Yes, when you’re in a fancy motel room at 1am and you can’t sleep, sometimes you need to make up a stupid story about the bath accoutrements.

That motel was in Cheyenne, Wyoming, by the way. And the next morning I got up and went to find a decent latte. I found a Starbucks, but I wanted to find some local running a drive-through stand.

What I found was Zen’s Bistro, which has a drive through for espresso drinks. I neglected to take a picture of the place, but I should have. In a bland cow town in southwestern Wyoming, this place was painted bright blue with yellow and purple accents. Red Christmas lights were strung haphazardly in the windows. It had chunks of mannequin dangling from the eaves. My kind of place. The kicker: They serve Seattle’s Best Coffee, which is a brand from Vashon, WA (which is near Seattle, which is why the name is funny).

I go to the drive-thru and a lovely petite young woman with that harsh, somewhat defensive look women sometimes have in the American west helped me get a soy latte. While she was working the espresso machine, a tall young man with a dazed look on his face came up to the window and said:

“So where in Washington? I saw the license plates on your car.”

“Seattle.”

“Yah? What brings you around? Going to Yellowstone?”

“Naw. Going to Boulder and then Texas.”

More small talk ensued. I hate small talk. Then he told me:

“I used to live in Tacoma. Until I moved to THIS SHITHOLE.”

I’ve capitalized ‘this shithole’ because that’s how he said it.

“Why did you move here from Tacoma?”

“To get away from the drugs. I’ll be six months sober in a week, after living here for three years.”

“Well, congratulations.”

“But I do miss that mountain.”

Puzzled look.

“Mount Rainier. Living in Tacoma, I’d look east, and there’d be the mountain. It’s all flat and endless here. I want to move back, and I think I’ll try in about six more months. Have to save up.”

Jokingly: “Moving back for the drugs?”

“Heh. No. Just miss the mountain and the green trees. And to get away from this SHITHOLE.”

My latte was ready at this point. I exchanged money for it. I wished him luck and gave a big tip.

In The Bathroom
A Parable

(Note: If you’re reading this in your Sites I Read page, you really should go ahead and read this with the images.)



The Shower Amenities felt that they ruled the whole of the bathroom. And Bath Gel ruled among the Amenities. While it was true that they believed they were rulers of the whole bathroom, this power had never been tested.



In fact, one day it occurred to Bath Gel that none of the Amenities had journeyed to any part of their fair Kingdom besides the Exquisitely Folded Towel that served as their castle. Bath Gel left the castle, to explore the mighty kingdom.



Shampoo, Hair Conditioner, and Body Lotion, on the other hand, were all content with their untested, ignorant ideas. They agreed with each other that they were all, indeed, the rulers of a mighty kingdom.





Bath Gel said they were being foolish. Who could rule an unknown kingdom? Finally Shampoo, Hair Conditioner, and Body Lotion gave in to his chiding, and reluctantly followed along behind Bath Gel. They kept in a group to themselves, and plotted.



When Bath Gel reached the edge of the sink, he had no idea what it was. So he made something up, because he couldn’t let the others see his weakness and ignorance.



“This, my compatriots, is the Pit Of Despair, into which unbelievers will be tossed! As you can see, there is no exit but down, into the bowels of the world!”

It was then that the others played their hand. So to speak. “I don’t know if this is the Pit Of Despair,” said Body Lotion, “but I know it is the last place YOU will ever see!” With that, they twisted off Bath Gel’s cap and killed him.



They threw his bottle into the Pit Of Despair.



Then they returned to their Exquisite castle, and happier, if more ignorant, times.

I plead alignment
To the hag
Of the untitled snakes of America.
And to the Republicans
For which they scam
One nacho
Underpants
Unpronounceable
With licorice
And jugs of wine
For owls

6/26, 1am

Red Roof Inn, Ogden, UT

Just watched the Frontline episode called ‘Bigger Than Enron.’ Pissed me off. Well, irked me, anyway. Also made me want to become an accountant so I could be in the business of stealing people’s money. Whee.

This motel is unique. The room is set up like a mini-office with a king-size bed. It makes me wonder: Who really uses the table and chairs you get in most motel rooms? Sure you set your keys on the table, but doesn’t everything really happen, ahem, in bed? We’re talking about a Red Roof motel room here, not The Ritz.

I also want to steal the lamp on this desk. It has a huge base with a power outlet and a phone jack on it. It screams ‘I’M A LAMP IN A MOTEL ROOM!’

I managed to turn off the TV after Frontline was over. Being me, I find it very difficult to leave a TV off if it’s nearby. My mind actually enjoys being manipulated in the way that TV does, because it’s typically more fun than laying in bed in a new place trying to get to sleep while my mind wanders and fixates on the million regrets. I need to learn to buy beer before every place nearby closes.

