The Subconscious, Lists, Etc from Microserfs

 

Lifted without permission from Microserfs by Douglas Coupland. You are encouraged to get your own hardcopy from your local bookstore.

I am danielu@microsoft.com. If my game was a life of Jeopardy! my
seven dream categories would be:

  • Tandy Products
  • Trash TV of the late '70s and early '80s
  • The history of Apple
  • Career anxieties
  • Tabloids
  • Plant Life of the Pacific Northwest
  • Jell-O 1-2-3
More details about our group house-Our House of Wayward Mobility....
....Littered about the Tiki green shag carpet are:
  • Two Microsoft Works PC inflatable beach cushions
  • One Mitsubishi 27-inch color TV
  • Various vitamin bottles
  • Several weight-gaining system cartons (mine)
  • 86 copies of MacWeek arranged in chronological order by Bug Barbecue, who will go berserk if you so much as move one issue out of date
  • Six Microsoft Project 2.0 juggling bean bags
  • Bone-shaped chew toys for when Mishka visits
  • Two Powerbooks
  • Three IKEA mugs encrusted with last month's blender drink sensation
  • Two 12.5-pound dumbbells (Susan's)
  • A Windows NT box
  • Three baseball caps (two Mariners, one A's)
  • Abe's Battlestar Galactica trading card album
  • Todd's pile of books on how to change your life to win! (Getting Past OK, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People...)
Susan is 26 and works in Mac Applications. If Susan were a Jeopardy! 
contestant, her dream board would be:
  • 680X0 assembly language
  • Cats
  • Early '80s haircut bands
  • "My secret affair with Rob in the Excel Group"
  • License plate slogans of America
  • Plot lines from The Monkees
  • The death of IBM
Microsoft, like any office, is a status theme park. Here's a quick rundown: 
  • Profitable projects are galactically higher in status than loser (not quite as profitable) projects.
  • Microsoft at Work (Digital Office) is sexiest at the moment. Fortune 500 companies are drooling over DO because it'll allow them to downsize millions of employees. Basically, DO allows you to operate your fax, phone, copier--all of your office stuff--from your PC.
  • Cash cows like Word are profitable but not really considered cutting edge.
  • Working on-Campus is higher status than being relegated to one of the off-Campus Siberias.
  • Having Pentium-driven hardware (built to the hilt) in your office is higher status than having 486 droneware.
  • Having technical knowledge is way up there.
  • Being an architect is also way up there.
  • Having Bill-o-centric contacts is way, way up there.
  • Shipping your product on time is maybe the coolest (insert wave of anxiety here). If you ship on time you get a Ship-It award: a 12-x-15-x-1-inch Lucite slab - but you have to pretend it's no big deal. Michael has a Ship-It award and we've tried various times to destroy it--blowtorching, throwing it off the veranda, dowsing it with acetone to dissolve it--nothing works. It's so permanent, it's frightening.
First, Abe. If Abe were a Jeopardy! contestant, his seven dream 
categories would be: 
  • Intel assembly language
  • Bulk shopping
  • C++
  • Introversion
  • "I love my aquarium"
  • How to have millions of dollars and not let it affect your life in any way
  • Unclean laundry

Next, Todd. Todd's seven Jeopardy! categories would be:

  • Your body is your temple
  • Baseball hats
  • Meals made from combinations of Costco products
  • Psychotically religious parents
  • Frequent and empty sex
  • SEGA Genesis gaming addiction
  • The Supra
Bug Barbecue's seven Jeopardy! categories would be: 
  • Bitterness
  • Xerox PARC nostalgia
  • Macintosh products
  • More bitterness
  • Psychotic loser friends
  • Jazz
  • Still more bitterness
Finally, Michael. Michael's seven Jeopardy! categories would be: 
  • FORTRAN
  • Pascal
  • Ada (defense contracting code)
  • LISP
  • Neil Peart (drummer for Rush)
  • Hugo and Nebula Award winners
  • Sir Lancelot
I learned a new word today: "trephination"--drilling a hole in the skull to 
relieve pressure on the brain.

