Remembering the palacers.

So the bastard did it.

Yep. Weasel the supposedly unmotivated's gone and graduated, gotten himself a degree. Yeah, in art, with a specialization in digital media. Bastard. Don't think for a minute that I'm not insanely jealous -- however hard it might be to find a job right off the bat with such credentials.

For those of you who may be reading and give a damn, Weasel (as I know him) is this fellow who came into the chat room I scripted for the studio that in better times had created the Ren & Stimpy Show, during that studio's lean years, in the period shortly after I'd moved to North North Hollywood. He's also to date the only person I know of to have read, let alone commented on this "blog", though heaven help me I've always replied to his comments by email, lest I appear to give a damn publicly whether anyone's reading or not. He always got along with everyone, including those whose attitudes towards him might be considered just a trifle condescending. With the very difficult, he always at least was polite. Always a mediator, never making any real worthwhile enemies. With the downright insulting he was never anything short of patient to the point that a person starts to wonder whether maybe he's just pretending to be a bitchy "holier than thou" queen while in reality being some sort of truly superiour being. Some sort of bastard bodhisattva, if you will.

Bastard.

The jerk even dared to send me an engraved invitation through the mails -- envelope in envelope, all very proper, I assure you (though I would personally have used a wholly different kind of paper, ink, and process) -- to his commencement ceremony. Can you believe it? How dare he! What next? They'll be asking me to officiate weddings. Not that I haven't.

I only wish that I could go. I'd love to go. I'd miss Pride this weekend to go, if I didn't already have to miss it just to work the first job that I've ever had where I don't have to hide who I am just to feel safe in order to have enough money to eat for the week. Damn it.

Oh well! The question now is what to give him for his graduation. He's hinted none too subtly (he's a straight man, I believe, at least mostly, and thus knows not that much of subtlety, though for a probably more-or-less straight man, he's not a bad man, though he not just hear but work with wind) that he would like a tent. (Yes, there are a few breeders out there worthy of the title "human", who may even be worthy of gifts commemorating major life accomplishments. He's no kind of apple at all, nor any insect in a hive, nor any other part of any cell structure I know of). Well, sir, what sort of tent? A single sleeper you can sling onto the back of a bicycle? A five-room portable mansion into which you can comfortably fit an early Biedermeyer sideboard? And of course -- good god -- what colour? I've no idea whatsoever.

Yes, I admit it, I'm into Walnut and Maple, but mostly Walnut, at the moment. Maple complements Walnut quite admirably, in any ambient light. Walnut darkens a room. Deeply. Carved walnut casts interesting shadows in lamp or candlelight. Ideally any cloth backing should serve not to absorb but to reflect light. In a room with natural sunlight wood catches and transforms sunlight, either through glass or through diirect optical contact.

I suppose a gift certificate might be in order. Alas, I'm liiterally struggling to find the money to eat at the moment, let alone pay the rent. Then to rebuild my savings to the point I'm not living so day by day that if the new owners of this building sell it out from under me on short notice I find myself out on the streets, Brinsmead piano, Hammond organ, steamer trunk 4625 and all. Might have to have a killer moving sale if they did.

God help me just about all I can offer him now is my very best wishes. Worth every penny he pays for it, I assure you. I can't offer much more to LASG but I owe them as well. Of course if he qualifies for 501(c)3 not-for-profit status everything changes: I can at least offer some sort of service in kind. Perhaps he needs a flyer designed or copywritten or translated into excellent Spanish. Who knows?

The guy's kept me in music these last 18 months. May sound like nothing in this day of the ipod; I assure you it isn't. I sent him through the mail an easel a while back, which apparently served him well for about five minutes. Since then he's practically showered me with countless hours of music on CDs I would never have been exposed to otherwise, much of which has gone on to become *the* thing I listen to when driving, much of which I've gone on to seek out for my collection of vinyl.

Enough of embarassing Weasel. Time will come when these entries are studied with such precocious care as are were the more complex satires of Juvenal, if I'm very lucky, and entire generations of scholars comfortably support themselves and their families by agreeing to endlessly argue with one another over whom I really refer to when speaking of such-and-such screenname, person, or Proper Noun in general (e.g., "John Milton").

There's also EST of course, whom I seem to have permanently alienated by a shameful lapse in judgment at having twice successively left him hanging in the Palace. I loved him dearly as did many others, treasured his presence; he's one of a kind; and if that bugs him, oh well, I guess it hardly matters, seeing as he never really existed, or something, and having never existed, never inspired me to greater acts than those of which I ever thought my old little self capable.

There's also Flem, to whom I almost never spoke (he flat out scared me), until he got me seriously engaged in nuclear issues, which have since become as good as any reason to go on living when I need one. If you're out there now, I'm going to see the Aquabats this coming 15th day of June at Launchpad: try and stop me. I dare you.

As for 3d Mike my god has he got talent in anything he undertakes to do, whatever his (to me, confusing) political leanings may be. A man may disagree tremendously on their views regarding public policy. As long as dialogue is possible, todo es possible. No one -- and I mean no one can make Escher prints into red-blue separations one hundredth as perfectly as he can. And precious few have the genuine, hard-earned sense of *real* "family values" he has earned, on his own terms. He's also one hell of a musician -- making 7/5 time sound good.

Then there's the long stream of cartoon people with whom I never speak these days at all, to whom I'm basically dead. Milton, Steve, please forgive me. My life was not your life, much as I'd liked to have made either of yours my own, had only I been born fifty years earlier than I was.

Tooner, I wish my word had one tenth of the integrity of yours. Last I checked your place was still up. Bless you, whatever your funny but truly beautiful ideas about who should be granted the dread "wizard" access and who shouldn't, whatever problems arose, however we perceived and addressed them finally leaving it in your lap. Thank you for taking us old school southparkers in when we got overrun without once making us feel the least bit unwelcome. I'm sorry that we didn't bring in members, but who wants to pay to be advertised to in each room? Spumco made some dreadful colour decisions, but they worked, in the 216 colour proprietary grid. I wish I could take credit for the graphics. Without them there'd have been nothing. But without my navigation the place wouldn't have made sense. The problem was, it was a cul de sac. You went in through the front door, complete with a slamming screen door as you entered into the living room, stage left. Click stage right into the sounds and animation trophy room. maybe eight or nine scripts in it. Clicking heads brought the sounds of the animals up on the walls. Click on George and he flashes he belly at you. Says something. Clich SR into the kitchen, then through the door (with slamming screen) into the backyard, in which is kept a Chicken Coop into which you may enter through the Chicken's Port of Entry into the AV shack, where by a script you could retrieve and one of something like fourteen male and female cartoon characters. The best, of course, were always custom made and never shared, with EST the undisputed master of the art form. We still use the place from time to time. Bizarre that we should. And yet there's those 14 lines of code, within which: Interactive animation with sound. Not complex scripting. Haphazard, really. Could be pared down to one operation, with optical, not digital, Sound. One registration.

True randomness.