Thursday, August 28, 2003
An unexpected little promo:
Thursday, August 28, 2003
I don't know if this is a funny story or not, but at the time it was pretty funny. I was getting a drink at a beachfront bar in Antigua and had been talking to the bartender about my tattoos — a very nice conversation — when a mid-thirties white woman (tourist) wandered up from the beach.
Tourist: I'll have a Zambuca and Lime (or something like that; I can't remember exactly what she ordered)?
(The bartender makes her drink)
Tourist: Have you ever tried this drink? It's really good!
Bartender: No, I've never tried it.
Tourist: Oh, you should try it! I know you'd like it!
Bartender: No, I really wouldn't.
Tourist: Well why not? You'd really like it!
Bartender: I'm a Rastafarian.
Tourist: Rasta-what? What's that?
Bartender: Rastafarian? You know, like Bob Marley.
Tourist: What's that got to do with anything? I'm sure you'd like it.
Bartender: We don't drink.
Tourist: Oh, why would you want to be like that?
Bartender: You have to have a pure body to have a pure spirit, you know, clean living?
Tourist: That doesn't sound very nice at all. What else don't you do?
Bartender: I'm a vegetarian.
Tourist: Oh, how sad!
Bartender: Enjoy your drink, ma'am.
Given that many Rastafarians are vegetarians bordering on vegan, I was always surprised at how strange veganism seems to people in the islands… They appreciated it I think, but it took some back and forth for me to explain the basic concepts when I was ordering food and so on. (In hindsight I'm thinking they may just have been unfamiliar with the terms; I probably should have just said “what food do you have that's appropriate for a Rastafarian diet?”)
Tourists on the other hand were almost hostile to it… At one meal when I ordered a vegan dish the guy sitting across from me started tossing indirect insults and spent the rest of the night glaring at me — like I was somehow harming him in not joining him in eating steak. Even those people who weren't overtly hostile about it tossed out an attitude of “what the hell is wrong with you, not eating meat” when they'd overhear my requests.
Thursday, August 28, 2003
The experience update is in place — thank you as always to the writers and the review team (and I'm sorry I haven't got your new software in place yet; it's next in line after the Encyclopedia)… Since people always like funmails, and I haven't done one in a while, I'll share with you some of the responses I've gotten in the past couple weeks from people who've had their experiences turned down. The first one is from someone who submitted mostly just song lyrics, and then we'll take it from there:
From: WillowTheSylph
FUCK YOU! I wrote this stupid thing so I could be with your stupid journal thing because my friend asked me to. I didn't know what to write, maybe you people should make a longer list of instructions. I didn't know that this site was full of English teachers, either. PLUS, this is the only experience I had, I saw "Ritual Cutting" and I thought, "Hey, I could write about this." How could I write an 800 word essay about my tongue, clit, nose or ear piercings, I got them done and that was it, they healed and that was it, I put other rings in and that was it. And please don't tell me that I put the lyrics in there just for word count, I didn't even know you had a word count until I tried entering it and I still needed 218 words left to put. You know it's people like you that make people like me do stupid things like what I did in my story. So, go fuck yourselves!
From: USCbaybe
Thanks alot for lowering my self esteem!!!! i'd just like to say that I no longer am going on/ submitting to your site because its not fair how people try and try but yet its not good enough! well I'd like to say that " You didnt specifficly state that ear piercings couldnt be done with a gun ok? ok! and if people have a problem with how i type they can F**K off!
From: Tiff
Well to whomever read the story is a fucking dork bc I said I had to change the jewlery after nine days bc of a reason adn I think I put the fucking reason in there ur website is just fucking bullshit! and u ppl think u are totally right about everything well bodys are different soo you shouldnt sit there and reject ppls storys that may help someone nad Im sure nobody really fukin cares about puncutation I sure they arent all teacher and are like hey look at that shit they dont have the proper puncuation is just bullshit!
