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Public Perception

There’s always been the idea that this thing should be fun. Hasn’t there? Whether that thing is life, art, writing, blogging, or this very blog post here you may be about to read. It should be playful.

And why is that? It’s not written in stone (technically this is written in pixels, or database tables, or binary digits, depending on how you look at it—but that’s just a pointless aside meant to add more words to my monthly word count—doesn’t it though). I could write boring if I wanted to. I could. Watch me… I’m using short simple sentences with basic words and minimal punctuation. This voice is very factual and the voice seems officious and clear, if not brusque. Whether I intend it or not, the style portrays the speaker as having more authority even if there is little if no real information attached and no claims are actually made. Sometimes those reading may not even notice the change. It is the kind of voice people might respect as a superior. This also applies in business, obviously. Dunnit sound good ‘n’ convincing? Oops… knew that couldn’t last.

But then again I spose it shouldn’t. That’s my opinion ‘course, but it doesn’t sound like me and it doesn’t fit the medium. I blame my upbringing. All my parents ever did was teach me that it was important to be happy and learn and do things I liked, and be respectful and interested in other people. Pfft. It’s not my fault if I also apply that to whatever this web-log-thing is.

I guess that’s kinda the problem. See, I care what other people think of me. I know, I know… hard to believe but it’s true. You all know that my parents read this thing? Yeah, they’re my #1 commenters. So there’s some things that, I can politely say, I know they’d rather not know about. But I might need to write about them anyways. What to do? Well, obey Flower the Skunk’s Rule of Courtesy …c’mon. Flower the Skunk? Bambi? Ok, I’ll spell it out: “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” That goes for everyone, myself included. I’m not gonna say anything mean and I won’t say too much about all the illegal activities I’m planning on participating in (for obvious reasons). I’ll just be myself.

And I’ll try not worry too much about whether the writing “measures up” to the standards of GLΘT-itude.

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My Nanowrimo

I figured out how to do it.

I’m not a novelist. Well, I’m not one right now. I don’t have the organization, I don’t have the consistency of focus, I have too much cool stuff to do and not enough time to do more than half of it. Can I tell you about my life right now?

I do lots of things. Recurring things like the Dr. Hal Show, like Bad Movie Night, like events put on Chicken John, or Kinky Salon, or CSC, or the Cacophony Society, or the parties of friends. I write lots of stories and I post lots of pictures of the places I’ve been and things I’ve done. That takes up enough time. Then I go on roadtrips or clean up the backyard or buy stuff or perform a dozen other productive-lifestyle like things. Is one still a weekend warrior if one never has weekends off? Then I design websites. I practice Spanish. I read cool blogs. I do the things I want to and by and large I want to do the things I like.

Where do ya see the Great American Novel in all of this? I don’t. Last year, I decided I had a story to tell. And old story, a true story, a complex and interesting story from my own life story going through middle school in a faux-magic pre-Rowling semi-LARPer reality-fanfic microculture. It woulda been interesting. Living my life interceded and I never got beyond my one page of story and seven pages of notes. Seven pages of beautifully thoughtful, detailed notes.

Not this year. This year I take a different tack—why not write as I do anyways, here on my public blog glot? If that’s not good enough (which it’s not) I need to up the ante. What’s 50,000 words? That’s… 1,666.6 words a day. Wow, that seems like a lot. I’m gonna need to set up a counter. And I’m gonna need to blog every day. See what we got already… 333?! Man, I’m only 1/5 there! For one day! Well, I think I served my purpose nonetheless in announcing it. One last thing is required: a pledge.

I promise, for the next thirty days, the month of November 2007, C.E., to participate in Nanowrimo by writing daily posts on my public website (this one), toward the goal of completing Nano’s 50,000 word target, and heretofore shall not engage in ridiculous and repetitive repetition of words or word phrases, to the effect that they shall lengthen the length of my posted posts, or otherwise engage in raffish or disregardful writing which is not of “publishable” quality, nor shall I copy and paste IM conversations, run vast backlogs of Twitter tweets, or, for that matter, put forth any generally unreadable and un-paragraphical tripe, nor forget the audience entirely and engage in stream-of-consciousness narrative monologist activity, and will someday make that appointment for the optometrist like I’ve been hoping to, and shall to the greatest degree probable fulfill this promise to the greatest degree that I want to.

