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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decay & ruin
Biosphere II
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dead malls
Detroit
Irving housing

got that wrong
Paleofuture.com

appropriate tech
Arduino μcontrollers
Backwoods Home
Fractal antenna

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(nobody does!)

Like my brownhouse:
   five o'clock Friday
Friday, October 24 1997
    I arranged a garden hose to siphon the water down the stairs (a technique I perfected as a kid when I used to play in the dirt) and emptied the tub completely.
    W

    hen I got off work, I bought some over-priced Drano at the Lucky Seven and headed home to face the bath tub situation. Deya tried to take a shower yesterday, and instead of standing in the murky grey waters, had gone in search of a stool to stand on. It sounded like a recipe for a broken neck. Real action had to be taken.

    My first attempt at fixing the situation was a failure; I dumped the Drano into a partially-full tub. I assumed for some reason that it would stay cohesive and go down the drain to slay the evil blockage, but of course it simply diluted and achieved nothing. So, using Deya's assistance, I arranged a garden hose to siphon the water down the stairs (a technique I perfected as a kid when I used to play in the dirt) and emptied the tub completely. Then I poured the rest of the Drano into the drain. After some minutes, the liquid slowly started going down. I waited some minutes for it to attack any and all foul conspirators against drainage, then I turned on the hot water. Gradually the draining accelerated. Then woosh! A whirlpool developed! Success was had against the forces of malfunction!

    Such publishing was expensive; one could even say it constituted a vanity tax (much like the lottery is a numerical ignorance tax).
    M

    ilestone in the counter races: my counter passed Ceej's counter today at about 3pm EDT. Hers had held the largest count in OpenPages. People have counters hoping for big numbers. It's one of those ego things that goes along with being a self-publisher, or perhaps just being human.

    Back in the day, vanity presses did for the marginal writer what no real press could risk its reputation doing. Such publishing was expensive; one could even say it constituted a vanity tax (much like the lottery is a numerical ignorance tax). But now, with an 8th grade education and a little basic training, any fool can publish whatever he wants for free in a form potentially accessible by millions. And we who do such publishing want to know we're being heard. We obsessively check our counters and look through our logs, noting (as I did this morning) that at almost 8am British Summer time, one impolex.demon.co.uk loaded entries for October 18th and 19th, two minutes apart. Then he (inexplicably) stopped, even though entries existed for October 20-23 as well. What was Grinder thinking? Did my writing bore him? Or was he suddenly distracted by a large breasted fishnet-wearing Korean girl ducking into a record store? No one can really know.

    I wonder if I'd have any friends at all if people knew what percentage of the time I keep my fingers up my nostrils when no one is watching me. Sometimes I do this to force myself to sneeze. Is this any different from masturbation?


    As Click and Clack suggest in such situations, I should probably just "turn up the radio."
    I

      picked up the Dodge Dart today from the mechanic. One of the guys there, endowed as he was with a greasy shirt and an honest face, said the bearings are fine and that the growl is in the transaxle. He went on to say that's not a serious condition, not for many miles at least. As Click and Clack suggest in such a situation, I should probably just "turn up the radio." The whole ordeal only set me back $35.00. Better still, one of the mechanics told me of a guy named Mr. Tate on Avon Street who sells ultra-cheap used parts for old American cars. That sort of information alone is worth $35.00.

    It's another five o'clock day: grey, overcast and cold. Maybe I'll go to an opening tonight at the Downtown Artspace to check out some photographs that won awards in a recent C-ville Weekly contest. Best in show, by the way, is a front porch scene shot by Jonathan Hayward at Big Fun.


    W

    hen Deya went to work, she dropped me off on the Downtown Mall. I happened to think during the ride that my thumb is still a little sprained from the skinhead incident of seven weeks ago.

    The Artspace Opening was the usual sort of thing that it usually is. Vino was available in force, and people were standing around looking at the photographs so as not to seem too interested in the other things that they'd really come for: socializing, free food and booze.

    I strained my eyes through special glasses for a long time trying to make some stereoscopic images leap into 3D, to no avail. Even drinking lots of vino didn't help.
    The photographs themselves were... well, I don't really know how to judge a photograph except on purely technical points. I liked them to an extent, mostly for reasons of familiarity with the subjects, but I wasn't possessed with an incredible urge to buy any. Not that I could buy any anyway. They weren't priced, or even (evidently) for sale. They were just a simple display of the "best" photographs that had been submitted to a C-ville Weekly's photography contest. Most were black and white. Most were close up of people in fairly grungy settings. I strained my eyes through special glasses for a long time trying to make some stereoscopic images leap into 3D, to no avail. Even drinking lots of vino didn't help.

