Dream in which an East Indian friend of mine is opening a giant pumpkin which I know is full of hornets. I tell him so, but he opens it anyway. Hornets swarm out and only instants later his face is puffed up like a balloon. Zoom out. He is sitting in a jail cell with his balloon face.
Walked into Wasabi last night to discover the place was practically empty. Got to talking with Rob the owner re his new venture, which is to ship a particular kind of high-grade Russian vodka to the states and become the sole distributor. He actually flew to Moscow for a week to seal the deal. Got so excited telling me about it that he went to show me the bottle he brought back & lo & behold, a few shots remained, so there I was drinking premium Russian vodka, just me & the owner, on a Monday night in a sushi bar. Ah me. Wudka.
Am teaching Mark & Henry to play bridge, so Yun & I can play with them. It's been awhile & I forgot how fun it was. 'Cept, Henry approached the thing orthogonally--like a gambler actually--with no regard for convention. He would always enter the bidding no matter what hand he had, and always pushed it to the 4 or 5 level, which meant we were always competing to see who could go set the least. Well it kept people from ever making game & I started to wonder: what's wrong with the scoring that it rewards this method of brute force bidding and not-so-fun gameplay? Because like it or not Henry was on to something...above the line points mean nothing until someone makes two games.
So, at nearly 4 in the morning, we wound up in the following ridiculous situation. Yun & I were not vulnerable. Mark & Henry were vulnerable and had a leg on. Because Yun & I had racked up so many points on their undertricks (which cost twice as much as ours), if they would have made their bid, they would have won the battle but lost the war. That is to say not even the 750 pt bonus could have saved them. So it was actually in our interest to lose the hand. Similarly, it was in their interest to lose the hand, and then let us make game and become vulnerable, in the hopes of setting us enough to dig themselves out of their hole.
So we played a bridge hand in which both sides deliberately tried to lose. It's actually a lot harder than it seems. Every card laid down was hilarious; often people would sluff off aces in non-trump suits when they clearly could have trumped. Oh, inverted world.
In lieu of a better scoring system, the next time we played I scored as follows. No concept of game, just play as many hands as you have time for, and total above & below the line points. To encourage people to bid up to the right level, I made tricks under the line worth twice as much. All other above the line scoring related to bonuses, undertrick penalties, and doubling remained the same.
It worked out okay. Henry had to adjust his bidding style to communicate information--which meant learning the conventions--and the bids were within bounds, so gameplay was typical & a lot more fun. Every once & a while you need to be reminded why there are conventions in the first place, and why they evolved the way the did. The best way is to play against a fresh mind. Just like in chess...remember how your little brother would somehow manage to beat you even if you knew what you were doing, and he didn't have a clue?
Got to see Ben Folds again, this time in the KC City Market with Craig. Guster headlined. Guster schmuster. Well they were okay I guess. Ben played a pretty short set but included were Fair, Selfless Cold & Composed, Steven's Last Night in Town, and Rockin the Suburbs, all songs I hadn't heard him solo on before. Actually for Fair all of Guster came out & backed him. This is how that started...
The Guster drummer, a wild birdman who bongo drums and cymbal clashes all with his hands, no sticks, came out & sang half of the George Michael's "Careless Whispers" cover with Ben. Which, incidentally, was funny and weird. Later he showed up again & started backing Ben on bongo drums. After the song Ben moved over to a drum set--being a former drummer himself till he threw his drumset in a lake c.f. "Army"--and for about 10 min. they traded off in a little impromptu drum circle.
Then it was decided the whole band should come out & play Fair & it was so right sounding it made you want to weep for the good old BFF days. Really, I think Ben is starting to wish he had a band together again. Flying solo isn't all it's cut out to be & you can tell he misses the collaboration.
