GRABBINGSAND

his name is adam. adam pearl.

words cannot express the mix of joy and sadness… he is a beautiful boy. he deserves a far sweeter world than the one that came before him, than the one his father knew. and the world he will know is the one that we are creating today. fear remains, yes, but hope sustains. even in the small sentiments of strangers.

sapphireblue has turned out the lights and left a note for the curious. i think i understand her motivations, but this means that my original web mentor has retired…. for the moment, anyway.

okay. i’ve given you a few days to take in the new blue design. so… what do you think?

you don’t need it now.

memorial day weekend in brief revue. or brief relief. bas relief? half day on friday. a too short visit home on saturday. the visit included patriotic barbershop singing, as my dad is now the president of the local spebsqsa chapter. yes, there is such a thing. and really, it is kind of cool in a retro-harmony-vocal-choral way. sunday morning slept in and so did i. after coffee, i committed grand theft, disturbed the peace and made deals with thugs — all without leaving the comforts of home. sometime over the weekend, i introduced the roommate to the fascinations of a good P2P client and an open DSL line — i fear, i have created a music-downloading monster. i never expected to hear m.c. hammer’s “can’t touch this” again… now i have heard it at least six or seven times. help us all.

oh, you noticed the redesign? mostly chromatic, you might need to empty your browser’s cache and force a full reload, as everything ought to be blue or bluish by now. i notice here at work that the macs are having some difficulty getting the latest data. silly apples…

oh, have you ever wanted to create your own real-time-strategy game? now you can.

all of you fashion-conscious folk out there will be interested to note that goth is the new look for fall.

“A clear backlash against the hippie vibe of the summer, and one of the key looks of the season, will see you wearing a wardrobe full of black leather and masses of attitude.” [from WGSN]

it’s funnier when you say it out loud like you’re elsa klensch or something.

a potato gun, that is.

be afraid. be very afraid.

the weekend’s work turned up a pair of black & white photographs given to me a few years ago. they are more than worth your time. enjoy.

i was productive. for a while. cleaned on a micro-scale in the room, throwing away almost drawerfuls of random and unnecessary refuse. things i just don’t need anymore, expired insurance cards, obsolete coupons for things i would never have bought, even old letters i realize i will never again read. then i settled into the living room for two movies. a double-feature of my own creation. both of them contain lines that just make me smile at their genius and truth.

stop trying to hit me and hit me!
morpheus to neo, the matrix 1999

luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.
yoda to luke skywalker, the empire strikes back, 1980

if you didn’t go to church this morning, that last one is part of a good sermon i could hear every sunday for months.

and its funny, but watching empire again helps me to see some of the good in episodes one and two. references to luke’s father have a certain resonance now. but basically, these movies, the three in the middle of the saga, they mean so much to my generation because they arrived when the clay of our own personal mythologies was still wet and malleable. naturally, an attempt to revisit a personal era of such importance is going to fall short of the mark. nothing will ever match that first time any of us saw obi-wan give luke his father’s lightsabre, or the “scoundrel” kiss aboard the millennium falcon, or yoda’s remark of “no, there is another.” but who knows? maybe there are little kids down at your local multiplex watching episode two right at this moment who will someday get shivers down their twenty-five year old spines when someone says “this party’s over.”

eh. maybe not.

in other news. a new the the double-album compilation comes out on tuesday. rock!

i volunteered in 1999, but was unable to attend. i volunteered in 2000 and in 2001, enjoying the experience both times. the staff position gives you a somewhat removed perspective on the whole event, allowing you to be in the midst of the affair without actually getting caught up in its benign madness. in other words, when you work staff for dragoncon, you can indulge in four days of imaginative fantasy without worrying about whether or not your ghostbuster, stormtrooper or boy wonder costume will be back from the cleaners. and best of all, it’s free. your admission to the ‘con requires only that you work for 16 hours out of the four days. easily done.

now, it appears, i am in deeper than usual. our fearless leader suffered from bit of burnout during the last ‘con, brought on by some political matters and a fever that kept him bed-ridden for the ‘con’s last two days. he appointed another one of our ragged band as his new standard-bearer, but now it appears that his replacement will be heading to the wilds of texas for new employment. do you see where this is heading?

yep. i am the new director for information services at dragoncon 2002. what does that mean? it means that i deal with the chief directors, organize work schedules, get materials, gather resources and actively recruit people to fill our ranks. the staff is in charge of turning the lost into the found, directing the aimless to their destination and a handful of other tasks that pop up along the way. the first day consists mostly of politely nudging people in the direction of registration. it becomes a mantra. “up the escalator… ‘cross the lobby… down the escalator… om…”

so i guess things will be a bit different this year. but not too different. i’m still not dressing up like a klingon…

plus a venti latte with nutmeg in it. no, i didn’t add nutmeg to my latte on purpose. i reached for the chocolate cocoa stuff on the counter and grabbed the wrong shaker and had dropped a good two shakes of aromatic spice into my coffee before i knew the wrong i was committing. this should reflect the state i am in, so be warned.

how can i comment on epi 2 without spoiling? well, i can start with the trailers. undercover brother, be like mike, men in black 2 and die another day — the new james bond trailer, which was just dead sexy if you ask me. there was another one, but i can’t remember it. the promised matrix trailer was missing, but i found it here: what is the matrix?

but what about the flick? was it good? was it worth the hype? okay. here are some simple observations:

1. though alec guinness grew to abhore his connection to star wars, ewan mcgregor has created the ultimate acting tribute to the elder ben kenobi. the voice, the body language, the way he handles himself in a bar…
2. christopher lee has done conflicted evil well for over thirty years and casting him as the nemesis in two of the biggest films in the last year was no mistake.
3. natalie portman is lovely, carries herself like a queen/senator, but the girl simply cannot act her way out of a paper bag. oh, and another thing: amidala has no blaster skills … leia never missed. ever.
4. yoda is the master. fight yoda and he will be on your ass like a badger on crack.
5. the fett family must’ve immigrated from australia.
6. there are more shades of grey to ths story now. the coin-flip battle between light and dark has landed on it’s side. and it’s rolling downhill…

i have more thoughts, quite a few complaints, but i’ll keep those to myself. for now.