're an IE user on the PC, you may find a surprise waiting there for you (doesn't work on the mac or in moz, and i don't even know for sure if it's still running, so no promises that you'll see anything). # 03.25.04 has it only been 3 days since i posted last? feels like it's been longer. this week has been really, really crazy. but i'll tell you all about that soon enough. in the meantime, what do you think of the new front-page photo? it's one of jessie's that i really like a lot, and the color/tone/symbolism really worked for me on here. that old green-field thing really was a little too windows xp rolling-hills (it's called the 'bliss screen' in micro-speak) after all. also note the new mp3. i was sifting through my to post pile of songs, looking for something happy; the velvet teen is super-happy pop-tastic. (and who doesn't need new-wave vocals and staccato drums?) i wish i could have left elliot smith up forever and ever, but we've got to move on some day, don't we? # 03.22.04 from tim, a link to a franz ferdinand track. if you can stomach streaming realplayer audio, check this out. these guys are awesome! # last week was ungodly busy. this time i almost can't wait for monday just so i can revel in the slowness of it. jess and i went out with our foodie-daddies, mark and rich and had an absolutely perfect meal at delfina. our waitress was so beautiful and nice that she had to break a glass right away, almost as if to provide some kind of grounding to keep the evening from floating away. the whole experience as best summed up when mark announced to our darling waitress that we would like one of every dessert. decadence. saturday night we managed to see the last showing of eternal sunshine of the spotless mind with some friends and the most concentrated group of attractive young hipsters to appear outside of a bar, ever. what can i say about the movie? more cohesive than any of kaufman's other scripts and, imho, infinitely more touching and well crafted. i love jim carrey so much, it hurts that i always hate his movies. which made this so much more of a treat. he's perfect in the role, totally restrained throughout. the whole story is as far out as you would expect from kaufman and the whole thing looks as enchanting as you would expect from michel gondry. but it manages to be far out and striking without being so explicitly weird as their last duet (human nature) is supposed to be. i would completely recommend this one. # 03.19.04 i'm not a PC kinda guy in the slightest, but i do find this one to be pretty appealing. (wait, is this a rip-off of apple's cube? eh, who cares?) # 03.18.04 congratulations on not letting me drive you nuts yet, baby. i love you! # "so her friend's are all cock-blocking, and i'm like, why do i gotta be some 'hood from oakland? why can't i just be this guy who grew up in like, trinidad and lived in london, 'cos i that's what i am. and i'm like, i think your friend's got a problem with me because i'm black, and she's all 'i really think you're over-reacting.' so i'm just like, i don't need this shit." "so what did you do?" "oh man, i just took off. danny showed up and we were gone. it's like, fuck-it, i don't need that shit, you know man?" "oh man, I know what you mean man." the collective din of the coffee shop has gone too far left for me, somewhere between the middle of the 3rd chilean drum solo playing over the stereo and the rising tone of my neighbor's comically san francisco conversation. the girl's on my left are admiring the sunlight and their bagels and someone's new hairstyle, and i put on my headphones to block out the rising white-noise of the whole room. this neighborhood only starts to feel hip on weekends, and only in a fringe sort of way. like any one of these people is no more than a few dollars or a few bad trips away from shirtless raving mad on the sidewalk come monday morning. but it works for me. i find that it takes the edge off of everyone's cool. it grounds things, brings back some reality. # 03.16.04 i have nothing to say to you. update: no, i'm lying! i actually do. like, for instance, to point out that i hung out with dan in the castro last saturday night (evidence). and this heat, yes! it's doing something, something with the pheromones. for example, on friday, flying back from seattle, a cute swedish boy sits down in the empty seat next to me and strikes up a conversation, totally unexpectedly. or today at work, when i had not one but two strange locking-of-eyes, acknowledging-exchange-of-glances moments. both wholly unintentional, i assure you. there's something in the air. # 03.14.04 i'm in a writing workshop with a friend for the next 12 weeks. we meet once a week and among various other things, we do at least one writing prompt. i'm surprised how much i'm enjoying the prompts; usually i hate pressure writing, but with fiction (and no need to accomplish anything by it) the pressure's a bit