I went to Uwajima-Ya and bought some UFO yaki soba noodles, the ones that 
steep in hot water in their own little plastic bowl. Amid all the 
lunch-with-Bill foofaraw, Karla and me managed to eat together. I asked her 
what her seven Jeopardy! dream categories would be--I told her about 
everyone else's, and she considered these as she twisted the yaki soba 
noodles in the little plastic dish, and then she said "they would have to 
be:" 
  • Orchards
  • Labrador dogs
  • The history of phone pranks
  • Crime novels
  • Intel chips
  • Things HAL says in 2001 and,
  • My parents are psychopaths.
And this got me thinking: I looked around and noticed that if you took all 
of the living things on the Microsoft Campus, separated them into piles and 
analyzed the biomass, it would come out to: 
  • 38% Kentucky bluegrass
  • 19% human beings
  • .003% Bill
  • 8% Douglas and balsam fir
  • 7% Western red cedar
  • 5% hemlock
  • 23% other: crows, birch, insects, worms, microbes, nerd aquarium fish, decorator plants in the lobbies...
Personal Computer
I am your personal computer

Hello

Stop Being Carbon

CNN 666

Lenscrafters                              airbag
magnetic ID card                          employee number
instant noodles                           birth
dodecahedron                              ATM

Lawry's Garlic Salt

808 Honolulu                              702 Las Vegas
503 Klamath Falls                         206 Tacoma
604 Victoria                              916 Shasta

oatmeal                                   laxatives
cherry flavored antacids                  Rubbermaid
holodeck                                  Courtyard Marriott
Sierra                                    Big Gulp
NCC-1701                                  liquid money
Schroder Wagg/London                      Rank Xerox





Welcome to Macintosh                      Carl's Jr


Gore-Tex                                  gray metallic Saabs

Barry Diller KISS

minibars                                  frequent flyer points
ads for pearls                            Oscar de la Renta
outer space                               minimum wage


manufacture
dungeons


magazine scent strips                     flame broiled
Bell Atlantic                             switchbox
phone jacks                               the DMV
F-16                                      MiG-29
Calvin Klein                              Han Solo
bourgeois decay images                    Download
Upload                                    Drive
Sparkletts                                Tori Spelling


Advil Kotex

Rosslyn                                    Langley
You jerk                                   Lee Press-ons




I went to the library and looked up books on freeway construction--the
asphalt and cement kind--Dewey Decimal number 625.79--and there haven't been
any published on the subject for two decades! it's bizarre--like a murder 
mystery. It's as if the notion of freeway construction simply vanished in 
1975. Sizzler titles include:
  • Bituminous Materials in Road Construction
  • Surface Texture Versus Skidding
  • Engineering Study: Alaska Highway
  • Better Concrete Pavement Serviceability
  • Vehicle Redirection Effectiveness of Medium Berms and Circles
At the Bellvue Starbucks, Karla and I discussed the unprecedented success 
of Campbell's Cream of Broccoli Soup. On a napkin we listed ideas for new 
Campbell's soup flavors:
  • Creamy Dolphin
  • Lagoon
  • Beak
  • Pond
  • Crack
Capture
specific
functions

Microsoft Navajo

NASA                                       Kristy McNichol
Flesh-eating bacteria                      Lance Kerwin
Arthur Hiller                              skateboard


trail mix                                  job description
PERL                                       toner cartridge


very                                       a lot

really ummmm...

Martin-Marietta

Industrial Light & Magic                   We're just friends
jump                                       run
hit                                        multi-user dungeon

Ziggy Stardust                             Wells Fargo
SkyTel paging                              Safeway
FORTRAN                                    hummingbird
IKEA                                       I am an empath


4x4 Kung-Fu Death Star platform

oligarchy                                  Kraft singles
Highway 92                                 cordless
Deuteronomy                                brain ded
Staples                                    Silo
Pearle Express                             an executive lifestyle


Maybelline implicator

Insert                                     Format
Font                                       Tools




Sierra nevada Pale Ale                     starburst explosion
Cedars Sinai                               Gak


UNDO

Ctrl Z Ctrl Z Ctrl Z

Phoenix                                    LA Lakers
Cleveland                                  San Antonio
Luis Vuitton                               bubble economy
Kalashnikov                                Creamsicles
Waxahachie                                 Livermore

the place for ribs

Taylor Sequences                           Bleeding eyeliner
frog                                       Colossal




UV rays

...arms armor ammo health

Brillo                                     backlit Plexiglas
Chicken Marsala                            N x S x T

WW3 Tetris

Tonopah, Nevada                            cat food
locate the source of urges                 System Seven
Woodside                                   8
Los Altos Hills                            17
San Jose                                   32
Space Cruiser                              487

Superstar COBOL

Fear Uncertainty Doubt                      Steak house
Crashed in a cornfield                      Calorie factory


Format?                                     Reject?




Susan read aloud bits from the Handbook of Highway Engineering:

"'Improperly installed or unwarranted signals can result in the following 
conditions:

	--Excessuive delay
	--Disobedience of the signal indications
	--Use of less adequate routes to avoid the signal
	--Increase of accident frequency...'"

