August 2001 Archives
As you may or may not know, Choire and I threw it all in a U-Haul and left Blogspot a few days ago and moved to our own domain on the tiny little island of Niue. No, we're not really on the island silly, we just bought the domain from them. We're loving it here and with our move my previous blogging psuedonym and aim and email address that went with it are all going to vanish very soon. If you want to email me or chat me up, please remember to delete the old stuff from your memory banks and replace it with the new links. Thanks!
What happens after a bunch of kooks spend an entire month snooping into each other's lives while caught in the throws of paranoia, suspicion and intense competition? Post-Puppetmaster of course.
I called in sick to work this morning and to be honest I don't feel so good. I think all that year end report writing, puppeteering, east west 2.0 launching and now the stress of our new Ernie-Aid Telethon has finally taken its toll. I guess ya gotta give your body sleep, nutritious food and a little exercise, and not just live on clif bars, cigarettes and ice tea. Who knew? I hope I'm better before the psychic fair this weekend. I've been reminded just how important it is in terms of my upcoming graduation that I put in all of my scheduled hours.
When I was a child the most horrific visions would leave me screaming in the middle of the night. My parents would come rushing in to calm me down and explain that there is no such thing as a ghost, and there most certainly was not a Chinese lady in our house who was out to get me. I would see her frequently as she made her way down the long hall and into my bedroom. And then I would scream, "CHINESE LADY! CHINESE LADY!" My parents couldn't deal with having a psychic child and after one particular night when my parents had come to my room two or three times in the wee small hours, my Mother made it clear that she was not going to have any crazy children in her house and I had to make this stop immediately or she would find a way for it to do so. Whatever it was didn't sound very good. Overnight the visions stopped.
In college I took a community development class and we had to choose a community as the focus of our class project. Everything I wanted to do was already taken and I got stuck with White Center, my hometown hood, a Seattle community of sorts often referred to as "Rat City." These days you might see one of the bumper stickers that says, "White Center: Not so white, not so central." 26 different languages are currently represented among the students at my old elementary school and while I initially was very unenthused, it did turn out to be the perfect project for me. I felt like Alex Haley discovering my Roots and doing my research on community history I discovered many interesting things.
Years ago, Seattle bars closed at midnight, but in King County they stayed open until 2 am. White Center, half of it within the Seattle city limits and the other half on county turf - made it the closest spot for people to party for two more hours nightly. It's no wonder it became the Pacific Northwest's bootlegging, alcoholic, crime ridden, "let's build the housing projects over there" spot. And while the city and county argued for decades over whose responsibility it was, the neighborhood increasingly found itself with a bad reputation. White Center has always historically been the primary home of the lowest common immigration denominator of the day as well and doing my research I discovered one day that the block I grew up on was pretty much built and originally owned by Chinese railway workers.
Discovering that little piece of information was interesting to say the least. I had almost forgotten all about the Chinese Lady in our house, until the facts revealed it wasn't such an impossibility after all. Over the years I have become much more in touch with my own sixth sense as well. It drove Choire and our other roommate crazy when we lived together in the early 90's. I'd tell them who was on the phone before it rang. I'd be singing that song before they even turned on the radio and found it there. We had a garage sale and the three of us were sitting on the front steps watching the vultures descend upon our bargains. Late in the day a lady in an old Mercedes drove up. Choire said, "I bet she's going to buy the Keane portraits." Kent said, "I put my money on the chest of drawers." I said, "She's going to look at everything before she makes her way to the 25 cent box and she'll spend about five minutes there before she pulls out that little beaded coin purse and she'll say, 'Oh, this will be perfect for my daughter' and that's all she's going to buy." They both ran screaming when she did indeed do exactly that. But I hated feeling like Carrie White.
A year and a half ago, stressed out by the things going on in my life I couldn't control and a dead guy named John that was opening doors in my studio apartment, I enrolled in a very intensive psychic seminary school program. The best thing about it is that while I used to feel like all of these things were always happening to me, now I've been given the tools to really turn it on, or turn it entirely off - mostly as I so choose. The whole experience has already been a journey beyond my wildest imagination.
