Hello from Kentucky Y'all!
Monday October 14--Is confession good for the soul? How about letting the world know your deepest, innermost thoughts, dreams and problems? I met an interesting young man named Justin Hall, late of HotWired, soon to be of Electric Minds, who has been doing just that for an ever-widening audience. He started by listing sex-oriented links on his site, then began writing a daily diary online. Folks initially visited for the links, but stayed for the personality. Want to peek inside a twenty-one year old male's head? Watch out, it can get pretty spooky in there.
Tuesday October 15--I try not to make fun of my old Kentucky home, but sometimes it's just too easy. Seems someone is going to erect a 270 foot stainless steel statue of Jesus Christ in Louisville, complete with observation deck. Perhaps this will be the midwest's answer to the Statue of Liberty, welcoming the religiously tired and the spiritually poor. (It sounds like the biggest holy lightning rod in history to me.) Louisville is also home to the Louisville Slugger Museum which has a 127 foot baseball bat standing outside. I think I'll get in touch with the producers of "Ghostbusters" because I smell plot.
Wednesday October 16th--I admit it, I'm an Apple enthusiast and it's tough sometimes. I'm surrounded by engineers who insist that they use "real" computers and I use a toy. May they rot in a Unix hell hole. My computer at least smiles at me from time to time, (when rebooting after a massive crash for instance). Every once in a
while Apple comes up with insanely great stuff, and more often than not drops the ball soon after. One of the neatest things they've developed lately is QuickTime VR, movies that you can navigate around in. When I watched an Apple representative fight to stitch one together I saw how difficult it can be, even for an expert. Apple hasn't bothered to make the process user/developer friendly yet, but it's still way cool.
Thursday October 17--These little boys who are getting in trouble for innocent kisses lately have me thinking about sexual harassment. (Alight I admit it, pretty much everything gets me thinking about sexual harassment.) When I signed on with U S West we went through an hour-long indoctrination on why "The Work place Is No Place For Humor," which outlined the deep psychic damage an innocent joke could have on a fragile co-worker. Humor was actually considered to be harassment! (As if a blonde joke could make someone go postal.) Political Correctness is getting out of control and on my nerves. Considering that case of an invited buff on the cheek in North Carolina, you'd think they would have at least given the little boy credit since it wasn't his sister he was kissing.
Those of you long enough in the tooth to remember The Firesign Theatre will delight in the news that Peter Bergman, one of the founders of this late Sixties comedy troupe, has a new CD-ROM coming out. Mr. Bergman was playing a popular CD-ROM adventure game and found himself frustrated in all of his attempts to find a way out of the game's virtual library scene. Thus was born PYST. A hilarious take-off on MYST, which depicts the original story's scenes as if four million visitors had traipsed through: beer cans, candy wrappers, broken spaceships, etc. John Goodman makes a guest appearance and there are loads of humorous audio files to enjoy. Just don't go into the library!