In the spring of 2008, upon breakup with TheEx, I moved back home with my ‘rents1 for the first time since my early 20s. This was to be a temporary arrangement, a stop gap until I moved to Detroit in January of 2009 to finish library school. All of my belongings, consisting mainly of books/journals but excluding furniture which I had given away, were boxed up in the bottom of their basement. Somewhere to the tune of 40 boxes, almost 2/3rds of which were stuffed with paper goods (re: books/journals).
For those of you who can recall, the winter of 2008/09 was one of the worst in recent memory. Upon packing for my move to Royal Oak in January, 2009, I discovered that 18-20 boxes, mainly said paper goods, were destroyed in some fashion whether by being waterlogged, dampened or mildewed. The boxes were all stacked along the north wall in the basement with almost all of the bottom boxes and several second and third row boxes damaged. Because it was not a case of pipes bursting or water heater exploding or an Act of God2, insurance would not cover the damage either on my policy or my brother’s.
What had happened was that due to all the rain in the fall and blizzards and snowstorms nearer to winter, the snow/rain seeped ground and eventually into the “waterproof” basement, along that northern wall in which my entire life sat. I lost A LOT of books.*
But this is not about the loss of dear friends, but rather, about the finding of old ones. My brother recently dropped off the remaining boxes that were still sitting in his basement, 18 months after I moved. What remained were stuffed animals and storage boxes crammed with treasures3 I had not seen in a very long time. These items were affected, minimally, by the mildew and dampness so I was not in a big hurry to worry about preservation upon their initial discovery. Which is probably why, after being moved to a safer spot in the basement, they stayed there for the last 18 months. Or I was just too goddamned lazy to get them to Royal Oak, you choose.
These boxes have been sitting in our living room for the last month or two, waiting to be organized. We decided that since we are more then likely moving before winter4, now would be a good time to get this stuff sorted: keep what I can, recycle what I can and toss out what is neither keepable or recyclable. We know that there are a large number of items5 not making the trek with us to our new home, no matter where that home may be. Instead of, as before, waiting to the last minute to pack and sort, my idea is to gradually do it over time so when we figure out WHERE we are moving to, the big move will be a lot less cluttered and a lot less of a pain in the ass.
Also, I’m unemployed thus I like to give myself projects. Many of the items in the boxes were beyond repair or preservation of some sort and those got sadly tossed into the garbage. What I could save, I did and re-boxed those items up. In one of the boxes was a decorative storage box containing letters and paper items I’ve kept since high school like MY PROM ANNOUNCEMENT FROM 19886 that remained unscathed from water damage. Other papery examples included love letters from old boyfriends (back when writing on paper was still the thing to do), post cards from friends all over the world and a series a post-marked letters from “Bob Smith,” of which one of them I conveniently scanned for you at the beginning of this post.
The back story to this letter, more then likely, is that from 1995-2000s I ran a mailing list of friends and acquaintances that I met on IRC/BBSes/mailing lists that I consolidated into one general list. I think the idea I had at the time was that so many of us were cc’ing the same people, why not create a mailing list to keep it simple. I am going to assume, by the date, I may have mentioned my birthday (June 12) was upcoming and I’m also going to assume that many people asked for my home address.
Another possibility is that I owned a domain at that time and he WHOIS my domain information to get my home address. I don’t think I ever found out WHO “Bob Smith” is/was but I did receive a number of letter from him for quite some time (which are now re-boxed up) as I found a few of them while flipping through the decorative boxes content. That decorative box contains a lot of memories of high school and my early 20s, much of which I haven’t thought about probably since that time but that I swore to NEVER FORGET!!!!!7
Flipping through some of the material last night broke my heart in some places – there were people, times and events that for reasons I seemingly can only understand, should never be forgotten but unfortunately were.
So who is Bob Smith? I don’t think I ever found out and if I did, I don’t remember who he was or what happened after the letters stopped. But now, 14 years later, I do have to wonder: Did he end up becoming a 34 year old douchebag or did he grow a pair and become a flaming liberal?
