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| About. | What's going on. | Sunshine plus one. | Previously. | Cat food again. |
 self-portrait, with floating heads.  self-portrait, nude, in the box store.  self-portrait, wet, in mouth of whale, with fish. This web page is the work of Marc Heiden, 23 years old, who . He lives in Chicago. My work voicemail cries out for you: (312) 693-0455. Projects: Players Workshop (Term 4). Dizzy for the foreseeable future. sometimes, I also write for Thinking of Hesterman, because I'm like that. updated daily: Corona Fametracker Kill Less of Me Man Cutting Globe McSweeney's Memepool Metafilter Misterpants oswald.nu randomWalks Red Secretary Salon occasional updates: Exploding Dog Neil Gaiman Kempa.com the Onion (W) Oregano Public Enemy Red Meat (Tu) This Modern World (M) Weep Magazine What Jail is Like Recent reading: 1 The Compass: the Improvisational Theatre That Revolutionized American Comedy Janet Coleman Said theatre was the precursor to Second City and the idea of improvisation as performance; the book is a chronicle of all that up to the late 1960s or so. Through detailed chapters on each of the major participants, it gives an interesting portrait of young hipster intellectual culture in the 50s and 60s. It also talks a bit about Ed Asner. I've never read a book that talks about Ed Asner before, so that'll be educational. 2 The Winter's Tale William Shakespeare Featuring that inexplicable Rosetta Stone of stage directions: Exit, pursued by a bear. When I was in Stratford, there was a gift shop with stuffed bears who had the stage direction on their shirts. I thought to myself, if I had a baby, and I mean a baby in the old bluesman sense, I would buy my baby a Winter's Tale bear. Maybe some day. The essay included with my copy, by Frances Dolan, left me gobsmacked: These improbabilities, which might be summed up in the notorious stage direction Exit, pursued by a bear (III.3.57), make it hard for some people to take this play seriously. But perhaps what is most unlikely, but also most moving, is not that a bear will turn up out of nowhere and eat you - which is one way of dramatizing the unexpected assaults of daily life - but that the bear does not eat the baby on whom hope depends; not that one is betrayed or aggrieved, but that one goes on. Aww, that's everything I've ever written, and she did it all in one paragraph. Shakespeare did it all in one bear, for that matter. Well, he was pretty good. 3 Arcadia Tom Stoppard My friend Rory requested that I correct the facts in this capsule summary: he had one conversation with one exceptionally smart, clever, beautiful woman about 'Arcadia'. Tom Stoppard is a brilliant author, of course, and I enjoy conversations with smart, clever, beautiful women, and I was a Boy Scout for a brief while, and therefore I'm all about being prepared for anything, so, word, I'm on it. 4 Swamp Thing : The Curse Alan Moore, Steve Bissette By the author of Watchmen. Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing is one of those series that comic book kids have always heard was legendary and brilliant, one of the first "smart comics", but was, for some damn reason, always unavailable; while DC kicks out TPB after TPB of various Batman characters dying and then returning with different haircuts, almost all of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol and Alan Moore's pre-Crisis Superman remain unavailable except for occasional single issue reprints. With the industry in the toilet as it is, they are finally reprinting some comics like this in hopes of attracting the Borders crowd. I've read the first collection as well; this is the third. I am pleased to say that both of them live up to the hype. Hot damn. peeps: Another Room Pelican Video Ron Rodent Skinnyguy WEFT 90.1 FM art 'n resources: Wes Anderson Antarctica Jobs Tim Burton Douglas Coupland Eatonweb Portal FTP Explorer HTML Help ImprovOlympic Second City The Simpsons Webwasher b-side wins again 2001 |
