I said I knew of no one except pornographers who were making any money on the web. But that's probably no longer true.

T


his morning I went to my bank, Nations Bank (on the Corner) and opened up a checking account. The idea is to get a debit card so I can buy things via mail order. The banker who signed me up, a Mr. Washington, was intrigued to learn that I worked in the Internet industry. He asked me about the feasibility of marketing African American greeting cards over the web. I said I knew of no one except pornographers who were making any money on the web. But that's probably no longer true.

I


n the afternoon, Matthew Hart and I ordered a dirt cheap Gumby's Pizza (some day we'll remember to say "easy on the aftertaste"), but we couldn't eat it all. Deya helped out a little when she drifted in. I've noticed that Deya, Matthew and I have become somewhat more of a cohesive unit since the departure of Leah.

In discussions about the emerging Angela situation, Matthew expressed the view that either Angela should get back together with Aaron or else move out. You see, despite the breakup, Aaron and Angela are still living together for financial reasons. And Aaron is having problems with Angela's recent evening absences. Deya and Monster Boy had to field five phone calls from Aaron last night while Matthew's door was shut. He even asked them to say what cars were parked out on the street. My god, this is getting bad, but it's a familiar story. Does anyone remember how bad it got in the late stages of Angela's Dynashack visitation phase?

I fixed up an old PS/2 Model 80 for Matthew so he can do word processing. This entailed combining working parts from two different units. Since he doesn't have a girlfriend anymore and has lots of time on his hands, he figures it would be good to do some writing. Other than that, all he does at the end of each day is drink and socialize.

Anything that can make Jessika act like a sex-crazed lunatic must be some special magic.

A


ngela came over, as she always does these days. She immediately requested that I assist her in the purchase of booze.

She drove Matthew and me to the Barracks Road ABC store and I went in and gor a litre of Pepe Lopez tequila. In our little world, tequila commands a special reverance. Anything that can make Jessika act like a sex-crazed lunatic must be some special magic.

We also got a case of Beast Ice. Angela has a weird problem with generosity. She refused to accept any money from either Matthew or me, though she'd paid for everything. I ended up flinging two dollars at her and they disappeared into the chasm between the two front seats.

Back at Kappa Mutha Fucka, we started drinking right away. We had no shot glasses (no doubt if we did they'd be smashed by now) so were forced to drink directly from the bottle.

He's always looking over at us with unease, no doubt suspicious of our clutter, decorations, long grass and faint aroma of urine.

Matthew was playing two early Beck albums on the boom box. Quite unlike modern Beck, this stuff involved almost no sampling or DJ effects. It had a decidedly Country and occasionally Folk sound, though the vocals were occasionally like Tom Waits or Syd Barrett. I actually prefer Beck's later musical experiments (for example, I really like "Jack-ass," the MTV video with Beck in the coal mine). I'm a sucker for understated charisma. But Matthew only really likes Beck's early stuff.

Angela chatted some with the Wahoo neighbor girl, whose irritating little dog came through our yard. The Wahoo neighbor girl's boyfriend is one of those big dumb-looking football player type guys, and he was following closely behind. He's always looking over at us with unease, no doubt suspicious of our clutter, decorations, long grass and faint aroma of urine. Angela said she thought the Wahoo neighbor girl was nice, but had one of those voices that Angela particularly loathes. Oh, you should have heard it, it was bad.

As I left for work, Monster Boy was alone in the darkened living room, playing weird music and zoning out on the screen saver on Matthew's new computer.

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Distribution of my various internet assets is probably a good thing in uncertain times.

T


he cool thing for me here in cyberspace today is that Ceej has gone well beyond the call of duty and set up a mailing list for me on the machine she controls for Spies.com (look at that page and guess who designed it). So, while my pages still physically reside in Charlottesville, my mailing list is off in sunny Palo Alto, California. Distribution of my various internet assets is probably a good thing in uncertain times. Figuring out how to manage my new list was not a straightforward process, and came with some embarrassing first steps, but everything seems to be in order now.

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Get a sense of what I was like exactly eight years ago today.

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