The Wrath of Kon

Watching Platoon. It’s on TNN and is “uncut”, which means they can say “shit”, but they still bleep out “fuck”. I haven’t watched this movie in a long time, and I forgot how many now-famous people are in it. It’s quasi-realistic and okay looking, but it also suffers from the Vietnam Cliche Syndrome like most other movies of its genre. They all have the same soundtrack, the poor black guys that don’t want to fight, the obligatory drug scenes, the out-of-nowhere VC ambush, the My Lai analog, and so on. Still, it’s an interesting waste of a few hours, at least for free.

I haven’t been writing much lately, haven’t been doing much of anything. Last night, I played Sim City for like 6 hours. I tried to build an entire city supported by nothing but rail, but then I gave in and had to build some roads. I got up to about 60,000 people, and then the fucking program crashed, and didn’t save anything. I haven’t played it since, mostly because I have to reboot my computer to Windows, and that’s a huge pain in the ass because I can’t get the stupid GRUB bootloader for Linux to work, so I have to open the BIOS and set a different drive, and that’s about a step away from opening the case and soldering a jumper or something.

Nothing else. No transit strike, BTW. Now I just need to brave the cold every day to get to the damn train.

I had tickets to see Ronnie James Dio at Roseland last night, but I was so tired and miserable by the end of the day Friday, that I just wanted to go home, order some food, and sleep. It was a long week, there’s this looming MTA strike, it gets dark at 4:30 now, and it’s rainy and 40 degrees pretty much all the time, so I didn’t feel like waiting in the rain for an hour to see four shitty opening bands all for Dio.

Instead, I got some Indian food and watched a DVD I forgot I hadn’t watched yet. I got this three-DVD set of documentaries about atomic weapons by Peter Kuran a while back. They’re pretty cool; one is called Trinity and Beyond and it’s your basic “about the atomic bomb” movie, but with a lot of new footage I’ve never seen. It also includes some 3D footage and the red and blue glasses, but it’s not a very good effect – maybe either my TV or my eyes are not calibrated correctly. There’s also Atomic Journeys, where they go to various places bombs were tested, including the test sites I visited in New Mexico in 1999.

The third movie, which I forgot about and just watched last night, is called Nukes in Space, and it’s all about various high-altitude nuclear tests by the US and USSR, plus a lot about the history of the ICBM and ABM. This is incredibly fucked up stuff and I never knew about a lot of it, but the US did tests where they tried to inject bursts of high radiation into the Van Allen belts to see what would happen. These top-secret tests, called Project Argus, were (at first) from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and they basically found out they could completely fuck up radio waves with the EMP that would be carried through the belts, which they thought could eventually develop some kind of all-out radio and radar fuck-up weapon against the Russians. A later test in the Pacific fucked up radio transmission across the ocean for three or four days and even knocked out the power grid as far away as Hawaii.

Lots of other weird footage on that DVD included LOTS of failed rocket takeoffs, which you can see in The Right Stuff, but they had a lot of alternate views and other launches. They showed two launch failures in the Pacific that WERE ACTUALLY CARRYING NUCLEAR WARHEADS! The warheads did not explode, but they did get consumed by the huge fireball of hot-as-the-sun propellant, which probably did something to the value of property within a 100 mile radius. Oh, also they showed the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex, better known as America’s only (formerly) operation ABM base. It’s located very close to where I was born, and was in fact designed to protect my birthplace of Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota. (They did not build this to specifically guard the base because I was born there; although I’m sure some of you appreciate my contributions to American literature, I don’t think the military does.) The SRMSC is a really fucked-up looking place, and looks more like a Mayan burial ground or some kind of 70s sci-fi movie set, because of the strange buildings and antenna. It was built, but then when Congress was dealing with the 1972 ABM treaty and the fact that newer Russian missiles would probably get around the highly complicated and expensive system, they scrapped the program – exactly one day after it was fully operational. Now, it sits dormant and maybe someday if someone decided we need to spend another 40 billion on anti-missile programs, they will reopen it.