I remarked to a few people recently that the digital divide is not so much about digital literacy but in reality about those who have moved their lives almost entirely online versus those who have not. These days we’re doing so much checking in, status updating, tweeting and so-called communicating we’ve STOPPED relating. Hypocrite that I am, I can be just as bad if not worse as the aforementioned, but it’s becoming painful to go out with people now to spend the entire event watching the back of their smart phone. If I had wanted to have have conversations with you via Twitter/Facebook/IM/Texting, I would have stayed home in my jammies and done so instead of slapping on war paint and dragging my ass out of the house.
We’ve stopped personalizing our experiences with each other unless it includes a badge, RT, pin, sticker or a like. This bothers and depresses me at the same time. In 1996, Bob Smith’s letters probably elicited simultaneous freaking out and giggles and now, I would probably still dismiss it as nothing. I think that right in and of itself says a lot on how drastically our culture has changed within the last 14 years and me along with it. So Bob Smith, here’s to you and wherever you may be and thanks for the memories.
1. ‘Rents comprised of my brother and Mumsy, as they live together. Explanation warranted since my father has been dead for a decade, thus saying “‘rents” might confuse people.
2. Seriously?
*. I have a list of books that I lost of which one day I’ll eventually publish as many people were too kind to tell me they would help me replace them.
3. Read: crap.
4. More foreshadowing that was started here.
5. Justin moved in with me with only a carload of stuff and much of my furniture has been shuffled from apartment to apartment over the last 10 or so years and needs to be replaced. A number of electronics, like our TV, is on the verge of dying so those items will be given or recycled upon move day.
6. I was 15 going on 16. Sadly, the hair has not changed much in the last 22 years.
7. Just imagine a drunken Lisa swaying to “Never Tear Us Apart” by INXS, with a lighter in my hand trying to light a cigarette but in reality, singeing my hair.
Tag: IRC
Um, okay.
There is a girl, who I know from IRC and it is very casual. She seems to think we are the tightest of friends and we’re not and I’ve told her so. So she just pasted me a link (damnit, i thought i had her blocked across the mediums) and I, nosey as ever, open it.
Apparently, it’s a message board for my little pony fiends and her boyfriend posts to the board how he asked her to marry him.
They want a my little pony on the cake.
????????????
And people wonder why I’m anti social?
drama update
Just to let you guys know I’ve heard from a few people this morning and most of it seems to be dismay at the immaturity and stupidity of the whole, surrounding idea. I’ve been told I’m welcome to come hang in a few of the back channels if I choose to, which I really appreciated. A few admins implied an O: was available if I wanted it and one came out and offered it to me last week when I told him what was bound to happen.
I’ll be back but not in 15 channels and not spreading myself thin.
You can’t have an irc habit for 7 years and go cold turkey.
I just need to chill, I think.
lost my O: so fuck everyone
I was told tonight that I had lost my O: on washington*irc due to “lack of trust” by my admin, which was translated into “my best friend thinks your a golddigging whore so i’m yanking it.”
what had happened, in my view, is that i would not sleep with his best friend, so said best friend decided to make my life uncomfortable and cause a ruckus, resulting in my removal from the undernet network as an ircop. well not that swift, took my admin a week before my admin did it but i knew it was coming and i’m was not surprised. the irony is that haela had warned me about said best friend months ago and i failed to listen to her. i’m sorry kara.
i don’t sleep with someone, they talk smack about me and i get punished. yay.
I can still irc if i choose to, my admin can’t stop me from doing that on that network. The problem was is that for nearly a year I was a fixture on several help channels and I’m unable to help them now. I am not going to be on irc for awhile to cool my jets. Spent far too much time on it anyways.
i’m wholly tired of the he said she said bullshit games that seem to follow me around like there is no tomorrow. i have ZERO idea what it is about me that people seem to want to step in and just cause a ruckus. In high school i was a whore due to some vicious rumour started that i had fucked the whole swim team (um, i was still a virgin at the time and it was nearly a gang rape i fought off). As i got older, people for some reason loved using me as a pawn to either get something or meet something. The irony is, the blind hope I had that it would dissipate as I got older only shows that it hadn’t.