There you have it. Around 500 words, and most of them actual words. Expect more of the same, folks.

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What to Do Now that Oink is Dead

Shit happens.

Sometimes you spend years setting up a highly successful, community-driven website based on equal trade and high standards and someone breaks in one morning and takes all your servers and arrests you and threatens your users by posting an intimidating message on your front page. Sometimes, your system is set up to rip off more of the lower-profile musicians than even a normal ripper-offer and you might even actually be doing something illegal. Oink, R.I.P.

Here’s what I did. Ripping-offing aside, I think what they had was a good thing. What a nice place. People were held to the rule that if you take, you also should give. Metaphor for life, baby. Contributions—if you don’t participate what’s the point? Well, it might be to steal music. It might also be to encourage people to go out and buy the rarer stuff they like, specifically so they can upload it and share it with, like, three other people.. which is what I did. You’re welcome, Esma Redzepova; you’re welcome, three other people.

So, while I don’t care what to use now that Oink’s dead, I think that more of the same spirit would be nice. Know what I did? I bought a t-shirt. Yeah. It’s got a little pig on it with headphones and stars exploding out from a shield bearing a Union Jack—$20 going to Mr. Oink. Know what else? If most of the cool stuff I downloaded from Oink’s Pink Palace of Musical Exclusivity mysteriously appears elsewhere, don’t be all that surprised. The greater number of us deserves to hear this stuff, too.

Good things never last forever. Oink didn’t; I don’t see it coming back. Find something else. It’ll come around. Someday, maybe everyone else’ll come around too.

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Caught

It happens to all of us.

Park Closed I got caught. I was exploring, as I am wont to do, a little-visited and forgotten part of the world. This particular one used to be an old U.S Navy base on the Eastern shore of San Francisco bay: Point Molate. I was there to drop off a certain someone for her certain Dad’s birthday shark fishing trip. I don’t recommend the road unless you use it for offroading. Anyways, coming back in the slight pre-dawn I took a closer look at the rows of oddly placed, identical housing. That’s when I figured that this place was just like the Ord—an old military base that had been decommissioned and left to the elements. That’s what I thought anyways. In the Ord’s case, the place had been partially (and I do mean partially) converted into a college, where quite frankly the coolest thing to study was the Ord itself. Sure—sometimes one has to cross a few barriers to get to somewhere abandoned and cool. It’s best to take a camera in case you can’t again.

So when I found a gate along the way back to civilization, and a smallish turnoff nearby, I was lured in. I sauntered around the edge of the fence and was inside. Seems the City of Richmond has a beachfront park which they keep closed for no good reason. Beached Fences Sure, there are big signs in there nearby the splintering picnic benches and rusted-out trashcans stating “no open fires: high explosive material in adjacent area” but I don’t see that stopping my enjoyment of the place. Finding myself at the the end of the “park” I found myself in front of another gate. To get around the fence (again) it was necessary to get down on the beach and over sea-slippery rocks. Nice views down there of one of the many San Francisco bay bridges, floating away into the morning fog. It’s at this point I see that there’s a gravel path leading around the next bend—a path which is very far and very exposed. Not that there’s much traffic at this hour… but still. I make my way along the path, running some distance and notice that there’s what looks like a house after the bend. And there’s what looks like a guy coming out of the house, and it looks like he’s taking out the trash. And it looks like he sees me. Uh oh…