While digging around for info on the SRMSC, I found a cool site called Cold War Leftovers that has some excellent pictures of the Safeguard site, plus a bunch of other stuff like abandoned Nike Missile sites and planes stored in the desert. Pretty cool stuff.

Not much else is going on, other than the threat of an MTA strike. If it happens, I will stay at home and work. I have FrameMaker and Windows on another partition, and I have all of my work stuff on a CD-R. I really don’t know if they will strike or not, but everyone seems to be ready for the worst.

Anyway, I’m arguing whether I should go into the city and get something to eat and either brave a movie or pick up some DVDs, or stay here, order some food, and rewatch some old stuff. It’s raining on and off, so it’s a tough choice. We’ll see…

I’m in an all-day meeting today and we broke for lunch at 11:00, so here I am, updating early and eating Wendy’s.

I went to bed early last night and woke up at about 3AM, my room freezing. I got up and found all of the radiators stone-cold, and the hot water somewhat lukewarm. This immediately launched me into a severe panic attack, with visions of spending the next week bathing in my kitchen sink with hot water from the stove and running the spaceheater for a tiny amount of warmth. I don’t know how I managed to fall back asleep, especially since the last two nights were filled with insomnia and looking at the clock every hour and hoping I would get in a few minutes before the alarm went off. But I did fall asleep, and at 6:00, I heard the creaking of water in the pipes and when I felt the radiator, it was slowly getting warm again. So the hour from 6:00 to 7:00 was the most wonderful sleep in the world.

The threat of a transit strike still looms over the city. I won’t go into the details, because I’m sick of repeating them, but you can look them up anywhere. Basically, if the union and the MTA don’t agree to a new contract by Sunday, the trains won’t run on Monday. I talked to my boss, and have a contingency plan: I will burn a CD of all of my Framemaker files on Friday, and if there are no trains on Monday, I stay home until there are trains. It actually wouldn’t be that bad, not having to ride the train in the morning and battle the cold; I could sit at home and listen to music and eat peanut butter and jelly every day and get work done in retreat. It would add an extra two hours to my day. And I normally don’t have meetings anyway. So we’ll see what happens.

Still working on the book, slowly. It’s above 60,000 words and my goal is 70-75K. The writing needs a lot of editing, though. I feel like I’ve said this over and over again, so maybe I should stop saying it.

I watched the movie Dark City the other night, at least part of it, and it’s nowhere near as good as I remembered. The scenery didn’t look as stunning as I’d remembered, and the plot was so forced that it seemed silly. I’ve heard the movie is much better if you turn the sound off until the first appearance of Kiefer Sutherland, but I haven’t tried it.

OK, gotta finish eating.

So yesterday afternoon I was watching CSPAN-2, mostly because I couldn’t fathom leaving the house because of weather and lack of money, motivation, and purpose, and also because all of the other channels I get on my half-assed bootleg cable setup were either showing infomercials, college football, or hunting programs. Anyway, I was watching some kind of award dinner where some group was giving George Bush (the first one) some kind of American patriot award. Even though I hate GBI, I was watching because they were showing some historical retrospective slideshow of his life. And the narrator said “Only 42 other people have known what it is like to be president.” WHAT THE FUCK? GROVER CLEVELAND WAS NOT TWO PEOPLE! I knew about this in the third grade, and someone who makes twice as much money as me can’t look this shit up in an almanac?

Okay, I did look it up in an almanac just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. Cleveland was the 22nd president in 1885-89 and the 24th in 1893-97. Other trivia about Cleveland:

• He had oral cancer from cigars, and had a tumor removed secretly; an operating room was set up in a yacht in the Potomac, and he had the surgery while he was allegedly on his way to vacation.
• He allegedly fathered an illegitimate child in 1874 with a woman named Maria Halpin. During the 1884 presidential campaign, he never disproved that the child was his, but he never admitted it either. He did, however, offer financial support to the mom and kid.
• He drank a lot of beer. He also had gout, which is directly related.
• He was the second-heaviest president, behind Taft.
• There’s some conspiracy behind his 1908 death, and some modern doctors think he may have had Alzheimer’s. He had a rapidly deteriorating mental state, but some say it was probably too rapid for Alzheimer’s.