I am 30 years old. I am definitely not a conventional type of person, but there are some fundamental truths or given beings that i think we all should have, and one of them being having good friends (ie people who won’t stab you in the fucking back). Or being honest with each other, or at least open minded. I am just so TIRED of all this fucking bullshit and the layers of BS people use to surround themselves. It makes me sick.
I’ll be back on irc eventually, but in the interim you can reach me via e-mail, or
icq: home: 1231211
work: uunetgrl
aim: home: lisaisamodgirl
work: uunetgrl
yahoo: modgirllisa
those are always up and running.
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starry night
for the last 8 months or so I’ve been dying my hair “raven mist” which is basically a deep dark black-ish red. i really adore the color, but it wasn’t till recently that i noticed that i had three shades of colors in my hair: my roots were black. then about 2 inches would be this reddish tinge and the rest of my hair was black. it looked like that i had this ring of red through my head which made for interesting results — but what surprised me was that when seeing how long my roots were, it was nearly 2 inches and i had just done my hair before I left VB a six weeks ago.
so whilst i was shopping last night for groceries, i decided that i had wanted to re-dye my hair. mainly because the red halo was kind of annoying and that i wanted a change. I’m sick to death of dying my hair red, because it ends up fading and looks too brassy. and the true fire engine red color that i did want is too harsh to do on my hair. so i opted for “starry night” which claims to be “shiny black” — and my hair is finally all one color. i can’t tell the difference other than I’m now one color instead of three. but i like it. and no one noticed. it’s not a majorly drastic change but it’s still a change. and it’s something new. 🙂
not like you can tell in the damn cam. seeing as it’s “Lisa und Paul Noir” and its black and white. Paul is talking about changing the cams in the house to be color. that will be coming up soon — i think probably within the next month or so. We are planning on taking geek-haus completely live complete with archives and crap. that should be damn interesting to see.
horoscope for: 12.13.99
Gemini:
Pack your bags and be ready for last-minute invitations for travel. You may be tapped for sudden fame and find yourself in the limelight. Groups, friends, and organizations may tap you for a leadership position. Partnership may catapult you into the spotlight, with newspaper coverage, interviews, and exciting new propositions for opportunities at a distance or in another country. Be ready for almost anything. A powerful new lifestyle is just around the corner.
[yah sure right! hahahahaha]
blasphemous rumors
there has been a long standing argument, at least with me and with others, about how to treat IRC. Some people say that IRC is just text and that most of what is being said is bs. And for the most part that’s true. But (and I say but! here folks), what if you are part of a community of people are are interacting for the most part with them daily, things do arise. rumors, speculation, gossip: for the most part, this is normal and generally harmless. and this can be applied to any medium: personal life, internet life, work, what have you.
today i was sent a private message from Paul’s roommate who happens to be friends with a certain female on the channel. this female has had a long history of instigating and spreading malicious bull not just about me but about several (and I do mean several) other more regular channel goers. if it’s not one person, it’s another. one time she took the intitative on privately messaging me a conversation between her and another channel regular about: me. And i didn’t understand why she did this since it was pretty rude comments from the person she was speaking to.
the private message i got from Paul’s roommate was way out of line: both by him and by the female in question. i had had it up to here with people such as her spreading bullshit rumors about me (and other people) for no other reason than because of jealously and maliciousness on their part.
the thing that gets my goat is the ‘why’ of this whole business. i really hate HATE people who are two faced and talk behind other peoples back — especially when it’s unfounded. there is no reason why except out of pure pettiness this has to continue.
for the last week or so, people have been privately messaging me about the female in question asking me what was her deal. most of these came from newbies who have just recently joined the channel and were curious as to why this hellcat was all loose. i just explained that for the most part, that she blows a lot of hot air and to ignore her. some were feeling defensive because the female in question would attempt to rip apart the person a new asshole, publicly, for no reason.
and it’s not just this one person, it’s been several. it seems the more concrete my relationship with Paul is and the happier I get, the more people wish to tear it down. I will never ever understand this petty jealousy and nor will i feed into it.
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rants and raves
well.