From: thabonemachine
Is your site just like Squarey Squarington or what? Jesus! Excuse my French, but to the main editors of the bmezine experiences, you all are so tight, you could put a lump of coal up your asses and get diamonds in return. Let me know when you have a diamond, I need money to get my next "drunk, irresponsible" tattoo. I apologize for not being a straight edged little pussy like some of ya'll...
From: Madrox 13 420
you guys are too fucking strict. i tried helping out your dumb asses. so fuck off
From: Turtlluvr14
fat people are useless. they should be bred to have no bones so we can use their fat asses as chairs. thats all i have to say
From: indig15
fuck you
From: stylishjellybean
yah i dun give a fuck wut u hafta say bout my story
From: JsTiNzBaByGuRl
Yes,I did just use another exclamation point so deal with it! I use those when I am typing something exciting and I was excited! I can believe I actually tried to write a story for the website you people belong too! Ya'll wouldn't know a good story if someone slapped it right in front of you on a cpmputer screen,which I did.
Anyway, it's a pretty much endless stream.
Oh — while I remember — I talked to the folks in the art department at the place that does our metal casting for the belt buckles, and doing the 3D work is no problem at all… so do expect some very cool stuff within a month or so.
And now I'm back to work on the encyclopedia.
PS. As a “trivial” side note, in the last five minutes alone I've received almost 4,000 (yes, four thousand) pieces of spam… I get between 250 and 1,000 an hour, but I think 4,000 in five minutes is the largest single burst I've ever received… and that doesn't count Sobig viruses which are coming in at about 1,000 an hour, although they're blocked at a server level so I don't have to download them.
Oh, and if DirecWay can't get their network online soon I'm going to lose it. It's inexcusable how poor the service has been lately. I can't maintain FTP sessions, their routing is getting worse, and I can't find servers at all 10% of the time. The failure rate on their systems at this point is obscene. At this point all my connections have over two seconds of latency in them, and often as much as five to ten seconds…
I really wish I was still on Island Time.
Thursday, August 28, 2003
So I was watching the Jon Stewart shows from the last couple days (Kucinich bombed last night in my opinion, unfortunately) and on Wednesday they had the editor of the NY Times crossword puzzle on… I admit I'm not much of a crossword guy, but while watching it, I had two ideas that I thought maybe were new. The first was three dimensional crossword puzzles (which I later discovered was far from new), and the second was “chaos crosswords”, where there's not a gridlock. For example, here's a simple one:
RED
1. Make me an ____.
2. Saturn has over 60 of these.
16a. Serbian National Radio.
16b. Blood _____. |
BLUE
1. Holy sound.
5. Model T.
11. Do you have the whole ___?
14. Pay the ____. |
GREEN
2. I hope one of these isn't under my bed.
3. Used to row a boat.
9. The oldest kind of plant (4 letters). |
It's not particularly hard, just interesting as an alternate kind of visualization exercise. Especially if you add “letter locks” as in green 9, it becomes interesting in a geographical sense. I'm not really much of a “gamemaker”. Below are the answers, rotated ninety degrees. I may well have made errors in it, so I apologize… just illustrating the idea.
Thursday, August 28, 2003
I'm working on an update right now of course; lots of great stuff flooding in but I wanted to post this picture from Twonorfolk. In actual fact it's from the latest MFC event (that's I think Wormy and of course Vampy), but when you take it out of context it's just a funny picture….
Imagine of course that Vampy has no idea who this dude is and is just at a sorority party and he's hitting on her because the hooks have made him superconfident, and all her friends in the background are kind of looking at it go down in a WTF? kind of way… Well, I thought it was funny anyway… Probably it's more a reflection of how tired I am!
But seriously, if you're in the UK or UK area, keep your eyes open for MFC events, it's definitely worth the trip (and I say that as someone that made the trip in an airplane over a big ocean…). Genuinely nice people that host very worthwhile events.
