Category: anti-blog Page 9 of 12

Gee, haven’t been here in a while.

A couple things of note:

1. Went to Seattle for Thunder Lizard Productions’ Web Design World 2001. I enjoyed the conference and the city immensely (not to mention the beautiful weather). 72 and sunny. (Seems like a long time ago.) I got to meet Zeldman!
2. Working on strike preparations. Yes, a striking web designer. Virtually all state of Minnesota employees are unionized. We’ve been offered a 2% raise and higher health insurance costs. Great. We will walk, if a majority votes to do so, around September 20th. [The date is now set for September 17th at 6:00 am.]

Like me, have you been wondering what to do with your old cell phone? Donate it.

Independence Day.

Independents Day.

In a somewhat unnecessary time-saving move, I crafted about a week’s worth of anti-blog entries in advance. It may have saved me some time, but it did cost me a bit in accuracy. While I got much right (and admirably prevented myself from getting a couple things wrong), I still managed to incorrectly predict that the state of Minnesota would shut down.

Anyway, it’s nice to be back in the present rather than the former future. I’m actually writing this on July 3rd, 2001. (Yes, a few entries from the last few days were written in advance, but I’m done with that.)

Strangely, I don’t have a lot to say. [My stunts of the past week are evidence of my present dearth of deep insight and wisdom.]

I did enjoy myself in Chicago, however, and I’m having a great time in Columbus. I’ve seen fireworks twice since I left (on Thursday in Milwaukee and Saturday in Chicago), seen a couple movies and baseball games, watched cable, surfed the web…. why be away from home, you might ask? Well, at home I don’t have:

1. cable
2. Milwaukee’s Summerfest
3. Taste of Chicago (Summerfest is better)
4. The Chicago White Sox
5. The Columbus Clippers
6. importantly, the sense of perspective that comes with physical distance
7. most importantly, my family and old friends with whom I can converse, hang out, and feel as myself.

I expect to go back refreshed and ready to work. On what, I’ll let you know.

* * *

Ooh, this is so cool. Want to go to Mars? As of now, you can’t. But in 2003, NASA will send a CD of names to Mars, for some reason, and yours can be on it, for free. [The offer is no longer valid as of January 2003.] You even get a nifty certificate to print and frame. I’m printing mine when I get home, though I probably won’t frame it.

Incredible. It’s the last day of June, and Minnesota has failed to pass a tax bill and seven spending bills.¹ What this means is that, unless something miraculous happens tomorrow, the state of Minnesota will shut down for the first time in its history.

Incredible. It’s the last day of June, and Minnesota’s legislators managed to pass a tax bill and seven spending bills.² What this means is that, unless something bizarre happens, I will still have a job when I come back—no interruption in pay will be necessary! And that is good, for I need to get paid to live. And I want to live—I do.

(Incidentally, I won’t be going to work [Monday]. Of course, I’ll be on my way to Columbus, Ohio no matter what happens.)

¹ This was all speculation written before the fact. I have no idea whether this prediction will come true or not. [It didn’t.] This idea seems to have been subconsciously inspired by Esquire’s semi-fictional profile of Michael Stipe.

² I like this version, the real one, better.

Today, June 28th, is the birthday of (among others):

• Mel Brooks
• John Cusack
• Gilda Radner
• Jason L. Gohlke
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Henry VIII of England

A journey into the eerie shadows of coincidence: Rod Serling entered the Twilight Zone, uh, died the exact day I was born—June 28, 1975.

I myself am spending the day in the city of my birth.¹

¹ “Ah, I see,” you suddenly realize, “all this time mumbo-jumbo is to obscure the dates of his road trip.” [This was all true.]

* * *

Hey, look, a great new Pinkey Suthers yesterday!

Oooh, boy. Mr. Nice dances [and for some reason, I laugh]. Courtesy (?) of memepool.

On a site like this [www.gohlkusmaximus.com], the dates on which I update the site tend to lose meaning as time passes. That is, as our distance increases from the creation date of any given entry, so does the relevance of the date that entry was submitted.

What I mean is this: Who cares when any of these entries are created, especially months later? So what’s the difference if I put up some entries I haven’t written yet—now?

What makes today today? Today is yesterday already.

Spotted on the bumper of a Chevrolet Celebrity in downtown Minneapolis: “Every day of my life forces me to add to the number of people who can kiss my ass.”

I kid you not.

1. I donated blood for the first time in my life.
2. I fainted for the first time in my life.

Fainting is a frightening phenomenon. Right after donating, I felt basically okay. I sat up, stood up, walked about 12 feet, grabbed a bottle of water, a packet of cookies, and a Coke. I sat down and rested my head on the wall behind me. So far, so good.

Seconds later, I completely lost control of my mind and body. A rapid-fire montage of random images and sounds suddenly flashed in front of my eyes, for an indeterminate amount of time, and then gradually resolved themselves into a male nurse. I felt horrendous for the next hour.

Another first I guess you could count would be “first time puking in a Bloodmobile”—though I did use their garbage can.

* * *

Budget update: the state and its employees’ unions have agreed on a settlement for a possible shutdown. Not great news—I’ll have to use vacation to get paid if the shutdown occurs, which looks more and more possible every day. I’ll avoid dealing with the possibility by simply driving far away from here for a week and a half.

* * *

My 26th birthday is next Thursday (yay?). I was getting excited about no longer being eligible to be drafted into the U.S. military, until I looked at the Selective Service web site and found that, over the past five years, the probability of my being drafted has gotten progressively lower. Effectively, I haven’t been draft fodder since the beginning of this year. [Another day, another anti-climactic discovery.]