Isn't it just a bit patronizing to assume I need to be reminded that email is fast, just like airmail?

G


raphical metaphors are all well and good as long as they are instantly identifiable. A white octagon against a red background is a pretty damn good metaphor for the idea of "stop." A simple arrow pointing right is a good metaphor for "onward." The list goes on. The key here is simplicity of metaphor. For its graphical metaphors, I give Netscapes 1.0 through 3.02 high marks. The buttons looked exactly the way they should have for the functions they performed.

Now we have Netscape's Communicator 4.0. Its graphics are a complete disaster. None of those scrunched up little shaded 3-D blobs seem to represent anything on first inspection. Oh, now I get it, that green slash is a bookmark! I keep having to remind myself every time I look at the menu bar, and the process of self-reminder is often enough of a burden that I avoid the menu bar entirely. Look at this: the stop sign that had been on the stop button is now, I believe, a grainy little traffic light. Is this an improvement folks? How about those green left and right arrows depicting forward and back? They've been over-prettied to the point of graphical ambiguity. And the blob that means "Messenger," is that, like, airmail dude? Oh, now I see, "Messenger" is the mail interface. Isn't it just a bit patronizing to assume I need to be reminded that email is fast, just like airmail? The ugliness and lack of good interface design goes on and on. Meanwhile, Internet Explorer is looking better all the time. It's a terrible day when we need Walmart to come in to do things right.

---

It's only when I have to show the basics to somebody who knows nothing that I realize that I know a great deal.

I


  set my alarm for noon so I could be up in time to drive to Charlottesville-Albemarle Technical School (CATECH), a local vocational school for area teens. My childhood friend, Nathan, is an instructor there and I'd volunteered to give a guest lecture on the Web and HTML at 1pm today.

I got some coffee and chicken thighs at the Fontaine Avenue Amoco, waiting in line behind a bunch of blue collar working guys who all looked pretty much the same, from their beer guts to their beards to their baseball caps. Driving the Dart up to CATECH, I was nervous about the fact that I have expired license plates, but nothing bad came of it.

I'd given a guest lecture once before at CATECH, though that first time had been kind of rough. For whatever reason, I hadn't been able to get a modem connection working that time, and had had to fall back on an HTML lesson demonstrated without the use of the Internet.

This time, the Internet worked flawlessly, and I was able to show some sample pages (including the musings home page, me getting beheaded the dancing baby, Steve Weiner, and Theresa Venesian), and do some "view source" operations. I didn't really know what to explain and what not to explain. It's all so easy for me that I think of it as intuitive. It's only when I have to show the basics to somebody who knows nothing that I realize that I know a great deal.

There was also a sector of smart kids, some of whom already knew HTML. Some of these had their own form of obnoxious behaviour. It was more subtle and less physical, but it was irritating all the same.

But HTML has a shallow learning curve, and it's an easy thing to demonstrate with minimal typing. Also, since the results are immediate and very rewarding, there's an incentive to buckle down and do something, anything, even when you're a blockheaded uninterested lazy student.

And some of these kids really were blockheaded. A few seemed to prefer flirting, tickling each other, giggling, chatting in hardened ugly dialects, playing video games and compulsively making noises - one girl kept going "Ooowah-Ooowah!" randomly & loudly. The class seemed forever to rage near the fringe of control. Nathan spent most of his time reprimanding students, telling them to pay attention, and ordering them back to their seats, mostly in a nice way. You could tell he hated doing it, but the bulk of the kids were monsters. And these weren't exactly little kids, you know. They ranged in age from 15 to 18. They should have known better, or perhaps their ritalin prescriptions needed adjustment. It was depressing to watch. I know I could never be happy working in such an unrewarding environment.

There was also a sector of smart kids, some of whom already knew HTML. Some of these had their own form of obnoxious behaviour. It was more subtle and less physical, but it was irritating all the same.

It's the same way I used to control such classrooms back before the tables had turned and I was the student, and some hapless adult was the harried teacher.

I don't like being in a power relationship with teenagers. I do not feel better than them simply for being wiser. In a rare situation such as this one where I actually had to apply my power on a certain level (whenever Nathan was distracted away or overwhelmed), I chose to use humour. It's the same way I used to control such classrooms back before the tables had turned and I was the student, and some hapless adult was the harried teacher. By maintaining a flip, anti-establishment attitude throughout (for example, showing them my web pages) and by occasionally lapsing into self-deprecating goofiness, I hoped to charm them enough so the lesson itself would get through. Sometimes I despaired that I was failing, sometimes I thought I was succeeding.

In the second half of class, the students all made their own little web pages, playing around with colors, centering, and even some images. All except one of them managed to grasp it better than I could have hoped.

During the final ten minutes before the end of school, Nathan let the kids all play a network video game called "Descent." I joined in for awhile from my workstation, but was too uncoordinated to do anything except simulate a tussin adventure.

Though I'm finding it difficult to simply ignore the chug-chug sound coming from the transaxle, I'm told it's something I don't have to worry about for now.

After the kids had left, Nathan labeled the lecture a success. He said the kids were kind of rowdy because the material was so unfamiliar. But he was impressed with the ease with which they grasped basic web page creation. We shared some sort of inside-out pizza in the teachers' lounge while some of his colleagues had a strange conversation. One black woman was expressing concerns about predictions made by Nostradamus, while a long-haired white guy was countering that he didn't believe that sort of hocus pocus for a moment, and that what we really had to fear was a two-mile-wide asteroid slamming into the Earth.

