Sometimes I just can't help myself. I just had revelations about the clubbing days and Steve and Matt and Mary Ann and Ginger. I posted them over on Writers Port. There were so many stories, the Delirium rave at the Latvian Embassy, the parking spaces of Queen across from where Speakers Corner was. There was a whole underground swell of excitement in me for that period for what I could recall in that instant and in which I am beginning to find myself again.

If I were to try to describe it all I'd have to start at the middle. The beginning is too far off. I remember the clockwork twisting hands of the Lawnmower man trying to escape his virtual prison on video screens suspended in mid air. Now a days this might be common in a club, but back then it was avante' garde. It had edge. And there was a VR game with a Ptyradactyl that tried to pick you up and throw you if you couldn't kill it. There was the ride of the Tour of the Universe on the CN tower, and the storm troopers running across the highway in the middle of the night. There were the mudsoaked fields where we shucked our own corn under the glaze of Nitrous. There were the in house concert shows where Moby played at the old Masonic Temple and the place that used to be called RPM. There was that celebrity DJ wandering around shaking everybody's hand and somehow Don Cherry got thrown into the mix for a charity video too. I got free CDs and T-Shirts for handing out flyers and dancing on TV. I sold countless vitamin drinks to which I will never see a cent of the work done for. I was like a dead head, traveling the underworld and going where the party went. If I could be called that un-talented member of the Tragically Hip, the one who goes at it both barells but just can't play guitar.

The trip hasn't ended. I'm sitting here in a chair with a beard, afraid of water, and strung out on caffeine and Antidepressants, but that's fine and I'll live with it. After all what else have I got to lose. I'm not lonely, I've got my cyberfriends during the week and they've got me. And I think if I ever thought that the world would get this small in the amount of time it has, ten years ago, I probably would have laughed and shrugged my shoulders and declared it the end.

But we survived the towers falling, we survived the Anthrax, we survived the Evils of the Triad of Terror, and we're still plodding along, Apes like on the Planet Of, and making more bad films with Donny and Mark Wahlberg and the like, and even considering making a batman with an American Psycho. Geez, won't that cripple the minds of the children of tomorrow. It's bad enough that I'm so creeped out by Nicholson I can barely keep myself composed when I watch him act.

I remember some simpler times when I would go to dances on Saturday nights. Times when I was a kid and I could think of nothing better to do than hold a girl on the dancefloor during Stairway to heaven. I did that with a girl once. Her name was Jennifer. She had long blond hair and was presbyterian. The farthest we ever went was to see Top Gun and hold hands a little bit. We were both rather shy and to this day I don't know why I never called her back. I just think without car" STYLE="text-decoration: none; border-bottom: medium solid green;" HREF="http://search.targetwords.com/u.search?x=5977|1||||cars|AA1VDw">cars, you are still kind of a victim of the environment. I think she's been doing well for herself. I see her around time and again and I wonder if she even recognizes me. I'm so different from what I was then.

I remember catching a Northern Pike on the docks of the Thousand Islands and hatching eggs in Kindergarden in an incubator and drawing on the etch a sketch in 2nd grade. I remember losing a friend to drugs in 5th grade and switching schools so many times I can't count them on my hands because I was "gifted." While I can read and write, I can't do much else. It seems I was born for interfacing with this machine. My father worked for a company that made software. And I guess it just got passed on. Sometimes at night I'll cruise along at half speed through Slashdot or some other journal and kind of half understand the engineering jargon. Are these Borg's human? Don't they know that there are whole worlds of possibility that they can't possibly enjoy unless they know the word? Jargon is a whack of beans. I can spit it too. I can spit C++ and Java and Linux, and GNU and Jaguar, and OSX and whatever else they are brewing in their custom designed Lan Party Fraternalisms of non-enlightened gibberish. I was there. I saw Future Shock and saw that yes, computer scientists have to trip on Acid before they can go to a dance party. It's just in the nature of things. It's good for you, let go the book said.

I'll tell you, I just made a commitment to myself in 1998 that I found in an old envelope upstairs. That commitment was to know America and my roots and dig up as much as possible. But I'm beginning to believe its not just about that any more. It's about the Earth. And UNICEF and the International Red Cross and the Soup Kitchen on the other side of the city. The hands we shake are our own as we grasp at straws hoping for that scrap of day old pizza at the bakery or that bit of rice we eat on our plates as we work our fingers to the bone.

Ask anyone, they'll tell you I'm a bum, I'm a smoker, a gambler, an ugly son of a bitch, and a rotten whisky breath with the women, but I'll tell you, I'd rather look like Einstein and Smell like a sewer than spend one moment having to lay off thousands upon thousands and then go to bed at night and pray for salvation because the bottom line is worth more than a child's education. These Republicans have no value for education. They would like to see everyone self taught. They have no feeling of responsibility for it. Instead of building schools they are building prisons and they are doing it with our Tax dollars. I'm not afraid to share my views.

Someone always says well Chris, the tack that stands up gets nailed down. And I say, the more the merrier, lets build a deck. We'll start with one word, fill up a line, then a page, then a chapter, then a book, then the world. Not a single person has ever countered me on this. Literacy is a must. Not only with words but with computers" STYLE="text-decoration: none; border-bottom: medium solid green;" HREF="http://search.targetwords.com/u.search?x=5977|1||||computers|AA1VDw">computers. There's a global war going on for control of your desktop. People probably aren't even aware of that. Microsoft vs. Linux, Linux Vs. Unix. Whoever wins gets the whole vacuum cleaner market and a whole lot more. My cell phone uses windows.

