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09.29.02 TIDAL, SWIMMING IN THE WAKE the temp files are finally closed, the mess is finally over. i got a job, the job; start on monday. started last week, really, but let's say monday is the day, for purposes of record. this means things will finally start to change. not a lot, mind you. really, things have been changing for quite some time now, a molasses change, a slow drip drip of evolution. so this is a big step then, but it's not the i once believed was imminent. the job is nearly trial, with a let's see how this is going in a month's time clause, but that's of little concern to me. in a month's time, things will be going very well and i'm confident that, baring unforeseeable circumstance such as the utter collapse of the US economy, this is it. that fact will lead jessie and i into the Little Move, down-the-street cousin to the Big Move that brought me here four months ago. so there's no swell of change after all. i came home friday, employed, endowed once again with a future ahead of me. but there was no celebrating, none of the hyperactive elation that i might have expected. instead, there is a slow settling in feeling, something like wood fires and warm blankets, the spreading joy of assurance, of contentment. driving down into the city last night, the glowing skyline rising up against the night, the streets winding down the hillside, surrounded by friends and comfort and promise, i felt at home, perhaps for the first time in years. # 09.27.02 and you knew this day would come. you knew, just knew. let's jump, pump, hump for joy! we're better now, aren't we? # mr. paul makes a keen observation on a story that's simply too interesting to pass up: It’s like a line out of a bad horror movie where one of the good guys turns out to be working for the bad side and he blurts everything out in the end and everything’s solved... wow. yeah. got it. # 09.26.02 have i mentioned recently that richard is brilliant? magnificent, reticent, delighfully glowing puffed pasteries, cream cheese filling and whipped chocolate frosting, such a bright light, long night. brillliant. # 09.24.02 does anyone else remember those "save the children" commercials in the early 90s? there was one that sticks out in my mind, of a shaking, trembling voiced hepburn, but i can't remember if it was audrey or katharine. i swear it was katharine, but david insists it was audrey. the internet, so far as i can tell, does not know the answer. do you? # i'm going to change my name. that way, i'll seem more daring, more exciting, edgy. i'm adding a silent X. (see below) i may consider getting it tattooed somewhere. i hear it's all the rage. sincerely, Xchris # "i don't know any old lady who can suck like that." # finally got a chance to watch the killing fields last night, the 1984 film about the rise of the vicious khmer rouge and the cambodian genocide. the film is great, once excused for it's excessive length. what's best about it is that this is really is quite an amazing piece of history, and it is still astoundingly under-documented, at least within the framework of the public conscious. given the above statement, i'm pretty jealous of dan, who got a chance to visit cambodia, along with what i gather was a pretty decent swath of south east asia while studying in india and thailand. i never got a chance to ask dan if he was there, but the thai study program is typically accompanied by dr. kerbo who is truly one of the best professors cal poly has. (i still have some of his books packed away in boxes somewhere -- they're some of the few i kept.) dr. kerbo's lectures, especially those which involved some of his first hand research from the region, were fascinating. his class, while really an introduction to the subject, usually managed to hold the interest of everyone in attendence for the full lecture, which is a pretty amazing feat. i would have loved to get the chance to see this region of the world, as it stands today, with him along for the ride. on a related note, if anyone knows of a good resource for cambodian history ('75 to present) i'd be interested to know. # 09.23.02 the moon hangs low over the city skyline, full and heavy and bright, and i wish i lived on the 18,000th floor. # i swear i could be a better writer, if only my memory wasn't so bad. the best ideas come to me at the worst moments and then vanish forever into the ether. my kingdom for a pad of paper... # i wish the city would just shut up for a little while. i've got a terrible headache. # 09.22.02 happy happy birthday mr. reese. # thom yorke is schedule to perform a rare (has it been done?) solo set at this year's bridge school benefit concert. i suppose this takes me out of the running as a real big radiohead fan, but i don't think i'll be going. even if the tickets weren't so expensive, i'm really not interested in many (if any) of the other performers lined up for this year's event. i mean, come on, Leann Rimes? geez. # i'm in love with mathiew kassovitz. he's the boy interest in amelie, if you don't remember. well, according to a recent article in the nytimes magazine, he's