Tuesday, February 18, 2003

Wow. Thinking of folks such as Lincoln especially, and somewhat Washington, they had to ply their political trade before handlers and media and makeup. Lincoln's charisma had to have been the raw, real stuff. He would have been unelectable today. Something that has impressed me about both Lincoln and Johnson, not so much because their personal commitments were to emancipation, but because of their political acumen during tough times. They both bided time, built political bases, and even then, moderated their own views to ensure the success of at least some of their efforts. 1:16:37 AM

I was also thinking it strange, the idea of being a businessman. How, when I have children, and people ask what their daddy does, they'll say, "Oh, he's a businessperson." Maybe I'll wait until I retire for little ones, just so they can say, "Oh, he gardens. And writes. And draws stories for us. And cooks. And sings. And plays harmonica. And makes up songs on the piano. And saves beautiful wood. And makes mommy laugh. And make other strange happy yummy noises when their door is closed. And dances. And paints with paint he grinds himself sometimes. And cooks. And camps. And photographs. And plays sports. And reads. And other stuff. Sometimes, all dressed up. But mostly, he just hangs out with us, doing the stuff we want to do." 1:09:40 AM

Cake + Cheese Classic tonight at the restaurant - Wayne, working pantry, which is desserts and salads, cold plates, says, as he's passing a piece of cheesecake to Dan - "It's Cheese. It's Cake. It's CheeseCake." As he turns to go back to making a salad. Oblivious to the later digested hilarious havoc he'd reap on my brain.   Cosmopolitennui/Cosmopolitanomie She actually followed me home tonight from work. Not just sitting in her car. We drank a little. Smoked a little. I thought later tonight of Nutella and Pretzels - Breakfast of Hempians. She wanted to play her CD of some new grunge band from Florida, Burning Social, or something. And I can't help sitting there thinking of the relief of Tom York. Knowing OK Computer or Amnesiac was up next.  And how crazy she was. In an utterly normal, banal way. Almost like a Donna Reed android, bought as a "mostly still good" model at a flea market in Tupelo. You're not exactly sure what's wrong, still works, pretty much, but sounds a little whacky. Which is the very worst kind of crazy you can be, in all the ways you'd expect someone to be crazy, like she's stepped out of a made-up Cosmo profile. Which is to say, predicable. And predictably boring. Not enough, so not enough, to make up for the sexy and cute. If you're going to be crazy, I say, make it at least interesting.   One of my tables tonight was a group from the symphony. Kathleen told a story of how when Dionne Warwick had the Powell booked, and cancelled at the last minute, one of the management at the Symphony sent out a memo announcing the cancellation, and she added a "P.S. Shouldn't she have known something was going to go wrong?" The noise the composer they commissioned made while eating made me wonder if he was a modern Beethoven, but he seemed to hear just fine. Maybe to his trained ears, mastication is music. Tonight, sitting looking at the black crack in the corner of the living room, I noticed the gray-blue in the white paint, and then the lighter gray in the ceiling, and stopped myself. For fear that the vapid talk of insipid color schemes and tapestries and throw rugs might give me some hidden insight into the profundity of difference between a chartreuse and a plain old yellow green. But only as related to the Ralph Lauren "Rustic Colors" Collection, the rest of the non-patentable color world rendered in black and white. That, I think, may be the ultimate commercialization of our society, as we're beginning to see with plants, the most basic building block of how we experience our world - by being alive, by eating food. The patenting of color. Even if we went with a 128 million palette. Each citizen could be implanted at birth with a color chip filtering the optic nerve. Each would have the inalienable right to a certain number of colors, maybe 64-grayscale to start, with 16 colors - something compatible with most publicly accessible monitor devices. People could then either buy the right to additional colors, or choose certain advertiser sponsored colors. And, of course, there would be special introductory colors, and hues, and I can imagine something like Lapis Lazuli or true Crimson, being so unbelievably rare and expensive, that only certain families even knew of their existence, let alone the ability to purchase, through money or birthright, access to that particular color. Even micro-transactions for viewing certain colors on a pay-per-view basis. Imagine the person who owns the rights to "Porn-star tan" or especially "Porn-star bikini-line." They would probably win almost instant access to Lapis Luzuli. Maybe I should learn the difference between chartreuse and yellow green. While I can still do it for free.   This may reflect good business ethics and bad business sense, or lack of entrepeneurial drive, but the greatest satisfaction for me of our first Syzygy check was being able to pay vendors, Pam Lowney for helping us with the writing, and Michael Krieder for illustrations. Maybe I can keep that same attitude, but think about buying the ocassional illustration or writings for me. Some people are best working in the world of the vaporous. I just thought of that in reference to Internet startups, and how many folks who just couldn't make it in the most basic of basic market conditions ended up raking it in during those days. I don't really know how to talk to folks slick, get them to buy into a roll-up strategy, or maybe I guess it's mainly because I just don't want to, but I think this down and dirty, bootstrap your way up market, is just the one for the Scotsman that's me. Aye. 1:01:06 AM