January 7

Let's say this started on the first. It's not like I was doing anything, besides not starting it on the first. But I was thinking about it. Well, I was going to think about it. This is going to be totally cool. Honestly!

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January 28

Okay, I don't know how that happened. I know you've all been here every day, telling your friends, waiting for the next installment. I stopped by a couple days ago myself, to see if it had changed. It hadn't.

See, the problem is that I just don't know what to do about the owls. More here, tomorrow.

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March 11

I had to move. I just had to move; I had no choice about it. It's the owls. As soon as I get settled down, which Marta and Warren say will be... oh, I haven't introduced Warren; I think Marta mentioned Warren. Well, Warren will have to wait until next time, because I have to move (owls, okay?).

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March 12

Okay, what you do is, see, you stitch together random noise from your day, or from someone's day you've heard about, together with pop-culture references and clever words you make up. The TV is the key... it's what holds blogs together. I'll start watching more, like CBS Evening News with that creepy old guy; I guess just about everybody on CBS is a creepy old guy. Okay, maybe I can watch reality shows with those creepy young people. Actually, blogging is more about music, but it's still the same. But didn't they replace that creepy old guy with somebody else? Somebody just as creepy, I'm sure. I'm gonna have to watch more CBS, I guess.

No, I can do this... piece of cake.

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March 29

It's the owls. I'm going to have to move again.

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March 30

See, the trick is to not say "I" all the time, like you're talking about yourself. That's especially true if you're remarkably boring, and even more true if you're remarkably boring, but you don't know it.

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March 31

Oops, sorry! Accidental post. I was just looking at the hit counter. Those things don't work right. :-)

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April 2

Oops! I almost said my bad. I hate it when people say that! :-(

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April 5

I think the hit counter is broken.

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April 6

Test.

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April 7

TEST!!!

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April 9

Now I am sure the counter is broken!

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April 22

Okay, whoever you are, that was not funny! Some of those weren't even real words! If you think this is so easy, well why don't you try it! Who was this chunkylover53 guy, anyway? Do you know how hard it is to get 57 comments deleted? It cost me three cents per comment, so please stop! :-(

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April 28

There, that's better.

Somebody told me that someone heard that if you put special keywords in your blog, somebody else will pay you for them; I don't know who, exactly. Okay, I'll try saying Wisconsin and cheese, and if people start eating more cheese (mmm... yummy cheese), I think Wisconsin will pay me for it. Not Swiss cheese, because I don't think the Swiss pay for it.

I think they also make Swiss cheese in Wisconsin, so maybe that will work, too. Maybe with a little extra money, I can do something about the owls.

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May 5

Wouldn't some of that fantastic Wisconsin cheese be great, right about now?

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May 7

Okay! Stop that! I get it! No more about... that... stuff.

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May 12

Test?!

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May 13

Cheddar?!?!

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May 14

Sorry! :-)

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June 23

This time for sure! :-)

So we were finally gonna see that Matrice movie today, but they wanted $8 for each of us, and the line was like 'round the block. I was totally bummed, so we went to the mall and got Matrice T-shirts that cost more than it would to see the movie, but they last longer (haw!), and people will think we saw it anyway, so that when we do see it we can tell 'em we already saw it once, and we're just seeing it again.

Uh, yeah.

Hmm... that didn't go as well as planned. I know it's because of the owls.

Maybe I should just make lists of my favorite things.

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June 27

Hi Warren! Did you see my new blog? I mentioned you in it, and there's a movie review, and everything. It's really catching on! If you can, be sure to tell people to click on the link... tell them that they don't actually have to read the words, just click on it, okay? Oh, who am I kidding? It looks so easy, but it's not. Maybe I should start again.

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June 28

Whoops! Just ignore that. It wasn't supposed to be here.

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July 3

Okay, let's try another approach. Right. Well then. Okay, I'll try blogtalk!

Uh.

See...

Okay, I have it now.

It goes something like this: Okay as if it's not bad enough that Buffy'z over {I did not see that one coming}. I'm already soooo really boooored with reruns on The TV, and there hasn't been a new Britany, uh, Simp... uh, somebody-or-other album since...

Uh, nevermind.

For some reason, that did not turn out quite how I thought it would. Just make sure nobody finds out, so I don't have to give all the money back. Nobody checks, nobody cares; I'll just fill-in with song lyrics, then I can cruise.

