Mar 2000, 8 entries

i was forced to lie to my co-workers by telling them that i was at the kingdome explosion last weekend. yes, i was there, pretty close actually, but far enough away to see the dome wiggling around on its thin concrete legs for a second or two before the sound of the explosions were heard. it lasted 16 seconds, the sound. but much before that, the dust started billowing up. big billowy things tend to sometimes move faster than they appear to in the rear-view mirror. objects are larger than they seem. the dust cloud bloomed up into the sky in lazy slow motion, but only a few seconds later did i realize that this cloud was eating up a city block every few seconds. one two three Jackson, one two three Main, one two three Yesler, one two three James. i was on Cherry. but i was running before that. it was a gleeful run, like in the movies, running terrified but excited with the beautiful but deadly bulls by your side, a sack of tomatoes swinging by your back, and a pulpy fist raised an happiness, little daisies being crushed by the bare soul of your foot.

what this means: i am sporty, i am communal with the city of seattle, i participate in the world, and if the world were a taxi it would not leave with my thumb raised on the corner. no, what the churches say—living in the world but not of it—that is what i was not, by watching the kingdome explode.

so you guys read this diary? but i only update every week or so. oh, but you like how i “use words in a rhythmy way”. but you also like how i sometimes act bitingly. if i were one for metaphors, and you know i’m not, i would say i’m a sick tiger in a thick cage tied down with aged bones. but you know i really like you. i don’t mean it when i say you’re boring—how could i cause i don’t know you. any you have told me numerous times that you’re only you for your own sake. but not me, apparently. i…

i am me for your sake. see that lie about the kingdome i did all for you. i mean, i lied to the co-workers about my exciting weekend. or did i lie to you about lying to my co-workers. if i was lying then, then how would you know if i was telling the truth now when i am admiting that i’m a liar. oh…

yes, i feel you’re tired. these stupid games. why do i spend so much effort and never say anything. where are the answers. why can you relate to me because you were once like me. implying that you grew out of this phase. what if i was once like you as well, acknowledging the existence of problems but only interested in them if they lead to solutions. then, who’s going in the right direction. or is it just like the white line on a tennis ball—circling around, making nice turns, sometimes going in a completely new direction, but then, wait, it’s all one line. wake up and smell the futility.

today, i was on the bus, and thinking about how i hate it when i’m forced to sit next to someone cause there are no empty seats (the seats come in twos, and i like to have me and an empty seat). but then i sit down next to someone (always the one reading the book, average looking, male if possible, cause i don’t want a girl to think that i’m sitting next to her in order to chat with her). and then, sometime during the busride, people will get off and an empty seat will become available. i’ve noticed that more often than not, i will continue to sit where i am, unless i’m still far from my stop, and i think the tipping point is at about 4 stops (there are only about 10 stops between my home and my work). if there are more than 4 stops, i’ll move to the empty seat, and if there are less, i’ll stay where i am (unless i’m by someone annoying of course).

i was talking with K about what worries us on a day to day basis. i’m not a micro-worrier, worrying about specific troubles, but rather a macro-worrier, that will invest in long term worries that manifest themselves in several different… manifestations. my biggest worry: i’m not doing enough. this will make me write in my diary, it will make me stay late at work, it will make me go running, it will make me go to church, it will make me write back to you, it will make me call my friends to go out for a drink. but i’m not particularly worried about my readers forgetting me, or my job not getting done, or my body turning into flab, or my spiritual health, or my e-mail coorespondence, or my friends forgetting about me. i’m worried about not doing enough.

i’m becoming nicer as this entry gets written. that’s always nice. if words were water jugs, the word nice would have walls about a foot thick, and only hold three drops of water.

i want to talk about how this diary changes my life. but this entry is getting too long.

do people ever consider taking life the same way that we take this meta diary land. i mean, since i want to be great, it would be appropriate for me to first either become an alcoholic or to become mad. has anyone you known ever become an alcoholic for the sole purpose of writing better? think about it. do you do anything for the sole purpose of gaining attributes that are associated with that action?

smoke. wear your super nice clothes. listen to the proper bands, study the appropriate subjects. soon, you’ll be who you think you already are. i will drink until i’m famous. somewhere, lines will cross, borders will blur, and there you will be. super cool.

i am getting tired of people. of the reviews, of the reviewers, of the bandwidth. which translates into it is going to go away soon. or, it could translate into i am just threatening you because nothing has happened as i wanted it to. you are too nice, too much in survival of the weakest mode. you are all advertisements for your dull lives. big billboards with nothing to say. then you discover someone who has something to say and you fill your board with that person’s name and you fall asleep in dull commercials.

here are two says which are mutually exclusive:

love is more interesting than death because everyone eventually finds death.
death is more interesting than love because people come back from love.

