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Ifyouseekay is getting a little too popular. That is not to say that it is getting popular at all, especially among it's desired audience. But alas as my friends seem to spend less and less time here, strangers are showing up more and more. Beth Westmark (the first non-physical acquantance member) signed up last week. And she was not unwelcome, she said nice things about my writing, and she seems to be an excellent person herself. But there are more strangers.
I posted my feeds list, and didn't bother password protecting it. Suddenly porn sites were added to my feeds and then, overnight, my feeds dissapeared. Lacking the insipration to repost the feeds and password protect it, I have let it fall away.
I see strangers in here all the time (either strangers, or you've all forgotten your passwords). 4 guests at a time lurking around the site, reading without commenting and searching my site for something they desire. Maybe this is the reason the mudwrestling pictures have been hit so very often. Maybe that's what they're all looking for. Good thing they werent sexy mudwrestling pictures...I might have a buisness on my hands if they were.
The most recent and most blatant stranger activitiy was from Meeshkaa, who joined, not the site, but the photogallery. First she posted her bod mods (or I assume it is her), metal through every abailable bit of skin on or in her face. I urge you to check it out...it may make you squeel. She also posted her personal pictures of new york, where she apparently travelled for a september 11th memorial service. Though there are things I'd like to say about this...I'm not going to say any of them, too complicated.
To beth, and Meeshka...you arent unwelcome, by any means. I'm not worried about you, I think that you add something interesting to the site.
But it worries me. I did not set up controls on the signing up, or the posting of pictures, because I did not think too many strangers would run across this place. Of course, I am somewhat extroverted in the online world, and I should not be surprised that links to my site have popped up through my direct and indirect actions. But I worry that fools will start to show up. Like whoever messed with my feeds, and if Meeshkaa can post pictures of the studs in the nape of her neck, then there is nothing to stop folks from posting pictures just to make my life more complicated, and I don't desire to be in the buisness of daily deleting improper pictures.
So to the strangers. This is just a site for my friends. I created it so we could stay in touch and keep tabs on ourselves and eachother. I don't doubt that you may find some things interesting, but be respectful.
And to my friends. Doods, strangers are posting pictures...so you can too! And you can comment on my posts, whether or not you have anything to say, and it makes me feel happy and useful and smart. Most of all, you can post your own stuff. This isn't just my blog...it can be yours too! We're all curious about what you have to say...even Meeshka and beth, and yes, some strangers may see what you have to say as well, but that's exciting....and that's the internet.
Someday, maybe, this site will be locked tight as a drum. If too many people try to make life a touch more difficult for me, I'll have to password protect the whole thing, and that woulld be sad.
So...friends: I miss you, and so does everybody else. Strangers: we like you, youre cool, try and like me enough to not screw with stuff. And new folks: I think it's great that people I don't know are interested in this place, I think you're interesting too.
Hank
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Posted by: Hank on Tuesday, May 11, 2004 - 01:49 PM
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Lorianne Schaub, the owner of one of the two Stranger Blogs I regularly visit was just yesterday blogging about the don't wanna syndrome. She is a long time practitioner of Zen, and still, when she has to lead her zen group every wednesday, all she wants to do is sleep. I could blog on my own 'don't wanna' stomp my feet and whine when it's time to go to work attitude, but I'd rather blog on zen and Barnes and Noble.
Just yesterday, after reading Loriannes post, I went tp barnes and noble with katherine to pick up some Kodocha Manga. In the check out line, I was suddenly staring face to face with a a bulldog dressed like the dalai lama. Aside from the mild racism, and general offensiveness, I was most dissapointed that, on the entire internet, I could not find a single picture of a dog dressed like Jesus. I was thinking maybe it would be a schnauzer, but I was really hoping for a dachsund. I don't know why I was thinking only of german dogs.
I doubt the dalai lama would be offended by Zelda the bulldog, and after picking it up, the pictures inside were consistently adorable. But really, it just seems a little insensitive.
I was altogether more taken aback by the slogan on the Bonsai Potato, "Zen - without the wait". Oh man. Oh...how lovely is it that we have marginalized and publicized a spiritual practice so much that it is now only a slogan. Good thing Buddhists are so understanding. I doubt one could market an edible crucifix with the slogan "christianity - without the effort" without receiving death threats. Alas we are in a most peculiar time in a most peculiar country in a most peculiar world. I think nothing would suprise me.
