Henry and June - Wednesday November 10 1999
Today was the day that I actually launched the slightly-modified Main Menu that got me in so much trouble yesterday. Sadly, the new version didn't include the spunky little Dan & Gwen animation. Probably only the observant will notice the changes, which were designed, it seems, to make our site look even more like a rip-off of Yahoo. Believe it or not, the Grand Pooh Bah once told the assembled at a company meeting that the move to a more-Yahooesque Main Menu back in January had the effect of doubling the value of our company. If anyone needs evidence that investors are sheep, I think that will suffice.
Things are different now around the company. Suddenly everyone, even jaded cynical me, is realizing that our company has reached critical mass. There's almost nothing that can stop the roll we're on, not even our groaning, rivet-popping, maxed-out Windows NT architecture. It's not just propaganda anymore. In just the 13 months I've been there, we've made it from darkest obscurity to the 11th biggest site on the web. The site was so small when I arrived that the "bigfun" username was actually available. Even the most optimistic of us never believed we'd actually get this far. But now that we're in the position where we find ourselves, I have to acknowledge the inertia that will inevitably make the most outlandish of last year's pipedreams come true.
All of this contributed to the stress I felt during tonight's Main Menu deployment. The release didn't exactly go off without a hitch, but then again, the devastating hitches only propagated to 10% of the server farm while the minor hitches lasted less than 20 minutes. The fact that all of the deployment tools I had at my disposal were those I developed myself considerably multiplied my sense of accountability. It's amazing how primitive aspects of the company persist simply because they work, idiosyncratic though they be, into the flush darling-of-investor epoch.
At home in conversations with Kim I've finally owned up to the fact that, if I work at this company for another 4 years and nothing particularly surprising happens, I'll have several million dollars. It blows the mind.
When I made it home, I found that Kim had rented the movie Henry and June, which purports to be about the life and times of Henry Miller and his wife June, as told by gonzo diarist Anais Nin. It's not the sort of flick one can rent from family-friendly Blockbuster since it bears an NC-17 rating. Happily, Kim finally got around to joining a non-mass-market video rental place here in Ocean Beach. Now we can watch any movie we want to, whether or not it offends the sensibilities of average people eating their average white bread sandwiches. Whitebread! Thankfully that's a cultural incompatibility I've never yet faced with a girlfriend.
Who knew that Anais was so into getting fucked and then writing about it? I've tried to read her (probably expurgated) diaries, but I never lasted for more than a few pages. But as played by Maria de Mederios, her goings on seemed to place a sexual imperative on the evening. Kim was wearing one of those 50 cent slips she'd bought the other day at the consignment store going out of business sale, and the next thing you know, I'd had my orgasm and Kim was angry at me (and demanding that I walk Sophie). Lucky for her, I'll be mending my ways this weekend during a tantric sex workshop in Los Angeles, taught by America's premier tantress. Is the word "tantric" related to the word "taunt"?