Currently, the oldest known evidence of me on the net, googlewise, is a post I made to bug-gnu-smalltalk back in 1994. I think I was trying to learn C++ at the time and decided to try Smalltalk because people said it was easier. Just the other day I downloaded Python and finding this old post made me wonder if Python is today's Smalltalk.

BTW, I believe I _was_ on a 386 with a 387

As of last May, the list was like a ghost town, or should I say, landfill? Kind of sad to see a place which once had so much intellectual might now reduced to a spambucket.

What are you waiting for? Do your own vanity search today! It's completely FREE!

Party people say hoooh. It's the 5.

David and Adam and I couldn't think of a thing to do Friday night but we shoulda gone here. We went to Magic Donuts instead, which used to be Hunts Donuts -- and used to battle for best sign in the Mission with the 5. Now it just battles the city to keep from getting shut down. The city actually threatened to confiscate their business because they were considered such a nuisance and safe harbor for vagrants and criminals. Straightup confiscate their whole business. Like they were terrorists or bootleggers. Can you believe it?

Just down the street from the Arsenal Grounds in London.

If you go to ABC's World News Now website and click on the webcast (on from 11pm-1am pacific time) you can watch the RAW FEED. Which is pretty interesting given that this is already a pretty loose broadcast and you get only one camera and always get to watch the 'casters even when they go to commercial. It's awesome. All in a beautiful 300kbps Real stream. You can chat with the hosts also.

Tonight Liz Cho was all business (studying her notes instead of goofing off with the cue-card guy) because she was new and filling in for Alison Stewart who was on assignment. I'm sure she's very professional but she always does the obligatory "pick the papers up off the desk and tap them down" as if her broadcast vocabulary is limited to the moves they teach in journalism school. Just before a sports broadcast she started talking about a blooper on the business report: "And it's gonna be playing all day." And Derek, the veteran's advice: "You gotta let it go. You gotta let it go. Just say, Ok, that stunk, I'll do better tomorrow." I've always loved this show ever since Aaron Brown was plucked from my local station in Seattle to start WNN. I missed him dearly. I did. But the new show was stamped with his personality from the start. A direct, open, and witty newsman. They reported that he's leaving the show he started and going to CNN.

Be sure to hang in for the World News Polka at the end. I kept the stream running and so did they -- the camera, unmanned, staring off into the news room. It was 15 minutes before they threw up the color bars. It seems to be a newscast designed for voyeurs.

I figgered out a quick and dirty little thing if you just want to backdate one day: Put this at the top of your post, say you're posting on Thursday, May 31:

<span class=date style="margin:0px;">Wednesday, May 30</span>

This will create a fake date header. When reading the posts, you can't really tell the difference. Make sure you use the same date format as is used in your site. I suppose you could use this any time, but the posts won't sort properly. You need the margin:0px because if the .date style in your stylesheet has margin:10px your "fakedate" will be indented. it does this because with .date now inside of the .posts block (with it's own 10px margin) you get a 20px margin.

Yeeeaaah dog!

At 5th and Bryant, blowin' the last few frames off a roll before going into The New Lab.

With the sun all shinin' an everything lookin' beautiful, I wanted to put my skate back in the limelight. MMMM, limes and light: two of the most important things in my life right now.

This is almost purely a record. I don't think there is much of interest in it for anyone but myself. This is not an apology, just a warning. (Come to think of it, this post is almost completely an apology/explanation for missing my deadline. Nobody gives a shit except for me.)

I saw Karen today. I haven't done that for years. She's still the same but everything's changed around her. Loft in Dogpatch, BMW 300 series, possible summer home in Greece or Italy. I kept staring at her and she kept going, "What? What?" and I just shook my head and said I can't believe it. The way she piloted her beamer around, the way she stressed over her stocks and her exquisite command of BFR (big fucking router) terminology. To me, it was like seeing the ghost of Christmas Future that never came to be. In '97 I was on that same tack - marriage, house, car, etc. She still smoked like a sailor, with the coffin nail hanging out of the corner of her mouth. She still had miles of attitude. We drank wine and talked and her cat walked on me. We drove down Indiana street and admired the waterfront (including the smokestack, which you can see from her place, pictured below).

