Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   April 1997

01: Spring, rebirth and contradictions - I am dissatisfied but happy, social but reclusive, humble but arrogant.
02: Angela, Angela reprise - Tension mounts when musings-based gossip finds its subject. But in the end the Internet proves useful.
03: who am I to them? - I sense a social pathology among certain of the youth of today.
04: big bottle of bourbon - My mother visits me with a big bottle of trouble. Also, some Liz Phair gossip and a MAJOR CORRECTION.
05: culture clashes at parties - The Malvern Girls come to town and there is a little cultural tension at a Curious Digit Party at my house.
06: Ramathon - Big Fun personalities hold a ramen-eating contest on East Market Street in Charlottesville, Virginia.
07: lunatic reverend - Email battles with a concerned Washington-State do-gooder.
08: boycott Infoseek! - I discover that Infoseek now no longer immediately indexes web pages that contain dirty words.
09: cold day in April - A few little observations of people and a little more vitriol aimed at Infoseek.
10: creativity from circumstances - A ludicrous notion advanced by a suddenly smut-shy search engine is the impetus for a whole new style of writing.
11: people who you meet on the Internet - It's a bit of a surprise to discover that those people I communicate with on the Internet have real bodies.
12: scene surfing - The solution to stagnation is motivation. Also: a realistic appraisal of the situation.
13: sausage party - Austin's birthday party at the Horrid Crash Pad is attended mostly by the vaginally-challenged.
14: occupied Jerusalem - Charlottesville, VA: a bakery remade into a bloated burrito stand has lousey atmosphere but cheap eats.
15: artistic isolation - I recluse myself in the name of glorious art, but where sings the muse?
16: television fuel - At times television can be like the window of a moving car as one drives through the cheesiest part of town.
17: the cactus garden - A metaphor to explain the hardiness of my friends.
18: the Musings of the Gus home | musings index | feedback | other journals
April 1997 index
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April 18, 1997, Friday

I realized: Two Godlike powers that require no supernatural forces include the power to name and the power to define.

YAAAAAH! Why do people do that to their web sites?

I returned to Staunton today because my Dad was throwing fits about needing some work I've been preparing during my graveyard shifts here at the friendly neighborhood ISP. Those are the shifts during which I'm supposedly maintaining the integrity of the network.

The first place I went when I made it back to Charlottesville was the Downtown Mall. Today was the first Fridays After Five of 1997. The even was marred by the cold windy conditions. I drank a Red Hook while hanging out with Jenfariello and her friend Sam in the Artspace.

On the the Corner, I ran across Leticia the Brazilian Girl and she somehow convinced me to go to the Horrid Crash Pad. The otherwise all-male drunken scene was uninteresting and I abandoned her there.

Parties happened in the evening as usual for a Charlottesville Friday night. One of these of which I was aware was happening on Grove Street, across the tracks from the gleaming white hospital tower. I don't think Elizabeth wanted me to go to the Grove Street party, but one of the people who lives there, Cory, a girl who runs the Java Hut coffee cart on the Downtown Mall, invited me independently. Elizabeth thinks one of the boys living at the Grove Street House is "dreamy" and she probably didn't want me around. You see, when we get trashed at parties, we have a tendency to hug and kiss and cry. We've even been known to sleep together. It's not the sort of performance that's conducive to romance with others.

It was a coffee-cart-girl kind of day. I blew much time hanging out in the dumpster-sized Higher Grounds on the Corner chatting with Lindsey, a Tandem graduate who knows the likes of Deya and Allie. Those references can't be too good, if you know what I mean, but still she was very friendly, giving me free coffee. I talked about my intestinal surgery and "the pyromania that got me kicked out of Oberlin." I'm all bad and shit: the young man you don't take home to mother. That's me. She told me all about being a dancer and eating disorders and the relationship between the two. I include the following third-party information for the curious: housemate Andrew once told me that Lindsey is "fine."

The Grove Street Party (at a place called "Abundance House"), which grew out of an informal vegan dinner party, had a relatively strong hippie presence. Hippies are rare in most of the circles in which I run, but I like most things about hippies except their horrible music. Their clothes are kind of dumb too. And that pot they smoke, well... And what's up with those dread locks?

Cory the Java Hut girl has dread locks, by the way. But she's more hip than hippie. Actually, most of the people at the Grove Street Party had a strange fashionableness about them that seemed to transcend hippieness. I'm not using the term "fashionable" as a perjorative. What I mean is that these hippies would perhaps best be described as "post hippies." They don't wear tie dyes; a lot of them have short hair and wear black boots. But they all still love that Reggæ music and they're all fond of beating on drums. Blah.

The refreshment: two kegs of beer. Later Cory the Jave Hut Girl found some Jagermeister.

The crowd that showed up was a relatively diverse one. Jenfariello and Sage were there, as were Crispina and Eliza of large meat pizza fame. I talked to Crispina for the first time tonight. She's concerned by the force of her little 14 year old sister's sex drive and worried a little about her own as well. With Friday's After Five's return, it is Jatasya season in all earnestness. Sure enough, Jatasya was at the Abundance House Party. Once she became drunk she lost a certain annoying remoteness which I had been teasing her about.

