pookiebear – Page 124 – A Most Unreliable Narrator

happiness

You’re such an ass Lisa. If you were
here right now, I’d just lean over and kiss ya.
Jonathan

Friday night, Justin and I had decided not to do anything more strenuous than watch TV. I however had been sucking down coffee all day and ended up staying till 3am on-line. I was bored. I couldn’t find anything (or anyone) worth talking to or doing. So I played around with my QuickCam for a bit and took some shots. I realized that many of my on-line buddies hadn’t seen me since I chopped my hair off and started sending them out.
“Lisa, are you mad?”
“What?”
“Are you mad or irritated about something.”
“Nope. I’ve been in a really good mood all day. Why do you ask?”
“I dunno — you just look really pissed off in those pictures.”
“Oh. Well I wasn’t.”
This is what it was like all weekend. I’d send pics to those who wanted them, only to be told I look like a pissed of bitch. And I wasn’t. I was positively goofy all Friday. Justin thought I had sniffed something because I seemed so out of “character” to him.
Ya know, I’m a petite little flower damnit. And I’m in a good mood for the most part all the time. So it bothers the hell out of me when I hear from friends that I always look pissed off.
Jonathan has made me promise to send him a picture of me smiling. I tried that. I took quite a few shots of myself with a cheesy grin — and it looked fake. not out of character — just fake. So last night, on ICQ jonathan started acting weirder than normal. i suddenly got really concerned and called him. he was laughing and we started sparing off one another.
I kept going “You’re such an ass Jonathan.” and he would laugh and say “Yeah, but you love it baby!” And I would sit there and giggle about something stupid.
It bothers me, really, that what people’s first perception of me. It’s confusing to me that quite a number of people talk about how great I am as a friend to them, and yet they turn around and talk to me about how pissed off or defensive I get.
hrm.
beats the fuck out of me.
sometimes I try, really hard, to be a good person. smile more. laugh more. and it still seems to me that you can’t win them all. if i try and be cheerful, people get all uptight about how “out of character” it is of me to be such a thing. and it doesn’t make damn sense to me.
maybe I’ve become too cynical and bitter in my old age.
From Danny:
“at the risk of getting bitchslapped by you (which may be a good thing) I’m gonna give you more than $.02 worth of my mind 🙂 (inflation adjusted)

“lisa, do you know when you’re the most attractive? when you’re gentle and quiet and relaxed and in a good mood. when you’re in a good mood, this little girl comes out that is so much a part of your unique personality. its the little girl that sleeps with a teddy bear, that talks about being truly and honestly in love, that stops and thinks long and hard about your future intellectually and emotionally.
“to be honest, i hate your rough/tough exterior. you’re not a bitchhoe, but when you are….i try to steer clear (not that we talk a lot anyhow) but when i do talk to you, i try to catch the happy gentle seductive lisa. i think its that line of age that everyone gets to where our lifeline stops being so jaggedly and starts to smooth out our personalities. it happens. i like the lisa that isn’t getting “fucked” either physically or emotionally because that makes you tough and hard. i don’t like the controlling lisa that can be so dominating at times. i believe that those are only phases. i believe that the rough/tough/bitchhoe exterior is all just a phase because the more i talk to you and hear from you, i see more of your lifeline smoothing out and hearing the gentle, calm, beautiful lisa coming out.
“i think this is what happened with Chad who is now honestly and truly in love. i think his lifeline is smoothing out, he sees things more clearly allowing him to be honestly in love. of course i don’t know Chad from Adam, but i think this is a part of everyone. Lord knows its a part of me as my life line is definitely smoothing out.
“this is the type of girl that will fall in love with someone and stay there because they will find that person who is also in the same stage in life. opposites only attract when they’re really young simply because they are ignorant to that other side of the world that the other person possesses. once they become educated and gain more wisdom about that other opposite life, it just becomes part of their knowledge bank and TRUE attraction comes from meeting someone more like them. at our stage in life, late 20s early 30s, opposites no longer attract. like attracts like. and you’ll be less likely to get your heart broken.”

