A small anecdote about the year 2001 and my introduction to the concept of "blogs"

So in the year 2001 I was a freshman in college. One day I asked a friend of mine how her weekend was.

"Didn't you see my last LiveJournal entry?"

I sort of kind of knew what LiveJournal was. As far as I could tell, it was exactly like a diary except anyone in the universe could read it. Which seemed completely at odds to the concept of keeping a diary as far as I understood it (writing down private stuff in a book you then hid so nobody else could read it). My thoughts on LiveJournal basically amounted to "Jeez that's dumb."

I knew that this girl kept one of these (she was actually a very nice, reasonable person aside from things like her Dashboard Confessional fandom and, y'know, LiveJournal), but I never read it because it seemed creepy. Like, well, reading someone's diary. And even if someone wanted me to read their diary, there's almost a 100% chance that I still wouldn't want to, y'know? I'm just as narcissistic as you: if anything I'm just gonna thumb through to see if I'm mentioned and then chuck it back under your mattress where it belongs.

So I tell her essentially that no, I did not read her last LiveJournal entry, and I don't keep up with her LiveJournal or anyone else's LiveJournal so I didn't already read about how her weekend was, but I'm asking her now, in person, so how was her weekend?

"It was..." She sort of sighed and thought for a second. "You should really just read my LiveJournal. It was a really crazy couple of days; I said it better there than I could right now."

So a couple of years later everyone starts talking about blogs, and bloggers, and "new media" and stuff. The way blogs are described they sounded pretty much like LiveJournal, so I dismiss them as pointless and hateful bullshit.

Postscript: I end up starting one out of boredom (and the fact that I was too lazy to start a zine, which was my original idea but would've taken way longer) and realize they don't have to have anything at all to do with LiveJournal, and I begin to hate them a little bit less.

If you are too young and/or too old to know what LiveJournal is, that's awesome.

If you are sure you want to cancel your Friendster account, complete the form below:

Why do you want to cancel your Friendster account?:

_O_ Other Reason(s)

Please List Reason(s):

Haven't logged in for 5 years, my profile was embarrassing, the name is stupid, it's not 2003 anymore

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Honest to God, this has nothing to do with the Facebook thing I wrote a little bit ago; someone brought up Friendster in conversation today and I thought "oh Jesus, I bet mine is awfully humiliating." Turns out I was pretty correct. I don't think it really would've made much difference if I would've left it be; nobody else appears to have logged in since the first Bush/Cheney administration.

The best part of the cancellation process was, I had to spend a good fifteen minutes figuring out what email address I had five years ago, then once I got there reactivating the sucker so I could get my password. Remember Hotmail? Crazy!

My evening is starting to feel kind of like a hideously plausible VH1 special from the not-too-distant future.

BY THE WAY: I'm drawing some more of those index cards

At Joe Mathlete Will Draw Anything You Want On An Index Card. Not taking any new orders until I fill all the old ones, but after four months of radio silence I guess it's a start?

Context for that last post (ROFLcon bio)

In case you were wondering:







So, yeah. Also, if you don't know what Goatse refers to, consider yourself blessed.

My ROFLcon bio

Everyone appearing at ROFLcon (which, for those just tuning in, was a big convention event thing where Harvard folks gathered together a bunch of "internet famous"-type people at, uh, M.I.T.) was asked to provide a bio about what it is they do. This is what I sent them:

"Joe Mathlete has been accidentally achieving internet notoriety since 2002, when a short WMV depicting him engaged in an imaginary lightsaber battle in his high school’s AV room was uploaded to Kazaa. Several years later, after a brief webcam clip of him lipsynching to a popular Romanian techno song achieved similar viral success, he decided to pursue his dream of writing and performing original music. When a video of him recording the vocals to one of his songs gained international attention for his unique, otherworldly baritone and distinctive method of moving away from the mic to breathe in, he destroyed his computer, renounced technology and moved to Wales. He lives in a small cottage south of Llandudno with his cat, Goatse."

If some or none of that makes much sense, trust me-- it's hysterical(ly geeky).

Just got back from ROFLcon

Where I hung out with a bunch of internet people. It was strange and fun and confusing and interesting and rad. I got my picture taken with Tron Guy, I learned what Twitter is, I didn't get much sleep, I met Damon from Galaxie 500 and Damon & Naomi (unrelated to ROFLcon but it wouldn't have occurred if I hadn't gone), and a bunch of other stuff happened.

My flight home was delayed like four hours so I'm going to pass out now... I'll probably have more to add later on. Much thanks to Tim Hwang and Diana Kimball and all the rest of the folks who organized everything and gave me a neat, surreal little vacation, Alex Gutierrez for letting me crash at her place for a couple days and showing me what there was to do in Cambridge that didn't involve the internet, and to all of the very friendly people I met over the weekend. Until later, if you would like to read a brief interview with a fairly inarticulate me, click with your mouse on these words.

If you have not ever listened to Galaxie 500, now is the time to purchase On Fire (or at least download "When Will You Come Home" or "Tugboat" or "Strange").

Confirm Facebook Account Deactivation

Please let us know why you are deactivating. (required)

_O_ I don't find Facebook useful.

Please explain further:

"Facebook is like a creepy and pointless videogame where people collect every person they've ever met, then waste their time spying on all the dumb bullshit they do all day. I don't care if some moron I went to high school with bought a new iPod, I don't want to play the vampire biting game, and I don't want people I don't care about to know what I'm up to if they're not going to bother asking me with words."

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You ever hear that Beach Boys song "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times?" Yeah.