    She paused and looked at the fire for a while. "I wonder if this guy is 
alive and if he's married?"




Space Needle 1962

Mattel
C+++++++++++
silver lens sunglasses                      Redmond


                                                        Schaumberg, Ill.
                                                   Interstate 80/287, NJ
                                                Dallas Galleria/LBJ Fwy.
                                    Torrey Pines/UTC Sorrento Valley,CA.
                                                    Metroplex/Irvine,Ca.
                                               King of Prussia/Route 202

Tandy Corp., Fort Worth, Texas 76107


relentless...
crispy...

fluids...

200 years from now

Ebola Reston

Marburg                                     Michaelangelo
Hepatitis non-A/non-B                       Machupo
Ebola Zaire                                 Rift Valley
Sabia                                       Hanta




   He sent us a rough draft of a product description he's written plus ERS--
Engineering Requirements Specifications, Herewith:



Oop!

Oop! is a virtual construction box of 3D Lego-type bricks that runs 
   on IBM or Mac platforms with CD-ROM drives. If a typical Lego-type brick 
   has eight "bumps"; an Oop! brick can have from eight to 8,000 bumps, 
   depending on the precision demanded by the user.
Oop! users can virtually fly in and out of their creations, or 
   they can print them out on a laser printer. Oop!users can build their 
   ideas on a "pad" or they can build their ideas in 3D space, a revolving 
   space station; running ostriches... whatever. Oop! allows users to 
   clone structures, and add these clones onto each other, permitting easy 
   megaconstructions that use little memory. Customized Oop! blocks can 
   be created and saved. The ratios and proportions of Oop! bricks can 
   also be customized by the user in much the same way typefaces are scaled.

Imagine:
"Oopenstein"--flesh-like Oop! bricks or cells, each ascribed biological 
   functions that allow users to create complex life forms using combinations 
   of single and cloned cell structures. Create life!
"Mount Oopmore"--a function that allows users to take a scanned
   photo, texture map that photo, and convert it into a 3D visualized Oop! 
   object.
"Oop-Mahal"--famous buildings, preconstructed in Oop!, that the user
   can then modify as desired.
"Frank Lloyd Oop"--architectural Oop! for adults.

As Oop! users won't have the actual plastic blocks in their hands, Oop! 
   generates new experiences to compensate for this lost tactility: feedback 
   loops...hidden messages...or "rewards" for properly completing a kit; 
   i.e., King Kong will climb up and down your Empire State Building and 
   install the flag if you finish. Oop! comes equipped with "starter 
   modules" such as houses, cat shapes, cars, buildings, and so forth that 
   can be added on to or modified or finished in an unlimited number of 
   colors or surfaces: slate, leopardskin, woodgrain, and so forth. Oop!
   structures can grow hair or plant life. Oop! strcutures can be 
   distorted, stretched, morphed, or "Jell-O'd." Oop! users can dissolve
   the connection lines between bricks to create "solid" structures.

Oop! constructions can be saved in memory or they can be destroyed by:
"Los Angeles" (earthquake simulator)
"Pyro" (fire and melting)
"Ruins" (decay simulator: x-numbers of years of decomposition can be 
   selected and simulated. Imagine your ranch house rotted into fragments
   and covered in kudzu or a variety of choking vines. Another idea: 
   "Flood")
"Big Foot" (elder sibling emulator: kicks construction into bits)
"Terror!" (a bomb explodes either inside or outside the structure)

As the Lego Generation ages (and as the Oop! product invariably grows
   more sophisticated), Oop! becomes a powerful real-world modeling tool
   usable by scientists, animators, contractors, and architects. Object 
   Oriented Programming design allows great flexibility for licensees to 
   develop cross-platform software add-ons.

                                   Build every possible universe with...
                                              Oop!




Q: If there were two of you, which one would win?

Jeffersonian individualism
victim                                      loser
winner                                      thief

http://www.city.palo-alto.ca/

Lexus.cel.phone.traffic.

My body type was in last year



                                                   We can no longer create
                                     the feeling of an era...of time being
                                           particular to one spot in time.




1999: The people were lying on the ground.





Demonize the symbolic analysis You're smarter than TV. So what?

Uranium and Beethoven.


Define random                               Ezekiel
MFD-2DD                                     Sony





nCube computers simulating the Tokyo power grid

They left a dead escalator, chewed and torn lying on the
                pavement like a dead gray candy necklace.