She said that I was the one human she knew that most reminded her of a cat.
In the midst of all the craziness, Jenfariello says that Ami Sage paid me the highest complement. She said that I was the one human she knew that most reminded her of a cat. Jen has a somewhat dimmer view; she said only partially in jest that she thinks I'm a pig. I was getting along with her considerably better than I was with Elizabeth. That's refreshing.

Cory the Java Hut girl didn't want me falling in love with her after the little thing that happened in her tiny little room. Don't worry, folks, I don't have sex anymore. She also painted my fingernails the most nauseating pastel shade of blue. We'd gone to her room on the pretext of her reading me some of her poems. I'd enjoyed them thoroughly.

T

hose people who know me know that I am shy and reserved and my soul is strangely inaccessible, at least when I'm sober. The desire to be open and charming has been one of the factors contributing to my gradually becoming a heavy drinker over the last ten or so years. Or so I tell myself. The thinking is that if I ever become content with my relationship with people, drinking will be unnecessary. The fact that I rarely drink when I intend to be alone gives me hope on this issue.

When people who know me in person read my journal, the dichotomy between the Brezhnev-era detachment I give them in person and the hardy Gorbachev frankness I present online is plainly evident.
For me this journal has gradually come to be an excercise in openness, or Glasnost, if you will. Here I get to be open and sober at the same time. When people who know me in person read my journal, the dichotomy between the Brezhnev-era detachment I give them in person and the hardy Gorbachev frankness I present online is plainly evident. Clearly I am deeply troubled. They all tell me this. The latest person to tell me so is Elizabeth. At the party tonight she took me aside to bitch and complain about how horrible and malformed my mind is. She was naturally ticked off that on Tuesday I accused her online of being a brat (it wasn't a perfect word choice, but it sufficiently expressed my disgust with her). Then she reads in yesterday's entry (yeah, she follows these musings closely) what I said about wishing Amy would come over while I was watching teevee. She rubbed my nose in this, saying I was too much of a chickenshit to tell Amy that I like her to her face and that I'm hoping she'll read what I wrote in the musings and get all misty and say to herself, "gee, that weird guy Gus cares about me." But what's the alternative? Clearly I enjoyed hanging out with Amy when she came on Wednesday, and since Thursday was much like Wednesday, it was a natural feeling for me to entertain the hope that Amy would magically appear. So my price for including a little honesty is getting slammed by Elizabeth for using my musings as some sort of big cowardly social manipulation. To some extent, of course, she's right. But she had an element of bitterness to her delivery of this point that seemed unfair. She's forever inflicting upon me and the rest of known world news of what boy she thinks is "dreamy" after all. Tonight, though, I was getting even. Often at the party as I walked past her (inevitably chatting with her latest dreamboy), I would whisper in her ear "DREAMY!!" We were hating each other intensely at the close of the evening. Perhaps this was a subconcious measure designed to forestall the unhealthy tendency we have of crying and hugging and saying "I love you." By the way, Elizabeth claims she will never again read my musings. That would make my life much easier, but I don't believe her for a moment. In truth, of course, I would be much happier if I could write about my friends with the peace of knowing they would never read what I wrote. It is not my desire to use the musings as a means of communicating things I cannot say in person. In general I've been careful to leave out things that seemed like communications. It's a rocky road, and just now I'm hating it. It's my life and I'm living it. Maybe I have a diseased mind. But at least some people are being entertained.

Both Jessika and Elizabeth have told me independently that when they read my musings, they are amazed by all that I include, especially the more embarassing stuff. But still, they sense that I'm carefully steering around pitfalls. Perhaps this is because much of the time I explain events while not say what I really thought about what happened. But I can't start too many fires in this forest in which I must dwell.

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19: Space Party 1.5 - A party builds to an incredible size late at night at the Dynashack.
20: 420 Party '97 - The Horrid Crash Pad comes through on April 20th, the international pot smoker's holiday.
21: a dreary day at the dynaSHACK - I find a passed-out Brazilian Girl in my bed.
22: documentary of sexual frustration - A decorated table at the Horrid Crash Pad is covered with crude images of large breasted girls.
23: hobnobbing with the artistic somebodies - I attend a party honouring Christopher Makos, a famous Warhol photographer.
24: more on Makos - I show Christopher Makos some cool stuff on the World Wide Web.
25: the sushi and vino diet - All the Christopher Makos build-up comes to a drunken conclusion and I go to bed early.
26: Horrid Crash Pad girl-release experiment - In the wake of the Foxfield Races, I take the Amy who works at the Tokyo Rose to the Horrid Crash Pad.
27: the flu or something - I'm sick, but I have some thoughts on the War on Drugs.
28: afternoon university art opening - Some UVA art openings occur on Mondays.
29: filling ancient holes - More than you want to consider when you go to the dentist. I also affect a convincing British accent.
30: finally, April - It's been a cold April, but not today.