Thursday, April 13, 2006

Brave New World

I recently attended a 30th birthday celebration for friend "A". He had attended my 30th birthday gathering nearly a decade before. I gifted him with a dvd of "Logan's Run". We had called my party a Logan's Run party because in that movie the people of a future society, when they turn 30 are recycled at a "Carousel" ceremony.

A began to relate to me the significance of that night a decade before. He came to my party with my girlfriend's cousin. She was his girlfriend at the time. He was very young, visiting the big city, at a party in a high-rise with older people. That night was a night of many firsts for him. He recalls seeing the internet for the first time as I demonstrated eWorld to him on my Mac and he was "blown away" that you could chat with people from all over the world in virtual rooms. We scanned through several of those rooms that night and more than one of them were very peculiar to him. There were "man-to-man" rooms in which men could anonymously chat with other men in a provocative and sexual manner.

He told me his mind was set spinning that night and a whole range of possibilities seemed to be opening up to him. He soon moved to Toronto and came out about a year after that night. He is now happily partnered with a nice medical professional.

What I remembered as a boring and lame evening of pizza and videos was to someone else an earth shattering event. It was for him a wedge that drove right into his brave new world.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Psychic Goat

Jake to Universe

When I was 5 years old we would visit a relative who kept a goat in their back yard. I would spend a lot of time looking at him and he would stare back. I imagined that we communicated psychically. He would mess with my head by telling me that he was really God in disguise and that he was testing me. Then he would point out that this is precisely what he would say if he were in fact the devil, to confuse me. Then he would say that he, as God, would say precisely that, to test me even more... and on and on...

I think they ate that goat.