about to become the spokes model for lancome's new line of men's aftershave. (god knows i'd buy from him.) {kudos to jessie's keen eye for pointing this one out to me} # i slept fitfully last night. i know this because my pillow is smashed and i have a deadly case of bedhead. i dreamt uneasy dreams -- we were robbed, but by an attractive youth who we later befriended. does this mean that i feel violated by my friends? # how to delete stuborn files under os x. interesting note: if you drag a file to the terminal window, the file's entire path will be pasted into the command line. handy! # 09.20.02 does anybody know how to teach the junk mail filter in mail.app to ignore anything that appears in the address book? this should be a simple function... # speaking of leaked product photos, check out the next updated palm, called the zire. white plastic set on a silver backing? hmmm, sounds familiar... # 09.19.02 a journaling filesystem for the mac, compatable with the existing HFS+ format? that's what they're saying over at mac os rumors. likely targeted for 10.3 -- if you don't know what this means, then you likely wont care. # 09.17.02 it used to be exciting around here. looking through the archives for some historical-reference links, i noticed that september and october of last year were pretty good months for prosaic* content. not insightful, life-changing content, mind you, but fun shorts, witty musings on cute boys and more pictures than i care to think about. makes this feel a bit like my blue period. hmmm, more media... # HERE, KITTY, KITTY after much trial and tribulation, i've returned to os x. this time though, i know i'm home. it wasn't easy, and although i'm impressed, there is still much that is lacking. (long post warning!!) first, the ordeal. installation was a pain. this is completely attributable to me, however, and not a problem on the part of apple. i had trouble with a piece of "third party RAM" installed in my relic of a computer, giving the os x installer fits and starts. after resolving this problem (it took all morning to figure out) i was able to proceed with the installation, which went impossibly well from this point in. if you bought a new mac today, and you didn't have any digital baggage from an old computer, os x could conceivably provide you with everything you need to go about your day (sans ftp and web browser, i should say). right now, the only non-apple program running in my dock is omniweb. which begs the browser question. what a sad state of affairs this is. what's a voracious internet consumer/producer such as myself to do? under os x, ie seems to be a jalopy at best. it's slow, with mediocre rendering and scrolling speeds. and to be perfectly honest, the interface that seemed rather quaint to me when it was surrounded by the "platinum" classic interface looks dog ugly over here in os x land. it's a poor interpretation of the aqua-based human interface guidelines; it doesn't bear any resemblance to ie for windows, nor does it even try to look or operate like other os x applications. but what other choice is there? i'm drawn to omniweb (now in version 4.1, most of the issues i had with this browser have been resolved) which is beautiful, quick and easy to use. it even (sweet mary) blocks pop-up ads. most pages are drawn accurately, and those it doesn't have (so far) fallen within my range of tolerance. the problem? javascript in the links bar and poor rendering of the movable type backend. omni wont' let me launch a javascript window from my bookmarks, making it impossible to pop up an mt blog window. in addition, the only page that i've seen mangled beyond recognition is the administrative backend for mt. is this a browser problem or a code problem? browser, from what i'm hearing. the half-finished, mozilla based, os x only browser chimera is quick and accurate and lovely and small. did i mention it's half finished? at v0.5, this cute new browser simply wont cut it for me. but rest assured, this situation is guaranteed to improve soon enough - david hyatt, one of the primary developers of chimera, was recently hired by apple. he wont say what he's working on, but there's little doubt that cupertino would do just about anything to improve the state of browsing under os x. in the meantime, i'm stuck lingering somewhere in-between omniweb and ie. but back to the apple-supplied applications. can i tell you how cool they are? let's hope for an update to improve stability and remove some bugs from iChat, because it's simply beautiful, and the interoperation with Address Book (lovely!) and even the Finder (now with more multithreaded speed!) are great. iTunes is great as ever, iPhoto (with library manager, natch) will probably change my photo-storing habits. and this, the tiniest of miniscule applications, TextEdit, is perhaps my favorite. it's the low-end, non-Word editor i've always wanted! inline spell check included, bless their fruity little hearts, apple has made me a happy man with this tiny program. i'm in the middle of a move to Mail and iCal (also lovely; like the application independent alarms). Entourage v.X is nice, it's