PROMINENCE DOT

Originally published on August 19, 1997

COM —well I see someone else has prominently displayed the dot com in its logoyle besides this country fried fat and freckled fellow from SE.

Meanwhile, Blum juggered my naught the other night by telling me that iMotedotcom wasn't life. He didn't elaborate, and that was the only time the web or my "life" was mentioned. I immediately spun off a Pontius Pilatian rant about life, what is life, everybody's got something to say on that topic, like Bracken for instance who's just written a book on the philosophy of what is life, and that kid has it all distilled down to the sexual conquest. Geez—I said. Bob immediately confessed that I had a point and we knew we had said our fill. All of this confusion began and ended in the last five minutes of Friday's poker night which was an intrusively hot & sweaty hoot.

At 9:52 AM -0500 8/18/97, rblumstein@columbiaresearch.com wrote:
> Sorry I started the pointless argument for the end of a otherwise good
> evening. I guess I was feeling ironic and the heat and alcohol weren't
> helping. My girlfriend said I shouldn't invite poeple over when it's
> so hot, not until at least I provide more air conditioning. I started
> the evening with 11 rolls of quarters and wound up with 3 (one of
> which Bob gave me). I was overall ahead now I'm dead even for all the
> poker played in recent years. What goes around comes around except for
> Bob Chisholm who nearly always wins Big. He's good to play with since
> he bluffs and generaly challenges everyone to their limits and beyond.
> Christine who usually goes home with empty pockets has since become a
> more seasoned player and made a little extra change. Hope you made
> some money, all the money flowing out of my coffers was enough to make
> everyone a little extra pocket change...

__________

Pointless, Bob? Hardly. It seems you made or tried to make several points. As it turns out I was particularly intrigued by your phrase, "well, that's not life."

But yes, I had a decent evening while gathering a few more twigs for the huge bonfire that has become my, uh, lifelessness. Powers of the phrase and the phrasemakers sort of thing. Counted my quarters the next morning. I was a buck and a quarter shy of exactly the fifty dollars I brought to the table, and was lamenting my losses until I remembered the five I kicked in for the pizza, so it turns out I actually soaked up a few bits on the plus side of the gambling ledger. Thanks for having me.

Noticed you escaped early from la casa del Blum during both of those 102 &105 degree recordbreakers this weekend. I took the liberty of retrieving the ice we never used and my white cap I'd left, letting myself in with key rather early Saturday morning. Now they're calling for temps to plunge into the fifties tonight. This kind of climate warp is liable to give even the outdoor bug battalions a nasty headcold.

The card went went on rather pleasantly until after one. I called it quits. Tony had already left. Allie had gone upstairs to snooze, as had Stefan even earlier. Blumstein, Chisholm and Christine packed it in after I announced my withdrawal. The two NoVa knockers took off. I was headed for the backdoor when in summation of a pretty decent evening I stepped in it.

Chisholm had been complaining about the heat and sweat on the cards all night, but his handsome well-articulated suave protected him (and where was his sweat?) from several rounds of most iffy behavior, but I'll leave that to another note. You see, I commented about airconditioning. Bob responded with too expensive. I countered if I had an extra two hundred a month that's where I'd spend it instead of socking it away for some millionaire old age roost. He recoiled by bringing up his business school classes and the fact that I never went there. I suggested he visit my website once in a while to find out where I stood on the issues. He insisted didn't know what I was talking about. I said I've never tried to lord anything over on him, that I was just making some innocent comment based on my own personal foils toward creature comfort in the now rather than later. He said he never lorded anything over on me. I said he just did. He said he did not, when? I said just then, by lording his so-called business credentials over mine. Then he made the comment. Yes, the comment. The comment was iMotedotcom, that's not life.

Oh well, we are a swelled bellied bunch of braggarts and inferiorities aren't we? Narcissistic to a fault. Ego-entrenched warriors for the self, and nothing but the self.

Oh, shallow shellfish on a stick, I just clicked on an iMote page, and it is all twisted. Wrong graphics in the wrong places, and another graphic skewed. Gotta go investigate. Maybe Bob's right. My life ain't life. Maybe he'll let me join in his weekly WWII strategy board game, or gaze dumbly at his stockpile of Japanese anime videos. Now that's life. I know I'm just being petty here, but it really burns the bone that among this crowd of friends and neighbors every choice one makes is shit, and Bob has always done that to me. My poetry is bad. My writing makes no sense. My web work is not life.

Even after all the GT v SET fires belching in the belly, and that most recent flamewar certainly left scars, I can at least say that you have always encouraged me in my struggle to express my loneliness and insights through writing and creative images and with the technical additions of web producing, you've been my only true visitor. I don't know what that says about you, but thanks anyway. But now, I've gotta attend to those pesky HTML brats. Keep it clean, and the dirt will follow anyway.

Busy with beaver and loaded for bear . . . strange how those epiphrases just jot themselves down along with the mustard and relish of a personality mirage. Lynn has not responded, although I certainly had no idea the phrase was anything but a toss-off. Tell me how it goes. I presume, it's like the "playing it by ear" and "that's my story and I'm stickin' to it" SET tune of the month. I can hear it already reverberating off the whispering pines of friendly Pennsylvanian platitudinal grace. Look forward to the update, but frankly, I think you and I are the only ones who "get" most of our poetic huckerism.

Occasionally Bob in good mood is generous with a Boblike compliment with adjectives like hip, post-modern, whacky, and subterranean sprinkled in to authenticate a true Bob true grit compliment, and they certainly have increased over the years, but like Bracken, most often he's just a little slow, and like all of us who prefer to hear our own voices that those of our neighbor.

GT