both sayings are true from the aesthetic words-emulating-truth standpoint. that’s what cliches are: words that sound good, and are therefore true. they fall apart when rephrased, or they hold together when turned one-hundred-eighty degrees. words are such fickle friends, you don’t even know who you’re playing with. it’s strange how my day’s mood can hinge on a few simple interpersonal interactions. please everyone love me.

those sentences in the last sentence had nothing to do with one another. why are they grouped together like fickle friends? when will someone call me on these horrid games? who will play when they realize what this all is. not that anyone is playing anyway, we’re all in a hopper painting, in a crowed room, staring at ourselves in different mirrors.

i have a new friend whom i swap metaphors with and play with toys until they break. but everything is making me want to cry this evening. is it the plum wine. is it diaryland’s new referral feature. is it homegrocer’s stock. is it my new haircut. is it this sad music. it is this simple game. it is my fans and enemies, and the great variation of events that occur without any substance but only consequence.

i’ll go review a few things now.

something strange has happened to a friend’s family: death. this doctor’s son is a friend of mine who i occasionally see when i fly down to visit my mom. last time i saw him, he gave K and i a lift to a starbucks. i wonder how he is now.

a beautiful gift from one of you: o sacred cord that bound the legs of christ bind this tongue of mine so that it says nothing, neither good nor evil—haha, or better to rip out my tongue right?

would you read a story that i wrote? it’s called decima. tell me if you hate it.

you are too kind, some of you. even in real life. it’s not like the world is treating me so badly that it is nice to see a good honest person get by. like that’s me. and at what cost do i get by you ask, the cost of knowing that in many ways i don’t deserve what i have. here’s the curse as i see it.

not like i’m going to presume to be cursed. i’m merely salieri, saint of the mediocre man and woman alike. i know the curse, and almost have it, but don’t quite. but before i get started, alice1, what the heck are you talking about, and do i even have the smidgenist bit to do with it. all i see is the phrase ”...I’ve resigned myself…” and i know you’re not giving good advice. or maybe you are, like the godfather i never had.

the curse, is that in order to be great, you have to want to be great, and therefore you don’t deserve to be. the curse of the presidential elections. the curse of homecoming queen. the curse of cliques and clubs. it’s not like those novels where the unlikeliest of all people is chosen to be the chosen one. buffy, you aren’t real. bilbo, that’s not true. whatever your name is in matrix, keanu, who are you fooling. but, the neat part is, is that we like buffy, bilbo, and the brunette boy, for the very reason that they don’t necessarily want to be great. i saw a poster in pagliacci’s pizza yesterday that says, “being good isn’t good enough for those that dream of being great.” i’ll have a slice of the cheesy poster, with pepperoni, please.

but we read about those fake folk because they’re likeable. they’re likeable because they’re innocent. innocent equals good. didn’t we learn that somewhere.

there’s the other end of the spectrum. the martrys. the messiahs. those of you who happen to have godly powers that bemuse the masses as if you were blinking an eye. you are also great, and you want to be great, but the reason we like you is because you die. the greatness that pays. socrates. jesus. mozart. beethoven. kafka. van gogh. ghandi. hemingway. plath. in order of appearance, and certainly not showcasing the entire crew. who wants a piece of that pie. i wouldn’t mind one, but i wasn’t offered one either. most people wouldn’t, but it’s better than the alternative.

here i am. dreaming of the cheese, what to do. we’re probably the most clear-headed of the groups. self aware. we have no debt, nice clothes, a palm pilot, and tacos in the bank. we plot, we plan, we see the effect we have on people, we multiply the effect, we drive the effect from multiple fronts, battle multiple wars in humility and sometimes throw our suspicious friends off the beaten path by being blatantly un-humble, blatantly rude. a person that open can’t be mischevious. take your eyes off of me. i’m talking in the first person plural but i should probably back out of this description, and continue in the second person. this isn’t how i am. this is how i am on paper. my resume. i have all the qualities of a prime candidate for the position, but the details are smudged, and they’re not accepting anyway.

i want to curse, and to be cursed. but i’ve been designed not to. do not curse, little erik. oh, you little teens feel powerful with your freedom but the truth is, value is directly proportional to use. the law of diminishing values, interest rates, abusive relationships, downward spirals. fuck you all.

i get angrier and angrier sometimes. if someone is smart enough to make it to the top without being of one of the classes above, and therefore in my virtual curse basket, they’re smart enough to know how they got there, and if they want to go anywhere else, they know what to do and what to say. by knowing what to do and what to say, they are no longer being “forced” to be great, by gift or by God, and therefore they are inherently evil down to the very seed they’ve sown and grass that’s grown. e-vil. the difference between a sheep and a cloned sheep. the god and the devil. you and i.

