2000-02-16 :: 03:41:16
Donald Trump loves Milk Duds
Soundtrack: Banco De Gaia, "The Magical Sounds of Banco De Gaia"; Gomez, "Liquid Skin [Sampler]"; Soulwax, "Much Against Everyone's Advice"; Supersuckers, "The Evil Powers of Rock 'n' Roll"
I'm not dead, yet. Nor was this a test as to whether or not you'd come back, or if I'd come back. A better explanation: it's hard to live life and record it and have time for both.
Also, I've been devoting time to writing for other things, such as my playwriting class and the school paper, where it appears I may just get a regular opinion column. All of this has been taking a higher priority than writing for me, and it frustrates me to a certain degree. I find things that strike me and I want to remember them, but I get caught up in more "things" and memories lose their sharpness/immediacy as time goes by before I have the opportunity to get around to recording them. It irks me. Perhaps this is the root of the "boring diary" complex that stirred up so much trouble "way back when." *shrug*
I'm checking out a bunch of CD's I got out of the Take Me bin today. I love the Take Me bin, for the CD's are the ones you would never hear on the radio (this generally means they are too good or too shitty), and they are free. Good (often), and free. Yes.
In any event... things have been good since last I wrote. I have continued on the righteous path of cooking, and whipped up a mean batch of sunny side up eggs and cheese toast. I must admit that Nick does more cooking than I do, but I'm working on catching up... I'll be on fajita duty this weekend. Made sure we got the limes this time for all the Coronas so I don't have to rush out and buy slices from a bar again... hahaha. We're all about the produce; there's a nectarine sitting on my monitor waiting to be eaten, and I can tell that it makes an overall difference in my mood and energy levels, particularly in comparison to last semester's "let's see if we can live on pasta alone" strategy. (Note to self: I can't.) This is all part of our "resolution of the week" plan, which so far has worked pretty well. The idea is that if you focus only on one thing and don't get on your case for failing to do any of the other things you need to improve, then you can slowly build your habits up into good ones. Our general resolution of "cook real food" has expanding into this "weekly" concept. The first weekly resolution I did was "wear my retainers at night" and then moved that into "do the full skin care deal at night instead of hackily brushing your teeth for 30 seconds." I have been better about the first, but I'm getting there. I think we'll have to allow for two week resolutions to really let them sink in. This week we have a joint resolution to resume lifting on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. I'm all training to be an infomercial guru, you know?
One thing I learn more and more is watching the level I reach out to people. I used to be okay with constantly reaching out and never being the one reached for, but I'm working towards balance on that. Sarah was talking (last night at 4AM) about how there is a yin and yang to everything, which on the one level sounds like new age bullshit, but also rings very true with me and a lot of what I do. Nick asked if it's better to work at achieving a true centering, or if one should push out to the extreme fringes; Sarah felt that you should reach the extremes to know what they are, but then use that to find a true centering (I think). We had a lot of talk about marriage and how there is this 20-40 year period of "non-giddyness" that you have to be prepared for based on a period of a few giddy lovey-dovey years. Frankly, it scares me that my parents are one of the only happy marriages of which I am aware. Almost all of my friends' parents are divorced or pretty much in a functional relationship (i.e. you never see them kiss or say "I love you"). Suck.
A tangent thought coming from all this conversation discussion: I find that I can sit back and enjoy others peoples' conversation more instead of trying to take up the space with my own voice; this makes me very happy. Nick calls it "learning the silence;" (is that punctuated correctly?) I think the more I write the more I learn that it's okay not to destroy interpretations with wordy explanations. Playwriting gives me a lot of that, too. Also tangential to this tangent: Someone asked me how my weekend was, and I said "fulfilling," and the reason I said this was because I had just had a really good conversation. You know, the kind where you and the person you are talking to can look each other right in the eye the whole way through and you do it because you are relating that well. For all of my learning to shut up and considering how much to reach out, it is nice to know that I can find people with which I can be open and show my emotions and have that openness returned in kind. That is very, very good.