Imagine:
In Florida the wind is rattling the chimes.
You look over the alligators and
the sea grass and water. There it is:
The rocket's burn. The best century ever.
We were here. But now it's time to go.


The past is a finite resource.



Shinhatsubai!

You may have alreday won!

Technology of mythic strength given surrealistic
applications.

Socially disengaged meritocratic elites.


                         Sporting goods stores always smell like the most
                                                        advanced plastics.







Did the neutron bomb ever actually get built?




I erased the office voice mail message that has served me well for the past
six months:
"Thank you for phoning the powerful Underwood personal messaging center.
   Press one for Broyhill furniture
   Press two for STP, the racer's edge
   Press three for the roomy, affordable Buick Skylark
   Press four for Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat
   Press five for Turtle Wax
   Press six for Dan
   Press pound to repeat this menu."




I'm driving up Interstate 5. It is raining and I remember I have to pick up paper towels and decaffeinated coffee at Costco.

And did you fell about that?

Mom... Dad...

I'm okay. I am not being starved, or beaten, or
                                           unnecessarily frightened.



Dropshadow lettering
Granite backgrounds
Hand
Held
Game
This is the end of the Age of Authenticity.

Oracle                                      Ampex
NeXT                                        Electronic Arts




Garage sale day...
...Also for sale:
  • Japan Airlines inflatable 747
  • official Hulk Hogan WWF focus-free 110 signature camera
  • antique Ghostbuster squeeze toys
  • Nick the Greek professional gambling home board game
  • Ping-Pong table
  • shoe box full of squirt guns
  • blenders (2)
  • vegetable juicer
  • dehumidifier
  • unopened cans of aerosolized cheese food product
  • M.C. Escher pop-up books
  • far too many Dilophosaurus figurines
  • huge Sony box full of collected Styrofoam packing peanuts and packing chunks from untold assorted consumer electronics

National Enquirer:

"Loni's Diary Rips Burt Apart"

He threatened her with a 
gun in jealous rage
He locked her out of her
honeymoon suite
He hid vodka in water
bottles

PLUS:

Burt: "I wanted to
ditch her at the altar."
Exclusive interview on his
tell-all book

                               I do not want this to be me.




Cars for the trip:
                         Me:    Michael's Acura
                      Karla:    her Microbus
                       Todd:    his Supra
              Susan and Bug:    their Tauri with U-Haul trailers




Personal Computer

Stars drinking glasses wrapped in tissue paper burnt arbonite dial telephones

Ethan's nine blender settings are labeled with little LaserWriter labels in
7-point Franklin Gothic:

	1) Asleep
	2) In-flite movie
	3) Disneyland at age 25
	4) Good $8.00 movie
	5) IMAX with Dolby
	6) Lunch w/D. Geffen and B. Diller
	7) Disneyland at age 10
	8) Aneurysm
	9) Spontaneous combustion




Should some future historian ever feel the need to duplicate an SF coffee
bar circa The Dawn of Multimedia, they will require the following:
  • thrashed PowerBooks covered with snowboarding and Chiquita banana stickers
  • a bad early 1980s stereo (the owner's old system, after he upgraded his own personal system)
  • used mismatched furniture
  • bad oil paintings (vaginal imagery/exploding eye/nails protruding from raw paint)
  • a cork bulletin board (paper messages!)
  • sullen, most likely stoned, undergrads
  • multi-pierced bodies
  • a few weird, leftover 1980s people in black leather coats and black-dyed hair
  • nightclub flyers
Learned a new word today: "interiority"--it means, being inside somebody's
head




Habitrail 2 also features:
  • 4-fingered cartoon gloves
  • ubiquitous Nerfiana
  • 24 Donna Karan coffee mugs (long story)
  • a decaf coffe tin labeled "666"
  • GoBot transformer-type toys
  • Glass beads at the door, like the ones Rhoda Morgenstern had
  • herbal tea packets and tea-making apparatus
  • several Game Boys
  • three 4'-x-8' dry-erase wall boards
  • a diet 7-UP pyramid
  • an extensive manga collection
  • T2 spin-off merchandise
  • one Flipper thermos
Microsoft     Apple
     waiting for the stock to vest     trying to get laid off
                      "the Campus"     "the Campus"
                        make money     "1.0" sensibility
                     Microsoft Way     Infinite Loop
                              Bill     (no longer any equivalent)
                        Apple envy     Microsoft envy
         boring buildings/good art     good buildings/art a sideline only
                 better cafeterias     better nerd toys
                      soccer field     scuplture garden
                             I-520     I-280
                             Intel     Motorola
                  average age:31.2     average age:31.9
                        gray Lexus     white Ford Explorer
not wild at creating new things but    good at creating new things but not
            good on follow-through     wild on follow-through
                       no one ever     no one got fired...until
                        gets fired     the layoffs started
    wacky titles on business cards     wacky titles on business cards
          eerie, Logan's  Run-like     eerie, Logan's  Run-like
                        atmosphere     atmosphere
              uneasy IBM symbiosis     uneasy IBM fusion
                  13,200 employees     14,500 employees
           people hired in 1991-92     people hired from colleges
             being shuffled around     in 1988-89 being turfed
                stock set to split     stock price at cash liquidation
                                       value of company; now's the
                                       time to buy