bye bye.

ps. at work today i was in the middle of a meeting where the managers couldn’t help cursing at one another and giving very sarcastic comments out like handshakes.

pps. on the walk home a woman asked me if i was a pimp and i said no. then she said good, cause then she was safe.

ppps. you are so beautiful i want to cry.

so today a tom green video came in the mail from Alice Boveman of Morrison, Colorado. who is this? and it’s a video that i saw was purchased off my wish list months ago. is it alice1 whose real name isn’t alice? whoever it is, thanks, and do you have a wishlist?

which makes me wonder why more of you haven’t bought me presents. if you buy me presents, i will not only buy you a present, but it will perhaps be an indirect way of paying for the costly people pages and for me to upgrade the message board to the licensed version that allows you to edit your own entries, and gain status as a poster, and other quasi interesting things.

i bought a seven hundred dollar jacket today. it’s nice. but it didn’t even come with pants! that’s okay though, i have my gold striped pants that will serve me fine at all weddings that happen to come up. buying the jacket made me feel that i’d done enough today and wouldn’t have to get the haircut. but i wonder what it is in me that fills up after a certain number of things are done and tells me “you’ve done enough for today, don’t do anything else.” it’s like a stomach. but i wonder how big leonardo da vince’s stomach was. would he be content with buying a jacket, or would he march straight to the hair cut salon for the haircut as well. he probably would. but then, i went to work today even though it’s saturday. and i plan on cleaning the bathroom. so maybe leonardo woulda gotten a good do, but then come home to a dirty bathroom too tired to clean. what about dostoyevski who could write two novels simultaneously, one in the mornings and the other in the evenings.

the measure of man is the size of his stomach (within this metaphor only). the people that can continue to do productive task after productive task are the builders of this world’s monuments. i worked almost 70 hours this week, bought a suit, designed a website, read a book on why marriages fail (K and i are a conflict-avoidance couple, with a strong desire—perhaps only on my end—to give the volitile couple profile a run for its money), went dancing at a new club (looks like the fratty community may claim this one, although the middle-aged community was sure planning on going down with its fists a flyin), and spent nearly $3000 on stocks and clothes (you think homegrocer is any good). and last entry i was saying “renounce and enjoy”. who do i think i am, ghandi.

what is the size of your stomach. do you spend most of your day in a brainless stupor, succumbing to the simplest urges of your bio-rhythm, only occasionally surfacing from the deep lake when you have an opportunity to make a nasty comment about the other drivers. my guess is that most of you are like this. sleeping, when awake. i wonder why sleep has been so often likened to death, and our everyday lives most often likened to death. why is everything likened to sleep and death. why is life so similar to death. why are you living. go to sleep, forget, ignore, tolerate, turn a blind eye, go with the flow, you can’t win them all, third time’s a charm, the blink of an eye, beggers can’t be choosers, bend like a straw, everything in moderation, close your eyes, it’s lonely at the top, time flies, like water off a duck’s back, lemons into lemonade, look on the bright side, tgif, blah da dee, blah da daa the walalee is what you walaloo of it, go smoke some pot, go have a drink, you’ll be okay. really. you think.

what a tiresome day. have been consistently waking up with a feeling in my gut as if a million things have happened as i lay asleep and there is no way i’ll ever catch up. that, and a feeling of being run over by my own peers in a ruthless war for self-esteem. who else feels this way.

i consistently ask you, whom i have varying degrees of like for, to cure me. to give me something worth coming back for. but there is nothing. all there is is discontent. and i already have that.

here’s a letter from one of you:

So, tell me, how did you get so cool? At the same time as being a
hardworker at your job? that’s always been my goal. I was always a teacher’s pet, yet at the same time I rebelled against authority. did
I tell you I once defied a weapons check at my high school? didn’t
think so.

I’ve reverted to all-lowercase letters midstream. A bad sign. What
should I do, about my pathetic journal/life? You’re the only source I
trust these days, seriously.

what can i say to this except, why must i even say this, all you have to do is renounce and enjoy. in the words of my good friend ghandi. renounce and enjoy. has it ever been better said. i renounce you diaryland, and i enjoy you. the dilemma, and i don’t mind if i say it is one, is that we want to renounce, and at the same time be happy. in the indirect way that happiness is a result of the lack of pain. freeproton, in his very generous review of me, likened me to the devil – in many ways one who brings pain to the foreground. but in many ways the devil exists in God’s Will. i’m beginning to think that the devil is just God’s way of getting out all of the painful things that he would have had to do (in order to fulfill His Good Will) any, but which we mortals would not be able to understand why God did. anyway, i know you are friends with the devil already, so why should i talk him up. stick to God kids, and don’t listen to my blather. i’m an old cynical man who hates the world.