powerful and it's pretty, but the more time i spend floating around this new interface, the more i am growing to loath the cumbersome all-in-one interface. on a small screen like mine, entourage becomes an attention-drawing, side-ways-scrolling nightmare. iCal and Mail likely do not (yet?) match the power of entourage, but i don't think i'll be leaning on either of them (especially iCal) hard enough to make a difference. under the hood -- CUPS printing engine, samba networking, automatic on-the-fly networking, a command line; i love this stuff. after years of file-sharing and printing nightmares, i can finally just hit "print." and still there are other out-of-sight technologies that i haven't yet been able to explore, like built in apache server (mmm, offline web development...) rendezvous, and others that i may never see, like inkwell handwriting recognition or quartz extreme (can we say quartzGL now, please?). lastly, impressions. i like this os. i was unsatisfied with my machine's performance under 10.1.x -- it was simply too gruesome. but with jaguar, i've actually found a performance improvement in most aspects, and equivalent speed in those tasks that are not faster. i'm still getting some kernel panics, most of which are likely attributable to the mediocre RAM mentioned above, but i'll be eagerly awaiting the forthcoming 10.2.1 update just in case. i'd like to see a better browser solution, in-Finder-ftp that doesn't bring the whole thing down, and general improvements to the iApps (iChat first and foremost). but all-in-all, i think i will be happy here. have i mentioned that i haven't even setup classic, let alone had occasion to run it? this time i'm here to stay. # 09.13.02 i'm headed down to the 'no (to co-op tyler's phrase) this weekend, so i'll remain offline for a few more days. this week has really ended up as the low-tide of my networked life. but i'm off of work and on the lam come monday morning, and with a pending os upgrade, there's bound to be lots to talk about next week. this includes my first impressions from jaguar (mac os x.2) and the doom and prognosticated gloom that comes only from the slow-settling realization that you have upgraded yourself into a hardware performance corner. a portrait of the geek as a young man. # 09.12.02 it's ok brian, the register says it was all a mistake. what's shipping on a segway run, anyway? # someone over at o'reilly has come up with a handy plugin for movable type which will publish a blog to a subscribable ical calendar. i don't really know why you would want to do this, but it does my geeky little soul well to know simply that i can. update: ok, but here's a useful one. an applescript that creates ical events for birthday's defined in your Address Book (note the capital letters; that means it the .app). see, your 5 minutes here today weren't completely worthless after all. # did you know that tomorrow is friday the 13th? me neither. # the san francisco office for the peace corps is upstairs from this office. i never knew. # welcome to prosaic* -- the new home for disillusionment and disappoint on the internet. # 09.10.02 today, today, today. all our love for noah. # 09.09.02 the most intelligent people in a company can often be found in the mail room. # these days, these days. there's a media frenzy these days. because i can't stop, yeah i can't stop this feeling, this feeling inside. the crazy old lady got on the bus today and she yelled at us, told us that it should have been called tyrannosaurus vagina. these days. can you guess what i did friday night? yeah, i saw coldplay. pretty much a complete surprise, really. a friend with an extra ticket and suddenly, there i was, staring up at guy's beautiful mug. ah, lovely. they were really good, boys and girls. i love the new album (who doesn't?) and i was delightfully surprised by their performance, which was absolutely stand up (if not a little short) and really quite impressive. they were having a good time, which is just something that i love to see on stage. saturday, i finally was able to drag someone to see lovely & amazing, a movie i've been waiting and waiting and waiting to see. it's delicious really. it's not meaty but it's nice. like eating the frosting off the cake. just the good stuff, just the sweet stuff, thanks, hold the rest. this was offset, because we're always offsetting things, by a first viewing of the newly acquired return of the living dead dvd. such fun should not be sold without a license. seriously, it's good. this afternoon, sunday, we were totally blow away by the 70mm re-release of baraka at the castro theater. have you seen this thing? you should, regardless of the format, but if you get a chance to see this new print, get ready to be astounded. it's so moving, now made even more so. i'm not afraid to say i cried at a few sequences. so what's next, you ask? good question. there's so much to see and do here! i picked up tickets to see doves and gomez play next month, two events i'm terribly excited about. and i grabbed an expo pass for this week's seybold, which will be my first time even getting near the event, even if i'm not