The Kitten, a wily black six year old female cat, was more subtle in her reaction, but I could tell she hadn't lost her fondness for me.

E


ffortlessly, my Dodge Dart cut through the forty empty miles back to my childhood home south of Staunton. I was blaring Dead Can Dance on the car stereo, but still the chug chug of the transaxle gnawed at my subconscious. I thought of my car as something like a foolish old horse, limping obediently under me and being payed for its devotion with premature ruin. My mechanic tells me not to worry. But I always sweat the little things.

The old house interior was warm and cozy to all my senses. My psychotic brother wasn't up yet, so the place still smelled okay. The folks were their usual enthusiastic-to-see-me. And The Kitten, a wily black six year old female cat, was more subtle in her reaction, but I could tell she hadn't lost her fondness for me. She plunked down directly upon whatever it was I was reading and let her head droop off the edge of the table.

I keep a complete archive of this website (as well as a number of other websites including heinovision.com) on the hard drives in the Shaque, the little building behind my parents' house where I used to live. The archive comes in handy when a bad FTP session manages to butcher my files. Today I updated my archive and rooted around for some more ancient documents to put on the web. Then I slept until well into the afternoon.

She's completely unaware of how much computers have advanced since the Mac si.

I


n the evening, I carried through on a plan to help my mother "get on the Internet." I'd explained that the little 25 MHz Mac si she's been using, while perfectly good for MS Word 4.0, Crystal Quest and Pipedream, is a little underpowered when it comes to rendering web pages. I'd gone on to explain that she should get some sort of new machine, probably a Mac since that's my expertise, that's what she's familiar with, and that's the kind of software I have. She's got lots of money sitting around from a failed bid on some real estate, so she handed me her credit card and said "get me what you think I need." So I dutifully got on the horn and did Apple Computer proud. I ordered a 225 MHz genuine Power Macintosh with accelerated video, 32 Megabytes of RAM, 3 Gigabytes of hard drive, a 12X CD ROM drive, and a 33.6 K Modem, as well as (what the hell?) a 30 bit flat bed scanner. Total cost? Less than $1800. For my mother, that was but pocket change. She's going to be amazed by what that machine can do. She's completely unaware of how much computers have advanced since the Mac si.

If the measure of a man is the web page devoted to him, then I can make Don into a very great runner indeed.

My psychotic brother, Don, was up by this time, and he enthusiastically showed me some prizes he'd won in a recent foot race. He had a beautiful brass candlestick and framed plaque of some sort, all displayed with a strange obsessive museum attic æsthetic in his room.

Evidently Don has been buying lots of books lately. His floor is cluttered with numerous book pyramids of several feet in height. He values his books so much that he lays them on plastic bags on the floor and stacks them in piles with the largest books on the bottom. He'd never even consider using the library convention of stacking them on edge in a bookshelf. The fact that most of his books are almost inaccessible matters little to him; he's simply happy knowing they're there. When I was a kid (before the age of 15 or so), I used to have a similar neurotic collector spirit with regard to books. That all went away when I started working with computers (circa 1983).

Don seems to view his awards as evidence that he is a serious, semi-professional runner, perhaps following perfectly in the footsteps of our maternal grandfather, Clarence DeMar. Don thinks that I should make a web page about him and his new-found running prowess. If the measure of a man is the web page devoted to him, then I can make Don into a very great runner indeed.

So the world is continually replenished with people who think babies are marvelous, that reproduction is a civic duty, and who ignore the fable of Mr. Yeast who once lived in a beer keg.

I'm registered to vote in Augusta County, the district of my childhood home. But since none of us (except Don) were inspired to go cast our ballots, we stayed home. We just weren't enthusiastic about any of the identical "I'm more of a right wing crazy than you are" candidates, even those running for an office as important as Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. To tell the truth, I've never believed that casting a vote is the most effective political use of my time. It makes about as much sense to me as buying a lottery ticket. Still, if each person who was intelligent and endowed with reasonable views had this idea, we'd soon be completely (as opposed to mostly) overtaken by the voting strength of the ignorant masses.

In a way, it's similar to the "voting" we do genetically by having children. Those of us who are rational see the world as having far too many people and view babies as being the unredeeming disgusting larval humans that they are. But those of us with such attitudes don't pass these views (and the genetic predisposition to have these views) on to another generation because we do not spawn it. So the world is continually replenished with people who think babies are marvelous, that reproduction is a civic duty, and who ignore the fable of Mr. Yeast who once lived in a beer keg.

Chicken is something I never grow sick of. It's practically all I've eaten in the last three days.

My mother cooked up a whole bunch of fried chicken. I ate, as usual, until I could eat no more. Chicken is something I never grow sick of. It's practically all I've eaten in the last three days.

I also drank a little blush vino that was lying around, and it made me a little bit tipsy for the drive back to Charlottesville.

B


ack at Kappa Mutha Fucka, I noted that the brief regression to Stone Age conditions had reversed. Every light in the house seemed to be on. And why the hell not?

It was nice to be able to set an alarm so I could have an unfragmented prework nap.

one year ago

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