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July 4

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July 5

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July 6

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July 7

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July 8

Jimmy cracked corn
And I don't care

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July 9

Jimmy cracked corn
And I don't care

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July 10

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July 11

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July 12

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August 27

Dear Patrons,

This performance has been a conceptual work of Virtual Performance Art; thank you for your contribution.

Performance Art is truly the purest of ART, and it must continue to be paid for by the NEA. I know the grant I got for this, was public money well spent.

People who have long-suffered from the lack of artistic ability or original ideas or socially-acceptable body odor, need your support, too. The are to be revered. They must be allowed to live in dignity, where they can wear flowing black tunics, carry iguanas, and feel free to never have to smile at waiters. Vote for the arts! Vote! And perhaps, one day, you will be fortunate enough to happen onto a Performance Artist arranging naked people into the shape of a duck.

Yeah, that'll work!

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August 28

All right, that was not called for! I mean, you try to come up with this stuff. Look, this is art!

Frankly, you're just jealous because you didn't get the govm'nt grant first.

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August 29

And I thought:

If I had thrown old parachutes all over Marin County, I'd have been put in jail... but nooo-o-o, they give this guy money. And then television stations send helicopters to record it for posterity.

I must be missing something.

Just once it would be nice if helicopters and reporters would show up when I'm not face-down on the ground with a cop's knee pressed in my back.

And the thought passed.

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September 2

Then the movie "Adaptation." came out on DVD. It is a movie about making a bad screenplay, about a book that couldn't be made into a movie. It was, in short, and in so many ways, recursively unmanageable. It somehow managed to rate thumbs-up by several thousand movie reviewers, though it's debatable where their thumbs were... up.

It also referenced the movie "Being John Malkovich," which was, among several dozen other half-explored subplots, about puppetry--perhaps the only form of Performance Art more reviled than mimery.

But, hey, I got the grant money!

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September 5

Okay! Fine! I get it... okay? Please quit with the comments.

You're just jealous that I got the funding instead of you.

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September 8

I'm sorry! S-o-r-r-y! Okay?

I'm sure you deserved the grant money more than I did. It's just that my uncle works at that big gray government office downtown, and he said that I could... uh, nevermind.

Anyway, I'm a dummy, and I'm sure that you are the artist of artists. Okay?

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September 9

That's better.

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September 14

I mean, puppeteers make at least enough money to buy more puppets.

"The Rap" is another form of Performance Art, although it is primarily funded by the private sector. For those unfamiliar, "The Rap" is a form of atonal barking, performed by people with posture problems and novel fashion sense, but no notable writing or musical skills.

Rock, on the other hand, is primarily melodic screaming and whining. The preferred genre is apparently based on the choice of people who live next door.

They all make money.

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September 16

Anyway, I got the grant (even though you really deserved it, okay?).

Now I have this rapping puppet and an iguana, but it's still hard to convince most people to take off their clothes in public.

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October 3

Like that "Adaptation." movie, on the surface this grant thing looks pretty good, but the more you understand it, the less you get it.

It seems that in order to really get the grant money, I have to show them the results of the performance. This could be challenging, since their computer looks like the one Grace Hopper used in high school, and the laptop I borrowed is a Radio Shack Model 100.

More of a concern is that you have to submit in triplicate, so I guess I'll have to do this Performance Art thing two more times (I wonder how Internet forums work).

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October 7

If not for PBS on The TV, Performance Artists wouldn't get any publicity at all... except of course when they're being arrested.

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October 8

So while the pleasant person at the counter gleefully hands-out generous helpings of festively-colored forms with mimeographed addendums, the hall echoes with the screeching of public servant-style footwear, as they dive into cloakrooms to avoid taking responsibility for those completed forms.

It's about nine layers into the belly of the bureaucracy, through some nice Deco architecture, past murals of Socialistic themes, painted by people in black tunics and funded by the WPA. Then up marble steps that haven't been cleaned since the Eisenhower administration. You can't get the full impact of the place from photographs; you have to smell it.

I open the door to the "Departm.n| of ||||| | |" (it probably used to say more). The waiting room has a filing cabinet and a desk, plus a robust receptionist in a squeaky leather chair, plowing a rut between them.