Isn't that interesting....

I need to do some ruminating. I'll be back for Part ?

I just picked up on Newscrawler the news that Microsoft plans to introduce a Service Pack 2 for Windows XP that will include a better firewall and a pop-up blocker. It's about damn time. It's like they do research on us lab rats before finishing the product. I never had problems with either under Linux upstairs, but the Media Player was too difficult to install, so, six of one half dozen of the other. I had to load the media twice to get it to work on this PC. Even ZD Net is not infallible.

Whew. I'm not angry any more. It took me a half hour to find Outlook Express in this Mess of Windows XP but I did it. And now I am proud to have conquered the worm. I have some of my e-mail problems straightened out. Except for the fact that I have only one good message for every 70 spam. That's a truckload of spam. It's getting entertaining just to see what they'll think of next. Did you know there is actually spam out there advertising that it will wipe out spam. What kind of sick joker came up with that one. I'm not laughing. We'll I finally got my letter from uncle Sam out of the Spam and he's seated right here on my monitor, ready to ship when the day comes. Think not what your country can do for you...

I think I'm done with Microsoft Outlook. It's fatware as my professor used to call just about anything by Microsoft. Its too prone to crashing and I can do just as well with Newscrawler. Its going to take some getting used to but theres a lot this little powerful program can do. Heard about it on Gibson's site. No doubt, he'd have a solution to my problem.

This morning the epiphany hit. I've had it before, but not like today. People are working on the Internet all day long to make their stories, their songs, their love connections, their real estate deals, their auctions and all sorts of other things. Why not just roll with the punches and let the chips dance. I think I'm in love with this medium not so much because of what I was, but what I have an opportunity to become, and not because I have little else, but because I have the means of production and they are right here in front of me. I am not going out tonight, and I am not going to chase a lost dream in the darkness of a Buffalo twilight time sort of encasement in that diner in Kill Switch where Pico Salazar may or may not be.

Today I conversed with some very real and noble people. I met Edilberto, who I've not given my whole heart to just yet. I've kind of kept him in my hip pocket like a nice revolver because I know he's on top of this beef. In fact he's been logging his travels back into the very early 90s and he's got some really good work in front of him. I asked him to sing me south, because I'm not ready to go South. The tropics are exciting and alluring, but they are no place for the meek at heart and I really haven't quite gathered that kind of courage yet. I also met a girl named andysheart who's got quite a lot of rapid typing skill and I am sure that she will go far in the long run. It seems like she's a little new to the environment, but she is friendly and makes a good listener to my rants.

Then there's Yvonne. Yvonne has been a great mentor and a help to me by providing some creative resources on her websites. Simple things like birth and death notices and historical information that bleeds into the papers. She is good at what she does and she has been at it for a little while at least.

And then again there's Bruce - With his short quips you might think at first that there's not much under the hood but when you lift the lid - Whoa. I am impressed he's got a V8 with Nitrous.

I know I met more than these few. But I'll save them for another day, another days work, and another days pay.

There's a new band that's sweeping the nation. They're called The Stills and I can see them easily becoming as popular as Interpol or Depeche Mode. The Stills have written some nice electro-love ballads and look to be coming our way soon. I don't know exactly how soon, but probably soon. I've heard them on 102.1 the edge and I think I will enjoy hearing them provided they aren't stiffly over played like Nickleback (who sound like a cat's hairball).

So let's get down and Greezy Sneezy. What are the top cars of 2005 going to be. I can see a Stratus coming up in the hood, and maybe that Infinity G35. I especially like the interior of a business class Taurus I was looking at on a used lot recently. Nice sun-roof and leather seats. Bad-sign though, it had a tape deck. Try to co-modify that.

Any wayshow. I've been in the bucket droppin' 20 on some Monte Carlo slots and some poker machines. And I enjoyed every minute of the ride. The only way you really get up at the wheel is if you hit the jackpot. And that has never happened to me yet.

I'd like to hit a jackpot... Just one. Sometime. It's like running for president and coming in second when you take a loss like that. Ask big Al. He rocks, but he's so yesterday. Nobody looks at the Godfather of the Internet and says now there's the big daddy, they want to get their fight on with the kids.
And that's the way it's always been. Without lifting a finger, you can Dial in a victory now a days. From what I hear, Kerry's got Bush by a few percentage points.

The coppers tried to pull me over for Driving slow last night, and my friend talked them out of giving me a ticket. I am glad that he made the stink that he did, or I would probably be in more trouble than I am now. I wasn't wearing my seatbelt, but it was as if he didn't even notice. He just drove off.
I am glad I stopped as quickly as I did. So here's the bird to the man.

Wow. I believe I missed it all this weekend. I fell asleep through the Super Bowl and missed the highly controversial half time show. Oh well. At least my team won. Of course anyone can say that now that its over if they've kept their team close to their chest as I have. I've enjoyed watching the Patriots and the Bills and I think the two teams have a unique relationship with one another having traded the players that they have. At least Bledsoe's got one ring. Brady seemed pretty amped up about going to Disney World again. I guess he can be proud of the nice passing plays he made that I saw in some of the short re-runs. More to come...