keep clear

my street runs into what is commonly known as a t-section at the main drag. the 100 or soo feet between one corner to another on all three sides has in big white paint “keep clear”. stipulating, that for traffic to make left/right turns onto the main drag or a left turn onto my street, the “keep” clear sign alert people to allow this to happen. Now you won’t see “keep clear” printed on every t-section that you run into — however since the off-ramp light is located about a block from my street, traffic gets heavy and backed up and it’s a royal pain in the ass to make a left onto the main drag or to make a left onto my street.
now the bitch is, is that people are dumber than box of rocks when it comes to driving. too many times when i have come home from work, i have to honk like a mad person because some moron has his tricked-out pinto in the intersection that says “keep clear”. finally, it ends up with the person behind him backing up enough so that I can get through.
there are other “keep clear” intersections that people don’t bother to “read”. one is off of Grand Ave in Lake Merritt, by where Darryl lives. I have to make a left onto a side street to take him home, however since the street between grand ave and lakeshore ave is curved, and the street i need to get onto is a side street, it’s impossible to do so if traffic is backed up from the light. there is only room for about 2 cars before the side street begins. since it’s such a busy intersection, again the “keep clear” is a signal to anyone with half a brain that others need to get through and that at red lights, people should be behind the white lines. think this happens? Fuck no. Yesterday a woman stopped in the middle of the intersection, so that no one could turn left onto the side street and no one could turn left onto the main street. I honked and she finally got off her duff and moved her car up. Other people will blatantly sit there and NOT move. Once I saw a cop who turned on his flashers to get through the intersection and then turned them off as he continued driving. That, Darryl and I both thought, was completely and utterly unfair.
the one thing i have learned since i have lived out in california, is how negligible people are when driving. like when i rolled into this woman’s car doing less than 2 miles an hour at the toll both to get on the Bay bridge. she attempted to claim “neck injuries” until she found out that my insurance for that day had lapsed (it was picked up a day or so later. a fuck up by the insurance company). another example is when my roommate cathleen was driving home late one night, her blood sugar dropped and she ran into a parked truck. she left a note and her business card to get the matter resolved. when the person didn’t call her for several days, she walked over to his house (the accident occurred right around the corner from our house), the guy didn’t even realize that he had been hit. when he took his work truck into be appraised, they said over 2k worth of damage. 2k worth of damage to a small hit, on a work truck that was covered in bondo and had other dents and scratches? cathleen finally got the guy to take his truck to a reputable mechanic and the appraisal was for about 600 bucks (this is cali after all).
and it doesn’t stop there.
arrogant mother fuckers who drive like mad people during torrents of rain and think that gravitational laws don’t apply to them, people who will drive on shoulders for blocks to cut into traffic during high peak times, people who make lane changes without looking. the list goes on and on.
i had read somewhere that if you can drive in the bay area, you can drive anywhere. I’ve become such a good little defensive driver that i about ready to make a career change and start driving professionally.
beautiful day in the neighborhood
san francisco (nee bay area) is infamous for being absolutely beautiful one day, rainy the next and than back to being beautiful again. Wednesday (2.24.99) was so beautiful, i got out off of BART one stop early on my way back to work. i stopped at the San Francisco shopping center and walked down market, enjoying the beautiful day mixed with the always precious site of homelessness and yuppies who convene together on the sidewalks. the wind was blowing just right so that the usual smell of urine was distant.
while walking down the street, i felt this sense of happiness i hadn’t felt in a particular time. I’m still in a quandary about what to do with my life — and i feel that i need to make a decision soon. but the rub is that looking back at the past history of me and seeing the all too familiar patterns that keep cropping up. I’ve been running in this rut now for about four years (long before cali came into the view) and almost every new year, i say the same things “this year is going to be different.” but it never feels like it is.
patterns are everywhere. i read old journal entries from 95,96 (written journal not on-line) and see that my bitch and moans then are the same bitch and moans now. i look through past on-line journals and see striking if not similar patterns in a comparison to month to month of then and now.
i get confused.
I’m not quite sure what i need to be doing. thoughts keep going through my head such as “Justin is the best there is” or “are you going to school for yourself or to prove something to someone” or “you are getting old Lisa. pretty soon you will be 40! (14 more years)”. i run such a gamut from self-pity to being self-righteous it’s almost sickening. i can never make up my mind exactly what i want. my mantra has just been “school, school, school” but i don’t know what i want to do with my life after that. the choices are so overwhelming that i freak and just do nothing. i think about all the stuff i want to do, and feel guilty when people attempt to convince me that i shouldn’t have to do it alone.
then i hear about ex’s who are getting married (those evil fuckers) and i feel like something is inherently wrong with me.
i used to have this strong sense of “worth” to the extent that i knew how my life was going to be going — mainly with my love life. i knew what i wanted from someone and that i was strong enough to say good-bye if it didn’t happen. then i hear other people who seem least likely to be in love — be in love and it sounds almost clinical. i can’t imagine my life with someone, let alone of being in love again. it seems such a 180 degree turn of who i am now — that i fear that my worst fear has come undone.
I’ve become afraid.
last night i talked to my ex Chad (from downpour on my soul) and felt strange. the longing in his voice matched the longing in my own voice — our voices to each other still did the same things physically to us that it had in the past. we talked a lot about our relationship and all the fun times we had and reminiscing about when he was living in Pittsburgh and when i would go see him. over 3 years have passed since we have last talked on the phone and about the same since we last saw each other physically. he’s got a new girl right now and he seems to be completely and honestly in love with her — but i keep getting the sinking feeling of what “could have happened” if i hadn’t done what i did.
I think about that now a lot — about the mens I’ve dated and of those ones, the ones that i had the most significant relationships with. i could have been happy with any of them in the long-term sense — and lord knows i was wildly in love with all of them at the time we were together. but shit always gets in the way and i always end up getting my heart-broken (often for trivial things)

sick

i’ve been home since last Wednesday (2.17.99) with some sort of bronchial/flu/cold dealie going on. I get this every year — and I’m sure if I wasn’t smoking, I wouldn’t get it as bad as I do. So lesson learned today folks that lisa is quitting smoking. have to. i can’t quite get this coughing up my lungs by an early death. i’ve called into work and wrote (well, i’ve been meaning to!) to my prof’s telling them what’s going on. I feel horrible. Today I attempted to take Justin shoe shopping and nearly fainted at the store. I can’t move far and was afraid to drive home. I called in sick tomorrow, planning on even more bed rest and fluids. The only positive thing this has given me is a much needed loss of 5 lbs. score. not water weight — but fat. woo. will make my goal of 10 lbs this month.
so this is part the reason why people haven’t heard from me. one frantic person thought i was personally ignoring him. Nerp. (Kruton, I’m not speaking about you okay?) I haven’t had much energy to do much except sleep, read and watch movies back to back. Reading should equate studying. it doesn’t. instead i’ve been imbibing on all the heinlein books that i have in my library. which doesn’t account for much — really just five or six of his main tomes. I have found though that even though i greedily read his stuff a few years back, i’m not finding it as “entertaining” as i did then. i don’t know what’s changed. it’s still funny and in many ways, many of what he says hits the nail on the head — but from what i’ve understood in the past with old Heinlein lovers — he comes and goes in spurts. heh. literally. i’m not really being dragged into anything “new” via lit as of late. i’ve been reading spurts of Plato/Aristotle/Socrates (not necessarily in that order) for classes and of course, course work. I tried reading a book that i bought several years ago called “Pooh and the Philosophers” in which the author claims “all of modern western philosophy leads up to Winnie the Pooh.” However, when I bought the book several years ago (as a gag gift to myself) I thought it would be “cute” as all theories are possible.
however, when i delved into the book last night — i found it to be boring and tedious. i did not see any Socratic/platonic (heh) view between Pooh and freaking honey. the author — who teaches philosophy at Cambridge natch — has something up his ass — or in his brain. or maybe he’s smoking too much damn crack.
michael wants me to come to his philosophy club on Tuesday nights. he says i have to back up what is say with proof and meaning — none of which i hold dear to my heart (as if!).
however, i get the feeling that it’s nothing more than #philosophy in real life — with just as many ego-iq’s as the channel holds. should be fun. so i will probably go.
defcon
Jonathan is trying to get me to go to defcon 7 this year. i have no idea why. he just think it’s cool for me to go. i went to defcon 5. and i really don’t see a reason _to_ go. see friends? maybe. but i can see them anytime. besides, this whole thing isn’t my bag. Jonathan is just strange. even though he looks like chris o’donell.
look-alikes
several people have commented that i look like minnie driver. i wish to hell that i looked like minnie! damn is she fione or what here? anyway, basically people think i look like her or tiffani-amber theissen. and mainly because while both are brunettes, they also have wide faces such that i have. except i chopped all my hair off a few months ago in an effort to go shorter — and then thought about going shorter still — and regret cutting it off. i always fucking do that!
this is so banal and pointless. i just wanted something to show minnie’s picture. *meow*
i’m going to bed.
night.
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ps: nyquil gives you some strange ass dreams. that’s all i’m saying because that is all i freaking remember.

