Myabe thinking you're supposed to "have a life" is a stupid way of buying into an untenable 1950s narrative of what life *supposed* to be.
How do we know that all of these people with "no lives" aren't really on the new frontier of human sentience and perceptions?
I only need 2 hours of people a day. I can; get by on that amount. 2 hours of FaceTime.
I replied:
2 hours of FaceTime is not good enough Abe.
YOU are not a productmanager, and life is not a product . . . though wouldn't it be SO MUCH CLEANER AND EASIER were that so.
Nonetheless, this line of thinking reminds me of the URBAN LEGEND of a Japanese exchange student who thought he was saving money by eating nothing but Top Ramen noodles every day for a year, but he died of malnutrition before he graduatd.
* * *
After sundown, Karla and I went out to the garage to see Dad's model train world. Mom says he hasn't been in there at all since he began working with Michael - after returning from "his episode" up in Redmond. I guess this is a good sign - that he's stopped obsessing and is out in the world and doing new things.
Todd and Michael had plonked down two monitors right in the middle of the landscape directly atop a farm. They had arranged the small animals in small herds atop the monitors, which are coaxial'ed into the Habitrail. The monitors were displaying some Gouraud-shaded Oop! bricks, rotating them in 3D space. Oop! is looking really good, by the way. It looks fresh and modern, as if the future is being squeezed out of the monitor screens like meat from a hamburger grinder. Todd taped a note to one monitor saying,
PLEASE GOD, LET RENDERING TIME GET CHEAPER AND FASTER.
Karla had brought along a feather duster and she dusted off the mountains and the village and the little white house Dad built where Jed is supposed to live. I turned on the trains, and we watched them drive around, through the towns, over the mountains, past the rotating building blocks, and then we turned the trains off, and turned the lights out and left. Dad doesn't seem to mind "us kids" stealing his world.
* * *
We call the two systems in the garage "Cabernet" and "Chardonnay."
Three other system units (two Quadras and a Pentium) are called "Ogre," "Hobgoblin," and "Kestrel." Two file servers are called "Tootie" and "Blair."
Our two printers are called "Siegfried" and "Roy," because they're all shiny and plastic.
Our SGI Iris workstation running an old version of Vertigo software is named, of course, "HAL."
I'm trying to end this day on an up note, but it's hard.
THURSDAY
Mom was cleaning out the spice rack in the kitchen. I watered her philodendron plant. She was really funny. She said she eats ripple chips for breakfast now. She says it's a bad habit and she's trying to break it and she blames "us kids"! She always says, "You kids." We like it, even though I think I slopped thinking of myself as a kid about four years ago. I don't mind responsibility. I guess that's why I don't mind the repetitive nature of computer work.
* * *
Boy did I get a response to my Net question about the organisms that lurk inside the human body. My Pig Pen theory was indeed confirmed: the average human body contains 1 x 10^13 cells, yet hosts 1 x 10^14 bacterial cells. Long, scary names:
Escherichia coli
Candida albicans
S. aureus
Klebsiella
Actinomyces
Staphylococcus
It really makes you take seriously all these articles in the news about old diseases becoming new diseases. I took so many antibiotics and sulfas for zits in my teens that I'm going to be felled by the first postmodern virus to walk down Camino Real. Doomed.
I mentioned all these microbes to Susan and I think she's going to become germ phobic. I could see it in her eyes. Fear.
* * *
Karla asked me what I thought of modern yuppie parents who smother their kids with attention and affection - those households where the kid rules and everything in the universe revolves around making sure they get touched enough by their parents.
I paused and tried to be honest and the answer blurted out: "Jealous." Susan overheard and started singing "Cars," by Gary Numan, and we all
started singing it. Here in my car, I can only receive, I can lock up my doors . . .
And then the moment passed. I e-mailed Abe on the subject, and he was online, so the response came back immediately:
I come from one of those "zero-kidney" families . . . we all made this agreement once . . . that if anybody else in the family needed a kidney it was going to be, "Well, sorry . . . Been nice knowing you."
I think that's why it's so hard for me to understand my body. Becauze our family was so zero-touch.
As I type, I'm bouncing my 11 pound ball of rubber bands contructed form my daily Wall Street Journal. It grows.
* * *
I learned a great new word today: "deletia." When you get an e-mail and reply to the sender, you simply obliterate everything they sent you and then, in small square brackets, write:
[deletia]
It stands for everything that's been lost.
* * *
Dad bought a P/S2 Model 70 computer just before he got fired. He stores it out in the garage with the train world. Locked deep inside the P/S2's brains memory are WordPerfect, a golf application, and some genealogical data he tried to assemble about our family, but which he abandoned after he finally realized that our family erased itself as it moved across the country.
FRIDAY
Dad mouthed a Michaelism today: "If you can conceive of humans developing a consciousness more complex than the human brain at some point, then, BINGO, you're a de facto believer in Progress."
My ears were burning when I heard him say this, and it was all I could do to not say, "That's Michael's quote." My ears were red.