Ok, while it is true that I've been incredibly busy this past month, I did still find time to blog. The only difference is I've been doing it over here on a game called Puppetmaster for the past month. I thought when it started I could keep blogging both places, but with everything else on my plate one of them had to go and so I stepped out on East West for awhile. I missed you all though, really, honest!
And Yes, I was The Puppetmaster! The Chat tonight rocked! It was hilarious and I can still feel my mind swirling trying to take it all in from both rooms at the same time. Like I said earlier, I had a blast, and it was fun creating Rachael and pulling her strings this past month. There were many questions tonight and I'll highlight just a few here. First off, I'm originally from Seattle so I chose a place I knew really well to not risk slipping up on geography. And yes, I did make a mistake very early in the game that a contestant did catch. I posted as Rachael then went back and posted as Philo and when I saw it on the page it had Rachael's name and picture with it. My browser had reloaded the previous page somehow. I FREAKED! but at least it was 3 am in the morning before the serious traffic hit and who would be up at 3 am? Answer: Somebody. And was I right about Ted having a ghostwriter or what? HAHAHAA! Oh, and Rachael's pictures are of one my favorite people - my friend Jessica here in Oakland. Love ya Jessica! It was a trip running around looking for durian fruit and stuff. Lots of laughs. Good times.
It's been one ton of fun and seriously, thanks everybody. I'll probably blather on about it more over the next few days. Regular readers pardon me on this one. This game has occupied my life in such a bizzarre way it will take a little getting used to returning to the real world - like I'd want to go do one thing, but I knew Rachael would be getting home from work at that time and she would blog. It was wierd being responsible for a person who didn't exist.
Congratulations Ashley for winning this thing. You rocked so hard and I love you to death. All that was just friggin theatrics. But you know what? I still won't marry ya. And Eva, you are a total gem. I adore you and your friendship online and other people like Nancy have made this whole thing worthwhile.
Goodbye Rachael. It was fun being ya, but I gotta go. R.I.P.
For those of you who missed the whole game, or just missed me this past month, you can catch up on some of what I've been up to in the posts below. A few are new and others have been edited and now include new content. And welcome to East West 2.0! We've been holding off on launching this until the game ended! Hang out and enjoy. You're all as welcome here as the flowers in Spring!
I went to read Puppetmaster this morning and there was nothing new posted. I felt lost. For the past month the game has consumed my life. Work, School, Puppetmaster, Work, School, Puppetmaster... I am starting to decompress while still reeling from the inertia. Rather than writing today I decided to finish East/West's listening page and work on our Ernie-Aid telethon - both of which are better than more of Rachael's ongoing drama or writing about how much I wanna win a game I was never a contestant in. Shouts out to George who lost his job, my beloved Ricky, the incomparable Aaron and you of course. I've missed everyone and thanks to all of you for the links and emails and everything. You're all the best and I'm truly, madly and deeply touched.
Someone asked me about the worst job I've ever had and something instantly came to mind.
It was 1990 and the temp agency had given me the address. Getting off the bus I was surprised to find a house rather than a business. I knocked on the door and the artist himself answered, showing me to a small claustrophic room where other temps were already in place. He introduced himself as a world reknowned artist of duck postage stamps. Our mission: to deperforate thousands of stamps featuring his latest duck stamp creation. I think it was for the state of Colorado to save their wetlands or something. We would deperforate and place each duck stamp individually into tiny wax paper stamp collecting envelopes. The rules were explained immediately. There will be no talking. No radio. If you tear more than five stamps you're off the job. However, if you deperforate so many postage stamps within the given time period you'll receive a bonus at the end of the day. If we all as a unit hit the necessary production level we could have radio. It seemed bizarre, but I was broke. He literally came in with a stopwatch and hollered "On your mark, Get set, Go."