different. it moves me along, instead of cramping me in. either way, i'll be posting at least one of these short pieces to my writing blog every week, so if you're into that kind of thing, now you can check them out. # 03.08.04 i got bored. it's sunday night, you know? i organized my music files. i reloaded my daily reads, just in case they'd updated during the last few hours of the night. then i set about to cleaning my bookmarks. which lead to the rediscovery of this. one day, in a moment of overzealous glee, dayv and i set up a weblog for our hysterically literate, verbose, long-limbed roommate. while it lasted, it was the best of all kinds of fun. point being, jon's last post (the whole thing lasted just over a month) is all about some of the really wacko crazy people that dot the san luis obispo landscape. he wasn't talking about my ex-boyfriends. slo draws an interesting arm of the vagrant crowd. not your usual drunken transients, the standard pissing in the doorway lot. no, these are highly-articulate conspiracy transients. jon's post illustrates this perfectly. i once had my own experience however. about a year before the birth of this blog, as i was making to leave linnea's (the cafe of choice) with my then-girlfriend (shut up). there was this guy, who i'd seen sitting in the same place many times before. he has a big mountain-man mustache and a cowboy had with horse hair braid. he also, curiously, has a big leather-bound (many animals died for this man) writing book, pages anchored on each side by perfect round stones. in front of him are two small stone bowls, one filled with water and one filled with ink. he's scratching something out with a quill pen. it's too perfect to pass up. i introduce myself. we talk. i sit. his book is covered in tiny, organic squiggles, wholly unrecognizable as any kind of living language. i ask what he's writing. he turns the dial up to 11. turns out, cowboy hat tells me, that the chumash indians who used to inhabit the central coast region placed a curse on the missionaries who founded the mission that stands not three blocks from where we sit now. the black magic of this curse, cowboy hat tells me, has filtered up through the catholic church through the centuries until finally it reached the head of pope john paul II. the curse hinged on an intricate trinity of geographic locations, including san luis obispo, the vatican city and an ancient city in the war-ravaged (then, at least) balkan states. the pope, growing anxious, had begun to exert his control over the italian government to force american intervention. that clever pope harnessing popular outrage within italy over a recent accident in which a US fighter had sliced through a ski lift cable, killing everyone on the lift. here's where he lost me. somehow, the US was going to be forced to make a move in bosnia which would effectively break the curse. this, cowboy hat told me, had been divined from his studies on the link between the pyramid on the dollar and an ancient chinese civilization, which had possessed a written language which was impossibly advanced and could only be explained by...drum roll..alien intervention. at which point i excused myself and left. not long after, i broke up with my girlfriend, became gay and stopped talking to interesting looking characters at cafe's. coincidentally, NATO began it's bombing campaign in Kosovo shortly thereafter. # 03.07.04 we're not fat just because the food is so bad or because we roll from doorstep to parked car and back again. we're also fat because we've forgotten what real portions are. and not just at mcdonalds. everything is oversized. # um, it's sunday. # 03.04.04 sell your leftover wireless bandwidth. interesting concept. i'll bet the phone/cable/dsl companies don't care for the idea too much though. # finally, the secret of gizmodo's drying weeks is revealed. great. two gadget blogs. fantastic overkill? # "It is simply wrong for our generation to presume to dictate via a federal constitutional amendment how future generations of Americans address this social policy," Mr. Muth said. smart people oppose the gay marriage amendment for lots of reasons. including, above and beyond it's discriminatory nature, the fact that it's just bad logic. new york times reports on the beginning of the senate's hearings on the matter. # 03.02.04 did you know google could do all of these cool things? i didn't! i mean, some of them yes, but most of them no. internet, what would i do without you? # 03.01.04 you know, i never really got the belle & sebastian thing. i mean, i always thought they sounded nice, but i wasn't sure what all the fuss was about. then i bought if you're feeling sinister. i particularly enjoy the track i've just posted. maybe it will help answer your bell & sebastian questions as well. # « February 2004 | archive index | April 2004 » built with movabletype |
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