I found an excellent site here that has a lot of information on the health of presidents. After reading it, I think it’s pretty clear that every person who was President had pretty severe medical problems. Even JFK, who was supposed to be a young and healthy guy, was on more prescriptions than my grandma took when she was 72 and months from death. I think Carter is probably the healthiest president. Maybe Ford. And I didn’t know Clinton wore hearing aids. Guess I missed that one.

Anyway, nothing has been going on here. I haven’t left the house all weekend, although I think I might go to the book store in a little bit here. It’s just been one of those weekends where sitting around and playing SimCity for 7 hours straight is more interesting than getting out. I don’t know if it’s weather or depression or what, but all I want to do is sleep. And read the almanac. It’s the ultimate zero attention span book. I just wish I had a newer one – this one is the 1999 edition, which means it was really written in 1997 and the most important stuff was updated in 1998.

OK, I need to finish my canned peaches and find my shoes. Oh, I’m also pissed and a bit freaked that MTA might strike in a week, because there’s no way I can walk 4 miles to work in December, or pay $20 each way for a taxi. More on that later.

I forgot to mention that my friend Danielle had her second baby girl the other day, on the 29th. Her name is Delphine Isabeau Mariel Mutsaers. 10 lbs 9 oz. 23 inches! Dani lives in the Netherlands now, so I have not seen her in a couple of years. I want to visit there at some point, although it is about third on my list of countries I want to visit, with #2 being Poland and #1 being Japan.

I had a long conversation with Ray last night about visiting Japan. I know the prices are insurmountable, but they are here, too. If I could get the airfare down, I think I could do it. I’m not interested in the super-high-end restaurants; I would be going to the Japanese McDonald’s and the Tokyo Denny’s, eating in those pork bowl restaurants and from vending machines. The killer would be that I’d want to buy an incredible number of CDs and gadgets. Ray really wants to somehow scam together a trip, and I really, really want to go somewhere significant next year. I think it would cost at least $3000 – a grand on airfare, another thousand on a hotel, and the last thousand on food and crap like taxis and subways. On top of that, I would need money to spend on gifts, gadgets, whores, whatever. I might be able to pull together $3000+ in the next year to blow, but I doubt Ray could. So who knows. It’s something to think about.

I also really want to get Ray out to Las Vegas, but once again, no money. He has a Costco card, or actually I think it’s a Sam’s Club card, from his Mom’s business and he uses it constantly to buy videos and shit when he can sneak them in. I devised this strategy that I think I will use in a story, that he could drive to Las Vegas and just stop at Sam’s Clubs across the country. He would be eating big boxes of pop tarts and nutragrain bars; he could buy one of those camping coolers that plugs in a cigarette lighter and keeps the big cases of Pepsi cool. At night he could pull over and camp out with a Honda Generator and a self-inflating bed. Once he got to Vegas, he could sell us a bunch of stuff for cash, like movies or video games or batteries, and then he would have money to gamble. That could make a good short story.

(The stupid Sam’s Club site won’t give me a national list of all of the locations. I’m paranoid about writing this story, and then it turns out there are no stores west of St. Louis or something.)

I’m serious about the Japan thing, by the way. If you have any stories or tips, let me know. I realize there are a lot of small things I’d have to deal with on such a trip, but I think the biggest would be paying a grand for tickets. And yes, there probably were cheaper tickets at some point, or I could do some crazy courier/supersaver/discount ticket thing, but I think I’d rather pay full price and hold an actual ticket. And tickets are damn expensive these days. I don’t know why, although the mandatory terrorist taxes and increased staffing probably doesn’t help things much.

