Tag: technology

Request

Hello, Charlz Theron. I hope this finds you well. I couldn’t find an email address on your site, so I thought I’d just drop you a line here. I know you read my site because, well, I wrote your July 15 entry. Could you remove that, please? Thanks, ever so.

Gay Pride Week

I’m sifting through the handbags in my favorite Mission thrift store, when the man next to me taps my shoulder. He’s attractive, well-dressed, late forties.

Him: Excuse me, can I ask your advice?

Me: Sure.

(He holds up a feminine red blazer and two purses.)

Him: Which of these purses goes better with this blazer?

Me: Well, the left one won’t work because the reds don’t match, and the one on the right is a little crazy. Is the woman artistic?

Him: I sure am.

Me: So, you’re the woman.

Him: Yep.

Me: Then it’s perfect. Have a fun weekend.


ONLY YOU

This morning I noticed a smoldering cigarette in the street. As most of the western United States is on fire right now, I walked a few steps over and crushed it with my toe. Then I realized how silly the impulse was. It’s not as if the asphalt were about to ignite. For a moment, it made me a little sad to live in a place where nothing burns.


MASTER OF MY DOMAIN

I’m way too excited about this. Two days ago, I successfully registered mightygirl.org and mightygirl.com. Triumviratacious. Troikarama.

Thinky

We did a bunch of interviews about the future of technology for an upcoming issue. A few interviewees were talking about how data acquisition is changing. We’re coming up with the technology and storage capacity to record the infinite details of everyday interactions. I’m curious about how this will affect mourning. Right now, we can go through photo albums, maybe some journals or home movies, to remember someone we’ve lost. What will happen when we have thousands of hours worth of tapes to review? It seems like it would take much longer to break out of grief when tangible reminders of a loved one are so plentiful.


FLOWER UPDATE

My landlord lives above me and operates a small convenience store nearby. This weekend, his wife stopped me as I was headed out. I think I know who took your flowers, she said. She told me her husband had seen one of our neighbors, an old lady, milling around the area. We walked two doors down, and sure enough, all of my plants were sitting on the lady’s front porch behind a locked gate. Let me type that again: two doors down, on the front porch. “She’s a little bit nuts, so wait until her son is home to ask for your plants back. Fabulous. First my neighbor steals my plants, and then I have to administer the smackdown to some poor senile old lady to get them back. I wasn’t sure if I had the stomach for it. Fortunately, my new roommate ran into the lady�s son and explained the situation. My flowers were waiting on the front porch when I got home. I like people again. I plan to buy ice cream for everyone.


PACKED ALL MY BLACK CLOTHES

I’m leaving for Internet World in New York tonight. This will be my first time in NY, suggestions welcome. If you’re at the show, please say hi.

1:28 p.m.


LIKE MINDS

More fun with Craigslist. Two recent favorites from the San Francisco general community section:

90 — MOHAWK advice needed (san francisco)

I have a brand new mohawk and need advice on how to look professional when I need to. Any tips on how to look cool on the weeked (sic) would be helpfull (sic) also.

thanks.

35 — Full Moon Circle?

Does anyone know of a full moon circle I could join? I’m female and would love to worship the moon w/ others! Let me know… THANKS!

1:28 p.m.


I FEEL PRETTY

You guys broke my Geocities site. Bastards. Oh well, it was time for me to leave my punk-rock lifestyle behind. As I moved in a hurry, there’s bound to be some mess to clean up. Please let me know if you come across broken links, images, spelling errors, or anything else that’s embarrassing, but not intentionally so. Thanks for all the “what up?” notes and the patience while I relocated.

3:30 p.m.

My cousin Ben makes a discovery about human nature:

“I have a Yahoo! email account and I was poking through my various settings and I ended up on my user profile page. One of the fields that people have the option of setting is Marital Status… Among the many choices was this one: Married but looking.”

2:50 p.m.

This is the most interesting portion of an article on the possibility of implanting computer chips in our brains:

Researchers at the University of
Washington estimate that it will take them a
decade to implant tiny computer chips into the
brain of a sea slug, which will then be released to
wander the ocean floor under video surveillance.

When the slug moves forward, dozens of
intracellular electrodes will record its neural
activity. When the slug stops, the electrodes will
record that, too.

When enough data have been collected, the
scientists will begin reverse-programming:
feeding the recorded electrical patterns back into
the slug’s brain. If all goes well, the slug will go
forward. (The military applications are
staggering.)

10:28 a.m.

Technology advances so fast that I feel like Judy Jetson. This is a great idea:

The furry mascots of the 2000 Summer Olympics
in Sydney — as well as an avalanche of caps,
T-shirts, mugs, pins and other official Olympics
merchandise — are being tagged with invisible
ink containing DNA strands from an unidentified
Australian athlete.

3:44 p.m.