While I'm talking about new age bullshit (or at least, I was up a ways there)... there was this Entrepreneurship Forum here this past weekend, and everything the people said was so hippie. It's like "yo, smoke a bowl, get an idea, people will give you money if you have the love, man!" We had a lot of famous people hobnobbing around, the VP of Operations for The Limited, Doug Liman (director of Go and Swingers and currently working on nibblebox.com), Tom Scott of Nantucket Nectars, Nancy Lublin (the head of Dress for Success), and some high up [Christian Anthony] at insound.com, among others. Mostly they all had a message consisting of "follow your bliss, if you build it they will come" type of stuff. Which is cool, I think you have to buy into your own fantasies and beliefs that you can control your reality more than you really can if you want to make your idea happen. Tom Scott cracked me up with this comment that I jotted into my Palm: "You don't need a house. You don't need a car. You can eat Ramen noodles." He also said "You'd think of the same shit I thought of if you thought about juice as much as I do." A lot of the people dropped the s-word without thinking twice, in fact, which I found interesting given who they were and to whom they were talking. Werd. Tom looks pretty much like you would expect from the radio commercials, he dresses in expensive comfortable clothing, has shaggy blond hair and sharp, Nordic "I used to play football some I guess" features. Everything he said was easy to believe and sounded very genuine and funny. That is probably a great deal of why Tom Scott succeeded.
I think the key to entrepreneurs is their magnetic ability to draw people to them and have them listen. I saw Jeb at the table next to mine and he was gesticulating and narrating one of his many thoughts or stories, and all eyes were on him. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up making a pile of money, because I think he has the goods. Of course, I would hope I have the goods, too, but one is hard pressed to be the best judge of oneself. The head of Dress for Success was quite captivating; she had a very nice sense of style (quite the leather fan, she) and had a great anecdote about meeting Donald Trump at some performing arts thing that she got tickets to early (meaning she had excellent seats).
Nancy: Hello.
Standard introductions occur, and then...
Donald: What do you do?
Nancy: I run a non-profit organization that gives poor women formal clothes so they can interview for good jobs.
Donald: Oh. Do you like it?
Nancy: Yes, a lot.
Donald: Oh.
Nancy: What do you do?
Donald: You are the first person that's ever asked me that. I guess you could say I am a builder. I build things.
Nancy: Do you like it?
Donald: Yes, I do.
It turns out she needed a good deal of floor space to expand Dress for Success at that time. And Donald, as Nancy put it, "has a little bit of real estate in New York." Well, the upshot of this is that sometime later she got The Donald's personal assistant's name through the "network" and went to Trump Tower after purchasing a huge box of Milk Duds. She asks to see the assistant, is told that she is in Trump's office and to go to floor [whatever], and does. Trump's office, Nancy said, "looks just like you expect it would" - gold, mirrors, etc. "The guy could see 20 reflections of himself at any time." Nancy proceeds to run into the socialite girl, who asks her why she is there. She holds up the Milk Duds box, and the socialite is like "You came all the way here to give him a box of Milk Duds?" to which Nancy replies that she's going to offer to bring Trump a box of Milk Duds a week for the rest of his life if she can get 1,200 feet of floor space for her non-profit. I think he ended up doing the deal, too. Haha.
The other thing I noticed, particularly in Doug Liman, is how entrepreneurs have a sort of "artistic suffering" streak in them. Do note that Doug is obviously an artist (being a moviemaker and all) at heart, but the general philosophy he espoused seems to speak of the entrepreneur's mindset. It's all about being the underdog, and showing everyone that you were right anyway, then waving your middle finger wildly and doing it all over again with no sleep and no friends and no life. I once saw a photo of Jerry Yang (of Yahoo! fame) curled up in a blanket under his cubicle computer asleep when he was worth about $500 million (it's in The Nudist On The Late Shift). This all sounds fairly insane, but I enjoy games, and this is all one huge game.
Doug was talking about how having two hit films opened every door, and that meant he had to find a new thing to do where he was being told 'no' all the time, just so he could have that struggle again. It was the struggle to succeed that made him happy. I don't know if I could live life being happy only on means and never on ends. Shouldn't it be okay to just chill with what you've made for yourself at some point before leaping into the void again? This is all probably like rock stars struggling for credibility after the hit single. Suddenly you are no longer just doing it for a devoted core that loves you and everything you do and sings along at every gig even though there are only five fans at any given show; you are doing it for a record company and the radio and MTV and the people who only know you because of "that one song." Also similar: the artist living in a flat and losing girlfriends because he's broke, yet he has no trouble getting laid frequently anyway - suddenly he gets a huge commission and doesn't know how to find that hurt in his soul anymore and ends up married and criticized for losing his edge. A lot of stuff is art, in its way: code you could redesign and tighten, words you could hone sharper, pictures you could start over and do in fewer, stronger lines, photos you could shoot again in better light. So perhaps the question is when it's good enough to let go and move on to something else. Well, I don't have any fucking answers on that one. I want to be happier reaching milestones, but I need a little more drive, too.
