Day: December 4, 2004

You are a Geek Girl! You’re competent, eccentric, and proud to be exactly who you are. It also helps that you’re the smartest person you know. Meeting a guy is not a challenge for you, as long as you’re willing to pull away from the computer. There’s a ton of geek boys who are dying for a girl exactly like you. What Kind of Girl Are You? Take This Quiz 🙂

 ROBOT EXCLUSION PROTOCOL
By Paul Ford

I took off my clothes and stepped into the shower to find another one sitting near the drain. It was about 2 feet tall and made of metal, with bright camera-lens eyes and a few dozen gripping arms. Worse than the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

“Hi! I’m from Google. I’m a Googlebot! I will not kill you.”

“I know what you are.”

“I’m indexing your apartment.”

“I don’t want you here. Who let you in?”

 “I am Google! I find many good things. I find that pair of underwear with the little dice printed all over them. And I watch the tape of you with the life-sized Stallman puppet. These are good unique things. Many keywords and links! My masters will say ‘much good job, little robot!’ Many searchers will find happy links of Stallman puppet see you! Ahhhh.”

“I put the robot exclusion protocol on my door. Didn’t you see it?”

“You understand Google, person? I index many things and if I am very good I get to go to Bot Park and have more processors. And an oiljob! Thank you Google! Must come inside apartment and index. Must!” His video eye winked up at me.

“I know my rights. I’m giving you 10 seconds to leave.”

“Yes. I will leave. First I index everything. Everything! I am Google!” It put out one of its video arms and began to read the label on my shampoo bottle. So I beat it into shards with a folding chair and let it index the dustbin.

December 22 2004
Alaska Airlines Flight
Depart: Vancouver, Canada at 10:33 am
Arrive: Los Angeles, California at 1:22 pm

This is like a bid for an undertow love affair, lurking to drag us under. I’m starting to be sick today, my head leaving flicker trails of aching teeth when I move. My eyes have been shellacked with sand and gritty liquid. I’m starting to lose reality coherence. A broken body, a broken mind. I have to close my mind down from the faeries.
I’m due at two housewarming parties tonight. I’m wondering if I’ll survive.

It’s cold, winters foreclosure. The good little girls are inside with hot chocolate, trying on mittens made of kitten fur soft wool. Outside the wind is bitter, moaning its dejection over the weather. Its lover left, its fantastic affair with the sun waning, winding down. A masquerade of river currents, leaves red in the gutter, like the star above dying. Fire drying up, too old in the year for predatory burning.

This is when the bad things come, the remnants of nostalgia and memory taking flesh to brand us, to beat us, hold us down and drink our breath. A thousand eyes will open with the wrong people inside. Looking out blue windows and gray and hazel, the voices will scour the world, hunting us down. Happy people aren’t allowed here, laughter when you walk your dog is dangerous.

I put something into voice tonight, an urgent spoken story in under sixty seconds. It’s the time limit that gives me my speed, a rushing articulation of being unable to properly convey the desired emotion. I’ve installed a sound forge, a program to beat my head against like the iron deficiency currently in my veins. It doesn’t agree with my mike, all I have is what comes with the windows package. Barely a slit to let light through and with such tacky curtains, dear god. I shouldn’t be up this late today, but I am anyways. It’s the time, it’s the moon pulling. Scratchy eyes and the ill’s upon me. If I don’t kill it in my sleep, I may be looking forward to a dread week of feverdreams and hallucinations. A pithy time of not being able to recognize a face and feeling my fingers turn to sticks and my skin too small. I know my delusions now when I’m sick, but they’re unshakable when I’m living them. I admit that I’m worried. For the first time in a very long time, I haven’t a partner in town to make sure I don’t die.

It occured to me tonight that I’m a grand in debt. A weight I hardly ever think about what’s going to drain off the top of my resource cheque. There’s less than there should have been, but maybe still just barely enough. A light-weight camera and a set of new eyes. The beginnings of the travel-plan to Europe side, already set in motion. I have to get my mother onto her passport stamp. Through her windfall, I might get a citizenship. I want to be eight, nine, ten hours away. I want to have daylight rise and set across another ocean. I’ve never tasted any other sea than this.

Give me stones, my loves. Give me stories.