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May 29, 2002

somewhere out there

Somewhere there are people right now, who are happening upon a very funny weblog. It's caustic, it's unexpected, it has several funny punchlines per post.

They laugh, they chuckle, they wonder who this new blogger is with such a snappy design sense and wit. But they won't know who it is, because the blogger is anonymous, and because they don't realize that the anonymous funny blogger is Heather B. Hamilton, a.k.a. in a former internet life as Dooce.

None of them will be able to come tell me, and Heather will continue to be writing her kickass writing and I can't read it. It's an injustice, I tell you.

Oh how I miss the sweet taste of "How to Annoy Me" and "How to Charm Me". I need my Heather B. Hamilton fix.

If you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, then you really need to go right now to the Dooce archives, which are still being maintained. But who knows for how long.

This goes without saying, I know, but if you know of the whereabouts of Heather, please, I beg you, tell me where she is. And to the people who have Emailed me, and have showed up in my referral logs with hopeful searches about constipation and mormonism...I don't know where she is either. Sorry.

A few of my favorite Dooce's, starting with the ones that probably got her fired from her job:
i think i've said something about something
bend your lover's elbow under your karachi, thus stimulating his lower kandahar
rachel's not a dog. she's my little sister
when a weblog takes over your life

May 27, 2002

even tinier than the tinyblog

guimp: world's smallest website...more innovation, fun, and diversion than many websites 1,500 times its size. This is really very cool.

To me anyway, and heck it's my blog. But not just me, it's via milov.nl, who just showed up in my referral logs (I always appreciate a chap with good taste) who also appears to be a fellow reader of php.weblogs.com, an amazingly cool and relevent weblog for one that's...topical to a programming language.

May 26, 2002

unfortunate haircuts of the past

for some reason this didn't drive the girls wild

Never underestimate the power of the mullet.

May 23, 2002

the body torpid

By the time I got to work I was so tired I couldn't even think about doing my job. Just a general weariness so strong it bordered on paralyzation. I'm finally getting paid to do what I want, which is develop in PHP, and between that and my actual full time job, my brain is on overload. I wasn't sure what to do, I just tried to find some ways to gently rouse myself from the torpor.

I laid down on the floor for a moment on my back, and then I remembered that in yoga that's shivasana or the corpse pose, and it's a resting pose. I needed a restorative pose. I did what I think is called the crocodile pose, lying on my stomach, with my head resting against my folded forearms. In a little while I did start to feel about 5% or 10%...well...restored.

I did a few push-ups, which was a revelation since I haven't been able to do them since I broke my elbow. I did 5 or 6, and felt like such a stud. My friend Josh does like 50 or 100 every morning, which is both silly and impressive.

My blood was flowing a bit and I realized that physical activity was the way to go. I put on my sneakers and sweatshirt and ran around the corporate building in the cool, damp night air.

I've been a computer geek for too long now, and I was seriously done by the time I got around the building, but I felt better for it. Felt like I was healing, felt like I might not be a total cripple the rest of my life, a brain in a jar hooked up to a keyboard or something. There's hope for my body yet. Oooh, only 2 more months, honey.

May 21, 2002

the ecstacies of beth

the ecstacy of rocking out the ecstacy of coffee the ecstacy of the sublime

I raise my glass to Beth, my beloved friend who seems to know so well how to enjoy life and be an honest and forthright friend. May she experience ecstacy until the end of time.

(Yes, Beth, I scanned your photos and you can have them back now.)

(Yes, Beth, I want to load up the whole crew and go to Folklife on Saturday.)

biological mystery revealed

not so hard I guess!

Well...guess it wasn't so hard after all. Maybe I should have included just a little less of the finger.

Mental Note: Fun little games garner more comments than poetry.

HTML-Kit

HTML-Kit

My new favorite HTML editor and freeware program is now HTML-Kit. I haven't seen Homesite 5.0, but this definately trumps 4.5. So many cool features and it's really easy to write plug-ins for. Plus, it's free!

May 19, 2002

biological mystery

what can it be?