I saw doves and I thought they were rocks, but they were
asleep. My breath made them stir, and the rocks
took flight, the earth
exploding...and my only thought was that
I wanted you to see them, too

The man from Whirlpool came to fix the
washer today, and he found Black Widow spiders nesting 
underneath its broken engine, and
he showed me the web, and I found myself thinking of catch-
ing you, biting you, spinning you within my
limbs and setting you free

Don't tell me this isn't true.

                                            Tell me you fell this fire


Oxydol throw cushion Revell binder paper makeover lipstick

The liquid engineers left the pool
heater on too long, and at night, chlorine vapors
rose above the plant life of the planet, and I
imagined my flesh,
being inside the pool, being warm, and protected, feeling
gravity, but able to mock it as I floated. Would
you float with me now, if I asked you, would you jump in the
pool and not even bother to strip? Could I strip you
down, remove your clothing and we would fall inside the water together?

It scares me.

              I don't want to lose you. I can't imagine ever feeling this
                            strongly about anything or anybody ever again.

This was unexpected, my soul's connection to you.

You stole my loneliness
            No one knows that I was wishing for you, a thief, to enter my
                     house of autonomy, that I had locked my doors but my
                   Windows were open, hoping, but not believing, you
                                                             would enter.




The 8 Models of Interactivity (as far as I can see)
i) The Arcade model
Like Terminator: kill or be killed.

ii) The Coffee Table Book model
Enter anywhere/leave anywhere; pointless in the end; zero replayability
factor.

iii) The Universe Creation model
I built you and I can crush you.

iv) The Binary Tree model
Limited number of options; read from left to right; tightly controlled mini-
dramas.

v) The Pick-a-Path model
Does our hero smooch with Heather Locklear, or not-you decide! Expensive.
Unproven entertainment value. Audiences don't pay money to work.

vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents: half-formed personalities roaming 9in packs) in search of
identity.

vii) The Agatha Christie model
A puzzle is to be solved using levels, clues, chases, and exploration.

viii) Experience Simulation models
Flight simultors, sport games.




"Embedded intelligence":(Intelligence buried in the nooks and
crannies of code and storyboard design).




unraveled brown cassette tape on the freeway

Staples PIN number CK-one basketball hoop

If we were machines,

we'd have the gift of being eternal and I want you to understand




    "You never heard about people 'not having lives' until about five years
ago, just when all of the '80s technologies really penetrated our lives." He
listed them off:

	"VCRs
	tape rentals
	PCs
	modems
	answering machines
	touch tone dialing
	cellular phones
	cordless phones
	call screening
	phone cards
	ATMs
	fax machines
	Federal Express
	bar coding
	cable TV
	satellite TV
	CDs
	calculators of almost other-worldly power that are so cheap
	    that they practically come free with a tank of gas."




SpaghettiOs                                 What's My Line
Aspirin                                     Jell-O simulator
invasion                                    Russian winter


Q: What animal would you be if you could be an animal?

A: You already are an animal




I am Bill's machine

I may be the largest machine that will ever be built.
                      I may be the richest machine that will ever be built.
                I may be the most powerful machine that will ever be built.

Raised with Cheerios and station wagons. Diagonal-slotted parking stalls of the Northgate mall.

As a child I once drove in a sedan's backseat along Interstate 5 and
looking out the windows I saw my city beside the sea, dreaming in
airplanes and wood; metal and rock ballads...better ways of living.
Golden sun falling on this city that wanted for more; sailboats atop
the golden water.

Pocket calculators                          cheeseburgers
sneakers                                    Datsun

The challenge of newness

Saturday morning cartoons recycling programs crying Indians.

You think you can live without me, but try.

You desire images of a better tomorrow;
I feed you these images.

You dream of a world in which your ego will not dissolve.

                                            I am the architect of the arena.