strange currencies

bitchasshoe.org is up.
friday (2.12.99), i was standing outside of slip.net smoking my cigarette when this woman came up to me. she started talking about how for valentines day, her office holds a baking contest, where the first prize is $50 bucks. and after the contest, she says, they go into the lunch room and eat all the goodies. after she finished that sentence, she walked back into the building, leaving me standing there still staring at the space where she was standing. i turned around and stared at the building across the street, wondering if it was worth $400,000 dollars for a loft to live there.
every sunday morning, justin and i make pancakes and bacon. but just not regular pork bacon — oohhh no. we make Jenni-O turkey bacon (95% fat free!). we love this crap so much, we usually make 1 1/2 packages to 2 packages and then munch on it the rest of the day.
we were out of a few items, so i said i was going to the store. i skipped going to lucky’s, because i always get hit on, so instead i went to safeway. i was looking for potatoe soup to use in dinner tonight, when this little short woman (about 4’6″) asked me (6′) to grab a box of pie crusts for her. she thanked me and went on her way.
james says “hi!”
my friend james (who runs DarkNebula) invited justin and i to go on a trek to Yosemite today. however, the roads were so bad that they have closed down access and if you could make it up, they recommended snow chains.
the bitch punked out on us by emailing me later this morning to say that he wasn’t going to make it AND he wasn’t going to come over and spend V-Day with us — the bitch.
but he wanted me to send you his regards.
c:>format c:
i had gotten so frustrated with my software crashing on me, windows was having issues and my system was running so damn slow, that i bought a six pack of hefeweizen and moved everything off my c: drive to my other drives and zip. when that was all completed and i had no personal data left, i reformatted the fucker.
there is something almost pure about having a blank harddrive.
i copied my start-up files from a diskette onto c, and rebooted. it started giving me issues of “non-system diskette. please hit enter to reboot.” what the fuck? i rebooted and went into bios, and saw that it was attempting to boot from the cd-rom. changed the format of boot options and tried again. same error. i started with it booting from the a: drive. same error. i started to panic. i do this on a daily basis. i’ve done hundreds of machines this way — there should be no reason why it’s giving me error messages. i checked and re-checked everything over again. nothing is wrong or incorrect. i grabbed my sony restore disk. last ditch effort. however, i go with sony’s restore disk, and i’m stuck with fucking 95 (instead of 98) and all the bullshit crap they put on. in a very last ditch effort before giving up to the MAN i stick in the 98 cd-rom and pray. it boots and installs 98 effortlessly.
i have been saved.
now, i’m not some neophyte who doesn’t know what they are doing — i’ve been working with computers for eons (so it feels like). and i have done this type of thing a few thousand times — so imagine my perplexity that if this wasn’t working how fucked up that would be! well, for once i would like to thank god (b. gates) and the ability to boot off of cd-roms. mental note: cd-r burn more copies of winders 98 for personal use.
but the only thing i was really concerned about — was my taxes. i had done them via turbotax. after you submit the information, they tell you to check back within 24-48 hours and then finish it. well, i reformatted my computer, and saved my files. only when i re-installed turbotax, it wouldn’t accept my un-lock code — so off to calling Inuit to get the damn code and explain what was going on. the irony, is that while i’m waiting for tech support, i figure out how to get my old info back and finish with my taxes.
the really rad thing?
IRS is going to deposit my refund on or by 2.19.99. Now that is damn QUICK! 🙂 i’m not having issues with the MAN today!
moloch
i often write stuff and save it, never to be published in any format. such as i used to write for f.u.c.k., but it’s been nearly a year since i’ve given jericho anything. sometimes f.u.c.k. submissions became a entry update. and i’ve been writing in my journal more. i’ve got time to kill on BART — i need something to occupy me. i’ve been working on lisa 2000, but it’s not finished yet.
i just checked out the work in progress i started on a few weeks ago — i can’t believe i wrote so much in such a little time.
i hope to have it finished one day.
but in the interim, i’ll put up what i have.
erm, maybe not. i’m sick of hearing about 404 errors.
i’m audi 5000 g.
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Open letter to the hacking community, from Adam Penenberg