On the desk is a real computer! It must be new, because it says "XT" on it, while most people I know still run something that says "XP". That's four letters better than the "XP."

This is going to work!

In line in front of me is a guy in a blue butterfly suit, trying to get his grant money for a stunt he performed in New York a couple of years ago. In front of him is the guy who did the parachutes in Marin County.

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October 9

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October 10

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October 11

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October 12

Jimmy cracked corn
And I don't care

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October 13

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October 14

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November 3

Then I realized that what was intended to be a story about Performance Art, using immature blogging as a plot device, with a side story about movies, was itself becoming a blog, and not a very good one at that.

Anybody could tell that I haven't been to Marin county in twelve years; that was a dumb idea. I never should have started that subplot about the bureaucracy, nobody would understand it anyway. People are going to see that I'm not a writer... I'm not even a blogger.

I don't know how I got into this. Maybe if I had better hair and lost some weight. What am I talking about? It needed drama or a plot twist. It's too late to start that now. Maybe if I could find the Web server where this is stored, I could erase it and start again. Then I could keep the good parts, like the iguana and the naked people, and get rid of the rest. Then it would be a good story.

I'm going to Palo Alto to find that server!

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November 4

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November 5

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November 8

The last time I was in Palo Alto, the car air conditioner went out, and nobody would look at it unless I gave them two written references and a blood sample. I hadn't lived in Palo Alto for several years, so everybody I had known was either a retired zillionaire or dead from an overdose. I spent the rest of that trip without air conditioning. When I lived there, everybody rode bicycles or public transportation; on that trip, even cops drove BMWs.

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November 10

So I'm going back to Palo Alto, still driving that same car (I have learned one thing: charge for your work by the hour, not by the number of pages).

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November 11

Near sunset, I reach the Southern Palo Alto/Mountain View gate on the Sunnyvale side. The cops are now driving electric cars, but as I said I'm still in the same car. There is no way these cops will let this old car into Palo Alto.

However, I am wearing Birkenstock sandals, so they give me a temporary tourist visa, and allow me to walk in.

As I walk up El Camino, it's probably a lovely sunset, but you can't tell in Palo Alto, because of this stupid hill to the West.

The BMWs are gone, replaced by Alternate-fuel SUVs. $5000 Segways(TM) replace the bicycles.

Ahead of me, a Performance Artist is shouting through a megaphone at a mob of naked people. I turn around and walk to the car, never glancing back to see what shape they're making.

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November 13

Who am I fooling?

I never got to Palo Alto.

The car is in the shop, work is getting ahead of me (and not just weeds in the yard); I can't afford go to Palo Alto now, let alone Marin County.

Anybody could see that it was all a lie. I wanted to try the blog-speak again; I wanted to lose weight; I completely forgot to talk about people with one name. Your hair grows faster in the summer. Nobody reads blogs. Maybe nobody will notice if I just end it.

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November 16

And so this cautionary tale draws to a close. The moral is: decide where you're going before you call for reservations.

No, that didn't work at all.

Maybe I should have talked about the orange shower curtains all over New York. Maybe I shouldn't have started at all. Maybe I should wait until the beginning of the year, and start it right. This is just the Internet, so nobody will see this, anyway. Yeah, I'll start again next year. Maybe I'll watch that movie "Adaptation." one more time.

Yeah, that should help... watch a movie.

Then I can write about it in my blog.

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November 19

Yeah, I should start this again. I'll do it right this time... right after the holidays.

Maybe I'll get a real grant to put on a performance piece called "Journey Toward the Goddess," it's all about transformations on a jet liner.

William Shatner's performance was memorable in the first version.

Resources that might've been cast to the downtrodden's gain. Toil that defending our Earth's delicate mantle cries for. Time that is lost with nary a seed sown. Flower crowns left of today's fleeting dance celebrate not life--they mock it. Should you don robes of Performance, best consider the fate of thy deeds as pure at your own peril.

Yeah, Performance Art is cool.

I think the next Performance Art project will be to go to industrial parks, put stacks of giant orange metal tubes in front of buildings, ring their doorbells, then run away. It's not an entirely original idea.

Maybe I'll just watch that "Adaptation." movie again

Yeah, after the holidays.

Right after I do something about those owls.

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