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Cheerio Wisdom | Lone Ranger | Bumming A Ride to the Rising Sun
Zinetown Beantown | An Anarchist's Punk Ethic
One of the problems of changing the graphic design of the site every month is that it takes additional time and sometimes the design sucks. However, one of my personal goals with the site is to have opportunities to think about design and play with new tools — I used ImageReady's GIF animation feature for the first time to create the animated "goatee".
The other problem is that the graphics are yet another element at potential odds with parts of the text. How do I write a scathing political rant with a goofy picture of me on the top of the page? How do permit myself opportunities to be silly alongside the serious? Some writers have a homogeneous tenor throughout, but I often get bored with these sites and don't want to feel overly constrained myself.
But it does trouble me, particularly this month's design. I actually like it; I think it is a clever little lark with the silly leopard side bar and punk rendition of Sesame Street style phonetics. But I suspect no one else got it. Maybe I'm too old and Sesame Street only ran those little skits in the beginning of the 70s?
Oh well, given this is a hobby, I'm happy if 20% of what I do is good, 50% is decent, and 95% sucks less than the rest of the world.
My heart is racing and I tune to gamalong gongs, which feels like the cage and the means of escape. "I can't look at you when I say this." So we sit: her front to my back. I give birth to insecurity as she coaches from behind. I can only hold on to her feet and try to find humor in this perverse lamaze.
I eat a dollar-bag of fortune cookies because of the sweetness and luck. Too much, I hug my cramp and consider the discardred bag on the floor. What does a tummy sick on fortune cookies mean for one's fate?
A while back I submitted this photo [¤]to an on-line picture rating service. Subsequent viewers can click through the submitted photos, rating each one on a scale from "hot" to "not". (I can't give you the URI to my page specifically, I assume they randomize it so people don't vote for themselves too much.) I was inspired given the quality of most pictures: bad scans of poorly lit couples. I expected for most of the folks on display, this was their first encounter with having any sort of Web presence. Nice, but I'd post a highly quality, well lit, picture of a really cute couple! On hindsight, I don't think my vanity had to do with the photo, but the fact that I was "web-slumming" it with the geocity masses. Checking back a few days I was both surprised and amused to note we had a rather poor rating! The hits from this site to the photo I submitted have continued to show up in my log files for months now and I decided to go back and see if anything had changed and noted there's a new feature: comments! This is beyond amusing, it's outright funny!
7 I want the name of who does his hair...to make sure I never go there.
10 pretty lady.
7 God bless America.
8 The almost look like a cute pair except they don't.
7 I love to see cute interracial couples. They are unique.
6 Has potential, but they should try again.
9 they are real good looking people and they look real good together
4 she's cute but he ruined it.
3 Because dude is SERIOUSLY ruining the curve here.
I don't know what half of these mean (though they still make me laugh, particularly the hair one and "he ruined it"). I then checked some of the comments on other couple photos and noted that if there is approval expressed for the female, there is a corresponding amount of disapproval for the male. I can only guess this is the result of men who are envious or otherwise incapable of appreciating their own sex. I then wondered if I'd be the same and reflected on the moments when I do those "he/she is out of his/her league" calculations in the back of my mind -- and otherwise suppress because it makes me feel ashamed and shallow -- and believe that my judgements are often more favorable towards the man! Then I thought maybe those instances come to mind only because they are the exception? Who knows. It's interesting how a 3 minute indulgence of vanity can lead to such a complex, muddled, train of self analysis!
There's few things I dislike about journals/zines more than people always apologizing. I don't find it very interesting to read so I try not to inflict it on others. Plus, I dislike the drama of people wringing their hands about their millions of readers demanding more. I figure all busy-ness is relative (I'll say I'm busy as a way to share my happiness or sadness over what I'm doing, but not as an excuse or bragging right) and the best writing isn't found in five minute updates. When I make a special trip to Fly Rabbit to look for the next Cometbus and it isn't in, that's ok because I'll appreciate it all the more when it is!