Feb. 8, 1999
Open letter to the hacking community:
Last week, Steve Silberman of Wired News called to tell me he and I and some other journalists had been duped by a psuedo-hacker named Christian Valor, AKA se7en. In April 1998, I had posted a piece on the Forbes Digital Tool web site about Valor¢s kiddie porn vigilantism and the fact that law enforcement knew what he was doing, but turned a blind eye. Cool story. Too bad it turned out not to be true.
I was certainly in good company. Steve also had written about Valor’s exploits, as had Newsday, the Independent in London, etc. Both Steve and I received letters from se7en’s ex-girlfriend simultaneously last week, but Steve got on to the story first. I was out of town. Sad to say, he and I were the only ones to respond to her letter. I told Steve I wouldn¢t post anything until his story hit. (See “Kid-Porn Vigilante Hacked Media http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1999/02/17789).
I can¢t comment on how the Steve or the Independent or Newsday conducted their research, but I would like to share with all of you how I did mine, and what went wrong. I¢m sure there are lessons to be learned.
As you may or may not know, I am no stranger to taking on journalists I think have concocted stories out of thin air. I broke the Stephen Glass story, the associate editor of The New Republic who made up a story on hackers¯and was later discovered to have made up some three dozen stories for a number of well-known publications (See “Lies, damn lies and fiction”:http://www.forbes.com/1998/05/11/otw3.html). I also took on Beth Piskora of The New York Post, who I believe made up a sexy tech story on Organized Crime setting up phony companies for Y2K remediation, who then, she claims, inserted software to divert money from bank accounts (read: clients) to mob-controlled accounts. (See “Phantom mobsters”:http://www.forbes.com/1998/08/28/feat.html). This canard was picked up by Vanity Fair in a recent feature on Y2K. Vanity Fair has yet to admit it published a lie.
I hate it when you nail a journalist and instead of coming clean, he or she hides. This is what both Glass and Piskora have done. That’s why I’m writing this note.
For my story (Kiddie porn vigilante: http://www.forbes.com/1998/04/17/feat.html) I knew I couldn’t get on IRC and traffic in kiddie porn on a Forbes computer. You remember what happened to that journalist for NPR who did, and is now had to plead guilty to a felony¯all because he was ostensibly researching a story? So I relied on law enforcement, EHAP, and NAMBLA. I called literally 10 law enforcement officials who said they studied under Valor in one of his security courses. On the record, they would all vouch for se7en¢s hacking skills. Off the record, they all said they knew what he was doing but they didn¢t care. Everyone hates kiddie porn traffickers.
I also talked to EHAP, and they told me they were distressed by se7en’s actions, because it gave hackers a bad name. Se7en should turn them over to the cops or the ISPs, they said, not break the law in going after them. They didn’t say he was a fraud.
I also contacted NAMBLA through its web site. I asked if anyone knew a hacker named se7en, who was purportedly going after kiddie porn traffickers on IRC. I received a cryptic response, something along the lines of, “Yes, some of our members have been complaining about this guy. We just want to be left alone.” End of conversation. He refused to turn over any other details.
So I felt confident that with all this cross-checking that Valor was who he said he was. Obviously, I made a mistake. I think the most important lesson I learned is that law enforcement doesn’t have a clue what really goes on in hacking circles; they are not good sources for this. I also now won’t write a hacking story unless I can meet the hacker face-to-face and actually see evidence that I can then verify with other hackers¯or computer security experts I trust. This is how I approached my story for Forbes magazine on the NY Times hack that ran last fall (available online at: .
If you want to send me taunting email, telling me what a fool I was, feel free. I’m at apenenberg@forbes.com. But you can’t possibly be harder on me than I’ve been on myself this past week. You live, you learn.
Sincerely,
Adam Penenberg
Senior Editor, Forbes Magazine

wired, se7en, and me

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1999/02/17789
There is obviously more to the story then what is being said.
My few comments in the article doesn’t show the nearly 2 hours of interviewing and email between me and Steve Silberman. there is a completely different story that isn’t being printed, and hopefully, at this point, it will get out. my reaction to the article is that i think Steve did a fab job — however se7en isn’t the mature nor the “grown up” he claims to be. while i realize journalistic integrity, but se7en comes out smelling like a rose much more then he needs to.
the main question i have received as to “why” i “dissed” se7en:
when you live with someone who not only lied to you, to your mutual friends, dismissed his own friendships along having a tendency to be completely sadistic: you wish them nothing but bad karma. se7en knew he lied not only about the kiddie-porn, but about everything. he would tell me things about his past, his friendships, peers that would be absolute and blatant lies. He would make me ‘promise’ not to say anything — and yet my own discreet searching found out that nothing he said matched — and when confronted would claim that it had been covered up or distorted to conceal the truth.
this was longtime in coming. se7en and i have been broken up for nearly two years — so it’s not the disgruntled girlfriend bit.
if anything, the one lesson i want everyone to learn is that do not always believe what you read. no matter who publishes it. do your own research and find out the truth yourself — because it is out there. (queuing up X-files music).
this site has gone from receiving 25-50 unique hits a day to a unique hit every 30 seconds since the story broke at 3am PST. If you are having problems pulling up anything on the site, smack me on the ass and let me know.
love,
me
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PS: update: 1:41 PM
Getting lots of email from “supporters” and comments from others. Received an email from Adam at Forbes who has requested that I post an open letter that he wants the world to see. There it is. 🙂
Steve posted an update to the original story. Nothing new — basically he calls Christian a “fraud”. 🙂 Score!
blatant self promotion
I’ve been thinking for awhile about giving back to those who have helped supported me since I’ve been doing the lisa chronicles. So i decided that the coolest thing to give would be t-shirts to all the subscribers of the list. T-shirts are cool — we all love them. So what better way to honor those who helped me then to give them something back?
Here is the deal:

There is currently 28 people subscribed to the list. Once I have hit 50 subscribers by February 28th, 1999, I will be sending out an announcement to the list on gathering info (mailing address and t-shirt size).
If I don’t hit my mark by that said date, I’ll be sending out an email anyway to those subscribed to the list and requesting specific information. Any t-shirts left (I make 50 shirts, there are 10 left as only 40 people are subscribed), will be SOLD for the cost of the shirt plus shipping and handling.
Recap: If you want a shirt, and you are on the list, you get one FREE. If you are not on the list, and want a shirt, you will have to PAY for it.

