Aug 2001, 4 entries

Yesterday was Seattle Stories’s 6 month birthday. I was already going to write to all the users about the new stories there, but then I thought, hmm, how long has it been up anyway, and I looked at the first post and I looked at my watch, and zing! it was exactly 6 months to the day. Strange.

Anyway, there’s a new contest at Seattle Stories, the Seattle Stories Stories About Seattle Contest. It will last 2 months, and the best story, as chosen by the judges, will be given the prize. Right now, the prize is $50 out of my own pocket, but if you want to be a judge as well, you can donate to the cause. We could use second and third prizes, you know. If you want to donate (and you don’t necessarily have to be a Seattle citizen), let me know. But by donating, you too will have a vote as to who will win the prizes in the end. We can make a crazy potpourri of prizes, like uneaten bananas and one-used toy cars, and such. Read more here.

Derek wrote an article about communities, and it talks about Nervousness.org: Getting real: Virtual communities that break the fourth wall. Interesting article.

Now that I’ve sold 20 or so of our products, I’m seeing all of these other interesting things that people are making. For example, there’s Jack’s, We Ain’t Got No Car zine, which I just received in the mail, and Ben Brown’s Words! Words! Words! Magazine, which I recently purchased. It has Josh’s story in it, so that should be worth it with that alone.

This entry is all business, I feel like. Let’s have the party in back! I’m going to Friday Harbor in about 3 hours, for a weekend at a cabin, and we’re going to rent scooters and scoot all over the windy roads, with beers in hand and sun tan lotion smeared on our grinning faces. Also, I just got approved for 2 weeks of vacation starting August 27th. I’m going to not go to work, not work on websites, not think about computers for two whole weeks, and instead focus all my energy on beginning “The Most Beautiful One”. I can’t wait.

Oh oh oh! I almost forgot. More business. Real quick. Inspired by the lovely script “Is Stephen A Moron?!”, written by Stephen, creator of the recently turned 1 year old web phenomenon of diary-x.com (happy birthday, by the wayside), I’ve created a Debates area at Nervousness, where you can take side on moral issues such as whether you’d save your kitten or a Van Gogh in a flaming fire. Check out the debates, for endless moral inquiry type fun.

Thank you. Thank you all, dearly. I love you more than words can say.

From a line-up of infinite people, it is impossible to find the most beautiful one.

Congratulations to Alan, co-conspirator at Seattle Stories, who is starting his first day at Amazon today (now making all three developers of Seattle Stories Amazon monkeys). He’s working just up the hall from me, about 5 feet out of my direct line of vision.

NERVOUS Industries is profitable! Today I sent out the first 10 copies of Decima, and realized that I’ve perhaps taken selling things dangerously close to cost (could be something in the food here at Amazon). I’ve got to rethink this strategy.

I wrote a new story for Seattle Stories. It’s a little strange because this is a story I really haven’t told anyone before, it’s a little embarrassing, and I had completely forgotten about it until recently. It’s called, Andrew & My Handicap.

It feels good to have all of these mini-resolutions happening, where there have been none in so long. Yes, so long, like weeks. Anyway, maybe y’all can help.

K, Jim, and I are trying to think of ways to get $60,000, enough to take a year or two off so that I can quit my job and write my book. You’d THINK that $60,000 wouldn’t be that hard to come by, but when you consider my requirements (that it cannot take work, and that it has to payoff within the next year or so), all of a sudden there are many fewer options available to us.

I could go on a game show. Fear Factor, a new show that tries to scare you, pays $50,000 to the winner, which is pretty close to my goal. And their tests are pretty wimpy. This got us thinking. What fears would you confront, and, more interestingly, which fears would you NOT confront, for money? In this case, this money is more important to me than almost anything, so I’ll do almost anything for it, if it was all over and done with in the few days it took to film the show.

A couple of things that come close to the line of things that are maybe too scary include: chewing off my own arm (although I think I would be able to bite off my thumb), conducting surgery on myself (although I would give myself stitches), pull out my eye-lashes (I don’t know why this one creeps me out so much). Those are all bodily, and play with my fear of the human body. Other things that made it to the list of things I might not be able to do were: get struck by lightning, be buried alive for a month (I assume there would be food down there, but I’d probably go crazy anyway so what would it be worth… wait… maybe it would help me write the book… okay, I’m up for this one again), and a couple other I can’t remember.

Last night my pager went off around 3:00am and something really strange happened in my head. It was as if some strange frequency had shattered the walls of my mind. Where normally there is the quiet murmur of self-talk against a black background, huge silver jellyfish-like glass macchias (not unlike the kind Dale Chihuly makes) began emerging from cracks in the black surface, and multiplying at an alarming rate, like a chrystal, or an expanding fractal. It was noisy. I couldn’t think of anything else. It was very scary. It was like the texture of my brain was being broken, and I couldn’t go back to sleep for a long time. The silver macchias grew and multiplied and sounded loud in my head, and they changed color, collectively, it was very sinister. I tried concentrating on my breath, but it felt like I had to look at my breath through the wall of macchias. Dale’s show opens tomorrow night in Seattle.

As I settled down, the macchias disappeared and instead the black surface of my brain became riddled with holes that expanded and contracted repeatedly and in an organic breathing gross way.

Anyway, now that’s over.

I got Judith’s package with all 20 of my 20 things the other day. It’s pretty neat seeing all these things made by people around the world. I wanted to display some of it online, but my digital camera is broken. My contribution was Nervous Yoga Cards. This is a great idea, if you haven’t thought about signing up, you should.

There’s an interview with me! A couple weeks ago Michelle Ranier wrote to me with a couple questions, not unlike the ones that Josh answered. I answered them, and now there’s an article with my name in it at the Montreal Gazette: Blogs can put your secrets on the web. I sound pretty dorky, but there you have it!

Nervousness has been Metafiltered.

Yesterday, Nervouness was a Yahoo Pick of the Day, and we got over 6,600 unique hits. That’s a record for me, almost 6 times over.

I also made some breakthroughs on the book I’m planning. This has been a week where my brain hasn’t had a minutes respite from the tumultuous triumph of its own tragic toad of the toodle-loo two too to.