going to any of the cool sessions. bah, who needs sessions when you can just wander around and gawk at technology? speaking of technology, as i just was, i picked up a new little toy for myself last week. since i've been making so much money in the lucrative temp industry, i've come to realize that i wont be buying a new ibook anytime in the near future. so i scored a deal on a new hard drive for my current citrus-colored beauty, which will allow me to get a little feline. but, unless i was crazy, i wouldn't try this particular upgrade myself. so my computer will be in the shop for a few days, which will most likely have a fair to major impact on my blogging. so don't take it personal kiddies. uncle chris hasn't left you, he's just going away for a little while. see you all again soon... # 09.08.02 i was watching a documentary on roller coasters the other night. some of them looked like a lot of fun, but i�m worried about my glasses falling off. i had to switch to the horn rimmed ones, because my wire frames broke a few months back. the horn rims slip down my nose all the time, which really bothers me, and i worry that they might fly off, if i was ever on a roller coaster. # 09.06.02 a few years ago, i made the bag switch. i saw it in a similar light to the brief to boxer switch: though hesitant at first, i would never go back. but over time, my love of the bag, in all it's incarnations, has begun to fade. certainly, it is functional and stylish, for a small load. but put more than about two or three things in it and your sunk. so i gave up on the bag. i realize that it can't meet my every need. i realize that i need to move on. yes, perhaps the messenger bag is popular. perhaps it's stylish. perhaps i will be the only kid on the block without one. but i got a new backpack this weekend. it's small, and black, and it has a special pouch, at the bottom, for shoes. this pouch, ever inventive, opens into the main compartment of the pack. so, you see, your dirty old shoes have somewhere to go, without getting your stuff all messy. but the backpack stays small. this is a good idea. i wish i had come up with it myself. # i've really got to credit darin for discovering this one. designbeef is a site for pissed off designers who have been either been abused by clients and the idea of creative control, or are dwelling early in their own festering yellow pools of cynicism. either way, it's pretty cool. especially noteworthy are the desktop images, which include this little pearl. # 09.05.02 they're singing oldies today in the mail room. so cute. # hey look! it's an interview with margaret cho. it's over at salon. it's interesting. it's hard to think of anything more to say about this. # 09.04.02 it's good to see brian back in action, after weeks of lagging updates. and in such fine form as well! a vibrating broom, for children no less! a timeless classic, i've no doubt. # "To compare [..] two personalities, check out their Web pages. You don't even have to make small talk to meet them. And you really do meet them. In an age of PR and marketing and media conglomerates, the blog stands apart, unvarnished, raw, unmediated. Even when you try not to reveal things about yourself, you do. [...] What some people view as the drawback of blogs -- their personal, narcissistic potential -- is, in my view, one of their greatest attractions. People are interesting in and of themselves." i don't typically care much for the commentary of andrew sullivan, but he really does touch on the aspect of the medium that i enjoy so much. sometimes a weblog is interesting first and foremost because of it's self-centered, "me, me, me" style. it's beyond people-watching, really. it's head-watching. # look at all the fun we missed, miss kitty. i would have loved to go along, but i just couldn't stand the idea of missing my programs. i'm so glad he's coming home today. # 09.03.02 Because the yankee asked me to, and because I was terribly bored last night, here are one hundred things about me:
1. My sporting career peaked when I made 3rd base as a substitute runner for the star player on my little league team. He was hit in the nuts.
2. I've worn glasses since the 4th grade. 3. I have no wisdom teeth. 4. The scar above my elbow was the result of a knife accident with my father. 5. It was my only serious injury. 6. I have two other scars: right thigh, a mole removed at birth; left knuckles, an accident involving a shopping cart. 7. I hate blood. 8. I believe I am balding at 22. So does my mother. 9. I once had strepp throat for 4 months, until my whole family was put on penicillin. 10. Subsequently, I do not know the multiplication tables, from 4 up. 11. I have made lists before. 12. I am unable to sing out loud in public. 13. My family has never moved. 14. I have never lived alone. 15. I bought Ace of Base in junior high. I'd seen the sign. 16. I drive when I'm most upset. 17. I read my boyfriend's website for over a year before I had the courage to email him. 18. I dislike taking my shirt off. 19. My weblog was not designed for such long entries. 