I wanted to take her on a walk around North Beach. It was hotter than hell. When you hang out with someone for the first time in 8 years you generally try to be pretty agreeable. I think Karen was being agreeable. First we stopped and that place called Enrico's. I've never been there before -- only looked at the idiots eating there. Not that they were idiots for eating there -- just that they were idiots. And we got a table on the outside where Karen could continue chain smoking. There were 2 tall "attractive" blonds eating at the table next to where we were and I gave Karen the view of them. She said, "Don't you want to sit here?" and I said, "No way." And, as if we needed a demonstration of Newton's Third Law of Motion, (that every force, no matter how lame, has an equal and opposite force) there were 3 drunk guys standing up drinking (like the place was a friggin disco or something) next to our table. So I got to watch for 20 minutes while a guy got up the courage approach the two women. Soon the drama moved into Karen's view and I had only to watch his buddy give hand signals while Karen said things that I'm sure had enough air behind them to zoom right past my ears and into the middle of the pickup scene, "That's disgusting."

The guy was playing the "We're just visitors (aussie accent) and we don't know where to go!" thing and to our astonishment, the women went for it. The women proceeded to design their complete "dream day in SF" itinerary as if they were the guy's administrative assistants and also say offensive, couldn't-be-more-untrue-or-unhelpful things like, "It's Wednesday and it's hot so nobody's going to be out on the streets."

The guy's loud, drunk and possibly homosexual friend came by and figured it was time to get in on the action. He succeeded in impressing the women enough that at one point when he was gone, one of them said to the first guy, "Look, there's a bar around the corner called Tosca, if you ditch that asshole we'll meet you there." And the guy said, "Yeah, we're trying to get rid of him too." Thus they set into motion the comedy which played itself out for the next half an hour.

It's all slapstick and I'm not a slapstick writer so I'll just say that it ended with a restaurant patron putting his cigar out on the chin of the "ditchee" and one of the women doing that "oh god - smack the heel of your palm against your forehead" thing after the guy she'd fallen for had fallen over and knocked all the stuff off the host stand. They realized they had been fools, hailed a cab for them (which screeched up simultaneously as she stepped off the curb and flicked her long, skinny white arm in the air) and strode of down the neon-lit street.

It was 11:40 and I was afeared I'd not make the homestead in time to put in a Wednesday entry. Blogger doesn't let you backdate entries. Well, Karen drives fast but not that fast. We took the 280 back to Karen's place and I got in my stinky, dirty jalopy of a car (I used to be embarrassed that it was too nice) and went home.

Damn. I missed it today. This is supposed to be Wednesday's photo. That's the first time. I had a perfect record until I actually had something to do and somewhere to go. Oh well. Luckly I can postdate it.

This is a nice smokestack, eh? I think it's at the end of 19th off 3rd street.

This is tire beach. Oh, there's a lot of names for it, but believe me, I think we should go with "tire beach".

It is a subtle clue about how I'm feeling today.

Black Dice is playing down at a salsa bar next to Doc's Clock. Wonder how they managed that? I went by the door and the promoter guy was sweating from his neck even before they'd let anybody in. I guess this is why I live in America.

I was standing on the corner and some skaters came up to a scruffy looking youth and started talking to him and looking around. I had just removed 300 dollars from the Wells Fargo and I said, "You lookin for the punk show?" and they said, "Yeah" and I said, "Uh huh. Me too." (That was when I only knew it was at 22nd and Mission.) The pasty faced singer/terrorist from Black Dice came out the door of the club and that's how I knew where it was. When you see this guy you want to look at every inch of his body. Every article of clothing, every exposed area of flesh. He's immensely interesting only because he destroys bars and intimidates people for a living. He's a waif-like 5'3" and greasy hair hangs out of his baseball cap. You know, in that greasy hipster boy way where the ears stick out and the hair parts to the front and back. He's a sweaterboy, as my friend Aviva would say. He even has that shy demeanor, that, "I suck so bad" slump. All of these appearances are called into question when he wraps the mike cord around his fist and jumps on a table and kicks an indierock girl in the shoulder. I honestly don't know who that guy is. Don't ask me. I'm just a gawker.

London Tube with Gemma.