I wish I was still in touch with my old friend Reece. He lived in Japan for years and always had info on that shit. Ray has a couple of friends there, so maybe I need to crack down and start writing people…

National Buy Nothing Day is stupid. There, I said it. If you don’t buy anything on one day, you still buy the stuff on another day. Unless you get everyone to buy nothing all the time, it won’t do anything. Maybe if you got everyone to buy nothing for a whole quarter, that might work, but everyone stocking up on stuff before and after would average out. And it’s also stupid because the day after Thanksgiving isn’t even the busiest day of the year. It’s usually one of the two Saturdays before the 25th. With the way the economy is, they should be having some kind of “buy everything” day, where you spend as much money as possible.

It’s too cold outside to deal with reality. I guess it’s 36 degrees, but with the wind and the gusts, it feels more like 20. I really want to get a Navy SEAL winter parka with all of the attachments and hoods and sleeves and stuff, but they are like $300. I also have an overwhelming urge to get a snowmobile, but there isn’t enough snow to support one. That’s probably because I watched about half of Die Hard 2 on TV yesterday, because I didn’t want to leave the house and I didn’t have any DVDs I wanted to watch.

Writing continues, although some parts have slowed, but I started a new chapter last night and wrote like 1500 words in 45 minutes. Work on the zine also continues, although I think I am going to change the name to “This Is Not a Fucking Music Zine” or something, because I’m sick of people from Portugal or whatever sending me their crappy tapes.

I am home. Half-day, holiday, not too bad of a deal. I went to two different wine stores and had a minor breakdown when faced with all of the choices. I bought a German Riesling and a California Merlot. I hope that works.

Larry asked in comments how many people read this journal. Out of curiousity, I will post a quick log analysis. From 9/25 to 11/26/02:

• 105,354 hits for 34.216.9.77/ (a hit being a single HTTP transaction or attempt.)
• 6015 hits on any journal page or the journal directory
• 965 unique domains hitting journal pages or the journal directory

If you’re wondering how I did that last one, I put the logs in a directory and did a grep journal * | cut -f2 -d':' | cut -f1 -d' ' | sort -u | wc

Note that people on the same proxy have the same IP; also people from AOL or other dialups potentially have a different IP each time they dial in. Also, search engine robots scanning for text are in there. That’s not a ton of people, but it’s higher than I would’ve guessed.

Not much else going on. Still no heat, but I saw that the department of housing was here earlier today and gave the landlord a citation, so he’s going to be charged something like $250 a day at a minimum of $1000 until the problem is fixed. There is a truck right outside my window, and I’d imagine they are working on it, but I also wouldn’t doubt it a damn bit if the workers are either asleep in the truck or at the Athens Cafe, getting drunk of their gourds. If the landlord hired them, I’m a bit suspicious of their work ethic. (Not that I should talk. But then shoddy tech writing is different than no heat when it is 30 out.)

I’m reading John Sheppard’s book Bad Men Driving right now, and it’s pretty cool. He has a giveaway going on where if you send him his address, he’ll send you one, and you probably should. I think I’m going to dig out the heating pad and spend an afternoon under my sleeping bag, and finish this book.

No heat. No hot water this morning, but I’ve got the bathing in the kitchen sink thing pretty down, and the water is back. Allegedly, the heat will be back tomorrow, and this will be the last round of repairs. But saying that ten times doesn’t have the same effect as a nice hot shower at six in the morning.

I have decided to do another issue of Air in the Paragraph Line, after reading the Cometbus Omnibus all weekend. I need a good solid project in my life, even if it involves collating and toner dust. I made PDFs of all of the old issues and you should really check them out – they are at 34.216.9.77/aitpl. Reading the old zines really surprised me at how good they were. They really bring back a lot of memories of my time from Seattle, and it’s also weird to see how they document the time I was writing both Rumored and Summer Rain. So I’m excited to begin working on issue 10.

Britta filters do not filter out all impurities. I mention this because a lot of people don’t realize this, and at some point, people are going to try to drink water with West Nile and Anthrax and think a pass through a $4 charcoal filter will make the shit into Evian. It won’t. Boil it.

I was going to write this huge diatribe about the Danzig album I am listening to, but I’m too tired and I really need to start positioning heaters and humidifiers, and I have to call in Ray and rub in the fact that Roddy Piper was signing books in New York and I didn’t go.