Reconsider your notions of what you think will rescue
you from a future sterilized of progress.




Everybody's decided what title to put on the business cards Susan designed.

	Bug: "Information Leafblower"
	Todd: "Personal Trainer"
	Karla: "Who can turn the world on with a smile?"
	Susan: "Her name is Rio."
	Me: "Crew Chief"
	Ethan: "Liquid Engineer"
	Michael: "You're Soaking In It"




Windows Win7ows cQndo#s 2ind5ws &_s4Zaa 5@sFAz cozrPa Pzraoc zocPar aPzroc

My brain is built of paths and slides and ladders and lasers and I
have invited all of you to enter its pavillion. My brain, as you enter,
will smell of tangerines and brand-new running shoes.


                                                               HELLO
                                                         My name is:
                                                                UNIX

Friend or Foe

I learned a great new word today: "deletia." When you send an e-mail and
reply to the sender, you simply obliterate everything they sent you and then,
in small square brackets, write:

                                 [deletia]

       It stands for everything that's been lost.




So Todd hacked together a quick in-house version in our network, called
RumorMeister. It got way out of control almost immediately:

1) SUSAN SHOPS AT TARGET BUT PUTS HER STUFF IN NORDSTROM BAGS
2) DANIEL SELLS HIS USED BOXERS VIA MAIL ORDER
...$5.00 PER DAY OF WEAR
3) BUG SWEATS TO THE OLDIES
4) DAN...THOSE DOCKERS...HIP!
5) TODD HAS SAGGY NIPPLES FROM TOO MUCH BODY BUILDING THEY'RE CALLED
'BITCH TITS'
5) TODD WEARZ DEPENDS WHEN HE BENCH PRESSES BECUZ UTHERWIZE HE'LL EVACUATE
HIS BOELS ON THE BENCH
7) KARLA PAID TO SEE "THE BODY GUARD"
8) BUG LAUGHS AT GARFIELD CARTOONS
9) KARLA CAN'T ACCESSORIZE
10) SUSAN HAS COMBINATION SKIN
11) TODD SMOKES 'MORE' CIGARETTES
12) I CAN HEAR KARLA'S COLOSTOMY BAG SLOSHING
13) ETHAN'S FERRARI IS A KIT CAR
14) ETHAN BUYS TIRES AT SEARS
15) BUG LOVES BARNEY
16) KARLA THINKS SHE'S A SUMMER BUT SHE'S REALLY A FALL
17) BUG HAS 2 RAFFI CASSETTES
18) DAN HAS A YANNI CD IN HIS CAR
19) ETHAN'S VISA LIMIT IS $3,000
20) SUZAN'Z BOYCRAZY SUZAN'Z BOYCRAZY SUZAN'Z BOYCRAZY SUZAN'Z BOYCRAZY 
SUZAN'Z BOYCRAZY
21) DAN: LISTERINE KILLS GERMS THAT CAN CAUSE BAD BREATH
22) DAN STILL LIVES WITH HIS MOTHER
23) BUG SHOPS AT CHESS KING
24) MICHAEL'S SHIRT SMELL LIKE GERBIL PEE

    Todd quickly removed the program from the system.




NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

Me:     to penetrate the Apple complex
Karla:  undisclosed (doesn't want to jinx)
Ethan:  to slow down time
Todd:   visit junkyards more often, to bench 420, and
        to have a relationship
Susan:  to hack into the DMV and to have a relationship
Bug:    to overhaul his image and to have a relationship




680X0

a burning Lego Los Angeles                  moon
880 Nimitz Freeway                          Premium Saltine crackers
Control and the feeling of mastery          I Robot


The Apollo rocket designers and the NASA engineers of
Houston and Sunnyvale grew up in the 1930s and 1940s dreaming
of Buck Rogers and the exoterrestrial
meanderings of Amazing Stories. When this aerospace
generation grew old enough, they chose to make those dreams
in metal.




Champaign-Urbana

Her parents are engineers but that wasn't enough to keep them together.

Pull the wires from the wall






							Chelyabinsk-70




Bulimia Top Ten List:
  • several buckets of Häägen-Dazs strawberry
  • two large spaghetti dinners
  • large box of Godiva chocolates
  • stack of eight grilled cheese sandwiches with ketchup
  • entire cheesecake
  • two dozen chocolate pudding cups
  • four hundred grapes
  • bucket of McDonald's french fries
  • even larger box of Godiva chocolates
  • largest box of chocolates in the universe
Dusty was trying to tell us all about "Mehrwert"--surplus value per
unit of time/labor: "A worker creates more value than that for which he is
compensated. You know?"