This is dedicated to Mr. Fred Rogers. I've got to find out if I can get collected Mr. Rogers Neighborhood episodes on DVD or something.....No, not possible. But I did order a tape of the Yo Yo Ma episode.

Mr. Rogers is my favorite show. It's just that it's only on at 6:30 in the morning. But gosh darn it if it isn't the most heartwarming thing you ever saw. He's so direct and fearless. He seems to have a direct line to my subconscious. It's as if he's beating back the whole of irony and pessimism and self-loathing with the wooden hanger he hangs his sweater up on. Especially in a vintage show where he's still got some snap in those fingers. He turns to the camera and says, "Yeah, 'cause I am your Television Friend. And your mine. You make each day a special day -- by just your being you. 'Cause there isn't another person in the whole world like you." If you stay up all night and watch it with the sunrise I guarantee you'll bawl your head off.

They should show this stuff in prime time instead of "When Animals Attack" or whatever they show nowadays. If you aren't getting the warm buzz from it then at least you can laugh your ass off at it. Like the amazing flying trolley that appeared in the land of make-believe today. What a wonderful thing. I bet it must be full of surprises too. Hi Lady Aberlin. (My god. What a hottie.) You know French don't you? We think the trolley speaks French. Do you think you could talk to the flying French trolley? We're having trouble understanding its "belling". Uh, oh, she doesn't bell in French very well.

Remember, you can bring your own ideas to whatever happens on the computer. And your ideas are special. And so are you. meow-meow-mow-special-meow-mow Conrflake S. Pecially.

I'm a bastard. I just realized it as I was washing the hair tonic off my hands. Christ almighty, is that my problem? I can only wonder. I don't know any other bastards. In that sense, I suppose I've risen above my station. There must be lots of bastards out there. I thought of it because I just watched a documentary on PBS about a Korean woman who was basically sold to an orphanage so that she could be adopted by an American couple. She's having a hard time reconciling of course. She feels alienated from her white parents. (Sooo white. And Sooo alien they are.) And yet, she can't hang with the Korean folks. Bummer. But at least she's going for it. It made me think about getting my shit on with my bio-parents. Primarily ol' Richard Britt down there in Florida. He's probably gonna die soon if he hasn't yet. Forget about Michelle Hafner up in Seattle. She's a friggin basket case and I've given her more than enough chances. Dick down in Florida accepted and then refused to reply to a certified letter asking for his help in providing genetic and hereditary information to his bastard son -- me. "Fuck that bastard", he probably said (in a southern accent).
Wait..wait.....

From: "Grahn, Johan"
To: "Positive Atheism" [editor@positiveatheism.org]
Subject: Yes, yes I know. I'm a bastard!
Date: Tuesday, October 24, 2000 8:25 AM

Cliff!

How are you? I hope everything is alright with you.
I have a tiny, little, insignificant correction to 
make with regards to your response to: "Four 
questions from a High-School Teacher." ......

Ok, I can go on now. What I was thinking was that I'd just give that old guy a call and yeah, my brothers and sisters would probably want to meet me and, what do I wear, and there's always an awkward moment when you meet but then it's all beautiful and yadda yadda and then I was like, "There's no way he's gonna want a BASTARD showing up on his doorstep." But before you go feelin sorry for me, just ask yourself, "Wouldn't it be kinda cool to be a bastard?" To show up and go, "Hey Pa! I'm yer bastard son!" You gotta admit it'd be funny for a second.

I don't think I can write about being a bastard any more because the woman who's sitting behind me at the laundromat has the ability to look over my shoulder as I type. And even though I'm posting this on the Internet where anyone can see it, I still don't want someone reading it when I type it. I need a little bit of privacy for the creative process to occur.

Haven't been outside my house in a while. What better to do than post a photo that would make anyone scared to go outside.

I downloaded almost all of the 3 CD Xen Cuts compilation from Ninja Tune. Forking Brilliant.

New Montgomery and Mission. Poor guy couldn't hold his tongue in his mouth. What's that called? I know, I'll search the WEB! Well, it seems this affliction is common artistic inspiration. Let see now, he could have Geographic tongue...but I doubt he has the dreaded Scrotal tongue or Kawasaki tongue. (Bless his heart, aint that Kawasaki kid cute?)