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Dear gentle reader: this blog has been operating continuously since I was a teenager. The writing below is at least a decade old. In that time every molecule of my body has been replaced, along with many foolish ideas and flighty beliefs. I want to keep some of those things public out of an honesty and humility I owe the world. I trust you to carry that context with you.

Friends page, why are you not exploding?

July 31, 2005 /

RUPERT IS REAL

July 26, 2005 /

Maria got her board scores back yesterday. She did better than she had hoped, which is better than most of the country! Maria is awesome!

It’s Plug Starshift Crisis Day!

July 25, 2005 /

Now I feel like I have to follow that title with a Girlsareprettyesque story about how your family life is weird and conclusions are disappointing.

Read Starshift Crisis! Seriously, why aren’t you reading it? You have the choice to read Kristofer Straub’s punchlines on a daily basis and you’re not! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!

July 22, 2005 /

Hotmail is telling me that there are no messages in any folder of my (nine-year-old) account. Intriguing!

Update 1540 hrs: Oh, they’re back. Boredom.

July 22, 2005 /

I’m learning Perl. Nobody ever told me that PHP’s syntax was essentially Perl’s!

July 20, 2005 /

I gave blood today without getting sick! WHOO!

I’m not sure what I did differently today, other than standing up slowly and eating and drinking double the normal amount at the canteen table.

July 20, 2005 /

Is anybody else just fucking creeped out by the American Apparel “Meet Melissa” ads? I’ve seen them a lot on the Onion and a few times on IndieClick affiliates, I’m not sure where else. The ad is a picture of a pretty girl with dark hair in a white t-shirt, smiling under a badly lit shower and looking kind of nervous. The ad has a rollover sidebar. Expanded, it reads:

“Meet Melissa. She won an unofficial wet T-shirt contest held at the American Apparel apartment in Montreal. Her prize for winning was a travel mug from McGill University, and the satisfaction of a job well done.

Melissa is wearing our new ultralight Sheer Jersey T-Shirt, AKA “The Summer Shirt,” available at our stores and online.”

Let’s translate that.

“Meet Melissa No Last Name. We had a party at a company apartment, then piled on the peer pressure and alcohol until we got some girls to pose under a shower. We thought this one was hot, so we’re going to put her face and upper chest on a few billion pageviews. We didn’t pay her shit!

We’re reasonably sure Melissa’s over 18, but hey, no last name and no pay means no paper trail, right? P.S. Go to our site and you don’t even have to look at her face, just her hands over her breasts splashed real big on the front page.”

For a company that’s trying to build a rep as progressive (“Sweatshop Free, Brand Free Clothes”), they sure come off like fratboy assholes there.

Update 1453 hrs: Ashleigh linked me to an enlightening Business Week article.