010511 I have moved on to a new phase of my work at work. Most of my efforts to this point have fallen under the umbrella of the Fuck Off and Leave Me Alone program, an extensive campaign intended to encourage people in my immediate vicinity at the office to both fuck off and leave me alone. This has been achieved as well as it can; I have certain regular duties, but my workload represents about 34% of Hiro's and 6% of Lum's, the other two people who have the same job that I do. Satisfied with the results, I've begun the Fuck All Y'All initiative, mentioned earlier this week, wherein I leave the building for long stretches of time. The overall intent of phase one was to be paid for doing nothing; phase two aims to have me paid for not even being here, and hopes that I will not be fired before fortune dawns in some form. I blame the media for these deadly games of cat and mouse that I'm always getting into. The media, and whoever first said "Kiss my big black ass." After a two-week disappearance, the millionaire refugee Nigerian farmers are back! I was worried that I'd done something to offend them, but it turns out they were just re-thinking their strategy. Every Friday (1, 2), they send a fax requesting the company's bank account numbers so they can give the company large sums of money for investment purposes. The company never falls for it, because it is not a very good scheme, and also because I usually get the faxes first and keep them for myself. This one is in the form of a memo, which is a nice touch. I think the hope is that the CEO will see it and think, oh, it's a memo from our Millionaire Refugee Nigerian Farmers division, I'll just sign off on it because I'm late for this Finance meeting. (All spelling, grammar, formatting as I found it.) FROM: ALHAJI MUSA ABDULLAHI date:9TH MAY2001 FAX: 234-1-7594356 ATTN: TO WHO IT MAY CONCERN/CEO. NO. OF PAGE(S): 1 So, as always, if any of this page's 1,342,600 readers want to jump on that, you are absolutely welcome to contact Mr Abdulahi. I'm worried, though, because the other millionaire refugee Nigerian farmers are always careful to note that 'the modalities are concluded', and Alhaji doesn't do that here, so the modalities may be up in the air. Hard to say. 010510, 010509 This webpage is in the process of being moved to its new address. I decided that I'd never get around to doing it unless I stopped cold and focused on only that; I also decided to exercise the Fuck All Y'All clause in my employment agreement, which calls for me to leave work every once in a while and not come back, so I was not at work for most of yesterday. I know how you worry, though, so I wanted to explain things. And request pie. But mostly explain. Cookies, actually, would be great. Anyway. Probably tomorrow. I still doodle on Hesterman in the meantime. Hey, how you been? You still living out by the airport? You tell Jimmy to forget about the five dollars. All's forgiven. Even Jimmy. 010508 Anyone who has read this webpage knows how this job has affected me. There are two other people who have the same position I do, though, and anyone who is wondering how it affects them will be interested to know that while Lum is making a career out of it, Hiro came by my desk today and declared that he's taking the police exam this weekend. He's tired of all this, sees the cops having a good time at bars, and has decided to abandon his professional ambitions in hopes of getting a job as a cop on a river patrol boat. Stopping pirates, I asked, and he nodded. He's very serious about it. I wished him luck. He's got a big photo of the Wu-Tang Clan in his cubicle, so I figure he'll do fine. 143. You are on patrol in a mostly residential neighborohood when you see the Wu-Tang Clan. Do you a) Fuck with them b) Inspect their beats, especially those belonging to the RZA, for he is the leader c) Check to see if ODB is with them; if so, arrest him on trumped-up charges d) Keep patrolling 144. Which of the following is NOT a known Wu-Tang alias? a) Bobby Digital b) Big Baby Jesus c) Rebel INS d) Will Ferrell Ah, I never get tired of that stuff. And if you do, you are a dickhead. To update yesterday's monkey business: Date: Tue, 8 May 2001 00:51:25 -0700 From: Per Jambeck (jambeck@bioeng.ucsd.edu) To: Ex Lion Tamer (heiden@enteract.com) Subject: inopportune floating red hat Congratulations on fearlessly breaking the story regarding Mr. Tito: if NASA can fake a moon landing, making an organ grinder's monkey look like a businessman should be child's play. Well-said. I rest my case and send the sincerest congratulations of this webpage to organ-grinders and their monkeys all over the world for this impressive milestone. It's a nice recompense on Russia's part, if you think about it, for firing Laika the space dog up there without a plan to get her back. We've learned the error of our ways, and we're bringing that monkey home. Next week, the tech crew is coming by to update my computer