Off we all went deperforating little duck postage stamps from very large sheets. Some of us did well, others did not. At lunch time the artist's wife entered the room. Her name was "Boots". She looked over our individual production quotas and one poor girl was asked to leave the house and not to return due to her sloppy workmanship. That was when the rest of us realized our agency had pimped us out to work for Ilsa - She Wolf of the duck postage stamp industry. I'm not sure why we all returned after lunch, but we did.
The project ended up taking an entire month. Daily I would get on the bus, ride over the hill and prepare myself for Boots, her OCD and her complete lack of any basic manners. As the days went by she grew worse. People walked out daily only to be replaced by more duck stamp deperforating cattle. After three nightmarish weeks a girl named Elizabeth and I were the only two remaining from the original crew. Elizabeth was involved in the whole Lifespring movement and was using her new outlook on life to not let the abusive work conditions change her attitude - and every day she tried to get me to come to one of her meetings. I didn't need to join a cult though, I was already in one and received many a bonus thanks to my expert duck stamp deperforation skills. I was losing my mind, but the agency assured me, daily, that they had nothing else for me at the moment.
The final week was insane. Boots was worse than ever and Elizabeth and I contemplated what level of medication she might have been taking. We agreed that we might as well have been working in a plastic fork factory removing extra doohickeys from the tines. It was excruciatingly dull work in a completely manic environment. And then we felt her gaze and Elizabeth and I were on our way to getting in trouble one more time. Yes children, we'd been talking. In came the artist and his drill sargeant wife.
"THERE, WILL, BE, SILENCE!"
Our radio priviliges were removed again and we grew bitter and poised for rebellion, purposefully making as many tears as we could without jeopardizing our potential day end bonus. After lunch, looking at several days worth of stamps still left to properly assimilate, Elizabeth and I waited and then turned on the radio. We couldn't take it anymore. We turned up the volume. We cranked it. The Commodores were singing Brick House. The two of us sat there, ready for her, when she came storming in.
"WHAT ON EARTH DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!!!"
We told her we were listening to music. She walked over and turned the radio off and reminded us that the radio was forbidden. I told her that her antics were probably forbidden by federal labor laws.
Elizabeth told her that only the Lambada was forbidden. We laughed and once we started we couldn't stop. You could see the veins in Boots' forehead start to swell. She was going to snap which only made us laugh more. We laughed uncontrollably as we collected our things and left. The other two worker bees followed us like mice as well. As we wandered down to the bus stop Boots was standing on the front porch screaming at us. "WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING! GET BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!" It was sad in a mentally ill sort of way.
That night I received a call from the temp agency. All four of us did. They had heard in depth over the previous weeks what our work conditions were like and had done nothing. Now they were calling to ask us to reconsider and return to the house of torture the following day. I said no. Apparently everybody did. The next morning brought a surprise. The woman from the temp agency was on my front doorstep. "If I have to get down on my knees and beg I will." I told her she didn't need to degrade herself like that. She just needed to agree to my terms. 1. Double the pay AND I get a daily bonus no matter what, 2. We can all talk, 3. We can listen to the radio all we want and 4. Boots will not be allowed anywhere near us. She almost fell down the stairs. "I can't do all that!", she pleaded. I told her to have a nice day and closed the door in her face. An hour later the phone rang. My terms had been accepted. I got on the bus and arrived to find Elizabeth the only one there. We completed the job for the agency in three days, doubling our record workload.
In the end Elizabeth and I made some serious cash, the artist and his wife got their project finished on time, the agency received their payment - and most importantly, the world was a better place for duck postage stamp collectors everywhere.
In Jr. High school I was obsessed with Charlie's Angels. My best friend Billy and I had matching yellow t-shirts. My allowance was spent on Tiger Beat Magazines in order to cut out the latest pictures and place them into scenic covered plastic sticky cellophane albums. My bedroom became a shrine featuring every poster on the market. Even going back many years the word "balance" seemed to have been misplaced from my vocabulary.
