2002

I upgraded to Mac OS X today. I have been in maximum geek-mode for about 6 hours now. You know its maximum geek-mode when you forget to eat, then you remember your hungry, and even then decide to defer dining.

OS X is…different. It’s very disorienting in hundreds of little ways, not to mention the fact that the guts are drastically different. I figure it’ll take me a week to come to a modus vivendi with it–getting it to work the way I like, and adjusting to the way it works. There is a lot I like about it already, and despite occasional complaints that it’s slow, I find that it is a) snappy, and b) pretty snappy even when I’m trying to do all kinds of things at once.

So I was making a fire-baton a couple days ago, and because I’m a klutz, jammed a phillips-head screwdriver into the web between my index finger and thumb. Ouch. Yesterday I went to the ER at Brackenridge to get a tetanus shot. (Interesting aside–I called a general practitioner’s office to ask if I should have them look at it. The receptionist said I should get a tetanus shot, and since there was a shortage of those right now, they didn’t have any, but the ER would. So I went there.) I waited about two and a half hours to get a shot that some guy practically administered as he walked past me. I asked a few people about the tissue damage, and they all seemed really unconcerned. One of them told me “hands heal up really fast.” So far, I’d have to agree, much to my surprise. The day after, I could barely hold anything in my grasp. Two days after, and I’ve got most of the strength back in my thumb.

Movies recently viewed:

• Y tu mamá también: very good on multiple levels.
• Five Corners: written by the same guy who wrote Moonstruck (which had a great script), this is quite a bit darker and more surprising.
• Ghost World: Very, very good in so many ways. Funny and kitschy and serious and sad.

Perhaps the best explanation of the Israeli-Palestinian situation I’ve seen.

I knew there was a reason I used Macs, but I didn’t realize it was this: “Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism”. Those wacky creationists. I don’t know whether to burst out laughing or run screaming in terror.

Got together with Carlos (visiting from NYC) and his fabled squeeze Rachel (who is really cool, and visiting from AZ), Greg, Dave, Chris, and a cast of thousands. Sushi at Kyoto, beer at Elephant Room, more beer at Gingerman, still more beer at Lovejoy’s (at which point I bowed out). Walking from Gingerman to Lovejoy’s is kind of weird, because you navigate an obstacle-course of musical entertainment–walk past one bar with one kind of band, next to another with another, and so on.

It’s spring, and the flora around Austin are all in a tizzy. This is good and bad.

Roses, wisteria, honeysuckle, et al are in bloom, and a walk through my neighborhood is a party for my nose.

But the allergy-spawning pollens are in the air too.

If you never leave your house, you’ll never know what the outside looks like.

One idea that holds a lot of explanatory power for me is the distinction between people as they really are and the mental models we have of people.

Whether it’s someone you encounter on the street for 30 seconds or someone you’ve known intimately for a decade, when you deal with that person, you’re really dealing with your mental model of that person. Some models are more accurate than others, of course, and in the process of getting to know someone, you refine your model of that person.

But the assumption that there is any such thing as the “person as you really are” raises an interesting epistemological issue. Anyone with a modicum of honesty and self-knowledge will admit that he does not have a perfectly objective self-assessment. And no other person could believably claim to have a better assessment of a person than the person himself. So that leaves the person’s true nature in a position akin to that of Schredinger’s cat, but in a box that’s been permanently locked shut.

The physics metaphor seems prone to over-stretching, so here’s another one: the self is like a house. You’re born in that house and you never have a chance to leave it, that is, you never get to look at yourself with another person’s eyes (I’m going to arbitrarily assert that drugs, “astral travel” and suchlike mystical claptrap don’t count). So you have no idea what the outside looks like. But you know every damn crack and crevice, every squeaky floorboard, and the right way to hike the key in the back door to get the lock to turn. Other people are on the outside looking in. Some people press their noses right up against the windows and get a pretty good idea of the house’s floor plan, but can never feel what it’s like to live in that house.

And perhaps most importantly, nobody has any idea what the structure and mechanical systems of the house looks like, hidden inside the walls. Are the wall studs 16″ on-center, or did the contractor skimp and use 24″ on-center? Is the plumbing copper or PVC? That’s a three-prong outlet there, but is it really grounded?

Perhaps if you believe in God, you can tell yourself that God knows. But I don’t.

Well, the show did go on, just not quite as planned.

We wound up doing it in the backyard of Amber’s house–Amber being one of the performers. About 30 spectators showed, and I think they enjoyed it.

While it was extremely frustrating and stomach-churning to have our sponsor default in the eleventh hour, and it would have been really nice to get the money for the show, I’m actually pretty happy with the way things turned out for a lot of reasons:

• The money on offer didn’t come close to fairly compensating us for the amount of prep time that went into the show–in a way, it’s better to give away your efforts than to be meanly remunerated for them.
• We all learned a lot from doing this–it was a valuable experience.
• I discovered it was nice to be doing the show just for us, rather than for a sponsor.
• We had fun
• In the end, I’m not unhappy that I’m not working for this particular sponsor, which is Camel cigarettes. I had been holding my nose all along, and now, since I’m not taking their money, I can be morally superior and smug.

Life is funny.

I was supposed to have a gig tonight, a big production with three other performers, plus a facepainter and five safety people. We had all put in a lot of work on this. I’ve put in at least 14 hours, and I know that others put in more.

Andrew, who has been coordinating our group, met the sponsor at the venue tonight, and the sponsor evidently said something to the effect of “Oops, we forgot to cut you a check!” And they couldn’t scrape together anything out of petty cash, so that show is not happening. Right this minute, Andrew is trying to scare up an alternate venue so that we can still put on a show.