A few weeks back i was at a party where some people in the audience were doing activities that were not good for the community. So, the DJ decided to put a spoken word piece on, and i have to admit, i loved it. There is nothing better than an artistic response to a social situation.

I despise deadlines. They make me anxious and confused and unproductive. So, Frank’s blog entry of the day put a huge smile on my face, as he quoted Douglas Adams:

love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

Sadly, i don’t think that my readers appreciate this attitude as much as i do.

Some capitalist in the sky must jump up and down everytime that i have to write a paper because i spend more money when writing papers than i do at any other point in time. Of course, all of my money goes to exactly one place. Conversely, all of my friends must hate me when i write because year after year, they get suckered into the painful process of moving my consumerist acquisitions.

Today: 1 Lacan, 1 Foucault, 2 Kafka, 3 Calvino, 1 Goffman, 1 Aronson, 1 Jung… yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s a theoretical day.

So, i’ve never been a particularly large fan of Internet porn. Hell, i’ve never been a big fan of any form of traditional porn. I love naked bodies, particularly naked women, but the way in which pornography is shot is typically more revolting than erotic. I get bored, turned off and disinterested. So, i never bother. I mean, i don’t really need to see another shaven pussy or a face cum shot; i’m not aroused by gang bangs and spread open anuses. Gag me. So, when i look for erotic images, i tend to look for more artistic ones, black and white, arousing and not necessarily entirely revealing. Images that show the form of a woman’s body and make her look elegant and powerful, show the beauty of the form of the body, not just an object ready to be penetrated. Also, i’m not particularly aroused by your typical porn star image – big breasts scare me and big hair even more. I like the punky, the wild, the goth. I like seeing the crazy energy of the model as part of the image, the ability for the model to be seductive and powerful, a troublemaker, not just a dumb camera shot.

This basically means that i don’t bother looking for images. Sometimes, i find artists that capture this essence of women, but often not. I’ve always enjoyed pictures from Burning Man, which is an inherently erotic and crazy space. And then this morning, i stumbled on a funny little erotic image site filled with punk/goth girls. This site was explicitely created by these crazy grrrls to show off hot alternative girls.

Hmm.. now i wonder how many other interesting sites are out there…

…

Since the original post, people have pointed me to:

nakkidnerds
kissy cam

i’m having another one of those thesis hatred moments… thankfully, my embittered friend kindly re-reminded me that i was on severe crack for thinking that grad school could be fun…. and yes, i’d rather read another book. ::slap:: won’t let myself. won’t let myself.

luckily, i’m not alone. there’s grad school barbie – am i delusional or outright masochistic? of course, some brilliant grad student has made an entire procrastination site out of grad school comics..

and finally, while i may not believe in the existence of hell, i still appreciate the grad school comparisons:

TOP TEN SUBTLE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GRAD SCHOOL AND HELL:

10. It doesn’t rain in Hell.
9. Everyone has heard of Hell.
8. It’s a lot more fun getting into Hell.
7. You can’t fail out of Hell.
6. At least you can sleep in Hell.
5. Hell is forever; grad school just seems like it.
4. People smile in Hell.
3. You only have to sell your soul to go to Hell.
2. There are hot men and women in Hell.
1. You wouldn’t tell a friend to go to grad school.

Ok, so even when i bounce spam, i keep a copy of it for myself, for curiousity sake. I mean, how can i study the digital realm without paying attention to what hell people go through in dealing with nuisances? Well, today definitely irritated the hell out of me. On one of my websites, i keep a public email address for fans to contact me with more information. After i receive a valid email from them, i put them into a list of non-bouncable people so that they don’t continue to get messages saying that this email address is invalid. But, needless to say, 99% of the traffic to that email address is spam, based on web robots. Well, today, a Mr. Nick Blackman from a valid roadrunner domain in Rochester NY decided to spam bomb me (and perhaps many other netizens). Every 2-3 minutes, i received a 40KB scr virus from him, along with notices of someone named Amy’s address and forwards about a friendship screensaver. Knowing full well that he was getting a bounce for every message, i ignored him. But, after the 20th message, i decided to contact abuse@rr.com. They did nothing. After the 700th message, i actually became noticably irritated. I mean, i know how to script out my mail to /dev/null, but i know that most people don’t and i had to imagine how many people had their email systems crash due to Mr. Blackman. Needless to say, roadrunner never responded to any of my 6 messages of abuse. So, instead i just have to wish a digital curse on Nick Blackman for his irritating while loop, which is currently at the 1477th message.

But, apparently, i’m not the only one with a spam problem this week.

I’m having a dimensional moment… [yeah, yeah yeah, blame it on the beach.]

Imagine the space of all people, all personalities, all personal characteristics. There are certainly patterns in people, in their behavior, across different people. One can think about stereotypes, about what behaviors result from personality differences. Yet, think about the typography of the space of all people. Imagine that each person is simply a line through all of the dimensions of possibilities, yet along a typography that has plenty of holes such that certain characteristics cannot exist without other characteristics.