I turn tail. But it doesn’t really matter as this guy has a truck and to be sure now, he sees me. I’m on foot. I have blue hair. I skirted around two fences to get here in the first place.  Turns out that this area now belongs to the Chevron Oil Corporation, although I didn’t find that out right away. No… I was just asked what the hell I was doing there. I answered honestly: I was taking pictures. Caught, with Blue HairAnd I said “I just walked around. I didn’t break and enter or anything. Just wanted to see what was here.” The guy gave me a long look, and I guess that was the right answer because he told me alright, I just needed to go now. He sped on ahead to the gate and I walked along behind (didn’t really see the need to jog anymore). As I began clambering down the rocks to the sea, I heard the guy call out “you be careful now. Take care.” Of course, I didn’t really know if he meant climbing on those rocks, or going places I shouldn’t, or exploring the world in general or living my life to the fullest or whatever, so I answered back in a way that fit all of them: “Thank you. I will. Thank you.” And then I got the hell out.

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The Long Weekend

On Saturday, I got in a scuffle with my boss over a moral issue which he refused to even acknowledge. I alerted him of my wish to take this concern to a higher authority, and he threatened disciplinary action. After this, I went to see an old friend until 2:00 in the morning the night before Folsom Street Fair. I got on the wrong bus on the advice of the driver, who said that he went to Mission. He went to Mission, alright… the bus was the 91, and he went to Mission and Geneva, almost out of San Francisco county. After the bus let off at West Portal Station at about four in the morning, I collected my bearings, realized the 91 was my only way out of there, and told the driver I wanted to get back on. MUNI pass in hand, we went on to have a conversation about his job, passengers sleeping on the bus or leaving trash, San Francisco, learning a new language, and much else, all in a darkened bus in a quiet neighborhood at four in the morning. The only other humans I saw were trashmen, briefly. Only two minutes off schedule,the driver renewed his route. Damn right I got off on Mission and Geneva that time, only to find that I had just missed my bus connection back home and the next one was in 26 mintues. 27 minutes. 28 minutes. And that it was freezing cold. Seemingly many minutes later, a single taxi passed by and I bit the bullet, and hailed it. Too bad he could only take cash. Screwed, and freezing, once again. Then what do I see? The cab backs up, full reverse down Mission. He asks if I could buy him gas. Hell yeah, I can buy you gas. He took me home, and I talked about the kinda day it’d been, and even paid me back the difference. I got home about 5:30.

I was awakened Sunday to a voicemail from my boss saying I’d been suspended for the “incident” the day before. Well, I called right back and said, ok, I’m fine with that, did you make the appointment with said higher authority as requested? Of course he hadn’t. So I spent the next day, the 30th, alternately gawking at naked weirdoes and writing a five-page letter to by boss’ bosses. It was a good letter, and the only reason I’m not spilling the beans (and they are some juicy beans, mind you) is that I volunteered some confidentiality on my part. They said I was “a good writer” when I presented it to them on Monday. They looked a little worried but I can’t blame them. I don’t know if that they had any idea of the kind of things that’d been going on.

The rest of Monday was nice. Me and the little lady went to Sutro Baths, the Dutch Windmill and Doorhenge in Golden Gate Park, got my favorite Chinese stuffed meat pastry (Chao-Su-Bao) in the Inner Richmond, and generally enjoyed life. I’ve gotten a lot of housework done. Being suspended has sort of been a boon, especially when A) you know you were in the right and could have accepted no less from yourself, and B) there might be a substantive apology for you in the works.

I have a meeting tomorrow at work with the boss’ boss, at 12 noon. Wish me luck.

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A Topic of Conversation

I’m it.

Recently, lots of people’ve been talking about me, or so they say. I sent an email yesterday to my folks about a certain question, and I’ve been getting a lot of feedback. This morning an old friend comes into work and says that him and another old friend were talking about me last night over a few beers. Where’ve I been? What’s so interesting?

All I did was tell my family that I was considering a legal change of name to something I’d come up with as a joke about a month ago. That’s not so bad if I really like the name. Maybe, sure, I should’ve been a little more serious since I’ve been thinking and thinking trying to come up with a good last name for years, and I actually don’t take it lightly, although I still want it to be fun and different. Anybody hear of this yet? Yeah, I want my name to be Orin Zebest. Write it down.