A situation recently has placed me in a position to have three angels of my own. I have to say it cracks me up. It does make some kind of sense though. I mean I'm the kind of guy who would find three lovely ladies who are wasting their talents and take them away from all that. They could work for me. I think I'm too much of an in your face kind of guy to hide behind an anonymous speaker phone my whole life though. And that's about to change. East Coast/West Coast 2.0 will be up and online before bedtime tonight! I'm psyched!
I relax. I think of the cool summer breezes I have been missing while completing my year end report writing manifesto. I live in a magnificently tragic city dripping in decoupage and art deco buildings. Oakland is a city to be savored with all one's senses. As the winding down continues I promise I'll be doing just that. Seeing. Tasting. Smelling. Feeling. Listening. I intend to get out there and grab this city by the balls. Good morning Oaktown, I'm young, free and single and I'm throwing myself on your lofty concrete shores. I cover the waterfront. I wander along Jack London Square and give thanks to the Bay Area I call my home! And I will stand, eventually, right upon the city's very edge and gaze out into the waters where I'll ask myself my usual question. "How dirty do you think that water is anyway?"
Water should be clean. We give thanks to Brita, the water store and evian. I can shower safe from harm should I choose to do so. Our dishes are clean. We use antibacterial soap and dishwashing liquid. I mean it kills bacteria, right? We pour it down our drains where it flows someplace and then theoretically goes right on killing even more bacteria. Does it flow into the bay? Am I really an environmentalist? Is San Francisco Bay getting better every day thanks to me using these products?
The House Mate recently invested in the ultimate in relaxationland living. Our new outdoor jacuzzi is deluxe ladies and gentlemen. It even has this thing in it called the "Ozone-ater" which supposedly pumps ozone into our water. This ozone combines with the bromite from the tablet and somehow all the bacteria molecules rise to the surface and evaporate or die or something important like that. Is pumping Ozone into our water releasing more Ozone into the environment? Is that a bad thing? Or are we helping Mother Nature? I mean don't we all need just a little more Ozone in our lives? Perhaps the holes in our planet's atmosphere at the North Pole are being filled right now thanks to all the redwood hot tubs in Northern California.
I'm thankful there are no pesky little germs on our forks and knives and spoons. There are no amoebas breeding in our hot tub. My friend Stephanie would be happy. We don't see each other very often, primarily because she's bacteria phobic. She doesn't like to leave her house. She uses napkins to open doors and answer telephones. We went out to eat once and she brought silverware from home in a clear ziplocked plastic baggie. She said, "I know these are clean." If only she could find her very own Boy in the Plastic Bubble. I mean there must be someone out there for everyone on this big blue marble, right?
I am burning a cd for myself I am calling "The Summer of My Discontent." I'm enjoying it immensely. Fly Pan Am, Faun Fables, Plastikman, Cowboy Junkies, Richard Buckner, Calexico... I do not know that I am particularly discontent though and that is the problem. If I was something would change. I would develop a plan of action. It is realistically more the summer of exhaustion and emotional lethargy, yet it's had it's magic nonetheless - and many more will be found in the jet streamed waters on the backyard deck.
Something rather marvelous is going on. The House Mate and I are getting closer again. There is something which inevitably happens when you spends hours together, naked, frothing in Ozone ridden heated waters. It's called conversation. I think for both of us it has been almost worth the price of the spa alone.
Way up to the north in the Arctic Circle I am reminded that you can sit at night and watch the Aurora Borealis toss amazingly beautiful colors across a night time sky. I've never seen it, but it is still a dream to do so before I die. Dark, atmospheric, colorful, dreamy - and yet it's all just light and dots coming together as a result of our poorly fractured ozone to create images of sheer utter beauty. It seems that even when things are broken they can often yield something truly unexpected in its perfection. I am starting to see where this is true for me as well. I hope it is true for everyone.