The shirts will be cool. I’ve already done the design. It’s just a matter of me buying the supplies and making them.
Some things to consider:

Going over the hit mark: At this point, I will do it on a first come first served basis. If I get more requests then what I’ve stipulated, I will work out a trade agreement or barter or something. I’m po’, so I can’t afford obviously to give shirts to everyone.
Concern over privacy: this is understandable. I run four mailing lists and I have never had the inclination to sell my subscribers to anyone. I hate spam just like anyone else. If you don’t want me to know that you are reading this (as I’m familiar at who is coming to the site by dns/ip number — not necessarily the person) then I guess you lose out 🙂

If I’m leaving anything out, please let me know. I’ll add more as I think about this.
This is obviously a blatant request to get more subscribers to the list as well as readership. But no one said i had morals or ethics! 😉
Now, don’t be sending me information on how you want a shirt and blah blah blah now. Wait till February 28th or subscribe to the damn list! 😉
PS: update: 7:49 PM PST
20+ new subscribers to the chronicles.
700+ unique hits.
Shitload of email.
I’ve been totally and utterly fascinated by watching people come and go. I don’t know what I was expecting — but again I’m not letting this eat up my life. I’ve been responding to email for the most part of the day — and now it’s nearing 8pm and I still haven’t finished my physics that is due on Wednesday (in which I will probably have a test — fail — and I can blame it on my own damn self for not having the will to stop mucking with the site and doing email). But anyway, a lot of positive feedback — a lot of new subscribers — a lot of contact from old friends I haven’t spoken to in years.
I don’t know what the fuck is going to happen next — several people are referring me to being famous. hardly. i am what i am. i have a story (or 10 or 15) to tell — i happened to believe in the truth and i happen to think that this time is the most right of any.
the one thing i’ve been promising myself, long before jericho or shipley joined in the fray was sitting down and writing the story myself — publish it on my site and sit back and let the cookies crumbs fall as they may. i’m bewildered by the sudden popularity and also the kind words (again — the article doesn’t show but a few comments on 2+ hours of interviewing I did) from strangers calling me a “hero”. beats me — i like to think i’m extraordinary — but — doesn’t everyone else?
i’m surprised I didn’t hear from a few people — namely Christian and CPM. But that doesn’t surprise me. Christian named me as being the only “witness” to his attacks and I derailed that. CPM offers unflattering information about me in her book – based on the fact that “se7en hurt you” deal. Jericho says that there is nothing I can do to stop it — obviously the book is already in fucking print!
blatant self promotion
several (like october) months ago — a friend of mine found it hard to keep up with TLC via web — so he inquired about an email version. I set one up — and invited those who were interested to sign up. Mainly people I knew or knew of signed up — no big deal.\
A few weeks ago — i thought “wouldn’t it be great that if i could give something back to those who gave to me?” and came up with the t-shirt idea. So I proposed a project: 50 subscribers by february 28th would get a t-shirt. however, the problem is that many people, since the article came out, s*bbed to the list _basically_ for the shirt. that kind of pisses me off.

I can only afford 50 shirts. I’m full time student and working full time. A lot of people have been behind me since this has been around in 1995 (yes not a typo). I feel that it’s only fair to them to give something back.
20 new subscribers today ALONE. one person even went so far as emailing me his snail mail address to get a shirt now. Hello! the shirts aren’t going to be made until the end of the month! goddamnit.

So here is the new deal. The offer still stands for the first 50 people who subscribe. Anyone after that up until February 28th will be given the option to either buy, at cost, the shirt or barter. I love books/music. I need more books music. One of these years i’ll put a wish list up and people can pick and choose from that. sounds fair? So if you are interested in signing up — be forewarned that if you are after 50 — then no free shirt.
fizics is calling me.
i have to get off the damn interweb.
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tax time