be cool. so i hear many of you are beginning to feel weighed down by the diaryland lifestyle. the lifestyle of contantly attempting to represent yourself in a favorable light even as the audience grows dumber and duller by the minute. many of us came here because we were web babies. but diaryland helped us grow up. we perhaps know a little html now. we perhaps can even create a roll-over, or an image map. we brilliant few may even have a favorite book from which we can cut and paste cgi scripts. we, you see, have out-grown diaryland.

where do we go? buy a domain name? why do that… look at me now flailing desparately for hits. well, i can tell you that a service is coming soon to alleviate all your pains. it is diary-x. the script that i am currently using—the one that can host cgi-script plugins, the one that allows you to create as many templates as you want, and even have separate html pages alongside your entries, all managed from one place, the one that can organize your older entries in multiple ways, the one that allows you to create something as dynamic as the people pages, and, most importantly of all, the one in which i have a helping hand in (so you will not neglect your daily dose of abusive literature) will be rolling live in the next month or so. there’s a mailing list right now if you want to learn more. it will be like graduating from aol (for those of you who haven’t yet, nevermind coming). other than that paragraph of propoganda, what other self-interested plans have been so blatantly stuffed into your little head.

you have been waiting for something new. keep looking. this is more of the same, only better. that something new may or may not ever come, and i wish you luck in looking.

live life loving.
erik

Two days ago I got an job offer as a web developer for the Personalization team at Amazon.com. I said I was interested. Then I told the Electronics web developers that I was no longer interested in the interviews they had set up for the following day. They said I shouldn’t give up on them so easily and to not accept the Personalization offer just yet. So today I went in and met with the VP of Electronics, the GM of Electronics, the PM of Electronics Web Development, and the GM of Web Development. They offered another position. After, I called the Personalization team and said I’d been given another offer. They conferenced and called me back with the PM and Manager of Personalization on speaker phone.

I need to decide by Monday which job I want. I keep on thinking I want one, and then, the other. Here are the pros and cons:

Electronics: I would be the first person on the team, therefore, I would have the most influence on the website. There is a lot of responsibility and they really need someone.

Personalization: I would be the seventh person on the team, therefore not as influencial, but I would have more people to learn from and to collaborate with. The whole scene of personalization is very new and sort of the hot topic in the web development field, and a lot of the most experienced developers have moved over to that group (I presume for a reason).

Which would you take? Please write to me with any help or insight that you have. Thanks.

i don’t usually use writing as a form of therapy, it sort of seems like a waste of time to write things out when you can just think about them instead. there isn’t really much difference in effect, for me. do you really think it’s true that some people are so easily distracted by themselves that a line of thought might be broken against the thinker’s will unless they force themselves to act alongside the thought? how fragile are we.

it’s a hobby of mine when meeting new people to wait for the first indication of their weakness. meeting strangers is usually pretty formal and scripted, but there’s a very physical breaking point between that and casual conversation. an awkward silence, if mutually noticed, isn’t really a sign of humanity, just awkwardness. but if only one of the two people notices the awkward silence, then the person who did notice it has also seen a weakness in the second person: the weakness of not being perceptive. it gives the first person the power of knowing that the awkward silences won’t be held against them. however, the really powerful people are the ones that can perceive an awkward silence, and convince the other person (who they notice has noticed the awkward silence) that they themselves are not aware of the awkwardness. human interaction is so beautiful, it’s like a beautiful lullaby. i wish i it was all documented somewhere.

i’ve noticed a speech pattern among the more powerful people at my work place. they begin all their sentences with “so what i was thinking…” or “so the way it was when…” or “so i see it as…”—basically prefixing all of their sentences with “so” and then immediately switching whatever authority the previous speaker had assumed they had onto themselves. it’s really annoying. it caught me off guard a couple days ago in a pretty important meeting and i have noticed it in three other people since then. it’s almost comical. i keep wondering if they feel self conscious for their speech pattern. since then, i’ve used it a couple times, when talking to them, to see if they’ll like me more for being like them.

another trait is “the loud laugh for no apparent reason.” i’m upgrading my laugh to that as well.

i walked all around the city today restlessly. i have a lot of errands but no motivation to do them. buy a mocha here, read through a few magazines there, gaze at the expensive watches, get money from the ATM, cross a few streets, weave between a few ugly couples, notice that an entire block is without power today, thus forcing them to shut down (except for the sushi bar), up escalators, down escalators, changing mind about direction in midmotion (old woman mumbling to me, “for God’s sake!”), unrest, disinterest, resize the wedding ring, look for a suit, decide on a color and also not to buy anything today, need to buy something, must buy something, there is nothing to buy, should i go home, cross the street with broken signal lights, buy something to eat, go home.

what should i do…