Shanti’s Dispatches

Finally got my blog back online. My MovableType database crapped out on me. Luckily, I had just backed up all my data.

Don’t tell Ben & Mena, but I was actually running quite a few mini-blogs on there… and I hadn’t registered yet. I was meaning to, honest, but having the entire database corrupted with no sane way to get back my data w/o reinstalling was the last straw.

Wordpress is quite slick, and since Gabriel and I are using it in our new top secret blogging project, I figured that I should “eat my own dog food” and use it on my personal blog.

I’m using the advanced Beta version of WordPress (1.3) - released 11/19/04, and haven’t run into a noticeable bug yet.

Taking a cue from hugh, I wanted to add some kind of “flava” to the site to spice it up a bit. Hugh’s got his drawings on business cards, but since I can’t draw, and don’t have a scanner at the moment - it’s going to have to be “big fucking quoatations” instead. Hopefully I’ll post a new one every few days or so… They could be from me (just random shit I make up on the fly), or quotes from readers, famous people, unknown people, dead people, living people, etc. You get the idea. The one thing I can’t stand is cheese, so I’ll try to avoid the overly sappy motivational type quotes.

I’ve also been reading Guy Kawasaki’s Art of the Start (free download). He says to use big fucking fonts (not in those words, exactly), when you’re pitching your business plan. So… that’s kind of where the idea for came from.

The first one was:
(the effect is much better when you see it in a thirty point font, but I won’t do that to you guys out there in RSS readers)

They will all laugh at you.

Just fucking deal.

To see the latest one (if you’re reading from an RSS reader), you’ll just have to cruise on over to sablog.com.

I found this poem on the Internet…

The lust for something more oozes from these streets
Like the awful stench of ambition once had
Thrown away for something as ridiculous and human as love
She thousands of miles away in the Southern California sun
While sounds of Notorious B.I.G. intermix with Spanish salsa here
And car alarms pierce the air like a wretched birdís final death scream, every 15 minutes
Muted several later, if not many more
Quick bursts of Spanish tongues echo back and forth in indistinguishable cacophony
Not strangers but family to these streets
One with the smells and concrete and desires of this place
Unheard of wealth traded back and forth by white men in coats
Downtown on the most famous of financial Streets
Now guarded by men with M-16s and riot gear
For the invisible beast lurks in dark corners of the earth now, not afraid to strike here
Since that fateful September day
In dark shadows and blistering deserts, the invisible beast trains for a dark insurmountable war
While we strike back with swords slashing as if at ghosts in the cold night air
Hoping we have destroyed the beast, never quite knowing for sure
The familiarity of a former, more suburban Midwest life beckons from afar
Its simplicity and boringness an acceptable price to pay for the silence of its lonesome, quiet streets
Friends and memories of college years gone away, the fear of being alone all pervasive
While in these streets of Harlem, thousands of people lust for something greater
Coming from distant Hispanic and Dominican lands, to this noisy concrete jungle
We march onward as a species in the indomitable quest for Progress, or is it merely Survival we are seeking?
Nothing it seems will quench this thirst from within. No answer out there or in here it seems can tell me what all of this is for and why I am here.
Walking back and forth daily across Broadway, the thought comes to me that my existence would be much more easily explained if a passing bus were to randomly and through no fault of my own smash my meager existence to pieces.
That would be the quick and easy answer to my reason for being on this planet and on my tombstone it would simply read:
Mowed down in Harlem at the tender age of twenty-four by a NYC metro bus. He had such great potential, too.

But alas, answers to existential crisis rarely arrive in such a decisive, physical form.
There will be an answer again, and she will have the devilís eyes.
I will do anything once again just to look into those eyes, and they will likely betray me, just like all the rest before.

People, let’s all just sit down one of these goddamned days, wake up, and smell the fucking coffee. We’re all just a bunch of Napoleons, even if we go the pacifist route and let the world swallow us up whole. Either way, we’re trying to prove something to someone, to “win” in whatever weird kind of way we all choose to go about doing it.

I’m a man, I need missions to get me through the day. We no longer kill wild beasts and drag them back to our base camp with the subtle intention of being the alpha male to impress that one hot tribal chick who skins the animal hides and always seems to be batting her eyelashes at you. No, we don’t do that anymore. But that doesn’t mean that that human animal is no longer part of me, dwelling just beneath the surface of my 21st century Billabong / Gap jeans costume. I’m fucking tired of denying that reality. You should be too. Get over it. We’re fucking animals. We have equal capacity for compassion and cruelty. When someone threatens to destroy us, we fight back and destroy them. This is the nature of survival. Bring it on, world.