Speaking of which, Ogden probably isn’t named for the celebrated poet. It’s probably named for the cave home of some caveman named Og who thought it would be a great idea to close up the whole freaking town after 10pm. That way, insomniac travelers who want to, say, buy beer, or buy anything at all for that matter would have to wait until the next day like a proper puritan. I’m not sure why Og is a puritan, but the mysteries of life are many, and the answers few.

I took pictures of myself at a rest area, on I-84 just north of the Utah border, but in them I look like a mental patient who just lost a fist fight, so I’m reticent to post one. What the hell… Here’s one.

Here’s the mile 23 marker for I-84 in northern Utah.

I noticed that all the mile markers in Utah are modular. In other states, the sign is one whole piece of printed metal, but in Utah they come as individual digits. Mix and match. I suppose a crazed prankster could swap numbers around, but why?

I’ve been trying to fix a bug in a program I’m working on. It’s a horribly elusive one, for a number of reasons, the most significant of which is that it exists on a hardware platform other than the one I use for development. Another being that the API it uses returns an undocumented error code.

“What does that mean… IN ENGLISH?” you ask.

It means I’m building a ship-in-a-bottle in a bottle, instead of the kind you collapse, insert in the bottle, and then uncollapse. Furthermore, the neck of the bottle can’t be trusted to lead to the space contained inside the rest of the bottle, if you get what I mean, and if I don’t sound too metaphysical there.

And to top it all off, I shouldn’t be doing this. I should be getting ready to travel for three weeks. I want to get this code out the door, but there’s just no time. The world will have to wait, and so will I. Maybe I’ll have a few idle moments during the trip… Hah.

A Demonstration Of How Bad Software Works:

The goal: Get an AOL Instant Messenger account.

1) Go to AOL’s AIM site.

2) Remember that once upon a time I think I had an AIM account.

3) Click on ‘forgot your password?’

4) Enter what I think my old screen name was.

5) “We’re sorry, but this screen name does not exist.”

6) Create a new screen name.

7) Watch as AOL chokes on the form. It sits there for a few minutes saying, ‘loading document…’

8) I press stop. I don’t know if I now have a screen name or not.

9) Go back to ‘forgot your password?’ to enter my new screen name in case AOL got it, but it didn’t get back to my browser.

10) Enter new screen name. Be greeted with the something like the following text: “We’re such dumbshits we won’t allow you to ask for your password within 24 hours of the last time, even if the screen name didn’t exist then, and doesn’t exist now.”

I understand the security problem (get AOL to send someone’s password in an email, monitor their data and watch as the password floats by in plaintext, or abuse AOL by telling them to send a zillion password reminder emails), but there has to be about a dozen more elegant solutions than preventing me from using the service.

By the way, folks. Your email is all in plaintext, and stored in about a zillion places on the internet for a while, because that’s how it works. And most of your email passwords are sent in plaintext to the server. Same problem exists for ftp.

Just so you know.

WARNING: Politics ahead

Not strictly politics, however. The new Department Of Homeland Security has a provision such that it is exempt from the Whistleblower Prevention Act, which “protects government employees from retaliation or losing employment for speaking out on waste, fraud and abuse.”

Read up on it here.

So, essentially, people like Coleen Rawley, the FBI agent whistleblower who testified before Congress a short while ago, would be left flapping in the breeze along with the tattered remnants of our once proud flag. Forgive me if I wax poetic; the administration has been yanking our rights away left and right of late, and it pisses me off.

Anyway. That the DHS exempts itself in this way is a new standard by which to measure hubris.

I’m in Blah Mode. (You ask: ‘When are you not?’)

I’ve been trying to tie up some loose ends before traveling most of the way across the continent. With this in mind, I’ll ask: If any of you Xangafolk want an old Macintosh, or any of a number of old Macintosh peripherals, and you live in the Puget Sound region, or anywhere between Seattle and Texas via interstates 84, 80, 25, 40, 45, and connecting via US highway 287, then please send me an email. I’ll deliver. Do you live in Tucumcari, New Mexico, and need an SE/30? I’M YOUR MAN.

The thing about the last few days before a trip like this is that all the things I wanted to do before I left, but put off doing because there was plenty of time (as if) come back to knock on my door and say, “Uh, hey… Remember me?” And by then there’s no time and I have to abandon them.

Life is imperfect, and much has to be tossed out like wilted spoiled lettuce from the veggie drawer, but it’s still a waste. Sigh.

Bourne Identity is a really really good spy flick. There’s a chase scene in a Mini, which makes me happy, especially since the girl from Run Lola Run is in the passenger seat.

Last night I went to the movie theater, thinking I’d watch either of two movies.

The dilemma: ‘The Bourne Identity,’ or ‘Star Wars: Episode II.’ I opted for Star Wars, which is a fun movie. But that’s not the point of this ‘blog.

I asked myself this question: If it was 1978, one year after the first Star Wars movie came out, and someone had asked me if, in the year 2002, I’d hesitate in the slightest over going to a Star Wars sequel, the answer would have been an immediate NO!

Funny how things change. ‘Bourne’ lost the coin toss, but it was close.