jotsheet

I’ve been slowly selling out. Been going downhill. Remember when I got a cell phone? That was a low point. But I can’t tell you when I was truly “keeping it real,” and I’m not even sure what that means. Come to think of it, how does one exactly “hold it down” and “represent?” Maybe I was representin back in freshman year of high school when I was dressing grungy, glowering at my classmates, and generally despising life. That seems likely. But in any event, I’ve completely sold out now. I’m sure of that, even if I’m not sure what it means.

Now look at those damn shorts. Take a hard look. I went to the Gap (!) and bought them. What am I doing to myself? I’m moving further and further to the Northwestern uniform; pretty soon I’ll have Lucky jeans and a North Face jacket.

Maybe selling out is part of growing up. Maybe it’s part of joining the rat race and having a full-time job. Maybe it’ll help me get a girlfriend (I can only hope). But I have to admit: I sort of miss the mindless rebellion of early high school. Sure, I was disconsolate, angry, and unhappy. But I was keepin it real, and dammit, buying shorts from the Gap ain’t keepin it real.

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Yesterday was the jotsheet’s third birthday. Remember back on April 25, 2001 when the jotsheet launched to great fanfare and thousands of fans overloaded the server? What a glorious inauguration.

The blog has come a long way since its earlier incarnations. What used to be hand-coded site filled with tidbits about my life that no one cares about is now a Movable Type-driven blog filled with tidbits about my life that no one cares about. It’s a lot more efficient.

And to celebrate the momentous occasion yesterday? I didn’t do anything on my website. Good times.

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Tonight, it took me 65 minutes to get home from work. 65 freaking minutes. That was the time from when I left the Tower to when I got to my apartment building. Now let’s consider this for a moment.

Yahoo! Maps says the route is 11.5 miles long, and 65 minutes is 1.083 hours, so over the course of the entire route, I averaged 10.6 mph. And by the way, I caught the Red Line just as it was coming into Grand.

Commuting is a waste of life!

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The Intarweb has spawned an entirely new lexicon. Computer-specific words such as “online,” “reboot,” and “connected” are now part of our regular, non-technological conversations.

What’s better, though, are the completely ridiculous, truly geeky Intarweb words. Somehow, these odd words arise from the uncharted depths of IRC, MUDs, and the hax0r underground to permeate the more mainstream Intarweb community. This includes eleet (i.e. leet/3l33t/l33t/ereet/reet), 0WN (i.e. PWN), and re (i.e. rehi). (Hey, even Shakespeare can dig the l33t-speak; check out Chris Coutts’ hilarious take on Romeo & Juliet: Tales for the L33t.)

But the best word that the Intarweb junkies have come up with is EVAR. This one I love. It combines enthusiasm and sarcasm (unusual, that) and confuses n00bs as a bonus. I plan to use this more in everyday speech. EVAR r0×0rs. w00t!

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When you write a book entitled Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, it helps not to be a lying liar yourself. Too bad Al Franken isn’t quite intelligent enough to grasp subtlety. Or consistency. With the sputtering liberal Air America network a few weeks old, I thought it’d be a good time to take a fair and balanced look at this joke of a project. (And perhaps it’d be a good time for them to work on their SEO: I can’t find their website in the first 5 pages of Google search results when searching for “air america.”)

First of all, let me just admit this: Making fun of Air America is just too easy. Franken and Garofalo were full of bluster and bravado a few weeks ago, prancing about how they were going to take on the big-bad right-wing radio establishment. How are the aging-comics-cum-politicos doing now on the radio dial? Erm, not so well. Before discussing their finances, let’s talk about the content of the programming.
(more…)

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I’m back online, biznitch. Due to a glitch from my normally reliable host, Dreamhost, the configuration for my account was screwed up for probably 18 hours. All better now.

With underscorebleach.net’s return to the Intarweb, I will be revising the mission of this site and will now seek to fill it will political rants, Web design notes that no one reads, and uninteresting observations about my life. This represents a major change from the previous incarnation of the site.

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Like two tin pans pounded together.

I watched it happen. BOOM. Impact. A moment. Cars smoking. One spun. The other veered. Silence swooped in and a hundred eyes flashed to the same spot. It is strange to be in the midst of such a focused event.

Dazed, the cab driver opened his door and stumbled out. The front of his taxi was destroyed—not crumpled, but smashed at strange, unnatural angle. The Chevy Cavalier had flown through the red light and struck the taxi mid-turn, twisting it around in the middle of the intersection like a boxer hit with a vicious left hook. But the Chevy itself was not so lucky.

I was a gawker. I looked on in awe and horror at the Chevy across the street from me. Who was in it? How badly were they hurt? The four lanes of asphalt between me and that new, violent form were something of a comfort. I dared not go closer. A few of the braver people looked in. Talked to him. I guess he could talk, and I guess he had his seat belt on, because he didn’t fly through the passenger side window and he didn’t fly through the windshield. He was in the driver’s seat, and I bet he was thanking God for airbags.

They cut him out of the car with a chainsaw. Put him on a stretcher and took him away in an ambulance. I never want to see an accident again in my life. Man, that sticks with you.

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