Can you guess what this is?

pome about a friend

i found out my friend was in a mental institution
it was so shocking cause i knew she was a little
troubled but nothing like the Harborview Medical
Center high risk ward troubled

i called her on the phone and she said she was
so tired and please daniel will you sing me some
buddhist songs all i remember is om mani peme hung

i sang a buddhist song
'all these forms that appear to eyes that see'
and i got choked up singing it because it meant
something different to me since she was hearing it

she sounded so sad i couldn't get out of my head the
picture of her running naked in the street

you know, she said, people can visit until nine o clock
i'll come tomorrow i said, i'll bring a buddhist book and
can i bring chocolate?
oh chocolate would be divine

pome of filial piety

i walked down the street with the styrofoam
package of my dinner
he in the hostel doorway assumed it was my leftovers

hey man can i have some food?

but it was really my dinner rushing for the bus and i
shook my head at him disdainfully and then
felt bad about it, at least i could have addressed him like
a human being

like somehow those men
these black and indian men drunk men or savvy men
don't warrant the attention you'd give to a broken child
which they are these men those broken men

like vultures, the endangered species that no one
cares about but goddamnit you better not club
those baby seals

i feel ashamed and then i miss my bus
and i feel very cranky
i eat my dinner
i feel like a miser

autobiographical pome

i felt like such a dork because i just found out
ok computer was such a good album
i wanted to have sex when i was in grade school
even then the idea to
lay with a naked girl just seemed so unbearably delicious

i once liked the mrs butterworths maple flavored syrup
so much
(pouring gobs on waffle chunks couldn't get enough of it)
that i poured myself a glass of it, realized it was way too much
after one sip i told my mom she asked me did you like it?
no.
are you mad?
no just don't do it again okay?

you take the bad with the good, the hot sex with the crazy ness
the model rockets and trains with the being dragged down the stairs by
your hair for spilling some pins and not picking them up the dog could
get hurt i don't even remember if i dropped them

i wrote the second longest story in 2nd grade
we had to write a story and then me and marcus mitchel got in a competition
about who could write the longest story mine was nine pages and marcus'
was thirteen
except it was all like:
then more aliens came down and me and my brother got baseball bats
and killed them all then more aliens came down and then we got out the
weed whacker and now there's blood all over the lawn ad infinitum
then he fell on me a year later and it broke my leg
then it high school he made fun of me in front of other kids and i
told them he had a miniscule penis which he did

now i just have this album everyone else knew about for years and wonder
if maybe you can't have hot sex with a sweet person

May 16, 2002

i got a scanner for my birthday!

A few photos for you to enjoy of rzan, at my mom's request.

Thanks for the scanner, mom!

Someday I might post as many photos as the booge. Well... probably not. He posts a lot of photos.

You can do so much more with photos when you have them in a digital format, yo. With a print you can only show a few people, but if it's digital then my sweet aussie friend can see it.

May 14, 2002

conversation in the park

Shakespeare in the park really rocks these days.

Yeah, so does Bruce Lee's grave.

Do you think you can call God on your cel phone?

We should go to that pay phone up there and dial 1-800 information and ask them for a listing for The Lord.

Why would we go to the payphone?

So we don't waste cel phone minutes.

Dude, it's the weekend and the cel phone minutes are flowing like pussy.

Oh. Well it's more poetic to call The Lord on a payphone.

(long pause)

I'll never think about pussy or cel phone minutes in the same way again, you bastard.

now

Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging I guess, it's been so long!

My birthday party was crazy mad fun, and I got a new scanner (lucky YOU!) and some wine, and some dharma books, and some dishwashing liquid and sponges, and just massive, massive TLC from all corners of the globe. Possibly the best birthday ever. Everything just came together.

Now it's back to work. I have as much contract work as I can do with lxis.net, and I've just been digging in with great gusto. I'm learning MySQL, and a bunch of UNIX administration stuff.

I have a lot of time to read on the bus, and I'm reading The Earth Store Bodhisattva, Barrell Fever, The Places That Scare You, Adobe InDesign 2.0, PHP/MySQL For Web Development, and an anthology of short, short poems called Eight Lines and Under.

It would be nice to have a little laptop cause then I, like meg, could write my blog posts on public transportation.

