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oh dear, a rave
Friday, October 23 1998
Overheard at work today:
Senior Editor: ...you know how in Fantasia when the brooms started multiplying...
Web Development Director: I've never seen Fantasia.
Senior Editor: What, you've never seen Fantasia? You robot!
Web Development Director: Well... I've just never seen Fantasia.
Senior Editor: Weren't you ever a stoner in college?
There was a period today when I felt on top of the world, assigning myself the task of writing a program to automate many of the irritating little repetitive procedures that go into doing the weekly updates of site content. But then I became bogged down in a nightmare of parsing errors from which I was unable to extract myself for the rest of the day. These problems (or "challenges" as we optimistically call them at work) have haunted me ever since I headed home for the day. Usually I feel empowered and ready for the weekend after the "Energy" ritual that concludes every week of work. But for some reason I feel like heading back to work just to figure out how to make my widget run like the bit of genius I believe it to be. Up until today I'd been dismayed to see how many hours my co-workers were willing to sacrifice to this business. Now I find myself obsessed in a similar way with an aspect of my job.
What's chinese is that it's a project I began entirely on my own initiative. In a sense, it's my baby, even if its ultimate result will be the smoother functioning of the company for which I work. I'm delighted to discover that bringing a few programming skills to my job allows me to periodically redefine my job description as I build tools to automate much of what I do.
I took a nap in the evening to give myself the strength to go out on the town for the first Friday night since beginning my new job. The plan was to meet up with one of Kim's somatics friends (a girl named Brooke) at a nearby University Heights place called the Empire Club.
But when we arrived, we found thundering repetitive music and a crowd of kids in big blue jeans all lined up in front of the door patiently awaiting admission procedures. These procedures required a pat-down for weapons & drugs followed by an I.D. check. There was one line for boys and another for girls. Kim made it inside before I did and she came out to tell me both the obvious and the not so obvious, saying, "This is what they call a 'rave,' it costs $12 and there's -again - no alcohol." This wasn't good news to me at all. We'd smoked some Kansan marijuana and drunk some vodkatea and wine before coming, but if we were going to be hanging out at a drug-free rave, we'd need to prepare first and get some pill drugs. For Kim (who looked down upon this event as a sad simulation of a rave) the drug of choice would have been Ecstasy. The guards were being pretty hard-nosed though, not even allowing one girl to take her chapstick inside. I don't know about what it's like in your neck of the woods, but where I'm from, ravers aren't exactly straight-edge.
Brooke showed up with a few of her chums. She was decked out in her big pants and had her hair pulled up into two phat antennæ. We told her we needed to go somewhere else to drink and suggested going somewhere else," but that was impossible since she was "meeting a lot of my firends here." I guess we'd done our social obligation by being there at all, because Kim told me we could go if I felt strongly about not staying. I knew I would have a miserable time if I stayed, so I said we should split. The way I see it, I don't have a lot of free time any more and the little time I do have should be spent in ways that I find enjoyable.
Kim and I ended up at the Kensington Club, which is always a good choice on a weekend night. We hung out in the ruddy "lounge room," the big space with the stage and comfy chairs. We were in there alone for awhile, having good conversation and sipping Red Hooks. Eventually we were joined by a large group of young motorcycle folks from Old Town San Diego. They were all very outgoing, friendly, and flirtatious. For awhile Kim had a couple of the guys engaged in conversation simultaneously and later she had a long chat with the bar's manager. The subtext with all these guys was that they wanted to sleep with her, a reaction that I find entertaining enough to encourage whenever possible.
At the bar as I was ordering more beers, I chatted with an attractive, intoxicated middle-aged lady from England. She told me she hated men but admitted she'd come to the bar in hopes of getting a "screw."
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