Monthly Archives: January 2003

Innovative Interface

By scamper · Posted in reality

Some MetaCreations expats (including Kai Krause on the advisory board) had something to do with this. CoOperating Systems’ HelloWorld looks interesting, though, as with PDAs, I don’t know if it’s something I’d use–my comrades are all located in an area roughly equivalent to two pixels on the interface shown. And who wants to talk to them anyway?

Note also “CoSI’s” appreciation of subtlety, even in a web presentation: If you click on the right half of a screenshot it takes you to the next page, and the left side it takes you back. Clever monkeys!

(I can also personally appreciate the fact that Christopher Franke, formerly of Tangerine Dream, is also on the advisory board.)

Tearing Down Walls

By scamper · Posted in thought, work

There’s always a new guy. Frankly there are too many of them, and only so many hours in a day. This is why we usually remain tucked behind our little social membrane–the alternative would be interacting with every single person around us, and filling our precious and dwindling supply of brain cells with dozens of otherwise useless proper names.

If I can possibly avoid meeting someone, I will. I’ll tie my shoe or go to the bathroom or call in sick or move, just please don’t tear down that third wall.

Earlier this week I needed to confirm an assumption I had about the project I’ve been working on. I can usually work in solitude, but soon enough I became entangled in a complex series of events that all seemed to be leading toward an inevitable interaction with a new guy. The maddening bit is that I was pretty sure I was right in my assumption, but it was an essential piece of information just the same. I had to be sure.

Desperate not to meet the new guy, I asked a anyone else who might be able to help me–people I already know–but to no avail. As a last ditch effort I tried looking up the new guy’s email address, but he’s just too damned new to be listed. Plus I didn’t know his name. It was like all of the universe’s controlling forces had suddenly become legion in their campaign to foil me.

You know when you’re going to knock something over, and you think hmm… if I don’t watch out then I’m going to knock that over, and then you do knock it over, and it’s happens even more slowly because you predicted it, and now you have to sit through it and watch it happen for real? It’s terrifying and frustrating and banal all at the same time.

So I took my little piece of paper over to the new guy and asked him if this thing was supposed to be there, and he said yeah, and I went back to my desk, defeated.

This morning I was trundling to my desk along my favorite route when I passed the new guy in the doorway. I looked up at him, looked back down to my shoes, recognized him, looked back up, saw his cordial I know you expression, and met it with my own, sustaining it just long enough so that it didn’t look like a twitch. All that work drained the life out of me.

In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat there was a guy who enjoyed a neural disorder that rendered him unable to remember anything for longer than about 60 seconds. I think I can beat that if I really assert myself.

In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat there was a guy who enjoyed a neural disorder that rendered him unable to remember…

Building Walls

By scamper · Posted in thought

Nothing shatters this perception of free will more quickly than when you notice the razor wire-tipped fences between you and the grass. Why can you not walk on the grass? Seen from afar, the fog enshrouded hills of Berkeley are so moist and inviting, but when you get anywhere near them you come face to face with the fences. They’re everywhere, like cobwebs in your cellar. Are they to keep you out, or the happy cows in? The Central American expats who work on the new gate around the community refer to themselves as guardas. You’ve heard them laugh about it as they build walls around the big houses. Nor iron bars a cage your ass. Hey guardas, a few more bricks to seal the top and you’d make Poe proud.

Wait–You’re Serious?

By scamper · Posted in activist

The audience had barely finished roaring from that whole “Bush declares a National Sanctity of Life Day” thing last week when the inevitable question was asked: “How will Mr. Bush top himself?” This would surely be a challenge, but he has risen to meet that challenge with aplomb. Witness: “Bush plan gives huge tax break to buyers of big SUVs“. Sterling performance, Mr. Bush! Now I need to wipe the snot off my monitor.

Infomercial

By scamper · Posted in whimsy

Look at that woman, will you?

Mmm?

She looks old, doesn’t she?

Her? She sure does. I’ll bet she’s 70.

And you can see every year on her. It’s too bad that she didn’t have Juvox in her day.

Jew-vox? As in “voice of the Jews?” What’s that?

No, silly! It’s only the most revolutionary, most effective vim-restoring system ever devised, and it’s got more than Jews talking about it.

It sounds like I’ve really been missing out!

Well fortunately we’re not a moment too late. Let me tell you about the wonders of Juvox. You lead an active life, but somewhere along the way you’ve lost the passion you had when you were younger.

It’s true, I really have.

You look disheveled at best, your features have all stretched toward the floor and melted together like wax, and your friends all share one thing in common: A strong sense of sympathy.

Boy, I feel terrible.

But what if I told you that there was a way to restore your youthful vigor? To put the fight back in your fists, and to regain that nervous energy you felt as you saw someone cute from across the compound?

I’d say who’s your supplier!