I’ve been busy, what can i say? the last month or so has been completely insane and crazy as I’ve been working and Pauly has been up here to start moving his stuff up as well as GET THE GODDAMN JOB AT ANDOVER! woo! I’m so excited. we even, gasp, opened up a joint checking account. 😮 dude, this is like so incredible 🙂 Anyways, email pauly@geek-haus.org to congratulate him on his new job.
Anyways, on to better and other things. For all of those who thought that since Lisa found true happiness, that there would be no chronicles, let alone sad/depressing/insightful ones as i am prone to doing in the past. wrong. as many of you have already know, not only am i Gemini! but i am also seasonal depressive, mixed with obsessive/possessiveness, bipolar manic depressive and a touch of multiple personality disorder.
basically, this past weekend, i had a list of stuff that i was working on and just didn’t do it. i stayed in my big queen sized bed, watched crap on teevee and ate. i swear the only person i talked to was paul. hell, i could barely get out of bed to take a shower. i felt, just, so out of it. everything came crashing down and the reality that paul won’t be here for another three odd weeks is just so overwhelming. i know he was just here last week, and in that three week period he’s gonna be moving in lock, stock and barrel, but just the utter loneliness of living alone was killing me.
firstly, i thought after being alone for a few weeks i was going to resent him when he came up because i had already marked this territory as mine, but once he got here he just fit in so well. we fit together like gloves. being with him, the time we were together, just seemed so precious. and i hated having to drive him to the airport to watch him fly back to Miami.
making love to paul is this intense experience. and it’s not about the rhythmic thrusting it’s about looking down and seeing that silly little grin he does when he’s happy.
now where the hell did that tangent come from? oh yah, so paul was up here, i met some of his family — but that isn’t the issue here.
but my depression is. I keep having these fleeting moments of thought when paul will come to me one day and say that he no longer wants to be with me – and that scares me. i was telling him on the phone the other night that everything about him is perfect. there is not one thing i feel that i have sacrificed for being with him or want to change in him. he is mein gott. literally.
but this depression thing, it can be a drag — if you know what i mean. i just can’t handle how it affects me somedays or how it treats me. i learned when i was at the emergency room way back when (October) that i probably had polycystic ovarian disease, which means i have too much tetersone in my system. which makes a lot of sense. which would explain the aggressiveness and other things (including heavy duty mood swings). and that simply by going to the OB/GYN and getting the right mix of birth control pills and drugs, I would be peachy. I know I would probably feel better, but I probably won’t be able to do anything till after the first of the year.
This time of year just sucks, so horribly. And it’s not that I miss paul so much or want him up here, it’s just that my first instinct is to always just go into hiding (and eat) and just do nothing. there is so much rattling around in my head that i haven’t quit figured out what to do yet. it doesn’t help that i do not get along with my family in the least bit (other than my brother) and that for the most part, i feel like a damn orphan. i sit there and listen to paul literally gurgle about Xmas with his family and the traditions that they have and i get caught somewhere between jealousy and envy and wishing i could be a part of that. and yet, it’s not yet. it’s too soon. i just, i just find it so hard to relate to people this holiday season as they rush to and fro to be with everyone.
I just don’t get it, I suppose. It’s not the happiness or the spirit of the season, but just that i feel more detached than usual. I guess right now it’s a mixture of everything that is wearing me down. And I was thinking, Paul and I have been going back and forth about me flying to Miami to meet his parents for Xmas. Logistically, it would be perfect, but, emotionally it would be too draining – at least on me.
I feel so helpless sometimes. All weekend, when paul had the opportunity, he’d call me to reassure me that everything was okay, i was wonderful and that everything was going to work out okay. You just get to the point where being strong just isn’t worth it somedays. And between sniffles, I told him this. And other days, I’m ripping him a new asshole because I cannot find that happy medium that would just make me happy. I wish I could give him that for Xmas, just no issues about anything, just being me and being happy with him (which, for the most part I am).
I’m finding, as usual, the more i write the more off topic I’m getting. Next thing I would be telling you that I’ve never had a vaginal orgasm. which is true. and that for the most part, I’ve never liked oral sex performed on me. i have way too many issues for one person. and yes, paul knows about this. and it’s not that i don’t find sex unfulfilling (au contraire) just that i can’t fucking let go of issues matters and concerns to take it where it needs to go. This is obviously something paul and i are working on.