Cursing is another resolution - it's gotta be reduced. I have to catch myself on that. If you see me saying "that's an unpleasant situation" or using the word "unpleasant" in general, that's probably me working a little self-censorship in the interest of cleaning my dirty ass mouth out. "Sucks a fat cock" has been a catchphrase for a wee bit too long. I may as well clean up my writing if I'm cleaning up my mouth. Or perhaps this should be my profanity outlet, and I'll just clean up my mouth. We'll see how that works out.
Well crap. It looks like like I just broke the lifting resolution for today since Nick is leaving and it's 12:26AM. And I just said "crap," which may violate that cursing resolution. Alright. Duly noted, back on track.
Sometimes, you have one of those days. I had one of those days a few days ago; I think it was last Thursday, but I'm not certain. In any event, I was really damn tired and had to go out to Kinko's to get some copying done for my house (not a frat, special interest housing). I haul over to Kinko's, barely awake, and I walk up to the clerk. His name was Sean, and he was a sniveling little goateed piece of shit unpleasantness.
Jordan: Uh, I need 160 copies of this? Double sided, and cut in fourths.
Sean: Take a copy key and do it.
Jordan: Where do I get it cut?
Sean: At the other end of the store. Just bring it to them.
Jordan: Is colored paper extra?
Sean: It's eleven cents a sheet.
Jordan: Uh, how much is white paper?
Sean: Eight cents.
Jordan: I'd like orange.
So he hands me a stack of orange and tells me to load it into a copier and make my copies and give him back the rest.
Now excuse me, I didn't realize you couldn't "place an order" with Sean, especially since he was in a little cubby corner with a sign that said "Place Your Order." I mean, he's in a fairly menial service position, he might as well provide some service; it's not like I was impolite. Anyway, I get a copy key and realize the machine won't start. In fact, some guy has just left it since he apparently doesn't want to deal with anything that says "Open Paper Tray 5." But it's a nice Xerox jobby (and the only keyed copier available) and the LCD has a diagram of where Paper Tray 5 is. I open it and the display changes and says "remove single sheet of paper" and I see there is indeed a single sheet of paper clogging the rollers, so I yank it out and it tells me to "close Paper Tray 5," which I also do. I am, at this point, extremely impressed with this machine. I mean, think of all the sensors that must be figuring out where stuff is screwing up to be able to lead a dunderhead user to a proper fix. I still have nightmares about the copy machines in the public library back in high school. The kind that would shut down randomly and eat your quarters and you'd pray they'd work because you'd left the paper to the last minute, again.
So I have difficulty setting the machine for double-sided copies, and Sean expresses great exasperation at having to leave his fortress of solitude to help me out, but he finally does and I get going. I make one copy, but end up copying the same side twice since I'm really not clear how it works (oops), and then I remember I have to feed it in twice to get one copy out (duh). This clearly won't cut it for 160 copies, so I ask Sean how to get multiple double copies and he demonstrates that you can only do 50 at a clip, but gets me going. Swell. I show him the faulty copy I made and he basically tells me to fuck off about it and I throw it out in his fortress' trash can. He tells me to go put it in the trashcan in the copier floor space. Having not seen any trash cans, I am miffed, but he goes and gets the piece of paper out of the trash and tells me to throw it out over there, then proceeds to give me directions ("up some... to your left... up... back... look down") to a tiny slot on the worktable that says "Kinko's Recycles Colored Paper." Sean doesn't appear to be a tree-hugger, and I note that he is in fact a power-hungry copy boy who needs a smacking.
At some point in all of this, a girl named Kathryn walks into the store. She's really tall and looks quite pretty without makeup. I am not sure why I know her name, I may have met her through a friend of a friend once, or perhaps overheard it when I saw her at some point at a party or in the cafeteria. You know. Anyway, she doesn't know me from Adam. I, of course, look nappy and much like a mugger in my navy fleece winter hat/cap/whatever. She is miffed as to what copier is available, since it appears that only Copy Card activated ones are - there is one key copier that she has looked past, however. I point to the one next to mine and say "this copier is keyed," and she looks at me like "Huh?" and I say "I mean, you can use it," and she starts to use it. Clearly, this was a brilliant exchange, and she will remember my suavity. I tried not to stare at her too conspicuously for the rest of the time there; I am fairly sure that I failed miserably. Such nice black slacks.
I had one other technical difficulty along the way, but the machine guided me through it again flawlessly (sheet stuck in the copy-turnover tray where it stores sheets that have one side copied before copying the other side). I love you, Xerox. Finally, I have a stack of 160 copies, warm and smelling that copier smell, and I take it to the cutting side. There is a woman at the counter arguing with the clerk about her business cards, which they are apparently having problems cutting properly. She has a box of improperly cut cards, so I'm assuming this is not her first visit to Kinko's for business cards. She also has very nice silvery hair, and is clearly getting perturbed. Finally another clerk comes to help me; he is a guy who has worked many jobs on Thayer (the street where all the stores are). He's got stretched ear piercings, a beard, and a girth. When he goes back to cut the table slips, he calls out "These won't cut quite right," and I just say "Whatever, dude," so I think he thought I was pissed, but I wasn't. I was just tired.
