Month: July 2003

…how come they hang out with these losers?

(Link courtesy of Jamie “JWZ” Zawinski’s LiveJournal.)

…because I can accomplish a lot powered only by a single wink.

Well, I think it was a wink.

Definitely wink. That was soooooo a wink.

Dag, yo. Look at how productive I am today.

(End of cryptic entry)

People in the new media industry — I was one of them for a while — have always said “It’s the content, stupid.” Go on all you want about the newest telephone techo-gadgetry; I’ll take my basic Samsung and the entertaining voicemail messages from yesterday over any hot new phone that Gizmodo, the gadget blog, drools over…

Message 1: Saturday July 5th, 12:45 p.m.

Hello Joey, it’s Dad. Your uncle Ravenal just arrived in town. We’re on the patio at Hooters. We request the honour of your company.

Message 2: Saturday July 5th, about 3:00 p.m.

Hi Joey, it’s Meryle. I need you to be my trained monkey…

Message 3: Saturday July 5th, about 5:00 p.m.

Joey, this is Tony. I used to manage The Living Room, where I hired you for a couple of nights to do some go-go dancing. I was wondering if you’d like to do some accordion playing with the house band at my new club…

Message 4: Saturday July 5th, about 7:00 p.m.

Joey, it’s Anne. Remember the girls from my PR class? Tanya’s throwing a party tonight and when they invited me, they kept saying “Bring Joey! Bring Joey!” I know it’s short notice, but if you’re not doing anything tonight, the girls would love to see you…

(And to think I was planning to spend the evening feeling sorry for myself.)

According to Colby Cosh’s analysis of data from sites that track links to blogs (Technorati, Myelin Ecosystem, Truth Laid Bear’s Ecosystem, Daypop’s Blogstats, Alexa, and Blogstreet), I’m in the top 10 list for most popular Canadian blogs!

(A “Canadian Blog”, for the purposes of this list, is one written by a resident of Canada.)

Here’s that top ten list:

1. Winds of Change

2. William Gibson

3. Caterina.net

4. Seb’s Open Research

5. Photojunkie.org

6. ColbyCosh.com

7. Wood’s Lot

8. Ongoing (Tim Bray)

9. Daimnation!

10. The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century

Hey, Rannie! Good to see you up there too. With him, me and Caterina, that makes for three Filipinos in the top 10.

I should also mention that a strong contender for the list — currently in 11th place, my spot in the first iteration of the top ten list before a non-resident Canadian was disqualified — is Kathy “Relapsed Catholic” Shaidle. We will jostle for placement on the list like good-natured English jockeys rather than trash-talking each other like professional wrestlers.

(Of course, pro wrestling gets pretty good ratings. Kathy, wanna get some wrestling masks and come up with kind of schtick? I picture you as “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and me as Randy “Macho Man” Savage.)

My thanks to all you folks who linked to me. Check out the blogroll in the sidebar to the right — if you link to me in a permanent list of links, you belong in my blogroll! If you’re not there, drop me a line and I’ll rectify the situation.

My social calendar for the rest of the summer looks like this: Wedding. Engagement party. Wedding. Meet friend’s new significant other. Wedding. It’s that sort of summer, and strangely enough, it’s beginning to irk me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not wishing any of the happy couples ill. I love it when my friends are happy. They are, after all, my friends. My homies. My doggs, yo.

In especially happy for my two friends who threw an engagement party last night in Accordion City’s Little Italy. It’s a Happy Movie Ending kind of thing — you could sum up the past five years as Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Realizes He Can’t Get Over Girl, Boy Wins Girl Back, Roll Credits.

This is not an easy feat. I’ve tried this twice over the past two years. One involved a cross-border/cross-country move, the other an equally life-changing offer. The result of both I’ll simply summarize as “craptacular”, despite the fact that I did everything right. (Really, I did. You can do everything right and still lose.)

So I raise a glass to my engaged friends: Congratulations: you beat the odds!

Sigh.

In the past week, I think I’ve been in three conversations (the last one being at yesterday’s engagement party) where someone has said “When will I ever find someone?” and the reply has invariably been “First, you have to give up completely. That’s when you find someone.” Experience — not just mine, but plenty of other people’s — seems to indicate that this is true.

After the past eighteen months of ridiculousness — some of it unbloggable, some of it referred to cryptically, some of it documented, one in particular being one of the most-linked-to personal stories on the Web — giving up is the sensible option.

Except quitting feels like…well, quitting. And it’s not my style.

To be honest, it’s the only annoying thing in my life at the moment. The rest of the time, I lead a pretty charmed existence. Flip through this blog’s archives if you don’t believe me. I really have nothing else to complain about, and that’s why complaining feels so wrong. “Why won’t she return my calls?” or “But I already have plenty of friends!” seem quite minor when a distressingly large fraction of world is wondering “Sell the cow, or sell the daughter?” or “The soldiers are coming, why won’t this cheap fucking AK-47 knockoff unjam?!”

Complaining sounds so ungrateful. So whiny. So emo rock.

Yes, the accordion does give me a little bit of a tactical advantage in these situations. I have looks, brains and charm on my side. And the situation isn’t as mysterious as this photo below makes it out to be:

But tactical advantages aren’t everything, otherwise Moxie would never be single.

Maybe I’m just a victim of “Pick Any Two” syndrome. It’s the old engineering maxim: “Fast. Cheap. Good. Pick any two.” I’ve often heard this one about dating: “Sexy. Smart. Sane. Pick any two.” Cory recently dropped this new one on me: “Hot job. Hot apartment. Hot girlfriend. Pick any two.”

Hot job? For a company and a CEO that the uber-influential Joi Ito raves about, and it starts a week Monday. Hot apartment? So hot it ended up on TV. That leaves…oh, crap.

Well, this too shall pass. Maybe in a future blog entry, I’ll be complaining:

July 5th 2004:

She’s at it again. I’m trying to get this particularly tricky bit of code on which Tucows’ fortunes depend to work, and she’s interrupting me all the bleeding time!

“Joey,” she says in her most sultry come-hither voice, “I’m wearing nothing but Cheez Whiz.”

“Dammit, woman, can’t you see I’m trying to work here?!“

Memo to my future self, six months from now

When you read this in the archives, be sure to say this to the cute girl sitting in your lap: “See sweetie, before I met you I’d completely given up all hope of meeting someone.”

Then cover her with ice cream and nibble on her bum.

Memo to my future readers and future blog historians, six months from now

See? I was the one who started the trend of using your blog to send messages to your future self.

To my American friends from your Canadian friend, have a safe and happy 4th of July!

Rannie “Photojunkie” Turingan took this photo of me at the megaswanky King Edward Hotel, where Min Jung Kim threw a little impromptu get-together. We had drinks, pizza, conversation, command accordion performances, Min Jung trying to find out what was beneath the Accordion Guy persona (caramel and a crunchy cookie, last I checked) and of course, photography.

Rannie just emailed me a photo from that evening, and damn, I look as though I could be in a scotch ad! Call my agent!

Thanks for the photo, Rannie! Maraming salamat po.