    As Jacques deBeaufort pointed out, the crowd was rather different than usual. They were mostly C-ville Weekly types. The members of the usual art scene (except for die-hards such as Jenfariello, Jacques and myself) weren't present.

    Jen was pleased overall; the C-ville Weekly had paid for the whole thing and promoted her gallery as well. You have to understand that the C-ville Weekly has been touting the Downtown Artspace as the "hip, energetic" gallery in town for over a year now. Now that the Artspace has such a reputation, where else could the C-ville Weekly go to display its award winning photographs?

    After I'd seem all I really wanted to, I spent most of my time hanging out in the back room. I discussed with Jacques the incredible potential that modern computers have for empowering talented individuals. Some day soon, we agreed, studios will be an archaic concept. The full expression of creativity of almost any sort will be possible on a desktop (or in a laptop). In the early 80s, this became possible for novelists. In the late 80s, for graphic artists. Now it's possible for animators, musicians and even movie producers.



    Pictures from an opening at the Downtown Artspace, October 3rd, 1997 (featuring me and my mother), by Jen Fariello. The pictures on the wall behind us are part of a photodocumentary of domestic violence.
    Jen showed me some photos she'd taken of my mother and me back at the last opening, on October 3rd. I liked them so much that I scanned them in on Jen's scanner and uploaded them to my website from Jen's Macintosh right then and there, despite my intoxication. Jen was intrigued by the idea of perhaps sometime setting up a QuickCam and uploading images from an art opening live (after an initial flurry of publicity here in the musings of course!).

    Meanwhile, Sam was creating a flyer to advertise a Halloween party that is to take place at the ever-spooky Brick Mansion in the 'Hood. I'll be there, you can be sure. Those of you who are always telling me you want to meet me should show up too; send me email asking for directions.

    When the vino ran out, I drank room-temperature Schlitz Malt Liquor in cans; these were left over from Jacques' Wednesday naked-people photoshoot, an event for which only five people showed up.

    Deya came by after she got off work. There wasn't much going on by this point, so she stood out in front of the Jefferson Theatre to watch "mall rats," the youthful punk/hippie/pseudo-goth kids who loiter away their lives on the Mall. Like most people in the greater Charlottesville area, Deya used to be a mall rat herself once, and watching the new generation has nostalgic value for her. But It wasn't a good night for mall rats. Rain was falling and making the ruddy bricks gleam. People hurried by and didn't loiter to talk with casual friends (as one normally does on a Friday night on the Downtown Mall).

    As we headed back to Deya's car, we came across Matthew Hart just getting off work (he'd been cooking at the C&O). We rendezvoused with him at Farmer Jack to get a case of Budweiser and a gallon of Carlo Rossi Paisano vino. Matthew sure likes his Budweiser, but beer season is over for me. On rainy Autumnal evenings, when slimy red leaves cling with their cold to boots and coats, red vino is the only antidote to that elusive feeling of dread.

    I didn't end up drinking any. I was feeling bored and tired, and went to bed well before 10:00pm. That's when the dreams began.

    I turned around and saw a line of middle aged woman had suddenly gathered. Their cameras were out and they were snapping pictures.
    A

    group of us Big Fun types had gone to some weird ancient village set in "the heaths." By heaths, I mean the moist treeless openland that covers much of Britain as well the tops of many mountains over on the Allegheny Plateau of West Virginia. The ancient village was Scottsville, Virginia, though for some reason we were not down along the James River. Instead, this Scottsville was situated up on the top of a mountain. We were lounging around on an ancient stone patio, chatting with a middle aged woman about nothing in particular, when I introduced myself as "Gus."

    "You're not by any chance the Gus are you?" she asked.

    "That's me!" I said proudly.

    I turned around and saw a line of middle aged women had suddenly gathered. Their cameras were out and they were snapping pictures. Some of the women had distinctly Asian features. I felt like Elvis.

    Later, my friends and I were exploring a part of the heaths that had been invaded by short stocky trees, much like the top of Big Levels in the Blue Ridge Mountains. But the ground was moist and covered with mosses. This sort of scenery crops up over and over again in my dreams.

    Under a particularly dense accumulation of moss, we found a little stone building, a cemetery crypt I thought. Jessika was very pleased and wriggled inside, conjecturing as she did so (with her usual dreamlike vagueness) about the little munchkins who had once occupied it.


    Get a sense of what I was like exactly one year ago today.


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