And maybe, hey, if I wanna get talked about I might as well tell those old friends what’s going on with me since I haven’t seen ‘em in, like, at least four months. That’d be good.

That would be the best.

See more progress on: legally change my name

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One Year in San Francisco

And I still don’t like typing the name out.

I came here, like many, with just hopes and dreams and a stupid suitcase full of stuff I couldn’t really use. Lucky me, I found the right place the moment I stepped out of the car. Pacific Tradewinds was good to me. I might’ve stayed a little too long, even for my own sensibilities, and eventually I found a place where I didn’t have to commute downstairs. That’s the apartment, that’s where I live and love.

And that’s home base. Since I moved in there’s been more and more events gone to, more people met, and more projects done (well, started anyways). It’s an awesome lifestyle. I do always love writing about how much has changed.

There was supposed to be a party. There will be no party—sorry. I couldn’t pull together the, uhh… well, everything. There’s more anniversaries coming up soon. I’ll make sure not to miss them this year.

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Why We Blog

Cause you want to. Cause there’s nothing else to do. Cause it’s an assignment. Cause you need to vent. Cause you’re curious about it. Cause you hate real work. Cause you’re a good writer. Cause you think people care. Cause you want to keep in touch. Cause you did stuff and you want to remember. Cause you don’t want to pay attention to what’s happening around you. Cause you never seem to have a pen. Cause you went to Burningman. Cause you did NOT go to Burningman. Cause you have too many friends to talk to on IM. Cause you don’t have enough friends to talk to IM. Cause you already paid for it. Cause you wanna make some money. Cause you want people to hear about your thing. Cause it’s fun. Cause it fills the in-between spaces. Cause you know a lot of stuff. Cause you have a a lot of time. Cause you think it’s cool. Cause hey, it’s free. Just because, I guess.

Soon to come: reasons not to blog.

page layout (3rd draft)

Blah blah blah, my first blog layout and first Flickr picture

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Last Week in August

Hello again everyone. As you know, I went on a roadtrip. A roadtrip during the last week in August. But not to Nevada. There’s a certain… “festival” event that we sort-of chose to miss this year, and every previous year also, coincidentally. Not that it was important, or anything. We didn’t have nearly at all close to enough money, anyways. Pfft, we had a better time traveling around northern California on an aimless roadtrip to somewhere. Ended up as far north as Crater Lake, although had the best time in Lava Beds National Park. There’s nearly no one there, and it’s full of caves which you can just drop in on and explore. Resting after discovering an ice cave in one, we discovered a new name for myself. Took lots of good pictures too. We had a good time, spent it with each other and not 40,000 people in a desert. I like the desert—grew up there—and it can be a very pretty place. Much more crowded now, I hear. I’ll take my roadtrip elsewhere.

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That Job of Yours

It’s all lifestyle, really. It’s how you live. And where you spend 8 hours a day 5 days a week is a pretty big chunk of life. So how can you be a cool person, an interesting person, a valuable person, if your job isn’t cool, interesting, or valuable?

Well, I suppose it would be hard. I can’t really say—my job doesn’t suck. I like the fact, working in a hostel, I get to talk to people from Germany and Canada and Japan on a daily basis. Sure, I talk to them and take their money. And tell them they can’t drink in the building. And give them directions to McDonald’s, sometimes. My job doesn’t suck, mostly. There’s advantages and disadvantages and such things can’t ever be changed, and that’s a truer and more cliché adage than I’d care to reflect on right now. Only difference is how much you get paid.

I know people with cooler jobs. Some jobs carry a lifestyle in and of themselves (“I’m an artist” …and what do you do in your off time?). It shapes how you are as a person because, well, you are what you do. There’s a responsibility, a damnable adult responsibility no matter if you’re dedicated to your craft or if your job description requires nights and weekends wearing a beeper. It’s odd to finally understand that.