HOTHOTHOT DOMAINS FOR SALE!
About a month or so ago, I got really bored and started looking at domains that were being auctioned off at Yahoo. When I finally organized the domains into some sort of order (listing them by bidders and then by amount) — i was flabbergasted. Over 1000 domains were up for grabs for obscene amounts of money and yet very few people were buying them.
Back in 1995ish (or thereabouts), I had several goals: a: to take up c++ to code my own bot for irc (my unix teacher said that irc was going to be the death of me yet — amazing how my addiction to irc landed me to where i am today, eh?) and to host my own domain. I had gallant plans, I did. I was going to do everything locally and be cool and stuff.
Needless to say, the first thing i did was check lisa.com, which was obviously taken. as was lisa.net and lisa.org. then i literally thought that all the domains were hosted independently on their own servers (I mean, this was way before virtual hosting took off) — and the prospect of owning a domain seemed daunting. I thought i would literally needed to run unix at home to run my shit. and i was prepared to do it 🙂
I guess the point too all of this is just that HOW FUCKING STUPID PEOPLE ARE! no one is going to spend a million bucks to buy a domain just because you list it on a website. I can’t but help to laugh at people who do this for a “living”. It’s like the dumbass customer we had at slip.net who purchased something like 10 domains of popular movie star names, but spelled like this: e-l-v-i-s-p-r-e-s-l-e-y.com. Um. Hello. Am I the only one who doesn’t get this?
that’s great it starts
smoke is going up my nose. ick.
da’ chronicles is evolving. i get a new idea every other week or so, so it’s original content is certainly blooming. personally, i don’t think it would have shaped into what it is now if i had sat down with a story board and done it all in one sitting. i keep adding and changing the site content. please lord, if you are up there, don’t make me get a brand new spanking idea about design. i simply couldn’t handle it.
last night, after updating da’ chronicles, i went on IRC. i was thoroughly bored, and justin was downloading some update on his computer. he was intent on watching tv, so i got on-line and configured irc on his machine.
one of the channels i always frequent, is #philosophers. i get on-line and see the usual parade of souls that frequent the channel. one of the usual cast of characters, Eroticide, is on the channel, except he’s masquarding under a different nick. he says “hello lisa rabey” as if he is being clever. i had checked my stats and noticed that he had been to my site. i ask him what he think, and he says something about how pompous and egotistical i am. i ask him why he thinks i’m being pompous and egotistical, and he says because i own a domain (well actually three domains, but i won’t needle it) and i “plaster my journals on the web”. i started laughing, and i tell him that it is illogical, because it is. i’ve been keeping an on-line journal since 1995 (or thereabouts), and that’s hardly egotistical and pompous. he goes off on some lame rant, and i just kind of keep laughing. he’s so lame. i tell him it’s no different then his self-styled prose that he kept on his website. i tell him to grow some balls. he says ‘okay’.
the irony is that later on, i was checking my stats again, and he had gone back to my site a few hours later.
fucking hypocrite.
i’m angry.
i’m so ticked off, that driving over to el cerrito this afternoon, i started grinding my teeth. hard.
I spoke to michael this afternoon, and he asks how i’m doing. i say ‘fine.’ and he says that it sounds like i’m down in the dumps again, and i say ‘yeah, i am. it’s never ending. every year from october to february, i’m thoroughly depressed.’ and he says ‘maybe you have seasonal depression.’ and i say ‘yeah, i was diagnosed that years ago.’ and he says ‘maybe you need some sunshine.’ and i say ‘why do you think i moved to california?’ and start laughing. and he starts laughing as well, and then we make plans to meet on wednesday, sans justin and karena.
right when i was typing up the above, justin called and asked me to come pick him up. i picked him up at bart and he saw how depressed i was looking. i asked him what he wanted to do tonight (if anything) and he started throwing off the usual (tennis being the first one). I shrug my shoulders and mention something about going to Lucky’s to pick up coffee and bagels for breakfast tomorrow. He asks if I want to go to the bookstore, and i swear, my eyes lit up. I was thinking earlier today when I was running errands of going to borders in Emeryville, and decided against it. I just came home and started working on da’ chronicles.