20. I have never liked my body hair. 21. I use my boyfriend's computer when he is away. 22. When I am alone, I turn off all the lights. 23. I obsessively cultivate crushes on strangers. 24. I have never known anyone named Ted. 25. I had never met a Jewish person until I went to college. 26. I recently discovered that my family is Jewish. 27. Driving alone with music is my favorite pastime. 28. I do not like starting multiple sentences with the word "I" 29. Continually, I am in fear of my own naivete. 30. My sister and I used to count out loud for fun. 31. I am overwhelmingly more self confident than I was 5 years ago. 32. Tomato soup. 33. I have secret crushes on brent, david, aaron, brian and noah. 34. I have public crushes on g, mark and chris. 35. I have not been seriously ill in over three years. 36. I once told Jon that "all the cool people are doing it." 37. Most of my friends were once crushes. 38. Cats, not dogs. 39. My life's ambition is to discover the perfect peanut butter sandwich. 40. I prefer to date people older than I am. 41. I was born with hypospadias. 42. It was corrected, functionally and cosmetically with three operations; one at birth and two, upon request, in high school. it really isn't as gross as you think. 43. I have smoked pot with my family. 44. I worked for a dot-com in high school. 45. I fetish design magazines. 46. I wish I had smaller feet. 47. I plan to visit New York very soon. 48. Four boyfriends. 49. I have never slept with a woman. 50. I am attracted to short(er) men. 51. I had one of those rat-tails in grade school. 52. I steal my boyfriend's socks. 53. I take long showers. 54. I mowed lawns for two summers to buy a large trampoline. 55. I really did think all boys got off on naked men. 56. I seriously thought this list would be easier than writing a new entry. 57. I have written more unseen pieces than seen. 58. Flying. 59. Warm nights, cool days. 60. I like washing, but not drying. 61. I always wanted to be a sub-hip art fag. I've achieved one out of three. 62. I'm finally giving myself approval to grow my hair out. 63. I've partied in two cities with Chris. 64. My first life's ambition was to be a schoolbus driver. 65. My best friend from youth was gay too. I never knew. 66. Boxers, always, or nothing at all. 67. I do not fear for my privacy. 68. I am too open. 69. I have had anonymous sex once. 70. I make friends almost instantly. 71. I hate the act of moving. 72. I do not have a car. 73. I was in a car accident on Christmas Eve. 74. I always wanted to play the piano. 75. I worked late shift at the city newspaper after high school. 76. Tattoo of a barcode on my lower back. 77. I have never left the united states. 78. I grew up in the country. 79. I love the rain, but I hate to get my glasses wet. 80. I have a secret fear of falling backwards off of escalators. 81. My father had cancer when I was in the 6th grade. 82. My mother told my 6th grade teacher I was going away on a family vacation. 83. I am an oldest child. 84. I was in 4H (I said I grew up in the country). 85. I've met Claire Daines. 86. I once drank a one-gallon jug of Carlo Rossi Rhine with Jon. 87. I've been clamming, illegally. 88. In high school, I ditched school, drove 3 hours to the beach and made it back before my parent's were home from work. 89. I have been given a stuffed animal by every boyfriend I've ever had, and occasionally sleep with one given by my little sister. 90. I will buy a cd based only on the cover. 91. I can't stand the smell or taste of tequila, due to one major tequila night in 1998. 92. My first computer was a Commodore 64. 93. I have gotten high at Disneyland before. 94. Someone suggested that my mother name me Peter. Think about that. 95. I love Linda Hunt's voice. 96. I can't stop eating Pepperidge Farm double chocolate Milano cookies until I finish the bag. 97. I wrote 105 items, for editing head room. 98. I used to own a shirt that said chick's dig scrawny pale guys. 99. I always wanted to be a journalist, but didn't think I could remain objective. 100. On principal, I refuse to end this list with a profound statement. # 09.02.02 i came to realize this weekend that i am not a world-class fabulous fag. never will be. when the cat's away, the boys will play. so tyler quit his job and took a northern detour. we hopped it up, we drank it down. we're not made for this kind of living. three nights and twice as many clubs, and i'm broken. too many drinks, too much dancing, too many people. here's the sullivan-standard hit list -- the where: we're danced out at badlands, sponge-soaked at sugar and free-ball-floorstomped under 99 luftballoons at trannyshack's history of 1984. the who: we're intoxicated by matt and matt and jen-the-not-lesbian, bought and bagged by mark and yas and rich and The Cousins, enchanted by the cumstop cowboy and retro-day-glow-platform-go-go'd by straightboytroy and theungirlfriend glo. the drinks: too much vodka, too much wine. we're tired. we're sore. we're not super-hip. we're so bohemian like you. # everyone on the street tonight has a grocery bag. # « August 2002 | archive index | October 2002 » built with movabletype |
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