* * *
E-mail from Abe:
Im re-reading all my old TinTin books, and I'm noticing that there are all of these things absent in the Boy Detective's life . . . religion, parents, politics, relationship, communion with nature, class, love, death, birth . . . it's a long list. And I find that while I still love TinTin, I'm getting currious about all of its invisible content.
* * *
The Valley is so career-o-centric. So much career energy! There must be a 65-ton crystal of osmium hexachloride buried 220 feet below the surface of Menlo Park, sucking in all of the career energy in the Bay Area and shooting it back down the Peninsula at twice light speed. It's science fiction here.
* * *
Mom's signed up for a ladies 50-to-60 swim meet. It's next week.
* * *
Susan bought a case load of premoistened towelettes at Price-Costco. She's mad at the rest of the Habitrail because it's such a pigsty. She daintily wipes off her
keyboard and screen and as she does so she says, "Man, I need a date, bad."
* * *
Karla's hair is down past her shoulders now. And she bought a dress with pink wildflowers on it, and it's funny, the way she's the same as ever, yet also reformatted, and it makes me look at her with a new fascination.
She's eating all sorts of food like a total person now and I've noticed that when I work on her body, she's just not as tense anymore. Everyone has a special place they store their tension (I'm on shiatsu duty), the same way everyone misspells the same words over and over. Karla stores her tension in her rhomboid muscles, the up-and-down muscles of her spine, and I remove it. This is making me feel good. That I can do this.
* * *
Daydream: today the traffic was locked on the 101. I saw visions of the Valley and snapped out of my daydream jealous of the future. I saw germanium in the groundwater and dead careers. I saw venture capitalists with their eyes burned out in their sockets by visions of money, crashing their Nissans on the 101 - past the big blue cube of NASA's Onizuka Air Force Base, their windows spurting fluorescent orange blood.
SATURDAY
Bug's dream c
ame true today. He got to visit Xerox PARC with a friend of a friend from Seattle. Back with us in the Habitrail, while arranging a handful of purple iceplant flowers nipped from the PARC's groundcover, he filled us in on details: "It's set in a purposefully blank location - they cover up all outside traces of civilization with berms and landscaping devices so you feel as if you're nowhere. Feeling like you're somewhere must be bad for ideas.
"Anyway, there's nothing but chaparral and oak trees on the hill to the west, and you feel like you're on a virgin planet, like the planets they visit on Star Trek. It feels really 'outposty.' But not scary, like you're in Antarctica. And the lobby - it's like a really successful orthodontist's waiting room in the year 2004. And guess what . . . I got to sit in the Bean Bag Chairs!"
An hour later we were all back at work, when apropos of nothing, Bug said, "Ahem," called our attention, and announced that he's gay. How random!
"I've been 'inning' myself for too long," he said, "and now it's time to out myself. It's something you'll all have to deal with, but believe me, I've been dealing with it a lot longer than you."
It never even entered our heads to think Bug was anything except a sexually frustrated, bitter crank, which is not unusual up at Microsoft, or in tech in general. I think we all felt guilty because we don't think about Bug enough, and he does work hard, and his ideas really are good. But we're just so used to him being cranky it never occurred to us he had an interior life, too.
I asked him, "But what about the Elle MacPherson shrine, Bug?"
"Replaced. Marky Mark for the time being, but he's only a phase."
"Oh, Bug . . ." said Karla, "how long have you been deciding this?"
"Always."
"Why now?", I asked. "So late."
"Because now is when we all explode. We're like those seeds you used
to plant on top of sterile goop in petri dishes in third grade, waiting to sprout or explode. Susan's exploding. Todd's going to explode. Karla's germinating gently. Michael's altering, too. It's like we're all seeds just waiting to grow into trees or orchids or houseplants. You never know. It was too sterile up north. I didn't sprout. Aren't you curious to know what you really are, Dan?"
I thought about it. It's not really something you think about.
"Now I can be me - I think," Bug said. "This is not easy for me. Let me repeat that - this is not easy for me."
"Does this mean you'll start dressing better? " asked Ethan.
"Yes, Ethan. Probably."
So that was that.
Maybe he'll be less cranky now. Karla and Susan said they were proud of Bug. I guess it did take guts. He's a late bloomer - that's for sure. And me? Am I curious to know what I really am? Or am I just so grateful to not be a full-scale, zero-life loser that it doesn't matter?
* * *
Bean bag chairs: how odd it is that they're still . . . I don't know . . . a part of the world.
* * *
Dad signed up for a night course in C++. He's going to make himself relevant.
* * *
Susan's sister sent her a bag of pot via FedEx. She wrapped it in magazine scent strips to foil FedEx dope dogs. What a good way to make those things do something useful.
* * *
Bug's right. We are all starting to unravel. Or sprout. Or whatever. I remember back in grade school, VCR documentaries on embryology, and the way all mammals look the same up until a certain point in their embryological development, and then they start to differentiate and become what they're going to become. I think we're at that point now.
SUNDAY
My sense of time perception has gone all screwy. Sundays always do that to me. One day is so much like every other day here, and yet every day is somehow different. I designed a little program that I click into every time I get an interruption - like a phone call or someone asks me a question - or I have to change a tape in my Walkman. My average time between interruptions is 12.5 minutes. Perhaps this is part of my time schism.