Ha ha. Well it’s not a drug, per se. And Juvox isn’t just a topical cream either. We call it the Juvox Vim-Restoration System. By going step by step through our specially designed process, you’ll be tampering with your chemical makeup in ways that mother nature could never have foreseen.

But is Juvox safe?

It sure is! Juvox is all natural, and is made from only two base ingredients.

That’s really amazing! How can Juvox be so effective without containing at least several industrial grade pollutants?

Well the methods of extraction and refinement are proprietary, but I’ll tell you that Juvox contains only death row inmate testosterone, and the sweet, soft forehead sections from third world babies.

You’re kidding!

And as for potency, nothing else comes close. The steroid hormone testosterone is one of the essential building blocks of aggression. It’s also primarily male–that’s how the inmates got to where they are! So we went right to the source. Juvox is infused with enough testosterone to bring the gleam back the the eyes of a cataract patient.

But isn’t it difficult to extract enough testosterone?

It was at first, but Vitubus, Inc.–the makers of Juvox–forged many mutually advantageous relationships with judges in several southern states in the early 90s, and access to dead men walking was as easy as electrocution!

But didn’t the Supreme Court recently rule that it was unconstitutional for judges rather than juries to decide whether to sentence a killer to death?

It’s true that there have been setbacks in the capital appellate process. But that’s why Vitubus, Inc. wasn’t content just to rely on hushed mandatory donations from inmates. Thanks to several key scientific advances Vitubus, Inc. hedged its bets by employing orchidectomy to populate its own testicle farms, and now the supply of grade A testosterone is on the rise, so to speak!

Ha ha.

And when you talk about soft, supple skin, what’s the one thing do you always use for comparison?

Why the foreheads of babies, of course!

Exactly. And we’ve scoured the planet and set up Missions in several of the most impoverished countries you could ever hope to find. People there are never lacking for babies, and these babies in particular have some of the softest foreheads in the world! Most people in these cultures simply have no access to the nutrients essential to building strong bones, and as a result infants often keep their soft foreheads until the age of about three! By fostering a belief in ritual trepannation, Vitubus Missions have more vital tissue than they know what to do with.

Wow. But hold on a second–isn’t eating babies wrong?

Not according to the Bible. And Juvox comes in a refreshing gum too, for people on the go!

Convenient!

Yes. Let me tell you, the results are just amazing. For the past four months I’ve been using the system myself.

How old are you anyway?

I’m 24!

Holy mother of fuck!

Mm hmm! The Juvox Vim-Restoration System isn’t available in stores, but if you call the number on your screen one of our operators will work with you to come up with a payment plan that works for you.

That sounds too good to be true.

You should start using it as soon as you can. And, as anyone on death row can tell you, the clock is ticking!

I’m going to call right away!

Operators are standing by.

Two Weeks

By scamper · Posted in work

After two weeks the workers return, and collect in their cubes like silt in the gear-teeth of a derelict clock. In a flagrant disregard for instinct they plan their meetings and follow-up meetings, and meta-meetings during which they will discuss the nature of meetings. I become swept up in the tide (or perhaps it’s the undertow) and witness as they awkwardly conduct themselves, and it’s like watching someone with amnesia trying to assume their family lives again: “Is this where I used to sit? Do I like meatloaf?” It saddens me. They speak of deliverables and collateral content and product specs. “No!” I want to shout. “Don’t you realize that you’re using the language of The Man?” And when you speak The Man’s language, he owns your mind. I try to save them from the rising momentum. “I wore this shirt for ten days during the break.” They think I’m kidding. So soon after their emancipation, and already they have their callous-toughened hands on the plough grips.

False Dilemma

By scamper · Posted in activist

Are people really buying into this administration’s false dilemma? “Either they disarm, or we have to go to war with them.” Oh, really? From what crevice did you pull that one? There’s a logical fallacy that describes this brand of thinking quite nicely, and what I don’t appreciate is the unyielding stream of rhetoric sluicing from Capitol Hill that seems as much geared to intimidate Them as it does to coerce Us. You know, the great unwashed. Today Bush says, “We are ready for war.” Warmonger I think they call it, and passive aggressive at that. “We’re ready, just in case. Not that we’ll need to, though we probably will. But either way, just saying.” Really, are people buying this?

All of this will seem annoyingly familiar to anyone who experienced any kind of social difficulties in school. It’s the old story: Bully accuses little kid of passing notes calling him names. Bully sends team of locker inspectors to rifle through little kid’s locker checking for evidence of hate-notes. Pieces of paper that may or may not be notes are found in little kid’s locker. Bully issues decree that little kid must surrender all pieces of paper, or he will have no choice but to liberate the little kid from his lunch money. Little kid explains that he was not passing notes about the bully’s mother, and declines to forfeit his entire paper supply. Bully calls little kid defiant, and says that the options are clear, and the choice is his.