Susan told us today what our characters and powers would be if we were on
Star Trek:
Michael:
Disembodied neocortex afloat inside a tabk of nutrient-bearing solution; has ability to see back and forth in time; communicates via LEDs and a synchronized swim team of hybridized dolphins living in a satellite-linked inlet on the Goa Coast.
Todd:
Repairer of broken machines; has tools instead of fingers; regulation hunk required by TV network to stimulate sales of tie-in merchandise; able to telepathically determine sexual coefficient of alien beings; skin can turn to gold by beaming himself to the planet Tanfastic.
Karla:
Crew Biologist; able to camouflage feeling with scientific theories; superior intelligence allows for dominance over all males or spore-bearing entities.
Me:
Token earthling; prey to foibles and pratfalls of all humanity (thanks Susan).
Bug:
Feathered creaturepicked up in sympathy from a collapsing Throm Nebula; most likely to say uncontrolled angry things about fellow cast and crew members to Entertainment Tonight years after the series ends up in syndication...lack of Screen Actors Guild residuals plus an addiction to cosmetic surgery will provide an inpetus.
Susan herself:
Priestess of the Right Lobe; erotic female interest demanded by TV networks; will devour males if overly excited; designs castles while sleepwalking; flawless plastic skin; thighs conceal bevatron guns.
Dusty:
Bionic creature from a destroyed Valley planet; disciplinarian; feeds on X rays; arms contain snakes that will fight her wars.
Ethan:
Bearer of the Dark Force; can transmute feces into uranium; owns hyperspace cruiser that can vanish and reappear at any moment across time, space, and money.
Abe:
Wise hermit cast adrift on asteroid for thousands of years; has developed odd code languages for everyday actions; lonely but not bitter; his heart is cryogenically frozen, and he must search the universe pursuing the Thawer.
CAP'N CRUNCH:
Reason this cereal is decadent:
a) Colonial exploiter pursues naïve Crunchberry cultures to plunder.
b) Drunkenness, torture, and debauchery implicit in long ocean cruises.

SUGAR FROSTED FLAKES:
Reason this cereal is decadent:
Silky throated military-industrial complex spokestoad "Tony the Tiger"
exploits the need of the undereducated underclass for a paternalistic,
Reagan-like figure. A cautionary tale of the perils of not indoctrinating
at the crÈche level.

TRIX:
Reason this cereal is decadent:
Well-meaning rabbit, "Trix," kept in continual state of malnutrition/
subservience by dominant children of the parasitic bourgeoisie. "Silly
rabbit, Trix are for kids" can only be construed as a call to class
warfare.

LUCKY CHARMS:
Reason this cereal is decadent:
Man with no known adult friends lures children into forest for purpose
of nutritonal (ideological) seduction. Sprightly twinkle motif on
packaging (putatively an allusion to "flavor") are, in fact, metaphors
for soul-deadening sucrose.

RICE KRISPIES:
Reason this cereal is decadent:
Snap, Krackle, and Pop thinly veiled emblems for the Trilateral Commission.

COCOA PUFFS:
Reason this cereal is decadent:
"I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs," the demented cackle of Sonny the
Cocoa Puffs bird/spokesmuppet, is resonant with the insanity inherent in 
the needless enslavement of the proletariat.

COUNT CHOCULA-FRANKENBERRY:
Reason this cereal is not decadent:
Gay relationship offers an excellent role model for this new era of
diversity. Witty empire motif plays on never-ending struggle of the
oppressed to topple the ruling classes.




FISHER PRICE minifigs versus LEGO minifigs

Fisher-Price Minifigs:
Plus:	limbless figures give children a feeling of helplessness
Minus:	faces resemble those of beloved but unfunny cartoon characters
	in FamilyCircus

Plus:	generic, Gap-like outfits
Minus:	height/weight-disproportionate bodies imply eating disorders:
	bad role model for millennial youth yearning to be functional.