to something called Workstation 5. If it's anything like Rocky 5, I'm in for a treat. Probably not, though. I'm taking the morning off, because computers are vital to what I do here, supposedly, and then I have to attend what they call a 'brown-bag lunch' to learn about the capabilities of Rocky 5, which doesn't bode well, because wasn't that the one where Rocky couldn't fight any more and trained the boxer who turned into a bad guy? Better off with Workstation 4, I think, where pre-Mr Tito Russia gets its ass symbolically kicked by American pluck and integrated capabilities. Anyway, sure, I'll bring a brown-bag to the tech crew's presentation, but it ain't going to be no lunch, yo. Only thing I consume out of brown bags comes in a 40oz size. Wait, that's a lie. Man, there are lies all over that paragraph. How did that happen? I thought I was paying attention. Shit. A lot of it's true, though, so I'd hate to punish those parts by deleting all of it, but the lies are so deeply entwined that they can't be removed without uprooting the entire thing. So it stays. In the future, vigilance. 010507 Today's entry, like most great works of art, is concerned primarily with monkeys. (news) The end of Mr. Tito's eight-day adventure, which took him to the International Space Station, did not end the public dispute between the Russian and American space agencies over space tourism. Though the two agencies reached a last-minute agreement on the terms for Mr. Tito's ride, recriminations have followed. The NASA administrator, Daniel S. Goldin, has promised to present the Russian space agency with a bill for the hours of work required by extra precautions and the "incredible stress" placed on NASA employees as they tried to ensure that Mr. Tito would not break anything or otherwise endanger the space station. I've been following this news story for a while and found the entire thing pretty confusing until I realized that Mr Tito is a businessman, not an organ-grinder's monkey. Then it all made sense. Shame about it not being an organ-grinder's monkey, though. Would that have caused friction between the organ-grinder and his monkey, I wonder, because the monkey had been to space and the organ-grinder had not? No, but I'd really respect the Russian government, I think, if Mr Tito had been an organ-grinder's monkey instead of a businessman. The US, you know them, they would totally complain about letting the monkey go into space, and if that's what the Russian space program took a stand on, that we don't give a fuck, this organ-grinder's monkey is coming into space and all y'all can kiss our big black ass, I would be a huge fan of theirs, and might go so far as to send them a dollar. It's a fairly simple scenario. The organ-grinder saves up, because he wants to send his monkey to space. The act isn't making as much as it used to, all these unemployed dot-com types are crowding the organ-grinder plus monkey department, and the organ-grinder feels like he needs something to set them apart: fine, those other guys have organs, and monkeys too, but my monkey has been to space! Back to the dot-com world with the Johnny-come-latelies. I bet a large part of the cost was created by the organ-grinder's monkey's little red hat floating off his head and into unpredictable places, like the control board. Wait, Mr Tito wasn't actually a monkey. Shit. I think I have work to do. There are photocopies that need to be made. What did the organ-grinder do while the monkey was away? I bet he was nervous. Please, he thought. Behave yourself up there in space, Mr Tito! Well, from all accounts, he had nothing to worry about: In the end, Mr. Tito appears to have been a helpful and well-behaved guest. His crew mates praised his performance and the permanent space station crew welcomed Mr. Tito into the American module and seemed to ignore much of the earthbound fuss over Mr. Tito. If he isn't a monkey, why do they keep mentioning his name like that? He's obviously a monkey. I bet sometimes the astronauts were working and they needed a wrench or a screwdriver, and Mr Tito learned to associate the sound of the words with the tools in question, just like he knew which dances went with which songs from the organ; and he'd go fetch the tool and come floating back with it, much to the delight of the busy astronauts. And I bet, of this much I am certain, that when the moon first rose on the horizon, Mr Tito shrieked happily and clapped his paws. Back in the day. |