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Posted by: Hank on Friday, May 07, 2004 - 01:06 PM
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Well yesterday turned out to be a pretty good birthday. I got a bunch of phone calls from all over the place. Mikey called from Oregon, I got a lovely message from my mom and one from Melissa. My mom's was quite strange. "This time 24 years ago I was saying 'where the hell is my baby' cause they took you away from me." Ahh...the birthing story. It used to be a punishment, but it was certainly no worse than the conception story.
As for presents, you've heard about most of them. Mini-tshirt, book from abby that has the title of soft core porn 'the spell of the sensuous', naked girl drawing from kim. Katherine bought me some candy. Which, we all know, is the true path to my heart.
John got me a weird and somwhat frightening Bear card. And updated Sparks Fly Up for the first time in months. He's been very busy. My dad put up a bunch of Pictures from the trip to holland, and that was a bit of a nice present. Katherine and I went to see Jack Wade, our new landlord (who I have just read a shor1 and rather impressive biography of.
After the Rocky Mountain Front BLM meeting (which was, of course, a farse, and not any sort of information exchange at all, just them telling is what they're going to do, and us being beliigerant.) We came home and katherine started working on her paper.
She had done three pages, when I woke up this morning she had 28. I don't know how she did it, but I hope she does well. That was a god damned lot of work. While she was doing that, I watched movies and made logos which you can now view and comment on in the bulliten board.
And that is the story of my birthday, for the most part anyhow. I am now going to clean my room because this culture abhors entropy.
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Posted by: Hank on Thursday, May 06, 2004 - 03:24 PM
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Well, it's been my birthday for a few hours, and since I've already had a pretty interesting day I thought I'd blog about it.
I started the day with a jolt. I had forgotten to turn down my CD player the night before so the bouncing souls jerked me from my sleeping. But I had to get up because I had an interview for an internship. It went really well. It's a paid position with Ursus International. The specialize mostly in public education. Teaching about Bears and thus about ecosystems, and showing how we have to conserve large portions of land, and lots of other species, if we want to save the bears. They also do non-lethal bear interaction workshops. Basically, if you get into a situation with a bear, there are a lot of good ways to get out of it without anybody having to die.
It's a paid internship, not much, but its something, and I really like him and the organization. It'll mostly be marketing, oddly enough, so go to their website and buy some raffle tickets. I haven't got the position yet, so I'm not actually going to put up a link. But really, the more money i raise, the more money I get, so yeah...I'm looking to make this profitable for both of us.
So that went well, and he thinks he'll probably go with me.
Then I came home and hung out with katherine some, which was nice. She's got about as much work to do as you would expect for the last week of the semester. This is not the best time to have a birthday, but I'm enjoying myself.
Then we went down to the real estate office to pick up a copy of our lease for perusal. I've got it now, and I need to call dad and make sure everything is in order.
In my mail today was a very dense little package from melissa which turned out to be a shirt compressed under 50 tons of pressure promoting the physician's desk reference. All of the weird free shit must be the best thing about being a student in med-school.
Abby got me a signed copy of 'the spell of the sensuous' by david abram, a fairly well known environmental author and ex-itenerate slight of hand magician. I'm looking forward to reading it at least once.
And Kim sent me a nude drawing of one of her friends with kimscript on it. I'm not posting it on the website because I dont have permission and adding young nude college students to a website can only result in either financial security through depravity, or exceeding bandwidth through indifference. Since I'm not planning on turning ifyouseekay into a pron site (yet) I'll hold off on the bare bottoms for now.
Tonight katherine and I are doing the most romantic thing one can do on one's birthday. We are participating in the policy process by attending a BLM scoping meeting for the proposed gas leases on the rocky mountain front. Yes...we are big enviro-nerds. Katherine has been working with the sierra club on protecting the rocky mountain front (a huge wild and undeveloped area where grizzly bears still hunt on the plains as they do nowhere else in the continental US). The bush administration has made it very simple and attractive for companies to drill for natural gas there, and Montana became immediately enraged. Yay Montana, Boo Bush.