I mentioned these interruptions to Todd who said, "I'm still doing 18-hour days like up at Microsoft, except instead of doing just one thing, I'm doing a hundred different things - my job is so much better. More diversity. It's the diversity of interruptions . . . time becomes 'initiative driven' as opposed to passive."
He then added that in Christian eschatology ("the study of the Last Things") it is always made very clear that time and the world both end simultaneously, that there is no real difference between the two.
Then he panicked, worrying that he was doomed to turn into his parents, and roared off to the gym. He's doing upper body today. He alternates upper and lower body. He never sleeps. That's how he names his days: Upperbodyday; Lowerbodyday; Absday; Latsday . . . Sometimes I admire his single-minded drive to achieve muscular perfection, and sometimes I think he's a freak.
* * *
I read about fishermen off the Gulf Coast whose net, dragging the ocean floor, snagged a sunken galleon, and when the net was raised, a shower of coins fell on the ship's deck. Talk about a story to appeal to us here in the Valley!
* * *
Sent out my Christmas cards today - I went to McDonald's and got a stack of "JOIN THE FAMILY" job application forms and filled them out for everybody. The only remotely personal question the form asks is: Sports? Activities?
Here's what I wrote for everybody: "Abe/Susan/Bug/Michael/etc . . . greatly enjoys repetitive tasks."
* * *
Geek party night: it's kind of like if we were in Hollywood and going to
an "industry party." That guy Susan met from General Magic had a party up at his place in the Los Altos Hills. All day at the office Susan and Karla talked about what they're going to . . . wear. It was really un-Karla, but I'm glad she's getting into her body and taking pride in it.
Susan's on the prowl, so she wants to look sexy, techie, "fun," and serious all at once. Good luck. She complains to Karla that "I've got period boobs . . . they feel like they're going to go on a lactating spree momentarily." She's so tell-it-like-it-is, but Susan . .
Karla said, "Well, that could work to your advantage if you wear that Betsy Johnson dress."
"Excellent idea!" Susan was motivated.
* * *
At geek parties, you can sort corporate drones from start-up drones by dress and conversation. Karla and I stood next to two guys who work on the Newton project at Apple. They talked with unflagging enthusiasm about frequent flyer miles for about 45 minutes. They had a purchasable Valley hip. One guy had the mandatory LA Eyeworks glasses and a nutty orange vest worn over baggy jeans. The other guy had Armani glasses and a full Calvin Klein ensemble, but not a matching ensemble, mind you - "thrown together" in "that expensive way." You can't help but be conscious here of how much everything costs, and where it comes from.
Newton Guy One: I'm trying to make United Premiere Executive 100K. Are you 100K yet?
NG 2: Oh, yeah, right after Hanover this fall. And you'll never believe this - I was late for a flight the other day, and when the woman at the United counter pulled up my record, I looked at the monitor and my name was surrounded by DOLLAR SIGNS. How subtextual.
NG 1: Wow, great! (Obviously genuinely impressed) I think I might make it if they let me fly United to Japan the next two times. Fucking Apple Travel. I now have frequent flyer miles on Alitalia, Northwest, JAL, Lufthansa, USAir, Continental, American, and British Air. I wish we flew Virgin Air . . . that would be the coolest.
NG 2: I like the toiletries case from British Air.
NG 1: They used to be cooler . . . all the stuff used to be from the Body Shop. But Virgin Air rules because you get your own video game monitor and you can play SEGA Games with other passengers.
NG 2: All over the plane? Or just business class?
NG 1: I don't know. Business class only, I think. I guess it would be cooler if you could play with the 13-year old kids back in coach . . . SEGA should send group testers on flights and do market research that way! (Titters.)
Karla and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes, but were impressed. APPLE! NEWTON! JAL FIRST CLASS! I don't have frequent flyer miles on any airline.
Loser.
MONDAY
Anatole's Lexus has a vertical slot in its dashboard. It's a coffee cup holder that pops out and does this flip-flip-flip origami thing - whoosh-whoosh-whoosh - and becomes horizontal.
Karla and I went out around sunset and had coffees and sat in the car. This was the highlight of the day, so you can imagine how dull the day was.
* * *
Stocking stuffers: I bought these red "panic buttons" at Weird Stuff, the computer surplus store across from Fry's on Kern Street in Sunnyvale. It's a fake IBM button with adhesive tape on the back that you're supposed to tape on to your board and push whenever you're feeling "wacky."
I felt really sad for the panic buttons, because panic seems like such an outdated, corny reaction to all of the change in the world. I mean if you have to be negative, there's a reasonable enough menu of options available - disengagement - atomization - torpor - but panic? Corrrrrrny.
* * *
I mentioned to Abe about my lessons in shiatsu and the weird relationship people in tech firms can have with their bodies. He replied:
I know what you mean about bodeis. At Microsoft you pretend bodies dont' exist . . . BRAINS are what matter. You're right, at Microsoft bodies get down played to near invisibilty with unsensual Tommy Hilfiger geekwear, or are genericized with items form the GAP so that employees morph themelfves into those international symbols for MAN and WOMAN you see at airports.
* * *