He also came out at the end of Guster's set, backing them in a much less Ben-centric way. Really now, have you ever been to a show wherein the acts collaborate like this? Every other concert I've ever attended has had iron curtains between the bands, esp. the bigger venues. That Ben weaved the two acts together like this is amazing if you think about it--a total break with tradition. There's always some new amazing thing at a Ben Folds concert...never pass one up.
So we stopped at a Perkins on the way back in St. Joseph MO, after driving around the eerily silent downtown looking for a mom & pop's diner to no avail. It was 1 am. The place was full of mostly old people, which was really strange considering the time.
Quite a few oddballs were there. "Safari Man" was what we nicknamed this guy with a red kerchief around his neck, tan lapelled jacket, ruddy face, glasses on a string. Then we heard him talk & realized he had an electronic voicebox which made him sound like an alien. Thus the kerchief we figured, and from there the whole getup was the logical next step. The logical next step?
Also there was a small woman who looked like she was straight out of a Britcom. Gaudy hat with big feather, turquoise suit jacket and skirt, round face & build, a waddling little Mrs. Bucket. Her husband looked like a bald ex Hell's Angel. How.
The return trip sucked, we were both falling asleep & driving through dense fog. At 3 am I suddenly awoke (fear of death) in the passenger's seat to Craig turning east at Rockport, which was nowhere near our turnoff & 180 degrees in the wrong direction. I took over & he fell asleep almost immediately. Got back 4 am to unfortunately wake up Mike who was sleeping in our living room before a team Triathlon at 7 am with Andrew & Jamaimer.
This is part two of yesterday. We went to Bricktop & it was without a doubt the best time I've ever had there. Yun, Mark, Jeff, Henry & I all there initially, but more people I knew kept showing up, including Jamaimer & Andrew.
There's a dj spinoff going on right now. Initial disappointment: when we first walked in the dj was playing rap crap & hip hop slop & it was the usual big brutal hip hop scene of no one's having fun because everyone's trying to act so damn cool. The next dj up was a little Vietnamese guy, Hassady, who I know through Dave, the frisbee team captain. House music, and at first there was a certain tension between the house crowd & the hip hop crowd who just stood there sullen, arms folded. Amid this a breaker circle started. Altho not as good as the last one it was super exciting, and was the segue into later full-fledged craziness which all participated in. The dance floor became an oven of madness.
Mark & I & Yun danced, Mark throwing in wacky Mark moves, Yun dancing with Asian grace & style, I becoming a glistening sweaty madman just like in Europe. Eventually Henry & Jeff danced a little too which was great since they are usually far too reserved. Hassady captured the essence of the place perfectly; he was voted the night's winner. Hooray for the home team.
Well this entry is lame but just suffice it so say it was a great time & seemed to me to be the all-inclusive peak of the summer, so many people were out last night, and everything was so crazy that it can only possibly slide downhill from here into slow autumn decay.
Oh, something I forgot: Yun & Jamie met for the first time, however briefly & confusedly. When two girls are happy to meet each other it is a beautiful thing. They grab each other by the hands or arms in an open & authentic way, eyes exchanging volumes of unguarded feeling, that is so completely unlike the typical gruff & wary first encounter of two men.
Yesterday was quite a day tho it sagged badly in the middle. Got up early after too little sleep (have been doing this for weeks anyway) to go fishing with Jake in a farm pond outside town.
After less than five minutes of waiting with both pulled in fish nearly simultaneously & went on to catch, I'd say, about 25 altogether. One of the first fish Jake caught was a largemouth bass that got mangled so badly by the hook that we decided we'd better kill it. Not having a knife, we took a rock and smashed the thing, but it took several blows & by the end we were so horrified of ourselves we almost got sick. We then tossed his dead body back in the lake--Jake assuring me it would get eaten--where it floated, a big belly-up accusation we had to look at for the rest of the morning.
Reminded me a little too much of the opening scenes of Spring, Summer... wherein the boy ties rocks to animals & laughs at their tortured state, and ends up paying for it in full later in his life. All life sacred? Maybe.
