[Saturday, June 3, 2000]

11:57 PM Okay, enough links. I have to psyche myself up to the task of writing a reply to Dan. </awe>

11:45 PM Egomaniac Watch: A new journal. It looks promisingly egocentric. We'll see.

11:41 PM All the five letter words in the english language. [Not recommended for people with a 28.8 kbs connection] Perfect for all those times that you have to change one five-letter word into another by altering one letter at a time. Never again will you have to use your brain to answer those brainteasers!

11:30 PM Today I listened to "My baby's in love with Eddie Vedder" by Alfred Yankovic twice, on the same CD player. The first time, I thought - surely that's too fast? - and the second time, it struck me as too slow. Although it is really of no consequence, the mere fact of not knowing whether it was somehow playing at the wrong speed or whether it was just my perceptions that changed infuriates me.

10:49 PM Ahhh! Oh, my Gods! I get an email from Dan! Okay, okay, I'll calm down... But what are the chances of being noticed by Him twice in one lifetime? It's incredible. It's unbelievable. It's like a sign from the heavens. (no, I'm not just trying to compliment Dan so much that he mentions me again. What makes you think that?) He says that I didn't hurt his feelings and that he might make a better error message now. Which means that something I did will have a slight effect on a tiny peice of Dan's site. My head is spinning with all this responsibility. I'm not quite sure how he tracked me down. I hope he didn't read my FAQ, because there's a bit there which actually might hurt his feelings. Because it is quite ambigiuous as to whether I mean it or not. Hell, I don't know, and I wrote it. One confusing thing about his email is that he didn't tell me that I have the most unimaginative design around. Perhaps it's so obvious that he doesn't have to say, I don't know.

10:29 PM Che, Tammy and one other person whom I'll call Ray are with me, here, at the computer centre. Yes. Well. They wanted to read my diary, it seems. Tammy's currently on the silliest bit of Mercuria. It's really irritating, knowing exactly when someone's reading my site. Writing it is fine. Publishing it is fine. But being there while someone reads it? Not good.

10:12 PM Re-reading my previous post, I'm convinced that it makes no sense whatsoever. How am I getting revenge like that?

8:18 AM For a recent Graphic Design project, I was forced to visit ebarf.com. It was .... uh .... indescribable will have to do, because I'm not going to elaborate. Anyway. If I had to wade through this site, perhaps I can get some revenge by making someone else do it too.

8:00 AM Our society is so sad. One of my sayings is: "Who needs sleep when you have coffee?" (Unoriginal, I know, but I generally say that when I'm being kept awake solely by the power of Coffee and nothing else. Originailty is not my strong point at these times) But the unspoken rule of society as a whole seems to be "Who needs spirituality when you have coffee?" I named one of my diary entries "The Power of Coffee", because on that day coffee had an effect I would not have expected. And just for fun, I minutes ago performed a search on that very phrase: "The Power of Coffee" I tell you, if I got this many results for a search on amphetimenes or marijuana, I'd give up hope for humankind altogether. I'm not going to try, for fear of what I may find. Why is Coffee so universal? So recklessly used? Cafine is a drug, just like delta-9-tetrahydrocannibanol. If you wish to plumb the depths of the Religion of Coffee, you'll want to check out this, this, this, this, this, and this. If you want to keep your sanity, then, you might want to see a site that has nothing to do with Coffee.

7:16 AM Yes, there's something dangerous about Parodies. No-one knows for sure whether you mean it or not. Jonathon Swift had this problem. I have this problem. But right now, I'm seeing this problem from the other side. Is this page genuine? I just don't know. So perhaps I shouldn't get so irritated at people who don't know when I'm using irony. Although I should hope that I give a clearer idea of my true meaning than these people do.

6:29 AM Rather than simply offer destructive criticism to Dan, I'd feel better about myself if I could give some constructive criticism as well. Such as showing an example of a stylish 404 page. Like this one, for instance.

3:26 AM I finished ironing out a minor difficulty in the code for this site. I was severely tempted to use Dreamweaver instead of wading through the sea of angle brackets but no, I stood firm in my convictions and, mere hours later, have managed to sucessfully alter one minor detail. That's the bad thing about using Dreamweaver all the time. You forget how to use HTML. But then every new advance has a disadvantage. I suppose you could say that the bad thing about guns is you forget how to use spears, the bad thing about opposable thumbs is that you forget how to crawl, the bad thing about gigantic brain cavities is that you forget how to grunt and trail your knuckles along the ground. But I did not weaken. I resisted temptation and finished the correction in plain HTML. I feel like I deserve the "Congratulations, You Didn't Use Dreamweaver" award. Or possibly the "Why Didn't You Just Use Dreamweaver, You Fool! That's What It's There For!" award. <basks in the envy of those who would never use HTML if they could afford to get Dreamweaver>

2:37 AM The high point of my life! I'm mentioned in /dan.el.ope/! (Yes, that was me. You don't suppose I hurt his feelings, do you? I hope not) I really doubt anything in my life will come close to the thrill of being mentioned - albeit indirectly - in an almost-famous web-log. I might as well give up on life. It's not worth living when I know that my one moment of fame has now been and gone. Oh, well.

2:25 AM Well. I have a web-log. Yes, with a hyphen. I can't stand the "kewl" abreviation of web-log, and I'm never going to use it. What can you expect to find here? Well, since I don't like internet culture very much (as a side effect of not liking any culture very much), you shouldn't expect this to be 100% normal, insofar as that term can apply to web-logs in any case. Expect to find strange sites, cryptic commentary, mental meanderings, preposterous postualtions, hypercritical hypothesis, and aliteration ad nausium. I expect to update this every day, at least once or twice. Possibly more often. If you see a day that goes by without an update, I'm probably dead. If you see two days go by without an update, I'm almost certainly dead. If three days pass and I still haven't updated, then it's probably time to send me an email and prod me into updating more often. And link of the day, to start the ball rolling, is one of the egomanical webdiaries upon which I base my semi-parody webdiary.