I returned home in the Dart without incident. Though I'm finding it difficult to simply ignore the chug-chug sound coming from the transaxle, I'm told it's something I don't have to worry about for now.

I


  found Matthew Hart drinking a forty and watching cooking shows on cable teevee. He had red gouges on his neck that spoke only of an evening involving Theresa. There was much more to be said, of course, since he'd attended the Joe Christ show last night.

Evidently there really are at least two people out there who have hacked off their penises in the name of non-transexual body modification.

About 25 people showed up. Some were goths, some were punks, some were dorks. Most of the people were Artspace regulars: my friends. There was no alcohol at first, so Angela and Matthew went on a beer run, augmented by the substantial stash of Jacques deBeaufort. Matthew described Joe Christ as "sort of a dork, really," surprised to find that he's a small, unassuming man.

As Mr. Christ was showing his movies in the artspace, Theresa made her typical unsubtle entrance. First the audience heard her loudly slam the door shut, then the stomp of her boots coming down the stairs. And then, as the movie played and the audience tried to watch, she drunkenly demanded, "Joe Christ! I have many things I must discuss with you!"

Joe Christ ended up smoking pot with my friends and then going back with them to Angela's place. Theresa demanded to see Joe's abbreviated manhood, so he went with her into the bathroom. She came out and proclaimed to everyone that the penis was indeed less than God had intended, but that there was a full inch more on Joe Christ than there had been on the guy in Sex, Blood and Mutilation (see the March 14th entry). Evidently there really are at least two people out there who have hacked off their penises in the name of non-transexual body modification.

It was sex, blood and mutilation, live and unchoreographed. Matthew says Joe Christ was shocked and dismayed.

Things degenerated from there. In front of everyone, Theresa demanded to know whom Matthew liked better in bed, her or Angela (news of Matthew's one-time drunken intercourse with Theresa, which is now basically in the public domain, was the issue that had caused all the problems last Saturday morning). Matthew's answer was that he couldn't even really remember having sex with Theresa.

Then Theresa expressed her sexual desires for her own sister, and in the midst of a protracted struggle, proceeded to bite Angela on the breast. As a final affront to tranquility, Matthew leapt into the fray and Theresa attacked him with lips, teeth, claws, elbows, boots and pudenda. What the hell is a pudenda? It was sex, blood and mutilation, live and unchoreographed. Matthew says Joe Christ was shocked and dismayed. We'd thought Mr. Christ would be beyond the pale, but it was our friends (or, more particularly, Theresa) who were the true wackos in the room. Matthew and I had to agree: Theresa has become much worse of late. She's essentially impossible to have around these days.

After his little tour of the Charlottesville fringe, Joe Christ ended up spending the night sleeping on the floor downstairs in Kappa Mutha Fucka. It was his vagina-pink car that I saw parked in the driveway when I came home from work this morning.

When Christ learned it was just on the abdomen, he said (seemingly disappointedly), "Oh, I thought she bit you on the dick!"

Here at am at UVA's Olssen Hall. My gut has been bothering me a little today, but it's been no big deal. Last night, however, I had to lay down on the floor of the server room at one point. I wonder what the hell is wrong with my upper digestive tract.

B


ack at Kappa Mutha Fucka, Deya told me that Joe Christ had said that the dickless guy in Sex Blood and Mutilation was someone who goes by the name "Les Johnson." Har har har, I get it.

As I was heading out the door to go to work, I found Monster Boy stinking up the living room with his fetid socks watching a documentary about the Salem Witch Trials. I asked him to tell me his story about what had happened with Joe Christ last night. Monster Boy added a few details to the story already told by Matthew:

But Angela didn't want someone as creepy as that possibly sleeping in her bed.

• Monster Boy showed up at the Artspace at about 3 in the afternoon on Wednesday. Jenfariello said that, since the Joe Christ show was sort of Monster Boy's thing, he should run the place, so she loaned him her key. Mr. Christ arrived at about 4, and Monster Boy helped him set up his equipment.

• When Theresa and Joe Christ went into the bathroom so she could see his modified penis, Mr. Christ made Theresa pull down her pants before he would pull down his. Then, when they both had their pants down, he made a move on her (according to Theresa). But who really knows. Given his truncated willy, what could he hope to do to her?

• Theresa thumped Mr. Christ in the chest with a bottle at one point, and he ominously warned her "don't do that!" Later, on the ride back to Kappa Mutha Fucka, he told Monster Boy that he had a violent past, and when people would start things with him, he'd go into a blind fury and not realize the damage he'd done until he came out of a fog fifteen minutes later.

• Originally the plan had been for Mr. Christ to sleep over at Angela's apartment. Theresa thought that would be pretty cool. But Angela didn't want someone as creepy as that possibly sleeping in her bed. So Monster Boy invited him back to Kappa Mutha Fucka, though it was already pretty crowded (what with CJ also spending the night).

• Monster Boy said that Joe Christ is a nice guy, but "weird." When, for example, Monster Boy told of the time that Theresa gave him a serious bite that turned black and blue, Christ asked where on his body it had been. When Christ learned it was just on the abdomen, he said (seemingly disappointedly), "Oh, I thought she bit you on the dick!"

one year ago

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