May 13, 2002

mothers day guest post

It's a guest post by, guess who...my mom:

I am sitting here reminiscing about your birth. It was a classic labor with contractions by the clock just like the book said. Unlike my other births, your water didn't break until well into labor.

At that point, your head was down far enough to act as a cork, trapping the water inside with you. And then you were born and as your head cleared the water came rushing out like a big wave. I always said you surfed out, ready to take on the world.

You were eight and a half pounds and born with a lot of energy. You were never shy about being held by strangers. Bubby Glor's favorite thing to say about you when you were an infant was "He's so smart, look how he scrutinizes everything." You were born shortly after midnight so you just made it on the 9th.

The doc came and stayed at our house that night and I made molasses sweet bread while I was in labor so that I could have it with a cup of tea after you were born.

You were a good looking baby with lots of dark hair and very alert right from the start. Well, that's all, but being pregnant with you and birthing you was a very good time and I thank you for your presence in my life.

May 12, 2002

thank you mom

Happy mother's day to my mom, and all the other moms out there.

Some excellent tinyblog guest posts written by my mom:
tinymom at spanish camp
sex education
dad: per mom

Enjoy.

May 8, 2002

burday!

Tomorrow (the 9th) is my 27th birthday!

I shave my beard every year on my birthday, so this year I'm having people take before and after photos. Plus, I just got a new color scanner in the mail for my birthday, so hopefully I will be able to show you in short order my newly shorn birthday face.

Also, Friday the 10th is my birthday party. If you live in the Seattle area and/or think you can get here and somehow didn't get an invite, email me and I will get you one in short order.

Have money burning a hole in your pocket? I don't have an Amazon wishlist, but if you want to make a tax-deductible donation to Amnesty International, that is my charity of choice. I think spending money on keeping people from being tortured and killed is a good idea.

Me and the tinyblog thank you for your support.

that's all folks

Okay, that's it for the Back to the Metro Bus Series, which can now be found on the sidebar with the other series'.

May 7, 2002

fast furney's auto repair III

When I told Fast Furney, he said I could have my car towed to his Garage.

"When can we do it?" I asked. Every day you keep your car in that tow lot, they charge you another $30.

"How about tonight?"

I called A Rose Towing, and asked if we could get it towed that night. They said we could, but someone had to be there to receive it.

"Okay," said Fast Furney, and we got in his car and drove down to Burien. He gave up another night of watching TV in his underwear just for me.

When we got to the Garage I saw that it was indeed just that...a garage. It was in a sleepy little residential neighborhood in southwest Seattle which is not considered to be the "good side".

He had a handful of non-working vehicles in the driveway and garage, and it seemed to be quite a mellow little neighborhood. The next door neighbors had some fine looking chickens wandering around in the yard and at one point a young boy came tearing out of the house, followed by his brother wielding a water balloon.

As the young boy made it out into the street, his older brother hurled the water balloon and it splooshed across the yard, missing him by a mile. A voice called out from the top window, "Darnell! Darnell, get back in the house...leave your brother alone!"

It was a warm and inviting early spring evening, and I felt a wave of relief wash over me being in Fast Furney's mellow pad. I wasn't going to have to pay for another day in the tow yard...I had a place to put the remains of this hunk of metal that was still my legal responsibility and all would be well.

We walked inside the garage to wait for the tow truck, and Fast Furney put his only CD, Jimi Hendrix The Ultimate Experience, and he basically told me to relax.

The Hendrix, the chickens, the relief...it seemed like the perfect thing would be, "Man, I'll relax...you have a bowl to smoke?"

Fast Furney doesn't smoke pot...just drinks beer, but miraculously a friend of his had left a packed bowl in his tool drawer about a year ago. It was just a little peice of bamboo with a little weed in it. I took a couple of hits off it and enjoyed 'Spanish Castle Magic' while the tow truck driver found his way from Ballard to Burien.

He showed up and unleaded the car, and a couple of weeks later, Furney sold the car and a couple of parts and split the money with me. It almost paid the towing costs. So, once again Fast Furney came through for me. I went home, downloaded some mp3's, and burned him another Hendrix CD.