I just finished doing my taxes. Woopie! 🙂 See, when I lived in the state of Michigan, if I didn’t get my city/state/federal forms sent to me, I could either go to the library or the post office to pick them up. Since neither Justin nor myself received our forms this year, we went to the library and the post office to pick them up. NEITHER places had forms. They both said that I had to go to the IRS building, in downtown Oakland, to pick up said forms. Which of course is only open for four hours a day, every other Tuesday and Thursday and the hours are like from 10-3, which won’t work because I’m in class! So, fuck that.
I downloaded and used TurboTax, and having my taxes electronically filed. It’s kind of rad. Sitting here in my jammies doing this all on line. Since I only had one W-2 and the report for my student interest loan, i was done in 10 minutes. I had of course figured it out on paper before hand. No use getting worked up over freaking tax time unless I was getting money back from the MAN!
downsizing
Women’s clothing. I know I know, we beat this into the ground before. But it just irks the living PISS out of me about how designers decide on sizing. Last night, Justin and I had gone to the mall and just went window looking. Found a shirt that would have been totally rad to wear to a party I was *supposed* to go tonight. Figured that since Cathleen and I were planning on making a shirt out of some material I have, I decided *not* to get it (or the matching skirt). Wake up this morning, and do errands. Cathleen doesn’t have enough time to make the shirt — that’s fine, I can go purchase it at the mall. Drive to the mall and buy said shirt along with a matching skirt and pants. Come home and try them on. NOTHING FIT! I had grabbed the right size, but it was still _too_ small. Cathleen loved the shirt. She tried it on and it fit her! She’s a size M and I’m an XL. Does this shit make any fucking sense to you whatsoever?
A few months (or 6) ago, Justin and I had gone to another mall and bought a skirt at a shop. The skirt was labeled 3XL. It was a store that was dedicated to funky fashions for us voluptuous women. Get home, the skirt is a size too _small_. 3XL. I started having issues. Cathleen tried on the skirt, and it fit her JUST FINE!
It just doesn’t make sense!
migration
back in December, for Christmas, danny had gotten my belly button pierced. this wasn’t the first time it was done — i had it pierced in january of 1996 in pennsylvania. however, over time, since the piercing was so shallow, it had eventually became painful as it started to migrate out.
when i had gone to get it done the second time around, ryne (piercer extraodinair) had pierced above the old scar tissue and made it more deep. now he didn’t express any concern for it. other than using a barbell other than a hoop would be better for me as well as making sure that i was taking care of it.
it’s starting to migrate again.
it frustrates me because i really love having it pierced — however it’s getting extremely painful. when i kept checking it, i realized that it had migrated to the point that it was now below the scar tissue — not above it when ryne had pierced it. i tried having Justin take it out — but his fingers were to big to grasp the balls at the end of the barbells. cathleen finally took it out for me. it was humorous. i was standing above the heater in our living room as she pushed and prodded the barbell to loosen it. my robe gaped open and i stood there wincing.
however, i am too fucking stubborn. i still have all my jewelry from when i had various other body parts pierced, so i was able to slide a 16g hoop through the hole a few hours later. I can’t get the suspension ball on, but I’m keeping it pierced goddamnit! if it looks like it’s going to eventually come out of my flesh — then I will remove it. I really want to keep it pierced goddamnit. I think though what I will end up doing is piercing the bottom of the belly button or going horizontal through it. I think I like that idea much better. I never had problems with anything else being pierced — I don’t know WHY it keeps migrating out.
the irony of this is that recently the AMA released along with the ADA a study on tongue piercing, saying it could lead to AIDS and other blood born diseases. WTF?
Now I realize that tongue piercing isn’t for everyone — however the chief concern for people who plan on doing it is the “problems” with dental care and what not to their teeth. Horror stories have filtered back (thanks to the interweb) about how people have chipped, loosen, swallowed teeth due to a piercing that was done incorrectly. My own piercing was done safely at the most respected place in the Bay area. However, I have a small mouth (gee –) and even though I kept sizing down the gauge and the length of the barbell, it was still too big for my mouth. I suddenly got worried about the repercussions of what was going to happen — my mother paid 10k for my dental work (braces, and what not) and I love my teeth. So 7 months later, out I took the barbell out for good.
I want to get it repierced again — but chances are I probably will not. I know that if I move back to Michigan, Danny has the hookup at a few good bod-mod places — they were the ones who did my nipples originally.
neoplanet
I first started using neoplanet as a browser last summer when it was first released. For some reason, I took it off my system. However, taking a look at their website and seeing how they had improved it, I decided to download and run it again. It is only 2MB in size. I’m not kidding. It however uses IE’s engine as the background process — which blows big fat hairy balls. But, i love the look and feel of how it works. So, my pages shouldn’t look any different to you — and I still have netscape on my system. If, however, you encounter an problem, please let me know!
Love,
me
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presents
I’ve been thinking for awhile about giving back to those who have helped supported me since I’ve been doing the lisa chronicles. So i decided that the coolest thing to give would be t-shirts to all the subscribers of the list. T-shirts are cool — we all love them. So what better way to honor those who helped me then to give them something back?
Here is the deal:

There is currently 15 people subscribed to the list. Once I have hit 25 (I might change this to 50) subscribers by February 28th, 1999, I will be sending out an announcement to the list on gathering info (mailing address and t-shirt size).
If I don’t hit my mark by that said date, I’ll be sending out an email anyway to those subscribed to the list and requesting specific information. Any t-shirts left (I make 50 shirts, there are 10 left as only 40 people are subscribed), will be SOLD for the cost of the shirt plus shipping and handling.
Recap: If you want a shirt, and you are on the list, you get one FREE. If you are not on the list, and want a shirt, you will have to PAY for it.

The shirts will be cool. I’ve already done the design. It’s just a matter of me buying the supplies and making them.
Some things to consider:

Going over the hit mark (25 or 50): At this point, I will do it on a first come first served basis. If I get more requests then what I’ve stipulated, I will work out a trade agreement or barter or something. I’m po’, so I can’t afford obviously to give shirts to everyone.
Concern over privacy: this is understandable. I run four mailing lists and I have never had the inclination to sell my subscribers to anyone. I hate spam just like anyone else. If you don’t want me to know that you are reading this (as I’m familiar at who is coming to the site by dns/ip number — not necessarily the person) then I guess you lose out 🙂

Do I look like a fucking people person?

high finance
fucking bank of america.
when i had signed up as a customer, i had signed up for direct deposit. as a direct deposit customer, i do not get charged for bank fees for having a checking account. saving me a big $5.50 a month. so, imagine my surprise when i got my first statement to find that yes, i had been charged that lousy 5.50. i call them, and complain. first the person i spoke with said that the last deposit made into my account wasn’t direct deposited. i said oh yeah? what happened? some magical little fairy just decided to put monies in my account? then she hands me to the manager, some snobby bitch, who proceeded to tell me that it states in black and white that it doesn’t become a direct deposit account until money is direct deposited. i said, but you can’t have money direct deposited until you get the account and routing numbers! which means that the first deposit is going to be done by hand! hello! fucking morons.
then, today, i’m checking the on-line statements and it says that they charged me $10 dollars for insufficient funds — which I don’t have! fucking jesus christ on a pogo stick! there is money in the account — i’ve only written one check, which is far LESS then what is in the account. god, i hate calling them because they act like their are so superior to us common folks who make less than 6 figures. fucking morons. geez. now i have to go to the school bookstore and pay with my credit card — which is actually my debit card attached to my direct deposited account! grrr.
busy little bee
i’ve got a few things lined up on my plate:

tomorrow i’m being interviewed by wired for something i cannot discuss at this time. i actually leaked the story to several other reporters but since this person was the first one to get back to me, he has full rights to it. anyway, i will provide more information once the story leaks this week.
i had some complaints about the lisa chronicles. basically it came from the person who first initially wanted me to do this via email. he said that while my life is interesting enough to read about, he was bored with the old lisa. he wanted “more”. including videos, pictures, etc. i’m like? what the fuck here. my life to you is what I choose to give you. anyway, i decided that the personal section about me needed a major lift, so i’ve been working on that this last week. it’s a time consuming — since it takes me awhile to get everything up and running. it might take me a few weeks to get it completed and uploaded. as usual, i’ll post when it’s completed. 🙂
school. always taking up time. i forewent the super bowl tonight to work on my website, which meant i’m waiting to the last minute to study. but, i’ll pull a 4.0 this semester. i know it 😉

presents
i’ve been thinking for awhile about giving back to those who have helped supported me since i’ve been doing the lisa chronicles. So i decided that the coolest thing to give would be t-shirts to all the subscribers of the list. T-shirts are cool — we all love them. So what better way to honor those who helped me then to give them something back?
Here is the deal:

There is currently 15 people subscribed to the list. Once I have hit 25 (I might change this to 50) subscribers by February 28th, 1999, I will be sending out an announcement to the list on gathering info (mailing address and t-shirt size).
If I don’t hit my mark by that said date, I’ll be sending out an email anyway to those subscribed to the list and requesting specific information. Any t-shirts left (I make 50 shirts, there are 10 left as only 40 people are subscribed), will be SOLD for the cost of the shirt plus shipping and handling.
Recap: If you want a shirt, and you are on the list, you get one FREE. If you are not on the list, and want a shirt, you will have to PAY for it.

The shirts will be cool. I’ve already done the design. It’s just a matter of me buying the supplies and making them.
Some things to consider:

Going over the hit mark (25 or 50): At this point, I will do it on a first come first served basis. If I get more requests then what I’ve stipulated, I will work out a trade agreement or barter or something. I’m po’, so I can’t afford obviously to give shirts to everyone.
Concern over privacy: this is understandable. I run four mailing lists and I have never had the inclination to sell my subscribers to anyone. I hate spam just like anyone else. If you don’t want me to know that you are reading this (as I’m familiar at who is coming to the site by dns/ip number — not necessarily the person) then I guess you lose out 🙂

Don’t bother me. I’m living happily ever after.

sell out

What if I’m three-dimensional and I have all these experiences,
and I want to include my anger in my vocabulary of emotions?
I don’t want to leave that out of my work, yet I insist
on not being reduced to it. ani difranco

not so long ago, i used to have all this rage.
anger at the world in which we live in — on how it is being treated — on how things are done. peoples stupidity, moronic defenses we have for a government, our perceptions of each other and how we relate. i was going to change the world one day — help those who were not as enlightened as i was.
and so i wrote those same experiences down. put them in journals, on the web, anywhere and everywhere. picking fights on IRC channels, email lists and in person. Getting people to see that life was not necessarily about black or white, it was a multitude prism of gray. i used to fucking CARE!
there was a pattern to my madness. sitting for hours in my bedroom — writing. showing emotion, no matter how poorly constructed it was. FEELING pain. happiness. sadness. joy. delirium. a myriad of emotions all bundled into my nice neat 6′ frame.
But I don’t feel anymore. I’ve become this homogenized version of the yuppie life style. Po’ but still — some version that needs a cell phone, a pager and having fucking health BENEFITS. I mean, my god. I’m planning this completely materialistic career to make fucking money. for what end? what means? To get myself out of debt? What for? It just does not make sense!
i loved living on the edge. having melodrama whipped up for me, pre-packaged in a pretty box with instructions. i loved feeling that i had a certain edge over other people. It is not possible they could feel what _i’m_ feeling nor could they begin to _understand_ what i’m understanding. it just was. god, i fucking miss it. Is this what sanity is all about? being this complete pseudo-Valium induced happiness? Neither happy nor sad? Get into a car accident? shrug it off. Friends son’s father gets killed by a bullet to the brain? big deal. Completely and utterly dead. cold. frigid. lack of human emotion. me and my fucking blue spot. patterns. complete and utter static life. no change. chop hair off, dye it — hope for new vive on life. spend hours readingother people’s pain to live vicariously through theirs. spark. lack of interest. People used to comment on how special I was.
Whine whine whine. Bitch bitch bitch. I realized the other day, with he popularity of doing on-line journalling — it was becoming virtually impossible with having _your own_ life. Why? simple. you read about so many other people’s experience that you can no longer differentiate between what _you_ did and what _they_ did.
it’s become almost ironic. i bitch, yell and scream to ex-lovers about their masking of emotion and feeling. how cold and unresponsive they were. and now, almost bitter sweetly, i can see how they felt on the receiving end. as stated before, both justin and danny comment on my lack of willingness to divulge anything pertinent.
The other night, Sherry called me. She was having men problems. To console her, out of my mouth came — “Do you really want to end up living with me in 30 years with 10 crotchety old cats? Get off your high horse girl and _talk_ to the damn man.” And it’s like “HELLO! LISA!! Clue for you!” numb. this is what it has become. this numbness. i don’t care if the world went down tomorrow — good riddance. i would think about suicide — but i’m too fucking lazy to do it. back in the day, when I did think about suicide, I would think to myself “I will show those evil bastards!” *evil cackle* and now, I only roll my eyes and light up a cigarette.
So while writing this, I’ve concluded I’ve sold out to the man. No more dynamic, hello static. I cannot imagine living this sort of lifestyle for the rest of my days. It seems inconceivable! Impossible!
c’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon
give me a spark. make me still care
make me want to feel
rape me. beat me.
MAKE ME WRITE BAD CHECKS! (wait, you did. $158 for college books. but just barely.)
When I was younger, in order to get rid of the pain, I used to sew my fingers together with needle and thread. self-mutilation. pulling hair. biting nails. all sorts of crazy shit. when i got older, i used to stand in my room and throw anything breakable. after i went through the bric a brac, i started on the dishes my mother had in the kitchen. now my mothers new house (well new being operative word here) doesn’t have any bric a brac. Of course not — I broke it all.
when i got older, i started piercing my body. a nipple here. a tongue there. biting my lip till it bled. thinking of a thousand and one ways I could die. Plotting murders of anyone that had crossed my path.
I fear death. I fear dying. I cannot accept it’s a natural part of life. Something innate in me refuses to accept this. Books upon books on studies on death lying in my bedroom. I can’t even READ them. As if I was going to die tomorrow (I could…). When I travel to work, I fear an earthquake is going to throw me off the Bay Bridge and into the bay. I’ll die, trapped in my fucking car. brand new that is. 1998 Saturn. swimming pools. movie stars.
And I’m getting so fucking claustrophobic in elevators. The new renovations at work have me seething. All because I have to take the damn elevator down ONE flight. That’s all — one flight. And _every_ single time I step into that damn thing, I keep thinking I’m going to plummet to my death. Oh sure, what the fuck ever. I’m heading towards the _basement_. I think I’m going to leave Justin on the couch and sleep alone tonight.
Just me and Teddy.
And some improbable perky book that will make think I’m okay.
13.5 hours later
Per my style, if i start writing the chronicle, and it is after midnight, i date it for that day. meaning, if it is technically 12:01 am, Saturday January 30th, 1999; i date it as such. So, now you know.
Now i’m awake.
When i left us last night, I turned off all the lights, took my contacts out and got into bed. I left Justin on the couch. He eventually climbed in several hours later. I don’t remember that. But i remember waking up next to him. anything i had been feeling before i had hit the sheets was gone. except my whole lower abdomen area started to itch. i climbed out of bed and went to the bathroom. i had started my period. self-induced depression has to be good for something.
i re-read what i wrote and it sounds so final. “I had started my period. he eventually climbed in several hours later.” strange. it doesn’t seem to flow like it usually does out of my head and into my fingers.
i think i’ll end this now and spell check everything and upload it. i’ve got studying to do.
blatant advertising
subscribe subscribe subscribe to the lisa chronicles now.
money back guarantee if not satisfied.

