Complacency is measured by the spaces between instances of excitement, where the blood nips the ears, and shame and pride wrestle over the gristle of achievment.

As of yesterday afternoon, my code had been run something over 640,000 times. This means that 640,000 web pages were viewed with the intervention of a program that I wrote.

That's right, ME! The cosmic entrails of ego versus modesty, spinning around the fire pit of anquish, biting each other on the ass and hoping for a hand out. Pass me the gnawed joint of venison so that we can crack the bones and suck the marrow, painting deer grease decorations on our faces, chests, legs, everywhere we roll in the dust of settled normalacy and bits of dust stick to the grease, drawing red dust patterns, declaring the ferocity of the hunt, and the fight.

Tuesday the server was down for several hours, and then Wednesday morning it was dead on its rack from 2:00 - 11:00 am. Hard to push the hit count when the site is dark.

Today the Oracle database is down. It couldn't swallow a bit of particularly gnarly data, and summararily barfed. The search function is down, and has been all day. The web crawler probably tried to index an 'election 2000' web site, and even Larry Ellison's program couldn't stomach the grim earnestness with which the candidates spin their (capital E) Evils.

On 5/26 I had conversations with a family member , and a, friend . Both of them were concerned about their 'job' situations. In the last few days I have heard, indirectly from each of them, and both have left/been left from their situations. I heard the news about one from Heather, who talked to the source, and the other one from another friend.

Jobs, schmobs!

Last weekend Tom Yoder and I chatted for a few minutes. I repeated my received wisdom that the film production code, while being a bad thing, had led to 'better' movies. That operating within the restrictions, the context, of censorship, had led filmaker as smuggler (in Martin Scorcessee's phrase).

'Rich, you've said this before, and I just don't know. Every now and then the Roxy has a pre-code film festival, but I haven't had a chance to check it out.'

Sunday the 11th David C. and I chatted. I was mostly in the throes of exhultation over having learned something new, and I was a bit of an arrogant prick.

Fortunately David is generally in no position to call me on that particular character flaw, so the conversation was a mix of discussion, support, and the observation that I might want to consider the fact that I was being an arrogant prick, but that was really not his problem..

"Here's the thing David, I think that I have finally found it! This is the holy grail, the rosetta's stone, the principle that makes sense of it all."

"Rich, you have always had this sense that 'everyone' knows something that you don't. Isn't this just one more of those?"

"Well, okay, maybe it is an overstatement, but I do think that this is the thing that the people in my presumptive peer group have understood for a long time. The thing that I have been missing."

"What is it again?"

"That in any cultural artifact, in any 'text,' in the broad meaning of the phrase 'text,' that there is a meaning, or at least, can be a meaning, beyond what it is that I think I understand."

"Oh, okay. Yeah, you might be right there. I remember at Yale when I realized that my naive understanding was a prison. Did I ever tell you the story of the report I had to do on Free Jazz?"

"Yeah, well, Tom Yoder told me about it, but go ahead."

"Well I was sitting in the Yale music library, listening to this music. I remember a lot of Cecil Taylor. And I had a powerful negative reaction. It was really hard for me to deal with this music. I finally had the minor ephiphany that here I was, at this priviliged University, expenses paid, and all I had to do was to listen to this music. Listen to this music, and notice the thoughts that I had. I finally acquired the capacity to appreciate the music. This experience augmented my ability to appreciate things that I didn't expect to like."

"That is cool. Tom and I had a similiar conversation about the 'ugly' sound of the Latin Playboys, and of Tom Waits. He talks of it being a matter of expanding our notions of beauty, until we are able to accept beauty in new forms."

"Something like that."

"This really seems revolutionary to me. Not revolutionary in an external sense, but in terms of my ability to comprehend, and appreciate, the artistic expression extant in the world that surrounds us." The conversations veered into a discussion of Semiotics 101. This was my grand ephipany, well, besides my real grand ephiphany, of the last week. Not besides, this is all integrated.

My current intellectual voyage is one reasonable result of 'Manifesto,' and of my efforts over the past year to integrate a higher level of creative effort into my regular, normal, life, but on a more immediate level, this all stems from my reading, and then the convesation that David and I had on 5/12, in which he pointed out that effective reading means to 'problematize' the material.

or maybe, that the material can evoke a cognitive state of wondering that will lead to the contemplation, and even answering, of questions.

At a higher level, this all makes sense, but it only makes sense once you have been able to put aside your own 'naive understanding,' as being the benchmark of intellectual progress.

Sunday David pointed out his theory that answering a question leads to two new questions. The more you learn, the more that your weight of ignorance increases.

As a final aside, David talked about Harold Bloom's new book, Why Read. Dr. Bloom is a professor at Yale. David never had him in a class, but he did 'shop' his classes on more than one occaision.

Tuesday I saw a couple of notices in SFGate, the web site for the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner. One was for a lecture by Harold Bloom, and the other was for a double feature of pre-code movies at the Roxie. I talked with David that evening and he went to see the professor, which interested me less than the synchronicity implicit in having both Bloom and pre-code movies pop up in my life two days after I talked with my closest friends about these ideas.