Katherine has promised me a present, but since she's so busy I probably wont be getting it until after the semester. My parents are sending me something today, but I dont think it's a DVD burner. Hopefully that will come eventually because damn...I need to consolidate my media.
That's all, maybe I'll update again this evening. There are a bunch of new pictures up, check 'em out, all the way from the beginning of April to now (even a picture of the tiny compressed T-shirt).
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Posted by: Hank on Wednesday, May 05, 2004 - 05:34 PM
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From here, it’s not just highway noise, it’s individual vehicles, one by one, each sounds different than the last. That one was a semi for sure, that, a small car or truck, and oh yes…that was undeniably a motorcycle. There is another vehicle sound, much more distinctive, and much more annoying, but I don’t hear it right now, so I won’t mention it. It is frequent enough, however, that I will hear it before I am finished, and I will mention it as it approaches.
I signed the lease on this apartment before I moved to Missoula. I had seen pictures of the interior and I knew where it lay on the map. The highway noise, I was told, was not bad unless you were on the far south side of the building. I did not ask which side of the building I was going to be on. The deal was too good, a furnished 2 bedroom for 520 a month with a creek in the back yard and, beyond that, one of the finest natural parks in Missoula.
When I arrived, the slow rustling of the creek only meters from my back door was only occasionally drowned out by the throbbing of a motorcycle or frustrated hum of an 18 wheeler ripping its way through Montana’s air. As you might expect, I am on the very south side of this building, and the noise of the highway is constant in its intermittence.
The stream, though, is intermittent in its constancy. Every night I am lulled to sleep by cars and trucks rolling over stained asphalt and water rolling over polished rocks. I was not awakened the first time the stream’s constancy proved intermittent, but, when I woke on December 29th, I noticed its absence.
It had slowed to a trickle as the temperature dropped, first, below freezing, and then below zero as Missoula sped into winter. On December 28th it still flowed in a winding crevasse between two ever growing sheets of ice. The next morning, if there was a flow, it was silenced by a thick sheet of ice that spread over the entire surface of the stream. I had heard it would happen, but I didn’t quite believe it. I had never seen a frozen stream, I didn’t understand how something so amazingly mobile could just suddenly halt in silence.
The highway noise continued, more intermittent than ever as more and more people stayed inside. Everything is dampened in the winter here. The sun hides, people stay inside, doors and windows are closed and covered, and the world loses color and is only white and gray. But the truckers keep on. They blow past much slower, but they still tear our air 24 hours a day.
And there it is. The sound I was telling you about earlier. It took longer than I thought it would, but it always comes. Each freight train screams its own chord. Some blast only one or two tones. Thos trains sound sick, like shadows of what they could be. But most have 3 or 4 full notes, always tuned differently. And each conductor has his or her own style. Toot toot tooooot. Hooooohoo hoooooo. Sometimes at night they sense our frustration and only let out tiny warning blasts to try and not wake us. But now it is only late afternoon here, so we are getting full blast. This one sounds higher pitched than usual, but it’s hard to tell without something to compare it to. One long blast, a long pause, another. It is silent.
But the rumble is worse than the hooting. The rails strain against the boards in the ground. The train’s cars shake against their bindings as the wheels rattle and squeak. It is only just approaching. The rail road crossing guards begin to flash and ring as they lower. I can see the crossing from my bed where I type. The train is lazily flowing past the stopped traffic now. Three engines, so it will be long. It’s a grain train. We have three sorts of trains here, grain, coal and lumber. Occasionally we will see something peculiar destined for who knows where. Train cars filled with sparkling new automobiles, sometimes the engines drag empty cars with their doors open so drifters can jump in at the stock yard.
Missoula has always been a way point for travelers. They stay over the winter sometimes, but in the summer their populations explode. Tents appear behind the brush in Greenough Park where a man will live for a day or a week, reminding me that the squeal and scream of a train is a mild inconvenience, and to some, it is a luxury.