Lego Minifigs:

Plus:	interchangeable, unisex hairdos
Minus:	clawlike hands are scary and potentially traumatizing

Plus:	bodies can be incorporated into architecture
Minus:	bad fashions




The Eight Laws of Multimedia Hiring:
				1)
Always ask a person, "What have you shipped in the last two years?"
That's all you should really ask. If they haven't shipped anything in the
last two years, ask, "So what's your excuse?"
				2)
The "job-as-life phase" lasts for maybe ten years. Nab 'em when they're
young, and make sure they never grow old.
				3)
You can't trsut a dog that's bitten you. You wouldn't want to employ someone
who you can steal away from another company in the middle of a project.
				4)
The industry is made up of gifted techies or smart generalists--the people
who were bored with high school--the sort of people the teacher was
always telling, "Now Abe, you could get As if you really wanted to, Why
don't you just apply yourself?" Look for these people--the talented
generalists. They're good as project and product managers. They're the
same people who would have gone into advertising in 1973.
				5)
One psycho for every nine stable people in the company is a good ratio. Too
many maniacally-driven people can backfire on you. Balanced people are
better for the long-term stability of the company.
				6)
Start-up companies beware: kids fresh out of school invariably bail out
after a few years and join the big tech monocultures in search of stability.
				7)
People are most ripe for pilfering from tech monocultures in their mid-to-
late 20s.
				8)
The upper age limit of people with instincts for this business is about 40.
People who were over 30 at the beginning of the late 1970s PC revolution
missed the boat; anyone older is like a Delco AM car radio.




I went to Price-Costco. My weekly job is to purchase in-office snacks, all
setup in an IKEA skelf unit in the kitchen. Everything costs 75¢.

	Mr. Noodles (for Dusty)
	Pop-Tarts
	hot chocolate mix
	Cup·A·Soup
	granola bars
	Chee·tos
	Famous Amos cookies
	Fig Newtons
	microwave popcorn
	BBQ potato chips




   We then got into a discussion of Nerd Schools and the end of the era of
"single-dose" education--and of course this led to a listing of schools
that had the best nerd reputations.
  • Cal-Tec (Extreme nerds; the Jet Propulsion Lab is just up the hill and around the corner. The big rumor is that they had to institute pass-or-fail grading because there were too many GPA-related suicides.)
  • CMU
  • MIT
  • Stanford
  • Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (for undergrads)
  • Waterloo
  • UC Berkeley
  • Dartmouth
  • Brown--"Hipster nerd school with a good undergrad comp-sci program."

Melrose Voyager Melrose Voyager

"Press pound now..."




vasectomy reversal billboard
breakfast                                   moccasins
Siegfried & Roy                             Sahara
Compaq                                      Nokia
NY Steak & Eggs $2.95                       47-Tek

control. remote. keno

forgotten cocktails
social interface                            name tag
cardboard IBM box                           cheddar
is it loud?                                 interactive virgin
tanked girl                                 Flamingo
reflective surfaces                         dry ice
Heywood Floyd American Moon
cities destroyed                                  fight
win win win                                       morphin mighty
Nam-1975                                          VFX-1
monster lab                                       colonize
air lock                                          thrust
Bob                                               boy game
orb                                               64 bits
tatami                                            pods
rings                                             Softimage
object popping                                    anti alias
lemon                                             BAR




trilinear MIPmap interpolation

Ultra 64 gravy

Samsung paper napkin cherry

synthetic
                                                       emotional
                                                        response
Nye County, Nevada                          Dept. of Energy
traffic lights                              White Tigerzoid
computer personal                           floral carpeting
Howard Hughes Parkway                       *69


cinderblock walls                     escort leaflets
First Interstate                      00
implant                               beverage
strip                                 bell
Big Indian                            I Endian




Sands

stolen watches abandoned wedding rings

buried cinderblocks full of $100 bills.

You want to surrender.

Subjected to the random, you acknowledge your inability to
comprehend logic and linear systems.


21

royal flush                     three lemons
barbecue sauce                  plastic bucket
garage door openers             woofer
antenna                         touch-tone
La Quinta                       calling card

We generate stories for you because you don't save the ones that are yours.

plane window                     green squares
towers                           lights
telephone lines                  baggage

The New World dream

The extended arm
The caravan traversing a million miles of prairie
Cross the uncrossable
Make that journey and build the road along the way.


You succeeded at memory-creation beyond all wildest dreams




Hanshin Expressway

Stephen Hawking walking through quiet rooms pointing out things
you've never seen before.

Mitsukoshi department store, Kobe, Japan, at a 45-degree angle, its
contents smashed against walls

Western Washington State, minus Seattle's metro region, is
assigned a new area code, 360, effective January 15, 1995

R U Japanese?

thin blood                                  rear-view mirror
Nirvana Unplugged                           Hawaii
what I wanted                               what really happened
Nikkei Index                                Embolus
Cerebrovascular event                       Possible reversibility

Monsterbreaker

Mothermaker                                 Kidnapper
System-beater                               Codebreaker
Sharkprincess                               Keypadburner
Skywalker                                   Clot

Godseeker

Braineater