so justin and i go to borders, and it is his idea, so we are not having issues about it. i walk around happy with my mocha freeze, and justin says if there is anything i want, to pick it up. for the life of me, i can’t remember what it is that i want, and i start to panic. i know i want a mocha freeze, so i get that. but as for books, i can’t remember which ones i was thinking about getting. i know that i have about 50 books in a pile that i have attempted to start reading and never finished. plus justin and i have our list of books that we wanted to get from the 100 best list. We had looked at amazon.com for the books and did notice they were noticeably cheaper.
so we are walking around, and i think i don’t want anything heavy, and he buys four sci-fi books to read, and i pick up some book. and we head off towards natural sciences and i pick up fermat’s enigma, which is about the solving of fermat’s theorem. basically the holy grail of the mathematics world. so i’m getting immersed with that, and we start walking around. justin is looking at computer books, and he asks me what MAC means in the PC terminology, and i say ‘i dunno.’ and he goes to explain it to me. and i say ‘oh yeah. each nic card has it’s own address that is independent of any other nic card.’ and justin kinda looks at me like ‘how did you know that?’ and i just shrug my shoulders and we sm00ch and keep looking around.
i walk past the humor section and see that Bill Gate’s Personal, Super-Secret, Private Laptop is on sale, and i think to myself that i gotta tell Traci about it because she loves anything anti-M$. and as we are walking towards the checkout, we head towards the periodical section and justin makes a bee-line towards computers and i head towards the chicky magazines. i flip through some of the somewhat decent ones and yawn. chicky mags are so damn boring. i start checking out the eclectical section, and i’m obsessed with the mag paper which is generated towards high falutin society folk in New York. and Justin makes fun of me, like he made fun of me getting a cell phone. fuck ’em and feed ’em fish heads.
the other night i was doing something. i don’t quite remember what it was, but it sparked me about being rich.
i mean really rich.
so i’ve decided, that being poor really sucks. that living hand to mouth is for losers, and that i’m going to be a millionaire by the time i’m 35. No more living in East Oakland baybee anymore. I will have homes in New York and oh, Paris. and be this great writer who writes scathing stories and I will have a Pulitzer by the time I’m 35 as well. Fuck this noise.
this one goes out to the one i love
First off, i wanted to say hi to jeff.
jeff and i found each other on #philosophy over two years ago. i thought he was a 40 year old so’n’so, and turns out he’s younger than me. 😉 he can be quite pissy at times, so thread gently as you enter. 😉
jeff and i talked about the other white jeff tonight, and in a sense questions that i wanted answers for were given. some of it was buried between the lines, and others were pretty much laid out plainly to see.
I couldn’t help flirting with Jeff, he brings that out in me.
i started thinking about all these wonderful things i was going to talk about right now. mainly about how i was happy for white jeff to have found someone, and then i realized, why kid myself? i mean, i keep obsessing over things that were never going to happen and things that should have happened and didn’t.
I obsess about a lot of things, and that i just one of my many quirks.
What I was actually surprised about was that Jeff read my webpage. He and I haven’t spoken in probably over a year, and mainly we stopped speaking over stupid shit. i always had a hunch that the tracks he was leaving behind on my logs were his, but, i didn’t want to start speculating again about being obsessive with fucking web logs.
jeff thought the entry i wrote on october 2nd was about him, and in a sense he’s right. because i have been thinking about him, and at one time i did have a crush on him. (HI Stebe!)
IRC is fucked like that.
I concluded the total irony of the whole situation, because after the whole debacle with the other white jeff, jeff and I are back where we were two years ago. it’s pretty obvious things some things never change.
I think i grew more angry at that, because i wanted to be able to say that all things have changed and i’m not the same person i was two years ago. but on the other hand, there are these dynamic things that we do that we can’t simply change.
no matter where you are, you are where you were in the first place.
there are a lot of things in my mind right now, but, it’s so damn late, and jeff and I as par usual stayed up for a few hours talking. i’ve smoked more than i care to remember, and my eyes are going heavy from being tired.
will report more from the bunker tomorrow.