Ramblings & ephemera

My new business idea

A coffee shop where the employees all wear platform shoes, glitter make-up, orange spiked hair, feathers, and silver spaceman pants.
It’s name:
ZIGGY STARBUCKS!
My friend Michael Krider made the following suggestions:
Drink names:

The Cafe Young Americano
Caffeine Genie
Sumatra-jet City

When employees hand your money back after a sale, they say, “Here’s your ch-ch-ch-change.”

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Thoughts for a Lovecraftian tale

Cthulhu in ancient Rome
Tennessee farmer David Lang’s disappearance into thin air
Lovecraft’s victims’ tendency to write in diary/account as things happen to them: “It devours me!”
A forgotten skeleton

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More on memory

Memories are passive fragments.
— Scott Granneman

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Tragedy in film

Modern tragedy in film: one man’s death invites the gaze & sympathy of millions, ignoring the other deaths that occur all around us all the time.

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The late great Hungry Buddha

This was written 15 January 2002, & the Hungry Buddha is gone now, but this is still an interesting description.

Just got back from lunch at the Hungry Buddha. Man, that was good. It’s a small place on Washington Street in downtown St. Louis. There are signs all along the walls: “Buddha would bus his own [...]

You always remember your first time

I remember the first day I ever got on the Internet. I was an English teacher working at a camp for gifted high school students, and a technologist was there talking about this thing called “the Internet” and how it was going to change everything. It sounded fascinating, so when I returned home a few [...]

The network is central

The centrality of the network in modern life, thought, & technology is apparent in that both ends of the use stack - users & developers - now think of the network as a given. A developer doesn’t graft networking on to software later in the process; instead, software is built assuming the network. Users expect [...]

Memory memories

Some gathered thoughts on memory:
Wanting to remember & forgetting, or knowing you’ll forget 
My father’s memories, & a chosen few passed along to me - of those chosen (or random) few, how many do I pass along?
Emotion recollected not in tranquility, but sometimes in seething emotion, in inner turmoil or pain
Flow of memories, inspired by surroundings [...]

Bringing up the rear

Two things people have said about Jans:
"With friends like Jans, who needs enemas?"
"Jans is a social laxative - he loosens everyone up." 

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Responsibility vs accountability

Responsibility: "I’ll do it."
Accountability: "I’ll pay a price if I don’t do it right." 

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My high concept Hollywood movie

In Hollywood there’s a meme known as “high concept”, the idea being that you can explain all there is to know about a movie in just a few words, ideally relating to another movie. So, for instance, you might describe a movie you’re looking to get a greenlight for as “Die Hard on a chicken [...]

A walkway of the dead

I was walking around on Wash U’s campus a while back - I don’t remember where, exactly - when I looked down and noticed that I was walking over bricks that had been “donated” by folks who had given money to WU. This is standard practice a lot of places: donate $$$, get a brick [...]