But those men in the park have the creek to whisper in their ears just as I do and the train never wakes me up anymore. It might keep me up, if I’m having a hard night already. But the highway, the stream and the train all have a slot in my subconscious now. I can ignore them as I choose and I never hear them unless I try to. Those sounds are just another subconscious sensation, like the rims of my glasses and the weight of my clothes on my shoulders.
The highway, the stream, the train. Each sound has a different intensity, a different consistency, a different connotation, but all of them together will always bring this place back to me when I hear them. I am leaving in less than a month. And so I am filing this in with all the sights and sounds and smells and memories of the other places I have lived. Each file calls a different weight to my brain. I will not know the weight of this place until I am gone from it.
I am giving this place over to my past, and I will never desire to live so close to a highway or rail line again. And while I happily rid myself of them with this move, I cannot and would not lose the weight of this place. That weight will always find me as I recall the sounds and smells and laughter and tears of the newest parts of my life. This place’s unique weight will settle in on me soon after I am gone in a moment of peace as I recall the sounds of my world flowing over concrete, steel, and stone.
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Posted by: Hank on Saturday, May 01, 2004 - 11:41 PM
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The news of today? Oh nothing very interesting. This morning the phone rang entirely to early and it was katherine telling me that we should really go around to some garage sales and try and furnish our new apt. We dont actually have a new Apt yet, but we will soon have some sort of place to move in to. We first went to a big collection of sales at the university but most of the good stuff was apparently already gone. Katherine got a really cool cheap candle lamp which is burnig to my left as we speak, and we got a rug for whereever our new place is.
On the way home we saw that there was a place on Pine having a sale and we dropped by. It was perfect, they had tons of stuff we needed. We got a book shelf ($5) a microwave ($10) and a queen sized mattress ($30). And the people were really nice and it was great to help them fund their trip back to Vermont. The mattress is really comfy and I'm glad that we'll at least have a place to sleep when we move in to our new place.
There's still a ton of stuff that we need. A couch, maybe a TV or some other form of mindless entertainment. Some tables, a dinner table would be nice, a coffee table. Yeah...moving in to a new place is going to be a teeny bit expensive to start with, but if we keep our current trend up we should be able to furnish a new place in environmentally and financially sustainable ways.
OK I'm going to post a thing I wrote today now in a separate entry (the thing above this.)
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Posted by: Hank on Saturday, May 01, 2004 - 11:27 PM
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In Florida, where I have spent something like 99% of my life, it can get really damn hot, and sometimes, by florida standards anyhow, it can get really freakin cold. For example, I remember my parents would wake me up early on days when it dropped below freezing so I could see what frost looked like. It was white, on the roof and a bit on the grass still. But it was gone by afternoon, as the temperatures never stayed below freezing for long. It's very rare, in the winter in Florida, for it to stay below 40 in the afternoons, and it's very rare for it to get above 100 in the summers. It's safe to say that, in Florida, a typical yearly high and low is 100 and 35
So yes, it was shocking for me to come to Montana and feel what a subzero halloween keggar feels like. It was amazing to have my car burried by crystalized water, and it was amazing to watch a whole river freeze in it's tracks.
It is spring now, flowers are leaping from the ground and trees are bursting with green. Yesterday the high was 84, there were girls in bikinis on campus. They were watering the grass. This morning....it snowed.
I have been telling people that temperature can vary in a day here as much as it varies from july to december in orlando. I was exaggerating, but I did not realize how little I was exaggerating. And now, as it was 84 yesterday afternoon and 27 this morning, I think maybe I wasn't exaggerating at all. Might there be a day, coming up soon, when one day it is in the 90's and the next it is in the teens? Is it possible, I'm starting to think it is. That would be, for the record, entirely larger than the yearly range for Florida, and I will certainly let you know if it happens.
I am acclimated though, I wear layers, everyone says that is the secret. I have said it many times, and maybe even on this blog, if layers are the secret, then I dont know why everyone's blabbering about it. The truth is, the secrets are the things no one thinks to tell you. Chapstick, for example, is more preventative than medicinal. By the time a Florida boy thinks to put on chapstick, his lips are irreversibly leathered. The secret is how to put on more than one long sleeve shirt without getting the sleeves all twisted around underneath. The secret is that removing a jacket with a nylon liner that is over a light fleece shirt will result in enough tiny shocks to literally light a room. The secret is not using an ice scraper on the painted parts of your car. The secret is wearing clothes to bed. The secret is gloves dont get your hands warm if your hands are already cold. The secret is not showering in the morning so your hair doesnt freeze to your head. The secret is hot showers and wool socks and that snow in the city is never ever clean. The secret is the real reason for windshield wiper fluid and door mats.