When I get the cut slips back, they all have the necessary stuff on 'em, so I don't really care. I go to pay, and the total comes to $26.65. Now, I had one dollar to my name at the moment and was given $25 by the house for copies, so you can imagine my head hitting my arm on the counter in "one of those days"ness, which it did. I asked the clerk if I could call my house to get someone to come give me the change, and he just knocked off the $2 for the cuts instead. So Charles at the Kinko's on Thayer is a really good guy, and I thanked him for being so nice.
On the way home, I went by a store called Anime Crash, which was showing a classic Transformers episode in a TV in the window, the one where Optimus is attacked by mind-controlled Autobots, or something. Spike gets his head rubbed at the end, which I remember seeing at some point in my youth. I was fairly transfixed, and then I realized that some six year old kid was to my right watching me, and his family was watching both of us.
Mom: Is this Pokemon?
Jordan: No, this is far better than Pokemon. This is Transformers. These were the toys I had when I was his age. I'm getting all nostalgic. I still have all of these toys.
Mom: Can you buy them now?
Jordan: Oh no, these are pretty old.
Dad: Maybe at a garage sale.
Jordan: But then they'd be all beat up.
Mom: They'd be beaten up when he plays with them anyway.
Kid: Beaten up when I play!
He was pretty cute when he blurted that out. Anyway, I went inside and listened to the audio portion of the show; it was just like I remembered. Transformers were, I believe, some of the greatest toys ever, if not the greatest. They made you think ("okay, so how does this transform?"), they were built to last, and they were giant robots that turned into cool things. Does it get much better than that? So the audio: the voices were like old friends. They all had these neat filters on them that made them sound cool and robotic. Granted, I'd seen the movie at least within the last year or so (I own it), but it's amazing what kids remember and store pretty much forever.
Nick has a theory that any kid with a Nintendo and Zelda will be able to tell you to go two screens left and bomb for the secret door when he sees any some given room in a dungeon and be right. This has appeared to be the case in "test studies." Jeb thinks kids should just be handed books written at extremely high levels about whatever they are into. So if some kid likes treehouses, you hand him an engineering manual and say "Go to it, you plan a treehouse, and we'll make it." Being a kid they will not understand that there are certain things you aren't supposed to be able to do and just struggle with it until they get it, the theory goes. And then you put that kid in an engineering class and watch him blow the unpleasantries out of everyone else when they start doing mechanics. I'm inclined to agree, provided some patient teacher is around when the kid hits a six syllable word or some other silly obstacle. I mean, look at how damn good kids get at memorizing video game patterns or dinosaur genealogy and understanding relationships between all of it. Jeb would be a good educator because ideas excite him and he explains them in very understandable ways - he once explained a the concept of a realtime operating system to me by talking about it as though the OS was having a discussion with the programs it was running.
Mmm, white chocolate. The nectarine is long gone. And the Supersuckers are pretty evil.
On a completely random (and I assure you, not evil) note, I threw a television down a stairwell (one story) onto cinder blocks. The house had a Drop Night (an old computer bit it, as did a laptop and a few other choice items). I threw Sarah's broken TV down with Nick the first time; it didn't break. I threw it down again a second time, and the casing broke apart, but the screen remained intact, and a lot of smoke came out. Another guy tossed a shattered cinder block remnant on it but the screen still (!) didn't crack. Then the cops came and told us we could kill someone (in thick New Englandese) and so we had to stop. It was fun to throw a TV though, let me tell you.
I had a few others ideas on my plate but I'll just let 'em stew 'til next time. At the end of the month (ha!). In their stead, a fine game of he-said, she-said (ordered male / female):
Note that the female diary is probably meatier with the exception of anomalous, and sometimes they don't even discuss each other (talking about the other seems to be a characteristic of the more volatile relationships).
Happy closing thoughts: I got two emails (well, one e-card and one email) from friends I hadn't spoken with in a while. That was really nice to be on the receiving end of a "reach out." Yay for Katie and Adam. I should note that Valentine's Day was the first time I ever had a "realtime conversation" with Katie in nearly three years (it was on ICQ, which both of us were completely unaware that the other had). Up until then the entirety of our correspondence has been either email or transcontinental letters. I wonder how many people have non-realtime relationships like that anymore.
Also, TerraServer is neat.
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