Anyhow the impetus for this little excursion: Jake is going to try to teach my to fly fish before our trip next month to Glacier Mt. National Park. I think I'm going to like fly fishing for a number of reasons. It involves skill--you don't just sit there waiting for a lucky bite as in bait fishing, but must cast & recast constantly with considerable technique. And you don't have to kill anything at all if you don't want to, not even something for bait.
Afterwards smelly muddy & sunburned we laid out on Jake's car in an unfinished suburb somewhere, eating burgers and listening to our beer bottles whistle at each other in the wind, a half-step off. Jake told me about how he used to come down here with his dog when there was still nothing, and how he would cut down plants with a wooden sword. (I too spent countless hours doing the same.) There is a certain kind of plant back home in Missouri that shoots up so fast that its trunk is the consistency of worthless styrofoam. It's like slicing through butter; there's a delay after your stick has passed through, and then the plant falls apart in two pieces, cartoon-style.
(The relentless advance of the suburbs all around us, styrofoam houses which sprung up only yesterday.)
My contention that programmers are artists, just of another sort, used to rest on pretty flimsy footing. In high school I made some remark to this effect to the school newspaper: by virtue of being a creative effort, programming makes the practicioner an artist. And I said people of The Future will realize this & place programmers alongside musicians, painters, writers, etc. Hubris.
Now I think a little differently. Eric Raymond puts it well:
The key thing here is the desire to have an audience. Yes, it's a bit thespian, at least if taken to the extreme. But it's there. I have this desire. I acknowledge it. I want people to use my software; I want end users who appreciate it, even if only 1 in 10 lepers returns to say wow this saved me so much time & effort, or hey this is pretty cool.
But that's not all that comes with this whole artist's bag. It was no surprise to me to discover from Kerouac's letters that he--like any writer--actively sought out all kinds of odd jobs ie parking lot attendant, a construction worker, a cotton picker, a forest ranger on a lonely mountain etc. for nothing more than the raw material it provided him. Without such experiences there would be no On the Road. Especially since Kerouac, more than most, was direct about his conversion of these raw materials into writing: usually just changing a few names to protect the innocent and reporting all else at face value.
It was a surprise when I realized again (I've realized this before, keep forgetting) that wild new life experiences are essential to programming. You can't program in a vacuum. It's easy to forget this. I think because the conversion is so involved & mysterious. You, much less your end users, will never see that crazy trip or beautiful forest that was the inspiration. But it's there.
So to make a long story short, I'm probably going to live out of a van next month. More on this later.
I stared so long
and so hard
that I forgot it was I
who was staring
and so became
like a dumb beast--
hanging meat
suspended above
a black plastic trash bag.
Semidrunk ramblings. (I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind.)
Went to see a local punk band tonight at Knickerbockers--usually, I have no time for this--and left somewhat sad. So many people have so much more energy than me & just choose to dissipate it. The show was fun to watch, I suppose, if you enjoy waste, or absorb energy vicariously. Turning all your energy into white noise indicates to me that you have not found the right channel. Or are basically too lazy to develop the right channel.
One of their songs was "The Idea of a White Jesus." I misheard this as "The IPO of Jesus" which is to me equally funny. Man, if I could have gotten in on the ground floor with that guy...
But no I hate hate hate waste generally & anymore hate seeing cool indie types stand around wasting their vast reservoirs of intellectual potential, or any other kind of potential you care to name. So you despise everything and push up your horn rim glasses with a slow deliberate movement that underscores the fact. I tell you, the whole thing is a goddamn culture of critics intead of artists, even the "artists" themselves are merely the critics of other artists. Stop trying to oppose and instead propose. Stop trying to negate and instead create. What did the happiness go, the dream go? (What happens to a dream deferred?) What fragile eggshell bone broke in your spine, I wonder, deflecting you onto your current course of self-regulated impotence.
Here I am decrying negativity with negativity. Well screw me. (Pushes up glasses in disgust in order to get a better look at self.)