A hard-on doesn’t count as personal growth.

working it
I hardly talk about clothes (one of my favorite passions) in my chronicles. It seems a bit shallow or maybe a bit self-indulgent. However, something occurred yesterday that was humorous that I just have to share.
Yesterday (1.25.99), I was wearing a gray skirt, light pistachio colored shirt and black chunky shoes. I also was wearing my usual three necklaces (two chokers and a pendent that hung a bit above my cleavage. I also had on a dark green wool sweater jacket as it was fairly warm in SF yesterday.
Got the picture in your head? Good.
So I’m leaning up against the wall, waiting for the 10a class to exit so that I could hit my 11a class. A few girls walked by me, checking me out (women always check out what other women are wearing, no matter what). This black girl comes up to me and says:
her: Where did you get that skirt?
me: *thinking* Eddie Baur.
her: Girl, you’ve got it going ON! I like it.
me: thanks.
She then literally, snaps her fingers in z formation and left.
I was a bit amused and feeling a tad more confident. I get told, over and over again, by women, men (bi,gay and straight) that my self-confidence and clothing carries really well. I was told by one person that one of the only reasons he gravitated towards me at work (he’s bi) was because I was the only one who knew how to dress.
I’ve never really thought so, personally. My trend for clothing tends to stick to a few classics and whatever funky stuff I can find. People _want_ to go shopping with me. I’ve had several offers to go shopping in Chicago (when I lived in Michigan) and downtown San Fran since my early 20’s. I also had another friend who said that he would LOVE (he’s gay) to go shopping with me in Toronto, because he knew I would be so much fun. I would assume this is a good thing. I keep clothing for long periods of time, even if I can’t wear it, to motivate me to lose weight. I’ve got a few skirts right now I _used_ to wear to motivate me even more to drop the poundage. But that is neither here nor there.
I try and make it a habit of not matching my pieces. For instance, last week or so, I wore the same gray skirt with a brown polyester button down and a burgundy sweater. I got compliments up the ying-yang about it. People just love the way I dress. If I were to name favorite fabrics, it would be: polyester, rayon and cotton. a poly-blend is also pretty nice. One of these years, I should throw up the photo-album i have of me since childhood, but I haven’t seriously thought about it. I need to do a few more pics of me in the now, as hardly anyone outside immediate friends and co-workers has seen my short hair (which is now red — again). Another project for the future.
deferment
Since I have gone back to college, I can defer my student loans. However, I only pay $50 bucks a month for them. My roommate, who has both her undergrad and grad from Berkeley in Poly Sci, has had her loans kick in to the tune of $750 PER MONTH. Shite. That is about the price of some mortgages. However, she found a way around that.
She and I were talking last night, and she realized that if she took 6 credits this semester, not only would she not have to pay her student loans they would also be deferred for another 6 months AFTER the last class. But if she takes 6 credits a semester — lord knows how long before she has to kick the funds back to the loan agencies. She’s not working towards any other degree — well, her doctorate, but the classes she is taking doesn’t count for that. She’s taking “fun” classes. She and I both were thinking about taking Western African Dance at Laney college. I imitated some sort of fucked up version of my interpretation of African dance. It sent Justin into peals of laughter.
The cool thing about California community colleges is that credits are 12 bucks a credit hour. In Michigan, I was paying 50. Talk about savings. Cathleen figured that a 200 dollar investment _now_ ($72 for classes, the rest for books) would be far worth it now then to kill herself paying back the student loans.
I hereby claim myself perpetual student!