That's a lot of secrets that I learned the hard way cause no one thought to tell me about them. Take notice, all you Floridians, if you're coming to live in Montana, don't trust that the secret is layers, the secret is that winter is a whole different life. It's up to the individual to decide if all the wonder of winter is worth the trouble, but spring is undoubtably worth the wait.
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Posted by: Hank on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 07:54 PM
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OK, real quick here.
To the anonymous person who added a porn site and dilbert to my RSS aggregator,
I'm not sure what you're trying to get at here. Frankly, I didn't know about either of those websites, and now I do, but really all I'm wondering is who added them. I can think of several people who whould think that is funny (I am of course one of them) and several people who might know of the existence of those sites. There is some overlap. Mostly I'm interested to know if it was a stranger or one of you. I will assume that Kristen put her blog up, as a service to me for my forgetfulness, but the other two...that's just a mystery.
Oh well, as danny chow said, 'what better way to start the day than with porn and dilbert'.
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Posted by: Hank on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 02:03 AM
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OK, well you all know I have a job by now right? Well, I just got access to the UMT web server, and so I can officially begin changing and editing the webpage which I manage, how excellent! But oh! that is not all the good news.
Remember how I said I was studying an unusual amount for a test. Well, there was a specific reason. I wanted an A, and I didn't want to have to do the stupid final extra credit project to ensure that A. So I studied my butt off and got the highest grade in the class. Whoo Hoo!
Other good news, I got an e-mail from justin and he has willfully accepted the writing assignment quoted in the previous entry. He says he will probably get it this weekend.
Other news, I just got an e-mail from David Quammen, who is a rather famous author. I have attained permission from him for a vital step in my plan to launch my next big idea. But, and he made this clear in his letter, he, in no way, supports or endorses my big idea, and he also makes it quite clear he doesn't think I can pull it off. Well...not the greatest news I suppose, but still cool to get an e-mail from David Quammen (granted I did send him a snail mail letter, so a reply is not so amazing).
Other good news...ummm. I don't have to work at all anymore for my Ecology class because I've got my A and there's no way to bring that grade down. I will still attend classes though, out of respect. I need to get working on work now, that is important, to be sure, because having a job is one thing, performing the duties of said job is quite another, and I'd like to hang on to this one for as long as possible.
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Posted by: Hank on Tuesday, April 27, 2004 - 06:08 PM
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I was spending an awful lot of time in the past few days studying for a test I took today. It's lovely to be able to concentrate on other things.
I gave both emily and abby writing assignments and they actually did them, which excites and emboldens me. So I have decided, at Emily's urging, to send one to Justin:
"Give me a few paragraphs on girls you have kissed. Compare and contrast their levels of sanity when appropriate. Have your kisses/crushes taken on a more sensible pattern since leaving Eckerd? Or would you say that you are still longing for Snickers when Three Musketeers are just as tastey, and not nearly as nutty?"
I just put in a feed organizer, it's for me, but you can check it out too if you like. You can even add feeds if you know what I'm talking about and care at all to do so, but don't go crazy. Basically it provides a little place where I can see if the blogs I generally go to have updated without bothering to type in their URL all the time. It will save me time, and I like that.
OK that's all
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Posted by: Hank on Tuesday, April 27, 2004 - 12:20 AM
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Other Stories
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· A stranger lurks
(May 11, 2004)
· Zen - without the wait
(May 07, 2004)
· Happy Birthday to me Part 2
(May 06, 2004)
· Happy Birthday to Me!
(May 05, 2004)
· Concrete, Steel and Stone
(May 01, 2004)
· Garage Sales
(May 01, 2004)
· The Secret
(Apr 28, 2004)
· My Feed List
(Apr 28, 2004)
· Heaps of good news
(Apr 27, 2004)
· Writing assignments and Other things
(Apr 27, 2004)
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