February 27, 1997, Thursday

Obscure but true thing to say today: the children of socially immature people have more luxury in their infancies.

I felt almost like I had transcended the heightened squabbling about what is or is not cool that must always attend the end of a century.

After work I drove my Dodge Dart back to my childhood home south of Staunton. The air was warm and humid and seemed appropriate for the Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet/Dead Can Dance tape that I'd made specifically for my car's tape player. I felt very retro as I drove. It was a good feeling. I felt almost like I had transcended the heightened squabbling about what is or is not cool that must always attend the end of a century. I was a timeless entity in my own little world.

I went to the new pawn shop on Greenville Avenue and managed to talk down the price of a keyboard with a bank of 100 different voices with the woman running the counter. It went from seventy to 55 dollars. It's a less flexible keyboard than Bn's, but I aim to mar it with some electronic modifications inappropriate for something that belongs to someone else. Also, it is physically smaller than Bn's keyboard and thus a little easier to find room for.

At the Shaque I had to figure out how to power the thing, since it didn't come with a power supply. I will probably build a number of custom effects and a power supply into it. The technology exists to make some very cool sounds for very little money.

Those settlements where some old people tended to wake up and pace around probably had an advantage because they had greater security.

After a nice long nap in the Shaque bunk, I chatted some with my parents. My Dad told me an interesting evolutionary theory he'd come up with to explain his fitful sleeping at night, which is very different from the deep sleep that I experience and that he experienced as a youth. He said that back in the cave man days when the young men had to hunt creatures to get meat for their settlements, it was important for the young men to get good solid nights of sleep. They had to experience deep fulfilling sleep in order to be capable hunters. The old men of the settlement, however, were of little use in the actual process of hunting (though they did serve as repositories for wisdom much as books serve today). Thus their sleep would have been less important. Those settlements where some old people tended to wake up and pace around probably had an advantage because they had greater security. The old men would notice the approach of saber tooth tigers and warriors from other settlements and alert the others if need be. Thus the young hunters were free to sleep soundly and the hunt would go well. My Dad says that evolutionary theory is a great aid in explaining the world. I agree. The general form of "survival of the fittest" explains nearly everything, from "why mountains are where they are," to "why Brazilians speak Portuguese" to "why men go bald and women do not" (explanations to any of these conundrums will be provided upon request).

I drank brandy on the 40 mile drive back to Charlottesville.

Per a specific invitation, I visited Jenfariello at her house on Wertland. I haven't visited her at all since our little romantic "fling" in January. That we haven't seen each other much since isn't related to any bad blood between us; we've just been distracted by other things.

We watched bad American television comedy and talked about a number of things, including that she has a new boyfriend named Dave who lives with or near Liz West in an apartment above one of the businesses on the Corner on University Ave. I couldn't think who Dave is, but she told me he has had dreams with me in them. She also told me that her old boyfriend Austin (a regular at the horrid crash pad across the street in the Wertland Apartments) still leaves notes on the windshield of her car asking her to "go get fucked up" with him. I told Jen that I get along well with Austin, but that he doesn't know the underlying situation.

We observed the neighbor's Siamese she-cat going through the seemingly painful ordeal of being in heat.

The fact that Jenfariello has a new boyfriend took away nothing from the evening. Among the several things we did was drink white vino and observe the neighbor's Siamese she-cat going through the seemingly painful ordeal of being in heat. I also gave Jen some multimedia software suitable for video frame capture from my home-made portable hard drive. Her 120 MHz Power PC Macintosh has video inputs; she can be a multimedia goddess if she so chooses.

By the way, one of my pages is at the top of Altavista relevance for "art in charlottesville" or "charlottesville artists." I use it as a place to advertise upcoming shows in the Downtown Artspace that Jen manages. She was very pleased with the updated version of the page I created last night.

My animation of the astrology signs morphing one into the other around and around is now pretty much complete (I tweaked it some on tonight's shift). I'm very proud of it and so end this page with a little demonstration of it.

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