Monday, June 22, 2009

Living La Vida Livingstone

i don't really recall when it all went down.
In 1991, i used a dial up BBS to download my first pornographic GIF. A good racket too, except that they did phone verification on age and my mother picked up the phone before I could. But clearly, at age fifteen I had a handsomely pixelated pornographic line drawing on my screen and I knew that computers worked and could be used.
In 1993, I applied for an email account from the Math department (only way to get one) and was able to chat online with friends for free (as opposed to 50 cents a minute long distance charges (daytime on a weekday).
In 1995, i saw the internet for the first time. It had been there for a while but I had a macintosh and therefore never saw what it looked like. See that was back when there was a computer called Macintosh which was owned by apple but was not an apple because apples all sucked and only macintoshes were good. Or something.
By 1998 it was unthinkable not to have email at your house. By 2002, it was unthinkable not to have broadband at your house. And by 2006 it was unthinkable not to have wireless internet at your house.
And now I am in Florida. I have lived here before. But now I have no internet. Of any kind. I have no car of any kind. I propel myself from place to place using the gentlemanly art of bicycling. I go upwards of 15 and 20 miles a day on the bicycle in head indeces of 105 and up. I no longer notice that my shirt is soaked through to the bone for many hours of the day. i ride on a bicycle with a basket. i wear a floppy hat, bad sunglasses, and floral shirts. I wave to the natives who wonder why I have no car.

I have to go 8 miles roundtrip to get internet. Or food. The food I can bring back in my bike's basket. The internet stays there. There are a few secure connections around my residence but I can't match the names with the connections so i can't beg them. I'm like a junkie for internet now. I need 'net. I need to be able to read useless information about baseball and Iran. I need to be able to wiki every useless fact that's ever been in my head. I need to see the pointless links that smart people place on twitter.
Rehearsals start tomorrow. I'm hoping that will fill the hole in my life left by the erstwhile internet.

You know what's not doing it? Cable frigging television. I have 50 channels which I'm watching on a non-flat screen without DVR and everything just looks ludicrous. I feel as though I've been placed in a time machine and thrust back into the year 2000.

So if you're wondering where I am, I'm in the jungle. Walking through weather that could best be compared to a forest of steaming groins, dodging bugs, and developing bicycle bruises on my buttocks. I'm not complaining. I can feel myself developing character.

And if this blog seems more pointless than usual, I hope you'll excuse it. I smelled burning peanut butter earlier which I understand to e a sign of heat stroke.
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