Ani Difranco - Napoleon

they told you your music
could reach millions
that the choice was up to you
you told me they always
pay for lunch
and they believe in what i do
and i wonder
if you miss your old friends
once you’ve proven what you’re worth
yeah i wonder
when you’re a big star
will you miss the earth

and i know you would always want more
i know you would never be done
‘cuz everyone is a fucking napoleon
yeah everyone is a fucking napoleon

and the next time
that i saw you
you were larger than life
you came and you conquered
you were doing alright
you had an army
of suits behind you
and all you had to be was willing
and i said i still
make a pretty good living
you must make a killing
a killing

and i hope that you are happy
i hope at least you are having fun
‘cuz but everyone is a fucking napoleon
yeah everyone is a fucking napoleon

now you think, so that is
the way it’s gonna be
that’s what this is all about
i think that that is
the way it always was
you chose not to notice until now
yeah now that there’s a problem
you call me up to confide
and you go on for over an hour
’bout each one that took you for a ride

and i guess that you dialed my number
‘cuz you thought for sure that i’d agree
i said baby, you know i still love you
but how dare you complain to me

everyone is a fucking napoleon
yeah everyone is a fucking napoleon

Now I understand the predicament in which Google finds itself. It mostly boils down to a simple rule: Don’t be evil, and what to do when confronted with evil.

What if you are confronted with forces of darkness that are more evil than you, and to wage war against those forces of darkness, you have to commit acts which you’d normally consider “evil” under normal circumstances. Perhaps this falls under the “Just War Theory” used in philosophical circles to justify human acts that would normally never be tolerated in “civilized” society.

Alas… I’m just posting this here to reinforce my resolve to “not be evil,” like Google, yet still engage in a Just War fight, when the forces that oppose me are pure, utter, Third Reich fucking evil.

As you could have probably guessed, this involves a relationship, and not anything related to work, family, etc. Peace out.

I absolutely “HATE” (with extreme emphasis), people that say/write what I’m about to write. But I’m going to say/write it anyway, so I guess I’ll just have to deal with the fact that on some level, yes, I do “HATE” (with extreme emphasis) what I represent.

I’m realizing that, yes, that whole thing about as you get older, realizing how little you do know is SO COMPLETELY UTTERLY FUCKING TRUE THAT IT IS FUCKING SCARY.

Note: to you intellectual types that happen to read this, it’s not about how much you “know” as in factoids to drop at cocktail parties. It’s something much deeper, and you won’t even begin to fathom it until you’ve been through it and survived. And if you think you somehow “don’t get it”, you may very well indeed “get it”, but if you let yourself be afraid that you haven’t gotten it yet, then yes, you may very well not have gotten it yet. Or you have, but just don’t know it. The thing that’s most scary about “getting it”, is that no one on this goddamned earth, no one at all, no belief at all, no religion at all, no bottle, pills, powder, liquid, hot pool girl, bursting bank account, etc. at all will ever be able to reassure you that you “get it.” You’re just going to have to fuckin deal, and that’s the scariest thing in life you will ever have to deal with. And that feeling won’t go away. If it does, it’ll come back at the worst time, too.

Why is the feeling of being in love, however vapid and amorphous, the same feeling you get when you have to vomit?

Or is that just me?

Going to publish a few unpublished sablog.com draft’s that never made it to the “silver screen” so to speak.

Just upgraded the blog to Wordpress 3.x. The release is 11-19-04 for those Wordpress freaks out there.

Everything works smoothly so far. It’s actually quite a change since the last Wordpress beta release I tested. This one should be good.

Someone was apparently amused enough by one of my posts that he wanted to leave a comment.

Unfortunately, I migrated to MovableType 3.0D which didn’t have MT-Blacklist support at the time. Anyone know if they’ve since add it? They only way to block comment spam was to enable TypeKey support.

Read My Lips: Drat and dang double drat at that:

Nope, sorry, ya’ll but I ain’t found the site yet that was worth the hoops you have to go through to register so as to comment ‘pon, and this one ain’t it, either.

Sorry if this here site o’ mine aint worth yo’r trouble ta regista, sirh… I reckon I best be upgradin so dat dem visitors o’ mine ken be posten comments on me blog, manh, eh?

Update:

After a wee bit of google searchin, I discovered thatthe fine young lad Jay Hallen has updated hees blacklist script to work with me movable blog version tree point oh. Ayyyy… let’s see if we can’t get this here script to install, mayties.

</end usage of random country/pirate accent>

Gabriel says:

In Google’s gmail webmail offering, one of the things I absolutely love and adore is the Archive button. So simple. So easy. So perfect for what it does.

You read an item. You absorb the content. You hit Archive. It goes away. Into the netherworld. Tucked into place where Google‚Äôs almighty seeing eye knows right where it is. Archive is freedom. Archive is release. Archive allows you to free yourself from past communication, ideas and concepts, safe in the knowledge that it is a simple click on the “All Mail” link to see what you need again. Or simply search for it, and lightning fast, it is back for you.

But you don’t have to categorize it. You don‚Äôt have to worry. Just hit Archive, and it is gone. Out of sight, out of mind. I really want an Archive button for everything now. Okay, I‚Äôm done with you, click Archive. Next. I think Archive is one of the most useful features of gmail, and is a concept which will spread to other software, it is just that good of an idea.

Gabriel asks: what else do you want an Archive button for?

How about one for people…

I’ve actually got a category in my Palm Pilot address list called “Lost” - for people who’ve I’ve lost touch with over the years.

Idea:

How bout a web service (like friendster meets classmates.com) where you list names + rough dates / locations of when you knew them. When two people enter the same data, it automatically notifies both parties of a possible match.