People always ask me why i’m obsessed with observing human behavior, why i’m obsessed with the patterns that people form in their actions, why i’m so curious to see the role of stereotypes and expectations. I’m fascinated by the typography of personal existence, of the dimensionality of people. I’m in love with the possibility that a model could be constructed of human existence, yet know that the model still exists in the realm of chaos, beyond our basic understanding. But as i sit and watch people, i am fascinated by the intersections that form, by being able see some of the relationships, see the holes within the space.

Ah, how i still adore the bridge between the sciences and humanity, to see the beauty in human behavior. Thinking about social psychology as a mathematical form, about behavior as a modeling opportunity…

Oh, how i’m itching to be thinking about modeling and dimensionality again. My hypertext roots are aching. After thesis… after thesis… ah, what a mantra.

Well I think we’ve sorted all that out now. If you’d like to know, I can tell you that in your Universe you move freely in three dimensions that you call space. You move in a straight line in a fourth, which you call time, and stay rooted to one place in a fifth, which is the first fundamental of probability. After that it gets a bit complicated, and there’s all sorts of stuff going on in dimensions 13 to 22 that you really wouldn’t want to know about. All you really need to know for the moment is that the Universe is a lot more complicated then you might think. — Douglas Adams, “Mostly Harmless”

I need an explanation on this one… what did i do recently? Normally, i go about my day, kinda ignored by people that i pass on the street, minding all of our own business, la la la… it is Boston afterall. But in the last week, something changed and i keep getting noticed. I was walking down Highland at noon and some guy stopped to ask me what time the T closed and after looking at him oddly, he went into a soliloquy about how he was from Georgia and … Weird pickup line. Which i shrugged off. And then, an hour later, a guy decided to pick me up on the lawn of the Media Lab by telling me about his work with 802.11 after he realized that i knew what the protocols meant, of course getting closer and closer with every statement. Ok, it was a weird day so i looked at my clothing (typically hippie, non-descript, hair a wreck, writing up my arms as i was deep in thought). Strange. But it kept happening – the waiter at Denny’s wanted me to go out with him, i got smiles outta people’s cars, etc. And i’m still at a loss – is it the orange hair? Did my phermones change with this new round of medication? Why have i gone from non-descript to being noticed in under a week? And shit, i still don’t know how to respond to pick-up lines…

Hmm.. or should i just explain it by this week’s Village Voice horoscope?
Life is totally unfair, and you will soon be living proof of that, Sagittarius-in reverse, that is! Wild cards and X factors will fall at your feet, in your lap, and on your head. You’re likely to attract a kind of extravagant, unpredictable luck that will almost make no sense. You’ll have such incisive intuition and impeccable timing that it may almost seem as if there’s a cosmic conspiracy working behind the scenes to make you happy and fulfilled. The only potential downside is that envious people may accuse you of having an unnatural advantage or reaping more than your rightful share. Fortunately, your charm levels will be so high that you can probably disarm their resentment.

Personally, i still believe that the only horoscope that i can listen to is The Onion’s:
The race does not always go to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but the job of lead singer always goes to the guy with the best hair.

Somehow, i’m just not inclined to stay on one topic, ever. So, why try in this format? I think that i just need to stop that..

Accepted the job with V-Day officially today. Computer arrives next week. Health insurance will be taken care of quite soon. Yippeeeee!!

I’m going to a conference this weekend on the Grassroots Use of the Internet – should be absolutely fascinating – activitists & tech geeks!

This week was full of many good good realizations – some emotionally painful, some quite healing after months and years of pain and frustration. Let’s just say that i actually smiled coming in to work today… it’s been a while!

Speaking of which, my advisor sent me a review of a book about eBay since we actually talked for quite a while yesterday about the affects of the dot.bomb and what it meant for companies and communities. And for whateve reason, it made me re-read the notes on the crash of ArsDigita.

[cypherpunk login for nytimes: c1ph3rpunk/c1ph3rpunk]

On the weird medical side, there’s a funny report about how tampons may protect against endometriosis (as does hetero sex during menstruation). Does that mean that i should give up my keeper? Grrrr….

Fusion finally announced their festival lineup! Now, i’m not overwhelmed by the lineup, but i would not miss such a fun event, especially given the venue!

for way too bloody long, i’ve not been particularly involved in anything digital, except what it takes to get by. hell, i feel unbearably lame in innumerable ways. all things digital used to be my playground, not just a topic of my academic masturbation. every once in a while i am reminded that i am not having enough digital fun, and today it was all thanks to a mr. halcyon.

this random digital stranger writes me to say that he was referred to me regarding random brainstorming about identity and authentication and whatnot… he sent along random links of his and i drool at the reminder of what i could be doing in san francisco right now – living an absurdist life, preparing for burning man like a normal person, being absolutely sexually and socially ridiculous. but, in the meantime, i will have to just have to fantasize while reading about this mr. halcyon’s ridiculous adventures…

Lifestyle as art in a webcam house
Experiments in digital initimacy and Globalgasm

Anyhow, i’m quite entertained… i like digital strangers, real or otherwise