However, I'm including the following excerpt to Rich Mackin about participation in Zinetown Beantown that strays close to what I dislike. (Yes, many of the things I dislike in others stem from recognizing them in myself. Someone once commented that I must be an angelic person to have such a complete ethical system, and I responded if that was the case I wouldn't need it!) However, the reason I'm sharing this excerpt is because I find this distinction between the effort I spend on digital versus paper media interesting; I wonder how other folks interested in both media deal?
I'd like to have a table at Zinetown; but I won't have anything in print. I fear I spend so much of my creative time on goatee.net and other digital projects that it sometimes leaves little time for paper. When I'm travelling and tight at work, I get frustrated since I have very little time in general for creative projects. What I've managed to do in the past is work on a print project and post a version on the Web when I'm done. However, this is high latency (takes a while to do) and means that the digital side suffers -- and people notice this very quickly.
So! One might think why not re-purpose the digital content in paper form? I've found that I lack the enthusiasm to do the editorial work: I'm killing trees to reach a fraction of the folks I reach on-line without that creative/adrenaline reward of something new.
However, I love the paper medium dearly as a reader and writer. I've been writing on-line for seven years now, but I'd rather read a zine than a blog and I didn't feel authenticate until I had to worry about paper stock and staples.
Last year, I set up my laptop next to my handouts and it prompted some curiosity and questions, but I don't think it merits a table at Zinetown by itself.
I'm disappointed I didn't do more, but I don't stress it. My time and compulsion for such projects varies. I might get a paper zine bug, time pressure will ease up, or my emotions will compel me to write. The way I try to think about my personal projects is that they are supposed to be a way of relieving stress, not causing it!
Spring is going to be hectic! A new project at work is ramping up and I'll be doing a good deal of international travel. In April I'm going to Hong Kong for WWW10. I've been there before and the city-island itself isn't all that exciting. A very western city focussed on little but tourism and money. Consequently, I hope two spend my first two nights getting acclimated on Lantau Island near the beaches, trails, and Buddhist monastery. The following weekend, I'm going to stop over in Tokyo for a a long weekend and visit Akihabara and Harajuku -- and this time I'll have my digital camera! Later in May I have to travel to Berlin, and by that time Mimi should be living there! It's very nice when work travel corresponds to personal interest. Then again West coast red-eyes suck.
So, all of this is a verbose way of saying that in preparing for the Hong Kong trip I dug up some old bits (which I never published on the Web) and I now make it available for your perusal: 1998 Hong Kong Travel Diary.
"Ev-ery-thing is su-per whe you're GAY!!!! When your Gay!!" -- Big Gay Al.
When I reviewed my extended absence greeting at work before deleting it I cringed: I sound so queeny. I haven't nailed it down and it isn't too apparent in my natural speech; I think it comes from accenting and lilting the last syllable of my words while composing my thoughts. I don't stutter, stammer, or umm, I say, "that's su-per." It's one of those things about myself that I try to amend, but otherwise accept because some voice mail systems don't let you re-record your message. Plus, it makes me laugh. Here I am playing standards diplomat between Internet behemoths and my voice mail answers, "Hi! This is Joseph, I'm going to be in Miami until the 12th but leave me a voice mail and I'll get right back to you!" You'd think I was going to a body waxing [¤] convention in South Beach [¤]; I was going to South Beach, but for different reasons.
Snuggling on a beach chair watching cappuccino clouds pass before a brilliantly cold moon above a warm emerald sea; floating on my back watching my feet forge up and over the crest of a wave; picnicking on a Mango covered bank of Oleta river and jumping in surprise and delight when a fish jumps out of the water; wearing sandals and a sarong; eating delicious veggie bagel presses at the kosher 770 Cafe that caters to old jewish men reading newspapers, younger fashionable jews (770 is open from 9pm to 4am on Saturdays!) and a vegetarian couple to whom the folks inside wave to when we pass by; walking happily for hours hand-in-hand looking for Nora's key lime pie because for that evening, there's nothing more important — and even though we never found it, we were still super.
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